by Barry Krusch
“Cutting off” speculation about Oswald’s motivation: a pretty aggressive tactic, especially when at that stage a conspiracy of any sort was as probable as any other hypothesis! It’s easy to see how what starts as a gag order can morph into an order to transmit false information. Since the vast majority of the individuals who were providing the most basic evidentiary testimony in the case to the Johnson-appointed Warren Commission were doctors under military control, FBI agents under Washington control, and Dallas police detectives under Dallas (and most likely Washington) control, all we really have to postulate is that innocent parties who were subordinates within the aforementioned hierarchies were given orders to do “X” and/or say or not say “Y” (and also ordered to remain silent about these directives if they wanted to keep their jobs, not to mention other possible consequences about which we have not been informed).
This technique would in effect create a vast functioning network of people in multiple domains “just doing their jobs” to achieve an objective about which they were totally in the dark. And since the media was broadcasting information fed to them by government operatives — operatives implementing orders to cut off speculation that Oswald was involved in a conspiracy, thanks to the Katzenbach memo — who could really blame these other individuals for following the party line? The “common” knowledge spraying from the firehoses of networks CBS, NBC et al. (piped by firemen Walter Cronkite and Huntley and Brinkley), and newspapers The New York Times and The Washington Post and magazines Time and Life (piped by firemen reporters), was now everywhere and in the minds of millions, defining the boundaries that separated the thoughts that were legitimate from the thoughts which were not.
And these were not the skeptical minds of a post-Vietnam, post-Watergate, post 911-world evaluating these boundaries, but naïve post-1950s minds shaped by a steady diet of Andy Griffith episodes and Leave It To Beaver reruns. It was a Norman Rockwell world indeed. Anyone who stepped out of the party line and alleged conspiracy on the part of a by-and-large trusted government would at the very least have been made a pariah, called “crazy,” or confronted with other ad hominem attacks which persist to this vastly more well-informed day.
A profound psychological phenomenon, which can explain why otherwise upright individuals, like doctors with years of experience, became a part of the “silent majority.” Dr. Charles Crenshaw gave a first-person account of this psychological phenomenon in his book Conspiracy Of Silence (pp. 153-6), and then explained that there was another psychological phenomenon contributing to his silence: the will to survive! (emphasis supplied)
At a news conference in the hospital the previous day, Drs. Malcolm Perry and Kemp Clark suggested that the President must have been turning to his right when he was shot. They said this because they also believed that the bullet that ripped through President Kennedy’s head had entered from the front. When the films showed that the President was not turned when he was shot, nothing more was said, as I remember. I didn’t blame Drs. Clark and Perry one bit. They, too, had observed the men in suits, and had heard about the scene with Dr. Earl Rose. [BK: the Secret Service took possession of the President’s body over the protestations of pathologist Rose who was supposed to conduct the autopsy]. Every doctor who was in Trauma Room 1 had his own reasons for not publicly refuting the “official line.”
I believe there was a common denominator in our silence — a fearful perception that to come forward with what we believed to be the medical truth would be asking for trouble. Although we never admitted it to one another, we realized that the inertia of the established story was so powerful, so thoroughly presented, so adamantly accepted, that it would bury anyone who stood in its path. I had already witnessed that awesome, dictatorial force in the Earl Rose incident, the same fierceness that I would, for years to come, continue to recognize in the tragedies awaiting those people who sought the truth. I was as afraid of the men in suits as I was of the men who had assassinated the President. Whatever was happening was larger than any of us. I reasoned that anyone who would go so far as to eliminate the President of the United States would surely not hesitate to kill a doctor. . . .
I’ve often wondered what would have been the consequences of looking directly into that camera and boldly stating, “President Kennedy was shot in the head and in the throat from the front.” Now, after all these years, I realize that such courage would have been utterly ineffective and suicidal. The truth, staring directly into the face of our government, stood about as much chance of coming to light as a june bug in a hailstorm, and I wouldn’t have fared any better.
Already, the eastern press had begun to discredit us as physicians and Parkland as a hospital. If you had any association with Dallas, you were suspect. To come forward and give an unwavering professional opinion that was contradictory to the official story would only have given them a personalized target. . . .
The hospital administration was paranoid about publicity, especially at a time like that. In view of all I had heard, seen, and sensed, I wasn’t about to appear on the six-o’clock news, giving an interview about the death of the President. A nursing student had already fallen into disfavor, and was later thrown out of school, because she informed the press of the number of blood units Governor Connally had received. Although no official instructions had been issued by the hospital administration, there was a tacit implication, an unspoken warning in their general attitudes that said that anyone who was intelligent enough to pursue a medical career was also smart enough to keep his mouth shut. Failure to do the latter would result in foreclosure on the former. We were all young doctors who for years had struggled and sacrificed to achieve that level of success. And we had a fortune in money and time tied up in our professions. The thought of throwing all that away weighed heavily on my mind.
That pretty much sums it up, doesn’t it? Now just multiply that by 150 or so actors, and you’ll have your answer to the question, “why would so many people consent to being unwilling participants in a conspiracy?”
There is one more follow-up question in this regard. It could be protested “who would launch a conspiracy not knowing precisely whether or not people would follow these orders or the party line?” This answer isn’t too difficult: apparently this was not a concern for the professionals who had run dozens, if not hundreds, or thousands, of similar operations, and always managed to maintain the covert status of these schemes.
Remember the Operation Northwoods memo? As you will recall, under the Northwoods plan, announced to a very small and privileged part of the world by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on March 13, 1962, an airplane was to be loaded with college students, college students who would fly for a short while only to be later be disembarked at another location while an identical clone aircraft headed for Cuba that was supposedly carrying these college students was to transmit a “MAYDAY” message that it was under attack by Cuban MIG aircraft, said clone aircraft to then be destroyed by radio signal: 76
Now, every one of these college students would operate as a functional timebomb threatening to expose this little plot, but apparently the Joint Chiefs Of Staff did not find this to be a concern. The Chiefs probably realized from their years of experience creating plans organizing spooks, spies, and snipers that most people would be like the peers of Charles Crenshaw, who would simply keep their mouths shut, and if there were any outliers, like Crenshaw himself nearly 3 decades later, there was always the ever-reliable media with their well-placed, well-paid Operation Mockingbird “assets” ready, willing, and able to frame the outliers in the same way that Oswald was framed. It’s the ever-familiar “wacko” spin: the people who go against the party line like District Attorney Jim Garrison, don’t get invited to join the party, as the ever-”objective” establishment pipeline The New York Times told us: 77
If you know in advance that millions of people will be exposed to this frame, through newspapers, radio, and television, you are good to go.
Of course, on the outside chance that ce
rtain members of the media themselves would not cooperate, anyone who would order the murder of a President would most likely have a backup plan to take care of any contingencies like that — right?
So, as we close off this section, let’s review what we’ve learned:
That there were only two, and not three, shells on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building is indicated not only by the early documentary evidence, including receipts and photographs, but also by a deductive proof related to the chain of custody based on the April 22 testimony of J.C. Day (as modified to the extent possible by Day’s June 23 affidavit).
The deductive proof results in a checkmate for The Case Against Oswald; if the aforementioned testimony is true, then there is no Case Against Oswald, and if it is false, then there is no Case Against Oswald.
These two shells were turned over by a member of the Dallas Police Department to the FBI without explicit orders transferring jurisdiction, which would entail a level of coordination that is not formally explainable.
Because there is a deductive proof that there were only two shells on the sixth floor, then all the testimony to the contrary indicates coordinated disinformation that by itself throws into doubt the credibility of all the evidence in the case, not just that related to the empty shells.
Chain of custody issues related to the Brown and Williams possession (as well as the Day testimony) indicate that at least two of the shells that became Warren Commission exhibits were not those found on the floor of the Texas School Book Depository, a second deductive proof.
There is evidence on record that the Warren Commission misreported testimony, which if true would in and of itself obliterate faith in any evidence.
Evidence against Oswald, when it can be demonstrated to be manufactured, is automatically converted into evidence for a conspiracy designed to hide the identity of the true assassins of the President, to allow these individuals to literally get away with murder — a crime for which there is no statute of limitations. And when the victim is the President of the United States, even more so than for any other person, this simply cannot be allowed.
To this last point, we now need to adopt a new attitude as we move through this book, and think in stereo. As we view the evidence, we need to see it from two perspectives:
Is this evidence for or against the elements of The Case Against Oswald?
AND
Is this evidence for or against the notion that there was a conspiracy to cover up the identity of the true assassins of the President, with both witting and unwitting participants?
To answer this latter question, we ought to heed these words of wisdom from Vincent Bugliosi (RH 1439):
A conspiracy is nothing more than a criminal partnership. And although conspiracies obviously aren’t proved by the transcript of a stenographer who typed up a conversation between the partners agreeing to commit the crime, there has to be some substantive evidence of the conspiracy or partnership’s existence. And in the conspiracy prosecutions I have conducted, I have always been able to present direct evidence of the co-conspirators acting in concert before, during, or after the crime, and/or circumstantial evidence from which a reasonable inference of concert or meeting of the minds could be made.
In this excerpt, we learn something important. The conspirators to murder the President (or to hide the true identity of his assassins) are not likely to be publishing their internal memos, such as existed. They didn’t have court reporters present to record their conversations, nor tape recorders. So, how do we prove conspiracy? Through the existence of “circumstantial evidence from which a reasonable inference of concert or meeting of the minds could be made.” Synchronized misstatements, planted evidence, forged documents, conclusions that violate the laws of physics: if we can see a pattern of improbable persuasion as we make our way through this book, we are able to rule out mere negligence as a hypothesis, and through sheer volume, are able to detect the presence of an “invisible hand” guiding otherwise innocent parties down a predetermined path.
So, both camps, the ones who maintain that Oswald is innocent, and the ones who maintain that Oswald is guilty, are in the same boat: forget claims, forget stipulations, and focus on evidence! And, when you analyze the evidence, look at it from the standpoint of logic and intuition: does this evidence really make sense?
To this point, we will let Mr. Bugliosi have the final word (RH 1437; emphasis supplied):
If . . . there is no evidence to support your allegation, from a legal standpoint you’re out of court. But even if you’re out of court, if you can at least argue that “well, there’s no evidence of this, but logic and common sense tell you it is so,” you still have talking rights and you can still play the game, as it were. But when you not only have no evidence, but logic and common sense tell you it isn’t so, it’s time to fold your tent. No evidence plus no common sense equals go home, zipper your mouth up, take a walk, forget about it, get a life.
My sentiments exactly, Mr. Bugliosi. Let’s take a look at rest of the evidence, and see what it has to tell us.
THIS CONCLUDES VOLUME ONE
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Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald (Volume One)
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Impossible: The Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald (Volume Two)
Footnote references for Foreword
1 Quoted in Accessories After the Fact, p. 453; see also Evidence Of Revision DVD # 1, at 1:24.
2 Effects of group pressure upon the modification and distortion of judgment, found in H. Guetzkow (Ed), Groups, Leadership, and Men, pp. 177-190.
3 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solomon_Asch (retrieved March 23, 2011). See also The Social Animal, Third Edition, p. 19. Data in the table is from “Opinions And Social Pressure,” Scientific American, Volume 193, Number Five (1955).
4 The Schotz speech is contained in Vincent Salandria’s book False Mystery, quotes from pp. 180-1 (emphasis supplied). The image on the left is CE385, found at 17H977 (that is Commission Exhibit 385, which can be found in volume 17 of the Warren Commission Hearings And Exhibits, page 977). The image on the right is from the FBI Supplemental Report to the Warren Commission dated January 13, 1964, CD105, p. 69 (Commission Document 105, page 69).
Footnote references for Introduction
1 “The truth is way out there; Jim Marrs believes that Kennedy was murdered as part of a vast conspiracy, that aliens visit us regularly, and that the Trilateral Commission controls our government. So, what if he’s right?” by Robert Wilonsky, Dallas Observer (Texas), July 6, 2000.
2 Digital Journal, “9/11 Truth - Governors, veterans, and loonies.” (September 11, 2011).
Footnote references for Chapter 1: An Introduction to Reasonable Doubt
1 Maimonides, Saeer HaMitzvot, Negative Commandment 290, quoted in N. L. Rabinovich, Probability and Statistical Inference in Ancient and Medieval Jewish Literature, 111 (1973).
2 Justinian, Digest, 48.19.5 (collected in 9 S. P. Scott, The Civil Law 110 (1932). Trajan ruled A.D. 98-117.
5 39 Geo. L.J. Ann. Rev. Crim. Proc. 1 (2010).
6 "The Thumb on the Scales of Justice: Burdens of Persuasion in Criminal Cases", Barbara Underwood, 86 Yale Law Journal 1299 (1977).
7 "The Thumb on the Scales of Justice: Burdens of Persuasion in Criminal Cases", Barbara Underwood, 86 Yale Law Journal 1299 (1977).
Footnote references for Chapter 2: Reasonable Doubt: The Deductive Case
1 1A Kevin O'Malley et al., Federal Jury Practice & Instructions: Criminal 12.10, at 168 (2000).
2 Erik Lillquist, “Recasting Reasonable Doubt: Decision Theory and the Virtues of Variability,” 6 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 85, 126-7 (2002).
3 "Defining the Standard of Proof in Jury Instructions," Dor
othy Kagehiro, Psychological Science, Vol. 1, No. 3, May 1990, p. 194.
Footnote references for Chapter 3: Reasonable Doubt: An Objective Standard
1 This is a theoretical number. In the real world, this number will not translate exactly because people’s judgment regarding confidence level can be mistaken. However, theoretically perfect judgment would result in a one-to-one correspondence between confidence determination and outcome. As a real world example, if you are 50% confident that a coin flip will result in heads, over a few thousand trials you will be right approximately 50% of the time (assuming a two-sided coin, of course). Note that a confidence level of 95% (assuming a completely accurate observer) results in 5 false convictions for every 100 convictions, not every 100 cases, according to Dr. Steve Patch, Professor of Statistics at the University of North Carolina in Asheville (e-mail to author, May 11, 2011).