03
Out of the Blank
Robbie Robertson contacted me a few weeks ago for a chat and that is what we did late July.
Here is the result, which I am pretty happy with.
06
Greetings!
First of all a small discovery in Darnell, finally some better focus on the group in the James Darnell film that is about to and is ascending the steps on the bottom left stairs. We can see two women who ascending who both look to the left down on Elm St. Click the photo below. This shot, even though at miserable quality, allows me to discern what is actually happening on the bottom left of the steps. In other Darnell copies the frames are way over exposed and blurred. #payattentionbrian !!!!
At this time my money is on Patricia Ann Donaldson being the woman with the scarf over her head. And the other lady in black (ID still unknown) is the one who stood next together on Elm.
Then the Anatomy papers, I like to think I am done for now. There has been about a two year delay due to my activities with the Malcolm Blunt archives. This delay was needed due to the quality of documentation found at Malcolm’s. And the problem with that was that it was spread all over his filing cabinets inside many unmarked folders. I was not just digitising the archives, but I was discovering at the same time. So that meant that getting these papers ready took way longer than originally thought. After April 2021 I barely looked at them until I had finished with scanning the first phase of Malcolm’s documents in Nov last year. In Dec I started to research, create two new papers and and make amendments to earlier released papers.
Yet I also know that there will be some updated content in the form of quotes of interviews of various people being added in the near foreseeable future. We spoke with Roy Edward Lewis in 2018 and 2022 and this material is being transcribed as we speak. Plus a set of other interviews, so that update will be there by end of Summer. The only other question remains is to condense all work into one file instead of four.
And thanks for the great feedback on my previous article, a newish chapter of the Anatomy of the Second Floor Lunchroom Encounter
I reckon in about a week the papers shall be released for y’all to plough through. Until then!
03
Summer 2021 Update
Summer 2021 Update
Ok so this year I did a lot of scanning of Malcolm Blunt’s materials for a soon to be fully accessible archive in Nov 2021. There is a lot of material to plough through if you are a student of certain facets of the JFK Assassination. Law Enforcement Agencies, Committees and various individuals all connected in this case are all well represented in this archive. If you have read a decent amount of books on this matter then this archive can help you gain more additional knowledge.
By the time of its primary release I think I have about 150.000 pages over about 17,000 PDFs ready to be shared. The work will continue for at least another year with regular updates.
I am going to slow down on scanning for the next few months so I can tidy some bits up in the archives and also put the focus back on my own work and this website. I will put the finishing touches to my forthcoming releases of the four(!) Anatomy papers for starters. They have been dormant for most of this year and some of 2020 as well. I hope to have all this done before the anniversary or it will be a X-Mas release read instead.
In November there will be an article written and photographed by me and published in Garrison Magazine, the article will have exclusive pictures I have made of Malcolm and his archive these past three years.
I am also creating a set of videos in which Malcolm and I are having a chat about his materials. So far two have been posted and I hope to do a few more over the next few months.
Then there are also some talks scheduled such as JFK Lancer, DPUK and Project JFK in November where I will speak in great depth about the above mentioned project and its vast content.
I have some more articles in the pipeline, such as the Minox camera and Oswald’s fingerprints and once I get my papers finished then I shall be developing those articles as well.
And last but not least the movies, which I hope to make a begin with early next year.
Plenty to get on with.
Best regards.
Bart.
18
Spaulden Jones Photos at the Sixth Floor Museum
A few weeks back the Sixth Floor Museum published a set of colour photographs taken by Spaulden Jones inside the Texas School Book Depository. Jones was a regional manager of Macmillan and Company, which were housed on the third floor of the TSBD. Spaulden Jones believed that he was on the elevator with Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963 at 08:30 as per his notes seen below.
The next day on the morning of the 23rd, Jones took a series of color photographs on the sixth floor of the Depository, and it is just amazing to see the so called ‘scene’ in colour for a change.
I like the photo of the two men in the so called sniper’s nest with one on the phone and the other being close to the sniper’s position and is fairly well concealed from view unless from relative closeness which this shot perfectly demonstrates. Those pipes look like a bother for a right handed shooter.
Two other photos stood out to me as they were not taken on the third floor, where the MacMillan office was based inside the TSBD.
They are of the second floor front entrance of the TSBD office of which there is a similar FBI photograph that was published by the Warren Commission in 1964. A quick comparison immediately shows this to be the same front entrance.
I reckon that potential clients of the companies housed inside the TSBD where received through the second floor front entrance. And that also goes for the conference room photo pasted below. There is no other conference room in the building than on the second floor in the back where the upper management such as Jack Cason and Ochus Campbell had their offices. It is nice to see what the conference room looked like. Obviously the books belong to the publishing companies housed on the second, third and fourth floors. No idea of identifying the people in the photographs above the shelf unit are. Nor the Emblem, could be an award?
And for more clarification I share the 2nd and 3rd floor plans made by the FBI. For some strange reason rooms 302, 303 and 304 are missing on the third floor plans.
Add on April 14th 2023.
Jones also did an Oral History Interview with the Sixth Floor Museum in 1996.
During the first ten minutes he explains what he had done during his career and his position inside the TSBD as a manager for MacMillan book publishing company, he worked from the fourth floor and he had six secretaries working for him.
- He knew Roy Truly very well. Truly was in charge of the physical shipping of the books.
- Jones was out for lunch with Herbert Junker (one of his sales reps) at the closeby Blue Front restaurant when JFK was killed.
- They returned to the TSBD straight after hearing the news. His estimation was that about five or ten minutes had passed.
- He noticed that there was a lot of confusion.
- He had five of his office ladies down out in front of the TSBD when he returned.
- When asking them how many shots they had heard many of them could not precisely recall as to how many they thought they had heard. It differed from 2-4 shots.
- Some of the women were near the front entrance and some were further down Elm St.
- He was milling around and he mentions meeting Wes Wise, but also a suited gentleman who was holding a shoe box which contained a piece of Kennedy’s skull and which he saw being handed over.
- People were listening to their radios where they would hear that the President was at Parkland hospital. But upon seeing that piece of skull Jones had not much faith in JFK still being alive.
- They, the office people, were let back into the TSBD, but they couldn’t leave.
- Upon return inside the women were very much upset and before they let anyone go they were being interviewed in their office. Strangely enough he cannot remember who questioned them, only that they were not wearing uniforms. He thinks they were FBI or USSS. The ladies were interviewed first.
- He mentions seeing and talking to Doris Burns afterwards. They had questioned her already but would not let her go. After which one of the other older ladies remarked “She won’t tell them her age.”
- When asked what questions he was asked at that time he states: “How many shots did you hear? Where were you standing?”
With special thanks to Gary Murr (for the drawings) and Ed Ledoux for some additional research.
08
TSBD Descent Timing by the HSCA
Too good to keep hidden for any time longer while I am still scanning in for Malcolm Blunt’s Archives. This document mentions the descent by HSCA Staff members inside the TSBD while on their trip in Sept 1977. From the 19th on to the 29th of that month various staff members, a total of 9 persons, of the HSCA were on a Dallas trip to ascertain more info from several witnesses.
While browsing I came across the following on the last two pages (p 11 & 12) from the bottom paragraph. They met ‘en masse’ at the TSBD, where they took notes and photographs but they also did something much more significant and that was that they timed their descent from the 6th floor (the so called sniper’s window) down to the 2nd floor lunch room via the stairway which could be done in 46 seconds……which compared to the Secret Service Report which claimed it was around a minute and a half and the re-enactment the WC allegedly did. The Warren Commission made mention of it during the sessions in March 1964. But no one in Dallas while the W.C. was there could attest to this particular re-enactment actually happening!
Still 46 seconds is half the time compared to what both the Warren Commission and the Secret Service came up with about an event that did not take place in the first place ;)
The whole document is at the Malcolm Blunt Archives.
10
The Malcolm Blunt Archives Update
The Malcolm Blunt Archives Update.
Greetings and happy new year. Hope you have had, under these difficult circumstances, a somewhat decent X-Mas break. I know I have not posted that much and the reason for that is that the Malcolm Blunt Archives have kept me occupied for quite some time now. And especially the second half of 2020 has been a very busy period scanning tens of thousands of pages in. I have been working on this project for more than two years now.
Starting with Harry Livingstone’s material which then slowly transcended into scanning Malcolm’s files, little did I know how much there was, yet at the same time has proven to be an absolute goldmine filled with rare and never before published documents, audio & video recordings.
Early Dec 2020, while there was a gap in Covid 19 travel restrictions, Peter Antill and I made our way to Malcolm to see what we could get our hands on to take back with us. Peter and I offloaded the 14 bags we had brought with us, yet I managed to bring ten bags back with me and that was only with 90 minutes left to do so. Two bags fill a drawer of a filing cabinet and contain anything between 2-3,000 pages. If you are wondering what type of content there is, well…..almost anything.
This is by far one of the best document collections when it comes to the JFK Assassination, but also for Dallas matters, anti-Castro, CIA, New Orleans, the ARRB, HSCA and a handful of other commissions investigating. At this point I have created roughly 10,000 PDFs. Scanning will continue for most part of this year trying to complete the digitisation of Malcolm Blunt’s entire archive.
For the first time in 18 months I managed to get access to the files I had worked on in the first half of 2019 while in Tetbury. These files have been kept at a storage site and I was very happy being able to regain access to them. The files in here are much more within my remit.
The coloured boxes are of course Harry Livingstone’s files. Malcolm’s materials in here refer a lot to Dallas Police and FBI. Due to some finds of great documents I am preparing a handful of articles which I will start working on more this month when I am taking a break from scanning.
While the Covid 19 restrictions are in place I will not be able to regain access until some time in March this year. But I have plenty to get on with for now and I reckon I will be working on this archive for the rest of the year. Expect a few cool articles to come in the next six months. And of course The Papers I have been working on these past few years and which are being crammed full with not before seen material, so plenty to look out for.