Dealey Plaza Memorial Service

[William Kelly]

The Event That Didn't Happen.

DEALEY PLAZA MEMORIAL SERVICE - Sunday, 11/22/98 THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY. I placed a tape recorder on Zapruder's peragoda/pedistal and taped the proceedings and then transcribed them. I hope somebody gets something out of this. - Bill Kelly

"Build the news upon the rock of truth and righteousness. Conduct it always upon the lines of fairness and integrity. Acknowledge the right of the people to get from the newspaper both sides of every important question." - George Bannerman Dealey, publisher of the Dallas Morning News.

CNN news reported that for the first time in 35 years that nothing was happening and there was to be no memorial service at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1998, the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

CBS News with Dan Rather reported that the Final Report of the JFK Assassinations Records Review Board "did find enough evidence to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald was the only gunman," while the Final Report never concluded any such thing.

Then the Associated Press (AP) reported from Dallas on November 22 that, "JFK assassination hype fades" and that "other than the usual handful of curious people milling about Dealey Plaza, the day was expected to be uneventful..."

Bob Porter of the Sixth Floor Museum told a reporter that nothing was scheduled to happen at Dealey Plaza that day, even though, if he looked out his office window, he could see over a thousand people gathering around the Grassy Knoll for a memorial service in honor of the slain president.

Well, what actually occured was that from noon until 1pm, the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) took a break from their fifth annual conference at Union Station, two blocks away, to hold a memorial service that was attended by a sea of people who filled the both sides of the street of the entire plaza. Participants in the JFK LANCER conference, also held in Dallas that weekend, also attended, as well as ordinary tourists, interested citizens and passersby.

COPA is an organization that was originally dcomposed of three independent groups - the Assassination Records and Research Center (ARRC) of Washington D.C., the Committee for an Open Archvies (COA) and the Citizens for the Truth about the John F. Kennedy Assassination (CTKA). They are professional associations composed of people interested in developing the truth about the assassination, who lobbied extensively for the passage of the JFK Assassination Records Review Act and have met with Cuban officials in the Bahamas to obtain information about the assassination from Cuban sources.

In an address before COPA the previous day, the chairman of the Assassinations Records Review Board, John Tunheim reiterated the Final Report's first paragraph that, despite Rather's statement, it "will not offer conclusions about what the assassination records released did or did not prove." Tunheim and his final report also note that significant documents were missing and some were even destroyed by federal agencies after the board began its business of identifying and releasing records to the public.

Others who spoke at the COPA conference included Philadelphia attorney Vincent Salandria, history professor John Newman, former FBI agent William Turner and others who have been instrumental in reviewing the recently released documents and attempting to make sense of what the government wants to maintain a mystery.

At noon on Sunday, November 22, 1998, COPA board member, and Washington D.C. attorney Dan Alcorn began the memorial service at Dealey Plaza.

Dan Alcorn : The federal board - The JFK Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) discovered that many of the records have been destroyed, and we do not have a complete record. Yet we have a much more of a documentary record than we have had ever before.

There's a memorial down on the street that has a quotation from the bible: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

That quote is also inscribed on the wall of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in McLean, Virginia, so there is a commonality of thought there. Many of us are here today because we have never believed that the government has told us the truth about the assassination, and we believe that unless we know the truth, we are not free.

Unless we know the truth about these events we are not a free people and we have not been a free people as long as we have been lied to about the events that occured here. The spirit of our commemorative event is to take those words to heart, and until we know the truth and the full truth of what occured in the street before us today on a day very much like today, a clear, sunny day in the fall of 1963.

On behalf of our organization I will make a challenge to you. Everyone here must be here because you care very deeply about the meaning of this event and what it means to our history as a nation. I will make the challenge to you to join us in our efforts in seeking the full truth about the assassination of President Kennedy. And not just the truth as pieced together by citizens who put in the time and effort to this, but to actually cause the government to tell the truth about this event, and for the government to come forward and give us a full and truthful accounting of what happened here in 1963. Otherwise, we in fact are not the free people we want to be, have been and we should be as a nation.

You know, it is a crime for a citizen of this country to tell a lie to a federal investigator, but it is not a crime for your government to lie to you. And we feel this is an unfair relationship. If it's a crime for us to lie to our government, it should be a crime for us t o lie as well.

It is in that spirit of investigation and of honest inquiry that our organization has worked closely with the Assassinations Records Review Board to get materials out. They ran into an obstructive wall of secrecy at the federal agencies. They told us that they ran into a Cold War system of secrecy that refused to relent on the documents and information as it related to this event. And this was thirty-five years after the event occured, and after a federal board was set up by the Congress to try to get information released about what happened here.

So we call on you to join us in our efforts. We think that great nations and civilizations cannot survive the kinds of doubt and turmoil that have been raised by the events that happened here. If you study the history of great civilizations you will find that when they lost their way in terms of truth, self-governing, democratic and republican institutions began their decline and was one of the reasons for their ultimate collapse. We do not want the decline and decay of our public and political system. We want to be a part of a healthy revival of those institutions.

We have experienced a decline in the public's trust in government since November,1963, a blimp in the charts that notes the significance of these events. Today a majority of people don't even bother to vote. The largest turnout of voters in American history was in 1960. The decline in public confidence in the government began with the ambush at Dealey Plaza and has continually declined since then. These trends are very troubling.

So we ask you to join us and support the effort we have started to try to pursue the truth of these events, to try to pursue credibility, honesty and openness on behalf of our governmental institutions. And by that effort to try to turn our nation in a healthy direction, to build stronger democratic institutions, to build a stronger faith between the pubic and its government. We feel that is essential, and we call on you as free citizens of this nation to join us in that effort.

I'm going to introduce to you a series of speakers who have been very involved in this issue and can give you the benefit of their experience as well. The first is Mark Lane, one of the earliest researchers in this case who did tremendous ground-breaking work, recorded much of his work for posterity and has written extensively about this case.

Mark Lane: I remember coming here thirty-five years ago and there were no crowds on the grassy knoll. But now, after all of these years, although they have a museum over there on the 6th Floor, which is a museum dedicated to a place where nothing happened. They don't have a plaque over here, on the grassy knoll, and they should.

Thirty-five years ago today the Dallas Morning News published a full page ad with the sarcastic heading: "Welcome To Dallas Mr. President," and then went on to practically call him a communist and a trator. That was then.

Today's Dallas Morning News has an editorial: "Kennedy's Legacy - The Time Is Ripe For Idealism," with no references to him being a communist or a traitor. Now he's a great man. They'll tell us everything about John Kennedy, everything, except who killed him. Because look at the rest of the Dallas Morning News, thirty-five years later, when every survey in America shows that 75 to 95% of the people are convinced that there was a conspiracy to kill John Kennedy, here we go in the guise of a book review in today's Dallas Morning News: Oswald Alone Killed Kennedy, Oswald Alone Killed Tippit, One Man Two Murders, they're sticking with the same story. I have but one word for the Dallas Morning News:

Shame. Shame on you, you are discracing the city of Dallas, and it is not fair to do that.

I'll tell you where there should be plaques in this city. There were a number of brave, courageous residents of this city, longtime residents of Texas, who had the courage to speak the truth to power in the face of intimidation and threats. Right over there was Jean Hill, and she's still there thirty-five years later, one of the first to tell the truth that shots came from behind that wooden fence. And they attacked her and ridiculed her. There should be a plaque over there commemorating her right on the spot where she is standing...

The Grassy Knoll should be called "Lee Bowers Memorial Park," the railroad bridge should be the Holland-Dode-Symmons Underpass - that's the monuments that should be named after the people of this state, people who had the courage to come forward with the truth, while the Dallas Morning News lied thirty-five years ago and continues to lie thirty-five years later.

This is the place where our leader was murdered. This is hollowed grown, and the people of this country know it. It is supose to be the largest tourist attraction in Dallas. There's people here all the time, at the grassy knoll, nobody looks for the truth from the 6th floor of the Book Depository building, because the people of America know the truth, even though the Dallas Morning News is unwilling to share the information with us.

That day in Dallas, in this city, at this location, when the government of the United States executed its own president, when that happened, we as a nation, lost our code of honor, lost our sense of honor. And it can only be restored when the government of the United States - and it will not do it without us insisting, and marching and fighting and voting, and putting this matter on the agenda,...but when that day comes that the government of the United States tells us the truth and all the factual details about the assassination, including their role in the murder. When that day comes, honor will be restored to this nation. Thank you.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is a member of the Board of Directors of COPA, a medical doctor from San Francisco who has researched this issue and has written about it in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Columbia Journalism Review, Dr. Gary Agular.

Dr. Gary Agular: It's hard to follow such a powerful speaker as Mark Lane and I certainly can't hope to match his eloquence, wit or command of this case, but what I can share with you is evidence...that autopsy photos are missing. This is something that you will not read in the Dallas Morning News, Time or Newsweek, but is something that is very clearly established, the ARRB releases are very clear on the point, the autopsy pathologists have described autopsy photographs that are missing. One of them defiantly stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which was supposed to tell us the truth about the assassination...which not only did not report that, it wasn't released until the ARRB came along.

There is enormous evidence in the forensic, in the medical area alone that indicates there was more assassin, but what is most shameful of all is the government's willingness, even in subsequent investigations, to lie about that evidence. Thank God there was an Assassinations Records Review Board, thank God they did the work they did, because now we no longer have to rely on government appointed authorities to tell us that we can trust the government's original conclusions, because we know we can't.

We know they've destroyed evidence, not only in the medical-autopsy area, not only among photographs, we know that witnesses have been intimated, and it is ashame that you won't read about that. No credible journalist will touch the story. It is a story not unlike the story of the CIA and crack cocaine, which led to the downfall of Gary Webb, before two volumes of the CIA Inspector's Report that confirmed much more than what Gary Webb even alleged about the CIA's complicity in the cocaine importation. But you won't read about that in the Dallas Morning News. You barely get a small column about it in the New York Times after they devote many, many column inches defamined journalists who talk about the subject.

I think it is important that those of you who are here today continue to insist that your government is accountable to you and does not conduct its operations in secrecy, that it does not deny you the evidence that is collected in its investigations and that it be as accountable to us as it insists we be accountable to it.

I hope you will continue to work with us to force the government to be responsible and admit the full truth about the assassination of President Kennedy.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is a member of the Board of Directors of COPA, a professor at Dartmouth, and the author of a number of books about the assassination, Dr. Phillip Melanson.

Dr. Phillip Melanson: Thank you. As we commemorate the 35th anniversary of this terrible political tragedy that so negatively affected our lives, our policies, our political system and our faith in our own government, we should remind ourselves that the tragedy of the President's assassination is compounded by a separate but related tragedy - the failulre of our law enforcement institutions, the failure of our political institutions and the failure of the media to affectively discover the truth of who killed President Kennedy and why. And until that happens, and it is never too late to find the truth if the citizens demand it, and until that happens the original tragedy will be compounded like a bad political debt into the next millenieum, and the faith in our political system will continue to erode.

I think also the failure to come to grips with who killed President Kennedy and why is related to the other assassinations in the 1960s, and that's why Martin Luther King's is begging the Justice Department to look for justice in that case, and we hear from Siran's lawyer in the case of Robert Kennedy.

If we had come to terms with what happened here at Dealey Plaza, discovered the truth and admitted it, the whole history of the 1960s would be different.

If the vast majority of the public believes this case is an unsolved conspiracy, who are the minority in officialdom to deny us the truth and to cling to the lone-assassin theory like it was an absolute religion in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Thank you.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is an acclaimed author and professor of history at the University of Maryland. His books include JFK and Vietnam and Oswald and the CIA, Dr. John Newman.

Dr. John Newman: I would like to say a few words about the media, and a couple of new developments for all of you gathered here. When I come here at this time of the year, I remember another place, a place connected to this place, and without the events that happened here, the other place would not exist, and that's the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., which is like no other war memorial in the world. I've been to other war memorials in Russia, China and Germany, and people frequent those memorials, they eat lunch there and talk and its a nice place to be. I don't how many of you have been to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C., but nobody hangs out It's a very, very somber place because there's still something going on there, something deep, something that's still in our psyche, and our culture and it connects directly to Dealey Plaza. And I think most people know that.

I'm not going to give a speech on the Vietnam War, but I think it is clear now that John F. Kennedy was on his way to pulling us out of Vietnam when he died, and the events that happened here catapulted us to that devistating debacle called the Vietnam War.

I'd like to echo what Mark Lane said about the media. I just heard that CNN this morning said that for the first time in all these years there were no events planned for Dealey Plaza on this day. So you are not here, this gathering does not exist. Furthermore, the evening before last, none other than Dan Rather, the major icon of the network television, made the announcement that the Review Board had conducted this very large investigation and looked at all these millions of pages of documents and had discovered that the lone-nut hypothesis was true, which was attributed to Judge Tunheim. Judge Tunheim was here in Dallas and refutes this story, and all of you who have followed this story know that the Review Board has taken no such position.

But it never ceases to amaze me how the media can twist and turn and obfuscate and block this mass movement to find the truth. Let me close by giving you a few examples of the information that is flowing out of these new files, and I think these are appropriate because of what happened here at Dealey Plaza. I am thinking particularly of a tape recorded conversation between President Johnson and Senator Russell, one of the Warren Comissoners. At great length they were able to save the situation and preserve the lone-nut hypothesis with that wonderful, sine qua non - CE399, the magic bullet that broke seven bones and came out prestine on a stretcher.

The newly released tape is very interesting because Sen. Russell calls the President to explain to him what this single-bullet theory is, and at the end of it he says distinctly, "I don't believe a word of it." And President Johnson said, "I don't either."

And I think that is appropriate thing to share with you the types of things that are coming out of the files. Then there is the galley proofs of the Warren Report where our estimed President Ford moved the bullet hole up, and these are the types of things that are in the newly released documents, but the mainstream media is not there to put them on page one.

Occasionally they get noted, but its like ships passing in the night. I am heartened to see by the turnout here today, that with respect to the American people, this is not passing in the night and I hope as we stand here today and think about the events that happened here, we pass the torch to a younger generation, which we are doing, our movement and our desire for the truth in this case carries on. Thank you very much.

Dan Alcorn: We are approaching the time in our program which is a memorial to the events that happened here thirty-five years ago, so for that purpose I'd like to introduce to you the executive secretary of COPA, a man who has devoted himself for a number of years to working on the projects we have as an organization, but has also done his own independent research on the assassination. I think that those who have had the experience of working with John Judge know of his serious and sincere commitment to investigating the issues that are at stake here and to his contribution that he has made to the the history of the investigation of the assassination. He has really been the heart and soul of the work we have done through COPA. He has put in a tremendous volunteer effort and sacrificed and suffered a great deal for the efforts he has made, which have gone largely uncompensated. So let me introduce to you the executive secretary of COPA, John Judge.

John Judge: It is interesting to see such a large crowd. For the better part of the last 25 years, I have come out here every year, usually with only five or six people, often in worse weather than this, with researcher and newspaper editor Penn Jones, who some of you know as having done work on the death of the witnesses, who passed on this year.

From the inception of the national security and military-intelligence state in the late 1940s, the history of this country has been a commodity that has been owned by that state. The people who don't own their own history are a conquered people.

Much of the effort I put in has to do with the idea of taking our own history back, of owning it ourselves, since much is still locked up in government vaults and hidden from us and we are really the only ones who can restore it. 35 years ago, in my view, there was a coup d'etat here in Dealey Plaza, and the government has not recovered in any significant way, towards democracy, since that day. Kennedy began to represent for many people, hope and change and a response from the top level of government to the popular movements at the time for civil rights, for arms limitations, for an end to the Cold War, and Kennedy was responding to popular movements in a way that presidents after him rarely have. So what was assassinated here that day was not just a particular man or a particular president, but a sense of hope by the American people. And I think that the government has let us know over the years, fairly consistently, that they did kill the president, and they killed him from a very high level, and that if they can kill the president and get away with it that they can kill anyone of us that they would like to and that we should sit down and shut up and get out of the way.

But I'm hoping that there is enough decency left in people in America, and I see evidence of that all the time, that we can understand that there are more of us, and that we can think, and we can take back our own democracy, if we want it.

It is now 12:30, and 35 years ago President Kennedy was assassinated here, so lets have a moment of silence.

[Two minutes of silence]

Thank you.

Peter Dale Scott, a researcher who could not be with us here today, sent an e-mail in which he said a few interesting things. He said that we've come into a new era in that one of the major tasks ahead of us right now is to focus on getting the government documents that are still locked up on the Martin Luther King assassination. The other thing he noted was a government statute that makes it illegal for a citizen of this country to lie to the government, and he suggested that a similar statute be passed that would make it illegal for the government to lie to its people.

I hope you will take this topic seriously and continue to act to get the full release of the files and to get the truth, and you are welcome to join us at COPA in fulfilling the remainder of our agenda and what is to be done in the future. You are welcome to join us and take your democracy back.

Dan Alcorn: We have a few other speakers here, including former FBI agent William Turner, whose books have been translated into Russian, German, Japanese, French and Spanish. He is currently working on a new book entitled: "Rearview Mirror - Looking back at the FBI, CIA and Other Tails.

William Turner: Thank you Dan. It's been exactly 35 years ago and two days that I came here on assignment for a national magazine to do an article on the breakdown in security that resulted in the assassination being successful. I was assigned to it because of my background as a former FBI agent. I can tell you that when I arrived the mood was really somber, the floodlights were on, reporters from all over the world were converging, people had left floral wreaths along the curbstone where the shooting took place, and it was very erry. The headquarters of the Dallas Police Department was a feeding frenzy of reporters trying to find out what happened. I was on a very tight deadline, I could only contend with the security breakdown issue at the time, which was that Oswald had worked as an informant for the FBI and that was the reason they had not furnished his name to the Secret Service prior to the presidential visit.

One thing I remember was talking to a Dallas patrolman named Malcolm Eugene Barnett who had been posted in front of the School Book Depository for crowd control at the time of the assassination. He told me that a women came running from the grassy knoll who told him that shots were fired from here. That being the case, I became very critical of the Warren Commission and when it's report came out I read it and realized it was pretty much a fairy tale. I am proud to say that I was associated with District Attorney Jim Garrison in New Orleans who tried to reopen the investigation into the assassination. Jim was a great American and was on the trail of the assassins, as his book says, when he was destroyed by the media at the Clay Shaw trial. The Garrison investigation paved the way for what we know today, and I believe that we know to a good degree of journalistic certitude what happened.

First the motives were piling up, John Kennedy had supposidly with held air cover for the Bay of Pigs, motive number one. John Kennedy had failed to invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962, motive number two. John Kennedy had promised to withdraw from Vietnam, motive number three. Motive number four is that John Kennedy, at the time he was assassinated, was on a second track, which was to secretly carry on negotiations with Cuba to bring about a detente. These motives piled up to the point where it became necessary to assassinate him. And I think it is very obvious with the compilation of information that we have today that the whole mechanism of it came out of the allegiance between the CIA and the rabid Cuban exiles and the Mafia, who already had an assassination apparatus set up to kill Castro. They switched targets and hit Kennedy.

And I hope you will join us, in recognizing the significance of the events that happened here, and try to do something about it. Thank you.

Hal Verb: The saying on the wall at the CIA: "Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free," is wrong. When you know the truth, the truth makes you MAD!"

[Dawn Meredith]

The Event That Didn't Happen.

Thank you BK for posting this. That was the last COPA conference I made it to. It was an incredible event.

Salandria was keynote speaker the first night; then Judge Joe Brown the next.

(Sad to read Phil Melanson's comments today- rip old friend.)

There was a very good crowd on 11/22 for the speakers and two minutes of silence.

The operation Mockingbird media- especially Dan-I'd Rather -Not just get it wrong on purpose, all the time.

Dawn

[Robert Howard]

"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

That quote is also inscribed on the wall of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in McLean, Virginia, so there is a commonality of thought there. Many of us are here today because we have never believed that the government has told us the truth about the assassination, and we believe that unless we know the truth, we are not free.

Unless we know the truth about these events we are not a free people and we have not been a free people as long as we have been lied to about the events that occured here. The spirit of our commemorative event is to take those words to heart, and until we know the truth and the full truth of what occured in the street before us today on a day very much like today, a clear, sunny day in the fall of 1963.

Well brother. I sure as hell got something out of it; see above.

Final Thought: As reliable as the Gospel, is how some American's perceived the statements of government official's in 1963, I will not even touch upon the 'my how we have changed' aspect of that issue, but toi say that, in the aftermath of the 1960's say early 1970, a significant amount of American's suspected the US Government had been [to some degree] involved in ALL of the major assassinations of the 1960's - JFK, Malcolm X, MLK Jr., RFK.

Think about that for a moment....43 years later Shane O'Sullivan of the BBC appears to have discovered a big missing piece of the RFK puzzle, to add to the thought - MLK's assassination resolution ended with the patsy story Dead on Arrival, you will find the other assassinations offer scintillating evidence that support theconclusion's of the American's of circa 1970. When there was closure for the family of MLK, Jr. there were no 1-inch typeset banner headlines saying "MLK Assassination Solved - Ray was Patsy."

When, and not if, Dealey Plaza is resolved similarly, there will be probably not be 1 inch headlines, repudiating 43 years of lies and obfuscations by our political leaders, as that is not compatible with the "interests of National Security."

The Dallas Morning News had quite a role to play in 1963, they [or, certain employess were indirectly or directly involved with helping establish Jack Ruby's whereabouts during critical moments on 11/22/63]

a timeline that may not be 100% reliable. George Applin stated that he saw "Sparky from Chicago" at the Texas Theater, hmmm;

The very controversial issue of whether Lee Oswald watched certain 'trigger films' will generate responses from Gary Mack 43 years later, but consider this - Ruth Paine unequivically stated 'she and Oswald watched' one of the flicks. hmmm; when an astute researcher checked TV Guide log's for the "pertinent period" he could not find a listing for the movie. NEWSFLASH! There are not a myriad of possibilities here people there are only three

1. She was mistaken [Very doubtful]

2. She was lying [Draw your own conclusions]

3. They did in fact watch the movie and evidence that it was on TV 'somehow' did not show up.

Well guess what boy's and girl's. There was an entity that could have erased any references to the movie in ye ole TV Guide, give up?

Try the Dallas Morning News which in 1963 printed and was directly involved in typesetting the content of the TV Guide.

PS Wasn't George Bannerman Dealey the guy that made those controversial remarks about JFK in Washington, that caused such a stir, before the assassination?

Cheers

Edited November 22, 2006 by Robert Howard

[William Kelly]

This is a reboot to bring this thread back into action after the news reports from Dallas that call the Dealey Plaza memorial service a "Circus."

Judge for yourself.

BK

The Event That Didn't Happen.

DEALEY PLAZA MEMORIAL SERVICE - Sunday, 11/22/98 THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY. I placed a tape recorder on Zapruder's peragoda/pedistal and taped the proceedings and then transcribed them. I hope somebody gets something out of this. - Bill Kelly

"Build the news upon the rock of truth and righteousness. Conduct it always upon the lines of fairness and integrity. Acknowledge the right of the people to get from the newspaper both sides of every important question." - George Bannerman Dealey, publisher of the Dallas Morning News.

CNN news reported that for the first time in 35 years that nothing was happening and there was to be no memorial service at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1998, the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

CBS News with Dan Rather reported that the Final Report of the JFK Assassinations Records Review Board "did find enough evidence to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald was the only gunman," while the Final Report never concluded any such thing.

Then the Associated Press (AP) reported from Dallas on November 22 that, "JFK assassination hype fades" and that "other than the usual handful of curious people milling about Dealey Plaza, the day was expected to be uneventful..."

Bob Porter of the Sixth Floor Museum told a reporter that nothing was scheduled to happen at Dealey Plaza that day, even though, if he looked out his office window, he could see over a thousand people gathering around the Grassy Knoll for a memorial service in honor of the slain president.

Well, what actually occured was that from noon until 1pm, the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) took a break from their fifth annual conference at Union Station, two blocks away, to hold a memorial service that was attended by a sea of people who filled the both sides of the street of the entire plaza. Participants in the JFK LANCER conference, also held in Dallas that weekend, also attended, as well as ordinary tourists, interested citizens and passersby.

COPA is an organization that was originally dcomposed of three independent groups - the Assassination Records and Research Center (ARRC) of Washington D.C., the Committee for an Open Archvies (COA) and the Citizens for the Truth about the John F. Kennedy Assassination (CTKA). They are professional associations composed of people interested in developing the truth about the assassination, who lobbied extensively for the passage of the JFK Assassination Records Review Act and have met with Cuban officials in the Bahamas to obtain information about the assassination from Cuban sources.

In an address before COPA the previous day, the chairman of the Assassinations Records Review Board, John Tunheim reiterated the Final Report's first paragraph that, despite Rather's statement, it "will not offer conclusions about what the assassination records released did or did not prove." Tunheim and his final report also note that significant documents were missing and some were even destroyed by federal agencies after the board began its business of identifying and releasing records to the public.

Others who spoke at the COPA conference included Philadelphia attorney Vincent Salandria, history professor John Newman, former FBI agent William Turner and others who have been instrumental in reviewing the recently released documents and attempting to make sense of what the government wants to maintain a mystery.

At noon on Sunday, November 22, 1998, COPA board member, and Washington D.C. attorney Dan Alcorn began the memorial service at Dealey Plaza.

Dan Alcorn : The federal board - The JFK Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) discovered that many of the records have been destroyed, and we do not have a complete record. Yet we have a much more of a documentary record than we have had ever before.

There's a memorial down on the street that has a quotation from the bible: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

That quote is also inscribed on the wall of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in McLean, Virginia, so there is a commonality of thought there. Many of us are here today because we have never believed that the government has told us the truth about the assassination, and we believe that unless we know the truth, we are not free.

Unless we know the truth about these events we are not a free people and we have not been a free people as long as we have been lied to about the events that occured here. The spirit of our commemorative event is to take those words to heart, and until we know the truth and the full truth of what occured in the street before us today on a day very much like today, a clear, sunny day in the fall of 1963.

On behalf of our organization I will make a challenge to you. Everyone here must be here because you care very deeply about the meaning of this event and what it means to our history as a nation. I will make the challenge to you to join us in our efforts in seeking the full truth about the assassination of President Kennedy. And not just the truth as pieced together by citizens who put in the time and effort to this, but to actually cause the government to tell the truth about this event, and for the government to come forward and give us a full and truthful accounting of what happened here in 1963. Otherwise, we in fact are not the free people we want to be, have been and we should be as a nation.

You know, it is a crime for a citizen of this country to tell a lie to a federal investigator, but it is not a crime for your government to lie to you. And we feel this is an unfair relationship. If it's a crime for us to lie to our government, it should be a crime for us t o lie as well.

It is in that spirit of investigation and of honest inquiry that our organization has worked closely with the Assassinations Records Review Board to get materials out. They ran into an obstructive wall of secrecy at the federal agencies. They told us that they ran into a Cold War system of secrecy that refused to relent on the documents and information as it related to this event. And this was thirty-five years after the event occured, and after a federal board was set up by the Congress to try to get information released about what happened here.

So we call on you to join us in our efforts. We think that great nations and civilizations cannot survive the kinds of doubt and turmoil that have been raised by the events that happened here. If you study the history of great civilizations you will find that when they lost their way in terms of truth, self-governing, democratic and republican institutions began their decline and was one of the reasons for their ultimate collapse. We do not want the decline and decay of our public and political system. We want to be a part of a healthy revival of those institutions.

We have experienced a decline in the public's trust in government since November,1963, a blimp in the charts that notes the significance of these events. Today a majority of people don't even bother to vote. The largest turnout of voters in American history was in 1960. The decline in public confidence in the government began with the ambush at Dealey Plaza and has continually declined since then. These trends are very troubling.

So we ask you to join us and support the effort we have started to try to pursue the truth of these events, to try to pursue credibility, honesty and openness on behalf of our governmental institutions. And by that effort to try to turn our nation in a healthy direction, to build stronger democratic institutions, to build a stronger faith between the pubic and its government. We feel that is essential, and we call on you as free citizens of this nation to join us in that effort.

I'm going to introduce to you a series of speakers who have been very involved in this issue and can give you the benefit of their experience as well. The first is Mark Lane, one of the earliest researchers in this case who did tremendous ground-breaking work, recorded much of his work for posterity and has written extensively about this case.

Mark Lane: I remember coming here thirty-five years ago and there were no crowds on the grassy knoll. But now, after all of these years, although they have a museum over there on the 6th Floor, which is a museum dedicated to a place where nothing happened. They don't have a plaque over here, on the grassy knoll, and they should.

Thirty-five years ago today the Dallas Morning News published a full page ad with the sarcastic heading: "Welcome To Dallas Mr. President," and then went on to practically call him a communist and a trator. That was then.

Today's Dallas Morning News has an editorial: "Kennedy's Legacy - The Time Is Ripe For Idealism," with no references to him being a communist or a traitor. Now he's a great man. They'll tell us everything about John Kennedy, everything, except who killed him. Because look at the rest of the Dallas Morning News, thirty-five years later, when every survey in America shows that 75 to 95% of the people are convinced that there was a conspiracy to kill John Kennedy, here we go in the guise of a book review in today's Dallas Morning News: Oswald Alone Killed Kennedy, Oswald Alone Killed Tippit, One Man Two Murders, they're sticking with the same story. I have but one word for the Dallas Morning News:

Shame. Shame on you, you are discracing the city of Dallas, and it is not fair to do that.

I'll tell you where there should be plaques in this city. There were a number of brave, courageous residents of this city, longtime residents of Texas, who had the courage to speak the truth to power in the face of intimidation and threats. Right over there was Jean Hill, and she's still there thirty-five years later, one of the first to tell the truth that shots came from behind that wooden fence. And they attacked her and ridiculed her. There should be a plaque over there commemorating her right on the spot where she is standing...

The Grassy Knoll should be called "Lee Bowers Memorial Park," the railroad bridge should be the Holland-Dode-Symmons Underpass - that's the monuments that should be named after the people of this state, people who had the courage to come forward with the truth, while the Dallas Morning News lied thirty-five years ago and continues to lie thirty-five years later.

This is the place where our leader was murdered. This is hollowed grown, and the people of this country know it. It is supose to be the largest tourist attraction in Dallas. There's people here all the time, at the grassy knoll, nobody looks for the truth from the 6th floor of the Book Depository building, because the people of America know the truth, even though the Dallas Morning News is unwilling to share the information with us.

That day in Dallas, in this city, at this location, when the government of the United States executed its own president, when that happened, we as a nation, lost our code of honor, lost our sense of honor. And it can only be restored when the government of the United States - and it will not do it without us insisting, and marching and fighting and voting, and putting this matter on the agenda,...but when that day comes that the government of the United States tells us the truth and all the factual details about the assassination, including their role in the murder. When that day comes, honor will be restored to this nation. Thank you.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is a member of the Board of Directors of COPA, a medical doctor from San Francisco who has researched this issue and has written about it in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Columbia Journalism Review, Dr. Gary Agular.

Dr. Gary Agular: It's hard to follow such a powerful speaker as Mark Lane and I certainly can't hope to match his eloquence, wit or command of this case, but what I can share with you is evidence...that autopsy photos are missing. This is something that you will not read in the Dallas Morning News, Time or Newsweek, but is something that is very clearly established, the ARRB releases are very clear on the point, the autopsy pathologists have described autopsy photographs that are missing. One of them defiantly stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which was supposed to tell us the truth about the assassination...which not only did not report that, it wasn't released until the ARRB came along.

There is enormous evidence in the forensic, in the medical area alone that indicates there was more assassin, but what is most shameful of all is the government's willingness, even in subsequent investigations, to lie about that evidence. Thank God there was an Assassinations Records Review Board, thank God they did the work they did, because now we no longer have to rely on government appointed authorities to tell us that we can trust the government's original conclusions, because we know we can't.

We know they've destroyed evidence, not only in the medical-autopsy area, not only among photographs, we know that witnesses have been intimated, and it is ashame that you won't read about that. No credible journalist will touch the story. It is a story not unlike the story of the CIA and crack cocaine, which led to the downfall of Gary Webb, before two volumes of the CIA Inspector's Report that confirmed much more than what Gary Webb even alleged about the CIA's complicity in the cocaine importation. But you won't read about that in the Dallas Morning News. You barely get a small column about it in the New York Times after they devote many, many column inches defamined journalists who talk about the subject.

I think it is important that those of you who are here today continue to insist that your government is accountable to you and does not conduct its operations in secrecy, that it does not deny you the evidence that is collected in its investigations and that it be as accountable to us as it insists we be accountable to it.

I hope you will continue to work with us to force the government to be responsible and admit the full truth about the assassination of President Kennedy.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is a member of the Board of Directors of COPA, a professor at Dartmouth, and the author of a number of books about the assassination, Dr. Phillip Melanson.

Dr. Phillip Melanson: Thank you. As we commemorate the 35th anniversary of this terrible political tragedy that so negatively affected our lives, our policies, our political system and our faith in our own government, we should remind ourselves that the tragedy of the President's assassination is compounded by a separate but related tragedy - the failulre of our law enforcement institutions, the failure of our political institutions and the failure of the media to affectively discover the truth of who killed President Kennedy and why. And until that happens, and it is never too late to find the truth if the citizens demand it, and until that happens the original tragedy will be compounded like a bad political debt into the next millenieum, and the faith in our political system will continue to erode.

I think also the failure to come to grips with who killed President Kennedy and why is related to the other assassinations in the 1960s, and that's why Martin Luther King's is begging the Justice Department to look for justice in that case, and we hear from Siran's lawyer in the case of Robert Kennedy.

If we had come to terms with what happened here at Dealey Plaza, discovered the truth and admitted it, the whole history of the 1960s would be different.

If the vast majority of the public believes this case is an unsolved conspiracy, who are the minority in officialdom to deny us the truth and to cling to the lone-assassin theory like it was an absolute religion in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Thank you.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is an acclaimed author and professor of history at the University of Maryland. His books include JFK and Vietnam and Oswald and the CIA, Dr. John Newman.

Dr. John Newman: I would like to say a few words about the media, and a couple of new developments for all of you gathered here. When I come here at this time of the year, I remember another place, a place connected to this place, and without the events that happened here, the other place would not exist, and that's the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., which is like no other war memorial in the world. I've been to other war memorials in Russia, China and Germany, and people frequent those memorials, they eat lunch there and talk and its a nice place to be. I don't how many of you have been to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C., but nobody hangs out It's a very, very somber place because there's still something going on there, something deep, something that's still in our psyche, and our culture and it connects directly to Dealey Plaza. And I think most people know that.

I'm not going to give a speech on the Vietnam War, but I think it is clear now that John F. Kennedy was on his way to pulling us out of Vietnam when he died, and the events that happened here catapulted us to that devistating debacle called the Vietnam War.

I'd like to echo what Mark Lane said about the media. I just heard that CNN this morning said that for the first time in all these years there were no events planned for Dealey Plaza on this day. So you are not here, this gathering does not exist. Furthermore, the evening before last, none other than Dan Rather, the major icon of the network television, made the announcement that the Review Board had conducted this very large investigation and looked at all these millions of pages of documents and had discovered that the lone-nut hypothesis was true, which was attributed to Judge Tunheim. Judge Tunheim was here in Dallas and refutes this story, and all of you who have followed this story know that the Review Board has taken no such position.

But it never ceases to amaze me how the media can twist and turn and obfuscate and block this mass movement to find the truth. Let me close by giving you a few examples of the information that is flowing out of these new files, and I think these are appropriate because of what happened here at Dealey Plaza. I am thinking particularly of a tape recorded conversation between President Johnson and Senator Russell, one of the Warren Comissoners. At great length they were able to save the situation and preserve the lone-nut hypothesis with that wonderful, sine qua non - CE399, the magic bullet that broke seven bones and came out prestine on a stretcher.

The newly released tape is very interesting because Sen. Russell calls the President to explain to him what this single-bullet theory is, and at the end of it he says distinctly, "I don't believe a word of it." And President Johnson said, "I don't either."

And I think that is appropriate thing to share with you the types of things that are coming out of the files. Then there is the galley proofs of the Warren Report where our estimed President Ford moved the bullet hole up, and these are the types of things that are in the newly released documents, but the mainstream media is not there to put them on page one.

Occasionally they get noted, but its like ships passing in the night. I am heartened to see by the turnout here today, that with respect to the American people, this is not passing in the night and I hope as we stand here today and think about the events that happened here, we pass the torch to a younger generation, which we are doing, our movement and our desire for the truth in this case carries on. Thank you very much.

Dan Alcorn: We are approaching the time in our program which is a memorial to the events that happened here thirty-five years ago, so for that purpose I'd like to introduce to you the executive secretary of COPA, a man who has devoted himself for a number of years to working on the projects we have as an organization, but has also done his own independent research on the assassination. I think that those who have had the experience of working with John Judge know of his serious and sincere commitment to investigating the issues that are at stake here and to his contribution that he has made to the the history of the investigation of the assassination. He has really been the heart and soul of the work we have done through COPA. He has put in a tremendous volunteer effort and sacrificed and suffered a great deal for the efforts he has made, which have gone largely uncompensated. So let me introduce to you the executive secretary of COPA, John Judge.

John Judge: It is interesting to see such a large crowd. For the better part of the last 25 years, I have come out here every year, usually with only five or six people, often in worse weather than this, with researcher and newspaper editor Penn Jones, who some of you know as having done work on the death of the witnesses, who passed on this year.

From the inception of the national security and military-intelligence state in the late 1940s, the history of this country has been a commodity that has been owned by that state. The people who don't own their own history are a conquered people.

Much of the effort I put in has to do with the idea of taking our own history back, of owning it ourselves, since much is still locked up in government vaults and hidden from us and we are really the only ones who can restore it. 35 years ago, in my view, there was a coup d'etat here in Dealey Plaza, and the government has not recovered in any significant way, towards democracy, since that day. Kennedy began to represent for many people, hope and change and a response from the top level of government to the popular movements at the time for civil rights, for arms limitations, for an end to the Cold War, and Kennedy was responding to popular movements in a way that presidents after him rarely have. So what was assassinated here that day was not just a particular man or a particular president, but a sense of hope by the American people. And I think that the government has let us know over the years, fairly consistently, that they did kill the president, and they killed him from a very high level, and that if they can kill the president and get away with it that they can kill anyone of us that they would like to and that we should sit down and shut up and get out of the way.

But I'm hoping that there is enough decency left in people in America, and I see evidence of that all the time, that we can understand that there are more of us, and that we can think, and we can take back our own democracy, if we want it.

It is now 12:30, and 35 years ago President Kennedy was assassinated here, so lets have a moment of silence.

[Two minutes of silence]

Thank you.

Peter Dale Scott, a researcher who could not be with us here today, sent an e-mail in which he said a few interesting things. He said that we've come into a new era in that one of the major tasks ahead of us right now is to focus on getting the government documents that are still locked up on the Martin Luther King assassination. The other thing he noted was a government statute that makes it illegal for a citizen of this country to lie to the government, and he suggested that a similar statute be passed that would make it illegal for the government to lie to its people.

I hope you will take this topic seriously and continue to act to get the full release of the files and to get the truth, and you are welcome to join us at COPA in fulfilling the remainder of our agenda and what is to be done in the future. You are welcome to join us and take your democracy back.

Dan Alcorn: We have a few other speakers here, including former FBI agent William Turner, whose books have been translated into Russian, German, Japanese, French and Spanish. He is currently working on a new book entitled: "Rearview Mirror - Looking back at the FBI, CIA and Other Tails.

William Turner: Thank you Dan. It's been exactly 35 years ago and two days that I came here on assignment for a national magazine to do an article on the breakdown in security that resulted in the assassination being successful. I was assigned to it because of my background as a former FBI agent. I can tell you that when I arrived the mood was really somber, the floodlights were on, reporters from all over the world were converging, people had left floral wreaths along the curbstone where the shooting took place, and it was very erry. The headquarters of the Dallas Police Department was a feeding frenzy of reporters trying to find out what happened. I was on a very tight deadline, I could only contend with the security breakdown issue at the time, which was that Oswald had worked as an informant for the FBI and that was the reason they had not furnished his name to the Secret Service prior to the presidential visit.

One thing I remember was talking to a Dallas patrolman named Malcolm Eugene Barnett who had been posted in front of the School Book Depository for crowd control at the time of the assassination. He told me that a women came running from the grassy knoll who told him that shots were fired from here. That being the case, I became very critical of the Warren Commission and when it's report came out I read it and realized it was pretty much a fairy tale. I am proud to say that I was associated with District Attorney Jim Garrison in New Orleans who tried to reopen the investigation into the assassination. Jim was a great American and was on the trail of the assassins, as his book says, when he was destroyed by the media at the Clay Shaw trial. The Garrison investigation paved the way for what we know today, and I believe that we know to a good degree of journalistic certitude what happened.

First the motives were piling up, John Kennedy had supposidly with held air cover for the Bay of Pigs, motive number one. John Kennedy had failed to invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962, motive number two. John Kennedy had promised to withdraw from Vietnam, motive number three. Motive number four is that John Kennedy, at the time he was assassinated, was on a second track, which was to secretly carry on negotiations with Cuba to bring about a detente. These motives piled up to the point where it became necessary to assassinate him. And I think it is very obvious with the compilation of information that we have today that the whole mechanism of it came out of the allegiance between the CIA and the rabid Cuban exiles and the Mafia, who already had an assassination apparatus set up to kill Castro. They switched targets and hit Kennedy.

And I hope you will join us, in recognizing the significance of the events that happened here, and try to do something about it. Thank you.

Hal Verb: The saying on the wall at the CIA: "Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free," is wrong. When you know the truth, the truth makes you MAD!"

[William Kelly]

The Event That Didn't Happen.

DEALEY PLAZA MEMORIAL SERVICE - Sunday, 11/22/98 THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY. I placed a tape recorder on Zapruder's peragoda/pedistal and taped the proceedings and then transcribed them. I hope somebody gets something out of this. - Bill Kelly

"Build the news upon the rock of truth and righteousness. Conduct it always upon the lines of fairness and integrity. Acknowledge the right of the people to get from the newspaper both sides of every important question." - George Bannerman Dealey, publisher of the Dallas Morning News.

CNN news reported that for the first time in 35 years that nothing was happening and there was to be no memorial service at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1998, the anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

CBS News with Dan Rather reported that the Final Report of the JFK Assassinations Records Review Board "did find enough evidence to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald was the only gunman," while the Final Report never concluded any such thing.

Then the Associated Press (AP) reported from Dallas on November 22 that, "JFK assassination hype fades" and that "other than the usual handful of curious people milling about Dealey Plaza, the day was expected to be uneventful..."

Bob Porter of the Sixth Floor Museum told a reporter that nothing was scheduled to happen at Dealey Plaza that day, even though, if he looked out his office window, he could see over a thousand people gathering around the Grassy Knoll for a memorial service in honor of the slain president.

Well, what actually occured was that from noon until 1pm, the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) took a break from their fifth annual conference at Union Station, two blocks away, to hold a memorial service that was attended by a sea of people who filled the both sides of the street of the entire plaza. Participants in the JFK LANCER conference, also held in Dallas that weekend, also attended, as well as ordinary tourists, interested citizens and passersby.

COPA is an organization that was originally dcomposed of three independent groups - the Assassination Records and Research Center (ARRC) of Washington D.C., the Committee for an Open Archvies (COA) and the Citizens for the Truth about the John F. Kennedy Assassination (CTKA). They are professional associations composed of people interested in developing the truth about the assassination, who lobbied extensively for the passage of the JFK Assassination Records Review Act and have met with Cuban officials in the Bahamas to obtain information about the assassination from Cuban sources.

In an address before COPA the previous day, the chairman of the Assassinations Records Review Board, John Tunheim reiterated the Final Report's first paragraph that, despite Rather's statement, it "will not offer conclusions about what the assassination records released did or did not prove." Tunheim and his final report also note that significant documents were missing and some were even destroyed by federal agencies after the board began its business of identifying and releasing records to the public.

Others who spoke at the COPA conference included Philadelphia attorney Vincent Salandria, history professor John Newman, former FBI agent William Turner and others who have been instrumental in reviewing the recently released documents and attempting to make sense of what the government wants to maintain a mystery.

At noon on Sunday, November 22, 1998, COPA board member, and Washington D.C. attorney Dan Alcorn began the memorial service at Dealey Plaza.

Dan Alcorn : The federal board - The JFK Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) discovered that many of the records have been destroyed, and we do not have a complete record. Yet we have a much more of a documentary record than we have had ever before.

There's a memorial down on the street that has a quotation from the bible: "Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

That quote is also inscribed on the wall of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in McLean, Virginia, so there is a commonality of thought there. Many of us are here today because we have never believed that the government has told us the truth about the assassination, and we believe that unless we know the truth, we are not free.

Unless we know the truth about these events we are not a free people and we have not been a free people as long as we have been lied to about the events that occured here. The spirit of our commemorative event is to take those words to heart, and until we know the truth and the full truth of what occured in the street before us today on a day very much like today, a clear, sunny day in the fall of 1963.

On behalf of our organization I will make a challenge to you. Everyone here must be here because you care very deeply about the meaning of this event and what it means to our history as a nation. I will make the challenge to you to join us in our efforts in seeking the full truth about the assassination of President Kennedy. And not just the truth as pieced together by citizens who put in the time and effort to this, but to actually cause the government to tell the truth about this event, and for the government to come forward and give us a full and truthful accounting of what happened here in 1963. Otherwise, we in fact are not the free people we want to be, have been and we should be as a nation.

You know, it is a crime for a citizen of this country to tell a lie to a federal investigator, but it is not a crime for your government to lie to you. And we feel this is an unfair relationship. If it's a crime for us to lie to our government, it should be a crime for us t o lie as well.

It is in that spirit of investigation and of honest inquiry that our organization has worked closely with the Assassinations Records Review Board to get materials out. They ran into an obstructive wall of secrecy at the federal agencies. They told us that they ran into a Cold War system of secrecy that refused to relent on the documents and information as it related to this event. And this was thirty-five years after the event occured, and after a federal board was set up by the Congress to try to get information released about what happened here.

So we call on you to join us in our efforts. We think that great nations and civilizations cannot survive the kinds of doubt and turmoil that have been raised by the events that happened here. If you study the history of great civilizations you will find that when they lost their way in terms of truth, self-governing, democratic and republican institutions began their decline and was one of the reasons for their ultimate collapse. We do not want the decline and decay of our public and political system. We want to be a part of a healthy revival of those institutions.

We have experienced a decline in the public's trust in government since November,1963, a blimp in the charts that notes the significance of these events. Today a majority of people don't even bother to vote. The largest turnout of voters in American history was in 1960. The decline in public confidence in the government began with the ambush at Dealey Plaza and has continually declined since then. These trends are very troubling.

So we ask you to join us and support the effort we have started to try to pursue the truth of these events, to try to pursue credibility, honesty and openness on behalf of our governmental institutions. And by that effort to try to turn our nation in a healthy direction, to build stronger democratic institutions, to build a stronger faith between the pubic and its government. We feel that is essential, and we call on you as free citizens of this nation to join us in that effort.

I'm going to introduce to you a series of speakers who have been very involved in this issue and can give you the benefit of their experience as well. The first is Mark Lane, one of the earliest researchers in this case who did tremendous ground-breaking work, recorded much of his work for posterity and has written extensively about this case.

Mark Lane: I remember coming here thirty-five years ago and there were no crowds on the grassy knoll. But now, after all of these years, although they have a museum over there on the 6th Floor, which is a museum dedicated to a place where nothing happened. They don't have a plaque over here, on the grassy knoll, and they should.

Thirty-five years ago today the Dallas Morning News published a full page ad with the sarcastic heading: "Welcome To Dallas Mr. President," and then went on to practically call him a communist and a trator. That was then.

Today's Dallas Morning News has an editorial: "Kennedy's Legacy - The Time Is Ripe For Idealism," with no references to him being a communist or a traitor. Now he's a great man. They'll tell us everything about John Kennedy, everything, except who killed him. Because look at the rest of the Dallas Morning News, thirty-five years later, when every survey in America shows that 75 to 95% of the people are convinced that there was a conspiracy to kill John Kennedy, here we go in the guise of a book review in today's Dallas Morning News: Oswald Alone Killed Kennedy, Oswald Alone Killed Tippit, One Man Two Murders, they're sticking with the same story. I have but one word for the Dallas Morning News:

Shame. Shame on you, you are discracing the city of Dallas, and it is not fair to do that.

I'll tell you where there should be plaques in this city. There were a number of brave, courageous residents of this city, longtime residents of Texas, who had the courage to speak the truth to power in the face of intimidation and threats. Right over there was Jean Hill, and she's still there thirty-five years later, one of the first to tell the truth that shots came from behind that wooden fence. And they attacked her and ridiculed her. There should be a plaque over there commemorating her right on the spot where she is standing...

The Grassy Knoll should be called "Lee Bowers Memorial Park," the railroad bridge should be the Holland-Dode-Symmons Underpass - that's the monuments that should be named after the people of this state, people who had the courage to come forward with the truth, while the Dallas Morning News lied thirty-five years ago and continues to lie thirty-five years later.

This is the place where our leader was murdered. This is hollowed grown, and the people of this country know it. It is supose to be the largest tourist attraction in Dallas. There's people here all the time, at the grassy knoll, nobody looks for the truth from the 6th floor of the Book Depository building, because the people of America know the truth, even though the Dallas Morning News is unwilling to share the information with us.

That day in Dallas, in this city, at this location, when the government of the United States executed its own president, when that happened, we as a nation, lost our code of honor, lost our sense of honor. And it can only be restored when the government of the United States - and it will not do it without us insisting, and marching and fighting and voting, and putting this matter on the agenda,...but when that day comes that the government of the United States tells us the truth and all the factual details about the assassination, including their role in the murder. When that day comes, honor will be restored to this nation. Thank you.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is a member of the Board of Directors of COPA, a medical doctor from San Francisco who has researched this issue and has written about it in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Columbia Journalism Review, Dr. Gary Agular.

Dr. Gary Agular: It's hard to follow such a powerful speaker as Mark Lane and I certainly can't hope to match his eloquence, wit or command of this case, but what I can share with you is evidence...that autopsy photos are missing. This is something that you will not read in the Dallas Morning News, Time or Newsweek, but is something that is very clearly established, the ARRB releases are very clear on the point, the autopsy pathologists have described autopsy photographs that are missing. One of them defiantly stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which was supposed to tell us the truth about the assassination...which not only did not report that, it wasn't released until the ARRB came along.

There is enormous evidence in the forensic, in the medical area alone that indicates there was more assassin, but what is most shameful of all is the government's willingness, even in subsequent investigations, to lie about that evidence. Thank God there was an Assassinations Records Review Board, thank God they did the work they did, because now we no longer have to rely on government appointed authorities to tell us that we can trust the government's original conclusions, because we know we can't.

We know they've destroyed evidence, not only in the medical-autopsy area, not only among photographs, we know that witnesses have been intimated, and it is ashame that you won't read about that. No credible journalist will touch the story. It is a story not unlike the story of the CIA and crack cocaine, which led to the downfall of Gary Webb, before two volumes of the CIA Inspector's Report that confirmed much more than what Gary Webb even alleged about the CIA's complicity in the cocaine importation. But you won't read about that in the Dallas Morning News. You barely get a small column about it in the New York Times after they devote many, many column inches defamined journalists who talk about the subject.

I think it is important that those of you who are here today continue to insist that your government is accountable to you and does not conduct its operations in secrecy, that it does not deny you the evidence that is collected in its investigations and that it be as accountable to us as it insists we be accountable to it.

I hope you will continue to work with us to force the government to be responsible and admit the full truth about the assassination of President Kennedy.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is a member of the Board of Directors of COPA, a professor at Dartmouth, and the author of a number of books about the assassination, Dr. Phillip Melanson.

Dr. Phillip Melanson: Thank you. As we commemorate the 35th anniversary of this terrible political tragedy that so negatively affected our lives, our policies, our political system and our faith in our own government, we should remind ourselves that the tragedy of the President's assassination is compounded by a separate but related tragedy - the failulre of our law enforcement institutions, the failure of our political institutions and the failure of the media to affectively discover the truth of who killed President Kennedy and why. And until that happens, and it is never too late to find the truth if the citizens demand it, and until that happens the original tragedy will be compounded like a bad political debt into the next millenieum, and the faith in our political system will continue to erode.

I think also the failure to come to grips with who killed President Kennedy and why is related to the other assassinations in the 1960s, and that's why Martin Luther King's is begging the Justice Department to look for justice in that case, and we hear from Siran's lawyer in the case of Robert Kennedy.

If we had come to terms with what happened here at Dealey Plaza, discovered the truth and admitted it, the whole history of the 1960s would be different.

If the vast majority of the public believes this case is an unsolved conspiracy, who are the minority in officialdom to deny us the truth and to cling to the lone-assassin theory like it was an absolute religion in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Thank you.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is an acclaimed author and professor of history at the University of Maryland. His books include JFK and Vietnam and Oswald and the CIA, Dr. John Newman.

Dr. John Newman: I would like to say a few words about the media, and a couple of new developments for all of you gathered here. When I come here at this time of the year, I remember another place, a place connected to this place, and without the events that happened here, the other place would not exist, and that's the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C., which is like no other war memorial in the world. I've been to other war memorials in Russia, China and Germany, and people frequent those memorials, they eat lunch there and talk and its a nice place to be. I don't how many of you have been to the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C., but nobody hangs out It's a very, very somber place because there's still something going on there, something deep, something that's still in our psyche, and our culture and it connects directly to Dealey Plaza. And I think most people know that.

I'm not going to give a speech on the Vietnam War, but I think it is clear now that John F. Kennedy was on his way to pulling us out of Vietnam when he died, and the events that happened here catapulted us to that devistating debacle called the Vietnam War.

I'd like to echo what Mark Lane said about the media. I just heard that CNN this morning said that for the first time in all these years there were no events planned for Dealey Plaza on this day. So you are not here, this gathering does not exist. Furthermore, the evening before last, none other than Dan Rather, the major icon of the network television, made the announcement that the Review Board had conducted this very large investigation and looked at all these millions of pages of documents and had discovered that the lone-nut hypothesis was true, which was attributed to Judge Tunheim. Judge Tunheim was here in Dallas and refutes this story, and all of you who have followed this story know that the Review Board has taken no such position.

But it never ceases to amaze me how the media can twist and turn and obfuscate and block this mass movement to find the truth. Let me close by giving you a few examples of the information that is flowing out of these new files, and I think these are appropriate because of what happened here at Dealey Plaza. I am thinking particularly of a tape recorded conversation between President Johnson and Senator Russell, one of the Warren Comissoners. At great length they were able to save the situation and preserve the lone-nut hypothesis with that wonderful, sine qua non - CE399, the magic bullet that broke seven bones and came out prestine on a stretcher.

The newly released tape is very interesting because Sen. Russell calls the President to explain to him what this single-bullet theory is, and at the end of it he says distinctly, "I don't believe a word of it." And President Johnson said, "I don't either."

And I think that is appropriate thing to share with you the types of things that are coming out of the files. Then there is the galley proofs of the Warren Report where our estimed President Ford moved the bullet hole up, and these are the types of things that are in the newly released documents, but the mainstream media is not there to put them on page one.

Occasionally they get noted, but its like ships passing in the night. I am heartened to see by the turnout here today, that with respect to the American people, this is not passing in the night and I hope as we stand here today and think about the events that happened here, we pass the torch to a younger generation, which we are doing, our movement and our desire for the truth in this case carries on. Thank you very much.

Dan Alcorn: We are approaching the time in our program which is a memorial to the events that happened here thirty-five years ago, so for that purpose I'd like to introduce to you the executive secretary of COPA, a man who has devoted himself for a number of years to working on the projects we have as an organization, but has also done his own independent research on the assassination. I think that those who have had the experience of working with John Judge know of his serious and sincere commitment to investigating the issues that are at stake here and to his contribution that he has made to the the history of the investigation of the assassination. He has really been the heart and soul of the work we have done through COPA. He has put in a tremendous volunteer effort and sacrificed and suffered a great deal for the efforts he has made, which have gone largely uncompensated. So let me introduce to you the executive secretary of COPA, John Judge.

John Judge: It is interesting to see such a large crowd. For the better part of the last 25 years, I have come out here every year, usually with only five or six people, often in worse weather than this, with researcher and newspaper editor Penn Jones, who some of you know as having done work on the death of the witnesses, who passed on this year.

From the inception of the national security and military-intelligence state in the late 1940s, the history of this country has been a commodity that has been owned by that state. The people who don't own their own history are a conquered people.

Much of the effort I put in has to do with the idea of taking our own history back, of owning it ourselves, since much is still locked up in government vaults and hidden from us and we are really the only ones who can restore it. 35 years ago, in my view, there was a coup d'etat here in Dealey Plaza, and the government has not recovered in any significant way, towards democracy, since that day. Kennedy began to represent for many people, hope and change and a response from the top level of government to the popular movements at the time for civil rights, for arms limitations, for an end to the Cold War, and Kennedy was responding to popular movements in a way that presidents after him rarely have. So what was assassinated here that day was not just a particular man or a particular president, but a sense of hope by the American people. And I think that the government has let us know over the years, fairly consistently, that they did kill the president, and they killed him from a very high level, and that if they can kill the president and get away with it that they can kill anyone of us that they would like to and that we should sit down and shut up and get out of the way.

But I'm hoping that there is enough decency left in people in America, and I see evidence of that all the time, that we can understand that there are more of us, and that we can think, and we can take back our own democracy, if we want it.

It is now 12:30, and 35 years ago President Kennedy was assassinated here, so lets have a moment of silence.

[Two minutes of silence]

Thank you.

Peter Dale Scott, a researcher who could not be with us here today, sent an e-mail in which he said a few interesting things. He said that we've come into a new era in that one of the major tasks ahead of us right now is to focus on getting the government documents that are still locked up on the Martin Luther King assassination. The other thing he noted was a government statute that makes it illegal for a citizen of this country to lie to the government, and he suggested that a similar statute be passed that would make it illegal for the government to lie to its people.

I hope you will take this topic seriously and continue to act to get the full release of the files and to get the truth, and you are welcome to join us at COPA in fulfilling the remainder of our agenda and what is to be done in the future. You are welcome to join us and take your democracy back.

Dan Alcorn: We have a few other speakers here, including former FBI agent William Turner, whose books have been translated into Russian, German, Japanese, French and Spanish. He is currently working on a new book entitled: "Rearview Mirror - Looking back at the FBI, CIA and Other Tails.

William Turner: Thank you Dan. It's been exactly 35 years ago and two days that I came here on assignment for a national magazine to do an article on the breakdown in security that resulted in the assassination being successful. I was assigned to it because of my background as a former FBI agent. I can tell you that when I arrived the mood was really somber, the floodlights were on, reporters from all over the world were converging, people had left floral wreaths along the curbstone where the shooting took place, and it was very erry. The headquarters of the Dallas Police Department was a feeding frenzy of reporters trying to find out what happened. I was on a very tight deadline, I could only contend with the security breakdown issue at the time, which was that Oswald had worked as an informant for the FBI and that was the reason they had not furnished his name to the Secret Service prior to the presidential visit.

One thing I remember was talking to a Dallas patrolman named Malcolm Eugene Barnett who had been posted in front of the School Book Depository for crowd control at the time of the assassination. He told me that a women came running from the grassy knoll who told him that shots were fired from here. That being the case, I became very critical of the Warren Commission and when it's report came out I read it and realized it was pretty much a fairy tale. I am proud to say that I was associated with District Attorney Jim Garrison in New Orleans who tried to reopen the investigation into the assassination. Jim was a great American and was on the trail of the assassins, as his book says, when he was destroyed by the media at the Clay Shaw trial. The Garrison investigation paved the way for what we know today, and I believe that we know to a good degree of journalistic certitude what happened.

First the motives were piling up, John Kennedy had supposidly with held air cover for the Bay of Pigs, motive number one. John Kennedy had failed to invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962, motive number two. John Kennedy had promised to withdraw from Vietnam, motive number three. Motive number four is that John Kennedy, at the time he was assassinated, was on a second track, which was to secretly carry on negotiations with Cuba to bring about a detente. These motives piled up to the point where it became necessary to assassinate him. And I think it is very obvious with the compilation of information that we have today that the whole mechanism of it came out of the allegiance between the CIA and the rabid Cuban exiles and the Mafia, who already had an assassination apparatus set up to kill Castro. They switched targets and hit Kennedy.

And I hope you will join us, in recognizing the significance of the events that happened here, and try to do something about it. Thank you.

Hal Verb: The saying on the wall at the CIA: "Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free," is wrong. When you know the truth, the truth makes you MAD!"

[William Kelly]

And here's a cell phone report from five years ago from the DC Durango Kid. - BK

http://durangotexas.blogspot.com/2008/11/4...assination.html

And I thought I'd issue a statement today:

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/

Edited November 22, 2008 by William Kelly

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

"The people who don't own their own history are a conquered people."

Interesting sentence by John Judge. Makes me wonder what public ownership would look like. I think there are a lot ways it could be less privatized, starting with massive media reform. Watching all the intelligence connected "journalists" on PBS Oswald shows today, made me think I was living in the USSR.

Thanks for posting this.

[William Kelly]

"The people who don't own their own history are a conquered people."

Interesting sentence by John Judge. Makes me wonder what public ownership would look like. I think there are a lot ways it could be less privatized, starting with massive media reform. Watching all the intelligence connected "journalists" on PBS Oswald shows today, made me think I was living in the USSR.

Thanks for posting this.

John Judge first accompanied Penn Jones to Dealey Plaza sometime in the mid-70s and has returned every year since. The first timet they went was not a major anniversary year and there were only a few flowers and no reporters. They held a moment of silence alone together.

Since Penn passed away Judge has been there holding the moment of silence at 12:30 on 11/22, a tradition that Penn began the year after the assassinaton.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081123/ap_on_re_us/jfk_anniversary/print;_ylt=As9815x2iXhZwvOcf2dAoSTLLJ94

JFK anniversary marked at Dallas shooting site

By ANDRE COE, Associated Press Writer Andre Coe, Associated Press Writer Sun Nov 23, 1:24 am ET DALLAS – About 500 people crowded Saturday into the plaza where John F. Kennedy was shot 45 years ago, all agreeing it was right to remember a pivotal moment in American history, even if they didn't all believe the official line.

People stood shoulder to shoulder and bowed their heads during a moment of silence at 12:30 p.m. Some hawked JFK memorabilia or pitched conspiracy theories to visitors. Others offered firsthand accounts of their memories of the killing.

Visiting from Pipersville, Penn., 66-year-old Barbara Koenig said coming to the site was something she needed to do.

"I remember the day of the assassination, and I've always wanted to visit this site," she said. "It's just an eerie feeling. It kind of takes you back 45 years to what you were doing and thinking about the whole tragedy of the affair. I burst into tears (then). In fact, I'm ready to cry now."

Nearby, street vendors held out commemorative newspapers hoping would-be customers would buy them. One person roamed the crowd with a sign questioning whether it was a lone gunman who killed Kennedy or several.

A group of men who wore black suits, matching ties and earpieces stood silent and appeared to guard a large black banner behind them.

The day Kennedy was assassinated is one people should always remember, but its truth still has not been entirely revealed, argued John Judge, head of the Coalition On Political Assassinations, a Washington-based organization that researches political assassinations.

Judge believes Kennedy's assassination was a government conspiracy and could easily be solved if all of the facts were revealed.

"If the case were to be honestly investigated or if a grand jury could open it up, we could get at it," he said. "I think (people) want to remember a piece of their history that was stolen from them."

On Saturday, two Xs spray-painted in the street marked the spots where Kennedy was hit as his motorcade drove through the plaza. A placard from the National Park Service stood on the ground directly across from one X.

For 68-year-old Ann Murphy, news of Kennedy's assassination stunned her when it reached her and other teachers in Toronto. She was in disbelief when school officials announced, "President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas," she said.

Murphy stayed glued to her father's grainy, black-and-white television set for more news on the events unfolding in the United States. She was even more stunned when she saw nightclub owner Jack Ruby later shoot the suspect in Kennedy's assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, on live television, Murphy said.

"It's strange," she said, "that one man's influence and popularity would extend well outside his own country."

[William Kelly]

"The people who don't own their own history are a conquered people."

Interesting sentence by John Judge. Makes me wonder what public ownership would look like. I think there are a lot ways it could be less privatized, starting with massive media reform. Watching all the intelligence connected "journalists" on PBS Oswald shows today, made me think I was living in the USSR.

Thanks for posting this.

Were there any other articles posted on line about this that were missed?

Thanks,

BK

John Judge first accompanied Penn Jones to Dealey Plaza sometime in the mid-70s and has returned every year since. The first timet they went was not a major anniversary year and there were only a few flowers and no reporters. They held a moment of silence alone together.

Since Penn passed away Judge has been there holding the moment of silence at 12:30 on 11/22, a tradition that Penn began the year after the assassinaton.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081123/ap_on_re_us/jfk_anniversary/print;_ylt=As9815x2iXhZwvOcf2dAoSTLLJ94

JFK anniversary marked at Dallas shooting site

By ANDRE COE, Associated Press Writer Andre Coe, Associated Press Writer Sun Nov 23, 1:24 am ET DALLAS – About 500 people crowded Saturday into the plaza where John F. Kennedy was shot 45 years ago, all agreeing it was right to remember a pivotal moment in American history, even if they didn't all believe the official line.

People stood shoulder to shoulder and bowed their heads during a moment of silence at 12:30 p.m. Some hawked JFK memorabilia or pitched conspiracy theories to visitors. Others offered firsthand accounts of their memories of the killing.

Visiting from Pipersville, Penn., 66-year-old Barbara Koenig said coming to the site was something she needed to do.

"I remember the day of the assassination, and I've always wanted to visit this site," she said. "It's just an eerie feeling. It kind of takes you back 45 years to what you were doing and thinking about the whole tragedy of the affair. I burst into tears (then). In fact, I'm ready to cry now."

Nearby, street vendors held out commemorative newspapers hoping would-be customers would buy them. One person roamed the crowd with a sign questioning whether it was a lone gunman who killed Kennedy or several.

A group of men who wore black suits, matching ties and earpieces stood silent and appeared to guard a large black banner behind them.

The day Kennedy was assassinated is one people should always remember, but its truth still has not been entirely revealed, argued John Judge, head of the Coalition On Political Assassinations, a Washington-based organization that researches political assassinations.

Judge believes Kennedy's assassination was a government conspiracy and could easily be solved if all of the facts were revealed.

"If the case were to be honestly investigated or if a grand jury could open it up, we could get at it," he said. "I think (people) want to remember a piece of their history that was stolen from them."

On Saturday, two Xs spray-painted in the street marked the spots where Kennedy was hit as his motorcade drove through the plaza. A placard from the National Park Service stood on the ground directly across from one X.

For 68-year-old Ann Murphy, news of Kennedy's assassination stunned her when it reached her and other teachers in Toronto. She was in disbelief when school officials announced, "President Kennedy has been shot in Dallas," she said.

Murphy stayed glued to her father's grainy, black-and-white television set for more news on the events unfolding in the United States. She was even more stunned when she saw nightclub owner Jack Ruby later shoot the suspect in Kennedy's assassination, Lee Harvey Oswald, on live television, Murphy said.

"It's strange," she said, "that one man's influence and popularity would extend well outside his own country."

[Bernice Moore]

Bill Kelly : ""John Judge first accompanied Penn Jones to Dealey Plaza sometime in the mid-70s and has returned every year since. The first timet they went was not a major anniversary year and there were only a few flowers and no reporters. They held a moment of silence alone together.

Since Penn passed away Judge has been there holding the moment of silence at 12:30 on 11/22, a tradition that Penn began the year after the assassinaton. ""

Penn Jones Dealey 1983...

John Judge 2007.....

B......

Edited November 25, 2008 by Bernice Moore

[William Kelly]

Many thanks for that Bernice.

Nice shot of Penn. I know some people made a pilgrimage to Baylor U library to rummage through Penn Jones' records that were salvaged.

Judge just sent out a report and there will be some videos on line soon of this years event.

Many thanks to Debra Conway, Larry Hancock and JFK Lancer people for graciously letting John Judge use their microphone to introduce the moment of silence and continuing the tradition that Penn started.

BK

[William Kelly]

The Event That Didn't Happen.

http://educationforu...?showtopic=8605

DEALEY PLAZAMEMORIAL SERVICE - Sunday, 11/22/98THE 35TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY.

I placed a tape recorder on Zapruder's peragoda/pedistal andtaped the proceedings and then transcribed them. I hope somebody gets something out of this. - Bill Kelly

"Build the news upon the rock of truth and righteousness. Conduct italways upon the lines of fairness and integrity. Acknowledge the right of thepeople to get from the newspaper both sides of every important question."- George Bannerman Dealey, publisher of the Dallas Morning News.

CNN news reported that for the first time in 35 years that nothing washappening and there was to be no memorial service at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1998, the anniversary of theassassination of President John F. Kennedy.

CBS News with Dan Rather reported that the Final Report of the JFKAssassinations Records Review Board "did find enough evidence to concludethat Lee Harvey Oswald was the only gunman," while the Final Report neverconcluded any such thing.

Then the Associated Press (AP) reported from Dallason November 22 that, "JFK assassination hype fades" and that"other than the usual handful of curious people milling about Dealey Plaza, the day was expected to beuneventful..."

Bob Porter of the Sixth Floor Museum told a reporter that nothing was scheduled to happen at Dealey Plazathat day, even though, if he looked out his office window, he could see over a thousand people gathering around the Grassy Knoll for a memorial service inhonor of the slain president.

Well, what actually occured was that from noon until 1pm, the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) took a break from their fifth annual conference at Union Station, two blocks away, to hold a memorial service that was attended by a sea of people who filled the both sides of the street of the entire plaza. Participants in the JFK LANCER conference, also held in Dallas that weekend, also attended, as well as ordinary tourists, interested citizens and passersby.

COPA is an organization that was originally composed of three independentgroups - the Assassination Records and Research Center (ARRC) of Washington D.C., the Committee for an Open Archvies (COA) and the Citizens for the Truth about the John F. Kennedy Assassination (CTKA).They are professional associations composed of people interested in developing the truth about the assassination, who lobbied extensively for the passage ofthe JFK Assassination Records Review Act and have met with Cuban officials in the Bahamas to obtain information about the assassination from Cuban sources.

In an address before COPA the previous day, the chairman of the Assassinations Records Review Board, John Tunheim reiterated the Final Report's first paragraph that, despite Rather's statement, it "will not offer conclusions about what the assassination records released did or did not prove."Tunheim and his final report also note that significant documents were missing and some were even destroyed by federal agencies after the board began its business of identifying and releasing records to the public.

Others who spoke at the COPA conference included Philadelphiaattorney Vincent Salandria, history professor John Newman, former FBI agentWilliam Turner and others who have been instrumental in reviewing the recentlyreleased documents and attempting to make sense of what the government wants tomaintain a mystery.

At noon on Sunday, November 22, 1998, COPA board member,and Washington D.C.attorney Dan Alcorn began the memorial service at Dealey Plaza.

Dan Alcorn : The federal board - The JFK Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) discovered that many of the records have been destroyed, and we do not have a complete record. Yet we have a much more of a documentary record than we have had ever before. There's a memorial down on the street that has a quotation from the bible:"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free."

That quote is also inscribed on the wall of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in McLean, Virginia,so there is a commonality of thought there. Many of us are here today because we have never believed that the government has told us the truth about theassassination, and we believe that unless we know the truth, we are not free.

Unless we know the truth about these events we are not a free people and we have not been a free people as long as we have been lied to about the events that occured here. The spirit of our commemorative event is to take those words to heart, and until we know the truth and the full truth of what occured in the street before us today on a day very much like today, a clear, sunny day in thefall of 1963.

On behalf of our organization I will make a challenge to you. Everyone here must be here because you care very deeply about the meaning of this event and what it means to our history as a nation. I will make the challenge to you tojoin us in our efforts in seeking the full truth about the assassination of President Kennedy. And not just the truth as pieced together by citizens who put in the time and effort to this, but to actually cause the government to tell the truth about this event, and for the government to come forward andgive us a full and truthful accounting of what happened here in 1963. Otherwise, we in fact are not the free people we want to be, have been and we should be as a nation.

You know, it is a crime for a citizen of this country to tell a lie to a federal investigator, but it is not a crime for your government to lie to you. And we feel this is an unfair relationship. If it's a crime for us to lie to our government, it should be a crime for us t o lie as well.

It is in that spirit of investigation and of honest inquiry that our organization has worked closely with the Assassinations Records Review Board to get materials out. They ran into an obstructive wall of secrecy at the federalagencies. They told us that they ran into a Cold War system of secrecy thatrefused to relent on the documents and information as it related to this event.And this was thirty-five years after the event occured, and after a federal board was set up by the Congress to try to get information released about whathappened here.

So we call on you to join us in our efforts. We think that great nations andcivilizations cannot survive the kinds of doubt and turmoil that have been raised by the events that happened here. If you study the history of greatcivilizations you will find that when they lost their way in terms of truth,self-governing, democratic and republican institutions began their decline andwas one of the reasons for their ultimate collapse. We do not want the declineand decay of our public and political system. We want to be a part of a healthyrevival of those institutions.

We have experienced a decline in the public's trust in government since November,1963, a blimp in the charts that notes the significance of theseevents. Today a majority of people don't even bother to vote. The largestturnout of voters in American history was in 1960. The decline in public confidence in the government began with the ambush at Dealey Plaza and has continually declined since then. These trends are very troubling.

So we ask you to join us and support the effort we have started to try topursue the truth of these events, to try to pursue credibility, honesty andopenness on behalf of our governmental institutions. And by that effort to tryto turn our nation in a healthy direction, to build stronger democraticin stitutions, to build a stronger faith between the pubic and its government.We feel that is essential, and we call on you as free citizens of this nationto join us in that effort.

I'm going to introduce to you a series of speakers who have been very involvedin this issue and can give you the benefit of their experience as well. Thefirst is Mark Lane, one ofthe earliest researchers in this case who did tremendous ground-breaking work,recorded much of his work for posterity and has written extensively about thiscase.

Mark Lane: I remember coming here thirty-five years ago and there were no crowds on the grassy knoll.But now, after all of these years, although they have a museum over there onthe 6th Floor, which is a museum dedicated to a place where nothing happened.They don't have a plaque over here, on the grassy knoll, and they should.

Thirty-five years ago today the Dallas Morning News published a full page adwith the sarcastic heading: "Welcome To Dallas Mr. President," andthen went on to practically call him a communist and a trator. That was then.

Today's Dallas Morning News has an editorial: "Kennedy's Legacy - The Times Ripe For Idealism," with no references to him being a communist or atraitor. Now he's a great man. They'll tell us everything about John Kennedy,everything, except who killed him. Because look at the rest of the DallasMorning News, thirty-five years later, when every survey in America shows that75 to 95% of the people are convinced that there was a conspiracy to kill JohnKennedy, here we go in the guise of a book review in today's Dallas MorningNews: Oswald Alone Killed Kennedy, Oswald Alone Killed Tippit, One Man TwoMurders, they're sticking with the same story. I have but one word for theDallas Morning News:

Shame. Shame on you, you are discracing the city of Dallas,and it is not fair to do that.

I'll tell you where there should be plaques in this city. There were a number of brave, courageous residents of this city, longtime residents of Texas,who had the courage to speak the truth to power in the face of intimidation andthreats. Right over there was Jean Hill, and she's still there thirty-fiveyears later, one of the first to tell the truth that shots came from behindthat wooden fence. And they attacked her and ridiculed her. There should be aplaque over there commemorating her right on the spot where she is standing...

The Grassy Knoll should be called "Lee Bowers Memorial Park," therailroad bridge should be the Holland-Dode-Symmons Underpass - that's themonuments that should be named after the people of this state, people who hadthe courage to come forward with the truth, while the Dallas Morning News liedthirty-five years ago and continues to lie thirty-five years later.

This is the place where our leader was murdered. This is hollowed grown, andthe people of this country know it. It is supose to be the largest touristattraction in Dallas. There'speople here all the time, at the grassy knoll, nobody looks for the truth fromthe 6th floor of the Book Depository building, because the people of Americaknow the truth, even though the Dallas Morning News is unwilling to share theinformation with us.

That day in Dallas, in this city,at this location, when the government of the United States executed its own president, when thathappened, we as a nation, lost our code of honor, lost our sense of honor. Andit can only be restored when the government of the United States - and it willnot do it without us insisting, and marching and fighting and voting, andputting this matter on the agenda,...but when that day comes that thegovernment of the United States tells us the truth and all the factual detailsabout the assassination, including their role in the murder. When that daycomes, honor will be restored to this nation. Thank you.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is a member of the Board of Directors of COPA, amedical doctor from San Franciscowho has researched this issue and has written about it in the Journal of theAmerican Medical Association and the Columbia Journalism Review, Dr. GaryAgular.

Dr. Gary Agular: It's hard to follow such a powerful speaker as Mark Lane and I certainly can't hope to match hiseloquence, wit or command of this case, but what I can share with you isevidence...that autopsy photos are missing. This is something that you will notread in the Dallas Morning News, Time or Newsweek, but is something that isvery clearly established, the ARRB releases are very clear on the point, theautopsy pathologists have described autopsy photographs that are missing. Oneof them defiantly stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the House Select Committee onAssassinations, which was supposed to tell us the truth about theassassination...which not only did not report that, it wasn't released untilthe ARRB came along.

There is enormous evidence in the forensic, in the medical area alone thatindicates there was more assassin, but what is most shameful of all is thegovernment's willingness, even in subsequent investigations, to lie about thatevidence. Thank God there was an Assassinations Records Review Board, thank Godthey did the work they did, because now we no longer have to rely on governmentappointed authorities to tell us that we can trust the government's originalconclusions, because we know we can't.

We know they've destroyed evidence, not only in the medical-autopsy area, notonly among photographs, we know that witnesses have been intimated, and it isashame that you won't read about that. No credible journalist will touch thestory. It is a story not unlike the story of the CIAand crack cocaine, which led to the downfall of Gary Webb, before two volumesof the CIA Inspector's Report that confirmedmuch more than what Gary Webb even alleged about the CIA'scomplicity in the cocaine importation. But you won't read about that in theDallas Morning News. You barely get a small column about it in the New YorkTimes after they devote many, many column inches defamined journalists who talkabout the subject.

I think it is important that those of you who are here today continue to insistthat your government is accountable to you and does not conduct its operationsin secrecy, that it does not deny you the evidence that is collected in itsinvestigations and that it be as accountable to us as it insists we beaccountable to it.

I hope you will continue to work with us to force the government to beresponsible and admit the full truth about the assassination of PresidentKennedy.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is a member of the Board of Directors of COPA, aprofessor at Dartmouth, and theauthor of a number of books about the assassination, Dr. PhillipMelanson.

Dr. Phillip Melanson: Thank you. As we commemorate the 35th anniversary of thisterrible political tragedy that so negatively affected our lives, our policies,our political system and our faith in our own government, we should remindourselves that the tragedy of the President's assassination is compounded by aseparate but related tragedy - the failulre of our law enforcementinstitutions, the failure of our political institutions and the failure of themedia to affectively discover the truth of who killed President Kennedy and why.And until that happens, and it is never too late to find the truth if thecitizens demand it, and until that happens the original tragedy will becompounded like a bad political debt into the next millenieum, and the faith inour political system will continue to erode.

I think also the failure to come to grips with who killed President Kennedy andwhy is related to the other assassinations in the 1960s, and that's why MartinLuther King's is begging the Justice Department to look for justice in that case,and we hear from Siran's lawyer in the case of Robert Kennedy.

If we had come to terms with what happened here at Dealey Plaza, discovered the truth andadmitted it, the whole history of the 1960s would be different.

If the vast majority of the public believes this case is an unsolvedconspiracy, who are the minority in officialdom to deny us the truth and tocling to the lone-assassin theory like it was an absolute religion in the faceof overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Thank you.

Dan Alcorn: Our next speaker is an acclaimed author and professor of history atthe University of Maryland.His books include JFK and Vietnamand Oswald and the CIA, Dr. JohnNewman.

Dr. John Newman: I would like to say a few words about the media, and a coupleof new developments for all of you gathered here. When I come here at this timeof the year, I remember another place, a place connected to this place, andwithout the events that happened here, the other place would not exist, andthat's the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C.,which is like no other war memorial in the world. I've been to other warmemorials in Russia,China and Germany,and people frequent those memorials, they eat lunch there and talk and its anice place to be. I don't how many of you have been to the Vietnam War Memorialin Washington D.C., but nobody hangs out It's a very, very somber place becausethere's still something going on there, something deep, something that's stillin our psyche, and our culture and it connects directly to Dealey Plaza. And Ithink most people know that.

I'm not going to give a speech on the Vietnam War, but I think it is clear nowthat John F. Kennedy was on his way to pulling us out of Vietnam when he died,and the events that happened here catapulted us to that devistating debaclecalled the Vietnam War.

I'd like to echo what Mark Lanesaid about the media. I just heard that CNN this morning said that for thefirst time in all these years there were no events planned for Dealey Plaza on this day. So you are nothere, this gathering does not exist. Furthermore, the evening before last, noneother than Dan Rather, the major icon of the network television, made theannouncement that the Review Board had conducted this very large investigationand looked at all these millions of pages of documents and had discovered thatthe lone-nut hypothesis was true, which was attributed to Judge Tunheim. JudgeTunheim was here in Dallas andrefutes this story, and all of you who have followed this story know that theReview Board has taken no such position.

But it never ceases to amaze me how the media can twist and turn and obfuscateand block this mass movement to find the truth. Let me close by giving you afew examples of the information that is flowing out of these new files, and Ithink these are appropriate because of what happened here at Dealey Plaza. I am thinking particularlyof a tape recorded conversation between President Johnson and Senator Russell,one of the Warren Comissoners. At great length they were able to save thesituation and preserve the lone-nut hypothesis with that wonderful, sine quanon - CE399, the magic bullet that broke seven bones and came out prestine on astretcher.

The newly released tape is very interesting because Sen. Russell calls thePresident to explain to him what this single-bullet theory is, and at the endof it he says distinctly, "I don't believe a word of it." AndPresident Johnson said, "I don't either."

And I think that is appropriate thing to share with you the types of thingsthat are coming out of the files. Then there is the galley proofs of the WarrenReport where our estimed President Ford moved the bullet hole up, and these arethe types of things that are in the newly released documents, but themainstream media is not there to put them on page one.

Occasionally they get noted, but its like ships passing in the night. I amheartened to see by the turnout here today, that with respect to the Americanpeople, this is not passing in the night and I hope as we stand here today andthink about the events that happened here, we pass the torch to a youngergeneration, which we are doing, our movement and our desire for the truth inthis case carries on. Thank you very much.

Dan Alcorn: We are approaching the time in our program which is a memorial tothe events that happened here thirty-five years ago, so for that purpose I'dlike to introduce to you the executive secretary of COPA, a man who has devotedhimself for a number of years to working on the projects we have as an organization,but has also done his own independent research on the assassination. I thinkthat those who have had the experience of working with John Judge know of hisserious and sincere commitment to investigating the issues that are at stakehere and to his contribution that he has made to the the history of theinvestigation of the assassination. He has really been the heart and soul ofthe work we have done through COPA. He has put in a tremendous volunteer effortand sacrificed and suffered a great deal for the efforts he has made, whichhave gone largely uncompensated. So let me introduce to you the executivesecretary of COPA, John Judge.

John Judge: It is interesting to see such a large crowd. For the better part ofthe last 25 years, I have come out here every year, usually with only five orsix people, often in worse weather than this, with researcher and newspapereditor Penn Jones, who some of you know as having done work on the death of thewitnesses, who passed on this year.

From the inception of the national security and military-intelligence state inthe late 1940s, the history of this country has been a commodity that has beenowned by that state. The people who don't own their own history are a conqueredpeople.

Much of the effort I put in has to do with the idea of taking our own historyback, of owning it ourselves, since much is still locked up in governmentvaults and hidden from us and we are really the only ones who can restore it.35 years ago, in my view, there was a coup d'etat here in Dealey Plaza, and the government has notrecovered in any significant way, towards democracy, since that day. Kennedybegan to represent for many people, hope and change and a response from the toplevel of government to the popular movements at the time for civil rights, forarms limitations, for an end to the Cold War, and Kennedy was responding topopular movements in a way that presidents after him rarely have. So what wasassassinated here that day was not just a particular man or a particular president,but a sense of hope by the American people. And I think that the government haslet us know over the years, fairly consistently, that they did kill thepresident, and they killed him from a very high level, and that if they cankill the president and get away with it that they can kill anyone of us thatthey would like to and that we should sit down and shut up and get out of theway.

But I'm hoping that there is enough decency left in people in America, and Isee evidence of that all the time, that we can understand that there are moreof us, and that we can think, and we can take back our own democracy, if wewant it.

It is now 12:30, and 35 years agoPresident Kennedy was assassinated here, so lets have a moment of silence.

[Two minutes of silence]

Thank you.

Peter Dale Scott, a researcher who could not be with us here today, sent ane-mail in which he said a few interesting things. He said that we've come intoa new era in that one of the major tasks ahead of us right now is to focus ongetting the government documents that are still locked up on the Martin LutherKing assassination. The other thing he noted was a government statute thatmakes it illegal for a citizen of this country to lie to the government, and hesuggested that a similar statute be passed that would make it illegal for thegovernment to lie to its people.

I hope you will take this topic seriously and continue to act to get the fullrelease of the files and to get the truth, and you are welcome to join us atCOPA in fulfilling the remainder of our agenda and what is to be done in thefuture. You are welcome to join us and take your democracy back.

Dan Alcorn: We have a few other speakers here, including former FBI agentWilliam Turner, whose books have been translated into Russian, German,Japanese, French and Spanish. He is currently working on a new book entitled:"Rearview Mirror - Looking back at the FBI, CIAand Other Tails.

William Turner: Thank you Dan. It's been exactly 35 years ago and two days thatI came here on assignment for a national magazine to do an article on thebreakdown in security that resulted in the assassination being successful. Iwas assigned to it because of my background as a former FBI agent. I can tellyou that when I arrived the mood was really somber, the floodlights were on,reporters from all over the world were converging, people had left floralwreaths along the curbstone where the shooting took place, and it was veryerry. The headquarters of the Dallas Police Department was a feeding frenzy ofreporters trying to find out what happened. I was on a very tight deadline, Icould only contend with the security breakdown issue at the time, which wasthat Oswald had worked as an informant for the FBI and that was the reason theyhad not furnished his name to the Secret Service prior to the presidentialvisit.

One thing I remember was talking to a Dallaspatrolman named Malcolm Eugene Barnett who had been posted in front of theSchool Book Depository for crowd control at the time of the assassination. Hetold me that a women came running from the grassy knoll who told him that shotswere fired from here. That being the case, I became very critical of the WarrenCommission and when it's report came out I read it and realized it was prettymuch a fairy tale. I am proud to say that I was associated with DistrictAttorney Jim Garrison in New Orleanswho tried to reopen the investigation into the assassination. Jim was a greatAmerican and was on the trail of the assassins, as his book says, when he wasdestroyed by the media at the Clay Shaw trial. The Garrison investigation pavedthe way for what we know today, and I believe that we know to a good degree ofjournalistic certitude what happened.

First the motives were piling up, John Kennedy had supposidly with held aircover for the Bay of Pigs, motive number one. JohnKennedy had failed to invade Cubaduring the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962, motive number two. JohnKennedy had promised to withdraw from Vietnam,motive number three. Motive number four is that John Kennedy, at the time hewas assassinated, was on a second track, which was to secretly carry onnegotiations with Cubato bring about a detente. These motives piled up to the point where it becamenecessary to assassinate him. And I think it is very obvious with thecompilation of information that we have today that the whole mechanism of itcame out of the allegiance between the CIAand the rabid Cuban exiles and the Mafia, who already had an assassinationapparatus set up to kill Castro. They switched targets and hit Kennedy.

And I hope you will join us, in recognizing the significance of the events thathappened here, and try to do something about it. Thank you.

Hal Verb: The saying on the wall at the CIA:"Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free," is wrong. Whenyou know the truth, the truth makes you MAD!"

Biography: http://educationforu...?showtopic=5214

http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/

Edited November 27, 2011 by William Kelly

[Duke Lane]

The Event That Didn't Happen. ....

This year's non-event was the Moment of Silence ... just talked right through it!

[William Kelly]

The Event That Didn't Happen. ....

This year's non-event was the Moment of Silence ... just talked right through it!

They talk through it all the time. The year Jesse Ventura was there they talked through it.

Somebody usually has a microphone and loud speaker system and even though John Judge has the permit for the event,

he can't be heard when he wants to.

It's a soap box and everybody has something to say.

The year I recorded it was the best I've been to, and I probably won't go back.

There's no need to.

BK

JFKcountercoup

If I could have five minutes to say something, this is what I would have said:

48 Years Gone

JFK 48 Years Gone

The American public's confidence in their government is now at an all time low,a decline that began in November 1963 with the assassination of President Kennedy, an event that sparked the steady decline that was buttressed by Watergate, Iran-Contra, Whitewater,9/11, the invasion of Iraq and now the economy. Just as the economic crisis won't be rectified untilits root causes are recognized, addressed and resolved, the decline in publicconfidence in government won't ever be fully abated until key issues about theassassination are resolved to a legal and moral certainty.

With a new Congress and an administration pledged to open government and full transparency we should expect the expedited release of all the government's JFKassassination records and a national security review of what really happened atDealey Plazathat day. Congress had previously sealed their assassination records for fifty years because that was the length of time that they estimated the people mentioned inthe records would be dead. Now that these records are released early, there isstill a window of opportunity to properly interview these witnesses for therecord. Although you may say that it is too late to determine the total truthor seek justice through the legal system, in the eyes of the law the murder ofPresident Kennedy is still an unresolved homicide, and there is a statistical probability that some of the witnesses are still alive. We know they are.

At the very least the living witnesses should be interviewed under oath and onthe record, either as part of a Congressional hearing or a grand juryinvestigation, and at least an attempt should be made to try to answer as manyof the outstanding questions as possible. The government records relatedto the assassination that remain classified are still sealed for reasons ofnational security. When President Kennedy was killed, it was a matter of national security to keep details of the assassination secret from the public,but now, forty-five years later, it is a matter of national security that theybe released and released in full.

Congress should hold oversight hearings on the JFK Act, as they are required.As Congress passed the Emmet Till Bill, which provides funding for and establishesa permanent Task Force designated to investigate and prosecute unresolved cold case civil rights murders of the fifties, sixties and seventies, they should includesome of the political assassinations of that era.

The life of the president and our form of government is threatened because the assassination of President Kennedy remains unresolved, and only by solving them to a legal and moral certainty can our future be secured.

Besides the hope brought by a new administration and expected Congressional efforts, there is a new DA in Dallas who has already released JFK assassination records that his predecessors had collected and failed to provide to the JFK Assassinations Records Review Board. While his office has also released dozens of prisoners whose convictions were overturned on DNA evidence, the actual perpetrators of those crimes still go free, just as those who killed JFK were never really even pursued. In the course of re-investigating the still unsolved cold case homicides, theDallas DA would have to re-examine the case of Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit, a murder that can be solved today, and resolution ofthat case could provide new evidence in the assassination of the President,since they are said to be related.

The assassination of President Kennedy may have occurred 48 years ago, but itis more significant today than at any time since it happened, a new relevance based on the historic circumstances of the day and the ideals of a new President, whose ability to serve and survive may rest on the secrets of Dealey Plaza.

The President is not secure today, our national security is still compromisednow, and our democracy will remain threatened until all the government records on the assassination of President Kennedy are released and the outstanding questions are resolved. Something that can and must happen.

BK

Edited November 29, 2011 by William Kelly