Joseph Townsend wrote:
>I think it is rather ironic that you claim "history is hired
>bullshit," but you use some semblance of historical referral to make
>your own statements. Furthermore, if you have conclusive evidence as
>to who killed JFK please inform the rest of us. I'm curious.
>If you believe in evidence then you must believe that there is some
>validity to historical research or, at least, it is as valid as any
>other line of research on social, political, cultural and economic
>issues.
Dear Joseph:
I got this from a history professor:
History exists and history is the product of those who research and
write it. There is no such thing as totally objective and neutral history.
Whoever writes history has some bias, some interest, declared or undeclared.
If the reader can discern that bias, he takes this into account. There is no
such thing as "History" in terms of objectified or deified moving force or
fate. That was dealt with by Nicolo Chiaromonte in The Paradox of History.
Or to put it more simply, it was Cleanth Brooks who wrote that history is
an imaginative construct.
You ought to read the Warren Report and follow that with some readings in
Meagher and Weisberg to see how evidence can be first distorted and then
used in a distorted way. Evidence is only what you make of it, and, if you
are being fed tainted evidence, then what does that do for your historical
construct. It's kind of like building a castle on sand, I'd say. In the
case of the Kennedy assassination, our misunderstanding of the matter,
which was based on an acceptance of incorrect (planted, faked, and
altered) evidence, has given us a faulty understanding of who we are, how
we got here, and where we are going.
I do have conclusive evidence as to who did not kill JFK. That would be
one Lee Harvey Oswald.
Consider:
-- Oswald's fingerprints appeared no where on the rifle. It was only upon
the FBI's second examination of the weapon (the third total) that a
partial print was found after the weapon was disassembled. Because of the
way in which the FBI spirited the rifle to Washington, a break occured in
the chain of possessino of the evidence and so these last prints would not
have been admissible in court. But by then it was probably known that
Oswald wouldn't be facing trial; that he would be tried only in the
newspapers -- and that would be enough.
-- The police officers who originally found the rifle on the sixth floor
identified it as a German Mauser ("so stamped")
-- Oswald had no traces of nitrates on his face, indicating he had not
fired a rifle; he did have them on his hands but these can result from
things such as urine or bacon as well as gunpowder. Be that as it may,
there would have been traces of nitrates on his cheeks had he fired a
rifle.
-- There is no evidence that Oswald's alleged rifle was fired on the day
of the assassination.
-- Oswald was a poor shot when in the Marines and constantly practicing;
he had not practiced shooting in years and yet was able to perform a feat
of marksmanship that the world's best have not yet been able to duplicate
even under better conditions than Oswald faced.
- He could not operate and aim the rifle fast enough to get off all the
shots in the time frame that the government's reconstruction specified.
Nor could he match the intervals between some of the shots, i.e., he could
not shoot fast enough.
-- The FBI was afraid to test fire the rifle because of its poor
condition. They feared damage to it. The barrels had a tendency to
explode.
-- The rifle's scope was mounted for a left handed person (Oswald was
right handed) and sighted off to one side. (The scope had to be corrected
with the placement of shims before it was tested.)
-- The order blank that Oswald allegedly used to order his rifle from
Klein's Sporting Goods was for a different model of Mannlicher Carcano
than he supposedly had in his possession.
-- According to the goverrnment's reconstruction of the crime Oswald did
not have enough time to get from the sixth floor to the second floor (and
buy, open, and begin drinking a Coke) by the time he was confronted by a
police officer. Compunding this problem is the fact that the elevator was
unavailable to him and other people on the steps did not see or hear him.
Films takeon of the TSBD shortly after the shooting show movement of boxes
- the fabled sniper's nest was being contrcuted after the fact.
-- The Magic Bullet or CE 399 which supposedly went through Kennedy and
Connally causing a number of wounds and broken bones plainly could not
have done the damage it did and emerged in a pristine condition (no blood
or tissue, only a slight flattening). It appears only to have been fired
into cottom or water. The Warren Commission printed a photo of a bullet
test fired through the wrist of a cadaver and the bullet showed severe
damage. Also, if you taook the amounto of metal recovered from Connally
(and remember not all of the metal was recovered) and added that wieght to
the bullet, it weighed more than it did at its manufacture! The bullet was
found in Parkland on neither Kennedy or Connally's stretcher. Jack Ruby
has been identified as being in Parkalnd at this time. The individual who
discovered the bullet also claims that he found a different bullet
(pointed tip rather than a rounded tip). Remember, this is the key to the
Warren Commission's case.
-- Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry, who maintained ot his dying day: "We
were never able to put Oswald in that window with a rifle."
-- The Altgens' photo which shows Oswald in the doorway of the TSBD as the
first shot hits Kennedy's throat. How could he be in two places at once?
-- The photos of Oswad holding the rifle are clearly forgeries. The
shadows fall in different directions. The chins don't match. The figure is
standing at an almost impossible angle. One can see a line where the head
was superimposed. In different versions of the picture, the body sizes are
smaller but the head remains the same size. A cutout for creating such a
forgery was found in the Dallas Police Department files years after the
crime! And so on. Walt Brown's The People vs. Lee Harvey Oswald shows how
a good lawyer would have destroyed hte government's case or lack thereof.
As for who did it, I have conclusive proof of direction from which the
crime came -- one need only look at who was active in the cover-up. CIA.
FBI, JCS. Rockefeller/Morgan interests. It's also interesting to see how
each of these entitities had their representatives on the Warren
Commission. McCloy -- Rockefeller/Morgan; Dulles -- CIA, Ford -- FBI.
This conclusion comes from trying to re-create the context of Kennedy's
presidency and separate it from the myths that pass for facts and evidence
at this point in time. It's really strange but historians try to
understand or describe Kennedy's presidency and assassination as
context-less events. Or, even, worse, the context is constructed solely of
myth which has been based on erroneous perceptions. These things didn't
happen in a vacuum or were merely coincidences. They were the actions of
real people who were trying to accomplish certain things in an environment
of extreme conflict.
Now ask yourself this: Why has the media never really investigated the
crime. Why have they been content to parrot the government's findings. Why
don't you ever read about any of this in the New York Times?
BTW, for the record, I said that Hunter Thompson said that history is only
so much hired bullshit. Until you have evidence that I was doing anything
other than objectively reporting his words, please do not misprepresent
me. There is nothing on the record as to whether I believe that statement
to be true or false. I believe my statement had more to do with whether
individuals such as Bob McNamara had any self-interest in their accounts
of the period.
If you ask me who I represent, I say nobody. but that's only because
nobody can bake an apple pie like your mom.
For freedom, this is:
Vic Flick
The only alternative (and his other possibilities)