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

[GustD45]

(12-02-2018 08:06 AM)mikegriffith1 Wrote:  

(12-01-2018 08:04 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 08:04 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.

Mr Griffith if I may inject myself in this discussion. I have actually just read (yes, actually read) the 1977 FBI report you and Dan Thomas have been alluding to.

My observations are as follows:

• The report clearly states that the FBI examined the book forensically for any tampering
• Writting impressions were discovered in the covers and on other pages of the diary
• EM and infrared photography was performed on the book
  

Pages being torn or removed from the diary do not constitute tampering by any means. J Wilkes I am sure used this book for multiple purposed including, sending notes, keeping records for his acting career, and while on the run for toiletry. No where in the report does it state the book was ever taken apart; neither in 1977 nor in 1865.

The writing impressions evolved over the time J Wilkes used the book. Whatever you have imagined these mean I can assure you the FBI did not lead you there.

To wrap this up Mr. Griffith you and Dan Thomas are chasing phantoms which none but you two can see.