JFK Assassination: Jacqueline Kennedy, RFK Did
Not Believe Only One Person Assassinated President John F. Kennedy
Analysis
on
December 20 2013 1:44 PM
One week after the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Texas, former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and
Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy privately communicated to the leadership of
the Soviet Union that they did not believe accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald
acted alone.
Jacqueline Kennedy and RFK wanted the Soviet
leadership to know that “despite Oswald’s connections to the communist world,
the Kennedys believed that the president was felled by domestic opponents.”
Publicly, Jacqueline Kennedy endorsed the
Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald acted alone, and it was not until
1999 that her and RFK’s private views were made known, when they were revealed
by historians Aleksandr Fusenko and Timothy Naftali in their book on the Cuban
Missile Crisis, “One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, 1958-1964.”
In the book, the historians reported that
when Jacqueline Kennedy’s artist friend William Walton traveled to Moscow on a
previously scheduled trip a week after President Kennedy’s assassination,
Walton carried the above “felled by domestic opponents” message from Jacqueline
Kennedy and RFK to another friend of the Kennedy administration, Georgi
Bolshakov, a Russian diplomat. Bolshakov served as a back-channel link between
the White House and the Kremlin during the October 1962 missile crisis.
Jacqueline Kennedy’s Analysis: Little Media
Coverage
At the time of the book’s publication in
1999, Jacqueline Kennedy and RFK’s private views received very little attention
from U.S. media outlets.
Further, in 2013, despite the enormous amount
of media coverage of the recent 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, when
hundreds of media outlets sent reporters and TV crews to Dallas, there was
relatively little coverage of what Jacqueline Kennedy, RFK or other public
officials in office in 1963 thought occurred on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza
in Dallas, even though many public officials have made their opinions and
analyses known publicly since then. Here are a few of note:
“I think the [Warren Commission] report, to
those who have studied it closely, has collapsed like a house of cards ... the
fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was not to use its own investigators,
but instead to rely on the CIA and FBI personnel, which played directly into
the hands of senior intelligence officials who directed the cover-up."
-- U.S. Sen. Richard Schweiker, R-Penn., and former member
of the Church Committee, which investigated U.S. intelligence community
activities, including illegal operations (1976)
I told the FBI what I had heard [two shots
from behind the grassy knoll fence], but they said it couldn't have happened
that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way
they wanted me to. I just didn't want to stir up any more pain and trouble for
the family."
-- Ken O’Donnell, former Special Assistant to President
Kennedy (1987)
“Hoover lied his eyes out to the [Warren]
Commission -- on Oswald, on Ruby, on their friends, the bullets, the guns, you
name it …”
-- Hall Boggs, Majority Leader and Former Warren Commission
member
“Were they aiming at the president?”
President Lyndon B. Johnson said.
"They were aiming directly at the
president. There’s no question about that," Director Hoover said.
"This telescopic lens brings close to you like they were sitting right
beside you."
-- Lyndon Johnson, president of the United States, to FBI
Director J. Edgar Hoover, on Nov. 29, 1963
“I never heard the shot that hit me.”
-- Texas Gov. John Connally, who had been seated in front of
President Kennedy in the presidential limousine in Dallas
At The Center Of The Nightmare
Of course, in the years following the
nation’s dark and ignominious day in 1963, many talented assassination
researchers have offered rigorous, systematic analyses of what happened in
Dealey Plaza, but the observations and thoughts of Jacqueline Kennedy, though
often overlooked, are extremely pertinent: She was the closest witness to the
crime and its intended victim, the president. She was, more than anyone else,
at the center of the nightmare.
Moreover, the observations of the
aforementioned and other public officials are data points of consequence and
therefore relevant. These are not the observations of ill-informed adults or
mere conjecture. To public investigators, these witnesses represent adults who
had access to at least some of the hard evidence available, and, in regard to
the Dealey Plaza witnesses, they comprise only those with first-hand evidence
or observations.
A Preponderance Of Evidence
Further, if the above observations and
thoughts had occurred in isolation, they would still be significant in the
investigation of the president’s murder. However, when combined with the
suspicious activity, anomalies and commonality of interests among key parties
in the case, they form a preponderance of evidence that, at minimum, begs
additional questions. Those suspicious activities/anomalies/commonalities
include:
• Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t fire when the presidential
motorcade was close.
• Gov. John Connally never heard the shot
that injured him.
• Aristocrat George de Mohrenschildt befriended working-class Lee
Harvey Oswald.
• Authorities arrested Oswald in about 90
minutes.
• Oswald’s paraffin test was negative: The
test determined that he may have fired a revolver that day, but not a rifle.
• After an earlier arrest, in August 1963 in
New Orleans, Oswald called a specific person at the FBI.
• Two days after President Kennedy was
murdered, Jack Ruby murdered Oswald.
• Most Parkland Hospital emergency room
physicians said President Kennedy had an exit wound, indicative of a gunshot
from the front, but the Bethesda, Maryland, autopsy that followed did not
describe the back-of-the-head wound as an exit wound.
• At least 21 law enforcement personnel in Dealey Plaza thought a
gunshot came from the front of the presidential motorcade.
• The presidential limousine was washed
before it was inspected for blood, bone and tissue evidence.
• No one physically saw Oswald at the TSBD’s
sixth floor window at 12:30 p.m. Central Time, the time of the assassination.
• At three committee investigations, the
Central Intelligence Agency either hid evidence or obstructed the committee
from obtaining it.
• Despite threatening to disclose “classified
things” to the Soviet Union after defecting, Oswald was never punished by the
U.S. government for doing so. Then, when Oswald said he wanted to return,
despite saying he was a communist, and it being the height of the Cold War, the
U.S. government let him return.
• Despite being interrogated for 10-12 hours
after being arrested on Nov. 22, 1963, crime investigators did not make a
legal, stenographic or audio recording of the interrogation.
• After Oswald was allowed to return to the
United States, he was surrounded by talented, accomplished middle/upper class
citizens at nearly every key point in his life through Nov. 24, 1963, even
though Oswald held largely blue collar, low-pay jobs.
Making Public JFK Assassination Files Held By
CIA Would Clarify Much
Further, the U.S. intelligence community in
general, and the Central Intelligence Agency specifically, could resolve many
of the questions/anomalies above by making public more than 1,100 classified
files related to the JFK assassination.
In particular, when made public, the
classified files of CIA Officer George Joannides; CIA Officer David Atlee Philips, who was involved in pre-assassination
surveillance of Oswald; Birch D O’Neal, who as counter-intelligence head of the
CIA, opened a file on defector Oswald; CIA Officers Howard Hunt; William King Harvey; Anne Goodpasture; and David Sanchez Morales -- when made public, these files
will help the nation determine what really happened in Dallas, who Oswald was
and how the CIA handled Oswald’s file.
However, the CIA says the Joannides’ files and the files of the CIA officers --
which the Agency said are “not believed relevant” to the JFK assassination --
must remain classified until at least 2017, and perhaps longer, due to U.S.
national security. But the CIA’s national security claim has never been
independently verified, according to JFKFacts.org Moderator Jefferson Morley.
Morley is the plaintiff in the ongoing Morley v. CIA suit, which seeks to make public Joannides’
classified files.
In Morley’s suit, his attorney has responded
to the CIA’s latest brief, on the issue of court fees. Having won on appeal
twice, Morley argues that the standard practice of the U.S government paying
court fees for a successful appeal should apply. The CIA counters that the
litigation has not generated any significant new information, and therefore the
government should not have to pay the court fees. The issue is now in the hands
of U.S. Judge Richard Leon.
It must be underscored that, to date, there
is no smoking gun or incontrovertible evidence of a plot or conspiracy to
assassinate President Kennedy, but there is a pattern of suspicious activity,
along with a series of anomalies and a commonality of interests among key
parties, that compel additional research and the release of non-public
documents.
Further, the CIA probably is not covering up
some tectonic, systemic crisis-triggering secret about the assassination of
President Kennedy, or even evidence of a colossal Agency operational failure
that would prompt the American people to call for a dismantling of the national
security state apparatus.
However, until all of the JFK assassination
files are made public, the pattern of suspicious activity, anomalies,
commonality of interests, along with the observations of the investigators and
public officials, form a preponderance of evidence that strongly suggest
that -- at minimum -- the American people do not know the full truth
regarding the assassination of President Kennedy, and that the Agency is hiding
something.
JFK Assassination - 50th Anniversary - 4
Files The CIA Must Make Public: Analysis
Scholar and assassination researcher Josiah
Thompson, author of “Six Seconds in Dallas,” said it best in the 2007
documentary film “Oswald’s Ghost”:
“As long as a mystery resides at the center
of this case, it can’t be closed,” Thompson said.
That case, the assassination of President
John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, remains, for many, an open and
unsolved murder case.
It remains open because the Dallas Police
Department never had a chance to conduct a standard criminal investigation of
the assassination. At the direction of Secret Service, Federal Bureau of
Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency officials present in Dallas,
President Kennedy’s body was quickly flown on Air Force One back to Washington,
D.C., that Friday afternoon.
The institution that did investigate the
assassination, the Warren Commission, concluded in September 1964, about one
year after the event, that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, fired three shots
from the Texas School Book Depository in Dealey Plaza and killed President
Kennedy, while also wounding Texas Gov. John Connally and bystander James
Tague.
The Warren
Commission also concluded that Dallas nightclub/strip club
owner Jack Ruby also acted alone when he shot and murdered Oswald two days
after his arrest, on Nov. 24, 1963, as Oswald was being transported from Dallas
police headquarters to a county jail.
And almost since the day the Warren
Commission issued its report, it has been criticized for being implausible,
unconvincing and grossly slipshod in its investigation procedures --
particularly for failing to collect 100 percent of the evidence, and for
failing to analyze evidence it had collected -- and for other serious
violations of basic protocols for criminal investigations.
Later, in 1978, a second investigation, by
the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, concluded that
President Kennedy was very likely assassinated as a result of a
plot/conspiracy, but the committee was unable to identify the other gunmen or
the extent of the conspiracy.
To date, there’s no “smoking gun,” or, in
other words, there’s no incontrovertible evidence of a plot/conspiracy to
assassinate President Kennedy, but there is a pattern of suspicious activity,
along with a series of anomalies and a commonality of interests among key
parties that compel additional research and the release to the public of key
documents.
With the above in mind, four files -- when
made public by the Central Intelligence Agency -- will help determine what
really happened on Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas.
The files are ranked from least important
(number 4) to most (number 1):
4) David Atlee Phillips
David Atlee Phillips’ operational and
management files should be made public. A Central Intelligence Agency officer
for 25 years, Phillips’ highest rank was as the CIA’s chief of operations in
the Western Hemisphere. An adept and creative strategist, perhaps Phillips’
best skill was his conceptualization of psychological warfare operations.
Research also suggests that Phillips, while
working undercover in 1963, was involved in pre-assassination surveillance of
Lee Harvey Oswald.
JFKFacts.org Moderator Jefferson Morley, who is also an assassination researcher,
said the CIA retains four files containing 606 pages of material on Phillips, who
died in 1987.
3) Birch D. O’Neal
Birch D. O’Neal was head of the CIA’s
counterintelligence office, which had tracked Lee Harvey Oswald from 1959 to
1963, and he reported to counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton.
According to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, Angleton’s
counterintelligence group opened a file on defector Oswald, and it also opened
his mail under the CIA’s HTLINGUAL program run by O’Neal.
Further, while the HSCA qualifies in its
report that “the existence of a 201 file does not necessarily connote any
actual relations or contact with the CIA,” an argument can be made that if
there were planned, repeated, mission-linked contacts between Oswald and the
CIA, and/or attempts to manipulate Oswald without Oswald knowing about it,
O’Neal likely recorded it in his files.
Morley said the CIA retains three files on O’Neal’s operations, containing 222 pages of material.
2) E. Howard Hunt
Those familiar with the 1972 Watergate
scandal that resulted in the 1974 resignation of President Richard Nixon will
remember E. Howard Hunt, who co-engineered the Watergate office
building bugging and burglary of the Democratic National Committee and also
conducted other undercover operations for the Nixon Administration.
Before his Nixon White House service days,
Hunt, of course, was no stranger to covert operations. In 1963, then-CIA
Director Richard Helms made Hunt the chief of the CIA’s Domestic Contacts
Division.
In the final months/weeks of his life, E.
Howard Hunt was interviewed by his son, Saint John Hunt, to whom he made
several assertions regarding the assassination of President Kennedy, including
individuals who were purportedly involved in the alleged plot/conspiracy, which
E. Howard Hunt opaquely called “the Big Event,” and which person (not himself)
had masterminded the plot.
Morley said the CIA retains six files containing 332 pages of material on Hunt, who
died in 2007.
1) William King Harvey
One of the most highly regarded CIA officers
of his time, Bill Harvey has been described as cerebral to the nth degree,
without sentiment, highly skilled, and in possession of great stamina and
determination.
He also was, arguably, the public policy official
with the most contempt for President Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General
Robert F. Kennedy.
When the CIA created an organization in 1960
capable of planning and undertaking assassinations, it was given the code name
ZR-RIFLE and the agency put Harvey in charge.
Further, according to author and assassination researcher Bill Simpich, Harvey was
the only real rival to the CIA’s James Jesus Angleton in CIA counterintelligence
in this era; Harvey ran the CIA’s counterintelligence division prior to
Angleton, then served as head of the CIA’s prestigious base in Berlin. In
short, Harvey likely knew of the same secrets as Angleton.
Morley said the CIA retains a 123-page file on Harvey’s operations.
Also: George de Mohrenschildt
A person not on Morley’s list, but one who
also is associated with the events of Nov. 22, 1963, is George de
Mohrenschildt, arguably one of the most fascinating -- and mystifying --
figures to make a home in the Dallas area during that period.
De Mohrenschildt, who was 52 in 1963, was a
conservative, sophisticated Russian émigré and petroleum geologist/professor
who settled in Dallas and established many contacts in Dallas oil, business and
conservative circles, including the very conservative Texas Crusade for
Freedom.
In 1957, de Mohrenschildt was debriefed by
the Central Intelligence Agency after traveling to Yugoslavia to conduct a
geological field survey for the U.S. State Department that was sponsored by the
International Cooperation Administration. During the trip de Mohrenschildt was
accused by Yugoslav authorities of making drawings of military installations
and fortifications. Upon returning to the U.S., the CIA debriefed him, both in
Washington, D.C., and in Dallas.
De Mohrenschildt, to summarize, was a
conservative, refined, accomplished, oil sector-based, White Russian émigré,
with at least one U.S. intelligence community interaction. And with whom did de
Mohrenschildt strike up a friendship in Dallas? Lee Harvey Oswald. Why would a
conservative, business-oriented, sophisticated geologist in Texas’ prime sector
-- oil -- one who was active in right-wing political circles, strike up a
friendship with a pro-communist, non-middle-class, malcontent outsider earning
slightly more than the minimum wage? And this occurred in the heart of the
conservative, communist-hating, commerce-oriented hotbed that was Dallas in the
early 1960s. DeMohrenschildt’s accomplished and multilayered life is so complex
that it will require extensive interviews with key CIA officials who must be
deposed, over several months, with sworn testimony provided, under penalty of
perjury for false statements, in order for the public to learn more about him.
Accordingly, a special committee comprised of
five researchers -- three selected by the U.S. president, one selected by
Congress and one selected by the Supreme Court -- should be appointed and
empowered to subpoena all records and information on de Mohrenschildt and
report its findings within one year of the committee’s first meeting.
CIA Files – Filling In The Information Gaps
The Warren Commission report, due to omission
of evidence, among many other mistakes, was a deeply flawed document. The
making public of all records relating to the individuals above, David Atlee
Phillips, Birch D. O’Neal, E. Howard Hunt, William Harvey and George DeMohrenschildt,
will begin the process of filling in the gaps regarding what really happened in
Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963.
It must be underscored that, to date, there
is no smoking gun or incontrovertible evidence of a plot/conspiracy to
assassinate President Kennedy, but there is a pattern of suspicious activity,
along with a series of anomalies and a commonality of interests among key
parties, that compel additional research and the release of non-public
documents.
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