JFK Conference: David Talbot named Allen Dulles as 'the Chairman of the Board of the Assassination'

[Octafish]

As a Democrat, a DUer and as a citizen of the United States, I was proud to attend "Passing the Torch: An International Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" at Duquesne University.

One of the important speakers there was David Talbot, author of "Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years." As the founder of Salon.com, the man of letters also understands new media and its import for democracy and our republic.



David Talbot did not mince words in his presentation at Duquesne. He publicly named former CIA director Allen Dulles not only as participant in the cover-up of events concerning CIA in the assassination of President Kennedy, Talbot said Dulles was the chief architect of the assassination.

Mr. Talbot has worked for more than two years on a book that I believe will shake the nation's financial and political establishment to its core. Here are Mr. Talbot's words, outlining why:

...I think what we're going to show over the next few years is that Allen Welsh Dulles was much more centrally involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, and its cover-up, than Lee Harvey Oswald.

Fifty years later, it's finally time to give the man his rightful place in history. In his day, Allen Dulles was America's most legendary spymaster, the longest-serving director of the CIA. He took great pleasure in regaling the public about his espionage triumphs. But, for obvious reasons, he could never take credit for his biggest and boldest covert operation:
the killing of the President of the United States in broad daylight on the streets of an American city.

I hope that my forthcoming book, which will be titled "The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, JFK and the Epic Battle for America's Soul" will at long last give Mr. Dulles his due. As I say in my title of my remarks this morning, I believe Allen Dulles truly was the "Chairman of the Board of the Kennedy Assassination."

In September 1965, nearly two years after Kennedy was violently removed from office, Allen Dulles went for a stroll near his home in Georgetown with a young magazine editor named William Morris. The old spymaster, long since retired, struck Morris as an amiable, avuncular character until the name Kennedy suddenly came up in the conversation. Suddenly a dark cloud crossed the old man's brow.

"That little Kennedy," he spat out. "He thought he was a god."

Allen Dulles knew who the true overlords of American power were. (They were) men like him and his brother, not Jack and Bobby Kennedy. The Kennedys were mere upstarts in comparison to the Dulles family. The Dulles dynasty boasted diplomats and international bankers and three secretaries of state. The Kennedy clan, by comparison, was distinguished by saloon keepers and ward healers. When paterfamilias Joseph Kennedy was amassing his fortune as a movie mogul and stock gambler, Dulles and his older brother were running Wall Street from their perch at the world's largest law firm, Sullivan and Cromwell and creating a new global financial order.

During the Cold War, President Eisenhower outsourced the country's foreign policy to the Dulles Brothers, with Secretary of State John Foster Dulles serving as the architect of Washington's global crusade against communism, and Allen Dulles carrying out the darker chores of empire.

Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev who kept looking for a way out of the Cold War noose but found himself repeatedly checkmated by the Dulleses remarked at one point, "One shuddered at what great force was in the Dulles Brothers' hands."

The Dulles Brothers stood at the very apex of American power, straddling an elite network that connected Wall Street, Washington, big oil and international finance. John Foster Dulles was the ultimate counselor for that overworld that ruled the country's government and business, and his younger brother Allen was at privileged circles master of intrigue and subversion, its enforcer...

Mr. Talbot had a lot more to say about the Dulles Brothers, especially Allen Dulles as head of CIA. One of the most important things to remember, Dulles, even after he was out of office, continued to command the respect of people like James Jesus Angleton and Richard Helms, people he had promoted to their positions of power, and people who kept their knowledge of CIA assassination programs away from President Kennedy and the various government investigators who would later ask them about them.

Something I'm personally proud to add: Dulles and his brother are two of the main founders of the BFEE, a term Bartcop coined and I borrow to denote the War Party affiliated with the right wing Wall Street crowd that infested Washington for much of the late 19th and 20th century. Allen Dulles was a good friend and business associate of Prescott Sheldon Bush, Sr.

During the Depression, they tried to overthrow FDR. Before and during World War II, they did business with Hitler. After the war, they imported NAZIs to help fight the commies and build up a case for the Military Industrial Complex. They've done a lot since, from Vietnam to Iraq.

Where does DU fit in all of this? DU serves to spread the truth about the government and how its secret services operate in service to wealth before service to the People. That's not only un-democratic, that's fascistic.

[kelliekat44]

1. I think Obama may be facing the same kind of opposition and a lot of things are beyond

his control and knowledge.

[Octafish]

28. My thoughts on the eve of Predident Obama's inauguration...

Heads up, Obama!

[loudsue]

74. You called that one spot on, too Octafish.

And you're right about the Dulles family. Absolutely correct.

[Unknown Beatle]

180. I disagree with you.

Obama was already in the tank for big monied interests. He wasn't about to jail anyone that broke the law, from the Bush administration to Wall St. His early appointees prove that he wasn't interested in what he campaigned against. Timothy Geithner, a Wall St insider; Eric Holder, attorney at Covington & Burling; the list goes on. There was no 'Heads up, Obama!", because he wasn't part of the solution to what ails us, he was part of the problem.

Did Obama bail out Main St.? Did Obama speak out for Occupy? No to both, and those two were huge for Americans.

You yourself posted this, How Corrupt Is the American Government? See For Yourself..., and in one of the links, we have this:

Obama and Congress promised help for struggling homeowners, and passed numerous bills that they claimed would rescue the little guy. But every single one of these bills actually bails out the banks … and doesn’t really help the homeowner

When he was elected in November of 2008, President-elect Obama announced his intention to nominate Timothy Geithner. That says it all.

ETA: Oopsies, you wrote that those were your thoughts back then and maybe you changed your mind about Obama now. My bad.

[Berlum]

2. Dulles (R - BFEE - Occultist)

[Octafish]

32. Cloak and Dagger had no place on the Warren Commission...

...yet, there he was. The Warren Commission's ties to NAZI Germany are facts curiously missing from American history and any corporate media mention of the assassination of President Kennedy.



Here's a fact curiously missing from American history and any mention of the Warren Commission: Two of its members were directly responsible for the rise of post-war fascism. Allen Dulles, as a top official of the OSS and CIA, incorporated NAZI war criminals into the CIA from its founding. John McCloy, as High Commissioner for Germany, allowed Klaus Barbie and who-knows-who-else to escape justice. Of course, both men were also barons of Wall Street and Beltway Insiders. We all can see what that means today.

[sabrina 1]

71. Omg! I knew a little about this, but like so many others, found it hard to process. But if we are

ever to get some form of justice in this country, hard as it may be, we must face these facts, and I thank you for bringing them out into the open so that people finally begin to understand the tragic history of this country. We sure won't hear about it on the Corporate Media.

[MinM]

177. Boston Globe: RFK never believed the Warren Commission

Just one day before his brother’s murder, Bobby had received a classified CIA report assessing the exile community’s reaction to a recent speech on Cuba policy that JFK had delivered in Miami. “The conservative and moderate elements were disappointed, having hoped for a more militant stand against the Castro revolution and regime,” stated the Nov. 21 report. Written by Richard Helms, the wily CIA deputy director who many believed was really running the agency, the report was contained in the confidential RFK Justice Department files released earlier this year.

As Bobby’s post-assassination suspicions appeared to bounce from Cuba to the Mafia to the CIA, he surely had to confront the reality that the lines separating all three had become increasingly blurry. In those same newly released RFK files was a personal note that Helms had written to Bobby, flagging an article that had appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times in 1962. Headlined “CIA Sought Giancana Help for Cuba Spying,” the article described a “fantastic tale of attempted Cuba espionage” involving the Chicago mob boss and covert operatives for the government.

This, of course, was the same Giancana whom Bobby had been doggedly trying to put away for years. The idea that the CIA would have turned to the mobster for a little help with Cuba would have seemed too outlandish for many Americans to believe. By now, however, Bobby knew the article had barely scratched the surface. The truth was a lot worse...

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/11/24/his-brother-keeper-robert-kennedy-saw-conspiracy-jfk-assassination/TmZ0nfKsB34p69LWUBgsEJ/story.html?p1=Article_Facet_Related_Article

[JimboBillyBubbaBob]

3. I suppose it would make many of our heads to spin...

...anticlockwise if we knew half of what goes down. I look forward to the book.

[spin]

5. I'm not sure if we can handle the truth. (n/t)

[DrDebug]

4. Indeed, be care with those United Fruit people

After all United Fruit was the first company to overthrow a government in human history (1903 Honduras)

:wave: I'm on a nostalgia tour and I couldn't help seeing you here.

BTW: How does the recommend work on the new DU (I haven't logged in for centuries...)

[IMG][/IMG]
[IMG][/IMG]
[IMG][/IMG]
Thanks to Mack White for those brilliant cartoons

[Demeter]

11. Rec your post!

It's time to pry the lid off this can of worms....everybody's dead (except Poppy).

[Octafish]

20. Allen Dulles and JCS chairman Lemnitzer told JFK the best time to attack USSR was 'Fall 1963'

What a coincidence.

Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?

Recently declassified information shows that the military presented President Kennedy with a plan for a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in the early 1960s.

James K. Galbraith and Heather A. Purcell
The American Prospect | September 21, 1994

During the early 1960s the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) introduced the world to the possibility of instant total war. Thirty years later, no nation has yet fired any nuclear missile at a real target. Orthodox history holds that a succession of defensive nuclear doctrines and strategies -- from "massive retaliation" to "mutual assured destruction" -- worked, almost seamlessly, to deter Soviet aggression against the United States and to prevent the use of nuclear weapons.

The possibility of U.S. aggression in nuclear conflict is seldom considered. And why should it be? Virtually nothing in the public record suggests that high U.S. authorities ever contemplated a first strike against the Soviet Union, except in response to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, or that they doubted the deterrent power of Soviet nuclear forces. The main documented exception was the Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 1960s, Curtis LeMay, a seemingly idiosyncratic case.

But beginning in 1957 the U.S. military did prepare plans for a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S.S.R., based on our growing lead in land-based missiles. And top military and intelligence leaders presented an assessment of those plans to President John F. Kennedy in July of 1961. At that time, some high Air Force and CIA leaders apparently believed that a window of outright ballistic missile superiority, perhaps sufficient for a successful first strike, would be open in late 1963.

The document reproduced opposite is published here for the first time. It describes a meeting of the National Security Council on July 20, 1961. At that meeting, the document shows, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the director of the CIA, and others presented plans for a surprise attack. They answered some questions from Kennedy about timing and effects, and promised further information. The meeting recessed under a presidential injunction of secrecy that has not been broken until now.

CONTINUED...

http://prospect.org/article/did-us-military-plan-nuclear-first-strike-1963

DrDeBug! It is great to read you. Long time missed you on DU!

Mack White is no slouch, either. Wonder what he'd think of the memorandum of Col. Howard Burris?

[DrDebug]

73. Very interesting story

I'm sure that the Dulles-Bush clan rejoiced at the idea of a nuclear holocaust. They almost got their wish with Cuba. Too bad that JFK messed that up.

Allen Dulles and George Herbert Walker Bush sliced up Cuba for their monopolies and wanted their sugar back. Oil, sugar, cocaine, money, power they are all highly addictive.

Fidel Castro, What Cuba's Rebels Want, Nov 30, 1957, The Nation

(snip)
At least 85 percent of Cuba’s small-scale farmers rent their land, and face the constant threat of eviction. More than half of our best arable land is in foreign hands; in Oriente, the broadest province of Cuba, the lands of The United Fruit Company and of the West Indies Fruit Company unite our northern and southern shores. Throughout the country, 200,000 rural families are without a square foot of land on which they can support themselves; yet almost ten million acres of untouched arable land remain in the hands of powerful interests.
(snip)

http://web.archive.org/web/20090417033036/http://www.thenation.com/doc/19571130/castro

Democracy Now!, Interview with Kevin Phillips author of American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics in the House of Bush

(snip)
George H. Walker was a real piece of work. I mean, he was a buccaneer. He was sort of a Joe Kennedy, but with a social register type qualification. He got involved in the 1920's with a bunch of Cuban companies, because of his ties to Percy Rockefeller and the National City Bank. They handled a lot of investments in Cuba. He was a director during the 1920's of eight or nine Cuban companies. George H. Walker had ties to the -- investment ties that were independent, so he had invested in some of these companies. One of them turned out several -- several turned out to merge into something called West Indies Sugar.

West Indies Sugar became one of the major American companies in Cuba, and George H. Walker Jr., the son of George H. Walker and Prescott, Bush's cousin was a director, held a family seat on West Indies Sugar. Now during the late 1950's, West Indies Sugar was based in the Indy province in Cuba. That's where the Castro insurgency was developing. Castro and his people sort of shook down West Indies Sugar. They used their trucks and hit them up for money and so forth. They were unhappy with the Castro movement. In 1959 or 1960, I forget which year, Castro's people nationalized West Indies Sugar, and at this time George H. W. Bush's uncle was Director of West Indies Sugar. The value of West Indies sugar had been about $50 million and it wound up being virtually peanuts.
(snip)

http://www.democracynow.org/2004/1/12/american_dynasty_fmr_top_republican_strategist

[yurbud]

176. I missed this when it first came up--this is crucial lost history

[LongTomH]

23. Thank you for this post and the cartoon.

There is so much 'hidden history' of the US that history books will not touch.

[Historic NY]

98. A lot of people probably don't know this major policy speech President Kennedy gave...

at West Point June 6, 1962. I met him as a little kid that day......I did an interview with a local paper recently and I brought this major speech up they printed it too....

Above all, you will have a responsibility to deter war as well as to fight it. For the basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible of a final military solution. While we will long require the services and admire the dedication and commitment of the fighting men of this country, neither our strategy nor our psychology as a nation,and certainly not our economy, must become permanently dependent upon an ever-increasing military establishment.

Our forces, therefore, must fulfill a broader role as a complement to our diplomacy, as an arm of our diplomacy, as a deterrent to our adversaries, and as a symbol to our allies of our determination to support them.




http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=8695

[hootinholler]

105. Thanks for that! n/t

[Octafish]

161. Thank you, Historic NY!

Please, will you share more of what you remember from that day?



I believe this is the rationale behind the West Point address: JFK hated War.

[lake loon]

123. Thank you for posting that

[Dreamer Tatum]

6. Can you state, in simple, declarative sentences,

with no links, appeals to conspiracy, irony, or other redirection, whom you believe killed Kennedy?

[rhett o rick]

7. I think it only fair if you go first. nm

[Dreamer Tatum]

10. Really? Ok. Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.

See how simple that is? No 1000 word salads or labyrinthine links.

[rhett o rick]

15. That was simple and I am guessing you prefer simple.

I believe that Oswald was involved and may have fired the actual shot or shot that hit JFK. But I believe that the odds that there was no conspiracy involved are extremely high.

If you believe that Oswald acted alone, I have no problem with it. My only problem here is when people try to use ridicule and mocking as tools to try to shut down discussion. And I am not accusing you.

I am very curious as to why you bother reading OP's like this one that obviously dont agree with your theory.

[Dreamer Tatum]

16. Wait - asking someone to state a belief is shutting down conversation?

In what world does "tell me what you think" equate to "shutting down the conversation?"

I will tell you why I read and respond: because SOME people seem to be more interested in supporting and perpetuating
the conspiracy industry than the answer itself.

And for the record, the OP still hasn't said what they believe, so it is far from clear whether they agree with my
"theory" or not.

[rhett o rick]

18. I wasnt referring to you. I clearly said that I was not accusing you. I dont even know

you. But I am learning quickly.

You say, "I will tell you why I read and respond: because SOME people seem to be more interested in supporting and perpetuating
the conspiracy industry than the answer itself. " So what if they are? Do you feel it's your duty to set SOME people straight?

"In what world does "tell me what you think" equate to "shutting down the conversation?" " In no world. But I didnt say that. Some that believe that Oswald acted alone, try to shut down discussion by calling others names like "CT'ers". You havent done that so that does not apply to you.

[reACTIONary]

93. +100 (nt)

[JackRiddler]

178. Oh no! Things to read!

How will we ever impose the Newspeak dictionary if people keep using WORDS?!

It seems you haven't even managed the headline, however. It's pretty clear as a declaration.

[Octafish]

17. I don't know. That's why I want to see ALL the government's JFK records opened.

Going from what I know, it wasn't Lee Harvey Oswald. He was being impersonated by people in Mexico City and Dallas in the weeks leading up to the assassination.

Simple enough for you, Dreamer Tatum?

[hack89]

42. Oswald was impersonated? Really?

This story gets wackier by the day.

Just out of curiosity, how many of the conference attendees were also 911 Truthers? Sounds like the kind of meeting that would attract them in droves.

[Octafish]

50. No one at Duquesne expressed condescension and bullying to those with opposing views.

Those are obvious attributes of the small-minded and ignorant. Who knows what made them that way, right hack89?

If you'd like to learn more about Mexico City, a good place to start:

http://www.ctka.net/pr999-osciamex.html


More here:

http://www.history-matters.com/frameup.htm


Once you have a basic understanding:

http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/was-oswald-impersonated-before-jfk-was-killed/


Oswald impersonations in Dallas, including signed purchase orders for trucks, a harrowing new car test ride, and an angry episode at a shooting range:

http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/was-oswald-impersonated-before-jfk-was-killed/


Don't forget to share what you learn.

[hack89]

51. If that is what passes as "proof" in the JFK CT industry

Then no wonder you have made no progress in 50 years.

unsubstantiated assertions in the first link - "it was an impersonator because he used words I don't think Oswald would use".

and two links to a CT site.

This takes me back to the good old days in the old 911 forum. Truthers had reams of "evidence" too.

[Octafish]

61. The problem isn't what I know or can can prove. The problem is CIA and secret government.

Read my journals on DU3 or DU2 to learn more.

[Judi Lynn]

72. Thanks for the links to those journals. So helpful. n/t

[hack89]

78. You have created the perfect self licking ice cream cone

A CT completely invulnerable to logic and evidence - the lack of evidence becomes evidence of a conspiracy.

Just like the Truthers and the birthers - they say exactly the same thing about government secrecy to "prove" their CTs.

[Octafish]

89. 10 Points of Agreement on Political Assassinations

10 Points of Agreement on Political Assassinations

October 23, 2013

Here is the full text of the 10 Points of Agreement on Political Assassinations reviewed and updated by the research community and at the last COPA meeting in November, 2012. To sign on, please send an email to [e-mail]. This will be updated online here and also used for press and public distribution in a condensed form.

10 POINTS OF AGREEMENT ON POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS

Coalition on Political Assassinations and the Research Community

This document is based on a consensus or large majority of the ballistics, forensic, photographic, legal, and medical experts and the academicians, journalists, historians, authors and serious independent researchers who have examined American political assassinations from the 1960s to the present.

We identify these murders as “political assassinations” based not on the target being an elected official, but on the motive and effect of the killing being political. In some cases the motive was the removal and replacement of a leader by opposing forces or by succession, or of a candidate for office. In others the target was a leader in a popular movement for change or social justice who was perceived as a threat to the status quo, both to destroy the movement and the hope of citizens for change. In others the target was a witness to criminal acts or conspiracies or damaging information that would threaten to reveal the actual perpetrators of the crimes.

We have had five decades of research, court cases, released records, official investigations, and independent investigations into the major political assassinations that changed the direction of America since the early 1960s. These statements represent the best evidence and what we now know, on the verge of the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, about his murder and others.

They are offered in the hope that the need for justice and the claims of history will prevail in a democratic society that has had democracy stolen by these heinous acts.

POINT ONE
WE DO NOT BELIEVE IN CONSPIRACY “THEORIES”, WE WORK WITH FACTUAL EVIDENCE OF CONSPIRACY IN UNSOLVED CRIMES

Our points of agreement are based on the best hard evidence – scientific, documentary, photographic and historic – that has emerged over five decades pointing to the inadequacy of the official explanations of political assassinations, and instead pointing to the existence of criminal conspiracy in politically motivated murders of elected and public figures of historical importance. From Congressional investigations, civil and criminal trials, declassified records, and new investigations over these decades, new evidence continues to emerge supporting these conclusions.

We do not work from speculation or theory, but from serious research into real evidence. Our members and presenters at conferences include former presidents of the American Academy of Forensic Science; leading ballistics, legal and medical experts, respected investigative journalists; former investigators for Congressional panels; academic professors of note; and independent researchers who have spent years examining and compiling the best new evidence. Our standards for these conclusions follow those of academia, professional journalists and criminal courts and investigations.

We use a process of peer review and rational skepticism to distinguish our presentations, as evidence-based, not speculation. We encourage a quality of debate on these issues, and the core of the research community is not at serious odds on these questions. We do not entertain “conspiracy theories” based on guilt by association or imaginative scenarios, but rely instead on association by guilt. We continue to push for the release of all documents, evidence, investigation and information needed to resolve these as yet unsolved crimes that had such an impact on our country.

POINT TWO
OFFICIAL INVESTIGATIONS WERE FLAWED: BALLISTICS, FORENSIC, LEGAL, PHOTOGRAPHIC AND AUTOPSY MANIPULATION LED TO FALSE CONCLUSIONS

The official police, coroner, and trial investigations and the examinations by the Warren Commission, the FBI and the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) ignored the best evidence in these assassination cases, or were denied it. These national probes disagreed in their conclusions, since the HSCA ended with a report that a conspiracy was probably involved in the murders of both President Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet, both were wrong in their insistence on the perpetrators of the crimes. Both were also lied to and obstructed by other government and intelligence agencies in their work.

The best evidence that has come to light in these cases points to the following errors in the official conclusions:

JOHN F. KENNEDY – Film footage, and the forensic and ballistics evidence are conclusive. There were more than three shots fired from more than one location in Dealey Plaza on November 22. 1963. The fatal shot did not come from behind President Kennedy. The Warren Commission’s single-bullet theory was wrong and has not stood the test of time or evidence. The bullets in the victims did not match the alleged murder weapon. A now admittedly flawed ballistics-matching test was used by the FBI for the first time in this case. There was evidence of tampering. Two different rifles were identified on site. The wounds were never properly examined. The body was removed from Dallas by the Secret Service illegally, since they had jurisdiction for the autopsy.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING – Ballistics tests are conclusive. The location of the shooter was not in the rooming house to the right and above Dr. King. The bullet in the victim did not match the rifle alleged to be the murder weapon. No autopsy was performed. There was evidence tampering. There is evidence of an additional rifle.

ROBERT F KENNEDY – Autopsy, acoustic and ballistics evidence are conclusive. There were more than eight shots, from back and front, and two shooters. The fatal bullets do not match the alleged murder weapon. Competent autopsy conclusions were ignored. There was evidence tampering. Two different guns have been identified.

SIMILAR PATTERNS IN OTHER POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS AND ATTEMPTS – President Ronald Reagan, Black Panther members Mark Clark and Fred Hampton in Chicago and many other political figures who were the target of assassinations and attempts are marked with similar discrepancies and errors in the forensic and ballistics evidence.

POINT THREE
IMPROPER TRIALS AND WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS OF ALLEGED ASSASSINS; NEW EVIDENCE OF INNOCENCE OR EXONERATION CONTINUES TO EMERGE

In all these cases either innocent people were wrongly convicted for the crime, or additional criminal conspirators were never located or charged. The best evidence that has come to light in these cases proves the following:

JOHN F. KENNEDY – Lee Harvey Oswald did not own the rifle and pistol alleged to be murder weapons, did not fire a gun that day, and was not on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository at the time of the assassination, the alleged location of the shots that killed President Kennedy. There was planted, destroyed and falsified evidence. Oswald claimed his innocence in public and claimed he was “a patsy” in a voice without stress. Oswald was killed in police custody by Jack Ruby, a member of organized crime, preventing a trial. Tremendous pressure was brought by top government authorities to find that Oswald was a “lone assassin,” No trial or fair hearing was ever held.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING – James Earl Ray did not fire a rifle and was not at the rooming house alleged to be the source of the shot, or at the scene of the crime. There was planted evidence and normal ballistics tests were not performed that day. At Ray’s brief trial, the defense lawyer stipulated his guilt and repressed evidence and testimony of conspiracy. The identity of Ray’s associate “Raoul” was not sought. His attorney prepared no defense, and pressured Ray to make a plea bargain and appeal later. There was interference in his later appeals, including the sudden deaths of two judges during the considerations. Ray died in prison during his final appeal, which had proved that the gun he purchased did not fire the bullet that killed Dr. King. Ray was later found innocent by a jury in a civil trial brought by the family of Dr. King, who heard all the facts that were otherwise ambiguous presented. This trial got scant media coverage.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY – None of the bullets fired from Sirhan Sirhan’s gun hit Robert F. Kennedy. There is clear autopsy and eyewitness evidence of a second gunman who fired the fatal shots. Evidence of other criminal conspirators at the site was not investigated fully. There is emerging evidence of hypnotic programming involved in Sirhan’s actions, a fact agreed to at his trial but claimed as “self-hypnosis”. Sirhan’s defense attorney stipulated his guilt at trial. There was false ballistics testimony at the trial used to convict him. Sirhan continues to bring legal appeals to prove innocence based on new evidence testing. An acoustic test clearly shows that two guns fired at least 13 bullets during the incident.

SIMILAR PATTERNS IN OTHER POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS – The use of programmed assassins, the framing of patsies, false suicides and evidence of conspiracy have been ignored in the murders or attempted assassinations of Ronald Reagan, John Lennon, Marilyn Monroe and Malcolm X, among others.

POINT FOUR
OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE AND OFFICIAL COVER-UP BY POLICE, CORONERS, GOVERNMENT AND INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES, GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATORS, DA OFFICES, ATTORNEYS GENERAL MARK TRIALS AND INVESTIGATIONS

The best evidence that has come to light in these cases reveals the following in political assassinations, especially the murders of President Kennedy, his brother and Dr. King:

§ Destruction and alteration of evidence and planted evidence
§ Manipulation and control of national and local media
§ Planning the investigative conclusions in advance
§ Complicity in pressure for false conclusions
§ Lack of investigation of alternative conclusions
§ Secrecy and classification of the historical records and evidence
§ Refusal to examine new emerging evidence or review convictions
§ Lack of due process or legal malfeasance in court trials
§ Direct concealment of involvement in or with the conspiracy or conspirators

JOHN F. KENNEDY – Incoming President Lyndon B. Johnson, Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach and FBI Director J, Edgar Hoover attempted to manipulate witnesses and public opinion to force a conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin. Local Dallas police, if not complicit in the crime, botched the investigation, destroyed or hid evidence and facilitated the murder of the sole suspect.

Members of the Warren Commission had serious conflicts of interest in their examination of the role of intelligence agencies, the demands of the FBI, and their selection of testimony and evidence for consideration. They were also thwarted by lack of cooperation and direct concealment of information by both civilian and military intelligence agencies. Their investigation was focused on proving a conclusion, to the point that only three evidence folders were prepared in advance of any hearing to contain information about each bullet. Witnesses were intimidated in advance by the FBI, and by the Commission counsel to reach a single conclusion. No proper autopsy or trial was ever conducted. Oswald was provided no real defense, and no cross-examination was allowed at the hearings. President Johnson ordered all evidence not released in the 26-volume Hearings and Evidence of the Warren Commission classified for 75 years.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations was undermined by political pressures that removed the initial homicide investigator and focused its direction solely on organized crime. It continued to support the conclusion that Oswald was the lone gunman in Dallas. Only hard scientific acoustical evidence showing that at least one bullet was fired from the front, forced the HSCA to conclude a “probable conspiracy.” The chairman, Robert Blakey, now concedes that the CIA hid evidence from him that might have steered the conclusion away from organized crime. Congress ruled that the evidence collected by the HSCA would be locked away from the public for 50 years. Only the JFK Records Act in 1992 effected the early release of millions of pages of Warren Commission and HSCA files on President Kennedy’s assassination, many of which are still being withheld.

The only judicial investigation of the crime, conducted by District Attorney Jim Garrison in New Orleans threatened these agencies. He was under attack from the start by both the FBI and the CIA. He was obstructed, denied records and witnesses, and vilified in the media, even though the records declassified later support many of his contentions and conclusions. His own files were ordered destroyed and concealed for decades by DA Harry Connick, who replaced him. Almost all the early critics of the Warren Commission were under surveillance and subjected to FBI and CIA attacks to discredit them.

Even though Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren noted that the case was not closed and that new evidence might emerge that would change their conclusions, the FBI and other agencies have refused to act when just such evidence has come to light. This despite the fact that we now know that many of the Warren Commission members expressed doubts about the conclusions reached, some during the investigation.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING – Despite testimony and evidence at the murder site of a different location and identity of the shooter, police and the FBI focused on planted evidence implicating James Earl Ray and refused to examine evidence pointing to conspiracy. The FBI did not perform simple ballistics tests on the alleged murder weapon. Local authorities altered and destroyed the crime scene the next day, and no attempt was made to preserve the proximate scene for forensic testing.

Attorney General Ramsey Clark declared there was no conspiracy involved before any evidence had been compiled. Civilian and military intelligence agencies concealed evidence of their role in active surveillance, disruption, placing of informants and attacks on Dr. King and the civil rights movement.

Neither the Memphis medical examiner, Dr. Jerry Francisco, nor the HSCA investigators attempted to determine the direction of the fatal bullet. Ray’s brief trial provided no defense or cross-examination, and the judge and his own lawyer silenced him when he raised the possibility of a conspiracy that had manipulated him. There were attempts to destroy the alleged murder weapon after it was found not to have fired the fatal shot, and a continuing refusal to allow re-testing. There were numerous attempts to undermine Ray’s appeals, including a decision to refuse a medical treatment that might have saved his life.

Emerging new evidence of conspiracy was either ignored or actively and falsely de-bunked by the FBI and the Justice Department.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations failed to examine evidence of Ray’s innocence and pointed to a “probable conspiracy” involving organized crime. The chairman, Rep. Louis Stokes, asked Congress to lock up the HSCA files for 50 years. These files are still not open to the public today.

A civil trial, which presented all the ballistics and forensic evidence and witness testimony under cross-examination to a jury, exonerated James Earl Ray and agreed there was a conspiracy involved, ruling that, “others, including governmental agencies, were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by the defendant” that had killed Dr. King. The testimony and evidence presented at the trial pointed to the involvement of both civilian and military intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY – The Los Angeles Police Department was active in intimidating witnesses and destroying or altering ballistics evidence in this case. Attorney General Ramsey Clark again declared there was no conspiracy involved before the evidence was considered. Sirhan Sirhan was not given effective counsel at trial and both civilian and military intelligence agencies concealed evidence of conspiracy. As new scientific and autopsy evidence emerged of a second, fatal weapon being involved it was ignored. The police investigative records and evidence were concealed for decades and the DA’s office in Los Angeles resisted attempts to reopen the case.

Definitive forensic evidence of a shot from behind Robert Kennedy from coroner Thomas Noguchi, expert ballistics examination that showed the fatal bullet did not come from Sirhan’s gun, and the testimony of witnesses to that conclusion were ignored or dismissed.

The discovery of an intact audio recording of the assassination provided acoustics and ballistics evidence that now clearly proves that two .22 caliber guns of different make and model fired at least 13 shots, some almost simultaneously, and an appeal on new grounds is being sought for Sirhan.

SIMILAR PATTERNS IN OTHER POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS – Similar problems beset the trials and official investigations of other political murders, including the use of military custody for suspects like John W. Hinckley, Jr. after arrest. Destruction of evidence, even of whole crime scenes, mark some of the political attacks carried out by local police. The murders of Malcolm X, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and numerous other political organizers involve police informants, disrupters and provocateurs in conjunction with intelligence agencies that conceal their involvement later. The false accusations of suspects often prevent the arrest and conviction of the actual conspirators. A few cold-case investigations into assassinations of other civil rights leaders and activists have led to the prosecution and conviction of the real killers, but their lessons have yet to be applied in these major cases.

POINT FIVE
A PATTERN OF UNUSUAL DEATHS, VIOLENT MURDERS, FALSE SUICIDES AND THREATS TO KEY WITNESSES MARKS EACH ASSASSINATION

The best evidence that has come to light in these cases points to the following in political assassinations, especially the murders of President Kennedy, his brother and Dr. King:

JOHN F. KENNEDY – The Dallas police, the FBI and the Warren Commission attorneys threatened many potential and actual witnesses into silence or into altering their statements. For example, one Warren Commission witness was quoted in the record as saying, “I heard one more shot than was actually fired.” Some witnesses who were sounding a warning in advance that President Kennedy would be killed died violently before the assassination.

A series of violent deaths or inexplicable suicides befell key witnesses almost immediately who had known Lee Harvey Oswald, Officer J.D. Tippit, a Dallas policeman killed the day of the assassination, and Jack Ruby. Officer Tippit was shot to death, but the best evidence does not point to Oswald as his killer. Oswald, the suspect, was the next to die, and his shooting was broadcast on national television, shocking the country. Ruby died in prison of a quick acting cancer after complaining he was being given painful injections.

A statistically improbable number of witnesses to key events or associates of suspects died in the intervening years. One listing cites as many as 175 suspicious deaths related to the case. Witnesses to the House Select Committee on Assassinations died violently and strangely before they could be called to testify, including top FBI and CIA agents involved in the assassination plots against Castro and domestic plots against Dr. King and others.

Violent and strange deaths befell other members of the Kennedy family over the years.

Prominent members of the media also died in strange ways following announcements that they had new evidence that would soon break the case open. Though not all may be murders, there is reason to do a more thorough investigation into these numerous “coincidental” deaths.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING – Memphis police and the FBI intimidated witnesses in the case from the beginning. Violent and strange deaths befell other members of the King family who had seen the wounds on his body, including his mother and his brother. Two court judges, local and federal, died abruptly of heart failure while considering Ray’s first local and final federal appeals. Judge Miller of the 6th Circuit Court had asked questions that upheld a remand of the case and subsequent re-appeal. His vote against Ray was “recorded posthumously by the other justices.” At least one independent reporter and investigator, Louis Lomax, died violently. The circumstances and the timing of these deaths invite further investigation.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY – Robert Kennedy might have been assassinated in part because he told associates that he wanted to re-open the investigation of his brother’s murder once he got into the White House. LAPD intimidated witnesses, some of them associated with CIA operations. The FBI concealed the Robert Kennedy autopsy and photographic evidence and other related materials in a separate filing system under control of Cartha Deke DeLoach, one of the originators of the FBI’s COINTELPRO programs against the peace and civil rights movements.

SIMILAR PATTERNS IN OTHER POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS – Witnesses to domestic political murders have died strangely, suddenly and violently prior to testimony at trials or official investigations.

POINT SIX
THERE IS EVIDENCE OF CIVILIAN AND MILITARY INTELLIGENCE AGENCY INVOLVEMENT IN THE CRIMES AND COVER-UPS

The best evidence that has come to light in these cases reveals the following in political assassinations, especially the murders of President Kennedy, his brother and Dr. King:

JOHN F. KENNEDY – Lee Harvey Oswald was connected to or employed by the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), the FBI and the CIA. There are numerous unexplained anomalies in the files on Oswald in the ONI, the FBI and the CIA, rising to a peak of suspicious intensification of interest in Oswald in the weeks just before the assassination. FBI Director J. Hoover admitted, and the released files show that there was an Oswald “double” in Mexico City prior to the assassination, to create a false link to Fidel Castro. The record also indicates that Oswald was part of a burst of dubious defectors to the Soviet Union, and who arrived and left in the same months. Oswald had a role at Jagger Chiles Stovall, an intelligence subcontractor for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) in the photographic evidence that led to the Cuban missile crisis, and a connection to the development of the U-2 spy plane.

Many of Oswald’s employers and those who helped place him had ties to the intelligence agencies, as did people who met him and surrounded him in New Orleans and in Dallas on his return from the Soviet Union. The White Russian community in Dallas, with extensive ties to the Tolstoy Foundation and the CIA helped to surround the Oswald family, set him up as the patsy and manipulate the evidence and testimony before the Warren Commission. Oswald was also close to many CIA agents and operatives who had been part of the Bay of Pigs operation and later Watergate crimes. Clay Shaw, who evaded prosecution by DA Garrison in New Orleans, was revealed to have been an active informant for the CIA. Top-level CIA meetings were held daily on undermining Garrison’s investigation. Texas official Waggoner Carr revealed information that LHO was an intelligence operative, after his arrest.

Extensive CIA files regarding Oswald are still classified and their release is being obstructed illegally. Allen Dulles, who had been fired as head of the CIA by President Kennedy, had a major role as a member of the Warren Commission investigation and obstructions.

The Secret Service played a role in pulling off security for the limousine at Dallas’s Love Field just before the shooting. At meetings in advance between the Secret Service, FBI and others, a dangerous change in the route of the motorcade and the decision to remove the plastic bubbletop from the limousine were made. According to their testimony, Secret Service agents were not stationed in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination, until Forrest Sorrels arrived twenty minutes afterwards. Numerous witnesses, including Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman, Sergeant D. V. Harkness, and Officer Joe Marshall Smith, testified to accosting people immediately at the scene of the shooting who identified themselves using valid Secret Service credentials. This may be explained by the established fact that the Secret Service recruited extra personnel, including from Armed Forces Reserves, for supplemental assistance during presidential visits. People acting as Secret Service agents in Dealey Plaza immediately after the assassination facilitated confiscation and removal of evidence and suspects from the crime scene.

A large contingent of Dallas police, including those close to Jack Ruby, were also part of an Army Intelligence Reserve unit that played a role in framing Oswald and undermining security for the motorcade. Army Intelligence agents from Ft. Sam Houston were reportedly dropped off at Dealey Plaza with miniaturized cameras to record the events of that day, but the films have never come to light.

Events at the time of the assassination and afterwards that day suggest a role by the top levels of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, such as Strategic Air Command bomber pilots in the air that hour missing decrypting books for combat and nuclear orders, including the pilot who brought the cabinet members back to Washington. Other examples include the secure communications between the Pentagon and all other agencies going dead at the moment of the assassination for two hours, the separation of President Johnson and the nuclear command “Black Box” for a period following the assassination.

A Dallas based US Army Reserve intelligence unit immediately put out disinformation about Oswald to confuse the American public with the false impression that Oswald was conspiring with the Soviets and Cubans to assassinate Kennedy. American troops were loaded onto transport planes and Navy SEALS were stationed offshore for an invasion of Cuba that day. There was a complete reversal at the Pentagon on the Monday following the assassination of Kennedy’s earlier orders for a full withdrawal from Vietnam, initiating instead a ten-year war with a projected 57,000 troop deaths

The Warren Commission failed to investigate the information provided by Dallas police and legal authorities that Oswald was working for both the FBI and the CIA. Oswald was seen meeting regularly with FBI agents in New Orleans in a garage frequented by anti-Castro Cubans, as well as with CIA agents who were tied to these Cubans. The HSCA similarly avoided any real investigation of this area.

John J. McCloy, who sat on the Warren Commission, had a long history of intelligence connections and a Cold War agenda. Others on the Commission staff worked closely with the CIA or had backgrounds in intelligence operations at the end of World War II in Germany. The CIA sent a memo in April, 1967 instructing press assets on methods to attack and discredit Warren Commission critics.

The role of civilian and military intelligence agencies in thwarting real investigations and hiding or destroying evidence proceeds from the Warren Commission to the Rockefeller Commission, the HSCA and the Assassination Records Review Board’s efforts to release the files. These intelligence agencies played a critical role in framing Oswald for the crime, and have covered up their involvement since.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING – Files released by the Freedom of Information Act over the years have shown that the CIA’s MK/CHAOS, the FBI’s COINTELPRO and RYBAT, and Army Intelligence’s GARDEN PLOT and LANTERN SPIKE carried out tight surveillance of Dr. King during most of his adult life up to the moment of his death. The CIA was focused on the rise of “militant black nationalist” organizations, and feared the rise of a “black messiah” like Malcolm X or Dr. King. Army Intelligence had been spying on King’s family as far back as his grandfather. J. Edgar Hoover targeted Dr. King as “dangerous” and FBI informants painted him as being under Communist control.

According to evidence presented at the civil trial brought by the King family, Army Special Forces snipers had Dr. King in their gun sights on April 4, 1968, apparently as a backup to the plotters closer to him. Army Intelligence agents were allowed to go to the roof of the nearby firehouse the day of his murder to take photographs, and Army veterans have reportedly seen pictures of the actual killer in the bushes across the street from the motel. The city of Memphis inexplicably ordered the removal of trees and bushes the following day in the area behind the rooming house that would have blocked any shot at Dr. King, misleading press and public about the possible source of the shots.

A well-known photographer in Memphis, who covered the civil rights movement and who was present at the scene of the crime was revealed to have secretly acted as an FBI informant and provocateur for years. Marrell McCullough, an Office of Naval Intelligence operative working for the Memphis Police Department, was the first to get to Dr. King following the shots, cradling him in his arms as he died, and he later worked for the CIA. The sole witness on the balcony level, James Laue, was in Memphis filming Dr. King for a documentary, but secretly worked for the CIA. The Memphis medical examiner, who refused to do an autopsy on Dr. King was called months later to come to Los Angeles to examine Robert F. Kennedy after his assassination.

The intelligence agencies penetrated Dr. King’s movement and his close circle with informants and disrupters. Current and former FBI agents were responsible for the withdrawal of police security around Dr. King before the shooting. Black police agents who had previously been assigned to such work were removed from the scene. The FBI also ignored many death threats and warnings aimed at Dr. King.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY – Robert Kennedy, as Attorney General under his brother, had stood up to the Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Cuban missile crisis, blocking escalation to global nuclear war, leading the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Curtis LeMay to storm out of one meeting saying, “We have to get rid of those S.O.B.’s [Kennedy brothers]“. Robert Kennedy had been placed into the CIA Mongoose planning group, and he blocked attempts to assassinate Castro and invade Cuba after being lied to by the CIA about the Bay of Pigs.

He was waging a successful campaign during the Kennedy administration against organized crime and he convicted or deported key Mafia bosses, including Sam Giancana, Jack Ruby’s boss in Chicago. He had given support to Dr. King in his efforts towards civil rights, intervening to affect his release from jail. He stood with his brother in the attempts to end the nuclear arms race, the Cold War and the rise of the Military-Industrial Complex that President Eisenhower had warned about. Both brothers were involved in the plans for a full withdrawal of American troops from the war in Vietnam by 1964. RFK and his brother were also threatening to end the Oil Tax Depletion Allowance which provided billions in federal tax breaks to major oilmen in Dallas and elsewhere.

Robert F. Kennedy was also a target of surveillance by the FBI and other government agencies, and his name appears in files regarding informant information, released by the FBI, that both he and Dr. King were allegedly under the control of the Chinese Communist Party. There are indications that J. Edgar Hoover and organized crime figures attempted to use surveillance and recording devices to collect information that would allow political blackmail of the Kennedy brothers.

In his presidential election campaign, Robert Kennedy raised the same issues that Dr. King had raised in regard to widespread poverty, racism and militarism and called for an end to the Vietnam War. He told close associates that he planned to reopen the investigation into his brother’s death once he got to the White House, and he expressed suspicions privately for many years about the existence of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Thus, he had drawn the enmity of the same elements that had wanted the removal of his brother.

There are indications of manipulation of RFK’s wrongly convicted assassin Sirhan and his family by the CIA and other agencies, and of sophisticated hypnotic programming of the sort tested by both the CIA’s MK/ULTRA and other mind control programs and by the Office of Naval Intelligence for the creation of assassins. Members of the LAPD who worked to obstruct justice and the record in this case had ties to CIA operations abroad.

SIMILAR PATTERNS IN OTHER POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS – The penetration of local police departments, especially their intelligence units, by agents or veterans of the CIA, ONI, Army Intelligence, the FBI and other covert agencies becomes visible in the murders of Malcolm X, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and many COINTELPRO operations.An intersection of organized crime, evangelical churches and both military and civilian intelligence played a role in the deaths of Marilyn Monroe and the attempted murders of George Wallace, President Ronald Reagan and others.

POINT SEVEN
THERE ARE UNINDICTED SUSPECTS AND ACCESSORIES AFTER THE FACT
Motive, means and opportunity do not provide a conviction, but they can provide a list of probable or possible suspects and persons of interest in a criminal investigation. In a normal homicide, one must work with the evidence to eliminate or include suspects until the preponderance of solid, not just circumstantial, evidence isolates the most likely culprit. In a criminal conspiracy, the principles are the same, but the evidence may serve to include rather than eliminate perpetrators. Accessories after the fact would include those who destroy or manipulate evidence, those who distort or deceive, those who ignore or provide evidence designed to point to a false conclusion, or those who control the investigation.

The research community has relied on a combination of the existing public records and testimony, related court cases, voluntary confessions, collections of anomalies or contradictory evidence, comparison of the facts to the conclusions, efforts to release more files and records and to examine the forensic evidence, independent scientific testing and logic to attempt to identify suspects and solve the cases. However, we were denied access to files, the power of subpoena, court-directed testimony or cross-examination, assistance from all but a few experts and journalists, and any objective forum in which to present our ideas and evidence for debate and review. Any criticism of well-reasoned theses and alternate solutions by independent researchers must first be applied to the flawed public and legal investigations by official bodies with the power to compel testimony, collect evidence and see classified files, who failed to create a credible or compelling solution that satisfied the public or the facts.

Because the evidence points in many directions with no method of legal resolution at hand and no tools for exhaustive research, the research community cannot be faulted for having a range of suspects and accessories after the fact, some or all of whom may have been involved in some way, be that plotting the crime, carrying it out, or covering it up.

After nearly five decades of work, authors, experts and investigators have discovered a large body of convincing evidence pointing to the need for further scrutiny and full legal investigation, with due process rights, of certain agencies and individuals who would fit an early suspect list based on the criteria mentioned above.

The best evidence that has come to light in these cases of political assassinations identifies the following suspects, accessories and persons of interest in the murders of President Kennedy, his brother, Dr. King and others:

JOHN F. KENNEDY – On the plotting level the prime suspects are the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, and members the ONI, Army Intelligence, the CIA, and the FBI.

On the mechanical level, we identify organized crime, anti-Castro Cubans, CIA agents, Secret Service agents, oilmen from Texas, far right extremists, the White Russian community in Dallas, CIA assets who manipulated Oswald and framed him, and the transplanted international Nazi and fascist criminals who escaped punishment and worked for the goals of the Cold War. The same personnel and operatives fit into the later Watergate and Contragate scandals and other political murders over time.

Deaths of witnesses were usually at the hands of local police, or trained assassins from organized crime, the anti-Castro community, and Army Special Forces, as well as some medical and forensic personnel who caused the deaths or ruled them as accidents or suicides.

Accessories after the fact and those involved in the cover-up include President Johnson, the FBI, the CIA, the Dallas police, examining doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital, some of the investigative panel members and staff on the Warren Commission and the HSCA and some members of the press.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING – According to the evidence presented at the civil trial on the assassination of Dr. King and the conclusion confirmed by the jury, the plotting of his assassination involved “others, including governmental agencies, [who] were parties to this conspiracy as alleged by the defendant”, So did the framing of the patsy falsely convicted of the crime, James Earl Ray. Again there is evidence pointing to a role by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army and Navy Intelligence, the CIA and the FBI who were conducting joint surveillance of Dr. King until the moment of his death. All of them saw him and the movement he was leading as a serious threat to national security that had to be eliminated.

On the mechanical level, we identify elements of white-supremacist organizations, organized crime and other criminal elements; and informants and provocateurs inside Dr. King’s organization created, used or paid by the government agencies opposing Dr. King. People close to him arranged details in Memphis that placed him in direct danger and aided in his assassination. Army Special Forces snipers had him in their sights that day, and other Army Intelligence agents were photographing the event from the nearby firehouse roof. Local police and FBI agents were responsible for compromising his security in the hours prior to his death, removing key African-American police who normally guarded him. Police, prison and government agents facilitated and manipulated James Earl Ray’s prison escapes, aliases, financial resources and international movements and planted evidence to frame him for the murder of Dr. King.

Suspicious and untimely deaths of witnesses to the crime and to the evidence point to the involvement of people involved in other covert police actions and provocateur roles, such as Marcus Wayne Chennault, who murdered Dr. King’s mother in their family church in Atlanta.

Accessories after the fact include the Memphis medical examiner who refused to do an autopsy on Dr. King that might have clarified the path and direction of the bullet. City officials in Memphis ordered immediate destruction of trees and bushes at the crime scene that were clearly blocking a shot from the alleged sniper nest in the rooming house bathroom. The FBI never properly performed ballistics tests of the alleged murder weapon. Courts, defense and prosecution attorneys, and the official investigations refused to pursue evidence of any conspiracy or to identify Ray’s mysterious handler, whom he called “Raoul”. When new evidence emerged over the years, it was met with hostile responses and a lack of objective investigation by the FBI and the Justice Department.

ROBERT F. KENNEDY – There is evidence pointing to a role in plotting the political assassination of presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy by the Los Angeles Police Department, the FBI, the CIA, military intelligence and elements of the Military-Industrial Complex. His campaign promises and issues threatened the same elements that had a motive and a role in killing his brother, President Kennedy. J. Edgar Hoover had a long and bitter hatred of his former boss, Robert F. Kennedy, knowing that the Kennedy administration planned to replace him as FBI director after the first term. The intersection of the FBI, ONI and organized crime played a role in his murder.

Also, on the mechanical level, organized crime and evangelical ministers seem to have assisted or facilitated in the murder or the placement of the patsy. The most likely suspect, a second gunman present, was employed by a major military contractor, Lockheed Martin.

Accessories after the fact include the Secret Service, which was were assigned a role in the case immediately after the shooting, the LAPD, which attempted to have the Memphis medical examiner who worked on Dr. King come to Los Angeles to examine RFK, This move was successfully blocked by the competent coroner Thomas Noguchi, whose thorough autopsy established conclusively that Robert F. Kennedy was shot from behind by a gun at very close range.

The LAPD destroyed and falsified evidence in the case, and pressured witnesses to change their testimony. LAPD ballistics examiner DeWayne Wolfer gave false evidence and testimony regarding the bullets and the alleged murder weapon. Courts and defense and prosecution attorneys failed to examine the evidence or provide a real defense for Sirhan, leading to a false conviction. The FBI played a role with its own botched investigation and refusal to re-examine emerging new evidence in the case, as well as in concealing key evidence in their own files. Evidence in the LAPD records was hidden from the public for many years, and key acoustic evidence did not surface until May 31, 2004.

New forensic evidenced and expert analysis continue to emerge in the murder of Robert F. Kennedy, leading to calls for a new grand jury investigation by the Los Angeles DA’s office and a new evidentiary hearing in court for Sirhan to appeal his conviction and sentence. The LAPD and court officials continue to block any re-examination despite the clear evidence of two gunmen, false conclusions about the source of the fatal bullet and indications of hypnotic programming of Sirhan.

SIMILAR PATTERNS IN OTHER POLITICAL ASSASSINATIONS – The same civilian and military intelligence and federal investigative agencies, local police departments, and elements of organized crime that intersect with them are implicated by clear evidence in many other political assassinations and attempts using the same methods, operatives and modus operandi as plotters, accessories after the fact and obstructers of justice on both local and national levels.

Inadequate medical examinations, court inquiries, police or other official investigations and destruction or manipulation of evidence continue to lead to false convictions and the immunity and impunity of the real assassins. In many cases the same operatives, coroners or medical examiners, court psychologists and attorneys reappear continuing in the same destructive roles. In a few cases, decades later, convictions are sought without reference to the larger patterns of criminal conspiracy that created the crimes.

This is true in the cases of Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, John Lennon, George Wallace, President Ronald Reagan, President Gerald Ford, and in the convictions of Mark David Chapman, David Berkowitz, Byron de la Beckwith, Squeaky Fromme, and Marcus Wayne Chennault. An example of multiple operations by the same personnel, beyond Watergate and the JFK assassination, would be Naval Intelligence operative Daniel Groth, who lead the Chicago police raid responsible for the murders of Black Panthers Fred Hampton and Mark Clark as well as COINTELPRO operations against the American Indian Movement and the Black Panthers leadership in California. Groth was also involved in obstructing justice in a plot to kill President Kennedy in Chicago in October. 1963, involving Thomas Arthur Vallee, who was using the alias “Lee Harvey Oswald.”

POINT EIGHT
A PATTERN EXISTS OF POLITICAL ASSASSINATION AS A TOOL OF STATE REPRESSION AND CONTROL AND FOREIGN POLICY

U.S. military and civilian intelligence agencies have carried out a long series of political assassinations both here and abroad under the auspices of the CIA’s MK/CHAOS, and the FBI’s COINTELPRO, which worked to “prevent the rise of a Black Messiah” and counter militant African-American organizations. They also carried out numerous assassinations, coups and overthrows of democratically elected and dictatorial leaders in other countries during wartime and peacetime.

President Eisenhower authorized NSC 5412 in the 1950s, which allowed covert assassinations of foreign leaders for purposes of “national security” and planned for the destabilization of the entire African continent.

During the Vietnam War, the Pentagon’s Operation Phoenix, which used Special Forces, assassinated tens of thousands of suspected “Viet Cong” opponents without trial or real evidence. These military elements and CIA plotters were directly involved in fomenting and arming opposition and carrying out or attempting assassinations and placements of heads of state in Iran, Southeast Asia countries, Central America, and in Cuba, Chile, Nicaragua, and dozens of other countries.

Allegedly these operations had full presidential approval, although the record often fails to verify this or shows clear signs of disapproval. President Kennedy and his brother opposed plans to assassinate Castro and they were reaching out behind the scenes to normalize relations in the wake of the missile crisis. Some of the Joint Chiefs and elements in the CIA were still furious with President Kennedy for refusing to approve American air power during the Bay of Pigs invasion, which had been planned to fail in order to force his hand.

President Kennedy also refused to approve several versions of Operation Northwoods, a joint Pentagon and CIA group plan to create a false incident that could possibly be blamed on Fidel Castro to justify a military invasion of Cuba and to murder Castro. Despite his refusal, and his firing of the Joint Chiefs chairman, General Lyman Lemnitzer, plans were in action on November 22, 1963 to carry out the invasion and assassination in Cuba, once Kennedy himself had been killed and Oswald had been falsely linked to Fidel Castro.

American intelligence agencies have been responsible for putting dictators in power and providing them with lists of hundreds of people to assassinate on their way to power. In some cases, such as in Iraq, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Cuba, these intelligence agencies were responsible for removing the same leaders years later. Congressional committees attempted to unearth these plans in the 1970s and to prevent further crimes, but they were obstructed and not successful.

These operations continue into the present administration, which has openly asserted the authority to assassinate terrorist suspects including U.S. citizens, done remotely by drones without formal charges or trials.

POINT NINE
LEGITIMATE QUESTIONS REMAIN: OPEN CASES, CLOSED FILES

The murders and assassinations of major and minor elected officials and public leaders since the end of World War II, and especially since the 1960s are still open cases and the full records on them and the investigations that followed have not yet been released for public review, despite the five decades that have passed and the questions that have been raised.

The evidence that has been compiled by independent researchers and by government investigations has consistently pointed to wrongful convictions of the alleged assassins and to a failure to examine and hold responsible the real agencies and criminals involved.

To dismiss all this evidence as “conspiracy theory” may satisfy the press or the uninformed and indifferent elements of the public or the government, but it does not make the legitimacy and urgency of the real questions raised any less valid. Legitimate unanswered questions and unsolved crimes remain and must be addressed. Despite claims that the files have been opened and the cases closed, exactly the opposite is true.

No amount of vilification of researchers and other experts can dismiss the medical, forensic, ballistics, and photographic evidence and anomalies they have pointed out. For every book written to defend the official versions of these assassinations, hundreds have been written raising questions those few fail to even address, or else address them with obfuscation, dishonesty, sophistry or outright falsification.

When Warren Commission member Representative Hale Boggs suggested printing at least some evidence to support the conclusions of the Warren Report, former CIA director Allen Dulles assented, and said, “Go ahead and print it, nobody will read it anyway.” Commission Chairman Earl Warren hinted that the truth would not be known “in your lifetime”, and that if the truth came out in the next hundred years, it would “destroy the country”.

Some of us read the volumes of evidence released then, the thousands of pages released under the Freedom of Information Act, and the now millions of pages declassified and released under the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act since 1992. We have looked at the FBI records regarding COINTELPRO, and at the LAPD and Memphis police files that still exist on the murders of Robert Kennedy and Dr. King. Forensic experts have been allowed to examine the hard evidence in some of these cases, even though much is still locked away from full public scrutiny, and have reached opposite conclusions from the official versions. Medical experts have examined the testimony, records and released medical results in these murders and have confirmed the innocence of those charged and convicted of the crimes.

The vast majority of the American people remain dissatisfied with the official conclusions reached by the police and government investigations of the major political assassinations of the 1960s. In fact, polls show that the beginning of widespread distrust in the government began with the release of the Warren Report’s flawed conclusions, not with the war in Vietnam or the Watergate scandal. Later events reinforced the indications during the Cold War that our government would lie to us – in the U-2 spy plane incident inside the USSR, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the Cuban missile crisis, and the Tonkin Gulf incident in Vietnam.

The Warren Commission and President Johnson made clear that the case was not fully closed and that new evidence coming forward would require re-evaluation. The House Select Committee on Assassinations ruled that there were “probable conspiracies” involved in the murders of JFK and Dr. King, and it called on the FBI and the Justice Department to follow up on the evidence it had gathered to bring criminal convictions. Justice Department attorneys have been pursuing cold-case murders of civil rights leaders from fifty years ago, in some cases indicting those responsible and exonerating those falsely charged. None of this suggests that the critics of the official version should cease and desist in raising new evidence and questions, or that the government should stop pursuing the truth.

The questions raised by government duplicity and covert actions in these events, some of which was only revealed decades later, leave further doubt about the veracity of the history of political murders that profoundly changed the direction and future of America. Evidence of government involvement in many illegal conspiracies reinforces the doubts and requires questions to persist until answered fully and openly. These questions are legitimate and pertinent to understanding our past and our present.

POINT TEN
THE CLAIMS OF JUSTICE AND HISTORY MUST BE SATISFIED

There is no statute of limitation for the crime of murder. Unsolved homicide cases are reopened years or decades later in light of new evidence or forensic methods and re-examined to determine innocence and guilt. There is a public interest in any murder or death, which allows the District Attorney and the coroner to require autopsies, control crime scene investigations and forensic and ballistics tests, and disinter bodies if necessary. In the case of politically motivated murders and assassinations, the public has an additional historical interest in objective investigations and full examination of all the evidence that emerges. This is especially true in cases of sitting presidents or candidates for that office, but it applies to murders carried out by government agencies with or without prior approval from the leaders.

Justice cries out to be satisfied in a murder case until it is fully and honestly resolved. History has its claims as well, requiring a further inquiry into events that takes into account all the facts and the full context of the events and their consequences. Democracy demands a level of vigilance and accountability if it is to survive the deaths of elected leaders.

Given what we already know after five decades of independent research, the research community agrees that the following actions are minimally necessary to satisfy the demands of history, democracy and justice:

§ The expedited and full release of all remaining classified and unclassified executive, Congressional, federal, military, intelligence, police, court, state and local records relating to the lives and assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy by the end of 2013, the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination. This release should follow the standard of presumption of release and no further review outlined in the JFK Assassinations Records Act as well as the provisions of President Barack Obama’s executive order for release of all federal records classified 25 years or more in the past. All related records and artifacts should be released for review. This public release should include records of other suspected political murders of public interest, related programs and organizations, and relevant records of foreign governments. Because prosecutors and courts often withhold records from the public used in the active investigation of a crime, this should be the first step taken.

§ These unsolved homicides and cold-case investigations demand a reopening, a thorough, public and honest review of the facts and evidence, a full debate by expert witnesses, retesting using current scientific methods of analysis, and an examination of previous government agency and court intransigence in these political murders.

§ District Attorneys in Dallas, Memphis, Los Angeles, New Orleans and New York City must reopen the cases of JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X based on petitions with the new evidence and allow presentation of new witnesses and facts before a grand jury that can consider new indictments. These officials and courts should also immediately allow an appeal by any living convicted assassins or their families in these cases for a full review of exculpatory and new evidence with a chance for parole or exoneration.

§ A special prosecutor on the federal level should be appointed to lead a truly independent homicide investigation into all the major political assassinations with no interference on access to records or witnesses, to carry out a transparent, objective and credible inquiry into evidence of conspiracy. The Department of Justice should initiate a full review and turn over all evidence in its files to the prosecutor regarding earlier investigations. The goal would be to free the innocent and charge and convict those guilty of plotting, carrying out, or covering up the crime, obstructing justice, destroying evidence, committing perjury, or any wrongful concealment or action in relation to these murders.

§ These convictions and exonerations are not the whole solution needed to punish and prevent political assassinations in America. A more thorough, transparent and accountable process must be developed for use in any future murder for political purpose, with an openness to hearing all evidence and forensic analysis. Public trust in these investigations must be restored by having objective experts, a lack of secrecy, public involvement and appeals and review in each case. In light of this, following full reconsideration and prosecutorial actions in these cases, Congress should hold full and open hearings on all levels of local, state and federal agency abuses and crimes uncovered, and develop policies to prevent the lack of accountability, impunity and corruption that allowed these abuses to take place.

§ A major public conference should be held in Dallas, Texas on November 22-24, 2013, marking the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy, and the 45th anniversary year of the murders of his brother and Dr. King, presenting the best and latest evidence in each case, hosted by the Coalition on Political Assassinations and the research community with the theme – “Fifty Years is Enough! Free the Files – Find the Truth”.

A Moment of Silence will be held on November 22, 2013 on the Grassy Knoll in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas, the site of the murder of the president, at 12:30 pm CST. Similar Moments of Silence should be observed in Memphis, Tennesee at 6:00 pm EST on April 4, and in Los Angeles California at 1:44 pm on June 6 that year to commemorate the deaths of Dr. King and Robert F. Kennedy.

SOURCES

This article was inspired by COPA board member Joe Green’s original JFK 10 Point piece posted at CTKA – http://www.ctka.net/2009/ten_point_program.html

JFK
Warren Commission Report and Hearings and Evidence (26 volumes)
Final Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations and Hearings and Evidence (13 volumes)
JFK Assassination Records Collection, National Archives
Report of the Rockefeller, Church and Pike Committees of House regarding intelligence agency abuses and political assassinations
Harold Weisberg, Whitewash (4 volumes), Never Again
Penn Jones, Jr., Forgive My Grief (4 volumes)
Josiah Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas
Joachim Joesten, Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?
Mark Lane, Rush to Judgment, Plausible Deniability, Last Word
Howard Roffman, Presumed Guilty
Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact
Jim Garrison, A Heritage of Stone, On the Trail of the Assassins
Peter Dale Scott, Deep Politics in the Murder of JFK (2 volumes), Crimes & Cover-up: From Dallas to Watergate, Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond
Vincent Salandria, False Mystery
Martin Schotz, History Will Not Absolve Us
Robert Groden, The Killing of a President, High Treason, The Search for Lee Harvey
Oswald
Gaeton Fonzi, The Last Investigation
Dr. Cyril Wecht, Grave Matters
Noel Twyman, Bloody Treason
Philip Melanson, Spy Saga
Joan Mellen, A Farewell to Justice
Jim DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, The Assassinations (with Lisa Pease)
Seth Kantor, Who Was Jack Ruby?
Jim Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable
David Lifton, Best Evidence (book and video)
Doug Horne, Inside the ARRB

MLK
Final Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations and Hearings and Evidence (13 volumes)
Report of the Rockefeller, Church and Pike House Committees regarding intelligence agency abuses and political assassinations
FBI records released regarding COINTELPRO programs and operations
Transcript of the civil trial, King v. Jowers, Memphis, TN – http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/MLKACT/
Harold Weisberg, Frame-up
Mark Lane and Dick Gregory, Code Name Zorro
Philip Melanson, The Murkin Conspiracy, Who Shot MLK?
Clayborne Carson, The King Papers
Ward Churchill, The COINTELPRO Papers
Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, The Assassinations
Dr. William Pepper, Orders to Kill, An Act of State

RFK
LAPD police investigation files in the murder of Robert F. Kennedy
William Turner, John Christian, The Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy
Dr. Robert Joling and Phillip van Praag, Open and Shut Case
Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, The Assassinations
Philip Melanson, The Robert Kennedy Assassination, Who Shot RFK?, Shadow Play

OTHER ASSASSINATIONS
Report of the Rockefeller, Church and Pike Congressional House Committees regarding intelligence agency abuses and political assassinations
Karl Evanzz, The Judas Factor
Baba Zak Kondo, Conspiracys: The Unraveling of the Assassination of Malcolm X
Manning Marable, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention
Ward Churchill, The COINTELPRO Papers
Penn Jones, Jr. Forgive My Grief (4 Volumes)

SIGNATORIES:
Peter Dale Scott, Ph,D.
Jim DiEugenio
John Newman, Ph.D
Abraham Bolden
Timothy Plainfield
Dan Sutton
Dawn Meredith
Bill Holiday
Stan Weeber
Chris Pike
T Carter.
Michael Newton
Don Hall
Pete Johnson
Peter Lemkin
Jack Lawrence
Michael Nurko
Frankie Vegas
Adam Parfrey
Andrea Skolnick (JFK Annie)
Paul Nahra
R. Scott Turner
Dave Starks
Greg Parks
Ronnie Wayne

Source: http://politicalassassinations.com/2013/10/10-points-of-agreement-on-political-assassinations-sign-on/

Those are the facts. There's not one word there about theory.

Rather than wasting your time pointing out something that is not true, hack89, try instead learning something. You'd be surprised at what there is to know about the assassinations of the nation's liberal, progressive leadership in the 1960s.

[hack89]

91. That is some concentrated industrial strength woo there.

I am not going down the rat hole with you. Enjoy your lifetime hobby.

[reACTIONary]

94. After a quick scan...

... I'm pretty sure there has NEVER been a crime ever committed by whoever it was who was alleged to have done it!

[Octafish]

97. It's easy to label, hack89. Nothing there is woo. It's fact.

Why do you insist on labeling a fellow DUer denigrating terms? I don't recall labeling you anything like "lone nutter."

[Spider Jerusalem]

125. Provably false assertions.

JOHN F. KENNEDY – Film footage, and the forensic and ballistics evidence are conclusive. There were more than three shots fired from more than one location in Dealey Plaza on November 22. 1963. The fatal shot did not come from behind President Kennedy. The Warren Commission’s single-bullet theory was wrong and has not stood the test of time or evidence. The bullets in the victims did not match the alleged murder weapon. A now admittedly flawed ballistics-matching test was used by the FBI for the first time in this case. There was evidence of tampering. Two different rifles were identified on site. The wounds were never properly examined. The body was removed from Dallas by the Secret Service illegally, since they had jurisdiction for the autopsy. Lee Harvey Oswald did not own the rifle and pistol alleged to be murder weapons, did not fire a gun that day, and was not on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository at the time of the assassination, the alleged location of the shots that killed President Kennedy.

Film footage, forensics, and ballistics are in fact conclusive. There were only three shots. They all came from behind. Only two of those three shots struck. One passed through Kennedy and ended up in Connally's thigh where it penetrated shallowly; the other caused a devastating and lethal wound to Kennedy's head. Fragments were recovered from the limo with striations that match Oswald's rifle. An intact bullet was recovered from Connally's stretcher with striations that match Oswald's rifle. To the exclusion of all other weapons. The single bullet trajectory has been repeatedly tested. Given the known relative positions of Kennedy and Connally, which can be determined from the fact that there are photographs and film of the car from not just Zapruder but from multiple angles, a bullet striking Kennedy in the back and exiting his neck would go on to strike Connally. The only "magic bullet" is the one posited by conspiracists, which, after passing through Kennedy, vanishes into thin air, not striking the car or anyone else in it. The wound to the back of Kennedy's skull was verifiably an entry wound. There was bevelling of the bone on the interior surface of the skull. There was a pattern of radial cracks in the bone going forward from the entry wound. There was a laceration of the brain along the path of the bullet. There was a pattern of fragments deposited in the tissue of the brain along the path of the bullet. All of this has been repeatedly verified by expert testimony and the analysis of dozens of forensic pathologists.

Oswald did own the rifle and the pistol. There is an order form with his handwriting. There is a money order with his handwriting. The rifle and pistol were shipped to his post office box. There are photographs of Oswald with the rifle and pistol that have been verified by multiple analyses as authentic. One of those photographs has Oswald's signature on it, again verified as authentic. Oswald was on the sixth floor of the TSBD and at one point in his interrogation admitted he was on the sixth floor. Two different rifles were NOT identified. The Carcano was misidentified as "looking like a Mauser", which to one not familiar with the Carcano, it might; there are photographs and television news footage of the rifle in then TSBD that have been examined. The rifle discovered has the same noticeable gouge on the forestock as Oswald's Carcano. There was only one rifle.

Why do you insist on spreading verifiably false information?

[Octafish]

126. Time waster.

Nothing in those 10 points is false. That's why I posted them.

[Spider Jerusalem]

127. It's all false.

Where is the evidence? There is evidence that says: The shots came from the TSBD. The shots came from Oswald's rifle. Oswald's revolver killed Tippit. Oswald's revolver that he had when arrested. That he tried to shoot a cop with. That he admitted owning in interrogation. You have no fact, you have no evidence. I can provide detailed citations for everything I am saying. Back up ONE of your claims. Just one.

[Octafish]

128. The case against Oswald...

...is bogus.



That means the government lied. "Why" is the question.

[Spider Jerusalem]

130. Nope.

R. PETTY -- "Yes, sir, I believe that they were struck by the same bullet and I have so previously stated in the preliminary report of the panel."

MR. PREYER -- "Would you summarize briefly your reasons why you believe this to be the case?"

DR. PETTY -- "Yes, sir, I will be very glad to, Mr. Preyer. I think it is necessary at this point to sum up, in a sense, the flight of the bullet and its effect on those it struck. The bullet that struck the late President in the upper right back area and then went on to penetrate the soft structures of the neck and to exit in the front of the neck was, as has been indicated already, traveling in a somewhat upward direction, anatomically speaking.

"Anatomists many years ago decided--the better to understand each other--to place a body in a specific position and to relate all of the descriptions of the landmarks of the body to the body in that position. That position actually is a person standing erect facing forward with both palms turned forward. This is the anatomic position and in tracing the inshoot wound on the back of the late President and connecting it with a more-or-less straight line with the outshoot wound on the front of the neck, the bullet will have followed a slightly upward direction.

"But the President was not upright at the time he was shot, he was certainly not in the anatomic position, and this explains, I believe, the objection that Dr. Wecht had and his argument that he could not understand how the bullet pursued a downward track from where it was discharged, then an upward track in the President and then a downward track into Mr. Connally.

"A second point that must be mentioned--the bullet that penetrated the back of the President exited the front, struck no bone. If it did strike any bone, the bone that it struck was fragile and certainly not markedly disrupted. It did not go through his spinal column. It did not go through bone that was solid and hard and offered great resistance to passage. In effect, it went through several inches of very soft tissue.

"There is no evidence on the X-rays that the bullet broke up in passing from the back to the front. There was no deformity, in my opinion, of the bullet as it went through the President.

"Now, the second object that this single bullet struck was Mr. Connally sitting somewhere in front of the President, and this is another point that Dr. Wecht has brought up repeatedly, and that is that there was no way to join, by means of a straight line, the bullet exiting from the President and striking the Governor.

"Indeed, there was one diagram yesterday that was showing the bullet making more-or-less right angle turns, which I am certain did not happen. As a matter of fact, I would suggest that from looking at the films taken of the actual assassination that the apparent relative positions of the President and the Governor are somewhat misleading, that is, that one cannot determine by looking at a flat two-dimensional view of one side of the limousine and the contained individuals precisely what relationship they had one to another."

DR. PETTY -- "Next, the bullet in striking Mr. Connally did not penetrate the chest in the usual sense of the word. The bullet did indeed enter the back and side of the chest near the armpit, and it did follow the course of the rib on its lateral or outer aspect, and it did indeed exit beneath the right nipple, but there is no evidence that that bullet actually penetrated the rib.

"Indeed, one of the surgeons who cared for the Governor, Dr. Shaw, stated to me that the bullet did not penetrate the lung but that the rib was shattered, and it is my opinion that this bullet in slapping against the rib shattered it in a place that the rib is quite vulnerable, and then proceeded to follow rather closely the slope of the rib and then finally to exit in the front of the chest.

"The X-rays fail to show any evidence of particles of metal in the chest. Therefore, in my opinion, the bullet was not significantly deformed during its passage in the chest of the Governor.

"Next, The bullet did indeed enter the wrist, and although the reports are somewhat difficult to understand, it apparently entered more on the back of the wrist and then exited more on the front of the wrist, and again as in the chest wound, this was a tangentially placed shot which shattered the bone--there is no question of that--it shattered and caused a comminuted fracture of the radius, and then went on to exit.

"Here for the first time, fragments of bullet substance are found, and it is here, in my opinion, that the bullet first significantly deformed. Then having exhausted itself, and at a very low velocity, it continued on to bounce in and out of the thigh of the Governor.

"Now, let me recapitulate this. The bullet penetrated one individual without deformity, leaving none of its metal behind. In the second person it penetrated the chest, slapping in a tangential manner against the rib, fracturing the rib, and damaging incidentally the underlying lung, because the rib was thrown against the lung, and then went on again without leaving any of its substance so as to enter the wrist where it finally left off a portion of its substance, not much, but some.

"There is nothing here that is unusual or spectacular or unexpected. This is the behavior of a full metal jacketed bullet, a bullet covered in all areas except the base by means of the firm, hard, tough, not easy to deform jacket.

http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol1/pdf/HSCA_Vol1_0908_1_Petty.pdf

And here is a Carcano bullet fired through a human wrist at a velocity of 1100fps. It's deformed less than CE399; is hardly deformed at all.

.html

[Octafish]

133. Like I wrote: Time Waster

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=20289

[Spider Jerusalem]

135. You're making assertions. Back them up.

Address the evidence and expert testimony. You haven't, because you can't. The only "time waster" I see anywhere here is you with your unproven and groundless assertions and evidence-free flights of fancy and conjecture and outright crankery.

[Octafish]

136. You brought up Dr. Petty. I showed where Dr. Petty is coming from.

No need to get angry or waste my time by posting crapola.

[Spider Jerusalem]

139. Not really, you haven't.

And I can post the testimony of the other members of the forensic review panel who were in agreement, if you want. You haven't really shown much of anything, and certainly not anything that happens to impugn the expertise of Petty as an expert witness. You're the one posting "crapola", as you put it. The bogus assertion that Oswald didn't own the rifle found in the TSBD, didn't own the pistol he had in his possession when arrested, didn't go to Mexico City, etc. All of these things are demonstrably false.

See also this:

And this:

And THIS:



And this: http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol2/pdf/HSCA_Vol2_0912_3_Canning.pdf

[johnnyreb]

142. "10 Points" updated url

10 Points of Agreement on Political Assassinations – Sign On
November 29, 2013
http://politicalassassinations.com/2013/11/10-points-of-agreement-on-political-assassinations-sign-on-2/

[dotymed]

80. "This takes me back to the good old days in the old 911 forum. Truthers had reams of "evidence" too.

There are "reams of evidence" as you put it, that prove 9-11 was an "inside job."
Too bad most people (in America) ignore it and chalk it all up to coincidence and crazy CT's.
This is an incident that is still relatively fresh in our history.

It is sad that most Americans believe our corporate government over their own "lying eyes."
The MSM tells you what to believe and who we can choose as our President, etc... they must be right.
I mean they are owned by the largest corporations in America....

[SidDithers]

99. The similarities are striking, aren't they?...

Bet there were more than a few birthers at the conference too.

Sid

[Octafish]

100. That term makes a handy label with which to smear good people.

Here are the speakers:

Gary L. Aguilar, M.D.
Head, Division of Ophthalmology, Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, San Francisco; Assistant Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology, Stanford University and University of California; independent researcher

Daniel S. Alcorn, J.D.
Freedom of Information Act attorney, Washington, D.C.

Russ Baker
Author, Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government and the Secret History of the Last Fifty Years; founder and editor-in-chief, WhoWhatWhy.com

Rex Bradford
President, Mary Ferrell Foundation; Vice President, Assassination Archives and Research Center; computer game and web developer and online records advocate, Ipswich, MA

Walt Brown, Ph.D.
Professor of history, Ramapo College, Mahwah, NJ; author, The People v. Lee Harvey Oswald, The Warren Omission and Treachery in Dallas; former special agent, U.S. Department of Justice

James DiEugenio
Economics and U.S. history teacher, Los Angeles; author, Destiny Betrayed and Reclaiming Parkland (forthcoming); co-editor, The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X

Sherry P. Fiester
Author, Enemy of Truth: Myths, Forensics, and the JFK Assassination; former senior crime scene analyst and court-certified expert, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida

Keith Fitzgerald
Independent researcher, Concord, NH

Robert J. Groden
Author, High Treason and The Killing of the President; photographic consultant, U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations; chief consultant, JFK; senior program consultant, The Men Who Killed Kennedy

Dan Hardway, J.D.
Private attorney, Cowen, WV; former researcher/investigator, U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations

John Judge
Founder and executive director, Coalition on Political Assassinations; co-founder, Committee for an Open Archives

William E. Kelly
Independent researcher; founder, Committee for an Open Archive; co-founder, Coalition on Political Assassinations

Mark Lane, J.D.
Attorney, social activist and author, Rush to Judgment, A Citizen's Dissent, and The Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK

James H. Lesar, J.D.
Freedom of Information Act attorney, Washington, D.C.; President, Assassination Archives and Research Center

Brian D. Litman
Principal, General Alchemy, San Francisco; former special media consultant/producer, KGB Veterans Association, Moscow

David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D.
Radiation oncologist and former professor of physics, University of Wisconsin; contributor, Assassination Science, Murder in Dealey Plaza and The Great Zapruder Film Hoax

Robert N. McClelland, M.D. (by videoconference)
Professor Emeritus, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; former Parkland Hospital surgeon

Joan Mellen, Ph.D.
Author, A Farwell to Justice and Our Man in Haiti; professor of English, Temple University

Jefferson Morley
Author, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA; former correspondent and editor, The Washington Post and Center for Independent Media

Tim Nicholson
Independent researcher and software engineer

Lisa Pease
Chief Archivist, Real History Archives; Co-author/co-editor, The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X

Jerry Policoff
Independent researcher and journalist, Lancaster, PA; Executive director, Assassination Archives and Research Center

Larry J. Sabato, Ph.D.
Robert Kent Gooch Professor of Politics, University of Virginia and director, University of Virginia Center for Politics; author, The Kennedy Half-Century

Patrick J. Speer
Independent researcher

Oliver Stone
Director, JFK; director and narrator, Untold History of the United States

Jeffrey Sundberg, MSEE, MS
Electrical engineer, University of Arizona; independent researcher

David Talbot
Author, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years; Founder and Former Editor in Chief, salon.com

Robert K. Tanenbaum, J.D.
Attorney, expert and legal commentator, Los Angeles; author, Echoes of My Soul, Tragic and Corruption of Blood; former deputy chief counsel, U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations

Donald Thomas, Ph.D.
Author, Hear No Evil and Acoustical Evidence in the Kennedy Assassination Revisited; U.S. Government research scientist; graduate faculty member, University of Texas, Pan-American

Josiah Thompson, Ph.D.
Private Investigator; author, Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination

Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D.
Forensic pathology consultant, author and lecturer; Member, Forensic Pathology Panel, U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations; Consultant, JFK

I heard most of them speak. Of them, not one spoke of "birth certificates," nor "9-11 truth" or "truthers" as you like to label them.

What I think: People who work to label those who are interested in discussing what they've learned about the assassination of President Kennedy in negative terms are doing a great disservice to the United States and democracy.

One more thing, Mark Lane, one of the people you enjoy labeling and smearing, was a personal friend of President Kennedy and Senator Kennedy. Mr. Lane also served as a member of the New York State legislature as a Democrat. Readers should know you've never voted for a Democrat, SidDithers.

[2banon]

117. Sid dithers, I just read you've never voted for a Democrat..

No wonder your posts always have a right wing reactionary taint to them.

[SidDithers]

121. ...

Sid

[grasswire]

153. He's a Canadian.

Never voted for a Republican either, apparently.

[GoneFishin]

101. You are right in a way. Who it would not draw are authoritarian personalities who are

constitutionally incapable of processing the fact that some people will go to great lengths for power and money, including government figures.

So the conference would be more heavily weighted with people who realize that people are fallible, whether in government or the private sector. And some of them are extremely corrupt. Having your name silk-screened on your door or an official name placard on your desk doesn't immunize you from the temptations of greed.

[Spider Jerusalem]

47. No, he wasn't being impersonated.

Oswald was in Mexico City. He has been identified by employees of the Cuban consulate as having been in Mexico City. His photo is on a visa application made in Mexico City. Why do you keep spreading verifiably false information about this?

[Zen Democrat]

52. J. Edgar Hoover told LBJ that the Oswald in Mexico City wasn't the same guy in Dallas jail.

He told him that on the morning of November 23rd. It's on tape. Your statements that he wasn't being impersonated have been rendered verifiably false by old JEdgar himself on more than one occasion. Like in 1960 when he wrote a memo about someone using Oswald's ID in New Orleans to try to buy a car, when Oswald was also in Russia.

[Spider Jerusalem]

55. That was based on a misidentified photo.

Against that one misidentified photo we have the positive identification of multiple witnesses who saw Oswald in Mexico City, and Oswald's photo on a visa application made to the Cuban embassy.

[Zen Democrat]

131. No No No. The FBI Director told POTUS that they had video and voice recordings of the man

claiming to be Oswald. And that the man was not the man they had in jail in Dallas. The CIA first tried to cover that their cameras weren't working that day at both the Cuban and Soviet embassies. Then the agents at the embassies described a different guy. Finally it came out that the CIA station in Mexico City destroyed everything they had a few days after the assassination.

Why do that? So I'm supposed to take the word of CIA agents that he was there when Sylvia Duran dealt with the man who was not Oswald at the Cuban embassy? Nope. I'm not that blind.

[Spider Jerusalem]

132. Nope:

The question of an Oswald imposter was also raised in an FBI letterhead memorandum to the Secret Service dated November 23, 1963. It was based in part upon information received by CIA headquarters on October 9, 1963, that on October 1, 1963, Oswald had contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City:

The Central Intelligence Agency advised that on October 1, 1963, an extremely sensitive source had reported that an individual identified himself as Lee Oswald, who contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City inquiring as to any messages. Special Agents of this Bureau, who have conversed with Oswald in Dallas, Tex., have observed photographs of the individual referred to above and have listened to a recording of his voice. These Special Agents are of the opinion that the above-referred-to individual was not Lee Harvey Oswald.

In response to a committee inquiry, the FBI reported that no tape recording of Oswald's voice was in fact ever received. The Bureau explained that its Dallas office only received the report of a conversation to which Oswald had been a party. This explanation was independently confirmed by the committee. A review of relevant FBI cable traffic established that at 7:23 p.m. (CST) on November 23, 1963, Dallas Special Agent-in-Charge Shanklin advised Director Hoover that only a report of this conversation was available, not an actual tape recording. On November 25, the Dallas office again apprised the Director that "[t]here appears to be some confusion in that no tapes were taken to Dallas * * * [O]nly typewritten [reports were] supplied * * *."

Shanklin stated in a committee interview that no recording was ever received by FBI officials in Dallas. Moreover, former FBI Special Agents James Hosty, John W. Fain, Burnett Tom Carter, and Arnold J. Brown, each of whom had conversed with Oswald at one time, informed the committee they had never listened to a recording of Oswald's voice.

Finally, on the basis of an extensive file review and detailed testimony by present and former CIA officials and employees, the committee determined that CIA headquarters never received a recording of Oswald's voice. The committee concluded, therefore, that the information in the November 23, 1963, letterhead memorandum was mistaken and did not provide a basis for concluding that there had been an Oswald imposter.

House Select Committee on Assassinations, Report, pp. 249-250.

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/clueless3.htm

[Octafish]

58. Because he was impersonated in Mexico City.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x345011



Some one claimed to be Oswald at the Cuban and Soviet embassies in Mexico City. The man even made phone calls on unsecured lines, demanding to speak with the KGB officer in charge of assassinations and wetwork by name.

http://jfkfacts.org/assassination/was-oswald-impersonated-before-jfk-was-killed/

In a way, I'm not surprised to see you don't know that, Spider Jerusalem.

[Spider Jerusalem]

60. No, he wasn't.

This is the visa application submitted to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. The photograph is of Lee Harvey Oswald.



Oswald was positively identified by multiple employees of the Cuban embassy as the man they saw. Silvia Duran, for instance: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKduranS.htm

So again: why do you keep pushing this debunked nonsense? I am surprised that YOU don't know that Oswald, himself, was verifiably in Mexico City.

[Octafish]

63. Time waster.

Duran was totrured at CIA request.

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Sylvia_Durans_Interrogation

[Spider Jerusalem]

68. This has nothing to do with that interrogation.

She spoke to the House Select Committee on Assassinatons. She confirmed it was Oswald.

Oswald was in Mexico City; not only is there his photo on the visa application, there's his handwriting in a hotel register. There are MULTIPLE WITNESSES who'll testify he was there. The Cuban embassy employees would have noticed if a different man than that in the photo was submitting the visa application. A negative of the visa application photo was found among Oswald's possessions. Oswald was not impersonated. There is no evidence that Oswald was impersonated. There is the FBI's misidentification of a photo of an unknown man exiting the Soviet embassy as being Oswald.

Again: Why do you insist on spreading falsehoods?

[YoungDemCA]

149. Worst-planned conspiracy ever...

nt

[Octafish]

151. How do you explain CIA monitoring real and fake Oswalds?

For weeks before the assassination, CIA officers were aware of Lee Harvey Oswald and Oswald's impersonator.

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Oswald_in_Mexico_City

So. Got anything to say about this or the information withheld from the Warren Commission?

Don't worry: I won't call your answer asinine.

[KurtNYC]

95. Oswald was either in Mexico City or meeting with Silvia Odio but NOT BOTH

http://22november1963.org.uk/silvia-odio-visitors

Personally, I think Odio met him.

[Spider Jerusalem]

115. You "think".

That's nice. Evidence? There are multiple witnesses who confirm his presence in Mexico City, along with his handwriting on a hotel register, along with his handwriting and photograph on his visa application.

http://jfkassassination.net/parnell/hscahand.htm

[UTUSN]

8. R#6 & K saluting the inimitable, indefatigable Octafish, gratitude for what he brings here

And thanks for the Bartcop mention.

[Octafish]

34. Bartcop has an excellent Reading Room...

...and you know what they say: "Readers are Leaders."

http://www.bartcop.com/jfklinks.htm

Hiya, UTUSN! Happy Thanksgiving! Thank you for the kind words. Your friendship means the world to me.

PS: Power...

"One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors." -- Plato

[hootinholler]

9. But Bobby named Dulles to the Warren Commission

OMG! It couldn't be!

I heard it right here on DU that Bobby and Allen were friends and all that frenemy stuff was totally professional! So Bobby really wanted Allen on the commish and made it so!

[Octafish]

38. Rumor going back to Gus Russo...

...best as I can tell. Russo's contention is RFK wanted to keep secret their own secret assassination program. Except, there wasn't one.

As for a tape being made in which Robert F. Kennedy says such to Lyndon Johnson, I haven't found it or even a transcript.

As for the guy making that claim, I've had problems with his scholarship.

[Bolo Boffin]

49. Actually it's reality going back to Walter Jenkin's 29 November 1963 memo to LBJ

As I've quoted to you from the HSCA appendix on the creation of the Warren Commission:

http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol11/html/HSCA_Vol11_0006b.htm

[Octafish]

65. No where does that say RFK asked Dulles be named to Warren Commission.

Your link in the other post didn't either.

[Bolo Boffin]

67. You should read it again.

Katzenbach in consultation with Bobby Kennedy gave Abe Fortas the names. That's what that memo clearly says. That's what Johnson says later in his memoirs.

Dulles' name came from Bobby Kennedy. This is not a problem for me, because I don't think Dulles was covering up anything to do with the Kennedy assassination. I think if he was there to cover up anything, it was the efforts to overthrow or assassinate Castro, something Bobby was a large part of (assassinations he might have plausibly denied, but efforts to overthrow Castro? Bobby was all about that.).

This is only a problem for you, Octafish. You're the one who thinks Dulles is Satan incarnate, covering up the successful CIA plot to kill Kennedy. Bobby giving Johnson his name is a mighty big dose of cognitive dissonance for you. But there's no need to muddy Bobby Kennedy with these foul suspicions. You can always come back into the light.

[Octafish]

69. So, it doesn't say what RFK said. It says what someone else said he said.

President Johnson or Asst. AG Katzenbach.

Got it.

[Bolo Boffin]

70. Why would Katzenbach lie? n/t

[Octafish]

81. To go along with the LBJ plan, which was to keep the USA from going to war with the USSR.

It's what LBJ said he had to tell Chief Justice Earl Warren to get him to participate in the "investigation."

As for your posts repeating the canard: No where in the historical record -- memorandum, letter, taped interview, direct quotation -- does RFK ask LBJ to appoint Dulles to the Warren Commission.

[Mc Mike]

83. Why would Katzenbach send this memo to Bill Moyers, before any of the facts were in?

On November 25 1963, the day of the Kennedy funeral, Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach sent a memo to Bill Moyers of the new Johnson White House. He had begun writing it the day earlier, within hours after Oswald's death at the hands of Jack Ruby.

The second paragraph stated: "The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial."

http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Katzenbach_Memo

[avaistheone1]

116. Thanks McMike. That memo is testament that the government was interested in Oswald being framed

before the data came in.

The second paragraph stated: "The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial."

Given that the authorities could not possibly by November 25 know these things to be true, and Katzenbach later admitted he knew very little at this stage, the memo is clearly advocating a political course irrespective of the truth of the assassination.

The motivation for this political course may be glimped in the succeeding paragraph: "Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or (as the Iron Curtain press is saying) a right-wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists. Unfortunately the facts on Oswald seem about too pat--too obvious (Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.). The Dallas police have put out statements on the Communist conspiracy theory, and it was they who were in charge when he was shot and thus silenced."

Katzenbach's memo advocated a public FBI report to satisfy this "objective," though he noted the possible need for "the appointment of a Presidential Commission of unimpeachable personnel to review and examine the evidence and announce its conclusions." He ended by advocating a quick public announcement to "head off speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort."

To many observers, the Katzenbach memo provides the blueprint for the cover-up which followed.

Direct link to memo:
http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?absPageId=756877

[Mc Mike]

122. Thanks for the link to the hard copy of the memo, Ava is.

For me, seeing a photo stat of the actual memo is better than seeing electronically typed excerpts. I think it's right that the memo is the blueprint, or the edict about what the findings would cover up.

After I posted the excerpt, I saw that Octa had posted it already in post # 41, down thread. That's the only downside of an o.p. attracting so much attention and info, it's tougher to resist the urge to post a reply to a statement in a subthread before I read through completely, and I wound up jumping the gun with a post that duplicates something already posted.

There's a political slant to the second paragraph of Ketzenbach's memo, the idea that only the Iron Curtain press was suspicious that it was a right-wing conspiracy. In fact, immediately after the assassination, a lot of citizens here and allies internationally pointed fingers at the far right and far right big money interests. JFK gets killed in an area that was teeming with violent right wingers, the buckle on the far right fundy christian bible belt, with birchers, Minutemen, concerned white citizens councils, klan, repug party officials, white russians and batista cubans, far right military and military industrial and intel and oil and financial interests, who had positions of power and influence throughout the city and had already loudly repeatedly denounced Kennedy as a 'treasonous commie appeaser'. After the assassination of someone they hated, on their turf, they said 'how dare you blame us', 'Castro reached right into our stronghold where we control everything, and killed that guy we said we hated'. 'So, now we should get to do what we wanted and invade Cuba, which is something that commie Kennedy wouldn't let us do.' Transparent double think, despite 50 years of smoke being blown.

The thinking behind Katzenbach's memo would have it that the source of any speculation, that those violent rightists -- with all those guns and all that control over the area -- could be reasonably considered suspects, well obviously the source of that speculation comes from our adversaries on the far left. Anyone who voices that speculation is a mouthpiece for the commies, or is a useful idiot for them.

Here's an excerpt from the HSCA, p. 258, describing the 'failure' of the Warren Commission:

http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/report/html/HSCA_Report_0144b.htm

'on the subject that should have received the Warren Commission's most probing analysis -- whether Oswald acted in concert with or on behalf of unidentified co-conspirators -- the Commission's performance was in fact flawed. One of the primary causes was the absence of full and proper co-operation of the FBI and CIA, and the desire of national leaders to allay public fears of a conspiracy.'

So the Commission didn't discover a conspiracy, because they 'wanted to allay public fears of a conspiracy.' ! Good excuse, and an excellent display of sound legal and judicial reasoning.

[JackRiddler]

134. Oh here we go again.

You never tire of this m.o.

Distract from the subject by ignoring story, context, institution, but picking some off-center figure and personalizing skepticism about whatever assists the official story as a slur on their integrity to even suggest, etc. etc. etc.

Asking why someone did something, such as participate in a cover-up, is a way of emotionalizing & distracting. The question is, did he? Did he write these memos or not? Are they true or not?

[hootinholler]

88. One might think if it were true

Dulles would be treated more gently by RFK Jr in a very informative recent article.

[Octafish]

164. BFEE Motto: Take the cash and avoid the blame.

Robert F. Kennedy saw conspiracy in JFK’s assassination

By Bryan Bender and Neil Swidey
BOSTON GLOBE STAFF NOVEMBER 24, 2013

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy was sitting at his backyard patio table, clutching a tuna fish sandwich, when the call came through. Kennedy had spent the morning at a Justice Department conference on his intensifying war against organized crime. He had invited two of his employees from New York, US Attorney Robert Morgenthau and an aide, back to his sprawling home, Hickory Hill in McLean, Va., to continue the conversation over a private lunch.

SNIP...

The newly released RFK papers contain an interesting postscript to all the cloak-and-dagger activity around Cuba. A secret CIA report entitled “Staying power of the Castro regime” concluded that the chances of a successful overthrow were “slim.” However, that report was written in the summer of 1964. In the months leading up to Dallas, acceptance of this idea had been far less widespread, especially among the people who most loathed Robert Kennedy, and, with him, his brother Jack.

***

Still, if the killing of the president was, as some suspect, a conspiracy to neutralize his brother, why wouldn’t the conspirators have simply gone after Bobby? Wouldn’t that have been a lot easier, especially since the president had the Secret Service protecting him and the attorney general traveled unprotected, even famously leaving the front door of Hickory Hill unlocked?

It is all a matter of speculation, but there could have been a very practical explanation for a more circuitous path. If Bobby had been assassinated, historians point out, his brother could have been expected to marshal every ounce of his prodigious federal power to exact revenge on the murderers and their benefactors. And because the victim would not just be the country’s crusading attorney general but also the president’s brother, the public would have surely given Jack Kennedy a blank check of support for a crackdown on whatever dark forces he determined were responsible.

David Kaiser revealed in “The Road To Dallas” that prior to the assassination Marcello had been overheard fingering RFK as the main obstacle to his mob business that needed to be removed. After moaning about Bobby’s persecution of him, Marcello uttered the Sicilian curse “Take this stone from my shoe,” and then concluded that they’d need to kill Jack to get to Bobby. If they went after Bobby directly, he allegedly said, they could expect the president to unleash the Marines on them.

Government documents released in the 1990s also indicate that decades later Marcello confessed to being part of JFK’s murder to a prison cellmate, who was also an FBI informant working on an undercover operation.

Few people have as intimate knowledge of the contours of the assassination files as Rex Bradford. From his perch in Ipswich, Mass., Bradford is curator of a vast digitized archive of nearly 1 million documents, maintained by the nonprofit Mary Ferrell Foundation. Although he takes no public position on who killed Kennedy, Bradford says many of the newly released documents strengthen the hypothesis that “hard-line intelligence people, hard-liners on Cuba” were somehow involved in the assassination, with “mob people tied into that same milieu.”

But for him and many other serious people who have carefully studied the possibility of an assassination plot, connecting theories of tough characters with the motive to kill Kennedy to the reality of Lee Harvey Oswald in the window of the Texas School Book Depository has been elusive. Oswald, a failure at just about everything he tried and hardly an expert marksman, is no one’s idea of the kind of man one would pick for the vanguard of such a plot.

If certain Cuban exiles and Cold War hard-liners had dreamed of a domino effect in which Castro was blamed for JFK’s murder, precipitating an American invasion of Cuba, that never happened, of course. Nonetheless, all the back-channel efforts at peace quickly withered. New President Lyndon Johnson, insecure in his command of foreign affairs and lacking the credibility Kennedy had won by successfully staring down Khrushchev, was not about to risk being seen as weak against Communists in Havana or Moscow — especially with an election less than a year away.

As for the mobsters, they could finally exhale. One week after Dallas, according to Kaiser, gangster Sam Giancana was caught on tape in a Chicago lounge saying, “This is going to take the heat off us.” The FBI’s focus, he said, would be on Castro-sympathizing leftists for some time.

Jimmy Hoffa is said to have crowed to reporters in Nashville, “Bobby Kennedy is just another lawyer now.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/11/24/his-brother-keeper-robert-kennedy-saw-conspiracy-jfk-assassination/TmZ0nfKsB34p69LWUBgsEJ/story.html

PS: Thanks for pointing out those parts, hoot. There is more than enough information -- just with the Mafia-CIA assassination plots -- to send these bastards still alive to gaol. The fact the media ignore stories like the two above show the corrupt, fascist nature of the gangster police state, just like George Orwell and Sinclair Lewis observed it becoming. Every voice that stands up to be heard hastens the day...

[dballance]

12. Eisenhower and Smedley Butler Warned us about the MIC and Intelligence agencies.

I see a lot of parallels with Obama's actions and JFK's actions that, I feel, led to JFK's assassination. JFK was willing to negotiate with the, then, "enemy," the USSR. Obama is willing to negotiate with the current enemies like Syria and Iran. Peace is not nearly as profitable and enabling of power-grabbing as war.

The CIA, and the MIC need their wars, power and money. Obama is a temporary impediment with a limited term in office. The people turning the cogs in the intelligence agencies and the MIC are long-term players.

Of course the President doesn't really control the CIA. Richard Helms admitted as much in his testimony to either the Warren Commission or the House Select Committee on Assassinations. I'll have to look that up. But, the CIA during Kennedy's time was a rouge organization that undertook operations that were contrary to JFK's orders. His military generals did everything they could to provoke Kruschev/USSR into a conflict. If you think that sort of thing hasn't only gotten worse then you're naive.

[starroute]

26. I've seen it suggested that Eisenhower's policies were being sabotaged

Most of this is fuzzy speculation, so I'm not going to try to find specific links -- but I keep running into the idea that Eisenhower felt control of foreign policy had been taken out of his hands during the last few years of his administration, and also that the U-2 incident may have been deliberately staged to prevent upcoming negotiations that could have ended the Cold War.

The U-2 claim seems particularly credible to me because it looks so much like the first "October Surprise" in 1968 -- when Nixon deliberately sabotaged the Vietnam peace talks.

In other words, Ike wasn't just warning us about the MIC in vague, general terms. He had something specific in mind that he couldn't say outright but he knew exactly what was going on.

[Octafish]

106. Did Francis Gary Powers ever go on record about that possibility?

The U-2 shoot-down destroyed the Eisenhower-Krushchev summit. Fletcher Prouty called it:

The Sabotaging of the American Presidency

The U-2 Debacle

EXCERPT...

Recently, the top secret transcripts of the May 1960 hearings held before the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. Senate became available. These transcripts had been obscured by an ambiguous title: Hearings Regarding Summit Conference of May 1960. Neither the title nor the index page give any clues to the casual researcher that the transcripts might have anything to do with the U-2 incident.

These hearings took place right after the U-2 went down, before Francis Gary Powers, the pilot of that plane, went on trial in Moscow. In other words, they took place before we had learned the Soviet side of the story and before Powers came back from prison. Few people even knew about these super-secret hearings.

Those in attendance were, in addition to the full Committee and their staff: Allen W. Dulles, then the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) and his Deputy, General S. Warner, and Ed Enck, all from the CIA and the U-2 program. Interestingly, the ostensible director of the U-2 program, Richard Bissell, was not there. Representing the Secretary of State was William B. Macomber; representing the Secretary of Defense was a Navy man, Captain L. Patrick Gray, the man whom Richard Nixon appointed to head the FBI, and later of Watergate fame. Although there were a large number of Air Force officers operating the U-2 program, not a single Air Force man was there.

A few months after the release of the transcripts in 1975, an obscure but authoritative journal, Military Affairs, published for the American Military Institute by the history department at Kansas State University, appeared with the paper, A Fragile Detente: The U-2 Incident Re-examined, by James A. Nathan, a member of the history department at the University of Delaware. This scholarly treatise might have gone unnoticed, except for the fact that the editor of Military Affairs received an angry letter from Francis Gary Powers dated February 6, 1976. In it Powers stated: "Normally I do not comment on articles written about the U-2 incident," but the usually taciturn Powers wrote a rambling, fourteen-page letter. Perhaps someone wrote it for him. That letter is remarkable; the Nathan article is remarkable; the Senate Foreign Relations Committee document, all 195 pages, is astounding; and the whole U-2 affair is unmatched in recent history. It is one of those keystone events that shaped the course of our lives for years afterward.

Contrary to all reports, that U-2 was not on a spy mission. It was not even flown by a spy. Powers' identification papers -- and he was loaded with them -- proved to his captors that he was a pilot working for the U.S. Air Force. He carried no CIA documents. With his Air Force ID and his uniform, military-type pressure suit, there was no evidence to indicate he was a spy. He looked like any other Air Force pilot. Why then was he promptly labeled a spy? What was Powers doing over the heart of the Soviet Union on May Day, and just before the most important summit conference of all?

In 1960 the directive NSC 10/2, published by the National Security Council (NSC) required that any clandestine operation must be operated so that if it failed or was compromised in any way, this country would be able to plausibly deny the existence of the operation. In CIA jargon, the plane and the pilot had to be "sterilized." The CIA and the Department of Defense (DOD) had spent millions of dollars sterilizing aircraft and equipment used in clandestine operations, so that anyone who might uncover an operation would be unable, under reasonable circumstances, to trace it positively to its true origin. Why then did Powers carry ID, and why did this U-2 carry so many identifying marks and decals?

I was the properly designated military officer in the Pentagon for a period of nine years -- including 1960 -- responsible for exactly this function of supporting the clandestine activities for the CIA. Under my direction many aircraft, many items of equipment, and many personnel were properly sterilized and "sheep-dipped" prior to use in secret missions. The U-2's were no exception. As a matter of fact, the entire U-2 program was supposed to have been made sterile from production on up. I must say I knew the CIA to be meticulous about deniability. On regular clandestine overflights to China Tibet, Indonesia, Burma, and other places, they did their best to conform with and obey the NSC directive. The identifying evidence included in Powers' flight violated the NSC mandate. If this was a spy mission, the violation was clearly planned to wreck the upcoming summit conference.

It was normal DOD-CIA practice that pilots engaged in clandestine operations don pressure suits which contained no identification of any kind prior to takeoff. In the process, the pilot was required to strip, and all identity and personal items were removed by the officials in charge of that flight.

Not only was this standard procedure a matter of great care, but in important cases, two or three aircraft and two or three pilots would be readied for each flight. The pilots would not know which plane they might fly, and no pilot would know his mission until the final briefing.

Powers' U-2 had been flown from Turkey to Peshawar, Pakistan on April 30, 1960 just a few hours before Powers took off for the USSR. He had been flown to Pakistan by transport and given only two and a half hours' warning before the flight. He has written: "I did not see the plane at close range."

For some unaccountable reason Powers took off on this, the longest USSR overflight ever planned, and in the seat pack of his parachute was every identification imaginable. If Powers was supposed to play the role of a spy, then in accordance with the script that has historically been passed down, he would be nameless, faceless, a man without a country. He was none of those things. Why not? And who saw to it that he was none of these things?

CONTINUED...

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/SAP.html

Wonder if Dulles and Co. at CIA expected (the then-shoe-in front runner) President Nixon in 1961 to continue destroying peace?

One thing's for certain today: "Money trumps peace" has become the ethos of the United States.

[starroute]

109. Thanks for that link -- it's good to know where the speculation comes from

But there's some other stuff I've been thinking about lately.

One thing is that when Kennedy was elected, he was considered to be a strong anti-Communist. In the debates, he did his best to attack Nixon from the right over the supposed "missile gap" and over willingness to attack Cuba.

He was also widely considered to be fascinated by the CIA. He was a James Bond fan. He loved the whole secret agent mystique.

But then he governed from a position of restraint. He pulled back from the Bay of Pigs. He didn't unleash the military to attack the Soviet Union.

And I'm wondering if Dulles and Co. started off thinking that Kennedy would go along with their agenda -- and felt betrayed when he didn't.

[2banon]

120. That's my summation, for what it's worth.. n/t

[Octafish]

163. That started in April 1961...

The history shows Dulles knew the Bay of Pigs would fail. CIA itself knew that Castro knew the time and place for the attack. The Pentagon thought the plan had, at best, 25-percent chance of success, yet let JFK think it was viable the people of Cuba would rise up and overthrow the guy who tossed out the longtime corrupt tyrant, friend of both the U.S. Mafia and Richard M. Nixon. So, knowing the plan was compromised, let alone stupid from a military and political point of view, Dulles and Co. failed to inform the President. How is that not treason?

Relations with DCI Dulles and JCS Chief Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer must've gotten really strained in July 1961 when they proposed the United States launch an all-out nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in Fall of 1963. Their rationale was that the United States would hold its optimum military advantage then. It seems they didn't care if the U.S. suffered the loss of more than a few major cities; beating the Communists was worth it.

[Octafish]

104. David Slawson, Warren Commission investigator, tried to warn us and was told to zip it...

Phillip Shenon, via David Talbot:

• In the years following the Warren Report’s release, several of the commissioners and staff members distanced themselves from their own report and publicly criticized the manifold deceptions of the agencies on which they had relied, namely the FBI and CIA. Among those who suffered grave doubts was lawyer David Slawson, the man who had been the Warren Commission’s lead investigator into whether JFK was the victim of a conspiracy. In 1975 Slawson aired his criticisms to the New York Times, attacking the CIA for withholding vital information from the commission and calling for a new JFK investigation. Within days of the story breaking in the Times, Slawson received a strange and threatening phone call from James Angleton, the spectral CIA counterintelligence chief. Angleton – who had not only closely monitored Oswald for several years before Dallas, but later took charge of the agency’s investigation into the alleged assassin – adopted a decidedly sinister tone during his call with Slawson, making it clear to the lawyer that he would be wise to remain “a friend of the CIA.” Slawson and his wife were deeply unnerved by the call. He thought the message was clear: “Keep your mouth shut.”

SOURCE: http://www.salon.com/2013/11/06/the_jfk_assassination_we_still_dont_know_what_happened/

PS: Thank you, dballance. Those doing wetwork at CIA answered to a "higher power."

[WillyT]

13. HUGE K & R !!! - Thank You !!!

[Octafish]

107. ''The younger Dulles saw no separation between his business and the country's business.''

Continuation of David Talbot's remarks:

...As young men, the two brothers developed a passion for the game of chess and they would play one another with a single-minded intensity that blocked out everyone and everything around them. They would apply the same fervent gamesmanship to their global law practice and then to the world itself when they took their commanding positions in Washington.

The younger Dulles saw no separation between his business and the country's business. Long before he ran the CIA and toppled governments in Iran and Guatemala, and targeted leaders for assassination in Africa, Latin America and even Europe, Allen Dulles was carrying out similar, clandestine work on behalf of his wealthy corporate clients. In 1932 as a Sullivan & Cromwell fixer, he flew to Colombia at the request of the Mellon family, whose rich oil and mineral fields were in danger of being nationalized, and he helped arrange the election of a Mellon-friendly presidential candidate.

"There's a thin line," he said, "between high finance and the shadowy underworld."

When the Dulles brothers targeted a sovereign nation, they invariably did so by couching their mayhem as part of the global crusade against the spreading evil of communism. But, the leaders they overthrew or murdered were generally reformers,
whose only sin was a devotion to improving the lives of their poverty-stricken people. When these foreign leaders moved to nationalize resources owned by U.S. and European corporate empires, they often aroused the lethal instincts of the Dulles Brothers. Because these multinational companies, whether it was United Fruit in Guatemala or the ARAMCO oil consortium in Iran, were also clients of the Dulles Brothers' law firm.

CONTINUED...

[WillyT]

114. Excellent Stuff... Much Of Which We Suspected... Can't Wait For The Book...

Thank you for all of your work here.

[rhett o rick]

14. The JFK assassination was a very important event in all our lives. Thank you for your reports.

And thanks to the Admins for recognizing how important this is to most of us.

One of the most important obligations of citizens is to be vigilant and work toward making our representation government actually represent us. This demands transparency. When money and politics are involved THERE ARE CONSPIRACIES. We are obligated to seek out the truth. The conspiracy deniers want desperately to live in a world without conspiracies, which is understandable. However, when their desperation reaches out to try to control what we believe, they go too far. If they dont believe in conspiracies, they should remain happily in their denial bubbles where they are safe (or so they think) from big bad reality.

[BelgianMadCow]

37. I want to second that thanks to the admins

that took courage, and a belief in DU sanity.

[Octafish]

113. Dulles assassinated a political ally of President Kennedy three days before JFK's inaugural.

Patrice Lumumba, president of the Congo. David Talbot explained:

During his nearly decade long run as America's intelligence chief from January 1953 to November 1961, Allen Dulles turned the CIA into the most lethal and most secretive agency in Washington. He recruited bright, young, ambitious men from Ivy League backgrounds and he turned them loose on the world. They were "Mad Men" with a "License to Kill."

President Eisenhower gave Dulles and his killing machine a long leash, because he thought that by allowing the CIA to engage in covert proxy wars in the Third World, he was avoiding a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. But, this cold war calculation inflicted severe collateral damage upon the developing world.

Leaders and political movements that could have lifted their nations out of poverty and suffering were cut down in their prime. Leaders like Patrice Lumumba, the young, charismatic nationalist in the former Belgian Congo.

Lumumba's efforts to lift his people out of the near-slavery imposed on them by their Belgian colonial masters elicited the wrath of U.S. and European mining conglomerates. And, yes, these mining giants were, indeed, represented by the Dulles law firm. Lumumba was inevitably portrayed by the CIA and the agency's assets in the media in the United States and Europe as a reckless communist and he was targeted for elimination.

By the way, i'm speaking here of media assets like the New York Times correspondent in the Congo who covered the sad end of Patrice Lumumba, a man named Paul Hoffmann, who's a familiar byline to many of us who read New York Times foreign coverage for many years. Paul Hoffman was an ex-NAZI who had served U.S. intelligence since (the end of) World War II. This is the man the New York Times sent to cover Patrice Lumumba in his final days.

The CIA also sent its Doctor of Death, Sydney Gottlieb, to the Congo with a tube of toxic toothpaste. When this poison plot didn't work, the agency brought in contract killers from Europe.

Finally, in one of the CIA's first cases of what would become known as extraordinary rendition, Lumumba was captured with the CIA's help and handed over to his mortal political enemies, a gang of killers that included CIA mercenaries.

But, the CIA continues to this day to deny any responsibility -- any direct responsibility for Patrice Lumumba's death. The agency is directly implicated in his savage torture and murder. Lumumba's assassination would lead to decades of dictatorship and social collapse and further misery in the Congo.

It's important to know the timing of Lumumba's murder: January 17, 1961 -- just three days before the inauguration of President Kennedy.

------------

PS: Thank you, rhett o rick! Your friendship and work mean the world to me.

[rhett o rick]

119. And thank you for keeping us up to date. Have a great holiday season. nm

[robertpaulsen]

19. One of the things I am thankful for ...

Having this Democratic and democratic website where through intelligent research and diligent observance, a great poster like you can speak truth to power and shine a light on reality. Thanks for all you do, Octafish! All of your JFK Conference posts are bookmark-worthy for those willing to confront the fascists intent on undermining what truly makes this country great. That's understating the case; all your posts are bookmark-worthy. I hope you are having a wonderful Thanksgiving!

[2banon]

118. I second robertpaulsen's remarks of praise to you Octofish and extend to rhettorick

and others who have worked to support all this work.. Thank you for all the hard work, and continued reporting.. hope your holidays are joyous and restful..

[certainot]

21. after the big 'stinks' caused by assassinations with guns, they discovered small plane crashes

work great and no one believes they would use such a method!

samantha smith (the anti-reagan, anti-star wars, anti-MX missile), paul wellstone, the guy with the goods on roves election hacking, etc.

[CanSocDem]

35. And after that...

...they discovered how to fix elections.

Silencing dissent is easier now than it has ever been.

Discredit, deceive, distract and destroy.

.

[mc51tc]

45. Plus Sen. Hale Boggs

His plane was never found in Alaska, and he served on the Warren Com. who disagreed with most of the findings. His was helping the Senator in Alaska when his plane went down I believe in 1972.

[BlueMTexpat]

84. Also, JFK, Jr.,

where there was never too much speculation, likely because he never had the opportunity to become a politically powerful figure (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy,_Jr._plane_crash) and Ron Brown, Clinton's Commerce Secretary at the time of his death (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Brown_(U.S._politician). There was - and is still - quite a lot of speculation about Brown's.

Whatever the truth about any of these, such crashes appear "conveniently" to occur more to Dems.

At least in my lifetime.

[certainot]

145. to many preventive 'accidents', and until people quit calling 'tinfoil' every time, it will continue

[Octafish]

144. Mike Connell

Was about to testify in regards to Karl Rove's role in the 2004 Ohio electronic election theft.

http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2008/3320

[certainot]

146. i remember that. there used to be a list of these 'airplane accidents' at unknownnews.net by cheryl

seal but the website was taken over and i can't find the list anymore- it was extensive

here's an unrelated old piece of hers http://www.minnesota8.net/Writings/seal01.htm but most of her stuff seems to be gone, but my research abilities probably suck

[certainot]

147. here's something else by her-

http://archive.democrats.com/view.cfm?id=7706

[dixiegrrrrl]

22. As an aside...I hope when he writes the book, he has good proof readers.

"saloon keepers and ward healers"


I have but not yet finished his book "Brothers".

[Octafish]

24. Good catch! My bad...

...ward heelers.

The transcription is mine from the recordings I made at the conference. All errors it contains are my own.

[dixiegrrrrl]

27. Ooooops...did not mean to poke at you

I wish, in politics, there WERE more "healers" than heelers.

Excellent post.
Us boomers were not really much awareof the cast of politics and world domination of the 50's...
just think how awake citizens could have been if the inter tubes were around then.

[LongTomH]

25. Octafish, have you seen this....?

JFK--Nikita Khruschchev Relationship Explained by Khrushchev's Granddaughter. The full segment is here: If JFK Had Lived: Foreign Policy.

You can speculate now different world history might have been, if JFK had lived.

[Octafish]

110. Thank you, LongTomH!

I did not know JFK was threatened with impeachment over Bay of Pigs.

Listening now to these outstanding interviews!

Jammed with information I did not know!

[johnnyreb]

29. There is so much essential history to be learned by inquiry into this event.

Who pulled the trigger is secondary.

As the caregiver son of a WWII veteran whose family was penalized massively by the Right for his participation in the battles of the Pacific, I am thankful for the leathernecks who teach us this history.

[Octafish]

112. W. David Slawson is a name few know...

...but, all Americans should. David Talbot brought up W. David Slawson, an attorney who served the Warren Commission as an investigator, who made the mistake of going public with criticism of the CIA in an interview with The New York Times in 1975. At the time, it was earth shaking news to learn the Church Committee reported CIA withheld information from the Warren Commission:

DATA ON OSWALD APPARENTLY WITHHELD FROM KEY WARREN
INVESTIGATION AIDES

By Ben A. Franklin
Special to The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 - J. Edgar Hoover sent a memorandum
to the State Department in 1960 raising the possibility that an
impostor might be using the credentials of an American defector named
Lee Harvey Oswald, who was then in the Soviet Union.

EXCERPT...

SUGGEST REOPENING INQUIRY

Shown the FBI memos and the two State Department documents -
discovered in the National Archives here by a private researcher -
W. David Slawson, a lawyer who checked out rumors about
Oswald for the commission in 1964, said he thought the assass-
ination inquiry should be reopened.

Mr. Slawson, who is now a law professor at the University of
Southern California, said he and other investigators had never
been shown the memos.

"We were the rumor runner-downers, and we certainly should
have seen this material, as we did a great deal of other stuff that
we showed to be unfounded," he said.

"IT MAY BE MORE SIGNIFICANT THAT WE DID NOT SEE IT, IN TERMS
OF A POSSIBLE COVER-UP AND THE REASONS FOR IT, THAN IF WE HAD
SEEN IT," he continued. "I mean, I don't know where the impostor notion
would have led us - perhaps nowhere, like a lot of the other leads. BUT
THE POINT IS WE DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT IT. AND WHY NOT?"

Two other commission staff members shared with Mr. Slawson the
responsibility for checking out rumors. Neither recalled specifically
having seen the memos, but they tend to discount any thought of a
renewed investigation.

CONTINUED...

http://www.acorn.net/jfkplace/08-Parks-36-items/nyt.2-23-75

For going public, the guy got the Treatment from James J. Angleton himself.

[johnnyreb]

137. Thank you Octafish.

I never tire of your knowledge or your strength.

[colsohlibgal]

30. There Is Just Too Much Out There Now

I admire the people who cling to the Oswald lone nut fiction, dogged they are, blinders/closed mind and all.

There are just too may documents, files, affidavits, facts out there now. Evidence. Memos and calls involving Johnson, Richard Russell, Nicholas Katzenbach and more. Bobby knew pretty quickly the parameters of what happened but had to close off those avenues because of Castro/Cuba, and things relating to that - even the Francis Gary Powers U-2 incident. Jackie Kennedy made it plain she knew as well - which is part of the reason she would up hooking up with Onassis and getting out of Dodge, she worried about her kids.

Dallas Police Chief Curry even admitted they couldn't even prove Oswald was up in that "snipers nest" or shot anyone. He (LHO) came up clean on the paraffin test. I get more sure every day he was a patsy. BTW, patsies very similar to Oswald were in place for the attempts that never came off just before Dallas, first Chicago then Tampa. Ruby - I believe his job was to kill Oswald before he was in custody, he didn't get it done right away, which got dicey for the conspirators because he got to a phone and also was able to deny he did it.

Then - you see other films and pictures of the immediate aftermath in Dealey Plaza and everyone was walking, running, pointing toward the grassy knoll. And - tapes and informants since have multiple mafia kingpins admitting being behind it. It appears there were as many as 3-4 shooters, but the lead suspect for firing the "frangible" bullet that blew away part of JFK's head was the head hit man for the Chicago Mafia, Chuck Nicoletti. One of his cohorts may have been one of the 3" tramps", Charles Harrison - none other than actor Woody Harrelson's dad.

Vincent Bugliosi, Gerald Posner, and their devotees, are living with blinders in a bubble, hands over their ears and eyes.

[Spider Jerusalem]

36. A few points:

1) The paraffin test, or dermal nitrate test, was discredited by experiments showing that it produced false positives in people who hadn't fired weapons, and false negatives in people who had. See for instance here: http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4379&context=jclc

See also here: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/factoid2.htm

2) Oswald's paraffin test wasn't negative.

The Paraffin Test

During the course of the interrogation of Lee Harvey Oswald following the assassination a paraffin test was performed by the Dallas police on both of his hands and his right cheek. The paraffin cast of Oswald's hands reacted positively to the test. The cast of the right cheek showed no reaction. 87

To perform the paraffin test, layers of warm liquid paraffin, inter-leaved with layers of gauze for reinforcement, are brushed or poured on the suspect's skin. The warm sticky paraffin opens the skin's pores and picks up any dirt and foreign material present at the surface. When the paraffin cools and hardens it forms a cast, which is taken off and processed with diphenylamine or diphenyl-benzidine, chemicals which turn blue in the presence of nitrates. Since gunpowder residues contain nitrates, the theory behind the test. is that if a cast reacts positively, i.e., if blue dots appear, it provides evidence that the suspect recently fired a weapon. 88 In fact, however, the test is completely unreliable in determining either whether a person has recently fired a weapon or whether he has not. 89 On the one hand, diphenylamine and diphenylbenzidine will react positively not only with nitrates from gunpowder residues, but nitrates from other sources and most oxidizing agents, including dichromates, per-manganates, hypochlorates, periodates, and some oxides. Thus, contact with tobacco, Clorox, urine, cosmetics, kitchen matches, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers, or soils, among other things, may result in a positive reaction to the paraffin test. Also, the mere handling of a weapon may leave nitrates on the skin. 90 A positive reaction is, therefore, valueless in determining whether a suspect has recently fired a weapon. Conversely, a person who has recently fired a weapon may not show a positive reaction to the paraffin test, particularly if the weapon was a rifle. A revolver is so constructed that there is a space between the cylinder, which bears the chambers, and the barrel. When a revolver is fired, nitrate-bearing gases escape through this space and may leave residues on the. hand. 91 In a rifle, however, there is no gap between the chamber and the barrel, and one would therefore not expect nitrates to be deposited upon a person's hands or cheeks as a result of his firing a rifle. As Cunningham testified:

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. ... I personally wouldn't expect to find any residues on a person's right cheek after firing a rifle due to the fact that by the very principles and the manufacture and the action, the cartridge itself is sealed into the chamber by the bolt being closed behind it, and upon firing the case, the cartridge case expands into the chamber filling it up and sealing it off from the gases, so none will come back in your face, and so by its very nature, I would not expect to find residue on the right. cheek of a shooter. 92

The unreliability of the paraffin test has been demonstrated by experiments run by the FBI. In one experiment, conducted prior to the assassination, paraffin tests were performed on 17 men who had just fired 5 shots with a .38-caliber revolver. Eight men tested negative in both hands, three men tested positive on the idle hand and negative on the firing hand, two men tested positive on the firing hand and negative on the idle hand, and four men tested positive on both their firing and idle hands. 93 In a second experiment, paraffin tests were per formed on 29 persons, 9 of whom had just fired a revolver or an automatic, and 20 of whom had not fired a weapon. All 29 persons tested positive on either or both hands. 94 In a third experiment, performed after the assassination, an agent of the FBI, using the C2766 rifle, fired three rounds of Western 6.5-millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition in rapid succession. A paraffin test was then performed on both of his hands and his right cheek. Both of his hands and his cheek tested negative. 95

The paraffin casts of Oswald's hands and right cheek were also examined by neutron-activation analyses at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Barium and antimony were found to be present on both surfaces of all the casts and also in residues from the rifle cartridge cases and the revolver cartridge cases. 96 Since barium and antimony were present in both the rifle and the revolver cartridge cases, their presence on the casts were not evidence that Oswald had fired the rifle. Moreover, the presence on the inside surface of the cheek cast of a lesser amount of barium, and only a slightly greater amount of antimony, than was found on the outside surface of the cast rendered it impossible to attach significance to the presence of these elements on the inside surface. Since the outside surface had not been in contact with Oswald's cheek, the barium and antimony found there had come from a source other than Oswald. Furthermore, while there was more barium and antimony present on the casts than would normally be found on the hands of a person who had not fired a weapon or handled a fired weapon, it is also true that barium and antimony may be present in many common items; for example, barium may be present in grease, ceramics, glass, paint, printing ink, paper, rubber, plastics, leather, cloth, pyrotechnics, oilcloth and linoleum, storage batteries, matches and cosmetics; antimony is present in matches, type metal, lead alloys, paints and lacquers, pigments for oil and water colors, flameproof textiles, storage batteries, pyrotechnics, rubber, pharmaceutical preparations and calico; and both barium and antimony are present in printed paper and cloth, paint, storage batteries, rubber, matches, pyrotechnics, and possibly other items. However, the barium and antimony present in these items are usually not present in a form which would lead to their adhering to the skin of a person who had handled such items. 97

http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix-10.html#paraffin

3) The bullet that struck Kennedy in the head wasn't "frangible"; it was a 6.5mm Carcano bullet. Multiple tests have been conducted regarding what happens to a full-metal-jacketed 6.5mm Carcano bullet, from the same lot of ammunition as that used by Oswald, and, when such a bullet strikes the dense bone of a human skull, it separates into the copper jacket and lead core, fragmenting in a way similar to the bullet that did strike Kennedy in the head. See here: http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix-10.html#head

See also here: http://www.firearmstactical.com/pdf/skull_bullets_lattimer.pdf

4) The "three tramps" have been positively identified. They were, in fact, three tramps. None of them was Charles Harrelson. See here: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/3tramps.htm

[micraphone]

40. Exactly!

1) One look at the Z film shows the truth. The last bullet hit him in the right forehead. i have to laugh at the gymnastics involved turning an EXIT wound into an entry wound. If JFK was shot from above and behind, why is Jackie crawling all over the Trunk? What about the motorcycle outrider (front and right of the car) who felt or heard a bullet go past his head on a perfect trajectory? The person injured by concrete from a ricochet on the sidewalk? Up to 9 bullets is terrifyingly logical.

2) Three FBI sharpshooters were unable to match LHO "feat" of loading, aiming and firing 3 times in 6 seconds at a moving target.

Either one of the above facts is enough to totally discredit the lone gunman theory - which is exactly the conclusion drawn by Assassination commission in 1978.

[BlueStreak]

103. It couldn't be more obvious

Last edited Sat Nov 30, 2013, 01:38 PM - Edit history (1)

and the "baffle them with bullshit" crowd has been in high gear on that one for 50 years.

Look at any respected medical text on gunshot wounds to the skull. They all say it is almost universal that the entry wound is small, and if the bullet exits, it will almost always be much larger. With my apologizes for the gruesome details, we know the large wound was in the back of his head and that is where the majority of matter went. Jackie's instant reaction was to jump onto the trunk to try to save that matter. Of course it was futile, but it was the instant reaction. What a horrible moment that was for her.

And when they took JFK to the hospital, he was in a gurney on his back. The attending physicians say the small entry wound and saw him struggling to breathe. They instantly started a tracheotomy and an infusion of plasma in a leg artery because, for what they saw at that instant, they thought there was a chance of saving him. But then they looked at the back of his head, which was obviously the exit would and immediately knew he would not live. -- and they stopped their efforts.

Nothing could be more obvious. But of course, that means that the head shot did not come from the depository. And that in turns means that Oswald couldn't have been a 'lone nut" (if he was even involved at all.). Which in turn leads to the inevitable conclusion that some organized group -- probably with CIA assets conducted this operation. And that potentially leads to upheaval that could threaten the very existence of the security state. So the Commission decided it must stonewall, fabricate, and whitewash. They had to stick with their ridiculous theories no matter how preposterous some of them were. And that all starts with denying the obvious -- that the fatal shot came from JFK's front.

[lake loon]

124. And if you've ever fired a gun, you know ...

Nothing you hit EVER recoils toward the shot. JFK was killed from the front. THAT is the ultimate "case closed."

[BlueStreak]

141. A key procedural thing is that there was no advocate for the truth in these proceedings

Warren allowed some outsiders to come before the commission and make arguments or present evidence, but that was entirely arbitrary. This was not like a trial where there are advocates for both sides present through the entire proceedings, with the other side being able to cross examine and get exculpatory evidence into the record. This was a one-sided kangaroo court. They simply didn't allow anything but the "lone nut" theory to be represented and argued.

This was a sham from the very first day.

[Mc Mike]

86. Re Jackie's marriage to Aristotle,

Congress had just passed a law that gave Secret Service protection to the surviving spouses of Presidents, for the rest of their lives or until they re-married.

Jackie married Onassis a week later.

[GoneFishin]

102. There is way too much. OSWALD : No barium or antimony on cheek.

http://22november1963.org.uk/oswald-rifle-and-paraffin-tests

Three Tests Proved Oswald’s Innocence

Test 1: Spectrographic Analysis
Oswald’s paraffin casts were subjected to two analyses. Spectrographic analysis, the method normally used by the police, showed evidence of barium and antimony on Oswald's hands, but not on his cheek.4

Test 2: Neutron Activation Analysis on Oswald
Spectrographic analysis was considered sufficiently reliable for criminal investigations, but in this case a more incisive test was also used. Neutron activation analysis, which is capable of identifying the presence of substances in quantities much too small to be captured by spectrographic analysis, also showed no incriminating quantities of residues on Oswald’s cheek.5 The result was reported in an internal Warren Commission memo: “At best, the analysis shows that Oswald may have fired a pistol, although this is by no means certain. … There is no basis for concluding that he also fired a rifle.”6

Test 3: Controlled Neutron Activation Analysis
In order to check the validity of the neutron activation analysis of Oswald’s paraffin casts, a controlled test was made. Seven marksmen fired a rifle of the same type as that found on the sixth floor. The standard paraffin test was administered, and the paraffin casts were subjected to neutron activation analysis. All seven subjects showed substantial amounts of barium and antimony on their hands and, more importantly, on their cheeks.7

The absence of significant quantities of residues on Oswald’s cheek meant that he almost certainly had not fired a rifle that day.

[Spider Jerusalem]

154. More untruths.

The paraffin casts of Oswald's hands and right cheek were also examined by neutron-activation analyses at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Barium and antimony were found to be present on both surfaces of all the casts and also in residues from the rifle cartridge cases and the revolver cartridge cases.

http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix-10.html#paraffin

Mr. CUNNINGHAM. ... I personally wouldn't expect to find any residues on a person's right cheek after firing a rifle due to the fact that by the very principles and the manufacture and the action, the cartridge itself is sealed into the chamber by the bolt being closed behind it, and upon firing the case, the cartridge case expands into the chamber filling it up and sealing it off from the gases, so none will come back in your face, and so by its very nature, I would not expect to find residue on the right. cheek of a shooter.

http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/appendix-10.html#paraffin

[GoneFishin]

155. Yes. The Warren Report does support the findings of the Warren Report.

Thanks much.

[Spider Jerusalem]

156. And contradicts your assertions.

And in any case: bullet fragments recovered from the limo; bullet recovered from Connally's stretcher. Ballistically matched to Oswald's rifle, to the exclusion of all other weapons. Oswald's rifle that was found on the sixth floor of the TSBD. Oswald's rifle that Marina told the police was missing from Ruth Paine's garage. Oswald's rifle that had his palmprint and fingerprints on it. Oswald's rifle that there are photographs of him holding (that have been repeatedly verified as authentic). Oswald's rifle that he bought (his name is on the money order, his name is on the order form, it was shipped to his PO box). Ear-witnesses on the fifth floor of the TSBD who heard rifle shots from directly above. One of whom heard the sound of the bolt cycling and the spent shell casings hitting the floor, another of whom had dust and debris in his hair, knocked loose from the ceiling by the report of the rifle firing (all of which is quite possible, the building was undergoing renovations, there were holes in the sixth floor through to the fifth-floor ceiling).

[GoneFishin]

157. You forgot your links to the Warren Report, you know, the source in question.

I don't question that they inserted talking points affirming the position which they espouse.

Nor do I doubt your ability to cut and paste, or paraphrase from that text.

I doubt their sincere desire to determine and publicize the entire truth.

The report is full of half truths such as "his palm print and fingerprints on" the rifle while neglecting to report that the prints did not appear until after federal agents visited Oswald's dead body in the morgue.

Or the complete omission of the fact that when agents tried to test the rifle, the rifle scope was so out of alignment that it was unusable.

Or that when the rifle was test fired the agents had powder residue on both cheeks, whereas Oswald had residue on neither.

There is a lot more. But you know that, and have chosen to ignore the inconvenient information.

The Warren Report was a whitewash. The fact that the mainstream media presstitutes can bring it up without bursting out laughing has fooled some into believing that it is a serious piece of work. But about half of us are not fooled.

[Spider Jerusalem]

158. Okay then, let's presume for just a moment that the conspiracy version is correct.

So: There's another shooter. In the Dal-Tex building, on the triple overpass, or on the grassy knoll. Two separate bullets hit Kennedy and Connally. For the wound in Kennedy's throat to be an entry wound and not an exit? The bullet would have had to pass through the windshield of the car (which no bullet did), and where was the shooter? Standing in a manhole? Which also leaves a problem: where's the bullet? Did it just vanish? Explainable if Kennedy had two entry wounds (back and front) to the torso, but...where are the bullets? If the back is a separate entry wound, we're supposed to believe he was struck with a bullet which didn't pass through his body and also vanished? And Connally. He's struck from behind by a bullet that is somehow tumbling (as it must've been, based on the shape of the entry wound), that also just vanishes. That leaves no "bullet wipe" on his clothing (there WAS "bullet wipe" on Kennedy's clothing, around the entry wound on his back). Then you have the supposed headshot from the grassy knoll. Which somehow magically doesn't disrupt the left hemisphere of Kennedy's brain at all, despite passing from right to left through his head, and leaves no exit wound on the left side. But wait, this is explained by the alteration or substitution of the body. Except all of the autopsy photos and X-rays are verifiably of JFK (verified by forensic anthropology, by comparison to pre-mortem X-rays, dental records), and they all confirm the wounds described in the autopsy report and that the headshot came from behind, not in front (and there's no way that Kennedy's body could have been altered, that's the stuff of science fiction, it's impossible to alter a corpse like that without leaving traces, it'd be noticed; it's impossible to have taken the body, the casket was attended the entire time between Dallas and Bethesda).

And the conspirators somehow contrive to plant fragments from a 6.5mm Carcano bullet fired from Oswald's rifle in the limo (a 6.5mm Carcano bullet that's fragmented in the exact same way a Carcano bullet actually fragments after striking a human skull, in fact), and to plant a bullet on Connally's stretcher at Parkland, while the whole time they can't know another bullet won't be recovered in the autopsy that might queer their pitch. Meantime just after the shooting you have some very busy conspirators; you have one up on the 6th floor of the TSBD, planting a rifle and three spent shells, and planting faked photos of Oswald, along with negatives, in his seabag in the Paine garage out in Irving for the police to find (and while they're at it somehow planting a copy of the same photo with Oswald's own handwriting on it among George de Mohrenschildt's possessions, while he's away in Haiti). And you have agents shooting officer Tippit, so they can pin it on Oswald. And suborning witnesses to get them to identify Oswald in a lineup. And suborning Marina to get her to testify that it's Oswald's rifle and that she took those photos. You have conspirators arranging for Oswald to die in custody; he would have been shot at the Texas Theatre if there hadn't been a crowd. So they go to Jack Ruby. And Ruby misses Oswald's transfer (announced over radio and television for 10am on Sunday), and just happens to go to a Western Union office across the street from the police station in time to be there to shoot Oswald when they're actually moving him, despite not having any way of knowing in advance.

The conspiracy version of events is a vast and intricate Rube Goldberg operation with a hundred little things that had to go exactly right in order for it to be pulled off. It's very very improbable. The evidence is all against it.

[GoneFishin]

168. There was a hole in the windshield, and we don't know about his left brain because it disappeared nt

I can see you went to a great deal

[The Midway Rebel]

169. Crack not a hole.

Caused by bone or bullet fragments by a shot from the rear. You can also see what looks like blood splatter in photos.

http://research.archives.gov/description/305143

[GoneFishin]

172. Not a crack. A bullet hole.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/06/28/jfk-conspiracy-the-bullet-hole-in-the-windshield/

(1) Dallas motorcycle patrolmen Stavis Ellis and H. R. Freeman both observed a penetrating bullet hole in the limousine windshield at Parkland Hospital. Ellis told interviewer Gil Toff in 1971: “There was a hole in the left front windshield … You could put a pencil through it … you could take a regular standard writing pencil … and stick [it] through there.” Freeman corroborated this, saying: “[I was] right beside it. I could of [sic] touched it … it was a bullet hole. You could tell what it was.” [David Lifton published these quotations in his 1980 book, Best Evidence.]

[Spider Jerusalem]

170. There was no hole in the windshield.

There was a crack in the windshield, probably caused by a skull or bullet fragment:

http://research.archives.gov/description/305143

There are photos of the brain taken at the time of the autopsy. They're entirely consistent with the autopsy report. The brain didn't "disappear"; Robert Kennedy had it removed from the National Archives and interred with JFK when he was reburied at Arlington in 1966. This was covered by the HSCA investigation. http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/brain.txt

[dmr]

31. For some reason I was thinking about Bobby Baker & LBJ today.

Just before the assassination, LBJ was embroiled in the Bobby Baker scandal, and most likely would not have been JFK's 1964 running mate.

Once LBJ took office, the scandal against him disappeared.

I'm not implicating LBJ in the assassination, but what I wondered this morning was if who LBJ assigned to the Commission had anything to do with his part of the scandal disappearing?

Wasn't there a tit for tat on the approval for the FBI to wiretap MLK Jr.?

I really don't know much about this, and maybe this isn't the thread to ask this question, but I am curious.

Thanks, and Happy Thanksgiving.

[mc51tc]

48. The investigation of Bobby Baker would have involved not only LBJ, but RFK, Hoover and JFK

according to wikipedia"

"In September 1963, an investigation was begun by the Republican-led Senate Rules Committee into Baker's business and political activities.[7] Baker was investigated for allegations of congressional bribery using money and arranged sexual favors, in exchange for votes and government contracts. Criticized increasingly, Baker resigned his job as Secretary of the Senate on October 7, 1963.[8]

According to author Evan Thomas, the President's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, was able to arrange a deal with J. Edgar Hoover to quell mention of the Ellen Rometsch allegations (she had a supposed affair with JFK) in the Senate investigation of Bobby Baker. Hoover successfully limited the Senate investigation of Baker by threatening to release embarrassing information about the investigating senators contained in FBI files. In exchange for this, Robert Kennedy reassured Hoover that his job as FBI Director was secure and also reluctantly agreed to allow the FBI to proceed with wiretaps that Hoover had requested on Martin Luther King to try and prove King's close confidants and advisers were communists.[9][10]

Although Lyndon Johnson was not involved in Baker's business dealing after 1960, the Senate investigation looked into their questionable financial activities in the 1950s. This was a problem for Johnson and there were rumors he would be dropped from the 1964 presidential ticket.[11] Afterwords, with the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, the Senate investigation was delayed. Thereafter, any investigation of Lyndon Johnson as part of the Baker investigation was dropped."

[Bolo Boffin]

33. Bobby Kennedy put Dulles on the Warren Commission.

Abe [Fortas] has talked with Katzenbach and Katzenbach has talked with the Attorney General. They recommend a seven man commission-two Senators, two Congressmen, the Chief Justice, Allen Dulles, and a retired military man (general or admiral). Katzenbach is preparing a description of how the Commission would function.

http://history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol11/html/HSCA_Vol11_0006b.htm

Dulles was suggested by Bobby. What coverup Dulles may or may not have participated in, it was not of the murder of Bobby's brother.

[Octafish]

41. No. RFK did not 'put Allen Dulles' on the Warren Commission.

Nor does your link show RFK putting Dulles on the Warren Commission.

FTI, Katzenbach was the Assistant AG who sent a memo staying the WC raison d'etre was to stop public discusion of a conspiracy. May've been his way of avoiding the nuclear war Dulles wanted.

The second paragraph stated: "The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial."

Given that the authorities could not possibly by November 25 know these things to be true, and Katzenbach later admitted he knew very little at this stage, the memo is clearly advocating a political course irrespective of the truth of the assassination.

SOURCE: http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Katzenbach_Memo

Why do you continue to repost something that is not true about RFK, Bolo Boffin?

[Bolo Boffin]

43. Yes, he did.

The Jenkins memo shows that Abe Fortas talked with Katzenbach who was talking to Bobby. Nick and Bobby came up with Dulles' name.

Nothing you have linked to disputes this in any way, Octafish. Why do you continue to pretend that it does?

LBJ from his memoirs (The Vantage Point, p. 48):

As for the makeup of the rest of the Commission, I appointed the two men Bobby Kennedy asked me to put on it, Allen Dulles and John McCloy - immediately.

Bobby named Dulles to the Commission, Octafish. McCloy, too, for that matter. This is the truth. I will continue to post the truth as I always strive to do.

[BlueStreak]

54. You make no sense at all. JFK FIRED Dulles.

[Bolo Boffin]

56. And then Bobby asked LBJ to put him on the Warren Commission.

Your problem is not with me. It's with verifiable historical facts.

[BlueStreak]

64. Do you understand that sometimes people are forced into positions?

There is no way any Kennedy would have wanted anything to do with Dulles.

But Robert might have decided it wasn't wise to oppose the guy who very well might just have engineered the murder of his brother.

[Bolo Boffin]

66. I think you're exaggerating the antipathy between the Kennedys and Dulles.

For example - June 23, 1964: Bobby Kennedy went to Johnson's office to help lobby Dulles to go to Mississippi to be an impartial observer for the government when those three civil rights workers went missing:

http://millercenter.org/scripps/archive/presidentialrecordings/johnson/1964/06_1964

There's two audio files there next to the June 23 Dulles entry, a WAV file and a MPG file. The MPG is more complete, but both have the section where Johnson hands the phone to Bobby so they can speak about Dulles going to Mississippi. I don't hear antipathy in that phone call. I don't hear anyone being cowed or bullied. I hear two professionals who respect each other working to solve a terrible problem.

ETA: Kennedy giving Dulles the National Security Medal on the occasion of his "retirement" after the Bay of Pigs fiasco.



Oh, you can just see the hatred oozing between these two men... not.

[YoungDemCA]

150. I don't know why you bother...

...to engage with conspiracy theorists.

I suppose there are some people who are still "on the fence." Setting the record straight does help.

[Zen Democrat]

53. Wait a minute. So, according to you, this "Bobby picked Dulles" crap is based on ...

what Walter Jenkins believed that Abe Fortas believed that Nicholas Katzenbach believed that Bobby Kennedy wanted? Give me a break.

[Bolo Boffin]

57. They weren't communicating by ouija board, Zen Democrat. n/t

[HooptieWagon]

59. LBJ himself said it.

p. 48 of his memoirs.

[BootinUp]

62. You believe him?

lol.

[Mc Mike]

87. He also said he didn't believe the Warren Commission report,

but don't let that shake your faith in the 'official story', Hoop.

[Zen Democrat]

129. LBJ said in 1969, after leaving office, that he always suspected a conspiracy.

In fact, almost everyone under 50 in 1963 believed that the truth was being withheld. It wasn't even an issue, except with the media and the Warren Commission apologists, who were one and the same. There were people who said, okay, it's over, let's move on. But most didn't. It's hard to prove today that anyone by name DID it, but it's obvious, and easily obvious, that the Warren Commission Report collapsed like a house of cards even as it was being printed.

People who are angry that the Kennedy Assassination is still being pursued ... I don't get you. My anger is directed toward the Alex Jones types who are the opposite of who they claim to be. Alex Jones was the ONLY conspiracy-based agitator allowed in the Dealey Plaza area last Thursday and he had a bullhorn? The likes of Alex Jones are getting their soot all over the serious research in order to debase it.

President Kennedy's murder was never investigated. Why would I accept made-up stuff to paper over the gaping holes in the official story? I love my country. What was done to our generation and our heroes was the most evil. Yes, I have a problem believing that a nobody out of nowhere killed JFK for nothing -- because that did not happen. Nor did it happen with James Earl Ray or Sirhan Sirhan.

[Mc Mike]

138. I agree with your post #53, and this one, Z.D.

Alex Jones is a bircher, and the bircher Hunt family in Dallas played a role in killing Kennedy, from what I've read. When the right wing does something underhanded, some of their assets mix in to the 'investigation', to add some lies to info being uncovered, stir dissension within the ranks of investigators, tar good investigators with a 'guilt by association', use their phony work against the false official story to get uninformed people to join their cause, and attempt to control all sides of the debate. It's not a genius tactic, in my opinion, they just have a ton of money, resources and influence, so are able to do this.

I didn't know that blowhard bircher Jones was the only (alleged) anti WC media investigator allowed in Dealey, but I'm not surprised.

The 'official story' with all those 'lone nuts' killing all those leaders who'd incurred the wrath of the right wing power structure -- I never believed the 'coincidence', either.

[indepat]

39. May light be shone in every crook and cranny until the truth, the whole truth triumphs

[Octafish]

159. Thank you, indepat! It is ALL about Justice.

Fascists hate democracy.

[indepat]

160. Confirming imo 'pukes will do whatever is necessary to gain and retain control, a clear and

present danger to our Constitution and Republic and imo constitute the enemy within for they are both seditious and domestic stochastic terrorists.

[Judi Lynn]

44. Thanks so much for the news David Talbot will be publishing

his book on the Dulles brothers. From the excerpt you've shared, it doesn't seem this is something one would ever want to miss reading.

Really, really hoping we know the minute it's available.

It's tremendous you made the effort to see him at Duquesne University, and discussing it with us.

We need to know as much as possible, and the sooner, the better. People been operating with absolutely no laws to check them, to reign them in at that level for so damned long. What an unforgiveable shame.

Please don't ever wonder if you have an audience at D.U. There is no one here who can fill your shoes, Octafish. We're always looking forward.

[Octafish]

165. ''Dulles had even less respect for Jack Kennedy's authority than he did for FDR's.''

Talbot's book is going to be literary dynamite. More of what he said at Duquesne...

...Dulles had even less respect for Jack Kennedy's authority than he did for FDR's.

After he was fired from the CIA by Kennedy, Dulles continued to meet with a steady stream of top- and mid-level CIA officials at his home in Georgetown. The two-story brick house on Q-Street became the seat of a sort of government in exile.

Among those Dulles remained in contact with were a number of CIA officials who later came under suspicion for the assassination of President Kennedy, including Jim Angleton and many of his aides, (including) Bill Harvey and Howard Hunt. Over the years, Harvey in particular has aroused strong suspicions.

John Whitten, the CIA official who was originally charged with the agency's investigation of the (John F.) Kennedy assassination, would later tell the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 that Harvey was a likely suspect in the case. Robert Blakey, the committee's chief counsel, and his investigator, Dan Hardway, came to share these suspicions about Harvey, but their investigation
ran out of political support and money before it could be completed.

Dulles gave Bill Harvey the CIA's highest medal and its most murderous assignments, including the Mafia hit or attempted hit against Castro. Bill Harvey was a creature of Allen Dulles' lawless and lethal CIA, a culture that operated with little governmental oversight and little respect for international law.

It was the kind of unhinged environment, where a man like Harvey could seriously propose recruiting mafia hit men, while on duty overseas, to kill members of a left-wing, democratic party, and then draw a gun on one of his own deputies, when the deputy objected on moral and legal grounds. It was the deputy, by the way, who was withdrawn back to Langley, and not Harvey, whose CIA career kept careening out of control for several more years.

Allen Dulles continued to meet with a variety of other sketchy characters when he was in so-called retirement in 1962 and 1963, including (with) Cuban exile leader Paulino Sierra Martinez, who was closely tied in with the Mafia. Dulles also met with -- thank you, Joan Mellen, for this -- also met with Philippe de Vosjoli, the head of French intelligence in Washington and a close associate of Jim Angleton. Dulles asked de Vosjoli to investigate the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba and report back to the CIA.

Now these are the activities not of a man who has gracefully accepted retirement and is puttering around his garden. This is the calendar of a man who still thinks he is running the show.

Allen Dulles himself makes another curious appearance in the Kennedy story in spite of his so-called retirement. In the fall of 1963, he went on a promotional tour for his memoire, "The Craft of Intelligence,” stopping over in Dallas for two days at the end of October.

On that fateful Friday, November 22nd, 1963, Dulles interrupted his book tour when he got the news
from Dallas. Thank you, Lisa Pease for this: Dulles did not go home when he heard the news. According to his own day calendar, Dulles went to something called the Farm.

I wanted to make sure the Farm was not a family retreat. I interviewed people close to Dulles, including his own daughter; and she had never heard of the Farm. But, the Farm we know was the term given (to) a secure CIA facility located on the Camp Perry Military Reservation near Williamsburg, Virginia.

In 1972, a local newspapar reported that the cia used the facility to, among other things, train assassins.

So, even though he had no longer -- he no longer had any official reason to be there, Dulles spent the entire weekend (of the assassination) at the CIA's facility, the farm.

During that eventful weekend, of course, Kennedy's body was flown back to Washington and subjected to a controversial autopsy. That same weekend, Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub operator and hustler, whom Robert Kennedy's Justice Department investigators quickly connected to the Mafia, shot down accused JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, conveniently silencing him forever. And throughout that fateful weekend, the grief stricken Attorney General made a series of frantic inquiries into the murder of his brother.

We know from the nature of these inquiries that Bobby Kennedy immediately suspected his brother was the victim of the CIA and the Mafia, the intelligence agency's junior partner in the murder business.

in other words, Robert Kennedy, the nation's top lawman and the president's devoted protector, a man who had spent much of his own life investigating the dark side of American power, immediately concluded that his brother had been the victim of the same CIA killing machine that had been directed at Fidel Castro and other world leaders deemed trouble.

This machine, built by Allen Dulles in the 1950s, had essentially been brought home to kill the President of the United States. It was a killing machine comprised of contract assassins, cut-outs, underworld operators and other unsavory types and overseen by the Ivy League swashbucklers whom Dulles had recruited to enforce U.S. interests around the world...

PS: There's a ton more from the presentation, including stuff from three of the people Talbot thanked or mentioned, but I have had little time of late. I promise to keep you and DU posted, Judi Lynn. Thank you for the kind words. Your friendship over the years means the world to me.

[rtassi]

75. Welcome to the party David … not like this is big news ...

[Octafish]

173. True. We've talked about it on DU...

...Corporate McPravda and Academia Inc, not so much.

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

[maddiemom]

76. The recent Rolling Stone article by RFK JR., is very enlightening as to his brother's

assassination and the CIA.

[maddiemom]

77. Correction: his uncle's assassination...

[Octafish]

162. Robert F. Kennedy saw conspiracy in JFK’s assassination

By Bryan Bender and Neil Swidey
The Boston Globe, Nov. 24, 2013

EXCERPT...

The newly released RFK papers contain an interesting postscript to all the cloak-and-dagger activity around Cuba. A secret CIA report entitled “Staying power of the Castro regime” concluded that the chances of a successful overthrow were “slim.” However, that report was written in the summer of 1964. In the months leading up to Dallas, acceptance of this idea had been far less widespread, especially among the people who most loathed Robert Kennedy, and, with him, his brother Jack.

***

Still, if the killing of the president was, as some suspect, a conspiracy to neutralize his brother, why wouldn’t the conspirators have simply gone after Bobby? Wouldn’t that have been a lot easier, especially since the president had the Secret Service protecting him and the attorney general traveled unprotected, even famously leaving the front door of Hickory Hill unlocked?

It is all a matter of speculation, but there could have been a very practical explanation for a more circuitous path. If Bobby had been assassinated, historians point out, his brother could have been expected to marshal every ounce of his prodigious federal power to exact revenge on the murderers and their benefactors. And because the victim would not just be the country’s crusading attorney general but also the president’s brother, the public would have surely given Jack Kennedy a blank check of support for a crackdown on whatever dark forces he determined were responsible.

David Kaiser revealed in “The Road To Dallas” that prior to the assassination Marcello had been overheard fingering RFK as the main obstacle to his mob business that needed to be removed. After moaning about Bobby’s persecution of him, Marcello uttered the Sicilian curse “Take this stone from my shoe,” and then concluded that they’d need to kill Jack to get to Bobby. If they went after Bobby directly, he allegedly said, they could expect the president to unleash the Marines on them.

Government documents released in the 1990s also indicate that decades later Marcello confessed to being part of JFK’s murder to a prison cellmate, who was also an FBI informant working on an undercover operation.

Few people have as intimate knowledge of the contours of the assassination files as Rex Bradford. From his perch in Ipswich, Mass., Bradford is curator of a vast digitized archive of nearly 1 million documents, maintained by the nonprofit Mary Ferrell Foundation. Although he takes no public position on who killed Kennedy, Bradford says many of the newly released documents strengthen the hypothesis that “hard-line intelligence people, hard-liners on Cuba” were somehow involved in the assassination, with “mob people tied into that same milieu.”

But for him and many other serious people who have carefully studied the possibility of an assassination plot, connecting theories of tough characters with the motive to kill Kennedy to the reality of Lee Harvey Oswald in the window of the Texas School Book Depository has been elusive. Oswald, a failure at just about everything he tried and hardly an expert marksman, is no one’s idea of the kind of man one would pick for the vanguard of such a plot.

If certain Cuban exiles and Cold War hard-liners had dreamed of a domino effect in which Castro was blamed for JFK’s murder, precipitating an American invasion of Cuba, that never happened, of course. Nonetheless, all the back-channel efforts at peace quickly withered. New President Lyndon Johnson, insecure in his command of foreign affairs and lacking the credibility Kennedy had won by successfully staring down Khrushchev, was not about to risk being seen as weak against Communists in Havana or Moscow — especially with an election less than a year away.

As for the mobsters, they could finally exhale. One week after Dallas, according to Kaiser, gangster Sam Giancana was caught on tape in a Chicago lounge saying, “This is going to take the heat off us.” The FBI’s focus, he said, would be on Castro-sympathizing leftists for some time.

Jimmy Hoffa is said to have crowed to reporters in Nashville, “Bobby Kennedy is just another lawyer now.”

CONTINUED...

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/11/24/his-brother-keeper-robert-kennedy-saw-conspiracy-jfk-assassination/TmZ0nfKsB34p69LWUBgsEJ/story.html

PS: Thank you for the heads-up on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s article in Rolling Stone. I will read every word in the coming weeks.

[mother earth]

79. TY, Octafish, for your tireless contributions here at DU, and to truth...

any dem worth their salt needs to see past the blinders, the façade, and understand and fight those bent on manipulating our gov't for personal gain, or we stand for nothing and are part of the problem.

[rhett o rick]

85. Well said. I agree completely. nm

[Enthusiast]

82. Kicked and recommended a shit load.

I believe every word of it.

[Octafish]

171. Thanks, Enthusiast! His book is due in 2015...

May it be as successful as "Brothers." That work about RFK and JFK made clear the history Corporate McPravda and Corporate Academia want America to avoid or forget and move on from: Attorney General Robert F Kennedy suspected CIA-Mafia connection immediately.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x884545

Proud to write DUers were a big reason more people discovered this important lesson, as told to me by several of the authors and presenters at Duquesne. The reason: The Internet goes around the Corporate gatekeepers to spread the words and Truth. Not much more democratic than that.

[cantbeserious]

90. The Oligarchs And Corporations Own And Control The Politicians That Own And Control Us

Last edited Fri Nov 29, 2013, 01:39 PM - Edit history (1)

That rely on the CIA, NSA and others to maintain their power and privilege.

[Octafish]

175. 50 years of 'Money trumps peace.'

Secret Government means no oversight, no accountability, no telling who profits:

JFK Would NEVER Have Fallen for Phony INTEL!

Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

Know your BFEE: Siegelman Judge is a big-time War Profiteer

Know your BFEE: WikiLeaks Stratfor Dump Exposes Continued Secret Government Warmongering

Thank you for grokking, cantbeserious. It is unbelievable, but true.

[Mc Mike]

92. Rec. Thanks, Octa.

2 of the 'official story' advocates upthread weighed in with a fallacious 'financial motivation' assertion to impugn researchers and authors they disagreed with. It reminded me of a real piece of trash book Michael Crichton wrote about the 'global warming conspiracy'. (I think the book was 'State of Fear', it really stunk.) But the plot involved a shadowy SMERSH-like group of environmentalists who had world wide reach and pushed the myth of global climate change, because they made big money from environmental organizations. They were involved in bombings and assassinations, etc.

Mike thanked the CATO Institute in his afterword for their help and research.

The same projection tactics, coming from the same right wing sources -- birchers and hugely profitable big oil -- projecting their own power and motives onto people who expose the criminality of the Hunt Koch bush Standard Oil of New Jersey crowd's obscene lust for profits and political control.

I'm not accusing the two post-ers of collusion with the nazi bircher repugs, but the ideas they assert are exactly the same as Crichton's, and serve the exact same cast of bad actors. Imagining Greenpeace and the Sierra Club running a group of paramilitary operatives and hitmen, instead of imagining the same about the oil companies' extremely well-financed security staffers, is insultingly disingenuous.

On the other hand, though, Yul Brynner did put in a top notch performance in Crichton's 'Westworld'.

[Waiting For Everyman]

96. I completely agree with him.

Will be awaiting his book with interest. Thank you, Octafish!

[bobthedrummer]

108. K&R + some more informative links (Thank you-your DU journal and BFEE series is among the best when

it comes to reporting on the real history of the corruption of America by fascists) Here are just a few worthwhile links to add to this thread (btw, I remember that Sidney Gottlieb headed what was once called the Health Alteration Committee of Dulles et al's CIA)

CIA's Denial of Protecting Nazis is Blatant Lie (by Hank P. Albarelli Jr)
http://www.voltairenet.org/article167692.html

Nazis in the attic excerpts by Randy Davis
Dulles
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/randy/swas3.htm

Bush Dulles & Nazis
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/randy/swas5a.htm

Nixon,, Laszlo Pasztor, Republican Heritage Groups
http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/randy/swas4.htm#5

Our Nazi allies by Ken Silverstein (5-3-2000 Salon)
http://www.salon.com/2000/05/03/nazi_2

James DiEugenio's review of George Michael Evica's last book "A Certain Arrogance"
http://www.ctka.net/reviews/certain_arrogance.html

[Octafish]

140. Thank you, bobthedrummer! Here are the posts on the sad anniversary and the Duquesne Conference...

Octafish to attend JFK assassination conference. Do you think JFK still matters?

JFK Conference: Amazing Day of Information and Connecting with Good People

After JFK Conference, when I got home, I felt like RFK.

JFK Conference: Bill Kelly introduced new evidence - adding Air Force One tape recordings

JFK Conference: Rex Bradford detailed the historic importance of the Church Committee

JFK Conference: Lisa Pease Discussed the Real Harm of Corrupt Soft Power

JFK Conference: James DiEugenio made clear how Foreign Policy changed after November 22, 1963

JFK Conference: Mark Lane Addressed the Secret Government’s Role in the Assassination

JFK Conference: David Talbot named Allen Dulles as 'the Chairman of the Board of the Assassination'

Noah's Ark - Nov. 22, 1963

Seven Days in May -- tonight on TCM

Machine Gun Mouth

PS: Truly appreciate your contributions to what we've learned about the Fourth Reich and its influence on the modern natjional security state, bobthedrummer. I also value your friendship, on DU and in real life.

[ucrdem]

111. The perfect criminal. . .

and the nearly perfect crime. But murder will out and Talbot seems to be hot on the trail. JFK's assassination is just one battle in an epic war that started when FDR appointed Joe Kennedy founding chair of the SEC back in 1934. Probably before that. Anyway many thanks, Octa! Great report, I was looking forward to this one. And now I'm really looking forward to Talbot's book and hope he's keeping backups in safe places!

[Octafish]

166. Thanks, ucrdem! Please see Replies # 107 and 165.

I really appreciate your active interest in this. With understanding, we can return to the kind of nation that awful day took away.

[Uncle Joe]

143. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, Octafish.

[Octafish]

174. US News & World Report asked Sabato and 5 other academics: 'Was it a conspiracy?'

Was JFK's Assassination a Conspiracy?

EXCERPT...

As the American Enterprise Institute's Karlyn Bowman and Andrew Rugg wrote in U.S. News earlier this month, the notion of a cabal to kill Kennedy is the most widely-believed conspiracy theory in America. An April 2013 poll showed that nearly 60 percent of Americans believe others were involved in the assassination. A recent Gallup poll showed the same thing, with 61 percent of Americans believing there was a conspiracy; the Mafia and the “federal government” are the most popular culprits. Even Secretary of State John Kerry has said that “to this day I have serious doubts that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.”

SNIP...

The Arguments

-----------

YES — A complacent media let someone get away with murder

JOHN KELIN, Author

-----------

YES — Physical evidence shows JFK was hit with multiple bullets from multiple directions

MICHAEL VOLLBACH, RONALD BURDA, Professors of Behavioral and Social Sciences at Oakland Community College Comment

-----------

YES — None of the available theories prove just one man killed JFK

JEFFERSON MORLEY, Moderator of JFK Facts

-----------

YES — Bungled investigations into JFK's death may keep the truth under wraps forever

LARRY SABATO, Director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics

-----------

NO — After 50 years, any concrete evidence of a JFK conspiracy would have been found

JOHN MCADAMS, Professor of Political Science at Marquette University

SOURCE: http://www.usnews.com/debate-club/was-jfks-assassination-a-conspiracy?int=1fe97e

PS: You are most welcome, Uncle Joe! Thank you for grokking.

[YoungDemCA]

148. Oh look, let's engage in endless fantastical speculation and fantasy!

And what's more, shut down our skepticism and critical thinking skills.

THE GOVERNMENT DID IT!-said every conspiracy theorist about everything, ever.

[Octafish]

152. So, apart from insults for his critics, you've nothing to say about Allen Dulles?

Got it. Also noticed your revealing word selection, which isn't what most Democrats I know have said about the truthfulness, let alone accountability, of the CIA and the other parts of the secret government.

Have you noticed who has benefited most since the death of President Kennedy also happen to be the same people (and their descendants) and corporations Allen Dulles served? If you're interested in democracy and justice, you should.

[ananda]

167. I've heard that before.

The Dulles brothers w e r e pretty nefarious.

[Fast Walker 52]

179. His new book on Allen Dulles talks about this

Really excellent interview on Democracy Now! about this:

http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2015/10/14/the_rise_of_america_s_secret

Sad this hasn't been discussed much.