By Dr. James Kelleher
Back in January, on Martin Luther King Day, members
of the Kennedy and King families called for new investigations into the murders
of President John F. Kennedy, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.
The family members are part of the Truth and
Reconciliation Committee which is comprised of authors, researchers, scholars,
attorneys and celebrities.
Robert Kennedy, Jr., Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, and
Dr. King’s nephew, Newton Farris Jr., were joined by David Talbot, Jim Lesar,
Dr. Cyril Wecht, Daniel Ellsberg, Oliver Stone and a number of other prominent
Americans in demanding that Congress reopen investigations into the murders of
JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcolm X.
Why should these investigations be reopened?
Andrew Kreig, an attorney and the director of the
Justice Integrity Project in Washington D.C. stated: “All four assassinations
are iconic events in American history that have generated intense controversy in
part because the implications remain important for world affairs.”
Kreig, a member of the Truth and Reconciliation
Committee, pointed out that all four investigations reached flawed conclusions
and that there was solid evidence that contradicted the findings in all four investigations.
Kreig was hopeful that official opinion on the RFK
and MLK assassinations was changing and cited two recent articles in the
Washington Post. One article covered Robert Kennedy Jr.’s belief that Sirhan Sirhan
did not kill his father. An additional front page story covered the King
family’s doubts concerning who killed Dr. King.
Both articles suggested a major change in direction
for the Washington Post which has a long history of endorsing the official
conclusions put forth in the Kennedy and King assassinations. For those
interested in researching the JFK, RFK, and MLK assassinations, the Justice Integrity
Project maintains up-to-date booklists on all three assassinations on its
website.
The former chief counsel of the House Select
Committee on Assassinations, G. Robert Blakey, supported the committee’s call
for the release of all the documents involved in the Kennedy assassination
required by the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992. Blakey is not supportive of
the call for new investigations, but said that the document release is his main
concern.
The HSCA reached a totally different judgment about
the assassination of President Kennedy than the Warren Commission, citing
strong evidence of a shot from the grassy knoll and that a conspiracy was behind
JFK’s murder.
Blakey pointed out that the Warren Commission was unable
to prove that Oswald was on the sixth floor of the Texas School Depository when
the shots were fired. He said that President Johnson pushed the investigation
along to its lone assassin conclusion because he wanted to get the
assassination out of the way and concentrate on running for president in 1964.
Blakey emphasized that almost all of the witnesses
are dead and that the documents are the only source left to obtain information
about the assassination.
Dr. Cyril Wecht, a well-known forensic pathologist
and a member of the HSCA forensic pathology panel, stated that the conclusions
rendered in the JFK, RFK, and MLK investigations are scientifically invalid and
intentional cover-ups. For Wecht, the chief concern was that it was possible to
carry out far-reaching cover-ups involving the murders of a president, senator,
and civil rights leader.
Yet, despite the government’s cover-ups, Dr. Wecht emphasized
that the majority of the American people rejected the conclusions of the official
investigations into the murders of JFK, RFK, and MLK. Dr. Wecht has long argued
that the Warren Commission Report should be moved to the fiction section in
every library in the country.
There is little doubt that the foundation of public
trust in American government was rocked by the JFK assassination and the
subsequent murders of RFK and Dr. King.
A detailed study of the Warren Commission Report
reveals a total reluctance to pursue any hint of a conspiracy. The commission
claimed that there was no credible evidence of a shot from any place in Dealey
Plaza other than the Texas School Book Depository, despite the fact that no
less than 64 witnesses stated that a shot came from the knoll or knoll area.
The commission, as Bob Blakey points out, never explained
why these witnesses were not credible.
The commission also ignored Ruby’s mob connections and
his stalking of Oswald before he finally killed him on November 24, 1963.
Allen Dulles, the former CIA Director fired by
President Kennedy, never informed the commission of the CIA’s attempts to kill
Castro in cooperation with Mafia members.
Warren Commission attorneys, Senator Arlen Specter
and Judge Burt Griffin, admitted while testifying before the HSCA that they
would have conducted a totally different type of investigation had they known
about the CIA’s attempts to kill Castro.
The Warren Commission’s findings have been attacked
by a chorus of critics over the years that have succeeded in destroying the
credibility of its conclusions.
The critics were joined by official government
bodies such as the Church Committee that
criticized the role of the FBI and CIA in conducting the investigation
into JFK’s murder. At LBJ’s behest, Attorney General Ramsey Clark assembled a panel
of experts to examine the medical evidence and discovered major errors in the
location of Kennedy’s head and back wounds.
Despite the successful attack on the Warren
Commission’s findings, the CIA continues to hold back documents related to the
Kennedy assassination on national security grounds.
Dr. Wecht, in an earlier interview, said that the
Warren Commission concluded that the Soviets and the Cubans were not involved
in JFK’s assassination. Wecht asked, “If the Soviets and the Cubans weren’t involved,
how is it possible for the CIA to make an argument to withhold documents based on
national security?”
Maybe, we should pay more attention to the
conclusions of those most affected by the tragedies generated by the assassination
of the Kennedys and Dr. King.
Their relatives, as well as the majority of the
American public, do not believe the official conclusions. Those who want to
support the effort to reopen the JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm X investigations can
go online to [ https://www.americantruthnow.org/ ] and sign the Ten Points of Agreement and “Call for Congress to
Reopen Assassination Probes.”
Dr. James Kelleher is professor emeritus at the
College of the Canyons, in Valencia, California and the author of “He Was
Expendable: National Security, Political and Bureaucratic Cover-Ups in the Murder
of President Kennedy." He is also a member of Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA.org)
From Irish Echo April 10-16, 2019 www.irishecho.com
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From Irish Echo April 10-16, 2019 www.irishecho.com
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