FOUR DAYS IN DALLAS – DAY TWO – Friday, November 16,
2018
I thought I was to open the JFK Lancer Conference at
the Lorenzo Hotel at 9 am, so I caught a cab from my hotel at 8:30 but when I
arrived I was told the conference didn’t start until noon, so I went into the
restaurant for breakfast and was invited to sit with Alan Dale of the
Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) in DC, Sir Malcolm Blunt the
brilliant British researcher who has spent more time in the Archives than
anyone I know, and professor John Newman, who was dressed in his master yoga outfit.
They were discussing Newman’s presentation on
“Framing RFK in the Castro Assassination,” focusing on how much of the
published literature on that subject can be traced back to Sam Halpern, who
lied. I added my two cents, in that Halpern was having lunch at an exclusive,
private club in Georgetown with Desmond FitzGerald, who had taken over the
Cuban Task Force W when William Harvey was fired. As they left Halpern quotes
FitzGerald wondering aloud if his Cuban commandos out of JMWAVE were involved.
And I think we should be wondering that too, a subject that Larry Hancock would
address at the same conference the next day.
I was surprised to see a Facebook entry by someone I
didn’t know, who was apparently sitting next to us, who named the four of us at
the breakfast table and commented on what a fascinating conversation we had. I
suppose there were other interlopers as well.
When the conference got underway JFK Lancer director
Debra Conway announced that this will be her last conference, but she would
continue other Lancer activities, including book publishing and social media
networking. Alan Dale, the DC jazz drum master was the Master of Ceremonies who
introduced me as the first speaker.
Sitting behind me on the platform were Dr. Newman,
Malcolm Blunt and CAPA attorney Bill Simpich, all of whom would also comment on
my subject, the JFK Act and the recently released records.
I will produce a transcript or a synopsis of my talk
as a sidebar to this, but did say that I was honored to open this conference,
and was glad I wasn’t following John Newman, as he would be a hard act to
follow. I then went into a brief history of the JFK assassination records and
the government’s secrecy, beginning with the Warren Commission, the Church
Committee, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). How Oliver
Stone’s movie “JFK” led to the JFK Act of 1992, and how that law was subverted
by President Trump, and where we are today.
I then listed my Top Ten records released under the
JFK Act, including the most recently released records.
After my talk John Newman, Malcolm Blunt and Bill
Simpich – three aces in my deck, all gave short five minute presentations,
though they all also gave longer presentations later.
When they were done, the program called for Dr.
David Mantik and Chesser to give a report on “JFK X-Rays and Wound
Interpretation,” and then former Justice Dept. John Orr and CAPA attorney Larry
Schnapf did their presentation on “CE399 material studies Dealey Plaza.”
John Currington, H.L. Hunt’s right hand man, whose
book “Means and Motive” I reviewed at my blog, gave a talk on H.L. Hunt, though
the program mistakenly says “Howard Hunt.”
After Stephen Krishna Sheney did his presentation on
the Sixth Floor Museum Archives, which include a massive and important Oral
History section that has yet to be mined, Stu Wexler and Larry Hancock gave a
fitting memorial tribute to the late researcher John Hunt, who I also knew and
admired.
Since I wasn’t interested in the X-Rays, that I just
don’t understand, knew of Orr’s work and read and reviewed Currington’s book, I
grabbed a cup of coffee and went for a walk outside, but there was no place to
go, no neighborhood to walk around. But then a car pulled up and in the back
seat were Dick Russell and Malcolm Blunt, who asked me to join them for a ride
to the Doubletree Hotel where the other conference was underway and where Dick
was speaking.
This is the “Judyth Baker Conference,” hosted by the
women who worked with Lee Harvey Oswald at Reiley Coffee in New Orleans in the
seminal summer of 1963 and wrote a book about it “Lee and Me,” in which she
alleges an affair with Oswald and still professes her love for him. She sought
donations for flowers for Oswald’s grave, wants to buy the burial plot next to
him so she can be with him for eternity, and said she was going to stay in
Dallas the week in order to be there for the 12:30 pm memorial service at the
Grassy Knoll on November 22, Thanksgiving Day.
While I missed David Neal and Randy Benson’s
tributes to RFK and MLK, which included music by Neil and Jim Glover, and
Glover’s presentation on Operation Chaos, the CIA’s war against Sixties
radicals like Glover’s college roommate Phil Ochs, I had researched and wrote
about Glover and Ochs and went to lunch with Glover, one of the most
interesting characters I know.
[ JFKcountercoup: Phil Ochs at Dealey Plaza? ]
[ JFKcountercoup: Phil Ochs at Dealey Plaza? ]
I’m sorry I missed my friend Richard Bartholomew’s
presentation on “Texas and the Deep State,” and didn’t really care much about
the panel discussion on Madeleine Brown by Robert Groden, Gary Severson and Dr.
John Williams, but did take in Larry Rivera’s discourse on anamolies in the
Atkins 6 photo, including the cropping of the crowds and the editing out of two
women in the crowd, including one who appears to be holding a camera.
One of the most important and significant
presentation I heard all weekend was given by Judge James Botelho, Oswald’s
USMC roommate at Atsugi and Southern California bases where Botelho’s
recollections of Oswald contrasted starkly with the government’s portrayal of
him. After his talk I got Botelho’s contact info as I intend to follow up his
presentation with some questions of my own and a profile of the retired Judge.
I then went back to the Lorenzo Hotel for a CAPA
Board Meeting where we discussed the possibility of holding a conference in
Dallas next year, since Lancer will not be holding one, and November 22 falls
on a Friday, the same day as 1963.
Following that meeting John Newman gave his
exceptional talk on “Framing RFK in the Castro Assassination,” an integral part
of the Dealey Plaza operational plan that blackmailed RFK to checkmate him as
Attorney General and keep him from pursing the assassins of his brother. That
is a talk that deserves an article of its own that I will compose ASAP.
Newman’s talk was followed by Carmine Savastano on
other suspects in the RFK assassination, and a final panel for the day with
Savastano and Larry Hancock on RFK.
Meanwhile back at the Doubletree, Thom Whitehead and
Sydney Wilkinson came in via skype and their film on close examination of
Z-film frame enhancements by Hollywood movie experts seems to indicate
tampering by the placement of a black blotch on the back of JFK’s head during
the fatal head shot, apparently to hide the large exit wound that the Parkland
doctors and SS Agent Hill clearly saw. This was previously shown at the CAPA
event the previous day.
Since I wasn’t there, the program says that Phil
Nelson gave a talk on “The Stalking and Death of Martin Luther King,” and
William M. Law, Hubert Clark and James Jenkins discussed Law’s book “On the
Cold Shoulder of History : What Happened at JFK’s Autopsy?”
Day two was long and excruciating, and what bothered
me the most was that there were two conference miles apart and people had to
take cabs or shuttles to get from one to the other. It doesn't seem like the conferences can be confined to the same area so people can go back and forth between them. In any case, it seems like there will always be competing conferences.
And how this
year, when CAPA planned its one day symposium on “Last Living Witnesses” on
Thursday so as not to compete with the other two conferences, Judyth decided to
expand her program to Thursday just to keep her people from attending the CAPA
conference, a very spiteful decision. And what was her program? From her program: “Marc Hackel, professional
translator, reads Classical Russian Love Poetry in Russian!,” “One-on-one Time
with JUDYTH VARY BAKER (special time to talk personally to early arrivals!
Also: see unique piece of evidence from Lee Oswald’s childhood!” and “Judyth
will have a live interview” with “Conspiracy Café” host George Freund – a
National News Program.
I guess it was a difficult decision as to whether to
attend JVB’s expanded program or CAPA’s “Last Living Witnesses.”
2 comments:
His name is Sammy Halpern
Thanks Ted, I corrected that.
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