I just saw some moron on Steve Kornacki’s program argue that there could not have been any conspiracy to kill President Kennedy because our government is inept and can’t keep any secrets. I thought Larry Hancock dealt with this long ago, when the first edition of Someone Would Have Talked came out. Simply put, plenty of people have talked. The official House Special Committee on Assassinations concluded in the late 1970’s that there had been a conspiracy including more people than just Oswald in the murder of President Kennedy. I am not going to spell out the whole history here, but I am going to give you the resources you need to understand why the research community is utterly convinced that a conspiracy took place.
The links I am providing deal exclusively with the CIA’s station in Mexico City and Oswald’s alleged visit to that city in late September and early October 1963. If you learn nothing else, you will learn how our government keeps secrets.
HSCA (Lopez Report)
Oswald, the CIA and Mexico City, by John Newman
Mexico City: A New Analysis, by John Newman
State Secret: Chapter 1, by Bill Simpich
State Secret: Chapter 2, by Bill Simpich
State Secret: Chapter 3, by Bill Simpich
State Secret: Chapter 4, by Bill Simpich
What Jane Roman Said
If, after perusing the above links, you can abide someone telling you that the government cannot keep any secrets, then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Yeah, saw that segment and wanted to find a brick to toss through the teevee. Four panelists at the table, all expressing the same lazy anti-conspiracy line, all showing little knowledge of the case beyond the official story and maybe one or two mainstream anti-conspiracy books.
That’s quite a predictable (for the MSM) uniformity of views — and the softball-tossing host did little to question their thinking. But typical behavior for network-cable coverage of the assassination: avoid any serious discussion of what really happened in Dallas by carefully circumscribing who gets to talk about it and by keeping the strong, knowledgable pro-conspiracy voices from being invited to the table.
Notice too, on diversity of views, that in an earlier segment, host Karnacki did bring in a remote guest, a former aide to Jackie and Ted, to talk about how JFK would not have escalated in VN as LBJ did.
Karnacki wimped out talking truthfully about Dallas. So have, in the past, other Msnbc hosts like Maddow and Olbermann. I guess even just allowing a fair discussion of the controversy, with opposing points of view ably represented, is enough to get one blackballed from the network?
This recent Nova program (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/cold-case-jfk.html) makes a convincing case that Oswald acted alone. Analysis of the gun and ammunition show that a single bullet of that type could have struck Kennedy through the throat and Connolly in the back and wrist. It also showed how a shot from behind could have caused Kennedy’s body to lunge backward. In fact, from the cracks in his skull, it made the case that the bullet could not have come from the grassy knoll.
That in itself does not mean that there was no conspiracy. But two of more gunmen equals conspiracy whereas one gunman obviously could have acted alone.
Of course, by keeping your focus on Dealy Plaza, you won’t see anything outside of it.
However, if you consider things outside of Dealy Plaza, you may come to much different conclusions.
I can provide links for the following, but I don’t have time right now.
Consider:
You can add to this list plenty more, including all the important people, from LBJ to Nixon, to RFK, to several members of the Warren Commission, who privately doubted that Oswald acted alone.
If you read nothing else, try to plod through either John Newman’s article on Oswald in Mexico City or Morley’s piece on Jane Roman.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsMKMMlleOE&feature=youtu.be
Here, I had time to find you a link explaining the explosive significance of the Joannides revelation.
Didn’t see the latest Nova offering on the assassination, but they had a GIGO “computer reenactment” episode ca 1988 that was long on production values, short on honestly presented facts.
And when even the rather moderate, cautious researcher Jeff Morley has major problems with the program, it’s probably just another slick Nova GIGO production. And I understand that while he was interviewed for the show, all his comments were edited out of the broadcast.
Of all the assassination shows so far on this 50th anniv, I am not aware of a single one, broadcast or cable, which gives the overwhelming conspiracy evidence a fair hearing. Have I missed anything?
.
Someone Would Have Talked
Thanks for the links, BooMan.
To me, the most interesting and suspicious part of the whole assassination, was Ruby killing Oswald – silencing him, forever.
Ruby, with a terminal disease, walked into the police station, where he was well known from running a local strip club, and, with cops all around him, pulled out a gun, and fatally shot Oswald.
Ruby died in Parkland Hospital a little over 3 years later – the same hospital JFK died in.
I always figured it was the CIA.
But, wtf do I know?
Admittedly, nothing.
But my thinking is that they conned Kennedy, just recently sworn into office, into the Bay of Pigs – which turned into a fiasco.
I’d read somewhere that Ike was reluctant to get involved, but had told the CIA to proceed with the plans to see where they led.
And then, a few months after taking the oath of office, the new President approved their attempt to overthrow Castro.
The CIA was embarrassed after that clusterf*ck, and my suspicion is that they were looking at heavier involvement in Vietnam as a way of saving face for the agency – but, as was reinforced on Karnacki’s show this morning, Kennedy had little interest in heavier involvement, beyond the 16,500 “Military Advisor’s” already in there.
Plus, as someone else on the show pointed out, JFK and RFK had been in SE Asia in the early 50’s, and saw the quagmire the French found themselves in, in Vietnam, and wanted no part of getting overly involved there. I also remember reading somewhere, that JFK wanted to see some progress soon, or he was going to pull-out those advisors.
What’s interesting to me, and what I realize I need to read up on, is how the CIA convinced LBJ, a man MUCH more interested in domestic issues than foreign affairs, to escalate in Vietnam.
LBJ left a mixed legacy.
The good: The Civil Rights Acts, Medicare, Medicaid, and “The War on Poverty.”
The bad and the ugly: Vietnam. And Nixon’s victory in 1968.
LBJ later admitted that he shouldn’t have listened to the “Domino Theory” adherents. But once in Vietnam, he didn’t want to be remembered as the first President to lose a war.
What a potentially different path the US might have taken, had JFK, and then LBJ, not gotten us more involved in Vietnam.
A far better path.
It always made sense to me that the CIA was involved at some level or other.
I’m also going to re-read James Ellroy’s great fictional book, “The Cold Six Thousand.”
In it, if I remember right, he ties up The Bay of Pigs, with the JFK, MLK, and RFK assassinations.
And, the CIA was involved in all of those, in his book.
Fiction?
Who knows.
The truth is probably stranger than even what a great writer like Ellroy can dream up.
And we’ll probably never know.
But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep trying to discover the truth.
JFK had already decided by Oct ’63 to begin pulling out our military advisors — 1,000 to be taken out by December of that year, with the remainder to be gone by the end of 1965. That was in NSAM 263. And it was a presidential decision made irrespective of how the war was going on the ground.
And I disagree that LBJ didn’t hold strong views or care much about FP — as a pol operating in the depths of the Cold War in the 50s and early 60s, he came down as a firm CW hawk. He held simplistic views about communism, and sincerely embraced Ike’s Domino Theory.
So I don’t think there’ll be much to uncover about the CIA supposedly convincing LBJ to go into Nam — rather, once he took over, it was almost predictable that he would reverse JFK’s withdrawal policy. Just as he tended to reverse Kennedy’s attempted detente with the Soviets (or didn’t adequately pursue it), JFK’s quiet overtures to Castro, and his softer hands-off policy towards Latin America and encouraging emerging nations like Indonesia and various African countries formerly under colonial rule.
Johnson, also contra the spirit of Kennedy, sent in tens of thousands of Marines to the Dominican Republican , on some bogus pretext about stopping communism in the Caribbean. He also, presumably, quietly nixed Kennedy’s effort at joining with the USSR on a joint Moon mission — something Khrushchev had apparently agreed to in Kennedy’s final weeks. Cold warrior to the bone — and a macho Texan to boot, with some manhood to prove in case folks weren’t terribly impressed by his one dubious medal from WWII.
Thanks, Brodie.
I’d forgotten that JFK was planning on pulling out of Vietnam.
I used to have a mind like a steel-trap – now it’s more like a colander.
And I think you’re right about LBJ.
He was a Cold Warrior, and, when he finally became President, he didn’t want to be out-hawked in his reelection attempt, in 1968 – from either party.
Instead, because of Vietnam, LBJ didn’t run for reelection.
And he stood by while Nixon undermined the peace talks – while as a candidate, no less! – all whole pushing some bullsh*t “Secret Plan” he had for ending the Vietnam War.
And then ran for reelection in ’72, on his bullsh*t “Secret Plan” he had for ending the Vietnam War.
It was so “secret,” apparently, that even HE didn’t know it!
Yes. Governments can keep secrets when the people who know the secrets are limited in number. Or when the release of the secrets would embarrass everyone involved with no exceptions.
That fact is why a doctrine of official secrecy is so corrosive of democratic governance.
It seems that the primary issue being seriously debated now is the identity and motive of the single gunman. Until there is total declassification of documents from the period and possibly scholarly research of archived private correspondence, we probably won’t have additional factual information on either of these points.
Pres Obama could come out and publicly call for the CIA and other agencies to go ahead, abide by the law and release all the remaining 1000s of documents they are still withholding — per Jeff Morley and his lawsuit — which would be in keeping with the letter and spirit of the ARRA law enacted following the Oliver Stone movie. I believe all these records — absent clear and specific good reason as detailed in the Act — are supposed to be all released by 2017.
But so far Obama has been quiet, last I checked.
And for the 50th anniversary of Dallas, an event dealing obviously with the sudden, tragic and violent death of a popular liberal president under suspicious circumstances still not adequately explained to this day, Obama apparently plans to mark it only by meeting in the WH with some people who served in the Peace Corps.
Nice, but off point and clearly a dodge. John Kerry is a profile in courage on Dallas compared to O.
Which should show us the depth of CIA control in DC.
Why does Obama have to address this? it’s more important to me that his presidency result in health care for [all/ more] Americans as well as his other accomplishments. I do a fair amount of traveling for work and you can’t imagine how different the quality of life is in places where 99% of the population doesn’t live in constant fear of bankruptcy or death due to accident or illness.
Looking for ‘answers’ is our equivalent to the ongoing ‘peace process’ in Palestine. In other words, a distraction from the real.
One element of the ‘coverup’ is the flooding of the zone with differing ‘facts’ and opinions spread by the agents of TPTB. And we as individuals are supposed sift it all out? No, we are tasked with having our awareness and attention grabbed and getting shunted over to irrelevant acres.
Note: I was on an eighth grade elementary school class trip to the United Nations in November 22, 1963. I saw them lower the flags of the nations of the world on the UN Plaza that day.
Let the dead bury the dead. Sifting ashes is not worth the energy, imo. We have a much higher job now, a NEW world to create.
In order to understand the reach of the CIA’s tentacles in media, consider this: Something like 24% believe the Warren Commission. Look how that percentage holds up in media venues. Pundits in our MSM? Almost unanimous. Articles about the assassination? Almost unanimous that it was lone nut Oswald. Books about that get good reviews in the NYTimes Sunday section… You get the idea. And note the commenters at, say, Salon. To believe that that government agency that was overthrowing governments all over the world might get rid of JFK earns you a tin foil hat.
The important point about Mexico City is that there was an Oswald imposter there, at the Soviet embassy and Cuban consulate. He was taped from phone taps and photographed. It wasn’t Oswald. LBJ and Hoover knew this the morning after the assassination. Who knew of the secret surveillance cameras? The tapped phones? Who would gain from connecting the Presidential assassin to the US’s Cold War enemies? Who knew a month and a half before the assassination that Oswald would be there at the Texas Schoolbook Depository?
You see, murder solved.
Yep. Any time the MSMers talk of the possibility of a conspiracy, it only involves the Russians, Cubans or Mafia. The very likely notion of the CIA being involved gets dismissed with a wave of the hands and a chuckle.
Carl Bernstein got it basically right in 1977, and little has changed since then.
When was the last time a serious pro-conspiracy researcher on Dallas was invited to appear on major tv? It doesn’t happen. They might invite colorful Jesse Ventura or moviemaker O Stone, but that’s about it.
Wonder why so many act as if they have a vested interest in Oswald as the lone wolf. That nothing about the official story or any actual information that has surfaced over the decades strikes them as odd.
After Kerry’s comments last week that he wasn’t satisfied (let’s ignore that he pointed his finger at Russia and Cuba demonstrating once again that he’s not too good at collecting available dots and connecting them), Ruth Paine surfaced to dismiss Kerry and his doubt. Until she did that, I’d dismissed those that didn’t see her as the innocent Quaker lady that generously helped Marina Oswald. heh — it’s not as if the FBI didn’t have undercover agents monitoring Quakers back in the 1950s.
Fifty years on and there is still no agreement on whether of not Oswald went to Mexico City. Many that don’t accept the Warren Commission, accept that he did go to Mexico City and vice versa.
Supposing there was a conspiracy (and there is way more evidence of a conspiracy than a lone gunman), the people conducting the conspiracy were no doubt aware that total secrecy was not even necessary. It’s the old “steal a 100 you’re a felon, steal a billion you’re a banker” rule. The “kill a man you’re a murderer, kill a million you’re a hero” thing. Once Oswald was dead, the risk was basically over, no matter what came out later. That’s why it was so important to kill Oswald immediately. The honest truth about some crimes, however specific or limited the conspiracy, is such a threat to the ruling powers generally that enormous pressure will be exerted at every point to tell a normalized story of it. The honest truth in such cases is so incongruent with the official map of the world that any number of inconsistent details can be public knowledge and still not threaten that map.
Man!!!
SHHHHHH!!!
That bridge is a secret!!!
Cain’t you media people keep anything quiet?
Later…
AG
Not that I’m surprised, since we’ve long awaited its coming, but the current mediafest on the 50th anniversary shows that it’s still pretty much de rigueur to assume at the outset of any piece on the subject, that “Oswald” killed JFK. The work cited by Booman, and other things of equal quality, might as well not exist.
But it’s gotten me thinking more and more about the JFK coverup as a classic case of “the social construction of reality”. Not a natural process in this instance, but something that has been carefully managed. It teaches you that there is such a thing as the social construction of reality, and also that there is such a thing as reality, the discovery of which is also a very definite social process, like science, forensics, and scholarship.
I began to wonder whether I could find anything specifically on that aspect of the history of the last 50 years (of course it plays a major part in some well-known books like Gaeton Fonzi’s The Last Investigation, the second edition of Jim DiEugenio’s Destiny Betrayed — virtually a new book — and others. But I mean, something more specifically on the sociology of knowledge.
I found a little essay that seems pretty good. I don’t know who wrote it, but he or she accurately observes: “The notion that Lee Harvey Oswald had anything to do with the assassination is very much a minority point of view among those with any appreciable knowledge of the subject. It is still, however, the default position in newspaper and television coverage.”
http://22november1963.org.uk/jfk-fiction-propaganda-media
I have only one cavil about the essay. Even the point about Oliver Stone may be right, though an earlier film that did concentrate on Oswald’s innocence had nothing like the impact of Stone’s film.
http://www.amazon.com/Plot-Kill-JFK-Rush-Judgment/dp/6301045718
What I disagree with is calling the Garrison investigation “a relatively trivial aspect of the case”. What Garrison investigated was essentially the New Orleans and Louisiana component of the case, which while perhaps in itself not quite as important as the Florida, Mexico City, and Langley aspects, was far from trivial, and intimately connected with the rest.
However, even if we accept that is was not the most important aspect, that is like calling the Rosetta Stone a “relatively trivial document” in ancient Egyptian history. After all, it’s nothing but a single decree of Ptolemy V. However, it just happens to provide the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics, which could not be understood before its discovery in 1798.
A book that may be of some interest is Barbie Zelizer’s Covering the Body: The Kennedy Assassination, the Media, and the Shaping of Collective Memory. I only just heard of this nook, but from what I can gather from the blurb and the one comment on Amazon, she doesn’t go for the jugular, but she goes after at least an aspect of it that has to do with the sociology and culture of American journalism.
My lunch buddy, a Vietnam vet a few years younger than me and from the same town, remarked to me, “You know, it seems that the assassination marks the downfall of the USA. All the bright promise of the 1950’s and early 1960’s, the America that could do anything, died that day along with Kennedy. Then came ‘Nam and 1968, Tet, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, the riots, Watergate, the Oil embargoes, the Fall of Saigon, the Iran hostages, Reagan, Bush, NAFTA, offshoring, 9-11, Iraq and finally the banking collapse and the double digit unemployment we have now.” You “young-uns” that can’t wait for us boomers to die, have no concept of what has been lost. You have no memory of Union wages, ordinary workers buying a new car every year, summer jobs for students that paid the equivalent of $21 and hour today, plenty of work for anyone who wanted it and would just show up every day sober and willing to work. Man going to the Moon, American Men going to the Moon. The world famous American electronics industry. The Yankee dollar that was supreme over the worthless Yen and Franc.
For a project I interviewed a man, college grad, who started working for the city’s major company but then was drafted for the Korean War. The company told him they’d have a job waiting for him when he came back. They did, then went on to pay for him to complete a masters degree while employed and helped him get a mortgage. He was no special case, they did so for all their employees.
In the ’80s that would be spurned as “Corporate Paternalism” as the Right told us it was better to have no benefits because “the market” would provide everything.
Somehow I think even had I lived in that time I would not have received many of those benefits. Instead I would be directed to the appropriate water-fountain.
Depends on where you would have lived. Re the water fountains and the racial implication , if you had lived in Detroit (or Kenosha WI) you might well have worked for the Big Four (sic) and enjoyed those union wages. That’s just one example. In the North and West Coast, there certainly was discrimination but the big companies employed many black men in blue collar jobs at substantial wages. I’d bet that many black men now would like to have the inflation adjusted UAW and USW wages paid then by GM, Ford, Chrysler, American Motors, International Harvester, US Steel, et al, not to mention competitive wages paid by Motorola, Admiral, Zenith, and Western Electric, all major employers of black people (the television plants employed many women as well as men, women were preferred for fine electronic assembly). I know that was certainly true in Chicago, Detroit and Gary Indiana.
Those areas are now blighted. The cars made in Asia or the South, the steel in Korea, the televisions in Japan, Korea or China. Black families that used to be lower middle class with a Union bread winner are now in poverty, living on welfare or selling crack, because there are no good jobs anymore.
This is not a fantasy of happy Negros cared for by benevolent Massa. There were insults and discrimination in plenty. The jobs those black men had were hard and dirty. Also, they hardly existed for black (or white) women. Union membership had not come easily. But in their own communities (yes, I remember housing discrimination), black people lived decent lives with vibrant communities, families with a strong male breadwinner and free of the nightly crackle of gunfire.
None Dare Call It Conspiracy by Gary Allen, father of Politico‘s Mike Allen. You should read it sometime. This game has been afoot for at least a thousand years.
Kennedy was no damned conservative.
No fear.
Weird fact: the string “Oswald” (converted to an integer) appears in the irrational number Pi over 200 times in the first 200M digits. This conspiracy goes even farther than we thought!
Seriously, I’m with Errol Morris on this one. If one looks at any incident closely enough, one will eventually find weird, sinister unexplained phenomena. The umbrella man is a great example of this. My feeling is that most if not all of the rest of the ephemera surrounding Kennedy’s assassination falls into this category.