11:58 pm CST


11:41 pm CST
The Mysterious Death of HST …

Jeff Wells: The Going Got Weird

Response to Jeff Wells on Hunter S. Thompson

Hunter Thompson was working on WTC collapse story before mysterious sudden death

11:37 pm CST
Noted conspiracy researcher Uri Dowbenko (who wrote the foreword to The Bush Junta, the comic book about the Bush Crime Family co-edited by myself and Gary Groth) wrote the following:

Bush Cabal Media Censors Boondocks Comix

10:01 pm CST


9:56 pm CST
Sherman Skolnick:
The Gannon Cannon - Part 1: Bush Treason In Spy Whorehouse

The Gay Old Party:
Is Dubya in the Closet?

More speculation on a Hunter S. Thompson-Gannongate connection:
Fear and Self Loathing in America: Reporting the Ugly Sins of the Father

Hunter S. Thompson Silenced with "Silencer"?

9:44 pm CST
Hey Mack,

Thanks for the good email.  I'm glad you enjoyed reading When the News Went Live, even if you're disappointed that we didn't deal directly with the proliferation of conspiracy theories. That would have been a different book, and we dealt instead with facts.

The physical evidence of the murders of Kennedy, Tippit, and Oswald is incontrovertible, complete with complete and consistent witness accounts of Oswald's and Ruby's movements, ballistics, photographic and autopsy evidence.

Having first covered these three murders, I went back into Warren Commission testimony, police reports, FBI reports, and other reliable evidence for a year of research while writing the book. Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum and consultant to the House Select Committee that revisited the investigations in the 1970s, is a wise skeptic who has had his own conspiracy theories and has devoted his whole professional life to studying the case.  He was kind enough to fact-check the book, and he helped us to avoid mistakes that we might have made without his expertise. Gary convinced me of some facts, and I convinced him of some.

All the best research confirms that Oswald acted alone in the murder of JFK and Tippit, and that Ruby was too flaky and too wired to have kept secrets.  The controversy over the physical evidence is a shame, since it detracts from the real questions that remain, such as the documented cover-up by the FBI and Oswald's associations with people who might have influenced or encouraged him to kill JFK.

We all agree that Oswald and Ruby both acted alone and independently, but none of us would ever claim that others might not have influenced Oswald.  Ruby, however, was a police and media groupie, and nobody in his right mind would have chosen him as a conspirator--and certainly not as a hit man. I talked enough to Ruby to know that much myself, and George Senator had no secrets either.  He was just a bartender who shared Ruby's apartment and might or might not have had a physical relationship with him--not that there's anything wrong with that.

Ah, but don't get me started.

Thanks again, Mack, for your email and your interest in When the News Went Live.  Feel free to post anything I send, and best of luck.  I'm an old South Austin fellow myself, so I guess that makes us kindred spirits.

Keep Austin weird,
Bob Huffaker

PS:  Boy, if you only knew us four co-authors, you'd surely understand that we didn't advance our so-called careers by keeping quiet. That's the part that still has us laughing.

Bob:

Thanks for your reply. I am glad that you acknowledge the possibility that Oswald may have been influenced by someone to kill Kennedy. This would of course amount to a conspiracy. Also, it would follow that any conspirators engaged in such a manipulation of Oswald might take the precaution of stationing additional shooters in Dealey Plaza in the event that Oswald, a poor marksman firing a substandard rifle from an impossible angle, failed to achieve a kill. These conspirators might also notice something about Oswald that so many who have researched him have noticed—that he was not violent and was an admirer of Kennedy. They also might discover (or at least suspect) that he was an FBI informant (this is a fact, not a theory), therefore could not be trusted with much of anything. So, instead of assigning him the task of shooting Kennedy, they would more likely keep him in the dark about the most important particulars of the plot and instead assign him other tasks that would later incriminate him as the killer; later, in the School Book Depository, his role would be somewhat limited—that is, he might be instructed to help a team of shooters enter the building and to stay out of sight, waiting for a phone call, while the shooting occurred. This is the most likely scenario regarding Oswald’s role, and it is based on a mountain--a veritable Everest--of evidence.

As for Ruby, his Mob connections have been exhaustively documented; there is no doubt that he was involved with underworld characters such as Santos Trafficante and Carlos Marcello, that he was involved in arms smuggling to Cuba (among other things), and that he was an FBI informant. He was also deeply in debt to the Mob and IRS, therefore was vulnerable to pressure to kill Oswald following the failure of previous attempts to kill him in Dealey Plaza and the Texas Theatre. As for whether or not anyone would be wise to choose Ruby as a hit man, the effectiveness with which he accomplished the task speaks for itself; clearly, he had some experience killing people.

Again, thanks for writing. I enjoyed hearing from you, and I’m always glad to meet a fellow Dallas-to-Austin transplant, especially one committed to the cause to Keep Austin Weird. (Austin’s weirdness is why we came here in the first place, right? If we didn’t want weird, we would have stayed in Dallas.)

Kind regards,
Mack

6:29 pm CST


6:14 pm CST
It’s Oscar night and I recognize even less of the stars’ names than last year. Shows how often I go to the movies. Anyway, here’s an appropriate story for this glorious night of glamour and glitter:

Pentagon Uses Hollywood Movies as War Propaganda

6:11 pm CST
Gannongate:

$10,000 Reward for Jeff Gannon Sex Evidence

Talon News shuts down / Domain names for porn sites tied to reporter now up for sale

JeffGannon.com Reactivated: First Column “Fear and Loathing in the Press Room”

5:35 pm CST
Hunter S. Thompson and the Aspen Institute

Reaction of HST's wife strange to you?

4:44 pm CST
Hunter S. Thompson Was Working on a 9/11 Expose When He Died, Says Writer

Paul William Roberts, writing in yesterday’s Globe and Mail (LINK), states that, at the time he died, Hunter S. Thompson was working on a story that the World Trade Center was brought down by explosives planted in the buildings.

I am posting the opening two paragraphs below, because the link will only take you to the first paragraph; to read beyond that paragraph, you have to register and pay. It is important that you at least read the second paragraph, because in that paragraph Roberts confesses that the first paragraph is partly fiction. There was no such telephone conversation, he says, but it is true that Thompson was writing a story on 9/11. Roberts then goes on to support the suicide version of Thompson’s death:

Hunter telephoned me on Feb. 19, the night before his death. He sounded scared. It wasn't always easy to understand what he said, particularly over the phone, he mumbled, yet when there was something he really wanted you to understand, you did. He'd been working on a story about the World Trade Center attacks and had stumbled across what he felt was hard evidence showing the towers had been brought down not by the airplanes that flew into them but by explosive charges set off in their foundations. Now he thought someone was out to stop him publishing it: "They're gonna make it look like suicide," he said. "I know how these bastards."

That's how I imagine a tribute to Hunter S. Thompson should begin. He was indeed working on such a story, but it wasn't what killed him. He exercised his own option to do that. As he said to more than one person, "I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time."

Now let’s see if I’ve got this straight. Thompson’s family says he was not depressed, nor was he in enough to pain to kill himself. In fact, by all reports, he was quite happy. He was talking on the phone to his wife, getting ready to work on his column, when he decided it would be wise to kill himself, so that he could go out (we are told) while “still at the top of his form,” even though this would mean not finishing his column or his expose on 9/11 (potentially the most important thing he would ever write) (?) …

2:41 pm CST
Hi, Mack,

I wrote When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963, with my friends and former colleagues Bill Mercer, George Phenix, and Wes Wise. Someone's post on your site suggested that we four journalists not only had our lives spared but also profited somehow by not reporting some horrible hidden truth about the JFK assassination.

That nutty assertion is one of the funniest things I've ever seen. I invite the writer of that post to read our book. Meanwhile, thanks for a great laugh and a good website.

Best wishes,
Bob Huffaker

Bob:

Thanks for taking the time to write. I appreciate your kind words about my website.

I wrote the 1/17/05 post to which you refer and, since writing it, have read your book. I found the behind-the-scenes account of your coverage of the Kennedy assassination for KRLD to be very fascinating; also, the book brought back many memories for me.

You see, I was living in the Dallas area at the time and, along with my father (who was a weekly newspaper editor) visited Dealey Plaza the morning after the assassination. This experience made a great impression on me and remains vivid in my memory; it also allows me to relate on a personal level to the events, places, and atmosphere of Dallas that weekend, as described in your book.

I enjoyed this aspect of the book very much; however, I was disappointed by your uncritical acceptance of the Warren Commission Report and your dismissal of 41 years’ worth of research by countless independent investigators, as well as a second government investigation (the House Select Committee on Assassinations), all documenting a conspiracy behind the murder of John F. Kennedy.

You say in your book that you are “weary” of conspiracy “theories.” Well, I am weary of the long-since discredited Warren Commission Report, and feel that your acceptance of it detracts from an otherwise interesting and informative book.

I have no reason to suspect that, in the course of your excellent coverage of the assassination and, later, Jack Ruby’s trial, you or your friends helped to cover up "some horrible hidden truth” and were rewarded for it; I am sure you did not even encounter such a truth because, if you had, you might not be with us today. As you know, reporters Jim Koethe and Bill Hunter interviewed Ruby’s roommate George Senator some hours after Ruby killed Oswald, and within a year were both murdered. Another reporter, Dorothy Kilgallen, learned things in a private interview with Ruby that she told friends would blow the Kennedy case “wide open,” but died of a mysterious drug overdose before she could publish whatever she learned. A great many people died because of what they knew about this case. This is not a "nutty assertion"; this is a fact.

Again, thanks for writing. I hope you will take another look at these conspiracy “theories” and rethink what happened on November 22, 1963.

Kind regards,
Mack