JFK 60th Anniversary, Part 2: Sex, Lies & Zapruder Tape

Read Part 1 ('So, Who Really Shot The President?') of this three-part series here.

We need to talk about Lee Harvey Oswald. He is at the centre of the official version of the story of the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on 22 November 1963. The murderer. But, of course, he was gunned down by a man called Jack Ruby before anything about him, or why he was in the vicinity of the crime on the fateful day, could be explored. And as a result, he remains a kind of cypher. He is whoever we want him to be.

Here’s a few of the conflicting things we’ve been told about Oswald:

(a) He was an ex-Marine, but a crap shot – so bad in fact that he once shot himself in the arm.

(b) Indeed, his shooting skills at live target practice were so terrible, his supervisor in the Russian Army shot LHO’s target, a rabbit, because the world’s most infamous assassin kept missing it.

(c) That said, in some reports, while serving in the Marines, LHO is recorded as being a good shot, but not belonging to the top echelon. On other occasions, in Marine tests, he was classified as being “okay”.

(d) In relation to the assassination of JFK, he might have called himself a patsy – but he was very bright, and clever.

(e) There is a photo of LHO in his garden, with him holding a rifle, perhaps the rifle and that day’s newspaper. That shot looks staged to me. I still can’t figure out why he would have had that photo taken. He claimed, vehemently, that the photo was a fake. Was he just years ahead of a more recent president with his fake-news denial approach?

(f) It was claimed that Oswald’s wife, Marina took the photograph in question and confirmed the photo was real and un-doctored. She stated, on her own behalf, that she never took the photograph in question nor had ever seen it before.

(g) Oswald supposedly shot the man we know as Officer Tippit.

(h) Officer Tippit knew Jack Ruby, who with his strip club was a front for the Mafia.

(i) Jack Ruby shot Oswald in broad day light and in front, and in the presence of, the entire local police force. This event was covered live on TV all over the world.

(j) Someone impersonating Lee Harvey Oswald visited the Russian Embassy. LBJ and J. Edgar Hoover discussed this very topic on the telephone, on the day that President Kennedy was shot.

And now a bit about E. Howard Hunt, a man who was not charged with the murder of JFK.

(a)His son, St John admitted Howard Sr. was not where he said he was on 22.11.63.

(b) Just before E. Howard Hunt died in 2007, his son recorded a death-bed confession where he alluded to a conspiracy involving several CIA main-men. He also named Lyndon Baines Johnson as the quarterback.

(c) There is a famous photograph taken of three characters – dubbed “the three tramps” – rounded up by the Dallas police beside the railways tracks close to what has become known as "the grassy knoll" shortly after the shooting. It has been claimed that Hunt actually appeared in this photo. However, he admitted to his son, he was a “bench warmer” for the three individuals who were.

(d) These “three tramps” were identified in 1989 as being Gus Abrams, Harold Doyle and John Gedney.

(e) Now, who exactly were these three men? Were they, as E. Howard Hunt has implied, part of his team? What exactly was their role on the 22 November 1963? Was Lee Harvey Oswald – or was he not – also part of this team?

(f) Lest we forget, E. Howard Hunt was the main architect of the Watergate break-in, which took place during President Nixon’s term, on 7 June, 1972. Hunt put together the team – aka ‘the plumbers’ (so named because they stopped leaks) – who were caught in the act of breaking into the Watergate, the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, by the police. The object of the covert action was to photograph campaign documents and to install wire-tapping equipment in the telephones. The end result, when the break-in was rumbled, was that Richard Nixon was impeached and departed the White House in shame but not embarrassment.

(g) Hunt and George Bush Senior were known to each other.

(h) Hunt worked for/with Dulles, an association which lasted for years.

(i) Both Dulles and Hunt (along with a lot of ex-pat Cubans) were involved in setting up the Bay of Pigs invasion.

(j) The widely held belief is that Dulles and Hunt would never forgive the Kennedys for not supporting them in their attempts at a Cuban invasion.

It is a big jigsaw. These are just some of the possible pieces. Some may have to be discarded.

THE BIG BUSINESS VENDETTA

Before we move on to another major piece of this puzzle – or person if you’d prefer – let’s look at the big picture again.

President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy were determined to overturn the status quo of American politics. Wars that had been staggering on would cease, as would the occupation, ownership and exploitation of other countries. On the opposite side of this coin, there were certain supporters of American Imperialism – and believers in American Exceptionalism – who were not only fixated on resisting such a transformation, but were intent on stopping it dead, of swatting it out as one does to a troublesome fly or bug.

As we put the pieces of the puzzle together, let’s conjecture that a group of people existed with American Imperial interests – captains of industry, heirs to family money – and who wanted to protect the old-school-network-approach to ruling the world. In order to accomplish, this they needed to go deep state and form... let’s call it a Star Chamber.

Members of a Star Chamber like this don't really care what people thought about them. And thus, it was. They felt elite, entitled, unaccountable and untouchable. They met in brandy and cigar scented rosewood panelled rooms. Rooms, which I have to admit I actually like. You might compare the Star Chamber in style to the set-up of a Chairman and board of a football club. They didn’t mind the manager of the team (JFK, that is) taking the public curtain calls and frontline glory. No, they didn’t mind that at all, as long as they could continue to pull the strings.

The managers (Presidents) could, and would, come and go. The Chairman and his Star Chamber, however, would always remain in-situ until they died, or handed their sinecure on to someone they were willing to anoint.

The Star Chamber wouldn’t have liked the fact that the Kennedy Brothers were actively encouraging small foreign territories – countries, that is – in their attempts to reclaim their national assets. The Kennedys’ intentions in this regard were in direct conflict to the Star Chamber’s interests in overseas investments.

They wouldn’t have liked the fact that the Kennedys took on American Steel – not only took them on, but won and won gloriously. In March 1962, teh United Steelworkers of America reached a new agreement with the US steel industry. No sooner had the dust settled on the deal when the Chairman of US Steel, Roger Blough, arrived at the White House and proved his priority was profit and not the US economy, by announcing that he was going to hike recently agreed steel prices by 3.5%.

Kennedys knew the other steel companies would soon follow suit. When negotiating with Blough failed to achieve a result, the White House went into immediate action. The CIA began publicly to investigate the steel industry for price-fixing, tax-evasion and anything else they felt relevant. The heat on the moneymen was unbearable, and one by one they all backed down and dropped the 3.5% increase in American steel. Roger Blough was the last one to fold. He reluctantly accepted what was a very public and embarrassing humiliation. From the Kennedy Brothers’ perspective, the net result was protecting the steel workers’ livelihood long term. It has to be more than a matter of curiosity that Blough served on several official bodies with Allen Dulles.

To summarise: the Star Chamber would not have liked the fact that the Kennedys were avowedly anti-conflict and pro-peace. They would have liked even less the fact the Kennedys’ priority was the national economy over the Fortune 500’s profits and bonuses. Perhaps some of the Star Chamber’s less salubrious members were also growing very nervous at RFK’s endeavours to bring America’s organised crime to task.

They, the Star Chamber, needed to do something about it… and quickly. Time was of the essence… particularly as we will see for one man in particular…

So let’s return to the Vice-President of the United States of America...

THE BREWING LBJ SCANDAL

From even before he was a teenager, Lyndon Baines Johnson – the same LBJ name-checked in the American playground, anti-Vietnam, lament, Hey Hey LBJ, How many kids did you kill today? – would tell anyone who would listen, that he was going to be President of the United States of America… someday. Every single thing he did from then on was dedicated to the fulfilment of this ambition. Between his teenage years and 1963 he “discovered” a failsafe way to win elections. Even when he was losing an election he worked out how to win them. He developed a unique ‘stealing-victory-from-the-jaws-of-defeat,’ approach, which he turned into an art form.

On a few occasions, his campaigns looked like they could only end in an almighty train wreck, but then, in the dying seconds of the election (and sometimes even after a deadline), a ballot box containing just the right amount of votes, cast in his favour and taking him into the lead, would mysteriously show up. It should also be noted that some of the votes had been cast by current residents of local cemeteries. The great Houdini had nothing on LBJ.

However, his magic ran out, or the scrutinisers ran in, during his campaign to win the Democratic nomination in the 1960 presidential election. Although he lost, the victor, Senator Jack Kennedy, invited LBJ to be his running mate as Vice-President.

Now, I don’t believe that this decision was as straightforward as it sounds. One theory is that LBJ – with the help of one J. Edgar Hoover, and his secret files, some containing details of Marilyn Monroe’s mysterious and untimely demise – might even have been the architects of the invitation.

Either way, the JFK/LBJ ticket won, narrowly beating Republicans Richard M. Nixon and Henry C. Lodge Jr. Thus did Jack Fitzgerald Kennedy became the 35th President of the United States of America and Lyndon Baines Johnson became his Vice President. To anyone who questioned Johnson accepting the lesser Vice President gig, it is said that LBJ would always reply that he was now only one body away from the most important job in the world!

Now here’s something else the casual observer might not know or have noticed. LBJ didn’t like the Kennedy brothers. He pretended to like Jack and would never say a bad word about him in public. However he never hid his hatred for Bobby. By all accounts the feeling was mutual. Bobby Kennedy had lobbied his brother aggressively, but unsuccessfully, to dis-invite LBJ from presidential ticket.

Here’s another fact. Before the ill-fated trip to Dallas, JFK had decided that LBJ would not be his VP for the second term. Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina was to be JFK running mate of choice. LBJ knew that Kennedy’s decision would likely effectively put paid to his lifelong ambition to become president of the United States of America. Although, in retrospect, perhaps tone might also suggest that JFK’s decision to exclude Johnston as VP on the ticket for the 1964 Presidential election put paid to Kennedy’s ambition to continue as president.

You might say that Lyndon Baines Johnson is a fascinating character. On the actual day of the assassination of President Kennedy, LBJ, through his close association with the Senate’s Majority Secretary, Robert (Bobby) G. Baker, was about to be drawn into a potential career-ruining scandal, which had been brewing beneath the surface for a long time. Baker, a.k.a. Little Lyndon, was LBJ’s right hand man, lackey and fixer. He would do anything and supply anything to land the necessary votes required for LBJ’s favoured bills.

The Senate investigation included claims of bribery and arranging sexual favours in exchange of Congressional votes and Government contracts. The Senate was also looking into the financial conduct of LBJ and Baker during the previous decade. The evidence they discovered was damning. On the morning of the 22nd November 1963, Life magazine in New York were discussing a front-page-led, long-time researched, feature which connected LBJ directly to Bobby Baker and the breaking scandal. Life magazine considered that the report would certainly be a career-ending expose.

There is no great leap involved in stating that LBJ must have known that his last chance for the job he had dreamed about all his life was passing fast. LBJ knew that when Kennedy returned to Washington and announced Governor Sanford as his new running mate, he, the Vice President’s, political career would be over.

Now, JFK wasn’t popular in the southern states, particularly in Dallas, Texas. There were death threats in advance of the proposed Dallas visit. The day before the assassination, a hand bill appeared on the streets of Dallas declaring that JFK should be tried for treason and listed seven reasons. There was an equally threatening full page advert in a local newspaper. Apparently, LBJ insisted the trip should go ahead.

LBJ advised against using the bulletproof bubble on the top of the President’s car.

LBJ picked the revised route for the President’s motorcade.

The original route had the motorcade drive straight down Main Street, under-passing the railway tracks and heading off in the direction of the Freeway, which would have taken them straight to the airport.

The revised route had the motorcade turn right off Main Street, by the County Jail, into Houston Street. This route necessitated the presidential vehicles slowing down drastically to take an acute left, back on themselves, down Elm Street and sharing (but separated from Main Street) the railway underpass.

It would have been much more difficult, if not impossible, to stage an assassination on the original route down Main Street, with sundry logistical and physical impediments. In the seconds just before the history-changing gunshots in Dealey Plaza, LBJ is caught on camera slipping down, way deep-down, into his seat in his car, two vehicles back from the President’s. The inference could be drawn that he knew the shots were coming.

The shots. What can we say about them, with authority? The Warren Commission investigated the circumstances of hte assassination. They supported the “lone gunman” theory which held that the assassination was the work of Lee Harvey Oswald. It’s a theory. But one that doesn’t really hold waster for more than one minute.

In all four shots were fired in those fateful moments. Two, possibly three, came from somewhere close to what we know as the Texas School Book Depository. However, there was likely a second sniper located in the Dal-Tex Building directly across Elm Street, and a shot – or shots – came from a similar (sixth floor) level to where Lee Harvey Oswald was alleged to be. So he was guilty – or was he? I don’t believe so. I believe he is guilty of being the only thing he confessed to: a patsy.

Here’s why. A few seconds after JFK said his final words to his wife – “Loose the sunglasses, Jackie” – gunfire echoed around Dealey Plaza. I am convinced that the fatal shot, the fourth, came from the complete opposite direction to the Texas School Book Depository – that it came from the sloping grassy knoll. Seven separate witnesses swore to this – and an eighth said that he smelt gunpowder coming from that area.

An all-American family man was one of the first witnesses to be interviewed on camera on 22/11/63. His wife and he had brought their two young kids and were standing on the grassy slope – the knoll – near the footpath, which separated the sloping grass from the tarmac road leading to the underpass. He was so close to President Kennedy as he was shot, he experienced the bloody murder in horrific detail.

He stated, very clearly, that he had heard a shot from up beyond the fence behind him, which guarded the grassy knoll from the railway yard beyond. He instinctively felt he was so close to imminent and present danger, that he and his wife pushed their kids down on the grass and parentally lay on top of them to shield them from the shooter.

The Warren Commission chose to ignore these statements and all other evidence that didn’t support the premise that Oswald was the lone gunman.

I visited Dealey Plaza. I climbed the six floors up to hell in the red bricked Texas School Book Depository on the corner of Elm Street and North Houston Street. I walked across the wooden floor to the corner window, as quietly as though I feared I was about to come across evil personified – to the location where LHO allegedly executed the world-changing fatal shots. I looked down on to the route taken by JFK’s unprotected limo.

There is even a large white X on Elm Street below, marking the exact spot where President Jack Fitzgerald Kennedy lost his life and the once proud nation lost its direction. I can tell you it was a life-changing and humbling experience. The second time I visited the Book Depository, several years later, it had become more sanitised, more of a tourist trap, more like a museum and ultimately less intimidating. For all of that, it was still an irresistible magnet. And in my gut, I knew what it told me.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

In addition to the Star Chamber the following characters were among the cast of thousands who enjoyed a walk-on part in this world changing drama: Mafia strip-club owner, and known FBI informant, Jack Ruby; David Ferriet; Officer J.D.Tippit; Fidel Castro; Bill Harvey; Clay Shaw; The KGB; The Mafia; Nikita Khruschev; Sam Giancana; Frank Costello; Carlos Marcello; even the CIA itself; the FBI; Frank Sinatra, Johnny Ray; Jim Garrison; Jim Marrs; Oliver Stone and Kevin Costner.

The final quartet were only involved post 22 November as they tried to uncover what had really happened, in preparing for the Oliver Stone feature film JFK (1991). Oliver Stone also did a documentary on the assassination, JFK Revisited: Through The Looking Glass (2021).

At one time or another, a total of 40 groups, 80 assassins and over 200 people have been accused of the murder. There’s only ever been one man officially tried for being involved in the conspiracy to murder John Fitzgerald Kennedy, namely Clay Shaw.

He wasn’t convicted.

There’s one other important name missing from the above list: that of Dorothy Kilgallen.

THE MYSTERY JOURNALIST

Dorothy Kilgallen was famous as a panel-member of What’s My Line, a mega successful 1960s USA TV show. She was also a fabulously successful columnist – syndicated to over 200 weekly USA newspapers – and as a meticulous crime reporter, well-respected for her coverage of several famous murder trials. She wrote a non-fiction best seller, Murder One, on these trials.

She was often heralded as: “The Most Powerful Voice in America.” She met JFK on a few occasions and on one memorable visit to the White House, President Kennedy was incredibly kind to her pre-teen son, a kindness she never forgot. When JFK was assassinated, she turned her attention and investigative journalistic skills to the murder. The crux of her approach was not whether Lee Oswald (alone or as part of a team) murdered the 35th President of the United States of America. This was the preoccupation – and a very difficult theory to sell to the American public – of both Hoover and the Warren Commission (as navigated by Hoover).

No, Dorothy Kilgallen was more intrigued by the role of Oswald’s assassin, Jack Ruby. She was the sole reporter at the time following such a line of inquiry. She made it her priority to search out the links between Jack Ruby, Lee Oswald and Carlos Marcello. Lee Harvey Oswald had never been addressed as Lee Harvey Oswald. Up until the JFK assassination, he was always called Lee – that is, Lee Oswald. When he was arrested, the Dallas police gave out his details as they had found in his driving licence: Lee Harvey Oswald. It stuck.

WE know that Jack Ruby murdered Lee Oswald because there is TV footage of him doing it. He walks up to Oswald, apparently unhindered, and BANG!! Shoots him at point blank range

The trial of Jack Ruby for the crime of murder was pure farce. A mobster and strip club owner, Ruby was witnessed by millions live on TV shooting Lee Oswald. You might say that there really was no need for the spectacle of a public trial. But it did serve the purpose of distracting from another farce – the one where LHO was deemed the lone shooter.

Dorothy Kilgallen felt the only investigation necessary was not did Jack Ruby murder Lee Harvey Oswald but, why did Jack Ruby shoot Lee Oswald? Who was Jack Ruby and why did he shoot and kill Oswald, as caught on Live TV? She wanted to find out if Ruby had known Oswald before 22/11/63.

Dorothy Kilgallen was using her weekly newspaper column to suggest that all was not as cut and dried as was being suggested by the authorities. She took pains in a very vital column to suggest that if LHO had been the lone assassin, then why on earth would he have instigated an incident – and thereby drawing attention to himself – near the corner of 10th and Patton Street, in the Oak Cliff neighbourhood of Dallas, just 45 minutes after JFK was shot.

Here’s what we were given to understand happened. Lee Harvey Oswald approached a police car manned by Officer JD Tippet and shot him three times, killing him stone dead.

So you can see Dorothy Kilgallon's point. You'd have thought that a man who had, barely 45 minutes earlier, allegedly murdered the President of The United States of American, would not have wanted to draw any kind of attention to himself? If Oswald had successfully managed to escape the Dallas Book Depository part of town, then he surely would have kept his head down and his hood up, to ensure he made an escape and got out of Dallas post haste.

The Office Tippet incident is curious in other ways too. It was reported that “a citizen who witnessed” Tippet’s murder, radioed in, using Tippet’s car radio, to report the incident. I wonder how many “citizens” would know how to work a police car radio in the 1960s. Even stranger is the fact that it was the same “citizen” who mastered Tippet’s police radio who also, once again, “alerted the authorities” that he recognised LHO in the darkened Texas Theater watching the film, War Is Hell (narrated by the all-American hero, Audie Murphy). Of course, you could say it was a coincidence. But there are coincidences, and there are plans...

There are some people who believed that JD Tippet’s role had been to assassinate Lee Oswald on his flight to freedom, not because Oswald had shot the President, but because he really was the patsy he was claiming to be on TV. Which is where we have to start to nail our colours to the mast. I have to admit that I’m inclined to believe that Oswald was nothing more than a well manipulated, maybe even 'brain-washed' patsy. A man whose scores on military shooting ranges were average at best and left a lot to be desired at worst, the likelihood of whom getting lucky enough to hit the President from the range that was involved was almost zero. Sifting through all of the evidence, and the counter-evidence, I think Lee Harvey Oswald was “planted” in the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, and was not meant to get out alive.

For whatever reason, the assassin(s) originally set up to take him out, failed to do their job properly. And so, the theory runs, local hood Jack Ruby was called in at the last minute to murder Lee Oswald. If Oswald had survived 22/11/63 and come to trial, things would have become much more complicated. It would have become perfectly transparent that this allegedly misguided individual would be totally incapable in 1963 of taking out the most powerful man on the planet. According to some accounts. when Jack Ruby was in his cell – after having been overpowered and apprehended in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters – he was absolutely petrified and experiencing severe palpations. That was until after he was advised that Oswald had eventually died as a result of his wounds, when his anxiety miraculously disappeared.

Whatever about the accuracy of those reports, Dorothy Kilgallen became preoccupied by Ruby and his bizarre role in the whole affair. The night-club owner was initially found guilty, but that verdict was – conveniently some might say – overturned. He was diagnosed with cancer and lived a free man till 1967, diving off a pulmonary embolism. Dorothy Kilgallon succeeded where all other journalists had failed by securing not one, but two, face-to-face interviews with Jack Ruby himself, in New Orleans. Even though her priority was to finish her book, Murder One – a work she was rightfully very proud of – she used her contacts to dig deeper into JFK’s Dallas murder. She admitted she was planning a separate book on the subject.

She carried around her ever-growing and bulging JFK file with her everywhere, showing bits of it to some of her circle. She eventually insisted that she knew who had murdered JFK, and how. She claimed that following her second planned trip to New Orleans, she was going to crack the case wide open by revealing her findings.

TOMORROW: THE FINAL INSTALLMENT OF PAUL CHARLES' GRIPPING JFK FEATURE – DOROTHY KILGALLEN'S MYSTERIOUS DEATH; THE ZAPRUDER FILM; AND THE UNANSWERED WARREN COMMISSION QUESTIONS.

Paul Charles was born and reared in Magherafelt, in Co. Derry and began his career in “music” managing a band called Blues By Five. He went on to become one of the leading music agents on the planet. Over the past 40 years, he has worked with some of the biggest names in music, at different times managing the careers of Van Morrison, Ray Davies of The Kinks, Gerry Rafferty, The Waterboys and Dexys Midnight Runners, and launching Tanita Tikaram into the world.

Earlier this year, he released his acclaimed memoir, Adventures In Wonderland – with the book hitting the No.2 spot on the Amazon music business chart.