In his farewell address, he defined the new problem that was facing us; not the foreign enemy, but our totally new domestic enemy:
Our military organization today bears little relation to that known by any of my predecessors in peacetime, or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea.
Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.15
And then he got very specific and dramatic about the extreme gravity of our situation:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.16
That threat became readily apparent to President Kennedy as he battled his own national security structure at every step of the way. In every crisis, JFK had to fight his own CIA and Joint Chiefs of Staff to avoid an all-out state of war.
He first had to fight over the Cuban “Bay of Pigs” invasion, then the Berlin Crisis of 1961, then the Cuban Missile Crisis, his efforts at a nuclear test ban treaty and drastic arms reductions, and finally his efforts at détente with Cuba, Vietnam, and the entire Soviet Bloc. By 1963, he had so alienated the militarycorporate war machine that he—quite rightly—was in actual fear of a coup openly taking place against his Administration or of being murdered. Robert Kennedy and others shared and voiced those same fears.17
But even though the Cold War has now been over for two decades, military spending has actually increased. Some is clearly necessary for our defense. However, especially since we lack an enemy anywhere even near us militarily, some military spending seems utterly ridiculous. Here’s an example of the cost of one project of the Pentagon for a new airplane called the F-35 Lightning II. Originally budgeted at $178 billion for a fleet of these new fighter jets, costs ballooned—by 2011—to a new estimate of $325 billion.18 And, as usual, they’ll certainly cost a lot more than that by the time they’re actually airborne. Would you like to know how necessary that plane is, as a component of our nation’s security? Here’s how The New York Times put it:
The F-35 is simply not needed. Only one American fighter plane has been shot down by an enemy aircraft in nearly forty years. Our fighter aircraft are already a full generation ahead of nearly everybody else’s. Off-boresight targeting technologies [which are what the Pentagon says makes the F-35 special] can be adapted to existing aircraft, giving them an enduring edge.19
So, in a word: unnecessary. And that’s just one example of dozens where taxpayer money is spiraling down the Pentagon’s golden drains. In the meantime, we really could have used $325 billion to assist our declining education system and repair our nation’s failing infrastructure.
But over a period of time, that military-corporate complex—which evidently now runs this country—has whittled away at our status quo, changing our national priorities. Issues like our health and our education have, to a large extent, lost out in that battle; bullets and bombs have won.
It wasn’t always that way. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy overruled the military masters who actually—even openly—sought a nuclear exchange with the Soviets. Kennedy stopped them. It was extremely difficult to rein them in, but his Administration succeeded in that effort. So the Pentagon did not have that same dominating influence over the Kennedy Administration.
Peace really did have a chance; a long, long time ago.
That all seemed to change right at the time of the death of John F. Kennedy. President Eisenhower warned us about the real powers that needed standing up to. President Kennedy stood up to those Powers That Be; and was murdered.
That’s why his death is so important: Because that’s when everything changed.
That’s why it still matters, even today.
Jesse Ventura
Autumn, 2013
1 Talbot, David, Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years (Free Press: 2007), xiii, 6, 8–12, 21, 278–279, 323–331.
2 United States House of Representatives, “Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, Ninety-fifth Congress, second session” 1979: archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/
3 Fursenko, Aleksandr & Naftali, Timothy, “One Hell of a Gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro & Kennedy, 1958—1964: The Secret History of the Cuban Missile Crisis (W.W. Norton: 1998) 344–345.
4 Talbot, Brothers, 14; Hepburn, James (Hervé Lamarr), Farewell America: The Plot to Kill JFK (Frontier: 1968), 301.
5 Talbot, Brothers, 377—382.
6 Ibid, 383.
7 Ibid, 290.
8 Ventura, Jesse & Russell, Dick, American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies that the Government Tells Us (Skyhorse Publishing: 2010), 38.
9 Scott, Peter Dale, Deep Politics and the Death of JFK (University of California Press: 1996), 258.
10 Douglass, James, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters (Touchstone: 2008); Scott, Deep Politics; James P. Hosty Jr. & Thomas Hosty, Assignment Oswald: From the FBI agent assigned to investigate Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the JFK assassination (Arcade Publishing: 1997).
11 Talbot, Brothers, 41, 44, 50–53, 64–71, 95, 103, 106–108, 146, 163–174, 189, 207–212, 217–230, 253–254.
12 Ibid, 148—151: curtislemay.tripod.com/
13 Kaplan, Fred, The Wizards of Armageddon (Stanford University Press: 1991), 246, emphasis in original.
14 Talbot, Brothers, 41, 44, 50–53, 64–71, 95, 103, 106–108, 146, 163–174, 189, 207–212, 217–230, 253–254.
15 President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Presidential Address to the Nation,” January 17, 1961: npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later
16 Ibid.
17 Talbot, Brothers, 41, 44, 50–53, 64–71, 95, 103, 106–108, 146, 163–174, 189, 207–212, 217–230, 253–254.
18 Arquilla, John & Fogelson-Lubliner, “The Pentagon’s Biggest Boondoggles,” March 13, 2001, The New York Times: nytimes.com/imagepages/2011/03/13/opinionj/13opchartimg.html
19 Ibid.
SECTION ONE
The Evidence
President Kennedy, per the government’s version, was assassinated by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, who acted entirely on his own, firing three shots from his “sniper’s nest” on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building, from behind the President’s motorcade with a Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 millimeter Italian rifle that was owned by the assassin. Only three shots were fired and they all came from the rear, after the motorcade had passed the window of that building.
Approximately forty-five minutes after killing President Kennedy, the same assassin then shot and killed Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit in a different section of town and was then arrested inside
a nearby movie theater. The Warren Commission, a body of elite officials entrusted with the official investigation, “found no evidence that Oswald was involved with any person or group in a conspiracy to assassinate the President”; “there was no evidence to support the speculation that Oswald was an agent, employee, or informant of the FBI, the CIA, or any other governmental agency”; “No direct or indirect relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby” (the Dallas nightclub owner who murdered Oswald two days after the assassination) and “no evidence of conspiracy, subversion, or disloyalty to the U.S. Government by any Federal, State, or local official.”20
The official government version of the JFK assassination is incorrect and that’s a fact that has already been proven—you just haven’t heard it yet from any of our government’s gatekeepers in the mainstream media. I plan to prove that to you far beyond any reasonable questions of doubt.
Because, just for openers, those official conclusions above mean that there were no shots from the front and that there were three gunshots and three gunshots only.
Well guess what, folks? That simply isn’t true. And that’s not just some opinion of mine—that can and has been proven scientifically. So please keep reading, because I won’t just give you some good reasons or theories that raise the possibility that they’re wrong—I’ll give you 63 points that prove it and will give you a pretty good idea of who the real perpetrators were.
20 “Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy,” September 24, 1964: home.comcast.net/~ceoverfield/warren.html
1
Frontal Gunshots
The forensic evidence is the crucial part of any crime scene investigation, as you’ve no doubt witnessed firsthand on TV shows like Law & Order and CSI. Forensic evidence is not about people’s opinions or anybody’s freaking theories. It’s about logical and scientific explanations of what actually happened—and you do that by examining the primary facts of evidence. So let’s look at the medical determinations; the blood spatter evidence and the photographic testimony.
President Kennedy was rushed to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas immediately after the shooting, and his body was taken on a stretcher from the limousine into the emergency room where a group of surgeons were ready and waiting to do whatever was humanly possible to save his life. It should be noted that Parkland was not just an emergency room, but an actual trauma center, where the doctors were experienced in the treatment of gunshot wounds.
In Trauma Room One, Dr. Malcolm Perry immediately performed an emergency tracheotomy, which is a standard trauma procedure to ensure that the victim can get air into their lungs. That procedure is accomplished by making a small incision in the lower front portion of the victim’s throat and then inserting a breathing tube.
Now let me just stop here for a second and ask you this: If you were a physician and you were entrusted with the trauma care of the President of the United States who had just been shot, don’t you think that you would vividly recall the exact specifics of precisely what took place? Well, so did they.
Dr. Malcolm Perry noted that there was already a smooth “wound of entrance” on the lower front area of President Kennedy’s throat.21 The Warren Commission, in their usual manner of obfuscation, managed to later get that same doctor to say things from which other inferences could then be drawn by that room of Washington lawyers. But if you look back at the actual words of Dr. Malcolm Perry—taken directly from the Parkland Press Conference on the afternoon of the President’s death—Dr. Perry clearly describes that hole he observed in the throat as “a wound of entrance”; then again as “an entrance wound”; and also states that “the bullet was coming at him.”22 Anyone experienced with wounds—and Dr. Perry was very experienced—can differentiate an entry wound from an exit wound. A wound of entry is small, like the circumference of the bullet, and has what could be termed a smooth appearance, while an exit wound is much larger, caused by the “blowout” damage of the bullet before it exits the body, and its exit after causing its damage then leaves a wound that is rough and jagged. So, in precisely detailing his exact actions on that memorable day, Dr. Perry noted that the bullet hole in the front of President Kennedy’s throat was a smooth wound of entry, and hence, because of what could be called the entry wound’s convenient location in the correct portion of the throat, he enlarged that already existing wound slightly with his scalpel in order to make an incision sufficient for placement of the breathing tube. In addition to the entry wound he observed in the front of President Kennedy’s throat, Dr. Perry also noted a massive blowout exit wound at the right rear of the President’s skull.
Other doctors also observed the huge exit wound at the back of the head. And they too observed that since it was the President of the United States whose wounds they were observing, they weren’t about to make a mistake about that or to forget it anytime soon.
The medical consensus from all the doctors who treated President Kennedy’s wounds in Dallas clearly confirms the massive exit wound at the back of the head.23 In all, at least eight of the treating physicians at Parkland Hospital confirmed on record that there was a huge exit wound at the rear of the President’ head.24 The names of these doctors were:
Dr. Malcolm Perry25
Dr. Charles Crenshaw26
Dr. Charles J. Carrico27
Dr. Richard Dulaney28
Dr. Ronald Jones29
Dr. Robert McClelland30
Dr. Paul Peters31
Dr. Kenneth E. Salyer32
The exit wound at the back of the head was also confirmed by:
FBI Special Agent Frank O’Neal33
Secret Service Special Agent Clint Hill34
Emergency Room Nurse Audrey Bell35
Radiographer Jerrol Custer36
Autopsy Technician Floyd Riebe37
Autopsy Technician Paul O’Connor38
Secret Service Agent Clint Hill—who later “changed his mind”—seemed exceedingly clear about the matter when he originally testified. At the time, testifying right after the assassination when one would think his memory would be vividly fresh, he described to the Warren Commission:
The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car. His brain was exposed. There was blood and bits of brain all over the entire rear portion of the car. Mrs. Kennedy was completely covered with blood. There was so much blood you could not tell if there had been any other wound or not, except for the one large gaping wound in the right rear portion of the head.39
So don’t look now, but there seems to be a very large elephant in the room, folks. If our government can take a very clear statement like that and try to spin it a different way in a lame attempt to prove that it isn’t true, then that’s a serious indication that something is really rotten in Denmark and that, for some reason, dark forces are at work here.
The entry wound that caused all that massive damage at the back of the President’s head was also clearly observed by the doctors:
Multiple witnesses, who were medically and otherwise credible, confirmed that they clearly saw an entry wound in the FRONT of President Kennedy’s head, in his upper right forehead at the hairline.40
Now let’s look at the blood evidence. Experts can look at blood spatter and determine from that what took place.
Sherry Fiester was a Certified Senior Crime Scene Investigator and Court-Recognized Expert in Crime Scene Reconstruction and Blood Spatter Analysis. She conducted an extremely detailed and professional reconstruction of the crime scene and here is the point-blank conclusion of that study:
The head injury to President Kennedy was the result of a single gunshot fired from the front of the President.41
That sure sounds pretty damn solid to me. She did say “front,” didn’t she?
Additional blood spatter evidence is further indicative of a shot from the front. There were two Dallas motorcycle officers riding flank-left-rear to the President’s car, meaning that the placement
of the outriders were slightly behind the rear wheels of the limousine on the left hand side of the car. The officers were Bobby Hargis and B. J. Martin, and their windshields were sprayed with the blood and brain matter of President Kennedy. It has been established that the limo had slowed considerably after the first shots—some said almost to a complete stop—so the dramatic spatter backwards and to the left of the car was not the result of the forward motion of the vehicle, but the result of directional gravity from the source of the shot, which would place the gunshot as coming from the right-front of the car. Bobby Hargis was riding closest to the car, behind it on the left side, and this is how he described what happened:
When President Kennedy straightened back up in the car the bullet hit him in the head, the one that killed him and it seemed like his head exploded, and I was splattered with blood and brain, and kind of a bloody water . . . well, at the time it sounded like the shots were right next to me.42
Officer B. J. Martin, who was riding even farther to President Kennedy’s left, in tandem with Officer Hargis, was also sprayed with blood and brain matter immediately after the head shot to the President.43
So the blood spatter evidence also shows us that shots came from the front; all proving through forensic findings that President Kennedy was actually struck by at least two bullets from the front—one in the right side of his forehead and one in the throat. And, since we know that shots also came from the rear of the motorcade, any shot from the front is proof of a conspiracy, as shots from both the front and rear necessitate that there were multiple shooters. Case closed. But hang on, because we’ve still got 62 more.
The Warren Commission tried to explain away that blood spatter and backward movement of the President’s body with some medical semantics, which I’ll get into on the next entry. They had to come up with something, because it turned out that there was a home movie made of it that day that vividly depicted the violent backward motion and the backward spray of blood and brain matter.
They Killed Our President Page 2