I spent the last weekend of June at the annual conference of Dealey Plaza UK, the highly dedicated group of British researchers investigating and remembering the assassination of President Kennedy.
My last post was a brief appreciation of the conference. Here I would like to give a fuller report of what I heard and learned and thought about during the three days of excellent presentations.
The organizer, Neale Safaty, had lined up seven hours of presentations for each day, a very challenging agenda. Topics included ( I am paraphrasing the titles),
The Walker Bullet. Scott Reid
INS reluctance to admit defector Lee. Gary Seversen
Allen Dulles involvement in two assassinations. Robert Manz
The Murder of JD Tippitt. Matt Douthit
A Confirming Memorandum. Robert and Janet Groden
Rogue Journalists. Bill Simpich
The Scene of Oswald’s Murder. Paul Abbott
Oswald’s Fingerprints. Bart Kamp
Michael Paine and Lee Oswald. Nancy Wertz Weiford
A legal basis for release of evidence. Andrew Iler
NARA. Malcolm Blunt
Tribute to JFK. Barry Keane
Tribute to Ian Griggs. David Ward
Jack Dougherty. Brooke LaPlante
The NBC Films. Bart Kamp
Similar Case Analysis. Paul Bleau
This is a personal and selective reaction to those talks where I felt a resonance with things I had or had not known. I am still getting familiar with this case and many things go right over my head. My apologies to those whose talks I am not commenting on. I look forward to understanding more in the future.
The Walker bullet. Scott Reid’s presentation made clear, as has been done before, that there is no evidence that the bullet now in evidence as the bullet fired at General Walker’s home is the actual bullet. This is important because the current bullet on evidence matches with the Mannlicher Carcanno rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository sixth floor after JFK was shot and traced to Lee Oswald.
A question I did not get to ask is whether there is any evidence that General Walker was in the room when the shot was fired. I am not aware of any besides General Walker’s statement.
When Lee sought to return to the US from the Soviet Union, the person at INS responsible for clearing defector returns blocked Lee three times before being overruled by the State Departmet. Gary Severson speculated: Special treatment for a false defector? Or ideological battles in the administration?
I don’t think anyone understands the murder of JD Tippitt. Matt Douthit makes it clear that the evidence of eyewitness statements is so murky and again the trail of evidence of shells and bullets has no validity as a chain of custody. One of my takeaways from this talk and the conference is growing confidence in suspicion that members of the Dallas police force were conspirators.
The confirming memorandum, purportedly from CIA head McCone to Secret Service head Rowley is imho too good to be true, confirmation by the head of the CIA of Lee Oswald’s connection to the CIA . I did not know about this document but I suspect it is a fake. Robert and Jean Groden presented the case otherwise.
Paul Abbott documented the scene at the Dallas City jail on Sunday morning November 24 meticulously. Who was standing where and video to document it. My lasting impression is of how much space Chief Curry put between himself and Lee just before Jack Ruby occupied that space.
Nancy Weiford is looking very closely at the relationship of Lee and Marina Oswald and Michael and Ruth Paine. The new news for me in her presentation was that in the years after his marriage to Ruth and their move to Dallas, Michael resumed relations with his biological father, Lyman Paine, head of a communist splinter group in California. It intensified for me the notion of Michael as a security risk and Michael as a suspect leftist. Maybe even a potential patsy?????
Andrew Iler is one of those pursuing legal challenges to secure the release of documents connected to the jfk assassination. He gave a clear explanation of mandates for release that have not been enforced.
I really appreciate the granular pursuit of video and photographic evidence that Bart Kamp pursues.
Paul Bleau is pursuing a different form of fingerprint which he terms “templates”. Provocations and false flag letters of the sort that swirled around Lee Oswald and suggest the orchestrating hand of someone like David Atlee Philips. I have not read his work but will pursue it. It resonates with my thought about the plot to kill Hitler, which was of course a series of plots with a core group of people making repeated efforts. Do we see a pattern? What does that tell us?
Reference and further reading
For Scott Reid’s work
https://www.kennedysandking.com/content/author/402-scottreid
A listing of some of Gary Severson’s work
https://www.google.com/gasearch?q=gary%20severson%20jfk&source=sh/x/gs/m2/5
For Matt Douthit on the Tippit murder
https://www.google.com/gasearch?q=matt%20douthit%20jfk&source=sh/x/gs/m2/5
For the scope of Robert Groden’s work
https://www.google.com/gasearch?q=robert%20groden&source=sh/x/gs/m2/5
Paul Abbott’s Substack is here
https://substack.com/@pabbott?r=elhkx&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=profile
For Bart Kamp’s minute by minute account
https://a.co/d/dIbrYr6
For Nancy Wertz Weiford’s work on George de Mohrenschildt
https://www.google.com/gasearch?q=nancy%20wertz%20weiford&source=sh/x/gs/m2/5
Andrew Iler, Paul Bleau and Paul Abbott have each contributed chapters to the recent work edited by James di Eugenio, titled “the JFK Assassination Chokeholds: that prove there was a conspiracy”
https://a.co/d/0AyTodG
I am reading it now.
For my essay on Allen Dulles see my earlier Substack, What would Allen do?
Credit to Johnny Cairns (and others?) for this poignant setup in the conference room.