JFK ASSASSINATION: THE CASE FOR CONSPIRACY IS STILL ALIVE!

JFK ASSASSINATION: THE CASE FOR CONSPIRACY IS STILL ALIVE! By John G. Kays

I still remember that hot Dallas day in August of 1965 when my family drove north on the Stemmons Freeway past the Texas School Book Depository Building. I was startled by its dark red, earthen tone. My family had only seen it on a black and white television in Houston, Texas during those dark days. “There it is, Dad,” I exclaimed with some trepidation in my voice. At that moment I felt equal measures of thrill and repulsion as I glared in awe at the ruddy colored building.

My enthusiasm for President Kennedy, his optimism, courage, and charisma all propelled me forward, and filled me with his hope, when I was very young. Yet the explanation for his death, by way of the Warren Report, left many unanswered questions. How could a lone assassin have committed such a sophisticated crime such as killing a president? What really happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963? Today marks the forty-fifth anniversary of the Kennedy Assassination, and yet many doubts still linger today.

Throughout these forty-five years the American people have been bombarded with images, books, newspapers, magazines, films, and countless theories about the assassination, that have left them jaded beyond belief. Over the past few years a new cover-up has taken place, modeled after the same old withered, ‘single-bullet theory’ that has been clouding the light of truth from us all of these years. This is a mystery to me as to why this is still happening after so many intelligent, virtuous researchers have definitively countered the assertions of Oswald as ‘The Lone Nut.’ Just a few examples of the new cover-up would be a 2003 Peter Jennings production or the way in which The History Channel has pulled from rotation the superb seven part series The Men Who Killed Kennedy by Nigel Turner.

These specials have to leave out more than they leave in in order to make this ‘lone assassin construction’ seem feasible. For me, it is still simple things that I`m troubled by. It is little things that don`t fit. One example of this is, you will remember, that the Dallas police officer, Marion Baker, saw Oswald in the TSBD lunch room only 90 seconds after the shots stopped. The odd thing is, Marian Baker said that Oswald was calm, and not out of breath. This would mean that Lee Harvey would have to flee from the snipers perch, run through the myriad of stacked boxes to the other side of the building, hide the rifle, race down four flights of stairs, and then calmly enter the second floor coffee room, all in just a minute and a half! An impossible feat!

A litany of brave researchers have saved us from the permanent peril of obscurity in this important case. Therefore, I must sing praises here for the likes of Penn Jones, Jr., Gary Mack, Robert Groden, Harold Weisberg, Mark Lane, Josiah Thompson, and most of all, Gary Shaw. Gary Shaw`s book Cover-up was my bible in the late 1970s. These brave individuals kept the spirit alive for dissent against the dark forces who didn`t want us to know who or why JFK was killed. Now days the internet protects us from these facts and clues from being lost to time. Moreover, information has been preserved by museums, libraries, and specialized archives. I have actually done a good job myself in preserving valuable records that shed light on this case. Last night I viewed a VHS tape, Fake, that has been buried in an archive box for more than ten years; I know of nowhere you can currently find this rare artifact.

And yet the truth about this case lies burrowed, aye, perched in a ‘snipers nest’ of data; the false facts must be carefully culled away from the uncut gems of truth that are hidden from view. The rubble of debris, the corpus of ephemera, that is the artist palette for conspiratoricians must contain the best evidence, the reasons for this deed, how they actually pulled it off, and the manner of its blasphemous cover-up. The reality of what happened forty-five years ago today in Dallas is just as clear as spring mountain water, if we could drink from its fount, but we can`t taste of its sweet water today. Storm clouds shroud our view and a newly forged cover-up persists.

*(This is a scan of drawing that I got when I went to see President Kennedy at Rice Stadium in Houston, Texas in 1962. I was nine years old at the time. Forgive me, but the scan is incomplete.)

This is a very interesting photo gallery of people and events associated with the JFK Assassination.

ANATOMY OF A CONSPIRATORICIAN

I realized yesterday that it has been twenty years now since we did the coffee-table book, Conspiracy-A-Go-Go, a guide to sites associated with the JFK tangle. My feelings for study of the JFK assassination have been dormant for many years. Yet when viewing RFK Must Die, about Robert Kennedy`s shooting, much of my enthusiasm came back from the dead. This was in November of 1988 that all of this action went down. But yesterday I tried to remember when this unusual hobby of evidence digging really got started; what were its origins?

In the early to mid 1970s I tinkered a little by reading the Warren Report; more than anything else I was having trouble making the facts fit together into a cogent puzzle. I am a trained historian and was aware of methodologies to research a subject and at least attempt objectivity. Not that much was laying around that you could read to counter the wooden story that was given by the Warren Report. And then again, I was from Dallas (but living in Austin at the time) and many rumors and stories were circulating back then; most people with any saby did not accept the fabrications spun-out by the government.

Actually it was just a handful of independent researchers who began to crack the lid of lies, the cookie-jar cover story that shielded the American people from the stark truth. I would sit in the public library for hours on end reading the trifle of material I could get my hands on. One of the first things I ever looked at was Cover-up by Gary Shaw. I can not recall when I first saw it (around 1978). I marveled over all the knew information contained within, such as the tramps or hobos at the Depository or the fake Oswald photos taken at the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City. I knew that Gary Shaw was onto something significant.

In the late 1970s I began to obtain more reading materials that gave me more data. When the House Report came out suddenly I realized that the conspiracy was real, four shots had been fired at Dealey Plaza. Oddly, over the past ten years, say, more books and specials have reasserted the veracity of the single bullet theory, the model for Lee Oswald doing it alone. From say, 1979-1999 conspiracy was the going trend regarding the assassination. I am confounded by this change in public opinion. I believe it is contingent on these oppressive times. However, I will state a few simple bits of info that still lead me to believe that JFK was killed as a result of a conspiracy.

One thing that still eats away at me is pointed out by Josiah Thompson in Oswald`s Ghost, the best film I`ve seen in recent memory about these issues. That is, what was a lefty doing shooting a liberal president in right-wing Dallas? This does not make sense. Did Lee work for the CIA, just as his mother Margarita always purported? The evidence that Lee did is convincing to me.

For me, It is still simple things that trouble me. It is little things that don`t fit. Remember, witnesses saw two men stacking boxes in the sixth floor window about thirty minutes before the shooting. How could Oswald have gotten to the lunch room in just two minutes? No one has ever duplicated this feat. Did Roger Craig see Lee run down the Knoll and get in a car about twenty minutes after the shooting? Why did so many witnesses die after 1963, many of them under suspicious circumstances (see Penn Jones Jr.)? How does the missed shot that hit the curb fit into the construct? Why were there two caskets for JFK? What about the puff of smoke coming from the Knoll, and seen by S.M. Holland and others? Weren`t the autopsy photos faked?

There are hundreds and hundreds of anomalies to this case, that simply don`t support the position that only Oswald did it alone. I`m sorry to see this new wave of conservative constructionists on the JFK Assassination. We have an obligation to look back on the courageous original researchers who uncovered this heinous plot. A few of them are Robert Groden, Gary Mack, Mark Lane, Gary Shaw, Harold Weisburg, and Josiah Thompson. I will continue to be defiant against these latest distortions. Access The Men Who Killed Kennedy again for truth. This has been censored on the History Channel in recent memory. I recorded it in the late 1990s, so I can not be denied its revelations. When people try to put forth the single-bullet theory, they simply have to extract all the info that doesn`t fit. This is a sizeable body of facts. Keep this in mind…