Errol Morris: The Umbrella Man in Dealey Plaza

[RocketMan]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/22/opini ... .html?_r=1

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/11/ ... a-man.html

For years, I’ve wanted to make a movie about the John F. Kennedy assassination. Not because I thought I could prove that it was a conspiracy, or that I could prove it was a lone gunman, but because I believe that by looking at the assassination, we can learn a lot about the nature of investigation and evidence. Why, after 48 years, are people still quarreling and quibbling about this case? What is it about this case that has led not to a solution, but to the endless proliferation of possible solutions?

[82_28]

Ran across this yesterday and thought it fairly interesting. If anybody wants to know the news, mood and most importantly pace of how narrative was rolled out, this shit I found on an unrelated search for something else, kinda puts it a little in context as to why we're still bickering about probably the most famous moment in the 20th century.



December 6th, 1963

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

kick. Glad somebody respected the anniversary. Just the thread title hid it.

Dealey Plaza photos of guys with radios coordinating the hit are kind of damning, the two sitting on the curb.
Scores of CIA-Hollywood scripts have been released as decoy assoCIAtions with proofs of the crime.

One of my faves is 'Used Cars' (1985) which recreates almost everything we know of including 'radioman' sitting on the curb.

[Jeff]

...

Just because Errol Morris is a master of the documentary art does not make him any kind of authority on what should be the province of careful investigators. Just because a story is absurd does not make it real, or “delightful”, as the Times video would like us to consider—and many did, with thousands emailing the Times piece to friends. This is something well understood by the game-players of the covert operations house of mirrors: the jesuitical contortions that can be made to twist any credible scenario.

Here are some things you should know about the man who came forward to identify himself as Umbrella Man and tell this ludicrous Neville Chamberlain story:

His account of his activities that day don’t track with what Umbrella Man actually did, raising questions as to whether this man who volunteered to testify to the assassination inquiry is even the real umbrella-bearer, or someone whose purpose was to end inquiries into the matter.

The man who came forward, Louie Steven Witt, was a young man at the time of Kennedy’s death. How many young men in Dallas in 1963 even knew what Neville Chamberlain had done a quarter-century before?

In 1963, Witt was an insurance salesman for the Rio Grande National Life Insurance company, which anchored the eponymous Rio Grande Building in downtown Dallas. It’s an interesting building. Among the other outfits housed in the building was the Office of Immigration and Naturalization—a place Lee Harvey Oswald visited repeatedly upon his return from Russia, ostensibly to deal with matters concerning the immigration status of his Russian-born wife, Marina. Another occupant of the Rio Grande Building was the US Secret Service, so notably lax in its protection of Kennedy that day, breaking every rule of security on every level.

A major client of Rio Grande was the US military, to which it provided insurance....

http://whowhatwhy.com/2011/11/28/ny-tim ... n-exposed/

[Elvis]