It looks like you're using an Ad Blocker.
Please white-list or disable AboveTopSecret.com in your ad-blocking tool.
Thank you.
Some features of ATS will be disabled while you continue to use an ad-blocker.
John F. Kennedy: The Case Reviewed
The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.
~John F. Kennedy- The Newspaper
The "Facts"
Examining Oswalds Guilt
“First, there was a number of witnesses that saw the person with the gun on the sixth floor of the bookstore building, in the window—detailing the window—where he was looking out.”
.edu
“I can’t identify him, but if I see a man who looks like him, I’ll point him out.”
.edu
The presence of a palm print indicates that he wore no gloves and took no precautions to prevent a trail of fingerprints and palm prints. Nevertheless, no prints of the defendant were found on the floors, walls, window ledge, window frame or window. Only a movable cardboard carton, subsequently present at the police station while the defendant was also there, is now alleged to have his print.
August 19, 2009
SC finds limited value in paraffin tests as evidence
As part of the experiment, he said, 17 men were made to fire five shots of a .38 cal. revolver using one hand only. After each string, both hands were subjected to paraffin testing.
Eight of the test subjects showed negative or essentially negative results on both hands. This means that, at least for the experiment, paraffin tests did not work half the time.
Three men showed positive results on the idle hand, but were negative on the firing hand. Four men tested positive on both hands, after having fired only with their right hand. Even if they do work, paraffin tests can sometimes give the wrong results. In the Philippines, paraffin testing has faced much scrutiny as well.
The conclusiveness or inconclusiveness of its results was discussed in the Supreme Court’s Oct. 6, 1995 decision convicting Claudio Teehankee Jr. for the 1991 murder of Maureen Hultman, the killing of Roland John Chapman and the frustrated murder of Jussi Olavi Leino.
During trial at the lower court, and during his appeal at the Court of Appeals, Teehankee capitalized on how he tested negative in the paraffin tests administered when he was taken into custody.
“Scientific experts concur in the view that the paraffin test has “proved extremely unreliable in use. The only thing that it can definitely establish is the presence or absence of nitrates or nitrites on the hand. It cannot be established from this test alone that the source of the nitrates or nitrites was the discharge of a firearm,” the High Court ruled.
.edu
The next day it was reported that FBI files showed that Oswald purchased an Italian carbine through the mail. It was sent to a post-office box maintained by Oswald in his own name and also A. Hidell (Clearly no serious effort to escape detection as the purchaser of the rifle was made by Oswald, if he did purchase it.)
Armed with the knowledge that Oswald could be connected with an Italian carbine (it then not being known that the Italian rifle in question might not be able to fire three times in five seconds), Wade made a new announcement. The murder weapon was not a German Mauser, it was an Italian carbine. This prosecution reversal established a high point in vulnerability for the trial—the trial that was never to take place.
.edu
Unexplained by Wade is why the officer was going to arrest Oswald, who was sipping a soft drink in the lunchroom along with others. If the officer had reason to single out Oswald for arrest for the assassination at that time, it seems unlikely that the mere statement that Oswald was an employe might result in immunity from arrest.
Wade does explain, however, how the almost immediate description of Oswald was radioed to the police and to the citizens of Dallas. The explanation: “Every other employe was located but this defendant of the company.” The New York Times (Nov. 23) reported: “About 90 persons were employed in the Texas School Book Depository and most of them were out watching the President’s motorcade when the shots were fired.” Police Chief Curry, who was riding in a car just 40 feet ahead of the limousine carrying the President, said he could tell from the sound of the three shots that they had come from the book company’s building. Moments after the shots were fired, Curry said, he radioed instructions that the building be surrounded and searched (New York Times, Nov. 24). The deployment of 500 officers from his 1,100-man force made fast action possible in the manhunt, he said.
The scene painted for us by Wade and Curry finds officers immediately rushing to the building to seal it off and search it. This is the building from which the fatal shots allegedly were fired. In these circumstances, is it likely that Oswald was permitted to leave the premises after the police had arrived? Is it likely that Oswald, after killing the President, and deciding to leave the premises, decided first to stop off for a soda, and had then—only after the building was surrounded, sealed off, and the search begun—made an effort to leave? Is it likely that each of the almost 90 employes, most of whom were outside of the building, engulfed in the panic and confusion attendant upon the assassination, could easily and quickly return to his place of employment through the police line, while still on his lunch hour, so that “every other employe was located but this defendant…” and the description of the one missing employe radioed at once?
.edu
WADE SAID, “He walked up to the car. Officer Tippit stepped out of the car and started around it. He shot him three times and killed him.”
This allegation isn’t directly related to the murder of the President but it raised interesting points. The Dallas authorities first said Tippit was shot in a movie theater. Later, it was reported that he was shot on one street and, still later, on another street. The first charge against Oswald was not for the murder of the President but for the murder of Tippit. That charge was made while the investigation of the Kennedy shooting was still going on., Wade announced that the Tippit case was absolutely set and that all the evidence proved Oswald shot the officer. In view of the certainty of the prosecutor as to a case that had been entirely locked up two days before, the following dialogue (at the press conference) is rather curious.
Reporter: Was this (where Oswald shot Tippit) in front of the boarding house?
Wade: No, it’s not in front of the boarding house.
Reporter: Where was it?
Wade: I don't have it exact.
.edu
A document written by the defendant showing his intention to commit a crime is important evidence. It seems incredible, were such a map in the hands of the Dallas authorities on the previous day when Wade presented the evidence, “piece by piece,” that he would have neglected to mention it.
Oswald was arrested three days prior to the map announcement. On the day of his arrest police removed all of his belongings from his room, telling the landlady that Oswald “would not return.” One wonders where the map came from three days later. The same newspapers that hailed the discovery of the map Nov. 25, without a single question as to its legitimacy, origin. or previous whereabouts, totally ignored or buried the last comment regarding this important document. “Dallas officials yesterday denied that such a map exists.” (Washington Post, Nov. 27.)
The Crime Scene
Sewer Shot?
I have heard about the possibility of a shot from the storm drain for many years and even met the daughter of a woman who said she and friends witnessed someone firing from the drain opening. But the mother refused to be interviewed and I have been unable to substantiate this story. I have always hesitated to discuss the storm drain because many years ago one of the earliest and best researchers, Penn Jones Jr., editor of the Midlothian Mirror, was ridiculed incessantly. Debunkers said he was claiming that Kennedy was shot "from a sewer." I have myself stood down in the storm drain which is located a mere six feet from the point of Kennedy’s fatal head shot. I could comfortably stand in this drain (I’m not too tall being 5’7”) and it would have been an easy pistol shot to a person sitting upright in an open convertible. Some witnesses said that one of the shots sounded hollow, had a ringing sound to it. And it could have been possible to leave the storm drain via a large drain pipe which connected to an opening behind the wooden picket fence on the notorious Grassy Knoll. But did a shot come from this drain? At the moment, there is not enough evidence to state yes, but it remains an interesting premise.
An interesting sidebar to this speculation is the fact that in the 1980s a section running vertically down the Grassy knoll collapsed. The Dallas Street Dept. found that someone had dug up a section of this drain pipe and cut away a piece about 2 feet X 4 feet and replaced the cut section. But instead of welding the section back, whoever did this simply replaced the section on the pipe and over time it gave way causing a collapse at that point. There was some speculation that perhaps an assassin had stashed his weapon in the drain pipe and was retrieved surreptitiously at a later date. This drain was connected to the storm drain at the foot of the Grassy Knoll.
JFK Jr. had announced to close friends he was planning to enter politics and run for the Senate from New York but he had not made this public. This, of course, would have placed him head to head against Hillary Clinton, who just announced she was going to run for the New York Senate seat. Since, Hillary was the first American First Lady to attend the secretive Bilderberg meetings, she obvious was the choice of the New World Order gang. Against this backdrop we learn that JFK Jr, by all accounts an excellent pilot who had always flown with an instructor in previous flights, sudden flew alone that night, got lost and dove into the sea. However, an early Coast Guard press release stated the FAA had last heard from him when he was 13 miles out on approach to the airport. This means he was not lost and was descending for a landing. Moments later, his plane dropped off the radar screen and was not recovered for two days despite the fact that the type of aircraft he was flying had an emergency transponder. Something caused his plane to lose altitude very rapidly. And according to the National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation report, the fuel switch on his plane was in the “off” position. Was he assassinated? The evidence to me indicates… most assuredly. How remains a mystery.
Jim Marrs
The Suspects
Mafia
In its final report of 1979, the House Assassinations Committee theorized that the assassination might have been masterminded by New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello. This view was endorsed by the committee's Chief Counsel, G. Robert Blakey, and Richard Billings in their 1981 book, The Plot to Kill the President, which suggests that two Mafia hitmen were involved-Oswald, firing from the book depository and another, still unknown, firing from the grassy knoll.
Marcello certainly had sufficient motive. Despite the Mafia's crucial help getting JFK elected in 1960, Marcello was apprehended and deported only a few months after JFK took office. Upon reentering the US and successfully contesting his deportation, Marcello threatened JFK's life and spoke of getting "a nut" to kill him.
The journalist, Dorothy Kilgallen, believed that the assassination of Kennedy had involved Jack Ruby and the Mafia. She also suggested that J. D. Tippet and Bernard Weismann were involved in the conspiracy.
Mafia
Another theory, popular among right-wingers and anti-Castroites (among them, US ambassador to Mexico Thomas Mann, columnist Jack Anderson and Mafia lieutenant John Roselli) accuses Fidel Castro of engineering the assassination. In this scenario, Castro either recruited Oswald as the assassin or turned around a hit squad that had been sent to kill him, sending them back to shoot JFK.
Theories
David Atlee Phillips, head of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division, told Kevin Walsh, a former investigator with the House Select Committee on Assassinations: that Kennedy had been "done in by a conspiracy, likely including rogue American intelligence people."
Gaeton Fonzi was a staff investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. In his book, The Last Investigation, Fonzi takes the view that the assassination was organized by David Atlee Phillips, head of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division.
In his book, Plausible Denial (1991), Mark Lane argues that CIA agents killed Kennedy. He claims that the conspiracy involved E.Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis.
Executive Action, was a CIA secret plan to remove unfriendly foreign leaders from power. In his book The Secret Team (1973) Leroy Fletcher Prouty claimed that elements of the CIA were worked on behalf of the interests of a "high cabal" of industrialists and bankers. He also claimed that the Executive Action unit could have been used to kill Kennedy. Prouty named CIA operative, Edward Lansdale, as the leader of the operation.
SS
In his book, Best Evidence, David Lifton claims that members of the Secret Service agents were involved in the killing of Kennedy. This included providing the assassins with a good opportunity to kill Kennedy. Lifton was highly critical of the behaviour of William Greer, Roy Kellerman and Winston G. Lawson during the assassination. Lifton believes that after the assassination of Kennedy they hijacked the body in order to alter the corpse. In the book, Mortal Error, Bonar Menninger, claims that SS agent George Hickey killed Kennedy by accident.
SS
J. Edgar Hoover was concerned that Kennedy would force him into retirement when he reached the age of 70. Mark North (Act of Treason) and George O'Toole (The Assassination Tapes) both believe that Hoover either knew of plans to kill Kennedy and did nothing to stop them, or he helped to organize the assassination. In his book, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (1993) Peter Dale Scott provides information that Hoover and the Federal Bureau of Investigation helped to cover-up the real identity of the people who assassinated John F. Kennedy.
Madeleine Brown claims that she was Johnson's mistress. In her autobiography, Texas in the Morning (1997) Brown claims that the conspiracy to kill Kennedy involved Lyndon B. Johnson and several Texas oil men including Clint Murchison, Haroldson L. Hunt and J. Edgar Hoover. Joachim Joesten, an investigative journalist, believes that Johnson's secretary, Bobby Baker was involved in this plot. This theory was supported by Craig Zirbel in his book The Texas Connection: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1991).
Bush CIA
If nothing else, these pages will show the reader the following:
- Although he does not recall when asked, George (Herbert Walker) Bush was in Dallas the day JFK was assassinated.
- Bush lies about the fact that he was a high-ranking CIA official at the time of JFK's death.
- Bush allowed the escape of a convicted terrorist from prison to go to work for him as an undercover CIA asset in Iran-Contra.
- Bush has released another convicted terrorist.
- Both these terrorists were present on Dealey Plaza on 11/22/1963.
- Both these terrorists were convicted for killing 73 people by blowing up an airliner.
- Bush is personal friends with a close associate of these convicted terrorists, who was also a participant in Iran Contra.
- Bush has taken a leading role as CIA official in structuring/organizing these terrorists in effective organizations.
My Theory/Closing Statements
JFK
Thirteen days before Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, a man named Joseph Milteer was tape recorded telling Miami police informant William Somersett that the murder of Kennedy was "in the working," that the best means of killing Kennedy was "from an office building with a high-powered rifle," and that "they will pick up somebody within hours afterwards, if anything like that would happen just to throw the public off."
Foreknowledge of the assassination, or just a lucky guess coupled with an uncanny understanding of how such things work?
Miami Police notified the Secret Service, and there are indications that an unannounced motorcade in Miami scheduled for later that month was cancelled. After the Kennedy assassination, informant Somersett spoke to Milteer on the phone. Police and FBI interviews with Somersett revealed that Milteer was jubilant, and said that "everything ran true to form. I guess you thought I was kidding when I said he would be killed from a window with a high-powered rifle."
JFk
On November 21, 1963, a government informant named Thomas Mosley was negotiating the sale of machine guns to a Cuban exile named Echevarria. In the course of the transaction, Echevarria said that "we now have plenty of money - our new backers are Jews" and would close the arms deal "as soon as we [or they] take care of Kennedy." The next day, Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
Back and to the left
If Kennedy was shot in the head from behind, why did the Parkland Hospital doctors all describe a large gaping wound in the rear of his head? They were mistaken, according to the Warren Commission, which relied on an autopsy report description of a "largely irregular defect" and a drawing which showed the large wound to be on the right side of the head. The autopsy report also firmly placed a small entrance wound low in the back of the head, just above and to the right of the external occipital protuberance.
The two differing descriptions turned into three when in 1968 an independent panel of experts reviewed the autopsy photos and X-rays, and declared that the entrance wound had been mis-measured at autopsy by about 4 inches! According to the Clark Panel, the entry was up in the cowlick.