03-09-2009, 06:14 PM
Hey, folks, I'm not an avid, professional or even adept researcher-commentator on the older stuff, notably JFK/Dealey Plaza, but this stuff is jumping of the screne, and so I throw it into the ring without comment or intent:
1) circa noon GMT -5
Kennedy memoir calls Chappaquiddick 'inexcusable'
NEW YORK — Sen. Edward M. Kennedy wrote in a memoir being published this month that he made terrible decisions after the 1969 car crash that killed Mary Jo Kopechne, but said he was never romantically involved with her and was haunted by that night for his entire life.
He also wrote in "True Compass" that he accepted the conclusion that a lone gunman assassinated his brother President John F. Kennedy.
The memoir is to be published Sept. 14 by Twelve, a division of the Hachette book group. The 532-page book was obtained early by The New York Times and the New York Daily News.
In it, Kennedy said his actions on Chappaquiddick Island on July 18, 1969, were "inexcusable." He said he was afraid and "made terrible decisions" and had to live with the guilt for more than four decades.
Kennedy drove off a bridge into a pond. He swam to safety, leaving Kopechne in the car.
Kopechne, a worker with slain Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's campaign, was found dead in the submerged car's back seat 10 hours later. Kennedy, then 37, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and got a suspended sentence and probation.
He wrote that he had no romantic relationship with Kopechne, and he hardly knew her. He said they were both getting emotional about his brother's death and decided to leave the party that was hosted by Robert Kennedy's former staffers.
Kennedy also wrote in the memoir that he always accepted the official findings on his brother John's assassination.
He said he had a full briefing by Earl Warren, the chief justice on the commission that investigated the Nov. 22, 1963, Dallas shooting, which was attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald. He said he was convinced the Warren Commission got it right and he was "satisfied then, and satisfied now."
In the book, Kennedy wrote candidly about his battle with brain cancer and his "self-destructive drinking," especially after the 1968 death of his brother Robert.
After his brothers' assassinations, Kennedy said he was easily startled at loud sounds, and would hit the deck whenever a car backfired.
He expressed regret over getting drinks with nephew William K. Smith in Palm Beach in 1991, after which Smith was charged with rape. He was later acquitted.
He also explained why he decided to run for the presidency in 1980, saying he was motivated in part by his differences with then-President Jimmy Carter. He criticized Carter's go-slow approach to providing universal health care.
As a 9-year-old boy at the Riverdale Country School in New York, Kennedy said he would hide under his bed, petrified of a dorm master he thought was sexually abusive.
The book was written with the help of a collaborator and was based on contemporaneous notes taken by Kennedy throughout his life and hours of recordings for an oral history project.
Kennedy died last week at age 77.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-nat...dy.Memoir/
#2) via www.whatreallyhappened.com
BBN, Raytheon and a fresh JFK conspiracy theory
A follow-up to a post from Tuesday
By Paul McNamara on Thu, 09/03/09 - 9:13am.
Because lots of good stuff goes unnoticed in comment strings ...
Earlier this week we learned that Raytheon, long one of the nation's most powerful defense contractors, is acquiring venerable BBN Technologies, a networking pioneer perhaps most famous for its role in designing the ARPANET, precursor to the Internet.
In writing about the deal, I included this footnote way done at the very end of the item: "History buffs will tell you that BBN is also known for having conducted acoustical analysis in 1978 for the House Select Committee charged with investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 15 years earlier."
A reader who identified himself as V12Merlin offered this provocative tidbit in response:
"One of the BBN engineers who worked on the Kennedy acoustic analysis thing was a close friend of mine, from my own Cambridge days. He told me at the time that the team was ordered by someone high up NOT to publish what they actually found."
Now I've been a Kennedy assassination buff since reading a table-top version of The Warren Report in my grandparents' living room back in high school, but I'm neither willing nor able to vouch for the veracity of what V12Merlin's friend told V12Merlin some 30 years ago. However, another reader who identified himself as Joe Kraska, a former BBN employee living in San Diego, was in no mood to just let the comment slide. Writes Kraska of the alleged cover-up:
"Because, you know, as we know, the noodle-backboned folks working at BBN, having found the real origin of the assassination of an American president would have all the ethical prowess of a peanut, and keep mum quivering in their boots because a Mysterious Evil Power ™ ordered them not to tell the truth. We know now at least, how much faith you have in the fidelity of your fellow men. That's just sad."
And that's telling him, all right.
(Update: Not that I really want to venture too close to this rabbit hole, but I did find a Wikipedia entry that would seem to indicate BBN was a rather unlikely cover-up suspect. In fact, it was the company's analysis that led the House Select Committee to conclude that shots were fired at the presidential motorcade from both the Texas School Book Depository and the infamous grassy knoll. That conclusion, much like most anything else regarding the assassination, has been long disputed. ... Those less fearful of rabbit holes are free to read the entire entry, but here's the top of it:
In December 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) had prepared a draft of its final report which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone as the assassin. However, after hearing testimony regarding the Dictabelt recording, they quickly changed their findings and concluded a second gunman had fired a fourth shot at Kennedy (it was claimed that a fourth shot could be heard on the Dictabelt). G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel of the HSCA, later said, "If the acoustics come out that we made a mistake somewhere, I think that would end it." Despite serious criticism of the scientific evidence and the HSCA's conclusions, speculation regarding the Dictabelt and the possibility of a second gunman has persisted.
The Dictabelt recording does not contain audible gunshots, but investigators compared "impulse patterns" (i.e., suspected gunshots and associated echos) on the Dictabelt to 1978 test recordings of Carcano rifles fired in Dealey Plaza from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and from a stockade fence on the grassy knoll forward and to the right of the presidential limousine. Based on this, the acoustics firm of Bolt, Beranek and Newman concluded that impulse patterns 1,2, and 4 were shots fired from the Depository, and that there was a 50% chance that impulse pattern 3 was a shot originating from the grassy knoll. Acoustics analysts Mark Weiss and Ernest Aschkenasy of Queens College, after reviewing the BBN data, concluded the probability was 95%.
So if, as was intimated by the friend of V12Merlin, there really was an order from on high that BBN technicians "not publish what they actually found," well, those squelched findings must have been pretty darn spectacular.)
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/44953
1) circa noon GMT -5
Kennedy memoir calls Chappaquiddick 'inexcusable'
NEW YORK — Sen. Edward M. Kennedy wrote in a memoir being published this month that he made terrible decisions after the 1969 car crash that killed Mary Jo Kopechne, but said he was never romantically involved with her and was haunted by that night for his entire life.
He also wrote in "True Compass" that he accepted the conclusion that a lone gunman assassinated his brother President John F. Kennedy.
The memoir is to be published Sept. 14 by Twelve, a division of the Hachette book group. The 532-page book was obtained early by The New York Times and the New York Daily News.
In it, Kennedy said his actions on Chappaquiddick Island on July 18, 1969, were "inexcusable." He said he was afraid and "made terrible decisions" and had to live with the guilt for more than four decades.
Kennedy drove off a bridge into a pond. He swam to safety, leaving Kopechne in the car.
Kopechne, a worker with slain Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's campaign, was found dead in the submerged car's back seat 10 hours later. Kennedy, then 37, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and got a suspended sentence and probation.
He wrote that he had no romantic relationship with Kopechne, and he hardly knew her. He said they were both getting emotional about his brother's death and decided to leave the party that was hosted by Robert Kennedy's former staffers.
Kennedy also wrote in the memoir that he always accepted the official findings on his brother John's assassination.
He said he had a full briefing by Earl Warren, the chief justice on the commission that investigated the Nov. 22, 1963, Dallas shooting, which was attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald. He said he was convinced the Warren Commission got it right and he was "satisfied then, and satisfied now."
In the book, Kennedy wrote candidly about his battle with brain cancer and his "self-destructive drinking," especially after the 1968 death of his brother Robert.
After his brothers' assassinations, Kennedy said he was easily startled at loud sounds, and would hit the deck whenever a car backfired.
He expressed regret over getting drinks with nephew William K. Smith in Palm Beach in 1991, after which Smith was charged with rape. He was later acquitted.
He also explained why he decided to run for the presidency in 1980, saying he was motivated in part by his differences with then-President Jimmy Carter. He criticized Carter's go-slow approach to providing universal health care.
As a 9-year-old boy at the Riverdale Country School in New York, Kennedy said he would hide under his bed, petrified of a dorm master he thought was sexually abusive.
The book was written with the help of a collaborator and was based on contemporaneous notes taken by Kennedy throughout his life and hours of recordings for an oral history project.
Kennedy died last week at age 77.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-nat...dy.Memoir/
#2) via www.whatreallyhappened.com
BBN, Raytheon and a fresh JFK conspiracy theory
A follow-up to a post from Tuesday
By Paul McNamara on Thu, 09/03/09 - 9:13am.
Because lots of good stuff goes unnoticed in comment strings ...
Earlier this week we learned that Raytheon, long one of the nation's most powerful defense contractors, is acquiring venerable BBN Technologies, a networking pioneer perhaps most famous for its role in designing the ARPANET, precursor to the Internet.
In writing about the deal, I included this footnote way done at the very end of the item: "History buffs will tell you that BBN is also known for having conducted acoustical analysis in 1978 for the House Select Committee charged with investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 15 years earlier."
A reader who identified himself as V12Merlin offered this provocative tidbit in response:
"One of the BBN engineers who worked on the Kennedy acoustic analysis thing was a close friend of mine, from my own Cambridge days. He told me at the time that the team was ordered by someone high up NOT to publish what they actually found."
Now I've been a Kennedy assassination buff since reading a table-top version of The Warren Report in my grandparents' living room back in high school, but I'm neither willing nor able to vouch for the veracity of what V12Merlin's friend told V12Merlin some 30 years ago. However, another reader who identified himself as Joe Kraska, a former BBN employee living in San Diego, was in no mood to just let the comment slide. Writes Kraska of the alleged cover-up:
"Because, you know, as we know, the noodle-backboned folks working at BBN, having found the real origin of the assassination of an American president would have all the ethical prowess of a peanut, and keep mum quivering in their boots because a Mysterious Evil Power ™ ordered them not to tell the truth. We know now at least, how much faith you have in the fidelity of your fellow men. That's just sad."
And that's telling him, all right.
(Update: Not that I really want to venture too close to this rabbit hole, but I did find a Wikipedia entry that would seem to indicate BBN was a rather unlikely cover-up suspect. In fact, it was the company's analysis that led the House Select Committee to conclude that shots were fired at the presidential motorcade from both the Texas School Book Depository and the infamous grassy knoll. That conclusion, much like most anything else regarding the assassination, has been long disputed. ... Those less fearful of rabbit holes are free to read the entire entry, but here's the top of it:
In December 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) had prepared a draft of its final report which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone as the assassin. However, after hearing testimony regarding the Dictabelt recording, they quickly changed their findings and concluded a second gunman had fired a fourth shot at Kennedy (it was claimed that a fourth shot could be heard on the Dictabelt). G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel of the HSCA, later said, "If the acoustics come out that we made a mistake somewhere, I think that would end it." Despite serious criticism of the scientific evidence and the HSCA's conclusions, speculation regarding the Dictabelt and the possibility of a second gunman has persisted.
The Dictabelt recording does not contain audible gunshots, but investigators compared "impulse patterns" (i.e., suspected gunshots and associated echos) on the Dictabelt to 1978 test recordings of Carcano rifles fired in Dealey Plaza from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and from a stockade fence on the grassy knoll forward and to the right of the presidential limousine. Based on this, the acoustics firm of Bolt, Beranek and Newman concluded that impulse patterns 1,2, and 4 were shots fired from the Depository, and that there was a 50% chance that impulse pattern 3 was a shot originating from the grassy knoll. Acoustics analysts Mark Weiss and Ernest Aschkenasy of Queens College, after reviewing the BBN data, concluded the probability was 95%.
So if, as was intimated by the friend of V12Merlin, there really was an order from on high that BBN technicians "not publish what they actually found," well, those squelched findings must have been pretty darn spectacular.)
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/44953
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