JFK: Who Wanted to Kill Him and How
1)Second Shooter(6 shots)
2)Cia killed him for not backing Bay of Pigs invasion
3)Killed by Mafia for cracking down on crime
4)Lyndon B. Johnson had him killed for Presidency
5)Cuban conspiracy - J.F.K. attempted to kill Castro early on so they were angered.
or, boring as it seems...
Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
We are coming up on the the 45th Anniversary of the Assassination of President John Kennedy. It has been estimated that over 2,000 books have been written on the subject, as well as many documentaries. That the events surrounding the murder of the 35th President remains contentious is an understatement.
I began to get interested in the JFK controversy about 30 years ago. In 1978, I was living in the San Francisco Bay Area and there were a terrible twin events of the assassination of the liberal mayor of San Francisco, George Moscone and the first openly gay city supervisor in the city's history , Harvey Milk. (A film about Supervisor Milk is due out this month starring Sean Penn.) One couldn't help but recall memories of Oswald and the American pattern of a gunman--part of a conspiracy or not--whose murderous designs thwart the better efforts of people who simply want to live in peace.
On top of this horror, in the very same month, came the word from the South American republic of Guyana that over 900 Bay Area ex-pats had been murdered or committed suicide in a remote jungle camp run by the Reverend Jim Jones, a messianic nut who in his early career promised to help marginalized people in the same city that had produced Moscone and Milk. In the end, Jones power made him mad. He lured followers down there to create a type of communal paradise. (Not telling them that he wanted to sexually abuse people and lead them in some type of quixotic trek to the Soviet Union.
These two events seared into me the notion of the power both of one man to change history with a gun and the dangers of following a charismatic figure. Both these events had echoes in the murder of JFK. Dan White--the city supervisor who murdered Moscone and Milk--seemed to have parallels to Oswald, a man who sought some type of historical immortality in his deadly actions. The difference between Jim Jones and John Kennedy were more removed from one another, but in both cases they were iconic figures. Jones' stature made him mad and his few good works before his madness died with him; Kennedy was both more powerful and more modest and his positive image has only grown, although his non-lethal peccadilloes and Cold War operations against Cuba and Vietnam put tarnish to that stature. But Kennedy's virtues in my mind outweighed his faults and I believe America and the world lost a great deal on that tragic Thursday in Dallas.
Having read and ruminated a lot on the assassination of JFK, I can honestly say I feel that the deeper one looks into the matter, the more doubt I have about Oswald, his killer Jack Ruby and the strange web of seeming coincidences and potential links to the Mafia, the FBI and CIA "rogue elements", anti-Castro groups, pro-Castro agents, John Birchers and other right-wing cells, et al, that all have been pit up as possible players in this tragedy. In this case, the more I know the more skeptical and doubtful I've become of ever knowing the truth of Dallas and Dealey Plaza. I am left with the feeling that the only known thing is that a cruel destiny for my country was made more cruel by at least two bullets fired from a cheap Italian rifle into the body of a man who could have made the world not a perfect place but a better one.
For more on the assassination:
http://www.jfk.org/
We Americans have a hard time believing your last statement - that, in spite of everything, a loser with a $15 mail-order rifle managed to get close enough to kill the one man who could have made America a far different - and better - place to live today.
ReplyDeleteBecause we have a hard time with this, we have to invent history.
I am typically not a conspiricist, but I thought Oliver Stone's JFK, while not answering any of the big questions, put the Oswald story to bed.
ReplyDeleteThe 6th Floor Museum is one of the few things worth seeing in the city of Dallas (proper). We have been a few times.
We also try to tell our youngest that his birthday coincides with Thanksgiving...not the anniversary of this horrible day. I am sure he will figure it out soon enough.
I think CIA Section Chief E.Howard Hunt's recently released confessional video kinda seals the deal that there was indeed a conspiracy. Everything he said before he died corroborates the book Crossfire by Jim Marrs which was used by Oliver Stone for his movie. The fact the MSM did not pick up on the Hunt story is very revealing.
ReplyDeleteI have mixed feelings about the day Kennedy was assassinated, I remember having been out with my mom and dad returning in the evening and turning on the TV to confusion, it was a while before my dad said I think President Kennedy has been assassinated' ....I didn't know what that meant and my dad explained it to me.
ReplyDeleteThe following Monday my school had a memorial service and I remember the emotion of singing The Battle Hymn of the Republic after the eulogies were over. This was Birmingham England 22 November 1963.
This also was just a year after the Cuba Crisis had me convinced every plane flying over my house was IT.. the Russian bomber that would evaporate everything. Living as we did then on the flight path into Birmingham Airport this gave rise to a period of night terrors I was just getting over when Kennedy was shot.
Having finally stopped running home every-time I heard a plane because I wanted to be with my family when we all die, I wanted to love Kennedy when it finally came to him, but I couldn't get over my fascination with Kruschev at that time and so my view has always been compromised.
The simple fact is that America traumatised my childhood and I am awaiting a class action against the Obama regime for compensation for driving me into the arms of communism as the only way to get even.
I have since heard the theory that Kennedy had threatened the happy lifestyle of the Federal Reserve and that was the reason for his subsequent removal?
You are probably right Doug that the truth may never fully emerge, assuming that there is only one 'truth' about this event.
What it did to me as an individual was to make me view America as an extremely unstable and anarchic place. This was not all negative by any means, the anarchy of America was also exciting and beguiling, the Beat Generation, the Blues, Elvis, sea monkeys and vouchers for Palisades Park I'd never be able to use.
Anyway as a complete aside 22 November has been a politically significant date since Kennedy's assassination, it was also the date in 1990 that Margaret Thatcher the UKs first female PM was finally driven out of office and in 2005 it was the date that Angela Merkel was sworn in as the first woman to be the Chancellor of Germany. Karma?
I guess if you really want to do a thing and nobody is really expecting it - which they can't have been else Kennedy would not have been in such an open vehicle - then it is more than possible to achieve your aims. Buying tickets on a few aeroplanes and then hijacking them and flying them into buildings is another example of something audaciously unexpected which may have worked just for that reason. So I don't know about "conspiracies" and I don't want to comment on whether those sorts of plots existed or not, but I do want to point out that in the end people cannot always cover all the bases, there is always the chance that the unexpected will slip through.
ReplyDeleteUnexpected by who?
ReplyDeleteMayan calendars routinely show auspicious dates as to demarcated events in this last century as occurring 28 years apart from each other. Pick one, and go back and forth! from one date in a month, to several dates in an identical month, they follow ...You will be amazed. It is all relative, as to this kind of time frame! Many events intertwine in time as companions to others, in other millennial frames as well, between civilizations. whether Indo-european, African. Asian, wherever. all the way to now, as well as in the other dimensions. We are in the 3rd, time is the 4th, and all higher are 5th, 6th and 7th, etc.
ReplyDeleteI was in Dallas, Tx, in late August /early September 1975, returning from Mexico, a 3 month stay there. Saw Dealey Plaza, the Memorial.
ReplyDeleteAm sorry but I was not impressed. I suppose felt something sinister, but I thought it was all a 'sham.' Even back then. Still do. nothing had changed my mind, but strengthened my beliefs in this NWO conspiracy of silence.
Fairly obvious I would have thought. For people not into conspiracy theories it all remains unexpected... until it happens. For myself I have yet to decide...
ReplyDeleteWell, the U.S. Government is certainly into "conspiracy theories" as they provided the first one which still stands amongst the most absurd, and there is plenty of evidence to support the claim that they were hardly unexpecting. A fairly obvious reality for those who have looked at the information.
ReplyDeleteThat pretty much sums it up I'm afraid. If ever there was a "tipping point" in modern American history, that was it.
ReplyDeleteI went there in 1991 while I was at a training seminar in North Dallas. It was really a worthwhile series of exhibits to go through. I thought they did a fair job presenting the case. (Oddly enough, the place where I bought my ticket looked was a booth which looked like it had bullet-proof glass around it. The irony of that has stayed with me.)
ReplyDeleteOliver Stone happened to be getting ready to shoot "JFK" at that time and they were repainting the book depository. The film "JFK" is well-made, but , like you said Marianne, it answers none of the major questions. I thought Stone was barking up the wrong tree by lionizing New Orleans DA Jim Garrison. If ever there was a prosecutor grasping at straws...
The one thing I remember most vividly is standing at the simulated "sniper's nest" near the cartons of boxes that recreated the place where the shots were fired. The view from the window down to Elm Street below looked so close--too close.
Ah,yes, dear old E. Howard Hunt, one of the Nixon Watergate "boys". I'll have to take a look at that. Thanks for the info.
ReplyDeleteWe have to remember some of the supposed hijackers were alive after the hijackings, (at least 5-9 of them were, as reported by Interpol,) and the bogus planting of the passport, perfectly preserved without a scorch mark at the WTC site, while they were cleaning up ranks with the 'Shroud of Turin' here, as to the sheer incredulity of it all. The plot seemingly keeps thickening, yet nothing is visibly added, or taken away, so it seems, versus the "official lie" of the WTC, and this Kennedy murder, as well.
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing those memories, AA. I got a bit choked up admittedly when you write about that memorial service and English school kids singing such a distinct American song.
ReplyDeleteI think I can understand your mixed feelings over President Kennedy. No one person should have the power to set off a nuclear war, especially since so many of those effected wouldn't have any say in the matter of his/her election. I remember in my second-grade class in 1966 when we were all cowering under our desks during Civil Defense Drills. I imagined Russian planes flying over us one day and dropping their bombs. It struck me as odd a little time later when my dad told me that we and the Soviet Union had been allies during the great war against fascism. Why did it all have to come to such a terrible sense of foreboding only a short time later?
I was too young to absorb the tenseness of the Cuban Missle Crisis as it was happening. I'm sure if I had been old enough my views on power politics would be somewhat different than presently.
That's a good point, Iri Ani.
ReplyDeleteOne book I read by a Kennedy aide said he talked about how an assassin could get a shot off at him if he was really determined. He discussed this many times with his aides--including that morning in Fort Worth, Texas, before he flew to Dallas that very morning!
I would never say conspiracies don't exist at high levels. They have before 1963 and many like Watergate in '72-74, the US support of the overthrow of President Allende in Chile in October 1973, and the Iran-Contra Affair in the Reagan Administration in 1985 are just three examples from one country. I don't think "conspiracy" is always the answer, so I'm still an agnostic overthings like 9/11. Too much time I think has elapsed for us to ever know about what happened to JFK or Martin Luther King for that matter.
I too had feelings of sinister energy at Dealey Plaza. Part of it semed natural given the past circumastances. But it was when I got to the Memorial designed by Philip Johnson that I really felt like some type of negative energy was all about me. I'm not usually so sensative, so this was a rare feeling of dread. I couldn't get out of that area fast enough after my visit to what seemed like a giant cemetary marker.
ReplyDeleteDoug I didn`t know when I mentioned An unfinished Life in your blog about Lincoln that you had such an interest in JFK. After reading the book I had two gut feelings (1) I was full of admiration for the way he coped with his lifelong medical problems and concealed them from the public and (2) I felt that his womanising made him very vulnerable to scandal - indeed I think there was a reference to a woman linked to a foreign embassy which could have caused a great deal of controversy,(How things have changed - poor old Bill Clinton couldn`t even get away with oral sex with one white house intern.) Perhaps JFK died at the apogee of his power and reputation. .
ReplyDeleteYes, I read that as well in a book "The Dark Side of Camelot" by Seymour Hersh. It appears that there was a Profumo-style sex scandal that MIGHT very well have erupted in JFK's facing who knows what kind of scandal. Newspaper editors in America had kept a lid on such matters, but of course that could have changed just a few years later. There is much to admire in JFK's health management and judgement on domestic matters and during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but he also took great personal risks. And, yes, even Clinton, who should have known the rules had changed, had some of those traits as well.
ReplyDelete