Unwanted Facts: Facts that Most Books on the Lincoln Assassination Ignore

[AussieMick]

Definition of 'tamper' .... "interfere with (something) in order to cause damage or make unauthorized alterations."

I dont see anywhere that proves (or even suggests) that 'tampering' occurred.

(I've sometimes had a notebook and needed to give someone else a written note, such as a phone number or address, so I'd tear out a page and hand over the written information.)

[L Verge]

(12-01-2018 07:04 PM)Gene C Wrote:  

(12-01-2018 04:21 PM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  I'm sorry, but you simply do not know what you are talking about. The FBI lab experts found massive evidence of tampering. I have to wonder how on earth you could claim otherwise. It seems obvious that you have only read only read one side of the story and appear unwilling to read the other side.

If you can't bring yourself to read Thomas's detailed chapter on the FBI lab report, go read the FBI lab report itself, which starts on page 24 of the PDF copy at archive.org, and pay special attention to the section titled "Result of examination," which starts on page 25:

https://ia800306.us.archive.org/30/items...booth4.pdf

Mike, thank you for posting the link to the FBI report on Booth's diary. I've read the pages you mention. They mention the missing pages torn out of the book are not in sequence.
NOWHERE IN THE FBI REPORT ON THE PAGES YOU MENTIONED DOES IT MENTION WHO OR WHEN THE PAGES WERE REMOVED.

On the bottom of the 27th page of the report
"As a result of the complete examination of the diary, no invisible writings, no unusual obliterations or alterations or any characteristics of question were found."

If you consider the missing pages as tampering, no one disagrees with that. But to attempt to say who or when the pages were removed and why, is pure speculation and the FBI report is silent regarding that.

Thank you, Gene, in pointing this minor little detail out. Mr. Griffith is trying to insert the words "War Department" in order to get the un-initiated to believe his conspiracy theories. He's counting on the fact that many folks will not read and analyze things -- just like some tend to ignore footnotes and endnotes (where some great information can be found).

Caveat Emptor, everyone, our "correspondent" is now attempting to muddy the waters even more by "introducing" Joseph Lynch into the picture. I would bet that he does not know that the main link in this story - the man who dealt directly with Mr. Lynch - is a member of this forum. Richard Sloan, where are you? You are a linchpin in what a few of us lived -- not just read about ala our "correspondent" here.

I recommended Ed Steers's book on Lincoln Hoaxes yesterday and do so again. All this, including the Lynch scam, is covered there in detail.

As for Reconstruction plans, am I not correct that much of what Lincoln talked about doing was laid out near the end of 1863, with nearly two long years of war left to go? I always felt that Lincoln's pronouncements at that time was him wishfully riding the good waves created with the Emancipation Proclamation.

The early test case was the "reconstruction" of Louisiana, and as I remember, that didn't go as well as planned. The continuing hatred between the two governments was made worse (at least in the Confederacy) by Sherman, Sheridan, and others. Could Lincoln have pulled off his conciliatory policies after 1863? Even acknowledging that he was a master politician/manipulator, I think he would have had to develop different strategies than the ones that Mr. Griffith quotes.

[mikegriffith1]

(12-01-2018 07:04 PM)Gene C Wrote:  Mike, thank you for posting the link to the FBI report on Booth's diary. I've read the pages you mention. They mention the missing pages torn out of the book are not in sequence.
NOWHERE IN THE FBI REPORT ON THE PAGES YOU MENTIONED DOES IT MENTION WHO OR WHEN THE PAGES WERE REMOVED.

On the bottom of the 27th page of the report
"As a result of the complete examination of the diary, no invisible writings, no unusual obliterations or alterations or any characteristics of question were found."

If you consider the missing pages as tampering, no one disagrees with that. But to attempt to say who or when the pages were removed and why, is pure speculation and the FBI report is silent regarding that.

I think you're missing the forest for a few small trees. Let us start with the point I made earlier:

The report details the intricate editing, cutting, and reconstituting that was done to the diary to remove the 86 pages. This would have required many hours of work and access to the needed materials. If someone has a scenario for how Conger or Lafayette Baker had the time and materials to do this editing between the time Conger said he "found" the diary and the time Baker turned it over to Stanton, I'd like to hear it.

I am saying that the editing, laminating, and reconstruction described in the FBI lab report was too extensive and time-consuming to have been done in the time between when Conger obtained the diary and the time he handed it to Baker. After Conger had the diary, he galloped to Washington to give it and other items to Lafayette Baker, and Baker turned it over to Stanton shortly thereafter. Baker worked for the War Department. When he received the diary, the diary was then in the possession of an official from the War Department. If someone wants to argue that Baker somehow did all that editing before he handed the diary over to Stanton, go ahead, because that would still mean that the editing was done after the War Department had possession of the diary, since Baker worked for the War Department.

(12-01-2018 07:04 PM)Gene C Wrote:  On the bottom of the 27th page of the report: "As a result of the complete examination of the diary, no invisible writings, no unusual obliterations or alterations or any characteristics of question were found."

So taking 86 pages, roughly half of the total pages, from the diary was a routine, ordinary alteration?!

You are taking this statement out of context. Remember that the FBI was asked to check for signs of invisible writing and to determine if any of the handwriting was forged, i.e., if any of the handwriting was not Booth's handwriting. "No unusual obliterations or alterations or characteristics of question were found" applies to the two purposes for which the FBI was asked to examine the diary, i.e., invisible writing and determining authorship. IOW, none of the obliterations or alterations cast any doubt on the authorship of the diary.

But you are taking "no unusual obliterations or alterations" as a blanket statement about the diary as a record. By any rational standard, the removal of roughly half of the pages from any record would constitute "an unusual obliteration or alteration," wouldn't you say?

Now let us look at some of the manipulation that the FBI report identified:

* 54 pages were cut from between the 1/1/1864 sheet and the 6/11/1864 sheet, and 25 of the edges of those cut pages were still visible. NOTE: One sheet equals two pages.

* The second and third sheets of packet number five were cut and their edges are no longer visible. Furthermore, those two sheets were originally connected with the two packet pages dated 6/23 and 6/29. IOW, they were cut and put elsewhere in the diary.

* There was handwriting on "many of the remaining edges of the group of twenty-five missing sheets" that would "assist in any future examinations relating to these missing pages." IOW, this handwriting was not identified.

* The removal of some of the pages was very selective and specific, and was not part of the removal of a group of pages all at once. For example, between the sheets for 8/21 and 12/10, three sheets (six pages) were removed; the sheets removed were the sheets for 8/22, 8/28, and 12/9.

* Oddly, some of the removed sheets were only partially torn out, clearly indicating that the redacting was deliberate and targeted. For example, in the back of the diary, between the summary of each cash account page and the rear cover, one of the removed sheets was only half torn, but the ones before it and after it were completely torn. Similarly, the top 1.5 inches of the the sheet dated 8/10/1864 was torn out, but the rest of the sheet was intact.

* Several lines of text on the inside of the back cover were crossed through. There is other writing there but "a reasonable interpretation of their content cannot be derived from the remaining portions alone."

* Some of the stains on the sheets could not be identified as to their origin.

* The text on 6/17/1864 page was was transferred "from the surrounding pages," and most of it was transferred from the 6/26/1864 page, i.e., from text written nine days later. Now try to imagine how that would happen innocently/normally, not to mention without overwriting text on the intervening pages but just text from a page written nine days earlier.

* The four sheets for 6/11, 6/17, 6/23, and 6/29 were "at an earlier date . . . laminated and rebound into the diary." IOW, at some point before the diary reached its final form, four sheets, or eight pages, were laminated and rebound into it. Of course, to do this, the sheets would have had to be cut in half, laminated to different cut-in-half sheets, and then rebounded as whole pages on sheets back into the diary. Humm, now why would anyone have done that to Booth's diary for innocent reasons? Why would anyone do that to any diary for innocent reasons?

Clearly, clearly, clearly, Booth's diary was subjected to some very unusual, targeted, deliberate, and massive editing. In addition to all of the instances of manipulation noted above, 86 pages were removed. When the diary's existence was first discovered, investigators who examined it concluded that 18 pages were missing, and they found this very suspicious. Baker and the War Department each accused the other of removing the pages. One wonders what the House committee investigators, not to mention the newspapers of the day, would have thought if they had had the technology to discover that 86 pages had been removed, and that numerous parts of the diary had been subjected to specific, targeted, and selective manipulation.

For those who would like to learn more on this issue, I suggest that you read Dan Thomas's thorough review of the diary's history and of the FBI report in chapters 9 and 10 in his book The Reason Booth Had to Die. Thomas includes graphics of some of the diary sheets.

[Gene C]

I think Aussiemick has a good point in post #16 above.

It is possible Booth treated this diary book much like we do a smaller spiral notebook. Write something down, and if you don't want to keep it, tear it out and give it or throw it away.

There was some testimony at Johnson's impeachment trial regarding the missing pages in the diary, but I can not recall specifically what they were.

Not having studied extensively the diary and its history, I enjoy the links and comments about it, whether I agree or not.
I can accept the diary (somewhere in time) may have been taken apart, pages laminated and reinserted, in an effort to restore and preserve its contents. When did the laminating process come into use? I do not see any evidence of a timeline when this may have happened, or see evidence of a government cover-up.
Mike, I can better understand the conclusion you have reached. I have not seen enough evidence for me to follow the same path you have, nor to reach the same conclusion you have.

Disclaimer: My comments are based upon a limited knowledge, so the more I learn, my views may change, or not.
Let's try (me included) to be more civil in our discussions.

[mikegriffith1]

(12-02-2018 08:28 AM)Gene C Wrote:  I can accept the diary (somewhere in time) may have been taken apart, pages laminated and reinserted, in an effort to restore and preserve its contents.

"To restore and preserve its contents"??? I can't fathom how one could interpret the manipulation that the FBI documented as an effort "to restore and preserve its contents." I just can't fathom that interpretation. As a technical editor by profession, I can't imagine how any effort to restore and preserve a document would involve the kind of manipulation that the FBI lab report describes.

And since when does removing 86 pages from a document constitute "restoring and preserving its contents"???

Finally, here's a thought for consideration: Why have not any of the "experts/scholars/luminaries" who have accepted and repeated the military court's claims said one word about the manipulation documented in the FBI lab report? Steers ignores them and just quotes the summary statement about no invisible writing and no unusual obliterations/alterations being found (and he mistakenly applies this comment beyond its original scope of authorship and authenticity). Kauffman does not even do this but simply mentions--in an endnote--that the FBI found that 86 pages were missing. If you peruse the traditionalist literature on the Lincoln case, you will not find one word about the selective and targeted cutting, the shifting of portions of text, the partial removal of some sheets vs. the wholesale removal of other sheets, the removal and rebounding of pages, etc., etc.

[Gene C]

I'm doubtful the government was laminating pages in the 1860's. When did that happen?
To do that effectively, they would have to remove the page from the diary.
At the Surratt trial, several witnesses were called upon to testify regarding the condition of the diary.
I don't know what they said, perhaps some one can share that with us.

You have yet to show any proof or evidence that it was someone in the government, and not Booth, who tore or cut out the missing pages. Since it was a diary/notebook for 1864, Booth had ample opportunity to write in it and remove pages before he died.

[Warren]

Mike Griffith wrote: "Finally, someone asked for evidence that the 86 pages were removed after the War Department got the diary. Anyone who asks this question and who claims they have read the 1977 FBI report either did not really read the FBI report or did not understand it."


Wrong.

[Gene C]

(12-02-2018 07:06 AM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  

(12-01-2018 07:04 PM)Gene C Wrote:  On the bottom of the 27th page of the report: "As a result of the complete examination of the diary, no invisible writings, no unusual obliterations or alterations or any characteristics of question were found."

So taking 86 pages, roughly half of the total pages, from the diary was a routine, ordinary alteration?!

You are taking this statement out of context. Remember that the FBI was asked to check for signs of invisible writing and to determine if any of the handwriting was forged, i.e., if any of the handwriting was not Booth's handwriting. "No unusual obliterations or alterations or characteristics of question were found" applies to the two purposes for which the FBI was asked to examine the diary, i.e., invisible writing and determining authorship. IOW, none of the obliterations or alterations cast any doubt on the authorship of the diary.

Seems to me you are the one taking things out of context again, by trying to make the FBI report say something it doesn't, as you demonstrate in your lengthy commentary.

[L Verge]

"I am saying that the editing, laminating, and reconstruction described in the FBI lab report was too extensive and time-consuming to have been done in the time between when Conger obtained the diary and the time he handed it to Baker. After Conger had the diary, he galloped to Washington to give it and other items to Lafayette Baker, and Baker turned it over to Stanton shortly thereafter. Baker worked for the War Department. When he received the diary, the diary was then in the possession of an official from the War Department. If someone wants to argue that Baker somehow did all that editing before he handed the diary over to Stanton, go ahead, because that would still mean that the editing was done after the War Department had possession of the diary, since Baker worked for the War Department."

This is only you assuming that someone other than Booth "tampered" with the diary. BTW: The author that you are currently enamored of is Don Thomas, not Dan Thomas as you have written several times now...

[AussieMick]

I can no longer resist quoting this as an example of the pointless "facts" in this Thread ...

" * Some of the stains on the sheets could not be identified as to their origin. " (Post #18 above)

[mikegriffith1]

(12-02-2018 09:28 AM)Gene C Wrote:  I'm doubtful the government was laminating pages in the 1860's. When did that happen? To do that effectively, they would have to remove the page from the diary.

Uh, yes, and the FBI report describes exactly that being done with some of the pages, as I discussed earlier. Again, this editing job was clearly a time-consuming, detailed revision and redaction. Between 4/17 and 4/21, three days were removed (4 pages and 2 blank pages). Some pages were only partially cut. In some cases, only one or two pages were cut. Some pages were moved to other parts of the diary. Some of the pages were laminated, so whoever did this had the means to laminate. Six pages were removed from the middle of Booth's confession and apology. The middle of the diary was glued back together. Etc., etc., etc. Clearly, somebody went through the diary very carefully and excised pages and partial pages that they found unacceptable, and moved other pages to create a false record.

I again urge you to read Dan Thomas's 13-page analysis of the FBI report.

(12-02-2018 09:28 AM)Gene C Wrote:  You have yet to show any proof or evidence that it was someone in the government, and not Booth, who tore or cut out the missing pages. Since it was a diary/notebook for 1864, Booth had ample opportunity to write in it and remove pages before he died.

Well, if you can't bring yourself to at least admit that the editing was clearly a detailed, sophisticated redaction that must have been done after the War Department got the diary, I don't know what to tell you. I guarantee you that Booth didn't cut pages from the middle of his confession, which he wrote during his flight, and then glue the whole diary back together in the middle section of the book, much less do the other editing that was done to post-4/14 pages.

And the idea that in 1864 Booth did any of the kind of editing that we're talking about strikes me as strained silliness and, in my view, is indicative of the inclination to see the Emperor's New Clothes that one encounters so often in defenses of the War Department's story.

You don't want to admit that the War Department tampered with and redacted the diary because you know that would indicate a cover-up, that it would clearly suggest that the original diary contained information that Stanton, Holt, Baker, etc., did not want revealed.

Even after the redaction, Stanton and his comrades decided that the diary was still unacceptable, so they suppressed its existence and did not enter it into evidence at the conspiracy trial. They didn't want the world to know that Booth denied foreknowledge of the attack on Seward, that Booth said that he did not contemplate killing Lincoln until the day of the murder, that Booth said he was considering going back to Washington to at least partially clear his name. These revelations would have thrown a hand grenade into the prosecution's case and would have raised all kinds of disturbing questions. So they suppressed the diary. If Baker, in an act revenge, had not revealed the diary's existence in his 1867 book, we still might not know it ever existed.

[Rob Wick]

So, I'm Edwin Stanton. Two of my minions have just returned from the field with a diary purported to contain damning evidence of the perfidy committed by myself and other Republicans in the greatest crime of the century. Instead of taking the diary, throwing it into the fireplace, and forever keeping the world from ever knowing of it, I concoct a detailed editing of a book that only three or four people have direct knowledge of? I know I can count on Lafayette Baker and Everton Conger to remain quiet because they work for me. One has the worst reputation in the city and the other is a nobody who would have died in obscurity had he not become part of the search. Should either one try to blackmail me I have the overwhelming power of the government behind me to ensure that my secret is kept.

For three years I conspire to keep the edited book under wraps because even the parts I decided to leave in could still be trouble for me. When its existence is made known, I testify to the fact that I saw it at the same time as the two men who previously testified to that same fact. During those three years I do nothing to destroy the diary completely.

Yeah, that makes a whole lot of sense.

Best
Rob

[Gene C]

And it all would have worked out, except for that pesky detective Harry, no make that Andrew Potter.

[L Verge]

I started out being generous and thinking that we would just be tolerant and put up with this game of historical ridiculousness. I now want to urge those of our readers who are not up to speed on all the intricacies of the Lincoln assassination story to be very cautious in what you make of all this. I would urge taking it all with a grain of salt, but at this point of the game (and that's what it appears to be to a certain person), you are going to need several blocks of rock salt to digest this. Move over reindeer (and watch where you step...).

[mikegriffith1]

(12-03-2018 07:16 PM)L Verge Wrote:  I started out being generous and thinking that we would just be tolerant and put up with this game of historical ridiculousness. I now want to urge those of our readers who are not up to speed on all the intricacies of the Lincoln assassination story to be very cautious in what you make of all this. I would urge taking it all with a grain of salt, but at this point of the game (and that's what it appears to be to a certain person), you are going to need several blocks of rock salt to digest this. Move over reindeer (and watch where you step...).

Leaving aside your failure to address the facts I've presented about the FBI report on the diary, you and your fellow apologists for the military commission here claim there is nothing suspicious about Stanton’s suppression of the diary and his failure to have Holt and Bingham enter it into evidence at the conspiracy trial. Well, none other than Congressman Benjamin Butler saw the matter very differently when Lafayette Baker revealed the diary’s existence in 1867. This is fascinating because Butler was a Radical Republican (1) who was hated by the South for his harsh treatment of New Orleans as a U.S. Army general during the war, and (2) who had argued in defense of trying the alleged conspirators before a military tribunal.

On the floor of the House of Representatives in 1867, Butler had a heated exchange with one of the prosecutors at the military tribunal, John Bingham, over the failure to introduce the diary as evidence at the conspiracy trial and over the execution of Mary Surratt given the revelations in the diary. David Dewitt discussed this revealing exchange and quoted the main parts of it:

General Butler, the recent defender of military commissions before the Supreme Court, of all men in the world, became her [Mary Surratt's] champion. Bingham, on the floor of the House, bearing upon his brow the laurels won as special judge advocate, in an unlucky hour was provoked by a jocose remark of the gentleman from Massachusetts to hold ''the hero of Fort Fisher not taken" up to ridicule as but a carpet-knight; thereby laying himself open to the following crushing retort:

"The gentleman has had the bad taste to attack me for the reason that I could do no more injury to the enemies of my country. I agree to that. I did all I could, the best I could. . . . But the only victim of that gentleman's prowess that I know of was an innocent woman hung upon the scaffold, one Mrs. Surratt. And I can sustain the memory of Fort Fisher if he and his present associates can sustain him in shedding the blood of a woman tried by a military commission and convicted without sufficient evidence in my judgment.''

Bingham, in reply, protested that he had executed no person, had but acted as the advocate of the United States; and, then, in imperious tones, demanded by what right the member assailed ''the tribunal of true and honorable men who found the facts upon their oath and pronounced the judgment. What does the gentleman know of the evidence in the case, and what does he care?"

This demand, a few days later, Butler took occasion to answer:

"I hold in my hand the evidence as reported under the gentleman's official sanction. . . . The statement I made the other day . . . was the result of a careful examination of the case for another and a different purpose, in the endeavor to ascertain who were concerned in fact in the great conspiracy to assassinate President Lincoln. The gentleman says he was 'the advocate of the United States only.' Sir, he makes a wide mistake as to his official position. He was the special judge advocate whose duty it was to protect the rights of the prisoner as well as the rights of the United States, and 'to sum up the evidence and state the law as would a judge on the bench.' Certainly, it was his duty to present to the commission all the evidence bearing upon the case. Now there was a piece of evidence within the knowledge of the special judge advocate . . . which he did not produce on this most momentous trial."

And, alluding to the appearance of the diary before the committee, he continued:

"Now, what I want to know is this: ... If it was good judgment on the part of the gentlemen prosecuting the assassins ... to put in evidence the tobacco pipe, spur and compass found in Booth's pocket, why was not the diary, in his own handwriting and found in the same pocket, put in evidence. . .? And, therefore, I did not charge the able and gallant soldiers who sat on that court with having done any wrong. They did not see the diary, they did not know of the diary. If they had they might have given a different finding upon the matter of this great conspiracy. ... I understand the theory to be that that evidence was not produced lest Booth's glorification of himself . . . should go before the country. I think that a lame excuse. If an assassin can glorify himself let him do so. ... I believe that piece of evidence would have shown what the whole case, in my judgment, now shows; that up to a certain hour Booth contemplated capture and abduction, and that he afterward changed his purpose to assassination. . . .

"Now what I find fault with in the judge advocate ... is that in his very able and bitter argument against the prisoners, no notice is taken ... of this change of purpose and brought to the attention of the men who composed that military tribunal. And if Mrs. Surratt did not know of this change of purpose there is no evidence that she knew in any way of the assassination, and ought not, in my judgment, to have been convicted of taking part in it. . . .

"Although in some aspects of the case it might not have been legal evidence, yet in all aspects it was moral evidence, carrying conviction to the moral sense. It is the dying declaration of a man, assassin though he be, who was speaking the truth, probably to himself, as between himself and his God. . . .

"That diary, as now produced, has eighteen pages cut out, the pages prior to the time when Abraham Lincoln was massacred, although the edges as yet show they had all been written over. Now, what I want to know, was that diary whole?" (Baker when on the stand was positive the leaves were in the book when he delivered it to Stanton.) "Who spoliated that book? Who caused an innocent woman to be hung when he had in his pocket the diary which stated at least what was the idea and purpose of the main conspirator?"

And, quoting from memory the sentence expressing Booth's half-formed purpose to return to Washington and clear himself, he vociferated:

"How clear himself? By disclosing his accomplices? Who were they? ... If we had only the advantage of all the testimony, we might have been able ... to find who, indeed, were all the accomplices of Booth ; to find who it was who changed Booth's purpose from capture to assassination; who it was that could profit by assassination who could not profit by capture and abduction; who it was expected would succeed to Lincoln, if the knife made a vacancy." (The Assassination of Abraham Lincoln and Its Expiation, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1909, pp. 176-180)