Richard J. Smith
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Posts posted by Richard J. Smith
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These drugs also helped the US government undermine Black communities, According to the San Jose Mercury newspaper, for the better part of a decade a drug ring comprising of CIA, & US drug enforcement agency personel sold tons of cocaine to the Crips, and Bloods street gangs of LA. This CIA run network opened the first pipeline between Columbia's cocaine cartel's,and the Black neighborhoods of Compton, and LA. Today thousands of young black men are serving long prison sentences for selling cocaine, a drug that wa all but unobtainable in black neighborhoods before members of the CIA started flooding South central with it in the 1980's, at bargain basement prices.
Come on, guys, this place is beginning to look like Conspiracies R Us. The CIA condoning central American operatives in the drug trade is not the same as the CIA orchestratiing the drug trade and specifically targeting the black population. I suppose the current Meth epidemic devastating White Trash America is the CIA's attempt to balance the scales?
Pat,
I was in touch with a retired DEA agent a few years ago who essentially confirmed a story that had been making the rounds for several years. You recall the death of DEA agent Enrique "Kiki" Camarena in Mexico in 1985, said to have been murdered by Mexican drug lords. If I recall, 2 low level traffickers were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for Camarena's death. This former DEA guy said Camerena was murdered by the CIA because he found out about an airfield in Mexico used by the CIA as a stopover from Central America to the US. As you know(and this forum's own Tosh Plumlee can confirm this I'm sure, as he made many of these flights), the CIA would fly weapons and supplies to Central America, and bring tons of cocaine back on the return flight. Barry Seal was also heavily involved in these operations(who was himself murdered outside New Orleans allegedly with a trunk full of documents proving ties to the CIA and GHWB). Tosh's closed session testimony to the Kerry Committee is still sealed as secret, related to national security.
In the early 90's, CIA officials went to Los Angeles and held a news conference to try to convince poor black families that they had nothing to do with cocaine smuggling. It was big news. They were nearly run out of the city. And if is in fact true that John Kerry apologized to one of Operation 40's chief assassins(and personal friend of GHWB), it certainly changes my mind about that senator. But then again, it's all politics as usual isn't it?
RJS
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I 95 is JFK highway YES Terry.
It is also on his schedule as to being JFK last act of doing and YES it is on some remote and you and or anyone else can not undo what is in black and while already written down.
It is thought and told somewhere that JFK was in fact threatened if he does do the highway it was NOT wanted to be done.
Now Terry there is not anything wrong in that of what I wrote it is historical facts.
If you don't know about it then I suggest you look it up and yes any student can do so as well. I have the listing of JFK schedule got it from NARA and long time ago posted it up on Lancer.
It is also considered to be and in fact is a remote area of which area he for some reason choose to stand to open the highway. I think if I do remember what I was told that was the ONLY PLACE they would let JFK stand to do it. Not any Landmark around it even just a river front not far away.
No, I don't take that remark at all coming from Mary as to be just a comment with no meanting behind it at all. She meant what she said.
Well Hi Nancy,
Let me clarify a few things if I may. Terry is absolutely correct. "Standing on the shoulder" of the highway as cars pass by is a metaphor, a euphemism of sorts, that indicates life passing you by. Mary's statement has nothing to do with I95 or any other highway.
You are partially correct however, in that a 50 mile portion of I95 in Maryland is called the "JFK Highway". Local towns and counties do that quite often in the US. There's a portion of a state highway in my area that the county named "Veterans Memorial Highway", but still has its number designation. It's just a political thing in the local area. The entire I95 isn't the JFK Highway however, just that 50 mile stretch.
Mary's statement HAD meaning, in that we need to get moving on this case or it will pass us by, just as cars pass by someone standing on the shoulder of a highway.
RJS
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Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines directed the Phoenix Project in Vietnam, in 1974 and 1975, which carried out the secret mission of assassinating members of the economic and political bureaucracy inside Vietnam to cripple the ability of that nation to function after the total US withdrawal from Vietnam. This Phoenix Project, during its history, carried out the political assassination, in Vietnam, of some 60,000 village mayors, treasurers, school teachers and other non) Viet Cong administrators. Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines financed a highly intensified phase of the Phoenix project, in 1974 and 1975, by causing an intense flow of Vang Pao opium money to be secretly brought into Vietnam for this purpose. This Vang Pao opium money was administered for Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines by a US Navy official based in Saigon's US office of Naval Operations by the name of Richard Armitage. However, because Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Armitage knew that their secret anti-communist extermination program was going to be shut down in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand in the very near future, they, in 1973, began a highly secret non-CIA authorized program. Thus, from late 1973 until April of 1975, Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Armitage disbursed, from the secret, Laotian-based, Vang Pao opium fund, vastly more money than was required to finance even the highly intensified Phoenix Project in Vietnam. The money in excess of that used in Vietnam was secretly smuggled out of Vietnam in large suitcases, by Richard Secord and Thomas Clines and carried into Australia, where it was deposited in a secret, personal bank account (privately accessible to Theodore Shackley, Thomas Clines and Richard Secord). During this same period of time between 1973 and 1975, Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines caused thousands of tons of US weapons, ammunition, and explosives to be secretly taken from Vietnam and stored at a secret "cache" hidden inside Thailand.
The "liaison officer" to Shackley and Clines and the Phoenix Project in Vietnam, during this 1973 to 1975 period, from the "40 Committee" in the Nixon White House was one Eric Von Arbod, an Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs. Von Arbod shared his information about the Phoenix Project directly with his supervisor Henry Kissinger.
Saigon fell to the Vietnamese in April of 1975. The Vietnam War was over. Immediately upon the conclusion of the evacuation of U.S. personnel from Vietnam, Richard Armitage was dispatched, by Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines, from Vietnam to Tehran, Iran. In Iran, Armitage, the "bursar" for the Vang Pao opium money for Shackley and Clines' planned "Secret Team" covert operations program, between May and August of 1975, set up a secret "financial conduit" inside Iran, into which secret Vang Pao drug funds could be deposited from Southeast Asia. The purpose of this conduit was to serve as the vehicle for secret funding by Shackley's "Secret Team," of a private, non-CIA authorized "Black" operations inside Iran, disposed to seek out, identify, and assassinate socialist and communist sympathizers, who were viewed by Shackley and his "Secret Team" members to be "potential terrorists" against the Shah of Iran`s government in Iran. In late 1975 and early 1976, Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines retained Edwin Wilson to travel to Tehran, Iran to head up the "Secret Team" covert "anti-terrorist" assassination program in Iran. This was not a U.S. government authorized operation. This was a private operations supervised, directed and participated in by Shackley, Clines, Secord and Armitage in their purely private capacities.
At the end of 1975, Richard Armitage took the post of a "Special Consultant" to the U.S. Department of Defense regarding American military personnel Missing In Action (MIAs) in Southeast Asia. In this capacity, Armitage was posted in the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. There Armitage had top responsibility for locating and retrieving American MIA's in Southeast Asia. He worked at the Embassy with an associate, one Jerry O. Daniels. From 1975 to 1977, Armitage held this post in Thailand. However, he did not perform the duties of this office. Instead, Armitage continued to function as the "bursar" for Theodore Shackley's "Secret Team," seeing to it that secret Vang Pao opium funds were conducted from Laos, through Armitage in Thailand to both Tehran and the secret Shackley bank account in Australia at the Nugen-Hand Bank. The monies conducted by Armitage to Tehran were to fund Edwin Wilson's secret anti-terrorist "seek and destroy" operation on behalf of Theodore Shackely. Armitage also devoted a portion of his time between 1975 and 1977, in Bangkok, facilitating the escape from Laos, Cambodia and Thailand and the relocation elsewhere in the world, of numbers of the secret Meo tribesmen group which had carried out the covert political assassination program for Theodore Shackley in Southeast Asia between 1966 and 1975. Assisting Richard Armitage in this operation was Jerry O. Daniels. Indeed, Jerry O. Daniels was a "bag-man" for Richard Armitage, assisting Armitage by physically transporting out of Thailand millions of dollars of Vang Pao's secret opium money to finance the re)location of Theodore Shackley's Meo tribesmen and to supply funds to Theodore Shackley's "Secret Team" operations. At the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok, Richard Armitage also supervised the removal of arms, ammunition and explosives from the secret Shackley/Clines cache of munitions hidden inside Thailand between 1973 and 1975, for use by Shackley's "Secret Team". Assisting Armitage in this latter operations was one Daniel Arnold, the CIA Chief of Station in Thailand, who joined Shackley's "Secret Team" in his purely private capacity.
One of the officers in the U.S. Embassy in Thailand, one Abranowitz came to know of Armitage's involvement in the secret handling of Vang Pao opium funds and caused to be initiated an internal State Department heroin smuggling investigations directed against Richard Armitage. Armitage was the target of Embassy personnel complaints to the effect that he was utterly failing to perform his duties on behalf of American MIAs, and he reluctantly resigned as the D.O.D. Special Consultant on MIA's at the end of 1977.
From 1977 until 1979, Armitage remained in Bangkok opening and operating a business named The Far East Trading Company. This company had offices only in Bangkok and in Washington, D.C. This company was, in fact, from 1977 to 1979, merely a "front" for Armitage's secret operations conducting Vang Pao opium money out of Southeast Asia to Tehran and the Nugen-Hand Bank in Australia to fund the ultra right-wing, private anti-communist "anti-terrorist" assassination program and "unconventional warfare" operation of Theodore Shackley's and Thomas Cline's "Secret Team". During this period, between 1975 and 1979, in Bangkok, Richard Armitage lived in the home of Hynnie Aderholdt, the former Air Wing Commander of Shackley`s "Special Operations Group" in Laos, who, between 1966 and 1968, had served as the immediate superior to Richard Secord, the Deputy Air Wing Commander of MAG SOG. Secord, in 1975, was transferred from Vietnam to Tehran, Iran.
In 1976, Richard Secord moved to Tehran, Iran and became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of defense in Iran, in charge of the Middle Eastern Division of the Defense Security Assistance Administration. In this capacity, Secord functioned as the chief operations officer for the U.S. Defense Department in the Middle East in charge of foreign military sales of U.S. aircraft, weapons and military equipment to Middle Eastern nations allied to the U.S. Secord's immediate superior was Eric Van Marbad, the former 40 Committee liaison officer to Theodore Shackley's Phoenix program in Vietnam from 1973 to 1975.
From 1976 to 1979, in Iran, Richard Secord supervised the sale of U.S. military aircraft and weapons to Middle Eastern nations. However, Richard Secord did not authorize direct nation-to-nation sales of such equipment directly from the U.S. government to said Middle Eastern governments. Instead, Richard Secord conducted such sales through a "middle-man", one Albert Hakim. By the use of middle-man Albert Hakim, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Secord purchased U.S. military aircraft and weapons from the U.S. governament at the low "manufacturer's cost" but sold these U.S. aircraft and weapons to the client Middle Eastern nations at the much higher "replacement cost". Secord then caused to be paid to the U.S. government, out of the actual sale price obtained, only the lower amount equal to the lower manufacturer's cost. The difference, was secreted from the U.S. government and Secord and Albert Hakim secretly transferred these millions of dollars into Shackley's "Secret Team" operations inside Iran and into Shackley's secret Nugen-Hand bank account in Australia. Thus, by 1976, Defendant Albert Hakim had become a partner with Thomas Clines, Richard Secord and Richard Armitage in Theodore Shackley's "Secret Team".
Between 1976 and 1979, Shackley, Clines, Secord, Hakim, Wilson, and Armitage set up several corporations and subsidiaries around the world through which to conceal the operations of the "Secret Team". Many of these corporations were set up in Switzerland. Some of these were: (1) Lake Resources, Inc.; (2) The Stanford Technology Trading Group, Inc.; and (3) Companie de Services Fiduciaria. Other companies were set up in Central America, such as: (4) CSF Investments, Ltd. and (5) Udall research Corporation. Some were set up inside the United States by Edwin Wilson. Some of these were: (6) Orca Supply Company in Florida and (7) Consultants International in Washington, D.C. Through these corporations, members of Theodore Shackley's "Secret Team" laundered hundreds of millions of dollars of secret Vang Pao opium money, pilfered Foreign Military Sales proceeds between 1976 and 1979. Named in this federal civil suit to be placed under oath and asked about their participation in the criminal "enterprise" alleged in this Complaint is probative of the criminal guilt of the Defendants of some of the crimes charged in this Complaint.
Joel Bainerman also investigated the CIA's role in the drug trade in his book, The Crimes of a President (1992):
Did the Reagan-Bush White House do business with drug traffickers? This question not only applies to the Presidencies of George Bush and Ronald Reagan, but to every single administration since the end of World War II.
The Christic Institute and its founder, Daniel Sheehan, deserves special credit for its work in exposing the CIA's ties to drug lords, particularly during the Reagan years. Founded in 1980 as a non-profit, public-interest law firm and public policy center, the Christic Institute had previously prosecuted some of the most celebrated public-interest lawsuits of the decade, including the Karen Silkwood case as well as the Greensboro Massacre suit against the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan.
During one of my trips to Washington I finally got a chance to meet Sheehan. Although situated only a few blocks from Washington's Union Station, it seemed only right that a nonprofit organization fighting against the tremendous odds of battling covert operators would be housed in a rundown, near slum neighborhood of the nation's capital.
Although we had just a short time together because I was flying back to Israel that evening, Sheehan struck me as being one of the very few people in the United States who grasped most of the complexities of the story of how the CIA had become involved with drug traffickers. The way he rattled off the names and events, he could probably have repeated them in his sleep.
Sheehan claims that there existed a conspiratorial "secret team" of covert operators which carried out its own, private foreign policy much of it funded by proceeds from the international drug trade. The 29 defendants named in a suit instituted by the Christic Institute in Florida included Lt. Colonel Oliver North, retired major generals Richard Secord and John Singlaub, former CIA intelligence officers Theodore Shackley and Thomas Clines, financier Albert Hakim, Robert Owen, a former aide to Vice President Quayle, Contra rebel leader Adolfo Calero, mercenary Thomas Posey, and drug dealers John Hall and Jorge Ochoa.
"We assembled evidence that the Contra resupply network orchestrated criminal covert operations, including secret wars, assassination programs and illicit arms deals. It financed these activities, in part, through the smuggling and sale of tons of cocaine and other illegal drugs into the United States," says Sheehan. "Since the Congress, the Reagan-Bush White House's Justice Department, and the Judiciary had, for the most part, turned a blind eye to these allegations, we took our evidence directly to the American public. The public needs to know and has a right to know of covert and illegal activities undertaken by private citizens in the name of U.S. foreign policy and 'national security.' "
In the lawsuit, the institute used the RICO statutes, passed in 1970 to bring Mafia bosses to justice (the statutes enable a member of a conspiracy to be held accountable for crimes committed by those under his orders). The institute was able to formally charge the Reagan-Bush Secret Team as a result of the 1984 bombing of a press conference in La Penca, Nicaragua. During the early part of 1984, after the Boland Amendments were passed, Oliver North came up with a new plan to secretly circumvent the congressional ban on Contra military aid. The idea was to take away the responsibility of arming and training them from the CIA and transfer it to a "private" network controlled directly by him from the White House. This meant uniting the various Contra forces into one effective fighting force.
One of the Contra leaders, Eden Pastora of the ARDE organization based in Costa Rica, refused a CIA ultimatum to ally his group with the larger Contra group the administration was supporting, the FDN. He was told by the CIA to "unite with the FDN or suffer the consequences."
At a press conference where Pastora was to announce that he was not going to accede to these demands, a bomb exploded, killing eight people and injuring many others. The White House obviously wouldn't take no for an answer.
Sheehan alleges that the explosion was arranged by Hull, a drug trafficker who helped Oliver North's Contra supply operation, and Felipe Vidal, another narcotics smuggler who worked with Hull. At a crucial December 1984 meeting at the Shamrock Hilton Hotel in Houston, Texas, attended by Hull and Owen, Jack Terrell, another participant in North's supply network, claims Hull told him "Pastora had to be killed" (The Progressive, March 1990).
The CIA helped cover up the bombing through extensive use of disinformation within Costa Rica. A Costa Rican government report revealed that in 1984 CIA agent Dimitrius Papas trained an elite 15-member group of Costa Rican intelligence agents known as "the Babies" to organize a network of illegal telephone taps and a slush fund for payoffs to Costa Rican leaders (The Progressive, March 1990; Newsweek, February 12th, 1990).
Joel Bainerman also found support from Victor Marchetti:
Victor Marchetti, who worked for the CIA for 14 years and served as executive assistant to the deputy director under Richard Helms until 1969, is probably the leading critic today of the CIA's "covert" activities. Having seen how things work from the inside, in 1975 he wrote The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, the first book to expose the workings of the U.S. organization. The book has become somewhat of a classic in certain circles. On April 18th, 1972, Marchetti became the first American writer to be served with an official censorship order issued by a court of the United States forbidding him to disclose any information about the CIA. The verdict was eventually overturned.
"I guess people like the book," Marchetti told me one morning at a coffee shop in the National Press Building in Washington. "Every once in a while I get a royalty check for a few hundred dollars from my publishers."
Marchetti was a Soviet military specialist and at one point was probably the U.S. government's leading expert on Soviet military aid to the countries of the Third World. He left the CIA and wrote about its shortcomings. He felt the agency was incapable of reforming itself and that Presidents had no interest in changing it because they viewed it as a private asset.
Out of all the people I interviewed for this book, Marchetti was perhaps the most insightful. He spoke about covert operations and secret agendas of the Bush-Reagan White Houses the way most people would about yesterday's football scores.
"It shouldn't surprise anyone that the history of the CIA runs parallel to criminal and drug operations throughout the world," he says. "The connection stretches back to the predecessor organization of the CIA, the OSS [Office of Strategic Services], and its involvement with the Italian Mafia, the Cosa Nostra, in Sicily and Southern Italy. When the OSS was fighting communists in France they 'mingled' with the Corsican brotherhood, who were heavily into drugs at that time."
Many of these contacts were formulated in the late 1940's when the OSS worked covertly to replace the leftist leaders of the Marseilles dock union, after it was thought that the union might interfere with American shipping in a crisis (The Nation, August 29th, 1987).
Exploiting the drug trade amplifies the operational capacity of covert operations for the CIA. When the CIA decides to enter a region to combat a communist force or country, the purpose is to seek out allies and assets which are effective and won't squeal. The CIA's allies' involvement with narcotics enhances their operational capacity because they are fully integrated into the household economies of the region and monopolize what is usually the largest cash crop in that country. Any group which controls such a lucrative trade commands extraordinary political power that is extremely useful to the CIA. Powerful drug warlords can mobilize people to die. No amount of money in the world can buy this operational capacity.
Says Alfred McCoy: "In the mountain ranges along the southern rim of Asia-whether in Afghanistan, Burma, or Laos-opium is the main currency of external trade and thus is a key source of political power. Since operations involve alliances with local power brokers who serve as the CIA's commanders, the agency, perhaps unwillingly or unwittingly, has repeatedly found its covert operations enmeshed with Asia's heroin trade. By investing a local ally such as Liekmatyar or Vang Pao with the authority of its alliance, the CIA draws the ally under the mantle of its protection. So armed, a tribal leader, now less vulnerable to arrest and prosecution, can use his American alliance to expand his share of the local opium trade" (The Politics of Heroin, 1991).
Marchetti agrees: "Drug dealers are in a position to know things, to get things done. They have muscle and no qualms about using it. This is attractive to the covert operators."
Ted Shackley won a libel action against Daniel Sheehan. In his autobiography, Spymaster: My Life in the CIA, published this year, Shackley argued:
By 1966 the dimensions of the opium problem in Southeast Asia were widely known. The files that I read before going to Vientiane, my discussions with officers who had served there, and a review of the open-source literature all brought the issue home to me. In brief, Laos was not going to be at all like Florida. In Miami the dragon was outside the wall, and my task had been to keep him there. In Laos, on the other hand, he was already inside the perimeter, and I was going to have coexist with him without being seared by his breath.
I can already hear the howls of outrage: "Coexist with narcotics traffickers! Just as we always thought! He should have been wiping them out."
Well, only rogue elephants charge at everything in their path, and the CIA was never such an animal. The critics' point of view is a respectable one, perhaps even reasonable, if you leave out of consideration the fact that the CIA takes its orders from higher authority and that nowhere in these orders at the time under discussionnow a generation ago-was there any mention of narcotics. The mission that had been handed me was to fight a war in northern Laos against the Pathet Lao and the NVA and to interdict, along the Laotian part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the flow of military manpower and materiel from North Vietnam to the battlefields of South Vietnam. My plate was full.
In addition to this, the cultivation of poppy and the medicinal use of opium formed part of the economic and social fabric of the area I would be working in. The CIA inspector general, reporting in September 1972 on the drug situation in Southeast Asia, said that when the United States arrived in the region, "Opium was as much a part of the agricultural infrastructure of this area as was rice, one suitable for the hills, the other for the valleys."'
This generalization was as true for Laos as it was for the rest of Southeast Asia, but it tends to obscure the fact that this common agricultural infrastructure supported and was supported by a multiethnic society. Among the Laotian hill tribes alone there were the Hmong, the Yao, the Lao Thung, and the Lu, just to identify a few, and the Hmong were further subdivided into the Red Hmong, the Striped Hmong, and the Black Hmong. These tribes and subtribes all shared a common culture in which the cultivation and use of opium played a part, but each had put its own individual twist on it. Subjecting all these groupings to a standard set of mores is a job I would not wish on any social engineer.
I did have to ensure that the guerrilla units we were supporting were not trading or using opium and to minimize the prospects that Air America or Continental Air Services aircraft were being used for opium-smuggling tasks while under contract to us...
The fantasy that the CIA was smuggling opium for its own profit has been examined and dismissed as the nonsense it is by a select committee of the United States Senate.
Interestingly, Armitage was an assistant to Secretary of State Colin Powell during the first Bush term. A simple internet search turns up plenty of dirt on Mr Armitage. Bo Gritz, former Green Beret and intel operative, was commissioned by Ross Perot to serach for MIAs in Vietnam, confirmed the Armitage heroin link and reported it back to Perot. Perot then called fellow Texan George Bush(Vice President at the time) and told him of the information. Bush apparently blew him off.
RJS
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THE JFK ASSASSINATION – BASIS FOR LEGAL ACTION. – By William Kelly – bkjfk3@yahoo.com
It is a myth that the assassination of President Kennedy will always remain an enduring mystery. Though justice may never be served, the murder of John F. Kenney is not an unsolvable crime, but rather a homicide that can be solved to a moral and legal certainty.
To keep people questioning, to allow multiple theories to abound, to let time slip away and drag on before applying the basic and routine legal procedures for investigating and solving such a crime is only a reflection of the institutional unwillingness, resistance and refusal to challenge the powers that took over the government on November 22, 1963.
The feeling of citizen helplessness is reflected in the subtitle of the book by one of the living victims of the same criminals – James Tague, whose book is called The Truth Withheld – A Survivor’s Story – Why We Will Never Know the Truth About the Assassination. But those responsible for JFK’s murder win and go free only if they die before being exposed, and escape justice.
The reason for the Congressional law that established the “50 year rule” on the classification of all Congressional documents is that is the amount of time it is estimated for the people mentioned in the documents to be dead. Since it is not yet 50 years after the assassination of President Kennedy, some of those suspects are therefore still alive.
It is simply not true that the murder of JFK will forever remain a mystery, and we’ll never know the truth, since thanks to the JFK Act, we have most of the evidence, the documentary records and witness testimony in the public domain.
Despite the institutional unwillingness to make the effort to solve the crime, a strong regiment of independent researchers, determined investigators, honest witnesses and ordinary citizens have taken upon themselves to determine the truth, solve the crime, but justice has yet to take its course.
“We need not accept (the) view that mankind…..is doomed,” JFK said in his landmark June 10, 1963 ‘Peace Speech’ at American University. We need not accept, “that we are gripped by forces we cannot control…Our problems are manmade – therefore, they can be solved by man….No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man’s reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable – and we believe man can do it again.”
American political assassinations and murders were committed by men, and therefore can be solved by men, if only the effort to do so is taken to do so. However belatedly, there has been a new trend to at least attempt to resolve the civil rights and political murders of the 1960s, with the assassination of Medgar Evers, the murders of the Philadelphia, Mississippi Freedom Riders, the York, Pennsylvania race riot killings, and the MLK assassination civil trial have all utilized the judicial system to solve crimes that were thought to be untouchable a decade ago.
The assassination of President Kennedy was not an accident of history or an act of God, but the act of man, and men can solve the crime if only the effort is made to do so.
Whether the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman as the official report alleges or a patsy as he claimed, he was a former U.S. Marine who worked with the U2 program in Japan, was trained in the Russian language, defected to the USSR, returned with a Russian wife, reportedly took a pot shot at General Walker, participated in covert Cuban operations in New Orleans and Mexico City, and fits the covert operative profile that makes the assassination a covert intelligence operation. As former Senator Richard Schweikder (R. Pa.) put it, the case has “the fingerprints of intelligence.”
Just because covert operations are designed to conceal the actual perpetuators doesn’t mean that they can’t be exposed, identified and brought to justice, just as other, similar covert crimes have been exposed – Watergate, Iran-Contra and the assassination of the former Chilean ambassador to the U.S. in Washington.
How can ordinary citizens force the hand of an entrenched judicial system? An examination of how the assassination of Medgar Evers and the other civil rights murders of the 1960s were resolved presents a legal road map to follow, and one of the first stops on the way to justice is the grand jury.
“As a general policy,” former Justice Department official Ben Civiletti testified before the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in its last session, “the Department of Justice seldom turns down at least exploring, or reviewing a petition or reasonable request,…(and)…to some extent it becomes a matter of public will…but also a matter of judgment that falls within the duties of any particular department or agency of government…as to how far questions…can be explored to a useful or fruitful purpose.”
Well, besides determining the truth and seeking justice, it would be useful and fruitful to determine who killed President Kennedy, why they did it, and how they accomplished it, so such a thing can never happen again. If the assassination of Medgar Evers was immediately pursued and justice resolved, President Kennedy would not have been killed in the same way, and if JFK’s assassination was properly resolved immediately, RFK and MLK probably would never have died the way the did.
Political assassination remain an effective tool for controlling policy only because the true perpetuators of these crimes are permitted to remain hidden in the background, pulling the strings of the puppets and moving the pawns as they have for centuries. The assassination of President Kennedy has maintained its watershed mark as the single most significant political event of the past century because it remains unresolved. Despite the tremendous amount of information that is now available, it remains an unresolved enigma and unsolved cold case homicide because there is no institutional willingness, motive or desire to simply solve it.
Unsolved cold cases, especially homicides, are reviewed every few years, sometimes by a new detective who looks over old evidence to see if there is anything that has been overlooked, or if there is any previously unknown evidence or witnesses, or recently developed scientific tools that could be used to help solve the crime. There is no statute of limitations on murder, under the rules of criminal procedure homicide is given precedence over all other crimes, and once accumulated, the evidence in a homicide is presented to a grand jury
Independent researchers, journalists and ordinary citizens can identify evidence, uncover conspiracies and witness crimes, but if there is no case, no grand jury, no place to present the evidence, then there is no justice. As Mr. Civiletti explained to the HSCA, the DOJ “seldom turns down exploring at least, or reviewing a petition or reasonable request…”
Towards the development of a legal case, the grand jury Petition-Request is a citizen’s petition to a District Attorney responsible for prosecuting offenders to request a grand jury be convened to review the facts of a case and determine if there is enough evidence to indict someone for a crime.
A grand jury is asked to decide, not guilt or innocence, but whether there is enough evidence to have a person brought to trial for a crime. The grand jury only hears evidence of guilt, but does not render a verdict. Its decision is whether to indict, which is merely an accusation, or not to indict. Guilt or innocence is determined in a court of law; where the rules of evidence preclude hearsay evidence and allows the defense attorney the opportunity to cross-examine witnesses. Hearsay is allowed, and witnesses must testify before a grand jury without counsel, as all attorneys other than the prosecutor are not permitted in the grand jury room.
If the grand jury determines there is enough evidence, they vote a “True Bill” and indict someone for a crime.
The DA can simply ignore such a citizen’s petition and request and not present the evidence to a grand jury, or even if a grand jury votes to indict, it is still up to the DA to issue the indictment and proceed to take the matter to court.
The Grand Jury process, which stems from English Cannon law, has been refined by the United States Constitutional system as an extension of the prosecutor’s will, though historically the grand jury can investigate official corruption, review and develop evidence, attempt to answer questions, subpoena records and witnesses, order forensic autopsies and specialized tests and follow the evidence where ever it leads.
While grand juries composed of ordinary American citizens do not have the knowledge of the history and powers of a grand jury, and are often merely tools of the prosecutors, sometimes a prosecutor will lose control of a grand jury that begins to ask questions and make requests of its own. Such a grand jury is called a “Runaway Grand Jury,” and often goes beyond the original intent of the prosecutors, such as the Rocky Mountain Flats Runaway Grand Jury. When the Colorado prosecutors refused to issued the indictments against a major defense contractors for environmental contamination, the grand jury leaked its report to the press [see: Westword Rocky Mountain Flats ]
The previous reluctance of district attorneys to prosecute political assassinations, especially decades old crimes, is being overcome by new, young and diversified blood in official positions of authority. Although those District Attorneys at the top of their profession know that investigating political assassinations is detrimental to furthering their careers, and witnessed what happened to New Orleans DA Jim Garrison, there is a younger generation of assistant prosecutors who look upon solving such major crimes as an achievement that will advance their future careers.
Former HSCA attorney, Dean Browning, Esq., who specializes in RICO litigation, said that such indictments are possible and that, “I am especially interested in developing an approach to seek indictments of those who conspired to murder the President.”
“I believe that a prosecution is feasible,” says Browning, “especially when invoking the Pinkerton Doctrine,” which holds that “a person associated with a conspiracy culpable for any criminal act committed by a co-conspirator if the act is within the scope of the conspiracy and is a foreseeable result of the criminal scheme.” Agency theory holds that “all conspirators act as the agent or represent the other conspirators involved in the criminal scheme, and are liable for all criminal acts committed by the other conspirators.”
Another reason that District Attorneys are reluctant to investigate and prosecute political assassination, besides opposing the criminal effort behind the murder, is the effort and manpower it takes to solve it, which takes away from the normal, day-to-day prosecutions that the District Attorney is also responsible for. J
This can be compensated by including the most significant evidence, lists of documents and witnesses, and outstanding questions with the Petition-Request, laying out the case for crimes and conspiracy and reducing the work of the prosecutors. Such a convincing attachment would also help persuade a prosecutor to accept the case and take it to a grand jury.
It will only take one such JFK grand jury, and there are dozens of potential jurisdictions. There are Federal, State and County grand juries, each with many assistant district attorneys who work under the District Attorney, providing dozens of individuals in which to present the Petition Request.
Establishing jurisdiction in any particular district will not be difficult. Although some will argue that it was not a federal crime to kill the president in 1963, it was a federal crime to conspire to kill a federal employee, whether it is a postman or a president.
Besides the local Dallas district, there are Texas State grand juries, as well as the North Texas Federal District court, which is located in Dallas. The reluctance of any Dallas or Texas official to investigate the assassination will probably make other jurisdictions more inviting, New Orleans in particular, where a new District Attorney recently took over from former DA Harry Connick.
Of the dozens of the potential jurisdictions, it will be easiest to convene a Special Federal Grand Jury in Washington D.C., where most of the original evidence is located at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and the body of the victim can be exhumed for a proper forensic autopsy.
Although conspiracy and homicide are the crimes being investigated, once the grand jury begins to subpoena records and require the sworn testimony of witnesses, other crimes, such as perjury, destruction of evidence, obstruction of justice come into play, and help persuade witnesses to tell the truth.
One aspect of the grand jury proceedings is their secrecy, which prevents the testimony from being made public before a trial. If there are no indictments, and there isn’t a trial, the grand jury could issue a report explaining what it learned and the reasons behind its action or inaction.
Historically, traditionally and legally according to the Constitution of the United States, the evidence in a homicide is presented to a grand jury, which is where the evidence in the murder of John F. Kennedy must go before there can be justice.
“That we live as a nation of laws, and are not a ‘Banana Republic,’” said Warren Commissioner John McCloy, “requires us as individuals and as a society, to purse truth and justice, ‘even if the heaven’s may fall.’”
It is not too late now, but soon, this case will slip slowly from an unsolved homicide to an historical mystery, unless we act now, and present the best evidence in a Petition-Request to convene a special JFK Grand Jury, and let the legal action take its course, wherever it may go.
William E. Kelly, Jr.
Bkjfk3@yahoo.com
Bill,
An excellent article to be sure. What certainly is needed is a team to put together the evidence. Not hearsay, speculation, theories, and innuendo, but hard evidence and documentation. It IS out there afterall, and it will be necessary for this "team" to put aside the theories and concentrate on the facts. This forum apparently has members who are lawyers or affiliated with lawyers or prosecutors in Texas. Perhaps that's a good place to start. Seems to me if I was an attorney licensed to practice in the state of Texas, and called myself a JFK researcher, I'd be all over this. So someone should grab the bull by the proverbial horns and get moving.
RJS
PS: Is your on-line grand jury petition still active? I recall we discussed this a few years ago.
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There is a special on the Discovery Channel on the Magic Bullet on right now. It is from that Unsolved History show. I'm already skeptical about the program because they've already dragged out Dale Myer's animation.
Just saw the last segment and it made me sick. They lined up a couple of torsos and tried to replicate the wounds by firing a Mannlicher Carcano from a sixty foot tower. Although the wounds DID NOT line up (the bullet passed below the first torso's clavicle and out of the chest instead of out of the throat, hit the second torso four inches below the armpit, and failed to penetrate its thigh) and the bullet was bent into a "c" shape, they explained it all away by saying the bullet hit two ribs instead of one on the second torso and so therefore the single bullet theory was supported by their experiment. This is utter nonsense. I SCREAMED when I heard their conclusion. I nearly broke something. Obviously, they were too chicken-xxxx to say their test did not support the "magic bullet;" I'm wondering what executive made this decision. If the whole thing was a fraud they would have just faked their results.
To make matters worse, they allowed Vincent Bugliosi, who was also featured on a recent episode of Penn and Teller's TV show Bullxxxx! dismissing conspiracy theories, to have the last word, warning people that an obsession with the assassination can be "toxic" Clearly Vince is getting ready for his book release this fall. This whole turn of events really makes me angry. I wrote "Unsolved History" a letter last year offering to help them create a similar program, but one with some credibility, and received no response. Instead they feed us this crap. Well, at least they showed us the tests and that is on the record. I believe I'll be using their test in my upcoming presentation on the medical evidence.
For anyone interested in further debate on the Discovery program visit JFK Lancer at the forum links below. I posted video captures of the "reenactment".
Original thread:
Rebuttal thread:
RJS
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See this thread at the Lancer Forum:
http://www.jfklancerforum.com/dc/dcboard.p...ing_type=search
Ron,
Note the editor didn't answer my question regarding crackpot theories.
RJS
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By all means, hold out hope that Gerry may actually reveal something of significance. But if an when that happens, dollars to donuts, it'll be unintentional.
This, in particular, is why I usually read these posts with interest(and suspicion). You never know what may inadvertantly come out.
Gerry posted this comment 8/27/05:
"The day of the JFK assassination, Jim Lewis was [as usual] playing Chess at "Little Joe's" apartment by the Miami River -- together with Eddy Collins, "Skinny", Dick Whatley, Bobby Willis, and Bill Dempsey. When Garman started dancing in the street soon after hearing the news from Dallas, Jim chastized him severely [along with Cuban pissed-off neighbors]; He reminded him that just four days before he had been a member of our security detail for JFK at MIA [Monday, 18th Nov.], and that he had been prepared to "take-a-bullet" for the President !!"
Anyone else think it odd that Garman would "dance in the street" after hearing of JFK's demise, yet was "prepared to take a bullet" for him 4 days earlier?
I wouldn't dismiss EVERYTHING GHP has to say.
RJS
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Bill,
Nice to hear from you again. Sorry to change the subject of this thread, but I've been wondering about your progress in trying get a grand jury convened. Haven't heard anything for well over a year. What's the current status?
RJS
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Over the years, researchers have been asking the wrong question; Was it Oswald or was it Bill Lovelady in the doorway?
We now know that it was both. and that is a stunning development.
I know tht John McAdams publishes that 1971 picture of Bill Lovelady to "prove" that the man in the doorway had Lovelady's hairline, but what is the source of that picture?
Why did Bil Lovelady where a shirt to resemble Lee Harvey Oswald in 1971?
The question was answered years ago. Only those that don't know the facts keep bringing it up.
"We now know it was both". We "know" no such thing.
"Stunning development"? The only thing stunning is that you believe this junk.
Why did Billy Lovelady wear a shirt to resemble LHO? He didn't, plain and simple.
It's misstated, speculative, untrue junk such as this that gives the entire research community a bad name.
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You trust the Warren Commission Report?
I really do not think that it is very credible to rely on the Warren Commission report, to "debunk" the very real possibility that Lee Harvey Oswald was photographed witnessing the Kennedy assassination.
Lynne,
I believe the Warren Report is full of excellent information and should not be dismissed. Do you really think every witness lied, or every document is false? The WCR is one of the best sources FOR a conspiracy I know of. It's their conclusion I don't agree with.
Regarding "debunking" the "real possibility" that LHO was photographed standing on the steps, you must think that Billy Lovelady committed perjury. If you read his testimony, HE drew the arrow pointing to himself in the photo when asked to identify where he was. He's given many interviews over the years, and was photographed with the now famous red checkered shirt. There is no "real possibility". There is only speculation, innuendo, and supposition. Time for a reality check.
Do you realize it's this kind of thing that makes CTs look like a bunch of loonies? Geez, just jump at anything no matter how far out. It WAS Billy Lovelady in the doorway of the TSBD. What anyone believes about the Warren Report is immaterial.
RJS
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It was unquestionably Billy Lovelady.
Mr. BALL - I have got a picture here, Commission Exhibit 369. Are you on that picture?
Mr. LOVELADY - Yes, sir.
Mr. BALL - Take a pen or pencil and mark an arrow where you are.
Mr. LOVELADY - Where I thought the shots are?
Mr. BALL - No; you in the picture.
Mr. LOVELADY - Oh, here (indicating).
Mr. BALL - Draw an arrow down to that; do it in the dark. You got an arrow in the dark and one in the white pointing toward you. Where were you when the picture was taken?
Mr. LOVELADY - Right there at the entrance of the building standing on the the step, would be here (indicating).
Mr. BALL - You were standing on which step?
Mr. LOVELADY - It would be your top level.
Mr. BALL - The top step you were standing there?
Mr. LOVELADY - Right.
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I recently saw television coverage of Hunt testifying in the Watergate Hearings in 1972 and at that time, nine years after the assassination, he looked much younger than the tramp.
I don't think a determination can be made but the man walking does bear a resemblance to Hunt, in my opinion, and the raincoat does eem out of place in the crowd. Of course, even if Hunt was in Dealey Plaza that does not necessarily make him a conspirator. It is possible at least that the CIA built itself a very tangled web because it was attempting to conceal something --short of its participation in the assassination.
Tim,
Granted it is difficult to ascertain positive ID from a old photo blowup, but not only does the trenchcoat fit Hunt, so does the hat.
And why else would Hunt be in DP? He's denied being there, and as someone pointed out, tried to use his children as an alibi. Of course, you'd more than likely have to subscribe to the theory that the CIA was the driving force behind the assassination to allow for Hunt's presence.
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Covert operatives operate in SECRECY. They cannot claim public credit
for their deeds. Therefore their satisfaction in a job well done is to witness
the successful operation. At last count, there seem to be at least a dozen
agency operatives in the plaza to witness the killing. In my opinion, Hunt
was in charge of the operation and was there to run things.
Jack
I agree 100%, although I do not believe Hunt was one the tramps. IMO, this was Hunt.
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According to the Houston Chronicle:
Halliburton Hired for Storm Cleanup
The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.
Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.
KBR was assigned the work under a "construction capabilities" contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process. The company is not involved in the Army Corps of Engineers' effort to repair New Orleans' levees.
I hope VP Cheney chokes on his dividend checks.
Carol,
Let me relay some personal info regarding Halliburton and Kellogg, Brown and Root. Halliburton, as you may know, was the defendant in an asbestos class action lawsuit brought about due to KBR's manufacture and use of asbestos. After the suit was filed, Halliburton broke KBR into separate entities so its multi billion dollar profits would not be affected by the suits. When the move was challenged, a judge agreed that Halliburton could do it. That KBR division then declared bankruptcy. My father was part of the suit, and subsequently died of asbestosis related lung cancer almost 3 years ago. KBR's division that will bear the brunt of the suit settlements has yet to pay a dime, although a settlement has apparently been determined.
So instead of facing up to its responsibilities, Halliburton devised a plan to save its profits, effectively negating what may have been payouts to thousands of very ill people who worked with KBR products containing asbestos. The division splitting allowed substantially less payouts by the designated division instead of the whole Halliburton/KBR conglomerate. And a federal bankruptcy judge let it all happen.
This was a well conceived plan by Halliburton to limit its responsibility, and it worked.
Needless to say, I also hope Cheney chokes on his dividend checks. I'm sure he's thrilled that my 80 year old widowed mother will get very little if anything, while he's laughing all the way to the bank with check in hand.
RJS
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So if this is true Tim, that only 10.2% of the guard are deployed overseas, then where were they all this week????? Why did the so called commander-in-chief not have them IMMEDIATELY dispatched to help these poor people?
You cannot dare answer this question yourself, so you will just offer up another right wind editiorial. Can you actually watch this national nightmare and not feel ashamed to be a human being? Or will you still just defend your "leaders" as if this is just all some triffling matter, when in fact the deficits in moral character from the administration have not EVER been more blatant.
Dawn
Tim said:
"75 percent of the Army and Air National Guard are available nationwide. In addition, the federal government has agreed since the conflict in Iraq started not to mobilize more than 50 percent of Guard assets in any given state, in order to leave sufficient resources for governors to respond to emergencies.
In Louisiana only about a third of Guard personnel are deployed, and they will be returning in about a week as part of their normal rotation. The Mississippi Guard has 40 percent overseas."
These figures are correct. Where I disagree is that 7500 troops were called out and on the ground within a day. They obviously weren't, and weren't seen until Friday. Something was dreadfully wrong with this picture. I agree with CNN's Jack Cafferty, who said "the government fell flat on its face". There was no excuse for the reaction(or lack thereof).
From one of the most conservative newspapers in America, the New Hampshire Union Leader:
"A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease. The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, has vanished. In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster and economic uncertainty. Wherever the old George W. Bush went, we sure wish we had him back."
From the New York Times:
"George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end."
RJS
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hi Blair, this one from the left I don't know if it was parkland or where it was taken. No doubt someone can say. As far as I know there were some 80 odd pics taken and only a handful released? There are as far as I know a couple of oblique ones of the front - right side - back but no square on front right back, which would be good to see if they were available.(i think I got this one from Lancer site)
The photo posted was taken at Bethesda. There were no photos taken at Parkland. Additionally, the autopsy photos currently in the public domain were never "officially" released.
Not sure what you mean by "no square on front right back". Are you referring to a photo of the entire right side of the head? The autopsy photos are in the National Archives, but can only be viewed with permission of the Kennedy family attorneys.
http://www.jfklancer.com/aphotos.html
RJS
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So we have document of massaging Oswald's chest, but I don't ever remember hearing Oswald's cause of death was blood loss. Judging by the official version of events as reported in 1963, the bullet pierced his aorta & lung, although I heard later that it pierced the diaphragm. However, that is the official story.
Parkland Memorial Hospital Operative Record - Lee Harvey Oswald Surgery
Date: 11-24-63
Pre-Operative Diagnosis: GSW of upper abdomen and chest with massive bleeding.
Post-Operative Diagnosis: Major vascular injury in abdomen and chest.
Operation: Exploratory laparotomy, thoracotomy, efforts to repair aorta.
Began: 1142 Ended: 1307
Anesthetic: General Began: 1142
Anesthesiologist: Dr. M. T. Jenkins, Dr. Gene Akin, Dr. Curtis Spier
Surgeon: Dr. Tom Shires
Assistants: Dr. Perry, Dr. McClelland, Dr. Ron Jones
Scrub Nurse: Schrader, Lunsford
Circ. Nurse: Schrader, Bell, Burkett, Simpson
Sponge Counts: 1st, 2nd 2 counted sponges missing when body closed. Square pack count correct.
Drugs: Ca chloride - 3 vials, Cedilanid - 12, One molar lactate - 6, Isuprel - 24, Adrenalin 1:1000 - 3.
I. V. Fluids and Blood: 3-1000 cc lactated Ringer's solution, 16-500 cc. whole blood, 6-1000 cc. 5% dextrose in lactated Ringer's solution. Measured blood loss - 8,376 cc.
Condition of Patient: Expired at 1307
Notes:
Previous inspection had revealed an entrance wound over the left lower lateral chest cage, and an exit was identified by subcutaneous palpation of the bullet over the right lower lateral chest cage. At the time he was seen preoperatively he was without blood pressure, heart beat was heard infrequently at 130 beats per minute, and preoperatively had endotracheal tube placed and was receiving oxygen by anesthesia at the time he was moved to the operating room.
Under endotracheal oxygen anesthesia, a long mid-line abdominal incision was made. Bleeders were not apparent and none were clamped or tied. Upon opening the peritoneal cavity, approximately 2 to 3 liters of blood, both liquid and in clots, were encountered. These were removed. The bullet pathway was then identified as having shattered the upper medial surface of the spleen, then entered the retroperitoneal area where there was a large retroperitoneal hematoma in the area of the pancreas. Following this, bleeding was seen to be coming from the right side, and upon inspection there was seen to be an exit to the right through the inferior vena cava, thence through the superior pole of the right kidney, the lower portion of the right lobe of the liver, and into the right lateral body wall. First the right kidney, which was bleeding, was identified, dissected free, retracted immediately, and the inferior vena cava hole was clamped with a partial occlusion clamp of the Satinsky type. Following this immobilization, packing controlled the bleeding from the right kidney. Attention was then turned to the left, as bleeding was massive from the left side. The inspection of the retroperitoneal area revealed a huge hematoma in the mid-line. The spleen was then mobilized, as was the left colon, and the retroperitoneal approach was made to the mid-line structures. The pancreas was seen to be shattered in its mid portion, bleeding was seen to be coming from the aorta. This was dissected free. Bleeding was controlled with finger pressure by Dr. Malcolm O. Perry. Upon identification of this injury, the superior mesenteric artery had been sheared off of the aorta, there was back bleeding from the superior mesenteric artery. This was cross-clamped with a small, curved DeBakey clamp. The aorta was then occluded with a straight DeBakey clamp above and a Potts clamp below. At this point all major bleeding was controlled, blood pressure was reported to be in the neighborhood of 100 systolic. Shortly thereafter, however, the pulse rate, which had been in the 80 to 90 range, was found to be 40 and a few seconds later found to be zero. No pulse was felt in the aorta at this time. Consequently the left chest was opened through an intercostal incision in approximately the fourth intercostal space. A Finochietto retractor was inserted, the heart was seen to be flabby and not beating at all. There was no hemopericardium. There was a hole in the diaphragm but no hemothorax. A left closed chest tube had been introduced in the Emergency Room prior to surgery, so that there was no significant pneumothorax on the left side. The pericardium was opened, cardiac massage was started, and a pulse was obtainable with massage. The heart was flabby, consequently calcium chloride followed by epinephrine-Xylocaine were injected into the left ventricle without success. However, the standstill was converted to fibrillation. Following this, defibrillation was done, using 240, 360, 500, and 750 volts and finally successful defibrillation was accomplished. However, no effective heart beat could be instituted. A pacemaker was then inserted into the wall of the right ventricle and grounded on skin, and pacemaking was started. A very feeble, small, localized muscular response was obtained with the pacemaker but still no effective beat. At this time we were informed by Dr. Jenkins that there sere no signs of life in that the pupils were fixed and dilated, there was no retinal blood flow, no respiratory effort, and no effective pulse could be maintained even with cardiac massage. The patient was pronounced dead at 1:07 P. M. Anesthesia consisted entirely of oxygen. No anesthetic agents as such were administered. The patient was never conscious from the time of his arrival in the Emergency Room until his death at 1:07 P. M. The subcutaneous bullet was extracted from the right side during the attempts at defibrillation, which were rotated among the surgeons. The cardiac massage and defibrillation attempts were carried out by Dr. Robert N. McClelland, Dr. Malcolm O. Perry, Dr. Ronald Jones. Assistance was obtained from the cardiologist, Dr. Fouad Bashour.
/s/
Tom Shires, M. D.
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How far up on the witness list should we place Gordon Novel?
I recall reading somewhere that when the subject is broached with Novel, he gets NASTY. IMO, Novel was Umbrella Man.
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Is anyone familiar with this DVD?
http://store.aetv.com/html/product/index.j...atid=&subcatid=
Thanks,TIM
Yes, I have it on VHS. It includes portions of the Roy Cooper film, with that segment narrated and presented by Richard Trask. Also has a presentation by John Newman. Very worthwhile IMO.
RJS
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I've looked through every book & report I own, but I can't for the life of me figure out where exactly Oswald was taken after being rushed back inside the PD. Was he kept just inside the door, back towards the elevator, what?
This might seem pointless, but I'm looking into something where this does actually matter.
Nic,
Between the area of the parking garage where LHO was shot and the elevator, there was a jail office. Between the jail office and the garage, there was a glass door and partition. Just inside the door there was what I would refer to as a reception desk, about as high as a bank teller's station. LHO was on the floor behind the desk. WFAA shot film footage of this area after LHO was shot, but the front desk was in the way(you couldn't see him on the floor). You could, however, see detectives standing around him looking down. The footage is seen in the WFAA documentary The Story Behind the Story. After the shooting, Ruby was led into the jail office, past LHO, and into the elevator. Sorry I don't have any photos of the jail office, but I marked your drawing with X's showing LHO's approx location.
RJS
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Boswell is described an in an interview with Harold Rydberg In the Eye of History as the one who might "crack" someday, being the "weak link". Recall that at the HSCA, Boswell moved the back wound on the autopsy face sheet to the back of the neck.
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk...md159_0001a.htm
I believe Finck, Boswell and Humes all tried to tell the truth when possible, but shied away when they realized their words might get twisted into something that will support the conclusion of conspiracy. They determined Kennedy was hit by two shots and two shots only, and will stick to that until death. How could they admit they made a mistake on the most important job they ever performed?
Finck told his superiors in 65 that the neck should have been inspected, and repeated this at the Garrsion trial. It was his impression Burkley ordered Humes not to inspect the neck, but Humes later told JAMA it was his own decision, not Burkley's.
The key to understanding the autopsy is to understand that Humes had no experience performing a proper autopsy, had no mandate to perform one, and was pressured into doing a half-assed one in order to save time. Boswell and Finck followed his lead. Finck knew the whole thing was wrong but it wasn't his call to make. He did his best, and has done his best to forget the thing ever since.
Pat,
I found this very interesting aspect of Boswell's ARRB deposition regarding Finck and the Shaw trial:
Q. Very early on in your deposition today, you made reference to Mr. Eardley from the Justice Department asking you to go to New Orleans; is that correct?
A. Mm-hmm.
Q. What did he say to you about the reason he wanted you to go to New Orleans?
A. He was really upset. He says, "J, we got to get somebody in New Orleans quick. Pierre is testifying, and he's really lousing everything up." And I called Jim to see if he didn't want to go, and he was having--his mother-in-law was ill, and he couldn't go. So they put me on a plane that day and took me to New Orleans, and that was one of the most interesting adventures of my life. I met--do you want to hear all of this?
Q. Yes, please.
A. Carl Eardley sent me to a hotel, and I went into the hotel and registered. I was already registered. I got up to my room, and there was a note on my bedside table telling me to meet somebody at a certain place at a certain time. And this was a scary place. This was down around the wharfs, and the federal attorney's office was in a big warehouse down there. And that's--I met somebody on the street. He took me in there, and then they told me what was going on. They showed me the transcript of Pierre's testimony for the past couple of days, and I spent all night reviewing that testimony. And it was this bit about the general. Jim said, "Who's in charge here?" And when they asked Pierre in court who supervised and ran the autopsy, he says, "Some Army general." And so that is why--and I never appeared. I spent two days down there and then came home, never appeared in court. And the government won their case.
Q. Actually, the government was the district attorney. So my next question for you actually was: What was the United States Department of Justice doing in relationship to a case between the district attorney of New Orleans and a resident of New Orleans?
A. Well, they--I went over and met somebody, some lawyer in another firm that night, and I don't know who he was representing. But, obviously, the federal attorney was on the side of Clay Shaw against the district attorney.
Q. Do you remember the name of that federal attorney?
A. No. I have no idea.
Q. Was it Harry Connick?
A. It could very well have been. That name sounds--of course, Connick is not an uncommon name. It could have been.
Q. Do you recall meeting with an attorney named Wegman?
A. No.
Q. Or Dymond?
A. Thirty years ago, no, I can't remember that.
Q. What did the government attorney say to you? Did he help prepare potential testimony for you?
A. They were getting ready to. I guess it all depended on what Pierre did that next day or something. I don't know. All I know is that they- -he was answering in very strange ways their questions, and, yes, they sent me down and talked to me and tried to get me to agree that he was very strange and that I could do a better job or something.
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I recently saw a TV programme featuring Gary Mack(?) on
German Satellite TV
- Channel ZDF - I think.
The programme dealt with all the photographs taken in Dealey Plaza on 22 November 1963.
Does anyone know the name of this film? Unfortunately, I caught the last 30 minutes or so and did not see the title. The programme featured the use of software used in determining what area of Dealey Plaza each photographer covered.
Can anyone provide more details on this TV programme and on the software used?
EBC
It was a Discovery Channel documentary called Death in Dealey Plaza.
http://shopping.discovery.com/stores/servl...catalogId=10000
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Does anyone think Fink, Boswell, & Humes are worth talking to?
Hi Nic,
Humes died in 1999, Finck lives in Switzerland. For an insight into these guys, read the interviews by William Law in In the Eye of History.
Finck, in his 1996 ARRB deposition, said "I don't know" and "I don't recall" so many times it was ridiculous. He did, however, make a rather groundbreaking comment about how the back wound was located by using the mastoid process as a starting point:
May 24, 1996, ARRB deposition of Dr Finck:
Q: Was there any procedure, for example, that should have been performed that was not performed?
A: The removal of the organs of the neck. In my training we were trained to remove the organs of the neck. And in this particular case, they were not removed.
Q: Isn't that particularly important in the autopsy of President Kennedy in the sense that
there is believed to have been a wound that went through the neck?
A: Yes.
Q: And isn't it important in a medical/legal autopsy to be able to track the course of a bullet through the body?
A: Yes.
Q: When you were performing the autopsy of President Kennedy, did you make any attempts to track the course of the bullet -
A: Yes.
Q: - that you referred to as the upper back?
A: Yes. That was unsuccessful with a probe from what I remember.
Q: What kind of probe did you use?
A: I don't remember.
Q: Is there a standard type of probe that is used in autopsies?
A: A non-metallic probe.
Q: In using the probe, did you attempt to determine the angle of the entrance of the bullet into President Kennedy's body?
A: Yes. It was unsuccessful from what I remember.
Q: In the probes that you did make, did you find any evidence that would support a bullet going into the upper back and existing from the place where the tracheotomy incision had been performed?
A: From what I recall, we stated the probing was unsuccessful. That's all I can remember.
Q: My question is did you find any evidence during the course of the autopsy that would link the wound in the upper back to the exit wound in the throat?
A: I don't recall.
Q: Do you recall anyone during the course of the autopsy suggesting that the bullet wound in the upper back might have exited from the throat?
A: I don't remember.
Q: Dr. Finck, are you familiar with the term "fixed body landmark"?
A: Yes.
Q: For example, would the midline in the cranium be considered to be a fixed body landmark?
A: No.
Q: When one is attempting to determine the location of a wound, we'll say, in the thoracic
cavity; would it be appropriate to use as a fixed body landmark a mastoid process?
A: No.
Q: For purposes of identifying the wound in the back, the thoracic cavity.
A: An immobile bony structure is a fixed body landmark.
Q: Well, for the identification of the location of a wound in the thoracic cavity -
A: Thoracic cavity.
Q: - is a mastoid process a standard and understood fixed body landmark?
A: For the thoracic cavity, no. Because it is part of the head, and the head is moving, could move.
Q: So that the mastoid process would not be a standard fixed body landmark for the purposes of identifying the location of a wound in the thoracic region, is that fair to say?
A: Yes.
Q: Dr. Finck, I would like to show you a document that has been marked as Exhibit 6, and I would like to ask you whether you have ever seen the document marked Exhibit 6? [Handing document to witness]
MR. GUNN: I will state for the record that Exhibit 6 appears on its face to be a certificate of death, signed it appears by Rear Admiral George Gregory Burkley, dated November 23rd, 1963. [Witness perusing document]
BY MR. GUNN:
Q: Again, my question to you, Dr. Finck, is whether you previously have seen the document before that is now marked Exhibit 6?
A: I don't remember.
Q: Do you know who George Burkley was?
A: Physician to the President. Yes, I recall now that I see this.
Q: Do you recall whether Admiral Burkley was in the autopsy room at the night of the autopsy of President Kennedy?
A: I think he was.
Q: I would like to draw your attention to the second page of the document, the fourth line down. Do you see the reference there to the third thoracic vertebra?
A: I do.
Q: For the purpose of locating a wound in the back, would the third thoracic vertebra be considered to be a fixed body landmark?
A: Yes.
Q: Was Dr. Burkley correct in identifying the posterior back wound as being at the level of the third thoracic vertebra?
A: I don't know.
Q: Did you make any attempt during the night of the autopsy to locate the upper back entry wound with any vertebra?
A: I don't recall.
Q: Is there any reason that you would not have attempted to locate the back wound in connection with a vertebra?
A: No.
Boswell is described an in an interview with Harold Rydberg In the Eye of History as the one who might "crack" someday, being the "weak link". Recall that at the HSCA, Boswell moved the back wound on the autopsy face sheet to the back of the neck.
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk...md159_0001a.htm
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Dawn wrote (re Robert Tannenbaum as a possible investigator):
He would be excellent. Had the press not gotten rid of Sprague he'd have been able to do his job. (With its hatchet jobs, leading to the fued with Gonzalez).
Tannenbaum retains his interest in the assassination. I notice he participated in the "Wecht conference" in Philadelphia last November. I know Mr. Wexler also did. Is any Forum member in contact with Mr. Tannenbaum by chance?
Tim,
I tried contacting him by email about a year ago, and got no response. Here's a good interview with him.
http://www.jfk-info.com/pr796.htm
RJS
Patriot Act: Good or Bad?
in JFK Assassination Debate
Posted
Bush's authorization to allow illegal wiretapping is in violation of the US Constitution and is an impeachable offense. Bush, nor any other president, has the authority to initiate such action.
I accidently watched about 30 seconds of Bush's speech tonight(flipped over from ESPN football to watch FOX Family Guy), and was SO pissed when I heard him say something about the "democratic constitution in Iraq", especially after what was revealed in the last few days. He clearly violated the constitution of the United States. If Congress had any schmaltz, they'd move on this quickly. Even the Republicans are irate. It's simply unbelieveable what this guy and his cronies have done.
RJS