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  • Ed Butler: Expert in Propaganda and Psychological Warfare

    Ed Butler: Expert in Propaganda and Psychological Warfare

    carlos ed
    Ed Butler (right) with Carlos Bringuier

    One of the most unusual and, for some people, breathtaking things that Gus Russo has accomplished is to dust off people who had been looked upon with a jaundiced eye, and, with a straight face, produce them for public consumption. Like the Warren Commission he “dusts them off” by not revealing any of their problems as witnesses, or how they would be attacked by an opposing attorney in court. For ABC, one of the witnesses was Ed Butler.

    Edward S. Butler was born in 1934 to an upper class New Orleans family. He went into the Army Management School from 1957-59 at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. When he returned home he took a position as an account executive with Brown, Friedman and Company, an advertising firm. But, according to New Orleans authority Arthur Carpenter, his service in the military affected all his later adult life. Butler wrote that at the time of his service he became interested “in psycho-politics and particularly Soviet applications.” As Carpenter notes, in June of 1960, Butler wrote an article in Public Relations Journal, which became a declaration for his later career as a propagandist. There he wrote about the Communist threat to America and how a spirit of crisis had to be created to resist it; how America had to use propaganda to counter the Soviets’ skill in that field; how public relations experts like himself had to be recruited in this endeavor; and finally how private funds had to be enlisted to finance this war and his efforts. He also proposed that this effort would serve as a complement to the State Department, USIA, CIA, free institutions abroad, and the various legislative committees dealing with trade information, foreign aid and the like. In short, a private adjunct to America’s foreign policy apparatus. The article turned out to be his vocational outline.

    Some of the people Butler recruited in New Orleans to help finance his propaganda efforts were Clay Shaw and Lloyd Cobb of the International Trade Mart and Alton Ochsner, the extremely conservative physician and philanthropist. By 1961 he had become involved in two associations that were meant to fight this propaganda war: the Free Voice of Latin America and the American Institute for Freedom Project. The former had its office in Shaw’s International Trade Mart and through the latter Butler engaged both Ochsner and Guy Banister, who was Oswald’s handler in New Orleans in the summer of 1963. But according to an investigation by Jim Garrison, Butler was so imperious and abrasive within the former group that he was forced out in 1961.

    At that time, Butler began to organize its successor organization, the Information Council of the Americas, or INCA. This was to be, in essence, a propaganda mill that had as its targets Central and South America, and the Caribbean. It would create broadcasts, called Truth Tapes, which would be recycled through those areas and, domestically, stage rallies and fund raisers to both energize its base and collect funds to redouble its efforts. By this time, as Carpenter and others point out, Butler was now in communication with people like Charles Cabell, Deputy Director of the CIA, and Ed Lansdale, the legendary psy-ops master within the Agency who was shifting his focus from Vietnam to Cuba. These contacts helped him get access to Cuban refugees who he featured on these tapes. Declassified documents reveal the Agency helped distribute the tapes to about 50 stations in South America by 1963. There is some evidence that the CIA furnished Butler with films of Cuban exile training camps and that he was in contact with E. Howard Hunt — under one of his aliases — who supervised these exiles in New Orleans. Some of the local elite who joined or helped INCA would later figure in the Oswald story e.g. Eustis Reily of Reily Coffee Company, where Oswald worked; Edgar Stern who owned the local NBC station WDSU where Oswald was to appear; and Alberto Fowler, a friend of Shaw’s; plus future Warren Commissioner Hale Boggs who helped INCA get tax-exempt status. Butler also began to befriend ground level operators in the CIA’s anti-Castro effort like David Ferrie, Oswald’s friend in New Orleans; Sergio Arcacha Smith, one of Hunt’s prime agents in New Orleans; and Gordon Novel, who worked with Banister, Smith and apparently, David Phillips, on an aborted telethon for the exiles.

    Two other acquaintances of Butler’s were Bill Stuckey, a broadcast and print reporter, and Carlos Bringuier, a CIA operative in the Cuban exile community and leader of the DRE, one of its most important groups in New Orleans. These three figure in one of the most fascinating and intriguing episodes in the Kennedy assassination tale. In August of 1963 — three months before the assassination — Bringuier was involved in a scuffle with Oswald as he distributed literature for the FPCC, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. As many commentators have noted, Oswald was the only member of that “committee” in New Orleans, and some of the literature he distributed gave as the FPCC headquarters address, the office of rabid anti-communist Guy Banister — further exposing who Oswald really was. WDSU filmed some of these leafleting events. When Bringuier found out about this, he confronted Oswald on the city streets and verbally and physically assaulted him. The police came. Bringuier got off; Oswald was busted for disturbing the peace — even though Bringuier was the aggressor. This event brought Oswald to the attention of Stuckey who had him on his WDSU show, Latin Listening Post, on August 17th. After the show, Stuckey and his friend Ed Butler asked Oswald to return four days later. Oswald continued his leafleting, this time in front of the International Trade Mart. In the interim, through contacts in Washington, they found out about Oswald’s voyage to Russia, his stay there, and his attempted defection. The morning of the program, the 21st, Stuckey informed the FBI that Oswald would appear on the program. Butler and Stuckey used the Washington information to “unmask” Oswald on the show, and thereby discredit the supposedly liberal and sympathetic FPCC as harboring Soviet Communists in its midst. Right afterwards, Butler went over to a neighboring TV station, WVUE, where he was put on the air to announce Oswald’s exposure on the 10 PM news.

    Interestingly, John Newman later revealed in Oswald and the CIA that the CIA had an anti-FPCC program ongoing at the time. It was run by Phillips and Hunt’s friend, James McCord. It may be relevant to note here that a CIA contact sheet with Butler contains the comment that he was “a very cooperative contact and has always welcomed an opportunity to assist the CIA.” Even more revealing as to the true nature of these events, Oswald wrote a letter about the confrontation five days before it happened.

    Butler’s role in the assassination tale now gets even more interesting. For as Time magazine noted in its 11/29/63 issue, “Even before Lee Oswald was formally charged with the murder, CBS put on the air an Oswald interview taped by a New Orleans station last August.” That night, according to New Orleans Magazine, Butler and the INCA staff churned out news releases about Oswald in order to offset the “rightist” and “John Bircher” charges flying about. Then, Senator Thomas Dodd, who ran the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, was called up by Butler. Conservative Democrat Dodd was very friendly with the CIA and was a personal and professional enemy of Kennedy, opposing him on his African anti-colonialism policy in the Congo. Dodd was out of Washington on November 22nd but booked a special flight back and announced to his staff, “I am a friend of the new administration!” Dodd then began to mimic and deride those who were bereaved over Kennedy’s death. He topped it all off with this: “I’ll say of John Kennedy what I said of Pope John the day he died. It will take us fifty years to undo the damage he did to us in three years.”

    Dodd then invited his acquaintance Ed Butler to testify before his Senate Sub-Committee, a kind of parallel to Richard Nixon’s red-baiting House on Un-American Activities Committee. Dodd later wrote of this episode that he was in contact with Butler just a few hours after Kennedy was shot — when Oswald was still alive! Further, Dodd added that Butler’s testimony convinced him and his colleagues that “Oswald’s commitment to communism, and the pathological hatred of his own country fostered by this commitment, had played an important part in making him into an assassin. This important and historical record completely demolishes the widespread notion that Oswald was a simple crackpot who acted without any understandable motivation.” In other words, Oswald really was a communist, and he alone killed Kennedy for that cause. (Hale Boggs was so enamored of Butler that he invited him to serve on the Warren Commission.) Finally, apparently completing Butler’s public relations tour, the tape of the WDSU interview was forwarded by the CIA to Ted Shackley at the Miami station and used in the CIA’s broadcasts into Latin America, furthering the legend about Oswald the communist killing President Kennedy. Declassified files reveal that the label on the box with the tape says, “From DRE to Howard”. This means that Bringuier’s group (DRE) probably gave a copy to Howard Hunt who forwarded it to Shackley who, in spite of later denials, was still funding the DRE at the time of the assassination.

    Could there be anything more to add to the suspicions about Butler? When New Orleans DA Jim Garrison began investigating Oswald’s activities in the summer of 1963, he inevitably came around to Butler, Ochsner and INCA. When word got out about this aspect of the investigation, Butler and Ochsner began to attack Garrison both locally and through national media like The New York Times (12/24/67). According to Carpenter, they began a whisper campaign that Garrison was mentally unbalanced and that his followers, like Mark Lane and Harold Weisberg, were lunatic leftists who wanted America to crumble from within. They became so worried about Garrison that Butler packed up all the files of INCA and moved to Los Angeles where he accepted a job offer from another conservative philanthropist, William Frawley of the Schick-Eversharp fortune. Frawley was one of the early backers of Ronald Reagan, governor at the time, who had failed to extradite two Garrison suspects. Frawley credited Reagan’s success to public disgust over “Niggers, the Watts riots, dirty students, the Cesar Chavez Reds and fair housing.”

    Butler wrote a book in 1968 entitled Revolution is My Profession in which he attacked as communist infiltrators those whose tactics have “been to try to link the CIA with all sorts of crime, especially President Kennedy’s assassination.” (P. 242) In that same year, he himself infiltrated a meeting of Mark Lane’s Citizens Committee of Inquiry and capsized their proceedings. Later that summer he hooked up with two other ultra-rightists, Anthony Hilder and John Steinbacher, to try to sell the idea that Sirhan had been under the influence of the Madam Blavatsky meditation cult, and that she had been a disciple of Stalin. Hilder and Steinbacher even produced an “instant book” on the subject: Robert Francis Kennedy THE MAN, THE MYSTICISM, THE MURDER. (As some commentators have pointed out, there are indications this book was actually put together before the RFK assassination.) Butler was at the press conference to promote the book. Butler then put out a magazine financed by Frawley called The Westwood Village Square which tried to link all three assassinations — both of the Kennedys and King’s — to the Communists. The centerpiece of the article was his testimony before the Dodd committee.

    In the eighties, the Butler-Banister-Oswald story came full circle. A young advertising employee named Ed Haslam was assigned to go over to the revived offices of INCA in New Orleans. At the time William Casey was fighting a not-so-secret war against communism in Central America. INCA was going to use a radio station through the Voice of America to support that effort. Haslam’s company was going to write ad copy for the station. When he got there, Butler showed him around the place. One thing he showed him was the extant files of Guy Banister. Gus Russo knew this story because Haslam revisited the office and Butler in the nineties with him. This intriguing fact never made it into the ABC special. Somehow, the files of the man who handled Oswald in New Orleans in 1963 came into the possession of the man who “exposed” him as a communist, first locally, then to the US government, and then to the world. By not going into any of the above facets, ABC served as a conduit for propaganda analyst Butler to revive his greatest psy-ops triumph.

  • How Gerald Posner Got Rich and Famous: Or, Bob Loomis and the Anti-Conspiracy Posse

    Although Gerald Posner had written several books prior to 1993’s Case Closed, he had never achieved any kind of broad notoriety, broadcast exposure, or large sales prior to that book. And although there had been other Warren Commission volumes circulating at the time, e.g. Jim Moore’s Conspiracy of One, none ever became nearly as famous, or infamous, as Posner’s. Why?

    The answer is: Robert Loomis.

    To understand who Loomis is and how far his reach extends in the publishing business, one must go back and study the origins and sad end of one of the very best books written on the Robert Kennedy assassination. That book — The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy — was written by Bill Turner and Jonn Christian and was published in 1978 by Random House. The book had been a special project of Jason Epstein, one of the more literate, intelligent, and creative editors on the publishing scene. The book that emerged was an excellent one in the field. Epstein was quite content with the result. He wrote attorney Vincent Bugliosi, who played a feature role in the book, “I hope you are as pleased as we are with the way it turned out. The jacket looks great, but more important is the tough case that is made between the covers.” And Epstein had plans for a good publicity campaign, which never really materialized.

    In an unexpected reversal the book, for all intents and purposes, was withdrawn from circulation. No paperback rights were sold. Random House used the possibility of a lawsuit by an organized crime figure mentioned in the book as the excuse. But the book had already been vetted by Random House’s lawyers for libel and the lawsuit never was filed. When a friend of Turner’s, Betsy Langman, called Epstein about the book’s reversal of fortune, he replied, “I don’t want to talk about it.”

    But someone at Random House did know what happened to the book. He was the man who had shepherded Robert Houghton’s previous book on the case, entitled Special Unit Senator, through Random House. Houghton had been in charge of the secret investigation of the RFK case inside of LAPD. An investigation that, by any objective standard, was a complete and shameful cover-up of the true facts of that murder. Houghton’s sponsor at Random House was named Robert Loomis. Loomis had told others that the Turner/Christian book had been withdrawn and burned. When alerted to the possibility of a lawsuit, he brushed it off cavalierly with words to the effect of: “So what?”

    Perhaps no other person in the publishing world has been more vigilant against any real investigation of the assassinations of the sixties, or of exposes of conspiracies in general, than Robert Loomis. Another client of his was the late James Phelan. Phelan was always friendly with the intelligence community and was exposed in the nineties as having done journalistic assignments for the government, like informing on Jim Garrison to the FBI. In the seventies, he did a book for Loomis entitled Howard Hughes: The Hidden Years. There had always been rumors and indications that Hughes had been working closely with the CIA, so many were interested as to what had happened to the eccentric millionaire in his later years and the odd circumstances of his death. Loomis made Phelan’s book a top secret project for Random House. Only Loomis and one other person at the firm knew about it. All dealings between New York City, and Naples, California (where Phelan rented a cottage to write the book) were done either in person or by hand-delivery. There was no mail or phone contact. The two mains sources for Phelan were two lower level employees in the Hughes empire.

    Phelan’s book is pretty much worthless today. It basically set the rather deceiving model of the bizarre lifestyle of the long-haired fruity Hughes who got more and more neurotic as time went on. None of the intricate ties between Hughes and the CIA, for example, in regard to the use of an island for Cuban exile training, or, another example, his connection to the Watergate scandal is touched upon. Phelan wrote another book for Loomis called Scandals, Scamps, and Scoundrels, an anthology of essays which includes a section on the JFK case which is basically a rehash of his anti-Garrison writings that had appeared in 1967.

    In the nineties, four more books emerged dealing with Oswald and the Kennedy assassination, Kennedy’s presidency, and the death of Martin Luther King. All were sponsored by or directly related to Loomis and his clients. All received a lot of hype, which the Turner-Christian book did not. Loomis sponsored Case Closed for Random House. He apparently knew Posner through an earlier effort of his entitled Hitler’s Children. As one can clearly discern through reading the footnotes, Posner’s Kennedy assassination book was a rush job that was done in the wake of the furor surrounding Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie JFK. Posner told Jim Marrs after a debate in Dallas that Loomis approached him about the book at that time and told him he would have the cooperation of the CIA on the project. This explains how Posner got access to KGB turncoat Yuri Nosenko, who was put on a CIA retainer in the late seventies. The book was timed for release on the 30th anniversary of JFK’s death which explains why it was such a clear hurry-up job. (See attached articles for a chronicle of only some of the many, many errors is this hapless book.) Loomis also commissioned Norman Mailer’s concoction of a book Oswald’s Tale, done with longtime FBI informant on the Kennedy case Lawrence Schiller. Mailer tried to make the case that the book was warranted by his access to some of the Russian files on Oswald that he had access to from the newly formed government of Belarus. Yet, according to John Tunheim of the ARRB, there is an approximately five foot high stack of documents that no one has seen on Oswald. Not even the ARRB. Mailer got nowhere near the majority of these files. Predictably, Mailer’s book presented the probability of the case against Oswald as the lone assassin.

    Further on into the nineties, Posner came out with another book on an infamous assassination of the sixties. This one was on the Martin Luther King case. It was called Killing the Dream and also made the same single-minded case against James Earl Ray as Posner did against Lee Harvey Oswald. He told one interviewer: “There is no question. Ray was the shooter. That’s how I see the evidence, how anybody objective has to see the evidence.” To put it mildly, this is a rather gross overstatement as can be seen by reading any credible book on the King murder, like say Harold Weisberg’s Frame-Up or Ray’s own Who Killed Martin Luther King? Let us not forget that in the only two real trials of this case, the jury decided for conspiracy; namely the HBO mock trial in 1993, and the civil trial held in Memphis by the King family vs. Loyd Jowers in 1999.

    Finally, let us consider Seymour Hersh and his embarrassment of a book on the Kennedy presidency, The Dark Side of Camelot. Hersh is a darling of the so-called liberal print media. People like Jacob Weisberg and Eric Alterman defended his career and his awful book when it was being attacked in so many quarters when it came out in 1997. These commentators, and just about everyone else, ignored the fact that Hersh’s career has always been quite questionable in his relationship to the CIA and his reliance on sources there. Also, that from the beginning Hersh’s book publishing career has been advanced by Bob Loomis. This whole rather strange career with Loomis and the questionable judgments and maneuvers Hersh has done in that career are examined in The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X (pgs. 364-373).

    If one calls Loomis’ office one will learn from his secretary that he spends a lot of time in Washington D.C., even though Random House’s main offices are in New York. This probably began because his former wife Gloria had once worked for the CIA. She was the personal secretary to none other than James Angleton, the legendary counter-intelligence chief of the Agency for 20 years. He is also the man who many writers and researchers, like John Newman and Lisa Pease, believe was handling the Oswald file in the CIA. This undisclosed fact would then explain how Posner got the CIA clearances to talk to people no one has access to. It also helps explain why Loomis does what he does. But wouldn’t it have been more honest to the reader of Posner’s book if he would have explained that it had been commissioned by someone whose former wife had worked for the man who was probably running Oswald as an intelligence agent?

    Did Posner make a Faustian deal with Loomis? A quid pro quo in political parlance? Consider the similarities between these two quotes dug up by attorney and longtime Kennedy researcher Roger Feinman: “All the conspiracy theories have undermined the public’s belief in the government, and that, to me, is a crime.” (Bob Loomis, Publisher’s Weekly, 5/3/93) “But I also think that the conspiracy theorists have made us lose faith in government.” (Gerald Posner, Dallas Morning News, 11/21/93).

    Coincidence or conspiracy?

  • Posner in New Orleans: Gerry in Wonderland

    Listening to the media accompaniment surrounding the release of Gerald Posner’s 600 page volume Case Closed, one was reminded of the trumpet blare which sounded when the Warren Report was released 29 years ago. Reading US News and World Report, a usually staid and reserved publication, one would have expected an investigatory effort worthy of Scotland Yard or the Mossad. What emerges after all the sound and fury is an effort more comparable to the Dallas or Los Angeles Police Departments.

    Before getting to the main focus of this essay, one needs to comment on some general matters regarding Mr. Posner and his book. Reportedly, like John McCloy and Allen Dulles, Mr. Posner is a Wall Street lawyer. Based on three interviews with sources who read his previous book on Mengele, Posner whitewashed that notorious Nazi’s ties to the Hitler regime before his McCloy-aided escape to South America after World War II. This may help explain Posner’s quite questionable use of sources.

    About the first half of Case Closed deals exclusively with the life and careers of Lee Oswald. Like the Warren Commission and the five volume FBI report on the assassination, Posner’s focus is on Oswald and it is in extreme close-up since it is always easier to portray a man as a lone nut if you draw him in a virtual vacuum.

    But to rig the apparatus even further, Posner uses the most specious witnesses imaginable in his single-minded prosecutorial proceeding. Scanning his footnotes for the first ten chapters, a rough approximation would estimate that about 75% of them originate from the Warren Commission volumes. In turn, many of these citings come from the testimony of Marina Oswald who, as lawyer Posner must know, could not have testified at Oswald’s trial. Also, Posner never reveals to the reader how Marina was abducted and then stowed away at the Inn of the Six Flags Hotel and how she was virtually quarantined while she was being threatened with deportation. Posner never points out any of the problems and inconsistencies with her Warren Commission testimony, which even some of the Commission members had reservations about, and which a skillful defense lawyer would be able to exploit to great advantage.

    If that were not enough, Posner quotes liberally from the testimony of both Ruth Paine and George DeMohrenschildt, two people who — to say the least — have questionable motives in this case and both of whom have direct and indirect ties to the CIA. Again, Posner ignores those ties and actually states that DeMohrenschildt had no connection to American intelligence (p. 86), when the CIA admitted those connections over 15 years ago. Posner also uses Oswald’s “Historic Diary” against him when everyone, even Edward Epstein, admits that it was not a “diary” at all, but was composed in 2 or 3 installments, probably as part of Oswald’s cover as an espionage agent.

    Finally, Posner quotes liberally from the work of Priscilla Johnson McMillan, the newspaper correspondent who interviewed Oswald in Russia, then helped the Warren Commission find Oswald’s tickets to Mexico after the FBI could not. She then locked up Marina Oswald for 13 years with a book contract until Marina and Lee, the mother of all “Oswald-did-it” books, appeared in 1977. The working papers of staff lawyer David Slawson reveal that even the Warren Commission suspected Ms. McMillan had ties to the CIA.

    This is all prelude to what the author does when his book reaches the locale of New Orleans. Posner seems all too aware that the city and Oswald’s actions there in the summer of 1963 pose a serious threat to the main thesis of his book. Perhaps this is why his bibliography lists all of Harold Weisberg’s books except Oswald in New Orleans. For to admit that Oswald was associating with clandestine operatives like Clay Shaw, David Ferrie and Guy Banister poses a big problem for a man intent on painting Oswald as a demented communist zealot. Consequently, Posner shifts into a denial mode and sustains it by any means necessary.

    For instance, Posner begins Chapter 7 by stating that, according to Marina, Oswald was home early every evening for the couple’s entire stay in New Orleans. Posner has often stated that he had access to the late Jim Garrison’s files. If he did he would have found out that Oswald stayed overnight on more than one occasion in a room adjacent to the French Quarter restaurant, “The Court of the Two Sisters.” The room was arranged by a mutual friend of Shaw and Ferrie. Posner mentions that Oswald worked at Reily Coffee Company while in New Orleans but leaves out the facts of the Reily family’s connections to Cuban exile groups and the peculiar coincidence of Oswald’s colleagues being transferred from Reily to the NASA complex at nearby Michaud Air Force Base. Posner states that Oswald’s expenditures of nearly $23.00 on pro-Castro leaflets was not exorbitant even though it was about one-sixth of what he was making per month, or the equivalent of a man making $3,000 per month spending about $500 on political flyers.

    On page 157, Posner writes that the altercation between Carlos Bringuier and Oswald on Canal Street in August of ’63, which resulted in Oswald’s conspicuous arrest, was not staged. Yet he never asks the logical followup question: if it was not staged then why did Oswald write about it days in advance? Of William Gaudet, one of the CIA agents who escorted Oswald on his strange tour of Mexico, Posner writes that he had no relation to the case outside of being next to Oswald when in line to buy a tourist card for south of the border. He adds that Gaudet was a “newspaper editor.” Posner does not write that the newspaper Gaudet edited was a right wing propaganda sheet about South American politics, that one of his reporting duties was supplying infomation to the CIA, that one of the men he worked for earIy in his career was a business associate of Shaw’s, and that Gaudet had a virtually rent-free office in the International Trade Mart which was provided to him by Shaw.

    Posner frequently uses character assassination when he finds testimony contrary to his thesis. Orest Pena had stated to Harold Weisberg that he had seen Oswald at his bar, the Habana. That tavern was a frequent watering hole for Ferrie, Bringuier, Shaw, and other militant Cuban exiles. Posner states (p. 167), that Pena recanted his story at his first FBI interview and vacillated before the Warren Commission. Posner does not state that Pena was visited by both Bringuier and FBI agent Warren DeBrueys and warned about his official testimony. Posner tries to finish off Pena by adding that he was later charged with managing prostitutes out of his establishment and was aided in his legal defense by “leading conspiracy buff Mark Lane.” What he faiIs to add is that his legal problems came about after his testimony before the Warren Commission and that the charges were so weak they never came to trial.

    Posner’s most breathtaking balancing act relates to Oswald’s relationship with Ferrie and Banister. On page 143, he states that the many Civil Air Patrol cadets who testified to Oswald being in Ferrie’s CAP before he joined the Marines must be either mistaken or lying since Ferrie was thrown out of the CAP in the mid-fifties when Oswald was supposed to be in his unit. Posner’s blinders keep him from telling the reader that, at this time, Ferrie formed his own CAP unit in Metairie and it was this unit that Oswald was a member of. This information is available in the invaluable Southern Research Company investigation of Ferrie commissioned by Eastern Airlines during his dismissal hearings. These papers are on file at the AARC. Posner states he spent many hours there. Did he skip the Ferrie file? On page 428, Posner states that “there was no evidence that connected Ferrie and Oswald.” In Garrison’s files it is revealed that Ferrie stated this himself to two people — Ray Broshears and Lou Ivon. He also told them he worked for the CIA. If Posner needs further evidence of the Ferrie-Oswald friendship he should ask Gus Russo, whom he credits in his acknowledgments. Russo found a photo of the two together from a friend who knew the pair in Ferrie’s CAP.

    Posner’s efforts to keep Oswald away from 544 Camp Street have a touch of the ludicrous about them. He tries to discredit the reliability of every witness that places Oswald there: Delphine Roberts and her daughter, David Lewis, Jack Martin, Oswald himself and the HSCA. He portrays Roberts as off her rocker and says she now states she lied to Tony Summers in the late 70’s about Oswald being in Banister’s office. She says today that Summers gave her some money to appear on camera for a TV special and this is why she said what she did. Posner ignores the following: 1) Roberts told her story to Summers before he even mentioned anything about a payment; 2) on her own and without any promise of money, Roberts told essentially the same story to Earl Golz of the Dallas Morning News in a story that ran in December of 1978; and 3) her story about seeing a “communist” outside the office leafletting the area, telling Banister, and him laughing and saying that he was one of them is partly corroborated by an interview with a third party in Banister’s office at the time. Again this is in the Garrison files that Posner says he had access to.

    In his desperation to discredit anyone associated with either the Garrison or the HSCA investigation of the New Orleans part of the conspiracy, Posner occasionaly winds up swinging at air. On page 138, he writes that Gaeton Fonzi was the HSCA investigator on the issues of Banister, 544 Camp Street, and David Ferrie. He smears Fonzi and the validity of these reports by saying “he was a committed believer in a conspiracy.” Fonzi’s name does appear on the reports in Volume X of the House Select Committee appendices. But in those reports related to the New Orleans part of the investigation his name appears along with the names of Pat Orr and Liz Palmer. If Posner would have talked to any of these people before smearing Fonzi, he would have found out that Fonzi only edited the New Orleans reports. Orr and Palmer did the actual field investigations and original writing in these sections, something that Fonzi has no problem telling anyone. I know of no books, articles or interviews by Orr or Palmer which would show them to be a “committed believer in a conspiracy.” In fact, both have reputations for reserved judgment and objectivity.

    Posner’s depiction of the Clinton episode in the late summer of 1963 and which connects Shaw, Ferrie and Oswald epitomizes his stilted, fundamentally dishonest approach. He obtained some of the original memorandums made by the Garrison probe into the incident and attempts to show that since the eyewitness testimony does not jibe, then the witnesses are lying and therefore Garrison coached them into telling a coherent story at the trial. First, let us note that it is Posner in his section on Dealey Plaza who writes that eyewitness testimony to the same event often differs (funny how his standards constantly shift). Second, I would like to know if Mr. Posner asked Shaw’s attorneys — lrvin Dymond and Bill Wegmann — how they got these memos. But more to the point, Posner either doesn’t know or doesn’t think it important to inform the reader that the incident under discussion took place in two different towns. Oswald was first seen in Jackson, about 15 miles east of Clinton. Two of the witnesses who testified at the Shaw trial saw Oswald, or a double, in Jackson and in a different car than the one that appeared in Clinton later. Henry Palmer, one of the witnesses who talked to Oswald in Clinton — and it was Oswald there — interviewed him away from the voter ralIy, and did not get a good look at the car which contained Shaw and Ferrie. Oswald’s last appearance in the area was at the hospital back in Jackson where two personnel secretaries took his application for a job.

    What Posner does with all this is worthy of a cardsharp. By implying that all the elements — the car, the passengers, the rally, the witnesses — are in one place at one time, he tries to cast doubt on the witnesses and aspersions on Garrison’s use of them. It would be the equivalent of having a couple drive a different car into a service station, having a different car leave and go to another station, and then the original car returns with only the husband driving. Would we expect the two sets of witnesses to see the same thing? On the contrary, if they did we would have doubts about them. If this tactic would have seemed effective, wouldn’t Dymond and Wegmann have used it at the trial? Posner lists the transcript of the Shaw trial in his bibliography. If he really read it he would say that Dymond’s cross-examination of these people was quite gentle, he barely touched them. And when he tried to get tough, it backfired.

    Posner writes of Clay Shaw that no one knew him as Bertrand (pp. 430, 437). I have been about half way through Garrison’s files and related FBI files. There are 11 different references to Shaw as Bertrand. Posner passes out the old chestnut about Shaw being only a lowly “contract” agent who “like thousands of other Americans” was interviewed by the Agency about his foreign travels (p. 448). Posner does not state that Shaw filed 30 reports with the CIA over a six year period, that this relationship likely extended beyond the time period recognized by the CIA; that Shaw’s connections to the European front organizations Permindex and Centro Mondiale Commerciale are, to say the least, suspect, that in the August 1993 CIA release made available at the National Archives, a document reveals that Shaw had a covert clearance for a top secret CIA project codenamed QKENCHANT.

    This is too long to explore other related matters that Posner mangles. But let me briefly mention three of the “mysterious deaths” that Posner tries to set us straight on. On page 496, Posner insinuates that the death of Mary Sherman was neither mysterious nor relevant and that “she was killed in an accidental fire.” Like John Davis, he lists the year of her death as 1967. Mary Sherman died on July 21, 1964, the same day that the Warren Commission began taking testimony in New Orleans. Posner could have checked the local newspapers on this because her death made headline news for days after. To this day her case is listed as an unsolved murder by the New Orleans police. There was a small fire in her apartment and some smoke, but they were certainly not the cause of death. Her severed arm probably had more to do with it; along with her discarded yet blood-drenched gloves (think about that one), and also the hack marks made from a butcher knife on her torso.

    In the same section, Posner writes that there is no source for the claim that Gary Underhill was a former CIA agent, and “no corroboration that he ever said there was CIA complicity in the assassination.” I hate to plug my own work, but in Destiny Betrayed, Posner would have learned there are several sources for Underhill’s wartime OSS career and his later CIA consulting status, including Underhill himself. As for his accusations about the CIA and the murder of JFK, he related them quite vividly to his friend Charlene Fitsimmons within 24 hours of the shooting. She then forwarded a letter to Jim Garrison relating the incident in detail.

    On the same page in which he discusses the Underhill case, Posner describes the murder of Mary Meyer in two sentences: “Mary Meyer (murdered) was allegedly one of JFK’s mistresses. Except for her reported liaison with the President, she was not associated with any aspect of the case.” Posner does not include Katherine the Great by Deborah Davis in his bibliography. If he would have read it he would have learned that Mary Meyer had been married to former CIA counterintelligence officer Cord Meyer. That several acquaintances stated that Kennedy was quite taken with the pretty and bright Meyer. And that since she had been married to a CIA officer, he confided in her about his plans to reorganize the Agency in his second term. Needless to say, the poor wretch accused of her murder was acquitted on weak evidence.

    I have only dealt with a small part of Posner’s work. I am sure if other specialists critiqued it they could come up with similar summaries in other fields of evidence. Suffice it to say that when an author evinces these kinds of tendencies, all exculpative of the CIA, all incriminating of Oswald, one has the right to question his bona fides. Posner is this year’s version of the Breo and Lundberg show. And again the media has heralded him without a critical eye. Upon scrutiny, his work, like JAMA’s is revealed to be a sham, maybe worse. And as with JAMA, two people are contemplating lawsuits against Random House and Mr. Posner. No doubt, the press will ignore the progress and revelations of those lawsuits.

    For the rest of us, the ones who care enough to be serious, the struggle to reopen this case continues. No matter how many Moores, Breos, and Posners come down the trail, we must never lose sight of that aim. Perhaps then we can swear in Mr. Posner and ask him who exactly were the CIA confidential sources he consulted and why — 30 years after the fact — they still demand anonymity?

  • Gerald Posner

    Gerald Posner

    posner

     

    Did He Get Anything Right? The leading voice of Warren Commission apologism never let the facts stand in the way of his story.

    How Gerald Posner got Rich and Famous Posner, it appears, had a publishing industry angel on his side.

    He’s Baaaack! The Return of Gerald Posner This article, written in 1998, describes Posner’s book on the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Case Closed? The articles grouped here summarize the most significant problems with Posner’s foray into the JFK case.

  • He’s Baaack! The Return of Gerald Posner

    This past March, April and May, Gerald Posner did a mini-version rerun of what he had done in 1993. Five years ago, Posner wrote one of the most one-sided, monomaniacal books ever on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Case Closed was given a huge publicity build-up and, when released, Posner was allotted more public appearances on major media outlets than any author in recent memory, save Seymour Hersh in 1997. In the meantime, Posner has become a regular name at publications like the New York Times and Time magazine. In the latter publication, early last year, the first announcements came that Posner was at work on a book on the King assassination. No surprise, it was timed to appear at the time of the thirtieth anniversary of King’s murder. Although Posner did not get quite as big a launch this time as before, he still appeared with Dan Rather on 48 Hours (3/24/98), and had a large spread in Newsweek (4/6/98). The latter was interesting in that it coupled an excerpt from Posner’s book with rather unenthusiastic articles about King’s legacy and the lives and characters of his children. The phenomenon that Probe detailed about the JFK assassination – a posthumous character attack to go with a cover-up about the original murder – was now transmuted and crystallized in the MLK case.

    Killing the Dream is pretty much drawn from the same mold as Case Closed.

    Posner shows the same type of “convict at any cost” attitude, the same quoting of clearly biased resources, the same use of character assassination on the supposed perpetrator, the same heavy-handed maneuvering of the evidence to rig the deck. For instance, in his public appearances, Posner’s version of candor is admitting that certain government agencies had surveillance on King. Sending King a note with a thinly veiled threat to commit suicide or be sexually blackmailed – which is what the FBI did to King – qualifies as a bit more than intelligence surveillance. Yet, no commentator I listened to challenged Posner on this point. This included the supposedly liberal Marc Cooper of the Los Angeles Pacifica outlet, KPFK. Shockingly, or not, two of the featured voices on National Public Radio on the thirtieth anniversary of King’s death were Posner and Robert Blakey.

    How single-minded is single-minded? In an interview in the San Jose Mercury News (4/26/98), reporter Jeff Guinn asked Posner if Ray had actually killed King. Posner’s answer was, to put it lightly, untouched with ambiguity: “There is no question. Ray was the shooter. That’s how I see the evidence, how anybody objective has to see the evidence.” Posner went on to use Robert Blakey’s HSCA version of a motive, the Ray brothers were after a $50,000 bounty put up by a St. Louis racist. As Bill Pepper and others have noted it is odd that, if this was the motive, there exists no evidence to indicate that Ray or his brothers tried to collect the money. Another oddity here is that one of the people who Posner thanks in his book is none other than David Lifton. Back in 1977, Lifton, with Jeff Cohen, wrote an article for New Times. It (rather weakly) postulated Ray as a racist and his brother Jerry Ray as a co-conspirator in a rightwing plot. This article caught the eye of Blakey and the HSCA and Lifton’s ideas ended up influencing the final product of their Final Report. Posner acknowledges that his debt to Lifton is a bit odd, but makes no more of it than that. We wonder what Lifton would think of another comment from that interview which is a pure Posnerism:

    The murders of Martin Luther King and John Kennedy did not do justice to the status of the victims. Many people want something meatier to lend extra weight to how they died. In each case, a conspiracy does that nicely. Look, the facts are that King and Kennedy were killed by sociopathic losers … There were no intricate assassination plots. None.

    Such metaphysical certainty from a man who writes about scouring the Toronto Sun newspaper for mentions of Ray in 1967 when that newspaper did not exist until 1971. Ditto for research Posner did at the so-called Canadian Bureau of Vital Statistics, which also is non-existent.

    No surprise, the symphony of praise also included the New York Times and the Memphis Commercial Appeal. The former review was written by Anthony Lewis, their liberal commentator who also praised the Warren Commission Report when it was first issued. The latter’s review was penned by Marc Perrusquia who was that newspaper’s point man on the effort by Bill Pepper to revive the King case. The praise for Posner extends through the major media to major political figures. In June of last year, Governor Frank Keating of Oklahoma praised Posner’s earlier work on the JFK case as “masterful”.

    Masterful? Let us never forget the sworn affidavit of Roger McCarthy of Failure Analysis Associates. His company did work for the ABA when they did their mock trial of Oswald in San Francisco in 1992. McCarthy’s firm provided experts and analysis for both the defense and prosecution. In his affidavit, McCarthy writes: “There was not a conclusion reached by FaAA as a company concerning the issues of the assassination. Each of our teams did its best within the factual, time, and resource constraints to assist the two eminent trial lawyer teams to resolve the key issues for their respective sides.” Significantly, he also added, “..there are gaps in the factual record that our analysis was unable to bridge.”

    Finally, the affidavit concludes:

    Subsequent to our presentation one Gerald Posner contacted Dr. Robert Piziali, the leader of the prosecution team, and requested copies of the prosecution material, but not defense material, which we provided. Eventually Random House published a book by Mr. Posner entitled Case Closed. While Mr. Posner acknowledges in the book the material from Failure Analysis Associates he does not mention or acknowledge the ABA, or mention or acknowledge that there was additional material prepared by FaAA for the defense. Incredibly, Mr. Posner makes no mention of the fact that the mock jury that heard and saw the technical material that he believes is so persuasive and “closed” the case, but which also saw the FaAA material prepared for the defense, could not reach a verdict.

    In early televised interviews of Mr. Posner that were witnessed by FaAA staff, Mr. Posner made no attempt to correct any supposition by a questioner that the FaAA analytical work was performed at his request for him, and certainly left quite the opposite impression.

    Another point, reviewers of Posner’s recent whitewash do not mention is that in the earlier work, Posner used Professor David Wrone as an historian who is aghast at some of the more irresponsible efforts of the critical community. What Posner, nor any of his reviewers, add is that Wrone was also aghast at Posner’s book when it originally came out. Wrone wrote a merciless review for The Journal of Southern History (Vol. 6 #1). In the first paragraph, Wrone stated, “…[Posner’s] book is so theory driven, so rife with speculation, and so frequently unable to conform his text with the factual content in his sources that it stands as one of the stellar instances of irresponsible publishing on this subject.”

    He later added, “Massive numbers of factual errors suffuse the book, which make it a veritable minefield….Posner often presents the opposite of what the evidence says.”

    None of the reviewers mentioned another problem with Case Closed: the interview denials. Some of the people who Posner sources in his footnotes deny ever talking to him. For instance, when Peter Scott phoned Carlos Bringuier in New Orleans to confirm that he told Posner what Posner quoted him as saying, Bringuier said he didn’t recall ever talking to the author. Gary Aguilar wrote a letter to the Federal Bar News & Journal noting this phenomenon (Vol. 41 #5): “I called [James] Tague on April 30, 1994, and he told me … that he has never spoken with Posner, though the implication of three references in Case Closed is that Posner did speak with him on two successive days…”

    Then there is the possibility that Posner may have deceived Congress. To quote Aguilar’s letter again:

    On November 17, 1993 before the House Committee on Government Operations, Posner reported that he had interviewed two of Kennedy’s pathologists, James Humes, M.D. and J. Thornton Boswell, M.D. Posner testified that they confirmed to him that they had changed their minds about the original location they had given for Kennedy’s skull wound….Posner informed the U.S. Congress that the pathologists told him that they had erred [in their original autopsy report] – the [head]wound was 10 centimeters higher, at the top rear of the skull. On March 30, 1994, I called both Drs. Humes and Boswell. Both physicians told me that they had not changed their minds about Kennedy’s wounds at all. They stood by their statements…which contradicted Posner. Startlingly, Dr. Boswell told me that he has never spoken with Posner.

    As John Newman has noted, one of the most incredible things about Posner’s book was its bombastic title. How could anyone write a book so pretentiously titled when the millions of documents sealed for decades were just about to be released? Couldn’t there be just a few interesting morsels in there that could have some effect on the Warren Commission’s conclusions? (Vincent Bugliosi’s upcoming Oswald-did-it whitewash has a similar title, Final Verdict.) One notorious presumption made by Posner was the statement that Oswald did not know David Ferrie. This, of course, is a real problem for the Oswald-did-it crowd since it opens up a Pandora’s box of weird associations for that supposed Marxist loner Oswald. It was a box Posner did not want to lift the top off of. Very shortly after the book’s publication, Posner had to eat those words when PBS and Frontline produced a photo of the two in the Civil Air Patrol. The bumbling Posner had to recover some face, so he told another whopper. In response to a negative review of his book which used the photo, Posner replied that the picture could be a fake since two such photos secured by Jim Garrison depicting Oswald with Ferrie had proved to be fakes also. First of all, there is no evidence that Garrison ever had photos of Oswald and Ferrie in the CAP. Secondly, the photos which he did have appear to show Ferrie with Shaw, not Ferrie with Oswald. Third, no one has ever produced evidence to demonstrate that those particular photos are forgeries.

    But Posner did not have to go photograph hunting to know that what he had said about Ferrie and Oswald was false. He just had to go to New Orleans and talk to some of Ferrie’s old CAP cadets. Or, he could have talked to some of the HSCA New Orleans investigators still living in New Orleans like L. J. Delsa and Bob Buras (see the accompanying excerpted document). They could have told him that the presumption was patently false. Or he could have just waited to publish his book in 1994 when some of the following documents were released. But then of course, the book would have appeared too late to dominate the broadcast waves on the thirtieth anniversary of JFK’s murder. Which was probably the real point all along. What makes this above assertion quite tenable is that on March 28, 1998 The New York Times allowed the masterful Posner to write an editorial for the 30th anniversary of King’s death. In it, Posner asked for the release of the government’s King assassination files. Is Posner now an advocate of the free flow of information? Does he really want to spend years going through millions of documents and cull out the wheat from the chaff? Does he wish to vigorously challenge the official version of some of our history? Of course not. After saying that the JFK Act of 1992 has released plenty of pages of new files, Posner’s New York Times column continued:

    While nothing has contradicted the original Warren Commission finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole gunman, the files have filled in many details for historians and eliminated much of the suspicion that the government was hiding something nefarious.

    Are we to conclude that Posner has read the 4 million pages now declassified at the National Archives? From the record adduced above, could we trust him if he had read them? But further, since publishing Case Closed in 1993, Posner has written two other non-fiction books. Besides the King book, he did a biography of Ross Perot timed for the 1996 election. Assuming he worked on the Perot book at least through 1995 and 1996, and the King book in 1997 and early 1998, just when did he have the time to go through the millions of newly declassified pages? I think we all know the answer to that question. Unfortunately, so does The New York Times.

  • The Posner Follies: Fast and Loose with the Witnesses

    Using Testimony Known to Be False

    In a debate with David Scheim on National Public Radio, Gerald Posner admitted including in his book, Case Closed, an interview with Dallas entertainment writer Tony Zoppi, an interview which Posner knew contained false information.

    1. Tony Zoppi told the HSCA in 1978 that he talked with Jack Ruby at the Dallas Morning News building on Friday morning, not long before the assassination of President Kennedy.
    2. HSCA later learned that this information was probably false. Confronted with this, Zoppi admitted his account was a fabrication.
    3. Nonetheless, Posner included the Zoppi statements in his book.
    4. When Scheim confronted Posner with this during their radio debate, Posner admitted that he knew the information was false, but that had included it because it was dealing with a crucial issue.
    5. In fact, Posner used the Zoppi statements in a effort to show that Jack Ruby was calm and was not in the emotional state one would expect of one who was involved in any assassination plot against the President. This was, of course, central to Posner’s thesis that Ruby became involved only after the assassination–and then only out of emotional turmoil.

    “Phantom” Witnesses

    1. Posner appeared before the Conyers Subcommittee on Government Operations in fall of 1993. At that time, he stated that he had spoken with Drs Humes and Boswell, who had performed President Kennedy’s autopsy, and that these two men now agreed that they had erred in parts of their autopsy report, notably in locating an entry wound in the back of Kennedy’s head 4 inches too low. Posner told the Congressional committee that Humes and Boswell thus now agreed with the depiction of the wounds seen in the autopsy photographs and X-rays.
    2. Dr. Gary Aguilar spoke with Dr. Boswell on March 30, 1994. At that time, Dr. Boswell denied ever having spoken to Gerald Posner.
    3. On pages 324-325 of Case Closed, Posner put forth his theory that a first shot from Oswald in the TSBD window nicked the branch of an oak tree, separating lead core from copper jacket,with the core striking a pavement of Main Street and producing fragments which nicked spectator James Tague in the face. Posner includes three citations from interviews with Tague. In these, Tague is reported as having told Posner that he does not know which shot produced the fragments which nicked him–hence Posner’s hypothesis is possible.
    4. What Posner does not cite in Tague’s 1964 Warren Commission testimony. There, Tague says that he thinks that it was the second or third shot which struck him, although he is not sure. Far more important (and totally ignored by Posner) is Tague’s statement under oath that he thought the shots came from the grassy knoll and not from the TSBD!
    5. Dr. Aguilar talked with James Tague in late April, 1994. Tague denied that he ever spoke with Gerald Posner. (Recall that there are 3 citations based on an alleged interview with Tague in Case Closed.)

  • Gerald Posner, Case Closed – The Art of Misrepresenting Evidence

    How many books have been written on the Kennedy assassination? In announcing the publication of seven new books on the subject this fall, Publishers Weekly put the total at over four hundred. Too high? No, too low, way too low, according to Gerald Posner, who opens his book Case Closed by telling us it’s over two thousand! This startling figure, if it can be believed, indicates how deeply President Kennedy’s death has dug into our nation’s psyche. The mystery and drama of a charismatic president gunned downed in the arms of his wife fascinates and haunts us. It has become, as the trailer to the movie JFK advertised, the story that will not go away. It is part of our mythology.

    Indeed, Oliver Stone has said that by blending fact with fiction he was trying to create a mythology to counter the Warren Commission’s. With the success of JFK and the deluge of new conspiracy books as the thirtieth anniversary nears, it was inevitable that at least one major publisher, in this case Random House, would put its prestige behind the lone assassin theory. Posner resolves the greatest murder mystery of our time, we are told on the book’s jacket.

    Not surprisingly, mainstream media has greeted the book with the same unquestioning acceptance it did the Warren Report twenty-nine years ago. U.S. News and World Report devoted half an issue to it. It has been heralded around the nation in major newspapers and magazines as the authoritative work on the assassination, supplanting the role once played by the Warren Report. Posner has appeared unchallenged on TV and radio talk shows, a stark contrast to the rough going Stone got from the mainstream media even before his film opened.

    Case Closed is nothing more than a rehash of the Warren Report; same evidence, same conclusion dressed up with computer simulations and even bolder speculations passed off as scientific certainty. Posner’s work shows a simple, unquestioning faith in the evidence gathered by the Warren Commission. It is riddled with misrepresentations of evidence. On one issue alone, whether witnesses saw a puff of smoke on the grassy knoll during the assassination, Posner manages to make five misrepresentations of the evidence, all on one page. So here we go again, another round of claims and counterclaims on the question: Was there a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy?

    Posner Claim:
    “Railroad workers on the overpass could not have seen puffs of smoke from rifle fire on the knoll, because modern ammunition is smokeless, it seldom creates even a wisp of smoke.” (Case Closed, page 256)

    Evidence:
    Posner’s claim is easily disproved by visiting a rifle range. Just watch people shoot. Puffs of smoke will be seen all over the place. Even a government investigation conceded that “modern weapons do in fact emit smoke when fired.” ( House Select Committee on Assassinations, Report, 1979, page 606)

    Posner Claim:
    “Edward Jay Epstein in Inquest, writes ‘Five of the witnesses on the overpass said they had also seen smoke rise from the grassy knoll area.’ Epstein’s citation lists only four names, three of which do not support the proposition that the smoke resulted from gunfire”. (Case Closed, page 256)

    Evidence:
    There are seven well-documented witnesses who claim to have seen smoke on the knoll. They are S. M. Holland (who testified before the Warren Commission (6H243), James Simmons and Richard Dodd (both interviewed by Mark Lane in the film Rush to Judgment), Walter Winborn and Thomas Murphy (both interviewed by me in May 1966), Austin Miller (who wrote a statement to the Dallas Sheriff’s Department on November 22), and reporter Ed Johnson (who wrote for his paper the next day. “Some of us saw little puffs of white smoke that seemed to hit the grassy area in the esplanade that divides Dallas’ main downtown streets.” (Fort Worth Star-Telegram, November 23, 1963)

    Posner Claim:
    “James Simmons said [to the FBI] he thought the shots came from the Book Depository and that he saw ‘exhaust fumes’ from the embankment.” (Case Closed, page 256)

    Evidence:
    This is indeed what two FBI agents claim Simmons said to them in March of 1964. (22H833) This FBI report, however, is a fabrication. One of Posner’s main flaws, which he shares with the Warren Commission, is his unquestioning reliance on hearsay reports of FBI agents. Many witnesses contradicted what was in their FBI reports, and Simmons was one of them. Simmons told Mark Lane in a filmed interview, “It sounded like it came from the left and in front of us towards the wooden fence. And there was a puff of smoke that came underneath the trees on the embankment… It was right directly in front of the wooden fence.” Simmons told the FBI agents when they visited him that he had seen a “puff of smoke on the knoll.” Evidently, they chose to hand in a false report instead. (The film Rush to Judgment)

    Posner Claim:
    “Austin Miller ‘thought the smoke he saw was steam. . . . There was a steam pipe along the wooden fence near the edge of the Triple Underpass…’ If there was smoke, it is most likely that Austin Miller was right, and it was from the pipe.” (Case Closed, page 256)

    Evidence:
    Not quite. Posner does not accurately represent what Austin Miller said. In a sworn statement to the Dallas Sheriff’s Department on November 22, Austin Miller said, “I saw something which I thought was smoke or steam coming from a group of trees north of Elm off the Railroad tracks.” (19H485) When he was questioned four and a half months later by Commission counsel David Belin, he was not asked one question about the smoke or steam he observed. The steam pipe that Posner refers to can been seen in the film Rush to Judgment. It is over 100 feet away from the point on the knoll where smoke was observed by seven witnesses. No one reported smoke or steam at the location of the steam pipe. If a steam pipe had been the cause of smoke at the site of the steam pipe or on the grassy knoll, one would expect the steam or smoke to have been seen again. No such sightings occurred. Posner has a tendency to misrepresent what the witnesses said. He criticizes another author for listing Victoria Adams as a witness who picked the knoll as the origin of the shots when she actually described the shots as coming from the vicinity of the Book Depository. (Case Closed, page 237) Adams did no such thing. She was looking out of a fourth floor window of the Book Depository when the shots were fired. She testified, “And we heard a shot, and it was a pause, and then a second shot, and then a third shot. It sounded like a firecracker or a cannon at a football game, it seemed as if it came from the right below [the knoll] rather than the left above.” She then ran out of the building and over to the knoll in the direction she believed the shots came from. (6H388)

    Posner Claim:
    “Clemon Johnson [another railroad worker] saw white smoke but told the FBI that it ‘came from a motorcycle abandoned near the spot by a Dallas policeman.’” (Case Closed, page 256)

    Evidence:
    The railroad workers saw a puff of smoke right after they heard the last shot. There was no motorcycle on the knoll at that time, as clearly shown in photographs taken by a witness, Wilma Bond, after the assassination. (Life magazine, November 24, 1967)

    Posner’s presentation of the evidence of the assassination is deceptive and contrived. He is so confident of his arguments, so disdainful of the questions that have been raised, that he is disposed to make any argument, no matter how fatuous or fabricated, that a lone assassin killed Kennedy. To say otherwise, in light of the overwhelming evidence, he tells us in the last line of Case Closed, “is to absolve a man with blood on his hands, and to mock the President he killed”.

    In his preface, Posner explains why the public has been particularly receptive to conspiracy theories in this case. (Case Closed, page ix) One reason he gives is that “public receptivity to the theories is also fed by suspicions that politicians lie and cover up misdeeds.” (Case Closed, page x) But hasn’t recent history, from Vietnam to Watergate to the Iran- Contra scandal, given the most innocent among us reason to be suspicious? To read Case Closed is to descend into a world understood from the most naive perspective of how people behave and how governments work.

  • Russo, Myers and the Father of the Magic Bullet

    Russo, Myers and the Father of the Magic Bullet

    specter 2Introduction

    In his book, Gus Russo coined a fantastic new phrase that most people familiar with the Kennedy case would call an oxymoron: The Single Bullet Fact. On the ABC special, Myers used this same term. The phrase has its origins in the Warren Commission’s theory that one bullet, Commission Exhibit 399, went through President Kennedy and Governor John Connally making seven wounds and fracturing two bones, gyrating side to side and up and down on vertical and horizontal planes, and then emerging virtually unscathed at Parkland Hospital, allegedly on the stretcher of Connally. Since the Commission said there were only three shells found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, and one bullet injured a bystander named James Tague, and one killed Kennedy by striking his head, this left only one bullet to account for the rest of the wounds. Consider the language the Warren Report uses to express this idea and you will see why responsible people call it a theory: “…one shot passed through the President’s neck and then most probably passed through the Governor’s body…” (Page 111) The reason that most people find this hedged language offensive is that, as Cyril Wecht has stated, the SBT is the backbone of the Warren Report. Without it, the report collapses and you have a conspiracy.

    Arlen Specter (pictured above), a young Philadelphia attorney, who handled the actual ballistics and medical evidence for the Warren Commission, put together the underpinnings of the Single Bullet Theory. In his book of memoirs he labels the SBT the Single Bullet Conclusion, thereby leaving the impression that the evidence he gathered pointed strongly only to that tenet. It is always good to revisit original sources. Which apparently, Russo and Myers and Jennings did not do in preparing their documentary. This is understandable considering Specter’s public appearance on the 40th anniversary of the most important case he ever worked on. We render a description of his performance at the Unviersity of Duquesne’s recent anniversary conference on Kennedy’s assassination below.

    In the interest of public fairness, we ask Mr. Jennings to get the video of this rather gentle colloquy and play it on his nightly news show. We would then like to have Mr. Russo and Mr. Myers respond to the very same questions. In evidentiary terms, those few moments would be worth more than all the “irrefutable” two hours of ABC’s specious special.

    The description below originated as an email; we present it with the permission of its author.

    Hi,

    The conference in Pittsburgh was fantastic! Have you heard about what happened to Arlen Specter? I would have gladly paid 5 times the admission fee just to see what I was so privileged to see — Arlen getting publicly humiliated. Frankly I was absolutely amazed that he showed up in person. But after he gave a droning talk in which he mentioned how the single bullet theory has now been proven to be single bullet “fact” thanks to ABC, he actually stayed for the Q&A and was sitting on the panel with Mark Lane (who the whole time was grinning ear to ear like a kid in a candy store — after 40 long years, he was finally getting a chance to challenge Specter in public), Jim Lesar, and a few others. People were lined up for a mile at the mike to ask questions. But they never had a chance (my friend Bob was going to ask him how he sleeps at night) because just the few preliminary questions by Lesar, who was the moderator, turned the former Yale debate champion into a babbling idiot.

    Lesar first asked Specter how he would put the magic bullet into evidence. When Specter fumbled that one, Lesar pointed out that there was no chain of evidence that would have held up in court and Specter said, “I know a bullet when I see one, and that was a bullet.” Then Lesar asked him who he would call as his witness to put Oswald in the sniper’s nest. Specter didn’t know! Then Lesar pointed out that not only was Howard Brennan their main witness, but he was their only witness, and that he changed his testimony 3 or 4 times and couldn’t identify Oswald in a police line-up that evening. Specter said, “Well, I’ll have to go back and look at the Warren Report again to refresh my memory on that one.”

    At this point Specter’s assistant (bodyguard? office hack? whatever you call these people) jumped on the stage waving his arms like a referee stopping a boxing match when a boxer is getting pounded mercilessly, and says that Mr. Specter has to leave for another appointment. At this point Specter incredibly waved him off in a show of bravado and said that he had come to answer questions. Then Mark Lane asks him why he always asked leading questions of the medical witnesses and pointed out that, again, this would not have been permissible if Oswald had actually been tried in a court of law. Specter vehemently denied that he ever led any witnesses at which point Lesar mentioned that the day before they showed on the big screen many examples from the WC testimony where he actually did lead witnesses.

    At that point Specter let out a huge sigh and let out a groan, slumped down in his chair, and literally turned white as a ghost. (My friend Greg sitting next to me jabbed me in the ribs and told me that he thought Specter was going to faint!) The place was so silent you could hear a pin drop. Then his bodyguard once again jumped on the stage and waved his arms repeating his prior assertion that Mr. Specter had to leave — and this time Arlen gladly jumped off and they hustled out a side door.

    This whole scene was absolutely incredible. The conference was open to attorneys for continuing education credits. I would estimate that of the 1,400 in attendance at least several hundred were sitting in the section reserved for lawyers. They learned more about their government in those 15 minutes than they ever could from any class they ever took. It was a priceless moment that I shall never forget. One of those extremely rare moments when the emperor is indeed stripped of his clothes and exposed naked for all to see. Feel free to forward this to anyone you know who is interested in this who wasn’t there. And make sure to get the video when it comes out.

  • Gus Russo: ABC’s Unsurprising Choice As Research Consultant

    As a longtime student of the death of the 35th President, I wish I could say I was surprised to learn ABC had chosen Gus Russo as one of its research consultants for its broadcast commemorating the fortieth anniversary of John Kennedy’s assassination. It would have been a surprise if ABC had chosen more wisely. Uneven scholarship by the mainstream media on that murder is almost an established tradition.

    By way of background, I am a practicing ophthalmologist in San Francisco. I am also one of the few non-government physicians ever allowed by the Kennedy family to examine the still-secret JFK autopsy X-rays and photographs. I testified before the Assassinations Records Review Board [ARRB] and was mentioned by name in the ARRB’s Final Report. [1] With Pittsburgh coroner, Cyril Wecht, MD, JD as my co-author, I wrote a 100+ page section of a book published in 2002 by one of the Dallas physicians who treated JFK in Dallas. [2]

    While there is no gainsaying that, as author of the book Live by the Sword, as lead reporter for Frontline’s 1993 documentary on Oswald, and as a reporter for ABC’s Dangerous World documentary, Russo has earned considerable respect among some in the mainstream as a JFK assassination authority. But Russo, unfortunately, hasn’t earned that respect from many careful students of the topic, both pro- and anti-conspiracy. And for good reason.

    As an example of the latter, I offer Max Holland, a Warren Commission loyalist and a contributing editor to The Nation magazine. Besides his contributions to The Nation, Holland’s writings on the Kennedy case have been published in American History, The Wilson Quarterly, The Boston Globe, and American Heritage Magazine, to name but a few. [3]

    Holland has written that Russo, “appears to be nearly incapable of discrimination and not much inclined to take a hard look at sources he likes … Russo is so intent on proving his thesis, which is that Oswald acted because the Kennedy brothers were trying to get Castro, that he routinely recites half-truths, and on occasion even bends a quote to mean something entirely different from what was intended.”

    Holland provides this telling example: “[I]n testimony before the Warren Commission, Michael Paine, whose wife had befriended Marina Oswald, told of a conversation he had with Oswald about Lee’s subscription to The Daily Worker, official newspaper of the US Communist Party. Oswald, ‘said that you could tell … what they [the party] (sic) wanted you to do by reading between the lines,’ Paine testified. In Russo’s book, Oswald’s remark to Paine becomes, ‘You could tell what they (the Kennedys) (sic) wanted to do [i.e., reinvade Cuba] (sic) by reading between the lines.” [4]

    Holland concludes that, “Russo leaves out anything and everything that contradicts his preferred thesis,” and that, “Russo has one foot firmly planted in the camp of those who use the assassination as a political cafeteria, taking a fact here and a fact there, but only insofar as they further a thesis.” [5] Since Holland, like Russo, is decidedly pro-Warren Commission, his assessment cannot blithely be dismissed as mere crankiness from a conspiracy crackpot. Moreover, the pattern Holland has identified is readily apparent in Mr. Russo’s handling of JFK’s medical and autopsy evidence, a subject with which I have some familiarity.

    ‘The Kennedys attempted to limit the extent of the autopsy, and to rush those performing it’ [6]

    Arguing that Robert and Jackie Kennedy set out to thwart an honest investigation of Jack’s death, Russo claims that perhaps even the shortcomings of JFK’s autopsy were the family’s fault because of constraints they put on the surgeons in the morgue. Mr. Russo’s evidence? Not official documents and credible witness accounts, which tell a different story entirely, but the uncorroborated, and contradicted, hearsay comments of a physician-witness to JFK’s autopsy, Dr. Robert Karnei. Tellingly, Mr. Russo did not interview Dr. Karnei himself. Instead, he credits statements attributed to Dr. Karnei that were supposedly recorded in 1991 by the controversial, pro-conspiracy author, Mr. Harrison Livingstone: “Robert [Kennedy] (sic) was really limiting the autopsy … [the pathologists] were really handicapped that night with regards to performing the autopsy.”[7]

    Borrowing from Holland, Russo leaves out anything and everything that contradicts his preferred thesis, including the abundant official evidence that the Kennedy family did not interfere. That includes the contradictory account from the very source of Russo’s allegation, Dr. Karnei! In a memo written four years before the hearsay interview Russo proffers, an attorney for the House Select Committee counsel, D. Andy Purdy, JD, reported officially that Dr. Karnei had “said he didn’t know who was running things,” and that Dr. Karnei said he did not, “know if any limitations were placed on how the autopsy was to be done.” [8]

    Ironically, Mr. Russo undermines his own case by recounting a statement from the only forensic pathologist to attend JFK, Dr. Pierre Finck: “The Kennedy family did not want us to examine the abdominal cavity, but the abdominal cavity was examined.” [9] The source for this quote, which Russo does not give, was an interview with Dr. Finck published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1993. [10] Since JFK suffered no abdominal injuries whatsoever, even if Dr. Finck’s memory was true this particular family request doesn’t seem all that sinister. And in any case, the military ignored this alleged demand – Kennedy was completely disemboweled. [11]

    So, if Russo has settled anything it is not that RFK/Jackie lacerated the autopsy, but that they were so powerless they couldn’t even budge the military to keep its scalpels away from the uninjured parts of JFK’s corpse. Setting Finck’s comment aside, Russo ignores evidence that undermines his preferred thesis of family meddling. Examples abound:

    • The House Select Committee reported that during an interview with the Commanding Officer of the Naval Medical Center, “[Admiral Calvin B.] Galloway said that he was present throughout the autopsy,” and that, “no orders were being sent in from outside the autopsy room either by phone or by person.” (my italics) [12]
    • In a sworn affidavit executed for the HSCA on November 28, 1978, JFK’s personal physician, Admiral George Burkley, claimed, “I directed the autopsy surgeon to do a complete autopsy and take the time necessary for completion.” [13]
    • Under oath to the ARRB, JFK’s chief autopsist, Dr. James H. Humes, admitted that Dr. Burkley, the supposed conduit of the family’s constrictions, seemed keen to move things along, but “as far as telling me what to do or how to do it, absolutely, irrevocably, no.” [By way of explanation, Humes made the obvious point that, since Burkley was not a pathologist, “he wouldn’t presume to do such a thing.”] [14]
    • Dr. Humes’ second-in-command, Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, told the ARRB that they were “not at all” in any rush or under any compulsion to hurry. [15] “It was always an extension of the autopsy,” that was encouraged, “rather than further restrictions.” [16]
    • As an important legal matter, RFK left blank the space marked “restrictions” in the permit he signed for his brother’s autopsy.

    Finally, Mr. Russo never mentions that in 1978 the Select Committee explored the question of the family’s role in detail, concluding that, other than (reasonably) requesting the exam be done as expeditiously as possible, the Kennedys did not interfere with the autopsy. [See full HSCA quote in the footnotes.] [17] All this material is in the open record, yet to read Mr. Russo one would not know it even existed.

    Would that the above example did not typify Russo’s scholarship. But in just what I know of JFK’s medical/autopsy evidence, I must side with Holland.

    The bent fibers at Kennedy’s shirtfront proved a bullet had exited his throat

    Mr. Russo wrote, “Kennedy’s shirt displayed a bullet hole in the front of the neck band with the fibers splayed out — still more evidence of an exiting bullet.” [18] Unwisely, Mr. Russo takes at face value what Mr. J. Edgar Hoover wrote the Warren Commission in 1964: “The hole in the front of the shirt was a ragged, slit-like hole and the ends of the torn threads around the hole were bent outward. These characteristics are typical of an exit hole for a projectile.” [19] Could Mr. Russo really not know that FBI and House Select Committee officials had long since debunked Mr. Hoover about this? “The FBI laboratory’s initial description,” the HSCA reported, “did not offer evidence concerning the direction of the fibers.” [20] The FBI’s initial lab report preceded Hoover’s March 23, 1964 letter. In other words, when the FBI lab first examined JFK’s shirt, it did not report fibers were bent. The bent-fibers story premiered in Hoover’s letter. But as Warren skeptic Mr. Harold Weisberg has noted, even in 1964 the Bureau was so cautious about this “evidence” that it essentially contradicted the head of the FBI. [21]

    During his Warren Commission testimony, FBI agent Mr. Robert Frazier said that the outward bend of the shirt fibers was indicative of exit only “assuming that when I first examined the shirt it was … it had not been altered from the condition it was in at the time the hole was made.” [21a] In 1978, the Select Committee’s forensic experts echoed agent Frazier’s caution: “[T]he panel itself cannot assess evidentiary significance to the fiber direction because of the numerous intervening examinations.” [22]

    Thus, Mr. Russo has selected evidence he needs and has kept his readers in the dark about inconvenient evidence that is much more compelling.

    The abrasion collar at his throat wound gives forensic proof a bullet exited there

    In an extraordinary example of his [and his editors’] carelessness, Mr. Russo proffers flawed forensics to argue a bullet exited JFK’s throat. He writes, “Exit wounds leave distinct ‘abrasion collars’ (sic) which were detected in the Kennedy photos of his throat (the tracheostomy had left one edge of the exit wound intact.) (sic).” [23]

    Hilariously, Russo has it exactly backward.

    Exit wounds do not have abrasion rings, or “collars” as they are sometimes called; entrance wounds do. One needn’t have any profound grasp of forensics to appreciate this simple and key distinction, only some minimal familiarity with one of the better-known controversies surrounding JFK’s autopsy evidence. It was the presence of an abrasion ring in Kennedy’s back wound that was said by the forensic experts of the Clark Panel, the Rockefeller Commission and the House Select Committee to be evidence a bullet had entered JFK through his back. [24]

    Overlooked evidence

    Though touching repeatedly on the subject of Kennedy’s autopsy, Russo ignores many pro-conspiracy facts unearthed by the Assassinations Records Review Board. For example, on August 2, 1998, the Associated Press reported an important ARRB finding: “Under oath [before the ARRB], Dr. Humes, finally acknowledged under persistent questioning – in testimony that differs from what he told the Warren Commission – that he had destroyed both his notes taken at the autopsy and the first draft of the autopsy report.” [25] In other words, Kennedy’s pathologist had destroyed invaluable original autopsy notes and lied to the Warren Commission about it. [26]

    The ARRB also discovered that JFK’s pathologists and one autopsy photographer had signed an affidavit asserting that none of JFK’s autopsy photographs were missing [27]despite the fact that all of JFK’s pathologists, both autopsy photographers, a White House photographer and a National Photographic Center employee later testified that photographs taken at Kennedy’s autopsy were missing; [28] that the government had issued misleading public statements regarding two aspects of JFK’s controversial autopsy photographs: First, that witnesses who were present at JFK’s autopsy had endorsed the images [29] when, declassified files show, they had, in fact, refuted them. [30] Second, that Kennedy’s autopsy photographs had been authenticated when suppressed files showed that the extant images failed the only authentication test ever conducted on the pictures. [31] And, finally, the ARRB concluded that there was evidence that there had been two brain examinations, of two, different JFK brains. [32] Given the enormous complexity of the Kennedy case, one can appreciate that, inevitably, some errors and oversights are bound to occur in even the most carefully researched book. Allowance for such shortcomings is necessary and appropriate. But the errors and omissions I’ve identified here I believe reflect more than just the momentary lapses that commonly occur during a gigantic and painstaking task. They reflect precisely what Max Holland has so astutely described as Mr. Russo’s unfortunate penchant for using the assassination as a political cafeteria, taking a fact here and a fact there, but only insofar as they further a thesis.

    With the press so often accused these days of carelessness in fact-checking it is, alas, scarcely surprising to see ABC settling for an author with so proven a record of carelessness that it is as obvious to Warren Commission loyalists as it is to Commission skeptics like me.

    Gary L. Aguilar, MD San Francisco, California 6 December 2003

    Notes

    1. Final Report of the Assassinations Records Review Board. Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998, p. 131.

    2. Gary L. Aguilar, MD, Cyril Wecht, MD, JD. The Medical Case for Conspiracy. In: Trauma Room One, by Charles Crenshaw, MD. New York: Paraview Press, 2001, p. 170 – 286.

    3. Max Holland. After Thirty Years: Making Sense of the Assassination. Reviews in American History 22(1994).

    Max Holland. The Key to the Warren Report. American Heritage Magazine. November, 1995.

    Adam Pertman. Researcher says Cold War shaped Warren Commission conclusions. The Boston Globe, 12/8/98.

    Max Holland. Paranoia Unbound. Wilson Quarterly, Winter, 1994. (See also Max Holland. The Key to the Warren Report. American Heritage Magazine. November, 1995, p. 50.)

    Max Holland. Stokers of JFK Fantasies. Op-Ed. The Boston Globe, 12/6/98, p. D-7.

    4. Max Holland. The Docudrama that is JFK. The Nation. 12/7/98, p. 30.

    5. Max Holland. The Docudrama that is JFK. The Nation. 12/7/98, p. 30 – 31.

    6. Gus Russo. Live by the Sword. Baltimore, Bancroft Press, 1998, p. 325.

    7. Gus Russo. Live by the Sword. Baltimore, Bancroft Press, 1998, p. 325.

    In arguing that Robert Kennedy limited JFK’s post mortem examination. Russo quotes, in High Treason, [1992, p. 182] that Robert Karnei, MD–a Bethesda pathologist who was in JFK’s morgue but not part of the surgical team–claimed the Kennedys were limiting the autopsy.

    8. In the ARRB-released, 8/29/77 memo from the HSCA’s D. Andy Purdy, JD [ARRB MD # 61], Purdy writes: “Dr. Karnei doesn’t ‘ … know if any limitations were placed on how the autopsy was to be done.’ He said he didn’t know who was running things.”) (p. 3).

    9. Gus Russo in: Live by the Sword. Baltimore. Bancroft Press, 1998, p. 325.

    10. Dennis Breo. JFK’s death, part III – Dr. Finck speaks out: ‘two bullets, from the rear.’ JAMA Vol. 268(13):1752, October 7, 1992.

    11. Breo, Dennis. JFK’s death – the plain truth from the MDs who did the autopsy. JAMA, May 27, 1992, vol. 267:2794, ff.

    12. Interview of Admiral Calvin B. Galloway by HSCA counsel Mark Flanagan, 5/17/78. HSCA Record Number 180 – 10078 – 10460, Agency File # 009409.

    13. Sworn affidavit of Vice Admiral George G. Burkley. HSCA record # 180 – 10104 – 10271, Agency File # 013416, p. 3.

    14. ARRB testimony James H. Humes, College Park, Maryland, p. 32 – 33.

    15. ARRB testimony J. Thornton Boswell, College Park Maryland, 2/26/96, p. 29.

    16. ARRB testimony J. Thornton Boswell, College Park Maryland, 2/26/96, p. 30.

    17. HSCA. Vol. 7:14:

    “(79) The Committee also investigated the possibility that the Kennedy family may have unduly influenced the pathologists once the autopsy began, possibly by transmitting messages by telephone into the autopsy room. Brig. Gen. Godfrey McHugh, then an Air Force military aide to the President, informed the committee that Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Kenneth O’Donnell, a presidential aide, frequently telephoned him during the autopsy from the 17th floor suite. McHugh said that on all occasions, Kennedy and O’Donnell asked only to speak with him. They inquired about the results, why the autopsy was consuming so much time, and the need for speed and efficiency, while still performing the required examinations. McHugh said he forwarded this information to the pathologists, never stating or implying that the doctors should limit the autopsy in any manner, but merely reminding them to work as efficiently and quickly as possible.” (emphasis added)

    18. (Gus Russo. Live by the Sword. Baltimore, Bancroft Press, 1998, p. 468.)

    19. Excerpt of letter from Hoover to Warren Commissioner General Counsel J. Lee Rankin reproduced by HSCA in Report of the Forensic Pathology Panel, Vol. 7:90. Full letter reproduced in: Weisberg, Harold. Post Mortem. Frederick, MD, 1975, p. 600.

    20. HSCA in Report of the Forensic Pathology Panel, Vol. 7:91.

    21. Weisberg, Harold. Post Mortem. Frederick, MD, 1975, pp. 599-601.

    21a. Weisberg, Harold. Post Mortem. Frederick, MD, 1975, pp. 599-601. Frazier’s Commission testimony appears at: 5H61.

    22. HSCA in Report of the Forensic Pathology Panel, Vol. 7:91.

    23. (Gus Russo. Live by the Sword. Baltimore, Bancroft Press, 1998, p. 468.)

    24. A good discussion of “abrasion rings” and entrance wounds is to be found in a book by the noted forensic authority Vincent DiMaio, MD entitled, “Gunshot Wounds.” London: CRC Press, 2000, p. 70 -71. Discussions of the meaning of an abrasion ring in JFK’s back wound are to be found in the 1968 Clark Panel report, in the 1975 Rockefeller Commission report and in the 1978 House Select Committee’s report – available by request.

    25. Mike Feinsalber, “JFK Autopsy Files Are Incomplete.” Associated Press, August 2, 1998, 11:48 a.m. EDT.

    26. See “CERTIFICATE” signed by “J. J. Humes,” 11/24/63, and cosigned by George Burkley, MD. Reproduced in: Weisberg, Harold, Post Mortem. Frederick, Maryland, 1975, p. 524.

      See “CERTIFICATE” signed by “J. J. Humes,” 11/24/63, and cosigned by George Burkley, MD,. Reproduced in: Weisberg, Harold, Post Mortem. Frederick, Maryland, 1975, p. 525

    27. Report of Inspection by Naval Medical Staff on 11/1/66 at National Archives of X-rays and Photographs of President John F. Kennedy. Reproduced in: Weisberg, Harold, Post Mortem, p.573.

    28. In formerly secret testimony first taken 20 years ago, Dr. Finck described to the Select Committee how he had photographed the beveling in JFK’s skull bone to prove that the low wound in occipital bone was an entrance wound. As he explained, only images of bone, and not soft tissue (scalp) images, would have shown cratering, or beveling. (Soft tissue will not demonstrate beveling, just as a BB “wound” through a carpet will not show the beveling of one through a plate of glass.) In the following exchange, Dr. Finck was being asked by the Select Committee’s forensic consultants whether the images being shown were those Dr. Finck had claimed were missing:

    (HSCA counsel D. Andy ) Purdy: “We have here a black and white blow up of that same spot (a spot on the rear of JFK’s scalp he claimed was the location of the bullet’s entrance). You previously mentioned that your attempt here was to photograph the crater, I think was the word that you used.”

    Finck: “In the bone, not in the scalp, because to determine the direction of the projectile the bone is a very good source of information so I emphasize the photographs of the crater seen from the inside the skull. What you are showing me is soft tissue wound (sic) in the scalp.”

    A few moments later, the following exchange occurred:

    Charles Petty, MD: “If I understand you correctly, Dr. Finck, you wanted particularly to have a photograph made of the external aspect of the skull from the back to show that there was no cratering to the outside of the skull.” Finck: “Absolutely.”

    Petty: “Did you ever see such a photograph?”

    Finck: “I don’t think so and I brought with me memorandum referring to the examination of photographs in 1967… and as I can recall I never saw pictures of the outer aspect of the wound of entry in the back of the head and inner aspect in the skull in order to show a crater although I was there asking for these photographs. I don’t remember seeing those photographs.”

    Petty: “All right. Let me ask you one other question. In order to expose that area where the wound was present in the bone, did you have to or did someone have to dissect the scalp off of the bone in order to show this?”

    Finck: “Yes.”

    Petty: “Was this a difficult dissection and did it go very low into the head so as to expose the external aspect of the posterior cranial fascia (sic – meant “fossa”)?”

    Finck: “I don’t remember the difficulty involved in separating the scalp from the skull but this was done in order to have a clear view of the outside and inside to show the crater from the inside … the skull had to be separated from it in order to show in the back of the head the wound in the bone.” (HSCA interview with Finck, p.90-91. Agency File 013617)

    Evidence that these key documentary photographs of JFK’s fatal wound were indeed taken dates to the Warren Commission. During his Commission testimony, while discussing the beveling that was visible in the bone where the bullet entered, Commander Humes claimed, “This wound then had the characteristics of wound of entrance from this direction through the two tables of the skull.” Arlan Specter: “When you say ‘this direction,’ will you specify that direction in relationship to the skull?”

    Humes: “At that point I mean only from without the skull to within … and incidentally photographs illustrating this [beveling] phenomenon from both the external surface of the skull and from the internal surface were prepared.” (Warren Commission Vol.2:363)

    (Another witness supported Finck’s contention that he had worked with the photographer that night. Dr. Robert Karnie, MD, a Bethesda pathologist who was present during the autopsy, was interviewed by the HSCA. It reported, “He [Karnei] said he does ‘remember him [Finck] working with probes and arranging for photographs.’” – HSCA Agency File # 002198, p. 6.)

    The fact no such skull photographs currently exist is a problem whose significance was apparently realized very early on. Dr. Humes’ testimony about these missing images appears to have been what was being referred to in a suppressed 1967 LBJ memo that reported, “There is this unfortunate reference in the Warren Commission report by Dr. Hinn (almost certainly Humes, there was no “Dr. Hinn,” or any other doctor with a name like it) to a(n autopsy) picture that just does not exist as far as we know.” Alternatively, the memo may have been referring to photographs of the interior of JFK’s chest which Humes also discussed with the Warren Commission, and which are also missing. (Source is from memo titled, “President Johnson’s notes on Conversation with Acting Attorney General Ramsey Clark – January 26, 1967 – 6:29 PM.” Obtained by Kathy Cunningham from the Lyndon B. Johnson Library. Copy available by request.)

    In a once-secret memo, HSCA counsel, D. Andy Purdy, JD, reported that chief autopsy photographer, “(John) STRINGER (sic) said it was his recollection that all the photographs he had taken were not present in 1966 (when Stringer was first saw the photographsHSCA rec. # 180-10093-10429. Agency file # 002070, p. 11. Stringer apparently was not satisfied with the explanation given him for the missing photos, for the HSCA reported, “He (Stringer) noted that the receipt he had said some of the film holders (sic) had no film in one side of the cassettes. He said the receipt said this happened in two or three of the film holders where one side only was allegedly loaded. He said he could understand it if the film holders were reported to have poorly exposed or defective film but could not believe that there were any sides on the film holders which were not loaded with film….”

    There are no photographs of the interior of Kennedy’s chest in the “complete” set of autopsy images at the National Archives. However every autopsy participant who was asked recalled that photographs were taken of the interior of JFK’s body, as they should have been to document the passage of the non-fatal bullet through JFK’s chest. Stringer told the HSCA he recalled taking “at least two exposures of the body cavity.” A. Purdy. HSCA rec. # 180-10093-10429. Agency file # 002070, p. 2.

    An HSCA memo reported that James Humes, MD, JFK’s chief autopsy pathologist, “… specifically recall(ed photographs) … were taken of the President’s chest … (these photographs ) do not exist.” HSCA record # 180-10093-10429), Agency file # 002070, p. 17.

    Regarding J. Thornton Boswell, MD, the pathologist who was second in command after Humes, the HSCA claimed “… he (Boswell) thought they photographed ‘… the exposed thoracic cavity and lung …’ but (he) doesn’t remember ever seeing those photographs.” A. Purdy. HSCA rec# 180-10093-10430. Agency file # 002071-p. 6

    Robert Karnei, MD, a physician witness who was not a member of the autopsy team, told the HSCA, “He (Karnei) recalls them putting the probe in and taking pictures (the body was on the side at the time) (sic).”A. Purdy. HSCA, JFK Collection. RG #233, file #002198, p.5.

    Floyd Reibe, the assistant autopsy photographer, was reported to have told the HSCA, “he thought he took about six pictures–‘I think it was three film packs’–of internal portions of the body.” In: David, Lifton, Best Evidence. New York: Carroll ∓ Graf, 1980, p. 638.

    29. The question naturally arises, did anyone ever see autopsy images that have since disappeared? The answer, apparently, is Yes. In a previously suppressed interview, former White House photographer, Robert Knudsen, told the HSCA he developed negatives from JFK’s autopsy which he examined in the course of his work on November 23, 1963. During the HSCA’s investigation, he was shown the complete photographic inventory. Kundsen repeatedly insisted, against pressure, that in 1963 he saw at least one image not in the inventory he was shown in 1978 – an image with a metal probe through JFK’s body that entered the back at a lower position than it exited through the throat wound. HSCA Agency File # 014028, and HSCA Agency File # 002198, p. 5.

    30. House Select Committee on Assassinations, vol. 7:36-39.

    31. See extensive discussion in essay by G. Aguilar and C. Wecht entitled, “The Medical Case for Conspiracy,” in: Crenshaw, C. Trauma Room One. New York: Paraview Press, 2001, pp. 208 – 211 and pp. 230-232.

    32. Lardner, George. Archive Photos Not of JFK’s Brain, Concludes Aide to Review Board. Washington Post, 9/29/98, p. A-15. Available at:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/jfk/jfk1110.htm”

  • 2003 Introduction to “The Seizing of the American Broadcasting Company”

    2003 Introduction to “The Seizing of the American Broadcasting Company”

    casey 2
    William Casey

    At the time it appeared, Andy Boehm’s article was the most thoughtful analysis of William Casey’s maneuvering to take over ABC. In fact, it was the only article we were aware of to consider the serious questions that this leveraged buyout posed. At the time it occurred, it was the most blatant attempt yet at controlling the broadcast media by an intelligence officer who was also a friend, ally, and investor in corporate sponsored media; in this specific case, Cap Cities, the entity Casey used to orchestrate the buyout. Of course, Casey’s 1985 maneuvering foreshadowed a creeping control by corporate-CIA friendly investors that later broke into a full gallop. Two present day examples would be the Fox Network controlled by rightwing GOP crony Rupert Murdoch, and the Clear Channel radio network whose Texas owners are friendly with President Bush and reportedly sponsored the pro-Iraq war demonstrations to blunt the effect of the huge anti-war demonstrations held last year. Perhaps if more reporters would have examined the Cap Cities/ABC buyout, the warning sounds of what was to come to pass in American media would have been clearer and louder.

    Boehm’s article was generally overlooked at the time. Although today, in light of the above, it has even more relevancy than when it was published. But the article has one serious shortcoming that necessitates this introduction. It does not spell out clearly enough why CIA Director Casey was so angry with ABC and so determined to get his friends and fellow investors at Cap Cities to move in on it. Boehm refers to this in a brief section of his essay as follows: ” The CIA was ostensibly upset because on Sept. 19-20, 1984, ABC News had aired allegations that the agency had contracted for the murder of Ron Rewald, a Honolulu swindler who claimed that his scams were directed by the CIA, of which he claimed to be a secret agent.” (Italics added)

    The added emphasis in the sentence should pose an obvious question: If Rewald’s story was so shaky and conditional, why was Casey so angry that he became the first CIA Director to move for control of a TV network in history? And why are the actual “scams” of Rewald not noted? We can think of two reasons for this. Rewald’s trial had ended in his conviction on fraud charges and the judge had sealed much of the court record. So Boehm did not have that much to go on. Also, Casey’s actions, and the growing hostility of the Establishment to independent journalism, might also have intimidated Boehm’s publishers. Whatever the case, it is possible today to tell a more complete story about Ron Rewald, his role in the investment bank Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong, Casey’s outrage and how it facilitated the Cap Cities takeover.

    Ron Rewald was recruited to spy on the student radical movement in America in the 1960’s. Some of his spying took place at the University of Wisconsin. In the 1970’s as a result of the exposure of this illegal activity by the Church Committee in the Senate, Rewald revisited his CIA connection. They assured him he would not be exposed or held liable for his past acts. In fact, they offered him an even better assignment. Since he was moving to Hawaii, and he was already running a small investment firm of his own, they asked him to move the firm to Hawaii and later to expand it into an investment bank. There was one qualification. Although Rewald could still do his investment consulting, the major part of the bank’s activities would be for CIA activities that needed to be sheltered from both public and Congressional oversight. Thinking these would be small activities that would not take up a large part of the firm’s time or funds, Rewald agreed.

    And for the first two years of Rewald’s reenlistment with the CIA, this was approximately true. But in 1980, something happened that changed the assignment, altered Rewald’s life, and ultimately provoked Casey to act as he did toward ABC. In January of that year, the dead body of Francis John Nugan was found in his Mercedes on the Great Western Highway in Lithgow, Australia. Thus began the unraveling of the Nugan Hand Bank. Years later, after five official reports and investigations it can logically be concluded that Nugan Hand was a proprietary of the Central Intelligence Agency. That it was on the brink of failure when Nugan either committed suicide or was murdered. The other partner, Jon Hand fled or was spirited out of the country. Nugan’s death and Hand’s flight blew the CIA cover off Nugan Hand and necessitated a displacement of its covert activities in the South Pacific to Hawaii and Bishop Baldwin. (For a good summary of the rise and fall of Nugan Hand see Jonathan Kwitny’s 1987 volume The Crimes of Patriots.)

    Now Bishop Baldwin expanded its operations greatly. Satellite offices opened up in more than a dozen cities worldwide. It now employed a staff of nearly 200 people. Rewald lived in a Hawaiian estate near Diamond Head valued at over a million dollars in 1980. Bishop Baldwin had a fleet of cars and a chauffeur to drive around Rewald and Bishop Baldwin’s clients. The company which had four accounts at its incorporation in 1979, had 110 by 1983. And in such exotic places as Hong Kong and the Cayman Islands. Rewald was now meeting with people like the Sultan of Brunei and Vice-President George Bush, and arranging secret arms deals with Rajiv Gandhi of India. In fact, this last seems to have been the major CIA use of the company i.e. to spirit weapons and arms of all types into Pacific Rim countries. Bishop Baldwin also used businessmen to collect intelligence and to direct the flow of capital into American companies. It also was used as a cover for more sinister assignments like the assassinations of leftist leaders and sympathizers.

    This all ended in July of 1983. At that time a local reporter who was mysteriously tipped off began to expose Bishop Baldwin as the shell company it was. The local report spread quickly enough to major media. The CIA went into a denial mode, cutting off all ties to Rewald and letting him take the fall for the collapsed company. Rewald attempted suicide in a Honolulu hotel but recovered. The CIA considered him dangerous and unstable so they hired an assassin, Scott Barnes, to liquidate him. They gave him the cover of a minister and placed him inside the prison Rewald was being held in on fraud charges. Barnes backed out of the assignment when he was questioned by local law enforcement authorities.

    Having decided to cut ties to Rewald, the CIA began to cover up its clear and important ties to Bishop Baldwin. The three leaders of the cover up were Casey, CIA Counsel Stanley Sporkin, and former Chief of Litigation John Peyton. The court placed a ten million dollar bail bond on Rewald which he could not possibly raise in the wake of the scandal. In addition a gag order barred Rewald’s attorney from repeating in public what he told them. Case records which are normally public records, were held from view.

    The trial was a farce. Of the four prosecuting attorneys, two were from the CIA. One was Peyton who claimed it was an utter coincidence that he ended up in Hawaii on the Rewald case. The judge forced Rewald to drop his attorney of choice, Melvin Belli. He had to employ a young lawyer from the Public Defender’s office who had not tried a case yet. Rewald was not allowed to be present when classified documents were being cleared for use during the trial. Jurors were not screened in the court but in judge’s chambers. Rewald’s lawyer was cited twice for contempt and tried to withdraw from the case when he saw the judge would not let him present a full defense of his client. The prosecution actually presented imposters in court so as not to have CIA personnel questioned about Rewald. Yet even after being convicted, Rewald testified as an expert witness at another CIA agent’s trial who also used Bishop Baldwin as a cover. Richard C. Smith was acquitted.

    What is relevant to our subject occurred in September of 1984 while Rewald was awaiting trial and after Barnes had pulled out of his assassination mission. ABC reporter Gary Shepard put together a two part report for the ABC nightly newscast hosted by Peter Jennings. It featured interviews with both Barnes and Rewald. And it told the story from their point of view. Barnes was allowed to reveal how the CIA had hired him to kill Rewald and Shepard related the fact that there was evidence to indicate Bishop Baldwin was a CIA front company. As Boehm relates in his article, Casey and the CIA began to attack ABC. But a week later, Jennings said on the air that ABC stood by its story. Then Casey began to shift his efforts into high gear with the result that Boehm describes. But Boehm does not relate that after Cap Cities completed its purchase of ABC in 1985, Jennings then went on the air and related again the CIA denial of its attempt to kill Rewald. He then stated that ABC had no reason to question the denial. (This information, as well as much of the above, can be gleaned in the Kwitny book, pgs 365-377, and in the book Disavow published in 1995 and authored by Rodney Stich and T. Conan Russell.)

    The exposure of myriad illegal activities taken part in by Rewald and Bishop Baldwin–up to and including murder-form the backdrop for the Casey-Cap Cities buyout of ABC. It also helps explain who owns and controls the major media in this country and why. And through that fact it helps give an appropriate background to why ABC is prolonging a lie about the murder of President Kennedy forty years after the fact. And why that particular lie is also publicly shared by the Central Intelligence Agency.

    Go to “The Seizing of the American Broadcasting Company“