My new book, "Into the Nightmare"

[Charles Drago]

Sometimes I have trouble understanding a question
if it's too vague or unformed. I don't try to dodge questions if
they are serious and focused on issues. So I look forward to clearly pointed ones
here. There are a lot of highly knowledgeable people here, which
is why I came to this site to have good discussions.

Please help me to help you understand the following two matters, which I now have raised and directed to your attention publicly at least six times in the aggregate:

1. Regarding your hypothesis that J. D. Tippit very well may have been the "Badge Man" figure allegedly firing at JFK from behind the picket fence, I have argued that the ability to hit a stationary target at a great distance under relaxed, non-life threatening circumstances (a skill which, according to Tippit's father as stated in your interview with him, Tippit possessed) does not equate to the ability to hit a moving target under the most pressure-packed, life-threatening circumstances imaginable. Yet your Tippit-as-Badge-Man argument is predicated in great measure (but not exclusively) on a simple "if you can hit a bird, you can hit a president" conclusion.

I find your argument here to be deeply flawed and otherwise uninformed by refined deep political analysis. As a direct consequence, the often valuable insights you present in the book are opened to ridicule.

Please indicate the flaws in my reasoning.

2. Regarding your "agree to disagree" position vis a vis the demonstrably ludicrous and, in my estimation and that of many others, hostile-to-the-truth conclusions of Phillip Nelson, please enlighten us as to the limits, if any, of your collegiality.

Do you "agree to disagree" with lone nut lie proponents Posner? Bugliosi? Rahn? Cinque? McAdams? Dunkel? Specter? Where, if anywhere, do you draw the line and distinguish between honorable argument and enemy action in JFK scholarship?

Do you agree that the LN/conspiracy faux debate is the critical component in the ongoing JFK conspiracy cover-up?

In closing: Previously you have dismissed these questions as unworthy of response by leveling the charge that I had not read your book and thus was unqualified to pose them.

You now seem to have abandoned that wholly spurious claim and replaced it with new evasions: My questions are too vague ... unformed ... not serious ... unfocused ...

So again: Help me to help you.

Sorry, but you seem to be complaining about some other book than mine.

This gets more interesting by the hour.

I'm not "complaining" about any book.

I am calling you (presumably) to task on the "Tippit-as-Badge-Man" hypothesis as proffered in the book Into the Nightmare: My Search for the Killers of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit .

Are you in fact the author of that book?

On page 277 of the volume to which I shall hereinafter refer as ITN, the author "McBride" writes:

"One of the most important pieces of information I gleaned from my interview with Edgar Lee Tippit had to do with J.D.'s shooting prowess. A story his father told me indicated that J.D. possessed, from an early age, an uncanny skill with firearms ... 'He loved to hunt,' recalled [J.D.'s] neighbor and future brother-in-law Jack Christopher. Tippit's father said of J.D., 'He was a good shot,' and that once when J.D. was young, they saw 'a hawk way off sitting on a treetop. J. D. told me, "Get your gun, and I'll kill the hawk." I said, "You can't." He did do it. He killed the hawk with the first shot, at least a hundred yards [away].'"

On page 568 of ITN, "McBride" writes:

"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 [.]"

Did you, or did you not, write these passages?

And are you, or are you not, the individual who posted on this forum the admonition that we should "agree to disagree" with Phillip Nelson regarding his "LBJ-as-mastermind" claim?