JFK Assassination

 

Having reach the point of consistent writer’s block, combined with having blogged so many subjects that I repeatedly hit the “I blogged about it already and have nothing new to add”, I’ll throttle back to every other Friday.  Moreover, I couldn’t get this one done in time and didn’t want such an important topic to be half-assed.  And it’s three months since the anniversary.  So here you go.

We came and passed November 22, the anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963.  Recently I’ve been reading Vincent Bugliosi’s huge volume, Reclaiming History, in which he debunks countless conspiracy theories behind the event and comes to the conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald did in fact act alone to assassinate President Kennedy on that day.  As an aside, Reclaiming History is a HUGE book.  It’s 1648 pages, and although I’ve started it, I haven’t quite finished it.  The initial 688 pages was also released as a separate book, Four Days In November, which simply described the assassination itself and the subsequent killing of Oswald by Jack Ruby (two days later).  I read Four Days and then began reading Reclaiming History.  Four Days was also made into a movie, “Parkland”, named after the hospital where both Kennedy and Oswald were taken after their gunshots.

FYI:  two other celebrities died on November 22, 1963 as well.  The author of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, C.S. Lewis, died of natural causes on that day.  And the author of Brave New World and The Doors of Perception. Aldous Huxley, also died - of natural causes - on the same day.  Both deaths were, as you might imagine, ignored in the hoopla surrounding Kennedy's.  

Let’s start with the basics.  On Friday, November 22, 1963, JFK and his wife Jackie Kennedy were riding in an open limo with Texas Governor Connally through downtown Dallas, starting westbound on Main Street.  The limo then made a right turn (90 degrees) due north onto Houston Street, then a left turn (90 degrees) onto Elm, westbound to the freeway.  As the limo turned left onto Elm Street from Houston St, it passed underneath the Texas Book Depository, and then down Elm Street, when a gunman shot both Kennedy and the governor.  The governor survived his wounds, but Kennedy did not.  Shortly after, a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, was picked up in a movie theater several blocks away to the south, and arrested – after having shot Dallas police officer Tippits who had approached him on his way from the downtown area where the assassination had occurred.  Two days later, a nightclub owner, Jack Ruby, came into the basement garage of the city hall and shot Oswald, fatally, as he was about to be transported to the main jail pending a criminal trial. 

Without a formal trial of Oswald, because he was shot by Ruby, the Warren Commission was set up to investigate the matter and determine if anyone else besides Oswald was involved.  The Commission was a seven member panel:  Chief Justice Warren, Richard Russell, Jr. (Senator, D-GA), John Sherman Cooper (Senator, R-KY), Hale Boggs (US Rep, D-LA), Gerald Ford (US Rep, R-MI), Allen Dulles (CIA), and John J. McCloy (World Bank).   Future PA Senator Arlen Spector was an assistant counsel.  The Warren Commission, after studying the issue, concluded that Oswald did act alone.  In the 1970s, a second investigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), also decided that he acted alone.  However, conspiracy theories persisted, and in 1991, Oliver Stone put out a movie, “JFK”, largely focusing on a criminal trial in the late 60s, done by New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, which attempted to implicate Clay Shaw as being in conspiracy with Oswald – by proxy, to prove a conspiracy through Shaw.  Despite this, Shaw was acquitted. 

First off, who is Vincent Bugliosi?  He was the L.A. district attorney who prosecuted Charles Manson and his “family” for killing Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, and friends, on August 8, 1969, then the Labianca couple two nights later.  Since Manson himself did not get out of the car on those nights and pull the trigger, Bugliosi needed to prove a conspiracy.  If not, Manson would walk free and corral another group of stupid teenage girls into killing more people.  Bugliosi succeeded at getting Manson convicted – and Manson died in prison serving a life sentence.  This gave Bugliosi a critical background in criminal forensics AND the nature of conspiracy, a skill set he used to evaluate the plethora of conspiracy theories surrounding the JFK assassination. 

By now, there are countless books on the topic.  However, as a practical matter, the most important contributor to the whole conspiracy movement in terms of bringing all of this to public attention – those of us who can spare 3+ hours to watch a movie but not the time and attention necessary to read all the books on the topic – is the Oliver Stone movie, JFK.  It had an all-star cast, not the least of which was Kevin Costner as Garrison, Tommy Lee Jones as Shaw, Gary Oldman as Oswald, and Donald Sutherland as the fictitious “Mr X” who advises Garrison, amidst various Washington DC monuments, of the vast conspiracy allegedly behind the assassination.  That movie takes as its focus the Clay Shaw trial in Louisiana in the late 60s.  Jim Garrison was a New Orleans prosecutor who was convinced that Oswald was part of a larger conspiracy, including Clay Shaw, so he prosecuted Shaw for conspiracy to kill Kennedy.   The trial served as de facto conspiracy trial, but Shaw was acquitted.  Stone saw fit to use the trial as a similar proxy for his own Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory.  The “Mr X” is a fictitious character who Garrison meets (in a meeting which never actually happened, by Stone’s own admission) in Washington DC.  Basically Garrison and Stone shared a firm conviction that, absence of evidence of a conspiracy to the contrary notwithstanding, there WAS such a conspiracy, mostly likely by a shadowy cabal of CIA, generals, etc. who were upset that Kennedy would not be escalating the war in Vietnam.  Garrison and Stone felt they had to fill in the blanks, as it were, to draw the picture and prove the case, out of whole cloth.  Bugliosi considered the Shaw prosecution an egregious miscarriage of justice and the verdict correct – as a fellow D.A. he had choice words for Garrison.  The bigger problem is that the movie serves as most Americans’ source of information on the assassination, as a work of fiction masquerading as the truth, serving to deliberately mislead the American public as to existence of a non-existent conspiracy.  Having an A-list cast makes the matter even worse, lending the stars’ reputation to an undeserved implication of credibility.  It’s garbage – 3.5 hours of fiction.    

Parkland.  This is a much simpler movie, echoing Bugliosi’s shorter book and simply giving us the basics of the assassination:  the motorcade, the assassination, the efforts of the Parkland ER dept to try to save Kennedy, the subsequent similar effort at the same hospital to save Oswald, and a very limited analysis of everything else.  Jeremy Strong plays Oswald, Paul Giamatti plays Zapruder, and Ron Livingston plays FBI Agent Hosty, who briefly interrogated Oswald before the assassination.  By the way, not only did Kennedy and Oswald wind up in Parkland, so did Ruby.  After being convicted of Oswald’s killing, he was sentenced to death.  That sentence was overturned and a new trial ordered, but while he was waiting on that, he had a stroke and was taken to Parkland, where he died.  I suppose any pilgrimage or assassination tour of Dallas would have to include this hospital.  The Book Depository actually has a museum on the sixth floor.  You’ll have to bring your own Carcano rifle – and good luck buying it in the mail for $12. 

Clearly, Bugliosi did his homework, not only reading all of the conspiracy theory literature out there, but actually talking in person with many of the doctors and major witnesses who supposedly support the theories, mainly indirectly.  And he devoted an entire, enormous chapter of his book to discredit – rightfully so – the Oliver Stone film.  I have to confess that as of writing this blog, I have not finished reading the book, but have digested the initial chapters on the assassination itself, the chapter on the autopsies – which form much of the core of the conspiracy, as most allege the fatal shots come from the grassy knoll, not the book depository – and the huge chapter devoted to critiquing the “JFK” film itself.  The remainder of the book, which I have not read, focuses on Oswald’s motives and the likely motives of would-be actors behind the conspiracy, e.g. the Soviets, Cubans, CIA, or the Mob. 

Zapruder Film.   26 seconds of home movie camera shot by Zapruder.   Since it was a primitive movie camera, the quality was very low, but the kicker is that it’s SILENT.   The vantage point is from the north, looking at the limo from the right side as it passed by on Elm Street.  There’s a brief obscuration of the highway sign.  The second shot is not obvious, except that Connally is twisting back and Kennedy and Jackie are confused and upset.  The third shot – the one through Kennedy’s head that blows his brains out – is obvious.

Gimme Three Shots & Single Bullet & Magic Bullet.   Oswald fired three times.  The first shot, as the limo turned left onto Elm right below the Book Depository, missed; the bullet was never found.  The second shot went through Kennedy’s back and then into Connally, who survived.  The third shot went through Kennedy’s head and blew his brains out, all over Jackie’s dress. 

“Single bullet” is the premise – correct, as it is, but disputed – that the same bullet which injured Connally first went through Kennedy, i.e. it wasn’t two separate bullets and thus a separate gunman from Oswald.  “Magic bullet” refers to the conspiracy theory laugh that somehow, for that bullet to leave Kennedy and hit Connally, it had to make a 90 degree right turn, then a 90 degree left turn.  The limo had three rows of seats.  The driver was in the front row, Connally was in the middle row, and the Kennedy and his wife were in the back row, with Kennedy himself to the far right back corner.  However, Connally was not directly in front of Kennedy, but actually further to the middle and below.  Further line of sight analysis of the Book Depository and the relative positions of Kennedy and Connally show that the bullet’s trajectory, far from an implausible zigzag, was actually straight.  Moreover, the entrance wound to Connally is oval/elliptical, but the range from the Book Depository was too close for the 2000 fps rifle round to yaw or tumble on its own.  At that range, a direct hit to Connally would have been a neat, circular entrance wound.  Thus the bullet which hit Connally did go through Kennedy first, thus the “single bullet”, which did not have to be “magic”. 

Motives for Conspiracy.  Assuming Oswald did not act alone, and was part of a larger conspiracy, who else was behind the assassionation?

Mob.  The “October Surprise” theory says that George H.W. Bush, in October 1980, swiftly went from the Imperial War Museum in London to a secret meeting in Paris to meet with Iranians to persuade them not to release the US hostages seized from the embassy in Teheran until after the November 1980 election, in order make Jimmy Carter look bad and improve Ronald Reagan’s chances.  The sole support for this theory is a Mossad (Israeli intelligence) agent who also echoed Mossad’s belief that the US Mob was behind Kennedy’s assassination.  The motive?  Supposedly the Mob helped Kennedy get elected in 1960 (those “dead votes” in Chicago) but were upset when JFK put his brother RFK as Attorney General, who then set out to aggressively prosecute the Mob.  This upset the Mob as an act of betrayal.

The catch is that the Mob generally did NOT target politicians, least of all popular, elected officials, much less the US President.  Generally the mob focuses its violence on competing mobsters and potential adverse witnesses.  Some allege that Jack Ruby had mob ties, but his ties to the Dallas PD were far more substantial.  Moreover, Lee Harvey Oswald had zero ties to the Mob.  Really, the Mob theory is a non-starter. 

Soviets.  The CIA had been monitoring East Bloc communications at the time, and from what they overheard, the Russians and their comrades were as shocked as anyone else by the assassination.  Although LHO had spent time in Minsk, the Russians really had no use for him, which is why he returned to the US with his Russian wife.  The Soviets had narrowly missed a nuclear war with the US over the Cuban Missile Crisis, so they would be equally averse to providing the US with a legitimate ground for war, which is what assassinating our President would have been.  So there was no motive on their part.

CIA/Military.  An old friend of mine who worked for the CIA felt blaming the agency was strange, as Kennedy was very popular with the CIA.  Perhaps the agency was a bit upset about Kennedy pulling the plug on the Bay of Pigs operation, but that came nowhere close to the hostility necessary to take out the President.  Moreover, LHO had no connection with the CIA. 

The military angle, as suggested by “JFK”, is that the top brass wanted a war in Vietnam, whereas JFK was about to remove the US advisors in there, and would certainly not be sending in troops.  Yet as Bugliosi notes, there was no guarantee that Lyndon Johnson, who would take over as President after JFK was killed, would be any more inclined or cooperative in sending troops to Vietnam.  As it was, he did, but then he refused to run for re-election in 1968.  For that matter, Nixon would have had a huge target on his back, as not only did he oversee the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam, but he also cozied up to Mao.  If the military was willing to have Kennedy – a very popular president – assassinated, surely it would not hesitate to do the same with Nixon. 

Oswald had been in the US Marines, but had no connections with the military at the time of the assassination.  Obviously he burned his bridges when he defected to the Soviet Union. 

Oswald as Patsy.  One reason for suspicions of a conspiracy is that Oswald himself was very eccentric, unpredictable, and not particularly bright.  In the two days between his arrest on Friday and death on Sunday, he was interrogated several times, and each person who talked to him was frustrated by his obtuseness.  He talked about “not saying anything without an attorney” but refused to accept any legal representation.  Neither the Marines nor the Russians had any use for him.  So how could this guy, all by himself, take out the President?

Oddly, the prior assassins were mostly lone wolves.  Charles Guiteau (Garfield, 1880), acted alone, as did Leon Czolgoz (McKinley, 1901).   Oswald simply needed to perch himself on the sixth floor, take three shots down at the limousine, and then leave.  He was picked up in a movie theater after walking from the Depository and killing a Dallas police officer.

The primary conspiracy concept is that there was another gunman at the grassy knoll ahead of the limousine who actually fired the shots which killed Kennedy.  Of course, Bugliosi managed to determine that both bullet wounds to Kennedy – his neck and his head – came from behind, i.e. from the book depository.  He devotes an entire chapter to determining that the majority of the pathologists concluded that both wounds came from behind, and what minor discrepancies may have existed – and were blown out of proportion by conspiracy theorists – can be reconciled and explained fairly simply.  When the dust clears, so to speak, we’re left with conclusive evidence that both shots came from behind.    

Assuming there was another gunman at the grassy knoll, what was Oswald’s role?  To be a patsy, a decoy in the Book Depository to hide the existence of the second gunman at the grassy knoll.  Well then, WHY would Oswald agree to put himself in the position of being the scapegoat for the assassination?  Leaving aside Ruby’s intervention, assuming he wasn’t killed leaving the Depository, or being arrested after leaving, he’d still be on the hook for the death penalty after a criminal trial.  Why would he agree to do so?  Moreover, as Bugliosi points out, if it’s implausible to believe the man was capable of killing the President by himself, it’s equally implausible that whoever did plan the assassination would rely upon him to be the patsy – to go to the Book Depository at that date and time and carry out the fake assassination as requested.  And then to be left to leave the Depository by himself and picked up all by himself at the movie theater. 

And as a UNWILLING patsy, acting completely independently of the second gunman?  Completely unbelievable.  If Oswald would be an unreliable willing participant in this whole thing, why would anyone set up an entire operation hoping that Oswald would carry out his own attempt without any coordination or agreement?  That’s just too bizarre. 

No Leaks, Garrison, and Stone.   A conspiracy of this magnitude would have resulted in some leaks at some point, but nothing happened.  If the answer is, “all potential leakers were ‘taken care of’,”, that begs the question of why Jim Garrison wasn’t “taken care of”, or Oliver Stone.  The bigger picture is that whether we want to believe or accept it or not, Oswald acted alone.