The Single Bullet Theory Cannot Be True

As seen from the above frame from the Zapruder film, Governor John Connally does not appear in distress. In fact he is doing exactly what he said he did—turning to see the President in obvious anguish, after hearing what he thought was a shot. Connally always maintained, as did his wife Nellie, that he heard the first shot and turned around to see Kennedy in trouble. As he started to turn to his left he heard the second shot and knew he was hit. He was still conscious when he heard the third shot that would kill the President.

In the official story Connally is supposed to be shot at this point in the frame, his fifth rib shattered in two places, the radial bone in his wrist broken, with the bullet ripping through his thigh. Yet here he is, turning 180 degrees around to see what is going on behind him. This one blurry frame of the Zapruder film proves his testimony and that of his wife Nellie to be accurate and the Warren Commission wrong. It simply didn’t happen the way we were told. Perhaps the powerful men that set all of this up thought we would never have access to the film. It shows the solution to the problem was a political answer. That bullet was going to do double duty and by golly, nothing was going to stop it.

assassination

Dale Myers and Pat Speer Duke It Out

Dale Myers (left) and Pat Speer (right)

I’ve been following Pat Speer’s web site for a while now. I admire his work. His web site is laid out like an online book (which it is) with chapters loaded down with illustrations and photographs. As an independent researcher he is thoughtful and well reasoned in dealing with the confusing mess that makes up the Kennedy assassination. He delves into what happened rather than conspiracy theories.

The fur started to fly when Speers did a chapter on his site entitled, Chapter 12c: Animania. Here, he takes on Dale Myers, an Emmy award winning animator who is most famous in recent years for his recreations of the Warren Commission’s SBT—single bullet theory for network TV documentaries. Myers has been at this for years starting out with test dummies and moving on to computer simulations. You can see Myers work in Beyond Conspiracy and Beyond the Magic Bullet.

Frankly, I would not want to be in Myers’ position here. There are numerous conflicts in the evidence from over 40 years ago and that carries over into the animation as well. For example in one animation, which is supposed to be correct in every detail, we are shown a red line depicting the bullet passing through Kennedy’s back and entering Connolly’s back. However, the line exits Kennedy’s chest, not the neck, which is an error Myers never addresses.

Pat Speer’s analysis of Myers’ animations have led him to conclude that his work is fraudulent. Strong words. Myers has issued several rebuttals on an Internet forum and on his web site and the fur has flown. The resulting tit-for-tat is far too involved to go into here; see both men’s sites (see links below) for the blow-by-blow details.

Speer does bring up some valid issues with Myers’ work. The placement of the jump seat relative to the door, the relative seat heights, the exact positions of both men to allow the passage of the single bullet, and how much foliage was present on Elm Street that Oswald had to shoot through. He does a decent job of finding flaws with animations and raises some valid issues.

Speer however, does falter on one issue and that is Myers’ placement of Kennedy and Connally in the limousine. Myers has Connally sitting low enough to be on the floor.  Myers’ response is to blame it on the distortion of the digitally generated camera wide-angle view. I am a photographer and have used wide-angle lenses for years. This simply cannot happen. Oddly, the side view from the animation showing Connally seated well below Kennedy. Myers’ explanation is odd, as he could have made a better response here. There are numerous photographs shot that day showing Connolly seated lower. Other photographs at apparently different angles show them seated on the same level (see examples below). In fact there is one I found of the limo door opened showing the jump seat positioned much lower than the rear seat. All Myers has to do is show the photos. Obviously, the President should sit taller, right?


Conversely, Speer had to know these photographs exist as well. But for the sake of argument, or whatever, chooses not to address them.

In Dale Myers defense, I do not think he is out to deceive the public. Pat Speer does and calls him a liar. I think Myers’ intentions are sincere though he seems content with what data is at hand, which is a flawed mess to begin with. For example, what we know as the SBT comes to us from a lawyer—not ballistics experts or engineers. Myers seems unconcerned with that and ends up doing what the original investigation did, which in some areas is to jury-rig the evidence to fit the theory. What Myers does is no different than Gerald Ford moving the President’s back wound to the back of the neck to be more “precise” in the final report. That way, everything works out right for the narrative. (And ironically, Myers does position the back wound in his animations inches above where the autopsy photos and measurements show the injury.)

I think a lot of serious researchers such as Myers go for the lone gunman theory because of the bad reputation that conspiracy researchers have been pegged with. Even Pat Speers, who is reasonable and not a conspiratorialist, with his simple questioning of the official scenario, finds himself placed in that camp.

At last count Myers has retired from the field of debate with Speer. Good for him. He needs to heal up from the bruises. Speer lets Myers have the final word:

“Forget about convincing Mr. Speer that one cannot draw a rational conclusion from an irrational premise; I’ve tried. Suffice it to say that Mr. Speer prefers to live in a land of illusion where physical realities don’t hold a candle to obsessive conspiracy theories.”

Myers only rejoinder is that he has tried to talk sense to a mule. As if that is smart to begin with. What Speer has done is to carefully dissect Myers’ recreation of the STB in painful detail. Speer paints Myers in a corner largely due to his own numerous errors in his data. Of course in time, the paint will dry and Myers will escape to find a friendly venue for his theories and recreations. A stage where he will not be asked hard questions and be allowed to promote his version of what happened on that tragic day in November.

Addendum 1.20.14
Review of the updated version of Myers' book With Malice.
http://oswaldsmother.blogspot.com/2013/10/book-review-with-malice-lee-harvey.html 

Sources: Video, Beyond Conspiracy and Beyond the Magic Bullet. Web sites: Speer, https://www.patspeer.com/  and Myers, http://jfkfiles.blogspot.com/

When The Going Gets Weird…

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

Hunter S. Thompson

The words of a wise man. It is one of my favorite quotes. As I make my way down the rabbit trails of the Kennedy Assassination, it becomes even more appropriate. As somebody once said it is not in the solving of a mystery, as it is the dancing with the mysterious. And you’ll find plenty of dance partners in Dealey Plaza.

Those familiar with the legend know that Lee Oswald in the summer of 1963 was fronting as a member the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. A pro Castro organization. After an altercation on Canal Street in New Orleans with an anti Castro Cuban émigré, he was arrested. While in jail, Oswald gave a handwritten note to police lieutenant Francis Martello. In the margins of the note was a number. For decades nobody knew what this number was or represented. Apparently it was not investigated at the time. Oswald was, after all, a nut. Declassified CIA documents years later eventually cleared the fog. It was the ID number of a CIA operative. It belonged to Michael Jelisavcic the manager of American Express in Moscow at the time Oswald was there. Oswald’s address book also contained Jelisavcic’s phone number as well.

Wake up now. For if Oswald is not a CIA operative, then how does he know Jelisavcic’s ID number? Conversely, if he is a CIA operative then how does he know a fellow CIA asset’s number? This incident is the equivalent of one employee at the shop knowing another employee’s Social Security number. It simply does not happen. The going just got weird.

The number now becomes a flag and Oswald is waving it. He’s letting the other players know what type of player he is and what team he is on. How else do you explain it? His mother was evidently correct when she huffed to the world that her son was an intelligence agent. She was written off as a kook. In this late day, his widow Marina implies the same, a blind kitten no more, saying he was being used by other groups. But she won’t say who those groups are. People like Marina, that are close the action, seem to keep it even closer to themselves. She leads us halfway down the rabbit trail and leaves us stranded there to find out way home. As if the truth would destroy our world. If it even could.

One of my favorite stories is the meeting, told by Antonio Veciana, head of anti Castro group Alpha 66, about his meeting in Dallas in 1963 with his CIA handler Maurice Bishop (alias for David Atlee Philips). As Veciana approached Bishop/Philips he noticed he was talking to a slim young man. Part of Veciana’s training was to memorize faces. A few months later he saw that face again when the news flashed around the world. It was Lee Oswald’s mug and Veciana knew instantly how deep he was in. Perhaps the CIA handler forwarded Jelisavcic’s ID number to Oswald? Oswald is not going to get the number on own. It is on file in the belly of the Beast. He could have been given the number to let everybody know who they were dealing with. Not just some malcontent having an altercation with people he argued with.

This whole incident grows from a seed planted here. Whatever information Oswald told the police lieutenant, and a bit later to the FBI agent Quigley, that we are not allowed to know, they both forwarded the information to military intelligence. Another mystery! For Oswald is the disconnected guy, the ultimate Nowhere Man. What is he in on that the Office of Naval Intelligence should alerted of? It is all like a dream now. The weird have turned pro.

And now the pro needs to go to work schooling everybody else. For after this incident Oswald tries to hook up with two different anti Castro, anti communist outfits. One outfit in particular, the DRE, trained and financed by the spooks at Langley, rebuffs Oswald’s attempts to offer his services to help train them. They issue a press release demanding a congressional investigation of Oswald—mind you this is months before the assassination. This is likened to killing a fly with a shotgun. A bit too much on the buckshot. Just how offended are these people and why make such an odd protest? Or for that matter, why does the pro Castro guy want to help train the anti Castro outfit to overthrow his man?

There are all kinds of theories on this. Obviously, the official story is at odds with the truth. That is to be expected here. After all, that experience is all over the place. What is of interest here is the strangeness of it all and what is precisely going on. And this is why the Kennedy assassination is such a fascinating thing to study! For you never know for certain, other than the President’s death occurred and Governor Connolly was wounded. It has been bandied about that Oswald could have been doing research for somebody to see if these anti Castro groups had any commies in them. Maybe. But then, who is the “somebody”? The usual suspects most likely. At any rate, none of that worked out and Oswald made his merry way to Dallas to fulfill his destiny, turning his back on the Fair Play for Cuba Committee forever.

But before that comes to fruition, Oswald mails a letter to the FPFC headquarters in New York City describing the scuffle and arrest. The letter is postmarked five days before the event actually occurs. Maybe after the weird turn pro they grow into something else even stranger. It did here with the letter. Perhaps it is too eerie to contemplate—Oswald turned psychic.

So we come back to the ID number. It is still sitting there, plain as day, staring us in the face. A steady reminder that things are not quite right here and there is something hidden from us. What we need is somebody to lead us on the right rabbit trail and not leave us stranded in an endless loop.

“I’m just the patsy,” he said. Well, we are all just a nation of patsy’s now.

Sources: Russell, On the trail of the JFK Assassins; McKnight, Breech of Trust; www.history-matters.com

assassination

Conspiratorialist…To Be Or Not To Be...

As I have delved into this I am not so much interested in the multiple phantom shooters laying down crossfire in Dealey Plaza, or the loser that gets lucky with two out of three shots, to an interest in how both sides, conspiracy and non, arrive at their conclusions. Both sides run down the same rabbit trails seeing different things, or missing them entirely. For me, the truth must lie somewhere in the middle.

Ultimately, we all see what we want to see as Vince Bugliosi does in Reclaiming History, where he accuses Nellie Connelly of having a faulty memory of the shooting sequence. Never mind that the Zapruder film verifies her testimony and that of her husband, John. To their dying day, both said that all three shots hit their targets—Kennedy first, then Connelly, then Kennedy last. In the mind of the Bugliosi’s out there, that first shot has to miss no matter what, because after all, that shot may indicate another shooter. That is the bullet that bounced off the curb at Commerce Street wounding James Tague on thee cheek. And never mind the bullet is passing 18 feet over Kennedy’s head, a sure sign that Oswald did not have the rifle pointing at his intended victim. Nowhere close. Surely, a dubious start for the former marine on his mission of infamy. But why? We’ll never know. Here, the conspiratorialist can lay claim to a second shooter. Of course it is laughable to assume a second gunman is going to be a bad a shot as Oswald is alleged to be. In ballistic terms it is a hell of a miss.

So herein lies the dilemma. The witnesses closest to the action have three shots fired at them and they know it as keenly as those close to death know it. But there is that other bullet that strikes the curb. Who do you believe? How do we resolve it?

The conspiracy believer says there is another unnamed shooter. The Warren Commission believer opts to ignore the witness testimony and go with the errant shot, bringing in the dubious Magic Bullet scenario—the bullet that does double duty wounding both Kennedy and Connelly.

And neither scenario is any good, leaving one with a sense of unfinished business. It is to accept one and deny the other, even when it is burning a hole in your head. And no, I don’t have an answer. I’ll post it if I ever do.

The conspiracy crowd tends to treat Oswald as the “innocent” patsy framed for the crime. As much as I love Jim Mars book Crossfire, he never addresses Oswald’s guilt when he lies to the police numerous times denying even the simple things, or his attempt to kill a police officer in the movie theater. All of these are the actions of a mind with a murderous intent. Also, Oswald’s path and timeline goes put him on a collision course with slain policeman Tippit, though the conspiratorialist believes him to be framed for this crime. Mars does not even suggest that Oswald may have been an accomplice to the crimes.

On the other hand, the Lone Nut crowd, offended at the notion of a conspiracy—will not have any sub conspiracies for side dishes either. In their worldview Oswald is an outsider incapable of fitting in, yet there is plenty of evidence to point him being just the opposite. He did join the Marines after all, hardly an anti social act. He was in the Civil Air Patrol as teenager. Pictures of him in Minsk show him laughing and enjoying himself at parties with the lovely Marina.

The sticky part is Oswald’s motivation to do the crime. He is not like Sirhan Sirhan with a notebook full of Robert Kennedy tirades. Oswald never speaks ill of Kennedy to anybody. Even his widow Marina says, to this very day, that Lee loved Kennedy. She now thinks he is innocent of the crime, and says that other groups were using him. Disappointedly, she will not say who those groups are but in our heart of hearts we know. The usual suspects. Just pick one out of the hat. The Cubans, the CIA, or the Mob. They all have more motivation to kill the President than Oswald ever did and everybody knows that.

Mind reading. The Warren Commission apologist’s notion of Oswald’s motivation is easily explainable once you try mind reading. A practice they are not embarrassed to practice. They place themselves in Oswald’s tormented psyche filled with delusions of grandeur, awful childhood memories, and constant failure at life. Norman Mailer claims to know Oswald, a man he never met, because he had studied his character in absolute detail and knows what his motivations are—delusions of greatness and fame, of course. It works for them like the crazy Magic Bullet does zig-zagging through space and time. If they would bend a little bit and bring Silvia Odio to the party they would have a more solid footing for motivation to kill Kennedy. But they cannot because Oswald is doing the unexpected. He is associating with an anti Castro group when he is pro Castro. Besides being a social butterfly. Speculation works here for them like the second shooter does for the conspiracy buff. It is still not tidy.

I guess I am not much of a conspiracy theorist. I’ve broken too many cardinal rules, two of which are Oswald being guilty and the cannon of the faith, the Grassy Knoll. I know, people heard shooting from there, they saw smoke, they smelled gun smoke. The angle is still off. A diversionary shooter maybe? What is his name? It probably does not matter because all that remains after the smoke clears (sorry) is the dilemma. The dilemma of so many witnesses (I’ve read over fifty) that experienced something that did not happen. And if it did, you have another shooter as lousy as Oswald is. How is that for a professional hit?

I guess I am not much of a “lone nut” theorist either. Oswald is more than he seems to be. He speaks Russian so well he can fool the locals with his regional accent, but flunks his language test before he gets there. He crafts an alias for himself, an Alek Hiddell. Then when he is arrested he has the alias ID card in his wallet along with another one with his real name on it. Dumb. When the police question him if he uses this alias he lies and says no. Even dumber. When he arrives in New Orleans and opens up a pro Castro support group, he is the only member. Then he goes about trying to help out anti Castro Cuban factions in town. He is fronting, obviously. But for whom? Whoever they are, they are not going to be admitting anything any time soon. Some have suggested he was playing “secret agent man” all by himself. That makes about as much sense as anything else making the rounds.

Richard Helms, former CIA director, and one of the foxes guarding the hen house, once said, “No one will ever know who or what Lee Harvey Oswald represented.” Except Helms of course, the ultimate insider and doer of dastardly deeds. Or, maybe he was revealing a tiny truth to us. That the Insiders did not really understand who Oswald was or how he slipped through. Whatever. It all lies buried in the ground now. They are all dead.

So I am wandering out in the no man’s land of this event. I want to believe in a conspiracy in the death of John Kennedy as much I want to believe in whatever crashed at Roswell came from intelligent life from outer space. We cannot have either. Evidence for both, if they happened the way the witnesses said, is locked up in a government warehouse along with the Ark that Indiana Jones found. And what an accurate metaphor that is for the current condition of the National Security State with its labyrinth of secrets.

The Long Knives of November

One thing that keeps me interested in examining the Kennedy assassination is the weirdness of it all. I have found that to be true in other events such as 9-11, TWA 800, or the assassinations of RFK and MLK. So much of the official story does not make any sense in any of these cases. Getting to the truth is impossible as long as political machines are doing the investigating. They are not digging for the truth anyway. They are instead, seeking a solution to a narrative as a fiction author does when his character is in trouble and needs to find a path out. Only, in the instance of real events, it never seems quite right. Like any good story, it is believable to a point, but it is still a story.

You cannot find a weirder character in this than Lee Oswald. He is at the crux of the whole thing. Oh sure, David Ferrie with his greasepaint eyebrows, his apartment lab with cages of white rats, is out there as well. But he was not pegged with a crime of killing a President, though he did associate with Oswald. You know the saying, show me who you run with and I will tell you who you are. Oswald the perpetual loner, effective Russian speaker, lost in his delusions of greatness, who just happened to be the most sociable loner ever. One with a wife and kids. A man who was all over the place leaving a trail as he went.

Oswald early on was playing fast and loose with all sorts of characters. He was a nobody that after he was arrested for a Canal Street altercation demanded to speak to an FBI agent. One did bother to show up for something that amounted to a misdemeanor, not normally on an FBI agent’s to-do list. Agent John Quigley, upon chatting with Oswald forwards the information to the Office of Naval Intelligence. Later, he gives vague testimony to the Warren Commission about this incident. Being a good G-Man, he only tells what they ask, not what he knows. In the early 70s the ONI destroys their files on Oswald. At some point in time so does the CIA. It’s all tidy now. As tidy as the eighty-six pages missing out of John Wilkes Booth’s diary.

You want to know why we can never get to the bottom of the Kennedy assassination? Because of affairs such as this. It is the gleaming of something out there, just outside of your field of vision. There are those who are powerful enough keep it that way and their ways are mysterious. Just as mysterious as Oswald’s letter describing the Canal Street altercation he mailed to the FFFC headquarters in New York. It just happened to be post marked five days before the incident actually took place. Another one of Oswald’s trails, or else he was showing his masters just how big of a screw-up they had hired? It is all part of the legend now.

Meanwhile, the handsome young President has his own legend. He stepped on too many toes. He governed as if he was the only King with no others about. Tragically, he found out that he was not the only King in Camelot. The Long Knives were not about to let this usurper appear and rearrange the chairs at the table. We know who they are and they mock us to this very day because they know we cannot catch them. Many have since passed on, but they left behind their machines to live after them.

Lyndon Johnson was a brute but he knew how the real game was played. He outplayed the Kennedy boys only to have the Long Knives outplay him and leave him stranded in the swamps of Vietnam. All of that lusted after power gone to waste. All of that blood on his hands, the same hands he used to grope women in the presence of his wife. How is that for a “thank you” Lyndon? You made a deal with the devil and he rigged your roulette table. A savvy player like you should have known that. You can’t trust anybody in this game, not even yourself.

The Discovery Channel is out there pumping out documentaries proving the Warren Commission’s conclusions over and over. The truth seekers are publishing their conspiracy books doubting Warren Commission’s conclusions over and over. The two sides will never come to terms. It has been a forty-five year head-butt that will never end. The truth is out there but only for a select few.

Just bear in mind ye Long Knives, we do not believe you and never will. Irksome, is it not?

JFK: Inside the Target Car

Don't miss Pat Speer's excellent review and analysis of the Discovery Channel's "JFK: Inside the Target Car".

LINK

45 Years On...

November 22, 1963 - November 22, 2008

JFK and the National Security State

“I have always believed, and argued, that a true understanding of the Kennedy assassination will lead, not to ‘a few bad people,’ but to the institutional and parapolitical arrangements which constitute the way we are systematically governed.”

Peter Dale Scott
Deep Politics and the Death of JFK

I could probably write a whole article analyzing Peter Dale Scott’s quote. In this one simple paragraph he lays bare not only a central truth about our government but also about the death of John F. Kennedy. Our intellectual elite and media (with the exception of those in Europe) know something they won’t dare utter—that the State is capable of murdering the Chief of State. In this case, the National Security State, with its confluence of intelligence, military, and civilian corporations being the executioner. It’s been done time and time again down through history. Are we so much better than Greeks and Romans that we are exempt?

Truman’s Regret
If there is a conspiracy to kill Kennedy it is forever buried in the bowels of this beast, the beast the Harry Truman signed into law in 1947, an act that formed the CIA, NSC, and the JCS. It was a decision that he came to express regrets about. As Truman said in his December 2, 1963 article entitled, Limit CIA Role To
Intelligence:

“I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda.”

Just sixteen years after Truman signs the National Security Act into law, and just ten days after Kennedy’s death, he now sees the CIA as a independent entity with it’s own agenda, operating outside the constitutional framework of the Federal Government and no longer subservient to the President. This is quite evident in the Bay of Pigs fiasco where the CIA was running its own military operation. He is giving us the same warning as Eisenhower did with his vague “military industrial complex” parting statement to the nation. It was not till the Church Committee hearings in 1975 did the public began to find out what the CIA had been up to all of those years from 1947 on. The question that lingers is, if the CIA would kill the Diem brothers then what is to prevent them from killing the Kennedy brothers here?

The CIA-Pentagon nexus is one of the most complex labyrinths created by man. No better account of this can be found than in L. Fletcher Proudy’s, The Secret Team. Although not a Kennedy assassination book per say, it provides the basis of how such a large group of networked organizations could bury just about anything they wanted to do to just about anyone. And Proudy believed that Kennedy’s battles with the National Security State insured his demise. They are the only ones that could commit the act and get away with it. They will not be tamed.

As Proudy showed, when the boys get together at the cafeteria and talk shop there’s no way of telling what is the truth. If your department is running an operation and it’s running under a cover, then the cover is what you talk about—not the real operation. Dick Russell in his book, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, stays on this theme. A source, known only as Captain Sam, describes it this way:

“Half of what I’ll tell you might be the truth, and the other half bullshit. But all of it is what I was told. That’s part of the game in the intelligence business. You confuse your own operatives with false information; maybe nobody knows the full truth about a particular assignment.”

With this scheme, only those at the very top know what is going on. It certainly bests the “need to know” method of compartmentalization. Maybe this seems like a crazy way to conduct covert operations, but just try prying into this maze to find out what happened to Kennedy and you’ll see what a frustrating task it is. No wonder men like Richard Helms seemed so smug all the time. He knew nothing was ever coming out and nobody had the power to make him talk.

The Military Connection
The National Security Act, which gave our nation a centralized intelligence bureau—which Hoover over at FBI hated as interlopers on his turf—which was also allowed to run operations. If the operations got too large the military would be called in. What constitutes small and large operations was never clearly defined. The CIA used this to full advantage when it went gallivanting around the world overthrowing democratically elected governments (Guatemala, Iran, Chile, and many more) and assassinating foreign leaders. Prouty lays the blame squarely on the CIA for the involvement and war in Vietnam, with good cause. He was there in the early days of the growing conflict as a liaison officer between the Pentagon and CIA. He was a witness to CIA meddling that started as cold ops that later turned hot. The CIA continued interfering after the military got there. You’ll see very few members of the mainstream media (which includes many historians) lay such accusations at the door of the CIA for the disaster in Vietnam.

John Kennedy’s problems with the NSS started with the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Like Eisenhower’s downed U2 embarrassment, Kennedy took the fall for it. It was an operation long in planning and was dumped in his lap as soon as he took office. But changes soon came and CIA director Allen Dulles was soon out of job. (But would oddly, later resurface on the Warren Commission to investigate Kennedy’s death.)

Vietnam
From the very beginning of his Presidency, Kennedy had to deal with Vietnam. Intelligence operations had been run in Indochina since 1945 and had only steadily built up over the intervening years. As usual the CIA is interfering once again the affairs of others and it steadily grows to they can’t contain it anymore. The military is called in. The army requested 16,000 troops for Vietnam in the spring of 1961. Kennedy, not wanting to get entangled, turned down the request. The army tried again for 8,000 in November of the same year and was turned down once again.

But things were apparently brewing outside of Kennedy’s control. For example, then Vice President Johnson was ingratiating himself with the Joint Chiefs. It is now known that he was receiving highly classified briefings from Army intelligence in regards to the situation in Vietnam—information that Kennedy and his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, were not privy too. This is an amazing breach of protocol in the chain of command! Not to mention Johnston’s lack of security clearance to view such documents. But it illustrates how entrenched Johnson was with the military and he his fate would be tied to theirs.

Kennedy tried to stem the tied by his October National Security Action Memorandum, NSAM 263. This order called for the removal of 1,000 troops from Vietnam by December of 1963. Four days after his death, newly sworn in President Johnson signs NSAM 273, reversing Kennedy’s order. The foundations of war are under way. The multi billion-dollar contracts will soon be signed with Brown and Root. Years later sold to Halliburton, the remnants of this corporation still profiting off war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Much has been written and debated about this over the years. Was Kennedy getting out or not? Some critics charge this was the normal rotation of troops. If so, then Kennedy doesn’t have to sign an order getting troops out, nor does Johnson have to sign an order making them stay. Regardless, Kennedy did make a political decision to avoid an entanglement in Vietnam by signing into law NSAM 263, and his desire to pull all troops out by late 1965. The President’s death resulted in a major policy change, in this case, swiftly implemented by Johnston’s NSAM 273. One of many to come, such as the Executive Order halting of the $5 Treasure notes backed by silver, not by credit such as Federal Reserve notes are to this day.

Just coincidence? Did Kennedy run afoul of the National Security State’s agenda and die as result? We’ll never know for certain but the suspicion will always remain. Deep politics enshrouds the inner workings of the State. If there is a conspiracy in the death of John F. Kennedy, it lies here. Buried in the belly of the Beast.

Sources: Prouty, The Secret Team; Scott, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK; Russell, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins; Newman, JFK and Vietnam.
assassination

Vince Bugliosi: The Sins of Omission and Commission

I saw Vince Bugliosi, former Manson prosecutor and author of the five pound, 1600+ page, Reclaiming History being interviewed on FOX around the time his book was just out. He came off as an affable, sincere guy. Then when I got his book and started reading, I was surprised to see his Dr. Jeckel to Mr. Hyde conversion. In Reclaiming History, Bugliosi is a one man wrecking ball of conspiracy theory and Warren Commission critics. When facts and logic don’t prevail, sarcasm, ridicule, and insults will suffice. He says if you do not accept that Oswald was the lone gunman then you are stupid. Really, is all of this vitriol necessary? It is as if Bugliosi is not so much settling history as he is settling scores.

His arrogance knows no bounds. Nor does his hypocrisy when he charges James Tague, the third man wounded that day, of trying to make money off his experiences when Bugliosi is hawking a $50 book. What cheek!

Vince Bugliosi is so militantly anti-conspiratorial that it clouds his judgment. He has to have everything in order like a compulsive-excessive. There must be no doubts about anything. There can be no sub-conspiracies, such as Clay Shaw using the alias Clay Bertrand and that Shaw was a CIA operative. In Bugliosi‘s world everybody is honorable and forthright—even Hoover and Johnson. This leads him to make preposterous statements that make no sense for a man gifted with such a keen mind. In other places, he seems to have no knowledge of the material he writes about and makes statements that are contradictory in his narrative.

Bugliosi’s whole approach to the Kennedy assassination is virtually the same as that of the Commission he wishes to defend. If facts and research don’t bolster the lone gunman then debunk it or ignore it all together. The Warren Commission decided via a secret meeting in January of 1964, that for various political reasons (see my piece, The Investigation That Never Was) they would basically run with Lee H. Oswald as the sole assassin and no other conspirators. Bugliosi takes the same path, though his is not as political. He states in his first chapter that Oswald is “guilty as sin.” From here, no objective investigation is going to be conducted within these pages, despite Bugliosi’s claims otherwise (the WC did likewise). The evidence will be made to conform to the theory. If it doesn’t, it is debunked or disregarded. And Bugliosi turns a blind eye to a lot in Reclaiming History.

The Bugliosi Silent Treatment
One of the “silent treatments” Bugliosi hands out is his treatment of the Joseph Dolce ballistics wounds research. Dolce, chairman of the Army’s Wounds Ballistic Board with over 20 years experience studying ballistic wounds, was contacted by the WC to do tests to determine if bullets striking human bone would maintain their shape as the “pristine bullet” that was recovered at the Parkland Hospital. After hitting ten cadaver wrists with Oswald’s rifle, Dolce concluded all ten were “markedly deformed.” Not a single one resembled what is known as CE 399—the magic bullet.

Joseph Dolce was ignored. Since his research contradicted a major piece of evidence in the “official” scenario of assassination, he was never called to testify under oath nor was his investigation ever mentioned in the 26 volumes of evidence or hearings. Years later, Dolce would be ignored by the House Select Committee on Assassinations as well. Not until Dolce was interviewed in 1986 did information finally appear on his work what he uncovered that the Commission did not want to see or hear.

Bugliosi’s treatment of the Dolce affair is the same. In fact, no mention of the cadaver experiment is mention in his book, or for that matter, in the nearly 1,000 pages of End Notes that is on the accompanying disc. Bugliosi refers to Dolce as a consultant but never as the chairman of the Army’s Wounds Ballistic Board. Dolce’s work is a major contribution in the investigation Kennedy’s death and Bugliosi commits a major slight of said work to maintain the lone gunman premise.

No Hearts of Stone
It was uncovered by researchers that the Warren Commission’s transcript of their interview with the President’s widow was edited. In fact, the original has the notation: “Reference to wounds deleted.” But no reason was given for the deletion. Researchers finally got the full transcription in the early 70s and many were outraged by this suppression of witness testimony that never made its way to any of the investigations—WC or HSCA.

Here are Jackie Kennedy’s comments that were deleted: “I was trying to hold his hair on. From the front there was nothing—suppose there must have been. But from the back you could see, you know, you were trying to hold his hair on, and his skull on.”

A very telling statement because Mrs. Kennedy is the first and closest witness to the President’s head wounds. And most importantly, she is saying he has a rear head wound that must be attended to. She places herself on the side of the Parkland doctor’s and their medical staff that witnessed a huge rear wound in the back of Kennedy’s head. The autopsy physicians (Humes, Boswell, Fink) claim in their official report and sworn testimony that the rear of the head had a small wound the diameter of the bullet Oswald alleged to have fired. Of course Kennedy’s head wounds are a major controversy that rages to this day with two sets of doctors in disagreement.

Unbelievably, Bugliosi states on page 29 of his End Notes,
“Frankly, the only thing the critics have proved from this episode is that the Warren Commission members were not made of stone.”

Frankly, the only thing Bugliosi proves from his remark is that he doesn’t give a damn what the truth is. If he were, he would be as incredulous as the critics are, but strangely, he is indifferent to this deception committed on the public by the Warren Commission.

The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald
Bugliosi goes on and on about his mock trial he did on TV, held in London of Oswald. Guess who wins? The prosecution led by Vincent Bugliosi, of course. He uses this as further evidence of Oswald’s guilt. Bugliosi had the nerve to state that his fake TV trial has “historical importance” because is more reliable than both the Warren Commission Report and the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

But it gets even more outlandish when he looks the jurors in the eye and tells them this is “one of the most important trials in the history of this country.” The jurors are all actors; the county is England where this charade took place. There is no defendant; he’s dead. The witnesses are under oath but not an oath that means anything as no one will go to jail for perjury. I stated earlier that Bugliosi’s arrogance has no bounds. Perhaps I understated it!

Mark Lane Gets a Sucker Punch
Attorney Mark Lane, one of the Warren Commission’s first critics and author of many best selling books on the Kennedy assassination comes under heavy fire from Bugliosi. The attacks start out mild and soon ramp up to the malicious. It looks pretty bad for Lane till you read his rebuttal at www.ctka.net. If Lane is to be believed, and I believe him to be truthful, Bugliosi blunders bad enough to be sued for slander. This would be nothing new for the former prosecutor who was sued for slander in the early 70s and settled to the tune of $15,000. Bugliosi accuses Lane of portraying himself as a Dallas police officer to arrange an interview with a witness. Lane says the transcript clearly shows him identifying himself by his real name “Mark Lane.” I do not know why Lane is not suing for such an outrageous statement.

What all of his demonstrates are severe flaws in Bugliosi character. He is so bound to discredit the critics that he resorts to imaginary tales. His fact checking takes a dive as well with many mistakes. It shows him to be a deceitful and strange personality and casts doubt on his aim to objectively find out what the truth is in this case.

The Invisible Man
Bugliosi likes to attack the more credible and accredited witnesses that don’t go along with the script. A case in point is the President’s personal physician Dr. George Burkley. Dr. Buckley is an interesting witness as he was in the motorcade when the shots were fired, was present at the Parkland Hospital trauma ward as the doctors there tried to resuscitate the dying President, signed the death certificate (with the throat injury described as an entry wound), accompanied the body back on Air Force One to Bethesda Naval for the autopsy.

Bugliosi attempts to discredit Dr. Burkley by attacking his positioning of the back wound, listed in the death certificate at being located at the third thoracic vertebrae. Bugliosi cites testimony from the HSCA claiming that x-rays showed that the first thoracic vertebrae at the point of entry on the back. That is way to high. Bugliosi is trying to pull a rabbit out of the hat for this one. First of all, an X-ray is not going to show the bullet wound since there is no bone damage. Secondly, there are no bullet fragments so no path of the bullet’s trajectory can be traced. Thirdly, no flesh wound would be visible on an X-ray. And lastly, Dr. Burkley did not make the call on the back wound position—that was determined by the Parkland physicians. Dr. Burkley was there as a witness and to sign the death certificate.

If Bugliosi were attempting a fair and honest investigation, he would be better served in examining why Dr. Burkley, a key witness, was never interviewed by the FBI, or the Secret Service, and never called to testify under oath to the Warren Commission. His name is never mentioned in the 912-page report, nor is the death certificate reprinted in the 26 volumes of complied evidence. Even the autopsy face sheet, which he signed as a witness, has his name erased (the original in the Nation Archives has his signature on it). Why is this man such a pariah? Possibly because he didn’t go along with the Government’s official story?

Dr. Burkley is the Warren Commission’s Invisible Man. He is Bugliosi’s Invisible Man as well.

The Limousine Blunder
Bugliosi’s rabid anti-conspiracy notions lead him down strange paths of denial that are easily debunked. A good example of this is cleaning of the Presidential limousine at Parkland Hospital by the Secret Service. Bugliosi can’t believe the Secret Service would do this before contacting the FBI to first investigate because, after all, the limo is a rolling crime scene. In Bugliosi’s own words: "But on the face of it, it appears highly unlikely that the Secret Service would wash away the "crime scene" before the FBI criminalists could examine the car, and there is no testimony or statement from anyone that this was done." (Page 33, End Notes, #54)

But first, Bugliosi misrepresents what happened. He claims that, on the word of unnamed “critics” the back seat of the limousine was washed out. Color photographs clearly shows there was plenty of gore left in that area. It was the rear trunk and bumper that was cleaned off. Never the less, this is destruction of material evidence at the crime scene and should not have been. The tissue and blood matter on the trunk would leave traces of the kill shot’s trajectory. In a few days the limousine would be hastily shipped off to Detroit for refurbishing, further destroying any further evidence.

Then Bugliosi implies there are no photographs taken of the event. They are—a simple Google search reveals them. A New York Times photographer was present at the scene of the cleaning and snapped the photos. In the photographs, SS agents and Dallas police officers can be seen plainly cleaning off the car with a bucket of water present near the car. Oddly, Bugliosi lists in his bibliography, Death in Dealey Plaza. This book has one of photos. By listing this book in his bibliography, that is tantamount to claiming he read the book for his research. Did he really? Or he just can’t handle the truth that things are out of place here?

Bugliosi, already in deep water, goes even further. He claims there were no witnesses to the event. In his own words: “…there is no testimony or statement from anyone that this was done." Wrong! Three print journalists were there as witnesses and all wrote articles that were published at that time. Most noted of the three was Tom Wicker of the New York Times. His account is easily found by a Google search. He clearly describes the incident complete with the bloody bucket of water situated by the car.

Mr. Bugliosi, do you think we don’t have Internet connections out here and can’t double-check what you write?

In Closing
This piece is not meant to be a complete recounting of Reclaiming History’s errors. A Google search will find a load of expert critiques of Bugliosi’s book. In the future I am sure someone will publish a more complete analysis of Bugliosi’s approach to the Kennedy assassination. Despite the flaws Reclaiming History is a great research volume for students of the assassination to study. However, Bugliosi fails in not conducting a fair investigation of the facts and letting his own personal animosity intrude.

Despite Vince Bugliosi being rabidly anti conspiracy he is on the record supporting a conspiracy in the death of the President’s brother Robert in 1968. Ironic that he gets one and not the other.


Sources: Reclaiming History, Reclaiming History End Notes (disc/PDF), Death in Dealey Plaza, Breach of Trust, MarryFerrell.org, Google

assassination

The Investigation That Never Was

The controversy that has plagued the assassination of John F. Kennedy has its genesis in the Warren Commission. The very name of this body lives in infamy as the first official government investigation of the Kennedy assassination. Formed rapidly after the death of the president, it operated for nine months before its conclusions were presented to the press and public in a 912-page book and twenty-six volumes of evidence and witness testimony. The mainstream press, then as now, largely accepted the Warren Commission’s conclusion. However, trouble started when independent researchers began going through the twenty-six volumes and uncovered information that contradicted the main report. Before long, a flood of books and articles began appearing questioning the Commission’s conclusion on the death of John Kennedy that has not abated to this day.

The fact of the matter is it was not a real investigation, in any sense of the word. It was confined from the onset with considerable political intrigue. Commission members leaked confidential information to government agencies. FBI director Hoover exerted acute and relentless pressure to restrict the Commission to the FBI’s initial report declaring Oswald as the lone assassin. Earl Warren proved himself such a spineless leader that lead lawyer J. Lee Rankin had to set the agenda, earning the nickname, “The Rankin Commission Report.” Other issues, such as destruction of material evidence, conflicting witness testimony, irrelevant evidence and witness testimony, inter-governmental turf wars, and leaks to the press, only added to the struggle. Ultimately, they feared they were going to learn more than they needed to know, without an ability to resolve these matters, and settled for a politically expedient narrative of a lone gunman early on, before any witnesses were called to testify.

The Hoover Problem

The Warren Commission had a list of powerful players to deal with. The main one was FBI Director, J. Edgar Hoover. Any attempt to do independent investigation or interview witnesses was viewed by the Director as interlopers invading his turf. He was highly insulted. He worked stridently to protect his image and that of the FBI. In one row with the Commission, he threatened to deny them access to the FBI crime lab, considered the best forensic lab in the world. Warren Commission lead council Lee Rankin had to constantly patronize Hoover to get out of these tight spots. Then Hoover would complain about having his ass kissed too much!

Much early debate centered on whether or not Oswald was an FBI informant. After much hand-wringing they finally decided to let Hoover settle the case by submitting a pro forma affidavit. It was basically Hoover, giving his “word” that Oswald was never employed by the Bureau for any investigative work. No other evidence needed. Legally, a worthless document, but an important one politically. It left everybody off the hook and gave the impression of having resolved an issue—one that nobody wanted to deal with. The same thing would be done later with the Deputy Director of the CIA, Richard Helms, to resolve the issue of Oswald being a CIA operative.

The Secret Meeting and the Telltale Tapes

And this basically is what they did on January 22, 1964, in a closed-door meeting, before the first witness was ever called to testify. This executive meeting was hastily called and the issues discussed were so sensitive that all the members present, including lead council Lee Rankin, decided to destroy all records of the meeting. There was just one problem—some honest soul out there did not follow orders and destroy the stenographer’s tapes. Somehow, they were deposited in the National Archives where eventually, a FOIA lawsuit pried them loose. We now know what happened in that closed-door meeting that the Commissioners did not want the public to know—Lee Harvey Oswald was too hot to handle. They had been discussing rumors that Oswald may have been an FBI informant. Their fear was that if it were ever known that Oswald was a government agent then the public would never believe the official story—that Oswald was the lone gunman and no conspiracy was in play. They decided to rubber stamp the FBI report at that moment. Any attempt at an objective investigation died here.

Curious though. Lead husky Rankin wrote a memo, unclassified, giving a brief synopsis of this January meeting. In it, he mentioned discussion of Oswald’s possible involvement with the FBI and further stated that the Commission had decided to pursue all leads on this. That was a lie! They had no intention of doing any investigation of Oswald as an informer or government agent and in fact were headed in the opposite direction. Obviously, Rankin wrote the memo for self-serving purposes thinking it would be the only historical record of this meeting for all time.

Oswald—Wrong Place, Wrong Time

That wasn’t the only hot potato the Warren Commission ran into. Another hot potato involved Oswald’s location at the time of the assassination. Oswald told the Dallas police, the Secret Service, and the FBI that he was on the first floor at the time of the shooting. Shortly thereafter, two men came in claiming to be Secret Service agents requesting to use the phone. Oswald made note that one of the men had a crew cut and carried a briefcase. Later, the Secret Service got in contact with the two men, Pierce Allman and Terrance Ford, who turned out to be program directors for the local TV station, WFAA. They said they had indeed asked a bystander to use the phone moments after the shooting but had not identified themselves as Secret Service agents. They also could not recognize Oswald from photographs they were shown. However, they did independently corroborate Oswald’s account of being on the first floor of the building moments after the assassination. Also of interest, one of the program directors did have a crew cut and was carrying a briefcase.

The Secret Service dropped any further investigation of the incident. Oswald was clearly at the wrong place and the wrong time in the “official” scenario of events even with two corroborating witnesses to prove his account. This dropping of investigative leads for political reasons is common throughout the whole period of the Warren Commission’s existence.

The Lone Bullet Theory

Without a doubt, the most controversial part of the Warren Commission is the lone bullet theory. Initially, they had it right. The first shot hits Kennedy in the back, the second bullet strikes Texas governor John Connally in the back, the third shot, the kill shot, strikes Kennedy in the head. Both John and Nellie Connally testified to this fact and never wavered for the rest of their lives. If they had left it at that, perhaps we wouldn’t be discussing this forty plus years later. But into history steps James Tague, with his scratched cheek.

Tague was watching the motorcade on Commerce street, when a bullet ricocheted off the curb, dislodging a concrete fragment that scratched his cheek. Tague is officially listed as the third person wounded on that fateful day. He was not brought in and interviewed till months after the Warren Commission was in progress. His testimony created new challenges to the official version of events. The scenario of three shots and three wounds ended with Tague’s cheek scratch. How would the Commission handle this new issue? No problem is you have lawyers to make up stuff. Now one bullet was needed to perform double-duty.

Entering the mix is the (not so) pristine bullet found on a Parkland Hospital gurney, known as CE 399. It is supposed to have slipped out of Gov. Connally’s thigh after passing through his chest and wrist.

This can never be known for sure. Even the finding of this bullet is controversial. It is not properly documented—there is no FD 302 form on this piece of evidence, as the FBI would file. The FBI agent, Odom, stated he did not recover this bullet, nor even being at the Parkland Hospital and interviewing the witnesses that recovered it. Consequently, the witnesses can’t identify the bullet in photos as the one they discovered. Was CE 399 possibly a plant? We’ll never know for certain but one thing is undeniable—CE 399 was fired from a long bore firearm and is slightly bent and twisted.

It wasn't long before Arlen Specter invented the single bullet theory (which he now likes to call a “fact”) to explain the inherent problems. That is a whole book unto itself, which I shall pass on here. The important point is the Warren Commission was in need of an expert witness to decide if CE 399 could do all the damage it was reported to do and arrive appearing in such good shape. They found their best expert in Joseph Dolce, chairman of the Army’s Wounds Ballistic Board. Using Oswald’s rifle fired by a top Army marksman, they test fired bullets into the wrists of ten cadavers. Their results were conclusive—all of the 10 bullets fired were in Dolce’s words, “markedly deformed” showing the mushrooming shape that bullets display when striking dense objects such as bone. None of them resembled CE 399.

Dolce was never subpoenaed to testify under oath for his findings nor was his evidence included in the 26 volumes of data. The Warren Commission was forced to ignore expert witness testimony like that of Dolce to make their version of events work. (Even mainstream WC defender Vince Bugliosi in Reclaiming History ignores Dolce’s work.) Eventually, they brought in three more experts to qualify that CE 399 was capable of causing all of the wounds in Kennedy and Connally. (One of the experts, Dr. Alfred Olivier was a veterinarian. Just how much of a ballistic wounds expert would he be? Well, it was a dog and pony show at this point, might as well bring in a vet.)

The Magic Moving Bullet Holes

The Single Bullet theory is a mess. Since James Tague came forward with his account of the bullet strike on the curb, and they had decided that only three shots were fired, one bullet now has to do double-duty. Much has been written about how improbable all of this is, but the most egregious action was Gerald Ford moving the bullet hole from Kennedy's back to the back of the neck. Kennedy's back wound was the "third thoracic vertebra." That is, the upper back near the shoulder blade. The President's shirt and jacket both show the bullet hole in the same position, as clearly shown in the autopsy photographs, the sworn testimony of the pathologists, and the death certificate. This shifting of bullet holes and the presenting of it as a fact to the public is so outrageous it boggles the mind and common sense. It is the misrepresentation of evidence in a murder investigation. And they wonder why we are debating these issues decades later!

Ford would defend his actions years later by saying, "My changes were only an attempt to be more precise." Perhaps more precise in the fiction they were writing? As can be seen, a political solution was obtained by doing this. The truth…that’s a different story.

Malfeasance

Ultimately, the Warren Commission veered into a political resolution to explain the Kennedy assassination. And by doing so they had to play loose with the facts. Here is a brief list of offenses committed by the WC:

• Failed to objectively investigate the murder of President Kennedy in a good faith manner by establishing Lee Oswald as the lone gunman in a secret meeting on January 22, 1964.
• Did not hire independent investigators in fear of offending Hoover.
• Ignored expert witness testimony when it contradicted the official version of events. Dolce for his bullet experiments, the Oak Ridge Labs spectrographical analysis of bullet lead and Oswald’s paraffin tests, and so on.
• Failed to adequately investigate Oswald’s background out of the fear of uncovering him as a government agent.
• Failed to adequately investigate any leads on possible conspiracies. (Six main areas of inquires were established. Four involved Oswald only.)
• Deliberately misrepresented evidence (i.e., Kennedy’s back wound positions.)
• Failed to subpoena important witnesses, such as Admiral Buckley, the President’s personal physician who was present in the motorcade, at Parkland Hospital when the President died, and at the autopsy in Bethesda Naval Hospital. Buckley signed the death certificate, which listed the neck wound as entry wound—not exit. His name is never mentioned in the 912-page report, nor is the death certificate reprinted in the 26 volumes of complied evidence.
• Had a liar for a lead counsel in J. Lee Rankin. His record of deception and suppression of facts corrupted the whole process. The most egregious lie was in telling Sen. Richard Russell that his dissenting opinion on the lone bullet theory could be in the final report. Rankin made sure it was not included.

In Summary

The Warren Commission decided early on that if they looked too much into Lee Oswald’s past they might open a can of worms that could never be contained. They quickly went for the long gunman scenario before they had called the first witness. The very fact that they wanted to proceed in this manner, and deciding it behind closed doors, with all documents of the meeting ordered destroyed (which were not), is a conspiracy in itself. And it is right to point out that the Warren Commission members are not the only conspirators. They are joined by Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, J. Lee Rankin, Arlen Specter, the FBI, the CIA, Justice Department, Secret Service, and Office of Naval Intelligence, just to name a few.

I could go on and on about how whacked this whole thing became but Gerald McKnight did an excellent job of documenting that in his book, Breach of Trust.  It is an excellent examination of the shenanigans and political manipulation that went on.

They never wanted to uncover what the truth was.  The fix was in.

Sources: McKnight, Breach of Trust. Scott, Deep Politics. Bugliosi, Reclaiming History. www.history-matters.com