Ancient Aliens & JFK by Mike Bara

 

Mike Bara may be knowledgable regarding NASA and Ancient Aliens but he doesn’t know Beans about the Kennedy assassination.

If you have ever watched Ancient Aliens on the History Channel you’ve seen Mike Bara along with other experts giving their opinions on how aliens arrived on earth in the far away past and advanced human evolution and technology.  It makes for entertaining television and the show makes it apparent that sometime in ancient human history there is evidence of what appears to be high technology and engineering being used at a time when civilization was supposed to be in a primitive state.  So the Star People came and gave us free advice on how to climb down from the trees and into the savanna.   

Bara is a retired engineer and has written numerous books on this subject and NASA space programs.  Most of his books bears the “Ancient Aliens” title (here, there and everywhere!).  He hosts a 6 day a week channel on Youtube and is a conspiratorialist with some reservations.  For example he is a supporter of the Apollo Moon landings but he swerves into the John Kennedy Jr. conspiracy that he faked his death to escape being murdered by the Deep State (a popular theory among the Q followers).  To someday reappear like the Second Coming of Jesus.  And do what precisely?  So Bara is reasonable and then sometimes not.

Mike Bara’s main thesis in this work is that President Kennedy had knowledge of contact with Aliens and was planning to share this knowledge with the Soviets as a peace entreaty.  This in turn sent the President on a collation course with the Deep State and ended his life.  Farfetched to say the least.

It is interesting that while Bara does conclude there was a conspiracy in the death of JFK and resorts to using the same old tired arguments of the Lone Nut crowd. Which in turn, harkens from the easily discredited Warren Commission Report. Bara follows the well trodden path of Oswald being a good marksman to the Magic Bullet Theory. I shall explore this in greater detail below and show why he is wrong on all of these matters.

MJ-12 Documents

One of the controversial issues in UFO research is the release of alleged documents about the MJ-12 group.  One day in 1984 a UFO researcher Jaimie Shandera checked the mail and found a package containing a set of microfilm documents from an anonymous source.  The Majestic 12 legend was born and launched thousands of arguments both pro and con.  Now that the dust has settled down a bit, the MJ-12 docs are considered a hoax. (For more on this you can check out Seamas Coogan’s Magnus Opus, JFK and the Majestic Papers: The History of a Hoax.  LINK)

Mike Bara seems reluctant to let it go.  As he said on page 38, “I am less concerned with the question of authenticity than I am with the content.”  He should be!  He ponders what if the documents have traces of truth in them (the 12 members were real men at least) and then precedes thru the chapter to discuss connections to the documents as if they were real.  Such as he does on page 42 when he suggests that JFK knew of aliens. “But if Kennedy was taken out of the loop on what MJ-12 knew, how then was he even aware of an alien presence?”  Bara wants to believe, regardless.  Most of chapter 2 flows like this and the rest of the book will feature similar confusing episodes.  

Nevertheless, Bara’s reasoning that JFK was aware of aliens wanting to share this with a Cold War enemy ultimately set in motion his death, is totally absurd.  Kennedy had a multitude of enemies that hated him worse than speculating about flying saucers.

  

The Magic Bullet Theory one more time…

Also known as the “Magic Bullshit Theory” was developed when the Warren Commission discovered they had more bullets flying in Dealey Plaza than Oswald could have fired.  So their lawyers created the fiction of one bullet wounding two men.  The problem was the shooter was firing from a high elevation while Kennedy’s wounds were low to high for the single bullet to allegedly traverse his body and hit Governor Connelly, besides the trajectory angles being incorrect.  It was a political solution to the problem.  There could only be one gunman.

But there is much wrong with it and too much to go into here and Bara’s response to it is no different than what a standard Warren Report defender would say.  Probably the most complete rebuttal comes from the testimony collected by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in 1996.  Namely the testimony under oath of four autopsy witnesses.  They were FBI special agents James Sibert and Francis O’Neill, and autopsy technicians James Jenner and Paul O’Conner.  All four men testify witnessing at the autopsy the sounding probe (flexible aluminum rod—used to trace bullets through bodies) inserted into Kennedy’s back.  The probe went a few inches in and downward.  It was not a pass-through.  So there is no exiting bullet through Kennedy’s throat.  Bara has shown in his sloppy research that he knows nothing about this and does great disservice to his readers by ignoring this important fact. 

Likewise for his handling for the CE-399 the so called “pristine” bullet found on Connelly’s stretcher and was alleged to have passed through two men breaking bones along the way.  Of course it is not pristine and shows marked flattening on one side.  Bara believes this bullet could have done all the damage it did, especially to Connelly breaking three ribs and fracturing the radial bone in the wrist and still remain largely undeformed.    

As I stated in one of my posts regarding this issue:  “The Warren Commission in 1964 tasked ballistic experts doctors Dolce and Light to conduct tests on cadavers using Oswald’s rifle at the U. S. Army Edgewood Arsenal.  As Dr. Dolce stated in an interview in 1986, each of the ten test fired bullets were in his words, “markably deformed.”  Dr. Dolce was not called to give testimony to the Warren Commission and his findings were buried in a report, published in March of 1965, that was classified “confidential” for 8 years before being placed in the NARA.”

Mostly likely CD-399 was a low velocity bullet with not enough grains in the shell hence the shallow impact.  It’s the one that fell out. Bara while writing of the magical properties of CD-399, failed to mention the numerous bullet fragments found in Governor Connelly’s body and also in the interior of the limousine.  One fragment he carried in his left thigh for the rest of his life.  As can be plainly seen, CD-399 is not fragmented.

Officer Tippit as Badge Man

This has to be the most unfortunate part of the book.  In my study of the Tippet killing I have never found anything that suggests he was the grassy knoll shooter.  Bara hangs his theory on the scant evidence of a Jack White digital reinterpretation of the Mary Moorman photo.  The famous Badge Man image cloaked in shadows on the grassy knoll.  There are various versions of this online and they all have one thing in common.  They are blurry.  Yet somehow Mike Bara finds enough data in the image to confidently state it was Tippit there and he was firing the fatal shot.

Due to Tippit’s movements and behavior that day, Tippit did not have the time to arrive in Dealey Plaza in order to assassinate the President.  He would need to be there early, at least by noon.  The President was killed at 12:30.  At noon Tippit was called to Hodge’s SuperMart to arrest a woman for shoplifting.  He was 7 miles away from Dealey Plaza at that point.  He would need to drive the woman back to headquarters to be booked, wasting valuable time if he was going to be an assassin.  No witnesses saw him in the Dealey Plaza location.

Some have suggested that Tippit may have been involved in the outer edges of the conspiracy.  His actions on the 22nd were peculiar as documented by Myers, Armstrong, McBride etc.  Tippit that morning was racing here and there.  At one point he rushed into the Tiptop record store and made a frantic call to someone who never picked up.  Whatever it was he did not display the actions of a normal police officer on patrol.  He was acting nervous and agitated.  Was his job to meet up with Oswald and take him out?  That seems far more plausible than looking at a blurry Photoshopped image and coming to a conclusion.

Officer J. D. Tippit as Badge Man is another poorly researched area of Bara’s book and a huge insult to the Tippit family.  All Bara has is a blurry picture.  Even the minimal facts I have presented here are not in Bara’s book.  Whatever Tippit’s involvement was that fateful day, he does not deserve this.

Conclusion

Overall, the Kennedy assassination chapters in Ancient Aliens & JFK are flawed.  The rest, including the secret space program, moon landings, etc, are competently researched and presented.  Sometimes as a researcher you can get into fire fighter mode.  So much incorrect information flows around the subject you are researching that the need arises to stamp it out.  It’s a constant process of reeducating and setting the record straight.  Mike Bara’s book is an example of that.  Obviously, this is not a serious look into who JFK’s killer was or other aspects of the assassination. The absurd notion that JFK had inside info on Aliens and what they are doing on earth is a joke. Bara is trading on the Ancient Aliens TV show name for traction.  It’s a pot boiler.  Reader beware.

Notes

p.100, Oswald was court martialed twice in the Marines.  Not three times as Bara wrote.

p.103, James Jesus Angleton was Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence.  Not the Deputy Director of the CIA as Bara states.  This error implies Angleton was #2 at the CIA.  He was not.

p.107, Bara calls Oswald a good marksman.  He was starting out but faded.  His first marksman test was excellent.  His score was lowered in the second test and barely qualified in the third test.  After the Marines during the Russia phase, when Oswald went hunting with friends he was loaned the shotgun—for obvious reasons. 

A reviewer on Amazon S. Harris, charged that some pages and at least one whole chapter of Ancient Aliens & JFK, are cut and pasted from Bara’s other books such as Dark Mission and Who Mourns For Apollo.  As Harris said  “Self-plagiarism is no crime…” yes, just the habit of a lazy writer.  As I said previously, a pot boiler. (Highly recommended you read the review on Amazon.  The reviewer points to other factual errors not mentioned in my review.)

Researcher Jones Harris once told me his theory that the grassy knoll shooter was Roscoe White.  Roscoe was former military intelligence.  He was seen walking around Dealey Plaza wearing a Dallas police officers uniform but not wearing the required hat.  But he wasn’t officially a police officer.  He wouldn’t attend police training till early December of 1963.  He was working for them as a clerk at this time.  As told to me by Harris, only those people that had completed training would be allowed to wear the uniform of the Dallas police department.  Could Roscoe White be Badge Man?  I suppose it makes for a better story to pin the crime on a more well known man rather than one who is not.

Sources

Why Officer Tippit Stopped His Killer by Jack Myers.  A very detailed and accurate account on the Tippit murder and Tippit’s movements the day of the assassination.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/why-officer-tippit-stopped-his-killer

John Armstrong’s detailed account of the movements of J. D. Tippit on 11/22/63.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/harvey-lee-and-tippit-a-new-look-at-the-tippit-shooting

JFK and the Majestic Papers: The History of a Hoax, Introduction by Seamas Coogan.  All nine articles are listed on this page.

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/jfk-and-the-majestic-papers-the-history-of-a-hoax-introduction

Briefer account here by Philip Coppens:

https://www.eyeofthepsychic.com/majestic12/

Book.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1939149991/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Pat Speer debunks the debunkers!

Pat Speer on his excellent research site debunks the debunkers of conspiracy in the national media, print-web-TV, regarding the reporting on the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy's killing.  This is why I didn't watch a lot of it.  I knew it would be so anti-conspiracy and fraudulent that it would not be worth wasting time on.  As Pat documents, indeed it was. It shows what lengths these media gate keepers do to keep the government myth of a lone assassin alive.  The amount of selective evidence sourcing to make sure Lee Oswald forever guilty boggles the mind.   

It's worth reading both pages:
http://www.patspeer.com/the-onslaught

And 

http://www.patspeer.com/the-onslaught-part2

Highly recommended.

Brad Meltzer's Humbug

“‘Decoded’ is likable, but goofy. There are interesting facts and factoids here, but they are largely smothered under layers of pseudo-drama and faux research.”

PopMatters Staff
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I've been watching Brad Meltzer's Decoded on the History Channel since it first aired in December of 2010. An entertaining show with best selling author Brad Meltzer sending out a team of experts to explore and solve mysteries. The show has a lively "you were there" style as the viewer follows the three experts from location to location taking witness testimony and solving puzzles. Conspiracy is going to be a constant theme especially in dealing with such diverse subject matter involving Free Masons, wealthy men cavorting at Bohemian Grove, and John Wilkes Booth possibly escaping death by using a stand-in. But there is always a hint that a conspiracy, no matter how reasonable or plausible, will be shot down. In other words, let no conspiracy take root and none does in any of the shows I've watched so far.

While presented as a serious investigative show there are moments where the research and methodology appears questionable. Some experiments done to test theories are hardly scientifically based and the testing conditions are skewed. Thing aren't helped much when the team of experts question witnesses, and then react to a comment with mock shock as they roll their eyes and give each other appalled looks.

I assume eventually, they will get to the JFK assassination or some odd angle on it. I would bet–if I were a betting man–that whatever the theory is, it won't hold water. It will be debunked.

The Experts
Brad Meltzer's three roving investigators are author/historian Buddy Levy, attorney/former prosecutor Scott Rolle, and mechanical engineer Christine Mckinley. There seems to be little to complain about here in regards to the abilities and career paths of the experts with the exception of McKinley, who apparently does little work as an engineer and has a career more oriented towards being a singer/songwriter. A Google search pulls up her web site where she promotes here CD and concert appearances (besides Decoded air dates). Besides that, does one really need an engineer to uncover if Booth survived the tobacco barn fire?

It is a bit amusing that on The History Channel's web site there is currently a picture of Levy, Rolle, and McKinley together (see above) and they are all the same height. The picture below is an earlier one that is no longer on the site. One can see that Rolle is the shortest member of the team with Levy being the tallest and McKinley in the middle. One could say this is a pictorial metaphor for the fakery this show can produce.

Target Patton
This episode caught my attention as it is a good example of how
anti-conspiratorial Decoded can get it as they pretend to conduct an objective investigation. The Patton episode aired on October 25 involves the conspiracy theory that General George S. Patton, instead of dying as a result of injuries sustained in an auto accident after the close of the war, was instead assassinated by a auto crash combined with a sniper. This idea has been floating around a long time and started soon after the legendary General's death. Like anything involving conspiracy, the Decoded team will in the end, drive a stake through it.

Numerous experts were interviewed for the show and the lead-off was author Robert K. Wilcox who wrote Target: Patton. This is probably the premier work on the subject. I decided to get this book as I had the feeling there is more to it than the TV show made note of. I was right. I found the book to be well researched and footnoted. Wilcox claims that a former OSS (Office of Strategic Services) officer, Douglas Bazata of whom he met and interviewed, admitted to being involved with the death of Patton and granted him open access to his numerous diaries and letters, to back up an incredible story of intrigue and high treason. (Decoded makes no mention of this level of documentation or that Bazata passed a polygraph examination in regards to his claims.)

Like JFK, General Patton had cultivated a large group of enemies and also like JFK, he was the odd man out with the other power brokers. The allies had decided to carve up Europe and let the Russians have their half. Patton was the only post-war leader who opposed this and wanted to wage war to send them back to their original borders. He was not one for politics, nor was he a man that cared about the Big Picture as the allied governments and top military leaders such as Eisenhower and Marshall had thrown together.  He also was appalled at the treatment of the defeated German soldiers and the surviving German citizens.

Douglas Bazata’s Background
Joining the Marines in the 1930's, Douglas Bazata worked his way up to eventually be sent out on secret assassination missions. These missions started before the WWII and according to Bazata, extended well after it. His missions didn't only include taking out enemies but also friendlies as well. Anybody that was suspected of being a spy or just some guy who talked to much. A nasty business that left him haunted with moral questions for the rest of his days.

Bazata claimed to have direct contact with the OSS director William Donovan where he says he was given the kill order directly from Donavan. Of course, this allegation will most likely never be proven but author Robert K. Wilcox found a declassified file, an order from Donovan, calling for a meeting with agents that Bazata did attend (pg. 92). Since he was being designated as an independent operator, he was given the freedom to set up a kill, or "weeding" as he called it, as he saw fit.

Once again, Decoded makes no mention of these details and offers little background on Bazata–a curious development because if his story is true, he is one of the major players to a plot.  So there is no context in the story by ignoring a major player in it.  They marginalize his role. Perhaps there was too much here to deal with, too much to dig through. Bazata has a great deal to his story that rings true and many events he notes are accurate.

The Set Up And The Fall
According to Douglas Bazata, his plan was to set up a seemingly impossible set of events, arranging an automobile crash coupled with a rifle shot to Patton as his car drove by. The rifle was to be a special-made air rifle that was capable of firing anything–which included rocks or metal fragments of odd shapes and sizes. Being air powered it was silent and left no standard ballistics evidence behind. On the other hand, it was a one-shot deal and at a moving target, the most difficult thing to accomplish with a firearm.

Bazata also laid claim to another act, probably the most difficult and improbable, of tampering with the car's passenger window to it would remain partially open a few inches to have a clean shot Patton. The admission could almost discredit his story except that a lot of it backed up by a polygraph exam of which he passed. It's unusual that Decoded passed on mentioning this claim in its debunking as it is something that could have stuck.

Ultimately, it all went down as plan except for Patton dying in the accident. Days later Patton would die from a lung embolism, something he had experienced earlier in his life. It should be noted that Patton suffered, besides a fractured vertebra which left him partially paralyzed, a severe Y-shaped cut to his face from the bridge of the nose to his forehead, which was never fully explained. Bazata claimed his shot hit Patton in the face but considered it a botched job–since it he didn't get a kill. It should also be noted that the other passengers, driver Horace Woodring and General Gay, seated by Patton in the rear seat, were not injured.

The Decoded Shooting Experiment
One of the most absurd parts of Decoded happened when Scott Rolle was tasked with seeing if a sniper with an air rifle could take a shot at a moving car, striking the occupant. The trouble with the test is there nothing scientific about it nor does it replicate anything about the alleged event. Rolle's experience with firearms and ballistics testing is unknown. I take it, not much in either. In the test, he does not use an original version, nor a copy, of a military air rifle from that period–a modern rifle is used instead; there is no accounting for weather, windage, range, temperature or recreating the alleged shooter's environment; no examination of shooting angles or positioning; and lastly, no accurate accounting for the speed of Patton's car in the moving part of the shooting test. (The target is hand-pulled on a small cart.)

Not only all of this, but Bazata claims to have used a small square piece of metal for a projectile (pg. 62 ). For the test, Rolle uses what appears to be a rubber object. To be fair, they had to use a rubber projectile since the weapon used for the test couldn't fire anything made of different materials or odd shapes as described by Bazata. They painted themselves in a corner even before the test takes place.

All of this together makes the Decoded ballistics test a joke. If there is an assassin firing at Patton, the experiment simulates nothing that could have been occurring in the actual event from the environmental conditions to the weapon used. This is an example of TV investigative fraud. Nothing about the test is accurate. Even Bazata told Wilcox he was aiming for Patton’s head but the Decoded team insisted he was shooting at the neck. Based on what? Nothing.

In this case, they got the result they wanted, which was to disprove an air powered rifle could be an effective weapon for assassination. And then settle it all by concluding the assassination attempt using an air rifle is now debunked.

What cheek!

In The End (thankfully...)
The Decoded team will wrap up the General Patton assassination affair as a neat and tidy event of a car accident coupled with a lethal lung embolism. Nothing suspicious here, just move along please! The Kennedy assassination is a model of similar events. The Warren Commission swoops in to give the public a similarly clean and uncluttered account of a presidential assassination that was anything but well-ordered. (And ironically, Patton’s car was rushed off to the junkyard as quickly as JFK’s limo was shipped off to Detroit for a rapid make-over. Also, Wilcox discovered that the Cadillac in the Patton museum is not the original vehicle. Decoded makes no mention of this or looks into the mystery.)

The many missing records, conflicting testimony of those involved, Patton's odd head injury, and a host of strange events and disappearing witnesses are never investigated in the show. I know there are time limitations in a one hour (40 minutes without ads) format network program such as this, but the focus is so hell-bent on shrugging off a conspiracy that many important facts are paid no attention to.

As mentioned earlier, the testimony and documentation of Douglas Bazata, a significant player in the book, Target: Patton, is largely ignored and made into a marginalized figure. Even worse, they totally ignored army Intelligence officer Stephen Skubik’s investigation of Patton’s death where Skubik found evidence from reliable Soviet sources of a plot to assassinate Patton. He also believed that Bazata was involved. If Patton were murdered by a plot, Decoded takes the wrong path in determining the truth, if they were even in the hunt for it to begin with. I don’t think they were.

As always I find it amazing that a man can have such a large host of enemies as George S. Patton did, both foreign (Russian, NKVD) and domestic (you-know-who) and can just happen to die in an automobile accident–his enemies are left to celebrate their luck! By denying a possible assassination plot in the death of General Patton it shows how difficult it is for organizations like TV networks to deal with such an event. After all, we are the exceptional People with our Constitution and our Bill of Rights. We don't do "I, Claudius." Or do we?

Brad Meltzer's Decoded is an entertaining show for what it is. Just don’t take its investigations as seriously as the producers want you to. It's entertainment masquerading as investigation.

I can’t wait for the JFK show! What a hoot that will be.

UPDATE: “DECODED - Did they read my book?” Robert K. Wilcox’s rebuttal to Decoded’s phony investigation regarding Patton’s death. Read his enlightening and full rebuttal HERE.

Sources:
Wilcox, Robert K., Target: Patton - The Plot to Assassinate General George S. Patton.

Robert K. Wilcox
http://www.robertkwilcox.com

Scott Rolle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Rolle

Christine McKinley
http://mckinley-music.com/

Buddy Levy
http://buddylevy.com/

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