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Bogus Evidence
Its ironic, since conspiracy buffs are
always claiming that the evidence
against Oswald is all faked or forged.
But in fact it is the conspiracy
evidence in the case that is laced with
faked documents, unreliable
witnesses, and misrepresented facts.

For example: a note (right)

supposedly written by Oswald and
addressed to a "Mr. Hunt" surfaced
during the HSCA investigation. It
supposedly ties Oswald to either CIA
agent E. Howard Hunt or to Texas
oilman H.L. Hunt. The HSCA gave
the document to its panel of
handwriting experts, and this is their
very skeptical report. In 1999, the
note was revealed to be a Soviet
forgery in a book by KGB defector
Vasili Mitrokhin. Here is the section
of the book that describes the KGBs involvement with Kennedy assassination disinformation.

Citizens for Truth in the Kennedy Assassination (CTKA) in 1994 published a document (a police
report), supposedly detailing an altercation between Jack Ruby and Lee Oswald at Mrs. Bledsoes
boarding house. (Why were they fighting? Werent they coconspirators?). "A CTKA Story?" is researcher
David Perrys analysis of the document, showing it to be an obvious fake. Since Perrys article was
written, the hoaxers who wrote it have come forward and admitted the forgery. Yet CTKA, Jim Marrs,
and Jack White all accepted the document as authentic.

Blame Your Own Father for Killing Kennedy?

Thats what Rickey White did. He claimed his father Roscoe White was tasked by shadowy Federal
authorities to kill Kennedy as a "threat to national security." But the documents he had that supposedly
proved this turned out to be forged. You can read about this sordid affair in the article "I Was Mandarin"
which appeared in the Texas Monthly in December, 1990. Also see David Perrys article "Who Speaks for
Roscoe White?" first published in The Third Decade and now available in expanded form on Perrys
website.

McCone-Rowley Document

It has been around since circa 1990, but in the early 2000s a document, supposedly written by CIA
chief John McCone to Secret Service chief James J. Rowley contained some explosive revelations about
Lee Oswald being an agent in the service of U.S. security agencies. However, the document turned out to
be a forgery, and even the vast majority of conspiracy theorists now reject it.
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Of course, most conspiracy theorists are honest, and would not forge documents to make their case.
However, several have been fooled by these hoaxes, and it is ironic that all the proven forgeries
connected with the case have come, not from the government, but from conspiracists.

Mark Lane Honest Advocate?

No one has been more assiduous in promoting conspiracy theories than

lawyer Mark Lane (right). And his lectures and books (especially Rush to
Judgment and Plausible Denial) have been extremely influential. But can you
trust Mark Lane to tell you the truth and the whole truth about any subject he
might be writing about? Check out some evidence.

Lane told the Warren Commission that Tippit shooting witness Helen
Markham said that the shooter was short, heavy, and with bushy hair. Here is a transcript of Lanes
telephone interview with Markham. Judge for yourself whether Markham was an easily
manipulated witness, and whether Lane was an honest advocate.
In his book Plausible Denial, Mark Lane presents himself as having convinced a jury, in a Federal
court in Miami, that E. Howard Hunt was part of a JFK assassination conspiracy. If you believe
Lane, it was a landmark case, vindicating what conspiracists have always claimed. But should you
believe him?
When author Jean Davison first became interested in the assassination, she read Lanes account of
Jack Rubys Warren Commission testimony, and then went on to examine what Ruby actually said.
This short autobiographical account compares Lanes version of what Ruby said with the unfiltered
testimony.
Julia Ann Mercer was a witness who claimed to have seen Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald
together in Dealey Plaza shortly before the assassination. How Lane dealt with her testimony is the
subject of this short essay. Want to see the primary sources on Mercer, and compare them to what
Lane said? Click here.
Journalist Hugh Aynesworth met Mark Lane in December of 1963 and supplied him with some
then-secret witness statements. Seeing what Lane did with them, he was rather put off.
If Lane cannot be trusted to fairly present the evidence about the assassination, how does he
perform when he ventures into another area? In 1970 Lane published Conversations With
Americans in which American soldiers described a number of atrocities committed by Americans
in the Vietnam War. Anti-war journalist Neil Sheehan investigated the accounts in Lanes book,
and found most of them to be bogus.
Although Mark Lane is on the political left, and blames the assassination on the CIA (which the left
dislikes), that does not mean that everybody on the left (or even most leftists) have a favorable
opinion of Lane. The magazine Mother Jones, for example, did an expos of Lane, calling him
"The Left's Leading Hearse-Chaser."

Misleading the House Select Committee

Mark Lane has been a purveyor or Martin Luther King conspiracy theories too, and he represented Kings
killer, James Earl Ray, before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. After investigating Lanes
claims, the Committee chastised him:

Many of the allegations of conspiracy the committee investigated were first raised by Mark
Lane, the attorney who represented James Earl Ray at the committees public hearings. As
has been noted, the facts were often at variance with Lanes assertions. . . . In many
instances, the committee found that Lane was willing to advocate conspiracy theories
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publicly without having checked the factual basis for them. In other instances, Lane
proclaimed conspiracy based on little more than inference and innuendo. Lanes conduct
resulted in public misperception about the assassination of Dr. King and must be condemned.
(House Select Committee Report, Page 424, footnote 16)

Firearms Factoids

In real world criminal cases, scientific ballistic evidence is among the strongest
evidence. In conspiracy books, this hard scientific evidence is cited to prove that
Oswald could not have killed John Kennedy. Unfortunately, conspiracy authors have
to cite a variety of pseudoscientific principles that real world forensics experts know to be nonsense.
There are, for example:

The failure of the Dallas cops to test the rifle found in the Depository to see whether it had been
recently fired.
The fact that Oswalds fingerprints were not found on the rifle nor the pistol supposedly used to
shoot Tippit.
The negative paraffin test on Oswald cheek that supposedly shows he had not shot a rifle.
The small throat wound which is supposedly too small to be an exit wound, and perhaps even an
entry wound from a 6.5 mm. round.
The ammunition clip that was claimed to have been missing when the rifle was recovered, and
without which Oswald could not have fired three shots.
Oswald supposedly unreliable ammunition, manufactured during the 1940s.
The fact that Oswalds rifle was described as "well-oiled," and therefore should have left traces of
oil on the blanket in the Paine garage or on the paper bag that the Warren Commission said Oswald
used to transport the rifle to the Depository.

A much longer list of firearms factoids is a veritable cornucopia of bogus forensics principles.

An All-Purpose Conspiracy Expert? L. Fletcher Prouty, a retired Air Force

Colonel, was the model for Oliver Stones Mr. X. You can see Prouty in conspiracy
documentaries posing as a expert on presidential protection, the origins of the
Vietnam War, and journalism in New Zealand. Just who is this fellow? Does he
actually know what he is talking about? Is he some kind of crackpot or something?
Click here for the "scoop."

Prouty has quite a lot of fans in conspiracy circles, and one of them has produced a
web site devoted entirely to Prouty, his writing, and his opinions.

Was Ruby Going to Expose The Conspiracy in Washington?

Jack Rubys famous "I want to go to Washington" testimony before the Warren Commission. Did he
really want to blow the whistle on The Conspiracy in D.C.?

Tenuous "Connections"

Conspiracy authors specialize in finding "connections" between supposedly "assassination related"

people, and "connections" with government agencies. Just how spooky do these "connections" appear
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when closely scrutinized?

Some of the employees at Oswalds place of work in New Orleans, the Reily Coffee Company, left
to take jobs at a nearby NASA facility.
Lee and Maria Oswald, when they returned from the USSR to the Dallas/Fort Worth area,
supposedly lost some of their luggage.
A phone call is supposed to link David Ferrie to Jack Ruby. Does it?
In the Marines, Lee Oswald got gonorrhea in a manner the Marines ruled "in the line of duty . . .
not due to own misconduct." Does this imply that Oswald was, for example, sleeping with
prostitutes on orders from some intelligence agency? Mark Zaid, a JFK assassination researcher
and a lawyer, looked into this legal determination.
Oswald, in custody of the Dallas police tried, according to several conspiracy books, to call a
sinister fellow named John David Hurt in North Carolina. Hurt was supposedly connected with
military intelligence, and so might have been Oswald's "contact." But is any of this actually true?

Should Oswalds Interrogation Have Been Recorded?

To anybody who watches TV crime dramas, it might seem obvious that Lee Harvey Oswald's
interrogation should have been taped. Isn't that what the cops always do? Given the massive stakes in this
case, isn't it suspicious that no audio recording was made? Unfortunately, what seems "obvious" today
doesn't necessarily apply in 1963. As late as 2004, the Center on Wrongful Convictions was urging police
departments to record interrogations. Indeed, their survey of police practices in that year showed that
virtually no departments recorded suspect interrrogations as far back as 1963. As researcher Sandy
McCroskey (who discovered this report) pointed out:

All departments in Alaska record [interrogations] and had been doing so for nineteen years in
2004. That means they weren't in 1963, as they started only in 1985. Los Angeles had been
recording for 23 years in 2004. That means they started only in 1981. What about New York
City? Well, all we have for that state is Broome County, and it didn't start until 2002!
Chicago? No department in Illinois started before 1994. Washington, DC started in 2003. No
police department in Texas was recording interrogations until 1992.

And of course, in 2004 a large number of departments still didn't record interrogations, a reality the
Center on Wrongful Convictions was trying to reform.

Goings On in Fort Worth

"The Cowtown Connection" an article by Duke Lane examines the Fort Worth connection in
the assassination and tests the veracity of a claim by Robert Morrow about the arrest of a "Maurice
Bishop" in Fort Worth. Also: the Tom Tilson auto chase. Uploaded by permission.

Invented Death Notice?

Among the "Mystery Deaths" surrounding the assassination, one that has attracted particular interest
is that of Karen Carlin. Interestingly, although she appears on the "Mystery Deaths" lists, there is no
evidence that she is in fact dead! This essay, by researcher David Perry, deals with a claim that author
Penn Jones, Jr. placed a fake death notice in one of his books at the request of a federal agent.
Supposedly, Carlin was going into a witness protection program. See what Perry concludes about this
claim.

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Changed Motorcade Route?

Its supposed to indicate a conspiracy, and especially the

involvement of Dallas City officials like Mayor Earle
Cabell. The motorcade was, the story goes, originally
supposed to go down Main Street in order to get on the
Stemmons Freeway, rather than turn right on Houston, and
then left on Elm. Thats what a map in the Nov. 22nd issue
of the Dallas Morning News showed.

But as is often the case, conspiracy books withhold

important information from their readers. Click on the map
at left/above to get the full story. This issue not only shows
the unreliability of conspiracy books, its one about which Jim Garrison lied in On the Trail of the
Assassins, and one that has trapped at least two suspect "witnesses" to sinister goings-on.

Bobby Kennedys View of the Assassination

Youve probably seen the much cited claim that Robert Kennedy said that "only the powers of the
Presidency" would get to the bottom of his brothers death. One person who vividly remembers the
speech in which RFK supposedly said this was author David Lifton. This is his own account from
Compuserve, uploaded by permission.

Clark Merrill tried to track this same claim about Bobby Kennedy in news reports from the 1968
Presidential Primary campaign. This article details what Bobby actually said. Compare it to what some
conspiracy authors said he said.

Did Nixon Think the Warren Commission Was a Hoax?

Of course, what Robert Kennedy (above) or any other political figure thought about the assassination
is irrelevant unless we assume that person had some sort of "inside information" that has never become
part of the public record. Otherwise, their opinion is no better than anybody elses, and less good than that
of anybody who has studied the case. But that doesnt stop conspiracists from quoting a BBC story that
said that Nixon called the Warren Commission a "hoax." The quote is all over the Internet, but the people
who are using it apparently have not bothered to check the primary source and see what Nixon actually
said.

A Thought From a Serious Conspiracy Researcher

My research has shown over 75% of all alleged facts in this case are false. Just take
any book and compare the authors conclusions to another authors conclusions. Check
each alleged fact in each book and see how many cancel or contradict each other. If all
the alleged facts in all the conspiracy books were true, we could expect to have the
following conclusions:

1. The Grassy Knoll was a very busy place with many gunmen who never saw each
other.
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2. There were at least 10 individuals depicted in the photos of the three tramps.
3. There were at least 30 gunmen firing from 4 different buildings, the overpass, the
Grassy Knoll, the South Knoll, the Presidential limo, the Secret Service follow-up
car, the curb on Elm Street and the sewer.
4. There were at least 100 conspirators in Dealey Plaza.

These "facts" seem absurd and ridiculous but this is exactly what we end up with if we
believe all of the conspiracy books which have been published. (Source: Bill Adams,
"The Enemy Within")

Do you think Adams is exaggerating? Check out David Perrys "Rashomon to the Extreme" for a list
off all the persons who have been "identified" as shooters or coconspirators in Dealey Plaza on the
day of the assassination. Then check out Mike Griffiths essay "Extra Bullets and Missed Shots in
Dealey Plaza" for more of the kind of "evidence" that Adams is talking about.

Winnowing the Wheat and the Chaff

In an area so awash in bogus, fabricated, and unreliable information, how does

one sort through the evidence? Veteran researcher Paul Hoch provides some
guidance in a talk he gave at the Second Annual Midwest Symposium on
Assassination Politics in Chicago in 1993.

People With "Foreknowledge" of the Assassination?

Richard Case Nagell claimed to have been working for the KGB and the CIA, and to have been
tasked with breaking up an assassination plot against Kennedy that both agencies knew about, and which
involved Lee Oswald. Dave Reitzes discusses his frequently changing, often contradictory stories in
"Truth or Dare: The Lives and Lies of Richard Case Nagell."

Joseph Milteer supposedly had "foreknowledge" of the assassination. A far-right extremist, he made
several statements to an FBI informant two weeks before the assassination about how Kennedy was
going to be killed. Did he actually know something about an impending assassination? Or was he merely
a blowhard? Click here to see how conspiracy books conceal certain of his statements. Just how much
does he seem to know when you look at more of what he said?

Rose Cheramie (actually spelled "Cherami") is another of the people with supposed "foreknowledge"
of the assassination. Her story is in all the assassination books, but British author Chris Mills has
collected new primary sources. His Rambling Rose is an essay that takes us beyond the usual treatment.
Mills believes she may have had actual foreknowledge of the assassination (I think hes wrong about
that), and offers a particularly strong treatment of her death.

More recent research into Cheramis death by Dave Reitzes shows that the claims of "foreknowledge"
are apparently bogus, and that the very earliest sources show no such thing.

Lets Just Think for a Minute About "Foreknowledge"

The House Select Committee on Assassinations examined Secret Service files, and found that from
March through December 1963 the agency received information on over 400 possible threats to the
President. (See the HSCA Report, p. 230.) Of course, many instances of loose and violent talk about the
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President being killed never were reported. For example, the rantings of Joseph Milteer (see above)
attracted Secret Service attention, but the statements of Rose Cherami did not.

Each of these threats could be interpreted as "foreknowledge" of the assassination. Somebody talked
about the president going to be killed, and the president was killed. Foreknowledge.

Bogus "Confessions"

We might expect that anybody who took part in the assassination would keep quiet about it. But
interestingly, several people have some forward to "confess" a role.

Judyth Baker claims to have been Lee Oswalds girlfriend in New Orleans in the summer of 1963,
and to have participated with him in a top secret bioweapons program to kill Castro. The story is
perhaps the most elaborate and multifaceted to come from any "conspiracy witness," but is it true?
James Files, whose story is promoted in a video produced by one Bob Vernon, claims to have been
the Grassy Knoll shooter. There are serious questions about his credibility, however.
Another person who has recently "confessed" a connection with the assassination is one Tex
Brown, who claims to have taught Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby how to shoot a rifle. In his review of
the book Broken Silence, researcher David Perry evaluates this tale.
One Robert Morrow has claimed a role in the shooting as a supplier of rifles and of electronic
devices. Ulric Shannon, in this thorough review of Morrows book First Hand Knowledge,
questions whether Morrows "knowledge" was really first-hand, as opposed to picked up from
various conspiracy books.
It might seem odd that the Dallas police would put Oswald into a cell with any other suspect, but
one John Elrod has claimed that he was Oswalds cellmate, and that Oswald "spilled the beans"
about a connection with Jack Ruby and a role in a gun running plot.

"What About All Those Strange and Convenient Deaths?" Its one of the staples of
the conspiracy literature the idea that a very large number of people "connected with the
assassination" have died under "mysterious" circumstances. Supposedly, a conspiracy "cleanup
squad" is running around killing people. See what the actual facts look like.

Washington, DC Phone Outage

It sure sounds like something sinister: the fact that the phone system in Washington, DC,
went down in the minutes following the shooting of Kennedy. Was this evidence of a coup detat in
progress, or the normal results of thousands of people seeking to tell friends and neighbors the news? As
is usual with conspiracy books claims, the more you know the less sinister it seems.

Mangling What the Warren Commission Said

In an attempt to determine whether it would have been possible for Oswald to have shot Kennedy in
the time he had available, the Warren Commission requested a number of shooting trials from
government agencies. What did the trials show? How do conspiracy books present the trials? Click here
to find out.

Gaeton Fonzi: A Story Too Good to Be True

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One of the more colorful claims in Gaeton Fonzis The Last Investigation concerns
Miami-based reporter Hal Hendrix. Fonzi wants to label Hendrix a spook, and provides
some interesting "evidence" of this.

The Fonzi Version

The next year Hendrix
got himself promoted
to a more prestigious
job, covering Latin
America for the
Script-Howard News
Service. Still based in
Miami, Hendrix
sources remained
quite extraordinary. In
a piece for Scripps-
Howard dated
September 23rd, 1963,
Hendrix wrote a
colorful and detailed
description of the
coup that toppled Juan
Bosch, the leftist
president of the
Dominican Republic.
If Hendrix report
didnt come from
inside sources, it was
an amazing display of
clairvoyance the
coup didnt take place
until the following
day.
The Last
Investigation, p. 325.
The Reality
In the days before the coup, Hendrix wrote a three-part series, with each
article in the series dealing with a different nation. First there was Cuba,
then the Dominican Republic, and then Haiti. My student Mark Rausch
managed to locate three Scripts-Howard papers that ran Hendrixs series:
the Albuquerque Tribune, the Rocky Mountain News, and the El Paso
Herald Post. All ran Hendrix story on the Dominican Republic one or two
days before the coup. So what did Hendrix story say? Here is the lead
paragraph:
The newly won democracy in the Dominican Republic is in
danger of disintegrating. The government of President Juan
Bosch, inaugrated only eight months ago, may not survive the
year.
Thats a prediction that the government will fall, but its miles from a
"colorful description" of a coup. Hendrix goes on to explain the problems
facing the nation, mentioning:
1. A preoccupation "among Western diplomats and responsible Dominicans" with
increasing Communist activity.
2. Incompetence that has "riddled the Bosch administration."
3. Boschs own stubbornness, vanity, and "lack of administrative talent."
4. The fact that "nearly every Dominican male" carries a concealed weapon.
5. Dimming economic prospects.
6. Foreign investors wary of political instability.
Where in this article did Fonzi see a "colorful and detailed description of
the coup?" The assumption must be that Fonzi was simply passing along
hearsay, and never bothered to check out this particular story.

Another "Official Story"

Conspiracy buffs are ever suspicious of the "official story" and "government propaganda." In at least
one case, however, many have been crudulous toward a piece of propaganda from a very different source.
Farewell America is a book whose origins are explored in this essay by John Locke. Further analyses of
this book, as well as the complete text, can be found on Dave Reitzes web site.

Those Conspiracy "Photo Experts"

They will assure you that all the evidence implicating Oswald is faked. They will assure you they see
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evidence of a conspiracy in films, still photos, movie footage, and x-rays. Do the conspiracy
"photographic experts" know what they are talking about? Lets take a look:

Tom Wilson Found a bullet entrance in the front of Kennedys suit jacket.
Groden and Livingstone An autopsy photo that shows the back of Kennedys head blown out.
Robert Groden photo of O.J. Simpson was faked.
Robert Groden a "second rifle" brought down from the Depository.
Robert Groden a figure in the background of newsreel footage of Oswald is Clay Shaw.
Jack White Inconsistent dimensions of rifle in backyard photos.
House Select Committee on Assassinations How real photo experts work.

A Photo of Two Men in the Sniper's Nest?

Since the Warren Commission believed that Oswald alone shot Kennedy from the sixth floor window
of the Texas School Book Depository, a photo of two men in that window at the time of the shooting
would be virtually incontestable proof of a conspiracy. A photogapher named Norman Similas claimed to
have taken just such a photo. Unfortunately, he could never produce it, and his credibility was highly
questionable.

Was the Chain of Evidence Broken?

Conspiracy authors are always claiming that the physical evidence against Lee
Oswald would have been "inadmissible" in court because the "chain of evidence" was broken.
Unfortunately, the same conspiracist authors who invent forensics principles unknown to the law
enforcement community also seem to invent rules of criminal procedure unknown to the courts. An
authoritative summary in a standard textbook on police procedure shows that essentially all the evidence
against Oswald would have been admissible.

Dallas Police Evidence Tampering?

The evidence against Oswald was so massive, and so apparently damning, that conspiracists pretty
much have to insist that much of it was faked, forged, or altered. And indeed, they have produced
"evidence" of Dallas police tampering.

One piece of evidence discovered by the police was a photo that shows the back yard of General
Walker (whom Oswald tried to kill), and the version that now exists has the license plate of a car
parked behind Walkers house torn out. Supposedly, photographic evidence shows that the plate was
intact when the Dallas cops recovered the photo. But a closer look at the evidence shows the
conspiracy books jumping to conclusions.
The Dallas police claimed to have found three spend cartridges in the Snipers Nest, corresponding
perfectly to the three shots that the vast majority of Dealey Plaza witnesses heard. But author Noel
Twyman found what he thought was evidence that only two spent rounds were recovered.
Photos of Dealey Plaza in the minutes following the assassination supposedly show a Dallas Police
officer, a Sheriffs Deputy, and a mysterious government agent finding and picking up a slug. Was
this an example of authorities suppressing evidence?

A Crank Phone Call is Evidence?

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Karen Carlin (stage name: "Little Lynn") was one of Jack Rubys stip-tease dancers. She phoned
Ruby on the morning of November 24th, 1963, and asked him to wire her $25 that she needed for
rent and groceries. Had she not phoned, Ruby would not have been in downtown Dallas that Sunday
morning and almost certainly would not have shot Oswald.

After the assassination, Carlin turned up on the lists of "mysterious deaths" although in fact there
was no evidence she was dead. Author John Davis takes the story from there:

. . . in October 1992, Karen Carlin came back from the dead. She contacted Gary Shaw,
director of the JFK Assassination Information Center in Dallas, after almost thirty years
living under an assumed identity, and told him she knew of a conspiracy to kill Lee
Harvey Oswald, that Ruby told her to phone him Sunday morning and that an hour later
he would telegraph her $25, just before shooting Oswald, to establish an alibi to justify
his shooting of Oswald as an impulsive act of revenge.

And who was ultimately behind the conspiracy to kill Oswald? Karin [sic] Carlin
mentioned two names to Gary Shaw, Carlos Marcello and Santos Trafficante, Jr. (John
Davis, The Kennedy Contract, p. 107.)

Needless to say, "Carlin" has not come forward to confirm her identity, testify or answer questions,
or otherwise make herself available. The whole affair is just one phone call to Shaw who has been
involved in a variety of other dubious "revelations" in the case.

Return to Kennedy Assassination Home Page

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