Citations & A Certain Arrogance
In writing a second edition of my 2015 Oswald bio, I am at the point…
In writing a second edition of my 2015 Oswald bio, I am at the point where Oswald applied for admission to the Albert Schweitzer College in Switzerland. In fact, that is where the first edition of the book ends. The new edition is taking the story up to at least the weekend of the assassination.
In this new edition, I am reexamining everything I wrote back then – and that led me back to why I wrote the book in the first place. From 2000, I was posting my original research across two or three different forums. From 2004, that included the JFK Education Forum. From then on, I suddenly started seeing my research appear in the books of others, sometimes attributed, sometimes not, and often used to support theories I do not subscribe to.
My work on the Albert Schweitzer College was one such area that was lifted.
In 2004, I posted a detailed analysis on the Education Forum titled A Man With a Mission. It was a forensic deep dive into Lee Harvey Oswald’s ideological ambiguity, his application to Albert Schweitzer College, and the spiritual-political networks that shaped his trajectory. That post—written from Australia, without leaving these shores—caught the attention of George Michael Evica, author of A Certain Arrogance.
Evica contacted me directly, as did separately, someone I assumed was helping him do research for his book (and who I believe is blameless in this affair, and therefore will remain nameless). They both expressed astonishment at the scope and precision of the work.
A Certain Arrgance was published a couple of years later, and I was soon contacted by a friend who congratulated me on my reasearch being used in it. When I checked, I found this to be true, but no attribution was made.
I contacted Prof. Evica and after some back and forth emails, he blamed the publisher and said he would have the book pulled and have proper attribution inserted.
He was good to his word. Unknown to me however, was that he was terminally ill. Had I known, I would not have reached out as I did, but what was done was done, based on known knowns. I could not undo the contact.
When finally republished, the attribution was well hidden, in the 3rd paragraph of endnote 113 to chapter 8, and my name is not listed in the index. It reads:
See also the brilliant work of Greg Parker, a young Australian assassination researcher and writer who has posted highly significant materials on the JFK Education Forum. Parker has written important summaries on Ruth Paine and the US/USSR exchange program” the Council on International Educational Exchange (CIEE); the ‘Friends Journal’ story on Ruth Paine and her Quaker exchange group (drawing on the FBI’s Supplemental Report); the East-West Contacts staff; Frederick T Merrill and the Free Europe Committee; and on the ‘space race’ dominated at government committee levels by… Lybdon Johnson, James Killian, Nelson Rockefeller, and Percival Brundage. I have paraphrased or quoted Parker’s work, here happily acknowlwdged. If I held any doubt about the large lateral significance of the Oswald story I was research and writing as I followed it through Albert Schweitzer College, it’s Unitarian dimensions, Brundage and his elitist associates, and the Paines with their incredible connections, Greg Parker’s independent discoveries in these same areas offered premium support for my work.
Well-hidden, but effusive. All I was after was for him to provide a proper citation to my work.
But in 2011, a new edition of A Certain Arrogance was released, edited and published posthumously, presumably by Charles Drago through Trine Day – which never met a conspiracy from an author it couldn’t wring a buck out of, but also the last resort of more grounded authors who can’t get a deal anywhere else and whose egos are too big to self-publish.
In the 2011 version, my name—along with the entire quote above—was excised. The research remained. The insights remained. But the acknowledgment was gone.
I believe this was deliberate. A quiet act of revenge for having challenged Evica on his sourcing, and later, challenging Drago on his own recondite, absurdist hypothesis which he humbly refers to as the Evica-Drago Model. The Model states that the people behind the assassination are unknowable, but a conspiracy has long been proven, and that this simple truth should be weaponized. That’s my abridgement of it, anyhow. The original was replete with hierachies of unknowables, charts, and circular logic.
Drago, in the 2011 edition, took this opportunity to rewrite the record and erase the source of some of the work. Pettiness over honesty. Just as his model was a triumph of pomposity over logic. Though it has Evica’s name, I never did see anything from him espousing such nonsense. Maybe he did, though it was certainly Drago who was the online advocate and sabre-rattler for it.
But this post isn’t about bitterness. It’s about forensic clarity. Attribution matters—not for ego, but for integrity. The historical record is built on the labor of researchers, archivists, and amareur detectives who follow threads others overlook. When that labor is erased, the record itself becomes distorted. Readers deserve to know such sources in order to evaluate the work for themselves.
So let this stand as a correction. A footnote to the endnotes. A reminder that even in the murky waters of Cold War esoterica and assassination lore, truth deserves a name.
Which leads to a second example – this time of poor citation practices.
On page 103 of Dr David Mantik’s latest book, JFK Was Killed By Consensus: Dealey Plaza Was Just The Final Stop, published in October of this year – again by the House of Melinoë aka Trine Day, Dr Mantik writes in a footnote, Incidentally (or maybe not) Roy [Truly] was a cousin to Fred Korth (Tatro november 2023).
Tatro may well have been his source. But there are two issues
Roy Truly was NOT a cousin to Fred Korth
The original source was a post I made on Dec 23, 2017 at the now defunct ReopenKennedyCase (ROKC) Forum. It named exactly who Roy Truly was related to, but either Tatro or Mantik managed to mangle it.
The sad part is that Mantik obviously never checked what Tatro told hold him, nor gave a proper aademically formatted citation. From someone with Mantik’s background and qualifications, it is a poor reflection on the slippage of standards in historical research.
Apart from that… I am fed up to the back teeth with the pillaging of my work, and the way it is (mis)used, the giant egos who dominate the public face of this niche field of research, and their over-arching sense of entitelment.
“War is the continuation of policy by other means”
Carl von Clausewitz
“Other means” includes assassination. JFK stood in the way of policy continuity. A second term could not be allowed for fear it would be the start of a dynasty, with two more brothers waiting in the wings.
And Oswald was innocent.
The second edition of my book will fill in the blanks.
You can help me to get the finish line of this work for the price of a coffee, subscribing, or sharing!
Facebook Comments