November 22, 1963: evaluating the evidence

Official Stories - Limited Hang Outs - Best Evidence - Disinformation

a pdf version of this page is at www.jfkmoon.org/jfk19631122.pdf

 

Official Story: November 22, 1963 through 1978
Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone nut

Most US citizens suspect the official "lone gunman" story is not true, but this healthy skepticism did not translate into popular understanding of how and why President Kennedy was assassinated.

"If you understand it, you understand the way the media works in this country."
-- Jim DiEugenio, www.kennedysandking.com

 

Fall back to the Official Story: a second gunman, but backed by Cuba

We know there was a second gunman, but Oswald was a Communist so we had to cover up the conspiracy because otherwise we would risk a repeat of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis that could lead to a nuclear war (since the public would supposedly demand a revenge attack on Cuba).

This claim was persuasive shortly after the assassination and discouraged political elites from looking closer at the facts. President Johnson used this lie to pressure Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren to become chair of the alleged investigative commission. Blaming Castro was to be an excuse for a US invasion of Cuba, which Kennedy refused to allow during the Bay of Pigs or the Missile Crisis. JFK had back channel communications underway to normalize US - Cuba relations when he was killed.

 

Official Story: since 1979
two gunmen, but we don't know who

In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations admitted a second gunman, and therefore a probable conspiracy, but declined to follow up this conclusion with comprehensive investigation. The Committee's director had experience investigating the Mafia and steered investigatory interest in that direction.

 

Limited Hang Out: admit part of the truth to cover up the full truth

A deeper fallback claim is the Mafia killed President Kennedy, and the US government was embarrassed to admit this because the CIA used the Mob to wage war on Castro's Cuba. This claim is a mix of truth and lies. The Mafia had important roles in the assassination plot, but the Mafia did not coordinate the stand down of the protection of the President, nor is the Mafia in charge of the ongoing political and media coverup which continues a half century after the crime.

From the Nixon tapes, 1973-03-22
PRESIDENT: You think, you think we want to, want to go this route now? And the--let it hang out, so to speak?
DEAN: Well, it's, it isn't really that--
HALDEMAN: It's a limited hang out.
DEAN: It's a limited hang out.
EHRLICHMAN: It's a modified limited hang out.
PRESIDENT: Well, it's only the questions of the thing hanging out publicly or privately.

 

Best Evidence: a military - intelligence coup to prevent President Kennedy from ending the Cold War

Why Kennedy was removed from office (the motive) is more important than who was shooting in Dealey Plaza, even though Oswald wasn't one of the shooters. The biggest secret is not how many people were shooting, but that the perpetrators knew the politicians, media and the public would acquiesce to their coup.

President Kennedy had changed his mind on the Cold War, especially after the Cuban Missile Crisis, when he resisted calls from the Joint Chiefs of Staff to start a nuclear war.

He called for nuclear disarmament, a different relationship with the "Third World," signed an order to start pulling troops out of Viet Nam, pushed through the Limited Test Ban Treaty, and offered to convert the "Moon Race" into a cooperative effort with the Soviet Union. Merging the space programs would have reduced the risk of a nuclear war with rockets.

JFK vowed to scatter the CIA into a thousand pieces. The CIA (and military intelligence) scattered JFK into a thousand pieces.

 


 

Seven Days in Curtis LeMay

Kennedy read the novel about a threatened military coup in the United States against a young President who sought a peace treaty with the Soviet Union over the objections of the military high command and the right wing. He saw the parallels and urged his allies in Hollywood to turn it into a film. Unfortunately, the film was only finished after Kennedy had been removed from office, and the obvious implication that the assassination had been a coup was downplayed when the film was released.

One curiousity is why the story is set in May instead of any other month (a part of the plot revolves around betting on a horse race that month, but other hooks for the story could have been made for other times of the year). One speculation this writer has seen is the title is a subtle hint about General Curtis LeMay, commander of the Strategic Air Command, bomber of Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and one of the most vociferous advocates of pre-emptive nuclear war against the Soviet Union. It is not speculation that if JFK had taken LeMay's advice during the Cuban Missile Crisis we almost certainly would have had a nuclear war. LeMay was present at JFK's tampered autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital the night of the President's murder, smoking a cigar, seemingly gloating over the death of his adversary.

 

Disinformation: used to discredit skepticism of the Official Story

There are many hoaxes about the conspiracy to remove Kennedy from office that are flashy but false. There is a blurry video claiming to show the limo driver killing Kennedy (the limo driver slowed down just before the shots were fired, but he didn't fire any of them). There is a claim the Zapruder film was faked, but the leading advocate for this also claims the Moon landings were faked and video of the planes hitting the World Trade Center were altered in real time by television networks to cover up the real projectiles. There is a group of white supremacist Holocaust deniers who claim the Israeli Mossad did it. These distractions are similar to the flares emitted by a plane that is under attack from a heat seeking missile — the decoys confuse the attacker and it usually goes off course.

 


 

www.politicalassassinations.com/2013/11/dont-believe-what-jack-tunheim-has-to-say-about-the-jfk-assassination/

Don’t Believe What Jack Tunheim Has To Say About the JFK Assassination
November 29, 2013

by Douglas P. Horne, former Chief Analyst for Military Records, ARRB

November 28th, 23:45
http://insidethearrb.livejournal.com/2013/11/28/

.... If you study the evidence yourself, you will find that the Kennedy assassination is like a 500 piece jigsaw puzzle for which 250 pieces have been thrown away, and 250 pieces from the wrong picture puzzle have been substituted, in an attempt to intentionally confuse everyone. The real reason the majority of the evidence in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy does not come together, is because of fraud in the evidence. ....

The state of the evidence in the JFK assassination today is so overwhelmingly supportive of a conspiracy, and a massive U.S. government cover-up, that anyone who denies this is the moral equivalent of a Holocaust Denier. Yes, that’s right, I actually said that. In fact, the evidence of a conspiracy in John F. Kennedy’s assassination is surely just as robust as the overwhelming evidence that the Nazis committed the Holocaust. Denying a conspiracy in JFK’s assassination is just as outrageous as denying that the Holocaust actually happened.

Continuing this analogy, if the German people can face up to the Holocaust, and admit that it happened, and take corrective action within their society to prevent it from happening again, then why can’t members of the establishment elite in America (academics, members of the mainstream media, and government officials) admit the truth about JFK’s assassination 50 years ago, and prevent a recurrence by outing the truth and intensively studying how the crime truly occurred, and by revealing how our institutions all failed us in 1963 and 1964? That would be a lot more beneficial and useful than mouthing platitudes every November. The more they continue to do this, the more they corrode our trust in government.

 


related websites:

JFKMLKRFK.com - by Mark Robinowitz - updated February 25, 2024