45 Years After RFK Assassination Retrospective: Who Killed RFK?

On June 5, 1968, U.S. Senator from New York and 1968 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was mysteriously gunned down in California. And in his 1976 book Heartland, comedian Mort Sahl made the following reference to RFK:

"Two personal friends of Robert Kennedy, one of whom had been his roommate in college, at the request of the Kennedy family, got in touch with Jim Garrison and attended the preliminary hearing of Clay Shaw. They said that Bobby would wait until he was in a position to be relatively assured of the Presidency and then would get deeper into the case and get the guys who killed Jack. Guys. They used the plural. Garrison said to me later he'll be dead if he wins the California primary..."

Coincidentally, a 1975 essay by Allard Lowenstein which appeared in Government By Gunplay: Assassination Conspiracy Theories from Dallas to Today, entitled "Who Killed Robert Kennedy?", observed:

"This year several Stern magazine reporters conducted an extended investigation. Stern is a leading...German newsweekly. Their findings were detailed in a cover story entitled, `The Real Murderer [of Robert Kennedy] is Still Free.' Those findings were not reported in the United States."

(Aquarian Weekly 6/5/96)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: NBC's 1967 `Case Of Jim Garrison' Special Revisited

On June 19, 1967 NBC broadcast a 60-minute special on New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's investigation of the JFK assassination, entitled "The JFK Conspiracy: The Case of Jim Garrison," but "only allowed Garrison to be interviewed for less than two minutes," according to The Kennedy Conspiracy by Paris Flammonde. On July 13, 1967, however, Garrison was finally allowed by NBC to speak to tv viewers for a half-hour and he said the following:


"...Many things that some of the major news agencies have been telling you are untrue...Although you are citizens of the United States, information concerning the cause of the death of your President [JFK] has been withheld from you...President Kennedy was not killed by a lone assassin...There has been, and continues to be, a concerted effort to keep you from learning these facts...

"...The conclusion of the Warren Report, that President Kennedy was killed by a lone assassin, is a fairy tale.

"...This country was not built on the idea that a handful of nobles, whether located in our federal agencies, in Washington, D.C., or in the ews agencies in New York, should decide what was good for the people to know, and what they should not know. This is a totalitarian concept, which presumes that the leaders of our federal government, and the men in control of the powerful press media, constitute a special elite..."

As long ago as May 16, 19067, Garrison told a New Orleans newspaper reporter the following:

"The point is that Clay Shaw and Lee Oswald have the same post-office box number in their address book and this is, in coded form, the unpublished phone number of Jack Ruby in 1963...

"We have had evidence for some time that in Dallas, Texas, Jack Ruby was working for the CIA at the same time Lee Oswald was working for the CIA here (in New Orleans).

"This means that the CIA well knew that these two men knew each other. We also have evidence that Lee Oswald was not the only man in Dealey Plaza who was an employee of the CIA and now we have found the phone number of the CIA in front of Lee Oswald's address book..."

In an October 1967 Playboy magazine itnerview, Garrison also observed that "there are also 51 CIA documents classified toop secret in the National Archives pertaining to Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby" and "in practice, any documents the CIA wanted classified wasa shunted into the Archives without any examination by the sleeping beauties on the [Warren] Commission..."

(Downtown 4/95)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Jack Ruby's CIA Connection?

The man who who eliminated Lee Oswald on nationwide tv on November 24, 1963, Jack Ruby, was apparently connected to the CIA, according to the now-deceased former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. In the October 1967 issue of Playboy magazine, for instance, Garrison stated:

"Ruby appears to have been the CIA's bagman for a wide variety of anti-Castro adventures. In this connection, let me point out that one of the documents classified top secret in the Archives is a CIA file entitled `The Activities of Jack Ruby.' Perhaps this will become a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in September 2038."

As early as 1967, The Kennedy Conspiracy: An Uncommissioned Report On The Jim Garrison Investigation by Paris Flammonde noted the following:

"District Attorney Jim Garrison bases his belief that Ruby was involved in a well-organized conspiracy to kill President John F. Kennedy on the following points: (1) Ruby knew Oswald; (2) Ruby knew Clay Shaw; (3) Ruby knew David Ferrie; (4) he was involved in smuggling guns to anti-Castro rebels in Cuba; (5) he was intimately involved with right-wing anti-Castro exile groups in Dallas; (6) he was a friend of General Walker; (7) he had indicated in letters smuggled out of prison that he belonged to a conspiracy; (8) he was acquainted before the Kennedy conspiracy with Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit; and (9) he was a part-time employee of the Central Intelligence Agency."

(Downtown 2/15/95)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Jack Ruby's Nov. 22, 1963 Movements

According to former New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison's book, On The Trail Of The Assassins, "approximately an hour before the arrival of Kennedy's motorcade, Jack Ruby...was observed alongside the grassy knoll, unloading a man carrying a rifle in a case" and "the statement of Julia Ann Mercer, the witness to that event, was altered by the F.B.I. to make it appear that she had been unable to identify Ruby as the man."

According to Who Was Jack Ruby? by Seth Kantor, at the very moment JFK was shot, Ruby was "five blocks away" on the second floor of the Dallas Morning News building, complaining about the anti-JFK advertisements which, the newpaper had published that morning. According to the same book:

"...Some 10 minutes after the shooting, advertising salesman Richard L. Saunders encountered Ruby, standing numbly amid the confusion, uncharacteristically subdued and pale. It was Ruby's quietness that startled Saunders. He had known Ruby several years and always had found him to be an excessive talker, but Ruby was no more than barely responding to comments everyone else seemed to be making about how terrible the situation was."

Kantor also noted that "An hour after the shooting of President Kennedy I encountered Jack Ruby at Parkland Hospital" but "the Warren Report declared that `Kantor probably did not see Ruby at Parkland Hospital'" around the time JFK's death was confirmed.

(Downtown 3/4/92)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: The FBI's Pre-JFK Assassination Telex

According to On The Trail Of The Assassins by Jim Garrison, "five days before the assassination the New Orleans F.B.I. office received a telexed warning that an attempt would be made to assasinate the President in Dallas at the end of the week" [in November 1963] and "shortly after the assassination the telex message was removed from the file drawer of the New Orleans office of the Bureau."

(Downtown 3/4/92)

50 Years Since JFK Assassination Retrospective: Who Changed JFK's November 22, 1963 Motorcade Route?

According to On The Trail Of The Assassins by Jim Garrison:

"The last-minute change in the parade route in Dallas was highly suspicious and raised serious questions about the mayor of Dallas, Earle Cabell, and his brother, former Deputy Director of the C.I.A., Charles Cabell, who had been fired over the Bay of Pigs fiasco [of 1961]. The parade route change, along with other leads pointing to the C.I.A., had been covered up neatly by the Warren Commission and its point man for intelligence issues, former C.I.A. Director Allen Dulles."

Former New Orleans D.A. Garrison also recalled that:

"The original route scheduled for the motorcade did not go right past the Texas School Book Depository where Oswald had been working...In fact, as late as the morning of the assassination the motorcade route was still diagrammed on the front page of the Dallas Morning News as continuing on Main Street to the center of Dealy Plaza."

Coincidentally, Garrison noted in his book that when he "pulled open my middle desk drawer and took out a copy of the Dallas Morning News front page that had been introduced as a `Warren Commission exhibit,'" he discovered that "on five-sixths of the Dallas Morning News where the diagram of the motorcade route was supposed to be" there "was nothing but a large square of solid gray."

On The Trail Of The Assassins also noted that although "there are also people who say that a map of the amended route was published sometime before November 22," coincidentally, "no such document has surfaced."

After JFK fired C.I.A. Deputy Director Charles Pearre Cabell, "General Cabell's subsequent hatred of John Kennedy became an open secret in Washington," according to Garrison. As Garrison also noted in his book:

"In most countries, a powerful individual who has been in open conflict with a national leader who was later assassinated would receive at least a modicum of attention in the course of the posthumous inquiry...Certainly a powerful individual who also held a top position in a major espionage apparatus and had been at odds with the departed leader would be high on the list of suspects."

Yet, according to Garrison, "General Cabell, who fit the description perfectly, was never even called as a witness before the Warren Commission."

(Downtown 2/26/92)