Jim DiEugenio's Review of Vince Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History Now Available at Black Op Radio

Len Osanic at Blackopradio.com has announced that Jim DiEugenio's point by point rebuttal of Vince Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History is now available for download for the affordable price of $10 and recorded in high quality MP3 format.  For that price you get 25 hours of the highly regarded JFK researcher, Jim DiEugenio breaking down Bugliosi’s self-proclaimed, “book of the ages.”

Highly recommended for JFK researchers or anyone interested in the truth.

Download link HERE.

End Note Follies

To me, the most interesting part of Vincent Bugliosi's 1600-page Reclaiming History isn't in the reams of text but in the EndNotes he has on the CD-ROM which accompanies the book. Some have said that this is where Bugliosi places the more difficult aspects of the Kennedy assassination in hope that the reader won't pay enough attention to go back there and look into what he has to say about it. Maybe so. I have a theory, and general feeling, that Bugliosi started out with the End Notes first and the rest of his book was fleshed out from them, or used as a guide for the various ghost writers he employed. Sometimes the End Notes offer additional information on a subject covered in the main text and in other places it's the same information with little elaboration. Or, even information that seems out of place such as the mini-bio on Che Guevara.

Nevertheless, Bugliosi's writing style is evident throughout the Endnotes, filled with sarcasm, straw man arguments, vicious personal attacks on conspiracy oriented researchers and the hypocrisy of accusing others of what he routinely does, which mainly, is omitting facts to make his arguments work.

What follows is a look into some of Bugliosi’s commentary and theory in the End Notes and what lengths (i.e., skating on thin ice) he goes to in his defense of the Warren Commission.

A So Very Comprehensive Investigation
(Endnotes, p.579, Note 1037)

"Because the Warren Commission’s investigation of the assassination was so very comprehensive, it even included a 'limited background investigation' of Officer J. D. Tippit and found nothing suspicious (CE 2985, 26 H 483–492)."

This of course is hilarious. The declarations that Bugliosi makes like this make wonder about the esteemed prosecutor's judgement. Or if he actually believes some of this nonsense he comes up with.

The fact of the matter is, what the Warren Commission did was hardly what one would call a legitimate investigation. After all, they had no independent investors on staff and instead had to rely mainly on Hoover's FBI for the facts in the case. They were supplied with only the evidence that verified the lone gunman theory as espoused by Hoover, the early author of the lone assassin story and the man behind the curtain pulling the levers. So what the Commission did was an evaluation of what they were provided and the FBI did not provide them everything. Meanwhile, the staff lawyers established six major areas of inquiry and four were on Lee Oswald. The actual investigation of JFK's death was conducted by the FBI, with narrow latitudes (no conspiracy) and totally overseen by J. Edgar Hoover.

There are many good books on the machinations of the Warren Commission and one of the best is Gerald McKnight’s Breach of Trust.

The Minox Camera
(Endnotes, p.394, Note 793)

Lots of controversy surrounds this piece of evidence. In a nutshell: Dallas police discover a Minox camera in Oswald's belongings. It’s a popular tool among intelligence operatives. The FBI gets wind of it and asks the Dallas police detective to change the description of it from a camera to a light meter. He refuses. Later, the FBI will rename it a light meter anyway in their evidence inventory. It will remain so for many years.

As Bugliosi notes, researcher John Armstrong made a trip to the National Archives to examine and photograph Oswald's Minox camera. There, he found the camera was sealed up so it couldn't be opened and that there was no way of observing the Dallas Police officer that initiated it or examine the camera's serial number. Armstrong rightly thought this suspicious and as usual, Bugliosi did not. And instead of figuring out why this camera had obviously been tampered with, Bugliosi resorts to his tried and true method of mockery against John Armstrong, who admits owning a Minox camera and asking him, "By the way, John, where were you at 12:30 p.m. on November 22, 1963? What did you say, John? Tulsa, Oklahoma? Can you prove it?"

At least John Armstrong actually made the effort to travel to the National Archives and examine the thing and report what he found. Something Bugliosi obviously didn't bother with as he practices research from the confines of the California state border.

Also, the serial number for the camera is listed as 27259 by the FBI. However, a Minox Corporation spokesman said that only six digit serial numbers were used for cameras sold in the United States. It is not a valid number as spokesman Kurt Lohn said. Once again, Bugliosi does not comment on this discrepancy or seek to resolve the issue.

Howard Brennan's Oswald Standing And Shooting
(Endnotes, p.531, Note 956)

Howard Brennan is one of those star witnesses that the lone nut crowd hang their hats on. Here is one of the few people that actually (or claimed to) see the rifle out the window. Brennan is not without controversy for not only his failure in being able to pick Oswald out of the line-up (claiming fears of personal safety) even after seeing him on TV, but one of his other claims is that he saw Oswald standing up while shooting. However, the window is so low to the floor that Oswald would have been shooting through the upper window glass if that were the case. This is, of course, ridiculous. Bugliosi solves this by having Brennan's position on the ground looking up to the sixth floor giving him an altered perspective for a mistaken impression of a shooter standing at the window. How convenient.

His highly accurate assessment of Oswald’s height at 5’10” is another matter.

Bugliosi ponders: “I don’t believe Brennan was asked this question but we can assume that he estimated Oswald’s height by extrapolation from what he could see of Oswald’s upper body.”

The subject of an early description of Oswald’s height is an ongoing controversy as the source of this information is confusing. Bugliosi is saying that Brennan could accurately judge Oswald's height by seeing him from the waist up–only. I don't see how this is even remotely possible or how Bugliosi could make such a claim and expect it to be taken seriously. If Oswald is leaning on the box at the window shooting, he’s not even going to be seen from the waist up–more like the shoulder up. So it’s impossible to make such a determination from Brennan’s viewing angle.

Typical of Bugliosi to give Brennan a pass. If he were a witness contradicting the official story, Bugliosi would tear him or her to shreds for getting off script, such as he did to Acquilla Clemons who he calls a "kook" twice, with no citation, once in main text and again in the End Notes (p.52, Note 78). (Clemons claimed to have seen two men involved in the Tippet slaying, where most witnesses see only one suspect.)

So here is a witness who said he saw Oswald shooting from the six floor of the TSBD, saw no flash or recoil, couldn’t ID Oswald from the police line-up then later changed his mind and said it really was Oswald when under oath to the Warren Commission. It’s funny to read Bugliosi’s explanations for witnesses as weak as Howard Brennan and what lengths he has flay about to work out the kinks.

Mr. Bugliosi, you make a fine contortionist if you ever took up the trade.

Judyth Vary Baker Character Assassination
(Endnotes, p.539, Note 978)

Bugliosi saves some of his best (or worst) drive-by character assassination for Judyth Vary Baker. Baker's story of being Lee Oswald's lover in the summer of 1963 is not without controversy. She is one of those figures in JFK research that polarizes the community into camps of true believers and true disbelievers. I have given her a book Me and Lee, a good review here, as she does seem to have a good grasp of the JFK case, and seems to fill in a lot of holes in the story of Oswald’s life in the summer of 1963. But even I have my doubts about some elements of her story. She claims to be involved with important events yet nobody documents her being there. One such event is the Oswald scuffle with anti Castro Cubans when he was handing out FPFC pamphlets. She claims to have been there on the street as a witness but nobody else reports this and the TV film footage does not reveal her. Her story is a long and convoluted tale that goes off into all kinds of tangents and Bugliosi does give a good accounting of the various winding threads.

The basic story is, Judyth, a whiz-kid science geek and Lee become star-crossed lovers and along the way Judyth becomes aware that Lee is an undercover agent (CIA and FBI) and gets wrapped up in a plot to assassinate the president. His goal according to Judyth is not to back out but to stay in and hopefully defeat the plot. He obviously fails and is framed as the patsy.

Her accounting of Lee Oswald makes him appear as a heroic figure, one seldom seen in the annals of JFK assassination research. Though it seems strange for this unsung hero to enter a movie theater with a loaded .38, resist arrest, assault a police officer, and attempt to shoot said police officer in the face.

Bugliosi can't help himself with her. He saves some of his best/worst invectives for driving his nails into her coffin. He starts out calling her, "Judyth Vary (as in very silly) Baker. " He further states, "Judyth’s story is so absurd that it is not worthy of citations to sources..." So unworthy he then proceeds to ramble on for 21 paragraphs about her.

I think it is well established that she and Oswald both worked at the same time at William B. Reily and Company, Inc., a coffee company. But not for Bugliosi who doubts she worked there and says in this Note that she never establishes this face, and gives as proof, no check stubs with her name on it. However, in her latest book, Me and Lee, she does feature a Reily coffee company W2 form with her name on it. So she is there as an employee the same time Oswald is.

Bugliosi can't just disagree with somebody with a story to tell, and in this case, an off-script story from the one the Warren Report relates. No, he has to be as ugly as possible about it. In this Note, he ridicules Judyth Baker with the same relish a twisted mind does when pulling the wings off a fly.

[Note: Currently Judyth Vary Baker has her own page and forum on Facebook. It’s basically queen Judyth holding court with her loving followers doting on her every word. I hate to say it but there is a preponderance of ignorance expressed by many of the posters there as well as lack of maturity. Poor Martin Shackelford is trying to set the record straight and is being told, literally, to blow it “out of his ass.” It’s an uphill battle against an army of cultists and I don’t how he keeps it up. It’s like trying to herd cats. To his credit, he remains very civil. Keep up the good fight Martin!]

The Attack on Saundra Spencer's Credibility
(Endnotes, pp. 264-268)

As Bugliosi states on p.268:
"We know she’s wrong when she says the photographs she saw show a 'blown-out chunk' in the center of the back of the president’s head. Why? Because apart from the observations of all three autopsy surgeons, the official autopsy photographs and X-rays conclusively, and without question, depict the body of President Kennedy at the time of the autopsy and show none of what Spencer described."

A strange response. Navy Photographic technician Saundra Spencer was responsible for processing the autopsy films. She said she saw a massive blow-out at the back of Kennedy's head in one of the processed images. However, the important point here is that she is not the only witness to see this wound. In fact, it's one of the biggest, ongoing controversies in the annals of the JFK assassination. Just about everybody that has close contact with John Kennedy's body saw the large rear head wound from all of the Parkland doctors and nurses, to the two FBI Special Agents, Sibert and O'Neil observing and taking notes, the two autopsy techs, Jenner and O'Conner, the many Dealey Plaza witnesses, to even the mortician who prepared Kennedy's body. And this is just a partial list of witnesses.

It comes down to this–the people with the responsibility to document the massive head wound, the three pathologists, Drs Humes, Boswell and Finck did not. This evokes a central mystery of the case. They were all military, so were they pressured to conform to the lone gunman theory early on? Some people think so. Basically, we are left with two camps of eminently qualified experts that don't agree. And frankly, there are more expert witnesses that saw the large wound to the back of Kennedy’s head than did not.

As far as autopsy photographs go, there is a lot of monkey business going on there. Photographer John Stringer, when examining his photographs in the National Archives noted numerous problems. For example, he says the negatives he saw were not of the same brand-name film he used–which was Kodak. The film in the Archives is Ansco. Apparently, the negatives he was looking at are copies of the originals. And who would do that? My guess is the Kennedy family. After the autopsy they got their hands on all autopsy materials such as all film and tissue samples–yes the brain too. After negotiations, they returned back the films to the government as a deed gift but were allowed to keep the tissue samples. I think they are the people who made the copies and have the originals locked away.

And on top of that, Stringer says there are photographs he took that are missing. Also, there are other photographs he says he didn't take, such as the bottom of the brain. Who was the other photographer? At any rate, Stringer's experiences are just the beginning of the tampering of the photographic evidence in the case. Dr. David Mantik has a very good essay, "20 Conclusions After 9 Visits" where he uncovers the tampering of the X-ray films in the National Archives. Bugliosi has read it and knows what the implications are and does nothing about it.

Saundra Spencer is a highly credible witness to there being a large blow-out to the right rear of Kennedy's head. Bugliosi attempts to discredit her are weak and speaks of the desperate path he walks in defending the sloppy job that the Warren Commission did. Does he really believe what he writes?

Che Guevara Biography
(Endnotes, p.998, Note 1345)
And what did the romantic communist revolutionary have to do with the JFK assassination? Answer: Absolutely nothing! This note is entitled "CIA’s attempt to murder Castro," though there is little written on that. Instead it ends up being a mini-biography of Che Guevara. This Bugliosi intellect works in mysterious ways that mere mortals can not begin to fathom.

For Now...
There are places where he doesn't expand on any new information and repeats what is in the main text. Also, Bugliosi appears to have left the hard to suss out issues for the End Notes. Such as the controversy regarding Oswald's two wallets where he struggles with the issue and then concludes it was all a confusing mistake and the second wallet actually belonged to policeman Tippit. Or the lack of documentation for the bullet, the famous CE-399. Bugliosi thinks Special Agent Barnwell Odom simply forgot (a contention he denied to researchers when asked).

Bugliosi Takes To The Airwaves

Vincent Bugliosi is out hawking a new book, Divinity of Doubt: The God Question
and appeared recently on the Alex Jones show. The former LA prosector gained fame in the late 1960s for putting away Charlie Manson and his gang for the Tate-Labianca murders. Years later Bugliosi gained the ire of JFK conspiracy researchers with his 2007 book, Reclaiming History. Ever boastful, Bugliosi called this 1600+ book (plus over 900 pages on CD-ROM) his “Magnus Opus” on the JKF assassination and did so once again on Jones’ radio program. The book itself is rightly referred to as a door stop and it belly flopped in the marketplace. It is no longer in print.

There is something basically smarmy about Bugliosi with his high-pitched slick talking lawyer swag. His arguing style, and to a certain extent, his writing style about the assassination bare similarity to that of a stage magician with slight of hand tricks and a pretty leggy model on side. Throw in some straw men to shoot down, plus an added dose of vitriol towards naysayers (i.e., conspiracy theorists) and the naivety of an audience that might not be familiar the particulars in the case, and he comes off looking sharp and on-game. I’ve called him the “King of the cherry pickers” as he often picks the evidence that supports the Warren Commissions’s lone gunman conclusion and largely ignores (when not discrediting) any contrary evidence.

Alex Jones tried to get Bugliosi to talk some about other issues, particularly the Kennedy assassination, but it quickly became apparent that Bugliosi didn’t want to entertain the notion, stating the lack of time to properly get into the issue. Jones did get him to talk about the shots from the grassy knoll, getting the standard reply, “There is no evidence of anybody seeing a shooter on the grassy knoll.” More on that in a few paragraphs.

But take notice of Bugliosi’s modus operandi–he says there is nobody seeing a shooter on the knoll. But what about the witnesses that heard shots coming from the knoll? He ignores them using the classic Bugliosi pass. The fact is, there are over fifty people that heard shots from knoll; everybody from Abraham Zapruder making his famous film, to Phil Willis whose photographs appeared in Look magazine to Bill and Gayle Newman lying on the curb protecting their children from shots they say they heard coming from the knoll. As it happens, too many to mention here.

This very similar to how Bugliosi dismisses the whole idea of there being a shooter on the knoll at all. He does this by stating the shooter has the wrong angle and that the kill shot would have passed through Kennedy’s head from ear to ear, rather than laterally from the front to back. Seems reasonable upon first assessment and I have to admit I was taken in by this when I first read it. But there is a catch–Bugliosi places the shooter in the wrong position behind the picket fence to being with! He does not believe any witness testimony so invents this scheme. My grandmother used to call this, “Having your cake and eating it too.” Indeed. Beware of this man’s arguments as they appear well upon first glance, but fade when more light is focused upon them.

Going back to the witnesses that saw activity on the grassy knoll, Tip O’Neill, on page 178 in his book, “Man of the House” cites both Kennedy aides Dave Powers and Kenny O’Donnell as saying they saw smoke rising from behind the picket fence on the knoll. And most importantly, they both heard shots coming from behind the fence as well.

However, the Master Cherry Picker not need ponder such difficulties. The song and dance must go on.

Sources
YouTube links:

Bugliosi on Alex Jones, May 11.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LD46_HQtzM

Jim Marrs rebuttal, May 12.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ9clQ-QA4k

James DiEugenio’s Take Down of Reclaiming History

At last, I’ve been waiting for a lengthy rebuttal of Vince Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History and it has arrived at last. Noted Kennedy assassination researcher and author James DiEugenio has published a seven-part piece at CTKA.net taking apart Bugliosi’s five-pound tome. I’ve long held that Bugliosi’s zealous defense of Warren Commission clouds his judgment of the case and James DiEugenio work bares that out. Masterfully done, DiEugenio dissects Bugliosi’s arguments piece by piece, striping them down to the bare bones and showing how wanting they are in substance. Bugliosi, who promises to never omit or distort any facts, and precedes to do just that through 1,600 pages and nearly a thousand pages more of end notes. Bugliosi’s hypocrisy is evident throughout, such as comparing conspiracy believers with people that believe that Elvis is still alive. Bugliosi is on the record for believing in a conspiracy in the death of Robert Kennedy but that is somehow more reasonable and doesn’t make him a conspiracy nut? What cheek!

DiEugenio pounds Reclaiming History hard through 7 web pages. Make no mistake; these are seven very long pages. It takes a long time to slog through it all but makes for fascinating reading. James DiEugenio’s presentation and analysis is quite impressive. He displays a keen mind and is in full possession of the minutia of facts of the sprawling Kennedy assassination case. He’s a gifted writer as well. I can find no better resarcher to tackle this subject and make a conclusive rebuttal to Reclaiming History.

I think more than anything else, DiEugenio shows that Bugliosi’s reasoning is steeped in a deep denial of the facts. He has to as he is presenting a nice, clean story as the Warren Commission did. Unfortunately the JFK assassination is anything but simple. Even in the most minor and ordinary of events strange and mysterious things abound. DiEugenio illustrates this well in the issue of Oswald buying a money order and mailing it. Sounds line a mundane detail, doesn’t it? It is not. Oswald has to get to the post office some 11 blocks away from work—one way. His work records show him not leaving the building the morning the March 12, 1963. Did he sneak out and get a friend such as Ruth Paine to drive him there? That is unknown how he got the post office that day but his handwriting is evident, using his Hidell alias on the envelope and money order. Postal records indicate Oswald had a window of between 8:30 to 10:30 AM to purchase the money order and mail it. Incredibility, the letter arrives at Kline’s Sporting Goods the very next day in Chicago. This is long before FedEx! Try to get a letter from Dallas to Chicago that fast today. Even odder is the money order is deposited in Kline’s bank account but with the wrong date on the deposit slip of February 12, instead of March 13. The money order has no internal bank stamping on the back from the First Bank of Chicago, as it should have had. Also, Oswald’s fingerprints were not recovered off of it either. Here we have a typical exercise in the mysterious nature of investigating this case. We see weird actions on Oswald’s end of things but it branches out into other areas as well.

Just the Warren Commission before him, Bugliosi ignores all of these details in order to tell his nice and simple narrative. And he just doesn’t do it here; he does it throughout his book. The denials turn into a parody of itself when Bugliosi tackles the more suspicious incidents. He pulls every lawyer trick out of his toolbox to the point of being intellectually dishonest. For example Bugliosi dismisses Oswald’s trip to register to vote in Clinton, Louisiana, in the company of Clay Shaw and Davie Ferrie, by asking where the witnesses are at and why didn’t the media report it? As if they would in a town that has no local newspaper! Here DiEugenio excels in showing Bugliosi as a lazy investigator who apparently never went to Clinton to talk to anybody. DiEugenio did and found a host of witnesses that still remember seeing the only white guy in line the day they had a huge turnout of African Americans for a CORE sponsored voter registration drive.

The only thing I take issue with is James DiEugenio’s treatment of Vince Bugliosi’s character. Maybe it has nothing to do with the work at hand and he chose not to mention it. DiEugenio says he admires Bugliosi perhaps for his good work in putting away Charles Manson and his followers for their heinous crimes. Probably best not to dirty one’s hands as Bugliosi does in his endless vitriol and insults he hurls when he compares conspiracy believers to be in the same league with Elvis worshipers and other general kooks.

But I think character matters. Shouldn’t it when a man promising to tell us the truth who has been sued for slander and lost? This is precisely what happened to Bugliosi when he stalked and slandered his milkman, Herb Weisel, who he thought was having an affair his wife. Bugliosi used his position of deputy district attorney to get their unlisted phone number and to locate Weisel’s place of employment. In 1973 Bugliosi settled for $12,500, cash, paid in increments of one hundred dollar bills. He also wanted numerous court documents including nine untranscribed depositions and all court reporter’s stenographer tapes. To say you settled, is tantamount to saying you won without having to admit anything. It’s a classic lawyer’s non-admission, admission of guilt. Only here, Bugliosi can only fake a win. The lawyer in the case, George V. Denny, charged that Bugliosi perjured himself abundantly in his deposition. He also called Bugliosi a “one man mini-Watergate” for covering up the ordeal by getting hold of the court records. Bugliosi also required as part of the settlement a $15,000 payment from all parties and attorneys who disclosed the terms of the agreement.

Okay, I’ll spare you the lurid details about an alleged assault on Virginia Cardwell, Bugliosi’s then pregnant girlfriend. Assault charges were filed and then dropped. You can read about that at the link below. Needless to say, both incidents portray an interesting portrait of the man who has bragged about writing the “book of the ages” on the Kennedy assassination. A man as flawed in character as the many people he casts such harsh judgment of in his book as if he has the God given right to do so.

Really Mr. Bugliosi…who put you up to this?

Sources:
http://www.ctka.net/2008/bugliosi_review.html; Bugliosi, Vincent, Reclaiming History; Pease and DiEugenio, The Assassinations.

Bugliosi character issues:
http://tatelabianca.blogspot.com/2006/06/bugging-installment-one.html

assassination

The Grassy Knoll Shooter Does Have the Angle

In an earlier article I looked into one the legends of the Kennedy assassination—the grassy knoll. Like many aspects of the crime there lies an apparent contradiction between witness reports and what actually happened. After much examination I concluded in that piece that the shooter’s angle was off and would have passed through Kennedy’s head from ear to ear and not the lateral wound down the right side of the head as seen in the autopsy report, pathologist testimony, and photographs.

I have since changed my view of this. I thought at the time Vince Bugliosi in his book Reclaiming History, had the right analysis. I was always impressed with the witness accounts—it was the study of the topographical map of Dealey Plaza and Bugliosi’s cherry picking of the data that turned me on a new path.

The former prosecutor of Charley Manson is king of the misdirection in his arguments, which must have served him well in court. He is one of the major proponents of the lone gunman and does not believe anybody was shooting other than Oswald from behind, six floors up. He discounts all witnesses of the grassy knoll shots with a flourish and in some instances ignores them altogether.

Bugliosi resorts to inventing evidence to support his argument. In his map he places a black dot to be the position of a sniper from behind the fence, positioned near the corner behind a live oak. Suitably, any shooter there would not have the right angle. The bullet could have passed through Kennedy’s head and possibly struck his wife as well.

However, Bugliosi concocts the position. For example on my map, it’s apparent that a shooter on the grassy knoll, if further west, nearer the railroad overpass would have the right bearing for a frontal shot. Bugliosi has to make it all up. He can’t use witness testimony as he has dismissed them all.

So Bugliosi has the shooter not having the right angle because he has placed his gunman in the wrong place to begin with! And then presents this as further proof that shots from the front could not happen. This Bugliosi character is a slick one. He would make a good illusionist with the clever props he uses. It makes me wonder how much evidence he fabricated in court to win his many convictions.

In my example I am placing my red dot in play. Conversely, I am going on witness testimony. We have the following’:

• Abraham Zapruder said he heard shots from his right as he filmed the assassination. That places a shooter on the knoll.
• The Newman family seen on the grass covering their children because they heard shots coming behind them from the knoll.
• Eight railroad workers on the overpass saw smoke from the knoll area.
• Senator Yarbrough’s comments on smelling gun smoke from the knoll as they passed by.
• Two of Kennedy’s top aides said they heard shots from the front.
• Orville Nix who filmed the assassination from across Elm. Said the shots were from the knoll but in his CBS interview, much to his dismay, the tape was edited to have him saying it was from the School Book Depository Building.
• The Philip Willis family, which includes his wife and two daughters. Daughter Rosemary is the girl in the red dress that can be seen running along Elm at the beginning of the Zapruder film.
  

This is just a small sampling of the witness accounts of shots being fired from the knoll area. There are many more. The final witness is the Zapruder film itself, documenting Kennedy’s backward head movement from an apparent frontal shot. Of course I am making the assumption that a shooter was there at my red dot, or at last near it. The purpose being, that the right shot can be achieved if there is a sniper present on the knoll and in the right place.

After all, who was standing behind the fence? Witnesses report being shooed away by men claiming to be Secret Service agents. Meanwhile, the Secret Service claims to have no agents in the area of the knoll. Shame, as they should have been there. It would have been quite a scene to have a real SS agent confront the phony one. I might add that following the assassination the Secret Service required all agents to turn in their ID badges. So the reports of counterfeit SS agents must have been taken seriously somewhere up the chain of command. If there is a conspiracy then that area behind the fence must be cleared.

I am convinced a shooter placed behind the fence near where it meets railroad overpass has the right position to produce Kennedy’s fatal head wounds. Bugliosi’s positioning near the corner of the fence is based on his intent to build a case for the lone nut scenario and nothing more.


For those interested in doing their own study of this issue, the overhead drawing of Dealey Plaza prepared for the Warren Commission is available HERE.

References
Buglosi, Vincent, Reclaiming History; Talbot, Michael, Brothers; Mars, Jim, Crossfire; YouTube.com, Zapruder film; maryferrell.org;

assassination

Vince Bugliosi: The Sins of Omission and Commission

I saw Vince Bugliosi, former Manson prosecutor and author of the five pound, 1600+ page, Reclaiming History being interviewed on FOX around the time his book was just out. He came off as an affable, sincere guy. Then when I got his book and started reading, I was surprised to see his Dr. Jeckel to Mr. Hyde conversion. In Reclaiming History, Bugliosi is a one man wrecking ball of conspiracy theory and Warren Commission critics. When facts and logic don’t prevail, sarcasm, ridicule, and insults will suffice. He says if you do not accept that Oswald was the lone gunman then you are stupid. Really, is all of this vitriol necessary? It is as if Bugliosi is not so much settling history as he is settling scores.

His arrogance knows no bounds. Nor does his hypocrisy when he charges James Tague, the third man wounded that day, of trying to make money off his experiences when Bugliosi is hawking a $50 book. What cheek!

Vince Bugliosi is so militantly anti-conspiratorial that it clouds his judgment. He has to have everything in order like a compulsive-excessive. There must be no doubts about anything. There can be no sub-conspiracies, such as Clay Shaw using the alias Clay Bertrand and that Shaw was a CIA operative. In Bugliosi‘s world everybody is honorable and forthright—even Hoover and Johnson. This leads him to make preposterous statements that make no sense for a man gifted with such a keen mind. In other places, he seems to have no knowledge of the material he writes about and makes statements that are contradictory in his narrative.

Bugliosi’s whole approach to the Kennedy assassination is virtually the same as that of the Commission he wishes to defend. If facts and research don’t bolster the lone gunman then debunk it or ignore it all together. The Warren Commission decided via a secret meeting in January of 1964, that for various political reasons (see my piece, The Investigation That Never Was) they would basically run with Lee H. Oswald as the sole assassin and no other conspirators. Bugliosi takes the same path, though his is not as political. He states in his first chapter that Oswald is “guilty as sin.” From here, no objective investigation is going to be conducted within these pages, despite Bugliosi’s claims otherwise (the WC did likewise). The evidence will be made to conform to the theory. If it doesn’t, it is debunked or disregarded. And Bugliosi turns a blind eye to a lot in Reclaiming History.

The Bugliosi Silent Treatment
One of the “silent treatments” Bugliosi hands out is his treatment of the Joseph Dolce ballistics wounds research. Dolce, chairman of the Army’s Wounds Ballistic Board with over 20 years experience studying ballistic wounds, was contacted by the WC to do tests to determine if bullets striking human bone would maintain their shape as the “pristine bullet” that was recovered at the Parkland Hospital. After hitting ten cadaver wrists with Oswald’s rifle, Dolce concluded all ten were “markedly deformed.” Not a single one resembled what is known as CE 399—the magic bullet.

Joseph Dolce was ignored. Since his research contradicted a major piece of evidence in the “official” scenario of assassination, he was never called to testify under oath nor was his investigation ever mentioned in the 26 volumes of evidence or hearings. Years later, Dolce would be ignored by the House Select Committee on Assassinations as well. Not until Dolce was interviewed in 1986 did information finally appear on his work what he uncovered that the Commission did not want to see or hear.

Bugliosi’s treatment of the Dolce affair is the same. In fact, no mention of the cadaver experiment is mention in his book, or for that matter, in the nearly 1,000 pages of End Notes that is on the accompanying disc. Bugliosi refers to Dolce as a consultant but never as the chairman of the Army’s Wounds Ballistic Board. Dolce’s work is a major contribution in the investigation Kennedy’s death and Bugliosi commits a major slight of said work to maintain the lone gunman premise.

No Hearts of Stone
It was uncovered by researchers that the Warren Commission’s transcript of their interview with the President’s widow was edited. In fact, the original has the notation: “Reference to wounds deleted.” But no reason was given for the deletion. Researchers finally got the full transcription in the early 70s and many were outraged by this suppression of witness testimony that never made its way to any of the investigations—WC or HSCA.

Here are Jackie Kennedy’s comments that were deleted: “I was trying to hold his hair on. From the front there was nothing—suppose there must have been. But from the back you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on.”

A very telling statement because Mrs. Kennedy is the first and closest witness to the President’s head wounds. And most importantly, she is saying he has a rear head wound that must be attended to. She places herself on the side of the Parkland doctor’s and their medical staff that witnessed a huge rear wound in the back of Kennedy’s head. The autopsy physicians (Humes, Boswell, Fink) claim in their official report and sworn testimony that the rear of the head had a small wound the diameter of the bullet Oswald alleged to have fired. Of course Kennedy’s head wounds are a major controversy that rages to this day with two sets of doctors in disagreement.

Unbelievably, Bugliosi states on page 29 of his End Notes,
“Frankly, the only thing the critics have proved from this episode is that the Warren Commission members were not made of stone.”

Frankly, the only thing Bugliosi proves from his remark is that he doesn’t give a damn what the truth is. If he were, he would be as incredulous as the critics are, but strangely, he is indifferent to this deception committed on the public by the Warren Commission.

The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald
Bugliosi goes on and on about his mock trial he did on TV, held in London of Oswald. Guess who wins? The prosecution led by Vincent Bugliosi, of course. He uses this as further evidence of Oswald’s guilt. Bugliosi had the nerve to state that his fake TV trial has “historical importance” because is more reliable than both the Warren Commission Report and the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

But it gets even more outlandish when he looks the jurors in the eye and tells them this is “one of the most important trials in the history of this country.” The jurors are all actors; the county is England where this charade took place. There is no defendant; he’s dead. The witnesses are under oath but not an oath that means anything as no one will go to jail for perjury. I stated earlier that Bugliosi’s arrogance has no bounds. Perhaps I understated it!

Mark Lane Gets a Sucker Punch
Attorney Mark Lane, one of the Warren Commission’s first critics and author of many best selling books on the Kennedy assassination comes under heavy fire from Bugliosi. The attacks start out mild and soon ramp up to the malicious. It looks pretty bad for Lane till you read his rebuttal at www.ctka.net. If Lane is to be believed, and I believe him to be truthful, Bugliosi blunders bad enough to be sued for slander. This would be nothing new for the former prosecutor who was sued for slander in the early 70s and settled to the tune of $15,000. Bugliosi accuses Lane of portraying himself as a Dallas police officer to arrange an interview with a witness. Lane says the transcript clearly shows him identifying himself by his real name “Mark Lane.” I do not know why Lane is not suing for such an outrageous statement.

What all of his demonstrates are severe flaws in Bugliosi character. He is so bound to discredit the critics that he resorts to imaginary tales. His fact checking takes a dive as well with many mistakes. It shows him to be a deceitful and strange personality and casts doubt on his aim to objectively find out what the truth is in this case.

The Invisible Man
Bugliosi likes to attack the more credible and accredited witnesses that don’t go along with the script. A case in point is the President’s personal physician Dr. George Burkley. Dr. Buckley is an interesting witness as he was in the motorcade when the shots were fired, was present at the Parkland Hospital trauma ward as the doctors there tried to resuscitate the dying President, signed the death certificate (with the throat injury described as an entry wound), accompanied the body back on Air Force One to Bethesda Naval for the autopsy.

Bugliosi attempts to discredit Dr. Burkley by attacking his positioning of the back wound, listed in the death certificate at being located at the third thoracic vertebrae. Bugliosi cites testimony from the HSCA claiming that x-rays showed that the first thoracic vertebrae at the point of entry on the back. That is way to high. Bugliosi is trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat for this one. First of all, an X-ray is not going to show the bullet wound since there is no bone damage. Secondly, there are no bullet fragments so no path of the bullet’s trajectory can be traced. Thirdly, no flesh wound would be visible on an X-ray. And lastly, Dr. Burkley did not make the call on the back wound position—that was determined by the Parkland physicians. Dr. Burkley was there as a witness and to sign the death certificate.

If Bugliosi were attempting a fair and honest investigation, he would be better served in examining why Dr. Burkley, a key witness, was never interviewed by the FBI, or the Secret Service, and never called to testify under oath to the Warren Commission. His name is never mentioned in the 912-page report, nor is the death certificate reprinted in the 26 volumes of complied evidence. Even the autopsy face sheet, which he signed as a witness, has his name erased (the original in the Nation Archives has his signature on it). Why is this man such a pariah? Possibly because he didn’t go along with the Government’s official story?

Dr. Burkley is the Warren Commission’s Invisible Man. He is Bugliosi’s Invisible Man as well.

The Limousine Blunder
Bugliosi’s rabid anti-conspiracy notions lead him down strange paths of denial that are easily debunked. A good example of this is cleaning of the Presidential limousine at Parkland Hospital by the Secret Service. Bugliosi can’t believe the Secret Service would do this before contacting the FBI to first investigate because, after all, the limo is a rolling crime scene. In Bugliosi’s own words: "But on the face of it, it appears highly unlikely that the Secret Service would wash away the "crime scene" before the FBI criminalists could examine the car, and there is no testimony or statement from anyone that this was done." (Page 33, End Notes, #54)

But first, Bugliosi misrepresents what happened. He claims that, on the word of unnamed “critics” the back seat of the limousine was washed out. Color photographs clearly shows there was plenty of gore left in that area. It was the rear trunk and bumper that was cleaned off. Never the less, this is destruction of material evidence at the crime scene and should not have been. The tissue and blood matter on the trunk would leave traces of the kill shot’s trajectory. In a few days the limousine would be hastily shipped off to Detroit for refurbishing, further destroying any further evidence.

Then Bugliosi implies there are no photographs taken of the event. They are—a simple Google search reveals them. A New York Times photographer was present at the scene of the cleaning and snapped the photos. In the photographs, SS agents and Dallas police officers can be seen plainly cleaning off the car with a bucket of water present near the car. Oddly, Bugliosi lists in his bibliography, Death in Dealey Plaza. This book has one of photos. By listing this book in his bibliography, that is tantamount to claiming he read the book for his research. Did he really? Or he just can’t handle the truth that things are out of place here?

Bugliosi, already in deep water, goes even further. He claims there were no witnesses to the event. In his own words: “…there is no testimony or statement from anyone that this was done." Wrong! Three print journalists were there as witnesses and all wrote articles that were published at that time. Most noted of the three was Tom Wicker of the New York Times. His account is easily found by a Google search. He clearly describes the incident complete with the bloody bucket of water situated by the car.

Mr. Bugliosi, do you think we don’t have Internet connections out here and can’t double-check what you write?

In Closing
This piece is not meant to be a complete recounting of Reclaiming History’s errors. A Google search will find a load of expert critiques of Bugliosi’s book. In the future I am sure someone will publish a more complete analysis of Bugliosi’s approach to the Kennedy assassination. Despite the flaws Reclaiming History is a great research volume for students of the assassination to study. However, Bugliosi fails in not conducting a fair investigation of the facts and letting his own personal animosity intrude.

Despite Vince Bugliosi being rabidly anti conspiracy he is on the record supporting a conspiracy in the death of the President’s brother Robert in 1968. Ironic that he gets one and not the other.


Sources: Reclaiming History, Reclaiming History End Notes (disc/PDF), Death in Dealey Plaza, Breach of Trust, MarryFerrell.org, Google

assassination

Book Review: Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi, Jr.

Reclaiming History is ultimately a flawed masterpiece. It’s a huge, heavy book of 1600+ pages (not to mention another 1,000 pages of end notes on disc). Bugliosi, the famous prosecutor of Charles Manson, attempts in grand style to deal with every detail ever written about in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. A “book of the ages” as the author boasts in interviews. However, like the Warren Commission that he so doggedly defends, this is not an objective search for the truth. Bugliosi states right up front that Oswald is “guilty as sin” and it spirals down from there in a long, detailed, prosecutorial brief in defense of the Warren Commission.

At first, Bugliosi's logic is quite impressive. His powers of deduction are unimpeachable, as if he were a flesh and blood version of Sherlock Holmes. He slices his way through conspiracy theories (and their authors) one after the other with skill and precision that he honed for years as a prosecutor. No rank amateur he. Off with their heads! But ultimately, the author’s arguments are straw men, easily burned when exposed to the flame.

Here is an example: In regards to the mysterious deaths of Kennedy assassination witnesses, Bugliosi states that in his experience as a prosecutor, a criminal suspect would most likely rather kill a witness before they speak. In this case, the witnesses have all talked repeatedly for many years. Makes sense. However, Bugliosi leaves out the other side of the argument. If this were true, then there would be no need for Federal witness protection programs. And what are they for? For material witnesses who gave their testimony and are under threat of death from the bad guys—after they talked. Here, Bugliosi simply ignores the other side of the argument to preserve his own.

And it’s like this over and over again.

For someone writing a book for the ages, many details are surprisingly flawed, even simple ones. On one page Bugliosi states there are 13 warehouse workers in the schoolbook depository building. On the same page, next paragraph, he states there are 16. He asserts that Huntley and Brinkley reported from ABC when they were on NBC. In the book he correctly refers to Dr. Ebersol as the acting chief of Radiology at Bethesda Naval. Then in the endnotes on disc he refers to him again but this time as an x-ray technician. Quite a demotion there! Sorry to be so picky but after all, this is the Book of Ages, meant to end all discussion, right? Hardly.

In some sections Bugliosi seems to have no grasp of the subject matter. For example, he agrees with HSCA pathology panel’s positioning of Kennedy’s back wound, with it being lower than the neck wound. He then goes on to say there are autopsy photographs which show the opposite—higher back and lower throat—which he then precedes to agree with. A Google search brings up the very same photo in question and shows this not true at all. Go see for yourself. In fact, he is being quite sloppy here. Why? Is somebody else doing the writing? At times Bugliosi acts as if we, the reading public, don’t have access to the Internet that allow us to double check what he is talking about.

More alarming are the blatant misrepresentation of facts (too numerous to go into here). Here is one of my favorite examples: Bugliosi claims that the Secret Service did not wash off the presidential limousine at the Parkland Hospital (before the FBI could examine it) and there were no witnesses to this event. Again, a simple Google search proves otherwise. Not only are there pictures of this washing taking place (a NY Times photographer was there) but there were three journalists who witnessed the event that have reported this event (the most famous—Tom Wicker of the NY Times who described the incident taking place in 1963). Needless to say, it is quite a goof on Bugliosi's part as it is easily disproved. Ironic, as he spends so many pages looking down his nose at conspiracy theorists, treating them as rank amateurs, while he does his fair share amateurish deeds as well.

Perhaps, in his zeal to set the record straight and assure the public that the Warren Commission got it right, any errors by them have to be overlooked or ignored. Such as when it was discovered by independent researchers that somebody had altered the transcript of Mrs. Kennedy’s interview—some thirty times and involving some crucial information on the number of shots and the Presidents fatal head wound. Bugliosi gives the Commissioners a pass, declaring that it was proof that their “heart’s were not made of stone.” Please! This is falsification of sworn witness testimony.

Bugliosi’s vain, boastful, personality almost overrides the narrative. He is a maze of contradictions. He is openly disdainful of conspiracy theorists calling them nuts, and kooky, and so on. He chastises them for making rooky mistakes, all the while making plenty of his own. After reading hundreds of pages of the continual vitriol on almost every page, it gets old. It’s as if he is not reclaiming history but settling scores. Oddly, Bugliosi is on the record for supporting a conspiracy in the death of the president’s brother, Robert Kennedy, which of course, makes him a conspiracy theorist too. Interesting that he gets one and not the other.

Despite it’s faults, Reclaiming History remains an excellent source book for students of the JKF assassination. The first section has a very good play-by-play score of events leading up to and past the crime. But one has to take it for what it is. Ultimately, one must do one’s own research into this issue, as cloudy and confusing at it can get. Bugliosi makes some valid arguments in defense of the official version of events, but often has to resort to ignoring contradictory evidence, cherry picking witness testimony, and at times, downright deception in order to arrive at his conclusions. At other junctures he flat out misrepresents evidence or presents assumptions as facts. Finally, Bugliosi makes too much of his right to be the author of the definitive truth on the Kennedy assassination. This, from a man who was sued for slander in the early 1970s and had to settle out for court for $15,000.