Conspiracy or Coup?

Conspiracy or Coup?

The big debate raging is no longer even considering whether or not there was a conspiracy to kill the President, now the arguments are over what kind of conspiracy it was. Was it a simple conspiracy - to conspire - literally meaning "to breath together," - or was it a full fledged coup d'etat - well planned and executed take over of the government? 

While some of this stems from the second point of the Ten Points of Agreement that people have, will or won't sign on to, mainly because of the disagreements over the language, something that took a few months to hammer out among a dozen or so knowledgeable people. 

I too disagree with some of it - beginning with Number One - which is technically correct in that the HSCA concluded JFK was "probably" killed as a result of a conspiracy, but that was in 1978, as now it is no longer "probably" but more certainly - it was a conspiracy to a legal and moral certainty. 

I also disagree with the name of the organization Truth and Reconciliation as Reconciliation which implies that justice will not be done and we'll figure out how to move on without reprimanding those responsible for murder, tampering with evidence, perjury and obstruction of justice. Holding those issues like a sword over the heads of those responsible is the only hammer we have that can make them come clean with the truth. 

Then the "probability" of No.1  is removed with the addition of Number Two - with the additional observation that the conspiracy was conducted in the "highest levels of government" and the assassination carried out by "elements of the national security state." 

I believe it was Christopher Sharrett in  Jerry Rose's Third/Fourth Decade who first analyzed the conflicting conspiracy theories as to whether President Kennedy was killed as a result of a full-fledged coup d’etat or was the victim of a group of rich oil men, mobsters, anti-Castro Cubans and renegade CIA operatives, as there is a clear distinction between the two.

As Christopher Sharrett wrote, “We should not view the assassination as a coup in the traditional sense -- …..but about resolving a disagreement within the state at a time when financial stakes were extremely high.”

https://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2019/01/christopher-sharrett-on-assassination.html

One particularly contentious aspect of the 2019 Ten Points of Agreement statement is Point #2: “In the four decades since this Congressional finding (that there was probably a conspiracy), a massive amount of evidence compiled by journalists, historians and independent researchers confirms this conclusion. This growing body of evidence strongly indicates that the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy was organized at high levels of the U.S. power structure, and was implemented by top elements of the U.S. national security apparatus.”

Some JFK scholars who believe the Mafia was behind the murder of the president, refused to sign on because of the agreement that “this growing body of evidence strongly indicates that the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy was organized at high levels of the U.S. power structure and was implemented by top elements of the U.S. national security apparatus,” as Vince Salandria and others said almost immediately.

From a distance, I would say that it was an official inside job since they were allowed to get away with murder(s), so it was officially approved after the fact if not before hand.

While the “renegade” scenario as depicted in the films “Executive Action” and Oliver Stone’s “JFK,” has held sway for the past few decades, the “Seven Days in May” scenario and “Coup” theory has been gaining ground and momentum and is becoming generally accepted as new information is processed, especially from the recently released records.

Paul Hoch once said he didn’t see the conspiracy extending to the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staffs, as John Judge professed, while David Kaiser takes issue with the second of the Ten Points of Agreement point that says “the assassination was organized at high levels of the U.S. power structure, and was implemented by top elements of the U.S. national security apparatus.”

Without getting into the details of the crime, one of the signatories to the Ten Points - Vince Salandria said that the murder of Oswald in police custody was enough to convince him that this was a national security state crime, and Christopher Sharrett, like myself, is one of Salandria's proteges. 

I'd like to know how those who planned the assassination could frame Oswald, blame Castro, and neutralize the attorney general without it being organized “at high levels of the U.S. power structure?”  That is beyond me. 

And the CIA paid and trained JMWAVE Cuban commando Pathfinders who we are now coming to know as those who implemented the Dealey Plaza operation, - they were certainly “top-elements of the U.S. national security apparatus,” as we are coming to know it.

If you try to determine the total truth from the ground up – from the streets and buildings of Dallas, you get cut off by “cut-outs” – what the mobsters called “buffers,” – who serve as middle men between those who call the shots and those who take the shots.

Once I was convinced that one man alone didn’t kill President Kennedy, I too became an adherent of the “renegades” scenario, in which the conspirators were independent of the government, but protected by them, and it took quite a while to understand the total coup idea, scenario and concept. 

But instead of starting at the street scene of the crime, we can better understand what happened by assuming a few basic concepts – 1) regardless of the role of the accused assassin; the murder was a covert intelligence operations, 2) Those who successfully conducted the operation controlled a) the scene of the crime; 2) the communications; 3) the media.

In order to understand the Dealey Plaza Operation – you must approach it from the perspective of those who were capable of  controlling 1-2-3, and only then can you begin to understand who planned the operation, who successfully carried it out, and who continues to promote the cover-story that Oswald and Cuban Communists were behind the dastard deed. 

While a superficial study of the assassination could lead one to believe Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible, or LBJ pulled it off, the Cubans and Russians and Mafia were involved, or any one of the multiple conspiracy theories out there, but a more in depth review of the facts and evidence recognizes that Oswald was not the Sixth Floor Sniper and that one of the conspiracy theories is therefore true. But which one?

That the conspiracy was not only a covert intelligence operation, but a full-coup d’etat is a big leap – and must be supported by the available evidence, especially the documented evidence, and I believe it is.

Instead of starting from the bottom up, to determine the existence of a coup you must start at the top and work down – as a coup d’etat must have certain particular aspects under  total control – especially the scene of the crime and the communications, and only a few people had that capability. 

Sharrett: “We should not view the assassination as a coup in the traditional sense --- obviously there was no imposition of martial law, no prolonged period of bloodletting (discounting murdered witnesses and such). Such a blow against the public would have been intolerable in a major Western democracy after European fascism, and the issue in any event was not about suppressing a popular movement...., but about resolving a disagreement within the state at a time when financial stakes were extremely high.”

As William Turner has pointed out, the mechanism to kill Castro was already in place, and all they had to do was switch targets to JFK in Dallas.

Just as Fred Litwin retrogressed from the truth to the cover-story, others went in the opposite direction. Walter Cronkite said (in Columbia Journalism Review, 1981) that, “I wonder with the CIA plot to assassinate Castro, about he possibilities of setting up something of this kind for whatever international purpose. I’m not as happy as I once was with the Warren Report.”

Major Ralph P. Ganis (USAFR), also explains in his book “The Skorzeny Papers” (Skyhorse 2018) how the international assassination mechanism was already in place and under “command and control.”

“Generally used in military terminology, ”Command and control’ is defined as ‘the exercise of authority and direction by a properly designated commander’ in the accomplishment of a mission….could only be initiated as a result of command and control methods. This effectively removes the possibility that the assassination in Dallas was the act of a lone gunman or originated with a petty personal vendetta…..The existence of a covert assassination capability…the clandestine network operated under formal command and control…those with the authority to activate (this) network and assign targets. Certainly, the national command structure of the United States government in 1963 was in such a position.”

As Ganis put it: “The correct way to say it is this - there was an assassination capability inherent and located within one office of the CIA – that was highly compartmented and highly controlled. So, it’s not like the entire CIA was involved. It was literally only one office, and even then, within the office it was probably on a need to know basis….So we may be literally talking about five individuals…..I mean this, this was a high secret, a high state secret, so it would not have been general knowledge, nor would it have been something that a lot of people would know about." 

Ganis: "The capability itself, the Executive Action capability itself, I equate in the book to the use of Atomic Weapons. The only way to launch this capability would have been by Executive Order – by the President, or the National Command authority – that level, - the Secretary of Defense, at that level. It was a presidential, national command authority level capability. Somebody at the CIA couldn’t use it. It would even have been impossible for even rogue use. This was a Command and Control situation. A target would be designated. But in other words, to use this capability would have required Executive Approval. So this small office within the CIA – called Staff D. And the guy who ran it was a man named William K. Harvey, during that time period. He managed the program. He managed that program – much like maintaining a nuclear bomber.  There are US Air Force personal who man the bomber, and there’s people who maintain the bomber, but they can’t launch the bomber. That comes from the President. The same with this capability.To kill a foreign leader, to liquidate a foreign leader is a very, very risky proposition. So that capability was held at the highest levels of our government.”

So the assassination of President Kennedy was carried out by a well planned and executed covert intelligence operation that was under the top command and control of those within the US government, specifically the national security elements, and that’s the way we have to look at it in order to understand it, how it was carried out, who conducted it, and why they did it.

It isn’t the line of executive power – President-Vice President – It is the line of military power – President – Secretary of Defense – Joint Chiefs of Staff - and that’s where the authority for the Dealey Plaza Operation came from.

More from Chris Sharrett: https://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2019/01/christopher-sharrett-on-assassination.html  /   https://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2019/01/an-open-letter-to-assassination.html

Blackballing RFK - How it Was Done

HOW RFK WAS BLACKBALLED BY JFK CONSPIRATORS

RFK and Harry Carlos Williams - Bay of Pigs veteran 

The death of Harris Worfford and the publication of John Newman’s book “Into the Storm” both call attention to one of the historical perplexities of our times – why Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy did not legally pursue those individuals who killed his brother despite knowing exactly who they were.

And the answer, as we come to know it a half-century later, is because RFK was blackballed, blackmailed, stymied, checkmated into inaction by an aspect of the very plan utilized to assassinate the President.

While allowed to know the truth – that one man alone was not responsible for the crime, as he expressed to close associates, and as him and Jackie Kennedy reported to the Russians, RFK was prevented from acting on his knowledge for a number of reasons – the key one being RFK’s authorization of CIA covert actions against Castro, one of which boomeranged, was redirected to JFK in Dallas, and came back to haunt Bobby.

Harris Worfford: : "What surely shocked RFK] was the recognition... that his brother and the government... were entangled with the most evil forces he could imagine....The Mafia leaders were privy to what may have been the worst national secret in the history of the U.S., and the most embarrassing personal secret about John Kennedy.... The potential for blackmail... included Judith Campbell... and any number of CIA and FBI agents;..."

     "During the late spring and early summer of 1962, I would see [JFK and RFK] huddled in the Oval Office or walking in the Rose Garden.  Now I know one of the hardest subjects they had to discuss....[RFK] apparently decided that he could not succumb to the threat of blackmail and would continue his all-out effort against organized crime, including Sam Giancana.... The FBI intensified its surveillance of [Campbell] and Giancana. [Giancana obtained an injunction against FBI harassment, perhaps to warn RFK to lay off.] 'Bobby pushed to get Giancana at any cost,' said William Hundley, who headed the Organized Crime Section at Justice - but who did not know the cost the Attorney General realized he might have to pay."

One aspect of this whole JFK-Campbell-Giancana story that is tied to the JFK assassination drama is the fact the FBI surveillance of Campbell picked up two Texas boys breaking into Campbell’s apartment, the twin sons of a former FBI agent who was then working for a Texas defense contractor, whose wife obtained jobs for Lee Harvey Oswald – including the Leslie Welding and Jaggers/Chiles/Stoval jobs.

But it isn’t the pre-Cuban Missile Crisis shenanigans – its after the dismissal of  William Harvey and the CIA covert operations against Cuba in the summer of 1963 that are most relevant to the assassination of President Kennedy.

As Wofford said it:

     "No one can know how much all this contributed to the change in Robert Kennedy's attitude and approach that manifested itself so dramatically and decisively' a few months later in the Cuban missile crisis [when he was no longer the leading hawk on Cuba].  One of his most trusted friends, with whom I tested this theory that the CIA-Mafia-assassination-and-sex entanglement had a profound effect on [RFK's] thinking, says it fits the facts and may be the key to the puzzle."

     "There was no way of getting to the bottom of the assassination without uncovering the very stories he [RFK] hoped would be hidden forever.  So he closes his eyes and ears to the cover-up that he knew (or soon discovered) Allen Dulles was perpetrating on the Warren Commission, and took no steps to inform the commission of the Cuban and Mafia connections that would have provided the main clues to any conspiracy."

As John Newman details in his book “Into the Storm”  (2019) , the third book in a series on the JFK Assassination, there was a concerted effort BEFORE the assassination to associate RFK with the covert intelligence operations the CIA was directing towards Fidel Castro – covert operations approved by the Special Group (Augmented w/ RFK) of the National Security Council and ostensibly by JFK and RFK.

When one of those operations was redirected to JFK in Dallas, this became a false and treacherous attempt to blame RFK for approving the CIA plots to kill Castro, and ultimately implicating RFK in the murder of his own brother.

While I can’t wait to read Newman’s book later this week, I did hear his presentation in Dallas at the JFK Lancer conference, which focused exclusively on the details of how most of the allegations of RFK’s approval of CIA plots to kill Castro originated from one man – Samuel Halpern, Harvey’s former assistant and one of the primary snakes in the Cuban Task Force W – JMWAVE rabbit’s hole.

To understand the significance of these affairs in the altering and outcome of events, it is necessary to recognize a few basic facts.

For starters, the conspiracy wasn’t a plot – it wasn’t just a bunch of oil barons, mobsters and renegade CIA operatives sitting around smoking and drinking and figuring out how they were going to whack the President, as portrayed in the films Executive Action and Oliver Stone’s JFK.

It was a plan – a very distinct plan – a contingency plan to kill Fidel Castro that was “disapproved by higher authority” and redirected to JFK in Dallas.

We know this from the conclusions reached by former FBI agent William Turner, former CIA official David Atlee Phillips and James Jesus Angleton, mobster John Rosselli, security expert Gene Wheaton, former USMC and CIA trainer Carl Jenkins, and Cubans Chi Chi Quintero and Felix Rodriguez.

All of them point directly to a very small CIA JMWAVE unit – based in Florida – that concentrated its covert operations against Castro, but redirected one specific plan to kill Castro to kill JFK in Dallas.

Of all the CIA plans to kill Castro  using poison pills, tainted diving suit, exploding cigars, bazooka and poison pen, - forget them all – and focus strictly on those plans that utilized a sniper firing a high powered rifle to kill Castro while he rode in an  open jeep – just as JFK was killed at Dealey Plaza.

Of such plans that we know about – the CIA plan code named Pathfinder fits that very specific bill.

Pathfinder was a very detailed tactical plan to kill Fidel Castro with a high powered rifle as he rode past in an open jeep – an operational plan the files of which were kept, according to CIA NPIC technicians – in the NPIC section of the JMWAVE station instead of the Operational Files where they belonged.

That the redirection of the Pathfinder plan to kill JFK in Dallas was not the result of a renegade group within the CIA – but was an operation officially approved at the highest levels as exemplified by the fact that the overall strategic plan behind the assassination was an adaption of the Valkyrie plan to kill Hitler, that was being considered for use against Castro but redirected to JFK in Dallas. And the fact that they got away with it. If it wasn't officially approved at the highest levels, the cover-up was that allowed the killers to get away scott free. 

The CIA’s “detailed study” of the Valkyrie plan to kill Hitler for use against Castro, was the strategic plan that included the Pathfinder sniper tactics instead of a bomb, as there are five specific aspects of the July 20, 1944 plan to kill Hitler that were utilized in the Dealey Plaza operation, five fingerprints that fits like five fingers in a glove in the planning behind the murder of the president.

The five aspects of the Valkyrie plan are – 1) The utilization of standard cover operational procedures and techniques; 2) getting the victim to approve the plan; 3) using the Home Guard/National Guard to carry out the operation; 4) controlling the media so “only the conspiracy speaks”; 5) blaming the crime on a communist. The only part of the Valkyrie plan that wasn’t utilized in Dallas was the mechanism of death –  using a high powered rifle instead of a bomb.

Of the five similar aspects, the subject of this essay only concerns #2) – getting the victim to approve the plan, - the key to how RFK was blackmailed by the conspirators, whose identity remains unknown, but whom we can surmise as being major players in this story.

In 1944, Colonel von Stauffenberg wrote the Valkyrie Plan for the control of major government buildings and media outlets during the sudden outbreak of a national emergency – Stauffenberg gave the example of a revolt of the millions of slave labors in Germany. Hitler not only approved the plan, he authorized Stauffenberg to join him and his generals in the routine staff meetings, during which Stauffenberg left a bomb that failed to kill Hitler.

In the case of JFK, as president he refused to approve any plan or operation to kill anyone, as he told all of his close advisors and a half-dozen newsmen, and the Pathfinder plan to shoot Castro was “disapproved by higher authority,” with the higher authority clearly being JFK and RFK.

But both JFK, RFK and the NSC Special Group did discuss and approve some ten violent covert operations against Cuba a month – some of which we know the results of from the news reports they generated –( ie. The Rex attack in NYT – Nov. 1, 1963 p. 1) and the articles in both the communist publications seen with the rifle and pistol in the  back yard photographs – the Trotskyite publication The Militant, and the official Communist Party paper – both featured articles on the commando terrorists raids against Cuban economic targets.

These post Missile Crisis JMAVE covert operations approved by the NSC Special Group (Augmented by RFK) are the ones we are interested in. Forget the rest for the moment.

In 1962-63 – in the post Bay of Pigs and pre-Cuban Missile Crisis atmosphere, RFK revived some of the Mongoose covert operations against Castro, including those being operated by the CIA out of its JMWAVE station at the University of Miami in Florida.

After RFK fired William Harvey as head of Task Force W (The Cuban Desk at CIA HQ), because he sent in the Pathfinders commandos during the Cuban Missile Crisis, - who RFK recalled. Harvey was replaced by Desmond FitzGerald, falsely said to be a cousin of the Kennedys, but who was very close to them.

FitzGerald and RFK reportedly played tennis together, but FitzGerald falsely told Dr. Rolando Cubella (AMLASH) that he personally represented RFK in his meetings to encourage Cubella to kill Castro.

From the records recently released under the JFK Act we know that the CIA Cuban desk under FitzGerald requested an average of twenty covert operations against Cuba a month – and the Special Group of the NSC approved an average of ten – half of those requested.

Of those rejected, we know that the Pathfinder operation to kill Castro with a high powered rifle as he rode in an open jeep – was “disapproved by higher authority,” although it was a very detailed plan that was months in the practice phase. Another psychological warfare plan that was originally approved, then recalled and cancelled, was a leafleting plan to drop leaflets over Cuba to encourage revolt. This plan was originally approved, but after it was approved JFK talked to Edward R. Morrow, his appointed director of the US Information Agency, who convinced the President against the leafleting plan, so it too was “disapproved by higher authority.”

During the summer of  1963 other, violent terrorist attacks against Cuban economic targets were approved  by the Special Group, the NSC and RFK and JFK – including the blowing up of oil and sugar refineries, dock facilities and similar specific economic targets.These came under the overall Program Alfa, which encompassed all of the covert operations against Cuba, each of which was given a specific code name too. 

These attacks were to be launched by commandos in small motor boats who were trained by US Ranger Captains Bradley Ayers, Edward Roderick, USMC Captain Carl Jenkins and “legendary” CIA explosives expert and trainer John “I.F.” Harper. Both Jenkins and Harper are still alive. 

Ayers, who did not sign a CIA secrecy agreement and wrote two books on the subject (“The War that Never Was” and “The Zenith Secret.”), recalls his work at the  CIA JMWAVE base in the summer of 1963, when he had the occasion to meet Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy on two occasions, that he recalls in detail in his books. While William Harvey himself, as attorney for Ayers' first publisher Boobs-Merrell, edited the first book, and excised much of the most significant aspects, Ayers' recalls meeting RFK in Florida in his second book, which was not vetted by the CIA. 

The first occasion Ayers met RFK was at a CIA safe house overlooking Biscayne Bay, where the top brass, suit and tie CIA officials and case officers conjugated for a cocktail party mixer, that included Desmond FitzGerald, head of the Cuban Desk – Task Force W., Ted Shackley, the chief of JMWAVE station, Colonel Bond, William Harvey, James O’Connell, E. Howard Hunt, Manuel Artime, Richard Helms, Army Ranger Captain Ayers, case officers like Porter Goss, and RFK himself.

As Ayers described it in “The Zenith Secret”:  “It wasn’t every day that one met the attorney general of the United States. It was rumored that Robert Kennedy had great influence in the administration and I’d heard he chaired the Special Group. He was appointed by the President to keep an eye on the CIA. His presence tonight enforced my belief that the  Cuban situation and Castro were prime concerns to the White House. I believed that President Kennedy’s promise to the Bay of Pigs survivors was more than just an effort to pacify the exiles. There was something special going on. I was thrilled to have some small part of it.”

Then Ayers had the opportunity to meet RFK again, this time at a remote JMWAVE commando training base in the Waloos Glades Hunting Camp, in the middle of the Everglades swamp. As Ayers describes it:

When he arrived, Ayers says he saw some helicopters. “…One was a military Bell H-13 with the identification numbers taped over, and the other was a civilian chopper with the name of a West Palm Beach air service on the tail rotor boom…”

“…Soon the door to the Quonsets swung open and four men emerged….I caught my breath at the appearance of the second man. It was the attorney general Robert Kennedy. The four men talked in low voices for a few minutes, and then the attorney general came over and shook hands with each of us, wishing us good luck and God’s speed on our mission.”

“Hell, I didn’t even know what my mission was. His white teeth flashed and sparkled, and I felt a strange sense of strength and resolve when he grasped my hand. Then he and one of the Cubans went to the civilian helicopter, and in minutes it took off. Now I understood the need for extra-secrecy. If the president felt strongly enough to send his brother, something very big was being planned.”

A PLAN not a plot.

As Ayers continues, “When the helicopter was gone, the deputy chief of station came over….(who told him),… ‘The reason we’ve got you here and the reason for all the secrecy is that we just got the green light from upstairs to go ahead on some missions we’ve been planning for some time….You’ll be happy to know that the Special Group has finally given us permission to use two-man submarines to strike Castro’s ships in the harbors. Some of your UDT people will be involve in that. And next week Rip’s boys are going to Eglin for parachute training, so an airborne commando raid may not be far off. But right now we’ve got a go-ahead to hit one of the major oil refineries from on the island. All we’ve got to do is get a commando force in shape to do the job….”

One of the top officials who knew all about these affairs was Samuel Halpern who served as executive assistant to William Harvey and after RFK fired Harvey, Halpern worked alongside of his replacement – Desmond FitzGerald, the CIA officer who briefed the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the adaption of the Valkyrie plot to kill Hitler to be used against Castro. 

Just as almost all of the immediate post-assassination intelligence sources who tried to blame Castro for the assassination were traced back to the assets of David Atlee Phillips, many if not most of the fake stories that implicate JFK and RFK in the CIA assassination plots against Castro can be traced directly to one man - Sam Halpern, as John Newman details in his new book, "Into the Storm." 

While unlike Bradley Ayers and the JMWAVE Cuban commandos, Samuel Halpern never met Robert F. Kennedy, was never in the same room with him. Yet, as John Newman details in his new book, Halpern made it a post- government career of falsely blaming RFK for backing the plots to kill Castro, and after JFK was killed, blamed Castro for killing him.

When Robert F. Kennedy, at his Hickory Hill home in Mclean, Va., received the phone call from the director of the CIA informing him of the assassination, RFK immediately thought of the Cubans – and asked CIA director McCone if his people were involved, and then called his Cuban friend – Harry Williams – and accused the Cubans of being involved. Bobby’s first thought was back to those in the CIA – the officers he met at the JMWAVE safe house on Biscayne Bay, and the Cubans – the Cuban commandos he met with at the Waloos Glades Hunting Camp.

At the very moment of the assassination, while Desmond FitzGerald’s emissary in Paris was delivering a poison pen to Dr. Rolando Cubella to kill Castro, FitzGerald himself was having lunch at an exclusive private and historic Georgetown Club with his assistant Samuel Halpern. According to Halpern, when informed of the assassination they left immediately, and on the way out, FitzGerald wondered aloud if any of his Cubans were involved.

And now we are just beginning to wonder the same thing.

But the names of the CIA trained Cuban commandos who carried out the operation are less important than the lines of authority, who approved and paid for Pathfinder - the operation that led to the death of President Kennedy. The one RFK was asked to approve, the one whose planners and officers he met at the Biscayne Bay safe house and was carried out by those CIA trained Cuban commandos he met at Waloos Glades.

So Bobby Kennedy was blackmailed from honestly responding to his brother’s murder because he approved the covert intelligence operations against Cuba that were turned against JFK in Dallas, and led directly to his death. 

BK Notes: I will add excerpts from John Newman's new book "Into the Storm," which deals with Samuel Halpern in detail, ASAP.

Two Un-disputable Facts

D.C. FOIA Attorney Jim Lesar writes: 

While I support the tremendous burst of energy and activity supporting this campaign, I feel that any future extension of it should be refined in a way to make the goals more focused, less subject to dispute, and more readily comprehensible to the general public.  Essentially, instead of ten points, which tend to be argumentative, a new statement would stress two undisputed points:  

(1) The JFK Act did not come anywhere close to meeting its goal of full disclosure of all JFK Assassination-related records by October 26, 2017.  The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), accomplished a great deal, but we now know it fell far short in many respects.  Oversight is the hallmark of democracy.  There has been no oversight of the accomplishments, inadequacies and failures of the ARRB since shortly after it was formed.  

(2) The last official investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy conducted by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was subverted by the CIA.  The HSCA sought to investigate the pre-assassination links between Oswald and the DRE, a CIA-funded Cuban exile organization.  The HSCA wanted to know who had been DRE's case officer.  As you know, the CIA brought that case officer, George Joannides, out of retirement to act as liaison with the HSCA.  Joannides then undermined the integrity of the congressional investigation by concealing the fact that he was the DRE's case officer at the time of its Oswald-related activities.  

These facts, admitted to under oath in a FOIA lawsuit brought by Jefferson Morley, lay a bedrock basis for demanding that Congress investigate why the CIA employed Joannides in an undercover capacity to derail a congressional probe into the assassination of a president, particularly in light of the fact that the CIA was itself a potential target of the investigation.

Making the above uncontested points in this way will, I think, shift the burden away from researchers and onto the backs of government officials and the corporate media where it belongs.

Finally, I think the chances of getting serious congressional attention can be maximized if we link up the assassinations of the 1960s with some current ones, particularly the Jamal Khashoggi and James “Whitey” Bolger assassinations. The Khashoggi assassination already is the subject of rare bi-partisan agreement, although it remains unclear where in light of entanglements with Saudi Arabia that will go.  And I am well aware that the traditional response to the Bolger assassination is that he got what he deserved.  ]

However, I believe that in the fairly near future new facts will emerge which may cause the American people to conclude that now is the time we must come to grips with effects of having become a global assassination empire.

I thank you and David Talbot and all the others who have participated in an extraordinary effort to confront congress and other governmental bodies with the need to hold oversight investigations into these matters.

In closing, it should be noted that although several members of the AARC's Board of Directors and others associated closely with it are signatories, the AARC itself has not take a position and in this email I am not speaking for the AARC.

Best regards, Jim Lesar

Kennedy and King Family Members Call for Congress to Reopen Assassination Probes

Kennedy and King Family Members and Advisors Call for Congress to Reopen Assassination Probes

On the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a group of over 60 prominent American citizens is calling upon Congress to reopen the investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Signers of the joint statement include Isaac Newton Farris Jr., nephew of Reverend King and past president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Reverend James M. Lawson Jr., a close collaborator of Reverend King; and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, children of the late senator.

Other signatories include G. Robert Blakey, the chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which determined in 1979 that President Kennedy was the victim of a probable conspiracy; Dr. Robert McClelland, one of the surgeons at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas who tried to save President Kennedy’s life and saw clear evidence he had been struck by bullets from the front and the rear; Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower who served as a national security advisor to the Kennedy White House; Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and a leading global authority on human rights; Hollywood artists Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner and Oliver Stone; political satirist Mort Sahl; and musician David Crosby.

The declaration is also signed by numerous historians, journalists, lawyers and other experts on the four major assassinations.

The joint statement calls for Congress to establish firm oversight on the releaseof all government documents related to the Kennedy presidency and assassination, as mandated by the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992. This public transparency law has been routinely defied by the CIA and other federal agencies. The Trump White House has allowed the CIA to continue its defiance of the law, even though the JFK Records Act called for the full release of relevant documents in 2017.

The group statement also calls for a public inquest into “the four major assassinations of the 1960s that together had a disastrous impact on the course of American history.” This tribunal -- which would hear testimony from living witnesses, legal experts, investigative journalists, historians and family members of the victims -- would be modeled on the Truth and Reconciliation hearings held in South Africa after the fall of apartheid. This American Truth and Reconciliation process is intended to encourage Congress or the Justice Department to reopen investigations into all four organized acts of political violence.

Signers of the joint statement, who call themselves the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, are also seeking to reopen the Robert F. Kennedy assassination case, stating that Sirhan Sirhan’s conviction was based on “a mockery of a trial.” The forensic evidence alone, observes the statement, demonstrates that Sirhan did not fire the fatal shot that killed Senator Kennedy -- a conclusion reached by, among others, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Los Angeles County Coroner who performed the official autopsy on RFK.

The joint statement -- which was co-written by Adam Walinsky, a speechwriter and top aide of Senator Kennedy -- declares that these “four major political murders traumatized American life in the 1960s and cast a shadow over the country for decades thereafter. John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were each in his own unique way attempting to turn the United States away from war toward disarmament and peace, away from domestic violence and division toward civil amity and justice. Their killings were together a savage, concerted assault on American democracy and the tragic consequences of these assassinations still haunt our nation.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Committee views its joint statement as the opening of a long campaign aimed at shining a light on dark national secrets. As the public transparency campaign proceeds, citizens across the country will be encouraged to add their names to the petition. The national effort seeks to confront the forces behind America’s democratic decline, a reign of secretive power that long precedes the recent rise of authoritarianism. “The organized killing of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK was a mortal attack on our democracy,” said historian James Douglass, author of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. “We've been walking in the valley of the dead ever since. Our campaign is all about recovering the truth embodied in the movement they led. Yes, the transforming, reconciling power of truth will indeed set us free."

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The Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s Calls for Action:

 1.    We call upon Congress to establish continuing oversight on the release of government documents related to the presidency and assassination of President John F. Kennedy, to ensure public transparency as mandated by the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform should hold hearings on the Trump administration's failure to enforce the JFK Records Act.

2.    We call for a major public inquest on the four major assassinations of the 1960s that together had a disastrous impact on the course of American history: the murders of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. This public tribunal, shining a light on this dark chapter of our history, will be modeled on the Truth and Reconciliation process in post-apartheid South Africa. The inquest -- which will hear testimony from living witnesses, legal experts, investigative journalists, historians and family members of the victims -- is intended to show the need for Congress or the Justice Department to reopen investigations into all four assassinations.

3.    On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we call for a full investigation of Reverend King’s assassination. The conviction of James Earl Ray for the crime has steadily lost credibility over the years, with a 1999 civil trial brought by Reverend King’s family placing blame on government agencies and organized crime elements. Following the verdict, Coretta Scott King, the slain leader’s widow, stated: “There is abundant evidence of a major, high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband.” The jury in the Memphis trial determined that various federal, state and local agencies “were deeply involved in the assassination … Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.” Reverend King’s assassination was the culmination of years of mounting surveillance and harassment directed at the human rights leader by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and other agencies.

4.       We call for a full investigation of the Robert F. Kennedy assassination case, the prosecution of which was a mockery of a trial that has been demolished by numerous eyewitnesses, investigators and experts -- including former Los Angeles County Coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who performed the official autopsy on Senator Kennedy. The forensic evidence alone establishes that the shots fired by Sirhan Sirhan from in front of Senator Kennedy did not kill him; the fatal shot that struck RFK in the head was fired at point–blank range from the rear. Consequently, the case should be reopened for a new comprehensive investigation while there are still living witnesses -- as there are in all four assassination cases.

A Joint Statement on Ten Points of Agreement on Political Assassinations of the Sixties

A Joint Statement on the Kennedy, King and Malcolm X Assassinations and Ongoing Cover-ups:

1-      As the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979, President John F. Kennedy was probably killed as the result of a conspiracy.

2-      In the four decades since this Congressional finding, a massive amount of evidence compiled by journalists, historians and independent researchers confirms this conclusion. This growing body of evidence strongly indicates that the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy was organized at high levels of the U.S. power structure, and was implemented by top elements of the U.S. national security apparatus using, among others, figures in the criminal underworld to help carry out the crime and cover-up.

3-      This stunning conclusion was also reached by the president’s own brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who himself was assassinated in 1968 while running for president -- after telling close aides that he intended to reopen the investigation into his brother’s murder if he won the election.

4-      President Kennedy’s administration was badly fractured over his efforts to end the Cold War, including his back-channel peace feelers to the Soviet Union and Cuba and his plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam after the 1964 presidential election.

5-      President Kennedy has long been portrayed as a Cold War hawk, but this grossly inaccurate view has been strongly challenged over the years by revisionist historians and researchers, who have demonstrated that Kennedy was frequently at odds with his own generals and espionage officials. This revisionist interpretation of the Kennedy presidency is now widely embraced, even by mainstream Kennedy biographers.

6-      The official investigation into the JFK assassination immediately fell under the control of U.S. security agencies, ensuring a cover-up. The Warren Commission was dominated by former CIA director Allen Dulles and other officials with strong ties to the CIA and FBI.

7-      The corporate media, with its own myriad connections to the national security establishment, aided the cover-up with its rush to embrace the Warren Report and to scorn any journalists or researchers who raised questions about the official story.

8-      Despite the massive cover-up of the JFK assassination, polls have consistently shown that a majority of the American people believes Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy -- leading to the deep erosion of confidence in the U.S. government and media.

9-      The CIA continues to obstruct evidence about the JFK assassination, routinely blocking legitimate Freedom of Information requests and defying the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992, preventing the release of thousands of government documents as required by the law.

10-  The JFK assassination was just one of four major political murders that traumatized American life in the 1960s and have cast a shadow over the country for decades thereafter. John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were each in his own unique way attempting to turn the United States away from war toward disarmament and peace, away from domestic violence and division toward civil amity and justice. Their killings were together a savage, concerted assault on American democracy and the tragic consequences of these assassinations still haunt our nation.

Dr. Gary Aguilar

Daniel Alcorn

Russ Baker

Alec Baldwin

G. Robert Blakey

Denise Faura Bohdan

Abraham Bolden

Rex Bradford

Douglas Caddy

Rodnell Collins

Debra Conway

David Crosby

Edward Curtin

Dr. Donald T. Curtis

Alan Dale

James DiEugenio

James Douglass

Laurie Dusek

Daniel Ellsberg

Karl Evanzz

Richard Falk

Isaac Newton Farris Jr.

Marie Fonzi

Libby Handros

Dan Hardway

Jacob Hornberger

Douglas Horne

Gayle Nix Jackson

Stephen Jaffe

James Jenkins

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Bill Kelly

Andrew Kreig

John Kirby

Rev. James M. Lawson Jr.

Jim Lesar

Edwin Lopez

David Mantik

Dr. Robert N. McClelland

Mark Crispin Miller

Jefferson Morley

John Newman

Len Osanic

Lisa Pease

William F. Pepper

Jerry Policoff

Rob Reiner

Abby Rockefeller

Dick Russell

Mort Sahl

Vincent Salandria

Martin Sheen

Lawrence P. Schnapf

E. Martin Schotz

Paul Schrade

Peter Dale Scott

John Simkin

Bill Simpich

Oliver Stone

Dan Storper

David Talbot

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend

Adam Walinsky

Benjamin Wecht

Dr. Cyril H. Wecht

Betty Windsor

TO SIGN YOUR NAME TO THIS LIST EMAIL: 

Addmyname@mail.com 

Biographies:

Gary L. Aguilar, MD, is a private practicing ophthalmologist in San Francisco, a clinical professor of ophthalmology at the University of California-San Francisco, and the vice chief of staff at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. One of the few physicians outside the federal government who has ever been allowed to review President Kennedy's still-restricted autopsy photographs and X-rays, Aguilar has delivered lectures on JFK's autopsy evidence before numerous medical and legal conferences. With coauthor Cyril Wecht, MD, JD, Aguilar has published articles on the Kennedy case in journals such as The American Scholar and the Journal of the American Medical Association, and has contributed chapters to several anthologies exploring the JFK assassination. Dr. Aguilar’s writings on various aspects of the Kennedy case are available online, most notably a multipart essay that examines the five investigations of Kennedy's medical and autopsy evidence that have been conducted by the U.S. government. https://history-matters.com/essays/jfkmed/How5Investigations/How5InvestigationsGotItWrong_5.htm

Daniel Alcorn was a law partner of the late Bud Fensterwald, co-founder of the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC). He has served on the AARC board since 1992, and was a founding director of the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) on behalf of AARC, and served on COPA's board until the end of the Assassination Records Review Board process in 1998. Alcorn has represented requesters in precedent-setting Freedom of Information Act cases in the trial and appellate courts in Washington, D.C., including cases related to the JFK assassination, the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, allegations of misconduct in the FBI crime laboratory, death squad activity in Central America, intelligence abuses, and PTSD, among other issues.

Russ Baker is the founder, editor-in-chief and CEO of WhoWhatWhy, a nonprofit news organization devoted to covering stories and angles ignored by the media. WhoWhatWhy has a special team poring over thousands of declassified JFK records. Baker is the author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years.

Alec Baldwin has appeared in numerous productions onstage, in films and on television. He has received a Tony nomination (A Streetcar Named Desire, 1992), an Oscar nomination (The Cooler, 2004) and has won three Emmy awards, three Golden Globes and seven consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards as Best Actor in a Comedy Series for his role on NBC-TV's 30 Rock. His films include The Hunt for Red October, Glengarry Glen Ross, Malice, Blue Jasmine, and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. He has authored three books: A Promise to Ourselves; his memoir, Nevertheless; and You Can’t Spell America Without Me, with Kurt Andersen. He serves on numerous boards related to the arts, the environment and progressive politics.

G. Robert Blakey is retired as the William J. & Dorothy K. O'Neill Professor of Law (now emeritus) at the Notre Dame Law School, where he taught criminal law, the law of terrorism, and jurisprudence. He also was a professor of law and the director of the Cornell Institute on Organized Crime, where he taught criminal law in the law school. Blakey also served as a special attorney in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the United States Department of Justice. From 1977 to 1979, he was the chief counsel and staff director, United States House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Denise Faura Bohdan is a lawyer, film producer and the daughter of Fernando Faura, author of The Polka Dot File on the Robert F. Kennedy Killing: The Paris Peace Talks Connection, chronicling the search for an alleged conspirator in the assassination of RFK. Faura’s investigation in 1968 is regarded by most researchers as one of the most important, linking Sirhan Sirhan to co-conspirators. Ms. Bohdan is producing a film on his investigation to shine more light on the assassination and conspiracy. Her previous film work focuses on human rights abuses, freedom of speech and pursuit of justice.

Abraham Bolden was the first African-American assigned to the White House Secret Service Detail, at President Kennedy's personal request. When he later tried to testify to the Warren Commission about rampant misconduct in the Secret Service, he was punished for his courage by a trumped-up bribery charge that resulted in his imprisonment for over three years. He is the author of a 2008 memoir, The Echo From Dealey Plaza.

Rex Bradford pioneered the digital dissemination of declassified JFK assassination documents, over 1.5 million pages of which are available at www.maryferrell.org. He is president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation.

Douglas Caddy is a Houston-based attorney and the author of six books, most recently his memoir Being There: Eyewitness To History. In 1959, he published an article in the National Review that began a long friendship with founding publisher William F. Buckley as they worked together to help found what’s now known as the modern conservative movement. In 1960, Caddy was elected as the founding national director of Young Americans For Freedom. His conservative activism made him an early campaigner for 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater. Caddy then worked in Washington, DC, as an attorney involved in many high-profile cases. In one, he became the original defense attorney for the Watergate burglars. His legal work has included cutting-edge research and whistle-blowing on the JFK assassination, Koreagate, CIA influences and other justice-related issues.

Rodnell Collins, Malcolm X’s first cousin, is the founder of the Malcolm X, Ella L. Little Collins Family Foundation and curator of the childhood home that he and Malcolm shared in Duxbury, Massachusetts. Now a national historic landmark, Collins is working on turning it into a museum. Collins’s memoir, Seventh Child, tells Malcolm’s story from a family member’s point of view. Most recently Collins participated in the 50th anniversary commemoration of the famous Oxford Union debate, “The Night Malcolm Spoke Out.”

Debra Conway is the president of JFK Lancer Productions and Publications, a historical research company specializing in the administration and assassination of President John F. Kennedy. 

David Crosby is a musician and songwriter. He has been speaking out about the JFK assassination since the 1960s, including onstage with the Byrds at the legendary Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

Edward Curtin is a sociologist who teaches at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He is a widely published essayist who has written extensively about the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. Donald T. Curtis is a retired oral and maxillofacial surgeon who participated in the resuscitation attempt of President Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.

Alan Dale is executive director of the Assassination Archives and Research Center. He is the host of JFKConversations.com.

James DiEugenio is the author of The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, and editor of Kennedysandking.com.

James Douglass is the author of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters.

Laurie Dusek has served as legal counsel to Sirhan Sirhan in a pro bono capacity for the last 11 years.

Daniel Ellsberg was a national security consultant to the Kennedy White House. Later he leaked the Pentagon Papers. A senior fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, he is the author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner and a memoir, Secrets, which became the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America. He is also a key figure in Steven Spielberg's film about the Pentagon Papers, The Post.

Karl Evanzz is the author of six books, including two highly acclaimed studies of the Nation of Islam: The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X (1992) and The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad (1999). A literary and film consultant, Evanzz worked on Malcolm X: Make It Plain (Blackside Productions, 1994) and Ali (2001), starring Will Smith. Evanzz worked at the Washington Post for 32 years in its news department before retiring in 2008.

Richard Falk is professor of international law, emeritus, at Princeton University and author of Power Shift: On the New Global Order (2016).

Isaac Newton Farris Jr. is the nephew of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He has served as the president and CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and in 2011 was elected president and CEO of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization founded by Dr. King. Farris currently serves as senior fellow of the King Center where he not only continues to write, research and lecture on the life, philosophy, and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., but also on how Kingian nonviolence should guide American society as we confront the social, religious, economic and war issues of America and of the world today.

Marie Fonzi is the widow of Gaeton Fonzi, a top investigator on both the Senate and House Committees that probed the death of President Kennedy in the 1970s. Marie wrote the preface and afterword of the 2016 paperback edition of The Last Investigation, Fonzi's inside story of this fateful Congressional drama.

Libby Handros is an award-winning TV producer and documentary filmmaker. Since beginning her career on the PBS team that produced Inside Story, the first regularly scheduled examination of the American press ever to appear on television, she has gone on to develop and produce over one hundred hours of prime-time programming on a wide array of subjects. Along with director John Kirby, Handros produced the critically acclaimed documentary feature The American Ruling Class and Cape Spin: An American Power Struggle, among other films. Currently she is Kirby’s producing partner on Four Died Trying, a multi-part series on the political murders of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, which changed the course of history.

Dan Hardway, a graduate of Cornell Law School, has practiced law for the past 37 years. His firm, based in Cowen, West Virginia, focuses on representing nonprofit organizations, especially Christian churches and ministries, and Freedom of Information Act litigants. From 1977 to 1978, Hardway worked as a researcher for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and assisted Ed Lopez in writing the section of the committee report titled, “Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City.”

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation, a libertarian nonprofit educational foundation, and the author of The Kennedy Autopsy.

Douglas Horne served for three years on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), from 1995-1998. He was hired by the ARRB as a senior analyst on the Military Records Team, and was later promoted to the position of chief analyst for Military Records; while on the ARRB staff, Mr. Horne ensured the release of historical records on Cuba and Vietnam policy; played a key role in the sworn depositions of ten JFK autopsy witnesses; and became the primary ARRB point-of-contact for all matters related to the Zapruder film. He is the author of the five-volume work Inside the Assassination Records Review Board (2009), and the e-book JFK's War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated (2014).

Gayle Nix Jackson is the granddaughter of Orville Nix, the man who took the film of the JFK assassination opposite from Abraham Zapruder. Following three decades of research on the background of the government's loss of this film, she has written two books, Orville Nix: The Missing JFK Assassination Film and Pieces of the Puzzle: An Anthology.  

Stephen Jaffe was an investigator and photo-analyst for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison 1967-68, testified before the Rockefeller Commission, was an associate producer/technical advisor for the film Executive Action, associate producer/technical adviser for documentaries The Garrison Tapes and the sequel by filmmaker John Barbour, and is the producer of the new documentary, A Rush to Judgment: Conspiracy in America, with Mark Lane. Jaffe was an investigator for the Lane Law Firm for the past 50 years and has written numerous articles on the assassination of President Kennedy.

James Jenkins was a medical corpsman assigned to work with pathologists on the autopsy of President Kennedy at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. He reports his eyewitness account in his book At the Cold Shoulder of History, co-written with William Matson Law.

William Klaber was the producer of The RFK Tapes, a 1993 public radio documentary on the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy. In 1997 he co-authored, with Philip Melanson, the book Shadow Play, which examined the evidence of police misconduct in the RFK murder investigation, evidence found in the LAPD’s own files that was finally made public in 1988.

Bill Kelly is a co-founder of the Committee for an Open Archives and the Coalition on Political Assassinations. He was the recipient of the 2013 Mary Ferrell Award for his work on the Air Force One radio transmission tapes. He is currently the coordinator of the research committee for Citizens Against Political Assassinations. His blog is http://JFKCountercoup.blogspot.com

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the author of American Values: Lessons I Learned From My Family.

John Kirby made his directorial debut with the Tribeca Festival-award-winning film The American Ruling Class, made for the BBC and the Sundance Channel. He is currently directing and editing Four Died Trying, a multi-part documentary series on the extraordinary lives and calamitous deaths of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy. 

Andrew Kreig is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit executive, attorney, author and commentator who edits the non-partisan Justice Integrity Project, which examines the performance of legal institutions. Its work includes publication of a multi-part “Readers Guide to the JFK Assassination” that highlights the topic’s leading books, films, archives, events and news developments.

The Reverend James M. Lawson Jr. was a long-time collaborator with Martin Luther King Jr. and, after the Reverend King, the major teacher in the non-violent struggles for desegregation and justice. Rep. John Lewis called him “the architect of the non-violent movement.”

Jim Lesar is president of the Assassination Archives and Research Center, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to disclose information on political assassinations to the public. During the past 49 years Lesar has litigated more than 200 Freedom of Information Act cases, resulting in the release of several hundred thousand pages of documents prior to the enactment of the JFK Records Act. He then testified before several House and Senate committees in favor of greatly expanded release of withheld government records pertaining to the assassination of President Kennedy. After the passage of the JFK Act, Lesar testified several times before the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) regarding the definition and scope of the term “JFK-assassinated-related” records. In 2006, in a suit in which he represented journalist and author Jefferson Morley, he won a significant precedent that subjected the CIA’s ultra-secret operational files to judicial review. This ultimately resulted in the disclosure of significant operational records, and in the process the CIA admitted under oath that it had hired a case officer linked to Lee Harvey Oswald’s pre-assassination activities to undermine the investigation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Edwin Lopez is an attorney practicing in New York. He has served as the general counsel at the Rochester City School District and is currently on the faculty of the Yang Tan Employment and Disability Institute at the Industrial Labor Relations School at Cornell University. In 1977 and 1978 he was a researcher for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), where he was involved, among other areas, in the research and investigation of anti-Castro Cuban groups, their possible involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy, possible Cuban government complicity in the assassination of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities in Mexico City and the performance of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in monitoring and reporting those activities. With the assistance of other staff members, he wrote the HSCA’s “Lopez Report.”

David Mantik holds an MD from the University of Michigan and a PhD in physics from the University of Wisconsin. He is former faculty member in the physics department at the University of Michigan and in the radiation oncology department at Loma Linda University. He is the author of JFK's Head Wounds (an e-book).

Dr. Robert N. McClelland is professor emeritus in the Department of Surgery at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, an adjunct professor of law at Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University, and a member of the attending staff at Zale Lipshy University Hospital. Previously, he served for 30 years as the UT Southwestern Medical Center’s Alvin W. Baldwin Chair in Surgery, where he had first come to work as an instructor in surgery in 1962. Two years prior to that, Dr. McClelland had begun his career on the senior attending staff at Parkland Memorial Hospital, where his duties would include the attempt to save the life of President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. While working on the mortally wounded JFK, Dr. McClelland saw clear evidence that the president had been struck by bullets from the front and rear, indicating more than one shooter was involved. The gruesome injury to the back of JFK’s head was caused by a bullet exiting the skull rather than entering it, McClelland determined, suggesting it was fired from the front of the presidential limousine, instead of from the rear, where Lee Harvey Oswald was allegedly shooting from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building.

Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, and author of several books, including Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform. As editor of Discovering America, a book series published by the University of Texas Press, he commissioned Lance DeHaven-Smith to write Conspiracy Theory in America, and his Forbidden Bookshelf series, published by Open Road Media, has revived dozens of essential books long out of print, and many of them killed at birth, including works by I.F. Stone, Peter Dale Scott, Christopher Simpson, Ralph McGehee and Gerald Colby.

Jefferson Morley is the founder of The Deep State, a news blog that illuminates the influence of secret intelligence agencies. He worked for 15 years as an editor and reporter at the Washington Post. He is the author of Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton and of Our Man in Mexico, a biography of the CIA’s Mexico City station chief Winston Scott.

Major John M. Newman, U.S. Army (retired), is adjunct professor of political science at James Madison University. He is the author of JFK and Vietnam, Oswald and the CIA and the multi-part series The Assassination of President Kennedy: Volume I, Where Angels Tread Lightly; Volume II, Countdown to Darkness, and Volume III, Into the Storm.

Len Osanic is host of Black Op Radio and producer of The Collected Works of Col. L. Fletcher Prouty.

Lisa Pease is the author of A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Based on more than two decades of investigative research, Pease’s recently published book has already been hailed as “the magnum opus of RFK assassination research” by acclaimed Kennedy biographer James Douglass.

Dr. William F. Pepper is an American lawyer, English barrister and best-selling author. His legal career has included representation of governments and heads of state, and teaching human rights law at Oxford University. A political activist, Pepper was a 1960s friend and supporter of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The King family asked his help to address their doubts about the guilt of accused assassin James Earl Ray. Pepper’s investigation concluded that Ray was a patsy. Representing both the imprisoned Ray before his 1998 death and the King family pro bono, Pepper then won a Memphis civil jury verdict in 1999 for the family concluding the murder was a conspiracy. Pepper authored three books on the evidence, most recently The Plot to Kill King (2016). In 2007, Pepper began representing pro bono Robert F. Kennedy’s accused assassin Sirhan Sirhan based on similar evidence that Sirhan did not fire any of the shots that struck RFK. Along with other RFK friends, Pepper has advocated for Sirhan to be released on parole and/or granted a first-ever hearing to examine the relevant scientific evidence.

Jerry Policoff has been a JFK assassination researcher since 1966, specializing in the role of the media. Widely published in magazines and book anthologies, Policoff covered the House Select Committee on Assassinations for New Times magazine, breaking many exclusives. He is the former executive director of the Assassination Archives and Research Center.

Rob Reiner is an actor and director best known for his role in the iconic TV show All in the Family and for his films A Few Good Men, When Harry Met Sally, and This Is Spinal Tap. His 2017 political thriller Shock and Awe was the first Hollywood movie to examine the tragic run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Reiner is now developing a docudrama TV series on the Kennedy assassinations.

Abby Rockefeller has participated in the sponsoring and organizing of several conferences concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Dick Russell is the author of three books on the assassination of President Kennedy: The Man Who Knew Too Much; On the Trail of the JFK Assassins; and They Killed Our President!, with Jesse Ventura.

Mort Sahl is an entertainer and political satirist. He helped write speeches for John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign, and later worked closely with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to solve the Kennedy assassination, even though doing so severely damaged his career.

Vincent J. Salandria is a Philadelphia attorney who began studying the Kennedy assassination on November 23, 1963. One of the original critics of the lone assassin concept, he is the author of False Mystery, an anthology of his essays incriminating the national security state for the murder of JFK.

Martin Sheen is an actor and activist.

Lawrence P. Schnapf is the principal attorney of Schnapf LLC and an adjunct professor at the New York Law School. He serves on the board of Citizens Against Political Assassinations.

E. Martin Schotz is the author of History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial and the Murder of President Kennedy. 

Paul Schrade is a former United Auto Workers official who knew both of the Kennedy brothers and worked in their campaigns. He was wounded in the hail of gunfire that mortally wounded Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Schrade, who has spent decades researching the RFK assassination, believes that Sirhan Sirhan did not fire the shots that struck Kennedy and is working for his release from prison.

Peter Dale Scott is a professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley. His books include Deep Politics and the Death of JFK; Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics; The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War; The American Deep State; and Poetry and Terror.

John Simkin established the Spartacus Educational website in 1999, an important section of which was devoted to the Kennedy assassination. He is the author of the e-book Assassination of John F. Kennedy Encyclopedia.

Bill Simpich, a civil rights attorney, is on the board of the Mary Ferrell Foundation. He is the author of the e-book State Secret.

Oliver Stone is an Academy Award–winning director and screenwriter best known for his movies Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Wall Street and JFK. His 1991 feature JFK provoked a nationwide uproar about the Kennedy assassination that led to Congressional passage of the 1992 JFK Records Collection Act and the release of thousands of important previously withheld government documents.

Dan Storper is the founder and CEO of the world music company Putumayo. He is writing a book about the political struggles of the 1960s.

David Talbot is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years and The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. He is the founder and original editor-in-chief of Salon and a former senior editor of Mother Jones magazine.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is the eldest of Robert F. and Ethel Kennedy’s children. She is the former lieutenant governor of Maryland. She has taught foreign policy at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maryland and is currently a research professor at Georgetown University, where she founded the Center for Retirement Initiatives.

Adam Walinsky served in the United States Department of Justice in 1963-64. He joined Robert Kennedy’s campaign for U.S. Senate in 1964, and then served as counsel and speechwriter for the senator through the presidential campaign of 1968. He was one of the coordinators of the Vietnam Moratorium of 1969-70, and was the Democratic nominee for Attorney General of New York in 1970. He practiced law in New York City until 1994, serving as chairman of the New York State Investigations Commission in 1979-81. Walinsky created and led the Police Corps, a federal program that offered scholarships to college students who agreed in return to train intensively for six months, and then serve four years in a state or local police force. Police Corps programs were created in 30 states, and although funding ended in 2004, many of its graduates are still serving in law enforcement and other civic endeavors across the country. From 2008 to 2012, he led a complete retraining of the Police Department in Baltimore, Maryland. He served in the United States Marine Corps Reserve.

Benjamin Wecht is the administrator of Duquesne University's Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law, managing an internationally acclaimed center for professional and general education that presents public seminars on the assassination of President Kennedy and other urgent topics. He also serves as managing member of the Forensic Sciences and Law Education Group, a business dedicated to disseminating educational video products and online resources relating to topics at the interface of forensic investigation and historical inquiry.

Dr. Cyril H. Wecht is past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American College of Legal Medicine. He is a clinical professor of pathology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and adjunct professor of law at Duquesne University. Dr. Wecht served as a consultant or expert witness on several major JFK inquests, including New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw, the Rockefeller Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Betty Windsor was a close friend of Dallas Times-Herald journalist Jim Koethe, who was murdered in his home in 1964 while working to solve the JFK case. Since the reporter’s murder, she has worked to solve both the Koethe case and the JFK case. Many researchers consider her the most important source on the events in Dallas during that era.

The last surviving Kennedy brother, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, said on May 9, 1975 that he would favor a new investigation if there is new evidence in the assassination of his brother Robert or in the assassination five years earlier in his brother John.

"'Obviously it is painful for the family.' Ted Kennedy said, 'but the first consideration ought to be on the basis of what new evidence is available.'"

Ralph Blumenfeld, "The Death of RFK", San Antonio Express, July 20, 1975.

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