tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31111546530154731102024-03-06T00:24:04.713-08:00Praise from a Future GenerationJohn Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.comBlogger24125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-45485428582796010912023-03-09T12:44:00.005-08:002023-10-07T05:27:17.472-07:00Worse Than I Thought: A Mother In History<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">he literature on the JFK assassination is rife with dishonest books that endorse, defend, and/or excuse the findings of the Warren Commission. Nothing new about that: it</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">’s </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">been true since publication of the Warren Report in 1964, and has carried on through a long line of apologist nonsense.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
One Commissioner and several WC attorneys cashed in on their experiences by writing books on the topic. A host of pseudo-serious WC advocates have also contributed, </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">profitably,</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> to this worthless tripe. At the time of the assassination’s fiftieth anniversary in 2013, pioneering critic Vince Salandria called it all a mountain of trash: propaganda meant to bury the obvious.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8KBW6aOUdhwMJSd2OPmZNF6-BMZW0r6uzmOketuvXTT42PVI6v9KP7851Z1d8c8ZvyYh6F1m3pmI40yb0aKo1gHDyn7WLmzHqEpD2Ax80GevNsVmxtR8px6egMc3YUirbQSnO5bvAnpg_gWaILpKjk-EakplqhSzwmiRwgQZeTva2yvy3U5OLdp7-0w/s517/stafford%2004a.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="517" data-original-width="449" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8KBW6aOUdhwMJSd2OPmZNF6-BMZW0r6uzmOketuvXTT42PVI6v9KP7851Z1d8c8ZvyYh6F1m3pmI40yb0aKo1gHDyn7WLmzHqEpD2Ax80GevNsVmxtR8px6egMc3YUirbQSnO5bvAnpg_gWaILpKjk-EakplqhSzwmiRwgQZeTva2yvy3U5OLdp7-0w/s320/stafford%2004a.jpg" width="278" /></a></div>Jean Stafford’s <i>A Mother in History</i> (Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1966) was an early entry into this disgraceful body of work. I have written about it before. What more could I possibly have to say? Do I have an unhealthy preoccupation with this slender book – </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">ostensibly </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">an unbiased profile</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> of the mother of the alleged presidential assassin?</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
•</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
The source material for <i>A Mother in History</i> is in the Jean Stafford archive at the University of Colorado (CU) in Boulder, part of the Norlin Library’s Rare and Distinctive Collections. By chance, it</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">s about fifteen minutes from my home.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTNa-U6ZnexJST_VGKr6ov0trWTN4JtvnvHzMMuHUEhYUiiy6qd6gXrTeVLCfTCCqmIZtGQjNEf8ti8ckxc2SGvYhg1zk-rskGAIPgls_wt-El73t2veMNt1emfIANJWANE2DawMgxsbBiVjKt98ZKXblekcNDHXpavsbNx7SCwxTKbCR_6Eu7v4kO-A/s4032/container.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTNa-U6ZnexJST_VGKr6ov0trWTN4JtvnvHzMMuHUEhYUiiy6qd6gXrTeVLCfTCCqmIZtGQjNEf8ti8ckxc2SGvYhg1zk-rskGAIPgls_wt-El73t2veMNt1emfIANJWANE2DawMgxsbBiVjKt98ZKXblekcNDHXpavsbNx7SCwxTKbCR_6Eu7v4kO-A/w264-h197/container.jpg" width="264" /></a></div>Stafford grew up in Boulder, which is presumably why she left her papers to CU. Since she mostly wrote fiction, this source material makes up only a small part of the archive. It includes typescripts, notes, and an interview transcript, all of which reside in one small box. But the real prize, and what I was most interested in when I went there in July 2022, isn</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">’t kept in the </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">box: tape recordings of Stafford</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">s May 1965 interviews with Marguerite Oswald. CU has the recordings, but they are stored elsewhere. To hear them required arrangements beyond the initial appointment I had to make to visit.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">But eventually I heard them. Today the recordings consist of six undated .mp3 files. A CU archivist told me that the original reel-to-reel tapes were transferred to audio cassette in the 1970s. They were digitized sometime in the 1980s, or perhaps a little later.</span></div><br /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-style: italic; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Nl_1TxSzJIHNz2PUlfGytlqHVf04RnkES8CFr7uj0kfG1uF8bIILXqcyH3s8dQ6upjRK35cJVWHAp8CDQQI8veezn1Zpxxd9KfnPWWQQqxB7nlrNCMSDfcFUF8JRYrDTSjAgpTn2gEYnxeBGsTxalc372DN6bjPTbik9yEqx8toRkAHO1uMb85QAsQ/s629/cover%2002.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="629" data-original-width="421" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Nl_1TxSzJIHNz2PUlfGytlqHVf04RnkES8CFr7uj0kfG1uF8bIILXqcyH3s8dQ6upjRK35cJVWHAp8CDQQI8veezn1Zpxxd9KfnPWWQQqxB7nlrNCMSDfcFUF8JRYrDTSjAgpTn2gEYnxeBGsTxalc372DN6bjPTbik9yEqx8toRkAHO1uMb85QAsQ/w242-h362/cover%2002.jpg" width="242" /></a></div>Appearing in book form in 1966, <i>A Mother In History</i> is in three sections, simply identified as I, II, and III. (There</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">’</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">s also an Epilogue and appendices.) Later editions feature a breathless jacket blurb touting Stafford’s “three incredible days</span><span style="font-family: Georgia;">”</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;"> with Marguerite Oswald. That, and other indicators, clearly imply each of those three book sections correspond to one day of conversation between the author and her subject.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
There may have been three days of interviews, incredible or otherwise, but I am highly skeptical of the implied chronology. An exchange on the book’s p. 36, as that purported first day neared its end, fuels this skepticism. Here Stafford writes that she asked Mrs. Oswald if it would be okay to bring a tape recorder the next day. Marguerite agreed. Stafford does not say so explicitly, but the clear message is that the first day was not tape recorded.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
The CU .mp3 audio tells a different story. For starters, Stafford fails to say, anywhere in the recordings, the day, date, or subject of her interviews. Interviewers often do; it could even be considered a best practice. It creates a record, and helps keep things in order.</span></div><br /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">
The audio itself may be undated, but .mp3 files do have sequential filenames. Based on these filenames, the first is </span><span style="font-family: courier;">stafford-interview-with-mrs.-oswald_-part-1-a.mp3</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">. This particular audio begins with Stafford asking, </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">“T</span><span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">ell me about your early life, Mrs. Oswald. You were born in New Orleans, weren’t you?”</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;"> The transcript begins the same way. It’s an amiable first question, a likely starting point, and I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest this was, in fact, the very first of the interviews: that is, the first day, which Stafford implied was not recorded.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">But I digress.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAMu-P9PAgznz_qn5P69cTjMTS3bEb7TGvrmFc_aevNVstsBWiKDjTxDV0agPTIgNzFV-cvqxClgVBxuVQN5PIb-sm75Wd11KRTP2zTisNYXJjlBmqR7_09Ui8Oo5vwZSSUzQgtMC13Ky3U7sPxlLvxBc7IZSLeY-WcIbk4rCUK6oBor-oCjDnD0YHQw/s986/03a.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="351" data-original-width="986" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAMu-P9PAgznz_qn5P69cTjMTS3bEb7TGvrmFc_aevNVstsBWiKDjTxDV0agPTIgNzFV-cvqxClgVBxuVQN5PIb-sm75Wd11KRTP2zTisNYXJjlBmqR7_09Ui8Oo5vwZSSUzQgtMC13Ky3U7sPxlLvxBc7IZSLeY-WcIbk4rCUK6oBor-oCjDnD0YHQw/w568-h202/03a.jpg" width="568" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">I had initially grown curious about a quote in the first section of the book – the section that readers are led to believe was from an unrecorded first day. Lee Harvey Oswald, Marguerite said, “spoke Russian, he wrote Russian, and he read Russian. Why? Because my boy was being trained as an agent, that’s why.”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKZ6upUY30V0zrG-VImc23F3zR28_HIJzginEXnjl0nwAlZjKAsTp7UiAVCM4VBCHiO4sz1azt_0Xglk7Ytg1M3YBCuyr4PGUeQ3MEIPxp6Qbr6W1Y44bfeomx1xJRdzzpBv2xoZLnZFQeZq_BNhfuBCP7CYyMmX98K4l-00RZyWELvKmaxVjEuHcJaA/s2437/02.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="841" data-original-width="2437" height="196" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKZ6upUY30V0zrG-VImc23F3zR28_HIJzginEXnjl0nwAlZjKAsTp7UiAVCM4VBCHiO4sz1azt_0Xglk7Ytg1M3YBCuyr4PGUeQ3MEIPxp6Qbr6W1Y44bfeomx1xJRdzzpBv2xoZLnZFQeZq_BNhfuBCP7CYyMmX98K4l-00RZyWELvKmaxVjEuHcJaA/w571-h196/02.jpg" width="571" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
In Stafford’s book there was no follow-up question. This baffled me. Even an amateur journalist, like Stafford, should have had enough sense to learn more about this explosive statement. I hoped the audio would clarify things. Instead, it revealed that <i>Marguerite Oswald didn’t say what Stafford quoted her as saying.</i> It is a manufactured quote.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
It’s a little complicated, so bear with me. Most of the words in that quote were, in fact, spoken by Marguerite Oswald. They were tape recorded; I have heard the audio. But it’s a false quote, because Stafford pieced together several phrases – some of them separated by as many as three minutes. Placing it all within quotation marks implies it is verbatim – but it is not, and is thus a deception.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL_LXobrs7a5_gcEk4JkVRzZ0Dn_M_2ZPVk4Kwlo9ScLnG5jIyPiQTu2LJtIMbpi80XlJCRDahJzTzFfBG_TdgNKCBE8xbs_xtKys8uvJ1mn_qWFlIuflpp-V8iQ8jTVnRhyvHAXlkvUn95_wlC9hNWUaveMyRJ6xZURbz2Z8LqCLs6Nu8H9gRwli9yw/s739/03b.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="575" data-original-width="739" height="436" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL_LXobrs7a5_gcEk4JkVRzZ0Dn_M_2ZPVk4Kwlo9ScLnG5jIyPiQTu2LJtIMbpi80XlJCRDahJzTzFfBG_TdgNKCBE8xbs_xtKys8uvJ1mn_qWFlIuflpp-V8iQ8jTVnRhyvHAXlkvUn95_wlC9hNWUaveMyRJ6xZURbz2Z8LqCLs6Nu8H9gRwli9yw/w561-h436/03b.jpg" width="561" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
I can only speculate on Stafford’s motives. That false quote does not support, as Stafford professes to, the lone gunman thesis. But given the magnitude of surrounding events, I cannot believe creating it was innocent. I think Stafford floated the idea of Oswald-as-agent – not a common view at the time – to characterize Marguerite Oswald as paranoid, and out of her mind.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
•</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
There are other false and manufactured quotes in <i>A Mother In History.</i> Once I discovered that first one it put me on high alert, and sure enough, I found others. I have not counted them all and don’t intend to; it would be a huge undertaking. But the more I studied the source material, the more dishonesty I found.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
On page 23 of <i>A Mother In History </i>is the following statement, attributed to Marguerite:</span></div>
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 14px;">
Lee purely loved animals! With his very first pay he bought a bird and a cage, and I have a picture of it. He bought this bird with a cage that had a planter for ivy, and he took care of that bird and he made the ivy grow. Now, you see, there could be many nice things written about this boy. But, oh, no, no, this boy is supposed to be the assassin of the President of the United States, so he has to be a louse. Sometimes I am very sad.</span></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
This is a rather inconsequential matter, but the quote is still false. Marguerite Oswald didn’t really say it. Here is what she <i>did </i>say, in answer to Stafford’s question, “Did he ever have any pets?"</span></div>
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 14px;">
Oh yes, Lee had a dog, and with his first pay he bought a bird and a cage – I have pictures of it, with ivy in it and all the food for the bird. Yes. He had a collie shepherd dog that I had gotten for him when it was a little [bitty] puppy. And he had it all those years until we went to New York. And that dog had puppies. He gave one to his school teacher. She wrote a nice article for the newspaper saying Lee loving animals and giving her a pet.</span></div></blockquote>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
True, the published quote roughly parallels what she really said. But it is still false. “Lee purely loved animals</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">”</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> does not appear in any of the audio. There is no mention of dogs in the published quote, let alone puppies, or giving one to a school teacher.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Nor did Marguerite say, apropos of nothing, “Sometimes I am very sad.” In fact, elsewhere in the recorded interviews, she said quite the opposite: “I’m not unhappy, Jean. You can see I’m not.”</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
•</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
The example about animals and pets is minor, compared to a false quote on pages 12-13 of <i>A Mother In History.</i> This one is presented as dialogue between interviewer and interviewee, and Jean Stafford goes in for the kill. It is intended, I am convinced, to make Marguerite Oswald appear nuts – to use a non-clinical term.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
Marguerite spoke first:</span></div>
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 14px;">
“And as we all know, President Kennedy was a dying man. So I say it is possible that my son was chosen to shoot him in a mercy killing for the security of the country. And if this is true, it was a fine thing to do and my son is a hero.”</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 14px;">
“I had not heard that President Kennedy was dying,” I said, staggered by this cluster of fictions stated as irrefutable fact. Some mercy killing! The methods used in this instance must surely be unique in the annals of euthanasia.</span></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">This exchange is not found anywhere in the interview audio or the transcript. Marguerite does not make the statement, and Jean Stafford does not make that stunned reply.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
There <i>is,</i> however, something similar to this in the interviews. Unfortunately, the digitized version of the tape recording at CU ends partway through the quote. Did the original tape end there, too? No, because the corresponding transcript, which I have found to be consistently accurate, continues for several more pages. It is convoluted, but this is what Marguerite Oswald really said.</span></div>
<blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: 14px;">
That President Kennedy was killed by – a mercy killing – by some of his own men that thought it was the thing to do and this is not impossible and since I blame the secret service from what I saw and what I thought it could have been that my son and the secret service were all involved in a mercy killing.</span></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6GRdogP1Z21-PTxe50Dmc_z2advLtYs7BL1KbPWFOauqwtVmpfl73gN34y8Kubd6hnmxnZANh30Zkoo0Sb8bw8uWEZzYnvyT-aDI_HxR8ta3FVtrc0KW7hb7j9Qbkkoc2rcq4zQUB1W5MIm047jrm2JKkTkWzNaev3BpIij6cV5hjTmaqdJ7fHlRIQg/s747/04a.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="367" data-original-width="747" height="285" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6GRdogP1Z21-PTxe50Dmc_z2advLtYs7BL1KbPWFOauqwtVmpfl73gN34y8Kubd6hnmxnZANh30Zkoo0Sb8bw8uWEZzYnvyT-aDI_HxR8ta3FVtrc0KW7hb7j9Qbkkoc2rcq4zQUB1W5MIm047jrm2JKkTkWzNaev3BpIij6cV5hjTmaqdJ7fHlRIQg/w581-h285/04a.jpg" width="581" /></a></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">A minute or so before her “mercy killing" remark, Marguerite <i>did </i>say “a dying President,” but “As we all know” is an invention. She says JFK was dying because he had Addison’s disease, which he did. She also called it a kidney disorder, which it is not. Addison’s can be life-threatening, but Stafford correctly points out that it is a manageable adrenal condition. And Kennedy managed his.</span></div></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
But Stafford can’t let this go without having some fun, falsely quoting Marguerite calling it Atkinson’s disease. In the audio, there is no doubt: Marguerite says Addison’s. It is rendered as Atkinson’s in the transcript. Maybe Stafford didn’t remember what Mrs. Oswald actually said, and later on trusted the error of the unknown stenographer. While accurate overall, the transcript does, in fact, garble certain words here and there; in places it reminds me of the sometimes-strange voicemail transcripts my Smartphone makes. The ethical thing would have been double-checking Marguerite’s presumed mistake, before putting it to print.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
But the point is that Marguerite Oswald did not say her son was chosen to shoot a terminally ill JFK in a mercy killing. Jean Stafford created that illusion.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
According to biographer David Roberts (<i>Jean Stafford: A Biography, </i>1988) Jean Stafford later “held parties at which she played the Oswald tapes for her friends.” Roberts cites Stafford’s “fascination” with Marguerite Oswald’s voice.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
It sounds more like arrogance to me. One imagines a bunch of cocktail-quaffing intelligentsia howling with laughter over Marguerite’s unschooled chatter. But maybe not. Maybe Stafford just wanted to give some of her pals a front-row seat to history. Whatever: the image this conjures is, to me, thoroughly repulsive.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
•</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
The Stafford-Oswald interviews took place in May 1965. This is approximately ten months after Marguerite met with Harold Feldman and Vince Salandria, after which Feldman wrote “The Unsinkable Marguerite Oswald,” published in September 1964 (<a href="https://www.ep.tc/realist/53/12.html" target="_blank">available online</a>).</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUat-zy6_pkhnz25R6YyTbryAF1y97lATHzANB2dTS3iXUQhGVQKdGxKOpiNQ5XOmydNZGElG7J9m-rJ-EgwDomu7ga2dcO52Xa7Vlcw8kYailQ5tDQHjO3vM9Hsja0IIPqu2F_t5H8vKNbRMsk378hBJiJLkw93cskr7jZ2W0cm4IwUEOaneQ9sRKOg/s1370/06a.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1230" data-original-width="1370" height="287" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUat-zy6_pkhnz25R6YyTbryAF1y97lATHzANB2dTS3iXUQhGVQKdGxKOpiNQ5XOmydNZGElG7J9m-rJ-EgwDomu7ga2dcO52Xa7Vlcw8kYailQ5tDQHjO3vM9Hsja0IIPqu2F_t5H8vKNbRMsk378hBJiJLkw93cskr7jZ2W0cm4IwUEOaneQ9sRKOg/s320/06a.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>If Jean Stafford had done her homework, she might have answered a question she puzzled over in her book’s Appendix III. How, she wondered, was an undereducated Marguerite Oswald able to paraphrase an obscure quote from Sigmund Freud? “Without persecution," she told Stafford, “there would not be a persecution complex.”</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
In his article Harold Feldman (at left, in photo), a lay psychologist, said that the media consistently portrayed Marguerite Oswald “as a self-centered, domineering, paranoiac showoff with frequent delusions of persecution. It reminds me of Freud’s remark that there would be no such thing as a persecution complex if there were not real persecution.”</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
Feldman, whose writing often appeared in psychoanalytic journals, wrote about Marguerite with a deference and sympathy Jean Stafford failed to summon. He observed:</span></div>
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She has devoted every day since November 22, 1963, to uncovering what she believes and millions believe is a real conspiracy in which her youngest son was the fall guy. As a result, she is held up to scorn as a bitter old woman who sees snares and plots everywhere.</span></div></blockquote><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">And he added: “… if Ibsen is right and the strongest is the one who stands alone for integrity and honor, then Marguerite Oswald is the strongest woman in America.</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">”</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
Marguerite Oswald was an ordinary woman thrust, quite against her will, into extraordinary circumstances. In spite of tremendous obstacles, she defended her son against the Warren Commission and the mainstream media. She had few allies. Even family members, she told Jean Stafford, distanced themselves from her. “I’m alone in my fight, with no help.”</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
Marguerite Oswald may have struck Stafford as eccentric, but who doesn’t have personality quirks? Jean Stafford exploited Marguerite’s to the hilt, and did so ruthlessly, in exchange for money. I could cite more examples of the dishonesty in <i>A Mother In History,</i> but life is too short.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
Stafford shuffled the truth like a deck of cards, manufacturing quotes and manipulating chronology, all to create the false impression – the lie – that her subject was divorced from reality. Suffice it to say <i>A Mother In History</i> is even worse than I imagined when I visited the Jean Stafford archive at CU.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
But it’s been more than fifty years since publication, so the damage is done.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
</span></div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-38907178064827752142022-10-12T09:11:00.003-07:002023-03-09T12:47:59.064-08:00A Nurse from Dallas<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUjBEYVTdnBnG09jYZo91hagc3YoYa96SrGG-wowmZfUgQ0brPBBbzjanTiyQ0U6r2fDUwqsnhVtRwUmKIS-bSMbJ63anANWVw2FoSzgb0dO0L1zzB30m2gNBUNiZ8C4Swni3E1pjt9kZTGGyGFkWYncD72s1nd81cpflQsz5w6Gk4Pw3gScK12WpPTg/s488/nurse%2001a.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="417" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUjBEYVTdnBnG09jYZo91hagc3YoYa96SrGG-wowmZfUgQ0brPBBbzjanTiyQ0U6r2fDUwqsnhVtRwUmKIS-bSMbJ63anANWVw2FoSzgb0dO0L1zzB30m2gNBUNiZ8C4Swni3E1pjt9kZTGGyGFkWYncD72s1nd81cpflQsz5w6Gk4Pw3gScK12WpPTg/s320/nurse%2001a.jpg" width="273" /></a></div>L</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">ast week I underwent minor surgery to correct a deviated septum. As I write this, I’ve just had the hollow, conical splints that were jammed up each nostril removed; they kept my nose in shape, quite literally, for the first five days of convalescence.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">After the procedure they wheeled me into the recovery room, where I gradually began to emerge from sedation. One of the nurses began chattering away at me. I got the sense she wanted to gauge my alertness; to calculate, maybe, how long before I could be discharged.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">In any case, she said at one point that she was from Dallas.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“Oh yeah?” I replied, muddy-minded.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“So is another nurse on this ward.”</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“Oh.”</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“In fact, I used to work at Parkland Hospital.”</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiva3CvwUtxeinFD24Z-CnELavSwUj17R_ovGhLO6I9gF5tcIHqR7fgA_DTMIu9w5EJcQvv8ArN9lqYKVwZ4dgim1a7GrrjGPocH3GCr2AthWS44tGQmnjIR5NExFR8fgw89Fi7o5FjmMcOuBEwa1H73KFScFKOPDj7fmFqNb4gyZlLavwbsKIQGwy2g/s240/jfk%2005a.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="218" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiva3CvwUtxeinFD24Z-CnELavSwUj17R_ovGhLO6I9gF5tcIHqR7fgA_DTMIu9w5EJcQvv8ArN9lqYKVwZ4dgim1a7GrrjGPocH3GCr2AthWS44tGQmnjIR5NExFR8fgw89Fi7o5FjmMcOuBEwa1H73KFScFKOPDj7fmFqNb4gyZlLavwbsKIQGwy2g/s1600/jfk%2005a.jpg" width="218" /></a></div>“No kidding,” I said through a fog.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“That’s the one where JFK died.”</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“That’s true.” It also closed a few months ago, and will be demolished.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“I guess because of that, I’ve always been interested in that case. I read almost everything about it I can.”</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“No kidding?” I muttered.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“No kidding!”</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">So I told her that it was an interest of mine, too; that in fact, I’d written a book about it. Ordinarily I would have kept this to myself, but I was still floating on anesthesia. She seemed genuinely interested. Hard to tell, because I was so out of it from the drugs.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">She wanted to know the title, and said she wanted to read it. I told her and she wrote it down. She already had my name on a medical chart.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">We talked some more. “There’s no way one guy could have got off all those shots in, what was it? – five or six seconds?” I agreed, then gave her my grand summary: which is the importance of distinguishing between conspiracy and culpability. Demonstrating conspiracy is the easy part, I slurred. The whodunnit is trickier.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwE8NvhRsrbvlJThHJ5DjJxITQI0UQtTN6ghDuPDY2ySWw0Y8FJE9gR8jpcbR7CTNV_dcqQ9pktoiqVnTBqhT-JY7huPMwAzus2E-KoRr2r01ws95ECQPsFISLtrJMf6EZYm7E8s94LdExl4usbOGsWl36mt39n8OTdesik0DPgxpnJDVjWYmGO1_rkA/s394/barf%2001a.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="394" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwE8NvhRsrbvlJThHJ5DjJxITQI0UQtTN6ghDuPDY2ySWw0Y8FJE9gR8jpcbR7CTNV_dcqQ9pktoiqVnTBqhT-JY7huPMwAzus2E-KoRr2r01ws95ECQPsFISLtrJMf6EZYm7E8s94LdExl4usbOGsWl36mt39n8OTdesik0DPgxpnJDVjWYmGO1_rkA/s320/barf%2001a.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Maybe this suggested I was mentally alert. A few minutes later I heard her calling my wife to say I was ready; she could come get me now. “We had a really interesting conversation about JFK!” she said. <i>Le spouse</i> has heard it all before.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">As we drove home the aftereffects of the anesthesia got to me and, aggravated by motion, I puked. Caught it all in a plastic bag, on hand just in case. Got home, felt better, took some pain meds, and drifted in and out of consciousness during Thursday Night Football. The Broncos lost to Indianapolis.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Recovery continues.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxAZNQ1knyvpaT2MA6f-hTT_AuxnKlgMy2r_9uTmjDMu3ZqWY-ooC2ctwnotU3ISEr0X9G-pVtWBdG2Blo6kxO75c0csvF8U8ESu97OzFkxlfNFayNoO5vArwN25zfypXugmBnDlQMluycH7qDbwKV4iEhtEOf1EV_IRvbopuzetnvGKu8-BFAXIwreA/s2400/OR_02.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1350" data-original-width="2400" height="374" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxAZNQ1knyvpaT2MA6f-hTT_AuxnKlgMy2r_9uTmjDMu3ZqWY-ooC2ctwnotU3ISEr0X9G-pVtWBdG2Blo6kxO75c0csvF8U8ESu97OzFkxlfNFayNoO5vArwN25zfypXugmBnDlQMluycH7qDbwKV4iEhtEOf1EV_IRvbopuzetnvGKu8-BFAXIwreA/w665-h374/OR_02.jpg" width="665" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><br />
John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-14526955619276441092022-03-22T08:46:00.003-07:002022-04-04T11:56:37.153-07:00Material Transfer Agreement<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">A</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">fter twenty-something years, <i>Praise From a Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report</i> is nearly out of my life.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><i><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiH-KGz1tPT1TMOCAz0FYL1SVVbWxf3tHpdmv_5LjHB5drmwZWHtFYI1aqNsQOLTutzyJ22qG0dL44Q5v_XplK3WCC6EGMz0X1ows8ePrq0wRcmWvtL6JhXm8CiKWn5_Ciiwmj1NSYDcm2cMHH6PwU5x1Vmvh13okx2x9ypvCjhek5K8DpwYbq80f-22A=s1209" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1209" data-original-width="850" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiH-KGz1tPT1TMOCAz0FYL1SVVbWxf3tHpdmv_5LjHB5drmwZWHtFYI1aqNsQOLTutzyJ22qG0dL44Q5v_XplK3WCC6EGMz0X1ows8ePrq0wRcmWvtL6JhXm8CiKWn5_Ciiwmj1NSYDcm2cMHH6PwU5x1Vmvh13okx2x9ypvCjhek5K8DpwYbq80f-22A=s320" width="225" /></a></div><br />Finally.</i> I’m tempted to add that word to the first sentence<i>.</i> But that may sound a bit mocking, or scornful.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Yet the publisher has paid me off and officially declared the book <a href="http://praisefrom.blogspot.com/2021/09/out-of-print.html" target="_blank">out of print</a>. The last surviving critic, Vincent J. Salandria (pictured), who some have also called the first critic, died in the <a href="http://praisefrom.blogspot.com/2020/09/vincent-j-salandria.html" target="_blank">summer of 2020</a>.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Now, it all belongs to the ages.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">During the book</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">’s</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> research and writing phase I amassed quite a bit of physical data. The project was completed years ago, but – much to the consternation of my wife – this data has sat and sat and </span><i style="font-size: 16px;">sat,</i><span style="font-size: 16px;"> and taken up space, in what used to be my office but is now her office.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">My ace in the hole was Baylor University in Waco, TX. Or so I thought. Some years back a curator of Baylor</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">’s </span><a href="https://digitalcollections-baylor.quartexcollections.com/poage-collections/jfk-penn-jones-collection" style="font-size: 16px;" target="_blank">Penn Jones collection</a><span style="font-size: 16px;"> told me he’d be happy to take this stuff off my hands when the time came. But I waited too long; this fellow is no longer there, and Baylor is no longer accepting material like this.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh8JrJzfIB0WX8ZjmE-Ld6WzyhuVntYxLAyRJGIb8lrm3XP7oTMcIYz-3v4vesUwm8CDk_AXEpoxGboNvjRueFv4--_RyneupRzkpUrK3EyNzqNg7Kju6IuoFo_cpafqWYO1a85iaLws5PGqzXY0teLV4DT1U6lZvM6QdjcqrB7HQid9aZpZ1XldB7sEA=s346" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="346" data-original-width="248" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEh8JrJzfIB0WX8ZjmE-Ld6WzyhuVntYxLAyRJGIb8lrm3XP7oTMcIYz-3v4vesUwm8CDk_AXEpoxGboNvjRueFv4--_RyneupRzkpUrK3EyNzqNg7Kju6IuoFo_cpafqWYO1a85iaLws5PGqzXY0teLV4DT1U6lZvM6QdjcqrB7HQid9aZpZ1XldB7sEA=s320" width="229" /></a></div>But Hood College is. They</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">re in Frederick, Maryland. The papers of Harold Weisberg (with goose), Sylvia Meagher, and Ray Marcus are already there; I plundered them way back when. Weisberg’s vast collection has been mostly digitized and is accessible </span><a href="http://jfk.hood.edu" style="font-size: 16px;" target="_blank">via the web</a><span style="font-size: 16px;">. At least some of the </span><a href="http://jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20Materials/Sylvia%20Meagher%20Clips/Sylvia%20Meagher%20Images/" style="font-size: 16px;" target="_blank">Sylvia Meagher</a><span style="font-size: 16px;"> material is online but is far less organized. I don’t know the status of the Marcus material.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">And now Hood is taking my stuff. It includes the papers of Vince Salandria, one of several foundations for my book. Long ago, when I first agreed to accept it, Vince told me his wife would otherwise burn it as soon as he was dead. </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">Happily, it has been spared that fate.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgTyXl6g2RcAPp1_i8Oq9lelhHQpMDz3C-fbmZC0NSu2jexQzmsxe7Fid5AvJF96s73CBw0Jz7Ay56HgF8WyXDd94QrSyRGyMwq9l5MX-Tep6HzWjluore5IiCsVwotsuEIoEfL_Wipze9Uw_l_UM1woCqRqzB1M54e06Pg_pgc431b0spS3G8Bfklhgw=s267" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="267" data-original-width="239" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgTyXl6g2RcAPp1_i8Oq9lelhHQpMDz3C-fbmZC0NSu2jexQzmsxe7Fid5AvJF96s73CBw0Jz7Ay56HgF8WyXDd94QrSyRGyMwq9l5MX-Tep6HzWjluore5IiCsVwotsuEIoEfL_Wipze9Uw_l_UM1woCqRqzB1M54e06Pg_pgc431b0spS3G8Bfklhgw" width="239" /></a></div>I have sorted out the most important stuff from redundant stuff and expect to hand it off to a Hood representative sometime this spring. It consists mostly of correspondence, books, clippings, magazines, and a few oddities.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><i>Praise From a Future Generation</i> will never, of course, be completely out of my life – in spite of what I wrote at the top. How could it be? It will likely be a year or two before any of the materials destined for Hood are accessible to interested parties. Not that I anticipate a flood, or even a trickle, of interest. I’m just glad it won’t end up in a fire pit, or a landfill, which was my fear after Baylor and several other institutions took a pass. (My dream is for this material, and everything relating to the early Warren Report critics, to be in a central location – the Smithsonian, say. Another topic for another time.)</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">As I write this, most of my collection has been boxed up. Legally it may not be what is called a material transfer agreement – but I am giving, and Hood is accepting. I have signed a Deed of Gift. What remains is for the Hood curator and me to align our schedules and figure out a workable plan to meet at an undisclosed location halfway across the country, to transfer boxes from my vehicle to his.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjyHdShLyDVJ-9PzVC_TDjMPkxVncyMjzDxvWwIdsezz2scwGMj7RVtr9hjtBMbyIFGwU1tcx1ME3Zl0aMRCbpkTC7nhPQkO-ZS844g0pn4xE59lcVov-dd0-dOb_iu9ourFsXa00qfSOaxLhLs0IYgzUbPNMkDP45V4SngOItKsmxps1zBAzE04cF30g=s4032" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="402" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjyHdShLyDVJ-9PzVC_TDjMPkxVncyMjzDxvWwIdsezz2scwGMj7RVtr9hjtBMbyIFGwU1tcx1ME3Zl0aMRCbpkTC7nhPQkO-ZS844g0pn4xE59lcVov-dd0-dOb_iu9ourFsXa00qfSOaxLhLs0IYgzUbPNMkDP45V4SngOItKsmxps1zBAzE04cF30g=w536-h402" width="536" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjTZ8GutGPid7yVLDjw-_c31_Y-p3dQ3ItJTZmUHlHE-ZFI7Hdt7Slt6ibRZk5fABRe2XuqOfKlmXic8FcPrOhjvK9FPKlEN-a1CpnVQQlce1FmENpZ58NiZzmfgSun2vCo35fnZQMVzDbYtoTsdQohSkPaNzQpl_JJ5HfubGpZi7ZSEe6Cu9vJ5FC73g=s640" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="403" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjTZ8GutGPid7yVLDjw-_c31_Y-p3dQ3ItJTZmUHlHE-ZFI7Hdt7Slt6ibRZk5fABRe2XuqOfKlmXic8FcPrOhjvK9FPKlEN-a1CpnVQQlce1FmENpZ58NiZzmfgSun2vCo35fnZQMVzDbYtoTsdQohSkPaNzQpl_JJ5HfubGpZi7ZSEe6Cu9vJ5FC73g=w536-h403" width="536" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><br />
John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-83129844590436073882021-09-09T07:52:00.009-07:002023-10-09T05:49:24.583-07:00Out Of Print<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">I</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">t’s the end of the road for <i>Praise From a Future Generation.</i></span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEyw6Oa4ZHn6aDFyDBWWxk_zQZf4j2vtDOL6AK2FGnciSdLNR0k_eBoWq8iL5e6NjN0U2dqiIfS-fUe35lrXL78MoJUSpytptIXdn29EHx9JxV6ryakj5eZPfudvAKXt8Tn7vUIsj_fQzN/s917/00.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="353" data-original-width="917" height="123" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEyw6Oa4ZHn6aDFyDBWWxk_zQZf4j2vtDOL6AK2FGnciSdLNR0k_eBoWq8iL5e6NjN0U2dqiIfS-fUe35lrXL78MoJUSpytptIXdn29EHx9JxV6ryakj5eZPfudvAKXt8Tn7vUIsj_fQzN/s320/00.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>A few days ago, as this is written, I received an unexpected letter from its publisher, Wings Press, informing me of their decision to shitcan the book once and for all. (Some choice excerpts from this letter are below.)</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">The letter surprised me. Aside from the e-book edition, I thought it already <i>was </i>out of print!</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgICLFLJYO-mfn81EFpyYYd36jUQ4uUMXIVKt7DxMSC9woypB8FN2WoPiyOnb8fIR7nFI0cvogk37o1cteX8Vi4kSfIucDgf3RNrOpOVKQmJRTJcZ1a-J4u3FGjAL5EuNPe2EYLcQ0abZkC/s500/cover.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="346" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgICLFLJYO-mfn81EFpyYYd36jUQ4uUMXIVKt7DxMSC9woypB8FN2WoPiyOnb8fIR7nFI0cvogk37o1cteX8Vi4kSfIucDgf3RNrOpOVKQmJRTJcZ1a-J4u3FGjAL5EuNPe2EYLcQ0abZkC/s320/cover.jpg" width="221" /></a></div>The letter included a royalty check covering the last three years. This too surprised me, although its miniscule amount did not. I didn’t think they owed me a farthing.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">How miniscule was the check? Let’s just say we’re not using it to put a swimming pool in the back yard, and leave it at that. </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">But I didn</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">t write the book expecting to make money. I hope that’s been obvious all along.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">In any case, hard copies of the book now belong to the ages. Or something like that.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">If you are reading this, you are among the tiniest of tiny minorities who are aware this book even exists (assuming you didn’t arrive here by chance). It is the story of the JFK assassination through the eyes of the “first generation” Warren Report critics, a small group of private citizens who immediately saw the lone nut assassin story for the transparent nonsense it was, and always has been.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjznMUsWeZ8cdAbQxwcg65_8oogThWDEG7ABQ6rs3lXSsCET2qvFeyuApCeN-cP4HtWAjPJ5OsOfneQ5KFAavJJU3vjGcq1kDhsSEmMqaIgReLKY2JQ0pQMm6hnRzTxvBINk1tkAxP-rLRY/s366/bw_pic.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="366" data-original-width="225" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjznMUsWeZ8cdAbQxwcg65_8oogThWDEG7ABQ6rs3lXSsCET2qvFeyuApCeN-cP4HtWAjPJ5OsOfneQ5KFAavJJU3vjGcq1kDhsSEmMqaIgReLKY2JQ0pQMm6hnRzTxvBINk1tkAxP-rLRY/w164-h266/bw_pic.jpg" width="164" /></a></div>Wings Press still has a handful of copies, p</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">ending my nonaction that dooms them to the landfill</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">. I have an option to buy some or all at less than market value. </span><i style="font-size: 16px;">Pass.</i><span style="font-size: 16px;"> Let them return to the earth, from whence they came!</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">The e-book remains, although if it’s unchanged from the version I saw when we prepared it a few years after the hard copy, it's poorly done – more like a PDF of the book, rather than liquid text that resizes itself to the dimensions of an e-reader.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">In any case, I must look at this as the final chapter (no pun intended) in the saga of writing this damned thing. It’s a little sad, of course. The finished product represents a lot of work. Research began around 2000 or so, and it was finally published in 2007 – in itself, a minor miracle. But it’s already been in the rear view mirror for a long time.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">___</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4KgWUBNK5Gn1was8GhueZFDRzamL2IJOWW__PVWXMXMCEWOYzSDYNvCNO77_tMI1mV1PjAxotf3UKQ2BDOsCh0UfohWHayOw9w7uwHyLveP5kWYsaWGn_tFdbdUFIwbW67LhoE36RYkOW/s2048/00a.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1368" data-original-width="2048" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4KgWUBNK5Gn1was8GhueZFDRzamL2IJOWW__PVWXMXMCEWOYzSDYNvCNO77_tMI1mV1PjAxotf3UKQ2BDOsCh0UfohWHayOw9w7uwHyLveP5kWYsaWGn_tFdbdUFIwbW67LhoE36RYkOW/w631-h422/00a.jpg" width="631" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /><br /></span></div><br />John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-7327066641326596392020-11-18T09:54:00.006-08:002021-01-26T06:25:56.401-08:00Priscilla is Heard<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><i>T</i></span><span style="font-size: 16px;"><i>he Muses Are Heard</i> is a largely forgotten book by Truman Capote. Published in 1956, it is a nonfiction account of an American company of <i>Porgy and Bess</i> and its visit to the Soviet Union.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguIqAjJ9vrzAiyfA96XhG_rdPr8FSIRylQqeORh-zVKVzvjSnTf8C2TtRuerhu7IRhEADD4xWAwOEd7GkGuz6gPExVPMyHERLwsBYzaxUR7gv-WA0mq6F6vWUSdSpDVxbA0iqFh6yJKD9F/s320/03_tc.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="240" height="371" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguIqAjJ9vrzAiyfA96XhG_rdPr8FSIRylQqeORh-zVKVzvjSnTf8C2TtRuerhu7IRhEADD4xWAwOEd7GkGuz6gPExVPMyHERLwsBYzaxUR7gv-WA0mq6F6vWUSdSpDVxbA0iqFh6yJKD9F/w279-h371/03_tc.jpg" width="279" /></a></div>When I first read it a dozen or so years ago I was surprised by the appearance of someone associated, indirectly, with the JFK assassination. To wit: one Priscilla Johnson, later Priscilla Johnson McMillan.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Johnson was ostensibly a journalist when she interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald at Moscow’s Hotel Metropole in November 1959, some four years after the events in <i>The Muses Are Heard. </i>She profiled Oswald, a supposed defector, for the North American Newspaper Alliance.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Right after the assassination, claiming she “had been thinking about him ever since” their 1959 meeting, Johnson wrote another article, “Oswald in Moscow.” It supported the argument that Oswald shot JFK largely because he was a publicity seeking lone nut.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Sometimes journalists get lucky: they’re in the right place at the right time. Was this the case with Johnson and her Moscow meeting with Oswald? Elements of her tale smell funny: she worked for John F. Kennedy in the early 1950s, when Kennedy was a Massachusetts Senator, and sought employment with the CIA, without success. So the story goes.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG0TrCA2POjP3CNbaKcEPPu-aUphAHKYvE3e9fCCP9ft5oUIM4E7r7il9bozaNjphmgFavh5bOtAqMllJXakpJLNoaQEqhYhaeD0fyZRW86FVm3z3aradnHZBnR249vhju2poGAmYvRwVp/s255/05_pris-marina.gif" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="251" data-original-width="255" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG0TrCA2POjP3CNbaKcEPPu-aUphAHKYvE3e9fCCP9ft5oUIM4E7r7il9bozaNjphmgFavh5bOtAqMllJXakpJLNoaQEqhYhaeD0fyZRW86FVm3z3aradnHZBnR249vhju2poGAmYvRwVp/s0/05_pris-marina.gif" /></a></div>Priscilla Johnson testified before the Warren Commission. Later she befriended Oswald’s widow Marina and began writing a book, <i>Marina and Lee. </i>After its publication in 1977 she became a persistent and reliable supporter of the lone nut scenario, drawing on her brief acquaintance with Lee Oswald and longer acquaintance with Marina to pose as an expert. (As this is written she is still alive at 92, according to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priscilla_Johnson_McMillan" target="_blank">her entry</a> in Wikipedia.)</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><center>•</center></span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">And lo! She makes a cameo appearance in <i>The Muses Are Heard.</i> This short work, remember, describes events that took place in late 1955 – some four years before Priscilla Johnson’s encounter with Lee Harvey Oswald.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Capote accompanied an all-Black cast of <i>Porgy and Bess</i> to Russia, part of an entourage that included the wife of the opera’s lyricist, Ira Gershwin. The trip was newsworthy as the first performance of an American theatrical company in the Soviet Union since the Bolshevik revolution. (<i>The New Yorker</i> magazine picked up Capote’s tab, and serialized <i>The Muses Are Heard</i> before it appeared in book form.)</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Capote wrote his piece in the first person – “observant, gossipy, bitchy, and always entertaining,” said biographer Gerald Clarke – inserting himself among his subjects. At one point he described how the cast, before one of their own performances, attended a ballet in Moscow.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><blockquote style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Sitting in the row ahead, there was one girl whose hair was neither plaited nor a sour bundle of string; she had an urchin-cut, which suited her curious, wild-faun face. She was wearing a black cardigan, and a pearl necklace. I pointed her out to Miss Ryan.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“But I <i>know </i>her,” Miss Ryan said excitedly. “She’s from Long Island, we went to Radcliffe together! <i>Priscilla </i>Johnson,” she called, and the girl, squinting near-sighted eyes, turned around. “For God’s sake, Priscilla. What are you doing here?”</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“Gosh. Gee whiz, Nancy,” said the girl, rubbing back her tomboy bangs. “What are <i>you </i>doing here?”</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Miss Ryan told her, and the girl, who said she was staying at the Astoria, explained that she had been granted a lengthy visa to live in the Soviet Union and study Russian law, a subject that had interested her since Radcliffe, where she’d also learned the Russian language.</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“But, darling,” said Mrs. Gershwin, “how can anyone study Russian law? When it changes so often?”</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“Gosh. Ha ha,” said Miss Johnson. “Well, that’s not the <i>only </i>thing I’m studying. I’m making a kind of Kinsey report. It’s great fun, gosh.”</span></div><br /><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“I should think,” said Miss Ryan. “The research.”</span></div><br /></blockquote><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><i>Gosh. </i>Johnson added that she was writing and submitting articles to American magazines. “Priscilla,” Miss Ryan whispered to Capote, “is sort of a genius.”</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">She also participated in a “pub crawl” through Moscow with Capote, Miss Ryan, and several others, “indulging [Capote’s] lifelong passion for ... foul-smelling, vile places,” </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">Gerald Clarke wrote.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><center>•</center></span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">An <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/11/the-only-person-who-knew-both-kennedy-and-his-killer/281712/" target="_blank"><i>Atlantic </i>article</a> about Priscilla Johnson McMillan, published at the time of the assassination’s fiftieth anniversary, called her the only person to know both JFK and Oswald – “his killer,” as the stuffy rag dutifully referred to him.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAtAZFDyTBkwN-jCJ7gZr-lpWX3gIvn2KR6tKePcTJ2umHrkqLCaicIkup7uiilFfhroeXiCSdUnVqGiEWoop23X-vj9njh3M95LlVsVFsmUGs8IW6FnLdQOlwRkb9O_vgv6DWzO_c4xqN/s320/02_tc.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="320" data-original-width="234" height="368" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAtAZFDyTBkwN-jCJ7gZr-lpWX3gIvn2KR6tKePcTJ2umHrkqLCaicIkup7uiilFfhroeXiCSdUnVqGiEWoop23X-vj9njh3M95LlVsVFsmUGs8IW6FnLdQOlwRkb9O_vgv6DWzO_c4xqN/w269-h368/02_tc.jpg" width="269" /></a></div>Not so fast! Capote made the same claim. In “A Day’s Work,” a story collected in <i>Music for Chameleons, </i>he said he was a guest at a dinner party hosted by then-Sen. JFK. He described meeting Oswald in a story/interview with, of all people, Robert “Bobby” Beausoleil, who, when Capote talked to him, sat in prison for crimes associated with Charles Manson and his murderous “family.”</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“Does that make you the only one that knew both of them, Oswald and Kennedy?” a startled Beausoleil asked, after Capote’s revelation.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“No. There was an American girl, Priscilla Johnson. She worked for U.P. [sic] in Moscow. She knew Kennedy, and she met Oswald around the same time I did.”</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">True? Maybe. I’m not sure the chronology adds up. More to the point, Capote had an uneven relationship with truth, and for me at least, has almost no credibility anymore. I have been an admirer of his in the past, and still think his oeuvre contains some very fine work. But you need a good bullshit detector.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Capote is, or was, an inveterate liar. “He took substantial liberties for the sake of lively reading,” Gerald Clarke wrote of <i>The Muses Are Heard.</i> </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">“</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">In one case he invented a whole scene.”</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Not only that, he fabricated sections of his acknowledged masterpiece, <i>In Cold Blood.</i> This, alas, is beyond dispute. As with any liar, once a falsehood is exposed it reflects negatively on everything you’ve ever done, said, or written.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">What, then, of Priscilla Johnson McMillan? I have no reason to doubt the accuracy of the characterization in </span><i style="font-size: 16px;">The Muses Are Heard. </i><span style="font-size: 16px;">Am I applying a double standard? Maybe. Or maybe it’s a judgment call.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Priscilla Johnson applied to the CIA in the early 1950s, according to the <a href="https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKjohnsonPR.htm" target="_blank">Spartacus </a>website and other sources. Her application was supposedly rejected. Yet there she is, an American in Moscow during the Cold War. Seems highly unusual to me.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Could the encounter between Johnson, Capote, and Miss [Nancy] Ryan have been just a coincidence? Or could she have taken a seat one row before Capote and her erstwhile classmate in order to be spotted, thereby enabling her to keep surreptitious tabs on these Americans? Johnson, of course, dismisses the idea out of hand: “There’s a lot of stuff like that online,” she told <i>The Atlantic.</i></span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">I don’t know what to make of this. Maybe it’s only a literary curiosity, or maybe </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">it’s</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> absolutely nothing. B</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">ut it’s at least worth knowing about; the intelligence swamp surrounding the Kennedy case is legendary.</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">________</span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><b>Notes</b></span></div><br style="font-family: "Times New Roman";" /><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Capote meeting</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> JFK is in <i>Capote, A Biography, </i>by Gerald Clarke. Also referenced in “A Day</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">s Work,” collected in <i>Music For Chameleons</i>. This collection includes “Then It All Came Down,” with the Beausoleil</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> conversation.</span></div></div><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Gerald Clarke discusses Capote having invented scenes for <i>The Muses Are Heard</i> and <i>In Cold Blood</i> in his biography. Surprisingly, the bio makes no mention of Oswald. Capote inventions are also discussed in <i>Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee,</i> by Charles J. Shields, and <i>Truman Capote,</i> by George Plimpton</span></div><br />
</span></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghh2PxqVkqY7smOROe9TU4gcwa-bNDaBZnjpVWVp_qlZ-BbUsfTeDTHLuZTL3n2NwNK5iDPp4E7xmSZ-ZQ103bdkO6fRBfQGdfVxE_FChknmxqwezLzg6ld_0sPssjQAntRFtuN7DPJHPt/s1964/IMG_3286.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1474" data-original-width="1964" height="457" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghh2PxqVkqY7smOROe9TU4gcwa-bNDaBZnjpVWVp_qlZ-BbUsfTeDTHLuZTL3n2NwNK5iDPp4E7xmSZ-ZQ103bdkO6fRBfQGdfVxE_FChknmxqwezLzg6ld_0sPssjQAntRFtuN7DPJHPt/w610-h457/IMG_3286.jpg" width="610" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span></div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-27998902941500173752020-09-29T08:27:00.002-07:002020-12-11T06:59:01.319-08:00Vincent J. Salandria<div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;"><i>Vincent J. Salandria died this past August at the age of ninety-two. It was my great privilege to befriend Vince after meeting him in Dallas in 1998</i></span><i style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">.</i><div style="font-family: georgia; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">
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<div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;"><i>To be blunt, I</i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px;"><i> did not want to be involved</i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px;"><i>. </i></span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px;"><i>This was in part because I don</i></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><i>’t</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px;"><i> do well on the air. But I felt I owed it to Vince, so I wrote up some remarks. When the host called to record our conversation I said I would simply read what I had written: </i></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><i>“I</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px;"><i>t lasts about four minutes.</i></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><i>”</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px;"><i> After a long pause the host replied, </i></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><i>“</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px;"><i>The last guy talked for over an hour.</i></span><span style="font-family: georgia;"><span style="font-size: 14px;"><i>”</i></span></span><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px;"><i> Clearly he expected more. Regardless, I read the text </i></span><i style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px;">reproduced below </i><i style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px;">(trying to sound spontaneous)</i><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px;"><i>, suffered through a Q&A that extended my participation by another ten or fifteen minutes, then wrapped it up</i></span><i style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px;">.</i></div><div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><div style="font-family: georgia; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div>
<div style="font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-family: "georgia"; font-size: 14px; font-weight: normal;"><i>The host did not ask about my book (the subject of this blog). No great loss – but I would like to say here that, for better or worse, it would not have been written without Vince Salandria. As described below, he gave me several boxes of his assassination-related correspondence that formed the initial raw material that got me started, and in time evolved into the book</i></span><i style="font-family: georgia; font-size: 14px; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal;">.</i><div style="font-family: georgia; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; font-weight: normal; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: x-large;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX_1itJyiJ0DpAByh_N8U4fVNSX8FWKryGZq-zK6w6XbmP5WlrKceWVosu_H6iMW7L2tRvKOk-KleDBIy-8zvjtpq8HVEb79Pz7JLmOsjIm8ZjB2CsRirYuVFpBkGvGgvNau9qKsc4RTSp/s845/vs_epoca.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="845" data-original-width="675" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX_1itJyiJ0DpAByh_N8U4fVNSX8FWKryGZq-zK6w6XbmP5WlrKceWVosu_H6iMW7L2tRvKOk-KleDBIy-8zvjtpq8HVEb79Pz7JLmOsjIm8ZjB2CsRirYuVFpBkGvGgvNau9qKsc4RTSp/s320/vs_epoca.jpg" /></a></div>V</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">incent J. Salandria was one of just a handful of people who began to independently investigate the JFK assassination immediately after it happened. With his brother-in-law Harold Feldman he traveled to Dallas in the summer of 1964, where he talked to Marguerite Oswald and interviewed key witnesses like Helen Markham. That same year he wrote one of the earliest articles demonstrating what we might charitably refer to as flaws in the Warren Commission version of events.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">Before I continue, Len, I have to say that I suspect Vince would not approve of any tributes to his work, like what we’re doing now. He was known for his humility, and not all that interested in getting credit for any of his research. To him it was much more important to find the truth, and put that truth before the public. Sylvia Meagher once said that while other early critics might bicker over credit for one discovery or another, Vince never concerned himself with any of that. Some of his friends even teased him about his humility, calling him “St. Vincent.” But he knew what he was about. As Christopher Sharrett once observed, Salandria </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">“</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">always knew he packed the gear.</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">”</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">His contribution to our common cause is undeniable and immeasurable. He and Harold Feldman saw, virtually from Day One, what had really happened. Even at that early stage they both viewed it as a high-level killing, and felt the only the real question was the scope of the conspiracy.</span></div><div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>In the 1970s Vince told Gaeton Fonzi that, and I quote, “the tyranny of power is here. Current events tell us that those who killed Kennedy can only perpetuate their power by promoting social upheaval both at home and abroad. And that will lead not to revolution but to repression...” end quote. He said that nearly fifty years ago, but we need look no further than <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2020/7/13/21322010/washington-dc-protests-june-1-trump-lafayette-square" target="_blank">Lafayette Square</a> in Washington, DC this past June to see that Vince Salandria</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">s insight remains valid, and that there is a direct line from November 1963 to today.</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRnzhHX_xauJtkTgO4VNH9sTXzfPveeDCj9vkH2Q2LE_RjlSV_gmaTFshQAFNtz2zOe_RIXv-peoQM5JHseDqnnmXarBXI39zhDb66HSjULUkaPvUubbcMwWsA2mDSHVF4iZ5i4XzfzLC9/s2048/vince_1998_detail_2.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1643" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRnzhHX_xauJtkTgO4VNH9sTXzfPveeDCj9vkH2Q2LE_RjlSV_gmaTFshQAFNtz2zOe_RIXv-peoQM5JHseDqnnmXarBXI39zhDb66HSjULUkaPvUubbcMwWsA2mDSHVF4iZ5i4XzfzLC9/s320/vince_1998_detail_2.jpg" /></a></div>I met Vince at the 1998 COPA conference in Dallas. About a year later he asked me whether I’d be interested in taking possession of his assassination-related correspondence, much of it dating back to the 1960s.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">When I hesitated, he added, “My wife will just burn it all as soon as I’m dead.”</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">I think he was only joking, but that ended up tipping the scales. I said yes, and wound up with what I still consider raw material of great historic significance.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">I only met Vince in person that one time, but over the next dozen or more years we had countless telephone conversations and emails. He consistently impressed me – not just with his insight, but with his encouragement and generosity.</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">In 2013, just before the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, I asked him for his thoughts on the occasion. I’ll conclude my remarks to you by quoting his reply:</span></div><br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><span style="font-size: 16px;">“The debate over the killing of President John F. Kennedy interminably rambles on. It dumps mountains of trash on the public in an effort to bury the self-evident truth of the JFK assassination coup and its cover-up. In the debate, the national security state and its puppets (the military industrial complex and the nation’s press), desperately seek to substitute for the plain historical truth of their guilt, a seemingly impenetrable mystery which is no mystery at all.”</span></div><br />
</div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-65774449395839679152018-10-03T13:42:00.000-07:002018-11-21T11:10:03.771-08:00Ill Will: The Sixth Floor Museum<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
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got a flier in the mail from The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas the other day, alerting me to an event scheduled for the end of this month. </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">The event is called </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">“</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">Conflicting Conclusions,</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">” </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">and the museum web site has more info. I</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">m not going to link to it.</span></div><br />
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<span style="font-size: 16px;">That flier bills the event as “a riveting conversation between two key figures from” the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassination, the two main government-led probes into the assassination of JFK, which reached the titular, opposing conclusions.
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It</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">s a crock of shit, of course.</span></div>
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I bear no ill will toward the Sixth Floor Museum. Or I bear a <i>lot </i>of ill will. </span><span style="font-size: 16px;">I can<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12.0pt;">’</span>t seem to remember which</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">. </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16px;">Oh yeah – it</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">s ill will, mostly; great gobs of it. <i>Heaps </i>of scorn. Total distrust.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16px;">Am I an ingrate? It is true I was once an invited speaker there, after the book that is the subject of this blog appeared. There I am, at left, in all my understated glory, blathering away.</span></div>
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But it is also true that the conspiracy that killed JFK succeeded, to the extent that it did, due to the promotion of confusion and mystery – aided and abetted by media sluts, and by institutions like The Sixth Floor Museum.</span></div>
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Shortly before the above photo was taken, some museum people sat me down with a big stack of my books and had me sign them all. <i>You can</i></span><i><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">t return them once I ink </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">’</span></i><span style="font-size: 16px;"><i>em up, </i>I cautioned. <i>No probleemo,</i> someone replied. <i>Sign.</i></span></div>
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So I did. Supposedly <i>Praise From a Future Generation</i> is, or was, the sole pro-conspiracy (pardon the phrase) title in the museum bookstore. This little factoid, I think, made some people a little suspicious of me. Fuck </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">em. I don</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">t know whether the museum still carries the book; probably not.</span></div>
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(Since I have never written it elsewhere, I</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">ll take a moment to note that among my Sixth Floor listeners was none other than Bob Jackson, who took the famous photo of Oswald being gutshot. Don</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">t know why he was there; he seemed totally underwhelmed.)</span></div>
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In any case, the Sixth Floor continues to promote confusion and mystery, and The Big Lie. I will never forget or overlook that simple fact.</span></div>
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The late Gary Mack, erstwhile Sixth Floor Museum curator, once scolded me via email for a rather bland commentary I wrote about the museum, and posted to the Internet. I made that post in the late 1990s, about five years after writing it. The comments were copied out of an otherwise forgettable essay I wrote about visiting Dallas for the first time in 1993. </span></div>
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And now, reminded of it all these years later, I will share here the remarks that irked Gary Mack. What the hell!</span></div>
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From </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">“</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">Impressions: The Sixth Floor Museum, circa 1993</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">”</span></i></div>
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For someone who has no doubt there was a conspiracy to murder JFK, there is a lot to dislike about The Sixth Floor museum, where I went the day after the bus tour.
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For starters, there is the fact that such a place is housed in the Book Depository, the cradle of the great lie. There is also the fact it is listed in the Dallas section of the AAA Tour Book for Texas, under the heading </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">What To See.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">”</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> This gives The Sixth Floor the stamp of officialdom; the tour book states casually that it is </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">the site from which the shots that killed President Kennedy ... were fired.</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">”</span></div>
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The once-cavernous sixth floor is now partitioned, and crammed with exhibits recreating the Kennedy Administration years, as well as the assassination. Like rats in a maze, visitors move from exhibit to exhibit, getting the official story. Many carry Walkman-style tape players, rented for an extra two bucks, which provide a canned narration of events.</span></div>
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It is difficult to view The Sixth Floor as anything other than a monument to the Warren Commission. The few references that are made to the idea of conspiracy – and admittedly, there are several – amount to little more than lip service to the notion; the scales remain heavily weighted against Lee Harvey Oswald.</span></div>
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There are no museum officials on hand to answer questions at The Sixth Floor. Visitors are not allowed to take photographs. Virtually nothing remains as it was on November 22 1963; even the so-called </span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">“</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">sniper</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">s nest</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 12pt;">”</span><span style="font-size: 16px;"> in the building</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman" , serif; font-size: 16px;">’</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">s southeast corner window has been reconstructed.</span></div>
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Security is strangely tight at this museum, like security at an airport. All bags are either checked at the door or run through an X-ray machine. Visitors must step through a metal detector before entering. It is the sort of security one would associate with a live president – not a museum for a dead one.</span></div>
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Photos by Marshall Kelin</i></span></div>
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<br />John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-369948043325827452013-12-08T06:15:00.005-08:002023-11-21T13:42:50.772-08:00The Debate Club<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 14px;">The following is the text of an op-ed I wrote for the "Debate Club," a feature of the <i>US News and World Report</i> web site. The occasion was the fiftieth anniversary of the JFK assassination. The magazine asked me and four others to comment on the question, "Was JFK's Assassination a Conspiracy?"</span><br /><span style="font-size: 14px;"><br /></span>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i>Was JFK's Assassination a Conspiracy?</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: x-large;">O</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">nly someone unfamiliar with the evidence would sincerely ask, “Was there a conspiracy to assassinate JFK?” It is easily demonstrable – no thanks to the media.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 16px;">F</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">or all its virtues, the American media has been regrettably complacent, even hostile, in its treatment of both the assassination and independent research into that crime. And so the issue has a serious public relations problem; when researchers are acknowledged today it is usually derisive. “These people </span><i style="font-size: 16px;">should</i><span style="font-size: 16px;"> be ridiculed, even shunned,” the</span><i style="font-size: 16px;"> New York Times Book Review</i><span style="font-size: 16px;"> sneered in 2007. “It’s time we marginalized Kennedy conspiracy theorists the way we’ve marginalized smokers.”</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 16px;">I beg to differ. Independent analysis of the official evidence by “these people” has clearly demonstrated the fact of conspiracy.</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 16px;">The present discussion sets aside the question of culpability; it is restricted to the evidence of Dealey Plaza, where the assassination took place. What that evidence shows is incontestable. As Vincent Salandria observed, “Dealey Plaza <i>reeked </i>of conspiracy.”</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 16px;">In its Report, the Warren Commission placed a gunman on the sixth floor of a building along JFK’s motorcade route through Dallas. Such a gunman would have been behind the presidential limousine when the shots were fired. Yet of the 121 Dealey Plaza witnesses whose statements appear in the Commission’s published evidence, fifty-one, by one count, said gunshots came from the right front – that is, from the infamous grassy knoll. Only 32 thought shots came from the building, while 38 had no opinion.</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 16px;">Former Kennedy aide Kenneth O’Donnell, who rode in the ill-fated Dallas motorcade, said he heard two shots from the grassy knoll. He did not tell that to the Warren Commission, but later conceded, “I testified the way they wanted me to.”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 16px;">The 8mm Zapruder film of the assassination unambiguously shows JFK’s head and upper body slammed back and to the left. Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Thus the bullet that destroyed JFK was fired from the right front – from the grassy knoll – far from the alleged location of the alleged assassin.</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 16px;">There is much more than this, of course: Dealey Plaza witnesses who saw unidentified armed men in the vicinity. Witnesses whose observations suggest a radio-coordinated hit team. Three Dallas cops who encountered fake Secret Service agents, and one who testified to meeting a hysterical woman screaming, “They’re shooting the president from the bushes!”</span></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 16px;">It all demonstrates conspiracy – the how of it. The question of culpability, the who and the why, remains; it is all that really matters. It is where the conversation begins. We should expect, even demand, that our media lead the way.</span></div>
<br />
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 16px;">Conspiracy in JFK’s death is a fact. To debate the issue perpetuates the erroneous notion that there is something to debate.</span></div>
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<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: 16px;">Even after half a century the assassination is not irrelevant. Nor is it too late to act. An early critic named Maggie Field once said that finding the truth about the murder of JFK was of utmost importance. “Until we can get to the bottom of the Kennedy assassination, this country is going to remain a sick country,” she said. “No matter what we do. Because we cannot live with that crime. We just can’t.”</span></div>
<br />John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-54402946438081557862013-10-01T07:59:00.001-07:002013-10-01T07:59:43.789-07:00E-book: Praise from a Future Generation<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;">
<span style="font-size: x-large;">
A</span><span style="font-size: 16px;">s of today – October 1, 2013 – my book <i>Praise from a Future Generation</i> is <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Praise-Future-Generation-Assassination-Kennedy/dp/0916727327/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380638348&sr=1-1&keywords=praise+from+a+future+generation">available as an e-book</a>.</span>
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk-yipHiX2A0Jc_17K64MuqpBM-vFvmJUFyRIhzkYZhfqMUSb3_uolrWiw2-FPWUO4h28DDCYxIr-QhPqMYDPuU7iP8R9EW-8G6KdWfc1mdDErhUf4X4JRr2njXflWFlks5WawXqiFquM/s1600/cover_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk-yipHiX2A0Jc_17K64MuqpBM-vFvmJUFyRIhzkYZhfqMUSb3_uolrWiw2-FPWUO4h28DDCYxIr-QhPqMYDPuU7iP8R9EW-8G6KdWfc1mdDErhUf4X4JRr2njXflWFlks5WawXqiFquM/s400/cover_2.jpg" width="267" /></a></div>
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><i>Praise from a Future Generation </i>is a nonfiction account of the earliest critics of the Warren Commission and its report on the 1963 assassination of JFK.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 16px;">The book first appeared as a hardcover in 2007, published by Wings Press of San Antonio, Texas. It has not exactly been a best seller – but then, I never expected it to be.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 16px;">I must admit, this is a case of the shoe being on the other foot. On one of my other blogs I <a href="http://bluelung.blogspot.com/2011/04/farewell-to-printed-page.html">railed against e-books</a> as something just shy of a crime against humanity.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 16px;">Now, self-interest asserts itself.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 16px;">This e-book version of <i>Praise from a Future Generation </i>has been a long time coming. Wings first approached me about this more than two years ago and I dutifully began yakking about it here. Then one delay led to another. But...that's all water under the bridge now.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: 16px;">You can find both the hardcover and the e-version on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Praise-Future-Generation-Assassination-Kennedy/dp/0916727327/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1380638348&sr=1-1&keywords=praise+from+a+future+generation">Amazon</a>.</span></div>
John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-42077425442757775442013-05-03T08:41:00.001-07:002013-05-03T08:41:38.405-07:00Check this out<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: x-large;">H</span><span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">ere are links to a few things I've developed over the last year or so, relating to the JFK assassination.</span><br />
<blockquote>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">
<a href="http://home.comcast.net/~johnkelin/life/life.html">Life</a>'s three versions: This documents the defunct magazine's role in covering up the assassination.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">
<a href="http://home.comcast.net/~johnkelin/fifty/jump.html">Fifty</a>: This one gathers a handful of essays on the JFK assassination. I consider them worthy reading, as the fiftieth anniversary of that crime draws ever closer.</div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">
<a href="http://home.comcast.net/~johnkelin/JFK/first.html">Dallas photos</a>: Presented mostly for entertainment purposes. Maybe human interest is a better phrase for it. Anyway, it's a bunch of pictures, most of them by me, of the Dealey Plaza/Dallas area. There are a few curiosities included.</div>
</blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Let me know what you think!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Also, <a href="http://home.comcast.net/~johnkelin/praise.html">check out my book</a>! And I don't mean from the library.</span>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-28616136820319658112011-08-30T06:57:00.000-07:002011-09-02T06:35:45.885-07:00Deleted Scenes<div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 32px/normal Georgia;"><i>P</i></span><i>raise from a Future Generation,</i> my 2007 book about the first generation critics of the Warren Report, is due as an e-book this fall. I’ve spent part of this summer making a series of mostly tiny corrections to it.</div><br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Since its publication, I've only looked at portions of the book. But now, as I slog through it cover-to-cover, I have chanced upon a deletion I was not previously aware of.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFH0AJd3BOVChNLbi-ipoe7G3mGDRFsr3a3-XsrhFQY_F8G1ZpiNbSNvq0iX4poHCx0AvapYER1QUP4Rd0-3MdInT_IGtQsCnLJ65TPk1OWmmmRXt8SOnzGX0odQ_aksP4qBgYZXvzusec/s1600/cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFH0AJd3BOVChNLbi-ipoe7G3mGDRFsr3a3-XsrhFQY_F8G1ZpiNbSNvq0iX4poHCx0AvapYER1QUP4Rd0-3MdInT_IGtQsCnLJ65TPk1OWmmmRXt8SOnzGX0odQ_aksP4qBgYZXvzusec/s320/cover.jpg" width="221" /></a></div>It is, admittedly, a rather inconsequential deletion. It was made in Chapter 20, “The Meeting.” The original manuscript has a paragraph or so describing how an early critic named Lillian Castellano telephoned Sylvia Meagher on October 3, 1965, just as a meeting of some East Coast critics got underway in Sylvia’s apartment. “It was quite a coincidence you should have called,” Sylvia said in a letter to Lillian a few days later.</div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">That paragraph is not in the book. When I read the published version recently I didn't even notice right away; I only noticed when spot-checking the end notes. The citation for the Meagher quote above is still there!</div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Why the publisher chose to make the deletion in the first place is a mystery. I see no good reason for the cut. What it saves in word-count is negligible. Naturally, this discovery has me wondering what else might have been deleted that I never noticed.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">If you read my book, you're already in a tiny minority. If you read my book and this blog, you're in an even tinier minority! I don't plan to lobby for any restorations in the e-book. But I would like to at least make a record of the deletion, even if only a handful of people see it.</div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The deleted material should have been on page 254. (The undeleted citation, erroneously entered as note 27, is on page 526.) Here's a .jpg file of the manuscript:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWW4hgntcbq6w72o8x-8gBKwkNXuf0YLnOVVKJDd4Zdn-tsScoWLWt4wmMcWMJhlZ7FUCm93mS86bHL1Cin5l8KoGnV0ZhHhmjNCCSjbbeVqiE9C4TVzsDV3kEgn3LT91UfVK2rOno9ZSy/s1600/deletion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="553" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWW4hgntcbq6w72o8x-8gBKwkNXuf0YLnOVVKJDd4Zdn-tsScoWLWt4wmMcWMJhlZ7FUCm93mS86bHL1Cin5l8KoGnV0ZhHhmjNCCSjbbeVqiE9C4TVzsDV3kEgn3LT91UfVK2rOno9ZSy/s640/deletion.jpg" width="640" /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; color: black;"></span></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh71BEcQeV0KGUHV496rAGMDPYR2JKwZy3ZpmzMQc24MivUGz00gb0z0aTZJ3bmfLfbeqW1bL3uAImgkusQ6P_Li_a97HsqbTL5NByd3lNrlG17odEMgri8WJzYBmt7x8_xjgcMLpu-s0pu/s1600/scissors.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh71BEcQeV0KGUHV496rAGMDPYR2JKwZy3ZpmzMQc24MivUGz00gb0z0aTZJ3bmfLfbeqW1bL3uAImgkusQ6P_Li_a97HsqbTL5NByd3lNrlG17odEMgri8WJzYBmt7x8_xjgcMLpu-s0pu/s1600/scissors.jpg" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWW4hgntcbq6w72o8x-8gBKwkNXuf0YLnOVVKJDd4Zdn-tsScoWLWt4wmMcWMJhlZ7FUCm93mS86bHL1Cin5l8KoGnV0ZhHhmjNCCSjbbeVqiE9C4TVzsDV3kEgn3LT91UfVK2rOno9ZSy/s1600/deletion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWW4hgntcbq6w72o8x-8gBKwkNXuf0YLnOVVKJDd4Zdn-tsScoWLWt4wmMcWMJhlZ7FUCm93mS86bHL1Cin5l8KoGnV0ZhHhmjNCCSjbbeVqiE9C4TVzsDV3kEgn3LT91UfVK2rOno9ZSy/s1600/deletion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; color: black;"></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWW4hgntcbq6w72o8x-8gBKwkNXuf0YLnOVVKJDd4Zdn-tsScoWLWt4wmMcWMJhlZ7FUCm93mS86bHL1Cin5l8KoGnV0ZhHhmjNCCSjbbeVqiE9C4TVzsDV3kEgn3LT91UfVK2rOno9ZSy/s1600/deletion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br />
</a></div></div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-75180003577720980112011-07-26T08:44:00.000-07:002011-07-26T08:44:32.302-07:00Kennedy Assassination Jokes: A Supplement<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">L</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">ast April I made a post here called </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;"><a href="http://bluelung.blogspot.com/2011/04/kennedy-assassination-jokes.html">Kennedy Assassination Jokes</a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">, a whimsical item recounting the lighter side of assassination criticism.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">It just occurred to me that I left out one of my favorite examples.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGaUpmGBB_Qn0X3UKr9yryhFlX_V3jbfepCjQL7oolc3a0hLc46IRbqzeLoG6I_CNN2qDeO1lrlVBbJasiz0EYeoWUzkgv_niDjc6B8oACCmTquePoFFXlyUx2ko7OJlPEGjqZcC4IrIuc/s1600/two_assassins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGaUpmGBB_Qn0X3UKr9yryhFlX_V3jbfepCjQL7oolc3a0hLc46IRbqzeLoG6I_CNN2qDeO1lrlVBbJasiz0EYeoWUzkgv_niDjc6B8oACCmTquePoFFXlyUx2ko7OJlPEGjqZcC4IrIuc/s320/two_assassins.jpg" width="225" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Renatus Hartogs was a New York shrink who examined Lee Harvey Oswald when Oswald was a truant teenager in the 1950s. Though a decade had since elapsed, this was good enough for the Warren Commission to call him as an expert witness. Hartogs dutifully told the Commission that the teenage Oswald was "dangerous," even though his contemporaneous report did not say that.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Cashing in on his Commission appearance, Hartogs co-authored a book about Oswald called<i> The Two Assassins.</i> In it Hartogs said, among other things, that the letters in Oswald's pseudonym, Alek J. Hidell, could <i>almost</i> be re-arranged to form "Jekyll-Hyde." (The pseudonym lacked two instances of the letter <i>y</i>.)</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Sylvia Meagher called <i>The Two Assassins </i>"a contemptible piece of garbage." In a published review, she noted that the letters in the name "Renatus Hartogs" could themselves be re-arranged to these phrases: "Trash outrages," and "Strange Authors."</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Meagher dreamed up a third anagram, but her editor insisted it be cut: "Thor's Great Anus."</span></div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-56298385909589120562011-06-23T09:24:00.000-07:002011-06-23T09:24:40.178-07:00Haiku<div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 19px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br />
</span></i></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">I want to tell the</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Truth, and I can't tell it here.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">I can't tell it here.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><i>– Jack Ruby (to Earl Warren)</i></div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
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</div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-6431157619430409942011-06-19T10:25:00.000-07:002011-06-19T10:25:04.550-07:00Forthcoming e-book: a little more<div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>he approximate target date for the e-book version of <i>Praise from a Future Generation</i> is this fall.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">That's it, so far. Just, "this fall."</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">The plan is for me to read through the existing book and mark it up with any corrections I might want to make, more than three years after its original publication. I've already begun this and expect to finish no later than the end of summer.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">For the most part, I'm making little changes most wouldn't even notice. A dash becomes a semi-colon, for example.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">But I'm also adding some new material. Not a lot – but stuff that probably should have been there all along. For example, there was, at the invitation of the House Select Committee, a meeting of seven or eight WC critics in 1977. This included four of the people I wrote about in <i>Praise.</i></div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">I've got a long HSCA document pertaining to this meeting. "For the most part," a staffer summarized, "it was agreed by the researchers that our number one priority must be to focus on the Warren Commission."</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">I'm also replacing some stuff about Mary Ferrell with some better stuff about Mary Ferrell. I interviewed her a few years before her death and she described to me how she learned of the assassination. But I subsequently found a better description in a letter Mrs. Ferrell wrote to Sylvia Meagher, and I shall use that description for the e-book.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">There's other little stuff. Just enough, I suppose, for me to call the e-book a "revised second edition" with a clean conscience.</div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-80870194127470171412011-06-07T09:59:00.000-07:002014-02-04T11:21:07.207-08:00Mary Ann Moorman<div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">M</span>ary Ann Moorman, an eyewitness to the assassination of President Kennedy who took a famous picture of that killing, appeared recently at an antiques mall about half an hour from where I live.</div>
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As I understand it, her May 24th appearance had something to do with selling the original of her famous picture (left). She agreed to participate in a live webcast interview. This was considered a pretty big deal, because she never testified to the Warren Commission way back when, and has granted very few interviews in the years since. Mrs. Moorman was among those closest to the presidential limousine when the assassination occurred.</div>
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Naturally I had to be there. I phoned the antiques mall and reserved myself a place in the audience.</div>
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Now, a few weeks later, I still haven't satisfied myself on the question, <i>why?</i> Why would she travel all the way to Colorado – she still lives in the Dallas area – to be interviewed in, as it turned out, a nondescript building along a cheerless frontage road running parallel to a freeway on the outskirts of Denver?</div>
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And yet she did. The interview lasted about an hour, and took place on a cramped set adjacent to a refreshment area. One of the most interesting things to come out of it was her statement that when she took the picture, she was standing in the grass behind the curb in Dealey Plaza, not in the street, as some believe she did.</div>
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This is an important question to some, who have detected the notorious "Badgeman" image in the murky background shadows of her picture. Verifying where she stood when she took it is critical to establishing its legitimacy.</div>
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Her position on the grass has been confirmed by a photo analyst who used a technique called Reverse Projection Photogrammetry to recreate her picture and substantiate where she stood.</div>
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<i>I made extensive notes of this interview. They're somewhat lengthy, but I reproduce them here:</i></div>
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Mary Ann Moorman, the amateur photographer who took one of the most famous pictures of the assassination of JFK, appeared at an antique mall in Wheat Ridge, Colorado, just west of Denver, on the evening of May 24, 2011.</div>
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Her appearance was for an Internet-based video program hosted by Gary Stover, an antiques enthusiast. Stover hosts a weekly webcast on iantiques.com, which is described as a social networking site for dealers, collectors, and antique enthusiasts.</div>
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I first heard about this event in early May. I only live about half an hour away, so I telephoned the antique mall, the Brass Armadillo, to arrange to be there for Moorman’s show. After I asked some very specific questions, they said they’d have Stover give me a call.</div>
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Something about this event seemed odd to me. Mary Ann Moorman lived in Dallas at the time of the assassination. That’s a long time ago – she could have relocated to the Denver area. I asked Stover when he called back, and he said no, she still lived in Texas.</div>
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(As I understand it, a dealer associated with iantique.com met Mary Moorman by chance five or six months ago in Texas. She is interested in selling the original Polaroid print of her famous photo, which she still has all these years later. And so they made arrangements to get her up to Colorado for an Internet interview. Last night’s interview dealt almost exclusively with Moorman’s experiences in November 1963, so the linkage between that and the sale of this historic photo is a little unclear to me. I’m sure there is some behind-the-scenes stuff I’m not privy to.)</div>
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Whatever the case, I showed up last night around 5:45. The Brass Armadillo Antiques Mall is located in a rundown area on a street that is parallel to Interstate 70. This cheerless setting seemed all the gloomier because of a steady rain that fell most of the day.</div>
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I found my way to the area where the interview would take place. The Brass Armadillo is a big building, raw and mostly unfinished, partitioned into sections where individual antique dealers sell their stuff and cut their deals.</div>
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The interview took place in a refreshment area, where during regular business hours stuff like soda and hot dogs are sold. There were a few tables and chairs but not many. An unlikely place for a live show, but probably the best spot available.</div>
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So I headed toward this refreshment area. Even as I noted the cramped setting, and the TV lights and cameras, I saw a woman seated at a small round table scribbling away. On closer inspection I saw she had a stack of 5x7 prints of the Moorman photograph, and that she was signing each one. And she turned out to be Mary Moorman.</div>
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I introduced myself and she smiled pleasantly. We shook hands. But I could see I was interrupting and did not want to be a nuisance. Quickly I learned these signed prints were being sold for two dollars.</div>
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I thought: is Mary Moorman reduced to this? Selling prints of her famous photo for two bucks apiece? I don’t think so; each print had a Brass Armadillo sticker on back, so it was probably some special arrangement she had agreed to. Anyway, I bought one.</div>
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I left her then, and found a place to situate myself. <i>The Stover Hour</i> has been webcasting JFK-themed shows for the entire month of May, and the Moorman appearance was the highlight.</div>
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There weren’t many places to sit and I wound up standing for the whole thing. I did find a ledge to put my stuff down, and also lean against as I scribbled copious notes.</div>
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Gary Stover’s interest in the JFK case is genuine, and he seems to have a good grasp of what can be a very complex set of issues. As the program began, he had a Polaroid camera that was the same model as the one Mary Moorman used. It isn’t clear to me what happened to hers. It may be at the Sixth Floor Museum, or it may have just got lost over the years – I’m not sure.</div>
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They talked a lot about the camera and her familiarity with it. “We were not a photographic-type family,” Moorman said. “We just snapped pictures.” Stover asked a series of somewhat technical questions I didn’t really care about. He used the phrase “retro-fit light kit” several times, and asked whether the frames on Polaroid film were numbered. Moorman wasn’t sure.</div>
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Next they talked about the familiar story of how Moorman and Jean Hill arrived at Dealey Plaza together. (This story is told in detail in Richard Trask’s <i>Pictures of the Pain,</i> and I won’t belabor it here.) It was drizzly when they first arrived, but Jean Hill of course wore a bright red raincoat mainly to attract the attention of a Dallas Police Officer she was dating.</div>
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Mary Moorman said she knew a number of Dallas cops from her high school days, including Officer Glen McBride. McBride rode one of the lead motorcycles that day, a few blocks ahead of the Presidential party, and Moorman took his picture. Stover asked where she was standing when she took the McBride picture. She replied that she stepped into the street for this photograph.</div>
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She said she also stepped into the street to take a picture of George Lumpkin, another cop friend who rode a motorcycle about half a block in front of the motorcade’s lead car.</div>
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Finally the presidential limousine turned from Houston onto Elm. As it neared the two women, Jean Hill called out, “Hey Mr. President!” or something like that. Mary Moorman raised her camera; as she took the picture she heard what she called “a sound,” followed by two more in quick succession. Firecrackers, she thought.</div>
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Stover pointed out that by the time Moorman took her famous picture, two shots had already been fired, according to the Warren Report: one that missed, and another, the second, that wounded JFK. Yet Moorman said the shot as she took the picture was the first she heard. So here is evidence of five shots. (Jean Hill, in her WC testimony, said she heard four to six shots.)</div>
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Why did Moorman and Hill pick that particular location? Stover asked. “I think God has a plan for everyone. We wandered all over green grassy spots. Why we chose that one, I don’t know... It was providence I took that picture.”</div>
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He asked whether she stepped into the street to take that picture, as she had to take the pictures of the two cops. “I’m pretty sure I stepped back just on the very edge of the curb to get on the grass,” she replied.</div>
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(I found this rather ambiguous. Did she step back <i>after</i> taking the photo? Or did she take it from the curb? After the <i>Stover Hour</i> ended I had a chance to put this question to her again, and she told me then that she took the picture from the curb. She noted that between the limo and the motorcycle cops there wasn’t a lot of room in the street; it wasn’t safe.)</div>
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Stover asked her whether she noticed the limousine slowing down. Yes, she said; it slowed almost to a stop. She clearly heard Jackie Kennedy’s cry, “My God, he’s been shot!” She had no sense of where the shots originated from. Neither, she said in response to another question, did she see evidence of shots having hit the sidewalk or turf; nor was she hit by any debris.</div>
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When the shooting stopped, she said, there was a brief stillness. This is when Jean Hill testified she saw a man resembling Jack Ruby run from the TSBD area toward the railroad bridge area. Mary Moorman did not see this man.</div>
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People began running up the grassy knoll area, Moorman said, and Jean Hill took off across the street in this direction. Hill had the Polaroid fixative, which she called a gel, and so it was not applied to the photo right away. (I don’t know how soon it needed to be applied. When I was a kid my parents had a Polaroid camera and I recall they usually put this goo on it right away, rolled from a plastic cylinder over the photograph.)</div>
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While Jean Hill was gone – and she was only gone a few minutes, Moorman said – Moorman was approached by a man she later learned was Jim Featherstone of the <i>Dallas Times-Herald. </i></div>
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“Someone told me you took a picture,” he said to her.</div>
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“Yes, I did.” Moorman was crying at this point. She showed him the picture and he said, “Come with me. We’ll go to the press room.” He wanted Moorman and Hill, who soon returned, to go with him to the press room in the Criminal Courts Building, conveniently located on Houston Street there in Dealey Plaza.</div>
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Jean Hill, in her WC testimony, portrayed Featherstone as almost sinister in insisting they accompany him to the CCB, where both women ended up spending most of the afternoon. Moorman does not recall it that way. And this wound up being one of the themes that Stover followed for the rest of his show: the differences in the recollections of Moorman and Hill.</div>
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This, I have to say, bothered me. I understand that many consider Jean Hill a problematic witness. I have not read <i>The Last Dissenting Witness</i> and don’t have a firm opinion on her one way or the other. But Stover seemed like he wanted to use Moorman in order to discredit Jean Hill – and that didn’t sit well with me. Jean Hill, for better or worse, gave sworn testimony while Moorman never did, apart from a Sheriff’s statement given on 11-22. And Jean Hill is dead and thus not able to defend herself. Much of this boils down to one person’s word against another’s.</div>
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Stover asked a lot of questions about what Moorman might have seen. Yes, she and Hill both saw that Honest Joe’s Pawn Shop truck. (He kept calling it <i>Uncle</i> Joe’s...my recollection is <i>Honest</i> Joe’s.) No, Moorman said, she did not see a Nash Rambler, let alone a Rambler that might have picked up LHO or a lookalike. (I don’t know how the Rambler fits into John Armstrong’s work.) No, she didn’t see an epileptic guy shortly before the motorcade arrived in Dealey. She didn’t see the Babushka lady.</div>
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Moorman completed her story of the afternoon of November 22. Sheriff Decker made an appearance in the press room, learned that Featherstone had taken Moorman’s photo (which wound up on the newswires), and demanded he retrieve it. She got it back in minutes. Moorman and Hill both made several phone calls, and at one point Moorman ran outside to get a newspaper. A cop stopped her on her way and said, “You can’t leave yet!” but she knew this cop, too – Wiseman – he let her continue to a newspaper box, buy an Extra edition of the paper, then come back to the press room. Not long after that she and Hill both gave their depositions.</div>
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Not long after the assassination Shirley Martin, an early critic of the Warren Commission, reported telephoning Jean Hill:</div>
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Before the interview I forwarded a PDF of this to Stover, and he asked Moorman about it. “I was never afraid,” she said. Any threatening calls? “No, absolutely not.” Stover seemed a little smug about this, like he’d just punctured another of Jean Hill’s stories.</div>
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Anyway it wasn’t long after giving the depositions that Moorman and Hill were finally allowed to go home.</div>
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Why, Stover asked, did you not testify before the Warren Commission? She had scheduled a time to testify, she replied. But before it happened she hurt her ankle when she jumped off the back deck of her house. The ankle wasn’t broken, just twisted, perhaps sprained – it was painful to get around. She contacted a WC representative, said she couldn’t make the scheduled time, and never heard from them again.</div>
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I had also emailed Stover a question about whether Moorman ever had any lingering effects from witnessing the assassination – any sleeplessness or nightmares, any flashbacks, whatever. No, she said, she had not. “God took care of me.”</div>
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On the night of 11-22-63, sometime after midnight – around 12:30, she said – the doorbell rang at her home. Two FBI guys were there asking to see the photo. They showed their ID, which Moorman said she was able to verify. She turned over the picture, they wrote out a receipt – scrawled it out on a piece of scratch paper, was the impression I got – took the photo, and returned it a few days later.</div>
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After that, she said, the CIA took the photo and returned it, as did the Secret Service, and the FBI again. Each agency left a receipt, apparently scrawled out like that first FBI receipt – “It was nothing official.”</div>
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The second time the FBI returned it, Moorman said, the picture had its notorious thumbprint.</div>
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In answer to another question, she said that while UPI sent out the picture worldwide on the day of the assassination (with her permission), and gave her a photo credit, she never sold the rights to it.</div>
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She jumped forward a few years after this. She mentioned Gary Mack and Jack White becoming interested in the picture, studying its background, making blowups, and finding the so-called “badgeman” image. “That was interesting,” she observed.</div>
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In 1965, David Lifton first discovered other possible human-like figures in the picture’s background. [<a href="http://praisefrom.blogspot.com/2011/03/5-man.html">Here's more</a>.] He brought these to the attention of Ray Marcus, and the two of them identified five areas of interest by the late spring of that year. Mary Moorman did not mention these and it wasn’t clear to me whether she was aware of them (just as it has never been clear to me whether #2 man and Badgeman are one and the same).</div>
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Moorman said that the Sixth Floor Museum had the original print in a vault for about 15 years, “for safekeeping.” It is no longer with them; she has it stored in another vault somewhere. Its condition, she says, is “good,” although she concedes it has faded somewhat. “You can still see ... what’s there,” she said.<br />
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There is some dispute about this, but I'll address it in another post.</div>
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She said that yes, she is interested in selling the original photo, but she gave no indication how much she would like to get or thought it might be worth. Its historical value is certainly on her mind, though. “I would like for it to be put in a museum somewhere, for its historical [value]...it really is a part of history.”</div>
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In answer to a question, Mary Moorman said she has never profited from the assassination.<br />
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She did not see Oliver Stone’s<i> JFK. </i>She was asked to participate in it but declined. One reason, she said, is that Jean Hill was an advisor on the film and Moorman didn’t want any conflicts with her.</div>
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What are her thoughts on the assassination? “I don’t think it’s final...the government can hide a lot...I believe there is a whole lot more to the story than has been told.”</div>
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After the webcast ended, there was a reception. Most in the small audience (I’d estimate 25-30 people) hung around for it. I got a chance to speak with Mrs. Moorman again and ask a few questions, like clarifying (or attempting to clarify) where she was when she took her picture.</div>
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I also wanted to ask her about a snippet of Jean Hill’s testimony, about “We have three shots...” I actually read a quote I’d written into my notes. Jean Hill told the Warren Commission: “They keep saying three shots ... I said, ‘I know I heard more... He said, 'Mrs. Hill, we heard more shots too, but we have three wounds and we have three bullets, three shots is all that we are willing to say right now.”</div>
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Mrs. Moorman said she had no recollection of that.</div>
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John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-33157188940202911442011-05-28T18:48:00.000-07:002011-05-28T18:48:47.494-07:00E-book: Praise from a Future Generation<div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">S</span>ome very witty wag once defined a liberal as someone whose interests aren't at stake.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
</span></span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">This applies to more than just politics.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">On one of my other blogs, I <a href="http://bluelung.blogspot.com/2011/04/farewell-to-printed-page.html">railed against e-books and e-readers</a>. Now the shoe is on the other foot.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnvR5hgry4LNROa8Tr9Dzy6T-aOuhZHxgU09I9G5KZsFl5ITTGVhL2yrjurWv34hK227c3N-nP0wqJcPUfjnxcVOol7yGlnP963u5dGx8GCCS0BBvyxiMbnrUBJyJZMnzHFbtq_V5_VuU/s1600/cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnvR5hgry4LNROa8Tr9Dzy6T-aOuhZHxgU09I9G5KZsFl5ITTGVhL2yrjurWv34hK227c3N-nP0wqJcPUfjnxcVOol7yGlnP963u5dGx8GCCS0BBvyxiMbnrUBJyJZMnzHFbtq_V5_VuU/s400/cover.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="275" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">My publisher recently contacted me to see if I would like to prepare an e-book version of <i>Praise from a Future Generation,</i> my account of the "first generation" critics of the Warren Report. A conventional hardcover version appeared in October 2007.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I would very much indeed like to prepare an e-book version, I replied. And suddenly my interests are at stake.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I still don't care for Kindles, and all the other e-readers out there on the market. But I can't deny the realities of the marketplace. According to an item I saw in the paper recently, Amazon says they are now selling more e-books than printed books, including books for which there is no electronic edition.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">This development gives me an opportunity. There are some little grammatical errors throughout the print version of the book, and in the months ahead I'll be ferreting out and correcting as many as I can. And I'll be adding some new material, too. Not a hell of a lot, but some stuff that should have been there all along, and maybe enough to justify calling the e-book a revised, second edition.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">There is no formal publication date yet. Probably sometime in the fall, I'm told.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">By the way...that witty wag who defined liberals also defined conservatives: in their case, as those with two perfectly good legs who refuse to walk forward.</div></div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-62130156701371351852011-04-14T07:52:00.000-07:002011-04-14T07:53:37.409-07:00Kennedy Assassination Jokes<div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>here aren’t many laughs associated with the Kennedy assassination. This is as it should be.</div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Of course, there are always those undeterred by matters of taste. Too, humor can be a defense mechanism. So naturally there is a lighter side to the issue.</div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4F3h0rrZuAdLdDu1-AVi6PLNlcBisO26HUh4Q43zyRJguIfszuSrzKlbDJ57hmF7krswGd4QHDN9XfYkUCRQH8XBx5zmRkDrLEXxMd4EUIbjfxDO-yTHoMGB42nZbv0ceOCiJ6x2nasm1/s1600/dental.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4F3h0rrZuAdLdDu1-AVi6PLNlcBisO26HUh4Q43zyRJguIfszuSrzKlbDJ57hmF7krswGd4QHDN9XfYkUCRQH8XBx5zmRkDrLEXxMd4EUIbjfxDO-yTHoMGB42nZbv0ceOCiJ6x2nasm1/s320/dental.jpg" width="237" /></a></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Mark Lane, for example, wondered why the Warren Commission's Hearings and Exhibits included the dental records of Jack Ruby's mother (Vol. XXII, p. 395, right). Those wouldn't be relevant, he quipped, even if Ruby had bitten Oswald to death.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In introductory material to her comparative study <i>Accessories After the Fact,</i> Sylvia Meagher related this: "It has been said jokingly that the Dallas police are not so bad – look how quickly they caught Jack Ruby."</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</span></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Salandria told Specter that the Commission had a duty to demonstrate the shooting performance it attributed to Oswald could be duplicated.</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div></div><div style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">"He asked whether I would have them kill a man," Salandria recalled. "The joke fell upon ears which detect no humor in murder.</span>"</div></div></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Georgia; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Now, with the passage so much time, we can get away with more than we could in 1964. Which brings me to Bill Hicks.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Bill Hicks was an 1980s and 90s-era comedian known for a popular stand-up act. He made numerous appearances on late night talk shows and seemed poised to break out to greater things when cancer killed him in 1995.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Hicks had an interest in the JFK case and expressed it sometimes during his act. (In the video below, he obviously references the Sixth Floor Museum, though calls it something else.)</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
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</div></div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-67698687011106219682011-03-24T10:27:00.000-07:002014-02-04T12:53:10.803-08:00#5 Man<div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">A</span>s this is written, the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination is less than three years away. It is safe to assume a great deal of media attention will be given to this event.</div>
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Most of it, it is equally safe to assume, will be given over to propping up the lone gunman scenario. I anticipate the weaknesses in this scenario being glossed over, and the correct (i.e. conspiracy) point of view ridiculed and dismissed, even though the lone nut nonsense has been discredited many times over.</div>
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When it comes to the JFK case, the major corporate criminals of the last not-quite-half-century include Time-Life and CBS. These entities, who in theory act in the public interest, have aided and abetted covering up the truth, and there has been nothing accidental about it.</div>
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In this post, I shall briefly present a case study: the deliberate suppression by CBS of a potentially important piece of evidence.</div>
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In 1967, Warren Commission critic Raymond Marcus was contacted by CBS and asked to lend his expertise to a new examination of the Warren Report. He initially agreed, but nearly pulled out after seeing an article in a Boston newspaper. That article began:</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8zDE0xMuy7kZnGsd6-Sm9vwBFsPIq8szoJUlNEkYQ7eRw4fxRKkXkP0idkVL1CfDvtNzzEl0FdrvDTfxTvdsN0pLlj1QOpFkAqo9B2UmSNCymF92NwxGAhIRcUYc9gVnrWSI1UKlsEYhb/s1600/article_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="142" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8zDE0xMuy7kZnGsd6-Sm9vwBFsPIq8szoJUlNEkYQ7eRw4fxRKkXkP0idkVL1CfDvtNzzEl0FdrvDTfxTvdsN0pLlj1QOpFkAqo9B2UmSNCymF92NwxGAhIRcUYc9gVnrWSI1UKlsEYhb/s400/article_1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
The documentary would not air "unless it sheds new light on the report, weakening the arguments of those who criticize it," the article went on, citing a CBS spokesman.</div>
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The program's bias was perfectly obvious, so when Marcus next spoke with CBS, he said he had changed his mind. But his CBS contact replied, "Some of us here are trying to do an honest job, and if those of you who have important information don't cooperate with us, you're just guaranteeing that the other side wins."</div>
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So Marcus stuck with it.</div>
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CBS had approached Marcus because of his areas of expertise, which included the Zapruder film, the so-called "magic bullet" (CE 399), and several pictures. These pictures included the Mary Moorman photograph of the assassination.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlRLD_r2tfD42azw6040jcho5tg5khPiF2VGuWX4eO5nqNqoKN5hrkw72vOfb4wAkXcQ-a-DL5gKrMErh2ffC6BNEFQSoX_WPu6xbaxnqUH1dQzMIkju-JJBHmOoMuTGvfLHJie0QRwJyG/s1600/no_5_display_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="465" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlRLD_r2tfD42azw6040jcho5tg5khPiF2VGuWX4eO5nqNqoKN5hrkw72vOfb4wAkXcQ-a-DL5gKrMErh2ffC6BNEFQSoX_WPu6xbaxnqUH1dQzMIkju-JJBHmOoMuTGvfLHJie0QRwJyG/s640/no_5_display_2.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
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<i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Note how the numeral 5 appears directly above cop's helmet (image courtesy Ray Marcus)</span></i></div>
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Marcus had been working on a detail of this photo since 1965, when David Lifton brought it to his attention. The two men identified five details they thought might reveal possible assassins (above). Both considered the fifth and final detail the most promising.<br />
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In time Lifton became more interested in the research that resulted in <i>Best Evidence,</i> but Marcus kept working on detail #5.</div>
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Marcus elicited expert opinions supporting his growing view that the #5 man detail really was one of JFK's assassins. Perhaps most compelling was the observation that "You don't need an expert to tell you that's a man."</div>
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The #5 man detail was among the materials Ray Marcus brought to the attention of CBS as it prepared its 1967 special.<br />
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Admittedly, the #5 man detail is murky; is not, as Mark Lane observed, "of the quality a portrait photographer might boast." So when<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> Marcus showed his Moorman work to the documentary's producer he included, for comparison purposes only, an unrelated news photograph of a man shooting civil rights activist James Meredith from ambush. The producer examined both photos, and at one point incorrectly referred to #5 man as "the man who shot Meredith."</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The reference was telling. He could not have made this erroneous identification if he did not first see a human figure in that #5 detail.</span></div>
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<i>CBS New Inquiry: The Warren Report</i> was broadcast in four parts in June 1967. Much of the third part was devoted to attacking New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, whose assassination investigation had been made public earlier that year.<br />
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Marcus had provided Garrison with the same Moorman photos he had provided CBS. Garrison told correspondent Mike Wallace that photographs existed showing the assassins.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/DeqlFY96Wpk?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></div>
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">Wallace incorrectly stated that this near full-frame Moorman photo was "a hazy blowup of an area from a larger picture." Needless to say, CBS had the resources to show much clearer images. The zoom did not even center above the motorcycle cop's helmet, where the #5 man detail is.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px;">But showing such details may not have weakened the arguments of those who criticized the Warren Report.</span><br />
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After the documentary had broadcast, its producer said, "Nothing would have pleased me more than to have found a second assassin. We looked for one and it isn't our fault that we didn't find one. But the evidence just isn't there."</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">This is, according to CBS, the man who wasn't there.</span></i></td></tr>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The newspaper excerpt is from </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Boston Herald-Traveler,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> reproduced in <i>#5 Man: November 22, 1963, </i>by Raymond Marcus.</span><br />
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John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-88546877073476096942011-03-17T10:39:00.000-07:002011-03-25T21:08:52.063-07:00Let Justice Be Done<div style="font: 16.0px Times; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 19.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 32px/normal Georgia;"><i>L</i></span><i>et Justice Be Done,</i> William Davy's groundbreaking study of the Jim Garrison investigation in the late 1960s, is now available in Kindle/e-book format.</span></div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 19.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">First published in 1999, <i>Let Justice Be Done</i> offered new documentation of a relationship between Clay Shaw, the target of Garrison's prosecution, and the Central Intelligence Agency.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 19.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">You don't need a Kindle to read the new version, Davy says. "Just download the Kindle reader app for free from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004PYDLYE"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">my Amazon site</span></a>."</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJcr_kJnKjKTKC3Y1VCnH7_sOa8WXbNp0BHPFAmQ0ObXeS0psu1muQyeBFqceLXSjmWKr0Dx-R4y5nHXOuIWhcUuZsuUK7wFRNGvnV8MfSg9AF5zACfqN8c969PIUhCM0Vjmt10fSOgvYW/s1600/cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJcr_kJnKjKTKC3Y1VCnH7_sOa8WXbNp0BHPFAmQ0ObXeS0psu1muQyeBFqceLXSjmWKr0Dx-R4y5nHXOuIWhcUuZsuUK7wFRNGvnV8MfSg9AF5zACfqN8c969PIUhCM0Vjmt10fSOgvYW/s400/cover.jpg" width="259" /></a></div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"></div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>Let Justice Be Done</i> documents "a more than casual relationship between Shaw" and the CIA. Shaw's reports to the Agency (as a "domestic contact") began as early as 1948, and continued into the 1960s.<br />
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One CIA document refers to a covert security clearance for Shaw. Former CIA officer Victor Marchetti told Mr. Davy that such a clearance indicates Shaw worked for Clandestine Services, possibly its Domestic Operations Division – "one of the most secret divisions within the Clandestine Services."</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Garrison charged Shaw with taking part in a conspiracy to assassinate JFK. From the beginning Shaw maintained his innocence, and indeed a jury rapidly acquitted him. Though he was arrested and charged in 1967, the trial did not take place until 1969. William Davy shows how, between arrest and trial, the defense benefitted from an unprecedented media blitz in support of the accused, and how the prosecution was infiltrated and compromised after Garrison's investigation became public knowledge. It now seems plain, with years of hindsight, that Jim Garrison never stood a chance.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">The e-book edition of <i>Let Justice Be Done</i> contains the complete text of the original, which is now out of print.<br />
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<a href="http://www.blackopradio.com/archives2011.html">Hear William Davy</a> interviewed on Black Op Radio March 17, 2011. (Click on the link and find Show #518.)</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
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</div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-80208384994520740402011-03-09T07:16:00.000-08:002011-03-16T18:15:15.175-07:00A Certain Type of Book<div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 32px/normal Georgia;">A</span>ny major world event will, in time, attract the interest of historians and other professional analysts. We expect this. We expect them to sift through the record, official and unofficial, and tell us what it all means.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">The assassination of JFK is a case in point. It is unique, though, in that it has always attracted a disproportionate number of non-professionals. Historically it has been the non-professionals who have found serious flaws in the government's lone nut thesis, and argued against it. And it has been the professionals, the historians and journalists, who by and large have endorsed it.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Estimates vary on how many books have been published on the assassination. They range from many hundreds into the thousands. I doubt very much there is an accurate tally. There may have been at one time, but with the advent of print-on-demand and other means of self-publication, a tidal wave (dare I call it a title wave?) has engulfed us.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Most of these books, and certainly the best, have been written by the non-professionals.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">From time to time I see lists of what various writers consider the best books on the subject, usually in the form of a "top ten" list. I have crafted one of my own. Like all such lists, it is highly subjective. Any one entry is likely to provoke sharp disagreement.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">I present my list below. But first, I've also assembled a list of really bad books about the JFK assassination. They may or may not be the <i>worst.</i> In fact, several of them are quite literate, and thus might be convincing to those unfamiliar with all of the evidence. This is a great danger to the truth. Uninitiated readers enter the landscape at their peril.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">So here are some really bad books about the JFK assassination, presented in no particular order.</div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>Case Closed,</i> by Gerald Posner</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>Reclaiming History,</i> by Vincent Bugliosi</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>Mrs. Paine's Garage,</i> by Thomas Mallon</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>Eyewitness to History,</i> by Howard Brennan (with J. Edward Cherryholmes)</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>Death of a President,</i> by William Manchester</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>The Day Kennedy was Shot,</i> by Jim Bishop</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>The Truth About the Assassination,</i> by Charles Roberts</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>The Scavengers and Critics,</i> by Richard Lewis and Lawrence Schiller</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>Final Disclosure,</i> by David Belin</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>Conspiracy of One,</i> by Jim Moore</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>With Malice,</i> by Dale Myers</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">The Warren Report</li>
</ol><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Some really good books about the JFK assassination:</div><ol style="list-style-type: decimal;"><li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i>JFK and the Unspeakable,</i> by James W. Douglass</span></i></li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>Accessories After the Fact,</i> by Sylvia Meagher</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>Conspiracy,</i> by Anthony Summers</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>The Last Investigation,</i> by Gaeton Fonzi</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>Rush to Judgment,</i> by Mark Lane</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>On the Trail of the Assassins,</i> by Jim Garrison</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>A Citizen's Dissent,</i> by Mark Lane</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>Let Justice Be Done,</i> by William Davy</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>The Bastard Bullet, </i>by Raymond Marcus</li>
<li style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i>Spy Saga,</i> by Philip Melanson</li>
</ol><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">My lists are rather arbitrary, and I'm probably overlooking a few titles I would include if I gave it serious thought. But if I haven't read a given book, I haven't included it. I don't consider either list the very worst or the very best. Such is the nature of a subjective list.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Also, there are pro-conspiracy books that, in my opinion, are not of much value (if any). But that's another list for another time.</div><div style="font: 18.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 21.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: normal normal normal 18px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 21px; text-align: center;">•</div><div style="font: 18.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 21.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Some of the titles on these lists of books, good and bad, are worth additional commentary. See, for example, my review <a href="http://praisefrom.blogspot.com/2011/02/bugliosis-book_25.html">"Bugliosi's Book"</a> elsewhere on this blog. I'll have some comments on some of the other titles in the not-too-distant future.</span></i></div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-20656606495287262832011-03-06T07:00:00.000-08:002011-03-06T07:00:02.535-08:00Mrs. Paine's Mirage (Or, How I Learned to Hate Mrs. Paine's Garage)<div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 32px/normal Georgia;"><i>M</i></span><i>rs. Paine's Garage,</i> published back in 2002, is an unfortunate little book. I have a distant connection to it, one that I regret.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">In July 2001 its author, Thomas Mallon, sent me an email introducing himself. He briefly described his project – a sympathetic look at Ruth Paine, a figure in the JFK assassination – and asked if I could put him in touch with Mrs. Shirley Martin, who had known Mrs. Paine many years before.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Mallon had apparently Googled Mrs. Martin and found no contact information. But the Internet, in its infinite thoroughness, linked my name to hers, presumably due to some research I was then conducting. So I wrote to Mrs. Martin about Thomas Mallon, and she agreed to talk to him.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Thomas Mallon's motives for undertaking a book about Ruth Paine are unknown to me, and I won't speculate on them. But I find it hard to understand how he could write <i>Mrs. Paine's Garage</i> without playing at least a gentle form of devil's advocate with his subject. Such a role, which some would consider the writer's duty, might have elicited valuable information that would have greatly enhanced the resulting narrative, even if he stuck to what I am convinced was a preconceived conclusion.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">As it developed, there was no devil's advocacy, and consequently no real depth to <i>Mrs. Paine's Garage.</i> Mr. Mallon accepts the official story of the JFK assassination and, it follows, the official story of Ruth Paine and her role in that cataclysmic event.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIjCHCWN7i9GRMYMTobeyDguPD5GVALGKNlPm575-5kc_IAaf4KdWsZfD41lIQDRJ6HecnBmAQlzRaTBiswUB9zmJEuKPqsC3I2f8HTSVKEDaN1oUV9jnvPOa3zqkPnjQrVQGUAdPhyphenhyphen-Qo/s1600/ruth_marina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIjCHCWN7i9GRMYMTobeyDguPD5GVALGKNlPm575-5kc_IAaf4KdWsZfD41lIQDRJ6HecnBmAQlzRaTBiswUB9zmJEuKPqsC3I2f8HTSVKEDaN1oUV9jnvPOa3zqkPnjQrVQGUAdPhyphenhyphen-Qo/s1600/ruth_marina.jpg" /></a></div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;"><br />
</span></div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia;">That role, in sum, is that Ruth Paine was, in 1963, a good-hearted Quaker woman who happened to befriend Lee and Marina Oswald at a critical juncture in their lives. She allowed the pregnant Marina and one daughter (soon two) to live with her in suburban Dallas while misfit Lee dreamed the dreams of the perpetual loser, finally exacting a psycho-sicko revenge on society by murdering President Kennedy.</span></div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Thomas Mallon refers to Ruth Paine as "a vessel of disinterested kindness." Others see Mrs. Paine in a different light.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Ruth and her husband Michael "maintain a delicate balance between intimacy and distance as concerns Lee Harvey Oswald," wrote researcher Barbara LaMonica in 1995. "They exploit their role as intimate when they want to condemn Lee, and take on the mantle of being expert witnesses as to his character, and how violence-prone he was, and how capable he was [for committing] the assassination. But they conveniently distance themselves from him when they want to avoid scrutiny."</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">After his arrest, a desperate Lee Oswald telephoned Mrs. Paine from jail and asked her help in contacting a lawyer named John Abt. "I was quite stunned that he called at all or that he thought he could ask anything of me – appalled, really," Ruth testified to the Warren Commission.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Yet she did, in fact, try to contact John Abt on Oswald's behalf. Asked by the Warren Commission whether she informed Oswald she had been unable to reach him, this vessel of disinterested kindness replied, "I made no effort to call the police station."</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Sylvia Meagher was herself appalled, really, by this admission. "Her failure to notify Oswald that she had been unable to reach Abt, so that he would realize the urgency of obtaining legal assistance elsewhere, is unforgivable," she wrote in <i>Accessories After the Fact.</i></div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">There is more about Ruth and Michael Paine, a lot more – but this is already getting long, so I need to get back to Mallon's book.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">There are portions of <i>Mrs. Paine's Garage</i> which I find downright deceptive. In a footnote on page 57, Thomas Mallon cites an "assassinaton legend" that on November 22, 1963, Ruth Paine greeted Dallas Police officers with the words, "Come in, I've been expecting you." These officers had come to search Mrs. Paine's home several hours after the assassination, and the Paine garage yielded a trove of evidence damning Lee Oswald.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">As Jerry Rose noted in a 1990 article in <i>The Third Decade,</i> the arrival of the cops at the Paine house was not, in and of itself, suspicious; Oswald listed the Paine address on his employment application to the Texas School Book Depository. It's her greeting that seemed so odd, even to the police. When they arrived at the Paine home, Lee Oswald had not yet been publicly identified as an assassination suspect.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">In any case, Ruth Paine firmly denies the greeting attributed to her, telling Thomas Mallon, "I was not expecting them and I did not say that."</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Maybe she didn't. But the allegation is not a "legend," which my dictionary says is an unverifiable story handed down by tradition. No, it comes from the testimony of one of the cops, Dallas Police Detective Guy F. Rose, who before he made it raised his right hand and swore that what he was about to say was the truth and nothing but. Maybe Detective Rose perjured himself. But this is not a legend, it is sworn testimony. And maybe it is true.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">It is worth mentioning that Shirley Martin, who is now deceased, later told me that after making contact with her, Thomas Mallon said some things to her that may not be true. Shirley said he told her that he would be able to quote her letters to Ruth Paine in his book, whether Shirley gave him permission or not.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">This is almost certainly false. Writers are strictly governed by what they can quote without permission. It is a matter of intellectual property. From what Shirley told me, Mallon at very least exaggerated how much he would be able to quote, and he probably knew better. This is a big reason why his smelly little book is on my list of the worst ever published on the JFK case.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">"I hope," Shirley Martin said, "he is not another Posner."</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16.0px Georgia; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">He wasn't, but not for lack of trying. <i>Mrs. Paine's Garage</i> was duly published, and excerpted in <i>The New Yorker,</i> and lauded by the usual media sluts. It appears, finally, to have sunk into a well-deserved oblivion.</div><div style="font: 16.0px Arial; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 18.0px;"><br />
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</div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-91980704118563025042011-02-25T15:05:00.001-08:002022-08-15T13:27:16.006-07:00Bugliosi's Book<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">(2006)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">O</span>ne must assume that Vincent Bugliosi is honest, and that his new book on the JFK assassination is likewise honest. <i>Reclaiming History </i>is Bugliosi's long-awaited entry into the war of words over what really happened to John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.</div><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px; min-height: 19px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px;">This is a massive book, so massive that the publisher, W.W. Norton, elected to put all of its end notes and other source notes onto an accompanying CD-ROM. At more than 1,600 pages, <i>Reclaiming History</i> gives the appearance of a comprehensive and minutely detailed study of the crime that shook the world four decades ago. Bugliosi says he devoted twenty years to his book. I'm devoting about twenty minutes to writing this essay.</div><div style="font: 16px Arial; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5JQ3J0-Xm-pczJys5NpppCRqS9wShpi5ltn6V2Aq9BLJkDMtkJa28gwNHMB85J4kUe3fEf0fg-iYd9iXcj2I8lXE7U2edRxBAvHZlgKtaJgW8VUxk_VBdJEHijmfjvB6u7XEnjzdIgiB9/s1600/bugliosi.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5JQ3J0-Xm-pczJys5NpppCRqS9wShpi5ltn6V2Aq9BLJkDMtkJa28gwNHMB85J4kUe3fEf0fg-iYd9iXcj2I8lXE7U2edRxBAvHZlgKtaJgW8VUxk_VBdJEHijmfjvB6u7XEnjzdIgiB9/s1600/bugliosi.jpg" /></a></div><br />
</div><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px;">Vincent Bugliosi, of course, is the former Deputy District Attorney from Los Angeles, best known for prosecuting Charles Manson and members of his murderous "family" some thirty-five years ago. Bugliosi's resulting book <i>Helter Skelter</i> (written with Curt Gentry) became a best seller, and according to the press materials accompanying <i>Reclaiming History</i> is the best selling true crime book of all time. Bugliosi has since written several other true crime books that have also been best sellers.</div><div style="font: 16px Arial; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px;">Why did the former prosecutor decide to tackle the Kennedy assassination? "Over 95 percent of the books on the case happen to be pro-conspiracy and anti-Warren Commission," he says. "So certainly there is a need for far more books on the other side to give a much better balance to the debate."</div><div style="font: 16px Arial; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px;">Well, maybe. But what was the purpose of the Warren Report? Sylvia Meagher once observed that if the Report cannot stand on its own – if it requires additional books to prop it up – that in itself is "a total default" to its critics. In Bugliosi's case, it may be a double fault. For sheer bulk, <i>Reclaiming History</i> is nearly twice as long as the 888 page Warren Report it defends.</div><div style="font: 16px Arial; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px;">Taking Bugliosi's numbers at face value, there are still plenty of books attempting to legitimize the Warren Report, and they are typically welcomed with great praise by the mainstream media. To name just a few, Gerald Posner's <i>Case Closed,</i> which appeared at the time of the assassination's thirtieth anniversary, was featured prominently in <i>U.S. News and World Report </i>and Posner was all over the boob tube for months. Commission member Gerald Ford published a book on the case, Commission attorney David Belin published two, and Arlen Specter devoted many pages to defending the Report in his 2000 memoir. William Manchester was contracted by the Kennedy family to write a book on the assassination before the Warren Report was even published. Jim Bishop wrote a book that did not question the official story. Richard Warren Lewis and Lawrence Schiller proved two heads aren't always better than one in a book attacking the critics. And Jim Moore published a pro-Commission book in 1989. (Commission attorney Wesley Liebeler announced he was writing, but never completed, a book on the case. And former Yale University professor Jacob Cohen also announced but never published a book defending the Warren Report.)</div><div style="font: 16px Arial; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px;">And then there are the television networks. The electronic media convicted Oswald the weekend of the assassination and has never let up in the forty-something years since. CBS has produced multiple documentaries supporting the official story, as have NBC and ABC. Don't even get me started on Time-Life. Methinks Vince Bugliosi's protestations are without merit.</div><div style="font: 16px Arial; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px;"><b>Spoiler alert!</b> I'm going to give away the ending to <i>Reclaiming History.</i> Like the butler in a hackneyed murder mystery, Oswald did it. "Oswald," Bugliosi writes, was "an emotionally unhinged political malcontent who hated America [and] was as guilty as sin."</div><div style="font: 16px Arial; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px;">And that, really, is about all you need to know of Vincent Bugliosi's book. But I'll add that one of his objectives is to deconstruct and debunk every theory offering an explanation to the assassination – every one, that is, but the lone nut theory. If Bugliosi's comment on Lee Oswald intrigues you, or if you like to read everything on this case, then by all means spend the fifty dollars that is the book's suggested retail price. Otherwise, hang on to your money.</div><div style="font: 16px Arial; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px;">In spite of Bugliosi's explanation for why he wrote <i>Reclaiming History </i>– what he sees as a dearth of books supporting the official account of the assassination (again, why wasn't the Warren Report adequate?) – I can only understand his undertaking of a project such as this in the context of an ideological war. Oswald, after all, "hated America," Bugliosi says. In a section of his book describing the earliest Commission critics, he emphasizes their politics, which were mostly, but not exclusively, left-leaning. The first published book on the assassination, Bugliosi writes, was by "an expatriate American Communist living in Paris." Another early author was "a German Communist party member." The next two books were written by "leftists sympathetic to Marxist ideology." This is fifties-style red baiting, and if such criticisms are valid, then it is equally valid to argue that Vincent Bugliosi, as a former big city prosecutor, is a thoroughly entrenched Establishment figure who is parroting the party line, and summoning his considerable rhetorical skills in an effort to bully skeptical readers and reassure others.</div><div style="font: 16px Arial; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px;">As noted at the outset, this commentary is not really a review of <i>Reclaiming History;</i> I have not read the book in its entirety and do not intend to. Its point of view is plain as day, and taking the time to dissect and expose its fallacies is, for me, an errand of too few returns. I leave that necessary chore to others.</div><div style="font: 16px Arial; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px;">But in the interest of full disclosure, I must note that I am the author of a forthcoming book related to these matters. <i>Praise from a Future Generation</i> is the story of the early, "first generation" Warren Commission critics. Documents released by the Assassination Records Review Board show that the activities of virtually every one of these critics were monitored to some degree. I will briefly describe just one example, and leave it to the reader to decide whether Bugliosi's characterization is fair and impartial.<br />
<br />
The "German Communist party member" Bugliosi refers to is Joachim Joesten, the author of <i>Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?</i> Bugliosi happily acknowledges (on p. 990) that his sources on Joesten include, via the Congressional Record, Gestapo documents seized by British authorities at the end of World War Two. Copies of these Gestapo records were provided to the Warren Commission by then-CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard Helms. One of these Gestapo documents, translated by the CIA, was a memorandum from 1937 stating that while living in Copenhagen, Joesten published an article in a French newspaper warning of Germany's military threat to Denmark. So Joesten's life work includes opposing Hitler, and in <i>Reclaiming History,</i> Vincent Bugliosi relies on documents prepared by Hitler's Nazi regime to pass judgment on his political reliability. This, I think, is just a tad questionable.</div><div style="font: 16px Arial; margin: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><br />
</div><div style="font: 16px Georgia; margin: 0px;">But, one must assume that Vince Bugliosi is honest, and <i>Reclaiming History </i>represents his true feelings on the Kennedy assassination. His motives, surely, are pure as the driven snow.</div><div><br />
</div></span>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-81625980069522574632011-02-23T10:31:00.000-08:002011-03-02T18:22:32.458-08:00JFK: The Lincoln Parallels<div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-large;">F</span>irst, a disclaimer. I am not an authority on the Lincoln assassination. Not even close.</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 19.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">But close your eyes for a moment and imagine I'm some bigmouth in his cups, down at the end of the bar. (Never mind that you can't read if you close your eyes.)</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">I've noticed an odd parallel between the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy.</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 19.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">There's an old Ann Landers column about curiosities between the two assassinations. You've probably seen it: Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy, Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln. Both secretaries warned their boss not to attend what turned out to be a rendezvous with death. Both slain presidents were succeeded by men named Johnson, and <i>blah blah blah.</i></div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><i><br />
</i></div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Cue the creepy music.</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">I'm not talking about the Ann Landers stuff.</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 19.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">No, I'm talking about similarities that to me, at least, suggest a pattern.</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><blockquote>Historians know no more than the information made available to them, and for many years the United States War Department kept the records on Lincoln's assassination locked in files marked "secret."</blockquote></div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">This quotation is from a 1959 book called <i>The Web of Conspiracy,</i> by Theodore Roscoe. It was the first thing in that book<i> </i>to really get my attention. Readers familiar with the JFK case know that classifying much of the evidence "secret" is precisely what happened after the Warren Commission concluded its work in 1964.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5vAcGYEuv9cfeb8WMEE_2IH6HP_nlZHwnu6uTW6juX1O-g7ByhLcTOLA9W7Hv19NghbV-r5mnx_XGfj_GkgW1bg9GBFo0s0BeRWwNV68LyDw9LKFKXhecfuRdXh8_HXdYvOu3s4xzXNuD/s1600/lincoln_shot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5vAcGYEuv9cfeb8WMEE_2IH6HP_nlZHwnu6uTW6juX1O-g7ByhLcTOLA9W7Hv19NghbV-r5mnx_XGfj_GkgW1bg9GBFo0s0BeRWwNV68LyDw9LKFKXhecfuRdXh8_HXdYvOu3s4xzXNuD/s1600/lincoln_shot.jpg" /></a></div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged Kennedy assassin, was of course shot down by Jack Ruby a few days after the assassination. No trial.</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">In the Lincoln case, John Wilkes Booth escaped the scene of the crime and evaded authorities for about twelve days, before finally being cornered and killed in a Virginia barn.</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 19.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Yet in this instance, there <i>was</i> a trial. Not only did Booth have co-conspirators who were captured alive; they carried out coordinated attacks on several other government officials, including Vice-President Andrew Johnson, at nearly the same moment Booth was killing Lincoln.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6hy7o10qE7HCnleDNrBNtmpnCZj8yVTIdflg_y2QashW49mSk-t2mAgSx4Eif330hXJUzdb7d-w3NJECM3jrjn10VZLT0PrNQMd2Xwt74Cs8JvdbSiYsTuzpX-7DzLHLbyP6wAkC_vTUP/s1600/lincoln_executions.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="519" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6hy7o10qE7HCnleDNrBNtmpnCZj8yVTIdflg_y2QashW49mSk-t2mAgSx4Eif330hXJUzdb7d-w3NJECM3jrjn10VZLT0PrNQMd2Xwt74Cs8JvdbSiYsTuzpX-7DzLHLbyP6wAkC_vTUP/s640/lincoln_executions.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">This is sometimes overlooked. We learn, of course, about Booth shooting Lincoln. But these other crimes are downplayed, as is the fact of conspiracy. I don't think I learned there was a Lincoln conspiracy until my teen years, and only then because I had a book of historic photographs. It included pictures of the execution of four of the eight conspirators (above).</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 19.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">The other four received prison sentences.</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><blockquote>Although trial proceedings were published at the time, the Bureau of Military Justice sat on a great deal of conspiracy information, and the Army chiefs refused to release much of the data on the assassination and the pursuit of the conspirators. Not until the mid-1930s were pertinent War Department records placed in the public domain.</blockquote> The mid-1930s!</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 19.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Why were these records suppressed for so long? Theodore Roscoe argued that within, say, twenty-five years of Lincoln's killing, no Civil War-era intelligence secrets could have been compromised.</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><blockquote>What could be compromised was the security of a myth, or the reputation of an institution, or the concealment of some figure or group who had been party to a heinous crime.</blockquote>Roscoe continued:</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><blockquote>The military censors had a field day with the Lincoln murder case. From the outset [Secretary of War Edwin] Stanton held that many of the facts relating to the assassination were "not in the public interest." Eventually so much of the truth was tampered with that no one could learn the truth. Thus an immense deception was imposed and a stupendous crime was covered...</blockquote></div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><blockquote>Today the cover-up is conceded by at least one Government agency which tells us in its official literature that "confusion and mystery" cloak Lincoln's assassination and "we probably shall never know all the facts"...</blockquote></div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">Does any of this sound familiar? So much of the truth was tampered with that no one could learn the truth.</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">I'm seeing some definite parallels between Lincoln and JFK. It is tempting to conclude that the similarities reveal a model for the clandestine removal of a president of these United States, but I think that would be reckless.</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 19.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;">And anyway, I'm just the loudmouth drunk down at the end of the bar.</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; min-height: 19.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><div style="text-align: center;">•</div></div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Most of the material presented here comes from a single source: </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The Web of Conspiracy,</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"> by Theodore Roscoe (Prentice-Hall, 1959). I turned to Wikipedia for a few factoids, such as the location of Booth's death.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR3wDKzAfVCHGoKId1SJ3Cgk7-oDLVttca1UYeXs6y9XutnEVu8-7aLQWqKNgzaV_wQ341NYv60HgQuuMcMtNuz0TDkQfjKjTLqs7bl5X5cyJUOo1qYMgu15lqW7fQ1zKtmXDpvPQcNX7W/s1600/booth_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR3wDKzAfVCHGoKId1SJ3Cgk7-oDLVttca1UYeXs6y9XutnEVu8-7aLQWqKNgzaV_wQ341NYv60HgQuuMcMtNuz0TDkQfjKjTLqs7bl5X5cyJUOo1qYMgu15lqW7fQ1zKtmXDpvPQcNX7W/s1600/booth_1.jpg" /></a></div><div style="color: #333233; font: 16.0px Georgia; line-height: 18.0px; margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px;"><br />
</div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3111154653015473110.post-78902200160845458402011-02-19T19:54:00.000-08:002011-07-18T12:12:13.163-07:00JFK: The Fiftieth Anniversary<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px;"><span style="font: normal normal normal 32px/normal Arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">T</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">he most recent public opinion polls I've seen on the JFK assassination are a little dusty. They go back nearly eight years, to November 2003, when ABC reported that 70% of those who were asked "suspect a plot."</span></span><br />
<div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">We'll see some new surveys as we approach the fiftieth anniversary. Assuming they are honest (a risky assumption), there shouldn't be much change. The numbers have fluctuated somewhat over the years, but have consistently shown that at very least, the majority of Americans "suspect a plot."</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Far more important is how many people still care. Most, I humbly submit, do not.</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is due largely to the passage of so much time. Most people now alive were not yet born when the assassination happened. Oliver Stone's <i>JFK</i></span><i></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> energized us for a time, but that has long since passed. Anymore, the Kennedy assassination is just a history lesson – and a confusing one, at that.</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The Warren Commission said one guy did it. Fifteen years later the House Select Committee concluded there was "probably" a conspiracy. The Assassination Records Review Board skirted the matter, emphasizing the release of assassination records and – </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">gulp!</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> – restoring government credibility.</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">All along, there has been a deluge of books promoting often-conflicting theories. The not surprising result of all this is uncertainty. "One of the primary means of immobilizing the American people politically today," wrote E. Martin Schotz in 1992, "is to hold them in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed but nothing can be known, nothing of significance that is."</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And that leaves us in a curious place. Most people believe there was a conspiracy to kill a duly elected president, but don't know its nature. It was a long time ago, though, so who cares?</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">•</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Even though we</span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> know </span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy, those of us actively studying it seem unable to make much difference. We can't crack the media and we can't ignite the masses.</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Instead of objective analyses of </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">our</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> issues, the media keeps feeding us leftovers: assassination re-enactments, new tests to prove the single bullet theory, and new attempts to shoot three rounds in six seconds from a third-rate weapon.</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">This is a great danger. To those who haven't read much in the field, and who don't much care to begin with, some of the lone nut nonsense might just seem plausible.</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">With the Internet, we can become the media. This is no small thing; David, after all, slew Goliath. But the Internet can be made to disappear, as it did in Egypt.</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And then there is the lack of unity within our ranks. This is aggravated by some of our luminaries, who assume proprietary attitudes toward certain issues. Even worse is the promotion of ideas that make us all look ridiculous. In some ways we're our own worst enemy.</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The fiftieth anniversary is still more than two years away, but we are already in a crucial phase. We must find a way to stand as one in the name of truth. We must emphasize those matters we have in common, since we share a common goal. We must find a way to make people care.</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The propaganda war is on, and will only intensify as we near November 22, 2013. For as we reach the fiftieth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, the primary objective of our opponents will be to bury this case once and for all.</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">They are the enemies of truth.</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">•</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">The quotation "One of the primary means of immobilizing..." is from </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">History Will Not Absolve Us, </span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">by E. Martin Schotz.</span></span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br />
</span></div></div><div style="font: normal normal normal 16px/normal Arial; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; min-height: 18px;"></div>John Kelinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11730334097307972636noreply@blogger.com1