Previous conferences

The Fifth Decade: New Evidence on Political Assassinations, COPA in Dallas November 19-22.

50 years after the election of President Kennedy, his murder remains officially solved and historically unsolved. However new evidence continues to surface and be evaluated from the release of files and the independent research of ballistic, forensic and medical experts, historians and authors and a national network of concerned citizens who have kept the case open and the issue alive. Similar work continues to be done into the major political assassinations of the 60s, MLK, RFK, Malcolm X and others, and their impact on our democracy, as evidence surfaces.

Please mark your calendar and make your reservations for this year’s COPA regional meeting in Dallas from November 19-22. The anniversary date falls on a Monday this year, and we will be out on the Grassy Knoll for our traditional Moment of Silence that day. Schedule and registration/reservation information is below.

We will be discussing COPA’s plans for a major conference in Dallas in 2013, the 50th anniversary year. We will have conferences in Memphis in April and Los Angeles in June as well that year for MLK and RFK, and in NYC for Malcolm in February if we can. We are working on a video documentary series for YouTube distribution, an anthology of what we now know to come out that year from the best researchers of the past and current years, and events to build up to this major opportunity to keep the JFK and other cases alive and to get full release of files. Please join us to get the latest and best evidence in these cases with great speakers and new revelations, and to help us plan for the coming events. Here is a list of confirmed speakers as well. For more information see www.politicalassassinations.com.

Speaker biographies follow below schedule
“The Fifth Decade: New Evidence on Political Assassinations”
Friday to Monday, November 19-22, 2010
Annual Regional Meeting of COPA
Hotel Lawrence, Dallas, TX
302 S. Houston St. (off Dealey Plaza)
Speakers, films, books, resources, email for details
Moment of Silence, Grassy Knoll, 12:30 pm November 22.
Open to public, registration fees paid on site.

Confirmed speakers:
Friday Keynotes: Walt Brown. Ph.D., Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney
Saturday: Peter Dale Scott, Dr Cyril Wecht, J.D., M.D., T Carter, Randy Benson, Doug Valentine, Ed Haslam, Donald Byron Thomas, Don Adams, Ed Tatro, William Turner, Dr. William Pepper, Esq., and Ronnie Dugger
Sunday: Robert Groden, Chris Pike, Ben Rogers, Clayborne Carson
Some by remote feed. More to be announced.

COPA Speaker Schedule, November 19-21, 2010

(All times are Central Standard Time in Dallas)

November 19

Friday Keynote – ADOLPHUS HOTEL, 1332 Commerce St., Mezzanine

7:00 pm – John Judge

Opening Remarks

John Judge is an independent researcher, lecturer and author of Judge for Yourself. He was the co-founder of both the Committee for an Open Archives and the Coalition on Political Assassinations. He has studied all the major political assassinations of the last century and helped to draft both the JFK Assassination Records Act and the Martin Luther King, Jr. Records Act currently in Congress. Judge also co-founded 9/11 Research Project, the McGehee Intelligence Library, and is working to create a Museum of Hidden History in Washington, DC. See www.politicalassassinations.com and www.judgeforyourself.us

7:30 pm – Walt Brown. Ph.D. (by remote feed)

The Second Perspective on the JFK Assassination

Walt Brown, PhD is the author of Master Analytic Chronology: The Death of President . Kennedy. This Chronology reports data from a handful of historical events prior, even, to the birth of John Kennedy. It was 2½ years in the making — 5,800 pages — 50,000 paragraphs — 2.2 million words. Brown has a Ph.D. in history from the University of Notre Dame, and teaches history at Ramapo College in New Jersey. Brown, a former special agent of the Justice Department, is a longtime researcher of the Warren Commission and the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He is also the editor of JFK/Deep Politics and the author of several books on the subject including: The People V. Lee Harvey Oswald (1992), Treachery in Dallas (1995), Referenced Index Guide to the Warren Commission (1995), JFK Assassination Quizbook (1995) and the The Warren Omission (1996). Brown’s most ambitious previous project was The Global Index to the JFK Assassination, a CD-ROM of 2400 pages, which indexed not just the WC, but also the HSCA, and 100+ of the best-known JFK books. There are 17,185 names and over 4 million references, and it is cross-referenced by 175 categories. See http://www.manuscriptservice.com/DPQ/

8:30 pm – Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (by remote feed).

Assassination as a Tool of Political Control

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney was the first African-American woman elected to the Georgia Assembly and to Congress. She served six terms in the House of Representatives, ending with the 109th session in 2007. She was the presidential candidate for the Green Party in 2008. Since then she has continued to work for human and civil rights here and around the world, and was recently arrested at sea illegally by the Israeli Defense Force while bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza and was part of a nationwide Bike4Peace ride that ended in Washington DC in September, 2010. She is working on her doctorate on the topic of political assassinations. She is an expert on COINTELPRO and introduced the first Articles of Impeachment against President George Bush and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Records Act, recently revived in Congress by Senator John Kerry and Rep. John Lewis.

November 20

Saturday morning –George Allen Building, 600 Commerce St., Jury Room

9:00 am – T Carter

A Memoir of Injustice – Jerry and James Ray

T Carter has played a key role in keeping COPA alive, and is an accomplished historian, researcher and archivist with expertise in the areas of political assassinations, social justice and Native American history. She holds a Master’s Degree in American History from George Mason University and a bachelor’s degree from Minnesota State University, Mankato. She assisted John Armstrong in his research on Harvey and Lee and helped Lyndon Barsten research Truth at Last on Dr. King’s murder. She also worked closely with Judge Joe Brown and Dr. William Pepper, the lawyer for James Earl Ray and the King family. She is also the author an upcoming book Jerry Ray: A Memoir of Injustice (TrineDay Books)

9:30 – 10:30 – Peter Dale Scott (by remote feed)

11/22, 9/11 and War

Peter Dale Scott has been a Canadian diplomat, an academic professor of English at University of California Berkeley and a profound researcher into what he calls “deep politics”. He is an acknowledged poet, and the author of many key research books into the assassination of John F. Kennedy – Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, the Watergate scandal –Crime and Cover-Up, and more recently the covert historical framework that led up to 9/11 and the most recent US wars – The Road to 9/11 (2007), The War Conspiracy (2008) and American War Machine (October 2010). He is currently investigating secret plans for Continuity of Government and martial law in the United States.

10:30 – 11:00 am – William Pepper, Esq., (by remote feed)

Emerging New Evidence on the Political Assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy

Dr. William Pepper, Esq. is a Barrister in England and an attorney, admitted in a number of jurisdictions in the US, whose work has focused on International Human Rights. Dr. William Pepper was a close friend and colleague of Martin Luther King, Jr. during the last year of his life, following Dr. King’s reading of his article on the Viet Nam war when he was a young journalist who exposed the war crimes against the civilian population. At Dr. King’s request, he directed the National Conference For New Politics, an umbrella peace and freedom organization formed to oppose the war and continue the struggle to empower the poor. He became James Earl Ray’s attorney in 1988, after becoming convinced that he was an unknowing patsy. He represented James Earl Ray until he died, and then represented the King family at an historic trial in 1999, where a jury in Memphis found that a government conspiracy existed to kill Dr. King, and cleared Ray. Pepper investigated the King assassination for some 30 years, and is the author of Orders to Kill, Act of State, with a third book in preparation. He has been a visiting scholar and Fellow at Cambridge and Oxford Universities and convened the Seminar in International Human Rights for two years at Oxford University, and he was Robert F. Kennedy’s Citizen Chairman in Westchester County, when he ran for the Senate in the year before Malcolm was assassinated. He is now is lead Counsel for Sirhan Sirhan, who he has come to believe was yet another patsy in that assassination.

11:00 – 11:30 am – Doug Valentine (by remote feed)

The Federal Bureau of Narcotics and the Assassination of JFK

Doug Valentine is the author of five books. His new book, The Strength of the Pack, is an expose of the DEA. His previous book, The Strength of the Wolf (about the Federal Bureau of Narcotics), devotes a chapter to the possible drug trafficking aspects of the JFK assassination. In his second book, The Phoenix Program, Valentine revealed that members of a US Army military intelligence group may have taken photographs of the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. Valentine worked as an investigator for Dr William Pepper and testified in Memphis in 1999 at the King v Jowers trial. See http://www.douglasvalentine.com/

11:30 –12:00 pm – Ed Haslam

Me & Lee – New avenues for LHO research
Ed Haslam lived in New Orleans in the 1960s and was the son of a physician. He began his journey into JFK research by investigating the bizarre 1964 murder of one of his father’s colleagues, Dr. Mary Sherman. His 1995 book MARY, FERRIE & THE MONKEY VIRUS investigated rumors of a biological weapon being developed in New Orleans by people whose names had been associated with Lee Harvey Oswald, in one way or another. In 2000, CBS’s 60 Minutes contacted Haslam and introduced him to Judyth Vary Baker who admitted to being part of the medical project that Haslam had written about. When she produced documents proving that she had been trained in cancer research and that she had worked Lee Oswald at the Reily Coffee Company, Haslam became more interested in her story. As a result, he included two chapters on Judyth in his 2007 book DR. MARY’s MONKEY. After his publisher secured the rights to publisher Judyth’s manuscript, Haslam was asked to edit the book, ME & LEE: How I came to know, love and lose Lee Harvey Oswald, which was released in hard cover earlier this year. At COPA 2010, Haslam will share his thoughts on how Judyth’s narrative has effected our understanding of Lee Harvey Oswald and how it opens up new avenues for further research into his activities.
12:00 – 12:30 pm – Donald Byron Thomas

Hear No Evil – Acoustic Evidence in Dealey Plaza

Donald B. Thomas published an article in the international journal Science and Justice in 2001 which re-ignited the debate on the acoustics evidence in the Kennedy assassination. “Study Backs Theory of ‘Grassy Knoll’: New Report Says Second Gunman Fired at Kennedy” wrote the Washington Post. “Thomas refuted those who had claimed to debunk the work of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, whose
acoustic scientists had found that a shot indeed did come from the grassy knoll.” His new book, Hear No Evil: Social Constructivism and the Forensic Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination is a detailed walk-through of the major scientific evidence in the JFK murder. Thomas is a government scientist who received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri. He has authored or co-authored several books and more than 100 articles in scientific journals. He is currently President of the Coleopterists Society and serves as associate editor for the Annals of the Entomological Society of America.

November 20

Saturday afternoon –George Allen Building, 600 Commerce St., Jury Room

2:00 pm – Dr. G. Paul Chambers, PhD. (by remote feed)

Head Shot: The Science Behind the JFK Assassination

G. Paul Chambers, PhD (La Plata, MD), is a contractor with the NASA Goddard Optics Branch and with Bellatrix, Inc. Formerly, he worked as the supervisory research physicist for the Energetic Materials and Detonation Science Department of the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Maryland and as a research physicist with the Condensed Matter and Radiation Sciences Division of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC. He is the author of Head Shot, Prometheus Books, 2010.

2:30 pm – William Turner (by remote feed)
Rear View Mirror – Hoover’s FBI and the Assassinations
William Turner is a former FBI agent and whistleblower on J. Edgar Hoover’s excesses. He has done groundbreaking investigative work on the John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy assassinations. His works include FBI: The Men and the Myth, Deadly Secrets, The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, with John Christian, The Fish is Red, with Warren Hinckle, and Rear View Mirror, his autobiography.

3:00 pm –Dr Cyril Wecht, J.D., M.D. (by remote feed)

Forensic Science and the Assassination of President Kennedy

Dr. Cyril Wecht, M.D., J.D. is a nationally renowned forensic pathologist, attorney and medical-legal consultant. Dr. Wecht received his medical degree from the University of Pittsburgh, and his law degree from the University of Maryland, and is also a Fellow of the College of American Pathologists and the American Society of Clinical Pathologists.
He has served as President of the American College of Legal Medicine, the American Academy of Forensic Sciences.The author of more than 500 professional publications, Dr. Wecht is also an editorial board member of more than 20 national and international medical-legal and forensic scientific publications. He has performed approximately 14,000 autopsies and has supervised, reviewed or has been consulted on approximately 30,000 additional postmortem examinations. Dr. Wecht has frequently appeared on several nationally syndicated programs discussing various medicolegal and forensic scientific issues, including medical malpractice, drug abuse, the assassinations of both President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, the death of Elvis Presley, the O.J. Simpson case, and the JonBenet Ramsey cases. His expertise has also been utilized in high profile cases involving Mary Jo Kopechne, Sunny von Bulow, Jean Harris, Dr. Jeffrey McDonald, the Waco Branch Davidian fire, and Vincent Foster. A comprehensive study of these cases are discussed from the perspective of Dr. Wecht’s own professional involvement in his books, Cause of Death, Grave Secrets, and Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey? He also directs the The Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA. See http://www.cyrilwecht.com/institute.php

3:45 pm – Ronnie Dugger
A Texas Oberver Remembers Dallas in 1963
Ronnie Dugger is an investigative journalist who founded The Texas Observer and was the editor and publisher for 40 years. He authored numerous biographies, including Dark Star: Hiroshima Reconsidered, The Politician: Life & Times of LBJ and On Reagan (A Policy Biography of Ronald Reagan). He also wrote Our Invaded Universities (a play), and is a working poet. His articles have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, Progessive, Atlantic, Harpers, and NYT Magazine. He is the founder of the Alliance for Democracy, an anti-big corporation nonprofit. He covered the assassination in Dallas, riding in the press bus when JFK murdered in Dealey Plaza. For the next two months he filed reports on the incident with the Texas Observer and the Washington Post and has been attentive to subject for the past 47 years.

4:15 pm – Don Adams, FBI (by remote feed)

Oswald did not shoot the President; The surfacing of Joseph Adams Milteer; and 11 shots fired in Dallas

Donald A. Adams, born, January 21, 1931 at Barberton, Ohio; Graduated
Barberton High School, June 1948; United States Army January 1949, Fort Knox, Kentucky. May 1949; Occupation Forces, June 1949-June 1950 Japan; Korean War, June 25, 1950 to June 1951; Honorably Discharged June 1952; Bachelor’s degree Education, Kent State University, Kent, OH. June 1955; Special Agent, F.B.I. September 1962, retired Akron, Ohio, December 1982. Presently Self employed as President, Adams Security Consultant Inc. He is a member of: Former Special Agents of the FBI; FBI Agents Association; Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association; Former Special Deputy, Summit County Sheriff’s Department; Presently commissioned officer, Fairlawn, Ohio Police Department; Akron Crime Clinic.

4:45 pm – Gary Severson

Oswald and North Dakota

Gary Severson is a native North Dakotan and is presently a social studies teacher at John F. Kennedy High School in Bloomington, MN. He has been following JFK assassination research since the late 60s. His own research developed in the late 80s as he studied LHO in New Orleans. In 1999 John Armstrong encouraged him to pursue Armstrong’s North Dakota/LHO connection, which resulted in a series of articles in the 2000 issues of The Fourth Decade. Included in this research is a segment dealing with North Dakotan Edward K. Thompsom, LIFE magazine editor at the time of the assassination.

Saturday evening – HOTEL LAWRENCE, HAYNES ROOM

7:00 pm – Randy Benson
The Searchers – A Documentary Film
Randy Benson is a graduate of Wake Forest University and the North Carolina
School of the Arts’ School of Filmmaking, and is an adjunct professor of film and
video at Duke University’s Center for Documentary Studies. His films have
garnered numerous awards, most notably the Oscar™ for Best Student
Documentary at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Academy
Awards™. Benson was invited to the Eastman Kodak “Emerging Filmmaker
Showcase” at the Cannes International Film Festival where he was awarded an
Excellence in Filmmaking Award. He was also selected as one of fifteen directors
worldwide to the First Appearance Program for New Directors at the International
Documentary Film Festival – Amsterdam. His work has been featured on the
Bravo Network, the Independent Film Channel (Split Screen), WTTW-Chicago,
UNC-TV (NC Visions), Canal Plus – France, Telewizja Polska S.A.- Poland and
MTV-2. Production is wrapping on Benson’s most recent documentary, The Searchers, a film profiling the assassination of John F. Kennedy. See http://www.rbensonfilm.com/Welcome.html

7:30 pm – Bill Simpich (by remote feed) (CONFIRMED?)

Oswald in Mexico City

8:00 pm – Ed Tatro

Lyndon Baynes Johnson – Master of Outrageous Acts

Ed Tatro was the cheif consultant, recruiter and participant in Nigel Turner’s THE GUILTY MEN broadcast on The History Channel 2003. Editor of TEXAS IN THE MORNING, the published memoirs of Madeleine Duncan Brown, LBJ’s mistress of twenty-one years. Editor of the Bugliosi chapter in BITING THE ELEPHANT by Dr. Rodger Remington. Attended Clay Shaw’s trial in New Orleans in February 1969. Consultant to Oliver Stone’s movie, “JFK”. Testified before the Assassination Records Review Board in Boston 1995. Author of many articles published in THE CONTINUING INQUIRY, THE THIRD DECADE and THE JFK ASSASSINATION FORUM. Cited in many books including CROSSFIRE by Jim Marrs, HOOVER: OFFICIAL & CONFIDENTIAL by Anthony Summers, ASSASSINATION OF AMERICA by Paris Flammonde and ME AND LEE by Judyth Vary Baker.

8:30 pm – Bill Truels

The Depository Mis-Direction

Dr. William Truels is a practicing general surgeon in Oklahoma City, with experience in trauma and wound surgery. He published, “Breach of Faith” in 1992, which describes the various forces opposed to President Kennedy at the time of his assassination. He has also published “The Quatrains of Camelot”, an extended poem describing the JFK assassination and its philosophical ramifications. He will discuss a three-dimensional analysis of Dealey Plaza, combined with the Zapruder film and the acoustics analysis to show that the most likely origin of the four rear shots is from the third or fourth floor of the Dal-Tex building, with one frontal shot from the Grassy Knoll. The author presents the shots as viewed from each location, with the Depository Oak tree and Secret Service Men in their proper positions.

November 21

Sunday morning – Hotel Lawrence, 302 S. Houston St, Haynes Room

9:00 am – Greg Burnham

NSAM 263, 273

Greg Burnham was born in San Diego, CA in 1957. His father worked for both Truman and Eisenhower while they were sitting presidents. “In 1963 my family attended the services for JFK, including walking past his coffin as he “lay in state” in the Capitol’s Rotunda. The mood in Washington was extremely somber that weekend, to say the least, and it made a lasting impact on me. I began seriously questioning the official version in high school and, by the time I was in college, I had become convinced that the WR was non-sense and that the HSCA was barely any better.”
The two most important subjects of his primary research–and best sources of information were the late Colonel L Fletcher Prouty, USAF and the late Gerry Patrick Hemming. Burnham is a “founding member” of Rich DellaRosa’s JFKresearch Assassination Forum. He appeared in The Guilty Men episode of The Men Who Killed Kennedy program for the History Channel, appeared in The Exhumation of Lee Harvey Oswald/The Norton Report (Discovery Channel); and appeared in “Infamous Grave Sites” (Travel Channel) regarding the burial of OSWALD. Burnham also appeared (as an expert on the military documentation) in a documentary about the Final Disposition of JFK’s Casket, which was aired in 1999 concerning its having been dumped in the ocean in 1966.

9:30 am – Robert Groden

“Robert Groden vs City of Dallas” and JFK: Absolute Proof

Robert Groden is the author of JFK:The Case for Conspiracy, High Treason, The Killing of a President, The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK:Absolute Proof, and parts
of Government By Gunplay. He has researched the photographic and medical evidence in the JFK assassination for 46 years. Groden released the Zapruder and many other films and the vast majority of the photographic evidence to the public through the years, including the color autopsy photographs. See http://www.jfkmurder.com/

10:00 am – Chris Pike
Penn Jones, Jr.
Chris Pike has contributed materials to the JFK Materials Collection at Baylor University’s Poague Library. He is an independent researcher into early critic Penn Jones, Jr. and Operation Northwoods. Presentation on Penn Jones with emphasis on his deep concerns for the corporate media takeover, consolidation of military industrial corporations, the marginalization of the chief executive’s role in the federal government etc. As well how the research community evolved from his contributions, which are being ignored by history.

10:30 am – Ben Rogers

An overview of JFK Materials in Poage Legislative Library

Ben Rogers, curator of the Penn Jones collection, is Director of W. R. Poage Legislative Library, a research facility that houses congressional records and personal papers related to political history. He has been archivist at Baylor University for twenty years. The Library currently features exhibits: JFK50: Primary, Election, Inauguration and LBJ: Texan, Politician, President. The library began its JFK Assassination Research Collection in 2004 with the papers of Penn Jones, Jr. There are now papers from not only Penn Jones but also Jack White, John Armstrong, Gary Shaw, John Kelin, Roy Schaeffer, Paul Hoch, Mae Brussell and others. The collection includes extensive magazines, newspapers and newsletters related to research since 1963. The papers of Penn Jones, Jr. form the foundation for a growing collection of JFK. The archive provides a depository for personal JFK papers in a private institution. The collection contains over 800 newsletters and hundreds of magazines and newspapers. In addition to the Jones papers, all of the JFK correspondence of Jack White has been added in the last two years. Most materials are listed online and are open to researchers. See http://www.baylor.edu/lib/poage/jfk/index.php?id=60997. Visit the web site for the collection: www.baylor.edu/lib/poage/jfk/

11:00 am – Clayborne Carson, Ph.D. (by remote feed). (CONFIRMED?)
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Clayborne Carson, PhD, Professor of History, Stanford University, Director, Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute Dr. Carson has devoted his professional life to the study of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the movements King inspired. Since receiving his doctorate from UCLA in 1975, Dr. Carson has taught at Stanford University, where he is now professor of history and founding director of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Research and Education Institute. Until the end of 2009, he also served as Martin Luther King, Jr. Distinguished Professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta and as Executive Director of that institution’s Morehouse King Collection. Among his published works are:
The Martin Luther King, Jr., Enclycopedia, African American Lives: The Struggle for Freedom, A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., The Autobiography of Martin Luther King. Jr., The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Volume 1: Called to Serve, January 1929-June 1951, Malcolm X: The FBI File, and The Eyes on the Prize Civil Rights Reader.

11:30 am – Mike Golden – (CONFIRMED?)

Gerald Posner’s Descent

Mike Golden is editor-publisher of Smoke Signals and the now dormant “countervoid” SoHo Arts Weekly, and he has written for Rolling Stone, The Paris Review, The L.A. Weekly, Spy, Ducts and elsewhere. He is the author of The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle (Seven Stories Press) on the art-poetry and mysterious death of the last poet in America to be put on trial for his language, d.a. levy. His recent article on Gerald Posner appeared in the online journal, Exiled.

12:00 pm – John Judge, Wrap Up, 50th Anniversary Plans

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