DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Quote from "Reclaiming History" by Vincent Bugliosi....
"If [Lee Harvey Oswald] had succeeded in getting to Cuba, who believes he would have ended up killing Kennedy? No one I've ever heard of. And how believable is it that a plot to kill the president...would be born after October 1, seven weeks before Kennedy's death? To believe something like that is to be addicted to silliness.
The absurdity of the notion that Oswald conspired with others to kill Kennedy can be spotlighted by the fact that on the very day, September 26, 1963, that it was announced in both Dallas newspapers that Kennedy was going to come to Texas on November 21 and 22 and that Dallas would likely be one of the cities he would visit, Oswald was on a bus traveling to Mexico City determined to get to Cuba." -- Vince Bugliosi
PAT SPEER SAID:
You guys actually fall for this nonsense? This is absolutely the DUMBEST argument against conspiracy I've ever read.
Let me see...hmmm...I'm Vincent Bugliosi...I need to cook up another completely illogical argument against conspiracy, in hopes that if I throw enough stuff against the wall, some if it will stick...hmmm...well how about this?...
LET'S PRETEND I can read the minds of all conspirators...LET'S PRETEND I can assume they'd want to have their plan planned out in exquisite detail months ahead of time...because, well, because this will sound good to the same gullible people that will BUY my giant book...so, here goes...
Well, we know Oswald tried to go to Cuba, so why don't we claim his trying to go to Cuba somehow proves no one would have implicated him in a plot whereby Cuba would get blamed for the assassination...
HUH???? Vince ignores the obvious...
Perhaps the planners had multiple plans which went awry, and the plot involving Oswald was only put together at the last minute...
Perhaps the planners didn't know Oswald tried to go to Cuba...
Or perhaps they knew he'd tried but also knew he'd been rejected...
Or perhaps, just perhaps, Oswald was implicated in the plot BECAUSE he tried to go to Cuba...
Conspiracy or no conspiracy, this argument by Bugliosi is pure SILLINESS, every bit as silly as the theories of Lifton, Fetzer, etc.
Vince can certainly do better.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Pat,
Vincent Bugliosi's comments about Oswald and Cuba make perfect sense. Vince was merely interjecting some basic, garden-variety common sense there. Because if Oswald had, indeed, travelled to Cuba in late September 1963 (and had stayed there for a period of time), then he obviously wouldn't have been able to kill President Kennedy in Dallas in November.
Plus, you're looking at Bugliosi's quote in the skewed and cockeyed fashion of a typical conspiracy theorist, in that you're assuming that a group of mysterious "conspirators" was REALLY trying to either frame Oswald for Kennedy's murder or was trying to use him as part of the working plot to kill JFK in Dallas. And you know as well as I do, Patrick, that there is absolutely NO FIRM EVIDENCE that any group of "planners" (as you call them) was attempting to frame Lee Harvey Oswald for JFK's death.
So, if we take your "perhaps this happened" conspiratorial angles out of the mix (all of which are pure guesswork on your part and are unsupported by the available evidence connected with the assassination), we're then back to the basic brass tacks of the situation (which was Bugliosi's whole point to begin with), which is:
IF LEE HARVEY OSWALD HAD MADE IT TO CUBA IN SEPTEMBER OF 1963, HE WOULDN'T HAVE SHOT PRESIDENT KENNEDY IN DALLAS IN NOVEMBER.
That's just a simple fact that any grade-school student could easily figure out. But it's also the kind of logical forehead-slapping fact that is often completely overlooked by the majority of people who study the JFK assassination.
People simply don't stop to think about such obvious (but very important) details like that. And that is just one example of the many common-sense and plain-as-day inferences that Vincent Bugliosi has sprinkled throughout his "Reclaiming History" book.
PAT SPEER SAID:
Even DVP, who pretty much worships the guy [Vince Bugliosi], has acknowledged that there are real problems with Bugliosi's book.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
I think you're overstating things there a wee bit, Pat. I've never said that Mr. Bugliosi's book has "real problems".
I've pointed out (on multiple occasions, such as here, here, here, and here) a few errors that I have found in Vincent's book, but I have also been quick to emphasize the following as well:
"The very few mistakes that crop up within VB's exemplary JFK book (and CD) are not nearly significant enough in nature, in my view, to warrant the dismissal of Mr. Bugliosi's ultimate 'Lone Assassin' determination." -- DVP; Dec. 14, 2007
LATER, DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
In the 15th chapter of Vince Bugliosi's JFK book (a 19-page chapter entitled "Summary Of Oswald's Guilt"), Vince lists his "53 pieces of evidence" that point toward Lee Oswald's guilt in both the Kennedy and Tippit murders.
And #19 on that list is something that I think qualifies as another one of Vincent's "common-sense inferences" that I referred to above, similar in nature to the Oswald/Cuba inference mentioned earlier.
And I'd bet the ranch that very few people have ever thought about Oswald's taxicab ride in this kind of incriminating way before. I sure hadn't thought about it in this fashion before reading pages 959 and 960 of "Reclaiming History":
[Bugliosi Quote On:]
"When Oswald got in the cab shortly after getting off the bus for the trip to Oak Cliff, and the cab drove off, the cabdriver [William Whaley], seeing all the police cars crisscrossing everywhere with their sirens screaming, said to Oswald, "I wonder what the hell is the uproar?" The cabdriver said Oswald "never said anything."
Granted, there are people who are very stingy with their words, and this nonresponse by Oswald, by itself, is not conclusive of his guilt. But ask yourself this: If a thousand people were put in Oswald's place in the cab, particularly if they, like Oswald, were at the scene of the assassination in Dealey Plaza and knew what had happened, how many do you suppose wouldn't have said one single word in response to the cabby's question?" -- Vincent T. Bugliosi; Pages 959-960 of "Reclaiming History" (c.2007)
[End Quote.]
-------------------
Food for thought, isn't it?
Also -- We can be 100% certain that Mr. Bugliosi is correct when he said that Oswald "knew what had happened" at the time Oswald got into Whaley's cab on November 22nd, and even most conspiracy theorists would have a difficult time in trying to debunk that fact.
Some conspiracists might disagree, however, and argue that the opposite is true, with Oswald not having any idea that the President had just been shot right in front of the building that LHO had just fled from.
But such an argument would totally ignore the testimony of Mrs. Robert Reid, who said that she actually spoke to Lee Oswald on the second floor of the
Book Depository within a few minutes of the shooting, with Reid saying to Oswald, "Oh, the President has been shot, but maybe they didn't hit him" [3 H 274].
Those words spoken by Mrs. Reid to Oswald actually don't make a whole lot of sense in their aggregate, because how could the President have been "shot" and still possibly NOT have been "hit" at the same time?
Mrs. Reid, who was undoubtedly a bit excited at that moment, probably meant to say: The President has been shot AT, but maybe they didn't hit him .... or .... The President has been shot, but maybe they didn't KILL him.
Some conspiracy promoters also probably would say that Reid's use of the word "they" in that sentence means beyond all doubt that Reid knew there was more than one gunman firing shots at the President.
But that argument isn't a strong one at all, because the word "they" is used as a generic term by many people (I'd wager to say MOST people, in fact), such as when somebody says "They say it's going to rain today"....or when Jackie Kennedy said "What are they doing to you?" to her husband during the assassination itself....or when Jackie later refused to change her blood-stained clothes and said "I want them to see what they've done."
And we know that Jackie could not possibly have known for a fact that the word "they" was literally true on those two occasions, particularly at the exact time when the shooting was taking place on Elm Street.
But, regardless of the specific words used by Mrs. Reid when she spoke to Oswald just after the assassination, the net effect would certainly still be very clear, and that is --- Oswald knew about the assassination attempt against President Kennedy before he ever left the Depository Building (even if some conspiracy theorists wish to believe Oswald was totally innocent of firing any shots at JFK).
As an additional footnote (and an extension) to what Vince Bugliosi said regarding William Whaley in the above book excerpt, I'd like to offer up Whaley's nearly identical comments that he made in David L. Wolper's 1964 documentary film "Four Days In November", which is a United Artists feature motion picture that includes Whaley re-enacting Oswald's 11/22/63 cab ride to Oak Cliff. During the re-creation, Whaley said this:
"This young man [Oswald] told me that he wanted to go to the 500 block of North Beckley. And when he got in [the cab], police sirens was runnin' and crisscrossin' each other, and policemen on tricycles was runnin' down, and so I thought it was a fire or a holdup or somethin'. I asked him, I said 'I wonder what the hell all this uproar's about?' And he didn't answer me. So, I figured he was one of these people, which we have lots of, that don't like to talk, they got other things on their mind. And so I just carried him on to where he wanted to go."
-- William W. Whaley; 1964 [See video below]
David Von Pein
February 27, 2010
February 28, 2010
