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60 Years Later

by J. Perdue Views: 184

JFK Assassination & New Evidence

November 22, 2023 marked the 60th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s death. A current Gallop poll shows 65% of Americans do not believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. Some years it has been as high as 81% (Gallop Poll Nov. 2023; https://news.gallup.com/poll/514310/decades-later-americans-doubt-lone-gunman-killed-jfk.aspx). There seems to be plenty of hearsay and circumstantial evidence that keeps the conspiracy theories alive and well. Rumors that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for the CIA, or organized crime and Cuban exiles carried out the assassination, or the FBI was involved in a cover-up. What facts or pieces of evidence exist that can be called credible? Two come to mind: 1) President Kennedy’s fatal head wound, which caused an exit wound at the back of his head, which indicates that the shooter was in front of the motorcade, and not in the Texas School Book Depository building. 2) The Zapruder film, which corroborates the theory that the fatal head wound was caused by shooter in front of the President’s car. There are links below to the Zapruder film and an interview with Dr. McClelland, who describes JFK’s head wound, and talks about his opinion that the fatal shot was from the front. Keep in mind, that the doctors at Parkland Hospital in Dallas saw, on average, 3 gunshot wounds a day. Therefore, I think Dr. McClelland is a credible witness. During this interview, Dr. Jones talks about a meeting with Arlen Specter, a junior counsel working for the Warren Commission, who came to Dallas 6 months after the assassination, and quizzed the doctor on the throat wound, which Dr. Jones admits that he initially thought the throat wound was caused by a shooter in front of the motorcade. Mr. Specter tried to convince Jones that what he saw was an exit wound, visible on the front of the President’s throat. Arlen Specter also told Dr. Jones that he had some witnesses who are willing to testify that they saw a shooter on the overpass, in front of the President’s car, but they weren’t credible. He also told the doctor not to talk about this to anyone. Arlen Specter, who went on to have a long career as a senator from Pennsylvania, is given credit for the “Magic Bullet” theory. 

Mark Shaw, an investigative journalist and historian, gave a presentation in 2021 at the Allen Public Library, near Dallas, Texas. Mr. Shaw believes Dorothy Kilgallen did not die from an accidental mixture of alcohol and sleeping pills, which was the official cause of death back in Nov. 1965, but was “silenced”. Ms. Kilgallen was a regular on What’s My Line, a popular TV show that aired Sunday evenings. She also had a column in one of New York’s newspapers and she didn’t buy the “Oswald Alone” theory and attended Jack Ruby’s trial in Dallas. Afterward, she told friends she was going to New Orleans and would bust the case wide open. She was later found dead in her New York apartment, and missing were all her files and notes. Mr. Shaw’s presentation is based on his book, Denial of Justice, where he makes the case that Dorothy Kilgallen was murdered as part of a cover-up of the JFK assassination.  

Several months later, Mr. Shaw says he was contacted by Morris Wolff, a who claimed he was at the Warren Commission meetings. He told Mr. Shaw that he knew Dorothy Kilgallen and after watching Shaw’s presentation, which focused on Ms. Kilgallen, he decided to contact Mr. Shaw. He explained to Shaw that after graduating from Yale, he went to work for Bobby Kennedy, and because JFK and Bobby believed J. Edgar Hoover was tapping their phones, they had him run messages back and forth between the two on his bicycle. When his time with RFK was over, Bobby suggested he work for Senator John Cooper, who needed a legal assistant.

Senator John Sherman Cooper, Republican from Kentucky, was selected to be on the Warren Commission, and Morris Wolff told Mr. Shaw that he often drove with Senator Cooper to the Warren Commission meetings. Mr. Wolff said the meetings were controlled by Earl Warren and J. Edgar Hoover, both pushing the “Oswald Alone” theory. Over time, according to Mr. Wolff, Senators Cooper and Senator Richard Russell Jr., Democrat from Georgia, also a member on the commission, became frustrated with the Commission’s direction, and wanted to have a recorded “dissent” document added to the final report. Again, according to Morris Wolff, the two Senators were tricked and their dissent was not included in the final Warren Commission report. Because they were required to sign a document saying they would never talk about the Commission proceedings, they remained quiet. One fact that caused the Senators to become frustrated with the Commission is that Jack Ruby’s ties to organized crime went untouched. The Commission refused to look into that issue, according to Mr. Wolff. He also said there were times when commission members weren’t always notified when individuals were brought in to be questioned.  After 60 years, we are getting an internal glimpse of the Warren Commission.

I find this quote from an article in the Intelligencer published on Nov. 9, 2023, insightful. Which was written by Scott Sayare, a freelance journalist based in New York 

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/jfk-assassination-documents-national-archives.html?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

In its executive session of January 27, 1964, the Warren Commission took up a rumor, passed on by the attorney general of Texas, that Lee Harvey Oswald had been working undercover for the FBI or perhaps the CIA. Having on hand a former director of the CIA, the group naturally sought his insights. Allen Dulles told his fellow commissioners, to their apparent disbelief, that one could not expect an intelligence service to be knowledgeable in such matters or truthful if it were.
“Wouldn’t tell it under oath?” asked Justice Warren.
“I wouldn’t think he would tell it under oath, no,” Dulles responded. “He ought not tell it under oath.” Nor could one expect to find any written record of such an agent. “The record might not be on paper,” Dulles said, or might consist of “hieroglyphics that only two people knew what they meant.” He clarified later, “You can’t prove what the facts are.”

Allen Dulles is telling us that we wouldn’t get the truth from a CIA operative when asked, even under oath.

After 60 years, I don’t think we will find much value in any released classified documents. If any documents did exist that shed a bad light on the FBI or CIA, they most likely have been destroyed years ago, or, they are in a form, as Allen Dulles told the Commission, hieroglyphics that we wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of. Our only hope of finding any kind of truth, even after 60 years, will probably rely on people coming forward, people who were there, people like Morris Wolff. There are not many of those who were there that are still alive. I believe Mr. Wolff is 90 years old, and maybe he figured his time to tell his story is running out, so he contacted Mark Shaw. Drip, drip, drip, the evidence trickles in. 

Dr. McClelland and Dr. Jones interview, two Parkland Hospital doctors who were there when JFK was brought to Parkland.

Zapruder film

Mark Shaw’s presentation, recorded Nov. 7, 2023 and posted on YouTube Nov. 9, 2023

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