The JFK Assassination: The Mother of all Conspiracies

The truth is simple

I borrowed the title of this article from myself. In my book Hidden History, that’s what I named the chapter on the JFK assassination. So it’s not plagiarism. I think it’s accurate. Of all the topics broached by the alt media and the conspiracy crowd, none are as big and all encompassing as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

I became a Kennedy fan boy at a young age. I read all the books I could on John F. Kennedy. A Thousand Days. My Twelve Years with John F. Kennedy, by his loyal secretary Evelyn Lincoln, who was the first Kennedy insider to express doubts about the official story of the assassination. And I was deeply influenced by Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, by his close aides Kenneth O’Donnell and David Powers. While not a conspiracy book, its first hand account of the events in Dallas painted a very revealing and negative picture of Lyndon B. Johnson. There was a clear inference, in between the lines, that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald had murdered Kennedy. And then I happened to read an excerpt from George O’Toole’s new book The Assassination Tapes, which was published in Penthouse magazine. Yes, I used to buy Penthouse. And Playboy. But I honestly did read the articles.

Penthouse especially published some thought provoking articles on deep politics then, in the mid to late 1970s. From that point on, I was hooked. My mother bought me a copy of Robert Sam Anson’s They’ve Killed the President and Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment. Anson was an early day “neocon,” or what I call a neo believer in conspiracy, not to be confused with the Zionists who run our corrupt government. Lane quickly became my hero. I eagerly joined the local chapter of his national lobbying group, The Citizens Committee of Inquiry. I became the head of that chapter. Not as impressive as it sounds, as myself and another teenager were the only official members. Although we did attract people to a library symposium. I slapped a “Who Killed JFK?” bumper sticker on my 1970 Datsun 510 sedan, to advertise my skepticism to the world. Meeting Mark Lane in late 1976 was one the most thrilling moments of my life.

I recounted what happened at Lane’s Washington, D.C. office that day, in Hidden History. I’ll provide a teaser here. It involved a long distance phone call from Hollywood, from then red hot comedian Freddie Prinze, who was the star of the sitcom Chico and the Man. Let’s just say that when Prinze supposedly killed himself a few months later, it really opened my eyes. Thanks to my official researcher card from The Citizens Committee of Inquiry, I was given a personal tour of the National Archives, which included a private screening of the Zapruder film, where I could freeze it wherever I wanted and watch frame by frame. They also brought out JFK’s bloody clothing, the ridiculous Mannlicher Carcano rifle, and let me hold the “magic bullet” in my hand. I felt like a big shot, especially considering I had just dropped out of community college for the first time.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations, which we presumably helped to create with our meager lobbying efforts, wound up supporting all the impossible claims of the Warren Commission, including the single-bullet theory. Needless to say, as a young, card carrying member of the ACLU, it was all very disillusioning. I realized that the liberal Democrats weren’t the good guys. After all, they didn’t seem to care who had killed their supposed idol and martyr, John F. Kennedy. It was at that point that I read None Dare Call it Conspiracy, by Gary Allen, and started realizing there were some pretty interesting conspiracies on the far Right. Even though I scoured the yearly list of CFR members, provided by the John Birch Society, and enjoyed James Tucker’s accounts of infiltrating the Bilderberg meeting in the Spotlight, I never lost my interest in the JFK assassination. Or my affection for the Kennedys. It remains my wheelhouse issue, and the one I always come back to.

About five years later, I was able to meet another of my heroes, indefatigable researcher Harold Weisberg, author of the Whitewash series and other books on the JFK assassination. I picked him up in Washington, D.C., where he was battling in court over some Freedom of Information request, as he did every day for years, and drove him back to his Frederick, Maryland home. He invited me in for dinner. He was just as grumpy as his reputation. Kind of a precursor to the black pilled alt media people, he didn’t trust anyone, and balked at giving other researchers credit. He liked the fact that I knew pretty much about big band music, as he played some of his favorite records for me. It was disappointing, but hardly surprising, when his bitterness caused him to try to sabotage Oliver Stone’s JFK by leaking an advance copy of the script to Mockingbird Media asset George Lardner of The Washington Post.

To my astonishment, my county’s adult education program actually allowed me to teach a course on the JFK assassination for five years or so. Initially, the class was on the assassination itself, and I put together what I thought was a convincing PowerPoint presentation, that demonstrated how the official version of events was a monumental lie. As I’ve noted before, in each of my classes, there always seemed to be a lone nutter, and it frustrated me beyond belief that I was unable to persuade them of the truth with my presentation. Now, there wasn’t much interest in the class, and half the time it was cancelled because not enough people signed up for it. They did charge what I thought was an exorbitant amount, so that certainly didn’t help. Then they switched me to teaching a course on Oliver Stone’s film, where I just screened JFK and stopped the film at various points to insert my comments. Talk about easy money.

COVID killed off that JFK class, and I’ve never heard back from them about starting it up again. It would have been more rewarding with a large group, but as time goes on, interest in the subject is bound to wane. Far more people today weren’t alive on November 22, 1963 than were. JFK is a video sound byte to them. A shock of thick hair with a distinct Boston accent. And their impressions of him are undoubtedly impacted by the nonstop negative media coverage, ever since Judith Campbell Exner donned those oversized sunglasses and held her first press conference. During which, by the way, she never mentioned the Mafia. So now, to many people, JFK is just an insatiable adulterer, who was too sick to be president anyway, and shockingly reckless. He probably caused his own death. Or at least he deserved it in some way. Read my books for all the slanderous comments about him from “liberals.”

People often ask me, “so who killed JFK?” And my answer always is, “not Lee Harvey Oswald.” Sure, we can reasonably suspect that the same forces who covered up the crime- the FBI, the CIA, LBJ, the Warren Commission- were involved in the conspiracy. I think it’s logical to assume that top level Pentagon officials, maybe some Big Oil names, and perhaps an Israeli or two were part of the plot. The crime of the twentieth century has never been honestly investigated. The Warren Commission failed to call many crucial witnesses, and the witnesses were never questioned properly. Think Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison proclaiming, “Ask the question!” A lot of us were doing that, as we waded through those 26 volumes of mostly meaningless material. You can see the attorneys attempting to pad the record. I provided some glaring examples of their “incompetence” in Hidden History.

Look at one of the infamous “backyard photos” above. Here we have the future lone assassin helpfully posing with both the unreliable Italian rifle, and the pistol that supposedly killed officer J.D. Tippit not long after Kennedy was shot. And he’s holding some commie literature for good measure. I mean, why be half-hearted about incriminating yourself? And try standing in that position. You will fall over. The shadows don’t match. The late great Jack White did extensive research on these photos, which were used to poison the public against Oswald. One of them appeared on the cover of Life magazine. And now, the “neocons” that dominate the research community have convinced many, if not most of them, that these ridiculous photos are legitimate. There were no suspicious witness deaths. The Umbrella Man was protesting JFK’s father’s WWII “appeasement.” Don’t ask about the Babushka Lady.

Anyone can do just a modicum amount of research, as I did as a teenager, and discover very quickly that we’ve been lied to about the murder of a sitting U.S. president. By the entire mainstream media. By every government agency. By almost all celebrities. And the Big Lie continues, sixty one years later. Understand that, if Oswald had been tried in an honest courtroom (which, of course, probably wouldn’t have been the case), then the case against him would never have gone to trial. The chain of possession problems for the alleged murder weapon- the one I held at the Archives almost fifty years ago- was hopelessly compromised. Both officers who found it- Eugene Boone and Seymour Weitzman- signed sworn affidavits identifying it as a different rifle. Legally speaking, the Carcano couldn’t be introduced into the record. Weitzman, by the way, wound up in a mental institution.

There are chain of possession problems with all of the “evidence” against Oswald. Read Hidden History for a comical recounting of how the “magic” bullet was discovered and handled. And then just last year, surviving JFK detail Secret Service agent Paul Landis recalled how he’d discovered a bullet- seemingly the “magic” one- on the top of the back limousine seat. Following typical law enforcement protocol, he told no one and planted it himself on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital. Landis and the rest of the Secret Service agents failed to react at all to the sound of gunfire. Limo driver Bill Greer stopped, or almost stopped, the vehicle, and turned around to watch JFK’s head explode. In a real investigation, Greer and the rest of the Secret Service would have been the first witnesses questioned. Without their absolute failure to do their jobs, the assassination could never have been successful.

At this point, I am one of the deans of the JFK assassination research community. Very few are left who have been studying this case for longer than I have. Robert Groden. Josiah Thompson. But like Rodney Dangerfield, I get no respect from the research community. Although Hidden History became a surprise best-seller, they had nothing to do with it. They are still debating lone nutters over the single bullet theory. Oswald was supposedly firing from a sixth floor window, behind the limousine. The bullet holes in JFK’s coat and shirt correspond with where the wound was marked on the original autopsy face sheet, about 5-6 inches below the shoulder. And yet, we are told this bullet exited through the president’s throat. You do the math. Downward trajectory, higher exit than entrance wound. This “magic” bullet caused 7 wounds in JFK and Governor John Connally, yet emerged in practically pristine condition.

JFK’s head can be seen, in the Zapruder, Nix, and Muchmore films, to be driven backwards violently from the head shot. Again, Oswald was supposedly behind him. So, both the Secret Service agents and the laws of physics weren’t working that day. And why do we have to rely on grainy home videos? Well, that’s because, unlike all of JFK’s other presidential motorcades, the press car wasn’t stationed in front of his vehicle. Instead, they were back in the motorcade, on a press bus. So there was conveniently no professional film footage of the shooting. The same thing would happen with the RFK assassination five years later. No one filming in the Ambassador Hotel pantry. It’s kind of like how the surveillance cameras never work during mass shootings. It’s a simulated drill thing, you wouldn’t understand.

The evidence that JFK was killed by a conspiracy is so overwhelming that it boggles the mind how some people can still accept the lone assassin fairy tale. Oswald had no motive- all witnesses said that he liked Kennedy. He had no means- his last Marine Corps. shooting test score put him, by one point, in the lowest “marksman” category. As the Marines would tell Mark Lane, his score indicated that he was “a rather poor shot.” No real sharpshooters, under far more favorable conditions, have ever duplicated Oswald’s alleged feat. And he had no opportunity- no credible witness ever placed him in the sixth floor window, as Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry himself admitted. His obvious links to American intelligence lend strong credence to Jim Garrison’s belief that he was working undercover, told to infiltrate a group that was plotting to kill the president. I believe that all of those in the New Orleans circle- like David Ferrie, were also being manipulated by someone like the FBI or the CIA.

In the book I wrote with JFK researcher William Matson Law, Pipe the Bimbo in Red: Dean Andrews, Jim Garrison, and the Conspiracy to Kill JFK, we explored this New Orleans conspiracy, which used all those shadowy anti-Castro Cubans and the likes of Ferrie and Guy Banister, to knowingly or unknowingly maneuver Oswald into being the patsy. We spoke with the sisters of Oswald’s best friend in high school, who had never talked publicly before. It was bombshell information, as Alex Jones likes to say. Those who say that there was a benign coverup, of a limited conspiracy, led by the Mob and “rogue” CIA agents, are promoting the “neocon” view. And it goes hand in hand with the continuous lies about JFK’s character, which I have written extensively about. If you can get people to believe someone was a really bad person, then why would they care about his assassination? Go listen to the Dead Kennedys.

National Security Action Memorandum 263, approved by Kennedy shortly before his assassination, paved the way for our withdrawal from Vietnam. 1,000 Americans were to be sent home at the end of 1963, with all Americans in the country to be out by 1965. On the day of the assassination, National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy drafted National Security Action Memorandum 273, which completely contradicted 263, and led to our disastrous escalation in Vietnam. Bundy had to have known JFK would never sign it, and would probably fire him for writing it. So you want a probable conspirator inside the White House? Well, how else do you explain something like that? Bundy also told JFK’s cabinet- in the air at the time flying to a conference in Hawaii- that there was no conspiracy, on the afternoon of November 22. Before there had been any investigation at all. Why would he say that?

I know JFK wasn’t perfect. Maybe he did sleep with Marilyn Monroe. Not many men would blame him for that. But he gave the two greatest speeches any president ever did- the “Secret Societies” speech, and his timeless June, 1963 American University speech, where he pleaded for peace as no American president ever had before, or has since. Obviously, some very powerful forces felt threatened by him. He was probably going to abolish the CIA. He was in a war of words with Israel over their developing nuclear weapons. Former CIA director Allen Dulles, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, General Curtis LeMay, and his vice-president Lyndon Johnson were among those who hated him, and would have welcomed his assassination. JFK’s elegance, charisma, and generally good nature made for a special time in American history. Call it Camelot if you want. Until his real killers are identified, we will not have any justice.