Wecht Conference

Can someone give us a run-down?

Hi Greg,

I was there, and of course Jim DiEugenio spoke.  I'm at work right now, but when I get home I could certainly summarize my impressions of the talks I did attend (unfortunately this year they had simultaneous sessions so a choice had to be made).  I also had to leave before the end of the conference program.

Perhaps Jim (whom I met for the first time, as I did everyone else, for that matter) could also provide his impressions.

More later when I'm on my own time.

Al

But in the Meantime, 'Team McAdams' is giving a blow-by-blow account.  A Twitter by any other name never sounded so (insert adjective here, depending on who you are).
My choice(s) would be "beyond the pale".  Anyone on youtube, yet, a la camera cachee'?

The conference was recorded; I'm not sure exactly what the plans are for BlueRay release or anything.

I do not waste my time reading McAdams supporters garbage, so I wouldn't know what they are saying.

But Jim has something amusing to tell about McAdams, who was indeed present.

By the way, just to mention, there were a number of talks which got a few people respectfully on their feet.  But the reaction to Jim's talk on JFK's foreign policy was wondrous to tell.  A resounding standing ovation.  It simply amazes me how many people did not know the things Jim spoke of (Congo, Hammerskjold, Indonesia, what went on during 1961, etc., etc.); you could hear the gasps of surprise throughout the talk.

I will limit myself to a thumbnail recap of the sessions I attended.

1.  Larry Sabato.   This had to be by far the worst (luckily it was the first).  He's nothing but a media pundit with an agenda.  Keep the case open, but tell people it's never going to be solved.  Sound familiar?  At one point he even said:  there were both positive and negative consequences of the assassination.  Positive?  For whom, Mr. Sabato?  Supposedly he is releasing an app with the entire DPD dictabelt corpus from 11/22.  He claims he had the famous one "independently" analyzed, but after his talk, Lisa Pease stood up and threw egg on his face by revealing that his independent analysis was the product of a company whose CEO is Richard Garwin, whose CIA ties are well known.

2.  Tink Thompson and Keith Fitzgerald (re)presented the idea that the shot from the rear to the head is not at Z312 but at Z329, so the frontal shot precedes it.  (Whatever one believes about this, I was happy to meet Tink and tell him that from an ab initio perspective he was the reason I was there.)

3.  Jeffrey Sundberg tried to argue that the Z-film we have is not the original based on the fact that the full width of the frame of vision takes in too much of an angle for it to have been filmed through the full mounted apparatus of the Bell and Howell set of lenses, but it could be the product of copying through a dismantled camera with the stop removed (I'm not a photographer, so that might be gibberish).  At any rate, I think he made an unfortunate choice in spending more than two thirds of his talk on trying to contextualize the idea of falsified evidence in the case.  It would have been better spent building a more solid argument for his audience.  As it stood, the essence of what he was saying was only in the last 10 minutes of the talk.  I'm not sure, but I believe his data was based on a computer simulation of the camera, though I may be mistaken here ... it sort of got garbled.

4. David Mantik and Pat Speer gave contrasting interpretations of the Harper fragment.  I don't think there was anything essentially new in either talk from what they have already written.  My opinion is Mantik is probably closer to the truth.  Dr. Mantik was another person I was anxious to meet and am glad I got a chance to talk to afterwards.  

5.  Dr. McClelland video-conferenced.  I heard the last half.  It is great to see that he has not wavered from what he has been saying for the past 50 years.

6.  The panel discussion on the press was very good; I think all the panelists, with perhaps the exception of Jeff Morley, had very similar views about press complicity with the CIA.  Jeff's take was more like "astonishment" that he would be asked by his superiors what his "theory" was before they considered running a simple call to release information to the public.  Not astonishing to me.  A National Security reporter from the Boston Globe tried to turn the tables and make it seem like people like Stone were to blame instead of the media, but he was soundly put in his place.  I believe Max Holland was in attendance (did Lisa call him out?).  I'm sure The Nation will soon be publishing some garbage written by him about the conference.

7.  Mark Lane did not really talk on the announced topic; more like off-the-cuff observations about his experiences with the case and its significance.  Certainly nothing about the Altgens photo .

8.  Joan Mellen presented some of the material she has added to the reissue of A Farewell to Justice.  But she also spoke in the Q&A about her next book on Mac Wallace.  She now claims to be able to demonstrate that the fingerprint is not his.

9.  Gary Aguilar gave one of the most pedagogically astute presentations of the autopsy data I have heard.  There were a lot of young people in the audience there, so it was perfectly suited.  He set up the official version and then tore it down piece by piece.  It was the talk to hear for those not familiar with the medical forensics of the case.

10.  Robert Tanenbaum's talk was sort of blustery and something of a disappointment overall.  But I had never heard him before.  A lot of what he said you can find in Fonzi's The Last Investigation.  (Oh, yes, that reminds me:  Mrs. Fonzi was there, in solidarity with Gaeton's memory; that was inspiring.)

11.  Dan Hardway gave a hard-hitting talk about his experiences dealing with CIA.  He tends to be a bit more apologetic for his mentor than I would be (which is understandable), but nevertheless, I thought his talk was dynamite.  Basically, the CIA reneged on the non-redaction agreement they had once they figured out he and Lopez were trying to flesh out the ties between Phillips, the DRE and JMWave.

He was also the more pessimistic voice on the panel discussion afterwards, and he and Tanenbaum sort of faced off.  I don't know whether it's just his inveterate New York outlook or not, but Tanenbaum almost sounded like he was running for office .

12.  Stone presented a clip from his Untold History.  I like Stone, I do, and am grateful he made JFK.  I just wish he wouldn't contaminate his story with that dross from the likes of Seymour Hersh that he allows to creep into his narrative.

13.  By far, for me the highlight of the three days was the one-two punch of Talbot and DiEugenio.  Talbot told me his book on Dulles will probably be out early 2015.  He said he has not uncovered a "smoking gun" (does anyone expect that?), but he said there is an awful lot of smoke.  Kind of cagey about revealing too much (under publisher's orders), but he implied that he has dug up some new stuff that he did not talk about.  At any rate, the talk was a perfect preface to Jim's on foreign policy, which he concluded by adding to the "two great lies of the past 50 years" (LHO killed JFK, LBJ continued his policies) the third that JFK was a Cold Warrior.

14.  Walt Brown announced his talk was his swan song.  Basically he laid out a set of presences (including Lumpkin, Whitmeyer/Wedemeyer and Powell, plus the Russian translators) whose connections to Army intel he said cannot be coincidental -- probably not news to most reading this site.  But he said that these are the leads he would follow up.

15.  Jeff Morley discussed his efforts and the docs that are out there.  He showed by name searches on the NARA database why their classification as "not relevant" is incorrect.  (I'm trying to think of the examples he used but they escape me presently, and I don't want to give false info, but they were all clearly of interest to JFK researchers).

16.  Lisa was giving a provocative talk on cultural control through propaganda and disinfo in this case when I had to leave.  But there were a number of great moments, like when she said that every story about JFK's affairs can be traced back to Heymann, or that people should stop participating in the propagating or rumor based on what a former CIA agent said he heard from someone else.

Wow! Great run down.

Yes, thanks for that, Albert.

Re: Richard Garwin, I don't know about his alleged CIA ties (do you have any details on that?) but I do know that he was a member of the 1982 National Academy of Sciences panel that was set up to shoot the acoustics down. So if he really is CEO of the company who undertook the new analysis, it's not much of a surprise that they claim to disproven the HSCA conclusion.

I was echoing what Lisa said concerning the Garwin - CIA link; perhaps she can provide the details.  Her assertion seemed to resonate with the audience, though, and Sabato did not contest it; he merely repliqued that he had the tape analysed by an independent third party ... it wasn't clear what he meant by that, but it was clear he was happy to skirt the issue.

Donald Thomas and someone else also spoke about the tape and its synchronization with the Z-film, but I missed their talks.  As I said, the choice to hold concurrent sessions was unfortunate.

Thanks for all the info, Albert. Very insightful.

 Report on Wecht conference from "The Future of Freedom Foundation"

http://fff.org/2013/10/21/a-great-conference-on-the-jfk-assassination-at-duquesne-university/

Thanks, Marlene.  It is true, as I said, that others, and Talbot, esp., brought people to their feet.  But it was my impression that the reaction to Jim was even stronger.  But I may be biased. 

It's also fascinating that there is Libertarian interest in this case; I suppose the opposition to the National Security state provides common ground between them and old radicals like me

I don't understand how people are getting the Thompson presentation screwed up.

Its quite simple.  There was no forward tilt of JFK's head at 312-13.  That was an illusion created by a smear on the film.

Therefore there is just one movement which is straight back at 313.

Further, Tink now says there was a later hit at 329 which knocked JFK forward.

I thought they were pretty convincing myself.

And later Groden and Mantik said they had been working along the same lines.

PS, Albert, you were not being biased at all.  You were being accurate.  Mr. Hornberger was one of the people who jumped on Janney's book about JFK being a Cold Warrior in 1961.  I showed during my talk in detail how that was just pure hokum all the way. And I deliberately named Janney as a purveyor of this baloney that Mary Meyer and Tim Leary were Kennedy's detente guides; when in fact it was Edmund Gullion.  And I proved that with facts and references and dates.

Hornberger did not like that since it exposes him also.

Therefore he switched my Standing O to Talbot.  

BTW, the guy had the chutzpah to actually seek me out after and shake my hand.  If I had known he was going to do this, I would have told him to take a hike.

http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/2013/10/my-comments-on-jfk-and-media-panel-at.html

If I'm not mistaken, Thompson had already presented in a different venue this reading of 312-313 in terms of blurring/smearing and car slowdown, no?  I recall reading about it some time ago.  I don't remember whether the second shot from the rear at 328-329 was part of that, though.

Mantik agrees there is no shot from the rear at 312.  But his sequencing is different from Tink's.  Because of the lead smudge on the outside lower right corner of the Harper fragment, which has to be from an entry wound, that fragment had to have been ejected after the shot hit from the rear.  This forces him into a reconstruction where the entire sequence (rear, front, and then again what he believes to be a third shot, from further down the wooden fence, responsible for the trail of tiny metal fragments very high up near the sagittal line) occurs after 313.  Which means that there's something fishy (according to Mantik) at 313.  (I asked him, what is happening at that point in the film, to which he replied he was not certain.)

Now, I'm still not convinced by the more radical arguments for film "fakery" at 313 (even if there is retouching of the head area there, how do you make the head rocket backward if there is no real motion in that direction to begin with? simple frame removal could accelerate the apparent motion, but to generate it out of nothing, well ...).  But whatever the case may be, the smudge on the Harper fragment is troublesome for Tink's hypothesis.  And I think Mantik is correct about its anatomical location (the dual presence of lambdoid and sagittal sutures seems pretty convincing to me), so the entrance wound which caused the metal deposit has to be from the rear.  Which means it was dislodged by a frontal shot subsequent to the shot from the rear.

I should add that Pat Speer locates the fragment higher up in the parietal.  But his view is that there was no shot from the front at all, and that the whole right side wounding was from a tangential shot, so the entrance smudge is still from behind (my question: how did the cerebellum get ruptured and be seen protruding from this higher, parietal wound, then?). 

Then there is the final conundrum:  where was the fragment really found, and how did it get there?  Supposedly it was found about 50 feet forward of the limo.  Even if its anatomical position is that maintained by Speer, it seems a stretch to believe that a shot from the rear could cause it to fly upward but with enough of a forward vector to make it land in that position.  And of course, if it is occipital and was ejected as a consequence of a frontal (tangential?) shot, then it should have been behind the limo.  One can only hypothesize that it was found there and then discarded again at the second location.

In order to make Harper square with Thompson, one needs some alternate explanation for it either along Speer's lines, or perhaps by rotating it so that the entrance smudge corresponds with a more forward wound (though this kind of thing has been attempted before, not too convincingly IMHO).

James DiEugenio wrote:

PS, Albert, you were not being biased at all.  You were being accurate.  Mr. Hornberger was one of the people who jumped on Janney's book about JFK being a Cold Warrior in 1961.  I showed during my talk in detail how that was just pure hokum all the way. And I deliberately named Janney as a purveyor of this baloney that Mary Meyer and Tim Leary were Kennedy's detente guides; when in fact it was Edmund Gullion.  And I proved that with facts and references and dates.

Hornberger did not like that since it exposes him also.

Therefore he switched my Standing O to Talbot.  

BTW, the guy had the chutzpah to actually seek me out after and shake my hand.  If I had known he was going to do this, I would have told him to take a hike.

Ah, that explains it.  For a moment I felt like a Dealey Plaza witness being told I heard echoes.

Perhaps Jim Di can provide us with a thorough run down of the entire Wecht conference?

There's certainly a lot more to say, Hasan, but I need to devote my "extra" time to finishing the port of Marlene's app to Android.  

But if there is more about any particular talk you'd like to know, perhaps I could fill in the details from what I remember (I stopped taking notes after the first two or three ...).

Or Jim Di is welcome to do so ... (I think we heard basically the same sessions).

No worries, Albert. I look forward to reading what more you have to say.

It was a  fine conference and it was well attended each day.

There were some very good and important presentations. Although its unfortunate that there were too many speakers so there had to be simultaneous presentations in different locations.

Some of the ones I liked the most, again, this is only my personal preference, were the ones by Gary Aguilar, Tink Thompson, Dan Hardway, Dave Mantik, Dr. McClelland, Dave Talbot, and the entire media panel on Thursday night was a real treat.

I am really looking forward to Talbot's new book on Allen Dulles. That should be really good.

Also, Thompson is marketing a book also called One Second in Dallas, which is about how he screwed up the case for decades with his famous "double hit".

Finally, Dave Mantik is doing a long piece on the Harper Fragment for CTKA.  That should be really good.

Cyril Wecht is a real crusader who will simply not give in to the WC idiocy.  We all owe him a lot of thanks for this.

I never got a chance to talk with Dr. Wecht, but he is simply amazing, still going strong, with a string of publications as long as the Nile.  And you have to admire him for continuing, as Jim said, on this crusade ... wasn't there some episode a few years ago where he was being menaced or threatened with some sort of bogus legal action?

He was actually indicted. 

It was purely political as part of that whole Karl Rove directed Justice Department maneuver.

Sick sick sick.

But Dave Perry put the whole indictment on his web site and kept it there even after he was cleared.

Right, that case was totally politically and Wecht did something very smart.  He's a Democrat, so he hired the most prominent Republican lawyer in Pennsylvania to represent him. Dick Thornburgh was  governor before serving as US Attorney General in the Reagan and George HW Bush Administrations.

James DiEugenio wrote:It was a  fine conference and it was well attended each day.

There were some very good and important presentations. Although its unfortunate that there were too many speakers so there had to be simultaneous presentations in different locations.

Some of the ones I liked the most, again, this is only my personal preference, were the ones by Gary Aguilar, Tink Thompson, Dan Hardway, Dave Mantik, Dr. McClelland, Dave Talbot, and the entire media panel on Thursday night was a real treat.

I am really looking forward to Talbot's new book on Allen Dulles. That should be really good.

Also, Thompson is marketing a book also called One Second in Dallas, which is about how he screwed up the case for decades with his famous "double hit".

Finally, Dave Mantik is doing a long piece on the Harper Fragment for CTKA.  That should be really good.

Cyril Wecht is a real crusader who will simply not give in to the WC idiocy.  We all owe him a lot of thanks for this.

Thanks for the info, Jim. I'm also looking forward to Talbot's new book on Dulles.

Maybe we will find out if Joan Mellen's reference to a CIA document declassified in 1998 and displaying,

in 1992, J. Kenneth McDonald, a CIA historian, wrote a memo based on his review of CIA records, released in 1998, stating Shaw had been a “highly paid CIA contract source.”

.....will remain confined to the basement of the wikipedia bio of Clay Shaw where it was banished almost instantly,
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Clay_Shaw&diff=578431064&oldid=578430950

...or not:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Clay_Shaw#Is_this_Revert_misleading.3F_Aftermath:_......Americans_.28businessmen.2C_journalists.2C_etc..29_had_provided_such_information_to_the_DCS.

........Administrator Gamaliel promptly relegated this contraty opinion of Shaw's volunteer status to the basement and actually added this comment to his "undid revision" of my edit. "(→‎Further reading: rm unrelated or low quality sources)" Gamaliel, author of John C. McAdams took action to maintain this ".Americans (businessmen, journalists, etc.) had provided such information to the DCS. (as volunteers)" in lieu of a determination made and written in 1992 by a CIA historian privy to review of classified information in CIA records,.........

......Will the information and supporting cites Gamaliel and John C. McAdams agree with be displayed prominently while equally or better sourced information is displayed less prominenlty in wikipedia articles, or not at all?

https://toolserver.org/~daniel/WikiSense/Contributors.php?wikilang=en&wikifam=.wikipedia.org&grouped=on&page=John_C._McAdams
en.wikipedia.org, by Edits (reverse), with Page = John_C._McAdams
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Edits ↑ User first edit last edit
17 (17/0) Location 2012-03-07 06:58 2013-04-22 19:09
7 (6/1) Gamaliel 2010-01-26 17:13 2013-04-08 16:28
6 (6/0) 65.26.198.73 (anon) 2013-02-08 05:41 2013-02-08 05:55
3 (2/1) Mikiestar 2013-04-08 11:20 2013-04-08 18:15 .......

Nice work Tom.

Shows just how bad Wiki is on this issue.  

Hopefully, the constant exposure of their skullduggery will show people Wiki cannot be trusted as a source.