Crossfire

by Jim Marrs

  Therefore, when Kennedy and his brother attorney general Robert Kennedy began to wage war on organized crime, to the mob and the industries it controlled and the banks that handled their money this quickly became a matter of self-defense, the strongest motivation for killing.

  Officials of the FBI and CIA likewise feared the Kennedys, who had come to realize how dangerously out of control these agencies had become. The anti-Castro Cubans felt betrayed by Kennedy because of his orders stopping US military assistance to the Bay of Pigs invaders and were quite willing to support an assassination.

  However, no matter how violent or powerful these crime-intelligence-industrial cliques might have been, they never would have moved against this nation’s chief executive without the approval of—or at the very least the neutralization of—the US military and its greatest political supporter, vice president Lyndon Baines Johnson, former chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee.

  Already angered by Kennedy’s liberal domestic policies, the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and his signing of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with the Soviet Union, top military brass undoubtedly were incensed in late 1963 when Kennedy let it be known that he planned to withdraw all US military personnel from Vietnam by the end of 1965. The military leadership turned against him.

  The stage was set. General Charles Cabell, the CIA deputy director Kennedy fired after the Bay of Pigs, was back in the Pentagon, and his brother, Earle Cabell, was mayor of Dallas.

  It was widely rumored that Vice President Johnson—long associated with dirty politics, gamblers, and defense officials, and facing jail because of scandal—was to be dropped from the Democratic ticket in 1964. Texas oilmen, staunch friends of Johnson and the military-industrial complex, were dismayed that Kennedy was talking about doing away with the lucrative oil-depletion allowance.

  International bankers were shocked when Kennedy ordered the Treasury Department to print its own money, rather than distributing interest-bearing Federal Reserve notes. Soldiers, mobsters, and conniving businessmen feared their apple cart was about to be upset by this youthful president.

  So the decision was made at the highest level of the American business-banking-politics-military-crime power structure that should anything happen to Kennedy, it would be viewed as a blessing for the nation, and certainly for them.

  And simply voting him out of office wouldn’t suffice. After all, what was to stop someone from carrying on his policies? Two more Kennedys—Robert and Edward—were waiting in the wings for their turn at the presidency. A Kennedy “dynasty” was in place.

  Therefore, the decision was made to eliminate John F. Kennedy by means of a public execution for the same reason criminals are publicly executed—to serve as a deterrent to anyone considering following in his footsteps.

  Unlike the Roman senator Brutus who participated in the stabbing of Caesar, the men at the top of this consensus didn’t even have to risk getting their hands bloody.

  Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty—a former Pentagon-CIA liaison officer and longtime assassination researcher—explained that most assassinations are set in motion not so much by a specific plan to kill as by efforts to remove or relax the protection around a target.

  Prouty noted:

  No one has to direct an assassination—it happens. The active role is played secretly by permitting it to happen. That was why President Kennedy was killed. He was not murdered by some lone gunman or by some limited conspiracy, but by the breakdown of the protective system that should have made an assassination impossible. . . . Once insiders knew that he would not be protected, it was easy to pick the day and the place. . . . All the conspirators had to do was let the right “mechanics” [professional assassins] know where Kennedy would be and when and, most importantly, that the usual precautions would not have been made and that escape would be facilitated. This is the greatest single clue to the assassination—Who had the power to call off or reduce the usual security precautions that are always in effect whenever a president travels? Castro did not kill Kennedy, nor did the CIA. The power source that arranged that murder was on the inside. It had the means to reduce normal security and permit the choice of a hazardous route. It also had the continuing power to cover that crime for . . . years.

  Operational orders most probably originated with ranking members of the government elite, men such as Allen Dulles and Cord Meyer, and military officers like Generals Charles Cabell and Curtis LeMay and Johnson’s military aide, Colonel Howard Burris. Actual planning was tasked to men knowledgeable in the ways of state assassins, such as the CIA’s William Harvey, David Atlee Phillips, and General Edward Lansdale of Operation Mongoose, that nexus of the military, mobsters, CIA operatives, and anti-Castro Cubans. Organized-crime chieftains such as Carlos Marcello and his associates Santos Trafficante and Sam Giancana were contacted. They already were involved with the CIA and provided personnel and logistics.

  But these mob bosses were smart. They realized the consequences if their role in Kennedy’s death should ever become known. Therefore, they insisted that elements within the government be involved. Several separate assassination plots were initiated.

  A world-class assassin was recruited—perhaps Michael Victor Mertz, the shadowy Frenchman with both crime and intelligence connections, or even an unknown but competent shooter like John Christian.

  Slowly, as the true assassination plot began to come together, word must have reached the ears of J. Edgar Hoover, a power unto himself with plenty of cause to hate the Kennedy brothers. Hoover was in contact with his close friend Lyndon Johnson and with Texas oilmen such as H. L. Hunt and Clint Murchinson of Dallas. His agents and informers were in daily contact with mob figures.

  Operatives from both intelligence and the mob were recruited. Many were like the CIA’s David Morales, Watergate burglar Frank Sturgis, and David Ferrie in that they had connections to criminal circles as well as to US intelligence and anti-Castro Cubans. It was a military-style operation in that overall knowledge of the plot was kept on a strict need-to-know basis. Many people on the lower end of the conspiracy truthfully could say they didn’t know exactly what happened.

  To distract public attention from the real conspirators a scapegoat—or patsy—was needed. Enter Lee Harvey Oswald, a patriotic young man who followed the tradition of his father and brothers by voluntarily joining the US military where apparently he was recruited into US intelligence, first through the Office of Naval Intelligence and then on to the CIA. Whether the Dallas Oswald was a Soviet agent or a US agent posing as a procommunist, he was the perfect patsy for the assassination. As an intelligence agent, he would have followed orders and easily could have been manipulated into incriminating himself as the assassin. Furthermore, his position as a spy would have prevented the Russians from proclaiming the truth of the assassination to their world, since they could hardly be expected to admit their knowledge of Oswald.

  Once the idea of conspiracy is acknowledged, questions of who fired a gun, from what location, and how many times become irrelevant. Much more important are the questions of who benefited from the assassination and had the ability to cover up the truth.

  It appears there may have been two serious slip-ups for the conspirators. First, it appears unlikely that as many as three shots were intended. More likely the assassination was to have been constructed so that it would appear that Kennedy was killed by one lucky shot from the Depository. The conspirators, of course, would have been prepared to fire another volley if necessary. Second, it is equally likely that their scapegoat, Oswald, was to have been killed by a conspirator during return fire by Kennedy’s security men. However, there was no return fire and Oswald managed to slip away from the Depository.

  When the shooting started, confusion was rampant. No one except the conspirators knew what was happening, and the Dallas police radio channel used for the presidential motorcade security was blocked for more than eight minutes due to an open microphone.

  The true assassins simply strolled
away, after dumping their rifles into nearby car trunks or passing them to confederates. One weapon may have been hidden down a water drain pipe on the Grassy Knoll, as a section of the pipe collapsed many years later. It had been cut open but not welded when replaced and the city claimed no knowledge of this activity.

  Oswald may well have been exactly where he said he was during the shooting—safely out of sight in the downstairs lunchroom of the Depository. Perhaps he had been told to wait for a telephone call at that time. He may have strayed by briefly stepping up a short flight of stairs and peeking out the front door of the Depository where he was captured in the Altgens photograph.

  Oswald left the Depository and made his way to his South Oak Cliff rooming house, where he retrieved his pistol to defend himself. His landlady said that within minutes of his arrival, he hurried from his room after a Dallas police car stopped out front and beeped its horn twice. It now seems likely that it was Dallas patrolman J. D. Tippit who picked up Oswald around the corner from his rooming house and drove him to the Texas Theater, which explained why he was unseen en route.

  The slaying of Tippit may have played some part in this scheme to have Oswald killed, perhaps to eliminate co-conspirator Tippit or simply to anger Dallas police and cause itchy trigger fingers.

  Regardless, Tippit was killed by someone other than Oswald. Whoever shot Tippit meant to kill him, not simply escape a policeman. The HSCA determined that one shot was fired point-blank into his head, a coup de grâce.

  Oswald, who was given every opportunity to flee through a rear exit of the Texas Theater, instead was captured alive, creating a bad situation for the conspirators. Oswald could not be permitted to stand trial and possibly reveal his true connections.

  Jack Ruby—the mob’s “bag man” in Dallas and the man who apparently handled funds for the local activities of the assassination conspirators—received his orders to kill Oswald from organized-crime leaders eager to protect the secret of their contract, and there were no alternatives for a mob directive.

  The key to understanding the Oswald slaying is not that Ruby somehow knew when Oswald was to be transported from the police station, but rather that the Oswald transfer was delayed until Ruby was in position—thanks to mob influence in the Dallas Police Department, one of the nation’s most corrupt at that time. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that Ruby most likely entered the police basement down a back stairway with the assistance of one or more policemen.

  One shot and Oswald was dead. A cover-up began immediately, leaving only his mother to question the official version of the assassination.

  While this scenario can be disputed, it nevertheless represents the only narrative that conforms to all of the known facts.

  Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as president within two hours of the assassination.

  His first act as president was to violate the laws of his own state by ordering the removal of Kennedy’s body from Parkland Hospital over the objections of the Dallas County medical examiner who was required by law to conduct an inquest. By that evening, Johnson was exerting undue influence over the Dallas investigation both directly and through his aides.

  Within two weeks, Johnson had coerced a reluctant chief justice Earl Warren into heading a special presidential commission charged with finding Oswald alone guilty of the deed. The creation of the Warren Commission effectively blocked several other assassination investigations in both Texas and Washington.

  The Warren Commission, composed of captains of both intelligence and corporate business—with representative Gerald Ford spying on behalf of Hoover’s FBI—paid precious little attention to anything that did not tend to prove the “lone-nut assassin” theory. The Commission had no staff of independent investigators. It relied almost entirely on the FBI and CIA for information. Both agencies, along with the Secret Service, today have been officially chastised for concealing evidence from the two government investigations.

  Government investigators found a virtual smorgasbord of assassination evidence available in Dallas and New Orleans. By carefully selecting data that fit the official version of a lone gunman, they were able to present a believable—if untruthful—account of Kennedy’s death.

  Meanwhile, a documented campaign of intimidation of witnesses began in Dallas. Some were simply told to keep quiet while others died under unusual circumstances. While some of this suppression might be blamed on mob thugs, many people in Dallas have claimed that it was FBI agents who warned them not to talk about the assassination—an odd admonition since officially it was the work of just one troubled man. This theory was presented despite embarrassing evidence indicating Oswald was an informant for the FBI.

  There is now abundant evidence that Hoover’s FBI destroyed critical evidence in this case, suppressed other evidence, and intimidated witnesses. The FBI solely directed the verdict that Oswald acted alone.

  There was never a real cover-up of the assassination, only official pronouncements for the major mass media and lots of red herrings for diligent investigators.

  As long as the US government backed by a supportive Establishment and corporate media refuses to seek and reveal the truth of what happened on November 22, 1963, it will be up to individual Americans to cull through the mounds of Kennedy assassination material and find the elusive truth for themselves.

  Who done it? Powerful men in leadership positions within the major corporate-military-defense-intelligence communities and the bankers who fund them, along with associated organized-crime bosses, reached a consensus that Kennedy was a danger to the status quo and had to be eliminated. Their faithful agents manipulated Mafia-Cuban-CIA pawns to kill the chief.

  President Kennedy was killed in a military-style ambush orchestrated by elements within the US government that included the military with the active assistance of organized crime.

  Pressure from the top thwarted any truthful investigation.

  It was an American coup d’état.

  This is no theory, which is informed speculation based on supposition. If something is provable, it is no longer a theory. The information presented within this book substantiates the fact that in 1963 US government policies were changed through an act of violence.

  Even today there is still pressure from the top of the American power structure to keep the lid on this sordid affair. Many officials who continue to obscure the Kennedy case played no part in the assassination conspiracy. They simply do not want to alert the American public to the corruption found in the interconnections between government, big business, the military, intelligence, and the mob. It might prove bad for business.

  What then is the legacy of president John F. Kennedy? The fact is that we will never know. His presidency always will be remembered, not for what he did, but for what he might have done.

  But it may be worth considering what kind of America we might have today if President Kennedy had lived. Imagine the United States if there had been no divisive Vietnam War, with its attendant demonstrations, riots, deaths, and loss of faith in government. There may not have been the scandals of Watergate, other political assassinations, or the Iran-Contra Pentagon-CIA attempt at a “secret government.” No 9/11 attacks with the ensuing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. No American “Reich” with military operations spanning the globe. Détente with communist Russia and China might have come years earlier, saving hundreds of millions of wasted defense dollars—dollars that could have been put to use caring for the needy and cleaning up the environment. Picture a nation where no organized-crime syndicate gained control over such divergent areas of national life as drugs, gambling, labor unions, politicians, and even toxic waste disposal.

  Is it possible to consider that we might have had a nation where peace and prosperity were achieved without the need for a massive military buildup, or that we might have experienced a kinder and gentler nation all along?

  John F. Kennedy was no superman. Today there seems to be a movement to focus attention on the “morality”
of his private life. But history will eventually record that Kennedy truly believed he had the best interests of his nation at heart. He wanted to lead America forward into a peaceful and prosperous future.

  Kennedy was in the mold of Mikhail Gorbachev, complete with his own American brand of glasnost, or openness with the public. But he was premature. America—at least the backstage rulers of America—was not ready for such innovation.

  The emperor has no clothes on—or in this case, American business and political emperors wear bloodstained clothing—but no one of any prominence wants to be the first to say so.

  Members of Kennedy’s inner circle also came to understand what had really happened. But this knowledge came too late. The proof had been taken up and they realized the extent of the power arrayed against them. Some kept their peace, some soon retired from government, and others left the country.

  No one was closer to President Kennedy and his work than his secretary Evelyn Lincoln. She was at his elbow constantly, yet no one in America can recall seeing a nationwide interview with her. This is probably because, as she wrote in a 1994 letter, “it is my belief that there was a conspiracy. . . . These five conspirators, in my opinion, were Lyndon B. Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, the Mafia, the CIA and the Cubans in Florida.”

  Robert Kennedy also came to understand the tremendous power behind the events in Dallas. On June 3, 1968, just two days before his own assassination, the younger Kennedy told close friends, “I now fully realize that only the powers of the presidency will reveal the secrets of my brother’s death.”

  He obviously had come to realize that the truth of John Kennedy’s death could come only after Robert Kennedy gained control over the FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and the Pentagon—all of which had become powers unto themselves.