Dealey Plaza, 1995

We got in about 9:00 pm and were handed a packet of info from the Paramount hotel staff covering the events of the next few days. Unfortunately, we missed the book-signing by Robert Groden at a local Borders Books outlet, but looked forward to the Tuesday events.

The film project with Sean is part of a larger effort in the JFK case. I have proposed that COPA produce an "infomercial" (for lack of a better term). For contributing money, people would get a video and a well written digest of our best stuff..."conspiracy's greatest hits" so to speak. The purpose would be to fund efforts to get a truth commission appointed to reach a final conclusion to the case...no prosecution, but power of subpoena and granting immmunity.

Tuesday, 11/21/95--We were organizing our gear for the filming of a few events and thus missed the opening comments, but came in for some of the meetings. We made the last half hour of the the Media discussion group led by Jim Marrs. There were usually two or three groups going at once, although all of the others stopped while the afternoons photo group was held for the White/Groden discussion. Most of the groups this day were more in a Q&A mode, thus only one really had significant happenings...we will get to that..

The Paramount is the old Bradford Hotel with a cheap face-lift. Our room looked right over the plaza and was $100 a night cheaper than the Reunion Plaza! The rooms were small, and when we opened a few up for the larger space needs of the Tuesday night video show, it was hot and crowded. Better than empty and desolate, I suppose.

After the first morning session, we sat in on the legal issues group with Brad Kizzia. Brad let us know that he was actually there to listen to us and report back to COPA on our suggestions. Yours truly promptly got on his soapbox about my infomercial idea. I don't really expect it to happen...it would require co-operation and money; two things sorely lacking in the research community these days.

We then took lunch with some of the participants...Sean and I engaged Jim Marrs in a discussion about, among other things, his next book. (He will do a Crossfire type of treatment of remote viewing and the UFO subject in a book called The Enigma Files.)

Then, in the afternoon, things got a little more interesting.

As most know, Mark Oakes has been the one responsible for encouraging Patsy Paschall to come public with the original of her assassination related film. Word has been flying that Patsy was going to serve a cease and desist subpoena on Robert Groden because he has included his second/third generation copy of her film in his current presentation of assassination films that comprise the majority of his moving photographic evidence these days. Mark showed up during the early afternoon photo session as Jack White was discussing the new photos gradually turning up relating to LHO, many of which were added to Groden's new book. The question of the Paschall film came up and Jack invited Mark in to talk about it.

At this time, Robert was down in his room talking with "Inside Edition" about the piece they were to do on him Wednesday, the 22nd. (Did anyone see it, I missed it!) All during the day, the JFK-Lancer people ran a hospitality/bookstore down the hall. Former FBI SAC Robert Gemberling (dubbed an "ass-kisser" by Harold Weisberg) made a not-so-surrepetitious appearance at one point...probably looking for Mark Oakes, whom Gemberling has threatened to sue many times for including his interview with Oakes on Mark's "Mystery FBI man" tape. Who knows?

Anyway, hats off to Mark for keeping personality out of his conversations regarding Groden's use of the Paschall film, especially since Robert showed up shortly after he started. They promptly agreed to have a civil discussion afterwards (which they did). (A lesson for other researchers.)

The take on the Paschall film is this....

I believe that Robert has a second or third generation copy...what we will see, if it is enhanced, is a very distant sight of the Grassy Knoll...but, we should be able to see movement of some kind on the GK(this from Patsy and Mark)...it is a very nice high view...4th floor of the red county courthouse...From what I could see from Robert's copy, there are about 10-15 seconds of the GK...more importantly, there should be a view of what we lovingly call, "The boys around the manhole cover" in the plaza...the FBI document stating that Barrett identified himself as being in her film is very important possible confirmation that he IS the one in the Murray-Allen photos. We may replace "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" with "Where's the slug, Robert?"

That night we saw Robert's new production, "The Assassination Films"...this is basically all the assassination films with some slo-mo work, some "Grodenscoping", and some resplicing of damaged replacements on some films.

It should be available in a few months, pending clearances and licensing....of course the present situation with the Paschall film makes this more uncertain...more on that later.

After Robert's presentation came John Armstrong's LHO presentation.

Now, I gotta say that I am not much on the "two Oswalds" theory, but son-of-a-gun, it's gonna be tough to ignore it with John's research. John's presentation was a tour de force of WC documents, FBI finds, newspapers, personal interviews...it was truly impressive.

I'll try to summarize by citing the most important piece he found. While LHO was supposedly in the Marine Corps, he was also working in New Orleans. Sez who? The Internal Revenue Service, that's who.

The N.O. info came from WC docs, but not in the Report. I'm a little fuzzy on this part (I was busy filming for COPA), but somehow, during the FBI's investigation right after the assassination, the FBI confiscated the tax records of the N.O. businesses during the time LHO was supposedly also working in N.O. (Of course, he was also in the USMC.)

Finally, the firms requested and received back their info. The problem was, the tax ID's of the firms were different. Letters were sent to the IRS to find out when those Tax ID's were created. Now these were IRS forms for 1956. The letters from the IRS confirmed that those tax id's on the forms were created in January 1964. Pretty spooky. What the heck is going on?!! Right there, the two-Oswald group grabbed me. Hey Posner, explain this. Anyway, John fielded a lot of questions. He's got a lot more work ahead of him and with more documents being released, I think John is going to turn up some interesting stuff...keep your eyes open for anything from him.

After the presentations, there were a few tense moments as Groden talked with Paschall and Oakes. Patsy was very upset at the terrible version of her film that was being shown, and at the fact that it was being shown, even though it is presently only a research tool. Robert offered to do several thousand dollars worth of enhancement work for free for her...She did not respond, and I understand why.

Here's Patsy's story:

Patsy filmed until the turn on Elm, because of trees in the way and the distance...however, when the shots went off, she remarked that someone was shooting firecrackers...she said this because of the smoke she saw from the fence on the knoll looked like someone had dropped a firecracker there, but it soon became obvious that the President had been hit...she then filmed the limo going under the overpass, and then panned to the knoll and zoomed in...this is the main shot that should be enhanced.

She then knew for sure that she had caught the area where the shooter was when she heard that Kennedy had been hit. By the next day, when everyone was sure it was LHO in the TSBD, she became really scared. In her words, she knew the kind of people who might be involved (she was a political worker, by Dallas "procedures" in those days) and was well aware of "what was coming down", and felt her film put her in danger. She made a copy, gave it to her lawyer, and kept the original in a vault...where it has been until now...

Mark is the one who finally would not give up until she agreed that the American people have a right to know what happened to our President. (She remarked that the day she finally agreed to go public was when she recognized that Mark was not going to go away.) Also, she felt safer now that many of those who could have been involved are no longer around... Does she feel safer? Kinda. This is not a publicity seeker, just a woman who happened to be shooting a film and caught the GK...pure chance.

Anyway, here's where things stand: she wants to sell the film outright. The current expectation is selling price of $250,000. This petite woman is a former city employee with a chance to provide some security for her grandchildren...don't blame her...I feel that she is also strong on including stipulations that the film MUST be disseminated widely (Conspiracy Museum, videos, shows, cd-roms, etc.)

So what she would prefer to do is sell the film to someone who would then license it out. What she and Mark want to do is make sure that the buyer gives maximum exposure to it...they don't want it bought and locked away for years as the Z-film was by Life. Every one of the shows that are interested want "exclusive rights" etc. They haven't agreed to her stipulations, and the problem is that another anniversary has passed---and who knows what will happen now that interest in the case has waned again?

So, there was no viewing at the Conspiracy Museum, and I don't know where things stand. I will try to stay in touch with Mark. but I am not optimistic that the film will be seen soon; neither is Mark, he was planning on looking for a job on Friday.

After that, Sean, Keith, Robert Groden, his son Mike, and Mike Blackwell (Mike occasionally has pinch-hit as a translator for Ed Hoffman) went out to Bennigan's to have what must be a very morose annual celebration for Robert Groden. The 22nd is also his birthday...imagine for a moment...think he has had much of a celebration of that in the last 32 years? Some reminder. This year was his 50th; it was bittersweet and I felt privileged to be asked to participate. We got him a cake and had a little hoopla. The Bennigans' staff sang a birthday song to "Robert", little did they know who he was.

On Wednesday, Sean and I meandered down to the Conspiracy Museum and interviewed R. B. Cutler. It was sort of a weird coupla days because you can't tell the players without a scorecard. Several of the "players" this week have bad histories with each other. You had to know who hated whom, so as not to invite so-and-so if you were going to be with such and such. It's worse than figuring out the seating chart at a wedding involving the Hatfields and the McCoys.

The sum of it is that the end of the AIC and the emergence of JFK-Lancer and the Conspiracy Museum hasn't been very harmonious. I am not going to take sides in this kind of stuff...all I can say is that this kind of acrimony really makes us seem like "buffs" to everyone else and does nothing except hurt our research efforts. I know that there are genuine wounds behind these painful changes, but it's a sorry situation. It isn't the first time internecine warfare like this has hampered our movement and it probably won't be the last.

As 12:30 neared, there was a silent march to Dealey Plaza. It was a warm sunny day with a stiff wind blowing our graying locks every which way. I felt that John Judge did a nice job with the ceremony. Just before the moment of silence, he read a statement by Penn Jones.

John Judge (left) and Robert Groden in Dealey Plaza, November 22, 1995

"Penn Jones has been very ill the last few years, unable to come out," Judge began. "But every year, from the time of the assassination on, except for one when he visited the gravesite in DC, Penn held this moment of silence at 12:30 out here as a tradition. He did groundbreaking work on the case from the very first day. He tracked the witness deaths. And he sent a statement along for me to read, which I thought I'd do, and then we'd do the moment of silence. So this is Penn Jones' statement:

"Thirty-two years ago this country lost its last chance that the people would ever have a voice in government, or any right to call their own destiny. The brutal murder of President John F. Kennedy, and the subsequent killings of his brother Bobby, and Reverend Martin Luther King, further enforced that.

"Assassination has become an instrument used to control the people and shape the direction of government. It has become more and more clear to us, as we see the continued efforts of assassination teams throughout the world, as in the recent murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Adolf Hitler used assassination and torture as a means to silence anyone who opposed him. When that much power is in hand, those means will always be used. Great men or unimportant men can be silenced if they dare to speak the truth loudly enough. It has always been the way of the world.

"Assassination has become so commonplace that it is a tool used to silence anyone who might bring out the truth. Who can ever forget how quickly Lee Harvey Oswald was gunned down to silence him? But we must always come to the places where great men died or gave their lives, and always remember, lest we ever forget, that truth once flourished. Many great men have died who spoke truth, and many unimportant men have died trying to rescue the truth.

"Today we gather to remember the man who tried to help all people throughout the world come to a better understanding of how important even the least of us are. Those of us who gather seek now to rescue the truth of this great man's death. And the enemies of truth are at work to destroy it once again. My time to work against these enemies of justice is over. But in my place, I want others to stand. The color of their skin, their sex, the length of their hair, or any other variable, should not impede the truth. November 22, 1963, must be remembered with a moment of silence, lest we forget what happened here. And those who stand here now are my representatives of truth, and for history."

Following the moment of silence, Ian Griggs, secretary of the newly-formed Dealey Plaza UK, made a statement from the Zapruder perch. "Each year---and it's there again for you to see---I place a Union Jack, our national flag, on that spot [on the grassy knoll]. It's there again today, with just a simple message from the UK to you and to this nation: that we care, too."

Ian added that he and other British researchers are proud to be accepted by American researchers. His London-headquartered group is a spinoff from John Rudd's Liverpool-based Dallas '63; evidently yet another inharmonious parting of the ways.

Author Robert Groden spoke next. "This is always a very, very sad day. Not just for the memory of the loss of John Kennedy, the loss of our freedom, the loss of the civil rights that were denied to Lee Harvey Oswald. But also because the research community---the original great leaders of this community---are going. They're leaving, very very quickly. Too fast. As John mentioned before, Penn has not been well. But we have lost so many others. We lost Sylvia Meagher. We lost Jim Garrison. And very recently we lost a very good friend, a man who kept this case open and going for many many years, Larry Howard." Howard, the Executive Director of the now-defunct JFK Assassination Information Bureau, died from a brain aneurism in January 1994, at the age of 54.

I determined that this sunny day would give me a chance to check something out. I feel Groden is right about the "blob" on JFK's head right after Frame 313 not being a phony artifact. At 12:30 on November 22, the sun is almost in line with the curving Elm Street right where the fatal shot hit. This easily explains the bright "blob" in front and the corresponding blackness in the rear of the head while the exit wound was completely on the opposite side of the head, in shadow and with little reflective help from the black Lincoln limousine. Case Closed.

Lots of local media were there; that's where all of the national feeds came from. An Hispanic news crew interviewed a Mexican family who came cross the border to pay their respects. I couldn't tell if one was a witness or not but they spent quite a bit of time with them and their children. An elderly businessman in an $800 suit told of loud explosions and running for a tree on the east side of the knoll, while his friend stood there and watched. The limo sped off, they looked around and then decided they had better get back to work as their lunch break was over. Guess they were all broken up, huh? He was with a representative of The Sixth Floor museum...figures.

BTW, the Sixth Floor is the only site around that won't let you film. Thanks for preserving the truth for us, guys. Ron Rich brought over a nice wreath from the Conspiracy Museum with the picture of JFK with arms crossed in the center of the display. We saw Larry Ray Harris there; he has moved to Atlanta and seems to have exorcised some of the pain of the fall of the AIC. I would imagine life has been different since Larry Howard's death. I also saw Robert Johnson. He said life has been different, but those who care about this crusade continue in spite of what life throws at them. Robert is truly one of the good guys: truth before ego. Ed Hoffman was speaking to a changing, but consistently large circle of listeners with his translator, Ron Friedrich. Beverly Oliver was missing this year, taking care of a very ill daughter, but sent her regards. Charles Brehm is rumored to be fighting cancer, and Malcolm Summers was missing for reasons unknown.

Several people just sat on the steps to the pergola, reflecting and wondering if the next generation would care. Several people brought their families and several teenagers came by to ask questions. Patient veterans who remembered those four tragic days quietly explained, "We're fighting for the truth for your children's sake..."

Robert Johnson said that this event has almost become like a reunion, seeing people whom you have lost touch with and haven't caught up with in a while...he's right. Farther down the road, a woman in her early 50's is describing where she was that day, and the tears begin to flow. The reporter is old enough to remember those times but seems unmoved by the woman's sobbing attempt to finish her thoughts. The reporter thanks her and the woman's family tries unsuccessfully to console her as they finally embrace her and lead her slowly away.

It is a day to reflect, a day to cry, and a day to despair over whether we will ever win a fight for the truth of our history; and the opposition is our own countrymen. And therein lies my despair. The power and reach of those who are intent on deriding our crusade and demeaning the unselfishness of those who continue is sometimes overwhelming. Even when the evidence coming from the files is proving our suspicions correct, as the latest COPA meeting showed, we have to endure widely disseminated hogwash like the A&E "bio" on Oswald.

As Pink Floyd said in Roger Water's masterpiece, "The Wall":