Dear David Ferriero AOTUS Re: JFK Act

An Open Letter to David Ferriero AOTUS

                        David Ferriero - Archivist of the United States - with historic records

Dear David Ferriero,

As the Archivist of the United States - "the Collector in Chief," you are responsible for the protection and maintenance of America's historic records, including the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the evidence and official records of the assassination of President Kennedy.

As a fellow blogger, Archives researcher and Walt Whitman fan I was struck by your blog post -"Calling all Whitman Fans," [http://blogs.archives.gov/aotus/?p=5342] as I found it hard to believe that over 3,000 previously unknown Whitman records could have secretly existed among the stacks at the Archives I also wrote about it.[ Whitman Treasure Trove Discovered at Archives | KellysCafe and JFKcountercoup: JFK Research At An Impass]

Their discovery gives me hope that more such historic records exist and await being found, especially among the many lost, missing and still with held records of the assassination of President Kennedy, the subject of much of my research.

As you are a former Navy corpsman - thank you for your service in Vietnam, you say you have an
interest in Navy records, so you should be interested to know of the sorry status of the ONI  records of the assassination - many lost, missing and wrongfully withheld today.

The Archives II where the Whitman  documents were found, is also where the JFK Records Collection is located, and the building was financed by the overwhelming  Congressional support for the JFK Act. Yet Congress has not held an oversight hearing on the JFK Act in 17 years.

As the AOTUS you are responsible for the implementing of the law - 44 U. S. C. 2107 [FKCountercoup2: 44 U.S.C. 2107 - JFK Act] which states: "The remaining provisions of this Act shall continue in effect until such a time as the Archivist certifies to the President and the Congress that all assassination records have been made available to the public in accordance with this Act."

So the law remains in effect until such a time when you have determined all the records are released, an event that should have already happened.

Therefore I have started this petition to request that you fulfill your responsibility as Archivist and ensure that the law of the land - the JFK Act of 1992 and see that Congress does its duty and holds oversight hearings to determine what became of the missing evidence and records [JFKCountercoup2: The Last Congressional Hearing on the JFK Act - 17 Years Ago].

 And that you, and not some unknown successor, will at such a time, and in our life time, inform the President, Congress and the American people that the last withheld JFK assassination record has been released.

William E. Kelly, Jr. 

Petition | Please carry out your duty as AOTUS and ensure the JFK Act of 1992 is fully implemented. | Change.org

What is Past is Prologue

What is Past is Prologue 

What is Past is Prologue

In a postscript to his film “JFK” Oliver Stone quoted a line from Shakespere - “What is past is prologue,” which is also inscribed on the base of the statue Future (1935, Robert Alken) at the side of the front steps to the National Archives building in downtown Washington D.C.

The quote is generally thought to mean that the past is a prologue of what's to come in the future, that history influences and sets the context for the present, much like those who are ignorant of the past are doomed to relive it. Or as Peter Pan put it, “This has all happened before and it will happen again.”

It was in the news when Joe Biden said it in the 2008 vice presidential debate to justify his referring to the failures of the Bush administration.

But as the phrase was originally used by Shakespere in The Tempest, Act 2, Scene I, it means that all that has happened before that time, the "past," has led Antonio and Sebastian to commit murder.

From The Tempest, Act II Scene I:
Sources: http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/tempest/3/

ANTONIO : 

“…..We all were sea-swallow'd, though some cast again,
And by that destiny to perform an act
Whereof what's past is prologue, what to come
In yours and my discharge.”

Antonio is rationalizing that he is fated to act by all that has led up to that moment, so the past has set the stage for their next act.

Thus it means that everything that has happened before that time has led Antonio and Sebastian to commit murder, so everything that has happened in the past has led up to the moment of the murder – and gives it reason and meaning.

In this context, the government’s records give reason and meaning to the murder of President Kennedy, especially if he was killed in a covert operation by his enemies in Washington rather than in a senseless, meaningless act by a deranged madman.

If President Kennedy was indeed killed by a deranged lone nut then there would be no reason, fifty years later, to keep so many records secret for reasons of national security, so many that they can’t count even them all.

JFK Research At An Impass

At An Impass – the JFK Assassination at the Crossroads –

Walt Whitman – JFK and the Known Universe of Assassination Records

By William Kelly

Since the present model of assassination research has failed to determine even the basic facts of the assassination of President Kennedy, the espousing of various possible theories as to what happened and then debunking them simply does not work, new and different approaches are needed if we are to determine how JFK was killed, by who and for what reasons.

In “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,” which Douglas Horne calls attention to in his book “Inside the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB),” and mentions how Thomas Kuhn looks closely at the history of science and how great scientific and technological advances were made, often in times of crisis.

In viewing the history of science as episodes that occur in cycles, after years of attacking questions and problems from the same angle, different and radical approaches are also often successful after traditional means have been exhausted.

Not long ago scientists didn’t know of any planet revolving around a sun within our own Milky Way galaxy, but after a relatively simple means was discovered, thousands of planets have been found and more are being discovered every day.

For many years it had been assumed that the entire work of America’s Poet Laurient Walt Whitman were known and had been completely studied and analyzed by students and scholars, but then, Dr. Ken Price, armed only with an intimate knowledge of Whitman’s handwriting, visited the National Archives II in Maryland, where the JFK Assassination Records Collection is also kept, and requested the records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and Attorney General (1860-1866), where Whitman was known to have worked as a clerk. Price expected to find one or two or maybe even a few letters written in Whitman’s unique hand, but instead found over 3,000!

JFK Assassination researchers should take notice of how these planetary and archival discoveries were made, and apply them to the JFK records that the various agencies of government claim were destroyed, are lost, missing or are being wrongfully withheld, and at least make the attempt to see if they can be found and included in the public record so there can be a more complete understanding of the assassination.

For starters, just as we don’t know how many planets there are in the galaxy, we don’t know how many records and documents are missing, were destroyed or are still being with held, numbers that we should be able to determine and know as they are contained in the universe of records at the NARA.

Just as Dr. Price knew what Walt Whitman’s handwriting looked like, and knew where in the government Whitman worked, he took those two facts and when he put them together he discovered the mother lode of Whitman gems that went unnoticed by others who lacked a knowledge of Whitman’s handwriting or didn’t bother to check the location of the records in question even though anyone can go to the NARA and request any open public record they want. Many scholars knew Whitman worked as a clerk for the government, but no one bothered to look where they knew they should be located.

Even though I know for a fact that the government’s official version of Dealey Plaza events is wrong, rather than espouse a conspiracy theory I long ago elected to approach the case from a radical and different direction – that of an unsolved homicide that should be pumped through the legal system – beginning with the evidence and testimony being evaluated by a grand jury.

In addition, from reading the official reports, I developed a unique research technique, a subject index filing system that begins a file on a new subject if it appears more than twice in apparently unrelated parts of the story – as I did with Collins Radio, the Pan Am Bank of Miami and the office of the Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI), U.S. Army Reserve Branch, an obscure office in the Pentagon, where a lot of assassination related activities occurred.

After I read where George deMohrenschildt tried to get Oswald a job at Collins Radio, after all he did work at a radio factory in USSR, I thought it significant that Collins also supplied the cover for the CIA Cuban raider ship “Rex,” and made and serviced the radios used by the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and Special Air Missions (SAM), including Air Force One, I began a subject file on Collins Radio, which is now very thick.

In reading the House Select Committee on Assassination Records (HSCA) the Pan Am Bank is mentioned as the place where “Maurice Bishop” had Antonio Veciana sign his security oath, where Jack Ruby deposited money for his Havana casino friends, the Fox Brothers, and I took special interest in the bank when testimony revealed that Cuban gun runners were paid in cash with Pan Am Bank wrappers.

I took interest in the ASCI office when it was revealed that George deMohrenschildt, after visiting Oswald for the last time in April 1963, and joking with him about shooting General Walker, he visited ASCI officers at the Knickerbocker Club in New York. He then went to Washington DC and met with ASCI officers again before leaving for Haiti. These ASCI officers (Col. Sam Kail and Dorothe Matlack) are the same contacts Antonio Veciana knew from the US Embassy in Havana. The Colonel who directed ASCI was also the case officer for Col. Frank Brandstetter, the former head of the Havana Hilton where Castro made his first headquarters when he took over Cuba who was in the same US Army Reserve Intelligence detachment in Dallas headed by Col. Jack Crichton and included the Colonel in the pilot car of the motorcade. http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2010/11/col-frank-m-brandstetter.html

Besides my Three-Time-Hits research technique, that calls attention to ubiquitous subjects of interest, like Collins Radio, the Pan Am Bank and ASCI, I think there are other different approaches that can be used to determine exactly what happened at Dealey Plaza. These different approaches require new and unique perspectives, including the perspective of the Level One sniper, forensic experts and especially any surviving witness who have not been properly questioned. 

As Peter Dale Scott has shown us in proposing the “Negative Template” research technique, if we focus on exactly those records that are deemed destroyed, missing or otherwise no longer in existence, the records being with held and the records they wanted withheld but we now have, and see where that leads us, especially in regards to the CIA, the Secret Service, the National Security Agency and the White House Communications Agency.

How many records do they have that were requested but were designated “Not Believed Relevant”?

How many records are known to have been destroyed?

How many records were known to exist but are missing?

How many records are being legally withheld on grounds of national security?

These are questions that can be answered and numbers that can and should be known.

BK 

Bkjfk3@yahoo.com 

Oswald Got Very, Very Lucky - Gunsmith

Oswald Got Very, Very Lucky 

"Oswald Got Very, Very Lucky" Says the Gunsmith who mounted the rifle scope. 

William Sharp was given this 6.5 mm Carcano when he left his post as gunsmith at Klein's Sporting Goods in 1968. It is reported to be the same type of rifle that killed John F. Kennedy 50 years ago.

http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=226036

Oswald got ‘very, very lucky,’ says Chicago gunsmith who mounted the scope on the rifle

BY ANNA BISARO
NOV 26, 2013

Cinder blocks smashed the windows and death threats for employees were left on the door.

This was what greeted William H. Sharp, now 82, when he went to work in the weeks following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 50 years ago. Sharp worked at Klein’s Sporting Goods and the West Madison Avevue business, now closed, had sold the mail order rifle Lee Harvey Oswald reportedly used to kill the president.

“When they held the rifle up [on the news], I about fell through the floor,” Sharp recalls of the night of Nov. 22, 1963. "An $11 rifle?"

The rifle Oswald had reportedly chosen to use and bought under an alias was a cheap Italian model, Sharp said. The 6.5 mm Carcano, a military-grade rifle, was not expensive to make and therefore, very popular among consumers.

“It was a piece of junk,” Sharp said. Knowing that the warehouse on West Madison in Chicago sold much higher quality guns, Sharp was shocked at Oswald’s choice and at his success. “If you want good optics, you don’t buy them for three dollars [an estimate].”

“The Italians, they are lovers,” Sharp said as he explained that the warehouse also sold better-quality British sniper rifles. "I just couldn't understand it," he said.

Oswald’s choice of weapon aside, there was something else to haunt him. At work the next day, Sharp relayed concerns to his boss about the gun he had seen on television.

“It’s my rifle, I put the scope on it,” Sharp told him. His boss replied, "'No No No, don't say that!'"  Sharp said his boss was afraid of the consequences.  

Later that day, the FBI arrived at the warehouse and confirmed Sharp's suspicions. "There were more FBI agents there than you could shake a stick at," Sharp recalls.

Klein’s Sporting Goods had an extensive and very profitable mail order business, Sharp said. The warehouse in Chicago was used as a mid-point between manufacturers and their consumers countrywide. The mail order catalog was so profitable that when the United States banned interstate firearm sales as part of the Gun Control Act in 1968, the company was sold and Sharp left to find work elsewhere.

Because he enjoyed hunting, Sharp had a lifelong interest in firearms. He had no prior experience as a gunsmith before beginning his apprenticeship at Klein's Sporting Goods at age 28, but took quickly to the job and enjoyed his work.

As the only gunsmith in the warehouse at the time of Kennedy’s assassination, Sharp’s job, at age 32, was to add components, like optics scopes, to rifles if customers requested them. Oswald's rifle had a scope put on it.  

Weeks later, the Warren Commission – the team of investigators researching the death of the president – sent Sharp a copy of the receipt with the alias Oswald had used to purchase the weapon: A. Hidell.  

When the FBI arrived at the warehouse on Nov. 23. Sharp said an agent asked him to demonstrate the use of the Italian rifle in the basement.

"I said, 'But I don't want to shoot that rifle," Sharp remembers. He did a demonstration at their insistence and what Sharp noticed when he shot the rifle still haunts him today.

Sharp used 6.5x52 Carcano ammunition that the warehouse sold together with the Italian rifles. That type of ammunition was not sold many places. As far as Sharp knew at the time, the Chicago warehouse was one of the only places that sold that type of ammunition, he said. If Oswald used ammunition he bought from the warehouse, Sharp demonstrated the use of the rifle for the FBI with the same ammunition Oswald would have used, he said. 

Before the shot rang out in the basement of the warehouse when Sharp pulled the trigger, he heard a click and felt a delay in the response of the firearm. This is called hang fire. Hang fire occurs when there is drag in release of the bullet from a rifle after the shooter pulls the trigger. 

"I don't know what he bought" for ammunition, Sharp said. However, Sharp believes if the rifle and ammunition were the same as those he had shown the FBI, Oswald’s rifle likely would have hang fired as well, he said.  

A delay in the response of the rifle would make shooting at a moving object very difficult because that delay in the release of the bullet would not have been accounted for when the person aimed if the shooter was unaware that the rifle would hang fire. 

Sharp said the FBI agent did not seem to notice the hang fire and later the Warren Commission did not understand the significance of his hang fire hypothesis. “Everything I said to them was Greek,” Sharp said of his phone conversation with the Warren Commission. "They were very intelligent people, but they didn't know anything about firearms."

"I was very skeptical of the hang fire of the ammunition," Sharp said. “If Oswald did do it, I would say he was just very, very lucky.”