Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald (55 page)

As far as the second and third possibilities go, the Johnson/Russell transcript indicates that President Johnson wanted to quash at the outset any investigatory threads that would lead to conspiracy. The mechanism for implementing this was the Warren Commission. With the Warren Commission in place, Johnson and Hoover would be able to control the flow of information, and nip in the bud any further investigations outside of White House and FBI control, as proven by this transcript of a conversation between Johnson and Hoover on November 29, 1:40 p.m:
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Once the mechanism for controlling the flow of information was in place, acting Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach’s November 25th memo (transmitting to the President’s Press Secretary the directive that would create the necessary cognitive climate for what was about to proceed) would be given the teeth necessary to have legal and force and effect:

“Cutting off” speculation about Oswald’s motivation: a pretty aggressive tactic, especially when at that stage a conspiracy of any sort was as probable as any other hypothesis! It’s easy to see how what starts as a gag order can morph into an order to transmit false information. Since the vast majority of the individuals who were providing the most basic evidentiary testimony in the case to the Johnson-appointed Warren Commission were doctors under military control, FBI agents under Washington control, and Dallas police detectives under Dallas (and most likely Washington) control, all we really have to postulate is that innocent parties who were subordinates within the aforementioned hierarchies were given orders to do “X” and/or say or not say “Y” (and also ordered to remain silent about these directives if they wanted to keep their jobs, not to mention other possible consequences about which we have not been informed).

This technique would in effect create a vast functioning network of people in multiple domains “just doing their jobs” to achieve an objective about which they were
totally in the dark
. And since the media was broadcasting information fed to them by government operatives — operatives implementing orders to cut off speculation that Oswald was involved in a conspiracy, thanks to the Katzenbach memo — who could really blame these other individuals for following the party line? The “common” knowledge spraying from the firehoses of networks CBS, NBC et al. (piped by firemen Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley), and newspapers
The New
York Times
and
The Washington Post
and magazines
Time
and
Life
(piped by firemen reporters), was now everywhere and in the minds of millions, defining the boundaries that separated the thoughts that were legitimate from the thoughts which were not.

And these were not the skeptical minds of a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, post 911-world evaluating these boundaries, but naïve post-1950s minds shaped by a steady diet of
Andy Griffith
episodes and
Leave It To Beaver
reruns. It was a Norman Rockwell world indeed. Anyone who stepped out of the party line and alleged conspiracy on the part of a by-and-large trusted government would at the very least have been made a pariah, called “crazy,” or confronted with other
ad hominem
attacks which persist to this vastly more well-informed day.

A profound psychological phenomenon, which can explain why otherwise upright individuals, like doctors with years of experience, became a part of the “silent majority.” Dr. Charles Crenshaw gave a first-person account of this psychological phenomenon in his book
Conspiracy Of Silence
(pp. 153-6), and then explained that there was another psychological phenomenon contributing to his silence: the will to survive! (emphasis supplied)

At a news conference in the hospital the previous day, Drs. Malcolm Perry and Kemp Clark suggested that the President must have been turning to his right when he was shot. They said this because they also believed that the bullet that ripped through President Kennedy’s head had entered from the front.
When the films showed that the President was not turned when he was shot, nothing more was said, as I remember. I didn’t blame Drs. Clark and Perry one bit. They, too, had observed the men in suits, and had heard about the scene with Dr. Earl Rose.
[
BK: the Secret Service took possession of the President’s body over the protestations of pathologist Rose who was supposed to conduct the autopsy
].
Every doctor who was in Trauma Room 1 had his own reasons for not publicly refuting the “official line.”

I believe there was a common denominator in our silence — a fearful perception that to come forward with what we believed to be the medical truth would be asking for trouble. Although we never admitted it to one another, we realized that the inertia of the established story was so powerful, so thoroughly presented, so adamantly accepted, that it would bury anyone who stood in its path. I had already witnessed that awesome, dictatorial force in the Earl Rose incident, the same fierceness that I would, for years to come, continue to recognize in the tragedies awaiting those people who sought the truth. I was as afraid of the men in suits as I was of the men who had assassinated the President. Whatever was happening was larger than any of us.
I reasoned that anyone who would go so far as to eliminate the President of the United States would surely not hesitate to kill a doctor
. . . .

I’ve often wondered what would have been the consequences of looking directly into that camera and boldly stating, “President Kennedy was shot in the head and in the throat from the front.” Now, after all these years, I realize that such courage would have been utterly ineffective and suicidal.
The truth, staring directly into the face of our government, stood about as much chance of coming to light as a june bug in a hailstorm, and I wouldn’t have fared any better.

Already, the eastern press had begun to discredit us as physicians and Parkland as a hospital.
If you had any association with Dallas, you were suspect. To come forward and give an unwavering professional opinion that was contradictory to the official story would only have given them a personalized target. . . .

The hospital administration was paranoid about publicity, especially at a time like that.
In view of all I had heard, seen, and sensed, I wasn’t about to appear on the six-o’clock news, giving an interview about the death of the President.
A nursing student had already fallen into disfavor, and was later thrown out of school, because she informed the press of the number of blood units Governor Connally had received. Although no official instructions had been issued by the hospital administration, there was a tacit implication, an unspoken warning in their general attitudes that said that anyone who was intelligent enough to pursue a medical career was also smart enough to keep his mouth shut.
Failure to do the latter would result in foreclosure on the former.
We were all young doctors who for years had struggled and sacrificed to achieve that level of success. And we had a fortune in money and time tied up in our professions. The thought of throwing all that away weighed heavily on my mind.

That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? Now just multiply that by 150 or so actors, and you’ll have your answer to the question, “why would so many people consent to being unwilling participants in a conspiracy?”

There is one more follow-up question in this regard. It could be protested “who would launch a conspiracy
not knowing
precisely whether or not people would follow these orders or the party line?” This answer isn’t too difficult: apparently this was not a concern for the professionals who had run dozens, if not hundreds, or thousands, of similar operations, and always managed to maintain the covert status of these schemes.

Remember the
Operation Northwoods
memo? As you will recall, under the
Northwoods
plan, announced to a very small and privileged part of the world by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on March 13, 1962, an airplane was to be loaded with college students, college students who would fly for a short while only to be later be disembarked at another location while an identical clone aircraft headed for Cuba that was supposedly carrying these college students was to transmit a “MAYDAY” message that it was under attack by Cuban MIG aircraft, said clone aircraft to then be destroyed by radio signal:
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Now, every one of these college students would operate as a functional timebomb threatening to expose this little plot, but apparently the Joint Chiefs Of Staff did not find this to be a concern. The Chiefs probably realized from their years of experience creating plans organizing spooks, spies, and snipers that most people would be like the peers of Charles Crenshaw, who would simply keep their mouths shut, and if there were any outliers, like Crenshaw himself nearly 3 decades later, there was always the ever-reliable media with their well-placed, well-paid
Operation Mockingbird
“assets” ready, willing, and able to frame the outliers in the same way that Oswald was framed. It’s the ever-familiar “wacko” spin: the people who go against the party line like District Attorney Jim Garrison, don’t get invited to join the party, as the ever-”objective” establishment pipeline
The New York Times
told us:
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