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JFK Autopsy X-rays: David Mantik vs. Pat Speer

A Critique of http://www.patspeer.com/
Chapters 18a, 18b, and 19b

It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.

~Mark Twain

Note 1: When I printed Speer’s essays, page numbers appeared; I use those numbers here.
Note 2: For my Dallas lecture (2009), see The JFK Skull X-rays: Evidence for Forgery
Note 3: ARRB summaries (Horne’s Appendices 43-46) of the three forensic experts

Introduction to this Critique

Jim DiEugenio brought the extraordinary work of Pat Speer to my attention. Since Jim wanted my feedback, and because Speer’s interests overlapped mine, I devoted several slides in my Dallas talk to Pat’s two chief proposals: explanations for the 6.5 mm object on JFK’s AP skull X-ray, and for the White Patch on the lateral skull X-rays. I first met Pat in the hallway after my talk, where I identified him by his name tag and we had a brief and courteous chat. I recall being surprised that he had not attended my lecture, although I later learned (from his website) that he had caught the last few minutes. It is the only time we have exchanged any dialogue. About a year later I visited his website again; that visit has prompted this review. At the above website, Speer has established a new record by nominating over 30 individuals for a rogue’s gallery, i.e., individuals who have made (meaningful) mistakes in this JFK case:

Speer’s Gallery of Rogues

Aguilar	Horne	Myers (aka Meyers)
Baden	Kurtz	Morgan
Bell	Lattimer	Peters
Bugliosi	Lifton	Piziali
Crenshaw	Lindenberg	Robertson
Davis	Mantik	Spitz
Durnavitch	McAdams	Sturdivan
Fackler	McCarthy	Wecht
Fetzer	McClelland	White
Groden	McDonnel
All the doctors who testified in the ABA mock trial (1992)

After Speer’s self-assured omniscience at ferreting out these blunders (and their guilty sponsors), I was not too daunted at seeing my own name among such an illustrious throng. However, it quickly got worse: Speer had nominated me for a special citation. Not only had I made (many) mistakes, but I had lied:

I’d never considered that, in order to convince his audience they should ignore my ramblings, that he would lie. That’s right, I wrote “lie” (Speer, 19b, p. 25).

So, after seven decades, I finally qualified as a liar. Curiously, my problem has always been the reverse – that of being too honest. (Speer cites me as lying about the location of the (presumed) lead smudge on the Harper fragment and about the explanation for the White Patch.) My devout Pentecostal mother, who had persistently drummed one lesson into my childhood head – never to lie – would have risen from her grave had she heard that charge. I have never been able to shake those shackles (of never lying), and my children are afflicted as well. But Speer still wasn’t done – he gamely went on to proffer some other attention-grabbing remarks:

Before I began this project I knew virtually nothing about x-rays.

Durnavitch, and just about everybody else who’s written about the x-rays, was wrong.

And yet it seems I’ve uncovered many issues not addressed by the so-called experts.

I offer one important clarification in this critique. After my Dallas lecture I recognized, with some regret, that I had left the audience with a confused picture of the (apparent) site of lead debris on the Harper fragment. Speer gets credit for also noticing this, and the audience has my apologies. The confusion arose from new evidence on the Harper X-ray, discovered by John Hunt. The X-ray showed the metal debris to lie at the opposite pole of the Harper fragment from where I had originally placed it (a placement that had been based solely on the photographs). For my Dallas lecture I showed only a close-up image (slide 19) of the Harper X-ray (courtesy of John Hunt), but I should have shown the entire X-ray. I correct that oversight here. However, if this new site for metal is accepted, Speer’s placement of the Harper fragment (like Riley’s and Angel’s) suffers grievous trauma.

Chapter 18: X-ray Specs

Note 4: This is actually Chapter 18a (18b follows), but Speer labels it simply as 18.
Note 5: These twenty questions were prompted by Speer’s comments, although the wording here is (mostly) my own.

1. Why were the JFK X-rays taken with a portable unit – and does it matter? (p. 1)

No, it does not matter. The autopsy suite had no installed unit, so the only option was a portable unit. But Speer quotes (p. 7) Dr. John Ebersole (the autopsy radiologist, who practiced as a radiation oncologist): for the evening’s chief purpose (locating metallic debris), this unit was quite satisfactory. I agree that a permanently installed unit would have added very little to this quest. The available images, which Speer describes as “poor,” are actually quite adequate to the task. Furthermore, to call the portable equipment “not first-rate,” as he does, is a gratuitous attack on GE, which was a major manufacturer of such portable equipment (and was also located in my childhood home of Wisconsin).

2. Was the club-shaped (metallic) object in the forehead “basically invisible to the naked eye” on the original X-rays? (pp. 2 and 22)

No, that’s wrong. Speer is correct to say that this object is hard to see on the unenhanced prints, but that is quite irrelevant – it is very easy to see on the extant X-rays. No one has ever said otherwise. See this fragment in my Figures 1 and 2 here. So far as I know, Speer has never actually viewed the extant X-rays at NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), so his conclusions derive solely from the published prints. (He has never asked me about my own viewing of the X-rays at NARA.) This fact (of his viewing only prints) becomes even more significant later in this critique (when he introduces his “slice”). Instead of the label “club-shaped” I have used “7 x 2 mm”; this describes its size (uncorrected for magnification) on the X-ray film. I have no intrinsic objection, however, to Speer’s label. My Figures 1 and 2 are the enhanced X-ray prints prepared by the HSCA. Given a choice of viewing the extant X-rays or the enhanced prints, most experts would prefer to see the X-rays. The enhanced prints were produced primarily because they more accurately reflect the X-ray images (than do the unenhanced prints). Jim DiEugenio has asked whether the chiaroscuro effect (dark-light contrast) is as apparent on the actual X-rays as in the prints. Based on my recollection, that answer is “No.” The act of printing is what increases the contrast; as anyone can see, that effect is especially evident in the unenhanced prints of the X-rays.

Figure 1. The AP skull X-ray. Note the 6.5 “metal” object within the upper right orbit (vertical yellow arrow). The elongated fragment (7 x 2 mm), lying above and to the viewer’s left of the 6.5 mm object (horizontal red arrow), was authentic and was removed by Humes. The trail of debris (oblique rose arrow), in turn, lies above this, at the very top of the skull. The single, tiny piece of shrapnel in the left scalp is indicated by the horizontal green arrow. Speer’s “wing” is identified by the oblique orange arrow (right side of skull). The residual right lateral skull is identified by a vertical blue arrow. Metallic debris (claimed by Speer not to exist) just inferior to the 6.5 mm object, is identified by a horizontal lavender arrow. Some of these (lavender) fragments may have correlates on the lateral X-ray, which would then mark them as authentic metal debris.

Figure 2. The right lateral skull X-ray. Note the faintly visible, tiny metal fragment (OTF, i.e., outer table fragment) at the far rear (oblique yellow arrow), just inferior to the discontinuity (fracture). This fragment correlates with (part of) the 6.5 mm object seen on the AP X-ray. The 7×2 mm fragment, removed by Humes, is at the very front (horizontal red arrow). The single, tiny piece of shrapnel high in the left scalp is indicated by the horizontal green arrow. The external auditory canal (large dark dot) is identified by a vertical pink arrow. The oblique orange arrow in the center identifies Speer’s “wing.” The vertical blue arrow (near the top) identifies Speer’s “large disintegrated fragment” (LDF). Two tiny metallic-like fragments (invisible here – lavender arrow) can be seen on the X-rays at NARA, near the inferior pole of OTF. None, however, lie inside of OTF. Furthermore, some of them may have correlates on the AP X-ray, near the 6.5 mm object, which would then mark them as authentic, tiny metallic debris.

3. Is it reasonable to conclude that the failure of Humes and friends to mention the apparent metal fragment seen within JFK’s right orbit (which I have described as the 6.5 mm object) was “some kind of mistake”? (p. 2)

This is a clear mistake all right, but one by Speer, not by Humes. The pathologists were hardly the only ones to view the X-rays that night. While in the morgue, these images were on public display, where many attendees saw them and commented on them. But no one ever described the 6.5 mm object that night. And that was the whole point of the exercise – surely someone would have pointed it out. Even my son (at age 6) and daughter (at age 4) both easily identified it as the dominant feature of the AP X-ray (neither one was then board certified). When I asked Ebersole about it, he abruptly – and forever – stopped talking about the autopsy (listen to my taped interview at NARA). The explanation is simple – it was not there that night. Larry Sturdivan has his own idea: he does not regard this thing as metal (I agree). Instead, he describes it as an artifact (it is), although he seems a bit lost about how that happened (he is not alone). Furthermore, even if Sturdivan were right about this – and it was present that night – how in the world did everyone overlook it? Sturdivan does not comment on this. Even the ARRB experts (see my note 3 above for a reference) all emphasized the gross inconsistency (in optical density) of this thing as viewed on the AP X-ray vs. its partner image on the lateral X-ray. Furthermore, they all agreed on how to correlate its image on the AP with its image on the lateral X-rays, i.e., the 3D coordinates of the 6.5 mm object correlated with the fragment at the rear of the skull. (In my Figure 2, I have labeled this latter object as OTF – for “outer table fragment” – a phrase that derives from the Clark Panel.)

Such a gross inconsistency in optical density had never before occurred in forensic radiology. But the ultimate proof of this gross violation of basic radiology principles lies in the optical density (OD) data. Subjective opinions of the X-rays come cheap, but the OD measurements thoroughly validate these conclusions of gross inconsistency – and they do so in a quantitative (and potentially reproducible) fashion. These results were published in Assassination Science (James Fetzer 1998, pp. 120-137). Regrettably, except for incorrectly using one graph below, Speer does not address these OD data, nor does he offer even an opinion on why they might not be reliable. These data show that the 6.5 mm object (as seen on the AP X-ray) must be longer (from front to back) than all of JFK’s dental amalgams stacked side by side – which is an obvious paradox. Aside from photographic superposition (in the darkroom) of this 6.5 mm object onto the AP X-ray, no one has even begun to explain that curious fact. Speer has now joined a large congregation of onlookers who have remained literally dumbstruck by the paradox of this 6.5 mm object. As just one example, John Fitzpatrick, the ARRB’s forensic radiologist, who reviewed the 6.5 mm object on two different days, “…continued to be disturbed and puzzled by the fact that the large radio-opaque object in the AP skull X-ray could not be located on the lateral skull X-rays.” See my Appendix 1 here for a summary of his findings. Even David Davis of the HSCA (p. 10) had trouble with these X-rays; he said, “It is impossible to work this out entirely.”

4. Is the second largest fragment on the X-rays (on the “path of disintegrated fragments,” according to Speer) the same as the one that Sibert and O’Neill described as lying at the rear of the skull? (p. 2)

Probably not. Speer identifies the “next largest fragment” as lying on the main trail (see his figure on his p. 1). See my Figures 1 and 2, where I have labeled this fragment as LDF (for “large disintegrated fragment”). In my opinion, Sibert and O’Neill’s description is too vague to interpret with certainty, but the outer table fragment (OTF) would, in common parlance at least, be described as lying at the rear, whereas LDF would be described as near the top of the skull (or near the crown, as Speer says). Fortunately, we don’t really need to rely too much on Sibert and O’Neill in this matter, so let’s move on.

5. Was JFK struck by a ricochet fragment? (pp. 3-4)

Yes, most likely he was, perhaps by even more than one. Howard Donahue (whose home I once visited) lists the evidence for these events (Mortal Error 1992, Bonar Menninger). OTF is a good candidate for this. Another is a small fragment near the top of the scalp – on the left side (see Figures 1 and 2). This latter one is visible on both the AP and lateral skull X-rays, even in poor quality prints, and it does lie way off the main trail of debris. Its appearance on the extant X-rays (as viewed at NARA) is totally consistent on the two views and also strongly suggests a metallic fragment. Furthermore, there are even other candidates for ricochet fragments (they are well off the main trail of debris), which I have observed at NARA. Also see my comments under Figures 1 and 2 about very tiny metal fragments near OTF (on the lateral X-ray) and also near the 6.5 mm object (on the AP X-ray). (For data on ricochet angles, see “FBI: Bouncing Bullets.” FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin. S. 2-6 u. 20-23. Washington, Sept/Oct 1969. A more recent article is by L. C. Haag, “Bullet ricochet: an empirical study and a device for measuring ricochet angle.” AFTE Journal 7 (3): 44-51, December 1975.) Whether such bullets must have struck James Chaney (as Speer insists, albeit without any analysis) would depend critically on the origin of the shot (Speer only mentions the sniper’s nest) as well as its timing. Chaney was a motorcycle man located to JFK’s rear; his Wikipedia entry describes him as the closest witness to the assassination – except for the limousine occupants. However, Speer is correct to cite Vincent DiMaio and to conclude that ricochet bullets do not break into narrow cross-sections or slices (even though Speer promptly introduces his own slice). He is also correct to confirm that the nose and tail of the bullet (which supposedly deposited the 6.5 mm object) were both reportedly found in the limousine. Unfortunately, since he has just quoted DiMaio, Speer sows confusion when he apparently states the opposite:

When one considers that the fragment is, according to both the Clark Panel and the HSCA Pathology Panel, 6.5 mm in diameter, the same as a cross-section of the bullet, moreover, the conclusion that the fragment was a “slice” seems obvious.

Even more puzzling, he seems to reverse himself once more on the next page (p. 4): “…it makes little sense to believe that the middle of a bullet…would get sliced off upon entrance to the skull…”. I think that what Speer means is that a slice can arise after entering the skull, but not at the point of entry. But he does insist that the 6.5 mm object represents an authentic piece of metal, one that came from the “middle of the bullet.” That is, of course, an extraordinary denouement – unsupported by any forensic data, and surely not approved by DiMaio. Here is what the HSCA’s ballistics expert (Larry Sturdivan) thinks of this proposal:

In the Biophysics Lab tests, most of the bullets’ jackets ruptured about midway through the skulls. The projectile would only break into disks if a person were shot by something like a roll of coins. When they break up in the target, real bullets break into irregular pieces of jacket, sometimes complete enough to contain pieces of lead core. It cannot break into circular slices, especially one with a circular bite out of the edge. As radiologist David Mantik points out in the book edited by Fetzer, there is no corresponding density on the lateral x-ray. The slightly lighter area indicated by the FPP [Forensic Pathology Panel] as the lateral view of this object is not nearly light enough to be a metal disk seen edge-on. As bright as it is seen flat in the frontal x-ray, it should be even brighter when seen edge-on in the lateral. If an object is present in only one x-ray view, it could not have been embedded in the president’s skull or scalp. (The JFK Myths 2005, pp. 192-193)

To make matters even worse, since Speer claims that the JFK X-rays are authentic, he must also believe that this 6.5 mm object was indeed present on the AP X-ray that night – but that no one noticed it. Speer totally evades this profound conundrum, as if he were blissfully unaware of it.

Speer also quotes from DiMaio (Gunshot Wounds: Practical Aspects 1985, p. 90), who reports no ricochet from a 6.5 mm full metal-jacketed bullet for impact angles of 20º and 30º. The following data (from the same table), however, are omitted by Speer. For this same bullet, a ricochet angle of 1.6º results from an impact angle of 10º. In addition, for impact angles of 30º, various other bullets yield ricochet angles of 1.19º – 2.48º. DiMaio also adds that partial metal-jacketed bullets usually break up on impact and then pepper the body with fragments from the jacket or from the core. He notes that these projectiles typically lodge in or just beneath the skin (that reminds me of JFK’s back wound). The multiple, tiny metallic fragments I saw in the skull X-rays (and the shallow projectile that caused the back wound, too) might thus be explained via such ricochet, but Speer carefully avoids following DiMaio down that path. Several pages later (p. 12), Speer notes that the nose of the bullet (CE-567) was covered with skin [for laboratory analyses of evidence released by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) click here], so the question naturally arises: Was this the projectile that caused JFK’s back wound? The problem, of course, is that this nose fragment was officially discovered in the front seat of the limousine so, unless some mix-up later occurred, that explanation won’t work.

6. Was the right half of JFK’s brain “turned to mush” by gunfire? (p. 5)

Since Speer regards the brain photos as truly JFK’s, he needs to square this comment with the nearly intact right brain seen in the autopsy photos. Unfortunately, he totally evades this issue. In fact, the OD data demonstrate that a good deal of the right brain was actually missing (which is consistent with the Parkland observations). Ultimately, however, this question cannot be answered – because authentic photographs of the brain no longer exist (Inside the Assassination Records Review Board 2009, Douglas Horne, Chapter 10).

7. Is it common for the brain to settle at the rear after gunshot wounds? (p. 6)

Perhaps it does. Speer cites a peer reviewed article (Radiology 240; No. 2, pp. 522-528, August 2006), in which this occurred in 8 of 10 cases, but he omits the following details. This study included 78 wound tracks in 13 cases, i.e., about six per person (which is clearly different from JFK). All subjects were injured by high-velocity 7.62 mm bullets from an AK-47 (probably also different from JFK). The authors admit that decompositional changes (especially in the brain) could have affected their interpretation. In particular, a distinct linear track within the brain could not be identified in any case. In addition, they emphasize that their small sample size limited their conclusions and they reported that their results would still need to be confirmed in a larger study. I would add that Doug DeSalles and I do not recall a similar outcome (of such brain settling) in any of the nineteen (19, not 9) cases we reviewed (of fatal gunshot wounds to the skull). Also, as best I can now recall, our cases typically had suffered only a single head shot. If such a CT scan study had been available for JFK, many of today’s mysteries about his skull trauma would have vanished; in particular, a 3D reconstruction of a skull (in this Radiology article) shows a remarkably detailed image of the comminuted skull fragments and skull fractures.

8. Does it make any sense that the cowlick bullet (I think Speer has in mind the HSCA scenario) did not leave any fragments around the entry hole? (pp. 6 and 14)

But it did leave small fragments! See my slide 33 from the Dallas lecture or my Figure 3 here. My sketch shows tiny metallic debris lying immediately inferior to the 6.5 mm object and at least one piece (paradoxically) inside the 6.5 mm object! (There may be more inside.) These (exterior) pieces can actually be seen in my Figure 1 (horizontal lavender arrow). These observations were made before my Lasik surgery, when I was extremely myopic (-9 diopters) and I could see such small objects in amazing detail without eyeglasses. That these things are metal is strongly suggested by the lateral X-ray, where two tiny fragments lie near the inferior pole of OTF (but outside of it). These two may well have correlating images on the AP X-ray; such a correlation would virtually guarantee their authenticity as metallic debris (presumably from a ricochet). If OTF is authentic, no other fragments should be seen superimposed over the inside of it; in fact, none are (which is different from the 6.5 mm object seen on the AP X-ray).

Figure 3. This is a magnified view of the 6.5 mm object, as I sketched it in my NARA notebook; I was still very myopic at that time so I could see nearby objects in remarkable detail. Notice the three fragments immediately outside of it and at least one inside its borders (all identified by red arrows). In addition, note the original, authentic fragment (cross-hatched – oblique blue arrow), which was probably described by the FBI. This one correlates with OTF (outer table fragment) seen on the right lateral skull X-ray; both the size and location (of the cross-hatched fragment) match to OTF. With my naked and myopic eyes I could actually see this cross-hatched, authentic fragment as an optical superposition. Speer fails to locate OTF anywhere on the AP X-ray, but he is apparently unaware of this gaffe. (This figure is similar to slide 33 in my Dallas lecture.)

Here is Speer’s actual comment, which is clearly wrong (about no small fragments located near the 6.5 mm object):

…defying expectation, there were no small fragments surrounding the [HSCA’s] supposed in-shoot in the cowlick, then one should rightly conclude that the lateral x-ray demonstrates convincingly that a bullet broke up near the site of the supposed out-shoot, above the right ear. I’d bet everything I have on it. And have.

So Speer seems to say that the 6.5 mm object arose near the exit site, after which it presumably (in his scenario) traveled to its final resting site, where his “slice” is now seen in my Figure 4. (A bit more clarity from Speer would help here.) More importantly, however, he offers no evidence whatsoever from forensics that such an event is even possible.

Figure 4. Seeing is Believing. This figure is copied from Speer’s p. 21. The oblique blue arrow (Speer’s arrow, not mine) identifies his “slice,” which (he claims) correlates with the 6.5 mm object on the AP X-ray. Of course, by reaching this conclusion, Speer has only created another paradox – he leaves OTF (outer table fragment) without a correlating image on the AP X-ray, but he seems unconscious of this.

9. Do radiologist Randy Robertson and neuroanatomist Joseph Riley agree that the JFK X-rays are authentic, and that there are no radiologists who share the opposite opinion and thereby agree with me? (p. 6)

It is true that Robertson and Riley disagree with me. (I don’t know who Burnett is, but Speer cites him as a radiology colleague of Randy Robertson.) However, neither of them has attempted to explain any of the paradoxical OD data. For that matter, no professional has even tried to explain the obvious paradox of the 6.5 mm object as viewed on the AP vs. its corresponding image on the lateral – the ARRB experts are excellent examples of this (failure to explain). In the history of forensic radiology, this is a unique event. It is true that there is no published list of radiologists who support my view. However, my best friend (a superb diagnostic radiologist), who played a critical role in illuminating how X-rays were copied in the 1960s, is a strong supporter of my views. Dr. Siple (whom I met), a friend of Harry Livingstone (see Siple’s comments in Harry’s books), had long suspected that the X-rays were composites (Assassination Science 1998, p. 156), which matches my own view. My Dallas lecture also cites Arthur G. Haus, the chief medical physicist at Kodak (whom I have met), as not offering any critique of my original OD paper; on the contrary, he found it very interesting. (Of course, as a then-Kodak employee, he could not make comments that might affect his own company.) But the chief problem, as Speer himself notes (based on his own online efforts), is a lack of interest by diagnostic radiologists; by his own report, he apparently got feedback from only one, and that discussion did not relate to the OD paradoxes. Finally, I did eventually receive a letter from the ARRB’s forensic radiologist, John Fitzpatrick, in which he made no substantive comments and firmly declined to discuss the JFK X-rays (Appendix 2). So the matter rests.

10. Were JFK’s X-rays overexposed? (pp. 7-8)

This is a common allegation, but it is misleading. Speer also buys into this myth – he even castigates Custer and Reed for screwing up so badly (even though, paradoxically, he later prefers their opinions – on other matters – over that of true experts). Think about this: no one claims that the other X-rays (of JFK’s extra-cranial sites) were likewise overexposed. They weren’t. So why would the skull X-rays alone be overexposed? Actually, they are not. It is common practice for X-rays to contain optical densities in the range of 0.5 to 2.0, so that the human eye can make rather easy distinctions among different densities. In fact, except for the Dark Area, most of the ODs on the JFK skull X-rays do lie within that typical range, as I have verified via hundreds of measurements. Even the densest bone (the petrous) falls within that range. Back when I first viewed them, the skull X-rays did not strike me as overexposed. Furthermore, such a response has not characterized other viewing experts either, e.g., none of the ARRB experts said that. One exception to this is Russell Morgan, who called them “severely overexposed” (p. 17). [Morgan was the forensic radiologist on the Clark Panel (named for US Attorney General Ramsey Clark), which published its report (of no conspiracy) on January 16, 1969, just days before the Garrison trial began. This panel was led by Russell Fisher, a forensic pathologist. Curiously (some would say suspiciously) both Russells had offices at Johns Hopkins University; in addition, the report had been long delayed, perhaps to counteract the Garrison trial. The Clark report can be found here.] However, with less exposure, the White Patch would be even whiter – and its OD would fall below the normal range for viewing X-rays! Interestingly, Morgan chose to ignore this absurdity. The HSCA, of course, enhanced the X-rays, but I suspect that was mostly to obtain useful prints for publication. (Printing changes the contrast.)

Speer claims that I failed to discuss issues of contrast in the JFK X-rays, thereby imputing this supposed failure to my specialty as a radiation oncologist. By contrast, Speer favorably quotes another radiation oncologist (John Ebersole) but then generously overlooks his specialty (which was the same as mine). More to the point, though, Speer ignores my history as a physicist, which is actually far more germane to this matter than is my specialty. (Just ask a random diagnostic radiologist some detailed OD questions, especially about characteristic curves, if you seek proof of this.) I had, in fact, addressed these issues in some detail in a rather long, but unpublished manuscript (privately circulated in 1994). Many pages were devoted to technical issues regarding OD, including characteristic curves of X-ray films. Although Speer is probably ignorant of this history, he failed even to be curious about it, and instead falsely accused me of being superficial.

Now one final point should seal the deal. I measured the ODs in the background of these X-rays, where only air surrounds the body. These background ODs provide a very useful check on the relative exposure of one X-ray film compared to another. The ODs quoted here are based on several measurements (up to ten) for each X-ray, but the range of ODs on each one was narrow. Here are the mean ODs: AP skull = 3.99; right lateral = 4.01; left lateral = 4.18; abdomen = 3.75; pelvis = 3.73. This represents only a modest range of exposures among the different anatomic sites. The one outlier is the chest, with a mean background OD of 3.42. This implies a lower exposure, but since lung tissue does not need as much exposure, that would be expected. In fact, to use the same exposure for the chest as for the pelvis or abdomen would lead to an overexposure. In short, all of these numbers fit together very well and are not at all surprising. Further support for this conclusion comes from John B. Cahoon (Formulating X-ray Techniques 1966, pp. 167-168). Suggested exposures for the abdomen, pelvis, and skull are almost identical: for the same current (100 milliampere-seconds), they differ only modestly in voltage (respectively 62, 64, and 70 kV). By contrast, the suggested PA chest exposure is only 10 milliampere-seconds (at 62 kV), a much lower exposure. These exposures are completely compatible with the background ODs on the JFK X-rays. Therefore, to claim that the skull X-rays were incorrectly exposed (and also to accept that the extra-cranial X-rays were correctly exposed – which they were) makes no sense. This discussion should just be put to bed – and Morgan was wrong to say that overexposure had occurred. The OD data convincingly close this case.

11. Did I employ contrast enhanced X-rays for the OD measurements? (p. 8)

No – definitely not. This is an eccentric charge by Speer, and it reflects badly on his approach to this subject. At NARA, I used only the extant X-ray films, not prints and not enhanced X-rays. In fact, while at NARA I never even viewed prints of X-rays or any enhanced X-rays. It is true, though, that the published prints of the JFK skull X-rays have been enhanced, but that is because the prints of the unenhanced X-rays do not accurately portray the extant X-rays. In print format, the enhanced X-rays are closer in image content to the extant X-rays. Since Speer had been exchanging e-mails with Fetzer (he quotes Fetzer), he could easily have asked Fetzer (about whether I had used the extant X-rays), but he forgot to ask. Of course, Steve Tilley (and Gary Aguilar, too) can also verify exactly what I used. Speer concludes with this statement:

I must admit that I …find Mantik’s conclusion the x-rays have been altered premature, and unconvincing (p. 8).

How Speer reaches this remarkable conclusion, without once addressing any actual OD data, he does not explain. Even if Speer were ultimately to prevail here, such opinions, reached without serious underpinnings, cannot become candidates for serious conversation. He could, at the very least, offer an opinion on why the ODs of the White Patch are similar to those of the petrous bone (in the right lateral X-ray) – after all, three layers of bone will not explain this. Another troubling paradox for Speer is that the White Patch and the petrous bone are not nearly so similar to one another (in OD) on the left lateral skull X-ray. Of course, this might well have occurred if the double exposure – of the fake White Patch – had been somewhat different on the two lateral X-rays.

12. Why is there no consensus on what is shown in the x-rays? (p. 17)

This is the easiest question of all; just think – if forgery had occurred, then that is precisely the expected (and almost certain) outcome! On the contrary, with honest X-rays no such persisting confusion should ever have arisen. Notice, in particular, how the 6.5 mm object greatly troubled John Fitzpatrick (the ARRB’s forensic radiologist) – so concerned was he that he even returned to it for a second day, yet he never could explain it. Speer does not address issues of authenticity in any detail, which – in view of Fitzpatrick’s failure to solve the puzzle – should scarcely surprise us. Speer then cites his reluctance to

…go through every wrong or misguided statement made by a conspiracy theorist [as if wearing blinders, Speer fails to recognize that my OD data are actually experimental, not theoretical], David Mantik and Doug Horne’s status within the so-called research community are of such a proportion that I find it necessary to note the numerous mistakes in their collected works. Here is one such mistake by Horne…

Speer then quotes at length from Horne (who was citing me): in short, I stated that the HSCA site shows no entry (as confirmed by the OD data, a basis that Speer ignores), but Speer claims that this conclusion is evidence of my belief in an exit high on the rear of the head. He finishes by suggesting that the HSCA entry site may be real, but merely be located somewhere else! (No evidence is offered for this.) Here is my response to this semantic bog.

Via detailed OD measurements, I was not able to locate a hole at the rear of the skull anywhere near the HSCA entry site. And where the main trail of debris projects to the rear of the skull, the AP X-rays suggest no skull bone, so it is natural to assume that some debris did exit there. However, in the absence of skull bone, one surely cannot expect to see a “hole” in that vicinity. That some debris did, in fact, exit to the rear, where it struck the follow-up limousine and at least one motorcyclist, seems quite certain. The other option for such an exit, of course, is the hole in the right occiput, as reported at Parkland. This is, of course, much lower than the main trail of debris. As expected, Speer does not mention this latter site as a possible exit.

13. Is there a “distortion” problem on the skull X-rays? (p. 19)

No – definitely not. The dictionary definition of “distortion” is a “change in shape.” What Speer actually means is magnification, which is quite another matter. Magnification alone does not change the shape of an object. Although magnification does affect these X-rays, that effect is easily manageable.

14. “Believing is Seeing” – did Speer find the right object on the lateral X-ray film to correlate with the 6.5 mm object on the AP? (p. 21)

Surely not. The so-called “slice” that Speer identifies on the lateral X-ray (my Figure 4) is the ultimate “boner” (Speer himself introduced this pun – see p. 18). No expert has ever identified that site as a piece of metal. Even Speer, if he had viewed the extant X-rays, would not have made such a blooper. The discussion that follows from his misidentification should just be ignored – totally. The reader should simply ask himself a simple question: Who is more likely to be correct – an amateur who has viewed only prints or zillions of experts, who have seen the X-rays? It is true that phrases (some by Humes, but others have contributed, too – see pp. 24-26) have imprecisely located the 7×2 mm fragment (Speer’s club), but the bottom line is simple: despite the semantic fog, there is really only one large metallic fragment under discussion – and it’s not the “slice” cited by Speer. His “slice” is just a bone spicule, certainly not metal. It has nothing to do with the case, except that it might have resulted from trauma. The only authentic large metal fragment involved in the autopsy is the 7×2 mm one (identified in my Figures 1 and 2), which Humes removed. Speer might also want to read again his own quotes from Humes (p. 25), about the 6.5 mm object: “I can’t be sure I see it in the lateral at all, do you?” And this one too: “I don’t remember retrieving anything of that size. “

15. Does the metal fragment at the rear of the skull (OTF) correlate with the 6.5 mm object seen on the AP? (pp. 23-28)

Yes – definitely! If you disagree, then try this question: Given the metal fragment at the rear (OTF) of the right lateral X-ray, where is its correlate on the AP? I have never found anyone who can answer this question – unless it lies (paradoxically) inside the 6.5 mm object. And that is precisely what my myopic eyes saw at NARA – an optical superposition of the faked 6.5 mm object over the underlying authentic fragment at the rear of the skull (OTF).

16. Has Speer explained the discrepancy between the 7×2 mm fragment (seen on the X-rays) and the quite different fragment in evidence at NARA? (p. 30)

No, he has not. John Hunt has summarized sample-size requirements (private communication):

According to Heiberger [of the FBI], the optimal mass of the spectroscopy sample was a milligram or less. Heiberger explained that ‘it would be about the size of a period at the end of a sentence.’ So small was the preferred sample size, according to Heiberger, Gallagher, and Corbie, that it was necessary to remove and prepare it under a 20X microscope. Heiberger also stated that they would be judicious with the blade when the samples were meager. ‘No more of a sample than was necessary would be removed,’ recalled Heiberger.

Hunt discovered that only 2 mg was actually taken for spectroscopy. This is only a tiny fraction of the original mass (106.92 mg) of the larger fragment.

Speer claims that I insist the 6.5 mm object is not visible on the back of the head. This is scarcely an accurate portrayal of my work. On the contrary, I have repeatedly stated that the location of OTF (on the lateral X-ray) correlates extremely well with the 6.5 mm object on the AP X-ray. So do virtually all experts who have viewed these films. The real issue is slightly, but seriously, different: Are the ODs of this thing consistent from one view to another? That answer is clearly, “No,” as even the ARRB experts readily emphasized. But Speer is relentless – he then also takes Horne to task for misrepresenting the situation. Somehow, though, Speer has still missed the point – it’s all about the inconsistent ODs, not the 3D coordinates (which do match). But then, strangely enough, Speer notes my “…near religious belief the fragment in the AP X-ray [the 6.5 mm object] has been added atop a much-smaller pre-existing fragment…”. So it seems (at least semantically) that he can state my proposal, despite his earlier misrepresentations. Unfortunately, as before, Speer does not even begin to address the actual OD data that support my conclusion (of superposition). That the OD data (presumably hard science) provide the basis for my “religious” belief, according to Speer, is especially ironic. Oddly enough, if he had known of my remarkable religious pilgrimage, he might even have winked at me while making such a statement. But let’s put the chief question directly to Speer: If OTF (on the lateral X-ray) does not match (in 3D) to the 6.5 mm object (on the AP X-ray), then where we do see the correlate of OTF on the AP? If I could choose one question for Speer to address, this is it. To date, no one has dared to answer this question. Speer, of course, has chosen to match his “slice” (on the lateral X-ray) with the 6.5 mm object (seen on the AP). But that leaves OTF without a partner on the AP X-ray, which is surely a unique event in the history of radiology.

17. Was the 6.5 mm object actually that size on the AP X-ray? (p. 33)

Yes, of course it was. This size was cited by both the HSCA and the Clark Panel. That size is merely based on a physical measurement (no magnification correction) on the AP X-ray, which is a trivial matter. Since this thing correlates with the metal at the rear of the right lateral skull X-ray (OTF), then magnification should be not an issue (because OTF lay adjacent to the film). Of course, if my proposal of photographic superposition is accepted, then magnification is quite irrelevant. Speer cites my OD graphs (and displays one of them), from which he extracts a width of 7.4 mm. His measurement technique, however, is highly unorthodox. Most scientists would measure from the halfway point (between minimum and maximum ODs) at either end of the curve: that yields a width of 6.5 mm, which agrees with measurement directly on the extant X-ray film. This is hardly news – I had made that determination from the graph immediately after recording the data.

Chapter 18b: More Fun with X-rays

18. Does the overlapping bone (on the lateral X-ray) explain the “White Patch”? (pp. 6-10)

No, it does not – nor could it even do so in principle. First, these are two distinctly different areas, as should be obvious from the right lateral X-ray – the White Patch is much more posterior than the overlap area. See my image of the White Patch in Assassination Science 1998, p. 160, or slide 5 in my Dallas lecture, or my Figure 5 just below. Speer does not display my image, but he should have. For comparison, Speer displays his “wing” on his p. 7; that image is copied here in Figure 6.

Figure 5. Right lateral X-ray showing the White Patch and the Dark (Frontal) Area. For the image on the right, I have circled (black dotted line) the White Patch, but it is readily apparent, even to the naked eye, on the left image. Also note the absurdly identical whiteness (on the left image) in the petrous bone and in the White Patch. On the right image, the petrous bone (which surrounds the external auditory canal – pink arrow) is faintly circled, while the Dark Area is circled in white. The external auditory canal locates the approximate center of the external ear (see my Figure 2).

Figure 6. Where is the “Wing”? This image is copied from Speer’s p. 4. He locates the “wing” between the two red lines. Presumably (although Speer does not state this clearly) the “wing” is identified by red shading. Notice that the “wing” lies directly superior to the external auditory canal (the latter is identified in my Figure 2), which is the approximate center of the external ear.

In his image (my Figure 6 here), Speer locates the “Actual tip of ‘wing’,” presumably meaning its most posterior tip (although his syntax is fuzzy). Even if that unreasonably far posterior location is accepted, it is still far too anterior to match the posterior border of the White Patch. The location of the White Patch, especially its posterior border, has repeatedly been confirmed by the OD data – it does not depend on the human eye (although it does match what the eye sees); in fact, the whitest area lies immediately anterior to the inner table of the occipital skull, well posterior to anyone’s location for the “wing.” Furthermore, it is visibly obvious (see Speer’s images) that the “wing” lies superior to the external ear and cannot extend far posteriorly. In my Figure 2, I have identified the external auditory canal, which Speer ignores; that structural feature clearly locates the external ear – without any ambiguity. Speer also ignores the evidence of the AP X-ray (my Figure 1). Notice there how the wing lies far out in space, quite detached from the skull. On the other hand, if the wing had extended far posteriorly (as Speer wants to believe), then some part of it would be seen much more medially in the AP X-ray, but it is not there. This argument is so powerful that little else need be said. But there is more.

Second, the ODs of these two areas are quite different: on the right lateral X-ray, the mean OD of the white patch (0.625 ±.055) is almost the same as the petrous bone (0.55), whereas a typical OD (1.33) for the overlap site is noticeably higher (than the White Patch), and it does not appear nearly so white to the eye. That visible difference is dramatically obvious in Figure 5 (especially on the right sided image). Speer claims that the White Patch was caused by three overlapping layers of bone. Despite his unrelenting caricature to the contrary, I have always accepted three layers of bone at the overlap site, although I have never emphasized this because no one (before Speer) had offered such a novel explanation for the White Patch. Incidentally, the three layers of overlapping bone should be obvious to anyone after viewing the AP X-ray (an image that Speer overlooks). He also argues that, because the ARRB experts (p. 10 and also Chapter 19b, pp. 26-27) noticed such bone overlap, they therefore support his conclusion that the overlap explains the White Patch. But that is simply absurd. We all (even me) understand that bone overlap (of three layers) is present. On the contrary, the question is this: Does the overlap explain the White Patch?

Third, the White Patch is so dense that whatever physical object it represents must appear somewhere on the AP X-ray film. I made this argument from the very beginning, even at our first press conference in New York City (1993). That transcript is reproduced in Assassination Science 1998 (p. 155) and warrants a quote here:

On the frontal [AP] X-ray, such an extremely dense [physical] object should have been as visible as a tyrannosaurus rex in downtown Manhattan at noon. However, when I looked at the frontal X-ray, there was no such beast to be seen.

No one has even tried to explain this paradox. Even worse, Speer seems oblivious to it.

Let’s next focus on the OD issues for overlapping bone, a quantitative exercise that Speer totally neglects. For these JFK skull X-rays, here are the pertinent OD changes (∆ODs) across various layers of bone: one layer = 0.45; two layers = 0.90; three layers = 1.35. The difference for one layer is easily measured at fracture lines; amazingly enough, Speer believes that I ignore these fracture lines (p. 9). If an extra bone layer truly explained the White Patch, then sites just outside the White Patch should yield ODs that are higher by about 0.45 (one layer). But that is not the case – on the contrary, the ODs suggest a difference of more than just one layer of bone. Of special interest is the OD over the occiput, at the very back of the skull (very close to the White Patch), where the bone is viewed tangentially: the data there suggest a ∆OD (compared to the White Patch) of not just more than one layer, but actually about two bone layers (i.e., it is much less white). In other words, the White Patch is truly an anomaly (much too white and with ODs that are far too low). It cannot possibly arise simply from overlapping bone. On the other hand, of course, a deliberate superposition of this area in the dark room could easily explain this paradox. That the ODs of the White Patch and the petrous bone are not nearly so identical (to one another) on the left lateral X-ray should also raise some doubt that not all is well in OD land.

Now recall that three layers of bone yield a ∆OD of 1.35. Since the measured OD (cited above) in the overlap area is already 1.33, the OD without the three layers of bone would be 1.35 + 1.33 = 2.68. The ODs in the maxillary sinuses (mostly air) are 2.89, so this value of 2.68 clearly suggests substantial missing brain in the overlap area. But the site in question (medial to the overlapping bone on the lateral X-ray) lies near the middle of the brain, where the autopsy photographs show no missing brain tissue! Also recall that the pathologists described the brain laceration as only 4.5 cm deep, which would lie just above the “wing.” (This level is demonstrated on the right lateral skull X-ray in the DiEugenio reference at the end of my Appendix 1 – see Figure 5A in that article.) Since Speer believes the autopsy photographs of the brain are JFK’s, this missing brain poses yet another paradox for him, which, of course, he does not address. The bottom line is that, given his state of knowledge, Speer has offered a zealous, honest and original proposal, but edicts are not evidence and proclamations are not proof. A thorough analysis of all of the data is always required. Moreover, he had seemed to agree with me (p. 5) that large dark areas (not merely fracture lines) represent missing brain, because the brain typically contributes much more to the overall OD than does bone, but in this specific discussion he has forgotten that lesson (or perhaps he changed his mind without telling us).

Speer also claims that the Dark Area contains only one layer of bone. Even a brief look at the AP X-ray, though, shows that this is most likely wrong. In my Figure 1, residual bone along the right lateral skull is indeed present (vertical blue arrow), and so is the symmetric bone on the left side; therefore two layers are present. Furthermore, Boswell’s autopsy diagram (cited by Speer, or see slide 23 in my Dallas lecture) clearly shows bone present on both sides of the skull in this region. Boswell’s skull drawings for the ARRB also confirm this (see my Figures 7 and 8 here). By simple logic therefore, the large Dark Area did not result from having only one layer of bone; it actually has two layers. On the contrary, the darkness must represent a large volume of missing brain. Moreover, Speer’s quoted Radiology article (if he accepts its conclusions) offers compelling evidence for just such missing brain at this anterior site (in those cases), but he seems to have forgotten what he read there.

Figure 7. Boswell’s drawing on a skull – lateral view. Doug Horne copied (onto a piece of paper) Boswell’s drawing on a 3D skull for the ARRB. Notice, in particular here, how much bone is present on the right lateral skull, in the region of the Dark (Frontal) Area (arrow). The latter phrase is my description of this dark region as seen on the lateral skull X-rays (both right and left).

Chapter 19b: Stuck in the Middle with You

Figure 8. Boswell’s drawing on a skull – AP view. This is the AP view of the same skull drawing by Boswell. Notice the presence of bone on both sides of the skull, where the Dark Area (arrow) would appear on the lateral skull X-rays.

19. Was the Oswald evidence tainted? (p. 14)

Yes, we agree! But if it was, why is Speer so certain that the medical evidence is so pristine?

20. What does the Harper fragment tell us? (pp. 21-25)

I have already offered my apology for confusing the audience with the site of the metallic debris on the Harper bone. Even though it is decisive, Speer does not cite the Harper X-ray at all, even though I did show the close-up view in Dallas. Using the Harper photographs, I had placed this (presumably) lead debris at one corner of the fragment. See Speer’s reproduction of the “Mystery Photo F8” (p. 21), or see slide 22 in my Dallas lecture. In retrospect, I don’t actually know which site the Dallas pathologists had picked, nor have I ever met anyone who knew. I only knew that they had picked some site. Just based on the photograph, though, the site I originally selected had looked suspicious to me, and, without the X-ray, I might still pick it today. The reader may wish to try this exercise himself, or even try it on friends. Quite amusingly, Speer (p. 24) also places the lead debris where I originally did! The Harper X-ray, however, shows the lead debris at the opposite pole of the fragment. See my Figures 9 and 10 here; the X-ray images are courtesy of John Hunt.

Figure 9. Harper fragment photos from the Dallas pathologists. The outer surface is on the left: note the faint lead smudge (red arrow) at the upper left, at the very edge. The inner surface is on the right. No evidence for metal of any kind is seen on this inside surface.

Figure 10. X-ray of the Harper fragment. Note the metallic debris, circled on the left, and shown enlarged on the right. This is the same site as the lead-like smudge that is identified on the photograph in my Figure 9 – just rotate either photo by 180º for easier comparison. John Hunt is acknowledged (and thanked) as the source for this X-ray, which he discovered at NARA.

Whether any metal is present at my originally selected site may not even be finally answered by the X-ray, but, in principle, it might have been decided by other physical and/or chemical tests performed on the actual bone (which is now long gone). For the present, therefore, we are stuck with the X-ray evidence. In his essay, Speer displays my placement of this fragment (p. 23) in the “Overhead View of Human Skull” from my Dallas lecture (slide 20). Notice where I have labeled “Metal debris – confirmed.” This is the metallic site identified in the Harper X-ray (Figure 10). On the exterior surface in the photographs (Figure 9) there is a suggestion of lead at the same site as the X-ray. If that evidence is accepted, then Angel’s (and Riley’s) placement of the Harper fragment (my Figure 11 here) does not make any sense. I had deliberately placed the Harper fragment (slide 20 of my Dallas lecture) deliberately too far to the right (for Angel’s placement), just because I did not want to obscure the sagittal suture. On the contrary, to correctly mimic Angel’s conclusion, the “Suture line, according to Lawrence Angel” should exactly overlap the sagittal suture (as it does in Angel’s sketch in my Figure 11 here). Of course, I do not accept Angel’s interpretation. Instead, the Harper fragment most likely came from the high occipital area, as I have argued elsewhere.

Figure 11. Angel’s placement of the Harper fragment (in blue). The delta fragment here (in red) lies anterior to the coronal suture (probably in its correct location). Note the suture line on the Harper fragment, a structure that Angel did accept. I borrowed this colored sketch from John Hunt; the uncolored version was published by the HSCA. The red arrow points at the metal debris (on the outside of the Harper fragment), based on the Harper X-ray.

According to Angel, the sagittal (i.e., midline, top of the head) suture is visible on the Harper fragment. That suture line helped Angel to locate the Harper fragment near the skull vertex, as shown in my Figure 11. However, based on the Harper X-ray, the lead site then lies just to the left of the skull vertex – and the lead is on the outside of the skull! That is truly bizarre. No one has ever proposed that a bullet entered at this site, yet that is precisely where Angel’s (and Riley’s) placement of the Harper fragment has led them. There is even more evidence (in a forthcoming essay) that my placement of the Harper fragment (mostly from the upper occipital area – see my essay in Murder in Dealey Plaza) is correct, after all. However the bottom line here is this: if one accepts the Harper X-ray evidence, then the Angel location – with lead lying to the left of midline on the outside – cannot possibly be correct. Angel, however, can be forgiven. He was told, as a fait accompli, that the occipital bone was intact, so he had little choice about where to put this bone. Also, even more importantly, he knew nothing about the Harper X-ray, but now everything has changed.

On Closed Minds

Speer adamantly claims that most characters (on both sides of these JFK debates) have totally closed minds, which they won’t change for anything (p. 27), a category into which he presumably dumps me. He had earlier (p. 9) also cited The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Kuhn 1962) to the same effect. But I plead not guilty to his charge – Speer should think hard about the following facts. First, at a rather early stage in my OD work, after I had (wrongly) decided that the OD data were inconsistent with composite X-rays (in a widely, but privately, circulated paper, titled “2 + 2 = 4”), I had followed the data where (I thought) they led and stated that the X-rays must be authentic. Speer apparently does not know this history. The correction of my mistake came from Arthur G. Haus and colleagues at Kodak, who advised me about image crossovers (from one side of the film to the other) in these 1960s X-rays, a technical problem that was later solved. (Initially, I had only known about modern X-ray films, where the image cannot effectively cross over from one side to the other.) The presence of such crossover in these JFK X-rays, though, re-opened the door to photographic alteration in the darkroom. Haus later read my paper, which discussed these image crossovers in the JFK X-rays. In view of this, Speer is demonstrably wrong to say that my mind has been forever closed. (Regarding the role of irrationality and bias in human decision making, see two excellent references – Irrationality: The Enemy Within 1991, Stuart Sutherland and Persuasion: Theory and Research 1990, Daniel J. O’Keefe.)

Second, as further evidence for my open-mindedness, Speer should review my rejection of the acoustic evidence (a 72-page essay for the CTKA website). A senior JFK researcher (who does not espouse a JFK conspiracy and who I greatly respect) remarked that I am the only conspiracy believer (so far as he knows) who has clearly disavowed the acoustic evidence. (I do not know where Speer stands – or sits – on the fence atop the grassy knoll.)

Third, another event might also give Speer pause: when Fetzer (my own editor and still a dear friend) overstepped the accepted bounds of public civility, I publicly chastised him, an event that Speer also seems to have missed. That sad event displays a lifelong curse: my primary loyalty is to my ideals, even at the expense of close friends (but I would not wish that handicap on anyone else, not even on Pat). In any event, here is the challenge for Speer: if he can truly show me to be wrong, then I shall recant again (of my JFK beliefs, but probably not of my religious views). On the other hand, if Speer were to recognize his imperfections, he would be welcomed back as warmly as the Prodigal Son.

A Few Final Thoughts

Lest there be any doubt, let me be very clear: I admire Pat’s passion. We need more Americans like him. And I really think I would like him if I got to know him. I would be remiss, however, if I did not admonish his readers to probe deeply into the foundations of his arguments before accepting his conclusions. In addition, Pat himself might consider becoming a bit more disciplined before careening into verdicts. I would also encourage him to lay aside his ad hominem attacks. David Hackett Fischer (Historians’ Fallacies: Toward a Logic of Historical Thought 1970, p. 293) has critiqued such ad hominem attacks: “But an ad hominem debate is unlike tennis in one respect – it is a match which everybody loses: players, referees, spectators and all. ” These attacks do not lead to any new knowledge and they surely won’t win Pat many new friends. In this tent (of researchers) we have acres of space for divergent views – but tolerance is always welcome. Finally, and more specifically, the implications of the Harper X-ray need to be integrated into our understanding of JFK’s skull trauma. My kudos to John Hunt for this wonderful discovery.

Acknowledgments. I am deeply grateful to Douglas Horne and James DiEugenio for their careful reading and valuable comments. I have already noted the essential contributions of John Hunt. It is a luxury to have accomplices such as these.

Appendix 1. My letter to John Fitzpatrick (with attachment)

November 3, 2009

John J. Fitzpatrick, MD
Diagnostic Radiology
John H. Stroger, Jr., Hospital of Cook County
1901 W. Harrison St.
Chicago, IL 60612

Re: JFK Autopsy Skull X-rays

Dear Dr. Fitzpatrick:

I recently read a staff summary of your medical presentation to the ARRB. In the attachment here I have listed 12 points of agreement. The only possible point of disagreement is not even certain; it is possible that there are no points of disagreement at all.

Nonetheless, the ARRB staff summary quotes you as saying that you disagree with my work. I wonder if I could persuade you to be more specific. In fact, there is a specific purpose: I am scheduled for a talk in several weeks on this very subject.

The chief medical physicist at Kodak (my own PhD is in physics) read my original paper (regarding the OD data on the skull X-rays), said he found it very interesting, and offered no specific critiques of it. You will also note that Cyril H. Wecht co-authored an article with me (see footnote on the attached page).

You may find my latest presentation on this subject online at http://www.assassinationresearch.com/v2n2/pittsburgh.pdf

Also see: Mantik, D. W. (2000), “Paradoxes of the JFK Assassination: The Medical Evidence Decoded,” in J. Fetzer, ed., Murder in Dealey Plaza (Chicago, IL: Open Court/Catfeet Press, 2000), pp. 219–297.

Sincerely yours,

David W. Mantik

The JFK Skull X-rays [also sent to Fitzpatrick]

Fitzpatrick (JF) vs. Mantik (DM): Points of Agreement

by David W. Mantik
October 30, 2009

The left brain silhouette can be seen in the AP film.
The extremely dark area on the upper right in the AP film represents missing brain (replaced by air) in an open wound.
The orbit of the right eye is fractured and displaced.
No entry wound is seen on the AP film.
The 6.5 mm object (on the AP) looks metallic.
The two burn marks (on the AP film) are unique.
No entry wound is visible on the lateral films.
No definite object is seen on the laterals to correspond to the 6.5 mm object on the AP film.
A small object is seen on one lateral film that was spatially consistent with the 6.5 mm object (on the AP), but it was not of the appropriate optical density.
The small metallic fragment posterior to the right eye on the lateral does not correspond to the 6.5 mm object (on the AP).
Most missing skull bone is parietal.
The direction of the bullet cannot be ascertained from the “snow trail” on the lateral film.
Most of the frontal bone is present, at least up to the hairline.
From the three bone fragments, it is impossible to determine the nature and direction of beveling.
Metallic fragments are seen on the largest of these bone fragments.
A suture, as well as an adjacent break in bone, is seen on the largest fragment, but the specific suture cannot be identified.

Fitzpatrick & Mantik: A Possible Disagreement

JF concludes that the left frontal brain is present. DM reports this: OD measurements on the lateral, through the maxillary sinuses, were compared to ODs in the dark frontal area. These two different sites show ODs that are very similar, which strongly suggests very little soft tissue in either area, i.e., very little brain on either side. One possible resolution of this apparent disagreement is as follows: if the left frontal brain has been displaced posteriorly, both parties could be correct. In fact, DM agrees that this might well be the case. DM only states that the area where the left frontal brain should lie is empty on the lateral films. However, OD measurements on the left side of the AP film add new information: these data suggest that 60-65% of the brain is present along an AP line through the left hemisphere.

Reference. The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease; “Paradoxes of the JFK Assassination: the Brain Enigma,” by David W. Mantik and Cyril H. Wecht.

Appendix 2. Letter from Fitzpatrick to me

(Postmarked March 10, 2010)

April 30, 2010

The 13th Juror
I

The complete title of this book is The 13th Juror: The Official Transcript of the Martin Luther King Assassination Conspiracy Trial. And unless you were around at the time the trial took place, and/or subscribed to Probe, there is a prologue to this 1999 civil trial. It is necessary to summarize that prologue to fully understand how and why the trial took place.

In December of 1993, a man named Loyd Jowers went on national television to confess a role in the 1968 conspiracy to murder Martin Luther King. At the time of King’s killing, Jowers was the owner of a small restaurant called Jim’s Grill, which was in very close proximity to the Lorraine Motel, the site where King was killed. To this day, no one knows exactly why Jowers appeared on television to make his public pronouncement. The best guess is that he felt that a team of investigators preparing a special for British television had begun to get close to what had actually happened.

British documentary and docudrama producer Jack Saltman had done a previous one-hour special on the King case in 1978. He had also constructed a courtroom trial that had actually not taken place. This was a program on the Kurt Waldheim affair. Around the time of the Jowers appearance, Saltman was preparing another courtroom reconstruction. This was on the King case. It was called Guilt or Innocence: The Trial of James Earl Ray. It actually took place in a Tennessee courtroom. It was broadcast in April of 1993. Ray testified from a Nashville jail. Out of over 70 hours of testimony, a three-hour HBO special aired in America, England, and 34 other countries throughout the world. It was much closer to a real trial than the earlier Vincent Bugliosi/Gerry Spence fiasco. And the jury ended up siding with defense attorney William Pepper in acquitting James Earl Ray. But the real impact of the Saltman production was that, unlike the Bugliosi/Spence farrago, Saltman actually did some real research. New and important witnesses had surfaced. Consequently, the mock trial brought the King case to life after years of dormancy. Some people on the scene, like Wallace Milam, ventured to say that Jowers might have felt pressured by the attention that Saltman and Pepper had brought to the case. It was through new witnesses that Saltman had uncovered Jowers. Jowers may have felt that the local and state authorities were about to look into the case again. He was wrong about that, but by going on TV he was to provide an opportunity for Pepper to try to formally reopen the King case.

He did try. And the amazing thing is the he almost got James Earl Ray a new criminal trial. As chronicled in Probe, Pepper was lucky enough to get Judge Joe Brown for his evidentiary hearing to test the alleged rifle the authorities say was used to kill King. The first round of rifle tests came back inconclusive. Brown then ordered a second round of tests. This time with the rifle barrel cleaned out so there would be no ambiguity about how the markings on the fatal bullet originated. At this point, and predictably, the city of Memphis, the state of Tennessee, the national and local media, and Washington DC began a relentless campaign to 1.) Remove Brown from the case, 2.) Stop any further criminal court proceedings, and 3.) Tar and feather Pepper in the press. Why do I say it was predictable? Because anyone familiar with what had previously happened to Jim Garrison and Richard Sprague in the JFK case, understood what was in the cards if Pepper and Brown got too close to the truth. These combined forces, and the death of Ray in early 1998, successfully stopped Pepper’s criminal proceedings.

But with the help of the King family, especially Dexter King, Pepper decided to pursue the case in civil court. He represented the King family in a wrongful death case against Jowers. The proceedings began in mid-November of 1999. They ended at 3:10 PM on the afternoon of December 8th. The jury found for the plaintiffs, meaning that Jowers was found liable for his role in the conspiracy. They also found that “others, including governmental agencies, were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by the defendant(s)”. (The 13th Juror, p. 752) In other words, Pepper had proved his case. Of course, the standard in a civil case is not the same as in a criminal case. But the fact that the jury deliberated for 150 minutes shows that Pepper would have had a shot at winning in criminal court.

But that is only half the story of what happened at the civil trial. The other half is how the media treated this epochal event dealing with a national tragedy. For the only representative of the press who was in court for each day of the proceedings was Jim Douglass, reporting for Probe. Let me repeat that fact: The only journalist in court every day for the civil case concerning who killed King was Probe‘s Jim Douglass. No one from the New York Times, Newsweek, or even The Nation was with Douglass. Which, of course, tells you all you need to know about why the MSM has gone into eclipse. And also why very few people are lamenting that decline. But it’s worse than that.

There appears to have been a deliberate gag order from both the national and local media not to divulge any of the important testimony at the trial. For instance, not even the local media was allowed to stay in court with Douglass. Marc Perrusquia had been the Memphis Commercial Appeal’s reporter on the King case in the years leading up to the civil trial. But he stood outside the courtroom during the proceedings and asked questions of Douglass when he emerged each day. Court TV had announced they were going to tape the trial and carry it on a daily basis. For some reason, they pulled out at the last minute.

According to Douglass, the story of Wendell Stacy epitomizes the orders sent down from the editors about covering the King civil case. Stacy was a well-respected local TV reporter who was interested in the case and really wanted to cover the trial. But his station, owned by Clear Channel, would not allow him to stay in court to do a complete and thorough job. According to Douglass, Stacy was there for perhaps half the proceedings. And his reports on TV were only summary in nature, not the kind of in-depth coverage he wanted to do. Later on, he became a consultant to French and German television productions about the King trial. He now began to get death threats over the phone. His house was ransacked more than once. One day, as he was going to work, his car blew up as he opened the door. Clear Channel eventually fired him. He sued and won in court, but Clear Channel refused to pay him. He had to file a separate action to recover. He was in the act of recovering when he died a couple of years ago. (Jim Douglass interview, 3/15/10)

According to Douglass, there was another reporter in court for about five days. But she was not American. She was from Portugal. She was there for two reasons. First, when Ray fled the USA after the shooting, Lisbon was one of the places where he spent some time. But more importantly, Ray’s mysterious handler named Raul was originally from Portugal. Pepper’s detectives thought they had tracked down who Raul actually was. Their evidence also led to Lisbon. They determined he was in the arms trade there until 1961. (The 13th Juror, pgs. 255-56) Pepper’s detectives managed to secure a picture of this man. Pepper tried to get the man to appear in court. But he managed to get a Rockefeller Center law firm to fight the subpoena. So when Pepper heard that this woman had done some work on the Raul angle, he forced her to testify against her will. Her name was Barbara Reis and she had been on the King case for about two years. (ibid, p. 296) She had done two articles on the man suspected of being Raul. She also interviewed members of the family in the USA as this was where Raul was now living. The family members told her that it was all a case of mistaken identity. But they also told her that agents of the US government had visited them on three occasions and mentioned that “they are protecting us”. Reis felt that this was a way of telling her to “go away. You won’t get anything from me and, plus, we are protected.” (ibid, p. 297) Reis continued by saying that she discovered that not only was the government looking over the family, but that the government was also tapping their phone calls.

As mentioned earlier, the Commercial Appeal stayed outside during the actual trial. Yet oddly, they wanted to be in court for the voir dire jury selection process. (ibid, Douglass interview.) In fact, they actually sent an attorney to court to argue their motion on the issue. (The 13th Juror, p. 2) They were not allowed to stay. So they then wanted the transcript to the voir dire hearings. This was also denied. (ibid) Douglass feels that this strange dichotomy, wanting full knowledge of the jury selection process, but not caring about he actual trial proceedings, indicates the paper wanted to try and apply some kind of pressure on the jurors.

When it was all over, and the jury found for the plaintiffs, the Washington Post sent in Gerald Posner to smear the proceedings. (ibid, Douglass interview) Posner then went on a TV media tour to do the same. Predictably, no one asked him how he could critique the trial if he was never there. Or how he could have read the complete transcript that fast.

II

During the actual proceedings, Lewis Garrison represented Jowers. And contrary to what Posner later said, Garrison did cross-examine many of the witnesses Pepper presented. Garrison’s defense included a long deposition of Ray from prison. During which he was clearly looking to challenge elements of Ray’s story. And in his summation, Garrison clearly insinuated that although there was a plot, Ray was the triggerman.

The problem for Garrison – which Posner tried to ignore – was that his client had confessed to a role in the conspiracy not once, but twice. In addition to the previously mentioned appearance on TV, Dexter King and Andrew Young interviewed Jowers on tape. It was a long, revealing, and interesting interview that was played for the jury. (pgs. 174-204) So Garrison’s defense was at a severe disadvantage from the start – but it then got worse when this tape was played.

Jowers’ essential story is this: He had been given a hundred thousand dollars by a local mobster named Frank Liberto to play a role in King’s murder. James Earl Ray’s handler Raul, was maneuvering Ray throughout Canada and the southeastern quadrant of America, and he had dropped off a rifle to Jowers. (p. 186) On the day of the murder, Jowers retrieved the rifle from the bushy area across from and below the Lorraine Motel. The man who did the shooting was Earl Clark, a policeman who was a crack shot. (ibid) Jowers wrapped the weapon up and placed it in the storeroom. Raul came by and picked the rifle up the next day. Since Raul had been with Ray that day, he knew where he was staying. And it was directly adjacent to Jim’s Grill. Knowing that he had directed Ray to purchase a rifle previously, it was very likely Raul who dropped the incriminating bundle of evidence, with fingerprints – including the rifle he asked Ray to purchase – in front of Canipe’s amusement store. This is a part of the case that no one has ever been able to figure out to any logical degree. If Ray had shot King, why would he have dropped the package right near the scene of the crime, knowing it would incriminate him?

Well, one of the bombshells of the trial went directly to this point. It was what the owner of Canipe’s had told Ray’s original lawyers, Arthur Hanes and son. Namely that this incriminating package had been dropped in front of his store ten minutes before the shooting! The guy who dropped it then hightailed it down Main Street. (p. 210) Hanes Jr. revealed that, on the strength of this testimony, the state offered Ray a plea bargain. Ray would be out on parole in ten years. His lawyers advised against it. They thought they could do better. (p. 208) As most people know, Ray then made a huge mistake. He replaced the Hanes team with the nationally known Percy Foreman. It was a move he regretted forever after. (ibid)

This is crucial testimony. It not only shows how Ray was set up by Raul – who has all the earmarks of a CIA agent involved in the guns and drug trade, in which Ray was used as a courier – but how Ray then panicked and fled the country. As Ray testified in his deposition, Raul arranged to meet Ray at Jim’s Grill the day of the murder. When he met him there, he asked Ray if he brought his white Mustang, which Ray had done. Raul also asked Ray if he brought some other paraphernalia, like binoculars. He then made sure he had rented a room upstairs of Jim’s Grill at Bessie’s Boarding House. (p. 663) Before the shooting, Ray had gone to a gas station to fix a leaking tire on his Mustang. Significantly, Pepper produced a report that said two people saw a white Mustang leave the scene at around 5:25. (pgs. 725-26) He also produced a witness who saw a white Mustang in front of Jim’s Grill with Arkansas plates. Ray’s Mustang had Alabama plates. (pgs. 58-60) This backs up Ray’s story of being gone from the scene at the time of the shooting.

Ray failed to repair his bad tire at his first stop. He was looking for another place to fix it when the first report came on the radio that King had been shot. A few minutes later, another report came across saying that the authorities were chasing a white man with a rifle in a white Mustang. Ray, a longtime petty thief, put two and two together: Raul had set him up. (pgs. 675-685) All the way down to the white Mustang. For it was the second Mustang that pulled out after the shooting with a white man in it. (pgs. 60, 678)

Generally speaking, what I have described above is what Pepper outlined to the court as elements of the “local conspiracy”. But I should add, Pepper actually began the trial in that aspect in another regard. As everyone knows, the main reason that King had gone to Memphis in April was because he had been there previously in March. And it had not turned out very well. There was a sanitation workers strike going on, and he had been there for a previous demonstration. The demonstration had turned ugly, and rioting and looting had taken place. Many observers had attributed the violence to a local Black Nationalist group called the Invaders, modeled on the Black Panthers. Pepper had two former members of the Invaders take the stand early in the trial, Cobey Smith and Charles Cabbage. Some interesting information was elicited from these two men. First, in March, King had stayed at the Rivermont Hotel. But in the interval between King’s two trips, the FBI had ridiculed King for staying at this white middle class hotel. So his lodgings were changed to the Lorraine. And further, King’s actual room at the Lorraine was later changed by an unidentified person. It was this change that allowed King to be out on a balcony on the third floor, therefore exposed to a sniper from below. Whoever made the change claimed they were from King’s camp. (pgs. 85-86)

Both Invaders’ witnesses testified that informants and agent provocateurs infiltrated their group. Smith said that someone sent King’s agency, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), a letter with bullets enclosed. Whoever sent it, said it was form them. He also said that the disruption of the first march was not by the Invaders, but by the police and by disruption agents sent in from the outside. In fact, Cabbage did not even want King back in Memphis at the time. (pgs. 22-30) But most interestingly, both men said that on the day of the murder, they had members of their group at the Lorraine, talking to members of the SCLC. The members were asked to leave right about 5:50 PM. Just a few moments before the murder.

Which now brings us to Merrell McCullough. McCullough was one of the informants masquerading as an Invader. Secretly, he was a police informant who was also connected to the FBI. It turns out that, before the murder, Merrell was introduced to Jowers as a policeman. (p. 184) Right before the assassination, McCullough had been in Jim’s Grill meeting with four other men. (p. 188) One of whom was another member of the police force named Lt. Zachery. (p. 204) One of the extraordinary disclosures made at the trial concerned Sam Donaldson, the reporter who originally broadcast Jowers revelations in 1993. As we will see later, there was a backup hit team in town from military intelligence. We also know from a famous photograph that McCullough immediately ran up to the balcony after King was hit. In that picture, while others are pointing to where they think the shot came from, McCullough appears to be calmly checking King for vital signs while looking across the way. According to what Donaldson told Young, McCullough was on the balcony to check King’s pulse and make sure he was dead and signal the military sniper team that no second shot was needed. (p. 192)

What made this moment possible? On each previous visit to Memphis, King has his own personal security detail. Which was made up of black detectives. Security expert Jerry Williams headed it up. On April 3rd, Williams was told not to form this regular unit. He was told that a group of white officers would protect King this time around. Williams testified that he would never had let King stay at the Lorraine overnight. They felt it was too dangerous. (p. 105) One reason was because of the thicket of bushes below, which provided good cover for a sniper. At least four witnesses saw a man or smoke in those bushes either during or right after the shooting. (pgs. 109, 110, 288) Including New York Times reporter Earl Caldwell. At 7 AM on the morning after the murder, those bushes, which provided such excellent cover, were ordered cut down. (p. 144)

The late Professor Philip Melanson testified to another part of this security collapse. Melanson had interviewed a policeman named Sam Evans. Evans was in charge of what was called the police Tactical Units, these were automobile units designed to be used as riot control agents. There were four of them stationed at the firehouse near the Lorraine. The morning of the murder, they were told to disperse. In one of the more troubling pieces of testimony presented at the trial, Evans told Melanson that it was Memphis Reverend Billy Kyles who told him they were not needed. (p. 113)

Kyles was a friend of King’s who had been a pastor at the Monumental Baptist Church since 1959. He was part of the local contingent who persuaded King’s advisors to help the sanitation workers. Kyles helped arrange the venue for King’s great “Been to the Mountaintop” speech on the evening of April 3rd. The next day, Kyles had arranged for King and his closest advisers to dine on a home-cooked meal at his home. Kyles’ story has been that he was in the room with King and Ralph Abernathy from 5 PM. The three preachers just talked for an hour. Abernathy then went into the bathroom to shave, and then Kyles left the room for his car, telling everyone to hurry up. (Time, 3/31/08)

Kyles had a rough time of it at the trial. Willie B. Richmond was part of a police surveillance team on King, which was not his actual security detail. He was stationed across the street from the Lorraine at a firehouse. When King’s entourage arrived at the airport, Richmond recalled someone – he thought it was Kyles – telling his partner that King did not want any security protection this time. As Pepper commented, what made this so odd is that Kyles had no real position in King’s hierarchy at that time. (p. 357) Although Richmond’s partner, Ed Redditt, was called back to headquarters on a phony pretense, Richmond stayed behind and kept notes on what he observed at the Lorraine. Pepper produced the notes in court and went over them with Richmond.

The notes recorded that at 5:50 PM several members of the Invaders opened the door of their room, gathered their belongings, walked downstairs, and placed them in the trunk of their car. His notes then read as follows: “Immediately after the Invaders left, the Reverend Kyles came out of room 312 and went to the room where Martin Luther King was living. He knocked on the door and Martin Luther King came to the door. They said a few words between each other and Reverend Martin Luther King went back into his room closing the door behind him, and the Reverend Kyles remained on the porch.” (p. 357)

This contradicts the story that Kyles has told for decades. According to these contemporaneous surveillance notes, Kyles was not in King’s room for a continuous hour prior to the shooting. He was in a different room, emerged, went to King’s door and knocked for him at 5:50 PM. He did this right after the Invaders left. And after King answered, Kyles did not saunter downstairs to his car. He waited for him to return. (ibid)

Pepper then had Richmond read the next entry in the notes: “At this time, Reverend Martin Luther King returned from his room to the gallery and walked up to the handrail. The Reverend Kyles was standing off to his right. This was approximately 6 PM. At this time I heard a loud sound as if it was a shot and saw Doctor Martin Luther King fall back on the handrail and put his hand up to his head.” (p. 358)

According to these surveillance notes, Kyles was not in the room from 5 to 6 PM; and he did not go downstairs after he notified King they were leaving. He was on the balcony for the full ten minutes up to the time of the shooting.

It got worse for Kyles. He did appear at the trial, but he had to be subpoenaed – even though he was sought by the defense. (p. 513) On the stand, Kyles slightly revised his “hour in the room” story. He said that King and he went out onto the balcony at around 5:45 and greeted some people. Someone said it was going to be cold that night. So King turned around, went to the motel door and told Ralph Abernathy to get him a coat. King then returned to the balcony and continued greeting some people. Kyles then said, “Let’s go.” Kyles turned and got about five steps when he heard the crack of a rifle. (p. 518)

Although Kyles has revised this version, it still differs from Richmond’s surveillance notes. It eliminates Kyles emerging from 312, and going to the door and knocking for King at 5:50. And in this Kyles version, although he has not started down the stairs when the shot rang out, he has turned and walked a few steps. This differs from the Richmond notes, which depict him standing right next to King.

Pepper did not cross-examine Kyles. His assistant, Julia Hill-Akins did. She told him that the Richmond surveillance notes did not have him approaching the King room – which was number 306 – until 5:50. But they did reveal that he had been in the adjacent room, number 307, at around 2:30 that afternoon. Kyles said he didn’t recall any of that. (p. 523) He also denied Richmond’s notes, which depicted him as leaving room 312 at 5:50 and then knocking on King’s door. (p. 526) Pepper’s assistant then asked Kyles if he had been one of the planners of the mass celebration in Memphis about King’s life the year before. Kyles said he was. So a video was played of him speaking in advance to promote it. Kyles described King’s last hour in his revised version, which he had testified to already. That is, with King coming outside at about 5:45 and talking to people in the courtyard. Kyles then said this: “He stood there, and I stood there. Only as I moved away so he could have a clear shot, the shot rang out.” This was quite a peculiar thing to say or admit. Its almost as if Kyles knew what was going to happen. When asked whom he was referring to when he said “he”, Kyles said it was James Earl Ray. He was not asked how he could have known that on April 4th.

Andrew Young had asked the local DA to give Jowers immunity for his testimony. The DA refused to do so. Young said that the intent was to shut everything down. (p. 177) Which is what they did with the Judge Joe Brown proceedings. From just this description of one part of the trial, the local conspiracy part, the reader can see why Jowers was not granted immunity. Consider the credible evidence that Pepper has advanced so far through multiple witnesses. It shows the following:
1. King’s security was compromised once he got to Memphis
2. His room was changed to expose him to a sniper
3. Ray was manipulated to be the fall guy by Raul
4. The Invaders were made to look like King’s enemies
5. Jowers was paid off to assist the real gunman
6. Someone planted evidence in advance to incriminate Ray
7. Knowingly or not, Kyles maneuvered King into perfect position
This reveals a well-planned plot. If I were a DA, I wouldn’t want to open up that can of worms about my city either. And if I were the New York Times and the like, I wouldn’t want the public to know about it. Especially since I had been part of the cover up for decades.

III

The extension of the local conspiracy into a larger one can first be illustrated by a fact that investigative reporter Doug Valentine found out: McCullough’s intelligence reports were forwarded to the FBI. Secondly, as Dexter King found out in the course of his investigation, there was the instance of the fake broadcast of a second white Mustang headed the wrong way out of Memphis. The broadcast said the Mustang was headed north, while Ray was headed south. This phony bulletin broke into a police broadcast frequency. On tape, King commented to Jowers that something like that almost had to be done by a military type of broadcast overriding a local police band. (p. 200)

There is another utterly fascinating tale of how powerful the forces behind the King cover-up were. A cab driver named Paul Butler was outside the Lorraine Motel the night of the murder. He was unloading someone when he heard a shot and saw King dead. Butler then called his dispatcher, who told him he would call for an ambulance. Butler also told the dispatcher he had seen someone running from the scene as he looked around. (p. 410) So a colleague, Louis Ward, told him to meet him at the airport. Two police officers were there, and Butler told him his story. He said that as he looked around, he saw someone running from the shrubbery area below, scale a wall, jump into a police car and hightail it out of the area. After he told his story to the cops, squad cars went to the dispatcher headquarters and told him to report to the police the next morning for a formal statement. (p. 412) He never got there. The next morning, at about 10:30, they found Butler’s dead body across a bridge in the state of Arkansas. (p. 413) The coroner said he had been thrown out of a car. (p. 201)

What makes this tale even more fascinating is this: Ward looked through every local newspaper for days for an obituary about his friend. He never found one. (p. 414) Pepper’s investigators searched for documentation on the death in Arkansas and Tennessee. He sent an assistant to both Memphis and Little Rock looking for a death certificate. There was none to be found. (p. 418) When Pepper’s investigators tried to find Butler’s employment record, or traces of it at the cab company, nothing was there. (p. 201) Yet Butler had been a regular driver for Yellow Cab for several years. (p. 409) Years later, when Ward tried to tell his story to he DA, the DA hung up on him.(p. 414) When you can eliminate any trace of a death record from the papers and the records of two states, its not just a local conspiracy.

Doug Valentine was one of the very few writers who penned a story on the King trial. It was for Robert Parry’s online journal, The Consortium. Valentine was also a witness at the proceedings. He had uncovered some interesting and relevant information about the King case while writing his book on the infamous Phoenix Program of systematic assassination in Vietnam. Some of the men who were involved in Phoenix were later transferred home and served in military intelligence groups in the USA. According to Valentine, they now “began to conduct surveillance and Phoenix type operations against anti-war demonstrators and people in the civil rights movement.” (p. 360) As in Vietnam, they were given lists of people, not just to follow, but also to act as agents provocateur against in their movements. Some of the more famous ones were Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman. (p. 361) In this function, they cooperated with police so that when the disruptive acts occurred, their police allies and informants would be there to arrest the targeted people.

Valentine said the domestic military intelligence activities covered the entire continental USA. But the 111th group governed the sector of the southeast. A man who Valentine interviewed said he had heard that the 111th had 24-hour surveillance on King and that their agents had been in Memphis on April 4, 1968. Further, that they had actually photographed King’s murder. (ibid) Another interesting revelation by Valentine was that a member of a different military intelligence group was also in Memphis the day previous to King’s murder. And they were involved in the removal of officer Ed Redditt from the firehouse across the street form the Lorraine Motel. As noted earlier, Redditt was Willie Richmond’s partner. We know this is true because of the corroborating testimony of police intelligence officer Eli Arkin. Arkin testified that in early April, three or four military intelligence agents moved into the Memphis Police Department. He observed them taking copious notes. On the day of the murder, Arkin was the man who was sent to remove Redditt personally from the firehouse. This was over a bogus threat phoned in from Washington about an assassination plot on a black police officer. When Arkin got Redditt home, the bulletin came on the radio about King being shot.

One of the most fascinating witnesses of the entire proceeding was former CIA contract agent Jack Terrell. Terrell was involved in the whole illegal arms for drugs trade as part of the Contra resupply effort under the Reagan-Bush regime. When the Boland Amendment outlawed any supplies going to the Contras in Nicaragua, the CIA began to get around that law by sending down arms and coming back with drugs as illegal payment. According to Terrell, Vice-President George Bush was fully cognizant of the illicit trade. Part of Terrell’s function was as an extension of Phoenix, except it was called Pegasus. And this included a program of systematic assassination against the ruling and democratically elected Sandinista party command structure in Nicaragua. (p. 398) In fact, Terrell said that Bush was up to his neck in this operation. One of Bush’s assistants supervised his operations. After Terrell testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about what he knew, there were two attempts on his life. (p. 399) When those failed, the smear campaign began. He was branded as an intelligence officer of Fidel Castro. He was also indicted on phony charges that were eventually thrown out of court.

But earlier in life, Terrell had run a successful business in Mississippi. One of the people who worked for him was a man named J. D. Hill, who was a reserve member of the 20th Special Forces group. They did covert operations, except in civilian clothes. One of their operations was being trained as part of an assassination team. They were taken via aircraft to West Memphis, Arkansas. They were placed on standby and told they were going to do a job in Memphis. But right before they were to be flown in, the operation was cancelled. (p. 402) When he got back to Mississippi, Hill picked up the paper and was shocked. The headline was that King had been killed in Memphis. Pepper managed to get a roster of the 20th from that time period. Hill’s name was on it. But Terrell also recognized several other people who Hill had told him about.

Terrell had developed a reputation in news media for being quite credible. One reason was that he never failed a polygraph. He was interviewed by ABC when they did a special on the King case. The interview lasted for three hours. (p. 405) Forrest Sawyer, ABC’s cover up man on the King case, conducted the interview. Not one minute of Terrell ended up on Sawyer’s Turning Point special in June of 1997.

Pepper called Carthel Wedeen to the stand to certify the testimony of Arkin, Valentine, and Terrell. Wedeen had been with the local Fire Department for 31 years. He started as a private and ended up as a District Chief. (p. 364) In 1968, Wedeen was Captain of Fire Station No. 2, down the street a bit and across from the Lorraine Motel.

On the day of King’s murder, Wedeen was running the station. He was approached by two army officers who identified themselves with military credentials. They wanted a lookout vantage for the Lorraine. So he suggested the roof of his fire station for that function. (p. 365) He actually went up with them at first. He said they were carrying heavy briefcases. When he asked them what they were going to do, they replied they were going to take some pictures. Where he placed them provided an unobstructed view of the motel. Incredibly, no researcher for the House Select Committee on Assassinations – or any other official body – ever talked to Wedeen. But from his testimony, the pictures Valentine was told about likely do exist.

IV

Who would have thought that anyone would have ever tracked down the mysterious but central figure of Raul? I never did. But it seems to have happened. And one of the first cracks in the wall was made possible by Jack Saltman. When the first United Kingdom broadcast of the mock trial of Ray occurred, a man named Sydney Carthew was watching. Carthew had been a seaman in the British Merchant Navy from 1956-73. One of the most frequent routes he sailed was the North Atlantic, from Liverpool to Montreal. (p. 270) The ship would stay in Montreal for one week when it docked. After the ship landed, there were two bars which the men usually frequented: the Seaman’s Mission, and the Neptune Bar. The latter, of course, was the name of the tavern where Ray said he first met Raul in 1967. Well, Carthew was also in Montreal in 1967. And he testified that one night at the Neptune, he also met a man who introduced himself as Raul. (p. 271) Raul asked him about jumping on board a ship to leave Canada for England. On another evening, he met Raul again. This time he was talking about shipping four boxes of guns out of the country via ship. When Carthew saw the tape of the mock trial, he saw Ray and the prosecutor jousting over whether or not Raul was a real person. Carthew jumped up and said, yep he sure was since he had also met him, and at the same place Ray met him. When Carthew finally met Pepper, the lawyer showed him six photographs and asked him to identify the man he met as Raul. As we shall see, Carthew’s identification was the same one that all the other witnesses identified, including Ray. (p. 275)

John Billings was a private investigator who came into the MLK case through a fellow investigator named Ken Herman. Herman was hired to do research by Saltman. (p. 251) He recommended the hiring of Billings, and Billings did a lot of work on tracking down Raul. Until the time of the trial, Billings had little on the man except Ray’s meetings with him at the Neptune Bar and the fact he was Latin in appearance. After the airing of the mock trial, two people got in contact with Billings. They were a married couple, Glenda and Roy Grabow. (p. 252) As youths, Glenda’s family had moved to Houston. There, she and her brother Royce met a man who introduced her to someone she called Dago and to his uncle named Amaro. Dago dealt with many odd pieces of contraband, including pornographic films and also arms, which they would pick up at the docks. Glenda and her brother Royce – who later identified a photo of Raul – did some messenger work for the two. (p. 253) But the rumor inside the circle was that somehow Dago was involved in the King assassination. One day Glenda was looking through a little rotating toy viewfinder at pictures of King, RFK and JFK. Dago came in and took it from her and looked through it himself. He commented that he had had King killed once already. He then dragged her in a room and sexually molested her.

The thing that impressed Billings about her story was the details she included. And every time she told it, the details stayed consistent. Billings said that this is one way he tested witnesses: Could they keep a detailed story straight? Because it is difficult to tell a complex lie the same way every time.

When Billings told Saltman about this story he was initially skeptical. But he decided to send Billings to Houston to do a field investigation on the matter. Billings had some contacts in New York and Miami in the judicial system. They helped him open doors in Houston to people like retired judges, and later, theater owners. The more people he interviewed the more he became convinced the Grabows were telling the truth. Because most of them recalled Glenda. One even produced a photograph of her. (p. 254) The witness trail eventually allowed them to track down a pension plan held by the now deceased Amaro, through his previous work on the docks. Then, interestingly enough, through a tip from the Memphis police, they got a fact sheet on Raul. (This is fascinating because it reveals that the local police had done work on this part of Ray’s story, found out there was something to it, but went ahead and convicted Ray anyway. See p. 255)

The trail on Raul began in Lisbon in 1961, where he was in the arms manufacture and sales business. (p. 256) He then came to America. And Billings attained a naturalization/immigration picture of the man. It was this photo that Billings used to show to witnesses amidst a spread of five other photos. Billings did this with Ray. (p. 257) And Ray picked out Raul’s photo as him. But surprisingly, Ray added that he had seen this picture before. Someone had been passing it around the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in 1978, and he had seen it at that time. Further, Ray recalled a newspaper article which noted that he had made this photo ID back then. And Billings produced the article in court. This, of course, tells us that the HSCA inquiry had a photo of Raul. And that their probe into the King case was about as good as its JFK inquiry.

Billings eventually located Dago/Raul. He was living in New York. Billings and Herman called him posing as businessmen. They wanted to use him as a supplier, since he was in the liquor trade. They flew up to meet him with Glenda in tow, so that she could get a good look at him. But Billings said, once they got up north, someone had clearly tipped off Raul. He failed to meet with them as planned. So they set up surveillance on his house from morning until midnight. Not one person came in or went out. Then on a Sunday morning, when a local paper carried a story about their possible discovery of Raul, a moving truck pulled up to the house and spent three hours loading up. Billings later found out the housekeeper had read the article and decided to leave. (p. 260)

The invaluable Jack Saltman also took the stand on this issue. Saltman had developed a genuine interest in the King case from the two shows he had put together. So after the second one aired, he spent some of his own time and money doing his own inquiry into the matter. (p. 303) Through contacts he had developed in law enforcement in Texas, he had found a lawyer who was involved in gun running cases in the sixties. And this man recalled that the name of Raul had come up in the investigations of several of those cases. He specifically recalled that Raul had been involved in the shipping of arms to the Somoza regime in Nicaragua. (p. 305) This corroborated what Gloria had told him about the activities of Raul and Amaro. Saltman also secured a photo of Amaro, and he discovered the two men shared the same last name. (p. 307)

Saltman ended up inadvertently corroborating Ray’s testimony about seeing the photo of Raul in 1978 during the HSCA proceedings. One night, while in Memphis, he had a former lawyer for Ray at his hotel room. He had accidentally left several pictures on the table. One of them was the naturalization photo of Raul. The lawyer leaned over and picked it up. She stared at it and said she had seen the picture in 1978, during the time of the HSCA when she was representing Ray. One of the HSCA investigators had shown it to her. (p. 308)

Saltman was now persuaded they had the right man. He tried to talk to Raul at his home. He said the front door was one in which you could not clearly see inside, you could only make out silhouettes. But those inside could see out. A lady started yelling at him in Portugese through the door. Then someone else started taking his picture through a window. He yelled through the glass that he wanted her to identify the enlarged picture he had of Raul. And he held it up. She said words to the effect that anyone could get naturalization photos, and if he got that, he could get further information too. Saltman thought this was a curious reply. Because it tended to reveal that she could see the photo and she recognized it from before. (p. 310)

Glenda could not testify. She had been in a serious auto accident previously. (p. 423) But her longtime husband did testify. Roy identified the same photo the others had – Carthew, Ray, Royce, Ray’s lawyer – as Raul. She recalled the man his wife called Dago from their time in Houston. He also produced a photo of his daughter with Amaro. He then produced a photo of Amaro, his daughter, himself and Glenda. (p. 425) The photos were taken in Houston in the early seventies. They were taken at a restaurant that the Grabows and Amaro and Raul used to frequent.

The Grabows moved out of Houston per the advice of lawyer Percy Foreman. The Grabows had visited Foreman about a case concerning Roy’s brother. Foreman told him that Raul had later called him and said he would kill the Grabows since they had consulted with him. Evidently, Raul had associated the visit to Foreman with the King case since Foreman had once represented Ray. (p. 427)

Roy testified to two other interesting things. First, in 1995, Glenda had called up Raul in New York and spoken to him for six minutes. (p. 428) Second, the Tennessee authorities investigating the King case had interviewed Glenda also. When they showed the couple the transcript, they had to do many corrections since her words had been altered. (p. 429)

It looks like Billings found Raul in 1993. But, disturbingly, it appears that Robert Blakey and the HSCA knew who he was 15 years earlier in 1978. Even more disturbingly, the Memphis police probably knew who he was back in 1968. But neither body would admit it. Since it would tend to bolster Ray’s story of being set up.

V

If one is new to the King case, the question you may ask is: In the face of all this, why did Ray cop a plea the first time around? There are really two reasons for that. The first one, as alluded to above, is that Ray made a bad mistake by switching lawyers. As many authors have written, Percy Foreman essentially sold Ray down the river. What made it worse is that Foreman appears to have cooperated in this sell-out with author William Bradford Huie. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 465) It was a pincers movement to get Ray to plead so that Huie could write his book, He Slew the Dreamer, a straight “Ray did it” story. Foreman shared in the profits garnered by the rights, which he sold to Huie. It is estimated that Foreman eventually made about a hundred thousand dollars from this deal. (ibid) He then literally offered no defense for Ray.

And make no mistake, Huie wanted to guarantee that Ray never got to tell his story in court and/or get a new trial. For in 1977, during the initial stages of the HSCA, a lawyer named Jack Kershaw represented Ray. On the stand, he told an interesting story about Huie. Huie had originally written a series of articles in Look which outlined a conspiracy featuring the then shadowy Raul. But in the last installment, Huie reversed field and made Ray the lone assassin. (The 13th Juror, p. 393) Huie contacted Kershaw and Kershaw agreed to meet with him at Thomas Nelson Publishing Company in Nashville. There, Huie offered Ray 25,000 dollars to say in public that he alone killed King and there was no conspiracy. When Kershaw told Huie that the money would do Ray no good since he was in prison, Huie said he would also get Ray a pardon. (ibid) Kershaw took the offer to Ray. He testified that his client “didn’t want any part of it.”

Since Foreman offered no defense, Ray listened to a recital of the case against him and challenged nothing in it. But make no mistake, the official case against Ray was full of holes. Which is why the authorities offered the Hanes team a ten year deal. First there was the testimony of Charlie Stephens. He was the only person who said he saw Ray leaving the bathroom at Bessie’s Boarding House, the alleged site from where the shot was fired. By all accounts Stephens was dead drunk at the time. (ibid, p. 90) And Pepper got this from a credible eyewitness. James McGraw was the cab driver who was there to pick up Stephens from the boarding house that day. He was there shortly before 6:00 PM, right before the shooting. When he got there he found Stephens passed out on the bed. So he left him there. But the driver also said that he saw the bathroom door open at the time, with no one inside. In other words, no Ray.

But the prosecution needed Charlie to put Ray in that communal bathroom at that time. Why? Because Stephens’ common law wife Grace, who was there at the time, would not identify Ray. She later ended up getting locked up in a mental institution for ten years. (See Mike Vinson’s article “Grace Stephens: A Sacrificial Lamb?” in Probe Vol. 6 No. 2)

But besides having no credible witness to place him where Ray had to be, the other major problem with the case against Ray was in the ballistics evidence itself. For instance, Ray’s prints were found on the rifle which, as we saw, was deposited before the shooting in front of Canipe’s. Yet there was no clip in the rifle and Ray’s prints were not found on the shell casing, which housed the fatal bullet. (op cit, The Assassinations, p. 462) Further, if “Ray had shot King from the rooming house bathroom he would have had to be standing in a bathtub. When Paris-Match tried to simulate Ray’s position, they had to pose their model on the rim of the tub toward the back, and then contort him into a position to lift the rifle to the window. ” (ibid) Which would be almost comical to depict in court.

Pepper produced two witnesses to show that the state had offered phony evidence in their railroading of Ray. At Ray’s hearing, the prosecutor had said that there were markings on the windowsill that matched Ray’s rifle. Yet when Ray’s appeals attorney, Jim Lesar, tried to get the FBI to vouch for this, they would not do so formally in writing. (p. 164) And Lesar’s expert witness said he did not think such a thing was possible. When Lesar finally got the FBI documents on this issue, they revealed there were no powder residues on the sill to do any kind of matching from. (ibid)

But the most important witness on the ballistics evidence was Judge Joe Brown. Brown was in a unique position to do this since he was privy to all the evidence on the rifle from his evidentiary hearings on the case in 1997. But further, Brown was a lifetime hunter and outdoorsman who was very familiar with rifles. (p. 225) One of the reasons that Gerald Posner criticized the trial was that Brown was the ballistics expert for the defense. Let me offer this up: I have read many pages of so-called “expert” testimony on ballistics from the likes of LAPD official DeWayne Wolfer in the RFK case, and FBI agent Robert Frazier in the JFK case. Brown’s testimony, in its fine detail, acuteness, and knowledge of the history of rifle and bullet manufacture in America, was superior to them both.

One of the most fascinating details Brown discovered was in the FBI documents he saw on the testing of the rifle and the ammunition. He said that the Bureau had discovered that metallurgically, the unfired cartridge cases and the fired case matched up. Also, the bullets in the bundle discarded in front of Canipe’s matched. But the bullet recovered from King’s body did not match the other bullets. (p. 227) And this suggested to him that the fatal bullet was not fired from the cartridge case in evidence.

Another problem for Brown was the fact that the weapon in evidence, a Remington Game Master 30.06, was pump action rifle. So why would you hold it on a windowsill to aim it? (p. 237) But further, since the 30.06 was such a common caliber, the bullet could be fired from another weapon. (p. 228) And recall, there was never any match made between the fatal bullet and the Game Master. Further, he found out that someone had actually cut up the bullet into thirds after it was withdrawn form King. Brown could not understand how and why this had been done. (p. 231)

Another very serious problem for the official story is that the Game Master is not manually sited in for accuracy. It has to be done by machine. The place where Ray bought that rifle for Raul did not have that machine. And Ray was nowhere near the marksman to come close to even trying to site the rifle in manually. (p. 234) This meant that, at the time of the shooting, the scope on the rifle was not aligned with the barrel. So when the rifle got to the FBI, it shot off to one side and low. (ibid) At the distance the bathroom was from King, Brown said that, without the rifle’s scope being properly calibrated, it would not have hit the target.

One of the most effective parts of Pepper’s presentation came at the very end. The second half of his summation consisted of a minute-by-minute time line of the last hour of King’s life at the Lorraine Motel. A sort of countdown to assassination if you will. Pepper put all the elements he had shown occurred at trial – Jowers giving the rifle to Clark, the military intelligence team atop the firehouse, the dumping of the incriminating briefcase in front of Canipe’s, Ray’s Mustang pulling away from the scene, Paul Butler arriving at the motel in his cab etc etc. It was very compelling and it all smelled to high heaven of a complex, intricate plot that could only have been pulled off and planned at a high level. (pgs. 731-32)

I have only two reservations about the book. I wish that there had been more introductory material about what had happened in Memphis prior to the civil trial. Which is what necessitated that trial. Second, a book like this should have an index.

But this is a valuable book to have. Between its covers it proves by a preponderance of the evidence – and maybe more than that – how Ray was set up, and then how King was actually killed. It also shows why the media avoided the trial, and why Ray was not allowed to have his criminal case reopened. Because if that had happened, in all likelihood, Ray would have walked out of the courtroom a free man.
April 21, 2010
David Von Pein: Hosting Comedy Central Soon?
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert better be looking in their rearview mirrors. They have a rival approaching. And he is even better than Colbert at impersonating the dimwitted, obnoxious, incredibly biased host that has made him famous. Why? Because he’s not acting. His name is David Von Pein and he is now proceeding at warp speed in his attempt to go beyond even Colbert’s famous caricature.

If the reader will recall, the last time we addressed Von Pein he was trying to patch up his beloved Reclaiming History. He has to. For he had ballyhooed Vincent Bugliosi’s giant tome in almost embarrassing accolades. Even before it was published.

To digress, it should be noted that Von Pein also does this with almost any TV show supporting the Commission. Then after the show is broadcast, he issues what is essentially a press release within hours of the air date. He notes that the show was excellently done and that it just wrecked some central tenet of the Commission critics. He has done this with almost every other Discovery Channel debacle to come down the turnpike. Then, when more credible, honest, and serious observers begin to poke holes in the production, he gradually gives ground. Until finally, he will maintain perhaps one tenet of the program as valid. He did this with the horrendous Inside the Target Car. When every point he had accepted about that atrocity was effectively speared, he finally backed off to defending just one of them. This was the simulated shot from the front with the head exploding; which he maintained as showing the head shot could not have come from the grassy knoll. To do this, he ignored a central point made by Milicent Cranor and myself: that what this actually indicated was the “replica skulls” used by host Gary Mack were anything but. Associate producer Mack essentially admitted this in his online discussion of the show when he said that the bullets they used did not fragment. Therefore the “replicas” did not provide the proper resistance, since in the Kennedy case the bullets did fragment. Von Pein can’t admit this since it vitiates both the experiment and his upholding of it. (Click here for our critiques of that phony sideshow )

The above pattern was paralleled with Reclaiming History. Before the book was published, Von Pein said it would lay out and silence the people he despises most in this world i.e. those who find serious fault with the Warren Commission. When the volume was issued, with great alacrity, he issued his usual press release. He praised all aspects of the work. He could find no real fault in the volume’s nearly 2,700 pages. When certain critiques began to point out the clear and myriad problems with the book – which he somehow had overlooked – he began to give ground. Until finally, today, he has been placed almost completely on the defensive.

For example, Von Pein responded to the first part of my Reclaiming History series by questioning my analysis of whether or not Oswald could have ordered the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that is in evidence today. I spent several paragraphs in part one of my critique showing that in view of all the evidence, it is highly unlikely that he could do so. I also posed a serious question about the transaction: the mail order company sent him the wrong rifle. Both the length and the classification were wrong. Although Oswald ordered the 36-inch model classified as a carbine, the Commission says he received the 40-inch model classified as a short rifle. Further, the House Select Committee on Assassinations discovered that Klein’s only placed scopes on the 36-inch model. Yet the 40-inch model in evidence has a scope on it. (Click here for that discussion.)

Von Pein said he would admit all this, but he then provided a link to the mail order allegedly sent in by Oswald. Which is classic Colbert/Von Pein. Because this technique ignores all the evidence I produced in Part One to show how hard it is to believe that Oswald sent in that money order. To name just a couple of points: 1.) It does not appear the money order was ever deposited, and 2.) Why would Oswald buy the money order at the post office, yet walk over a mile out of his way to mail the envelope? All the while being unaccountably absent from work.

To understand Von Pein, one has to go back to his online, forum appearance on the JFK Lancer site back in 2003. Even though moderator Debra Conway warned of submitting “trolling threads” there, Von Pein couldn’t help himself. In July of that year, he proclaimed Oswald guilty through what he termed a “mountain of evidence.” He then asked, how much of this overwhelming tidal wave of proof would it take to convince a person out of the notion of conspiracy? Quite a thunderous build up eh?

But as with Chaplin’s cannon, the explosion fired the shell about two feet away. For Von Pein’s “mountain of evidence” consisted of the mildewed litany of discredited Warren Commission data. Which, of course, is not a mountain. It’s more like the San Andreas Fault. He began with the above noted specious notion that Oswald owned the rifle; and he ended with the equally specious notion that Oswald could have run down from the sixth floor to the second in time to be seen by Marrion Baker and Roy Truly right after the assassination. Some of the gems in between were that Oswald definitely killed Officer Tippit and that he also attempted to kill General Edwin Walker. My favorite point was this: “the Single Bullet Theory has still not been proven to be an impossibility.” I guess he thinks that if it’s not impossible, that means it happened. (As we shall see later, with CE 399, it is impossible.) Von Pein even wrote that at Z frame 224, both Kennedy and John Connally were reacting to the same bullet. Which Milicent Cranor, in her previously posted article “Lies for the Eyes”, showed to be a howler. In reality Kennedy is reacting and Connally is not. With a straight face, at the end of this “mountainous” listing, Von Pein wrote, “For aren’t hard facts and evidence always more believable than wild speculation and conjecture?” (Posted 7/17/03)

As one respondent noted to Von Pein, with the work of Josiah Thompson, Sylvia Meagher, and Mark Lane, his list had been pretty much demolished by 1967. Yet he was reviving it as if it were new. Further, while listing it, he did not note any of the serious problems that those writers had pointed out. Von Pein was, of course, starting a classic “troll thread”. One that is deliberately meant to provoke others. “Trolling” was defined by Tim Campbell in his 2001 article on the subject as such: “An Internet troll is a person who delights in sowing discord on the Internet. He … tries to start arguments and upset people … To them, other Internet users are not quite human but are a kind of digital abstraction … Trolls are utterly impervious to criticism … .You cannot negotiate with them … you cannot reason with them … For some reason, trolls do not feel they are bound by the rules of courtesy or social responsibility.” Conway duly posted this article, seemingly to warn Von Pein.

But this did not even slow Von Pein down. For, as Campbell noted, trolls are non-negotiable and impervious to criticism. In his Colbert vein, Von Pein tried to say he was making arguments that were founded in common sense and logic. (Post of 7/21/05) A few days later, the uncontrollable urge to lash out at the billions who would not accept the Single Bullet Fantasy again possessed Von Pein. He submitted a truly Colbertian post. It pictured a gift basket of books for a Commission critic. It consisted of book covers entitled – among others – Paranoia, Face Your Fear, and A Paranoid’s Ultimate Survival Guide. No joke. (Post of 7/26/05) This points out the other side of Von Pein, which is also echoed in Reclaiming History: When you cannot win your argument on the facts, you resort to smearing your opponent. And Von Pein did this not just with the general comment above, but also to individuals. As Todd Teachout noted, Von Pein made comments to members like “You are disgusting!” and “The goofy gas must be getting to you … You’re talking more like a moron with every post.” As Todd ultimately noted, the obvious intent was “to not engage in a discussion of issues here, but to attempt to stifle a discussion of the issues.” (Post of 7/22/05)

Which was undoubtedly true. And finally, a few days later, Conway announced that she was banning Von Pein from her forum. After his belated expulsion, there followed a two-day celebration. On a small scale, it was somewhat comparable to V-E Day. But before leaving the subject of Von Pein at Lancer, it must be noted that it was there that he began to manifest his almost incontinent devotion to Reclaiming History. In fact, he began to bandy it about as a way to counteract evidentiary points in the case i.e. the avulsive hole that so many witnesses saw in the back of Kennedy’s skull. What made this odd is that he was doing it in 2005. Reclaiming History would not be published until two years hence. Quite an omniscient feat. One person questioned Von Pein’s reasoning from a different angle. He said that it was not logical for Von Pein to build up Bugliosi’s book because the author would be working with the same database everyone else was. Von Pein replied that although this may be true, Bugliosi was somehow that much smarter than everyone else and that should make the critics quiver in fear. For Reclaiming History would spell the end of their cause. Pretty hefty expectations for a book yet to be published.

As I said, Conway eventually did the right thing and ejected him from the forum. But Von Pein had to have understood that he was breaking the posted rules of the site. For it clearly stated that members were not to use abusive language. Another rule was not to spam or harass or exploit the other members. (The gift basket of “paranoid” titles would qualify as such in my book.) But the rule that Von Pein violated with reckless abandon was the one about doing mass posts and therefore flooding the board. As Gene Stump pointed out, Von Pein did 263 posts in his first 12 days! (Post of 7/28/05) As Teachout indicated, the game for Von Pein was to dominate the forum with his antique discredited “facts”, so that instead of doing constructive work, everyone would be debating things as silly as the Magic Bullet. When that didn’t work, Von Pein’s smears and insults would be used in hopes of dividing and polarizing the place so that no actual discussion on the evidence was possible. Because anyone who believed the Commission in error could be reduced to being something less than human: a sick and paranoid conspiracy buff. (In large part, Bugliosi adapted the last technique in his book.)

Once ejected from Lancer, Von Pein migrated over to John Simkin’s Spartacus forum. Pretty much the same thing occurred there. He was eventually ejected because of his abusive language plus his failure to post a photo of himself. Simkin required the latter to prevent trolls from entering the forum under assumed names. Which, of course, raises some interesting questions about Von Pein’s failure to do so.

After this second ejection, Von Pein came to his senses. He realized he could not comport normally with the great mass of the public who didn’t buy the fantasy of the Single Bullet Theory. He now made his way to the place where he belonged all along: the John McAdams dominated Google group, alt.conspiracy.jfk. Why is this important? Because historically speaking, McAdams was the first person on the Internet to exhibit critical thinking skills so stilted, comprehension skills so unbalanced, cognitive skills so impaired, all combined with a basic dishonesty about these failings, to the degree that he almost seemed the victim of a neurological disease. Any strong indication of conspiracy in the JFK case, no matter how compelling, could not permeate his brain waves or synapses. McAdams hates being an outcast or labeled as a propagandist – even though he is. So he constructed a sort of hospice for people like himself who normal thinking people could not tolerate. Actually two of them. One is on his own site and one is a Google Group.

The important thing for Von Pein is that since McAdams controls the halfway houses, almost anything goes as long as it supports the Warren Commission. Here, Von Pein could now use his previously noted wild man tactics with impunity. Another place that Von Pein frequents is the IMDB forum on Oliver Stone’s film JFK. There, to those not familiar with the facts of the case, he tried to discredit the film as a work of “fiction”. Or those who have not read the accompanying volume to the movie entitled JFK: The Book of the Film.

But it is from alt.conspiracy.jfk that Von Pein has continued what will probably be his lifetime goal: To protect and to serve Reclaiming History. After all, Von Pein bought into the book two years before it was published. He proclaimed to all that Bugliosi would grind the likes of Sylvia Meagher, Gary Aguilar, and Philip Melanson into hamburger. To put it kindly, Reclaiming History did no such thing. In fact, as Von Pein was advised, one of the most surprising things about the book is how little new is in it. For the most part, Bugliosi just recycled all the old Krazy Kid Oswald arguments and put them between two covers. In so doing he largely relied upon that same hoary and discredited cast of characters: Michael Baden, John Lattimer, Larry Sturdivan, David Slawson. He even trotted out Gerald Ford. As I noted, though Von Pein was warned about this probability, he thought Bugliosi would pull a rabbit out of the hat. He didn’t. Because there is none to pull.

Reclaiming History was remaindered in about a year. And it has been effectively attacked by a slew of writers: Rodger Remington, Gary Aguilar, Milicent Cranor, Michael Green, Mark Lane, Josiah Thompson and myself among them. So Von Pein is placed in the position of any troll. He has to defend what he said by protecting his hero from the justified and effective attacks on his work. In this regard, he has gotten so desperate that he communicates with Bugliosi’s secretary on a regular basis. She even asked him to host a cable TV program and take on “any and all conspiracy nuts.” Apparently, Rosemary Newton is unaware that Len Osanic personally invited Von Pein to debate me on his Black Op Radio program. I also asked him to do so. He failed to take up the challenge at either opportunity. Understandably, he would rather wage his crusade from inside the friendly confines of McAdams’ hospice (which I have elsewhere nicknamed The Pigpen) This is not very brave but – as we shall see – it is probably smart on his part. As Gil Jesus has noted, it’s from there that Von Pein can issue some of his most bizarre proclamations, like “What does ‘back and to the left’ prove? Anything?” Or this other dandy: “Let’s assume for the sake of argument that there were/are several different Mannlicher Carcano rifles with the exact same serial number on them of C2766 … my next logical question (based on the totality of evidence in this Kennedy murder case) is this one: So what?” (Jesus post at Spartacus forum 9/13/08, quoting Von Pein) Only from The Pigpen could such wild nonsense be allowed.

And only there could the following go by without being harpooned. In August of 2009, Von Pein queried Rosemary Newton again. He wanted her to ask Bugliosi if CE 399 – the Magic Bullet – would have been admitted into evidence at trial. He also wanted to ask if the judge at the 1986 simulated posthumous Oswald trial in London had done so. In the Introduction to Reclaiming History, Bugliosi tries to insinuate that the televised trial that he (unwisely) chose to participate in was very close to an actual trial. And that it followed the standard rules of evidence. The author sidestepped the crucial fact that since the trial was in London and the core evidence is at the National Archives, things like the alleged rifle, the shells, the autopsy evidence, and CE 399, were not there to be presented in court This would not be the case at a real trial. But not only that, even though all three autopsy doctors were alive in 1986, none of them were at the trial. Could one imagine all this happening in a real, contested, high-profile trial? I can’t. In actuality, the London production did not even approach a real trial. And since all the above was lacking, the rules of evidence – by necessity – could not be followed. To point out just one failing: Any defense lawyer worth his salt would have demanded CE 399 be presented in court for the jury to view. We shall see why shortly.

In spite of the above, on August 22nd of 2009, Bugliosi replied to Von Pein’s query about the admittance of the Magic Bullet into evidence. Significantly, the prosecutor led off by saying that the purpose of the “chain of possession requirement is to insure that the item being offered into evidence by the prosecution, or the defense, is what they claim it to be.” (Keep in mind, Bugliosi himself said this.) He then answered the first question with, yes CE 399 would be admitted. And his answer to the second question was that the judge at the London trial had admitted the bullet into evidence without seeing it! Yep, that’s what happened. A question that Von Pein/Colbert didn’t ask was: “Vince, what kind of evidentiary hearing could you have if the actual bullet wasn’t there? That would mean that the jury could not examine it. It’s the shock of seeing that bullet and then listening to both the damage it inflicted and its flight path that has convinced tens of millions of Americans that Oswald didn’t do it.”

In his reply, Bugliosi also referred to pages 814-815 of Reclaiming History as proof that CE 399 was not fired elsewhere and then planted at Parkland. If you look up those pages you will see why Von Pein is Von Pein. For on those pages, Bugliosi is referring to the Neutron Activation Analysis test. The one which the scientific world, the FBI, and the court system has now deemed as discredited. A test which, because of the work of Bill Tobin, Cliff Spiegelman, Eric Randich and Pat Grant, will likely never be used in court again. The test which even Robert Blakey has called “junk science”. (For why, click here and here). In other words, only in the world of John McAdams, Von Pein, and Reclaiming History, are we to still use this “junk science” for bullet-lead forensic purposes. After this, Bugliosi begged off and thanked Von Pein profusely. As he should.

In Von Pein’s previous reply to my brief noting of his treatment of the rifle issue, he protested my terming him a “cheerleader” for Reclaiming History. He said he was actually a cheerleader for the truth. But if that was the case then why didn’t Von Pein/Colbert ask Bugliosi any of the following about CE 399?
1. “Vince, in Six Seconds in Dallas – which you have read closely – the author makes a convincing case that CE 399 was not found on Kennedy’s stretcher or John Connally’s. Nor was it on the floor. It was on the stretcher of a little boy named Ronald Fuller. If so, how did it get there?” (See pgs. 163-64)”Vince, in that same book, the author interviewed O. P. Wright, the guy who turned over CE 399 to the Secret Service. He said that the bullet he discovered was not a copper coated, round nosed, military jacketed bullet like CE 399. But a lead colored, sharp-nosed, hunting round. How could that be? And by your own definition of the chain of custody test, i.e. insuring that the item is what it is claimed to be, in light of Wright’s testimony, how would CE 399 be admitted into evidence?” (ibid p. 175)”Josiah Thompson talked to Wright’s widow many years later. She was the head of nursing at Parkland. She said other nurses turned up other bullets that day. Did you talk to her? Why wasn’t this investigated by Arlen Specter and the Commission?” (See my review of Reclaiming History, part 1, Section 4.)”Why did the FBI lie in a memo about showing CE 399 to Wright? Gary Aguilar and Josiah Thompson found out that they did not do so. Does this have anything to do with Wright’s name not being in the Warren Report?” (ibid)”In your book, in the End Notes on p. 431, you write that Elmer Lee Todd’s initials are on CE 399. John Hunt checked on this at the National Archives. Todd’s initials are not on the bullet. So it appears the FBI lied again. Did you not check this fact?” (See my Reclaiming History review, part 7, Section 3.)”Todd wrote down the time he received the bullet as 8:50 PM. But Robert Frazier wrote down that he got the bullet at 7:30 PM. Yet the FBI says he got it from Todd. How could such a thing happen? Is that dichotomy in your book? I don’t recall it.” (Ibid)
  
  “Vince, were all these issues addressed at that London trial? I don’t recall them being brought up. In a real trial don’t you think they would have been?”
2. “If you had been Oswald’s defense lawyer at trial, wouldn’t you have used this information to powerful effect to show that CE 399 was not the bullet found at Parkland, and the FBI knew it? Why would you not have? Its tremendously exculpatory stuff. I would have liked to have seen the DA’s face as you wrecked his case with it.”
Von Pein asked the author none of these questions. So much for him being a cheerleader for the truth. You can’t do that unless you find the truth. To find the truth you have to ask the right questions and honestly follow the answers. (Which is probably why Von Pein has been known to disable comments on some of his You Tube channels.)

Von Pein/Colbert would not pose the above questions for they would indicate that 1.) The London TV proceeding that Bugliosi participated in was nothing but a show trial, and 2.) Bugliosi ignored almost all these very important questions in his book. (And concerning question number five, it doesn’t appear that Bugliosi visited the National Archives to examine the key piece of evidence that he says was admitted, sight unseen, in London.) This kind of leaves Von Pein holding the bag. I mean he has been trying to sell Reclaiming History as the Holy Grail to the JFK case for about five years. To put it mildly, it hasn’t panned out as he claimed. He can’t admit that. Since because of his unwise advertising campaign, he now has egg all over his face. So he sends out an SOS to Bugliosi. And what does he get? More egg. Maybe he’ll get an omelet next time.

Zealot that he is, he still shills for Reclaiming History. But only from his safe haven at the McAdams’ controlled comedy central forum. There he is largely protected from the spears and arrows of the real world. Jon and Stephen, with interviews like the one described above, Von Pein is in training. Don’t look now, but he’s gaining on you.

See als Part 2.
April 1, 2010
Russ Baker, Family of Secrets

This book has a rather deceptive title. In two ways.

First, although it says it will be about the Bush family, strictly speaking, it really is not. There are only a few pages about Prescott Bush, father of George H. W. Bush, the man who really started off the whole regime. But further, there is next to nothing on important figures in George’s brood like Neil, Marvin, and especially, Jeb Bush. Which means that the book really examines the careers of two men only: George Bush Sr. and Jr.

But it’s even more constricted than that. From a careful reading of the volume, the book spends over 40% of its text on just three events in the lives of those two men. In order they are: Senior’s alleged involvement in the JFK case and Watergate; and Junior’s much debated service in the Texas Air National Guard. That’s it. Check for yourself. Think for a moment of all the rather dark and deadly things those two men have been involved with. Its hard to believe that Baker makes short work of the following: the Iran/Contra affair, the elimination of the Sandinistas through lethal means, the October Surprise, Gulf War I, Oliver North’s drug running, the election heists of 2000 and 2004, the incredible intelligence failure that resulted in 9-11, the phony pretenses for Gulf War II, and the 2007 collapse of the American economy. That list is, of course, selective and reductive. But Baker gives all of these matters the once over. In fact, some are not dealt with at all. It is an odd choice.

Baker would probably say that there have been reams written about the above topics. Which is true. Yet, there are two salient points to be made in that regard. First, one can always do more digging into matters like the above. For the simple reason that they are very large and complex subjects that have yet to be exhausted. One great comparison is what Jim Hougan did with Watergate. By the time he issued Secret Agenda in 1984, there had been scores of books written on the matter. Yet his book made you reconsider the whole affair from Step 1. Secondly, the Bush family role in the above events I listed is certain. It is not a matter of manufacture, conjecture or speculation. As we shall see, that is not the case with two of the three areas that Baker has chosen to concentrate his book on.

I

Let us start with what I perceive to be the strength of the book. This would be the discussion of George Bush Jr. and his rather weird and spotty service in the Texas Air National Guard. Baker had written about this subject previously and at length in publications like The Nation. So this is clearly something he had followed through time as the issue gradually mushroomed in importance. The climax of its public debate was the veritable explosion that erupted at CBS in 2004-05. As Baker describes it, Dan Rather and others were dragged over the coals when they used some questionable copied documents to explain the gaps in President Bush’s service in the Guard.

The problem all began in 1968, after Bush Jr. graduated from Yale. Once out of college, George would lose his student deferment and almost certainly be eligible for a tour in Vietnam. The problem was this: although the Bush clan supported the war in public for political fodder, they secretly understood it was a terrible mistake that was not worth fighting in, much less dying over. So they had to finesse George W. Bush dodging his impending service in Indochina. The clan decided on an exit ticket: W. would join the National Guard.

Specifically, George would join the 147th Fighter Wing of the Texas Air National Guard. The trouble was that, understandably, many young men in Texas wanted to join this group at the time. It was nicknamed the “Champagne Unit” because many of the offspring of wealth and power joined up to dodge combat in Vietnam (p. 139) In fact, special positions were created to accommodate the many demands for entry. (ibid)

The Bush story has been that George talked to unit commander Lt. Col. Walter Staudt and Staudt told him positions were open. (p. 138) In reality, strings were pulled by state Speaker of the House, Ben Barnes, to get Bush Jr. into the unit. (p. 139) But, once in, W. got even more special treatment. Usually, to be commissioned a second lieutenant, one has to either attend officer training school, pull 18 prior months of service, or have 2 years of ROTC. Bush did none of these, but he still got the commission. (p. 140) Secondly, the unit paid to train Bush to be a pilot from square A. Which was another exception to procedure. The unit usually either borrowed trained pilots from the Air Force or further trained those who had had some experience. Bush had none. (p. 139)

And then there were the strange interludes, let us call them vacations. After George Jr. took six weeks of basic training in San Antonio, he got a two-month leave to work on Ed Gurney’s Senate campaign in Florida. (p. 140) Gurney’s campaign was being run by a friend of Bush Sr. named Jimmy Allison. It was after this episode that Bush Jr. took his first training lessons, on both a Cessna and a simulator, in Valdosta, Georgia. That took about a year. (p. 141) He then returned to the Houston area and Ellington Field for the “more daunting task of learning to fly a real fighter jet.” (ibid)

In the summer of 1970, having completed his jet pilot training, his full-time obligation now transformed to a part-time status, usually referred to as a “weekend warrior”. But after this, in early 1972, something began to go wrong with Bush’s flying career. For some reason that has never been fully explained, he was taken out of the cockpit and placed in a two-pilot training plane. (p. 148) From which he had already graduated. Sort of like going back to trainer wheels after one has learned to ride a bicycle. On these regressive two-seater flights, his friend Jim Bath sometimes accompanied him. It didn’t seem to work. Because back in the F-102, he needed three passes before he made a landing. In fact, he had become such a liability in the air that, according to the author, the last documented record of him flying alone is April 16, 1972. (ibid) He then left both the unit and the state. The problem is he had not fulfilled his time obligation yet. This now begins the second stage of murkiness to the Bush National Guard saga: in addition to not flying again, did he or did he not fulfill the rest of his service obligation?

The latter question is partly covered up by another political campaign. George Jr. said he now was going to work on another Allison managed enterprise. This one was the senate run of Red Blount in Alabama. So George Jr. requested a transfer to the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance unit in Montgomery at Dannelly Field. The question then became: Did Bush Jr. then fulfill his service at Dannelly? Well, the former base commander said the following: “I’m dead certain he didn’t show up.” (p. 150) And in fact, as Baker writes, “no credible records or eyewitnesses ever emerged to back” his claim of fulfilling his weekend service requirement in Alabama. (ibid) In fact, former members of the Dannelly unit ran ads offering monetary rewards in a Guard periodical to anyone who had any evidence that George Jr., had fulfilled his service. No one replied to the ads. (ibid) But Baker did find a number of witnesses who testified to Bush being a rather boisterous drunk during the Blount campaign, and two who said he combined his alcohol intake with illicit drugs. (p. 151)

And this angle perhaps links to why George had to get out of flying, and also the 147th. According to a witness who talked to Jerry Killian, Bush’s wing commander, Bush was getting the jitters about flying. Killian said he “was having trouble landing, and that possibly there was a drinking problem involved.” (ibid)

After Blount’s loss in November of 1972, George Jr. packed his bags and returned to Texas. But he did not return to Ellington as he was supposed to do so. He first went to Washington DC and then to Florida for the holidays. He then returned to Dannelly in Alabama for a routine x-ray, except, oddly, it was done by a dentist. (p. 153) He also called a former female Blount worker and invited her to dinner. Over dinner, he told her he was there for guard training. As Baker notes, this sure sounds like George Jr. was laying in a future CYA trail to disguise the facts that a.) he had not served in Alabama and b.) he was not returning to Ellington.

Junior now went back to Texas to try to allegedly fulfill his service requirement. Except his superiors did not want him back. (p. 154) In fact, there is no record of him serving back at Ellington after Alabama. Further, no paperwork for alternative service in Alabama was ever sent to Ellington. (p. 156) As Baker logically deduces, “Just about all the evidence suggests that George W. Bush went AWOL from National Guard duty in May 1972 and never returned, thus skipping out on two years of a six-year military obligation.” (ibid) Clearly, someone was pulling strings for Bush Jr. As Texas reporter Jim Moore wrote, if Guardsmen missed drills or were late they were hunted down and arrested. If they missed a second exercise you could be made eligible for the draft. (p. 157) Who was doing the pulling for W.? Well, at around this time, George Bush Sr. was becoming head of the Republican National Committee.

From the beginning of Junior’s political career his handlers knew this National Guard episode was going to be a problem. When Moore first questioned W. about it during a debate for the Texas governorship in 1994, he was later accosted by campaign advisers Karen Hughes and Karl Rove. (pgs. 407-08) They wanted to make it clear that these questions were somehow out of bounds. But as Bush’s career advanced along to the point that he was now considering running for president, the issue would not go away. And it appears that when the presidency got on their radar screens, the Bush team fiddled with the files.

According to Guard manager Bill Burkett, this began in 1997. After a call from a Bush staffer, he saw some Guardsman in a room with Bush’s file. It was being pilfered. One of the documents discarded was a ‘counseling statement’. This explained why George was being grounded and the changes in assignment, slot, and his wages. (p. 411) Burkett first made these claims at that time. He then wrote letters to state legislators. He then phoned Bush adviser Dan Bartlett. (ibid) Burkett was then sent to Panama in 1998. He got sick on his way back and had problems getting his medical benefits. People who tried to help him in the Guard were fired.

As Baker summarizes it, whatever one thinks of Burkett, there are documents missing from Bush’s Guard file that should be there. For instance, on how Texas handled his transfer to Alabama, and also a panel report that should have been written up after Bush stopped flying. (p. 412) Further, “microfilm containing military pay records for hundreds of Guardsmen, including Bush, was irreversibly damaged”. (ibid) This also occurred in 1997, the year when Burkett’s reported pilfering incident allegedly happened.

What is so utterly fascinating about this whole sorry tale is that no MSM source did any real reporting on it until late May of 2000. This was when W. had more or less vanquished the GOP field and was closing in on the presidential nomination. Only then did reporter Walter Robinson of the Boston Globe break a story , which included interviews with Bush’s former commanders who did not recall seeing him in Alabama or Texas in 1972 or ’73. (ibid)

Mickey Herskowitz made this saga even more interesting. Herskowitz was a longtime Texas sportswriter who also co-wrote several biographies of celebrities e.g. John Connally and Mickey Mantle. The writer knew George Bush Sr. and he suggested that he co-write a book with his son in time for the 2000 presidential campaign. Karl Rove OK’d the project and W. said he would do it if he didn’t have to work too hard. He also wanted to know how much money was in it. (p. 420) But W. also worried if there was enough material there for a book since he thought he had not really accomplished all that much. Therefore he felt it might be a good idea to focus on his policy objectives. When Herksowitz asked what those would be, W. replied, “Ask Karl.” (ibid)

The pair had about twenty meetings about the book. Herskowitz said that although Bush was reserved about his National Guard service, he did say some interesting things. The writer asked him what he did about his obligation once he went to Alabama and served on the Blount campaign. Bush replied, “Nothing. I was excused.” (p. 420) This may or may not be true. But it contradicted the cover story that was already out there, and also later cover stories to come. Bush also told the author that he never flew a plane again after he left the Texas Guard in 1972, either military or civilian.

There was one other tantalizing thing that W. told Herskowitz. He said that his father “had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait, and he wasted it … If I have a chance to invade … if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed…” (p. 423)

This is a very important statement of course. For the attacks of 9-11 gave W. the opportunity to invade Iraq. And to complete the job that he thought his father had not. Even if Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9-11! That is how predisposed W. was on this issue before the 2000 campaign even began. And the fact that he had dodged his military service in Vietnam, and then gone AWOL in the Air National Guard personally made it easy for him to commit tens of thousands of young men to an awful war, since he had never come close to fighting in one. Therefore, with the terrible war in Iraq as a backdrop, Bush Jr. and his Guard service should have loomed large in the debate over sending young men into a questionable war. That the national media never pursued this angle with any relish or consistency tells us all we need to know about the state of the MSM at that time. Especially since W. was now sending National Guard troops to serve in Iraq. (p. 440)

In 2004, right before the re-election campaign, things did heat up. Burkett appeared on Hardball and made his accusation about seeing Bush aides clean up the Guard records. This story had some bounce, as it later appeared on the CBS News and in the New York Times. (p. 447) Then two things happened to suck any helium left out of the balloon.

First John Kerry, and his campaign manager Bob Shrum, made one of the biggest miscalculations in the history of presidential races. Rather than attacking the first four years of W.’s presidency, they decided to center Kerry’s nominating convention, and a large part of his early campaign, on his service in Vietnam. Baker properly scores them for this. It was a misguided strategy, especially in light of the fact that there was so much in the Bush presidency to go after. But we all know what made it worse. Karl Rove created the whole phony Swift Boat Veterans for Truth mirage. And, unchallenged at first by the Kerry campaign and the press, this Rove manufacture was allowed to disseminate through rightwing outlets like Fox News.

The second event that helped bury the issue was the Dan Rather-Mary Mapes-CBS News bloodbath. Most of us know this story by now. Burkett got hold of some documents about George’s service in the Texas Guard. One seemed to depict a transfer from Killian due to George’s inability to meet standard on his pilot training, and his failure to get a physical. (p. 456) This, and 3-4 other documents whetted Mapes’, Rather’s 60 Minutes producer, appetite. She wanted to use the documents for a 60 Minutes segment on the issue.

There were two problems with this. First, Burkett got them from a source who did not want his name divulged. In fact, this mysterious source did not even turn them over to Burkett. A go-between named ‘Lucy Ramirez’ did so. Consequently, the provenance of the documents was under a cloud. Second, the documents themselves were copies. Further, Mapes had Burkett fax them to CBS in New York. (p. 457) This resulted in further distortion of the lettering on the papers.

Everyone knows what happened next. Via what appeared to be some GOP operatives who just happened to view the show, the Bush allies on the Internet began to question whether the documents were real or fakes. This created a tempest in the midst of an election campaign i.e. the whole phony issue of whether or not the “liberal media” was out to get a sitting GOP president. CBS management did a bad job in meeting this challenge. They eventually gave in and authorized an “independent panel”. Which, of course, was not really independent. Their job was to essentially get rid of or demote everyone involved with the program. How bad was this panel? They never even investigated or ruled on whether the documents were actually genuine.

If Bush Jr. had planned it all in advance, it could not have turned out better for him. Through the Swift Boat mirage, his military service backfired on Kerry. And because of the Web attack, Bill Burkett, and the whole Texas Guard issue was taken out like a machete had cut it away.

Beyond any doubt, this is the high point of the book. Baker combines some original reporting with work by people like Moore and Mapes to put together a good, juicy, and factually solid summary of this whole sorry episode. What it all says about W., and even worse, the national media, seems to me to be of the utmost importance and interest. The former abdicated his responsibility to the Guard. And the latter abdicated its responsibility to the public.

II

If the rest of Family of Secrets was as sound as this section, the book would have been a good and valuable effort. In my view, such is not the case. In fact, it’s not even close. And the bad part is that the rest of the book really means upwards of 90% of it. Baker’s reporting on Bush Sr. does not reveal anywhere near the amount of factual data, reliable testimony, logical inference, and investigative reporting that he does on the Texas Guard story. And since, as I note above, these other areas take up much more space than this first story, the overall effort suffers mightily for that.

A clear objective of the book is to counter and modify the work of Joseph McBride for the Nation. In two essays done in 1988, McBride unearthed documents and interviews that indicated that Bush Sr. was involved in providing cover for Cuban exiles for the CIA. McBride did not go any further than what the documents indicated. He came to the conclusion that Bush’s actual CIA status-whether he was an agent or asset– could not be really evaluated. But it looked like he was a businessman used as an asset. One of the main objectives of Baker’s book is to somehow show that Bush Sr. was much more than just a CIA asset at the time of the Bay of Pigs. In fact, Baker tries to insinuate that Bush Sr. was a CIA officer from the fifties onward. In fact, his chapter on Bush Sr. becoming CIA chief in the mid-seventies makes this objective clear. It is entitled “In From the Cold”.

Generally speaking the argument is made through three steps: 1.) Bush’s alleged service as an agent in the fifties 2.) His alleged role in the JFK case, and 3.) His alleged role in the Watergate effort to bring down President Nixon.

I cannot do any better than Seamus Coogan did in his brief discussion of the import of the 1988 McBride articles. (Click here to view his essay.) The relatively brief McBride articles are also reprinted on pages 371-78 of Mark Lane’s book Plausible Denial. McBride does not pass judgment on what Bush actually was up to in the Agency. But he did interview a trusted source who said Bush had probably helped with the Bay of Pigs. Which would make sense. For as Seamus noted, Bush’s oil company operated off of Cay Sal island, about 40 miles off the coast of Cuba.

Now, inexplicably, Baker writes that the McBride articles elicited a collective yawn from the media at the time of publication. (p. 11) Not really so. As McBride notes in his second piece, his story “received wide coverage in the media.” The Bush team’s initial denials, and the CIA’s break with tradition to issue a formal reply were extraordinary. It was made worse when, in a dumb stroke, the Agency tried to say the document actually referred to a different George Bush. McBride tracked down this second George Bush, who did work for the CIA at the time. From the interview, it is very hard to believe the memo from J. Edgar Hoover, warning of a possible exile attempt to attack Cuba in the wake of JFK’s death, referred to him. (Lane, pgs. 376-78) All this mucking about created a buzz in the press. Especially considering the fact that, back then, there was no Internet to speak of at all. But I think Baker wants to characterize it as much less than it was in order to somehow portray himself as a pioneer in uncovering the long ignored clandestine career of Bush Sr. In other words, McBride’s work was the tip of the iceberg and it greatly understated who Bush Sr. was and what his ties to the Agency really were. It took Baker to reveal it. Let us evaluate his case for the long withheld clandestine career of George Bush Sr.

He begins his excavation on page 12. He says that researcher Jerry Shinley has found a document that places Bush’s service with the CIA back into the early fifties. The problem is that the phrasing in this document is quite ambiguous. It says that through a Mr. Gale Allen the CIA had learned in 1975 that Bush had knowledge of a terminated project dealing with proprietary commercial projects in Europe. Bush learned of them through CIA officer Tom Devine. Now, the fact that Devine told his sometime oil business partner about a since deceased CIA project does not mean that Bush Sr. was in the CIA. In the memorandum’s terms, at least as Baker presents it, the wording suggests what I just wrote: Bush had acquired the knowledge through Devine. Another problem is that Bush’s commercial projects were not in Europe, but in America and the Caribbean. So I got the feeling that, unlike with the Air Guard story, the author was stretching his data thin.

That impression was strengthened when I discovered that, Baker was relying largely on one source for the rest of his information about Bush and the CIA prior to the Bay of Pigs. That source was the same one that John Hankey used in an online discussion with me, namely Joseph Trento’s 2005 book entitled Prelude to Terror. Let me explain why this creates a problem.

Trento is a longtime writer on intelligence matters. In fact, he figures importantly in Lane’s Plausible Denial. But it’s the way he figures in that book that should have given Baker and Hankey pause. Trento is not an intelligence writer in the way that say Jim Hougan is. Hougan is a digger, a man who does not accept the world of intelligence by its surface measures or by what its maestros tell him. And it’s that skepticism that makes him a trusted and valuable source.

Trento is not a digger. And he trusts what most of his sources tell him. To the point that sometimes he just writes their declarations out in sentence form. A good example of this would be his previous 2001 book, The Secret History of the CIA. Which, to put it mildly, did not live up to its title. Since two of Trento’s most trusted sources were CIA operators like James Angleton and Robert Crowley, the book has a definite spin to it. For example, in spite of much contrary evidence, it says that it was not Henry Cabot Lodge who spawned the coup against Ngo Dinh Diem in Vietnam, but President Kennedy. (Trento, p. 252) Trento, listening unswervingly to Angleton, characterizes Lee and Marina Oswald as Russian agents, and the Kennedy assassination as a KGB plot. (pgs. 258ff) Trento mentions the fact that George DeMohrenschildt said he had been told by the CIA to contact Oswald. But Trento, quoting Angleton writes, “Angleton, however, maintained that DeMohrenschildt worked for the KGB and that he was the Oswalds’ control officer.” (ibid, p. 258) He also adds that DeMohrenschildt took his own life in 1983, when in fact he died mysteriously in 1977. (ibid) Angleton tells Trento that Oswald’s cavorting around with Cubans in New Orleans was a KGB charade to blame the assassination on Cuba and not Russia. (ibid, p. 260)

I could go on and on in this vein but let me just add this: Trento tells us that another of his sources, William R. Corson, was dispatched to Dallas by President Johnson to begin his own investigation of the case. (Trento, p. 267) And that Corson ended up working for the Warren Commission. Corson told Trento that Cuban DGI agents convinced Jack Ruby to kill Oswald. (ibid) Need I say that this last is right out of a Gus Russo disinformation script. And for the same reason. Just as Russo is ‘oh so trusting’ of his CIA sources, so is Trento.

But what makes this last bit even more interesting is that of his three major sources, Corson is probably the most trustworthy. Corson was a military intelligence officer who served in Vietnam and wrote a highly critical book on US involvement in that struggle. But part of the problem is that Corson died in 2000. The two Trento books under discussion were both published afterwards. So whatever corrective influence Corson could have had on these last two books was probably weakened.

In spite of all the compromising elements I have listed, its from Trento’s Prelude to Terror that Baker gets the large part of the rest of his information about George Bush and his previously secret ties to the CIA. In light of all I have outlined above, here is a question that Baker should have asked himself: “If this information about George Bush is true and viable, then why didn’t Trento use it in his previous book? After all, it was titled The Secret History of the CIA. Wouldn’t George Bush be part of that?”

What makes this even worse is that in the area of Prelude to Terror where the early CIA employment of Bush is discussed, virtually every endnote is to an interview with a CIA officer. (See Prelude to Terror, pgs. 362-64) In other words, it’s all anecdotal. But furthering my original point, these interviews were almost all done many years ago. So why didn’t Trento use them in the previous book? It doesn’t help matters that almost all these interview subjects are now dead, so they can’t be cross-checked. Why should they be? Consider this: “It was in the late 1950’s that the covert operations culture called upon George H. W. Bush’s talents. Bush was at first a tiny part of Operation Mongoose, the CIA’s code name for their anti-Castro operations.” (ibid, p. 16) Baker didn’t seem to notice that the CIA could not have first called on Bush in the late 50’s to be part of Mongoose because Mongoose did not begin until 1962.

Finally, let me add one last word about why the use of this book seems suspect to me. The general message of Trento’s tome is that the use of private intelligence networks, set up by people like Ted Shackley, has led to our present problems in places like Afghanistan. (ibid, pgs. 316-17). The book blames some of this on George Bush Sr. because of his well-known ties to the Saudi Arabian monarchy. It is also highly critical of this network’s Saudi ties to Pakistan and the death of President Zia. In fact, it blames the Saudis inability to keep control of Pakistan’s atomic weapons quest as the reason why the quest became Islamicized, that is, anti-Israel in intent. Who is a major source for Trento’s view of Bush and the Saudis in all this: Angleton’s scribe Edward Epstein. (See p. 324) I should note that one of Angleton’s later responsibilities in the CIA was supervising the Israeli desk and interfacing with Mossad.

Baker writes not a word of caution, qualification, or warning about any of the above. That’s how much he wants to make Bush Sr. a longtime CIA operator. And the drive does not stop there. Not by any means.

III

As most commentators on the life of George Bush Sr. acknowledge, by the early sixties, he was trying to transition out of his previous petroleum business life style. He wanted to get into national politics-a goal at which he later succeeded in a big way. So in 1963 he was living in Houston and became chairman of the Harris County Republican Party. As such he was supporting Barry Goldwater for president. He also decided to run for the senate against liberal Democratic incumbent Ralph Yarborough. An important point to enumerate here, as Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin do in George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, is this: Bush was in on the beginning of the revival of the GOP in the south. And, unlike Dwight Eisenhower’s GOP version, it was a particularly virulent strain of the GOP. One that would eventually and naturally evolve into the Newt Gingrich slash and burn version, whose intent would be to essentially raze the New Deal.

According to Tarpley, Bush had run hard for the county office in 1962, with his wife in tow. They went from meeting to meeting telling listeners that there had to be a viable two party system in Texas. It was from this county position that Bush decided to scaffold his run against Yarborough. He announced his candidacy on September 10, 1963. He would have to win a primary first before he took on the populist Yarborough.

Just about all the above is missing from Baker’s treatment of Bush’s first senatorial run. To Baker, all this rather interesting drama takes a back seat to what he perceives as the real and hidden importance in that run: George Bush’s role as a covert CIA operative in the killing of John F. Kennedy. In fact, Baker devotes more pages to this subject than any other. (About 90 of them.) He begins his Chapter 4 on a rather unusual note, one that will establish his creeping solipsistic view. He actually implies that Bush became chair of the Harris country party not for the above stated political ends. Oh no. He did it so he could travel all over Texas. Why? Because “Bush’s political work, like his oil work, may have been a cover for intelligence activities.” (Baker, p. 49 By the way, the supposition about his oil work being a cover is largely from Trento.)

A few pages later, on page 52, Baker introduces what will clearly be the main entrée for his theory of Bush the covert operator in the Kennedy hit. This is the Parrott memorandum. It is to Baker what the above-mentioned Hoover memorandum about Cuban exiles was to John Hankey in his film JFK 2. That is, Baker is going to drag every single piece of nuanced meaning he possibly can out of it. If the Parrott memo were a cow, Baker would have worked every last drop of not just milk–but blood, water, and tissue from it. To the point that someone would have had to kill the cow to put it out of its misery.

To provide the background: on 11/22/63, George H. W. Bush called the FBI. He said that he had heard in recent weeks that a member of the Young Republicans named James Parrott had been talking about killing Kennedy when he arrived in Houston. The FBI characterized Parrot as rightwing, a quasi-Birchite, a student at University of Houston, and active in politics in the area. Further, that a check of Secret Service indices revealed that they had a report that Parrott had threatened to kill Kennedy in 1961. The FBI interviewed Parrott’s mother and then Parrott himself. They found out that Parrott had been discharged from the Air Force for mental reasons in 1959. Parrott said that he had been in the company of another Republican activist at the time of the shootings. Bush at first denied making the call, and then he said he did not recall making it. (See Tarpley, Chapter 8b.)

In light of the above basic facts, let us watch what Baker does with this. First of all, if you were a covert CIA operator in on the Kennedy plot, would you announce in advance that you would be in Dallas to give a speech on the evening of 11/21? Further, would you put that announcement in the newspapers? Well, that is what Bush did in the Dallas Morning News on 11/20.

At the actual time of the assassination, Bush was in Tyler, Texas. The author says he made the FBI call about Parrott to establish an alibi. This makes no sense. Why? Because Bush already had an alibi. As Kitty Kelley established, the vice-president of the Kiwanis Club-a man named Aubrey Irby-was with Bush at the time of Kennedy’s murder. Along with about a hundred other people. For Bush was about to give a luncheon speech at the Blackstone Hotel. He had just started when Irby told him what had happened. Bush called off the speech. (Baker, p. 54) Question for the author: With about 101 witnesses, why would you need a phone call to establish your alibi?

The author then writes that Bush told the FBI he would be in Dallas later on the 22nd, and that he would be staying at the Sheraton that night. Baker finds it suspicious that he did not stay the night as he said he was going to. Or as Baker writes in his full Inspector Javert-or John Hankey-mode: “Why state that he expected to spend the night at the Dallas Sheraton if he was not planning to stay?” (p. 59) Well Russ, maybe he was planning to. But because he later realized that Dallas would not be a real good place to campaign in that night, he changed his mind. I mean don’t you think the populace was mentally preoccupied?

What Baker does with the figure of Parrott is just as odd. As Tarpley wrote, the man had been discharged from the Air Force for psychiatric reasons. He was from the rabid right in Texas, which is pretty rabid. And the Secret Service had a source that said he had made a threat against Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs. Baker soft pedals all this to the max. He tries to make Parrott into a sweet misunderstood lad who Bush somehow magically picked out to provide him an alibi he didn’t need. I could find no mention in Baker of the previous Secret Service file threat by Parrott which Tarpley mentions. And because that is not here, an important part of the story get jumbled.

In Bush’s report to the Bureau, he mentioned a man named Keary Reynolds as someone who may have told him about Parrott. From Parrott and his mother, Baker says that Reynolds actually came to Parrott’s house to ask him to paint some signs for the GOP campaign. So this now becomes Reynolds giving Parrott an alibi. (Which, like Bush, he did not need. Because, as I wrote above, he had been with another Republican activist.)

Baker then interviews Reynolds. Reynolds does not recall making the paint job offer or visiting the Parrot house. (pgs. 61-63) He says he vaguely recalled the name because a young man had come around HQ previously and someone told him that he had threatened JFK. He also recalled escorting Parrott to the Secret Service office on 11/22 because of that. So what Reynolds does is back up the Secret Service having a threat file on Parrott. He also seems to back up Bush hearing about this reactionary around HQ. Finally, he seems to undermine the whole “visit to Parrott’s house to offer a job” thesis. Reynolds says he was never at the Parrott home. Parrott and his mom may have fibbed about that to conceal the fact that the Secret Service called him in that day because of his past history. And also perhaps because of the Bush phone call.

But Baker is still not done. Barbara Bush is apparently part of the plot, or at least the cover up. Barbara Bush wrote a note about her activities on 11/22/63. Addressed just generally to members of her family, it talks about her being at a beauty parlor when she heard the news on the radio of Kennedy being shot. (Baker, pgs. 53-54) Again, Baker gives the letter the Javert-Hankey going over. First, he asks where was George? Russ, Kitty Kelley already established where George was. Did you expect him to be at the hairdresser’s with his wife during a primary campaign? Back then, guys used combs and Brylcreem. Baker then asks why the letter had not surfaced earlier. Maybe because this was Barbara’s first book of personal memoirs? As far as I can see, that was the case. Barbara Bush did write one book previously called Millie’s Book, but that was really a children’s book about the White House, wryly written from the point of view of her dog. Baker/Hankey then asks for the original, which he says he cannot get since Bush and his wife would not talk to him for the book. I wonder why.

What I think Baker is getting at-and he’s always getting at something or other– is this: Somehow Barbara faked this letter years later to establish another alibi. But again, for who? Her husband already had one. (I really hope Baker does not mean for herself.) Further, back in 1994 when her book was published, who harbored any suspicions about Bush Sr. and the JFK case? Hankey and Baker were years off.

The rest of this overlong JFK section is, for me, even worse than the above. It basically amounts to what I scored Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann for in their two bad books: guilt by name association. A friend of the Bushes was letting them use their plane during the campaign. I think Baker means us to believe that this was not a friendly gesture between friends: Mr. Zeppa was really an accessory to the plot as he squired Bush around. Don’t ask me how or why. Jack Crichton was a pal of Bush’s in the Texas GOP. But Crichton, in turn, was a friend of Deputy Police Chief Lumpkin who was driving the pilot car in Kennedy’s motorcade. What that means is never made clear. But Baker also brings up the fact that Crichton provided a translator for Marina Oswald who wrongly worded her Russian phrases. What Baker leaves out is that Marina had a few translators, and they were all questionable.

In spite of the speciousness of the above, Baker caps it off with Jack Ruby’s famous speech in an empty courtroom about people in “very high positions” putting him in the place he was in after his conviction for murder. (p. 118) I actually think Baker wants to imply that Ruby was referring to Bush.

If he was doing that, all I can say is, Baker has as much unearned chutzpah as John Hankey. And in regards to the JFK case, he also has about as much balance and judgment as his soul brother does. Let us note just how misguided the guy is. For the sake of argument, let us grant him one of his premises in regards to the Parrott episode: That it was a charade meant to divert attention. (And with all I pointed out above, that is a very generous grant of credit.) Here’s my question: What would be the point of a diversion if both Bush and Parrott had credible alibis? Which they did. This is what the author says: “Poppy Bush was willing to divert the investigative resources of the FBI on one of the busiest days in its history.” (p. 65) When I read that I had a Hankeyian moment: I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Can Mr. Investigative Journalist Russ Baker really be this ignorant about the FBI and the Kennedy murder? As Tony Summers discovered long ago, J. Edgar Hoover was “working” on the Kennedy case from the racetrack the next day. (Summers, Official and Confidential, p. 315) As everyone except perhaps Baker knows, Hoover had closed the case against Oswald within about 2-4 hours. (Vanity Fair, 12/94, p. 90) He did so for many reasons, including the strong possibility that Oswald was an FBI informant. So the fix was in almost immediately. And it never let up. The idea that somehow Hoover was actually going to investigate 1.) Who Oswald really was, and 2.) What the true circumstances of the murder were is a preposterous tenet. But that is somehow what Baker is proposing: the Parrott episode somehow upset Hoover’s apple cart.

Concerning J. Edgar Hoover and the JFK case, Baker is only slightly less silly than John Hankey.

IV

As was established in The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush, from their days in the oil business in Texas, Bush Sr. knew George “the Baron” DeMohrenschildt. This was probably because the Baron partnered an oil investment firm with Eddie Hooker. (Baker, p. 75) Hooker had been Bush’s roommate at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. (ibid, p. 72) And they had stayed friends through the years.

After giving a brief but serviceable overview of the Baron and his brother Dimitri, plus the development of the White Russian community in Dallas, the author begins to describe why the Baron was in Haiti at the time of Kennedy’s assassination. According to Baker, it was only the Baron’s distance from Dallas at the time of the murder that allowed his actions to escape the purview of the Warren Commission. (p. 113) Again, this shows how shallow Baker is on his view of the Kennedy case. Can he really be serious? Who the heck did not escape the purview of the Warren Commission? You can make a pretty good list of all those they had myopia about. In addition to DeMohrenschildt, there was Ruth and Michael Paine, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, Guy Banister, Kerry Thornley, Sergio Arcacha Smith, Sylvia Duran, and even Sylvia Odio (who the Commission never took seriously). And that’s just those dealing with Oswald’s direct associations. The Commission was a set-up from the start. And it was meant to be so. Whether DeMohrenschildt was in Haiti or not.

He then compounds the above with this thundering truism: “The bottom line is that the Warren Commission did not assign a seasoned criminal investigator to figure out DeMohrenshildt’s relationship with Oswald and his larger circle of connections.” (p. 127) Oh really Russ? Maybe Baker doesn’t know that the Commission had no private ‘seasoned criminal investigators’ on their staff. They relied on the FBI, CIA and Secret Service. Who, as most informed observers realize, were covering things up. Baker didn’t know this? Maybe that’s why they publish him in the New York Times.

The author found out the real reason that DeMohrenschildt was able to escape scrutiny. It wasn’t actually because of the above. It was the blinding obfuscation of the sisal plant. Hold on a moment. Let me explain this Bakeresque idiom. See, once DeMohrenschildt handed off Oswald to the Paines, he left Texas for Haiti. Before departing he and his partner had a couple of meetings with government agents i.e. the CIA and Army intelligence. He and his business partner Clemard Charles were then paid almost $300,000 by the Haitian government for geologic testing and a prospective sisal plantation. There has always been a question about whether or not this money was really a disguised reward for his mission with Oswald.

As far as I can see, Baker ignores the money angle. He then says that the sisal proposal was a cover to disguise what DeMohrenschildt was really doing. (pgs. 104-105) I am assuming Baker means what he already did with Oswald. But here’s my question: Who was the sisal motif supposed to fool? Critics of the Commission have always been suspicious of the Baron and his Haiti payoff. The money may have been for his Oswald duties, or it may have been for a role in a later coup against the Duvaliers in Haiti. Which attempt did take place, and Charles was jailed for his perceived role in it. But the point is, what did Baker think was going to be discussed and put on paper before the two left? Did he really think the CIA or Army intelligence was going to write that the Baron was now coming off his clandestine assignment with the future patsy in the upcoming JFK murder? Or that the interviewers were going to outline the upcoming overthrow attempt? These kinds of thing do not get written about in memoranda.

About 140 pages later, the DeMohrenschildt story gets picked up again. This time it’s in the midst of the hurricane created by the Church Committee, the Pike Committee, and the formation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations to reopen the JFK case. In September of 1976, the Baron wrote a short letter to the new CIA Director, George Bush. (p. 268) In it the Baron described the painful situation he now found himself in: he said his phone was bugged, he was being followed, and the FBI would not help him. He thanked his old acquaintance and asked him if he could do something to help.

If anything, the Baron was underestimating his drastic situation. He did not describe two other elements. First, the psychological treatments he was getting, actually electroshock. This may have been from the loss of his daughter three years hence; or, as Jim Marrs has written, a mysterious doctor may have inflicted it on him. (Baker, p. 271) Secondly, the weird figure of Willem Oltmans was pursuing him, trying to get him to “confess” to his role in the Kennedy murder.

Oltmans was a Dutch journalist who knew DeMohrenschildt from a few years back– 1968 to be exact. (HSCA testimony of Oltmans, p. 10) Just precisely what he was up to, or why he pursued George insistently over the years, these have never really been explained. But its interesting that after George suddenly died on 3/29/77-allegedly a suicide-Oltmans began to spread the news that the Baron had confessed to him before he supposedly took his life. It was a bizarre plot that involved Russian KGB agents with Texas oilmen. But, according to Oltmans, the Baron himself was also involved and Oswald had acted on his instructions in this plot. (ibid, p. 28). Oltmans began his campaign to tell the world of this right after his former friend died. He testified before the HSCA in closed session on April 1, 1977. When one reads this deposition you will note that the longer Oltmans talks, the less Deputy Counsel Bob Tanenbaum believes him.

At around this time, reporter Jerry Policoff of New Times met with Oltmans in New York. Policoff had secured notes DeMohrenschildt had made while working on a manuscript left with his lawyer. The notes expressed his considerable fear of Oltmans and the reason he had fled from him in Amsterdam. He felt the journalist was trying to drug him in order to get him to say things he did not want to say. He also thought Oltmans was bisexual and was making a homosexual pass at him. Oltmans had heard that Jerry had secured the notes and got in touch with him to meet. Oltmans reacted to the notes by saying they were forgeries. Policoff said he was confident they were genuine. Oltmans then made some thinly disguised threats on his health. Policoff left. Oltmans’ behavior left Policoff with the strong suspicion he was some kind of intelligence asset. (Communication with Policoff, 6/24/10)

Yet Oltmans was only one side of a pincers movement. Once George ran away from Amsterdam to escape him, Edward Epstein awaited him in the USA. And he promised the Baron thousands of dollars to just sit and talk with him about Oswald. In fact, Epstein was the last person to see him before DeMohrenschildt died. On the morning of his death, he had been subpoenaed by the HSCA. Epstein wanted to talk to George since he had been working on a biography of Oswald for Reader’s Digest. Epstein’s unofficial adviser was James Angleton. The book that derived from this effort, Legend, insinuates that the Baron was a KGB control agent for Oswald. The reader should note here the rough parallel with what Oltmans eventually was selling.

Bush made two replies to the 9/76 missive by the Baron. One was to his staff, which had forwarded the letter to him. These are rough bullet notes saying the following: that he did know DeMohrenschildt, that the Baron got involved with dealings in Haiti, that his name was prominent in the Oswald affair, that the Baron knew Oswald prior to the JFK murder, at one time DeMohrenschildt had money, Bush had not heard from him in years, and he was not sure what his role was in the JFK matter. (p. 267)

On the whole this is accurate. But Baker takes issue with the last two points. Concerning the first, he says that Bush was in contact with the oil geologist in 1971, and that DeMohrenschildt had written Bush a note when he became GOP County Chair in 1973. Bush may or may not have gotten that note. If he did not, he had not heard from him in about six years. Concerning the last, if Bush was not in on the JFK plot, then in 1976, that was a quite defensible stance.

Bush wrote the Baron a brief letter back saying he sympathized with his situation. But although there was media attention to his case, he could not find any official interest right then. He then said he wished he could do more, and then signed off. Considering the fact that Epstein and Oltmans were likely working off the books for Angleton, his observation about “official interest” was probably correct. Thus ended the Bush/Baron relationship. Almost like he knows he has very little here, Baker tags on some meandering scuttlebutt about a man named Jim Savage who delivered the Baron’s car to him in Palm Beach on his return from Amsterdam. Its another of his Scrabble type name association games: Kerr-McGee, the FBI, Sun Oil, even the Pew family. (pgs. 275-277)

The above two sections are pretty much the sum total of Baker’s work on Bush Sr. and the JFK murder. If anyone can find anything of significance here, something that somehow changes how we look at the case, please let me know. In all honesty, I can’t.

V

As threadbare as Baker’s work is on the JFK case, his two chapters on Bush Sr. and Watergate are probably worse (pgs. 175-252). In fact, having read much on the contemporary political scandals that have rocked the American scene, I would rank Baker’s work on Watergate with some of the most pretentiously empty political reporting I can recall. It’s so bad that it made me think he had a desperate rationale behind it all. (Which I will discuss later.)

Baker begins his section on Watergate with a discussion of a scandal that is not even normally associated with Watergate. In fact, it may not even be a scandal. In early 1970, Richard Nixon authorized H. R. Haldeman to funnel funds from White House contributors to some 1970 congressional campaigns. The idea was to reward Nixon loyalists with campaign cash and ignore those who were not perceived as such.

There are two important things to remember about the so-called Townhouse Operation. First, the machinations behind it occurred before any of the planning of the crimes associated with Watergate began. This would be the missions done by the infamous Plumbers units who did burglaries and surveillance operations. The planning of Townhouse predates the summer 1970 hiring of Howard Hunt by Charles Colson by about six months. (Jim Hougan, Secret Agenda, pgs. 32-33) Hunt did not start recruiting members of his Plumbers Unit until April of 1971. (Hougan, p. 29) Their first operations did not formulate until two months later with the NY Times exposure of the secret Pentagon Papers. (ibid) It was then that things like the burglary of Dan Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office and the forgery of documents linking President Kennedy with the death of Ngo Dinh Diem began. (ibid, p. 33) In fact, in the rather lengthy three articles of impeachment against Nixon prepared by the House of Representatives, you will not find any specific mention of the Townhouse Operation. (Click here)

Further, none of the money funneled into Townhouse was used to finance the Plumbers illegal capers. Third, in a technical sense, it is hard to argue that Townhouse was illegal. For the simple reason that laws regulating campaign funds, and their eventual usage, were not enacted until after the Watergate scandal. In other words, although it was a ‘slush fund’, it was not a violation of law. For these reasons I was curious as to why the author began with Townhouse, an event which you seldom see even mentioned in chronicles of Watergate-either conventional or revisionist.

And make no mistake, Baker has drunk deep the revisionist history of Watergate. So in an effort to set up a Nixon vs. CIA backdrop, he mentions Nixon’s desire to attain secret CIA files that Richard Helms was reluctant to turn over. (p. 181) He says that Nixon wanted CIA files on the days near the end of the Kennedy administration. Hmm, maybe dealing with the Kennedy assassination? Problem: the paragraph where he mentions this is not footnoted. But the next paragraph is. In that paragraph Baker has John Ehrlichman telling Bob Haldeman that the CIA is holding something back and the way they are acting, it must be dynamite. The problem with this quote is that when I looked it up in the source Baker named, The Haldeman Diaries, I couldn’t find it where he said it was. I then searched that book for all references to CIA Director Richard Helms, who Baker said Nixon demanded the documents from. Still no luck.

Now, most informed observers know that there are two sources for this ‘secret file” tale. Haldeman wrote about a meeting with Richard Helms in which he was instructed by Nixon to mention the whole “Bay of Pigs thing”. Helms came unglued when he did. So Haldeman came to believe that the phrase was a code term for the JFK murder. (See pgs. 38-39, of Haldeman’s The Ends of Power. But oddly, in those pages, Haldeman writes that although he actually wanted to do a private inquiry into the JFK case, Nixon turned it down.)

Another source for this is Ehrlichman’s roman a clef novel, The Company. In that work, Ehrlichman is referring specifically to the secret Bay of Pigs Inspector General report. But what Baker writes here is simply confusing. He refers to “[relevant files] … regarding the turbulent and little-understood days leading up to the end of the Kennedy administration”. These secret CIA documents do not exist anywhere that I know of in file form. So what Baker is referring to, and why he uses it, are things never really made clear. And the author reveals his own confusion when he later contradicts himself by saying the files Nixon was seeking were about the Bay of Pigs. Which, of course, was at the beginning of the Kennedy presidency. (Baker, p. 200)

The reader should note: with Townhouse, which is not really part of Watergate, and these nebulous “secret CIA files”, Baker is off to a rather unpromising start. He never recovers.

As I said, Baker has read much of the Watergate revisionist library. He will now cherry pick from it in a way worthy of the likes of Lamar Waldron in order to fulfill his own agenda. Incredibly, the author writes the following: “My independent research takes … the facts in a completely new direction. It leads to an even more disturbing conclusion as to what was really going on, and why.” (Baker, p. 204) As we will see, Baker did next to no new research on Watergate. And his new direction is a fabricated one that I can guarantee no one will follow in the future since it is based upon quicksand.

It was under Nixon that George Bush actually became a player on the national stage. In fact, one can argue that it was Nixon who salvaged Bush’s political career. Bush had tried to break into that national theater in two runs for the senate from Texas. He first lost to Ralph Yarborough and then to Lloyd Bentsen. Afterwards, Nixon gave Bush a job first as United Nations Ambassador and then as chair of the Republican National Committee. Nixon made it clear that although he perceived Bush to be part of the Eastern Establishment-of which he was not-he liked and trusted him. And no serious commentator whether of a conventional or a revisionist stripe-e.g. Stanley Kutler or Jim Hougan-has ever proffered that George Bush had anything to do with what happened to Nixon during Watergate. Like most Republicans, he supported him through the crisis as long as he could. His advice basically consisted of advising Nixon to tell his whole part of the story as truthfully as possible. One can read any number of Watergate books and this is what will come through.

Baker can’t settle for that. Why? Because if Watergate was a CIA operation, it doesn’t fit his agenda of defining George Bush as this super duper Agency Black Operator from way before the Bay of Pigs. So as with the Kennedy assassination, he has to create a function for him in this labyrinthine plot. At first he dredges up Townhouse. And at first he does not tell the reader that Bush himself was a prime recipient of those funds-that is how much Nixon liked him. He then links this at the end with a call Bush made as RNC chair to Lowell Weicker. (p. 233) Weicker was a Republican member of the Senate Watergate Committee, which investigated those crimes in televised hearings. Bush, now chair of the RNC, asks Weicker if he should destroy the Townhouse records. Baker, in super conspiratorial high gear, casts this as being a ploy to get Weicker mad, knowing that Weicker was also a recipient of some of the funds, though in a much smaller way.

To me this is ridiculous. First, Weicker needed no egging on to be outraged against the crimes of Watergate. From the beginning of his career, which goes back further than Baker outlines, Weicker has always been 1.) An independent minded politician who defies easy categorization, and 2.) Against corruption in government. For a Republican, he is so independent minded that Ted Kennedy actually presented him with a Profiles in Courage award. The idea that a character like him needed egging on, or else his actions would have been different , is completely unjustified in light of his record. Both before Watergate and after.

Second, far from Baker’s spin, the purpose of the call seems to be for Bush to keep himself out of Townhouse, since he was the largest beneficiary of the funding. This may be why Baker soft-pedals this fact until near the end of the discussion. In fact, in his discussion of this phone call, he never reveals that Bush ranked first in Townhouse funding. (pgs. 232-33)

To me, this angle yields about zero. But Baker has a fallback.

As I said, the author has drunk deep in the literature of Watergate revisionism. So he is familiar with the books, Secret Agenda and Silent Coup. But you will see very little of the revolutionary discoveries about the Watergate break-in from the former in this book. This is at first seemingly odd. Why? Because it was those actions that 1.) Made the scandal front-page news 2.) Sprung a trap on Nixon which he did not at first understand and from which he could not escape 3.) Is the clearest indication that the break-in was deliberately sabotaged by CIA operatives masquerading as Nixon campaign workers.

The above is undeniably true. But the problem for a guy with an agenda the size of Baker’s is this: there is no evidence that Bush had anything of any substance to do with any of it, in any aspect.

So what does the ever-inventive author do? He goes over to the inferior revisionist book on the subject, Silent Coup. He borrows their aggrandizement of the role of John Dean in the scandal. Why? Please sit down before I write this. Its because in March of 1973, in a phone call with Nixon, Bush-at the urging of others– suggested sending Dean to testify before the Watergate Committee. (p. 213) That’s about it.

The reader should understand something: in March of 1973 Nixon was being attacked in the media because of his stonewalling of the Watergate Committee. (Stanley Kutler, The Wars of Watergate, p. 268) In fact, he was being specifically pilloried over this issue that Bush is talking to him about. That is, his invoking blanket executive privilege over public testimony by members of his staff. Nixon even said that the doctrine of executive privilege was not subject to question by the other branches of government. (ibid) What made it worse was that Dean was supposed to be writing a report on Watergate for the White House at the time. So he should have been an important witness. (ibid) Further, because Dean had cooperated with acting Director of the FBI Patrick Gray on Watergate, the threat was that if Dean did not testify, Gray would not be approved. (ibid, p. 269) So this made the issue Bush was addressing important booth in Congress and in the media. How bad did it get? It got so heated that three conservative GOP senators, Jim Buckley, John Tower, and Norris Cotton all implored the president to get Dean before congress. (ibid, p. 270) Weicker even wanted Haldeman to testify at this rather earl date. (ibid)

So Bush was doing what several other Republican leaders were. By not informing you of that, by not specifically mentioning the circumstances and acts of many others, Baker tries to make what Bush did into some covert conspiratorial act. Which it is not. And that’s bad journalism. In fact, this whole section on Watergate is really a confession of bankruptcy on Baker’s part. Failing to find anything to implicate Bush in either the conventional or revisionist versions of Watergate, he concocted something that, for all intents and purposes, doesn’t exist. And then, after he produces nothing, he has the Hankeyan chutzpah to state that Bush was actually behind it all. (p. 232) Which is nothing but pretentious and bombastic balderdash.

I almost don’t want to go on. But I should mention that what Baker does with the JFK and Watergate episodes is symptomatic of the rest of the book. He wants to somehow implicate the Bushes in crimes for which there is next to no evidence, while not reporting on the ones for which there is plenty of evidence. Therefore, somehow the Bushes are also involved in BCCI, the stealing of the Marcos Gold, and even the Phoenix Program. And there is about as much evidence in those instances as what Baker produces in the JFK and Watergate cases. My question then is: Why stop there? Why not involve them in the King and RFK cases Russ? (I hope I didn’t give him any ideas.)

The overall poor quality of this book worries me. We are at a crossroads in America between the fall of the Old Media and the rise of the New. (See here for a view of that.) We know what we got from the Old Media, which is still hanging on. But if the New Media means a choice between the likes of The Huffington Post and The Daily Beast on the one hand, and the unfounded conspiracy mongering of the likes of Alex Jones and Family of Secrets on the other, then are we really any better off than we were before?

I’m not sure.

March 28, 2010
John Hankey, Dark Legacy, aka JFK2 – replies
A response from Jim DiEugenio

posted by Bob (Fox) on Tue Mar 23, 2010 12:40 pm

Originally I was not going to reply to John Hankey’s response about Seamus Coogan’s incisive and well-researched critique of JFK 2. But since both he and his henchman Michael Dell could not confine themselves to the facts of that critique, but have now launched a smear of the personal motives and trustworthiness of myself, Lisa Pease, Seamus and the site in general, I feel it necessary to do so.

Why? Because on Black Op Radio, I have taken the time to praise this forum and to single out certain people on it. I have not done that with Spartacus, JFK Lancer, or DPF. Since I went out on a limb, I don’t want it sawed off below me by people like Hankey and Dell.

I had no idea that Seamus was going to submit that essay on that subject until it was almost completely written. But some hints conveyed to me in advance were questions like the following: 1.) “Jim, didn’t Kennedy know the Bay of Pigs was going to be launched in advance?” 2.) “Did Delphine Roberts know Oswald was at the Lake Ponchatrain training camp?” 3.) “Who hired Hunt at the White House?” and 4.) “Have you ever heard anything about Prescott Bush actually running the CIA while Dulles was DCI?” My answers in order were: Yes, No, Colson, and No. When I asked Seamus what he was working on, he said it was a review of Hankey’s documentary. Hankey’s answer to those questions were No, Yes, Nixon and Yes. I said, “Are you serious?” He said, “Yes, I am. Its that bad.”

I had seen Hankey’s video many years ago. I dismissed it as rather amateurish in technique, sophomoric in content, and specious in its scholarship. In the last it owed much to Paul Kangas, a man who I once lectured at a seminar with in San Francisco. And who Gary Aguilar warned me in advance about. He told me, “He’s our weak link.” In fact, Hankey’s penchant for accenting the dubious role of Nixon in the JFK case, and the false idea that Kennedy didn’t know about the Bay of Pigs invasion are borrowed from Kangas. Hankey does much borrowing, and all of it is indiscriminate. In fact the only things that may be actually Hankey’s are the things he makes up. Which I will discuss later.

Let’s take Hankey’s opening paragraph as an example of his slick rhetorical technique. He says Seamus “concedes” the Hoover memo was about George Bush. This is ridiculous, as he does no such thing. Everyone realized this was so after the Joseph McBride articles appeared in the Nation, way back in 1988. And I find it odd that Hankey has so much trouble giving McBride credit for first publicizing the memo and then writing two good essays about Bush and the CIA. Why is it so hard for him to write McBride’s name, and date and source the articles properly? He actually tries to attribute them to Mark Lane, when Lane actually properly sources them to McBride as appendixes in Plausible Denial.

He then states that “these misguided anti-Castro Cubans were in Dealey Plaza and shot Kennedy. Coogan pretends that I am alone in my position that this Bush-supervised group was directly involved. But that is precisely the principal thesis of mark Lane’s Plausible Denial…and Gaeton Fonzi….” This is pure balderdash. The Cubans Bush was allegedly associated with in the memo are never named in the memo. So what is the evidence that they are the same as those in Lorenz’s group? He produces none. And to conflate Fonzi with Lane on this issue is fundamentally dishonest. As Seamus pointed out, Fonzi in his fine book The Last Investigation, showed why Lorenz was not to be trusted on this point. He came to the conclusion she was trying to sell a screenplay. He explains why in detail on pages 83-107. Fonzi’s book came out in 1993, two years after Lane’s. Lane may have been unaware of this evidence against her. But Hankey should not have been. And used her tall tale anyway. After all, he needed some Cubans, any Cubans.

The third point Hankey pulls out of a hat. He talks about a call to the FBI by Bush that is related to the James Parrot matter. He then says that Seamus concedes the point with his silence. John: Take a look at your film JFK 2 again. The Parrot matter is not in it. That is why Seamus is silent about it. You didn’t mention it there.

As in his film, Hankey is very good at avoiding the central point: his film is full of factual errors, distortions, and illogic. To the point where he actually creates things that did not happen. In other words, as Seamus wrote, it is solipsistic, not realistic. How does he explain all these large and pitiful mistakes? In two ways.

He needed a fact checker and could not hire one. And second, the errors he made are not of substance, they are minor.

Concerning the first: Used books are not expensive, and neither is the Internet. I went through Seamus’ article with a fine tooth comb. The vast majority of his sources I found in my personal library or on the web. Somehow we are to believe that Hankey could not find out through any low cost source that there was no such thing as the “Senate Select Committee on Assassinations”? How about calling someone on the phone and asking them. He didn’t know that Delphine Roberts never claimed to see Oswald at that Cuban exile training camp? How about going to the library and checking out Tony Summers’ book Conspiracy. He really thought that the only source Hoover had about the CIA training camps in New Orleans was Oswald? How about calling up former FBI agent Warren DeBrueys and asking him if the Bureau knew about CIA covert ops and were warned to steer clear of them. None of these are expensive or time consuming. They consist of picking up a phone or driving to the local library. Hankey chose not to do them. He then complains about someone pointing out his myriad errors and blames it on lack of funds. When Seamus is a struggling graduate student.

From here, without any foundation, he then begins his smear of Seamus. He attributes the fact that Seamus found his video chockfull of major errors—like one every two minutes—to the fact that he must have a dark and hidden motive. He is –get this—protecting the Bushes!! No John, nobody with any knowledge of modern history will do that. And if they did so I would not print the article. Seamus was very clear about that issue at the end. And he named just one of their crimes, the election heist of 2000. Your film detracts attention from their true crimes, in trying to impaste upon them one for which there is no credible evidence. As he said, what McBride wrote about proves that Bush lied when he said upon becoming CIA Director that he had no previous relationship with the Agency. And that is all the memo proves. It was you who went way beyond the actual words in the memo. Hankey then tries to say that he never tried to take credit for something he did not discover. Take a look at the subhead in the essay, which says, “Did you really do all that John?” These are quotes that have Hankey’s name attached to them. So he cannot deny he wrote them. He says it was he who proved that Bush was the man Hoover referred to in the memo. Nope. It was McBride who did so. He then wrote that he pointed out that the memo names Bush as a supervisor of the anti-Castro groups. It does not. He then says that that David Talbot’s Brothers further corroborates the material in his film about CIA trained Cubans and the Mafia. Yet Hankey is not even mentioned in the Talbot book. And try and find either Lorenz or Bush Sr. in that book. Seamus was correct on this score.

He then tries to say that Mark Lane was the first to implicate George Bush Sr. in the JFK case. All that Lane did was reprint the McBride articles in his book. Period. He does not work them into the text. All he says is that Bush’s activities in the sixties are worthy of note. (p. 329) It was Hankey who took Lane’s sentence, and the memo, and accused the Bush family of being the prime movers behind the JFK assassination. He then tries to say that Fletcher Prouty was also a purveyor of this theory. All Prouty did was insinuate that Bush was involved in the Bay of Pigs operation. He probably was, but—as Seamus showed– Prouty was wrong about the name associations he used i.e. the ships and the name Zapata. So Lane made an error with Lorenz, Prouty did with the names. We all do. But instead of investigating those faulty points, Hankey built a false edifice from those errors. Which is one reason his film cannot be taken seriously.

He then says he won’t take up the many small and silly objections Seamus makes, since he terms them misdirection and distraction. Really? Making up a scene in which Bill Colby is talking about Hunt and Bush being in Dallas and part of the hit team on Kennedy—when in fact there is no evidence for him either saying this or thinking it? That is not small and silly; it’s a huge and serious falsification. So is making up another scene where Bush Sr. walks into Hoover’s office with a couple of thugs and threatens him with a poison dart gun unless he writes the memo about him. (Did Michael Dell miss that?) That is the climax to the whole video. And Hankey has not one iota of evidence that it ever happened. It is a huge and misleading invention on his part. And Seamus was right to call him on it. In fact, when I read the essay I could not believe what I was reading. So I watched the video all the way through. Seamus was right about that scene, and the rest of it.. And it was one of the things that convinced me to print the essay. Work this bad—like say Waldron’s Ultimate Sacrifice– should not go unchallenged. And this is a main function of CTKA. To show why certain conspiracy oriented material should not be trusted. Because it makes us look stupid and silly. Can you imagine what say, Sixty Minutes, could do with JFK 2?

Which brings us to Michael Dell. Who mysteriously showed up on the forum right after Seamus’ essay was published. And he started defending Hankey and attacking Seamus and CTKA. Why? Probably because he has had Hankey on his show more than once. And actually accepted these wild scenarios as credible. Dell did not ask Hankey: “John, what is your proof for Bush threatening Hoover with a poison dart gun after the JFK murder?” Or: “John, when did Colby ever say that Hunt and Bush were in Dallas and part of the hit team?” Or: “Why would Kennedy let the CIA launch the Bay of Pigs invasion without his approval?” Seamus did ask the questions that Dell did not. And for this, Dell attacks Seamus for doing what he should have done.

Which leads into the whole thing about questioning me, Lisa and CTKA. Hankey hints at this but Dell takes it the length of the field. I love this one: “CTKA has no legitimate standards and is susceptible to producing..inferior material..I will no longer trust them….” etc. etc. Mr. Dell, if you could not ask Hankey about his source for the Bush pointing a gun at Hoover scene, its you with no standards. Unlike forums, our articles are peer reviewed. By people like Gary Aguilar, Mili Cranor, Dave Mantik etc. You probably have not heard of them, since they are good researchers. We are the only such peer-reviewed site out there. Which is why we have a lot of stature and respect. We get many submissions. And we turn down many of them, since they are rejected in the vetting process. Hankey’s video would have been returned to him politely with a short critique pointing out a sampling of his major errors. And I wager he would have ignored the points and facts so elucidated.

And no we do not run rebuttals. Why? Because we negatively review too many articles, books, TV shows and DVD’s. I don’t want to spend anymore of my time—or my readers’– getting into point-counterpoint arguments with the likes of Lamar Waldron and David Kaiser. Or John Hankey. And Hankey’s reply here proves my stance correct.

Finally, let me add one last point. Dell tries to save the day by saying that Seamus is wrong about Hankey because Horne proved Lifton’s thesis in Inside the ARRB. I wonder if Dell actually read the whole series, or if, like many others in the research community, he is relying on what someone wrote as a post on a forum. I also wonder how much time Dell has spent studying the medical evidence in this case. Finally, I wonder if he has consulted with experts in that field, like Mili Cranor or Aguilar about Lifton’s theory. I doubt if any of the above are true. He just wants to smear Seamus. There will be a multi-part review upcoming on CTKA about Inside the ARRB. Yet we demand, unlike other sites, that the reviewer read the entire work, and show mastery of the material. Its very much up in the air if Horne did what Dell said he did. But, as I said, that doesn’t matter to Dell.

But it does matter to me.

JIM DIEUGENIO

Re: A response from Jim DiEugenio

by Michael Dell on Tue Mar 23, 2010 4:32 pm

Mr. DiEugenio,

Thank you very much for taking the time to enter the discussion. However, I will take issue with your referring to me as a “henchman.”

I’ve gone over this before, but the reason I “mysteriously” joined the message board was because I felt a wrong was committed, and I didn’t see anyone standing up for Mr. Hankey’s work. I didn’t start the topic. I joined it to voice my opinion. Nor did I “smear” Mr. Coogan. Again, I invite anyone to go back and reread the thread. My posts were nothing but respectful to Mr. Coogan. Yet he greeted my concerns with insults, personal attacks, and paranoia.

You’re right. I had interviewed John Hankey. And I found him to be a fine fellow. He has been nothing but kind and respectful in our dealings. He’s a high school teacher in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles. He’s a good man trying to do what’s right at a great sacrifice. He deserves more respect than Mr. Coogan or CTKA afforded him.

If there are mistakes in Mr. Hankey’s work, it’s right and necessary to point them out. I want to learn what those mistakes are so I don’t repeat them. Yet it’s impossible to learn anything of substance when Mr. Coogan pens a review full of ad hom attacks, sarcastic comments, and condescension. Such a review would have been fine if it was on a personal blog. But I would like to think a serious investigative body like CTKA would have higher standards. That’s my opinion. You’re free to disagree with it. And, as you and Mr. Coogan have already displayed, you’re also free to insult me for it. But it doesn’t make that opinion less valid.

And, as you can clearly see if you’ve been reading the thread, I’m not alone.

You’re also correct in assuming I’m not a serious JFK researcher. Because I’m not, nor have I ever claimed to be. I actually have a life outside of this. I’m a student and a writer, both journalism and fiction. My interests are numerous and varied, from sports to Russian literature to consciousness studies to meditation and physics. I’m also fairly well read on countless conspiracy topics. However, I’m by no means an expert on JFK. That’s why I need to depend on, and am grateful for, the works of men like yourself, Mr. Coogan, and Mr. Hankey. That’s also why I need to know whom I can trust.

In the past, I’ve trusted you and CTKA. I trust Black Op Radio. I trust Jim Marrs. So when I hear those people talking about Doug Horne and his work, I know I can put my faith in it. Again, I’m not a professional JFK researcher, I don’t have the time to read every book that comes out on the subject. That’s why trust is so important. And that’s why your jab at me for probably not having read Horne’s entire work is so preposterous.

Exactly what were you trying to accomplish with that remark? So you’re saying I shouldn’t believe Doug Horne? You’re saying body alterations never took place? Because you realize that’s what Mr. Coogan said in his review of Mr. Hankey’s work, right? Yet you jump on me for believing Doug Horne without reading his entire work when my belief is based on listening to experts like yourself support Doug Horne. So once more, are you saying I shouldn’t trust you, Black Op, Jim Marrs, etc?

And let me single out this line from that same paragraph…

[i]”Yet we demand, unlike other sites, that the reviewer read the entire work, and show mastery of the material.”[/i}

Really? Like the way Mr. Coogan reviewed the latest edition of Mr. Hankey’s film? Oh, wait. He didn’t. And he stated as much early in his review, rendering the rest of it completely meaningless. But I guess that must have slipped through the ol’ peer review process too.

And your harping on the bit in Mr. Hankey’s film where he shows George Bush threatening Hoover with a poison dart gun is yet another strawman in your ever growing field of scarecrows. Mr. Hankey never says that’s what happened. He’s saying that’s what COULD have happened. It’s only his theory. And anyone watching the movie understands that. Trying to pretend otherwise is silly.

But getting back on topic, I want to still be able to trust you and CTKA. That’s why I need you to help me and others like me. Instead of meeting our concerns with insults and pride, how about some professionalism and understanding?

We’re on the same team here. Which once again brings me back to my original post on the subject. And I will ask the same questions of you that I asked of Mr. Coogan.

1. If your goal is truth, why wouldn’t you and your group of peers reach out to Mr. Hankey and express your concerns before writing such a review?

2. Why didn’t you ask Mr. Hankey to explain why he believes the things he does? If he’s wrong, you could help him understand why. It’s a teaching opportunity.

3. Why didn’t you present Mr. Hankey with a copy of the review to get his response before publication?

4. Why didn’t you even have the courtesy to inform Mr. Hankey the review was published?

Again, if your goal is truth, shouldn’t you be working with people like John Hankey? He’s one of the good guys. If you think his research is flawed or he’s going down the wrong path, extend a helping hand, not a closed fist.

Nothing you have said has changed my opinion of Mr. Coogan’s review. The quality of that piece remains the same and can be judged on its own merits. I still believe it to be an agenda-filled hit piece. The tone of the article and the language used makes it impossible for me to see it differently. My stating that opinion is in no way “smearing” Mr. Coogan. Besides, I believe Mr. Coogan has done a good enough job of that on his own with his behavior towards me.

Finally, I will gladly extend an olive branch. Our shared goal is finding truth, no? I want to work with people like you to achieve that goal. I’d like to bring the community together, not fracture it. So I would be honored if you could come on the little podcast I do and hash things out. We can even try and get Mr. Hankey to come on too, and we can bury the hatchet once and for all and put all this ugliness behind us. I realize you’re no doubt a busy fella, but we can work around your schedule and record something at your convenience. The invitation is there if you’re willing to accept it.

Namaste.

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by Bob (Fox) on Tue Mar 23, 2010 4:43 pm

This thread is why this forum is the best JFK assassination forum on the Net. Lots of great arguments and discussion here. I appreciated Jim D responding like he did. The same goes with John Hankey. I’m sure more will be said later as well. Most of you know this, as Jim has mentioned this on BOR (Black Op Radio), plus I’ve mentioned it here as well, but I will hopefully have an article that will be on CTKA soon. Jim has mentioned this forum on BOR as well, giving us some kudos for our work. As most of you also know, Seamus and I have had some pretty vigorous debates about the Bu$hes role in the JFK assassination and other events, like 9/11. Like I’ve said before…debate is good. That is what this thread is all about. Now, in terms of the article by Seamus, as I’ve said before, he did uncover some mistakes and some invalid assumptions that John had in JFK II. The story was long and well researched. Was Seamus a bit overzealous and harsh in his review of John’s film? Perhaps. To be fair to John, he has upgraded JFK II to a newer version called Dark Legacy, which I have only seen parts of. I think we all should view that film before we make any final conclusions. That being said, I do think John’s overall premise was correct in JFK II. Could it have been produced more effectively? No doubt. But that is why John has upgraded the film to it’s latest version. Now I do disagree with Seamus about the way he ended the article. This is what I said earlier in this thread…

Finally in his essay, Seamus sees no connection between the JFK assassination and 9/11. Seamus is also from New Zealand and not from the United States, so understand his perspective. But in my opinion, he is wrong. The biggest evidence of that CLEAR connection is Operation Northwoods…

http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICL … woods.html

Take a good look at the plan. A REAL good look. This was a plan that ALL the joint chiefs wanted to take place. It was also endorsed by Allen Dulles and the Bu$h boys as well. This plan was given to JFK in March of 1962. JFK refused to implement this horrific idea. But an incompetent dolt that stole an election in 2000 named Dumbya Bu$h didn’t refuse. Operation Northwoods was almost a blueprint for the events that happened on 9/11/2001. Instead of Cuba in 1962, it was Afghanistan and Iraq in 2001. It is now 2010, and we are still there. The CIA is happy. The war profiteers are happy. The military industrial complex is happy. Meanwhile, the MSM still sleeps, just like they have since the JFK assassination.

Now that is my belief. Do I have any concrete proof? No. But there are a lot of pieces of the puzzle that fit.

Now in terms of Michael Dell, Michael did have John on his radio show. I think that is the biggest reason he defended the review by Seamus. Also, I have listened to a number of shows that Michael has done, and although the format of his show isn’t strictly politics, it is clear that Michael is on the CT team.

I was recently on one of his shows as well, and although we talked briefly about the JFK assassination, most of the show was about hockey and football. We talked about the magic bullet theory and how ridiculous it is, plus what Gerald Ford on the Warren Commission did to raise the wound on JFK’s back to make it fit the silly theory.

We also talked about the head wound the doctors saw at Parkland immediately after the assassination. It was clear to them that the large hole in the back of JFK’s head was an exit wound.

We talked a bit about Operation Northwoods and the Cuban Missile Crisis and also the great new books by Jim Douglass and Doug Horne.

No mention of Seamus’ article. No mention of John Hankey.

Bottom line, we all need to take a deep breath and remember we are all on the same team. Like I said earlier, the lone nut team never debates the disinformation they put out there. Why? Their heads are in the sand, they drink the kool aid and they are bought off.

We on the CT team however, are always searching for the truth. We have disagreements at times. We have theories that are laughed at…at first. But we keep digging. Folks like Mark Lane, Jim Marrs, Robert Groden, Jack White, Jim DiEugenio, Lisa Pease, Wim Dankbaar, Jim Fetzer, Tom Rossley, John Judge, Dick Russell, David Lifton, Michael Calder and company lead the way.

The new books by Douglass and Horne have gotten us closer to the real truth about 11/22/1963 then we have ever been before.

We have a political voice as well in Jesse Ventura.

Gil Jesus has done a fantastic job on You Tube and I’ve seen others there who also have put out excellent work.

The JFK assassination forums have done great work as well, especially ours. All of you should take bows.

We try to educate and learn. We also debate. That is what a forum does. All sides need to be heard. That is what this thread has done.

Just choose your words carefully and be respectful.

WE ARE ALL ON THE SAME TEAM.

And we are going to WIN!

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by Dealey Joe on Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:01 pm

Mr. Dell

Why not have John Hankee and Seamus Coogan on your show?

makes more sense to me.

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by Michael Dell on Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:33 pm

Dealey Joe wrote: “Mr. Dell – Why not have John Hankee and Seamus Coogan on your show? makes more sense to me.”

Well, from my past experiences with Mr. Coogan, I’m not sure he’d be open to such an invitation. But I have no animosity towards Mr. Coogan. And if he’d be willing, I’d be happy to have him on the show…

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by Michael Dell on Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:34 pm

Bob wrote: “Just choose your words carefully and be respectful. WE ARE ALL ON THE SAME TEAM.”

Well said, sir. And that’s the point I’ve been trying to make from the start…

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by ThomZajac on Tue Mar 23, 2010 6:04 pm

From my perspective, this mostly boils down to a matter of delivery.

Certainly there will never be complete agreement regarding every key point.

The real issue becomes how we choose to discuss and disagree and make our points.

As Bob has said many times, we can be passionate without being disrespectful.

Coogan’s hit piece on Hankey was disrespectful- and there was no need for it to be. I’ve been publishing a newspaper for 25 years and I couldn’t imagine writing a critical story about someone or some business without contacting them for comment before publishing. Hankey is accessible. For Coogan to write such a mean-spirited piece without the professional courtesy of contacting him so that he might address some of the criticisms is simply unforgivable. Add to that the policy of not allowing equal time or even a rebuttal, and you’ve got the lowest kind of ‘journalism’ that there could ever possibly be- no matter how valid the article’s points.

I’d like to think that we demand more of ourselves than that.

Let’s follow the fine examples set by Bob, and Michael Dell.

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by Michael Dell on Tue Mar 23, 2010 6:33 pm

ThomZajac wrote: “I’d like to think that we demand more of ourselves than that. Let’s follow the fine examples set by Bob, and Michael Dell.”

Thank you, sir.

And Thom brings up an important point. Perhaps it’s merely a question of background and perspective. Thom has a journalism background. Bob is a journalist. I’m a sportswriter and a fiction writer. We’re seeing the review from that perspective. Mr. Coogan and Mr. DiEugenio are no doubt ace researchers, but perhaps they don’t understand or appreciate concerns expressed about the delivery of the facts they present.

I’m guessing Mr. Coogan and Mr. DiEugenio are rather focused in their pursuits, and maybe they don’t pay as much attention to the use of words and language as they should. By the same token, perhaps Mr. Hankey doesn’t know as much about their respective strengths in researching and sourcing.

But to bury Mr. Hankey for his flaws and then take no responsibility for your own is, in my opinion, reckless. And it doesn’t advance our shared cause.

Which brings me back to my original point. I simply don’t understand why CTKA wouldn’t reach out to Mr. Hankey and work together. It would seem to be a natural pairing. Mr. Coogan and Mr. DiEugenio have the expert knowledge of obscure source material and researching skills. Mr. Hankey knows how to present things in an easily accessible, entertaining way. Why not work together and help each other out?

And I’m sorry, but the decisions to not reach out to Mr. Hankey, to not contact him about the review, and to not even alert him the review was published, to me, all betray an agenda. Like Thom said, that’s not how journalism works. And if you conduct yourself in such a way, you must be willing to accept criticism for it.

I just hope everyone, myself included, can learn from this entire exchange. And remember, we’re in this together. Be the change you want to see in the world. If you want people to treat you and your colleagues with more respect, extend that same respect to others, even those who disagree with you.

Namaste.

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by Bob (Fox) on Wed Mar 24, 2010 2:29 am

This will be the final post on this thread. It’s the last reply from Jim D. After this…I am done with this subject. We have had our chances to voice our opinions in this thread. They are here for all to see. I would like to say more as well…trust me…but decorum prevents me from doing so. It’s time to move on. Jimmy Files would appreciate this…this isn’t Joliet…but we now have a lockdown here at our forum…

Mr. Dell, I really do not see how anyone can take seriously your resistance to being called a henchman for John Hankey in this affair. Especially when you state that “a wrong was committed” against him. In my view, after editing Seamus’ long essay, and checking his sources thoroughly, the wrong was by Mr. Hankey and the victim was the historical record. Which is clearly something you did not check before you had him on your show. But, now you attack Seamus because he did check the record. Hmm.

And what is the reason you are so outraged against Seamus and CTKA? Because you met Mr. Hankey and “I found him to be a fine fellow. He has been nothing but kind and respectful in our dealings…He’s a good man trying to do what’s right at great sacrifice. He deserves more respect than Mr. Coogan or CTKA afforded him”

Mr. Dell, what is deserving of respect is not a man’s charm, or niceness, or his job. What deserves respect in CTKA’s eyes is the quality of a man’s work. That is, the thoroughness of his scholarship, the rigor of his logic, the quality of his perceptions, the number of important interviews he does, and the important documents he uncovers. In that regard, Hankey’s film is so mistake riddled, so illogical, so full of deductive errors of reasoning, that what is shocking is that no one had skewered it sooner. Certainly, you were not going to. Hankey is just too nice.

How do you deal with the sorry string of errors in JFK 2? With this: “If there are mistakes in Mr. Hankey’s work, its right and necessary to point them out.” So you want to have it both ways. You say “If there are…” Which in light of Seamus’ essay is a ridiculous statement. There are literally dozens of errors of every kind in the pseudo documentary. So many that it is actually shocking. Just consider:
1. Mossadegh and Arbenz were not killed in CIA overthrows.
2. Ganges was not a doctor in 1963
3. Who believes that 13 bullets were fired in Dealey Plaza, and what is the evidence for that ballistically or acoustically?
4. Roy Kellerman was not looking in the back seat at the time of the shooting.
5. What is the evidence for Connally seeing Kennedy choking on a bullet and being shot in the head?<
6. It is not true that there was no evidence against Oswald by the evening of the murder.
7. The mystery of who shot JFK is not “easier to answer than you think”.
8. The CIA memo about supplying an alibi for Hunt on 11/22/63 was not written by Helms.
9. Operation Zapata was not named after Bush’s oil company.
10. There is no evidence that either the ships Barbara or the Houston were named by Bush Sr.
11. Nixon did not bring Hunt into the White House.
12. There is no credible evidence that Nixon was in on the JFK plot, so why picture him with a rifle pointed at Kennedy in the limo?
13. The Rubenstein document is very likely a forgery. And it was not “recently discovered”.
14. There is no evidence, let alone proof, that LBJ blackmailed Nixon about his role in the JFK case on a phone call.
15. There is no evidence, let alone proof, that Nixon hired Connally because they worked on the JFK hit together.
16. Hoover was not a crack investigator or heroic anti-Fascist. Just look at what he did in the Palmer Raids. Or the McCarthy years.<
17. Hunt was not found guilty of murder at the Liberty Lobby trial.
18. There is no evidence, let alone proof, that Prescott Bush picked Nixon out of crowd and decided to be the prime backer of his early political career.
19. There is no evidence, let alone proof, of any sinister connection between Nixon and Hunt in 1963 on the JFK plot
20. There is no evidence, let alone proof, that Prescott Bush was the real power behind DCI Allen Dulles at CIA.
Let me digress on this last point. Because it reveals Hankey’s methods in the use of evidence. As Seamus showed in his essay, there is no mention of this Bush for Dulles substitution in either of the two standard reference books on the CIA. So what does Hankey now do? He says that Prescott Bush was on a committee of inquiry in the Chou En Lai assassination affair. Dulles asked him for the status of the inquiry and Prescott declined to tell him. Therefore Prescott was really the power behind Dulles at CIA. Which is a totally illogical deduction. Every so often there is an internal inquiry at CIA. During the Dulles years there were, for example, the Bruce-Lovett report and the Lyman Kirkpatrick report on the Bay of Pigs. If Dulles has asked David Bruce, Robert Lovett or Kirkpatrick to divulge anything from their reports before it was done, and they had refused, would that mean that these three men were really in charge at CIA and not Allen Dulles? Of course not. The very question seems ridiculous. But these are the illogical lengths that Hankey will go to in twisting evidence to buttress his baseless theory.

Now I stopped at 20 serious errors. Yet I only got halfway through the show. I would have gotten to about forty in an 88 minute presentation. And I should note, I edited Seamus’ essay down from 54 pages to 34 pages. Simply because I thought it was overkill. So unedited, it would have come to at lest 50 errors. Which is simply unacceptable and intolerable for an 88 minute documentary. And that is the key word. This is supposed to be a documentary. Which is what makes the error rate shocking. So for Dell to use the phrase, “If there are mistakes in Mr. Hankey’s work”, this is simply an attempt to whitewash the truth. There are so many errors that they should offend any serious person’s sensibilities. Yet they are not offensive at all to Mr. Dell. After all Hankey is a “fine fellow” who has been “kind and respectful in or dealings”. And that excuses an academic debacle like JFK 2.

I don’t know what he means about Horne’s work. CTKA has not published any part of the upcoming five-part review of Inside the ARRB. And I have said very little about it on Black Op Radio. To read a book(s) that long takes weeks, maybe a month. And then to compose one’s thoughts and write it out, that takes almost as long. But having read much of it, and having followed the controversy about Lifton’s book for many years, it’s not correct to say that somehow Horne’s book “proves” Best Evidence. Only someone with sub standard scholarly standards would say so. And only someone who has not consulted with the best medical people in the field. And, although I like him and Crossfire is a good overview book, Marrs is not a medical authority. (Ever hear of “The Signal and the Noise”?)

I love how you tried to score us on not reviewing Dark Legacy with JFK 2. Seamus explained this upfront. If you read his essay—which you are trying to ignore the contents of, he said many, many more people have seen JFK 2 than Dark Legacy. Because it has been around much longer and since it is online. So I told Seamus that I would buy Dark Legacy later and review it with Baker’s Family of Secrets. Since the whole Parrot episode that Hankey uses there is dealt with at length in the Baker book. So CTKA will have reviewed the whole Bush trio at length and in depth. Who else has done so? (By the way, you broke your own rule here. You did not ask me beforehand if I planned on reviewing Dark Legacy before you attacked me. Strange double standard you have.)

This last point relates to you rather odd view of critical procedure. You take me to task for not consulting with Hankey or “reaching out ‘ to him before publishing Seamus’ article. Or giving him a copy of the review beforehand. I don’t know where you learned this strange procedure. There have been about 13 reviews published of my two JFK books. In not one instance has anyone ever consulted with me beforehand, reached out to me, or even sent me a review. Never. This is why publishers have clipping services.

I love the point you make about the Bush threatening Hoover scene with a poison dart gun being excusable since it only “could happen”. Mr. Dell, almost anything “could happen”. I mean Roscoe White could have been firing at Kennedy from the roof of the TSBD with a uranium bullet in a sabot. He could have then jumped down into a rubber blanket held by three accomplices on the Dallas police force in civilian clothes. That “could have happened”. Do you think it did happen? Would you like to see it in a documentary on the JFK case? It is the job of the documentary filmmaker to show us what DID happen, or if not, the closest approximation of what happened with the best and most reliable evidence available. What evidence is there for this preposterous product of a fevered imagination? Is it in any book on Hoover? Are there witnesses who saw it? Are there witnesses who heard about it? Was it in Hoover’s appointments book to meet with George Bush after the assassination? Did his longtime secretary Helen Gandy ever tell anyone about it? Did Tolson? Did DeLoach? So why use such a wild and fantastic scene at all? Especially in a documentary film? And why would you defend it, and then say that its CTKA that has no standards? Wow.

Finally, I will pass on the podcast. I don’t think we are “on the same team here.” Not by a longshot. Just wait until you see my review of Dark Legacy.

Over and out. No more posts by me on Mr. Dell or Hankey.

JAMES DIEUGENIO

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by John Hankey on Thu Mar 25, 2010 9:55 pm

There isn’t now, nor has there ever been any issue raised by DiEugenio or Coogan that is worth discussing except one:

Does the evidence support the finding that George HW Bush was involved in the assassination. All else is obfuscation.

DiEugenio and Coogan concede that the Bush of the memo is our very own George HW. McBride (all praise and glory to him; blessed be his name) located another George Bush at CIA and got a statement from him that he wasn’t the Bush of the memo. That, says, DiEugenio, settles the question and “proves” it was our George. Fine and dandy. I felt it wasn’t sufficient, and tried to gather the circumstantial evidence to prove the point more definitively. But fine. It was him.

DiEugenio and Coogan (henceforth D&C) say that’s all it means. It doesn’t connect Bush to the assassination or to the “misguided anti-Castro Cubans”. So let me ask you, Jim, or Seamus, and any one else, to take up these following points, which are relevant to the issue; and to skip the bullshit:

1) The title of the memo in question is, “Assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy”. The title is NOT “Misguided anti-Castro Cubans”; or “Response to State Dept. Inquiry”; or any of dozens of other possible titles. Hoover thought it was relevant to the assassination, obviously. D&C don’t think so; they don’t want you to think so; and they attack me for drawing what seems to me a starkly obvious conclusion: that a memo, titled “Assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy”, that named Bush as a member of the CIA, ties him to the assassination. I mean, are these not ludicrous points for me to have to make? Why the Bleep do you, D&C, think Mark Lane saw fit to include the memo in his book??? Why The Bleep did he feel it was relevant to a book about Hunt, Lorenz, and the assassination??? I may have holes in my socks. My underwear may need changing. I haven’t vacuumed my carpet in a couple of weeks. Attack me for that. But good grief!! For me to suggest that this memo links Bush to the assassination is not something that deserves to be attacked with the air of disregard both of you have brought to this debate. I think the entire discussion group should be offended. And say so. For an important number of researchers, the minute Hunt told the Washington Post “I’m a CIA assassin,” their immediate reaction was “OMG. He killed JFK!” I was a teenager when I attended a speech by Donald Freed entitled, “From Dallas to Watergate.” He connected Hunt to the misguided anti-Castro Cubans and then to the assassination; and he did it without the benefit of the Hoover Bush memo.

2) The Hoover Bush memo says that the FBI requested that the CIA send representatives to receive this report. If the report had been presented telephonically, Hoover’s memo would have said so. Bush received the report in person. No reasonable doubt. The report was given by a man in the FBI’s upper echelon. I presume, therefore, that it was given at FBI headquarters in Washington. That would be standard. If it was given somewhere else, I think we might assume that Hoover would have mentioned it. But it’s not an important point. The critical point is that if the FBI calls you up and says they want to give you a report, you don’t send the teenager who walks your dog. Jim is a school teacher. If the FBI calls the principal and says that they have a report that the English teachers are using bootleg copies of some textbook, and they want the principal to send someone to receive their report of the results of their investigation, who is the principal going to send? The janitor? A PE teacher? Or the English Department chair? Duh! Again, it is an obvious point. Not quite so obvious as the first. But it is an extremely reasonable extrapolation to say that the memo powerfully suggests that Bush was supervising these Cubans. So why the attack upon me for doing so?

3) “So!” say D&C, “what is the evidence that they are the same as those in Lorenz’s group? He produces none.” (That is an exact quote, by the way) Well, if I had provided no other evidence than the implications of the memo itself, I think the points 1&2 above are sufficiently powerful so as to suggest that the allegation of Bush’s connection to the assassins is worth considering. Don Freed figured that if you were in the CIA in ‘63, you were suspect. D&C characterize the following as “none”.

a) Bush and Hunt came to the White House within a few months of each other, to work for Nixon. Bush insisted on a White House office, very unusual for a UN ambassador. Again, regardless of D&C’s objections and obfuscations, Haldeman says that no one could figure out how Hunt got an office in the White House. OK. They both worked in the White House at the same time. DiEugenio would not dispute that Watergate was a CIA operation. He probably would dispute that Bush was a high ranking CIA officer at this time. But it’s obvious that he was. I’m sure DiEugenio would say, that doesn’t connect him to Hunt! He would have you believe that Bush had nothing to do with Watergate. Or if he did, that doesn’t connect him to Hunt. Or if it did, that doesn’t connect him to Hunt in Dallas in 1963. We’ll get to that in a minute. D&C both continue to ignore Haldeman’s statement that when Nixon told the FBI not to investigate Hunt, because “you’ll uncover the whole Bay of Pigs thing”, that Nixon was talking about the Kennedy assassination. Come on Jim. Take this up. It links Nixon to the assassination. It shows that he knew Hunt was involved! But DiEugenio tries desperately to make the point that Colson, not Nixon, hired Hunt. The implication is that Nixon knew nothing about Hunt, because Colson hired him. Well who the Bleep told Nixon that Hunt was connected to the Kennedy assassination? Jim? Can you help us out? Do you want to suggest that Colson told him? Based upon what? Colson had no connection to CIA operations. But, as I point out in the movie, Bush was involved in the same operation, the Bay of Pigs, at the same time, in the same location, that Hunt was. DiEugenio, on Black Op radio 463, raises the strawman, that I said Nixon hired Hunt; and that means, according to DiEugenio, that I say that Hunt was serving Nixon’s interest. Of course I never said any such thing. If I were asked, I’d say that Hunt was working for Bush during Watergate, as he was at the Bay of Pigs, and in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Well, there can scarcely be any doubt whatsoever about two of those. In the context of the Hoover memo, its title, and its naming of Bush, there can scarcely be any doubt about any of them. How can anyone honestly characterize this as “no evidence”. They can’t. DiEugenio is not who he pretends to be; he is not who I, until a little over a week ago, I thought he was. At very least, he’s vastly dishonest in the defense of Bush.

b) I linked Connally to the assassination. Well, you buy that or you don’t. The day of the assassination, Connally said he saw the president slump before he was shot. That was a lie. The film shows he did not see Kennedy before he was shot. He said it, I supposed, to counter the numerous witnesses who said JFK was thrown violently backwards by a bullet from the knoll. And then months later, on cue, Connally changed his story to accord with the single bullet theory. In addition, Connally says the recognized the first shot as an assassin’s rifle shot; but the Zapruder film shows him sitting there calmly, holding his Stetson. You make of that what you will. D&C thinks it means nothing. I think it links Connally to the assassination. And Haldeman says Connally said, “You can’t bring me to the White House until you find something for Bush.” Ok. Pretty weak. I’ve actually cut it out of the latest version. But it’s not nothing. It’s clutching at straws. And it’s a straw. But it’s not nothing. It’s worthy of discussion. It reveals an otherwise invisible, that is secret, connection between Bush and (to me) a clear assassination participant.

c) Bush’s co-founder in Zapata Oil, Bill Liedtke, provided the hush money that was paid to Hunt. It’s another connection between Hunt and Bush. No doubt. Well, no doubt in anyone’s mind but D&C. They can’t even see it. To them, it’s not weak evidence. To them, it doesn’t exist.

d) When CIA agent Felix Rodriguez went to Ramon Rodriguez, the cocaine money launderer, to ask for money, he said, “Bush sent me.” Ramon had written the checks for Hunt, with the money from Liedtke. Felix didn’t know Ramon. But obviously Bush did. How? I suggest that Bush knew Ramon because he was in charge of getting the hush money for Hunt from Liedtke, and to Hunt through Ramon Rodriguez. If it weren’t for all the other stuff, this would be pretty slim. Taken altogether, I think this wraps up Bush pretty tightly with Hunt, before, during, and after Dallas ‘63. The Kennedy assassination is the most tightly held CIA operation in all of history. Given that, we should expect to find nothing. In that context, this is a load of evidence. But forget all that.

e) The FBI memo, recording Bush’s phone call the day of the assassination, claiming he was in Tyler Texas, but explaining that he would be in Dallas that night. Russ Baker in Family of Secrets, reveals that the Dallas Morning News carried an ad saying Bush was speaking in Dallas the night before. DiEugenio called this truly wonderful book “vaporous”, whatever that means. But it’s not a nice word. I raised this book and the evidence in it in my first response. And what is DiEugenio’s response? Read for yourself:

“He (Hankey) talks about a call to the FBI by Bush that is related to the James Parrot matter. He then says that Seamus concedes the point with his silence. John: Take a look at your film JFK 2 again. The Parrot matter is not in it. That is why Seamus is silent about it. You didn’t mention it there.”

No Jim? I suppose. I needed Wim Daankbar to hook me up with this FBI memo (thanks Wim!). And in every rehash, of the four or five I’ve done the last six years, it’s been there. But, OK, Seamus didn’t see it. He’s off the hook on that one. But you’re not. Where’s your response to this memo, putting Bush in Dallas, on duty, the day of the assassination??? Your response is to call this powerful list of connections between Bush and Hunt “none”. What are we to make of this? What are we to think about a person capable of such lies, and in such a dubious cause.

I have, until this episode, been a huge fan of Jim’s. When it comes to dismantling the Warren report and it’s defenders, he is incomparable. No? Or that was my opinion. What the hell happened? Why is he defending Bush in this insanely dishonest fashion? Mike Ruppert was my hero before he persuaded me he was an evil prick. DiEugenio actually makes a favorable mention of Ruppert on Black Op radio 463. I thought I was going to be physically ill when I heard this. So on Black Op he promotes Ruppert. But in his rebuttal in this forum, he doesn’t make any mention of Ruppert, or my charges against him and Lisa Pease for their role in denying Gary Webb an autopsy. How about that, Jim? Care to weigh in on a Bush critic who shoots himself in the head twice, with a .38, and doesn‘t get an autopsy? No. You’re right to shut the bleep up on that score.

In his rebuttal on this forum DiEugenio makes this stunning remark: “So Lane made an error with Lorenz.” This remark is stunning on a number of counts.

1) It is stunning, for a person of Diegueno’s (now-apparently ill-deserved) status to be so evasive and deceptive. The issue is not really Lorenz credibility. It is Mark Lane’s. It is Lane who says Hunt is guilty; and Lane cites Lorenz, as part of a vast array of evidence in support of that finding. I said this in my original remarks, that it is Lane who said Hunt was guilty. DiEugenio misdirects your attention away from the primary “Lane says Hunt is guilty” thesis towards the “Lane believes Lorenz” thesis. Lorenz is a distraction. And DiEugenio, for good reason, avoids confrontingm Lane’s central thesis in order to harp on a single piece of evidence for that thesis: Lorenz.

2) DiEugenio gives us “So Lane made an error with Lorenz;” and what does he offer in support? Zip. We are to discard Lane in favor of DiEugenio based upon what? DiEugenio’s incomparable credibility? Not anymore, I hope. Destroying DiEugenio’s credibility is my central goal at the moment. Have I accomplished it yet?

3) DiEugenio was on Black Op radio to promote Coogan’s attack on me on Feb. 28 (463), But a week later, Lane was on, minutes before DiEugenio came on (this is 464). They shared the same show (though not simultaneously). During his portion of the show, Lane pointed out that Lorenz had cited Sturgis and Hemmings as being in the cars that drove to Dallas for the assassination. And Lane, on the show, says that both Sturgis and Hemmings have corroborated that story, saying that they were there and involved in the assassination. So Jim, Mark Lane has the statements of two of the killers to back up his belief in Lorenz’s story. And you have what?

Finally, during his time on Black Op Radio #463, Jim also attacks somebody’s website for not allowing rebuttals. He laughs about it. It’s ridiculous to him. And then he writes in his rebuttal to me “And no we do not run rebuttals.” Well, I won’t dispute the wisdom of that policy when applied to Warren Commission defenders. However, I’m not a Warren Commission defender. But I’m interested in much more than attacking the Warren Commission. I’m interested in getting beyond the obvious point that Oswald didn‘t act alone, getting at who was behind the killing, and going after them. How can you possibly fail to distinguish between the two? I think that is an essential question for us, your former fans, in trying to divine your motives. Everything you have said on the subject of Bush’s guilt is fundamentally dishonest, in that even when you are right on some minor point, you utterly misrepresent the significance as being somehow fundamental. The good thing is we have learned something important about who you really are. The terrible thing is that you have been a spokesman for the assassination community on important other matters, and you have utterly undermined our faith in your honesty.

******************

That’s a rousing close; and I hate to bring this up, instead of ending there. But in divining who Jim DiEugenio is, and what is going on, I think it’s worth noting: The person representing themselves as Seamus has gotten his hands on a disk that doesn’t contain the Hoover memo, and does contain all this other stuff about Oswald and ice darts and whatnot. That’s interesting. There probably never were more than a dozen such disks on the planet. Maybe fewer. I sent one to Kris Millegan; who offered some suggestions for corrections, which I incorporated; and he referred me to Wim; and I sent him one. And he made some additional suggestions, including getting rid of the Bush-with-the-ice-dart story; and incorporating the Ruby Nixon memo, and the Bush FBI memo from the day of the assassination. And I immediately incorporated those changes, before offering the disk to the public at large, ever. So I would guess that absolutely no one who actually dragged themselves all the way through to the end of Seamus’s hatchet job recognized what he was talking about. Now I know Seamus didn’t get this early early version from Wim. Or from Kris. He’s in bleeding New Zealand for Krike’s sake; or so the story goes. But I smell a big fat rat. And I call on Seamus to explain himself. Where’d you get it Seamus? From the FBI? It reminds me of Bush’s phone call the day of the assassination. I love it when smart asses screw themselves up, being so damn clever. By the way, I’d be happy to sell a copy of the latest version. Wait! He knows the latest version exists. He knows it’s “slick”. So why the hell is he using a six-year old version? To what purpose? And where’d he get it?

***************************************

Anyone who cares to can take up for themselves the myriad irrelevant details that DiEugenio raises in objecting to my work, and decide for themselves if they have any merit. But he raises four as being major, and they’re easily dispensed with, so let me take them up, after pointing out that they indict him more than me, for suggesting that they in any way relate to the case against Bush.

He says 1.) “Jim, didn’t Kennedy know the Bay of Pigs was going to be launched in advance?” This is an utterly irrelevant distraction from the question at hand; but it is a vitally important point, I think, in terms of understanding History, and current affairs. And for that reason, it seems appropriate to me that DiEugenio should rail about it, from the wrong side. That is, I see him as a key disinformer, so if he portrays this as key, it might be – just not in the way he suggests.

I understand that the vast majority of expert opinion is that Kennedy approved the invasion and then refused to provide air cover. This includes experts like Fletcher Prouty, who had a very inside view from which to judge. But I don’t find the story that Kennedy approved the invasion plausible on a number of scores. But my opinion is beside the point, in the face of cold hard evidence:

Days after the assassination, Kennedy called Maxwell Taylor out of retirement and assigned him and Bobby to conduct an investigation into what happened at the Bay of Pigs. They conducted a series of depositions with leading players, including frontline CIA officers on board the Houston and the Barbara J, and Cubans, and cabinet officers. The transcripts of these depositions was published under the title Operation Zapata, about 20 years ago. I think I encountered a reference to it in Fabian Escalante’s book, or in ZR Rifles. In any case, I found the actual US Gov. publication in the local library. The transcripts reveal that when the CIA proposed the invasion, Kennedy turned it down flat. He said he didn’t want any “D-day sort of invasion” (his exact words), but that if the agency wanted to sneak some guerillas into the mountains at night, that would be acceptable. One of the cabinet officials tried to claim that the large invasion had been approved at one particular meeting, and Bobby interrupted him to let him know that he (Bobby) was there and there was no such discussion. One of the CIA officers in command of one of the ships explained that he had been instructed to tell the Cubans, after they were all loaded up and on their way, that the invasion had been called off; and to make sure that they mutinied and went ahead with it anyway. There is real drama in all this. Dulles is sitting there. His underling is ordered, by Maxwell Taylor, the highest rank in the military, to rat Dulles out. The underling looks at Dulles, then at Taylor, and then tells this detailed story of how Dulles planned to get around Kennedy’s rejection of the invasion by pretending to call it off at the last minute, and then blaming it on a Cuban “mutiny”. The officer explained how he had been instructed not to wear side arms, and to be sure to encourage the Cubans to mutiny. But, he said, the Cubans weren’t having any part of a mutiny, and he had to explain the entire scenario to them and assure them that it wasn’t really a mutiny, that they had the complete backing of the US, and that had to proceed. Which they reluctantly did, now unnerved by this attempted charade.

You could argue that this document is somehow dishonest. But I don’t find this plausible on a number of counts. First, why would create this false document, and then tell absolutely no one. I have never encountered anyone who has heard of it. Second, I find the story more than plausible. The Pentagon had approved the CIA’s plan, stupid as it was. But none of the generals got fired. If Dulles, Bissell, and Cabell got fired, it could not have been for offering a bad opinion, could it? You see, if the President agreed to the invasion, it was his opinion too. That’s just not how things work. You don’t fire knowledgeable people because you and your advisors all decided to take their advice. But if Dulles etc. went ahead with an invasion plan that Kennedy had explicitly rejected, that’s quite another matter, isn’t it? The notion that Kennedy would approve the invasion in the first place is also implausible. Kennedy believed in the right of people to choose their own form of government, and he was sympathetic with Castro’s populism. Bobby, in particular, would have been hugely sympathetic to what Castro did to the Mafia. This first is a critical point. Kennedy was not willing to fight a popular movement in Vietnam, even if it was communist; because it was popular. Kennedy was genuinely pro-democracy. He was also against murdering foreign leaders, whether it was Diem or Castro or Khruchev. And finally, Kennedy objected to the notion that the giant power of the US should be brought to bear upon this tiny little island. He said so, in so many words.

This is not a small deal. It is thoroughly revealing about the extent to which we watch a shadow show, and the extent to which 99.99999999999% of the population may be left in the dark about really large and critical issues (like whether Kennedy approved the initial invasion or not). I think it relates to a number of issues. Clinton says he knew nothing about the genocide in Rwanda. Romeo Dillaire and many others attacked Clinton bitterly for his failure to take low-cost zero-threat actions to scare the killers (like jamming their radio station, threatening the leaders by name over their own radio, and buzzing the treetops of the capital with jets). Clinton’s National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake, a Kissinger protégé, apparently didn’t tell Clinton, though Lake had complete information on events in the first minutes that they began. I believe the Fort Hood shooting was an op. But I think the evidence shows powerfully that Obama wasn‘t involved in it. Obama has been attacked by the PNAC crowd for refusing to call this Islamic Terrorism; and he ordered the FBI to investigate itself about how they could have failed to open a file on the shooter, Malik Hasan. And the day Obama received their report, he took one sniff and called William Webster out of retirement (see Maxwell Taylor above) to conduct a new investigation, and ordered everyone involved to stop leaking the manufactured background of Hasan-as-Islamic-terrorist. I think this shows that Obama, like JFK at the Bay of Pigs, was not in on the plot.

DiEugenio’s ignorance on this point would be excusable if I hadn’t shown the title of the book, Operation Zapata, and the actual pages with the quotes, in my video. As I’ve said, I held him in the highest regard, but he’s just half-assed on this point.

(There is a point I have to make parenthetically. JFKMURDERSOLVED fans will appreciate it. James Files describes how Nicoletti told him that the CIA had called off the assassination at the last minute, but that he and Nicoletti decided to mutiny and go ahead with it anyway. Ring a bell? This is totally Dulles’ modus operandi.)

More from Jim

2.) “Did Delphine Roberts know Oswald was at the Lake Ponchatrain training camp?” I said she knew and that she said so. I spent 20 minutes online and can’t find the source for Delphine Roberts saying this. I spent another 20 going through my books. Garrison didn’t say it, Lane didn’t say it, Marrs didn’t say it. I didn’t just make it up. Perhaps Sutton or Hinkle. But it’s the most very minor point. Peter Dale Scott says Oswald was there at the camps. (www.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/JA/DR/.dr10.html – Deep Politics – 251) Scott may have gotten the information from Robert Tanenbaum, the original Deputy Chief of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, who resigned saying the HSCA wasn’t interested in the truth. He says he saw a film of Pontchartrain showing Bannister and Oswald. http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/JA/DR/.dr10.html Explain to us, Jim: If Oswald was there, if such rock solid sources say he was, why are you even raising this point, much less making a huge issue out of it? (D&C: “I said, ‘Are you serious?’ He said, ‘Yes, I am. Its that bad.’) That’s pretty bad. I said the secretary said. Maybe she did. Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she lied. Maybe she didn’t. But Tanenbaum is vastly more credible, and says he saw incontrovertible evidence. I should have used Tanenbaum instead of Robets. OK. Score a big point for D&C for misdirection.

More from Jim

3.) “Who hired Hunt at the White House?” I said Nixon. DiEugenio says Colson. Colson worked for Nixon. There can be no dispute about that. Did Colson hire Hunt on behalf of Nixon? Of course. So were dealing with misdirection here, as usual. And now check this from Haldeman’s The Ends of Power:

p. 12 Erlichman to Haldeman the morning after the break-in “He (Colson) doesn’t know anything (sic) about Watergate, and he hasn’t seen Hunt in months.”

Colson to Haldeman: “he (Hunt) was off my payroll. You gotta believe me, Bob. It wasn’t me. Tell the President that. …Hunt left my office months ago, like I said.” So to say that Colson hired Hunt, as DiEugenio does, is useless. In what sense did Colson hire him, if he didn’t pay him? and Hunt didn’t work for him? And more to the point, MUCH MORE to the point, who was Hunt working for? Who was he answering to? Is there any doubt in anyone’s mind that Hunt was answering to the CIA? And what CIA officer was closest to him, with a White House office? Bush. No possible question. Now D&C want to insist that somehow this doesn’t constitute a connection between Hunt and Bush. And in order to distract you from this obvious connection, they raise silliness like “Nixon didn’t hire Hunt. Colson did.” Which is not only silly; and not only a dark misinformative piece of misdirection; but it’s essentially wrong.

and finally from Jim 4.) “Have you ever heard anything about Prescott Bush actually running the CIA while Dulles was DCI?” And if Prescott ran the CIA from the shadows, you’d expect to have heard of it? I answered this in my first rebuttal, to Coogan. Briefly, then, Joseph Trento tells how, when Dulles inquired about Prescott’s activities investigating an assassination attempt by the agency against Chou En Lai, Dulles was told he didn’t have sufficient security clearance. But how is this an important question? First of all, I never said Prescott was Dulles’ boss, though I suggested that it was possible. So saying I did is more misdirection and straw man-obfuscation. But if I had said it, so what? It’s not essential. There’s evidence to support it. But the real question is, which of these men, Dulles or Prescott, is highest rank in the Rockefellers’ army? Because that’s all the CIA is or ever was, the publicly funded, officially sanctioned, covert army of the Rockefellers. So does Dulles or Prescott Bush rank higher? Answer that and you will have answered the question, “who was the boss of whom?” But who the hell cares?

I thought I’d include that, reviewing Haldeman’s book, I encountered an incident where Connally calls Nixon and says “burn the tapes.” Bush Jr. did burn the Nixon tapes, in case you missed it. When experts suggested new technology might be able to recover the erased segments, little George ordered the 18 minute segment removed and destroyed. Go ahead, Jim. Explain how that one doesn’t connect George Sr. to Hunt or to the “whole Bay of Pigs thing.”

“The Dark Legacy of John Hankey”

DiEugenio’s Review Update of “Dark Legacy”

“Onwards and Downwards with John Hankey”

Coogan Reply to Fetzer at Deep Politics Forum

Master Class with John Hankey, Part 1

Master Class with John Hankey, Part 2

Master Class with John Hankey, Part 3

Master Class with John Hankey, Part 4
March 25, 2010
Alex Jones on the Kennedy Murder: A Painful Case, Part II

In Part One, we examined Alex Jones’ beginnings and his success. Not to mention, his extraordinary case of foot-in-mouth conspirahypocrisy, which he has packaged and sold to the world inspiring hordes of conspiravangelists. With regards to his upcoming documentary, this is not so much a review but more of an insight into what we can expect. To show the potential for failure, I then take a look at two of Jones’ most prominent players – and potential bedfellows in his documentary – Jason Bermas and Paul Joseph Watson.

Though my extensive examination of Bermas’s film Invisible Empire may seem to take us off the path of Alex Jones and the Kennedy case, Kennedy is still very much in the picture, if a little more to the background. What this does is serve to give us an insight into the poor grasp of history, society, and theology which abounds in the Jones nexus. Though Paul Joseph Watson had little to do with Bermas production, I would imagine they share many of the same opinions since Watson is one of the top (if not the top) researchers in the Jones organization. Both individuals, like Jones, are repeat offenders in endorsing long-dead (or soon-to-be-dying) Kennedy assassination myths.

The conclusion I reach relates back to the slim chances of such incompetence ever creating a meaningful or useful documentary on anything related to Kennedy’s, or anybody else’s, assassination.

I. Sunshine Superman

Jones may well be getting ready for another bite at the Johnson did it cherry via Howard Hunt in his long rumored film, Black Sunshine (discussed shortly). Hunt’s “confession” is not a way to get a good take on the killing of President Kennedy. It is pretty much old hat, and the version Hunt gave to his son before he died is slightly revised from the one he published in his last book. Anybody who has read Plausible Denial by Mark Lane knows that no one believed Howard Hunt’s story of being with his family that day. And then there’s the 1966 “secret” James Angleton memo to incoming Director of Intelligence Dick Helms about the need to provide Hunt with an alibi.

The problem is that, given E. Howard Hunt’s spook-riddled past, who can really tell where the truth lies? For example, in light of Gaeton Fonzi’s first-rate book, The Last Investigation, the Marita Lorenz aspect of Lane’s volume is (to put it mildly) rather weak today. (See Fonzi, pgs. 83-107) And when, eventually, Gerry Hemmings backs up her Miami-to-Dallas “travelling assassination team,” then one’s antennae should stand up. (Lane, p. 300)

But these are not the only problems. Another is this: Many respected researchers find Hunt’s family a tad too self-promoting to be readily believed. The man who brought the dying Hunt’s confession to light was his son, “Saint John.” (Apparently, Hunt-the-elder just couldn’ resist foisting his wry humor upon even his own son – for life.) St. John has a colorful past. He also deserves credit for overcoming his well-publicized demons. And maybe some of his insights into life with his father could have been illuminating. It’s Hunt’s commodification of practically everything around him that raises eyebrows.

He has a website and also had some companies up and running called Dreamlike and Spook Productions. Hunt will sell anything “Hunt” you want. There’s Hunt’s online book you can buy, an autographed manuscript you can purchase, an interview with St. John you can own, and of course there’s “dad’s confession” itself. Yes, for 20 bucks they’re yours forever. But it gets worse or more humorous – depending on your viewpoint – very soon.

In Part One, we mentioned that Hunt had been extremely forthcoming with information about his personal life to a number of people who emailed us after Jim DiEugenio announced my Alex Jones project on Black Op Radio some months ago. But some conspiravangelists, conveniently turned a blind eye at our pointing out Hunt’s self-voluntary participation in the process. So before we go any further, I have to forego any niceties and repeat that we did not seek out this information nor did we dig into Hunt’s background in any way, shape, or form; quite frankly, we have better things to do.

What we reluctantly learned from the emails was that for a buck thirty-four per photo (click on the necklace) his wife’s likeness is yours. But that’s only the start. Apparently, you can also purchase Mrs. Hunts’ XXX action DVD’s and two different types of calendars in which she stars. Hunt, who photographed his wife, likely also filmed her. Does this then make “Saint John” (do you suppose that he’s in on the irony?) the JFK equivalent of Larry Flynt?

Which begs the further question: In his conspirahypocrisy, exactly how low will Alex “LBJ, bazookas, and grenades” Jones stoop? Though he openly congratulates Naomi Wolf’s stance on the destructiveness of pornography and generally displays contempt for that industry (as do many of his listeners and viewers), Jones nonetheless jumps at the chance to embrace the likes of a Saint who appears more than willing to bare all.

Many have posited that people with dubious reputations may be able to find redemption with precious nuggets of truth and insight. Thus if Hunt’s information was truly insightful, like say Rose Cheramie’s (who shared something of a similar history), then Jones could be forgiven for using him. The problem is that St. John is no Cheramie and Jones is no officer Francis Fruge. Not by a long shot. Cheramie never sought remuneration for her story, nor did Fruge who investigated it. Unlike Hunt she never lived to tell it to a wider audience (which may tell us something).

Instead, Hunt and/or his father clearly had a business motive in place to spill the beans, which as said earlier, if handled better could have given some real insight into Hunt Sr. Yet, as it stands now most people schooled in the JFK case had known about the first confession for some time, barring the dubious addition of Lyndon Johnson. It’s this addition which has endeared him to a certain section of the JFK community which, like Jones, took Barr McClellan’s Blood, Money & Power seriously.

Howard Hunt turned down the chance at 5 million dollars from Kevin Costner to set the record straight; yet for little or no reward he divulged a cock-and-bull story for his son to market to anyone who would buy it. Even the factually challenged John Hankey had an all too rare moment of insight when he stated something along the lines, “If Hunt says Johnson did it, that’s all the more reason not to believe he was behind it.” (John Hankey: Black Op Radio Show #424, 5/21/09). Hunt is something of a first: An X-rated photographer who is also appears to have no qualms about promoting himself as a “witness to history” in the Kennedy assassination. But in his attempt to market anything not nailed down, he seems a natural match for Jones.

II. Black Comedy

Why is this important?

The rumors around Prison Planet forums are that Jones is planning to release what will likely be an awful production for JFK’s 50th anniversary in 2013. Yet people closer to Prison Planet have informed CTKA that it is coming out near the end of this year. The only hint of what it is like is a brief, two-part 20 minute promotional clip at YouTube featuring St. John Hunt and Jim Marrs. (Click here for: Part 1 & Part 2.) But I have no confirmation that this sneak will even be seen in the final form.

Till that fateful day, we can be comforted with the words of a keen Ron Paul supporter from the Ron Paul War Room:

I have high expectations that Alex Jones’ forthcoming documentary, Black Sunshine, will be the most penultimate coalescence of the truth about the JFK assassination and how those involved in it have usurped virtually every position of major power in government today.

This tells us a lot about Alex Jones, his Libertarian leanings, and his media allies. If the Paul fan’s lack of judgment is not depressing enough, Jones’ own inflated opinion of his scholarship is utterly troublesome. In his interview with Marrs (discussed earlier in Part One), Marrs told Jones that he had his work vetted by Oliver Stone’s research team led by Jane Rusconi. Jones, obviously feeling himself to be Marrs’ equal, replied:

I wanna be clear, I can’t say too much on air, but some of my work is being looked up for a film similar to JFK and the way it’s presented and there’s a team of seven people looking at everything I’ve put out and found it all to be accurate, and found a lotta times it’s worse than what I am presenting.

Who are or were “The Magnificent Seven” he’s had looking over his evidence? Jones’ idea has been in the pipeline for some time so it’s time we had a look at the leading individuals within the Jones nexus, his “brain trust,” so to speak.

Thus let us take a look at some of his other friends. For once we measure Jason Bermas and Paul Joseph Watson, we will begin to understand all the mega-conspiracy giddiness that populates all of Jonestown. A giddiness, that overrides factual accuracy not to mention the rules of logic and history.

III. Jason Bermas: Worrisome Warrior

III.1 Why We’d “Rather” He Didn’t Bother

Jason Bermas, joined up with Jones sometime in 2007 (after Jones’ interview with Marrs). Bermas may not be one of the current “heads” working on the project but should Jones project go ahead, Jason Bermas could well be involved in the editing and design of the project. Bermas is a man well known for his efforts in the 9/11 Truth Movement. Along with Dylan Avery, he put together the massively popular Loose Change 9/11 which appeared in its final form, Loose Change 9/11 Final Cut, in 2007. When it comes to the Kennedy assassination, however, Bermas, like the rest of Prison Planet, really would be better off butting out. It’s clearly not their area of expertise.

It was in his pre-Prison Planet days that Bermas first came to this writer’s notice: In a scene from an early version of Loose Change (2005 or 2006?), Bermas is seen engaging a rather agitated off-duty fireman in a debate at Ground Zero. One onlooker mentions that the same people who pulled off the Kennedy assassination were also behind the Twin Towers collapse – to which Bermas enthusiastically agrees. Which, as we have seen, is rather odd, because it appears Bermas knows about as much about the JFK case as Jones – which is very little. Or, to put it another way, he knows just enough to be “factually challenged.”

In Loose Change 9/11 Final Cut, Bermas and Avery utilized an interview with Dan Rather from a BBC Newsnight May 16, 2002. Of course the interviewer, Madeleine Holt, never asks Rather any questions pertaining to his blatant lying about the Zapruder film: How he reported on national television seeing Kennedy’s head move forwards as if shot from behind. Rather’s career took off from that point onwards. Unsurprisingly, the issue was never brought up in Loose Change nor does it seem to exist anywhere on any Prison Planet/Infowars site. Instead, Rather is lauded for observing the buildings as coming down as if by controlled demolition.

In September of 2007, the brilliant Greg Palast, a person supposedly admired on Prison Planet (though I see little of his influence in their continuously dubious output) lampooned Rather’s gutless display concerning “Top Gun” Bush and his running AWOL from the Texas Air National Guard. Yet the only criticism of Rather found on any Jones-related site was an article dated 8/6/2008 by Kurt Nimmo. Nimmo, knowing no better than Bermas or Avery, mentions a brief interview with Rather in which he denied any knowledge of the Bilderberger group. Now, anybody who knew about Rather’s obsequiously self-serving lies wouldn’t need to bother asking banal questions about his ties to the Bilderbergers.

Regardless of Nimmo and Palast, it still means that by 2007 Bermas and Prison Planet clearly had no idea of Rather’s shenanigans. Thus they had no idea whatsoever that Dan Rather will always be regarded as an utterly gross and cowardly sell-out and shill by anybody well-versed in the Kennedy case (or reality for that matter). In 1993, Dan Rather told Robert Tanenbaum, the former deputy chief counsel to the HSCA, “We really blew it on the Kennedy assassination.” But the sincerity of Rather’s late-arrived realizations on the Kennedy assassination must be judged in light of his most recent foray into assassination-shilling because Dan “we-really-blew-it” Rather still has the death of Martin Luther King pinned solely on another lone gunman, James Earl Ray (Jim DiEugenio; Review of The Road to Memphis, May 3^rd, 2010 & Black Op Radio, Show #477; June 3^rd, 2010).

III.2 The Inflatable Empire

Unlike Jones, Bermas has sometimes put out some thought-provoking stuff. He gave a good account of himself on Black Op Radio. And while Loose Change, and his other documentary, Fabled Enemies, asked some good questions, Bermas’ latest presentation, Invisible Empire: A New World Order Defined, has little of the guerilla charm his previous works possessed.

First, let me ask this: How can one define something as nebulous as the New World Order? –especially when resorting to the likes of Hankeyian histrionics, Bircher-Society logic, and Jonesian contradictions and generalizations as the basis for building historical perspective? For Bermas and Jonesville it is, quite predictably, a secret amalgamation of globalists cabals intent on taking over the world and planning for a draconian one-world government.

While it would be difficult to argue against the presence of powerful individuals and globalist groups operating throughout the world today, rather than constructively imagining a “New World Order,” critical thinking would seem to indicate that a “nebulous world order” is more to the point. According to National Institute for Research Advancement (NIRA) studies, as of 2005, there are over 500 powerful think tank groups worldwide. Think tanks, whether government funded or privately endowed (well known or not) have often had a disproportionate influence over governmental policy decisions, yet have often competed against each other. If Bermas (a person who has clearly never seen The Corporation, nor Adam Curtis’s The Power of Nightmares) had just kept to the lines of logic outlined in these fine works, rather than journeying to the land of the flakes, Invisible Empire would have made for far more worthwhile viewing.

III.3 The Origins of the NWO (according to Bermas)

About 11 or so minutes into his documentary, Bermas shows that he is an individual in possession of very little historical or theological knowledge. The notion of the New World Order hasn’t actually been around for a long time. Individuals like Dennis Cuddy like to trace its origins back to the early 20^th Century. The modern right-wing take on it is that it was born out of the crazed and confused Christian fundamentalist, racist right-wing politics of groups like the John Birch Society in the late ’50’s.

Bermas wants us to believe that the concept of the NWO came from a little known manifesto called New World Order by American Samuel Zane Batten, which came out in 1919. To Bermas’ credit, this does appear to be the first book to carry the title. The problem is that many theologians and writers were contributing numerous works about a more united and egalitarian world at the turn of the 19^th and the early part of the 20^th centuries. This influenced the great Utopian-Dystopian debates, which increased after the First World War. Batten was nothing new or, indeed, revolutionary.

It is heavily implied by Bermas that Batten’s New World Order influenced Hitler. But there is no evidence that Hitler had ever read Batten’s works (or that it was even translated into Deutsch for that matter). He then goes on to mention that Hitler’s little known second book was dubbed The New World Order. Now, let the following be a reminder that this is what happens when you hang out with unscholarly people. The book was never named nor dubbed by that title. It was called Zweites Buch, which literally means Second Book, in which Hitler merely postulated challenges facing a Nazi global hegemony. While Bermas is correct in stating that it was completed in 1928, he fails to note its interesting history: It was not published until well after the war, in 1961 in German; and not until 2003 in English.

The meaning of an idyllic universal utopian New World Order differs from person to person. A John Birch Society member like G. Edward Griffin would have his own version, as would the reader, as does Bermas. Yes, it is that complicated a deal. Someone’s heaven is invariably someone else’s hell. Martin Luther King’s Dream would be David Duke’s Nightmare. So let’s look into the many groups and individuals that help make up the New World Order and – for most conspirahypocrites – the amorphous group that invariably killed Kennedy.

III.4 The Hives of Tyrants

Bermas’s film was spoiled right off the bat – three minutes and forty-two seconds into the production – by his misappropriating Kennedy’s April 27, 1961 speech made to the American Newspaper Publishers Association. Granted, Kennedy does discuss the need for a free and open society, and yes, he does speak out against secret societies, secret oaths and the potential power of government taking advantage of any given situation and imposing censorship. It’s powerful stuff. In particular, Kennedy’s prophetic jibes at the “trivialization” and “tabloidization” of the media, which few people seem to note, are arguably the most important part of his speech.

What is alarmingly dishonest, however, is that Bermas has used an edited version of this speech to make it appear as if Kennedy is rallying against a Jonesian-style secret society, when in point of fact, he clearly is not. In his speech, before Kennedy famously states “We are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy,” Bermas has removed three contextually related paragraphs which precede this famously quoted line, and which, to all but the most imaginative thinkers, make it quite clear that Kennedy is referring not to some collusive NWO conspiratorial-style cabal, but rather to the conventional Cold War forces of communism. And sadly, there are more than a few wishful thinkers out there. Places like YouTube (where it’s quite likely Bermas picked this up from) abound with edited versions of “The speech that got Kennedy killed” or “JFK New World Order Illuminati Speech.” No one realizes (least of all Bermas) that Kennedy delivering a speech to the likes of Henry Luce about secret groups is akin to Mowgli giving a warning to Shere Khan about his human diet. Thus, Bermas, without even knowing it, stands guilty of “cutting the cloth to suit the fit,” in much the same way as John Hankey inventively turns John Connally into an arch-conspirator and has George Bush threatening Hoover with a dart gun in his Hoover’s FBI office.

In Bermas’ history lesson about the NWO, he completely overlooks the fact that Hitler himself was a conspiracy theorist of some renown. It was this, plus his own racist beliefs, that led him to exterminate millions of Jews, Gypsies, Catholics, Socialists, as well as some 20,000 to 80,000 Freemasons (Christopher Hodapp, Freemasonry for Dummies, pg 85). Bermas goes on to name numerous secret groups from the Masons to Bilderbergers, Illuminati, Bohemian Grove, and the ever-present Skull and Bones. Collectively, according to Bermas, these groups form the New World Order, and together they inflate his hypothesis that all are working toward the same goals. Let’s have a quick look at this twisted mass Bermas construes.

Masons Though the Masons only account for a speck of the invisible empire on Prison Planet, the Libertarian Jones has a strange relationship with Freemasonry. According to Jones, groups like the Freemasons supported many prominent “founding fathers” of the United States.

Alex Jones, in one of his more sober moments, in a discussion with a caller on his show, actually said much of the above. However, he couldn’t help but add that only the higher levels, or 33^rd degree Masons, are dangerous or enlightened.

President Harry Truman was a bona fide and ardent mason and reached the much-vaunted 33^rd degree level of Masonry. He also created the CIA in 1947. Yet in 1963 he wrote a famous editorial decrying the some of the operations that the CIA had partaken of as being way beyond what he had imagined. Allen Dulles was so worried about this column, which was published a month after JFK’s murder, that he paid a personal visit to Truman and tried to get him to retract it. (see the last chapter of Jim DiEugenio’s Destiny Betrayed)

Further, Truman’s 33^rd degree level of Masonry didn’t stop his administration from being undermined by the Republicans and the likes of Joe McCarthy which eventually saw the resultant rise of Eisenhower in 1952 over Adlai Stevenson (Richard M. Fried, Nightmare in Red pgs 7-10, 16-17). Warren Commission member Senator Richard Russell was a high-level Freemason. He was also the most ardent critic of the lone gunman line on the panel (Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, pgs 282-298). And he was the first of the Commissioners to break away from the Oswald-did-it-alone scenario. In fact, he actually conducted his own private inquiry while the Commission was in progress.

Bohemian Grove, CFR, Trilateralists, Skull & Groaners According to author Michael Wala, Eisenhower was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and a regular visitor to Bohemian Grove. That didn’t stop him from warning the US about the acquisition of power by the Military-Industrial Complex. Being granted entrance to a place like Bohemian Grove did not stop Bobby Kennedy (who addressed a Grove retreat while Attorney General) from having his brother and himself both shot under the most suspicious circumstances. (William Domhoff, The Bohemian Grove and Other Retreats; p. 27)

Richard Nixon, also a CFR member, didn’t get any help from his fellow Bohemians during Watergate. Likewise, for Jimmy Carter: Being a member of Bohemian Grove, the CFR, and an ardent Trilateralist didn’t stop him from signing into existence the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) which concluded there was a probable conspiracy in the killings of both Kennedy and King. Nor did the protection of these groups help Carter when the Republicans derailed his re-election campaign with the October Surprise.

Touching on the Skull and Bones fraternity, Bermas has clearly never heard of another prominent Bonesman, Robert Lovett, who was scathing of CIA foreign policy under the Eisenhower administration.

Another Warren Commission member, John Sherman Cooper, was also a member of Yale’s Skull and Bones Society, and his doubts about the lone gunman conclusion have been well documented. Being a member of Skull and Bones, Bohemian Grove, the Trilateral Commission, and the CFR didn’t help George Bush get elected over Bill Clinton. Clinton is a known Bilderberger whose connections didn’t save his “socialistic” healthcare initiatives, nor save him from being smeared in numerous supposed scandals around his business dealings in Little Rock, Arkansas, nor from being impeached by the US House of Representatives when his dalliance with Monica Lewinsky was exposed.

The point is (as anyone who studies the Power Elite well knows) that there are splits among the upper classes. For instance, there can be little doubt that around 2004-2005, when the Iraq War began to head south, that there was a powerful reaction against the Bush family. For Bush was such a horrible president that he endangered the future of the GOP. None of the Bush family connections saved them from this. It’s a little known fact that many a “crank’s” arch-conspirator, George Bush Sr., signed the JFK Act in October of 1992. The tickler here is that it came under the steerage of Bill Clinton and led to the establishment of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in 1994, whence a number of sealed documents from Carter’s HSCA saw the light of day.

III.5 The Dim Politics of Bermas, Oswald, Bush, and Scott

In the documentary I saw, Bermas had fully bought into the utterly contestable documentation that named Oswald as a CIA operative under the cover of the Office of Navy Intelligence (ONI). It was also posted on Prison Planet in September of 2004. This should be of some concern. Because before his film was released in April of 2010, Bermas had boisterously promoted the document on his Prison Planet radio show in late October of 2009.

As we saw in Part One, Bermas (like Jones) continually finds new and inventive ways to self-destruct with practically anything to do with the assassination. In the above video, Bermas cannot even pronounce CIA Director John McCone’s name correctly. Had he taken some time out to have read or listened to someone like John Newman, he would likely know how to pronounce the name, and he would also realize that Newman (a man who has dealt with more genuine CIA documents related to Lee Harvey Oswald than any current researcher) has, to the best of my knowledge, never endorsed the McCone/Rowley papers.

Newman is clearly in a different league from Bermas. However, had Bermas taken a step back and looked around he would have found that many commentators of various shades in the JFK nexus believe the document to either be a fake or something to be avoided due to its dubious association with the likes of Jim “The Gemstone Files were my idea” Moore. Indeed, that Bermas never thought to look at the opinions on JFK forums like Spartacus or JFK Lancer, for example, says something about his rather lax levels of evaluation. While Bermas is clearly not interested in the truth of the matter I hope the reader is.

Despite my reservations about aspects of Gary Buell’s rather eclectic work I encourage anyone to visit his blog on the subject as it’s also where one will find some interesting points of view (John McAdams aside) and arguably the most influential post on the topic by Anthony Marsh:

When I looked at it I knew instantly that it was a fake. How? It is not written in the proper format using the proper CIA style. One tip off is the marking “CO-2-34,030.” That is actually from a Secret Service report. How would I know? Because I had obtained and used on my Web site some of the pages from that SS report, so the notation jumped out as a fabrication. What someone did was take a page from the SS report, maybe even downloaded it from my Web page, removed the original text and wrote their own. Also the wording is not how the CIA would word a document of that type at that time. They would not refer to Hoover by name or agencies by common names. Instead you would see code words like ODACID. You need to look at hundreds of thousands of genuine CIA documents as I have to develop a mental database of what genuine CIA documents look like. I have no doubt that the hoaxer really thought that something like that was said. I don’t think the intent was like the other hoaxes to discredit all JFK assassination research. I think someone just assumed that he knew enough to create a realistic fake to incriminate the CIA.

Bermas also repeated another inflated myth on his show that made it into his film: that Bush, as head of the CIA, stopped and stymied the government investigations of the 1970’s. The insinuation here is that he did so to cover up his roles in the Kennedy assassination and Watergate. Bermas’ musing sounded scarily like a John Hankey perpetuated myth.

In order to gain a little more credibility with regards to entwining 9/11 with the Kennedy assassination, Bermas has utilized Peter Dale Scott. However Scott’s track record on the Kennedy assassination is regarded by many as inconsistent. His needlessly convoluted book, Deep Politics and the Murder of JFK, in which he posits that the all-powerful mafia were prime players in the killing of Kennedy, is simply not supportable today in light of the ARRB releases, Or in light of the information that other researchers like Lisa Pease, Gaeton Fonzi, Jim DiEugenio, Jim Douglas, Bill Davy, and John Newman have unearthed from those files.

III.6 The Kennedys, King, and Diana Spencer?

Another fatal and unforgivable error in Bermas’ documentary is that shortly after discussing the deaths of JFK, King, and RFK, he omits Malcolm X and allows a certain Diana Spencer to share the spotlight with these three eminently more important individuals. At one point in the show, Bermas had indulged in a spiel about the low standards and trivialization of the news media, which Kennedy had warned about. Now Bermas turns around and places “The Paparazzi Princess” with the Kennedys and King. But it should be noted that Jones himself has also courted a number of celebrities – like Charlie Sheen – to boost his own profile. Bermas also ignored a mountain of criticism and research from the right and the left that has not only been critical of Diana, but of the way her death had senselessly dominated the media and been elevated to quite unmerited levels of martyrdom.

No researcher I know of or associate with would demean the legacy of JFK, RFK, King, and Malcolm X by relating the importance of Spencer’s life and death to theirs. It’s the kind of thing that maybe Hollywood would indulge itself in (perhaps someone as frivolous as Tom Hanks) and in so doing, thereby inflate Muhammad Al Fayed as some kind of truth-seeker. For yes, Bermas includes Al Fayed bleating on about a plot against Spencer and his son enacted by the Royal family. To see what a cretinous, paranoid, sexist, and racist individual Al Fayed is, and how little water any of his future claims of a plot would hold, Bermas should have dug out Maureen Orth’s fine 1995 Vanity Fair article entitled, Holy War at Harrods.

Because on top of embarrassing himself with Diana, and making a most unworthy hero of Al Fayed, Bermas also missed this fact from Orth’s report: Al Fayed’s ex-brother-in-law was the infamous arms dealer, Adnan Khasoggi, a character even more despicable than Al Fayed himself. Khasoggi is a person most people interested in a range of international conspiracies and criminal activities have a word or three about as Timothy Noah from Slate points out. And as if that’s not bad enough, Bermas’ comrades at Prison Planet have Khasoggi in a number of articles supporting the Bush regime, an example of which can be seen here. Clearly, Bermas had a chance for some “meat and veg” here but instead he went for the tub of corn and the E Channel.

IV. Paul Joseph Watson

IV.1 Leading Questions?

What would your reaction be if I told you that Paul Joseph Watson is someone who, at one time or another, has been either wholly or partly responsible for promoting the work of Gerald Posner, Gary Mack, Dave Perry, Lamar Waldron, Thom Hartmann, and Bob Woodward? What if I told you that Watson also believes that the Oklahoma City bombing and the Kennedy assassination are related, with no evidence to support it? (Watson, Order out of Chaos p. 7) –And that he also believes that Madeleine Brown is credible, and that Johnson and Bush committed the JFK murder? –And then has the audacity to write that “[p]eople are mentally lazy?” (Watson, Order out of Chaos, p. 196).

Now, would you trust any information given to you from a man who on page 16 of his book, Order out of Chaos, states that Nero played the fiddle while Rome burned yet has little understanding that it is an allegorical tale, nor any idea that the violin was not invented until some 1000 years later? I would like to add, do you think an introduction dubbed as a first chapter and a bibliography consisting of nothing but advertisements for Jones’ products makes his book “one of the many keys you will need to unlock the truth,” as he seems to believe? (Watson; pg 7)

What would your reaction be, then, if I then told you that Watson is very likely the chief writer and editor for Jones’ web sites?

Well, I know I’d be afraid.

Sheffield, England based Paul Joseph Watson seems to be at the very nerve center of Jones’ operations. He is described as the chief researcher and editor for Prison Planet.com and Prison Planet.tv. And he is the Orwellian moderator who constantly deletes any voices critical of Jones from the Prison Planet forum. Watson is also something of a prolific writer and contributes numerous articles and observations throughout the Jones Empire. If the Jones’ gang’s embarrassing levels of knowledge and the often contradictory reportage and vetting of articles pertaining to the JFK assassination can be placed at the foot of any one individual, it may be Watson’s. He is a young man who has come to see himself as something of a historian, seer, and Prison Planet’s in-house Kennedy assassination expert.

IV.2 Dancing With Dave P

Though Fletcher Prouty’s musings on The Christchurch Star had been around for sometime prior, it gained prominence thanks to the film JFK in 1991. It has been a point of study for myself coming up on 3 years now. Though I cannot be too harsh on Watson for not grasping the situation (it took me a while), I did not publish anything online till I was totally able to back up my conclusions. It doesn’t work like this in Jonestown. As we have seen, Watson, in keeping with the best traditions of knee-jerk posting, has no such scruples. So he goes on to quote JFK disinformation specialist David Perry, as a way to counter Prouty’s supposed claims.

As I said, this author has been studying The Christchurch Star for some 3 or 4 years. In the second part of my essay, which will likely come out in December of this year, I discuss the fact that The Men Who Killed Kennedy and JFK are ironically somewhat to blame for the Dave Perry induced controversy, in that they oversold the idea that Prouty believed New Zealand got the word ahead of others. The reality is that Fletcher Prouty never said New Zealand got the news ahead of anyone else in the world; he just happened to be in New Zealand when he picked up a newspaper and got the news.

Now, the time that Prouty actually picked up his newspaper is immaterial. Prouty understood that concept that many, including Watson, do not: Upon his return home he consulted numerous other newspapers that confirmed it was more or less instantaneous around the world. Due to international timelines, New Zealand is the first and arguably most modernized state to collectively see every new dawn. Thus Prouty, like the many New Zealanders he was amongst, may well have bought one of the first printed accounts of the tragedy. (A host of Prouty’s replies to questions about The Christchurch Star can be seen at http://www.prouty.org/.)

IV.3 Larry “The Fable Guy” Dunkel: A Watson Source

The “experts” at Prison Planet display an amazing level of naiveté with regards to frauds in the JFK field. (What this means for their dabbling in other areas I shudder to think.) And they have little understanding of either the pro-Warren commission individuals or their positions.

Dave Perry, is a slippery, clever, and connected individual, and as Bob Fox, Jim DiEugenio, and others have noted, he, like his companion Gary Mack (real name Larry Dunkel, famously dubbed “The Fable Guy”), has made a career out of misrepresenting events and people like Prouty. They also rail against easy prey like Madeleine Brown, and then paint all researchers – most of whom have never advocated her – with the same brush. Yet, Mack and Perry both know that someone like Watson will never fully read nor comprehend the intricacies of the Kennedy assassination. Hence, Watson is perfect fodder for their disinformation.

Mack’s dubious reputation matters not to Watson. This can be seen in his use of Mack in discussing the 15,000 pages of documents brought to public attention by new Dallas DA Craig Watkins in November of 2007. What got most attention in the press about this story was a transcript in which Ruby and Oswald discussed killing RFK in October 1963. This was simply not deemed credible by both pro- and anti-conspiracy groups. What is of interest here is a copy of a screenplay signed by DA Henry Wade, circa 1967, which had included this alleged transcript.

After using Mack to lay doubt on the transcript, what does Watson do? He then writes “the fact that a CIA team was hired to kill Kennedy is documented.” And what is the Watson “documentation?” Well, it’s the apparent key to the upcoming Black Sunshine: St. John – and his father, Howard Hunt’s “confession.” But that’s not enough for Jones’ expert on the Kennedy case. Watson then writes: “Hunt was photographed in Dealey Plaza along with other members of the hit team on the day of the assassination.” This must refer to the discredited thesis of A.J. Weberman and Michael Canfield about Howard Hunt being one of the so-called “three tramps”, a precept no serious photo analyst adheres to today.

But then, in the same article, Watson even tops that. He says that the MSM ignored the Hunt confession just like they ignored the Barr McClellan revelations in his 2003 book Blood, Money & Power. This book, established in Part One of this review as a “Jones tome,” is considered by many to be one of the worst books on the subject to come out in the past 15 years and embarrassingly its only piece of interest is the fingerprint work of Nathan Darby – and that’s in the appendix. Now, considering the fact that the works of Waldron &amp Hartmann, Myers, and Bugliosi were published in that time span, that is surely saying something.

So what Watson does is use Gary Mack to discredit questionable information in the first article. He then goes on to “save the day” for conspiracy by using even worse information like Hunt, the three tramps, Barr McClellan, and a dubious photo alleged to be George H. W. Bush outside of the Texas School Book Depository in the second. What can one say about such a recurrent journalistic pattern? Except that it’s incredible that the Prison Planet gang think that they can get away with it.

This brings us back to Jim Marrs. If Watson and Jones truly respected Marrs’ research, or knew anything about the research community (whom they scorn with their lack of knowledge), they wouldn’t include pieces with Perry or Mack in it. They clearly haven’t seen Robert Wilonsky’s July 6^th, 2006 Dallas Observer article on Marrs entitled, The Truth Is Way out There. While Perry seemed to give an even-handed (if slightly condescending) opinion of Marrs in the article, at the same time, he and Gary Mack (according to Marrs himself) made it a regular practice of rudely interrupting Marrs’ lectures at the University of Texas, Arlington. And those interruptions became so disruptive that Marrs eventually decided to retire from teaching the course. (Jim DiEugenio; Inside the Target Car, Part Three: How Gary Mack became Dan Rather; Section IV)

V. Conclusion

Ultimately, this entire essay begs one serious question: How could an organization like Jones’ – with the likes of Bermas and Watson on hand – ever hope to produce a documentary honoring what occurred on the 22^nd of November, 1963? In Jonestown, we have seen Vince Bugliosi, Gary Mack, Dave Perry and others utilized. And on the other hand, Jones has no problems cavorting around with Barr McClellan and St. John Hunt. This is schizophrenia, which results in the on-air goofiness described above. And with the complete lack of any quality control or fact-checking apparatus, the general feeling is a sort of steady-stream, “bread and circus” fodder for the the Jonestown dumbed-down masses. In a weird way, it’s a reverse template of the MSM. The MSM sees no conspiracies anywhere. With Jones, any conspiracy anywhere is A-OK, whether it really happened or not. And the more sensational, the better.

So even after the ARRB’s two million pages of documents have demolished former myths and theories, making them deservedly the scrap of historical oblivion, these sage prophets of conspiravangelism march on into their own oblivion – as if the ARRB never existed. Russ Baker, John Hankey, Barr McClellan, Howard Hunt (as one of the three tramps), specious “Oswald as a CIA trained operative,” and LBJ pulling up the rear with grenades and bazookas in hand, framed by the mysteries of The Christchurch Star – all join the ranks of the parade. With circus acts like these, one pities the poor listener or reader who nonetheless sits in seeming awe of Jones, The Human Cannonball, splendidly arcing across three rings under the cover of the Prison Planet Big Top. Like a modern day P. T. Barnum, Jones understands his audience’s hunger. And he apparently doesn’t give a whit at passing off ersatz-cotton-candy-info for the authentic alternative his flock should crave. Have your credit card ready please.

If the likes of Jones, Bermas, and Watson cannot understand a case which has slowly become easier by the year to unravel – thanks to the work of real researchers (who they largely ignore), then what can the discerning reader make of anything else they will ever say about any topic?

Bottom line: Don’t hold out a lot of hope for Black Sunshine. Pity the country that, on the JFK case, has to choose between Tom Hanks and Reclaiming History and Alex Jones and Black Sunshine.

(The notes I made which helped form this essay on Jones and may shed further light on him can be found at Greg Parker’s ReopenKennedycase in three roughly edited parts. Should anybody want to examine Jones in a bit more depth, I invite those interested to have a look.)

March 17, 2010
Alex Jones on the Kennedy Murder: A Painful Case

Alex Jones’ appalling understanding of the Kennedy assassination led him to endorse the dubious documentary JFK 2 and the equally specious Family of Secrets. As Jim DiEugenio and myself have shown elsewhere on this site, both of these works are very questionable on the relation of George Bush to the Kennedy case. Therefore, it was decided a piece on Jones himself would be a fitting end to CTKA’s journey to the outer limits of rhyme, reason, and research. And to show the difference between Jonestown and what Len Osanic has termed the Legion of Reason.

This is not a review of Jones’ upcoming assassination documentary on the JFK case. Actually, it’s more a warning about it. While I worked on it, it was interesting to note that the majority of the general criticism directed at Jones seems to come from three camps: (1) those individuals who appear to be jealous of his prominent status; (2) those who felt they had been burned by him in some way; or (3) from paranoid anti-Semitic individuals who are even more unhinged than Jones is. (Often it’s a combination of all three.) Jones is so polarizing within his own crank territory, that it was hard to find any credible voices in critique of him. I hope this fills that gap.

The Ministry of Rev. Jones

In 1996, Jones began his inauspicious rise from community TV in Austin, Texas on a show called Final Edition. From there, the privileged son of a successful dentist (and alleged John Birch Society member) from the wealthy city of Rockwell has become the Internet conspiracy king. His company has spewed forth a number of websites: Prison Planet.com, Prison Planet.tv, Infowars.com, Infowars.Net and the Jones Report (to avoid confusion herein, Jones sites will be referred to as Prison-Planet). Jones’ organization also runs the Ron Paul War Room.

Prison Planet.com seems to serve more or less as Jones’ promotional vehicle for his radio shows. While Infowars.net contains a number of news stories on things like FEMA concentration camps, heroic teabaggers, illegal immigrants, and so on, it is really more or less a link site that tends to feature bullion as its top story (there’s a reason for this). Prisonplanet.tv is primarily multimedia based. The Jones Report is the least updated of the sites and seems to be a collection of Jones’ “best of” stories and, it seems, longer essays.

Jones’ web page assault provided an interesting dilemma for study. As it was often hard to know whether or not he had omitted anything, or if a particular article, link, or interview about any given topic was buried at some other location. Thus, any critic is bound to have stated at some point that Jones has not covered an issue when he may well have. This is no victory for Jones however. It’s a big problem. His accumulation of articles appears to be a calculated move to dominate search engines and thus lasso much contemporary dissent under his own rubric, which, in turn, brings large sums of money: The more hits, the more advertising revenue and merchandise sales for Jones and his close friend, Ted “Goldfinger” Anderson. (Anderson is not only the owner of the Genesis media network, but also a gold speculator. Researcher JP Mroz informs me that Anderson is also something of a hustler, apparently being a little loose with the truth concerning investments in his metal stocks.)

Thus, like any mainstream news network Jones criticizes, he casts a wide net: not for truth, but for profit. Hence, Jones is more or less akin to a fundamental Christian televangelist. Like many televangelists, Jones worships at an altar of religion and hypocrisy. His religion is that of conspiracy, and like many evangelicals (some of whom probably watch his shows), he has taken the teachings of his faith far too literally. In so doing, Jones has melded a unique outlook one could call either “conspirahypocrisy” or “conspiravangelism.”

These two terms are worth keeping in mind. Because though Reverend Jones often advises his flock to find out information for themselves, at the same time he implores his followers to distribute his videos for “educational purposes” and to “wake up” others and buy his products to get the truth. But retail is only one aspect of Jones’ operation. In fact, with the next step he takes, there is little difference between him and the god-awful cheese of Benny Hinn.

In true Benny Hinn Ministries fashion, he exhorts his supporters to help fund his ministry to the tune of some $275,000 with his infamous “money bombs” to help him expand and fight the New World Order. He also receives massive donations from Christian businessmen, who have paid up to $50,000 for Jones’ bullhorn, which he auctions as a means to expand his studio facilities. Unsurprisingly, Jones has become quite wealthy. How wealthy? That is uncertain. Jones keeps extremely quiet about his personal fortune. But most bloggers put it in the millions.

Let us digress from religion and return to Jones’ accumulation of information for, what amounts to, profit. Jim DiEugenio has stressed on numerous occassions that there is nothing wrong with profiting from research. For example, Jim Douglass, author of the thought-provoking book, JFK and the Unspeakable, certainly deserves to reap the rewards of the fruits of his labor; as do Mark Lane, Oliver Stone, Jim Marrs, and Dave Talbot – further examples of dedicated researchers who have, by their discriminating focus, contributed positively to the case. In contrast, Jones casts his net so wide that he not only scoops up all things good, like say, John Pilger, Lisa Pease, and Greg Palast, but he also takes in – or rather, is taken in by – the wild-eyed kookery of Kathy O’Brien, Robert Gaylon Ross, David Icke, and numerous others. He then minces it all together in cans ready for sale with no regard for how polluted the blend or dreadful the taste. Furthermore, there is very little quality control, which means cross-contamination (factually incorrect and contradictory positions) becomes commonplace. This results in, as we shall see, a wild, goofy, circus-type atmosphere in which almost anything can be said without thought or fear of reprimand.

Conspirahypocrisy in Action

A classic example of Jones’ conspirahipocrisy is that he will stop at nothing to make figures like the Bush family the ultimate evil of the age. A July 24th, 2009, Huffington Post press release discussing Oliver Stone’s praise of Jim Douglass’ book, JFK and the Unspeakable, was placed on Prison Planet. Yet Prison Planet’s good work in mentioning this fine book is quickly scuttled: A search or so later on the Inforwars website turns up a glowing article from May 2009 citing the credentials of Lamar Waldron’s ridiculous Legacy of Secrecy.

Why Lamar Waldron? Well, Waldron (as per his schtick) has tried to cash in on making Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld key figures in the undermining of senate investigations like the Church Committee in the mid-seventies, when any number of Republicans were guilty of crimes. As if being sucked in by Waldron wasn’t bad enough, Jones showed his peculiar form of amnesia by having Vince Bugliosi on his show in May of 2008 discussing his book on the Iraq War. The problem is that Jones obviously hadn’t seen Bugliosi’s 2007 appearance on The Colbert Report, or his numerous talks on YouTube promoting his Reclaiming History, a 2,700 page panegyric for the Warren Commission.

Feminisim & Rockefellers

Despite many of his guests being to the right and no doubt bigoted, in fairness, it has to be said that Prison Planet seems to be a more or less non-racist organization. But Jones is definitely something of a sexist. In one broadcast, Jones took it upon himself to lecture women about their being targeted by advertising (as if women haven’t understood this for years) and being mislead by environmental groups. To top it off, Jones once stole a line from the ever sexist Henry Makow, about how sitcoms have modeled negative and subservient male behaviors.

And it gets worse. Women who consider themselves feminists are by far the most manipulated members of their gender. That’s according to the late (but not great) Aaron Russo. In his last ever interview (conducted by Jones), Russo discussed the cold dark truth that the world’s elites are socialists and that feminism was created by the Rockefellers. Jones enthusiastically mentioned that Gloria Steinem, the leader of the U.S feminist movement, had been exposed as a long-term CIA informant.

Judging from this 2007 Jones/Russo conversation, it is obvious that neither had been aware of the fact that it was a socialist-feminist group, Red Stockings, that had actually exposed Steinem. Jones also displayed no knowledge that the CIA and FBI had infiltrated numerous progressive movements, not just this socialist-feminist one. This is highly ironic in light of the next area of discussion.

The Grandstanding Orwellian Orwell Fan

In 2008, at a peaceful rally in which protestors attempted to recreate the 1967 “levitation of the Pentagon” at the Denver Mint, an uninvited Jones crashed the party and harangued neo-conservative, quasi-fascist Michelle Malkin. How anybody could usurp someone else’s event and then have some of the left-leaning protestors stick up for a woman dubbed “The Asian Ann Coulter” shows a certain talent for the inept, and an extreme need for headline grabbing.

And Jones’ grandstanding appears to know no limits. There is a cleverly edited clip on YouTube entitled, Alex Jones Using Cointelpro Tactics?, in which Jones discusses the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation. Yet the clip also reveals Jones as a self-aggrandizing egomaniac ruining a pro-gun rally in Austin that, once again, he did not organize. (Please also see: Alex Jones is Still a Jackass.) In fact, as one can see from clicking through to the article, it was Jones who came in and disrupted the rally, essentially hijacking it for his own purposes, making it into a circus. In that regard, he is the P. T. Barnum of conspiracy politics and activism. It is this unique blend of conspirahypocrisy which turns Jones into “The Orwellian Orwell Fan.”

Jones often uses the term “Orwellian” to describe seemingly any event. In fact, Jones has made a major presentation about Orwell. (And his many inaccuracies therein are worthy of another critique.) The fact that Jones and the lunatic fringe utilize the works of a known Democratic Socialist and other decidedly left-leaning individuals like Aldous Huxley and Phillip K. Dick (who, if living, would most certainly shun the likes of Jones) is a classic example of how little analysis pervades his unique blend of right-wing pseudo-libertarian ideology. At its core, the Jones’ network believes that the left and right argument is a convenient government con job. How would Eric Arthur Blair (Orwell) respond to this gibberish that Jones spewed at the reopening of the Branch Davidian Church at Waco on September 19th, 1999? : “Victory is ours against the New World Order, against the Communists, Socialists, and the Bankers that run the whole filthy show!”

As seen in The Dark Legacy of John Hankey, Hankey has a bad habit of claiming things he never achieved. So does Jones. In fairness to both Hankey and Jones, this sort of thing abounds in the competitive world of conspiracy demagoguery. It’s a world in which all members are guilty of reinventing history at one time or another: A very Ministry of Truth-like crime.

Here are but some shining examples:

Jones has made a big deal about his infiltration of Bohemian Grove. While he was indeed the first to film the “cremation of care ceremony,” Jones barely acknowledges that it was made possible by English journalist Jon Ronson. Ronson filmed Jones prior to his foray into the grove, in the episode “The Satanic shadowy elite.” Ronson’s measured viewpoint about the proceedings can be seen in an excerpt from his notable book, Them: Adventures with Extremists.

Contrast this with Jones’ summation of the event and judge for oneself who is in charge of the facts.

A few years later, Jones propagated the myth that he was the first radio commentator to announce 9/11 style attacks on America. Except he was not. It was the equally kooky – and depending on whom you talk to – “spooky” Bill Cooper. Cooper detested Jones shtick and called him a liar and sensationalist. Cooper, however, was another conspirahypocrite of ludicrous JFK assassination theories. Namely, that Kennedy’s limousine driver turned around and shot Kennedy in the head. The footage Cooper used to sell this idea was an extremely old 8th generation copy of the Zapruder film which has been soundly debunked by Zapruder film expert Robert Groden. (Please see: Jim DiEugenio; Black Op Radio, Show #470, April 15, 2010.)

In Orwell’s 1984, The Ministry of Truth had the job of turning one-time enemies into long-time allies and vice-versa. Jones has done the same thing. He once denounced David Icke as a potential disinformation agent, likening his “reptilian lizard man” theory to being a “turd in the punch bowl.” Yet Icke’s patronage enabled Jones to patch into the “moon unit” market and the “lizard man” is now something of a regular on his show. Jones is also a pretty poor representative of free speech he claims for us all, since there are a number of websites devoted to individuals whom he has had kicked off his forums.

Is There Life on Marrs? … There’s a little, but Jones missed it

It’s highly ironic, that Jones was born at Parkland Hospital, the place where JFK died. Because with his and his cronies’ (e.g., Jason Bermas and Paul Watson) limited knowledge of the assassination and what actually occurred, you would think Kennedy had just checked in for a sore throat, pulled back muscle, and a headache.

While interviewing author Jim Marrs on his radio show, Jones showed a noticeable lack of knowledge about his book Crossfire which, along with Jim Garrison’s On the Trail of the Assassins, had a huge influence on the direction of Oliver Stone’s film JFK. Now, considering the limitations of the day, both books were solid pieces of work. But therein lies a problem. New books by the likes of Jim Douglass and Gerald McKnight have been able to capitalize on a plethora of released documents unavailable to Marrs at the time. By comparison, Garrison’s work (for the most part) hasn’t dated so badly because of its singular focus on his case bought against Clay Shaw. Also, many of Garrison’s suspicions about Guy Banister, David Ferrie, and Clay Shaw have, in large part, been borne out. Many subjects in Marrs’ book, like LBJ, body alteration, and Madeleine Brown, amongst others, have not.

The film JFK has been able to update its information via special editions with additional interviews, A-V essays, and director commentaries. One wonders though, has anybody out there in the Jones’ nexus actually bothered to sit down and listen to any of them? Not likely. The problem is that many conspiravangelists, have become stuck in something of an HSCA and JFK time-warp. It is as if nothing happened before or after this period. These earlier vehicles – The Men Who Killed Kennedy and the first editions of JFK and Crossfire – have become virtual bibles to many unwitting newcomers who are little aware of their limitations. Jones falls into this category, and that’s without apparently even having read the Marrs’ book.

A Short Dissection!

Jones’ July 27th, 2006 interview with Marrs began to break into the bizarre shortly after the 9-minute mark. It is here that Alex Jones shows who he is and what he knows about the Kennedy case.

9:19 Minutes: JFK, Blueblood Scion of The Eastern Establishment: Jones kicked off proceedings by absurdly stating that Kennedy “Came from ‘blue blood’ elites.” How on earth anyone could think of JFK, a 2nd generation Irish Catholic, as being a waspish member of the Eastern establishment is beyond me.

9:36 Minutes: Johnson and Pussy Galore: Almost on top of Jones “blue blood” call, he then promotes Madeleine Brown. Brown may have met Democratic congressman Lyndon Johnson at a party in 1948 in Austin, and may have been one of his many female friends. It’s ironic that Johnson purportedly bestowed the name Pussy Galore on her because Miss Galore, like Brown, is a fiction. (Bennett Woods, LBJ Architect of American Ambition, pg, 247). Brown’s most way-out claim is that she was present at a secret party in Texas where Richard Nixon, John McLoy, J. Edgar Hoover, LBJ, and oil baron Clint Murchison, Sr. – or his son Junior, depending on whose concocted story you read – and other luminaries planned Kennedy’s assassination on the evening of the 21st of November, 1963.

Firstly, Johnson himself was seen by a few thousand people and filmed that night in the company of President Kennedy at the Houston Coliseum. Johnson didn’t arrive in Fort Worth until 11.05 pm on the night of the 21st of November, and it is roundly reported that he wound up his day in the same hotel at a very late hour with his advisors. (William Manchester, Death of a President, pgs. 135, 138).

The same goes for Dick Nixon, who was in town that night with Joan Crawford. This was widely reported in the Dallas press and was still being reported until fairly late that evening. (The Dallas Morning News, Friday, November 22, 1963, Section 1-19) Kai Bird’s autobiography describes John McCloy hearing the news of the assassination while having breakfast with former President Eisenhower. (The Chairman, p. 544) As for Hoover, according to Anthony Summers, it is highly likely (to the point of absolute certainty) that J. Edgar Hoover, like McCloy, was nowhere near Texas at the time. For instance, the next day he was calling Bobby Kennedy from his Washington office at around 1:34 P.M EST with news of the shooting. (Summers, Official and Confidential, p. 394). In fact, in none of the standard biographies of Hoover – Powers, Theoharis, Gentry, or Summers – does anyone note him being in Texas that evening.

A Dallas-to-Washington round trip is around 3-4 hours each way. Why would two very powerful and highly visible 68-year-olds fly to Dallas, Texas to meet with Johnson at some ungodly hour, well after 11:00 P.M CST, compromising themselves in the process, and then fly back from Dallas, arriving home anywhere between 3:00-5:00 AM the following morning? Why do all that when a sinister meeting in Washington could have easily been arranged prior to events. And anyway, as Jim DiEugenio has said, the idea of organizing the plot just a night before is silly (Please see: Jim DiEugenio; Black Op Radio, Show #476, May 28, 2010.)

Hoover, the supposed major conspirator, had believed someone was impersonating Oswald in Russia. Furthermore, during Oswald’s absence on his way to the Soviet Union, it took the FBI and the Swiss authorities months to find the Albert Schweitzer College – which Oswald had supposedly planned to attend.

But it just keeps getting worse for those in the Hoover “plotter” scenario. Hoover once said to President Johnson that the evidence was not strong enough against Oswald to get a conviction, and like Nicholas Katzenbach, said that the public needed to be assured Oswald was the lone assassin. We know some 14 minutes of tape were removed from a conversation Hoover had with Johnson. We also know that Hoover believed someone was impersonating Oswald in Mexico City. (John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p. 651) Hoover, himself, would go on to later describe how the United States government would be rocked to the core by the real truth about the Kennedy murder, and he would also call the case “a mess, a lot of loose ends.” (Summers, Official and Confidential, pgs. 413-414)

One of the only researchers I know of who has advocated for Hoover’s involvement is Peter Dale Scott, whom we shall touch on later (Peter Dale Scott; Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, pgs. 242-267). Had Jones (or his researchers) ever bothered to look around the Kennedy critical community, he would have found that potential “Johnson did it” allies – like Doug Weldon – repeatedly tried to interview and question Brown with legitimate questions; yet she constantly evaded such questioning. (Doug Weldon: Spartacus Education Forum, post of 4/25/10)

But the hypocrisy and contradiction surrounding Brown continues unabated. Jones’ top researcher, Paul Watson, makes a big deal about Johnson’s highly improbable statement to Brown, “Those SOB’s will never embarrass me again.” What Watson doesn’t tell anybody is that Johnson had also told Brown that oilmen and the CIA had killed Kennedy. The evidence clearly shows that Johnson had grave doubts about the assassination, and was unconvinced, as was Hoover, with the evidence days after the assassination. (Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, p. 283) And at one point, according to Fletcher Prouty, he even asked J. Edgar Hoover if any shots had been fired at him.

In 1967, Johnson remarked to aide Marvin Watson that the “CIA had something to do with this plot.” (Summers, Official and Confidential, p. 414.) Leo Janos’ Atlantic Monthly article, The Last Days of The President: LBJ in Retirement, which was printed in July of 1973 – just six months after Johnson’s death, provides us with perhaps the starkest appraisal of Johnson’s mindset in later life:

During coffee, the talk turned to President Kennedy, and Johnson expressed his belief that “the assassination in Dallas had been part of a conspiracy.” A little later Johnson said “I never believed that Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled the trigger.” Johnson said that when he had taken office he found that “we had been operating a damned Murder, Inc. in the Caribbean.” (Atlantic Monthly, July 1973)

Recently released documents citing Godfrey McHugh’s observations of Johnson’s paranoid behavior on Air Force One have cast further doubt on the Johnson-did-it angle. Yet in an odd piece of face-saving for the dwindling Johnson lobby, Paul Joseph Watson, one of the brains behind Prison Planet’s internet information apparatus, believes Johnson on Air Force One to be play-acting to draw suspicion from himself. In doing so, Watson ignored all of Johnson’s previous comments. He utilized Saint John Hunt and Madeleine Brown (arguably two of the least inspiring witnesses the research community has come across) to bolster his case that Johnson was likely hamming it up.

Had Watson bothered to read David Talbot’s Brothers, he would have seen that Johnson panicked at Parkland and told Mac Kilduff that he wanted the announcement of JFK’s death to be delayed till he was safely on the plane, stating his belief in a potential “world-wide conspiracy.” Johnson’s performance at Parkland Hospital and on Air Force One was certainly not mugging. (Talbot, pgs 282-285) It would be interesting to see how Jones, Watson, or anyone else for that matter, would explain away the fact that within hours of Oswald’s death, Johnson’s Cabinet and Justice Department were convinced by Eastern Establishment figures Eugene Rostow and Joe Alsop to take the investigation out of Texas and back to Washington. Whereupon, Allen Dulles – and not the mythical Johnson – would become ringmaster of the investigation. (Donald Gibson, The Assassinations, pgs 3-17).

9:38 Minutes: “Below Par” McClellan: Sure enough, Jones soon spits out the name of Barr McClellan. And in deference to the imagined strength of the Brown and McClellan stories, utters a pure Jones/Barnum piece of oversized hyperbole: “It seems to be an Ironclad case.” Like Brown’s tome, Texas in the Morning, McClellan’s very bad book, Blood, Money & Power, pinning the crime on Johnson, is regularly touted around the Jones Internet nexus. In fact, when McClellan’s book came out, Jones had him on his show for a solid hour, and after the show, pronounced that LBJ had killed Kennedy. One of its main selling points was the disputed Mac Wallace fingerprint supposedly found in the TSBD (Texas School Book Depository). However, John Kelin found that different groups of Johnson-did-it advocates at the time disagreed on its validity.

(A link to an article†by me on Greg†Parker’s forum, “The Lies of George Bailey,” discusses this issue further. There are also a number of other issues†surrounding†Barr McClellan as explored in Jim DiEugenio’s review of Doug Horne’s volumes 4 – 5. There is also this conversation between Bill Kelly and Jim DiEugenio†on the Spartacus/Education forum, which any new researcher should take heed of.)

But the rest of the McClellan book was so bad that even researchers like Walt Brown – a generally well-known non-kook advocate of the “Johnson did it” club, and no relation to Madeleine Brown – eventually distanced himself from McClellan’s dubious work, which he had once supported. This is what Walt Brown was quoted as saying in public on various Internet forums after the book was issued:

I have no reason to think that his (McClellan’s) work is in any way an attempt at deceit, but at the same time, I have no answers to the “why?” of how it went from a solid, stand-on-its-own-legs work in July to an almost fictionalized account in October.

Alex Constantine is one of the few individuals within the rabid conspiracy circuit who doesn’t try and make out that every man and his dog were involved in the case. In a post at his web site of 7/6/2008 he wrote that McClellan’s son Scott had strong links to Jones’ Great Satan, the Bush clan. How Jones and his crew didn’t pick up on this and run with it is quite puzzling.

11:00 Minutes: Operation Northwoods: (The full details of what Northwoods was about can be seen at the Operation Northwoods page at the Mary Ferrell Foundation. And an interesting twist to the Northwoods tale can be read in the addendum to part II of this essay, which will be available shortly.)

As if what had transpired earlier on in the interview was not bad enough, Jones made another alarming faux pas, i.e., that the Operation Northwoods proposal in 1962 led Kennedy to sack a number of high ranking officials in the CIA and military. In so doing, Jones clearly implied that the Kennedys’ refusal of the Northwoods proposal was part of what got him killed. Thankfully, Jim Marrs corrected Jones. Marrs then reminded Jones that Kennedy’s sacking rampage had occurred a year earlier in 1961. And it was actually caused by the culmination of the investigations into the planning and ill execution of the CIA’s Bay of Pigs invasion. As a result, its prime organizers – Allen Dulles, Dick Bissell, and Charles Cabell – were terminated. As for Northwoods, Kennedy did not react to it in any way except in rejecting it. There is also no evidence that Lyman Lemnitzer, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was fired as a result. Lemnitzer had long been an obstacle to the Kennedys, and his contract as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was simply not renewed. Had he not proposed Northwoods, he would not have been kept on anyhow, as the Kennedys had long wanted Maxwell Taylor in the position. Lemnitzer moved on to be the head of NATO. (Talbot, pgs. 106-108)

Thanks – but No Thanks – for the Assist

Now, some might say that my using a 2006 interview with Marrs is unfair. Jones could probably have learned from his mistakes about Northwoods and the like. After all, Marrs had corrected some of them. And Jones must care about accuracy because the precise historical record is what he is supposed to be about. I mean, that is what he is selling: an alternative view of history that is much more close to the facts than the MSM’s version. Well, what I am about to say brings this all into question. Because two years later Jones got worse, not better. And this is an important point, not just about Jones and his business empire, but also about his respect for history and the JFK case.

The JFK murder is clearly the event that ripped open the guts of the so-called American Century of Henry Luce. Jim Hougan and Don DeLillo have both described the JFK case as the event that tore open the dark underside of the American political system, one that had been previously hidden from the public. And it was this exposure which gave birth to serious alternative thinking and explanations about large historical events. It would later give birth to a whole new literature of revisionist history. Well, by any standard, Jones flunked his test; in two years, he hadn’t learned a thing. In 2008, Jim Marrs introduced Jones to Debra Conway, co-founder of JFK Lancer, at Lancer’s November in Dallas conference. Anybody with a genuine interest in the case would have to be particularly incompetent not to have come across Conway somehow, somewhere. Jones, who maintains he has a high level of interest in the case, seemed to have never heard of either Conway or her JFK Lancer. (Conway: email of July 25th, 2010)

If this wasn’t bad enough, Jones’ defense of Jesse Ventura during his Howard Stern interview on the 21st of May of 2008 was, in a word, embarrassing. Jones makes sensible observers, like his friend Ventura, look as bad as himself. Ventura needs the likes of Jones and Jason Bermas like he needs Dan Rather. The errors the two made concerning the deaths of JFK and RFK are shocking, as was their labelling others as exaggerating kooks. (Please see – YouTube video: Alex Jones Jason Bermas Howard Stern Jesse Ventura)

At 6:46 into Jones’ spiel, he says that 90% of Americans believe the government killed Kennedy. Every anniversary there are polls. On the 35th anniversary of Kennedy’s death in 1998, a CBS poll found that 74% of Americans believed that Oswald did NOT act alone. For the 40th anniversary in 2003, an ABC poll found that “70% of Americans … believed there was some sort of plot behind the killings.” And the Discovery Channel and the History Channel have repsectively polled a 79% and an 83% belief by Americans in a conspiracy. None of these cited poll numbers are anywhere near the mystical 90% mark Jones conjured up out of thin air.

Jones then mangles further Shane O’Sullivan’s already dubious and orphaned claims about who was at the Ambassador Hotel the night RFK was killed. Read this carefully for it is shocking:

They’ve now come out on BBC, NBC, showing the film footage of the Ambassador Hotel. Three CIA section chiefs from Asia, the famous guys involved with Kennedy – JFK as well; it’s admitted the guy who shot RFK behind him, ahhh, who the coroner said shot him – from behind, Mr. Cesar, was CIA. We have the footage of all these guys there directing Cesar and others right before it happens.

Jones was obviously unaware that Paul Watson’s team (in a rare moment of research competence) actually had the foresight to publish Lisa Pease’s November 2006 misgivings about Shane O’Sullivan’s appearance on BBC2’s NewsNight Programme on November the 20th, 2006. This was not posted on the Infowars website until March 23rd 2008. Jones’ clueless dialogue, with an equally clueless Jason Bermas, about Shane O’Sullivan’s mistake about the RFK case, occurred almost two months later – to the day – on May the 22nd of 2008. Thus once again, in true Prison Planet style, Jones exposes himself as a dilettante who, far from elucidating and leading and empowering his listeners, actually confuses, misleads, and marginalizes them as ill-informed kooks.

Three CIA section chiefs from Asia? (Asia? Where on earth did he get that from?) For most of the period of 1962-68 all were around the JM WAVE station in Miami. They were, according to O’Sullivan, Gordon Campbell, George Johannides, and Dave Morales. Campbell, who was never a figure of significance in the Kennedy assassination, and never a high-ranking CIA official, died in 1962. (Talbot, p. 397) Which is significant, since that is six years before RFK’s assassination. Johannides was a leader of psychological operations at the JM Wave Station, not a “section chief.” Furthermore, the photo shows slight resemblance, bar glasses, between O’Sullivan’s suspect and Johannides. And the evidence says he was in Athens circa 1968. However, Johannides is a genuine figure of interest in the John Kennedy (not RFK) assassination, as Talbot mentions in his book. (p. 397) As for Morales, he is said to be the individual supposedly waving people into position, yet he is a grainy figure that can barely be distinguished. Further, the photo comparisons never actually matched. (See Morley and Talbot.)

But actually, it’s even worse than that for Jones. Because in 2007, in O’Sullivan’s film RFK Must Die, and his book Who Killed Bobby?, O’Sullivan found LAPD documents showing that the two men whom he once took for Johannides and Campbell were actually Bulova watch company employees. And this has been certified by family members. (O’Sullivan, pgs. 469-70)

Obviously, if the men are not who Jones says they are – and they are not – they cannot be, as he says, “directing Cesar and others right before it happens.”

Remember, this show was broadcast in 2008. All this material correcting the record was published a year previous. With all the millions Jones rakes in, how much does he spend on quality control and fact-checking? His listeners, if they want accurate information – or at least an attempt at it – have a right to ask him this question.

Jones does get something right. Thomas Noguchi, the Los Angeles coroner did believe that Kennedy was shot from behind (Lisa Pease and James DiEugenio editors, The Assassinations, pgs. 616-618). But he never said, at least in public, that Cesar did it. The evidence surrounding Cesar as one of the shooters is compelling. But we must note, it is compelling, not proven. For instance, it has not been “admitted” by anyone that Cesar was CIA. He seems to come from a complex cabal within the Bob Maheu, Richard Helms, and Howard Hughes nexus. Whether or not the companies he worked for prior to the assassination were all CIA fronts or proprietaries is another question altogether. (Ibid, pgs. 602-606)

We now have the son releasing the video, we have the audio, the guy who was photographed at being at the scene by The Dallas Morning News and Dallas Times Herald, and that, of course, is E. Howard Hunt. I mean, Jason, when does it end?

Yes Alex, when does it end? Saint John, like his father, is a character of curious moral fiber. If one wants to see just how curious, I advise they skip ahead and read the following section “Alex Jones and the Saint.” How Jones can continually refer to Hunt as a credible source is, as you will see, the epitome of bombast. As for the rest of Jones’ rant, he seems to be implying that the contested images of the three tramps in Dealey Plaza taken on 11/22/63 by William Allen of The Dallas Times Herald, Jack Beers of The Dallas Morning News, and George Smith of The Fort Worth Star Telegram show one of them as Howard Hunt. The problem is that when Mark Lane successfully litigated the Liberty Lobby case, he refused to use those pictures in evidence, as he believed they weakened his case. A case which, despite using the testimony of Marita Lorenz, he prevailed in. (Lane, Plausible Denial, pgs. 133-134) Furthermore, the likely identities of the tramps has supposedly since been discovered, though much conjecture and debate about their identity persist.

Now Jason Bermas leaps into the fray (Bermas, like Saint John Hunt, is examined in greater depth later).

But just go to the video tape of the Secret Service by Kennedy that day. As they’re turning the corner at Dealey Plaza one of the Secret Service agents at the back of his car actually gets called off. And he’s not happy about it Alex.

This is what I mean about the issue of quality control and the ethical question of what a host and his guest owe to their listeners. Listeners do not deserve to be misled – whether it’s by Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite or Bermas and Jones. Neither the Bronson, Zapruder, or Altgens films captured what Bermas is describing; nor did any of the other escorts, nor the two hundred or so people in the vicinity witness what Burmas describes.

What Bermas was referring to were the actions between the dubious Emory Roberts, who was in charge of the Secret Service follow-up car, and agent Henry Rybka, whom Roberts ordered off the presidential limousine – not at the corner of Dealey Plaza’s Houston and Main, but, quite clearly, at Love Field.

I really, really wish Bermas had not said this. Because his announcement now sets his master off on a goofy rant for the ages. Again, read the following carefully. You will completely understand why Jones distributes John Hankey’s film and interviews Russ Baker for hours.

You got LBJ on the radio behind ’em calling in the assault, “get ready we’re going on to sniper position 1.” ‘Cause, they had kill zones all the way down to the airport. They were gonna keep, keep, you know. And they were ready with hand grenade attacks, bazooka attacks. If they had to, they were going to have military kill ’em and go to full martial law. They had riot troops in the air from the army flying above Dallas.

Let’s break this last speech down. Like John Hankey, it’s the only way one can fully comprehend the complete nonsense that conspirahypocrites spout.

You got LBJ on the radio behind ’em calling in the assault, “get ready we’re going on to sniper position 1.”

Really Alex? What happened is that Johnson asked Herschel Jacks (not an agent), to turn the radio on so he could hear reportage of the motorcade on a local radio station. (William Manchester, The Death of a President, p. 203) Occasionally, he would ask how much further they had to go. Then, Rufus Youngblood, Johnson’s assigned agent, would radio back to his follow up car “And ask them how many more miles and so forth.” (Youngblood Testimony, Warren Commission, Vol. II, p. 151) The closest Johnson ever got to a walkie-talkie was when Youngblood eventually managed to get over the seat and protect him. From there, Youngblood was barking orders to the other agents. (Manchester, pgs. 244-245, Youngblood Testimony, p. 149). There’s nothing hidden here; Johnson admits being near Youngblood’s device:

I felt the automobile sharply accelerate, and in a moment or so Agent Youngblood released me. I ascertained that Mrs. Johnson and Senator Yarborough were all right. I heard Agent Youngblood speaking over his radio transmitter. I asked him what had happened. He said that he was not sure but that he had learned that the motorcade was going to the hospital. (Johnson Statement: Warren Commission; Vol V P. 562)

If this evidence isn’t enough for you, how does logic sound? For Johnson to have coordinated the strike, it meant that he would have had to have undertaken a truly Hankeyian sleight of hand. Because he was sitting next to his wife Ladybird and a few feet away from his arch foe, Senator Ralph Yarbrough. Now, Yarbrough never said anything about Johnson talking into a radio in his Warren Commission affidavit. (Warren Commission, Vol. VII pgs. 439-440) Nor did he say anything about Johnson being in continual radio contact with others to William Manchester in the Death of the President. (Manchester, pgs. 244-245)

H.B. McClain, the motorcycle policeman whose job it was to shadow Johnson’s car, like other patrolmen, didn’t much like Johnson’s attitude towards him and his fellow officers either. He never saw Johnson do anything of the sort. (Larry Sneed, No More Silence, pgs. 162-169). McLain has also voiced his belief in a conspiracy to the author and intimated to myself off camera that a number of his fellow patrolman had privately felt the same way. Thousands of people lined the streets that day and no one saw Johnson speaking into a radio; just like they never saw Secret Service agents being ordered off of cars at the corner of Houston and Elm Street.

They were gonna keep, keep you know, and they were ready with hand grenade attacks, bazooka attacks.

It was hard to pick up where all of this came from. There were plenty of lunatics out there making all kinds of threats against Kennedy. Jones, however seems to have melded every hare-brained anti-Castro Cuban assassination scheme into a kind of assassins potpourri. If Jones and others seriously think that a trained and professional squad of killers would use this kind of cumbersome equipment, they clearly have no idea of what an assassination entails, nor could they have read the transcript of a certain Joseph Milteer. Also Alex, how could one pin such an attempt on any patsy?

Furthermore, there is not a shred of credible evidence that there were assassination teams dotted all the way through the motorcade. If there were, why then did they wait until Dealey Plaza? Did Jones realize that his ludicrous scenario resembles something from a Warner Brothers’ cartoon? Has he ever realized that one of his more frequent guests, Colonel Craig Roberts, thought of Dealey Plaza, in particular the knoll, as a good ambush spot. In fact, it could not have gotten any better. You had a car slowed down to about 10 MPH. You had high buildings behind the target so an assassin could get a good elevated shot off. You had a picket fence in front of the target at an elevation also. Then you had parking lots in between for a getaway. With a set-up like that, why on earth would anyone need to call in an assault with bazookas and hand grenades? Do Jones and Bermas even study covert and clandestine operations? And what the words “clandestine” and “covert” mean?

If they had to, they were going to have military kill ’em and go to full martial law. They had riot troops in the air from the army flying above Dallas.

There is no documented evidence that has come out either before or after the assassination that the US was going to “go to full martial law.” This is another of Jones’ Orwellian fantasies. But it gets worse. Jones flagrantly steals from JFK the film and then gets it totally wrong. Donald Sutherland (not “Peter” as Jones called him in the Marrs interview), who played the X/Fletcher Prouty character, actually said this about the aircraft:

We had a third of a combat division returning from Germany in the air above the United States at the time of the shooting. The troops were in the air for possible riot control. (Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, JFK: The Book of the Film, p. 110.)

While there was a combat division returning from Germany at the time, it was part of a long-term process of repatriation. But it is crucial that in no way, shape, or form did “X” say anything about them flying above Dallas. Furthermore, does Jones really think that one third of a combat division would be enough to enforce martial law upon the United States? This would be, at the most, 5,000 troops!

Alex Jones on the Kennedy Murder: A Painful Case; Part II

March 17, 2010
John Hankey, Dark Legacy, aka JFK2

The Dark Legacy of John Hankey

Alex Jones and John Hankey

Alex Jones is the perennial king of internet conspiracy mongering. He has views on innumerable events. Even those he knows little about. The Kennedy assassination is but one subject he knows little about. For instance, Jones has endorsed the very suspicious Barr McClellan and his book of “faction” Blood, Money and Power. He has also chosen to endorse a video on the Kennedy case. This is called JFK 2: The Bush Connection. The original – which can still be found online – is a low-budget, poorly produced production by a self-proclaimed 30, 40 or 50 year researcher named John Hankey. Hankey has cobbled together footage from Oliver Stone’s film JFK, the series The Men Who Killed Kennedy, the PBS program Nova, and other productions. The latest version – Dark Legacy – is more slickly done and has some newer information in it. But since the original has been around much longer and is available online, I will concentrate my critique on that.

Hankey has rehashed his product a number of times. JFK 2 seems to have been re-edited at least 3, and possibly as many as 4 times. This is the version I have utilized in my review.

I should note: there are at least two other versions of this first production available. One of them gives more credit for source material and cleans up some crude language. Another version spends about 20 more minutes toward the end on Oswald and the FBI. We will discuss that version later.

Hankey and Prescott Bush

In JFK 2 it is implied that Prescott Bush was the main – or one of the main – architects of the CIA, and its operations to overthrow foreign governments and assassinate foreign leaders. In an earlier version of the film, Hankey used Howard Hunt’s connections to Averill Harriman and Nixon to link him to Prescott Bush. Then, Hankey detailed the overthrow of three prominent leaders via CIA-Prescott Bush (?) backed coups.

No 1: Arbenz: Contrary to what the film tried to say, Jacobo Arbenz of Guatemala was not killed after this particular coup. That implication is false. The coup occured in 1954, after which Arbenz fled the country. He died as an exile in Mexico in1971. (Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit, p. 232) I should add here, the Schlesinger/Kinzer book is still considered the best work on that overthrow. You will find many, many references to Allen and John Foster Dulles in it. (see page 312) You will not find any at all to Prescott Bush, or the Bush clan.

No 2: Lumumba: Why Hankey would place Patrice Lumumba of the Congo next in line to Arbenz escapes me. But Lumumba was not overthrown until 1961 and he actually did die at that time. (Richard Mahoney, JFK: Ordeal in Africa, p. 69) Mahoney’s book is one of the best treatments of the whole Congo episode. Again, you will find several references to the Dulles brothers in the index. (p. 333) You will not find any to Prescott Bush, or the Bush clan.

No 3: Mossadegh: Why Mossadegh should be listed third, when the CIA action against Iran came first, in 1953, also escapes me. But unlike what Hankey tried to say, he was not killed in the coup. Mossadegh was placed under house arrest at his estate and died there in 1967. (NY Times, 12/7/09) And in the chronicles I have seen of that coup, you will again read the names of the Dulles brothers. You will not see the name of Prescott Bush. (For example, see The CIA: A Forgotten History, by William Blum, pgs. 67-76. We will examine this preposterous claim of Prescott Bush’s invisible but all-encompassing influence on the CIA in greater depth later.)

Thus after viewing Hankey’s video, reading his comments, and listening to his views with regard to political happenings, it would seem wise to take what he says or writes with caution. I mean, how could anyone take a guy who is pals with ‘Henry Makow PHD’ seriously? Makow is an advocate of the ancient conservative conspiracy theories in which Feminism is seen as an integral part of the new world order, that the Rockefellers are socialists and the classic one about Freemasons controlling the world banking system. Those interested in high comedy can visit his website and or read about his banking thesis in his 2008 book entitled Illuminati: The Cult that Hijacked the World.

Did you really do all that John?

John Hankey has made a number of statements in which he seems to adjudicate himself as the source of all the discoveries concerning George Bush’s supposed relationship to the Kennedy assassination. Here are some snippets which show his modesty in that regard. They appear in an April 2009 piece by Hankey entitled “Same Killers – Different Day”:

“I will give myself props for destroying Bush’s claim that the memo did not refer to him. As the video JFK – the Bush Connection outlines, in college, Bush was a “brother under the skin” to the son of the head of hiring for CIA; he left college and went to work for a man his father identified as a CIA recruiter; and he then set up shop in the middle of CIA preparations for the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs; which puts him squarely in the middle of the “misguided anti-Castro Cuban operations referred to by Hoover’s memo and on and on and on.”

The memo he refers to can be seen here.

It plays a major – perhaps the major – part in his thesis. And, as we will see, he claims that he was the first to out Bush as a supervisor of anti-Castro Cubans.

“I will give myself credit, also, for being the first to point out that this memo identifies Bush as a supervisor of these “misguided anti-Castro groups”. You would not, after all, send someone to FBI headquarters to receive a report on one of your operations, and send someone who was entirely unfamiliar. You’d send the most knowledgeable, and therefore the most involved, person available. And I also, in that video, point out in the clearest terms possible, that the military industrial complex has used the CIA to murder JFK. And that the CIA had done so using its “misguided anti-Castro Cubans.” Whom, again Hoover described as being supervised by “Mr. George Bush.”

(For more of his views click here).

Where does one begin with an error-ridden mouthful like the above paragraph? First, Hankey was not the first to point out that the memo in question mentioned Bush. This FBI memorandum was first discussed at length in The Nation on July 16, 1988. (In another version of JFK 2, Hankey incorrectly says it was made public in 1992.) The author of that article was writer Joseph McBride. In that essay, he said that this one page memo had been declassified by the FBI back in 1977. Since then, to name just one example, Mark Lane reprinted McBride’s original essay plus a follow-up Nation piece in his book Plausible Denial back in 1991 (pgs. 371-78). Secondly, when Bush’s representatives tried to say the memo did not refer to him, contrary to Hankey’s claim, it was McBride who tracked down a man with the same name in the CIA and showed it was very unlikely the memo related to him. (ibid, Lane.) Why and how Hankey would even begin to take credit for all this is a little bizarre. Third, the memo mentions nothing about Bush being “a supervisor” of these Cuban exiles. Fourth, to prove his thesis, Hankey tries to show just how the CIA had used the Cuban exiles in the Kennedy murder. As we shall see, it is not convincing. Fifth, the memo does not say that Bush went to FBI headquarters to be briefed on November 23rd. It just says that Bush-along with another man – had been orally issued information that Cuban exiles may stage an attack on Cuba in the wake of Kennedy’s murder. It does not say how he was orally informed. The idea that on 11/23 Bush would be flown to Washington to hear information that was not in any way unusual or surprsing, and which he could have been briefed by phone about, makes little sense. So although Hankey did not in any way discover this memo or first publicize it, he is the first to aggrandize it way beyond its literal meaning. To the point that he is actually implying that it somehow involves Bush in the assassination of President Kennedy. Which it does not.

If you thought the above comments were a little exaggerated, then check this one out. It comes from an email exchange between Hankey and an online fan:

“I’m grateful that you called me at all. But it sounds like I’m better off to shut my mouth about what you’ve told me, since, like many true stories, it’s so incredible and the other evidence is there in plain sight anyway. This new book, “Brothers,” further corroborates all the CIA-trained Cubans and Mafia material in JFK II.”

Does he really think that his video JFK 2 was the first to expose the CIA-Mafia plots and their possible coordination with Cuban exiles? Did Hankey ever hear of Anthony Summers’ valuable book, originally titled Conspiracy? It was first published many, many years – even decades – before JFK 2 began to circulate. Further, how was David Talbot’s Brothers inspired by Hankey’s research? You will not see Hankey’s name in Talbot’s index. But you will see Summers’ name. (p. 476) But even that gives Hankey too much credit. For the Talbot book does not really outline any such conspiracy to kill President Kennedy.

Where did you get That?

In JFK 2 Hankey has utilized a well known dubious document to implicate a well known politician with a famous Dallas based Chicago mob hoodlum (which is explored later in this review). But Hankey doesn’t stop there. Hankey has also made statements to the affect that the CIA has declassified files that ‘reveal’ Oswald was a CIA agent.

Now John Newman has assembled a paper trail clearly showing CIA interest in Oswald. And a number of key stops and disappearances of information in Oswald’s file indicate the Agency was monitoring Oswald. Which, when combined with his nefarious activities in New Orleans at corresponding times indicates that he was of operational interest to the CIA. And, according to Newman, he was probably being run by James Angleton himself. (John Newman: Oswald and the CIA 2nd ed. pg. 637)

But I hasten to add there is nothing with regards to released CIA documentation that says outright that Oswald was an agent of the CIA. And the Rowley/Secret Service document that has allegedly done so, is generally considered a clever fraud or hoax. (Click here for more.)

I’ve been researching for how long?

Hankey can’t quite decide how long he has been researching the Kennedy case. In the third version of his video, close to the 59 minute mark, he states:

“It has taken me 40 years to come up with this perspective, but at this point I really view the Kennedy assassination as a continuation of WWII”

Is he really trying to say he has researched the Kennedy case for forty years? He sure kept a low profile if he did. Because before his video appeared, no one had even heard of him. And if he was working that long, why didn’t he find that FBI memo on Bush way back then when it was declassified?

In his unfunny semi-autobiographical song that he features in all 3 versions, Hankey mentions that a friend showed him the Zapruder film and it “Gave him a slap!” Maybe Hankey saw a bootlegged copy of the Zapruder film prior to Geraldo Rivera’s first national showing of it on Good Night America in 1975. But copies before that time were rare. They originated with Jim Garrison letting Penn Jones copy the film he was given by Time-Life for the Clay Shaw trial. But again, no one ever heard of Hankey at that time.

Then how recently did he actually get started? A clue might be in this interview he gave from last year.

“It has taken 40 years to collect the evidence to hang Kennedy’s murder around Bush’s neck. I began 9 years ago when JFK Jr.’s plane went into the sea; the Pentagon took over the news reporting, and then lied ridiculously into the teeth of reporters who knew better, about why the search had been kept, for 15 hours, from what was immediately obvious was the crash site.”

You can see that his beginnings ‘9 years ago’ suddenly grow by an enormous 31 years in the space of the same interview.

“It took me nearly 40 years to find these memos; and nearly another ten to figure out what they mean. Believe me, I’m not bragging. But I am advocating patience.”

John, let me reiterate: you didn’t find the memo. If you did, do you mind proving that you had it before McBride wrote his essay? And what you say that FBI memo means is not what anyone else does. As for that 40 year odyssey, no one recalls you back there working with Vince Salandria, Ray Marcus, and Sylvia Meagher. Let alone talking about George Bush in 1969. You also need a review of basic arithmetic, since 40 plus 10 equals 50. Yet the 50th anniversary of President Kennedy’s death will be in 2013. So it is impossible for anyone to have been on this case that long.

Also, have I missed something? Where, when, and how did he “hang Kennedy’s murder around Bush’s neck”? Is JFK 2 evidence of this? Not on your life. The evidence would suggest that Hankey first got into his research around 1999, with the death of John Kennedy Jr. After that, around 2004, his video was cobbled together. Hankey seems to have had a mere 5-6 years of investigation under his belt before the film. But that’s no excuse for 1.) The errors that riddle his work and 2.) His penchant for taking credit for things he did not achieve. 3.) His need to distort things both large and small.

A review of Hankey’s JFK 2 is below. It represents a rather frightening statistic. As until now, it is one of the few pieces critical of Hankey’s research efforts on the web.

A Close look at the Film JFK 2

05:49 I have to say ‘so what?’ if ‘Pulitzer prize winner’ Tom Wicker of the New York Times initially agreed with the statements of the Parkland Memorial Hospital Doctors about the size and extent of the head wound. (New York Times, November 23, 1963 p.1)

Any Kennedy assassination researcher should know that Wicker was hardly a crusader for the truth. Yet Hankey tries to makes him out to be some kind of accidental hero and vainly clung onto this concept in his 2006 COPA speech.

Hankey doesn’t tell the viewer that Wicker severely criticized Oliver Stone’s JFK upon its release. (New York Times, 12/15/1991) and lovingly endorsed Gerald Posner’s Case Closed.

“Posner’s book is highly praised on the dust jacket by Tom Wicker, a longtime Warren Commission apologist who in 1979 wrote an introduction to the House Select Committee on Assassinations report (N.Y. Times edition) praising the Committee’s vindication of the Commission, then later confessed he hadn’t read the Committee’s report, and also wrote the foreword in 1982 to James Phelan’s attack on Garrison” (Martin Shackelford: Issue #1 “Case Closed or Posner Exposed?)

Furthermore, Hankey misses a crucial piece of evidence concerning the bullets and shots that is contained in Wicker’s New York Times article, which appears at around the 18:43 mark.

Hypocrisy Looming

08:45 The reader may well have previously come across the story of Mac Kilduff, Kennedy’s press liason having his hand gestures indicating a shot from the front purposefully edited out by ABC’s Peter Jennings in his appalling 2003 special.

11:49 Hankey now becomes sanctimonious in his anger about the ABC’s splicing of footage to fit their story.

“Now there’s a problem here. (Peter) Jennings is a news man, if people come to see him as a crude liar he’s finished. Why would he risk everything telling such weak and obvious lies about a murder that took place forty years ago?”

But if you want to, you can fast forward this critique to the 27:33 minute mark where you will see an example of Hankey’s splicing of footage.

Six or Seven Wounds?

18:43 Hankey tries to sell the idea that, in all, there were 6 wounds in Kennedy and Connally. Yet you may recall that at the time of 14:23 Hankey had already utilised the iconic courtroom clip from JFK in which Garrison (Kevin Costner) utilises Alven Oser (Gary Grubbs) and Numa Bertel (Wayne Knight) to demonstrate the trajectory of the 7 wounds in both Kennedy and Connally. Hankey somehow missed the fact that, most of the time, entrance wounds leave exits.

But he doesn’t stop there. His limited logic skills then lead him into believing that his 6 wounds mean 6 bullets. Thus it is clear that he never carefully read the aforementioned Wicker article he bragged about minutes before, because Connally’s surgeon Robert Shaw clearly states that Connally’s wounds were caused by one bullet. Indeed Shaw himself makes a rather dubious claim about this bullet’s trajectory that Hankey never bothered to pick up on.

“Dr. Robert R. Shaw, a thoracic surgeon, operated on the Governor to repair damage to his left chest. Later, Dr. Shaw said Governor Connally had been hit in the back just below the shoulder blade, and that the bullet had gone completely through the Governor’s chest, taking out part of the fifth rib. After leaving the body, he said, the bullet struck the Governor’s right wrist, causing a compound fracture. It then lodged in the left thigh. The thigh wound, Dr. Shaw said, was trivial. He said the compound fracture would heal.” (Wicker: New York Times 11/23/63)

What Shaw said would obviously become one of the cornerstones of the Magic Bullet theory. Despite the seeming unfeasibility of Shaw’s statement, the mistaken notion that 6 bullets caused 6 wounds in Kennedy and Connally without any interference in such cramped confines is quite clearly ludicrous, as indicated by the wound to Connally’s thigh which judging by the superficiality of it meant that a bullet or a fragment likely took a deflection from somewhere around the rib or the wrist area.

Medical Student Turned Doctor

19:01 Hankey claims that one of the Parkland doctors saw a bullet hole through the windshield of JFK’s limousine. I agree that there was likely a bullet hole there. The problem is that the person whom he refers too is Evalea Glanges, who openly stated that she was not a doctor but a 2nd year medical student at the time. (The Men Who Killed Kennedy ’40 Year special’) By not explaining the full context of Glanges’ real status, it leads to an insinuation that she was also one of the Parkland doctors involved in Trauma Room One. But further, right after this, at about the 19:40 mark, Hankey actually states that there were likely 13 bullets involved in the assassination. A figure that is about twice as high as most estimates made previous to him. Hankey cannot understand that bullets can fragment, and they can also ricochet.

Secret Service

24:25 A few moments later Hankey claims that both Secret Service agents were turned around and looking at Kennedy as he got shot stating “They are both completely turned around watching the President die“. At the time of the headshot we can plainly see that only the driver Bill Greer is turned around to the rear of the vehicle, and not Roy Kellerman who has his head looking forward.

Furthermore, by trying to implicate these Secret Service agents, Hankey, who minutes before was trying to account for every shot and bullet supposedly taken that day, ignores the massive problems Kellerman’s testimony had for the Commission, in that he seems to describe a volley of bullets landing in the vehicle. Yet Hankey ignored this. Had Hankey done any real research he would have discovered that, judging by the clipped comments made to a friend, agent Kellerman also believed in a conspiracy. (Vince Palamara Survivors Guilt, Pgs 1-3)

Conspirator Connally: Caught In a Slump

25:47: At this point, Hankey’s video gets even worse.

He now tries to insinuate that, after the assassination, the conspirators began changing the language of the situation to create conformity in the cover up. He picks out the use of the term ‘slump’ as evidence of this sinister ploy.

“At 5:10 the afternoon of the murder the code word ‘slumped’ as the official lie first appears, this time on the death certificate. Minutes later while Connally is lying in his hospital bed he repeats the code word that the killers have decided to use to describe the president as he was shot”.

In his use of other people’s archival material, he never bothered to think about the unlikelihood of Connally – a man who had received perhaps multiple gunshot wounds and had undergone rather intensive surgery immediately upon his arrival at Parkland Hospital – being able to discuss the issue that day. Hankey clearly has no idea what bullets do to a person, nor does he seem to realize how much of a hole he has dug himself into; because his ‘Minutes later’ line in which Connally says he saw Kennedy ‘slumped’ came about from an interview on the 27th of November some five days after the assassination. (Martin Argronsky interview with John Connally 11/27/63)

Now, Connally did indeed turn around and may have seen Kennedy clutching his throat and moving forward. But Hankey now regales the viewer with the exact definition of the term ‘slumped’, the word that according to Hankey goes straight to the dark heart of the conspiracy. While it’s apparent Kennedy never technically slumped forward when Connally says he did, its clear that Kennedy had at least ‘stooped’ forward and at a slightly downward angle after receiving a shot to his throat. Seconds later we see the head shot where Kennedy is thrown back and to the left via a shot from the right front, after which Kennedy proceeded to slump forward and to his left.

You may be asking: “So what if Connally had used the incorrect term, and anyhow Hankey did eventually admit Kennedy slumped.” Well actually it’s quite an issue. Because Hankey uses the slump to launch into a diatribe about Connally seeing Kennedy ‘choking on a bullet and being shot in the head’ when there is no evidence for this on the Zapruder film. As adjudged by the Z film, everybody in the world-except Hankey – can clearly determine that Connally only gives Kennedy a brief glance. And he is clearly turning back around at the time of the fatal headshot.

27:15 According to Hankey, Connally was placed in the limousine by the conspirators so he could lie about the direction of the shots and what went on in the car. Between 27:15 and 28:52 Hankey utilizes two of Connally’s most well known press conferences after the assassination: the aforementioned one on the 27th of November 1963 at Parkland Hospital, and the one he gave in 1964 after his testimony to the Warren Commission. This is to show that Connally had changed his story to fit the official version.

We don’t know why Connally never mentioned seeing Kennedy slump forward in his second press conference. But Connally was adamant that he was not hit by the same bullet that hit Kennedy in the throat. This is made clear in both interviews. This testimony created all kinds of problems for the Commission. Hankey, whom you may recall had earlier berated Peter Jennings for editing out bits of information contrary to his own angled story, now fades out Connally’s statements made at the Washington press conference and also Connally’s earlier interview at Parkland when he admitted yelling “My god! They’re gonna kill us all” and mentions Jackie crying “They’ve murdered my husband they’ve murdered my husband.” (Ibid, Argonsky)

So if Connally was rehearsed by the conspirators, someone blew part of the script. But later, building on this unsound foundation, he then tells us to remember Connally when he starts ‘naming names’. Yes, the likes of John McAdams are truly trembling at the thought of these revelations.

The Body Snatching Caper

29:07 After some standard descriptions of the Secret Service violating Texas law in taking Kennedy’s body out of Parkland Hospital before an autopsy was done, Hankey now borrows David Lifton’s body alteration angle. I think he does this to show how powerful the conspirators were. You know, they supposedly mangled the body whilst en route to Bethesda Naval Hospital to make Kennedy’s wounds more compatible with the lone assassin deception.

29:53 Hankey tells the viewer “The evidence is overwhelming but it might take some courage on your part to believe your eyes and ears”. Hankey is no stranger to wild hyperbole. First he says he has hung Kennedy’s murder around George Bush’s neck (a statement that is not even in the ballpark). Next, he steals credit for the CIA-Mafia-Cuban exile angle. Now he says the evidence for the body alteration theory is overwhelming and uncontested.

Sorry John, it is neither.

Hankey overlooks the fact that for JFK, Oliver Stone, Zachary Sklar, and chief research assistant Jane Rusconi plowed through the available literature and found Lifton’s body alteration theory lacking. Which is why it is not in the film. Further, no medical doctor researching this case advocates it. And this is not just the doctors on the official story’s side, like say Michael Baden. But doctors who have severely criticized the Warren Commission’s version of events, e.g. Cyril Wecht, Randy Robertson, Gary Aguilar, and Doug DeSalles. And there are other critics who have done work in the medical field who do not buy Lifton’s ideas e.g. Harrison Livingstone, Robert Groden, William Law, and Roger Feinman.

A point not mentioned by Hankey is partly depicted in Oliver Stone’s film. Why would the conspirators have to hijack the body if they controlled the autopsy at Bethesda that night? This was proven by the testimony of Pierre Finck at Clay Shaw’s trial. Part of which is shown in Stone’s film. But for a more complete version of that testimony see Jim DiEugenio’s book Destiny Betrayed. (pgs. 288-309)

I hasten to add that some of the best reading about the irregularities surrounding the military controlled autopsy is by Garrison critic Harold Weisberg in Never Again (pgs 283-307). In which he describes in great detail the US military’s presence at the autopsy. And in this section, even Weisberg gives Garrison’s staff their due.

But Hankey seems to back Kennedy’s body being secretly smuggled off of Air Force One for some posthumous surgery (a central tenet of body alteration scripture). But the long suppressed testimony of Richard Lipsey suggested that a decoy plan involving two ambulances was used to throw the media off of the scent. (Deborah Conway: Transcription of HSCA Interview with Richard Lipsey 1-18-78) (The full transcript itself makes for some interesting reading.)

Air Force One transcripts mention bringing a crane to the opposite side from where Jackie Kennedy and entourage disembarked. Now, decoys are understandable considering the incredible press generated by the public nature of the crime. As for the cranes, well as we know the Air Force One transcripts and recordings are notoriously incomplete and as one can clearly see from the grim footage of Air Force One’s arrival in Washington it appears that only one crane was used.

I have to wonder how many people have ever watched the arrival of Kennedy’s coffin? It’s virtually impossible for anything to have gone on. Now while the runway suddenly goes black and there is mention of a power cut as the plane comes in, the plane is still very much in motion when the lights are restored making it pretty hard to disembark a ton worth of casket.

What most authorities believe today is that there was post-autopsy fakery in the x-rays, and perhaps the photos. And clearly, some of the photos are missing. (See for example, Gary Aguilar’s excellent essay in Murder In Dealey Plaza, pgs. 175-218)

“Nobody Claims to have seen the President’s killers.”

38:23 While Hankey is correct about the dubious circumstances in which Oswald’s description came to the police, he is slightly misleading. He doesn’t name Howard Brennan. Brennan became the Warren Commission’s star witness in identifying Oswald, and it is supposedly via Brennan that Oswald’s description came out. Brennan’s credibility problems would have only taken Hankey a moment to explain.

38:42 As for there being no evidence against Oswald by that evening, a point that Hankey makes a short time later, this is again dangerously simplified. Although Hankey later touches on the posthumous appearance of Oswald’s fingerprints on the Mannlicher Carcano after his death, some aspects of the shameful use of evidence against Oswald could have been explored here. Hankey then states at 39:13 that the conspirators knew they had to alter the body at the time they arrrested Oswald. This is incredible, since neither he nor Lifton nor anyone else has ever come close to proving this remarkable thesis. Hankey should have remembered an important axiom for any Kennedy assassination researcher: extraordianry claims require extraordinary evidence. In fact, as we shall see, he should have that rule tattooed on his forearm.

Ignorance is Bliss Part 1: Angelton, Helms and Phillips

40:13: Hankey prefaces this part of the program, which he entitles “Who killed JFK?”, with a truly remarkable statement, one seemingly borne of a combination of ignorance and arrogance. He actually says that the mystery of who shot President Kennedy is easier to answer than the viewer thinks. It has taken most serious researchers years-even decades – to come to any kind of real conclusion about who killed Kennedy. And even then, they cannot prove their tenet to a court room standard. Others, like Bob Groden, still are not certain after forty years of work. But somehow, Hankey has us all beat like a drum. He knows. Except its not his own material. Like almost everything in this production, its borrowed from someone else. Straight from Mark Lane’s Plausible Denial, he gives us Howard Hunt’s legal action against Liberty Lobby. And he begins this segment with two errors. First, he says that the famous CIA memoradum explaining how they must provide Howard Hunt with an alibi for 11/22/63 was written by Director of Plans Richard Helms. Yet according to his own source, it was written by James Angleton, Chief of Counter-Intelligence. (Lane, p. 145) He then calls Howard Hunt a CIA assassin. Yet, to my knowledge, Hunt has never actually admitted to being a hit man.

This is important because, after these distortions, Hankey does not tell the reader that the famous James Angleton memo was designed to be a limited hang-out operation by Angleton. It was meant to deflect attention away from himself – since he was likely running Oswald – and onto Richard Helms and Hunt over at domestic covert operations. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 197) Angleton is one of the three key players in Mark Lane’s Plausible Denial who barely exist in Hankey’s film. Which is odd, since writers like John Newman and Lisa Pease have shown Angleton is a quite important character in the Oswald story, and therefore the assassination saga. The man who Angleton sent his none to subtle message to, Helms, is provided the briefest of mentions here. Angelton features again in this essay when we encounter George DeMohrenschildt’s “suicide” at 1:08:20

Further, Hankey seems to buy Marita Lorentz a hundred per cent. She and her “caravan story” of an assassination team into Dallas headed by Howard Hunt is probably the weakest part of Lane’s book. And the fact that the late Jerry Hemming went along with that tale makes it worse, since he had a reputation for marketing disinformation. Apparently, Hankey never read Gaeton Fonzi’s sterling The Last Investigation. For Fonzi raises severe reservations about the credibility of Marita Lorenz. (pgs. 83-107) In fact, Fonzi came to the conclusion that she was using that story to market a film production deal. But Hankey needs a Cuban connection in Dallas to market his “Bush connection”. This does the trick for him.

David Phillips

Another important name in Lane’s Plausible Denial that Hankey forgets to tell the reader about is David Phillips, who said there was no evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was at the Cuban and Soviet Embassies in Mexico City. (Lane, pg 82). Phillips is an important (if somewhat overstated) figure in the assassination. Yet he does not even warrant a mention in the entire hour and a half. In an interview as recently as 2009 on the Maria Heller show, Phillips is paid mere lip service by Hankey as Lee Harvey Oswald’s recruitment officer. (Hankey on the Maria Heller radio program 7/15/09.)

Yet that is an extremely tenuous accusation. Neither Jim Di Eugenio, Lisa Pease nor John Newman have ever been so bold as to venture an opinion as to who recruited Oswald. But judging by the general consensus surrounding John Newman’s writing, Oswald was likely ONI before his defection to Russia. In which case, he came under the scrutiny of the CIA upon his arrival there.

A further nail in this recruitment coffin is that Phillips’ main area of operations was not Russia at all, but Latin American affairs. Phillips could have played an indirect role in helping sheep dip Oswald in New Orleans. We know he was likely guilty of framing Oswald in Mexico City, and he may very well have met him in person on August of 1963 in Dallas under his cover of Maurice Bishop. (Fonzi, p. 141)

Indeed, if the following information is indeed true, Phillips confessed to a private investigator that Kennedy could have been done in by rogue intelligence operatives. Furthermore he also told his brother that he was there in Dallas the day of Kennedy’s assassination. But none of this is deemed important by Hankey. (Larry Hancock, Someone Would Have Talked. Pgs 181-182).

Ignorance is Strength

Why does Hankey ignore or downplay these three looming figures? It may be that Hankey and other Bush revisionists have deliberately tried to make Bush out to be directly under the control of Dick Bissell. Bissell was the CIA’s Director of Plans in 1961. By doing this, they suggest that Bush was somehow a major part of the Bay of Pigs invasion. One way they do this is by connoting that the official name of the invasion, Operation Zapata, was borrowed from Zapata Petroleum, the name of Bush’s oil company. This ignores the rather important fact that the codename Zapata was actually taken from the peninsula due west of the Bay of Pigs. The bay formed the eastern limit of the peninsula. Another linkage mentioned by Hankey is also dubious. Namely two of the landing craft were named Houston and Barabra J. The latter is supposed to denote the name of George Bush’s wife. Hankey milks this for all its worth by saying that Bush also named his planes after his wife when he was a pilot in World War II. The problem is that the planes were named in numerical order, Barbara I, II, and III. No middle initial involved. That is because Barbara Bush apparently has no middle name. So where did the “J” come from in naming the Bay of Pigs boat? Hankey knows he has a problem here because he skips over the middle initial when he names the boat. (At the 1:00:20 second mark.) I won’t even comment on the pretense of Houston being the location of Bush’s oil company. Because it was the location of scores of oil companies at the time. All this name association is much ado about nothing.

The other serious problem in associating Bush with the Bay of Pigs is this: Bush’s name is nowhere to be found in the major literature on that operation. It is not in the two book-length studies of the debacle, by Peter Wyden or Trumbull Higgins. Nor is it to be discovered in the two offical reports on the matter: Lyman Kirkpatrick’s CIA Inspector General Report, or the Taylor Report done by the White House. There are literally scores of names listed in the command structure of the operation in those four studies. Those many veteran OSS-CIA individuals working alongside people like Howard Hunt would have outranked Bush straight off the bat.

In all likelihood, Bush was one of many business assets involved whose company (like others) probably provided some sort of cover for Cubans involved in the operation. This is because his Zapata Offshore had oil rigs positioned 30 miles north of Cuba near Cay Sal, which was “an island the CIA used as a service station for covert operations.” (William Turner and Warren Hinckle, Deadly Secrets, p. xxix) And again, in all likliehood, it was the relationship between Bush and those Cubans that Hoover was referring to in the memo that McBride publiicized.

John Hankey & Dick

43:12 As if Hankey’s manipulation of Connally was not bad enough, thanks to Lane’s outing of Hunt, Hankey puts two and two together to make five. As we know, E. Howard Hunt was the senior member of Richard Nixon’s infamous Plumbers Unit. So, if you can believe it, Nixon somehow becomes a participant in the assassination. This is where the program goes completely off the rails.

Hankey seems to have fallen into the same trap that many new researchers make when they start out. Because someone has been as vilified as Nixon, one can latch Nixon’s name onto any event, no matter how outlandish, and he sounds like a reasonable culprit. The problem is that with all the post-assassination and Watergate hype, there have been a number of over the top and downright dishonest accounts of Nixon’s life and career, with few works being objective, incisive, or cool-headed. Hankey now joins that line.

For instance, Hankey states that Nixon brought Howard Hunt into the White House. Not accurate. As Jim Hougan points out in his brilliant and revolutionary Secret Agenda, prior to being hired by Charles Colson – not Nixon – Hunt worked at a CIA front called the Mullen Company. This was ostensibly an advertising and public relations firm. It was closely aligned with Howard Hughes. It was presided over at the time by CIA asset Robert Bennett. It was Bennett who mentioned Hunt’s name to Colson; Hunt then offered his services to him; and then Colson hired Hunt. (Hougan p. 33) It was an act that Colson came to regret. Why? Because Hunt appears to have been a CIA infiltrator in the White House who, along with James McCord, deliberately sabotaged the Plumbers at Watergate and helped collapse Nixon’s presidency. (ibid, pgs. 270-75) By misunderstanding this cause and effect sequence, Hankey misconstrues Watergate. By doing so, he puts Hunt at Nixon’s service in 1972. When the real story, as Hougan details it, is that Hunt was really working for the CIA at the time. Further, and a question that any reasonable person would ask, what is the evidence for Hunt being close to Nixon in 1963? He was working for the CIA, along with David Phillips. Hunt biographer Tad Szulc even has him temporarily running the Mexico City station while Oswald was allegedly there in 1963. (Compulisve Spy, pgs. 96,99) And through his function of organizing the Cuban exiles in New Orleans, Hunt almost had to have known about Oswald. So instead of tracing Hunt on a logical upward line within the Agency, where he was working at the time, Hankey does this incredible zigzag-in both time and space – out to Nixon. And then, as noted above, he doesn’t even get that association right. But yet, he then depicts Nixon with a rifle pointed at JFK in his limousine! (45:08) I’m not kidding. See for yourself.

45:23 Hankey seeks to further cement Nixon’s role in the assassination by enlisting the aid of a dubious document that links Jack Ruby to Nixon in 1947 as part of Nixon’s House Un-American Activities Committee purge. One problem is that Nixon was a freshman in the role as junior counsel in 1947. He would make his spurs prosecuting Alger Hiss the next year, which led to his vice presidential nomination in 1952 (Richard M Fried: Nightmare in Red. The McCarthy Era, pgs 17-22). The Ruby document has come to be treated with suspicion by practically all but the most questionable researchers today. For instance, it refers to “Jack Rubenstein” living in Chicago in November of 1947, when he had moved to Dallas by that time. Second, Rubenstein had changed his name to Ruby the year before. (Seth Kantor, The Ruby Cover-Up, pgs 203, 208) Also, the document carries a zip code when they did not exist at the time. (Some, have tried to explain the zip code problem as the document being a composite, since the letterhead is from the FBI but the information seems to originate with the HUAC. This ignores the fact that the FBI worked with the HUAC hand-in-glove; to the point of lending the committee assistants and even staffers. Whoever forged the document understood that. Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets, p.354) Finally, Hankey says that this document which allegedly has Ruby working for Nixon in the forties, was “recently discovered”. In fact, it surfaced decades ago

46:26 Hankey, like Paul Kangas, believes that Nixon lied about his whereabouts that day. So let’s look at some of the allegations. Nixon is reported as saying in an FBI memo that he had been in Dallas two days before the assassination (Don Fulsom, Crime Magazine, 3/22/09). Not on the day of the murder. One has to question the credibility of this document. Nixon was photographed in Dallas stating he was there on business with Pepsi Cola on the 21st of November. He made comments about Johnson possibly being removed from the ticket. (Dallas Morning News 11/21/63) Later that night, he was seen dining out with famous actress and Pepsi Cola heiress Joan Crawford. (Dallas Times Herald, 11/22/63) The next day he was photographed in a New York airport after arriving from Dallas after hearing the word of the assassination. (Minneapolis Star, 11/22/1963).

Thus either the FBI or Nixon were really dumb, or so was the person who made up the document. Now Nixon may well have made some diverse calls about when or where he heard word of Kennedy’s death that day. Two of his stories involve a taxi cab. One in an August 1964, Readers Digest article in which Nixon says he remembers hearing word of the assassination while stepping out of the airport and into a waiting cab. The other was from Esquire magazine circa November 1973, in which Nixon says he heard a screaming woman, stopped the cab, and wound down the window.

So what is he really guilty of? Well he seems to have embellished his story, and made it slightly more dramatic with the retelling. But that’s really the sum of it. Furthermore the stark reality is that Nixon was in the air at the time of the shooting. He heard the word either on the plane or as he got off it. He sat down, and was photographed. Thus Nixon was not on the ground in Dallas, as is implied by Hankey, who throughout JFK 2 depicts Nixon with that ridiculous rifle in hand.

But now, what does Hankey do? He states that his conspiracy now includes Hunt and Nixon. (46:50)

What He Did Buy Into

In a self penned 2007 article on the rather odd Jeff Rense website entitled “Comment: Hunt’s Death Bed Confession Ignored by the Mainstream Media” Hankey utilizes H. R. Haldeman’s recollections in his diaries to further incriminate Nixon. This time it’s Nixon’s phone conversation with former President Johnson. Here, Nixon tells Johnson to keep his allies in the press off of his case during the 1973 Watergate scandal. And he threatens to reveal Johnson’s bugging of their telephone conversations prior to the 1968 elections. Johnson apparently reminded Nixon of his own past indiscretions and the conversation, according to Hankey, is conveniently deleted at a crucial point.

Hankey insists that this was deleted because it had to have mentioned the Kennedy assassination. But there is one little problem, he has no evidence to prove this. (Which, as the reader has seen already, is not a real problem for Hankey.)

Outside of Hankey’s world, what was really happening between LBJ and RMN? Johnson had begun bugging Nixon because of his involvement in undermining Johnson’s first peace talks with the North Vietnamese in 1968 (Robert Dallek, Lyndon B Johnson: Portrait of a President, pg. 369) Johnson, who was well aware of the public pressure mounting on the Nixon presidency, was prepared to call Nixon out on the fact that Nixon had broken the law. If Nixon made the mistake of mentioning Johnson’s bugging, Johnson was threatening to reveal how Nixon had thwarted his efforts to end the Vietnam War before the 1968 elections. (Charles Taylor: The Traitor. Salon.com 01/09/2010)

It’s also apparent that Hankey has mistaken a number of different events that culminated in the illegal removal of some 18 minutes of tape from the Nixon White House. These removals were most often based around conversations Nixon was having with his top aides about the Watergate break-in. Whether or not they contained information about the Kennedy assassination is speculative at best. (Tim Reid: “Mystery of Watergate tapes missing 18 minutes may be Solved” The Times 07/30 /2009)

Richard Nixon, as Vice President to Eisenhower, was involved in anti-Castro operations, and was involved in the plans for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Nixon, in his search for Republican party power, certainly encountered the Bush family. It’s more than likely the CIA used the Bush oil business to further aspects of their operations against Cuba. But the point is that Nixon would have seen the Agency utilize a number of individuals, companies, and fronts to further their aims. Thus the Bush family was hardly unique in this aspect. (Larry Hancock Email 10/22/2009)

This is one of Hankey’s major problems. He completely forgets to mention the assistance given to the CIA by certain individuals which far surpassed what the Bushes were doing at the time. People like Howard Hughes, and his right hand man Bob Maheu; or the Luce family; or the Pawleys. These are but three examples. Hughes, in particular, looms large in the Nixon story if one cares to fast forward to 1:04:00

Conspirator Connally: 2. Holding Hands with Nixon

47:16 Hankey now drags in his third conspirator, the one he already warned us about. To join Hunt and Nixon we now have John Connally – you know, the guy who almost got killed that day. Hankey tells us that when Connally was appointed by Nixon as his Secretary of the Treasury, this ‘shocked’ political observers at the time. What Hankey does not say is that Connally did not serve under Nixon till some 8 years after the assassination. Furthermore he overplays this seeming betrayal of Connally’s Democratic principles.

Hankey should know that the Southern Democrats have long been much more conservative than their northern counterparts. And Connally’s innate conservatism was well known in many Democratic circles. His Democratic party rival, Senator Ralph Yarbrough, was considered one of the last great progressive Southern Democrats, and a fervent supporter of Kennedy. He disliked both Connally and Johnson. (Randall Bennett Woods: LBJ: Architect of American Ambition, pgs. 415-416) In 1969 Connally resigned as governor and became a lawyer for a Texas firm. He was then appointed Secretary of the Treasury by Nixon in 1971. He then resigned that post by joining the Democrats for Nixon campaign of 1972. By 1973 he had become a full fledged Republican candidate (Douglas Harlan, Texas Monthly, January 1982 pgs. 114-119)

47:24 Hankey tells us that it was Connally “Who held Kennedy’s hand and pretended nothing was going on as he led him into the killing zone.” The inference here is that Kennedy was lured to Dallas by Connally and the conspirators. But that’s not true. Kennedy’s trip to Dallas was discussed with Johnson and Connally in June and formal planning began in September of 1963. It happened for a variety of reasons. Two of them were to raise funds for the upcoming election in 1964, and to heal the rift between between Connally and Yarbrough (WCR pg. 27)

It’s a little known fact that Connally, who encouraged Jackie to come along, was not keen on the idea of the president coming to Dallas. Why? Because Kennedy divided Connally’s centrist conservative constituency which represented the accumulated wealth of Texas. Thus rather than enthusiastically organise rallies and functions, Connally dithered and seems to have done all he could to get the trip over and done with as quickly as possible. (Jim Reston, The Lone Star: The Life of John Connally pgs. 240-260)

Connally opposed a parade route. The parade route was specifically organised by Secret Service men Winston Lawson and Forrest Sorrels, who overrode the Dallas authorities they were supposed to plan it with. Connally loudly voiced security concerns about the final venue’s size, referring to the Trade Mart’s balcony and 53 entrances. He was also uninformed of the actual parade route (WCR pgs 27-30; Vince Palamara: Survivors Guilt pgs 2-9)

Is Hankey implying what I think he’s implying here? That Connally was willing to place himself and his wife in harm’s way and almost have himself killed, just so he could lie about the direction of the shots? When in fact there was confusd testimony about this anyway? Why risk one’s life over something like that?

Hankey’s History Part 2

47:35 Hankey reminds us that it’s important to remember that Nixon, Hunt and Connally are really “small devils” in all of this and to name the real bad guys we need a little historical perspective.

47:53 Hankey then tries to give the audience a little lesson about Americana history. Using a clip from the film Little Big Man he shows how cruelly the leaders of the United States had treated its indigenous population. This massacre he describes as being on par with the genocide of the Jews by Hitler.

48:13 What is Hankey up to? Well, he uses this unbalanced history to form a bridge to the Nazi genocide programmes. See, they were partly funded by US business. And that starts him naming the big names in the Kennedy assassination and their links to the Third Reich. Namely, the Harrimans and Rockefellers. But we are also introduced to another assassination figure of ill repute. But he’s OK with Hankey.

Hankey’s Heroes: Hoover the Ace Investigator

48:19 “This is J Edgar Hoover the Head of the FBI for nearly 40 years. He has recently been criticised for being gay and a cross dresser. He has been criticised for a long time for being a racist. But you have to admire his skills as an investigator. Hoover investigated the Nazi connections of all these people and bought actions against them. For example Hoover investigated the Nazi Connections of Union Bank in New York and in 1942 the year the US entered the War the Bank was seized as a Nazi asset.”

Hankey is actually trying to portray Hoover as a.) Some kind of crack investigator, and b.) Some kind of anti-Fascist. When the record adduced by his most recent and most complete biographers proves the opposite in both categories. (By the way, the USA did not enter the war in 1942, but in 1941.)

But there are more problems for Hankey using Hoover’s investigation of American businessmen trading with the enemy, which he believes led to the annexation of the Union Bank. It was actually the office of the Alien Property Commission that more often than not examined and documented the cases of corporate collusion with enemies of the United States. (This was explored in a scholarly fashion by Ben Aris and Duncan Campbell, The Guardian 9/25/2004)

It was these reports which found their way to the FBI which was bumbling around trying to find communist spies and Nazi saboteurs. Further, as can be seen from myriad reports, nothing of consequence really happened to Union Bank’s directors like Harriman. And most importantly nothing happened to Prescott Bush, George Senior’s father and George Junior’s grandfather.

E. Howard Hunt Found Guilty of Murder in Liberty Lobby trial?

49:37 Nixon and Howard Hunt now return. We are now called upon to remember the trial of Howard Hunt depicted in Lane’s Plausible Denial. Hankey now says “Where the jury found Hunt guilty of the murder of president Kennedy”. Could Hankey really have confused a criminal homicide trial with a civil case involving defamation? The jury decided that Hunt was not defamed by the writings about the famous “Hunt memorandum”. That is all. No one knows where Hunt actually was that day. Let’s get real: if this had been a criminal case, the standard of proof, rules of evidence, and the actual procedure would have been much different. To say the jury found Hunt guilty of killing Kennedy is a ridicuous overstatement.

49:50 Hankey then goes on to say that, at that trial, Hunt ‘testified’ to being in direct contact with Harriman in Paris after the war. If you can believe it, this is true. But Hankey, by inferring that Hunt came onto the scene via Averill Harriman, conveniently forgets to tell the viewer that Hunt had begun his intelligence career in the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) in 1944. This was four years before serving as US Ambassador Harriman’s ‘press aide’ during the Marshall plan in Paris circa 1948. (Davies & Roberts: An Occupation Without Troops, pg. 230) Hunt didn’t stay long in his job and was back in Washington working for the CIA (established in 1947) by 1949. (Lane, pg. 251).

Timewarp

50:26 Hankey now shows a picture of a congenial Prescott Bush adjusting the hat on a smiling Richard Nixon (both adorned with faux swastikas). We are now told that Bush turned his attention from supporting Hitler to supporting Nixon after his bank was closed down.

“Four short years later he found another young man to sponsor in politics, Nixon. Who was documented as employing Jack Ruby a year after this photo was taken. Nixon who hired Hunt, who hired Connally, was created and sponsored from the very beginning by Prescott Bush, are you surprised?”

At this point, I would not be surprised at anything Hankey writes or says. It’s correct that Nixon first made it into the senate in 1946 – that’s where it ends. So let’s number and catalogue the inanities in this paragraph.

One: “Four short years later he found another young man to sponsor in politics, Nixon.”

Despite the large amounts of accusations on the internet, in the literature available to us on Nixon, it appears that Prescott Bush was not significantly involved in Nixon’s early political rise to power prior to 1946. Nixon’s most prominent early sponsor was a wealthy bank manager by the name of Herman Perry and his law firm Wingert ∓ Bewley, who also represented California’s oil and business interests. Reporter, Joel Beers wrote a clever piece on Nixon and his odd relationship with his old childhood stomping grounds in a piece titled “Dick Nixon’s Orange County”. (Orange County Weekly, 8/12/1999)

Nixon’s grandfather was good friends of the wealthy Bewley family and Nixon represented Wingert & Bewley from 1937-1942. (Bela Kornitzer: The Real Nixon. pgs.127-128. 141) After his return from the war he took his opportunity to enter politics by answering an ad by prominent Californian Republicans looking for a candidate in the 1946 elections. (Ibid pgs. 154-158)

The evidence suggests that Prescott Bush – who was based in Connecticut and who never resided in California to the best of my knowledge for any length of time – was not one of California’s prominent Republicans.

So who does Hankey ignore?

Howard Hughes.

Howard Hughes took an active interest in Nixon in the mid-fifties. His financial investments in Nixon and his brother from this period would cause Nixon problems in the years ahead and could well be one of the motivations behind the Watergate saga. Indeed, Hughes’ involvement with Nixon is arguably the most scandalous of any of Nixon’s relationships with the United States business leaders (and is discussed in slightly more depth a little later on). Hughes also had dealings with Bush’s oil business, as he leased them the islands in the Bahamas, some thirty three miles off of the coast of Cuba, which was then used by anti – Castro raiding parties.

Edwin Pauley.

Edwin Pauley was arguably the pre-eminent California oil man of his day. Pauley had been treasurer of the Democratic National Committee in the 1930’s, and served as President Roosevelt’s petroleum coordinator in the European theatre of the war. He was also close friends with Harry Truman and negotiated for the United States at Yalta. (Biographical Sketches: Edwin W. Pauley. Truman Library)

Indeed, Pauley was a powerful figure whose interests spanned the gamut of the United States energy industry. He was much more powerful and influential than Prescott Bush at the time. The reality is that he enjoyed closer relations with other powerful figures like Hughes, whom he engaged in a number of business dealings. The most prominent being in 1958 when Hughes partnered him in Pauley Petroleum operations in the Gulf of Mexico (Pamela Lee Grey: in James Ciment, Thaddeus Russell (eds)The Home Front Encyclopedia: United States, Britain, and Canada in World Wars I and II. Volume 1 p. 691)

Pauley was so influential he even engaged John McCone of the CIA and J. Edgar Hoover in support of quashing free speech on his old University of California campus. (Seth Rosenfeld: San Francisco Chronicle 06/09/2002) Pauley would later create a Mexican slush fund for Nixon’s campaigns in 1968 and 1972, which it seems the Bushes contributed campaign monies to. Thus it is Pauley who provides us with a solid link to Bush monies supporting Nixon’s campaigns.

Two: “Who was documented as employing Jack Ruby a year after this photo was taken.”

We already know that the document linking Ruby and Nixon is dubious. Secondly, and most importantly for Hankey’s falling credibility, the photo in question was not taken in 1946 but in 1953. You can see for yourself at the Corbis Images site.

Three: “Nixon who hired Hunt, who hired Connally was created and sponsored from the very beginning by Prescott Bush – are you surprised?”

As proven above, Nixon did not hire Hunt. Colson, egged on by CIA asset Bob Bennett, hired Hunt. But is John Hankey trying to tell us that Nixon hired Hunt who in turn hired John Connally? He really should watch his scripting because that’s what it sounds like from this statement. What’s truly insidious about Hankey’s argument is that for it to have relevance to the Kennedy murder, Nixon would have had to hire them all under the auspices of Prescott Bush prior to the Kennedy assassination. This is a piece of conspiratorial logic that Hankey has to ignore.

I would like to reiterate that it’s highly improbable that Prescott Bush, if he was involved with Nixon at the very beginning of his political career at all, was likely not the sole interested party. His involvement likely began around Nixon’s ascendancy within the Republican party, by his vice presidential years. But it’s hard to say how deeply involved he was in Nixon’s actual Presidency because, by 1971, Bush was in extremely poor health and died in 1972.

The Magical Mystery Memoranda Part 1

50:44 Hankey now makes reference to the Bush/Hoover memorandum from The Nation. It confirmed Bush was CIA prior to his appointment in 1975. And that was really all there was to it. Indeed, Joseph McBride was wary of developing the memo any further and wrote:

“Bush’s duties with the CIA in 1963 – whether he was an agent for example or merely an “asset” – cannot be determined from Hoover’s memo.”

In support of McBride’s comments, Larry Hancock described for me the lack of excitement generated by a memorandum of this type in the FBI offices.

“Now, first off, if you read enough documents you see that Hoover was very rigorous about passing on routine info (and this was very routine) to other agencies. It was only the good stuff he kept to himself. Nor did Hoover call somebody over to the FBI building and have a formal briefing made on such a trivial report on such a momentous day.”

Kind of deflates Hankey’s imagination doesn’t it? But, imaginations do need to be kept in check when dealing with such issues, because there’s some good evidence that Hankey didn’t use which further supports the angle that Bush was involved with both the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban exiles. The problem for Hankey is that the evidence we have, and you shall see, of Bush’s involvement does not back the rather more extreme ‘Bush family did it’ angle that the likes of Hankey advocate.

Thus it is clear from statements made by Brigadier General Russell Bowen (and others) that Bush was at the very least affiliated with operations in the Gulf of Mexico and Miami.

“Bush, in fact, did work directly with the anti-Castro Cuban groups in Miami before and after the Bay of Pigs invasion, using his company, Zapata Oil, as a corporate cover for his activities on behalf of the agency. Records at the University of Miami, where the operations were based for several years, show George Bush was present during this time.” (Russell Bowen as cited on Wikipedia.)

Bush’s role it seemed was as a facilitator of some operations. And as pointed out by McBride, there is debate about Bush as to whether or not he was a CIA man who ran a business front, or a businessman who let the CIA use his facilities. Generally speaking the evidence appears to favour the latter view. The Wikipedia is unreliable with information concerning the Kennedy assassination. However its entry dealing with the Zapata Offshore Drilling company is one of its better entries. And though I often find Joseph Trento a little wayward with his appraisal of the Kennedy assassination, it’s hard to argue with what he has accumulated concerning Bush’s role in the scheme of things. It’s important to note the role of Allen Dulles in the manipulation of the younger Bush, as this has a bearing later on.

William Corson: “George’s insecurities were clay to someone like Dulles”. (Bush was) “Perfect, at talent spotting and looking at potential recruits for the CIA. You have to remember, we had real fears of Soviet activity in Mexico in the 1950s. Bush was one of many businessmen that would be reimbursed for hiring someone the CIA was interested in, or simply carrying a message.”(Joseph Trento, Prelude to Terror, p. 14)

John Sherwood of the CIA: “Bush was like hundreds of other businessmen who provided the nuts-and-bolts assistance such operations require… What they mainly helped us with was to give us a place to park people that was discreet.” Trento, then gives Sherwood’s account of Bush starting out as “a tiny part of Operation Mongoose the CIA’s code name for their anti-Castro operations.” (ibid, p.16)

Another well established writer on the web page, John Loftus, writing independent of Trento adds.

John Loftus: “The Zapata-Permargo deal caught the eye of Allen Dulles who, the “old spies” report, was the man who recruited Bush’s oil company as a part time purchasing front for the CIA. Zapata provided commercial supplies for one of Dulles’ most notorious operations: the Bay of Pigs Invasion.” (John Loftus: Secret War, pg. 368)

I decided to get the independent appraisals from other researchers to see if they also matched what had been written on the subject of George Bush’s role in the CIA at the time of the Kennedy assassination. They were more or less very compatible.

Larry Hancock:“I think it’s very possible that Bush started doing favours for the Agency even before 1963 and allowed his business to be used for clandestine activities…that could be said about virtually any business operating off shore in the Gulf.” (Larry Hancock: Email 23/10/2009)

Greg Parker: “Bush it seems was some kind of facilitator before and after the assassination for the agency. People forget that agency work in the field is pretty tightly compartmentalised. Just because our friend George was involved in one area doesn’t necessarily mean he knew the big picture. Basically he did the jobs he was given – possibly by Tom Devine whose departure from the CIA may have been faked for the purpose of running George and by extension, Zapata Offshore …

The reality for the ‘Bush done it’ mob (who seem to have emerged from the 9/11 crowd) is that … the planning of the assassination was out of his league at the time. It’s odd isn’t it? … .But making the Bushes out to be the kingpins of the Kennedy hit strikes me as more than a little naïve. It’s just flat out not true.” (Greg Parker email 8/12/2009)

Ignorance Is Bliss Part II: Allen Dulles who?

52:58 In an attempt to impress upon us that it is really George Bush in the memo, and to prove that Bush was a ‘supervisor’ of the Cubans, we are introduced to Allen Dulles, a man whom Hankey clearly knows nothing about. There is often little consensus in the JFK research community. But Dulles, like Jim Angleton, Phillips and Helms, is widely regarded as an essential ingredient to understanding the Kennedy assassination. So for Hankey to distort his relatively brief mention of him should not go unscored.

“Dulles worked closely with Nazi bankers during World War II. That somehow qualified him to become the director of the newly formed Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA.”

First, it would seem that Hankey wants to make out that Dulles was the first CIA Director. Not true. Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter became the head of the CIA upon its creation, and ran it from 1947-1950. Walter Bedell Smith then ran the Agency from 1950-1953. Dulles became his Deputy Director in 1951, and then became its longest serving director in 1953. Now Hankey, one would hope, had learnt a few things from when this debacle of a project first came out. But on Black Op Radio (show # 424) as recently as May of 2009, Hankey still dismissed Dulles. Going as far as to make one of the most unbelievable implications in JFK research history: that Dulles was a cut out for Prescott Bush.

“Prescott Bush is the guy who during WWI was with Army Intelligence. Dulles was not with army intelligence during WWI and it’s a little bit surprising that he would be put in charge of the CIA instead of Prescott, given that they are more or less parallel in their power up until that time.”

He then repeated this in an interview with Joseph Green in July of the same year whilst banging the drums for his JFK 2 revamp entitled Dark Legacy.

“GHW Bush worked for the CIA and was clearly involved in the assassination; so closely that his name shows up on a memo signed by Hoover and titled “Assassination of President John F. Kennedy”. His father was also very deeply involved in the CIA. It can in fact be argued that Prescott Bush was the real power at CIA, that Dulles was a front; and that it was Prescott, not Dulles, who masterminded the assassination.”

(Much of what we have already discussed and criticised thus far is contained within this interview and answers the question for the reader whether or not his revamp is an improvement or indeed worth paying for? The simple answer is that is no in either case.)

Returning to the above quote, even for Hankey, this is shocking. Let us repeat the axiom to live by: extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. This Bush for Dulles substitution surely qualifies as an extraordinary, over the top, claim. The problem is the usual one for Hankey: there is simply no evidence for it. For instance, the standard reference work on the Central Intelligence Agency is John Ranelagh’s The Agency: The Rise and Decline of the CIA. That book was published in 1986, well after the death of Prescott Bush. Ranelagh took four years to write it. He interviewed hundreds of people. (p. 12) His bibliography runs to twelve pages. The book runs to almost 800 pages of text and notes. You will not see one reference to Prescott Bush in his index. Somehow, none of the hundreds of people he talked to knew that Allen Dulles was really a puppet and that Prescott Bush was pulling his strings. I mean Richard Helms didn’t know that? Dick Bissell didn’t know it? Dulles’ own deputy Charles Cabell didn’t know it? Although less a straightforward and systematic history, the other standard reference book on the Agency is The CIA: A Forgotten History. That book has over 60 pages of footnotes. But I guess Bill Blum was also decieved, since there is no reference to Prescott Bush in that volume either. Did Hankey discover something that, in all their long toils, these two men did not? I doubt it. Or maybe he will now claim that every single person and source was instructed to lie to these two men. By who? Well, Hankey’s kingpin behind the JFK hit of course: George Bush Sr.

What this bit of patent mythology indicates is the same phenomenon that David Brock pointed out in his book Blinded by the Right. He termed the irrational extremists he encountered in the conservative bastions of the nineties as the Clinton Crazies. Whipped up into a frenzy by the likes of Richard Mellon Scaife and his agent Christopher Ruddy, they were ready to blame the Clintons for anything: the murder of Vince Foster, illegal real estate deals, fathering illegitimate children and covering it up etc. Well, in about 2004, when the presidency of Bush Jr. began to really unravel, a reaction similar to Clinton Craziness began to set in against the Bushes. It was more soundly based than the one against the Clintons. And in that regard, it more closely resembles the reaction against Nixon during and after Watergate, which I alluded to above. But in some ways, the reaction against the Bushes has perhaps been even more extreme than the one against Nixon. And Hankey’s attempt at an Orwellian rewrite of the history of the CIA, inserting Prescott Bush for Allen Dulles, is surely a part of that fevered delirium. A fevered delirium that has given birth to the likes of Gary Allen, the late Aaron Russo, Alex Jones and cross pollinated with the liberal fringe in which David Icke, and Jason Bermas are now joined by John Hankey.

And it goes hand in glove with Hankey’s bizarre attempt to implicate George Bush Sr. in the middle of the Kennedy assassination. What it amounts to is rewriting history in order to facilitate a personal agenda. What else can possibly explain it? Perhaps this was his thinking: “Many people believe the CIA was involved in the murder of Kennedy. If I substitute Prescott Bush for Allen Dulles, then I bring the Bush clan closer to the Kennedy murder.” The only problem is that it’s not true. In other words, it’s a solipsism (the philosophical idea that one’s own mind is all that exists). A solipsistic approach always makes for bad – and deceptive – history.

With that in mind, let us take apart the above Hankeyisms. In addition to implying that Dulles was the CIA’s first Director, which he was not, Hankey tries to say that his only qualifcation for that job would be his assocaition with Nazi bankers during World War II. It’s true that Dulles’ firm, Sullivan and Cromwell, worked with German bankers up to the beginning of the war, and with affiliates of German businesses during the war. But to say that was the one and only reason Dulles was appointed CIA Director in 1953 is just daffy. Or incredibly ignorant.

Dulles was trained as a spy well before he became a lawyer for Sullivan and Cromwell. It is a small matter of debate between Jim DiEugenio and myself as to when Dulles was actually recruited into spy work for the US (this is something of a black hole which I hope we can resolve at a more appropriate time). What we do know however is that during WW I & II he ran America’s biggest and most important spy rings, both centered in Switzerland. At the end of World War II, he became the OSS chief in Germany. There, he recruited the Gehlen Organization into American intelligence. Allen Dulles was also instrumental in the post-war creation of the CIA and then had an advisory role in its development. In 1948 he helped write the Jackson-Dulles-Correa report which suggested reorganization of the Agency. That report was read by Director Smith. Smith then called Allen and made him Deputy Director in order to partly implement that report. (See Part 8, Sections 4-6, of Jim DiEugenio’s review of Reclaiming History.) All of this crucial information is left out by Hankey. It is all important. More important than the idea that Dulles’ association with Nazi bankers impressed Smith so much as to make him his deputy.

“Prescott Bush is the guy who during WWI was with Army Intelligence. Dulles was not with army intelligence during WWI and it’s a little bit surprising that he would be put in charge of the CIA instead of Prescott given that they are more or less parallel in their power up until that time.”

Actually, in World War I, Prescott Bush received intelligence training and he also worked as an artillery captain. His intelligence duties were as a laison officer with the French. Prescott did not serve in World War II. As noted above, Allen Dulles was an intelligence officer in both wars. And he was not simply a staff officer. He ran operations out of Switzerland. And at the end of World War II he rose to head of the OSS in Germany. After the war, he was then actively involved in the creation of both the National Security Act and the Central Intelligence Agency. He also ran a CIA sponsored operation out of the law offices of Sullivan and Cromwell to subvert the Italian elections of 1948. (Christopher Simpson, Blowback, p. 90) At the end of the war, he helped found Radio Free Europe and helped write a report about reforming the CIA. To compare the intelligence background of Dulles with Prescott Bush is a little like comparing the Arkansas State football team with the University of Texas Longhorns.

I don’t quite know what Hankey means by the second part of the sentence. What does “parallel in their power” mean or matter in something like this? But just to point out who Dulles was involved with at the time, here is a list of companies represented by Sullivan and Crowmwell in the forties: JP Morgan & Company, Dillon Read and Company, Brown Borthers Harriman (Prescott Bush’s company), Goldman Sachs, New York Life Insurance Company, The American and Foreign Power Company, International Nickel, Overseas Securities Corporation, United Railways of Central America, United Fruit, Chase Manhattan Bank, General Electric, US Steel. It is not an exaggeration to say that Sullivan and Cromwell represented a large part of the Eastern Establishment at the time.

Furthermore, Dulles was more or less a natural choice for Director in 1953. He had been in intelligence since World War I, he was Deputy Director at the time, and his brother was Secretary of State. And although Walter B. Smith liked being Director, he was ill. (Ranelagh, p. 230) What would have been really surprising is if Eisenhower had appointed Prescott Bush as Director.

“GHW Bush worked for the CIA and was clearly involved in the assassination; so closely that his name shows up on a memo signed by Hoover and titled “Assassination of President John F. Kennedy”. His father was also very deeply involved in the CIA. It can in fact be argued that Prescott Bush was the real power at CIA, that Dulles was a front; and that it was Prescott, not Dulles, who masterminded the assassination.”

The first sentence is, in large part, sheer hyperbole bordering on sensationalism. George Bush Sr. was not “clearly involved in the assassination”. If he was, someone would have discovered his role many years ago. Say in the first 25 years of research on this case. As per his name showing up in a memo by Hoover, we have shown what that was for. And it was not about Kennedy’s assassination. (Which Hoover was not really interested in.) And thousands of FBI documents are headed at that time with “Assassination of President John F. Kennedy”. Or did Hankey forget that the FBI was the prime investigative arm for the Warren Commission? If Prescott Bush was so involved with the CIA, why is his name not in Ranelagh’s book? The rest of the quote is just so bizarre and unfounded that it really makes one wish Hankey would disappear. Prescott Bush, as just proven, was not the “real power” at CIA. And for Hankey to now say that Prescott was the real mastermind behind the JFK murder, well it makes me wish that McBride had never discovered or written about that Hoover memorandum. We would be spared these outrageous and completely unfounded wild accusations based upon a foundation of quicksand.

Hankey’s History: Part 3

54:48 Hankey claims that Prescott Bush’s Army Intelligence employees during WWI turned into the CIA. This is pure fiction. The intelligence units that Prescott Bush served in were the precursor to what would one day become the NSA. The OSS was set up by Roosevelt and is the direct ancestor of today’s CIA. (See here.)

55:04 Hankey again twists reality by insisting that Bissell like Hunt had worked for Harriman “for 10 years“. This is just wrong. Howard Hunt did not work for Harriman for anything like that period of time. Nor did Dick Bissell, who was recruited by Harriman in 1947 and Hunt in 1948.

Though they knew each other prior to working together, Bissell only worked directly for Harriman for a few months on the Marshall Plan. He worked under him sporadically over a period of some 4 years prior to his employment by the CIA. In real terms, if Bissell and Hunt had worked for Harriman for 10 years, Bissell would have been working for him until 1957, and Hunt until 1958. The problem with this is that Bissell was recruited by the CIA in 1953 and Hunt in 1949. Which, unless Harriman was running the Agency (which he clearly was not) renders Hankey’s accusation false. (See Theodore A. Wilson and Richard D, McKinzie: Oral History Interview with Richard M. Bissell Jr. 07/09/71; Ralph E Weber: Spymasters: Ten CIA Officers in their own words. pgs 43-45)

Hankey Scores An Irrelevant Point

55:08 Hankey gets something else right, but it’s kind of peripheral. William Casey and Prescott Bush did form the National Strategy Information centre to apply pressure on Kennedy’s Cold War policies and support the CIA’s endeavours in 1962. But this says nothing more than Prescott was a cheer leader for the Agency, something that 1.) has been established for decades, 2.)Many wealthy Republicans were.

Skull and Groans

55:32 What would any bad post Kennedy assassination, 9/11 documentary be without mentioning the infamous Skull and Bones society? Skull and Bones seems to have become the all seeing evil society since 9/11. George Bush figures rather heavily in all that.

The problem with mentioning Skull and Bones as the root of all things evil and the driving force behind the Kennedy assassination is that it leads to the whole Secret Society fallacy. For example, on the Freemasonry Watch website, members of the Warren Commission are named as masons who covered up the crime. Sen. Richard Russell, a well known Mason, is named as one of the guilty parties. However, Russell was the only Commissioner who launched his own investigation and at least tried to find the real facts of the case. Though not quite as visceral as Russell the other dissenting Warren Commission member was a fellow by the name of John Sherman Cooper (Gerald McKnight: Breach of Trust pgs. 293-295) who was himself a well known Bonesman. Though by the time of Cooper’s testimony to the HSCA (in which he seemed to have caved a bit by outwardly supporting the Commissions efforts), he still gave a number of statements which indicated a certain amount of indecision on his behalf (HSCA Vol III, pgs. 599-610). Let’s be frank about this issue: If you have to devote a fairly long section of your video to the Skull and Bones society, it means you don’t have much real evidence at hand to make your thesis stick.

The Roll Call

55:58 Time for a roll call. As we have seen, Hankey has a habit of tying people together in a singular group, when in reality their interactions are separated by years and sometimes decades. In fairness, with a group like Skull and Bones these interactions can span the generations. Thus I have no ‘bone’ to pick with that nor do I have a problem with his naming Averell Harriman, Prescott Bush, and Bush’s uncle George Herbert Walker who all check out as Bonesmen.

But he runs into trouble this with his use of Robert Lovett.

“Robert Lovett, architect of the CIA, was a bonesman selected for membership by Prescott himself”.

Lovett was a Bonesman and played a role in the establishment of the CIA. However it would have been impossible for Bush to have picked him, because individual members cannot handpick individuals. It is decided upon by the group. Which, of course, makes perfect sense.

Let’s turn back to Lovett and ‘the occult’ before I leave this time slot. It’s ironic that Salvadore Allende, the President of Chile, was a 31st degree level freemason and that didn’t stop him from getting taken down by some dark forces. Also, Bonesman Lovett filed a report on the CIA some twenty years before Allende’s overthrow. This report was scathing of what Dulles had made out of the CIA at the time. (See Part 8 of Jim DiEugenio’s review of Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History.) So you can’t rely on secret societies to make your case.

56:14 Hankey’s next target is one F. Truby Davison whom Hankey describes forthwith.

“F. Truby Davison was also selected for membership in Skull and Bones in 1918, the year Prescott did the picking. Davison was in charge of hiring for the CIA in 1948, the year George Herbert Walker Bush left Yale in search of a job.”

As you have seen Bush was not privy to selection of Lovett in 1918, thus it would make it difficult for him to have selected Davison. Furthermore, George Bush is not widely regarded as beginning his tenure at the Agency until the early fifties. Thus it’s hard to see how immediately going to work for Dresser Industries (a Harriman subsidiary) upon graduation puts him in the unemployed category, nor under the recruitment of Davison. Since he was already in contact with Henry Neil Mallon, a seeming recruiter of business executives anyhow. (Baker & Larson: “Bush Senior Early CIA Ties Revealed” The Real News Project, January 8, 2007)

56:32 We now move onto Davison’s son, a fellow with the unfortunate name Endicott Peabody Davison. Hankey claims that Peabody Davison was in the society the same year as George Bush. This is also wrong. He was a Bonesman from 1944-45 some 2 years before Bush was tapped.

History with Hankey: Part 4

58:46 Hankey now discusses Operation MONGOOSE as a commando team in the same breath as Operation Forty or Alpha 66. In fact, MONGOOSE was the name given to the overall Cuban initiative of 1961-62, into which it seems elements of both Operation Forty (formed prior to the Bay of Pigs) and Alpha 66 (formed in its aftermath) were incorporated. This is an important distinction which any Kennedy researcher should be able to make.

58:57 At this point, Hankey seems to claim that Howard Hunt helped stage the Bay of Pigs invasion from the island of Cal Say off of the coast of Cuba. In reality, the invasion actually took place from Guatemala and Nicaragua (Trumbull Higgins, The Perfect Failure, pgs. 125-27). And at the time of its launch, Hunt was stationed at CIA HQ, where he monitored its progress with David Phillips. Because of his Spanish speaking skills, Hunt was scheduled to fly to Florida, when and if the invasion succeeded. From there he was to accompany the Cuban exile leadership to the beachhead. It’s hard to believe that Hankey missed all this. Because Hunt writes about it in his valuable book on the Bay of Pigs invasion Give Us this Day (pgs. 190-95). Hankey may be, in his usual way, straining to stitch together some kind of clandestine relationship between Bush and Hunt.

History With Hankey: Part 5 – The Bay of Pigs

58:16 Hankey claims that planning for the Bay of Pigs was begun by Dulles in 1959, forgetting to mention that this was also the year that Castro came to power. He then uses this as the catalyst for George Bush to move closer to the Agency. Zapata did split its interests up in the same year and Bush did go solo as the president of Zapata Offshore. But the cause and effect relationship Hankey is hankering for is problematic. Because the planning for the invasion did not start in 1959. As Higgins notes, in early 1960 Eisenhower was still using embargoes and trade cut offs against Castro. (p. 48) The actual early planning for the Bay of Pigs did not begin until March of 1960. (ibid, p. 49) By the way, this is also the point where Hankey brings in the so-called parallel between the code name of the invasion Operation Zapata, and the name of Bush’s oil company, which as we have seen is specious. He then asks, well what kind of an idiot would name a CIA operation after his oil company? He then answers George Bush. I’ve got a better question: What kind of researcher would not know that the name of the peninsula right next to the Bay of Pigs is called Zapata?

1:01:06 This is a vintage Hankey moment. He claims that both Hunt and Bissell left Harriman’s office at the same time to go work on the Bay of Pigs at exactly the same time as George Bush. If this muddle of mistakes has altered your memory I refer you back to 55:04. Honestly I shake my head.

1:01:40 “Hoover’s memo names Bush as a CIA supervisor of the Bay of Pigs invaders, the anti Castro Cubans, there can be no reasonable doubt about this connection. George Bush was working for the CIA assisting in their operations at the Bay of Pigs, working for Bissell, working with Hunt, working with Sturgis supervising the CIA’s misguided Castro Cubans.”

As you have clearly seen the document does not say this. Yet, Hankey somehow “forgets” that Hoover’s memo says absolutely nothing about naming Bush as a “supervisor” and nothing about the “Bay of Pigs.”

1:02:10 Hankey now reaches even further in his dramatic creation. A second earlier he made the dubious call that Bush “was working with Hunt”. He now suddenly changes his mind and-out of nowhere – he says that Bush was “Supervising Hunt.” Again, there is no mention of George Bush in any of the major literature on the Bay of Pigs. But Hunt is mentioned in almost every book on the ill-fated invasion. If Bush was supervising Hunt, his name would be somewhere. It’s not even in Hunt’s memoir entitled Give Us this Day. And in that book, Hunt mentions many, many people both above and below him who were involved in that operation. So: Where was George?

Nobody Had Connections To CIA Operations In the Nixon White House

1:02:16 Hankey then discusses Bush’s arrival in the White House stating.

“After Bush got beaten up in two elections, Nixon bought his sorry butt into the White House trailing E. Howard Hunt behind him. Halderman said no one could figure out who brought him in to the White House. But it isn’t that hard to figure out because not only did Hunt and Bush come to work for Nixon at exactly the same time but no one in the White house had any connections to CIA operations…No one had any connections! While Bush on the other hand, was directly involved in exactly the same CIA operations in the same area at the same time that Hunt was.”

This is another Hankeyian mouthful. Let’s break it into bite-size indigestible gulps.

“Nixon brought his sorry butt into the White House trailing E Howard Hunt behind him.“

As proven earlier, Bush did not bring Howard Hunt into the White House. Hunt was brought in by Charles Colson at the urging of Bob Bennett and Hunt himself. Bush was offered the job of UN Ambassador by Haldeman and Nixon in December of 1970, about 6 months before Hunt was offered employment by Colson. (Hougan pgs. 32-33) And since Hunt concentrated on domestic matters, the employment chain for Hunt went in a different direction from Bush’s. It went from Colson to John Ehrlichman (ibid) So the idea that Hankey tries to convey, that somehow there was a cause and effect relationship, or that somehow Bush caused Colson to hire Hunt, is simply not grounded in the discernible facts.

“But it isn’t that hard to figure out because not only did Hunt and Bush come to work for Nixon at exactly the same time”

As we have seen this is inaccurate.

“..but no one in the White House had any connections to CIA operations. No one had any connections!”

What about Henry Kissinger? Kissinger worked hand in glove with the CIA on the overthrow of Allende in Chile. What about Alexander Butterfield? Butterfield was a deputy to Haldeman who set Nixon’s schedule, provided him with briefing papers, and was instrumental in setting up the taping system in the White House. Butterfield’s exposure of that system to the Senate Watergate Committee helped impeach Nixon. Fletcher Prouty exposed Butterfield’s ties to the CIA during the Watergate scandal. (See Haldeman’s The Ends of Power pgs. 109-10.) What about Hunt and James McCord? Jim Hougan builds his wonderful book Secret Agenda around these two characters, who were allegedly retired from the CIA and denied knowing each other. In fact they were not retired and they knew each other from many years before. (Hougan, pgs. 3-26) And in fact, Hougan writes that McCord, from his position at the Committee to Re-elect the President, secured jobs for a few of his CIA friends at the White House. (ibid, pgs. 58-59) A statement like the above reveals that Hankey is not only ill-advised on the Kennedy assassination, but he doesn’t know very much about Watergate either.

“While Bush on the other hand, was involved in exactly the same CIA operations in the same area at the same time that Hunt was.”

The viewer may have noted that in skipping over the nefarious American activities in Latin America at the time. Hankey has presented absolutely no evidence of Hunt and Bush working together on anything other than the Bay of Pigs, and even that is an unproven and indirect relationship.

1:03:01 Conspirator Connally Part III: Time Warped

Hankey here tries to insinuate that Bush got his job as UN Ambassador by blackmailing Connally about his involvement with the Kennedy assassination. In reality, the previous UN ambassador, Charles Yost, had resigned. As had the previous Treasury Secretary, David Kennedy. Bush actually wanted Kennedy’s job at Treasury. But Nixon liked the idea of appointing a high profile conservative Democrat to a Cabinet level posiiton. So he gave that job to John Connally. Bush then settled for the United Nations. (See The Unauthorized Biography of George Bush, by Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, Chapter 11). Which, besides undermining Hankey’s assassination plot, also tells you that Connally was higher in the pecking order than Bush in 1970.

This makes it hard to believe that Bush could have been controlling Connally seven years previous. Indeed, in Douglas Harlans article “The Parties Over” in the Texas Monthly of January 1982 he described the bitter feuding between Connally and Bush in which he often belittled and humiliated Bush at every opportunity (pgs 114-119).

Now, after all of Hankey’s accusations, does he really have anything at all to convict Connally with? Well, in one blog dated as recently as 1/2/2008, a fan of Hankey’s called ‘Boulderdash’ in a piece dating from February 2008 called “Clinton, Obama, JFK and the next terrorist attack’ excitedly writes.

“There is a tape of a phone conversation, available on the web, between John Connally and LBJ. Connally was demonstrably involved in JFK’s murder. And he called Johnson and said, “Oswald was a Cuban agent.”

For Hankey and his followers this is evidence enough that Connally was clearly in on the plot. The inference is that Connally was trying to convince Johnson that Oswald was in with Castro. What Hankey failed to tell his good friend ‘Boulderdash’ is that this phone call actually happened in 1967 four years later, in which Connally reveals to Johnson that he had heard the rumours from some journalists. I’ll leave up for yourself to find the link if you can be bothered. Boulderdash like his hero Hankey never stopped to think why were these rumours were being circulated? Well this link explains how they emerged in light of the Garrison investigation.

Time Warp IV

1:03:42 Hankey now makes the dramatic call that Nixon, Bush, Hunt and Connally all meet up in 1970. Hankey soon after portrays them as making their steps to power over Kennedy’s corpse. Yet as usual he has no credible evidence to show how any of them were actually involved in his murder. But he also leaves something else out that is important: By 1970, Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy and Malcolm X had also been murdered. Maybe I should not have noted that. I might give Hankey an idea for his next mockumentary.

Watergate in and out of a nutshell

1:04:00 Nixon was widely considered to have resigned rather than face prosecution over his obstructing justice in that case. The coup de grace came for Nixon upon the release of tapes dating from the 23rd of June 1972 implicating him in the scandal and discussing the hush money involved in paying off the burglars. Hunt was, on the surface, one of the many problems Nixon was faced with concerning hush money to the Watergate burglars.

Now one has to know something about the background and complexity of Watergate to understand how outlandish the next Hankeyism really is. For he now claims that Nixon was paying Hunt because Hunt threatened to implicate him in the JFK murder. So let us get this straight: First, Bush blackmails Connally to get a job at the White House; then Hunt blackmails Nixon; and they both use Kennedy’s murder as a the pretext. To go through all the problems with this double blackmailing scenario would take a short essay in itself. But how about this for starters: There is no credible evidence that Connally or Nixon was involved in Kennedy’s murder. So how could they be blackmailed? Also, no other credible author has ever attributed those motives to either Bush or Hunt.

How does Hankey insert Bush into this then? Through a guy named Bill Liedtke. Liedtke and Bush were business partners from Texas in the fifties. Liedtke ended up being part of the Republican team that put together some of the hush money for Hunt once he was in jail for Watergate. The problem here is that several people were involved in this effort. Liedtke was one of the underlings. But the actual effort was run at the top by Herbert Kalmbach and Haldeman. (Stanely Kutler, The Wars of Watergate, p. 275) The reason the White House paid up was because Hunt was threatening to spread the Watergate scandal to Ehrlichman and Egil Krogh, who supervised his particular Plumbers Unit of break-in artists. (ibid p. 276) Maybe Hankey can tell us how Ehrlichman and Krogh were linked through Bush to the Kennedy murder?

Massive Bush Cover up?

1:06:21 You probably thought this could not get any worse. Like me, you may have even thought that it’s this kind of goofiness that gives people who write about conspiracies, even obvious ones like the JFK case, a bad name. Well, you were right in the second assumption. You were wrong about the first. Hankey has not stopped scaling the heights of dreadfulness. Like Captain Kirk, he is now about to go where no man has ever gone before. But unlike Kirk, Hankey fails to discover anything of any real use.

“In 1975 the Senate Select Committee on Assassinations began to investigate the CIA’s role in the Kennedy assassination. The Committee uncovered the CIA internal memo that Spotlight magazine wrote about which says that Hunt was in Dallas the day of the assassination. William Colby was director of the CIA at the time.”

Hankey now does another frail and childish imitation of Colby saying (these are underlined): “Oh yeah, Hunt was there alright. He and Bush were in charge of the shooters” And he was cooperating with the committee “But they weren’t really in charge, they were just taking orders” and supplied the committee with the Hunt memo. The problem is the usual with Hankey: No such thing happened. This is nothing but a creation of Hankey’s fevered imagination. Hankey should have been a playwright.

“Colby was suddenly fired and out of the blue supposedly with no CIA experience George Bush Sr. was appointed to take over as head of the CIA. Why, what could qualify Bush for this job? One thing: Bush could be relied upon better than Colby to cover up the facts of JFK’s murder because Bush knew that the trail led straight to him. He had to cover it up and he did, he ended CIA cooperation completely with the Committee and shut down the investigation”

Okay, let’s break this Hankeyism down as we have before.

“In 1975 the Senate Select Committee on Assassinations began to investigate the CIA’s role in the Kennedy assassination.”

Firstly, anyone who has studied the JFK case – which Hankey says he has been doing for about 40 or 50 years – knows that there was never any such thing as the Senate Select Committee on Assassinations. There were actually two Senate committees that sprung up in the wake of Watergate: the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee. Neither of them had the name attributed to it by Hankey. The first did do a whitewash of some of the circumstances around the Kennedy murder. The second only investigated the performance of the intelligence agencies in their support of the Warren Commission.

It was the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) which actually did a long inquiry into the murder of President Kennedy. These are easy things to check. Hankey didn’t.

“The Committee uncovered the CIA internal memo that Spotlight magazine wrote about which says that Hunt was in Dallas the day of the assassination.”

Not true. In Lane’s book it is stated that the source for the memo was Victor Marchetti, a staff assistant to Richard Helms. The stir over the Hunt memo came about during the HSCA. (Spotlight August 15th 1978) It was Joseph Trento writing for the Sunday News Journal on August the 20th 1978 who made note that a 1966 memoranda placing Hunt in Dallas was in the hands of the HSCA. Joseph Trento later testified as to seeing the memo signed by Helms and Angelton. The Hunt memo was never submitted into evidence by Colby or anyone else to an offical body.

William Colby was director of the CIA at the time?

Not really. Colby served as the Director of Central Intelligence from September 1973 to January 1976. He had made disclosures to the Pike and Church Committees during 1975. But there is no evidence he had anything to do with Hunt and the Spotlight magazine article, since he was not the DCI of the Agency during the HSCA. Now I shall not go into detail discussing Hankey’s inane and immature voiceover of Colby’s. Namely because there is absolutely no evidence for any of it in the first place. Nor did Colby ever say anything like this publicly or privately to anyone.

“Colby was suddenly fired, and out of the blue with supposedly no CIA experience George Bush Senior was appointed to take over as head of the CIA. Why, what could qualify Bush for this job? One thing Bush could be relied upon better than Colby was to cover up the facts of JFK’s assassination because Bush knew that the trail led straight to him. He had to cover it up and he did; he ended CIA cooperation completely with the Committee and shut down the investigation.”

As per Bush closing down the investigations, this is again wrong. As Jim DiEugenio so clearly states at the end of Part 8 of his Reclaiming History series, Gerald Ford, and the CIA used the murder of CIA officer Richard Welch to begin to squelch the Pike and Church Committees at the end of 1975. Bush’s role in that maneuvering was minor. The major players were Ford, Kissinger, Colby, and David Phillips. It was the House Select Committee on Assassinations that really investigated the Hunt memorandum. And the HSCA was brought into existence in September of 1976. Its report was issued over two years later in 1979. George Bush served in the role of DCI from January 1976 until January 1977. George Bush ran some obstruction against the previous inquiries, but would have only 5 months to run any interference against the HSCA. And he was not around for the revelations of the Hunt memorandum. So how was he in a position to cover up his own role in the JFK murder? The answer is evident to everyone except Hankey: He actually wasn’t. This is all another Hankeyism.

George De Mohrenschildt

1:08:02 George De Mohrenschildt, nicknamed the Baron, is a subject one would not expect Hankey to get right. And true to form, Hankey does not.

1:08:12 His first claim is that De Mohrenschildt got Oswald the job at the “Dallas School Book Depository”. John, please, it’s the Texas School Book Depository. And as Jim Douglass so wonderfully demonstrates, it was not the Baron who helped get Oswald his job there. It was Ruth Paine. (JFK and the Unspeakable, p. 171) In fact, it would have been quite difficult for DeMohrenschildt to attain that job for Oswald since he was in Haiti at the time. (ibid, p. 168)

1:08:20 Hankey, the self proclaimed veteran gumshoe, again invokes the fictional ‘Senate Committee on Assassinations” (refer to 1:06:20)

“The night before he was to be questioned by the Senate Committee on Assassinations, his head was blown off”

Hankey is off to another bad start here. George De Mohrenschildt died in Manalapan Florida on the afternoon of the 9th of March 1977. The Church Committee was ended by then. So the interview was with the HSCA, the ‘House Select Committee on Assassinations’.

1:08:28 Hankey now reveals that De Mohrenschildt had the contact details of Poppy Bush in his address book. Hankey for once downplays the evidence remarking:

“By itself this proves nothing. Taken in context however it is one more amazingly direct link to Bush and the assassination.”

It is no such thing of course. Consider the following from Webster Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin’s Unauthorized Biography of George Bush:

“After De Mohrenschildt’s death, his personal address book was located, and it contained this entry: “Bush, George H.W. (Poppy) 1412 W. Ohio also Zapata Petroleum Midland.” There is of course the problem of dating this reference. George Bush had moved his office and home from Midland to Houston in 1959, when Zapata Offshore was constituted, so perhaps this reference goes back to some time before 1959. There is also the number: “4-6355.” (This was the number of ‘Poppy’s’ office)

In a place like the Dallas-Fort Worth area, which Midland is due west of, an individual as gregarious as De Mohrenschildt would have found it hard not to ingratiate himself with the likes of George Bush. Particularly considering the facts that the Baron was an oil geologist and Bush owned an oil company.

Returning to De Mohrenschildt, it seems that he had been more of an observer and incubator for Oswald prior to his involvement with the Paines – who Oswald met via his interactions with the White Russian community. And it was the Baron who provided Oswald entry into that commuity. Further, the death of DeMohrenschildt, which came at the end of a rather bizarre and long ordeal at the hands of Willem Oltmans and Edward Epstein – who was working with and for James Angleton at the time – deserves a film of its own. It should not be just cheaply tacked on as a “direct link to Bush and the assassination” when it is not any such thing. To use just one point: How does Bush connect with the Paines or the White Russian community?

Hankey as DA

1:10:29 After a mindless monologue about the weight of the evidence against Bush, and the connections they pose to the JFK case, Hankey now intones: “If he stood trial in Texas he would get the electric chair”. Which shows just how much Hankey knows about the legal system. Because most people who know anything about both the JFK case and the law would reply: What competent DA would sit through this risible presentation without rolling their eyes and looking at their watch several times?

What then follows is a bizarre tune utilizing South Park animations and a puerile unfunny cover version claiming Bush as the controller and Hunt as the triggerman and contains a number of references to crawling inside someone’s behind. The only good thing about this sequence is that it gives us hope that the film is close to being finished.

It is but a fleeting hope. Hankey still has some 10 plus minutes to abuse one’s sensibilities with.

Hankey and Oswald

1:14:13. Now comes a little intro into Oswald’s background, which Hankey does not screw up too badly, since he appears to have taken the information from the film JFK. But he does manage to say that three men close to Oswald when he returned from Russia-David Ferrie, Guy Banister, and DeMohrenschildt-all died “shortly after the assassination.” Well, yes, Banister did. But Ferrie died in 1967, and the Baron died ten years after that. That’s not “shortly after” John.

1:14:57 While Hankey is explaining Oswald’s FBI informant status, he tells the audience that through “Declassified secret documents of the Warren Commission” we know they were told by the Dallas DA and the Attorney General of Texas that Oswald was an informant. Hankey clearly wants to portray himself as an avid reader of this declassified information. Yet, there was nothing really secret about it. First, the story came out in a newspaper, and second, researchers like Mark Lane wrote about it back in 1966. (Rush to Judgment, pgs. 370-74) But even before that, Gerald Ford wrote about it in 1964, in his book Portrait of the Assassin.

Time Warp V

1:15:27 Hankey now distorts another memo written by Hoover.

“In 1960, 3 years before the assassination, J Edgar found time to write a memo regarding a lowly insignificant lone nut Lee Harvey Oswald. What the hell did Hoover find so interesting about this guy 3 years before the assassination? Hoover’s memo complained that someone was using Oswald’s identity while Oswald was in Russia to buy trucks for CIA trained anti Castro Cubans”

What Hankey does here is to combine two memos into one to create a false picture of what was going on and Hoover’s knowledge of it. The multiple Oswald saga began in June of 1960 when Hoover wrote in a memo to the State Department: “There is a possibility of an imposter using Oswald’s birth certificate”. (George Michael Evica, A Certain Arrogance, p. 42) If Hoover was running Oswald at this time, he would not need to be writing such notes. And in this memo there is nothing about “buying trucks”.

But since Hankey ignores it, it is worth taking into account the strange story behind how this memo came into being. When Oswald left the Marines, it was under the pretext of attending the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland. But Oswald had deviated and gone on to Russia instead. His mother was deeply confused about his turning up in the Soviet Union rather than in Switzerland. As a result she spent much of her time contacting the various agencies associated with the State Dept and the college itself in the latter part of 1959. (John Newman: Oswald and the CIA, pgs. 166 -167)

The FBI eventually investigated the college to find out if someone was attending the school under a false pretext. What the FBI discovered was that 1.) The school was no ordinary institution of higher learning, and 2.) Oswald never showed up there.. The college was so obscure Swiss authorities had to be contacted. And even they took two months to verify its existence. (Evica, p. 49) So how did Oswald know about the place?

Now, months later, in January of 1961, Oswald’s name was being used for the purchase of vehicles in the United States. The problem was he was in Russia at the time. But at the Bolton Ford dealership in New Orleans, salesman Oscar Deslatte encountered two individuals from the Friends Of Democratic Cuba organization (FDC). They tried to purchase a number of Ford pick up trucks. After bartering for a price with Deslatte, one of the individuals, a large Cuban who identified himself as one Joseph Moore, requested that he put the name of his partner on the receipt. The name was ‘Oswald’. Deslatte immediately went to the FBI after the assassination with this information. (Jim Garrison: On The Trail of The Assassins. pgs 57-59)

Deslatte was interviewed on the 25th of November 1963. In this interview he did not identify the man as the Oswald arrested on the 22nd. As evidence Deslatte furnished the receipt he had laid out for them. (Deslatte: FBI interview 11/25/1963) It was flatly ignored by the FBI, and it was not until 1979 that the receipt, clearly showing the name Oswald, was released by the Bureau. (Anthony Summers: The Kennedy Conspiracy, pg. 446).

One of the key reasons why the FBI ignored Deslatte’s compelling claims and suppressed the evidence was probably because the FDC had Guy Banister, a former ONI agent and also former head of the Chicago office of the FBI, on its Board of Directors. Banister had set up his own private detective agency in New Orleans and has since been clearly linked to Oswald’s CAP leader David Ferrie. By conflating the two incidents, Hankey distorts the complexity and the actual context of who Oswald was.

Hankey on the Bay of Pigs and Oswald

1:16:19: “Kennedy awoke and discovered that the CIA had launched a major invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs.” Is Hankey saying what I think he is saying here? That Allen Dulles-or in Hankey’s world, Prescott Bush-somehow launched the Bay of Pigs invasion on his own, without Kennedy’s knowledge? To use a phrase that too often comes up with Hankey, this is preposterous. And it is hard to believe that Hankey didn’t know it was so. All one has to do is read Trumbull Higgins book The Perfect Failure, to see that Kennedy attended meetings about the invasion beforehand. (p. 97) In Robert McNamara’s book, In Retrospect, the former Secretary of Defense actually describes the meeting at which Kennedy polled his cabinet on whether or not to OK the invasion – which they did. (pgs. 25-27)

1:19:10: According to Hankey, as a result of the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kruschev insisted that all Cuban exile training camps be shut down and the the Russians be allowed to inspect them. He does not cite a source for this. Probably because he cannot. I have never seen it in any book on the subject, including the standard reference work, The Kennedy Tapes. The idea that Kennedy would allow the Russians to inspect former CIA training camps on American soil is another Hankeyian leap. But there appears to be a reason for it. Hankey is now going to ask: How could Hoover locate these camps in order to close them? Well John, probably because the FBI offices near the towns they existed in knew about them. They had to in order not to arrest the operatives involved during MONGOOSE. Hankey could have learned about this by interviewing some FBI agents. Apparently, he didn’t. What he wants to do is now say that Hoover learned about at least one of them through his super agent in the field: Lee Harvey Oswald.

“Oswald was seen at the training camp at Lake Pontchartrain Louisiana by the secretary of the former FBI agent who ran the camps. This camp was raided and shut down days after Oswald visited there.”

Banister’s secretary was Delphine Roberts. Oswald was not seen at the training camps by Roberts. He was seen by her handling communist literature on the street near Banister’s office. (William Davy, Let Justice be Done, p. 40) There is some evidence that Oswald visited the New Orleans training camp in question. But no one knows precisley when. So how can Hankey make the deduction that it was shut down days after Oswald visited there?

Now the declassified record, combined with various interviews does indeed suggest that Oswald was likely some type of informant for the FBI, and Jim Douglass and others have long suggested a connection. (op cit pgs. 333-338) I agree that there was such an involvement with Oswald. But unlike Douglass and DiEugenio, I don’t think Oswald’s role as an informant is actually that dramatic. But it is other researchers who came up with this information in the first place. Furthermore it is quite doubtful that Oswald was “Hoover’s most important agent in the field.” On what information could this judgment be based upon anyway? I tend to feel he was just one of a network. But Hankey makes him his top agent because he wants to make Hoover into some kind of hero again. Hankey says that on November 22nd, Hoover immediately understood that the CIA had murdered Oswald, and that they had framed his top agent in that crime. What does he base these assumptions on? Nothing that he has shown the viewer.

1:21:03 Now Hankey does the usual. He puts together a childish skit and then overplays his cards. Utilizing a cut out of Marlon Brando as Stanley Kowalski with Allen Dulles’ head attached, we are greeted to the CIA honcho holding and threatening J. Edgar Hoover in a dress. The message is the CIA had Hoover over a barrel because they had managed to frame Hoover’s top agent as the assassin. And this made sure Hoover would be silent during the Warren Commission cover up. This may or may not be true. But even if it is, is it crucial? No. For the simple fact that Hoover would have gone along with the cover up anyway. Since, as many biographies of him show, he despised Robert Kennedy. He was happy to be free of him since RFK was planning to fire him in a second Kennedy term. Further, he was good friends with Lyndon Johnson and liked working with him. (See, for example, the biographies of Hoover by Anthony Summers and Curt Gentry, respectively at pages 316, and 536))

1:22:29 Hankey gives a bunch of background about Operation 40, largely based on the Marita Lorentz tale. And it goes on and on: “And according to the memo the CIA asks Hoover to tell them what he knows of the misguided anti Castro Cubans, why? You yeah you sitting there thinking about it” This is one of the lowest points of this dismal production. Because the memorandum says no such thing. Hankey is demanding that we think of the significance of non-existent wording on a non-existent document.

1:23:07 Hankey now builds to a crescendo that is so beyond the rules of evidence, logic and deduction – i.e. normal comprehension – that it is a little stupefying.

“Remember that Bush called the FBI the day of the assassination. He told them he was in the Dallas area and he got in a plane and flew to Washington. If he really wanted information on the anti Castro Cubans why didn’t he go to Miami and talk with the FBI agents who were actually involved in investigating the Cubans? If he wanted to hear it from headquarters why didn’t he just call? And he already knew the answer to the question so why did he go through all this trouble? There’s something going on here. What? These are important questions if you want to try and understand the world you live in you can’t just shrug them off. Science and criminal justice say that you have to come up with a better explanation than me or else you have to accept my explanation … And my answer is pretty ugly.”

If you have been following along, you know that Hankey is again reading things into the memo that are not there. It does not say that Bush flew to Washington. What the memo says is that Hoover (possibly via a middle man) contacted both Bush and another man about possible attacks on Cuba in the wake of the Kennedy assassination. In other words, the initiative came from Hoover. The idea that Bush had to go to Miami to receive this info is ridiculous. Hankey apparently doesn’t know that the FBI has offices in every major city in America. Or that they had ways to get info to those cities. Ever hear of a telex machine John? Unlike what Hankey says, what’s going on here is not something we need to comprehend. It’s something that Hankey needs to comprehend about himself. That in his half-mad pursuit of George Bush, he has fallen off a cliff. And he has taken people with little understanding of the case with him.

The Plot to Kill Hoover

1:24:51 I don’t even want to describe what Hankey does next. But for the sake of this depressing essay I have to. Hankey literally invents a scenario where the plotters are now mystified about what Hoover’s intentions are in the Kennedy case, and have to meet with him to sort the situation out. This is again, preposterous. For within hours of the assassination Hoover was on board with the lone asassin scenario. (See DiEugenio’s Reclaiming History review, Part 7, sections 1 and 2.) Hoover was glad to see JFK gone, since it would mean that RFK would now be off his back. And anyone who knew Hoover would have known and predicted this. But Hankey has not read up on it. Or, if he has, he wants to keep it from the viewer for the benefit of his piece of theater.

“It’s obvious these guys don’t know for sure what Hoover’s gonna say or they wouldn’t have to get on a plane to Washington to ask. So now here they are in Washington, but what are they supposed to do if Hoover gives the wrong answer? How hard a question is that? They just whacked the president the day before so answer it! What are they gonna do if they get the wrong answer? Are they just gonna shoot him in the head right there in the FBI headquarters? Well here’s a hint.”

Cue picture of Senator Frank Church holding a pistol used by CIA operatives for assassinations.

“The CIA had developed a pistol that shoots a dart made of ice, the dart contains a drug that gives the victim a heart attack. The ice dart goes into the body, melts and the only evidence of a murder having been committed is a small pin prick left by the entry of the dart”

Its not quite clear, but Hankey now has Bush, or one of his thugs, holding the gun.

“These thugs probably had such guns in their pocket. If Hoover gave the wrong answer these two guys would kill him.”

The message: George Bush was in Hoover’s office right after Kennedy was killed. He threatened him with death unless he went along with the cover up. And that is why Hoover did what he did.

This single scene ranks Hankey with the worst of the worst in the JFK research field: Lamar Waldron, Craig Zirbel and John Davis among them. Hankey’s climax is that a gun firing what looks like flechettes laced with heart-attack inducing poison was used to threaten J Edgar Hoover. And this was done by George Bush in Hoover’s office. This is apparently the ultimate earth shattering conclusion we reach. Yet of course there is utterly no evidence that such a meeting took place at all. And, for that matter, this is the first I have ever heard of anybody ever going into Hoover’s office and threatening to shoot him. Call me old fashioned, but it seems like fantasy to me. Indeed, more like science-fiction.

Hankey’s Hero: J. Edgar Hoover?

1:26:09: Hankey now calls Hoover a great investigator. He then tells us “Hoover was a master of intelligence. When he destroyed the Black Panthers for Richard Nixon, the head of security for the Panthers was an FBI agent. When Hoover destroyed the Communist Party for Eisenhower, the man in charge of the party’s own membership list was an FBI agent; and he certainly got the goods on the Nazi collaborators in this country.” Uh, John, Hoover did not destroy the Panthers for Nixon or anyone else. As Gentry and Summers detail, and the Church Comiittee did also, that was Hoover’s own private campaign. And his war on Black Nationalist leaders went on through the presidencies of both Johnson and Nixon. (Gentry, p. 602)

And for Hankey to call Hoover a great investigator is simply appalling. If you read Gentry’s book, Hoover framed many people who probably were not guilty of crimes, and he used many, many illegal and unethical means to do so. (See Jim DiEugenio’s review of Reclaiming History, part 7. Especially the first two sections.)

Son of A Nazi Bitch

1:26:37 “So what does Hoover do when this Son of A Nazi Bitch comes to threaten him? He writes this memo, that’s what he does. Creating a written record of George Bush’s role in the assassination and hiding it in plain sight in a memo to the director of the CIA. This memo deserves the close attention we’ve been giving it. You see even with a CIA secret weapon in your hand, killing Hoover in his own office is an enormously risky project. Who would do such a thing? That’s really pretty easy if the men who were so involved in the assassination felt that it was less dangerous for them to murder Hoover than let Hoover conduct a real investigation of JFK’s murder.

This memo then strongly suggests that George Bush was such a man. It suggests that he was so covered in Kennedy’s blood that murdering Hoover in his own office was an acceptable risk; in any case this memo recalls George Bush’s role as a key player in the conspiracy to murder Kennedy, serving at a high level to protect the misguided anti Castro Cuban president killers from the FBI”

Hate to tell you John, but the memo is not to the Director of the CIA. Its to the Director of Intelligence and Research at the State Department. And I don’t beleive for a second that Bush did what you are suggesting he did, or for the reasons you are describing. In fact, I don’t believe anyone did what you are describing here. Hankey then asks “Are you enjoying this, it’s pretty ugly stuff”. John, I’m not enjoying it at all. But the reason is not what you think it is. What is ugly about this fiasco is the mind of a man who really doesn’t care if he is basing his documentary on fact or fiction. And doesn’t care how outrageous the things he depicts are. Hankey feels he doesn’t need any facts or evidence to a.) Show that Bush was a prime player in the Kennedy murder, or that b.) Bush threatened to kill Hoover unless he wrote the memorandum.

John, please listen to this: You do have to have real evidence before you say wild stuff like that. You really do. If you don’t then its not research. Its a Hollywood screenwriting class in how to compose lurid melodrama. And to somehow make Hoover a cringing victim of someone as low on the pecking order as Bush was at the time, well this shows just how ignorant of the power structure Hankey is. Do I need to add that, at the every end, Hankey tries to insinuate that George Bush Jr. was in on the murder of John Kennedy Jr.? Go ahead, look for yourself. If you dare.

In JFK 2, Hankey makes a rather large song and dance about nefarious notes and memos mentioning George Bush. In fact, he builds a 90 minute pseudo-documentary largely around one FBI memo. Which he then stretches beyond all normal meaning.

Yet, the Assassination Records Review Board declassified 2 million pages of documents after Oliver Stone’s film came out. Of which this film uses none. Why not? Its easy to figure out. Was Bush at Bethesda during Kennedy’s autopsy? Was he in contact with Clay Shaw, or David Ferrie or Guy Banister when Oswald was in New Orleans? Do any cables go to Bush, or have his name on them, before, during and after Oswald’s crucial Mexico City trip? Did Bush have any contact with the Warren Commission during its inquiry into Kennedy’s death? Did Bush have any association with Ruth and Michael Paine in 1963 or 1964? Did Bush have any influence in ratcheting up the Vietnam War in 1964 or 1965? Did Bush influence Johnson to stop Kennedy’s attempt to warm relations with Castro after Kennedy’s assassination? Nope to all these.

In 1963, Bush was a businessman living in Houston, running Zapata Offshore. He was the chairman of the Harris County Republican Organization, supporting Barry Goldwater and preparing for a 1964 run for the Senate against Democrat Ralph Yarborough. The idea that someone like that would be part of a high-level plot to kill President Kennedy, and would threaten to kill Hoover so he would then pen a memo concealing his non-involvement in the assassination, this is all nonsense. And you can dress that concoction up with references to Averell Harriman, you can inflate Bush’s father into the puppetmaster of Allen Dulles, you can falsely declare that Bush pulled Howard Hunt into the White House, or that he got John Connally his job as part of the Kennedy cover up, or that Skull and Bones was really behind it all etc etc etc. As they say a pig is a pig – even if you dress it up with mascara and rouge, and place earrings in the pig’s ears.

What the Hoover memo shows is that Bush was some kind of CIA asset in 1963. And that through his business dealings he was associated with some Cuban exiles. Just as many, many wealthy Repubicans were at that time e.g. Clare Booth Luce (the DRE), William Pawley (Eddie Bayo), and even some wealthy Democrats were, e.g. George Smathers (Eladio del Valle). When Bush said, upon becoming CIA Director for a year, that the had no previous association with the Agency, this was not true. In other words, he lied. Yawn.

This is a shoddy production that cannot stand up to scrutiny and therefore gives the JFK research community a black eye. Pity the country that has to choose between stuff like this and Gary Mack’s Inside the Target Car and The Ruby Connection. Because it is hard to say which is the worst. But besides that, there are three other things that are objectionable about it. First, by impasting George Bush on the JFK case by the same kind of Machiavellian means that Robert Blakey impasted the Mafia, it distorts the actual circumstances of the crime. I mean just think of what Hankey is saying here: George Bush, John Connally, Howard Hunt, Richard Nixon, Averil Harriman, and the Rockefellers, along with Allen Dulles, killed Kenendy. Talk about a diversion away from the facts. Second, this sensationalist approach deflects away from the true crimes committed by George Bush and his sons. Which are both plentiful and horrid. I mean how about stealing the 2000 election from Al Gore? That’s not big enough for Hankey and Russ Baker? Third, and this is something Hankey has tried to do, it somehow implies that the same people behind the JFK murder, were behind the 9/11 attacks. If you think I’m kidding, read this. Which is, again, preposterous.

But I will admit one thing. It is a lot more sexy, timely and high profile to follow Howard Hunt from Nixon to Bush than it is to follow him from Phillips to Helms. So if you are Alex Jones, making big bucks selling books and videos, then Hankey and others who have sprung up in the wake of 9/11 are more in tune with your marketing angle than say John Newman, Gaeton Fonzi, Lisa Pease and Jim Di Eugenio are.

There is nothing wrong with writing revisionist history. But if you choose to do so, you must be held to high standards of scholarship. Because if you are not, the tendency is to fall into an abyss of baseless thrill-seeking. Which is what happened here. And as long as the likes of John Hankey are floating around-and with demagogues like Alex Jones to market him to an unsuspecting public – legitimate concerns about legitimate conspiracies, like the Kennedy assassination and others, can be swept under the carpet and marginalized by enemies of the truth.

Knowingly or not, this is the function that John Hankey serves.

Hankey/DiEugenio Debate Murder Solved

DiEugenio’s Review Update of “Dark Legacy”

“Onwards and Downwards with John Hankey”

Coogan Reply to Fetzer at Deep Politics Forum

Master Class with John Hankey, Part 1

Master Class with John Hankey, Part 2

Master Class with John Hankey, Part 3

Master Class with John Hankey, Part 4

March 16, 2010
Rodger Remington, Biting the Elephant
Rodger Remington is a retired history professor. He taught for over thirty years at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Which, ironically, happens to be the home of former Warren Commissioner Gerald Ford. I say ironically because Remington is a relentless and acute critic of the Commission and their work.

After Rodger retired from teaching, he began to copy large segments of the Warren Commission volumes at a library. He brought them home and studied them minutely. Shocked and surprised by what he studied, he then started to write a series of books on the Commission’s findings. They are titled, in order: The People v. the Warren Report, The Warren Report, and Fallings Chips. All three were published between 2002 and 2005. He published his latest work, Biting the Elephant, in 2009. This last largely consists of his attempted correspondence with three Commission supporters: Gerald Posner, Ken Rahn, and Vincent Bugliosi. In each case, the author tried to convince the Commission supporters to co-write a book with him that would consist of a point-counterpoint of specific issues in the JFK case. In each instance, the official supporter ultimately declined. In an amusing Roger and Me kind of narrative, the author closely chronicles his prolific but futile attempt to engage the “Warrenati” in his literary enterprise.

Biting the Elephant also deals with a minute examination of some of the key witnesses the Commission used to place the shots from the upper floors of the Texas School Book Depository. These four are Howard Brennan, Amos Euins, Arnold Rowland, and James Worrell. His examination of the testimony of these four men is searching, nuanced, and thorough. This is important, of course, since the Commission and its supporters rely extensively on these four men – especially Brennan – to pin the murder of President Kennedy on Lee Harvey Oswald. Remington shows just how problematic their testimony is in that regard.

I

Remington begins his first chapter with the unwise words of Gerald Ford in Life magazine of 10/2/64. With a mixture of laughter and tears, the reader will recall that Ford described Howard Brennan like this: “The most important witness to appear before the Warren Commission in the 10 months we sat was a neat, Bible-reading steam fitter from Dallas. His name was H. L. Brennan, and he had seen Lee Harvey Oswald thrust a rifle from a sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository and shoot the President of the United States.” (Remington, p. 22)

Immediately afterwards, the author shows just how biased Ford must have been to write this. For Brennan told assistant counsel David Belin, “Well, as it appeared to me he was standing up and resting against the left window sill, with gun shouldered to his right shoulder, holding the gun with his left hand and taking positive aim and fired his last shot.” (ibid)

In his discussion of Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History, Remington points out that this is very hard to believe since it would necessitate a bullet going through a glass window. (Remington, p. 352; see also Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment, p. 83) Further, the author shows that, during his visit to Dallas for reconstruction purposes, Belin almost certainly falsified the positioning of Brennan in CE 477. Belin placed him on the wrong ledge of a retaining wall and facing the wrong street. As Rodger points out, the Zapruder frames featured on the cover of Reclaiming History show that Belin was wrong in this. Yet Bugliosi fails to point this out. (ibid, Remington)

The author points out something else worth noting about this curious witness that Ford was so enamored with. Brennan admitted that he didn’t see the first shot. He actually thought it was a firecracker. But he also admitted that he did not see the rifle explode for the second and third shots either. (WC Vol. III, p. 154) The author deduces that if we are to take this seriously, then Brennan must have been jerking his head back and forth between Kennedy being killed and the shooter in the TSBD – and with miraculous speed and anticipation. In reality, Brennan is not to be taken seriously. As Rodger writes, given these qualifications, “…there is absolutely no factual basis for identifying Howard Brennan as an eyewitness to the shooting…” (pgs. 35-36) Amen.

But I should add, there may be a reason that Brennan said what he did, in the way he did. As attorney Bob Tanenbaum has stated, if one goes with the Commission’s version of the so-called sniper’s nest, Brennan’s testimony is weird. He is supposed to be the source of the original description of the assassin’s height and weight. But as Tanenbaum notes: If Oswald was kneeling down behind that stack of boxes, how could Brennan have determined his clothing color, height and weight? (WC Vol. III p. 144) This may be why Brennan depicted him standing. But, if that was so, then why did he build the “sniper’s nest”? (It is true that Brennan also said he saw the man before the shooting, but then he said he was sitting on the sill. He later seemed to contradict himself by saying he did not see the window until after the first shot. WC Vol. III, pgs. 144, 154)

Remington leaves out another dubious point about this strange witness. After the assassination, Brennan went home and said he watched television. During which he viewed Oswald’s face twice. (WC Vol. III, p. 148) Although the Warren Report is confusing on this issue, it seems to say that he then viewed a line-up the evening of the murder and failed to pick out Oswald. (Warren Report, p. 145) David Belin realized this was a problem for boss Gerald Ford’s star witness. So when Brennan testified before the Commission, an excuse was forthcoming. He failed to make the identification that night because he was afraid a communist plot would endanger his family. (ibid,) It was that fear which held him back from making the positive ID at police headquarters the night of the 22nd.

In his book, No Case to Answer, Ian Griggs has made a detailed and valuable analysis of the Oswald line-ups (pgs. 81-91). In this regard, it is important to note some of the comments made by Brennan on the issue of the line-ups to the Commission. When asked by Belin if he recalled how many people were in the line-up, Brennan answered that he was not sure, possibly “seven more or less one.” (WC Vol. III, p. 147) Which would mean anywhere from 6-8. According to Griggs, there were never more than four men in any line-up. And in fact, there could not have been either 7 or 8. Why? Because the placement allotment allowed for only six people. (Griggs, p. 91) Belin then asked the “star witness” about the ethnic makeup of the line-up, “were they all white, or were there some Negroes in there, or what?” Brennan replied with, “I do not remember.” (ibid) Which is a startling answer. Why? This is 1963, at the height of King’s civil rights movement. The March on Washington occurred several months previous. The Klan was blowing up buildings and buses. Yet Brennan does not recall if there were any black men in the only line-up he ever saw in the most important murder ever in Dallas?

In this regard, Mark Lane and Harold Weisberg made two brief but telling comments about Brennan’s alleged presence at an Oswald line-up. Harold Weisberg wrote in Whitewash, “It is true that Brennan ‘viewed’ the line-up, although he appears to be the one person of whose presence the police have no written record.” (p. 90) Mark Lane echoed this in Rush to Judgment: “The Dallas police submitted to the Commission a document which they said incorporated the name of every person who attended any of the four line-ups at which Oswald was shown to witnesses. Brennan’s name, however, does not appear therein.” (Lane, p. 91) Odd that the Commission’s star witness should be notable by his absence.

Griggs thought all the above more than just odd. So the former British detective followed up on it. Griggs found out that although he could find particular times assigned to the four line-ups the police listed, there was no time that the Commission assigned to the one Brennan was allegedly at. (Griggs, p. 90) Griggs found a book – Judy Bonner’s Investigation of a Homicide – in which the author said that Brennan was at the same line-up as Barbara and Virginia Davis, who were witnesses to the Tippit murder. This line up took place on the 22nd at 7:55 PM. (Griggs, p. 88) Yet, when Griggs checked this out with Barbara Davis, she said she did not recall Brennan being there. (ibid, p. 92) Griggs also discovered that no other line-up witness mentioned seeing Brennan. (Griggs, p. 94)

The detective also found the police notes used to make up the official reports on the four line-ups. Brennan’s name is not listed there either. (ibid, p. 93) Neither is his name in any of the affidavits or testimony of the police officers who supervised the line-ups. (ibid)

I’ve saved the best for last. John McCloy asked Capt. Will Fritz if he was at the line-up attended by Brennan. Fritz said the following: “I don’t think I was present but I will tell you what, I helped Mr. Sorrels find the time that that man – we didn’t show that he was shown at all on our records, but Mr. Sorrels called me and said he did show him and wanted me to give him the time of the showup. I asked him to find out from his officers who were with Mr. Brennan the names of the people that we had there, and he gave me those two Davis sisters, and he said, when the told me that, of course, I could tell what showup it was and then I gave him the time.” (ibid, p. 94, italics added) This is the man directly supervising the police investigation. Yet he doesn’t know that 1.) Barbara Davis didn’t see Brennan, and 2.) He doesn’t care if Brennan is not listed by his own men as being at that line-up. If someone can find a piece of Commission testimony more openly indicating the cops cooperating with Washington in aid of a cover-up, I would like to see it.

Like Mary Bledsoe, Wesley Frazier, and others, the weight of the evidence indicates that Brennan was one of the Commission’s manufactured witnesses. If Oswald had participated in a real trial – which the Warren Commission did not even resemble – a skilled and knowledgeable defense attorney would have dismantled Brennan piece by piece. Which is probably why Oswald was killed.

One of the most interesting parts of Biting the Elephant is that Remington actually proffers a method as to how this happened. He writes of a little noted debate within the Commission over “preparation” of witnesses. This occurred in January of 1964. According to Remington the lawyers who were in favor of witness preparation were Arlen Specter, Joe Ball, and David Belin. They were opposed by assistant General Counsel Norman Redlich. Ultimately, Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin stepped in and decided the dispute in favor of the three assistant counsels. (Remington, p. 53) The understanding arrived at was that “preparations would be summarized in memoranda to be submitted to Redlich. Apparently, somewhere along the way, the requirement for memoranda gave way to the demands of limited time and they were not always provided.” (ibid) I can attest that Remington is right on this. I have seen some of the memoranda at the Dallas Public Library. Before a witness testified the Commission had notes arranged like bullet points as to what the witness would say on specific evidentiary points. It would seem that this is why witnesses were pre-interviewed – sometimes repeatedly – by the FBI, the Secret Service, and sometimes both. One can argue that this preparation occurs at trials today all the time. But at an actual trial, the witness is also cross-examined by the opposing lawyer. No rigorous cross-examination on Oswald’s behalf ever happened during the Commission hearings.

II

The three other witnesses that Remington minutely examines are Amos Euins, Arnold Rowland, and James Worrell.

Euins was a fifteen-year-old high school student in 1963. (p. 36) There are three serious problems his testimony contains for those who use him as a prosecution witness against Oswald. First, when one follows the course of his testimony from the day of the assassination, it is confusing as to whether or not he believes the man he saw in the Texas School Book Depository was white or black. (ibid, p. 39, p. 118) Second, Euins heard four shots. (p. 115) Third, the man he saw in the window had a bald spot in the back of his head – something hard to pin on Oswald. (pgs. 116, 118)

On the first point, Remington digs deeper into the record and finds out why Arlen Specter treated Euins rather gently. It turns out that on the day of the assassination, Euins told news director James Underwood that the man he saw in the TSBD with a rifle was black. Underwood pressed him on this point by asking him if he was certain. Euins replied that he was. (p. 126) Later on that day, he told the Dallas County Sheriff’s office that them man he saw was a white man. (ibid) Still later, when he was informally questioned by Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels, he said he was not sure if he was white or black. When he was asked if he could identify the man he saw if he viewed him again, Euins said, “No I couldn’t.” (ibid, p. 127)

Euins was apparently “prepared” in advance for his Commission appearance. In addition to being handled rather gingerly by Specter, he had a rationale for his jumping back and forth. He now said that the sheriffs’ office had not transcribed what he said accurately. He said he did not tell them the man was white. Only that he had a white spot on his head. (p. 118) He now told Specter that he could not really tell if the man was black or white. (ibid) The problem with this is that, right after the assassination, he told Sgt. Harkness that the man was black. (p. 125) This, of course, would pose serious problems for the Commission since it would eliminate Oswald as the man Euins saw.

But Remington goes further with Euins. He questions how Euins could have seen a “white spot” on top of the gunman’s head from his vantage point on the ground? (p. 127) The author thinks that Euins picked up this detail from another witness, perhaps James Worrell. For Remington, the capper in all this is an FBI report filed about a week after the shooting. The boy’s stepfather told the agent that the boy had told him what he saw but that “he was not sure whether Euins had seen the shooting or whether he had just imagined it.” (pgs. 126-27)

Although a bit older than Euins, Arnold Rowland was also a high school student. But as Remington points out, Specter did not treat him nearly as gently as he did Euins. Why? Because Rowland’s testimony posed serious problems for the Commission, in more ways than one. First, he said he saw a person with a rifle in a window other than the designated Sniper’s Nest window. Second, he said he saw a person other than Oswald in the Sniper’s Nest window prior to the assassination.

Star witness Brennan said he saw a man with a rifle in the southeast corner of the TSBD. Since this was the window on the sixth floor which also contained the peculiar box arrangement and in which the expended three shells were found, the Commission insisted that the assassin fired from there. But Rowland said that he saw a man with a rifle in the opposite window, the southwest one. Further, he said he saw a black man in the southeast corner window, the one the Commission and Brennan said Oswald was firing from. (pgs. 54-55) Consequently, the Commission decided to start an FBI inquiry into Rowland’s background in order to discredit him. To poke holes in his credibility, they first said that although Rowland pointed out the man in the opposite window to his wife, she said she did not see him. The actual reason for this was that she was near-sighted and did not have her glasses on (p. 63) Another way the Commission went after him was to say that he did not tell the police about the African-American man in the “Oswald” window. Yet, as Remington points out, Rowland did tell the FBI about him the next day. The FBI told him this detail was not important. (p. 74) In all, the FBI visited him seven times and he signed four different hand-written notes. (ibid) This included visiting him at work and at his mother-in-law’s house. (pgs. 75, 79) Specter even questioned Rowland about his grades and his IQ, obviously in hope of tripping him up.

The point Remington is making in all this is the one made many years ago by Sylvia Meagher: the Commission had a clear double standard in their investigation. If a witness told them something helpful with their preconceived verdict, he was treated gently. If what he said was not helpful to them, he was treated roughly. And if that witness did not get the message from the constant visits of the FBI and Secret Service, then Arlen Specter gave him a prolonged third degree grilling. As he did with Rowland.

James Worrell was more of a mixed bag for the Commission. Like Euins, Worrell said he heard four shots. (pgs. 101, 115) Like Euins, he said he heard them from the upper floors of the TSBD, either the fifth or sixth. (p. 111)

But here begins the serious official problems with Worrell as a Commission witness. As Remington points out, in the Doubleday version of the Warren Report, there is a photo of Worrell in Washington walking to the Commission HQ to be questioned. He is with three other eyewitnesses: Robert Jackson, Euins, and Rowland. In the picture, Worrell is holding a pair of glasses in a position that suggests he took them off at the photographer’s request. (p. 112) What makes this incident even more fascinating is a fact the author notes next. During the hearings that day, when Worrell’s companions were questioned, each one was asked about the quality of their eyesight. Jackson replied his vision was a perfect 20/20. Rowland said his was better than 20/20. Euins said “I can see real good at a distance, but I can’t see at real close range.” (p. 112. This, of course, would be fine for the Commission’s purposes.) As the author notes, Worrell was not asked about the quality of his eyesight.

The final problem with Worrell was contained in his affidavit executed on November 23rd. There he said that during the shooting, he “got scared and ran from the location. I ran from Elm Street to Pacific Street on Houston.” There, he stopped to catch his breath and looked back at the building: “I saw a w/m, 5’8″ to 5′ 10″, dark hair, average weight for height, dark shirt or jacket open down front, no hat, didn’t have anything in hands come out of the building and run in the opposite direction from me.” (p. 111) In other words, it appears that Worrell saw someone running out of the back of the Depository right after the shooting. Which would seem to suggest a conspiracy. As does his testimony about hearing four shots.

So what is the net sum of these four witnesses? The answer is: very little, if anything. Only an inveterate Commission zealot could still believe in Howard Brennan today. As I said, he is a manufactured witness. Euins said he could not identify the man he saw if he saw him again, and did not even know if he was white or black. And his own stepfather doubted his word. Rowland’s testimony actually exonerates Oswald. Worrell’s testimony indicates a marksman in the fifth or sixth floor firing four shots. And then suggests either he, or an accomplice, escaped out the back of the building. Needless to say, at a real trial, in a true adversary proceeding, the defense would look forward to cross-examining these four witnesses.

III

The second part of the book is about the author’s interactions with three Magic Bullet fantasists: Gerald Posner, Ken Rahn, and Vincent Bugliosi. Remington outlines his attempts to get any of the three to co-write a book with him debating the merits of the evidence in the JFK case. In the case of Posner, the Case Closed author never wrote him back. He and Rahn had a rather interesting correspondence before the former college professor decided to back out.

The most interesting communications Remington had with the Magic Bullet crowd was with Bugliosi. Remington notes that in his bloated tome Reclaiming History, the former prosecutor complains that Warren Commission assistant counsel Arlen Specter never answered a letter he wrote to him. Remington then asks us to consider the following in light of that complaint. In February of 2008, after digesting Bugliosi’s giant volume, he penned a letter to the Single Bullet backer. He asked him to cooperate in his book venture. He also listed six pertinent questions they could debate. A couple of these were: 1.) Why was Dr. George Burkley never examined as a witness by the Warren Commission? And 2.) Why were the media records of the 11/22/63 Parkland Hospital press conference never entered into evidence by the Commission? Bugliosi never responded in writing. But he did call Remington on February 20th. (pgs. 304-05) He said he had no time to answer in writing. And during his twenty minutes on the phone, the former prosecutor never directly answered any of his queries. He tried to discount them with a classic lawyer’s brush off: He said they “didn’t go anywhere”.

After this rather dismissive call, Remington wrote the attorney again on March 3rd. He got no reply. He then wrote him five more times in April and May. There was no reply to any of these. (ibid, p. 309) So, on the evidence of this record, the Single Bullet Fantasy crowd has severe reservations about confronting its critics on a level field.

In relation to this, I must bring up a point that Remington uncovered about the ersatz London trial that Bugliosi unwisely chose to participate in. Unwise in two senses. First, because it did not in any way resemble a real trial. And secondly, because in spite of that fact, the author took it seriously. And that misjudgment started him down the path to Reclaiming History. Jerry Rose commented after seeing the program that the roster of witnesses was heavily loaded in favor of the prosecution. (The Third Decade, Vol. 3 No. 1 pgs. 16-24) The producers found room for people like Tom Tilson and Paul O’Connor, yet they could not find room for crucial people like Sylvia Odio and James Humes. Further, as Rose notes, the prosecution presented 14 witnesses, twice as many as the defense’s seven. But in spite of all that, Remington reveals that the jury’s first verdict was 7-5 for acquittal. And he got this right from the source, producer Mark Redhead. (p. 303)

Having been in the jury room for more than one trial, I understand that when you have that kind of vote, it is very hard to overcome each and every juror and get a unanimous verdict. Which was reportedly done here. Clearly, someone in the jury room had to have been riding herd, or there may have been outside interference. (It is clear from all the above, plus what Bugliosi revealed in his book, that the show was slanted for the prosecution.) Remington reveals that the man riding herd may have been the foreman. Because when he interviewed him, he disagreed with the producer Redhead. He said the first vote was 10-2 in favor of conviction. (ibid)

In fact, the highlight of this second part of the book is the careful but major surgery the author performs on Reclaiming History. Rodger’s approach is different from mine in my multi-part series on the same subject. Remington goes little further than the established record of the Warren Commission. He incorporates little or nothing that was discovered in later years. But even on that ground, he scores some heavy blows against Reclaiming History. One case in point is Bugliosi’s taking to task Mark Lane’s depiction of the famous Katzenbach memorandum. This was the document issued by the acting Attorney General on 11/25 which essentially said that Oswald was the sole killer and the official story must enunciate that clearly. This was before any official Washington inquiry was in process.

Bugliosi scores Lane for not quoting the first part of the document. The prosecutor then says that this part of the memo states that: “It is important that all of the facts surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination be made public.” The implication being that the memo is not as one sided against Oswald as Lane makes it out to be. Remington notes that the italics are Bugliosi’s, not Katzenbach’s. (Remington p. 324) Bugliosi does not specifically note this, and therefore uses it to hammer home his point against Lane. But even worse, although it is true that the above words are the first in the memo, they are not the only words in the sentence. The full sentence reads as follows: “It is important that all of the facts surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination be made public in a way which will satisfy people in the United States and abroad that all the facts have been told and that a statement to this effect be made now.” The very next sentence is: “The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin: that he did not have confederates who are still at large: and that the evidence was such hat he would have been convicted at trial.” The rest of the five paragraphs in the memo are in the same vein as statement two. (See page 326) Remington thus shows that Bugliosi has quoted selectively in order to make a manufactured point against the man he calls the “dean of distortion”. (p. 324) In any full reading of the memo, it can be fairly said that it was Bugliosi, not Lane, who was doing the distorting. And the tendency to selectively quote, as I have stated and shown elsewhere, is a very serious problem with Reclaiming History.

Remington also brings out another absolutely puzzling point about Bugliosi’s rather weird attitude toward central evidence in the JFK case. Ever since Cyril Wecht revealed it, the fact that President Kennedy’s brain is missing from the National Archives has posed a real mystery as to this case. And on two levels. First, there is no real explanation as to how and why it is absent. Several authors have made educated guesses as to how this disappearance occurred. But no one has come close to proving their case. The other point that makes this so tantalizing is that, as Wecht has noted, the missing brain is absolutely central to solving the mystery as to what precisely happened to President Kennedy. In a real autopsy, the brain would have been properly sectioned and the path of any bullets through it could have been discerned. In other words, a skilled and experienced pathologist – like say Wecht or Milton Halpern of New York – could have done much to show us how many bullets hit Kennedy’s skull and from which direction(s). Because the brain is absent and because the autopsy was so deficient in this regard, this fundamental point is in hot dispute.

But it’s even worse than that. As authors like David Mantik and Doug Horne have pointed out, it is hard to believe that the brain depicted by artist Ida Dox in the House Select Committee volumes is actually Kennedy’s brain. Why? Because her renditions depict a brain that is almost fully intact. Yet, many witnesses at the Bethesda autopsy testified to seeing a brain that was blasted away, and therefore did not in any way present an intact brain. Further, on the evening of the 22nd, the brain withdrawn from Kennedy’s skull was not weighed. Which is startling, since it is standard autopsy procedure to weigh the major organs after they are withdrawn. Yet, days later, when a weight was assigned to Kennedy’s brain, it weighed in at 1500 grams. This is also startling. Because the top end weight is about 1400 grams. Autopsy fantasists like Michael Baden try to explain this discrepancy by saying the fixing mixture the brain was soaked in could have added the weight. What he does not allow for is the fact that what was being soaked, by most accounts, was a partial brain. (For a good short treatment of this subject see David Mantik’s essay in Murder in Dealey Plaza, pgs. 261-64).

Now in any serious, intelligent, and honest discussion of this matter, all these points would have to be enumerated to the reader. And, considering the nature of the evidence, one would have to seriously lament the absence of the brain and the serious failings of the pathologists in this regard. Finally, putting the best face on it, one would conclude that the evidentiary record is hard to decipher.

How does Bugliosi handle this crucial matter? Like this: “One of the very biggest mysteries concerning missing evidence in the Kennedy assassination, one that continues to fascinate, and one that may never be solved, but fortunately, one that doesn’t’ need to be – since it has mostly academic value – is what happened to President Kennedy’s brain?” (p. 335, Bugliosi’s italics.)

Is Bugliosi saying what I think he is saying here? That the opportunity to actually dissect bullet tracks through the brain, to photograph those tracks, to preserve tissue slides containing both tissue and lead etc. – that this was all an academic matter? Is he really saying that it had no forensic value in a murder case at all? Even though the murder was accomplished by gunfire and the fatal wound was in the head? How does one explain such a stance? Except that if this is what he is saying, no wonder he would not answer Rodger’s questions in writing.

In the midst of his discussion of these two important matters – the Katzenbach memo, and the missing brain – Rodger digresses into an enlightening discussion of different modes of finding truth in a complex matter. (Which, if you can believe it, Bugliosi believes the Kennedy case is not. He says the case is simple. If you can reduce the importance of the missing brain to an academic matter, then one can say the case is simple.) Quoting modern philosopher Richard Rorty, the author delineates two ways of pursuing the truth. If we believe that such a thing is attainable, one must grant that the truth is something that must be found. Yet, what men do with this truth is then made by the words one assigns to it. As we have seen in these two instances with Reclaiming History, Bugliosi does a lot more in making the truth than in finding it.

IV

For me the high point of the section on Bugliosi, perhaps the peak of the entire book, was the author’s analysis and takedown of Bugliosi’s 53 evidentiary points with which he convicts Oswald. In my series on Reclaiming History, I ignored these since I thought many of them to be – as we will see – rather silly. But academic historian that he is, Remington actually had the discipline and patience to analyze them all.

One of the things he immediately comes up with is rather startling. Bugliosi’s first nine evidentiary points rely upon the testimony of either Wesley Frazier, Marina Oswald, or Charles Givens. For instance, for his first point, Bugliosi says that prior to 11/21, Oswald had hitched a ride with Wesley Frazier to see his wife only on Fridays. Yet, on the 21st, he did it on Thursday. The prosecutor’s inevitable conclusion is that Oswald went to the Paines on Thursday to pick up the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. As Rodger points out, the car-sharing idea did not originate with Oswald, but with Frazier inviting Oswald to join him. If that invitation had not been extended, the car rides may not have happened. (p. 341) And the total number of rides previous to the 21st was only four. Not a great sample to establish a defining pattern with. Third, Oswald had missed the previous weekend visit and then quarreled with his wife over the phone on Monday night. Therefore he may have been trying a surprise visit to patch things up with his wife. (ibid).

Now, if you read Part 6 (especially sections 2 and 3) of my Reclaiming History review, you will see that Wesley Frazier and his brown paper package story has become highly questionable today. And its questionable just about every step of the way. And because of other information about how the Dallas Police searched his house, detained him, and then gave him a midnight polygraph that had him on the brink of hysteria, Frazier has now been exposed as a compromised witness. Which explains why he is guarded today by the likes of Hugh Aynseworth and his colleague in cover up Dave Perry. None of the myriad points I enumerated in that review matters a whit to Bugliosi. He uses Frazier’s coerced testimony and the dubious brown package story for six of his first nine points of indictment. When, in reality, any intelligent , objective observer would tell the prosecutor that if he presented Frazier, Marina, and Givens as his first three witnesses at a real trial, with a defense lawyer like Carol Hewett waiting for them, there would be three extremely long faces exiting the witness chair after she got done with them. Four if you counted Bugliosi’s.

At point number ten, Bugliosi says that Oswald was play acting when he asked Junior Jarman on 11/22 why there was a crowd gathering below them. Here, the prosecutor is indulging himself in mind reading powers in order to transform something exculpatory into something culpable. Then it gets worse. For point number eleven is none other than Howard Brennan! Point thirteen is this: that Oswald was purchasing a Coke on the second floor when Officer Baker encountered him shows he descended from the sixth floor because he usually drank Dr. Pepper there! (Bugliosi, p.958. I looked this one up in Reclaiming History, since I had a hard time believing the prosecutor took it seriously. He actually does.)

But further, Bugliosi here says that Oswald placed himself on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting. I didn’t recall anyone saying this before, although perhaps they did. So, like Rodger, I looked up Bugliosi’s source note. I then understood why no one else had used it. The prosecutor was using a summary of one of Oswald’s interrogations while in custody. So for Bugliosi to say that Oswald himself said this is s real stretch. For the simple reason that there is no stenographic record or tape in evidence for these sessions. What we have is Dallas Police, FBI or Secret Service agents’ renditions. But in this case, it’s worse. Harry Holmes was a postal inspector who doubled as an FBI informant. Which is why he was the only non-law enforcement officer there with Oswald. Holmes is the guy who did a lot of cover for the Commission as to how Oswald could have picked up his rifle without the proper papers being signed in order to receive a firearm under an alias. (See John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee, p. 452) Armstrong actually thinks it was Holmes who helped put together the phony money order for the rifle, a money order that is severely out of numerical order for the date it was allegedly purchased. (ibid, pgs. 463-64)

Holmes’ Oswald interrogation summary was not submitted until December 17th, almost a month after the murder. Then, under oath, he said he heard Oswald say things that others did not hear him say. For when he was examined by the Commission, Holmes said Oswald had admitted he had gone to Mexico before returning to Dallas. (ibid, p. 480) Even David Belin was taken aback by this. He asked Holmes if this was something he picked up from reading the papers, or did Oswald say it himself. Holmes said Oswald stated it. The obvious question, which was not asked by Belin, then becomes: Why is that rather salient fact not in your report, especially since it was finalized on December 17th? And why did no one else hear Oswald say it when you said he did? Holmes also lied about Oswald discussing his postal money order that day. For neither Will Fritz nor two Secret Service agents in his presence on 11/24 recalled Oswald saying anything about a postal money order. (ibid) Yet, Holmes is the man that Bugliosi relies upon for Oswald’s allegedly self-incriminating statements. Without telling us that Holmes appears to have made up other self-incriminating statements.

But it’s even worse than that. For one when turns to Holmes’ summary as printed in the Warren Report, it does not say Oswald was on the sixth floor. It specifically says he did not indicate the floor he was on at the time of the shooting. (WR, p. 636) And then comes the clincher. When one reads this section of the Holmes report, it becomes clear that the FBI informant is embroidering his story to jibe with the evolving tale of the infamous Charles Givens. For the whole thing about “You go on down and send the elevator back up…” is there in Holmes’ summary. This whole Givens flip-flopping charade was exposed by Sylvia Meagher back in 1971 in the Texas Observer. (8/13/71) On the day of the assassination, the TSBD worker said he had seen Oswald around 11:50 in the so-called domino room on the first floor. Ten days later, on December 2nd, he changed his story for the Secret Service. He now said he saw Oswald upstairs with a clipboard on the sixth floor at around 11:45. As Givens left, Oswald told him to send an elevator back up for him. After that, he never saw Oswald again. Both stories cannot be true. But clearly, Holmes heard about the second story through his FBI grapevine. And he is now trying to create posthumous corroboration by Oswald, which again, no one else heard. Yet Bugliosi uses this obvious concoction as evidence against Oswald.

Remington summarizes the entire list as follows: of the 53, seven of them are of the “we know” variety. (Remington , p. 438) That is, things that Bugliosi assumes to be a fact, which actually are not e.g. like Oswald owning the rifle in evidence. Another 27 instances consist of the “he said she said” variety (including expert testimony that would have been challenged in court.) With the above general and specific sampling of the 53 points, so much for Bugliosi’s claim of Oswald’s guilt beyond all doubt. (Reclaiming History, p. 953)

V

Remington’s critiques of Rahn and Posner are not quite up to his discussion of Bugliosi, but they are still worthwhile. Posner’s pile of junk Case Closed, has been so riddled full of holes that it’s almost not worth the effort to attack anymore: it’s like making the rubble bounce. But still, Rodger makes some interesting and telling points. He notes that, in his defense of the single bullet theory, Posner spent much more time explaining away the timing problem i.e. getting off the three shots in the space of a few seconds, than he did on the ballistics and trajectory problems involved. In fact he spent more time on the former than the latter two combined. (Remington, p. 135) Rodger is also good with the alchemy Posner pulls off with the Willis sisters. If one will recall, Posner built part of his ridiculous theory about an early shot – one before the limousine disappeared behind the sign – around Rosemary Willis turning at the sound of a first shot. A shot that missed. Posner sourced this to an interview Rosemary Willis did in 1979 with one Marcia Smith-Durk. Yet no particular venue is given for this interview. (ibid p. 163) Another source given is from a newspaper that had gone out of business by the time Case Closed was published. But that interview was also from 1979. (ibid) Why nothing in 1963 or 1964? What Posner does not tell you is that Phil Willis had two daughters who were with him in Dealey Plaza that day. And it was Linda Kay Willis who testified in 1964 before the Commission. When she did so testify, she told Wesley Liebeler that it was the second shot that missed. Which effectively kills Posner’s theory, since Oswald could not have hit Kennedy before he went behind the sign since the branches of an oak tree interfered with his sight. Which is probably why Posner didn’t mention the 1964 Willis testimony.

Finally, Remington points out a rather artful use of ellipsis by Posner. In his discussion of Howard Brennan, Posner consulted the posthumously published memoir by the Commission’s star witness. This was done with a co-author and was entitled Eyewitness to History. In describing a man Brennan saw by looking up at the sixth floor of the TSBD, Posner quotes the following: “His face was almost expressionless…He seemed preoccupied.” Ellipsis can be used and defended if there are only a few words left out of a quote, or even a couple of sentences. But Remington notes that, in this instance, Posner eliminated five paragraphs! But further, what he eliminated mildly suggests a conspiracy. For in what is left out, Brennan is describing a sealed off area of Dealey Plaza toward a side entrance of the TSBD. This side entrance is described as being off Houston Street, toward the rear of the building. The police had sealed the area off with saw horses and forced all cars to move out. Yet Brennan observed a car in that vicinity with a white male driver behind the wheel. As he looked, he wondered why that car was allowed to stay there. What made Brennan even more curious was that the front wheel of the car was pulled sharply away from the curb and the driver had his door partly open. Brennan wondered if this was so the car could make a quick U turn while departing. Brennan closes the five paragraphs cut by Posner with this: “As I was watching the man in the car, I saw a policeman who was on foot walk over towards the car and began talking to the man in a friendly, laughing manner. So far as I could see, there was no attempt to get the man to move his car, and after chatting for a minute or so, the policeman walked back to his post.” (ibid p. 173)

Brennan closed out this segment by saying that he never saw any accounting of this “mystery car” anyplace. And thanks to Posner’s editing, the reader of Case Closed would not know about it either. Thanks to Rodger, we do.

The discussion of Rahn is wryly funny. Rahn had by far the longest correspondence with Rodger about co-writing the book on the Warren Commission. They actually exchanged a number of written communications. But ultimately, Rahn backed out. (Remington, p. 211) Rahn, of course, is the man who has always advocated Oswald’s guilt through the now discredited Neutron Activation Analysis test. Rodger wants him to answer one simple question: “How can it be determined that the famous CE 399 was fired that day?” (ibid, p. 201) In all their communications, Rahn never directly answered this question. He tried to build a negative argument that it would have been difficult to plant another bullet. But he never directly answered Rodger’s question. So Rodger asked the question a different way: “How can NAA establish that the bullet in the Single Bullet Theory was actually fired at the time of the assassination?” (ibid, p. 209) This question was never directly answered either.

From here, the author details the rather weird attempt by Rahn and his partner Larry Sturdivan to get an article about NAA published in an academic journal. They could not get one published in an American journal. Probably because the controversy over the issue was now heating up with the work of men like Pat Grant and Cliff Spiegelman. So they got their work published in a journal based in Budapest, Hungary. And they did it in 2004, the year before the FBI announced they were discontinuing the NAA test. (ibid p. 252)

The main part of Remington’s discussion of Rahn, deals with his attempt to get a counter-article published in the same journal. Which he ultimately failed to do. He was only allowed to write a brief letter to the editor. And Rahn was allowed to answer it. Then, in 2006, Eric Randich and Pat Grant got their milestone essay published in the Journal of Forensic Sciences. This was followed in 2007 by the work of Cliff Spiegelman and Bill Tobin, for which Spiegelman won an award. (See here.) So in retrospect, the desperate attempt by Rahn and Sturdivan to get their paper published in Budapest, seems like a Hail Mary pass with time expired in the game. And as Rodger points out, the issue in which Sturdivan and Rahn were published in was a tribute to Vincent Guinn! The man who first used (actually misused) the test to convict Oswald for the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

As to the quality of the scholarship within, Rodger gives us a taste of it through some quotes attributed to Sturdivan. These are some of his points:
1. NAA eliminates all conspiracy theories that involved additional shooters.
2. NAA proved the rifle was not planted
3. NAA proved that the precise locations of JFK’s head wounds and back wounds were not needed to solve the case
4. It supported the Single Bullet Theory
5. It knit together the physical evidence into an airtight case against Oswald, thereby putting the matter to rest.
Quite a series of claims in light of the fact that the alleged science of NAA was soon be negated by the two teams of researchers named above. To the point that the FBI and courts will not use it again. It is further rendered ridiculous by the work of John Hunt, Gary Aguilar, and Josiah Thompson, which proves that CE 399 was not fired that day, and the bullet found at Parkland Hospital was later switched. (See my review of Reclaiming History, part 7, Section 3) All this shows just how out of touch with the facts Rahn and Sturdivan really are.

Rodger Remington’s work is not for everyone. He is a classic type of researcher in that he stays within the boundaries of the Warren Commission materials. There is no discussion of Kennedy and Vietnam, of Oswald and the CIA, of Ruby and the Mafia etc. There is no development of the revelations of the ARRB. But if you can allow for that, it’s a rewarding book. As for me, there is no amount of dirt that can cover the withering corpse of the Warren Commission. So any further burial is always welcome.
March 16, 2010
David Aaronovitch, Voodoo Histories
An Incurious Man: David Aaronovitch’s Voodoo Histories

On June 10, 1963, John F. Kennedy explained the foreign policy of the United States like so:

World peace, like community peace, does not require that each man love his neighbor – it requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement. And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever. However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events will often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors. [1]

On November 26, 1963, Lyndon Johnson expressed American foreign policy a little differently:

It remains the central object of the United States in South Vietnam to assist the people and Government of that country to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy …

We should concentrate our own efforts, and insofar as possible we should persuade the Government of South Vietnam to concentrate its efforts, on the critical situation in the Mekong Delta. This concentration should include not only military but political, economic, social, educational and informational effort. We should seek to turn the tide not only of battle but of belief, and we should seek to increase not only the control of hamlets but the productivity of this area, especially where the proceeds can be held for the advantage of anti-Communist forces. [2]

As historians, we might ask ourselves if there were any significant events that occurred in between these two events that might explain the difference. And we might, after a moment, think of the Kennedy assassination. However, if we were to do so, as logical as that might seem, we would be placing ourselves in opposition to most mainstream history of the last 47 years. Mainstream historians tend to ignore the significance of these changes, and some (like Noam Chomsky) have even argued that Kennedy was simply lying on June 10th and that JFK’s foreign policy would have been the same as Johnson. Recent revelations from various members of Kennedy’s cabinet have given the lie to this viewpoint, however.

There is another possible position to take on this issue. One could, in principle, say that it is simply insanity to even ask the question. Asking the question is already to take leave of one’s senses, to lose touch with reality. That is David Aaronovitch’s position.

His book Voodoo Histories: the Role of Conspiracy Theory in Modern History has a contradiction built right into the title. According to Aaronovitch, conspiracy theories play no role in modern history, except as diversion and nonsense. In order to make his case, the author discusses several different conspiracy theories from all over the world. And it is here where we find the real problem of his book.

ORGANIZATION

Books of this type (Gerald Posner’s Case Closed, Vincent Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History and so forth) generally rely on amateur psychology, failure to address the evidence, omission and falsification, and just plain illogic. Voodoo Histories has elements of all these things, although it far surpasses those works in terms of literary execution. However, the most important thing to note about the book is its organizational structure. In succession, the main topics of each chapter are the following: (1) The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, (2) Leon Trotsky and the Moscow Trials; (3) McCarthyism; (4) JFK; (5) the murder of Hilda Murrell; (6) the Da Vinci code; (7) 9/11 Truth; (8) the suicide or murder of Dr. David Kelly; and (9) the Obama birth certificate flap.

Let us first note that these topics are, to put it mildly, eccentric. Mixed into these various broad topics are: the alleged murder of Princess Diana, the moon landing hoax, Holocaust denial, etc. He does show restraint in not discussing UFOs or Elvis, but virtually every other conspiracy theory gets addressed at some point. This is quite clever. With an assortment like this, one’s head is likely to be nodding in agreement at some point – maybe most of them. And there is the occasional fact that one might find intriguing; for example, I was surprised to learn that two-thirds of alien abduction “victims” are women. Granted, I’d never given the matter any thought before, but that is sociologically interesting.

Most of these chosen targets are easy. The Protocols, among other things, were enthusiastically endorsed by Henry Ford. Ford’s anti-Semitism was such that he received the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest honor that could be given to a non-German, by Adolf Hitler in 1938. [3] Unfortunately, this document remains relevant in our time, as there are some right-wing groups who cling to it, sometimes with the caveat that they don’t really mean the Jews as such, or not all Jews, or only the international banking Jews. People like Henry Makow and Alex Jones take the documents seriously, as did the late William Cooper. [4] In a case like this, the “conspiracy” plays second fiddle to the real issue, which is pure anti-Semitism. And though Aaronovitch’s discussion of the Protocols brings nothing new to the table, the subject matter is certainly worthy of attention.

However, of the other topics addressed in his book, there are really only two that concern the vast majority of political researchers: JFK and 9/11. The Obama birth certificate flap is an extension of various right-wing fantasies, although calling this a “conspiracy theory” is a bit of a stretch. I’m not sure how many people believed that the birth certificate had been manipulated with the foreknowledge that one day Obama would be a presidential candidate – hopefully very few. The Moscow Trials, while interesting historically, are not terribly relevant to today’s world. McCarthyism is a curious topic for the author to address, but dealing with it in any detail would require a much longer essay in itself. However, there are many contradictions and problems in dealing with McCarthy, and Aaronovitch doesn’t really go into them; he takes the standard position that McCarthy’s delusionary conspiracy theory ran out of control. There are two British murder investigations, into Hilda Murrell, an activist, and Dr. David Kelly, who had inconvenient information. While the interest in both cases is understandable (Murrell’s body was allegedly in her garden for four days before being found, and Dr. Kelly’s death had numerous curious details), the historical impact of these deaths (with all due respect) is minimal. Meanwhile, the Da Vinci code is shoehorned incongruously into the book, a topic for which the author has only disdain (his title for this chapter is “Holy Blood, Holy Grail, Holy Shit,” which sums up his attitude).

We can therefore see, looking at this organization, that there is an immediate flaw in the conception, for there are an infinite number of ways to organize any given dataset. Aaronovitch, for his part, has selected a structure with two great benefits: (1) much of the material will superficially appear to support his thesis, and (2) it guarantees that readers will find some things to agree with, even if they dispute other sections of the book – an excellent marketing strategy.

Unfortunately, his decision is hardly satisfactory to anyone serious. Most political researchers, in doing analysis of certain significant events, discuss JFK, MLK, 9/11, and numerous other incidents of major world importance. But if one were to take the approach of, say, People magazine, one might write a book and include JFK alongside Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana. That is, to say, in the world of commercial tabloids, or a star-obsessed perspective, the connection between the people or events involved ceases to be political. It rests, instead, on the fact that they are famous. “What makes the deaths of JFK, Marilyn Monroe, and Princess Diana so fascinating is the victims’ iconic status and their youth,” writes the author. [5]

Note how reductive this point of view becomes. All information exists, in the word chosen by John McAdams, as a series of “factoids.” Aaronovitch’s book, by endorsing this structure, is a Procrustean Bed equalizing all inquiry. As in the game Trivial Pursuit, the questions “Who Shot J.R.?” and “Who Shot JFK?” are worth the same piece of pie. No one whose interest is truth can afford to take this approach to what amount to the most serious historical subjects of our time.

JFK

By and large, this is not an evidential book. He doesn’t address the major assassinations in any detail, apart from Kennedy. His entire take on RFK is summed up as: “And if you thought JFK had been killed by ‘them,’ then why not his brother, gunned down in California in 1968?” [6] Alas, in his chapter on the JFK assassination, although he does not rely on simple rhetoric for his attacks, the evidence he sites is vastly out of date. There is nothing new in his discussion, particularly in light of Bugliosi’s recent Reclaiming History. If Bugliosi can’t prove the Warren Commission thesis in 2600 pages, then Aaronovitch will not be able to do so in 30 or so. However, he at least gives it a try, which is more than we can say about his assessment of the other political murders.

Aaronovitch’s point of view on Oswald is as follows:

If one reads the Warren Report, the circumstantial evidence that Oswald was the lone gunman seems overwhelming. He worked at the Texas School Book Depository, where, on the sixth floor, after the shooting, his rifle was discovered inside an improvised sniper’s nest. People had seen a man at the sixth-floor window, had seen the rifle barrel, had heard the shots. Oswald was the only employee unaccounted for after the shooting, and he was picked up shortly afterward in a cinema, having just shot a policeman looking for someone of his description. The words ‘slam dunk’ come to mind. [7]

Did I say the author was trying? OK, maybe not so much.

Without going into the evidence for all of this (see Jim DiEugenio’s book on Bugliosi [8] for a detailed rundown, as arguing with Aaronovitch is both redundant and silly given the scale of the other battle), note that he just restates the Warren Commission’s conclusions. When one looks into the detailed evidence, the case falls apart. Aaronovitch isn’t going to volunteer that the rifle was ordered under a different name, that the FBI initially failed to get prints off the rifle, that the FBI’s own nitrate test cleared Oswald of the murder, that the rifle changed shape three times before settling into the form of a Manlicher-Carcano, and that the State would never have been able to make a case against Oswald for shooting the policeman J.D. Tippit, much less JFK. “The detail is overwhelming,” he complains. [9] Yes, it is; such is the price for doing the investigative work. Unfortunately, if you don’t do the work, you are going to end up ineffectually repeating the same balderdash that nobody believed in 1963.

And, of course, he does. He calls the idea that Oswald shot at General Edwin Walker “an incontrovertible fact,” an embarrassing statement which he may want to delete in future editions. [10] He says of Norman Mailer’s book Oswald’s Tale that “It is suggestive that one of the eminent Americans who initially advocated the notion of conspiracy changed his mind when he began to study Oswald the man.” [11] It is indeed suggestive of the fact that Mailer desperately needed money to help him with the IRS, but apart from that it is unclear just how liberal Mailer was in the first place. Having gone through a substantial amount of personal correspondence located at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, I can say that his political views were not consistent with his public statements; among other things, one of his best friends was G. Gordon Liddy.

The rest of his short JFK discussion, encased in a chapter entitled “Dead Deities,” will convince no one but the already convinced. And anyone convinced by his evidence doesn’t understand the concept.

9/11

Aaronovitch’s take on 9/11 is somewhat depressing. It is depressing because I am in the unfortunate position of having to agree with much of it. This is less a triumph on the author’s part and more a reflection on how disastrous the various truth movements have become. As a result of the large-scale illiteracy infecting those who would question the events of 9/11, many ridiculous notions have become commonplace memes. Aaronovitch goes right for them.

He describes a conversation with the alleged MI5 whistleblower David Shayler, who has been promoted by Alex Jones and Webster Tarpley, among others, in which he makes the absurd statement that a “cigar-shaped missile” struck the World Trade Center. [12] He invokes Dylan Avery’s popular film Loose Change, itself an easy target because of numerous factual errors and its endorsement of the no-plane-hit-the-Pentagon theory. This leads naturally into the work of Thierry Meyssan, who invented the no-plane theory, and then Aaronovitch uses this same theory to undermine David Ray Griffin, who gave and continues to give credence to it. Meyssan, of course, has been linked to Michael Collins Piper, and to the right-wing American Free Press and Christopher Bollyn. [13] The anti-Jewish nature of AFP is apparent to anyone familiar with the publication, which is also a trait of Eric Hufschmid, who produced one of the first films about 9/11 called Painful Questions. There are a couple of pages dedicated to Tarpley, who although he has reportedly left the LaRouchies behind, continues to believe in a worldview indistinguishable from LaRouche, with a powerful and controlling central government producing Star Wars defense systems and nuclear plants.

Now Aaronovitch doesn’t do a particularly good job of attacking these people – it is, for the most part, guilt-by-association – but in fact there is little I can say in their defense. I have dealt with a couple of these folks personally, and from my reading of the situation they arguably have done more damage than help in the 9/11 investigation. However, this could not have happened without the hordes of eager followers who read too little and watch too much. Aaronovitch doesn’t even exploit what may be the most incredible person to emerge from all this – Ace Baker – whose theory includes holographic planes at the Pentagon and WTC. As Horatio once said to Hamlet, “T’would be to consider too curiously to consider so.” And people continue to eat it up, not recognizing the contradiction in uniting behind a charismatic leader to oppose fascism.

The author does not deal with Peter Dale Scott’s The Road to 9/11 nor with the more credible sections of Mike Ruppert’s Crossing the Rubicon because in doing so he would come up against the real questions of 9/11: the lack of military response, Norman Mineta’s testimony about Dick Cheney and the Pentagon plane, the fact that the Patriot Act was written prior to 9/11, the various business interests that gained from the attacks much the way Bell Helicopter profited from Vietnam. He doesn’t deal with these issues and he doesn’t have to, because the 9/11 movement has given him holograms and holes to fight instead.

OCCAM’S RAZOR AND THE ‘TRIUMPH OF NARRATIVE’

At some point in all of these books, there comes a point where the author must assert that conspiracists are psychologically damaged in comparison with the well-adjusted author. That happens a few times over the course of the book in different guises.

One tool that the author uses is to bring in Occam’s Razor. I have written about this particular device at length elsewhere, [14] but the main point is to remember that Occam’s Razor is a bit of advice that may or may not be useful depending on the context. It is entirely useless in biology, for example. It also depends heavily on what one means by the “simplest explanation.” For example, in the 9/11 attacks, the “simplest explanation” is said to involve a man on kidney dialysis who trains and inspires a team of devout Muslims from a cave in Afghanistan and never mind his long ties with the CIA, the Bush family, the fact that his followers apparently enjoyed drink and drugs, [15] wrote suicide notes that appeared to contradict Islam, [16] and so on. Trying to find the simplest model for something may or may not be a fruitful approach depending on circumstances.

The other tool is best exemplified by his discussion of a British biologist (yes, a biologist, but leave that aside for the moment) called Lewis Wolpert who theorizes that human beings have a “cognitive imperative” to attribute causes to the events of the world. The biologist tells us that all human beings have “a strong tendency to make a causal story to provide an explanation … ignorance about important causes is intolerable.” This represents, says this biologist, the “triumph of narrative.” [17]

There is little more than a restatement of Hume (and a pinch of Foucault) in this, but we should first note that if we take Wolpert seriously, we not only destroy religious belief but undermine science as well. Wolpert proposes a torch, but his torch is actually a flamethrower, burning down all possibilities of understanding the world. If he is correct, we will always be projecting our private consciousness onto everything like the conspiracies proposed by the heroes of Umberto Eco’s hilarious novel Foucault’s Pendulum.

What Aaronovitch wants to do, of course, is assert that opposition to the state will always follow a fantastical pattern desired by the conspiracists. Once again, however, his perspective on the issue has unintended consequences. In his chapter on the Moscow Trials, he reports how people were convinced of the guilt of the parties in the dock, and how the German novelist Lion Feuchtwanger gradually became convinced of the reverse. Feuchtwanger describes how he heard “what they said and how they said it,” and that “I was forced to accept the evidence of my senses and my doubts melted away …” [18] Does Aaronovitch take this opportunity to explain that Feuchtwanger is a conspiracy theorist, in opposition to consensus reality, and that his certainty is simply a symptom of his derangement? He does not. What is the difference? The identity of the state apparatus. Aaronovitch, like the Western press generally, is willing to accept conspiracy theories as they appear in other countries. Think back to when there was much speculation about Vladimir Putin’s role in the assassination of a political rival or Gerald Posner himself when discussing a possible Saudi conspiracy. [19]

TO THE MAN

To his credit, Aaronovitch does not engage in specific name-calling the way some have done in identifying certain people as idiots or lunatics. He is far too subtle for that. He works at creating associations to undermine the serious by lumping them in with the unserious. I will do him the same credit here. However, since he does decide to psychoanalyze conspiracy theorists, albeit with the assistance of a biologist, permit me to place him on the couch for a moment.

The son of a well-known Communist and anti-American comic book activist, Aaronovitch grew up as a Communist himself. He staged a protest in 1975 as part of the Manchester team on a UK television show called University Challenge, in which he and his fellows answered every question with the name of a revolutionary. [20] However, like Christopher Hitchens, after 9/11 he ceased being a leftist gadfly and became a raving warmonger, arguing that the Iraq War was justified simply to remove Saddam even if no WMDs were found. [21] Even when the scale of the disaster was evident, he refused to back down:

The government has lost a great deal of trust precisely because the weapons haven’t been found, and because the Gilliganesque charge that Number 10 somehow lied about their presence, has stuck. The trouble is that I find – partly as a result of the Hutton inquiry (the evidence, not the report) – that I don’t believe the government did lie. As the MoD intelligence dissident, Brian Jones, wrote to the Independent last week, “I cast no doubt on Mr Blair’s integrity. He evidently believed that Iraq possessed a significant stockpile of chemical or biological weapons and expected them to be recovered during or soon after the invasion… such a discovery would have enhanced, rather than undermined, ‘the global fight against weapons proliferation’.” [22]

Of course this was nonsense, and the Blair government made no errors in analysis. They lied, as did the Bush administration. [23] And eventually Tony Blair resigned his position to take a job at J.P. Morgan. [24] We should not, of course, draw any conclusions from this.

If we wanted to be amateur psychoanalysts, we could say that Mr. Aaronovitch is protesting too much; that is, that the former Communist is now bending over to prove his moderate credentials. And that he has become so blinded in his confusion that he now refuses to conform to reality in drawing his conclusions, continuing to defend the insanely corrupt Blair government despite voluminous physical evidence showing it to be a cesspool. He also reaches to defend the decision to remove Saddam because of the leader’s inherent evil, while not dealing with any of the geopolitical consequences in any sort of serious fashion. He thus transmutes himself into a less masculine version of Ann Coulter.

Q.E.D.

At one point in his book, Aaronovitch points out that “from 1933 to 1963, only Eisenhower was not the target of assassins.” [25] He doesn’t count the attempted overthrow of the Roosevelt government in this analysis, although one easily could. [26] He also doesn’t draw the conclusion that the U.S. is some sort of banana republic, given this history; instead, he notes how it provides ample evidence that America produces unmotivated psychopathy at a rate unparalleled in the Western world.

And this really gets us to the crux of the matter. In order to believe Aaronovitch, you have to take a long string of incidents and pretend they are of no consequence in American history. JFK orders withdrawal from Vietnam, fires Allen Dulles, and is murdered on November 22, 1963. In 1965, Malcolm X is shot to death, shortly after the pilgrimage to Mecca that greatly changed his views on racial conflicts in society. On April 4, 1967, MLK begins to attack the Vietnam War directly in a great speech called “A Time to Break Silence.” On April 4, 1968, King is shot to death. Bobby Kennedy is running for President at the time. In June of 1968, he is shot to death. Fred Hampton and Mark Clark of the Black Panthers are shot to death in December of 1969. Huey Newton goes to prison, Bobby Seale goes through his infamous trial, Stokely Carmichael is forced out of the country during the 1970s. The Democratic National Convention of 1968 is a disaster, paving the way for both Kevin Phillips’s Southern strategy and a Nixon administration that changes the face of politics. There is no one for the left to unite under, although there is a lukewarm coalition behind Allard Lowenstein. Lowenstein was certainly not in the class of these former men, and in fact was a CIA informant, [27] but he was nonetheless shot to death himself in 1980. Also murdered in 1980 was John Lennon, not a political figure as such but greatly feared by the Nixon administration, and hated by an FBI that tried to deport him numerous times. Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to receive public office in the United States, is shot to death in 1978.

Now at the same time that this is happening, we have an insane war in Vietnam, the oil shocks of the 1970s, and a vast wave of rightward movement culminating in Reagan’s “morning in America” in the 1980 election campaign. After that, the right-wing has enough momentum to continue demolishing the left to such an extent that even when Bill Clinton is elected President, Clinton’s liberalism can hardly be said to exist in comparison to people like Dr. King or the latter-day Bobby Kennedy. Liberalism, in effect, is wiped out. Aaronovitch invokes the book The Assassinations but fails to deal with the evidence in favor of its basic premise, which is that there was an internal war against the Left to prevent what would have been a revolution.

In order to decry this as some sort of conspiratorial fantasy, you have to say that none of this matters, that none of it had any real effect on history (the Chomsky structuralist interpretation), and to hold that believing otherwise makes you crazy. But look at what this means. In an ordinary criminal investigation, the closest parties to a murdered person become suspects. That is, if a woman is killed and she is married, all things being equal, the husband most likely did it. Children, overwhelmingly, are molested, beaten, and killed by their parents and not by strangers. That is because human beings operate from internal motives; they generally don’t kill at random or from a sociopathic perspective.

But it’s even worse than this. This line of reasoning suggests that the higher the stakes, the more likely it is that a murder is committed for no motive. In other words, it is reasonable to suggest that a guy who desperately needs money to pay rent might rob a liquor store, but to suggest that Lyndon Johnson (for example) had Kennedy killed in order to become President of the United States is unreasonable. This is illogical. Obviously, the greater the stakes, the more attractive criminal undertakings become. The history of Europe is filled with the devious murders of kings for the purpose of usurpation; just read Shakespeare.

The inherent lie in Aaronovitch’s work is that it is in any sense an honest review of “conspiracy theory.” I have many problems with this phrase in general, but putting those aside for the moment, the reason that there are conspiracy theories is because those models fit reality better than other models. For example, in the JFK case, there is a Warren Commission model that has been falsified by thousands of pieces of evidence out together in painstaking fashion by those who care about truth. In the course of this arose other models that attempt to better explain what happened, and some are no doubt closer than others. This is normal science. The distinction is that the WC model has a political value attached to it which is not dependent on its truth value.

If the author had truly been serious about writing an overview of conspiracies, he might have left behind the large package of straw men gathered in this book. He might have instead chosen from any number of real historical events, such as the 1846 invasion of Mexico led by Zachary Taylor, the 1898 bombing of the Maine leading to the Spanish-American War, Operation Paperclip, Operation Gladio, the Manhattan Project, the coup of Salvador Allende, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Iran Contra … there are endless examples, of which these are but a few. In doing so, he might have been to construct a model of how such things are done and thus produced some valuable work.

It’s obvious why he doesn’t go into these other cases. For example, he doesn’t say anything about the RFK case in his book, because if you simply list the agreed-upon facts in order, any idiot can see that Sirhan didn’t kill RFK. It’s physically impossible. Aaronovitch has produced a book that resembles talk radio, in that it speaks in a mocking tone designed to appeal to an audience confident in their conclusions and unacquainted with evidence. In so doing he produces another in a long assembly line of tomes purporting to enlighten but instead steeped in a smear campaign.

In a final bit of irony, Aaronovitch ends his book by using a long quote by the historian Stephen Ambrose, in which Ambrose complains that conspiratorial thinking led to the conditions that created McCarthy. [28] Why is this ironic? Because, rather like the disingenuous hack Gerald Posner, Ambrose was a serial plagiarist. [29] He, also like Posner, was heavily criticized for the shoddy research work that went into his books. [30] There was also the ugly incident involving James Bacque, for whom Ambrose had been a mentor. Bacque discovered evidence in the Soviet archives that Dwight Eisenhower had allowed Russian soldiers to starve to death while outside in prison camps. Ambrose initially supported the work, but then later denounced it, as Ambrose’s best known work was his allegedly definitive biography of Eisenhower. [31] Aaronovitch’s use of Ambrose is therefore very apt indeed. He was the perfect example of the modern American historian, a plagiarist maintaining the consensus by means of covering his eyes and ears.

Aaronovitch learned his lessons well. Ultimately, Voodoo Histories is a perfect illustration in the art of not paying attention.

Notes
1. John F. Kennedy, speech at American University, 10 June 1963.
2. National Security Action Memorandum No. 273.
3. Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews (Public Affairs: NY 2001), 284.
4. For Jones and Makow, see http://www.prisonplanet.com/121504makow.html; for Cooper, see his book Behold a Pale Horse (Light Technology Publishing: Flagstaff, AZ: 1991), where he instructs the reader to replace the word “Jew” with “Illuminati” and the word “goyim” with “cattle.” No joke.
5. David Aaronovitch, Voodoo Histories: The Role of Conspiracy in Shaping Modern History (Penguin: NY 2010), 268.
6. Ibid, 131.
7. Ibid, 127-128.
8. James DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland.
9. Aaronovitch, 129.
10. Ibid, 134.
11. Ibid, 136.
12. Ibid, 249.
13. Ibid, 260-261.
14. http://wp.me/pPsLn-b
15. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1340519/FBI-tracks-down-the-Florida-lair-of-flying-school-terrorists.html
16. http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0929-07.htm
17. Aaronovitch, 354.
18. Ibid, 65.
19. http://www.satribune.com/archives/sep7_13_03/P1_slept.htm
20. http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2008/11/david-aaronovitch-hoggart-abba
21. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,945551,00.html
22. http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/2-16-2004-50627.asp
23. http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23803734-french-accuse-tony-blair-of-soviet-style-propaganda-in-run-up-to-iraq-war.do
24. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7180306.stm
25. Aaronovitch, 132.
26. See The Plot to Seize the White House by Jules Archer & War is a Racket by Smedley Butler. The story is also retold in the superb documentary The Corporation.
27. See The Pied Piper by Richard Cummings (Imprint.com, 1985).
28. Aaronovitch, 356.
29. http://www.forbes.com/2002/05/10/0510ambrose.html
30. http://hnn.us/articles/504.html
31. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/02/24/books/ike-and-the-disappearing-atrocities.html?pagewanted=1
March 2, 2010

Blog

A Critique of http://www.patspeer.com/ Chapters 18a, 18b, and 19b

Introduction to this Critique

Chapter 18: X-ray Specs

Chapter 18b: More Fun with X-rays

Chapter 19b: Stuck in the Middle with You

On Closed Minds

A Few Final Thoughts

Appendix 1. My letter to John Fitzpatrick (with attachment)

The JFK Skull X-rays [also sent to Fitzpatrick]

Fitzpatrick (JF) vs. Mantik (DM): Points of Agreement

by David W. Mantik October 30, 2009

Fitzpatrick & Mantik: A Possible Disagreement

Appendix 2. Letter from Fitzpatrick to me

(Postmarked March 10, 2010)

I

II

III

IV

V

See als Part 2.

I

II

III

IV

V

A response from Jim DiEugenio

posted by Bob (Fox) on Tue Mar 23, 2010 12:40 pm

Re: A response from Jim DiEugenio

by Michael Dell on Tue Mar 23, 2010 4:32 pm

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by Bob (Fox) on Tue Mar 23, 2010 4:43 pm

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by Dealey Joe on Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:01 pm

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by Michael Dell on Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:33 pm

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by Michael Dell on Tue Mar 23, 2010 5:34 pm

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by ThomZajac on Tue Mar 23, 2010 6:04 pm

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by Michael Dell on Tue Mar 23, 2010 6:33 pm

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by Bob (Fox) on Wed Mar 24, 2010 2:29 am

Re: Seamus Coogan on John Hankey

by John Hankey on Thu Mar 25, 2010 9:55 pm

I. Sunshine Superman

II. Black Comedy

III. Jason Bermas: Worrisome Warrior

IV. Paul Joseph Watson

V. Conclusion

The Ministry of Rev. Jones

Conspirahypocrisy in Action

Thanks – but No Thanks – for the Assist

The Dark Legacy of John Hankey

Alex Jones and John Hankey

Hankey and Prescott Bush

Did you really do all that John?

Where did you get That?

I’ve been researching for how long?

A Close look at the Film JFK 2

I

II

III

IV

V

An Incurious Man: David Aaronovitch’s Voodoo Histories

ORGANIZATION

JFK

9/11

OCCAM’S RAZOR AND THE ‘TRIUMPH OF NARRATIVE’

TO THE MAN

Q.E.D.

Notes

A Critique of http://www.patspeer.com/
Chapters 18a, 18b, and 19b

by David W. Mantik
October 30, 2009