08-11-2014, 07:48 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-11-2014, 08:05 PM by Jim DiEugenio.)
Scott:
The whole idea behind the critical studies of the JFK case is to try and unearth what really happened to President Kennedy. In all of its circumstances.
Because of the horrid mess that the Warren Commission created, that is not an easy thing to do today. Which is an understatement.
But people who try must apply to their work some kind of standards, so we don't have Brennans in reverse.
Baker has all the indications of being another Madeleine Brown. A witness who is nothing but a huge question mark. And that is being kind to her.
If you don't recall, there was a time she complained about being a political prisoner in the USA and seeking asylum in Scandinavia. That turned out to be well, not really accurate. She did the same thing in relation to Canada--and that was, well, not the case. Today, miraculously, persecution free, she does tours from Minnesota to Texas.
When a witness is not forthcoming about certain aspects of her life e.g. her college career, her marriages, her occupation, and these black holes occur at certain points in the narrative that are key to her book (actually books), then this should raise certain warnings about her work and credibility. As noted previously, this is the problem Carol Hewett had with Baker. She could never get a straight answer on these topics from her. Which, in reality, should have been as easy as drinking a glass of water.
Now, people who accept Baker in the community have not had the reputation for doing field investigation work. That is, actually going to the scene of certain places, tracking down on site records, finding witnesses, getting new leads etc. The kind of thing Gaeton Fonzi was so good at and make his book so indispensable. I have never seen anything like that from Jim Fetzer or Martin Shackleford. But that is precisely what is needed in a case like this. When Carol tried to do this with Baker, she could not get a straight answer to even the simplest question like: Did you graduate from UF? Now what is so hard about answering that question?
Except that if she did not graduate, then maybe it undermines the tenet that she was a scientific prodigy? And if she was not another Mary Sherman in her academic faculties, then what use would Ochsner have for her? See, this is something a lawyer like Carol would find curious. Why? Because when Carol was working with CBS, if you can believe it, CBS was predisposed to buy Baker's story. And they wanted Carol to find verification for it so they could run it. It would have helped Carol if she could have. But the problem is when the witness will not even cooperate in piecing her own life together so one can answer questions like, What have you been doing for 30 years? Have you been married before? Did you graduate from UF and if not, why not? If you cannot get straight answers to those kinds of simple questions, then this reflects on how candid someone is about other more complex and material points.
There is much evidence that Baker and her backers ignore that indicates they have pieced together what amounts to a mythology. So much that it is stunning. But it shows just how careless, and how, in another way, they are so willing to fall for someone who simply would be destroyed on the witness stand. And make no mistake, Baker and her backers are good at what they do. They do not just borrow from books. They have been through things like Garrison's ARRB files, which is something that only a very few people have been willing to read. For instance, at one point, she and her backers, like Fetzer, claimed that Oswald and her were in Jackson and they parked the car down the street from Edwin MacGhee's barber shop with a bassinet in the back. The problem here was, they didn't get all the way through the file. Because it later turned out that, when Garrison completed the inquiry, it was Clay Shaw who picked up Oswald almost right in front of the barber shop. The car down the street was unrelated to Oswald since there was a laundromat a few doors down from there. I can vouch for this since I have been there and there is a small corner mini mall still there with a laundromat right down from MacGhee's. At least that was the case when I was there in 1994. But this is how they put together a crazy quilt blanket that, like with the WR, when you press it, it gives way.
But the point is, one can only expose these things if one has done the hard field investigative work necessary. People like Fetzer and Schackleford have not, and never have. And never will. Its time consuming and expensive. But it needs to be done in a case like this. As per the horseback riding on a beach in New Orleans, when I was there, the people in the Big Easy went to Biloxi for that kind of stuff. Which is in a different state.
By all means attend her conference if you think Ruby, Shaw, Oswald and Ferrie dined out in New Orleans, and Oswald invited Baker to meet with them for dinner in the summer of 1963. And Ferrie did not say anything about Oswald being seen in public with two staunch anti communists while he was working for the FPCC. And somehow Baker didn't put the pieces together for 30 years. That is she didn't call Garrison, Sprague or Blakey.
Fine, its your choice.
The whole idea behind the critical studies of the JFK case is to try and unearth what really happened to President Kennedy. In all of its circumstances.
Because of the horrid mess that the Warren Commission created, that is not an easy thing to do today. Which is an understatement.
But people who try must apply to their work some kind of standards, so we don't have Brennans in reverse.
Baker has all the indications of being another Madeleine Brown. A witness who is nothing but a huge question mark. And that is being kind to her.
If you don't recall, there was a time she complained about being a political prisoner in the USA and seeking asylum in Scandinavia. That turned out to be well, not really accurate. She did the same thing in relation to Canada--and that was, well, not the case. Today, miraculously, persecution free, she does tours from Minnesota to Texas.
When a witness is not forthcoming about certain aspects of her life e.g. her college career, her marriages, her occupation, and these black holes occur at certain points in the narrative that are key to her book (actually books), then this should raise certain warnings about her work and credibility. As noted previously, this is the problem Carol Hewett had with Baker. She could never get a straight answer on these topics from her. Which, in reality, should have been as easy as drinking a glass of water.
Now, people who accept Baker in the community have not had the reputation for doing field investigation work. That is, actually going to the scene of certain places, tracking down on site records, finding witnesses, getting new leads etc. The kind of thing Gaeton Fonzi was so good at and make his book so indispensable. I have never seen anything like that from Jim Fetzer or Martin Shackleford. But that is precisely what is needed in a case like this. When Carol tried to do this with Baker, she could not get a straight answer to even the simplest question like: Did you graduate from UF? Now what is so hard about answering that question?
Except that if she did not graduate, then maybe it undermines the tenet that she was a scientific prodigy? And if she was not another Mary Sherman in her academic faculties, then what use would Ochsner have for her? See, this is something a lawyer like Carol would find curious. Why? Because when Carol was working with CBS, if you can believe it, CBS was predisposed to buy Baker's story. And they wanted Carol to find verification for it so they could run it. It would have helped Carol if she could have. But the problem is when the witness will not even cooperate in piecing her own life together so one can answer questions like, What have you been doing for 30 years? Have you been married before? Did you graduate from UF and if not, why not? If you cannot get straight answers to those kinds of simple questions, then this reflects on how candid someone is about other more complex and material points.
There is much evidence that Baker and her backers ignore that indicates they have pieced together what amounts to a mythology. So much that it is stunning. But it shows just how careless, and how, in another way, they are so willing to fall for someone who simply would be destroyed on the witness stand. And make no mistake, Baker and her backers are good at what they do. They do not just borrow from books. They have been through things like Garrison's ARRB files, which is something that only a very few people have been willing to read. For instance, at one point, she and her backers, like Fetzer, claimed that Oswald and her were in Jackson and they parked the car down the street from Edwin MacGhee's barber shop with a bassinet in the back. The problem here was, they didn't get all the way through the file. Because it later turned out that, when Garrison completed the inquiry, it was Clay Shaw who picked up Oswald almost right in front of the barber shop. The car down the street was unrelated to Oswald since there was a laundromat a few doors down from there. I can vouch for this since I have been there and there is a small corner mini mall still there with a laundromat right down from MacGhee's. At least that was the case when I was there in 1994. But this is how they put together a crazy quilt blanket that, like with the WR, when you press it, it gives way.
But the point is, one can only expose these things if one has done the hard field investigative work necessary. People like Fetzer and Schackleford have not, and never have. And never will. Its time consuming and expensive. But it needs to be done in a case like this. As per the horseback riding on a beach in New Orleans, when I was there, the people in the Big Easy went to Biloxi for that kind of stuff. Which is in a different state.
By all means attend her conference if you think Ruby, Shaw, Oswald and Ferrie dined out in New Orleans, and Oswald invited Baker to meet with them for dinner in the summer of 1963. And Ferrie did not say anything about Oswald being seen in public with two staunch anti communists while he was working for the FPCC. And somehow Baker didn't put the pieces together for 30 years. That is she didn't call Garrison, Sprague or Blakey.
Fine, its your choice.