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On Friday, November 22nd 1963 at 12:30 P.M. the 35th president of the
United States of America, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated while he
rode in an open limousine though the streets of Dallas. This event,
which abruptly and severely altered the course of history, it has
created more controversy than any other single event.
Some haunting
questions still remain. "Who did it?" "Why did they do it?" "How was it
done?" "Was there a cover up" The official answers complied by the
Warren Commission have never satisfied the majority of the world's
population. In this following essay I will try to show who was
responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy.
I believe the
only way to prove that there was a cover up, is to firstly prove that
Lee Harvey Oswald is not the killer. The Warren Commission consisting
of "various outstanding citizens" was created to "ascertain, evaluate
and report upon the facts relating to the assassination ... and the
subsequent violent death of the man charged with the assassination Lee
Harvey Oswald. The purpose of the Commission was to examine the
evidence developed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and any
additional evidence that may hereafter come to light ... to make such
further investigation, as the Commission finds desirable. In less than
one week they found that a 'lone nut' killed JKF. At no time did the
Warren Commission seem to consider the basic legal rights of Oswald -
innocence until proven guilty, the right to legal representation, or
the right to cross-examine witnesses and evidence against him.
There is
no way that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. Firstly the
paraffin test of Oswald's hands and his right cheek conducted on
November 23, 1963, has been positive for his hands but negative for his
cheek. Generally, this is evidence in Oswald's favor, but the
Commission asserted that the test "is completely unreliable in
determining either whether a person has recently fired a weapon or
whether he has not." Nobody saw Oswald on the 6th floor window after
11:55 on November 22nd. 90 seconds after the assassination, Roy Truly
and Police officer M. L. Baker saw Oswald on the second floor. Oswald
had to take the stairs down. But he had just 90 seconds to hide the
rifle in the opposite corner of the sixth floor, run downstairs 4
floors passing Victoria Adams who never saw him and reach the second
floor where he was encountered to be "calm and collected".
The Warren
Commission claimed that Oswald fired three shots in 5.6 seconds from
the sixth floor of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. The first shot was
the 'magic bullet' which made a total of seven wounds on JFK and
Connally . Which appeared later in the Parkland Memorial Hospital - you
can see - in an almost pristine condition. The second shot missed JFK
and hit a bystander in the cheek and the third was the fatal head. The
Warren Commission said the third shot hit JFK from behind, however his
head was pushed backwards and to the left. This means the bullet must
of come from the grassy Knoll. Also many witness thought they heard
shots from there.
Oswald rifle's had poor capability
(experts tried to do the same what Oswald was claimed to have done, but
only one was able to do that! because he got not familiar with the
rifle and the inaccurate attached scope of the rifle. It was near
impossible for him to make the shot in 5.6 seconds "If I had to pick
one man in the whole United States to shoot me, I'd pick Oswald. I saw
that man shoot and there's no way he could have ever learned to shoot
well enough to do what they accused him of. I'm one of the best shots
around, and I couldn't have done it." --Sherman Cooley (US Marine,
served with Oswald)
If Oswald was not the killer then who would have
wanted to see President Kennedy dead? Lyndon Johnson (LBJ) The CIA J.
Edgar Hoover The Mafia Anti-Castro Cubans Richard Nixon I am convinced
Lyndon Johnson may very well have been involved in the plot to murder
President Kennedy. I believe Johnson probably knew about the plot ahead
of time and either sanctioned it or actively took part in it.
Another
possibility, in my view, is that Johnson realized soon after the
shooting that Kennedy had been killed by a conspiracy, and that Johnson
had an idea as to whom had been behind it. In any case, Johnson was a
driving force behind the cover-up that followed. However there is only
circumstantial evidence, but there is a lot against LBJ. The CIA in
reference to its alleged involvement in the assassination, are
referring primarily to the CIA's covert action personnel, i.e., those
agents who deal in sabotage, propaganda, and assassination.
There is
evidence that suggests that some of the Agency's covert operations
personnel have also taken part in drug trafficking. Most CIA personnel
are not involved in such activities and would be appalled at any
attempt to harm an elected official. The covert operations personnel
make up a large portion of the CIA, and they, along with the Agency's
top officials, are the most powerful group in the CIA. Some
high-ranking CIA officials have attempted to frustrate presidential
policies and have initiated or sanctioned illegal operations, to
include working with organized crime. JFK and the CIA were in a virtual
state of war from the moment of the Bay of Pigs disaster until the day
he died. JFK did not trust the CIA and he reportedly intended to
dismantle it after the 1964 election.
In Vietnam, the CIA refused to
carry out instructions from the ranking American official in the
country. The CIA ignored President Kennedy's directive that it not
initiate operations requiring greater firepower than a handgun. It also
ignored JFK's orders to stop working with the Mafia. When Kennedy heard
the news that South Vietnam's dictator Ngo Diem had been murdered by a
CIA-backed coup, against his express wishes, he was outraged. Kennedy
was no fan of Diem's, but he did not want to see him murdered. General
Maxwell Taylor wrote that upon learning of Diem's death JFK "leaped to
his feet and rushed from the room with a look of shock and dismay on
his face".
Kennedy blamed the CIA for Diem's murder. Kennedy said he
had to "do something about" the CIA and that the Agency should be
stripped of its exorbitant power. On another occasion, Kennedy
reportedly said he would scatter the CIA "into a thousand pieces." One
of the more troubling cases of CIA disobedience to presidential
authority was its behavior in relation to Cuba. In September 1963, long
after President Kennedy had ordered a halt to the covert campaign
against Castro, senior CIA staffers, including the deputy director,
Richard Helms, and Desmond Fitzgerald, the head of the Agency's Cuba
unit, approved plans to kill Castro, without seeking presidential
authorization. They also continued other covert operations against Cuba
in violation of the President's instructions. Needless to say, these
CIA officers did not inform the President of their activities; nor did
they inform Congress or the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy. They
didn't even tell then-CIA director John McCone, probably because he was
appointed by President Kennedy following the Bay of Pigs disaster.
In
short, as Anthony Summers has observed, "in September and October
1963--a crucial moment politically--CIA officers were acting in a way
that gravely endangered White House policy". A key figure linking the
Agency to the assassination was CIA man David Atlee Phillips, who was
seen with Oswald a few months before the shooting. Among many other
things, Phillips was the propaganda chief for the Bay of Pigs operation
and later rose to become the chief of the CIA's Western Hemisphere
Division.
In 1954 Phillips worked with E. Howard Hunt and others to
overthrow the Arbenz government in Guatemala. Based on his extensive
investigation of Phillips for the Church Committee and then for the
Select Committee, Gaeton Fonzi believes that "David Atlee Phillips
played a key role in the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy".
Phillips was in charge of the CIA's Cuban operations in Mexico City at
the time of the assassination, so he was strategically positioned to
frame Oswald, and it is quite possible, if not probable, that he was
involved in the phony Oswald visits to the Cuban embassy.
Another
former CIA agent who has come under suspicion is E. Howard Hunt. Hunt,
a former high-ranking covert operator and a propaganda specialist, was
a key figure in the Bay of Pigs invasion. As mentioned, Hunt and David
Atlee Phillips helped to overthrow the Arbenz government in Guatemala.
According to former (and now deceased) CIA operative Frank Sturgis, who
knew Hunt well, Hunt was involved in CIA assassination operations. Hunt
has made no secret of his intense dislike for John Kennedy. To this
day, Hunt blames JFK for the failure at the Bay of Pigs.
When Watergate
whistleblower John Dean opened Hunt's private safe, he found bogus
telegrams that falsely linked JFK with the assassination of South
Vietnam's corrupt dictator Ngo Dinh Diem. Where was E. Howard Hunt on
November 22, 1963? Hunt has given conflicting accounts of where he was
at the time of the shooting. In his 1985 libel trial in Miami, Florida,
the jury concluded Hunt was not being truthful about his whereabouts on
the day of the assassination. Hunt was believed to be the small "tramp"
in the famous "tramp photos." The tramp photos show three supposed
tramps, which were arrested in the railroad yard behind the grassy
knoll shortly after the assassination. The tramps were found in a
freight train that had pulled out from behind the TSBD without
authorization. The railroad tower controller stopped the train because
he knew it did not have permission to depart. The police then searched
the train and found the tramps. In the tramp photos the tramps are
being escorted by some Dallas police officers who are holding shotguns,
presumably on route to the police station.
In 1988, 3M's Comtal
Corporation analyzed photos of Hunt and of the third tramp and found a
noticeable resemblance between them. All of this does NOT prove Hunt
was the third tramp, but it is worth noting that he bears a strong
resemblance to a man who was arrested in Dealey Plaza shortly after the
assassination. The Mafia had the means, the motive, and the opportunity
to assassinate President Kennedy. Prior to the assassination, various
Mafia leaders were heard to threaten JFK's life.
The Mafia were
believed to of pay JFK's way into Power. They thought they had someone
in the White House, however JFK began to crack down on Mafia. On
November 20, two Mafia men told Rose Cheramie that it was common
knowledge in the underworld that Kennedy was about to be killed.
Mafia-CIA man David Ferrie was very probably involved in framing Oswald
while he was in New Orleans, and Ferrie engaged in highly suspicious
activity shortly after JFK was shot. And, as mentioned, a Mafia courier
named Eugene Hale Brading was arrested in the Dal-Tex Building
overlooking Dealey Plaza immediately after the shooting. Brading had an
FBI rap sheet with about three dozen arrests. He had met with one of
the sons of avowed Kennedy-hater H. L. Hunt the day before, ostensibly
to discuss some oil business.
After he was arrested, Brading gave the
Dallas police an alias, and told them he had merely gone into the
building to use the phone. The police released him a short time later.
Without question, a Mafia man, Jack Ruby, silenced Lee Harvey Oswald
before he had a chance to tell his side of the story. Furthermore,
right after the President's visit to Dallas was announced, Ruby began
making numerous calls to important Mafia contacts all over the country.
Ruby, like Eugene Brading, was in H. L. Hunt's offices the day before
the shooting. Convicted Texas hitman Charles Harrelson has been
identified as the tall man in the famous photos of the three "tramps"
who were arrested in the railroad yard behind Dealey Plaza shortly
after the assassination. In the early 1980s, Harrelson was convicted of
murdering federal judge John Wood with a high-powered rifle, and is
currently serving his sentence in a Texas prison.
During the standoff
that preceded his arrest, Harrelson not only confessed to killing Judge
Wood, but also said he had been involved in the Kennedy assassination.
Harrelson later retracted his statement about having taken part in the
assassination, claiming he had fabricated it under the influence of
cocaine. When arrested, Harrelson was found to be carrying the business
card of R. D. Matthews, who, was acquainted with Jack Ruby and with
other Dallas crime figures. At Harrelson's trial, Joe Chagra, the
brother of the man who was believed to have hired Harrelson, testified
that Harrelson was given the contract to kill Judge Wood after he
claimed to have participated in the JFK assassination. Indicted along
with Harrelson in the plot to kill Judge Wood was the brother of New
Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello, who was one of the Mafia figures
identified by the Select Committee as possibly having been involved in
the assassination of President Kennedy.
The photos of the tall tramp
were compared with pictures of Harrelson. It was likely that they were
same person. Similarly, police officers trained in photo identification
have that Harrelson definitely appears to be the tall tramp. So far
federal authorities have shown no interest in investigating Harrelson
in connection with any role he might have had in the assassination. Why
would the Mafia have wanted JFK dead? Quite simply, because the Kennedy
administration was threatening the very existence of organized crime in
America. Robert Kennedy was waging an unprecedented war on the Mafia, a
war that targeted not just Mafia operations but also Mafia leaders
themselves. Soon after Lyndon Johnson took over, the war on organized
crime came to a virtual halt. Sam Giancana (real name: Momo Salvatore
Guingano) was a Chicago Mafia boss involved in CIA plots to kill Fidel
Castro. Giancana was also the target of attacks by then Attorney
General Robert F. Kennedy, despite the fact that the Attorney General's
own brother, John Kennedy, had been having an affair with Giancana's
paramour, Judith Exner, starting in March 1960.
Further infuriating
Giancana, Robert Kennedy ordered the FBI to shadow his every move so
closely that other mob figures kept their distance from him,
effectively isolating him from business and social associates. Later,
out of desperation, Giancana went to court and obtained an injunction
against the FBI. Anti-Castro Cubans could have also been involved in
the Assassination of JFK. The anti-Castro Cubans were admittedly
furious with Kennedy over the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion but
later forgave him because, among other things, he ransomed 1,200
captured exile troops from Castro. But there is strong evidence that
some anti-Castro Cubans never forgave Kennedy for the failure at the
Bay of Pigs, and many of these same individuals were furious at Kennedy
over his handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis and over his shutting
down of their para-military training camps.
It should be noted that the
militant anti-Castro exiles were almost exclusively under the control
of the CIA. Richard Nixon was one of the most corrupt residents in the
history of our republic. If nothing else, I believe Nixon might have
had foreknowledge of the assassination (and obviously did nothing to
prevent it). The Nixon administration repeatedly intervened to quash
prosecutions and investigations of criminal activity in Mafia-dominated
labor unions. Nixon was involved in a number of highly
questionable--and, in some cases, Mob-connected--financial dealings.
Nixon pardoned organized crime figures after the government had spent
millions of dollars to put them in jail.
Among those pardoned was Mafia
killer Angelo DeCarlo. On one occasion, recorded on a 1971 Watergate
tape, Nixon and his aides discussed using Mob thugs to attack anti-war
protestors. Not surprisingly, by all accounts the Mafia warmly endorsed
and supported Nixon's campaigns. John Davis, an authority on organized
crime, has said, For one thing, there is some evidence linking him to
Jack Ruby. It was reported in a 1947 FBI document that Jack Ruby had
performed "information functions for the staff of Congressman Richard
Nixon". Nixon flew to Dallas on November 20, 1963, two days before the
assassination.
Asked later why he had come, he said he was there to
attend a board meeting of the Pepsi-Cola Company. Yet, a subsequent
review of Pepsi-Cola corporate files revealed there was no record of
any Pepsi-Cola board meetings in Dallas in 1963. While in Dallas, Nixon
made comments to the city's newspapers to the effect that he, unlike
President Kennedy, did not need Secret Service protection. Several
researchers believe that this taunting might have contributed to the
decision not to have the Plexiglass bubble top placed on his limousine
on the day of the assassination. He is also believe to have influenced
the mayor of Dallas to change the route of the limousine. The route of
JFK's car was changed for an unknown reason to a more dangerous route.
(See map of route) Nixon left Dallas on the morning of the
assassination. However, during an FBI interview in early 1964, he said
the only time he had been in Dallas in 1963 was two days before Kennedy
was killed.
It has been said that Nixon must have been the only adult
at the time who could not remember where he was on November 22, 1963.
Why did Nixon tell the FBI he had not been in Dallas on the day of the
murder? What exactly was he doing there from November 20 till the
morning of the assassination? According to none other than Nixon's
chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, Nixon attempted to force the CIA to
assist in thwarting investigations into Watergate by threatening to
expose the CIA's role in the Kennedy assassination. In connection with
this, it is worth mentioning again that E. Howard Hunt of the CIA was
able to blackmail Nixon for a million dollars. What did Hunt know?
As
discussed earlier, several researchers have accused Hunt of complicity
in Kennedy's death, and Hunt has given conflicting accounts of where he
was on the day of the shooting. Also several of the people who were
hired or considered for employment by the Nixon White House during
Watergate had been connected with the Warren Commission. Was this just
a coincidence? In addition, some of the operatives and Cuban exiles who
were involved in the Bay of Pigs operation later turned up in the
Watergate affair. In my opinion, the principal individuals and forces
behind the assassination were fanatical right-wing elements in the CIA
and in the military, J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Johnson. I believe CIA
and Mafia operatives, to include disaffected anti-Castro Cubans,
constituted the largest part of the on-the-ground, operational arm of
the plot.
I believe that members of the Dallas law enforcement
community were involved in the Dallas end of the cover-up, and that
some of them knowingly allowed Jack Ruby to murder Oswald. I believe
that FBI agents, along with J. Edgar Hoover, played a major role in
most aspects of the cover-up. I believe Oswald was setup by LBJ, Hoover
and the CIA. The magic bullet found mysteriously, later in the Parkland
Memorial Hospital in an almost pristine condition was planted to match
Oswald's rifle. . In my view, the main reasons President Kennedy was
killed were (1) He refused to further escalate American involvement in
Vietnam (2) He was moving to end the Cold War (3) Mafia's outrage over
his war on organized crime. Just below these reasons, I would list
LBJ's lust for the presidency, J. Edgar Hoover's hatred of JFK and his
desire to remain director of the FBI and Kennedy's reported intent to
drastically reorganize or dismantle the CIA.
Bibliography
Jim Marrs CROSSFIRE: THE PLOT THAT KILLED KENNEDY, New York: Carroll
& Graf Publishers, 1989.
James DiEugenio, DESTINY BETRAYED: JFK,
CUBA, AND THE GARRISON CASE, New York: Sheridan Square Press, Inc.,
1992.
Harrison Edward Livingstone, HIGH TREASON 2, New York: Carroll
& Graf Publishers, 1992.
www.ourworld.compuserve.com/homepage/MGriffith/suspects.htm
J.F.K. & the cold war Urs Schwarz, John F. Kennedy, C.J. Bucher Ltd
1964 Elizabeth Greenup, Case Studies in Modern History, 1987
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