Corsi Lies About Visiting Frank Marshall Davis’ House

On August 1, 2013, Jerome Corsi appeared on the Colorado morning radio program, The Peter Boyles Show. The archived audio of the hour describes his appearance as “Jerome Corsi from World Net Daily – Obama hid gay life to become president.” So you know you’re in for a classy discussion.

At approximately 7 minutes and 30 seconds into the archived recording, there is this exchange between Boyles and Corsi:

Boyles: “Joel Gilbert’s done great work. He’s matched the floorboards, in other words the hardwood in the house, it’s the same hardwood.”

Corsi: “Well I was with Joel on a lot of that. We went to the house where Frank Marshall Davis lived. Joel documented it all. I shared a lot of my research with Joel. And, y’know, all the circumstances of those photographs match the location.”

This exchange actually contains a lot of dishonesty about Joel Gilbert’s work. Boyles claims that Gilbert “matched the floorboards,” but of course Gilbert never once produced any photographs of any floorboards in Frank Marshall Davis’ house. Gilbert claimed in interviews that the floorboards looked similar, and he claimed that he’d taken photos, but no such photos ever appeared in his film or on his website. Neither he nor Corsi ever published a single bit of evidence, photographic or otherwise, to support the claim that the inside of Frank Marshall Davis’ house in Hawaii resembled the room depicted in the photos that Gilbert libelously claimed were of Ann Dunham. And Corsi is lying when he says that the photographs match the location.

(These facts are, unfortunately, the sort of thing that’s difficult to footnote. How does one best illustrate the absence of supposed evidence? All I can suggest is that if you were to scan Gilbert’s movie and peruse his website, you’ll see for yourself that there are ZERO comparison pictures taken inside Davis’ Hawaiian house. Indeed, the film doesn’t even make the floorboard claim.)

However, that’s not the point of this post. Rather, it is Corsi’s assertion that he personally accompanied Gilbert during Gilbert’s visit to Frank Marshall Davis’ house. Corsi had never said such a thing in his extensive reporting on Gilbert in 2012, and Gilbert had similarly never mentioned Corsi tagging along. But here he is in August 2013, declaring as fact that he traveled to to Frank Marshall Davis’ house in Hawaii alongside Joel Gilbert.

There is, of course, one independent witness who could confirm or deny this claim: the gentleman who actually lives in Frank Marshall Davis’ house. Last year he confirmed that Gilbert did visit his house under false pretenses, and he also confirmed that virtually everything Gilbert said about the house was completely false. But, importantly, the homeowner was himself present when Gilbert made his visit.

And so I contacted the homeowner again, to ask if Jerome Corsi had ever visited his home, with or without Joel Gilbert. Here is his response:

I don’t own a stack of Bibles, but if I did, I could swear upon them that to my knowledge Jerome Corsi has never visited my house with or without anyone else. Furthermore, to my knowledge, I have never met Jerome Corsi in person anywhere. Joel Gilbert’s visit to my house was a solo venture posing as a History Channel producer.

There’s no ambiguity there: when Jerome Corsi told Peter Boyles and his listeners that he had accompanied Joel Gilbert to Frank Marshall Davis’ house, he was blatantly lying to them all. This is not akin to misremembering who one attended a movie with; one does not accidentally misremember making a nonexistent, several-thousand mile trip for an event that one did not participate in. In other words, Corsi said he went with Gilbert to the Davis house, even though he knows, with 100% certainty, that he absolutely did not. A lie could not be more premeditated and unapologetic than that.

The takeaway lesson here is straightforward: Jerome Corsi is willing to openly lie about even basic actions that he has undertaken as a journalist. He will claim to have done things that he has not done. He will claim to have gone places that he has not visited. He will claim to have been physically present for events that he was not at.

This is why it is essential never to trust any original research or claim made by Corsi without independent confirmation from a neutral source. How can one trust an undisclosed document or an anonymous “informant” from Jerome Corsi, if he’s willing to fabricate and fictionalize his own journalistic travels?

Corsi Plagiarizes JFK Assassination Book

Recently, WND has been running a series of articles promoting Corsi’s new book, Who Really Killed Kennedy? One such piece, published on November 3, 2013, is the unbylined article “CIA hit in 1950s mirrors JFK assassination”. The article discusses the political upheaval in Guatemala in the 1950s, specifically Corsi’s theory that the CIA was involved in both a 1957 assassination of the Guatemalan President and, of course, the JFK assassination in 1963.

Although the article is uncredited and even though it quotes Corsi in the third person, a considerable portion of the article is actually adapted from Corsi’s own book. Of primary interest here is that midway through the article appears an accounting of the 1957 assassination of Guatemalan President Carlos Armas, which is copied almost word-for-word from Chapter 5 of Who Really Killed Kennedy?.

Here is the story as presented in Corsi’s book, starting at the bottom of page 204 and continuing onto page 205, under the subheading “Guatemala 1957: The Assassination and the Patsy”:

On July 26, 1957, President Armas was assassinated at around 9:00 p.m. as he and his wife prepared to enter the dining room of the Presidential Palace. Two bullets were fired, one of which severed his aorta and killed him instantly. The assassin, identified as twenty-year-old Romeo Vasquez Sanchez, was said to have committed suicide immediately, using the same rifle he had used to kill Armas. The Guatemalan government identified Romeo Vasquez Sanchez as a disgruntled soldier dismissed from the military in June 1955 because of his “Communist ideology.” Yet, somehow, Romeo Vasquez Sanchez managed to rehabilitate himself sufficiently to have been a member of the Presidential Palace Guard when he committed the assassination.

The Guatemalan Army claimed to have a forty-page handwritten diary in which the assassin referred to “a diabolical plan to put an end to the existence of the man who holds power.” The diary reportedly read: “I have had the opportunity to study Russian Communism. The great nation that is Russia is fulfilling a most important mission in history…the Soviet Union is the first world power in progress and scientific research.” The Guatemalan government LAO claimed to have evidence that linked Romeo Vasquez Sanchez to Moscow. The evidence produced was a card from the Latin American service of Radio Moscow that read: “It is our pleasure, dear listener, to engage in correspondence with you. We are very thankful for your regular listening to our programs.” No evidence was ever produced to prove Romeo Vasquez Sanchez was ever a member of the Guatemalan Communist Party.

Now compare that account with the one of the same event that appeared in the 1992 book Coup d’Etat in America: The CIA and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, by Alan J. Weberman and Michael Canfield (originally published in 1975, and available online here):

On July 26, 1957, President Carlos Castillo-Armas was shot down at about 9:00 p.m. as he and his wife prepared to enter the dining room of the Presidential Palace. He was struck by two bullets, one of which severed his aorta. A communiqué identified the assassin as Romeo Vasquez Sanchez, 20 years old; it said he immediately committed suicide with the same rifle he had used to kill the President. The first authorities to arrive on the scene after the shooting were all military, including the Minister of Defense. The Guatemalan Government described Romeo Vasquez Sanchez as a”Communist fanatic” who was expelled from the Guatemalan Army six months ago for “Communist ideology,” but had joined the Presidential Palace Guard. Eight days later, the Guatemalan Government said Romeo Vasquez Sanchez had been dismissed from the Army in June 1955, two years ago.

It claimed to have a 40-page handwritten diary in which the assassin referred to “a diabolic plan to put an end to the existence of the man who holds power.” The diary read: “I have had the opportunity to study Russian communism. The great nation that is Russia is fulfilling a most important mission in history…the Soviet Union is the first world power in progress and scientific research.” The Guatemalan Government claimed to have found evidence on the person of Romeo Vasquez Sanchez that linked him to Moscow. The evidence turned out to be a card from the Latin American service of Radio Moscow that read: “It is our pleasure, dear listener, to engage in correspondence with you. We are very thankful for your regular listening to these programs…no evidence ever turned up that Romeo Vasquez Sanchez was a member of the Guatemalan Communist Party.”

As it can sometimes be difficult to compare and contrast text on a screen-sized layout, here is a side-by-side comparison of the two texts:

(Note: twice in the second paragraph, Corsi includes footnotes that cite to the Weberman/Canfield book. However, as seen above, those footnotes refer only to quotations of earlier sources that were similarly quoted in the 1992 book. Corsi is thus citing to the book as his source for those particular quotes, which does not excuse copying two full paragraphs of their original text and presenting it as his own.)

Naturally, this is only one page out of a 300+ page book. At the same time, it’s not merely a sentence or two; it’s two full paragraphs copying both the word choice and the structure of the original, and adding almost nothing new. Only a far more intensive review could determine whether this is an outlier in Corsi’s book, or whether it’s a recurring feature.