The JFK 10-Point
Program
by
Joseph E. Green
This
essay was inspired by a conversation with Robert Mezzone, who provided
invaluable feedback in its construction. —J.E.G.
During
the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) conference in Dallas in 2007,
an after-hours conversation concerning Lee Harvey Oswald became a heated
discussion. I decided to play peacemaker. "Look," I said, "At
least there's one thing we can all agree on. Lee Harvey
Oswald didn't fire any of the shots at the President."
The
fellow next to me pipes up, "Actually, I disagree with that, I think he
was one of the shooters. Now, you see, this is what happened ..."
Of course.
There's always one.
I had
another conversation recently that led me to start thinking the following: What
are the basic things that 99% of Kennedy researchers can agree upon? Suppose
we, as Kennedy researchers, were going to present a 10-point program the way
the Black Panthers did. What sort of things would be on that?
This is
not a trivial point. It goes toward our survival in the system. It behooves us
to be more organized in our presentations to the public, and to learn to master
the ability to deliver succinct points which are universally recognized to be
true. We have to deal with the world as it is in terms
of realpolitik, and that means being able to effectively communicate
our principles to the outside world.
The
downside to not coming up with some sort of organizational structure
is that opposing forces are strengthened and even galvanized. It is perhaps
constructive to look at another debate to see the possible outcomes.
Zetetics
By way
of demonstrating that virtually any position can draw followers,
let's for a moment take a look at the Flat-Earth Society. They claim to
practice zetetics, which in normal terms simply means "looking at things
in a different way." The concept of the flat Earth is frequently
invoked in discussions about ideological dementia, but it may serve us well to
remember that there really is a Flat-Earth Society, that there are
people who subscribe to its tenets, and that they generate long, complex chains
of reasoning that purport to debunk the theory of a Round Earth. Indeed,
Alfred Russell Wallace, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, seriously studied and
promoted the idea of a flat Earth. And even to this day, you can find
people who seriously put forth the idea that the Earth is a flat disc,
unmoving, in the center of the universe, while the other objects in the sky
revolve around it in an ether rather than the vacuum of space.
Take a
look at the forums, if you dare. There are some truly astonishing
exchanges lurking there, as posters argue back and forth in continuous strings
of escalating lunacy.
Now
superficially there are concepts in the JFK community that may look, from the
outside, like this sort of craziness. For example, if one puts forth the
theory that the President's brain was substituted by conspirators, without
going into the evidence, it probably sounds crazy to the average person.
The difference between the 'second brain' thesis and the Flat Earth Society is
that in the former example, researchers are driven toward the
conclusion by the facts. Flat-Earthers, on the other hand, have to
concoct elaborate theories because their fundamental premise is totally at odds
with the known facts. No honest researcher into the JFK assassination
begins from a standpoint of creating some bizarre theory; it isn't the fault of
researchers that so many facts turn out to have bizarre implications.
The JFK
Assassination
Because
any science allows for honest disagreement, dissension can be found in the
ranks of the JFK community. And whereas Round-Earth scientists are in
privileged position—they have the facts, the media, world opinion, and
establishment behind them, we do not. We have the facts and arguably
world opinion, but we are beset on all sides by a self-congratulating media and
professional disinformationalists. And the establishment is most
definitely not with us.
There is
thus a central paradox with respect to the JFK situation. The
establishment thoroughly promotes the Flat-Earth idea and is forced to come up
with elaborate theories (such as the Magic Bullet thesis) to overrule the known
facts. Meanwhile, for those who have studied the matter, the conspiracy
at the heart of the JFK assassination is as obvious and well-supported as the
Round Earth.
Bitter
disagreements crop up. This was true almost from the very beginning, as John
Kelin wonderfully documents in Praise from a Future Generation, which
shows how the Garrison investigation drove a wedge between the earliest
researchers that ended friendships and associations. From a scientific
perspective, this comes as no surprise and is consistent with JFK research
being a relatively "young" science. However, this chaotic state of
affairs has some detrimental effects. From the standpoint of an outsider's
perspective, it can look as though nothing is agreed upon and that
the JFK case is simply a haven for kooks hatching their private fantasies on
one another.
In other
words, it's a problem of public relations.
So much
valuable and astonishing research has been done, and it has been done by
non-professionals as often as not over the years. What sometimes gets lost, I
think, is the plot. You and I might disagree about the relative involvement of
the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Kennedy assassination, or whether James Jesus
Angleton was the prime mover or Lyndon Johnson, but in any such analysis there
will be large areas of agreement between us. What I have tried to do is take
those large areas of agreement and put them down as ten principles. These
principles should underlie any discussion of the case. These represent areas of
strength for the JFK community and should be promoted to the general public.
I would
suggest that it should be these elements which should be used in public
pronouncements and to inform our organizational capacity. The "hard
science" of the assassination can then be done within our own structures
such as COPA or CTKA or the like. For the general public, however, these are
easy-to-understand and simple areas in the investigation where the facts are
overwhelmingly with us.
So I
present my 10-point program:
It is
both legitimate and important to question the government's investigation of the
Kennedy assassination.
I think
this is the most important statement in many ways. The media continually
represents that our questions are at best unimportant and at worst ridiculous.
As public citizens, we have the right to ask questions of our government and
doing so makes us defenders of the Constitution, not "conspiracy
buffs." For the Posners and Bugliosis of the world who would say
otherwise, we need only present the following statements for their perusal:
"I
never believed that Oswald acted alone, although I can accept that he pulled
the trigger."—Lyndon Johnson 1
(Johnson
also told Senator Richard Russell that he did not believe in the single-bullet
theory either.)
"It
was the greatest hoax that has ever been perpetuated."—Richard Nixon, speaking
of the Warren Commission 2
"Hoover
lied his eyes out to the [Warren] Commission—on Oswald, on Ruby, on their
friends, the bullets, the gun, you name it."—Congressman Hale Boggs, one
of the seven Warren Commission members 3
"If
I told you what I really know, it would be very dangerous to this country. Our
whole political system could be disrupted."—J. Edgar Hoover, in response
to the question "Do you think Oswald did it?" 4
"Goddamn
it, Georgi ... doesn't Premier Krushchev realize the President's position?
Every step he takes to meet Premier Krushchev halfway costs my brother a lot of
effort ... In a gust of blind hate, his enemies may go to any length, including
killing him."—Bobby Kennedy to Soviet envoy Georgi Bolshakov 5
(Bobby
later enlisted Walter Sheridan to conduct a private investigation into the
assassination, and planned to reopen the case if elected President.)
"[I]
never believed that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy without at
least some encouragement from others ... I think someone else worked with him
in the planning."—Senator Richard Russell, one of the seven Warren
Commission members 6
"One
of my greatest shames as a journalist is that I still don't know who killed
Jack Kennedy."—Hunter S. Thompson 7
Now the
point is not that all these people make it a fact that Kennedy was assassinated
in a conspiracy. But how can it be impertinent to ask questions, if all these
people—who presumably have far more access than we will ever have—don't believe
fundamental conclusions of the Warren Report? The matter is not settled,
and we must keep asking.
The
medical and photographic record of the assassination does not support the
government's position.
What is
most readily understandable about the medical evidence is that eighteen
witnesses at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, most of them doctors, all describe a
blowout head wound at the back of the head. The autopsy photos entered into
evidence do not show this wound.
The
medical evidence is the Pandora's Box of conspiracy research, as Cyril Wecht,
Gary Aguilar, and David Mantik, among others, have shown: The X-rays don't
match the eyewitness statements. The government somehow lost Kennedy's brain.
Dr. Humes testified to the House Select Committee on Assassinations that
he burned not just his autopsy notes, but the first draft of his
autopsy report. In 1968, a medical panel appointed by Ramsey Clark noted a
6.5mm fragment at the upper part of the rear skull in the x-rays that no one
saw the night of the autopsy. Even though x-rays were taken that night.
However, regardless of what one thinks of the various theories that have come
about to explain the problems proposed by the medical evidence, we can all
agree on the testimony of the Parkland doctors and what the
"official" autopsy photos show and their manifest disagreement.
The
Zapruder film fails to support the government's designation of a lone shooter.
A
tremendous controversy rests at the heart of the analysis of the Zapruder film.
On one side are those who believe that the Z-film is the final record of the
assassination; while on the other, there are those who believe that it has been
altered beyond recognition. We might characterize this as the Robert Groden
school v. the Jim Fetzer (or Jack White) school on this issue.
More
important than this discrepancy, however, is that however one looks at the film, neither
interpretation supports Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin.
The
Z-film, as everyone knows, shows the President moving violently backward upon
the last shot striking his head. This movement supports the idea that the fatal
headshot came from the front—specifically, the area around the grassy knoll.
Now Groden himself has some amazing further revelations in his study of the
Z-film, which he is going to publish soon, but I will say nothing of that here.
Fetzer
and Jack White believe they can prove that the film, rather than showing the
actual assassination, has been altered into a kind of cartoon. I don't wish to
go into the reasons for that here, as they can do a much better job of
explicating themselves than I can. However, if the Z-film has been altered,
then obviously Oswald—at minimum—had at least one accomplice, presumably a
capable film technician.
Whether
the Z-film has been altered or not, it contradicts the Warren Report's
conclusions. (Like the other topics, there are further avenues; for
example,Life Magazine published Z-film stills out of order in an apparent
effort to fool the public, and the film itself was largely suppressed until
Groden got his new rotoscoped version on Geraldo Rivera's television program.
However, the simple premise stands.)
The
initial tests performed by the Dallas Police and the FBI exculpate Lee Harvey
Oswald.
This one
is also very simple. The FBI performed a nitrate test on Oswald to determine
whether he fired a weapon. It was positive for his hands, and negative for his
face, meaning that he had not fired a rifle that day but may have fired a
pistol. However, since he worked with newsprint at his job, and nitrates can be
contracted from newsprint, this is not definitive. In addition, no fingerprints
were found on the alleged murder weapon, the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. The
Dallas Police found a palm print on it after Oswald was already dead,
and after one of the finest fingerprint analysts in America, the
FBI's Sebastian LaTona, dusted the entire rifle and found nothing of value.
The
'magic' bullet is precisely that.
This is
the bullet which must have created seven separate wounds in both
Kennedy and John Connally in order for Arlen Specter's 'magic bullet' theory to
be correct. If this bullet did not create all those wounds, then there are more
than three shots and more than one shooter.
When
this bullet was found on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital, it had no blood on
it. In fact, the bullet that struck Connally left some lead permanently in his
wrist, while this bullet appears to be undamaged. Dr. Cyril Wecht, former
President of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and consultant to the
House Select Committee on the Assassinations (HSCA), declared that this state
of affairs is simply impossible, and he should know.
The
photograph of the man in Mexico whom the government says is Lee Harvey Oswald
cannot possibly be Lee Harvey Oswald.
Seriously.
Lee
Harvey Oswald was an FBI informant known to J. Edgar Hoover, and therefore
cannot be declared to be an "unknown loser."
One of
the anti-conspiracy advocates' favorite tricks is to paint Oswald as a loser.
The poor slob was just a lonely guy who wanted to be famous, and he could have
been shooting at anyone. This was Norman Mailer's premise in
writing Oswald's Tale. It underlies the idea that Oswald shot at General
Edwin Walker, who was a right-winger.
For a
poor lonely slob, however, Oswald sure got around. He went to Russia claiming
to be a defector, married the niece of a Russian Colonel, and then came back.
Despite being a Marine and former radar operator who threatened to give away
secrets to the Soviets, he was never charged with anything, and the CIA has
always unconvincingly denied debriefing him upon his return. He was paid both
by the Russians, the American military, and given money by the State
Department. Then he was allowed to bring his Soviet wife Marina back to the
U.S. with him. All this took place during the height of the Cold War. Unusual,
to say the least.
During
the Warren Commission hearings, reports were discussed that Oswald was an agent
of both the FBI and CIA. For instance, Texas Attorney General Waggoner Carr and
District Attorney Henry Wade told the Warren Commission that Oswald was an FBI
informant, made $200 a month, and provided his informant number of 179. 9
Dallas
DA Wade told Carr that his source told him Oswald had a CIA employment number.
In addition to that, a June 3, 1960 FBI memo features J. Edgar Hoover
complaining that someone was using Oswald's identity and he was requesting
information on Oswald from the State Department to clarify the situation.
Hoover began: "There is a possibility that an imposter is using Oswald's
birth certificate..." This is three years before the
assassination. FBI employee William Walter later confirmed that, in 1963, he saw
an informant file with Oswald's name on it. Hoover would later point out to
Lyndon Johnson that the person in Mexico City neither looked nor sounded liked
Oswald. 10
Gerald
Ford has admitted to moving Kennedy's back wound, an act that cannot be
objectively reconciled with an attitude of pursuing the truth.
On July
2, 1997, the Associated Press ran a story in which Gerald Ford admitted that he
raised the back wound several inches in the Warren Commission to better convict
Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin. Ford stated that he was only attempting
to be "more precise" and that his change had "nothing to do with
conspiracy theories." Ford thus admits to falsifying theWarren
Report. 11
Whatever
Jim Garrison's motivations or the eventual failure of his trial, he was right
about Clay Shaw, who did turn out to be a contract agent of the CIA, and did
correctly identify the link between Lee Harvey Oswald and Guy Banister.
Whatever
one thinks of Jim Garrison, and he remains a polarizing figure to this day,
there are two things on which he was indisputably right:
The
first is that Clay Shaw was definitely a contract agent with the CIA. Richard
Helms testified in court (very reluctantly) that Shaw had this
"domestic" relationship with the agency, as Mark Lane documents in
regard to the civil trial of E. Howard Hunt v. Liberty Lobby. 12
The
second is that he discovered that 531 Lafayette Street and 544 Camp Street led
to the same building, which meant that the supposedly Marxist Oswald was
sharing an office with rabid right-wing reactionary Guy Banister. Banister's
connections (to the Bay of Pigs invasion, among other things) blow up any
notion that Oswald was either a leftist or a lone nut. 13
The Mob
didn't do it. (At least, not by themselves.)
"I
don't doubt their involvement, Bill, but at a lower level. Could the Mob change
the parade route, Bill? Or eliminate the protection for the President? Could
the Mob send Oswald to Russia and get him back? Could the Mob get the FBI, the
CIA, and the Dallas Police to make a mess of the investigation? Could the Mob
get the Warren Commission appointed to cover it up? Could the Mob wreck the
autopsy? Could the Mob influence the national media to go to sleep...This was a
military-style ambush from start to finish ... a coup d'état with Lyndon
Johnson waiting in the wings ..." 14
—Kevin
Costner as Jim Garrison in the film JFK
Lamar
Waldron's fantasies aside, these questions remain just as good now as they were
in 1991.
The
Mob-did-it theories have been such a fertile area for the government (cf.
Robert Blakey for just one example) that I think that we, as researchers, have
to put some limits on the idea. Anyone who proposes that the Mob did it on
their own or that the Cuban invasion somehow backfired on JFK, barring some new
and stunning evidence, is simply not one of us. The Mob position is too
damaging and the evidence too scant.
That may
sound dogmatic, but let's go back to my Flat-Earth example for a moment, with a
little twist. As researchers, we've compiled a large assortment of
facts. And when we look at the total facts involved, in order to say the
Mob is the prime mover in the assassination, we are forced to ignore the larger
context of the Cuban invasion, Operation Northwoods, the Vietnam War, the
reduction of the oil depletion allowance, and the sheer vastness of the
operation required to kill the President and cover up the piles of evidence
contradicting the official story. In other words, we have to do a series
of logical backflips in order to leap over all the contrary evidence, rather
than accepting what is staring at us right in the face. Mob-did-it is,
now and forever barring some astounding, paradigm-changing evidence, in the
Flat-Earth category. Did the Mob have some level of involvement?
Sure. Probably, even. Were they running the show? Absolutely
not.
The
investigative process is a scientific one at its best, and that means weeding
out the ideas that don't work as well as promoting the ones that do. As Karl
Popper noted, knowledge proceeds by falsification. By falsifying certain
notions and promoting those where the evidence is irrefutable, we present a
more unified front to the world and help to streamline and organize our public
relations. It may not be to everyone's taste, but it has to be done, if we are
to ultimately win over the generations to come.
End
Notes
1. This quote comes from the
telephone recordings of the Johnson White House and was publicized in The
Atlantic Monthly in 2004 by, of all people, Max Holland!http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200406/holland
2. This quote comes from the Nixon
tapes and was first reported by the BBC. John McAdams, who operates the
"Kennedy Assassination Home Page," disputes Nixon's meaning in this
comment. The interesting thing about his discussion of the context is that I
believe the additional commentary further implicates Nixon rather
than absolves him, but that is a discussion for another day.http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/1848157.stm
3. This quote can be found in many
places, but one interesting discussion—because it occurs in a mainstream
magazine—is from the November 1998 issue of Texas Monthly. http://www.texasmonthly.com/preview/1998-11-01/feature23
4. Once again, this quote can be
found many places, but one book that contains many such quotes is Larry
Hancock's Someone Would Have Talked (JFK Lancer Productions &
Publications: 2006).
5. David
Talbot, Brothers (Free Press: New York 2007), 32.
6. Gerald McKnight, Breach of
Trust (University Press of Kansas: 2005), 297.
7. Maureen Farrell, "JFK, 9/11
and Conspiracy Theories,"http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/03/11/far03002.html
8. David Talbot, "The Mother of
All Coverups,"http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2004/09/15/warren/
9. Jim Garrison discussed this
information in an October 1967 interview with PlayboyMagazine. It was
ironically first reported in Gerald Ford's book Portrait of the Assassin.
10. For a great discussion of the
"Mexico City stuff," see John Newman, Oswald and the
CIA (Sky Horse Publishing: New York 2008), 352-391.
11. "Gerald Ford forced to admit
the Warren Report fictionalized," Associated Press, 2 July 1997.
12. Mark Lane, Plausible
Denial (Thunder's Mouth Press: New York 1991), 218-225.
13. For an excellent discussion of
Garrison's New Orleans discoveries, see James DiEugenio, Destiny
Betrayed (Sheridan Square Press: New York 1992), 130-146.
14. The screenplay
for JFK was written by Zachary Sklar and Oliver Stone, based on the
books On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison
and Crossfire by Jim Marrs.
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