Sabato reviewed by DiEugenio

[Jim DiEugenio]

http://www.ctka.net/reviews/sabato_2.html

Although there are two decent sections in it, this is a pretty bad book.

Obama much further left than Kennedy? That is absurd.

THe results of the polling confirm everything we thought was true about this case.

The rest of the book tries to say the results were wrong.

[Tracy Riddle]

Great work as always, Jim.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Thanks Tracy.

Let us hope Larry, Rent a Scholar, Sabato, reads it.

BTW, enabled by Shenon, two WC counselors attacked Sabato for making criticisms of them in his book.

Whew.

[Dawn Meredith]

http://www.ctka.net/reviews/sabato_2.html

Although there are two decent sections in it, this is a pretty bad book.

Obama much further left than Kennedy? That is absurd.

THe results of the polling confirm everything we thought was true about this case.

The rest of the book tries to say the results were wrong.

Excellent piece Jim. Your reviews are so complete. You save the rest of us the agony of reading the book.
When do you sleep????
This guy clearly has an agenda.
And it's not truth.
Just one more MSM hack. This is the kind of book that gets you on tv. Why bother with facts when you can get such public notice?::fury::
Bravo!

Dawn

[Albert Doyle]

I admire DiEugenio so much that if he asked me to shine his shoes with my shirt before a conference I'd probably do it, however I was confused to see these passages appearing:

It has been questioned by some because Baker never mentioned the incident, or Oswald, in his first day affidavit. Even though when he made out the affidavit, Oswald was sitting right across from him in the witness room at Dallas Police headquarters. (James DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland,pgs. 192-96)

I read somewhere that Dallas Police had an encounter with Oswald previously where they learned he was intel. If this is true it could be feasible that the reason Baker first omitted Oswald from his report was because he was either ordered to until they could figure it out, or acted on his own volition. If you think about it this isn't that far-fetched since we know the real relationship between Dallas PD and the Carousel with which Oswald was associated. Also, some of DiEugenio's own writings place Oswald in the lunchroom according to Carolyn Arnold's witnessing.

But researcher Sean Murphy has gone beyond that. He argues, with compelling evidence and logic that, at the time of the assassination, Oswald was most likely outside the building. Standing back in the alcove of the Houston street doorway with his sandwich and soda pop. In the Darnell film, this image has been termed "Prayer Man", because of the position of the subject's hands in still shots. The man next to this figure, and a step above him, is Wesley Frazier. Needless to say, if this figure is actually Oswald, not only is the Warren Commission shown to be a complete fraud, but also the worst suspicions about Frazier being suborned are also true.

Now we have fully resurrected Ralph Cinque and Professor Fetzer's claim. When I told Seamus soon we'll see DiEugenio's picture on Cinque's website I was joking. Now I'm wondering. Only this time we are switching from their nutty transposition of Lovelady to having Oswald in the shadowy corner. But this conflicts with the timing of Oswald being in the lunchroom. A couple of things to note is Darnell is after the shooting when Lovelady switched to the right side of the steps. During the shooting I don't think you'll find any image that shows any obvious soda and sandwich. What this comes down to in my mind is whether we can believe all those in view of Prayer Man would keep their mouths shut about it being Oswald. Not only would Lovelady have a clear view of Oswald in the Darnell shot, but is it likely after being questioned about the Altgens controversy that he would keep his mouth shut after having a clear view of Prayer Man while standing on the right side of the steps? Also, I know when I'm in a group and I see something remarkable I have a habit of turning around to see the others who witnessed it sort of like an involuntary "Did you see that too?" reflex. If Oswald was out there on the steps during the shooting I can't believe no one scanned him. You're losing me with this. I'm just waiting for Fetzer to revise and say Doorway Man was actually Prayer Man along with a whole new set of bizarre alteration reasons supporting it.



As to the rest, thank goodness for DiEugenio who basically rides these FOX historians out of town tarred and feathered on a rail like they deserve.

[Marc Ellis]

I've always thought Sabato was a talking head with a silly mustache. He only wrote his book for a one time payoff on the fiftieth anniversary. He's not worth a serious review IMO. I did read the CTKA review though.

More importantly, I've learned much from DiEugenio's deconstruction of Bugliosi in 'Reclaiming Parkland'. At it's best, it's persuasive. And in argument, that's all that matters.

Now that I've gotten past the Hollywood stuff and the Tom Hanks tedium, I think it's a more important book than 'Destiny Betrayed'. It is focused on taking down Bugliosi's (ie., the etablishment's) conclusions, carefully, logically, one-at-a-time. That's important and no one yet has done it to my knowledge. So if Bugliosi's book is 'for the ages', so is 'Reclaiming Parkland'. It is the only serious point-by-point rebuttal I know of.

More than once, the author returns to Bugliosi's dubious pledge at the beginning of his book, to state his opponents' arguments in the way they would make them, and leave nothing out. DiEugenio shows repeatedly, either Bugliosi was dishonest about that, or the JFK assassination is a subject way out of his intellectual depth.

I highly recommend 'Reclaiming Parkland'. Notwithstanding the title, it's not about a flop movie.

[Jim DiEugenio]

On his first day affidavit, Baker said nothing about the second floor incident. And I go over this in detail in Reclaiming Parkland.

The fact that Oswald was in the witness room when he made out the affidavit makes it all the more incredible.

And sorry, I won't accept any excuse, because this became the official story.

I don't know how anyone can conflate Fetzer and the Doorway Man with Sean Murphy and Prayer Man. They are two completely different images. And the reasoning and logic behind Sean's work is so superior to Fetzer and Cinque that it is almost like comparing Sylvia Meagher with say Buchanan, or later, Hankey.

There is a thread on Sean and his work here. There is a longer, more complete one at Spartacus. There is another long one on Greg Parker's site, Reopen Kennedy.

Everyone came after Sean with everything they could muster. Including what you just said about the time of the film. As he said, it makes no sense for Oswald to go back up the stairs and to the lunch room when its pretty clear he already had the soda and lunch right there. And the positioning of Prayer Man makes it hard for anyone to see him back there. Except Frazier.

I urge anyone who has not read those other two threads to do so. Potentially, this is significant. Not just about Oswald, but about Frazier.

[Jim DiEugenio]

I've always thought Sabato was a talking head with a silly mustache. He only wrote his book for a one time payoff on the fiftieth anniversary. He's not worth a serious review IMO. I did read the CTKA review though.

More importantly, I've learned much from DiEugenio's deconstruction of Bugliosi in 'Reclaiming Parkland'. At it's best, it's persuasive. And in argument, that's all that matters.

Now that I've gotten past the Hollywood stuff and the Tom Hanks tedium, I think it's a more important book than 'Destiny Betrayed'. It is focused on taking down Bugliosi's (ie., the etablishment's) conclusions, carefully, logically, one-at-a-time. That's important and no one yet has done it to my knowledge. So if Bugliosi's book is 'for the ages', so is 'Reclaiming Parkland'. It is the only serious point-by-point rebuttal I know of.

More than once, the author returns to Bugliosi's dubious pledge at the beginning of his book, to state his opponents' arguments in the way they would make them, and leave nothing out. DiEugenio shows repeatedly, either Bugliosi was dishonest about that, or the JFK assassination is a subject way out of his intellectual depth.

I highly recommend 'Reclaiming Parkland'. Notwithstanding the title, it's not about a flop movie.

Thanks Marc. I may have been the only guy to read all of the book, plus the CD. When I asked Gary Aguilar if he had done so, he memorably replied, "Are you crazy!"

To this day, I don't understand why Bugliosi took that pledge in his introduction. If I was his editor I would have told him, "Look you wrote a long prosecutor's brief. You did not include all the exculpatory stuff. Someone is going to take notice and go after you on that." Either the editor did not tell him that, or Vince ignored him. With all due respect to VInce, who I still like personally, he deliberately left stuff out. For example, about Ruby's polygraph. He read that report. He then censored it for the reader.

About the title. They gave me a list of five titles to pick from. I wanted to call it either "Refuting Bugliosi" or "Doubting Bugliosi". I got overruled. Turns out I was right. But 90% of the time, the publisher gets to name the title.

[Albert Doyle]

If Oswald was known to Dallas PD to be a spook and known to be associated with Ruby it is well within reason that he would be omitted from the record for the time being. The Dallas cops omitted Ruby's true background when he showed up at the station in broad daylight on Friday night. Oswald was a Ruby boy. You are forgetting that Carolyn Arnold put Oswald in the lunchroom at 12:25. The glitch here is Oswald told Fritz he was in the 2nd floor lunchroom (when off. came in) at the Depository well prior to any finagling at the police station. Combine this with the fact that Oswald would have to be out on the steps for such a prolonged duration for him to be Prayer Man that it would be impossible for no one to witness him, especially since the cameras managed to. No, in my mind years of research builds up false edges where perhaps none exist and the suggestion that Oswald was out there waving his arms while rolling up his sleeves, while having numerous people pass by him at the entrance, is something that common sense should exclude. These are things that common sense tells us shadows would not conceal since it would require numerous people to pass Oswald while entering the Depository at the Darnell juncture. If that were the case I find it unbelievable that Oswald would not have simply told that to his captors at the police station. How difficult was "Ask Frazier. I was with him on the front steps"?

We know Oswald was a spook and we know he was following serious covert orders. The lunchroom makes much more sense than the front steps because it's where those likely orders would have put him in order to both get him out of the way and set him up as a patsy. These are hardly "excuses" because they confrom to a complex pattern of intrigue and covert methodolgy seriously related to the assassination and evidenced elsewhere.

[Jim DiEugenio]

The only problem with that idea is this: There is no evidence for that happening.

No one was with Baker when he did the affidavit. But beyond that one would have to prove that Baker somehow knew this stuff. There is nothing to do that with.

But beyond that, in the original affidavit, Baker never even mentions the lunch room at all. So the problem is not just Oswald, its the location.

I think there is a possibility that the man Baker describes is the man Worrell saw escaping from the back of the TSBD after the assassination.

Sean entertained that idea at one time. But I think today that he thinks the hit team came down in one of the two freight elevators.

Oswald was seen outside after, and in one of the interrogation notes, he said he was there.

Now, if anyone thinks that Frazier was going to say he saw LHO on the steps, well, forget it.

This debate should not be here though. This is about Sabato's book. If you want to debate this issue please go to the Sean Murphy thread.