Shanet's theory of 1963 US Domestic Coup

[Shanet Clark]

Members:

This is the paper I posted when I joined the Forum in 2004.

I was threatened with legal action by a former member and have been away, but now I am back.

If you havent' read my theory, you may be interested in it .........

"History, one thousand years hence, will see a shorthand record of the state-approved coup d’etat.

The future’s historians will see a group of World War II-era presidents, followed by the assassination of President Kennedy and right then, almost simultaneously, the rapid ratification of the twenty-fifth amendment to the United States Constitution. Then follows the futile Southeast Asian land war, the Civil Rights Acts and urban race riots, in the future textbooks.........

Other details about the decades will recede, one thousand years from now, the Beatles, maybe, a walk on the Moon - just shorthand survives - in the future historians’ understanding of our United States history.

I won’t dig out my T.B. MacCaulay, my Thomas Carlyle, my Tott, Elton, or my dusty old Edward Gibbon for you, but suffice it to say, as one who has read political history, that kings and emperors wrote and re-wrote the record of their illegitimate ascensions, at will and after the fact, thoughout all of our recorded history, across the world.

To believe in them makes you a positivist, a sucker, a naïve believer in progress and the State’s eternal accuracy, honesty and diligence.

I will not footnote or add a bibliography to this piece. The information you all are aware of, it is public and the facts are well known. I believe the theme, the thesis, the theory I present here follows from the facts, both inductively and deductively. Inductively, it makes sense of all the specifics, all the questionable government acts - and deductively it follows from this general principle: People in power tend to cover their tracks when they arrive illegitimately.

Historically, however one got into office, if he was finally Emperor or King or President, it was legal.

It had to be “legal.”

Now in the civil republic that we call the United States, in fall of 1963,

certain forms were followed and certain associations were formed.

Acts were committed that were apparently crimes, but they were actually quite “legal,” under the secret regulations and security clearances then in existence, inside the Pentagon and White House, and then made legal again -

The trace of the actions and the identities of the actors are found in a few paragraphs of Constitutional forgiveness, the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, written in 1965 and ratified in 1967. A kind of ‘killing under color of law’ theory emerges from the study of the period, from the biographies and history of the U.S. leadership in the 1960s.

Much hinges on the Cabinet. The 25th amendment tells us that all or part of the Cabinet majority, with the Vice President also on board, shall have the power to decide on the incapacity of the sitting president. This means the role of Treasury Secretary C.D. Dillon becomes crucial in the deed and the aftermath. By deed and aftermath I mean principally, the Dealey Plaza ambush and the Warren Commission’s investigation. Read the twenty-fifth amendment, I think you will see that Vice President Lyndon Johnson is in there, and so is Treasury Secretary C. Douglass Dillon.

The Treasury Secretary is the top of the chain of command for the Secret Service. If Occam’s Razor points to too many suspects, then a unity forms from that, a super-ordinate explanation, an over-arching scheme, both simple and comprehensive. All is explained by the scenario described, in 1965, in the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

The subsequent rationale, or ex post facto legislation - which ratifies a change in government after the fact, this technique is as old as the written language.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, Douglass Dillon, J. Edgar Hoover, the powerful Dulles brothers, these cabinet members and cabinet-level advisors to Kennedy and Johnson. I think they are mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. They could decide upon the President’s incapacity to perform as commander.

The militant reactionary political enemies of John Kennedy formed powerful nodes of power in the web of secret defense interests. It is the unspeakable reality of American political violence which is at historical issue. In 1963 mercenaries and Mafiosos were engaged full-time in the Caribbean and along the Gulf Coast of the U.S., that traditionally unstable US tropical southern border (since Dutch, Spanish and French times, and the war of 1899). Cuba, a right wing mob casino paradise, was lost to the radical, Fidel Castro. John Kennedy failed to initiate the armed air invasion plans the CIA had hoped for and the Bay of Pigs failed miserably.

Now we all know that John Kennedy was a charismatic and intellectually bright man, but he had a strong egocentric aspect, and orgies of all kinds generally followed closely on his person and his staff. After spending a lifetime considering critically the scope and magnitude of what I know and what I know I know, deductive and inductive reasoning, published and private sources:

I find it was an inside job, it was a government job, and it was put up to important people as a fait accompli, “a done deal.”

The assassination was presented to Lyndon Johnson, C.D. Dillon, J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon, as a done deal, a fait accompli, before and after the fact.

This was done by the spies, Kennedy’s enemies. The militant force used the security mechanisms in place to declare John Fitzgerald Kennedy unfit for security clearances and sensitive positions of authority.

Someone in defense intelligence or the CIA circa 1963 took this type of intercepted intelligence to a higher level, 'Well, Jack’s now takin’ the Sandoz doses with Cord Meyer’s wife, LSD thing they’re on now, he’s crazy now, totally mentally unfit do to anything as commander in chief, now he’s clinically, criminally, chronically insane, according to Caption b subsection A, paragraph E, and so on …'

I paraphrase, and form a theoretical scenario. My theory doesn’t hinge on Jack Kennedy using LSD, or having syphilis, or even suffering from Addison’s adrenal deficiency. My theory hinges on the willingness of the spies, his enemies, to declare him incompetent, and I think the theory is a reasonable conclusion.

And so that was that, from the Plans Directorate and 111th they scrambled to work, and the angry Cuban Alpha 66 group did the heavy lifting, with their partners, the mob. Douglass Dillon, Kennedy’s inexplicable choice for Treasury secretary, was the ultimate head of the Secret Service in 1963.

The fix was in, and it was “legal,” due to incapacity.

Why Jack Kennedy made Clarence D. Dillon the head of the U.S. Treasury, no one will ever know.

Robert Lovett had turned it down. Dillon, Reed & Co. was a Wall Street institution and C.D.Dillon was a sort of late model Andrew Mellon for President Kennedy -- an attempt at bipartisan Cabinet leadership, and a sop to the right. Anyway, C.D. Dillon ran the 1963 Secret Service, a branch of Treasury then, and he and the intelligence paramilitary put the thing into place, and then they covered up the assassination with the Warren Commission and the Twenty Fifth Amendment to the Constitution.

Nothing else explains the route, the failure to prepare, the lack of running boards on Jack’s presidential limousine. Why no running boards, why drive at walking speed, why the slow detour, why the crowded overpass over the limousine? We can’t blame a building or a fence or a knoll, people did this. They think they committed no crime. But they implicated themselves in the apologia, which is the 25th Amendment.

Lyndon Baines Johnson, who was elevated to the now compromised (or politically constrained) Presidency, was sitting in the Oval Office while the 25th Amendment went through. At that juncture Cabinet members and a V.P. had the power to incapacitate the President.

This organic legislation, a fundamental addendum to the republic’s Constitution, implicates Clarence Douglass Dillon (whose signature was on the currency in the 1960’s), the amendment indicts Vice President Johnson and other cabinet level advisors in the defense and domestic security web, it explains the acts of Johnson’s friend and protector, J. Edgar Hoover, and possibly Maxwell Taylor, the 1964 ambassador to Saigon.

This top-down scheme allows for the coordinated order of events seen in the event and its aftermath. The amount of troubling illogic in the murder and all the bizarre aftermath points to a Program, a Program approved by at least a few heads of Cabinet.

Jack was a playboy, a movie star, a total wild man. The people that lived up his rear-end, taping him, snapping pictures and listening in, they caught him being very naughty, and they took the case upstairs.

Incapacity.

Dulles got on board with all his baggage. The plan came off the books, the plane was off down the runway, and at Dealey Plaza the deal went down...

In the future, this will be the conventional wisdom, and all the rough consensus about a government conspiracy points toward this explanation, the “legal” model.

Sources? The Twenty-fifth amendment, that’s about as primary as you get, and the Warren Commission, and all it suggests, and neglects, that is primary, that is substantive, that is contemporary.

Affidavits of the assassins and the assassin’s helpers, and the investigative reporting of Seymour Hersh, and the late Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Dorothy Kilgallen, and the behavior of the 1963 Secret Service in the primary document, a color film by Abraham Zapruder, and the photos of the railroad overpass crowded with people over Kennedy’s bloody head…is that a primary source, a film of a walking speed open-car ambush?

The top guys did it. Those that control the FBI, the Naval Hospital, military intelligence, and secret service would never have co-operated without orders from higher-ups. I present a coherent, compelling, cohesive hypothesis, a theory to explain the facts.

In Dallas, Mr. Barnes was there, and Mr. McCord, Eugene Brading and Jimmy Files, maybe Niccolletti the hit man, Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, lucien Conein, Rip Robertson, Johnny Roselli, and Dave Morales, Lansdale the ugly American, he was there, and all together, so it looks like a government job, with mob contractors participating, similar to what was planned for Castro.

I’m a patriotic American and I wish the current officeholders of the Secret Service, Pentagon and the Treasury well, I really do.

But in 1963 the Republican Treasury Secretary C.Douglass Dillon was a responsible party.

Lyndon Johnson was a responsible party. John Edgar Hoover was in authority.

Allen Dulles and the Cabell brothers were responsible. Ed Clark was implicated.

Tracy Barnes was implicated. William Harvey was implicated. Dave Morales was implicated.

Clint Murchison and Sid Richardson was implicated. H.L. Hunt was implicated. David Attlee Phillips and Desmond Fitzgerald were involved in the murder, and they were gung-ho patriotic Americans.

The team of mercenaries and hitmen that had worked under federal control in the late 50’s were also implicated; Sam Giancanna, Mr. Marcello, Mr. Trafficante, the infamous Johnny Rosselli, Mr. Niccoletti and his driver Jimmy Files, they were all implicated. And the medical crews, and the FBI, and the Dallas police, who failed to protect the suspect. Oswald, who was lost to history, made one substantive statement “I am a patsy.” His career in counter-intelligence is evidence for my theory.

A highly-classified document once existed, and it was the authorization for the executive action.

Incapacity (with the eye dotted and the tee crossed) of the Commander in Chief;

JFK was stripped of his security clearances, and his removal was officially authorized.

But in the Constitution itself is another rapidly written, but after the fact, rationale.

This is an ex-post facto, presidential ascension, legitimacy rationale, a document like the ones we have seen so many times in British and Roman history. It was a national security crisis…and John Kennedy was supposedly clinically insane, from drugs. Kennedy was declared clinically incapacitated and was stripped of his security clearance, because he had indulged in the psychedelic LSD-25, which the CIA had introduced for mind control and human experimentation in the Chemical Warfare Program MK/ULTRA. The same agencies had spied on Kennedy and discovered this mistake, when he spent time with Mary Meyer.

The Twenty-fifth amendment gives cover to the events of November, 1963; especially since the Vice President and some of his Cabinet level advisors were still in power in 1965 when it was composed, and even in 1967, when it became law, ratified in “the summer of love.”

Why this sudden rush to radically re-write the rules for a Presidential succession? Dallas and the unusual ascension of Lyndon Baines Johnson was the motivation.

What laws or rules drive good historical theory? Theories explaining evidence must be concise, compelling, coherent, cohesive. The simplest scheme possible to explain all the known facts and misunderstandings. Occam’s razor, or the law of parsimony should drive theory derived from evidence. Keep it simple stupid. No bells and whistles.

So with the Kennedy assassination, a simple answer, an explanation, at last. But damn it is hard to swallow, despicable murder…like Julius Ceasar, or Alexander II.

This was a story of top-down orders, from the VP and a Cabinet bloc.

The Commander-in-chief had suffered “incapacity.”

Murder during the Cold War, under secret color of law,

involving the Cuban mercenaries, secret service failures and a laughable FBI investigation…

Johnson, Hoover, C.D. Dillon, Alan Dulles, the Warren Commission and the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, how does all this fit together? A top down, top level security crisis, an executive action, a non-crime, a “legal” event.

May God in Heaven bless our martyred leader, John F. Kennedy, and God protect us all.

(Re-posted for new members/ May 2006)

[Ron Ecker]

Shanet,

It's a good theory, but we know that VP Johnson had an independent and compelling reason to have JFK assassinated. Johnson was facing political and personal ruin unless he became president asap. He had apparently killed before out of self-preservation, and would have no compunction about doing it again, as he had never before been so desperate as in the fall of 1963. As Billie Sol Estes puts it, in going to Texas JFK simply "did not realize that LBJ and his friends intended to kill him."

LBJ may have advanced JFK's incapacity among other reasons (Vietnam etc.) to recruit the military, Hoover, Mafia, CIA, etc. all into an assassination plot. Or LBJ may have been approached on the same grounds, a plot that to him was a gift on a silver platter. Who came up first with the plot, based on incapacity and/or the usual laundry list of motives, is sort of like which came first, the chicken or the egg. But I believe that if JFK had never once been unfaithful to Jackie, and had never once touched an illegal drug during his days in the White House, he would still have been assassinated. "LBJ and his friends intended to kill him."

Ron

[Guest Eugene B. Connolly]

.... but now I am back.

...and welcome back to you, Shanet!

EBC

[Shanet Clark]

.... but now I am back.

...and welcome back to you, Shanet!

EBC

Eugene:

Since I developed the theory of "incapacity" I have noted the

strange behavior of Joint Chiefs Admiral Lemnitzer (NORTHWOODS)

and cling to the belief that Naval Intelligence monitored Kennedy throughout his life

and developed a file similar to Seymour Hersh's DARK SIDE OF CAMELOT.

Incapacity was the probable pretext of the government EXECUTIVE SANCTION........

thanks

[Stan Wilbourne]

Shanet,

Your theory certainly connects all the dots. Once you know there was a conspiracy, the question is then "why"?

I believe the order came straight from the pinnacle of power. My question for a long while now has been, "Was that power inside or outside of the government?"

Are the lines blurred there?

From Matthew Smith's "JFK, The Second Plot", page 314:

The conspirators had names, and it is likely that more than one of them -- perhaps all of them -- at one time or another shaken the President by hand. It is not difficult to believe that the whole thing started by two people expressing their discontent to one another, perhaps one angry enough to suggest that someone ought to rid the country of Kennedy once and for all. If the other heard his own thoughts and feelings on the matter being expressed, the conversation would not have to develop very far before it featured considerations of how such a goal might be achieved. The two would be extremely wealthy men, two of those who were used to their money, power and influence obtaining for them anything they wanted. Two who belonged to that 'other government' of big business who, at the end of the day, believed that what was best for the interest of their group was best for the United States. They would recount how they had discussed this subject with their friends and acquaintances, and how many othe people felt the same way. The people they were talking about were people in high places, people in the Pentagon who were seething over Kennedy's polices, people in oil and other businesses who made no secret about their hatred of the young President. They knew the Mafia could not wait to see him go, one way or another, any way as long as he went, and there were others too. The outcome of this discussion would be that they would talk in the utmost secrecy to some of the friends they had mentioned, and arrage a meeting of 'interested parties'...

The next meeting probably became some kind of council of war with those present pledging themselves to the 'project' -- how to get rid of President Kennedy. Thre were probably not more than half a dozen people in the room, and the atmosphere would not be at all reminiscent of whispering plotters planning something dastardly. It would be more likely a staid 'other government' gathering where those present saw what they had to do as something exceedingly distasteful but, none the less, imperative for the nation. The aura would be one of dedicated patriotism, no doubt. Among those present there would probably be a general and probably a high ranking CIA official, who would talk of others of their colleagues, upon whom they could completely rely for their participation. Most of those there would represent, one way or another, money, and money would be available in virtually limitless supply for the vital 'project' they were undertaking. If there was not a Mafia representative present, it is likely a decision was made to seek a nominee from their ranks. Their first task would be to secure the service of a 'supremo', an 'arranger' who would organise the whole event to the instructions given him by the group representative, the only person who would be known to him. Arrangements having been made for a bank account, from which funds could be drawn, the arranger may not have met the group representative again. Possibly he was given deatils of the ambush, the plan for which may have been drawn up by the conspiring general, and perhaps he was also given the name of a Mafia contact knowledgeable about available assassins on the international 'circuit'. His job would be to set up the main tier plot, though, no doubt, he would also become responsible for the unexpected cover up which became necessary, also. It was probably thought best that the arranger be kept in ignorance of the details of the second plot, that being the responsibility of the CIA member of the group, though he would be told how it would dovetail into the main tier plot...

...it is likely it was some sort of consortium representing different interests, and it amost certainly was planned, as the conspiratiors saw it, 'in the national interest'. It was a coup d'etat they were planning. No doubt many of those who participated in the two plots -- those who knew what it was they were about -- felt the same way as the conspiratorial group about the President. But those people who sat down together to plot the President's demise and the overthrow of the administration were people of power and influence and money -- the Establishment -- and whichever way they planned it, they achieved anonymity, thanks to that part of the second plot which succeeded.

[Guest Stephen Turner]

Eugene:

Since I developed the theory of "incapacity" I have noted the

strange behavior of Joint Chiefs Admiral Lemnitzer (NORTHWOODS)

and cling to the belief that Naval Intelligence monitored Kennedy throughout his life

Shanet, this is the area I have been researching for the last six months, and have come to believe that the assasination grew organically out of Northwoods, same planners, same players..Lemnitzer, Craig, Dulles, LeMay etc, with maybe Walkers rifles doing the shooting. I am currently looking into bankrolling by various big buisness interests. Once I have this in shape I will present it to the Forum..Regards, Steve.

[Jim Root]

Shanet

I too believe that the assassination was a coup orchestrated from within the government by a (small?) group that could be assured that they would have the ability to garner support for what would become the cover-up of their crime. It is my belief that those who orchestrated the crime would have had knowledge that by using Oswald as a key figure they would assure the support of various agencies in the cover-up.

For instance on April 21, 1963 the FBI was alerted to Oswald's pro Cuba activities in Dallas although the Dallas office of the FBI had no independent information to support this information. Because of the information provided to the FBI by an anonomyous informer Oswald's file was reopened and his movements were monitored and reported. Is it logical that the "conspirators" could assure that the FBI's investigation would be subject to their influence once it would be discovered that the FBI had been alerted to and were monitoring the movements of Lee Harvey Oswald? Would the FBI become plyable if it could be shown that they were aware of the accussed assassin yet they failed to prevent the assassin from having access to the "snipers nest?" What was in the destroyed Hosty note and why was it destroyed?

For years I belived that the assassination and the cover-up were two seperate incidents but now believe that both were part and parcel of the same plan. That the plan would be developed based upon a "legal" theory is not beyond belief in my book. I have been reading Kai Birds wonderful biography on John J. McCloy and am having my independent research verified reguarding McCloy's ability to find for the government legal justification for illegal activities.

Two stroies which I find interesting in illustrating this point (both occured during World War II). The first has McCloy handing Sec. of War Stimson a written brief while he is on his way to see President Roosevelt. Stimson begins reading the brief to the President and hits a point where he reads the words, "of course this is unconstitutional but ..." and he stops reading. The meeting erupts in laughter as the guardians of the free world continue to work on how they are going to justify pulling off this illegal activity. In another event Roosevelt is disrupting the construction of the Pentegon with his personal imput on how the plans should be altered. McCloy is miffed by the Presidents interference so when Roosevelt has a favor to ask McCloy (dealing with a former high ranking NAZI who had been a Harvard classmate of Roosevelts and was in custody in Canada) McCloy lets the President know that he will only help with the President's problem if he approves the Pentagon plans as they currently stood. Roosevelt approved the plans and McCloy brought the Presidents friend quietly into the United States. After this event Roosevelt would jokingly refer to McCloy as "that blackmailer."

We could go on to show how McCloy not only orchestrated the Japanese - American internments but then assurred that the Supreme Court cases dealing with this event were "fixed" by not allowing certain information to be presented to the justices. McCloy would also suppress the release of information before the 1944 election that would help to prevent political problems for Roosevelt dealing with the same relocation problem and suppressed a court order to allow Japanese - Americans to move freely about in the United States until after the election as well.

By 1963 John J. McCloy had a great deal of experience in lying to the American public and creating legal theory that was contrary to the Constitution in order to protect what he felt was in the best interests of National Security.

Your theory is not so far fetched and McCloy's placement on the Warren Commission, in my opinion, may well support that theory in some form or another.

Jim Root

[Len Colby]

Shanet, your analysis of the 25th Amendment is completely erroneous, the part you are referring to, section 4, reads as follows [my comments in brackets]:

Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments [i.e. – the full cabinet] or of such other body as Congress may by law provide [Congress has never designated such a body], transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

It should be pointed out that the VP and a majority of the members of the cabinet would have to declare that the president was incapacitated. It is extremely unlikely that they would do so in a situation when the president wasn't legitimately incapacitated for several reasons:

1) They were chosen by the president and presumably were people he confided in. Although some VPs were chosen as part of marriages of convenience this is not the case of the cabinet members. At the time the amendment was ratified there were 12 cabinet members, the plotters would need 7 of them to sign the declaration.

2) For a conspiracy to work the group carrying it out has to trust each other and have common interests. The only common link among the cabinet members is that they were appointed by and serve under the president you think they might plot to depose. The VP would have an obvious motive, what would be in it for the cabinet members who would risk life imprisonment or political ruin for doing so?

3) Although it's no guarantee that no shady characters become cabinet members that they have to be appointed by the president and approved by the Senate and have there live investigated by the press and president's advisors makes this unlikely and the chances that 50% + 1 of them would be coup plotters is hard to imagine.

Also such a plot wouldn't work for other reasons:

1) All the president would have to do to return to office is to sign a declaration that he (or she) wasn't incapacitated. This is I believe the biggest hole in your "theory". In a situation where the VP and cabinet disputed the president's claim that he wasn't incapacitated the question would be settled by congress and a 2/3 vote by both houses would be necessary to keep the president from returning to power.

2) In the extremely unlikely situation that the VP and cabinet tried to remove an able president, such a coup is unlikely to be accepted by the American public. Although Clinton committed perjury many congressmen and senators who voted for his removal were hurt politically by this vote, although FDR and his New Deal were very popular his attempt to "pack the (Supreme) court" was a political disaster. The situation would not be sustainable.

So the plotters would have to actually incapacitate the president to the point that congress and the American people would agree he (or she) truly wasn't "able to discharge the powers and duties of his office". They would have drug/poison him either to induce a permanent coma or leave him crazy (I don't know if such a drug exists). But any group capable of and willing to do that would probably just kill him it would be easier and less risky. Easier, less risky and more effective, a VP who succeeded a dead president would become president in his own right and thus have much more of a mandate than an 'acting president'; this would be especially true if the president was known to have been assassinated. JFK's 'martyrdom' helped LBJ pass legislation and get reelected. 4 VP's suceeded dead president's in the 20th century (TR, Coolidge, Truman and LBJ) all four were elected president in the next election. (None of the 19th century sucessors ran for pesident)

The 25th amendment was introduced, passed and ratified while LBJ was president but that proves little. The amendment was introduced by Birch Bayh. Liberal Bayh saved Ted Kennedy's life in a 1964 plane crash and was the also the principal framer of the 26th amendment (lowering the voting age to 18), the ERA (the Equal Rights Amendment) and Title IX (prohibiting sexual discrimination in sports and education). It was passed by a two-thirds (at least) majority in both houses of congress and both houses of the legislatures of (at least) three quarters of the states. Were the thousands of legislators across the country who voted to pass and ratify the amendment "in on" the conspiracy?

"The rules for a Presidential succession" weren't "radically re-written". The main focus of the amendment was to provide for the nomination of a vice-president when there was a vacancy. The part of the of the amendment you object to was ratified because it was necessary, on at least six previous occasions the president was incapacitated for extended periods of time and there was no mechanism to declare an acting president leaving the country effectively leaderless.

1841 – William Henry Harrison caught pneumonia during his inauguration speech he was never well enough to serve as president and died 32 later.

1850 – Zachary Taylor fell ill after consuming cherries and milk on July 4 and succumbed to cholera (or gastroenteritis depending on who you believe). He lay incapacitated for 5 days before dying.

1881 – William Garfield was shot July 2 but he did not die until September 19, 80 days later.

1901 – William McKinnley was shot September 6 but only died September 14.

1920 – 1 - Woodrow Wilson suffered a stroke on October 2, 1919 leaving him incapacitated this was hidden from the American public and his VP, it is believed his wife and close advisors were in charge until William Harding succeeded him on March 4, 1921(five months later).

1923 – Harding died August 2 after being ill for several days.

By the 1960's the US was enmeshed in a "cold war" with the Soviet Bloc especially after the Cuban Missile crisis it was obvious that extended periods without an acting president could be perilous, Soviet hard liners had recently forced Khrushchev from power. Theoretically a president could lapse into a coma on the day of his inauguration and be kept alive indefinitely on life support. Without the 25th amendment the country would be without an acting president until the inauguration of his successor 4 years later.

I don't follow your analysis that the 25th amendment some how is evidence of LBJ, Hoover and Dillion et. al.'s guilt. They might well have been the culprits but they had little to do with the amendment and it is in no way indicative of their guilt. JFK was already dead the amendment was not of use to them.

How exactly did the amendment "give cover to the events of November, 1963". You indicated, as much as I could follow you that you thought some plot to incapacitate JFK existed, do you have any evidence in support of this theory?

I have seen similar interpretations of section four of the amendment, mostly on sites that froth on about the Illuminati and Area 51. What I haven't seen is a historian, political scientist or legal scholar give the idea credit and for good reason, it's obviously wrong to anybody who knows what they are talking about.

I am also curious about your claim that you were threatened with legal action over 25th Amendment/ JFK Assassination essay above, who threatened to sue you most (if not all) the people you cited had died. Wasn't it Gratz who threatened to sue you after you accused him of involvement in the attempt on Wallace?[/size]

Len

Edited May 10, 2006 by Len Colby