Friday, November 9, 2018

Response to W.T. Parnell's Review of Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freek

NOTE: I like it when these guys post and publish such rubbish, as it gives us the opportunity to respond and set the record straight. - BK 


W. Tracy Parnell


Debunking JFK Conspiracy Theories



Canadian Fred Litwin, a marketing professional who worked nine years for the Intel Corporation, has written a book on the JFK assassination with a catchy title - I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak. This concise, entertaining and well written volume will be of interest to conspiracy skeptics and open-minded newcomers to the case. It may even be of interest to long-time conspiracy buffs who actually read it. Litwin previously authored a book called Conservative Confidential: Inside the Fabulous Blue Tent, which is about his journey from anti-nuclear activist to Conservative party campaigner. His JFK book describes an analogous trek from conspiracy believer to “lone nutter.”

BK: So this former anti-Nuke activist is now a conservative and we should pay attention to what he has to say? I don’t think anything he has to say matters.

Litwin begins by documenting the missteps of the early critics of the Warren Commission. An important point made by Litwin, one that he returns to frequently, is that these early critics (and subsequent generations) often consisted of individuals on the political left. They included Bertrand Russell, Raymond Marcus, Sylvia Meagher, Vincent Salandria, Thomas Buchanan and of course Mark Lane.

BK: One of the most intriguing aspects of all Deep Political Events, as Peter Dale Scott describes them, is that the resolution of the assassination of President Kennedy is beyond normal political divisions like leftists and right wingers, liberals and conservatives or democrats and republicans. It is simply a matter of the truth, not one of political divisions.

Litwin notes that “… you weren’t a proper leftist if you didn’t understand the “right-wing” plot to take over America and the huge coverup.” To illustrate the critic’s mindset, Litwin quotes Marcus who thought that If people became aware of the “fraud” of the Warren Report, “they’ll start to demand other answers. Maybe they’ll ask about the Rosenbergs, Hiss, the whole Cold War.  Maybe we can get clean and whole. But if this stays down, there’s no hope.” However, while Litwin is critical of conspiracy theorists on the left, he notes that President Trump promoted the discredited story that Ted Cruz’s father was one of the men who handed out pro-Castro leaflets in front of the Trade Mart in New Orleans at the behest of Lee Harvey Oswald.

BK: Ok, the real Cruz involved with Oswald in New Orleans in the summer of 1963 was Minguel Cruz, then a 17 year old anti-Castro Cuban who was arrested with Oswald and never questioned properly, and is still alive today. How come nobody wants to know about this Cruz?

Litwin begins his coverage of the investigation of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison early in the book and later devotes an entire chapter (titled Jim Garrison’s Excellent Homosexual Adventure) to the “Jolly Green Giant.” Garrison’s theories did indeed revolve around homosexuals at first, but as Litwin points out, eventually mushroomed to include “Minutemen, CIA agents, oil millionaires, Dallas policemen, munitions exporters, “the Dallas Establishment,” reactionaries, White Russians and certain elements of the invisible Nazi substructure.”

BK: This exposes not the conspiracy theorists’ suspecting Minutemen, CIA agents, oil millionaires, Dallas policeman and munitions exporters, - wait a minute – where did the “munitions exporters” come in? – I get the White Russians and certain elements of the invisible Nazi substructure, but here does the “munitions exporters” come from?

 Reading Litwin’s concise chronology of Garrison’s farce reminds one of the myriad absurd aspects of his investigation. These would be laughable except for the fact that the investigation destroyed the life of an innocent man-New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw. Garrison charged Shaw with conspiring to assassinate JFK, but Shaw was properly exonerated.

BK: Wait a minute, Shaw was not responsible for what happened at Dealey Plaza, but neither was Lee Harvey Oswald. If Oswald was set up as the false assassin – the Fall Guy and Patsy in the murder of the president, so was Shaw, an innocent victim, falsely accused. But like Oswald, Shaw was part of the covert intelligence network that was responsible for the assassination.

The New York Times called Garrison’s prosecution of Shaw “One of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of modern jurisprudence.” Garrison was ultimately barred from further legal action against Shaw by a court injunction.

BK: So Shaw wasn’t responsible for the assassination, only for associating with the accused assassin, - “the most disgraceful chapters in the history of modern jurisprudence,” is not the prosecution of Clay Shaw but the failure of the law enforcement establishment to pursue and prosecute the actual killers of the President.

Litwin’s uses his personal journey from conspiracist to lone assassin advocate to drive his narrative and begins in this regard with the 1975 airing of the Zapruder film on Geraldo Rivera’s Good Night America. Rivera appeared with Robert Groden, Dick Gregory and Ralph Schoenman. Litwin, and millions of TV viewers, were impressed by the fact that the film showed JFK moving “back and to the left” which seemed to indicate a shot from the grassy knoll. But as Litwin shows, a close analysis of the evidence proves a shot from behind.

BK: It doesn’t matter whether the fatal head shot came from in front – as the film indicates, or behind, where the Sixth Floor Sniper was located, the fatal head shot came from not the Sixth Floor but from a First Class Sniper – trained in his profession – “One shot, one kill,” and he was in front or behind the target – which was either going towards him or away from him, but not moving from right to left as the Sixth Floor Sniper saw it. Whether the fatal head shot originated from in front or behind doesn’t matter, as it didn’t originate from the Sixth Floor of the TSBD, where the Third Class Sniper’s job was only to pump evidence into the target car and leave the rifle and shells to implicate the Patsy. He was a diversion, not the real assassin, a First Class Sniper who shot JFK in the head as he rode by in an open car, exactly the Pathfinder plan to kill Castro.

Litwin goes on to refute claims by Gregory and Schoenman while outlining the extreme leftist views of both men. Litwin also provides some interesting background on Schoenman, who was Bertrand Russell’s personal secretary before they had a falling out.

BK: I know Schomeman too. He made a presentation at the NYU Law School conference that implicated Minguel Cruz in the assassination and a Puerto Rican union mobster  – sparking me to make one of my first Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, in which I obtained documents that indicated Cruz was only 17 years old when he was arrested in New Orleans, and was not the guy with the same name who was a Puerto Rican union mobster. When I presented my documents to Schomeman, he acknowledged I was correct and he was wrong. But he was right on a number of other points. And since then I have become good friends and associate with Schomeman’s ex-wife Joan Mellen, who I have called the “Unsinkable Molly Brown” of JFK research.

Speaking of Schoenman, he turns up again in Litwin’s chapter on Oliver Stone and JFK the movie. It seems that Schoenman wrote Garrison in 1971 suggesting that “… we take the offensive. Let’s get out a book, hard and fast, which nails the case against Shaw that we couldn’t get into the courts … let’s put THEM on the defensive by blowing the Shaw case sky high with a muck-raking book that closes in on the company [CIA] even closer.”

The eventual result of this strategy was Garrison’s book On the Trail of the Assassins, which was the basis for Stone’s film. Litwin argues that in Stone’s upside-down world, Garrison became the hero and Shaw the villain rather than a victim of an unjust prosecution. He goes on to document elements of the film that are complete fantasy, but which millions of movie fans accepted as fact. Litwin also discusses the homophobic aspects of the film and provides historical context for his analysis.

BK: It wasn’t the “homophobic aspects” of the film, but Shaw’s CIA connections that make it worth looking into. So he was a gay guy – who was also a spy, as were Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and other spies. It isn’t their sexual perversions that come into play here, it’s their clandestine associations with the CIA and intelligence connections that matter. And If it wasn’t for Garrison and Stone, we wouldn’t have the “JFK” movie or the JFK Act of 1992 that ordered the government to assemble all of the official records on the assassination of JFK and open them to the public through the JFK Collection at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) by 2017, something that had yet to happen. 

Returning to Litwin’s personal narrative, following a period of relative inactivity he resumed his JFK research upon seeing Stone’s film in 1991. He subscribed to journals and had his own articles published and even lectured on the subject himself. Two powerful influences for Litwin during this period were the HSCA volumes, which largely agreed with the WC findings,

BK: Wait a minute! The HSCA volumes do not largely agree with the WC findings, as they provide a multitude of leads that we are still pursuing today – especially the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro, and the HSCA conclusion that there was very likely a conspiracy in the assassination, concluding that the Justice Department should continue their investigation, something they didn’t bother to do. Both the first – Richard Sprague, and second Chief Counsel – G. Robert Blakely of the HSCA concluded there was a conspiracy, for different reasons. So the idea that the HSCA “largely agreed with the WC findings” is patently false, and Parnell should stand corrected.

and the writings of noted researcher Paul Hoch.

BK: Paul Hoch is one of the most respected JFK assassination researchers and for Litwin to say he inspired him to write this Bull Shit make a mockery of Hoch and his decades of devoted and respected work.

HSCA findings that impressed Litwin included the authentication of the autopsy photos and x-rays,

BK: Then how come the photographers of the autopsy photos refused to confirm that they took them, and said they even used a different type of film? Now that’s impressive.

the forensic pathology panel, the photographic panel, the study of “earwitnesses”,

BK: Yes, the majority of “earwitnesses” said the second and third shots were right on top of each other, so close that they could not have been fired by the same gun. Bam, bam, thank you mam.

the handwriting and fingerprint analysis,

BK: Yes, let’s look closely at the handwriting and fingerprint analysis on the Dear Mr. Hunt letter, the prints on the boxes in the sniper’s nest, and the rifle. Let’s look more closely at the handwriting and fingerprint analysis, as it proves Oswald is innocent. 

the Mannlicher-Carcano firing tests and the firearms panel.

BK: Yes, the MC firing tests prove that weapon could not have inflicted all of the damage done, and as the accused assassin’s brother and US Marine marksman said, “If Lee did not practice with that rifle in the days and weeks before the assassination, he did not fire the shots that killed the President and wounded Governor Connally.” And since the WC says the accused assassin did not practice with that rifle at all, then he didn’t do it.

Hoch, who Litwin describes as “not your run-of-the-mill conspiracy freak,” wrote in his newsletter “My model is that there were many coverups, probably many independent ones … One possibility - ironically - is that Oswald did it alone but so many people had things to cover up [unrelated to any assassination plot] that the reaction of the government made it look like the assassination resulted from a conspiracy.”

BK: The idea that there was a cover-up but not a conspiracy is one that can be shown to be false because the cover-up not only protected those actually responsible for the assassination, but how it was accomplished, still accepting the lone assassin myth that has been proven false.

Litwin devotes a chapter to the JFK documentaries from producer Brian McKenna that appeared over the years on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s acclaimed series The Fifth Estate. Litwin carefully documents the abuses of McKenna, which date back to 1977. McKenna revealed his bias toward conspiracy theories during his acceptance speech upon receiving the JFK Lancer Pioneer award in Dallas. McKenna said that a “sophisticated coup plotted by the US military and CIA with support from Hoover’s FBI and Kennedy’s bodyguards” was to blame for the killing. McKenna also fingered the Mafia, HL Hunt and LBJ as conspirators, all perennial conspiracy favorites.

BK: I too have been a recipient of a JFK Lancer – Mary Farrell Pioneer Award (2013) and agree with McKenna’s description that the assassination was result of a “sophisticated coup plotted by the US military and CIA with support from Hoover’s FBI and Kennedy’s bodyguards,” and the Mafia (via John Rosselli), H.L Hunt and oil interests, and of course LBJ was the Que Bono benefactor who initiated the cover-up. They are perennial conspiracy favorites because of their own actions, not the imaginations of silly conspiracy theorists.

A persistent rallying cry of the conspiracy theorists has been to “release the documents.” As of 2018, approximately 99 percent of the documents have been released, depending on whose tally you use. Litwin shows that withholding documents is something routinely done by governments worldwide although it often makes little sense. He provides several examples of documents that theorists were suspicious of, but ultimately proved to be innocuous.

BK: Yes, many, in fact most of the records released under the JFK Act of 1992 are innocuous, but there are a number of key records that are “Smoking Documents” that lead us to the truth, including the Higgins Memo, the HSCA interview with Warren Commission attorney Sam Stern, and all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff records that refer to CIA Cuban covert intelligence operations. They confirm the conspiracy.

In the same chapter, Litwin presents evidence that the conspiracy theorists may have been influenced by a disinformation campaign run by the Soviet Union designed to promote the “CIA did it” angle. Litwin also shows that conspiracy guru Mark Lane received at least $2000 from the KGB.

BK: OK, so Lane got two grand from the Ruskies. Now compare that to the six figures a year that Max Holland gets from the CIA to promote their disinformation. And while speaking of official disinformation about the assassination, you can’t ignore the continuing black propaganda disinformation campaign to blame the murder of JFK on Castro. The people responsible for this disinformation are very close to the actual perpetrators.

Fred Litwin has written an entertaining and informative book that explains why he changed his mind about a JFK conspiracy. The book does not discuss every issue of interest to JFK assassination students (impossible since there are hundreds) over the course of its modest 272 pages. Nor will it change many minds among the current generation of theorists, who are motivated by a naïve view that the world, had Kennedy lived, would have been very different.

Under this belief, the Vietnam War, Watergate and any number of other national maladies would have been avoided by the continuation of the Camelot regime, a view that Litwin argues credibly against.

BK: Ok, JFK would not have changed the world, but he would have made a difference, - not sending hundreds of thousands of troops to their death in Vietnam, and ending the Cold War decades before the fall of the Berlin Wall. So Nitwit Litwin is wrong on that count too.

These theorists simply choose to ignore the voluminous evidence developed by the Warren Commission and enhanced by the HSCA, or they say it is falsified, planted or otherwise misinterpreted.

BK; No it’s not falsified, planted or otherwise misinterpreted, except by those who want it all to remain a mystery, but is quite clear and easily explained – JFK was the victim of a covert intelligence operation perpetuated by a domestic anti-communist intelligence network that continues to operate today. No misinterpretation there.

These same individuals scour the millions of available documents for bits of information that when viewed through the lens of their own bias results in confirmation of whatever pet theory they support.

BK: There’s no theory behind the Higgins Memo, what Sam Stern said to the HSCA, or what we now know about the Valkyie plot to kill Castro and the Pathfinder plan to kill Castro – they confirm the pet theory that one of the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro was redirected to JFK in Dallas. And that’s not pet theory of some silly conspiracy theorist but the conclusion reached by former FBI Agent Bill Turner, Mafia don John Rosselli, military investigator Gene Wheaton, USMC Captain Carl Jenkins and the anti-Castro Cubans and US Army Reserve officers who actually killed JFK or knew how it was accomplished.

Most of these people will not read Litwin’s book, but they will criticize it. However, those open minded enough to give it a chance will be entertained and, in the process, learn something from a guy who has been there. For more information see: Conspiracy Freak.com


BK: Ok, I’ll eventually get around to reading Litwin’s book, and will criticize it with a fair analysis, but I don’t believe Litwin is a “guy who has been there.” He hasn’t been anywhere. 

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