Tag: Joan Mellen

Up close and personal with David Ferrie

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.”

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

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. …

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

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.

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

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

Comment of the week

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?

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