The Kennedy murder again

UPDATE 26 OCTOBER: Some documents in the JFK murder case have been kept secret by President Trump at the request of the CIA, on grounds of “national security”, 54 years after the murder. Most of the material is now available for scrutiny, but the documents in question need to be “assessed”. Americans are kept very secure, aren’t they?

The murder of President John F Kennedy in 1963 is in the news. On the 26th of this month documents about the murder held by the FBI and CIA still classified as secret will be released to public scrutiny. This is the provision of an Act of Congress of 1992. President Trump, it is said, may countermand the release if he considers the information a threat to “national security”

There have been nine investigations into Kennedy’s murder. All of them conducted by groups perhaps implicated in the murder and/or its cover-up. The only culprit enquirers can agree on is Oswald, a choice made apparently before any of the investigations began. An independent judicial enquiry really needs to be made, taking into account evidence turned up by investigators ignored by previous enquiry bodies. Perhaps the new evidence about to be released will precipitate this.

The news prompts me to ask my JFK questions. Like a lot of people I wonder about the murder, find the ‘official’ explanation unconvincing, but am confused by the plethora of so-called conspiracies put forward as solutions. More information on conspiracies is available here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_conspiracy_theories, although the report errs on the grounds of inclusion, not discriminating between many of the ‘idiot fringe’ claims and those with some foundation.

This is still an unsolved crime. Will the documents released on the 26th answer these questions?

1. Firstly and most obviously, will any incriminating evidence against any person or organisation remain undestroyed at this stage? The Government still supports the lone gunman Oswald theory. Would it release information that contradicts this?

2. Will we learn why JFK was shot? It would have been easier to damage a campaigning politician’s reputation, and JFK was vulnerable on health and morals counts.

3. Was Oswald a patsy, as he said? One observer, of the many who watched the President’s motorcade from windows along the route, claimed they saw Oswald with a gun at a window of the Book Depository. There were hundreds of windows, and spectators at them, lining the route, yet police investigated only the tip on Oswald. Other witnesses, who claimed they saw a gunman shooting from a rise at the front of the procession, were ignored by police. It was almost as if police knew the fatal bullet’s trajectory before they began their investigation. Could Oswald have performed a miracle with one shot, wounding two bodies in five places with a bullet that changed trajectory in mid air to do so? Why did Oswald leave an identifiable weapon at the scene of the crime, then make himself conspicuous by murdering a police officer for no reason? Was he asked to play the part of an anti-Cuban protester, then scheduled to be silenced by Officer Tippett, then by Jack Ruby? Why was the fatal bullet that killed the President unmarked, yet the bullets that killed a police officer so badly marked they could not be identified? Is it true, as Earl Warren said, that he was ordered by LBJ to find Oswald the lone assassin? The Oswald as murderer theory bristles with unanswered questions like these.

4. Was there a cover-up? If it’s true that Earl Warren was asked by LBJ to find Oswald guilty in order to reassure the American people (and put an end to further enquiry), then there was a cover up. If it’s true that covert operations accompanied the autopsy on the President’s body (it was not carried out as prescribed by law); that evidence as to the shooting was removed from the President’s limousine before the investigation started; and that no enquiry was made as to who else (other than Oswald) had both motive and opportunity to murder the President: doesn’t that suggest a cover-up?

5. Were some of the hundreds of websites and documentaries allegedly solving the crime really misinformation released by guilty parties?

6. Will we learn who ordered the killing? Investigations so far have concentrated on who carried out the murder, but ignored who initiated it. I have found only one of the many documentaries on YouTube about the JFK murder that makes an accusation, against former President George Herbert Bush; it claims that in 1963 he was a senior supervisor of the CIA, owner of oilfields off the Cuban coast, involved in attempts to assassinate Fidel Castro, and present in Dallas when the US President was murdered, in the company of a CIA assassin, Howard Hunt. (https://youtu.be/ZDWIKA9ouks). No proof of guilt; but circumstantial evidence that needs explaining if possible.

7. Were ex-Presidents Johnson, Nixon, Ford and Bush snr, and/or FBI chief Hoover, and/or ex-heads of CIA Dulles or McCone accessory before or after the fact as some allege? If so would they be charged with murder?

8. Is there a connection between the JFK murder, the RFK murder, Martin Luther King jnr’s murder, that of Malcolm X, and the murders of the many witnesses to the JFK investigation?

9. Would anti-Communist activities carried out by the CIA throw any light on the JFK murder? The CIA was active in 1954 in Guatemala, 1960 in the Dominican Republic, 1961 in Cuba and 1973 in Chile, and many other countries as well, sending in elimination teams of commandoes, supporting foreign military, providing arms and arms training to insurgents. They had motivation, training and authority to intervene against Kennedy if they had wished to.

It seems extraordinary that the claims made of a 1963 coup d’état by US security organisations and complicity in such an action by the US Executive have not been met with anything except ridicule. Investigators have accumulated a considerable amount of evidence from medical staff involved, forensic ballistic investigations, and interviews with many witnesses not before asked to testify and give information on the murder. Isn’t refusal to evaluate this evidence in itself suspicious?

The matter should be of concern to most people, not just Americans. If there is any substance in any of the claims of a conspiracy of murder and a conspiracy of silence about it, then has the USA been ruled since 1963 by organisations justifying their rule on grounds of “national security”? Watch out for that phrase. It’s pretty close to the “martial law” used by dictators.