Greatest Mystery of All Time

[Christopher T. George]

Hi all

This arose in the "Dallas in 2013" thread begun by Roger Fong but I thought it deserved its own thread.

The Kennedy assassination is the greatest murder mystery of all time. And like a great mystery novel that you can snuggle up to each night, I'm not ready for it to end. Besides, I'm a little apprehensive that the denouement will be a disappointment. The journey may turn out to be more satisfying than the destination.

Roger

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Hi Roger

Well I still believe the identity of Jack the Ripper is the greatest mystery of all time, but that's just according to my own predelictions. Will JFK's murder ever be solved? Just like the case of Jack, perhaps not. Actually here are the cases of TWO JACKS that probably will not be solved. Inasmuch though as the JFK murder probably involved a conspiracy, and Jack the Ripper most likely involved a conspiracy of ONE, I think the JFK murder might be more likely to be solved, and perhaps in our lifetime.

All my best

Chris

[Roger Fong]

Chris,

I don't know much about Jack the Ripper, but I've spent years studying the Kennedy case and I still consider myself a beginner. Has there ever been a case with so many suspects, so many plots and sub-plots, so many red herrings? No novelist would dare construct a story line that is this convoluted.

Roger

[Nic Martin]

I have a slight interest in Jack the Ripper ( I adore Casebook.org, and recently read "The Complete History of Jack The Ripper," ) and while it is a mystery in that there's not really any widely-accepted suspects, the Kennedy assassination links so. many. people.

Mafia. CIA. FBI. ONI. Secret Service. Cubans. Communists. New Orleans. Washington DC. Miami. Dallas. Former Presidents of the United States.

With Jack The Ripper, there's really no one solid suspect that everyone agrees HAD to be the Ripper - with the Kennedy assassination, there's at least a thousand suspects and everyone believes something different.

Both cases are insanely great mysteries, but I have to agree - while several authors could dream up a story about a brutal serial killer leaving no suspects, I don't know of any that could dream up the Kennedy assassination with it's assorted cast of characters.

[Stan Wilbourne]

gone

Edited March 6, 2010 by Stan Wilbourne

[Tim Gratz]

Roger wrote:

I don't know much about Jack the Ripper, but I've spent years studying the Kennedy case and I still consider myself a beginner. Has there ever been a case with so many suspects, so many plots and sub-plots, so many red herrings? No novelist would dare construct a story line that is this convoluted.

Good point, Roger. I suspect some of the "red herrings" were planted by the conspirators but some of them must be some of us attaching significance to events that are no more than co-incidences.

"So many suspects" is a good point as well. The surfeit of suspects, all with arguable motives, is one reason why motive alone is insufficient to "indict" someone as part of the conspiracy.

[John Simkin]

Has there ever been a case with so many suspects, so many plots and sub-plots, so many red herrings? No novelist would dare construct a story line that is this convoluted.

Two of the key suspects, David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt, were/sre novelists. Both had a long history of working for the CIA in creating black propoganda. (They first worked together on this, along with David Morales and Rip Robertson, in Guatemala to overthrow President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954). To understand the JFK conspiracy you need to understand how the minds of these CIA operatives worked. It is no coincidence that Phillips and Hunt went on to become novelists. Why waste all that creativity.

[Pat Speer]

Two of the key suspects, David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt, were/sre novelists. Both had a long history of working for the CIA in creating black propoganda. (They first worked together on this, along with David Morales and Rip Robertson, in Guatemala to overthrow President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954). To understand the JFK conspiracy you need to understand how the minds of these CIA operatives worked. It is no coincidence that Phillips and Hunt went on to become novelists. Why waste all that creativity.

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It's also intriguing that William F. Buckley, Hunt's protege in the CIA, went on to write spy novels, whilst simultaneously producing the right-wing bible-the National Review. It makes one wonder if Buckley's whole world view, the blueprint of sixties through eighties conservatism, was a deliberate creation designed to excite and titilate the easily fooled.

[JL Allen]

The probable subject of a novel rather than it's author - hardly anyone fills the bill as one of the potential architects better than Edward Lansdale - who seems to have been devoted to the devising of the most bizarre, incomprehensible covert plots and operations throughout his entire career.

It was such a huge and energetic enterprise though - it seems like it began to unravel at almost all of it's fringes and edges soon after it had taken place. Only our willingness to accept so many changes, alterations, alibis and excuses in the retelling of the story allowed them to succeed. In it's raw state - it was riddled with glaring inconsistencies and mistakes. Far from any kind of perfect murder, it was a sinister contraption continuously patched together as it limped along on the road to the future.

[Christopher T. George]

Has there ever been a case with so many suspects, so many plots and sub-plots, so many red herrings? No novelist would dare construct a story line that is this convoluted.

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Two of the key suspects, David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt, were/sre novelists. Both had a long history of working for the CIA in creating black propoganda. (They first worked together on this, along with David Morales and Rip Robertson, in Guatemala to overthrow President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954). To understand the JFK conspiracy you need to understand how the minds of these CIA operatives worked. It is no coincidence that Phillips and Hunt went on to become novelists. Why waste all that creativity.

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Hi John

The fact that David Atlee Phillips and E. Howard Hunt went on to become novelists is interesting but not conclusive no more than William F. Buckley or Gary Hart writing their novels, or thinking that Edgar Allan Poe was a murderer because he wrote mystery or horror stories. Or that Walter Sickert was Jack the Ripper because he did a painting or two of a murder scene or of a woman on a bed that might have looked vaguely like the last canonical victim, Mary Jane Kelly, found murdered in bed in her room at 13 Miller's Court. The trouble with the case of the Whitechapel murders just as with the JFK assassination, it seems to me, is that there is too much information, and the overwhelming wealth of information, red herrings, and blind alleys help to mask the truth.

Best regards

Chris George

[Jim Root]

Everybody has their pet theories and I am no different. For myself I have studied the life of Edwin Walker and am surprized by how many of the key people surrounding Kennedy he was associated with.

Over the past several months I have been able to piece a great deal of information together about a man named John B. Hurt who is loosely associated to Walker and more closely associated to Maxwell Taylor (perhaps just a coincidence). I became aware of this John B. Hurt years ago and have been intrigued by the possibility that he was the man Lee Harvey Oswald attempted to call, while in custody, the night of the assassination of JFK.

Within the last several months I have learned a great deal about this man and think that possibly he could be a key to learning more about the assassination. The fact that he continued to work for the NSA and retired just a few months before the assassination may explain why, if he was Oswalds contact, Oswald was unable to locate the John Hurt that he in fact attempted to contact. Hurt worked with a very small group of cryptologist that borke the Japanese codes before and during WWII. The leader of this original 5 man team was William Friedman and it was his founding group that the NSA was created from.....leaving Hurt as a major caracter in the creation of the NSA.......Coincidence?

In the past few weeks I received a copy of a document that had been classified for some 48 years. Within its contents there is a strange series of decoded messages from late 1942. On the surface it would seem to be just an example of work that had been accomplished long ago by John B. Hurt. Where I am shocked is that I had read and seen reference made to these same messages in books such as the Puzzle Palace, etc. that then go on to reference the Venona Project (the work to break Soviet codes).

In the second half of 1942 some forward thinking members of the Japanese diplomatic corp realized that after the Battle of Midway Japan would never win the war with the US. They began making overtures to various governments in an attempt to create an atmosphere for a negotiated peace. The US was monitoring these attempt messages and apparently Hurt was a major player (based on the declassified document that he wrote). John J. McCloy, as Asst. Sec. of War was the man who was overseeing these developments as we monitored the Japanese messages. The Japanese attempted (since they were not at war with Russia) to negotiate a sepearate peace between Russia and Germany....believing that if Germany did not have to contend with Russia the allies would be more inclined to negotiate a peace with Japan.

The fear of a Russian/German seperate peace created a strong desire for the US to break and begin to understand the Russian Codes. Two players within the US Government, later to be on the Warren Commission, Asst. Sec. of War John J. McCloy and OSS Bern Station Chief Allen Dulles became intimately involved with problem which became known as the Venona Project (which began with the same messages that are discribed by John B. Hurt in his papers).

So now, just by coincidence, we can associate Warren Commissioners John J. McCloy and Allen Dulles, assassination target Edwin Walker and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Maxwell Davenport Taylor (all) with one John B. Hurt. We also know that Lee Harvey Oswald attempted to make a phone call to a John Hurt, unsuccessfully, using information to find the John Hurt that he was looking for.

Oswald went to Russia. All the names listed above could/would have been associated with an organization created in part to break Russian codes, the NSA. Oswald was associated with the U-2, one of which was shot down on May 1, 1960.

One of the key elements of breaking the Japanese Military Code just before the battle of Midway was creating the need for the Japanese to send information about Midway that the US Cryptologist knew would be sent. This information would then be followed, providing the necessary key to breaking the code. Imagine for a moment.....the order to shoot at a US spy plane would have to come from a high level of command. If the NSA could follow the complete chain of command to knock down a U-2 would we gain a great deal of intelligence knowledge?

But then, Lee Harvey Oswald would have been an intelligence asset known within only the highest levels of government....including perhaps two Warren Commissioners. Ah, nevermind, to far fetched.....only a spy novel could create such a story!

Just thoughts

Jim Root

[Christopher T. George]

Hi Jim

The strands of information that you laid out are all interesting and intriguing. I would like to think that the line of enquiry you are following will help to solve the mystery of the Kennedy assassination. Good luck to you in your further investigation.

Chris

[Carrie Gallagher-Driscoll]

Wow! I have to say that I haven't thought about the connection between novelists and the assassination. Though there will always be those that choose to write about what they know. Had I seen " I going to whack JFK in Dallas" by E. Howard Hunt I might think twice. Heh- but I would say it's all just people writing about what they know. I couldn't see Hoover writing a cook book. I wouldn't buy it anyway. Might find teh Castro Espiciale. But, I do have to say that all of you are VERY thorough because honestly, now that I think about it, the writing is a common thread. I guess I've always looked at the black and white and you guys have ventured into the grey area. The thing is, that's where the truth lies. Nothing this twisted, dramatic, tragic and enthralling. Who needs All My Children when we can crack a history book.

Thanks for the nugget for thought!

-Carrie

[James Richards]

Another author amongst our crowd of suspects was Robert Emmett Johnson. He didn't compose books but he did write several articles.

One of these was published in a 1968 edition of True Magazine and was titled, 'I Stuck Pins In A Voodoo Dictator'. It's an interesting piece with some curious names involved.

If anyone is interested in reading the article, email me and I will figure a way to send the text.

James

[Guest Stephen Turner]

. The trouble with the case of the Whitechapel murders just as with the JFK assassination, it seems to me, is that there is too much information, and the overwhelming wealth of information, red herrings, and blind alleys help to mask the truth.

Best regards

Chris George

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Hi Chris, I guess being honest, part of what attracts me to both these cases is the chance to be part of solving a great mystery. But I am also motivated by the concept of justice, both for the victims, and for those falsly accused of these terrible crimes.I also believe it does not matter whether you are a Whitechapel doxy, or the president of the U S, you have an inalienable right to your life..

[Christopher T. George]

.  The trouble with the case of the Whitechapel murders just as with the JFK assassination, it seems to me, is that there is too much information, and the overwhelming wealth of information, red herrings, and blind alleys help to mask the truth.

Best regards

Chris George

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Hi Chris, I guess being honest, part of what attracts me to both these cases is the chance to be part of solving a great mystery. But I am also motivated by the concept of justice, both for the victims, and for those falsly accused of these terrible crimes.I also believe it does not matter whether you are a Whitechapel doxy, or the president of the U S, you have an inalienable right to your life..

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Hi Stephen

I certainly agree with your sentiments. It is nice to see that with the work of Neil Shelden and others the victims of the Whitechapel murders are getting their moment to shine in the sun with new information coming out as well as photographs (the latter at least in the case of Annie Chapman).

Chris