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I was a sophomore
in high school sitting in my English class when the PA System came on
with the sound of a radio running over the stations until it hit a
special news broadcast. It was about a quarter to eleven in the morning
(Pacific Time) and the announcer told us that the President had been
shot. About 5 minutes after the hour when the news report let the other
shoe drop and said that the President was dead. I was profoundly
affected by the news, as I suppose everyone was. I remember, when I was
in 7th grade, I was home sick the day of his inauguration and watched it
on television. I remember thinking that this is the beginning of a brand
new decade, we are clearly in the latter half of the 20th Century. We
have a brand new President, a young man. The world was brand new and it
began an era of hope. The assassination was the first in a long line of
disillusions of the sixties. For me, Kennedy is the quintessential
symbol of the sixties; a new hope shot down in the prime of life.
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When in September (or October?) of 1964 when the Warren Report was
published, I bought a copy and began reading it. But I only got through
the first few pages before I was over come with grief. I think it was
how the one bullet nicked the knot on his tie on the way out.
But as time went on, I began hearing
more and more about some inconsistencies about the assassination.
Sometime in the first half of 1967, I saw an issue of Playboy that
listed a whole bunch of photos of people who were witnesses to some
aspect of the assassination and have since died (more or less under
mysterious circumstances). I don't remember which issue it was (or even
if it was Playboy, though I think it is). The
first time I ever actually read anything about it was in the October
1967 issue of Playboy (to the left). The Playboy Interview was with Jim
Garrison, District Attorney of New Orleans. I couldn't make much sense
out of the article since he talked about people I didn't know (I had
missed the earlier interview in February with Mark Lane (the right) and
only discovered it a few years ago). I came away from the article with
the sense that there was definately something fishy about the Warren
report. |
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That was really all I did until
Oliver Stone's JFK film came out on video. That reminded me
of all the problems with the assassination. I even remember some of the
things they mentioned in the film, and one of them was the Jim Garrison
Playboy interview. Nevertheless, knowing that Hollywood is all about
making it up. I noticed the film was based on Garrison's book On the
Trail of the Assassins and Jim Marrs' book,
Crossfire. So I picked those up and started to read them. |
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What seems to be clear and indisputable is that the Warren Commission
did not "investigate" the Kennedy Assassination. They gathered
documentation, with varying degrees of integrity that supported the
pre-conceived theory that 1) Oswald did it. (2) He acted alone (no
conspiracy) and (3) Oswald, Ruby and Officer Tippit did not know
each other.That, of course,
doesn't mean that the "conclusions" were wrong. It does mean that
investigating the assassination was not an agenda item. The question,
then, is what was the agenda? Were they part of a conspiracy or, as Col
L. Fletcher Prouty suggests, victims of a conspiracy? Or was it
something completely unrelated?
One suggestion was that the threat of Nuclear War was very real (the
assassination occured barely a year after the Cuban Missle Crisis). If,
the American public, the story goes, got wind of a connection between
Oswald and Cuba or the Soviet Union, it may not be possible to thrawt
the pressure. This scenario is much easier to see, today, in light of
our current situation with events begun on September 11, 2001. Their
objective was to calm those fears.
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On the
Trail of the Assassins,
published in 1988, is an account of the investigation lead by Jim
Garrison into the JFK assassination. His theory was that Anti-Castro
Cubans and their CIA-Sympathizers are responsible for the assassination
due to Kennedy’s withdrawal of support for the Bay of Pigs and the
overall softening of rhetoric with Cuba and the Soviet Union. It also
covers his arrest and subsequent trial of Clay Shaw. It opened up my
eyes to a great deal of problems with the whole "official" view
presented by the Warren Report. |
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Jim Marrs' Crossfire
was published 1989 and is composed of a variety of data about the
various conspiracy theories. It is almost an encyclopedia of plots.
There is no conclusion and, as you might expect, some of the theories
are mutually exclusive. They cover the CIA , FBI and Mob
involvement theories without making any judgments. Jim Marrs is a
journalist, by trade, and this work constitutes a collection or
compilation of the theories and background. He does present some
seemingly far afield ideas. One thing that you cannot help to find while
looking into this, is the extraordinary number of what appears to be
(for the lack of a better term) "coincidences". Some of them are
suggestive, but whether or not they're significant, requires a judgment
call, which Marrs does not do. So these "facts" sometimes just hang out
there, painfully ominous, but, maybe more so than is deserved. One
of the facts I remember falling into that category was that
Richard Nixon was in Dallas that day. He was on the board of directors
for Coca-Cola and they had a board meeting. |
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Dr Charles A Crenshaw was on of the
doctors at Parkland in Dallas that worked on both Kennedy and, later,
Oswald. His book, JFK, Conspiracy of Silence was a
personal account of that day for him. The book is interspersed with
recollections of Crenshaw and a historical chronology of the day
provided by the "ghost writers" Jens Hansen and J. Gary Shaw. There is
some very graphic detail about the presidents injuries, it will take
some energy to get through it. One thing he said of note was "...there
was no doubt in my mind that the bullet had entered his head through the
front..." The book is sensitive, in spite of the necessity of its
occasional graphic details. |
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Jim Moore's Conspiracy of One
is an outline of his opinion on what happened that day in Dallas. I was
less than thrilled with this book. He calls himself a Warren Report
Critic, and, in fact disagrees with them in the end, but the vast
majority of the book he spends criticizing other Warren report critics.
He does it in a caustic, disparaging and, typically, uninformative way,
as well. Only in the last chapter does he get down to what he thinks and
it is anti-climatic. He does plead with you to read his book with an
open mind and read it in order. One good thing about the book is that he
does cite other critics and what their basic opinions are. That will, at
least, give you a list of who else you might want to read.
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James P. Hosty was the FBI agent from
Dallas assigned to Oswald. In his book, Assignment: OSWALD
he discusses his role in the period in and around the assassination. He
was, apparently, just assigned to the office a month or so before the
assassination and hadn't quite got a handle on all of those over whom he
had responsibility. He did visit his home a couple times and talked with
Oswald's wife, but beyond that, there wasn't much contact. One of the
interesting things that may critics point out was that Oswald had come
into the FBI office and left a note for Hosty, which Hosty read,
destroyed. So what was in the note? Hosty says that it
had nothing to do with the assassination. It was merely Oswald venting
about him (Hosty) visiting his home and talking to his wife while he was
not there. |
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Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment is the 1966 critique of the Warren
Commission's Report on the Assassination of John Kennedy. Unlike many
books about the event, this does not propose a solution, it merely
underscores the problems with the apparent "agenda", investigative
procedures and conclusions of the Commission's report. It is well
documented and footnoted. He uses footnotes and annotations liberally.
Chapter three, for instances (more or less, typical), has about 10
footnotes and 242 endnote references. Since it's one of the first books
out challenging the Commission's report, it really is a must read if you
are at all interested in the assassination.
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Next on my list is this article from
Gallery's October 1975 issue. Col. L Fletcher Prouty writes The
Guns of Dallas. Intriguing is that there exists a schematic map
that outlines trajectories and locations of the motorcade and where
shots probably originated . The map suggests at least 10 men on the
ground with four shooters; 2 from the Grassy Knoll, one from the Book
Depository and one from The Dal Tex building across Houston street from
the Book Depository. |
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The October 2, 1964 issue of Life
Magazine had an article from, then, Representative Gerald R. Ford,
member of the Warren Commission report. With the aid of some photos,
most notably from the famous "Zapruder" film (Abraham Zapruder was
taking movies at the time of the assassination and got it on film), the
article chronicles the events of the assassination. In this article Ford
asserts "...there is not a scintilla of credible evidence to suggest a
conspiracy to kill President Kennedy...." Right. |
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