JFK Assassination Forum

Magnificent to see England treating President Trump with all the dignity and respect that America deserves.  A stark contrast with how they were laughing at Biden's weakness. 

I apologize for interrupting James' excellent work with my silliness, but opportunities to needle Tom simply cannot be resisted. His obsession with Gloria Calvery dates back something like 20 years, and it's mostly lost on me. All efforts to make Bill Shelley into the Second Most Interesting Man in the World are likewise lost on me. Since he consistently, from 11-22-63 to the WC, placed Oswald on the first floor at 11:50, I have a hard time picturing him as a conspirator - let alone a CIA operative or Oswald's FPCC leafletting buddy in New Orleans. I've never thought the two Sidewalk Guys were anyone other than Shelley and Lovelady, and Alan Ford's stuff has always just made my head hurt. Perhaps someone can explain the significance of all this to me?

Ah, I see that WC Sham Guy Dan has started Yet Another Calvery Thread that explains what a CTer thinks the significance is. Shelley was induced to dramatically change his story in order to accommodate the WC Sham but kept placing Oswald on the first floor at 11:50 when he could have just Shut the Hell Up about that? Well, perhaps ....

Oh, dear, my head is spinning. Over at Prayer Man, they are convinced (and make rather a good case with enhanced photos) that it is Shelley and Lovelady walking down the sidewalk and that they lied when they said they were on the steps. http://www.prayer-man.com/bill-shelley-and-billy-lovelady-in-the-couch-film/. Isn't this the opposite of what WC Sham Guy Dan says? Given the choice between Bart Kamp and WC Sham Guy Dan on almost anything, I must admit I'd go with Bart.

But, yes, I was referring to the professed fear of a nuclear Armageddon with the Soviet Union. Thanks to records released in 1993, we know that LBJ pressured Richard Russell and Earl Warren into serving on the WC by telling them that if the government didn't squash rumors that the Soviets and/or the Cubans were behind the JFK assassination, this could push the U.S. into a war that could “kill 40 million Americans in an hour.”

As we used to say about the General Counsel of the Mega Corp at which I worked, "Often wrong but never in doubt." Good thing you have a professional fact-checker like me to keep on your toes.

If not before, Earl Warren revealed what LBJ had said to him in the Memoirs of Chief Justice Earl Warren, published in 1977. You can read the relevant excerpt from his Memoirs here at page 7: https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol11/pdf/HSCA_Vol11_WC_1_Operations.pdf. That's HSCA Volume 11, "Creation of the Warren Commission."

The similar argument made to Russell did indeed come to light (as far as I can tell) when the fabled "LBJ tapes" were released by the National Archives in response to ARRB requests in 1993. If the theory is that LBJ made this argument to stack the deck at the WC and ensure a LN outcome, then he miscalculated rather badly in the case of Russell - eh? Russell was not only a naysayer at the WC but was practically a full-tilt CTer after LBJ's death. LBJ's pressure was apparently too subtle for Russell to get the message - eh?

When I'm not wearing my CT propellor beanie, I see no reason to think LBJ was not sincere in his concerns. Your "belief" that LBJ pressured "several senior military officers" with this argument to ensure a LN result at the autopsy has no foundation whatsoever as far as I can discern. We know that the Joint Chiefs had suggested to JFK that the loss of tens of millions of American lives in a nuclear war would be an acceptable price to pay, whereupon a dismayed JFK had said "And we call ourselves the human race." Why would we think your unnamed "senior military officers" would not have responded "Nuclear war? Cool!" to LBJ's argument?

James,

Was Arce wearing a suit that day?

-- Tom

All of the TSBD order-fillers wore suits. It was an extremely formal warehouse. Oswald was a renegade, the Punk Who Wouldn't Wear a Suit (as Shelley famously called him). Arce had an orange pimp suit that was the envy of his order-filling peers, or at least that's what Weisberg reported in 1992.

More to the point, is there some reason you change avatars like they were popcorn? Why not just use an actual photo of yourself and stick with it, as I do? (Yes, that's me.) Some of these avatars are hysterical - shriveled up little old men who somehow identify with superheroes and whatnot.

You folks didn't think I was going to allow my all-time favorite bit of persiflage to sink into oblivion, did you?

Yesterday, I happened to read two scathing reviews of Luna’s UFO (UAP) hearings by serious, longtime ufologists (yes, there are such things). Here is one: https://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2025/09/restoring-public-trust-through-uap.html (“Well, that was a colossal waste of time.”). Both emphasized that these were clown shows in which the witnesses included some of the least-credible names in the field and nothing resembling actual evidence was presented. They also noted that the festivities played out in front of a nearly empty room.

Then I read this piece by a presidential historian and JFK biographer named Alexis Coe at MSNBC (so you know what her politics are): “I testified at a congressional hearing on the JFK files – I won’t make that mistake again,” https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/jfk-files-congress-conspiracy-theories-anna-paulina-luna-rcna210504.

She testified at the Dentist Don hearing. She, too, emphasizes what a non-serious effort these hearing are and how her perspective as an actual historian was distinctly unwelcome. She also notes that the room was almost empty. Some of her comments about the other guests are quite humorous, to wit: “They understood archives the way toddlers understand taxes: not at all, and mostly through tantrum.”

Here, my fellow Luna enthusiasts and CT hopefuls, is what the dais actually looks like during one of these bombshell hearings. In his heyday, Dentist Don had more people in his waiting room.