Richard Charnin’s new book: Reclaiming Science- The JFK Conspiracy, features an apt title because it entails reclaiming the content that has hitherto been obfuscated and distorted under the specious science (or what I call pseudo-science) of the Warren Report as well as its PR apologists like Gerald Posner ('Case Closed') and Vince Bugliosi ('Reclaiming History'). These charlatans have sought to reinforce all manner of pseudo-science to do with the assassination - that's been pumped out by a clueless and complicit media the past five decades. And believe me, Richard Charnin's book is the ideal antidote.
Granted, it likely won’t be on any NY Times best sellers’ lists but I found it to be one of the best new books on the JFK assassination to emerge in the past 25 years. Charnin, a former consultant and quantitative programmer for investment banks has written a mathematical masterpiece which uses Poisson analysis to show a significant number of witness deaths in the wake of the JFK assassination were indeed unnatural (Confirming an earlier London Times actuarial assessment).
This is important given how the matter of JFK witness deaths represents what many serious researchers regard as one component of the ongoing cover up. It is also important because the issue is rife with disinformation and misinformation from know-nothings.
These are people who believe they're entitled to just recklessly babble about the assassination from a position of woeful ignorance, like Marilyn Elias. Recall that in a prior post, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-second-assassination-today-fifty.html
I'd noted how Elias had tried to refute witness deaths such as that of Dorothy Kilgallen- in her piece 'Conspiracy Act' , in The Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report (Winter, 2013, p. 15). Elias also, in some of the worst yellow journalism, tried to tar the whole witness murders theme by castigating Richard Belzer for being a nasty, anti-government sort because he appeared on a radio program with Alex Jones to promote his new book, 'Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation Into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination' .
I have read Belzer's book, along with Charnin's, and believe it to be one of the most important for newcomers and also more experienced researchers (who've done at least 10 yrs. work) to get a handle on the matter of the witness deaths, and why they are not coincidental. Elias, for her part, shows her incompetence by her reliance on hack Gerald Posner who has already been exposed as one of several disinformation agents, see e.g. how his slapdash investigations have been exposed here:
http://assassinationweb.com/twpos.htm
Re: Kilgallen, as Charnin notes (p. 120):
"was the only reporter granted an exclusive interview with Ruby in jail. She openly attacked the cover-up in her New York Journal-American columns on 2/2/64 and 9/3/65."
Most notably (ibid.):
"She reported a meeting between Ruby, Tippit and a Texas oilman, and revealed that Oswald was in too many places at one time, had links to U.S. intelligence and his true story was known to just a few government agents."
This alone would have put Kilgallen on the architects' radar, for likely elimination, because of: a) her prominence as a journalist, and b) exposing aspects of the plot the architects wanted kept under wraps. This especially applied to LBJ who had many links to Texas oilmen, (including Clint Murchison and H.L. Hunt) which he didn't want broadcast, not to mention undermining his Warren Commission fraud. Two key aspects were the Oswald double - which I examined before and cited James Douglass' sterling work exposing it in his 'JFK and the Unspeakable', including the actual intelligence background of Oswald. The latter destroys the lone nut madman myth that LBJ and Hoover wanted to plant in their illegitimate 'child' - the Warren Commission Report.
Thus, one sees there would have been ample reason to eliminate Kilgallen, as much or more as the reasons to eliminate David Ferrie (when the Garrison investigation started) and William Bruce Pitzer, the lab specialist at Bethesda who vowed to expose the actual autopsy photos and chicanery.
But this is where Charnin's probability analyses (e.g. in Chapters 3, 4) really comes to the fore - in separating the suspicious witness deaths from the natural ones. And note, imho this could only have been done using a Poisson -type analysis. Much of this hearkens back to statistics shown at the end of the excellent movie, Executive Action (1973) which I strongly recommend to any interested person. Those stats cited an actuary's finding reported in the London Sunday Times which calculated the odds of 18 material witness deaths within three years of the assassination at 100, 000 trillion to 1. In other words, 100,000 trillion to 1 against being coincidence!
As Charnin points out (p. 25):
"The HSCA statistician dismissed the odds as being invalid, claiming the universe of witnesses was unknowable."
But, of course, this is nonsense since as Charnin later notes 1400 material witnesses are listed in 'Who's Who in the JFK Assassination'.
Charnin also correctly observes (ibid.)
"The (London) actuary's probability was actually very conservative. At least 42 JFK-related witnesses died unnaturally in the three years following the assassination. Using the 0.000220 weighted JFK -witness mortality rate the probability is E-53 (1/ Trillion ^4). "
For those more accustomed to standard (scientific) notation this would be: 10 -53 or, alternatively, 1 in 1053 odds.
Linked to the issue of witness deaths is how they could have been accomplished with so many seeming objective observers being none the wiser. This Charnin takes up in Chapter 6 on 'Motives and Techniques' where we learn, for example, of the poison dart gun umbrella developed by the CIA at Fort Detrick, Maryland - used in the JFK throat shot. (There was a small entrance wound in JFK's neck but no bullet was ever recovered - leading researchers to believe a small dart left the partial wound which later dropped out, or an ice pellet)
We also learn of "a special type of poison that induces a heart attack and leaves no trace unless an autopsy is conducted." This was surely the type used to eliminate David Ferrie, as well as others (Clay Shaw, Earlene Roberts).
Charnin's other chapters are equally compelling including to do with the Warren Commission itself (p. 17), Dealey Plaza (p. 55), Acoustics (69), the Zapruder Film ( 79) , Wounds (83), the Patsy (87), Disinformation (105) and his JFK Calc Spreadsheet (p. 135). The latter has now been enhanced to include Dealey Plaza witnesses' reference to the origin of the shots.
There are also 38 pages comprising nine appendices- ending with a quiz on the assassination. (Something every would - be bloviator or opinion provider needs to take - to prove he is worthy of making comments!)
No one should let the math get in the way of owning this useful and essential book, a critical addition to the assassination literature.
See also:
http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/jfk-witness-deaths-graphical-proof-of-a-conspiracy/
Granted, it likely won’t be on any NY Times best sellers’ lists but I found it to be one of the best new books on the JFK assassination to emerge in the past 25 years. Charnin, a former consultant and quantitative programmer for investment banks has written a mathematical masterpiece which uses Poisson analysis to show a significant number of witness deaths in the wake of the JFK assassination were indeed unnatural (Confirming an earlier London Times actuarial assessment).
This is important given how the matter of JFK witness deaths represents what many serious researchers regard as one component of the ongoing cover up. It is also important because the issue is rife with disinformation and misinformation from know-nothings.
These are people who believe they're entitled to just recklessly babble about the assassination from a position of woeful ignorance, like Marilyn Elias. Recall that in a prior post, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-second-assassination-today-fifty.html
I'd noted how Elias had tried to refute witness deaths such as that of Dorothy Kilgallen- in her piece 'Conspiracy Act' , in The Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report (Winter, 2013, p. 15). Elias also, in some of the worst yellow journalism, tried to tar the whole witness murders theme by castigating Richard Belzer for being a nasty, anti-government sort because he appeared on a radio program with Alex Jones to promote his new book, 'Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation Into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination' .
I have read Belzer's book, along with Charnin's, and believe it to be one of the most important for newcomers and also more experienced researchers (who've done at least 10 yrs. work) to get a handle on the matter of the witness deaths, and why they are not coincidental. Elias, for her part, shows her incompetence by her reliance on hack Gerald Posner who has already been exposed as one of several disinformation agents, see e.g. how his slapdash investigations have been exposed here:
http://assassinationweb.com/twpos.htm
Re: Kilgallen, as Charnin notes (p. 120):
"was the only reporter granted an exclusive interview with Ruby in jail. She openly attacked the cover-up in her New York Journal-American columns on 2/2/64 and 9/3/65."
Most notably (ibid.):
"She reported a meeting between Ruby, Tippit and a Texas oilman, and revealed that Oswald was in too many places at one time, had links to U.S. intelligence and his true story was known to just a few government agents."
This alone would have put Kilgallen on the architects' radar, for likely elimination, because of: a) her prominence as a journalist, and b) exposing aspects of the plot the architects wanted kept under wraps. This especially applied to LBJ who had many links to Texas oilmen, (including Clint Murchison and H.L. Hunt) which he didn't want broadcast, not to mention undermining his Warren Commission fraud. Two key aspects were the Oswald double - which I examined before and cited James Douglass' sterling work exposing it in his 'JFK and the Unspeakable', including the actual intelligence background of Oswald. The latter destroys the lone nut madman myth that LBJ and Hoover wanted to plant in their illegitimate 'child' - the Warren Commission Report.
Thus, one sees there would have been ample reason to eliminate Kilgallen, as much or more as the reasons to eliminate David Ferrie (when the Garrison investigation started) and William Bruce Pitzer, the lab specialist at Bethesda who vowed to expose the actual autopsy photos and chicanery.
But this is where Charnin's probability analyses (e.g. in Chapters 3, 4) really comes to the fore - in separating the suspicious witness deaths from the natural ones. And note, imho this could only have been done using a Poisson -type analysis. Much of this hearkens back to statistics shown at the end of the excellent movie, Executive Action (1973) which I strongly recommend to any interested person. Those stats cited an actuary's finding reported in the London Sunday Times which calculated the odds of 18 material witness deaths within three years of the assassination at 100, 000 trillion to 1. In other words, 100,000 trillion to 1 against being coincidence!
As Charnin points out (p. 25):
"The HSCA statistician dismissed the odds as being invalid, claiming the universe of witnesses was unknowable."
But, of course, this is nonsense since as Charnin later notes 1400 material witnesses are listed in 'Who's Who in the JFK Assassination'.
Charnin also correctly observes (ibid.)
"The (London) actuary's probability was actually very conservative. At least 42 JFK-related witnesses died unnaturally in the three years following the assassination. Using the 0.000220 weighted JFK -witness mortality rate the probability is E-53 (1/ Trillion ^4). "
For those more accustomed to standard (scientific) notation this would be: 10 -53 or, alternatively, 1 in 1053 odds.
Linked to the issue of witness deaths is how they could have been accomplished with so many seeming objective observers being none the wiser. This Charnin takes up in Chapter 6 on 'Motives and Techniques' where we learn, for example, of the poison dart gun umbrella developed by the CIA at Fort Detrick, Maryland - used in the JFK throat shot. (There was a small entrance wound in JFK's neck but no bullet was ever recovered - leading researchers to believe a small dart left the partial wound which later dropped out, or an ice pellet)
We also learn of "a special type of poison that induces a heart attack and leaves no trace unless an autopsy is conducted." This was surely the type used to eliminate David Ferrie, as well as others (Clay Shaw, Earlene Roberts).
Charnin's other chapters are equally compelling including to do with the Warren Commission itself (p. 17), Dealey Plaza (p. 55), Acoustics (69), the Zapruder Film ( 79) , Wounds (83), the Patsy (87), Disinformation (105) and his JFK Calc Spreadsheet (p. 135). The latter has now been enhanced to include Dealey Plaza witnesses' reference to the origin of the shots.
There are also 38 pages comprising nine appendices- ending with a quiz on the assassination. (Something every would - be bloviator or opinion provider needs to take - to prove he is worthy of making comments!)
No one should let the math get in the way of owning this useful and essential book, a critical addition to the assassination literature.
See also:
http://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/2013/10/14/jfk-witness-deaths-graphical-proof-of-a-conspiracy/
I also applied Poisson to proving election fraud in two books: https://richardcharnin.wordpress.com/my-book/
ReplyDeleteMy website: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ib27G_vDNtQDNLDR8rXiU2LJLCn7Hspd4g5SKtQw1CM/edit
Thanks, Richard. I hope that readers will try to get one or both of those books as well.
ReplyDelete