REVIEW -- "Reclaiming History"
David Von Pein
BOOK REVIEW FOR:
VINCENT BUGLIOSI'S "RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
JOHN F. KENNEDY"
(Selected Excerpts Culled From My Full-Length Book Review)......
==================================================
"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; Page 1461 of
"Reclaiming History"
~~~~~~~~~~
I agree 100% with the above-referenced comments made by Mr. Bugliosi.
I can remember thinking to myself many years ago....if I could choose
just one person on the face of the globe whom I would want to have
write an in-depth book on the JFK assassination, that one person would
be Vincent T. Bugliosi.
Written over the course of nearly a 21-year period by former Los
Angeles Deputy District Attorney Bugliosi, "Reclaiming History: The
Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy" was a daunting project
indeed. In 2006, the book's title was changed from "Final Verdict" to
the wholly-appropriate "Reclaiming History".
This massive 1,664-page book (released on May 15, 2007) is accompanied
by a CD-ROM, which contains an additional 958 pages of endnotes and
another 170 pages of source notes. So the total number of pages comes
to just a little under 2,800.
"Staggeringly Comprehensive" would be a very accurate two-word
description for this book, in my opinion. "Reclaiming History"
contains more than 10,000 source citations, including 1,557 in the
first chapter alone, plus another 1,627 in the "Lee Harvey Oswald"
chapter.
Vince Bugliosi has meticulously researched and scrutinized the entire
JFK assassination case for this book -- from Lee Harvey Oswald, to
Jack Ruby, to J.D. Tippit, to all of the physical and circumstantial
evidence, to the witnesses, to the autopsy, to the Warren Commission,
to the HSCA, to the ARRB, and also to the enormous number of
inaccurate conspiracy theories that have populated the landscape since
1963.
And Vince Bugliosi (also referred to as "VB" in this review) has
assessed this massive amount of information with his usual style of
common sense, logic, thoroughness, and fairness....and has reached the
conclusion (which I have fully agreed with for many years) that Lee
Harvey Oswald, alone, shot and killed President Kennedy and Dallas
police officer J.D. Tippit on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas,
Texas.
Bugliosi has done something here that no one else has done prior to
the release of "Reclaiming History" -- he has taken each major
conspiracy theory (and many minor ones too) and has looked beyond just
the surface allegations of conspiracy to dig deeper into them and
reveal the inherent illogic, inconsistencies, and internal
contradictions that exist in EVERY THEORY (without a single
exception). It's a magnificent accomplishment by Bugliosi, in my
opinion.
I get the sense that VB is having a ball as he works his way from one
unsupportable conspiracy theory to the next in the second half of this
book, thoroughly reducing each and every theory to a pile of dust.
(And in most instances, even the dust doesn't stand a chance, as Vince
blows that away as well.)
When conspiracists go about the formidable task of attempting to
dismantle Mr. Bugliosi's 21 years' worth of lone assassin-favoring
research, I get the feeling that those "CTers" will, in essence, be
trying to put out the Great Chicago Fire with a Dixie cup full of hot
water. Such meager conspiracy-rescuing attempts won't be of much use
at all.
The first chapter in "Reclaiming History" (titled "Four Days In
November") is a spectacular 317-page chronological narrative,
detailing the events of November 22-25, 1963. The whole first chapter
has a very realistic "as it's happening" feel to it.
The 276-page "Lee Harvey Oswald" chapter contains a superbly-written
biography on President Kennedy's assassin. You're not likely to find a
more comprehensive look into Oswald's strange 24-year life than this
"LHO" chapter in Bugliosi's book (although Jean Davison's splendid
1983 book, "Oswald's Game", comes pretty close).
As with all other parts of "Reclaiming History", the microscopic
detail that exists within the Oswald chapter is remarkable, including
a look at Lee's grades in various school subjects, plus a notation
about a KGB report made on Oswald about his activities on May 1, 1960,
wherein the KGB agents following Oswald around in Minsk (USSR)
actually noted the trivial fact that Lee had purchased "200 grams of
vanilla cookies" at a local bakery.
I'm surprised the agents didn't record the brand name of the
confections and the color of the box. ;)
We also find out that when Lee returned to the USA from Russia, he
boarded Delta Airlines flight #821 for the last leg of his excursion,
from New York to Dallas, on June 14, 1962.
In addition to the stellar biographical chapter on Oswald, this book
also has a pretty thorough bio section on Oswald's killer, Jack Ruby,
as well. The 74-page chapter called "Ruby And The Mob" serves the dual
purpose of filling in the blanks of Ruby's life and also dealing in
depth with Jack's purported "Mob connections" (which are allegations
that Bugliosi handily destroys).
Re. the "Single-Bullet Theory" --- Mr. Bugliosi's "SBT" timeline has
me a bit puzzled. He's actually got a variety of different opinions on
the timing of the SBT shot (or so it seems when you read through the
entire book, plus the CD's endnotes).
I, myself, believe beyond all reasonable doubt that the specific SBT
point-of-impact Zapruder Film frame can be established....and that
frame is almost certainly Z224 (and not "somewhere between Z frames
210 and 222", as Mr. Bugliosi says in this book on page 463).
Many things begin to happen to victim John Connally beginning at
Zapruder frame #224 -- TOO many things, in my opinion, to believe that
the SBT bullet passed through both Connally and JFK at any other time.
Oddly, though, Bugliosi says in an endnote that the SBT shot occurs
"at Z223-Z224"; so I'm not quite sure which exact Z-Film frame Vince
totally endorses, if any. (On some radio interviews in May 2007, Vince
has stated that it's his belief that the SBT shot occurred "within a
split-second of Z210".)
Plus, on pages 325 to 327 of the CD's endnotes, Bugliosi acknowledges
the very real possibility (via Dr. John Lattimer's 1994 "lapel bulge"
tests) that a single bullet could have passed through both Kennedy and
Connally at Z224.
Vincent seems to be placing on the table ALL potential "SBT"
possibilities throughout his immense publication. I, however, would
have preferred more consistency in this book with regard to the timing
of the SBT bullet strike. But Bugliosi evidently feels that the
precise "impact" frame cannot be definitively established on the
Zapruder Film for the SBT shot.
But even with a bit of ambiguity in his SBT timeline, at least
Bugliosi knows (as do I) that a SBT frame DOES exist somewhere within
Zapruder's 26-second home movie. And this bottom-line SBT belief
exhibited by VB is due in large part to plain ordinary common
sense....because the sum total of all the evidence in this case makes
the Single-Bullet Theory a virtual certainty.
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/bb22792c022c5a2e
Or, to use Vincent's own words (from page 482 of this book) -- "The
overwhelming evidence is that whenever Kennedy and Connally were hit,
or first reacted to being hit, they were both struck by the same
bullet." -- VB
And then there are also these comments made by Vince B. on pages 457
and 458:
"We can have all the confidence in the world, by an examination of the
physical evidence and the utilization of common sense, that {a single
bullet struck both JFK and Connally}. When you can establish the
single-bullet theory by reference to evidence other than the
{Zapruder} film, you necessarily know that the film itself cannot, by
definition, show something else. .... Since we KNOW Kennedy and
Connally were not hit by separate bullets, we know, before we even
look at the film, that it CANNOT show otherwise." -- VB
The above Vince Bugliosi quote is brimming over with evidence-based
common sense (with such common-sense observations flowing like water
over Niagara Falls from every page of this book).
================================
SOME OF MY FAVORITE QUOTES FROM THE BOOK (with a few "DVP" comments
thrown in for good measure):
"Waiting for the conspiracy theorists to tell the truth is a little
like leaving the front-porch light on for Jimmy Hoffa." -- VB; Page
xiv
---------------------------
"I can assure the conspiracy theorists who have very effectively
savaged {Gerald} Posner in their books that they're going to have a
much, much more difficult time with me. As a trial lawyer in front of
a jury and an author of true-crime books, credibility has always meant
everything to me. My only master and my only mistress are the facts
and objectivity. I have no others." -- VB; Pages xxxviii-xxxix
---------------------------
"Not the smallest speck of evidence has ever surfaced that any of the
conspiracy community's favorite groups (CIA, mob, etc.) was involved,
in any way, in the assassination. Not only the Warren Commission, but
the HSCA came to the same conclusion. ....
"But conspiracy theorists, as suspicious as a cat in a new home, find
occurrences and events everywhere that feed their suspicions and their
already strong predilection to believe that the official version is
wrong." -- VB; Page xlii
---------------------------
"The doors to the theater are slammed open as a wedge of officers
bursts into the sunlight {with suspected police killer Lee Harvey
Oswald in handcuffs}. .... The suspect complains that the handcuffs
are too tight. Detective Paul Bentley isn't too sympathetic, thinking
to himself that Oswald was in much better shape than Tippit was. He
reaches back and tightens the cuffs even more." -- VB; Pages 106-107
---------------------------
"{Dallas medical examiner Earl} Rose sees the casket bearing the
president's body being pushed out of Trauma Room One, Mrs. Kennedy at
its side. .... A crush of forty sweating men are clustered around the
wide doorway as curses fly back and forth. One of them looks like he
might belt the medical examiner at any moment. ....
"In a homicide case, it's my duty to order an autopsy," {Theron} Ward
says. .... Ken O'Donnell pleads with him, "Can't you make an exception
for President Kennedy?" Incredibly, Ward tells him, "It's just another
homicide case as far as I'm concerned." O'Donnell's response is
instantaneous. "Go fuck yourself," he yells. "We're leaving!"" -- VB;
Page 110
---------------------------
"{Jack Ruby} called his sister Eileen, in Chicago {on Friday
afternoon, 11/22/63}, and was crying. .... "Maybe I will fly up to be
with you tonight," he suggested, but she reminded him that Eva
{another sister of Jack's}, who had just returned home from the
hospital from abdominal surgery, needed him now more than she did.
"You better stay there," she told her brother." -- VB; Page 172
DVP: The above conversation between Lee Harvey Oswald's eventual
murderer, Jack Ruby, and Ruby's sister is quite illuminating (in a
"non-conspiratorial" sort of way). Because if Jack Ruby had been a
"hit man" for the Mob (or whoever) and had been assigned to "rub out"
Oswald (as many people firmly believe was the case), then why is he
offering to fly to Chicago on the night of the assassination to be
with his sister? It doesn't add up.
And, per page 172 of VB's book, Ruby might very well have gone to
Chicago too, if his sister, over the phone, had not persuaded him not
to make the trip.
---------------------------
DVP: Vincent Bugliosi's incredible attention to the smallest of
seemingly-unknowable details concerning the events of November 1963,
borders on the supernatural.* Such microscopic details are fascinating
to me for some reason. Here's one such example, among literally
hundreds sprinkled throughout this publication:
"On an impulse he {Jack Ruby, at around 10:15 PM on November 22} stops
at Phil's Delicatessen on Oak Lawn Avenue and tells the counterman,
John Frickstad, to cut him ten corned beef sandwiches with mustard.
And ten soft drinks--eight black cherries and two celery tonics. He
chats a bit with the owner, Phil Miller. .... The sandwich bill only
comes to $9.50 plus tax--Frickstad made only eight sandwiches instead
of the ten Jack ordered." -- VB; Pages 174-175
* = Upon doing a little additional research of my own regarding Ruby's
purchase of the sandwiches and drinks on the night of November 22, I
discovered (by way of Mr. Bugliosi's source notes on the CD) that VB
obtained the detailed information about the type of sandwiches and
exact flavors of the cold drinks from Warren Commission Exhibit #2252
(which is linked below).
CE2252 also provides additional information concerning Ruby's late-
night deli order that's not in the book. Quoting from CE2252: "He
{Ruby} also ordered three cups of butter, one-half loaf of bread, and
some extra pickles. Potato salad and pickles were provided with each
sandwich".
That is just one of many examples of the thoroughness of the Warren
Commission's investigation (and, of course, exemplifies the
comprehensive nature of Mr. Bugliosi's research for this book as
well). ....
http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh25/html/WC_Vol25_0103b.htm
---------------------------
"The {Warren} Commission {quoting Arlen Specter}..."chose men of
outstanding reputation, like Joe Ball of California, a leader of the
California bar for many years...Similar selections were made...from
New York and Chicago and Des Moines and New Orleans and Philadelphia
and Washington, so that every conceivable pain was taken to select
people who were totally independent, WHICH IS HARDLY THE WAY YOU SET
OUT TO ORGANIZE A TRUTH-CONCEALING COMMISSION"." [Bugliosi's
emphasis.] -- VB; Page 342
---------------------------
"Lest anyone still has any doubt as to the location of the large exit
wound in the head...the Zapruder film itself couldn't possibly provide
better demonstrative evidence. The film proves conclusively, and
beyond all doubt, where the exit wound was.
"Zapruder frame 313 and frame 328 clearly show that the large, gaping
exit wound was to the RIGHT FRONT of the president's head. THE BACK OF
HIS HEAD SHOWS NO SUCH LARGE WOUND AND CLEARLY IS COMPLETELY
INTACT." [Bugliosi's emphasis.] -- VB; Page 410
http://www.assassinationresearch.com/zfilm/z328.jpg
---------------------------
"Common sense tells us that seeing only the wound to the front of the
president's neck {and not seeing the corresponding entry wound in
Kennedy's back at any time}, the Parkland doctors would instinctively
have been more inclined to think of it as an entrance wound. Almost
anyone would be so predisposed." -- VB; Page 414
---------------------------
"Though conspiracy theorists are almost unanimous in believing that
the president was shot from the front and his throat wound was an
entrance wound, they are strangely silent as to what happened to this
bullet after it entered the president's throat. .... It would be
virtually impossible for a bullet entering the soft tissue of the neck
at a speed of 2,000 feet per second to stop inside the neck and not
exit the body." -- VB; Page 416
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.assassination.jfk/msg/6951e9702addec2c
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/bed05a055b2f4133
---------------------------
"Perhaps the clearest visual evidence of the fact that the entrance
wound in the {President's} back was definitely above the exit wound in
the throat appears in one of {the} autopsy photos taken of the left
side of the president's head as he is lying on his back, his head on a
metal headrest.
[Here's the photo Vince is referring to, turned sideways for better
orientation:]
http://www.jfklancer.com/photos/autopsy_slideshow/images/jfk_zeroang.jpg
"Only the wound to the throat is visible, not the wound to his upper
right back. However, it couldn't be clearer from this photo that the
wound to the back was definitely ABOVE the exit wound in the throat."
-- VB; Page 424
DVP: Deja vu:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/d1d7ea222703d800
---------------------------
"The {Zapruder Film} alterationists have even claimed that at some
point after the assassination, all the curbside lampposts in Dealey
Plaza were moved to different locations and/or replaced with poles of
different height. .... I know that conspiracy theorists have a sweet
tooth for silliness, but is there absolutely nothing that is too silly
for their palate?" -- VB; Pages 506-507
---------------------------
"It is worth being reminded that on the same day, October 7 {1962},
that General {Edwin} Walker returned to Dallas...Oswald
announced...that he had decided...to move to Dallas. .... What Lee had
in mind very likely was his plan to murder General Walker." -- VB;
Pages 673-674
---------------------------
"The evidence is clear and unimpeachable -- Lee Harvey Oswald bought,
owned, and handled the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found on the sixth
floor. And it was THIS weapon that was used to murder John F.
Kennedy." -- VB; Page 804
---------------------------
"She {Julia Ann Mercer} said, "A man was sitting under the wheel of
the car and slouched over the wheel." (I defy any student of the
English language to explain, from these words, the position the man
was in.) ....
"But why presidential assassins...would deliberately draw attention to
themselves by parking illegally and blocking traffic on a busy street
in the presence of three Dallas police officers as well as lay
witnesses like Miss Mercer is not known. Of course, conspiracy
theorists never let common sense get in the way of their hallucinatory
theories." -- VB; Pages 883-884
DVP: Large-sized "LOL"!
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/4c5c64ebb97fa1ee
---------------------------
DVP: The very enjoyable CT bashfest continues as Vince takes a look at
the widely-believed, but ultimately "terribly silly" (per VB's
footnote on page 888), "Badge Man" theory. The side-splitting hilarity
in Chapter #12 flows non-stop, as indicated by the following excerpt:
"Apparently, Kennedy's assassin, instead of trying to...escape from
behind the picket fence after shooting Kennedy, had much more
important things to do -- mainly, climb over the fence (at which point
he'd be in plain view of everyone on Elm Street) so he could beat up
on that louse Gordon Arnold and take his film." -- VB; Page 888
---------------------------
"Perhaps the most famous of the "other" assassins are the "three
tramps". The fact that there never was any evidence at all of their
guilt is irrelevant to the conspiracy theorists. To the buffs, there
was one big piece of incriminating evidence against the tramps: THEY
WEREN'T LEE HARVEY OSWALD! And in the balmy and unhinged conspiracy
universe, no evidence of guilt is stronger against someone than that
he isn't Lee Harvey Oswald." -- VB; Page 929
---------------------------
"{Oswald's} attempt, just seven months {before JFK's murder}, to kill
Major General Edwin A. Walker clearly showed his propensity for
murder, at least where his target was political. ....
"Remarkably, many major books on the assassination by Warren
Commission critics and conspiracy theorists don't even mention
Oswald's attempt to murder Walker. Not one word." -- VB; Page 942
---------------------------
"Once you establish and know that Oswald is guilty, as has been done,
then you also NECESSARILY know that there is an answer (whether the
answer is known or not) compatible with this conclusion for the
endless alleged discrepancies, inconsistencies, and questions the
conspiracy theorists have raised through the years about Oswald's
guilt." -- VB; Page 953
---------------------------
"No one knew Oswald as well as his wife, Marina. .... Marina told
{author Priscilla} McMillan that when she visited her husband in jail
on the day after the assassination, she came away knowing he was
guilty. .... She said she knew that had he been innocent, he would
have been screaming to high heaven for his "rights," claiming he had
been mistreated and demanding to see officials at the very highest
levels." -- VB; Page 962
---------------------------
"In a city of more than 700,000 people, what is the probability of one
of them being the owner and possessor of the weapons that murdered
both Kennedy and Tippit, and yet still be innocent of both murders?
Aren't we talking about DNA numbers here, like one out of several
billion or trillion? Is there a mathematician in the house?" -- VB;
Page 964
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/7e70b829247b4a49
---------------------------
"In the Kennedy case, I believe the absence of a conspiracy can be
proved to a virtual certainty." -- VB; Page 973
---------------------------
"The dreadful illogic and superficiality of the conspiracy theorists'
modus operandi has inevitably resulted in the following situation:
Though they have dedicated their existence to trying to poke holes in
the Warren Commission's findings, they have failed abysmally to tell
us (if the Warren Commission was wrong) what actually did happen.
"In other words, other than blithely tossing out names, they have
failed to offer any credible evidence of who, if not Oswald, killed
Kennedy. Nor have they offered any credible evidence at all of who the
conspirators behind the assassination were.
"So after more than forty years, if we were to rely on these silly
people, we'd have an assassination without an assassin (since, they
assure us, Oswald didn't kill Kennedy), and a conspiracy without
conspirators. Not a simple achievement." -- VB; Page 982
---------------------------
"The conspiracy community, a potent and formidable body through the
decades, has by sheer force of numbers clearly dominated the debate in
front of a national audience, one which apparently hasn't minded
hearing, for the most part, only one side of the story." -- VB; Page
999
---------------------------
"Warren Commission counsel Wesley Liebeler says that..."if {Mark Lane}
talks for five minutes, it takes an hour to straighten out the
record"." -- VB; Page 1001
---------------------------
"It is nothing short of incredible that Lane, who finds room in his
book {"Rush To Judgment"} for 353 people who he claimed were connected
in some way to the Kennedy case, couldn't find room for a single
paragraph on people like {Robert} Jackson, {Johnny} Brewer, and
{Police Officer M.N.} McDonald." -- VB; Page 1003
---------------------------
"The vast majority of the witnesses on the various mysterious-death
lists of the conspiracy theorists...weren't connected with the case in
any known way whatsoever. .... But of those who did have a connection
-- such as Roger Craig, Earlene Roberts, Lee Bowers, and Buddy
Walthers -- all of them, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, had already told their
story, most of them on the public record, so what could possibly be
achieved by killing them?" -- VB; Page 1018
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/d52845e6c744cccf
---------------------------
"The conspiracy theorists are so unhinged that they believe Oswald's
framers would use an impersonator who looks as much like Oswald as
Danny DeVito does." -- VB; Page 1056
DVP: Here's the guy who evidently was posing as Lee Oswald in Mexico
(according to some conspiracy believers):
http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y30/rsan2332/LHO25.jpg
---------------------------
"One theory that perhaps "takes the cake" is set forth by conspiracy
author David Lifton in his book "Best Evidence". .... Out of his 747
pages, {Lifton} unbelievably devotes no more than 6 or 7 full pages,
if that, to Oswald." -- VB; Pages 1057-1058
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/0de08844600b8c7a
---------------------------
"The notion that LBJ would actually decide to have Kennedy murdered
(or be a party to such a plot by others) is not one that, to my
knowledge, any rational and sensible student of the assassination has
ever entertained for a moment. But conspiracy theorists are not
rational and sensible when it comes to the Kennedy assassination." --
VB; Pages 1274-1275
---------------------------
"In {Oliver} Stone's hands, the thoroughly discredited {Jim} Garrison
became a courageous, Capraesque, American patriot fighting for justice
and to save the country from dark and sinister forces out to subvert
our American way of life." -- VB; Page 1353
---------------------------
"{Oliver Stone} wanted his movie, he wrote with towering arrogance in
the January 1992 edition of "Premiere" {magazine}, 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. .... Arrogance thought it already
had a bad name. That was before it met Oliver Stone." -- VB; Page 1358
---------------------------
"OLIVER STONE, IN HIS MOVIE 'JFK', NEVER SAW FIT TO PRESENT FOR HIS
AUDIENCE'S CONSIDERATION ONE SINGLE PIECE OF EVIDENCE THAT OSWALD
KILLED KENNEDY!" [All emphasis Mr. Bugliosi's.]
"So a murder case (the Kennedy assassination) where there is an almost
unprecedented amount of evidence of guilt against the killer (Oswald)
is presented to millions of moviegoers as one where there wasn't one
piece of evidence at all. There oughta be a law against things like
this." -- VB; Page 1386
---------------------------
"If...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; Pages 1437-1438
DVP: Truer words were never spoken, Vince. And the "I Want A
Conspiracy" mindset that some people possess is on full display here:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/c6fc623a7f9d0738
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/24f8834034ebccf7
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/b1e24b5f97bed883
---------------------------
"Critics have questioned whether Howard Brennan was really the source
of {Dallas Police Inspector J. Herbert} Sawyer's detailed description
{of the TSBD assassin} and the dispatcher's subsequent broadcast. ....
The affidavit that Brennan gave at the sheriff's office within an hour
of the shooting includes {a} description of the gunman...nearly
identical in language to Sawyer's {12:44 P.M.} broadcast. .... There
can be little doubt Brennan was, in fact, the source." -- VB; Pages
35-36 of Endnotes
---------------------------
"Hugh Aynesworth...covered the assassination story from ground zero
{and} said that he went out to {Lee Oswald's} rooming house right
after the police had searched Oswald's room on the afternoon of the
assassination and interviewed {housekeeper Earlene} Roberts in depth.
"She never said a word about any police car honking its horn outside
the rooming house around the time Oswald was there earlier in the
day."
"In fact, Aynesworth said he interviewed Roberts at least two more
times thereafter and she never said a word about the alleged incident.
{Jim} Ewell, he said, had also interviewed Roberts separately and she
never mentioned the incident to him either." -- VB; Page 40 of
Endnotes
DVP: It's also worth mentioning here, with respect to Earlene Roberts,
that Roberts told the Warren Commission that it wasn't all that
uncommon for a police car to stop in front of the Beckley Avenue
roominghouse and toot its horn. Roberts claimed that such an event had
occurred on other occasions prior to November 22, 1963.
So, the very fact that police cars had a pre-11/22/63 HABIT of
stopping in front of 1026 North Beckley and honking the car horn
should tell a reasonable person that even if a similar occurrence DID
take place on the day of the assassination, it probably wasn't any
kind of a CONSPIRATORIAL event. Instead, it can be considered a NORMAL
thing to have occurred at that location (assuming Roberts was being
truthful about the pre-November 22 horn-honking incidents).
---------------------------
"The virtual proof that Ruby came down the Main Street ramp is that
within a half hour of his arrest...(long BEFORE {DPD officers} Pierce,
Putnam, Vaughn, and Maxey had been interviewed and given their
statements), Ruby told Dallas police...detectives that he had entered
through the Main Street ramp and had seen Pierce driving out of the
ramp.
"How could Ruby possibly have known this if he hadn't, in fact, been
at the entrance to the Main Street ramp? I mean, Pierce himself didn't
even receive instructions to drive out of the Main Street ramp until
around 11:15 a.m., just six minutes before Ruby shot Oswald." -- VB;
Pages 108-109 of Endnotes
---------------------------
"How would this "fake 6.5 mm {X-ray} object," as {Dr. David} Mantik
calls it, implicate Oswald? .... What possible advantage would the
conspirators have gained by forging the object onto the X-ray film?
The thought that they would risk getting caught doing this to
implicate Oswald in a case in which he and his rifle were ALREADY
OVERWHELMINGLY CONNECTED TO THE ASSASSINATION is irrational on its
face.
"One should add that if, indeed, Dr. Mantik's conspirators were
willing to do something so extremely risky and completely unnecessary
to frame Oswald, wouldn't they have found some way to bring it to the
attention of the FBI or Warren Commission in 1964?
"Instead, if Dr. Mantik is correct, we have to learn about the
sinister implications of the "cardboard artifact" for the first time
35 years later when he published his findings in the book
"Assassination Science"? Isn't this silly, again, on its face?" -- VB;
Page 222 of Endnotes
---------------------------
"The single most important discovery, and one that establishes with
ABSOLUTE AND IRREFUTABLE CERTAINTY that the autopsy photographs have
not been altered, is the fact that many of the photographs, when
combined in pairs, produce stereoscopic images. ....
"The entire photographic panel of the HSCA concluded that "the autopsy
photographs and X-rays were taken of President Kennedy at the time of
his autopsy and that they had not been altered in any manner." This
fact alone demolishes the conspiracy theorists' allegations that
photographic fakery was used to conceal the plot to kill the
president.
"It also destroys another prime conspiracy belief--that the eyewitness
descriptions of the president's wounds that were offered by the
Parkland Hospital doctors (and later by some eyewitnesses to the
autopsy) are proof that the autopsy photographs had been altered.
"Obviously, if the autopsy photographs are genuine and unaltered
(which all the experts agree), then eyewitness descriptions of the
president's wounds that contradict those photographs are not proof of
alteration, as some critics claim, but nothing more than examples of
understandable, mistaken recollections, or if not that, then
deliberate and outright falsehoods." -- VB; Pages 223-224 of Endnotes
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/0a74025900f77968
---------------------------
"A point that conspiracy theorists have raised over and over in their
books is that the entrance holes in the president's coat and shirt
were more than 2 inches lower in the back than the actual entrance
wound in his body. But even if there wasn't an explanation for this,
so what?
"Like virtually all criticisms by...conspiracy theorists, it doesn't
"go anywhere." The typical critic just points out the discrepancy and
then moves on. But the discrepancy would only mean something if one
were able to thereby conclude that the president was shot twice in the
back, once where we know the entrance wound in the back was, and once
below that where the holes in the coat and shirt were.
"But one can't conclude this because there is no evidence of a second
entrance wound to the president's back, and no evidence of any holes
to the back of the president's coat and shirt other than one to the
coat and one to the shirt." -- VB; Page 241 of Endnotes
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.assassination.jfk/msg/3b0c2cd76e4bcfcb
---------------------------
"What reason would the conspirators have for taking multiple
{backyard} photos? Even if it was to ensure that they at least got one
good photo, after they got their good photo, why wouldn't they destroy
the others?" -- VB; Page 398 of Endnotes
DVP: Indeed. And many CTers even go so far as to say that multiple
backyard pictures were faked even though the conspiracy theorists
purporting such insanity readily acknowledge the fact that Marina
Oswald herself took ONE "REAL" PHOTO of her husband on March 31, 1963!
In other words, an authentic, bona fide backyard photo of Lee Harvey
Oswald existed prior to 11/22/63, but the photo fakers decided to go
ahead and fake additional pictures anyway....i.e., forgeries which
depicted the EXACT SAME BACKYARD SCENE AS THE ONE "REAL" PHOTO!
Can the conspiracy-loving silliness GET much crazier than that?
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/abf2ea54c9dddca4
---------------------------
"If we're to believe the {conspiracy} theorists, it apparently never
crossed the minds of the alleged conspirators who killed Kennedy to
simply get rid of the evidence that could convict them. Unlike nearly
all ordinary conspirators, Kennedy's killers intentionally and
knowingly left evidence behind in the archives and the Warren
Commission volumes that could expose them -- evidence that only the
conspiracists are smart and industrious enough to uncover." -- VB;
Page 418 of Endnotes
---------------------------
"The bullet {from the 2004 "SBT" test performed in Australia during
the "Discovery Channel" documentary, "JFK: Beyond The Magic Bullet"},
though it directly struck two ribs, weighed 158 grains, meaning it
lost just .6 grain more than Commission Exhibit No. 399...even though
the latter bullet only struck a glancing blow to Connally's right rib.
"Certainly, the relatively intact Adelaide {Australia} bullet showed
that the limited damage to Commission Exhibit No. 399 was not
inconsistent at all with its having caused all of the wounds to
Kennedy and Connally." -- VB; Page 430 of Endnotes
DVP: The "Beyond The Magic Bullet" program (in which Vincent Bugliosi
made an appearance, by the way) is one of the best documentaries in
recent years on the JFK assassination.
The detailed SBT test performed by the Australian researchers proved
that a Carcano/WCC bullet could positively take a very similar path
through two "bodies", do approximately the same damage to the two
"victims", and have that bullet emerge in a totally UNFRAGMENTED
condition. Here's a picture of that test bullet:
http://216.122.129.112/dc/user_files/6735.jpg
I ask: What are the odds that such a test could mimic the Single-
Bullet Theory so closely (not perfectly, granted...but darn close to
it) and yet have that purported ONE-bullet event actually being
performed by two or three different bullets in Dallas on November 22,
1963 (complete with the appropriate number of "vanishing" bullets
after the shooting)?
Any odds-makers nearby?
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/69758897e673c5a2
---------------------------
"The whole issue of what stretcher the bullet {CE399} was found on,
Connally's or some unknown person's, is a giant nonissue. Since we
know that the bullet was fired from Oswald's Carcano rifle, and we
know it wasn't found on Kennedy's stretcher, it had to have been found
on Connally's stretcher." -- VB; Page 431 of Endnotes
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/0b30398a449c05b7
---------------------------
"What is the likelihood that a bullet found on CONNALLY'S stretcher,
which we know was fired from Oswald's gun, is not the same bullet that
deposited its missing fragments in Connally's wrist? Next to nothing.
"In other words, when all is said and done, what difference does it
make if it turns out that the NAA tests are completely invalid? But
there is a more important point to be made. Let's not forget that the
NAA conclusions by Guinn...are COMPLETELY CONSISTENT with all the
other evidence showing that Oswald was at the sniper's nest window and
it was his Carcano rifle that fired the only bullets that hit Kennedy.
"This other, independent evidence necessarily increases the likelihood
that Guinn's separate NAA conclusions are accurate." --VB; Pages
436-437 of Endnotes
DVP: In addition, allow me to add my two cents re. this matter .....
What do you think the chances are that a multi-gun conspiracy took
place in Dealey Plaza, with bullets from MORE THAN ONE GUN striking
the victims in JFK's limousine on Elm Street....and yet NOT A SINGLE
BULLET OR FRAGMENT from any non-C2766 (i.e., Oswald's) gun turned out
to be large enough to be tested in order to positively eliminate Lee
Harvey Oswald's Carcano rifle as the source for ALL of the bullets and
fragments that hit any victims on Elm Street?
In other words: If a multi-gun plot really did end the life of John F.
Kennedy, how is it POSSIBLE that those conspirators got lucky enough
to have none of the non-Oswald bullets (or even fragments thereof)
discovered by anybody?
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy.jfk/msg/e68af2a823062f43
---------------------------
"An argument frequently heard in the conspiracy community is that
Oswald could not have been convicted in a court of law because the
"chain of custody [or possession]" of the evidence against him was not
strong enough to make the evidence admissible in a court of law. ....
"The first observation I have to make is that I would think
conspiracists...would primarily want to know if Oswald killed Kennedy,
not whether he could get off on a legal technicality.
"Second, there is no problem with the chain of custody of much of the
physical evidence against Oswald, such as the rifle and the two large
bullet fragments found in the presidential limousine.
"Third, and most important on this issue, courts do not have a
practice of allowing into evidence only that for which there is an
ironclad and 100 percent clear chain of custody, and this is why I
believe that 95 percent of the physical evidence in this case would be
admissible.
"I can tell you from personal experience that excluding evidence at a
trial because the chain of custody is weak is rare, certainly the
exception rather than the rule. The typical situation where the chain
is not particularly strong is for the trial judge to nevertheless
admit the evidence, ruling that the weakness of the chain goes only to
"the weight of the evidence [i.e., how much weight or credence the
jury will give it], not its admissibility"." -- VB; Page 442 of
Endnotes
---------------------------
"Even if we were to assume the total invalidity of the polygraph test
given to Ruby, his willingness--in fact, his insistence--that he be
given one is strong circumstantial evidence of his innocent state of
mind and the truthfulness about everything he said.
"Lay people, including Ruby, for the most part believe that lie
detector tests can detect lies. It is a considerable stretch to
believe that if Ruby were guilty of being involved in a conspiracy, he
would insist on taking a polygraph test, supremely confident he could
conceal his guilt and pass the test." -- VB; Page 645 of Endnotes
---------------------------
"{Joan} Mellen's book {2005's "A Farewell To Justice"} is dreadfully
bad on all counts. All the completely discredited witnesses, even
mental cases, who had made bizarre allegations years ago in the Shaw
case...were actually, per Mellen, telling the truth. ....
"Where Mellen can't find some already well-known nut in the Garrison
case to rely on or tell her what she wants to hear, she comes up with
more obscure nuts. ....
"The Kennedy assassination has already been polluted beyond all
tolerable limits by nuts and quacks and phony stories. Mellen is a
university professor. How dare she publish such misleading material on
so serious a subject." -- VB; Pages 910-911, 915, and 923 of Endnotes
================================
A FINAL WORD:
Per the "letter of the law", everyone who is accused of a crime is
considered to be innocent until proven guilty....and this is just as
it should be. However, even lacking the advantage of an official
courtroom trial, Vincent Bugliosi, in my opinion, HAS definitely
proven that Lee Harvey Oswald, alone, was guilty beyond all doubt of
the two murders he was charged with in 1963.
And I also feel that any reasonable person who reads this incredible
and comprehensive book will have no choice but to arrive at that very
same "Bugliosi Has Proven Oswald Was JFK's Lone Assassin" conclusion.
Yes, the more rabid of JFK conspiracists are likely to be unimpressed
by Mr. Bugliosi's all-encompassing body of work here. They will likely
still balk and squawk about how Vince hasn't proved a darn thing and
about how you can never prove there WASN'T a conspiracy.
But it won't matter what the "zanies" continue to say. Because to any
level-headed and sensible person, "Reclaiming History: The
Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy" represents the equivalent
of Moses bringing the tablets down from the mountain. And each and
every tablet says the same thing: "Oswald's Guilty and No Conspiracy".
Upon finishing this tome, it becomes even more obvious that the title
of this book is, indeed, very appropriate and on target -- because Mr.
Bugliosi, within these pages, has done a more than admirable job of
"reclaiming history" from the JFK assassination conspiracy theorists
of the world.
David Von Pein
May/June 2007
=====================================================
Full-Length "RH" Review:
www.hometheaterforum.com/htf/showpost.php?p=3200858
=====================================================
mnhay27
And here's a review of Bug's book by a professional historian:
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Essay_-_Vincent_Bugliosis_Misnamed_Reclaiming_History
David Von Pein
Nah. No thanks. I prefer the common sense that my review provides
instead.
mnhay27
LOL What's the matter Mr. Von Pein - afraid to see your precious
hero's approach torn apart by a professional who knows his subject?
Never mind. You just ignore the truth and stay safe and warm in your
little lone nut bubble.
Gil Jesus
> =====================================================
>
> And here's a review of Bug's book by a professional historian:
>
> http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Essay_-_Vincent_Bugliosis_M...
------------------------------------------------------
GEE, VON PEIN, THIS DESCRIPTION SOUNDS EXACTLY LIKE YOU---JUST CHANGE
THE NAMES FROM BUGLIOSI TO VON PEIN:
Vincent Bugliosi's Misnamed Reclaiming History
by David R. Wrone, 28 Sep 2007
In the forty four years of sustained discussion about the official
findings of the federal government's investigation into the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy no author can equal the
failure Vincent Bugliosi has achieved in his misnamed Reclaiming
History.
Invented facts & relations.
A characteristic of his narrative is the frequent use of hypothetical
instances as a substitute for a lack of evidence or absence of
documentary support for a statement. These he typically expresses with
such phrases as "probably" or "must have" and similar wordage. In
other words, when no or scant evidence exists to sustain a point he is
writing about, he makes it up. For example, in one three page section
of the end notes where he discusses the Officer J. D. Tippit murder he
uses these made up substitutes for the lack of evidence thirty seven
times. In the book as a whole one can only estimate the total number
of inventions to be incredibly large. This is not what the
civilization we are part of calls history, but is a class of fiction
presented as non-fiction known as Munchausen's work. In the appendix
the thirty seven instances are set down.
Mythic reconstruction substituted for evidence.
Closely akin to Vincent Bugliosi's inventions employed as evidence is
his use of imaginary or mythic reconstructions to carry a point when
he hasn't any facts to sustain them. These he plugs into his narrative
and employs for all the world as if they were expressions of the
November 22nd reality. In this he parrots the Warren Commission's
lavish and pious use of reconstructions as a solution for the lack of
evidence in its rush to frame Oswald's guilt so a doubting America and
a skeptical world would believe it. While we could cite many of these
stand-in devices to illustrate this common Bugliosian anti-historical
trait, perhaps his invention of the path Oswald took from his rooming
house at 1026 N. Beckley Avenue to the scene of the Officer J. D.
Tippit murder near 10th Street & Patton Avenue, will suffice.
Like the Warren Commission did before him Bugliosi claims Oswald
killed Tippit. To do this Oswald officially-following the Warren
Report's scenario--had to move from his room on Beckley three minutes
after 1:00 p.m. to the scene of the murder by 1:15 p.m. (radioed in at
1:16 p.m.) the time the Commission set for the shooting. [1]
Responsible critics long ago convincingly proved the feat to have been
impossible for him to have performed. [2] Bugliosi overcomes this
severe and ultimately exculpatory time constraint in three ways. First
he gratuitously starts Oswald to the Tippit scene several minutes
before 1:00 p.m. to gain minutes for his thesis. Next, he adds minutes
to the end of the walk where he speciously asserts Oswald arrived
later than 1:10 p.m., the time a witness swore he had seen Tippit dead
on the pavement. [3] He then couples the gerrymandered time with an
invented pathway. He declares he himself fast walked this route taken
by Oswald south of the rooming house to the murder scene, a route he
knows by intuition alone. He got there in 11' 23" minutes, plenty of
time for Oswald following this asserted trail and supposed time to
have shot Tippit at 1:15 p.m. before a citizen sounded an alert on the
police radio at 1:16 p.m. [4]
But when we examine the path Bugliosi took, upon which his assertions
of Oswald as murderer of the police officer must rest, we discover it
is all a type of blue sky matter, a theory not history. He invented
the route. There is not a scrap of genuine evidence, a fact, a
scintilla of data, to mark any route to Tippit. Just as with the
Commission's map of Oswald's alleged path taken, it is a pining wish.
[5]
The only evidence of what Oswald did after leaving the rooming house
is based on his housekeeper's report. At 1:04 p.m., she stated and
attested, he stood at the bus stop just across the front sidewalk and
just past the drive way on the right hand side of the house where he
could catch a bus going north. [6] The official record avoids
presenting any information on the schedule and route the northbound
bus took while Bugliosi also renders them invisible entities just as
he did on Oswald's wait at the stop. But after going north the bus
route turned and ultimately passed the Texas Theatre. Furbishing the
logic of the bus stop wait, we recall that Oswald told Captain Will
Fritz of the DPD during interrogation that after he left his room he
went to the movies. [7] Certainly the north bus component ought to
have been included in the evidentiary base and evaluated; a proper
inquiry into the assassination of President Kennedy would demand it.
[8]
The Master Theorist.
Not content with mere invention and rampant speculation, Bugliosi
pommels all dissenters from the official doctrine that Oswald killed
JFK and passionately tars them with the slander brush of 'conspiracy
theorists.' But contrary to his assertion all dissenters are not
theorists, such as the exemplary Howard Roffman and the indubitable
Harold Weisberg, as well as many others. But bizarrely Bugliosi is a
theorist himself, the castle-master indeed. The hundreds of his
invented facts and dozens of mythic reconstructions are simple
theories, pure instances of the pernicious breed, including the major
theory suffusing his book that asserts Oswald killed JFK.
Fact corruption.
He so often corrupts facts that it makes his text unacceptable to any
person of candor seeking understanding of this national tragedy.
Several representative instances of this characteristic are presented
in the appendix.
Calculated omission of important facts.
A close brother to distortion of some key evidentiary elements is
Bugliosi's often omission of important relations defining a fact. The
result is the presentation of the false nature of the fact under
discussion with the end of furthering his theory of Oswald's guilt.
Perhaps the best short example from the great many, yea scores, for us
is his treatment of cab driver William Whaley's identification of
Oswald in the police line up. Without context, so important for a
reader to judge the fact properly, Bugliosi briefly states that Whaley
at 2:15 p.m. on the afternoon of November 23rd picked out Oswald.
Whaley, of course, is the cab driver who right after the assassination
had driven Oswald to N. Beckley Street and had further attested in
various testimonies and affidavits that he had dropped him off at
three different addresses! [9]
We are not told about the bizarre nature of this police line up. [10]
Four men stood in the line up, three well dressed police officials,
detectives--W. E. Perry (7H232-235) and Richard Clark (7H235-239), and
jail clerk Don Ables (7H239-243)--and then the rudely dressed Oswald.
Each was asked to give their name and occupation. The first three gave
fake answers. Oswald though gave his true name and said he worked in
the Depository, which by then the world knew about, and his picture
was in the papers Whaley read that morning.
Oswald stood in the line up bawling out the policemen for framing him,
cussing and ranting he was being set up; he had bruises and a black
eye. "He talked," the cab driver recalled, "that they were doing him
an injustice by putting him out there dressed different than these
other men he was out there with." [11] As Whaley added: ". . . you
wouldn't have had to have known who it was to have picked him out by
the way he acted." Moreover, Whaley swore there were six men in the
line up when there were four. [12] Then, incredibly, he testified that
he had signed the finished affidavit before he went down to view the
line up. To top it all off he did not identify Oswald as his passenger
but chose no. 3, whereas Oswald was no. 2 with a large number above
his head. [13] The Commission fiddled the answer and put false
information about it in its Report. [14] The entire incident drives to
the heart of the sickeningly incompetent and corrupt police techniques
and dedicated false focus that Bugliosi consistently and often piously
masks with his simulated erudition. As it is he provides a distorted
picture of Whaley's credibility.
Conclusion.
With Bugliosi we have a man with great talent and mighty work ethic
whose reputation now stands tarnished. But he is not alone. In
addition to the author's weaknesses, though, we have a wide range of
institutions that failed us. We have the refusal of a publisher to
publish responsible volumes on this crucial subject. To spew this mind
skewing mammoth of disinformation out into the public mind has no
saving grace. But we also have a press and a media avoidance of the
evidentiary base; we have the refusal of clueless historians to
address the reality; and, we have the spurning of the subject by the
intelligentsia, its rejection by Congress, and its disdain by lawyers.
In short this volume must be seen as part of the breakdown of American
society in a time of crisis.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Appendix
I. Instances of Invented Facts and Relations on pages 49-51 of the end
notes.
In these few pages of the end notes Bugliosi often relies on the
Warren Commission findings and arguments, which he holds to be valid
and uses them sometimes as his own basic position.
Beginning on page 49 of the endnotes P = paragraph. line = line down
from the top of the paragraph or page top.
1) p. 49, P 1, line 3, "The Warren Commission estimated that Oswald
left the Depository Building at 12:33 p.m."
Estimated you will observe, not determined or defined by evidence.
12:33 is put forward by Bugliosi as if sound and as an expression of
the evidence properly defined and appropriately examined. The time was
critical. A quick departure of Oswald from the Depository was key for
the Warren Commission's and Bugliosi's purposes of coordinating it
with the alleged assassin's walk to the bus, bus ride, taxi cab ride,
walk, and then arrival at his rooming house. The housekeeper Mrs.
Roberts swore he entered her rooming house about 1:00 p.m. Thus Oswald
could not dally leaving the Depository or he could not reach his room
by that time. This iron requirement forced the Commission and Bugliosi
to ignore, distort, and censor much information showing or suggesting
Oswald departed from the Depository later. This it masked by the term
'estimated.'
Some of the difficulties inhibiting an Oswald early departure from the
Depository can be noted. First, we can observe that no one saw him
leave the building, or at least officials did not find someone who
did. Next, in addition to the possibly several hundred individuals
around the area of the site and many films not pegging his departure,
the Commission rested the path for Oswald's exit from the building
solely and forever on Depository clerk Mrs. Robert Reid's testimony.
Her account presents so many problems that they erode confidence in
its employment. [A1] She had been outside watching the motorcade and
returned to her second floor desk. The Commission claimed she took two
minutes walking from Elm Street to her desk from where she saw him
sauntering out. But this is based not on some stop watch of the moment
or other chronological device she possessed, but upon three shaky
reconstructions the attorneys ran her through that generally fits its
theory. Her official time then means Oswald was on the second floor at
12:32 p.m. and then "calmly" walked out in the next minute (i. e.,
12:33) where she safely back at her desk spied him. But the Commission
has Oswald taking one minute to do the same thing going the other way
whose incongruity poses no problem. [A2]
Further complicating the Commission's (and Bugliosi's) blueprint for
exit is the witness of a Depository clerk, Geneve Hine. She had not
left the building to view the motorcade passing, but had stayed at her
desk, a position that Oswald would have had to pass on his way out.
She did not see him. [A3] Neither the Report nor Reclaiming History
utilizes her compromising information, yet both must have known of
it.
Adding more possibilities to a delay in Oswald's departure time is the
experience of four individuals who entered the Depository shortly
after the assassination to use the phones. Three met a person possibly
Oswald. [A4] The Secret Service believed WFAA-TV newsmen Pierce Allman
and Terry Ford met him in the lobby; when Oswald stopped and gave them
directions to a phone, obviously an act that added time to his exit
and flew in the face of the assertion he was an assassin fleeing the
scene of his devil work. If one recalls, when Capt. Fritz of the
Dallas police interrogated Oswald he had mentioned that when about to
leave the building he had met two men and directed them to a phone.
[A5] "These are the men referred to by Oswald in his interview with
Fritz," reported the Secret Service after investigating their
accounts. [A6]
The activities of newsman Robert MacNeil and army officer James Powell
must be noted. The former's account suggests but not with certainty he
also might have seen Oswald, adding minutes to the departure time, and
for the latter man there is an unresolved timing issue. Minutes after
the assassination MacNeil rushed into the building searching for a
phone. The later television commentator recalled meeting with a young
man who pointed him to the phone. Over the years he consistently said
of the event that: "I can't confirm" it was Oswald. [A7]
Special Agent Powell of the Army Intelligence, 112th Group, Region
III, also rushed in, allegedly about eight minutes after the
assassination, 12:38, and apparently saw Allman telephoning, but did
not see Oswald. [A8]
2) _____, P 1, line 6, "[With respect to the FBI's reconstruction of
Oswald's path to the Tippit scene] we have no reason to believe Oswald
would have been walking at an average pace"
Many times federal investigators and private individuals have tried to
reconstruct the alleged path Oswald took from his room to the scene of
the Tippit killing--officials: the FBI once, the Warren Commission
once, HSCA twice, the arch apologist former counsel David Belin twice;
citizens: Bugliosi and many others have worn a path between the two
sites. The twin problems they faced were a) what route to follow for
there were many possibilities, and b) how to get Oswald from his room
to the killing site quickly enough to have shot Officer J.D. Tippit
four times. If they could not get Oswald there in time he could not
have killed him. Officials pared time and fudged evidence in a mighty
effort to pull off sufficient minutes. Unbelievably each
reconstruction differed in the time they took in following their
imagined route and never referred to the other times or explained how
each one could differ and why. The FBI walked at an average pace.
Bugliosi in this sentence criticizes the FBI reconstruction as being
performed at an average pace whereas he fervently claims Oswald fast
walked or came close to a trot. To refute the FBI's reconstruction he
simply invents a fact, by saying "no reason to believe." This resort
to imaginary formulation is not history. In fact, there is no evidence
whatsoever on Oswald's pace or route. None.
3) _____, P 1, line 8: "In heavy traffic (as it was that day)"
Bugliosi wants to use the FBI reconstruction time of Oswald's move
from the Depository to board the bus in order to satisfy his need to
get Oswald to his room in time to fit his invented time-frame. To meet
the demands of his mathematical calculations he asserts that the
actual time of Oswald's walk to the bus from the Depository and the
FBI's reconstruction of that time were duplicates.
But again we must impose the iron rules of history upon the subject
matter. He presents no evidence to prove that the crowd and traffic
density during the reconstruction duplicated the crowd and traffic
density during Oswald's alleged flight.
He circumvents the absence of evidence by use of the phrase 'as it was
that day' that he apparently plucked from the ether. This he imposed
on the text to leave the impression it was a 24 carat duplication. It
cannot possibly be valid. For example, traffic and crowds on the 22nd
were thick. Not true on the reconstruction day.
4) _____, P 2, line 3: When addressing the Commission counsel Belin's
reconstruction of Whaley's cab ride from the bus station to the
rooming house, Bugliosi remarks that: [Whaley according to the
Commission left at 12:48 p.m.,] "most likely" this was "several
minutes later than Oswald actually left."
Bugliosi wanted the cab to leave the stand earlier so he could capture
additional minutes to fit his theory of an Oswald earlier arrival at
his rooming house. This would give him several minutes before the
official time. Then he would have Oswald enter and exit and get to the
Tippit scene in (Bugliosian) time to kill the officer.
His problem roots in the Commission reenactment of the ride. Bugliosi
asserts blithely and without shame or evidence--no document, no
eyewitness, no photograph, no mechanical device, or any other system--
that 'most likely' the cabbie left several minutes earlier.
'Most likely' does not have a scrap of fact behind it for alas it is
wholly invented. It is a device to grab those few more minutes; it is
not history.
5) _____, P 2, line 4: "Oswald would have probably been walking at a
fast pace" [at the time he left the Depository.]
Bugliosi needs Oswald to reach the cab stand prior to 12:48 p.m. so he
can leave in the cab earlier than the Commission claimed. The
Commission argued Whaley departed at 12:48 p.m. Bugliosi needs some
additional time before then to get Oswald to his rooming house earlier
than the Commission asserted. By doing this he could have Oswald enter
and leave the house and walk to the Tippit scene early enough-or so he
pontificates-- to shoot the officer.
Again, we remark there is no evidence whatsoever Oswald fast walked
that day from the Depository or for that matter anywhere. Oswald's
known movements belie he was a fast walker. [A9] Let us illustrate.
After the assassination in the Depository a searching police officer
confronted him on the second floor stopped at the Coke machine and he
was not out of breath or worried, just calm. Stopping for a Coke is
not the characteristic act of a man in flight. (Truly, 3H262; Baker,
3H251); he sauntered from the Depository (Reid, 3H279); he dallied at
the taxi cab stand and finally got into the front seat, not the mark
of a man in flight (Whaley, 2H255-256); he then when a woman seeking a
ride came up to the cab he offered to get out and let her have it, but
she declined his polite offer, which certainly contradicts a charge
this man was hurrying from a crime scene (Whaley, 6H431); he stopped
the cab blocks short of his rooming house address and walked the
additional several blocks, which is diametrically an opposite move of
a man in flight (Whaley, 6H429); he waited at a bus stop, surely this
is not evidence of a man in desperate flight (Roberts, 7H439); he went
to a movie, which to the initiated and uninitiated alike is the
opposite of what a man in a hurry to escape with his life would do
(Report, p.8-9); and so forth. Manifestly, this is a profile of a
person not fast walking in flight from police and in fear of his life
and cannot be construed as such except by theory fueled by
imagination.
'Probably' is an assertion of wish and does not have the wings of
evidence to make it fly.
6) _____, P 2, line 6: "the most reasonable assumption is that Whaley
put 12:30-12:45 p.m. on his trip ticket" to record a time prior to
12:45.
No evidence exists for this 'assumption.' How can an assumption be
evidence? Whaley testified he entered all his trip ticket times in
quarter hour segments (which in fact he did not) and Oswald's ride he
entered at 12:30 to 12:45 p.m. Bugliosi asserts that Whaley pulled out
before 12:45 and that gratuitous chronology provides the author with
more minutes to move Oswald to his rooming house. There are no
records, witnesses, documents, film, or other pieces of evidence to
support this claim.
But the Commission stated Whaley's record keeping was inaccurate.
Since it had to have him enter his rooming house at about 1:00 p.m. it
indulged in another of its infamous reenactments. Its counsel rode
with Whaley during a reenactment and placed the drop off on Beckley at
12:54 p.m. providing Oswald with six minutes to walk the several
blocks to the house. Its premise seems to have been if you do not have
the evidence then imagine it.
Bugliosi wants, yea needs, Oswald to arrive at his drop off several
minutes before 12:54 p.m. With that he can get him in and out of his
room quickly so he can walk to the Tippit murder scene in Bugliosian
time to kill the officer.
There is no evidence to sustain this point.
7) _____, P 2, line 7: "he left" the bus depot "at some time prior to
12:45 p.m."
Related to the previous point (6).
You cannot determine the time Whaley drove away with Oswald by simply
inventing it came before 12:45 p.m. The witness as was well shown by
the Commission was unstable, confused, and perjured himself, and even
told the Commission he thought he gave bad information, all of which
Bugliosi converts to make him a solid good witness. The Commission
said 12:48 p.m. and Bugliosi wants it to be 12:42 p.m. or earlier to
accommodate his cockamamie claim Oswald got to his room earlier than
1:00 p.m. (the witness statement) so he just asserts 'some time
prior.' He is working with fairy dust as a substitute for historical
procedures.
8) _____, P 2, line 8: [The Warren Commission estimated time of
departure from the bus cabbie stand at 12:48 p.m. is] "at least three
minutes'' too late.
This relates to points 6 and 7. Here Bugliosi has decided to invent
the number of minutes prior to 12:48 p.m. that Whaley left the cab
stand and states 'at least three minutes.' Again we observe: this is
naked, standing without factual support. Bugliosi needs those minutes
to move Oswald in and out of the rooming house before 1:00 p.m. in
order to have him walk to the Tippit scene in time to kill the officer
according to Bugliosian time.
9). _____, P 2, line 9: "It makes little sense" that if Whaley left
the depot at 12:48, he would record his departure as being between
12:30 and 12:45.
He continues to wrestle Whaley. After considerable working over by the
Commission lawyers, the pliable, confused, and utterly lost Whaley
swore it was 12:48. But he is such a poor witness it is decidedly
strange and telling on his scholarly pretensions that Bugliosi assumes
he is sensible. 'It makes little sense' has no meaning as evidence for
departure time.
10) _____, P 2, line 12: He states the Commission held that Oswald
walked "at a normal pace" from his taxi drop off to rooming house.
He ought to have noted for the reader that there is no evidence on
what pace Oswald used. Again, the speed Oswald allegedly walked is
pure, bald, conjecture.
11) _____, P 2, line 15: According to the Commission Oswald arrived at
his rooming house "around 12:59 p.m."
Again, to state the central point, 'around' disguises an invention,
this time by the Commission. It claimed Oswald arrived at his room at
'around' 1:00 p.m. giving him a minute, 12:59-1:00 p.m., to sprint up
the stairs and in the door. This of course is conjecture not history.
The Commission only had the evidence in the house keeper's statement
of when he entered, 1:00 p.m.
12) _____, P 3, line 1: [With a "probable minimum" three-minute error
by the Warren Commission the real arrival time was "most likely" 12:56
p.m.]
Here he continues to pound the reader's intelligence with his invented
three minute early cab departure and chastises the Commission again.
In an act not defined through evidence this permits him to subtract
time from the Commission's conjectured, 12:59 p.m. time, a conjecture
we observe on an invention. 'Probable' is not evidence.
13) _____, P 3, line 2: "real arrival time was most likely"
Relating to point 12 above.
At this point he asserts the time Oswald entered his rooming house at
12:56 p.m. In the absence of facts he simply conjures much I suppose
like the witches in Macbeth do, but in such a way to support his
theory of Oswald the killer. His previous discussions and assertions
are not the burden bearers of a sound history just idle speculation.
History must deal with the facts and when they are missing a
responsible historian says so.
14) _____, P 3, line 6: "no reason to assume" the housekeeper's
statement that Oswald entered at 1:00 p.m. "should be given"
precedence over his [Buligosi's] reconstruction of Oswald's time at
12:56 p.m...
There is every reason for a historian to accept her statement. He just
tosses overboard the evidence. It was carefully examined and tested by
the Commission, the FBI, and the Secret Service. She repeatedly stuck
to her basic points. There is no evidence upon which to rest his
demand. She is a witness and he is an inventor of 'evidence.' But note
the cheek on what he asks a reader to do here. He or she is to discard
solid evidence and substitute for it his forty year after the fact
pooka story based on dozens of hypothetical statements, inventions,
and conjectures. This is not history.
15) p. 50, P 3, continued from preceding page, line 1 top of p. 50:
"should be given"
See above, no. 14.
Here again the conditional and the asserted hypothetical in lieu of
fact is used.
16) _____, P 3, line 4: "Assuming an arrival time" at his rooming
house of 12:56.
He continues to substitute his invented time--pulled out of the blue
we reiterate--as a reality.
17) _____, P 3, line 6: [The arrival time at his rooming house, 12:56
p.m. is based on a Warren Commission "assumption" Oswald walked at an
average pace-we "can certainly assume he was not"
It is not 'we' but history that is at issue. The pace is not known.
18) _____, P 3, line 8: Part of no. 17.
He chides the Commission for assuming Oswald walked at an average
pace, which for him slowed Oswald down too much to arrive at the
rooming house at 12:59 p.m. The Commission as we have previously
commented needed to have Oswald arrive in the rooming house at 1:00
p.m. to accommodate Mrs. Roberts testimony that he arrived at that
time. So the fact the Commission assumed evidence is not the issue for
Bugliosi but rather that they assumed too much. But he, Bugliosi,
assumes the correct time. Why? He just says he is correct and bald
assertion transmogrifies to fact. There is a touch of Bedlam here.
Page 50, P 3, line 10. Here we make note of a fact in the text. Before
the Commission Mrs. Roberts testified Oswald left the rooming house
"in a hurry . . . walking unusually fast . . . all but running." This
sentence becomes Bugliosi's coin of truth proving to some corner of
his mind that Oswald proceeded to the Tippit murder at the same rate
of speed. Unfortunately for history he has decided to omit critical
facts.
a) What she also swore to and he clips out of his narrative was
Oswald, after departing the house, then stood outside the house at a
bus stop waiting. The bus stop and the waiting become invisible to
Bugliosi and never enter his thinking. Yet,
b) The rush exit from the rooming house makes sense if he is hurrying
to catch the north bound bus to go to the movies.
c) We have previously noted the evidence that Oswald was a slow mover
and also gave other points that show he was not in a rush, fleeing for
his life. These elements from the official record seem not to find a
way to enter into this author's thinking. His use of the "rushing
sentence" is an instance of misrepresentation of the facts.
19) _____, P 3, line 10: [Mrs. Roberts estimated that Oswald stayed in
his room three or four minutes] "would clearly seem to be loose and
excessive."
Here he is trying to diminish her testimony in order to award more
minutes to his claim Oswald was in and out of the house quickly. This
would permit him to get to the Tippit scene early.
'Would clearly seem' covers up a wish and a want for those minutes to
bolster his theory. These drive the issue not the facts. He errs. Only
evidence not theory diminishes solid testimony. She is correct.
20) _____, P 3, line 11: "if we use, based on common sense," [an
amended reconstructed time, Oswald would have left his home for a
fatal and serendipitous rendezvous with Tippit around 12:59,
earlier.]
History relies upon facts and evidence, testimony and documents, not
"common sense." We must also observe he does not define common sense;
his version may be entirely different from a reader's. Of course, he
is attempting to move him out of the house and to the Tippit scene to
kill the officer on his invented time schedule. This is a simple
instance of manipulation of the evidence to fit his theory and is
unacceptable behavior for a putative scholar.
21) _____, P 3, line 12: "would have left . . . around 12:59."
He either did or did not according to the evidence. This relates to
no. 20. He did not leave at 12:59 but three or four minutes after one
and at 1:04 was standing, waiting for a bus.
22) _____, P 3, line 13: [Generally] "assuming a departure time as
late as 12:59 p.m."
Again, he 'assumes' because he has no evidence and is a prisoner to
his theory of the time Tippit died and must either have him leave at
this time or chuck his argument. This is old fashioned balderdash.
23) _____, P 3, line 13: [Since] "my best estimate of the time of
Tippit's murder was around 1:12 p.m."
As previously noted he has invented a number of things along the way
and now seeks by fiat to accord them status as evidence! Furthermore,
it is not his best estimate at all that provides a historian with an
objective rendering of an event but the lay of the facts that infuses
sense and awards meaning to objects.
24) _____, P3, line 15: [Oswald arrived at the Tippit murder scene]
"around 1:11 p.m."
Nos. 21, 22, 23 apply here.
Oswald did not arrive around 1:11 p.m.; this is supposed by Bugliosi,
a sheer invention passed off as scholarship. By manipulating the facts
he alleged Oswald left the rooming house before 1:00--in the teeth of
the only evidence that he left at 1:03 and was standing at the bus
stop at 1:04--and that he fast walked, again in the teeth of the known
facts that it is impossible to know what pace he used. No matter how
one construes the time element for the alleged travel from the rooming
house to the Tippit scene, his or the various officials--12 to 18
minutes--and Bugliosi's claims about 11 and one half minutes--Tippit
was dead before Oswald allegedly arrived.
25) _____, P 1, line 2: [There are several routes Oswald] "could have
taken" [to the Tippit scene.] He refers to the Commission map
CE1119A.
He does not tell the reader the map is based on hearsay and at any
rate is inaccurate and unreliable. Commission counsel David Belin made
it up on his own, unsworn, without witnesses, and with no checks upon
him. He omits alley ways and a road.
27) _____, P 1, line 2: Belin for the Commission stated "that there
are two "direct" routes" from the rooming house to the Tippit murder
scene.
In referring to previous efforts at timing the alleged Oswald path to
Tippit's murder site Bugliosi refers to David Belin, assistant counsel
for the Commission. The Belin statement rests solely upon his unsworn
word.
The alleged routes should have been tested and sworn to and with
witnesses present, then double checked and criticized by an opposing
counsel (the essence of legal truth gathering). Belin did not do this
although it was his responsibility. In the second place there are more
than two routes, if one counts alley ways, and the like, doubling
back, and what not. Observe, once more, that Belin merely asserted
what happened without any evidence.
Oswald did not kill Tippit and did not follow any paths.
28) _____, P 1, line 11: "at a normal pace"
Locked in on the speed walker aspect here he states Belin walked off
the time between the rooming house and the murder scene 'at a normal
pace.'
It is not known what pace Oswald allegedly took and it certainly is
not known what route he took. Belin in a book he later wrote did the
walk twice, at 14 and 12 minutes. But what Bugliosi omits is when
before the Commission Belin stated it took 17' 45" to do it. [A10] But
any of Belin's times precludes Oswald as having shot him. [A11]
29 _____, P 1, line 14: [The Warren Commission] "assumed" [Oswald did
not take the (short route) to the Tippit scene.]
Both this point and the next relate to the route followed. To repeat
our central point on this topic. There is no evidence that Oswald took
any route, let alone the longer one.
30) _____, P 1, line 16: [On the shorter route he "would have had to
pass" [Helen Markham, a witness near the Tippit murder scene.]
Again, this simple speculation.
31) p. 51, P 1, continuing from p. 50, line 2 from top of p. 51: [From
the map one can see the Commission] "believed Oswald took" [it]
32) _____, P 1, line 2: "assumed" [Oswald took the longer route on
CE119A.]
One should note in nos. 31 and 32 that this is again hypothetical
writing.
33) _____, P 1, line 5: [In reconstructing Oswald's route] "I assumed
Oswald would be walking" [at a brisk pace.]
We have already commented on this assertion. How can a person claiming
to be a bona fide historian of the crime of the century assume facts?
We should additionally observe the path set forth in the official
route (and presumably Bugliosi's). It has Oswald changing directions
seven times, as in a Chinese puzzle, south from his rooming house,
then going east, then South East, then North East, killing Tippit,
they traveling South West, they South East, then South West to the
theater. A man fleeing for his life would not twist and turn and
wander. This mindlessness is not explained by the author and negates
his invented argument that Oswald was fleeing for his life.
34) _____, P 1, line 5: "Common sense tells us . . . Oswald would most
likely" [not have been walking at a normal, average pace.]
Not true. There is no evidence on what speed Oswald walked. At issue
is not common sense, an ingredient that is not defined by him but
wrongly assumed to be a universal element of the mind. It often
starkly differs from one to another.
Long ago we learned as the nation evolved that historians must rest
their accounts on fact and evidence not on imagination and wishes and
wants. He uses Earlene Roberts statement that Oswald ran fast, almost
running to exit from the front room or television room of the rooming
house. But then clips from his account with the scissors of his
predetermined conclusion of Oswald's guilt that she saw him standing
outside the house. As we commented above this was at the north bound
bus stop. He corrupts her statement.
We should also underscore the fact several teams of officials looked
into her statements with the Secret Service not doubting her for a
minute. His manipulation of Mrs. Roberts' witness testimony and
affidavits and interviews to fit his imaginary scenario constitutes an
unfaithful use of the sources and is not what historians rightly do.
Items 35, 36, and 37 relate to the alleged motive of Tippit allegedly
pulling Oswald over. This is all speculative stuff. It cannot be known
why Tippit pulled an individual over. There is no evidence.
35) _____, P 2, line 3: [Oswald] "was most likely" walking at a fast
pace and that was why Tippit pulled him over.
36) _____, P 2, line 5: Citing a Sheriff Bowles Bugliosi states Oswald
"probably" was "walking like the devil possessed."
How would Bowles know? He would not. He was not there. It is another
Dallas absurdity passed off as intelligent police work. 'Probably'
covers a guess based on a wish.
37) _____, P 2, line 11: He states "even if Oswald had been walking
fast earlier, [when reaching the Tippit scene] he would have been
slowing down."
Simply amazing. A double invention.
II. Fact corruption instances.
The following four examples are used to illustrate Bugliosi's problems
with the factual base.
1. His claim that four eyewitnesses saw a rifleman in the sixth floor;
three of whom saw him fire.
2. His claim that a withheld page of Mrs. Kennedy's testimony is not
as critics claim with key data but innocuous.
3. His claim that the police sealed the Depository.
4. His claim that contrary to theorists the Secret Service did not
wash the limousine in Dallas and taint evidence.
~1~
Four eyewitnesses saw a rifleman in the sixth floor; three of whom saw
him fire.
In a blatant non-sequitur that in Bugliosi's peculiar form of
scholarship substitutes for a rebuttal to the critic-doubter, he, in
what must be classed as pouting language, mentions four eye witnesses
saw a rifle pushing out of the window in the alleged sniper's nest on
the sixth floor of the TSBD and three of them saw that rifle fire.
This proves, he says, that the ear witnesses' on the fifth floor's
testimony that they heard something on the sixth is correct. Although,
a thoughtful reader will find the logical assumption impossible to
follow, except perhaps after a long evening in an Irish bar, he
writes: [A12]
I guess we should just forget about the sworn testimony of four other
witnesses (Howard Brennan, Amos Euins, James Worrell, and Robert
Jackson) who saw a rifle in the sniper's nest window, three of whom
saw the rifle being fired.
Let us examine the evidentiary merits of Bugliosi's four eye witnesses
to a rifle, three of whom, he says, actually saw it discharge.
Amos Euins:
A 15 year old black youth, small for his age, Amos stood on the
northeast corner of the intersection of Elm and Houston Streets about
100 feet or so from the alleged sniper's window. In the Warren Report
Euins is quoted as saying: "And so I saw this pipe thing sticking out
of the window." And, "Then I looked up at the window and he shot
again." [A13]
Evaluation of Euins' testimony shows it contains such fundamental
weakness that we must dismiss his claim. As the first of the fault
lines discerned in his alleged witness we observe that over the course
of the investigation in various official statements and interviews the
teenager shifts what he saw. Initially, the shooting sounded, he swore
in a November 22 affidavit, "like automatic rifle fire." [A14] Three
and one half months later, on Tuesday, March 10, 1964, in Washington,
D. C., before three Commission members, four assistant counsels, and a
bar delegate, he would flick this statement aside to say he heard
three single shots. [A15]
But turning from his weapon firing vagaries to other aspects of his
testimony we discover change and confabulation are his strong suit,
especially revealed in his efforts to identify the race of his alleged
sighted assassin. This comes forward in the several official
examinations of his claims where three times he changed the racial
identity of the man he saw.
Within just a few minutes after the shooting, he had told Sergeant D.
V. Harkness, he had seen a black man. [A16] News reporter James
Underwood heard the exchange. Euins said: [A17] "It was a colored
man." Are you certain, he was asked? In reply, he affirmed his view of
the assassin's race: "Yes, sir." Then a mere hour later Euins swore in
the Sheriff's department that the man he had seen in the window was a
white man: "This was a white man, he did not have on a hat." [A18]
Then on March 10, before the Commission, he swore he could not see the
man's face or color. "Of what race was he, Amos?" asked the counsel
for the Warren Commission? [answer:] [A19] "I couldn't tell."
Confronted with three choices of equal worth set before them-black,
white, and invisible-the Commission counsels picked and chose, like
selecting a pickle in a barrel, to take white as the assassin's race
rather than toss out the teenager's ramble. White, of course, fit
their predetermined conclusion of Oswald the lone assassin.
In addition to his confusion on the weapon type and the assassin's
race, Euins further asserted during the Commission hearings a number
of fantasy physical facts. He stated that the rifleman stood in front
of sixth floor boxes to shoot, i.e., between the boxes and the window.
[A20] This can not possibly be true. Photographs, and the Warren
Commission's own evidence, show the boxes of the alleged sniper's
window to be smack against the window wall and sill, rendering Euins'
statement false. [A21]
Nor are these all the serious faults to be found in his rambling
testimony. He also swore that he saw the man stand and lean out. He
swore he saw the rifle barrel, stock, and trigger guard in his hands.
But both of these alleged visual sightings are physically impossible
to configure given the physical characteristics of the sixth floor
area, eastern most window. Not only was the window opening too slight
for a standing man to lean out of but also for him to fire from it.
According to the strictures embodied in Euins' assertions, to have
fired from the window (and poke out the rifle), the feat would require
the shooter to have squeezed his bodily frame in an unnatural if not
impossible sideways positions, which is not what he testified to, and
even then he would still not be able to hit JFK. [A22]
Finally, joining his inability to identify in broad sunshine from 100
feet away someone he saw several times as to race, his irrational
physical facts, and impossible firing position, comes the coup de
grace to Euins' claim, the statement of his stepfather. After the boy
had told him the various things he claimed to have seen, he remarked
to FBI agents: [A23] "he was not sure whether Euins had seen it, or
whether he had just imagined it." As the step father had previously
said to FBI agents: [A24] "he questioned the statements given by
Euins."
Amos' testimony is so faulty to rely upon any specifics is fraught
with peril!
Even a rural N. Dakota prosecutor with a degree from Billy Bob Law
School would have run away from this crate of cracked eggs but at this
page in the end notes Bugliosi embraces him. Later on, page 102 text,
end notes page 30, he brings forth many of the problems associated
with Euins. How square this partial examination of Euins' flaws with
his use when it fits particular needs except to suggest at the worst
Bugliosi is dishonest, at the least confused, and at final judgment
for understanding the assassination his observations are not to be
trusted. [A25]
So, instead of Bugliosi having four witnesses to rifles sticking from
the window we have only three left to now examine for merit; and,
instead of three seeing the rifle fire we are reduced to two
possible.
Howard Brennan:
On his lunch break steamfitter Howard Brennan sat atop a small wall
directly across from the Depository and watched the motorcade pass
between him and the building. Bugliosi states (page 101 of text,
footnotes page 30): "Brennan testified that he heard only two shots,
the first and last, and that he looked up in time to see Oswald fire
the last shot." He cites Brennan's testimony appearing on 3H154 of the
Hearings as his source. Bugliosi, however, like the man in the old
Greek story, Procrustes, clips out the rest of the quotation in order
to fit his assertion of witnesses having seen a rifle being fired. A
concerned reader must ask why Bugliosi would corrupt the evidence to
try and make his point. When the excised portion is restored to its
rightful place it turns out Brennan never saw the man discharge the
rifle, which refutes Bugliosi. Indeed in the snipped out portion of
his testimony we discover the Commission asked him that very question
about seeing the rifle fire: [A26]
Mr. McCloy: Did you see the rifle explode? Did you see the flash of
what was either the second or the third shot?
Mr. Brennan. No. . . .
Mr. McCloy. Did you see the rifle discharge, did you see the recoil or
the flash?
Mr. Brennan. No.
We have shown Bugliosi consciously corrupted the evidence that Brennan
saw the rifle fired. Now we wish to show Brennan testified to a
physical impossibility that alone should have disqualified him as a
witness. Bugliosi could not have missed this. This is the stuff of
many articles and found in a number of books. [A27] The right-wing
steamfitter swore that the man stood in the window, which could not be
with the window almost closed, and its sill a foot or so off the
floor.
But even more critical to evaluating this testimony is its taint. A
scholar, as well as a layman, must dismiss his testimony for he
committed perjury. In the first Dallas Police line up that Brennan
viewed with Oswald in it Brennan swore it did not contain the man he
had seen. Returning home he then saw Oswald twice on television and
was later told by the Secret Service Oswald was a communist, which was
match to the tinder of Brennan's reactionary political prejudice.
Then, on viewing the line up again, Brennan swore Oswald in the line
up was the man. [A28] One is proof of the perjury of the other.
In the Zapruder film where each frame moves at 1/18th of a second
through the camera we find more evidence requiring Brennan's testimony
to be discarded. At the same time he swore he was looking up at the
window and saw the assassin ready himself, we find he looks over his
left shoulder at the President receding down Elm Street, from frame
204, and at frame 207 he turns and looks over his right shoulder
toward Houston Street an act fully compatible with a reaction to a
noise disturbance created by a shot from the rear beyond Houston
Street, equivalent to a shot fired at frame 189. [A29] He is not
looking at the Depository window as he testified. For the third shot
that comes at Z frames 312/313 he has turned back from looking over
his right shoulder to looking over his left shoulder at the President.
Since he later told CBS News that to his left he saw JFK's head
explode, this means he could not have been looking up at the sniper's
window. Bugliosi unbelievably "solves" this by the rather unusual
historical principle of fiat, by claiming he did both! He has no
evidence. The "solution" would not be permitted for a member in the
flat earth society. [A30]
Further damning facts about his testimony occurred when the Commission
put this star witness through a reenactment in Dallas. They handed him
a photograph of the south side of the TSBD and asked him to select and
mark the windows where he claimed to have seen the three black men
peering out of three windows on the fifth and where he saw the
assassin, in the alleged sniper's window, eastern most on the sixth.
He failed. He selected two windows on floor six when it was only one,
and chose a permanently single window on floor five, one closed on
November 22, when he should have chosen three. The Commission
attorneys nonplussed gave him hints, like closing all the windows on
the east end of the building except the three on five where ear
witnesses allegedly peered out as well as the one on six where Oswald
allegedly lurked. They also mentioned open windows to him.
Leading the witness and altering the crime scene for defense purposes,
aside from the exceptional comprise of ethics, normally does not give
one truth and in this instance embarrassingly fails. Bugliosi does not
address this issue and its hokey construction, apparently believing
the manufacture of evidence in an inquiry into the murder of the
president is coeval with actual evidence. [A31]
But Brennan had such poor eyesight he could not identify the figure of
a man in the window. Early that afternoon of the 22nd FBI Special
Agent Robert Wise took Brennan's statement on what he claimed to have
seen. Wise related: "Brennan volunteered information to the effect he
is considered far sighted by his optometrist." [A32] In 1965
Commission counsel Joe Ball who helped conduct the reenactment
admitted to researcher Ed Epstein that during the reenactment:
"Brennan had difficulty seeing a figure in the window, much less
identifying someone from the sidewalk." [A33] Again, in rebuttal to
possible dissent of Brennan's vision quality, Bugliosi quotes the
devil instead of the evidence, always a dangerous thing for an
attorney to resort to, by asserting on Brennan's own 25 year old dusty
and fading recollection that he could see quite well, sharp. But this
is pining confabulation, by federal officials' certain knowledge,
Commission staff attestations, his testimony, and the physical
evidence, he could not do so in Dallas, which is the only operative
fact. [A34]
So, of Bugliosi's four witnesses to a rifle sticking out the window
two have been sifted out by that great arbiter of truth, facts, and
two have been removed as having seen the rifle fire. We have two of
his claimed four left to examine.
Bob Jackson.
A Dallas Times Herald photographer, Bob Jackson rode in the 7th or 8th
vehicle in the motorcade. [A35] After the limousine had turned down
Elm Street he heard shots and "then saw the rifle or what looked like
a rifle drawn back into the building" in the sixth, eastern most
window. He did not see the rifle fire. Jackson said he heard four not
three shots and that the last of them came from the front of the
motorcade, which would presumably be the area of the Grassy Knoll or
pergola but absolutely not from the rear where Oswald allegedly shot
from. [A36]
However, Bugliosi hid from the reader the number of shots Jackson
heard and the direction he thought the last shot came from. Such
testimony naturally would have hurt Bugliosi's theory of Oswald the
lone assassin and he dast not let it enter into his account. The
question to ask, one that consistently arises, is why does Bugliosi
consider his cherry picking of fragments of witness' testimony to
press into his Oswald-alone-did-it mold to be sound scholarship?
His testimony and the circumstances of where he was and who was with
when he saw what looked like a rifle on the sixth requires us to
accept his statement. [A37] Three newsmen in the same car, Tom Dillard
(6H164), Jim Underwood (6H170), and Malcolm Couch (6H166-167),
confirmed Jackson's shout that he had spied a rifle. He did not see it
fire.
We have previously eliminated two who claimed to have seen a rifle and
to have seen it fire. Now we see that one, the third of his four, saw
a rifle, but did not see it fire. One of Bugliosi dismal quartet
remains to examine.
James Richard Worrell, Jr.
The 19 year old high school senior cut class to view the motorcade. He
claimed that when JFK entered Elm Street he, James Worrell, had stood
with his back to the south wall of the TSBD about ten feet or so from
its corner at Elm and Houston. [A38] He heard a shot. After hearing it
he tilted his head way back to look up and beheld a rifle barrel,
about six inches, sticking out of the fifth or sixth floor windows and
then he saw it fire again. He saw the flash and smoke of the
discharge. He immediately ran to his left around the corner of the
building and east across Houston Street and turned north down Houston
stopping across from the rear of the Depository where he saw a man
flee the rear of the building. In flight he alleged he heard two more
shots.
The next day he heard the police wanted witnesses to step forward so
he phoned in to the police station and was taken to headquarters where
he gave an affidavit. [A39] After describing the shots he told the
police he saw a man run from the rear of the TSBD but could not see
his face. He soon changed his account. On the 30th he gave the FBI an
interview where he said the man he saw was in fact Lee Harvey Oswald,
for time apparently enhances memory. On March 10 the Commission
examined him. Now, with time working its wonders he swore he could not
identify the man he saw in the rear of the building.
One observes that the excitable youth came forward only after having
seen the assassination coverage on television and in the newspapers,
which tainted so many witness statements and perhaps his. His changing
of identity of the fleeing man clearly suggests this. Moreover, a
skeptic must also ask if a person can really bend his head back at a
90 degree angle--which was his testimony--while close to the building
and actually see up to the sixth floor and spot the end of a barrel
thrust forward four inches. Does the human eye have the physical
capacity to record accurate images from that position? Mine does not,
but I am not 19 years old. Further, did the Mannlicher rifle normally
show a flash when shooting? No. After extensive testing the FBI stated
it did give a wisp of smoke, but no flash. [A40] Thus, Worrell could
not have seen it flash. But having found so many weaknesses in
Bugliosi's teenage, television viewing, self-important witness
statement there is yet another one to be noted. While Worrell first
saw "a man" fleeing, then he saw "Oswald" and then a "man" yet we know
from another source he saw nothing.
To the rear of the Depository Building lay the Missouri, Kansas &
Texas Railroad tracks. The MKT or Katy had a loading dock directly
across from the Depository and facing it. Over the noon hour James
Ebert Romack, a MKT employee, sat on the dock eating his lunch. He
heard shots and looked at the rear of the Depository while he ate and
did so during the aftermath of the shooting. On March 6 the Dallas
Times Herald ran a story about Worrell's claim to have sighted a
fleeing man. Romack quickly telephoned the FBI to say that could not
possibly be true. It interviewed him.
It seems that on November 22, Romack had the rear of the Depository
constantly in view during the motorcade time and for a few minutes
after the shooting. No one ran out the back door of the Depository.
Also, a policeman almost immediately ran behind the building and
Romack yelled to him that he would continue to watch while he
continued his search. No one came out. [A41] This episode could have
lasted but three or four minutes.
For Worrell to be in intentional error on something so vitally
important throws into question everything else the flighty high school
senior claimed to have seen. No prosecutor would hazard putting this
quirky fellow on the stand, nor would a bona fide historian sully the
pages of his book with such testimony.
So Bugliosi's assertion that three of his four witnesses saw shots
being fired from the TSBD alleged sniper window turns out upon
examination not to be valid. None did. He misrepresented the evidence.
His assertion four men saw rifles also failed to be upheld. Only one
did. Why he did not mention other individuals who believed they saw a
rifle or similar object poking out the window is curious. For example,
Couch (6H156-157) in the news automobile with Jackson and Mrs. Earle
Cabell (7H478), riding in the motorcade both saw something sticking
out of the sixth floor, eastern most window opening. [A42]
The passion buried in Bugliosi's unnatural rant against the critic led
him to corrupt the evidence to promote disinformation. It had an
unfortunate side effect. It overrode his caution and blunted his
expertise in criminal activities.
Three comments on issues Bugliosi ignores must be advanced.
The initial observation on the sighting of a rifle or a simulation of
a rifle (even a mop handle, and what all) seen on the sixth floor
relates to the possibility it could have been a decoy. [A43] This
seems so obvious it scarcely needs to be stated.
Are we to assume individuals bright enough to kill the President and
get away with it could not think of that standard criminal disruptive
device to hold authorities on a blind trail even for a few minutes
while they escaped? Some illustrations can be found in the evidentiary
base to suggest this method was part of the thought processes of some
would be assassins. The first example is: The Joseph A. Milteer
documents from Miami on November 9 where a police electronic listening
device and undercover agent recorded a reactionary individual
explaining how his group would kill the hated JFK with a high-powered
rifle fired from a high building and then decoy the police by letting
a patsy take the blame. [A44]
The second example of assassins-to-be planning to use a decoy comes
from the same benighted Florida city. Just before JFK visited Miami on
November 18, the Secret Service uncovered a threat by a right wing
group under Diaz-Lenz to murder him and set up a decoy to blame it on
Castroites. [A45]
More important than a decoy in considering the statements of witnesses
to a rifle or look-alike rifle being seen and helping Dallas police
thus peg Oswald to the crime is the impossibility of the sixth-floor
eastern most window area being used as a shooter's stall. This also
reinforces the decoy possibility. According to the Commission's own
evidence, the official evidence, the window on the sixth floor was so
slightly opened that an assassin could not fire a rifle from it and
hit JFK. [A46] The sill of the window was one foot off the floor with
the sash opened just slightly. There was a 16 inch sill ledge. A
person sitting on the box of books near the window could not fire a
scoped rifle and hit the President 60 feet below in the street. Only
by firing through two panes of glass, (caused by the raised opened
window), and cocking the weapon at a steep down ward angle could the
limo be put into the sights. The glass was not broken. The police, the
FBI, the Commission, and a host of lemming supporters blindly assumed
and unquestionably accepted the Dallas Police assertion it could be
done as originally depicted. It could not. To overcome the law of
physical matter and the geometry of angle and the barrier of glass, in
its Report the Commission had the window opened wide and a picture
taken of a hokey reconstruction showing a rifle in a fixed position on
tripod falsely claimed copy of reality. [A47]
~2~
He claims withheld data from Mrs. Kennedy's testimony is innocuous.
Page 102 of text, reference to page 30 of the end notes.
In the summer of 1999 a documentary film maker, Mark Sobel, checked
Mrs. John F. Kennedy's printed testimony against the recording
secretary's tape of the event lodged in the National Archives. He
announced he had found that when printing the ostensibly true record
of its hearing with the widow the Commission had eliminated two
clauses in a phrase she uttered, the underline ones: ". . . I could
see a piece of his skull sort of wedge-shaped, like that, and I
remember that it was flesh colored with little ridges at the
top." [A48] In the printed version the Commission had also inserted
for a deleted section the phrase, "Reference to wounds deleted." [A49]
Some assassination critics immediately pointed to the discovery of the
skull fragment as important for understanding the nature of the head
wounds and for shedding light on the controversies raised by the
federal investigation's control of medical information. The covert
excision relates to the cover-up.
Bugliosi's judgment? This was a minor incident with no vital
information revealed. The Warren Commission tempered her remarks, he
guessed, to assuage her feelings. The episode, he wrote, "proved the
hearts of the Warren Commission members were not made of stone."
What he did, however, by this device was avoid the key evidence found
in her testimony, which we now turn to.
At 4:20 p.m. on Friday, June 5, 1964, at her home at 3017 N Street,
N.W., Chief Justice Earl Warren and General Counsel J. Lee Rankin
along with a recording secretary questioned Jacqueline Kennedy, JFK's
widow. Robert Kennedy sat in. At 4:30 the interview had finished. Ten
minutes. The printed transcript of the interview took four pages in
volume 5 of the Warren Commission volumes of evidence, but when these
are stripped of the publication paraphernalia the text actually totals
about two pages. Although none of this you would know by reading
Bugliosi.
Not only was the Warren Commission representatives interview with Mrs.
Kennedy incredibly brief, but also it was superficial. Rankin and
Warren merely brushed over the assassination to leave a pro forma
record for history that she had been interviewed by the Commission.
They could hardly have ignored her and published a full report on the
murder.
Before we look into what Mrs. Kennedy told the Commission we must
comment on the nature of the interview. Here, with JFK's widow, the
Warren Commission had the best witness to the assassination before it,
a woman with a keen mind who had sat next to her husband in the
limousine and was looking at him when his head exploded. Yet, the
Commission avoided her for six months before taking her testimony when
she should have been the first witness interviewed and at great
length. In one-half year the sharpness of mind fades and other facts
whether false or partly false generated by the veritable blizzard of
information about the murder swirling in the media silently intrude
upon the senses to temper recall. In fact, Mrs. Kennedy complained
about this aspect of her testimony, "I used to think my husband did
not make any sound . . . then I read the other day it was the same
shot that hit them both." [A50] Several of the key witnesses
complained of the long wait to hear them for time dulled memory and
alien facts intruded, among them Ike Altgens, Phil Willis, and Abraham
Zapruder who all testified in July. [A51]
In the 1960s and 70s critics attempted to acquire the typed copies of
the original transcript held in the Archives under confidential
classification. By May, 1971, they had pried out pages 6809-6814,
6816-6817 from volume 48, but could not obtain page 6815 that in print
included the phrase, "Reference to wounds deleted." Abruptly in May,
1972, inexplicitly the Archives mailed it to them. Critics Paul Hoch
and Harold Weisberg compared it with the printed version in the 26
volumes. They found the Commission had made almost thirty changes in
her supposedly verbatim printed account, several quite substantial,
many minor.
Among the sentences in the first group of released transcripts was: "I
could see a piece of his skull sort of wedge-shaped like that, and I
remember it was flesh colored with little ridges at the top." In the
printed version the Commission had deleted, "sort of wedge-shaped like
that" and "with little ridges at the top." The critics made this
feature and others known to many individuals and to Jack Anderson, the
newspaper columnist. This, it will be observed, was the same doctored
phrase that Mark Sobel had announced thirty-seven years later, in
1999, that he had discovered by comparing the printed versions with
the recording secretary's tapes and from which he had garnered much
publicity about his find. [A52]
Two other changes must be noted: For the original sentence:
"I was trying to hold his hair on. But from the front there was
nothing, I suppose there must have been. But from the back you could
see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull
on."
the Commission substituted the phrase:
"[Reference to wounds deleted.]"
Her comment, of course, describes the President's skull after the
death shots. The actual evidence we now know shows two shots hit JFK
in the head at Zapruder frames, 312/313, one from the front and one
from the back, with severely fragmenting, soft metallic content whose
gases and physical reactions exploded the skull at Z337-339 blowing
out the rear of the head. The Commission did not want a description of
the head wound circulated for their tightly defined scenario excluded
that type of bullet used and that kind of destruction being inflicted.
It falsely claimed only one rear shot at Z313 hit him. It further
declared, it was a hardened metal, jacketed, bullet of characteristics
similar to the earlier bullets that wounded him and Governor John
Connally the type that did not fragment. [A53]
The other change to be noted includes the last portion of the
sentence:
"But I used to think if I only had been looking to the right I would
have seen the first shot hit him, then I could have pulled him down,
and then the second shot would have gotten Governor Connally."
For the last eight words in the sentence: "the second shot would have
gotten Governor Connally" it printed "the second shot would not have
hit him."
By this change the second shot changes to the one to hit JFK at Z313.
She had actually testified to the Governor being hit by a separate
shot, which this covert change converts to sustain the Commission's
doctrines. The closest witnesses of Connally (4H152-153) and his wife
(4H147) and Roy Kellerman, Secret Service Agent (2H73-74) agree with
her; the Zapruder film confirms it. The official version is part of
the single bullet invention that one shot wounded JFK and transited
the body to hit Connally. A separate shot hitting Connally was
physically impossible according to the Commission's chronological and
physical imperatives it had imposed upon their holding to find a
single person, Oswald, to be the assassin.
Overall Mrs. Kennedy testified to a conspiracy. She said four shots,
when the official conclusions were only three; she swore she did not
hear the first shot, but then heard three later shots. Her testimony
also placed the first shot much earlier than officially admitted and
at a time impossible for Oswald to have fired it. She told Rankin and
Warren that Connally was hit by a separate bullet. Her description of
the head wound did not conform to the official claims. [A54]
Bugliosi did not address the issues around her testimony but ducked
them. Its information would have fatally compromised his dedicated
theory of a lone gunman Oswald killing JFK. It would have exposed the
official claim as not true. Instead of the revealed transcript proving
the Warren Commission members had soft hearts it proved them to be
hard-hearted knaves of the first order, here protected by their
champion of the bar sinister, Bugliosi.
~3~
Bugliosi claims the police sealed the Depository.
Page 131 of the test, reference to page 33 of the end notes.
In another quibble with a lower tier dissenter over when the police
blocked off the Depository as a crime scene the quarrelling Bugliosi
trounces the individual. In so doing he displays what an average
reader might assume is impressive, overreaching scholarship. He
concludes police sealed the building about 20 minutes after the
assassination. This conflicts with the Warren Report that claims it
occurred at 12:37 p.m., or just seven minutes afterward the murder.
[A55] Both err. The Depository was never sealed.
In order to mislead he focuses attention exclusively on a minor point.
As a first observation, we note a careful reader would discover
Bugliosi never tells his readers how many doors there were in the
building. Neither does he address their location. He seems to assume
merely a back door and a front door, like a house.
But when one turns to the evidence he hid from the reader we find the
police never sealed the Depository.
There were five back doors--four dock doors and one walk through door.
The Report though says Secret Service agent Sorrels walked through the
back door twenty minutes after the murder. [A56] He found no one there
guarding it, which becomes Bugliosi's timing mechanism. [A57] The
policeman Romack saw was there only fleetingly.
What does the record say? We turn first to the testimony and relations
of Bill Shelley, Oswald's foreman, and then we shall refer to the
building manager Roy Truly's comments. Shelley related to responsible
critics the month after the Warren Report came out that: "All four
rear doors were separate and open, only one guarded, and 'anyone of a
thousand different people could have entered or left the building and
nobody would have known it.'" [A58]
Shelley's immediate actions reinforced his statement when he left the
building and walked to the grassy knoll. He returned without being
encountered by or stopped by police. [A59] (6H330) Several other
individuals recorded similar sealing-refuting experiences.
Another excellent witness to an open building besides Shelley is
building manager Roy Truly. He provided the FBI an authoritative
account of what happened in the building right after the shooting
where he reveals that the police and many Dallasites seem to have
treated the murder aftermath as a species of circus:
Mr. TRULY related that within fifteen minutes after the shots were
fired at President KENNEDY, there were numerous people all over the
TSBD building, and he did not know any of them. He assumed that many
of them were law enforcement officers, although they were not in
uniform. A number of uniformed officers of the Dallas Police
Department were making a systematic search of the building and were
guarding the doors to the building. [Front doors] About thirty minutes
after the shots were fired, Mr. TRULY was on the sixth floor of this
building, and any number of newspaper, radio and television reporters,
and photographers were on that floor. . . . spectators and others not
connected with any law enforcement agency or news media, were
wandering around the TSBD building the afternoon following the
assassination. [A60]
The implications of not closing off the crime scene for the proper
investigation of the crime are profound and would seem obvious.
Careless handling of evidence, introduction of foreign matter, and the
assassins leaving the crime scene are just part of the possible
problems that could arise.
~4~
Bugliosi denies the Secret Service washed the limousine in Dallas.
Page 157 of the text, reference to page 35 of the end notes.
In minor details as well as the major issues Bugliosi brings in
factual error to advance his agenda. As part of his technique he
selects the critics he will attack, usually going for the ones in the
lower tiers to pommel, much like, I suppose, the grade school bully
who beats up the weak and spindly kid with horn rimmed glasses and
then touts himself as a latter day Sugar Ray Robinson.
On the limousine he writes that "critics claim the backseat was washed
out with a bucket of water . . ." 'This is,' he opines, with
information not drawn from the evidentiary base but invented,
presented as if an embrace of reality: "highly unlikely the Secret
Service would wash away the crime scene before FBI criminalists could
examine the car . . ." He further notes the car had residue in it when
examined back in Washington, a condition affirming for reasons only
reporting to his mind for verification his claim it was not washed in
Dallas. History, however, must move by the practical reality, the
evidentiary base.
The reality is it was indeed rough washed in Dallas. To sustain this
conclusion we have solid evidence: a witness, a photograph, and the
limousine. The famed New York Times reporter Tom Wicker who was in the
motorcade and at Parkland Memorial Hospital when JFK died wrote a
moving piece about the day. As he waited for news from the operating
room, he wrote, he wandered outside to the Emergency Door parking
stall and saw the presidential limousine parked there with its top off
and "a bucket of bloody water" next to it. [A61]
While this is sufficient proof that Bugliosi's caustic opinion is in
error there is additional support in a photograph that backs up
Wicker's observation. Photographer C. Stoughton snapped a black and
white picture of the limousine in the stall with the top now attached
with its supporting posts adjusted to accommodate it. A man with a
bucket of water and a towel works at the limousine. [A62] The witness
of one of the nation's top reporters and the evidence on an official
photograph dispels any doubts that it was rough washed, an action that
comprised the integrity of the evidentiary base.
But there is another line of evidence to consider, the automobile
itself. Of course, the limousine covered with blood and gore could not
have been thoroughly "cleaned" in Dallas due to the strictures of time
and limitations of facilities but only roughly so for transporting
back to base. Evidently, the Dallas wash removed the worst of the
blood and gore. Preservation of the crime scene and location of
possible minute bullet fragments and other items of possible forensic
worth seemed not to be the operative element for the shocked and
shaken Secret Service. That evening in the White House garage the FBI
forensic team in Washington indeed found residue in it as would be
expected. The Secret Service also searched the car. [A63]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes for Main Essay
[1]. R165.
[2]. Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact (Indianapolis: Bobbs-
Merrill, 1967), 255; Harold Weisberg, Whitewash (Hyattstown, MD: by
the author, 1965), 53-56.
[3]. CE2003, 11; In what must be the most illogical moment in his
treatment of the Tippit murder he claims the watch of the witness, T.
F. Bowley, was inaccurate and therefore his timing of the death erred,
accommodating Bugliosi's invention. The evidence? Many watches are
inaccurate, he says, and he presents an instance in a woman on Dealey
Plaza, miles away, and forty minutes before who witnessed the
assassination had a watch that ran fast! Therefore, Bowley's did.
Even the most ardent supporters of his doctrines must close their
doors to this one. An observer will note that Bugliosi did not
establish for the record that when he timed his reenactment that his
own watch ran properly.
[4]. R165. He says a single citizen made the call, but actually in
reading the transcript one discovers two citizens made the broadcast
over the police car radio to DP headquarters, T. Bowley and D.
Benavides. See transcript, CE1974.
[5]. R158. The map is CE1119A.
[6]. E. Roberts, affidavit, 7H439; Secret Service interview E.
Roberts, and sketch of her sighting scene, SAIC Sorrels to Insp.
Kelley, June 10, 1964, CO 2-34, 030.
[7]. R601.
[8]. Harold Weisberg and Penn Jones, Jr., interviews.
[9]. The Commission faced the timing problem of how Oswald got from
the Depository to his rooming house at 1026 N. Beckley by 1:00 p.m.
where as previously noted a witness, the housekeeper Earlene Roberts,
set the time of his entrance. On the next to last leg to his rooming
house he rode in William Whaley's cab.
The day after the assassination Whaley swore before a notary public
that he had taken Oswald to 500 N. Beckley, which was five blocks from
the rooming house. (Whaley Exhibit A) Four months later, in the
morning of March 12, before the Commission in Washington, he swore to
a different drop off site. Now, he told the commissioners hhad let him
out at the intersection of two streets that ran parallel. (R162;
2H258) Later under Commission pressure he corrected the problem of two
different addresses and on April 8, 1964, before counsel David Belin
in a deposition in Dallas swore he had dropped him off at 700 N.
Beckley Avenue. (6H430; R162-163) His trip log said 500 N. Beckley.
(CE370)
The Commission selected the 700 block as the "correct" site, which by
that reckoning it guessed Oswald now afoot walked the several blocks
remaining. They guessed (no evidence) he would arrive at 12:59 p.m. or
thereabouts to enter his rooming house. (R163) Recall, Oswald, it was
asserted, was a man in flight for his life after having killed the
most powerful man on earth. Yet, he got out of the cab several blocks
from his rooming house and walked the rest of the way to his room! No
explanation appears in the official records for this odd behavior,
which Bugliosi regards as normal.
[10]. H. Weisberg, Whitewash (1965), 77-79; S. Meagher, Accessories
After the Fact (1967), 257.
[11]. 2H294.
[12]. R161; Weisberg, Whitewash, 53-54; Perry, Clark, and Ables, cited
in the text.
[13]. 6H430-431; Weisberg, 53-56, 77-79.
[14]. R161; see Weisberg, just cited.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes for Appendix
[A1]. 3H270-281.
[A2]. Following H. Weisberg, Whitewash, 110-112.
[A3]. 6H397.
[A4]. USSS Agent Roger C. Warner, report to chief, January 1, 29,
1964, CA 2 34 0 30, CD 354.
[A5]. R629; Preliminary Report #3, US Secret Service, 11-29-64, CO
2-34-0 30.
[A6]. Ibid.; interview of Terrence Ford by Dallas police, Detectives
F. Hellinghausen and T. Wardlaw through Lt. J. Revill to Captain W.
Gannaway. February 18, 1964, Dallas Police files; see too, 89-43-4323
and 4498 of June, 1964, and 89-43-4700, pp. 131, 134, of July; and
100-10461-8220, p. 14, of October.
[A7]. MSNBC, December 29, 2003, interview; FBI SAS Gerald Caswell and
James Rogers, December 3, 1963, interview, NY89-75, CD 206; MacNeil,
The Right Place at the Right Time (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co.,
1982), chapter 13; Jerry Organ, "MacNeil's Newshour," The Fourth
Decade, vol. 2, no. 3. (March, 1995).
[A8]. CD 354. The telephone logs of the Depository have not been seen
by me to check on the Allman time. The alleged time is from Powell's
statement. Powell filed a report with his unit. But the Army
reportedly destroyed all its Oswald and assassination files and the
report. From its Houston headquarters the 112th within an hour of the
assassination had phoned Dallas police with the information the
alleged alias A. J. Hidell, found on the man arrested in the Texas
Theatre, belonged to Oswald. Weisberg, Army Intelligence files, Hood
College; Earl Golz, "Army Apparently Did Not Tell Commission of
Oswald's Alias," Dallas Morning News, July 19, 1978. On Hidell see
Meagher, Accessories, xxv n, 48 n, 49-50, 62, 105, 181-199, 230-234,
236; and, Weisberg, Whitewash, 139, 146.
[A9]. Roy Truly, building manager who accompanied Officer Marrion
Baker, to the meeting: "He didn't seem to be excited or overly afraid
or anything." (3H225); Officer Baker: "He appeared normal, you
know." (3H252); Mrs. Robert Reid, who saw him leave the building: "he
was moving at a very slow pace, I never did see him moving fast at any
time." (3H279); William Whaley, cab driver; Oswald ambled, not fast
walked, up to the cab stand in a normal way ([:mffaltkey:WH-2-255 |
2H255]]), and got in the front seat next to the driver (2H256); when a
lady wanted to know if the cab was taken, Oswald sitting in the front
seat said: "I will let you have this one." (2H256); Whaley let him off
several blocks before his rooming house. (2H256-258); E. Roberts: "I
saw Oswald standing at the curb . . . on the same side of the street
as our house." (7H439).
[A10]. 6H434.
[A11]. Oswald was standing by the bus stop at 1:04 p.m. Add 14 minutes
for one reenactment to this and you get 18 minutes past the hour or
1:18 p.m.; add 12 minutes for another and you get 1.16; add 17' 45"
and you get 1.21.45 with the call to police over Tippit's murder made
at 1.16 p. m. with Bowley witnessing the body in the street at 1:10
p.m.
[A12]. Reclaiming History, 92.
[A13]. Report, 64.
[A14]. Amos Lee Euins, affidavit, Sheriff's Department, November 22,
1963, printed as CE367 in the Hearings volumes.
[A15]. Hearings, volume 2, pages 201-210. (2H201-210)
[A16]. Harkness, 6H370.
[A17]. Underwood, 6H170. Harold Weisberg, Whitewash (Hyattstown: By
the Author, 1965), 105. Doyen of the first generation critics
Weisberg's work is exclusively based on the Report and 26 volumes and
follows the admonition that the answer to the question 'what happened'
not the answers to the question 'who did it' is central to
scholarship.
[A18]. CE367.
[A19]. 2H207.
[A20]. 2H201-210.
[A21]. See the photographs in CE715, CE733, CE734.
[A22]. CE1311, CE1312, Weisberg, Whitewash, 40.
[A23]. FBI SA Leo Robertson to SAC, Dallas, November 29: 89-43-1244.
[A24]. E. Modon to SAC, December 14, 1963, 44 1639 2440, p. 1.
[A25]. See the analysis based on a careful examination of the primary
documents by the responsible scholar, Howard Roffman, Presumed Guilty
(Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, Inc., 1975), 189-190, as
well as the treatment by Weisberg, Whitewash, 105, and his Whitewash
II (Hyattstown: By the author, 1966), 86-89
[A26]. 3H154.
[A27]. He claimed to have read the literature, but his treatment of
Brennan suggests he did so hurriedly. The works of the first
generation of solid, responsible critics, based on careful use of
primary evidence, reveals the flaws in Brennan's testimony: Roffman,
Presumed Guilty, 188-199; Weisberg, Whitewash, 39-42, and Whitewash
II, 41-42, 88-89; Meagher, Accessories After the Fact, 10, 12, 13, 28,
78n, 372, 397, 430. Brennan's testimony alone demolishes his
credibility, 3H140-161, 184-186, 211; 11H206-207.
[A28]. 3H145-148; CD5, 15; Roffman, Presumed Guilty, 195-197.
[A29]. Wrone, Zapruder Film, 102-103, 112. 120, 164, 189, 195-196.
[A30]. Roffman, Presumed Guilty, 193, CBS, September 27, 1964.
[A31]. The bizarre photograph is reproduced in the Warren Report with
Brennan's markings where it is cited as evidence of Brennan's
trustworthiness, page 62; CE477; Weisberg, Whitewash, 40.
[A32]. FBI serial, R. Wise, to SAC, November 22, 1963, 89-43-136. He
did not wear glasses that day.
[A33]. Leo Sauvage, The New Leader. "The Duality of the Warren
Report," (June 20, 1966), 24; Epstein, Inquest, 110.
[A34]. On Brennan see: Brennan testimony, 3H140-161, 184-186, 211;
11H221, 11206-207, with SSA Forrest Sorrels' testimony about him in
7H348-351, 354-355. Scholarly treatment is found in Roffman, Presumed
Guilty, 61-62, 188-99; Weisberg, Whitewash, 24, 34, 39-42, 99, 105;
Whitewash II, 2, 41-42, 73, 87-89; Meagher, Accessories, 12-13, 78
fn.
[A35]. Washington Post, November 23, 1963; 2H155-164.
[A36]. 2H159; reference of Jackson's story of this event in the
Washington Post on the 23rd is corrupted by Cmdr. J. J. Humes in the
autopsy protocol where "some shots" heard is converted to three shots,
cf. autopsy of JFK, Warren Report, 539, where compare with Post
story.
[A37]. R64-65.
[A38]. 2H190-201.
[A39]. CE363.
[A40]. CE3133.
[A41]. FBI SPC Forest Lucy to SAC Dallas, March 6, 1964,
100-10461-408[?]
[A42]. R65.
[43]. Meagher, Accessories After the Fact, 9; Roffman, Presumed
Guilty, 286; Weisberg, interview.
[A44]. See, CD1397, MM 89-35, Threat to Kill President Kennedy,
December 9, 1963; Bill Barry, "JFK Plot," Miami News, February 2,
1967; documents and tape transcript in Weisberg, Frame Up, 238-246,
464-481.
[A45]. SA Ernest Aragon to J. J. Rowley, Chief SS, December 30, 1963,
SS 1-16-602-111; CD87:206.
[A46]. CE1312.
[A47]. Report, 99.
[A48]. JFKLancer web site, http://jfklancer.com/LNE/jbkwc.html.
[A49]. 5H178-181.
[A50]. Transcript of testimony, 6815.
[A51]. 7H515-525; 7H569-576.
[A52]. Pages 6809-6817, vol. 48, of original transcript; Weisberg,
Post Mortem, 380-384; Weisberg, Mrs. Kennedy files, Hood College.
[A53]. Zapruder film; Wrone, Zapruder Film, photographic section; Dr.
Randolph Robertson, forensic radiologist, "The Head Shots," Pittsburgh
conference, November 2004.
[A54]. Weisberg as previously cited.
[A55]. Warren Report 155-156.
[A56]. R52.
[A57]. Warren Report 155-156; Weisberg, Whitewash, 42-43.
[A58]. Geo. and Pat Nash, The New Leader, "The Other Witnesses," Oct.
12, 1964.
[A59]. 6H330.
[A60]. FBI SA Robert Gemberling's report as cited in Weisberg,
Whitewash II, 35-36.
[A61]. Wicker, "Wicker Describes," Times Talk, December, 1963.
[A62]. Stoughton photograph.
[A63]. Weisberg, Whitewash, 164; 3H132-136; 5H66-72.
bigdog
> BOOK REVIEW FOR:
>
> VINCENT BUGLIOSI'S "RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
> JOHN F. KENNEDY"
>
As thorough and convincing as RH is, few CTs are going to be swayed by
the common sense approach and few Americans will take the time to read
it. The value of the book will be as a reference work for future
scholars. It will be a companion book to the WCR, much as Case Closed
was but with a lot more detail. It will clearly repudiate all the
popular conspiracy angles of the day.
I have served as a juror on several criminal trials. I'm not sure if
this is the universal practice, but in my state (Ohio) the prosecution
makes closing arguments first, the defense rebuts, and then the
prosecution gets one final turn to refute defense arguments. No
further arguments are presented. In essence, RH is acting as the final
prosecution argument, refuting all the silly conspiracy theories that
have emerged in the past four decades. That's not to say even sillier
theories won't be advanced in the future, but RH pretty much stomps
the shit out of those that have been presented up to now. Future
historians will no doubt look at the myriad of conspiracy theories
that have been advanced, compare them to the arguments put forth by
VB, and will have no trouble at all arriving at the truth. Sure, kooks
have always been around and always will be, but 100 years from now,
none of them will be taken seriously regarding the assassination of
JFK.
YoHarvey
>
> Appendix
> I. Instances of Invented Facts and Relations on pages 49-51 of the end
> notes.
> In these few pages of the end notes Bugliosi often relies on the
> Warren Commission findings and arguments, which he holds to be valid
> and uses them sometimes as his own basic position.
>
> Beginning on page 49 of the endnotes P = paragraph. line = line down
> from the top of the paragraph or page top.
>
> 1) p. 49, P 1, line 3, "The Warren Commission estimated that Oswald
>
> read more ยป
With Bugliosi we have a man with great talent and mighty work ethic
whose reputation now stands tarnished. But he is not alone. In
addition to the author's weaknesses, though, we have a wide range of
institutions that failed us. We have the refusal of a publisher to
publish responsible volumes on this crucial subject. To spew this
mind
skewing mammoth of disinformation out into the public mind has no
saving grace. But we also have a press and a media avoidance of the
evidentiary base; we have the refusal of clueless historians to
address the reality; and, we have the spurning of the subject by the
intelligentsia, its rejection by Congress, and its disdain by
lawyers.
In short this volume must be seen as part of the breakdown of
American
society in a time of crisis
Considering the national media and numerous historians have endorsed
RH as a "book for the ages" one has to wonder why the CT community
continues its' assault? Fear? Embarrassment? Stupidity? All of the
above? I can only imagine how low they'll sink when the HBO series
ultimately appears. Should be terribly entertaining. The miniseries
will do for the SBT what Stone did for the conspiracy community.
Let's see what the polls say then.
aeffects
> On Nov 2, 4:27 am, David Von Pein <davevonp...@aol.com> wrote:> BOOK REVIEW FOR:
>
> > VINCENT BUGLIOSI'S "RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
> > JOHN F. KENNEDY"
>
> (original post snipped)
>
> As thorough and convincing as RH is, few CTs are going to be swayed by
> the common sense approach and few Americans will take the time to read
> it. The value of the book will be as a reference work for future
> scholars. It will be a companion book to the WCR, much as Case Closed
> was but with a lot more detail. It will clearly repudiate all the
> popular conspiracy angles of the day.
repudiate what -- hell, daBug has been running the other way since he
wrote his boat anchor.... Best the idiot can build is David Von pein
er, Reitzes.
Take off your knee pads and live a little, chum.... The WCR needs your
attention, it's a sinking ship, pal!
David Von Pein
OK. I shall.
And be sure to run back into bed with Groden, Stone, Lane, Fetzer, and
Garrison's ghost. You (whoever you are) should feel right at home with
that batch of kooks on either side of you.
aeffects
Dave.... its becoming most apparent the best your idol worshippers can
mount here is a Oscar Meyer weenie....
Carry on son.....
David Von Pein
Well, that's an improvement anyway. At least it's "son" today, instead
of the usual "hon".
(Must be time to take a fresh batch of mind-altering drugs, huh, DH?
The last batch has worn off.)
aeffects
only mind altering drug needed here Dave is LIFE (and maybe the
magazine, too)
David Von Pein
Which, in a CT-Kook's case, stands for --- Languishing In Fantasyland
Endlessly.
mnhay27
I'm glad that you and I (whoever I am LOL) are in agreement that you
shall be ignoring the TRUTH.
aeffects
>
> > VINCENT BUGLIOSI'S "RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
> > JOHN F. KENNEDY"
>
> (original post snipped)
>
> As thorough and convincing as RH is, few CTs are going to be swayed by
> the common sense approach and few Americans will take the time to read
> it. The value of the book will be as a reference work for future
> scholars. It will be a companion book to the WCR, much as Case Closed
> was but with a lot more detail. It will clearly repudiate all the
> popular conspiracy angles of the day.
repudiate what -- hell, daBug has been running the other way since he
wrote his boat anchor.... Best the idiot can build is David Von pein
er, Reitzes.
Take off your knee pads and live a little, chum.... The WCR needs your
attention, it's a sinking ship, pal!
> I have served as a juror on several criminal trials. I'm not sure if
Ben Holmes
says...
>
>On Nov 3, 12:00 pm, bigdog <jecorbett1...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>On Nov 2, 4:27 am, David Von Pein <davevonp...@aol.com> wrote:> BOOK REVIEW FOR:
>>
>> > VINCENT BUGLIOSI'S "RECLAIMING HISTORY: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT
>> > JOHN F. KENNEDY"
>>
>> (original post snipped)
>>
>> As thorough and convincing as RH is, few CTs are going to be swayed by
>> the common sense approach and few Americans will take the time to read
>> it. The value of the book will be as a reference work for future
>> scholars. It will be a companion book to the WCR, much as Case Closed
>> was but with a lot more detail. It will clearly repudiate all the
>> popular conspiracy angles of the day.
>
>
>repudiate what -- hell, daBug has been running the other way since he
>wrote his boat anchor.... Best the idiot can build is David Von pein
>er, Reitzes.
>
>Take off your knee pads and live a little, chum.... The WCR needs your
>attention, it's a sinking ship, pal!
>
>> I have served as a juror on several criminal trials. I'm not sure if
>> this is the universal practice, but in my state (Ohio) the prosecution
>> makes closing arguments first, the defense rebuts, and then the
>> prosecution gets one final turn to refute defense arguments. No
>> further arguments are presented. In essence, RH is acting as the final
>> prosecution argument, refuting all the silly conspiracy theories that
>> have emerged in the past four decades.
Sadly, even though Bugliosi clearly recognized the "16 Smoking Guns", and surely
knew that they had to be dealt with - ran in the opposite direction.
DVP, Bugliosi's mouthpiece, has lied and stated that Bugliosi *DID* answer the
16 smoking guns, but can't cite it.
So if Bugliosi is forced to run away from serious conspiracy theories, and play
with strawmen - what does that tell you?
>> That's not to say even sillier
>> theories won't be advanced in the future, but RH pretty much stomps
>> the shit out of those that have been presented up to now.
No, he ran away from the 16 smoking guns, even though he *KNEW* about them.
>> Future
>> historians will no doubt look at the myriad of conspiracy theories
>> that have been advanced, compare them to the arguments put forth by
>> VB, and will have no trouble at all arriving at the truth. Sure, kooks
>> have always been around and always will be, but 100 years from now,
>> none of them will be taken seriously regarding the assassination of
>> JFK.
Tis unfortunate that you make a statement that cannot be proven in your
lifetime. Tis safe... too!
aeffects
> In article <1194118365.147533.116...@e9g2000prf.googlegroups.com>, aeffects
Now Dave, what do you make of THAT? 16 smoking guns... Endlessly
regurgitating failed WCR quotes is ludicrious at best, inane at worst.
You think everyone is that stupid?
David Von Pein
Vince has addressed every single one of Fetzer's "Guns", without a
doubt. Of course, if Ben had actually bothered to read "Reclaiming
History", he would know that VB addresses every one of those things
within the book.
But, just because Vince hasn't addressed them in the EXACT, PRECISE,
CHRONOLOGICAL "SMOKING GUNS" manner that a kook named Ben Holmes
demands, it means (per the kook named Ben) that VB hasn't answered/
addressed ANY of the silly "Guns".
That's what is known as "Kook Thinking", and Ben has that kind of
thinking down pat.