Vince Bugliosi: The Whole Story

[Jim DiEugenio]

I just glanced over at the fruitcake Dale Myers' site.

This is the guy who at one time, not so long ago, was a fierce critic of the Warren Commission. And John Kelin interviewed him at that time. And its at the CTKA site.

Realizing there was no upside in return for spending all that time knocking the official story, he circled around 180 degress around the time of the Oliver Stone film.

Then, with help from his pal Gus Russo, he appeared on national television in 2003 to pronounce one of the greatest lies ever broadcast. He called the fulcrum of the Warren Report, the Single Bullet Fact.

HA HA HA LOL ROTF

He actually kept a straight face while saying it. That's how bad he wanted to get paid.

Well, on his blog spot he noticed Vince's passing. He says he assisted Vince with Reclaiming History. (He was actually supposed to get a co-writer credit after Fred Haines, Vince's original partner, got sick.)

But Delusionary Dale just cannot help himself. He actually calls RH, easily the best book in the assassination field.


::::cuckoo::

I like the throwaway use of the modifier "easily". RH is nothing but a rerun of just about every discredited piece of evidence that the WC and HSCA used to prop up the ludicrous idea that Oswald was the lone assassin. Neither Vince, nor Myers, nor Haines honestly confronted any of the best evidence against the official story. Nor did they even acknowledge the newer evidence that completely vitiates it: Jeremy Gunn's interview of John Stringer, where he denounces the photos of the brain at NARA; John Armstrong's work on CE 139 showing that its the wrong rifle; and John Hunt and Robert Harris' work, which together destroys the efficacy of CE 399 and shows a separate bullet went into, and dropped out of, Connally. In other words: wrong brain, wrong rifle, wrong bullet. Some case huh?

To call such a bloated, selective rehash easily the best book on the case, shows just how out there in the stratosphere Myers is right now. He made his money off of Frontline, and Peter Jennings, and he is now sticking to it.

We now know that the WC was a knowing fraud. That the majority of the commissioners understood that. And so did the staffers. To uphold such a fraud renders one's work to the level of an anthropological curiosity, like looking at and playing with a rare animal in a zoo.

[Tracy Riddle]

It's ironic that Myers' book With Malice is actually much better than Bugliosi's, though he ignores a lot of the evidence he collected to deliberately support the official story of the Tippit murder. Of all the LNer books, I would only recommend With Malice and the ones by Richard Trask.

[Jim DiEugenio]

That book was published many moons ago.

I think Myers has gotten worse in the meantime.

I mean to call RH easily the best book in the field?

Length does not denore quality. It just denotes length.

RH was like the leaning tower of Pisa. As I detail in Reclaiming Parkland, Bugliosi actually took that joke of a trial he did in London as a real measure of the JFK case. It was not in the slightest. He then wrote a book about it, and then Oliver Stone's movie came out. So he doubled down on that.

Then the ARRB started up. And he doubled down again. He told me that the book was actually supposed to be three volumes. When I asked him why it was so long he said, "I've got to knock down all that stuff you and Lisa wrote in Probe." Except he went after everything and everybody. As Jeff Morley said, what kind of historian writes most of his book on what did not happen. Which is why Vince was not a good historian.

And the thing is, I kind of liked Vince personally. And I still think he wrote three good books: The Betrayal of America, No Island of Sanity, and The Prosecution of George Bush for Murder.

The Paula Jones book I thought was especially good. And I think that he was correct legally also. Which would have saved us the whole Clinton impeachment fiasco.

But when I read Reclaiming History and saw what he had done, I mean I was just appalled. Its one thing to be a smart person. Its another thing to use that intelligence to achieve and revivify a false paradigm, using phony evidence. To use one example: Vince pummeled Doug Horne on his two brain memorandum. But he never told his readers about 1.) Stringer's denial of the brain phtographs, and 2.) Humes' saying that there was no upwards trial of particles in the extant head x rays as he wrote about in his report. And that is just dishonest since its apparent he read both ARRB depositions.

I don't know what possessed him to do stuff like that over and over. So disagreeing with his ghost writer Myers', who made some money off this thing, I think RH really hurt his reputation.

[Tracy Riddle]

Hadn't Bugliosi always supported the WC, at least going back to the mock TV trial in the 1980s?

He seemed to be open to a conspiracy in the RFK assassination; did he ever change his mind about that?

I think that with JFK and MLK, many liberals and Democrats have accepted "political truth" over actual truth, because they have never seen any political benefit in getting to the truth about the matter.

[Tom Bowden]

My discussions with Vince began with the RFK murder many years ago and he never indicated any change in his stance of a conspiracy there. From Day 1, he always indicated he believed the WC on JFK.

[Tracy Riddle]

My discussions with Vince began with the RFK murder many years ago and he never indicated any change in his stance of a conspiracy there. From Day 1, he always indicated he believed the WC on JFK.

I wonder what kind of conspiracy he suspected in the RFK case. There is very little discussion of who was behind RFK's murder - we generally assume "the same forces who killed his brother" - or what kind of patsy/group they were trying to blame. Obviously not Cuba in this case.

With Sirhan (a Christian Palestinian) and the other Middle Eastern-looking people that several witnesses saw, I personally see a clever attempt (by CIA/Mossad/SAVAK) to manipulate some radical Palestinian group like al-Fatah to be blamed. This would incite American public opinion against the Arabs and in favor of Israel (like the botched USS Liberty attack was supposed to do). But apparently others in the government (local and federal) decided to ignore all of that and go the "lone nut" route.

[Jim DiEugenio]

From what I was able to gather, Vince never dropped his ideas on the RFK case being some kind of conspiracy.

I also got the idea that at least since the phony London trial, he always thought the Warren Commission was correct.

I touched on this a bit in Reclaiming Parkland.

The excuse he gives is that in the RFK case there is just too much evidence of extra bullets.

How he cannot see a double standard there is odd. Because as many have said, that is a problem also with the JFK case.

[Albert Doyle]

To use one example: Vince pummeled Doug Horne on his two brain memorandum. But he never told his readers about 1.) Stringer's denial of the brain phtographs, and 2.) Humes' saying that there was no upwards trial of particles in the extant head x rays as he wrote about in his report. And that is just dishonest since its apparent he read both ARRB depositions.

I read Bugliosi's chapter on the brain. It is nothing but a superficial dancing around the facts in order to avoid all the incriminating evidence. It is a diversion that occupies the reader in unrelated material in order to make it look like Bugliosi has covered the subject. Meanwhile he makes no effort to analyze how the Commission trapped itself by producing an impossibly intact 1500 gram brain that then went through several alterations before it ended up being lost. Bugliosi makes no attempt to account for the photographic record of this intact brain that then disappeared or the protests of the FBI witnesses who said it could not be the same brain. Vinny had to be aware of all this so it can be accurately said that he avoided it deliberately in order to mislead his readers.


Bugliosi was a willing pro-government hired gun who would loan his services to spin things in favor of the government position. He was the favorite guest of media programs offering government propaganda on the assassination.

[Tom Bowden]

I have long thought but never found any proof that Kenneth O'Donnell was part of the conspiracy on both assassinations. He seems to be the person who suggested the route through the pantry for RFK. He had ties to the Chicago mob, which had reason to want both of them dead. His actions after the assassination to me indicated guilt. Namely his turn to alcoholism.
I have ballistic tests and a complete forensic work up of the Caesar gun. Everything to me points to CIA/mafia as the group, who carried out the assassination. I was close to Adele Sirhan before his death and I do not believe in the brainwashing story on Sirhan. I believe it more centers around the polka dot dress lady as the reason for his involvement. However this is off topic for this thread.

[Jim DiEugenio]

But see Albert, that is what is odd about Vince.

In some cases, like the RFK case, and the 2000 election heist, the Paula Jones case, and the phony pretenses for the Iraq War, Vince was pretty good. In fact, when I first read his front page article in The Nation, about the Supreme Court decision in Bush vs Gore, I got his number from a friend and congratulated him on a job well done. He also subscribed to Probe, and I talked to him a few times when he would order stuff. We agreed on how bad Ken Starr was, and then he sent me his Paula Jones book. Which I thought was quite good.

So Vince's overall output is a mixed bag I think. And his batting average is over .500.