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CTKAformerly published Probe Magazine. Most of the articles on this site first appeared in Probe.

If you would like to submit an article to be considered for publication on this site, please send mail to us at here.


Jim DiEugenio's Upcoming appearances and radio Interviews:

April 13th, Barnes and Noble, Metro Pointe, 901 B South Coast Drive Ste 150, Costa Mesa, CA
714-444-0226, 12-3PM

May 4th, Barnes and Noble, Orange Town & Country 791 South Main Street Suite 100, Orange, CA
714-558-0028, 12-2PM

NEW DATE! May 18th, Barnes and Noble Bookstore in Manhattan Gateway Shopping Center 1800 Rosecrans Avenue Building B, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
310-725-7025, 12-4 PM

October 16-19th Passing the Torch Conference, at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh

November 21-24, November in Dallas, at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas


“BILLBOARD”

New Articles/Reviews

JFK: The French Connection,  by Peter Kross  Review by Seamus Coogan

Notes on Lunch with Arlen Specter on January 4, 2012
By Vincent Salandria

Part 1: Review of Peter Janney’s "Mary’s Mosaic"
By Lisa Pease

Part 2: Entering Peter Janney’s World of Fantasy
By James DiEugenio

The Awful Grace of God, Religious Terrorism, White Supremacy
and the Unsolved Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.
by Martin Hay

MRS. KENNEDY & ME: A Very Good Book With A Few Pages of Trouble
by Vince Palamara

Jim DiEugenio analyzes and summarizes Larry Hancock's interesting and unique new book Nexus: The CIA and Political Assassination

Jim DiEugenio reviews the work of Chris Matthews on the life and death of President Kennedy, including his latest biography, "Jack Kennedy: Elusive hero".

Reviews of John McAdams' book JFK Assassination Logic by:
— Pat Speer

David Mantik

Frank Cassano

Gary Aguilar

BETRAYAL IN DALLAS: LBJ, the Pearl Street Mafia, and the Murder of President Kennedy
Reviewed by William Davy

The Second Dallas,
a DVD Robert Kennedy documentary produced, written and directed by Massimo Mazzucco. Reviewed by Jim DiEugenio

The Connally Bullet Powerful evidence that Connally was hit by a bullet from a different assassin, by Robert Harris

Journalists and JFK,
those who were in and around Dealey Plaza that day and those who made a career of the case afterwards.
Intro By Gary King.

Joseph Green on the late Manning Marable's new full scale biography of Malcolm X.

JFK and the Majestic Papers: The History of a Hoax by Seamus Coogan

- and -

LBJ and the Conspiracy to Kill Kennedy: A Coalescence of InterestsSeamus Coogan on Joseph Farrell's new book

Hear No Evil: Social Constructivism and the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination
by Donald Byron Thomas
A Comprehensive Review by David Mantik
of

The Real Wikipedia? by JP Mroz and Jim DiEugenio (3 part series)

Sirhan and the RFK Assassination
Part I: The Grand Illusion
Part II: Rubik's Cube by Lisa Pease

Who is Anton Batey?
CTKA takes a close look at a most curious radio host who is a JFK denier, Chomskyite, and yet happens to be in league with John McAdams and David Von Pein. Yep, its all true.
Part 1
Part 2

Inside the ARRB
Reviews of Douglas Horne's multi-volume study of the declassified medical evidence in the JFK case. Reviewed by
Jim DiEugenio, David Mantik and Gary Aguilar.

 

COMING SOON:

Exclusive excerpts from Mitchell Warriner's long awaited new book on
the Jim Garrison investigation

 

 

Update: Shermer Takes the Message Wide

by Frank Cassano


I hope you didn’t blink … or you would have missed it.

On December 14, 2010, an article appeared in the Huffington Post, titled “My Day in Dealey Plaza: Why JFK Was Killed by a Lone Assassin.” It was supplied by Michael Shermer. I say “supplied” because I hesitate to use the word “written.” “Written” would imply that it was a creative and original endeavor.

But there is nothing about this article by Shermer that is different from anything you ever saw Max Holland provide for the New York Times, and other publications, pertaining to the violent death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dallas.

It pretty much begins and ends with “Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy.” (There, I just saved you some time. You don’t need to read the article anymore.) Shermer does do Holland one take better in that he doesn’t even make it out of the first paragraph before he’s already smeared those who give tours down in Dealey Plaza as being interested only in procuring your money. (As if the people who give tours at the Sixth Floor Museum are not? You can be sure that any information you get from the people in Dealey Plaza is bound to be infinitely closer to reality than anything you could ever receive on the Sixth Floor.)

And make no mistake, Shermer wants no alternative thinking about anything. In this same article, he uses the date he was in Dealey Plaza—December 7th—to take a swipe at anyone who thinks the USA deliberately let its guard down to allow the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. He then extends that into this: “There is no more to the Pearl Harbor conspiracy theory than there is that President Bush helped orchestrate 9/11 or knew about the pending attack and allowed it to happen in order to unite the American public into supporting his wars of aggression in the Middle East.”

But it is paragraph four that is my overall favorite. Second sentence in particular:

This was certainly the case for me when I interviewed several conspiracy theorists hanging around Dealey Plaza that day. Their eye light up and they grow ever more animated (and even agitated) as their story grows in complexity about all the different people, elements, and events that almost miraculously (it would be a miracle in most re-tellings) came together to assassinate JFK. One fellow had so many people involved in the assassination that they would have needed a small sports arena to meet to plan out the day. This improbability seems to bother conspiracy theorists not one tiny bit, as they spin out their narratives, drawing you down their causal pathway that resulted in the end of Camelot.

“Their eye light up…”?

Was Mr. Shermer speaking with a Cyclops that day in Dealey Plaza?

I’m surprised Shermer didn’t seize the opportunity to build up that angle. It would have added immensely to the ridiculous picture he always strives to paint about the JFK assassination, Dealey Plaza, and conspiracy theorists. (Plus, a Cyclops roaming around Dealey Plaza would have fit perfectly into Shermer’s cute little puppet show/slide presentations.)

But of course, this is another canard. Shermer never delineates between what the actual conspiracy consisted of and what the cover up consisted of. Since the cover up was ratified by J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI, President Johnson, and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, then yes, many people were involved with it. Since it was clear there was no downside or consequences to cooperating with a lie.

Shermer then follows with another hackneyed canard: that Dealey Plaza is much smaller than he thought therefore, it would have been easy for Oswald to pull off his “three shots, with two direct hits in six seconds.” Shermer fails to bring up the fact the Warren Commission could not duplicate this feat using marksmen who were worlds above Oswald in shooting skill.

I’d say that the most interesting part of the article was not Shermer’s parroting of the Warren Commission hocus-pocus—that’s par for the course in everything Shermer does. Rather, it was the posts which were included in the “comments” section underneath the story.

The posts demonstrate beyond any doubt that there are enough people present out there who remain skeptical about the “official story.” So much so that “they” would need to go out and hire another 20 Michael Shermers if they hoped to ever change that. True, plenty are still woefully misinformed … but the vast majority can see past all the blatant bull crap, voodoo, snake oil, and smoke.

One last word on the sorcery of Shermer. Prior to his cover up of the JFK case for Huffington Post, he did a review for them of the excellent film Inside Job. This is clearly the finest documentary on the Wall Street crash of 2007. In the entire review, Shermer could not bring himself to type the word "derivative." Which, of course, was the main cause of the crash.

That fact tells you all you need to know about who Shermer is and what he is about.

 


The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X

FLASH! This book is now available on KIndle for the lowest price ever, of $10.99


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Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case by James DiEugenio

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Enemy of the Truth cover

Enemy of the Truth: Myths, Forensics and the Kennedy Assassination
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Forensics can be a complicated subject, yet Fiester provides the reader with easily understood, accurate, information. Enemy of the Truth: Myths, Forensics and the Kennedy Assassination is so comprehensive in its approach, this work should be used in the instruction of all new crime scene investigators nationwide. William LeBlanc, CFCSI

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