Kennedys and King Test host626

Category: John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Original essays treating the assassination of John F. Kennedy, its historical and political context and aftermath, and the investigations conducted.

  • The Crimes of Quillette

    The Crimes of Quillette

    I’ll say this for Fred Litwin: He knows where to go to advance his cause.

    On Steve Paikan’s Ontario TV show The Agenda, Litwin stated that nothing in the declassified files of the ARRB indicated anything about a conspiracy in the JFK case. This is simply and utterly false. As I wrote about Litwin’s essay on Jim Garrison, this statement proves one of two things: 1.) He did not read any of the declassified files, or 2.) He did read them and is deliberately misrepresenting them. In my review I proved that such was the case with several specific examples. This exposure reduces Litwin to the level of Leslie Nielson as Lt. Frank Drebin in The Naked Gun: proclaiming to a gatheringcrowd there was nothing to see as, behind him, bombs explode a fireworks factory. But this is the kind of poseur that Litwin is, except he is not nearly as funny as Nielson.

    In addition to his interview, Litwin has also done an article for an online journal. That online journal is something called Quillette, which I never knew existed until someone pointed out the Litwin article. I would have never found this journal on my own, and I would not have been missing anything.

    Quillette is a libertarian inspired anti-PC, anti-liberal journal founded by one Claire Lehmann. Journalist Bari Weiss grouped Lehmann as a member of the Intellectual Dark Web, along with the likes of Jordan Peterson and Ben Shapiro. (See this article for info on Peterson) Shapiro is the snarky right-winger who went on MSNBC to defend gun rights by handing the host, Piers Morgan, a copy of the constitution. Unfortunately Morgan, a Brit, did not reply with, “Ben, do you also believe that African Americans should count as 3/5 of a person for census purposes? Because that is what this document says. Should they, and also women, be allowed to vote? Because under this document they were not.” As Alice Dreger wrote, opinions are not scholarship, and that is what the members of this group generally offer. (“Why I escaped the ‘Intellectual Dark Web’’’, Chronicle of Higher Education, 5/11/2018) She could have added that snark does not denote intelligence. As with the Shapiro exchange, it’s often just an excuse for being a smartass. Quillette published the so-called “Google memo” by James Damore, in which he accused that company of practicing reverse discrimination which somehow hurt Asians and whites and males. The right loves this kind of thing since it is a way to repudiate the affirmative action policies originated by President Kennedy. Except, by reading some of their articles concerning JFK, I would be willing to wager than no one at Quillette even knows that JFK started that policy. The Intellectual Dark Web is really the cover layer for the rise of the Trumpian alt-right. If the reader understands all that, then everything that follows is as natural as water running over a rock.

    I

    On September 27, 2018, Quillette published an article by Litwin based on his book I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak. That article tried to make the case that somehow the KGB was involved in fostering JFK conspiracy thinking in the USA by planting disinformation stories. Litwin, not the most original researcher, largely based his piece on the work of Max Holland. He labels Holland an historian—which he is not. Two of the three pieces that Holland says are KGB produced disinformation are not disinfo at all. I dealt with them in my critique of Holland’s original article that The Daily Beast was dumb enough to print. As I noted there, the late Mark Lane did not get secret donations from the KGB. And he proved this in his book, The Last Word. (pp. 92-96) As I showed in my critique of Litwin’s essay on Jim Garrison, the last thing in the world that Permindex was was a creation of the KGB. And Shaw’s association with it was something he himself acknowledged. I demonstrated this, not just in my previous essay on Litwin, but also in my lengthy exposure of Holland.

    The third piece of alleged KGB mischief that Litwin brings up is the famous “Dear Mr. Hunt letter”. In book form this was first produced in Henry Hurt’s volume Reasonable Doubt. It is a note dated November 8, 1963, and addressed to a Mr. Hunt. It is written in cursive and reads, “I would like information regarding my position. I am only asking for information. I am asking that we discuss the matter fully before any steps are taken by me or anyone else. Thank you.” Oswald’s signature follows. (See HSCA Vol. 4, p. 337) Again, Litwin says this was part of a Russian intelligence operation codenamed Arlington.

    One of the problems with that pronouncement is that the Dallas Morning News ran a story saying they had three handwriting analysts look at the note: Mary Harrison, Allan R. Keon and Mary Duncan. They compared it to samples of Oswald’s writing. All three concluded it was genuine. (NY Times, April 4, 1977) The trio belonged to a professional organization called the Independent Association of Questioned Document Examiners. Harrison said she would be comfortable going into court and presenting her analysis. Litwin gets around this problem by saying that the NY Times wrote of the note’s possible authenticity. As the reader can see, that is not what the Times reported. The HSCA did not make a conclusive judgment about the note because it was a photocopy. (Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, p. 236) On this point, Ms. Harrison stated that reproductions are often presented in court.

    Most of the Litwin/Holland material was produced by KGB defector Vasili Mitrokhin. Making the Mitrokhin case look even worse on this matter is the work of researcher Greg Doudna. Doudna did his best to track down the evidence Mitrokhin had purloined from the KGB showing the note was a forgery. In Mitrokhin’s book, The Sword and the Shield, there is a footnote referencing some original papers at a British university. (Mitrokhin and Christopher Andrew, pp. 228-29) Greg got in contact with the curator at Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, and part of the University of Cambridge. To cut to the chase, there is no evidence for this forgery in the Mitrokin collection. All there exists to back up that footnote is a typed draft of the book. This is the kind of scholarship Litwin offered and Quillette accepted. (E-mail communication with Doudna, 11/28/2018)

    Mitrokhin was a former KGB archivist who became a defector. Apparently, neither Litwin, nor anyone at Quillette, ever read Amy Knight’s coruscating review of his role in the wave of alleged Soviet defectors finding their home with Anglo-American publishers and newspapers owned by the likes of Rupert Murdoch. As she points out, when first drafts by these defecting authors were not sensational enough, they were spiced up. And presto! They now included information like, well, how about Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi and Robert Oppenheimer were giving atomic secrets to the USSR? And Oppenheimer recruited Klaus Fuchs—who actually was a spy—to Los Alamos, the location of the Manhattan Project. Knight, a real scholar in the field of Soviet studies, had some fun with that one. (“The Selling of the KGB”, Wilson Quarterly, Winter 2000) She had more fun with the source for both Holland and Litwin. The idea that an archivist did not have access to a copier for 12 years and therefore had to scribble down notes from documents, instead of copying the documents themselves, this simply strains credulity. But if one sees this new field of exchange as a marketable continuation of the Cold War—with impoverished KGB agents finding a way to make mucho bucks from an American/British Establishment that has a lot invested in the justification of that Cold War—then it makes sense. Somehow, the anti-PC Quillette fails to acknowledge that angle. Which indicates what their political correctness is all about.

    In fact, on the matter of the JFK case, Quillette is Establishment to the hilt—and beyond. On the 55th anniversary of the murder of President Kennedy, they gave Litwin an encore. They ran an echo to his book. One of the editors, Jamie Palmer, penned a piece called “My Misspent years of Conspiracism”. All I can say to Mr. Palmer is that if this was an audition for the big-time MSM, he should be getting a few calls from the Fox network in the near future.

    II

    In Litwin’s book, he says that what originally convinced him there was a conspiracy in the JFK case was ABC TV’s public showing of the Zapruder film in 1975. In Palmer’s Bildungsroman, it was his viewing of the film JFK. But even in describing that experience the reader can see why, as with Litwin, Palmer ended up being a Warren Commission shill. He writes that somehow the Mr. X character in that film turned out not to be credible. That character is based on Fletcher Prouty, and virtually everything he related from his own experience at the meeting in Washington with the Jim Garrison character has turned out to be accurate. That Mr. X/Garrison conversation on a park bench concerning Vietnam has revolutionized our thinking about that entire conflict. It inspired several books that have advanced the film’s thesis even further. Namely, that President Kennedy was not going to escalate the Vietnam quagmire any further, that no combat troops would be sent into theater, and the advisors America had there were going to be recalled. From what I have seen of Quillette, they would not print scholars like David Kaiser or Gordon Goldstein or James Blight. That’s not what they are about. Litwin is.

    Palmer is unintentionally funny when he gets to the turning point of his personal saga. He says that his original beliefs about the case were reversed when he watched the 2003 program on the assassination that was produced by Peter Jennings at ABC and broadcast in England by the BBC. This site carries an entire section consisting of 16 critical articles demonstrating why Jennings’ show was a three-ring circus. From Jennings’ hiring of Gus Russo as his main consultant, to the “computer simulation” of the Magic Bullet, the program was a set up to revivify the corpse of the Warren Report. Our articles expose that agenda in gruesome detail. Somehow, Palmer swallowed it whole. In fact, he calls this program “a masterpiece of methodical argument”.

    Palmer goes on to describe certain parts of that “methodical argument” for an entire section of his long essay. What is incredible about his recitation is that, with one exception, it is all recycled Warren Commission drivel used to convict Oswald in 1964. Are we to believe that in over ten years of his belief that Oswald was innocent Palmer never read any of this material? Not even in books critical of the Commission? For he now says that he sees that Stone was remiss by not including the shooting attempt at General Edwin Walker in his film. Palmer writes, “Oswald had tried to assassinate someone else in April 1963.” The case against Oswald in the Walker shooting has been well examined by, among others, Gerald McKnight in his fine book Breach of Trust. That book is 13 years old, so if Palmer wanted to check up on that incident, he could have.

    First off, the Walker shooting was investigated by the Dallas Police for over seven months and Oswald was never a suspect. Why? For one, the best witness was Kirk Coleman. He ran out of his neighboring house right after hearing the shot. He saw two men escaping, in two separate cars. Further, when he was shown pictures of Oswald by the FBI, he failed to identify him as either man. (McKnight, p. 57) But beyond that, a cursory look at the Warren Report reveals that Oswald did not drive, or own a car. Another witness, Robert Surrey, told the police that two nights before the shooting he had seen two men casing Walker’s house. They left in a Ford. Again, he said that neither man looked like Oswald. (McKnight, p. 58) Tough to go into court when the two eyewitnesses deny the defendant was there.

    But it’s worse than that. The bullet recovered from the scene of the crime, which missed Walker from about 25 feet away, was not the correct ammunition for the alleged Oswald rifle. In newspaper and police accounts it was reported as a 30.06 projectile, not 6.5 mm. Plus, it was steel jacketed, not copper jacketed as was the ammunition used for the Oswald rifle, and therefore was a different hue. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 100) The reason the FBI and the Warren Commission had to pin the Walker shooting on Oswald was because there was next to nothing in his past to connect him to such an outburst of murderous violence as occurred in Dealey Plaza, and later, with the killing of Patrolman Tippit. In the Marines, Oswald accidentally injured himself when a derringer went off as he opened a locker. He then had a dispute with an officer and threw a drink in his face. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 130) What makes that sum total even weaker is that Oswald liked and admired President Kennedy. (Dick Russell, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, p. 206)

    The one exception to his warmed over Warren Commission refuse is contained in Palmer’s final and thunderous J’accuse against Stone. The author concludes his conversion story by praising the ABC-produced Dale Myers computer simulation of the Magic Bullet done for the Jennings program. That simulation was supposed to show the Warren Commission was correct in saying that one bullet went through both John Kennedy and Governor John Connally, making seven wounds, smashing two bones, and emerging from its journey in pretty much unscathed condition, missing only 3 grains of its original mass. There have been several devastating critiques of this simulation. All Palmer had to do was search the web and he would have found them. In our section on this site, we feature three full-scale dismantlings of Myers and his cartoon. The Single Bullet Theory, the sine qua non of the Warren Report, simply did not happen. And when one has to cut as many corners as Myers does in order to create a Rube Goldberg contraption to say it did, then such is the proof of the plot. That Mr. Palmer did not consult any of these critiques says a lot about his personal bias and also his honesty with his readers. He actually writes that he found Myers’ simulation “too convincing to dismiss”.

    Robert Harris showed how easy it was to dismiss. He demonstrated that Myers deliberately misplaced the positions of Kennedy and Connally in the car for ABC. Harris proved this was the case by using actual images from the Zapruder film to demonstrate that Myers had jammed the two victims much closer together than they were, thereby foreshortening the firing trajectory. Myers also changed the position of the two men and altered the image of the car within the same traveling shot. He did this in order to conceal the fact that when placed in their proper perspective, the Magic Bullet comes in way too low to strike Connally in the right rear shoulder. In spite of all this, Palmer concludes this section of his essay by saying that if this same technique would have been used to demonstrate a frontal shot, he would have considered it “decisive and final”. I would like to inform Quillette that by using these techniques, one could simulate a sniper hitting Kennedy and Connally from the top of the Hertz sign in Dealey Plaza. But for Palmer and Quillette, in keeping with Mr. Litwin’s approach, it’s not the accuracy of the presentation that matters, it’s the result. Or to use an old realpolitik adage: the ends justify the means.

    III

    But Palmer has to maintain his whole “personal saga” pretense. So he now shifts gears into the New Orleans aspect of Stone’s film and also to Garrison’s book, On the Trail of the Assassins. But, like Litwin, Palmer refuses to acknowledge an important aspect of the overall calculus: the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). Litwin simply misrepresents the discoveries of that body. Palmer simply ignores them. As I noted in my review of Litwin, this tactic is convenient for Warren Report shills since so much of what Garrison was talking about back in 1967 has turned out to be accurate. In fact, because Garrison was correct on much of what he said, the FBI and CIA had to cover up the facts, and the CIA had to launch subversive operations against him.

    Part of the subversion was to launch infiltrators into Garrison’s camp. As Garrison describes in his book, one of them was a man he called Bill Boxley, his real name being William Wood. In Stone’s film, he and co-screenwriter Zach Sklar named him Bill Broussard. Palmer actually calls the character, “a composite of various Garrison staffers” and “is allotted the role of the villain in Stone’s film”. Wrong again. From talking with co-screenwriter Zach Sklar, Broussard was based upon Boxley. And if anything, Stone and Sklar underplayed the damage Boxley did to Garrison. This author spent several pages dealing with the havoc the man unleashed, and also the investigative files he stole—some of which were never recovered. (DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, pp. 278-85) If you can believe it, Palmer actually tries to make the guy some kind of hero. What is even more bizarre is that Palmer also relies upon Tom Bethell, the man who was supposed to be in charge of Garrison’s archive. On the eve of the Shaw trial, Bethell turned over the DA’s trial brief to Shaw’s defense. Through research into the Garrison files declassified by the ARRB, Peter Vea discovered that, unlike what Bethell tried to imply years later, he did not admit this to Garrison. Lou Ivon, Garrison’s assistant, conducted an investigation and found out Bethell was the culprit. According to Peter’s work, Bethell broke down and wept upon discovery. Before Garrison could decide what to do with his case, he fled to Dallas. As stated to this author in a conversation he had with the late Mary Ferrell’s estranged son, for whatever reason, Bethell ended up at her doorstep. With touchstones like this, you can do a lot to downgrade Jim Garrison.

    And Palmer cannot let go of Litwin’s false idea that somehow Garrison’s witness Perry Russo was drugged and fed leading questions to get him to identify Shaw as Bertrand. In my review of Litwin I showed this was not the case. It was a trick set up by Shaw’s lawyers with the aid of compromised journalist James Phelan. They rearranged the two sodium pentothal (truth serum) sessions to make it appear that this is what occurred. When read in their true order no such thing happens. Russo introduced the character of Bertrand on his own without being coached. The two best exposures of this charade are by Lisa Pease (Probe Magazine, Vol. 6 No. 5, p. 26), and Joe Biles in his book on Garrison entitled In History’s Shadow (pp. 43-47). Both have been available for over 15 years.

    But Palmer goes beyond Litwin. He says that Perry Russo flunked his polygraph test according to the administrator. The administrator he is referring to is one Ed O’Donnell. O’Donnell was a policeman who Garrison had tried to draw up on charges for police brutality against African American suspects. Both he and Ray Jacob, another technician used by the DA, were intent on unsettling Russo in order to get the wrong indications on the test. (Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice, p. 147) When Russo complained to Garrison about these tactics, Garrison called O’Donnell into his office. He asked him if he had a tape of Russo denying that Shaw/Bertrand was at a gathering at Ferrie’s apartment. The policeman said no he did not. Yet he had told Russo he did. Garrison terminated his services upon hearing this. (Clay Shaw trial testimony of 2/26/69) The proof of who O’Donnell really was is that he ended up being an advisor to Shaw’s defense team at the trial. (Mellen, p. 309)

    If you continually and falsely smear the DA’s investigation, and then assume that Oswald shot Kennedy—which we know today did not and could not have happened—then you can characterize Garrison’s inquiry as “inconsequential”. But you would have to add that the Richard Schweiker/Gary Hart investigation for the Church Committee was also meaningless, and the Richard Sprague/Robert Tanenbaum phase of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was also adrift. The problem with saying that is you are now dismissing two fine senators and two excellent prosecutors. Between them, Sprague and Tanenbaum prosecuted about two hundred homicide cases. The combined record was one loss in well over twenty years. Sprague was the lawyer who prosecuted the famous Jock Yablonski murder conspiracy case and convicted corrupt labor leader Tony Boyle. (DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, p. 326) According to Tanenbaum, when he was privately briefed on the Church Committee inquiry by Schweiker, the senator told him that, in his view, the CIA had killed Kennedy. He then handed him a research file compiled by his chief investigator Gaeton Fonzi. (Probe Magazine, Vol. 3 No. 5, p. 24) Need I add that this was the same conclusion that Garrison had come to a decade earlier? But Dale Myers and ABC have magically made this information “inconsequential”. And with a stroke of his pen, or keyboard, Palmer has made Schweiker, Hart, Sprague, Tanenbaum and Fonzi all disappear. In fact, from his perspective, they never existed.

    Without that backdrop, and without the relevant discoveries of the ARRB about New Orleans, then you may as well be writing about Jim Garrison from the viewpoint of some MSM hack journalist in 1968. For instance, like Litwin, Palmer wants to discount the fact that we can now prove that the mysterious Clay Bertrand, who called Dean Andrews, was really Clay Shaw. (DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, pp. 385-86) He fails to mention that we know today that it was Shaw and his friend David Ferrie who were escorting Oswald around the villages of Clinton and Jackson 100 miles north of New Orleans in the late summer of 1963. They were trying to register Oswald to vote in a parish far away from where he lived so he could get a job at a mental hospital. (Bill Davy, Let Justice be Done, pp. 101-17) Shaw lied about all these matters: that he knew Ferrie, or Oswald, that he used the Bertrand alias, and that he was in Clinton-Jackson with those two men that summer. Shaw also knew Guy Banister. (Davy, pp. 93-94) Oswald spent many days of that fateful summer of 1963 in Banister’s office preparing his Fair Play for Cuba Committee flyers and pamphlets, with Banister’s address on the early copies. (Davy, pp. 37-42)

    Somehow, Palmer does not understand that it was these activities in New Orleans that summer that were injected into the media within hours of President Kennedy’s murder and did much to convict Oswald in the public mind as the sociopathic communist who killed the president for ideological reasons. It thus makes sense that Shaw would call his acquaintance Andrews to go to Dallas to defend Oswald—not knowing Oswald was going to be killed within 48 hours of his apprehension. Shaw would know that Andrews could be compromised, or be used as an incompetent lawyer.

    This is where, as they say, the plot thickens, and again, Palmer leaves it out. Through the ARRB, we know today that Oswald was not a sociopathic communist. He was very likely working through Banister as a CIA agent provocateur. The CIA had set up an anti-FPCC campaign under the tutelage of David Phillips, who was one of the men running that operation. (Davy, p. 286) Further, a man fitting the description of Phillips was in Banister’s office in 1961 trying to arrange a citywide telethon for the Cuban exile cause. (Davy, pp. 21-24) Phillips’ was also seen in film made of one of the nearby New Orleans CIA training camps, a film which the HSCA temporarily had in their possession. Along with Oswald and Banister, witnesses also identified him as being in the film. (Davy, pp. 30-31)

    With this background now filled in a bit, Palmer may want to ask himself if it explains the curious provenance of Oswald’s pamphlet, “The Crime Against Cuba” by Corliss Lamont. Oswald stamped it with 544 Camp Street, Banister’s address. Oswald’s version of the pamphlet was printed in 1961. It had gone through at least four more printings by the time Oswald was leafleting with it in 1963. Yet his was from the first edition. The CIA purchased 45 copies of the original edition in 1961. Is this how Oswald got the outdated version, perhaps through Phillips who was running the subversive program against the FPCC? To make it all a bit more curious, Oswald wrote about his altercation with the Cuban exiles, which got him arrested and the pamphlet confiscated, before it happened. (Davy, p. 38)

    As the reader can see, these are the provocative questions that Oswald’s activities in New Orleans pose when they are presented with the full information we have today. Much of it was available at the time of the Jennings special. Mr. Jennings was not going to touch it. We explain why in our special section reviewing that very poor and unethical documentary. In a nutshell, in 1984, ABC Nightly News did a report on the exposure of a CIA front company in Hawaii and the Agency’s involvement in a possible murder plot. It was a fascinating two-part installment. CIA Director William Casey was very upset by that reporting. So he arranged to have some of his friends and colleagues at Capital Cities buy the network. Jennings, the host of the program, got the message. After Casey and Cap Cities bought the network, Jennings, who had originally stood by the story, now said he had no problem with the CIA’s denial of it.

    Palmer closes his essay with a reference to Litwin’s book, saying that somehow the technical panels set up by the HSCA on things like forensic pathology, photographic evidence and the rifle tests sealed the deal against Oswald. By now, one really wonders just what Palmer was doing in those ten years he doubted the Warren Commission. He certainly was not reading the journals on the subject. Because if he had been, he would have known that people like Dr. Gary Aguilar, Dr. David Mantik and this author completely took apart these very flawed tests made by the HSCA. And, in fact, the chair of the HSCA, Robert Blakey, also took one of them back, the one he relied upon as the lynchpin of his case against Oswald, namely the Comparative Bullet Lead Analysis (CBLT). He has now termed it junk science. (For a full scale, in-depth analysis, see The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 69-85; pp. 250-91) Those 58 pages simply devastate the so-called findings that Litwin, in four pages, trumpets. And one will find evidence in those pages indicating that the HSCA simply and knowingly misrepresented some of their forensic findings.

    IV

    At the end of Palmer’s article, he sourced a previous piece in Quillette from 2017. This was from one Craig Colgan. Colgan fits right in with Quillette’s agenda. He once wrote an article about the National Museum of African American History and Culture and complained that although there was an exhibit for Anita Hill there was none for Clarence Thomas. Anita Hill was the first woman who actually brought the issue of sexual harassment into national consciousness. The fact that she was an African American testifying against the Establishment-backed Thomas made what she did even more courageous. (See this article)

    The title of Colgan’s November 25, 2017 piece was “Are the JFK Conspiracies Slowly Dying?” He begins his article with a reference to Dylan Avery and his film on 9-11 called Loose Change. He then says that since Avery has backed away from some of his more extreme statements, perhaps those who attack the Warren Report should also. Toward the end of the piece, he says he would allow a kind of Robert-Blakey-inspired Oswald-did-it-with-some help concept. And that is what the JFK critical community should be aiming for.

    I don’t know very much about the 9-11 controversy. But I do know that the official investigating committee issued a report without an accompanying set of volumes of evidence. The Warren Commission issued an over-800-page report with 26 volumes of testimony and evidence. The incredible thing about the early critics is this: some of them actually read those volumes. They came to a clear conclusion: the evidence in the volumes did not support the tenets of the report. The late Maggie Field wrote an unpublished book in which she reproduced pages from the report”s conclusions, then juxtaposed to them extracts from the supporting volumes of evidence that directly contradicted them. One could similarly refer to Sylvia Meagher’s classic study Accessories After the Fact. Unlike with 9-11, then, in the case of President Kennedy’s murder, there is nothing to retreat from. In fact, as tens of thousands of declassified pages have later been released, Field’s book has not just been ratified; it has been shown to be too mild, for we know today certain agencies were concealing evidence that would have indicated how parts of the plot and, even moreso, the cover-up, worked. (For example, see section III of this essay and the discoveries about David Phillips and New Orleans.)

    At this point, one must accentuate the fact that even though Quillette is known as a scientific and technically oriented journal, that is what is completely missing from any of its articles on the JFK case. For instance, Colgan mentions a conversation he had with Gary Aguilar about his critique—co-written with Cyril Wecht—of the PBS special Cold Case JFK which aired at the 50th anniversary of the JFK murder. But he does not devote a single sentence to the total demolition of that series that Aguilar and Wecht performed—in a peer review journal on ballistics! And he does not link to the two-part review. Nor does he note that, although Gary offered to pay for both their flight and hotel accommodations, the father and son team who were featured on that program refused to debate him in public.

    Colgan also notes the decline in the public’s belief that there was a plot behind Kennedy’s murder. This is accurate. At the fiftieth anniversary of Kennedy’s death, Hart Associates did a poll for Larry Sabato’s book, the Kennedy Half Century. It statedthat 75% of the public did not believe the Commission’s lone gunman verdict. This was down from the over 90% during the time that Stone’s film JFK premiered. (Sabato, p. 416) The reason for this is simple to discern. Due to Stone’s film, for about one year—from 1991-92—there was actually an open discussion in the media about Kennedy’s murder. And there were actually programs and front-page stories in magazines that addressed it in an even-handed way. The Power Elite was quite upset by that hubbub. They did three things to counter it. Random House, through editor Bob Loomis and publisher Harold Evans, decided to recruit Gerald Posner and give his book one of the most massive publicity barrages in recent publishing history. We know this from the lawsuit the late Roger Feinman launched against Random House concerning that book.

    Secondly, they decided that there would be no more open debate on the issue in the media—and there has not been. We know this from written communications between researcher Walt Brown and Loomis as well as from Alec Baldwin’s speech in Houston last year at a dinner during the JFK mock trial. Baldwin said he had approached NBC with a proposal for a documentary program on Kennedy for the 2013 anniversary. It was rejected without a hearing, with words to this effect: We have reconciled ourselves to the official version. Another example would be what happened in Dallas at the fiftieth anniversary. With the world’s media on hand, Mayor Mike Rawlings completely controlled and cordoned off Dealey Plaza so that no critic could be heard by them. (See our report on the subject as well as this one at jfkfacts.org)

    Third, virtually every single program since—and there have been more than a few—has endorsed the Warren Report, specifically the Single Bullet Fantasy and the no-frontal-shot concept. The problem with these productions is that each one has falsified the facts of the case. (See this video or read this essay)

    Judging from their articles, Quillette is really more of a politically oriented journal than a scientific or technical one. At that, they should have understood the politics of the Warren Commission. The policies of the most active member of that body, Allen Dulles, were opposed to those of President Kennedy. But from this review, the reader can see that both Litwin and Quillette were more in sympathy with Dulles than JFK.

  • Jim Garrison vs. Fred Litwin: The Beat Goes On (part 2)

    Jim Garrison vs. Fred Litwin: The Beat Goes On (part 2)

    In the field of JFK assassination studies, those who advocate for the Warren Commission have always had a special and personal problem with Jim Garrison. After all, the New Orleans DA was an elected official who did not just challenge the Warren Commission; he actually put together an alternative theory of Kennedy’s assassination. That theory created intense interest and attracted a public following.

    This created a serious problem for the MSM. The press had embraced the Warren Report, all 800 pages of it. Now came an accomplished District Attorney who was saying that their much-ballyhooed report on the death of President Kennedy was rubbish. By doing that, Garrison was not just upsetting the MSM’s apple cart, but also the FBI, the Secret Service and the White House. After all, they had all cooperated and worked for several months on this much anticipated report. Could they all have been so easily taken in by the Dallas Police? Or was there something else at work? Perhaps a deliberate cover-up? If so, why? What could be behind such an evil act and its elaborate concealment?

    By raising these questions, Garrison was upsetting the establishment. Therefore, he was harshly attacked by all elements of the power structure. Almost no one in the media—except the LA Free Press, Ramparts and Playboy magazines—gave him a fair hearing. Every major newspaper, magazine, and TV network discounted or attacked him—none treated him fairly or even handedly. Elements of the government illegally spied on him, sent infiltrators into his camp, wired his office, tapped his phone, and launched subversive operations against his investigative efforts. (See William Davy, Let Justice be Done, Chapter 12) When Garrison complained about these actions, the MSM ignored him. Today, after the disclosures of the Assassination Records Review Board, they cannot be ignored. For the simple matter that the acts of subversion can now be proven with declassified documents.

    There is another important element to the cacophony enveloping New Orleans that has also been revealed. That is the incessant efforts of Clay Shaw’s attorneys to enlist as much help as possible from Washington DC. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, pp. 261-78) What makes this secret solicitation so curious is that, for two solid years, the media portrait of Shaw was that he was as clean as the driven snow. If such were the case, then why were Shaw’s lawyers so desperate for help from the CIA and the FBI? And why did the Agency and Bureau give it to them? Was there something that those two executive intelligence agencies knew that they weren’t telling the public? If so, what was it?

    Through the ARRB, we have now discovered that there was a lot to hide about Clay Shaw. And neither the FBI nor the CIA had planned on letting the public know about it. If not for the ruckus created by Oliver Stone’s 1991 film JFK, no one may have ever discovered any of it.

    Now comes one Fred Litwin. Litwin has written two books. They have both publication and thematic similarities. The first was called Conservative Confidential. That book is about his coming out as a gay man and also traveling politically from left to right, eventually emerging as an activist conservative in the gay community in Ottawa, the capital of Canada. What I found interesting about the first book is that, although I had never heard of Litwin, evidently some powerful people had. The book was blurbed by the likes of Conrad Black, and Daniel Pipes. Black is a former international newspaper magnate who was convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice in America and banned from running a company or serving on any boards in Ontario. Pipes is a rightwing veteran of several think tanks who wrote a book labeling almost anyone who believes in political conspiracies as being inherently paranoid. In Chapter 1, Pipes specifically pointed to the African American community. Nice fan base. After making a lot of money in the computer field, Litwin is involved in lecture presentations, music, film festivals and publishing today. (For an example of the people he sponsors, go here)

    Litwin’s second book is called I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak. Like his first, it was published through his own company, Northern Blues. From the title, one does not need much explication as to the similarity in theme. With the JFK case, as with his politics, Litwin has now seen the light. Like St. Paul on the way to Damascus, he had a vision. Except, unlike with Paul, his was not of a vision of a resurrected Christ appearing before him. It was Lee Harvey Oswald firing three shots in six seconds from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository; scoring two of three direct hits to the head and shoulder area of JFK. A feat that, without cheating, no expert has ever been able to duplicate. One of those bullets went through Kennedy’s back, rising upward slightly, even though it was originally traveling downward. Without striking bone, it then went left to right, even though it was fired from right to left. It made a perforating exit from Kennedy’s neck, one that was smaller than its entrance—even though exits are supposed to be larger. It then went through Connally’s body and as it exited his chest it veered right towards his wrist, and then deflected left into his thigh. It emerged from his thigh and was found in the rim of a stretcher, except no one knows whose stretcher it was. (The Impossible One-Day Journey of CE 399; see also Was the CE 399 Magic Bullet Planted?)

    When it was found there was almost no deformation of the bullet, and no blood or tissue on it. After smashing two bones in Connally, it was missing only three grains of its mass. (WC Vol. III pp. 428-30) As Gary Aguilar and Josiah Thompson have shown, CE 399 was so specious as evidence that the FBI had to lie about its identification. (The Magic Bullet: Even More Magical Than We Knew?) As others have said, to believe all this, one must have had some kind of religious experience. Especially if one did not buy into it at first.

    But there is another oddity about Litwin. The present author has been in this field for going on three decades. I have read a rather large amount of material on the subject. This includes research journals from both America and abroad. I do not recall coming across Mr. Litwin’s name in any of them. Apparently, the man kept his beliefs about a JFK plot rather close to his vest.

    I am not going to deal with the entirety of Litwin’s book. Anyone who can propagate that the evidence for more than one gunman in the JFK case has weakened over time does not deserve extended scrutiny. Neither does anyone who is on friendly terms with the likes of Daniel Pipes. But there is a chapter of Litwin’s book available online. It happens to be his chapter on Jim Garrison. Since that is 16 downloadable pages, it should serve as an example of the quality of his work.

    As I have previously said in dealing with the anti-Garrison crowd, if there was one area that the Assassination Records Review Board did a decent job on, it was in declassifying a lot of interesting documents on the New Orleans aspect of the Kennedy case. In two previous review essays on the subject, I have been critical of the fact that none of these documents were anywhere to be seen in the work under discussion. Specifically, this would include the essay by Don Carpenter at Max Holland’s site (Max Holland and Donald Carpenter vs Jim Garrison and the ARRB), and Alecia Long’s essay at 64 Parishes (Jim Garrison: The Beat Goes On).

    Litwin continues to manifest that revealing trait. In the 16 pages, I could find no evidence that he used even one single piece of declassified documentation. When an author does this, it immediately tells the reader much more about him than the writer’s ostensible subject. That is, Mr. Litwin does not give one iota about the declassified record. He is not interested in what the new information is. He does not want to know what the CIA and FBI knew about Clay Shaw back in the sixties, or why it was deemed so taboo that the public had to be kept in the dark about it.

    Which leaves us with two alternative theorems. Either Litwin does not know about this new information; or he does know about it but does not want the reader to be aware of it. Both explanations are pretty unappetizing. But they tell us much about Litwin and his book.

    By the third paragraph, the author exposes the serious fault lines in his work. He writes that Jim Garrison cracked down on vice in the French Quarter by raiding gay bars. How anyone can write something like that is incomprehensible. Once Garrison became famous through the exposure of his JFK inquiry, many people wrote about this 1962 crusade. Almost ten years ago, there was a book written on the subject by author James Savage. What Garrison was cracking down on was a racket called ‘B girl drinking’. The B-girl would sit with a male customer and, as long as he paid for the liquor, she would entice him with hints of sex to be had. (Washington Post, 2/10/63) The girl’s drinks would be very watered down, and as the mark got inebriated, the host would then shortchange him. Afterwards, the poor guy was taken to a cab to get to his hotel; the house got 2/3 of the take, the girl got 1/3.

    I would like to ask Mr. Litwin the obvious question he is seemingly unaware of: If the racket involved a female employee with a male customer, how could these be gay bars?

    What Litwin does next is as bad as the above. He does all he can to denigrate the value of the information that Jack Martin relayed to Garrison’s office within 48 hours after the assassination. For instance, he does not fully explicate why Guy Banister exploded and pistol-whipped his former investigator/employee Mr. Martin. Martin had made some rather incriminating comments, like implicating Banister in the Kennedy assassination. Martin specifically said: “What are you going to do—kill me like you all did Kennedy?” Martin later said that if Banister’s secretary had not intervened, he thought Banister might have killed him. (HSCA Volume 10, p. 130) After the assault, Banister threw some money at his victim. On his way to the hospital, Martin told an acquaintance: “The dirty Nazi bastards did it to him in Texas, and to me here.” (Affidavit of Martin and David Lewis to Jim Garrison 2/30/68)

    Since Martin was describing events on the day of the assassination, who does Litwin think Martin was referring to when he said, “Did it to him in Texas?” In light of the Martin’s previous comment, it was probably President Kennedy.

    What was the specific reason for Banister’s assault? Again, Litwin does not fully reveal that aspect. As Garrison’s staff later discovered, the FBI in New Orleans—namely agent Regis Kennedy—later thought that Martin might have pilfered Banister’s files on Oswald. (Garrison memorandum from Andrew Sciambra, 10/28/68) In fact, a part-time employee at Banister’s office, Mary Brengel, told the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) that she felt that both Banister and his secretary Delphine Roberts knew what was going to happen in Texas that day. (HSCA interview of 4/6/78)

    It was Roberts who rescued Martin. Banister then swore her to secrecy and kept her out of the office after the bloody incident with Martin. (Anthony Summers, Conspiracy, p. 294) So when Garrison interviewed her, she was tight-lipped. Later she did reveal things to the HSCA, specifically to investigator Bob Buras. On his second attempt to get her to talk to him, Roberts told Buras that Oswald was at Banister’s office and had a few private meetings with him. He was allowed to use a second floor room to print up his anti-Castro materials. (HSCA interview of 7/6/78) Reporter Scott Malone later found a corroborating witness for this information. Brengel told him that Roberts said Oswald had been at 544 Camp Street, Banister’s office, that summer. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 111) When this author interviewed another Banister employee, Dan Campbell, he also revealed that Oswald had been in Banister’s office that summer. In a separate interview with this writer, so did his brother Allen. (Destiny Betrayed, p. 112)

    In other words, it makes perfect sense for Banister to have had a file on Oswald and for Martin to be interested in it on the day of the assassination. It also follows that, as Roberts told Buras, Banister was upset when he heard that Oswald had handed out flyers in New Orleans with Banister’s office address of 544 Camp Street on them. (HSCA Buras interview.)

    Litwin’s depiction of David Ferrie is about as limited and dubious as his work on Banister. Litwin writes that when the FBI and Secret Service questioned Ferrie, he denied knowing Oswald, or having anything to do with Kennedy’s assassination. Litwin leaves it at that. Which is rather uncurious of him. For as anyone who reads Ferrie’s FBI statement has to acknowledge, Ferrie lied his head off to the Bureau. And it is hard to buy the argument that they did not know he was lying. For instance, Ferrie said he never owned a rifle with a telescopic sight and would not know how to use one. This, from a man who was a trainer for both the Bay of Pigs invasion and Operation Mongoose. (HSCA interview of John Irion, 10/18/78; Davy pp. 28-31; CIA memo of October 1967, “Garrison Investigation: Belle Chasse Training Camp”)

    Ferrie also said that he did not know Oswald and Oswald was not a member of his Civil Air Patrol (CAP) unit in New Orleans. This was another lie that Litwin seems comfortable with. In this case, all the Bureau had to do was question some of the other members of that CAP unit to find out Ferrie was lying. Jerry Paradis, who later became a corporate attorney, told the HSCA that he knew Ferrie and Oswald were members of the same CAP unit because he was also a member and he saw them together at a meeting. (HSCA interview of 12/15/78) Anthony Atzenoffer said the same about Ferrie and Oswald at the CAP meetings. (HSCA interview of 1/2/79) As we all know, in 1993, PBS discovered a photo of Oswald and Ferrie at a CAP cookout and showed it on TV.

    But there is something even more incriminating about Ferrie which indicates that not only was he knowingly lying to the FBI but was also trying to scoop up evidence that would prove his perjury. For in the days immediately following the assassination, Ferrie was looking for that CAP picture of him with Oswald. He called a former CAP member, Roy McCoy, to find out if he had a copy. The FBI had to know Ferrie was doing this. Why? Because McCoy and his wife later called the Bureau and told them about Ferrie’s search for the photo of him with the alleged assassin of President Kennedy. In other words, the FBI was complicit in Ferrie’s cover-up. (New Orleans FBI report of 11/27/63)

    Somehow, Litwin did not think that any of this information about Banister, Ferrie and their ties to Oswald—or the attempts to conceal it—is worth conveying to the reader. Nor does he feel it necessary to note the FBI’s odd reaction to Ferrie’s perjury and attempts at obstruction of justice. This writer would beg to disagree with Mr. Litwin. And again, the fact that he does not reveal it says a lot about his intent as an author.

    Litwin trudges onward with Dean Andrews. Andrews was the New Orleans lawyer who said that a man named Clay Bertrand called him on Saturday, November 23, 1963, and asked him to go to Dallas to defend the alleged assassin of JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald. Again, it takes Litwin about two sentences to descend into travesty. First, he says that Andrews was in hospital and heavily sedated at the time he got this call—which is supposed to cast doubt on the credibility of the claim. Twenty-three years ago, the estimable William Davy checked on this point through the hospital records. Those records indicate that Andrews got the call at least four hours before he was sedated. (Davy, p. 52) Litwin then writes that the call was actually from a man named Eugene Davis. This is also wrong. The name of Eugene Davis did not enter the record until NBC produced its hatchet job on Jim Garrison in the summer of 1967. Davis subsequently denied this under oath. And Andrews was then convicted of perjury. (Davy, p. 302; Jim Garrison’s interview in Playboy,10/67)

    Today there is no doubt who Clay Bertrand was. And through the efforts of British researcher Martin Hay, we now know that Andrews admitted that Bertrand was Clay Shaw. The late Harold Weisberg did some work for Jim Garrison in New Orleans. He developed a friendly relationship with Andrews and talked to him on several occasions. In an unpublished manuscript, Weisberg wrote that Andrews admitted to him that Shaw was Bertrand. But the lawyer told him he was not to say anything about this without his permission. (See the unpublished book Mailer’s Tale, chapter 5, p. 11, at the Weisberg online archives at Hood College)

    Although Andrews’ word would have probative value in this instance, with the work of the Assassination Records Review Board there is simply no question today that Shaw was Bertrand. And, again, the FBI knew this. There are two declassified FBI reports from 1967 in which the Bureau is given information that such was the case. (FBI teletypes of February 24, and March 23, 1967) In a third FBI report of March 2nd 1967, Bureau officer Cartha DeLoach states that they had information about Shaw in relation to the Kennedy case in December of 1963! Somehow, Mr. Litwin did not find that interesting. Many people would disagree. They would also be upset to know that the public had to wait over 30 years to find out that the FBI agreed with Jim Garrison. In light of these revelations Litwin is unintentionally humorous when he writes that the FBI could not find out who Bertrand was. They did know who he was. They did not want to tell anyone because it would support Garrison.

    But Litwin is intent on trying to show that Garrison was somehow deluded by Andrews. So he trots out another discredited tale that is about fifty years old. He says that Andrews made up the name of Manuel Garcia Gonzalez and that Garrison ended up believing him. Again, this tells us more about Litwin than it does Andrews or Garrison. Andrews actually gave Garrison two names: Gonzalez and Ricardo Davis. Both of these were names of real people. (Larry Hancock, Someone Would have Talked, pp. 349-50) And if the reader wants to see just how interesting Gonzalez was, please read this. Dean Andrews was anything but ignorant or dishonest. This is why—as he told Garrison, Mark Lane and Anthony Summers—he was in fear for his life.

    Predictably, Litwin uses an old trick that reporter James Phelan and Shaw’s lawyers originated in the sixties to discredit Perry Russo. Russo told Garrison that he heard Ferrie and Shaw, at a gathering with a Leon Oswald, speak about killing Kennedy. Garrison had Russo undergo both truth serum and hypnosis. By mixing up Russo’s two interviews under sodium pentothal, Phelan made it appear that Dr. Esmond Fatter was leading the witness. But Garrison submitted the two transcripts to the HSCA, and he had them clearly marked and dated in his own files, which this author had access to. When read in their correct order, not backwards, there is no leading of the witness. Russo comes up with the name Bertrand and describes him as the big white-haired guy—which he was—on his own. (See Probe Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, p. 26) Again, this canard was exposed nearly twenty years ago.

    Like Donald Carpenter, Litwin is intent on not revealing the declassified record about Clay Shaw, even though the ARRB did interesting work in that area. It is clear now that, as declassified CIA documents reveal, Shaw was a valuable and well-compensated contract agent from the fifties. Joan Mellen prints the declassified document that proves this in her book about George DeMohrenschildt, Our Man in Haiti, on pp. 54-55. That book was published six years ago. Is there any reason for Litwin not to refer to it? That document also explains why Shaw committed perjury on the stand when asked about this issue. (Davy, p. 185) When you add in Shaw’s covert security clearance for the project QK ENCHANT and his probable clearance for ZR CLIFF, then it is obvious why the CIA considered him a valuable agent. It also helps explain why, as the ARRB discovered, the CIA destroyed Shaw’s 201 file. (ARRB Memo from Manuel E. Legaspi to Jerry Gunn, dated 11/14/1996) The internal lie about Shaw by the CIA—that he was only part of Domestic Contacts like 100,000 other businessmen—shows the lengths they felt they had to go to in order to construct a cover-up about their prized employee. Like the FBI, the last thing the Agency wanted to admit was that Jim Garrison was right about Clay Shaw—which he was.

    Litwin never acknowledges, let alone confronts, any of these documents. He tries to escape from Shaw’s CIA employment by using the excuse that Shaw’s service with the mysterious European entity called Permindex was a tall tale manufactured under Soviet influence and passed on to a leftist newspaper in Italy, the same excuse the likes of Max Holland uses.

    This is more malarkey. The State Department wrote up memos about Permindex at the time the organization was creating a large controversy in Switzerland. Due to the character and suspected criminal backgrounds of members of its board, the controversy got so disturbing it caused the entity to move to Rome. This information was declassified back in 1982 due to a Freedom of Information lawsuit by Bud Fensterwald. They extend from February 1957 to November of 1958 and Shaw is featured in these cables. Bill Davy and others have used these in their books about Garrison’s investigation of Shaw. Again, the FBI was aware of the CIA role in Permindex and how Shaw figured in it. (Davy, p. 100)

    Canadian researcher Maurice Phillips recently discovered even more interesting memos about Permindex in the Louis Bloomfield archive in Montreal. Shaw had been on the board of Permindex, and Bloomfield was a corporate counsel. It turns out that Permindex was likely operating not just as a CIA shell, but at a level above that. Phillips has discovered memoranda which show that Bloomfield was soliciting funds for the endeavor from some of the wealthiest people in the world, for instance, David Rockefeller and Edmond deRothschild. (Letter from Bloomfield to Dr. E. W. Imfeld of 2/10/60) Phillips also discovered a memo revealing that one of the founders of Permindex, Ferenc Nagy, was a CIA asset. Because of that status, he invited the Agency to use this new “business” entity in any capacity they wished. (CIA memo of March 24, 1967, released in 1998)

    Question for Mr. Litwin: did the Soviets manufacture those State Department cables back in the fifties? And somehow insert the Bloomfield correspondence into his personal papers? Once we dispose of this silliness, the obvious question all this leaves, and which Litwin wants to avoid is: What was Shaw doing in the middle of all this?

    The discoveries of Maurice Phillips were quite detrimental to the cover story about Shaw, Bloomfield and Permindex. So much so that, in violation of Bloomfield’s will, his heirs have now tried to stop any more information from being released from his papers. The totality of the declassified record reveals that the cover-up about Shaw was wide, deep, systematic and is ongoing a half century later. This is how fearful the Establishment was about Jim Garrison’s discoveries and where they would lead.

    And that is the fact that Litwin’s article is meant to divert us from. As noted, I could not find one single reference to a primary source record in the entire 16 pages of his essay. Instead of relying on these newly released documents, who does Litwin choose to trust? Well, how about Hugh Aynesworth? If that isn’t bad enough, then how about James Phelan? It’s one thing to use a discredited reporter; it’s another not to tell the reader that he is provably related to the FBI, the CIA, or both. Also that both men denied those relationships prior to the documents being released showing such was the case. Can one say anything worse about a journalist? But that does not seem to bother Litwin at all. (For Phelan, see Probe Magazine, Vol. 6 No.4, pp. 5 and 32, and FBI memo from Wick to DeLoach of April 3, 1967; for Aynesworth see a Western Union teletype of May 13, 1967 which he sent to both the White House and the FBI.)

    By using his discredited sources instead of the declassified record, Litwin is able to conceal the fact that Shaw committed perjury at least four times at his trial:

    1. He lied about his association with the CIA, as amply demonstrated above.
    2. He lied about his use of the alias Clay Bertrand, as is also amply demonstrated above.
    3. He lied about his relationship with David Ferrie. (Affidavits to the DA of 6/27/67, 10/9/68, FBI teletype of 3/5/67, Probe Magazine, Vol. 4 No. 4, p. 8. The last two sources refer to secretaries who saw the two together.)
    4. He lied about not knowing Oswald. (Interview of attorney Samuel Exnicios by Joan Mellen 1/8/02; Davy, pp. 101-17)

    Do innocent people tell this many lies under oath, thereby risking decades in prison? Shaw had to lie, because if he didn’t it would have exposed him to too many questions that he would not have been able to explain away. Like, “Why did you call Andrews and ask him to go to Dallas to defend Oswald?” And, “Why were you and Ferrie escorting Oswald around the Clinton/Jackson area attempting to register him to vote in a place he didn’t live?”

    In the face of all this—quite relevant—perjury, what does Litwin do? Besides avoiding it all, he runs to another risible source: Paul Hoch. Hoch had been misleading the critical community on New Orleans for so long that, when the ARRB opened its doors, he did not want to be exposed as a charlatan. He therefore stood in front of a crowd of about 300 people in Chicago in 1993 and told them to ignore any new releases that came from the Board about Clay Shaw. I wish I was kidding about that, but unfortunately I was there. For that reason, and many others, Hoch simply has no credibility on the issue today. By following Hoch’s advice, Litwin now has custard pie all over his face. Or as they say in the field of information technology, which both men worked in: garbage in, garbage out.

    Not that it matters. If this excerpt is any measure of his book—and from a preview I saw, it is—then Litwin did not write it to educate any members of the public. Neither did he wish to elucidate any of the issues that have now been accented by the releases of the ARRB. And he certainly doesn’t give a damn about the assassination of President Kennedy.

    What he has done is enhance his status with the kinds of people who backed his first book, that is, Conrad Black and Daniel Pipes. He has become a member in good standing of the Culture Warrior crowd. If one looks at his book from that Machiavellian perspective, then like George W. Bush and his disaster in Iraq: Mission Accomplished.

  • Kennedy and Indochina

    Kennedy and Indochina

    (Click here to open in a new page.)

  • Walter Machann Interview Synopsis

    Walter Machann Interview Synopsis

    Gayle Nix Jackson’s Interview Excerpts with Walter Machann.

    http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2018/09/walter-machann-interview-excerpts.html

    For the complete interview – see Gayle Nix Jackson, Pieces of the Puzzle (2017)

    We know Gayle Nix Jackson as the granddaughter of Orville Nix, who, like Abraham Zapruder, filmed the assassination of President Kennedy, the subject of her first book—Orville Nix: The Missing Assassination Film (2014).

    Then, after interviewing a number of important witnesses, including Walter Machann, Gayle put together a second book, Pieces of the Puzzle, an anthology that includes contributions from a number of other JFK researchers and touches on other important subjects. The interview with Machann stands out however, as a key piece to the Dealey Plaza puzzle.

    Not only did Gayle Nix Jackson find Walter Machann; it can’t be overemphasized how important it was that she gained his trust and he talked to her on the record, answering key questions.

    One of the more significant and elusive characters in the JFK assassination story, Walter Machann was a Catholic priest who catered to the needs of the Cuban exile community of Dallas, including Silvia Odio and her family.

    Before the assassination, Silvia Odio told Father Machann about three visitors to her Dallas apartment, including “Leon” Oswald, a former Marine who said President Kennedy should have been assassinated after the Bay of Pigs. Machann not only confirms Odio’s story but provides and exact date, a fact that had eluded official investigators.

    To put things in chronological order, Machann explained to Gayle Nix Jackson: “I’m Polish on my father’s side. Irish on my Mother’s side … My dad worked as a shipping clerk for over 50 years at an oil company. My mother had only a high school education. My dad finished high school at night school … I never had money. I wasn’t tied to luxuries in life … My mother sent me to school at age 5 … Sister Winifred took me like her little boy. I graduated high school before my 16th birthday … and I was shipped off to the Seminary. I had been an altar boy and one of my friends was a secular priest. I got interested in philosophy because the Jesuits are famous for that, for their arguments, like Socrates and St. Thomas Aquinas. I was really just being carried along in the wave … I was ordained before I was 23. The cut-off age was 24. I have a little frame of the Pope in Rome that gave me dispensation to be ordained before age 24. I wasn’t really prepared emotionally, but I was very pious, very religious.”

    “I spent a summer in Mexico while still in Seminary,” Machann continued; “I saw a lot of Mexico and can speak Spanish well. It’s almost a second language.” Which is why he became head of the Catholic Cuban Relief Program in Dallas.

    “Bishop Tschoeper appointed me (to the Catholic Cuban Relief Program),” Machann said. “He knew I spoke Spanish and had done well at the University of Mexico. I was young and energetic. I think he felt I would be the right person for that job. The Cuban Catholic Committee of Dallas was not very representative of all the Cubans. There were different segments … a pretty small group … It’s always difficult when you have such people who have been thrust into a new country knowing no one and longing for their families. So many of these Cubans were young or newly married. Many of them were from quite wealthy families in Cuba and they got here and could barely scrape up enough money to buy food. It was very sad for them.”

    “As for the Odios,” Machann said, “I knew her sisters. Sarita. I knew Annie. She was a teenager. They were accustomed to living in a higher part of society. Castro made their country estate into a prison. That’s what revolutions are about I guess. Castro was at their house a lot. They had a wedding there for (Castro’s) sister.”

    Gayle gave Machann Silvia Odio’s book of poetry, written in Spanish, from which Machann translated to English and from which we learn that Silvia was born in Cuba in 1937, but was sent to the United States to go to school. She graduated from Sacred Heart High School in Philadelphia, studied law at Villanova University, returned home and then left Cuba in December, 1960.

    According to Machann, “She was artistic, semi-intellectual. The Spanish philosopher Ortega de Garcet [sic; probably refers to José Ortega y Gasset] was her favorite … She was romantic about the fate of Cubans coming to Dallas. Some of her ideas I even put in my sermons. Because of the trauma of the revolution, going from wealth to poverty, you have to remake yourself. Forge a new self.”

    Catholic Cuban Relief

    As for the Catholic Cuban Relief Program, Machann said, “ … I would talk to businesses asking them to help and then there were many socialites who helped bring clothing and food and such for us to distribute to the refugees.”

    Among the Dallas socialites who assisted Machann in taking care of the Cuban refugees was Lucille Connell. “Lucille Connell! Yes! She was one to remember … ,” said Machann. “There were a group of women who … helped with the Cubans. Most of them weren’t even Catholic, but a few were. They were more social than they were anything. I suppose because of the times it was their way of being in a kind of club to help others. They were always in the paper, Lucille Connell especially.”

    And it was Connell, not Silvia Odio, who first alerted authorities to Odio’s three visitors, including Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused assassin.

    In Lucille Connell’s testimony, she mentions Silvia and Annie going to the movies. Gayle says that “Faith Leicht … said that while they were at the movies, Silvia said she would be right back. They figured she was going to the restroom. She didn’t show up after the movie was over. Faith said that they later found Silvia wandering around Turtle Creek near General Walker’s home. This was April 10th of 1963. Faith said that Annie called you to see if you knew where Silvia was and then called Lucille Connell. They then called the police. The police picked her up on Turtle Creek and took her to Lucille Connell’s home.”

    April 10th was the date someone took a shot at General Walker while he was in his home office on Turtle Creek. To that story, Machann said, “I don’t think that happened. I think that must be made up. I don’t remember anyone calling me about Silvia … It seems like another distraction. I don’t know what proof there is that he ever shot at General Walker and just missed him.”

    Besides Lucille Connell and Faith Leicht, another Dallas socialite who assisted Machann in helping the Cuban refugees was Trudi Castorr, wife of Colonel Castorr, who was involved in running guns to Cuba with the husband of one of the bartenders at the Carousel Club, and Jack Ruby was the bagman in the operation. But Machann doesn’t recall Trudi Castorr.

    “Trudi Castorr? That doesn’t ring a bell, but I didn’t know all of them,” Machann said. But he did know Sylvia Odio, intimately. “Silvia was one of the Cubans from a wealthy family; in fact, I heard that her dad was one of the wealthiest men in Cuba. Silvia immediately took up with Lucille … She also liked attention and nice things. Her state of mind, I don’t know how you would describe it, but she was prone to nervous breakdowns. She was highly excitable, but also very strong. She told me she was her father’s favorite child and I think she must have been very much like him. Though she would faint and feign nervousness, she was strong and outgoing, unlike her sister Sarita … Sarita went to the University of Dallas and was here with their younger sister (Anne) who was in high school. She was engaged to a Swedish man. I think they may have gotten married. Sarita was very quiet. She never rocked the boat. She was the opposite of Silvia.”

    The Visitors

    Before the assassination Silvia wrote to her father in a Cuban prison to tell him about the three visitors, told a Navy psychiatrist—a friend of Connell—and told Father Machann. She told those three close confidants, and Connell, about three strangers who visited her apartment seeking assistance for their Cuban cause, including “Leon” Oswald, the accused assassin of the president, who said that JFK should have been killed after the Bay of Pigs.

    When the strangers came, Silvia’s younger sister Annie answered the door and the visitors at first asked for her other sister Sarita. Silvia’s father was affiliated with JURE, a liberal anti-Castro group led by Manolo Ray, while Silvia’s sister Sarita was a Dallas college student involved in the DRE, the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil.

    The visitors said they were “working in the underground,” and they introduced themselves as “Leopoldo,” “Angelo,” and “Leon” Oswald, an American. The next day, Leopoldo called Silvia and told her Oswald was a former Marine and expert marksman who said the Cubans should have assassinated President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs.

    Machann said, “The one thing I did tell them was that I remember that date because Silvia and Lucille were going to a celebrity party with that actress (Janet Leigh) … and I felt slighted. I wondered why they didn’t ask me to go. I would have liked to have gone. I just remembered when she called and told me … I connected it to that party I didn’t go to … I do know she told me the day she said they came was the day they were going to the party.”

    Gayle found a Tuesday, September 24, 1963, newspaper report on the Galaxy Gala Ball that was scheduled for the following Friday, September 27, setting the date of the visitors exactly.

    Besides having knowledge about Odio’s visitors before the assassination, and providing the date, Father Machann, the Dallas newspapers also reported, introduced John Martino to a John Birch Society audience in Dallas when he was promoting his book, I Was Castro’s Prisoner. In that talk, with Sylvia Odio’s sister Sarita in the audience, Martino said he knew her father Amador Odio in the Isle of Pines prison in Cuba. Odio was incarcerated for participating in a plot to kill Fidel Castro that also included Antonio Veciana, who also becomes entwined in the JFK assassination story. Martino’s mention of her father caused Sarita to cry.

    John Martino is well known to JFK researchers from his role in the Bayo-Pawley raid to Cuba with William Pawley and other suspects in the assassination. In the 1990s, while I interviewed Martino’s sister and brother in Atlantic City, Anthony Summers was in Florida interviewing Martino’s son and wife. Martino’s widow told Summers that her husband had expressed foreknowledge of the assassination of the president on the morning of the murder.

    Machann however, says today that he didn’t know John Martino and doesn’t recall introducing him to the Birch Society audience.

    Machann said that with the Cubans, “Politics and religion were separate. Whereas in Texas, politics is religion … I just remember I think it was at a Mass we had for him, I gave a sermon, that was later published in the Catholic Weekly, and it was, kind of my interpretation of some of the things that Silvia had said about this philosopher Ortega y Garcet [Gasset], talking about consciousness, the change of consciousness, I kinda played a little on that now they needed to think of something positive for the future.”

    Machann said that “I would go to different businesses asking for help with the organization. I met the oil baron H. L. Hunt that way … When I went to Mr. Hunt’s office he just talked about the Communism problem and his Lifeline show. He never donated any money to us.”

    The CIA Connection

    While Machann assisted the Cubans and helped raise donations for them, he worked closely with a Cuban, Mr. Joaquin “Papa” Insua. “We worked together. Mr. Insua kept our books so he knew about all the money we took in and gave out … I didn’t [hire him], I don’t know who did, but I would think it was someone from the Diocese.”

    Strange enough, after the assassination, the Dallas Cuban Refugee Office, where Machann worked, caught fire. Of that Machann says, “I know all the records that Mr. Insua kept were burned. He died not long afterwards, or maybe it was before. The memory of an old man isn’t reliable is it?”

    It was Joaquin Insua who kept the records and accounted for the money, the origins of which we now know was the CIA.

    The Catholic Church’s support for the Cuban refugee relief was sponsored, as least in part, by the Philadelphia-based CIA conduit Catherwood Foundation.

    [See: Catherwood Fund—http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/catherwood-fund.html and Cuban Aid Relief—http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2008/01/cuban-aid-relief.html].

    The CIA’s interest in refugees from communist countries began with Nazi German general Reinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s intelligence chief for the Eastern front, who recognized the value of the information provided by the refugees fleeing the Soviets with Operation Wringer. The CIA continued this operation with the International Rescue Committee, headed by Leo Cherne, who Lee Harvey Oswald wrote to three times from the Soviet Union seeking assistance in returning home.

    As most Cubans are Catholic, it wasn’t surprising for the Catholic Church to support the Cuban refugees, and the Church’s effort was in turn supported by the CIA Catherwood Foundation, that provided money and set up medical clinics in Miami, New Orleans, and Dallas, where large numbers of Cubans settled.

    New Orleans

    Sometime shortly after the assassination, Machann suddenly left the priesthood, disappeared from Dallas, and resurfaced in New Orleans.

    “I didn’t see them after the assassination. I moved to New Orleans and never saw any of those people again,” Machann said.

    As for leaving the priesthood, Machann says: “There’s a saying, ‘El camino que no coriste.’ It means, ‘The road you didn’t take.’ People do tend to think what would have happened had I stayed? I mean, I see many of my classmates … what happened to them in their careers. You know. I had a very good friend who was a counselor at the University of Dallas, another was a chancellor to the Arch Diocese, at that time every place I had been assigned, they couldn’t find anything to keep me challenged. I couldn’t find anything to keep me adequately engaged. They kept me busy. I would do all the things and turn the money over to them, but basically it was not something I had really chosen. It didn’t seem to be what my potential was. You know? It wasn’t my real vocation, whatever that is, my calling. It was my mother’s dream … My mother didn’t like me leaving the priesthood. I didn’t really tell her I was going. I just left. She didn’t even know where I was … I ended up negotiating with the Diocese, very privately, that I could be admitted to Loyola in New Orleans. They didn’t know what to do with me, and they … It’s not that they didn’t want me, I just found the priesthood unfulfilling. Of course, I was a bit scandalized by some of the things I saw, which of course you would be when you get too close to people who are very sanctimonious, or at least have all the trappings of religion … I held myself to a certain standard but I didn’t see anyone else doing it. I think shock is what allowed me to make the break. Otherwise, I may have not ever broken away. It was a critical time. My personal crisis just happened to occur simultaneously as the Kennedy Crisis.”

    When he left the priesthood, Machann had talked the church leadership into allowing him to attend Tulane University, where he got a degree in Sociology and Philosophy.

    In New Orleans, unknown to Silvia, he visited her uncle, Dr. Augustin Guitart, a college professor who attended Oswald’s court hearing after the altercation with Carlos Bringuier and the DRE Cubans who accosted him. Guitart was a friend of Bringuier.

    Of his time there Machann said, “I knew the Odio family well enough that when I went to New Orleans I would visit her uncle (Augustin Guitart). He was a professor … He taught physics … It was nice knowing him though because I was in a city where I knew no one and I would go to his home and it felt like family.I spent a lot of time at the Guitart home … He was a quiet man. He didn’t seem like an activist. He was a physics professor, short in stature. He was a mature, serious pleasant man.”

    After the Warren Commission learned about what became known as “The Odio Incident,” an investigator visited Machann in New Orleans. Besides Gayle Nix Jackson, Machann says there have only been two other interviews with him. “One was an FBI agent that found me in New Orleans, the other was a Frontline team that put me on camera and asked me questions. There were only two official interviews. The FBI guy in New Orleans and Frontline.”

    Machann’s associate in the Dallas Catholic Cuban Relief program, Mr. Insua, had a daughter who served as their secretary and taught school at the church, including the son of FBI agent Hosty, a parishioner. And it was Hosty, Machann says, who tracked him down in New Orleans and interviewed him there.

    “That FBI guy’s name was James Hosty,” Machann now says. “He was a former parishioner at Blessed Sacrament Church where my family had attended church for a long time and he was the one who found me in New Orleans and came to my boarding house where I was renting a room. He called me downstairs and had a talk and I followed his direction, he asked me to make a phone call which I did. But the only thing I could tell him is what I said. He couldn’t get any more information, I wasn’t really involved. If they did send him, or why they did send him, he didn’t ask me a lot of questions, like did they ever confess to you. Even if I had heard confessions, it’s nobody’s business, it’s sealed and locked away. Maybe they were just trying to find out anything they could find. They like trying to catch someone. Like fishing. They’ll try anything. I didn’t know anything. How soon the investigation got to be a cover-up rather than an investigation, I don’t know. It became more a distraction than an in-depth investigation … They talked to me … just because it was a way to throw sand up in everybody’s face … they had to pretend they were doing a completely thorough investigation.”

    The problem here is that the official Warren Commission records indicate that it was not Hosty, but Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley, who questioned Machann in New Orleans about the Odio incident. According to these documents, the investigator had Machann call Sylvia Odio on the phone and ask her once again about her visitors. And according to the official report, Odio then said one of the visitors was Rogelio Cisneros, but she later denied saying that.

    And then we don’t hear from Machann for many years. When I tracked Machann’s family to Texas and talked to his sister on the phone, she said her brother was in Thailand, where he moved to after leaving the priesthood. I imagined he had continued his theological musings and became a monk, but boy was I wrong.

    Machann says that, “My first real job other than being a priest or throwing a newspaper route was working at the Mental Health Halfway house (in New Orleans).”

    World Travel—Thailand

    After leaving New Orleans, Machann says, “I worked in Florida for a few years in the mental health field. I didn’t like the commercialization of Florida. I lived in West Palm Beach where the rich people were … I traveled throughout Russia with a travel group. It was a break in the Cold War. They wouldn’t let you read just any book, so you had to be careful which books you carried. I bought a Volkswagen in Hamburg in 1968 and drove all the way through the Baltic States, the Czech Republic and the Coast of Spain. I was sleeping in the car and eating just to stay alive. I ran out of money and had to come back home.”

    “When I was in New York, I was having a hard time finding a job. I had put in applications to many overseas jobs and WHO just happened to hire me. I moved to Thailand and lived there many years. In fact, I had my son there. Yes, I have a son … Unfortunately, his mother died when he was seven of dengue fever. He basically grew up as an orphan. He had no mother. But he always was interested in philosophy as well. I don’t know how much of who we are is genetic, environment or education, but he was mesmerized by Greek books at a very young age … He did a few tours in Iraq and came back a different man. He tried to find peace here, but eventually moved back to Thailand. I’m going to see him soon.”

    “I haven’t talked much about my low points in life, because you don’t go through traumatic changes in your life without discussing your philosophy, emotions, mental state and the like. My wife dying forced me to come back to Texas. That’s when I also found that in life after 40, you become unemployable in the states. My friends tried to get me jobs. Incidentally, one was a medical director at UT Southwestern. He hated the Kennedys. What came out was, he had a tremendous hatred for the Kennedys even though he was from the north. I was kind of shocked. He was one of these New England Harvard graduates, I don’t know. But I knew I didn’t want to work there.”

    “Truth is a difficult thing. I don’t know how to explain it. Have you read a book called Killing Time? [Paul Feyerabend’s autobiography; see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_Time_(book)] The man who wrote it is one of my favorite modern philosophers … The world is changing politically and environmentally. It’s harder to travel these days. When I came back to the states, I noticed how different everything was. I knew I needed to be here to help my sister, but the Thai government was making me jump through hoops, so it was necessary to come back. They were making my life inconvenient. My son and his Thai wife were living here with me for a while … While I’m thinking about it and it amazed me that it happened. I used to come on home leave every 2 years from Thailand and other places. I was back at the house on Oak Cliff Blvd. and the phone rang, no one was there but me, I don’t know where everyone else was and it was Silvia Odio. She called me from Miami. She was telling me about her new husband making all these trips to Cuba and had other girlfriends and she was kinda complaining … She said she was very, very crushed and upset. She said people were twisting the truth, they don’t believe me. Of course, she was a very unusual person and personality so she inspired a lot of interest … It was a short conversation. We kind of cooled off then. We never spoke again.”

    The Assassination

    As for the assassination itself, Machann says: “I thought there was a conspiracy. Though Oswald was very left-wing and pro-Castro, none of it seemed to make sense. I still think there is something more to the assassination but I have no idea what … After the Bay of Pigs, there were many upset Cubans, they were patriots. They missed their homes. But I don’t believe they were upset enough to kill the President.”

    “I think it was something far out of my realm and my hands. I think it was power at the very highest levels. That’s one thing I learned about Greek history and civilization—trouble always began when the power and wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few. That’s what’s happened in the US now. Very few have wealth and power, elected or not. So, I’m just afraid this was a power elite type of conspiracy. They have the confidence of power. They can do all kinds of things.”

    “At that time (Oswald) was doing crazy things … I heard a radio interview he had once in New Orleans … The guy talked very honestly like he was involved in these causes for a reason. He was convincing. He didn’t sound stupid, he just sounded confused or misguided or mixed up.”

    “The thing that really blows my mind is they really put the story across that using that weapon, he fired those shots you have to really twist everything around upside down and inside out to make that stand up. Only power can do that … We still don’t know some of the secrets of the Roman Emperors. You know, this is almost like a thorough kind of reduxia ad absortum [sic; = reductio ad absurdum] as if there are other possible explanations, other than a top down kind of conspiracy, deliberate type plan. These things don’t just happen like this.”

    “Let’s face it, there is room somewhere in the real world that somethings are not what they seem to be and the story we get told and we are led to believe aren’t always true. The American Dream is not all real … But you can see how I was pulled into maybe as a distraction or confusion to muddle the picture. Something like that, I really feel like I was a spectator like everyone else … But you see, that’s like all the bloodhounds following the false scent somewhere. And I think that was deliberate on someone’s part, to put up all these distractions. Whereas the real culprits escaped.”

    “I didn’t see that (JFK) movie for a long time. When I did see it, I thought it was pretty well made … but then … it finally made up my mind, you know, I could never believe their story. I was convinced there was a conspiracy.”

    In Conclusion

    “Well, that’s all. I hope that you can tie it up and be satisfied that you’ve done what your conscience compelled you to do and call it a new day and become a writer in your own right.”

    Gayle noticed that when Machann talked about his past he did so in the third person, as if he was another person, as he says in his parting shot letter to Gayle:

    “The way or path to come through a better and stronger person while showing compassion for those you have spent so much of your life trying to support is one you must find for yourself. There are different paths. I have found my own, and my son has tried his own, but now we share the same. The work it entails determines the degree it rewards … I expect you may try and will find the path for yourself. In response to your questions re my past … Fr. Machann is an earlier person, self-evolved into a changed identity beginning 50 or more years ago. As I recall, he was an innocent bystander with respect to that tragic event of the murder of an American president. My own present memory, i.e., of Walter J. Machann Jr., can add little to your specific requests for evidence in your work to expose facts and a more truthful history of that crime. I can feel how personal this quest has become. I don’t believe that a chapter on “Father Machann” would be meaningful, or really pertinent to the core of your work. Whatever you decide I will remain a friend and confidant in need as you wish.” Sincerely, Walter J. Machann Jr.

    What Walter Machann remembers of Father Machann is meaningful and pertinent to the core of our work, as he was innocently entwined in the murder like a fly in a web, the intelligence network that was responsible for the covert action that resulted in the murder of the President—the Dealey Plaza Operation.

    From what we now know, it is disturbing that Machann doesn’t recall introducing John Martino at his Birch Society book promotion, or Trudi Castorr, society wife of Colonel Castorr, involved in a Cuban gun-running operation with Jack Ruby.

    The discrepancies are disturbing. Was it FBI Agent Hosty or Secret Service Inspector Kelley who questioned Machann in New Orleans? And who were Leopoldo, Angelo and “Leon” Oswald, and was it the historic Oswald or an imposter? Either way the whole scene stinks of conspiracy.

    What Machann does tell us is significant. He was apparently unaware of the CIA-backing of the exiled Cuban Aid Relief; and the sudden, suspicious death of Joaquin Insua and the arson fire that destroyed their records leaves open areas of new investigation.

    Machann gives us dates, names and places that provide additional leads that will allow us to find other missing pieces to the Dealey Plaza puzzle.

    [Some of the quoted text has been slightly edited for grammar and punctuation]

  • Creating the Oswald Legend – Part 2

    Creating the Oswald Legend – Part 2

    I. Oswald’s Passport and Illegals

    In part 2 we will continue our journey into Oswald’s wondrous world and discover that his USSR defection was only a part of the larger picture. Moscow and Minsk were only stops, but not the destination of his journey. These stops were to become part of his resume, to create a “Legend” who will return home pretending to be a Soviet spy in order to infiltrate suspected communists, subversives, and supporters of Castro. From the beginning that destination was Cuba; it has always been about Cuba.

    Marguerite Oswald was in disbelief when she was informed that her son had defected to the Soviet Union. In September, her son visited his mother in Fort Worth after his discharge from the Marines and told her that he wanted to travel to Cuba. In February, an FBI agent, John Fain, interviewed Marguerite regarding the whereabouts of her missing son. He later stated in his report that “Mrs. Oswald stated he would not have been surprised to learn that Lee had gone to, say, South America or Cuba, but it never crossed her mind that he might go to Russia or that he might try to become a citizen there.”1

    When Oswald tried to defect to the USSR, a wire service noted that his sister-in-law said “that he wanted to travel a lot and talked about going to Cuba.”2 Similarly, when he returned back to the States, a 1962 Fort Worth newspaper recalled what Oswald said to his family: “He talked optimistically about the future. Some of his plans had included going to college, writing a book, or joining Castro’s Cuban army.”3

    Oswald’s travel destinations included Cuba, the Dominican Republic, England, Turku Finland, France, Germany, Russia and Switzerland. One has to wonder how the recently discharged Marine would have been able to fund a trip that involved so many countries that were far apart from each other, like Cuba and Russia. Before leaving the Marines, he applied for a passport on September 4, 1959 and received it on September 10, 1959. To apply for the passport he used for identification a Department of Defense (DOD) I.D. card, although he could have provided his birth certificate. As George Michael Evica noted, “Lee Harvey Oswald should never have had a DOD I.D. card on September 4, 1959, possibly on September 11th, but not on September 4th.”4 September 11 was the date that he was to be transferred to the Marine Corps Reserve, once his active duty was over.

    The Marine Corps confirmed that it had issued the card before he was discharged, but this kind of practice ended as of July 1959, so he was probably issued the DOD I.D. card because he was going to fill a civilian position overseas that required it.5

    Too many peculiarities surround the young ex-Marine, his DOD I.D. card, his passport application, the countries he was planning to visit and the expenses needed to support such a trip. All these were enough to sound the alarm bells in the intelligence community, but somehow this did not happen.

    Oswald had also stated in his passport application that he intended to study in Europe, and he named two institutions. One was the Albert Schweitzer College (ASC) in Churwalden, Switzerland, and the second was the University of Turku in Finland.

    Oswald sent his application to the ASC on March 19, 1959, informing them that he was going to attend the third (spring) term of the trimester schedule, from April 12, to June 27, 1960, followed by a registration fee payment of $25 on June 19. However, this time length posed a problem by itself. Oswald’s passport was valid for four months overseas, so if he wanted to attend its third trimester, then his passport should have been valid for nine months, an extra five months. According to his passport, he could have only made it to study the fall trimester of 1959, and then only if he was given an early discharge, which actually happened.6 Oswald was released from the Marines with a dependency discharge on September 11, 1959 to go to Fort Worth to take care of his injured mother. However, his mother had only a minor injury and Oswald left for New Orleans on September 17, 1959, to begin his trip to Europe. A year later, after his defection to the Soviet Union, he was given an undesirable discharge from the Marine Corps, something that was to haunt him to his final days.

    In 1995 the Assassinations Records Review Board (ARRB) revealed the communication between the FBI Legat at the Paris Embassy and FBI Director Hoover. The FBI Legat had sent Hoover five memoranda regarding Oswald’s intentions to study the ASC.

    The first memorandum was dated October 12, 1960. It was based on information from the Swiss Federal Police and stated that Oswald was planning to attend the fall trimester of 1959. The second memorandum was a strange one, since it stated that Oswald “had originally written a letter from Moscow indicating his intention to attend there (at Churwalden).”7

    This was an extraordinary turn of events, as the second memorandum implied that Oswald was planning to attend the third trimester, similar to his college application and the Warren Commission’s conclusion.

    The fourth and fifth memoranda were even more peculiar. They revealed that Oswald had not attended the course under a different name and that there is no record of a person possibly identical to Oswald attending the fall trimester.

    The above information should have sounded the alarms in FBI HQ because they suspected that since he did not attend the college he had brought with him his passport and his birth certificate to the Soviet Union. Even Marguerite Oswald, when asked by FBI agent Fain about her son’s whereabouts in Europe, replied that Lee has taken his birth certificate with him.

    The above information forced Hoover to send an enquiry to the Office of Security in the Department of State regarding the “missing” Lee: “Since there is a possibility that an impostor is using Oswald’s birth certificate, any current information … concerning subject (Oswald) … ”8

    Hoover, like his agent before him, suspected that Oswald had fallen victim to a Soviet spy ring that would have used his birth certificate to create a false identity which an “illegal” spy would adopt to enter the United States as a sleeper agent.

    The illegals were not under diplomatic protection like their legal counterparts that were usually connected to a Soviet embassy. They would resume the life of an American, probably one that has died, live a normal capitalistic life and would be activated when the need arose.

    Switzerland had been a center of espionage since WWII. Soviet illegals would never send or receive mail directly to/from the Soviet Union but would use neutral countries like Switzerland as a cover address to avoid detection. It is a surprise that the CIA counter-intelligence mole hunters did not open a 201 file on Oswald as soon as he defected. In fact, they did not do that for over a year. Instead, they put him on the HT/LINGUAL list of about three hundred Americans whose mail was secretly being opened.9 This would be an indication that Oswald was used to detect illegal networks in Switzerland by detecting their mails.

    The ASC was reputed to be a place where liberals, communists and Marxists would go to study, perhaps being a possible illegal passing point. By applying to this college, even if he never went there, it could appear that his birth certificate was used to create an illegal in Switzerland that would later use his identity and papers to travel to the States. Another scenario would have been that someone looking very similar to him, someone almost identical in appearance, could have taken his place, like a Soviet illegal. Alternatively, the US intelligence services would have looked suspiciously on Oswald upon his return to the States, wondering if he had been turned into a Soviet spy coming home on behalf of his new Soviet handlers.

    Regardless of the truth, Oswald—wittingly or unwittingly—had created a “Legend” for himself that could be used any time against various targets. Most importantly though, the US intelligence services would suspect that Oswald was probably impersonated by someone else for sinister purposes. This was to be the first time but it would not be the last.

    II. Albert Schweitzer College

    How did Oswald find out about this obscure college somewhere in Switzerland? It has been suggested by various authors that Kerry Thornley, one of Oswald’s Marine friends at Santa Ana, brought it to his attention and helped him with the application.

    Thornley was a New Age writer, satirist, mystic and crypto-fascist, and a native Californian who had studied at USC. He had been six months in active duty, following time in the reserves when he met Oswald at El Toro base near Santa Ana. Oswald even gave Thornley his copy of George Orwell’s 1984 to read.10 Thornley claimed that he met Oswald a week after Oswald applied to the ASC. As Greg Parker notes, it is possible that Thornley met and knew Oswald before his application to the college.11

    Thornley testified to the Warren Commission:

    I believe it was the First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles. I had mentioned earlier at the time I was talking to Oswald, and knew Oswald, I had been going to the First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles. This is a group of quite far to the left people politically for the most part, and mentioned in order to explain my political relationship with Oswald, at that moment, and he began to ask me questions about the First Unitarian Church and I answered, and then he realized or understood or asked what Oswald’s connection with the First Unitarian Church was and I explained to him that there was none.

    We do know that Oswald had visited Los Angeles, at least to get his passport, although he may have visited the Cuban Consulate as we shall see later on.

    The leader of this church was Minister Stephen Fritchman. He was a peace activist who had supported the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, had been called by the Un-American Activities Committee and had attended the World Congress for Peace in Stockholm in May 1959.12

    Was there a connection between Oswald, Thornley, Fritchman and the ASC? The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) included in its assassination files about Oswald a sixty-page report on Fritchman. Additionally, the Warren Commission and the FBI were interested and curious about Oswald and Thornley’s Unitarian Church link while trying to explain how Oswald obtained information about the ASC.13

    Evica believed that “Oswald’s mysterious source of information about Albert Schweitzer College could be explained by Thornley’s attendance at Fritchman’s First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles … the pastor may have possessed detailed information about the college and copies of the college’s registration forms. When Oswald visited LA, he could have picked up the materials at the church … Alternatively, Thornley … could have picked them up and passed them on to Oswald.”14

    The Liberal Religious Youth (LRY) was a group that cooperated with the ASC. Reverend Leon Hopper, one of its members, said to Evica in March 2003 that “student recruitment was almost always through personal contacts … also confirmed that Stephen Fritchman could have been an information source … Finally Hopper confirmed that the LRY concentrated on the summer sessions of ASC, reaching prospective students through personal contacts.”15

    The ASC was located in the small village of Churwalden, Switzerland, and there was something peculiar about it since it did not offer degrees. Even the Swiss authorities did not know it existed until the early 60s when there were accusations of a narcotics and fraud scandal involving the college. Soon the college was in debt, and closed only after an unknown entity from Liechtenstein paid off all of its debts.16 The peculiarities did not end there. Since the village was very small, it did not have a hospital, a library, a fire department or a police station. The village was many miles away from the nearest town of Chur, and one had to drive through poor roads and across mountains to reach the village.

    The college was housed in the village’s larger building, the hotel Krone with thirty rooms capacity.17 It opened in 1954, and the first list of students available revealed there were no Swiss students at all, which served to keep it unknown to the Swiss Government.18

    The ASC was created by the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF). According to Richard Boeke, first President of the American chapter of IARF, it was the crown jewel of all the IARF’s associate religious centers and had initially been “good for Liberal Swiss Protestants.”19 The IARF originated in 1900 as the International Council of Unitarian and Other Liberal Religious Thinkers and workers on May 25, in Boston. The stated aim was “opening communications with those in all lands who are striving to unite Pure Religion and Perfect Liberty, and to increase fellowship and cooperation among them.”20 It would include religions like the Unitarian, Buddhist, Humanist, Muslim, Scientology and Theosophy.21

    The ASC was operated by the Albert Schweitzer College Association—a non- profit organization with its legal HQs in the village of Churwalden—and the Unitarian “American Friends of Albert Schweitzer College” which was also a non-profit organization. The “American Friends of Albert Schweitzer College” had its offices in Boston. It was incorporated in New York in 1953 with the purpose of receiving tax-deductible contributions from United States citizens and corporations.22 Its directors were John H. Lathrop (Brooklyn, NY), John Ritzenthaler (Montclair, NJ), and Percival F. Brundage (Montclair, NJ).23 Brundage was the most interesting individual out of the three directors, a true member of the “Power Elite”, with government and intelligence connections.

    III. Percival F. Brundage

    Who was Percival F. Brundage? Brundage was the son of a Unitarian Minister who graduated cum laude from Harvard University in 1914 and afterwards became a successful accountant, probably one of the best of his era. In 1916 he worked as a civilian in the Material Accounting Section of the War Department’s Quartermaster Depot Office in New York which involved record keeping of sensitive military procurement operations.24

    He became a senior partner in the accounting firm, Price-Waterhouse. He was director, and then president of the Federal Union that argued for the federation of the Atlantic democracies.25

    Brundage had a significant connection to the Unitarian Church and the ASC. He was a major Unitarian Church officer from 1942-1954 when the Unitarian Church was cooperating with, first, the OSS, and later the CIA.26 He was also president of the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF) from 1952-1955 and president of the American Friends of Albert Schweitzer College from 1953-1958. Most importantly, Brundage became the most prominent member of the Bureau of Budget (BOB) during the Eisenhower presidency. He was its deputy director from 1954-1956, its president from 1956-1958 and he served it as consultant until 1960.27

    As the head of the BOB, Brundage was controlling the United States budget, and from that privileged position he would be familiar with the Pentagon’s and CIA’s secret black budgets but without ever exposing or surveying them. It seemed that Brundage would turn a blind eye and let them do their secret work without the government ever bothering them.

    One of Brundage’s closest friends was a fellow Unitarian, James R. Killian Jr., president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).28 Killian was appointed the chairmanship of president Eisenhower’s Technological Capabilities Panel in 1953 to measure the nation’s security and intelligence capabilities and also to study both military and intelligence applications of high-flight reconnaissance.29 Killian appointed Edward H. Land, inventor of the Polaroid land camera, as chief of the top-secret intelligence section of the Air Force Technological Capabilities Panel that helped create high-flight reconnaissance, like the U-2 and satellites. Land was also responsible for the CIA receiving the responsibility for the U-2 program.30 In 1957 he was appointed by Eisenhower as Special Assistant for Science and Technology, and in 1956 became Eisenhower’s chairman of the US Board of Consultants on Foreign Intelligence Activities, reporting to the president the activities of the intelligence community, especially the CIA.31 This board was supported by Brundage’s BOB. Later, Killian advised Eisenhower that the Air Force was incapable of developing photographic reconnaissance satellites. This allowed him to turn over that assignment to the CIA, which led to the CORONA satellite program32 that was discussed in part 1.

    Killian, Brundage and Nelson Rockefeller were the three men who transformed the national Committee of Aeronautics (NACA) into the civilian agency responsible for the US space program. It was renamed NASA. Brundage was responsible as the head of BOB for drafting the congressional legislation for the creation of NASA.33 Brundage was also involved in Operation Vanguard, which was “intended to establish freedom of space, and the right to overfly foreign territory for future intelligence satellites.”34

    In 1960, Brundage and one of his associates, E. Perkins McGuire, were asked to hold the majority of a new airline stock “in name only.”35 They both agreed to act on behalf of the CIA. The airline was none other than Southern Air Transport, which was used in paramilitary missions in the Congo, the Caribbean and Indochina. The Newsweek issue of May 19, 1975 linked Percival Brundage to Southern Air Transport, Double-Check Corp, the Robert Mullen Company and Zenith Technical Enterprises. The Double-Check Corp was a CIA front that was used to recruit pilots for covert missions against Cuba; Robert Mullen’s advertising company provided cover for CIA personnel abroad; and Zenith Technical Enterprises was the front that provided cover for CIA’s JM/WAVE station in Miami.36

    Southern Air Transport was created by Paul Helliwell, an originator of the CIA’s off-the-books accounting system and nicknamed Mister Black Bag. Helliwell was a member of the OSS and later of the CIA in the Far East; he was one of the most prominent members of the China Lobby. His mission was to assist Chang Kai-Shek and his Kuomintang (KMT) army in Burma to invade China. This army managed and controlled the opium traffic in the region. Helliwell created two front companies to help KMT to carry out its war and the drug trade. One was Sea Supply in Bangkok and the other was CAT Inc., later Air America in Taiwan.37 Helliwell had organized a drug trafficking network supported by banks to launder CIA’s drug profits in the Far East.

    Richard Bissell brought Helliwell back to the States to plan a similar network of front companies and banks to finance the Agency’s war against Castro. Similar to Sea Supply and Air America, he created Southern Air Transport in Miami to fly over drugs and guns to support not only the war on Cuba but also in Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia.

    In his book Prelude to Terror, Joseph Trento claimed that Helliwell’s main objective was to cement the CIA’s relationship with organized crime.38 Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante were both planning to invest in the Far East by bringing heroin back to the States. Helliwell established banks in Florida and became the owner of the Bank of Perrine in Key West, “a two-time laundromat for the Lansky mob and the CIA”, and its sister Bank of Cutler Ridge.39 Lansky would deposit money into the Bank of Perrine, reaching the US from the Bank of World Commerce in the Bahamas. Lansky also used the small Miami National Bank, where Helliwell was a legal counsel, to launder money from abroad and from his Las Vegas casinos.40 Peter Scott claimed that Helliwell worked with E. Howard Hunt, Mitch WerBell and Lucien Conein on developing relationships with drug dealing Cuban veterans of the Bay of Pigs invasion, and became CIA paymaster for JM/WAVE to finance Chief of Station Ted Shackley’s operations against Cuba.41 Sergio Arcacha-Smith, one of the New Orleans Cubans who knew Oswald and E. Howard Hunt, was involved in the lucrative business of contraband transportation from Florida to Texas, specializing in drugs, guns, and even prostitution.42

    In other words, Percival Brundage was no ordinary citizen. His BOB activities with the U-2, the satellite programs, the Pentagon, the CIA, and especially his involvement with the ASC, linked him indirectly to Lee Harvey Oswald. The young Marine had applied to the ASC to study in Switzerland and his defection to the Soviet Union was unwittingly connected to the U-2 and CORONA projects that brought an end to the Paris Peace talks and prolonged the Cold War. When Percival Brundage became a part of Southern Air Transport, he entered a nexus of CIA, Mafia, drug trafficking, money laundering and anti-Castro Cubans, one which later met and manipulated Oswald, and some of whose members were very likely involved in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It is also very plausible that the assassination was financed by this drug trafficking and banking network instead of oil-men money as many believe.

    IV. Cuban Sympathizer or Agent Provocateur?

    Was Oswald a communist sympathizer from his early days, like the Warren Commission concluded? Had he been in contact with the Cuban Consulate in Los Angeles?

    Corporal Nelson Delgado was a Puerto Rican stationed at El Toro Marine Corps base who became close friends with Oswald. They were both loners but they had a common interest, and that was Cuba. Both admired Castro because he seemed to be a freedom fighter against Batista’s tyranny who could bring democracy to Cuba. They were dreaming that they could go there and become officers and free other islands like the Dominican Republic. Delgado could speak Spanish and Oswald would configure his ideas about how to run a government—so they kept dreaming.

    Things got a little strange when Oswald became serious about it and was trying to find ways to actually go to Cuba.43

    When interviewed by the Warren Commission, Delgado said he advised Oswald to go and see the Cubans at the Cuban Consulate in Los Angeles. Wesley Liebeler, a Warren Commission lawyer, took Delgado’s testimony and stretched it by the ears to make it look like Oswald was in contact with the Cubans all along. According to Australian researcher Greg Parker, “Liebeler, adroitly took a bunch of assumptions and leaps of logic by Delgado and magically recast them as proven fact leading to an inevitable conclusion.”44

    According to Delgado:45

    • Oswald told Delgado there was a Cuban consulate in Los Angeles;
    • Oswald started receiving letters with a seal on them that Delgado thought might be from Los Angeles because Oswald had said he was getting such mail from the Cuban Consulate;
    • Oswald took a trip by train to Los Angeles to “see some people”.

    Based on the above, Liebeler instructed Delgado to “tell me all that you can remember about Oswald’s contact with the Cuban Consulate.”46

    Delgado also noted that after Oswald allegedly visited the Cuban Consulate, he started receiving mail, pamphlets and a newspaper. Naturally, he assumed that they must have come from the Cuban Consulate and concluded the newspaper was communist, since it was written in Russian. He asked Oswald if it was a communist newspaper and he replied that it was White Russian and not communist. Still, Delgado, who did not know what White Russian meant, concluded it was a Soviet newspaper.47

    One of the pamphlets had a big impressive seal that looked like a Mexican eagle with different colors, red and white and a Latin script with the word “United” included. Parker believes that Delgado probably was describing the logo of a Russian Solidarist movement known as NTS (HTC in Russian), standing for Narodnyi Trudovoy Soyuz (National Labor Union) in English.48 Below we can see the NTS logo with something that looks like an eagle, and the colors white, blue and red in the background.

    nts logo
    NTS logo

    More information about NTS can be found in Stephen Dorill’s book MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service. According to Dorill, NTS was founded in Belgrade in July 1930 by Prince Anton Turkul and Claudius Voss, and it stood for National Labor Council. Prince Turkul was a member of the White Russian Armed Services Union (ROVS) and its purpose was to restore Tsarist Russia. Voss was the head of ROVS in the Balkans and “a British intelligence agent and ran ROVS’ MI6-friendly counter-intelligence service, the Inner Line, that sponsored NTS.”49

    Dorill also revealed that “the Russian émigré organizations were working overtime through bodies such as the NTS … to undermine the Soviet regime and to form a provisional government when the Soviets collapsed.”50 Dorill described NTS’ origins: “Initially a left-of-centre grouping, NTS soon moved to the right, promoting an anti-Marxist philosophy of national labor solidarity, based on three components: idealism, nationalism, and activism. It enjoyed the support of several European intelligence services, in particular MI6, and also attracted substantial funds from businessmen with interests in pre-revolutionary Russia, including Sir Henry Deterding, chair of Royal Dutch Shell, and the armaments manufacturer, Sir Basil Zaharooff.”51

    If Parker is right, and the pamphlets that Oswald was receiving were not communist but on the contrary from the NTS, then we can conclude that Oswald was in contact with fervent anti-communist White Russians. In that context, then, his trip to the Soviet Union could be viewed from a different perspective.

    Oswald received help to apply to the ASC and travel to the Soviet Union, most likely from a nexus that involved the CIA and anti-communist organizations with relations to the military-industrial complex. When Oswald applied to the ASC, he listed his favorite authors as Jack London, Charles Darwin and Norman V. Peale.52 Jack London was one of the founders of The League for Industrial Democracy (LID), whose purpose was to extend democracy in all aspects of American life. During the Cold War, it was renamed the Student League for Industrial Democracy (SLID), had close ties to the CIA and had become anti-communist.53 Jack London was a supporter of social Darwinism, eugenics, Nietzschean philosophy and Jungian psychology.54

    Darwin was a Unitarian and author of “Origins of the Species.” His cousin Francis Galton studied heredity based on Darwin’s work and as a result he coined the word “eugenics”, the theory that selective breeding will improve the human race.55

    Norman Vincent Peale was a minister of the Lutheran church, politically conservative, and opposed the liberal and Catholic Jack Kennedy. He believed that as a Roman Catholic President Kennedy would align with the Vatican with respect to US foreign policy.56 He headed a group, which included Billy Graham, that held a secret meeting to discuss how to derail Kennedy’s election bid.57 Some of Peale’s associates were supporters of lynching, while others were against the Eisenhower-Khrushchev Paris peace summit.58 He was also friends with the conservatives Nixon and Hoover.59

    If Oswald was, as he is alleged to be, a communist sympathizer, these interests and connections to the reactionary and elitist Right come as a surprise. Indeed, they would seem to indicate, on the contrary, that Oswald was actually instructed and guided by people who were anti-communist and probably tied to the CIA.

    Even Hans Casparis, the founder of the ASC, had probable CIA connections. Casparis claimed that he had graduated from three universities, studied at a fourth and was a full-time lecturer in German and philosophy at the ASC. There were no specific degrees listed on the ASC brochure presenting Casparis, while five other lecturers held doctorates, and another one, along with Casparis’ wife, Therese, held a BA.60 Casparis claimed that he was a lecturer in education at the School of European Studies at the University of Zürich, but when Professor Evica asked the university to confirm it, they replied that Casparis had never lectured there.61 Records indicated that Casparis had studied at the University of Chicago (1946-1947), and the University of Tübingen (1922-1923), but never received degrees from either of the two.62

    The same ASC brochure said that Therese Casparis, his wife, had a BA degree in education from the University of London. However, the university’s assistant archivist revealed that Therese had received a second-class honors degree in German and then enrolled to take a teacher’s diploma, but she left without taking an exam, so she never received a BA in education from that university. Therese gave birth to five children from 1934 to 1948, but Evica could not find any college in Europe or England which awarded a degree to Hans or Therese. 63 It was a mystery how they were able to raise five children without any higher degrees, yet were able to attract support from important Unitarians to establish a college in an unknown village somewhere in Switzerland. It is likely that Hans and Therese were employed by the CIA to infiltrate this liberal college. If we consider Evica’s findings that Allen Dulles had used religious organizations like the Unitarians to create humanitarian front organizations in order to conceal OSS and later CIA covert operations to destabilize Eastern Europe, South America and South East Asia, we can conclude, or strongly suspect, that ASC was such a front cover.

    When Oswald was arrested in New Orleans during the summer of 1963, he was asked by police officer Frank Martello how he came to be a member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC). To that he replied that “he became interested in that committee in Los Angeles … in 1958 while in the US Marine Corps.”64 Although he gave the wrong information, since the FPCC was established in April of 1960, he simultaneously revealed that when he was visiting Los Angeles he most likely met the pro-Castro people that had organized the FPCC’s Los Angeles branch at the first Unitarian Church of Robert Fritchman.65

    In 1963, Richard Case Nagell was investigating the FPCC branch in Los Angeles, leftists and Unitarians. In his notebook were written the names of: Helen Travis of the FPCC, Dorothy Healy of the Communist Party, USA, Reverend Robert Fritchman of the First Unitarian Church, and the officials of the Medical Aid for Cuba Committee.66

    Is it possible that all along Oswald was being groomed to penetrate the FPCC?

    A 1976 CIA internal memo stated, “In the late 1950’s, Hemming and Sturgis, both former US Marines, joined Fidel Castro in Cuba but returned shortly thereafter, claiming disillusionment with the Castro cause.”67 Delgado testified that a mysterious man visited Oswald at the gate of El Toro base. He had assumed that he was someone from the Los Angeles Cuban Consulate. However, Gerry Patrick Hemming revealed later on that he had met Oswald in the Cuban Consulate in Los Angeles and went to confront Oswald at the gate of El Toro base.

    There are indications that this actually happened. A CIA memo stated that “Henning (Hemming) returned to California in October 1958 … he left for Cuba by air via Miami on or about 18 February 1959, arriving in Havana on 19 February 1959. He claimed to have contacted the officials in the Cuban consul’s office in Los Angeles prior to his departure.”68 Another CIA Security Office memo from 1977 linked Oswald to Hemming: “The Office of Security file concerning Hemming which is replete with information possibly linking Hemming and his cohorts to Oswald … ”69

    Could it be possible that Oswald was being “put together” to penetrate pro-Castro organizations like the FPCC as Hemming had been associated with Castro and his allies before him?

    In a 1976 article in Argosy, it was stated that, “Hemming maintains that the US should utilize a number of Special Forces types … who could penetrate revolutionary movements at an early stage, gain influential positions, and then channel them into more favorable areas.70 It was during that period late 1959, early 1960, when Oswald defected to the Soviet Union that the US Government—and Hemming—had realized that Castro was pro-Soviet. He was a Communist who could pose a threat to the US interests and an option would have been to have him “eliminated.”71

    It is likely that Oswald was sent to the Soviet Union to build up a “Legend” as a pro-communist, pro-Soviet sympathizer. One who appeared to have provided secret information to help the Soviets shoot down the U-2—even if he did not—and then return home as a Soviet spy, or as someone who had helped create a Soviet illegal. His mission would have been to infiltrate leftist, subversive and pro-Castro organizations while pretending to be on their side.

    Summary of Parts 1 and 2:

    • The way Oswald received his passport was very peculiar.
    • In 1959 Oswald likely visited the Los Angeles Cuban Consulate, allegedly because he was a Red sympathizer.
    • His Marine mate Delgado thought he was receiving mail and leaflets from the Cuban Consulate, while the material was more likely White Russian, from an anti-communist solidarity organization called Narodnyi Trudovoy Soyuz
    • Oswald had applied to study at the Albert Schweitzer College (ASC), an obscure college in Switzerland.
    • There was confusion as to which trimester he was planning to attend ASC.
    • It is a mystery as to how Oswald found out about this college.
    • Kerry Thornley, another of Oswald’s Marine mates, was attending the First Unitarian Church in Los Angeles where Robert Fritchman was its Minister.
    • Either Thornley or Fritchman probably supplied Oswald with all the necessary information.
    • Oswald listed on his college application authors Jack London, Charles Darwin and Norman B. Peale, which indicated that Oswald had elitist, conservative and far right political views.
    • Hans Casparis the founder of the ASC falsely claimed that he had academic credentials he did not have.
    • Similarly with his wife Therese, also a lecturer at the ASC.
    • The ASC was created by the International Association for Religious Freedom (IARF) and was supported by the Unitarian American Friends of Albert Schweitzer College.
    • Percival Brundage was one of the Directors of the Unitarian American Friends of Albert Schweitzer College.
    • Brundage was Director of the Bureau of Budget (BOB) during the Eisenhower presidency.
    • Along with another Unitarian, James Killian, he was involved in the U-2 and CORONA satellite projects.
    • Brundage held major stocks of Southern Air Transport that Paul Helliwell had established.
    • Helliwell was a CIA man in the Far East who helped arrange drug trafficking to finance CIA operations.
    • This brought Brundage in contact with a network of drug-trafficking, money-laundering banks, anti-Castro Cubans and the CIA operations against Castro.
    • The ASC was to become a link between Oswald and Brundage.
    • Oswald’s mother thought it was strange that her son would go to the Soviet Union; she thought he was more likely to go to Cuba.
    • Oswald stated in 1963 that he first learned about the FPCC while visiting Los Angeles.
    • The people who established the Los Angeles FPCC branch were attending Fritchman’s First Unitarian Church.
    • It is probable that Oswald was prepared by some US intelligence service, probably the CIA, to penetrate pro-Castro organizations like the FPCC at a time that the US government began plans to eliminate Castro.
    • For that reason it had to appear that he defected to the Soviet Union.
    • His actions there created his bona fides that he had been turned into a communist spy.
    • CIA counter-intelligence chief James Angleton ran a second operation involving Oswald or his file to sabotage the peace summit.
    • Oswald was a fake defector and a US intelligence dangle.
    • He never intended to renounce his citizenship.
    • The FBI learned from his mother that he had his birth certificate with him.
    • Hoover feared that some impostor might be using his birth certificate and that a Soviet illegal might take his place if he returned to the States.
    • Oswald was put on the CIA’s illegal HT/LINGUAL mail-opening program designed to detect Soviet illegals.
    • This would have also strengthened his Soviet spy profile.
    • The U-2 had a finite operational life time.
    • It was scheduled to be replaced by the A-12 aircraft and the Corona satellites, so there were alternatives if something went wrong.
    • Oswald did not give information to the Soviets to help them shoot down the U-2, but it appeared that he did. This boosted his “Soviet Spy” legend.
    • Dulles admitted that it happened due to a malfunction.
    • Prouty believed that it was sabotaged from the inside.
    • The U-2 was sacrificed, since there were other alternatives to replace it, to disrupt the Paris peace summit and prolong the Cold War.
    • It was planned by a treasonous collaboration of American and Soviet hardliners who had invested in the Cold War.
    • Oswald was part of Angleton’s mole hunt to discover who betrayed Popov and the U-2 project.
    • However, Popov was not betrayed by a mole, so a mole hunt was not necessary.
    • Angleton used the mole hunt as a cover to accommodate the U-2 shoot down. Although it failed to discover the mole’s identity, that exercise gave him a usable alibi by which he could claim, in the case suspicions were raised that it was an inside job, that the U-2 incident was the work of a mole.

     

    In Part 3, we examine the Oswald legend in Dallas, New Orleans and Mexico City.

    Go to Part 1

    Go to Part 3

    Go to Part 4

    Go to Part 5

    Go to Part 6

    Go to Conclusion

    Go to Appendix

    Notes

    1 John Newman, Oswald and the CIA, Skyhorse Publishing Inc. 1995, p. 92.

    2 Newman, p. 92.

    3 Newman, p. 92.

    4 George Michael Evica, A Certain Arrogance, Trine Day 2011, p. 21.

    5 Evica, p. 22.

    6 Evica, pp. 25-26.

    7 Evica, pp. 68-69.

    8 Evica, p. 59.

    9 Newman, p. 423.

    10 Greg Parker, Lee Harvey’s Oswald Cold War, vols. 1 & 2, New Disease Press, 2015, p. 283.

    11 Parker, p. 285.

    12 Parker, p. 287.

    13 Evica, p. 35.

    14 Evica, pp. 35-36.

    15 Evica, p. 87.

    16 John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, Quasar Press, 2003, p. 227.

    17 Armstrong, pp. 227-228.

    18 Armstrong, p. 228.

    19 Evica, p. 83

    20 Parker, pp. 287-288.

    21 Parker, p. 288.

    22 Evica, p. 86.

    23 Armstrong, p .228.

    24 Evica, p. 237.

    25 Evica, p. 238.

    26 Evica, p. 276.

    27 Evica, p. 238.

    28 Evica, p. 245.

    29 Evica, p. 247.

    30 Evica, p. 248.

    31 Evica, p. 248.

    32 Evica, p. 250.

    33 Evica, pp. 255-256.

    34 Parker, p. 290.

    35 Evica, p. 272.

    36 Armstrong, p. 229.

    37 Peter Dale Scott, The American Deep State, Rowman & Littlefield, 2015, p. 126.

    38 http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKhelliwell.htm.

    39 http://www.globalresearch.ca/deep-events-and-the-cia-s-global-drug-connection/10095.

    40 http://www.globalresearch.ca/deep-events-and-the-cia-s-global-drug-connection/10095.

    41 http://spartacus-educational.com/JFKhelliwell.htm.

    42 James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, Skyhorse Publishing, 2012, p. 329.

    43 Newman, pp. 96-97.

    44 Parker, pp. 280-281.

    45 Parker, p. 281

    46 Parker, p. 281.

    47 Parker, p. 282.

    48 Parker, p. 282.

    49 Stephen Dorril, MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty’s Secret Intelligence Service, Harper Collins, 2002, p. 405.

    50 Dorril, p. 405.

    51 Dorril, p. 406.

    52 Parker, p. 296.

    53 Parker, p. 297.

    54 Parker, p. 297.

    55 Parker, p. 297.

    56 Parker, pp. 297-298.

    57 Parker, p. 300.

    58 Parker, p. 301.

    59 Parker, p. 302.

    60 Evica, pp. 95-96.

    61 Evica, p. 96.

    62 Evica, p. 96.

    63 Evica, pp. 100-101.

    64 Evica, p. 36.

    65 Evica, p. 36.

    66 Dick Russell, The Man Who Knew too Much, Carroll & Graf, p. 226.

    67 Newman, p. 101.

    68 Newman, p. 102.

    69 Newman, p. 103.

    70 Newman, p. 104.

    71 Newman, pp. 115-121.

  • The Three Failed Plots to Kill JFK, Part 2

    The Three Failed Plots to Kill JFK, Part 2

    Case linkage and patsy casting for regime change operations

    Case linkage, also called linkage analysis or comparative case analysis, is an offender profiling process that helps crime investigators determine whether a series of crimes were committed by the same offender.

    The Warren Commission and the investigative agencies at their service never performed this type of standard research for the JFK assassination.

    In The Three Failed Plots to Kill JFK: The Historians’ Guide on how to Research his Assassination published in 2016, I did some data mining from the works of reputable authors and original source documents (mostly from the Mary Ferrell Foundation) which centered on three previous plots (L.A., Chicago and Tampa) to assassinate JFK within the six months that preceded the murder and six potential patsies (Vaughn Marlowe, Richard Case Nagell, Thomas Arthur Vallee, Harry Power, Santiago Garriga and Policarpo Lopez). (Before reading this follow-up, it is strongly recommended that you read the original article by following the above hyperlink.)

    What we can conclude from this analysis is that the peculiarities that one can find in their personas, associations and actions is hardly a haphazard collection of traits and behaviors. I have argued that there is a ZR/Rifle (CIA Executive Action) signature at play that points the finger straight at its signatories and the reliable executors of this regime-change M.O., namely: David Atlee Phillips, William Harvey, David Morales and their long established network of assassins and frame-up artists which includes Mafiosi and Cuban exiles.

    Crucial to this line of inquiry will be the use of data visualization which will play a determining role in a summation phase of our quest to correct history book and mainstream media falsities in their accounts of November 22, 1963.

    In this article, we will push the analysis even further by covering a fourth failed plot, add some information about one of the potential patsies already profiled, and add two more to our already impressive list. We will begin, however by discussing how the use of data visualization should be considered more often by authors in order to help synthesize this complex case.

    Numerical data may be encoded using dots, lines, or bars, to visually communicate a quantitative message. Effective visualization helps users analyze and reason about data and evidence. It makes complex data more accessible, understandable and usable. (Wikipedia)

    In Oswald’s Intelligence Connections: How Richard Schweiker clashes with Fake History, I chronicle some 64 characters (soon to be updated to over 75) that Oswald had touch points with that either certainly (over 30) or plausibly had intelligence connections. They were fluffed off by the Warren Commission instead of being mapped out in a diagram and analyzed for who they really were and who they linked up with—exactly what the Mueller Probe is doing for anyone with a direct or indirect relation with the Trump camp.

    In my CIA and Mafia’s “Cuban-American mechanism” article, the chart below is used to showcase Santo Trafficante’s links with CIA, Mafia and Cuban exile persons of interest. Of particular interest are the persons with their names in red: No fewer than six for certain and two plausibly are directly involved in the Oswald set-up, murder or cover story and also are connected to Trafficante. The Trafficante, Roselli, Harvey, Morales, and Robertson links should also stimulate a lot of research:

    Also in this article, readers can inspect a table that singles out David Atlee Phillips as a person of extreme interest.

    In all, Oswald and Phillips shared 23 touch points—20 of which took place within the year in and around the assassination. It is simply impossible to ignore this number of connections between a CIA officer and a lone drifter!

    The Phantom Plot in Nashville, May 1963

    After reading the Previous Plots article, researcher Frank Cassano sent me information about another plot that failed in Nashville which had been covered by Bill Adams in 1993 for The Fourth Decade:

    Synopsis of Assassination Attempt Against JFK, May 18, 1963, in Nashville TN

    A few years ago I began looking into other assassination sites as well as other potential assassins and potential patsies. I was able to track a potential JFK assassin to the general area (Knoxville, TN) of a planned JFK motorcade in May of 1963. The trip was altered prior to the actual day of the trip and JFK instead made a visit to Nashville, TN. His visit, on May 18, 1963, included several motorcades.

    In early 1992 I was shocked to see a tabloid print a story about an assassination attempt against JFK during the Nashville trip! Congressman Bob Clement of Tennessee had made a startling revelation. He said his father, the late Gov. Frank Clement (governor of Tennessee in 1963) told him of a strange incident while JFK awaited a helicopter after visiting the Governor. The tabloid quoted Congressman Bob Clement of Tennessee as stating, “While the President waited for the helicopter, a man approached with a gun hidden underneath a sack. Secret Service agents spotted him and grabbed him”.

    I called and interviewed the congressman in the early summer of 1963. I also obtained actual Nashville news stories about the congressman’s revelation in January of 1992. As a result of reading the news stories and talking to Congressman Clement, I have been able to piece together the following story:

    President Kennedy arrived in Nashville on May 18, 1963. He rode in a motorcade to Vanderbilt University where he gave a speech outside in the football stadium. JFK left the stadium in another motorcade and drove to the governor’s mansion. Somewhere between the Governor’s mansion and the helicopter landing site at Overton High School, a man approached JFK with a handgun under a sack. It is unclear whether JFK was in his limousine or not at the time. The governor witnessed this event and the subsequent capture of the suspect by the Secret Service. The man was held at the High School for some time. Nothing more is known about the man. The Secret Service asked the governor to keep the event out of the press for fear it would lead to more assassination attempts.

    I have also found some writings about a gun found in a paper bag in the vicinity of Dealey Plaza, however the foundation for this aspect of the story is not solid.

    While this failed plot is by far the thinnest of the four looked into, it is worth noting for the following reasons:

    1. As with the Chicago plot, a suspect was picked up and released without any trace: no names, fingerprints, photos, reports, etc.
    2. The Nashville attempt, as was the case for all of the other failed plots, was revisited by neither the Secret Service nor the FBI after the JFK assassination.
    3. The Secret Service once again took steps to keep media from publicizing it.
    4. None of the four failed plots were known to the Warren Commission.

    Over and above underscoring this pattern of secrecy, it may be worth pursuing whether or not there are still files or witnesses that could shed light on the incident and the suspect. Who were the arresting agents? Are they alive? What can we learn about this suspect? Was he also communist leaning? Was he linked to the FPCC? Did he have Cuban contacts? Why was he let go? Was he at least placed on an FBI watch list? Perhaps an FOIA request would be in order.

    More on Harry Power

    In the “Three Previous Plots” article, the alternate patsy that had the skimpiest profile was Harry Power. Other snippets of information about him have since surfaced.

    Here is how Harry Power was originally covered:

    San Antonio, November 21, 1963

    Because of the code of omertà surrounding the JFK assassination, Harry Power’s story is perhaps the sketchiest of the potential scapegoat cases we will have discussed. But since no stone should be left unturned when investigating a murder, especially a president’s, it is worth identifying and earmarking for more analysis.

    Harry Power was yet another ex-marine who checked in to a Terre Haute House Hotel room in Indiana on November 25, 1963 with a long package. When he checked out, he left behind a rifle … a Mannlicher-Carcanno, according to a retired Chief of Police Frank Riddle … a Mauser, according another unidentified source.

    A United States Government Memo in 1967 describes the allegation. Riddle claimed San Antonio authorities informed him that Power was a member of the Young Communist League and an expert rifle marksman. An ex-co-worker described him as anti-Kennedy. He had held a job in San Antonio Texas in 1962.

    Riddle stated that all information had been turned over to the Warren Commission and that the rifle was taken by Secret Service agents. The Secret Service claimed to have only found out about this incident in 1965. Their key source is none other than the head of the Washington Secret Service, Chief Rowley himself, who you will recall played a key role in keeping the Chicago plot as secret as possible. The FBI did confirm, however, that the Terre Haute Police department had in fact followed up on this lead around when Riddle claimed it happened … which would indicate further Secret Service and Warren Commission complacency.

    According to Dick Russell, Richard Nagell told Jim Garrison that Power was a Trotskyite who had met Oswald.

    Given that JFK motorcaded in San Antonio on November 21 and that Power could easily be linked to that city, it is not a major leap to see similarities between Power, Oswald and the other scapegoat candidates that seem to have been lined up before the assassination. [slightly edited]

    The Indiana Rifle story had received little interest until journalist Sheldon Inkol researched it in 1993 (The Third Decade, Volume 9, Issue 5: “The Indiana Rifle,” by Sheldon Inkol) and updated his findings in 1995 for The Fourth Decade. From his research and FBI file 62-109060 JFK HQ, we can now add the following points:

    1. The rifle found in Indiana was most likely a Mauser and not a Mannlicher-Carcanno.
    2. Because of an NSF check written by Power, we know that at one time he was in New Orleans.
    3. An ex-co-worker of Power’s who was the witness Riddle referred to was Roger Dresch, who also stated that Power was a hunter who sighted a rifle with a scope at a shooting range, that he had been a paratrooper who complained about his father being an alcoholic, and who occasionally talked about becoming a hermit in the wilderness.

    According to Inkol, it is Dick Russell who first revealed the name of Harry Power in The Man Who Knew Too Much in 1992. There had been only small articles about the incident before this. Inkol credits veteran researcher Larry Haapanen, who interviewed Riddle, for having confirmed the name of Power after following up on an article in 1970.

    Dick Russell provided the following to the Harry Power profile:

    A National Archives document about the affair was declassified in 1970 … a file reports that Power had been investigated in connection with the shooting attempt on General Walker in Dallas, a shooting that the WC falsely claimed to have been by Oswald and his Mannlicher-Carcano. Other files associated with the Power rifle claim that it was a 7.65 Mauser. CIA agent Richard Nagell told Garrison investigators in 1967 that Power was a Maoist or Trotskyite and “had known Lee Harvey Oswald and had been seen with him …”

    Inkol adds the following points, based on police investigations:

    1. There were no fingerprints on the Mauser.
    2. Indiana Police indicated that the hotel where the rifle was found was right across from the Democratic and Republican headquarters.
    3. According to Riddle, the FBI tried to link Power’s presence to a political rally going on the night before in proximity to the Terre Haute hotel.
    4. The editor of the Indianapolis News and the NRA, who had found out about the incident, were asked to keep it silent by authorities.
    5. Power seemed to have a troubled marriage.
    6. He had financial difficulties.
    7. He was described as a “Smart Aleck”, “Trouble Maker” and person with a warped outlook on life.
    8. He had failed at one point to get a driver’s license.
    9. He may have been from Chicago.

    According to Inkol, Frank Riddle insisted that Power was a suspect in the attempt on General Walker’s life the previous April—something the Warren Commission tagged on Oswald. In 1964, Secret Service Chief James Rowley confirmed to Riddle that the FBI and the Secret Service had files on Power.

    Inkol tempers Riddle as a source as he points out that some have qualified him as a “blow-hard”.

    Inkol is not convinced that Power was even in the hotel. He argues that the description given (age, height and weight) of the person with the rifle in the hotel is very different from the San Antonio description of Power.

    He believes that one possibility that merits further investigation is that he was being set up as an alternate patsy or part of a subversive pro-communist group intent on attacking the U.S. Government—who could have been pinned as the shooter from the knoll if a front shot had to be admitted to.

    He also points out that had the assassination taken place in San Antonio where Kennedy motorcaded a day earlier, the patsy might have been Power instead of Oswald.

    Inkol ends the first article with a fleeting comment about the Indiana rifle being perhaps linked to a seventh potential patsy according to David Lifton who twice interviewed the next subject we will discuss, but revealed very little to Inkol about him. I decided to contact Lifton to follow up on this tantalizing clue about yet another alternate scapegoat (not to be confused with the famous astronaut), who even without a link to the rifle is, in terms of his profile, an Oswald dead ringer!

    John Glenn

    Unlike most of the other potential fall guys that figure in this analysis, the case of John Glenn and his wife Marcia is quite well documented. This, however, has nothing to do with the FBI, CIA, or Warren Commission’s efforts to scrutinize this Oswald semi-replica.

    According to the WC, Oswald opening an FPCC chapter in New Orleans was a demonstration of his ego trip … period! Fortunately for researchers, the FPCC was under intensive scrutiny by the Internal Security Subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).

    Through their reports and the writings in 1993 of Jerry Rose (The Third Decade, “Red Summer of ‘63”), we can paint a better picture of Glenn and the role the FPCC came to play in making our cast of puppets easy to frame for the crime of the century.

    The FPCC was characterised as “Castro’s Network in the USA” by the HUAC. Membership within this anti-U.S. organization was described during hearings as an effective door-opener to enter Cuba via the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City and Cubana Airlines.

    Though the HUAC had been seriously rattled by the McCarthy era witch-hunts, Castro was breathing some new life into this outfit for political showcasing of American patriotism.

    One area that got their attention was the travel to Cuba by American students despite a travel ban. On June 25, 1963, 58 students left New York and transited through Russia satellite Czechoslovakia on the way to Cuba where they were apparently well received by the Castro regime. This group had been infiltrated by an informant named Barry Hoffman who had gotten approval from agencies that were tied to the FBI, CIA, and State Department. During hearings in September of 1963, he painted the students as pro-Cuba and anti-U.S.A. and talked about rumors that Cuba had not dismantled the nuclear installations on the island.

    Evidently, he was a poor spy who was not trusted by the other students. He was “number 3 on their fink list”. Numbers 1 and 2 were John Glenn and his wife Marcia.

    On November 18, 1963—four days before JFK’s assassination, the Glenns’ testimony before the HUAC had the effect of smearing the FPCC. Transcripts of the hearings point out striking similarities with Oswald:

    John Glenn joined the U.S. Air force in 1950.

    While in the service, Glenn received training in the Russian language at Syracuse University and became a Russian linguist for Air Force Intelligence, with security clearance for secret, top secret, and cryptographic information. Meanwhile, he continued his regular college studies through night school and correspondence courses. Glenn, while still receiving regular military service pay, including food and housing allowances, returned to full-time studies at the Indiana University where he obtained a degree in business administration in January 1954.

    He then resumed active duty with Air Force Intelligence for 2 more years, including 16 months overseas, before being discharged in January 1956, after reaching the rank of staff sergeant.

    During the summer of 1958, he visited the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia, and Poland for about 40 days as a guide for the Tom Maupintour Associates, an American travel agency. The next summer he toured the same countries, plus Yugoslavia and Rumania, in a similar capacity for another travel organization.

    The witness confirmed information obtained through an investigation by the Committee on Un-American Activities that he had traveled to Mexico in the spring of 1962 in an attempt to get a Cuban visa. He was unsuccessful.

    It was at about this time, the fall of 1962, Glenn told the subcommittee, that he joined the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He had been a sympathizer of the group much earlier, he said. He admitted having written a letter printed in an Indiana University publication, dated February 10, 1962, in which he said that “the people in Fair Play are willing to argue to anyone who will listen that our government and our press are lying through their teeth [about Cuba].”

    The witness admitted that, without having applied for U.S. validation, he traveled to Cuba with the group of alleged students who departed from New York on a BOAC plane on June 25, 1963. Glenn acknowledged the accuracy of the subcommittee’s information that on the return trip, after arriving in Spain with the main body of U.S. “students” on August 26, 1963, he left the group and traveled to Morocco. He said that after he and his wife had learned they could stay abroad for a while, they had decided to travel to Algeria to observe the political developments there, which were supposed to be similar to what they had witnessed in Cuba.

    When the Glenns arrived in Morocco from Spain, the witness testified, they received an entry permit to Algeria from the Algerian Government. While hitchhiking their way to Algeria, however, they were arrested by the Moroccan police and ordered deported to Spain as undesirables. He said he learned from both the American consul in Rabat, Morocco, and the Moroccan police that the deportation was ordered by the United States Government.

    On October 15, 1963, according to investigation by the Committee on Un-American Activities, Glenn reported to the American Embassy in Madrid, Spain, that he and his wife did not have a ticket for return transportation to the United States. The embassy purchased a ticket for them, and they were flown to the United States on an Iberian Air Lines plane.

    Their landlord testified that the Glenns possessed communist literature, including The Militant, which Oswald also subscribed to, that connected them to the Socialist Worker Party and its affiliate YSA.

    In his article, Jerry Rose speculates that “given the possibility that Glenn was connected somehow with a rifle in Indiana which was believed to be related to the assassination, it is possible as well that Glenn, like Oswald, was being groomed as pro-communist patsy if Oswald for any reason did not work out in the role.” Rose advances that Glenn’s forced return and appearance before the HUAC suggest (but do not prove) control from high places … an interpretation he felt at the time that was worth pursuing.

    David Lifton

    When I first reached out to David Lifton through some of my contacts who know him, I was a bit apprehensive. But after some email exchanges, David Lifton generously shared some of his observations.

    Here are the preliminary questions I sent David:

    1. Can you summarize when the interviews took place, where, how long they lasted, who was present?
    2. What led you to want to interview Glenn in the first place and how did you set them up?
    3. What were the topics covered and what were the main things he had to say and that you observed?
    4. Glenn’s learning of the Russian language, links to the FPCC, the way he entered Morocco and came back. Some point out the similarities to Oswald and the fingerprints of intelligence—what did your interviews (and other research) bring out in this area?
    5. Inkol mentions that you said that Glenn had a link to the Indiana Rifle (which is the one that links to William Power I believe). Can you discuss this?
    6. Do you think Glenn was being set up as a potential patsy?—please explain.
    7. You mentioned you knew about William Power. How? and if you do read my article, you will see that what I have on him is quite thin (I have found a few more bits of information that I will add). If there is anything you can add I would be most grateful.

    Without going into details, David’s preamble to answering my questions deals with how the passage of time and moving his office unfortunately cloud his recollection of his meetings with Glenn. What follows here are his responses:

    So… that having been said, and based on current recollection.

    RESPONSE TO Q1-3: Glenn’s name came up in connection with my embarking on a comprehensive search of all print (i.e., newspaper) coverage of the JFK assassination, using a set of microfilms I purchased from University Microfilms in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

    I believe that it was the San Antonio papers—either the San Antonio Light, or the News—Express (there were only two San Antonio papers) —that carried stories about what happened on 11/21/63. About a “mystery car” parked at a curb, and some remarks made by one of the occupants of that car, to the effect that “He’ll never get through this city.” Something like that. That led to the San Antonio Police dispatcher putting out a call for that vehicle to “call in to your headquarters” or some such thing. Then, 24-36 hours later, after JFK was assassinated in Dallas, this incident (call it the “San Antonio incident”) then resulted in significant “follow-up” coverage, and that led to the name John Glenn and the story of the San Antonio rifle, linked to the Indiana (Bloomington, IN, I think) rifle.

    Anyway, I clipped those stories, then obtained the House (or Senate? not sure) hearings that took place on or about Nov 18, 1963, at which Glenn testified, as I recall.

    With that as background, I then sought contact with Glenn, who—I somehow learned—lived in Venice, California.

    My first meeting with Glenn was at the UCLA Student Union. What I remember is that it was dark outside, and the SU cafeteria was crowded, and that was how I met him.

    I questioned him closely and established—to my satisfaction (again, “as I presently recall”) —that he did not fit the profile of an “alternate” patsy because there was no evidence whatsoever that there was any third party in his life influencing where he was living, or what he was doing, or asking him to do anything.

    Of course, I was disappointed in the result, but that’s what I found.

    Subsequently, when Robert Sam Anson (who I came to know) was writing about the JFK assassination (for Esquire, I think), he wanted to follow-up on this. Again, as I recall. And, again, as I recall, the two of us actually went to John Glenn’s Venice apartment and spoke with him.

    I do not remember the details at all. What I do remember is being in John Glenn’s apartment, and having the sense that he was “just like Oswald,” something like that. I believe I had that sense because he had either a poster of, or paraphernalia connected with, The Militant. Again, I don’t remember. What I do remember is the UCLA Student Union “first meeting” and my sense of disappointment that my

    hypothesis wasn’t panning out.

    RESPONSE to Q4: See answer to Question 1. FYI: I kept a very imperfect “journal” of my daily work; and I would often write letters home, but I don’t believe they would have contained any relevant information.

    Anyway, that material is stored “elsewhere.”

    RESPONSE to Q5: I believe that the “primary source” for these “links” comes from the San Antonio newspaper coverage—again, I was using microfilmed records of the S A Light and/or News Express for the period 11/20 —11/25/1963.

    RESPONSE to Q6: That was my hypothesis, but what I remember is being (very) disappointed that my questioning of him failed to unearth any supporting data. (Could he have been deceiving me? I suppose he “could have,” but I’m pretty confident that I was not being fooled, and that he was who he “appeared to be.”)

    RESPONSE to Q7:

    1. Please send me the link to your article (or anything else you wish me to read) again. I’m not sufficiently “organized” to lay my hands on it at this moment.
    2. As I recall, it all stemmed from my work with the microfilmed records of the two San Antonio newspapers.

    Also, and this may be of interest to you—or maybe not—I think that some of this “San Antonio” stuff may have been covered in the Dallas Morning News in the day or two after JFK was assassinated.

    David followed up shortly after with this following point:

    P.S.  What I forgot to mention in my memo …

    That the San Antonio newspaper (one of them) reported after the assassination of JFK on Friday 11/22/63, that the “mystery car” was a Secret Service vehicle.

    And that’s what made the whole incident so very important.

    Harry Dean

    Harry Dean is one of those characters I put into the category of unreliable witnesses who may have important knowledge, but that have made many statements that are easily contestable and that have had researchers chasing their tails. Unfortunately, in the JFK assassination soap opera—we are faced with a whole slew of personalities who mislead yet can sometimes be decoded to a certain degree. Frank Sturgis and Gerry Patrick Hemming come to mind, as they along with others tried to send HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi and other researchers on wild goose chases. They nevertheless give us a better picture of the decadent setting Oswald immersed himself in.

    When dealing with such characters, without fully dismissing them, it is prudent not to waste much time on them and only go with what can be corroborated.

    Before reading some of Dean’s forum posts, I looked at what other researchers had to say about him.

    For over 50 years, Dean made claims in letters and forums that he had been recruited, selected, and led by American Intelligence forces to take on special missions such as spying on Castro while in Cuba, the John Birch Society, and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Only in 2017 would he finally admit that he was not an official FBI informant.

    In a 2005 post on The Education Forum, he came up with the following claim:

    But among the widespread ‘rightist’ movement were assassin-minded persons that would take action to aid in seizing control of the U.S. government if only given the word.

    Even being tight-knit with the individuals involved, except for bits and pieces of confusing information I failed to timely detect a clearer picture of the real and more subtle plot to kill the president … the plan move relentlessly … but a ‘need-to-know’ method of secrecy was being applied among my radical associates.

    When the name of a Fair Play For Cuba Committee communist was broadcast throughout the rightist circuit after the airing of an August, 1963 radio program from Station WDSU, New Orleans, Louisiana, Lee Oswald was ‘selected’ by another of our {JBS} associates, retired U.S. Army General E.A. Walker of Dallas, Texas.

    The subject was chosen by ‘Guy” Gabaldon as ‘the fall guy’ in the secretive plot against Kennedy. None of us objected, and found it humorous to frame a communist. I quietly considered it as goofy as the weird, but hazy, arrangements to kill the president.

    When Kennedy visited Mexico City in late June of 1962, Gabaldon, in league with some rightist Mexican Federal Police Officials, was set to shoot president Kennedy. Only a last minute escape problem aborted that assassination scheme … Two other of our associates … Lawrence John Howard—aka Alonzo Escruido, and Loran Eugene ‘Skip’ Hall—aka Lorenzo Pacillo, were dispatched by Gabaldon to enlist Oswald in {a phony CIA, Central Intelligence Agency set-up} at Gabaldon’s Mexico City area office.

    General Walker did not orchestrate the assassination, nor the framing of Oswald! Nor did the Mafia, the Cuban exiles, Birchers, etc. Walker could not have organized the weakening of security, the botched autopsy, the Mexico City Oswald imposter episode, the Warren Commission failures, the propaganda offensives. The framing of Oswald began before he left Dallas for New Orleans.

    This goes a long way in explaining why some have suggested that I not include Dean in a comparative analysis of potential patsies.

    However, when researching the documentary trail about Harry Dean on the Mary Ferrell site, as well as on forums and websites (see: https://sites.google.com/site/xrt013/harrydean) that provide an in-depth analysis of Dean’s statements and pertinent documents—we can nevertheless find information about the FPCC, Dean himself and other characters that seem to be part of a model:

    A 1962 Los Angeles FBI File reveals the following about Dean:

    LAX advised Chicago FBI office about phone conversation which Harry had with SA William J. McCauley.   During that phone conversation, Harry “confided that he had been an informant for the Chicago Office, having been a Secretary of the Chicago chapter of the FPCC, but that largely because his wife had become very upset over his activities on behalf of the FBI, he had discontinued his informant activities and had come to the LAX area about one year ago, and is now employed as a plasterer operating out of the Union Office on Vermont Avenue, Los Angeles. He added that he has, since his arrival in Los Angeles, had casual contact with Edgar and Marjorie Swabeck, whom he had previously known in the Chicago area, and from them has learned that Marjorie Swabeck is secretary of the LAX chapter of the FPCC at the present time. He said that he otherwise has taken no particular interest in the FPCC, and that while he himself is personally not averse to resuming informant activities in behalf of the FBI, he hesitates to do so because of his wife’s feeling in the matter. The Chicago Office is requested to verify and furnish a brief summary of the subject’s background, particularly his activities as an informant and his reliability while known to the Chicago office.”

    Another L.A. 1962 FBI file goes on further:

    SAC Chicago to SAC LAX

    Dean first called the Chicago Office in August, 1960, to report that he had been elected Recording Secretary, Chicago Chapter, FPCC. He did not divulge his name and address at this time. Later in the same month he called this office, stating his name and advising he was residing at 1540 Central Avenue, Whiting, Indiana, and that he owned his own business, the Whiting Plastering Company. He told of his connections with the FPCC, furnished information concerning the leadership of this organization, and said he would be amenable to an interview with an agent of the FBI.

    The Indianapolis Office conducted an inquiry in Whiting, Indiana, in September 1960. Detective Captain Edward Grabovac, Whiting, Indiana Police Department, advised that Dean, whose real name he believed to be Gordon Hunt and who had used the name George R. Baker, had skipped town and the Whiting PD had a warrant for his arrest on bad check charges. Grabovac said Dean was a self-employed plasterer.

    The Whiting, Indiana PD procured an identification record from the Detroit, Michigan PD under FBI #4657880. This record revealed that Dean had been committed as a mental patient in Canada in 1948 and was sentenced at Chatham, Ontario, for breaking and entering to ‘one year indefinite’. At this time, Dean had one arrest by the Detroit PD for disturbing a religious meeting and two arrests for using indecent and obscene language.

    He was also AWOL from Fort Knox, Kentucky in 1949. In December 1960, Dean again called this Office to report that he had been residing in Detroit for the past two months. At that time he said he was living in Chicago but he refused to divulge his local address. He continued to telephonically contact this office on several occasions until June 1961.

    He furnished information concerning Cuban nationals connected with the 26th of July Movement and on local persons connected with the FPCC. He was last contacted by two agents of the Chicago Office on June 7, 1961, at which time he was told that this office did not desire his assistance. Former CG___-S advised in August 1960, that Dean was a white male, age about 25 (in 1960), stocky build and black hair. While Dean voluntarily furnished info to the Chicago Office over a period of nearly a year, he was never considered a PSI or informant by this Office.

    Even though Dean does not seem like a highly prized asset for the FBI, the paper trail on Dean also confirms the following: Dean had been committed as a mental patient in Canada in 1948 and was sentenced at Chatham, Ontario.

    An OSI file (NARA Record Number: 104-10404-10041) confirms that Harry Dean was in the U.S. Army in 1945 and then again in 1948 using the name George Robert Baker and that the Office of Naval Intelligence has three files on him. It also states that he had been arrested by the RCMP and the Detroit Police under the Registration Act.

    In 1958 he became a member of the 26th of July Movement, a group led by Fidel Castro.

    In late 1959 and early 1960 he received three letters from Juan A. Orta, the Director of the Prime Minister’s Office of Cuba.

    He visited Cuba in June 1960.

    In August, 1960, he had been elected Recording Secretary, Chicago Chapter, FPCC.

    He soon after became a voluntary informant to the FBI (who nevertheless considered him a Fruitcake).

    In 1961, he moved to Los Angeles, where he had casual contact with Edgar and Marjorie Swabeck, whom he had previously known in the Chicago area, and from them learned that Marjorie Swabeck is secretary of the LAX chapter of the FPCC at the present time. (Which perhaps brought him into the realm of Vaughn Marlowe and Richard Case Nagell).

    In 1962 he joined the John Birch Society.

    He also claims to have known Larry Howard and Loran Hall whose names come up with respect to the assassination, and he warned the Los Angeles FBI about a plot to murder JFK that emanated from General Walker which was discussed during a John Birch Society meeting where Oswald was identified as the patsy.

    In one of his posts Dean states that the Swabecks may have been setting him up. The NARA documents do confirm a relationship that would have begun in 1960 when Harry met Edgar Swabeck during his travels to Cuba. According to Dean they played a role in getting him to set up the Chicago FPCC branch.

    By 1961, the Swabecks were now part of an L.A. FPCC chapter when Dean reconnected with them. They tried once again to involve him in the FPCC. It would not be a great leap to conclude that the Swabecks probably knew Vaughn Marlowe.

    Edgar Swabeck’s father seems to have been Arne Swabeck, one of the founding members of the Communist Party in the U.S. In the late 1920s, he was expelled from the party as a Trotskyist and worked together with James P. Cannon and other American Trotskyists to create the Socialist Workers Party. Swabeck visited Leon Trotsky in his exile in Turkey in 1933. He made a cameo appearance in the movie Reds. He was also reference person for The Militant, published by the SWP.

    It is also worth asking: If the murder had taken place in L.A., would a link to the cast of FPCC characters have also caused the downfall of the SWP which was very close to the FPCC management in L.A.?

    Potential patsy analysis: a new perspective

    When I completed the first article, I felt we could deduce that the subjects discussed where being actively groomed to become patsies; in other words, that operatives maneuvered easily discarded freelance assets or other malleable figures into assuming weaponized, pro-Castro and/or communist, anti-Kennedy misfit personas, and placed them in the proximity of the kill zone with abundant incriminating evidence. The string-pullers were also fully prepared to pounce with propaganda initiatives to put the blame of the assassination on Castro! While this seems to fit well—admittedly to varying degrees—in the cases of the first seven subjects profiled, the analysis of our two latest characters suggests something similar but with certain caveats.

    In the cases of Dean (pending more research) and Glenn, we can state that the credentials are also very suspicious, but that certain elements fit less well the claim that they were being groomed to take the fall: Their FPCC links predate when the winning stratagem was being mapped out, which arguably had its origins no earlier than when the ZR/Rifle (executive action) architect and disgraced CIA officer William Harvey met with mobster John Roselli in late Winter 1963. It was after these meetings that definite attempts on JFK’s life began multiplying and that the subsequent incriminating behavior and travels of Oswald, Nagell, Lopez, Vallee, Power and Garriga were too well timed to be considered mere coincidences.

    So how we interpret the profiles of Dean, Glenn, Nagell, and Marlowe with respect to their FPCC links needs to be more nuanced. While we cannot state at this point that they were maneuvered into joining the FPCC in order to be groomed as patsies, their connections to this organization, which was being heavily infiltrated by intelligence, when combined with their other traits, are nevertheless very telling and more in line with the role of informants who had patsy credentials. Some of the other subjects required fine-tuning of their personas and logistical maneuvering in the months leading up to the hit. The analysis of all the candidates on the short list bolsters the case that a cash-strapped Oswald did not leave his young daughter and pregnant wife in the lurch so he could pursue his ideological dream of opening an FPCC chapter in one of the most hostile places imaginable towards this dwindling organization.

    Senator Richard Schweiker of the Church Committee famously stated that the fingerprints of intelligence were all over Oswald. As we can see in the updated chart, Oswald has company!

    • Eight of the nine subjects profiled are connected to cities visited by Kennedy during the six months that preceded his assassination.
    • Each of these cities were territories exploited criminally by Mafiosi of interest in the assassination.
    • At least three moved to the cities and got employment in strategically located buildings along the motorcade route shortly before the planned presidential visit.
    • Seven were ex-military.
    • Eight of them exhibited behavior that can very plausibly be linked to intelligence gathering or Cuban exile interaction.
    • Seven were directly linked to the FPCC. Seven of them had visited Mexico City.
    • Six attempted to visit Cuba, three of them successfully.
    • Seven had links to Cuban/Latino exiles.
    • Six were described as having psychological problems.
    • Seven exhibited anti-Kennedy behavior.
    • None were probed seriously by the Warren Commission.
    • Intelligence services, notably the Secret Service, kept crucial information about these subjects as well as the prior plots totally secret from the Warren Commission.

    Potential alternative patsy comparison chart

    patsies

    More on the FPCC

    In the original article, much was written to underscore just how unlikely it would be for the subjects analyzed to be involved in 1963 with a dying FPCC. The timing was not right, their profiles contrast with the students and intellectuals who were most ideologically attracted to this outfit before the missile crisis, and the opening of chapters in hostile locations like New Orleans and Miami in 1963 can simply be described as mindless … unless, of course, other stratagems were at play: perhaps its infiltration by informants, which was rampant by then, and patsy grooming ploys.

    It stands to reason that the persons in a position to lead the infiltrators and monitor their movements deserve our utmost attention and that the FPCC should be turned upside down by the research community, because when Oswald joined the failing FPCC, he was most likely on a mission.

    In this respect, John Newman’s research into the FPCC infiltration and David Atlee Phillips’ role is worth noting. From his 2013 countercoup article here are some key points:

    • In early 1961, eleven weeks before the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA seized an opportunity to become more actively involved in running operations against the FPCC. CIA Security Office and Western Hemisphere elements identified an Agency employee who knew Court Wood, an American student just returned from Cuba under the sponsorship of the FPCC. This opportunity to surveil Court Wood, which developed at the end of January, was irresistible in the judgment of the person in the CIA’s Security Research Service (SRS) of the Security Office who conceived and authorized the operation. That person was James McCord, the same James McCord who would later become embroiled in the (Watergate) scandal during the Nixon Presidency.
    • It is fitting that one of the Agency’s legendary disinformation artists, David Atlee Phillips, should have been in charge of the CIA’s CI and propaganda effort against the FPCC. Phillips would reappear in Mexico City at the time Oswald visited there, taking over the anti-Castro operations of the CIA station in Mexico City during the very days that CIA headquarters and the CIA Mexico City station exchanged cables on Oswald’s visit to the Mexican capital.
    • “At the request of Mr. David Phillips” wrote the fortunate CIA employee picked to spy on his neighbor, “I spent the evening of January 6 with Court Wood, a student who has recently returned from a three-week stay in Cuba under the sponsorship of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.” The employee said that Court and his father both were pro-Castro and “extremely critical” of American foreign policy. “I’ve been advised by Mr. Phillips to continue my relationship with Mr. Wood and I will keep your office informed of each subsequent visit.”
    • What the operation tells us is that, by 1960, CIA was sufficiently interested in countering the FPCC to engage in an illegal domestic operation. The fact that controversy would follow the two men in charge, McCord in connection with Watergate and Phillips in connection with the Kennedy assassination, cause this page in CIA’s anti-Castro operations to stand out in hindsight.
    • We have in the past utilized techniques with respect to countering activities of mentioned [FPCC] organization in the U.S. During December 1961, New York prepared an anonymous leaflet which was mailed to select FPCC members throughout the country for the purpose of disrupting FPCC and causing a split between FPCC and Socialist Workers Party (SWP) supporters, which technically was very effective.
    • These tactics dramatize the lengths to which the FBI was willing to go to discredit the FPCC, whose chapters in Chicago, Newark, and Miami were infiltrated early on by the Bureau. As we will see in Chapter Sixteen, during Oswald’s tenure with the FPCC, FBI break-ins to their offices were a regular occurrence.
    • According to FBI records, on April 21, 1963, Dallas confidential informant “T-2” reported this letter to the FPCC, in which Oswald said he had passed out FPCC pamphlets in Dallas with a placard around his neck reading HANDS OFF CUBA, VIVA FIDEL.
    • Whether Oswald had stood on a street corner or not, important undercover FBI assets in New York were in motion against the FPCC during the time or shortly after Oswald wrote the letter. As we already know, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was the subject for intense FBI and CIA interest and counterintelligence operations. A major FBI Chicago office investigation of the FPCC appeared on March 8, four days before Oswald ordered the rifle from Chicago. This study was transmitted to the CIA.
    • By picking such an organization to correspond with and carrying out actions on its behalf, Oswald—by default or by design—had insinuated himself into the gray world of the watchers and the watched.

    The SWP

    Because of the Socialist Workers Party’s strong links to the FPCC and with at least four of the subjects we have profiled, and because it published The Militant, the newspaper being clutched by Oswald in his infamous backyard photo, it is worth researching this political outfit which was considered subversive by intelligence agencies.

    In 2005, its national leader between the early 1960s to the mid 1980s, Barry Sheppard, wrote a political memoir about this organization.

    The SWP had its roots in the 1930s and was officially founded in 1938. It quickly became an active supporter of leftist causes and the maligned Labor Movement—a target of Hoover’s FBI. Its existence was marked with volatility and controversy. It was a target of the McCarthy era witch-hunts in the fifties—these flared up again under the actions of the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1960s, when a certain Lee Harvey Oswald and at least three of the alternate patsies decided to join. The SWP also supported The Nation of Islam and later Malcolm X, The Freedom Riders, Algerian Independence, Peace movements—many of the issues Kennedy haters were boiling mad about!

    It was an enthusiastic supporter of the Castro revolution:

    Reflecting our own growing confidence in the revolutionary leadership, The Militant began to carry speeches by Castro and other Cuban leaders, which were among the best popular explanations of what the revolution was doing. In one of the first speeches we published, Fidel explained that the US-inspired counter-revolutionary fronts would fail because, unlike the guerrillas of the July 26 Movement, they could never build a base in the peasantry with their program of returning the land to the exploiters. Over the next years, others on the US left also came to support the Cuban revolution, but The Militant was always the best and most consistent US source providing truthful news about Cuba and publishing the ideas of the Cuban revolutionaries in their own words.

    The SWP was very involved with the FPCC:

    We came to be part of the leadership of the FPCC partly as the result of a crisis in the organization. The original FPCC leadership was somewhat timid, and shied away from forthright defense of the revolution as it radicalized. In response, Cuban members of the July 26 Movement living in the US blocked with the SWP and some other militants, and took over the leadership of the Committee. It was while he was staying at the Theresa that Castro met Malcolm X. A few years later, I would interview Malcolm for the Young Socialist in his office at the Theresa. The revolutionary Black nationalist was attracted to the Cuban Revolution from the start and supported it until he was murdered in 1965.

    When Castro was refused lodging during his New York U.N. visit in 1960, he received support from the SWP:

    Castro declared that the delegation would camp out in Central Park. Berta Green, a member of the SWP who was also the Executive Secretary of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), got in touch with the Hotel Theresa in Harlem, which agreed the Cubans could stay there.

    Sheppard’s memoir shows that the SWP was much larger than the FPCC when he describes protest mobilization during the missile crisis in 1962:

    We stood up to it. The PC discussed and approved the thrust of a statement to appear in the next issue of The Militant. It ran under the headline, “Stop the Crime Against Cuba!” We alerted SWP branches and YSA chapters that night to mobilize to support the broadest possible actions against the threat. In New York, there were two major demonstrations. One was called by Women Strike for Peace and other peace groups. We joined some 20,000 protesters at the United Nations on this demonstration. Then the Fair Play for Cuba Committee held its own action, more specifically pro-Cuba in tone, of over 1,000 people, also near the UN.

    The following points concerning the July 1963 convention cast even more suspicion around the timing and motives of openings of FPCC chapters in the deep south by Santiago Garriga and Oswald and the continued involvement with the FPCC by the other subjects:

    At the convention, a meeting of pro-Cuba activists discussed the situation in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Cubans living in the United States who supported the July 26 Movement had helped us build the FPCC. Now most of them had returned to Cuba. In most areas, the FPCC had dwindled down to supporters of the SWP and YSA. Since we did not want the FPCC to become a sectarian front group, the meeting decided to stop trying to build it. The FPCC then existed for a while as a paper organization, until the assassination of President John Kennedy dealt it a mortal blow.

    Sheppard’s account of the SWP reaction when the Kennedy assassination was announced is noteworthy:

    We were listening to the news when the announcement came. I said, “I hope it’s not that nut who tried to join the party, that guy who is a one-man Fair Play for Cuba Committee chapter in New Orleans.” Imagine how I felt when it turned out he was the one charged with the act. The SWP and YSA had received letters from a Lee Harvey Oswald, asking to join. His letters, as I remember them, were politically confused, and the photo that was sent with them was strange. In it, the person who was supposedly Oswald held copies of The Militant and the Communist Party’s Worker. He also sported two or more rifles and hand guns sticking out of his belt. A similar picture appeared on the cover of Life magazine after the assassination. Oswald, it turned out, had posed for similar photographs holding the Communist Party’s paper and the Workers’ World Party’s Workers’ World. One look at the picture and everyone in the leadership of the party and YSA thought we were dealing with a nut or a provocateur. Oswald purchased subscriptions to The Militant and Young Socialist. But no one in our leadership thought we should accept him as a member. In any case, our policy was not to accept at-large members in places where there was no party branch or YSA chapter, for the reason that there was no real way of evaluating the applicant. The press featured Oswald’s connection with the FPCC and speculated that Castro or some unspecified “reds” were behind the assassination. We were a potential target because we were well known as supporters of the Cuban revolution …

    … The New York Daily News, attempting to fire up the atmosphere against the left, stated in an editorial: “The fact remains that Oswald was a Marxist and proud of it. The fact remains that the Communist Party continually preaches death to imperialism, capitalism, etc. It is only natural for lamebrains such as Oswald to conclude that this means killing your enemies wherever and whenever you can reach them defenseless. Ideas have consequences.” This was all a pack of lies. As The Militant pointed out a few days later, the editorial was also an attempt to cover up the fanatical hatred that the right wing had for Kennedy, particularly because of the concessions the government was being forced to make to the fight for Black rights. In Dallas during the days before the Kennedy visit, for example, the rightists had posted leaflets displaying a photo of Kennedy and the words: “Wanted for Treason.”

    Dan Hardway’s 2016 declaration

    HSCA investigative attorneys Dan Hardway and Ed Lopez co-authored a section for the HSCA’s Final Report on the CIA and LHO in Mexico City which remained classified in full until 1996. The draft, after further declassification in 2003, was published by the Mary Ferrell Foundation Press as Oswald, The CIA, And Mexico City: The Lopez-Hardway Report, and shed light on missing/ destroyed tapes and photos, Oswald impersonations, lying CIA officials and peculiar behavior by Oswald or a frame-up artist—all completely fluffed over by the Warren Commission.

    In 2016, Dan Hardway prepared a written declaration in a support of a Jefferson Morley Freedom of Information civil action which should really trouble historians who describe JFK conspiracy proponents as flakey opportunists. In his own words, here is who media and historians have chosen to snub:

    From July of 1977 until December of 1978, I was employed as a researcher on the staff of the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). In that capacity I had a top secret security clearance and, during a major portion of my employment, had access to un-redacted Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) records. My primary area of responsibility in research for the HSCA was the possibility of any relationship of any nature between the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO), with special focus on the CIA’s awareness of, and reporting on, LHO’s activities in Mexico City. Implicit in that focus was the issue of whether the evidence from Mexico indicated any operational connection between LHO and the CIA.

    My research for the HSCA also covered areas related to people of interest, including David Atlee Phillips and William Harvey, among others, and CIA assassination programs. I was also tasked with research and analysis of the response of the CIA’s Mexico City Station LHO’s trip to Mexico City and to the assassination.

    The following are some of the most damning statements made in this very important affidavit:

    • Beginning in May of 1978, the CIA assigned George Joannides to handle liaison with Edwin Lopez and me. In the summer of 1978, Mr. Joannides began to change the way file access was handled. We no longer received prompt responses to our requests for files and what we did receive no longer seemed to provide the same complete files that we had been seeing. The obstruction of our efforts by Mr. Joannides escalated over the summer, finally resulting in a refusal to provide unexpurgated access to files in violation of the Memorandum of Understanding previously agreed to by the HSCA and the CIA.
    • I did not do any research aimed at George Joannides, or his activities in 1963, because, while working for the HSCA in 1977-1978, I was not informed that he had had any involvement with any aspect of the Kennedy case and I had no basis to even suspect that he had. In researching possible connections between post-assassination stories about LHO and David Atlee Phillips, I did little, if any, research that I recall into the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (DRE) because, among other reasons, the CIA had firmly represented to the HSCA that all ties between the DRE and the CIA had been terminated prior to 1963.
    • … to review CIA 201 files on many of the individuals who had been sources for stories that appeared in the immediate aftermath of the assassination tying LHO to Castro or the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. I was able to establish that most of the sources of the stories were, or had been, agents or assets used at one time or another by David Atlee Phillips.
    • Before our unexpurgated access was cut off by Joannides, I had been able to document links between David Phillips and most of the sources of the disinformation that came out immediately after the assassination about Oswald and his pro-Castro proclivities. I confronted Phillips with those in an interview at our offices on August 24,1978. Phillips was extremely agitated by that line of questioning, but was forced to admit that many of the sources were not only former assets that he had managed, in the late 50’s and early 1960’s, but were also assets whom he was personally managing in the fall of 1963. Mr. Phillips was asked, but could not explain, why the information that came from anti-Castro Cuban groups and individuals pointing to Cuban connections all seemed to come from assets he handled personally, but acknowledged that was the case. Mr. Phillips also acknowledged that back-channel communication methods existed, but denied that any were used in Mexico City.
    • We have, since 1978, learned that George Joaimides was running the propaganda shop at the CIA’s Miami JMWAVE Station in 1963. It is extremely unlikely that Mr. Joannides could have occupied that position and not have known, and worked with, David Atlee Phillips. In addition, in 1963, as we now know, George Joannides was the case officer handling the DRE. In 1977 the CIA specifically denied that DRE had a case officer assigned when asked that question by the HSCA.
    • One possible inference from the known data, at this point, is that the CIA brought someone out of retirement who knew where to not let us look and he impeded and, eventually, shut down our research. His specific work in regard to my research was commended by his superior in his annual performance review from 1978.
    • In addition to being a primary source of stories about LHO in the days after the assassination, the DRE also had a highly visible encounter with LHO in New Orleans in September 1963. George Joannides’ s performance evaluation dated July 31,1963, reports that Joannides has “done an excellent job in the handling of a significant student exile group which hitherto had successfully resisted any important degree of control.”
    • David Phillips recruited a group of students in Havana to work against Castro while Phillips was serving under deep cover in Havana in the late 1950s. At the time, the group was known as the Directorio Revolucionario, or DR. Phillips was the DR’s first case officer. When the DR’s leadership fled Cuba in 1960, William Kent, who was very close to Phillips and worked with him, organized them into an effective organization in Florida, known as the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil, or DRE.
    • In August, 1963, LEO had an encounter with DRE representatives in New Orleans. That encounter resulted not only in widespread publicity in New Orleans at the time, including newspaper articles, television coverage and radio interviews, it also resulted in the first reports trying to tie LEO to Castro after the assassination of John Kennedy. DRE released their information the day of the assassination and it was covered in both the Miami Herald and the Washington Post the next day.
    • The CIA never told the Warren Commission about their support of, and work with, the DRE in 1963. The CIA never told the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the “Church Committee”) about it. The Assassinations Record Review Board (ARRB) asked the Agency about DRE. The CIA initially told the ARRB the same thing they told the HSCA: the Agency had no employee in contact with DRE in 1963. The ARRB, however, in examination of Joannides’s CIA personnel file, discovered its clear indication that Joannides was the DRE case officer in 1963.
    • In the early 1960’s, David Phillips was working at Headquarters where he, along with Cord Meyer, developed the first disinformation operations aimed at the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
    • To summarize what we now know: the DRE originated as the DR under the tutelage of David Phillips in Havana in the late 1950’s. William Kent took over running the group, now known as the DRE, once they had fled from Havana to Miami. In his position, he was responsible to Phillips. Crozier came in to assist Kent with his workload. Kent and Crozier were not too successful with the hard-to-control group and Richard Helms gave the DRE an officer responsible directly to him, which officer was Joannides. But Joannides’s performance evaluations indicate that his immediate supervisor, prior to October 1963, was Kent. We do not know what working relationship Joannides had with Phillips either directly, or indirectly through Kent. It is unlikely that Phillips did not continue to be involved in, or at least kept apprised of, operations of a group that he had started and nurtured, both directly and indirectly, which continued to be directly active in his primary area of responsibility: anti-Castro propaganda. Indeed, it would be in keeping with what is known if he used that group in operations against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, or that he continued to be involved in disinformation operations aimed at the group, having designed the first one.
    • After David Atlee Phillips testified a second time before the HSCA in Executive Session on April 25,1978, several staff members, myself included, sought to have the Chief Counsel recommend to the Committee that it refer Mr. Phillips to the Justice Department for prosecution for lying to Congress.
    • On September 16, 1963, the CIA informed the FBI that it was considering action to counter the activities of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FFCC) in foreign countries. In New Orleans, on September 17,1963, Oswald applied for, and received, a Mexican travel visa; on September 27, Oswald arrived in Mexico City. On that day, and the following day, Oswald, or someone impersonating him, may have visited the Cuban Consulate. On those same days, the Mexico City CIA Station was testing an impulse camera in their photo surveillance operation aimed at the door of the Cuban Consulate. Sometime in late September Phillips left Mexico City on a temporary duty assignment at CIA Headquarters. It is at this time that Phillips was promoted to chief of anti-Castro operations in Mexico City—the Cuba desk. On October 1, the Mexico City Station sent bulk materials to Headquarters.

    Dan Hardway’s state of mind can be inferred by the open-ended questions he poses near the end of his declaration:

    • Were the promotions rewards for a successful disinformation operation aimed at the FPCC in New Orleans, an operation that the Agency thought it could export to Mexico? While TDY, did Phillips meet with Kent at HQ? Did he meet with Joannides in Miami? Did they review the results of a disinformation and “dangle” operation they had just run in Mexico City?—their first attempt to export the successful domestic anti-FPCC disinformation operation? Did they review the production from the impulse camera? Was that camera’s production the “bulk material” in the pouch? We don’t know the answers because the questions were never asked; George Joannides shut down the HSCA investigation into this area before this level of detail could be discovered and connected. Given all this, a reasonable researcher has to ask whether the Oswald visit in Mexico City was part of an intelligence operation that had both counterintelligence and propaganda purposes? It also, in this context, becomes appropriate to ask whether there has been an active cover-up and whether George Joannides’ undercover assignment to work with the HSCA was part of that cover-up.

    Hardway’s concluding remarks do not give the impression that he believes that Oswald was simply a drifting malcontent or a pro-Castro ideologue, and that Joannides and Phillips could be counted on for knowing what really happened:

    • In regard to the issues of 1963 there would be great public benefit to knowing whether LHO had been involved, wittingly or unwittingly, in an intelligence operation. Even without settlement of that ultimate question, additional information about what George Joannides was doing in 1963, in particular with the DRE in New Orleans, would go a long way to providing insight into that ultimate question. Similarly, being able to explore the relationship between David Atlee Phillips and George Joannides would benefit the public by either confirming or disproving vital aspects of the events of 1963.

    Conclusion

    Dan Hardway’s declaration is recent, blistering, and completely demolishes the history books’ stenographic claims that Oswald the Lone Nut killed JFK. Hardway underscores many disturbing observations that cannot be explained by mere happenstance. His position is nevertheless soft-pedalled compared to what Schweiker and Gaeton Fonzi have stated. It is now possible to go a lot farther in our deductions.

    Case comparison analysis of the potential patsies and prior plots to assassinate JFK would bring investigators to study common traits, behavior patterns, entity links, chronological sequences in order to develop a profile of the offenders. The perpetrators in this case were able to:

    1. recruit dreamy, malleable ex-marines or Cuban exiles who were drawn to the world of espionage;
    2. have access to a network of Mafiosi and Cuban exiles who shared regime change objectives and could work in proximity with the potential patsies while providing layers of separation for the decision-makers;
    3. use propaganda to create pro-Castro, anti-Kennedy, misfit, violent, and dangerous personas;
    4. lead the subjects into joining left-wing, subversive organizations, visiting Mexico City, and trying to enter Cuba;
    5. move some of them near the kill zones and cause them to behave suspiciously in visible, controversial, and timely manners;
    6. ensure a weak investigation and keep incriminating evidence secret;
    7. place the blame on communists or Castro himself with the help from friends in the media.

    Only a select few had the means to carry all this out.

    They wrote up the technique in a playbook called “ZR/Rifle” and applied it, or versions of it, a number of times in foreign countries. Some of them hated Kennedy so much that it is quite plausible that they went rogue. A few of them even admitted the existence of a conspiracy, their involvement, or their knowledge of it.

    William Harvey’s links with other CIA persons of interest, Johnny Roselli and Santo Trafficante and their network of Mafiosi, Jack Ruby and Cuban exiles who hovered around Oswald during the last months of his life, his links to the FPCC infiltration programs, travel to Dallas shortly before the assassination and role in ZR/Rifle tactics qualify him as a person of extreme interest in the coup.

    Visual data shows how David Atlee Phillips’ universe overlaps with Oswald’s through over 20 common touch points involving Cuban exiles, propaganda tools, the FPCC, Mexico City, Oswald babysitters, etc. Case linkage shows that no fewer than six of the eight alternate patsies were also marked as pro-Castro with their bizarre FPCC links, the very organization Phillips was turning inside out in his plots to counter Castro sympathizers. Throw in his lies, quasi-confessions, and his being thrown under the bus by colleague E.H. Hunt, and we have a strong case to make about who some of the leading plotters were.

    If we accept that these are some the fingerprints of intelligence that Richard Schweiker referred to, the offender profile suggests quite strongly that at least a few of the fingers the prints came from belonged to David Atlee Phillips and William Harvey! In the late 1970s, after the HSCA asked the Justice Department to re-open the case, these two suspects, and their networks of assassins, operatives and propaganda assets who have been discussed in previous articles, should have been rounded up, and would have been in a normal murder investigation. The fact that this one was presidential seems to have lowered the bar of diligence and motivation. It should still be done posthumously, for the sake of correcting what is related to unsuspecting high-school history students, and of preventing future attacks on a democracy.

    The next question we can ask ourselves, is who provided the brains and handled upper management tasks for the Big Event? The entity link diagram and a chronology analysis point so far to a group of like-minded, discarded and/or disgruntled CIA officers who were all loyal to a disgraced Alan Dulles who, after being removed from his functions by the victim, remained committed to his worldviews, well connected and a man on a mission. Stay tuned!

    Go to Part 1

  • Jim Garrison: The Beat Goes On

    Jim Garrison: The Beat Goes On

    Would Jim Garrison have been forgotten if Oliver Stone had never met the late Ellen Ray? If the reader is unaware of who Ellen Ray was let me inform you of her importance in history. (her obituary)

    Ellen Ray was the wife of Bill Schaap. They ran a publishing company called Sheridan Square Press. Sheridan Square did not just release books. They also published magazines like the illustrious Covert Action Information Bulletin and Lies of our Times. If our readers do not know about those two periodicals, it is their loss. The first dealt with the Central Intelligence Agency and its allies; the second was concerned with media analysis. They were well done and important journals.

    Ellen Ray had known Jim Garrison a long time—going all the way back to his original investigation of the John Kennedy murder in the late sixties. She always thought highly of him and his work. So when Garrison thought of writing a book on his inquiry in the eighties, Sheridan Square was one of the houses he thought of releasing it through. But before that, Garrison had had an offer from a much bigger publishing house. That deal did not go through since the proofreader the house assigned to the book was Sylvia Meagher. Now as everyone knows, this site is a sincere admirer of Meagher and her fine book, Accessories After the Fact. But as most insiders also realize, Meagher was one of the early critics who developed a phobia—some would call it a mania—about Jim Garrison and his inquiry. (The others would include Josiah Thompson and Paul Hoch.) Even someone like Jerry Policoff, who was a close friend of Meagher, once said that Sylvia should not have been assigned to review Garrison’s book: “My God, she contributed money to Clay Shaw’s defense!”

    Well, predictably, Meagher’s analysis contributed to Garrison returning his advance. But that may have been fortunate, because now he turned to Ellen Ray and Sheridan Square Press. They assigned him Zachary Sklar as his editor. Zach was a distinguished journalism professor and contributor to Sheridan’s two publications. It was a fortunate pairing. Originally, Garrison had written his book from a third person point of view. But when he met Zach, the editor convinced him that since the DA was an actual participant in the story he was telling, it would be more effective if he wrote the book as a first person narrative. I think most people today would say that was a good choice.

    On the Trail of the Assassins sold about forty thousand copies when it was originally released in hard cover. The thoroughly annotated book revealed many new things about Garrison’s investigation that most outsiders did not know about. It also exhibited Garrison’s firm grasp on the entire evidentiary record of the JFK case and also Kennedy’s place in history. Overall, it was a real contribution to the library of books on the assassination of President Kennedy.

    But what happened later was probably even more significant. At a film festival in Havana, Ellen Ray met up with Oliver Stone. She told him words to the effect: “Have I got a book for you!” Stone read Garrison’s book and decided to bring it to the big screen. He did so in December of 1991.

    But this was the JFK assassination. And it was Jim Garrison. As the DA noted in his book, there were many media critics of his inquiry. And they struck at him in what can only be called a vicious and personal manner. Some of them hid their relationships with the intelligence community, e.g., James Phelan, Walter Sheridan, and Hugh Aynesworth. Even more buried was the cooperation between these men and Clay Shaw’s lawyers. (See Destiny Betrayed, second edition, chapter 11 for an analysis of this nexus.) That sixties wave of media critics was not going to let Oliver Stone bring back Jim Garrison and the JFK case in any kind of fair or salutary manner. So they decided to do a preemptive strike on Stone’s film.

    In what was probably an unprecedented campaign in the history of American cinema, the MSM attacked the film JFK seven months in advance of its release. In fact, Ben Bradlee and the The Washington Post sent George Lardner to Dallas to write a story as the film was being shot in Dealey Plaza.

    Lardner’s article began with one of the truly snarky remarks in recent journalistic history. In watching a rehearsal of the Dealey Plaza sequence, Lardner noted that Stone had ordered up five shots in the assassination sequence. The reporter then wrote: “Five shots? Is this the Kennedy assassination or the Charge of the Light Brigade?” Through their acoustical testing, the House Select Committee on Assassinations had concluded that there were four shots fired. But as researcher Donald Thomas revealed at Cyril Wecht’s Duquesne Conference in 2003, those same sound technicians told Chief Counsel Robert Blakey that they detected five shots. Blakey told Thomas that he did not think it was possible to sell that many shots to the committee, so their report only analyzed and accepted four. In other words, this was a political decision, not a scientific one. There is real evidence that there were five shots, but somehow that did not matter to Lardner. After all, it’s the JFK case.

    Lardner’s article was the first volley in a seven-month MSM campaign that was intended to make sure that the reception of JFK was jaundiced in advance. Many of the same people who attacked Garrison back in the sixties were brought back to do so again, like Aynesworth and Edward Epstein. The fact that neither of these men was at all credible or objective on the subjects of the Kennedy assassination or Jim Garrison was irrelevant. The goal was to savage the film before it had a fair hearing. That is how radioactive this subject was, even thirty years later.

    In spite of this assault, JFK did well at the box office, both at home and abroad. It was nominated for eight Oscars, including Best Picture. But to show the reader just how nutty the anti-JFK crusade was, consider the following. On the eve of the Oscars, an anonymous author bought an ad in the trade journal Variety. The ad asked that no voters cast their ballot for the film as Best Picture. Researcher Rich Goad did some detective work and found out that the ad was paid for by the late Warren Commission counsel David Belin.

    Besides bringing the Kennedy assassination back into the limelight, JFK was the main cause for the creation of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). For at the end of the film, Stone added a subtitle revealing that the files of the House Select Committee were being kept secret until the year 2027. This created a sensation in Washington. Tens of thousands of citizens now called their representatives, sent them letters or faxed them in order to do something about this travesty. It worked. The Board was created. It was a unique agency that was made up of private citizens appointed by the president. That agency had a staff that read and researched documents that were now to be declassified. If an intelligence agency objected, that agency had to show why the document should be kept secret. This reversed the previous Freedom of Information Law, which put the burden of proof on the requester, who had to show why it should be declassified. But even today, twenty years after the ARRB closed its doors, the government is still maintaining secrecy over thousands of documents.

    That Board has a decidedly mixed record of achievement. But it did do some good work on the Garrison angle of the JFK case.   In fact, the Board even went to court with then New Orleans DA Harry Connick to salvage a file cabinet full of documents remaining from the Garrison investigation. After being shown up in the press, Connick resisted turning over the materials. But the Justice Department eventually secured the documents. The Garrison family also turned over thousands of pages that the late DA had in his personal effects.

    Garrison had always insisted that, for various reasons, he was never able to reveal most of the evidence he had secured from 1967-69. After authors like William Davy, Joan Mellen and myself went through what the ARRB attained, we had to agree. The Garrison files in the Archives today hold an abundance of utterly fascinating material on a wide array of subjects dealing with many aspects of the JFK case. Does the MSM reveal any of this to the public? Nope. One of the most embarrassing aspects of the three-week binge that the media went on last year in anticipation that the JFK files were finally going to be completely declassified was this: No one chronicled what the ARRB had already released. Which was significant. It was about 2 million pages of material that opened up new vistas on subjects like Rose Cheramie, Kennedy and Vietnam, and the medical evidence in the JFK case. Guests like Larry Sabato, Phil Shenon and Gerald Posner did not want to discuss those topics. Nether did their hosts like NBC stooge on JFK, Rachel Maddow.

    It is easy to understand why this would occur. As Upton Sinclair once said: It is hard to make journalists understand something when their paycheck depends on them not understanding it. Contrary to popular belief there is no such thing as a liberal media. In the twentieth century, and up until today, the American media has been controlled by an oligarchical class. Some authors call this class the Eastern Establishment. Some call it the Power Elite.   As sociologist Donald Gibson explained in his fine book Battling Wall Street, President Kennedy was not a part of that group. He never joined the Council on Foreign Relations; he did not join any secret societies at Harvard; he didn’t like working intelligence during World War II. He got transferred out to the South Pacific and served with a bunch of Joe Six Pack guys on what were close to suicide missions. As this author demonstrated in the second edition of Destiny Betrayed, both in the Senate and in the White House, Kennedy was opposed to much of what this Power Elite was doing abroad, especially in the Third World. (See Destiny Betrayed, second edition, pp. 21-33) After his death, the progress that he did make in the White House was largely halted, and then reversed. (pp. 367-77) Due in part to the ARRB, we know much more about these changes, especially regarding Indochina.

    Jim Garrison was probably the first critic of the Warren Commission who understood this matter. And it is probably one of the reasons the MSM decided to smear him beyond recognition. This goes on to the present day. In a recent article in a regional journal called 64 Parishes, a writer named Alecia Long decided to pick up the infernal and eternal anti-Garrison cudgel. The New Orleans Times Picayune has always liked to go after Garrison and so they are now carrying it on their web site.

    To anyone who is familiar with the territory, the first reaction is, “Oh my aching back!” The ten-page article is simply a compendium of every MSM caricature of Garrison and his Kennedy case that one can imagine—except Long does not even mention the ARRB. She only alludes to what they did in about a half a sentence. As we shall see, this was a wise choice on her part.

    The preposterous thesis of her essay is that somehow, by his clever use of the media, Garrison was able to advance his case, his cause and his reputation. She uses Garrison’s 30-minute talk on NBC as proof of this. She even opens her article by asking why NBC agreed to give the DA this platform. She does not answer her rhetorical question until several pages later. There, she finally says that in June of 1967, “NBC ran an hour-long special sharply critical of Garrison’s claims and the methods used by his investigators.” This is an understatement. Most objective observers considered the Walter Sheridan production a straight-out hatchet job. But she tries to bolster the program’s credibility by adding, “The special featured several witnesses who claimed to have been offered bribes in exchange for providing testimony damaging to Shaw.”

    What she does not note is that these so-called “witnesses” were later exposed, either in court, or by their own confessions, as being bogus. (DiEugenio, pp. 239-43) And more than one witness—for instance, Fred Leemans and Marlene Mancuso—testified as to the unethical and threatening tactics used by Sheridan for the program. It was Sheridan who fabricated these phony on-air statements by threatening and intimidating Garrison’s witnesses. Mancuso did not succumb to his bullying, so she was not on the show. Leemans did and went on the program. But both of them signed affidavits revealing the extent to which Sheridan and his cohorts would go to in order to flip Garrison’s witnesses. For example, Leemans was told, “… if I did not change my statement and state that I had been bribed by Jim Garrison’s office, I and my family would be in physical danger.” (DiEugenio, p. 240) Somehow, Long missed those statements, which gravely undermine her thesis because logically, they explain why the Federal Communications Commission decided to grant Garrison the time to counter Sheridan’s handiwork. But even at that, the FCC only gave Garrison a half hour, compared to Sheridan’s full hour, which contradicts the idea of equal time embedded in the now defunct Fairness Doctrine.

    She also questions why, when granted the time, Garrison did not answer Sheridan’s charges in more specific terms. As the DA stated throughout his Playboy interview, if he had done that, it would have given Shaw’s lawyers a pretext to move to get his case thrown out of court, since it would prejudice prospective jurors.

    With the release of Garrison’s files by the ARRB, the idea that Garrison did not have a factual basis for his case against Shaw is revealed to be utterly false. There is no doubt today that Shaw used the pseudonym of Clay Bertrand. The declassified files contain over ten witnesses who stated this was the case. It is further revealed that the FBI knew this as well. And finally, attorney Dean Andrews knew it—and lied about it.   As a consequence, Garrison never got to ask Shaw the key question: “Why did you call Andrews and ask him to go to Dallas to defend Oswald?” (DiEugenio, pp. 387-88)

    It is also now shown that Shaw lied about his association with the CIA. That association has turned out to be a long service and a lucrative one. Not only did Shaw lie about it at his own trial, the CIA continually lied about it, and Robert Blakey fell for it. In the HSCA volumes, Shaw is referred to as part of a large businessman’s contact program in the Agency. Not true. Shaw was a well-compensated contract agent from at least the fifties. (Joan Mellen, Our Man In Haiti, pp. 54-55) In the sixties, he had a covert security clearance code name that was the same as Howard Hunt’s. (DiEugenio, pp. 383-87) The CIA tried desperately to cover up these facts, even going as far as altering Shaw’s files. (William Davy, Let Justice Be Done, p. 200) The ARRB later discovered the CIA had gone even further and destroyed Shaw’s 201 file.

    (or open in a new window.)

    As the late Yale educated attorney Allard Lowenstein once said regarding the Robert Kennedy assassination: in his experience as a lawyer, people who have nothing to hide don’t hide things. Somehow, Long does not think any of this new material is relevant to any discussion of Jim Garrison today.

    In addition to this secrecy about Shaw, which hurt Garrison’s case, Long does not detail any of the other methods of obstruction that the CIA and the FBI used against Garrison. Nor does she elucidate any of the meetings that Shaw’s lawyers had in Washington soliciting this kind of aid, which ended up being bountiful. The declassified files of the ARRB contain literally scores of pages on this subject. This features interference with the serving of Garrison’s subpoenas. And further, the setting up of a special committee within the CIA to survey actions to take against Garrison before, during, and after the trial of Clay Shaw. At the first meeting of this super-secret group, James Angleton’s assistant, Ray Rocca, said that he felt that Garrison would convict Shaw in the Kennedy case. (DiEugenio, pp. 269-74) Perhaps in their quest to stop that from happening, on the eve of the trial, at least three prospective witness for the prosecution were physically attacked before they testified: Richard Case Nagell, Clyde Johnson and Aloysius Habighorst. None of these men ended up testifying. (p. 294)

    As mentioned previously, one of the most bizarre statements that the author makes is that Garrison was proficient at using the media and manipulating them for his own benefit. How anyone can make such a statement today is simply inexplicable. As authors like William Davy and myself have shown, the media utterly destroyed Jim Garrison. Before Garrison took on the Kennedy assassination, he had a promising career ahead of him as a Louisiana politician. Many thought he could have been governor or senator from the state. (DiEugenio, pp. 172-74) That career was utterly wrecked by the two-year roasting he took in the press from almost every outlet imaginable: CBS, NBC, NY Times, Life Magazine, Saturday Evening Post, to name just a few. Garrison was eventually defeated in his District Attorney re-election bid due to two sets of phony pinball kickback charges, which he defeated at trial. But the publicity weakened his position and strengthened his opponent Harry Connick, who defeated him in a close election in 1973. (See chapter 19 of Garrison’s book.) To most legal observers, Connick turned out to be a very poor DA compared to Jim Garrison.

    After Garrison was retired from the DA’s office, it took him years to recover from the ordeal he went through. At that time, people who visited him in New Orleans said he had a small office that he rented from a larger firm. This is the man who likely would have been residing in the governor’s mansion if not for the JFK case. That media manipulation Long describes did the DA a lot of good, didn’t it?

    Long is so utterly biased that she actually credits Judge Herbert Christenberry. This is the judge who threw out Garrison’s attempt to try Shaw on perjury charges after his acquittal. Today, there is little or no doubt that Shaw lied numerous times at his conspiracy trial. For instance, about his employment by the CIA, about his friendship with David Ferrie, about his use of an alias. And according to Garrison assistant Steve Jaffe, this time Garrison was not going to make the same mistake he did at the conspiracy trial. He was going to use every witness he had against Shaw.

    Judge Herbert Christenberry should never have presided over this hearing. Moreover, there should have never been a hearing in the first place. As Garrison notes in his book, the idea of a federal judge inserting himself into a state case was quite unusual, since there was a law against it. But that is what happened. Shaw’s lawyers moved to have a state case considered in federal court. (Garrison, p. 253)

    Why did they do this?

    Because Christenberry’s wife had written a letter to Shaw after his acquittal. This was also after Garrison filed the perjury charges. The letter uses the plural pronoun “we”, so it clearly describes both husband and wife’s sentiments. The Christenberrys congratulated Shaw on the outcome of the trial. They sympathized with him over what the DA had done to the poor man. They continued by saying how much better the proceedings would have been if the case had been allotted to federal court and Judge Christenberry. But unfortunately, Caroline Christenberry could not voice these sentiments during the trial for risk of being labeled prejudiced in advance. (Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p.315)

    If there was ever an attempt to solicit a case, this was it. That letter is in the National Archives today. It appears Long has never heard of it.

    This article proves the very worst about the JFK case. Everyone hoped that the declassification of the files would aid in the public’s understanding of what that case was really all about, what impact it had on the personages involved and also on American history. That will not happen with people like Long. At the end of her original essay as published in the periodical 64 Parishes, it is revealed that her piece is part of something called the “Democracy and the Informed Citizen Initiative”, which is sponsored by the Federation of State Humanities councils. The Andrew Mellon Foundation was part of the support for that initiative. In other words, the Power Elite Kennedy opposed is still thriving.

    But further, as Anthony Thorne discovered, Long made up her mind about this matter without looking at any documents. She said, “I don’t want to dig through CIA and FBI documents for the rest of my life.” She then gave the back of her hand to the myriad books on the JFK case: “I find the basic premise of many these books to be problematic and would then note [sic] take those as seriously as historical studies.”

    The books don’t matter. The documents don’t matter. Typical MSM historian on the JFK case.   Which is why her article is worthless. It is the vacuity and speciousness of work like this that helps drive readers to the likes of Alex Jones. Perhaps unbeknownst to her, Long is adding to his minions.

  • More Proof JFK Was Hit From the Front

    More Proof JFK Was Hit From the Front

    Many people are now analyzing the newly-released documents concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and most are hoping to find scraps of information that will help reveal Who Done It? But some of us are still intrigued by a different puzzle: What exactly They Done.

    We continue to ponder this issue because so much of what we have been told by the government has been contradicted by key witnesses, those who were closest to the action, and whose testimony was the most detailed and specific.

    One such person is Glen Bennett, a Secret Service agent who rode in the back seat of the follow-up car just behind Kennedy on the day of the assassination. If what he said is true, then he saw something small but extraordinary—something that would mean that at least one bullet came from the front.

    SS Agent Glen Bennett at Love Field
    (Image courtesy of Vince Palamara)

    Bennett said he was looking right at Kennedy’s back at the very moment he heard a shot, a second shot, and he saw it hit.

    It’s not what Bennett saw, but when he saw it, that is key: Photographic evidence shows that if he indeed saw this strike, it had to have happened after JFK was already reacting to an earlier strike. That earlier strike—by a separate bullet—led to an obvious reaction: Kennedy seemed to be grabbing at his throat.

    And, if the throat wound is not related to the back wound—then it has to have been an entrance.

     

    What Bennett Said He Saw

    Bennett said he saw Kennedy hit in the back “about four inches down from the right shoulder.”

    He said it in a formal typed statement, as well as in his notes written by hand while he was on the plane returning to Washington—that is, before the autopsy, presumably before anyone else had known about that wound. The emergency room doctors in Dallas’s Parkland Memorial Hospital said they never turned the body over and were unaware of the wound. So it does seem that Bennett actually saw this strike. The relevant part of his statement:

    About thirty minutes after leaving Love Field, about 12:25 P.M., the motorcade entered an intersection and then proceeded down a grade. At this point, the well-wishers numbered but a few; the motorcade continued down this grade en route to the Trade Mart. At this point, I heard what sounded like a firecracker. I immediately looked from the right/crowd/physical area/ and looked towards the President who was seated in the right rear seat of his limousine open convertible. At the moment I looked at the back of the President I heard another firecracker noise and saw the shot hit the President about four inches down from the right shoulder. A second [sic] shot followed immediately and hit the right rear high of the President’s head. [If he heard two “firecracker” sounds earlier, the headshot has to be the third shot he heard, not the “second.” ~M.C.]  I immediately hollered “he’s hit” and …

    Promoters of the official story say Bennett could not have seen that shot because he was too far away. But you can see from the pictures that he was not so far.

    They also say such a wounding would be too small to see. Wrong again. You can perform your own experiments to see what is visible, and at what distances.

    Bennett did not describe in detail what he saw, but such a shot would look like a sudden, inward tenting in the jacket.

    When He Saw It

    I see no visible clue on films that suggests JFK is being hit in the back. It could have happened soon after the throat shot – or several seconds later, during what many described as a “flurry” when JFK was shot in the head.

    On the other hand, reactions to the first and last shots are easy to see. Evidence of the first is unambiguous at Zapruder frame 224.

    But he had to have been hit before that.The sound of the shot would have come after the bullet hit, but before JFK showed any reaction.

    A photo taken by Major Phillip L. Willis, a bystander, captures this moment. As he put it,

    “The shot caused me to squeeze the camera shutter, and I got a picture of the President as he was hit with the first shot. So instantaneous … the crowd hadn’t had time to react.”

    Willis Photo No. 5

    Nor did Glen Bennett have time to react. He is in this photo and, as you can see, his upper body is turned to the right as he watches the crowd on the north side of Elm Street. According to his statement (see above), he would not yet be looking at Kennedy.

    If he heard the same shot Willis reacted to, he still would not yet be reacting as of this moment. But, like many other witnesses, it’s possible Bennett didn’t even hear this shot. (Some didn’t even hear the second one, yet they heard more than one later, during the head wounding. But that’s another story.)

    About three seconds later, James W. Altgens, an Associated Press photographer, also took a photo of the motorcade. The strange thing is, Altgens said he took that picture almost simultaneously with what he called “the first shot.”  When questioned closely about the timing, Altgens swore that he heard no other shots or noises that could have been shots before this “first” one.

    Altgens Photo No. 6

    Glen Bennett is also in this photo. People say he is still turned to his right here, but I have trouble seeing him at all. In any case, if Bennett, like Altgens, had not heard a shot before this moment, then I would not expect him to have reacted yet.

    Jackie Kennedy apparently did not hear all the shots, and she had an explanation: the noise of the motorcycles put-put-putting. And Bennett was very close to them. (Please go here for more on the acoustical evidence, and other bewildering mysteries of this case, including the fact that Mary Moorman heard a shot for the first time when JFK’s head exploded, which she captured on her famous Polaroid photo.)

    An Attempt to Discredit Glen Bennett

    Glen Bennett was never asked to testify before any of the official investigating bodies, like the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations. This is no surprise. Kennedy’s own physician, George Burkley—a man who was with him in the Dallas emergency room, and at his autopsy in Washington—was also never asked to testify. Whatever Burkley witnessed gave him the impression that more than one shooter was involved in the assassination. (Please go here to see more on that.)

    Thanks to David Lifton, author of the best-selling book, Best Evidence, many assassination researchers ignore Bennett’s comments.

    Lifton—who believes that all shots came from the front, despite Connally’s back wound and other evidence—claims Bennett was lying. (See pages 77, 284-7, and 510-511 in the 1988 edition of his book). Lifton’s proof? The Willis and Altgens photographs. They both show Bennett looking off to his right.

    But Willis said he snapped his photo when the first shot was fired. How could Bennett be already facing the front at that moment? The same applies to the Altgens photo. Even if Bennett had heard the same “first” shot Altgens heard, how could he be reacting already? He would have been facing the front at the time of the second shot (the second shot he heard)—not the first.

    If I had to guess, I’d say JFK was hit in the back during the “flurry” at the end. Too bad we can’t question Bennett about it.

    Ironically, what Lifton considers proof that Bennett lied, is actually proof, though indirect, of a shot that came from the front.

  • 2017 & 2018 JFK Releases: Progress, Issues, Recommendations

    2017 & 2018 JFK Releases: Progress, Issues, Recommendations

     

    (Click here if your browser is having trouble loading the above.)

  • The Omissions and Miscalculations of Nicholas Nalli

    The Omissions and Miscalculations of Nicholas Nalli

    “If there are enough parameters, it is possible to fit anything.”

    –G. Paul Chambers, Ph.D. (physics)1

    The source material for this review is as follows:

     

    Nicholas R. Nalli*. “Gunshot-wound dynamics model for John F. Kennedy assassination.” Mechanics, Engineering, Physics. 30 Apr 2018, Volume 4, Issue 4.

    *Corresponding author. I.M. Systems Group, Inc., 5825 University Research Court, College Park, MD 20740, USA. nallin@imsg.com.

    https://www.heliyon.com/article/e00603

    • From the news release: “The new findings do not necessarily rule out a broader conspiracy, but they do pour water on the theory that the fatal shot was fired from the grassy knoll.”2
    • From Nalli’s abstract: “It is therefore found that the observed motions of President Kennedy in the film are physically consistent with a high-speed projectile impact from the rear of the motorcade, these resulting from an instantaneous forward impulse force, followed by delayed rearward recoil and neuromuscular forces.”
    • From the closing paragraph: “But themodeling study (and underlying dynamics and conservation laws) presented in this paper, in corroboration of the autopsy findings, do imply that President Kennedy was not hit by a hypothesized gunshot from the front.”

    First: A Logical Issue3

    Nalli claims that his work is “consistent with” a (rearward) recoil of JFK’s head after a posterior shot. He then concludes that because his work is “consistent with” such a scenario, this means that any other scenario (e.g., a frontal shot) cannot be correct. On the other hand, G. Paul Chambers has shown that JFK’s head snap is fully consistent with a frontal shot.4 Can Chambers therefore justify reaching precisely the opposite conclusion, i.e., namely that recoil from a posterior shot cannot be correct?

    These mutually exclusive models remind us of the Ptolemaic model, which described the earth as the stationary center of the universe. The planetary motions were modeled on clever epicycles. The model worked (well enough), and it was “consistent with” the data. But that does not mean that other models were excluded—as Copernicus (1473-1543) discovered. Nalli does not seem to recognize this logical issue. Moreover, he does not recognize that a shot from the rear might even be compatible with a second head shot (from the front).

    David Lifton was an early pioneer in this controversy about the movement of JFK’s head, first meeting with a Nobel Laureate, the physicist Richard Feynman, and next with a British physicist, Dr. James Riddle at UCLA, who (like Chambers) concluded:

    The motion of Kennedy’s body in frames 312-313 is totally inconsistent with the impact of a bullet from above and behind. Thus, the only reasonable conclusion consistent with the laws of physics is that the bullet was fired from a position forward and to the right of the President.5

    The Nalli Assumptions

    Nalli employs numerous key assumptions. If any one of these is seriously wrong, his model might well collapse. Here are 21 assumptions, many of which inevitably lead to miscalculations.

    1. NALLI: In his scenario, ejected debris only goes forward; none travels backward.

      MANTIK: Nalli acknowledges that the autopsy skull defect measured 13 cm (5 inches), but he never explains why ejecta could not escape in other directions. The autopsy report (if it is accepted) described a defect that encompassed the frontal, parietal, and occipital skull. The Parkland doctors, almost uniformly, described a baseball-sized hole in the right occiput; so also did autopsy assistants, FBI observers, and the individual6 who developed autopsy photographs. (See Addendum 1 below.) If some ejecta went backwards, Nalli’s thesis is in serious trouble—after all, less momentum would then be available to drive the head backwards. Furthermore, many witnesses—in Dealey Plaza, as well as early observers of the Z-film—recalled such rearward-flying debris. One of these was Charles Brehm: “That which was a portion of the President’s skull went flying slightly to the rear of the President’s car and directly to its left.”7 Clint Hill noticed that there “…was blood and bits of brain all over the entire rear portion of the car.” Hill added that he himself had been covered with blood and brain tissue. Moreover, the evidence is not all from eyewitnesses; Josiah Thompson was the first to point out debris visible on the limousine trunk, as seen in the Nix film.8 Nalli (perhaps innocently) ignores all this rearward going momentum.

    2. NALLI: He estimates that the projected area (A) of the bullet (as it struck the skull) was merely its cross-sectional area.

      MANTIK: Milicent Cranor9 points out, however, that no such estimation is required—after all, the autopsy report plainly states the actual size of the entry hole as 6 x 15 mm,10 which is obviously much larger (by more than a factor of two) than the bullet’s cross-sectional area. She further quotes Nalli, who states that all the pertinent drag forces (on the bullet)—are directly proportional to the projected area of the bullet. Therefore, Nalli’s calculations for the drag force (Fd) are wrong by at least a factor of two. In addition, such a tangential strike would deliver a greater impulse to the head, making it more difficult for Nalli’s forward ejecta to reverse the resulting (additional) forward momentum of JFK’s head. Cranor concludes:

      The elliptical shape of the long entrance wound indicates a sideways or tangential hit (the two are different but have much in common). This would mean the bullet was in contact with the bone in front of it longer than it would have been in a nose-on hit.

      And the longer bullet and bone are in contact, the more energy is imparted to the bone—and, in some circumstances, the more the head moves, until the bone in front of it detaches completely. According to Capt. Philip Dodge, tangential strikes can actually knock a person down.11

    3. NALLI: In his Figure 3, he plots the drag force (Fd) as a function of tissue depth (δx). Four curves are shown, each with a different value of the exit wound diameter (de).

      MANTIK: Unfortunately, he never shows similar curves for different values of the entrance diameter, which he incorrectly estimates to be the cross-sectional area (A) of the bullet.

    4. NALLI: In his Figure 4, he plots the impulse (Jx) as a function of tissue depth, for four different values of the exit wound diameter (de).

      MANTIK: However, the impulse force is directly proportional to the projected area (A) of the incident bullet, which means that the entrance wound diameter (A) is also critical. Unfortunately, he merely estimates that A is the cross-sectional area of the bullet—even though the pathologists described it as 6 x 15 mm. His Figure 4 therefore examines only a small fraction of the universe of possibilities; he should have used either the correct value of A, or some reasonable range, instead of estimating that A was merely the cross-sectional area of the bullet.

    5. NALLI: In his Figure 4, he plots the velocity of the bullet at depth (vx) for four different values of the exit wound diameter (de).

      MANTIK: Unfortunately for Nalli, according to his equation 23, the velocity also depends on the projected area (A) of the bullet, but he again merely estimates that A is the cross-sectional area of the bullet, rather than the 6 x 15 mm stated in the autopsy report.

      So, this graph also needs some serious amendments.

    6. NALLI: He sees only a single head shot (said to be due to a Mannlicher-Carcano bullet).

      MANTIK: The only intact bullet (the Magic Bullet) in the Warren Commission (WC) case was purportedly found on a Parkland Hospital stretcher. Its provenance has been thoroughly debunked by Josiah Thompson and Gary Aguilar, M.D.12 John Hunt has also noted the paradoxes evoked by its so-called arrival at the FBI laboratory in Washington, DC.13 Most likely, the Mannlicher-Carcano bullet is irrelevant to the JFK case, but it is the only bullet that Nalli considers.

      There is even more: Dr. Randy Robertson, my radiology colleague, recently discovered the papers of James M. Young, M.D., at a Navy website. Young, a White House physician at the time, reports that one more bullet was found in the limousine.14 The WC did not report this, nor does Nalli recognize this bullet, although he may not have known about it.

    7. NALLI: “…the impulse force [sic] is modeled in the current paper by assuming a perfectly inelastic collision.”

      MANTIK: During such an inelastic collision, by definition, the entire bullet must remain inside the target. Inconveniently for Nalli, the nose and tail of this same bullet were purportedly15 found inside the limousine—not inside of JFK’s head. Nalli is aware of these fragments, but he does not really address the conundrums that they pose. No one knows how much momentum was carried away by these miscreant limousine fragments—or by the middle portion of this bullet—because this middle section was never recovered.16 Since Nalli never considers the momentum of these three fragments in his calculations, a dark cloud is cast over his results.

    8. NALLI: His “…theoretical model calculations were performed for an idealized high-energy spherical projectile with the mass and speed of a Carcano bullet.”

      MANTIK: Of course, the actual bullet (or bullets) remains unknown,17 and its spherical shape is only an approximation. In particular, if the 6.5 mm object on the AP skull X-ray represents a real metal fragment (that mysteriously sheared off and remained behind at the rear of the skull), then that bullet fractured at entry (which Nalli concedes) and was never round at any point inside the skull.

    9. NALLI: The cratering process identifies the exit wound—and therefore the direction of the exiting projectile.

      MANTIK: The purported exit site is shown on the left below (Figure 1), from WC Exhibit 388, as produced by H.A. Rydberg18 under the direction of JFK autopsy pathologist Dr. James Humes. Frame 313 of the Zapruder film (Z-313) is on the right. Nalli displays neither of these images. Nalli’s streaking debris can be faintly seen here in Z-313, going upward and forward. (He describes four particles.)
      Figures 1A and 1B. On the left is the WC sketch. On the right is Z-313.

      The usefulness of beveling (to pinpoint entrance or exit sites) has now been roundly criticized. It is no longer considered definitive. Nowhere does Nalli acknowledge this.19 It is not certain that he was aware of this rather new state of knowledge.

    10. NALLI: Perfect inelasticity is assumed, i.e., the bullet does not exit from the skull: “As a final note, all these calculations have treated the head as a ballistic pendulum.”

      MANTIK: Unfortunately for Nalli, if the nose and tail of the bullet were found inside the limousine (as the WC reported), and the middle portion has disappeared, then his ballistic model is broken. For the classical ballistic pendulum (where nothing exits), such a broken rule might well destroy his case.20

    11. NALLI: The parameter a, used to calculate the bullet speed at depth (Equation 18),is a projectile nose-shape parameter that ranges between ≈1.2 and 1.9.

      MANTIK: This value contains an alarmingly large range. In Nalli’s Figure 3, he presents the drag force for several values of de (the effective exit diameter of the deformed bullet—see Nalli’s Table 2). Nalli’s Figure 4 displays the bullet speed at tissue depth (vx), but no variation of a is demonstrated, thus concealing a great deal of uncertainty. MATLAB could easily have plotted this for him (for different values of a).

    12. NALLI: The bullet was broken into at least three fragments.

      MANTIK: This presumably (Nalli never clarifies this) includes the 6.5 mm “fragment,” located inside JFK’s right orbit as seen on the AP X-ray—but never explicitly cited by Nalli21—as well as the nose and tail of this same bullet. Nalli also overlooks the 40-odd fragments still visible on the skull X-rays. Figure 2 is my meticulous 3D localization of these fragments, with a schematic attempt at relative sizes. This work was performed at the National Archives, using the extant JFK X-rays. The blue ellipse (not its actual shape) represents a fuzzy cloud of ill-defined metallic debris, quite unlike that typically seen from a full metal-jacketed bullet. (See Addendum 2 below for images of typical fragments from a metal-jacketed bullet.) The thin orange arrow (in Figure 2) represents the approximate trail of particles. I shall return to this trail later, as it is grossly inconsistent with Nalli’s bullet trajectory.
      Figure 2. My localization (in yellow) of tiny metal fragments on JFK’s lateral X-ray. The blue ellipse represents a fuzzy cloud of metallic debris. The red ellipses represent mysterious objectsthat appear on the reproductions by the House Select Committee on Assassinations.
    13. NALLI: The bullet exited at the right coronal suture [somewhat anterior to the exit site shown in WC Exhibit 388)].

      MANTIK: Nalli thereby ignores the multiple bullet fragments seen on the X-rays (Figure 2) that lie far anterior—and far inferior—to his chosen exit site. He also ignores the single metal fragment in the left hemisphere, easily visible on most extant images of the AP skull X-ray (but not identified here).22 Most of these fragments lie in the anterior portion of the skull, which suggests a frontal bullet. For so many tiny fragments to fly so far forward from a posterior entry would be odd indeed. Furthermore, the largest fragment in the trail is near the back of the head, whereas it would be expected to fly the farthest from the entry, and therefore lie nearer the front of the head.

    14. NALLI: JFK’s hat size was average (7 3/8), but then (paradoxically) he assumes that JFK’s intact brain weighed 2100 grams [sic].

      MANTIK: Wikipedia reports that male brain sizes lie between 1250 and 1500 cubic centimeters.23 There is, however, substantial variation between individuals; one study of 46 adults, aged 22-49 years and of mainly European descent, found an average brain volume of 1273.6 cubic centimeters for men, with a range of 1052.9 to 1498.5 cubic centimeters.24 Based on Nalli’s estimate of 2100 grams, JFK’s brain size lies extraordinarily far outside the normal range.25 As an extreme example, Oliver Cromwell’s brain was well over 2000 grams, possibly the largest ever recorded.26 Cyril Wecht tells me that he has performed over 50,000 autopsies, but has never encountered a brain anywhere near that large. Nalli here faces a classic choice between Scylla and Charybdis: either he must admit that the brain weight in the autopsy is wrong27 or he is stuck with too little dispensable brain to achieve his jet effect.

    15. NALLI: He claims that JFK had only a single large wound—which was on the right front.

      MANTIK: The autopsy report disagrees with a single right frontal defect; on the contrary, it describes a 13 cm defect (a number quoted by Nalli) that included the frontal, parietal, and occipital regions. The autopsy notes of pathologist J. Thornton Boswell suggest that the defect was even larger, i.e., 17 cm (Figure 3). Furthermore, numerous Parkland physicians reported a large right occipital defect. See the recent documentary film, “The Parkland Doctors,”28 for their essentially unanimous—and very troubling recollections.29 Nalli might find the doctors’ comments exceptionally disconcerting, but he never mentions these professional eyewitnesses. Figure 3 is Boswell’s depiction of the huge skull defect at the autopsy. The line at the vertex (#2) represents a scalp laceration. In other words, bone was missing over most of the upper skull, which raises profound questions about why the debris should only go forward (as Nalli claims). Furthermore, Dino Brugioni, who saw an early version of the Z-film, reported that debris surrounded JFK’s head, and did not merely travel forward. (See further discussion of Brugioni below.) The autopsy X-rays also confirm large areas of missing skull, even over the occiput, as I have extensively discussed in Reference 8.
      Figure 3. Boswell’s marks on a skull as photographed at the National Archives. He prepared this for the ARRB to depict JFK’s skull at the autopsy. Line #2 represents a scalp laceration. Most of the upper skull is missing, which Nalli never tells us.
    16. NALLI: He admits that the mass of the forward “exhaust jet” (i.e., the ejected debris) is not known, but he estimates it as 20 ±10% of the total brain mass.

      MANTIK: The problem here is that the photographs of the brain show rather little missing brain tissue. I have viewed these at the National Archives. Nalli never refers to these photographs—or even to the public sketch from the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Figure 4 is a reasonable portrayal of the photographs (which I have seen at the Archives). This image is grossly inconsistent with Humes’s statement: “Two thirds of the right cerebrum had been blown away.”30 Furthermore, the exact masses of the ejecta are manifestly critical to Nalli’s calculations. Therefore, his explicit confession of ignorance on this point is quite disturbing.
      Figure 4. JFK’s (purported) brain shows little missing tissue. This is the sketch by Ida Dox for the HSCA. This brain was likely present at the second examination, i.e., not JFK’s brain.
    17. NALLI: His pièce de résistance is his Figure 7, which is based on his Equation 27. In this figure he demonstrates that JFK’s head displacement is always backward (as shown by the negative signs in his figure), no matter the angle of the ejecta, and no matter their masses.

      MANTIK: But, of course, if the presumed scenario can only yield a leftward (backwards) displacement of the head, one should not be too surprised to obtain a backward displacement of the head. Nalli should clearly note (but fails to do so unambiguously) that these measurements only apply to the Center of Mass (CM) system, i.e., the perspective of the moving limousine. He notes (again unclearly) that “… this calculated recoil displacement can be translated to the observed changes of position in the Zapruder Film by re-adding the initial velocity.” Unfortunately, he never does this simple addition for the edification of his reader, nor does he take time to explain exactly what this means.

    18. NALLI: He argues that a “real” [sic] force caused JFK’s head snap, and that without it JFK would simply have “…succumbed to gravity” and fallen forward or sideways. He claims that the “anomalous forward impulse” at Z-313 is not observed on any other limousine occupant.

      MANTIK: We might ask Nalli about Kellerman’s dramatic backward head snap (and subsequent prompt forward snap)—as seen in multiple Dealey Plaza films—immediately prior to JFK’s head snap. If JFK’s movement requires a “real force,” why is Kellerman exempt? (Kellerman sat in the right front seat.) Kellerman’s movement in the Nix film can be seen here:31

      http://assassinationofjfk.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Nix.gif

      The corresponding animation from the Z-film is here:

      http://assassinationofjfk.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Zapruder.gif

      And here is the Muchmore film:

      http://assassinationofjfk.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Muchmore.gif

      In each of these films, Kellerman clearly moves rather dramatically, yet Nalli insists that JFK is the only person who moves.

    19. NALLI: JFK was hit in the head at Z-312.

      MANTIK: Nalli thereby ignores a legion of witnesses to a head shot well after Z-313.32 He also ignores WC survey data,33 corroborating WC documents, WC sketches of shot locations on Elm St., and the prompt WC re-enactments on Elm St., all of which are consistent with a shot well after Z-313.34 Figure 5 is taken from the WC files, and clearly shows a shot well after Z-313.35 In Reference 8 (p. 56) I display corroborating Secret Service photographs that show the limousine positions for each of these three shots.36 Such a late shot, of course, raises the specter of another shooter.
      Figure 5. WC exhibit, prepared by the FBI, showing a shot (first limousine on the left)well after Z-313 but ignored by Nalli. The next nearest shot(second limousine from the left) here is at Z-313.
    20. NALLI: He tacitly assumes that the Z-film is authentic.37 Likewise, he assumes that the streaking debris in Z-313 is authentic.

      MANTIK: These streaks are central to Nalli’s calculations of recoil momentum. See References 3 and 6 below for detailed analyses of Z-film authenticity.38 The bizarre issues raised by this streaking debris are discussed below.

    21. NALLI: The Mannlicher-Carcano was the assassination weapon.

      MANTIK: Nalli does not recognize the evidence-based arguments that the Mannlicher-Carcano is likely irrelevant to the case. Almost certainly Oswald did not fire a weapon that day, and it is dubious that he owned the Mannlicher-Carcano. The truly diverse arguments for this conclusion are dazzling and overpowering.39

      Robert Frazier, the FBI ballistics expert, admitted they did not swab the barrel of the weapon to determine if it had been fired that day. Lyndal Shaneyfelt of the FBI added that he could not identify the weapon from the photograph in which Oswald held it. Even Howard Brennan, who supposedly saw Oswald in the sixth-floor window, admitted that he never saw a rifle discharge or flash—and that he never saw a scope (the weapon in the Archives has a scope40). Furthermore, no one ever identified it as the weapon supposedly stored in the Paine garage. Finally, between May 8, 1959, and November 22, 1963, despite diligent efforts by the FBI, no evidence was ever unearthed to show that Oswald fired a weapon during those 1,600+ days.41 Moreover, Marine Colonel Allison Folsom,42 testifying before the WC, characterized Oswald (while he was in the Marines and using a Marine-issued M-1) as “a rather poor shot.” Yet on November 22, 1963, using a far inferior weapon, he was supposedly perfect.

    Nine Nalli Omissions

    1. Dr. Luis Alvarez, who Nalli frequently refers to, persisted in his experiments until he got the result he wanted.43 Even worse, he failed to disclose what he had done. This embarrassing gaffe was finally revealed by Josiah Thompson during Cyril Wecht’s “Passing the Torch” conference in Pittsburgh during October 2013.44 45 It should also be emphasized that Alvarez only got his result (of a jet effect) by using a soft-nosed bullet. A Mannlicher-Carcano bullet never produced a consistent jet effect.46 Nalli fails to disclose this critical evidence. In fact, Nalli’s next step should be to demonstrate the jet effect with an intact Mannlicher-Carcano bullet (or to hire someone for the job).
    2. No Dealey Plaza witness—or any early viewer of the Z-film—reported a JFK head snap. Instead, these witnesses repeatedly recalled JFK slouching forward.
    3. Nalli does not cite the rearward going debris seen by surveyors (in individual magnified Z-film frames) during their prompt re-enactment on Elm Street.47
    4. Nalli does not cite the Dealey Plaza witnesses who saw debris slowly rising 6-8 feet in theair above and around JFK.48 Jackie Kennedy and William Manchester also saw slow-moving fragments. Manchester should know—after all, he had watched the Z-film seventy-five times.
    5. Nalli seems unaware (which may be excusable) of the recollections of Dino Brugioni, who saw an early, and quite different, Z-film.50 Brugioni observed debris surrounding JFK’s head—not just going forward, as Nalli assumes. This is of course consistent with Nalli’s statement that the kinetic energy is “…propagated radially outward [emphasis added] in the form of an expanding pressure wave, resulting in a rupture and explosion of the skull.”51 Furthermore, Nalli may not be aware that Brugioni was quite certain that the extant Z-film is different from the one he saw.52 In particular, Nalli only sees these forward flying particles in 2-3 frames at most, whereas Brugioni recalled seeing them in many frames. So also did the Dealey Plaza surveyors. The same is true for the debris in Alvarez’s experiment.53
    6. Nalli omits the observations of Hargis (a motorcyclist at the left rear), who was struck so hard by debris that he thought he had been hit:

      Then I felt something hit me. It could have been concrete or something, but I thought at first I might have been hit.54

      A second motorcyclist was also hit—Billy Joe Martin, who also rode at the left rear.55 Their positions in the motorcade are shown in Figure 6. It is surely quite odd that the two motorcyclists at the right rear (Chaney and Jackson) did not report being hit. Nalli tells us none of this, but perhaps he did not know.
      Figure 6. Positions of the motorcycle men, as seen in the Nix film; this image was supplied by David Josephs. Chaney and Jackson were apparently not struck by debris, but Hargis and Martin were.

      This (rearward-flying) debris might well have carried away a significant fraction of ejected momentum, so its omission by Nalli is critical. Also recall that Hargis and Martin were riding at the left rear, while Nalli’s ejecta derive from the right front—exiting at veryhigh speeds (he claims)—so it is unlikely that Hargis simply encountered these same ejecta as he rode forward—even though the wind was blowing toward the limousine. Moreover, if the wind was blowing debris (ejected from the right front) backwards toward the limousine, why then were the motorcyclists at the right rear not struck by debris, while both of those at the left rear had such vivid recollections of being hit?

    7. Although Nalli cites his business address as College Park, MD, and he acknowledges the assistance of the staff at National Archives II, he does not report a personal examination of the JFK artifacts at Archives II—which is in College Park, MD. On the other hand, I have viewed these artifacts on nine different days, initially with Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D.56
    8. Nalli fails to tell his readers what happened when a posterior shot struck a skull in the WC scenario: the face of the skull was blown out. This shocking image was printed by the WC (Exhibits 861 and 862).57 That is clearly not what happened to JFK. So, how does Nalli explain this astonishing result?
    9. Nalli ignores the eyewitnesses—from Dealey Plaza, from Parkland, and from Bethesda. He does not display the JFK skull X-rays, which he mostly avoids. He even overlooks the WC data tables, re-enactments, and their sketches of shots on Elm St. The Z-film is his sole source for truth. The WC three-shot scenario (Figure 5 above) clearly shows a shot well after Z-313.58 The final shot appears at the bottom of the stairs, but Nalli seems unaware of this.

    A Nalli Admission

    • NALLI: Missed shots cannot be ruled out.

      MANTIK: Nalli missed the bullet reported by James Young, M.D. Likewise, he does not mention the Belmont memo; written the evening of the assassination by assistant FBI director Alan Belmont, it states that a bullet was lodged behind Kennedy’s ear (Joseph McBride, Into the Nightmare, p. 556).

    Eight Questionable Statements by Nalli

    1. NALLI: The WC considered the question of conspiracy.

      MANTIK: Hale Boggs, Majority Leader and former Warren Commissioner:

      Hoover lied his eyes out to the Commission—on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the guns, you name it …59

      Judge Burt W. Griffin, former assistant counsel for the WC and judge of the Court of Common Pleas, Cuyahoga County, Ohio:

      “I think the CIA and all the other investigative agencies, including the FBI, were totally dedicated to trying to find out if there was a conspiracy,” he said. “But they were also totally dedicated to concealing how they operated, and the CIA did not want us to know that they were trying to assassinate [Fidel] Castro.”60

      W. David Slawson has been even more outspoken:

      Slawson’s silence has ended once and for all. Half a century after the commission issued an 888-page final report that was supposed to convince the American people that the investigation had uncovered the truth about the president’s murder, Slawson has come to believe that the full truth is still not known. Now 83, he says he has been shocked by the recent, belated discovery of how much evidence was withheld from the commission—from him, specifically—by the CIA and other government agencies, and how that rewrites the history of the Kennedy assassination.61

      William Walton, a friend of the Kennedys, speaking on behalf of RFK and Jacqueline Kennedy:

      Perhaps there was only one assassin, but he did not act alone …. Dallas was the ideal location for such a crime.62

      Richard Goodwin, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs:

      We know the CIA was involved, and the Mafia. We all know that.63

    2. NALLI: The recoil effect “… has been backed up by subsequent independent experimental studies.”

      MANTIK: For the WC, Larry Sturdivan (one of Nalli’s consultants) shot ten skulls with the Mannlicher-Carcano at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds.64 All ten skulls moved in the direction of the bullet. (Did Sturdivan, as consultant to Nalli, fail to tell him about these skulls?) Oddly enough, Sturdivan thereby confirmed the (long-concealed) results of Alvarez, i.e., the jet effect is a unique event, which does not occur with the Mannlicher-Carcano bullet. Furthermore, the jet effect as an explanation for the head snap has been fully discredited in at least three other independent experiments performed by John Nichols, M.D., Ph.D., Arthur Snyder, Ph.D. and Doug DeSalles, M.D.65 In summary, if we were to count Sturdivan’s (10) disobedient skulls and Alvarez’s (singular) failure, this would total five independent confirmations (of no jet effect). Moreover, based on Lucien Haag’s more recent report, we now have six. He shot at fiberglass wrapped melons with 6.5 mm Carcano bullets and seemed to show a dramatic jet effect in sequences of colorful frames. But Haag was careful to parse his words—a jet effect was only obtained when he first exposed the soft lead cores of these bullets! On the contrary, when he used intact Carcano bullets, “…the melons…remained in place, and the entry and exit holes were small.”66 In summary, he obtained the same results as everyone else—intact Carcano bullets do not cause a jet effect.

    3. NALLI: John Connally (JBC) reacted at the same time as JFK. (JFK was apparently shot while behind the sign, i.e., before Z-224.)

      MANTIK: This is misleading. JBC believed he had been hit shortly after JFK, between Z-231 and Z-234. (His wife chose Z-229 through Z-233.) Connally’s surgeons, Robert Shaw and Charles Gregory, believed it might have been as late as Z-236.67 JBC insisted that he heard the first shot, and only after that felt himself hit by the second one. Furthermore, he was certain that only JFK was hit by the first shot.

    4. NALLI: The development of high speed cameras has assisted our understanding of wound ballistics.

      MANTIK: Indeed, it has. Such films routinely show both forward spatter and backspatter, but Nalli totally ignores the inevitable backspatter, as seen in Figure 7.68 For Nalli, there is only forward spatter—he never mentions backspatter—at all, let alone in the JFK case.

      Further support for this conclusion derives from experiments on live pigs destined for slaughter. Bone particles were a feature of backspatter from close-range shots to their heads: “Contamination of nearby surfaces by bone fragments and bone-plus-bullet fragments, as well as other organic debris appears to be quite heavy.”69 Many Dealey Plaza witnesses saw debris flying backwards. If this had been due to backspatter, much of Nalli’s assumed forward momentum would have been cancelled out. These Dealey Plaza witnesses though were not seeing backspatter—they saw forward spatter, from a frontal bullet.
      Figure 7. Backspatter is obvious here; it occurs in most similar shots.
    5. NALLI: Three [sic] additional government investigations affirmed the WC’s basic findings.

      MANTIK: On the contrary, the HSCA favored a “probable conspiracy.” The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) was neutral, as stated in their final report, which published no official conclusions or findings of fact. The ARRB merely cited the Congressional prohibition against reinvestigating the assassination. Nalli has merely misled us about this fundamental issue. Worse than that (for Nalli), the ARRB staff strongly suggested that two separate brain examinations had been conducted of two different brains on two different dates.70 That report was approved by Chief Counsel Jeremy Gunn and reported in the Washington Post. This conclusion likely explains the odd reported brain weight of 1500 grams. Furthermore, the ARRB learned that the autopsy photographs could not be matched to the pertinent camera/lens combination,71 and that Saundra Kay Spencer, the photographic technician who developed and printed JFK autopsy images at the Naval Photographic Center (NPC) in November 1963, testified to the ARRB that she saw a photograph with a hole of one to two inches on the back of JFK’s skull.72 Altogether, even though they were officially neutral, the ARRB reached four different sets of autopsy conclusions.73 Despite Nalli’s pleading for the WC, the commissioners would not have been pleased with these ARRB autopsy conclusions.

    6. NALLI: The WC offered “definitive evidence.”

      MANTIK: Nalli conveniently overlooks the rather long list of criticisms that the HSCA levelled against the WC investigation. Also recall the comments above by Boggs, Griffin, Slawson, Walton, and Goodwin. Then there is Walt Brown’s The Warren Omission (1996), written by a Ph.D. in history, Harold Weisberg’s Never Again (1996), and the detailed review article by Aguilar and Cunningham.74 Moreover, historian Gerald McKnight provides an exhaustive guide to the antics of the WC.75 The army’s top ballistics expert in that era was Colonel Joseph R. Dolce; the army specifically sent him to the WC, but the agenda-driven Specter shrewdly ignored his answers. For example, Dolce insisted that two bullets had struck Connally.76 Dolce’s experience in government had led him to say that in “… conferences you cannot disagree too often … especially when you’re discussing bullets before three-and-four-star generals.” For their sympathy with the WC conclusions, Drs. Alfred G. Olivier and A. J. Dziemian of the Edgewood Army Arsenal were well received by the WC; on the other hand, when Dolce was eager to correct the wrong impression they had made, the WC ignored him.

    7. NALLI: He claims that no bullet fragments were recovered (except for two tiny ones by Humes).

      MANTIK: He thereby ignores the independent recollections of James Jenkins, Dennis David, and Tom Robinson, all of whom saw bullet fragments (distinctly more than two tiny ones) while in the morgue that night. Others with similar recollections include Paul O’Connor, Floyd Riebe, Jerrol Custer, Edward Reed, John Stringer, and Captain John Stover77.

    8. NALLI: He posits a neuromuscular reaction as a further source for JFK’s rearward head snap.

      MANTIK: This claim rests upon slim evidence, i.e., the movement of JFK’s head at about Z-318. If one is permitted to interpolate, then this latter event (according to Nalli) is more precisely located at Z-318.2. But Z-318 itself does not even contain an original data point (due to excessive image blurring). Furthermore, the graph of displacement (Nalli’s Figure 8a) shows a nearly uniform displacement between Z-316 and Z-319 (and includes only three data points); it is inexplicable how a force can be invoked during this interval of essentially uniform motion. Finally, after Nalli’s supposed neuromuscular reaction at Z-318, JFK’s head slows down (while going backward), whereas the neuromuscular reaction (according to Nalli) should accelerate the head (backward). Here are the pertinent Nalli Figures 8a, 8b, and 8c.78
      Figure 8. Nalli’s graphs of position, “speed,” and “acceleration.”

      Gary Aguilar, M.D., and Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D., have responded in detail to the neuromuscular speculation. Here is a quotation from their work.

      There are numerous problems with this “neuromuscular” theory. With respect to the example of the alleged human victim in 1936, Robert Capa’s famous “Fallen Soldier,” it’s now widely believed that the photograph [to which Nalli apparently alludes] was likely not taken of a head shot victim in a war zone, where Mr. Capa claimed he’d taken it. Instead, it’s likely the photograph was staged, far from any battle action. But even if “Fallen Soldier” is valid, the image, like those of the goat, depicts reactions distinctly different than what we see when JFK is fatally struck.79

      Aguilar also notes (in the same article) that neither the decorticate nor the decerebrate posture explains JFK’s head snap; if so, the neuromuscular reaction simply does not apply. Oddly enough, Larry Sturdivan invokes both of these postures—at different places in his work. It should be quite sufficient to emphasize that no expert in neuroscience has ever supported this bizarre neuromuscular theory.

    Two Stubborn Paradoxes for Nalli

    1. Now what about those forward-streaking ejecta in the Z-film—the very ones that critically underlie Nalli’s momentum calculations?
      1. The two most obvious trajectories extrapolate back to the same point on JFK’s forehead/frontal bone.
      2. This same site is also the origin of the large bone fragment seen (and X-rayed) at the autopsy; according to Lawrence Angel this was frontal bone.
      3. This large bone fragment simply fell into the limousine—while the streaking fragments (supposedly) zoomed off at very high speeds.80 How can such wildly different behavior occur for bone fragments ejected from the same forehead site? And how exactly can all these fragments fit into this same limited forehead site—where no one at Parkland saw any defect? Nalli addresses none of these issues, even though he claims to see four solid flying fragments, which he explicitly interprets as skull fragments.
      4. Dealey Plaza witnesses—and early viewers of the Z-film—saw only fragments slowly moving in the air immediately around JFK.
      5. Witnesses saw fragments flying to the left rear—but not to the right front.
      6. Calculations show that the Z-313 ejecta could have flown 117 feet, whereas John Lattimer’s (experimental) fragments flew only 20-40 feet. The latter distance, of course, is more consistent with slower ejecta speeds. Furthermore, the documentary, “Inside the Target Car,” did not report such far flung fragments.81 On the contrary they only report nearby fragments.
      7. The relative absence of spatter behind JFK’s head is itself suspicious, as such spatter would be expected for either a shot from the front or from the rear.
    2. This final paradox is one of the most fundamental in the entire case, although it is seldom noted. The left image below is Z-312, essentially the moment of impact—per Nalli. Note JFK’s forward head tilt. For dramatic comparison, WC Exhibit 388 is shown again on the right.
      Figures 9A and 9B. Z-312 is on the left, while the WC trajectory is on the right. The yellow arrow represents the metallic trail on the X-rays (assuming a posterior bullet), while the red arrow (on the left) identifies Nalli’s headshot, as prescribed by the WC.

      On the left, the red arrow identifies Nalli’s proposed single head shot, with the appropriate downward angle of 16° (taking into account the downward 3° slope of Elm St.). The entry site does not seem to matter to Nalli, so I have chosen the WC site, which is also shown in the image on the right. (The HSCA entry site lay 10 cm superior.) The yellow arrow represents the trail of metallic debris on the lateral skull X-rays—presumably deposited by this same bullet. The WC trajectory in Figure 9B—presumably championed by Nalli—stands in stark contrast to the red arrow in Figure 9A, i.e., the exit sites are quite different. In fact, Nalli’s trajectory might well blow out JFK’s forehead, which would have been obvious at Parkland (but such damage was not seen).

      But the second (and even more profound) paradox is apparent in Figure 9A. Nalli’s bullet trajectory cannot reasonably deposit the metallic trail seen on the X-rays: the entry site is both too low and the angle is quite wrong. The HSCA entry site might be nearly superior enough, but then the bullet would exit through the top of the skull—well before depositing the anterior portion of the trail. However, the red arrow in 9A could work if JFK were sitting erect. Oddly enough, many witnesses recalled that JFK was sitting erect when hit.82 If that is true, though, then the Z-film does not reflect reality. To more clearly illustrate this confounding paradox, Figure 10 is a composite image.83 If any single image emasculates the WC verdict of one shot to the skull (as well as Nalli’s conclusions), then this is the one.
      Figure 10. The lateral X-ray superimposed on Z-312, as composed by David Josephs.

    Conclusions

    Nalli runs into surprisingly many buzz-saws. If even one critical assumption is seriously wrong, his conclusion cannot stand. This review has demonstrated several such assumptions that clearly must be wrong. At the very least, the uncertainty in many of his parameters casts a strong shadow over the entire work. Nalli clearly favors the Zapruder film over the X-rays, but he never explains why. Furthermore, eyewitnesses—even the Parkland M.D.s—are persistently ignored. Although he cites Larry Sturdivan as a consultant, he does not cite Sturdivan’s shooting experiment, where 10 of 10 skulls flew forward—not backward. Nor does he recognize Sturdivan’s conclusion that the 6.5 mm object (on JFK’s AP X-ray) cannot represent a metal fragment. Without any comment, he accepts the Mannlicher-Carcano as the guilty weapon, and Z-312 as the critical moment. He resorts to inflating the mass of JFK’s brain—to nearly match Oliver Cromwell’s outsized brain (whose size appears unmatched in history—at least for home sapiens). He assumes that ejecta only flew forward—despite current knowledge that backspatter is typical, and despite visible evidence on the limousine trunk of rearward-going debris. Based on rather fragile reasoning, he merely assumes the masses of these ejecta. He mistakenly estimates the projected cross-sectional area of the bullet as it initially struck the skull, whereas the autopsy report states a much larger area. And these items are all fundamental to his calculations. For example, if some ejecta flew backward, his calculations cannot possibly be correct—and his model might well fail. (Since some brain likely flew backward, even less brain mass would then be available to fly forward and provide backward propulsion.)

    Moreover, he commits a logical fallacy—just because his model works, he concludes that no other model can possibly be correct. Logically, however, just because one model is initially preferred, its challenger is not thereby finally proven wrong. After all, the history of science often illustrates battles between opposing models, where both (temporarily) explain the same data set. Most critically though, he assumes a scenario in which debris only flies forward which means that, in his calculations, the head can only lurch backwards. Well, in that case, it surely will go backwards.

    Addendum 1: The Witnesses
    Figure 11. What the witnesses saw at the right rear of JFK’s head.

    For higher resolution images of Figure 11, see Robert Groden, The Killing of a President (1993), pp. 86ff.

    Addendum 2: Bullet Fragments
    Figure 12. X-ray of someone shot in the head with a Bronze-Point® bullet. The arrow-like “Bronze-Point,” a hunting bullet, is identified by the arrow.

    Notice the very large fragments in Figure 12, quite unlike the JFK X-rays. Also note how numerous these fragments are—quite unlike the next image (of a metal-jacked bullet). Furthermore, none of these fragments have the remarkably fuzzy borders that most of the JFK fragments show.84
    Figure 13. This test skull was shot with a Mannlicher-Carcano (full metal-jacketed bullet) by the Biophysics Division at Edgewood Arsenal.

    In Figure 13, the bullet entered occipital bone superior to the site where Mr. Larry Sturdivan believes that JFK was struck (note the “hole”). But the fragment trail is relatively low on the skull (compared to JFK’s trail) and the fragments are larger than most of the JFK fragments. There are fewer fragments than in Figure 12 (a hunting bullet), but also notice how large most of these fragments are (compared to the JFK X-rays). Notice another striking feature: the bullet in Figure 13 breaks up some distance from its entrance site (as is typical of full metal-jacketed bullets), whereas the fragments in the JFK X-rays cluster toward the front, especially the smaller ones (which suggests a frontal entry). Furthermore, there is nothing in Figure 13 remotely like the fuzzy cloud in JFK’s X-rays. Such a fuzzy cloud (i.e., the blue ellipse in Figure 2), as well as fuzzy borders for many (but not all) JFK fragments, hint at a possible mercury bullet.
    Figure 14. These fragments were produced by a full metal-jacketed bullet.

    None of these examples in Figure 14 come close to matching the fragments in JFK’s X-rays.85

     

    Addendum 3: Brain Weights

    Figure 15 displays brain weight versus body weight for various species. The red line represents the brain size gifted to JFK by Nalli.86 David Josephs alerted me to this graph, although I first became aware of this concept in 1963 as a graduate student in biophysics. Note that this is a log-log graph. If a linear-linear graph had been used, the inexplicable size (2100 grams) cited by Nalli for JFK’s brain would have looked even more preposterous.
    Figure 15. Brain weights vs. body weight in various species. The red line identifies Nalli’s brain weight for JFK, which is far outside the normal range for homo sapiens.

    Acknowledgments

    Fortunately, this essay was not orchestrated by a one-man band. Although I am not quite sure whether to thank him or to curse him, Jim DiEugenio incited me to undertake this review. Jeffrey Sundberg offered his usual astute clarifications, often weeding out ambiguous statements. Michael Chesser, M.D. has confirmed so many of my observations at the Archives that I hardly know how to express my gratitude. Gary Aguilar, M.D. and Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D. contributed singular insights. Douglas DeSalles, M.D. reminded me of the many shooting experiments that failed to show a jet effect. Gregory Burnham contributed the movie clips about Kellerman. Walt Brown reminded me of Marine Colonel Allison Folsom. Paul Hoch, Ph.D., generously shared his unique historical perspective on the shooting experiments of Luis Alvarez. John Hunt supplied the skull photographs from the National Archives. Douglas Horne, the éminence grise of assassination researchers, as always, offered critical input. And David Josephs offered so many suggestions that he should be a co-author. Finally, I must thank Nicholas Nalli for reminding me of so many concepts that I once appreciated intuitively while on the physics faculty at the University of Michigan—and for thereby also resurrecting many happy memories of those long-gone days.

    Notes

    1 Head Shot: The Science Behind the JFK Assassination (2010), p. 128. Nalli lists twenty parameters in his Table 2. He also reports that the strength of cortical bone (σu) can be three times higher during high-speed trauma. This necessarily introduces a great deal of uncertainty into any calculations based upon this parameter. And, according to Nalli, the drag force (Fd) is directly proportional to σu, so any calculations of drag force are subject to this uncertainty—and Nalli has many of these calculations in his paper. According to Nalli, “…while uncertainties in parameters were accounted for as much as possible, this could not be done for a handful of them, especially bio-mechanical parameters (e.g., σu, U6, ρt, ρs and E).”

    2 http://www.newsweek.com/jfk-assassination-conspiracy-theory-debunked-new-gunshot-study-902292.

    3 Although the first draft of this review was completed soon after Nalli’s article appeared, I then got hopelessly sidetracked for many weeks while working in an underserved clinic in northern California—trying to help zillions of cancer patients with poor lifestyle choices. My apologies for this delay; it was due to a commitment I had made well before Nalli’s article appeared. NOTE: To avoid tedium, many sources are not cited here. Reference 8 includes most of these. June 18, 2018. DWM.

    4 Chambers, Chapter 9. Nalli references Chambers’s book, but he does not comment on his conclusions. Chambers, also a physicist, supports a frontal head shot, and does not accept a jet effect.

    5 David Lifton, Best Evidence (1980), p. 53.

    6 I have personally interviewed several of these individuals, who tell a mutually consistent story.

    7 Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment (1966), p. 56.

    8 Josiah Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas (1967), p. 99. Inspect the trunk in this image.

    9 https://whowhatwhy.org/2018/05/31/scientist-neutralizes-jfks-back-and-to-the-left-or-does-he/.

    10 This reported entrance wound diameter of 6 x 15 mm introduces yet one more paradox into the case: How can this bullet scape off a nearly round 6.5 mm fragment onto the back of the skull (as seen on the JFK AP X-ray) if it struck tangentially?

    11 Journal of Neurosurgery 9 (1952), 472-483—as cited by Cranor.

    12 https://history-matters.com/essays/frameup/EvenMoreMagical/EvenMoreMagical.htm.

    13 http://www.jfklancer.com/hunt/mystery.html.

    14 https://whowhatwhy.org/2017/10/06/navy-doctor-bullet-found-jfks-limousine-never-reported/.

    15 Although this seems an unlikely scenario, the WC bequeathed it to us.

    16 Nalli seems to accept the 6.5 mm fragment (on JFK’s AP skull X-ray) as authentic—even though his consultant (Larry Sturdivan) does not. Even if it is authentic, it cannot represent much of the middle portion, as it is extremely thin. See my peer-reviewed paper about this object at Reference 9.

    17 These limousine fragments could not definitively be matched by neutron activation analysis to any other metal fragments in the case—nor to the Magic Bullet.

    18 Rydberg has since expressed his misgivings about his sketch: http://assassinationofjfk.net/for-the-sake-of-historical-accuracy/.

    19 From that memorable essay (Reference 5) by Gary Aguilar, M.D. and Kathy Cunningham, here is their footnote 352: “As observed by David Mantik, M.D., Ph.D. (personal communication), there are numerous cases from the scientific literature in which the documented beveling characteristics were the reverse of what might be expected from the known direction of wounding. While beveling may be a useful clue, it is far from Humes’ ‘100 times out of 100.’ [Dixon DS.”Keyhole lesions in gunshot wounds of the skull and direction of fire.”J Forensic Sci,1982; 27:555-66. Coe JI.”External beveling of entrance wounds by handguns.” Am J Forensic Med Pathol,1982; 3:215-9. Baik S, Uku JM, Sikirica M.”A case of external beveling with an entrance wound to the skull made by a small caliber rifle bullet.”Am J Forensic Med Pathol,1991; 12:334-6. Donohue ER, Kalelkar MB, Richmond JM, Teas SS.”Atypical gunshot wounds of entrance; an empirical study.”J Forensic Sci,1984; 29:379-88. Lantz PE.”An atypical, indeterminate-range, cranial gunshot wound of entrance resembling an exit wound.”Am J Forensic Med Pathol, 1994; 15 (1):5-9.]”

    20 For an illustration of a ballistic pendulum, see Chambers’ useful sketch at p. 203.

    21 Despite Nalli’s reliance on Sturdivan (he is, after all, one of Nalli’s consultants), Nalli never cites Sturdivan on the critical matter of the 6.5 mm object. Instead Nalli appears to accept it as an authentic metal fragment. But Sturdivan has stated the opposite in The JFK Myths (2005), p. 193: “No, I think it’s an artifact of some kind … [bullet] fragments could have been found anywhere but, wherever they were found, NONE (sic) would be disks 6.5-mm in diameter … Some have said it was a piece of the jacket, sheared off by the bone and left on the outside of the skull. I’ve never seen a perfectly round piece of bullet jacket in any wound….”

    22 Michael Chesser, M.D. (neurologist), while recently at the National Archives, noted many tiny metallic fragments just inside the forehead bone (on JFK’s extant lateral skull X-rays). This location is grossly inconsistent with Nalli’s exit site. Chesser’s observations were made public well in advance of Nalli’s review, but Nalli was likely unaware of them. Chesser’s tiny fragments partially overlap the more inferior of the two red ellipses in Figure 2. Chesser also noted a hole in the forehead bone, possibly created by the same bullet that deposited these tiny fragments. Now if Chesser is correct—and it would be difficult for an impartial observer to avoid the conclusion—not only would this overt evidence for a frontal shot “pour water” on Nalli’s conclusions, but it would render his work quite irrelevant. Like me, Chesser was an expert witness at the November 2017 Mock Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. See Reference 12 (slides 9-31) for Chesser’s own presentation.

    23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_size.

    24 Allen, JS; Damasio H; Grabowski TJ (2002). “Normal neuroanatomical variation in the human brain: An MRI-volumetric study”. Am J Phys Anthropol. 118(4): 341-58. doi:10.1002/ajpa.10092.PMID12124914.

    25 If true, JFK’s brain weighed 4.6 pounds, compared to the average brain of 3.0 pounds. The average head weight is 10-11 pounds: https://www.brainstuffshow.com/blogs/how-much-does-the-human-head-actually-weigh.htm. Nalli estimates JFK’s head as 10.3 pounds. See https://www.brainstuffshow.com/blogs/how-much-does-the-human-head-actually-weigh.htm. So, the average ratio of brain to head size is about 29%. Since JFK’s hat size was average (and his head size therefore was probably average, as Nalli agrees), his brain to head size in Nalli’s scenario (using Nalli’s numbers) becomes a fantastic 45% (2100 grams ÷ 4500 grams).

    My cousin Steve agreed to submerge his head in a bucket of water; using Archimedes Principle, his head weight was 4250 grams.

    26 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-littlest-human-2006-06/. Was Cromwell blessed with especially potent NOTCH2NLS genes? Ironically, this article (about these genes) was posted online during the Mock Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/early/2017/11/17/221226.full.pdf.

    27 The listed brain weight (1500 grams) most likely describes the one at the second brain autopsy, i.e., the one shown in Figure 4 below (not JFK’s brain).

    28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AN6WXERsEKE.

    29 This film was screened during the November 2017 Mock Trial of Oswald, where I appeared as an expert witness.

    30 In JAMA, May 27, 1992—Vol 267, No. 20, p. 2798.

    Humes here almost certainly described JFK’s actual brain, i.e., not the one shown in Figure 4. Humes, of course, was not the only one to report rather little residual brain. FBI agent Frank O’Neill, several autopsy assistants, and professional personnel at Parkland agreed: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/ARRB_Medical_Testimony.html.

    But we don’t need witnesses—we have optical density measurements that yield similar results for the large amount of missing brain: see David W. Mantik and Cyril H. Wecht, “Paradoxes of the JFK Assassination: The Brain Enigma”. Cf. https://archive.org/details/assassinationspr00jame.

    31 Greg Burnham supplied these online images.

    32 See Milicent Cranor’s brilliant summary of these witnesses to a shot after Z-313: https://web.archive.org/web/20110606195259/http:/spot.acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/31st_Issue/jiggle.html. Also see my argument for such a late shot in Reference 1, p. 285. Then there is Clint Hill, who also recognized a shot well after Z-313: https://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/604980/jfk-assassination-kennedy-clint-hill-witness-account-president-dallas. Clint Hill first placed his hand on the limousine 30 frames after Z-313. According to the FBI, his foot did not reach the bumper until Z-368; both feet reached at Z-381. Mary Moorman has often recalled hearing a shot well after her famous photograph, which supposedly captured the headshot. Finally, even Josiah Thompson, in his forthcoming book, Last Second in Dallas, now favors a late shot near Z-327.

    33 The first survey plat of Dealey Plaza was by Robert H. West, Dallas County Surveyor, on November 26, 1963, just four days after the assassination. That data was obviously altered later to fit the single bullet theory. At the bottom of the next survey (December 5th, CE-585) is a note, “Revised 2-7-64,” which means that in February 1964 the last shot was still fixed near the concrete steps, well after Z-313. See Chuck Marler, “The JFK Assassination Re-enactment: Questioning the Warren Commission’s Evidence,” in Assassination Science (1998), ed. James Fetzer.

    34 See reference 8 for a WC reconstruction (with photographs) that clearly display a shot well after Z-313.

    35 https://kennedysandking.com/content/warren-commission-document-wcd-298-how-the-bureau-made-a-fourth-shot-beyond-z-313-disappear. This is an enlightening essay by David Josephs, which illuminates the nature of the earliest FBI conclusions. These still stand in stark contrast to those of the WC.

    36 These SS photographs were initially published by Harold Weisberg in Whitewash II (1966), p. 248. David Josephs reminds us that CE875 is an album of SS photographs with the limousine at every station point on Elm St. at intervals of 0+25. No photograph was taken at 5+00 because the last shot was within 4 feet of this. But this site is well beyond Z-313, i.e., well past Zapruder’s pedestal, as is readily seen here: https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/pdf/WH17_CE_875.pdf.

    37 Nalli cites Vincent Bugliosi, who claimed that the Z-film was not necessary to reach the WC conclusions. I concur that the Z-film is not required to reach a conclusion—unfortunately for Nalli, though, that conclusion is rather one of conspiracy. My review of Bugliosi’s enormous book can be found online: https://www.assassinationscience.com/v5n1mantik.pdf. (So also is my review of his Divinity of Doubt.)While he once regaled me with his frustration over my review (for well over an hour), Bugliosi stated that I was the only reviewer who he had telephoned.

    38 Here are some arguments for film alteration: (1) John Costella (Ph.D. in theoretical physics) has shown via mathematical algorithms that unrealistic distortions appear in the film, (2) some frames (e.g., Z-232) show physically impossible images, (3) odd inconsistencies exist among the Dealey Plaza films, (4) the debris hangs in the air for only about three frames, (5) the black geometric patch over the back of JFK’s head (flagrant on early generations of the film—as I have observed in two separate formats), (6) the two, totally compartmentalized Z-film events at the CIA on consecutive days that weekend, (7) witnesses uniformly reported that the limousine stopped, and (8) witnesses reported actions no longer seen in the Z-film (e.g., see the Preface in Reference 8).

    See http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/19952-new-proof-of-jfk-film-fakery-conclusive-evidence-experts-claim/ and http://assassinationofjfk.net/the-two-npic-zapruder-film-events-signposts-pointing-to-the-films-alteration/.

    At the recent Mock Trial of Oswald, Alec Baldwin reported that even the Kennedy family accepts alteration of the Z-film. After all, Jackie was there.

    39 The reader is referred to the exhaustive work by John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee. An easier approach is via James DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland (2013). Then there is David Josephs, who has also done heroic work on these issues: https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/oswald-on-november-22-1963.

    40 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_rifle. Brennan failed to identify Oswald in a police lineup that day; for further discussion of Brennan’s erratic statements, see Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why (2005), pp. 109ff.

    41 This is longer than US involvement in WW II—and even longer than Tiger Woods’s major tournament drought.

    42 Warren Commission Hearings, Volume XIX, p. 17ff: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=1136#relPageId=35&tab=page.

    43 Alvarez shot at coconuts, pineapples, and even at water-filled jugs—and he tried quite different bullets, until he happened upon a combination that finally yielded his long-desired jet effect. But that did not happen with the Mannlicher-Carcano bullet.

    44 This was based on original documentation generously supplied by Paul Hoch, Ph.D., who was then Alvarez’s graduate student in physics.

    45 http://www.patspeer.com/chapter16:newviewsonthesamescene.

    46 I was in the audience (as a medical student) when Alvarez gave his lecture at Los Alamos, NM in 1975, where I received (and preserved) a pre-print of his paper.

    47 Charles Breneman, who assisted surveyor Robert H. West, stated that he “…saw three frames of the Zapruder film which showed large blobs of blood and brain matter [emphasis added] flying from Kennedy’s head to the rear of the car” (Fort Worth Star Telegram, April 14, 1978).

    48 Larry Sneed, No More Silence (1998), pp. 351-371.

    49John Corry, The Manchester Affair (1967), p. 45.

    50 Dino A. Brugioni (1921-2015) served as the Chief Information Officer at the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) for about two-and-a-half decades. He was the world’s foremost living expert on the U-2 and SR-71 aerial reconnaissance imagery, and on the Corona and early Keyhole satellite reconnaissance imagery.

    51 In his excellent book, Hear No Evil (2010), pp. 351ff, Donald Thomas describes this as a Krönleinschuss effect, as it is called in forensic pathology. Nalli references Thomas, but does not quote his conclusion: “… we are compelled to conclude that the jet recoil theory is dubious at best.”

    52 https://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/05/douglas-p-horne/the-two-npic-zapruder-film-events-signposts-pointing-to-the-filmsalteration/.

    53 The American Journal of Physics, Volume 44, No. 9, September 1976; I have carefully examined the images in the original article.

    54 http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/hargis.htm.

    55

    Mr. BALL. You had a white helmet on?
    Mr. MARTIN. Yes.
    Mr. BALL. Did you notice any stains on your helmet?
    Mr. MARTIN. Yes, sir; during the process of working traffic there, I noticed that there were blood stains on the windshield on my motor and then I pulled off my helmet and I noticed there were blood stains on the left side of my helmet.
    Mr. BALL. To give a more accurate description of the left side, could you tell us about where it started with reference to the forehead?
    Mr. MARTIN. It was just to the left—of what would be the center of my forehead—approximately halfway, about a quarter of the helmet had spots of blood on it.
    Mr. BALL. And were there any other spots of any other material on the helmet there besides blood?
    Mr. MARTIN.Yes, sir; there was other matter that looked like pieces of flesh.
    Mr. BALL. What about your uniform?
    Mr. MARTIN. There was blood and matter on my left shoulder of my uniform.
    Mr. BALL. You pointed to a place in front of your shoulder, about the clavicle region?
    Mr. MARTIN. Yes, sir.
    Mr. BALL. Is that about where it was?
    Mr. MARTIN. Yes.
    Mr. BALL. On the front of your uniform and not on the side?
    Mr. MARTIN. No, sir.
    Mr. BALL. That would be left, was it?
    Mr. MARTIN. Yes; on the left side.
    Mr. BALL. And just below the level of the shoulder?
    Mr. MARTIN. Yes, sir.
    Mr. BALL. And what spots were there?
    Mr. MARTIN. They were blood spots and other matter.
    Mr. BALL. And what did you notice on your windshield?
    Mr. MARTIN. There was blood and other matter on my windshield and also on the motor.
    Mr. BALL. Was the blood noticeable—were there large splotches?
    Mr. MARTIN. No; they weren’t large splotches, they were small—It was not very noticeable unless you looked at it.
    Mr. BALL. Was the discoloration on your helmet noticeable?
    Mr. MARTIN. Not too much—no—as a matter of fact, there were other people around there and two more officers there and they never noticed it.
    Mr. BALL. At that time were you with Mr. Hargis?
    Mr. MARTIN. No, sir; I don’t believe that he went to the hospital with us. I believe he stopped there at the scene of the shooting.
    Mr. BALL. And did you ever see his helmet or his uniform or the windshield of his motorcycle?
    Mr. MARTIN. No, sir—I never recall seeing him again until the next day.
    Mr. BALL. Now, was this blood on the outside or the inside of your windshield?
    Mr. MARTIN. It was on the outside of my windshield.
    Mr. BALL. Was it on the right or left side?
    Mr. MARTIN. It was on the outside of my windshield.

    56 Reference 4.

    57 https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/html/WH_Vol17_0440b.htm.

    58 This exhibit was supplied by David Josephs.

    59 Bernard Fensterwald, Jr. and Michael Ewing, Coincidence or Conspiracy?, p. 96. The quote comes from an unnamed aide to Congressman Boggs. The book also quotes Bogg’s wife Lindy, through a colleague, as saying “He wished he had never been on it [the Commission] and wished he’d never signed it [the Report].”

    60 http://www.toledoblade.com/MarilouJohanek/2013/11/17/Retired-Ohio-judge-investigated-Ruby-s-slaying-of-Oswald.html.

    61 https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/02/warren-commission-jfk-investigators-114812.

    62 https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/JFK_Assassination_Quotes_by_Government_Officials.html.

    63 David Talbot, Brothers, p. 303. Author interview.

    64 http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/jfkinfo/hscastur.htm. Also see Larry M. Sturdivan, JFK Myths (2005), p. 163, which displays the 10 (of 10) skulls that failed to show the jet effect. Although the resolution in these images is low, backspatter might be faintly visible.

    65 http://www.jfklancer.com/galanor/jet_effect_text.html. See Arthur and Margaret Snyder, “Case Still Open: Skepticism and the Assassination of JFK” in Skeptic Magazine, Volume 6, Number 4. (Arthur is a SLAC physicist.) DeSalles (e-mail to me) notes that his multiple attempts, with full metal-jacketed bullets through melons wrapped with either duct tape or casting plaster, failed to show convincing evidence of a jet effect. He has offered $100 to anyone who can demonstrate a jet effect (with the proper bullet). DeSalles has gifted me with videotapes of his experiments, which I have viewed closely. John Nichol’s experiments are reported here: https://www.baylor.edu/content/services/document.php/185131.pdf.

    66 “President Kennedy’s Fatal Head Wound and his Rearward Head ‘Snap,’” AFTE Journal, Volume 46, Number 4, Fall 2014, pp. 279-289; see Figure 8.

    67 Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas (1967), pp. 70ff.

    68 https://www.google.com/search?q=exploding+bullets&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=o-YoUrqzOYWSiAKtjYDoAQ&ved=0CEMQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=1048#facrc=_&imgrc=w_ukJR22ViotQM.

    Nalli never acknowledges backspatter, although it might well offset much of his proposed forward momenta. An authentic human skull would be a superior example for Figure 7, but my internet trolling failed to discover such an example, although this image is memorable: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/01/world/asia/vietnam-execution-photo.html.

    69 “These materials were examined by scanning electron microscopy/energy-dispersive X-ray analysis. Calcium-phosphorous (bone) particles were detected on the 9-mm Smith & Wesson pistol, on two casings found at the scene, and on one of the revolvers. Two of the calcium-phosphorous particles on the casings had associated bullet fragments.” J Forensic Sci. 1991 Nov; 36 (6):1745-52. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1770342?dopt=Abstract.

    70 Reference 2. Douglas P. Horne , “Evidence of a Government Cover-Up: Two Different Brain Specimens in President Kennedy’s Autopsy”.

    71 Reference 5, Section V.

    72 Reference 5, Section V.

    73 Reference 6, Chapter 11.

    74 Reference 5.

    75 The most infamous quote from the WC was uttered by attorney Wesley Liebeler: “The best evidence that Oswald could fire his weapon as fast as he did and hit the target is the fact that he did so.”

    76 Breach of Trust, pp. 186ff. This book was published by the University Press of Kansas.

    77 http://aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh17/pdf/WH17_CE_397.pdf. Stover was the Commanding Officer of the National Naval Medical School at Bethesda that night.

    78 Paul Hoch, Ph.D. (e-mail to me) raises several issues about these graphs: (1) Did Nalli repeat the measurements? (2) Nalli states that he “re-plotted” the data, whereas re-measurement would have been expected. (3) When Nalli refers to “digitization of the original image,” does he mean the Z-film—or rather the graph in Six Seconds in Dallas, p. 91? (4) Nalli’s Figure 8 has error bars; they all appear the same size; “I wonder where he got them.” Thompson has since disavowed the initial forward motion (due to blur artifact), although Nalli does not tell us that: http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2013/10/wecht-center-symposium-on-jfk.html.

    Here is my response to Hoch. Comparison of Nalli’s graphs with Thompson’s graphs suggests that Nalli performed his own measurements even though he ambiguously states, “The data have been re-plotted [emphasis added] by the current author….” To further confuse us, Nalli’s legend for Figure 8 states that the position measurements are those of Thompson, so the answer is still in some doubt. Given the sequential steps involved in Nalli’s three successive graphs, I would expect the uncertainty to increase successively from graph to graph. Close inspection suggests that is likely true, but the error bars remain oddly uniform within each graph. And certainly, the blurring in some frames (e.g., Z-318) must increase the calculated uncertainty at that point, yet that is not seen in the third graph at Z-318—just where the neuromuscular reaction supposedly begins.

    79 https://statick2k-5f2f.kxcdn.com/images/pdf/AguilarWechtAFTA2015.pdf. For more details from Aguilar and Wecht, see AFTE Journal, Volume 47, Number 3—Summer 2015, and AFTE Journal, Volume 48, Number 2—Spring 2016.

    80 While investigating these streaks decades ago, I had also measured their speeds, and calculated their ranges.

    81 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dMzdvYyXNA.

    82 See my discussion of these many witnesses in Reference 1. James Altgens is a corroborating witness, discussed in Reference 8.

    83 This image presents even more challenges to a frontal headshot at Z-313, which means that the traditional believer in conspiracy might become even more bewildered than a WC supporter. See Reference 8 for further discussion of this paradox.

    84 https://www.bevfitchett.us/gunshot-wounds/centerfire-rifle-bullets.html. Incidentally, ingested game that contains lead is distinctly unhealthy. It should be left to the elderly.

    85 The images in Figure 14 were supplied by David Josephs.

    86 http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/brains/compare/size6.

    Principal References

    1. Fetzer, J. H., ed. (1998). Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK. Chicago, Catfeet Press.
    2. Fetzer, J. H., ed. (2000). Murder in Dealey Plaza: What We Know Now that We Didn’t Know Then about the Death of JFK. Chicago, Catfeet Press.
    3. Fetzer, J. H., ed. (2003). The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK. Chicago, Catfeet Press.
    4. David W. Mantik (2003). “Twenty Conclusions after Nine Visits”, an online lecture. https://assassinationresearch.com/v2n2/pittsburgh.pdf.
    5. Gary L. Aguilar, M.D. and Kathy Cunningham (2003). “How Five Investigations into JFK’s Medical Evidence Got It Wrong.”
    6. Horne, D. P. (2009). Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government’s Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK. Self-published.
    7. David W. Mantik (2009). “The JFK Skull X-rays: Evidence for Forgery,” A Lecture for JFK Lancer. http://www.assassinationscience.com/JFK_Skull_X-rays.htm.
    8. David W. Mantik (2015). JFK’s Head Wounds: A Final Synthesis—and a New Analysis of the Harper Fragment. e-book.
    9. David W. Mantik (2015). “The John F. Kennedy Autopsy X-rays: The Saga of the Largest ‘Metallic Fragment’” (peer-viewed article). http://www.journals.ke-i.org/index.php/mra/article/view/177/78.
    10. David W. Mantik (2017). The State of Texas vs. Lee Harvey Oswald: “The JFK Autopsy Skull X-rays”, an online lecture prepared for the Mock Trial of Oswald. https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/the-state-of-texas-vs-lee-harvey-oswald-the-jfk-autopsy-skull-x-rays.
    11. David W. Mantik (2018). “JFK Paradoxes: A Primer for Beginners” (peer-reviewed article). http://escires.com/articles/Health-1-126.pdf.
    12. Michael Z. Chesser, M.D. (2017). “The Application of Forensic Principles for the Analysis of the Autopsy Skull X-rays of President Kennedy and a Review of the Brain Photographs.” This is a visual essay prepared by a neurologist and expert witness for the Mock Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, held at the South Texas College of Law in Houston, Texas, November 16-17, 2017. https://statick2k-5f2f.kxcdn.com/images/pdf/michael-chesser-houston-2017.pdf.

    The Mantik Website: http://themantikview.dealeyplazauk.org.uk/