Tag Archive for Joan Mellen

Up close and personal with David Ferrie

September 22, 2018Assassination, News36 comments

Rick Bauer, a reader in Florida, writes to tell of his personal experience in 1965-66 with David Ferrie, the New Orleans pilot who has been the target of JFK conspiracy speculation for decades.

Dave Ferrie watermarked
Pilot in training Rick Bauer (left) with his trainer David Ferrie (photo credit: Rick Bauer)

“I am a graduate of Tulane University in 1966. In the fall of 1965 I commenced flight training paid for by the Department of Defense for students enrolled in various ROTC programs. I was a USN scholarship student at Tulane. My instructor was David Ferrie …. I knew Dave from Sept. 1965 until May of 1966. I passed my Private Pilot’s check ride on March 27, 1966.”

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Is Trump going to release the JFK files?

April 22, 2018Assassination, Experts, JFK Facts 2.0, News2 comments

Joan Mellen, professor and historian at Temple University, doubts it:

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Joan Mellen on the USS Liberty attack

July 7, 2017Assassination, ReviewOne comment

Joan Mellen sends word she is writing a book about the attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. I recently posted about James Angleton’s role in the incident. Read more

About that fingerprint supposedly found in the Book Depository 

November 9, 2016Assassination, Best of, ReviewNo comments

ICYMI:  In a new look at LBJ, Joan Mellen debunks the Mac Wallace myth.

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Attacking Trump’s JFK theories, the New York Times neglects the facts

October 18, 2016Assassination, News14 comments

The disturbing shadow of John F. Kennedy’s assassination remains visible in American politics and journalism.

Witness the appearance of Roger Stone, adviser to Donald Trump, at a symposium on Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans, which drew the attention of the New York Times (and the pro-Clinton attack group Media Matters.)

“At a time when talk of having lost the country is very much in vogue, along with deep suspicions of a powerful and secretive elite, the symposium seemed remarkably of the moment,” writes reporter Campbell Robertson.

Of course, reporting on how fears of secret power are driving the discourse of the 2016 presidential election is an eminently timely and worthy subject. But reporting is what Robertson failed to do. Instead of learning the latest JFK facts, Times readers were served a birthday cake. Read more

Joan Mellen on LBJ, Texas, and JFK

October 17, 2016Assassination, ExpertsNo comments

Recommended: Alan Dale speaks with Joan Mellen about her new book “Faustian Bargains: Lyndon Johnson and Mac Wallace in the Robber Baron Culture of Texas.”

In a new look at LBJ, Joan Mellen debunks the Mac Wallace myth

October 12, 2016Assassination, Review56 comments

Joan Mellen on LBJIn her new book about Lyndon Johnson, Faustian Bargains, Joan Mellen does something all too rare in the world of JFK research. She checked an oft-asserted “fact,” and found it isn’t a fact at all, but a fiction.

But first, the book. Faustian Bargains is intended less as a biography of LBJ than a portrait of the “robber baron culture” of Texas” and corrective to Robert Caro’s magisterial multi-volume biography, which Mellen scorns for its favorable depiction of LBJ’s political skills and legislative accomplishments.

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JFK Facts podcast: The trouble with conspiracy theories and their critics

September 20, 2016Experts, News, Podcast, Podcast7 comments

Jefferson Morley and Alan Dale discuss Cass Sunstein’s ideas concerning conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists.

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Watch the trailer for JFK documentary, ‘Killing Oswald’

April 8, 2016Assassination, Review78 comments


The film is called Killing Oswald. I haven’t seen it but Mark Groubert has and here is what he said in his review for Crooks and Liars: Read more

Comment of the week

February 16, 2016Assassination68 comments

Ronnie Wayne – February 11

…. I guess the other main theory of the thread is it means all of DiEugenio and Mellen’s work, as well as Garrison’s is junk?

In New Orleans, ‘Oswald’s Summer of Secrets’ 

October 15, 2015Action, Assassination, News6 comments

“Oswald’s Summer of Secrets: New Orleans and the JFK Assassination” is the topic of conference in the Crescent City starting tomorrow October 16. Some JFK writers whose work I admire will speak, including Joan Mellen, Russ Baker, and Jim Marrs.

I won’t be attending.

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JFK authors defend John McAdams as Marquette seeks to fire him

February 10, 2015Assassination, News98 comments

John McAdams

John McAdams

John McAdams is a walking test of the First Amendment.

The Marquette political science professor is an obnoxious, persistent climate-change denier with a passion for attacking skeptics of the official theory of JFK’s assassination and smearing “liberals” for supposedly suppressing free speech. He is, in a word, an ass, an independent-minded donkey of a scholar with a thin skin and bad manners.

Once upon a time, he tried to accuse me (and this website) of supposedly suppressing his JFK opinions, an argument that he had to abandon when I welcomed his anti-conspiracist views on the site (within the capacious limits of the site’s comment policy).

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Pass or fail? The Warren Commission report reviewed 50 years later

August 26, 2014Assassination, News, Upcoming213 comments

Warren CommisionOn the upcoming 50th anniversary of the publication of Warren Commission report in September 1964, not one but two conferences in the Washington DC area will take a close look at the report and its account of JFK’s assassination, which most Americans do not believe is accurate. Read more

What we’ve learned since the Warren Commission report

July 25, 2014AssassinationOne comment

From the Assassination Archives and Research Center:

“The AARC is hosting a conference commemorating the 50th anniversary of the release of the Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President Kennedy:  “The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination:  A Half Century of Significant Disclosures.” Read more

Jim Garrison conference in Las Vegas

January 29, 2014Assassination, News3 comments

Jim Marrs, Dick Russell, and Joan Mellen will be celebrating Jim Garrison at a conference to be held at the University of Las Vegas, Nevada, at 7 pm on Friday Jan. 31.

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