Why? Because Pat Speer has the patience and fortitude to examine and review just about everything said about the Kennedy assassination leading up to, and during, the 50th Anniversary of the event in 2013. This includes it all: print, web, and TV. I really didn’t have the wherewithal to sit thru it thinking I would be so angry I would not be able to sleep at night. I’m so glad somebody did this work as it needed to be done.
His review, entitled, The Onslaught: the Media's Response to the 50th Anniversary of the JFK Assassination, is a master clinic in media machinations involving presenting the case to the American, where most television commentators on the major networks, or journalists, have little or no understanding of the event. After reading two very long pages of Speer’s analysis, it’s really quite amazing to see such a divergent group of people, from the web, print media, PBS, and cable news news networks, people of different backgrounds from seasoned print journalists to new media writers, can all come to the same conclusion: The Warren Commission got it right.
The conclusion being that there is no conspiracy, that conspiracy is just a bunch of made-up stories, that Lee Oswald is guilty of not only killing President Kennedy, but Officer Tippet, and attempted to assassinate General Walker as well. It’s amazing to see them all walk in unison together like this. It’s a hive-mind in operation. Just one big collective of dead thinkers from all over the place.
The stumbling block for all of these people is the single bullet theory. SBT as we call it. Two ballistic experts, Luke and Michael Haag (father and son), are tasked with replicating it. They will make the rounds to a host of documentaries on various networks. Their tests are all supposed to be scientific and feature stunts that have been done before. As Speer shows, much is flawed in their demonstrations--wrong distances, angles, still targets, not shooting at bone, and so on. How ironic to have experts trying to prove a theory that comes from non-ballistic experts, i.e., lawyers. How convoluted is that? Very! The staff attorney’s created the SBT for purely political reasons once the FBI came up with an errant bullet striking the curb on Commerce wounding James Tague. In the end, the Haag’s come off as a pair of fakers to those of us who have studied the case. At no point in these demonstrations, is it ever revealed that the Warren Commission in 1964 tasked ballistic experts doctors Dolce and Light to conduct tests on cadavers using Oswald’s rifle at the U. S. Army Edgewood Arsenal. As Dr. Dolce stated in an interview in 1986, each of the ten test fired bullets were in his words, “markably deformed.” Dr. Dolce was not called to give testimony to Warren Commission and his findings were buried in a report, published in March of 1965, that was classified “confidential” for 8 years before being placed in the NARA. You’ll never see this mentioned in any of these programs.
And this thread of fakery runs through just about every show and article on JFK’s assassination. I think what it shows more than anything is how co-opted the American media is when it comes to the controversy surrounding the case. It should be a time honored American tradition to question and test what the government tells us.
I don’t know what the are more bothered with...conspiracy or controversy.
Here is the quote, by Pulitzer prize-winner David Horsey, in the LA Times that most aggravates me:
“In the real world, though, conspiracies tend to unravel. Somebody squeals, somebody leaks, somebody betrays. We always find out – and usually because a conspiring collective of humans is bound to screw up.”
Does this learned man understand anything about history at all? It’s rife with conspiracy. To suggest that conspiracies unravel due to human frailty is ludicrous. Plots can unravel but they mainly unravel after the deed is carried out. And some, such as the JFK conspiracy can last seemingly forever by having jack legs such as Horsey who would rather pontificate on a national medium rather than conduct a proper investigation. In many ways people like this are unwittingly government shills, if not on the payroll. And we know what former CIA director William Colby said about that in front of Congress; that all major media figures are under their control.
Conspiracies are real. Conspiracy is not a theory, it's a crime. The one involving JFK’s death is ongoing for 50 years. It does happen. About a dozen people were involved with the conspiracy to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Who talked there? Nobody. Dozens of men were involved in the plot to a assassinate Adolf Hitler. Who talked there? Nobody. The nineteen hijackers on 9/11. Did any of them talk? Of course not.
I think Pat Speer sums it up when commenting on the early journalists that looked into the assassination. As he put it, “..they basically accept whatever evidence is put on the plate before them.”
To be fair, that was a time when most people believed their government. However, a host of revelations were to follow over the next decade to dispel that. A whole lot of lying was uncovered from Vietnam, Watergate, and the CIA/FBI revelations. The disappointing thing is that people in the media today still believe what is presented to them with minimal examination.
Speer finishes up with the following: “I mean, have any of the old newsmen dragged out to tell their stories --MacNeil, Lehrer, Schieffer, Rather, Brokaw, Aynesworth, Allman, and Payne--expressed the slightest doubt about the most doubtful aspect of the Warren Commission's conclusions: the single-bullet theory? I don't believe so.”
So the most common prevailers of the lone nut theory in all of these 50th Anniversary media presentations (print-web-TV) either have no working knowledge of the case, are government shills, money and fame seekers, habitual liars, or just a bunch of opinionated blowhards. I imagine the next generation of stooges will be in place for the 100th Anniversary. I’m glad I won’t be here to see it.
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