Bill Chesher was a car mechanic who had worked on Jack Ruby’s car. Chesher and another mechanic, Robert Roy, said that they had both even seen Oswald in Jack Ruby’s car.309
New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison had “solid evidence” Ruby, Oswald, and David Ferrie not only all knew each other, but—get this—that they were all working with the CIA in its anti-Castro operations:
I have solid evidence indicating that Ruby, Ferrie, Oswald and others involved in this case were all paid by the CIA to perform certain functions: Ruby to smuggle arms for Cuban exile groups, Ferrie to train them and to fly counterrevolutionary secret missions to Cuba, and Oswald to establish himself so convincingly as a Marxist that he would win the trust of American left-wing groups and also have freedom to travel as a spy in Communist countries, particularly Cuba.310
That was what was actually going on, and that was what the government had to cover up! Garrison continued and he didn’t mince his words either:
We have evidence linking Ruby not only to anti-Castro exile activities but, as with almost everyone else involved in this case, to the CIA itself. Never forget that the CIA maintains a great variety of curious alliances it feels serve its purposes. It may be hard to imagine Ruby in a trench coat, but he seems to have been as good an employee of the CIA as he was a pimp for the Dallas cops.311
They were all knee-deep in covert activities and Garrison figured out that it was precisely that relationship that made the U.S. government stonewall his investigation every step of the way:
. . . Ruby was up to his neck with the plotters. Our investigators have broken a code Oswald used and found Ruby’s private unlisted telephone number, as of 1963, written in Oswald’s notebook. The same coded number was found in the address book of another prominent figure in this case.312
As veteran JFK historian James DiEugenio points out, it was blatantly clear that Oswald and Ruby knew each other. The Warren Commission can refuse to talk about that huge elephant standing right there in the room if they choose to, but that doesn’t make the damn thing disappear! Here’s how DiEugenio described that “elephant” when commenting on a so-called “documentary” that failed to include some very basic facts which he detailed in his review of Gary Mack’s film, who was a custodian of the JFK assassination museum now located on the sixth floor of the Book Depository building.
All one needs to know about the latest Gary Mack fiasco is this: Almost none of the above is included in the hour. Nothing about the involvement of Ruby and Oswald in the Cuban conflict through the CIA and the Mafia; virtually none of the plentiful and multi-leveled connections of Ruby to the DPD; and none of the witnesses who indicate Oswald and Ruby knew each other.
This, of course, is ridiculous. For if a program is trying to explore whether or not Ruby shot Oswald to conceal a plot to kill Kennedy, then it is fundamentally dishonest not to tell the viewer about the above. Because clearly those three areas of evidence would suggest the following:
Ruby and Oswald shared connections to the CIA and the Mafia
Ruby and Oswald knew each other through their experience in the Cuban crisis as extended into the USA
Ruby used his police contacts to enter the basement of City Hall and kill Oswald.”313
Why would the Warren Commission hide the fact that they all knew each other if they were truly doing an authentic investigation and wanted to know the truth? Let me answer that for you—they wouldn’t hide it and they didn’t want you to know the truth! It wasn’t about learning the truth; it was about taking the truth and trying to bury it where no one would ever find it.
That was apparently the need for the whole cover-up—they were all involved together: Oswald, Ruby, Ferrie, Banister, Dr. Ochsner, Dr. Sherman—all tied inextricably together in the whole sordid story.314
Read Judyth Baker’s book and Edward T. Haslam’s book, Dr. Mary’s Monkey, because that’s another important one, too. They’re a couple of real eye-openers.
Another thing that has been pointed out to me which I thought was very interesting—and I’ve never heard this brought out publicly before—was that when Ruby shot Oswald, did you notice that all of the detectives were dressed in dark black or blue suits; except for the guy actually escorting Oswald? He’s dressed totally in white, with a big white cowboy hat. Well, that—according to a tip someone gave me—was to set up the shooter. Then, even with the big crowd of people, the shooter knows Oswald’s going to be just to the right of the white cowboy hat. And you know who told me that? Judyth Baker. She said she noticed that when they brought Lee down . . . so the shooter can get on target. Obviously, there were a lot of strange things taking place with the whole Jack Ruby thing.
But the evidence is unmistakably clear on a huge point here. Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald definitely knew each other. And like I said, that’s not just important; that’s a fact that changes everything.
Listen to what the only District Attorney’s office to ever investigate the JFK assassination concluded about the importance of the fact that Ruby knew Oswald:
First of all, let me dispose of this concept of the ‘temporarily deranged man.’ This is a catchall term, employed whenever the real motive of a crime can’t be nailed down. In the overwhelming majority of instances, the actions of human beings are the direct consequences of discernible motives.
This is the fatal flaw of the Warren Report—its conclusion that the assassination of President Kennedy was the act of a temporarily deranged man, that the murder of Officer Tippit was equally meaningless and, finally, that Jack Ruby’s murder of Oswald was another act of a temporarily deranged individual. It is, of course, wildly improbable that all three acts were coincidentally the aberrant acts of temporarily deranged men—although it’s most convenient to view them as such, because that judgment obviates the necessity of relentlessly investigating the possibility of a conspiracy.315
Far from being an impulsive act, Jim Garrison described Ruby’s murder of Lee Harvey Oswald like this:
In Jack Ruby’s case, his murder of Lee Oswald was the sanest act he ever committed; if Oswald had lived another day or so, he very probably would have named names, and Jack Ruby would have been convicted as a conspirator in the assassination plot. As it was, Ruby made the best of a bad situation by rubbing out Oswald in the Dallas city jail, since this act could be construed as an argument that he was ‘temporarily deranged.’316
I agree with Jim Garrison.
306 Judyth Vary Baker, Me & Lee: How I Came to Know, Love and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald, (TrineDay: 2011).
307 Edward T. Haslam, Dr. Mary’s Monkey: How the unsolved murder of a doctor, a secret laboratory in New Orleans and cancer-causing monkey viruses are linked to Lee Harvey Oswald, the JFK assassination and emerging global epidemics (TrineDay: 2007), 307, parenthetical comment in original; citing Judyth Baker, Me & Lee.
308 Belzer & Wayne, Hit List, xiv, 49, 141, 310; “Did Ruby & Oswald Know Each Other?- Beverly Oliver,” retrieved 29 April 2013: youtube.com/watch?v=Lgd_QY1c8q8
309 James DiEugenio, “JFK: The Ruby Connection, Gary Mack’s Follies-Part One,” Citizens for Truth about the Kennedy Assassination, accessed 12 Nov. 21012: ctka.net/2009/ruby_mack. html
310 JFK Lancer, “Jim Garrison’s Playboy Interview, Part Three,” retrieved 3 May 2013:. jfklancer.com/Garrison4.html
311 Ibid.
312 Ibid.
313 DiEugenio, “JFK: The Ruby Connection, Gary Mack’s Follies-Part One.”
314 Belzer & Wayne, Hit List, 294.
315 JFK Lancer, “Jim Garrison’s Playboy Interview, Part Three.”
316 Ibid.
SECTION TWO
The Cover-Up
There were actually two conspiracies which are both scientifically provable: One that murdered President Kennedy, and the other that covered it up. No one is suggesting that Robert Kennedy was involved in the murder of his own brother. However, the fact that he helped to cover it up is, and should be, a highly significant indication of powerf
ul post-assassination forces at work. The reason it had to be covered up was due to the very nature of the crime—the way the conspiracy was constructed.
And there’s something else that needs to be said here. The word “conspiracy” has been much-maligned and that has apparently been very intentional. When you watch mainstream media, look very closely at how they ridicule that particular word. It’s only a word, but the mere mention of it now stirs up childish controversy rather than intelligent inquiry. The evidence—and logic—dictate that a “lone nut” literally was not capable of engineering the highly complex and sophisticated assassination of the 35th President of the United States. The organized semantic ridicule of “conspiracy buffs” who “come out of the woodwork” with their “kooky theories” whenever someone famous is killed is a transparent effort at the marginalization of unwelcomed critical thinking. I have a news flash for those people: leaders have been killed throughout human history, and the facts have proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that it usually is a conspiracy! So read your history. And if the gatekeepers who are controlling what the American public does and does not have access to were really concerned with learning the truth about any particular issue, they would welcome critical commentary as a sign that people are actually thinking and are truly participating in this Democracy—exactly as the forebears of this country originally intended we do.
29
The Smoking Gun of
the Cover–Up
I’ve highlighted the memo from acting Attorney General Nick Katzenbach for a very good reason: Because it lays out the whole plan for the cover-up. If you want to read it again, it’s at the front of this book, right where it belongs.
Keep in mind that it came from the U.S. Department of Justice—the Attorney General’s office that Robert F. Kennedy himself was the head of— and it detailed exactly what had to be done.
That document proves that the whole U.S. government cover-up was not some idle occurrence and did not just evolve as the circumstances developed.
That was their plan from the start.
So look at the words and get yourself a good handle on the truth. It tells you what the plan was, straight from the get-go:
The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial.317
Is that clear enough for you? Because it’s sure as hell clear to me.
We need something to head off public speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort.318
Yeah. We wouldn’t want the public to wonder what actually happened to their President who just had his brains blasted to smithereens. We wouldn’t want our duly-elected officials in Congress to conduct an actual investigation and try to figure out what actually happened. We wouldn’t want any of those things, would we?
The only other step would be the appointment of a Presidential Commission of unimpeachable personnel to review and examine the evidence and announce its conclusions.319
And that’s why they formed the Warren Commission. That’s the real reason:
Not to find the truth, but to bury it!
317 Nicholas deB. Katzenbach, Deputy Attorney General, “Memorandum for Mr. Moyers,” November 25, 1963: maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Katzenbach_Memo
318 Ibid.
319 Ibid.
30
The Presidential Limousine
Was Crucial Crime Scene
Evidence
If you’ve ever seen an actual police crime scene—or even watched television in the past twenty years—then you know that preservation of the crime scene is 101 at its most basic level. Everybody knows that.
Make no mistake about it: the open Lincoln limousine was the crime scene of the assassination of the President of the United States.
So let’s take a little look at how they preserved that crucial crime scene. Did they wrap police tape around it so that everybody saw “Police Crime Scene Do Not Enter” and nobody touched the thing? Did they make any serious effort to maintain the integrity of that crime scene?
Nope. They didn’t do any of those things that they clearly should have.
What did they do? Get a load of this:
JFK’s limo was quickly shipped off to Detroit for a rapid make-over.
That’s right. President Johnson & Co. had the crime scene immediately shipped away. Isn’t that great? Does that tell you anything about the authenticity of the government’s actual efforts to determine who killed our President? Maybe I should add or the lack thereof.
Believe it or not, that’s what they actually did. What dummy doesn’t know that a crime scene is not to be turned over or touched until the forensic team and detectives have gone over it? Here you have the very murder site as the car. How is it that wasn’t even looked at? And no one questioned that and said, “Excuse me, we need to preserve that evidence”? That’s Homicide 101. Again, how many standard procedures get violated, and it goes back to what Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty said: “When you look for a conspiracy, look for the violation of Standard Operating Procedures.” Well, there’s a real beauty for ya.
President Kennedy’s assassination was on a Friday afternoon in Texas. By Monday morning before work hours—and probably much earlier—the President’s limousine was already in Detroit sitting at the Ford plant and was already in the process of being destroyed and refurbished. In other words, the evidence was gone.
George Whitaker Sr., a senior manager at the Ford Motor Company’s Rouge Plant in Detroit, Michigan, told attorney [and professor of criminal justice] Doug Weldon in August of 1993, in a tape recorded conversation, that after reporting to work on Monday, November 25, he discovered the JFK limousine—a unique, one-of-a-kind item that he unequivocally identified—in the Rouge Plant’s B building, with the interior stripped out and in the process of being replaced, and with the windshield removed. He was then contacted by one of the Vice Presidents of the division for which he worked and directed to report to the glass plant lab, immediately. After knocking on the locked door [which he found most unusual], he was let in by two of his subordinates and discovered that they were in possession of the windshield that had been removed from the JFK limousine.320
So when it came to preserving the most obvious evidence in the whole case, it was Goodbye and Goodnight. And that was damn well intentional.
320 Douglas P. Horne, referencing Doug Weldon, “Photographic Evidence of Bullet Hole in JFK Limousine Windshield ‘Hiding in Plain Sight’,” June 4, 2012: lewrockwell.com/orig13/horne-d2.1.1.html
31
The Illegal Removal of the President’s Body
As Jim Garrison put it, the whole cover-up was enabled by the fact that:
The Government succeeded in accomplishing what, normally, it would not be able to accomplish in another city. It succeeded in getting the body of the President out of Dallas without an autopsy. In other words, Air Force One . . . didn’t so much “take-off” as it made a “getaway” . . . The plane took off with the body of the President and no civilian autopsy had been conducted. Then the body was placed in a controlled environment—the military hospital at Bethesda. And there the autopsy was conducted. After the autopsy, Commander Humes, who conducted the autopsy, burned his notes, which was probably the first time in history that a serious autopsy resulted in the burning of the notes.321
At that time, legal jurisdiction over the body resided entirely with the authorities in Texas. There was no law on the books; no legal jurisdiction for the “kidnapping” of the President’s body. By law, it should have remained in Dallas for the autopsy. Not many people know that, but it’s true.
The law was that local authorities had clear jurisdiction for the autopsy— not the Feds!
During that battle over the President’s body—which was apparently at gunpoint right in the middle of a hospital—the Secret Service “won” and put the President’s body on a plane.
Imagine that one, fo
lks! There was a big battle over the President’s body, and when things really started to get hairy, the Secret Service even had their guns drawn. Dallas authorities refused to release it to them, citing—quite correctly—that it was their legal jurisdiction to conduct the autopsy. As Secret Service specialist Vince Palamara noted:
Also worthy of study are the widely reported violent actions of the Secret Service at Parkland. More than one commentator has stated that the agents protected JFK’s corpse far more aggressively as they were stealing it from the local coroner—at gunpoint, who was merely trying to maintain the chain of evidence, than they had just moments before.322
Palamara has examined the facts surrounding the Secret Service issues of the assassination for decades and reaches a stark conclusion:
Ironically, two of the agents who participated in that illegal seizure of the President’s body at gunpoint were Roy Kellerman and Bill Greer, who rode in JFK’s limousine and were paramount to his supposed security. Since the murder of a president was not then a federal crime, the agents had zero jurisdiction.323
That law was changed after the assassination—now the murder of a federal official is a federal matter. But it wasn’t in 1963.
So whatever else there is to be said about it, the fact of the matter is that they did violate the law and they did so very aggressively.
321 The Steve Allen Show, 1971, KTLA-TV, (Golden West Broadcasters, Inc.): youtube.com/watch?v=KXZfsbpa2kI
322 Palamara, Survivor’s Guilt, citing Charles A. Crenshaw, M.D., JFK: A Conspiracy of Silence: Headline-Making New Revelations from the Surgeon who tried to Save JFK and Oswald (Signet: 1992).
323 Vincent Michael Palamara, email to author, 10 May 2013.
32
Hoover and the FBI Assisted the Cover-Up
G et this: J. Edgar Hoover—twenty-four hours after the murder of President Kennedy—had already declared Oswald the killer. There hadn’t been one shred of evidence. And when you look at the way the FBI was run back then, who’s going to defy Hoover? When J. Edgar says Oswald did it, there ain’t one agent that’s gonna step out of line and say, “Wait a minute, maybe that’s not right.”
They Killed Our President Page 16
