BEN HOLMES SAID:
>>> "Fascinating interview [above]...particularly for anyone who
actually knows the facts. It's fun to count how many times Bugliosi
simply lies." <<<
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Which, of course, is zero.
Vince does get a few things wrong in most of his radio interviews. But he's not "lying" (i.e., he's not exhibiting a willful "intent to deceive"), and you can't prove he is.
I fear Bugliosi's memory is not as good as it once was...in fact, he tells us that fact point-blank right straight out during his interviews when he insists on taking only one question at a time, because by the time he gets around to answering the second question--he's totally forgotten it.
The same thing, I think, applies to certain small, relatively unimportant matters regarding his book and the JFK case overall, like the "Oswald never went to Irving on a weekday other than Nov. 21" topic. Or another time in the book where Vince suggests that JFK's limo was decked out with "heavy armor".
Or another location in the book when he says that Dr. Gregory never provided additional details regarding the precise number of fragments that Gregory removed from Governor Connally's wrist (Vince apparently forgot to read an entire day's worth of Gregory's Warren Commission testimony).
And that particular error (or "oversight" would be a better word) involving Dr. Gregory, which is certainly not a lie by any means, definitely is to the distinct DETRIMENT of Mr. Bugliosi's overall lone-assassin position. Because, when this error is corrected, the corrected version of Gregory's testimony tends to bolster (even more) the general one-killer conclusion reached by the WC and by Vincent Bugliosi as well.
Vince also has made the mistake (not a deliberate lie, as Holmes probably wants to believe) of saying that "Reclaiming History" is the "only book out there" that contains photos of both Zapruder Film frames 312 and 313. That is obviously wrong, and is merely a misconception Vince (for whatever reason) has with respect to those two Z-Film frames and the vast number of books connected with the JFK case (many of which do, indeed, contain Z312 and Z313 in them, including some books that I know for a fact have been read by Vince himself -- Mark Fuhrman's 2006 book "A Simple Act Of Murder" to name just one example).
But that's called an honest mistake. It's not a lie. But I doubt that a mega-kook named Ben Holmes agrees with me.
Getting back for a moment to the small error Vince made about Oswald's weekday vs. weekend visits to Irving in October and November of 1963:
As far as I am able to determine (via the records and witness statements of Wesley Frazier, Ruth Paine, and Marina Oswald), the only time prior to 11/21/63 that Lee Oswald went to Irving to see his wife on a weekday (vs. a Friday or Saturday) was on Monday, October 21, 1963, which was a special occasion for Lee because Marina had just given birth to LHO's second child the previous night (October 20th). Lee then travelled back to Dallas with Buell Wesley Frazier on Tuesday morning, October 22nd.
There was one instance (on Veterans Day, Monday, 11/11/63) which had LHO staying at the Paine house one extra day, because of the National holiday on Monday, November 11th. But he didn't travel TO the Paine home on a weekday in that instance. He merely extended his weekend visit by one extra day.
Small errors made by Vince Bugliosi, like the ones brought up by Ben "I Love Chaff" Holmes, are completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. But those types of tiny, innocent errors that appear in Bugliosi's book, or that might come out of VB's mouth during an interview, are just the kind of honest mistakes (as opposed to "lies") that tend to make a conspiracist like Ben Holmes salivate, with the conspiracy kook then proceeding to shout "victory" by being able to claim that Vince Bugliosi "lied" about something that is completely insignificant in the long run.
But Vince B. never ONCE told a lie in "Reclaiming History" -- based on the following (and most common) definition of that word:
LIE [noun] -- 1 a: an assertion of something known or believed by the speaker to be untrue with intent to deceive.
Vince has a few errors in his book, yes. I don't deny that for a moment. Any book of that size (almost 2,800 total pages) is bound to have its share of errors. But does Bugliosi tell any lies (via the above-mentioned definition)? No way.
In past Internet posts, I have openly talked about a number of mistakes that reside in Bugliosi's book --- HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.
And just the other day I found another small error in "RH" (of a spelling nature only) -- VB spells "Jaggars" (of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall) incorrectly in many places in the book and on the CD-ROM disc. He spells it "Jaggers", a common and excusable error, of course, that I'm guessing hardly anyone has noticed (I didn't even notice it until April 2008). But, interestingly, Vince also spells it right (once) on the CD.
Kook Holmes probably wants to string Vince up by the strongest tree limb because of these "Jaggars/Jaggers" errors too. Right, Ben? (Prob'ly so.)
But all of these mistakes/errors in Vincent's book are very minor in nature and certainly do not undercut, in any way whatsoever, Bugliosi's bottom-line conclusion of LHO acting alone in the murders of JFK and J.D. Tippit.
Ben and other assorted conspiracy nuts no doubt vehemently disagree with my paragraph above. Well, so be it. But, as we all know, a Conspiracy Super Kook like Benjamin is going to continue to believe whatever the hell he wants to believe when it comes to the death of John Kennedy, despite the vastness of the forest in front of him that says he's dead wrong.
>>> "If VB had any balls, [he'd] try his hand here -- where there are people who know the evidence as well as he claims to know it." <<<
I doubt Vince has the patience, or the stomach, or (if he's anything like me) a strong enough bladder to listen (for more than three-and-a-half minutes) to the unsupportable, piecemeal ramblings of a bunch of conspiracy-desiring nutjobs at an Internet forum.
But I can always ask him (through his secretary, who has been extremely nice to me). :)
And if Ben is lucky, maybe he too can get Vince angry enough to threaten Benji with a lawsuit, based on the stupid shit Ben continues to spout about VB over the Internet airwaves. (A la: Ric Landers, Joan Mellen, and David S. Lifton.)
That'd be kinda fitting (and sweet), wouldn't it now?
:-)
>>> "But LNT'ers can't survive without lying about the evidence." <<<
Kook Holmes is preaching about LNers "lying about the evidence". Can it GET any better (and hilarious) on the Pot/Kettle scale than that? I kinda doubt it.
>>> "Everything *does* point to a frontal shot." <<<
Oh, you mean like the X-ray shown below (which is a picture that was deemed "unaltered in any manner" by the HSCA)?:
REPLAY:
>>> "Everything *does* point to a frontal shot." <<<
What was it I was just saying above about "pots" and "kettles" (and "lies"). Now is a good time to emphasize those three words again, it would seem.
>>> "Exculpatory evidence just fries Bugliosi." <<<
But the 53 things that lead inexorably to Lee Harvey Oswald's GUILT are supposed to be totally ignored. Right, Ben?
Tell me, Ben, do you agree or disagree with Vince Bugliosi (who is a lawyer who has had a great amount of experience dealing with ACTUAL criminal cases in ACTUAL courtrooms) when he says this:
"As a prosecutor, I found out something -- if you are innocent of a crime, there's probably not going to be anything pointing toward your guilt. Why? Well, because you're INNOCENT. But every once in a while there might be one or two things that point toward your guilt, even though you're innocent. And in very rare situations, there might even be THREE things that point toward your guilt even though you're completely innocent." -- VB
Does anyone here disagree with the above common-sense statement put forth by Mr. Bugliosi?
If you DO disagree with Vince's words I just typed above, you're totally nuts.
Now, with that obvious observation out of the way, we can move on to the specifics of the JFK murder case.....
"In 'Reclaiming History', I set forth 53 separate pieces of evidence that point irresistibly to Oswald's guilt. And under those circumstances, it would not be humanly possible for him to be innocent. Because you cannot have fifty-three separate pieces of evidence pointing toward your guilt and still be innocent....at least not in the real world in which we live. Only in a fantasy world can you have fifty-three pieces of evidence pointing to your guilt and still be innocent." -- VB
Good luck, Ben, with your "exculpatory" evidence that is somehow going to overcome the carload of "Oswald's Guilty" evidence that undeniably exists in the JFK and J.D. Tippit murder cases.
I think author and former LAPD cop Mark Fuhrman said it very nicely, too, in his JFK assassination book when he said this:
"There is no exculpatory evidence that outweighs the accumulated proof against him [Lee Harvey Oswald]." -- Mark Fuhrman; Page 89 of "A Simple Act Of Murder" (c.2006)
REPRISE:
>>> "It's fun to count how many times Bugliosi simply lies." <<<
There isn't a person alive who can prove that Vincent Bugliosi told a deliberate "lie" (with the "INTENT TO DECEIVE" attached) within his 2007 book "Reclaiming History: The Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy".
Mr. Bugliosi, over the course of a two-decade period, wrote what is now (by far) the most comprehensive book on the assassination of JFK. He analyzes the evidence (the REAL evidence, that is) and uses a great deal of ordinary common sense--which IS allowed to be used when writing a JFK book--and comes to the only possible rational, reasonable, BASED-ON-THE-EVIDENCE conclusion that a reasonable person can reach at the end of those 2,700-plus pages -- with that conclusion being: Lee Harvey Oswald was guilty (alone) of the two murders he was accused of committing in 1963.
And the Internet ramblings of a rabid conspiracy theorist like Ben Holmes certainly are of no major (or minor) consequence whatsoever when placed next to the huge number of things (which number in the DOZENS) that indicate the fact that Lee Oswald was performing a solo act in Dallas on November 22nd.
"For the most part the persistent rantings of the Warren Commission critics remind me of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights." -- Vincent T. Bugliosi; 1986
The above words spoken by VB couldn't be more accurate, in my view. If truer words have ever been uttered in reference to many of the JFK conspiracy theorists of the world, I've yet to hear them.
David Von Pein
April 6, 2008
