80% of Americans reject the WCFR
(CBS) This story was written by CBSNews.com's Jarrett Murphy
Saturday is the 40th anniversary of the death of President Kennedy and the 40th
birthday of the greatest whodunit in American history — the genesis of an
unrelenting debate over the motive of the president's killer.
Or killers.
Indeed, the notion that Lee Harvey Oswald did not act alone in killing the
president might be the ultimate "conspiracy theory" because it is one that most
Americans believe. A 1998 CBS News poll found that only 10 percent of
respondents felt Oswald acted alone. Seventy-four percent believed there was a
cover-up. Recent polls suggest that this is still the way Americans feel.
Speculation over "what really happened" in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963 is a national
institution. Hundreds of books, films, television specials and websites have
sifted through the minutiae of assassination evidence, suspicion and intrigue.
Words like "magic bullet" and "grassy knoll" are part of the vernacular.
Theorists have fingered suspects from the Mafia to the Cubans to the CIA to
Lyndon Johnson and the Federal Reserve.
According to longtime Clinton aide Webster Hubbell's memoir, President Clinton
told his trusted ally and Justice Department appointee there were two things he
wanted found out: whether there were UFOs, and who killed JFK. In the past year,
U.S. newspapers have mentioned Oswald 760 times — more than twice as frequently
as either Sirhan Sirhan or James Earl Ray, the men who murdered Sen. Robert
Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., respectively.
(UA CONTRAIRE) see>
http://www.whokilledjfk.net/ (BOTTOM OF PAGE)
As fascinating as the debate over who killed the president is another question:
Why does the shooting 40 years ago still captivate?
James Fetzer, a professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota (Duluth)
who claims proof of a conspiracy, believes the killing of Mr. Kennedy still
interests Americans — in part — because of the glamour and mystique projected by
the president and first lady.
A more important reason, he said, is that the story told by the Warren
Commission — the official government probe of the president's killing —
i.e. was
simply too full of holes.
"I think people know at a deep, subconscious level that they were being lied to
by the government," he said. "If the president of the United States can be
assassinated in the middle of the day, then the American people have no basis to
believe what their government says to them."
Doubts about the "lone gunman theory" emerged almost immediately after the
president's death. That prompted the Warren Commission to report in 1964 that it
found no evidence "of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate
President Kennedy." i. e. (NO DOMESTIC INVESTIGAION)
"Others of the more widely publicized rumors maintained that Oswald must have
received aid from one or more persons or political groups," the Commission
reported, "ranging from the far left to the far right of the political spectrum,
or from a foreign government, usually either the Castro regime in Cuba or the
Soviet Union."
Fifteen years later, the House Select Committee on Assassinations found "on the
basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was
probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy."
The crucial difference between the two reports was that the Warren Commission
believed the president was killed by the shots fired by Oswald, while the House
committee suspected two gunmen were involved, based on "various scientific
projects."
But the House committee was "unable to identify the other gunman or the extent
of the conspiracy."
It said the Soviet government wasn't involved. It found the Cuban government
wasn't responsible. It concluded the Secret Service, the CIA and the FBI weren't
to blame. And it decided that anti-Castro groups and the Mafia weren't behind
the killing, but that the evidence couldn't rule out that individual members
were involved.
The sheer number of possible explanations might be part of the appeal of the JFK
case. John McAdams, associate professor of political science at Marquette
University and a skeptic of conspiracy theories, notes that the Kennedy
assassination offers something for everyone: Leftists can blame the CIA, while
right wingers can suspect communists.
The three earlier killings of American presidents offered less room for that
sort of speculation. It was obvious why John Wilkes Booth shot President
Lincoln. He and his co-conspirators were eventually rounded up and executed.
Charles J. Guiteau and Leon F. Czolgosz, the men who killed Presidents Garfield
and McKinley, respectively, were both mentally disturbed; there were no hints of
larger plots.
In Kennedy's case, however, the idea that a "lone nut" could kill the most
powerful man in the world was unsettling.
"People like to believe that things happen in the world for a reason," McAdams
says. "They don't want to believe that chance events like that can move history.
It's much more comforting to believe that large events have important causes."
If the 1998 CBS News poll is any indication, Americans never expect to be
reassured. Seventy-seven percent said they believed the truth of who killed Mr.
Kennedy would always be a mystery.
Fetzer believes that lack of closure, coupled with the suspicion that the
government is withholding the truth, is a cancer on the American psyche that has
undermined trust in public institutions. "It must be excised," he said.
The hope that the one, crucial, missing clue will someday surface is a faint
one, McAdams said. Most government documents on the assassination were released
in the 1990s. New forensic techniques might emerge, but it's unlikely evidence
was collected on which those techniques might be used.
"For all practical purposes, the evidence we have now is the evidence that will
exist for the ages," McAdams said.
Likely, the mystery of what really happened in Dallas will persist as well.
By Jarrett Murphy
(McADAMS KNOWS NOTHING OF THE EVIDENCE/TESTIMONY) sEE>
http://www.whokilledjfk.net/debates.htm
He admitted in our radio debate that he does NOT have the 26 volumes.
i. e. Truth & Justice would go a long way in restoring
belief/respect in Political Leadership/Law Enforcement/ National Media that they
once Earned.