My JFK assassination recreation

(Note: This is my personal opinion of the assassination from what I've learned and read. Some prior knowledge of the assassination and the individuals involved may be necessary to fully understand the theory that I present. Take this for what it's worth, and feel free to disagree.)

Government myopia has the potential to bear cynicism in some, when this political institution plays father figure to the great unwashed. We oftentimes seem to be placed on a need-to-know basis. If something does not affect our daily lives, or something is deemed too grandiose for us to understand or even acknowledge, we are left flailing in the dark. The assassination of President John Kennedy is one time in particular that the government “shielded” us, “protected” us, “defended” us against a truth too real and too frightening. I will state up front that I do not believe the government, the CIA or the FBI participated in the Kennedy assassination. I do believe, however, all three institutions did all they could to cover up the real facts of the president’s murder. To me, that can be more interesting, and frankly more infuriating, than the details of the assassination itself. My father wrote the following in an e-mail to me:

“I think it might have been a sign of the times. No one wanted to learn that the Russians did it; that would lead to world calamity of the nuclear kind. Folks didn't want to think, either, that the Cubans did it in retribution for our attempt to assassinate Castro or the Bay of Pigs fiasco; it would be unthinkable that a western, but yet third world, country could pull something like that off. And no one wanted to know that it was the mob that really did it as payback for Bobby going after the Mafia, Jimmy Hoffa and the rest (not to mention some of the dons' girlfriends). Beyond that, although I think highly of Earl Warren, one must remember that Gerald Ford was on the commission, too, and he may have brought his Chevy Chase mentality to the proceedings. Bottom line, I think the commission, in a patriarchal way, protected the country and what, at the time, they perceived as the uninformed body politic, once again not giving you and me and all us regular folk credit for understanding the complexities of foreign and domestic policy and intrigue. I think we were more sophisticated than that back then, and we're even more so now. To contradict Jack Nicholson, we could have handled the truth.”

Conspiracy theories about JFK have become a cottage industry for authors and filmmakers. And no matter who one blames (outside of Lee Harvey Oswald), there is always proper “justification” for governmentally withheld information. That is my reason for sharing the above e-mail. My personal theory includes Oswald the patsy, not Oswald the gunman. While I do not absolve Oswald of guilt – I do believe he took part in the conspiracy to murder JFK, and that could be ruled just as abhorrent as murder – I think he did not fire shots from the Texas School Book Depository. There are a number of reasons that lead me to this conclusion. Most important among them are the placement of the shells in the depository (I doubt that he would fire three shots, pick up the shells, then lay them neatly under the window sill), the lack of nitrate on his face (granted, there was some present on his hand, but had he fired a gun that day, it would have also been on his face) and the lack of fingerprints on the gun (initially, there were none found, but a week later they magically appear). Furthermore, if it is true the motorcade was late that day, then why was Oswald seen 10 minutes before the assassination in the break room on the second floor? Shouldn’t he have been readying himself on the sixth floor? And also, how did Oswald appear on the second floor almost immediately after the shooting, where he was spotted by a Dallas policeman? I do concede that perhaps Oswald provided the gun and left it on the sixth floor for the assassins, hence my disbelief in his undeniable innocence.

I support the theory that the assassination was carried out by a combination of the mafia, ex-U.S. intelligence officers and Cubans. I believe that David Ferrie and Jack Ruby played integral roles in the assassination. I do not believe, however, they were the main culprits (read, the ones who organized everyone, bankrolled the assassination and located the patsy). I think they may have been point men, or liaisons between the assassins and those who were in charge. (For example, someone like Clay Shaw or Guy Bannister may have been the brains behind the operation.)

Why the mafia? I think the primary reason is that many members of the more powerful mafias, such as Sam Giancana, felt slighted that the Kennedy brothers would attack them despite their assistance in procuring John Kennedy’s election. I also believe the mafia’s business interests in Cuba were at stake with the Kennedys in power. They needed Fidel Castro removed from power in order to benefit from casinos erected in Havana. Their powerful and lucrative business ventures could not survive if John Kennedy remained president. Jack Ruby took a central role because he had ties to the mob in New Orleans and Dallas. I do not doubt his involvement because of eyewitness accounts. I do not find Rose Cheramie’s account prior to the assassination as credible; however, I do think it should have been taken more seriously than it was. Ruby was identified, though, by Julia Ann Mercer on the side of the road the day of the assassination. She saw people unloading what appeared to be guns from the bed of his truck. There is also a picture taken by Phillip Willis that he claims shows Ruby standing in front of the book depository immediately after the assassination. The FBI took his pictures, and when they were finally returned, the picture in question was oddly cropped and no longer clearly showed the person whom Willis initially identified as Ruby. I think Ruby’s insistence to be moved to Washington after his arrest to discuss the assassination is noncommittal, while still damning.

Ex-intelligence officers, such as Clay Shaw and Guy Bannister, were important to the execution of the assassination because they may have had initial ties to the mob, as well as to those people in charge in Dallas (Earle Cabel, for example). Guy Bannister, a former FBI agent, obviously ran his private investigation office in close proximity to the U.S. intelligence district in New Orleans. He had also been involved in CIA-controlled anti-Castro movements. Clay Shaw’s guilt is in his alias, Clay Bertrand. While it is harder to tie Shaw to a conspiracy, it is known that he had CIA connections, and that he had been reported to have been seen in public with Oswald and possibly Ferrie.

I do not think Castro hired a hit on President Kennedy. Castro had nothing to lose with Kennedy in office, since the president had no plans to invade Cuba. A change of presidential power could result in a decision to enter Cuba. The Cubans involved in the plot, I think, were the anti-Castro Cubans who were being trained illegally and secretly in Florida and North Carolina by people such as Ferrie. When Kennedy discovered these camps were operating in stark defiance to his mandate, he stormed them and had everyone removed. I believe it was easy, then, to recruit the Cubans to kill Kennedy. I also believe that Ferrie was able to draw Oswald into the equation and set him up as the patsy to the crime.

It is also important to note that I do believe there were six shots fired, not three from one person and one gun in one location. The fact that sharpshooters hired by the Warren Commission could not match Oswald’s supposed marksmanship is an indication that there could not be one gunman. It is also impossible to fire three shots from the Manlicher-Carcano at a moving target in less than six seconds.

The hierarchy of the assassination as I see it starts with men, such as Clay Shaw and Guy Bannister, filters down to someone like David Ferrie and Lee Harvey Oswald (in my opinion, I think Oswald was led to believe he had a more integral part than he did), and continues to the Cubans and the mafia, who ultimately pulled the trigger.