CHAPTER I
WHY DO WE NEED TO KNOW?
"You can fool some of the people all
of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of
the people all of the time."
Abraham
Lincoln
"It is not the function of government
to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen
to keep the government from falling into error."
Justice
Robert Jackson
"We
can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy is when
men are afraid of the light."
Plato
Who was really responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? Did Lee Harvey Oswald actually fire the shots that killed him? Were there others involved in the brutal assassination of the President? Did someone or some group somehow frame Oswald and get away with murder? Was Oswald involved and just the only person caught, or was he simply, the only person responsible?
These are the seemingly simple questions that have been bantered about since Oswald was arrested in Dallas on the day of the shooting. You will have one of the four widely separate views on the subject. You may believe that these questions have already been answered satisfactorily. You may feel that the answers, whatever they are, simply do not matter any longer. You can also be of the opinion that they have not been answered, and are extremely important, even today. Or, you might still be uncertain as to where the truth lies. Depending upon which viewpoint you have, this work will vary in its importance. If you are already involved in searching for the truth, I hope that my writing will help to organize all the research that has already been done, and make some sense of it. If you don't know what to believe, maybe this will also help you. If you believe that the truth has already been revealed...your beliefs are about to be sorely tested.
I know that reading something that goes against what you believe in is a very difficult thing to do. I've experienced it while doing my research for this work. There are a number of books listed in the bibliography that were exceptionally hard for me to read. In many cases I could only read a few pages at a time and then had to literally force myself to read more later.
I have no doubt that those of you who firmly believe Oswald alone was guilty will have the same problems with my work. I just ask that you give me the benefit of the doubt, as I attempted to do.
What you need to understand up front is that I am not one of the many professional researchers of this event. In fact, I've learned to question many of the conclusions drawn by those who have been involved with investigating the assassination. I have read or seen many accounts on both sides of this controversy, and I feel that there is just too many profit seekers who wish to cash in on the tragedy. They have caused more damage to those who honestly seek the truth than any other single factor. Far too many books and documentaries on the topic, regardless of which side they support, sacrifice honesty just for profit. Their little lies and half-truths, the bits of misinformation and the incomplete quotes have done great abuse to those simply interested in justice, because they damage the credibility of any and all theories, conspiracy or lone gunman. Unfortunately, these less-than-honest portrayals started with the initial "investigation".
I've also noticed that many of those on both sides of this controversy have developed prodigious egos...so much so that they themselves, while claiming otherwise, have allowed certain aspects of this case to become so etched in stone, that their ego trips are now more important to them than is the truth. Consequently, they continue to hold on to and staunchly (or fanatically) defend beliefs that have been contradicted by recent revelations and released documents. I believe that the strongest person is he who can admit to a mistake or error, rather than he whose self-belief is so unstable that maintaining lies and errors is the only way to maintain it.
For me, studying this event is merely a hobby that started one day in 1990, when I read an article that questioned the findings that I had believed in for over twenty-five years. I was totally flabbergasted at what the author, whose name I cannot even recall, was saying. Was it possible that history (and the Government of the United States) had inaccurately recorded who was responsible for what had happened on that day in November of 1963? Had I really been a member of the misinformed for all these years? What was going on here?
I decided, much to the chagrin of my wife and family, to begin to explore the many books written about the assassination. The reason that I began my voyage is still very clear to me. I was both angered and embarrassed by the thought of having been lied to by the government and the press, and not knowing it for all these years. I needed to find out if the article was really true. The reason that it seemed so important for me to find out is more a reflection of my personality than anything else. It certainly was not because of any long dormant "Kennedy Democrat" feelings. I am a card-carrying Republican with at most, moderately conservative views. I am also still somewhat of an idealist. I despise injustice of any kind. The thought that somebody may have murdered Kennedy, changed history, forever condemned Oswald, and gotten away with it, just set my blood boiling.
Justice is supposedly one of the backbones of all of our ideals. An attorney friend of mine once told me that the only place to find it now is in a monastery. That's the typically cynical view of today, made even sadder, in his case, because of his choice in careers. My beliefs are a little more old fashioned and idealistic, perhaps left over from the times before that fateful November day.
After reading a select few of the conspiracy books and seeing how much of the evidence appeared blatantly suspicious, I quickly became hooked. My idealism, thirst for justice and, yes, my ego, forced me into trying to solve what had become, to many, the greatest murder mystery of all time. As I continued my trek through the many books about the assassination, I found that most of them were full of enough technical data to perplex an engineer and all were laced with many different theories, as to what really happened and why, that were vague, questionable and highly confusing. I could see where it was nearly impossible for the average citizen to be able to tell which side was right. What I believed the debate needed, was someone who just took a key section of the case and showed, beyond any doubt, that someone had either framed Lee Harvey Oswald or that he was guilty, in language that could be understood without also needing to read reference books on physics, anatomy, pathology, ballistics and/or intelligence operations. I am a firm believer in, "Keep it simple, stupid!” If there was a conspiracy to frame Oswald, then there was also one to kill Kennedy, and I believed that the evidence to prove it must exist, even at this late date. After all, Mission: Impossible was only a television show, not real life. There had to be a trail, somewhere. I was determined to find it, or prove to myself that it had never existed. What I found frightened me to the marrow of my being, and has caused me to doubt my country's institutions to such a degree, that I doubt if I will ever recover sufficiently to completely trust them again.
While some still choose to believe that President Kennedy (JFK) was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald (LHO) acting alone, recent polls have shown that a vast majority of American citizens now believe that others were involved in the assassination. These opinions exist despite the documented work of the two major federal investigations: The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, colloquially known as the Warren Commission (WC), and the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), both of which concluded that the fatal shot had been fired by Oswald.
If the two major federal investigations claimed that they had found no evidence of a major conspiracy, then why have there been so many conspiracy books written and why do so many still believe in a conspiracy? That is just about the simplest part of this controversy to explain.
Among the first things that I discovered while doing my research was that most of those people who believe in the official stance have not read, and most do not care to read, the evidence and testimony which should justify the conclusions stated by the federal studies. Most have blindly decided that the conclusions are correct, that the information used to arrive at them is true and accurate, and it also backs those conclusions. This is, I feel, the major error that anyone who believes in the lone gunman scenario makes...not "testing" the conclusion by comparing it to the evidence and testimony. The possibility that either report's conclusions might not be totally in line with the evidence and testimony is something they simply will not consider...and, it leads to having no ability to comprehend how shallow the actual "case" against Oswald was. Until 1990, I was a member, in good standing, of this group.
In fact, as unbelievable as it may seem, I have engaged in debates with numerous WC defenders and have been told such things as:
"Who cares what the evidence was? Oswald did it"
"I don't need to look at anything. I know he did it."
"Oswald did it, regardless of what the evidence says, and I'll never be convinced otherwise."
This kind of blindness was expected by the Warren Commission, as is evidenced by the transcripts of their executive sessions where a number of the Commission members openly discussed the probability that few would ever read the hearings evidence and most would rely, solely, on the Warren Commission Report (WCR) and its supporting documentation. Some might say that they depended upon this blindness; since it seems that they worried very little about whether or not the evidence in the twenty-six volumes of testimony and exhibits actually supported their conclusions. It also appears that some of the Commissioners felt that only a few academicians would ever really look at the evidence.
They were wrong. Many Americans, spurred on by those concerned citizens whose views initially conflicted with the WCR findings, have since looked into the supporting data. Almost all have come away feeling that the real evidence contained in those twenty-six volumes bolsters an entirely different set of conclusions than those stated in the report. The critics also believe that the Warren Commission's conclusions were predetermined. There is quite a bit of documentation to indicate that this too, is true. Take, for example, the internal memo of January 13, 1964, from J. Lee Rankin, Warren Commission general counsel, to the staff of the Commission. This memo is very difficult to reconcile, especially this early in the "investigation", less than 45 days from its creation, if you believe that the Commission's actual intention was to conduct a broad-scope, honest inquiry into what took place in Dallas, the weekend of November 22-24, 1963. In his memo, Rankin, the actual head of the investigation team, states that, due to the physical evidence from the ballistics reports and the autopsy, the Warren Commission investigation and report would be centered on Oswald only.
Is this the way to properly "investigate"?
Because of this attitude, many feel that the basic reasoning behind the WCR conclusions was fatally flawed from the outset. They feel that the WC started at the conclusion, then picked, or in some cases invented, the scenarios and evidence required to confirm it. They then re-arrived at the already formulated conclusion, believing that their justification was sound. A classic case of circular reasoning. Another of the major problems fueling the controversy is that both of the government panels, and unfortunately, a great many conspiracy believers, rely only on those bits of evidence that support their positions. They all ignore the basic scientific format of using the total evidence to reach a conclusion.
The Warren Commission, because of the lack of a comprehensive "let's see where this leads us" approach, only used the information that backed their pre-ordained theory. Anything that was uncovered and didn't fit was arbitrarily considered to be either incorrect, irrelevant or in error, despite how credible that evidence or testimony might have been. In some cases, that which did not agree was simply ignored. The possibility that this "Oswald alone" approach was the only one taken by the Warren Commission because of some dark intrigue has been speculated about for many years. It is very difficult to not feel that something was wrong.
Even many of those who later worked on the HSCA were shocked when they began to look seriously at the evidence in the Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits (WCH). Leslie Wizelman, a Cornell University law student who accompanied law professor G. Robert Blakey when he took over as general counsel for the HSCA investigation, wrote an internal memo to him within four months of beginning her HSCA assignment that included the following:
"I find myself greatly frustrated about my role on this committee. I will have very serious difficulties writing a report that concludes the Warren Commission was right. I simply do not believe it. It appears that certain theories have been developed and conclusions have been established. It would be interesting to have someone...tell us upon what they are based. In addition, it would be very interesting to know if we (my emphasis) are going to actively investigate the Kennedy assassination."
Wizelman, young, enthusiastic and idealistic, had been assigned to review the legendary 26 volumes and write a report. It becomes easy to assume what that report was supposed to say and what her feelings were about it. We know what the findings of the HSCA were: Oswald was the assassin, just as the WCR said.
Interestingly, the HSCA would not or could not satisfactorily resolve the issue, despite their new investigation, which contained the first in-depth review of the autopsy, including the highly controversial photographs and x-rays, never previously seen in public. A number of those who took part in the HSCA investigation have since complained about what was really done and most Warren Commission critics have steadfastly challenged most of those conclusions also. The HSCA findings did however force a great many WCR supporters to "redefine" their previous positions about the quality of the autopsy.
How can the beliefs of the people and the conclusions of the government studies be so divergent when they both see the same evidence and testimony? How can it be possible that both of these government studies are wrong? Why do the bulk of the American people believe that they have been lied to about this affair? That is also relatively simple to explain.
Most of those conspiracy theorists who have looked at the evidence feel quite strongly that so much of it is so blatantly questionable that it defies all logic to believe in it or the conclusions drawn from it. They don't attempt to challenge the accepted conclusions by impeaching just a single part of the case; they show reasons to impeach all of it. Many times there are several reasons per item of evidence. They feel, beyond doubt, that the evidence was concocted, in its entirety, just to frame LHO.
Conspiracy books touch on many different reasons to believe in a connivance. The problem with this has always been that so many theories of what happened exist, it is very difficult to put all the pieces together in such a way so that they fit, and you can feel comfortable with the conclusion, in the light of the total evidence. I do not know of any researcher who has tried to account for all the evidence in his or her theory. Most omit any piece of evidence that is in conflict with their beliefs, not unlike the two government studies that they so often and so antagonistically, criticize. Such actions leave them just as vulnerable to criticism. These actions also undermine the validity of conspiracy claims.
The WC supporters on the other hand, backed by the conclusions and the supporting documentation of the Report, keep trying to make the conspiracy advocates take the existing evidence and make it point to anyone else. They can't, because it doesn't. The physical evidence documented in the WCR does point only to Oswald. The critics have never questioned that; what is questioned is the evidence itself, and the whether or not it is real. Those who support the WCR, either ignore that possibility, or show that they do not understand the depth of it. They do this by defending only a few of the questionable parts of the evidence, and failing to see the implications of the fact that almost all of it has been impeached. This is not necessarily sinister; it is just a sign that they simply cannot believe that the federal government could, and would, lie about what it found. They also cannot believe that a conspiracy of this magnitude could have happened, regardless of the questions about the evidence. Thus, the continuing impasse.
How can you, once and for all, determine if a conspiracy did exist and therefore, must still exist now, to hide the true facts of the assassination and the successful efforts, by obviously powerful people, to eliminate the elected head of the United States and blame the event on a "lone nut"? The best way to establish the true picture in this controversy is for each citizen to examine all the evidence, in its entirety, and come to his/her own conclusion. This is the approach I recommend to anyone who is deeply interested in finding the truth about this sordid episode of American history. It is far from an easy task and your quest for the answers will be a monumental undertaking.
First, finding copies of the Warren Commission Report and the twenty-six volumes of testimony and exhibits is very difficult. Both are necessary since you must determine if the conclusions in the Report match the evidence and testimony gathered in the investigation. Neither is in print any longer, so the local library is your best bet. Recently, they, and the HSCA hearings testimony and evidence, have begun to become available on computer CD-ROM. Reading them is both arduous and usually quite boring, not to mention extremely time consuming. The reward is that the conclusion reached will be your own, not that of someone else.
Secondly, in what has been viewed, by many, as one of the many sinister sidelights of the controversy, you will find that public access to many of the documents, internal correspondence and items of physical evidence that, in a "free society" are supposed to be available to all, has been seriously curbed, and in many cases completely denied. A visit to the National Archives II in College Park, Maryland, where all the files, exhibits, photographs and documents pertaining to the assassination are housed in the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection and are supposedly available to the public, will leave you disappointed and also wondering just what exactly is going on. Even today, despite the changing climate, problems with access to key documents and pieces of physical evidence continue. If you've the time, please try to see, for example the rifle or the autopsy photographs. You will come away with much greater insight into the meaning of "government censorship".
Next, especially with the release during the 1990's of so many files which had been withheld from the public, the sheer volume of related documents is mind-boggling, running into millions upon millions of pages...most of which mean little or nothing, but with an occasional jewel hidden within. Finding the jewel is the trick. Too often the jewel is only seen when 2 or more seemingly unrelated documents are compared.
I'd estimate that if I spent 8 hours a day, 6 days a week at the National Archives, it would take 10 years to just read the documents housed there relating to this case...and there are other files which still remain out of reach. Being of a sharp enough mind to analyze and compare them, and having the additional time and desire to do so is prohibitive in the extreme. One is reminded of the old adage "looking for a needle in a haystack". In comparison to this case, that exercise would be simple.
Being unable or unwilling to do all that, the next best step is to read a review that honestly analyzes the most important parts of the case: the Physical Evidence. According to WC general counsel Rankin, the physical evidence is the key to not only the WCR conclusions, but also the reason for the investigation centering on LHO alone. This book attempts to do just that.
While the testimony of the bystanders can be misleading or contradictory, and the theories about the various backgrounds, motives and relationships ambiguous, incorrect or simply irrelevant, the physical evidence, as presented in the two government studies, should show how and why investigators tied Oswald, alone, to the assassination. The physical evidence is the glue of the government's case. If that glue doesn't hold, then there must be another reason that someone has been trying so hard and for so long to blame only LHO.
An in-depth review of the physical evidence will point towards either conviction or conspiracy.
It will be the purpose of this work to establish, from a logical perspective and beyond any reasonable doubt, that two conspiracies did exist... one to commit the murder and one to implicate Oswald, while hiding the true facts. I will attempt to accomplish this by using only the physical evidence and testimony or statements about it. I believe it is only logical to assume that if a conspiracy to implicate Oswald and hide the true facts existed, then a conspiracy to commit the assassination also existed, probably including many of the cover-up conspirators. So, it is the conspiracy to implicate Oswald that I will concentrate on in a reverse approach that has been slighted, in most cases, by researchers. I will also offer up all of the physical evidence available. Where necessary, at the end of reviewing some area of the physical evidence, I will inject, in a limited fashion, some other pertinent facts. I will use only those statements made initially, not later revised for purposes of personal gain, due to coercion or simply because recollections have faded or changed with the passage of time. Using the government's studies, I will show you proof that most of the physical evidence initially recovered, was either planted, altered or destroyed; important witnesses ignored or told to remain silent; and that key figures were pressured, coerced or deceived into making statements or performing acts that helped perpetuate the conspiracy, increase the confusion and implicate Oswald.
I will not cover, in detail, what I consider to be the unimportant fringes of this case, such as the number and locations of all the gunmen; who shot Dallas Police Department (DPD) officer J.D. Tippit; how did Jack Ruby get into DPD police headquarters, etc. They are the insignificant parts that the government's defenders want to argue over, in their attempts to confuse the one truly important issue at hand: Does the physical evidence justify the government's conclusion?
It is my ardent belief that the documented physical evidence is the basic and fundamental source for finding the truth about this event. Using the testimony alone cannot prove which side is correct, since that testimony is totally subjective, and dependent upon the validity of the physical evidence.
There is a saying in logic that, once you've eliminated everything else, whatever is left, must be the truth. That axiom will be our foundation throughout this work. It was not the axiom of the government studies. You will see where the two studies, when confronted with evidence that could not be fitted into their necessary scenario, instead chose to invent the impossible, rather than explore the probable. It was the only way they could maintain their predetermined conclusion. That predetermined conclusion was their axiom.
You will also see, as I did, that many, many parts of the Warren Commission labyrinth simply do not make sense, yet remain the basis of the still "official" conclusions. They were accepted then, and they are still defended now. Why? Can the WCR conclusions still be correct, in spite of those parts? Can I be wrong about enough of them to save the "lone nut" scenario? Can you deal with both the truth and its implications, no matter where or to whom it points?
Sometimes that alone is enough to stop people from wanting to know or understand.
I will show you proof, through logical deductions, after a review of all of the evidence, that the case against Oswald was a well-planned and orchestrated fabrication, thus proving that the assassination of John F. Kennedy was conceived, planned and brought about by others who also had the power to both frame Oswald and hide the truth from the American people. I will also explain why this charade is still being carried on today. I will only speculate on Oswald's background and Jack Ruby's motives during my "theory" section which will include: who was behind it; what went "wrong"; why it happened; and why I still believe that it won't be solved. I will cover more than enough for you to decide, but not too much so as to confuse you. Like you, I am merely a citizen who wants to know the real truth.
Today, as has always been the case, those who continue to defend the WC conclusions try to downplay every part of the puzzle that the conspiracy believers challenge. They always do this in a piecemeal fashion. It is their best type of defense. I'm used to these tactics and this form of rebuttal. I've argued with many of them extensively over the Internet. They feel that if anyone says that LHO could have made the 3 shots within the time frames, he, in fact, did it; or if only one part of the Single Bullet Theory is just remotely possible, it ALL happened because it HAD to; or no matter how contorted Kennedy and Connally needed to be to line up correctly for the "Magic Bullet", that's the way they must have been lined up, etc. All would like for you to lose your focus in your defense of each individual point, the more trivial the better, and they refuse to grasp the overwhelming significance of the whole picture, which includes, much to their dismay, the need for the WC conclusions to be proven, not just accepted as being correct.
But, in this work, looking at that whole picture is exactly what I want you to do. I want you to look at the enormity of the evidence that will be impeached. It is virtually the entire case against Oswald! No amount of rebuttal is enough to salvage all of it; there are just too many odd happenings, coincidences and major question marks. And that is the key to seeing the whole picture. How many screwy, far-fetched occurrences does it take before you can't believe in the evidence anymore? That is what changed my opinion seven years ago. And, the further into it I looked, the screwier it got. It appeared that the truth had also been a victim, maybe the most important one of all.
Why is that truth so important even after all these years? Well, let's look at what this episode cost the American people.
The United States of America, at the time of the Kennedy inauguration (REAL VIDEO of the inauguration, click HERE), seemed destined to continue on the path of greatness that she had been following since her inception in 1776. Her younger generations, stimulated by the duende of the youthful President and his family, expressed in his famous inaugural challenge, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country", looked to the future with optimism, passion, commitment and energy rarely seen previously. After the events in Dallas, that same generation soon became, and to this day remains, cynical, indulgent, and both fearful and questioning of authority. They developed, and passed on, a deep antipathy towards most elected officials. The term "credibility gap" came into our language under Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B Johnson, and the path of greatness soon disappeared into an effluvium of disillusionment and apathy that still impedes it today. Subsequent administrations spearheaded our involvement in Southeast Asia, opposed by JFK, through the rest of the 1960's and into the early 1970's. Their policies in this area nearly tore the country apart from within, and left thousands of Americans and millions of Asians dead, yet did virtually nothing to change the global order. However, billions in tax dollars were spent, mostly on military hardware and base construction in Vietnam, making some rich, at the expense of others. What followed next was an era of political corruption, unprecedented in its magnitude and arrogance, which further rocked the structure of America. That period was followed by weak and lackluster leadership that left the country and its people wallowing, lost and bitter. Over the last thirty years, a host of questionable policies has created a gargantuan national debt. This malady was completely unknown from our beginning as a nation up until the mid-1960's. The long-term financial cost of those decisions now threatens our children's futures. Racial tensions, ever widening gaps between the "haves" and the "have-nots", eroding morals, weaker family structures, educational system failures, and the ever-growing problems of crime, drug abuse and a failing urban system are all repercussions of the many puzzling decisions made by our elected "representatives" over the past three decades, not to mention the questionable dealings which involve the intelligence apparatus which Kennedy had threatened to break "into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds". For what reason and to what ends were they all made? Was it really because of national necessity, or was it just political, or in some cases personal, desire? All of this tumultuous history has roots that can be traced, in many ways, back to the debauchery that changed all of us, and our futures, beginning on that day in Dallas, and to the political mendacity that it caused. When the rulers don't respect the rules, why should the people? And, in what is the most disturbing part today, it is my belief that most of our high-ranking government people today know the truth and are still attempting to keep it hidden.
This episode has also shown us that our "free press", so fundamental and necessary to the fabric of a true democracy, can be far less resilient to pressures from sources whose main concerns are detrimental to the needs of the public...that portion of the democracy the press have a moral and ethical obligation to protect and serve above all else.
Edmund Burke has written:
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."
By definition ours is supposed to be a government, "of the people, by the people and for the people". When we allow any person or tiny group of people to dictate who governs, we destroy the meaning of the Constitution of the United States of America, and all that it signifies. If certain parties within our government are part of such a plan, and use their power to cover-up what has been done, democracy, the finest form of rule on this planet, ceases to exist and is replaced by anarchy, cleverly disguised. That is what has happened in the United States...and it began on November 22, 1963. We, the people, no longer control the government. Our views are no longer of concern, only special interests matter to our politicians, for good reason. After all, if the President can be assassinated and the truth hidden...
Because of an ongoing and ever deepening feeling of resignation, which started on that day in Dallas, the people's apathy is reflected in the voting booths, where a smaller and smaller percentage of Americans show up. This is due to the fact that their "freedom of choice" now has been reduced to voting for the least objectionable candidate, in which case most Americans accept conduct that would not have been acceptable previously. Is this what we were taught democracy is supposed to be like? Are you old enough to recall the halcyon early days of the Kennedy Administration, and compare the difference in the feelings and outlooks?
I am not nearly naive enough to expect that anyone will ever be brought to trial for either the deed itself or the subsequent obstruction of justice. In fact, despite all the efforts that have been, or will be, put forth, I continue to sincerely doubt that the whole truth will ever be known. I did not originally write this for publication, so there was no intention for financial gain in it and, since the number of people who will probably read it will be tiny, my review and conclusions will not affect the eventual outcome in the least. Yet, write this I did, because it’s my way of dealing with the anger, frustration and helpless feelings that exploring these events have caused in me. I also hope to show those of my peers who care to sit down and read this, where the truth actually lies and why it remains important to get to it. I hope you'll start with an open mind. Justice requires it. So does our future as a nation.
In the New Testament, Jesus Christ says:
"...and the truth shall make you free."
(John 8:32)
Because history tends to repeat itself, it is only by uncovering the truth in this matter that we can cleanse ourselves of all its hypocrisy and arm ourselves against its inevitable reoccurrence, somewhere in our, or our children's future.
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