5 comments about Case Open: The Unanswered JFK Assassination Questions.

1. Weisberg makes a lot of big mistakes in his book. He seems to have this personal grudge against Posner for destroying one conspiracy theory after another. Oh well. Almost 40 years after the assassination and all I still read about is mysterious 2nd, 3rd, 4th . . . 1,232,982th . . . zillion . . . ad infinitum gunment spraying lead all over Dealey Plaza. Sheesh, I must have been the only one not involved in the conspiracy. Where did the conspirators meet, Madison Square Garden?



2. Carefully analyzes and decimates the piece of swiss cheese that is Posner's book "Case Closed." Excellent read, illustrating not only how readily the lazy lone gunmen theorists and Warren Commission apologists like Posner can get book deals for what amounts to third grade school reports on the JFK assassination, but also to what degree the media and so-called journalist communities have conceded true research on the case to scholars and average citizens.

   Along with the recent audio and dictabelt evidence that details MORE than three shots in Dealey Plaza, Fetzer's book opens the case even wider, than it's always been -- and sheds much light.




3. I understand why Mr. Weisberg felt compelled to write a book debunking case closed because after all, Posner's book is a sham. However, this book seems sloppy and thrown together. Not Weisbergs best effort.



4. Harold Weisberg is a legend in the JFK case. Just for "Post Mortem" alone, he deserves a hollowed place in the pantheon of this whole affair. That said, "Case Open" is a good book that suffers from poor editing and awkward style. If only Weisberg's book would have been presented intact (by his own admission, this was the abridged version) AND properly edited. Still, a decent assault on Posner's dreadful "Case Closed."
   vince palamara



5. Via an assortment of completely-unsupportable conspiracy notions, "Case Open" is Harold Weisberg's anemic attempt to destroy and bury the Lone-Assassin conclusion reached by author Gerald Posner in 1993's "Case Closed". This short and seemingly-rushed-to-press-without-a-minute-to-lose pro-conspiracy book is just another excuse to bash the perfectly-acceptable single-killer conclusion reached by the Warren Commission in 1964 (and backed up by Mr. Posner's flawed but overall very good work in '93). The JFK Assassination has been a veritable Cash Cow for conspiracy promoters.*
   
   * = But note the very small number of Lone-Assassin believers who have "cashed in" on the JFK murder craze. And it's not that the LN writers couldn't be cashing in more, too....because there's certainly no LACK of evidence favoring the notion that Lee Harvey Oswald was a solo killer on 11/22/63 in Dallas. Seeing as how every bit of physical evidence says "Oswald Is Guilty As Hell!", I'm surprised there haven't been more books published by LNers to counter the absurd works of Garrison, Fetzer, Groden, Marrs, Lane, Weisberg, et al.
   
   Since there's no physical evidence to back up the idea of conspiracy, the "Conspiracy Mindset" is an alien one to me with respect to the 1963 John F. Kennedy assassination.
   
   An example of the very odd and skewed "CT" mindset, of course, is that conspiracists believe (on nothing more than outright blind faith, with absolutely zero pieces of evidence at all to prove that it occurred) that a band of President-murdering conspirators actually arranged a plot -- ahead of time (with ample time, no doubt, to THINK about the idiocy and implausibilities of their proposed actions) -- that called for the framing of one "patsy" named Lee Harvey Oswald, while at the same time deliberately shooting President Kennedy from every angle imaginable.
   
   And then, after pelting the lone target with up to a dozen rounds of hot lead from a multiplicity of directions, these boobs who pre-planned it that way somehow expected everything to neatly fall into a nice "Oswald Did All Of This" pile at LHO's feet -- either via their own miraculous brand of "evidence altering" procedures ....
   
   -- Or: --
   
   .... In a curious "Hail-Mary, I Sure Hope Everything Works Out Okay" fashion, these moronic Patsy-Framers just hoped and prayed that the U.S. Government would ALSO be wanting to frame the very same "patsy" that the pre-11/22 patsy arrangers were wanting to frame....and then the large number of Government cover-uppers would obediently perform all of the necessary altering of evidence themselves to eliminate the tons and tons of evidence that undoubtedly will be revealing the conspiracy, since these brain-dead assassins decided to use three or four gunmen, instead of the required maximum of one.
   
   Many CTers actually (and incredibly) believe that a "Patsy Plot" was pre-planned in the above manner. How could the "Patsy" conspiracy believers NOT believe something along the lines I've laid out above and still believe that JFK received any gunshot wounds from the FRONT?
   
   Can there be any "reasoning" with people who believe something that wouldn't even have been considered by any assassins in the first place....much less having a plot like that actually implemented and carried out on November 22nd, 1963?
   
   Another thing I've never understood about CTers is the notion of -- "The More Options Conspiracy Theorists Have, The Better".
   
   But why is having a whole bunch of unsupportable "options" to work with getting conspiracists anywhere nearer the "truth" in the case? For, only ONE of those options could be the "correct" one (even from a CT POV)...and ALL OTHERS ARE WRONG, and therefore are, in essence, junk.
   
   Nothing like murky waters huh? CTers don't want to be pigeonholed into just one or two (or 42) "options"....they want 342, so the conspiracy apparatus will continue to churn out more WRONG theories than right ones for decades still to come.
   
   I'd also love to know what that band of "Patsy Plotters" (who worked so hard to set up dumb-as-a-box-of-rocks Lee Harvey) would have done if Lee just decided to take Friday off? He decides he's not going to go to work at the Texas School Book Depository on November 22nd. He's going to call in sick and spend the whole day at Ruth Paine's house with Marina and his two little girls.
   
   What happens then?
   
   That is yet another "unknown" factor that the plotters need to have go off like clockwork on 11/22 in order for their "Miracle Patsy Plan" to succeed.
   
   And the fact that, per many CTers, Oswald isn't even WATCHED at 12:30 by the plotters is another laughable part of this so-called "plot". Lee, per most CT accounts, is on the lower Depository floors when he's needed on the 6th Floor firing at JFK. Yet another impossible-to-control 12:30 PM variable in this grand "Master Plan Of Patsydom".
   
   And what if Depository employees Harold Norman, Bonnie Ray Williams, and Junior Jarman had decided to go to the SIXTH floor to watch the motorcade...instead of the fifth floor? What would the Patsy Plotters have done then? Would they have eliminated every one of those three witnesses in a blaze of gunfire?
   
   The Patsy Plot is so amazingly and incredibly IMPOSSIBLE for so many different reasons. But CTers can only see the plot through POST-assassination eyeballs...never having once (evidently) looked at the complexities of the plot through PRE-11/22 orbs.
   
   The biggest and boldest reason to know that Lee Harvey Oswald was not being set up as a lone patsy is --- TO KNOW THAT NOBODY WITH A BRAIN WOULD HAVE FRAMED HIM THE WAY CTers THINK HE WAS FRAMED....BY USING GOBS OF SHOOTERS!
   
   Once conspiracy theorists learn this, and accept it, then the Multi-Gun Patsy Plot that CTers have fallen in love with over the decades crumbles into a pile of dust.

No comments about Cold Blooded Killings: Hits, Assassinations, and Near Misses That Shook the World.

2 comments about Murder in Memphis: The FBI and the Assassination of Martin Luther King.

1. This is a fairly good book but nothing like Orders to Kill by William Pepper which is much more detailed and conclusive in it's arguments. Thinking about it I guess these guys probably re-released to cash in on the time, effort and money that Pepper spent on the the case. Still it is much better than Posner so...



2. As it is a particular field of interest to me, I have probably read more about the trilogy of 1960's assassinations than most. Most conspiracy theories, however, involve a certain suspension of disbelief, and the reader, as investigator, must decide what they believe or not. Not so in Mark Lane and Dick Gregory's Murder in Memphis; without pointedly trying to be, their simple stating of the facts is the single most damning, disturbing, and convincing indictment of the FBI and others involved that I have ever read. Brilliantly written, the book is also meticulously researched; every source used is clearly identified and the reader gets the impression they could independently verify every statement made with relative ease. A non-stop page-turner from beginning to end; it is a must read for anyone who enjoys non-fiction.

No comments about Twenty Days : A Narrative in Text and Pictures of the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and the Twenty Days and Night That Followed..

No comments about Guatemala: Human Rights and the Myrna Mack Case.

5 comments about The Very Rich Hours of Count von Stauffenberg.

1. To say that the most intriguing aspect of Paul West's novels are the titles might be damning with faint praise. But the titles are great - "Bela Lugosi's White Christmas", "Lord Byron's Doctor", and, of course, "The Very Rich Hours of Count Von Stauffenberg". These all do what a title ought - tease you into interest. What about Lord Byron's doctor? And why the doctor and not Lord Byron? I think of Bing and white, not Bela and white.

   Knowing that Von Stauffenberg was the man who carried the bomb into the meeting to try to assassinate Adolf Hitler, I was drawn to this book by the title. So it was not only the title, but also the subject matter. West chooses interesting subjects. The bomb plot to kill Hitler, the Jack the Ripper murders, Lord Byron (who, according to Caroline Lamb, was mad, bad and dangerous to know).

   So, drawn by the subject matter, intrigued by the title (what was it that made Von Stauffenberg's hours rich?), I picked up the book. LOVED the cover.

   I find it hard to describe Paul West's style. The closest I can come is to say it is a densely written book. There are a lot of words, and not all the words carry one forward into the tale. Indeed, in some instances one feels like one has stepped into a small eddy of words and only after whirlling about a bit does one spin out of the eddy and move on to the next. When not half way through the book I recognized we were coming upon the moment of Von Stauffenberg's demise, and given that the narrator of the book was Von Stauffenberg himself, I was curious to see how West was going to approach the second half of the book. I underestimated the man. The death of the narrator did not phase him for one moment. Nor did it cause a change in the voice of the book. Goodness. I hadn't expect that.

   I have also read The Women Of Whitechapel - drawn again by subject, title and cover. But I give. As curious as I am about Bela and his white Christmas, about Lord Byron and his doctor, I'm gonna give it a pass




2. To say that the most intriguing aspect of Paul West's novels are the titles may be damning with faint praise. But the titles are great. "Lord Byron's Doctor", "Bela Lugosi's White Christmas" and, of course, "The Very Rich Hours of Count Von Stauffenberg". These are wonderful titles. They tease one into contemplation - what about Lord Byron's doctor? And why the doctor? They create contradictory images. Bela Lugosi brings to mind darkness, bats, vampires and blood. To picture Bela Lugosi frolicking through a White Christmas (with Bing crooning in the background) could cause a slight brain cramp.

   More than the titles, I am drawn by the subjects Mr. West chooses to explore. Jack the Ripper stalking the women of Whitechapel through the fogs of London. Lord Byron, who was, according to Caroline Lamb, mad, bad and dangerous to know. And the rich Von Stauffenberg, rakish in his eye patch, who carried the bomb into a meeting with Adolf Hitler in an abortive assassination attempt.

   So we have interesting subjects, intriguing titles. Enough so that I picked up and looked at a copy of The Very Rich Hours of Count Von Stauffenberg. LOVED the cover.

   Trying to think of a word to describe Mr. West's style, "dense" came to mind. This is a densely written book - lots and lots of words. But the words don't always move one forward in the story. Instead, it feels as if one has fallen into an eddy of words, and only after whirling about in place for a while does one spin out of the eddy and move on to the next. When only half way through the book I realized we were fast approaching the moment of Von Stauffenberg's demise. Since the book is written in his voice, I was curious as to how Mr. West would deal with the rest of the book. I had underestimated the man. The death of the narrator didn't phase the author in the least. I hadn't expected that.

   Drawn by subject, title and cover, I also read The Women of Whitechapel. And now, as curious as I am about Lord Byron's doctor and Bela Lugosi's Christmas (white or otherwise), I'm gonna have to give it a pass




3. Having read both this book(several times) and Hoffman's definitive biography, I believe that full appreciation of the novel requires considerable factual background of the type provided by Hoffman. That said, though spectacularly difficult to read owing to the horrors of Nazism explored in brilliant imagery, as well as to just the pyrotechnics of the language, the book is ultimately extraordinarily moving. Stauffenberg is presented as a man as self-doubting as Hamlet in his way. At the end, though, willing to risk everything for his beliefs. The last paragraph of the book is unforgettable.



4. Readers of this book should be interested by the rather harsh comments about it made by the main character of J.M. Coetzee's novel Elizabeth Costello.



5. Paul West's fictional memoir, "The Very Rich Hours of Count Von Stauffenberg", has a sort of dreadful rollercoaster quality to it: beginning with the military career of Hitler's would be assassin from Tunisia to Poland, the slow evolution of Stauffenberg from a proud German soldier into another horrified bystandard to the atrocities of the Third Reich painted with agonizing, poetic precision. His court martialing of an "old friend" who brutally shot two elderly Polish women (and subsequent dmoetion for this very action) is the first step in a long journey to Hitler's "Wolf's Lair" and a go-for-broke attempt on "S'gruber's" life.
   
   Giving voices to the tragic figures of German Resistance members like Hans Oster, Henning Von Tresckow, Leber, Olbricht and Ludwig Von Beck, West's sometimes skillfull and sometimes awkward poetic, postmodernist style adds color to a little known and little appreciated series of ill fated events inspired by conscience and driven by the manic fury of a few principled men determined to prove that not all of "Hitler's Germany"
   was in fact "Hitler's Germany".
   
   For all the novel's failings--the foremost being West's attempt to transform every common phrase uttered by the Resistance fighters into lofty French Symbolism--the scene in which Stauffenberg plants his briefcase bomb next to Hitler is written with the precision worthy of a real poet: "The texture of the explosion that of a shredded rainbow poising upward as a reverse waterfall. I thought I felt the heat. I knew I smelled the reek of burned hair, and my first thought, pardonable in an assassin, was "That is Hitler burning: his ideas are shrivelling on the pyre of himself, his mustache has gone, his eyes like those of a dead trout, matted and grayish green. I could taste his death on the still summer air. The trademark forelock had gone off with a foaming crack, like guncotton, and the outside snakebite of his nostrils no longer channeled air" (pg 178). If only.
   
   Had it not been so tragic, the July 2Oth conspiracy would take on the character of a comic opera or a play written by Ionesco. Misfire after misfire; false step after false step. People bumping themselves off left and right, often only to fail and fall into the hands of the Gestapo half fried. And, behind all of this absurd grisliness, the purest ideals of humanity.
   
   In the narrative, Stauffenberg's soul survives his execution by General Fromm and is forced to witness the subsequent loss of lives, kangaroo trials, and horrid deaths of his family and friends. Somehow, in all of this, West's imaginary Colonel manages to find the spirit of life and vitality even amongst the "death feast" that followed the bomb's failure. Stauffenberg indicts himself for the failure, and West seems to as well, though I'm not sure how accurate this is: how could the members of the Conspiracy really believe that a man so badly wounded could pull this off? And how could Stauffenberg possibly have known that Hitler survived the blast or that Fromm would immediately turn on him? It was more a symbolic act than an attempt at success, as many historians have noted: as early as 1938, Stauffenberg and company doubted that any uprising would succeed but that the attempt simply had to be made for the sake of historical record. And here we have it in Paul West's stunning novel.

No comments about Appointment In Dallas The Final Solution To The Assassination Of JFK.

No comments about The Suppressed Truth About the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

5 comments about Shadow Play: The Murder of Robert F. Kennedy, the Trial of Sirhan Sirhan, and the Failure of American Justice.

1. I literally tore through this book. I couldn't put it down. Fascinating and frustrating with regards to the failure of the justice system.



2. Klaber stands alone in his remarkable attention to detail and his insightful intuition as he dissects Sirhan, the assassination and all the people and events surrounding it. Investigative journalism at its finest; with no sides taken, no leaf unturned/unflipped/unanalyzed and certainly no minds unchallenged.

   Klaber's wired-in work makes all the others' works putter off into nattering nabobs of nonsensical noise as he delicately delves into this June 4, 1968 seminal tragedy. Klaber kooks the krime and katers to only the most diskriminating kats.

   What's Klaber writing about now?




3. This book was extremely enlightening and engrossing. It reveals many startling details about an assassination that in the public's mind is an open and shut case. This book will make you re-examine what you think you know about the murder of Robert F. Kennedy. It is a fascinating and disturbing look into the mishandling of the investigation as well as the trial of Sirhan Sirhan.



4. Mr. Klaber's book is well-written, engrossing, and thought-provoking. At its core, however, it is less about what the common reader thinks of as the "case" of the RFK murder than it is centered strongly on the legal proceedings themselves. He brings out tantalizing bits of evidence, but does not follow any of them to their end points. In the end, while being more fully aware of the possibility of Sirhan's innocence, the reader has little to go on in terms of discovering the real perpetrator(s) or the second gunman.



5. 
   That book is Shadow Play: The Murder of Robert F. Kennedy. Unlike the ALSO UNBELIEVEABLY GOOD BOOK BY TURNER AND CHRISTIAN that was reissued last year (anyone who has not read this book has missed not-only a non-fiction very well documented Crying of Lot 49, but also a book replete with hundreds of footnotes connected to 1960s rightwing groups and also related to the the JFK assasssination.)
   The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
   Lots of stuff on California Birchers for Frawley fans!
   
   Oh, wrong book-edict.
   
   Melanson and Klaber's book is different but also outstanding. It largely confines itself to the trial and the spiral staircase of jusrisprudence within the LAPD. A lot of the background research of Turner and Christian's, that focussed on the right wing mix that had surrounded Sirhan is not covered in the Melanson book. Instead it is a very scrupulous deconstruction of the offical proceedings. It is no less incredible, no less a remaining-jaw-dropper, in that in exposes gaping caverns in the offical pillars of justice as practiced by the Los Angeles DA and the LAPD.

1 comments about Assassination of the Corvair, (His Hoaxes of the 'sixties, v. 1).

1. Attention all 1960-1969 Chevrolet Corvair Enthusiasts and the like:
   
   If you own a Corvair or are just a car history enthusiast you need to see this book (if you can get your hands on it that is)! Full of information that will either get you thinking or get you into the esteemed club of so-called 'Nader Haters' The title says it all: HOAXES!!!