DVP VS. A CONSPIRACY THEORIST (TOPICS: VINCENT BUGLIOSI, "RECLAIMING HISTORY", AND
SOME OTHER STUFF TOO)


GARRY PUFFER SAID:

I find it most interesting that you were able to read and review this book well before the publication date.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

I wasn't and I didn't. And in my very first comment [which is no longer available to read] connected to this Amazon review, I explained the error concerning the date that appears at the top of my review.


GARRY PUFFER SAID:

The Warren Commission Report is nearly 900 pages accompanied by 26 volumes of testimony and evidence (but no index).


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Better look again. The Warren Commission Report and its associated volumes actually include MULTIPLE indexes. Let's have a gander (the first one shown below is in the 888-page Warren Report itself, while the last two are in Volume 15; so, yes, you do need to know where to look for these indexes, but once you know where they are, then it's a snap to access them at any time in the future, particularly nowadays when every page of this material is available on the Internet):

WARREN REPORT APPENDIX V (INDEX OF WITNESSES):
http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0254a.htm

WARREN COMMISSION INDEX OF NAMES:
http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh15/html/WC_Vol15_0382a.htm

WARREN COMMISSION INDEX OF EXHIBITS*:
http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh15/html/WC_Vol15_0406a.htm

How many more indexes do you require?

* The "Exhibits" index linked above only goes up to CE1053, and that's because it's an index that provides information as to what volume number and page number to go to in order to find out when a particular exhibit was mentioned when a witness was on the stand. The other 2,000 "CE" exhibits are not listed in that index, and that index doesn't actually tell the reader where to go in the volumes to locate a picture of the exhibit itself. But, of course, even a second-grader who knows anything about the general structure of the WC volumes would have no difficulty in locating photos of all the Commission exhibits themselves -- just go to Volumes 16-26.


GARRY PUFFER SAID:

That is a massive number of pages for something of such poor quality.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

You're obviously buried in conspiracy quicksand, Garry. The fact is, the Warren Commission Report and volumes are massively comprehensive (certainly comprehensive enough to determine what needed to be determined--i.e., Who Shot JFK and did he do it alone?). Naturally, you totally disagree. Well, what's new there?

The Warren Commission's biggest mistake was not taking a closer look at the autopsy photos and X-rays. Therefore, we had to rely on inaccurate drawings made by Mr. Rydberg.

But the conspiracists who think they can use the Rydberg drawings to discredit the WC's findings are sorely mistaken, and that's because the NEXT investigation (the HSCA) DID examine the autopsy pictures and X-rays in detail (and confirmed their authenticity), and the HSCA/FPP came to the same identical conclusion that the WC came to -- JFK was shot just twice, with both bullets entering his body FROM BEHIND. And the Clark Panel in 1968 and the Rockefeller Commission in 1975 came to the very same identical conclusion as well. Were they ALL liars?


GARRY PUFFER SAID:

You made the same mistake with this review. It's way too long.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

It's a really long book, so I wrote a really long review to go with it. So sorry you were displeased. I hope you'll forgive me for not meeting the rigid expectations of a conspiracy theorist. I should be hanged from the oak tree in front of the Depository. (Got any rope?)


GARRY PUFFER SAID:

He [Vincent Bugliosi] did very little actual research (almost none in fact) and although the book was 20 years in the making, precious little of that time was used in researching and writing this book.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

You don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about. Between approximately 2001 and November 2006, Mr. Bugliosi worked 70 to 90 hours per week on "Reclaiming History". And to say he did almost no research for the book is to simply ignore the 10,000 source notes that appear in the book. [Check out this audio clip.]

Get real, Garry. So far you're anything but.


GARRY PUFFER SAID:

I wasn't aware that Mr. Garrison had been "thoroughly discredited." By whom?


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

By anyone with a smidgen of common sense, that's by whom. Just read Vincent's section on that topic in "Reclaiming History" (beginning on Page 1361). Apparently you didn't.

For Pete sake, Jim Garrison's own lead investigator, William Gurvich, resigned in disgust and told the world that Garrison had "no case" whatsoever against the man Garrison was prosecuting--Clay Shaw.

Read more about Garrison's total lack of evidence against Shaw and Gurvich's comments about the case here (and via the image below), which is an excerpt taken from page 1361 of "Reclaiming History".





GARRY PUFFER PUFFED:

Your review suffers from the same faults as "Reclaiming History": It is voluminous but without substance, it contains untruths, and it avoids any ideas that conflict with its conclusions. I'll give your review a D- because there are very few grammatical or spelling errors.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

How sweet of you. But at least a D- is better than the F- that you're getting for your review of my review.

The day you come up with one solid piece of credible evidence that undermines the "Oswald Did It" conclusions of both the Warren Commission and the HSCA, please drop me a line. Thus far no conspiracy theorist has been able to do that. But, who knows, maybe Garry Puffer of Riverside, California, will be the first. Good luck.


GARRY PUFFER SAID:

Any good history book indexes the subjects as well as names.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

The Warren Commission Report (WCR) itself is indexed by subject (and very nicely too)--it's called the "Table Of Contents", and it's quite detailed, with tons of sub-topics listed. Each sub-topic is then sourced within each section.

In fact, I've always been very impressed by the WCR's Table of Contents section. Quite useful indeed. I use it often.


GARRY PUFFER SAID:

It is a researcher's nightmare to approach 26 volumes with a topic in mind only to find out there is no way to find anything. Listing three indexes that are fairly useless on their own is typical of the way you argue your points.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

You're silly. The Warren Commission's indexes are just fine and provide direct "Volume No." info for every single witness and every single name that appears in the WCR and volumes. And as I just mentioned, the WCR's Table of Contents is, essentially, a "subject index". And a very useful one too. You require way too much from the Commission in this "index" regard. And the "List of witnesses" is something that I'll bet a lot of researchers aren't even aware is in the WCR (Appendix V).

That witness index gives instant info as to what Volume No. (and page number) to go to to find that witness' testimony and, in many cases, their affidavits too. It's a very handy Appendix that is just as good as a "Subject Index" for most researchers, and that's because the researcher pretty much already knows what "subject" the individual witness in the "List of Witnesses" is connected to. And for those newbie researchers who don't know Jim Humes from Ruth Paine, they can easily find the material on any specific subject by utilizing the WCR's Table Of Contents, which, as mentioned, is incredibly detailed.

Naturally, all of these things aren't nearly good enough for Mr. Puffer. But they certainly should be good enough for anyone who isn't desperate to dismantle the WCR and its work. (But is there a conspiracy theorist in the world who ISN'T desperate to perform such a task, no matter how silly and nitpicky their complaints are?)


GARRY PUFFER SAID:

I'm insignificant in all this.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

How true. And I'm insignificant too. But Oswald still did it alone. And the evidence proves it.


ADDENDUM REGARDING SYLVIA MEAGHER:

Garry Puffer actually did me a bit of a favor when he brought up the subject of a WC index. Because it got me to thinking that I needed to add a couple of things to my online Kennedy Book Catalog, with those items being Sylvia Meagher's two Master Index volumes for the JFK investigations [ONE and TWO].

And while searching Amazon for those Meagher books, I noticed a blurb connected to another one of her books, "Accessories After The Fact", which is a 1967 book that many conspiracy theorists treat as the Holy Grail of JFK assassination books. The blurb at Amazon says:

"Her amazing assertion that Oswald had never actually been charged with Kennedy's murder, despite sworn testimony to the contrary (see Commission Document 5 for the FBI's statement that "such arraignment was not necessary")."

I'm just wondering if Meagher actually contends in her book that Oswald was never arraigned by Justice of the Peace David Johnston at 1:35 AM on 11/23/63?

If Meagher does take that position, it just makes me wonder what other off-the-wall theories she adopted as the truth over the years, because Johnston himself wrote a statement that details the 1:35 AM arraignment of Oswald [Johnston Exhibit No. 1, at 20 H 315].

There is also 11/23/63 television coverage from newsmen (WFAA-TV coverage specifically) who talk about the early-morning arraignment of Oswald, and about how Oswald said "That's ridiculous" following the arraignment procedure.

All lies, Sylvia?

It's true, indeed, that there is an FBI report (Commission Document No. 5; Page 400) that does say that Oswald was not arraigned for JFK's murder. Now, why such an inaccurate statement exists in CD5, I haven't the foggiest idea. But can anyone with any common sense really believe that that one document in CD5 trumps all of the other people (including Justice of the Peace David L. Johnston himself [at 15 H 508]) who said Oswald was arraigned at 1:35 AM?

"In a conference between Captain Fritz, Mr. Wade, and two or three of his assistants and myself, and Chief Curry--it was decided to go ahead and arraign him [Oswald] and that arraignment was held at 1:35 a.m., November 23, 1963, in the identification bureau of the Dallas Police Department, and once again I appraised him of his constitutional rights, read the affidavit, and advised him again that I remanded him to the custody of the sheriff, Dallas County, denying bond as capital offense. He was also told at both of these instances [the Tippit and Kennedy arraignments] that he would be given the right to contact an attorney of his choice." -- David L. Johnston

--------------

In addition to all of the above proof that Lee Harvey Oswald was definitely "charged" and then "arraigned" for the murder of President Kennedy, there is also the following late-night (Nov. 22-23) television interview with Dallas County Justice of the Peace David Johnston, in which Johnston reads every word of the formal complaint charging Oswald with killing John F. Kennedy. About an hour after this TV interview, Johnston read that same document to Oswald during the official arraignment:




JOHN R. KING SAID:

How does a person change the date on an Amazon review?


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

You can't. The date is fixed for all time by Amazon once it's submitted.

Here's the deal on why my review is dated March 22, 2005 (even though it was written in 2007):

Years ago, Amazon would allow a person to submit multiple reviews for the same product. But in about 2006, they stopped allowing more than one review for an item. And at about that same time, if you were to delete a review and then write a new one for the same product, the date of the first review would still be attached to the new review. (Amazon did this in order to stop people from "bumping" their reviews to the top of the stack; apparently that was a problem at the Amazon.com website a few years ago.)

And that's what happened with my "Reclaiming History" review(s). I did, indeed, write a "pre-release" review for the book in 2005 (which is another thing you can no longer do at Amazon.com; you can't submit any review for a book until the release date; you can write pre-release reviews for all the DVDs you want to, but not for books; seems a bit strange to have that inconsistency, but that's the way it is).

Anyway, when it came time to post my review following the book's release, I deleted my 2005 review and then submitted my 2007 review. But the new rules were in place then (only one review per "product set" and "no bumping allowed"), and therefore my new review still maintained the 2005 date.

But to complicate matters a little bit more, I actually DO have two reviews still on the Amazon site for this book ("Reclaiming History"). And I think the reason for that is because the one I wrote in November 2005 (yes, another "pre-release" one, as I was anticipating what was coming from Mr. Bugliosi, and I was absolutely right too) was written on an Amazon page that had a different ISBN book number for Bugliosi's book, and it was written at a time when Vince's book was still called "Final Verdict" (and the Amazon webpage for "Final Verdict" is still active too, right here).

And even though all 200+ customer reviews have since been merged into the same "product set" for the book called "Reclaiming History", my November 2005 pre-release review was still allowed to exist on the site, even though I have since submitted a second review for the same product.

I've always wondered why my November '05 review didn't disappear after I submitted my final review for "RH" in June of 2007. But for some reason it didn't, because here it is. [Note -- The previous link, which is no longer functioning, was a screenshot of my Amazon review page. The 2005 review in question was finally deleted by Amazon sometime in early 2018. But I was able to save the review as a screenshot (which has now been deleted too; ~sigh~) before the cached version of it completely disappeared from the Web.]

BTW, my 2007 Amazon review isn't nearly my "full" review for Mr. Bugliosi's book. The complete 11-mile-long version is at my "RH" website, here:




GARRY PUFFER SAID:

Hi David,

Are you really so clueless as to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald knew anything about the Mannlicher-Carcano? "His own gun?" Laughable. A bullet fired into cotton wadding and dropped on the wrong stretcher at Parkland? Yeah, great evidence. It is in fact better evidence for a conspiracy than it is for your pathetic theory.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

Remarkably, though, CE399 shows just about exactly the amount of weight loss that we would expect to see given the circumstances -- e.g., no bullet lead in JFK's neck/back; no bullet lead in Connally's torso; one tiny fragment in Connally's thigh; and a very small amount of lead in Connally's wrist.

It blends perfectly with the approx. 2.4-grain loss of CE399. Those bullet-planters were amazing, weren't they? They somehow KNEW when they planted that bullet that the amount of metal which would be plucked from the TWO victims would not exceed 2.4 grains. And it most certainly didn't exceed that (no matter how many lies the conspiracy crowd tells about this matter).

http://jfk-archives/The Connally Bullet Fragments


GARRY PUFFER SAID:

And in case you hadn't noticed, there are not many people who agree with what you claim to believe.


DAVID VON PEIN SAID:

That's yet another myth that is always propped up by the conspiracy clowns. Percentage-wise, it's true that the sensible "LNers" are in the vast minority. I cannot deny that fact.

But to hear kooks like Jim DiEugenio tell it on Anybody-But-Oswald Radio (hosted by Len Osanic), you'd think that Vince Bugliosi, Gerald Posner, John McAdams, and myself were the only people on the planet who think Oswald shot Kennedy. But such talk is just more over-the-top crappola coming from the CT side of the fence, as is clearly demonstrated by the results to the second question in the 2003 ABC News poll linked here.

By extrapolation, millions of people think Oswald shot Kennedy (and acted alone). So it's not just Bugliosi, Posner, McAdams, and Von Pein.

David Von Pein
October 7-18, 2012
September 5, 2015


THE BATTLE CONTINUES HERE: