Thunder from the Sky: Who Killed Kennedy?
By Mike Bayham
Dear Friends,

Of the four American presidents who have been assassinated, we know the most details on the first three slain presidents.  It is common knowledge that actor John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in Ford's Theater at the conclusion of the Civil War.  We know his motives (to avenge the vanquished Confederacy and disrupt the Federal government) and that of his fellow conspirators who assisted him in the scheme.

If we were to consult an encyclopedia, we would also acquire a comprehensive knowledge of the murders of James Garfield and William McKinley.  The former was shot in a train station by an upset Republican who felt he was cheated out of a patronage job and the latter was killed in upstate New York by an anarchist. 

The same cannot be said about the death of John F. Kennedy.  Forty years after his tragic death in Dallas, there are more questions than answers.  Though the official line, as endorsed by the Warren Commission Report, tries to make Kennedy's death appear as simple and clear as the previously murdered presidents, there are aspects of the commission's findings that are implausible. 

On the other extreme is Hollywood director Oliver Stone's JFK, which paints a sympathetic portrait of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who conducted his own high-profile investigation into the Kennedy assassination based upon a hypothesized link between the killing and possible accessories in New Orleans. 

In contrast to the heroic Garrison, Stone "outs" a menagerie of villains directly and indirectly involved in the Kennedy shooting, including Lyndon Johnson, the CIA, the mafia, and a group of Louisiana businessmen.  Lee Harvey Oswald, popularly recognized as Kennedy's assassin, is projected as, to use Oswald's own term, a patsy.

The primary basis of Garrison and Stone's assertion of the existence of a conspiracy is that there was more than one shooter in the vicinity of Dealey Plaza.  If there were additional gunmen firing at the president, the government's position on the assassination would be upended since the presence of multiple assassins unequivocally points to a coordinated effort by a group, instead of a lone nutcase as stated in the official report, to take out Kennedy.

The question of who shot Kennedy is not the most critical element of the true story, since any faceless hitman, or hitmen, can be imported and paid to pull a trigger at anyone.  The most important questions are who was behind the assassination and what were their motives. 

Because I want to be able to continue starting my car in the morning without fear of explosion, you will find no names in this column.  Actually the real reason why no aspersions will be cast on my part is because I simply don't know the answers.

However, this is what I do know:

1) The magic bullet theory was the omen of what would be many stupid things to come out of the mouth of Arlen Specter, who coined the fairy tale.  Anyone who knows anything about ballistics can tell you that when a bullet enters a person, bounces around inside, exits into someone else, and bounces around again, the bullet does not exit its final victim in near pristine condition. 

The magic bullet theory has less logical credibility than the superstition that opening an umbrella inside will bring you bad luck.  The "MBT" is really nothing more than a ridiculous way of inventing a reason for something either inexplicable or an action that certain people did not want reviewed further. 

2)  Jack Ruby's shooting of Oswald points to an organized crime connection to the assassination of the President.  Ruby's alibi of wanting to spare the grieving First Lady the pangs of enduring Oswald's trial rings hollow.  Since when does a strip-bar owner closely identified with the criminal element begin to care about the feelings of a widow whose brother in-law was doing his best Eliot Ness against the mob?

Undoubtedly, Ruby was at the Dallas Police Station to truly finish the job by silencing the weakest link in the assassination chain.  The question here is what was the criminal element so afraid of Oswald revealing?

3)  Finally, there is the eccentric Lee Harvey Oswald.  The bizarre story of the former Marine is surreal.  Some of the milestones of his life include his defection to the Soviet Union where he took a job in a radio manufacturing plant and a wife, moving back to the United States (was Soviet immigration asleep at the wheel twice?), promoting a pro-Castro "Hands off Cuba" campaign in New Orleans, associating with anti-Castro activists, and then accepting a menial job in a building that the president's motorcade just so happened to pass. 

This is clearly a case of a person who was going out of his way to discredit himself (months prior to the Kennedy shooting he made a point of throwing a tantrum inside the editorial office of a New Orleans daily) as normal while intricately placing himself in a strategic position as a sleeper.     

If Oswald did intend to kill the president, why would he use a cheap, inferior rifle that frequently jammed?  Also, did Oswald get off any of the fatal shots or was he nothing more than a strategically placed red herring?

The answers to these questions may never be revealed to the general public, though there are probably few people still walking the earth who were privy to the act or were associated with those who were know the details.  I also would not hold my breath for the release of the remaining sealed records from the assassination investigation.  When you are sitting on evidence that can piece together a puzzle the "powers that be" do not want solved, you don't bury it, you burn it.  The odds are slim that there is anything of substantive value in the timed-release files. 

While there is insufficient evidence to implicate the individuals and organizations fingered by Stone in JFK, there are enough facts available to state that the Warren Commission Report does not do justice to the slain president, who is its subject, and the trees that were cut down for the paper it is printed on.  However when considering the illogical nature of the report, it could not have a more appropriate namesake.

For those of the Fox Mulder mentality concerning Kennedy's death, somewhere, someplace, the truth is out there.

For those who believe the government line on the assassination, remember to keep placing your lost teeth under your pillow.

Respectfully,

Mike Bayham