Back to Bethesda – JFK’s Last Hurrah?
BK Goes Gonzo – A Report on the September 2014 AARC
Conference – The Warren Report – 50 Years of Significant Disclosures –
Bethesda, Maryland
By Bill Kelly
Where to begin? As David Kaiser quotes the King in Alice
in Wonderland – “Begin at the beginning and go on ‘till you come to the end,
then stop.”
Good advice well taken, but there’s before the
beginning – what Shakespeare called the Prologue – as inscribed on the
granite statute in front of the old National Archives building in Washington
D.C. - "What Is Past Is Prologue," and the title of their magazine – Prologue, which has published some
important articles on the assassination.
The original Prologue from McBeth is a prologue to a
murder, but it doesn’t just mean that you need to understand the past to
understand the present – the prologue provides the deep background, the social
situation, the meaning behind the crime, so you know what inspires the murder
and why things happens.
John F. Kennedy was either the victim of a deranged
lone nut without clear motive or the President was killed by his enemies, a
pre-planned and well executed plot, a conspiracy and a coup d’etat.
But it must be one or the other and can’t be both.
Although no one has ever been brought to justice for
the murder or any of the crimes related to it; what is wrong and can be legally
demonstrated to be false is the Warren Report’s official proclamation that the
President was killed by Lee Harvey Oswald alone, with no clear motive and
Oswald was in turn killed by Jack Ruby alone and unaided.
Since the September 1964 release of that report
there have been many sensational revelations that not only call into question
this basic conclusion of the Warren Report but a new model of the assassination
is emerging; one that takes all of the facts into consideration and makes some
sense of it all.
As G. Kinston Clark said in The Critical Historian - book that got me hooked on history: the distortion produced by bias
is potentially present in any attempt to write history. Sometimes the danger is
obvious and menacing, sometimes it is covert coming from unexpected angles and
in not easily detected forms….Any interpretation which makes use of facts which
can be shown to be false or accepts as certainty true facts which are dubious or
does not take into account facts which are known, are at best, potentially
misleading and possibly grossly and dangerously deceptive….It is the first task
of the historian to review any narrative to find what links are missing
altogether…where what is defective cannot be supplied by further research, it
is an historian’s duty to draw attention to the fact so that men can know where
they stand.…Any historical conception which has not been adjusted to the most
recent results will cease to be satisfactory.”
What do
we now know to be false that we thought was true and what do we know now that
we didn’t used to know in regards to the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy? That is the question posted.
To set the prologue and deep background let me
explain that Jim Lesar, Esq., the president and director of the Assassinations
Archives and Research Center (AARC) decided to host this conference on the 50th
Anniversary of the Warren Report not only to call attention to what significant
disclosures have been made since the report was released but also show how
records are still wrongfully being withheld today and why it’s still important
to do something about it now. [ASSASSINATION ARCHIVES – AND RESEARCH CENTER]
As far as the public’s confidence in their
government; it is generally acknowledged that the late September 1964
publication of the Warren Report sparked the first negative spike in the
statistical graph and the steady and continuing decline in the public
confidence in government has not yet abated and will not until all of the
assassination records are released to the public. [Confidence in Government | JFKCountercoup]
Lesars’ call for this conference led to the hiring
of AARC Executive Director Jerry Policoff
who pretty much put this conference together himself, keeping it academic,
serious and meaningful. He now knows what John Judge of COPA and Debra Conway
and Larry Hancock at Lancer had to do to make their many annual Dallas
conferences successful.
Knowing Jerry from his early articles on the assassination
in the late 70s and his original participation with COPA, he knows me too, so
when I was offered the opportunity to make a presentation at the conference I
considered bringing the ONI files to the forefront, since nobody else was
talking about them, though eventually they were mentioned on the final day by
Joe Backes. [JFKcountercoup: The Railroading of LCDR Terri Pike / OSWALD’S ONI RECORDS REVISITED | COPA]
I decided instead however; to update the state of
the Air Force One radio transmission tapes, a more popular topic that almost
went viral after the October Wecht conference in Pittsburgh. [Passing the Torch | 13th Annual Symposium | Duquesne University]
There have been many JFK Assassination Conferences
over the years, but only a few stand out – the NYU Law School conference in NYC
the late 1970s, Dallas ASK, Chicago 4th Decade, 1992 and 1993 DC
COPAs, the 2008 and 2013 Wecht Institute symposiums, but this 2014 AARC
conference marks the ending of an era.
There was another conference going on in DC the same
weekend and I will get around to that later, [The Warren Report 50 Years Later: A Critical Examination] and
another one is being planned for Dallas in November [JFK Lancer], but here I will focus on just the Sept. 2014 AARC Conference in Bethesda
and why what happened there is important.
As a speaker I wouldn’t be paid but they would
arrange for my transportation, room and banquet dinner, so I was in, and
planned on driving down but then, thanks to GPS
hooked up with independent researcher William Paris who met me early
Thursday afternoon at a Dunkin’ Donuts just off of the highway. I had the
pleasure of driving to DC with William in his Sube wagon full of band
equipment, as he plays guitar in a popular Jersey Shore rock band (Billy Walton Band // HOME). His plan was to stay with his folks who lived nearby and attend the
conference Friday and early Saturday with his father before leaving to catch a
gig at the Jersey Shore on Saturday night. I would have to leave early with him
or find my own way home, which turned into quite an adventure.
On the ride down I had a flashback on the trip I
took to DC for the first COPA meeting with Bob Danello, a police lieutenant who
was one of the early supporters of COPA who had a keen interest in Cuba.
One of the pertinent things Will Paris mentioned was
the fact the apparent Lone-Nut fall-back position seems to be taking shape and
they are now saying that - okay, Oswald did it alone, but he wasn’t just a
deranged loner, he was a deranged loner with secret intelligence connections –
Cuban Communists connections, the original cover-story, and this had to be
hidden at the time or it would have started World War III.
The thing about this scenario is it assumes the fact
that the assassination operation was meant to be discovered as a Cuban
Communist Conspiracy and the cover-up rejected that notion using the excuse
that it would lead to war, just as 9/11 led directly to wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq. So instead of going to war or even finding out who was really behind the
assassination, the deranged lone nut cover up was devised and accepted and
saved the world from nuclear annialation. Or so the story seems to go – or is
apparently going. Well we’ll just have to wait and see.
When I checked into the first class Bethesda Hyatt
Regency hotel I was at first mistaken for another guest – another William Kelly
but Jerry Polifoff, who was located by cell phone at a deli-liquor store fifty
miles away, quickly straightened it out – I was registered under the name Bill
Kelly. So I had a namesake registered at the same hotel that weekend – harking
to my recent blog post on Double-Identities in JFK assassination research. [JFKcountercoup: Double Identities in Historical Research and the HSCA Records of Richard A. Sprague, Esq.].
After checking out the price of a beer at the hotel
bar, I wandered around the corner to find the small and quaint Tommy Joe’s, a
typical collegiate bar in a new and bustling neighborhood of bars, restaurants,
shops and cafes.
“Hey Bill!” came a call from across the street.
Who could possibly know me here? I looked over and
it was Zack, an Ohio school teacher in for the conference who I had met at the
Wecht conference in Pittsburgh the previous October. Zack is the kind of young
historic researchers who will have to step up and take over as the next
generation of researchers, and he seems up to the challenge.
Zach
Zach
Back to the hotel for a 6:30 pm Meet and Greet,
conference registration and casual cocktail party in the Presidential Suite on
the 11th floor, I got on the elevator with a half dozen others who I
didn’t recognize but looking around I had an eerie feeling and flashed to the
elevator scene in Robert Redford’s “Three Days of the Condor,” where the Condor
gets on an elevator with the Jackal assassin and a couple of silly giggling
college kids.
While it was a silent ride, once off the elevator we
introduced ourselves and it turned out the other passengers on the elevator
ride were Marie Fonzi, widow of journalist and former Congressional investigator
Gateton Fonzi, HSCA investigator Dan Hardway, former anti-Castro Cuban
terrorist Antonio Veciana and Ernest Trivitts – a Russian professor, former
close friend of the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and suspected KGB
operative.
What a crew, I thought, my instincts proved correct.
I introduced
myself to Marie Fonzi, told her Gaeton was a hero of mine, and so was she for
carrying on his work, especially in this area.
Just off the elevator I met Buell Wesley Fraser, who
gave Oswald a ride to work on the morning of the assassination, and Fraser’s
wife Betty, a charming Texas couple with an interesting story to tell that
doesn’t jive with the official version of events.
Then Anthony Summers was suddenly there too, just
off a plane from Ireland.
Standing off in a corner former HSCA investigator
Dan Hardway introduced himself to Veciana, noting that while it was the first
time they met, he knew quite a lot about Senior Veciana from having worked
closely with Gaeton Fonzi and Ed Lopez, both of whom did know Veciana
personally. While Veciana can understand and speak English, he is more
comfortable and prefers Spanish and had with him his son, a high school history
teacher, and a translator, the very capable Fernanado Amati.
Lopez, short with crew cut hair, still has a boyish
look about him, one that belied the CIA when he and Hardway finally got their
security background clearance and for nine months and were given access to any
CIA document they requested before being cut off. Some of the documents they read
had to do with Veciana, and now, here they were standing together and shaking
hands for the first time.
I took a photo of Lopez and Veciana together, and
then saw a somewhat frenzied Jim Lesar trying to recruit a few extra hands to
go downstairs to the front door and help unload Jerry Policoff’s car of the
refreshments. Zach and I volunteered, and when Policoff showed up I grabbed a
few cases of beer and some wine and hand delivered it to the thirsty in
Presidential Suite.
Unpacking the refreshments I met Alan Dale and was
later impressed with his knowledge of the case as well as his ease in front of
the microphone. Since he is a DC band leader and used to talking to rooms full
of people he did a fine job as Master of Ceremonies, a role that he will also
play for a mini-JFK Lancer conference in Dallas in November.
Dale’s JFK Lancer radio program, like Black Op
Radio, also includes many important interviews with researchers and writers.
[JFK Lancer - President John F. Kennedy Assassination Latest News and Research]
Looking around the room I decided to check in with
Tony Summers, handed him a warm beer and received a brief report on his latest
subject [Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan | This is the official blog of Anthony Summers & Robbyn Swan, best-selling non-fiction books authors] I was glad to see that he came from across the pond
to participate in this conference since it’s important to get his well reasoned
and respected take on the subject on the record.
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Buell Wesley Frazer, his wife and Jerry Policoff (Kelly Pix)
I also went out of my way to sit down and talk to
Buell Wesley Fraser and his wife Betty. Fraser was an Irving neighbor of Ruth
Paine who worked at the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) with Oswald and
gave him a ride to work on the morning of the assassination. Fraser was at
first considered a suspect in a conspiracy and was violently interrogated by
the Dallas police but refused to change his story, always denied that the
package Oswald took to work that morning was long enough to be a rifle, and
said that Oswald never gave any indication of having the intention of killing
the president that day. Oswald, according to Fraser, was also a loving father
who enjoyed playing with his children and the other children in the neighborhood
liked Oswald, a point Frazer thought important in judging Oswald’s character.
After leaving his job at the TSBD Fraser served in
the military and while quiet and reserved for many years, he began to tell his
story, first to his family and friends and then to school children and the
Sixth Floor Museum as part of their Oral History Program [Living History with Buell Wesley Frazier - YouTube / Collections | The Sixth Floor Museum]. And now
to this conference of primarily serious historical researchers.
Also at the Presidential Suite, Ernest Tibbits had a
similar view of Oswald and characterized him as a warm, kind and gentle human
being with a sense of humor, and not the usual deranged sociopath portrayed by
those who claim he killed the President and a cop.
Everyone has their own perspective, not only of
Oswald, but what they perceive to have happened at Dealey Plaza that day, and
what would happen at the conference that weekend.
“We had not been told the truth about Oswald” –
Warren Commissioner Richard Russell
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