Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups (2 page)

The actual
facts
of the matter indicate:

•The gunpowder burns on Foster’s hands were
defensive
—they were in a region where he could only have had his hands placed on the front of the gun barrel, i.e., in a position defensive to his assailant;

•Foster’s fingerprints were nowhere on the gun even though it was a hot and humid day, which would increase the likelihood of leaving fingerprints on the weapon, as would the heavy perspiration that would be expected from a person seriously considering suicide;

•Police said they found a .38 caliber Colt revolver with high-velocity ammo in his hand, and the Government alleges that it was the murder weapon. But there was virtually no blowback. That is not possible. Any homicide investigator will tell you that a .38 fired directly into the mouth leaves a bloodbath all other the place, especially on the victim, their clothing, the gun itself, and anything nearby—it’s everywhere, and it’s a mess; yet the victim’s clothing—even his white shirtsleeve and cuff—were in practically pristine condition. So was the gun. Not possible.

The above are certainly not minor concerns, by any stretch of the imagination, nor are they misplaced theories. And those are just three of the inconsistencies—there are dozens more. In such a matter it is clearly not a bunch of nuts expounding crazy conspiracy theories. It is a case where the official version is so full of gaping holes and inaccuracies that something is seriously amiss. And if the facts are fairly examined, one cannot help but conclude that the official version is the craziest theory out there!

To sum it up simply, unlike many of the authors and investigators whom we studied for this book, we didn’t have any pre-formulated agenda: We just followed the evidence ...

¹
William Schaap, “Testimony of Mr. William Schaap on the role of the U.S. Government in the assassination of Martin Luther Ling,” The King Center, 30 November 1999,
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/MLKv9Schaap.html
(accessed 22 Oct. 2011)

²
William Schaap, “Testimony of Mr. William Schaap on the role of the U.S. Government in the assassination of Martin Luther Ling,” The King Center, 30 November 1999,
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/MLKv9Schaap.html
(accessed 22 Oct. 2011)

³
Christopher Ruddy,
The Strange Death of Vincent Foster
(New York: THE FREE PRESS, 1997), 213.

INTRODUCTION BY RICHARD BELZER

Defaming History, or, Who Didn’t Kill JFK

“President Kennedy’s assassination was the work of magicians. It was a stage trick, complete with accessories and fake mirrors, and when the curtain fell, the actors, and even the scenery, disappeared. ... The plotters were correct when they guessed that their crime would be concealed by shadows and silences, that it would be blamed on a madman and negligence.”

—James Hepburn,
Farewell America
 

“It’s pretty heavy, huh?”

—
Lyndon Johnson, after being presented with the hefty Warren Commission Report by Chief Justice Earl Warren

When I came across prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi’s 
Reclaiming History,
 I said to the salesperson who guided me to the tome, “It’s pretty heavy, huh?” The clerk smiled knowingly as if to get my reference, I hope ... I thought to myself, why would Vinnie (Bugliosi) spend, as he claims, five plus years writing a book that after 1600 some pages triumphantly declares, “Oswald did it!!!” In his increasingly testy and defensive style, he boldly, if not patronizingly, announces that he is in fact reclaiming history, and in the bargain, he absurdly and summarily dismisses a virtual library of meticulous and overwhelmingly compelling research by the most serious and sober scholars, authors, journalists, archivists, historians, and scientists ... who just happen to have come to radically different conclusions than the esteemed prosecutor.

Upon turning to virtually any page of his “history,” one major glaring reality becomes more than clear: Mr. Bugliosi is a prosecutor first and foremost ... presenting his “case” ... which should in any reasonable reader’s mind disqualify him as a true, let alone objective, historian.

Even to the masses of us who are not lawyers, it is almost jokingly obvious that in the classic technique of his trade, there is a torrent of evidence ignored, ridiculed, distorted, and reinterpreted, and when needed, he laughingly draws the most ludicrous conclusions and makes mindless ill-informed guesses about the who, what, and whys of Lee Harvey Oswald.

The so-called “mainstream media” in general and depressingly predicable fashion, of course embraced Bugliosi’s assault on reason with the glee of ancient archbishops reviewing 1600 pages of a book verifying their “belief” that the world is indeed flat!

So what are we to make of the thousands of pages of theories, counter-theories ... facts chasing facts, a Japanese beetle jar ... that jug of motor oil filled with bugs ... a physicist’s nightmare of neutrinos in a rodeo in the fifth dimension ... I sift through those pages and I begin to feel like Boo Radley watching Two and Half Men in Esperanto. It’s like watching a David Lynch film projected on rain clouds in a Tasaday village.

I was taught the truth will set you free ... unless of course you want the truth about who killed JFK.

Like all of you, I have a beautiful wife, a house in France, and a career in show business. You might know me from the critically acclaimed and therefore doomed series Homicide: Life on the Street or from one of my television specials, or Law and Order: SVU, or perhaps my political commentary, or one of my books, or one of my personal appearances in a nightclub near you ... I don’t know! Just leave me alone! But anyway, just like you, I would rather live my life than sit around thinking nasty thoughts about who killed JFK.

So it behooves me to settle one irrefutable reality about the “crime of the century”: IT WAS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR OSWALD TO HAVE SHOT PRESIDENT KENNEDY!!! There I said it: with no apologies to the likes of prosecutor Bugliosi. Let me explain this pesky fact once and for all. The prosecutor likes to boast that he is virtually the only person on earth to have read the entire 26 volumes of the Warren Report. He fails to mention his willful, startlingly lax examination of the contradictions and omissions in the report.

After President Kennedy’s head was exploded, Lee Harvey Oswald was discovered on the second floor of the Book Depository building drinking a Coke. His presence was verified by his boss, Roy Truly, and motorcycle patrolman Marion Baker. According to the Warren Commission, the three men’s encounter was reenacted in two “tests” by the commission: In the first, Baker (walking!) reached the second floor landing in 1 minute, 30 seconds. In the second test; in his words: “at kind of a trot”; he finished the course in 1 minute, 15 seconds ... to “time” Oswald’s movements, Special Agent John Howlett of the Secret Service (in another rigged “test”) carried a rifle (there were three rifles found in the Depository on November 22: a German Mauser, a much joked about Italian Mannlicher-Carcano, and a British Enfield Rifle; but that’s another story) from the “nest” and “placed” the Carcano on the floor near the site where it was actually found. The truth is the murderer hid the rifle, which would take longer than to “place it on the floor.” The reality is (as Mr. Bugliosi knows full well if he “read” the Report as he claims) the Warren Commission reenactments of Baker’s reaction times were done at a slower speed than his actual movements; according to Baker’s own testimony he ran from his motorcycle and into the depository quickly, but the reenactments had him purposely go more slowly to meet the needs of the Commission’s desire to create the impression that there was time enough for the assassin to do his dirty deed. Let us now consider what Oswald was alleged to have accomplished, by some miracle, with his rickety-ass misaligned bolt-action relic of a rifle: Fire three bullets, with deadly accuracy (of which one was “magic”: a theory concocted by Arlen Specter, at the behest of the Commission, that manages to suspend the laws of Newtonian physics!), squeeze out of the sniper’s nest, wipe off the gun, go to the opposite end of the sixth floor, zigzagging and dodging stacks of books, wedge the
weapon between two of the stacks, run down four flights of stairs (with landings, actually making it eight flights ... I visited the Book Depository), then, according to page 679 of Volume XXVI of the Commission's Hearings and Exhibits, exhibit No. 3076 quoting Officer Baker's deposition: "on the second floor where the lunchroom is located, I saw a man standing in the lunchroom drinking a Coke"; Oswald appeared completely calm and not the least out of breath or nervous at his chance encounter with patrolman Baker and Roy Truly (who, remember, ran up just one flight of stairs), in reality surely getting them there in more like SIXTY TO SIXTY-FIVE SECONDS, ladies and gentlemen: Therefore to repeat: IT WAS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR OSWALD TO HAVE SHOT PRESIDENT KENNEDY!!! THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT!

In conclusion, I would have the distinguished prosecutor ponder two quotes:

“Let General de Pellieux allow me respectfully to point out that a piece of evidence, whatever it may be, cannot have any value and cannot constitute scientific proof before it has been subjected to cross-examination...”

—Fernand Labori, defense attorney at the trial of Emile Zola. Paris, February 17, 1898

And finally:
“There is a certain nobility about facing up to the truth... ”

—Oxford scholar Richard Dawkins

P.S.
I highly recommend Josiah Thompson’s masterpiece
Six Seconds In Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination,
 published by Bernard Geis Associates, distributed by Random House, 1967;
The Oswald Affair - An Examination of the Contradictions and Omissions of The Warren Report,
 by Leo Sauvage, published by The World Publishing Company, 1966; and the most compelling, incredibly revelatory book ever written about the murder and all its labyrinthine logistics and mysteries,
Ultimate Sacrifice,
by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann, published by Carrol & Graf, 1966.

Conspiratorially Yours,
RICHARD BELZER

INTRODUCTION BY DAVID WAYNE

Governments tell lies, and most of us are learning to look at that as a reality. Forensic evidence stands in stark contrast, exhibiting the signposts of
truth
in a mute testimony that is almost timeless.

Those who commit crimes—be they governments, mobsters, or maniacs—inevitably make mistakes. And it’s the evidence—in its silent but relentless integrity—which proves that which
actually
took place.

Even at its ugliest, evidence is somehow comforting, even beautiful: purplish bruises (known technically as
lividity
marks) telling us that a body was moved
post-mortem; dried vomit that ran up a cheek, informing us that the victim wasn’t standing or sitting at the time of death
and
that any drugs involved were not fully ingested.

Evidentiary findings serve as a fixed beacon from which to navigate the shifting sands of time. They are of such significance that even what is
missing
helps us to solve the puzzle: An absence of sufficient blood determines what could
not
have happened at a crime scene; a stomach without refractive crystals screams to us that the victim could
not
have swallowed the drugs.

So, if you still believe that Marilyn Monroe overdosed on pills, or that Lee Harvey Oswald murdered JFK, or that Sirhan Bishara Sirhan killed Senator Robert Kennedy, then you better keep reading. In fact, you owe it to yourself as a witness to history. All the aforementioned allegations are quite literally
impossible.
If at first glance that seems arrogant, then just read those three chapters—it won’t seem so after you have; for it is not a matter of opinions—those are the conclusions that the evidence necessitates. Examine the facts fairly and you will reach the same conclusions. Former FBI Special Agent Zack Shelton, whose excellent investigative summary,
The Shelton Report,
appears exclusively in our JFK chapter, summed up our work ethic best:

“I don’t have any theories. All I have are the facts.”

We include two types of entries: deaths that were alleged to be suicides or were originally ruled suicides, but have so many suspicious circumstances that they appear to have been murders; and deaths that were known to be murders but have so many irreconcilable issues that something is clearly amiss. In some cases, they were obvious: shooting oneself in the head five times with a bolt-action rifle is a bit of a stretch to term a suicide—even in Texas. In others, the flawed official reasoning was more subtle but, upon examination, every bit as clear.

In some chapters, we provide a brief summary of the major thinking that has developed regarding a specific death or assassination. Therefore, please note in sections following the subtitle
“possible scenarios”
that we at times may be leaving the field of facts and entering the arena of speculation—two very different places—and that we do not necessarily subscribe to a particular viewpoint.