The Kennedy Assassination

Posted 4:34PM on Monday, November 11, 2013

The fateful day of Nov. 22, 1963: when President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated just past the Texas School Book Depository and just before reaching a bridge over the highway on his way to make a speech. The aftermath has been controversial ever since then. Official records were sealed for 50 years (controversial in itself) and I never thought I'd live to when those records, or most of them, could be unsealed. Just like many Americans living then and many born after the assassination, I really want to see what's in those records. All we've seen so far is the fabled "Warren Commission Report." I bought the book (it ran 726 pages.) Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court Earl Warren was the chairman of the Warren Commission. On it with him were the legendary Georgia Senator Richard B. Russell, Senator John Sherman Cooper, Representative and future president Gerald Ford (who had two assassination attempts on his on life during his future presidency,) Allen Dulles and John F. McCloy. J. Lee Rankin was the General Counsel. It became my pet project when I had time over the years. I meticulously cross-indexed the various topics (some I found to be contradictory in themselves.) I bought every book I could find on the assassination and still have a dozen in a special section of my bookshelves. Right next to it is a collection of books on the Martin Luther King assassination. All of these books had the various conclusions the writers reached and why. All this went into my cross indexing of both. I readily concede was possible for Lee Harvey Oswald to get off 3 shots in about 6 seconds from a fifth story window of the Texas School Book Depository where he worked. His family testified he took his rifle to work with him that day. He had to be extremely lucky to hit Texas Governor John Connally with one shot, one missed hitting the pavement according to witnesses lining the street, and the other hitting President Kennedy in the back of the head. All these targets were in a moving car. My then Congressman Phil Landrum arranged for me to see the entire fabled Zapruder film in slow motion. The projectionist patiently ran and re-ran the film as I took notes and timed sequences. The entire exercise took several hours. Very interesting to me was the film showing policemen with guns drawn racing up a grassy knoll toward the underpass. Why, I wondered, would that be happening if they didn't think the shooter was up there? Watching the Zapruder film again and again, I was intrigued by the fact Kennedy's head jerked backward. Oswald was said to have shot him from the back. When someone is hit from the back, the head goes forward; Kennedy's jerked backward. That backward jerk confirms to me the shot had to come from the front. That is consistent with the police racing up hill with guns drawn. Most of the people standing on the bridge above the underpass were interviewed. One apparently was not. Several people testified a crippled man on crutches had been seen crossing the bridge above the underpass for several days. No such man was questioned for whatever reason. That brought back memories. I had seen a movie of an attempt on French President DeGaulle's life as he spoke from a platform in the middle of the square to the right as you face it. In the movie, a crippled man on crutches had rented an apartment facing the square. He came home to his apartment, put together the rifle parts hidden in the crutches, and shot at DeGallue. In the movie, police raced up the stairs and in a shoot-out killed the would-be assassin. A supposedly fictional book was written about that incident. It was named "The Day of The Jackal." The shooter quickly disassembled the rifle putting the parts in crutches and going down the stairs passed the racing police going up going on to his freedom. In studying world-wide terrorism, sponsored by the Soviet Union after World War II at the then National War College in Washington, D.C., one name came up consistently. A real-life terrorist was Henri Curiel, called simply "Carlos the Jackal." He used all sorts of disguises and operated for hire all across the world. I devoted an entire chapter of my memoirs to the facts of worldwide terrorism and Carlos was one of the major actors. U.S. Intelligence is on record as knowing The Jackal had been in the United States a couple of weeks but had made no violations so there were no grounds for questioning him. I think it is entirely possible that the crippled man who had been seen on the bridge - but never interviewed - was The Jackal. Oswald could have been in on the shooting, but I don't think anyone can rule out that the Jackal fired the fatal shot causing Kennedy's head to jerk backward. I'm afraid there's going to be no final resolution of what actually happened that the American public can accept.