Benjamin Cole

I am interested in compiling a list of well-connected US figures, or on-the-scene professionals (Secret Service, technicians at the autopsy) who thought WC fell down on the job, but not researchers and journalists, though the latter two categories are important. Evidently, Vincent P. has compiled such a list.

Gaddafi, well....not sure he was clued in on the JFKA.

Ron B. Thanks for your comment. It may be that the Morales, Harvey, Dulles and Angleton believed the WC was "horse dooky," but did they ever say so? Angleton made the "wilderness of mirrors" comment, but that is vague. I have always had reservations about Nagel. Trust but verify as they say. BTW, you have heaped calumny on the useful "horse dooky," an excellent fertilizer, by comparing it to the WC.

James D.-- Thanks. I will take a look.

Tony K: As far as I can tell, the Z-film entirely vindicates Connally. 1. JFK puts his hands toward his throat ~224 2. Then Connally turns to his right to look at JFK, makes a 180-degree turn in his seat. JFK has slumped to the left, towards Jackie. 3. Connally, unable to see JFK, starts turning around forward, then is struck ~296 4. Then the head shot(s) 313. That is 17 frames between Connally and the JFK being struck, in a camera that shoots at 18 frames per second. Obviously, the single-shot bolt-action rifle cannot answer to the situation. Great find on the Sibert quote. Far from being conspiracy nuts, right from the start, despite extraordinary pressure, there were many high and connected who doubted the WC. You are right, Sibert falls into this category.

Tony K-- Thanks for reading and your comment. On Sibert and O'Neill, do you have a cite? They said something was fishy, and they thought JFK's head showed signs of surgery prior to arriving in the Bethesda, although they are not surgeons. What is curious is the number of very close witnesses who say three separate shots hit JFK, Connally, JFK...and then say LHO did it alone. The three SS men in the follow car to the JFK limo all say that. But, that does not add up. A single shot bolt-action rifle cannot accomplish that, in the time allowed.

Chris B- Thanks for reading and your response. Ralph Yarborough is a good one. You have a cite on Nixon? E. Howard Hunt? I know of his late-life confession, but that has been sketchy. I am less interested in a Larry King type. He is well-connected (was), but not to the JFKA in particular. Of course, Cuban intelligence did their own investigation, and they say it was Hemininio Garcia and Eladio Del Valle.

Hello Everyone: I am thinking of a very simple idea, that I hope someone did before. If not, I ask help in compiling this list. It is a simple list, possibly with just brief paragraph each, of the "high" or "connected" people, such as Robert Kennedy, Hale Boggs, Richard Russell, Sherman Cooper, even LBJ, John Connally and his wife, David Atlee Phillips, and so on, who did not really believe the conclusions of the WC. I guess we could add Robert Blakely, as he concluded there had been a conspiracy in the JFKA. I heard that Curtis E. LeMay called the JFKA "a CIA job." George Burkley, JFK's doctor. The three Secret Service men in the follow car all said three separate bullets struck JFK, then Connally, then JFK, and said so in a Sixth Floor Museum taped session. Various people at the JFK autopsy. Anyway, that's it. I have seen so many names over the years, but I never cataloged the names, and I wonder if anyone else has.

I think that's right. I am puzzled why so much time is spent on this issue. I think the driver exhibited a normal human reaction. I happen to think there were at least two gunmen in Dealey Plaza that day.

Paul Rigby---I tend to Josiah Thompson on this one, but I am open-minded, and Doug Horne is a serious researcher. But the buyer of the film was LIFE magazine, operating under Henry Luce. A made man, so to speak. Surely, CIA could have asked for a few more days, or even a week, due to "national security reasons" to delay shipping the film to Luce & Co. So...was there really a rush?

Verily! Thanks Adam Johnson, and top of the day to you.

"On 28th August, 1964, Belmont received a memo that suggested that the Warren Commission had doubts about the authenticity of the palm print found on the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle: "J. Lee Rankin advised because of the circumstances that now exist there was a serious question in the minds of the Commission as to whether or not the palm print impression that has been obtained from the Dallas Police Department is a legitimate latent print impression removed from the rifle barrel or whether it was obtained from some other source." However, Belmont was able to persuade members of the committee to accept the authenticity of the palm print." ----Spartacus I assume this is not the memo of which you speak, as it is from Aug. 28 1964. Have you a copy of the the Belmont memo of 11/22/63? What did it say?

Lawrence S.---That's roughly my take too. Although it should be noted that serious JFKA researcher John Newman posits the CIA had an operational interest in LHO back to 1959, and then was biography-building LHO for a year in front of the JFKA. This biography-building would have been beyond the ken of Cuban exiles, the Mob, etc., and had to have been directed by higher-ups in CIA. No sign Lansdale was involved. My guess is David Atlee Phillips was hatching a false-flag fake JFKA, with LHO as the willing patsy. The plan leaked and someone piggy-backed on the plan, perhaps Eladio Del Valle and Herminio Diaz Garcia. I suspect the post-JFKA cover-up included CIA higher-ups, and indeed included the effective hiring of the Mob (Jack Ruby) to make sure LHO did not talk. Anyway, that's my best guess. As usual, I posit any serious conspiracy to assassinate a US president would have had a very limited number of participants.

W. Tracy P--Thanks for reading, and I will tap your services as a proofreader in the future!

There is film for free now on YouTube, the 2013 effort by Irish author and movie-maker Shane O'Sullivan, entitled "Killing Oswald." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i0M22fUKzk&t=3093s So you guys need some fresh meat to tear into, and here is a film review: Killing Oswald In the range of films and literature made about the JFKA, the film Killing Oswald (2013) by Shane O’Sullivan is not bad, but seriously stumbles in presentation, content and tone. Slickly and even cleverly made by documentary standards, one could have wished the effort went the extra mile, or found better advisers. But at least Killing Oswald it is not in the Lone Nutters abyss, and for small favors we can be thankful. Despite some strengths, Killing Oswald starts off on its left foot, presenting the otherwise highly intelligent author and historian David Kaiser as a knowledgeable JFKA authority figure. “Otherwise,” because for reasons that baffle, Kaiser in 2008 authored The Road to Dallas, a book that posits the Mob somehow hoodwinked Lee Harvey Oswald into shooting the president, all by himself. And indeed, early in Killing Oswald “the Mob did it” angle gets a lot a credence, as related by Kaiser, who cites Robert Blakey, the chief counsel (19767-8) of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Blakey was a veteran mob-hunter who suspected the Mob in the JFKA, and said so during his days at the HSCA. It should be noted in his later years Blakey realized he had been bamboozled by the CIA, and publicly said so (to his credit). After Killing Oswald stumbles out of the gate, then the jockey fall off the horse: Almost breezily, Kaiser dismisses the substantial work of Mark Lane and Oliver Stone as a pair who seize on on “any discrepancy in the evidence as proof of a conspiracy and cover-up.” Kaiser then sanctimoniously places himself and other sensible people as between recondite extremists on the JFKA who are either 1) conspiracy-addled or 2) lone-nutter freaks. Egads. Lane’s book and film Rush to Judgement (1967) stands tall to this day on the merits, and moreover, Lane trudged cross-country with clunky camera equipment and old-fashioned celluloid to record for posterity, in their own words, what actual witnesses had to say about the JFKA. In Rush to Judgement, one can watch an actual witness such as railroad-worker Sam Holland, and take the measure of the man. Lane’s work was not mere cinematography, it was history, and provides unvarnished testimony. No one doubts Josiah “Tink” Thompson, but imagine how much stronger the effect would be if Thompson had filmed Parkland personal director O.P. Wright that the bullet found near a hospital gurney on Nov. 22, and later presented as CE-399, the very bullet that passed through JFK and then Connally, was not the slug O.P Wright had held in his hand on Nov. 22. And Oliver Stone may have taken some artistic license with the JFKA in his film, but his contributions again tower, and have led to The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which has helped pry documents from the federal government’s grasp that illuminate not only the JFKA but that period of history. Kaiser should pay contrite homage to Lane and Stone, not peevishly snipe. Why Killing Oswald starts with Kaiser leading the way is unfathomable. Kaiser is unabashed however, and digs his hole deeper by subscribing to the extremely dubious “single bullet” theory of the JFKA. But as the Zapruder film rather clearly shows, Governor John Connally reacts to a separate gunshot from the one that apparently struck JFK in the neck. (To me, this is the most simple and indisputable evidence of more than one gunman). Between Connally’s reaction to being struck by a bullet, and the subsequent fatal shot to Kennedy (frames ~290 to 313), is a little more than one second, or not enough time to have been executed by a single-shot bolt-action rifle. That’s just for beginners, among many other reasons why there were at least two guns in Dealey Plaza that day. Of course, JFK also appears to have been violently bashed to his left and back in the shooting, as if he received a blow from the direction of the Grassy Knoll. Beyond that, the connections between LHO and the Mob are sketchy as best, and involve LHO’s uncle-by-marriage Charles “Dutz” Murrett. Evidently Murrett operated in the world of New Orleans boxing and gambling, and was mobbed up. So what? This is the flimsiest sort of guilt-by-association. Kaiser essentially posits that LHO mother’s sister married a mobbed-up fellow, and that means LHO was mobbed up and the Mob did it? If we could choose our relatives…. In vast contrast, thanks to the work of long-time and serious JFK researcher John Newman and others, it is clear the CIA and other intel agencies had an operational interest in LHO that extended back as far as 1959. To be sure, Killing Oswald recovers its footing a bit when the documentary interviews Newman, who relates in several segments the CIA’s sustained interest in LHO. Indeed, Newman goes so far as to say elements within the CIA were biography-building LHO with dread purpose before the JFK assassination for many months, perhaps for even a year. Newman, shockingly, then all but says elements in the CIA planned the JFKA, and manipulated the events that defined LHO, such as leaf-letting in New Orleans, his radio appearances, and the LHO visits to the Cuban and Russian embassies Mexico City. (My own suspicion is the CIA, and CIA Chief of Western Operations David Atlee Phillips, planned a false-flag fake assassination attempt on JFK, with LHO as the participant shooter who misses. The plan was piggybacked on by other elements, CIA assets, who implemented the plan but in earnest, with a ready-made patsy in LHO. Likely, then CIA higher-ups authorized the Mob to bring in Dallas mobster Jack Ruby to provide the title to Killing Oswald, in exchange for favors not known.) Viewers Adrift The intelligent-but-uninformed viewer of Killing Oswald is thus left stranded, not sure if the initial “Mob did it, tricked Oswald into being patsy” version holds water, or whether it was the CIA that planned and then executed the JFK hit, or some other narrative. Adding to foggy schizophrenia, late in Killing Oswald, Kaiser fleetingly introduces the character John Martino, an anti-Castro militant who has sketchy Mob and CIA links. But how Martino ties into LHO is left a blank. Martino made claims that he was involved in a visit of LHO to Cuba shortly before the JFKA, but the assertion floats in the air, unverified in any way, and indeed seems unlikely. Martino also said he had a tertiary support role in the actual assassination. Again, the Killing Oswald viewer is left adrift, like a diner at an uncertain buffet without a menu, and where the restauranteur has great flair but no conviction in his fare. Dead Ends There are some dead ends in Killing Oswald, such as the interviews of Dick Russell, who relates the strange tale of Richard Nagel, the Korean War hero who once worked in military intel, suffered brain injuries and also seems to have become consumed by inner devils. Russell is a tremendous and earnest author, but Nagel has never really panned out, and in the context of Killing Oswald, his story just clouds the waters. Too much of the Nagel story relies on Nagel’s word. The ever-murky Silvio Odio episode is revived, in which she claims that LHO and two men visited her in October, 1963, about the time LHO was in Mexico City. Yes, if true that means LHO was impersonated in Mexico City since he could not be in two places at the same time, and also that LHO had pals in the anti-Castro movement. But there is plenty of indisputable evidence of LHO involved with anti-Castro people in New Orleans, and Odio’s claim may be one of mistaken identity. The Nagel and Odio stories are not verifiable, and not necessary to the construction of a compelling JFKA narrative. The Cloying Oswald Actor In addition, Killing Oswald relies on too many re-enactments, in which an actor plays the Oswald character, who sometimes reads from letters, diary entries, political treatises, and so on. Some scenes, such as Oswald at the Cuban embassy in Mexico City, are also re-enacted. The character Oswald quickly becomes cloying in these scenes, especially in what are effectively soliloquies. Killing Oswald does not indicate that many of these LHO writings may have been intended for official consumption, such as letters home from Russia, or indeed may have been part of a biography-building program. Moreover, like many young people LHO may have been wandering for his political bearings, so to speak. We all know former liberals who become libertarians, and vice versa. Ultimately, LHO’s writings are largely inconsequential, but unfortunately, within the context of Killing Oswald, they suggest LHO was a true-blue communist who one day acted on his urges. Another failing is Killing Oswald’s treatment of the pot-shot taken at General Edwin Walker in Dallas in April, 1963. The documentary more or less takes at face value the cover story that LHO did it, and intended lethality. A worthy moment in Killing Oswald are the old newsreels of the window sill that deflected the shot as it entered Walker’s home; as seen in Killing Oswald, the sill is struck on the underside. Indeed, the window sill deflected the shot downwards, per DPD reports. Yet the shot, fired from perhaps 30 yards away, missed the seated Walker on the high side, so much so that Walker told the DPD he initially was unaware he had been shot at, and thought a firecracker had been tossed into the house by local youths. Here the Harvard historian Kaiser outdoes himself, first by revealing he does not like to read primary materials like DPD reports, and then by musing if only LHO had shown the lack of resolve on Nov. 22 that he had shown in targeting Walker in April, history would be different. The far more likely explanation, that LHO was on a CIA-sponsored biography-building mission in his missed pot-shot at Walker, had assistance at the scene, and that LHO missed intentionally, does not seem to dawn on Kaiser, or the Killing Oswald filmmakers. Other missing elements A single documentary cannot capture everything about the JFKA, and so we might forgive that Killing Oswald does not examine the lengthy and persistent cover-up of the JFKA, exemplified by such issues at the ersatz CE 399, the “magic bullet” now debunked, and almost certainly introduced into the evidentiary record by the FBI. Nevertheless, if the JFKA had been a Mob or Cuban-revenge hit, or just a nut-job assassination, there would be little stopping the federal government from a solid investigation. Instead, we got the Warren Commission and media complicity, the purpose of which was to obfuscate and pacify. This elementary truth was not addressed by Killing Oswald, and yet the cover-up is an excellent indicator of a foul, underlying truth. Even the feeble under-financed HSCA investigation, bungled by Chief Counsel Blakey, concluded there had been a conspiracy to assassinate JFK—and yet HSCA staffers bitterly complained about the lack of CIA cooperation. By simple deduction, the CIA and federal government have something to hide. Given that deduction, then Mob, or Cuban-revengers, or lone-nut JFKA scenarios lose traction. Bright Spots Killing Oswald does have many bright spots, including clips of LHO’s erstwhile friend, the ever-mysterious George De Mohrenschildt, gifted with a vague, deep Teutonic-Eastern European accent reeking of intrigue. De Mohrenschildt steals the show with his line that the establishment says a lunatic shot JFK, then a lunatic shot the lunatic LHO, and that the New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, conducting a 1968 investigation into the JFKA, is lunatic too. “It is extremely insulting for the United States, this assumption that there are so many lunatics here,” says De Mohrenschildt. The old black-and-white clips of President Kennedy, particularly in small interview settings, are painful to watch, so thoughtful, well-spoken, intelligent and measured is the president. What has happened to the nation that could find a JFK in 1960, but now finds a Trump, and Bush Jr. or a Biden? Anti-Castro warrior and CIA-asset Antonio Veciana is introduced, and makes his claim that he met LHO in the company of Maurice Bishop, aka David Atlee Phillips, in Dallas in September 1963. A curiosity of Killing Oswald is researcher Newman identifies Phillips as the likely CIA higher-up handling LHO. But today Newman darkly suggests Veciana’s relations with Phillips are at least partly falsified, and the infamous LHO-Phillips-Veciana meeting never happened. Joan Mellon makes a few appearances in Killing Oswald, to lesser effect but always fun to watch, but she gets ensnarled in a confusing story about an Angelo Murgado (Kennedy) that does not move Killing Oswald forward. Mellon would have been far better deployed in explaining how the CIA gut-knifed Garrison while stabbing him in the back with planted agents on his staff—all with media complicity. A section on how the CIA, Washington establishment and a complicit media torpedoed Richard Sprague, the first HSCA counsel, would have been worthy as well. And of course, what is a JFKA documentary without James DiEugenio? Killing Oswald needed narrative assistance and guidance, and DiEugenio, with his encyclopedic knowledge, could have provided it. It says something about the genre that with all of the flaws mentioned above (and many more, but this review is too long already), Killing Oswald is still one of the better treatments of the JFKA on film, and fun to watch.

Yeah, E. Howard Hunt. That guy told William Buckley that he (Hunt) would have murdered columnist Jack Anderson if the order had come down from the Nixon White House. Murder a newspaperman? Not even a spy? I surmise there is a lot of sick braggadocio around the JFKA, with creeps-R-us saying they had a hand in it. Who knows?

BTW, I am not here to say Lansdale was a nice guy. Only that he wanted to pursue the Vietnam War in a much more low-key manner. But the guy would authorize assassinations, and pushing human beings out of helicopters. My view is the US should have never gotten involved in any way in Vietnam.

Well, John Newman says he is working on it. It really seems LHO was a CIA asset. I guess you could posit the CIA brought in the muscle from the military side. Seems dangerous to do...chances of a leak. I think anyone in CIA planning the assassination of the US President would operate with but a very tight handful of men, not invite bunches of dudes from the military. But, as I said, I think the CIA planned a false-flag fake JFKA, and even that was a very tight operation, with two or three in the need-to-know circle.

Well.... We have John Newman who says the CIA was developing and building the LHO biography for a year before the JFKA, as part of the plan for the JFKA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i0M22fUKzk&t=3088s Newman is surprisingly blunt in the film above (Killing Oswald, 2013). So, not sure how Lansdale works with the CIA, from which he was separated at that point. Curiously, Landale appears to have been "against" the war effort in Vietnam. From Spartacus: "Lansdale also argued against the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem. He told Robert McNamara that: "There's a constitution in place… Please don't destroy that when you're trying to change the government. Remember there's a vice president (Nguyen Ngoc Tho) who's been elected and is now holding office. If anything happens to the president, he should replace him. Try to keep something sustained." It was these views that got him removed from office. The pressure to remove Lansdale came from General Curtis LeMay and General Victor Krulak and other senior members of the military. As a result it was decided to abolish his post as assistant to the secretary of defence. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal for counter-insurgency work and became consultant to the the Food for Peace programme. Lansdale continued to argue against Lyndon Johnson's decision to try and use military power to win the Vietnam War. When General William Westmoreland argued that: "We're going to out-guerrilla the guerrilla and out-ambush the ambush… because we're smarter, we have greater mobility and fire-power, we have more endurance and more to fight for… And we've got more guts." Lansdale replied: "All actions in the war should be devised to attract and then make firm the allegiance of the people." He added "we label our fight as helping the Vietnamese maintain their freedom" but when "we bomb their villages, with horrendous collateral damage in terms of both civilian property and lives… it might well provoke a man of good will to ask, just what freedom of what Vietnamese are we helping to maintain?" Lansdale quoted Robert Taber (The War of the Flea😞 "There is only one means of defeating an insurgent people who will not surrender, and that is extermination. There is only one way to control a territory that harbours resistance, and that is to turn it into a desert. Where these means cannot, for whatever reason, be used, the war is lost." Lansdale thought this was the situation in Vietnam and wrote to a friend that if the solution was to "kill every last person in the enemy ranks" then he was "not only morally opposed" to this strategy but knew it was "humanly impossible". Lansdale added "No idea can be bombed or beaten to death. Military action alone is never enough." He pointed out that since 1945 the Vietminh had been willing to fight against the strength of both France and the United States in order to ensure success of their own. "Without a better idea, rebels will eventually win, for ideas are defeated only by better ideas."

Matt A: I welcome your views, even though they differ on some points from mine. I do not discourage you from posting your views here, or anywhere else. On "left-wing" vs "right-wing" re the JFKA, you are aware that Jacob Hornberger is a libertarian, which some regard as a right-wing philosophy, and major figure in the JFKA community? Many libertarians are migrating to the view that the Deep State is a dangerous apparition, and the signal manifestation of authoritarian government. Why the Democrats and left-wing are embracing the Deep State might be of concern to you. Trump the worst President in history? Depends on who you are. Presidents LBJ-Nixon authored the deaths of six million in SE Asia, and that is the only the beginning of the atrocities in the region. I would believe anyone in SE Asia who says LBJ and Nixon were inhuman. Bush Jr.'s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan sucked down $6 trillion and counting US dollars, destabilized the whole region, displaced millions and led directly to hundreds of thousands of deaths, maybe millions total. Trump? A loser, but not even in the same league. That's my view, and I understand not everyone agrees. I am heading out for the day. Back when work is done.

Matt A- Well...I am not a rabid right-winger. In fact, not even a un-rabid right-winger. Be careful when you assume.... Sheesh, I think government and lifestyle is probably better in socialized Germany than in the US. Great Britain's NHS seems to have handled COVID-19 better than the US hodge-podge. You confuse my distrust of the Deep State, and its relations with the modern Democratic Party, with being a "right winger." And let us be honest: If you watch a Tucker Carlson of Fox, you get support for a non-interventionist foreign policy that you do not find on CNN or MSNBC, or mainstream media. Sad to say, today's useful idiots are spread across the political spectrum, from the woke Democrats to old-school GOP'ers. The multinationals want that US military global guard service, and the two parties are willing to oblige. Note that I do not make any assumptions about your political views. I give you the benefit of the doubt that your views may be quite nuanced and knowledgeable, and may well differ from mine.

The woke CIA is here! They hire "cisgendered" Latinas who exult in the glories of themselves and the CIA! What I think is really going on, is that the CIA-intel community is ginning up yet another reason for constant, ubiquitous US involvement everywhere. All through Asia, Africa and Latin America, one can criticize cultures and nations on women's issues. (Afghanistan is a narco state, btw). We see this now on Afghanistan, with US military leaders citing women's issues as a reason to stay in. (What happened to women and religious minorities in Iraq after Saddam went down is not a polite topic). So, woke multinationals will push the women's agenda globally, hand-in-hand with the US military-intel community. The left-wing is co-opted, and become useful idiots (already well underway in the US). BTW, this news outfit The Hill is pretty good.

Thanks, honored to be on one of the few sites where real history is a topic.

Great book review. About six million SE Asians were killed after the US became involved in Vietnam-Laos-Cambodia. Let alone other atrocities to numerous to even list. For what? In a cruel irony, the Vietnamese have for centuries resented Han hegemony. Even Guangxi province, to the immediate north of Vietnam, is regarded as an autonomous zone of China, as they resent Han domination also. From Smedley Butler to JFK to the present day, the multinationals-globalists-militarists have become more powerful, and more aligned with a powerful surveillance state. Good luck, everybody.

As mentioned by others, you have some confusing possibilities. 1. A relatively quiet weapon. 2. The speed of sound is ~1,125 feet per second. To state the obvious, if a witness is ~140 feet from one weapon, but ~280 feet from a second weapon, and the first weapon is fired ~1/8th of second after the second weapon, the witness will honestly hear one shot. 3. Echoes. 4. What is interesting is that some witnesses right outside the TSBD, standing side-by-side by others, heard shots from the Grassy Knoll area, while others thought the shots came from above. For me, the key has been that so many witnesses (including veterans and cops) smelled telltale gunsmoke in the Dealey Plaza, down by the Grassy Knoll, in the immediate aftermath of the JFKA. Ergo, there was gunfire in the immediate region.