Generals @ Dealey Plaza

 Generals and Admirals at Dealey Plaza 

While Gen. Taylor was on a special mission to Vietnam, General LeMay chaired a Sept. 25, 1963 meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a briefing by CIA officer Desmond FitzGerald on CIA covert operations against Cuba. FitzGerald mentioned the fact that the CIA was seeking disenchanted Cuban military officers to oppose Castro, much like the German military attempted an assassination and coup against Hitler in 1944. FitzGerald said they had identified about ten such officers, but they had not developed the confidence to talk to one another. That was not a problem in the U.S. military, as the Joint Chiefs of Staff were united in their recommendation that the US military should invade Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis and other than General Taylor, their hatred of the president and his policies. 

                                                               General Maxwell Taylor 

General Maxwell Taylor - Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Taylor was brought out of retirement to serve as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs by President Kennedy, after Kennedy read a book Taylor wrote on military strategy. Taylor led the investigation into the failure at the Bay of Pigs. He was close friends with RFK, who named one of his sons after Taylor. At the time of the assassination Taylor was in a meeting at the Pentagon with the German General Staff, which included two German generals who were involved in the July 20, 1944 plot to kill Hitler, but escaped retribution. The Germans later reported that they were perplexed by Taylor's response to the news of the assassination. He continued the meeting as if nothing had happened, and then took a nap. As US chief representative to NATO, Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer may have also attended that meeting. For more on Taylor: JFKCountercoup2: General Maxwell Davenport Taylor

General Lyman L. Lemnitzer - Appointed by President Eisenhower, Lemnitzer became the fourth Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 1960-1962. Near the end of WWII Allen Dulles and Lemnitzer met with German military officers to arrange the unconditional surrender of German forces in Italy and Southern Austria, without consulting the President. After the war Lemnitzer helped establish NATO. After disagreements with President Kennedy over Berlin, Cuba and Southeast Asia, Lemnitzer endorsed the Northwoods plan to fake an attack on the USA, blame Cuba and use the attack as a justification of an invasion of Cuba. Lemnitzer was removed as Chairman on September 30, 1962 and was appointed Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (NATO) where he served from 1962 - 1969. Lemnitzer, in 1975 served on President Ford's Commission on CIA Activities within the USA. 

General Victor "Brut" Krulak USMC SACIA - At the Pentagon Krulak was assigned to the position of SACIA - Special Assistant for Counter-Insurgency Activities, which was responsible for support CIA covert operations, primarily in Cuba and Vietnam. As a marine officer in the South Pacific, one of Krulak's marine units was rescued from a Japanese held island by Lt. J. F. Kennedy and PT-109, an incident depicted in the book and the movie.One evening Krulak visited JFK at the White House, apparently after hours, because there is no record of it. Krulak said he took Kennedy a bottle of whisky that he had promised him for rescuing his troops in the South Pacific. Krulak's adjunct Colonel Walter Higgins, wrote the memo of the September 25, 1963 meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when CIA officer Desmond FitzGerald briefed them on the status of CIA covert ops against Cuba, specifically mentioning their "detailed study" of the July 20, 1944 German military plot to kill Hitler, that the CIA was adapting for use against Castro. 

For more on Krulak: JFKCountercoup2: General Victor H. Krulak

General Curtis LeMay - Air Force Chief of Staff, LeMay was temporary chairman and ran the Sept. 25, 1963 meeting while General Taylor was on a special mission to Vietnam. On the Friday before the assassination LeMay wrapped up a two day conference of USAF generals at Maxwell AFB in Alabama. He then went on a hunting and fishing expedition to Michigan with entertainer Author Godfrey. When notified of the assassination, LeMay requested a USAF special mission pick him up at Toronto, and then changed that to Warton, Canada, near where he was apparently hunting and fishing. JFKCountercoup2: AF's Top Generals Complete Two-Day Meetings at MAFB

General Author Godfrey USAF Reserves - A pilot himself, Godfrey owned a special plane given to him by Eddie Rickenbacker, the president of Eastern Airlines. Godfrey picked up LeMay in Alabama and together they went to Detroit and then on to a special hunting and fishing preserve and private club that Godfrey belonged to. At the time of the assassination Godfrey was back at his entertainment studio in New York City, so he must have left LeMay back in Michigan/Canada.  JFKCountercoup2: Godfrey Wings Off To Hunt With Gen. LeMay

   General Edward Lansdale USAF - Lansdale was technically a special warfare and counterinsurgency specialist with the CIA, but given a general's rank in the Air Force. After defeating a suspected communist insurgency by Hulks in the Philippines, Lansdale brought a Philippine counter-insurgency expert Napoleon Villaneuve with him to help train anti-Castro Cuban commandos in Central America, the brigade that would go ashore at the Bay of Pigs. At first Lansdale and others involved in the planning of the operation intended for small groups of commandos be trained and infiltrated into Cuba on the eastern end of the island, where they could set up staging areas in the mountains as Castro himself had done. These commando were called the Pathfinders, and some were infiltrated into Cuba a few weeks before the Bay of Pigs. At some point the plan changed from infiltrating the commandos in small groups to a full fledged mechanized landing, that failed. Lansdale later led Operation Mongoose, the post - Bay of Pigs covert action program to get rid of Castro, and left the CIA/USAF a few months before the assassination. He apparently stayed at a Fort Worth hotel on the eve of the assassination and appears in photographs at Dealey Plaza. 

General Edwin Walker - U.S. Army General Walker was relieved of his European command after distributing John Birch Society and other right wing radical literature to his troops. President Kennedy had him psychologically evaluated, before he moved to Dallas to drum support for right wing and John Birch Society programs. At a February 1963 party at his home, set up for the Oswalds to meet the Paines, at the home of Magnolia Oil company engineer Volkmar Schmidt, Schmidt talked with Oswald for a few hours, suggesting to him that General Walker should be killed as Hitler should have been, specifically mentioning the July 20, 1944 attempt. On April 10, 1963 someone took a shot a Walker through his home office window, and Oswald was later, after the assassination of the President, blamed for that incident as well. Before George deMohrenschildt left for Haiti, the Oswalds gave him a copy of the backyard photo of Oswald with the weapons and communist publications, on which Marina wrote "Hunter of Fascists, ha ha." 

General Thomas Powers - Said to be even more of a right-wing fanatic than LeMay, if that is possible. Vice Commander of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) under Gen. LeMay 48-54, Commander of SAC 57-64. Established Operation Chrome Dome putting B-52 nuke bombers in the air 24-7. During the Cuban Missile Crisis on Oct. 24, 1962, Powers raised the SAC defcon to level 2, without presidential authorization, and did so over non-secure communications so the Soviets would know it. When the RAND corp recommended changes in the command structure to restrain a non-authorized attack, Powers responded: "Restrant? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. In the end if there is one Russian and two Americans left, we win!"

Gen. David M. Shoup USMC 

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/shoup.htm

General David Monroe Shoup served as the twenty-second Commandant of the Marine Corps from January 1, 1960 until his retirement from active service, December 31, 1963.

As a colonel in World War II, General Shoup earned the Nation's highest award, the Medal of Honor, while commanding the Second Marines, 2d Marine Division, at Betio, a bitterly contested island of Tarawa Atoll. The British Distinguished Service Order was also awarded him for this action. The following citation accompanied his award of the Medal of Honor:

"For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his own life above and beyond the call of duty as commanding officer of all Marine Corps troops in action against enemy Japanese forces on Betio Island, Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert Islands, from November 20 to 22, 1943.

General Shoup was nominated by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on August 12, 1959 to be the 22d Commandant of the Marine Corps, and his nomination for a four-year term was confirmed by the Senate. Upon assuming his post as Commandant of the Marine Corps on January 1, 1960, he was promoted to four-star rank.

On January 21, 1964, shortly after his retirement, General Shoup was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal by President Lyndon B. Johnson for exceptionally meritorious service as Commandant of the Marine Corps.

While Shoup's experience in WWII, like the President, made him want to avoid war, he sided with the other Joint Chiefs of Staff during the Cuban Missile Crisis when they wanted to invade Cuba. After JFK stormed out of an Oval Office meeting with them, leaving the tape recorder running, Shoup was overheard saying to General LeMay: "I agree with that answer, general, I just agree with you, I just agree with you a hundred percent. Somebody's got to keep him from doing the goddamn thing piecemeal. That's our problem. Go in there and frig around with the missiles. You're screwed. You go in there and frig around with anything else, you're screwed," Shoup had added.

General Earle Gilmore "Bus" Wheeler, (January 13, 1908 - December 18, 1975) was a U.S. Army General and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/ewheeler.htm

In 1964 he succeeded Maxwell D. Taylor as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and held that post until 1970. Wheeler died in Frederick, Maryland after a heart attack, while being transported by ambulance from his West Virginia home to Washington D.C.

Considering the large number of general officers available in 1964 with distinguished combat records in World War II and Korea, the staff officer Wheeler was a surprising choice for the top Pentagon post. His relative lack of combat experience, however, might actually have been seen as a plus in the eyes of the new president, Lyndon B. Johnson. The latter was not known for his tolerance of independent thinking, and Wheeler's dutiful acquiesence in Johnson's conduct of the Vietnam War is a failure for which Wheeler has been harshly criticized by some historians.

General William Odom - Commander of the National Security Agency (NSA) and Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (ACSI). John Newman served under him for two years. When Thomas Powers, author of Intelligence Wars, asked Odom - what makes a good intelligence case officer? Odom thought about it and replied, "Did you see the Paul Newman, Robert Redford movie The Sting? Well that's it." That tells me that Odom took Paul Linebarger's class on propaganda and psychological warfare at the Center for International Studies. Joe Smith, in his book Portrait of a Cold Warrior, describes how Linebarger had his students read David Maurer's The Big Con, which was a linguists study of the slang used by con artists and confidence men, which became the basis for the movie The Sting. 

Admiral George Whelan Anderson, Jr.

http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/gwanders.htm

The Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) in charge of the US blockade of Cuba during Soviet missile crisis in 1962, died March  20, 1992, Arleigh Burke Pavilion nursing home in McLean, Virginia. He was 85 years old and lived in Washington, DC. He died of congestive heart failure, his family said. 

Many military experts had expected that he would become Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). But a series of major policy disputes with Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara sidetracked his 36-year Navy career, and he was abruptly replaced as operations chief in 1963. Shortly after that, President John F. Kennedy, pleased with the Navy's handling of the blockade, appointed him as US Ambassador to Portugal. During 3 years there, encouraged plans for peaceful transition of the Portuguese colonies in Africa to national independence. 

After leaving his post in Portugal, he returned to Government service from 1973 to 1977 as member and later chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. 

In the Cuban crisis, the US forced the removal of Soviet nuclear missiles from the island. Kennedy was quoted as telling him, "Well, Admiral it looks as though this is up to the Navy," to which he replied, "Mr President, the Navy will not let you down." Time magazine featured him on its cover, calling him "an aggressive blue-water sailor of unfaltering competence and uncommon flare." But he bridled at the extent of McNamara's insistence on civilian involvement in running the operation, regarding it as usurpation of traditional military authority. Historians say that the 2 men even debated specific ship deployments in an argument that erupted in the Situation Room of Pentagon. 

Admiral William "Red" Rayborne, developed Hyman Rickover's nuclear submarine fleet and the Polaris missile. Appointed by President Johnson as Director of Central Intelligence after John McCone, despite not having any intelligence experience. Was Director of CIA during the Ramparts magazine exposure of CIA use of student and non-profit organizations. Replaced in 1966 by his deputy Richard Helms. 

Admiral Chester Bruton. Decorated WWII submarine commander Communications-electronics director of the Joint Staff of the Commander in the European Command 58-60, after which he retired and went to work for Collins Radio in Dallas. Friends with George deMohrenschildt, who visited Bruton and his wife with Marina and Lee Oswald, staying for lunch and lounging by the pool. While deMohrenschildt's idea was to try to get Bruton to get Oswald a job at Collins Radio, after all he worked at a radio factory in USSR, Oswald made his dislike of military top brass very known by insulting Bruton. In 1992, when I obtained Bruton's DC phone number and called him, his daughter answered the phone and said that her father had just died and she was there to collect his effects. 

 Free the JFK Files During Sunshine Week March 14-20, 2021

I am asking for the umpteenth time, to try to direct the Sunshine Week conversations around to the ultimate government secret of all time – the still secret records on the assassination of President Kennedy.

Like 2017, when the JFK Act required the government to release all of its records on the assassination in full, but failed to do so because President Trump was convinced to continue withholding them, his deadline is over this year, possibly in April, but definitely by October, unless, and it’s a big unless, President Biden co-tows to the Deep State and orders them to be withheld, again.

Now it’s up to one man, and one man alone – President Biden, to do nothing and let the records be automatically released, or issue an Executive Order to continue withholding them.

In addition to persuading President Biden to just release the records, the Congressional Oversight Committee must conduct open public hearings on the JFK Act to determine why a law passed by Congress and signed into law by President Bush is not being enforced, what became of the many missing and destroyed records, and why haven’t those responsible been held accountable?

The last oversight hearing on the JFK Act was over 20 yeas ago,

Now that the Democrats have the power, and dominate the committees, you would think that it is more likely to happen, but don’t bet on it, as this is not a liberal-conservative, Democrat-Republican or right wing-left wing issue – it is one of national security, and one the Deep National Security State takes very seriously.

The new chairwomen of the House Oversight Committee is Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D. NY), whose district covers lower Manhattan. If are a constituent of hers, like New York attorney Larry Schnapf, you can write her a letter like he did – link to letter:

While Larry is a lawyer and wrote a really good letter that will get her attention, and the attention of the attorneys and staff of the Oversight Committee, letters should be short and concise, confined to one page, and emailed, faxed and sent by regular mail.

There are slightly more Democrats than Republicans and if you are represented by any of these men and women you should contact them and request they ask the chairwomen to schedule a JFK Act oversight hearing, as only the chairwomen can do so.

[ https://oversight.house.gov/members ]

Of those on the committee I am only familiar with Elenore Norton, the non-voting representative of the District of Columbia. Although she can’t vote, she is a ranking member and the other members of the committee listen to her. I think she is our champion on this committee and I will be asking all of my Washington D.C. friends and associates to not only write to her, but seek a meeting with her and Carolyn Maloney at the Oversight and Reform offices. A short meeting with the top researchers in DC could be very persuasive, as will a reasonable write-in campign by everyone interested in this cause.

Larry Schnapf recently appeared on Len Osanic’s Black Op Radio Show 1032 on March 4 in which he talked about these things. [ https://blackopradio.com/archives2021.html ] as well as a Senate Resolution 281 that urges the president for full release of the records [ https://fas.org/irp/congress/2017_cr/jfk-release.html  ]

Read Larry’s letter to Rep. Maloney: [  https://jfkfacts.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Rep-Caroyln-Maloney-re-JFK-Oversight.pdf /  https://www.fff.org/explore-freedom/article/letter-to-house-committee-on-oversight-and-government-reform/ ]

Committee Web Site:  [ https://oversight.house.gov/ ]

 

If you wish to contact the Committee, you may write to or call the below information:

2157 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone: (202) 225-5051
Fax: (202) 225-4784

Preview of Larry Hancock's The Tipping Point

 Preview of Larry Hancock's The Tipping Point 

Larry Hancock’s new book The Tipping Point is a concise summary of his many decades long investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. 

[Those who want a taste of The Tipping Point before being tempted to purchase it, you can read key excerpts at the Mary Ferrell web site here: https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point.html ]

I have been following Larry’s work since his landmark Someone Would Have Talked (Updated in 2010), which firmly puts to rest the often repeated and demonstratedly false cliche that if there as a conspiracy to kill the President someone would have talked. They talked all right, and Larry documents numerous cases, each of which leads to the heart of the case.

Since the official deranged lone nut scenario has been proven false, it must have happened another way, and in this book Larry lays out a very believable alternative scenario, one that connects all of the main subjects to Cuba, and defines the essence of a covert intelligence operation, the means by which the conspirators achieved their goal, and got away with it.

The Tipping Point picks up where Josiah Thompson’s Last Second in Dallas leaves off, with the President’s head shattered by two almost simultaneous shots, one from the front and one from behind. While Thompson gives a micro analysis of the eyewitness reports, ballistics, medical evidence, and acoustics, fitting them all together without speculating who was behind the triggers, Hancock puts things in their Cuban context, lays out a chronology and gives names to those who are the most likely candidates for pulling off such an audacious triangulation of firepower.

As with the subjects in his Someone Would Have Talked, and as CIA official Rolf Mowatt-Larsen explained in his 2019 CAPA presentation in Dallas, the suspects are limited, limited to those who had the capability to conduct such complex covert intelligence operations, and many of them are the same ones who talked and most are familiar characters to anyone who has studied the murder of the President in even a superficial manner.

James Jesus Angleton ran the CIA counter-inteligence office that kept particularly keen tabs on Lee Harvey Oswald before the assassination, counter-insurgency expert General Ed Lansale, America’s James Bond William Harvey director of the anti-Castro Cuban Task Force W and the case officer for Mafia Don John Rosselli, along with covert cowboy Rip Robertson, all of whom are associated with the CIA’s Miami station JMWAVE, where most of the intirgue stems from.

Besides documenting most of the references to records released under the JFK Act, Hancock refers to the CIA crypt files that translates the codes into English, puts everything into a clear and concise chronololgy, and quotes the suspect themselves as to their participation in the Cuban ops that were turned against JFK at Dealey Plaza.

Besides the usual suspects, Larry brings some relatively new names into the fold – Carl Jenkins and John I.F. Harper, CIA trainers who prepared the Cuban Pathfinders for the Bay of Pigs and later Mongoose commando attacks against Cuba. And Gene Wheaton, Jenkins’ former housemate and proprietor of a CIA airline propriety company. Wheaton tried to blow the whistle on what he knew about renegade CIA operations but  then CIA director William Casey was in on it, and the Assassination Records Review Board didn’t pay him any attention.

Narrowing down the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro to the few that resemble the Dealey Plaza operation, Larry focuses on one particular plot – the Pathfinder Plan. From CIA technicians at the National Photo Interpretation Center (NPIC) we learn that Pathfinder was a plan to infiltrate anti-Castro Cuban commando snipers into Cuba and shoot Castro in the head with high powered rifles as he rode by in an open jeep.

I pretty much see eye to eye with Larry Hancock, and while we are usually on the same page, Larry always seems to be ahead of me, so I know I will learn something new from anything he writes.

 [https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Tipping_Point_Introduction.html ]

Some excerts:

Reality Check

“…..it had become quite clear, to me at least, that the official history (as portrayed in the Warren Commission Report) of the assassination was simply not credible. That conclusion was based in part on an assessment of the materials offered in support of the Warren Report were questionable in many respects – including the fact that the legal chain of evidence used in support of the report was not only broken, but contained so many questionable elements that an evidentary approach simply did not offer a viable foundation for assessing the crime.”

“Beyond that, the documentary record supported the conclusion that an iterative series of actions had been taken after the assassinationto suppress certain items of evidence, to obfuscate witness testimony, and to preempt any contemporary investigation of conspiracy during the months immediately following the assassination.”

The Back Door

“After fifteen years of my own inquiry into President Kennedy’s murder, I concluded that there had indeed been a conspiracy in play – but that my initial and preferred, evidentiary approach to the crime would remain both frustrating and fruitless. Pursuing a conspiracy by going through the front door was simply not viable.”

“….What we foundwas that irrespective of the individual (we studied) and the lead, to some extent all of them shared some sort of history with the Cuban revoluion of the late 1950s, the rise to power of Fidel Castro, the Cuban resistance to his regime, the various CIA efforts to oust Castro from power or the years-long anti-Castro resistance movement inside Cuba or among Cuban exiles in the United States.”

“Perhaps most startling, not only did all of the sources and associations which seemed most credible connect to Cuba in some fashion, in the end they actually pointed in the same direction that Robert Kennedy appears to have immediately suspected on the afternoon of November 22, 1963.”

The Cuban Backstory

“…Due to its proximity and its long-standing trade relationships with the United States, Cuba was already an area of routine CIA foreign intelligence collections as well as political influence (anti-communist) efforts…..In support of such options the U.S. Army began using commercial covers to secretly place officers inside Cuba to collect military intelligence…..”

The CIA Cuba Project 1960-61

“The initial CIA effort to oust Fidel Castro, approved by President Eisenhower in March, 1960, bailed in its goal to produce well-armed, widespread guerilla action against the Castro regime by the end of October, 1962…”

“Moving dramatically from covert action, the CIA turned to the creation and amphibious landing of a heavily aremed, brigade sized, conventional infantry force – supported by tanks, armored trucks, heavy weapons units and parachute drops as well as by a Cuban volunteer air element.”

BK NOTES: When the original covert insertion of Pathfinder commandos into the east coast mountains was removed from the planning and replaced with the full force brigade, General Ed Lansdale and his Phillipine trainer were removed from the operation.

“It has only been with the release of a body of new information from the CIA’s own internal inquiries and histories as well a great deal of relatively recent oral history work, that we can begin to fully appreciate the disconnnects between the mission as it was directed and understood by President Kennedy, and the actual military operation as it was carried out by (Richard) Bissell and those reporting to him…..”

Covert Action against Cuba 1961-1962

“For the Kennedy administration the year 1962 began with a reset in Cuban affairs. President Kennedy remained committed to action against Cuba, but it was going to be covert action – orchestrated at an interdepartmental level above the CIA. The program would officially begin early in the year, designated Operation Nongoose and headed by a Kennedy appointee rather than a senior CIA officer….Instead the CIA was assigned to a support role, carried out by a relatively small  group designated as Task Force W (headed by William Harvey) and with field operations conducted by the JMWAVE station….”

“Still, a number of the highly trained infiltration cadre that had been originally trained under Carl Jenkins remained operational, although relegated to performing relatively minor missions under officers such as Bay of Pigs veterans Rip Robertson and Grayston Lynch. The paramilitary personnel involved in those missions are of special interest because of the strength of their anti-Castro commitment, and the degree to which they remained militarily active in both sanctioned and unsanctioned efforts against the Castro regime over a number of years.”

Larry and I agree on a number of basic hypothesis. For one, the official story just doesn't hold water, so it must have happened another way. In addition, whatever happened at Dealey Plaza it was a covert intelligence operation that is centered around Cuba, CIA operations against Cuba, and specific CIA-Mafia plans to kill Castro. One of the plans to kill Castro was turned against JFK in Dallas, and the multi-gunman ambush and conspiracy was meant to be transparent, and Castro was to be blamed for it. 

And I think there are others who are working on this case who now think the same - Peter Dale Scott, John Newman, Bill Simpich, Jeff Morley, Malcolm Blunt, Alan Dale and others. 

And every line item is footnoted to the hilt.

Additional Links:

More excerpts from The Tipping Point: JFKCountercoup2: Larry Hancock's The Tipping Point Excerpts

Tipping Point

https://larryhancock.wordpress.com/2019/08/25/cia-pseudonyms-and-aliases/

http://www.larry-hancock.com/documents/index.html

https://www.maryferrell.org/php/pseudodb.php

https://www.maryferrell.org/php/cryptdb.php

Was Khruschev Behind the Assassination of JFK?

 Was Khruschev Behind the Assassination of JFK? 

NO. An emphatic No! 

And for many reasons. 

For starters, Lee Harvey Oswald was not the sixth floor assassin, was not on the sixth floor of the TSBD at the time of the assassination and therefore the false assumption made by former CIA director James Woolsey, is untrue, so his accusation that Khrushchev told Oswald to kill Kennedy is just as absurd as the on-going CIA disinformation campaign to blame the Dealey Plaza Operation on Fidel Castro. 

Every covert intelligence operation has a cover-story, a believable but untrue distraction that is part of the deception aspect of every operation. The original cover-story for the Dealey Plaza Operation, as Peter Dale Scott has pointed out, was what he called the Phase One cover-story to blame the assassination of JFK on Castro Cuban Commies. Evidence of this not only comes from the "so-called evidence" - ie. rifle, that implicated Castro loving Oswald, but by the backgrounds of those who make this claim. 

When HSCA investigator Dan Hardway compiled a list of dozens of people who tried to pin the tail on Castro's donkey in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, he noticed that many if not most of them were friends, associates, agents, operatives or media assets of David Atlee Phillips, the CIA spymaster who specialized in psychological warfare and was the psych war director for Operation Success (Guatemala) and te Bay of Pigs. When Hardway asked Phillips about this when he testified under oath before the HSCA, Phillips acknowledged he knew those people but couldn't  understand why they did what they did. 

The Phase One Cuban Castro Commie cover-story was squelched by LBJ himself on Friday evening, between 7 pm and 9 pm, from his Vice President suite in the Executive Office  Building next door to the White House. That's where he learned that the radio news was broadcasting the fact that Dallas D.A. Henry Wade was going to charge Oswald with being part of communist conspiracy, so he had his top aide call around Texas, beginning with Texas Attorney General and order them not to charge Oswald with anything to do with conspiracy. "It could lead to war," was the excuse not to do it.

As Vincent Bugliosi describes in detail in his book Reclaiming History, Assistant Dallas D.A. William Alexander was being persuaded by Philadelphia Inquirer reporter and editor Joseph Goulden to charge Oswald with "furthering a communist conspiracy," and Alexander told Goulden he was considering just that. 

By the Way, Joe Goulden was not only a media asset of David A. Phillips, he is now responsible for Phillips' private papers. 

Henry Wade was tracked down at a Dallas restaurant and he returned to his office immediately and confronted Alexander about the allegation and Alexander got the message and denied he was going to do that. So then the Phase Two and equally wrong cover-story of the assassination being arranged by a deranged lone nut case began to take shape.

JFKcountercoup: The Tipping Point

JFKcountercoup: The Tipping Point - Revived

But that was just the beginning. As the Phase-Two cover story began to unravel, Phase-One was the fall back position, and is still an on-going or "active measure" as the psych-war soldiers call it, today. 

We have former CIA agent Brian Latelle promoting the Castro knew of the assassination in his book (Castro Obsession?), using a Cuban defector who worked at the Cuban-Russian listening post set up on the North Shore of Cuba. The defector said that Castro himself had ordered him to listen to the radio transmissions from Texas, where JFK was to be. But that's not proof that Castro knew JFK was going to be killed, it only proves he knew JFK would be in Texas. And we have French journalist Jean Daniel visiting Castro right after meeting JFK, and helping to establish the back-channel communications JFK and Castro were setting up at the time of the assassination, which negates  the idea either man was trying to kill the other at that time. 

Then there's former CIA agent Bob Baer who obtained hundreds of thousands of dollars from somewhere to make a series of TV programs that allegedly "follow" Oswald the assassin, from Minks to Mexico City in order to prove that Oswald met with Communist agents and was encouraged by them to kill JFK. He even goes to a bull fight in order to prove that Oswald could have met his communist handler there without anyone seeing them. 

Gus Russo, who I know from working with him to get the JFK Act passed, came across like a real independent researcher, until John Judge saw him having lunch with two high ranking CIA officials. Russo then gets a book contract for Brothers at Arms, that compiles all the rumors and innuendos that Oswald was working for Castro when he killed JFK. 

Phil Shenon, another CIA media asset, who worked for the New York Times, was persuaded by a former Warren Commission attorney, some say Arlen Spector, I believe it is still living Sam Stern, to write a book that implicates Castro in the assassination - "A Cruel and Shocking Act"

When Shenon appeared on National Public Radio, he acknowledged he isn't interested in learning the full truth about the assassination, only the leads that point to Castro. 

Other posts regarding Disinformation and Black Propaganda at Dealey Plaza: 

JFKcountercoup: Disinformation at Dealey Plaza

Black Propaganda & the JFK Assassination | JFKCountercoup

Now, as this silly game continues, we have former CIA director R. James Woolsey and a former Communist intelligence official Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, write a book that tries to blame Nikita Khrushchev for the assassination. 

What this is proof of is that the CIA still continues to believe the real and total truth of the assassination is so important that it has to continue to deceive today. 

While I have yet to read the book "Operation Dragon: Inside The Kremlin's War on America", and will and will review it in full ASAP, there were two mainstream newspapers that wrote sensational news reports with headlines like -  "Lee Harvey Oswald was told by Soviet Leader to Kill JFK" and "Lee Harvey Oswald ordered to kill JFK by Soviets, ex-CIA chief claims." 

For those seriously interested in such disinformation tactics I have posted both UK Daily Mail and the NY Post articles at my alternate blog, JFKCountercoup2: 

JFKCountercoup2: Khrushchev and the JFK Assassination - CIA Disinformation Campaign Continues

As I point out in my list of the Top Ten Newly Released Records on the assassination, Khrushchev's true feelings about the assassination were to ridicule investigative journalist Drew Pearson for believing the silly Phase-Two cover-story that a deranged lone nut case killed the President. 

JFKCountercoup2: Kelly's Top Ten Newly Released Records

3) Drew Pearson's interview with Khrushchev - 104-10003-10064 DOCID-32105956.PDF. Khrushchev disbelieves the Warren Report and criticized American intelligence agencies.  "Pearson repeated that the reaction of Chairman Khrushchev and his wife was one of flat disbelief and archetypical of the universal European belief that there was some kind of American conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of Oswald....could not believe that the affair had happened as it apparently did and Mr. Pearson made no headway whatsoever in trying to change their belief that something was not on the level. Chairman Khruschev greeted Mr. and Mrs. Pearson's efforts with a tolerant smile..."

And thanks to Jeff Morley for promoting this entry in my list at JFK Facts - JFK Facts » #NewJFKfiles: In 1964 Nikita Khrushchev schooled Drew Pearson on the JFK conspiracy question

It is ironic and sad that Pearson would share the details of his dinner with Mr. and Mrs. Khrushchev with the FBI, but not with the readers of his Washington-Merry-Go-Round column, that was eventually taken over by his assistant Jack Anderson. And Anderson is not a disinterested party in all of this either, as he broke the story of mobster John Rosselli's involvement in the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro run out of JMWAVE. 

JFK Facts » #NewJFKfiles: In 1964 Nikita Khrushchev schooled Drew Pearson on the JFK conspiracy question

The original docs thanks to the Blackvault.com 

DOCID-32105956.PDF

More on Thompson's Last Second in Dallas

 More on Thompson's Last Second in Dallas 

Criticism of  Josia Thompson's Last Second in Dallas is coming from both sides of the fence. 

Some Conspiracy Theorists don't like the fact that Thompson doesn't think the Zapruder Film has been altered, and doesn't even bother to mention the dispute. 

Years ago Thompson explained that since three copies of the Z-film were made immediately, along with the original, that he says is of much better quality, and they all show the same thing, and all went in in different directions shortly after the copies were made, - he asks how could they have been altered? 

In addition, he noted, if the purpose of the alteration was to hide evidence of conspiracy, then why leave in the head shot frame - that clearly indicates a shot from the front and thus a conspiracy? 

As for the dedicated Lone Nutters, they continue to argue against any shot from the front, and dispute Thompson's assertions that the neck wound was an exit wound from a bullet fragment from the head shot from the rear, and Connally's wrist wounds were caused by similar bullet fragments from the same bullet, as Dr. Gregory, who Thompson talked with personally, attested. 

"The government's wrong," Dr. Gregory, a field surgeon in Korea, told Thompson, "Connally wasn't hit in the wrist wit the bullet they say he was. I told them all this in my testimony down there. The bullet they're talking about has a rounded ti. He wasn't hit in the wrist with that. He took a fragment through the wrist." 

One Thompson critic began making a list of mistakes in this book, beginning with Thompson's statement that it was Connally's left wrist that was fractured, rather than the right wrist, though that is a matter of perspective, whether you were looking at Connally or were Connally, from his perspective. 

Another dispute concerning CE#399 is it's discovery on a gurney in the hall outside the Parkland Emergency Room by Darrell Tomlinson, who gave the bullet to Parkland security officer O.P. Wright, a former 30 year Dallas policeman. Wright was clear that the bullet in evidence #399, is not the bullet that he handled, which had a pointed tip, rather than a round one. 

In addition, in talking with Parkland aides who were at the scene at the time, he determined the gurney on which the bullet was found was not used by either JFK or Connally, but rather a young two year old boy Ronnie Fuller, who had cut his cheek that was bleeding badly. That gurney, says Thompson, "is in no way connected to the care of either President Kennedy or Governor Connally." 

Thompson is known for correcting his mistakes however, and I'm sure he will correct any mistakes in future editions, as I'm sure there will be. 

One big change in Thompson's thinking is the fact that he is now convinced the flurry of shots lasted a little more than eight seconds, rather than the six seconds he used as the title of his last book on the subject. 

Thompson's revival of the HSCA acoustics study of the Dallas PD dictabelt recordings has also created a controversary that I will deal with in a separate article. 

Nor does Thompson consider the Ramsey Panel's rejection and attempted refutation of the HSCA acoustics study a concerted conspiracy to hide the truth. Instead he calls it another C word - complicity.

When he asked Dr. Mullen of BBN if the Ramsey panel cheated, he concluded, "No. This all came about through no conspiracy. What happened here was much more complicated, more nuanced, and more human - indeed, all too human. It was complicity. And this complicity had much more to do with who these men were and what they had experienced earlier in their lives." 

As an example of this, Thompson references how three members of the Ramsey Panel had previously served on the Vela Panel, that had previously rejected, much to the satisfaction of the US government, the Vela satellites report of a nuclear blast 1,500 miles south of Cape Town, South Africa, believed to be a joint Israeli-South African test, despite the satellite's record of detecting such blasts. 

I prefer the example of the Doubleday Commission's conclusion that the American game of baseball was invented by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown, New York on a specific day in a specific year, despite the numerous newspaper reports of the game being played for years before that. That's why the Baseball Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown, where baseball wasn't invented by Abner Doubleday. 

Other examples of this "complicity" is the Warren Commission itself, along with the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel, that intentionally excluded Dr. Wecht from key meetings and interviews because they knew he would not be complicit. The replacement of non-complicit Richard Sprague as chief counsel of the HSCA is another example. 

What will be interesting will be a March 17 video conference from the Wecht Institute of Forensic Pathology and Law at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, that will feature Dr. Wecht, in celebration of his 90th birthday, Dr. Lee and Michael Baden, the former NYC pathologist who served on the HSCA forensic pathology panel with Wecht. 

What's most curious, is why Josiah Thompson's book Last Second in Dallas has not been reviewed or mentioned in any mainstream media publications, while former CIA director James Woosley's book saying that Oswald was controlled by Soviet KGB agents and ordered to kill Castro by Premier Khruschev. I will be writing about that next. 

Also on the agenda a Sunshine Week (March 14-21) campaign to get the House Oversight Committee to hold public hearings on the JFK Act, as well as a tribute to MLK on the anniversary of his assassination in early April. 

Stay tuned. 

Josiah Thompson's Last Second In Dallas

  Josiah Thompson’s Last Second in Dallas (University of Kansas Press, 2021)

Josiah Thompson’s new book Last Second in Dallas could be a game changer, but probably won’t because of the opposition of both dedicated lone nuts, who will brand it another conspiracy book, and silly conspiracy theorists who will disagree with what he has to say.

Unlike both camps Thompson doesn’t claim to know who killed the President, and doesn’t try to pin the blame on anyone.

Instead he tries to compile the most significant evidence, witness testimony, forensic facts, ballistics and medical reports, acoustics, film and photos all together and at least try to assemble a clear and concise picture of the puzzle of what occurred at Dealey Plaza that day.

"This book has a twofold purpose," Thompson explains. "On the one hand, it is a personal narrative of my experiences over the past five decades of trying to figure out what happened. At the same time, it is a kind of detective story that ends up disclosing what I have found." 

"Before beginning to read," Thompson cautions, "the reader should be warned. This book is about the final second of John Kennedy's life. What happened in that final instant is shown in all-too-graphic detail by the Zapruder film and the autopsy photos. It is profoundly unsettling for both author and reader to examine a man's death in such graphic detail. Yet we must. For it is in that last second of the shooting that a central reality of the event is to be found. We must immerse ourselves in theses details if we are to reach that reality, unsettling and uncomfortable as it may be." 

As a first generation critic of the Warren Report conclusions, Thompson spices these technical details and bloody facts with his own personal experiences that explain how he got involved and still cares about this case.

From his time at Yale, enlisting in the military as a Navy UDT (Underwater Demolition Team) “Frogman,” graduate student in Philosophy, book on philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, decade long professorship at Haverford College, developing interest in the Kennedy assassination, being hired as a consultant to Life Magazine, authorship of the landmark Six Seconds in Dallas, more than two decades working as s PI – private investigator in San Francisco, in the Sam Spade tradition, and authorship of his work on hundreds of cases (including the Oklahoma City Bombing) in the book Gumshoe.

Thompson once said that of all the cases he worked on as a PI, there came a point in the investigation when some new piece of evidence or witness testimony led to the resolution of the crime, that is all of the case but one – the assassination of President Kennedy, which has remained an enigma, and not just for him.

After working on this book for ten years Thompson has tried to settle that issue by trying to put all of the key pieces of the Dealey Plaza puzzle together, throwing out the pieces that don’t fit, and aren’t even from this puzzle, and summarize what he has learned over the years.

In his Foreword to this book, Richard Rhodes, a former associate of Nobel laureate Luis W. Alvarez notes that Thompson’s first serious study was on Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and “the grandfather of the modern philosophical movement known as existentialism,” which “is about understanding the meaning and mystery of our existence without anchoring it in unsupported certitudes. That seems to me what Thompson has spent his life pursing: giving up certitude…”

Rhodes says that he once supported Alvarez and the idea one lone nut killed the president, but is now convinced that Thompson is right, reversing the trend of former silly conspiracy theorist becoming dedicated lone nuts. "A careful reexamination of the forensic evidence in this book has changed my mind. I never would have imagined doing so, but for what it's worth, I now think the weight of the evidence supports Thompson's conclusions." Others should follow.

Unlike all dedicated lone nut advocates and most silly conspiracy theorists, Thompson doesn’t know who killed the president, but he’s figured out the basic forensics, at least to his own satisfaction.

And he’s willing to admit when he’s wrong, and correct his past mistakes, as he now recognizes that the shooting sequence wasn’t limited to six seconds, but more like eight to nine seconds, and the two inch forward movement of the president’s head wasn’t caused by what he initially thought.

There’s been a lot of new developments since the publication of Six Seconds in Dallas, most notably the Church Committee and House Select Committee on Assassination (HSCA), the latter of which commissioned a scientific study of the acoustic evidence, a tape recording of the shots resulting from a Dallas police motorcycle with a microphone stuck open during the assassination.

It has been falsely stated many times, mainly by dissenting congressmen who weren’t paying attention, that the HSCA conclusion regarding conspiracy was based entirely on the acoustical study, that they disagreed with. Committee chief counsel G. Robert Blakey wrote a book on the mob connections to the assassination, based on the HSCA findings, investigator Gaeton Fonzi focused on the CIA’s David Atlee Phillips, attorney Ed Lopez on the Mexico City charade, attorney Dan Hardway on the false attempts to blame Castro for the assassination, investigator Jack Moriarty on the Dallas aspects, in particular the murder of JD Tippit and the Collins Radio connections, among many other important leads to come out of the HSCA. So it isn’t true the acoustical study was the only basis for the HSCA conclusion regarding conspiracy.

While I don’t pretend to understand the math or equations that make up the acoustical study, or the government commissioned Ramsey Panel’s attempt to refute it, I trust Drs. Barger, Weiss, Ackensasy, and now Richard Mullen’s rebuttal of the Ramsey Panel’s refutation of the acoustic panel’s work, based entirely on Ohio drummer Steve Barber’s discovery of cross-talk between the two police channels.

Both Alveraz and Ramsey have discredited themselves, Alveraz for not being forthright about the extent of his experiments attempting to prove the so-called “Jet Effect,” with bullets forcing melons to fall back towards the direction of the shots, while Ramsey led a previous government panel that failed to affirm a satellite report of a joint Israel-South Africa explosion of a nuclear bomb in the ocean, assuring that he would go with what the government wanted rather than what was known to be true.

Led by Dr. Barger of BBN, the HSCA acoustic study arranged for the recording of rifles fired from both the Sixth Floor of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) and from behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll at Dealey Plaza, comparing them with the sounds of rifle fire on the DP dictabelt tapes. Then they took the results a step further by putting the sounds on an ocelliscope and measuring the echo patterns created by the shots, creating an acoustic fingerprint of Dealey Plaza.

I was in the Congressional hearing room when the acoustic team – Drs. Barger, Weiss and Ackensasy testified before the HSCA. When a congressman asked them what they would say if they were told the recording was not made at Dealey Plaza at the time of the shooting, one of them responded, “I would then ask to be taken to that location and expect to find an exact duplicate of Dealey Plaza,” because the echo analysis reflected on the gun reports bouncing off the buildings and walls of the plaza that were measured and matched.

When the Ramsey panel fell into a funk in refuting the acoustic study results they leaned on the findings of crosstalk on the tape discovered by Ohio rock drummer Steve Barber. While most people discarded the acoustics study completely, the three original scientists quietly stuck to their guns, and then Don Thomas published a refutation of the Ramsey panel’s conclusions in a British forensic journal, reviving the debate.

Thompson devotes more than one chapter to the acoustic issues, and includes articles by Dr. Barger and his BBN associate Richard Mullen as detailed appendix in the back of this book, but the issues are complex and important enough to deal with in detail separately, and I will.

Thompson embrases the HSCA acoustical study however, because it just may be the missing piece of the puzzle that fits, and together with the other forensic pieces, lead to the clear and concise portrait of what occurred at Dealey Plaza, and the eventual resolution of the crime. That’s because what the acoustical study says in regards to the timing and spacing of the shots fits quite nicely over the witness reports, and most importantly the Zapruder film.

Backtracking a little bit, what amazes me the most, and not mentioned by Thompson, is the fact that during his decade long tenure as a Haverford professor in Philadelphia, he was living in very close proximation with a number of other assassination related characters, including Warren Commission attorneys Arlen Spector and William Coleman, Marina’s biographer Priscilla Johnson, Ruth and Michael Paine, Michael’s mom Ruth Forbes Paine Young and her husband Arthur Young, the inventor of the Bell Helicopter, as well as John Judge, who was working at the Quaker Friends Peace Center. Since I lived in Camden, NJ, just across the river, I often visited Judge, so we were there together in very close proximity.

Priscilla Johnson attended Bryn Mawr College, just down the road from Haverford College, where Thompson taught. And was a member of Cord Meyer Jr.’s World Federalist organization at the same time Michael’s mom organized fund raisers for the pro-UN group.  Michael Paine went to Swarthmore College, near Haverford and Bryn Mawr, all on the Philadelphia's Main Line. Michael met Ruth H. Paine at a folk dance. When they were married in Media, Pa., Arthur Young arranged for Michael to get a job at Bell Helicopter in Texas, so they relocated there. Ruth H. Paine later returned to Philadelphia and made a donation to the Quaker Friends Peace Center when John Judge called her on the phone requesting donations.

Just around the corner from where Michael and Ruth H. Paine were married in Media, local Vietnam War activists broke into the FBI office and stole their files, later distributing them to the media and exposing operations CHAOS and COINTELPRO,  the FBI's penetration and operations against the anti-war activists. Of all the assassination related individuals living in Philadelphia at the time, one was more significant than the others in terms of steering Thompson towards Dealey Plaza - and that was Vincent Salandria. 

When Thompson was arrested for distributing anti-war leaflets, he was bailed out by Salandria, an ACLU attorney as well as the lawyer for the Philadelphia school system. Salandria wrote some of the earliest published articles critical of the Warren Report conclusions, and turned Thompson on to the case and its multiple mysteries. Thompson became part of Salandria’s committee of correspondence, which included a number of key early researchers - Christoper Sharrett, E. Matin Schotz, Mary Ferrell, Penn Jones, Shirley Martin, Maggie Fields, Harold Weisberg, Ray Marcus, David Lifton, and others. 

But Thompson wasn't satisfied. "As for the books already published about the assassination," he writes, "it struck me that virtually all had focused, in one way or another, on picking apart the Warren Commission's conclusions. None had looked at the core evidence in the case and tried to pull all the pieces together into a single whole. We had heard enough about how wrong the Warren Commission's reconstruction was, but what was right?" 

Then Thompson and Salandria traveled to Washington DC together to visit the National Archives and view the Z-film, met archivist Marion Johnson, as I have, and obtained slides of the key frames of the film.

Thompson says that despite being an early mentor to him, they had a falling out over whether the throat wound in JFK’s neck was a bullet entry, as Salandria believed, but Thompson was less certain. I too got to know Salandria because of our mutual work on the Air Force One radio transmission tapes, and found him to be easy going and congenial and believe that the “falling out,” was more over Salandria’s belief that while the devil may be in the details, the government wants us to waste our time micro-analyzing the evidence rather than concluding what is quite obvious – there was a blatant conspiracy we should all just recognize.

Salandria told Gaeton Fonzi in 1975 that, "I'm afraid we were misled. All the critics, myself included, were misled very early. I see that now. We spent too much time and effort micro-analyzing the details of the assassination when all the time it was obvious, it was blatantly obvious that it was a conspiracy. Don't you think that the men who killed Kennedy had the means to do it in the most sophisticated and subtle way? They chose not to. Instead, they picked the shooting gallery that was Dealey Plaza and did it in the most barbarous and openly arrogant manner. The cover story was transparent and designed not to hold, to fall apart at the slightest scrutiny. The forces that killed Kennedy wanted the message clear: 'We are in control and no one - not the President, nor Congress, nor any elected official - no one can do anything about it.' It was a message to the people that their Government was powerless." 

As for Thompson, he was uncomfortable with the fact that all of the pieces to the Dealey Plaza puzzle didn’t fit nicely together, and recognized that some of the pieces weren’t even part of the puzzle, and threw them out.

Thompson made a number of important determinations. Based on viewing the Z-film it is quite clear that JFK is struck in the head from the front, as if hit by a baseball bat. Eyewitnesses, including the Newmans and Holland, on the triple underpass, thought the shot(s) came from behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll, and many people and police ran there afterwards. Many ear witnesses said the first few shots were evenly paced, but the last two shots were close together, almost on top of each other – “Bam, Bam.”

While interviewing witness with Life Magazine editors, Thompson followed Holland down from the triple underpass to the area behind the picket fence, where someone had been standing, pacing back and forth as his footprints were embedded in the mud, and a pile of fresh cigarettes butts were left there.

At Parkland hospital Thompson traced the origin of CE399, the so-called magic bullet, and interviewed the orderly who found it and the hospital’s head of security, a retired 20 year Dallas policeman. It turns out that the bullet was found on a gurney not affiliated with either President Kennedy or Governor Connally, but a little boy who was brought in at the same time. And the security officer said the bullet that was turned over to him had a pointy tip, not the one in evidence today as CE399.

Thompson realized that the so called single bullet that supposedly hit JFK in the back, exited his throat and went on to inflict all of the wounds on Connally, did not kill the president, so he focused on the fatal head shot, and it’s multiple complexities. The last second in Dallas is the moment the president is struck in the head and thrown violently backwards, with blood spewn about, a piece of the scull flipped on the truck that Jackie retrieved and tried to put back in place, two other scull fragments that were later found on the ground, including the Harper fragment that came from the back of the head and has since disappeared. And most significantly the blood and brain matter that hit Secret Service agent Hill as he ran towards the limo and hit the motorcycle policeman riding to the left rear of the car.

While all of that clearly indicates a shot from the front, the clincher is the fact that Hill, the doctors at the Parkland emergency room and a number of those at the autopsy all describe a very clear grapefruit sized hole in the back of JFK’s head that was clearly  an exit wound of a shot from the front.

Thompson quotes novelist Don DeLillo, who wrote about the assassination in his book Libra, as saying about the Zapruder film's key frame of the exploding head shot: "Are you seeing some distortion inherent in the film medium or in your own perception of things? Are you the willing victim of some enormous lie of the state - a lie, a wish, a dream? Or did the shot simply come from the front, as every cell in your body tells you it did?" 

What puzzled Thompson however, are the bullet fragments that created a crack in the windshield, embedded in the chrome trim by the rearview mirror, were found on the floor of the limo and according to the doctor who operated on Connally, caused the wounds to his wrist. One piece of the puzzle is the fact that full metal jacketed bullets like CE399 and those believed to have been fired by the sixth floor gunman, don't fragment like the bullet that struck JFK in the head. That must have been a different type of bullet.

"It all came down to the threshold question: Was there more than one shooter? If the answer was yes, then that fact would show itself in the details of the shooting. Finding those details - if they existed - would be the task of my book. And if they did not exist, that too would make the book worthwhile." 

The answer Thompson provides, as was presented to him by Keith Fitzgerald is that there were two almost simultaneous shots to the head, one from the front that killed him, as seen in Z-film frame #313,, and a second shot less than a second (.07) later from somewhere behind, that fragmented.

Dr. Cyril Wecht had previously speculated on two shots to the head, and wants proof of two gunman, and this might be it – especially because such a two head shot scenario can be seen in the Z-film and complimented by the acoustical study results as well as earwitness reports.

In 1978, Dr. Cyril Wecht, a member of the HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel wrote: "In my opinion, the medical evidence and other physical evidence and investigative data in this case do not rule out the possibility of another gunshot wound of JFK's head....A soft-nosed bullet, or some other type of relatively frangible ammunition that would have disintegrated upon impact could have struck the right side of JFK's head in the parietal region. Inasmuch as there is a large defect of JFK's skull in this area, it is not possible to rule out the existence of a separate entrance wound at this site." 

My own research only concludes that the shot to the head that killed the president was not taken by the sixth floor gunman, whoever he was, but was taken by a well trained first class military sniper from either in front of the target or behind it, so it didn’t appear to be moving but was approaching or moving away from the shooter. First class snipers are trained to shoot for the head, and their motto is “one shot one kill.”

Almost all of what Josiah Thompson’s conclusions jive with my own, I don’t get so engrossed in the ballistic, medical, forensic or photo analysis, but I try to determine how the covert operation at Dealey Plaza was planned, put together and conducted.

As Thompson puts it: "There is no more effective ambush than a crossfire. With shots coming undeniably from two locations and likely a third....This was a highly sophisticated, devastatingly effective assassination: two bullets to the head and one to the back. Its vary audacity is its most compelling feature. Any speculation as to who did it and why must at least start with that fact." 

I had known Thompson since the early 1990s from our participation at various conferences, but except for an occasional lunch with others and drinks in the hotel bar, I didn’t spend any considerable or quality time with him except for one occasion. It was after an anniversary November COPA conference in Dallas, when after the conference in the second floor ballroom of the Union train station, while the others sat down for dinner and an awards ceremony, Thompson and I left together to attend a media panel presentation at the Sixth Floor Museum.

Former Dallas mayor and TV reporter Wes Wise had invited me, as he had previously gave me a tour of Dallas assassination hot spots and videotaped  an interview with me for the Sixth Floor Museum. I had been asked to give a talk to a college law enforcement class, and when the professor decided to take the entire class on a field trip to Dallas, I arranged for Wes Wise to give them his tour.

[  Links to Wise Tour -   JFKcountercoup: Case Study No.14 - Wes Wise - Assassin's Tour of Dallas                / JFKCountercoup2: Wes Wise Tour of Dallas Hot Spots ]

So Thompson and I left the COPA conference, walked down Houston Street, crossed the plaza and had a short but interesting conversation along the way. There was a classy wine and cheese reception before the panel discussion that included a handful of former local news reporters who covered the assassination. It was held on the seventh floor, and the college professor and his students were also there.

I mention all of this because if you get through this intense and instructive book, and the two appendixes on the acoustics, there are fifty-six pages of footnotes and sources. Many of these footnotes refer to specific documents and records mentioned in the text, and notes that for the seriously curious, they can be found in the Thompson Collection at the Sixth Floor Museum, not a bastion of silly conspiracy theories.

Peter Dale Scott once said at an early COPA conference that besides the usual assassination buffs -  dedicated lone nuts who support the Warren Report conclusions, and the silly conspiracy theorists who try to pin the assassination on a likely suspects – LBJ, CIA, Mafia, KGB, Castro, etc., there was emerging a third class of independent researchers who don’t believe they know who killed the president, but keep an open mind, read all the books and records, and try to answer the outstanding questions that can and should be answered, however difficult.

Josiah Thompson is one of those different breeds of assassination buffs, as are a number of others – John Newman, Bill Simpich, Jefferson Morley, Larry Hancock, among others, and I would like to include myself in their number.

Mary Farrell once told me that she was convinced the assassination of President Kennedy will one day be resolved to a legal and moral certainty, not because of any government or official investigation, but by the joint work of independent researchers, and I believe her.

Josiah Thompson’s Last Second in Dallas is a foundation that can lead to a clear outline of the ambush at Dealey Plaza, identify the gunman, and the mastermind who planned and conducted the Dealey Plaza operation, though justice will never be served.

William Kelly is Research Coordinator for CAPA – Citizens Against Political Assassinations, Dr. Cyril Wecht Chairman, and a member of the board of David Talbot’s Truth and Reconciliation Committee. His email is billkelly3@gmail.com.

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