20-12-2009, 07:28 PM
(This post was last modified: 20-12-2009, 09:30 PM by James H. Fetzer.)
Charles, Thanks for mentioning (5), the "familiar faces" at Houston and Main, which appears to me to be the real deal. Ask yourself, what is the probability that six men who resemble CIA officials should be present together at that place and time if they were not those CIA officials, who would have a reason for being there, namely, to pay their "last respects"? The photographic evidence is highly probable, on the hypothesis that they were knowledgeable about the assassination, and incredibly improbable otherwise. On this basis, I infer that the measure of evidential support for their CIA identifies is very strong and that the measure of support for the alternative is very weak, approaching zero. It would be an incredible coincidence for that to be the case.
As for the Ambassador film, I tend to believe that Bradley Ayers and Wayne Smith are accurate in their identifications. Gordon Campbell was even Brad's case officer when he was stationed at JM/Wave in Miami from May 1963 to December 1964. I was upset to hear from Peter Dale Scott that additional research had allegedly "established" that they were wrong in their identifications, including their "'finding" that Campbell had died years before. Who these personages who resembler Campbell, Morales, and Joannides are was not part of their research. But without establishing the identifies of these persons whom Ayers and Smith have identified, the burden of proof is on those who want to deny it. I have no reason to doubt them and many reasons to believe them. They both knew them personally.
As for Conein, I have explained above why I disagree with you. I believe that both direct (photographic) and indirect (circumstantial) evidence supports it. I agree that these identifications are a lot like fingerprint comparisons, where there can be many points of agreement without establishing the conclusion with certainty. But that is the case for all empirical conclusions: none of them can be established with "certaintly", so if that is our standard, we will never know anything about the death of JFK. Moreover, our critics will find grounds to disagree, no matter how strong the evidence. I was stunned when Evan Burton sought to dismiss the massive evidence that supports the sabotage of the Wellstone plane, for example, by suggesting that each element had been present in other cases, even after I had posted a lengthy list of features of the crash.
It is not only not true that each of the features of the crash were present on other occasions--consider the cell phone anomaly, the garage doors' spontaneous opening, the odd meteorological phenomenon above the crash site, not to mention the early arrival of the FBI and their declaration that there were "no signs of terrorist involvement" before any investigation had been conducted--but if there were other cases of this kind, they would almost certainly involve sabotage as well. Burton was treating them as separate events by considering their probabilities individually, when the evidence must be taken together as a totality, not piecemeal, by calculating their product. I think Burton's ridiculous charade was the last straw for me with The Education Forum.
My commitment to this and other cases, Charles, is that we must pursue logic and evidence to discover the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I have been exposed to this line of reasoning with regularity in relation to the investigation of the events of 9/11. Especially there, the use of video fakery in New York and the absence of any evidence of a Boeing 757 having hit the Pentagon are only two illustrations of the kinds of issues that many students of 9/11 will not pursue. Well, I am not among them. We have to figure out how all of this was done, why and by whom. Anyone who wants to know what we know now (in the tentative and fallible fashion of science) should visit my blog at http://jamesfetzer.blogspot.com, which represents the latest that I have been able to piece together--absent these recent presentations. And I welcome your critique!
As for the Ambassador film, I tend to believe that Bradley Ayers and Wayne Smith are accurate in their identifications. Gordon Campbell was even Brad's case officer when he was stationed at JM/Wave in Miami from May 1963 to December 1964. I was upset to hear from Peter Dale Scott that additional research had allegedly "established" that they were wrong in their identifications, including their "'finding" that Campbell had died years before. Who these personages who resembler Campbell, Morales, and Joannides are was not part of their research. But without establishing the identifies of these persons whom Ayers and Smith have identified, the burden of proof is on those who want to deny it. I have no reason to doubt them and many reasons to believe them. They both knew them personally.
As for Conein, I have explained above why I disagree with you. I believe that both direct (photographic) and indirect (circumstantial) evidence supports it. I agree that these identifications are a lot like fingerprint comparisons, where there can be many points of agreement without establishing the conclusion with certainty. But that is the case for all empirical conclusions: none of them can be established with "certaintly", so if that is our standard, we will never know anything about the death of JFK. Moreover, our critics will find grounds to disagree, no matter how strong the evidence. I was stunned when Evan Burton sought to dismiss the massive evidence that supports the sabotage of the Wellstone plane, for example, by suggesting that each element had been present in other cases, even after I had posted a lengthy list of features of the crash.
It is not only not true that each of the features of the crash were present on other occasions--consider the cell phone anomaly, the garage doors' spontaneous opening, the odd meteorological phenomenon above the crash site, not to mention the early arrival of the FBI and their declaration that there were "no signs of terrorist involvement" before any investigation had been conducted--but if there were other cases of this kind, they would almost certainly involve sabotage as well. Burton was treating them as separate events by considering their probabilities individually, when the evidence must be taken together as a totality, not piecemeal, by calculating their product. I think Burton's ridiculous charade was the last straw for me with The Education Forum.
My commitment to this and other cases, Charles, is that we must pursue logic and evidence to discover the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I have been exposed to this line of reasoning with regularity in relation to the investigation of the events of 9/11. Especially there, the use of video fakery in New York and the absence of any evidence of a Boeing 757 having hit the Pentagon are only two illustrations of the kinds of issues that many students of 9/11 will not pursue. Well, I am not among them. We have to figure out how all of this was done, why and by whom. Anyone who wants to know what we know now (in the tentative and fallible fashion of science) should visit my blog at http://jamesfetzer.blogspot.com, which represents the latest that I have been able to piece together--absent these recent presentations. And I welcome your critique!