GOODBYE TO FETZER AND ALL THAT Dear Friends, It seems to me that this exchange has now pretty much run its course and I’m prepared to follow the advice that has been given me by many: “Don’t try to argue with Professor Fetzer; it’s impossible.” What follows, then, is a form of “goodbye” as I leave the field of debate with Professor Fetzer to do other things. In leaving, it seems to me useful to look back on how this all started. Last summer, I was doing research on the 6th Floor cartridge cases — partly because Noel Twyman had made an incorrect claim that only two cases were found up there and partly because I think these cases (especially CE 543) provide fertile ground for research. About that time, I received an invitation from Professor Fetzer to become a member of the Program Committee for a JFK conference he was organizing. He offered me an expense-paid trip to Minnesota. Recognizing Professor Fetzer’s earlier enthusiasm for the “Greer shot the President” theory, I told him I was flattered to be asked but declined to be part of the program committee or his conference. Then I had lunch with my old and good friend, Paul Hoch. Paul told me he was concerned about recent trends in our community and especially about its transformation into a community of discourse where you had to subscribe to some “party line.” He felt that the continuation of this trend would see our community of inquiry transformed into a cult which would forfeit all claim to believability in the wider world. If this happened, said Paul, this would be the “death spiral” of the community he and I had belonged to for over thirty years. He urged me to say something about this in Dallas. Almost by magic, within a week or two I received a fax from a researcher which seemed to exemplify the trend Paul and I had talked about. Gary Mack was called a “turncoat,” other researchers were derided for unknown reasons. I replied to the researcher’s contentions with respect to the Zapruder film and said that I found the attitude expressed objectionable. I said that any free community should not impose any “party line” in terms of which people could be labeled “turncoats.” I also said that good work with respect to the assassination had “nothing to do with how many initials you can hang after your name or how often you’re called ‘distinguished.’” I then sent the email reply to the original researcher and the six or seven Kennedy assassination people for whom I had email addresses. Professor Fetzer was included in that list because of his recent invitation to me. He sent me a nine-page abusive email. So that you’ll see why I call it “abusive,” I’m going to cite the very language he used. In a style that can only be described as supercilious and condescending, here are just a few of the insults he threw my way because we disagreed: "You have thereby discredited yourself as a commentator on these issues." "I think you would be more persuasive if you could at least not commit mistakes in reasoning that philosophy professors teach their students to avoid." "You, a practicing detective who should know better.." "It has not been necessary for you to look at any evidence because you have thought about it and settled the matter for yourself." these matters would never remotely consider advancing." "You have now earned the title of a leading anti-intellectual and know-nothing!" "And who better to expose this post by Tink Thompson as intellectual rubbish than James H. Fetzer, an expert in critical thinking?" "I only wish that you were as serious about current research on the film as you are with preserving your own reputation relative to past work on the film.. you have simply become another obstacle en route to uncovering the truth in the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy." "These are reasons why you have discredited yourself as a commentator on recent developments in this case, about which you appear to be abysmally ignorant. If you are sincere in your desire to continue to contribute rather than rest on laurels earned in earlier times, then contact..." That abusive and condescending blast began an email exchange that toured the far reaches of absurdity and included even a Monty Pythonesque excursion on Professor Fetzer’s part as he attempted to show that I was not to be listened to with respect to the Kennedy assassination because my scholarly work in philosophy focused on the work of the 19th Century thinker, Soren Kierkegaard. (Huh?!) The longer this exchange continued the more it became apparent that Professor Fetzer himself exemplified precisely the trends in assassination research that Paul Hoch and I found objectionable. First, he tries to smear people whose views he disagrees with as “disinformation agents.” Second, his emphasis on credentials seeks to set up a two-tiered system of validation and respect in our community: (1) those with Ph.Ds and M.D.s who should be considered “distinguished,” and (2) the rest of the community. By the time Dallas rolled around, I had agreed to appear on a panel on Zapruder film alteration. I thought long and hard about using that occasion to attack directly and by name Professor Fetzer. I saw that it might be considered a waste of time. But then I thought about how our community started some thirty-five years ago. It seemed to me that I ought to say something about that. It seemed to me that character assassination and elitist posturing should not be allowed to stand. I looked at Professer Fetzer’s web site where he labels certain people “disinformation agents.” I saw that and became angry. It’s just not acceptable to think that labeling people “disinformation agents” is okay as a form of debate. McCarthyist tactics like this are not okay. Anyone who tries this or who tries to relegate some of us to second-class citizenship in our community of inquiry should be called on it. At Dallas, I talked about why I didn’t think the Zapruder film had been altered and critiqued two contentions Professor Fetzer had made about the film which I thought were mistaken. I had written two paragraphs on Fetzer’s attempts at character assassination. I threw them away. But in the last two paragraphs of my remarks, I attacked Professor Fetzer directly for his announced desire to divide our community into the “distinguished” and the rest. I said: “You may wonder why I’ve taken the time to attack Professor Fetzer here. It is because he expresses a trend in assassination research which I find odious. His emphasis on credentials and the cult of expertise (or alleged expertise) is demeaning to the tradition of inquiry we all share as a community. When the final history of this case is written it will be based on the canons of acute historical research. These canons have nothing to do with how many initials you can hang after your name or how often you’re called “distinguished.” They have to do with the evidence you put forward for your view and the reasonableness of the interpretations you hang on that evidence. That’s what Sylvia Meagher and I believed when we started working together in the 60s. It was a long time ago in virtually another country. It was 1965... 66... 67, and here and there people were beginning to distrust what they’d been told. There was Mary Ferrell in Dallas, Penn Jones just outside Dallas, Sylvia Meagher in New York City, Paul Hoch in Berkeley, Cyril Wecht in Pittsburgh, Vince Salandria in Philadelphia, Harold Weisberg in Maryland, Ray Marcus and David Lifton in Los Angeles... and many, many more. A housewife, a lawyer for the school board, the editor of a small paper, a graduate student, a young professor, a WHO official. We were little people. People who had only a few things in common -- an inquiring mind, an unwillingness to be intimidated by public attitudes, more than a little tenacity, a bit of modesty and a willingness to laugh at oneself. None of us had any money or hoped to make any money out of this. We were doing it for its own sake. We formed a community... the closest thing to a true community of inquiry that I've ever known. We shared information on a transcontinental basis. I still remember the excitement with which Vince Salandria and I received our copy of the Sibert-O'Neill Report from Paul Hoch! None of us gave a damn for credentials because (as we put it) "there are no Ph.Ds in assassination research." Back then... with the might and majesty of the federal government aligned with the news media in defense of the Warren Report... doing assassination research was somewhat like doing research on UFOs. It was not respectable. And so we formed our own community and helped with each others' research and critiqued each others' drafts. It's that community which still stands in my mind's eye as the ideal and it's that community to which I owe my loyalty. That community lies at the farthest remove from “Assassination Science” and its promoter.” It was that critique which Professor Fetzer found so objectionable that he seized the microphone and started to berate me until the power to the microphone was turned off! Since Dallas, David Mantik and Professor Fetzer have again begun the email debate. David Mantik, ever the gentleman and serious researcher, apologized for a canard he illegitimately threw out. Then he retired completely from the debate. Professor Fetzer, however, has been uncontainable. He has posted four email messages from the earlier debate (three from him and one from me) and then re-posted one from him that he had already posted. Then, in the tradition of Senator Joseph McCarthy, he has moved on to make scurrilous charges against me, Michael Parks and even the poor book critic of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel claiming that we are “disinformation agents” in the employ of some shadowy but unnamed government agency. When he was called on this, he first ignored it and then reiterated the charge with what he claims to be “evidence.” As Mark Twain observed a long time ago, “A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” True. But let me do what I can to help the truth put on its shoes. 1. Professor Fetzer has claimed that the book critic of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel is a “disinformation agent.” In his KKK post of 12/7/98, Fetzer wrote: “When I first read THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL-SENTINEL review [of “Assassination Science”], it was clear to me that we had taken a professional hit... I even mentioned to David [Mantik] that it was a clever disinformation technique to plant reviews that are complete distortions of this kind (using friendly book reviewers, as Document 1035-960 recommends) and then have other assets cite them as though they were authoritative! Little did I then suspect that someone who would practice this technique is Tink Thompson!” You might wonder how I managed to get into this. I had quoted the remark of Ernst-Ulrich Franzen, the Journal-Sentinel staffer who wrote in his review that Professor Fetzer’s contribution to “Assassination Science” is “of no interest to anyone except James Fetzer’s.. immediate family and friends (for example, letters to Fetzer from President Clinton, Elliot Richardson and Robert McNamara).” What is really loony here is that although the reviewer didn’t like the book very much and concluded that “a handful of good articles do not make a book that’s worth the time and money of the average reader,” he praised David Mantik’s article on Zapruder film alteration: “Almost as good [as Crenshaw’s article] is David Mantik’s fascinating dismantling of the famous Zapruder film showing that it could have been doctored to depict only what officials wanted it to depict.” So according to Fetzer, poor Ernst-Ulrich Franzen of the Journal-Sentinel staff is a “disinformation agent” carrying out “a professional hit” (in accordance with the 1967 CIA document 1035-960) by praising David Mantik’s attempt to show the Zapruder film was altered!!! When Professor Fetzer was challenged to produce any evidence for this silly charge, he said on 12/9/98 “I have no doubt that this was a professional hit” and then referred people to the “disinformation page” of his web site. If the professor believes it’s sufficient proof of being a “disinformation agent” for a reviewer to point out the triviality of Fetzer’s own contribution to his book, then he ought to also charge the reviewer for Publisher’s Weekly who pointed out the book was “marred” by Fetzer’s contribution! 2. Professor Fetzer has claimed that Michael Parks is a “disinformation agent” because he disagreed with Jack White’s video and made a smart remark about Jack selling the video. Once again, the good professor uses the canard of CIA document 1035-960 as evidence of Parks’ perfidy: “It may be worth observing that attacking critics by implying they are motivated by money is recommended in CIA Document 1035-960..” When challenged for evidence, Professor Fetzer simply repeats the charge 12/9: “As I have observed, attacking critics by implying they are motivated by money is recommended in CIA Document 1035-960..” Professor Fetzer remains silent about the document he cites which is dated April 1, 1967 and offers advice as to how to deal with critical attacks on the Warren Commission by persons such as Lane, Epstein, etc.: “Our play should point out as applicable, that the critics are (i) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (ii) politically interested, (iii) financially interested, (iv) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (v) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein’s theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher Knebel article and Spectator piece for background.” What this 1967 document has to do with Michael Parks is difficult to figure out. Michael Parks got tired of Fetzer’s nonsense. Since Fetzer charged Michael with being a “disinformation agent” basically because Michael didn’t think Jack White’s evidence was persuasive, Michael challenged Fetzer to a duel based on White’s claims. In Round One, Fetzer claimed to have dismissed Michael’s critique and won the round with the following riposte: “To respond to this one, I don't even have to review the video again. The occupants of the truck bed were not just a man, but also a large object I would estimate to be about the size of a refrigerator. Unless Parks is maintaining that the refrigerator is also jumping in and out of the truck, Jack's proof stands. I think the matter is no more complicated than that.” Sure. But Professor Fetzer, there’s a problem. There’s nothing like what you say in the truck... no refrigerator... nothing!!! [To see the pickup without Professor Fetzer’s imaginary refrigerator in the back, ask Michael to send you “canpicku.jpg.” Alternatively, you might want to look at the Cancellare photo on page 126, Shaw and Harris (Cover-Up) or page 50 of Groden (The Killing of the President) or page 399 of Trask (Pictures of the Pain).] Might this delicious instance of the professor’s razor-sharp acumen and breathtaking diligence as a researcher earn him the nickname “Professor James ‘Refrigerator’ Fetzer”?] 3. Professor Fetzer continues to attack me as a “disinformation agent” whom he describes in sinister terms as “not the person he [Thompson] claims to be.” When challenged for “evidence” of this, the good professor’s reply is all over the place. It is true that (1) I don’t think the Zapruder film has been altered, (2) I have not endorsed Jack White’s recent claim of having proven it to be altered and (3) I don’t believe that NPIC had the original of the film on Friday night, November 22nd. So what? This just proves that Professor Fetzer and I disagree in our interpretation of the evidence. So Professor Fetzer spins a fantasy out of his own imagination. He claims (a) that I was hired by LIFE with no background in film to do an exhaustive examination of the Zapruder film, (b) that my background “including a Ph.D. from Yale in philosophy likewise failed to provide appropriate background or training for this task,” (c) that Six Seconds used “drawings rather than photographs [of the Zapruder film], where drawings have often been used to mischaracterize the evidence in this case.” (d) that the enduring influence of Six Seconds has been to create the mistaken impression “that the Zapruder film had been subjected to a serious critical analysis, which was not the case and one for the undertaking of which he was in fact completely unqualified.” (e) that since new studies of the film have appeared (Mantik, et al.) I’ve been vociferous in my opposition and that (f) Thompson’s “motivation may be purely personal in attempting to preserve a reputation that was supposed to have been based upon his expertise with respect to the film.” There is only one true statement in this mish-mash of lie and speculation. My Yale Ph.D. was totally irrelevant to research about the assassination. That, of course, is precisely my point. All of us back in the 60s started out with no expertise in what we were doing. We were little people who had enough sense to know when we were being lied to. Just as now. It would take only the most superficial knowledge of the history of the case to recognize the professor’s silliness here: (a) I wasn’t hired by LIFE because I had any expertise to analyze the Zapruder film. I was hired by LIFE because I knew what questions should be asked of the evidence, what people should be interviewed, what photographs should be searched for. They could train up an editor in a few months to do that but they didn’t have a few months. My hiring by LIFE as a consultant to co-direct their assassination investigation had nothing to do with the Zapruder film. It had to do with the exigencies of getting an investigation started quickly. (c) Sketches were used in Six Seconds instead of photos from the Zapruder film because LIFE owned the film and would not permit us to use photos. Even for the sketches, we were sued by LIFE, I lost all earnings in defending the suit, and ultimately a federal judge expanded copyright law by ruling in our favor in Time Inc. vs. Geis, Random House, Thompson, et al. Saying that the fact sketches were used in Six Seconds means Thompson is a “disinformation agent” is like saying that a woman dresses in black because she’s “an agent of the devil” and then finding out that she’s dressed in black because she’s mourning her recently deceased husband. It’s just stupid. (d, e and f) Six Seconds wasn’t solely or even principally about the Zapruder film. As its title states, it was an attempt to bring together all the then-known evidence in the case to create a plausible scenario of what happened. I wasn’t then and am not now an expert on the Zapruder film. Many, many people know more about it that I do because they’ve put in the hard work of learning about it. I have no personal stake in whether the Zapruder film is authentic or not. If someone could prove it was altered, I wish them well. It would be a significant breakthrough. But you have to prove it and not just claim to have proved it! Finally, there is the dirty little tail that the good professor attaches to his tawdry attempt at character assassination. Back on October 11th , it became apparent that the good professor was sniffing around, trying to find something to smear me with. So I threw him a bone: “For the last week, you've been nosing around trying to find some biographical fact to smear me with. I'm going to give you a very special gift. Take a look at the AARB Report, Chapter 6, G. Warren Commission Staff and Critics, 2. CIA and FBI Files on Warren Commission Critics, c. Josiah Thompson: ‘The CIA has a small 201 file on Thompson which indicates that he was considered to be of possible operational interest to the Agency in the early 1960s while he was living overseas. CIA lost interest, however, and the CIA records that the Review Board examined do not appear to reflect that Thompson worked for the CIA in any capacity. The Review Board staff did not locate any assassination records in the 201 file.’ There you are, Jim. Rich material for a smear, eh? The only trouble is... I've told this hilarious story over one hundred times. Andrew Kopkind even wrote about it for the New Republic back in 1970, so it's not really an expose, Jim. Sorry. [This story will be told again in Dallas only after someone has bought me at least two drinks!]’ So what does the professor do? He throws in the bone I gave him but he doesn’t tell where he got it from and he doesn’t disclose the explanation. Then he goes on to say: “If the CIA HAD succeeded in recruiting him, I hardly think it would have acknowledged as much. But I have not gone that far. I have simply offered my own reasoned opinion that these sources appear to be spreading disinformation for reasons that to me remain obscure.” So the smear is made and then, cowardly, he retreats into insinuation. Like Mark Twain said, “A lie can travel halfway around the world, while the truth is putting on its shoes.” I’m not going to tell here this hilarious story of a CIA screw-up because it would only become grist for the rumor mill operating out of the professor’s fervid imagination. But the two-drink offer still stands for anyone who wants to take it up! One final point highlights not the professor’s wickedness — but his silliness. For reasons that are completely impenetrable, Professor Fetzer has tried to save a small error made by David Mantik in his initial article in “Assassination Science.” Professor Fetzer went on for four pages of gobbledegook using words in capitals like “BASE RATES,” “INFERRED FROM,” “APPLIED,” etc. in a silly attempt to salvage the unsalvageable. The point is crystal-clear to anyone who can read the English language. Mantik was wrong when he wrote: “Saliency... was established not by the researchers, but was defined internally by the responses of the observers themselves.” He’s wrong because both the experimenters and Loftus agree that “saliency” was established “externally” before the experiment began by a separate group of high school students and researchers. Millicent Cranor has been kind enough to post what Loftus said about this which is an accurate account of what the experimenters themselves said they did. This is a direct quote from Loftus, p. 26: “Before the experiment began, the investigators tested the movie to determine the salience of the perceivable items by simply measuring the frequency with which they were mentioned. The film was shown to high school students and to staff members who worked with one of the researchers. These individuals simply listed what they had seen. Of the nearly nine hundred possible items that were present, some were never mentioned while some were mentioned by almost everyone. The latter items can be considered to be highly salient items." (Elizabeth Loftus, Eyewitness Testimony, page 26) The original article by Marshall, et al. states: “Before the experiment, we tested the movie to determine the salience of the perceivable items by measuring the frequency with which they were mentioned... We showed the movie to high school students and to members of the staff of the Survey Research Center. Some of the 900 items were never mentioned, some were mentioned by almost everyone.” (Harvard Law Review, Vol. 84 [1971], “Effects of Kind of Question and Atmosphere of Interrogation on Accuracy and Completeness of Testimony,” James Marshall, Kent H. Marquis and Stuart Oskamp, page 1631) So once again it is clear that Professor Fetzer has been wasting everyone’s time, gabbling about nothing for four pages of an email. It’s because I’ve finally decided not to waste any more time on the professor that this is my goodbye to him and all that. But I leave you folks (to return to doing some real research on cartridge cases) with a sense of optimism. I’ve met people over the last few months who are not only capable of handling the good professor. They are also capable of doing real research and, unlike the professor, are actually doing it. Most of them are listed on the professor’s web page as “agents of disinformation.” The future of our community of inquiry is in their capable hands and in the hands of many others I’ve never met. When I have something to say about the 6th Floor cartridges I’ll post it, so that I can get criticism from all of you. And the professor? Well, I imagine he’ll just keep gabbling on... and on... and on. As one of his admirers recently put it, “He’s like one of those cartoon characters who has run off the edge of the cliff and doesn’t know it!” Josiah Thompson