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Article: 382 of sgi.talk.ratical
From: dave@ratmandu.corp.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe)
Subject: Book Review: "On The Trial Of The Assassins"
Keywords: this book provided basic inspiration to Stone for "JFK"
Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1991 16:19:58 GMT
Lines: 148
When They Murder Our President. Factual Conspiracy--It Did Happen Here
by dave ratcliffe
___________________________________
ON THE TRIAL OF THE ASSASSINS; My Investigation and Prosecution
of the Murder of President Kennedy
by Jim Garrison
As singularly important an event as the assassination of
President Kennedy was in the context of post-WWII American
history, the paramount tragedy that remains with us more than 25
years later is that collectively, as a nation, we still have been
so misinformed about what actually occurred. Not only about the
bursts of gunfire which, in six seconds, ended the administration
of the 35th President of the United States, but integral events
both before and after the murder itself, that successfully hid the
real facts from the public during the initial days and weeks after
that awful Friday, when the different news and government agencies
were getting their story line "straightened out".
Consider these facts:
* Lee Oswald was given a nitrate test, which reveals deposits
of nitrate on a person's cheek when she or he has recently
fired a rifle, on the evening of the assassination. The
nitrate test results indicated that Oswald had not fired a
rifle on November 22, 1963. This fact was kept secret for
ten months, only to be revealed in the Warren Commission
Report.
* Oswald was questioned on Friday night while in the custody
of Captain Will Fritz, head of the Dallas Police Homocide
Division. Recording of such questioning is routine even in
minor felony cases. Yet, according to the Warren Commission
hearings, the alleged murderer of the President of the
United States was questioned for a total of 12 hours without
any taping or shorthand notes by a stenographer. Nor was an
attorney present.
* Although at least twelve individuals were taken into custody
by Dallas Police on November 22, there are no records of any
arrests made that day within the confines of the Dallas
Police Department.
* The Dallas parade route, published on the right five-sixths
of the front page of "The Dallas Morning News" for Friday,
November 22, 1963, showed the motorcade running down Main
Street straight through and beyond Dealey Plaza. As the
chief city administrator, the Mayor of Dallas--who in 1963
was a Mr. Earle Cabell--would have to know and officially
approve any such eleventh hour change. Earle Cabell had a
brother named General Charles Cabell who had been the deputy
director of the CIA--the number two man--under Allen Dulles
for nine years, until he was fired by President Kennedy
after the Bay of Pigs fiasco of which General Cabell had
been the Agency's man in charge. General Cabell's subsequent
hatred of John Kennedy became an open secret in Washington.
However he was never even called as a witness before the
Warren Commission.
* Julia Ann Mercer, while stopped in traffic on Elm Street
about an hour before the assassination, saw a young man get
out of a pickup truck on her right, carrying a not very well
concealed rifle, and then walk up the grassy hill which forms
part of the overpass. At the local FBI office, on Saturday,
November 23, she identified the driver of the pickup truck
whos face she got a good look at, from a number of mug shots,
as that of Jack Ruby.
* For more than five years, the Zapruder film of the
assassination was concealed from the public and locked in a
vault by Life magazine. This moving picture showed Kennedy
being slammed violently backwards--clear evidence of his
being struck by a rifle shot from the front.
The above are just a few of the striking assemblage of facts
laid out in this new book by Jim Garrison, ex-District Attorney
and now a Judge of the Court of Appeal in New Orleans. Not only
is it an immensely engrossing story written by an eloquent man, it
is also essential reading for all of us both who remember living
through that seminal time, as well as a whole new generation of
people who were not alive then, and for who the assassination
remains a murky, unmeasured abyss.
Jim Garrison describes what he believes happened at Dealey
Plaza in Dallas as a coup d'etat. He defines a coup d'etat as "a
sudden action by which an individual or group, usually employing
limited violence, captures positions of governmental authority
without conforming to the formal requirements for changing
officeholders, as prescribed by the laws of constitution". He
goes on to ennumerate the necessary elements for a successful
coup: "extensive planning and preparation by the sponsors; the
collaboration of the Praetorian Guard (officials whose job is to
protect the government); a diversionary cover-up afterwards; the
ratification of the assassination by the new government inheriting
power; and the the dissemination of disinformation by major
elements of the news media."
Garrison believes the sponsors had instigated and planned this
coup long in advance and that this group consisted of "fanatical
anticommunists in the United States intelligence community; that
it was carried out, most likely without official approval, by
individuals in the C.I.A.'s covert operations apparatus and other
extra-governmental collaborators, and covered up by like-minded
individuals in the F.B.I., the Secret Service, and Dallas police
department, and the military; and that its purpose was to stop
Kennedy from seeking detente with the Soviet Union and Cuba and
ending the Cold War."
At one point, reflecting on the media's absolutely static
rejection of even the idea of conspiracy, Garrison writes: "Then,
perhaps for the first time, I realized what it was that petrified
these people... To acknowledge that an organized conspiracy had
occurred was to recognize that it had been done for a purpose--to
change government policy. Having told the world for so many years
how wonderful we all were, here in the greatest country in the
world, the media people were not willing to admit that our
national leader could be removed in such a brutal fashion in order
to change government policy. That would put the lie to American
democracy. That just could not be. Therefore, in their minds,
the assassination had to be a random event, the work of a deranged
loner."
The final paragraph of the book, after suggesting that it may
be too late for an honest investigation, states:
However, it is not too late for us to learn the lessons of
history, to understand where we are now and who runs this
country. If my book can help illuminate this for a younger
generation who never knew John Kennedy, then it will have
served its purpose.
--
daveus rattus
yer friendly neighborhood ratman
KOYAANISQATSI
ko.yan.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n. 1. crazy life. 2. life
in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating.
5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.