Here is the essence of my disagreement with you Charles. I'm sure you have an elegant rebuttal for this.
Past Imperfect:
The Assassination as a Historical Question
by
Ulric Shannon EDITORS NOTE: This is a paper presented at the First Research Conference of the Fourth Decade, Fredonia, New York, July 19-21, 1996. Shannon's assessment of some issues may have changed since he wrote this paper, but his assessment of the problems of the "research community" has not. Posted with the permission of Ulric Shannon.
Does a perverse law operate whereby those events that are most important are hardest to understand because they attract the greatest attention from mythmakers and charlatans?
----Holger Herwig, Patriotic Self-Censorship
in Germany After the Great War, 1987.
A noteworthy development has taken place the last few years in scholarly literature devoted to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. This is the increasing frequency of journal articles and panel discussions questioning the purpose, methods and ultimate aims of what is loosely referred-to as the research community, as we enter the fourth decade of an enquiry with no end in sight.
This is a relatively new phenomenon in our field of interest, one likely occasioned by a new-found image consciousness brought about by the Oliver Stone film and regular flurries of media attention at "anniversary time." A more important contributing factor, however, may be the increasing realization that the research community is in need of a major reappraisal of itself; this sentiment is manifest in the growing exasperation of many of my colleagues who feel that the research community's agenda is being set by its least knowledgeable and least objective members.
The purpose of my presentation is to critically evaluate the aims of the research community, as well as its methods; but before I do, two caveats need to be emphasized. First, I should point out that my criticism is meant to be constructive, and that I don't exempt myself from any of it; I've had the painful experience of re-reading Third Decade articles I wrote three or four years ago, and literally cringing. Did I really say that? What was I thinking?
Second, it should be noted that my criticism of the research community's methods is nothing new; Dennis Ford, James Folliard, Tom Filsinger and others have written very cogent essays describing various pathologies in the work of the community: poor reasoning, narrow-mindedness, biases and the like.
(1) Since Shannon wrote this essay, the "Zapruder film alteration" theory has prospered among conspiracists, in spite of the wacky nature of the "logic" that supports the claim. Clint Bradford has an excellent web page outlining the evidence on this issue.
By far the most insidious fixation on the possibility of a cover-up is the one being engaged in these days by some members of the research community who believe that the entire body of evidence is suspect. I refer specifically to those who are endeavouring, with very little success, to prove the Zapruder film was altered.
(17) It seems clear to me that these people are making these arguments for no other reason than that the film conflicts with their own pet theories about the location of the wounds or the number of shots. I had planned to say much more about this, but since Daryll Weatherly has a presention on this topic planned for Sunday, I'll let him address this issue.
But the dim view some researchers take of the evidence in this case has been extended, in recent years, to all of the basic tools of the historian. Jim Marrs states that more than five witnesses "have stated that their testimony as presented by the Commission [in its transcripts] did not accurately reflect what they said."
(18) For this reason, he advises his readers not to trust the basic evidence and testimony. For his part,
Charles Drago told participants at the Third Decade conference in Providence, three summers ago, that the research community shouldn't waste its time poring over the newly-released files in Washington. Why? Well, if we don't find a smoking gun but reiterate our belief in conspiracy anyway, he writes, "this will allow them once again to paint a group portrait of us as impossible-to satisfy conspiracy 'buffs' out on the lunatic fringe."(19)
Now think about for a second. For decades, we beat the drum about full disclosure: the files won't be released until 2039! What in God's name has happened to democracy!
And when the government finally relents--under pressure from a movie,of all things--we immediately denounce the newly released files as an even more insidious coverup than earlier non-disclosure. A neutral observer might say that we've loaded the dice: we treat evidence of conspiracy as such; we treat the absence of evidence of conspiracy as proof of a cover-up;and then we infer a conspiracy from this coverup. This is psychotic. If the body of evidence has systematically been altered, why does it seem to point so consistently in the direction of conspiracy, to the point where true believers in Oswald's sole guilt are treated like disciples of the flat-earth society? For example, why would the Warren Commission alter Jean Hill's testimony (as she claims it did) but leave in her description of four to six shots, some from the knoll? And why does her "altered" testimony match point for point her description of the assassination to radio reporters some twenty minutes after the shooting? (Well, maybe that tape has been doctored, too.)
(20)
This tendency to view more and more of the available evidence as suspect has devastating implications for us. If none of the evidence is reliable, then the truth is no longer knowable; it becomes something you attain through intuition alone. Dennis Ford has addressed this problem much more eloquently than I can, and I'll quote from him:
I know of no other field in which opinion leaders happily argue their cause out of existence. It's as if some of the[m forget] that no theories are possible without an evidentiary base. There's no way to create a theory without such a base....the only evidence left for consideration is eyewitness testimony and that has been shown in decades of experimental study to be an exceedingly shaky base on which to build cathedrals of speculation. Turning from empirical researchers into metaphysicians, whose theories need no support and can't have support, these assassinologists have unwittingly closed their version of the case.
(21)
