Cars associated with the assassination. JFK’s presidential limousine was rebuilt and is now on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan, www.hfmgv.org/museum/limousines.aspx. The ambulance that drove Oswald to Parkland Hospital after he was shot can be found at Historic Auto Attractions, Roscoe, Illinois, http://historicautoattractions.com/Exhibits.html. In 2012, the Cadillac hearse owned by O’Neal Funeral Home that carried JFK’s body accompanied by Jackie from Parkland Hospital to Air Force One was sold to a private collector for $176,000 at Barrett-Jackson’s annual auction in Scottsdale, Arizona, www.barrett-jackson.com/application/onlinesubmission/lotdetails.aspx?ln=1293&aid=443. In 2011, this auction house also sold to a private collector the “alleged” ambulance that carried JFK’s coffin from Air Force One to the Bethesda Naval Hospital. However, the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum stated that the car was a fake, the real vehicle having been donated to the institution in 1980 and then destroyed in 1986. The car in which Wesley Frazer drove Oswald to work is on display at Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Odditorium in San Antonio, Texas, www.ripleysnewsroom.com/worlds-largest-and-most-interactive-ripleys-believe-it-or-not-odditorium-opens-in-san-antonio.
Jack Ruby’s revolver. In 1991, this gun, which was then in the possession of his brother, Earl Ruby, was sold for $220,000 by Herman Darvick Autograph Auctions in New York to a Florida real estate developer. It was offered by him in Las Vegas in 2008 through Guernsey’s Auctioneers and Brokers, but it was not sold, failing to meet the reserve price of more than $1 million, although at the same auction, the hat that Ruby wore when he shot Oswald and some other artifacts were sold. “The Pugliese Pop Culture Collection,” Guernsey’s Auction Catalog, March 15, 2008.
The flags on the JFK limousine. These flags were originally given to Evelyn Lincoln and were acquired in 2005 by the Zaricor Flag Collection, for $450,000 at the sale by Guernsey Auctioneers in New York City. “John F. Kennedy; The Robert L. White Collection,” Guernsey’s Auction Catalog, Dec. 15, 2005, www.flagcollection.com/itemdetails-print.php?CollectionItem_ID=2546.
Signed 1963 official White House Christmas cards. Before they left for Dallas, Jack and Jackie began to inscribe Christmas cards to be mailed upon their return from Dallas. Many of these cards, which have a picture of a crèche nativity display in the East Room of the White House, were in the possession of JFK secretary Evelyn Lincoln and were later given to Kennedy collector Robert White. Several of these cards have been sold individually at auction and continue to emerge in the marketplace.
JFK’s last signature. It is believed that Kennedy inscribed his last documented signature when he signed the November 22, 1963, edition of the Dallas Morning News for a maid at the Hotel Texas. This newspaper was sold at Heritage Auctions in Dallas in 2009 for $38,837. See “20th Century Icons Autographs,” Heritage Auction Catalog, Nov. 6–7, 2009.
Signed first-day covers (JFK commemorative stamps). Many of the principals involved in the Kennedy administration, especially participants in various events (such as Judge Sarah Hughes and the Secret Services agents), signed envelopes with the first-day issue November 22, 1964, postmark of the JFK commemorative stamp.
Controversial commercially released items considered to be beyond bad taste. In 1999, a board game, Conspiracyland (a takeoff of the children’s game Candy Land) was sold by the “Patsy Brothers Company” in Dallas. This game’s box had cartoon drawings of Jack and Jackie in her pink suit dancing before a Book Depository gingerbread house and the promotional description, “For kooks of all ages. 2 to 4 skeptical players. Average playing time: 6 seconds.” In 2004, a computer game, JFK Reloaded, produced by Traffic Software in Scotland, allowed participants to play the role of Oswald and shoot at Kennedy from the sixth-floor window in Dealey Plaza. The participant was then able to keep score on the accuracy and number of shots fired.
292 Jacqueline Kennedy’s pink suit is stored at the National Archives and is unavailable to be viewed, sealed until 2103. For autopsy photographs, X-rays, and other similar material, permission must be obtained by JFK’s family through their representative, Paul Kirk. Most of the photographs, documents, and other major Warren Commission exhibits and artifacts that are at the National Archives and Records Administration can be viewed online at www.archives.gov/research/jfk.
293 JFK’s brain. See Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Panel Review of the Photographs, X-Ray Films, Documents and Other Evidence Pertaining to the Fatal Wounding of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas, 1968.
295 To date, the most thorough review of the numerous conspiracy theories can be found in Bugliosi’s work, Reclaiming History, wherein he devotes almost five hundred pages of text to this subject. Since the time the JFK assassination occurred, the basic conspiratorial motifs largely have remained the same. Recent books further amplify these theories. Some works focus on single theories, while others weave or provide multiple conspiracy views of the assassination. For a summary of the various conspiracy motifs, see Harold Hayes, ed., Smiling through the Apocalypse: Esquire’s History of the Sixties (New York: McCall Publishing Company, 1969), which includes a reprinting of the article “Sixty Versions of the Kennedy Assassination,” Edward J. Epstein, pp. 467–505; Tom Miller, The Assassination Please Almanac (Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1977); or Carl Oglesby, The JFK Assassination: The Facts and the Theories (New York: Signet, 1992). Entire books have focused on certain aspects of these recurring themes. A small sampling of this vast conspiratorial literature includes:
Russians/Communists/KGB. Almost immediately after the assassination, U.S. government officials were concerned that there was a Soviet plot to kill the president. Oswald’s activities in the Soviet Union have been the primary subject of several works.
Right wing. Because of the full page welcome mr. kennedy to dallas ad in the Dallas Morning News, as well as the wanted for treason handbills, the right wing was a major suspect in having a hand in the assassination. For an early work, see Morris A. Bealle, Guns of the Regressive Right, or How to Kill a President (Washington, DC: Columbia Publishing Company, 1965).
Mafia/organized crime. See David E. Scheim, Contract on America: The Mafia Murders of John and Robert Kennedy (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1988); G. Robert Blakey and Richard N. Billings, The Plot to Kill the President (New York: Times Books, 1981); and David E. Kaiser, The Road to Dallas (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008).
CIA: Because many perceive the CIA to be the least cooperative agency with regard to the assassination, and with many files still being withheld, this has been fertile ground for conspiracy theories. See John Newman, Oswald and the CIA (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995); Michael Canfield and Alan J. Weberman, Coup d’État in America: The CIA and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York: Third Press, 1975); and Mark Lane, Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991).
Cuba. See Gus Russo, Live by the Sword: The Secret War Against Castro and the Death of JFK (Baltimore: Bancroft Press, 1998); Lamar Waldron, Ultimate Sacrifice: John and Robert Kennedy, the Plan for a Coup in Cuba, and the Murder of JFK (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005); and Warren Hinkle and William W. Turner, Deadly Secrets: The CIA-Mafia War against Castro and the Assassination of J.F.K. (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992).
FBI/Hoover. See Mark North, Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1991).
Business/Wall Street/Texas oilmen. For an early treatment of this subject, see Alvin H. Gershenson, Kennedy and Big Business (Beverly Hills, CA: Book Company of America, 1964).
LBJ. See early works, such as Bernard M. Bane, The Bane in Kennedy’s Existence (Boston: BMB Publishing Company, 1967); Joachim Joesten, The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson (London: Peter Dawnay, 1968), and his self-published mimeographic work, The Case Against Lyndon B. Johnson in the Assassination of President Kennedy (Munich, 1967). More recent books include: Barr McClella
n, Blood, Money and Power: How LBJ Killed JFK (New York: Hanover House, 2003); and Phillip F. Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011).
Multiple/fake/second Oswalds. See books such as Richard H. Popkin, The Second Oswald (New York: Avon, 1966); Michael Eddowes, The Oswald File (New York: Clarkson Potter, 1977); and John Armstrong, Harvey & Lee: How the CIA Framed Oswald (Arlington, TX: Quasar, 2003); and the video release of Jack White, The Many Faces of Lee Harvey Oswald: Unmasking the Secret Agent Who Was Framed as Kennedy’s Killer (JFK Videos, 1991).
Multiple gunmen. For one of the early works that focused on the number of shots, see Josiah Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination (New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1967). One of the early theorists was Robert B. Cutler, who self-published numerous works regarding multiple assassins, including: The Flight of CE 399: Evidence of Conspiracy (Beverly, MA: Omni-Print, 1969), and Two Flightpaths: Evidence of Conspiracy (Manchester, MA: Cutler Designs, 1971). So too is Raymond Marcus, The Bastard Bullet: A Search for Legitimacy for Commission Exhibit 399 (Los Angeles: Rendell Publications, 1966). Though originally self-published in very rare signed and numbered limited spiral-bound editions, these works have been reprinted numerous times.
Secret Service. These theories have been alluded to in several conspiracy works. Perhaps one of the more unusual theories appeared in Bonar Menninger, Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992), accusing a Secret Service agent of accidentally firing the shot that killed Kennedy. Needless to say, that Secret Service agent sued the publishers. While the suit was dismissed on technical grounds, the retired Secret Service agent settled with St. Martin’s Press for an undisclosed sum.
296 From November 22, 1963, until today, there actually have been over ten governmental, congressional, and presidential commission investigations that have partially or completely covered aspects of the Kennedy assassination. In addition, there have been numerous Freedom of Information Act lawsuits and requests, producing thousands of additional documents. While there have been some inconsistencies and new documents have emerged, the essential findings and conclusions of the Warren Commission have stood the test of time and have not been contradicted. There is no credible evidence of any conspiracy, and that Lee Harvey Oswald alone did not fire his rifle from the sixth floor of the Book Depository on November 22, 1963. The major government investigations include:
The initial FBI Investigation and multivolume report, December 9, 1963.
Warren Commission. Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the subsequent Hearings Before the President’s Commission on the Assassination on President John F. Kennedy, 26 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964).
National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, vol. 8, Assassination and Political Violence (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1970).
Several congressional hearings and reports in the 1960s and 1970s on the preservation of evidence of the Warren Commission and on FBI oversight.
U.S. Rockefeller Commission, Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975).
U.S. Senate, 94th Congress, 2nd Session, Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities in the United States (Sen. Rpt. 94-755, Church Committee Report), bk. 5, The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1976). This multivolume report also includes several hearing volumes.
U.S. House of Representatives, 95th Congress, 2nd Session, Final Report of the Select Commission on Assassinations, and the accompanying twelve hearing and appendix volumes on the JFK Assassination (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1979).
Attorney General Ramsey Clark, Panel Review of the Photographs, X-Ray Films, Documents and Other Evidence Pertaining to the Fatal Wounding of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas (1968).
National Research Council, Commission on Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Resources, Report of the Committee on Ballistics Acoustics (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 1982).
Assassination Records Review Board, Final Report (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1998), along with the House and Senate hearing volumes and committee reports that created the board and were published by the U.S. Government Printing Office in 1992.
297 There has yet to be published a comprehensive scholarly historiography of the JFK assassination conspiracy literature. Although there have been more than thirty freestanding bibliographies on JFK assassination books, pamphlets, and articles, no one source is complete, and many of the early works contained numerous errors. Also, unlike the Lincoln assassination, while there are several JFK assassination specialty collections being amassed, especially the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, as well as a few university libraries, there is no institutional library whose collection comes even close to completeness.
Within months after the assassination and before the release of the Warren Commission Report, there were three major hardcover works, all published outside the United States: Nerin Gun, Red Roses from Texas (London: Frederick Muller, 1964; also published in Italian, French, and Chilean Spanish); Thomas Buchanan, Who Killed Kennedy? (London: Secker & Warburg, 1964; also published in a few foreign languages as well as in America in hardcover and paperback); and Joachim Joesten, Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy? (London: Merlin Press, 1964; also published in the United States in hardcover and paperback, and revised after the release of the Warren Report). Joesten became a prolific writer on the JFK assassination, producing several additional books in German, French, and English, all published outside the United States, as well as a self-published newsletter and mimeographed essays printed in English from his home in Germany.
Immediately after the Warren Commission Report was published, thousands of conspiracy-inclined authors produced works, and bestsellers emerged in every decade and every generation. In 1965, Harold Weisberg self-published in Hyattstown, Maryland, his Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report (reprinted by Dell the following year), and the floodgates opened. Weisberg also turned out to be a prolific writer on the JFK and Martin Luther King Jr. assassinations, self-publishing, publishing revised editions, and commercially publishing more than ten works on the assassination and creating many more unpublished manuscripts. Upon his death, the Weisberg archives were donated to Hood College, and many of the holdings are available online: http://hood.edu/library/specialcollections/weisberg-archive.html.
The other early writer who should be mentioned is Mark Lane. His article “Oswald Innocent? A Legal Brief” was published in the December 19, 1963, edition of the National Guardian, and since the subsequent request by Marguerite Oswald to represent her son before the Warren Commission, Lane has been immersed in writing about the JFK assassination and similar subjects. Lane wrote the runaway bestseller, Rush to Judgment: A Critique of the Warren Commission’s Inquiry into the Murders of President John F. Kennedy, Officer J.D. Tippit, and Lee Harvey Oswald (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966). He also produced a documentary movie based on the book, along with a long-playing phonographic record. This was followed by his book A Citizen’s Dissent: Mark Lane Replies (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1968). He wrote a work of fiction with Donald Freed, Executive Action: Assassination of a Head of State (New York: Dell, 1973) and cowrote the screenplay that was made into the movie, Executive Action. In the following years, he penned two more books on the JFK assassination: Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991), and Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011). Lane created “The Citizens Commission on Inquiry” and was on the lecture circuit for
decades. Before the House Select Committee on Assassination, Lane also happened to represent James Earl Ray, the assassin of Martin Luther King Jr. This resulted in the publication of his book with Dick Gregory, Code Name Zorro: The Murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977). Perhaps even more coincidental, Lane was the legal counsel to Jim Jones in Guyana when the People’s Temple mass suicide occurred in 1978. Somehow Lane was able to escape the carnage of this horrific event. At the same time, Representative Leo Ryan, visiting Jonestown, became the first congressman killed while conducting official business while in office. This misadventure resulted in one more Lane book, The Strongest Poison (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1980). Mark Lane is only one of the many conspiracy theorists that have written several books on the assassination of JFK, joining the ranks of individuals such as Robert B. Cutler, Penn Jones Jr., Robert J. Groden, and others.
299 Jackie’s quotes. White Camelot interview.
299 For Jacqueline Kennedy’s commentary, see the Theodore White Camelot interview notes; the December 6, 1963 issue of Life magazine, and the November 17, 1964 issue of Look magazine.
INDEX
The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created. To locate a specific passage, please use your e-book reader’s search tools.
Abt, John, 196, 200, 215
Aftermath of an Execution (Marguerite Oswald), 263
Air Force One
appearance of, 65
in Dallas, 94–95, 96, 98, 107–8
and details of JFK trip to Dallas, 67
and flight to Texas, 65–66
in Fort Worth, 81, 82
in Houston, 77
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