My new book, "Into the Nightmare"

[Lauren Johnson]

To the best of my analytical skills and visual acuity, "Badge Man" is some blur on one of Mary Moorman's photograph.

I respect and mourn Jack White.

I loathe Gary Mack.

My own considered judgement is that "Badge Man" is at best a red herring, at worst a psyop to discredit JFK assassination research.

I do not welcome the resurrection of this random noise....

I thought I was the only one that thought BM was nothing but smudges. After going through a case of Visene and hours spent squinting at the Moorman photo to the point of blindess, I have long ago given up. I think it is a mistake to base anything on the alleged Badge Man character when the evidence is so poor.

[Charles Drago]

To the best of my analytical skills and visual acuity, "Badge Man" is some blur on one of Mary Moorman's photograph.

I respect and mourn Jack White.

I loathe Gary Mack.

My own considered judgement is that "Badge Man" is at best a red herring, at worst a psyop to discredit JFK asssassination research.

I do not welcome the resurrection of this random noise....

With his intemperate remarks borrowed from prizefighters, etc., Mr. Drago seems to be trying to bait me into attacking him,
for some reason. I'm not sure what he's so exercised about, so I won't try to decipher it or respond.

What I have been trying to do is to engage you in a spirited, respectful, in-depth, on-the-merits argument regarding your "Tippit-as-Badge-Man" hypothesis.

Rather than addressing my questions in a forthright and scholarly fashion, you have responded by A) declaring, without any supporting data, that I did not read your book; B) describing my focused, articulate queries as being "vague and unformed; and C) ludicrously claiming that you were not the author of the book to which I was obviously referring.

Now you would accuse me of "trying to bait [you] into attacking [me]."

For someone who so vigorously eschews ad hominem attacks, you seem to have no trouble whatsoever smearing my character, intellect, and motives.

Permit me to give you a bit of unsolicited advice: You are doing neither yourself nor your book any favors whatsoever by running and attempting to hide from serious criticism.

Your Tippit-as-Badge-Man hypothesis is, in my informed estimation, a house of cards that you cannot and thus will not attempt to defend.

And by the bye, your evasions don't pass the laugh test.

As for your bizarre reference to my alleged usage of the patois of prizefighters ... Well, this heavyweight has grown board with sparring with a lightweight.

You stick to your weight class, I'll stick to mine.

[Magda Hassan]

While it would be enlightening if Joseph could address Charles' more reasonable questions re Tippet he is not to be blamed for not wanting to engage with Charles and there are plenty who choose not to.

[Tracy Riddle]

C'mon everybody, let's not form circular firing squads. I only engaged in a little Palmara-bashing because I don't know what he really believes, if anything, about the assassination. But if we disagree about specific matters, we should state our objections and then let it rest. There are at least 10,000 different items we could all disagree about in this complex subject, and unless we're prepared to repeat the religious wars of the Middle Ages, we need to accept that fact. A lot of questions in this case are probably unanswerable at this point.

[Magda Hassan]

C'mon everybody, let's not form circular firing squads. I only engaged in a little Palmara-bashing because I don't know what he really believes, if anything, about the assassination. But if we disagree about specific matters, we should state our objections and then let it rest. There are at least 10,000 different items we could all disagree about in this complex subject, and unless we're prepared to repeat the religious wars of the Middle Ages, we need to accept that fact. A lot of questions in this case are probably unanswerable at this point.

:rocker: Thank you Tracey. And I don't think you are alone in wondering what Vince P thinks this week about the assassination.

[Jim DiEugenio]

For the life of me, I don't know what Vince P was thinking with that 7 minute video he made praising Reclaiming History as the end all of the critics from Meagher to Newman.

I mean, did he read the thing? Or was he just intimidated by the 2,700 pages?

Bugliosi did almost no original research for the book. Which is shocking.

But further, it does not appear that he went anywhere except his office in Pasadena to do any field investigation. Which is even more shocking. I mean, 21 years, a million dollar budget, and he cannot even go to New Orleans? I mean they have great gumbo Vince! I went twice with no budget at all.

So I don't understand why Palamara did that. (I also don't understand why he liked Ultimate Sacrifice either. Or as Len Osanic calls It Ultimate Shit)

One thing I learned about Bugliosi, in addition to not being good with complexity, he is also not a good investigator.

Being a lawyer is one thing. Being a detective is something else.

[Joseph McBride]

Magda,

Thank you for your best efforts to preserve civility here, an uphill
effort. I don't want to engage in mudwrestling with those who
enjoy that "sport" and who mischaracterize a long
and complex book before repeatedly accusing it of one thing or another,
including not covering topics it does in fact cover in considerable detail.

I will refer people to my website for the book,
on which I am posting news, reviews, and interviews
periodically:

http://intothenightmare.com

[Magda Hassan]

For the life of me, I don't know what Vince P was thinking with that 7 minute video he made praising Reclaiming History as the end all of the critics from Meagher to Newman.

I mean, did he read the thing? Or was he just intimidated by the 2,700 pages?

Bugliosi did almost no original research for the book. Which is shocking.

But further, it does not appear that he went anywhere except his office in Pasadena to do any field investigation. Which is even more shocking. I mean, 21 years, a million dollar budget, and he cannot even go to New Orleans? I mean they have great gumbo Vince! I went twice with no budget at all.

So I don't understand why Palamara did that. (I also don't understand why he liked Ultimate Sacrifice either. Or as Len Osanic calls It Ultimate Shit)

One thing I learned about Bugliosi, in addition to not being good with complexity, he is also not a good investigator.

Being a lawyer is one thing. Being a detective is something else.

Yeah, I think he was intimidated by the size of it. Some men are impressed by size. And legal studies should give you the means to do good research, look at Linda Minor as a good example, but it doesn't always. I felt that BG's book was more a case for the prosecution against Oswald than any sort of enquiry into the murder of JFK. He very much cherry picked his way through.

[Peter Lemkin]

Let me state, first, that I have Into the Nightmare in my stack of books, and have not yet gotten to it, but am anxious to read it. So I do not know what the arguments about Tippit are that Joseph musters for his hypothesis. But, FWIW, I do know -- outside of Buchanan -- that this identification has been proposed in at least one other place: Phillips, D.T. A Deeper, Darker Truth: Tom Wilson's Journey into the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Illinois: DTP/Companion Books, 2009. The epilogue suggests that Badge Man is Tippit because of the supposed pock mark on his left cheek uncovered by Wilson's digital analysis. In my opinion the book is, to be kind, extremely dubious (I am inclined to say totally bogus junk; there is not enough detail in the presentation to understand exactly what the mathematics of Wilson's technique supposedly consists of), but I thought I'd just add this into the mix here for completeness sake.

I don't want to divert this thread into one on another book, but since it was brought up, just a quick mention - and if more be needed, it should be on another thread. I am one of the few researchers to have worked with Tom Wilson and I'm trained as a scientist and do understand the theory behind his work. I agree that the book about his work suffers greatly in not enlightening the reader as to 1] his methodology and the theory behind it 2] the full spectrum of Wilson's findings - only some. There is nothing wrong, in theory, with Wilson's methodology, but it needs to be independently repeated by others. [by the way he was allowed to use his same technique as a Court approved expert witness many times on various murder and other forensic cases!] Sadly, his family has refused my repeated attempts to release the vast volume of his work, notes, technique, databases and computer programs et al. I'm going to shortly make one last attempt to appeal to them - citing the 50th....but they are either not up to speed on the need for this or afraid - I know not which. I find Wilson's work very interesting and potentially a key to unlock many mysteries. That Wilson uncovered or confirmed a few things does NOT mean that his every finding would be valid. Others, repeating his work would go a very long way to finding out which are valid and which are still open to question. Discarding his work because it is difficult to understand and non-transparent to most is not the correct way to vet it. I think there are some very important finds in Wilson's work - I also find some I am sceptical of - but, again, they need to be repeated to know their full validity. The FBI and other 'keepers of the Big Lie' were VERY worried about Wilson and his work [and I have evidence of this!] and likely worked to feed him some bad information/photos/data in order to discredit him. IMO

[Phil Dragoo]

Charles at 137 above excerpts from page 568 Into the Nightmare:

"The shot from behind the retaining wall in relatively close proximity to President Kennedy may not have been a particularly difficult one, but hitting its target was crucial to the success of the plot. The accuracy of that shot that most likely was the one that blew out the back of Kennedy's head attests to the lethal expertise of the gunman who fired it. J. D. Tippit's unusual skill with firearms, from boyhood, was attested to by his father, and it was furthered in his U. S. Army service during World War II and his years with the Dallas Police Department. That expertise could help account for why he may have been chosen for the job of Badge Man [.]"

While I am certain Lee Oswald was not present when Officer J. D. Tippit was shot four times, I have a number of objections to the chain of reasoning in the excerpt.

I don't find the discussion of Badge Man to be any more credible than the game of Cat's Cradle in Vonnegut's tale of the same title.

I don't see a "shot from behind the retaining wall" or as it is framed, "the shot from behind the retaining wall"--this is simply argument to facts not in evidence.

That Tippit had "unusual skill with firearms" seems at odds with his being perforated without drawing his gun.

Robert Tosh Plumlee apparently convinced Richard Belzer and David Wayne that Officer J.D. Tippit was part of "an extraction team" but now we have an implication that Officer J.D. Tippit was Badge Man making the easy shot which. . .what. . .entered the president's right upper parietal and exited the right occipitoparietal, QED a satisfying denouement in the third act.

Except the temple shot didn't come from a shooter who wasn't there, no matter that Pappy said the boy could shoot.

Now, regarding Vince lauding Bugliosi, it's a puppy wetting the linoleum thing.

We don't need twenty-seven hundred pages of Bugsy pounding the witness rail with his fist.

We've got Vickie Adams and Sandra Styles and the Stairs That Didn't Creak.

And as for Ultimate Sheesh How Many Times Have I Read This Paragraph and Dozed Off
I chucked that
it really was too big for a paper weight
and too slippery for a door stop

Peter

I think Tom Wilson had his hits and his misses. My favorite part of his book isn't his technique--it's Dan Rather refusing to see his stuff
because there "isn't a scintilla of evidence of conspiracy"

Everyone talks about the Big Bang
but what about the Big Pop
when Dan Rather
pulls his head
out of his
(navel)