Historians, Journalists and Political Conspiracies

[Joan Mellen]

Why is it that most books written about political conspiracies: assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra, etc. are written by journalists rather than historians? Is it because of fear or is it something to do with the nature of being a historian?

For example, The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that the “committee believes, on the basis of the available evidence, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy”. However, very few historians have been willing to explore this area of American history. Lawrence E. Walsh’s Iran-Contra Report suggests that senior politicians were involved in and covered-up serious crimes. Yet very few historians have written about this case in any detail? Why do you think that historians and journalists appear to be so unwilling to investigate political conspiracies?

Historians and journalists are unwilling to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy, to cite our example, because they know that they will be punished, as you suggest in question number 3 were they to do so. They would get very small advances from the small publishers, and would have to finance the research themselves as I had to do. I wrote books about Japanese movies for the British Film Institute, I wrote those books about Latin America, to help pay for the research because my advance was so law.

As for the documents, many but not all are available at the National Archives. Anyone can view these documents. People are out there to be interviewed. These establishment historians have chosen, and this is a choice, not to explore what really happened to President Kennedy because they fear reprisal in the form of damage to their careers and to their financial well being.

Once the press rubber-stamped the Warren Report, and refused even to explore its contradictions, the press of our country became embedded in the official cover up. They continue to be embedded largely in official versions of events today, but it began, I believe, with the Kennedy assassination.

Jim Garrison reopened his investigation of the Kennedy assassination when he read Dwight Macdonald's article in Esquire magazine about the Warren Report and its deficiencies. But Macdonald, an old radical, was an exception in recognizing that the Warren Commission had done no real investigation. Even the great journalist I.F. Stone refused to deal with the Kennedy assassination honestly.

I do not believe that our country would have been damaged politically had the truth of government involvement in the murder of President Kennedy been reported. The reverse is the case. Democracy is weakened by the press maintaining official lies; please see "9/11 and 11/22," my op ed piece on my website http://www.joanmellen.net/NYC_2006article.html which compares the lies of two Presidential commissions, the Warren Commission and the 9/11 Commission.

[Dawn Meredith]

Why is it that most books written about political conspiracies: assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra, etc. are written by journalists rather than historians? Is it because of fear or is it something to do with the nature of being a historian?

For example, The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that the “committee believes, on the basis of the available evidence, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy”. However, very few historians have been willing to explore this area of American history. Lawrence E. Walsh’s Iran-Contra Report suggests that senior politicians were involved in and covered-up serious crimes. Yet very few historians have written about this case in any detail? Why do you think that historians and journalists appear to be so unwilling to investigate political conspiracies?

Historians and journalists are unwilling to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy, to cite our example, because they know that they will be punished, as you suggest in question number 3 were they to do so. They would get very small advances from the small publishers, and would have to finance the research themselves as I had to do. I wrote books about Japanese movies for the British Film Institute, I wrote those books about Latin America, to help pay for the research because my advance was so law.

As for the documents, many but not all are available at the National Archives. Anyone can view these documents. People are out there to be interviewed. These establishment historians have chosen, and this is a choice, not to explore what really happened to President Kennedy because they fear reprisal in the form of damage to their careers and to their financial well being.

Once the press rubber-stamped the Warren Report, and refused even to explore its contradictions, the press of our country became embedded in the official cover up. They continue to be embedded largely in official versions of events today, but it began, I believe, with the Kennedy assassination.

Jim Garrison reopened his investigation of the Kennedy assassination when he read Dwight Macdonald's article in Esquire magazine about the Warren Report and its deficiencies. But Macdonald, an old radical, was an exception in recognizing that the Warren Commission had done no real investigation. Even the great journalist I.F. Stone refused to deal with the Kennedy assassination honestly.

I do not believe that our country would have been damaged politically had the truth of government involvement in the murder of President Kennedy been reported. The reverse is the case. Democracy is weakened by the press maintaining official lies; please see "9/11 and 11/22," my op ed piece on my website http://www.joanmellen.net/NYC_2006article.html which compares the lies of two Presidential commissions, the Warren Commission and the 9/11 Commission.

Joan is so correct. When friends ask me why I am still- after 43 years!!- studying this case I try to make them understand that the coup that occurred in 63 did not later just return to us our government. Instead things have steadily worsened. Compare the situation today with JFK's bravery. This country is barely recognizable; our Constitution is all but a sad memory. I blame the press for a lot of this. The CIA's Operation Mockingbird has never been more alive and well than in today's press. LIke Fox for example "fair and balanced?" When it's so pro- W and lackies that I cannot imagine a network MORE biased, against truth, fairness and balance.

And the newspapers are no better. Our only hope is the net, that it remain unregulated.

I cannot blame the journalists themselves because, as Joan points out, if one dares to write critically, the brass will edit such a piece so that it reflects their corporate "Mockingbird" stance.

The days of a journalist like Earl Golz are long gone,and with him, freedom of the press.

We live in very uncertain times. Why don't Americans wake up and demand better? I am afraid they have been so thoroughly brainwashed that they really don't realize that our precious freedoms are all but gone. We have an Attorney General who should be removed but his commander-in-chief is so Nazi- like it's truly horrifying. JIm Garrison, long ago , spoke about the rise of Nazism in Germany and compared the situation

in the US to that time saying "I'm afraid Nazism will come to America in the name of national security".

How prophetic!

Dawn

[Peter Dale Scott]

Is there any real difference between the role of an investigative journalist and a historian?

There shouldn't be. In my area journalists should think historically, and historians investigatively.

How do you decide about what to write about?

Whatever is most in need of public criticism and exposure.

Do you ever consider the possibility that your historical research will get you into trouble with those who have power and influence?

As one of my close colleagues (Malcolm Caldwell) was murdered, and some of my sources also, yes, I try to be mindful of how much risk I should take.

You tend to write about controversial subjects. Do you think this has harmed your career in any way? Have you ever come under pressure to leave these subjects alone?

I was advised by friendly senior academic colleagues not to write about Vietnam, in one case almost threateningly (it ended a friendship). And for several years I could not get a merit increase. But all in all I have no complaints about my university.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that the “committee believes, on the basis of the available evidence, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy”. However, very few historians have been willing to explore this area of American history. Lawrence E. Walsh’s Iran-Contra Report suggests that senior politicians were involved in and covered-up serious crimes. Yet very few historians have written about this case in any detail? Why do you think that historians and journalists appear to be so unwilling to investigate political conspiracies?

Both historians and especially journalists often depend on government cooperation in the advancement of their careers.

What is your basic approach to writing about what I would call “secret history”? How do you decide what sources to believe? How do you manage to get hold of documents that prove that illegal behaviour has taken place?

This is a complex matter not reducible to a paragraph. I once taught a semester-long course in how to evaluate and compare sources, which is the key. Documents are very important too, but rarely "prove" something by themselves.

Why is it that most books written about political conspiracies; assassinations of JFK, MLK, RFK, Watergate, Iran-Contra, etc. are written by journalists rather than historians? Is it because of fear or is it something to do with the nature of being a historian?

Academic historians are housed in a bureaucratic hierarchy that is unfortunately less open than it advertises itself to be. So are most journalists. But journalists are more experienced than most historians in the possibilities of doing self-financing research.

[Ron Ecker]

I do not believe that our country would have been damaged politically had the truth of government involvement in the murder of President Kennedy been reported. The reverse is the case. Democracy is weakened by the press maintaining official lies

Perhaps the biggest perpetual lie by which government criminals have continued to thrive is the notion that the people "can't handle the truth." So that's what rugs are supposedly for, to sweep things under. They sure have gotten lumpy.

I'd be willing to bet that it's the criminals, if they were exposed by enough historians and journalists, who couldn't handle the truth. But I'm afraid their power has grown too pervasive to allow such exposure, so the lie will live on.

[Anthony Summers]

I don't much like the description "investigative journalist" - it's become debased by overuse and its usurpation by people who couldn't investigate their way out of a paper bag.

As for me, I think I simply felt the stories I was covering - while working for the BBC - often deserved more work and digging than time and budgets allowed. As Senior Film Producer in the BBC Current Affairs Group, I worked with colleagues to encourage that sort of project. Then I left to write my first book, on the disappearance of the Romanovs in 1918, and before I knew it was being described as an investigative journalist. But everyone in journalism should strive to investigate and probe below the surface of the story. If they don't, in my book they're not journalists at all.

In function, the historian essentially works with what's there in print already or what he or she finds in manuscript form. Unlike journalists, they tend to seek out living witnesses far less often - and in my experience then often proceed to carp at "journalists" who do go out and do "live" research and - perish the thought! - come up with something the historians had missed. One U.S. historian had the gall to say (in connection with one of my books), "If it's not in the files, it didn't happen."

The Kennedy assassination is a special case, I think. At first, to its shame, the U.S. media simply trusted the establishment and did virtually nothing to probe into the case. Lazy from the outset, and later gullible and passive. Frankly, they've not done much even since the evidence for "lone gunman Oswald" became evidently fragile. Why? So ridiculous were many of the early "critics", so bizarre was the Garrison circus in New Orleans, that many perfectly honourable reporters shied away from what looked like a quagmire for reputations. So did I - until asked to make a BBC documentary about the work of the House Assassinations Committee.

[Dick Russell]

I was drawn into investigating the Kennedy assassination in 1975, when the Village Voice sent me to do a story on what Professor Richard Popkin had recently uncovered. At the time, I had no intention that this would occupy the next couple years of my life. The more I learned, the more I realized that a "secret history" underlay what we'd been taught in school, certainly of the post-WW II years and since the creation of the CIA in 1947.

I've never cared overly much about "career advancement." But yes, there has occasionally been pressure to leave a controversial subject alone, although I wouldn't say it's necessarily been overt. I was told, some time ago, that I was being followed occasionally - and I'm sure my phone has been tapped periodically.

In the case of major media, I think the reluctance to investigate political conspiracies stems from several factors. First, they don't want "egg on their face," in other words they didn't choose to examine what happened to JFK and his brother, and others, from the get-go - and it would prove embarrassing to do so at a later time. Also, I'm sure there has been pressure "from the top" not to look too deeply. And also, I think a lot of people just don't want to believe that these kinds of things can happen in America. It's a false sense of innocence, one could say.

My basic approach to writing about "secret history" is, at first, to believe just about everybody. By that, I mean I don't prejudge someone I'm interviewing or dismiss even a "fantastic" story out-of-hand. It's only as I came to know a great deal about the Kennedy assassination, for example, that I was able to realize that quite a few - indeed, the majority - of the strange folks I'd interviewed were probably not telling the truth. Some may have been intentionally planting disinformation. Ultimately, I came to believe Richard Nagell - and Antonio Veciana, for example - because I gained a strong sense of their personal integrity. And, I guess, because there were things they WOULDN'T say, to my frustration. After awhile, an investigative journalist starts to draw conclusions by finding as many sources for verification as possible. It's time-consuming. As for getting ahold of documents, it used to be a lot easier to use the FOIA, before the Bush Administration set about trying to "cancel it out" - and thereby keep the "secret history" secret.

[Bill Charleston]

I do not believe that our country would have been damaged politically had the truth of government involvement in the murder of President Kennedy been reported. The reverse is the case. Democracy is weakened by the press maintaining official lies; please see "9/11 and 11/22," my op ed piece on my website http://www.joanmellen.net/NYC_2006article.html which compares the lies of two Presidential commissions, the Warren Commission and the 9/11 Commission.

Joan;

I was fascinated by your comparison of the JFK assassination to the 9/11 Commission. You are close to gettting it, but you are still somewhat off target. Keep looking and the truth will jump out at you.

There is one more large similarity that you are missing.

Bill

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

I found the end of this biref article by Jim Hougan very interesting. In a response to a professor who lumps him together dismissively with a bunch of "conspiracty thoerists", Hougan mentions something very interesting about the timing of Prof. Richard Hofstadter's famous essay on the "Paranoid style of American Politics":

Nevertheless, it is fair to say that there is an epistemological divide between scholars such as Dr. Moore and well-intentioned sleuths such as John Judge. On the one hand, we have the “professional conspiracists,” who tend to see evil everywhere. And on the other hand, we have the “professional coincidentalists” who (let’s be clear about it) wouldn’t know a conspiracy if they found themselves framed for the murder of Beowolf.

The origins of this divide can probably be traced to an untimely coincidence of the 1960s. In 1964, the eminent historian, Richard Hofstadter, published an essay in Harper’s Magazine. Entitled, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” Hofstadter’s piece inveighed against the “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy” of right-wing demagogues such Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society.

What made the article untimely was the fact that its publication coincided neatly with the completion of the Warren Commission’s report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That report, which validated the FBI’s findings that the President had been murdered by a lone nut, was submitted to the Johnson White House on September 24, 1964. Exactly one month later, Harper’s hit the newsstands with Hofstadter’s article, attacking “the paranoid style.”

While Hofstadter did not mention the Kennedy assassination, his essay provided a convenient and respectable framework for subsequent attacks upon critics of the Warren Commission. Suddenly, it was intellectually disreputable---”paranoid” and unpatriotic---to question the edicts and findings of respectable institutions like the Warren Commission, CBS and The New York Times. Ambitious academics, desperate for tenure, took their cue.

Serious researchers like Harold Weisberg soon found it almost impossible to publish. And when a publisher was finally found, Weisberg and his colleagues were as often as not dismissed as “conspiracy theorists” by journalists and academics who made little or no effort to evaluate their research.

Nearly 40 years have now passed since Hofstadter’s article first appeared, and in that time the world has been plagued by terrorism, assassination, genocide and war. Parapolitical structures headquartered in caves have laid waste Wall Street, killing thousands of Americans. Constitutional protections have been suspended, superseded or exempted to death, while a new regime of surveillance unfolds in the heartland.

Surely, it is time that we put an end to the name-calling, and begin to follow the evidence. All of the evidence. Wherever it goes.

------------

I did not know about this coincidence in timing of Prof. H's famous article and the WC's studiously unparanoid edict. I find it interestling that Hougan goes so far as to descibe it as a warning shot to aspiring academics. For the full artilce see

http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Articles/hougan.htm

Edited April 29, 2007 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[Pat Speer]

I found the end of this biref article by Jim Hougan very interesting. In a response to a professor who lumps him together dismissively with a bunch of "conspiracty thoerists", Houghan mentions something very interesting about the timing of Prof. Richard Hofstadter's famous essay on the paranoid syle of American politics:

Nevertheless, it is fair to say that there is an epistemological divide between scholars such as Dr. Moore and well-intentioned sleuths such as John Judge. On the one hand, we have the “professional conspiracists,” who tend to see evil everywhere. And on the other hand, we have the “professional coincidentalists” who (let’s be clear about it) wouldn’t know a conspiracy if they found themselves framed for the murder of Beowolf.

The origins of this divide can probably be traced to an untimely coincidence of the 1960s. In 1964, the eminent historian, Richard Hofstadter, published an essay in Harper’s Magazine. Entitled, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” Hofstadter’s piece inveighed against the “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness and conspiratorial fantasy” of right-wing demagogues such Sen. Joseph McCarthy and Robert Welch, the founder of the John Birch Society.

What made the article untimely was the fact that its publication coincided neatly with the completion of the Warren Commission’s report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That report, which validated the FBI’s findings that the President had been murdered by a lone nut, was submitted to the Johnson White House on September 24, 1964. Exactly one month later, Harper’s hit the newsstands with Hofstadter’s article, attacking “the paranoid style.”

While Hofstadter did not mention the Kennedy assassination, his essay provided a convenient and respectable framework for subsequent attacks upon critics of the Warren Commission. Suddenly, it was intellectually disreputable---”paranoid” and unpatriotic---to question the edicts and findings of respectable institutions like the Warren Commission, CBS and The New York Times. Ambitious academics, desperate for tenure, took their cue.

Serious researchers like Harold Weisberg soon found it almost impossible to publish. And when a publisher was finally found, Weisberg and his colleagues were as often as not dismissed as “conspiracy theorists” by journalists and academics who made little or no effort to evaluate their research.

Nearly 40 years have now passed since Hofstadter’s article first appeared, and in that time the world has been plagued by terrorism, assassination, genocide and war. Parapolitical structures headquartered in caves have laid waste Wall Street, killing thousands of Americans. Constitutional protections have been suspended, superseded or exempted to death, while a new regime of surveillance unfolds in the heartland.

Surely, it is time that we put an end to the name-calling, and begin to follow the evidence. All of the evidence. Wherever it goes.

------------

I did not know about this coincidence in timing of Prof. H's famous article and the WC's studiously unparanoid edict. I find it interestling that Hougan goes so far as to descibe it as a warning shot to aspiring academics. For the full artilce see

http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Articles/hougan.htm

The initial opinion of most every American opinion-maker and intellectual was that Kennedy was killed by the right. When Oswald's left-wing background was exposed, many of them did a quick retreat and assumed/hoped he was some sort of lone nut. The initial conspiracy theorists--with the exception of Mark Lane and those writing in Europe--were largely right-wingers convinced Kennedy was killed by a communist conspiracy. Hofstadter's article was almost certainly an attack on their credibility. It was feared they'd force us into a war. In the interest of fairness, the intellectual community and media leaned too far back the other way, and immediately accepted the Warren Report (without reading it). They then, operating under the assumption that the great progressive Earl Warren would not have steered them astray, failed to read the 26 volumes and expose that the report presented to the public was a prosecutor's brief. The NY Times even went so far as to cull exhibits from the 26 volumes to support the Warren Report, which they by then had to know was a prosecutor's brief, and publish it as The Witnesses. Later, in 66 and 67, much of the media went back and realized their mistakes and started asking questions. The same thing has happened today. The media, by and large, played ball with the White House in starting the war in Iraq. Now, feeling jilted, they are going at Bush and his Boys full force. In Watergate it was the same deal, newspaper editors overwhelmingly ignored the Watergate story until Nixon had successfully been re-elected.

The lesson to be learned is that, when it comes to White House lies, America's press operates under the assumption the White House is telling the truth until it becomes PAINFULLY clear they've been lied to. Then and only then do they initiate investigations and expose the lying liars for the lying liars they are. Unfortunately, this leaves the door open for VPs to commit MURDER, literally, and crooks to steal elections. It then becomes incumbent on congress to do their jobs and investigate these things. If the public dislikes the President, as in Watergate, he will go down. If the president remains popular, however, as in Iran-Contra, nothing will be done. beyond smearing the president's legacy.

In the case of LBJ and the JFK assassination, the fact remains that he was treated as above suspicion from day one, and has never been investigated. This is as severe an indictment of the American system as I can imagine. Whether or not LBJ did it is almost immaterial at this point. What matters is that if he did do it, he was ALLOWED to get away with it, because no one had the intestinal fortitude to look at his actions. How else can you explain his creating a presidential commission made up largely of cronies to clear himself? This investigation, by all rights, belonged in Texas, on the one hand, and in congress. It should have been done in public for all to see. The FBI and Secret Service should have done peripheral investigations. That virtually everyone with any power agreed that it was best to let Johnson investigate himself and do it in secret is to their everlasting shame. Sometimes investigating a murder is more important than political expediencey. This wa sone of those times.

Edited April 29, 2007 by Pat Speer

[William Kelly]

I thought I'd revive this interesting thread in light of the publication of David Kaiser's Road to Dallas.

There were three, maybe four histoirans appointed to the Assassination Records Review Board, though none of them have utilized their unique position there to write anything worthwhile about the assassination.

Although many institutions have failed us in regards to the assassination, including Congress, the Judiciary, Presidents, the Fourth estate and the academic community, historians, for the most part, have not even bothered to enter the fray.

BK

[John Simkin]

The investigative journalist relies mainly on interviews. The historian relies mainly on documents. There is overlap, but that's the main difference.

The basic rule is that before-the-fact (in this case, pre-November 1963) documents are more important than after-the-fact ones. There's a hierarchy of evidence. People who come forward years later with stories are suspect, and if they said something different at the time, one has to discount them heavily. Meanwhile, one has to read as many documents as possible to understand the context of a particular event. Almost everything Oswald did looks, actually, like part of something bigger that was happening at the time.

Political history in general is very unfashionable, and before me, only one professional historian, John Newman, has written about the JFK case. It frightens people because so many crazy folk are involved with it, I think. It also requies a huge time commitment.

In that case I am amazed that you claim that Loran Hall was definitely one of those who visited Silvia Odio on 25th September, 1963. Your use of Frank Ragano's hearsay evidence to support your Mafia theory put forward in the "Road to Dallas" is also open to criticism.

[Tim Gratz]

Granted Ragano's story about what Trafficante confessed to him constitutes hearsay but assuming Ragano was testifying in court (and assuming that what Trafficante told him was not protected by the attorney-client privilege) it would have been admissible in evidence as a "statement against interest". Since Ragano's story would have been admissible in evidence as a hearsay exception, I think John's criticism of Kaiser on this point is not well-founded. I do agree that it is astounding that Kaiser can propose Hall and Howard as Odio's visitors when both Silvia and her sister said they were not.

[William Kelly]

Granted Ragano's story about what Trafficante confessed to him constitutes hearsay but assuming Ragano was testifying in court (and assuming that what Trafficante told him was not protected by the attorney-client privilege) it would have been admissible in evidence as a "statement against interest". Since Ragano's story would have been admissible in evidence as a hearsay exception, I think John's criticism of Kaiser on this point is not well-founded. I do agree that it is astounding that Kaiser can propose Hall and Howard as Odio's visitors when both Silvia and her sister said they were not.

No need to speculate, hearsay is admissible as Grand Jury testimony, and before you can get to a trial, you need to have a grand jury indictment. The hearsay would not be permitted in trial. But its okay for grand jury, which must come first.

BK

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Your use of Frank Ragano's heresay evidence to support your Mafia theory put forward in the "Road to Dallas" is also open to criticism.

Tim Gratz was disbarred only once, so we can forgive him. Frank Ragano was disbarred twice, which puts him in very select company indeed.

Ragano, by his own admission, came up with his assassination story only AFTER publishers rejected his first book proposal. The problem with Ragano is not that his story is hearsay, it is that he is a CERTIFIED lying sack of s--t.

Any historian who relies on him will not be taken seriously, and any lawyer who would ask a jury (grand or petty) to believe him deserves to be laughed out of town.

[William Kelly]

I thought I'd revive this interesting thread in light of the publication of David Kaiser's Road to Dallas.

There were three, maybe four histoirans appointed to the Assassination Records Review Board, though none of them have utilized their unique position there to write anything worthwhile about the assassination.

Although many institutions have failed us in regards to the assassination, including Congress, the Judiciary, Presidents, the Fourth estate and the academic community, historians, for the most part, have not even bothered to enter the fray.

BK

Although the other distinguished historians on the ARRB have not bothered to write about the JFK Assassination, Anna Kasten Nielson, Professor of History at American University, has written about the need to declassify government records.

She also contributed a chapter to "A Culture of Secrecy," but gets a few things wrong, and shows why such things should be peer reviewed, not necessarily to stirr disagreement, but to correct things that are obviously wrong.

"A Culture of Secrecy – The Government Versus the People's Right to Know," Anthology edited by Athan G. Theoharis (University Press of Kansas, 1998), with contribution by Matthew M. Aid, Jon Wiener, Anna Kasten Nielson, et al.

Chapter 10

The John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. By Anna Kasten Nelson.

"I've never seen any information released that ever did anyone any good." – Agency representative, ARRB briefing.

Anna Kasten Nelson:

"The John F. Kennedy Assassinations Records Collection Act of 1992 marked an important milestone in the ongoing conflict between the public's need to know and the culture of secrecy that evolved during the fifty years of the cold war. The act was designed to strip away theories that implicated federal agencies in a conspiracy to murder the young president. Its unintended consequence has been to crack open the door to the inner sanctums of the CIA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies."

[bK: As Doug Horne notes in his response to this statement, the act was NOT designed to strip away theories, but to release records and let the people decide for themselves what to believe.]

"…The Warren Commission Report concluded that President Kennedy had been killed by bullets fired by only one assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository. Three shots had been fired; one hit the president but did not kill him, one went astray, and the third killed Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally of Texas, who shared the president's limousine as it slowly moved through downtown Dallas. The commission further concluded that, while Oswald was influenced by Marxist ideology and was sympathetic to Fidel Castro's government in Cuba, his decision to kill the president came from internal demons, not an external conspiracy…"

[bK: Of course it was the first shot that hit the president but did not kill him and ostensibly went on to wound Connally, and not the third shot, that killed Kennedy].

"The most thorough and direct study of President Kennedy's assassination was conducted in 1978-79 by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), which examined all three of the assassinations that had rocked the country during the 1960s – those of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy…the HSCA questioned the 'single-bullet theory,' the conclusion that a single bullet killed the president and wounded Governor Connally…"

[bK: The HSCA investigated the JFK and MLK cases, but not RFK. The MLK HSCA investigation files remain sealed; apparently until Oliver Stone makes a movie about that assassination.]

"…How do five individuals deliberately chosen for their unfamiliarity with Kennedy assassination documents, arguments and theories, carry out their legal mandate?…"

[bK:The Review Board was to be composed of five individuals who had no prior experience working FOR the GOVERNMENT, not deliberately chosen for their "unfamiliarity with the Kennedy assassination documents." They were supposed to be familiar with the documents as historians and librarians and scholars.]

"…On one memorable occasion, a board member asked an agency official why his agency always withheld a particular piece of information that appeared to be completely harmless. The official thought for a few minutes before replying that he could not remember the reason, but since the information had never been released he was sure there was a good reason."

xxxyyyzzz

Edited May 21, 2008 by William Kelly