Besmirching History: Vincent Bugliosi Assassinates Kennedy Again

by Michael Green, 19 Sep 2007

Copyright 2007 Michael Green

The purpose of Bugliosi’s Reclaiming History is to defend the integrity of the USG National Security State by grossly distorting its nature and function, by disguising that it is the servant of factions of the ruling classes within the United States, and by pretending that the people who control it did not and could not contemplate the assassination of a democratically elected President whose recalcitrant politics fell outside their parameters. According to Bugliosi, only the lunatic can seriously entertain that Kennedy was murdered because he pursued détente with the USSR, championed nuclear disarmament, decided not to back the invasion of the Bay of Pigs with US military might, made a peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis when the Joint Chiefs wanted invasion and war, and decided to withdraw US troops from Vietnam rather than pursue by brute force an imperial venture in Southeast Asia. According to Bugliosi, Oswald is not just the murderer of Kennedy, he is the only one involved, and he is nothing but “a first class ‘nut.’” (945) Thus, Kennedy’s murder is deprived of any political significance whatsoever, assassinating him yet again.

Bugliosi considers himself at liberty to mock those who appreciate the truth of the opposing world view, inter alia, “conspiracy icon Vincent Salandria [for claiming that] ‘the killing of Kennedy represented a coup d’état.’…I suppose that since a coup d’état is defined as a sudden, unconstitutional change of state policy and leadership ‘by a group of persons in authority,’… you couldn’t even have a coup without the involvement, cooperation, and complicity of groups like the FBI, CIA, and military-industrial complex.” Individuals who entertain such notions are so wrapped up in “their fertile delusions” that they substitute finding a motive for finding evidence, make no connections between, e.g., the CIA and Oswald, and thus sadly show nothing but “this crazy, incredibly childlike reasoning and mentality that has driven and informed virtually all of the pro-conspiracy sentiment in the Kennedy assassination from the beginning.” (985-987)

This essay answers Bugliosi by showing direct involvement of the Warren Commission and the US military in the cover-up, and by demonstrating that the assassination was a state murder, without attempting at this point the far more difficult and far less important task of saying which individuals did precisely what. All of the organs of state power participated in the cover-up; indeed none could do so without confidence in the cooperation of all the others. Some did so as part of their role in the murder, some like the FBI did so reluctantly, but there were no institutional whistleblowers because the consensus of persons with political power was firmly opposed to Kennedy’s foreign policy and they used their control of the organs of state power to kill him, and then replaced his foreign policy with theirs.

Read the full essay at www.maryferrell.org

Comments

[Brian and Beth]

Nice to see repeated reference to, and understanding of the implications of, the excellent Dr. Joseph Dolce.

What a brilliant move it was for those intending to foist this deception on the public that he was excluded from the Warren Commission hearings so that the mainstream media and even many critics don't talk about him and his essential destruction of the lie that is the Warren Report.

[Wim Dankbaar]

Check out this new DVD on Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Spooks-Hoods-Hidden-Elite/dp/B000W8HEC2/

Wim

[Richard]

The old saying that if 2 people know a secret, than the only way that secret will remain that way is if one of them is dead doesn't apply here I guess. Also, why bother with the unimportant matters as who did precisely what in the assasination. And he hasn't even read Bugliosi's book yet. It is comments like this, no matter what else follows, that gives so many conspirators a bad rep. It is prepostorous to believe for even an instant that so many people could be involved in such a massive coiverup and the truth still remain hidden after 43 years. Give me a break.

[Brian and Beth]

But much of the truth isn't hidden:
For example, we know that, as Dr. Green points out, from the statements of the top bullet expert for the Commission, Dr. Joseph Dolce, that bullets just don't smash all the bones alleged and come out slightly flattened. They just ignored him.
We also know that if a bullet goes through even coarse cloth or leather, you'd find microscopic markings indicating that. CE399 doesn't have a scratch on it. We know that from FBI ballistics expert Robert Frazier. The Commission just chose to ignore that.
One could go on and on about just "the truth" we know about CE399 that it excludes it from the JFK killing.
On this basis alone, the shooting is beyond the capability of one man, Lee Harvey Oswald or anyone else.
It's not the burden of the critics to start naming who the shooters were and its not the fault of the responsible critics that those who make unsupported claims get most of the attention of the mainstream media. The Commission failed us all when they made their Procrustean bed of a case accepting the "solution" forced on them by Hoover. What little investigating they actually did was shaped to conform to the political requirement of a lone gunman connected to no group.
The fact remains, Dr. Green's analysis is right on target. Bugliosi's book is a one-sided, badly reasoned brief, however lengthy.

[Ed J]

This is the essence what drives most conspiracy buffs:

"According to Bugliosi, Oswald is not just the murderer of Kennedy, he is the only one involved, and he is nothing but “a first class ‘nut.’” (945) Thus, Kennedy’s murder is deprived of any political significance whatsoever"

Bugliosi references this phenomenon in his book. People are unwilling to believe that a nothing like Oswald could murder Kennedy. There simply HAD to be bigger forces at work.

Well, there weren't.

Please read the whole book. Bugliosi's 1600 page recitation of the evidence is extraordinary.

[Rex Bradford]

Those who repeat the homily that conspiracy believers "just can't believe that a nobody like Oswald could kill a big man like Kennedy" are usually unwilling to look at the flip side of the mass-psychology coin - that many people are simply unwilling to believe that assassination is a tool of political change in America. That's why I prefer to focus on the facts rather than such cute and essentially useless psychoanalyzing. And on the facts, the Warren Commission's theory of the crime has, as Senator Schweiker said on national TV more than 30 years "collapsed like a house of cards." Clever but fundamentally dishonest writing like Bugliosi's (see essays on this site), and a media eager to be told that it was right all along, doesn't change this basic fact.

[Ed J]

You "prefer to focus on the facts"?

Where?

You offer nothing but wild speculation.

The Warren Commission had the weapon, the ammunition, and the shooter with a history of attempted assassination. What you have is this copout:

"without attempting at this point the far more difficult and far less important task of saying which individuals did precisely what."

"At this point"? WHEN do you plan to give us an alternative theory of the actual assassination? Another 44 years from now?

[Pat Speer]

Ed, you say the Warren Commission had the weapon, the ammunition, and the shooter, and seem to believe that that nice little bundle says it all.

But it really doesn't.

Fact: the majority of witnesses underneath the sniper's nest window thought the shots came from their left. When the HSCA tested how witnesses heard shots in this location, they concluded it was easy to recognize a shot fired from above, and theorized that the rifle was fired from within the building, something they knew to be untrue.

Fact: the Dealey Plaza witnesses closest to Kennedy at the moment of the head shot overwhelmingly believed a third shot came after the head shot. This calls into question the currently popular single-assassin scenario.

Fact: witnesses from all over the plaza overwhelmingly believed the last two shots were fired closely together. Those who measured out the time mostly believed these last two shots were fired too close together to be two separate shots from a bolt-action rifle.

Fact: Oswald's cheek was coated in paraffin and tested for nitrates. It came up negative. Later, a more definite test was performed on this paraffin cast. It inexplicably showed more gunshot residue on the back side of the paraffin than on the side that touched Oswald's cheek. This draws into question whether Oswald even fired a rifle on 11-22.

So, yes, there are plenty of facts that can lead one to doubt that Oswald acted alone, or was even one of the shooters, should one look beyond Bugliosi's prosecutor's brief.

[Ed J]

Have you read "Reclaiming History"?

Every one of your "facts" above are addressed and refuted.

Once again I ask the same annoying question that none of you guys seem prepared to answer: If not Oswald, who did the shooting and from where?

You have no evidence of your own. You nitpick at the Warren Commission's report without presenting your own "prosecutor's brief".

Every shred of actual evidence points to one man and one location: Oswald from the sixth floor of that building.

[Pat Speer]

Ed, I understand that many CTs have a pathological need to believe Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. I also understand that many single-assassin theorists have a pathological need to believe the United States "is not a banana republic" and that Kennedy was not killed by a conspiracy. But I don't fall into either category. My belief that there was more than one shooter comes almost entirely from studying the forensic evidence, although books like Larry Hancock's Someone Would Have Talked--by almost all accounts a far better book than Bugliosi's--undoubtedly made an impact.

I have read the bulk of Bugliosi's book, and agree with him much of the time, but he avoids a number of issues like the plague, and is grossly in error on a number of other points. I assure you the issues mentioned above are NOT covered in detail in his book. If they are, please let me know where. Bugliosi has conducted a PR campaign claiming to have answered all the conspiracy theories, and this is so much hot air, like a Santa Ana wind.

A number of researchers, including myself, have let it be know that we'd be willing to confront Bugliosi and anyone of his choosing in a televised debate, anywhere, anytime. But Bugliosi, supposedly so committed to turning around public opinion on this issue, has begged off, insisting that he doesn't have the time. Nonsense. He knows his claims of "solving everything" can not be supported; he knows he hid a lot of evidence from his readers. And he's not willing to have to admit this in public.

[Pat Speer]

Ed, I understand that many CTs have a pathological need to believe Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy. I also understand that many single-assassin theorists have a pathological need to believe the United States "is not a banana republic" and that Kennedy was not killed by a conspiracy. But I don't fall into either category. My belief that there was more than one shooter comes almost entirely from studying the forensic evidence, although books like Larry Hancock's Someone Would Have Talked--by almost all accounts a far better book than Bugliosi's--undoubtedly made an impact.

I have read the bulk of Bugliosi's book, and agree with him much of the time, but he avoids a number of issues like the plague, and is grossly in error on a number of other points. I assure you the issues mentioned above are NOT covered in detail in his book. If they are, please let me know where. Bugliosi has conducted a PR campaign claiming to have answered all the conspiracy theories, and this is so much hot air, like a Santa Ana wind.

A number of researchers, including myself, have let it be know that we'd be willing to confront Bugliosi and anyone of his choosing in a televised debate, anywhere, anytime. But Bugliosi, supposedly so committed to turning around public opinion on this issue, has begged off, insisting that he doesn't have the time. Nonsense. He knows his claims of "solving everything" can not be supported; he knows he hid a lot of evidence from his readers. And he's not willing to have to admit this in public.

[Ed J]

Pat, you present the two sides in this debate as having some kind of equivalence. This is like saying that evolution and creationism are equally valid. They are not. Evolution presents facts and creationism must be taken on faith. I believe in facts. When you folks in the conspiracy world can give us a plausible shooter, a plausible location, the weapon and the ammunition, I'll take you seriously.

[Pat Speer]

Ed, you're high on your own supply. Is the single-bullet theory a "fact"? Then why can't it be replicated, or made to match the Z-film? Similarly, are the supposed locations of the President's wounds "facts"? Then why do they keep moving?

What you apparently fail to understand is that your set of "facts" has been creamed by those eager to prove there was a lone assassin, from a whole big collection of "facts", many which suggest there was a conspiracy. (For example, the statements of the Parkland witnesses.) Oswald's sole guilt comes nowhere near the standard of being a legal "fact" nor a scientific "fact". It's a theory, and an unpopular theory at that. For forty years it's been shoved in the nose of the American public, and it still fails the smell test.

[Gator]

Let's face it, I believe Bugliosi is probably paid by the Bush people to steer the public over a cliff like Peter Jennings tried to do. I wish the Lord would take those old idiots and kill em off !
(Well he is, a little slower then I would do.)