Vincent Bugliosi in San Francisco

Good evening and welcome to tonight's meeting of the Commonwealth Club of California; I am Jack Cortis, President of Mellon Private Wealth Management of Northern California and the Commonwealth Club's Quarterly Chair. It is my pleasure to introduce our distinguished speaker Vincent Bugliosi, prominent criminal Trial Attorney, author of the famed Helter Skelter and his new book Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F Kennedy. As a trial lawyer with the Los Angles County District Attorney's office Mr. Bugliosi successively prosecuted 105 out of 106 felony trials including 21 murder convictions without a single loss, as an author of true crime books reached number one on the New York Times hardcover best seller list. His most famous trial was the Charles Mansion case which became the basis of Helter Skelter, the biggest selling true crime book in publishing history. His most recent book Reclaiming History required 20 years to research and write. He reconstructs the exact events and circumstances of the assassination of President John F Kennedy, analyzing hundreds of pieces of evidence. He thoroughly analyses every conspiracy theory resulting in his conclusion that the Warren Commission is accurate in its assessment that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Mr. Bugliosi's logic, command of the evidence and intellectual discipline honed through his years as a skilled prosecutor provide fresh insights on this American tragedy. Well, he is exceptionally thorough in his account and analysis. He brings to life the many people involved allowing the events to unfold and resonate with historical drama. Please welcome Vincent Bugliosi. Thank you. Thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. I am sorry about my voice. I was going to say that it's little hoarse because I from the smog capital of the world, L.A. and I am not accustomed to all this clear air up here but, I can't blame it on that. For whatever reason it started yesterday, my voice got hoarse, of course one thing I have been giving one interview after another just going going constantly. I started this morning, I had to get up at 4:45 and from five on till about eight when they picked me up I was on doing radio of back East from the hotel room, didn't have time for breakfast. It has been extremely grueling schedule for someone of my age; I am 72. About my age, I was in Dallas Texas Thursday speaking to the Dallas Bar Association and quite a few judges came up and wanted to take their photo and many of them were former judges, now when we think of a judge at least I do, I think of someone you know, very dignified, usually grey haired so these people coming up to me saying there were former judges I have been on the bench for 20 years and I am looking at them and they look like young young people to me and I am saying Jesus, I must look like I am 200 years old. Because they are young people and they are former judges. About five months ago I was taking about how busy I was and just you know kind of getting run down. I never get tired but just little groggy from from work and someone said, well don't worry about it you look great you look good. I said, yeah I know I don't look at the over 90s, she said you don't. And I want to say that I am certainly very honored that I have been invited to speak here at this very famous and very prestigious Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, I guess it goes back over a century and I have never been honored to speak here before but I want to thank all the people in charge for inviting me. If there is one thing that I think, I am known for at least among lawyers, to some of them - this preparation preparation, I prepare my law suites I prepare everything that I do. This book here is a million and a half words but I haven't yet prepared a formal speech on it to condense a million and a half a words down to a half hour or an hour speech. I will, in due time but I haven't really had the time to do it. I have just been extremely busy. But I have scratched out some notes here and I will be able to do okay tonight. The lighting here - partially my age -. I first got involved in the Kennedy assassination back in 1986 when London Weekend Television called me and said they want to me to quote prosecute Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination of President Kennedy and they said that Gerry Spence, the great trial lawyer from Miami who was going to defend Oswald, I see his photograph on the wall here, so he spoke here a couple of years ago I guess, is that right is that correct? - Three four months ago, oh okay I didn't know. Anyway they said that Spence would be defending Oswald and I said well you know, I am very flattered about the invitation but I had received invitations before to appear in artificial court room settings and I had always said no. You know I am just too busy. You know I am not being pretentious or important but I I work seven days a week. I won't have any time. He said, now wait a while, this is going to be completely different, we know about your love affair with the yellow pad I am still in the 19th century by the way with a yellow pad and pencil. I don't have a computer or anything like that. They said your pads are going to be the script. Now that was that was very important to me. My pad was going to be my script, there is not going to be any script unscripted and we are going to have the original Warren commission witnesses. Sir, I would appreciate if we are going to have the original Warren commission witnesses. That was very impressive. So the very type of people I would need if I had prosecuted Oswald in real life we were going to have at the London trial - most of them. We would have a Federal Judge from Midland Texas, a Federal Jury chosen from the Jury rules of the Dallas Federal District Court. And we were going to be in trial he said for 28 hours. As it turned out to it was 21, but still that was very substantive 28 hours on film and we would have about five months to prepare for it. And Spence would tell you the same thing that he and I prepared for the London trial as much as any other murder case in our carrier. I remember getting up in bed about three every morning and I would call London, they were coming to work and I was going to bed and I would say, I need this photo I want you to contact this witness - try to find this book. In any event it was while I was preparing the case that I found out that although these conspiracy theorists accused the Warren Commission of suppressing the truth and distorting the evidence I found out that it was they who were guilty of these precise things. Number two I also found these conspiracy theories there was just no substance to them. They were just pure moonshine. And yet I knew that the majority of Americans had bought into all these nonsense. So it was at that point I decided to do a book. So I started working on it way back in 1986. It's difficult for me to speak candidly about my book, Reclaiming History without sounding immodest, although we learnt from Churchill that modesty is not always a virtue. He was running for real action against Clement Atley and apparently reporter said so, Vincent I think you have to agree that Mr. Atley is lot more modest than you are. Where upon Churchill said yes yes but then again he has got a lot he has much more to be modest about. And in any of that it's difficult for me to speak candidly about this book, without sounding boastful. But the alternative is even worse. Why is the alternative worse? Because someone could think well you know, this is just another one of the close to 1000 books on the Kennedy assassination. But it's not. As the LA Times says finally someone has put all the pieces together, Reclaiming History is a book for the ages. And when I wrote the book that was my intent, to write it for the ages. Whatever I do in my public life whether it's a summation to the jury or a book I always aspire to a masterpiece, whether I achieve it or not is a separate story. But I at least aspire to it. The Wall Street Journal said that this book is unlike any other book ever written on the assassination. Very briefly, Reclaiming History is the first book on the assassination ever to cover the entire case. The subject matter is so fast that lawyers not just not lawyers actually but authors devote five to ten years of their lives to write about a simple subject a single subject. CIA, Mob, Ruby, Oswald, the trial in New Orleans, Jim Garrison prosecuting the Clay Shaw and I took the whole thing on. And it covers the entire case. There are many things in the book that are not even in the Warren report or the House Select Committee of assassination's report. Secondly it has always been the conventional wisdom now I am going to sound boastful here but the alternative is worse. It has always been the conventional wisdom that they there would never be a satisfactory resolution of this case, even by people like myself who believe that Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone. But they always felt there was going to be some doubt about this case. But Reclaiming History settles all of the questions about the Kennedy case once and for all. L.A. Times review says, with Reclaiming History from this point forward no reasonable person can argue that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent; no sane person can take seriously assertions that Kennedy was killed by the CIA, Castro, the Mob, the Soviets, Texas oilmen or Lyndon Johnson. Reclaiming History may finally move those accusations beyond civilized debate. Finally and surprisingly I am just giving you the three main areas were this book differs from anything else that has ever been done. Surprisingly, this is the first book on the assassination that has ever taken on all of these many, many conspiracy theorists and destroyed their theories. There has been no other book on the assassination that has done that. There have been books sort of attacked one or two theories but I attack all of the theories in great depth. My editor back in New York Tony Lawrence said that it took a book of this magnitude to finally put a stake in the heart of the conspiracy community in this country. I should add that in Reclaiming History I weave into the narrative, historical events that somehow relate to the assassination, e.g. the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam War, the Gulf of Tonkin, Civil Rights Movement etc. The book is one and a half million words. If we assume that an average book has about 400 pages and the average number of words per page is 300, this translates to about 13 volumes. It is over 10,000 citations. My editor's nightmare is that some older elderly ladies reading the book at night, she falls asleep with the book on the chest and she doesn't wake up in the morning. Cindy Adams, I don't know if you know she she writes for New York Post, she said, what is what were some of her lines? Well she said, you start reading Reclaiming History in junior high and you'll finish as a senior citizen. Then she had another line that this is not a book you put in the coffee table, this is the coffee table at. Why so long? Well, as I have indicated that this is the first book ever to cover the entire case. But there is another reason why this book is long I think even more than the one that I just gave you. There are two realities in this case. One reality is that within with in hours of the shooting at Dealey Plaza, local law enforcement Dallas, I am referring to the Dallas PD Sheriff's office local office of the FBI. It was obvious to them that Oswald had killed President Kennedy and after they learnt what a complete coop this guy was, they formed the opinion that no one was going to conspire with this guy. So basically at its core we're dealing with a very thorough and not that important when you take these photos, I see people looking all around. Hitler could be up here and if some one got up and walked he would follow them still. Probably no one has ever told no other speakers told that. But I'd appreciate it. And he's taking a photo of me. I am not that important. A video? Where was I? No one can tell me because no one is listening to me, what was I talking about? Pardon, oh yeah. So, with in hours 24 hours at the most, fortunately every one in Dallas law enforcement knew that Oswald killed Kennedy and acted alone. That's one reality. This is a very simple case very simple. Chief Justice Earl Warren used to be the DA in nearby Oakland and he said that this would have been a two three day murder case and Oswald would have been convicted. And I agree with him. So, at its core, this is a very simple case and it remains a simple case in one sense to this very day not a complicated case at all. That's one reality. But here is the second reality, because of the unceasing and fanatical obsession of literally and I am not exaggerating here, literally thousands upon thousands of Warren Commission critics and conspiracy theorists who had dedicated their lives almost to to investigating every single conceivable aspect of this case for close to 44 years and made hundreds upon hundreds of allegations. This simple case has been transformed into its present state; there is more movement in this room I think than any place I have ever spoken to. What's going on now? When you get o my age, you ask question like oh you got all these questions for me. Again, where am I? Don't get old, okay. When you get old like I am, you go off on a tributary and then you forget where you were. No no that's not where I was, that I know. Now you are going to, you are having because I wasn't saying that about what was I talking about, you got it on tape and I was talking about the significance of this case in American history you are kidding. I have got worse problems than I thought I did. That's not on my notes here. Pardon oh yeah the this simple case has been transformed into its present state, and what's its present state, I will tell you what its present state is. This case is now the most complex murder case by far - by far in the world history. Nothing even remotely comes close to this case. Just to give an example, in manuscript form, one of my end notes, I am not about the main text now, I am talking about an end note one end note on acoustics is about a 120 pages with 60 foot notes. That's what this case has been transformed into. But at its core this is a very simple case. With any project in life we don't even have to give it a second thought, we just automatically, it's intuitive. We know that if we work long and hard enough we know we are going to reach the bottom of the pile. And I can tell you and other people worked on this case would tell you there is no bottom to the pile in the Kennedy assassination. It is absolutely endless; I am not using this as a turn of phrase or anything like that. There is no bottom to the pile; it's a bottom less pit. At this very movement that I am talking to you right now, there is at least a 100 people on this country that are looking at some documents from the national archives for some inconsistency, discrepancy, contradictions, some hint hint of a conspiracy and these people may be a 1000 people part time and a 100 full time, these people certifiably psychotic when it comes to this case, but they are intelligent people otherwise. You know, doctors, lawyers, engineers and they can create a lot of mischief. And they have created a lot of mischief and for years I have been responding to all of them. And I would still be responding tonight if my publisher didn't say Vince, we are going to press, that was the end of it. And these people have been successful. 75 percent of the American public now believes that there was a conspiracy in the assassination. They reject the findings of the Warren Commission. Only 19 percent accept the findings of the Warren Commission. Why, well through their books and radio and TV talk shows, college lectures, movies, like the joke movie JFK, just one continuous lie, Stone did have one thing correct, he had the right date, he had the right victim, and I want to be fair to Oliver, come on, he had that. Otherwise it was just one continues lie. Because of all of this the shrill voice of the conspiracy theorists finally penetrated the consciousness of the American people and succeeded in totally discrediting the Warren Commission, several very honorable men, and convince the majority of American that Oswald was a either a member of a high level conspiracy or just some patsy who was framed by some elaborate group of conspirators ranging from anti Castro Cuban exiles to organized crime work in a league with US intelligence. I was speaking to lawyers back East a couple of years ago, about 600 lawyers, not on this case, I was speaking on tactics and techniques in the trial of a criminal case but during the question and answer period we got into the Kennedy case because the movie JFK just come out. And I could tell about the rhetorical nature of the questions that the questionnaire thought there was a conspiracy in the case. Well I asked for a show of hands as to the number of people that believe in a conspiracy just a vast forest of hands that I I don't know what the percentage was, may be 90 percent. So I said to the group, I said, now you all are intelligent people. I said, what if I could prove to you in less than a minute that you are not thinking very intelligently with respect to the Kennedy case. And there was kind of a murmur out there you know, what's this guy talking about. Some of my right friends said we don't think you can do it. I said, all right take out your watch, start following the seconds. I am going to prove to you in less than a minute that you are not thinking very intelligently with respect to this case. So I ask for another show of hands, this is just the peripheries, I don't remember my exact words, but I ask for another show of hands as to those who had the seen the recent movie JFK or at any time in the past, had read any book or any newspaper column or any magazine article propounding the conspiracy theory or otherwise rejecting the findings of the Warren Commission. And again it looked like the same forest of hands that got up. And then I said to them, I said now I don't need a show of hands for my next point. I said I think you folks all agree that before you form an intelligent opinion upon a matter in dispute this is is amusing to me really pointing out, before you form an opinion upon a matter in dispute you have to hear all sides of the story. As this as the old West Virginia Mountaniers says no matter how thin I make my pan cakes, they always have two sides. I said, with that in mind how many of you have read the Warren report. That was embarrassing it was just embarrassing, about five, ten people raised their hands. Someone timed me at 47 seconds. I had proved in 47 seconds that the majority of the audience had rejected the findings of the Warren Commission hadn't bothered to read the Warren report. If I could condense the billions upon billions of words into a few minutes on the two main issues of the assassination you know, by the way I will be happy to try to answer those questions, just that you have got so many of them, there is no way in the world particularly with me, some one wants to ask me to write an article of 3500 words, I said, I cant even say hello in 3500 words, then it up 75 you could all those questions I will be here till midnight, fine if you want to keep doing it. Anyway, try to condense all of this into the two a couple of minutes, on the two main issues, did Oswald kill Kennedy and was there a conspiracy? On the issue of Oswald's guilt, I learned as a prosecutor, and actually you don't have to be a prosecutor, its just common sense that if you are innocent of a crime, excuse me, chances are there is not going to be any evidence of your guilt. Why, because you are innocent. But now and then because of the nature of life, the unaccountability of certain things may be one piece of evidence might point towards your guilt even though you are innocent. And in very unusual, rare situations may be even two, may be even three pieces of evidences point towards your guilt even though you are innocent. But in this case here, as I point out in Reclaiming History, there is I set forth 53 separate pieces of evidence that point irresistibly to Lee Harvey Oswald's guilt and under those circumstances it would not even be humanly possible for Oswald to be innocent, at least not in the world not in the world in which we live. You know I am talking to you folks, you can hear me, there we will be a dawn tomorrow, not that world. Only in a fantasy world can you have 53 pieces of evidence pointing towards your guilt and you are still innocent. Very briefly I will give you five pieces of evidence out of 53. The murder weapon was Oswald's; his Mannlicher-Carcano weapon was the murder weapon, its pretty heavy evidence, right? Oswald was the only employee at the Book Depository building who takes off after the shooting in Dealey Plaza. 45 minutes later he shoots and kills officer J D Tippet, Dallas Police Department. I told the jury in London, the Dallas jury in London, that the murder that bore the signature of a man in desperate flight from some awful deed. 30 minutes later he resists arrest, pulls a gun on the arresting officer. During his interrogation he tells one lie after another one provable lie after another, all of which show a consciousness of guilt. When someone tells me that they think Oswald was innocent I know one of two things. Either they are completely unaware of the evidence or they just some silly person. Let's briefly talk about conspiracy. There is no credible evidence let's italicize the world credible, I am not talking about some guys who says my father was on the grassy knoll when he killed the President, you know then. Oh I mean you have no ideas of the stories that come up with; we find out the father was imprisoned at the time. There is no credible evidence that the CIA or Mob or any of these groups was involved in the assassination, nothing. I told the jury in London, I said, you know folks I will stipulate three people can keep a secret, I said, but if two are dead. And here we have a situation, we are close to 44 years later, not one word, not one syllable was leaked out. Why, because there is nothing to leak out. Secondly all of this is naked speculations, secondly there is no evidence that Oswald ever had any association or connection with any of these groups. And boy, they checked him out big time. Herald Wiseberg, the very well respected assassination researcher, who leans towards the conspiracy theory, he says that they checked ever breath this guy ever breathe from the moment he arrived back in United States from the Soviet Union on June 13th 1962 to the date of the assassination. 25000 interviews by the FBI, they found no evidence that he had ever associated with any of these groups. Number three, assuming for the sake of argument that one of these groups decided to kill Oswald, I reject that completely out of hand, it belongs in a Robert Ludlum novel and nowhere else. But I didn't have that luxury in my book. In my book I discuss it in great, great depth. But let's assume for the sake of argument the CIA or Mob or the Military Industrial complex decides let's kill President Kennedy, Oswald would have been one of the last people and we know he is guilty, I have just told you that, I mean I will give you the evidence, 53 pieces, Oswald would have been one of the last people in the face of this earth whom they would have been gone to. Why, well number one, he was not an expert shot. He was a good shot but not an expert shot. He had a 12 dollar mail order rifle. He was notoriously unreliable, extremely unstable, I mean, come on this guy defected to the Soviet Union, pre Gorbachev, I mean even today who in the world defects to the Soviet Union. I mean isn't that one of the bleakest places on earth, I think it is. And he gets over there and he wants to become a Soviet citizen and they turned him down. What does he do, he tries to kill himself, he tries to commit suicide, he slashes his wrist, just just the ideal type of guy that the CIA or Mob would want to rely upon to commit the biggest murder in American history, okay right. Let's take it a step further. One of these wants to kill the President and for whatever crazy, bizarre reason they want Oswald to do it and he goes along with it. Let's see where that takes us makes any sense. Once Oswald shot Kennedy at Dealey Plaza and left the Book Depository Building one of two things would have happened. Let me tell you the least likely thing first. The least likely thing was that there would have been a car waiting for him to help him escape down to Mexico or wherever. Certainly the conspirators would not want their hit man to be apprehended and interrogated by the authorities. That's the least likely thing that would happen. The most likely thing by far, now you folks all are intelligent people and I think you know exactly what I am going to tell you now, the most likely thing by far if the CIA or Mob got him to kill Oswald for them you know, there would have been a car waiting for him to drive him to his death, you know that would have happened. And yet Oswald was out on the street with $ 13 in his pocket trying to flag down buses and cabs. That fact alone shows you there was no conspiracy. I mean even the even the, that the Presidential motorcade that drove beneath the window the sixth floor window where Oswald was, that motorcade wasn't even determined until November 18th, four days before the assassination. Does any rational people believe that the CIA or Mob would conspire with Oswald to kill the President within four days of his coming to Dallas? Okay, let me make this very quick here. There is two other points that I want to discuss, then we will open this up to questions and answers. These are no one has ever accused me being short wended but apparently we don't have that much time. These are two issues and there are many, many others, but these two issues, the conspiracy theorists have used very, very successfully to convince the American public that there was a conspiracy in this case. The first is the so called head snapped to the rear. Most of you folks know what I am referring to when I talk heads snapped to the rear, okay. If you look at the Zapruder film, at the time of head shot - you see the president's head going backwards about 8 inches. This was first shown on Heraldo Rivera Special, Goodnight America, it was an old show on ABC and millions of people saw it. And the next day it was water cooler talk. Everyone was saying, well wait a while, the grassy knoll is to the President's front Oswald is to the rear, the head snapped the rear must have been the shot came from the front, so if Oswald is to the rear, this must mean that it was a conspiracy, a second gun man on the grassy knoll. And Spence in London showed that segment of the film five times, I didn't object. And he said it looked like baberuth has struck the President with his left hand I guess struck the president from the front, and he said Mr. Bugliosi, he says, is trying to convince you folks that what you saw with your very own eyes, you didn't even see. If I didn't have an answer to that I think the verdict in London would have been not guilty. I think they would raise a reasonable doubt of guilt, as it was the Dallas Jury convicted Oswald. Here is the answer. The answer is that if you look at the individual frames of the Zapruder film you cannot see it if you look at the film itself, you have to look at individual frames. In Reclaiming History, I think its only book on the assassination that has these two consecutive frames. You can see them in the Warren Commission volume but I don't know of any other book that shows these consecutive frames. At 312 the President's head is okay, at 313, one eighteenth of a second later, there is 18.3 frames per second of the Zapruder film, you see the President shot in the head, the explosion to the head and in what direction is his head pushed at 313, what direction? Slightly forward, 2.3 inches, indicating what, a shot from the rear. So at this all important where Oswald was at this all important moment of impact, which you can't see on the film, and I showed the Dallas jury on the screen, the President's head is pushed forward 2.3 inches and then at 314 to 321 you see this head snapped to the rear caused by a neuromuscular reaction - nerve damage caused by the bullet to the President's brain, caused his back muscles to tighten which in turn caused the head to snap to the rear. In fact I also showed the jury in London a high contrast forward of frame 313 which was not available to the Warren Commission, and you see this terrible, terrible spray of blood and tissue and is all to the front indicating a shot from the rear. Okay last issue we talk about, so called magic bullet. These conspiracy theorists are so outrageous and so audacious that not only do they lie when there is documentary evidence to refute what they have to say, but even when there is film evidence photographs, they lie about that, why? Because they know that may be only one out of hundred or one out of a thousand will have access to that film or the photograph. What they do in their sketches and I have it in the book, they place Governor Connally in the Presidential limousine directly in front of Kennedy, in their sketches and it was in the Oliver Stone movie and they say, so here is Connally, here is Kennedy and they say a bullet passing from the passing from the right to the left through President Kennedy's upper chest exiting the neck, soft tissue on a straight line, to hit Connally they say, would have to make a right turn in mid air and then make a left turn to go on and hit Connally. Well, you know if you start off with an erroneous premise everything that follows makes a heck of a lot of sense. The only problem is that it's wrong. Connally was not seated to the President's directly to his front and there is a photo in the book, very clearly, he was seated to his left front in a jump seat, half a foot in. So the orientation of Connally's body vis-à-vis Kennedy's was such that a bullet passing on a straight line through Kennedy body would have had no where else to go except to hit Governor Connally. Now in London Spence had Dr. Cyril Wecht take the witness stand for the defense and he said, will you characterize for this Dallas jury - this bullet Dr. Wecht? He said, well it was a magic bullet, he said. It made right and left turns in mid air and bullets don't even do that in cartoons. And everyone starts to chuckle. So on cross examination I said now Dr. Cyril Wecht, if a bullet passing from the right to the left through soft tissue on a straight line which you acknowledged, did not go on and hit Governor Connally as you claimed it did not, I said, why didn't it tear up the interior of the limousine or hit the driver? He said I don't know, I didn't conduct the investigation in this case. Mr. Bugliosi. I said well, now wait a while doctor, it sounds like you have your own magic bullet. I said if it didn't hit Connally, didn't hit the interior of the limousine, didn't hit the driver, I said it must have zig zagged to the left. He says no, it need not have zig zagged to the left. I said there are hops, skip and jump over the car. He says no, it need not have performed any remarkable feat. I said, then what happened to that bullet Dr. Wecht? He said I don't know. So who has got the magic bullet here? For 40 some years the conspiracy theorists have wrapped that magic bullet around the head of the Warren Commission and millions of Americans think that the Warren Commission had the magic bullet. But he only people that had the magic bullet are the conspiracy theorists because if we are to believe them, after that bullet exited the front of the Presidents throat, apparently it just vanished without a trace into thin air. Have I run out of time? Okay. Let me just say this. After over 40 years of the most prodigiously intensive investigation and examination of a murder case in the world history certain powerful facts exists which cannot be challenged. Number one, not one weapon other than Oswald's Mannlicher Carcano Rifle has ever been found and linked to the assassination. Not one bullet other than the three fired from Oswald's Carcano has ever been found in link to the assassination. No person other than Oswald has ever been connected by evidence to the assassination. No evidence has ever surfaced as I indicated earlier, linking Oswald to any of these groups that are believed to have been behind the assassination. And no evidence has ever been found showing that any person or group murdered Kennedy and then framed Oswald for the murder that they committed. Now one would think that faced with these strong, stubborn and immutable realities that the conspiracy theorists unable to pay the piper would fold their tent and go home, but instead undaunted and unfazed they continue to disgorge even more of what they have given us for the last close to 44 years, wild speculation, theorizing and intentional dissembling of the facts. Okay let's open this up to the questions and the answers.