BOOK EXCERPTS FROM VINCENT BUGLIOSI'S "RECLAIMING HISTORY"
David Von Pein
http://ReclaimingHistory.blogspot.com
http://DVP-Potpourri.blogspot.com/2009/12/reclaiming-history.html
===========================================
"RECLAIMING HISTORY" BOOK EXCERPTS:
"The purpose of this book has been twofold. One, to educate
everyday Americans that Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone. ....
And two, to expose, as never before, the conspiracy theorists and the
abject worthlessness of all their allegations. I believe this book has
achieved both of these goals."
-- Vincent Bugliosi [hereinafter VB]; Page 1461 of "Reclaiming
History: The Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy" (W.W. Norton
& Co., Inc.)(Copyright 2007 by Vincent Bugliosi)
David Von Pein
"The conspiracy community regularly seizes on one slip of the
tongue, misunderstanding, or slight discrepancy to defeat twenty
pieces of solid evidence; accepts one witness of theirs, even if he or
she is a provable nut, as being far more credible than ten normal
witnesses on the other side; treats rumors, even questions, as the
equivalent of proof; leaps from the most minuscule of discoveries to
the grandest of conclusions; and insists that the failure to explain
everything perfectly negates all that is explained."
-- VB; Page xliii
David Von Pein
"If these conspiracy theorists were to accept the truth, not
only would they be invalidating a major part of their past, but many
would be forfeiting their future. That's why talking to them about
logic and common sense is like talking to a man without ears. The
bottom line is that they WANT there to be a conspiracy and are
constitutionally allergic to anything that points away from it."
-- VB; Page 1438
David Von Pein
"One would think that at least five people (Jackie Kennedy,
Governor Connally and his wife, Nellie, William Greer...and Roy
Kellerman)...might forever be immune from being accused, by the
terminally wacky buffs, of being involved in the conspiracy to murder
Kennedy, if for no other reason than that they themselves were in the
line of fire. But not so fast say the conspiracy buffs, unwilling to
concede by exemption any Homo sapiens who were alive and breathing on
November 22, 1963.
"Conspiracy theorist James H. Fetzer has removed Greer, who was
directly within the line of fire for both shots that hit Kennedy, from
the line-of-fire defense, claiming that Greer, as a part of the
conspiracy, deliberately stopped the limousine after the first shot to
make Kennedy an easier target for the remaining shots. So apparently
Greer, per Fetzer, decided to place his own life on the line to see
that Kennedy was killed.
"And two young buffs from Canada also removed Greer as well as
his partner, Kellerman, from the line-of-fire defense by actually
contending that Greer himself turned around and shot Kennedy,
Kellerman holding the steering wheel while his partner did the deed.
"In fact, a Tulsa citizen, serving as his own lawyer, went so
far as to file a lawsuit on September 30, 1996, asking the court to
find Greer and Kellerman guilty of murdering Kennedy.
"That leaves three other passengers in the presidential
limousine. Surely at least they have to be immune from the pointed
finger, right? Well, not all of them. A few weeks after the
assassination, Governor Connally's wife, Nellie, wrote an account of
the assassination on a yellow pad. Thirty years later, Newsweek
published excerpts from the account. One excerpt refers to Nellie's
visit to her husband's bedside in the recovery room at Parkland
Hospital. "He asked me about the President," she wrote, and when she
told him the president was dead, his reply was, "I knew."
"Conspiracy theorist and author Walt Brown writes, "Those two
words ['I knew'] will probably--and perhaps should--generate two
conspiracy books." In other words, there's at least a chance that
Connally was so intent on joining in the conspiracy to murder Kennedy
that, like Greer, he was even willing to risk his own life.
"In fact, conspiracy theorist Harrison E. Livingstone, in his
book 'The Radical Right and the Murder of John F. Kennedy', informs
his readers that "those in the know in Texas believe that Connally was
part of the planning for the assassination."
"I don't know about Nellie, but it's probably just a matter of
time before some nutty buff removes Jackie's Oleg Cassini pillbox hat
and tries to put the conspiracy hat on her. I mean, she wasn't quite
as much in the line of fire as Connally and Greer were. And God knows,
with JFK's flagrant womanizing, she certainly had a motive.
"Indeed, how long do we have to wait for some deranged
conspiracy theorist to write an article or book stating that President
Kennedy was in very ill health, that he had been told he didn' t have
too long to live; and that he, yes HE, was a party to the conspiracy
to have himself murdered? The motive? Polls showed his popularity was
in decline and he viewed his murder as a good career move. And we know
that Kennedy's popularity did, in fact, rise dramatically as a result
of his death on November 22, 1963.
"But all of the above assumes that John F. Kennedy was actually
killed on November 22, 1963. And we don't know this. Indeed,
conspiracy theorist George Thomson, a swimming-pool engineer, is
convinced that twenty-two shots were fired in Dealey Plaza, and five
people were killed, but not JFK. Officer Tippit was impersonating JFK
in the presidential limousine and it was he who was killed. Kennedy
escaped and was seen a year later in New York reveling at a private
birthday party for author Truman Capote. Who am I to say that George
Thomson is wrong?"
-- VB; Pages 1498-1499
David Von Pein
"Unbelievably, [Oliver] Stone told Time magazine, "I think this
movie ["JFK"], hopefully, if it's accepted by the public, will at
least move people away from the Warren Commission." He wanted his
movie, he wrote with towering arrogance in the January 1992 edition of
Premier, to "replace the Warren Commission Report."
"Can you imagine that? A Hollywood producer wants his movie to
replace the official and most comprehensive investigation of a crime
in history. It's a measure of Stone's sense of self that such a
thought, even if a vagrant one, would even enter his head.
"Arrogance thought it already had a bad name. That was before it
met Oliver Stone."
-- VB; Page 1358
David Von Pein
"Perhaps the most powerful single piece of evidence that there
was no conspiracy in the murder of President Kennedy is simply the
fact that after all these years there is NO CREDIBLE EVIDENCE, direct
or circumstantial, that any of the persons or groups suspected by
conspiracy theorists (e.g., organized crime, CIA, KGB, FBI, military-
industrial complex, Castro, LBJ, etc.) or anyone else conspired with
Oswald to kill Kennedy.
"And when there is NO EVIDENCE of something, although not
conclusive, this itself is very, very persuasive evidence that the
alleged "something" does not exist. Particularly here where the search
for the "something" (conspiracy) has been the greatest and most
comprehensive search for anything in American, perhaps world history.
"I mean, way back in 1965, BEFORE over forty additional years of
microscopic investigation of the case by governmental groups and
thousands of researchers, Dwight Macdonald wrote, "I can't believe
that among the many hundreds of detectives, Federal Bureau of
Investigation and Secret Service agents, and [counsel] for the Warren
Commission...not one would be bright or lucky enough to discover or
stumble across some clue [of a conspiracy] if there were any there."
"But not one clue of a conspiracy has ever surfaced. And this is
so despite the fact that the two people the conspirators would have
had to rely on the most not to leave a clue, Lee Harvey Oswald and
Jack Ruby, were notoriously unreliable.
"A conspiracy is nothing more than a criminal partnership. And
although conspiracies obviously aren't proved by the transcript of a
stenographer who typed up a conversation between the partners agreeing
to commit the crime, there has to be some substantive evidence of the
conspiracy or partnership's existence.
"And in the conspiracy prosecutions I have conducted, I have
always been able to present direct evidence of the co-conspirators
acting in concert before, during, or after the crime, and/or
circumstantial evidence from which a reasonable inference of concert
or meeting of the minds could be made.
"In the Oswald case, if, for instance, Oswald had disappeared
for a few days before the assassination without adequate explanation,
or within these few days he was seen in the company of a stranger, or
there was evidence he had come into some serious money, or he had made
any statement to anyone, such as Marina, suggesting, even vaguely, a
conspiratorial relationship, or someone had called him at the Paine
residence and he left the room and took the call in another room, or
he was seen getting in a car after the shooting in Dealey Plaza*, or
any of a hundred other possible events or circumstances had occurred,
that would be one thing. But here, there is NOTHING, NOTHING. Just
completely foundationless speculation and conjecture."
-- VB; Page 1439 [Emphasis is all Bugliosi's]
* = DVP Interjection --- There are witnesses who DID say they saw Lee
Oswald getting into a Rambler station wagon in Dealey Plaza about ten
minutes after the assassination. But those witnesses were positively
mistaken. How can we know they were mistaken? Because Oswald, at that
exact time, was getting on a bus several blocks east of the Book
Depository Building. And we don't even need the testimony of witness
Mary Bledsoe to confirm this fact either. The paper bus transfer,
dated Nov. 22, 1963, that was found in Oswald's shirt pocket after his
arrest is verifiable proof that Oswald could not possibly be the man
who was seen by some witnesses getting into a station wagon on Elm
Street at approximately 12:40 PM CST on 11/22/63.
David Von Pein
"To say that those alleging a conspiracy in the Kennedy
assassination have not met their burden of proof would be the
understatement of the millennium. Here, the absence of any credible
evidence of a conspiracy is bad enough for the conspiracy theorists,
but, as demonstrated on these pages [of "Reclaiming History"], there
is much, much evidence pointing irresistibly in the direction of NO
conspiracy."
-- VB; Page 1440
David Von Pein
"If [Lee Harvey Oswald] had succeeded in getting to Cuba, who
believes he would have ended up killing Kennedy? No one I've ever
heard of. And how believable is it that a plot to kill the president
of the United States, the most powerful man on earth, would be born
after October 1, seven weeks before Kennedy's death? To believe
something like that is to be addicted to silliness.
"The absurdity of the notion that Oswald conspired with others
to kill Kennedy can be spotlighted by the fact that on the very day,
September 26, 1963, that it was announced in both Dallas newspapers
that Kennedy was going to come to Texas on November 21 and 22 and that
Dallas would likely be one of the cities he would visit, Oswald was on
a bus traveling to Mexico City determined to get to Cuba."
-- VB; Page 1444
David Von Pein
"Indeed, since Kennedy's motorcade route past the Book
Depository Building wasn't selected until November 14, and announced
in a paper for the first time on the morning of November 19 in the
Dallas Morning News, we not only thereby know that Oswald getting a
job at the Book Depository Building on October 15 was unrelated to
President Kennedy's trip to Dallas and the assassination, but it would
seem that any conspiracy involving Oswald as the hit man would have
had to be hatched no earlier than November 19, just three days before
Kennedy's death (that is, unless the argument is made—which I have
yet to hear even the daffy conspiracy buffs make—that WHEREVER Kennedy
went when he came to Dallas, it was Oswald's job to track him down and
kill him).
"Surely no person with an ounce of sense could possibly believe
that the CIA, mob, and so on, recruited Oswald to kill Kennedy just
three days before the assassination."
-- VB; Page 1444
David Von Pein
"[Mark] Lane...elevated to an art form the technique of quoting
part of a witness's testimony to convey a meaning completely opposite
to what the whole would convey. A perfect example occurs when he
quotes part of Jack Ruby's testimony before the Warren Commission, in
which Ruby literally begged Chief Justice Earl Warren to bring him to
Washington to give further testimony.
"[Quoting from Lane's 1966 book, "Rush To Judgment":] "Ruby made
it plain that if the Commission took him from the Dallas County Jail
and permitted him to testify in Washington, he could tell more there;
it was impossible for him to tell the whole truth so long as he was in
jail in Dallas," writes Lane. Lane gives the following excerpt from
Ruby's testimony before the Warren Commission...Ruby: "But you
[Warren] are the only one that can save me. I think you can." Warren:
"Yes?" Ruby: "But by delaying, you lose the chance. And all I want to
do is tell the truth, and that is all."
"The unmistakable implication that Lane seeks to convey is that
if Ruby were questioned in Washington, he would divulge the existence
of a conspiracy. YET THE VERY NEXT WORDS that Ruby uttered after "that
is all" were "There was no conspiracy." These four words, which
completely rebutted the entire thrust of Lane's contention, were
carefully omitted from 'Rush to Judgment'."
-- VB; Page 1004
David Von Pein
"When Oswald got in the cab shortly after getting off the bus
for the trip to Oak Cliff, and the cab drove off, the cabdriver
[William Whaley], seeing all the police cars crisscrossing everywhere
with their sirens screaming, said to Oswald, "I wonder what the hell
is the uproar?" The cabdriver said Oswald "never said anything."
"Granted, there are people who are very stingy with their words,
and this nonresponse by Oswald, by itself, is not conclusive of his
guilt. But ask yourself this: If a thousand people were put in
Oswald's place in the cab, particularly if they, like Oswald, were at
the scene of the assassination in Dealey Plaza and knew what had
happened, how many do you suppose wouldn't have said one single word
in response to the cabby's question?"
-- VB; Pages 959-960
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/60d6eb4e737d3fd4
David Von Pein
"There is a simple fact of life that Warren Commission critics
and conspiracy theorists either don't realize or fail to take into
consideration, something I learned from my experience as a prosecutor;
namely, that in the real world--you know, the world in which when I
talk you can hear me, there will be a dawn tomorrow, et cetera--you
CANNOT be innocent and yet still have a prodigious amount of highly
incriminating evidence against you. That's just not what happens in
life. ....
"But with Lee Harvey Oswald, everything, everything points
towards his guilt. In fact, the evidence against Oswald is so great
that you could throw 80 percent of it out the window and there would
still be more than enough to prove his guilt beyond all reasonable
doubt."
-- VB; Page 952
David Von Pein
"Conspiracy theorist Walt Brown [said that] Oswald's Mannlicher-
Carcano was a "piece of junk" that "certainly lacked accuracy."
"Even if Oswald's Carcano was the worst piece of junk in the
world, this is an irrelevant argument since...firearms experts for the
Warren Commission (FBI) and HSCA proved that it was, in fact, the
weapon that fired three bullets in Dealey Plaza, two of which struck
the president.
"But in point of fact, the Carcano was not a piece of junk that
lacked accuracy. Ronald Simmons, the chief of the Infantry Weapons
Evaluation Branch of the Department of the Army, had his people test-
fire Oswald's Carcano rifle...forty-seven times, and testified the
rifle was "quite accurate"--in fact, just as accurate as the American
military rifle being used at the time, the M-14.
"Indeed, the exact type of rifle Oswald used to kill Kennedy was
still being used at the time [in 1964] by the Italian NATO rifle team
in competition."
-- VB; Page 493