JFK (59 page)

This “instant” news, available so quickly and completely in far-off New Zealand, is a most important detail of the murder plan. This newspaper ran an “Extra” edition that was on the streets before noon in Christchurch. It ran news items filed by experienced on-the-spot reporters in Dallas, who reported that the President was hit with a “burst of gunfire.” A few lines below, it said, “Three bursts of gunfire, apparently from automatic weapons,” were heard.

Another reporter quoted Sen. Ralph Yarborough, who had been riding in the procession, as saying, “. . . at least two shots came from our right rear.” As confirmed by photographs made at that time, the “right rear” of Senator Yarborough’s position could not have been the alleged lone gunman’s lair six floors above.

NBC-TV reported that the police took possession of “a British .303-inch rifle. . . with a telescopic sight. That was not the Italian rifle of the Warren Report.

Another account in this same newspaper stated that “the getaway car was seized in Fort Worth, Texas.” Whose getaway car? Oswald never left Dallas.

This type of sudden, quite random reporting is most important, because one can usually find the truth of what occurred in these early news reports. Later, the “news” will be doctored and coordinated and will bear little resemblance to the original, more factual accounts.

Experienced reporters travel in the presidential party. They know gunfire when they hear it, and they reported “bursts” of gunfire. They reported “automatic weapons.” They reported what they heard and saw. They did not yet have propaganda handouts.

Neither the FBI nor the Secret Service reported such action. Since automatic weapons were never found, it becomes apparent that the reporters on the scene had heard simultaneous gunfire from several skilled “mechanics” or professional killers and that this gunfire had sounded like “bursts” of “automatic weapons.”

This reference to “three bursts of gunfire” and “apparently from automatic weapons” that I read first on the front page of the
Christchurch Star
provides a most important clue. It shows how on-the-spot news coverage creates real facts that are much different from the preprepared cover story, and the after-the-fact
Report of the Warren
Commission
.

Another factor is important. On-the-spot news coverage benefits from that “instantenous communications throughout the world. . . simultaneously with the occurrence of a news event” that David Lawrence mentioned in the
New York Herald Tribune
.

During early on-the-spot news bulletins CBS made use of these same words: “Three bursts of automatic gunfire, apparently from automatic weapons, were fired at President Kennedy’s motorcade in downtown Dallas.” These same lines were repeated in subsequent CBS bulletins of that date.

Another point can be made from this bulletin. Although the gunmen may have used “automatic” weapons, it is more likely that what the reporters heard that day was the well-coordinated fire from at least three gunmen in different locations, and that they fired at least three times each.

This is an old firing-squad and professional hit-man ploy. It serves to remove the certain responsibility from each gunner as a psychological cleanser. If three men are to fire, they all know that two guns are loaded and one gun is firing blanks. The gunmen do not know who had the bullets, or who had the blanks. Each man can choose to believe that he did not kill the victim; and each man can swear an oath that he was not the killer.

It is relevant to note that these on-the-spot bulletins did not contain the previously written “Lee Harvey Oswald” data that had been fed to the world press and that I read in New Zealand.

Nowhere does the Warren Report mention the precision control of several guns, yet it is hard to discount the first, eyewitness reports from experienced men.

On the other hand, almost one-quarter of that front page in Christchurch was taken up with detailed news items about Lee Harvey Oswald. An excellent photograph of Oswald in a business suit and tie was run on page 3. This odd photograph appeared in no other files.

At the time this edition of the
Star
went to press, the police of Dallas had just taken a young man into custody and had charged him with the death of a Dallas policeman named J. D. Tippit. They had not accused Oswald of the murder of the President and did not charge him with that crime until early the next morning. Yet a long article put on the wires by the British United Press and America’s Associated Press had been assembled out of nowhere, even before Oswald had been charged with the crime. It was pure propaganda. Where did those wire services get it?

Nowadays, Oswald is a household name throughout the world, but in Dallas at 12:30 P.M. on November 22, 1963, he was a nondescript twenty-four year-old ex-marine who was unknown to almost everyone. There is no way one can believe that these press agencies had in their files, ready and on call, all of the detailed information that was so quickly poured out in those first hours after the assassination.

In the long account in the
Christchurch Star
about Lee Harvey Oswald—which included that fine studio portrait in business suit, white shirt, and tie—these press services provided, and the
Star
published, some very interesting information.

According to the account, Lee Harvey Oswald:

. . . and much more.

The statement by David Lawrence of the
Herald Tribune
that “instantaneous communications throughout the world has been made possible” is true. It is possible to send news around the world “instantaneously.” But what of the content of that news? Can information on some young unknown be collected and collated “instantaneously”?

By what process could the wire services have acquired, collated, evaluated, written, and then transmitted all that material about an unknown young man named Lee Harvey Oswald within the first moments following that tragic and “unexpected” event—even before the police had charged him? How could they have justified the collation of such news until
after
the police had charged him with the crime?

There can be but one answer: Those in charge of the murder had prepared the patsy and all of that intimate information beforehand.

Strangely, the FBI, the Secret Service, the Warren Commission, and the Dallas police force instantly declared Oswald to be the killer. They never considered any other possibilities. The evidence was never examined. In newspapers around the world, even as far away as Christchurch, New Zealand, the headlines blared that Oswald was the President’s murderer.

If one believes the information in the wire-service article, is it possible also to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald, alone, was the murderer of President John F. Kennedy?

That is such a powerful question that one wonders why it hasn’t been asked more often by those who have recourse to excellent sources, tenacious investigators, and wide experience—the moguls of the media themselves. How can the press of the world have lived with this fantasy it inherited from clandestine propaganda sources before Kennedy’s body was cold? How has this story been contained for more than twenty-eight long years? We must wonder what has happened to our once-free press.

We must also wonder at the chilling effect this assassination has had on succeeding presidents.

Lyndon Johnson was riding in a car behind President Kennedy in the Dealey Plaza motorcade. Johnson was seared by that event. During his November 29, 1963, conversation with J. Edgar Hoover, Johnson asked, “How many shots were fired” and “Were any fired at me?” We may be sure that he thought during his years as President about those shots that went right over his head. As any soldier can tell you, such an experience provides an excellent education.

We have noted in an earlier chapter that, despite frequent denials, Richard Nixon was in Dallas during those fateful moments, attending a meeting with executives of the Pepsi-Cola Company. According to the general counsel of that company, Nixon and the others in the room knelt in a brief prayer when they heard of Kennedy’s death. Despite this, there were many news stories in which Nixon denied that he was in Dallas at the time of the assassination. Why did Nixon tell so many different, false stories about his whereabouts at that time—all placing himself outside Dallas?

Although Nixon may not have heard those guns of Dallas, there can be no question that they were never far from his mind, especially during the hectic years of his own presidency. Some people say Nixon became paranoid. That would be understandable.

Gerald Ford, who became President after Nixon left office, was a member of the Warren Commission. He attended more of its meetings than any other member. He knows the details of the murder of Kennedy well. Add to that his own experience when an assassin fired at him while he was President. He, too, knows the sound of bullets and understands their lesson.

President Reagan was not in Dallas and was not a member of the Warren Commission, but he was a member of the Rockefeller Commission that studied CIA activities in the United States. He learned about allegations concerning the assassination of President Kennedy and of the CIA’s role in foreign assassination attempts as a member of that commission. Then, on the steps of the Washington Hilton in 1981, he, too; was felled by an assassin’s gun. On that day, if not before, he learned how the game is played.

Four days after Kennedy’s death, on November 26, President Lyndon B. Johnson met with his new presidential team, most of whom had served with JFK. Only four days after the assassination in Dallas, LBJ listened to a briefing on warfare in Indochina, which had been the subject on the agenda of the November 20 conference in Hawaii. This briefing and the agenda formulated at the November 20 conference in Honolulu, before President Kennedy’s death, marked a major turning point in the Vietnam War.

Whereas Kennedy had ordered, in NSAM #263 of October 11, 1963, the return of the bulk of American personnel by the end of 1965, the November 20 agenda and the November 26 briefing moved in direct opposition to Kennedy’s intentions and paved the way for the enormous escalation that took place after his death. President Johnson’s NSAM #288 of March 1964 completed the full turnabout.

On March 8, 1965, U.S. Marines landed on the shores of Vietnam at Da Nang. Before long, there were 550,000 American troops in Vietnam. Fifty-eight thousand U.S. soldiers would die there. Before that “no-win” conflict would end, more than $220 billion would be poured into the coffers of the war makers.

It had been evident that great pressures were building against President Kennedy. The Kennedy administration, especially with the near certainty that the President would be reelected, was diametrically opposed to many of the great power centers of our society. He had to go. The government had to be put in the hands of more pliable “leaders.”

A nation with the strength and determination to rise and demand an investigation into the death of President Kennedy—as well as the deaths of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King—will have the strength to survive and prosper.

Does America have that strength? I believe it does. More than any other country, America represents the cause of freedom, for all of mankind. For that reason, for ourselves and for others, it is vitally important that the truth of the events in Dallas on November 22, 1963, be told.

ON NOVEMBER 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy flew to Dallas, Texas, to deliver a major speech at the Trade Mart. He did not live to deliver that speech. What follows are extracts from the speech that he had planned to deliver and an analysis of events that followed: