First, let me summarize the government's version of
this event...
On November 22, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald, a Communist
sympathizer and Castro supporter, shot and killed
President Kennedy. He acted alone in this
endeavor, and his motivation was simply that he was a
lone angry nut, with family problems, money problems,
and few friends. After killing the President, he
walked out of the Texas School Book Depository, back to
his boarding house, where he retrieved his pistol.
Minutes later, he used the pistol to murder Police
Officer J.D. Tippett. Why? Because he had
just shot the President and was nervous. In fact,
he was so nervous that he then decided to watch a movie
and went to the Texas Theater, but barged in without
buying a ticket. He was apprehended there by the
police. Less than forty-eight hours later Oswald
himself was killed by another lone angry nut, Jack Ruby.
No one else was involved in any part of the affair -
there was simply one lone angry nut who killed a
President, and was subsequently killed by another lone
angry nut. Very simple, isn't it?
There are so many holes in the government's case, it
is difficult to find a place to start. The Warren
Report is a disorganized mess of jumbled statements, all
twisted around and out of order so that the reader
cannot possibly make any sense of anything or connect
any two pieces together. Many people were
dissatisfied with the rambling morass of statements and
disjointed pieces of evidence, and began to ask
questions and look for answers themselves. Men
like Jim Garrison, Mark Lane, and Jim Maars researched
and investigated tirelessly, and slowly began to poke
holes in nearly every single part of the Warren Report.
The basic theory of what really happened is something
like this:
John Kennedy was a threat to the military-industrial
complex, as well as to the CIA. He wanted to pull
out of the war in Vietnam, which would have had
disastrous financial consequences for the people who
made things like helicopters, bullets, weapons, etc...
He planned to break up the CIA and give authority for
all paramilitary operations in peacetime to the Joint
Chiefs, ending the reign of the CIA as a power base in
Washington. He was rumored to be soft on
Communism, as evidenced by his secret deal with the
Soviet Union to cease all operations against Cuba in
return for the Soviets pulling their missiles out of
that Caribbean nation. In the eyes of many key
players in Washington and around the country, it was
time for him to go.
Certain figures in the covert operations branch of
the CIA were tasked with creating a plan to eliminate
Kennedy. Nothing was ever put on paper, nothing
was ever discussed openly. But the men doing the
planning were covert operators with years of experience
in "black ops" around the world - they knew how to plan
and execute a coup d'etat and get away with it.
A "fall guy" would be needed - Lee Harvey Oswald was
the perfect choice. He was a naval intelligence
officer who had, under orders, defected to the Soviet
Union a few years earlier, then returned to the United
States. He was ordered by his case officer to go
to New Orleans, ostensibly to infiltrate the anti-Castro
groups there that were supposedly planning an illegal
invasion of Cuba. Once in New Orleans, Oswald was
under the control of Guy Bannister, a retired FBI agent
who was working as a contract agent for the CIA.
Bannister was heavily involved in Operation Mongoose,
which was the planning of another invasion of Cuba.
Oswald believed he was in New Orleans to infiltrate
Bannister's group, but in reality he was being
"sheep-dipped" into the role of a pro-Castro communist.
Bannister told Oswald to infiltrate the pro-Castro
groups around New Orleans, in order to obtain
information on them for Bannister. Oswald did so,
handing out leaflets for the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee, and even getting arrested for fighting in the
street with several anti-Castro proponents. He
also appeared on a local radio show where he debated the
finer points of Leninism with a militant Cuban exile.
After firmly establishing himself as a pro-Castro
communist, Oswald returned to Dallas where he was told
to get a job in the Texas School Book Depository.
Meanwhile, the original parade route for Kennedy's
motorcade was being altered to bring it through Dealy
Plaza, the protection for the President was being
removed, and the apparatus for an instant cover-up was
being brought into place. Three teams of shooters
were positioned around Dealy Plaza, and at 12:30 on
November 22, 1963 the President was assassinated.
Oswald, by this time likely aware of what was going
on around him, calmly walked out of the Texas School
Book Depository and returned home. He received a
signal in the form of a car pulling up to his boarding
house and honking its horn, and he left the boarding
house and walked to the Texas Theater, where he was told
to wait for further instructions. Unbeknown to
him, Officer Tippett was being ambushed and murdered a
short distance away, and a tip that the assassin of
President Kennedy was hiding in the Texas Theater was
being phoned in to the police.
After the assassination, Oswald was killed to prevent
him from saying anything detrimental to the "official"
version of the assassination. Key members of the
FBI, the Secret Service, and the Dallas Police botched
the investigation, destroying some evidence, creating
other pieces of evidence, and ignoring or bullying
witnesses. These were the select few who were in
on the scam from the start. Even more
investigatory personnel, perhaps through misguided
patriotism and a zeal to nail the person the higher-ups
were saying was responsible, did basically the same
thing even without knowing the true story.
Shortly after the assassination, Lyndon Johnson was
sworn in as the new President, the war in Vietnam
received the full support of the government, and plans
to fragment the CIA were quietly disposed of. The
"oil depletion" allowance (which gave enormous tax
breaks to Texas oilmen on the theory that their wells
would someday run dry) was kept in place, despite
Kennedy's original plan to abolish it. The coup
d'etat had been accomplished.
Now, I'm not one of those people clamoring to "open
the files" on the JFK assassination, simply because I
believe that any files that once existed that would shed
some light on this whole sordid affair were burned or
shredded decades ago. It may never be possible to
obtain definitive answers to most of the questions
regarding this sad event in American history. But
we shouldn't pretend it didn't happen. Any
information that can be obtained belongs to the American
people, but we are denied access to it. We
shouldn't be.
If
you'd like to read more about the investigations into
the conspiracy surrounding the death of President
Kennedy, you should read "On the Trail of the Assassins"
by Jim Garrison, or "Crossfire: The Plot that Killed
Kennedy" by Jim Maars. If you want to learn more
about the official version of what happened in Dallas on
11/22/63, you can either read the entire Warren Report
(if you have several weeks to kill, and a superhuman
ability to wade through meandering bullshit) or "Case
Closed" by Gerald Posner.
