Why we will never find out the truth about the death of JFK

[John Simkin]

I have come to the conclusion that we will never discover the truth about the people behind the assassination of JFK. I think in time, probably in about 2063, the US government will appoint a respected historian to examine the classified documents related to the case. They will then report that a conspiracy and a cover-up did take place but the available evidence makes it impossible to identify those responsible for these events.

This is what happened with the Labour Government decided to announce an investigation into the Zinoviev Letter that was published in 1924. For many years, people had been claiming that the letter was part of a conspiracy organized by British Intelligence and the Conservative Party.

On 10th January, 1996, Ken Livingstone, made a speech in the House of Commons naming the agents responsible for this conspiracy. It is believed that Livingstone got this information from agents within MI5 who were sympathetic to the Labour Party.

When the Labour Party gained power in 1997, the Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, announced that he had ordered the Foreign Office, to carry out an investigation into the case. He also put pressure on MI5/MI6 to open up their files on the Zinoviev Letter.

First, let me give you some background details on the case. In the 1923 General Election, the Labour Party won 191 seats. Although the Conservatives had 258, Ramsay MacDonald agreed to head a minority government, and therefore became the first member of the party to become Prime Minister. As MacDonald had to rely on the support of the Liberal Party, he was unable to get any socialist legislation passed by the House of Commons. The only significant measure was the Wheatley Housing Act which began a building programme of 500,000 homes for rent to working-class families.

In October 1924 the MI5 intercepted a letter signed by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern in the Soviet Union, and Arthur McManus, the British representative on the committee. In the letter British communists were urged to promote revolution through acts of sedition. Vernon Kell, head of MI5 and Sir Basil Thomson head of Special Branch, were convinced that the letter was genuine. Kell showed the letter to Ramsay MacDonald, the Labour Prime Minister. It was agreed that the letter should be kept secret but someone leaked news of the letter to the Times and the Daily Mail. The letter was published in these newspapers four days before the 1924 General Election and contributed to the defeat of MacDonald and the Labour Party.

Gill Bennett was the historian selected to carry out this investigation. She discovered Stanley Baldwin, the head of the new Conservative Party government, set up a Cabinet committee to look into the Zinoviev Letter. On 19th November, 1924, the Foreign Secretary, Austin Chamberlain, reported that members of the committee were "unanimously of opinion that there was no doubt as to the authenticity of the letter". However, eight days later, Desmond Morton, the head of the Secret Intelligence Service's Section V, dealing with counter-Bolshevism, admitted in a letter to MI5 that "we are firmly convinced this actual thing (the Zinoviev letter) is a forgery."

Morton also wrote a report for Chamberlain's Cabinet Committee explaining why the SIS originally considered the Zinoviev letter was genuine. According to Gill Bennett, Morton came up with "five very good reasons" why he thought the letter was genuine. These were: its source, an agent in Moscow "of proved reliability"; "direct independent confirmation" from CPGB and ARCOS sources in London; "subsidiary confirmation" in the form of supposed "frantic activity" in Moscow; because the possibility of SIS being taken in by White Russians was "entirely excluded"; and because the subject matter of the Letter was "entirely consistent with all that the Communists have been enunciating and putting into effect". Bennett goes onto argue: "All five of these reasons can be shown to be misleading, if not downright false."

The problem for Gill Bennett was that a lot of the relevant documents had been destroyed. It was therefore impossible to say who was really behind the forged letter and its publication in the press. However, she suspected that Desmond Morton was the key figure behind the Zinoviev Letter.

In 1998 Robin Cook reported back to the House of Commons that although the Zinoviev Letter was almost certainly a forgery, its precise authorship cannot be determined. Nor could it be confirmed that the SIS and the Conservative Party were part of a conspiracy to remove the Labour government.

In her published report in 1999 Gill Bennett was keen to distance herself from conspiracy theories: "The propagation of conspiracy theories is always unprofitable, as it is impossible to prove a negative.” However, she did argue that Desmond Morton, like other members of establishment, was appalled by the idea of a Prime Minister who was a socialist. She pointed out: "It was not just the intelligence community, but more precisely the community of an elite - senior officials in government departments, men in "the City", men in politics, men who controlled the Press - which was narrow, interconnected (sometimes intermarried) and mutually supportive. Many of these men... had been to the same schools and universities, and belonged to the same clubs. Feeling themselves part of a special and closed community, they exchanged confidences secure in the knowledge, as they thought, that they were protected by that community from indiscretion." If that is not a conspiracy I do not know what is.

During this same period, MI5 decided to open up its files to the historian, Christopher Andrew. In his book, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (2009), Christopher Andrew argues that on 9th October 1924 SIS forwarded the Zinoviev letter to the Foreign Office, MI5 and Scotland Yard with the assurance that “the authenticity is undoubted” when they knew it had been forged by anti-Bolshevik White Russians. Desmond Morton, the head of SIS, provided extra information about the letter being confirmed as being genuine by an agent, Jim Finney, who had penetrated Comintern and the Communist Party of Great Britain. Andrew claims this was untrue as the so-called Finney report does not make any reference to the Zinoviev letter. Andrew also argues that it was probably George Joseph Ball, head of B Branch, who passed the letter onto Conservative Central Office on 22nd October, 1924. As Andrew points out: “Ball’s subsequent lack of scruples in using intelligence for party-political advantage while at central office in the later 1920s strongly suggests” that he was guilty of this action.

However, like Bennett before him, Andrew discovered that most of the important documents surrounding the case had been destroyed. Therefore, it was impossible to name the “guilty men”.

Bennett thought it might be a good idea to write a biography of Desmond Morton. When she began examining the documents concerning his life she realized she had problems. It seems that Morton had used his position in SIS to destroy this evidence. This even included his time at Eton College and the Royal Military Academy.

Despite his statement in the House of Commons about the Zinoviev Letter, privately, Cook knew that the British intelligence services could not be trusted. Cook refused to believe the evidence provided by the intelligence services concerning WMD in Iraq. On 17th March 2003 he resigned from the Cabinet. Cook was of course right, unfortunately, he never got the chance to know this for certain as he died from a "heart-attack" on 6th August 2005. He would of course been the star witness in the subsequent inquiries into the background to the Iraq War.

I would argue that any opening of the classified files on the JFK case would follow the same pattern as that of the investigation into the Zinoviev Letter.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/TUzinoviev.htm

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/SPYmorton.htm

[Guest Tom Scully]

John,

I think your concern is a bit misplaced. We go round and round, and all we seem to demonstrate ("we", mostly excludes the corporate media) is that right-centric, concentrated wealth and power, by the steps it takes against the interests of the overwhelming majority of working folk, to compensate for its fear of that majority, should be opposed as the greatest threat to our security and our system of laws.

Sure, we want to uncover the secrets of the powerful, but I think we are faced, imminently, with bigger fish to fry.:

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_gr...rism/index.html

The warped platitude of DC "centrism"

...This is the so-called "centrist compromise" -- the one Graham (along with the Brookings Institution) is pushing, Milbank is endorsing, and the administration may be heading towards adopting. But just think about what it actually is. According to its advocates, there is and will continue to be a group of people whom we deem Too Dangerous to allow to be free, yet who have committed no crime and/or against whom there is no evidence of actual wrongdoing. Therefore, we want to imprison them even though we can't prove they did anything wrong. Thus, we're going to create new, special courts -- and christen them with the Orwellian title "National Security Courts" -- and empower them to approve the President's decision to imprison human beings in cages even though they've committed no crime (not even the extremely broad criminal offense of "providing material support to Terrorist organizations," of which anyone who even gets near an actual Terrorist group is easily convicted).

This new judicial system will be devoted to imprisoning people "preventively" -- for being Dangerous. In other words, we're dispensing with the idea that the Government can only imprison those who we can prove have committed crimes, and are instead creating by statute a new category of human beings -- people who have committed no crimes but belong in prison anyway -- along with courts to keep them imprisoned (this idea was unveiled in Barack Obama's "civil liberties" speech last May when he described the so-called "fifth category" of people, and I wrote about everything wrong with that proposal here). But why stop with accused Terrorists? Why not dispense with this "due process" annoyance entirely, and imprison all people who we know deep down are guilty of something really bad, or at least will be in the future -- such as those we know murdered someone or raped children but can't find the evidence to prove it (or those we believe likely will in the future)? What decent person would possibly allow such monsters to go free just because we can't convict them in court?

That's the "centrist compromise" which Graham and Milbank advocate, and which the ACLU -- by virtue of its opposition -- is deemed by Milbank guilty of being the "purist" equivalent of Liz Cheney....

http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/gossip..._bush__ker.html

Thursday, March 4th 2004,

Both President President Bush and his all-but-certain Democratic opponent, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, were members of the elite and secretive club that meets in a windowless mausoleum on the Yale campus in New Haven.

Both Kerry, Class of '66, and Bush, Class of '68, are extremely reluctant to discuss their common ties to what Skull and Bones expert Ron Rosenbaum calls "the most powerful of all secret societies in the strange Yale secret-society system."...

...In what might be eerie coincidence or further disturbing evidence of a scheme for world domination, The Washington Post has assigned Bonesman Dana Milbank to chronicle the battle between Bush and Kerry.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

I have come to the conclusion that we will never discover the truth about the people behind the assassination of JFK.

OK, that's the pessimistic view. Now let's hear from an optimist.

Charles Sanders Peirce died in 1914, but he had something to say about inquiry into the JFK assassination:

The First Rule of Reason

135. Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy:

Do not block the way of inquiry.

Let me call your attention to four familiar shapes in which this venomous error assails our knowledge:

137. The first is the shape of absolute assertion....

138. The second bar which philosophers often set up across the roadway of inquiry lies in maintaining that this, that, and the other never can be known....

139. The third philosophical stratagem for cutting off inquiry consists in maintaining that this, that, or the other element of science is basic, ultimate, independent of aught else, and utterly inexplicable — not so much from any defect in our knowing as because there is nothing beneath it to know....

140. The last philosophical obstacle to the advance of knowledge which I intend to mention is the holding that this or that law or truth has found its last and perfect formulation —

Peirce maintained that the truth of any mystery can be found, IF INQUIRY CONTINUES LONG ENOUGH. It may not be in my lifetime or yours, but it will be found PROVIDED ONLY that inquiry continues.

http://www.textlog.de/4249.html

[John Simkin]

Peirce maintained that the truth of any mystery can be found, IF INQUIRY CONTINUES LONG ENOUGH. It may not be in my lifetime or yours, but it will be found PROVIDED ONLY that inquiry continues.

http://www.textlog.de/4249.html

This issue is not about belief or philosophy. It is about the way intelligence services destroy evidence.

[Paul Baker]

I agree that we'll never discover the truth about the assassination of JFK, for one simple, pedantic reason. We already have.

[William Kelly]

I agree that we'll never discover the truth about the assassination of JFK, for one simple, pedantic reason. We already have.

Agreed, we already know JFK was the victim of an ambush, a covert operation conducted by trained operatives working on a need to know basis who are under the policy of plausible deniability, and that they were affiliated with a domestic intelligence network that is still functioning today.

Now it's just a matter of filling in the blanks with the names of the guilty.

And that we are doing.

BK

[Ron Ecker]

John,

I agree with you. A real future inquiry will come far too late to identify those responsible (other than the fact that they worked for or with the CIA, military, and Secret Service, where only good guys work now). In the meantime, the American people in general have neither the interest nor the will to push for answers from the government, and that, as they say, is that. The government and its media lackeys continue to cover up (e.g. annual TV programs supporting the official story) apparently just for the fun of it (aside from pure contempt, as in the case of the Joannides files), since the need for it is no longer apparent. The HSCA said 30 years ago there was a conspiracy and nobody cared. The JFK Records Act was passed only because of a good movie, so we've been there and done that. Now Tom Hanks is going to produce a movie based on Bugliosi's Reclamping History for 2013 release, just in case some new interest and curiosity should be aroused by the 50th anniversary of the crime. Gotta nip such stuff in the bud.

Edited March 15, 2010 by Ron Ecker

[Terry Mauro]

I agree that we'll never discover the truth about the assassination of JFK, for one simple, pedantic reason. We already have.

Agreed, we already know JFK was the victim of an ambush, a covert operation conducted by trained operatives working on a need to know basis who are under the policy of plausible deniability, and that they were affiliated with a domestic intelligence network that is still functioning today.

Now it's just a matter of filling in the blanks with the names of the guilty.

And that we are doing.

BK

I don't consider Permindex to be a domestic agency.They were responsible for the murder of JFK and the cover up. Permindex was run out of Montreal by British SOE Louis Mortimer Bloomfield. Permindex had been identified by French intelligence as being the agency responsible for the murder attempts against President Charles de Gaulle.

Permindex was also linked to the murder of Italian industrialist Enrico Mattei in 1962

From 1962 to 1968 you see the wholesale replacement of all the post WWII reconstructionist leaders- Mattei,(Italy) Kennedy (USA) Macmillian (Great Britian),Charles de gaulle (France) , and Konrad Adenauer (Germany). Poof, the world turned on a dime during this period and it hasnt returned yet.

The plot that resulted in the murder of JFK was not a domestic affair.

.

[Pat Speer]

I agree that we'll never discover the truth about the assassination of JFK, for one simple, pedantic reason. We already have.

'

Paul, even those who think they "know" Oswald fired the shots that killed Kennedy, should be able to recognize the unique aspect of this case--that NO ONE can honestly say they know why he did it, or if anyone else put him up to it.

The question of motive even haunted the Warren Commission...

[J. Raymond Carroll]

This issue is not about belief or philosophy. It is about the way intelligence services destroy evidence.

One of Peirce's central tenets is that no one is infallible. Intelligence agencies may be good at hiding and destroying evidence, but they are not infallible either, as can be seen from John Newman's book, Oswald & The CIA.

No doubt the Mossad thought they had destroyed all key evidence relating to the planned assassination in Dubai, but they didn't think of everything. I'm sure Howard Hunt never thought that his alibi would someday be blown to smithereens when his own son identified him in a photograph from Dealey Plaza.

[Paul Baker]

I agree that we'll never discover the truth about the assassination of JFK, for one simple, pedantic reason. We already have.

'

Paul, even those who think they "know" Oswald fired the shots that killed Kennedy, should be able to recognize the unique aspect of this case--that NO ONE can honestly say they know why he did it, or if anyone else put him up to it.

The question of motive even haunted the Warren Commission...

I'm not sure if 'haunted' is the right word, Pat. It's not neccesary to establish motive in order to prove guilit, as I'm sure you're aware, but naturally it is something that demanded attention. The attempted murder of General Walker is a significant waymarker. Lee had no qualms about killing somebody, and in a sneaky, cowardly way. Months later, when Lee learnt that the president was going to pass right by his workplace, the temptation was too much. Here was an opportunity. Who knows, really, what was going on in his tiny mind? I'm not even sure it would be that interesting.

I'm sure you've seen the documentary, Beyond Consipiracy, in which Robert Oswald gives us a useful insight into his brother's personality. Robert is convinced that his kid brother killed the President, and acted alone. That's about as close to the horse's mouth we can get, thanks to one Mr Rubenstein.

Paul.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

The question of motive even haunted the Warren Commission...

Lee Oswald had no motive to injure JFK, but it is an entirely different story when we look at Howard Hunt. It is no secret that Hunt continued to hate JFK long after the assassination.

Given a choice between two suspects, one with motive and one without, it does not require a Ph.D to decide the right direction for further inquiry.

[Pat Speer]

I agree that we'll never discover the truth about the assassination of JFK, for one simple, pedantic reason. We already have.

'

Paul, even those who think they "know" Oswald fired the shots that killed Kennedy, should be able to recognize the unique aspect of this case--that NO ONE can honestly say they know why he did it, or if anyone else put him up to it.

The question of motive even haunted the Warren Commission...

I'm not sure if 'haunted' is the right word, Pat. It's not neccesary to establish motive in order to prove guilit, as I'm sure you're aware, but naturally it is something that demanded attention. The attempted murder of General Walker is a significant waymarker. Lee had no qualms about killing somebody, and in a sneaky, cowardly way. Months later, when Lee learnt that the president was going to pass right by his workplace, the temptation was too much. Here was an opportunity. Who knows, really, what was going on in his tiny mind? I'm not even sure it would be that interesting.

I'm sure you've seen the documentary, Beyond Consipiracy, in which Robert Oswald gives us a useful insight into his brother's personality. Robert is convinced that his kid brother killed the President, and acted alone. That's about as close to the horse's mouth we can get, thanks to one Mr Rubenstein.

Paul.

See, Paul, this is why I find comparing ideas with LNs interesting. They rely upon incorrect assumptions, and then claim these assumptions lead to the inevitable conclusion Oswald did it. In this case, you assume Oswald's trying to kill Walker indicates he'd try and kill Kennedy. This is a non-sequitur. If Oswald had not been arrested Walker would have been one of the top suspects in Kennedy's murder. The man was far to the right of Robert Welch. Absolutely bonkers. Only in the world of a single-assassin theorists does a leftist's trying to kill a dangerous right-wing banana-head suggest he'd kill a moderate President in a cultural war with right-wing banana-heads.

I mean, get real. If a leftist took a shot at Dick Cheney, or the President of Blackwater, would he then be considered likely to take a shot at Barack Obama? OF COURSE NOT. If it was then claimed he had taken a shot at Obama, but was silenced before he could put up a defense, a large percentage of people would assume he'd been made a patsy. And rightly so.

Your use of Robert Oswald to defend your pre-determined conclusions is equally backward. Robert long-claimed his brother was not a good-enough shot to hit the shots attributed to him. Over time, however, he came to see that he either had to assume his brother did it, or accept that his country was not what he'd been led to believe it was. He chose the former. But when one reads between his lines one finds another story. One interesting aspect to his story is his recollection that, while the Oswald family was under protection from the Secret Service, they were given the impression the Secret Service thought the FBI was involved in the assassination. Another interesting aspect is his assertion that his brother was obsessed with the TV show "I led Three Lives." "I Led Three Lives" was the story of a right-wing man posing as a communist for the FBI. HMMMMMM... why the heck would Oswald---who was dying to join the Marines--think it cool to pretend to be a communist and report to the FBI, if he was really a committed communist? Do Jews delight in TV shows glorifying Nazis? I think not. And neither should you.

[Greg Burnham]

In my opinion, the more we stay at it--the more we learn. And I think that what we learn--although it might not be what we were seeking to learn--is very important information. Unfortunately, many people will give up because they conclude that we will never know the "names" of those responsible so that "they don't get way with it" -- Even though I agree we probably won't know many, if not most, of those names, I have news: THEY GOT AWAY WITH IT already! But, what we learn about the tactics employed by those who obstructed (and continue to obstruct) justice by the ongoing cover up is perhaps more important than "catching" the original bad guys.

It is ironic that Gerald Ford admitted in a TV interview that he was responsible for (incorrect: directing the artist to change the actual location of the wound) changing the WR's wording to move JFK's back wound from the 3rd thoracic vertebrae to the base of the neck. It is perhaps even more ironic that he did so with impunity. His reasoning for doing this [paraphrased]: "...wasn't to alter history, but to make the evidence more understandable (precise to the Americn people)".

Where I come from that is called: obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct (AT THE VERY LEAST) in a capital crime, which, if I'm not mistaken, has no statute of limitations. (Doug, am I right?) In any event, not only did Ford "get away with it" -- he got away with it after confessing to it on National TV and it never even made the front page of the New York Times.

So, I agree with John that we will not know everything--probably ever. But, what we will discover from our undaunted tenacity is well worth the pursuit...even if it leads us back to ourselves.

(Thanks to Pat, I edited some errors from my earlier post) --

Edited March 16, 2010 by Greg Burnham

[Pat Speer]

In my opinion, the more we stay at it--the more we learn. And I think that what we learn--although it might not be what we were seeking to learn--is very important information. Unfortunately, many people will give up because they conclude that we will never know the "names" of those responsible so that "they don't get way with it" -- Even though I agree we probably won't know many, if not most, of those names, I have news: THEY GOT AWAY WITH IT already! But, what we learn about the tactics employed by those who obstructed (and continue to obstruct) justice by the ongoing cover up is perhaps more important than "catching" the original bad guys.

It is ironic that Gerald Ford admitted in a TV interview that he was responsible for directing the artist to change the actual location of the wound to JFK's back from the 3rd thoracic vertebrae to nearly the base of the neck in the artist's rendering used by the Warren Commission in its investigation. It is perhaps even more ironic that he did so with impunity. His reasoning for doing this [paraphrased]: "...wasn't to alter history, but to make the evidence more understandable (to the Americn people)". Where I come from that is called: obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct (AT THE VERY LEAST) in a capital crime, which, if I'm not mistaken, has no statute of limitations. (Doug, am I right?) In any event, not only did Ford "get away with it" -- he got away with it after confessing to it on National TV and it never even made the front page of the New York Times.

So, I agree with John that we will not know everything--probably ever. But, what we will discover from our undaunted tenacity is well worth the pursuit...even if it leads us back to ourselves.

Greg, Ford did not have anything to do with the creation of the Rydberg drawings. From patspeer.com, chapter 10:

Ironically, Specter’s failure to tell the Commission that the wound he saw on the autopsy photograph was too low on the President’s back to support his proposed theory left a permanent stain on the reputation of another prominent Republican, Gerald Ford. In 1998, it was discovered that Ford, who would eventually become President, but who in 1964 was merely an influential Congressman from Michigan, was the member of the Warren Commission who had the words “a bullet had entered his back slightly above the shoulder” changed to “a bullet had entered the back of his neck,” in a draft of the Warren Report. Ford explained to a reporter that he believed this wording was more precise. Apparently, he was confused by the Rydberg drawings, which did indeed depict the back wound as residing at the base of the neck.