by Barry Krusch
Once Oswald was killed, though, there was no need to postulate any conspiracy hypothesis in the media, and the documentary evidence that only 2 bullets were fired could be easily buried . . . just like, in fact, it was.
Admittedly, this is an extremely intriguing hypothesis, and it has one primary virtue, which is that it reduces the number of conspirators down to a very small number: the only ones who had to be a part of the plan were the ones who actually handled the evidence, Day, Fritz, and one or more key personnel at the FBI. Everyone else could be completely in the dark! It also accounts for all the inconsistencies that we’ve seen without having to suspect other possibly innocent individuals of participating in an after-the-fact conspiracy to cover up what really happened.
About this hypothesis, two points could be noted: needless to say, even though it states that 3 shells actually were present, it does not in any way, shape, or form provide support for the proposition that there was a “lone” assassin — to the contrary, it positively contradicts it, so you’re not going to find the Bugliosis of the world rallying around this one. Also, as intriguing as it is, the only support for it is the evidence that we have seen, which may or may not be enough to sustain it given all the other alternative hypotheses we have to explore.
And there is at least one more of these, so let’s give this one the final examination.
The Coordinated Lying Hypothesis
As far as I can tell, this is the hypothesis which has the most evidence behind it, so let me return to the original question which inspired this lengthy exploration of the possibilities, “Is there any way to show that commission witnesses had been coordinating their misstatements?”
With the evidence I have provided for the false reporting hypothesis, we now know that misstatements can be coordinated even if the person themselves did not make the statement, via the blue pencil technique. And, misstatements could obviously also be coordinated wherever there have been rehearsals designed to create this coordination.
Consequently, we can discover the presence of re-authoring or rehearsals by inference: synchronized testimony, whether through editorial control or rehearsal, is easy to show precisely where there are identical misstatements — we can immediately infer the presence of synchronized testimony when two people make exactly the same mistake concurrent in time. If A states that “29 + 29 = 100,” and B somewhat later states that “29 + 29 = 100,” we know that the probability that two individuals would make a mistake that improbable on their own would be extremely unlikely. The odds are, conversely, extremely high that if the blue pencil wasn’t used (and it most certainly could have been, as the Appendix demonstrated), the individuals in question pow-wowed beforehand and coordinated their statements (if indeed they made the statements), which sadly enough for them and their stories, are easily proven false, proving not only that each lied, but also that both agreed to tell the same lie . . .
Returning to the empty shells issue, let’s look at a very simple example of coordinated testimony between Captain Fritz, Detective Sims, and Lieutenant Day. We will start with Fritz, and an affidavit he prepared attempting to confirm the testimony by Day. The credibility of Fritz is already under fire because he made a statement contradicted by multiple witnesses in the Craig matter (discussed in the Appendix), and unfortunately for the validity of this affidavit, Day’s testimony reveals that this statement by Fritz must likewise be in error and also deficient in several respects. For example, in the following affidavit, Fritz states that Sims “brought the three empty hulls to my office.” (7 H 404)
Yet as we have already seen, the CSS form told us that it was Brown, not Sims, who received the empty shells from Day:
And, according to that form, it was two shells delivered to Brown, not three. Nor is there any testimony or document on record that Brown in turn delivered even these two shells to Sims.
An additional problem for the story that Sims received the shells is that if Sims had actually taken possession of them, he should have marked them (being the next recipient in the chain of custody). But if you will recall the testimony of Day, he nowhere indicates that Sims’ initials are on the shells, and, in fact, Sims himself would not state positively for the record that he initialed the shells, in yet another suspicious memory lapse all too reminiscent of the Day testimony;
I mean, if you were an experienced officer and were initialing empty shells that could have been used to murder your President, isn’t that something you would remember? Not Sims! (7 H 186): 69
We can be forgiven for seeing waffling like this as a pathetic attempt to avoid a charge of perjury. As you will recall, RMS was not seen on the shells (according to the testimony of Day, who had the benefit of a magnifying glass and a good light), and we can also see (upon review) that Sims’ name was not on the envelope (CE 717 at 17 H 501), as the testimony of Day likewise indicated (4 H 253): 70
So Sims’ professed “belief” (if in fact he did believe it) is as irrelevant as it is inaccurate.
So, here we have similar testimony by Day, Sims, and Fritz, none of it corroborated by hard documentary evidence, and all of it contradicted by that same evidence. Because they are all trying to tell the same story, a story not only not backed up by the necessary documents but contradicted by those documents, that’s a textbook example of synchronized misstatements. And a dozen or 100 or 1000 synchronized misstatements will not only never add up to the truth, but they have a paradoxical effect in the other direction: the more there are, the greater the proof that “the fix was in.”
There are other problems with the statement of Fritz: for example, we know from Day’s testimony that the envelope ostensibly delivered to Fritz (and ostensibly by Sims) was unmarked and unsealed, a key fact Fritz neglects to mention. Also, according to Day’s testimony of April 22, the envelope contained hulls that were not marked by Day at the scene, and so even if Sims actually had delivered an envelope to Fritz, we can’t be sure that that envelope contained the shells that were found at the Texas School Book Depository — can we? And even if this most likely imaginary envelope did contain three shells, we know from the analysis of Day’s testimony that it is absolutely certain that at least one of them was not fired from Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle.
Apart from these issues, there is an additional misstatement by Fritz, which alone throws the entire affidavit into doubt. Re-read these three sentences from the Fritz statement (7 H 404):
Unfortunately for Captain Fritz’s story that he delivered the third hull on the night of November 27 to the FBI because “the Commission wanted the other empty hull,” that was impossible. The Executive Order forming the Warren Commission was issued two days later, November 29, as the following screen captures from the Warren Report reveal (WR 471): 71
While the date of the press release was November 30, the actual date of appointment was November 29, as we can see from the bottom line:
Proof that the shell was turned over on November 27, and not a later date, such as November 30, was the following receipt prepared by James Hosty (CE 2003: 24 H 347): 72
So, why is Fritz providing sworn testimony that the Commission requested the shell when the Commission hadn’t even been formed? The charitable interpretation is that he was mistaken. But, taking into account the context of coordinated disinformation just revealed, we can be forgiven for disregarding this charitable interpretation.
The astute reader will have noticed that we have moved into some very interesting territory here. This chapter was supposedly designed to discuss evidence justifying or not justifying an element of the First Proposition of The Case Against Oswald, but now we see that the evidence that was supposed to convict Oswald has instead backfired into meta-evidence that that evidence itself is irredeemably tainted, which will have a major impact on our base legal assumption:
All the evidence in The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald stipulated as admissible is authentic. The admissible evidentiary record is comprehensive, credible, sufficient, and consistent to the e
xtent that it precludes reasonable doubt regarding both of the following propositions regarding the assassination of President John F. Kennedy:
Is the evidence in this case authentic, and if it is, is it credible? If it is not authentic in even one area, and/or could be shown to lack credibility in predictable key areas (revealing a pattern of dissimulation), it not only would fail to justify the guilt of Oswald, but in a boomerang effect, would now operate to demonstrate the guilt of his accusers!
So, as we proceed through the subsequent chapters, we are now occupying new ground: simultaneously evaluating the impact the evidence that we view with reference not just to the guilt of Oswald, but also to the guilt of his accusers, in criminal charges related to, at minimum, obstruction of justice, accessories after the fact to murder, and treason.
That is a totally different ballgame, one that the mind naturally resists, and, indeed, ought to resist. When we are talking about numerous people involved in the spreading of coordinated disinformation, in what may or may not have been a conspiracy to cover up the identity of the true assassins of the President using tools that would be the 1964 equivalent of what Industrial Light and Magic does for cinema today, we have to first cross a threshold to evaluate this evidence. The spread of coordinated disinformation is a serious charge, and leads us to one final remaining question related to that threshold, a question many readers may have already asked themselves, and one asked by Vincent Bugliosi (RH 1460; emphasis supplied):
Let’s assume, for example, that the CIA was behind the assassination. After the assassination, how could the CIA have gotten the FBI, Secret Service, Dallas Police Department, the autopsy doctors, indeed, the Warren Commission itself, to go along with the horrendous crime the agency had committed and do the great number of things the conspiracy theorists say these various groups and people did to cover up the CIA’s complicity in Kennedy’s murder? Wouldn’t that be an impossible task?
Here Bugliosi asks a legitimate question. Yes, one or more plants/contract agents in the Dallas Police Department and FBI may actually have had knowing involvement with a conspiracy to assassinate the President from the beginning, but on the other hand, in a cover-up of that crime, many individuals would have needed to be unwittingly involved in a cooperative capacity. Can we really say that all these people were knowing co-conspirators?
Our intuition tells us “no!” A crime of this magnitude would have to have the least number of people involved as part of the “inner circle,” if for no other reason to prevent discovery of the conspiracy and the ultimate identity of the perpetrators. Yet, numerous other people who would not have this knowledge would be called upon to cooperate after the fact as part of a cover-up operation. How could these people be drafted into the plot, however unwittingly?
Enter the World War III cover story.
To understand the methodology of surreptitious inclusion, one has to understand the psychology of the 1963 mindset. Just over a year earlier, the Cuban missile crisis occurred, and the United States seemed to be on the brink of nuclear war, as Americans woke up to headlines like these (The New York Times, October 23, 1962):
Following a steady dose of “duck and cover” civil defense training films that had earlier been seen by millions of kids in the 1950s, the Cuban Missile Crisis seemed to seal the deal and turn the most hardened scoffers of those training films into true believers.
The historical crisis was resolved when Kennedy and Kruschev together worked to bring America back from the precipice via mutual compromise, but this flirtation with the ultimate disaster — global annihilation — had to be fresh on people’s minds, an omnipresent threat waiting in the wings.
An extremely useful tool for psychological leverage! This was not lost on President Johnson, who utilized this psychological tool to persuade his friend Richard Russell to serve on the Warren Commission. One version of the World War III cover story might have gone something like this: “This guy Oswald is a communist, and we have some pretty good evidence that this was a communist plot, instigated by either Cuba or Russia or both, but if we let the American people discover this, then we are going to have to take action, certainly a declaration of war, which could easily lead to a nuclear exchange. So to prevent the death of millions of innocent Americans, we are going to have to make sure that everyone thinks that Oswald is the lone assassin.”
The author has been unable to locate any documentary evidence of this more detailed version, but there is on the record a transcript of the “lite” version of the cover story as transmitted to Russell on Novermber 29 by Johnson, with several of the details stated explicitly implied. Johnson meets Russell’s reluctance to serve on the Commission with a good old-fashioned Texas power-play, the nuclear edition: 73
How many people besides Senator Russell were given this story, and in what form: in public places, or in smoke-filled rooms? If it is more than this one, we have an explanation for a methodology by which innocent, patriotic Americans could have been enlisted to cooperate in a conspiratorial effort without any knowledge on their part! Douglas Horne, Senior Analyst on the Military Records Team of the Assassination Records Review Board, citing author David Lifton, discussed this possibility in the context of medical personnel (an area of the case we have not yet investigated; Inside The ARRB, v. 4, pp. 1181-82; emphasis supplied):
Lyndon B. Johnson . . . used the fear of a nuclear holocaust to persuade an extremely reluctant Chief Justice Earl Warren to chair the Presidential Commission whose primary goal was to quash rumors of conspiracy about Kennedy’s assassination. Needless to say, this extreme form of arm-twisting — laying a guilt trip on Warren by telling him that unless he cooperated and chaired the Commission, 40 million people could be killed in a war between the United States and the U.S.S.R. because of rumors about an international Communist conspiracy — worked like a charm. David Lifton has come to refer to the application of this psychology by LBJ as the ‘World War III cover story,’ . . .
I say this because I do not for one minute believe that Robert Knudsen; Drs. Humes, Boswell, and Finck; Dr. Ebersole; Dr. Canada; nor Admirals Kenney, Galloway, or even Dr. Burkley, were knowing participants in the conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. They were, however, all clearly knowing participants in the medical coverup — but if they were told that they had to suppress evidence of multiple shooters to prevent World War III, then they doubtless believed they were engaged in a coverup necessary for the survival of the nation and the prevention of a worldwide nuclear holocaust.
If the distribution of this cover story was more widespread — and there is at least one key piece of evidence on the record that it is, the Katzenbach memo — then we have an explanation that could turn an improbability into a probability.
But could the cover story alone account for all the examples of unintentional cooperation that we may be coming across? No. The cover story was not the only method of surreptitious inclusion, and indeed, due to its sensitive nature, could only have been given to the most key parties, which then brings us to a second method.
Any key party given a cover story could then issue orders to their subordinates, and their subordinates would follow orders without necessarily knowing the reason why. The orders the subordinates were given could have been either to a) keep silent about something they had seen and/or b) provide testimony consistent with a “refreshed” memory (i.e. change their stories), and/or c) do an action and keep quiet about it, as the primary possibilities.
Regarding the first possibility, we know, for example, that medical personnel at President Kennedy’s autopsy were ordered not to reveal what had transpired there, forced to sign “gag orders” which were in effect for approximately 15 years — so-called “rights” to free speech be damned. Here is what one of those gag orders looked like (ARRB MD 138): 74
As far as the second and third possibilities go, the Johnson/Russell transcript indicates that President Johnson wanted to quash at the outset any investigatory threads that would lead to conspiracy. The
mechanism for implementing this was the Warren Commission. With the Warren Commission in place, Johnson and Hoover would be able to control the flow of information, and nip in the bud any further investigations outside of White House and FBI control, as proven by this transcript of a conversation between Johnson and Hoover on November 29, 1:40 p.m: 75
Once the mechanism for controlling the flow of information was in place, acting Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach’s November 25th memo (transmitting to the President’s Press Secretary the directive that would create the necessary cognitive climate for what was about to proceed) would be given the teeth necessary to have legal and force and effect: