Christopher Sharrett's Open Letter to Assassination Researchers

An Open Letter to Assassination Researchers

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by Christopher Sharrett, Ph.D.

Introduction -- 1997

The following "Open Letter" was written by me twenty years ago, at a time of personal frustration as a great deal of hope was invested by researchers in the House Select Committee on Assassinations. While I would change some formulations in the letter, and certainly sharpen its political focus, the essential concerns of that writing remain basic to my thinking about the JFK assassination and political murder in America.

The problems I address in the letter still seem to burden assassination research. Instead of beginning with the proposition that the JFK assassination was a political murder effectuated by state authority, hardly a provocative conclusion even a week after the assassination, researchers seem to believe that the assassination is unsolved and unsolvable (one prominent researcher terms it an earmark of the "age of uncertainty"). Researchers assert this by the endless ruminations over assassination minutiae, even though we have never been lacking for hard data of official collusion in the removal of Kennedy. Just as tabloid TV diverts us from discussing matters of real importance, the rehashing of assassination forensic and similar minutiae diverts us from an in-depth discussion of the political function of the Kennedy assassination, its place within the political-economic framework of the postwar world, and within the internecine rivalry (a constant of state and private power) of the era.

I have been appalled, in 1977 and today, by the indifference and even outright hostility toward the notion that we indeed know the essential truth of the assassination. There is often a similar hostility, it seems to me, toward any coherent, systematic understanding of this murder as a necessary function of the postwar state under standing economic realities. It is my continued hope that knowledge of the dynamics of the Kennedy murder will cease once and for all to be the basis for a parlor game leading us into debilitating Orwellian self-doubt and political paralysis. Rather, let this knowledge become a way of educating our people about the real structure of power in America.

An Open Letter to Assassination Researchers

1978

November 22nd of this past year marked the fourteenth anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Many people such as Penn Jones, Vincent Salandria, Gary Shaw, Richard E. Sprague, Bob Cutler and others have been concerned with the political significance of this crime for over a decade; other interested writers and researchers, including the author, came to an understanding of the events not only of Dallas but of Memphis, Los Angeles, Laurel Park, Chappaquiddick Island and Watergate in more recent years, largely because the trauma of the Vietnam War preoccupied the lives of the people in this writer's generation.

It is fitting on this anniversary, however, for all interested citizens --- those of the "first generation" and those of the "second generation" --- concerned with the facts in the death of President Kennedy and others to take stock of where this country is in the final quarter of this century. What are the real consequences of President Kennedy's murder? Who are the people controlling America in the wake of the assassinations? What was to be gained from these violent deaths and their associated crimes and what do the individuals behind them hope to earn on a long-term basis?

This writer agrees with Vincent Salandria on the notion that a huge amount of time has been spent in studying the hard evidence of conspiracy in the Dealey Plaza operation; by now most reasonable researchers agree that JFK was killed in a paramilitary, multi-assassin ambush similar to those utilized against political leaders around the world over the past century. 

The general features of this assassination were continued with a few modifications (such as brainwashing, hypnosis etc.) in the killings of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and in the shooting of Governor George Wallace. The great majority of researchers agree on how the killing of President Kennedy was accomplished to such an extent that squabbling over minor points (such as whether a bullet struck at Z234 or Z237) is ridiculous and tends to consume energies whch could be spent on other areas. 

In fact, as Gary Shaw and Vince Salandria have suggested, the evidence of conspiracy and of a "public execution" (in Gary Shaw's phrase) in JFK's death now seem so overwhelming as to have us conclude the government meant to reveal such evidence, despite the seemingly contradictory protestations supporting the lone-assassin thesis.

An example of the incredible obviousness of conspiracy can be seen in the publication of the Oswald "backyard photos" in national magazines, with the authorities claiming these photos proved Oswald to be the assassin since he was a "gun nut", a Communist etc. Any logical adult with a knowledge of our legal system would know, particularly with the benefit of hindsight, that such an assertion was a slap in the face to both law and the intelligence of our citizenry. Moreover anyone with a knowledge of photography or the graphic arts could see these pictures were composites, especially when Marina Oswald contradicted herself so blatantly regarding the way she "took" these photographs. The fact that Marina was allowed to testify against her own husband even though the Warren Comission was not an adversary procedure by itself provides another insult to the public. Another blatant example of conspiracy is the absurdity of the "sniper's nest" in the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository; the early photographs of this "nest" circulated by the Dallas newspapers and the wire services had to show to any interested citizen that the assassination was not accomplished in the way officialdom asserted.

Why then did the government allow so much of this evidence to be published? 

Why did Time-Life, Inc. publicize the fact that this organization would not release the Zapruder film even after the public was aware it contained evidence of conspiracy? 

Why do magazines like Time continue to publish obviously retouched versions of the Oswald photos when the evidence of their forgery has been pointed out even in that very periodical? 

Why do numerous "establishment" magazines (such as Atlantic, Harpers) and newspapers (such as Washington Post) today tell us that President Carter is totally controlled by supranational elite organizations such as the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Society and the Councll on Foreign Relations (Penthouse, the sex magazine now exceeding Playboy in circulation --- making it one of the most popular magazines in America --- is doing a seven-part series called "Cartergate: The Death of Demoracy")? 

Why does the news media tell us that it has been controlled by the CIA and its allies for over a generation, and by the progenitors of the CIA before that? 

Why are we told that the intelligence community used the population for massive behavior modification experiments, ranging from MK-ULTRA to the use of the College Entrance Examination Board to gather data on adolescent psychology? 

This writer contends that many such questions can be answered by examining the nature of the "public execution" of JFK; as other researchers have noted, Kennedy could have been removed in a variety of ways short of murder if the conspirators had chosen to do so. A blackmail attempt or massive scandal such as the one used to bring down Nixon, would be equally effective. Yet in those earlier years the controllers of this nation wanted to shoot our leaders to pieces to slam home the message that faith in constituency-based government was obsolete. It is also useful to keep in mind that Watergate had a far greater affect on the American people and the peoples of the world than on the principals of the Nixon Administration, who are now, for the most part, rich and famous. Contrary to what Ford, Rockefeller and others would have us believe, Watergate proved that equal justice under law does not exist. More important, it proved to the initiated that officials can be appointed to and removed from public office without the consent or even the knowledge of the electorate.

To this writer the most pressing business for interested researchers and all concerned citizens is to understand how the opinions and sensibilities of our people have been manipulated since the death of John Kennedy. It is a mistake to assume that the controllers of our foreign and domestic policies are anything but the most sophisticated, intelligent individuals who have been formulating their control of the world in think-tanks, Round Tables and planning commissions long before the events of Nov. 22, 1963. It is most crucial to try to understand how this control is being effected today; to accomplish this knowledge it may be necessary to remove some political prejudices and other blinders which have kept us divided as a people and prevented us from perceiving the true nature of governmental control in all its functions. Some people may hotly dispute some of the remarks contained herein, but it is necessary to understand that this essay is exploratory and actually invites much more detailed study and argumentation from the reader.

In order to analyze conspiratorial politics today it is hardly necessary to look at the evidence in the killings of the Kennedys and King. It is almost as instructive to read the theories of Zbigniew Brzezinski, George Ball and the contributors to Foreign Affairs magazine or to such documents as The Crisis of Democracy produced by the Trilateral Commission. By reading a cross-section of these materials one point becomes obvious: the world-planners of today are not "right-wing militarists" as they have traditionally been perceived; they are instead non-ideological individuals who in some instances would even prefer to be thought of as "liberals." Many footnotes could be provided on this point, but in order to make the argument more immediate for the reader I will ask him to judge the events in the cultural atmosphere of this country within the past dozen years.

If a "right-wing fascist military dictatorship" had taken control of this country I submit we would all be wearing storm-trooper uniforms and mouthing an appropriate ideology. But isn't the prevailing sentiment of America not only anti-nationalist but anti-traditional? Don't most college students scoff at the military? In recent years we have witnessed attempts by the media and the Eastern Establishment to break down the morale of the military on all levels, such as in the emphasis on the cheating scandals at West Point. Why is this done in a nation with a huge military budget? Perhaps because the think-tank planners know that it is useless to pay for a large standing army --- which is basically a means of employment for minorities and the under-privilged --- in an era when it is much more practical to have a small strike force to fight brush-fire wars complemented by a mammoth arsenal of nuclear devices.

One of the most compelling measures of the conspirators' accomplishments can be found in the condition of the youth of America. Having grown up during the start of the 60's "counterculture" I can make the following assertions without fear of being accused of philistinism; I can also state the following since I have both partaken of this counterculture and witnessed its affects on young people from the vantage point of a teacher.

The most obsessive concern of people such as Brzezinski, Ball, the Rockefellers, the Bundys, Vance and the Trilateral Commission is that there are too many "useless eaters" in the world, people who consume resources without returning the "investments" of the elite. The Rockefellers have supported such studies as The Limits to Growth and Mankind at the Turning Point sponsored by a conglomerate-backed unit called the Club of Rome. It is important to understand how these studies have an impact on the lives of middle and lower-class citizens alike and how they are made part of both governmental policy and public ideology. Not only is Zero Population Growth supported by the very rich, documents such as The Crisis of Democracy actually call for an end to financial support to the most basic social services, such as education. There are many instances of this ideology in practice in everyday life. When New York City faced financial collapse, Felix Rohatyn of the international investment bank Lazard Freres (which is closely interlocked with the Rockefellers and Rothschilds) established the MAC corporation which would curtail public services and plow down whole neighborhoods to make way for parking lots and industrial centers. In a recent issue of the Atlantic Monthly McGeorge Bundy wrote an article on the Bakke case now before the Supreme Court in which he stated, in so many words, that Americans must make up for crimes against minorities through programs such as Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action. [1] 

This "liberal" opinion must be counterbalanced by an earlier article by Robert Brustein [2] in the New York Times Sunday Magazine in which Bundy states that the Ford Foundation and its allies will curtail support of the arts, education, etc. since these enterprises do not return an immediate profit for venture capital (the Trilateral Commission papers suggest other reasons). What does this mean? It means that instead of supporting education and developing our society to provide more jobs for all people the "liberal" Establishment would rather turn blacks and whites against each other in a self-destructive scramble for increasingly worthless college diplomas.

The end result is similar to that of the assassinations and Watergate: the public becomes demoralized and sees little sense in basic human endeavor, in this case education. So what does the public do? When a young child is faced with cruel, abusive parents he or she can do nothing but become in-grown and find escape in some sort of fantasy life. Such is the case with most of the American people, including those who understand the meaning of JFK's death and especially the youth growing up in the 1970's.

I have never believed that the "counterculture" of the 60's was a totally spontaneous societal phenomenon. Certainly a good deal of the protest movement and overall disenchantment of the period was born out of the wide apprehension over the atrocity of the Vietnam War, but it is naive to think that the "crisis managers" of the various think-tanks employed by the government would leave such socio-political trends untampered with. We must recall that American college students were told to "tune in, turn on and drop out" at precisely the time when serious political study and social commitment was necessary. The "liberal" news media, including particularly the New York Times, often promoted the most irresponsible and unreasonable of the Leftist or underground figures of the 60's. The drug phenomenon was made to seem synonymous with political activism of the time and indeed the influence of drugs on American youth in that crucial era tended to dilute serious interest in social, political and cultural matters. It is interesting to consider the events of the 60's with the cultural occurrences of the more placid l970's.

Increasingly drugs and the various aspects of popular culture and the entertainment industry have had a marked influence on the political (or metapolitical) orientation of the nation's youth. The "underground" movements of the 60's are now totally acceptable (perhaps the term is coopted) to the establishment; it is difficult to call such phenomena as the "punk rock" fad "underground" in any sense when it is marketed by CBS, Warner Communications, RCA, and other giant concerns. 

It is difficult to believe that the same organisms that control our flow of "hard news" would ignore the leisure hours of Americans, especially of maleable adolescents. The difference is that in place of the "flower child" of the 60's peace movement the young person today is far more jaded since he/she has been exposed since childhood to a popular culture that essentially says "take drugs" and replace sincere love relationships with casual sexuality. Some rock bands, motion pictures and TV shows today openly espouse violence, anarchical behaviour, totally bizarre sexual conduct and a generally bleak, cynical view of human destiny. Pornography, including the despicable entry of child pornography, has become acceptable on a wider scale since all classes of society have been conditioned to recognize its normality and its place within our Constitutional System.

As someone engaged in the arts and in education, this writer has rarely advanced any aspect of censorship, but the current situation must be examined closely for a variety of reasons. The extremely loose morality and cultural decay of Weimar Germany, when combined with the economic collapse of that nation, provided an ideal atmosphere for the rise of a dictatorship and gave a perfect rationale for total censorship. Although the above remarks are based in part on personal observation, there is good documentation that a similar crisis could be brewing in America. 

We know now (through such sources as Alfred McCoy's The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia that the intelligence community works hand-in-glove with organized crime in keeping up the drug flow in America. We also know that the Mafia has extensive control over pornography and that large corporations (now replacing the old Hollywood movie-mogul system) market many of the more atrocious, anti-humane motion pictures having an impact on the broad middle-class sensibility. 

The problem becomes compounded when the media focuses the audience regularly on the "controversy" surrounding these issues; the court cases involved over patently mediocre trashy films, books, etc. The result is that we have a climate of reaction as evidenced in a recent Newsweek cover story, "Is America Turning to the Right?". Just as bogus terrorism (such as the Patty Hearst-SLA story) creates a rationale for more security and a stepped-up police state, this "cultural terrorism" creates divisions within society and calls for a backlash ending in total repression.

It is the element of divisiveness itself, mentioned earlier, which is perhaps the key to the control by the power structure. As Vincent Salandria has remarked, a society kept in a state of chaos is ripe for totalitarian intervention and it is reasonable to believe Aldous Huxley's notion also noted by Salandria, that the new forms of control will come upon us in many clever new disguises. Some elements of polarization have been commented on but perhaps the grandest split in American society is between "left" and "right". 

To researchers interested in conspiratorial politics in America it is obvious, as Carl Oglesby has pointed out, that there are many areas of agreement between people of the left and right despite political differences. The John Birch Society, for example, has long spoken of a supranational conspiracy of the financial elite manipulating our foreign and domestic policies; Carl Oglesby quoted a few sources also used by the JBS in his book The Yankee and Cowboy War and many assassination researchers recognize important work done by the right in areas such as the Wallace shooting. Yet the left has refused to get together with the right because groups like the JBS also take a hard line against Communism, stating that this too is an invention of the power structure.

Of course many of the right-wing organizations have objectionable ideas (it seems a common intelligence device to put the truth in the mouths of lunatics) but this is not to say that people who have subscribed to right-wing positions should be written off as unsalvageable, or to say that all their ideas are vacuous. For example, in recent years this writer has become suspicious of the idea that Russia or China should be seen as models for egalitarian societies, particularly after Nixon and Kissinger were so warmly embraced by Brezhnev and the Chinese leaders. One could not help but be bewildered when the Soviet leaders expressed some sort of grief when Nixon was removed from office; instead of educating the world as to the intelligence forces behind Watergate the Soviets chose instead to suggest, through various means, that Nixon should have dealt more harshly with his critics. 

There are a number of other incidents that both the American Left and Right should examine with open, unblinkered attitudes. Why was Khrushchev, who ostensibly was moving toward detente with President Kennedy, removed from office a year after the JFK assassination? If the Cold War between the U.S. and Russia was genuinely intense, and if new arguments are now developing, why have American businesses been allowed to establish headquarters in Moscow? Why did the Rockefellers open a branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank and a World Trade Center in that city? This writer contends that both nations have become equally pragmatic equally non-ideological and equally contemptuous of basic human dignity.

There may be further evidence on the above points present in a new development in the JFK assassination. Dutch journalist Willem Oltmans, who gained a good deal of knowledge about the assassination from George DeMohrenshildt before the latter's untimely death, recently produced a witness who could be the "Deep Throat" of the assassination case. 

This witness is General Donald Donaldson, alias Dimitri Dimitrov, alias Jim Adams, a double agent brought to the U.S. during World War II by FDR (or by the OSS), at a time when the U.S. was cooperating with Russia against the Nazis. Donaldson apparently told Oltmans and later Senator Frank Church, President Ford and President Carter that he knew the JFK assassination was planned at the highest levels of American intelligence, with the full knowledge of Allen Dulles. 

Provided that this isn't complete disinformation, the question arises as to how Donaldson functioned as a "double agent" in the interim and how, if this agent was imported from Russia, he achieved access to the most volatile American intelligence secrets? 

Adjacent to this issue is the question of why other Soviet agents who have not only investigated but written articles on the JFK murder have not been allowed to use their information as a tool for a massive blackmailing of American policies by Russia?

Still more evidence of the use of the Left against the Right is seen in other aspects of the assassination inquiry. When the Select Committee on Assassinations was formed last year, the power structure played one ideological faction against another in the attempt to sabotage the investigative effect itself. Right-wing spokesmen in the Congress argued that the probe was a waste of money, a means for another assault on the intelligence community or unpatriotic for various reasons. Some right-wingers felt that if there were conspiracies in the various cases they involved Communist plots of one sort or other. At the same time liberals and left-leaning members of the House argued that the investigation might violate civil rights of certain suspects (a totally fabricated charge). The most prominent liberal argument was and is that conspiracy theories rarely hold water, are un-fashionable, etc. Of course there were many honest liberals and conservatives alike who were willing to go beyond thier political affiliations and ideas to look at the real evidence and stick to the central issue, namely, "who killed Kennedy and King?" 

The strategy of the power structure, however, is to use various liberal and conservative politicians to appeal to the appropriate preconditioned sentiments of their constituencies in blockading the House investigation. On the East Coast, the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, and the TV networks (with their accomplished cover-up masters Eric Sevareid, David Brinkley, Howard K. Smith, et al) perpetuate the lone-nut no-conspiracy nonsense chiefly by appealing to the "moderate," "reasonable," vaguely liberal point of view through the "tough-minded" commentaries of the media's gray-haired father-figures. The intelligence community is also adroit at presenting similar arguments in the more "liberal" journals New Republic, Commentary, and related newspapers and radio and TV talk shows.

On the issue of the House Assassination Committee itself, the prospects for a truthful solution seem scant at present (January 1978), but it would be naive for us to believe that any single investigation could right all the wrongs of the past dozen years at least. For interested people who may become depressed by another "no conspiracy" verdict by officialdom, there is reason to take heart in the axiom, "The mills of the gods grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine." 

The adage is applicable for a simple reason. Assassination researchers have always believed the JFK killing and cover-ups are directly relevant to the health of the body politic today and that the sickness associated with that murder will become manifest in every aspect of our lives as Americans. A fitting analogy might be the case of a person overcome by a severe infection who refuses to take anti-biotics for fear of the possible side effects. So too many citizens have decided to bury their heads in the sands, to pretend that the crimes related to the political murders are unrelated symptoms which will go away if ignored long enough; the government would certainly have us believe their solution is preferable to the "antibiotics" of real investigations and purges of our political system, which, according to the media propagandists, would have the dangerous "side effects" of crippling our intelligence organizations or decreasing American credibility abroad. Indeed these risks may be involved to a certain degree, but the "side effects" are not nearly the threat to the survival of this nation that the illness itself is at present. As Henry Steele Commager remarked on a recent television program, a clandestine intelligence network and the power structure that supports it cannot be seen as compatible with the concept of a democratic republic; sooner or later, one or the other will have to go.

It should be emphasized that no remark contained herein was meant to belittle the research or beliefs of other researchers, students of clandestinism or citizens in general. Above all it is my contention that research into all forms of conspiracy in America should be expanded and that a new era of cooperation should begin for all people interested in salvaging our country regardless of their political persuasions. It seems that the Carter Administration, rather than ushering in new confidence in government, has instead attempted to lull the U.S. into a false sense of security while new forms of manipulation and cover-ups commence. Carter has already proven that he, like JFK, LBJ, Nixon and Ford has no real control over the direction of this nation or even of the Executive Branch. He has gone back on numerous campaign promises even at this early date, particularly concerning military spending. The important point is that the power structure (as represented currently by The Trilateral Commission) has accomplished a master stroke by installing a figurehead who is in some small measure capable of summoning up the public trust with his Kennedy-like demeanor and "down home" appeal. As is exemplified in other aspects of the approaching Brave New World, the new totalitarianism will come in ingenious raiment. If we can understand this factor as well as how the integrity of the human soul and mind are now held in contempt by our rulers, then perhaps it will not be long before we discover the true legacy of John Kennedy's death.

* * *

NOTES

1. Robert Brustein, "Can the Arts Go On?", New York Times Magazine, July 10, 1971

2. McGeorge Bundy, "The Issue Before the Court: Who Gets Ahead in America?", The Atlantic, November, 1977, p. 1.