20-04-2009, 03:59 AM
Jim DiEugenio had written a multi-part review of The Torbitt Document in 2001 for the JFK Research Forum, but I found out that he doesn’t still have the review. I meant to save it at the time, but for some reason I only have Parts 1 & 3 (and I don’t know how many parts there were).
I sent Jim the parts I had (below), and here is his response:
[COLOR="Blue"]“I stand by all of that.
“Torbitt is an obvious disinformation packet. And its timing-after Garrison--is very suspect.
“In fact, one could say that it led the way to All Those Other Suspects, especially the Mafia.”[/COLOR]
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
[the remaining two parts of the review]
Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal aka Torbitt Document
by James DiEugenio ® , 2001…
Part 1
I will now post highlights of my analysis of the essay that was known by
two names, Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal and the Torbitt
Document.
Some background first. In the notes accompanying my copy which was
issued by the short-lived Mae Brussell Research Center, two federal
agents gave this information to a conservative Texas lawyer named
David Copeland, who disguised his name as William Torbitt for
publication purposes. The date was around 1970, right at the end
of the Garrison investigation, a significant point as we will see. The
official name is the long one given above, but the most popular one is
the shorter rubric. The idea that this is in any way a document is sheer
nonsense. It is a freeform essay that, as we will see, is not supported
by its footnotes.
The word nomenclature means to name or the process of naming names.
That is what this essay does in spades: names abound all over the place.
It is interesting to look at this essay now, in light of the many advances in
information, especially by the ARRB. But in my opinion, it could not have
withstood rigorous anlysis at the time it was released, if someone would
have done it. The essay has been sold and passed around for years,
decades, and in fact it was sold by Prevailing Winds, and it was popular
with people like Jeff Steinberg of the La Rouchies, who I know and respect.
In one way I can see how some intelligent people could have been taken in
by this clever mosaic but in another way, I can't see why no one would take
the time to take it apart. In my view, disinformation, no matter how
sophisticated, has to be attacked because it leads many people down blind
alleys.
A good example would be the Blakey-Billings Mafia myth created after the
HSCA. We now know that these two men decieved the public with that
whopper and many of the things they said are inaccurate, like Marcello
saying in executive session that he paid David Ferrie directly to get his
gas station, or Marcello admitting culpability in the JFK case on the
BRILAB tapes. People actually gave credence to this thing and people
like John Davis who furthered this myth were invited to seminars and
sucked up valuable time (though not with me) furthering this non sequitir.
They even got away with smearing Garrison as some kind of pawn of
Marcello until I analyzed that myth and showed it to be another deception
at the first COPA conference. So now with the so-called Torbitt Document.
The two federal agents who gave this information to Copeland worked for
the Customs department and the BND. He took the info and enlarged upon
it and added the footnotes. We do not know where their work ended and his
began or if any sources were given to him. Copeland was a supporter of the
conservative wing of the Texas Democratic party, i.e. people like Connally and
Bentsen. In the afterward he writes that "the Fascist cabal who assassinated
John Kennedy planned to lay the blame on honest right-wing conservatives,
if their first ploy, to lay the blame on Oswald and the communists was not
bought."
Later in the same place, the following appears, "As is the office of a lawyer,
he [Torbitt] makes legal deductions from the evidence gathered but consistently
refuses to speculate on the evidence even when some speculation is warranted....
he resorts only to those legal deductions which courts allow a lawyer to make
from the court approved and documented evidence." This statement is not
supportable by the author's own work, and I will show this throughout. But it does
give the essay an air of authority that, combined with certain other namedropping
elements and partly good information has managed to impress some.
The essay is surprising in that Torbitt was one of the first authors to
actually name the assassins. By about two thirds of the way through,
there are four snipers named: Emilio Santana, William Seymour,
Manuel Gonzalez, and Jim Braden.
How specific is the description? Consider this: "Manuel Gonzalez,
firing from the fence to Kennedy's right side struck the President in
the right temple killing him instantly." This is sourced to the records
of jim Garrison as is most of the sensational stuff. I am in posession
of Garrison's extant records and have read them all. I never saw this.
It is true that much of Garrison's stuff is lost, but I talked to a lot of people
who worked with him and no one ever mentioned this.
Torbitt describes Braden as an agent of the Defense Industrial Security
Command (DISC). Perhaps this is so, but he advances no evidence for
this and I have never seen it elsewhere.
Torbitt insists that it was Seymour at Sylvia Odio's impersonating Oswald,
and mentions it as an established fact, when as early as 1964 it was in
dispute ( for a good analysis see Sylvia Meagher). Seymour is also noted
as impersonating Oswald in Mexico. Again this is sourced to Garrison and
again I have not seen it.
Santana is named as the sniper in the Dal-Tex building, and again this is
attributed to Garrison and again I have not seen it. Santana is quite an
interesting character and in fact may have been involved in Dallas but much
of what Torbitt says about him is not supportable. (For the stuff that is
supportable, see my article in Probe on Rose Cheramie.)
But Torbitt is not done. He adds that, in addition to the above four, there
were seven Mexican professionals in firing position in Dallas. They were
agents of Albert Osborne. Again, Osborne is another interesting character
(to say the least) but the idea that he ran an assassination ring is not
demonstrated. So this set of claims, or 'legal deductions" is a bit overblown.
But not only does the author assume to know who the snipers were; he also
assumes to know how they got away. Of course, Braden was arrested,
actually I think only detained, before he was released.
Seymour jumped into the Nash Rambler and was dropped off at the Abundant
Life Temple. He then killed Tippitt.
Santana and some other snipers stayed at Tammie True's before the
assassination. In my file on Santana, this information is not borne out.
In further contradiction of Torbitt, Santana, according to my files, did not say
that he knew Seymour.
Gonzalez went to Fort Worth and stayed at Tammie True's and then was flown
to Houston. Again, Garrison did a lot of work on Gonzalez, and again I did not
see this. So again, another set of sensational claims is overhyped.
Part 3
Let us now go one step upward in Torbitt's explanation of the conspiracy.
Although Copeland's essay contains a melange of agencies--almost a
parody of a grand conspiracy--the Mafia plays a key operational role in it.
Two of the major mobsters involved are Carlos Marcello and Joe Bonanno.
Like Robert Blakey, Copeland/Torbitt has David Ferrie working for Marcello
both before and after the assassination; instead of working for lawyer
Wray Gill who contracted him out for the Marcello case.
But further, Torbitt has Marcello giving Ferrie instructions on his role in the
plot at 1:00 pm on 11/22/63 in court in New Orleans. Since Ferrie was dead
when Torbitt was writing and Marcello never talked, how did Copeland get
this information? He sources it to Paris Flammonde's book but it is another
false footnote. Torbitt states that the Alamotel Hotel in Houston where
Ferrie was headed was owned by Marcello, yet the HSCA report on Ferrie
does not support this claim. (Further, Torbitt calls Marcello's New Orleans
hotel the Town House Hotel when in reality it was the Town and Country.)
Ruby is supposedly working for Marcello also and again this claim is
asserted but not at all demonstrated. Torbitt has Marcello on the ruling
national board of the Mafia but this claim has been disputed elsewhere.
But Torbitt then does something even more breathtaking. All the actions
taken by Bonanno and Marcello were taken not through their relationship
with the Mob, or the Mob's relationship with the CIA, but through their
connections to DISC! And then he tops that one. Right after this, he asserts
that both of these American Mafia Dons were members of PERMINDEX and
Centro Mondiale Commerciale! This goes unsourced and like the connection
to DISC I have never seen it mentioned anywere else. (As we shall see, it is
significant that historically speaking, Torbitt/Copeland is probably the first to
assert this Mafia importance in the assassination and to assert the primacy
of Ferrie's pseudo-relationship with Marcello.)
Even on comparatively easy and lesser details, Torbitt is dubious. He claims
that Gordon Novel's wife told Garrison that her husband impersonated Oswald
in the days preceding the assassination. I saw that interview and this information
is not in there. Torbitt says that Ferenc Nagy of PERMINDEX is the umbrella man
in Dealey Plaza. Anyone who looks at the photo of Nagy in my book will see that
this claim is ridiculous.
Torbitt states that after his program on Garrison in 1967, Walter Sheridan was
not seen on NBC News "which proves Walter Sheridan was on special
assignment from his DIA position." Yet a quick check of NBC records will show
that Sheridan did at least four other programs for NBC after the Garrison one.
And the DIA is the one intelligence agency Sheridan was not connected to.
Torbitt has over 14 witnesses testifying to the Clinton-Jackson incident at the
Shaw trial. That figure is exaggerated by about a third. According to Torbitt,
the name of William Seymour surfaced through Dean Andrews. He even has
Andrews naming Seymour as an assassin. I have seen every extant record
on Andrews from the Warren Commission and the Garrison probe and these
claims are nowhere to be found. Torbitt has Gordon Novel seen with Ruby
in the Carousel Club. Again, I have a thick file on Novel and this evidence is
non-existent.
I sent Jim the parts I had (below), and here is his response:
[COLOR="Blue"]“I stand by all of that.
“Torbitt is an obvious disinformation packet. And its timing-after Garrison--is very suspect.
“In fact, one could say that it led the way to All Those Other Suspects, especially the Mafia.”[/COLOR]
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
[the remaining two parts of the review]
Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal aka Torbitt Document
by James DiEugenio ® , 2001…
Part 1
I will now post highlights of my analysis of the essay that was known by
two names, Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal and the Torbitt
Document.
Some background first. In the notes accompanying my copy which was
issued by the short-lived Mae Brussell Research Center, two federal
agents gave this information to a conservative Texas lawyer named
David Copeland, who disguised his name as William Torbitt for
publication purposes. The date was around 1970, right at the end
of the Garrison investigation, a significant point as we will see. The
official name is the long one given above, but the most popular one is
the shorter rubric. The idea that this is in any way a document is sheer
nonsense. It is a freeform essay that, as we will see, is not supported
by its footnotes.
The word nomenclature means to name or the process of naming names.
That is what this essay does in spades: names abound all over the place.
It is interesting to look at this essay now, in light of the many advances in
information, especially by the ARRB. But in my opinion, it could not have
withstood rigorous anlysis at the time it was released, if someone would
have done it. The essay has been sold and passed around for years,
decades, and in fact it was sold by Prevailing Winds, and it was popular
with people like Jeff Steinberg of the La Rouchies, who I know and respect.
In one way I can see how some intelligent people could have been taken in
by this clever mosaic but in another way, I can't see why no one would take
the time to take it apart. In my view, disinformation, no matter how
sophisticated, has to be attacked because it leads many people down blind
alleys.
A good example would be the Blakey-Billings Mafia myth created after the
HSCA. We now know that these two men decieved the public with that
whopper and many of the things they said are inaccurate, like Marcello
saying in executive session that he paid David Ferrie directly to get his
gas station, or Marcello admitting culpability in the JFK case on the
BRILAB tapes. People actually gave credence to this thing and people
like John Davis who furthered this myth were invited to seminars and
sucked up valuable time (though not with me) furthering this non sequitir.
They even got away with smearing Garrison as some kind of pawn of
Marcello until I analyzed that myth and showed it to be another deception
at the first COPA conference. So now with the so-called Torbitt Document.
The two federal agents who gave this information to Copeland worked for
the Customs department and the BND. He took the info and enlarged upon
it and added the footnotes. We do not know where their work ended and his
began or if any sources were given to him. Copeland was a supporter of the
conservative wing of the Texas Democratic party, i.e. people like Connally and
Bentsen. In the afterward he writes that "the Fascist cabal who assassinated
John Kennedy planned to lay the blame on honest right-wing conservatives,
if their first ploy, to lay the blame on Oswald and the communists was not
bought."
Later in the same place, the following appears, "As is the office of a lawyer,
he [Torbitt] makes legal deductions from the evidence gathered but consistently
refuses to speculate on the evidence even when some speculation is warranted....
he resorts only to those legal deductions which courts allow a lawyer to make
from the court approved and documented evidence." This statement is not
supportable by the author's own work, and I will show this throughout. But it does
give the essay an air of authority that, combined with certain other namedropping
elements and partly good information has managed to impress some.
The essay is surprising in that Torbitt was one of the first authors to
actually name the assassins. By about two thirds of the way through,
there are four snipers named: Emilio Santana, William Seymour,
Manuel Gonzalez, and Jim Braden.
How specific is the description? Consider this: "Manuel Gonzalez,
firing from the fence to Kennedy's right side struck the President in
the right temple killing him instantly." This is sourced to the records
of jim Garrison as is most of the sensational stuff. I am in posession
of Garrison's extant records and have read them all. I never saw this.
It is true that much of Garrison's stuff is lost, but I talked to a lot of people
who worked with him and no one ever mentioned this.
Torbitt describes Braden as an agent of the Defense Industrial Security
Command (DISC). Perhaps this is so, but he advances no evidence for
this and I have never seen it elsewhere.
Torbitt insists that it was Seymour at Sylvia Odio's impersonating Oswald,
and mentions it as an established fact, when as early as 1964 it was in
dispute ( for a good analysis see Sylvia Meagher). Seymour is also noted
as impersonating Oswald in Mexico. Again this is sourced to Garrison and
again I have not seen it.
Santana is named as the sniper in the Dal-Tex building, and again this is
attributed to Garrison and again I have not seen it. Santana is quite an
interesting character and in fact may have been involved in Dallas but much
of what Torbitt says about him is not supportable. (For the stuff that is
supportable, see my article in Probe on Rose Cheramie.)
But Torbitt is not done. He adds that, in addition to the above four, there
were seven Mexican professionals in firing position in Dallas. They were
agents of Albert Osborne. Again, Osborne is another interesting character
(to say the least) but the idea that he ran an assassination ring is not
demonstrated. So this set of claims, or 'legal deductions" is a bit overblown.
But not only does the author assume to know who the snipers were; he also
assumes to know how they got away. Of course, Braden was arrested,
actually I think only detained, before he was released.
Seymour jumped into the Nash Rambler and was dropped off at the Abundant
Life Temple. He then killed Tippitt.
Santana and some other snipers stayed at Tammie True's before the
assassination. In my file on Santana, this information is not borne out.
In further contradiction of Torbitt, Santana, according to my files, did not say
that he knew Seymour.
Gonzalez went to Fort Worth and stayed at Tammie True's and then was flown
to Houston. Again, Garrison did a lot of work on Gonzalez, and again I did not
see this. So again, another set of sensational claims is overhyped.
Part 3
Let us now go one step upward in Torbitt's explanation of the conspiracy.
Although Copeland's essay contains a melange of agencies--almost a
parody of a grand conspiracy--the Mafia plays a key operational role in it.
Two of the major mobsters involved are Carlos Marcello and Joe Bonanno.
Like Robert Blakey, Copeland/Torbitt has David Ferrie working for Marcello
both before and after the assassination; instead of working for lawyer
Wray Gill who contracted him out for the Marcello case.
But further, Torbitt has Marcello giving Ferrie instructions on his role in the
plot at 1:00 pm on 11/22/63 in court in New Orleans. Since Ferrie was dead
when Torbitt was writing and Marcello never talked, how did Copeland get
this information? He sources it to Paris Flammonde's book but it is another
false footnote. Torbitt states that the Alamotel Hotel in Houston where
Ferrie was headed was owned by Marcello, yet the HSCA report on Ferrie
does not support this claim. (Further, Torbitt calls Marcello's New Orleans
hotel the Town House Hotel when in reality it was the Town and Country.)
Ruby is supposedly working for Marcello also and again this claim is
asserted but not at all demonstrated. Torbitt has Marcello on the ruling
national board of the Mafia but this claim has been disputed elsewhere.
But Torbitt then does something even more breathtaking. All the actions
taken by Bonanno and Marcello were taken not through their relationship
with the Mob, or the Mob's relationship with the CIA, but through their
connections to DISC! And then he tops that one. Right after this, he asserts
that both of these American Mafia Dons were members of PERMINDEX and
Centro Mondiale Commerciale! This goes unsourced and like the connection
to DISC I have never seen it mentioned anywere else. (As we shall see, it is
significant that historically speaking, Torbitt/Copeland is probably the first to
assert this Mafia importance in the assassination and to assert the primacy
of Ferrie's pseudo-relationship with Marcello.)
Even on comparatively easy and lesser details, Torbitt is dubious. He claims
that Gordon Novel's wife told Garrison that her husband impersonated Oswald
in the days preceding the assassination. I saw that interview and this information
is not in there. Torbitt says that Ferenc Nagy of PERMINDEX is the umbrella man
in Dealey Plaza. Anyone who looks at the photo of Nagy in my book will see that
this claim is ridiculous.
Torbitt states that after his program on Garrison in 1967, Walter Sheridan was
not seen on NBC News "which proves Walter Sheridan was on special
assignment from his DIA position." Yet a quick check of NBC records will show
that Sheridan did at least four other programs for NBC after the Garrison one.
And the DIA is the one intelligence agency Sheridan was not connected to.
Torbitt has over 14 witnesses testifying to the Clinton-Jackson incident at the
Shaw trial. That figure is exaggerated by about a third. According to Torbitt,
the name of William Seymour surfaced through Dean Andrews. He even has
Andrews naming Seymour as an assassin. I have seen every extant record
on Andrews from the Warren Commission and the Garrison probe and these
claims are nowhere to be found. Torbitt has Gordon Novel seen with Ruby
in the Carousel Club. Again, I have a thick file on Novel and this evidence is
non-existent.