JFK Assassination Forum
JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion & Debate => JFK Assassination Plus General Discussion And Debate => Topic started by: Fred Litwin on May 21, 2025, 12:47:12 PM
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https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/luna-s-ridiculous-hearing (https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/luna-s-ridiculous-hearing)
Luna's Ridiculous Hearing
I must be a glutton for punishment. I watched the complete two hours+ of the Luna hearing and I thought my brain would explode. I don't know what was worse - the silly testimony of the witnesses or the brainless questions of the committee members.
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Well, it really was a circus.
There was no semblance of any sort of adversarial process to be seen. Curtis could have been discredited by simply asking him how he concluded that there were shots fried from two (or more?) locations from his brief time with the President.
You nailed the most obvious problem with Hardway’s testimony. Bugliosi pointed this out in his book. I suppose Hardway could say that someone else on the HSCA discovered these facts about the DRE but that doesn’t speak well for the committee as a whole if information was that compartmentalized. Also, he is now claiming that he didn’t even see documents that he signed off on because of the evil Joannides. So, even if one could trace DRE docs to him revealing his knowledge of their operations, he could say he didn’t really see them.
The letter from the CIA person (Delores Nelson) he refers to does exist (I believe) although it may not be online. Robert Reynolds may know where it is. However, what she said about Joannides being involved in a covert operation for the HSCA may simply be her interpretation of the situation and may or may not be correct.
Tunheim’s position on the Joannides file seems to be that parts of it were not given to the ARRB (the month-to-month reports on the DRE) and these should exist so the agency should supply them even though they have said in the past that they don’t have them.
Horne also said that one of the most reliable witnesses was Saundra Spencer. Somehow, her remembrances from 30 years earlier trumped the autopsy materials.
This committee is a joke. The purpose seems to be to assure the American people that conspiracies do exist. Therefore, when certain politicians create conspiracy theories they should be believed. If they want the truth, they should call yourself, Posner, Myers and Reynolds. This group could debunk both hearings in short order.
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https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/luna-s-ridiculous-hearing (https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/luna-s-ridiculous-hearing)
Luna's Ridiculous Hearing
I must be a glutton for punishment. I watched the complete two hours+ of the Luna hearing and I thought my brain would explode. I don't know what was worse - the silly testimony of the witnesses or the brainless questions of the committee members.
Given his status, Judge Tunheim's comments were particularly awful. Gosh, what is he thinking here?
Here's probably the worst part: "The FBI was following him [i.e., Oswald] in Dallas because he was a suspect in another shooting. All of this suggests that they had a lot of contact with him ahead of time, and the -- I don't know what that suggests, other than the fact that they wanted to cover that up, the fact that they knew a lot about him ahead of time and didn't do much about it."
A "suspect in another shooting?" The Walker attempt? "Suggests that they had a lot of contact with him"? Why is he saying this? There's no evidence at all that they suspected him in that shooting. Or any shooting. Hosty never mentioned anything about it and he would have known. As I argued before, I don't see any evidence at all that the FBI had a "lot of contact with him" in Dallas. Or much contact at all.
Hosty, the sole agent assigned to monitor him (and Marina) at that time, testified that he had no contact with Oswald at all from November 5 to the assassination. In fact, he said he never met Oswald at all before the assassination. That's from October 3, when Oswald arrived in Dallas from Mexico City, to the assassination. Plus he said he had 25-40 other cases he was dealing with. One agent, 40 cases. Moreover, from that October 3 date to the assassination Hosty said he had *no idea* where he lived during the week. And of course Hoover punished 17 agents due to their failure to keep track of Oswald. So this "lot of contact" claim by Tunheim is just wrong.
From Hosty's WC testimony:
Mr. STERN. Putting that aside for the moment, what was your evaluation of Lee Harvey Oswald based on the work that you had done and the reports that you had made, the information you gathered early in November?
Mr. HOSTY. Well, there were many questions to be resolved. I was quite interested in determining the nature of his contact with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. I had not resolved that on the 22d of November. We were still waiting to resolve that. Prior to that, I mean that would be the only thing----
Mr. STERN. What had you planned to do after November 5 about this case?
Mr. HOSTY. Well as I had previously stated, I have between 25 and 40 cases assigned to me at any one time. I had other matters to take care of. I had now established that Lee Oswald was not employed in a sensitive industry. I can now afford to wait until New Orleans forwarded the necessary papers to me to show me I now had all the information. It was then my plan to interview Marina Oswald in detail concerning both herself and her husband's background.
Mr. STERN. Had you planned any steps beyond that point?
Mr. HOSTY. No. I would have to wait until I had talked to Marina to see what I could determine, and from there I could make my plans.
Mr. STERN. Did you take any action on this case. between November 5 and November 22?
Mr. HOSTY. No, sir.
And again, Hosty never mentions anything about Oswald being a suspect in a shooting. That's not only not a "lot of contact", that's no contact at all.
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" . . . Joannides being involved in a covert operation for the HSCA . . . "
Huh?
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https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/luna-s-ridiculous-hearing (https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/luna-s-ridiculous-hearing)
Luna's Ridiculous Hearing
I must be a glutton for punishment. I watched the complete two hours+ of the Luna hearing and I thought my brain would explode. I don't know what was worse - the silly testimony of the witnesses or the brainless questions of the committee members.
Vladimir Putin is jumping for joy!
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Not to divert this too far but here is Hosty discussing the Walker shooting in his book "Assignment Oswald." From this account (and others) plus his WC testimony it's obvious that the FBI wasn't investigating the shooting; the DPD was. And I would think that Hosty, the lead agent in charge of monitoring Oswald in Dallas, would know about any suspicions involving him? And be involved in any investigation?
Anyway, from this account the DPD focused, based at least in part on what Hosty told them, on someone within the Walker organization as the shooter. Nothing about them or the FBI suspecting it was Oswald.
(https://www.drivehq.com/file/DFPublishFile.aspx/FileID12441938836/Key68deqm683l7d/walker shooting.JPG)
(https://www.drivehq.com/file/DFPublishFile.aspx/FileID12441938829/Key5li3qoo9bcct/walker two.JPG)
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Huh?
In a court filing, Nelson of the CIA said Joannides was "serving undercover" during his HSCA tenure. Was he really or was it her interpretation of something she read? I don't know.
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Not to divert this too far but here is Hosty discussing the Walker shooting in his book "Assignment Oswald." From his account it's obvious that the FBI wasn't investigating the shooting; the DPD was. And they suspected it was someone within the Walker organization who took the shot.
It's obvious to me that Tunheim is not that well versed on some issues or he believes too many conspiracy writers.
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It's obvious to me that Tunheim is not that well versed on some issues or he believes too many conspiracy writers.
No one on the committee was able to challenge him. Or wanted to. Can't expect them to know the details of this but that's why they have staffers. Or why the hearings should have someone on the panel like Fred or Max Holland, Posner et al. to challenge claims. This is all one-sided. And why they allowed Dr. Curtis to give his second (third? fourth?) hand account of the shooting is another problem. Maybe worse than Tunheim's testimony. Curtis wasn't saying anything about the shooting that he knew firsthand; it seemed to be entirely from things he read or heard from others.
Things like this remind me of Liebeler's complaint about debating Mark Lane: "Lane will talk for 15 minutes and it takes you four hours to correct his claims." That's always been the problem with conspiracists of any variety but especially JFK assassination types. You are always having to chase after them.
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Don Curtis: Then he (Specter) got the committee together, and nobody I'd ever seen before sitting behind the table, and put me on a high stool uncomfortably...And then started asking me questions.
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The testimony of Dr. Don Teel Curtis was taken at 9:25 a.m., on March 24, 1964, at Parkland Memorial Hospital, Dallas, Tex., by Mr. Arlen Specter, assistant counsel of the President's Commission.
Mr. SPECTER - Let the record show that present are Dr. Don Curtis and the court reporter, in connection with the deposition proceeding being conducted by the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, which is inquiring into all facets of the assassination, including the medical treatment performed for President Kennedy.
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In a court filing, Nelson of the CIA said Joannides was "serving undercover" during his HSCA tenure. Was he really or was it her interpretation of something she read? I don't know.
Nelson who?
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The Luna Hearing made it obvious that age has caught up with Oliver Stone. He's now incapable of maintaining coherent thought for better than 4 continuous minutes. I watched Tink Thompson interviewed for roughly 50 minutes on NewsNation several months ago. The same is Now true with him. I hope that both Stone and Thompson have maintained detailed journals. Both have acquired a lot of knowledge in addition to physical evidence regarding the JFK Assassination. Detectives and Cops keep records of the cases they are involved with over the course of their career. Yet, we have guys like SA Clint Hill pass and we do Not hear anything about a personal journal? Why is this? Same goes for Gary Mack. He should have had a 3 Car Garage full of Badge Man Material, McKinnon ID Issue, the Dictabelt, etc. Yet we get squadoosh. What is going on here?
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Detectives and Cops keep records of the cases they are involved with over the course of their career. Yet, we have guys like SA Clint Hill pass and we do Not hear anything about a personal journal? Why is this? Same goes for Gary Mack. He should have had a 3 Car Garage full of Badge Man Material, McKinnon ID Issue, the Dictabelt, etc. Yet we get squadoosh. What is going on here?
Comrade Storing,
As you've been brainwashed into believing, it's all part-and-parcel of THE DEEP STATE CONSPIRACY.
Keep up the good work in spreading the disfo, Comrade!
Your buddy,
-- Vladimir Putin
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Nelson who?
Delores Nelson of the CIA's Public Information Programs Division. She was responding to Morley's lawsuit against the CIA. That is when she made the statement about Joannides that I referenced.
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Delores Nelson of the CIA's Public Information Programs Division. She was responding to Morley's lawsuit against the CIA. That is when she made the statement about Joannides that I referenced.
One doesn't have to be Jim Garrison to have legitimate questions about what exactly Joannides was doing with the HSCA. Why Joannides? Who chose him? As I understand it, he was simply the liaison or go-between between the HSCA and the CIA, correct? He had no role outside of being essentially a messenger between the two. So what harm could he have done? Still, it's a curious choice to use.
Hardway says that the CIA was very cooperative until they started asking about Mexico City. Not New Orleans or the DRE. It was then that that, according to him, the CIA clamped down. Hardway comes across to me as a very honest guy but he really does see the assassination through his "CIA was behind it all" perspective, e.g., Oswald had no agency, didn't act on his own; he was being directed/controlled by outside forces and figures such as Philips.
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One doesn't have to be Jim Garrison to have legitimate questions about what exactly Joannides was doing with the HSCA. Why Joannides? Who chose him? As I understand it, he was simply the liaison or go-between between the HSCA and the CIA, correct? He had no role outside of being essentially a messenger between the two. So what harm could he have done? Still, it's a curious choice to use.
Hardway says that the CIA was very cooperative until they started asking about Mexico City. Not New Orleans or the DRE. It was then that that, according to him, the CIA clamped down. Hardway comes across to me as a very honest guy but he really does see the assassination through his "CIA was behind it all" perspective, e.g., Oswald had no agency, didn't act on his own; he was being directed/controlled by outside forces and figures such as Philips.
My take on Joannides is that he was given his position as a liaison to the HSCA by Breckinridge because he was an experienced man. Once he was on the job, Joannides, who was likely an old school CIA hardliner, considered it his duty to give out as little information as possible. This was simply to keep the secrets on methods and sources and almost certainly not to cover-up any "Oswald Operation" as Morley suspects. After all, the DRE guys Morley talked to never said there was any operation or that Bringuier's interactions with Oswald were scripted by the agency. Some of them did believe in conspiracy theories (apparently) like millions of others. But they never said the DRE was involved in those, only that they were "used" somehow by the CIA.
Did Joannides delete files? Sure, it is possible, heck anything is possible. But again, if you could somehow prove he did, it would not prove an "Oswald Operation." It is likely that Joannides gave his word to sources and/or assets that their efforts would remain forever secret. So, when he was in a position to get rid of files he COULD have. But I would say it is just as likely that the operational files on the DRE from the period Joannides was case officer (which Morley is so concerned about) are lost or never existed or were routinely destroyed. After all, many files are lost-Mary Ferrell has a report on that somewhere.
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My take on Joannides is that he was given his position as a liaison to the HSCA by Breckinridge because he was an experienced man. Once he was on the job, Joannides, who was likely an old school CIA hardliner, considered it his duty to give out as little information as possible. This was simply to keep the secrets on methods and sources and almost certainly not to cover-up any "Oswald Operation" as Morley suspects. After all, the DRE guys Morley talked to never said there was any operation or that Bringuier's interactions with Oswald were scripted by the agency. Some of them did believe in conspiracy theories (apparently) like millions of others. But they never said the DRE was involved in those, only that they were "used" somehow by the CIA.
Did Joannides delete files? Sure, it is possible, heck anything is possible. But again, if you could somehow prove he did, it would not prove an "Oswald Operation." It is likely that Joannides gave his word to sources and/or assets that their efforts would remain forever secret. So, when he was in a position to get rid of files he COULD have. But I would say it is just as likely that the operational files on the DRE from the period Joannides was case officer (which Morley is so concerned about) are lost or never existed or were routinely destroyed. After all, many files are lost-Mary Ferrell has a report on that somewhere.
One would think that the same people at CIA who sent Nosenko-loving John L. Hart to not (sic) testify about Oswald to the HSCA also sent Joannides to serve as liaison.
Factoid: After Hart, in his HSCA testimony, severely slandered KGB Major I mean Lieutenant-Colonel I mean Captain Yuri Nosenko's former CIA case officer, Tennent H. Bagley, and buttressed Nosenko's spurious "bona fides," Bagley requested permission to rebut Hart's testimony. His request was granted, and he proceeded -- as "Mr. D. C." (as in Mr. Deputy Chief of the Soviet Russia Division) -- to rip Hart the proverbial "new one" in his 16 November 1978, 170-pages-long testimony.
Note: Nosenko was the false defector-in-place-in-Geneva-in-June-1962 / rogue physical defector to the U.S. in February 1964 who claimed to have been Oswald's case officer in Moscow (how lucky for J. Edgar Hoover!!!) who "knew for a fact" that the KGB had absolutely nothing to do with the former sharpshooting Marine radar operator during the two-and-one-half years he lived in the USSR!!!
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One would think that the same people at CIA who sent Nosenko-loving John L. Hart to not (sic) testify about Oswald to the HSCA also sent Joannides to serve as liaison.
BTW, Tom, I saw your Substack post and you definitely should write a book on your Nosenko theories. Easy enough to do with self-publishing now and they would be preserved for posterity.
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BTW, Tom, I saw your Substack post and you definitely should write a book on your Nosenko theories. Easy enough to do with self-publishing now and they would be preserved for posterity.
Thanks for the feedback, Tracy.
They aren't my Nosenko theories, though.
They are the observations of Nosenko's former CIA case officer and primary interviewer / interrogator, Tennent H. Bagley, plus the actual theories of John M. Newman and former CIA officer W. Alan Messer (who thinks Nosenko was a rogue physical defector to the U.S. in February 1964 whose bona fides Aleksei Kulak (FEDORA), Dmitry Polyakov (TOP HAT), and Igor Kochnov (KITTY HAWK), et al., had to support because he was telling J. Edgar Hoover what the KGB was desperate for him to hear -- that the KGB had absolutely nothing to do with former sharpshooting Marine U-2 radar operator Oswald during the two-and-one-half years he lived in The Worker's Paradise.
Have you read Bagley's book, Spy Wars, or his follow up article, "Ghosts of the Spy Wars," yet?
Both are free-to-read. Just google "spy wars" and "archive" simultaneously, and "ghosts of the spy wars" and "archive" simultaneously.
Enjoy!
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Douglas Horne at the hearing:
Ex-Govt Employee Tells Congress JFK X-Rays 'Actually Reveal A Total Of 3 Headshots,' Records Missing
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I believe that Horne revealing the 2 separate "Briefing Board" sessions was ground breaking. That + Horne unearthing Dino Brugioni = an evolving Zapruder Film. What we have today is Not what Dan Rather viewed and described to the nation.
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I believe that Horne revealing the 2 separate "Briefing Board" sessions was ground breaking. That + Horne unearthing Dino Brugioni = an evolving Zapruder Film. What we have today is Not what Dan Rather viewed and described to the nation.
Doug Horne's description of the missing autopsy photos during the hearing is especially informative and important. He starts talking about the missing autopsy photos at 56:45: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPOFi_6Bk-4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPOFi_6Bk-4).
Dan Hardway's testimony about his and Lopez's finding that Oswald was impersonated in Mexico City is also informative and important. Same link.
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Doug Horne's description of the missing autopsy photos during the hearing is especially informative and important. He starts talking about the missing autopsy photos at 56:45: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPOFi_6Bk-4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPOFi_6Bk-4).
Dan Hardway's testimony about his and Lopez's finding that Oswald was impersonated in Mexico City is also informative and important. Same link.
Yeah, I had never heard about numerous missing autopsy photos. It's stuff such as this that gives credibility to the HSCA Testimony of White House Photog Robert Knudsen and his seeing an autopsy photo showing probe(s) in the body of JFK running from the front of the body to the rear.
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The very fact that all those autopsy photos were withheld shows that they didn't help the notion of a lone gunman from above and behind.
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Possible "numerous" missing autopsy photos reinforces an additional autopsy or separate JFK Body Work of some kind. This is why the SS stole the JFK Body.