JFK, MLK, RFK, 50 Years of Suppressed History: New Evidence on Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy.
Failures to Confront the Unspeakable, and The Way Ahead. Part I
January 21, 2019. Martin Luther King Day
First published by GR on November 15, 2013 coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963).
April 4, 2018 is the 50th Anniversary of Martin Luther King‘s Passing.
June 6, 2018 is the Anniversary of the Passing of Robert F. Kennedy,
Their Legacy will live forever.
***
In the last 50 years there have been
two major threats to life on our planet. The first, the nuclear arms
race and its near disaster of 1962, was narrowly averted by President
John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert Kennedy, who then set a course
for peace.
The second, the ticking climate bomb
on its short “business as usual” fuse, has no solution in sight. (PART
II of this essay forthcoming)
In both cases unseen forces have
blocked a survival response to incalculable danger. We will examine
these forces and suggest a way forward, modeled partially on action
taken by JFK to avert nuclear war.
Mind is the Master power that moulds and makes,
And Man is Mind, and evermore he takes
The tool of Thought, and, shaping what he wills,
Brings forth a thousand joys, a thousand ills: —
He thinks in secret, and it comes to pass:
Environment is but his looking-glass.
James Allen,1902
I. Introduction
Most people under 60 will not remember
the harrowing Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, when the world was brought
to the brink of nuclear war. With the US leading the long-range missile
race, short-range Soviet missiles had been quietly installed in Cuba.
Tension ignited when a US reconnaissance pilot was shot down over Cuba
and killed. Kennedy, opposed to a war with Cuba, feared that his
generals would overthrow him and escalate the crisis to a nuclear war
that they believed to be winnable.
In desperation Kennedy turned to urgent,
secret negotiations with his Cold War enemy, Premier Nikita
Khrushchev. Disaster was narrowly averted through the vital historical
meeting of October 27.[1]
Horrified by the event and under
pressure from senior advisors to pursue a first-strike capability,[2]
Kennedy made a decisive turn towards peace. He began urging the Nuclear
Test Ban Treaty and withdrawal from Viet Nam.
In June, 1963 he made an impassioned
plea at the American University to make peace with the Soviets: “If we
cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe
for diversity. In the final analysis, our most basic common link is
that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We
all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.”[3]
But he would not be long for this world,
for he had bitterly alienated the hawks who placed “winning the Cold
War” above the life of a President.
JFK’s November, 1963 assassination
unleashed nuclear roulette[4] to swagger and bluff its way into the
eighties, obstructing his vision for peace while the planet hung in the
balance.
Now, 50 years later, we again face a
global precipice that cries out for decisive action. A radical
transition to green energy must begin immediately to avert an
unstoppable slow-motion disaster.
Again hidden forces have been
obstructing a response. Since the Rio Summit in 1992, CO2 levels have
spiked towards disaster while the media have remained fixated on
pipeline and tanker routes.
Where is the human outcry for earth’s life-support? Why have we failed to seize control of our survival?
Trappist monk Thomas Merton figured it
out in the sixties. He coined the term “the unspeakable” during the
nuclear madness of the Cold War, to describe a vacuum that can be
utterly void of compassion and responsibility.[5]
This systemic moral abyss covertly
carries out CIA assassinations and the overthrow of foreign governments
while protecting senior officials from knowing too much, under the
doctrine of “plausible deniability.”
In failing to acknowledge and confront
the under-side of the state we have allowed the abyss to grow, as it did
in Hitler’s Germany.
Following JFK’s murder came the
assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, neither of
whom, we now know, were murdered by lone gunmen.
Each of these men looked into the void
and confronted the unspeakable in the name of peace and justice. Each
paid the final price.
To learn from history, and to be worthy of their sacrifices, we need to “go there” too.
President John F. Kennedy
“Our problems are
man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human
destiny is beyond human beings.” John F. Kennedy (1917-1963)
Widespread suspicion that JFK was killed
by elements within his own government, most particularly the CIA, has
long been fostered by films such as Oliver Stone’s 1991 JFK.
In 2009, Stone reviewed the extraordinary book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters:[6] “It
is the best account I have read of this tragedy and its significance.
It is a book that deserves the attention of all Americans; it is one of
those rare books that, by helping us understand our history, has the
power to change it.”[7]
On January 11, 2013, Robert Kennedy Jr.
told Charlie Rose in front of a large Dallas audience that his father,
Robert F. Kennedy (brother to JFK), privately believed the Warren
Commission was “a shoddy piece of craftsmanship,” and that “the evidence
at this point I think is very, very convincing that it was not a lone
gunman.”[8]
Kennedy said his father had “asked
Justice Department investigators to informally look into allegations
that the accused assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had received aid from the
Mafia, the CIA or other organizations. He said the staff members found
phone lists linking Jack Ruby, Oswald’s assassin, to organized crime
figures with ties to the CIA, convincing the elder Kennedy that there
was something to the allegations.”[9] Kennedy also praised the
scholarship of JFK and the Unspeakable.
The Rose interview was taped but not broadcast by the media, which evidently does not “go there.”
One man who “went there” in the sixties
was the young award-winning Dallas Deputy Sheriff, Roger Dean Craig, who
was on duty when JFK was killed. Craig, in a virtually unknown
interview following several attempts on his life, spoke clearly about
his orders that morning to watch but not offer security to the JFK
motorcade. Though Kennedy had been promised the greatest police
protection ever provided to a President, Craig reported surprisingly few
Dallas police: none riding beside the limousine, and none sitting on
the trunk to shield him.[10] The rifle Craig and other officers examined
in the Texas School Depository did not match the three spent
cartridges. Craig’s clear testimony and the tragic story of his ensuing
destruction is available online.[11]
A February 25, 2013 news story reports that Robert J. Groden, best-selling New York Times
author and forensic photographic consultant to the 1978 House Select
Committee on Assassinations, has been arrested or ticketed 81 times in
Dallas for lecturing at the site of JFK’s assassination. Each time he
was legally exonerated.[12] Groden, consultant to Oliver Stone’s film JFK, has written six books disproving the lone gunman evidence, and produced the virtually unknown 1993 documentary, JFK: The Case for Conspiracy.[13]
A 2011 study tells of a witness who went
into hiding for decades after testifying to the Warren Commission that
she was on the Depository stairs and did not see Lee Harvey Oswald at
the official time he was reported to have fled. She later found that
her testimony to the Commission had been revised.[14]
Much is being done to expose the real
murder of JFK. Now, at the 50th anniversary of his death, with 1,100
JFK assassination records still under wraps (in violation of the 1992
JFK Assassination Records Act), the Mary Ferrell Foundation and JFK Facts offer news and archives about the Kennedy assassination.[15]
Dr. Martin Luther King
“A nation that
continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than
on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” MLK,
“Beyond Vietnam,” April 4, 1967 Speech, NYC
American civil rights
leader Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King was shot on the second-floor balcony
of a motel in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968.
Like Kennedy, King had launched a
non-violent campaign against the Vietnam war, based on his horror of the
unspeakable brutality the Vietnamese children suffered from napalm.
An August, 1963 FBI memo had described
King as “the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the
standpoint of communism, the Negro and national security.”[16] He was
arrested 29 times and his home was bombed.
King’s alleged assassin, James Earl Ray,
had long been denied a criminal trial in spite of repeated efforts by
the Martin Luther King family. In 1999 the King family commissioned
attorney William F. Pepper to pursue a civil wrongful death suit on
behalf of Ray, who had died in1998. The case, which called 70 witnesses,
was tried in Memphis Circuit Court before Judge James E. Swearengen.
After 30 days of hearing evidence that had never been presented in a
court of law, the jury exonerated Ray in a victory for the King family.
The 12-person jury instead found a murder conspiracy involving agents of
the government of the United States, State of Tennessee, and the City
of Memphis.[17]
Only one reporter — Wendell Stacy from
Memphis ABC News — covered the trial in depth. He was fired and suffered
attempts on his life.[18] The massive evidence and verdict for this
trial were thus buried by the US media, stunting history and killing
hope.
Senator Robert F. Kennedy
“I’m afraid there are guns between me and the White House.” Robert Kennedy, 1968
Just after midnight on June 5, 1968, RFK
was shot three times while leaving the stage of the Ambassador Hotel
ballroom in Los Angeles. He had been celebrating his win of the
California democratic primary election the day before.
Of the three alleged lone-gunman assassins, Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan’s role is the most doubtful.
Most eye witnesses reported long ago
that Sirhan was facing Kennedy as he walked off-stage into the pantry.
However, the autopsy showed that the bullets entered Kennedy’s body from
behind and to the right.[19] Coroner Noguchi estimated that the lethal
shot to the back of his neck was fired from no more than 1.5 inches,
and left thick powder burns.[20] The final Coroner’s report described
embedded “dark brown to black powder residues in the neck injury.[21]
Eye-witnesses have also long reported
more shots than Sirhan’s 8-bullet pistol could hold. John Pilger, twice
Britain’s “Journalist of the Year”, was following Kennedy into the
kitchen and reported shots after Sirhan was restrained, confirming, in a
2008 interview, “there was another assassin or another several
assassins.”[22]
There was no camera footage of the
shooting. However in 2004, the long-archived “Pruszynski Tape” was found
in the California State Archives by American journalist Brad Johnson, a
senior CNN news writer.[23] This audio recording was judged authentic
by forensic analyst of magnetic recordings, Phillip van Praag, whose
oscillogram showed 13 shots, including two double shots fired back to
back.[24] Two sets of shots with different megahertz patterns were fired
from opposite directions.[25]
In 2012 a key witness to the murder went
public. Nina Rhodes-Hughes, a fund-raiser for RFK, walked 6-7 feet
behind him as he left the stage. She heard shots from in front of RFK,
and then from her right. She later learned that the FBI had changed her
testimony to say that she had heard 8 shots, which she “never, never
said…there were at least 12, maybe 14.” Her statements were reported by
CNN, Huffington Post, and other major news outlets last year.[26] They exactly mirror accounts of several other witnesses.[27]
Concluding Remarks
Fifty years of research shows that three humane visions of global peace were thwarted by three covert assassinations.
In each case eyewitness accounts were
written out of history. In each case the “lone gunman” fiction denied
society a true understanding of the deep politics of history.[28] In
each case propaganda masked truth and undermined the public good.
Notes
[1] Hershberg, Jim. “Anatomy of a
Controversy. Anatoly F. Dobrynin’s Meeting with Robert F. Kennedy,
Saturday 27 October, 1962.” The Cold War International Project Bulletin, Issue 5, Spring 1995 (http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nsa/cuba_mis_cri/moment.htm).
[2] James K. Galbraith and Heather A.
Purcell, “Did the U.S. Military Plan a Nuclear First Strike for 1963?
Notes on National Security Council Meeting July 20, 1961”
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Essay_-_Did_the_US_Military_Plan_a_Nuclear_First_Strike_for_1963.
By September 1963, the National Security Council was considering the
killing of 140 million Soviets in exchange for 30 million Americans.
“Summary Record of the 517th Meeting of the National Security Council,”
September 12, 1963
(http://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v08/d141).
[3] John F. Kennedy. American University Commencement Address, June 10, 1963 (http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/BWC7I4C9QUmLG9J6I8oy8w.aspx).
[4] Crisis events in the nuclear age
are listed at http://peacemagazine.org/archive/v13n1p20.htm and
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/nuclear-false-alarms.html
[5] See for example, the psychiatric
interview of Richard Kuklinski by Dr. Park Dietz, “The Iceman Tapes:
Inside the Mind of a Mafia Hitman”
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psoq8qYvx18).
[6] James W. Douglass, “JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why it Matters,” New York, Simon & Schuster, 2008.
[7] Oliver Stone, “JFK and the Unspeakable,” Huffington Post, July 23, 2009 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/oliver-stone/jfk-and-the-unspeakable_b_243924.html).
[8] CBS, January 12, 2013,
http://washington.cbslocal.com/2013/01/12/rfk-jr-evidence-very-convincing-lone-gunman-did-not-kill-jfk/.
[9] David Flick, “Kennedy’s Make Rare
Visit to Dallas, Say RFK Questioned ‘Lone Gunman’ Theory in JFK
Assassination,” January 12, 2013
(http://www.dallasnews.com/news/community-news/dallas/headlines/20130112-kennedys-make-rare-visit-to-dallas-say-rfk-questioned-lone-gunman-theory-in-jfk-assassination.ece).
[10] This may be seen in “The
Undamaged Zapruder Film,” at
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkennedyJ.htm. Secret Service
interviews have debunked the claim that JFK declined full motorcade
support: http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/palamara/factsheet_vmp.html
[11] “Two Men in Dallas,” released
1976, produced by attorney Mark Lane, author of Rush to Judgment, 1966.
Parts 1-5, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QyvRfeLDsB4,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFEx8hjD8kE,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hygDvRpam_w,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6vXeg50rjs,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COKE8gVTOuU
[12] Jim Schutze, “JFK Conspiracy Theorist Robert Groden goes 81-0 with Latest Win Against City Censors,” Dallas Observer, Feb. 25, 2013 (http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/unfairpark/2013/02/jfk_conspiracy_theorist_robert.php).
[13] Part 1,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAS33MP02b0. For the second gunman, see
particularly Part 9, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePsJiovip4M.
[14] Barry Ernest, “The Girl on the
Stairs,” CreateSpace, March 2011
(http://www.amazon.com/The-Girl-Stairs-Missing-Assassination/dp/1460979370)
[15] http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page and JFKfacts.org.
[16] United States Government
Memorandum, August 30, 1963. On December 23, 1936, the FBI’s Domestic
Intelligence Division held a major planning to “expose King for the
clerical fraud and Marxist he is.” Cited from: American RadioWorks,
“The FBI’s War on King”
(http://americanradioworks.publicradio.org/features/king/d4.html)
[17] Filmed highlights from the case
are available in 10 parts, under “MLK Assassination Conspiracy Trial.”
Part 1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-mlYaWOu4E. The complete
trial transcript, 2735 pages, is online at the Martin Luther King
Center,
http://www.thekingcenter.org/sites/default/files/KING%20FAMILY%20TRIAL%20TRANSCRIPT.pdf
and in html format at
http://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/MLKACT/MLKACTtoc.html. A journalist’s
6-minute summary of the evidence is available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEP94AVshrs. An excellent review of Dr.
Pepper’s book about the case, “An Act of State: The Execution of Martin
Luther King,” by David T. Ratcliffe, is available at
http://www.ratical.com/ratville/JFK/MLKactOstate.html.
[18] Stacy held a Doctor of
Philosophy degree in journalism. “Wendell Stacy recorded the trial on
his own video tapes and after the trial was fired by his employer Clear
Channel because he had been pushing for more coverage of what had
happened in the trial and on other issues. He sued Clear Channel and
years later won his suit…Using his video recordings he produced an
hour-long documentary on the assassination of Dr. King that aired on
French and German prime time television. After the documentary was aired
he was repeatedly threatened by telephone messages, experienced a
series of break-ins to his home, and his car blew up when he was about
to get into it. His sudden death in 2007 was from causes that are very
difficult to understand.”
http://politicalassassinations.com/2012/08/complete-transcript-of-the-martin-luther-king-jr-assassination-conspiracy-trial/
[19] See the second rough draft of
the autopsy report by Dr. John E. Holloway, Deputy Medical Examiner,
dated June 21, 1968, at
http://www.autopsyfiles.org/reports/Other/kennedy,%20robert_report.pdf.
[20] Joseph Geringer. “The
Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy,” TruTV Crime Library
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/terrorists_spies/assassins/kennedy/5.html.
[21] Report on the Medicolegal
Investigation of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, 368-5731. See page marked
304. (http://www.sirhansresearcher.com/i.pdf).
[22] John Pilger in an Amy Goodman
interview, June 6, 2008, “John Pilger Confirms Multiple RFK Shootings,”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ27B4bSqEw
[23] CNN, “2009 BackStory: 2nd gun in
RFK shooting?” Added on March 13, 2012 to
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/crime/2012/03/02/bs-rfk-assassination.cnn.
[24] “Pruszynski Recording Reveals Second Gun,” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URYZjbaeQo8
[25] “RFK: An Open and Shut Case.
Robert Joling Interview.” Part 1 of 3:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CI9EfIu-00) Joling was past president
of the American Academy of Forensic Scientists, 1975-76.
[26] “RFK Assassination Witness Nina
Rhodes-Hughes Says Sirhan-Sirhan Didn’t Act Alone,” April 30, 2012
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/30/rfk-assassination-nina-rhodes-hughes_n_1464439.html).
Denise Ryan, “B.C.-based actress Nina Rhodes-Hughes speaks of Robert K.
Kennedy’s assassination (with video),” The Vancouver Sun, May
7, 2012
(http://www.vancouversun.com/news/based+actress+Nina+Rhodes+Hughes+speaks+Robert+Kennedy+assassination/6570188/story.html).
[27] CNN, “2009 BackStory: 2nd gun in
RFK shooting?” Added on March 13, 2012 to
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/crime/2012/03/02/bs-rfk-assassination.cnn.
[28] “Deep politics” is a term coined
by Dr. Peter Dale Scott, whose books are listed at
http://www.history-matters.com/pds/dp3.htm.
I wish to thank Dr. Michael J. Harvey, biologist, for his assistance with this essay.
This essay is dedicated to Dr. James W. Douglass, from whose book JFK and the Unspeakable and workshop I learned deeply.
PART II OF THIS ESSAY:
The Climate Bomb: Failures to Confront the Unspeakable, and The Way Ahead
PART II OF THIS ESSAY:
The Climate Bomb: Failures to Confront the Unspeakable, and The Way Ahead
The original source of this article is Global Research
Copyright © Elizabeth Woodworth, Global Research, 2019
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