The Fiasco of Spartacus

[Jim DiEugenio]

If I had not just read it, I would not have believed it.

I did read it and I still have a hard time buying it.

Von Pein started a thread on the, I have a hard time typing it, the lapel flip!

Can you believe it?

This fraud was created by Lattimer over a decade ago. Yep, the same Lattimer who also sallied forth with the Thorburn reaction hoax.

Lattimer has been taken apart by Mili Cranor more than once. And this whole "lapel flip" thing was discredited by her and others about a decade ago, if not more. To name one thing, the bullet hole through Connally's jacket is nowhere near the lapel! When I found that out I wanted to slug Lattimer. Mili said, Jim, understand: these people don't really believe the mass of what they say or write. They are salesmen, working a confidence game.

Yet, even though this has been discredited for years on end, Von Pein actually started a thread on the SBT based on this, which lasted 17 pages--in other words it was almost Fetzerian! Isn't that about the craziest thing you ever heard? In 2015, to still be arguing the single bullet fantasy, on the lapel flip?

The Single Bullet Fantasy can be discredited in about ten different ways. But John Hunt completely devastated it with his essays about the Phantom Bullet at FBI HQ. Those two essays prove that the bullet was substituted or there were four bullets. I argue the former. http://jfklancer.com/hunt/phantom.htm If that is not enough, how about this http://ctka.net/2011/Harris_Bell_Article.html

Crazy Dave now says that we don't know if John Hunt actually handled the bullet or was looking at photos. We don't know for sure. But since the photos are actually bigger than the bullet, I don't know what the heck he means by that. Except that maybe NARA is in on the plot and they erased FBI agent's Todd's initials from the bullet? Geez Dave how big is your plot then? And NARA is trying to discredit Hoover?

Then Von Pein says the idea that Oswald did not actually pick up those weapons--the rifle and handgun-- is discredited by articles on his web site. This, of course, is to increase the number of visitors to his fruity site. Well, if you look at his argument for Oswald picking up the handgun, its humorous. Because he had to footnote it more than once by saying he has changed his mind about such and such a matter.

The problem is that there is absolutely no evidence that Oswald ever went to Railway Express Agency to pick up that handgun. No signed receipt was ever found in Oswald's belongings, no sales receipt is in the WC volumes as adduced by REA. No witness ever said he handed the handgun to Oswald.

So first Davey tried to say that the post office collected the money for REA, and then gave Oswald the handgun at the USPS. Absolutely incredible. I told Davey, this is embarrassing even for you. The idea that the USPS would serve as a banking agent for a private competitor is so loony that its ludicrous to even contemplate. Especially back then. But he insisted he was right for about a week. Then he goes over to Dale Myers' site and he changed his mind. In other words, he didn't want it to appear that I had made him rethink his position. So he used Mr. Single Bullet Fact. Except, he still had the same problem.

All that Myers' said was that REA had left a postcard for Oswald at his USPS box. LHO picked it up and brought it to REA and got the handgun. In other words, Davey wanted everyone to believe that this solved his problem: namely no evidence that the transaction took place, or that the FBI had even been to REA ! In fact, it added one more document that should be in the record but is not.

Yet this is the kind of craziness one gets into when one decides to argue with these clowns. Gordon actually tried to deal with Von Pein rationally. I thought eventually he did pretty well. But 17 pages on the SBT? And of course this kind of thing encourages the Krazy Kid Oswald advocates who think Davey is doing such a good job with the evidence.

Wow. I mean, Simkin walked away. And a group of them thought it was worth keeping it around. To argue with Von Pein?

BTW, the Von Pein/Ayton book is now rated at almost the one million mark at Amazon. And they want to argue with a guy who's book completely sunk on sight? Maybe Von Pein is giving out free copies at his chicken store? He should have a lot of returns to give away.

I think Martin Hay's CTKA review had something to do with that.

[R.K. Locke]

That forum is an absolute joke these days. Between the dickhead who thinks that Edwin Walker was behind the assassination and all the milquetoast simpletons who engage relentlessly with Von Pein it is hardly worth reading. Have people in the JFK "research community" never heard of the concept of no platforming? I guess not. Either that or they have fallen prey to the folly of free speech absolutism. "Everyone deserves to have their say!" Bullshit.

No doubt it's stuff like this, along with the interminable internecine squabbling over the minutiae of the evidentiary record, that has driven away the likes of James Richards, Zach Robertson, John Kelly, Linda Minor and any number of other worthwhile researchers.

[Jim DiEugenio]

Agree totally.

That's why I don't even want to apply. That forum is almost a parody of what we are supposed to be doing.

I figured out a long time ago that Von Pein uses these arguments he gets into for one purpose: to place them on his web site. But he does it in censored form. So that he always gets the last word and he leaves your best points out. You know, WC style.

He has a series with me that is about 98 parts because I dared tear down his idol Bugliosi. ( I also tore down his other idol Jean Davison, but that was so complete he hasn't touched it yet.)

He doesn't put any real research on his site since he doesn't do any. So this is what he does. The censored format allows him to inflate himself in the eyes of the unfortunate visitor to his site.

Lee Farley stopped arguing with him when he discovered he was doing this.

[Albert Doyle]

Still though the overall effect is to give Von Pein the advantage by sheer presence. He will gain public credibility by being there while the public isn't aware of why his refuters are refusing to participate. Von Pein quit and could not answer the brain evidence. He's done. I still think Jim D should swallow his pride and go over there and clean-up now that the trolls protector Simkin is gone.


One advantage arguing with the trolls has is smart people will see Greg Parker is an empty windbag and fraud. There are several places where instead of answering David Josephs he entered that it had already been covered. Parker is like one of those petty dictators in an underfunded British Sci-Fi movie.


There's nothing wrong with the notion of the lapel flipping out. We know Connally had wounds that corresponded to such an event. It doesn't matter anyway because we know NPIC altered the Zapruder Film according to Brugioni. Which means you have to throw out all Zapruder Film evidence. The magic bullet is already refuted by much other evidence.

[Gordon Gray]

Still though the overall effect is to give Von Pein the advantage by sheer presence. He will gain public credibility by being there while the public isn't aware of why his refuters are refusing to participate. Von Pein quit and could not answer the brain evidence. He's done. I still think Jim D should swallow his pride and go over there and clean-up now that the trolls protector Simkin is gone.


One advantage arguing with the trolls has is smart people will see Greg Parker is an empty windbag and fraud. There are several places where instead of answering David Josephs he entered that it had already been covered. Parker is like one of those petty dictators in an underfunded British Sci-Fi movie.


There's nothing wrong with the notion of the lapel flipping out. We know Connally had wounds that corresponded to such an event. It doesn't matter anyway because we know NPIC altered the Zapruder Film according to Brugioni. Which means you have to throw out all Zapruder Film evidence. The magic bullet is already refuted by much other evidence.

Just for accuracy's sake, I don't believe Brugioni ever said that the NPIC altered the film. They received two different versions of the Z film, one that had been altered at Hawkeye.

[Jim DiEugenio]

BTW, what makes the Von Pein/Ayton book so silly is that at the AARC conference last fall, Russ Baker made a talk about the Warren Commission. He showed some documents which the staffers had compiled in January of 1964. The staff understood its mission was to show there was no conspiracy in the Kennedy case. These will be in his new book. BTW, this makes three pieces of evidence we now have that reveal the fix was in beforehand. The first is the Eisenberg memo, the second is the Odio/FOnzi interview, and now this.

Further, as someone revealed over there, it turns out that Jerry Ford told the French premier that he knew there was an organized conspiracy in the Kennedy case, but they could not prove it. (Albert Rossi is translating that newspaper article now and we should have it up at CTKA by tonight.) What a liar Ford was eh?

Third, another revelation by Baker is that not just Ford, but Dulles was rewriting the final drafts of the Warren Report. The gist of Dulles' revisions was to demonize Oswald as a sociopath.

To support the WC today or the SBT today is not just wrong, its ludicrous.

[Jim DiEugenio]

What's wrong with the lapel flip idea is that the implication is that this is when the bullet hit JBC, and its an extension of the bullet that hit JFK.

Those are both wrong, because when you see JBC's jacket the bullet hole is not near the lapel.

Therefore, if the lapel is flipping, and there is a debate about that also, it was probably because Connally was turning to the crowd and perhaps the wind caught the lapel.

Can you imagine wasting 17 pages arguing over Lattimer? Even Ron Ecker congratulated Crazy Dave for accomplishing his mission; which is to distract and waste time. All the while building up grist for his web site. Now that his book has bombed.

That is what the EF has come to.

[Joseph McBride]

Mary Ferrell once tried to recommend to me John K. Lattimer's
LINCOLN AND KENNEDY: MEDICAL AND BALLISTIC COMPARISONS
OF THEIR ASSASSINATIONS as the best study of the medical
evidence in the JFK assassination. I had read it, so this was one
of the moments when I was alerted to her true nature as a
disinformation specialist.

[Jim DiEugenio]

That is really something, for two reasons.

See, I think that in that book Lattimer revealed that he had the exact same model of MC rifle that the WC says Oswald had. Down to the correct and duplicate serial number! Which meant of course that, as many thought, the MC rifle was so mass produced from so many factories that the serial numbers were not unique. Both John Armstrong and Tom Purvis proved this conclusively.

All that book is, is rationalizations for the WC. So was she saying the WC got the autopsy right? That would be impossible.

[Tracy Riddle]

When I want scientific expertise on the subject of bullet wounds, I turn to a urologist like Lattimer. ::rofl::

I think the lapel flip theory goes back to the 1970s. I remember LNer books in the 70s-90s referring to it frequently.