Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (114 page)

This settled the matter for the House Committee, which apparently made
little or no attempt to seriously study the number of deaths that followed
the JFK assassination.

Jacqueline Hess, the Committee's chief of research for the JFK investigation, reported:

Our final conclusion on the issue is that the available evidence does not
establish anything about the nature of these deaths which would indicate
that the deaths were in some manner, either direct or peripheral, caused
by the assassination of President Kennedy or by any aspect of the
subsequent investigation.

However, an objective look at both the number and the causes of death
balanced against the importance of the person's connection to the case,
still causes raised eyebrows among those who study such a list.

In this section, people who were connected-no matter how tenuouslywith the assassination and who are now dead are listed according to date of
death.

This is dealing only with deaths, not with the numerous persons-such
as Warren Reynolds, Roger Craig, and Richard Carr-who claim to have
been shot at or attacked.

This chapter has been entitled "Convenient Deaths" because these
deaths certainly would have been convenient for anyone not wishing the
truth of the JFK assassination to become public.

The CIA has gone to some lengths to discredit the idea of mysterious
deaths plaguing assassination witnesses.

A 1967 memo from CIA headquarters to station chiefs advised:

Such vague accusations as that "more than 10 people have died
mysteriously" can always be explained in some rational way: e.g.,
the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes;
the [Warren] Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses-the FBI
interviewed far more people, conducting 25,000 interviews and
reinterviews-and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths
are to be expected.

Testifying before the Church Committee in 1975, CIA technicians told
of a variety of TWEP technology-Termination With Extreme Prejudicethat cannot be detected in a postmortem examination.

One recently declassified CIA document, a letter from an Agency
consultant to a CIA officer, states:

You will recall that I mentioned that the local circumstances under
which a given means might be used might suggest the technique to be
used in that case. I think the gross divisions in presenting this subject
might be:

(1) bodies left with no hope of the cause of death being determined by
the most complete autopsy and chemical examinations

(2) bodies left in such circumstances as to simulate accidental death

(3) bodies left in such circumstances as to simulate suicidal death

(4) bodies left with residue that simulate those caused by natural diseases.

The letter goes on to show that undetected murders do not have to be the
result of sophisticated chemicals. It states:

There are two techniques which I believe should be mentioned since
they require no special equipment besides a strong arm and the will to do
such a job. These would be either to smother the victim with a pillow or
to strangle him with a wide piece of cloth such as a bath towel. In such
cases, there are no specific anatomic changes to indicate the cause of
death .. .

While it is obvious that the CIA-and hence the mob through operatives
who work for both-has the capability of killing, it is less well known that
the Agency has developed drugs to induce cancer.

Recall that Jack Ruby died of sudden lung cancer just as he had been
granted a new trial.

A 1952 CIA memo reported on the cancer-causing effects of beryllium:
"This is certainly the most toxic inorganic element and it produces a
peculiar fibrotic tumor at the site of local application. The amount necessary to produce these tumors is a few micrograms."

Local law-enforcement officers and coroners are not equipped, either by
training or by inclination, to detect deaths induced by such sophisticated
means. They look for signs of a struggle, evidence of a break-in, bruises,
or marks on the victim.

With no evidence to the contrary, many deaths are ruled suicide or
accident. Others are ruled due to natural causes, such as heart attack.

It is interesting to note how the deaths are grouped. Many of the earliest
deaths came during the time of the Warren Commission investigation or
just afterwards.

More deaths took place in the late 1960s as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was launching his investigation. Other suspicious
deaths occurred during the mid-1970s, as the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking into assassinations by U.S. intelligence agencies. And
finally, another spate of deaths came around 1977, just as the House Select
Committee on Assassinations was gearing up its investigations.

These deaths are listed below in chronological order. An asterisk means
the death is a particularly suspicious one. They also are grouped according
to which investigation was being conducted at the time.

The possibility of convenient deaths leads one into a well of paranoia,
yet this long list cannot be summarily dismissed.

Obviously, many of these deaths-particularly in recent years-can be
ascribed to the passage of time. But others cannot-especially when
viewed in the context of the assassination inquiries taking place at the
time.

Read for yourself and consider ... When does coincidence end and
conspiracy begin?

List of Deaths

The Garrison Inquiry

The Church Committee Investigation

1977-A Terrible Year for Many

The year 1977 produced a bumper crop of candidates for listing under
convenient deaths connected to the JFK assassination-including the deaths
of six top FBI officials all of whom were scheduled to testify before the
House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Topping this list was former number-three man in the FBI, William C.
Sullivan, who had already had a preliminary meeting with the investigators
for the House Committee. Sullivan was shot with a high-powered rifle near
his New Hampshire home by a man who claimed to have mistaken him for
a deer. The man was charged with a misdemeanor-"shooting a human
being by accident"-and released into the custody of his father, a state
policeman. There was no further investigation of Sullivan's death.

Louis Nicholas was a special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover as well as
Hoover's liaison with the Warren Commission. Alan H. Belmont also was
a special assistant to Hoover. James Cadigan was a document expert with
access to many classified assassination documents, while J. M. English
headed the FBI laboratory where Oswald's rifle and pistol were tested.
Donald Kaylor was the FBI fingerprint expert who examined prints found
at the assassination scene. None of these six Bureau officials lived to tell
what they knew to the House Committee.

Other key assassination witnesses, such as George DeMohrenschildt and
former Cuban president Carlos Prio Soccaras, died within weeks of each
other in 1977, just as they, too, were being sought by the House Committee.

The ranks of both organized crime and U.S. intelligence agencies were
thinned by deaths beginning in 1975, the time of the Senate Intelligence
Hearings, and 1978, the closing months of the House Committee.