Before History Dies

Table of Contents

Dedication

Introduction

The Conspiracy Theory

Jefferson Morley

Anthony Summers

David Talbot

David Scheim

Robert McClelland

Dan Hardway

Marie Fonzi

The Lone Assassin Theory

Dale K. Myers

John McAdams

Max Holland

Judge John R. Tunheim

Gerald Posner

Gus Russo

Dave Phillips

Get Involved

Epilogue

People, Places & Things

Thoughts on the Hereafter

Special Thanks

About the Author

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the next generation.

May you develop a passion for history,

and may you pass that passion on to anyone who is willing to listen.

Introduction

I started this project with no clue as to how it might turn out, and not knowing if anyone from my generation would even want to read it. After all, how many young people do you know who are really interested in another book on the Kennedy assassination? Does it really matter who kill him anymore? How could I relate this period of history to a generation that does not seem interested in history in the first place?

I wrestled with these questions before I ever began writing this book. But I’m a lover of history, and I came to the conclusion that this project was worth the effort if there just was one or two who people who might grasp the importance of President Kennedy’s murder. Of course, I have a personal interest in this case. I’ve dedicated the last six years of my life to researching it. Still, I had to be honest with myself. While I am fascinated with it, I think most people, especially younger people, just don’t have that big an interest in the JFK case. This is dead history; the case is more than 50 years old.

And then there is the complete mess this piece of history has become.

Whenever I tell people I’m researching the Kennedy assassination, I can almost see their face morph into a mask of horror. Oh boy, he’s one of those conspiracy theory nuts, is what they’re thinking, right up there with UFO enthusiasts and Bigfoot hunters. I used to be offended by this reaction, but I’ve come to realize it’s not an unwarranted stereotype. Let’s face it - there are some similarities.

The JFK assassination has become a case that popular culture either wants to ignore altogether, or rejects out of hand - partly because there really are some weird conspiracy researchers out there; and partly because some of the older researchers are afraid to let go of their throne. Sadly, this has left the research community depleted of younger students of Kennedy lore. We don’t want our friends to think we’re a nut case, but neither do we wish to pry information from the elite of the researchers. We’re not interested in getting into a fight over who knows the most about Oswald or the grassy knoll area.

But we are fed up with the lies upon lies, and the same old battle cries of half truths. We don’t want to sit at the table and play the Who killed JFK trivia game any longer. The Who’s Who of shooters, mixed with the mass confusion that social media forums provide, has left us Millennials doing what we do best…not caring.

This is where my conviction springs from. I want to be a voice of reason for my generation, because as crazy as it seems, I believe President Kennedy’s assassination still affects us today. The results of Dealey plaza had a major historical impact on our society, and those events still shade our attitudes in both large and small ways that we might not even be aware of. I believe this is where our modern skepticism originated from in the first place.

A few years back I was just like most of the people in my generation - I didn’t give a flip who killed JFK. I thought it was boring, a waste of my time. I had a family member who taught college-level history, which cultivated my love for the subject as a younger child. But by my teenage years I had bought into the progressive lie that history had become irrelevant. It was not until I was nearly 20 years old that I started to notice the effects this worldview had on my thinking.

One night, while surfing the TV for a movie, I stumbled upon Oliver Stone’s Oscar-winning film, ‘JFK.’ I was hooked. As soon as the credits rolled, I booted up my computer for a fact-check session. History started to come to life for me, and I began to understand the weight this assassination played on the American story.

This process started slowly for me. I spent hours upon hours reading documents and chewing on old documentaries. There were times I questioned if it was all a waste of time, but the mystery of this case kept me pursuing its many twists and turns until I got a good grasp on the basics.

I followed this season up by getting lost in the forest of conspiracy theories. It took me years of wandering through those thick trees before I finally found the path of sound logic again. After experiencing that, I decided to step away from the internet forums and go directly to the experts themselves. This was the best decision I made because it educated me on the case in a way I couldn’t get by just reading blogs.

When all was said and done, I was shocked by how misleading many of the assassination books could be. I learned that history, if not fact checked, can be rewritten with smooth words and cunning edits. Simply put, a lot of the conspiracy theories were created through clever lies.

And yet…many alternatives to these conspiracy theories seemed like they simply brushed the more troubling questions aside. I could not believe in a massive worldwide conspiracy to murder JFK, but I also could not explain why the government repeatedly lied to its own citizens on such an important topic.

It alarmed me that so many people I knew were so disinterested in historical facts. If our government would lie to us about the JFK assassination, what else could we be lied to about, if those in power believed we didn’t care?

That is why I wrote this book. I am convinced that President Kennedy’s assassination was the key point in our history that led us to this cynical society we live in today. I hope this work can make a tiny dent in the apathetic approach to history that has been created in the post-JFK world.

I don’t expect it to be easy. The Kennedy assassination has a legacy of disinformation and ignorance, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to understand it. This case is still an ongoing battle today. Right now there are thousands of documents pertaining to the assassination that are locked away in vaults and filing cabinets all over the world. I hope this thought might appeal to your skeptical nature. Is there any legitimate reason we shouldn’t have access to those documents? Shouldn’t we, as citizens, be able to see all of these documents in full?

If no one asks to see them, will they just languish away until we fade away? Will we allow history to die with all these questions unresolved? I hope not. As the old saying goes, those who will not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. We need to understand our past to prevent it from happening again.

According to ABC News, there have been more than 2,000 books written about JFK’s assassination. Some are pretty good, others are misleading at best. In any case, there is no shortage of information available to any interested reader. I did not want to just write another JFK book with regurgitated information and call it my book. Instead, I decided to interview some of the world’s top researchers from both sides of the debate, and allow readers to come to their own conclusions.

Instead of writing another book on another theory, I hoped to save my readers the time I wasted by following the wrong researchers. In short, I wanted to provide a book that could be a research tool for people who want to study history on their own terms.

I interviewed experts and adherents of the Lone Assassin theory (Oswald acted alone) and of the Conspiracy theory (Oswald was a pawn in a greater conspiracy). I tried to be respectful of the researchers on both sides who allowed me to interview them. Some many not agree with this approach, but I believe it is important to understand and consider both sides of any case if you seek to have your mind settled on it. I think the result will be a book that can be a great asset in your search for the truth.

I think John F. Kennedy was a special President. He had his flaws, but he had a passion for America and an overall view of a better world for humankind. He saved us from a nuclear war, and he set the standard for what a true statesman should look like. I think we owe it to his legacy to set the record of his assassination as straight as we can, and to try to answer the biggest question mark in American history.

I hope this book will help you in this challenge. It is left up to our generation to research this case, and then to educate the next generation behind us…before history dies.

The Conspiracy Theory

I cannot blame people for believing in a conspiracy when it comes to the assassination of President Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald, although poor and mentally disturbed, was no ordinary crack pot. At a young age, he left the Marine Corps and attempted to defect to the Soviet Union, America’s communist arch-enemy at the time. He soon returned to America with a Russian wife at his side, and he openly supported Cuba’s communist leader, Fidel Castro, by handing out pro-Cuba leaflets on America’s street corners. He had contact with individuals who had distant intelligence ties. He traveled to Mexico City to get a visa to Cuba, and the photos the CIA had of him there simply vanished after the fact.

Soon thereafter, he returned to Dallas and murdered the leader of the free world.

Oswald denied all guilt for this crime, and was gunned down on live television by a shady nightclub owner while he was surrounded by Dallas police officers. In light of that storyline, do you have to be nuts to be suspicious? I don’t think so.

Some of the most credible Conspiracy Theory advocates I could find raise excellent arguments for just such a conspiracy. They leave us wondering why the government has responded to the assassination in such a strange, if not outright deceitful, manner. They point out the controversy involving President Kennedy’s wounds. They present their views regarding how many shooters might have been in Dealey Plaza, and why the CIA has been so reluctant to cooperate with any investigation into the matter. And they offer their opinions about why a murder from half a century before should still matter to us today.

Was there a conspiracy to murder the President? Why has the government withheld assassination related documents for over a period of 50-plus years? Did Lee Harvey Oswald act on orders to murder the President, or was he set up to take the fall? Did Jack Ruby murder Lee Harvey Oswald to silence him? If so, who sent him to do the job? These experts believe they have solid answers to these questions. Let’s see if that is the case.

Jefferson Morley

Jefferson Morley is a former Washington Post reporter and a respected JFK assassination researcher. He is the founder of JFKfacts.org, a website dedicated to fact-checking all of the aspects that surround the assassination, and author of the book, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA. After spending years getting burned by conspiracy theorists, I stumbled upon Jefferson Morley’s work through other authors. What separated Mr. Morley from other researchers was his logical approach to the question of conspiracy, and his willingness to not adhere to theories if the evidence didn’t support them. Mr. Morley also has a unique experience in battling the CIA for their remaining documents on the JFK assassination. This, among many other reasons, is why I wanted the reader to hear Mr. Morley’s perspective.

In the History channel documentary, JFK Assassination: The Definitive Guide, you said, …suspicions of conspiracy did not originate with conspiracy theorists, they did not begin with Oliver Stone. Suspicions of a conspiracy originated in the circumstances of the crime. Can you please explain what you meant by that?

Well, some people say, the President was shot and everyone knew what had happened, and then conspiracy theorists came along later and drummed up these theories. In fact, what happened was when people saw and learned about what occurred in the assassination, they immediately came to the conclusion that one person couldn’t have done this. So, it wasn’t that someone later on wrote an article or a book or published a movie that put forth a conspiracy theory and the only motive was that these people were trying to sell something.

Instead, it was the facts themselves. It was the facts of the events that made people question what happened. So, I was trying to draw a distinction between when people say that Oliver Stone just conned people into believing a conspiracy theory. No, it doesn’t work that way. It was the facts of the crime that made people think it happened in a different way than the way the Warren Report set forth. That’s what I was trying to say.

Could you please tell us about Lee Harvey Oswald and his possible ties to the American intelligence community?

Well, I think what we have learned, especially through the work of the Assassination Record Review Board, we have a much fuller record of what the CIA knew about Oswald. We now know they knew much more about him than they ever told the Warren Commission. He was very well known to a number of high ranking officials in the intelligence community. That’s not a theory, that’s a fact.

From the day he entered the Soviet Union in October 1959, until the day he died in November of 1963, there were four years that the CIA collected information on Oswald constantly. By the time he died, they had about 40 to 50 reports on him in their CIA file. From the State Department, from the FBI, from the CIA itself, they had intercepted his mother’s correspondent. They knew who this guy was.

This idea that some guy came out of nowhere to kill the President isn’t true. If Oswald did kill the President, then it was done by a guy who the CIA knew about before hand. And so, that raises the question of what was the nature of their interest? Were they looking to get intelligence from him? Were they manipulating him? It was an unusual level of attention that he got. It wasn’t like a normal or routine check. Was he some kind of intelligent asset? Now, there’s no way to prove that, but there’s a lot that says it may be the case.

The Warren Commission could never establish how Oswald got to Finland to enter the Soviet Union. I mean, here’s a guy who’s a high school drop out, and he’s 20 years old, and he figures out that he’s going to go to the only place in the world where he could get a visa at that time. If he had gone any other place in the world, he would not have got into the Soviet Union that quickly. How did Oswald know to go to Helsinki? That’s one question, and another one is how did he get there? No one has answered these questions, leading some to speculate he was taken there on a U.S. military plane. That’s speculative, but it’s certainly possible based on the undisputed evidence that we have. That’s where it seems like he was enjoying some level of protection.

How about the infamous J. Edgar Hoover/LBJ phone call? Did it concern Oswald’s intelligence connections as well?

Well, the fact that Oswald was so well known by the CIA was shocking to officials. They were indeed concerned about these connections immediately after the assassination, and quickly started to suppress those connections at high levels. They were largely successful in keeping them out of the Warren Commission’s findings. Now, did Hoover and LBJ talk about that? I don’t know, maybe. But that would be pure speculation.

In light of all you know, do you think the CIA was complicit in the assassination, or do you think they were just protecting their self-interest afterwards?

I think people in the CIA were responsible for the assassination, let’s put it that way. That’s not to say there was a conspiracy to murder the President, because I can’t point to any individual member of a conspiracy.

But the assassination of the President was an intelligence failure. The U.S. government should have had sufficient information to prevent that from happening. The government failed. Where did the failure originate? It originated in the CIA. It was the malfeasance of the CIA that caused the wrongful death of the President, whether Oswald did it alone, or he was apart of a conspiracy.

In light of that, why do you believe that the CIA is so reluctant to release the George Joannides file? Is there a connection to the failure of the CIA, Joannides, and the murder of the President?

I think that there was a covert operation, an on-the-rise covert operation that involved Oswald. It was approved by CIA officials, and that’s what they can’t admit. That’s not to say the operation was a plot to kill the President. I’m not sure of that, but I’m pretty sure there was an operation around Oswald to manipulate him and discredit the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

CIA officials reporting to Dick Helms, the Deputy Director, and James Angleton, the Counterintelligence Chief, were responsible for that operation, and that’s what they want to