by J. W Lateer
The authority of authors Plume and Demaret seems superior to that of the assassination researchers who make claims regarding the role of the French OAS. Of course the group of Catholic activists, financiers, and related private interests mentioned by Plume and Demaret could have very loosely fit the description of the JFK plotters. The plotters were at least allies of world Catholicism, though not necessarily Catholic and some were even anti-Catholic (like the Southern segregationists and extreme Nazi’s).
Unfortunately, Plume and Demaret are not helpful enough to name names of these Catholic activists. However, Plume and Demaret do compare them to the Catholic “Cagoule” movement from 1935-1937. To get some names, we must refer to the book The Action Francaise: Die-Hard Reactionaries in Twentieth Century France, by Eugen Weber. To quote Weber (writing in 1962) at page 283:
The most dangerous force on the Extreme Right in France since the mid-1950’s has been a secret organization that closely resembles the prewar Cagoule. Its leaders are difficult to identify, but they have apparently infiltrated the highest level of the civil service and the military hierarchy, even to the point of being able to remove compromising evidence about themselves from the files of the security police…
Among the suspects arrested in connection with the attempted assassination of de Gaulle in September, 1961 there were petty noblemen with names like Martial de Villemandy [civilian], Cabanne de la Prade [civilian], Barbier de Blingnieres [military] and Boucher de Crevecoeur [civilian].
This is an organizational chart of the plot at the time of the Petit-Clamart attack:
The first and last attacks employed IED’s or roadside bombs. However, the biggest attack was at Petit-Clamart and it was a military-style sniping and crossfire attempt using machine guns. Over 100 rounds actually hit the Citroen sedan in which President de Gaulle and his wife were riding. One bullet pierced the hem of the dress of Mdm. de Gaulle. The President himself was unscathed. And that was thanks mostly to his driver who sped away immediately despite having to drive on 4 flattened tires.
We might ask why experts label this type of attack a military-style attack? The first reason is that it requires discipline; discipline is the specialty of the military. Second, there is an excellent chance to get away.
When you add the element of a crossfire, you greatly increase the possibility of success. With a crossfire, there is no one direction by which the victim can escape. Multiple points of the compass are covered. Obviously the very use of a military-style attack points to the military (or at least experienced mercenaries or the paramilitary).
Another type of assassination attack is the walk-up shooter. This has been the mode of three out of the four U.S. Presidential assassinations. It is easy to accomplish the walk-up attack by use of the “lone nut.” Of course such a “lone nut” can be acting on behalf of just about anybody. There are innumerable examples of this type of plan: e.g. Presidents Garfield and McKinley and Governor George Wallace in 1972. It also includes failed attempts on Gerald Ford in 1975 and Ronald Reagan in 1981. Another was Robert Kennedy in 1968. The downside of this plot is that the shooter will get caught and usually executed unless he kills himself first. If you believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone shooter, he would be placed in this category. If Lee Harvey Oswald were actually willing to sacrifice himself, (as would the average lone nut), he would have more likely been a walk-up shooter rather than a sniper from a window.
A third method is the IED or the roadside bomb. This has been used many times, often in the most sensational cases. Examples are the Pont-Sur-Seine and Ecole Militaire attempts on de Gaulle. Also, many people don’t realize that a bomb was part of the overall plot for the successful assassination attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. Ferdinand was actually killed by a walk-up shooter. This famous case triggered off World War I. Again, most people don’t realize that the killing of Franz Ferdinand is now thought to have involved Serbian military intelligence. Another very famous assassination using a bomb was that against Czar Alexander II of Russia in 1881.
A fourth style is the Mafia hit. It is similar to the walk-up shooter only because it involves one person individually shooting another. But that’s where the similarity ends. The Mafia may pick a very public place such as when the victim is eating in a restaurant or even having his hair cut in a barber’s chair. The latter was used in the murder of Albert Anastasia in 1957. That murder along with the famed St. Valentine’s Day massacre in Chicago, were bold, terrifying attacks that send a message to virtually everybody in the U.S. including the police, the rival gangs, the citizenry, and even the politicians.
An alternative to the dramatic public execution often used by the Mafia is the more common Mafia “hit.” This involves isolating someone in a dark alley, then to walk up to or drive up and shoot them without warning. Then, ideally, the killers take the body and dump it in the nearest river. This usually includes providing the corpse with a pair of “concrete shoes.” This type of hit is the proverbial “gangland slaying.” The message to the police is clear. It is a plainly a gangland slaying. It has been done by professional killers. In these killings, the perpetrators are never caught. So if you are the police, you should not waste your time investigating.
The final type of assassination is by poisoning. This is very rare these days. It was used in the ancient world, most famously involving King Mithradates who lived in the ancient Middle East. According to legend, Mithridates ingested a small amount of arsenic every day. This immunized him when his enemies tried to use arsenic to kill him. More recently and in the same spirit of mythology, the CIA had tried to poison Fidel Castro, either by ordinary poison, a poisoned cigar, a poisoned seashell, a poisoned diving suit or even injecting him with cancer, (the last method according to author Judyth Vary Baker).
Another example of alleged poisoning is the case of alleged Soviet agent Bogdan Stashynsky which will be discussed in depth in later chapters. Supposedly, Stashynsky used a cyanide spray gun to kill Ukrainian hero Stepan Bandera. The facts surrounding this case and this method are very shaky as we shall see.
The drawback to poisoning is that it may fail because it is hard to deliver the poison. It involves a great deal of luck. Also, with the advent of modern science, there is more access to treatment and antidotes. With the advent of modern forensics, there is a greater chance of tracing the poison back to the killer.
So the takeaway from all of the above is this: if there were multiple snipers in Dallas, and they used a cross-fire, this fact would point to a military (or paramilitary) group as being responsible for the act of shooting John F. Kennedy.
Notes:
Target de Gaulle, by Plume and Demaret is cited at p 79.
Chapter 3
Why Has The JFK Case Never Before Been Solved?
The Mount Everest-Sized Pile of Assassination Evidence.
There are many reasons why the murder of JFK remains officially unsolved.
First, there have only been roughly 100 serious books in which the authors try to explain the assassination. While some of these authors have spent almost an entire lifetime with their research, many have spent a lot less. The longest periods of research have been on the part of authors like Mark Lane, Jim Marrs, Dick Russell and Dr. Jeffrey Caulfield. Amazingly, Mark Lane started out as the lawyer for Oswald’s family the weekend of the assassination. Lane published his most recent book in 2012, so that’s 50 years of research. Dr. Caulfield started his research in 1992 and published in 2015. Russell spent 17 years with his research before publication.
But arrayed against these authors have been tens of thousands or maybe hundreds of thousands of CIA employees, military intelligence staff, FBI, Secret Service and other government workers. No one will ever know exactly how many government employees have worked on the JFK cover-up.
We do know one thing, however. The cover-up did not have to be organized or co-ordinated. Take for example the locking-up of the James O. Eastland records at Ole Miss. The Dean of the Univers
ity law school did not have to know who killed JFK. All he needed was to have one researcher approach him and ask to see the records and tell him he was working on the JFK case. The minute the Dean heard that, the door was locked. Instantly.
There were at least three Federal Judges who appear to have helped in the cover-up, apparently out of concern for national security. They didn’t know who killed JFK. It is very likely that all they knew was that they got a call from Washington asking them to dismiss a case, or possibly make a ruling. They would have done it, no questions asked. That’s just how governments work. And that’s the problem that the 100-odd researchers have been up against since 1963.
And then there are the lone gunmen theorists. Some of these authors have a background in law enforcement or as prosecutors, such as Vincent Bugliosi. Bugliosi wrote a book with 1648 pages trying to prove the lone gunman theory. One can only ask, does Bugliosi think life is too long, so he gladly wasted all that major part of his life to perpetrate a lie? And Vince was a former prosecutor. We can hope he did better by the many defendants he prosecuted.
Let’s face it. The brave researchers such as Jim Marrs and Dick Russell were self-selected. They were not hired with a top-flight background in criminal investigation. If one wants to read a book by a top-flight criminal investigator, read A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963 by Mark Fuhrman and Stephen Weeks. As many readers might know, Fuhrman was the detective with the top reputation for investigation in the Los Angeles Police Department. He gained fame by his work in the crime of the decade, the O. J. Simpson murder case in 1994-1995. Displaying his talents, Fuhrman takes the “magic bullet” theory and rips it to shreds. But he then turns around and displays his loyalty to law enforcement and to the government. He dismisses the cover-up as only a matter of wounded pride and vanity. He blames embarrassment on the part of investigators who were trying to sweep their shoddy investigation under the rug.
Next in importance is the sheer volume of evidence and potential evidence in the case. When the evidence in each book is counted based on the average evidence per page times the number of pages, it is possible to estimate it. It comes out to around 1000 items of evidence per book. Of the 1000 items, about half is new or unique to the particular book. With 100 major books, that makes 50,000 items of evidence. Our definition of “evidence” here includes even a small fact such as “John Doe was in New Orleans on September 15, 1963.” Another example would be “it was 73 degrees in Dallas when JFK was shot.” And so on. Even though these facts are minute, the important thing is this: a serious researcher has to pick his way through all 50,000 facts! There is no shortcut.
Another analysis put together by this author is a 1500-name database. This database was assembled by counting the top 80 to 120 names cited most often in the index of 31 unique, non-repetitive books. (Lone gunman books were excluded!) Of the 1500 names, only about 350 were cited a sufficient amount of times in more than one book. In a later chapter, the results of some statistical analysis of these names and these books will be presented.
The important point here is that out of 1500 names, any one of the names could theoretically be a JFK murderer. There is no shortcut to avoid sifting through all 1500 names.
It is possible be bitten by the JFK assassination bug and it lasts quite a while. For people like author Mark Lane, it lasts a lifetime.
Logical Rules Or Principles Useful In Evaluation of the Assassination
There are 10 principles which should be followed in the evaluation of the JFK evidence. They could be called the “Ten Commandments of Assassination Research.”
Some logical rules, which your author has developed or selected, are: as follows:
1: Motive, means and opportunity.
2: When you have eliminated the impossible, you have the answer.
3: If you are judging a theory which offers an explanation for otherwise unexplained facts, you should believe it.
4: Some of the first information to come out can sometimes be the best information.
5: When a key witness makes a statement that sounds totally unbelievable, it almost always turns out to be true in the end.
6 There are no impossible coincidences.
7: If a career, salaried member of the espionage community makes a statement, he is very possibly lying. (That’s his talent and his job).
8: There may be some evidence which is covered up by law enforcement out of sheer embarrassment and nothing more.
9: Cui Bono? This is Latin for “Who Benefits.”
10: Follow the money.
A Suggested List Of The 10 Best Assassination Books, Alphabetical By Author
Me & Lee, by Judyth Vary Baker
Above The Law, by James Boyd
General Walker and The Murder Of President Kennedy, by Jeffrey Caulfield, MD
The Ordeal of Otto Otepka, by William J. Gill
Dope, Inc.: The Book That Drove Henry Kissinger Crazy, by David Goldman and Jeffrey Steinberg
Farewell, America, by James Hepburn
JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F Kennedy, by Fletcher Prouty
The Man Who Knew Too Much, by Dick Russell
Brothers in Arms: The Kennedys, the Castros, and the Politics of Murder, by Gus Russo and Stephen Molton
The New Germany and the Old Nazis, by T H Tetens
For further reading, the “Hearings on the Censure of Thomas Dodd” (1966) published by the U.S. Senate are must reading and available for free on hathitrust.org.
The Dog-Whistle Books
One category of books, about which you won’t read anywhere else but here, are the dog-whistle books.
What in the world are the dog-whistle books, you might ask? These will be so-called because there were people back in 1964-1969 who knew who murdered JFK. There were more than a few. The problem for these people was naked fear. As graphically illustrated in the book Hit List, there were over 100 witnesses in the JFK case who were murdered, most of them with impunity in broad daylight.
The most famous of these was investigative journalist Dorothy Kilgallen. Dorothy’s name was a household work back in the 50’s and 60’s. She was as well-known to TV viewers as Oprah Winfrey or Judge Judy are today. Dorothy was the only person lucky enough (or unlucky enough) to be allowed to interview Jack Ruby in total privacy. But Dorothy spoke out of school a little too loudly. When she did that, she was dead by sundown and her notes were stolen. And notes that she had given to a friend were also stolen.
Having been witness to the Kilgallen tragedy, other authors or journalists were loath to publish what they knew or found out about the assassination. But then a facet of human nature began to emerge.
Many people on the fringes of the assassination information were, by definition, narcissistic. If you’re close to people who would perpetrate or condone the murder of an elected President, your character might be in question. But these narcissistic people realized that they knew something that could make their name famous in a small way, down through the ages. So the dog-whistle book was invented.
Authors like William J. Gill or James Boyd who wrote on the subject of Otto Otepka and Thomas J. Dodd, respectively, figured out that they could write all the facts they knew about the assassination without actually mentioning it. The only way anyone would know what they were doing so, was when the facts eventually came out. Then they would be credited (and be famous). Another way a dog-whistle book is discovered is when a researcher discovers that the author had to know about the assassination in order to write his book.
Here is a partial list of the dog-whistle books familiar to this author.
Washington Through a Purple Veil, by Lindy Boggs
Above The Law, by James Boyd
The Ordeal of Otto Otepka, by William J. Gill
The Case Against Congress, by Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson
Despoilers of Democracy, by Clark Mollenhoff
Self-Destruct: Dismantling America’s Internal Security, by Robert Morris
> Note:
Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination (2016) by Richard Belzer and David Wayne
Chapter 4
A Statement Of The Facts In Dealey Plaza 11-22-63
The Importance of the Basic Facts
This is the first step in looking at the JFK case. It should be said at the outset that mention of military intelligence is not intended to impugn the honor of the loyal military officers present in Dealey Plaza. There could be many explanations for their activities, none of which would necessarily point to their individual guilt in the murder.
Dallas, November 1963:
On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy and his wife Jackie Kennedy visited Dallas. The primary purpose of the trip was to travel in an open car in a motorcade through the City of Dallas so that thousands of people would come out to see the President. If successful, this would enhance his standing with the voters of Dallas.
The motorcade would pass through an open area known as Dealey Plaza. A small map of the motorcade route appeared on the cover of the Dallas Morning News before the assassination. There is a question as to whether that map actually showed Houston and Elm Streets where the shooting occurred. However, a contention by prosecutor Jim Garrison that the route was changed at the last minute, does not appear to be supported by evidence.
From Dealey Plaza, the motorcade would continue on to the Dallas Trade Mart where Kennedy was scheduled to speak to an assembled audience. Riding in the middle jump-seat directly in front of President Kennedy was Texas Governor John Connally. Vice-President Lyndon Johnson had argued forcefully for Texas Senator Ralph Yarbrough to take that position but he was overruled by the President. Vice-President Lyndon Johnson was in an open car several cars behind Kennedy. LBJ’s car was, however, close to the Texas Schoolbook Depository when the shots were fired.
