The JFK Execution: Oswald and the Other Criminal Elements Involved
November 10, 2013
JFK researcher Frank Beckendorf wrote this essay on the JFK assassination and he wants and invites your comments:
The JFK Execution: Oswald and the Other Criminal Elements Involved
by Frank W. Beckendorf BCJ, MA
© Copyright 2012, 2013
September 9, 2012
“You say you got a real solution
Well, you know
We’d all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We’re doing what we can”
--- John Lennon, Revolution
Back in November 1963, I was sitting in my sixth grade class when, a little before one in the afternoon, classwork came to an abrupt halt. Shortly, after twelve – thirty, we were told that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas. When it was later announced that his wounds were fatal, we were sent home.
Students and teachers were both exultant and dejected. More depressed than sad. The President was dead. Our President was dead.
Shortly, after the assassination and state funeral, a government panel was formed to find out who killed the President. Months later, this commission released its findings and, immediately, doubts were raised about the report’s accuracy. Later, it was learned that this commission had been stacked with some anti – Kennedy people and others who had tried to avoid the service.
Less than three years later, an American lawyer would release his first work, Rush to Judgment, and doubts began to overpower the Warren Commission’s findings. When the Warren Commission reported that a single individual killed the President of the United States on a Dallas street, Mark Lane’s book refuted the findings with the skill and detailed analysis that quickly attracted attention. This devotion has lasted for almost fifty years and continues, with an even greater magnitude and determination, to seek a truth; independent of any government – backed directive. What Lane would argue became facts among conspiracy theorists.
Witnesses were ignored. Testimony was transcribed incorrectly and recorded contrarily. And, other pertinent facts were simply ignored or dismissed. The validity of the report quickly deteriorated soon after its hasty release.
My interest in this matter began when my father bought a copy of the Warren Commission report in a one volume version published by the New Orleans Times Picayune around the time that Lane’s analysis was introduced to the world. All this engulfed my curiosity when I looked at the commission’s single volume work, and then saw researchers later delve into the twenty-six volumes in totality. My interest wavered little as I read newspaper and magazine accounts from the age of thirteen until today, when more detailed books followed the brief articles in the periodicals of the day, contesting the government’s findings.
In 2005, Hurricane Katrina destroyed my collection of materials related to the assassination, but it didn’t destroy my interest and commitment to reading what I could, and studying the various explanations via professional journals, books and related matter. My extensive collection of writings was gone and I was determined to replace all of them. To this day, I have strived to get this done.
Introduction
What I want to do with this, the first of my white papers, analyzing the killing of the 35th President of the United States, is to give my version of what I think might have happened. There have been numerous accounts of what occurred and new ideas that continue to come out a half century after the most studied crime of the twentieth century. As I am entitled to also give mine just like all the others before me, I believe that based on what I have learned, studied and researched, my explanation is a viable one for others to consider seriously. This account should accomplish a few things, some of which are: to test my desire and commitment for writing a more extensive explanation, a desire to publish what I think, and a decision to contribute something to the investigation.
My thesis is this. I believe that one person had access to all the factions that researchers speculate were involved in JFK’s murder. Many people believe that no single individual, or group, was involved. The guilty had to have help. And, that is an acceptable assumption.
My theory encompasses this and involves the one man that had access to all of these groups researchers mention, Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald walked among the right-wingers, federal agents, generals, anti-Cubans and other groups. While some people say he did not fire a shot November 22, 1963, it does not absolve him of any guilt. No story out there is convincing enough to persuade the majority of researchers out there that continue to pour out explanations and research. Oswald is the key to any explanation. He is the one who had contacts with everybody, and when he did not, he had access to others who had direct contact to the guilt-ridden.
Lee Harvey Oswald was not completely innocent of the murder of Kennedy. While we may not know, and accept, the true motive, Oswald is guilty in the assassination of Kennedy. At least many still believe he is involved. We just do not know what part he played in the plot and execution of one of the twentieth century’s most influential leaders.
Oswald walked among all the various facets named as possibilities and cited in direct involvement. Was he a go-between that could keep everybody together? Was he the kingpin who could patch things up when the factions argued? Was he the one to secretly arrange the financing between the oil men in Dallas who felt threatened with the disappearance of the oil depletion allowance and the frontline executioners? Was he the courier to carry money from the affluent plotters to the front line actual killers? Was he the one to coordinate the participation of federal agencies or their rogue agents?
What I want to do is explain my thesis and explain it in a way that this possibility exists. I want to show the world that there is another explanation that may have never been given or that has been downplayed. I will now attempt to do this.
Outline
The format of this paper will be broken up into the various factions that have been mentioned in the past, along with their identifying parts, an explanation of involvement and the cover-up, and still, other actual components of the actual crime and scenario.
One thing is for certain, someone or some assemblage of at least two individuals, committed one of the most heinous crimes of the last one hundred years.
Predating the Crime
In 1960 the unexpected happened, John Fitzgerald Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon for the Presidency. No one had expected this and few U.S. influential leaders wanted it. But, with the help of criminal elements, Joseph P. Kennedy made sure the Chicago vote favored his son by buying the election in Chicago. As a result, JFK won the election by a very slim margin and many political and nonpolitical factions began to get concerned that a liberal outlook and the future of our nation was its focus. They grew cautious and nervous about JFK’s actions and his plans for the nation-state.
Various factions would question and grow dissatisfied with JFK’s decisions as President and began thinking of ways to combat this influence. Common among JFK’s opponents was the notion to get rid of him permanently as a way of eliminating the concern. Closely guarded plans began to surface, as we have since learned, to remove him by taking his life. Every plan, and plot, was aware that his replacement was a more controllable and manageable, Vice – President, Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas.
In his first year, JFK began paying attention to Dwight Eisenhower’s advice to do something about the CIA which had gone from an investigative body to one where foreign assassinations became commonplace. The CIA was out of control and seemed to answer to no one.
JFK had also come face-to-face with a decision about what to do with Vietnam. Should the United States back out of the Southeastern Asian nation or should it escalate the problem with an engagement to fight and eliminate the spread of Communism? Whether the spread of communism was the real problem there or not, JFK had to face this, and other issues he thought might get him killed with a unpopular decision. The military industrial complex, along with the leadership of the CIA, wanted military escalation instead of appeasement. Other factions became upset with some of JFK’s decisions, also. The resettled Cubans felt betrayed. And, the Mafia smelled a rat. The right wingers wanted a more conservative approach to all the nation’s problems.
Some of the other major political crises of 1960 helped convince some to contemplate detrimental opinions from some of the newly elected Democrat’s challengers. The shooting down of the U2 spy plane, Operation Zapata and the invasion of Cuba brought forth disparagement. In the years 1961 and 1962, JFK faced the Cuban Missile Crisis, the building of the Berlin wall, the Soviets testing a nuclear bomb, a Cuban blockade becoming a reality and peace talks between Kennedy and Khrushchev.
On another front, JFK appointed his brother, Robert Kennedy as Attorney General of the United States. While this should not have caused major tension between John Kennedy and his opponents, RFK began an anti-Mafia crusade that would attack the influence of the Mafia leadership. The reader should recall that it was the Mafia which helped JFK win Chicago and, ultimately, the 1960 Presidential Election. To attack the Mafia was to renege on an informal understanding and conciliation between the Kennedys, in particular the patriarch, Joe Kennedy, and the Cosa Nostra.
In addition to attacking the Mafia, Robert Kennedy also went after Jimmy Hoffa, the Teamsters leader who oversaw millions in pension fund money and other financial avenues. Both the Mafia and Jimmy Hoffa would make no secret of their intense dislike for the Kennedys. Hoffa quickly became a problem for the new President.
Then there were the military and other high ranking officials who lost their jobs through Kennedy’s actions, namely Charles Cabell, Alan Dulles and others. These names could, and should never, be ignored in any study of the assassination. In fact, Charles Cabell’s brother, Earle, would be Mayor when Kennedy’s motorcade drove through Dallas in late November 1963.
Meanwhile the Texas military industry began seeing dollar signs with a war in Southeast Asia. Thousands of helicopters and millions of munitions would be needed and would have to be manufactured. Why not them?
In essence, this essay will look at many reasons why different groups, or factions, had reasons to kill John F. Kennedy in November 1963. Whether it’s the Mafia, right – wingers, anti – Castroites, LBJ and his cronies, or the military industrial groups. There are many different angles and people who could be linked to prejudicial reasons for killing JFK.
Lyndon B. Johnson
The man who succeeded Kennedy had plenty of reasons to kill Kennedy. First of all, he was said to have a fixation to become president from an early age. Even his grandmother noticed this as she predicted that he would eventually die in prison. And, if not for the assassination of JFK, this may have become reality.
Johnson had begun to feel that his heart attack a few years earlier and his age were hindrances to his chances in winning a presidential race. He was a U.S. Senator and had held other high ranking positions, but they were not the ultimate prize he wanted. And, he began to question his chances to leave a real legacy as the nation’s top official. His chances, he felt, were growing slimmer as time passed.
Bobby Baker, Billie Sol Estes and Malcolm Wallace
In addition, there were three people who had helped him along in his path for power: Bobby Baker, Billie Sol Estes and Malcolm Wallace. Wallace was Johnson’s personal hit man, or so it is said. Estes gave tons of dirty money to Johnson as he was illegally acquiring it and Bobby Baker was there to do Johnson’s dirty work, in and out of governmental circles. Robert Kennedy was preparing to investigate Johnson just as his brother was shot and Johnson knew he could avoid all this if JFK was eliminated permanently.
Baker became a foundation for Johnson when he needed dirt on officials. Baker made sure he could provide what Johnson needed shortly after becoming a Senate page at the age of 14. Nicknamed, Little Lyndon, Baker began to make deals with mobsters and other parties to provide vending machine services and other things for all kinds of people. These activities helped him to make political connections, both for legal and illegal purposes. He quickly became rich as he was making connections for Johnson. In addition to this, Baker also arranged illicit meetings between JFK and female suitors.
Billie Sol Estes was making his own deals as Baker was in operation. Most were illegal. He began giving LBJ all kinds of money with the illegal cash he was amassing. He was giving so much money to Johnson, that LBJ found it very convenient to not ask questions and to threaten the various authorities investigating Estes. After Johnson’s death at his ranch, Estes would identify more than seven people Johnson had ordered killed with Wallace as the executioner. One ordered dead by Johnson was his sister, Josefa.
Malcolm Wallace was a college student who had figured out how to get noticed all the way up to a university’s highest echelons. Many people believe he was on the Sixth Floor of the School Book Depository building and had played a key role in arranging the assassination. For Johnson? There were even reports of his fingerprints up there in the sniper’s nest!
Wallace had been convicted years before of murder and had received a suspended sentence with Johnson’s help. This was in the earliest association times with Johnson. His conviction for killing John Kinser led to a long relationship with LBJ and provided Johnson with the apparatus he needed to correct the injustices he felt were done to him. Wallace later died mysteriously in a one car accident in 1971 at the age of 50. Meanwhile, Billie Sol Estes had stated numerous times that Wallace had probably been involved in more killings than he could name, but that he could not verify most of the information he possessed.
Other than this knowledge of seven individuals Wallace was instructed to kill, Estes stated this was the only ones he could say happened.
In any case, Johnson avoided a long prison sentence with his ascension to the presidency and given the opportunity to establish a legacy for himself. He had also provided a means for the military industrial people in Texas a way to earn millions with military sales for a war in Southeast Asia. Johnson would later waste away at his ranch and would, supposedly, confess everything to a psychiatrist as his fingernails and hair grew excessively long and his personal hygiene habits waned.
The CIA, or Rogue Elements of
Kennedy had quickly grown frustrated with the CIA shortly after his election to the Presidency. He had learned that the CIA had answered to no one and had repeatedly done things outside of its legal jurisdiction and that such actions went unchecked. He had been warned by Eisenhower and threatened to divide it up into thousands of pieces shortly after his re-election in 1964. Elements of the CIA learned of this attitude and were not thrilled. So, the question remains whether or not the CIA was involved or just a few rogue agents? Was the CIA a protagonist of the assassination as a group, or were there just a few scoundrel employees?
Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA
Allen Dulles, head of the CIA during Kennedy’s tenure, was at the forefront of the failed Cuban invasion. Dulles was also involved with other things that Kennedy considered outside his authority, i.e. overthrowing governments in places like Iran and Guatemala.
So the question becomes, was the CIA involved in the murder as an agency? Or, was it involved in the cover-up? If not as a group, were just a few individuals involved? Was Dulles a ringleader or were other agents like James Jesus Angleton, Cord Meyer, David Morales and others? Or, were these rogues just minor players following instructions from higher up?
Many CIA agents disliked Kennedy’s peace offerings to the communists and Russia as its primary pioneer then. Many CIA employees felt that the U.S. had failed the common Cuban by retreating from an invasion, in particular the support of the Bay of Pigs offensive. Many thought that the United States should just strike, while it had the upper hand, and having first strike capabilities without the threat of a credible retaliatory reaction.
There, apparently, was a general consensus among CIA agents that Kennedy’s actions were not healthy for the nation and that Lyndon Johnson would take a different approach with these important decisions. Many felt that Johnson would get involved in a Southeast Asian war and confront communism’s spread. Many CIA agents may have felt that the help they needed to succeed in such a killing was present for the asking.
After all, it had the intelligence capabilities to weigh the strengths of these beliefs. Was it involved at all or were just a few agents entangled? Many studies have looked at these angles over the years and come up with interesting conclusions.
Lee Harvey Oswald
The most central figure in the killing of Kennedy is Lee Harvey Oswald, but many have felt he never fired a shot. To this day, there are still many who still believe in his non – involvement. Paraffin tests offered no proof. And, suspect fingerprints remained just that. Suspect. Oswald’s body was said to have been printed in the parlor by federal agents, days after he was dead. Why, so long?
And, lately, many books have come out to suggest that Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed a patsy just as he said he was. But was he completely innocent of the crime? With all the information we know today that Oswald possessed, how much complicity did he have in this crime of the century? Was he completely innocent?
Readers should note that it is not necessary to be at the scene of the crime to be guilty of a crime or conspiracy. Was Oswald guilty of this historic tragedy? Did he pull a trigger that day? Or, how can he be implicated in the crime, if indeed he was guilty of involvement?
Lee Harvey Oswald, since the 1963 killing, has been found to have had connections that the Warren Commission, and later investigations, refused to believe. His uncle worked with Carlos Marcello, the crime boss in New Orleans. He could walk among CIA agents. He could knock on the door of right wingers. He could intermingle with Jack Ruby, David Ferrie and Clay Shaw/Bertrand. Just who could he not get an audience with? The Texas military industrialists? The rich? RFK? LBJ? The agitated Cubans? Scientists trying to create fast acting cancer drugs? Castro? Just who did he not have the ability to approach?
My contention here is that there may be some guilt attributed to Oswald’s playing a part in the killing of Kennedy. A patsy? Perhaps? But, totally innocent? Maybe not. If what I contend has some truth in it, then Oswald shares some guilt. Oswald was just too knowledgeable in what happened to argue the idea that because he may not have fired a shot, he was completely innocent. He knew a lot of what happened and previous scenarios in Chicago and Florida prove that is all possible.
Allen Dulles, head of the CIA during Kennedy’s tenure, was at the forefront of the failed Cuban invasion. Dulles was also involved with other things that Kennedy considered outside his authority, i.e. overthrowing governments in places like Iran and Guatemala.
So the question becomes, was the CIA involved in the murder as an agency? Or, was it involved in the cover-up? If not as a group, were just a few individuals involved? Was Dulles a ringleader or were other agents like James Jesus Angleton, Cord Meyer, David Morales and others? Or, were these rogues just minor players following instructions from higher up?
Many CIA agents disliked Kennedy’s peace offerings to the communists and Russia as its primary pioneer then. Many CIA employees felt that the U.S. had failed the common Cuban by retreating from an invasion, in particular the support of the Bay of Pigs offensive. Many thought that the United States should just strike, while it had the upper hand, and having first strike capabilities without the threat of a credible retaliatory reaction.
There, apparently, was a general consensus among CIA agents that Kennedy’s actions were not healthy for the nation and that Lyndon Johnson would take a different approach with these important decisions. Many felt that Johnson would get involved in a Southeast Asian war and confront communism’s spread. Many CIA agents may have felt that the help they needed to succeed in such a killing was present for the asking.
After all, it had the intelligence capabilities to weigh the strengths of these beliefs. Was it involved at all or were just a few agents entangled? Many studies have looked at these angles over the years and come up with interesting conclusions.
Lee Harvey Oswald
The most central figure in the killing of Kennedy is Lee Harvey Oswald, but many have felt he never fired a shot. To this day, there are still many who still believe in his non – involvement. Paraffin tests offered no proof. And, suspect fingerprints remained just that. Suspect. Oswald’s body was said to have been printed in the parlor by federal agents, days after he was dead. Why, so long?
And, lately, many books have come out to suggest that Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed a patsy just as he said he was. But was he completely innocent of the crime? With all the information we know today that Oswald possessed, how much complicity did he have in this crime of the century? Was he completely innocent?
Readers should note that it is not necessary to be at the scene of the crime to be guilty of a crime or conspiracy. Was Oswald guilty of this historic tragedy? Did he pull a trigger that day? Or, how can he be implicated in the crime, if indeed he was guilty of involvement?
Lee Harvey Oswald, since the 1963 killing, has been found to have had connections that the Warren Commission, and later investigations, refused to believe. His uncle worked with Carlos Marcello, the crime boss in New Orleans. He could walk among CIA agents. He could knock on the door of right wingers. He could intermingle with Jack Ruby, David Ferrie and Clay Shaw/Bertrand. Just who could he not get an audience with? The Texas military industrialists? The rich? RFK? LBJ? The agitated Cubans? Scientists trying to create fast acting cancer drugs? Castro? Just who did he not have the ability to approach?
My contention here is that there may be some guilt attributed to Oswald’s playing a part in the killing of Kennedy. A patsy? Perhaps? But, totally innocent? Maybe not. If what I contend has some truth in it, then Oswald shares some guilt. Oswald was just too knowledgeable in what happened to argue the idea that because he may not have fired a shot, he was completely innocent. He knew a lot of what happened and previous scenarios in Chicago and Florida prove that is all possible.
The author has earned a Bachelor of Criminal Justice from Loyola University in New Orleans and a Master of Arts from the University of New Orleans. He was born and lived in the immediate New Orleans area for fifty – three years of his life, until Hurricane Katrina forced him to relocate his family to West Texas, in particular Abilene, TX in 2005. He is a retired social studies teacher and holds a real estate sales license in Louisiana and a real estate broker’s license in Texas. He also teaches American Politics at an online university.
Some people choose the path less traveled.
Me, I'd rather cut through the woods.
Frank Beckendorf BCJ, MA
Slidell, La.
985-205-7622
