Talk:Charles Baron

Latest comment: 7 years ago by Location in topic Peter Dale Scott on Baron


Peter Dale Scott on Baron

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I have strong reservations about the use of Peter Dale Scott's book Deep Politics and the Death of JFK in this article. As an example, the article now states "According to Jack Ruby and Baron associate Tony Zoppi, Baron knew U.S. Air Force General Curtis LeMay." This is a wildly confusing sentence that can only be understood by looking at Scott's original text, which says that when HSCA interviewed Dallas reporter Tony Zoppi, Zoppi said Babe Baron was a close friend of Curtis Lemay. Scott calls Lemay an "enemy" of John Kennedy (p. 199), so apparently all this is meant to show that "enemies of Kennedy" were in touch with Mafia figures such as Baron.

The statement that Baron was a 'brigadier general in the Illinois National Guard' also seems to be wrong; poking around in the FBI documents at Mary Ferrell, Baron is mentioned as a lieutenant colonel in the Illinois National Guard. The claim that Baron and gangsters Dave Yaras and Lenny Patrick were protégés of Jacob Arvey is utterly undocumented in this article or in Scott's book and is probably libel of Arvey, who was a strong supporter of Adlai Stevenson(!). Nor does Scott give any source for his claim that Baron was associated with Meyer Lansky.

I will come back to this article soon. Scott apparently mentions Baron in an earlier book, Crime and Cover-Up: The CIA, the Mafia, and the Dallas-Watergate Connection and I would like to see what he says there before I delete all this unsourced nonsense. In a review of 'Crime and Cover-Up', Harold Weisberg says, "To read Scott's footnotes is to appreciate Mark Lane's." Good call. Rgr09 (talk) 06:23, 5 September 2017 (UTC)Reply

@Rgr09: First of all, I'm not even sure that this article deserves a stand-alone article. A search of the Chicago Tribune archives here reveals a few mentions, primarily in the gossip column Tower Ticker, but I have a hard time figuring out what is his "claim to fame"... or at least one that would be supported by reliable sources. The third paragraph of the Tower Ticker in this issue briefly notes "Charles Baron, just upped to Brig. Gen. [ret.]", whatever that means.
Secondly, I view all citations to PDS as unreliable and I don't have any reservations about discarding them. Any source that ignores the mountains of evidence pointing to Oswald as the lone assassin of JFK and the lack of evidence pointing to other conspirators is a fringe source and really has no place being cited in Wikipedia. -Location (talk) 16:07, 5 September 2017 (UTC)Reply