Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (117 page)

One Life editor, Ed Kearns, was later asked about the changes. He told
assassination researcher Vincent Salandria:

I am at a loss to explain the discrepancies between the three versions of
Life which you cite. I've heard of breaking a [printing] plate to correct
an error. I've never heard of doing it twice for a single issue, much less
a single story. Nobody here seems to remember who worked on the
early Kennedy story .. .

Of course it was Life that paid Abraham Zapruder $150,000 in $25,000
installments, then proceeded to lock this vital piece of evidence away from
the American public, which only got access to the film after it was
subpoenaed for the Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans.

Government officials made great use of planned leaks to the media to
assure the public that no conspiracy existed in the assassination.

On December 3, 1963, just eleven days after the assassination, the
Dallas Times Herald reported:

Meanwhile, Washington sources said the extensive FBI report now
being completed will depict Oswald as a lone and unaided assassin. The
report also will point out that there was no connection or association of
Oswald with any night club operator, sources said.

It is fascinating to consider how such assurances could be made by the FBI
just one week after the "crime of the century"-a time when federal
investigators supposedly were just beginning to unravel Oswald's life and
associations.

On June 1, 1964, four months prior to release of the Warren Report, this
headline appeared in The New York Times:

PANEL TO REJECT THEORIES OF PLOT IN KENNEDY DEATH

On September 27, 1964, the Warren Report was released to nearunanimous praise from the national news media. The New York Times even
went to the expense of publishing the entire report as a supplement to its
September 28 edition. The paper then published both a hardcover and
paperback edition of the report in collaboration with Bantam Books and
the Book of the Month Club.

Two months later, The Times again sought to lead the public's understanding of the assassination by helping publish The Witnesses, consisting
of "highlights" of Warren Commission testimony. Assassination researcher
Jerry Policoff, after studying this publication, wrote:

The selection and editing of testimony for this volume showed a clear
understanding of that evidence which supported the Warren Commission
findings and that which did not. Testimony which fit into the latter
category was edited out in a manner which could hardly have been
accidental. References to shots from the front, for example, were consistently edited out, as was the admission by one of the autopsy surgeons that he had burned his original notes. Deleted from the testimony
of three Secret Service agents present at the autopsy was . . . a description at significant variance with the official autopsy report. . . . In
short, a volume purporting to be an objective condensation of relevant
testimony compiled by America's "newspaper of record" was little
more than deliberately slanted propaganda in support of the Warren
Commission Report.

Respected researcher Sylvia Meagher wrote: "The Witnesses, therefore,
was one of the most biased offerings ever to masquerade as objective
information. In publishing this paperback, The Times engaged in uncritical
partisanship, the antithesis of responsible journalism."

In 1966, a great deal of controversy had been generated by researchers
critical of the Warren Report. This prompted Richard Billings, then Life's
associate editor in charge of investigative reporting, to order a look into
certain aspects of the assassination, particularly the "single-bullet" theory.

Billings's staff concluded after analyzing the Zapruder film that the
one-bullet theory was untenable and, in its November 25, 1966, issue, Life
called for a new investigation.

However, in its November 25, 1966, issue, Time magazine-also a part
of Time-Life Corporation-editorialized against the "phantasmagoria" of
Warren Commission critics and concluded: "... there seems little valid
excuse for so dramatic a development as another full-scale inquiry."

Asked about these conflicting editorial postures, Hedley Donovan, editorin-chief of both Time and Life, responded: "We would like to see our
magazines arrive at consistent positions on major issues, and I am sure in
due course we will on this one."

This reconciliation occurred two months later when Billings said he was
told by a superior: "It is not Life's function to investigate the Kennedy
assassination." (Similar admonitions have been echoed in newsrooms
throughout America over the intervening years.) Billing's investigation
was terminated and the November 25 article, which was to have been the
first of a series, became the last.

The one television network that continually backed the Warren Commis lion version of the assassination was CBS, where newsman Dan Rather
has served as one of the anchormen on assassination reports since 1967.
Rather was one of the only newsmen who managed to see the Zapruder
film in the days following the assassination.

In a 1967 assassination documentary, CBS conducted a series of tests
designed to prove that Oswald could have fired his rifle in the time
established by the Warren Commission. When these tests essentially failed
to support this contention, narrator Walter Cronkite nevertheless reported:

It seems reasonable to say that an expert could fire that rifle in five
seconds. It seems equally reasonable to say that Oswald, under normal
circumstances, would take longer. But these were not normal circumstances. Oswald was shooting at a president.

Cronkite's mistake was the same as that of the Warren Commission and
later the House Select Committee on Assassinations-a presumption of
Oswald's guilt guided the investigation.

Of course, a presumption of Oswald's innocence would have led investigators into a confrontation with government agencies, the military, big
business, and powerful politicians.

Therefore the major news media have been content to let sleeping
assassination conspiracies lie, compounding this timidity by characterizing
anyone who dared looked hard at the case as a "buff," "fantasist,"
"paranoid," or "sensationalist." In the Dallas area, for instance, diligent
reporters were warned off the assassination story by superiors despite a
continuing spate of new developments and information.

Early on there was some excuse for this pathetic media track record.
Newsmen in the early 1960s were used to getting their information from
official sources and had no real idea that these same sources might lie to
them. Questioning the word of J. Edgar Hoover was tantamount to
blasphemy.

When newsmen from all over the world descended on Dallas, they were
at the mercy of local and federal authorities. They didn't know the city or
its leaders and they didn't know how to talk to its residents. So the bulk of
reporters waited in the police station for the next official pronouncement.

Oswald's brother Robert commented in his book, Lee:

It seemed to me that the police, who should be conducting a careful
investigation to discover just what had happened and how deeply Lee
might be involved, had instead surrendered to the mob of reporters,
photographers and television cameramen. I knew that these men from
the newspapers, magazines and television networks were workingmen,
just like I was, and I could not blame them for carrying out their
assignments. But I could and did blame the Dallas Police Department
for its failure to retain any control over the situation. The most casual remark by any of the investigators or police officers was broadcast to the
world immediately, without any effort being made to determine whether
it was somebody's wild speculation, a theory that deserved further
investigation or a fact supported by reliable evidence.

Independent investigating was virtually nonexistent. The few reporters
who dared investigate quickly moved on to another topic after realizing the
power arranged against them.

Author Leonard Sanders was a young reporter in the Dallas area at the
time. He told this author that he discontinued investigating the assassination after becoming convinced that his telephone was tapped and his
movements monitored.

Dallas investigative reporter Earl Golz was actually ordered not to write
about the Kennedy assassination again in the late 1970's. This order was
ignored in the wake of revelations made public by the House Select
Committee on Assassinations.

In this type of atmosphere, it is no wonder that the public remains
confused about the facts of Kennedy's death.

As researcher Jerry Policoff wrote: "The Kennedy Assassination cover-up
has survived so long only because the press, confronted with the choice of
believing what it was told or examining the facts independently, chose the
former. "

The major news media-like other official segments of American societysimply failed to function properly in response to the assassination of
President Kennedy.

The normal police function was subordinated to pressure from the
federal government. The usual legal precautions to protect against wrongful conviction-such as a presumption of innocence until proven guilty,
cross-examination of evidence and witnesses, and the securing of defense
counsel for the accused-were bypassed in the case of Lee Harvey Oswald.

The possibility of wrongdoing at the top of this nation's political structure panicked otherwise honest leadership in local, state, and federal
government. Major business leaders, sensing the enormity of what had
happened, kept their peace.

Never had the old saying "Who will watch the watchers?" carried more
meaning.

As a result of this turmoil, what essentially had been a plot by a few
fearful and greedy men grew into a full-scale palace revolt-aided by
business, banking, industrial, media, and defense communities that played
no active role in the plot. The results of this revolt were accepted by the
"status quo"-the "Establishment"-after the fact.

But who plotted against Camelot and how was this plot realized?

Since so much information concerning the plot to kill Kennedy has been
destroyed, altered, or masked by false leads, it remains impossible to state
with authority details of the plan. Even those involved were probably not
informed of every aspect of the plot.

However there is enough information available today to begin to construct a likely scenario of what happened:

By the beginning of 1963, serious talk against President Kennedy was
circulating within many groups-organized crime, the anti-Castro Cubans,
the CIA, business and banking, the oil industry, and even the military.

There were many connections among all these groups and, once word of
this pervasive anti-Kennedy feeling reached the ears of certain members of
the Southwestern oil and business communities, secret meetings were held
where money was raised and tacit approvals given.

From this point on, there would be no further contact between the
individuals who initiated the plot and those who carried it out. Consequently, there is little likelihood that the originators of the plot will ever be
identified or brought to justice. However, the broad outlines of the plot can
be discerned by diligent study of all available assassination information.

Because of his family's great wealth, John F. Kennedy was incorruptible
by bribes. He also was the only president since Franklin Roosevelt who
was an intellectual. Kennedy had a rich sense of history and a global
outlook. He apparently had an idealistic vision of making the world more
peaceful and less corrupt. In other words, he really believed he was
president and he set out to shake up the status quo of Big Banking, Big
Oil, Big Military-Industrial Complex with its powerful Intelligence Community, and Big Organized Crime, which had gained deep inroads into
American life since Prohibition.

There were-and most certainly remain-numerous ties among all of
these powerful factions. It is now well documented that the mob and the
CIA worked hand in glove on many types of operations, including assassination. The various U.S. Military intelligence services are closely interwoven, and in some cases, such as the National Security Agency (NSA),
are superior to the FBI and CIA.

Therefore, when Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert
Kennedy, began to wage war on organized crime, it quickly became
a matter of self-defense to the mob and the banks and industries it
controlled.

Officials of the FBI and CIA, likewise, were fearful of the Kennedys,
who had come to realize how dangerously out of control these agencies
had become.

The anti-Castro Cubans felt betrayed by Kennedy because of his last minute orders halting U.S. military assistance to the Bay of Pigs invaders
and were quite willing to support an assassination.

However, no matter how violent or powerful these crime-intelligenceindustrial cliques might be, they never would have moved against this
nation's chief executive without the approval of-or at the very least the
neutralization of-the U.S. military.