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The Last Word on Who Shot

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The Last Word on Who Shot quarter century has passed since John E Kennedy had his head blown apart in Dallas. But the question of who Akilled him is still very much alive. Was it the Soviet KGB? Fidel Castro's hit men? Anti-Castro Cubans incensed that Ken- THE nedy had cancelled plans to help them depose Fidel? Was it the Mafia? Or rogue elements of the CIA? That those questions just won't go away flows naturally from two solid truths: • The Warren Commission's findings that Lee Harvey Oswald LAST fired the fatal shot, that he acted alone, and that there was no organized conspiracy to kill the president, was based on lies, distortion, and suppression of evidence. A total whitewash. • Jack Ruby, who murdered Oswald two days after the JFK as- sassination, silencing the only man who might have told us the WORD truth, was not merely a small-time go-go joint owner and petty gambler; Jack Ruby was the Chicago Mafia's man in Dallas, and he was involved with some of the biggest Mafia bosses in the country. ON I t was 30 minutes after noon, a Friday, November 22, 1963. !Kennedy and his wife, Jacqueline, were in the rear seat of a limousine, waving at crowds along the route of the Dallas motorcade. In jump seats in front of them sat Texas Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie. The crowds were cheering, WHO enthusiastic, and just after the limousine passed a large building known as the Texas School Book Depository and entered Dealey Plaza, Nellie Connally turned and said to Kennedy: "Well, Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you." Kennedy didn't have a chance to reply. There was a sharp SHOT crack, then two or three more. Kennedy was pushed forward by a bullet that hit him in the back, Connally slumped over toward his wife when he himself was struck, and then Kennedy's head snapped back and a large chunk of skull and brain matter splattered behind him and to his left. Jackie Kennedy, her dress bloodstained, began crawling over the limo's trunk in an attempt to grab pieces of her hus- band's skull. JFK "I was trying to hold his hair on," she later told the Warren Commission. "But from the front, there was nothing...." Remember that, it's important: one bullet hit Kennedy in the Closing the book right front of his head and shoved parts of his skull back and to the left, and Jackie remembered being horrified that there was on the crime of nothing left of the front of his head. the century The president was pronounced dead at one P.M. About 45 minutes after he'd been shot, another murder occurred in Dal- las, miles from Dealey Plaza. A cop, J.D. Tippit, was shot to death by a man who reportedly fled into a nearby movie house. When other policemen arrived, they bagged Lee Harvey Os- BY TONY SCADUTO wald inside the theater. 42 GALLERY ?1,e1 )(trr Meanwhile, police had found a rifle es and examining tens of thousands of FBI files. The allegations, Rankin said, equipped with a telescopic sight on the pages of reports from the FBI, the CIA, were "very damaging for the agencies sixth floor of the Texas School Book and other federal and state agencies. that are involved in it and it must be Depository, which overlooked the site Its final report, released in September wiped out insofar as it is possible to do 1 of the assassination. According to wit- 1964, concluded that the fatal shots so," according to minutes of the meet- nesses, shots had been fired from win- came from the Book Depository's sixth- ing, which were released years later. dows of the Depository just after the floor windows; that Lee Harvey Os- Former CIA Director Allen Dulles, a motorcade had passed the building_ wald fired all the shots; that there was member of the Commission, quickly that is, from behind Kennedy's limou- no conspiracy of any kind; that rumors noted a major problem: how to inves- sine. Police learned that a man who that Oswald worked for the FBI or CIA tigate the allegation, since Hoover worked in the building, Lee Harvey were false; that Oswald acted alone. would no doubt deny that Oswald had Oswald. had vanished. The public bought it, at first. After ever worked for the FBI. Dulles said Oswald, a former Marine who had all, the probity of Earl Warren, future that if he were in Hoover's shoes, he gone to live in the Soviet Union in President Gerald Ford, and the other would lie under oath. 1959, had renounced his citizenship Commission members could not be ques- The die was cast. Hoover denied and married a Russian woman—whose tioned. But soon there was a small but knowing anything about Oswald. He uncle was a high-ranking official in the steady stream of magazine articles and even denied that his agents had tried to KGB—was formally charged with mur- books that tore holes in the Commis- debrief Oswald on his return from Rus- dering President Kennedy and Officer sion's investigation and conclusions. sia, which is hardly credible. Before the Tippit. The stream turned into a torrent when Commission began its real work, Hoover Oswald, questioned for hours, repeat- startling new material was revealed in came in with a report several hundred edly denied having killed anyone, and suppressed documents that were pried pages long which presented 111,,the evi- insisted he was "a patsy" and a fall guy. loose under the Freedom of Informa- dence that Oswald acted atone. The Two days after the murders, Oswald tion Act. Commission followed Hoover's script was to be transferred from the city jail For one thing, records of executive like marionettes. to the Dallas County jail. Journalists sessions of the Warren Commission To prove Oswald acted alone, the crowded into the basement of the po- showed that its members believed its Commission devised the single-bullet lice building housing the city jail to re- major function was to dispel all specu- theory—what its critics call the "magic bullet"— one of the most absurd conclu- sions ever found in an official report. The evidence that the assassination was a Warren's group ruled that Oswald fired three shots in 5.6 seconds, and that Mafia hit is so overwhelming that Robert one of those rounds killed JFK. It ig- Blakey, chief counsel to the Committee, nored the fact that Oswald was a lousy marksman, according to his Marine stated, "I am firmly of the opinion that the records. It ignored the fact that even Mob did it. It is a historical truth." National Rifle Association sharpshoot- ers had great difficulty firing three rounds from the old rifle Oswald al- legedly used—a bolt-action rifle requir- 4 port the transfer. As Oswald was being lation that Kennedy was murdered by ing manual ejection of one shell before tet.f.,.led from an elevator to..an armored car, assassins under the control of either the next round could be loaded into /1/' Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub operator the KGB or Castro. Johnson himself the chamber—in the few seconds that who was friendly with scores of cops, told Earl Warren he was afraid that, bullets were fired at Kennedy. And it suddenly stepped forward and fired a should Oswald be found to have been failed to note the fact that the NRA /11a1 single shot into Oswald's abdomen; part of a foreign conspiracy, "it, could shooters couldn't hit the target—a sta- millions of Americans watched Os- mean nuclear war," according to the tionary target. wald's murder on their TV screens. report of the Senate Intelligence Com- Of the three bullets, one hit Kennedy Ruby insisted he had killed Oswald mittee. And according to Melvin Eisen- in the head, killing him. Another went because he was temporarily unbal- burg, a Commission lawyer, Johnson wild, hitting a curb and wounding a anced by his beloved president's death. ordered a cover-up and the members bystander. The third was the magic bul- He was found guilty at a trial, and sen- of the Commission went along because let. Because of the time problems— tenced to death. But Ruby didn't live they had the same fears as Johnson. three shots in 5.6 seconds—the com- long enough to be electrocuted; he FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover helped mission had to invent the theory that died of cancer in January 1967. orchestrate the whitewash. Hoover had this single round struck Kennedy in the Within days of the murders, the new his own fears. Within hours of Oswald's back of the neck, exited his throat; ho- president, Lyndon Johnson, announced arrest, rumors spread through official vered in the air for 1.8 seconds, and the creation of the Warren Commission, Washington and Dallas that he was an then made a sharp right turn and flew chaired by the Chief Justice of the U.S. agent for the FBI or CIA, or both, and on toward Gov. Connally, who was sit- Supreme Court, Earl Warren. Johnson that some Dallas FBI agents had had ting directly in front of Kennedy. Next, instructed the Commission to investigate contact with him in the months before the bullet entered Connally's back near everything about the assassination and the assassination. his right armpit, shattered his fifth rib the murder of Oswald, and he instruct- In one of the Commission's first and then his right wrist, and finally ed the Commission to get at the truth closed-door meetings, its chief counsel, burrowed into his left thigh.
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