01-12-2011, 05:59 PM
(This post was last modified: 02-12-2011, 07:02 AM by James H. Fetzer.)
JFK, the CIA and The New York Times, Part 2
NEW EVIDENCE APPEARS
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3304[/ATTACH]
No one could have been more surprised than I when another student of the assassination, Bernice Moore, sent me a comment that had been posted in response to The New York Times, which included an extract of Witt's actual testimony to the HSCA:
228.
Christopher Marlow
San Diego, CA
November 22nd, 2011
6:08 pm
After watching this video, I looked up the interview of the "Umbrella Man" for the House Committee on Assassinations. It was very enlightening. The man's name was Louis Steven Witt, a former Dallas insurance salesman. He was questioned by counsel for the committee, Mr. Genzman....
Mr. WITT. Yes. As I moved toward the street, still walking on the grass, I heard the shots that I eventually learned were shots. At the time somehow it didn't register as shots because they were so close together, and it was like hearing a string of firecrackers, or something like that. It didn't at that moment register on me as being shots.
...
Mr. GENZMAN. What do you next recall happening?
Mr. WITT. Let me go back a minute. As I was moving forward I apparently had this umbrella in front of me for some few steps. Whereas other people I understand saw the President shot and his movements; I did not see this because of this thing in front of me, The next thing I saw after I saw the car coming down the street, down the hill to my left, the car was just about at a position like this [indicating] at this angle here. At this time there was the car stopping, the screeching of tires, the jamming on of brakes, [!!!] motorcycle patrolman right there beside one of the cars. One car ran upon the President's car and a man jumped off and jumped on the back. These were the scenes that unfolded as I reached the point to where I was seeing things.
...
---> If you look at the Zapruder film, you will see that the car does not stop. But the Umbrella man and literally dozens of witnesses testified that the presidential limo came to a stop during the assassination. The Zapruder film has been altered to conceal this and other facts. Any careful examination of the Z film will lead you to this conclusion.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3303[/ATTACH]
This new evidence, moreover, makes an enormous difference to the evaluation of Witt's testimony. Based upon other evidence we have accumulated about the Zapruder film, which is contradicted by witness reports about the limo having been brought to a halt--which we believe was in response to the Cuban's raised fist--for which there are many witnesses, whose reports have been collated by John Costella in "What happened on Elm Street? The Eyewitnesses Speak","New Proof of Zapruder Film Fakery" and "Who's telling the truth: Clint Hill or the Zapruder film?", what Witt is saying closely corresponds to those other witnesses and to the reports of others who have seen "the other film", which appears to be the original Zapruder before it was subjected to reconstuction, as Doug Horne has explained in his five-volume study, which I summarized in "US Government Official: JFK Cover-Up, Film Fabrication". As I then explained in post #160 on The Education Forum,
Well, I'm only beginning to sort this out, but his description of what happened is very close to what happened as we have reconstructed it. The limo stop, of course, is at the heart of the matter. It was such a blatant example of Secret Service complicity that it had to be taken out. When you study Clint Hill's report of the sequence of acts he took--running forward, boarding the vehicle, pushing Jackie down, lying over their bodies and peering into a fist-sized hole in the back of JFK's head while giving a "thumbs down" BEFORE THE LIMO REACHED the TUP--which he has been saying and reporting consistently for (then) 47 years--this is hardly the first time we've had a witness who supported the limo stop. I have given several references to studies that document their reports.
The point is that THIS DESCRIPTION, which was NOT in DiEugenio's summary, POWERFULLY SUGGESTS HE ACTUALLY WAS THERE. Some of it is rather fascinating, including about the breaks and all that, because it has not come up before. But when you have a motorcade that is proceeding quite uneventually AND THE LEAD CAR SLAMS ON ITS BREAKS, it would not be surprising if the car following should run up against it or if other drivers had to react by slamming on their breaks. So you are making too quick an inferences from the sound of breaks to assuming the sound came from the limo! What he is saying needs to be sorted out but, given this stunning and dramatic report (which he cannot have acquired from viewing the Zapruder film), he probably WAS there.
It's like finding a fingerprint or the DNA of someone who was not previously a suspect at a crime scene. This guy could not possibly have known some of what he is reporting UNLESS HE HAD BEEN THERE. Even the limo stop is not widely known, even though there are dozens and dozens of witnesses who reported it. Too many play on the "slowed dramatically" versus "came to a halt" difference, which is splitting hairs, since (1) it had to slow dramatically to come to a halt and (2) the Zapruder film shows NEITHER dramatic slowing NOR coming to a halt. So this is really quite remarkable, because, as in the case of Gary Aguilar's chapter in MURDER, Tink has endorsed Witt, but he turns out to have witnessed the limo stop, which is further proof that the film is a fake.
WHAT THEN ABOUT THE UMBRELLA MAN?
I have now done what I should have done originally, namely, check his testimony for myself. Here is what I have found:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3305[/ATTACH]
While there is massive evidence of the limo stop (links to some of which I have cited above), I do not find Witt credible simply because he observed the limo stop but because he is reporting information that only someone who was actually there could possibly have known. The Zapruder film was shown for the first time on the Geraldo Rivera TV program in 1975, but it does not show any of these very specific details that Witt is reporting. Even most students of the assassination would be hard pressed to say what they think actually happened at that place and time. The screeching of tires, with one car running up onto the other (the Secret Service Cadillac evidently butting up against the Lincoln limousine) and one man jumping off and climbing onto the back of the other (Clint Hill rushing from the Cadillac to the back steps of the Lincoln) not only fits the scenario to a "t" but adds details that offer more data to consider, including especially the acoustical aspects of this event, which have been under-explored previous to this belated discovery.
This also means that Robert Morrow, another contributor to the forum, may have been closer to the truth than I was in relation to the Umbrella Man. A fundamental principle of scientific reasoning is that the search for truth must be based upon all the available relevant evidence. Witt's remarks about the shots and their sound are also telling. We know many said that the first shot (or "the first shots") sounded like firecrackers. Jim Lewis has found that, when high velocity bullets are fired through windshields, they make the sound of a firecracker. But the fact is we have new evidence to consider in assessing this. When his testimony was vague and ambiguous, my other arguments carried greater weight. But this very detailed and specific testimony outweighs the vagueness of the rest. At the very least, we have found a remarkable additional witness to the limo stop from an expected source--and thanks to Tink! And that underlines a mistake in Jim Marrs' discounting of Witt's story:
According to Witt:
I think I went sort of maybe halfway up the grassy area [on the north side of Elm Street], somewhere in that vicinity. I am pretty sure I sat down. . . . [when the motorcade approached] I think I got up and started fiddling with that umbrella trying to get it open, and at the same time I was walking forward, walking toward the street. . . . Whereas other people I understand saw the President shot and his movements; I did not see this because of this thing [the umbrella] in front of me . . . My view of the car during that length of time was blocked by the umbrella's being open.
Based on the available photographs made that day, none of Witt's statements were an accurate account of the actions of the "umbrella man" who stood waiting for the motorcade with his umbrella in the normal over-the-head position and then pumped it in the air as Kennedy passed.
But that is to overlook that the film has been massively revised to conceal the true causes of the death of JFK. One of the first and most obvious oddities of the extant film is that so many figures in Dealey Plaza, including the bystanders on the north side of Elm Street, are virtually motionless and unresponsive, even when the president is immediately before them. This has long since appeared to be a result of taking earlier footage as the foreground and making adjustments to later footage, including the introduction of special effects, such as adding the "blob" and blood spray to make it look as though the head shot in frame 313 was fired from behind and blackening out the actual wound at the back of his head. In order to achieve consistency between the various films, they had to change them to conform to the revised Zapruder, where removing activities like those that Witt reported would have made that task immeasurably simpler. If he is moving around, the effects of deleting frames would have been conspicuous because of "jumps" in his actions. It was simpler to keep him frozen, more or less as was done with Mary Moorman and Jean Hill on the opposite side of the street.
There are multiple indications that Tink's purpose here and throughout the entire series--which, given there are 10 six-minute segments in an hour and Errol Morris has reported he has six hours of interviews, which may mean as many as 59 more six-minute reports--is to attempt to debunk belief in conspiracy in the assassination of JFK. His remarks about a "wing-nut" who suggested that the umbrella may have concealed a device to fire a flacehette is particularly revealing, since such a device is actually discussed in the HSCA transcript of the testimony of Louis Steven Witt. Richard Sprague and Robert Cutler were among those who took the idea seriously, where it turned out that the CIA actually had devices of this kind in 1963. So Tink was either faking it (because he was not familiar with the Umbrella man's testimony) or deliberately distorting an odd aspect of the investigation of the assassination (which was conducted by investigators that no one else familiar with their work would describe as "wing-nuts").
It was not irresponsible for Sprague and Cutler to endorse the flechette hypothesis when, to the best of my knowledge, (i) they did not have access to the Parkland Press Conference transcript (which was not even provided to the Warren Commission), (ii) they did not know there was a through-and-through hole in the windshield, (iii) they were apparently unaware of the tiny shrapnel wounds in JFK's face, and (iv) they did not know that, unless the tentorium had been previously ruptured, even the near simultaneous impact of the shot to the back of his head and the frangible hit around his right temple would not have been sufficient to cause cerebellum to extrude from the world. So this appears to be a classic case of acquiring new information and new hypotheses that make a difference to understanding what took place, where, in this case, hypotheses that were previously accepted should be rejected and hypotheses that were previously rejected should be accepted. Another serious student of the assassination, Alan J. Salerian, M.D., moreover, has taken this hypothesis seriously in studies he has presented as recently as 2008.
Anyone with any lingering doubt about Tink's betrayal of JFK research should pay close attention to what he say, where, in particular, he is suggesting there are arbitrarily many innocuous explanations for any evidence that has ever been viewed as "sinister" in the sassassination of JFK. As Cliff Varnell has remarked, "Check out the sarcasm dripping from Tink's [use of the phrases] "really sinister" and "sinister underpinning":
Here's a transcript: (laughing) What it means it that, if you have any fact which you think is really sinister it's really obviously a fact which can only point to some sinister underpinning hey, FORGET IT, MAN, because you can never, on your own, think up all the non-sinister perfectly valid explanations for that fact. A cautionary tale.
And that, of course, is why Mark M., commented, "This was wonderful. The best - and most convincing - debunking of any and all conspiracy theories I have ever seen, and in just 6 minutes too."
I hate to say "I told you so", but I nailed Tink as working the opposite side of the street a long time ago and was attacked for doing so. I also observed earlier that, in disavowing the "double-hit" theory, he was setting himself up to proclaim that there was no conspiracy in the assassination, after all, just in time for the 50th observance. That we have good reasons to believe that Witt was there, however, does not excuse his suspicious activities and association with the Cuban. That the Secret Service would allow them to act that way in close proximity to the president is one more indication--along with more than 15 others--of Secret Service complicity in setting JFK up for the hit. While Robert Morrow and I may not completely agree on the activities of the Umbrella man, we converge in our conclusions about the role of Josiah Thompson in this shabby affair; and for that reason, I want to give him the last word for this round of what may well turn out to be the most elaborate CIA cum New York Times disinformation campaign in history:
I have "fallen into traps" before on the JFK assassination. Then when I see the error of my ways I try to get out of that hole as quick as possible. That means I change my mind when the weight of evidence changes direction.
As for this this NY Times - Josiah Thompson - Umbrella Man thing ... it looks like it is yet more generalized lone-nutter propaganda given an NY Times platform. Really, instead of debunking one probable fallacy - that Umbrella Man was part of the assassination - they could have used that valuable air space/print space to document a THOUSAND things that point to a coup d'etat.
So we have yet another pathetic performance by the NY Times. Perhaps not an error of commission, but a thousand errors of omission. How about an article on Fletcher Prouty and Victor Krulak's identification of Maj. Gen. Edward Lansdale at the TSBD and what that probably means? Spend a little time on that photo and the backgrounds of Lansdale and what Prouty has to offer.
That is but one mere example.
As for Josiah Thompson - count me extremely unimpressed with his smug attitude and *performance* - and that is exactly what he was doing , *performing* - as the JFK expert for the NY Times, playing along with their lone-nutter agenda, much in the way [that] "conspiracy theorist" Gary Mack [who is the official archivist for The 6th Floor Museum] constantly does.
Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
NEW EVIDENCE APPEARS
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3304[/ATTACH]
No one could have been more surprised than I when another student of the assassination, Bernice Moore, sent me a comment that had been posted in response to The New York Times, which included an extract of Witt's actual testimony to the HSCA:
228.
Christopher Marlow
San Diego, CA
November 22nd, 2011
6:08 pm
After watching this video, I looked up the interview of the "Umbrella Man" for the House Committee on Assassinations. It was very enlightening. The man's name was Louis Steven Witt, a former Dallas insurance salesman. He was questioned by counsel for the committee, Mr. Genzman....
Mr. WITT. Yes. As I moved toward the street, still walking on the grass, I heard the shots that I eventually learned were shots. At the time somehow it didn't register as shots because they were so close together, and it was like hearing a string of firecrackers, or something like that. It didn't at that moment register on me as being shots.
...
Mr. GENZMAN. What do you next recall happening?
Mr. WITT. Let me go back a minute. As I was moving forward I apparently had this umbrella in front of me for some few steps. Whereas other people I understand saw the President shot and his movements; I did not see this because of this thing in front of me, The next thing I saw after I saw the car coming down the street, down the hill to my left, the car was just about at a position like this [indicating] at this angle here. At this time there was the car stopping, the screeching of tires, the jamming on of brakes, [!!!] motorcycle patrolman right there beside one of the cars. One car ran upon the President's car and a man jumped off and jumped on the back. These were the scenes that unfolded as I reached the point to where I was seeing things.
...
---> If you look at the Zapruder film, you will see that the car does not stop. But the Umbrella man and literally dozens of witnesses testified that the presidential limo came to a stop during the assassination. The Zapruder film has been altered to conceal this and other facts. Any careful examination of the Z film will lead you to this conclusion.
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3303[/ATTACH]
This new evidence, moreover, makes an enormous difference to the evaluation of Witt's testimony. Based upon other evidence we have accumulated about the Zapruder film, which is contradicted by witness reports about the limo having been brought to a halt--which we believe was in response to the Cuban's raised fist--for which there are many witnesses, whose reports have been collated by John Costella in "What happened on Elm Street? The Eyewitnesses Speak","New Proof of Zapruder Film Fakery" and "Who's telling the truth: Clint Hill or the Zapruder film?", what Witt is saying closely corresponds to those other witnesses and to the reports of others who have seen "the other film", which appears to be the original Zapruder before it was subjected to reconstuction, as Doug Horne has explained in his five-volume study, which I summarized in "US Government Official: JFK Cover-Up, Film Fabrication". As I then explained in post #160 on The Education Forum,
Well, I'm only beginning to sort this out, but his description of what happened is very close to what happened as we have reconstructed it. The limo stop, of course, is at the heart of the matter. It was such a blatant example of Secret Service complicity that it had to be taken out. When you study Clint Hill's report of the sequence of acts he took--running forward, boarding the vehicle, pushing Jackie down, lying over their bodies and peering into a fist-sized hole in the back of JFK's head while giving a "thumbs down" BEFORE THE LIMO REACHED the TUP--which he has been saying and reporting consistently for (then) 47 years--this is hardly the first time we've had a witness who supported the limo stop. I have given several references to studies that document their reports.
The point is that THIS DESCRIPTION, which was NOT in DiEugenio's summary, POWERFULLY SUGGESTS HE ACTUALLY WAS THERE. Some of it is rather fascinating, including about the breaks and all that, because it has not come up before. But when you have a motorcade that is proceeding quite uneventually AND THE LEAD CAR SLAMS ON ITS BREAKS, it would not be surprising if the car following should run up against it or if other drivers had to react by slamming on their breaks. So you are making too quick an inferences from the sound of breaks to assuming the sound came from the limo! What he is saying needs to be sorted out but, given this stunning and dramatic report (which he cannot have acquired from viewing the Zapruder film), he probably WAS there.
It's like finding a fingerprint or the DNA of someone who was not previously a suspect at a crime scene. This guy could not possibly have known some of what he is reporting UNLESS HE HAD BEEN THERE. Even the limo stop is not widely known, even though there are dozens and dozens of witnesses who reported it. Too many play on the "slowed dramatically" versus "came to a halt" difference, which is splitting hairs, since (1) it had to slow dramatically to come to a halt and (2) the Zapruder film shows NEITHER dramatic slowing NOR coming to a halt. So this is really quite remarkable, because, as in the case of Gary Aguilar's chapter in MURDER, Tink has endorsed Witt, but he turns out to have witnessed the limo stop, which is further proof that the film is a fake.
WHAT THEN ABOUT THE UMBRELLA MAN?
I have now done what I should have done originally, namely, check his testimony for myself. Here is what I have found:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]3305[/ATTACH]
While there is massive evidence of the limo stop (links to some of which I have cited above), I do not find Witt credible simply because he observed the limo stop but because he is reporting information that only someone who was actually there could possibly have known. The Zapruder film was shown for the first time on the Geraldo Rivera TV program in 1975, but it does not show any of these very specific details that Witt is reporting. Even most students of the assassination would be hard pressed to say what they think actually happened at that place and time. The screeching of tires, with one car running up onto the other (the Secret Service Cadillac evidently butting up against the Lincoln limousine) and one man jumping off and climbing onto the back of the other (Clint Hill rushing from the Cadillac to the back steps of the Lincoln) not only fits the scenario to a "t" but adds details that offer more data to consider, including especially the acoustical aspects of this event, which have been under-explored previous to this belated discovery.
This also means that Robert Morrow, another contributor to the forum, may have been closer to the truth than I was in relation to the Umbrella Man. A fundamental principle of scientific reasoning is that the search for truth must be based upon all the available relevant evidence. Witt's remarks about the shots and their sound are also telling. We know many said that the first shot (or "the first shots") sounded like firecrackers. Jim Lewis has found that, when high velocity bullets are fired through windshields, they make the sound of a firecracker. But the fact is we have new evidence to consider in assessing this. When his testimony was vague and ambiguous, my other arguments carried greater weight. But this very detailed and specific testimony outweighs the vagueness of the rest. At the very least, we have found a remarkable additional witness to the limo stop from an expected source--and thanks to Tink! And that underlines a mistake in Jim Marrs' discounting of Witt's story:
According to Witt:
I think I went sort of maybe halfway up the grassy area [on the north side of Elm Street], somewhere in that vicinity. I am pretty sure I sat down. . . . [when the motorcade approached] I think I got up and started fiddling with that umbrella trying to get it open, and at the same time I was walking forward, walking toward the street. . . . Whereas other people I understand saw the President shot and his movements; I did not see this because of this thing [the umbrella] in front of me . . . My view of the car during that length of time was blocked by the umbrella's being open.
Based on the available photographs made that day, none of Witt's statements were an accurate account of the actions of the "umbrella man" who stood waiting for the motorcade with his umbrella in the normal over-the-head position and then pumped it in the air as Kennedy passed.
But that is to overlook that the film has been massively revised to conceal the true causes of the death of JFK. One of the first and most obvious oddities of the extant film is that so many figures in Dealey Plaza, including the bystanders on the north side of Elm Street, are virtually motionless and unresponsive, even when the president is immediately before them. This has long since appeared to be a result of taking earlier footage as the foreground and making adjustments to later footage, including the introduction of special effects, such as adding the "blob" and blood spray to make it look as though the head shot in frame 313 was fired from behind and blackening out the actual wound at the back of his head. In order to achieve consistency between the various films, they had to change them to conform to the revised Zapruder, where removing activities like those that Witt reported would have made that task immeasurably simpler. If he is moving around, the effects of deleting frames would have been conspicuous because of "jumps" in his actions. It was simpler to keep him frozen, more or less as was done with Mary Moorman and Jean Hill on the opposite side of the street.
There are multiple indications that Tink's purpose here and throughout the entire series--which, given there are 10 six-minute segments in an hour and Errol Morris has reported he has six hours of interviews, which may mean as many as 59 more six-minute reports--is to attempt to debunk belief in conspiracy in the assassination of JFK. His remarks about a "wing-nut" who suggested that the umbrella may have concealed a device to fire a flacehette is particularly revealing, since such a device is actually discussed in the HSCA transcript of the testimony of Louis Steven Witt. Richard Sprague and Robert Cutler were among those who took the idea seriously, where it turned out that the CIA actually had devices of this kind in 1963. So Tink was either faking it (because he was not familiar with the Umbrella man's testimony) or deliberately distorting an odd aspect of the investigation of the assassination (which was conducted by investigators that no one else familiar with their work would describe as "wing-nuts").
It was not irresponsible for Sprague and Cutler to endorse the flechette hypothesis when, to the best of my knowledge, (i) they did not have access to the Parkland Press Conference transcript (which was not even provided to the Warren Commission), (ii) they did not know there was a through-and-through hole in the windshield, (iii) they were apparently unaware of the tiny shrapnel wounds in JFK's face, and (iv) they did not know that, unless the tentorium had been previously ruptured, even the near simultaneous impact of the shot to the back of his head and the frangible hit around his right temple would not have been sufficient to cause cerebellum to extrude from the world. So this appears to be a classic case of acquiring new information and new hypotheses that make a difference to understanding what took place, where, in this case, hypotheses that were previously accepted should be rejected and hypotheses that were previously rejected should be accepted. Another serious student of the assassination, Alan J. Salerian, M.D., moreover, has taken this hypothesis seriously in studies he has presented as recently as 2008.
Anyone with any lingering doubt about Tink's betrayal of JFK research should pay close attention to what he say, where, in particular, he is suggesting there are arbitrarily many innocuous explanations for any evidence that has ever been viewed as "sinister" in the sassassination of JFK. As Cliff Varnell has remarked, "Check out the sarcasm dripping from Tink's [use of the phrases] "really sinister" and "sinister underpinning":
Here's a transcript: (laughing) What it means it that, if you have any fact which you think is really sinister it's really obviously a fact which can only point to some sinister underpinning hey, FORGET IT, MAN, because you can never, on your own, think up all the non-sinister perfectly valid explanations for that fact. A cautionary tale.
And that, of course, is why Mark M., commented, "This was wonderful. The best - and most convincing - debunking of any and all conspiracy theories I have ever seen, and in just 6 minutes too."
I hate to say "I told you so", but I nailed Tink as working the opposite side of the street a long time ago and was attacked for doing so. I also observed earlier that, in disavowing the "double-hit" theory, he was setting himself up to proclaim that there was no conspiracy in the assassination, after all, just in time for the 50th observance. That we have good reasons to believe that Witt was there, however, does not excuse his suspicious activities and association with the Cuban. That the Secret Service would allow them to act that way in close proximity to the president is one more indication--along with more than 15 others--of Secret Service complicity in setting JFK up for the hit. While Robert Morrow and I may not completely agree on the activities of the Umbrella man, we converge in our conclusions about the role of Josiah Thompson in this shabby affair; and for that reason, I want to give him the last word for this round of what may well turn out to be the most elaborate CIA cum New York Times disinformation campaign in history:
I have "fallen into traps" before on the JFK assassination. Then when I see the error of my ways I try to get out of that hole as quick as possible. That means I change my mind when the weight of evidence changes direction.
As for this this NY Times - Josiah Thompson - Umbrella Man thing ... it looks like it is yet more generalized lone-nutter propaganda given an NY Times platform. Really, instead of debunking one probable fallacy - that Umbrella Man was part of the assassination - they could have used that valuable air space/print space to document a THOUSAND things that point to a coup d'etat.
So we have yet another pathetic performance by the NY Times. Perhaps not an error of commission, but a thousand errors of omission. How about an article on Fletcher Prouty and Victor Krulak's identification of Maj. Gen. Edward Lansdale at the TSBD and what that probably means? Spend a little time on that photo and the backgrounds of Lansdale and what Prouty has to offer.
That is but one mere example.
As for Josiah Thompson - count me extremely unimpressed with his smug attitude and *performance* - and that is exactly what he was doing , *performing* - as the JFK expert for the NY Times, playing along with their lone-nutter agenda, much in the way [that] "conspiracy theorist" Gary Mack [who is the official archivist for The 6th Floor Museum] constantly does.
Jim Fetzer, a former Marine Corps officer, is McKnight Professor Emeritus at the University of Minnesota Duluth.