JFK Assassination - It Takes a Village
      
As a JFK
assassination investigator, I am perhaps the least qualified person in the
world. Somewhere around 2,000 books have been written on the assassination, and
I haven't read any of them because in the wide range of things one must make
choices about, reviewing theories about a case that was closed in my mind years
ago just hasn't seemed compelling. It's not that I ever believed the Warren
Commission Report findings, or doubted conspiracy. I just didn't think the truth
would ever be known, because for years that was the public message, the
accepted end to it all. Then in 1975 the Abraham Zapruder recording of the 1963
event was finally shown to the world, and that's when all conspiracy hell broke
loose. For his 1969 trial against Clay Shaw, New Orleans District Attorney Jim
Garrison had subpoenaed a low-grade copy of the original Zapruder film, and
other copies were circulating among a privileged few journalists and
investigators. This eventually culminated in the March 6, 1975 broadcast of the
film on Good Night America, an ABC weeknight news feature program hosted
by Geraldo Rivera. I watched it with a group of fellow graduate students in a
residence hall at Ball State University and it made me sick, and not further
inclined to explore the subject.
What has happened over time is that the
personal computer became omnipresent, the Internet was developed as a public
access tool for storing and retrieving information, and there flourished
Websites that functioned as data sieves for assassination theory information.
Patterns in the story emerged for many more people than the number that would be
inclined to read through those 2,000 tomes of tragedy hoping to figure which of
it was true.
The notion that the assassination was a coup
d'etat takeover of the U.S. government was not proposed, to my knowledge, until
Garrison made this claim in the Clay Shaw trial. It was a disqualifying charge,
in the public's mind, because no new guerilla insurgency swept into power
following the murder. There was a natural ascension of the Vice President of the
United States to the position of President. That, after all, is the bottom line
purpose for the office of the Veep: to ensure the orderly transition of
authority in the event of an emergency event. Lyndon Baines Johnson had
fulfilled his duty at a time when news information was not what it is today, and
few Americans were aware that the Vice President of the United States was, at
that time, under criminal investigation that would most certainly have landed
him in prison. Few were aware of his personal association with murder and mayhem
(Malcolm Wallace) and political corruption (Bobby Baker, Billie Sol Estes,
others in Texas). Those investigations essentially ended with Kennedy's death
and Johnson's presidency.
Even more to the point, few in the world of
journalism who were aware of all of these Johnson issues drew any immediate,
concrete connections between the assassination and LBJ, other than that he
somberly took control of the nation in a time of shock and grief. Viet Nam was
thought of as Kennedy's war, expanded by a reticent LBJ and executed without
resolution. It was just years of human loss and defense contractor profiteering.
When Johnson determined not to seek re-election in 1968, RFK was assassinated
while seeking the office, and Richard Nixon took the reigns of government, I did
not personally imagine the narrative that was playing out: a standard one in
which a ruler is assassinated and a new ruler put in his place, rather like
happened with the assassination of Caesar in Rome in 44 B.C. It took many
years for myself and much of the rest of the public to begin to accept that
JFK's assassination was another of these violent transitions. America, then and
now, has a bland cover about itself that makes politicians, government
operatives, and corporate executives seem all about the same. We don't get
bearded "Che" Guevara-type rebel takeovers. We get villains who look just like
accountants.
It just didn't hit me that we were under the
influence of a particular strain of zealots until I first heard then-President
George H.W. Bush going on about the "New World Order". He was using a language
from Nazi Germany to inspire the nationalistic inclinations of the American
public, and that's when it started to feel to me like there were things at work
in the U.S. beyond anything I had imagined. Yes, naive to be sure.
When one falls into the JFK Assassination hole,
it leads back in time, long before that day in Dallas in 1963. Memes developed,
branching out in all directions, and among them was the message that all hope
should be abandoned by those who imagine that America is a book open for public
investigation and understanding. Another developed, as well, that promoted the
idea that while there was a conspiracy involved in the murder, anything one
could learn about the facts of the case were false and corrupted. An "I don't
know the truth but you sure as hell don't know the truth either" type of dynamic
festered, with all of its nullifying implications.
Even if one cannot believe anything one is
exposed to regarding JFK's assassination, the stories told are wrought with
patterns of illogic and straight-out weirdness that raise red flags even for a
weekend warrior regarding the subject. Here are a few that hit me.
Was Oswald the World's First "Loser Marine"?
Americans are not, by
and large, the world's most nationalistic people, but they do tend to exhibit a
great deal of respect for former service members. As a Marine, Lee Harvey Oswald had been
accepted into Naval Intelligence and was stationed at a top secret foreign
operating base as part of the U-2 high altitude spy plane program. He had a
security clearance to handle classified information. He learned the Russian language
somewhere in the course of gaining these credentials.
All of that would typically represent significant credibility
were it applied to almost any Marine other than the Lee Harvey Oswald. That guy was portrayed as a Marxist ex-Marine - the only
self-nullifying type - who was only barely employable as a minimum wage earner.
That was the guy that the Warren Commission needed to identify: the lone nut,
whose only skill was rifle marksmanship.
Lee Harvey Oswald had a friend named George de Mohrenschildt,
a Russian geologist and professor who befriended Oswald a little more than a
year before the 1963 assassination. Much of what the Warren Commission's
determinations about Oswald came from de Mohrenschildt's testimony to the
commission. He was among the most intensively interviewed of the commission's
witnesses and he made this loser he had befriended sound like an abusive bum who
not only spoke poor Russian but was largely illiterate as an English speaker. He
was also the one who created the notion that Oswald had taken a pot-shot at
radical right wing General Edwin Walker. He missed, by the way. This expert
marksman, who managed to hit Kennedy and Connolly with a single shot, and then
blow JFK's head apart while he was moving away in the presidential limousine,
couldn't hit the General seated at his kitchen table. He couldn't get off more than
one shot, either. Of course, the loser Marine's rifle scope was out of
alignment. On the other hand, there are those stories of his being seen at a
Dallas-area rifle range just nailing everything he took aim at. He couldn't hit
Edwin Walker, though. Maybe he wasn't even the one who took the shot.
Mohrenschildt, who had a CIA connection in J. Walton Moore,
who monitored his international travels, was once thought to have worked as
Oswald's handler for the CIA. According to a lady named Judyth Vary Baker,
who wrote a book about an affair she claims to have had with Oswald, he did have
a CIA handler, but it was David Atlee Phillips (October 31, 1922 – July 7,
1988), the Director of CIA operations in the Western Hemisphere. If true, that
would mean Oswald was no loser Marine, but a fish being managed by the top men
in U.S. Intelligience.
De Mohrenschildt was involved with directing Oswald to get
work at the Texas School Book Depository - the building from which Oswald
supposedly carried out the assassination. De Mohrenschildt died in 1977,
shortly after contacting George H.W. Bush about troubles he claimed to be having
with "thugs". There are Kennedy conspiracy buffs who believe the CIA had him
forcibly committed to a mental institution to induce amnesia about anything he
knew about the Kennedy assassination. There are also those who believe that
George H.W. Bush, who was CIA Director in 1976-1977, ordered him killed after that 1977 contact.
Oswald, it appears, was no "loser ex-Marine", but
the public at large cannot let go of this image. There seems to be no public
concept of any possible conspiracy in which Lee Harvey Oswald is not
unsympathetically pathetic in aspect. It is a tribute to the extraordinary power
of image creation and control and of managed communications.
The First Bullet to Hit Kennedy was an Entry Wound that Came from the Front
Of all the items
critical to the cover-up of the truth behind the JFK administration, the autopsy
records, which have become lost or faked in some instances, tell the story the
Warren Commission findings sought to cover: that shots came from places other
than the Texas School Book Depository. JFK's limo driver reported that shots
were coming at them from "all directions". But then again, the current rage is an
"enhanced" Zapruder film that purports to show that the guy driving the
limousine, SA William Greer, fired a pistol into JFK's head. He would have had
to have done that with extraordinary stealth, as Gov. John Connolly and his wife
were sitting between the driver and the President. The edited footage is far from
compelling, but the one thing that is clear is that the wound to Kennedy's
throat was an entrance would from the front. Whatever else transpired in those
brief seconds of mayhem, the neck wound obviously says that there was more than
one shooter. It would have taken a screwball theory about a "magic bullet" for
that to be other than true. No magic, no doubt that Oswald was not a lone
gunman.
Oswald's Shadows Are All Wrong
Call me a lunatic, but
the shadows in the backyard photographs of Lee Harvey Oswald posing with his
rifle are not the most glaring bit of incompetence displayed in this photograph
(right). Given the sight of Oswald's bizarre left arm, one wonders why no one
has suggested an "alien theory". Photographic analysis experts have gone on
record to report that all of this series of Oswald photos are faked, and rather
poorly at that. In fact, image capture of Oswald was apparently an extremely
illusive dream because in still photographs he looks like a variety-person,
varied from one photo capture to the next in ways as significant as height and
weight. Again, I'm not saying it's aliens, but... Sometimes, like when
Oswald the loser ex-Marine visited the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City, the
security cameras would malfunction. It's aliens.
Have You Ever Heard a Silencer?
The Warren Commission
put all its cards in one basket: the sound of three shots, recorded by
the radios carried by the police officers in the motorcade. That is what many
eye witnesses report hearing, too. People point in response to
three shots from the Texas School Book Depository. The
police response immediately focused on the building from which the sounds of the
shots came. There are cynical people among us who would suggest that is
precisely what a team of snipers would prefer to have happen: attention directed
as they would prefer, toward the fall guy, thus distracted from them.
On the other hand, there is a guy named James Files in prison
in Illinois who claims to have fired the headshot, missing his mark just
slightly because Kennedy's head was moved by other rounds fired by other
shooters just a split second earlier. Maybe silencers aren't necessary when
simultaneous gunfire, sounding from all directions at the same time, leaves a
difficult to decipher sonic pattern.
Jack Ruby and the Dallas Police
The archival footage of
Jack Ruby, hanging out at the Dallas Police Station following the apprehension
of Lee Harvey Oswald, is astonishing. Ruby was a known underworld figure in
Dallas, an associate of the Chicago mob. He was well-known to the Dallas police,
some of whom frequented his strip club, so would obviously have been recognized;
he wasn't hiding, or wearing a disguise. And how easy is it to loiter around the
headquarters of a major city police department? And why would one do it? Only
the out-of-town press were unaware of who he was, and oblivious to his presence,
which had no logical reason for being, unless he was on site to do something,
like silence Oswald.
Ruby and Oswald were acquaintances, both with associations
with New Orleans detective and FBI operative Guy Banister, who came from
Chicago, as did Ruby. Banister had joined the FBI in 1934 and was present at the
killing of gangster John Dillinger. In Chicago, he was Special Agent in Charge
for the FBI, until his retirement in 1954 returned him to his home state of
Louisiana.
Where Did Bobby Kennedy, as a Young Boy, Think His Allowance Came From?
To understand how Robert
Kennedy could undertake a committed assault on organized crime given his own
family's very recent alliance with mob bosses in New York, Chicago, and Los
Angeles, is a little hard to comprehend. RFK is among the most enigmatic figures in
this story populated with enigmatic figures. Was he a hopeless idealist? Or was
he working to expunge the family reputation of association with organized crime?
It is hard to imagine how he thought that could work, unless he was either
extraordinarily young and naive, as JFK was often described as being, or
confident that the U.S. government would guarantee a good result. Did Bobby
believe that as Attorney General of the United States that he was powerful
beyond the reach of organized crime's ability to intimidate or even murder?
Did JFK Have a Death Wish?
We have learned over the
years that JFK was a beautiful mess. He will chronically ill, destined for a
shortened life; physically broken and dependent upon drugs to manage his
constant pain; a sex addict whose impulses were uncontrollable, but whose
performance was poor; a charismatic manipulative personality; an insecure
sibling of a lost, cherished son; an initially hesitant leader who sealed his
fate when he became deliberate; a performer and poser; a bullying, demanding
husband; a self-absorbed romantic who imagined himself somewhere in the realm of
Camelot; and that most detestable of all things - a natural born politician.
It was Kennedy's call that there be no security top on his
limousine that day in Dallas in 1963, and that security service agents stay away
from his car so that people could get a clear view of him. Was he just that
certain that he could win over the right-wing capitol of Dallas with the sheer
magnetism of his image and personality? And was that what was going to protect
him in what he called "nut country"?
Or, among all of his other eccentricities and odd traits, was
it just that JFK didn't really care how it all played out? Was he on an
existential trip to Neverland? A dutiful son who had achieved his father's dream
for an older, lost child, and was accepting of whatever would transpire
thereafter?
What if Rain Had Fallen that Day in Dallas?
The one thing one can't
help but wonder, amid all of the theorizing about what happened in Dallas that
November 22, 1963, is what would have happened had it rained on the motorcade
that day? Rain had fallen throughout Kennedy's events in Texas the previous day.
Would the plans developed by the kill squad been ruined had rain fallen and the
top been up on the presidential limo? Or was there a contingency plan for
alternative weather condition? Or, for those who believe Lee Oswald was just a
fame-seeking nut and a lone gunman, what would his response have been. Instead
of taking up his position in the "sniper's nest" would he just have worked a
normal day, inventorying boxes of books?
GO TO PART 3 - State of the Conspiracy
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