The JFK Assassination is the Mother of all Rabbit Holes

I’ve spent much of my adult life engaged in a variety of research related to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In addition to an extensive library of books on the subject collected over the years, I have personally interviewed a dozen or more witnesses who were present in Dealey Plaza that day, along with other figures like Texas Ranger James Leavelle.

After all these years of reading, studying, researching, auditing university courses and writing about the topic, I’ve realized that the statement by Joe Pesci, playing New Orleans figure David Ferrie in Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” that the assassination is a “mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma” is 100% true.

It is simply not possible for any single person to fully understand and keep in their mind every aspect of the assassination and all events that led up to it and followed it.

To truly understand why it all happened, for example, one must understand the history of the relationships and cooperation between both the Jewish and Italian mobs with both the CIA and FBI going all the way back to the advent of Prohibition, before either agency even formally existed. You must understand how those relationships and cooperation evolved into a coordinated effort to get rid of Fidel Castro and return the mob to the preeminence it had enjoyed in the hotel and gambling business in Havana under the rule of Fulgencio Batista. You have to understand all of that half century of history to grasp how it all had evolved by 1963, and how both John and Robert Kennedy were working against the wishes of the intelligence community and the Pentagon to end that toxic relationship as JFK’s administration progressed.

But there is so much more you must understand to appreciate all that took place in the second half of 1963, too much to fully detail here. The time commitment needed for anyone to understand it all – or even a significant portion of it – is incredibly daunting, which helps explain why so many people prefer to kneejerk to just saying “Oswald did it” and refusing to contemplate it any further. I really can’t blame them.

This is, after all, the Mother of all Rabbit Holes.

Over the years, I’ve been asked hundreds of times to explain who I thought “did it.” In recent years, my response has become some variation of, “do you have a few days?” If I say I think elements of the intel community, the mob and the U.S. military were all involved, and that LBJ and other prominent Americans of the time knew in advance it was going to happen, most people will just snicker and ask, “why do you think that?”

Again, do you have a few days?

But let me give you just a small taste of it all today, the week of the 60^th anniversary of the killing.

To believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone – or acted at all – in the killing of the President as his car barely crept through Dealey Plaza at 12:30 p.m. CT that day, one must suspend all disbelief and accept the proposition that a seemingly endless series odd events, associations and incredibly unlikely coincidences are all perfectly normal things that happened organically.

As the years have gone on, I’ve realized that one of the best ways to make folks unfamiliar with the case understand why the government’s legend about the assassination is so microscopically unlikely to be true is to point out some of those thousands of odd events, associations and unlikely coincidences they must believe to also believe Oswald acted alone, or indeed, that Oswald acted at all.

Here are some of those, just off the top of my head:

·        To believe Oswald was the shooter, you have to believe that a Dallas policeman and Dallas County deputy sheriff both misidentified the rifle found on the 6^th floor of the Dallas School Book Depository Building not as an Italian-made 6.5mm Mannlicher Carcano, but as a 7 mm German Mauser.

·        You have to believe both those men, each an expert marksman and one such a gun nut that he later worked as a gunsmith, could not tell the difference between a Mauser and a Mannlicher Carcano of a different caliber.

·        To believe Oswald was the shooter, you have to also believe it is mere coincidence that even the Dallas Chief of Police Jesse Curry also misidentified the rifle as a German Mauser, even as he held it up for the assembled press to see just hours after the President was killed.

·        You are also required to believe it is mere coincidence the rifle only began to be ID’d as a Mannlicher Carcano after police had searched the home and garage of Ruth and Robert Paine, where Marina Oswald and her baby were living at the time, late in the afternoon.

·        Speaking of the Paines, you also must believe it is mere coincidence that they’ve both since been documented to have served as long-time operatives for the CIA.

·        To believe he was the shooter, you must believe that, in less than 1 minute, Oswald was able to fire the final shot, run the 60-yard length of the Depository building, carefully hide the rifle among stacks of boxes near the stairway, run down 5 flights of stairs without anyone in the building hearing  or seeing him, then run the length of the Depository building again to the 2^nd floor break room, buy a bottle of Dr. Pepper from the vending machine, drink half of it, and be standing there calmly and not out of breath or sweating when he was found in that room doing exactly that by the first Dallas police officer who ran into the building within a minute after the shooting. All of this is simply a matter of documented fact.

·        To believe all that, you must dismiss several black Depository employees and the building receptionist as liars, since they all told investigators they had seen Oswald in that break room in the minutes before and after the shooting. The receptionist even swore to the Warren Commission that Oswald had asked her for change for a dollar so he could buy the Dr. Pepper shortly before the motorcade arrived in Dealey Plaza.

·        To believe Oswald was the lone shooter, much less a shooter at all, you have to believe the Magic Bullet Theory concocted by Warren Commission lawyer Arlen Specter. That bullet – Warren exhibit 399 – allegedly entered JFK’s upper back, somehow exited his throat, hit John Connally in the back, turned left, broke two of Connally’s ribs, entered his wrist where it shattered another bone, then turned right and lodged itself in Connally’s thigh.

·        You must also believe that this Magic Bullet caused all that damage, defying the laws of physics at least 3 times in the process, without losing a measurable amount of its lead or becoming deformed in any way, since it is in near-pristine condition.

·        To believe that theory, you must also believe every one of the doctors and nurses who worked on JFK at Parkland Hospital are liars, since every one of them told the Warren Commission they had observed a tiny entry wound in JFK’s neck, which was enlarged by the doctors to insert a breathing tube during the emergency treatment, another small entry wound in JFK’s right temple, and a large exit wound in the back of the President’s skull. All these wounds are consistent with shots fired from in front of the motorcade, not from behind.

·        To believe Oswald was the lone nut shooter, you have to believe it is only coincidence that Mr. Specter was later awarded with a permanent seat in the U.S. Senate, in which he served through the rest of his life, becoming fabulously wealthy in the process.

·        To believe Oswald was the lone shooter, you have to believe all the witnesses who swore to the Warren Commission that they were question after the shooting by suited men identifying themselves as Secret Service and FBI agents were liars, since it is a documented fact that no Secret Service or FBI personnel were present in Dealey Plaza that day. That latter fact is a stunning derogation of duty by both agencies, but you are required to believe that is mere coincidence, too.

·        You have to believe it is just coincidence that the original plans for the motorcade were for it to travel straight through downtown on Main Street and then drive to a luncheon at the Texas Women’s building in Fair Park where the President was to speak, but those plans were changed at the last minute to hold the luncheon at the Dallas Trade Mart, which required altering the parade route to turn off Main onto Houston Street, then take the hairpin, 120 degree left turn onto Elm Street, which required the motorcade to slow down to less than 10 mph, a violation of all Secret Service procedures for presidential motorcades.

·        You have to believe it is just a coincidence that the Mayor who encouraged that change was Earle Cabelle, who just happened to be the brother of former CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabelle, who was bitter after he and then-CIA Director Allen Dulles were fired by JFK in 1962.

·        You also must believe it just coincidence that Lyndon Johnson appointed the Kennedy-hating Dulles to serve on the Warren Commission, where he ended up playing the lead role.

·        You also have to believe it is just coincidence that the School Book Depository was owned by a modestly successful oil man named D.H. Byrd, whose nickname was “Dry Hole Byrd” because he drilled so many bad wells. Byrd was also the founder of the Civil Air Patrol, in which Lee Harvey Oswald served as a trainee when he lived in New Orleans in the 1950s. Also serving in the same CAP unit as Oswald was the aforementioned David Ferrie. Oswald, Ferrie and Byrd all appear together in a photo of the unit taken 8 years before the assassination. Mere coincidence.

·        To believe Oswald acted alone, you have to believe the autopsy lead doctor hand-picked by the intel community and the Pentagon, James Humes, was lying when he testified the first thing he noticed upon seeing the President’s body at Bethesda Hospital was that there had been “surgery to the head,” and that JFK’s “brain was missing.” His exact words.

·        You have to believe that it is just a coincidence that, despite the fact that many of the most respected forensic pathologists in America had quickly made calls volunteering to perform the most important autopsy in American history to that point in time, it is just coincidence the powers in DC chose instead to have Humes and another Navy doctor do the job, despite the fact that neither one of them had ever performed an autopsy involving bullet wounds. You read that right.

·        You also have to believe it is just a coincidence that Humes, on the morning of November 23^rd, chose to literally burn his hand-written notes from the most important autopsy in American history in his home fireplace. I’m not making that up – he testified to that under oath.

·        To believe the government’s version of events, you have to believe Jack Ruby decided on the spur of the moment to kill Oswald on November 24 in the basement of the Dallas Police Building.

·        To believe that, you have to attach zero meaning to the 50+ phone calls made to and from his home and office involving numbers in the Chicago and New Orleans areas in the previous days, many of which have been traced to known mob figures. That’s mere coincidence. Wrong numbers, I suppose.

·        And to believe that, you have to think it’s also mere coincidence that Ruby began his working life as a runner for the Al Capone mob, and continued it as an enforcer for the mob-affiliated Chicago Junk Handler’s Union before being ordered to move to Dallas to be the Chicago mob’s main man there.

·        You also must believe it is mere coincidence that Ruby received a $50,000 windfall in the days prior to the assassination, and bought a new safe to hold it all that he put in his office at the Carousel Club.

·        To believe the carefully constructed legend about Lee Harvey Oswald, you have to believe it was mere coincidence that he got his job at the Book Depository mere weeks before the assassination, and that the fact that job had been arranged by the aforementioned Ruth Paine and DH Byrd was just an accident of history.

·        To believe there was no conspiracy, you have to believe that Dallas police claimed to have found Oswald’s wallet at the scene of the JD Tippett shooting, but then found another wallet on the person of Oswald himself when he was arrested at the Texas Theater. So many wallets for one guy with no money to his name.

·        To believe the legend, you have to believe it was mere coincidence that, in the weeks leading up to the assassination, Ruby had been introducing his young drifter friend, a guy from California named Larry Craford, as “Lee Oswald” to friends and patrons at the Carousel Club.

·        You also have to believe it is merely a coincidence that multiple witnesses to the Tippett shooting identified not one, but two shooters who fit the description of Ruby and Crafard.

·        You also have to believe it is just coincidence that the “gray jacket” DPD officers claimed to have found near the Tippett scene and claimed it belonged to Oswald (despite the denials of both Lee and Marina Oswald) was actually identified by a researcher to be a light blue jacket that belonged to Crafard.

·        To believe the government-constructed Oswald legend, you also must believe that it is mere coincidence that a wealthy Dallas-based oil geologist named George de Mohrenschildt drove all the way over to Fort Worth of his own volition one day just to befriend Lee and Marina Oswald shortly after they had returned to the U.S. from the Soviet Union.

·        You also must believe it is mere coincidence that de Mohrenschildt later was revealed to be a long-time operative for the CIA.

·        You also must believe it is mere coincidence de Mohrenschildt was so close to George Poppy Bush that he felt comfortable to writing a letter appealing to Bush – then Director of the CIA – to order government agents who had been following and threatening him to back off, an appeal Bush rejected with a very heartfelt letter of his own. You also must believe it mere coincidence that, rather than show up for testimony to the House Assassinations Committee, de Mohrenschildt allegedly committed suicide with a shotgun to the head two days before he was scheduled to appear.

·        To believe the Oswald legend, you must believe it mere coincidence the CIA and FBI both had kept open files on him since 1959.

·        To believe the Oswald legend, you must believe it mere coincidence that, when he was documented to be passing out “Fair Play For Cuba Committee” leaflets in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, the FPCC had an office at 544 Camp Street. That office was on the same floor and next door to an office held by one Guy Bannister, an ex-Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Chicago office who we now know was running a CIA-managed training operation outside New Orleans for Cuban ex-pats in preparation for another invasion of that island to depose Castro. Just a coincidence, surely.

I’m up to 2,500 words now, and I haven’t even touched on all the hundreds more coincidences you must believe on subjects like Oswald’s time in the Marine Corps, his fake trip to Mexico City, his defection to and return from the Soviet Union, Marina’s own background as a likely KGB operative, all the shenanigans surrounding the Zapruder film, the dozens of mysterious deaths after the event, Lyndon Johnson’s likely role in all of this, how Dan Rather bald-faced lied to the American people about what the Zapruder film really showed, how multiple individuals have been documented as claiming to be Oswald at various times and locations in and around Dallas even while Oswald was supposed to have been in New Orleans and Mexico City, the mysterious decisions and failings by the Secret Service agents that day, the odd case of Eugene Hale Brading, and many other sub-topics.

Summary

I’ve never been a believer in mere coincidence. We so often find out later that events we initially believe to be coincidence turn out to have been intentional outcomes caused by advance conscious decision-making by one or more persons. Still, though, real coincidences do happen, even if they are rare.

So, it would be one thing to accept one or even a handful of odd coincidences combining to lead Lee Harvey Oswald to just happen to be in that exact place at that exact time of that exact day with that exact rifle to take those exact 3 shots and plan and execute it all by himself only to be executed in a classic mob-style hit by a known mob figure two day later who also just happened to be in that exact place at that exact time carrying that exact gun and in that exact mood to save the nation from a long Oswald trial.

But it is another thing entirely to naively believe that hundreds of unlikely events and wildly odd coincidences just happened to take place in the exact sequence necessary to believe Oswald acted alone.

Or acted at all.

So, if you want to know who I think really did it, well, give me a few days and about 10,000 more words and I might be able to get around to doing that.

That is all.