The below column originally appeared
in the Orchard Press Online Mystery Magazine in 2002:
Despite the passing of
decades and competing tumultuous world events to stimulate our interest, we
remain fascinated with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
We still see a cottage
industry of articles, documentaries, books and movies that deal or refer to the
tragic death of the U.S. President.
Even Cuban dictator Fidel
Castro – one of the usual suspects – got into the act a few years ago when
reports came out of Cuba that he was personally conducting a one-man Warren
Commission into the shooting of Kennedy.
Although Castro has
considerable personal experience in shooting people, usually with a wall behind
his victim and a complementary blindfold, I lean more towards the FBI’s more
scientific tests that conclude that there was only one shooter – Lee Harvey
Oswald.
As a lifelong student of crime and crime
writer, I too have maintained an interest in what is no doubt the Crime of the
20th Century.
Conspiracies abound, then and
now, that accuse forces within the U.S. government of killing Kennedy to avenge
his failure to fully support the invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and his
supposed plan to abandon South Vietnam.
I don’t subscribe to this
theory. Had agents of the government been involved in the shooting, I believe
they would have missed John and hit Jacqueline.
A government operation of
this magnitude would have ended up, like we used to say when I was in the Navy,
in a SNAFU (situation normal, all fucked up).
We should also take note that
in our free and open society, the government has never been very good at
keeping secrets (The Pentagon Papers, leaked and published in newspapers, is
one of many examples of this).
Considering the long line of
spies reporting to Moscow during the Cold War and the "Deep Throats"
who routinely leak to the media, surely some substantial testimony or evidence
of government involvement would have surfaced by now. Human nature makes us all
blabbermouths.
Joseph Wambaugh, a former LAPD Sgt. and one of our best crime novelists, covered this well in his recent true
crime book, Fire Lover.
He wrote that "the
vast-government-conspiracy theories floated in hundreds of books and films have
never failed to produce howls of laughter when mentioned at law-enforcement
gatherings, especially in the aftermath of JFK, when the vast government
conspiracy included the FBI, CIA and all the other three-letter agencies
staffed by bureaucrats who are mostly loathed and distrusted by street cops.
Those with an alliterative flair call them grandstanding government geeks in
penny loafers, or bumbling back-stabbing bureaucrats who wouldn’t conspire to
peek inside a girlfriend’s underwear without the approval of a U.S. attorney
and a search warrant.
"But what really brings
down the station house," Wambaugh continued, "is when, in order to
make the JFK conspiracy work, all the revisionists had to include the Dallas
Police Department. And that does it every time. Cops get to knee slapping and
falling out of their chairs over the thought of it. Because everyone who’s ever
worn a badge knows the moment a cop gets a real secret, the drums start beating
and the asphalt jungle wireless starts humming, and the first leggy news chick
with tits out to here will be blabbing the secret on the news at ten even
before the cop wives get to tell it to the gang at the office and the girls at
the gym."
Kennedy, as some conspiracy
buffs and revisionist historians would have us believe, was attempting to rein
in the covert operators when they struck him down in retaliation. I don’t buy
this.
Kennedy, a WWII naval officer
who read and promoted Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, gave new birth to the
Army’s Green Beret Special Forces and ordered the Navy to expand the Underwater
Demolition Team (UDT) frogmen into today’s SEALs (Sea, Air and Land).
He was the special operators’
champion and had used them to counter communist insurgencies around the world,
much as the Special Operations groups of today are combating terrorism.
Patriotism was and continues
to be the special operators’ prime motivation for doing dangerous and thankless
work. To these men, killing a president, especially Kennedy, would be downright
un-American.
Another popular conspiracy is
that organized crime was behind the assassination of Kennedy to halt Attorney
General Robert Kennedy’s war on crime.
The theory goes that the mob
was upset with Kennedy’s ingratitude, considering the mob’s large donations and
their assistance in wide spread voter fraud in Cook County, Illinois. It seems
that some Illinois residents were so enamored with Kennedy that they rose from
the dead to vote for him. Some even voted twice! Some political analysts
believe the voter fraud threw the election to Kennedy.
I don’t subscribe to the idea
that the mob killed Kennedy. American organized crime leaders decided very
early in their development that the killing of public figures like politicians,
policemen and reporters was bad for business (I particularly appreciate the
ruling on reporters).
This ruling was not based on
morality or civic duty; it was based on the idea that the ensuing public
outrage would bring on a crackdown of criminal operations and a loss of
revenue. The mob, then and now, is all about making money.
The mob strictly enforced
this rule in 1935 by killing one Arthur Flegenheimer, aka, "Dutch"
Schultz," when he threatened to kill prosecutor Thomas Dewey. Based on
their history and transcripts of wiretaps, I don’t think they would have
violated this very practical tradition by killing a president.
The so-called "Men of
Honor" in Sicily have discovered what Salvatore "Charlie Lucky"
Luciano and the other old time crime bosses warned against. The Sicilian
criminals, having boldly murdered crusading prosecutors and priests, lost most
of their public acceptance and now face the wrath of the Italian National
police and the Pope.
And not one of the many mob
guys who have become cooperating government witnesses over the years have
provided any serious evidence of organized crime involvement in the
assassination.
Like many of the military,
intelligence and security people I knew when I served in the Navy and later as
a Defense Department civilian, I used to believe that Castro killed Kennedy.
President Johnson shared this
belief.
Kennedy attempted to kill
Castro with plots derived by "Operation Mongoose." Castro told
reporters at the time that he was going to turn the tables on Kennedy. Oswald’s
communist past and ties also point decidedly leftward.
And - although it is often
glossed over - prior to the Kennedy assassination, Oswald attempted to
assassinate General Edwin Walker (Ret), a controversial conservative figure in
the early 1960s. Why would the mob, the CIA, the military and all of the usual
suspects want Walker dead?
Today I have doubts about any
and all conspiracies, left or right. Gerald Posner’s Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK initially
sparked my change of mind and heart. Posner answers a number of questions about
the assassination, effectively disputes testimony of so called
"witnesses" and proves that a number of coincidences were just that –
coincidences.
Posner also points out that
science has made great advancements since 1963 and by putting the old evidence
through modern scientific tests, he dispels many of the conspiracy theories.
Unfortunately, I don’t have the space to go into detail, so I suggest you read
Posner’s book.
I now lean towards what I
call the "Two Nuts" theory. Simply put, Oswald was a nut and the man
who shot him, Jack Ruby, was also a nut. So unless further evidence concerning
the Crime of the 20th Century is uncovered, for me, the case is closed.
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