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‘Blog This: President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and 50+ Years Later’
Allow me to open with one observation:
- Any single act is itself one fleeting moment, one small thread weaved among the fabric of before time and after time.
These are the ways of all events, including the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.
I shall share with you the environment of my ‘before time’ where and how I lived that November 1963 and my ‘after time’ reactions and realisations through the subsequent days, months, years, and decades since that moment in time.
My Dad was a JFK fan. I clearly recall Senator John Kennedy’s 1960 Presidential campaign:
- ‘Kennedy, Kennedy, he’s our man; Nixon’s in the garbage can’.
My Dad was finishing his degree at Arizona State University. His major was Political Science; his career plan was to be a high school History teacher.
My Dad was employed as a drafter at Sperry Flight Systems; he worked at their Northern Phoenix Bell Road facility. He brought in-house company magazines home for us to see and read. (I wish we kept them.) He showed his work to us that included drawings of what appeared then as science-fiction aircraft. Not rocket ships, but rocket-propelled, winged aircraft. These vehicles were being designed to travel from ground to space orbit and back as space airplanes, not rocket ships; ya know, we later saw them as the ‘Shuttle’.
I remember the Kennedy space events in those years of the early 1960s. We watched the rocket launches, journeys, and splashdowns on television. My dad took me to see a travelling exhibit of a Mercury capsule.
I have memories as our ‘typical’ family came apart. My parents separated and divorced in 1962, before I began 1st Grade. My sister Kathy (two years my elder) and I began living with our father once the court decreed final custody to him (Summer 1963).
Now living with my Dad, he placed Kathy and me into our Catholic parish school beginning Autumn 1963; I began 2nd Grade.
My Dad always brought news into our home through newspapers, magazines, radio, television. He was always debating, discussing, testing, and quizzing news, politics, and current affairs issues. We spent Sundays reading the Sunday paper.
I remember hearing my father playing his bedroom radio as we got ready for the day: CBS radio news on then-KPHO 1480 AM. When he came home from work we watched ‘Huntley – Brinkley Report’ on NBC.
My paternal grandmother added NBC’s ‘Today’ show as part of our morning news routine when she came to live with us beginning February 1964.
I fell ill with a typical childhood illness October 1963: chicken pox. My Dad brought his radio to my room to listen to KPHO news radio during the day. Mrs. Hudson was our next door neighbour; she came to look in on me while my Dad was at work.
My Dad bought a 7-inch reel-to-reel audio tape recorder to record the Sunday morning network talking head shows (‘Meet the Press’, ‘Issues and Answers’, ‘Face the Nation’). He probably did that to help as reference for his college classes. He did not allow me to use his tape recorder without his approved supervision. Never mind, I was a curious kid. I occasionally snuck it out after school before he arrived home from work. I was eager to listen to these news show tapes on my own. Too bad he routinely recorded over previous shows; he left but a handfull of reel-to-reel tapes I now have in a box somewhere inside my carport storage room. What a small treasure!
(Up-date – 29 Nov 14: Burglars ransacked my home and stole personal possessions during 2014 – including the entire collection of these reel-to-reel audio tapes. Their lack of intellect reflects they likely had no idea what was on those tapes.)
Visitation to our mother and Allen her second husband (beginning during the Summer of 1963) was an almost opposite experience from my father’s environment. My Mom and Allen rarely ever watched television news or listened to radio news; I recall the absence of newspapers or news magazines. It was almost taboo to watch TV news shows or discuss current events or politics at her house. Both my Mom and Allen showed themselves to be wack-o Republican right-wing pro-segregationist prejudicial bigots. My Mom would tell me she was proud to have voted for Wallace in 1968. Could it be their refusal to be informed explained their ways?
(Up-date – 29 Nov 15: Herman Cane said on his radio show last week: ‘I love the un-informed voter.’)
I recall that I still had plenty of Hallowe’en candy that I was saving in a box – innocently rationing it to last as long as possible. Among my favourites were these caramel lumps variously wrapt in either black or orange waxed paper; I don’t see them much anymore. I never ate from that supply again; that candy remained in that box, becoming hard and stale after the event of 22 Nov 63.
I remember that late-morning Friday. We were still in class; we had not yet gone to lunch. Someone came to deliver the message to our teacher (I think her name was Sister Mary Patrick). She told us that President Kennedy was hurt (it was still early in the ordeal and no one really knew, or mentioned, his condition at that time) and that the entire school would be going to Mass to pray for him. The school sent us home after Mass.
Walking alone between home and school my first two school years was not unusual. It would not be unusual Kathy and I would walk separately this school year now living as latchkey kids with our Dad.
We frequently stayed at the Corbett’s home after school. Not that day. I walked home alone that day both desperate and eager to talk to someone about the unfolding events – anyone with intelligence. There would be no one that after school afternoon.
Kathy would not do for serious conversation. She had neither the presence to discuss the events that transpired at Dallas nor the greater implications they wrought. It would be pointless wanting to discuss with Kathy what became my precocious perceptions about the conspiracies, CIA, Mafia, world reactions, and political repercussions surrounding JFK’s assassination. Kathy’s mental and physical state mattered not a whit because she considered that I was but a stupid runt spewing wild conjectures. This from a sister who held no concern for news and issues.
Kathy and I were not always close; I’m not sure all the reasons why. She shunned me as an unwanted ‘tag along’. She bullied me. I have since learned about birth order, first-born, family composition identity base, sibling bullies, etc. I have come to understand her frequent assaults against me since my earliest memories; she holds that animalistic first-born instinct to kill younger siblings as do chicks in a bird’s nest.
Bullies have the pathetic habit of crying, clinging, and falling into a crumpled mess whenever reality confronts them. Kathy proved no different. She showed the true constitution of such a bully; she sat clutching her Thumbelina doll in her room the remainder of that day then clung to our father the moment he arrived home that evening.
Calling my Mother would not do for reasons already described. I expect she and Allen went celebrating that day.
TV news here at Phoenix was minimal; this was 1963, not 2013. Phoenix stations were: KTVK (channel 3), KPHO (channel 5), KOOL (channel 10), and KTAR (channel 12) with names such as Frank Thompson, Dave Nichols, Bill des Auxtelles, Art Brock, and the despised Bill Close (Phoenix’ very own public, loyal, and proud Bircher who held total control of the station’s newscasts and held no reluctance to editorialise them to his political bias).
I received my fill of repetitious network reports. I tuned to KPHO TV to see if they were running Wallace and Ladmo. I wanted to know what they were doing. No comedy that day; they were consoling their youth audience.
The events that day broke my Dad, the JFK fan. We watched the news together that entire weekend. We saw all the up-dates, the examinations, the memorials. We stayed home to watch the funeral procession and burial together. We watched live TV coverage through all that and in the midst we were shocked with the rest of the nation witnessing Jack Ruby shoot Lee Harvey Oswald in the police basement. Now I was seriously formulating my thoughts about these events.
I count myself among the number who have come to accept that November 1963 weekend as probably among the most news-packed of our life that we will ever remember. The aftermath would fill the following days, weeks, months, and years – consuming some more than others.
My Dad bought that JFK memorial phonograph record that weekend. We waited until 1966 when he eventually obtained a record player and we finally listened to it. I wore it out. I memorised and learned that entire album – both the narration and Kennedy’s speeches. I could deliver each speech exactly as JFK delivered them.
I received a JFK biography book for Christmas 1963. I bought other biographical and non-fiction books about JFK; I read and re-read them. I memorised passages from them. I was becoming a ‘student’ of JFK, his life, the assassination, the politics, the conspiracies, the white-washing, the assassination cover-ups.
We had subscriptions to ‘Life’, ‘Look’, and other publications. ‘Life’ published frames from the Zapruder film. Both my Dad and I, amateur photographers, took interest in those prints; I spent hours examining those frames and noting the times represented by each frame and of the whole.
I followed the news about the investigation of the assassinations of both JFK and Oswald, the debate about the bullets, the conspiracies, the denials of conspiracies. I already knew on 22 Nov 63 that there was a conspiracy. I tried to discuss with adults that the full truth would never be revealed to anyone among we the living – that those who controlled the events and the media would seal the facts until long after we all pass, prosecutions become impossible, and interest waned. This remains as much a story about cover-ups, lies, and deceptions by those who control the media and facilitated by those who unquestioningly accept media lies.
My Dad and I watched the Warren Commission contort evidence into their own ‘facts’ to fit their pre-established conclusions published as the ‘Warren Report’, a tome meant to assuage popular American sentimentalities rather than expose the truths wherever they may be. To this day it remains that the more they repeat their lies, the more people believe them as truth.
It would come to pass that I studied and debated these and other events with historian Ralph Epperson during the 1980s and 1990s. We did not always agree on every issue and every point on every topic; we came to independent agreement on many.
I’ll try explaining these conspiracies and theories, not solely mine but a representative perspective of a major portion of both students and experts alike. I’ll also support my positions by demonstrating the circular il-logic of the Warren Commission, its ‘Warren Report’, and its participants who benefitted by straining credulity of its ‘Report’.
I do not need to present proof or fact to answer every claim of every other dissertation. I do not need to explain every player in this tragedy. The purpose of this presentation is that I need only present Constitutional ‘reasonable doubt’ against the flawed ‘Warren Report’ to support my position and cast ‘reasonable doubt’ on their claim that Oswald was the ‘lone assassin’. Everyone else can sort through the participants and formulate their own theories or conspiracies.
The likely conspiracy involves any manor or combination of CIA, Mafia, Vice President Richard Nixon, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, Batista Cubans, and other notorious elements. This monograph will include a demonstration how and why Castro, Cuba, and Soviet Union could not be part of any effort to assassinate JFK.
JFK was actively making efforts with Cuba and Soviet Union to reverse the damage of both the ‘Bay of Pigs Invasion’ and the October 1962 ‘missile crisis’. Both Kennedy and Castro were approaching the joint understanding of fact that the ‘Bay of Pigs Invasion’ was Nixon’s plan, not Kennedy’s.
Then-Vice President Nixon expected to soundly defeat Kennedy in the 1960 election. This ‘Invasion’ would put a feather in Nixon’s Presidential ‘Red Baiting’ cap and establish the tone of his administration. Nixon would prove himself to be the big, bad, anti-‘Pink-o Commie’ killer, ‘freeing’ Cuba for the return of Batista Cubans and Mafia thugs who ran the island and its corrupt tourist industry until the Castro overthrow. Recall Nixon had his own association with known Mafioso. Nixon lost much when Castro expelled Batista and the Mafia and gambling scourge.
Nixon’s invasion of Cuba was full steam ahead as his Vice President term was concluding and the Presidency was nearing his grasp. He did not want to lose both the 1960 election and his invasion in quick succession. He did not want Kennedy mucking his plans.
Nixon’s Batista Cuban ‘exilees’ expected Kennedy’s support at the same relish as Nixon. Newly-elected President Kennedy was eager to prove to the Birchers and ‘Red Baiters’ that his manhood was bigger than Nixon’s. (Male anatomy is the reason for many wars.) Nixon conned JFK into his newly-minted dupe. Kennedy learned many lessons from that invasion, but only after it failed. Kennedy wrongly presumed one political lesson: that conducting Nixon’s dirty war would put him in good stead with Nixon’s followers. Democrats too often make that mistake that, gee, if they only do what Republicans want, then Republicans will like them and maybe vote for them. IT NEVER WORKS! (Obama still has not learned this lesson.)
Nixon and the CIA re-designed the ‘Bay of Pigs Invasion’ to certain political and military failure for Kennedy, and reason to incite Nixon’s blind followers against Kennedy. Nixon, CIA, and Batista Cubans were so motivated that they were eager to sacrifice their own ‘soldiers’ to blame their failure on Kennedy. (We would come to witness Nixon sacrificing his ‘soldiers’ during the Watergate era. Republican commentator David Brooks would later boast that ‘We Republicans are good for blaming Democrats’ on PBS ‘Newshour’ in 2006.)
Recall how the Catholic Church and other religions in the USA historically opposed a Catholic adherent as a public office-holder at any level, especially President. Catholics, Protestants, and other religious all soundly and overwhelmingly opposed Al Smith in 1928, the first major candidate Catholic for President. Opponents feared Smith would declare the USA a ward of the Catholic Church and himself an underling of the Papacy. How dare any political candidate mingle religion into American government! How dare Smith, a Catholic, seek public office!
This strong anti-Catholic, anti-religion in American government, anti-Kennedy force continued from 1928 to 1960. Thus was the expected Nixon landslide election of 1960. That failed, but the same anti-Catholic, anti-Kennedy force continued to 1963 … and to Dallas.
Let’s fast-forward digress to the 2004 Presidential campaign of Senator John Kerry, himself a Catholic. That election cycle also saw witness to strong anti-Kerry, anti-Catholic forces. That time the combined pro-Bush, pro-Republican, pro-Neo-con, pro-Christian Conservative religion in government, pro-Conservative Catholic force led the opposition to Kerry, not because he is Catholic but because he is politically liberal – a liberal Catholic, gawd forbid! Conservative pro-Bush Catholics joined with Bush’s Christian Conservatives to demand their candidates and their political representatives un-Constitutionally impose their religion into American government.
If only those same people who, in 1928 and 1960, vigourously invoked Constitutional opposition of religion in American government would return to today’s environment and tell the citizenry a thing or two about their warning now unheeded.
It is necessary we revisit post-World War 2 Asia.
Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev were moving toward peace and reconciliation – awakened by the realities of ‘MAD’ (mutual assured destruction): any nuclear confrontation between or among any of the nuclear club was certain annihilation among all.
The Soviets and China were our World War 2 allies until President Harry Truman conspired with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to sell out USSR and China in the post-WW2 era. The Soviet ‘Warsaw Pact’ was the reaction to the Truman-Churchill sell-out. Kennedy’s developing foreign policy position was that it was long-past time to mend fences.
Republicans and conservatives hated Kennedy seeking to stop their ‘Cold War’, itself a Republican fabrication keeping nations in a state of continuous global war for war’s sake and to enrich its adherents of the Eisenhower-Nixon ‘military-industrial-governmental complex’. Those are the marks of Republican fascism, their policy since Herbert Hoover and Benito Mussolini established their ‘eternal alliance’ in 1925.
Recall that old saying that only Nixon could make peace with China or USSR. Nixon the avowed anti-‘Pink-o Commie’ achieved applause from like-avowed anti-‘Pink-o Commie’ Republicans and Birchers making their concept of ‘peace’ with ‘Pink-o Commie’ nations far different than Kennedy’s peace. Nixon and his Republicans and Birchers held influence over the media to control that message. He, not Kennedy, was their boy.
Kennedy’s peace efforts (relating to this topic) covered the entirety of both East and Southeast Asia, including unified and independent Korea and Viet Nam.
Many people incorrectly correlate Korea with Viet Nam. There are similarities, but there are key differences.
South Korea held long-standing efforts to re-claim national independence and to restore self-rule as the free nation of Korea separate from domination by Japan, China, USSR, and ‘North’ Korea.
Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos comprised French Indochina. Those nations also sought to restore their own unified national identity same as South Korea.
Korea achieved the beginning of its freedom from Japan as a result of treaty at the end of the World War 2. Not so for Viet Nam.
Recall that American GIs fought and died for Ho Chi Minh’s Viet Nam independence movement during World War 2’s War of the Pacific. Both Truman and his successor President Dwight Eisenhower reneged the American promise to Ho Chi Minh for their independent and unified Viet Nam at the end of the War and wrongly placed USA in an untenable position: restore France to their pre-WW2 colonial position. Minh’s only alternative was correctly seeking aid from USSR and China.
Herein lay JFK’s position: Kennedy clearly stated in his inaugural address that America would support any people who sought their own liberty. South Korea met that mark and to this day USA continues support for South Korea. South Viet Nam failed that mark.
South Korea, though not perfect, lacked the insidious corruption notable of South Viet Nam. South Korea fought hard for their liberty during the 1950s; by the 1960s, South Korea was moving ahead toward Democracy and an open economy.
In comparison, South Viet Nam continued moving into deeper political bribery and corruption. Recall the series of protests, monk self-immolations, and the brutal martial law with instant street executions. The common citizen of South Viet Nam wanted little to do with tyranny from the North, wanted even less from their corrupt South dictators, and was not as eager as South Korea to attain their own liberty. Both civilians at home and military on the battlefield held little support or loyalty to the tyranny of South Viet Nam, the desire for an independent free South Viet Nam, nor the notion of a divided Viet Nam. No amount of American civic or military support would change that Viet Namese construct. Kennedy wanted no USA participation supporting that indifferent South Viet Nam. Viet Nam’s post-WW2 future always was unification; it was happening with WW-2 ally Ho Chi Minh. Kennedy was willing to re-build that unified Viet Nam. Republicans opposed ally Ho Chi Minh and this free and united Viet Nam.
That corrupted South Viet Nam dragged down American efforts to resolve post-WW2 French Indochina. Kennedy opposed France’s demands to help them restore their colonial dominion. Kennedy sought European powers to relinquish their pre-WW2 colonial territories and to support their people toward their free and independent pre-colonial identities. France initially balked, dragged USA into their quagmire, then let ‘French Indochina’ go independent.
The Republican’s fabricated their ‘Domino Theory’ as a concept of Republican perpetual world war; they saw Southeastern Asia and Viet Nam as their location for a continued state of war. Kennedy and Khrushchev peace efforts disrupted that Republican notion. Kennedy would have led the USA, Khrushchev and USSR, and Mao Tse-tung and China into jointly-negotiated peace at Southeastern Asia and independence for the former colonies of French Indochina: Cambodia, Laos, Viet Nam. Nixon and Republicans opposed that peace. Republicans would eventually goad newly-inaugurated President Johnson into their war; he was their new dupe eager to also assert the size of his ‘manhood’ in the failed expectation of Republican votes.
Dallas, Texas, was (and is) the anti-Kennedy ‘hate capitol of the world’. Watch the filmed footage of the day. You will see the multitude of Confederate flags flowing freely – at least as numerous as American flags. Texas then and now hates peace, civil rights, and Kennedy. Anti-Kennedy forces had reason to personalise their hatred toward JFK. He spent the Summer of 1963 campaigning for peace, including his campaign for peace at Europe. He led a rally for peace among West and East at the Berlin Wall. JFK was now on his peace ‘victory tour’ of the USA and the beginnings of his 1964 Presidential campaign, the perfect opportunity for the anti-Kennedy forces to assassinate him.
Look at the Presidential motorcade as it arrived at Dealey Plaza. There are plenty of Secret Service, FBI, Dallas and Texas police, and other security personnel gaggled among the vehicles – except the Kennedy limousine. Why? Who gave the order to leave the Kennedy vehicle exposed? Why were security officers not riding the running boards and surrounding the Kennedy vehicle as they were the other cars?
The motorcade slowed from 25 mph to 5 mph once it entered Dealey Plaza. Why? Who gave that order to reduce the speed and make easy pickings of the passengers?
Okay, so you insist that Lee Harvey Oswald is the ‘lone assassin’ killer of President John F. Kennedy. This author questions that Oswald was the ‘lone assassin’ while open to debate the extent, if any, that Oswald was involved as one of multiple suspects or co-conspirators. This author is open to the possibility that perhaps Oswald may have been one of multiple participants in the murder, the definition of conspiracy.
We’ll discuss this assassination enquiry using the ‘Warren Report’ and common presumption that Oswald was the ‘lone assassin’, demonstrate Constitutional ‘reasonable doubt’ sufficient to acquit any defendant of all charges, and cast infamy upon the ‘Warren Report’, its members, and its adherents.
Oswald was a former US Marine who hired as a CIA operative to infiltrate Castro Cuba and the USSR on behalf of Republican ‘Red Baiting’, the Republican attitude of the day. That is how Oswald came to be connected to Castro Cubans and how he got into USSR and declare asylum while employed as a CIA mole. Oswald met and married Marina; they eventually departed USSR and moved to Texas.
This is where CIA and Mafia are likely co-conspirators – with or without Oswald. Oswald remained a CIA employee. Kennedy was reversing both Nixon’s CIA moves against Soviets and Cuba and the Eisenhower-Nixon ‘military-industrial-government complex’. Mafia wanted Kennedy killed. Mafia sought retaliation against Kennedys whose family empire was becoming ‘legal’. Then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy had been using the full force of the federal government to attack organised crime; Jimmy Hoffa was among the biggest of RFK’s targets.
Mob ‘hits’ usually involve their target, the killer, the killer’s killer, and perhaps the killer of the killer’s killer – all buffers insulating the top levels who give the kill order. Kennedy – killed. Oswald – killed. Jack Ruby – killed. The convenience was that conspirators chose Ruby because he was dying of terminal cancer – the ‘killer’ that guaranteed Ruby’s silence and good fortune to the bosses.
Bar owner Jack Ruby covered multiple bases inside the corrupted environment typical of that day. Ruby was both a Mafioso and a police buff. Ruby’s insider status brought him close to mob-connected police and eventual free entry to that Dallas police basement to kill Oswald.
Notice how Oswald was surrounded by police, reporters, and photographers when the police paraded him into the city jail Friday afternoon. Dallas police allowed Ruby to be present when they brought Oswald to the City jail and gave Ruby a dry run how he could kill Oswald. Then compare when those two Dallas police strung Oswald into the open and made him an easy target for Ruby Sunday afternoon. Sunday’s method of transport was no accident.
The ‘Warren Report’ described Oswald as a man of detailed planning.
Investigators claim they ‘found’ three bullet casings neatly arranged at the Texas School Book Depository. Not two casings, not four or more casings, but three casings, the same exact number to match the Warren Commission’s pre-determined conclusion that there were three gunshots. These casings were not strewn hither and yon as randomly ejected by the mechanics of the gun’s action. Why would Oswald take extra time to leave three casings neatly arranged in open view? Why would he forget to recover them and dispose them?
Police claim they ‘found’ Oswald’s ‘hidden’ rifle at the Depository. The siting scope of that rifle was not aimed or set properly. Again the questions arise how and why Oswald’s detailed assassination plan ended with this murder weapon left in place. Certainly, if it was easy to bring the rifle un-noticed into the Depository, then it was equally easy to dismantle it and take it with him from the Depository.
Investigators failed to examine those casings found at the Depository scene and failed to determine whether they came from bullets shot that Friday or a prior occasion. Police reported that the three casings and rifle had Oswald’s fingerprints. Investigators reported that the prints on the rifle are smudged among other print smudgings, not clear as if Oswald cleaned his rifle in preparation for the assassination. Why would this detailed assassin not clean his rifle before committing this assassination? These extra smudings of non-Oswald prints leave doubt that only Oswald used the rifle and doubt when he used it. Note of Oswald’s fingerprints on the rifle and casings do not appear in original police reports written that weekend, only in the later ‘Warren Report’.
Maybe there were actual Oswald prints on the casings and rifle. Maybe he didn’t clean that rifle before the assassination. That leaves open the possibility that Oswald handled that rifle a previous time.
Fingerprints can be planted or copied to other surfaces – or weapons – when mixed with other actual prints. That leaves the open proposition that Oswald’s fingerprints could have been planted on those casings and that rifle.
Police claim that the firing pins from the bullet casings match the hammer of the rifle found at the Depository. They also claim that the two bullets found to have hit both Kennedy and then-Governor John Connally (D-Texas) match the barrel rifling of this rifle. Military rifles are designed to interchange parts quickly under battlefield conditions. Co-conspirators possessed those capabilities to copy incriminating fingerprints onto that rifle, interchange the parts of that rifle, and plant that rifle and its casings.
Let’s continue this on the basis of both that ‘single bullet theory’ of the ‘Warren Report’ (the two-fer-one bullet that hit both JFK and Connally) and a following bullet that hit only Kennedy.
The ‘Warren Report’ and investigators present their conclusion that the assassin fired three shots solely because police ‘found’ a matching number of casings at the Depository. They conclude that shot #1 ‘missed’, shot #2 is the ‘single bullet’ two-fer-one shot, and shot #3 hit Kennedy the second time. They used the counting of three casings to conclude that there must have been three shots.
The ‘Warren Report’ concedes that a command of military sharpshooters failed to fire three accurate shots from the Oswald rifle within the established Zapruder film time limit. The ‘Report’ declares that the Oswald rifle can fire only two shots within the Zapruder film time limit, at best firing only one shot with sufficient accuracy. Three gunshots exceed the mechanical limits of the Oswald rifle fired according to the Zapruder film time limit. The shooter’s opportunity for the best accuracy would be shot #1 leaving random aim for a hasty shot #2 and shot #3; shot #3 fired beyond the Zapruder file time limit.
This ‘Warren Report’ scenario fails their own assertion that shot #2 and shot #3 were the shots that hit JFK twice and Connally once.
Police investigators and the ‘Warren Report’ assert that they never recovered the bullet from shot #1, a ‘miss’. Their failure is the mark of incompetence at best, conspiracy at worst. We can reasonably expect that the intent of any assassin is to aim each and every shot at its intended target; they do not start with ‘miss’ shots. The assassin surely aimed shot #1 at Kennedy, not randomly into hither or yon. This aimed-but-a-‘miss’ shot #1 certainly would have struck the Kennedy car or landed in the pavement. Certainly the eagle-eyed investigators could have located this bullet. Why did they fail?
Witnesses on scene at Dallas’ Dealey Plaza reported multiple gunshots. The number of shots commonly reported varied from two to six. Many witnesses reported gunfire from the Depository, others reported shots from the ‘grassy knoll’, others declared they saw someone shooting from the train trestle seen prominently in the Zapruder film. Others reported echoing; that could mean the sound of four shots was really two shots or the sound of six shots was really three shots. Others reported hearing one single shot, a pause, then two quick shots; that could mean either (a) the quick shots were one shot echoing, or two separate shots, or (b) shot #1 and shot #2 from the Depository rifle (to fit within the Zapruder film time limit) and shot #3 from a second rifle at a different location.
Here comes now the circular il-logic summary of the investigators and the ‘Warren Report’. They assert that shot #1 is the ‘miss’, shot #2 is the two-fer shot, and shot #3 is the Kennedy head shot; they want you to accept that as ‘fact’. Wait, they also concede that the Oswald rifle could only mechanically fire two shots (not three) in the duration established in the Zapruder film time limit. That means there exist only two ‘Warren Report’ options possible to conform with the Zapruder film time limit: (a) shot #1 and shot #2 or (b) shot #2 and shot #3: either shot #1 or shot #3 were fired beyond the Zapruder film time limit. Where went that shot #1 that the Commission declared was a ‘miss’ while shot #2 and shot #3 were hits. Huh?
The Warren Commission insists three shots. Perhaps that third casing is a red herring and the Commission fell for it. Perhaps there were only two shots, not three, not six.
The investigators and the ‘Warren Report’ accounting that shot #2 and shot #3 hit their mark breaks their ‘fact’ that one ‘lone assassin’ fired the Oswald rifle’s shot #1, shot #2, and shot #3 when they also admitted that three shots could not have been fired from that Oswald rifle within the Zapruder film time limit nor could the rifle mechanically fire two shots within the time limits of shot #2 and shot #3. Thus the claim of the investigators and the ‘Warren Report’ fails again. At best, one assassin fired shot #1 (they conclude it was a ‘miss’), another assassin fired shot #2 (that hit both Kennedy and Connally), and another assassin fired shot #3 (that hit Kennedy in the head).
Shots #1 and #2 could not have come from the assassin who fired shot #3 and shots #2 and #3 could not have come from the assassin who fired shot #1 due to both the stated mechanical limitations of the rifle and according to the Zapruder film time limits. This counts at least two assassins (perhaps there were three or more to count the six shots some witnesses reported being fired) and defines ‘conspiracy’. Oopsie-doodles!
The ‘Warren Report’ and the Warren Commission were flawed creations. Politicians created the Commission to assure that its biased members and political insiders issued pre-established conclusions to evade truth.
Lyndon Johnson hated the Kennedys – especially Robert Kennedy. Johnson would direct the appointments to the Commission.
There was former CIA Director Alan Dulles. Or shall we say, fired CIA Director. Dulles and Nixon planned the ‘Bay of Pigs Invasion’ that embarrassed Kennedy. Kennedy fired Dulles for the ‘Invasion’. Dulles hated Kennedy for being fired.
Then-Representative Gerald Ford (R-Michigan) was another among the Commission’s ‘blue ribbon’ members. The nature of his appointment came to provide official Congressional cover-up. There would be no future happenstance when Nixon appointed Ford as Vice President in 1973. The pair came to the agreement that Ford would return the favour and absolve ‘Tricky Dick’ Nixon of all his transgressions and criminality he committed throughout his dirty tricks career. Ford’s Presidential pardon covered Nixon’s complicity with the assassination of President Kennedy, the man who defeated Nixon, the man who began changing the course of the dark history that Nixon worked tirelessly to create and was seeing crumble during Kennedy’s administration.
So, too, was then-prosecutor Arlen Specter. First he was an expedient Democrat, then he turned to be Republican to pad his career, then he turned to be Democrat again when his Republican career was floundering. He feathered his nest whichever way the winds were blowing.
Remember all those Batista Cubans and CIA whom Nixon recruited for his ‘Bay of Pigs Invasion’. Their names and deeds appear in the investigations of the JFK assassination. Their names and deeds re-appear at Nixon’s dirty schemes including the ‘Firefighters’ and ‘Plumbers’ gangs who conducted crimes, break-ins, and bombings on the Brookings, Watergate, and other venues.
A different world it would have been had Kennedy served his two terms! There would have been a second, clear, liberal era, much a combined Roosevelt-styled Progressivism and ‘New Deal’. That compact would have meant the end of the Republican ‘Cold War’, advancing the treaty among nuclear nations to reduce nuclear arms, peace efforts throughout Southeastern Asia, amicable dissolution of the European colonial system and aid to emerging independent client territories, a vital era of civil rights advancement, strong union and worker rights, environmentalism, a co-operative ‘space race’. Okay, maybe not Utopia, but certainly not what the assassination conspirators wrought and the world we now experience.
Epilogue:
I watched the various broadcast network news coverage and recollections of people who say they were there.
Each network news broadcast seemed to have discovered their own handfull of people who say they were at Dealey Plaza that day. They say they encountered Oswald standing at the Depository doorway or sitting at the Depository cafeteria either ‘seconds’ or ‘moments’ following the gunfire.
These people accumulate more doubt than assurance of Oswald’s guilt, let alone his participation in the conspiracy.
These witnesses all placed Oswald distant from the declared sniper’s lair at the 6th floor of the Depository mere ‘seconds’ or ‘moments’ following the gunfire. Each witness claims with absolute certainty that Oswald, someone hardly described as athletic, descended six flights of stairs and positioned himself settled at the location where these witnesses now declare they saw him mere ‘seconds’ or ‘moments’ after the shots.
These witnesses want you to believe that.
Yeh, we could all be decent specimens at our best youthfull days. Such was not Oswald’s condition that day. Oswald was not known at that time to have been in great shape to flee down six flights of stairs and appear settled ‘seconds’ or ‘moments’ later.
‘Reasonable doubt’ is all that is Constitutionally necessary to cast questions on the Warren Commission, its ‘Report’, its motives, and their players of that event.
Then we have today’s throng of right-wing Republicans, Christian Conservatives, and T-Baggers appearing as commentators on television, radio, and print. Almost universally these talking heads now declare Kennedy as one of their own. They claim JFK cut taxes and was a ‘Cold Warrior’. These are the same yappers whose current politics would not include their revered Ronald Reagan, yet they insist you believe Kennedy is theirs.
Nope.
Kennedy gave a speech detailing ‘Why I Am A Liberal’. Not one of any right-wing Republican, Christian Conservative, or T-Bagger adherents would ever agree with JFK’s stated liberalism. In fact, sadly, too many current Democrats fail living to Kennedy’s state of being a liberal.
My blog originally appeared at the Thom Hartmann web-site:
I posted it here because it bears worth repeating again in the coming election season.
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Slim and Me 