Robert Arnold's Book The Conspiracy Between John Wilkes Booth and the Union Army

[mikegriffith1]

(10-25-2018 08:30 PM)L Verge Wrote:  First, "several years ago" means just that - Arnold's book came out in 2016, which is several years removed from the current year of 2018.

Second, Our gift shop manager (who is an expert in the Lincoln assassination field also) and I reviewed Arnold's book at the time that he sent it to us. Please note that he was plugging his book; we did not solicit it and his publisher did not send us one. Perhaps sales were moving slowly?

One author has referred to the Surratt House Museum and its related members as "the Vatican" for those interested in the history of this crucial event (and, it was meant with respect, not as a put-down). Perhaps Dr. Arnold saw a lucrative market at our museum? However, we did not consider the content up to good research standards and did not believe his claim that he had found so many things secretly hidden away by the government for over 150 years. Is his the first book we have rejected? Heck, no! Just rejected one on Pink Parker yesterday.

At this very moment, Arnold's book is sitting on my kitchen table, and I have every good intent of giving it a second go-round. One thing I remembered immediately upon opening the volume is that there are almost as many pages dedicated to photocopies of his presented "evidence" as there are pages of text. Not always a good sign, at least to me -- filler when one can't find enough to write about?

And, all of your disparaging remarks about Michael Kauffman -- yep, same man who is very well-respected in the history and publishing field. I do not agree with all of his conclusions, but I certainly stand in awe of the tremendous amount of intense research that he has done over the course of about 40 years (and continues to do while working a full-time job and raising a family). Perhaps some day I will have the same respect for your writings, but not right now.

And finally, please verify your statement, "As a published author and recognized authority on the JFK assassination in the JFK research community, I am quite familiar with Dr. Lattimer." I am a little confused as to who the "published author and recognized authority" is. Are you referring to yourself or Dr, Lattimer? Poor sentence structure, sorry. In any event, the Kennedy family thought enough of his qualifications to allow him access to the medical files. And isn't it a little self-serving to list your websites as references?

Good night. I'm sure we'll be chatting again tomorrow.

My points in reply:

* Two years is usually not referred to as "several years." And it is not unusual for authors and small publishers to send complimentary copies of their books to bookstores in the hope of getting them stocked.

* One reason it is unfortunate that you chose not to carry Dr. Arnold's book is that it contains a substantial amount of important new information from documents that the military commission suppressed and buried. Dr. Arnold spent years finding these documents in the National Archives, and he deserves the gratitude of all serious scholars for bringing to light the information contained in those documents. I do not understand the criticism of his providing images of these documents. Given the importance of those documents, I am glad that he allows the reader to see some of them.

* I am sure Michael Kauffman is a nice man, but I do not know how anyone could view his book as a strong, much less definitive, answer to the alternative theory regarding Booth's fate. Kauffman addresses almost none of the problems with the traditional version of Booth's fate. He spends one short paragraph on the issue of the JWB initials and says nothing about the huge problems with the traditional claims regarding the initials. He does not discuss any of the medical and ballistics evidence that Corbett could not have shot the man in the barn. He even uses Seaton Munroe's horrendously errant and dubious article as a source on events at the theater that night, even though many scholars have expressed doubt about his claims in this regard (e.g., https://www.jstor.org/stable/3205119?seq...contents).

* As a technical writer, I can assure you that my sentence was not the least bit poor in structure but perfectly valid. I identified myself with the pronoun "I" after the prepositional subordinate clause that began the sentence, which should have made it quite clear that I was referring to myself, since the noun/pronoun after such a clause should identify the person referred to in the clause.

But, yes, I was referring to myself. Although I am not very active in JFK research anymore, I still maintain a heavily trafficked website on the case. When I was active in the JFK research community, I was interviewed on BBC Canada and on other programs as a guest expert, and my research was widely quoted by other researchers and experts. In 1997, I wrote a book on the case, which was published by JFK Lancer Productions and Publications, and which sold out all of its printings. Many JFK assassination research sites still carry links to my articles and to my website. In fact, earlier this year, I was contacted by the producer of a JFK assassination documentary asking for permission to use my research on the House Select Committee on Assassinations' analysis of the backyard rifle photos.

I do not know why it was "self-serving" to list some of my articles to support my comments about Lattimer. When I see someone cite some of their own research in an online discussion, I never think of that as "self-serving," just as I do not view it as self-serving when I see authors cite their own research in a book, which they do quite often.

* Finally, in your previous reply, you said that Booth was on the run for 12 days. Actually, he was on the run for less than 10 days. He shot Lincoln at around 10:10 PM on April 14 and died at around 7:00 AM on April 26, which amounts to 225 hours, or nine days and nine hours.