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A LOOK AT THE DEATHS OF THOSE INVOLVED*
Jim Marrs and Ralph Schuster [Editor's Note: The claim that many persons who had personal knowledge of the assassination of JFK have met untimely deaths is reviewed by the authors, who provide a overview of the evidence. It appears that many who had personal knowledge of the assassination of JFK have indeed met untimely deaths.]
In
the three-year period which followed the murder of President Kennedy and Lee
Harvey Oswald, 18 material witnesses died - six by gunfire, three in motor
accidents, two by suicide, one from a cut throat, one from a karate chop to
the neck, three from heart attacks and two from natural causes.
An actuary, engaged by the "London Sunday Times," concluded that on November 22, 1963, the odds against these witnesses being dead by February 1967, were one hundred thousand trillion to one. The above comment on the deaths of assassination witnesses was published in a tabloid companion piece to the movie "Executive Action," released in 1973. By that time, part of the mythology of the Kennedy assassination included the mysterious deaths of people who were connected with it. By the mid-1960s, people in Dallas already were whispering about the number of persons who died under strange or questionable circumstances. Well into the 1980s, witnesses and others were hesitant to come forward with information because of the stories of strange and sudden death which seemed visit anyone with information about the assassination. Finally, in the late 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations felt compelled to look into the matter. But aside from discrediting the "London Sunday Times" actuarial study, the Committee was unable to come to any conclusion regarding the growing number of deaths. The Committee said it could not make a valid actuarial study due to the broad number and types of persons which had to be included in such a study. In response to a letter from the Committee, "London Sunday Times" Legal Manager Anthony Whitaker stated: Our piece about the odds against the deaths of the Kennedy witnesses was, I regret to say, based on a careless journalistic mistake and should not have been published. This was realized by The Sunday Times editorial staff after the first edition - the one which goes to the United States...- had gone out, and later editions were amended. There was no question of our actuary having got his answer wrong: it was simply that we asked him the wrong question. He was asked what were the odds against 15 named people out of the population of the United States dying within a short period of time, to which he replied -correctly - that they were very high. However, if one asks what are the odds against 15 of those included in the Warren Commission Index dying within a given period, the answer is, of course, that they are much lower. Our mistake was to treat the reply to the former question as if it dealt with the latter - hence the fundamental error in our first edition report, for which we apologize. This settled the matter for the House Committee, which apparently made little or no attempt to seriously study the number of deaths which followed the JFK assassination. Jacqueline Hess, the Committee's chief of research for the JFK investigation, reported: Our final conclusion on the issue is that the available evidence does not establish anything about the nature of these deaths which would indicate that the deaths were in some manner, either direct or peripheral, caused by the assassination of President Kennedy or by any aspect of the subsequent investigation. However, an objective look at both the number and the causes of death balanced against the importance of the person's connection to the case, still causes raised eyebrows among those who study such a list. In this section, people who were connected - no matter how tenuously - with the assassination and who are now dead are listed according to date of death. This is dealing only with deaths, not with the numerous persons - such as Warren Reynolds, Roger Craig, Richard Carr or Richard Case Nagell - who claim to have been shot at or attacked. This section has been entitled "Convenient Deaths" because these deaths certainly would have been convenient for anyone not wishing the truth of the JFK assassination to become public. Of course, it is impossible to state with any certainty which of these deaths resulted from natural causes and which did not. Because so many of the these deaths involve persons either working with or connected with the CIA or other domestic intelligence services, the Agency has gone to some lengths to discredit the idea of mysterious deaths plaguing assassination witnesses. A 1967 memo from CIA headquarters to station chiefs advised: Such vague accusations as that "more than 10 people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some rational way: e.g., the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the (Warren) Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses - the FBI interviewed far more people, conducting 25,000 interviews and reinterviews - and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be expected. Yet it is now well established that the CIA was developing a wide-range of lethal techniques for disposing of people dating back to the early 1950s. Testifying before the Church Committee in 1975, CIA technicians told of a variety of TWEP technology - Termination With Extreme Prejudice - including liquid botulinum toxins and a pulmonary-embolism-causing pill which cannot be detected in a post-mortem examination. One recently-declassified CIA document, a letter from an Agency consultant to a CIA officer, states: You will recall that I mentioned that the local circumstances under which a given means might be used might suggest the technique to be used in that case. I think the gross divisions in presenting this subject might be:
1.
bodies
left with no hope of the cause of death being determined by the most complete
autopsy and chemical examinations
2.
bodies
left in such circumstances as to simulate accidental death
3.
bodies
left in such circumstances as to simulate suicidal death
4.
bodies
left with residue that simulate those caused by natural diseases.
The
letter goes on to show that undetected murders do not have to be the result
of sophisticated chemicals. It states:
There are two techniques which I believe should be mentioned since they require no special equipment besides a strong arm and the will to do such a job. These would be either to smother the victim with a pillow or to strangle him with a wide piece of cloth such as a bath towel. In such cases, there is no specific anatomic changes to indicate the cause of death... While is obvious that the CIA - and hence the mob through operatives who work for both - has the capability of killing, it is less well-known that the Agency has developed drugs to induce cancer. Recall that Jack Ruby died of sudden lung cancer just as he had been granted a new trial. A 1952 CIA memo reported on the cancer-causing effects of beryllium: This is certainly the most toxic inorganic element and it produces a peculiar fibrotic tumor at the site of local application. The amount necessary to produce these tumors is a few micrograms. Local law enforcement officers and coroners are simply not equipped, either by training or by inclination, to detect deaths induced by such sophisticated means. They look for signs of a struggle, evidence of a break-in, bruises or marks on the victim. With no evidence to the contrary, many deaths simply are ruled suicide or accident. Others are ruled due to natural causes, such as heart attack. It is interesting to note how the deaths are grouped. Many of the earliest deaths came during the time of the Warren Commission investigation or just afterwards. Some significant deaths also took place in the late 1960s as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was launching his own investigation. Other suspicious deaths occurred during the mid-1970s, as the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking into assassinations by U.S. intelligence agencies. And finally, another spate of deaths came around 1977, just as the House Select Committee on Assassinations was gearing up its investigations. These deaths are listed in chronological order. An asterisk (*) means the death is a particularly suspicious one. They also are grouped according to which investigation was being conducted at the time. The area of convenient deaths leads one into a well of paranoia, yet the long list of deaths cannot be summarily dismissed. Obviously, many of these deaths - particularly in recent years - can be ascribed to the passage of time. But others cannot - especially when viewed in context of the assassination inquiries taking place at the time. Read for yourself and consider...When does coincidence end and conspiracy begin? https://www.blogger.com/null
List
of Deaths
1977 - A Terrible Year For Many
The
year 1977 produced a bumper crop of candidates for listing under convenient
deaths connected to the JFK assassination - including the deaths of six top
FBI officials all of whom were scheduled to testify before the House Select
Committee on Assassinations.
Topping this list was former number three man in the FBI William C. Sullivan, who had already had a preliminary meeting the investigators for the House Committee. Sullivan was shot with a high-powered rifle near his New Hampshire home by a man who claimed to have mistaken him for a deer. The man was charged with a misdemeanor - "shooting a human being by accident" - and released into the custody of his father, a state policeman. There was no further investigation of Sullivan's death. Louis Nichols was a special assistant to J. Edgar Hoover as well as Hoover's liaison with the Warren Commission. Alan H. Belmont also was a special assistant to Hoover. James Cadigan was a document expert with access to many classified assassination documents, while J.M. English headed the FBI laboratory where Oswald rifle and pistol were tested. Donald Kaylor was the FBI fingerprint expert who examined prints found at the assassination scene. None of these six Bureau officials lived to tell what they knew to the House Committee. Other key assassination witnesses, such as George DeMohrenschildt and former Cuban President Carlos Prio Soccaras, died within weeks of each other in 1977, just as they too were being sought by the House Committee. The ranks of both organized crime and U.S. intelligence agencies were thinned by deaths beginning in 1975, the time of the Senate Intelligence Hearings, and 1978, the closing months of the House Committee. Charles Nicoletti, a mobster connected with the CIA-Mafia assassination plots, was murdered in Chicago, while William Pawley, a former diplomat connected with both organized crime and CIA figures, reportedly committed suicide. Adding official confirmation to rumors that "hit teams" may have been at work was a "Time" magazine report that federal agents had initiated a nationwide investigation into more than 20 gangland assassinations constituting what agents believed was an "open underworld challenge to governmental infiltration of Mafia activities." One FBI source was quoted as saying: Our main concern is that we may be facing a revival of the old "Murder, Inc." days. A "New York News" story concerning this official fear of roving assassination squads even mentions the death of Sam Giancana, who was killed one day before he was to testify about MOB-CIA connections and while under government protection. Just as the House Committee was gearing up its investigation into the JFK assassination, the news media reported the following deaths:
Following names are the recently
known deaths, almost all died of natural causes:
Text
by Jim Marrs
Dates by Jim Marrs and Ralph Schuster
(c)
2002 Jim Marrs and Ralph Schuster
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