PROBABLE CAUSE AUSTRALIA

A Continuing Inquiry into the JFK Assassination

Issue 6 - June 1994

Probable Cause Australia is the only Australian magazine dedicated to the JFK assassination.

Editorial

Welcome to another big issue of Probable Cause. As we plunge into the winter months of 1994, the same seems to be happening to research on the assassination. After the "Spring" of Oliver Stone's "JFK" and the "Summer" involving US Congress action and the opening of "all" the files, we look to be heading back into the murky stagnant swamps of assassination blues. The 30th anniversary has passed, the media has come and gone and they're not interested any more. It will take something big to change the weather...

A warm welcome to the number of new American subscribers who have thrown their support behind a group of people thousands of miles away and we thank you. You are open to submit letters, theories, articles and thoughts as is any one who wishes to contribute to help us survive.

This issue is packed with news and articles as usual. We have the wrap up of the JFK Memorial day held on JFK's birthday, Sunday 29 May, here in Melbourne, another great article from U.S. researcher Walt Brown, our local Nixon Expert takes time out from the continuing "Prince of Thieves" article series (trust us, the final part is coming soon) to pay tribute to the man we all called "Tricky Dickie." The Tippit murder is covered by Larry Ray Harris and we finally get to venture into the Twilight Zone with Reverse Speech analysis - we ain't saying nothing...you make up your own mind on that one.

Also this issue sees the start of "QUID PRO QUO". We began KAIC with the idea that all theories were to be represented fairly and openly for the reader to decide. It's time we gave the other side to the conspiracy theory a chance and we've certainly got a great lineup of writers to debate for us; starting this issue with Edward Jay Epstein and his views on "JFK" the film.

We also print our first Bill Clinton review. What has he done? How has he done it? Did he know he did it? Will he continue to do it? Thanks to all those who wrote and phoned to say that issue 5 was the best yet. We may try to have one issue a year devoted to just one topic. The "Case Closed" issue went down very well - the issues raised needed to be addressed then and there, no use waiting for the media to pitch in, we'd still be waiting.

Don't forget, the next issue is the big double issue and will be out for the assassination week in November. For those who keep asking, "The Prince of Thieves' Part III" article will appear in the double issue, we hope, along with more exciting news and a real coup concerning the autopsy photos. Plus more of the regular columns and, yep, even a review or two.

LATE NEWS
News that didn't make the body of this issue.
Of course, the sad news broke over the wires on Friday May 20, that Jackie Kennedy Onassis had died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in her New York apartment at the age of 64. The final chapter in a long, tragic life drew to a close as Mrs. Onassis checked herself out of hospital and went home to her apartment to be with her family for her last few days.

A strong, stylish woman, Jackie will be remembered, as always, for the way she carried a grieving nation 31 years ago as a young, vital President was laid to rest. It's true to say that whenever anyone thinks or talks of Jackie Kennedy Onassis, they have a picture of her in their mind: the young, pretty First Lady of November 1963, dressed in pink, living a nightmare. She was the last strand holding us to Camelot.

She's gone now, so has the dream, but the memory will never fade. To have been so strong in life and in the face of death, not only hers, but also Jack's and Bobby's, is truly remarkable. She is at rest, buried in Arlington next to the President, reunited with her first husband for the first time in thirty-one years. Thirty-one long years...

Read and enjoy Probable Cause #6. Let the memory never die. There is no higher religion than truth.

November 22, 1963: The Other Murder - The Death of Officer Tippit Revisited by Larry Ray Harris

Thirty years later. a number of mis-conceptions about the John Kennedy assassination still linger in the public mind. One of the most enduring is that investigators compiled a virtual open-and-shut case against Lee Harvey Oswald in the slaying of a Dallas policeman named J.D. Tippit, who was abruptly gunned down on a residential street four miles from Dealey Plaza, less than an hour after JFK was shot.

The widespread public acceptance of Oswald's guilt is such that the Tippit murder has been virtually relegated to a historical footnote. This was borne out by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, whose 1979 final report devoted a scant three paragraphs to the policeman's death -- concurring with the 1964 Warren Report conclusion that Oswald was a cop-killer. More recently, attorney/author Gerald Posner's appalling new tome, Case Closed, glosses over the Tippit's murder case in just seven pages.

On the surface -- and certainly as depicted by Warren Report groupies such as Posner and Jim Moore - the case against Oswald appeared to be air-tight. But viewed objectively, thoughtfully and in its entirety, the record leaves little doubt that someone other than Lee Oswald was responsible for the death of a Dallas cop.

Let's take a look back at that other murder on Nov. 22, 1963.

WHERE WAS OSWALD?
The Warren Report said Oswald, afoot, left his rooming house in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas at 1:04 p.m. Police were notified of the shooting by a citizen using the radio in Tippit's squad car at 1:16 p.m. Therefore, Oswald had no more than 12 minutes to walk from his apartment to the intersection of Tenth & Patton - about one mile away.

BUT, Oswald's landlady told the Secret Service that she looked out the window "several minutes later" and observed Oswald standing motionless at the curb in front of the house. Therefore, "several minutes" after 1:04 p.m. Oswald was still lingering in the immediate vicinity of his rooming house. (Perhaps he was waiting on the mysterious police car which, according to the landlady's testimony, paused directly in front of 1026 N. Beckley while Oswald was in his room, honked its horn twice. and drove away.)

AND, contrary to the Warren Report's assertion that he "rushed' to Tippit's car and "promptly" notified police on Tippit's radio, eyewitness Domingo Benavides testified that when the shooting began, he crouched down in the seat of his pick-up truck and laid low for "a few minutes" because he was afraid the gunman would reappear and start shooting again. Thus, 'a few minutes' elapsed between the shooting and the time police were notified at 1:16 p.m. (Benavides first tried to aid the mortally wounded officer before climbing into Tippit's squad car and fumbling with the radio microphone, trying to figure out how it worked. Contrary to the Report, which wrongly credited Benavides, it was a bystander named F. Bowley who took the microphone from him and called the dispatcher. Bowley's Nov. 22 affidavit said he came upon the scene in his car, got out and intentionally looked at his watch to note the time: 1:10 p.m. - another indication that "a few minutes" - perhaps 5 or 6 - elapsed before Bowley called the radio dispatcher).

If Oswald was still in front of his apartment house "several minutes" after 1:04, and if the Tippit shooting occurred "a few minutes" prior to the 1:16 p.m. emergency transmission by Benavides, he could not possibly 'have been in a position to shoot the policeman. This was demonstrated by Commission staff attorney David Belin (the most passionate advocate of Oswald's sole guilt in both the JFK and Tippit murders), who retraced the accused assassin's 'presumed' route with a stopwatch. It took him 17 minutes and 45 seconds.

Moreover, the Warren Report said Oswald was walking east on Tenth Street when Tippit encountered him. But, contemporaneous written reports flied by the DPD, FBI and Secret Service stated that the pedestrian who shot Tippit was walking west on Tenth Street and continued west after the shooting. Oswald could not have been walking west on Tenth because he would have been coming back toward his rooming house from a point beyond the crime scene he could not possibly have reached in the established timeframe. (A resident in the next block named Jimmy Burt later told independent researchers including the author, that he noticed the man walking west on Tenth Street just moments before the shooting; Burt said he was certain it was not Lee Harvey Oswald.)

Finally, two witnesses (Butch Burroughs and Jack Davis) have said they observed Oswald inside the Texas Theatre as early as 1:15 p.m. - much earlier than the Warren Report timetable. (Burroughs, who was working the concession counter, remembered waiting on Oswald). If correct, their accounts provide additional corroboration that Oswald was nowhere near Tenth & Patton when Tippit's was slain.

WITNESSES: THE KEY THREE
Helen Markham was the sole basis for the Report's conclusion that Oswald was walking east on Tenth. She alone said Tippit's killer -- identified by her in a line-up as Oswald -- was walking east when the police car approached him from behind. Markham thus became a cornerstone of the case against Oswald. elevating her status to "star" witness for the DPD and the Commission. Hysterical and fainting, she is said to have picked Oswald from a police line-up -- even though she told the FBI the same day (Nov. 22) that Tippit's assailant was 18, red-complexted and had black wavy hair. (Oswald was 24, fair skinned and had receding brown hair. Descriptions of Tippit's killer broadcast over the DPD radio from the scene included references to black hair.)

Publicly, the Warren Report called Markham's bizarre testimony "reliable." But, behind the scenes, the panel knew their "star" witness was a walking, talking disaster. An unpublished Commission memo summarizing Markham's deposition warned, "This witness is very unsure of herself on most points." So unsure, in fact, that she earned the contempt of commission staff attorneys Joseph Ball - who complained that her account was "full of mistakes" and "utterly unreliable" - and Wesley Liebler. who dismissed her story as "contradictory" and "worthless." (Several years later Ball derided Markham publicly during a debate, calling her "an utter screwball.") Assistant counsel Norman Redlich's hear-no-evil response to his colleagues: "The Commission wants to believe Mrs. Markham and that's all there is to it."

William Scoggins purportedly picked Oswald out of a boisterous police line-up on Nov. 23, long after the suspect had been formally charged with the officer's murder. But a FBI report reveals that two days later, when FBI agents showed him a photograph of Oswald, Scoggins told them he couldn't be sure the person he observed on Nov. 22 was "actually identical with Oswald". Later, Scoggins sheepishly admitted to the Warren Commission that when the FBI showed him pictures of several different people (including the accused assassin), he picked out a man other than Oswald as the Tippit gunman!

Domingo Benavides was the closest person to the shooting -- he said he was in his truck a mere 15 feet away -- yet he was not taken to any of the line-ups to see if he could identify the man. His Warren Commission appearance elicited only a tentative identification: he could say only that a picture of Oswald he saw on TV resembled the man who shot Tippit.

THAT'S HIM: THE POLICE LINE-UPS
The Dallas Police line-ups -- all four of them -- were a travesty. In the first two, the disheveled and bruised Oswald was paraded before witnesses (including Markham) accompanied by two detectives and a jail clerk who were neatly attired in slacks and dress shirts. The fourth and final line-up the next day (attended by Scoggins) was even more outrageous: Oswald, two teenagers and an Hispanic man! Further, throughout at least three of the line-ups Oswald was loudly and angrily protesting the unfairness of the procedure and demanding legal representation. One witness (William Whaley, a taxi driver) made the observation that "...anybody who wasn't sure could have picked out the right one just for that."

Three individuals not known to the Warren Commission later offered wildly variant accounts of the shooting and its immediate aftermath:
- Acquilla Clemons, a housekeeper, said she heard gunshots, went out to see what was going on and saw two men running from the scene in opposite directions.

Frank Wright, who lived in the next block, said he heard gunshots, went out to see what was happening and saw a man standing near a police car. He insisted the man ran and jumped in a gray car parked beyond the cruiser, and sped away west on Tenth Street.

Jack Tatum told House Assassination Committee investigators that he was driving west on Tenth and had just passed a police car when the shooting broke out; Tatum paused and watched the gunman walk behind the squad car and take careful, deliberate aim before firing one more shot into Tippit. ("This action," the HSCA Report noted, "which is commonly described as a coup de grace, is more indicative of an execution than an act of defense intended to allow escape or prevent apprehension. Absent further evidence -- which the committee did not develop -- the meaning of this evidence must remain uncertain.")

These seemingly irreconcilable accounts only add to the mystery, and serve to reiterate that official investigators and independent researchers don't really know just what transpired at Tenth & Patton that day.

FOUR + FOUR = "A SLIGHT PROBLEM"
Four bullets were removed from Tippit's body, and four empty shell casings were reportedly found at the scene of his death. Investigators' should have had no problem matching them up to indisputably establish Oswald's guilt.

BUT, the bullets taken from Tippit's body could not be traced to Oswald's revolver. According to an FBI exert, the barrel of the pistol which fired the bullets -- allegedly Oswald's .38 Smith & Wesson revolver -- had been modified, causing the bullets to pass erratically through the barrel thereby leaving inconsistent individual characteristics which made positive identification impossible. Years later in the late 1970's, the House Assassinations Committee also was unable to positively connect any of the bullets to Oswald's pistol -- even with sophisticated techniques not available in 1964.

MOREOVER, three of the bullets were manufactured by Western-Winchester, and one by Remington-Peters. BUT two of the shell casings were made by Western-Winchester, and two were made by Remington-Peters. The Report was unable to adequately explain this curious discrepancy -- which staff attorney, Melvin Eisenberg delicately described as "a slight problem" when he broke the news to the Commission's executive members.

In the final analysis, the four shell casings are the only tangible evidence linking Oswald's pistol to the Tippit murder; without question, they were fired in his .38 Smith & Wesson. When they were fired is another matter altogether, for there is reason to wonder if the shells turned over to the Warren Commission were the same shells found at the scene on Nov. 22.

The second description of the suspect broadcast over police radio that day said the gunman was "apparently armed with a .32 caliber dark finish automatic pistol."

A few minutes later, Sgt. Jerry Hill notified the DPD radio dispatcher: "The shell at the scene indicates that the suspect is armed with a .38 caliber automatic, rather than a pistol." [Note: There are only two types of handgun, automatic and revolver; both are pistols, therefore, Hill meant to say "automatic, rather than revolver."]

Was Tippit slain with an automatic handgun, as these two radio transmissions indicate? If so, Oswald was not the killer - for he was allegedly carrying a revolver, which fires ammunition of a different size and shape than that made for an automatic (which 'automatically' ejects the shells as the bullets are fired; revolver shells must be ejected manually). Anyone with a passing familiarity with handguns could distinguish between automatic and revolver ammunition at a glance. Would a seasoned police sergeant like Jerry Hill, investigating the murder of a brother officer, make such a misidentification?

Uncertainty about the Tippit ballistics evidence grows with the revelation that Dallas policeman J.M. Poe, who took custody of two shell casings on Nov. 22, was later unable to identify them. Patrolman Poe was instructed by Sgt. Hill at the scene to 'mark' two shells found by Domingo Benavides; Poe scratched his initials on them to establish a chain of evidence: But seven months later, FBI agents asked Poe to examine the four shells turned over to the Warren Commission. The FBI report told the tale: Poe "stated he recalled marking these cases... but he stated after a thorough examination of the four cartridges shown to him on June 12, 1964, he cannot locate his marks; therefore, he cannot positively identify any of these cartridges as being the same ones he received from Benavides."

All of this suggests the possibility of police tampering with evidence to prop up a hastily-contrived, shoddy case against a hapless suspect. Coupled with the utter lack of any other credible evidence implicating Oswald, it raises the specter of a classic police frame-up ....

THE JACKET THAT DIDN'T FIT
Police found a white jacket on a parking lot behind a nearby gas station. The jacket eventually turned over by police to the FBI and Warren Commission was gray. The Warren Report flatly stated that this jacket, designated Commission Exhibit 162, belonged to Oswald and was discarded by him as he fled the scene of Tippit's death.

The few known references to the jacket that weekend, including the DPD radio transmission announcing its discovery, called it white. CE 162, the garment given the Warren Commission is officially a "gray zipper jacket." (I have held this jacket at the National Archives and it is gray; conceivably someone might call it 'light gray', but no one - least of all trained policemen - would call it white or even off-white.)

A commercial laundry tag stapled in the jacket was never traced to Oswald. Unpublished FBI reports disclose an investigation requested by the Warren Commission in which all dry cleaning firms in the Dallas/Fort Worth and New Orleans areas were contacted without identifying the one which laundered the garment. The Warren report didn't mention the laundry tag or the unsuccessful effort to trace it.

The same FBI investigation determined that Marina Oswald handwashed all of her husband's clothing (including two jackets) and that she never knew him to use a commercial cleaner. And, whereas CE 162 was size 'medium', all of Oswald's other clothing was size 'small'.

Dallas Police crowed all weekend about each new development - however circumstantial or tentative - in the case against Oswald. But they were strangely silent about the jacket. Nor is it mentioned anywhere in the dozens of police reports published in the Report's 26 volume appendix. A police captain was erroneously credited with finding the jacket - he explicitly testified he didn't find it - and there is no report from #279, the "unknown" officer who called the radio dispatcher to report his discovery. (In 1978 I identified and attempted to interview this officer, who responded angrily when I asked what color the jacket was. "That information might be something they don't want given out," he said tersely, terminating a brief conversation.)

According to a Secret Service report, Oswald "complained of a lineup wherein he had not been granted a request to put on a jacket similar to those worn by some of the other individuals in the lineup." Why would Oswald want to wear a jacket if he had discarded the one he was wearing when he shot Tippit? And why didn't police facilitate the identification process by making him wear the white jacket in the line-ups?

DPD, FBI and Secret Service reports detailing interrogations of Oswald do not mention a jacket; nothing in the official record indicates he was questioned about or confronted with the white jacket by his hosts (as he was confronted with the infamous 'backyard photos' of himself holding a rifle).

Only one of six witnesses shown the gray CE 162 stated positively it was the one worn by Tippit's killer; their descriptions of the gunman's jacket varied, and in several instances were significantly inconsistent with the Commission garment. Oswald's landlady could not identify CE 162 as the one he was wearing when he left his room at 1:04.

There was no credible evidence whatsoever that CE 162 belonged to Oswald and was abandoned by him near Tenth & Patton.

WHO SHOT J.D.?
After 30 years, that remains a valid question in the estimation of this writer. The information set forth above is the proverbial tip of the iceberg. Virtually every aspect of the official case against Oswald in the Tippit murder is tainted or flawed or outright undermined by the known facts, evidence and testimony. Other anomalies surrounding the policeman's death are too numerous to outline here. They include the circumstances which brought Tippit to the quiet residential street where he died, miles from his own patrol district; his activities in the hour preceding his murder; and an aspect of Tippit's personal life which -- had it been known to investigators in 1964 -- might have cast the officer's demise in a different light altogether.

Unfortunately, the truth about Tippit's death may never be known. Because of the unbelievably shoddy and dubious case concocted by the Dallas Police, and its endorsement by myopic government investigators, the record of J.D. Tippit's murder is inaccurate and incomplete. At least to those with open minds, the strange death of a policeman on Nov 22, 1963 seems destined to remain that date's other unsolved murder.

LARRY RAY' HARRIS of Dallas is co-founder of JFK Assassination Information Center. He is co-author with Gary Shaw of the book Cover-up. (1976)(1992) and was consultant to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations. During his 17 years of active research on the JFK assassination Harris has been involved with numerous books, articles and films about the case.

JFK Memorial - May 29, 1994 by Steve Gerlach

Sunday, May 29, 1994, would have been JFK's 77th birthday. Hard to believe, but true. The Memorial to John F. Kennedy situated in Melbourne's Treasury Gardens was a fitting place to hold a memorial (and celebration) of Kennedy's life - keeping with the wishes of the Kennedys that John be remembered on his birthday for what he did rather than now he died on November 22, 1963.

After four months of exhaustive planning, research and paperwork, Mary Dinsdale presented a poignant and reflective speech on the life of John F. Kennedy. The weather was sunny and warm, not unlike Dallas thirty-one years ago, but as Mary's speech began, the clouds gathered and the day became solemn. Very fitting indeed...

There is talk that a committee has decided that the memorial is "of no value to Australia's future" and is it in danger of being pulled down. Even though the people of Melbourne donated money to have it built in 1965! The number of people who came to visit the memorial while we were there is testament to its value in the heart of Melbourne. Even the tourists (mostly Americans) found their way to this spot to pay their respects and to reflect on what might have been.

Mary's speech lasted for a half hour in which time we too reflected on what was and what may have been if Fate had dealt another hand. Jackie Kennedy was also mentioned in passing, having just died the week before, closing the door on Camelot.

After the ceremony, talk ranged from Vietnam to the Kennedy family; from assassination in Dallas to Watergate; from sadness in lives cut so short to hope that this case may be solved sometime in the future.

With the Melbourne weather turning from cool to cold, many decided to leave to be with their own thoughts, while a small band headed for shelter and food at nearby Collins Place to talk more about the man, the myth, and the assassination.

One thing was certain, we weren't about to let Melbourne City Council destroy a memorial that "supposedly" has no bearing on the future of Australia. If we are to use that train of thought, every statue in every city should be pulled down as none of them have any bearing on Australia's FUTURE!

We will take up the fight to keep the Memorial in the treasury Gardens for all Australian's. We will keep you up to date with the latest news on this issue. "Those who forget the past are doomed to relive it."

You Can't Close A Case If You Can't Count - A Posner Commentary by Walt Brown

Heretofore, I have remained silent with respect to the facts alleged to be the ultimate, final gospel as presented in Case Closed. I have kept this silence for two reasons: first, I hate waiting on long lines; secondly, I have tried to make it my practice to avoid truly bizarre JFK assassination theories.

Now, almost a year since Case Closed reared its ugly head, it has been bashed thousands of times by countless critics who, in fact, do know more about the res gestae of Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, and who will not close the case until we have found the absolute truth. If this sounds like a negative commentary on Case Closed it will get worse when the critics get to Chapter Two and the subsequent pages of Mr. Posner's work.

Critics have, in fact, analysed literally every sentence of the work under scrutiny, and where Posner has given an opinion cum fact, he is criticized by people who are giving their opinions cum facts. The truth is not always well served by this process.

I shall now begin my examination of the sentence I have taken for my text, and I promise to stick to the facts. You may check them as your eyesight persists, or if you read "The Warren Omission" chapter in my next book, Blue Death, Red Patsy, White Lies or a monograph which expands on that chapter and will keep the name The Warren Omission.

On page 411 of Case Closed the Warren Commission's failures are simplisticly explained away: 'Since all the Commissioners had full time careers, [one wonders what Allen Dulles's was...] they could only spend part of their time at the hearings. Senator Russell had the poorest attendance, hearing only six percent [sic] of the testimony. Only three of the seven commissioners heard more than half the testimony.'

Therein, Mr. Posner clearly demonstrates the shallowness of his "research", the gullibility he anticipated in his readers (not surprising in Warren Report believers), and his willingness to pass off pedantry as scholarship.

I have told many folks that I have read the 26 volumes of the Hearings and Exhibits three times, but I haven't requested notice in The Guinness Book. I do, however, assert that when I counted every question put to every witness, and analysed the content of each of the 109,930 questions, it was a unique exercise. It also taught me where the Warren Commission, and its most recent apologist, went badly astray.

With respect to "Senator Russell...hearing only six percent [sic] of the testimony," Posner gives the Georgia legislator, who had serious reservations about the whole fraudulent Warren Commission, more -- much more -- than his due.

The 15 volumes of testimony comprise 7,909 pages. Six per cent of that is 474.5 pages; Russell appears on only 140 pages, or 1.7%. Is this the full extent of the Posnerian deception? No. All indicators bear out that Russell's apathy was far more serious than stated. The Warren Commission took testimony from 488 different witnesses, although some, like Marina Oswald, were deposed several times, and others, like Jesse Curry, were deposed once in Dallas by a commission attorney, and only then flown to D.C. The commission appearance appears in Volume IV, dated April 22, 1964; the staff appearance, which one could call a rehearsal, as virtually all questions that Curry handled well were re-asked in D.C., occurred a week earlier, on April 15, but was buried in Volume XII.

Of the 488 witnesses, Russell's 6% would amount to 29 witnesses; in fact, he heard the testimony of six, and was walking into the hearing room during the last two questions put to Dr. Shaw (IV, 116-7). To use another variable, if Senator Russell had heard 6% of the questions asked, he would have heard 109,930 x .06, or 6,596; in fact, he heard 986, or .89%. Not even one of the almost 110 thousand questions, and hardly 6%. As a final variable, 6% of the questions asked would again be 6,596; Russell asked 249, or .22%. These findings are reflected in Table One.

TABLE ONE

POSNER
THE REALITY
6% of pages = 474
140 (1.7%)
6% of witnesses = 29
6 (1.2%)
6% of ?? heard = 6,596
986 (.89%)
6% of ?? asked = 6,596
249 (.22%)
Composite only avail. in reality
4.01/4= 1.0025%

Hardly approaching 6%, yet at 1%, it is probative of the critics' arguments that Russell wanted no part in the proceedings, refusing at one point to sign the Report.

He heard one witness, Marguerite Oswald, in Volume I; no witnesses in Volumes II and III; Dr. Gregory and the Connallys in Volume IV, contributing three questions to the record of Dr. Gregory. On September 2, he asked Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon one procedural question about the Secret Service (V, 525), and then, on September 6, he led the questioning of Marina at the US Naval Air Station in Dallas, asking 245 questions which revolved around ticket stubs from a bullfight in Mexico a year earlier. Of note, Russell asked the final question asked by a commissioner (V, 620). Somehow that is fitting for the one commissioner who did not ask a question until April 21; who did not ask a question (in the "presence" of commissioners) until 51 witnesses had been asked 24,893 questions, and an additional 305 witnesses had been deposed by counsel and were asked over 70,000 questions; who was absent from the proceedings from I, 186, to IV, 122, or 1,470 continuous pages, or 55.89% continuous absence of the testimony taken by commissioners.

Yo, Poz! You didn't get it right on Richard Russell! What about the rest?

With respect to the remainder of slick wording on page 411 of Case Closed [which perhaps should have been titled "Farce Posed" after its author], "Only three of the seven commissioners heard more than half the testimony," the accuracy here is different from the data Mr. Posner put forward regarding Senator Russell.

Put another way, this part is even more grossly inaccurate. Mr Posner has again somehow, well, let's say "overlooked" the fact that his original researchers, the seven Warren Commissioners, only were 'present' in varying degrees, at the testimony of 93 of the 488 witnesses. The fact that no witness ever gave testimony before the entire Warren Commission bespeaks volumes.

We know Russell's achievements. What of the others? Chairman Earl Warren was "present" (the term used by the WC stenos and for good reason) for all 93 witnesses heard by Commissioners, but he played an extremely limited role, often just lending dignity, if that was possible, to the proceedings, by swearing in the witness and then asking a throw-away question or two before turning the witness over to the staff counsel, who asked 81.22% of the questions put to witnesses in the presence of commissioners. A classic Earl Warren question was put to Marina: "Well, Mrs. Oswald, did you have a good trip here?" (I, 1) It is the first question asked by the Commission, and since Marina was not yet sworn, one wonders at the range of possible answers: "Yes, Mr. Warren, there was not much turbulence. Now can we talk about my dead husband whose guilt you have already decided, so I can go back to my usual FBI harassment?"

The two government "insiders," Allen Dulles and Gerald Ford, attended 70 and 60 hearings, respectively, and asked the highest totals of WC questions, 2,154 and 1,772 respectively. (Not surprising given their roles on the Commission.) John Sherman Cooper attended 50 hearings, John McCloy 35, and Hale Boggs 20. We have already had passing mention of Richard Russell's 6. The totality of their efforts [and recall our premise, "only three of the seven commissioners heard more than half the testimony..."] is reflected in Table Two:

W.C. MEMBER
HEARINGS
NO. OF ??
% OF W.C. ??
% OF TOTAL ??
ROLE
E. WARREN
93
608
8.7
.55%
Chair
A. DULLES
70
2,154
30.9*
1.96%
Cover CIA
G. FORD
60
1,772
25.4*
1.61%
FBI mole
J.S. COOPER
50
926
13.2
.84%
Warm Body
J. McCLOY
35
795
11.4
.72%
Big $$$
H. BOGGS
20
460
6.6
.41%
Go figure
R. RUSSELL
6
249
3.5
.22%
Gadfly
TOTALS
334/7= 47.7
6964/7= 994.8
(100)
6.33/7= .904

* The two suggested government insiders asked over 50% of the questions posed by Commissioners, although they were hardly probative.

The final "omission" [no plug intended] in Case Closed's depth of research is its failure to understand what "present" meant with respect to a Commissioner and a witness. Most simply put, it means that the Commissioner named was 'present' at some time during the questioning of that witness.

The testimony of Dallas Ringmaster Jesse Curry is instructive ( IV, 15Off). Listed as "present" were Warren, Cooper, Ford, McCloy, and Dulles. Only Warren and Dulles were present at the outset of the 683 question session. Dulles remained throughout; Warren left at question 122. John McCloy arrived at Question 125, and since the others arrived later, Ford at 130, departing at 450, and Cooper, arriving at 314 and departing at 492, we are left with the fact that only one, not five, or four, but one was present at question 123 put to Jesse Curry. The results of his overall session are illustrated in Table Three:

W.C.
ARRIVED
LEFT
# OF ?? HEARD
% OF ?? HEARD
E. WARREN
0
122
122
17.86%
A. DULLES
0
683
683
100%
J. McCLOY
125
683
558
81.69%
G. FORD
130
450
320
46.85%
J.S. COOPER
314
492
178
26.06%
TOTALS
565/5= 114
2430/5= 486
1861/5= 372
272.46/5= 54.49%

It would thus appear that Mr. Posner has committed a series of egregious if unintentional errors in his conclusions regarding the time spent "on task" by the seven Presidential dwarves. Richard Russell did not hear 6% of anything, except possibly D.C. traffic. Only Earl Warren was "present' for a number as high as 19.2% of the witnesses, but not even remotely that much testimony. The others lent their names to a governmental fiasco typified in the following exchange, which occurred during the testimony of Ruth Paine:
The CHAIRMAN: Senator Cooper, at this time I am obliged to leave for our all-day conference on Friday at the Supreme Court, and I may be back later in the day, but if I don't, you continue, of course.
Senator COOPER: I will this morning. If I can't be here this afternoon, whom do you want to preside?
The CHAIRMAN: Congressman Ford, would you be here this afternoon at all?
Representative FORD: Unfortunately Mr. McCloy and I have to go to a conference out of town.
The CHAIRMAN: You are both going out of town, aren't you?
Senator COOPER: I can go and come back if it is necessary.
The CHAIRMAN: I will try to be here myself. Will Mr. Dulles be here?
Mr. McCLOY: He is out of town.
The CHAIRMAN: If you should not finish, Mr. Jenner [he was asking the questions... ], will you phone me at the Court and I will try to suspend my own conference over there and come over.
Senator COOPER: I will be here anyway all morning and will try to come back this afternoon.
The CHAIRMAN: Thank you very much. (III, 55-56)

 You, good reader, can judge which of the researchers whose names appear in this commentary have done their homework and not relied on an outfit which carried Failure in its name. As for you, Poz, I sure hope you enjoyed my little "omission" here, because I sure enjoyed all of yours.

Quid Pro Quo - JFK: The Second Coming of Jim Garrison
Reprinted from "The Assassination Chronicles" by Edward Jay Epstein

More than a century before the advent of the Hollywood pseudocumentary, Karl Marx suggested that all great events and personalities in world history happen twice: "the first time as tragedy, the second as farce." Oliver Stone's film JFK is a case in point.

In 1969, when Jim Garrison's Conspiracy-to-kill-Kennedy trial collapsed, his entire case that the accused, Clay Shaw, had participated in an assassination plot turned out to be based on noting more than the hypnotically induced story of a single witness. This witness, Perry Ramond Russo, had testified that he had had no conscious memory of his own conspiracy story before he had been drugged, hypnotized, and fed hypothetical circumstances by the district attorney about the plot he was supposed to have witnessed. To the dismay of his supporters -- and even three of Garrison's staff resigned -- this was the essence of Garrison's show trial: a witness who acknowledged he could not, after this bizarre treatment, separate fantasy from reality. After that, Garrison's meretricious prosecution of it was considered by the press to be, as The New York Times noted in an editorial, "one of the most disgraceful chapters in the history of American jurisprudence." In this debacle, Garrison himself was exposed as a man who had recklessly disregarded the truth when it suited his purposes.

Then, in 1991, a generation later, Garrison reemerges phoenixlike from the debris as the truth-seeking prosecutor (played by Kevin Costner) in the film JFK - and who brilliantly solves the mystery of the Kennedy assassination. In this version, there is no hypnosis: The reborn Garrison resourcefully uncovers cogent evidence that Clay Shaw planned the Dallas ambush of President Kennedy in New Orleans with two confederates: David William Ferrie (played by Joe Pesci), a homosexual soldier of fortune, and Lee Harvey Oswald (played by Gary Oldman). Garrison establishes that this trio, who also participate together in orgies, all worked for the CIA, and were recruited into a conspiracy to seize power in Washington.

Filmed in a grainy semidocumentary style, with newsreels as well as amateur footage incorporated into it, JFK purports to reveal the actual truth about the Kennedy assassination. From the moment it was released, its director, Oliver Stone, has so passionately defended its factual accuracy that he became, for all practical purposes, the new Garrison. What could be more appropriate in the age of media than a crusading fiimmaker replacing a crusading district attorney as the symbol of the truth-finder in society? In this capacity, Oliver Stone-Garrison played out his case on television news programs, talk shows, magazines, and the op-ed pages of newspapers. He held his own press conferences, with his attractive researcher at his side, met with congressional leaders, and he, as the original Garrison had done a quarter of a century before, used this public platform to focus attention on the possibility that the government was hiding the truth about the Kennedy assassination. In exploiting this torment of secrecy, Stone proved far more successful than his predecessor in rousing interest in releasing the classified files pertaining to the assassination.

But where Jim Garrison failed in building a plausible conspiracy case against Clay Shaw, how did Oliver Stone succeed? The answer is that whereas the original Garrison only attempted to coax, intimidate, and hypnotize witnesses into providing him with incriminating evidence, the new Garrison, Oliver Stone, fabricated for his film the crucial evidence and witnesses that were missing in real life -- even when this license required deliberately falsifying reality and depicting events that never happened. Consider, for example, the way he fabricated Ferrie's dramatic confession to Garrison in a hotel room only hours before he died.

In reality, as well as in Jim Garrison's account of the case, David Ferrie steadfastly maintained his innocence, insisting he did not know Lee Harvey Oswald, he was not in the CIA, and that he had no knowledge of any plot to kill Kennedy. The last known person to speak to Ferrie was George Lardner, Jr., of the Washington Post, whom Ferrie had met with from midnight to 4:00 a.m. on February 22. 1967. During this interview, Ferrie described Garrison (whom he hadn't seen for weeks) as "a joke." Several hours later. Ferrie died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

In JFK, Oliver Stone invents, and falsities, his own version of Ferrie's last night. Instead of being calmly interviewed by a reporter in his home, JFK shows a panicked Ferrie being doggedly interrogated by Jim Garrison in a hotel suite until he finally breaks down and confesses. Ferrie names his CIA controller and, in rapid-fire succession, admits in the film everything he denied in real life. He acknowledges that he taught Oswald "everything." He then explains that not only does he know Clay Shaw but also that he is being blackmailed by him and controlled by him. He also admits that he works for the CIA -- along with Oswald, Shaw, and "the Cubans," who were the "shooters" in Dallas. He displays intimate knowledge of the plot by explaining that the "shooters" were recruited without being told whose orders they were carrying out. He tells Garrison that the plot is "too big" to be investigated, implying that powerful figures are behind it, and that, because they know Ferrie is now talking, they have issued a "death warrant" for him.

After Ferrie leaves Garrison and returns to his apartment, he is shown being chased, held down, and murdered by a bald-headed man who forces pills down his throat. The murderer is shown in other fictional scenes as an associate of Shaw, Oswald, and the anti-Castro Cuban shooters. When Garrison arrives at the murder scene and finds the empty bottle of pills, he concludes Ferrie was murdered, which gives Ferrie's earlier revelations to Garrison the force of a deathbed confession. (In reality. the coroner ruled that Ferrie had died from "natural causes" - a verdict that Garrison, as the empowered authority, did not contest.)

Oliver Stone's transformations in this scene, as seen in Table I, involve more than some trivial cinematic contrivances. They provide the critical linkage for the conspiracy. Ferrie's confession connects the team of anonymous Cuban "shooters" in Dallas with Clay Shaw, David Ferrie, and Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans and, at a higher level, the CIA "untouchables." It changes the entire story - just as it would change the story about the execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg if film fabricated a fictional scene showing the Rosenbergs confessing to J. Edgar Hoover that they were part a Communist conspiracy to steal atomic secrets.

Table 1
Ferrie's Last Interview, February 22, 1967

IN ACTUALITY
IN JFK THE FILM
FERRIE IS:
At home, relaxed
In hotel suite, in panic
WITH:
Reporter Lardner
D.A. Garrison
FERRIE:
1) Denies knowing Oswald
1) Admits training Oswald
2) Never mentions Shaw
2) Admits Shaw controls him
3) Denies he is in CIA
3) Admits being in CIA
4) Denies knowing of plot
4) Describes plot details
Says Oswald, Shaw are CIA
Talks of Cuban Shooters
Death:
Ruled natural
Ferrie shown murdered
by Cuban associate of Shaw's

Ferrie's false confessions are not isolated bits of license. Throughout JFK, in dozens of scenes, Oliver Stone substitutes fiction for fact when it advances his case. He even blatantly contradicts the two books he represents as being the bases for JFK. He makes especially effective use of this substitution technique when it comes to witnesses. Here, like all fictionalizers, he has an advantage over fact-finders: He can artfully fashion his replacement witnesses to meet the audience's criteria for what is credible. His substitution of the fictional "Willie O'Keefe" to replace Garrison's flawed witness, Perry Raymond Russo, is a case in point.

Russo, it will be recalled, was Garrison's sole witness to the alleged plot that was planned in Ferrie's apartment. But his credibility suffered from three problems.

First, there was the memory lapse. Russo did not tell his incriminating story until four years after the assassination and then only after he had been rendered semiconscious by sodium pentothal and instructed by a hypnotist to imagine he is watching an important discussion "about assassinating someone."

Second, there were the inconsistent identifications. According to the statement of his first interrogation, Russo, when shown photographs of Shaw, said that he had seen him from afar - but never met the man. Subsequently he changed his story to say he had met him at Ferrie's apartment. One week later he told a homicide officer he was not sure the man he met was Shaw.

Third, there was the misidentification of Oswald. Russo claimed the man introduced to him as "Leon Oswald" had a beard in September 1963 and was Ferrie's roommate. Oswald was clean-shaven at that time, and Marina's roommate (Ferrie's roommate, at the time, did have a beard).

While Garrison was stuck with this contradictory testimony, Oliver Stone was not. He simply substituted for Russo the fictional character "Willie O'Keefe" (played by Kevin Bacon), who had none of the real witness's deficiencies.

Unlike Russo, a heterosexual with no plausible access to Shaw's secret life, his replacement, O'Keefe is fashioned as a handsome male prostitute who has been Shaw's homosexual lover arid drug partner for over a year. Moreover, he is given the political persona of a neo-Nazi and Kennedy-hater - a political stance that more plausibly might allow him to be privy to a discussion as sensitive as the assassination plan. And, unlike Russo, who only popped up after Ferrie's death-seeking publicity on local television, O'Keefe contacts Garrison before Ferrie's death -- and before Garrison's investigation has even become public -- from stale prison. He is serving time for prostitution, and he offers to cooperate with Garrison (whom he also physically admires) because "he has nothing to lose" and presumably because it might lead to a reduced prison sentence.

Unlike the real witness, O'Keefe displays no memory lapses requiring drug or hypnotic "objectification." He voluntarily relates a coherent story: Ferrie first introduced him to Shaw in the summer of 1962: Shaw immediately hired him to participate in elaborate orgies with him and Ferrie. In the course of this relationship, he met Shaw's associates, including Oswald, whom he has no problem identifying as beardless, and the anti-Castro Cuban mercenaries (including one bald one, who murders Fer- tie). At one late-night meeting in Ferrie's apartment, after the Cubans depart, Ferrie, Oswald, and Shaw discuss the plan for killing Kennedy, including the "cross fire" and "triangulation of fire."

The fictional O'Keefe's story is supported by Ferrie's fictional confession, which is then given weight by Ferrie's fictional murder by the fictional bald-headed Cuban introduced in O'Keefe's story. Since Oliver Stone's audience is not apprised of the substitutions of fiction for fact, this cross-corroboration makes the New Orleans plot plausible to it.

The New Orleans conspiracy remained a relatively low-level one, involving homosexuals, anti-Castro Cuban killers, Oswald, and CIA employees. To link it to the central coup d'etat in Washington, D.C., Oliver Stone resorts to a deus ex machina: a fictional meeting Garrison has with a deep-throat-style anonymous source, who identified himself only as "X."

"X" is a cynical man of military bearing (played by Donald Sutherland). He meets Garrison in late February 1967, just after Ferrie's death, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. When asked by Garrison whether he is with the CIA, "X" refuses to identify the agency he represents but tells Garrison he is "close, you do not know how close."

After describing the Warren Commission report as "fiction," "X" launches into a remarkable fifteen-minute exposition of the assassination. He discloses that Kennedy was "executed by a device as old as the crucifixion - a military firing squad." It was not some low level plot but a full-blown "coup d'etat," with "Lyndon Johnson waiting in the wings." Its purpose was to prevent Kennedy from withdrawing from Vietnam and ending the Cold War with the Soviet Union. Since the military-industrial complex could not afford to lose this war threat - "one hundred billion dollars" in war contracts was at stake -- it ordered the assassination. The secret team of generals and officials who carried out this coup also arranged the "cover story" that framed Oswald as the lone assassin and sabotaged the telephone system in Washington, D.C.. after the assassination so no news would leak out. "Nothing was left to chance." X adds.

"X" explains that two weeks before President Kennedy was due to arrive in Dallas, X's superior. "General Y," ordered him to accompany a group of officials on a trip to the South Pole. If he hadn't been sent away, he would have had the "routine duty" of arranging "additional security" for the president in Dallas - which would have made the assassination impossible. When he returned and realized what had happened, he deduced that there could be only one reason for "Y" sending him away at this critical time: to prevent him from interfering with the assassination plan in Dallas. X tells Garrison he cannot publicly reveal these secrets, because before he could testify he would be "gagged, arrested, and put in an insane asylum," but he urges him to "make arrests" anyhow. With the New Orleans conspiracy now connected to the Washington conspiracy, Garrison returns to New Orleans and arrests Clay Shaw. Garrison, in reality, had not met such a source. Rather than going to Washington, D.C., he spent the week between Ferrie's death and Shaw's arrest filling in the lapsed memory of the new witness, Russo (with the help of sodium pentothal). Even though the original Garrison never met "X," Oliver Stone, the new Garrison, not only found "X" but also retained him as his technical adviser for JFK. This super source, whose story was anachronistically slipped into the old Garrison's case, is Colonel Leroy Fletcher Prouty. Before his retirement from the Air Force in December 1963, Colonel Prouty had worked in the Pentagon in the Office of Special Operations - which provided planes and other equipment for covert activities. In November 1963, Prouty had been sent to the South Pole at the time of the assassination, but here the similarity between the real and the fictional "X', ends.

Unlike the character in the film, Prouty's duties did not include providing "additional security" for the president's motor-cades, according to the Secret Service (which did have that re-sponsibility). He was not even a liaison with the Secret Service.

Aside from advising Oliver Stone, Prouty is also extremely active with other conspiracy-hunters. He served, for example, as editorial adviser to publications of the futuristic Church of Scientology; as a consultant to the far right Lyndon LaRouche Organization, who also provided its convention with a presentation comparing the U.S. government's prosecution of Lyndon LaRouche (for mail fraud) "to the persecution of Socrates"; a board member of the Populist Action Committee, where he joined Robert Weems, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, and John Rarick, the organizer of the White Citizens Council; and as a featured speaker for the anti-civil rights organization called the Liberty Lobby, whose founder, Willis Carto, also set up the Institute for Historic Review, a disseminator of books and videotapes that allege that the Nazi death camps in Europe were fictions devised by Zionist propaganda to justify tax money being donated to Israel. (It also published Prouty's own book, The Secret Team.

Prouty also exposed the machinations of putative global conspiracies. For example, when the Liberty Lobby held its annual Board of Policy Convention in 1991, he presented a special seminar, "Who Is the Enemy?" which blamed the high price of oil on a systematic plot of a Cabal to shut down oil pipelines deliberately in the Middle East. "Why?" he asked, and explained to the seminar: "Because of the Israelis. That is their business on behalf of the oil companies. That's why they get $3 billion a year from the U.S. taxpayer." His enemy list also included the CIA, usurers, school textbooks, the media, political parties, international banks, federal crises-planning exercises, and the U.S.-Soviet Trade and Economic Council (which, according to Prouty, had stage-managed, along with David Rockefeller, the liquidation of the Berlin Wall to profit from "the rubles and the gold").

So this is the intellectual provenance of the man Oliver Stone chose as his technical adviser - and the man called "X." In JFK, X displays secret knowledge about the ultimate conspiracy behind the Kennedy assassination when he tells Garrison that the "who" and the "how" of the shooting are "just scenes" to hide the "why." The "why," in turn, proceeds from the unbreakable rule of the power elite that "the organizing principle of any society is for war." Because Kennedy violated this precept by taking steps to end the was, he had to die.

Prouty/X's secret knowledge about the elite's organizing principle and the "war system" derives from a very special source - a suppressed Kennedy administration study, which he discussed in the Liberty Lobby's Radio Free America on December 14, 1989. He explained then that this study was so secret that the group of "power brokers" who conducted it met, according to Prouty, "in an underground storage and security area" in the Hudson Valley of New York called "Iron Mountain." The explosive issue they addressed was: Could America survive "if and when a condition of permanent peace should arise"? Their conclusion, which "X" would echo almost word for word in the film JFK two years later, was "the organization of society, for the possibility of war is its principal political stabilizer"; without a believable war threat "no government could remain in power," and consequently "the elimination of war... implies the eventual elimination of national sovereignty." He explains on this radio program and in a subsequent issue of Spotlight, the newspaper of the Liberty Lobby, that these conclusions come directly from the report from this Iron Mountain group -- which he has obtained a copy of (and that the Institute for Historic Review republished). He concludes the program by relating about the "high cabal . . . calling the shots."

While Prouty quotes accurately from the "Report from Iron Mountain," he fails to realize it was a complete hoax. There was no group in underground storage vaults in Iron Mountain, no study of the elimination of the war threat, no report from power brokers. The "Report from Iron Mountain" was a brilliant spoof by political satirist Leonard Lewin of think tanks in 1967. Victor Navasky, then the editor of the satiric magazine Monocle, who thought up the idea, persuaded Dial Press to put Lewin's book on its nonfiction instead of fiction list, which resulted in a front-page news story in The New York Times about the "suppressed" report. Subsequently it was revealed by the author for what it was. What neither the author nor Navasky could foresee was that this hoax would reemerge a quarter of a century later, first in radical-right radio broadcasts and Liberty Lobby publications, and then as the connective logic of Oliver Stone's film JFK.

Not only did his technical adviser on JFK prove unable to distinguish a mirthful hoax from somber reality, but Oliver Stone also himself proved unable to separate the false scenes in JFK from the reality of Garrison's case, at a Town Hall meeting in New York in March 1992 - a meeting in which he again compared himself to Garrison as one of four people libeled by the media for "representing an unofficial history" of the assassination (the other two in this quarter are, according to Stone, Oswald and President Kennedy). The panel at Town Hall included Norman Mailer, Nora Ephron, and myself, and it was moderated by Victor Navasky, now the editor of The Nation. When I pointed out to Stone that his depiction of Ferrie confessing to Garrison was false history, he replied that even though such a meeting never happened, he had "sketched" it into Ferrie's last night because Ferrie had at an earlier point "raved and ranted" to one of Garrison's investigators. Stone saw no problem in his misrepresenting this fiction as fact in his "unofficial history." He also dismissed other challenges to the fictitious evidence he inserted in JFK -- such as the six scenes depicting someone pasting Oswald's head on a photograph of some other gunman's body to frame him -- by responding to the person who had questioned this fiction by meticulously citing the actual photographic evidence, "I don't know where you get your facts." Moreover, he not only vouched for the bona fides of Prouty but also presented as pure "truth" X's thesis that the "military-industrial complex" killed Kennedy so he would not end the war in Vietnam.

Oliver Stone, as the new Garrison, demonstrated yet again how easily pierced is the thin membrane that separates the mainstream media from the festering pools of fantasies on its peripheries. What he allowed to ooze into JFK from these fringes, with the help of his technical advisers such as Colonel Prouty, is the tormenting concept that "secret teams" and "high cabals" fabricated entire historic events to fool them -- a concept that incorporates in its schema even the Iron Mountain hoax. In doing so, Oliver Stone organized a flight from reality. JFK thus completes the journey from fact to fantasy that began with the flawed Warren Commission report in 1964. What has been lost en route is the truth.

W. J. Clinton Prez. U.S.A. by Steve Gerlach

The great hope of the assassination research community in the last few years was not Oliver Stone, or the opening of the files. The great hope rested with William Jefferson Clinton as he ran for office, won, and accepted the greatest and most powerful job in the United States. After 30 years, finally, we had someone inside the government on OUR side. Our hopes and dreams rested with the saxophone playing, hip guy who reminded us all of another President, both in manner, style and inspiration.

There's no doubt that the initial feeling towards Clinton was almost JFK-esque. The great hope, a new start, a better future. Unlike his predecessors, Clinton was to focus on domestic issues and not bombing the hell out of other countries "just because."

Remember: "The economy, stupid."

It's amazing what a few briefings with the CIA and FBI can do to a new President. Scarcely was the Big Chair in the White House warm, and already Clinton was focusing on Foreign issues, threats and demands. "Excuse me, the JFK assassination?" No word. Nothing.

Zilch.

And it has remained that way. Okay, a few generous "acts" in opening "certain" files. But nothing else. Clinton even went as far, on November 22, 1993, to say that he believed the Warren Commission! And then the bubble burst. Our hopes were dashed. Solving the case? No hope. Never. That's it, guys, show's over.

What have they shown him? What have they told him? What threats have they made? What proof do they have? And who the heck are "they" anyway.

As Cyril Wecht said at the ASK Symposium last year: Clinton should stop pretending to be JFK and actually do something in his memory - open and solve this case!

But, as of writing, the man they call the "elevator President" as his popularity keeps going up and down as every "good" deed is thwarted by new Savings and Loans and sex scandals, the ol' Prez. doesn't seem to get much time to sit, scratch, or even open a case that's thirty-one years old and STILL unsolved.

Perhaps that's the idea.

Keep the guy on his toes, he won't have time to do anything he or the public wants.

We are a long way away from the action down here but, if eligible, I would have voted for Clinton at the last election. The next one? No way.

His days are numbered.

Something drastic will have to happen.

Time to turn hot air into something solid, Bill.

"The truth, stupid."

Yo! HCEEPS ESREVRE (Reverse Speech) and the Kennedy Assassination by Ralph D. Thomas.

INTRODUCTION TO REVERSE SPEECH
A New Investigative Frontier

In my ten year search for the truth of what happened on Dallas on November 22nd, 1963, I had always reasoned that a new investigative technique would one day be discovered that could help bring back some of the evidence that has since vanished. The problem with the Kennedy Assassination is that it happened almost thirty years ago. A new investigative technique never before used would help bring to light some of the mysteries the assassination has been cloaked in. After years of being on the lookout, I found the new investigative technique with Reverse Speech.

When you look at the history of major discoveries and breakthroughs, you'll find that many of them were discovered by accident and many weren't accepted by people when first revealed. Reverse Speech is no exception. It was discovered by mistake. It's very hard to accept and I thought it was another new phenomenon that didn't have much validity until I made a complete study of the subject when I first found out about it. I ask that you look at this with an open mind. In this article, I am going to explain what Reverse Speech is, describe my tests for the validation of it, explain how this new frontier can be used as an exciting and new investigative tool and give you some actual examples of Reverse Speech.

WHAT IS REVERSE SPEECH: Reverse Speech is a newly discovered form of human communication that exists outside of conscious awareness. This extra form of communication co-exists and occurs simultaneously with our normal speech process. As the brain constructs the necessary speech sounds to form intelligible language, it constructs them in such a way that at least two messages are communicated. One forwards, which is constructed and heard consciously, and one in reverse which is constructed and heard unconsciously.

This unconscious form of communication or Reverse Speech, occurs constantly throughout the human speech process. Every minute of every day all of us are delivering and receiving speech reversals each time we engage in conversation. As we speak consciously in forward speech, we say what our conscious mind chooses to say. At the same time our unconscious mind is also expressing itself, backwards, in those very same sounds that we previously assumed came only from the conscious area of the mind.

What polygraph technology, PSE technology and body language attempted to achieve has now been given to us via an extrasensory means of perception that has always existed. However, Reverse Speech takes us much further into the subconscious mind. By analyzing speech in reverse, not only can we spot deception, we can also locate unconscious thoughts. Reverse Speech is a voice of the unconscious mind. It has the potential to reveal true thoughts and true feelings sometimes in direct contradiction to what has been spoken forward.

This new discovery is very hard to accept when you first hear about it and, again, I ask you to keep an open mind about it until you get to the end of this article. My first thoughts about this was "hogwash" until I looked at it a little closer and did my own verifications. Please read on! In order to understand how this works, I am going to briefly describe how it was discovered by psychologist David J Oates.

David Oates is an Australian psychotherapist who worked with street kids in halfway houses. About ten years ago, some of Mr. Oates' young clients came to him and wanted to know his thoughts on what has now come to be called backwards masking. Backwards masking is a term used to describe popular bands deliberately placing hidden messages on records that were recorded backwards. Mr. Oates developed an interest in this fad as a direct result of some of these teenagers coming to him wanting his thoughts on backwards masking. He rigged up a recorder that would play in reverse so he could study backwards masking further. What he found out was that these hidden messages where occurring on all records and even occurred on some of the first records produced in the 1930s. David Oates also learned that these messages where present on all forms of music including Rock and Roll, Gospel, and County And Western and appeared to have a direct relationship to what was being said forward in the song. In 1984 David Oates, after conducting extensive testing, became personally convinced that unintentional backwards messages on records did exist. Over the next two year period, he found numerous reversed messages across a wide section of recordings ranging from songs to advertisements to political speeches to normal conversations.

In 1987 David was joined by associate Greg Albrecht who assisted him in his research for most of that year. During this time they devised the theory of "Reverse Speech And Speech Complimentary" and isolated many common patterns to this phenomena. Speech Complimentary has to do with the fact that the messages found in reverse have a direct bearing to messages stated at the conscious level. In November of 1987, this research team officially announced their findings to the Australian public. The media interest in Australia was intense and their work was featured on numerous current affairs television programs, magazines and radio broadcasts. Reverse Speech was used successfully by an Australian police force to solve a crime. Mr. Oates was offered a job in Brisbane to use Reverse Speech in a therapeutic situation. He then began to develop the technology further, refining procedures and theories and collecting extra information that supported the hypothesis of Reverse Speech.

In 1989, the first official research institute for Reverse Speech was formed in Brisbane, Australia, and David began to lecture on the topic extensively, conducting training and instigating further research programs. In June 1989 he travelled to the United States to lecture on Reverse Speech. The reception he received was overwhelming and, as a result, he moved to Dallas, Texas in August 1989 to establish a research base in the United States.

In an Australian television interview with a man suspected of murder, Mr. Oates made an analysis of the soundtrack to prove his point that Reverse Speech can be used as an investigative tool. This is just one example David provides in his presentations and tapes. The two sentence soundtrack consists of a reporter asking the suspect if he ever threatened the victim with the suspect's response. The transcript goes like this:
DID YOU EVER THREATEN?
NO I NEVER THREATENED... I NEVER REMEMBER THREATENING ALTHOUGH HE DID ON OCCASION TELL THE POLICE I THREATENED HIM.

David Oates located a speech reversal that said:
REVENGE KILLING THE LAD.

In early 1991, I attended a lecture on Reverse Speech at the University Of Texas given by David Oates. The lecture lasted several hours and David gave example after example of the Reverse Speech phenomena. I was, at first, very skeptical. One of the first things I did was contact the police department in Australia to verify that they had used Reverse Speech in one of it's investigations which Mr. Oates revealed in his lecture. After making several telephone calls getting to the right person, I did verify that a murder weapon was located in the basement of a suspect using the Reverse Speech process. With that verified I obtained one of David Oates modified tape recorders to test some of his examples on my own as I thought that some of this stuff could have been some kind of technological trick. One of the more famous soundtracks Mr. Oates uses in his examples is a sound track of man's first spacewalk by Neal Armstrong. Where the soundtrack says, "That's one small step for man", David reversed the tape and it said, "Man will spacewalk."

EXAMPLE:
NEAL ARMSTRONG: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
REVERSAL: Man will spacewalk.

I went to a video store and obtained a documentary video tape of our space program and located the soundtrack on the video. I then tape recorded the soundtrack of, "that's one small step for man," and then played it backwards. Sure enough I found that when I played the tape recording backwards, the sentence, "Man will space walk," was found. I had proved to myself that David Oates' Reverse Speech examples were not some sort of technological trick that involved doctored soundtracks. I also did this with several other examples Mr. Oates presented in his lecture and all provided that David's soundtracks had not been doctored.

My next thoughts ran along the lines that this thing might just be some sort of coincidence. I talked with several language experts and statistical mathematicians at the local university proposing "what if" type questions and asking them if such coincidences could occur. Their basic answer was that speech spoken forward may produce a random audible word now and then when played in reverse but the idea that reverse speech could make complete sentences or phrases that related directly to what was being said forward was a statistical improbability. I tested the "one small step for man" further by recording these words into a tape recorder myself and having several other people do it thinking that I might come up with the same sentence in reverse, Man will space walk. Not only did I not hear "Man will space walk" when I played these tracks in reverse, I heard a completely different sentence with some individuals. On my own voice I recorded over and over again, I finally heard (after several hours of listening), "Maybe this is valid." On another person who had somewhat of an idea of what I was doing, I heard, "Ralph's flipped out."

EXAMPLE:
RALPH THOMAS: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
REVERSAL: Maybe this is valid.

EXAMPLE:
SUBJECT: That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
REVERSAL: Ralph's flipped out.

Mr. Oates's research clearly shows that reversals occur in normal speech about one time every 15 seconds. During highly emotional conversation they occur about once every two seconds. In prepared speeches and that sort of thing they only occur about once every five minutes. With the proper equipment and the proper training, Reverse Speech will become a new and exciting investigative technique.

After hours of testing, I started listening to other soundtracks of news interviews and have located several reversals. I also took David Oates' certification course on Reverse Speech. Through my own experimentation, I have learned that reverse speech is indeed valid but that one needs training to become a Reverse Speech Analyst as the actual reversals are very hard to pick up among the gibberish when you play a tape recording in reverse. Mr. Oates' course teaches professionals how to locate and identify reversals and how to utilize a screening process he has developed to make sure the reversals heard are valid. There are only a handful of people who are actually trained and certified as Reverse Speech Analysts. Except for myself, no-one in the investigative sector is yet certified. Certainly one of the greatest opportunities in investigation exists with Reverse Speech.

I had become so excited about this new technology that I travelled to Dallas, Texas to spend some time with Mr. Oates. During our talks, Mr. Oates handed me some of his tape recordings and printed material. His research is well documented and contains a wealth of third party verifications attesting to it's validity from doctors, lawyers, professors and other professional and academic people.

I want to cite one more example of Mr. Oate's research that graphically illustrates the principle of speech complementarity where the reverse dialog reveals extra concerns that the speaker has concerning what the speaker has said forward. This example also proves how beneficial this technique can be for any type of investigation. It is an interview with John Lennon recorded immediately after the death of the Beatles manager, Brian Epstein. The reporter asks what advice the maharashi had given him.

(REPORTER) I understand that this afternoon the maharashi conferred with you all. Could I ask you what advice he offered you?
(LENNON) He told us that, ah, not to get overwhelmed by grief and ah whatever thoughts we have of Brian to keep them happy because any thoughts we have of him, have of him, will travel to him wherever he is.
David Oates located a speech reversal in this soundtrack that says:
Can't be Beatles now.

This example is significant for several reasons. First, many Rock And Roll historians claim that Epstein's death lead to the eventual disbandment of the Beatles. Lennon's reversal certainly reveals unconscious concerns. Secondly, this example uses an actual name in reverse, the Beatles which is a common occurrence in reverse speech. Thirdly, the reverse speech speaks in a distinct British accent.

After a very careful study of Reverse Speech, I have come to the conclusion that it is one of the major discoveries of all times as an investigative science and that Reverse Speech will revolutionize many aspects of the private investigative business. Since the lecture given by Mr. Oates in early 1991, I have taken the certification course in Reverse Speech and have been appointed to the board of directors of the Reverse Speech Institute and have been appointed to head up the investigative division of Reverse Speech. I also wrote a book on the subject for the investigative profession called Reverse Speech: A New Investigative Frontier.

Naturally, I started a collection of audio recordings on people and witnesses involved in the Kennedy Assassination and started conducting testing and Reverse Speech analysis of these recordings. I am very excited about this new investigative process as it relates to the Kennedy Assassination. When doing the tape analysis, I couldn't help but think that this new application would bring about new evidence. I was right. The results are amazing and they are reported in the next chapter as well as on the audio cassette tape.

Are You Ready?? Reverse Speech and the Kennedy Assassination. "New Evidence With A New Technology"

After becoming certified in the use of Reverse Speech as an investigative technique, I began to explore the assassination with my knew found knowledge. Naturally, I needed tape recordings made by the key players in the assassination. My first attention turned to Lee Oswald.

OSWALD: Very little comments made by Oswald have been captured on tape. Although he was interviewed by the Dallas Police Department after his arrest, the official story is that no tape recording was made during the twelve hours of interrogation by Dallas Homicide Detective Will Fritz. The reason given by Captain Fritz for not tape recording the interview is that he did not have access to a tape recorder and that he had requested the purchase of a tape recorder for quite some time. I find this hard to swallow. One of the largest and one of the best police departments in the country in the early 1960s certainly had to have a tape recorder and I am certain that it's use would have been considered with an interrogation with the suspect of the crime of the century. It is a well documented fact that Captain Will Fritz was ordered to stop his investigation by the federal government by President Johnson. Sources reveal that Johnson called Captain Fritz and stated that he had his man and in the interest of national security, "stop your investigation." Based on my research which would be too lengthy to go into, I believe that Will Fritz likely had made tape recordings but they have either been suppressed or destroyed. I know for a fact through confidential sources that he took notes. I think that it is also important to point out that Will Fritz was known among police circles as one of the best police detectives in the country and whatever took place, Captain Fritz was following orders from his government.

There are some comments made by Oswald after his arrest and before his murder that have been captured on tape. He was permitted a very brief news conference and was recorded by newsmen as he made his way to and from the police interrogation room and his jail cell before he himself was shot down.

The following is the transcript with speech reversals of the news conference.

(OSWALD) Ah I really don't know what this situation is about nobody has told me anything.
( No Reversal found, poor quality track. Too many news reporters talking in the background)
I've been accused of ah, of ah murdering a policeman.
[I know nothing more than that.]
(REVERSAL) I'm the lonely camelot. (VALIDITY 5)
I do request that someone [to come forward]
(R) I mustn't , I mustn't. (VALIDITY 6)
To give me [ah legal assistance.]
(R) We need more help. (VALIDITY 5)
(NEWS REPORTER) Did you kill the President?
(OSWALD) [No I have not been charged with that in fact nobody] has said that to me yet.
(R) got one problem that's nasty unknown. (VALIDITY 4)
The first thing I heard about it was when the newspaper reporters in the hall ah [asked me that] question.
(R) I didn't scratch (VALIDITY 4)

That was the end of the news conference. It is apparent from the video of this news conference that the Dallas police cut it off. Oswald appeared frustrated at this point. It's my feeling based on additional research that the news conference was cut off by the Dallas police because they had not intended for a question and answer session to take place at all. The news conference was held in the police line-up room. Oswald was first displayed to the news media on the other side of the glass but reporters were complaining. The Dallas officers then escorted Oswald out onto the main floor of the line-up room and the reporters were able to ask the few questions. One reporter asked him as he was escorted away something about the cut above his eye and Oswald responded that a policeman hit him but the soundtrack was of very poor quality at that point with too many reporters talking in the background.

I was able to locate a few recordings from old news reels as Oswald was moved through the hallways of the police station. Here is one of those comments along with the reversals.

(News Reporter) Did you fire that rifle?
(OSWALD) I don't know the facts that you people have been given but I [emphatically deny these] charges.
(R) See now I'm the give-up. (VALIDITY 4)

Still another comment was recorded in the hallway when reporters asked Oswald's involvement.
(Oswald) These people have given me a hearing without legal representation or anything.
(R) That killer was gifted (VALIDITY 3)
(Reporter) Did you shoot the President?
(Oswald) I didn't shoot anybody.
(R) Are they all going to dish it out? (VALIDITY 4)

I have located eight speech reversals that Oswald made after his arrest and before he was shot down. In summary they are:
(R) I'm the lonely camelot.
(R) I mustn't , I mustn't.
(R) We need more help.
(R) Got one problem that nasty unknown.
(R ) I didn't scratch
(R) Help! See now I'm the give-up.
(R) That killer was gifted.
(R) Are they all going to dish it out?

Perhaps the most significant reversal is where Oswald says in reverse when a reporter asked him if he shot the President, "I didn't scratch." (NOTE: There is a faint word on the end of this reversal that could be "him" which would make the reversal, "I didn't scratch him." However, the final word was not audible enough for analysis.) Since speech reversal is the voice of the unconscious mind, they cannot be consciously controlled and they do not lie. What we have here is conclusive evidence using speech reversal as a kind of lie detector that Oswald did not kill the President.

The reversal that Oswald uses where he says forward, I request someone to come forward to provide legal assistance that says, "We need more help," is also significant in that he is using the word we. This certainly indicates that Oswald was referring to some other party or parties other than himself. It certainly is evidence that points to more than one gunman.

The reversal that Oswald uses when he said forward, "These people have given me a hearing without legal representation or anything," (R: That killer was gifted), certainly indicated that Oswald's subconscious mind thought whoever the killer was did a very good job and it certainly implies that it was not Oswald.

The speech reversal where Oswald says, I mustn't, I mustn't, might have something to do with his subconscious wanting to tell something. Perhaps Oswald knew more than he would tell. The reversal that says, You've got one problem, that nasty unknown, is in direct relationship to Oswald not being the assassin.

The reversal that says, Help! I'm the give-up, certainly goes alone with Oswald telling the Dallas Police that he didn't kill the President and that he was just a patsy.

The reversal that says, I'm the lonely Camelot, is harder to reach an opinion on. The word Camelot comes up again and again in reverse speech as an Archetype which has meaning that has to do with very deep unconscious thought patterns and is believed to be one of the archetype words in the reverse speech vocabulary that is passed down from one generation to the other. It is important however to remember that Camelot is the name of a song that Kennedy listened to over and over again and that news reporters have since coined the Kennedy Presidency as Camelot. This makes it impossible to determine what type of reversal we have here.

CONCLUSION OF OSWALD TAPES: Based on the Reverse Speech tests I conclude then that Oswald may have had some knowledge of the assassination but he didn't fire any shots.

CORROBORATION OF THE REVERSE SPEECH CONCLUSION ON OSWALD
1) PSE TESTING: PSE testing conducted by George O'Tool, Mike Kradz and Doctor Gordon Barland published in O'Toole's book, The Assassination Tapes, drew to the same conclusion I did. Their conclusion stated that Oswald likely did not fire the rifle but likely had some knowledge of the assassination. Although I had been researching for O'Toole's study several months, I was not able to locate it and review it until nine months after I completed the Reverse Speech analysis and I had no idea of what their conclusions were. As a former PSE examiner, I reviewed the tests conducted by O'Toole, Kradz and Doctor Gordon and reached the same conclusions that they did. I believe that it is important to point out that test results indicating deception are subject to examiner opinion and it is much more difficult and complicated to make a conclusion of deception being present than it is to conclude no deception is present. Stress levels that would indicate deception can sometimes be tricky as the stress can sometimes be caused by external irrelevant factors. However, the exact opposite is the case when no stress is present and the subject is not engaged in deception. It is cut and dry. Oswald was telling the truth when he said he didn't shoot anybody.

2) WITNESS ACCOUNTS: You will recall that only one witness gave testimony that would tend to show that Oswald was the person pulling the trigger in the sixth floor window. This lone witness, Howard Brennan, could not identify Oswald in a police line up, kept changing his mind concerning a positive identification and failed PSE testing conducted by O'Toole and verified by myself. Aside from Brennan's own inconsistency, his account is inconsistent with at least four other witnesses. Arnold Rowland, Carolyn Walther, Ruby Henderson and John Powell all describe two men in the sixth floor window neither of which match the description of Oswald in any way.

3) PARAFFIN TEST: You will recall that the paraffin test revealed that Oswald could not have fired a rifle. If Oswald didn't fire a rifle on November 22nd, 1963, he didn't shoot Kennedy. A positive result was found on his hands but a negative result was found on his face. If Oswald would have fired a rifle, he would have tested positive on both hands and his face. The Dallas Police and the District Attorney would only state that Oswald fired a gun (not a rifle) stating that the test results revealed positive results on both hands. But if Oswald had discharged a small firearm, this action is usually executed with one hand which would have resulted in a positive on one hand and a negative on the other hand. The positive test from both hands likely came from external chemicals in the form of lead based paint he had come into close contact with on November 22nd, 1963. It's been established that the floors of the School Book Depository Building were being painted on the day of the assassination and the close contact with the chemicals of such a paint would have likely caused a positive result. The paraffin test then tends to show that Oswald didn't fire either a rifle or a side arm on the day of the assassination and tends to corroborate my Reverse Speech analysis tests.

OTHER REVERSE SPEECH TESTS
Several additional news conferences and on the spot interviews were recorded with other officials involved in the investigation of the assassination. Henry Wade was the district attorney in charge of the Oswald case. Jessie Curry was the Dallas Police Chief at the time of the assassination. Most of these can be located on various videos in the form of short news clips. Here are transcriptions of the ones I have located and analyzed:
DISTRICT ATTORNEY WADE:
(REPORTER) Has he told anybody he killed the President?
(WADE) He hasn't admitted killing the President to anyone. I don't know what he said,..he says he didn't do it.
[We're still working on the evidence. This has] been a joint effort by the Secret Service, The Federal Bureau Of Investigation, The Dallas Police Department, The Sheriffs Office, my office, and Detective Will Fritz has been in charge of it.
(R) This is the way .... you won't believe this. (VALIDITY 4)

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: I believe that it is important to point out that my research shows that Henry Wade had been asked by the federal government to cut off any comments concerning conspiracy theories. My research reveals that Wade had been contacted by high ranking federal government officials (most likely Lyndon Johnson or J. Edgar Hoover) and briefed about this. The reversal, "this is the way...you won't believe this," strongly implies that Wade was attempting to follow the guidelines and instructions he had been given by the federal government. "This is the way," certainly implies that he wanted the news reporters to believe that Oswald was the assassin. "You won't believe this," implies that there is more to the story. During the later part of my research, I developed the fact that the first official document indicting Oswald for the murder of Kennedy quoted Oswald as being part of an international conspiracy. The White House contacted Wade and had the references of a conspiracy removed from the indictment

(REPORTER) How would you describe his mood during the questioning?
(WADE) [Very arrogant.]
(R) Very ignorant. (Validly 6)
[Has been all along.]
(R) More Water Sir? (Validity 5)

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: It is hard to tell what Wade was referring to in his reversal, "Very Ignorant." Was he saying that he felt Oswald was an ignorant person or was he saying Oswald was ignorant when it came to the assassination? My research reveals that Oswald was not an ignorant person and, in fact, he was a well read individual. Based on this research, my opinion is that Wade was referring to Oswald being ignorant of the assassination. It is also my opinion that the reversal, "more water sir," is unconscious thoughts coming out of someone asking Oswald if he wanted more water during the interrogation.

(REPORTER) How do you sum him up. Ah as a man based on your experience with criminal types?
(WADE) I think he's a man that ah [planned this] murder [weeks or months ago and]
(R) No boy just had the skill (VALIDITY 4 )
(R) some help. (VALIDITY 4)

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: This reversal certainly indicates Wade's thoughts that one person could not have had the skill to pull off the assassination of the President Of The United States and his thoughts that Oswald had some help.

as and laid his plans carefully and carried them and out [as planned at that time what he was going to tell] the police that are questioning him at present.
(R) Influence make Leo mad that's going to help you. (VALIDITY 3)
I would say that without any doubt he's the killer, the law says [beyond a reasonable doubt] until a moral certainty which I'm, there's no questions that he was the killer of President Kennedy.
(R) There's a problem here. (VALIDITY 4)

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: The reversal, "there's a problem here," certainly implies that Wade thought that the evidence that was collected up until this time had at least one major problem proving Oswald's guilt.

(REPORTER) Will you ask death in the electric chair for Lee Oswald?
(WADE) [Yes Sir]
(R) I think so. (VALIDITY 2)
[we'll ask the death penalty.]
(R) I'd pay to sell him. (VALIDITY 5)
(REPORTER) How many cases of this type have you been involved in where the death penalty has been involved.
(WADE) Since I've been district attorney, we asked, I've asked the death penalty in 24 cases.
(REPORTER) How many times have you obtained it?
(WADE) 23

ANOTHER SHORT NEWS CONFERENCE WITH WADE'S REMARKS:
(WADE) Yes I haven't gone into that. The paraffin tests show that he had ah, recently fired a gun, it was on both hands.
(REPORTER) Both?
(WADE) Both hands.
(Cannot hear question)
(WADE) [A gun]
(R) A rifle. (VALIDITY 5)

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: A paraffin test measures chemical elements on a subject's hands and face that would be strong evidence concerning the firing of a weapon. Paint is one thing that will produce a positive result with a paraffin test and fresh paint was being used on plywood floors at the Texas School Book Depository Building the day of the assassination. Oswald's test results were positive for both his hands and negative on his face. A negative result on the face would indicate that a rifle was not fired by the suspect. If Oswald didn't fire a rifle, he could not have assassinated the President. Wade commented that the results revealed Oswald fired a gun in forward speech. He said, "a rifle" in reverse. There is a big difference.

DALLAS POLICE CHIEF CURRY
(REPORTER) What was his comments?
(CHIEF CURRY) He doesn't give any motive except he denies them both.
(REPORTER) We understand that no one actually saw this man pull the trigger of the rifle that apparently killed the President. Is that correct?
(CHIEF CURRY) That is correct up till this time in our investigation.
(REPORTER) What about the ballistics tests chief?
(CHIEF CURRY) On the [ballistics test] we haven't had a final [report but] it is, I understand will be favorable.
(R) The throat (VALIDITY 4)
(R) take me to him. (VALIDITY 5)

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: Curry's reversal about the throat is interesting. I assume that Curry is referring to Kennedy's throat wound and the reversal indicates he would like to see it. Kennedy's body had already been removed from Dallas to Washington D.C. which was actually an unlawful act of itself according to Texas law. The Parkland Hospital doctors who had treated Kennedy had stated in a news conference that the throat wound was an entrance wound. If the throat wound was an entrance wound, then the shot was fired from the front. If it was fired from the front, Oswald could not have fired it as his position at the time of the shooting was behind the President.

(REPORTER) Do you think the smudged fingerprints found on the rifle which killed the President will be able to establish the identity of the killer.
(CURRY) We hope so but I couldn't say positive at this time that they will be.
(REPORTER) Will it be enough to convict him?
(CURRY) I don't know if it will be enough to convict him or not. If we can put his prints on the rifle ah it would certainly connect him with the rifle. We want to say this that this investigation has been carried on jointly by the FBI the Secret Service, the rangers and the Dallas Police Department Captain Fritz has been in charge.

ANOTHER NEWS CONFERENCE WITH CURRY
(REPORTER) Was their any surveillance ah, was the police aware of his presence in Dallas?
(CHIEF CURRY) We and the police department here did not know he was in Dallas. [I understand the] FBI did know he was in Dallas.
(R) Pay ransom off. (VALIDITY 4)

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: This is the first time the word ransom comes up from members of the Dallas Police. This word comes up again which is documented towards the end of this study. The specific meaning of this is not clear but it is apparent that the police chiefs thought patterns were centered on the payment of a ransom.

(REPORTER) The FBI informed the police?
(CHIEF CURRY) [Yes]
(R) Save me! (VALIDITY 6)
We did not have knowledge.

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: The reversal, "Save me," certainly implies that Curry was concerned about his comment. The FBI did, in fact, know of Oswald, knew that he was in Dallas and had interviewed him several times in the months before the assassination. It is also apparent that the FBI had an ongoing investigative file on Oswald in the Dallas field office.

(REPORTER) You were uninformed.
(CHIEF CURRY) We had not been informed of this man.
(REPORTER) Chief do you have any concern for the safety of your prisoner in view of the high feeling among the people of Dallas over the assassination of the President?
(CHIEF CURRY) No because his, [ah necessary] [causes will be] taken of course.
(R) His sentence.
(R) That's because he's hostage.(VALIDITY 4)

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: The two reversals, "His sentence," and "That's because he's hostage," are interesting. It is my opinion that Curry was referring to Oswald's court sentence which would be death in the electric chair for the assassination. If he was referring to his sentence which was carried out by Jack Ruby, the same result of Oswald's death and silence becomes the issue. The reversal concerning Oswald being a hostage is also interesting. Hostage is defined in the Funk & Wagnalls International Dictionary as: A person held as a pledge for the performance of some stipulation.

(REPORTER) Chief we understand you have the results of the paraffin tests which were made to determine whether or not Oswald fired a weapon.
(CURRY) I understand it was, I understand it was positive.
(REPORTER) But what does that mean?
(CURRY) It only means that he fired a gun.

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: Although I didn't find any reversals in Curry's response, his forward speech implies that Oswald didn't fire a rifle only a gun. Again, if Oswald didn't fire a rifle, he didn't kill the President. I also believe that it is significant to point out that neither Curry or Wade ever directly pointed out that the test was negative on the face which indicates Oswald did not fire a rifle. They just left that part of the test out.

COMMENTS MADE AFTER RUBY SHOT OSWALD
DALLAS POLICE CHIEF CURRY
(CURRY)[The suspect's name is Jack]
(R) That's the man that does it. (VALIDITY 4)
Rubinstein I believe. [He goes by the name of Jack] Ruby
(R) That's the man and a druggy. (VALIDITY 4)

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: My research indicates that Ruby was an underworld figure and a major contact for drug traffic. "That's the man that does it," implies that Ruby kills people and "That's the man and a druggy," indicates that the police chief knew Ruby was involved in drugs.

Dozens of witnesses who were employed by or knew Jack Ruby and dozens of Dallas police officers have stated that a large number of police officers in Dallas knew Jack Ruby but both the police department and the federal government attempted to cover this point up.

DISTRICT ATTORNEY WADE
(REPORTER) Did you know Ruby before this?
(WADE) [No Sir. Saw him in this very same] room Friday night
(R) Yes Sir. Send me Dallas night clubs. (VALIDITY 4)
when we had the defendant up here.
If some of you [will recall he asked a question] from out here
(R) Help me! Said he knew Oswald. (VALIDITY 2)
Na it was an answer to a question, he was standing right back here and I didn't know who he was. I thought he was a member of the press and he told me as I walked out of here that he was a night club operator.

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: The first speech reversal indicates that Wade did know Ruby. My research of Ruby's employees at his nightclub indicates that Wade had been a guest at Ruby's club in the past and that Ruby did know him. The second reversal above, "Help me! Said he knew Oswald," indicates that Ruby had a relationship with Oswald. My research and documentation of several witnesses clearly support the fact that Oswald and Ruby did know each other before the assassination. Wade already knew this fact and it appears that he withheld it.

(REPORTER) What question did he ask you?
(WADE) What?
(R) No
(REPORTER) What question did he ask?
I don't remember but he [he, ah maybe it was an answer but] I.
(R) That's him forget about it. (VALIDITY 3)

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS: In my opinion, this reversal indicates that Wade wanted to get off this question.

DETECTIVE JAMES R. LEAVELLE INTERVIEW
Detective James R. Leavelle was the police officer who was handcuffed to Oswald when Oswald was shot by Ruby.

(REPORTER) Can you tell us what happened, ah where handcuffed to him?
(LEAVELLE) I was handcuffed to him and also had ahold of waistband of his trousers. I saw this man come from the crowd and at the time he emerged from this crowd of these people he was not more than six [or seven feet from us] from me.
(R ) Mafia restaurant. (VALIDITY 5)
(REPORTER) Did you see the gun in his hand as he came?
(LEAVELLE) I saw the gun in his hand as he emerged from the crowd but [being such a short distance from me]
(R) He's a mobster this bullshit let's hit him. (VALIDITY 4)
ah I had time to say anything.
(REPORTER) Ah when Oswald fell to the ground was he unconscious at that point?
(LEAVELLE) [I would say if he was not he was near ah nearly so.]
(R) What's he doing ah, Ransom, ransom he paid us off. (VALIDITY 5)
Ah just as soon the ah my partner on the other side Mr. Graves grabbed ah Jack's hand with the gun in such a manner that he wouldn't fire it anymore.
(REPORTER) Did you recognize him when he came through?
(LEAVELLE) Yes I have known Jack Ruby for a number of years and I recognized him just as soon as he emerged from the crowd.

AUTHOR'S COMMENTS:
The three reversals I found are:
(R) Mafia restaurant.
(R) He's a mobster this bullshit let's hit him.
(R) What's he doing ah, Ransom, ransom he paid us off.
The first two reversals clearly indicate that Ruby was a member of organized crime and my research into Ruby's background certainly points in this direction. For the second time in my findings, I find the word ransom again by a member of the Dallas Police. When considering the forward dialog, it implies that Leavelle is referring to the fact that Ruby paid someone off.

RUBY AND THE DALLAS POLICE DEPARTMENT
The following is a televised statement issued by Police Chief Curry concerning the number of Dallas Police officers Jack Ruby had known. Within minutes after Ruby shot Oswald, rumours circulated that Ruby was well known to the Dallas Police. Dozens of employees such as Nancy Hamilton and a piano player by the name of Johnson have stated that Ruby not only knew at least half of the 1200 members Dallas police department, he gave them free drinks and free food at his clubs.

POLICE CHIEF CURRY STATEMENT:
We have 1200 men in our department and we ah, had each man to submit a report regarding his knowledge or acquainted with Jack Ruby. Less than 50 men even knew Jack Ruby. And less than a dozen had ever been in his place of business. Most of these that had been in his place of business had been in there because they were sent on investigations or answered a call for ah police service. Ah I believe there was four men in our department that we were able to determine had been there socially. That is off duty, in the presence, ah ah [and were present in his night] club.

(R) Johnson is there for me.

It is my opinion that the reversal, Johnson is there for me, is referring to President Johnson who had talked with Police Chief Curry by telephone after Ruby shot Oswald. This implies that this is a story that was developed to squash the flying rumors that over half the members of the Dallas Police Department knew Jack Ruby. My research reveals that Ruby did in fact know a large number of Dallas police officers, permitted them to come into his night clubs to drink and eat free of charge.

PRESIDENT JOHNSON'S FIRST PUBLIC STATEMENT AFTER KENNEDY ASSASSINATION
After the assassination November 22nd 1963, Lyndon Johnson took the oath of office aboard Air Force One in Dallas and then flew directly to Andrews Air Force Base outside of Washington D.C. Upon his arrival and departure from Air Force One, he gave his first public statement as President. The following is a transcript of his dialog along with reversal analysis:
This is a [sad time for all people.]
(R) People are mad.
[We have suffered a loss] [that cannot be weighed.]
(R)Sorry depress by you.
(R)Yeah we saw an extra.
For me it is a deep [personal tragedy.] [I know that the world shares] [the sorrow] [that Mrs. Kennedy] and [her family bare.]
(R)Get yourself gone sir.
(R)Fresh dope, we have to go now.
(R)Her loss
(R)He done it, she didn't do.
(R)That's a mouth full
[ I will do my best.] That is all [I can do.] I ask [for your help] and God's.
(R)That damn hood. Poor Ralph.
(R)You'd make out.
(R)I Hurry up.

THE REVERSALS LOCATED ARE:
People are mad.
Sorry depress by you.
Yeah we saw an extra.
Get yourself gone sir.
Fresh dope, we have to go now.
Her loss
He done it, she didn't do.
That's a mouth full
That damn hood. Poor Ralph.
You'd make out.
I Hurry up.
The first reversal, People are mad, is most likely Johnson's subconscious thoughts about the events that had taken place concerning the assassination of Kennedy. The second reversal, Sorry depress by you, is an interesting reversal but it's exact meaning remains a mystery to me. Did Johnson mean that he was depressed by Kennedy or was he referring to being depressed by the assassination?

Yeah we saw an extra, is a reversal that could mean that the authorities knew that there were more trigger men. It is important to point out that this news conference occurred Friday night after landing in Washington. Oswald was already under arrest.

I believe that the reversal, get yourself gone sir, is internal dialog. Johnson is telling himself to get going and get the news conference over. It goes along with the last reversal, I hurry up. The reversal, fresh dope, we have to go now, also implies that Johnson is in a hurry. I believe that the words, fresh dope, is referring to information. Certainly as the new president, Johnson had a great deal on his mind. Does fresh dope refer to new information on the assassination?

The reversal, he done it she didn't do, is another interesting reversal. Johnson is talking about Mrs. Kennedy in the forward dialog. Does he mean she didn't do it in reverse? I believe that is the case. Although the presidential family was often shown as a happy family, there is evidence that the Kennedys only stayed married for political and image reasons. Who is he? That is not exactly clear.

The reversal, That damn Hood, Poor Ralph, is the most significant reversal found. That dam hood implies a member of organized crime. The top crime boss of Dallas was Ralph. Did Johnson know that organized crime was involved in the assassination? What ever is the answer to that question, I conclude from Johnson's reversals that, although he might have known more about the assassination than he lead the public to believe, he had nothing to do with it. I do believe that it is relevant to repeat something that was covered earlier about Johnson. That is, after his retirement from the White House and before his death, he indicated that he did not believe that Oswald acted alone.

JACK RUBY'S LAST PRESS CONFERENCE
The following dialog is the last press conference of Jack Ruby. The press conference was very short and recorded on the spot by a local television station. The quality was not good. This interview took place directly following Ruby's sentence. I have placed in brackets in the forward dialog where the reversals I found occur.

[Everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface.]
(R) You dust him forever. Christ wasn't finished. You killed him.
[The world will never know the true facts] of what occurred, my motives, ah in other words, [I'm the only person] in the background [that knows the truth] pertaining to everything relating to my sentence.
(R) Wish I wouldn't have.
(R) Certainly not.
(R) I pushed on my roll.
REPORTER: Do you think it will ever come out?
[No because, unfortunately,] thank God, they they [have so much to gain and have such an ulterior motive to put me in the position I'm in, we'll never know the true facts.]
(R) He is the first, let's get one.
(R) I'm pushed to the limit. They asked me to name'am.
REPORTER: Are they people in high places.
[Yes]
(R) Hate them

The forward dialog certainly shows that the true facts concerning the assassination of Kennedy and the killing of Oswald is not now known and will never come to the surface. It is interesting to note that Ruby uses the word "everything" in his forward statement. He didn't use the words some facts but implies that the whole story given to the American people is not true. Ruby is saying forward that he never revealed his true motive for his murder of Oswald. He also indicates that he was forced to kill Oswald. Ruby also indicates forward that those who were involved would never permit the truth to come out.

I located seven reversals from the Ruby press conference. They are:
You dust him forever. Christ wasn't finished. You killed him.
Wish I wouldn't have.
Certainly not.
I pushed on my roll.
He is the first. Let's get one.
I'm pushed to the limit. They asked me to name'am.
Hate them

The first reversal is a three sentence reversal "You dust him forever. Christ wasn't finished. You killed him." The forward dialog where this occurs is, "Everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface." This is an expansive external reversal in which Ruby says that he murdered Oswald. The word "dust" is a kind of slang in the underworld. The second sentence, "Christ wasn't finished," certainly implies a mission that Ruby carried out and goes along with what he says forward when he later implies that he was forced into the mission to kill Oswald. This whole thing certainly implies that Ruby killed Oswald in order to silence him. My research and investigation set out in this investigation shows that the Dallas police and Captain Will Fritz thought they had Oswald at a point where he was about ready to break before he was taken down into the basement to be transferred to the county jail. It was at this time that Oswald was murdered by Ruby.

It is my opinion that Ruby's reversal, "Wish I wouldn't have," shows remorse for his killing of Oswald. This is another expansive external reversal were Ruby says forward, "The world will never know the true facts." He is referring to his murder of Oswald which I conclude was a mission given him by unknown parties. This reversal is congruent with his forward statement that implies that he was forced into the mission which he never wanted to perform. His reversal, "I'm pushed to the limit. They asked me to name'am," certainly goes along with this. In this reversal, I assume that Ruby is referring to law enforcement and government officials who interrogated him. They asked Ruby to name the other conspirators and Ruby implies in his reversal that he didn't name any names. From these reversals, my conclusion is that people within the government knew the assassination was a conspiracy but didn't know who the conspirators were.

The next reversal, "certainly not," is a contradictory external reversal which contradicts Ruby's forward statement that he's the only one who knows the true facts. Ruby knew, therefore, that there were other people who knew the real story.

Ruby's reversal, "I pushed on my roll," is a first level reversal that picks up slang again from the underworld. "Push my roll," is slang that has to do with paying someone off. Roll refers to a roll of money. My research shows that Ruby always had a large roll of cash in his pocket Push refers to pushing someone by giving them cash in return for a favor. It's a payoff. This reversal is corroborated with the ransom reversals found in the reversal analysis of police officials previously published.

Jack Ruby's reversal, "He is the first. Let's get one." is another first level reversal which is very expansive as to his thoughts. It's my opinion that the first sentence, "He is the first," is referring to Oswald. Ruby is saying Oswald was the first person known to be involved in the assassination. His second sentence, "Let's get one." implies that other persons were involved in the assassination and that Ruby would like to see at least one of them caught. Since he says let's get one, there had to be at least two more persons involved.

Ruby's final reversal in which he says, "Hate them," is another expansive reversal. The reporter asked Ruby if the people involved were in high places. Ruby replies forward that they are. In reverse he says that he hates them. It's relevant to note that Ruby was found guilty and given the death penalty. His attorneys had appealed the sentence. It is not clear who the reporter or Ruby were referring to when the reporter asked the question about high officials.

Ruby later got sick and was transferred to a hospital. He has stated while in jail that a medical person was giving him injections he thought would kill him. Ruby died of cancer while in the hospital.

THE JANET CONFORTO INTERVIEW
Janet Conforto was the feature act at Jack Ruby's club and went by the stage name of JADA at the time of the Kennedy assassination. Conforto had only worked at Ruby's club for a few months. Prior to her employment at Ruby's club, she worked in New Orleans as a stripper at a place called the Sho-Bar. The Sho-Bar was owned by New Orleans crime boss, Carlos Marcello. Using the stage name "Jada", Conforto was considered the hottest act in town. A few months before the assassination, Ruby had travelled to New Orleans to watch Conforto's strip act in the Sho-Bar and apparently developed a contract with her to become the feature attraction at his night club in Dallas. In the months following the Kennedy Assassination and the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby, Conforto mysteriously disappeared. Although several independent investigators attempted to locate her, she could not be found. Finally, she became the victim of a homicide statistic in a motorcycle accident in the state of Louisiana. The day after Ruby murdered Oswald, Conforto was interviewed by newsmen. On Monday, November 24th, 1963 she appeared on WFAA television in Dallas. I obtained video coverage of this interview and performed reverse speech analysis on the interview.

Here is the dialog:
REPORTER: How long did you know Jack Ruby?
CONFORTO: [I knew Jack Ruby] for approximately [four, five], six months.
(R) You can't do that.
(R) You asshole.
REPORTER: In what relationship?
CONFORTO: I was employed as the ah feature at the Carousel Club [and I had known Jack before] I went to work there and ah I had a [slight hassle with Jack] and I had left and ah that was the end of my association with Jack.
(R) I wonder about that.
(R) You'll find out.
REPORTER: What kind of a man was he?
CONFORTO: Jack Ruby was [ah a fanatic, he was very ah nervous] man, a very [violent man] he would ah cause hassles and harassments and ah always running around very energetic aahm.
(R) You better not, he knew what drove me. You better shut up.
(R) And Knew Oswald
REPORTER: Would you say he had a violent streak in him?
CONFORTO: Oh yea, very much so. [Yes he would get carried] away by something and lose all lines of rational thinking. He would just go off zoom [and just ah]...he has to ah prove something. He had to be somebody.
(R) They greased him.
(R) That ass done it.
REPORTER: I've heard some stories about him being a generous type. They tell a story that when a customer at one of his clubs would call for a taxi, Jack would put fifty cents aside in the event the customer left and then the cab driver would come up and have to go away empty handed he'd give him the fifty cents. Does this square with his character as you knew it?
CONFORTO: Oh yes, Jack ah was almost a dual nature. He would be ah very nice and very helpful to me. He ah would change completely then in the next few minutes he'd be your worst enemy an he'd be against you and he'd want everybody to support him against you and very irrational and very ah emotional.
(No reversals found)
REPORTER: Did he ever carry a gun?
CONFORTO: I don't know. I don't know him that well but I had seen him with a gun and ah [I presume he carried] it every night. It seemed to be a habit of his.
(R) You going to get shot.
REPORTER: What about politics. Did he seem interested in politics particularly regarding the Kennedys.
CONFORTO: [I've heard Jack talk about] the Kennedys and I've been trying to think and it's so [confusing] today. But I believe he [disliked Bobby] Kennedy.
(R) The horrible cost, I've heard that.
(R) He did it.
(R) If I tell you.
REPORTER: Got no recollection about what he said about the President?
CONFORTO: Ah [yea he followed that statement up about] Bobby with something about [Jack Kennedy but I can't] for the moment [form it in my mind.]
(R) Horrible thought, he did it, you lousy thing.
(R) Jack, yea he did it.
(R) Now you're minimal
REPORTER: Do you think that ah Jack Ruby was the type of man that was capable of killing the assassin of President Kennedy out of love for Kennedy, out of political motives.
CONFORTO: Ah [I don't think he loved Kennedy] that much. Ah [I don't know why] he would do it. I would say he would be perfectly capable of an act like that ah very much so.
(R) He did it, love, he didn't care for them.
(R) I don't know that.

SEVENTEEN REVERSALS FOUND IN ORDER OF OCCURRENCE:
You can't do that.
You asshole.
I wonder about that.
You'll find out.
You better not, he knew what drove me. You better shut up.
And Knew Oswald.
They greased him.
That ass done it.
You going to get shot.
The horrible cost, I've heard that.
He did it.
If I tell you.
Horrible thought, he did it, you lousy thing.
Jack, yea he did it.
Now you're minimal
He did it, love, he didn't care for them.
I don't know that.

Within the reversals, I believe that we have four that point to the fact that Conforto thought that Jack Ruby has something to do with the assassination. They are:
That ass done it.
He did it.
Horrible thought, he did it, you lousy thing.
He did it, love, he didn't care for them.

I do not believe that these reversals are referring to RUBY murdering OSWALD but refer to RUBY having something to do with the assassination of Kennedy. The last three reversals are specifically referring to the Kennedys and not to Oswald. Since there is and never was a question as to wheather or not RUBY shot OSWALD in anyone's mind, I do not believe that the fist two reversals are referring to Ruby shooting Oswald at all. They are all revealing that RUBY had something to do with the assassination. These reversals are corroborated by witnesses who place RUBY at the assassination site just before and right after the assassination and the witnesses and photographic evidence that place RUBY at Parkland Hospital were he most likely planted the magic bullet.

We have one reversal that points to the fact that Ruby had a relationship with Oswald prior to the assassination. That reversal is:
And Knew Oswald.

According to J. Gary Shaw of the JFK Assassination Information Center, Conforto stated privately that she had observed Oswald talking with Jack Ruby at the night club and that she was introduced to Oswald by Ruby as, "my friend from the CIA." This account is corroborated by Beverly Oliver (still alive) as Ruby had introduced Oswald as a CIA agent to both Conforto and Oliver. Conforto's private statement about Ruby introducing her to Lee Oswald as a CIA agent comes from Bud Shrake who was a local sportscaster in Dallas and was dating Conforto. Shrake is alive and well today and is an escort for Texas Governor Ann Richards. So the reversal, And knew Oswald, can be confirmed through not only private statements Conforto had made, but through the account of Beverly Oliver who also recalls the incident.

I believe that we have several reversals that point to the fact that Conforto knew more than she was telling. The reversals that point to this are:
You can't do that.
You'll find out.
You better not, he knew what drove me. You better shut up.
You going to get shot.

I believe that the first and second reversal are directly related to her reversal about Ruby knowing Oswald. The first reversal, you can't do that, is internal dialog in which Conforto is telling herself not to expose that fact about the Oswald and Ruby relationship before the assassination. The next reversal, You'll find out, indicates that she believes that the media is going to find out anyway. The next reversal, you better not, he knew what drove me. You better shut up, also reveals that Conforto knew something she better not tell and that something was the fact that Oswald had been in Ruby's club and that Conforto knew that Ruby and Oswald had been communicating.

The reversal, you going to get shot, is internal dialog which gives the reason why Conforto would not tell everything she knew. Since she later mysteriously disappeared and then died under suspicious circumstances, I believe that the reversal, You going to be shot, is highly relevant and corroborative with the known events that took place after the interview. Since we have a reversal that came out that exposes the fact that Conforto knew that RUBY and OSWALD were in communication before the assassination and that OSWALD was introduced to CONFORTO by RUBY as a CIA agent, I conclude that this is what CONFORTO knew but did not want to expose in her forward speech.

One reversal indicates that someone was paying Ruby off. That reversal is:
They greased him.

This is, again, underworld slang that tends to indicate a payoff. The word "greased" refers to being paid off. It's my opinion that this reversal goes along with the "ransom" and "payoff" reversals we located and would tend to indicate that RUBY was given funds to make a payoff and a percentage of it was his to keep.

The conclusions drawn from the Conlotto analysis is:
1) Ruby had a relationship with Oswald prior to the assassination.
2) Ruby had something to do with the assassination conspiracy.
3) Ruby was being paid off by someone.

The Last Great Cover-Up - Richard Milhous Nixon 1913-1994 by E. Burton Mercer

In the weeks following Bill Clinton's successful 1992 run for the White House, overzealous Republican Party supporters began circulating t-shirts, badges and stickers advertising a new candidate whom might be able to tackle Clinton at the next election. "He's tanned. He's rested. He's ready," the merchandise read. "Nixon in '96"

Alas, the right-wing fantasy of Richard Milhous Nixon returning triumphantly to his seat in the Oval Office, a seat he so disgracefully resigned from on August 9, 1974, was nothing more than that: a fantasy.

Yet Nixon, driven from office for his involvement in the infamous Watergate scandal, came closer to retribution for his crimes than many dared dream. From the moment the Presidential helicopter lifted off from the White House lawns in that August of '74, Richard Nixon began crafting a new image out of stone, an image to cleanse the public's memory of Nixon the liar, the conspirator, the "crook".

Unfortunately for history, the gamble paid off. Upon his death last April, the painstakingly remodeled "Tricky Dicky" Nixon was hailed around the world as a "visionary", an "eider statesman", a "peacemaker". Like so much of Nixon's life, the lies that he created for himself continued to foster unchecked in death.

Not twenty years before, Nixon had been revealed for what he really was: a manipulating, paranoid ogre with a penchant for obstructing justice, bribing witnesses, lying to the public, and concocting devious and damaging schemes to destroy his perceived political "enemies". Put simply, Richard Nixon was exposed as a criminal.

So how could this monumental embarrassment to the American political landscape so successfully indulge in the re-writing of the public record? I wish I knew. Suffice it to say, Nixon was not without powerful friends. Yet perhaps the real question should be: Did Nixon succeed? Possibly. But let us not forget, that for all his clever crafting of the public's perception of him over the course of the last twenty years, Richard Nixon's name will be forever enshrined in print and commentary with that annoying little reminder that yes, Nixon was the first United States President to resign from office for his involvement in the subversion of the American Constitution.

And that's it in a nutshell, folks. For every ally Nixon had cultivated, there will be ten soothsayers ready to keep his historical ghost-writing in check. Just recently, commentator Terry Lane announced within the pages of The Sunday Age that Nixon's greatest crime whilst in office was the secret bombings of Cambodia during the height of the Vietnam War. Watergate, according to Mr. Lane, would be relegated to the footnotes of history.

But the fact of the matter is, that annoying little "footnote" was significant enough to drive Nixon from office; not the bombings of Cambodia, nor any other alleged "war crimes" Nixon authorised during his tenure as Commander in Chief.

And what's more scandalous is that while the truth behind Nixon's secretive decision-making process during the Vietnam War has now been revealed and documented, the real mysteries and motivations behind the Watergate break-in of June 17, 1972, have not.

Nixon's determination to submerge his role in the Watergate scandal is the stuff of legend, with the ex-president going to extraordinary lengths to distance himself from the alleged excesses of his aides.

And the outpouring of forgiveness and grief that followed Nixon's death seemed to grant the disgraced president a golden seal of moral approval that most white collar criminals can only dream about.

Yet Nixon's retribution received a potentially fatal blow only days after his state funeral, when, in an act of exceptional timing, another skeleton from his political closet was dragged kicking and screaming into the harsh light of day. Under the banner "Nixon's Aide's Legacy Is A Diary Of Bombshells", the detailed and intimate diaries of former chief of staff Bob Haldeman were revealed for all the world to see. They speak of a Nixon in turmoil, a man raging against blacks and "the total Jewish domination of the media."

"[Nixon] pointed out that there has never in history been an adequate black nation," Haldeman wrote. "And they are the only race for which this is true."

The issue of Chappaquiddick is also broached; with Haldeman writing that Nixon is "going to push hard on the Ted Kennedy thing, mainly because it greatly reduces Teddy's influence in the Senate." Nixon's obsession with the events surrounding the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at the Chappaquiddick river extended to ordering his domestic affairs counselor, John D. Ehrlichman, to work on "what really happened." In regard to the Watergate crisis, Haldeman, who answered only to Nixon himself, wrote that "our objective internally should be maximum obstruction and containment, so as not to let the thing run away from us." Of course, the "thing" did run away from Nixon and his men, and the rest, as they say, is history.

It's just a pity Richard Nixon didn't see it that way.

Why not continue and read the double issue 7 & 8 of Probable Cause Australia?

Backcopies of all issues, including all photographs, are still available. Just contact the editor via the Feedback link on the Probable Cause Australia welcome page.

N.B. The opinions expressed above are not necessarily those of the editor but all comments will be passed on to the relevant authors.

  • Credits
  • Editor-in-Chief : Steve Gerlach
  • Art Editor : E. Burton Mercer
  • Managing Editor : Paul Jones
  • Contributing Editor : Stephen Webb
  • Photographic Analysis : Tony Skomina
  • Internet : Steve Gerlach
  • Contributors : Larry Ray Harris, Walt Brown, Edward Jay Epstein, Dallas JFK-AIC, Steve Gerlach, Paul Jones, Tony Skomina, E. B. Mercer, Ralph D. Thomas, Steve Webb.
  • Art Direction : Louie Louie Enterprises Australia

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