from: http://pages.about.com/search/chapter2.htm Click Here: <A HREF="http://pages.about.com/search/chapter2.htm">Preserving the legacy</A> ----- FORETHOUGHT Chapter 2 Possessed by the determination to reverse the foreign policy course that Kennedy was charting as President, Johnson did not entertain a single doubt about the need to assassinate Kennedy. The tragic fact of the matter is that Lyndon Johnson simply lacked the capacity to envision a future for the United States unless John F. Kennedy and his plans to withdraw from Vietnam were put to rest. Deluded by the irrational belief that withdrawal from Vietnam would trigger World War III, Johnson mobilized lockstep ideologues and plotted the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The substantive facts that directly implicate Lyndon Johnson are very clear and indisputable. The calm and deliberate hive of activity that Johnson unleashed as soon as John F. Kennedy died was so elaborate and so flawlessly executed that it betrayed an extraordinary degree of pre-assassination planning and forethought. As Kennedy's Vice President, Johnson "publicly" languished in a state of impotence. As soon as Kennedy was shot, Johnson executed a superhuman agenda which was as deliberate and as well thought out as any carefully planned Johnsonian "dictat". On the day of the assassination, despite the state of grief, disarray, shock and confusion, Lyndon Johnson was so fiercely determined to get his own way that he personally ordered Kilduff to disregard immediate demands to take-off for Washington and to keep the plane on the ground until Federal Judge Sarah Hughes arrived to swear him in, made certain that the oath was typewritten correctly, calmly dictated notes to his secretary, fed a press release to Merriman Smith of UPI, arranged to have full press coverage upon landing, called Robert Kennedy to plant the suggestion that the Attorney General of the United States advised him to take the presidential oath immediately, summoned Kennedy loyalists and asked them to remain in government because he allegedly needed them more than the late President ever did, told Merriman Smith and Charles Roberts of Newsweek that he intended to retain the entire Kennedy Cabinet and Kennedy White House staff, used the radio-telephone to call the late President's mother, phoned the wife of the wounded Texas Governor to comfort her, placed calls to Washington and ordered a meeting with legislative leaders, informed the press about upcoming meetings, called McGeorge Bundy to arrange an additional bipartisan meeting before Kennedy's funeral, issued the ignored order that upon landing in Washington, the "casket would be followed by Mrs. Kennedy on the arm of President Johnson", -the list of Johnson's instant rejuvenation goes on and on.1 In retrospect, the evidently pre-planned manoeuvres reflect the fact that Lyndon Johnson was so well prepared to meet the news of Kennedy's assassination that he was undoubtedly motivated by foreknowledge about the plot to murder Kennedy. The behaviour of Lyndon Johnson is quite consistent in betraying the fact that he evidently knew exactly what had happened to Kennedy and why. For example, when Johnson ordered Kilduff to keep the plane on the ground following the Kennedy assassination, he inadvertently exposed the fact that the murder of Kennedy triggered a plot to cover up the truth rather than the panic, grief and confusion that Johnson alluded to. Recall that on the day of the assassination, Johnson was so anxious about the need to promote the belief that he was caught off guard that he had allegedly contemplated the fear that he was the next target of a wider conspiracy. If that were true however, if Johnson had in fact feared for his own safety on the day Kennedy was assassinated, the obsession to leave Texas would have overwhelmed the demand to keep the plane on the ground so that Johnson could be sworn in as President. In retrospect, it is easy to distinguish the self-serving lies from the genuine, obsessive motivation to seize power and to cover up the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. To belabour the neglected point, the deliberate, instantly dispatched manoeuvring reflects an extraordinary degree of diligent, pre-assassination preparation. The intense but calmly delivered course of action that Johnson unleashed as soon as Kennedy died was anything but spontaneous and leads to the inevitable conclusion that Lyndon Johnson was clearly aware of the fact that Kennedy would not survive past November 22, 1963. Emotional human beings initially respond to unexpected pressure, they do not unleash deliberate, flawless political performances. Granted, Lyndon Johnson was a manipulative genius, his strength was a product of strategic planning and purposeful deception, not on the spot thinking. The assassination of John F. Kennedy caught everybody off guard -except the people who knew that Kennedy was going to be shot. Most people were so stunned by the disbelief of it all that they couldn't even think straight. In stark contrast, the non-stop execution of contrived behaviour betrays the fact that Lyndon Johnson knew that Kennedy would be assassinated on the 22nd of November. To be sure, Johnson claimed that he was deeply shocked and overwhelmed with grief as he was "catapulted without preparation into the most difficult job any mortal can hold."2 But the evidence betrays such self-serving lies. Indeed, Lyndon Johnson was deeply shocked and overwhelmed, not when Kennedy was assassinated, but when he was alive and in control of American foreign policy. Johnson believed that Kennedy was betraying the national interest and that World War III was imminent as long as the so-called foreign policy "meddlers" like Kennedy were in charge. Under the circumstances [the paranoia that motivated Johnson] the assassination of John F. Kennedy was a relief, not a shock. If Lyndon Johnson publicly pretended to embrace the Kennedy record, lock, stock and barrel, he did so to cover up the truth about the Kennedy assassination. Clearly, Johnson's immediate preoccupation to retain Kennedy loyalists had absolutely nothing to do with genuine feelings or intentions and everything to do with the need to cover up the truth by obscuring the stark contrast between him and Kennedy. Public relations aside, Johnson's pledge of continuity with the Kennedy Administration was entirely fraudulent. In actual fact, Johnson relished the opportunity to prove the so-called "Harvard crowd" wrong and often did the exact opposite of what they advised, just to spite them. Even in retirement, the resentment that Johnson harboured was so intense that the former President was still in a rage over Kennedy-style policy. According the bitter, retired President who was still as hostile as ever: "It gives me goosebumps every time I hear the phrase 'no more Vietnams' because I fear we're entering a phase of withdrawal. And if that happens we'll lose all of Asia and then Europe and we'll be an island all to ourselves. And when all that comes to pass I'd sure hate to have to depend on the Galbraiths and that Harvard crowd to protect my property or lead me to the Burnet cave (a large cave near Austin) ."3 If the degree of resentment and anger that overwhelmed Vice President Johnson when he was subject to the whim of the Harvard crowd is not obvious or widely acknowledged, it is simply because Johnson was contemporaneously too disciplined to expose his anger and the press focused upon the false impressions that Lyndon Johnson deliberately promoted. Unfortunately, the publicly digested record of the Administration of Lyndon Johnson is often nothing more than an echo of deliberately manufactured lies, and under such circumstances, the truth has to be uncovered, it cannot be "officially" dictated. The "official" historical record suggests that the Vietnam war was "Americanized" in 1965, in response to the Gulf Tonkin crisis. In actual fact, the war was secretively Americanized through National Security Action Memorandum No. 273, dated November 26, 1963, a single day after Kennedy's funeral. Every military action that Lyndon Johnson authorized can be traced back to NSAM 273. On January 22, 1964, Maxwell Taylor, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff claimed that "National Security Action Memorandum No. 273 makes clear the resolve of the President to ensure victory over the externally directed and supported communist insurgency in South Vietnam."4 Taylor further indicated that the "Joint Chiefs are convinced that, in keeping with the guidance in NSAM 273, the United States must make plain to the enemy our determination to keep the Vietnam campaign through to a favourable conclusion. To do this, we must be prepared for whatever level of activity may be required and, being prepared, must then proceed to take actions as necessary to achieve our purposes surely and promptly." The guidance that NSAM 273 provided was comprehensive. Beyond promoting the conviction to take action as necessary "part of this secret (NSAM 273) plan to escalate and widen the war was to obtain from Congress a resolution granting military carte blanche. Thus armed, the Pentagon strategists believed they could deploy the ground forces, ships, and air power deemed necessary to win.5 And so, the pivotal "Americanization" date was not 1965 when Johnson publicly committed combat troops to Vietnam, but November 22nd 1963, when Kennedy was assassinated and his agenda was vetoed by NSAM 273. Kennedy's determination to avoid a land war in Southeast Asia was instantly made a mockery of because when NSAM 273 stressed the commitment to win the war, Kennedy's commitment to withdrawal was implicitly vetoed. A phenomenal degree of fraud and deceit lurks beneath the secret plot to "Americanize" the Vietnam war. In retrospect, the huge gap between the official fraud and the reality is glaringly obvious. On August 4, 1964, Johnson appeared on television to publicly promote manufactured detail about a phantom battle at the Gulf of Tonkin in order to obtain a resolution granting military carte blanche. In essence, Johnson dramatized a crisis to evoke a Pearl Harbour-style response, in effort to unite public opinion about the need to commit American combat troops to war in Vietnam. The public relations tactic was an unheralded success and Johnson got exactly what he wanted. On August 7, 1964, Congress, by a vote of 416-0 in the House, and 88-2 in the Senate, passed what amounted to be an approximation of a Declaration of War, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The resolution ceded to Johnson the right he desperately craved -to take all necessary steps in Southeast Asia, "including the use of armed force."6 Significantly, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution reflected the stark, foreign policy contrast between Kennedy and Johnson. As the vehicle that united Americans, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was essentially the gimmick that rallied the American public to support a wider war in Southeast Asia. Indeed, Johnson's determination to get American combat troops into Southeast Asia was finally realized through the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Every obstacle, including Kennedy himself, was methodically overcome, and it was all done in an extremely secretive, calculating manner because the prospect of a public debate over what Johnson believed to be a "single answer" issue, was not necessary. The only factor that Johnson deemed to be significant was to develop a ploy to commit America to war in Southeast Asia. In the final analysis, Johnson's "single answer" solution dictated everything from the assassination of John F. Kennedy to the Gulf of Tonkin scheme that rallied America to war in Southeast Asia. Clearly, compared to Kennedy's commitment to withdrawal from Vietnam, Johnson's foreign policy pursuit was a deliberate, angry abdication of the path that Kennedy had charted. Even Kennedy's assassination did not abate the hostility that Johnson's self-proclaimed superior sense of understanding about foreign policy evoked, and while his Vietnam policy ultimately claimed his credibility, Johnson continued to blame Kennedy the so-called "amateur", for misguiding American foreign policy. According to the bitter, former President Johnson: "They say Kennedy knew about foreign policy and I don't. I was up there participating in all the Ike decisions-Lebanon, Korea... I appointed Kennedy to the Foreign Relations Committee and he only attended a few meetings. They say he called the fifth desk officer (in the State Department) about things; I call Rusk."7 When Kennedy died, Johnson persistently wooed the very same Ivy League crowd whose ideas he fervently despised because he was driven by the obsession to cover up the motivation that claimed Kennedy's life. Indeed, the disingenuous campaign to retain Kennedy "loyalists" was dispatched with such choreographed precision that not a single "New Frontiersman" abandoned Johnson during the presidential transition period. On November 23, Johnson wooed Walter Heller, the chairman of the President's Council of Economic advisers. He asked him, as he had asked a dozen others, to reassure Kennedy intellectuals like Arhthur Schlesinger, Jr. and Gaibraith, that Johnson genuinely wanted them to be in his administration. Schlesinger had already handed in his resignation, but on November 26, Johnson took him into the Oval Office and systematically erased every single reservation he harboured. Schlesinger's letter of resignation highlighted the fact that every President had the right to have his own people in the White House, but "Johnson replied that he now regarded Schlesinger as one of his own men, that he had complete confidence in him, and that although it undoubtedly would be a sacrifice for Schlesinger, he must stay for the President's sake and for the country's. Johnson said all this with simplicity, dignity and conviction."8 The sophisticated con job succeeded and Schlesinger did not immediately resign, but after four months of "no assignments", he finally got the message and quit. Regardless, Schlesinger inadvertently helped Lyndon Johnson create the image of continuity that he required to obscure the contrast between the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy. In retrospect, the meticulously planned campaign which provided Johnson the opportunity to feign continuity with the Kennedy administration was entirely fraudulent. The symbols of continuity that Johnson cultivated were essentially the smokescreen which created the false impression that Lyndon Johnson was not obsessed by the motivation to assassinate President Kennedy. But despite the zeal to feign continuity, on March 30, 1964, Newsweek described the discontinuity of the transfer of power in the following terms: "Here's one way the making of foreign policy has changed since Lyndon Johnson became President. Under John F. Kennedy, the last word was usually written at informal meetings between the President and White House aide McGeorge Bundy. Now most of the big decisions come during weekly scheduled luncheons attended by Johnson, Bundy, Secretary of State Rusk, and Secretary of Defense McNamara."9 In particular, responsibility for the intense, irreconcilable debate about what to do in Vietnam shifted from the hands of Kennedy who opposed an American combat troop commitment to a group that demanded it. Under the circumstances, the vulgarity of attaching the word "continuity" between the Kennedy and Johnson administrations is clear and obvious. When Kennedy died, the debate over Vietnam was buried with him and the Johnson administration prosecuted the war in secrecy until the Gulf of Tonkin gimmick provided the opportunity to fraudulently generate widespread public support. The diametric opposition between Johnson who was obsessed with winning the Vietnam war and Kennedy who was determined to keep American troops out of what he generally viewed to be a futile engagement, reflected anything but continuity. The Vietnam war created deep division and it is impossible to genuinely claim continuity between the administrations of Kennedy and Johnson because the two leaders were on opposite sides of the irreconcilable divide. The "great patriots" who violently opposed the Kennedy foreign policy vision included powerful, ideologically aligned, foreign policy advocates like Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, McGeorge Bundy and Dean Rusk, and that produced an alliance which was indeed powerful enough to plan and to cover up the murder of Kennedy. Believing that the Vietnam war reflected a Sino-Soviet Communist conspiracy, the "great patriots" were determined to do whatever was necessary to avoid a Communist victory in Vietnam, and in that context, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was simply a means to that end. The "great patriots" ridiculed the so-called intellectuals who focused upon the civil war element of the Vietnam war and who contemplated solutions that were not strictly focused upon the obsession to militarily contain the Communists. At the same time, prior to sending in the marines in 1965, the "great patriots" were obsessed by the need to divert attention away from the truth about the Kennedy assassination, and to that end, Lyndon Johnson appointed J. Edgar Hoover to promote the manufactured official explanation that Lee Harvey Oswald singlehandedly murdered Kennedy. Upon landing in Washington on the day that Kennedy died, Johnson's "political muscle" was immediately focused upon the exhaustive campaign to get all the evidence about the Kennedy assassination investigation into the hands of his trusted friend, J. Edgar Hoover. Indeed, Johnson's obsession to thwart an independent investigation defined the direction and the substance of the entire Kennedy assassination probe. Having authorized J.Edgar Hoover to monopolize the entire investigation, Johnson successfully preempted honest efforts to engage a legitimate probe. Kennedy's assassination generated enough photographic and eyewitness evidence to permit a thorough, exhaustive and conclusive investigation, there was absolutely no legitimate reason for limiting the focus to a frivolous examination about the secret life of Lee Harvey Oswald. The United States Congress, the State of Texas and the Justice Department were ready and anxious to get to the bottom of the tragic assassination, but Lyndon Johnson anxiously preempted every effort. On November 27, 1963, the New York Times reported that a Senate Judiciary Committee was to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the killing of Oswald. Americans expected an immediate, independent, exhaustive inquiry, and when Senator Everett Dirksen raised the proposal to have a Senate Judiciary Committee investigate the assassination, it received support from both Democrats and Republicans on the floor of the Senate. Lyndon Johnson normally craved that sort of consensus, but the Kennedy investigation evidently demanded a thorough cover up, not an independent investigation. And so, instead of addressing the many calls to launch an independent probe, Lyndon Johnson appointed Hoover to produce a case which placed all the blame for a meticulously organized, professionally executed conspiracy upon the shoulders of a single patsy named Lee Harvey Oswald. On November 30, the press reported that Johnson had named a seven man panel (the Warren Commission) to investigate the Kennedy assassination. In reality however, the panel had absolutely nothing to do with investigating the facts which surrounded the Kennedy assassination. Indeed, instead of encouraging panel members to seek the truth, Lyndon Johnson convinced them that their primary duty was not to investigate but to protect the national interest by dispelling assassination rumours. The Johnson-directed cover up was ingenious. His close friend, the relatively unchallengeable Director of the FBI promoted the fraudulent claim that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone and an independent probe was averted by sidetracking all the relevant facts which related to the assassination. The astounding success of the campaign to divert Warren Commission members away from the effort to investigate and towards the so-called "need" to dispel Kennedy assassination rumours, clearly facilitated Johnson's capacity to "bury" the truth. Indeed, every single member of the Warren Commission was evidently motivated, not by the need to investigate the Kennedy assassination, but by the phoney need that Johnson manufactured, in effort to direct attention away from the truth. Allen Dulles said that an atmosphere of rumours and suspicion interferes with the functioning of government, especially abroad, and one of the main tasks of the Commission was to dispel rumours. John J. McCloy said that it was of paramount importance to 'show the world that America is not a banana republic, where a government can be changed by conspiracy.' Senator John Sherman Cooper said that one of the Commission's most important purposes was 'to lift the cloud of doubts that had been cast over American institutions. Congressman Gerald Ford said that dispelling damaging rumours was a major concern of the Commission, and most members of the Commission agreed.10 As early as November 22, the very day that Kennedy was shot, J. Edgar Hoover had the express order of Lyndon Johnson to take complete charge of the investigation, and since then, Johnson personally exercised an extraordinarily aggressive and persistent effort to control all the evidence which related to the Kennedy assassination investigation. Police authorities in Texas had the legal jurisdiction to investigate the assassination, but the Johnson White House wanted all the evidence flown to Washington. Dallas Police Chief Curry initially refused to turn over the evidence, but by November 26, having convinced Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade to comply, the evidence was turned over to Hoover's FBI. In the meantime, Hoover and Johnson maintained the obsession to discredit evidence which suggested that anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The zeal to eliminate every hint of evidence which pointed away from Oswald was so fierce that Waggoner Carr, the attorney general of the State of Texas even received a call from someone in the White House who was evidently on a "fishing" expedition to determine the findings of the of Dallas authorities. The mysterious Washington caller claimed that he had heard a rumor that the Dallas authorities were going to draw up an indictment alleging an international conspiracy and the "White House would be interested in having this eliminated unless there was proof of a conspiracy."11 In retrospect, the call was an implicit "keep your mouth shut" threat, which was supposed to humble Texas authorities into accepting the fact that Hoover alone was responsible for dictating the truth about the Kennedy assassination, and every single fact that he did not directly authorize was strictly rumor. The determined effort to take complete charge of the Kennedy assassination investigation occupied days of wrangling between Washington and Texas, and despite the fact that the legal authority to investigate Kennedy's murder belonged to the State of Texas, the unrivalled capacity to cover up the truth about the Kennedy assassination was subject to the incredible abuse of power that Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover practised. And so, while the entire world was in a state of numbness and disorientation, Lyndon Johnson and J. Edgar Hoover took complete charge of the Kennedy assassination investigation in effort to cover up the truth. Perhaps, the manipulative tactic which is most responsible for maintaining the cover up is Johnson's tendency to exploit honest law enforcement officials like Nicholas Katzenbach, who initially wanted to take the investigation out of Hoover's hands and to set up a board of inquiry, and Chief Justice Earl Warren, who rubber stamped the "evidence" that Hoover made available. Johnson was certainly relentless in his demand to recruit beyond reproach officials who inadvertently substantiated the credibility of the cover up. On November 29, 1963, Earl Warren in fact refused to accept the unusual appointment to chair a presidential commission because, in the words of the Chief Justice himself: "First, it is not in the spirit of constitutional separation of powers to have a member of the Supreme Court serve on a presidential commission; second, it would distract a Justice from the work of the Court, which had a heavy docket; and, third, it was impossible to foresee what litigation such a commission might spawn, with resulting disqualification of the Justice from sitting in such cases."12 The objections that Earl Warren raised were very serious and there was no reasonable rebuff to cause him to change his mind. But Johnson was too desperate, too relentless and too determined to exploit the integrity of Earl Warren, to allow the Chief Justice the opportunity to deny the President of the United States. And so, since Johnson determined that he could not rely upon reason to recruit Earl Warren, he unleashed a dramatic, emotional tirade which was evidently powerful enough to move any loyal, unsuspecting American citizen. According to Lyndon Johnson, who shamelessly exploited the Chief Justice's sense of duty: "You were a soldier in World War 1, but there was nothing you could do in that uniform comparable to what you can do for your country in this hour of trouble".13 After suggesting that nuclear war was imminent unless patriotic Americans like Earl Warren were prepared to sacrifice individual concerns, the disgruntled Earl Warren predictably answered the call of duty and said: "Mr. President, if the situation is that serious, my personal views do not count. I will do it". It was not appropriate for a sitting Justice to serve on a presidential commission, but honourable men respond to the call of duty that Lyndon Johnson defined, and the personal integrity of the Chief Justice was brilliantly exploited. Unaware of the devious plot that had claimed the life of John F. Kennedy, Warren inadvertently helped Lyndon Johnson circumvent an independent probe of the Kennedy assassination by allowing himself and his trustworthy name to be manipulated. Clearly, the Warren Report, controlled entirely through the fraudulent tactics that Johnson and Hoover orchestrated, was certainly not an independent probe of the Kennedy assassination. On the contrary, the Warren Report deliberately thwarted a comprehensive investigation of the facts and promoted the fraudulent conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was responsible for what has repeatedly been proven to be the work of a comprehensive conspiracy. And while Hoover and Johnson used the integrity of Earl Warren to fraudulently place all the blame for Kennedy's assasination on Lee Harvey Oswald, they did not, by any stretch of the imagination, convince any reasonably intelligent person of Oswald's guilt. Indeed, the credibility of the fraudulent Warren Report conclusions did not survive the test of time and by 1966, most Americans doubted the fraudulent assertion that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone. Regardless, even though Warren Report conclusions were effectively discredited, in the eyes of Lyndon Johnson, the work of the Commission reflected an unmitigated success. Under normal circumstances, the Commission was a failure because it did not clear up the confusion about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In the context of Johnson's obsession however, the Commission had managed to avert an immediate, independent probe of the Kennedy assassination, and in that respect, it was a success. And so, in 1971, during a brief encounter with Earl Warren, the former Chief Justice was understandably perplexed when Johnson blurted: "Chief, of all the things you have done for your country, the most important was your work with the Commission on the assassination of President Kennedy." Earl Warren did not understand the comment because he was non conscious of the fact that he had inadvertently helped Johnson thwart the opportunity to expose the truth about the Kennedy assassination through the comprehensive, independent probe that most people demanded. The Warren Report reflects absolutely nothing beyond the preoccupation to cover up the truth about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Indeed, even prior to the Warren Commission's first meeting, J. Edgar Hoover leaked the following press release: "An exhaustive FBI report now nearly ready for the White House will indicate that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone and unaided assassin of President Kennedy, government sources said today."14 In that context, the Warren Report was essentially the Hoover Report [Hoover in fact dictated Warren Report conclusions] and the suggestion that Earl Warren had anything to do with investigating the Kennedy assassination is extremely naive. Moreover, the Warren Report did not solve the Kennedy assassination, it merely promoted fabricated evidence, distortion and disinformation. The mystery that surrounds the Kennedy assassination is, without a doubt, the product of deliberate deception. It is not even remotely possible to blame the lack of evidence for the failure to expose the truth. Scores of photographers produced tens of thousands of individual frames immediately before, during and after the assasination and the massive mountain of evidence should have facilitated the capacity to reach reliable conclusions and to dissolve controversy in the process. The Director of the FBI was certainly capable of launching a thorough and comprehensive investigation that produced unchallengeable conclusions. Instead, J. Edgar Hoover promoted fraudulent evidence in a vain attempt to "prove" that Lee Harvey Oswald was singlehandedly responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy. In November of 1966, Hoover responded to mounting criticism that the Warren Report was a fraud by saying: All the available evidence and facts point to one conclusion -that Oswald acted alone in his crime. Not one shred of evidence has been developed to link any other person in a conspiracy with Oswald to assassinate President Kennedy.15 It is obviously necessary to repeat [as often as Hoover fraudulently claimed otherwise] the fact that despite Hoover's determination to blame the assassination on what he called the "twisted mind" of Lee Harvey Oswald, he was not able to produce a single shred of evidence which proved anything beyond the fact that he was responsible for framing Lee Harvey Oswald. Instead of publicizing autopsy evidence like crucial medical photographs which could have conclusively identified the path of controversial bullet wounds, the records conveniently vanished from the National Archives in Washington D.C. Instead of recording the evidence of key assassination eyewitnesses who were in a position to expose the truth, Hoover pompously declared that the public "should show more regard for the facts on record".16 Instead of conducting the sort of inquiry which is crucial to any murder investigation, evidence mysteriously vanished and was consistently tampered with in a manner which was consistent to Hoover's "facts on record". Indeed, the tampering was so blatant, consistently obvious and undeniable that the Hoover supplied record assumed "magical" capabilities, as dictated by the otherwise impossible task of proving that Kennedy was struck exclusively by bullets fired from the Texas School Book Depository. The effort to suppress all contrary evidence was exhaustive. Instead of publicizing the obvious truth, autopsy attendants were forced to sign a military gag-order, to keep the fact that Kennedy's wounds were deliberately misrepresented a secret. Anyone who witnessed the autopsy was effectively harassed and bullied by the palpable threat that they were subject to the punishment of a General Court Marshall, if they divulged information about the Kennedy autopsy.17 Hoover promoted the claim of Oswald's guilt through the suppression of all evidence that indicated otherwise, and genuine autopsy evidence was certainly cause for cover up concern. In retrospect, the Hoover-directed charade is glaringly obvious. Lee Harvey Oswald had not been formally charged with any crime, the Warren Commission had not been created, the evidence surrounding the Kennedy assassination had not been investigated, yet the propaganda which is responsible for creating the impression that a pro-Communist maniac murdered Kennedy, was aggressively promoted through Hoover's capacity to leak reports to the press. The media, thoroughly saturated with reports about the alleged assassin and the left-wing psychological profile attributed to him, inadvertently supported the huge propaganda campaign that focused on Lee Harvey Oswald, and ignored the genuine facts which surround the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Former FBI veteran William Sullivan, privy to the fact that Hoover tended to support investigative hoaxes like the McCarthy hearings, described the self-serving motivation behind the Warren Commission when he said: "Oh God, there's so much of this. There's the Kennedy assassination. Hoover leaked our [FBI] investigation to the Chicago Tribune and the Washington Evening Star, thinking that if he got things out before the Warren Commission got under way, it would either cut off their own private investigation, or at least it would limit it by dulling the edge of its operations in the eyes of the public."18 The December 23, 1963 issue of Newsweek reported that the "still-secret" FBI report on the assassination of John F. Kennedy was singularly lacking in mystery. Insiders described the report as being solid on physical evidence and on Oswald's erratic psyche. At the same time, the appearance that the FBI report was comprehensive was misleading because Justice Department officials [excluding Hoover and cohorts] were disappointed because they were not in a position to judge the substance of the report, and they had questions about what was left unsaid.19 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2E 1 Jim Bishop, The Day Kennedy Was Shot, p. 405. 2 Lyndon Johnson, Vantage Point, p. 12. 3 Richard Harwood and Johnson Haynes, Lyndon: A Washington Post Book, p. 157. 4 Neil Sheenan er al., The Pentagon Papers, p. 274. 5 edited by Marvin E. Gettlemann et al., Vietnam and America: A documented History, p. 238. 6 edited by Marvin E. Gettlemann et al., Vietnam and America: A Documented History, p. 246. 7 Richard Harwood and Johnson Haynes, Lyndon: A Washington Post Book, p. 68. 8 Rowland Evans and Robert Novak, LBJ: The Exercise of Power, p. 342. 9 Newsweek, March 30, 1964. 10 Edward J. Epstein, Inquest, p. 32-3, (Epstein interviews Rankin, Duties, McCloy, Cooper & Ford.) 11 Jim Bishop, The Day Kennedy Was Shot, p.523. 12 Earl Warren, memoirs, p. 357. 13 Ibid., p. 358. 14 Seth Kantor, Who Was Jack Ruby? p. 89. 15 The New York Times, November 26, 1966. 16 Ibid. 17 Arts & Entertainment Channel, Investigative Reports: The Men Who Killed Kennedy: The Witnesses, October 25, 1991. 18 Ovid Demaris, The Director, p. 282. 19 Newsweek, December 23, 1963, p.19. ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! 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