COMMENT ADDENDUM:
MORE REASONS WHY JFK’S KILLING HAD TO BE A CONSPIRACY
In the first moments after the shooting, some police headed
uphill on the Grassy Knoll. Many indications from sound to the way crowds moved
and pointed suggested something had occurred there. One policeman ran up the
slope and began searching behind the barriers with his gun drawn. He met a
suited man who quickly offered an official-looking ID card for the Secret
Service.
The policeman holstered his gun and didn’t pursue the
direction he had been headed. Nor did he note the identity of the “agent.” The
trouble with that brief episode is that the Secret Service is known not to have
stationed any officers on the Grassy Knoll. It was, of course, a terrible error
in their preparations for the motorcade, but it is nevertheless what they did.
So, who was the suited man with the false Secret Service ID? And what was he
doing there? And where would he obtain such an ID? I think we’re safe in saying
he wasn’t Oswald.
The fake Secret Service agent may well have been a man seen
by another witness briefly earlier. A man who could only communicate by sign
language told a clear story of being on the overpass and noticing a man in a
suit, just behind the wooden picket fence that stood along the top of the
Grassy Knoll, holding something. He saw the man in the suit swing around and
toss what he was holding to another man in work clothes, waiting nearby.
The man who caught what looked like a rifle quickly broke it
into two parts, stashed them into his large open toolbox, and walked away. Just
behind the Grassy Knoll with its picket fence then was a parking lot and extensive
rail yards, just the kind of place for a workman with a tool box to disappear
into. The official investigators chose to ignore this witness. Most people who
‘heard” a story like that from a witness speaking in sign language would take
it very seriously. After all, in a sense it requires a great of extra effort
for such a witness to give his testimony and I think that adds to its
credibility.
Why was the immensely important evidence of the presidential
limousine so quickly destroyed? The car was sent back to the manufacturer near
Detroit to be rebuilt instead of being preserved for serious and extended
forensic study. The interior was, of course, spattered with blood, but it also
contained bits of bullets and marks from bullets, things which were very
important evidence.
There were witnesses at the hospital, when the car was
briefly parked in front to deliver the mortally-wounded president, who
testified that there were both a bullet crease on the windshield’s chrome frame
and a small hole in the windshield’s glass. Shouldn’t this have been preserved
for close study and to reassure people that every detail was scrutinized? But
it was not. Why? Even if the car was rebuilt, key pieces like the windshield or
the rear interior could easily have been set aside, as were so many more
trivial objects that found their way into the National Archives.
The most important single piece of evidence in the case, the
Zapruder film, has its own remarkable story. The film was purchased from
Abraham Zapruder, who happened to be standing on the concrete pergola along
part of the Grassy Knoll taking home movies of the parade (just a note, his
position was hidden by trees or shrubbery from the position further along the
picket fence from which at least one assassin fired). His film was purchased by
Life Magazine for what was then a very large amount of money. Actually, you
might have thought it should have been seized by local police or FBI as
evidence, but for some unknown reason, this single most important piece of
evidence ended up in private commercial hands.
Apart from the police not seizing key evidence, what is
wrong with that, you might ask? Well, it is just a fact that Henry Luce’s Time-Life
publications in those days often worked with and served as covers for the CIA. Allen
Dulles was part of Luce’s social circle. Luce himself wrote a famous article in
the 1940s called “The American Century,” the title becoming a frequently-used
expression, and he was an ardent supporter of the values we associate with the
Washington establishment, especially with the CIA.
It is no secret that the Luce newsmagazines were considered
as important keys on the CIA’s “mighty Wurlitzer,” as one former agent referred
to the list of publications and writers that was regularly used in getting a
story “out there” to the public.
The film was withheld from the general public for a long
time. Why should that be? We even had Dan Rather on CBS Television do a little
broadcast of what he saw when supposedly shown the film in private. His was a
completely false description, as you may easily see for yourself (see FOOTNOTE).
Why was that required, a deliberate false description broadcast by one of the
most well-known men in American broadcasting? One can only be sure Rather did
not just decide on his own to do this or that his broadcast had anything to do
with Oswald, except to support the unproved notion that Oswald, supposedly
behind the president on the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository building,
was the sole assassin, an idea that had been set in stone early by J. Edgar
Hoover.
We have testimony that the film was delivered to a
quickly-assembled group of specialists at CIA by hand. They worked into the wee
hours to assemble a “story board” for some very high-level presentation. There’s
nothing wrong with that, but at a later date, one of these technicians was
shown what we now understand as the Zapruder film, and he said that it clearly
was not the original film.
Importantly, the halo we now see above Kennedy’s head as a
bullet struck was not on the original film. Instead there was a cone-shaped
ejection from the rear of Kennedy’s head. That ejection would, of course,
suggest a shot from the front, and it would also support other testimonies as
that of a police outrider on his motorcycle being spattered with blood and
brain tissue. That simply could not happen with a shot from where Oswald
supposedly was.
The film, as we know it, has been altered. You see, we know an
early copy of the film – three had been made – was delivered also to the CIA’s
top photo lab in Rochester for work. This was a lab in which almost anything possible
to do with film could be done. The world’s best equipment and top experts
worked there. We do not know what was done, but considering the comment, above,
of the technician who worked on what definitely was the original film, it would
appear changes were made to a copy that resulted in the film we now see.
There are a great many more such serious issues left totally
unresolved today, the kind of issues which should not be unresolved with the most
ordinary murder, let alone the murder of a president. Perhaps the greatest set
of issues is around the President’s autopsy. There is a huge set of issues
here, and I won’t go through them all. Several entire books have been written
on the topic, including the very important “Best Evidence” by David Lifton. I’ll
mention only a few glaring matters.
In the Zapruder film, we see President Kennedy, his car
emerging from behind a freeway sign, grasping at his throat with both hands.
Clearly, even in the altered film we have - and there is reason to believe that
this emergence-from-behind-the-sign sequence was also altered - Kennedy was hit
by a bullet in the throat. The emergency medical people attending him – all
experienced, very senior people – later described the wound as a small puncture
wound just above the knot of his necktie, a puncture wound with bullets
invariably indicating an entrance wound. A tracheotomy was performed -
involving two tiny slits (about two centimeters long) on the sides of the wound
– to accommodate the insertion of a tube for emergency breathing.
Now at some point in time later, autopsy photos of the
President were taken by someone and distributed to the press. Some of them are
strange and mysterious photos, poorly lighted, not always well focused, and in
black-and-white – not at all to the standard of official autopsy photos of the
time. The most striking one is of Kennedy on his back with his eyes still open.
There is a sizable gash in the center of his throat, big enough to almost
resemble someone having started to try slashing his throat. This was what the
official autopsy doctors and technicians saw, and it bears no resemblance to
what was described in Dallas. This strange wound ended-up being called an exit
wound for a bullet which entered Kennedy from behind – in other words, the
direction of the bullet making it was reversed.
The official autopsy notes, which of course in a murder case
becomes an important legal document, were destroyed later and burned by the doctor
writing his report. He wrote fresh ones, and we have often been given the silly
excuse (silly certainly when it comes to matters like an autopsy) that this was
because the original notes had blood on them. This destruction was an illegal
act.
Of course, legality played very little role in how the
President’s body was treated. We know that local officials in Dallas demanded
that the body be autopsied there, as required by law, and a literal fight broke
out with the Secret Service drawing guns to wheel the body away. The body was
flown to Washington along with Mrs. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. Even its
treatment then is seriously in doubt with many bits of evidence suggesting it
was not even in the coffin brought along with Mrs. Kennedy to the autopsy hospital.
Instead it appears to have been delivered in the rear in a kind of cheap
shipping coffin.
The importance of this lies in the fact that we have
testimonies that the President’s body, when received for formal autopsy, had
already had some medical work done on it. The technician receiving and opening
the shipping case has described what he found which you can read in Lifton’s
book.
Further, and very importantly, two FBI agents who attended
the autopsy made notes which became an official record apart from the doctor’s
report. Two riveting small items are in that FBI write-up. The first involves
the agents’ description, before the autopsy was started, of the body as having
had some “surgery about the head.” We are given no details. The second is a tiny
mention of receiving a “missile” removed from the President by one of the
doctors. Again, no details. Was this missile the bullet that we believe entered
Kennedy’s neck from the front?
We don’t know exactly what happened to the President’s body
in being moved from Dallas to Washington. Was his body ever in the casket with Mrs.
Kennedy and President Johnson? Had it been sent off separately for the quickest
possible receipt in Washington? Or was it surreptitiously removed aboard the plane?
The fact is that work was done on the body by someone somewhere in Washington
before the official autopsy seems beyond dispute. The autopsy proper, an event
with a number of generals and admirals and big suits standing in the room as
witnesses, must have been a very bizarre event. Why were they necessary?
Why was the autopsy even held in a military facility with
military doctors and many high-ranking military men watching and even sometimes
telling the doctors what to do, as one of the doctors related years later? The military
autopsy doctors did not compare in expertise to the pathologist in a large
American city like Dallas where shootings are frequent. But of course, military
doctors follow orders.
Another intriguing and unexplained event involving the trip
back to Washington was Lyndon Johnson’s insistence on being sworn into office.
We’ve all seen the photos taken inside the plane. Poor Mrs. Kennedy had to
stand there in a confined space, still in her blood-spattered clothes, watching
the man she knew her husband distrusted being sworn into office. It was all
completely unnecessary. Was Johnson subjecting the Kennedy family to some kind
of degradation ceremony? It was possible with this unbelievably crude man, a
man who, as President in the White House, is known for behaviors like talking
to reporters while sitting on the toilet and once, in response to a question
about why America was in Vietnam, unzipping his pants and pulling out his
penis, saying something like, “See, this is why.”
Of course, once Johnson was sworn into office and had
possession of the “best evidence,” Kennedy’s body, a fundamental division in
post-assassination events occurred. Attention in many respects shifted to Washington
rather than remaining where it should have been, the scene of the crime in
Dallas. Johnson could, with the cooperation of people like the admired and
admiring J. Edgar Hoover, direct the way events unfolded, and he very much did.
Bobby Kennedy’s authority was imperceptibly, to outsiders, reduced to that of a
token office holder. Within a week, the Warren Commission was appointed, a
commission whose job was twisted badly from the beginning.
Earl Warren did not want to serve as Chairman of the
Commission, but Johnson used a suggestive and threatening line, delivered in a
theatrical tone of voice, to convince him otherwise, a line he used on many
people at the time. It went something like, “If you knew what I know, the lives
of tens of millions could be at risk in these events.” Well, what responsible high
official could turn down an appeal put in those terms? It was a complete lie of
course, but it had not been that long since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and
memories of those truly frightening events were fresh.
The terms establishing the Warren Commission virtually
guaranteed its failure. Most importantly, the FBI did all the investigation,
Hoover’s FBI, that is. Hoover, the man who extraordinarily-early had said they
had their man in Oswald. Also, behind the scenes there was Johnson’s often repeated,
“If you knew what I know, the lives of tens of millions could be at risk in
these events.” So, it was essential that findings be established quickly to
avoid some vaguely-forecast catastrophe. Since Hoover considered that they
already had their man, it was only necessary to collect a big pile of tidbits
supporting that conclusion, and that is precisely what was done.
Those who are familiar with the Warren Report understand
that it is just one long prosecutor’s brief. It is not an objective effort in
the least. Indeed, at times it goes so far out of its way to be unfair, it is
embarrassing to an honest mind. None of the Commission’s activities reflected
the standard rules of courts with arguments and evidence from both sides. In
essence, it is a document which cast aside all principles of normal justice and
fair procedure to declare a dead man guilty of murder with a carefully-selected
pile of exhibits and witnesses, that man having no proper representation even
in the proceedings, and certainly no other person or group was even considered
worthy of investigation.
Why was it necessary to do things in that fashion? If you
wanted to find the truth, you would never proceed that way, but it is just what
you would do if you wanted to get a story “out there,” and out there with an
impressive shelf-full of books which resemble the client-confidence props you
see in every lawyer’s office. The twenty-six volumes of “evidence” published
after the 889-page report were so carelessly assembled that no index was provided.
Imagine, publishing the equivalent of a huge encyclopedia of photos and transcripts
and exhibits with no way of finding anything? And as all researchers know, the
way in which these were thrown together, literally in a jumble, makes an index
even more necessary. It did serve, though, to slow mightily all efforts for
independent checking of the report’s claims. You see, even though exhibits and witnesses
were carefully selected and many witnesses were guided as what to say by FBI
agents, the vast pile does contain some interesting information, a good deal of
it suggesting the Commission’s conclusions were often not well-considered and
even deceptive.
There are many anecdotes demonstrating the “agenda” of the
Commission and that of its investigative arm, the FBI, but my favorite one is
when the Chairman, Earl Warren, visited Jack Ruby in his Dallas cell, Ruby having
killed Oswald on national television and in the police station. Ruby literally
told Warren that if he wanted him to talk about the truth, he must take him to
Washington. He strongly suggested that events hadn’t been as they appeared. He
pretty close to begged Warren, saying it was not safe in Dallas for him to
talk.
This was all said in Ruby’s usual gangster-like, twisted and
garbled speech, but what he was saying couldn’t be clearer. And who could doubt
the matter of safety with a police department riddled with corruption and dark
secrets, some of whose members clearly had assisted Ruby in his tasks and some
of whose members had so badly handled pieces of evidence that they became
legally useless?
Warren told Ruby that that would not be possible. Why would
that be? Who would have argued with the Commission Chairman and former Chief
Justice if he said that is what he wanted to do to secure vital information? No
one, of course. So much for Warren’s battle for truth.
FOR DAN RATHER’S EARLY DISHONEST DESCRIPTION OF THE ZAPRUDER
FILM PLUS THE ACTUAL FILM ITSELF AS WE NOW KNOW IT, SEE:
