JFK at the Fringe of Reason

The November 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy occupies an almost absurdly controversial place in American culture. The vast majority of criminal investigators and forensics experts who investigated the case and have studied it in the decades since agree that the evidence points conclusively to a lone assassin. The President was struck by two bullets fired from above and behind him; the bullets were identified as having been fired from the rifle owned by Lee Harvey Oswald, to the exclusion of all other weapons. Three spent cartridges found inside a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, overlooking the assassination site, were proved to have been fired from Oswald's rifle. Oswald was employed in the building as a laborer, and was inside without an alibi when the shots were fired.⁽¹⁾

 

Lee Harvey Oswald in custody

 

Criminal investigators, scientists, historians, and journalists commonly dismiss JFK conspiracy theories as no more worthy of consideration than, say, "9/11 Truth" theories alleging U.S. government complicity in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In professional and academic circles, many equate Kennedy conspiracy theories with such pseudoscientific or paranormal beliefs as extraterrestrial visitations, alien abductions, hauntings, and extrasensory perception (ESP). From this point of view, JFK conspiracy theories are at best a distraction, and at worst, potentially misleading and corrosive.⁽²⁾

Yet polls consistently show that the vast majority of Americans believe the assassination of JFK was the work of a conspiracy. A 2003 ABC News poll found that only 32 percent of American adults believe Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in Kennedy's murder, 51 percent believe there was a second shooter, and more than two-thirds believe there was a government cover-up.⁽³⁾ A 2004 FOX News poll determined that 74 percent of Americans believe there was a cover-up, and a 2006 Scripps poll found that 40 percent of American adults consider it either "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that U.S. officials were directly involved in the President's death.⁽⁴⁾ A 2003 Gallup poll found that 34 percent of the population believes that our own Central Intelligence Agency was involved in Kennedy's demise.⁽⁵⁾

Which side is right? How can we be so certain that there is no validity to the idea that John Kennedy was overthrown by what filmmaker Oliver Stone termed, in his blockbuster 1991 film JFK, a coup d'etat?⁽⁶⁾ After all, conspiracies do happen, sometimes even at the highest levels of our government, the Watergate scandal being an obvious and uncontested example — albeit "a rather pitiful botched conspiracy," in the words of one commentator.⁽⁷⁾

The common denominator between the coup d'etat paradigm of the JFK assassination and the realm of pseudohistory, pseudoscience, and the paranormal is methodology.

Michael Shermer, prolific author and publisher of Skeptic magazine, defines pseudohistory as historical claims advanced "without supporting evidence and plausibility and presented primarily for political or ideological purposes."⁽⁸⁾ (Holocaust denial, for example, is a widely accepted example of pseudohistory.)⁽⁹⁾

How do we judge what is history and what is not? "The key," Shermer observes, "is the ability to test one's hypothesis."⁽¹⁰⁾

 

Michael Shermer

 

Unfortunately, in the case of the conspiracy theorists, the axiom known as Occam's Razor or the law of parsimony — the principle that the theory that involves the least number of assumptions is probably the correct one — seems to have been supplanted by what we might call Garrison's Dictum, after onetime New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, who led a tragically misguided farce of an investigation into the JFK assassination in the late 1960s, and (ironically) became the inspiration for Oliver Stone's movie. Garrison told the world, "The key to the whole case is through the looking glass. Black is white and white is black. I don't want to be cryptic, but that's the way it is."⁽¹¹⁾

Shermer notes that scientists strive for objectivity ("basing conclusions on external validation") and avoid mysticism ("basing conclusions on personal insights that elude external validation").⁽¹²⁾ That's not the way conspiracy theorists seem to think. A statement Jim Garrison made in 1969 offers some insight into the conspiracy-oriented mindset:

 

You see, most people don't realize we're living in a totalitarian state. Most citizens of this country live — we live — in the world that appears to be, while those in power live in the world that is. . . . Especially those hiding behind the intangibles of power in the government and the military complex and the CIA. When you recognize and deal with the intelligence apparatus in this country, you're encountering the world that is.⁽¹³⁾

 

Jim Garrison

 

Many of the Kennedy conspiracy theories seem to flow from this premise. When inevitable anomalies arise in the evidence, the simplest solution (human fallibility) is brushed aside in favor of sinister, more complex scenarios involving shadowy government agents and operations. For example, contradictory descriptions of the President's wounds lead to theories of forged autopsy reports, forged photographs and X-rays, and even the wounds themselves being altered or another body substituted for autopsy.⁽¹⁴⁾ Disparate recollections of the official examination of the President's brain lead to a theory of two separate examinations of two separate brains.⁽¹⁵⁾ Divergent descriptions of Lee Harvey Oswald throughout his life lead to scenarios concerning CIA Oswald imposters.⁽¹⁶⁾

In his book, Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer has isolated some of the most common problems with pseudoscientific thinking. With some qualification, these problems apply to pseudohistory in general and Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories in particular. Let's examine some cases in point.

 

 

"Anecdotes Do Not Make a Science"⁽¹⁷⁾

Eyewitness accounts can enrich the historical record and fill in gaps where hard evidence is inadequate or inapplicable, but they cannot, in and of themselves, supplant or invalidate hard evidence.

Conspiracy theorists commonly express the opposite view. For example, author Harrison Edward Livingstone (High Treason) writes that "if a group of doctors all say that they saw a certain type of wound, and there is no credible evidence to controvert it, giving credence to a suspect photograph is a mistake. A contradictory photograph should be suspicious rather than the statements. Their observation becomes a fact."⁽¹⁸⁾

If a number of eyewitnesses describe a wound of exit towards the back of the President's head, Livingstone says, then "the photographs and X-rays showing the back of the head [intact] are false and cannot possibly be correct."⁽¹⁹⁾

Similarly, radiation oncologist David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., argues:

 

The legal principle is that eyewitness testimony has priority over photographs. This principle was turned upside down by the battalions of lawyers who worked for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) and for the WC [Warren Commission]. For them, against all legal precedent, the assumption was always the reverse: if the witnesses disagreed with the official view, it was assumed that they were in error or even lying. On the other hand, the photographs (and the X-rays, too) were assumed [sic — see below] to be immutable monuments to truth. In a real trial, no competent judge would have permitted this illegal approach.⁽²⁰⁾

 

"It is curious," attorney Milton Brener once observed, "that among the career critics of the [Warren] Commission there are few who qualify by training or experience as investigators, and fewer yet whose lives have been spent in the evaluation of evidence."⁽²¹⁾ This lack of training and experience can be detected in the conspiracy theorists' reliance on eyewitness testimony and handy dismissal of the physical evidence that contradicts their hypotheses.

Things get even more confusing when people come forward with strange, unverifiable tales of conspiratorial goings-on. Journalist James Phelan writes:

 

There are certain sensational cases that have a fascination for unstable people and fetch them forth in droves. A classic example was the "Black Dahlia" mutilation murder of playgirl Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles. Over the years, dozens of people came forward and confessed to this crime, which still remains unsolved. Celebrated cases also attract witnesses who are not psychotic, but who falsely identify key figures out of faulty memory or a desire to lift themselves out of dull anonymity into the spotlight. Chief Justice Frankfurter once commented that eyewitness testimony is the greatest single cause of miscarried justice. In a sensational case, a careful prosecutor often spends more time winnowing out false witnesses than he does working with authentic ones.⁽²²⁾

 

"Scientific Language Does Not Make a Science"⁽²³⁾

A minor movement of sorts was launched in 1998 with the publication of Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK, edited by James H. Fetzer, Ph.D., Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. The book was intended, Fetzer writes, "to place the investigation of the assassination of JFK on an objective and scientific foundation."⁽²⁴⁾

But not a single "objective and scientific" contribution to the book ever passed muster with a peer-reviewed, scientific journal. Instead, the editor decides who qualifies as an "expert" and what constitutes an "objective and scientific" study.

 

James Fetzer

 

In one chapter, historian Ronald F. White, Ph.D., offers what might be construed as an explanation of sorts, warning that

 

historical research published in scientific journals must always be treated with a healthy dose of skepticism. Scientists simply are not trained in the basics of historical research and therefore are not likely to be very critical of their sources. For the study of the Kennedy assassination, gullibility can easily poison one's research. To make matters worse, the peer review process in scientific journals becomes distorted when the reviewers, who are themselves non-historians unfamiliar with the details of the assassination, serve as referees. Unlike historians who are trained to carefully scrutinize the authenticity of the primary evidence, scientists and physicians tend to limit their professional critique to issues of methodology. Therefore, science journals are notorious for producing bad history.⁽²⁵⁾

 

Historians would do a better job, White suggests, because they take into account issues important to "assassination experts," such as eyewitness testimony, hearsay, and lay interpretations of forensic evidence.⁽²⁶⁾

Besides,

 

The scientific method represents a highly idealized and perhaps naive vision of human inquiry. Because scientists are, by their very nature, idealists, they have always been among the first to be duped by political power.⁽²⁷⁾

 

The legacy of this kind of reasoning is a bewildering array of theories that multiply with each passing year, and no end in sight.

 

"Bold Statements Do Not Make Claims True"⁽²⁸⁾

"One unerring mark of the love of truth," John Locke wrote in 1690, "is not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant."⁽²⁹⁾ This thought was echoed by David Hume some decades later: "A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence."⁽³⁰⁾

And, as Michael Shermer notes, "the more extraordinary the claim, the more extraordinarily well-tested the evidence must be."⁽³¹⁾

It makes one wonder what evidence of conspiracy has been tested so thoroughly and successfully to allow James Fetzer to categorically state that "anyone sincerely interested in this case who does not conclude that JFK was murdered as the result of a conspiracy is either unfamiliar with the evidence or cognitively impaired."⁽³²⁾

 

"Heresy Does Not Equal Correctness"⁽³³⁾

Jim Garrison wrote, "For the government and the major media to have acknowledged what virtually everyone knew (that Kennedy had been fired at by a number of guns) would have put an end to the sacred pretense that the President's assassination was a chance occurrence."⁽³⁴⁾

But there is nothing "sacred" about the idea that a lone gunman killed the President; it's simply the conclusion that flows most logically from the evidence.

 

"Burden of Proof"⁽³⁵⁾

The burden of proof lies with the person making the extraordinary claim. It is not enough for conspiracy theorists to pick at the "official" conclusion, as creationists do with the theory of evolution.⁽³⁶⁾ As with evolution, the case for Lee Oswald's guilt is constructed of neatly interlocking, mutually corroborative pieces of hard evidence.⁽³⁷⁾ Chipping away at one facet cannot falsify the whole, nor can this method validate an hypothesis of conspiracy.

 

"Rumors Do Not Equal Reality"⁽³⁸⁾

Perhaps you've heard that Jack Ruby (the strip club owner who gunned Oswald down during an abortive police transfer two days after the assassination) was hired by the Mafia to silence the assassin. Or that Oswald was a secret agent. Or that the President was killed by the CIA, which he had reportedly threatened to splinter into a thousand pieces after the Bay of Pigs disaster. Or that the military-industrial complex murdered him to keep him from withdrawing U.S. troops from Vietnam. Or that the same forces responsible for JFK's death also took out Senator Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. There is no factual basis for any of these stories.

 

"Unexplained Is Not Inexplicable"⁽³⁹⁾

Michael Shermer observes, "Many people are overconfident enough to think that if they cannot explain something, it must be inexplicable . . ."⁽⁴⁰⁾ Shermer is referring to the natural world, but it applies equally well to historical events.

Conspiracy theorists commonly demand answers to questions that are impossible to answer conclusively from the available evidence. For example, if Oswald did it, what was his motive? (We don't know; he never confessed.)⁽⁴¹⁾ But if he wanted to become important or famous or to accomplish something for a political purpose, why didn't he confess? (Fair question, but Oswald's still not talking.) Why are there discrepancies — sometimes seemingly minor, sometimes perhaps not — between the many different reports, photographs, and other items of evidence in the record? (Practically every criminal or historical case has loose ends or discrepancies. Would it ever be possible to explain every conceivable detail to every critic's satisfaction?)

Just because we don't have explanations for everything hardly invalidates the evidence we do have.

 

"Failures Are Rationalized"⁽⁴²⁾

One of the key tenets of many conspiracy theories is that President Kennedy was fatally shot from a patch of land to the President's right, commonly known as the grassy knoll, not from the Texas School Book Depository building behind him. One argument frequently advanced in support of this hypothesis is that eyewitnesses at Parkland Memorial Hospital who attempted to save the President's life (but did not examine his wounds) tended to describe an apparent exit wound on or extending into the back of the head, consistent with a shot from the front. There are ways of testing this hypothesis.

For example, one can examine the photographs and X-rays taken at the President's autopsy, as numerous experts have done — including a panel of nine forensic pathologists retained by the House Select Committee reinvestigating the assassination in the 1970s — and confirm that the photographs display a small, beveled wound of entrance on the rear of the President's head and a large wound of exit on the right side, forward of the ear. The photos and X-rays show no large defect in the rear.⁽⁴³⁾

One of the expert pathologists consulted by the House committee was Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., then coroner of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, a nationally prominent expert on forensic pathology, and long one of the most vociferous critics of the Warren Commission. In 1967 Wecht had noted the critical importance of the autopsy photos and X-rays (which were controlled by the Kennedy family and inaccessible to researchers at that time), stating that the X-rays "might help us decide whether or not the President was struck more than once in the head."⁽⁴⁴⁾

Given the opportunity to study these materials a decade later, Dr. Wecht was the only one of the nine-member HSCA Forensic Pathology Panel who dissented from the conclusion that President Kennedy had been shot only from the rear. While conceding the evidence for a second head shot from the President's side to be "Very meager, and the possibility based upon the existing evidence is extremely remote," Wecht insisted that the evidence was insufficient for him to rule out the possibility of such a shot.⁽⁴⁵⁾

When asked why his eight co-panelists, whom he agreed were eminently qualified in the field of forensic pathology to render an expert opinion, would take the position that the original autopsy report's conclusion of a single head shot from behind was accurate, Wecht speculated about possible government affiliations that could taint his colleagues' integrity.⁽⁴⁶⁾

 

Cyril Wecht

 

When the photos and X-rays fail to support their hypotheses, conspiracy theorists commonly assert that some or all of them must be forgeries. The House committee's panel of expert photographic analysts subjected the films to careful scrutiny utilizing state-of-the-art methods, and uncovered no evidence of forgery;⁽⁴⁷⁾ but since the release of the committee's report in 1979, theories postulating forged evidence have multiplied rather than declined.⁽⁴⁸⁾

 

"After-the-Fact Reasoning"⁽⁴⁹⁾

It is commonly believed that Jack Ruby killed Oswald on behalf of the Mafia, but there is no evidence for this. It is often pointed out, however, that Ruby made several phone calls to Mob-connected individuals in the months prior to the assassination. Is this evidence that the Mafia ordered Oswald's murder?⁽⁵⁰⁾

"Correlation does not mean causation," Michael Shermer reminds us.⁽⁵¹⁾ Just because one event follows another does not mean they are related. In fact, a great deal of testimony indicates that the phone calls in question were related to Ruby's professional grievances with the American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA), which represented the strippers he employed at his nightclub. The AGVA "was riddled with corruption and compromised by its mob connections,"⁽⁵²⁾ so anyone dealing with the AGVA could have been rubbing shoulders with the Mob, whether they realized it or not. There is no evidence that Ruby had any significant relationship to organized crime or that any of his phone calls or actions were related to a conspiracy.⁽⁵³⁾

 

Jack Ruby

 

"Coincidence"⁽⁵⁴⁾

"In the paranormal world," Shermer observes, "coincidences are often seen as deeply significant."⁽⁵⁵⁾ By the same token, coincidences play a vital role in the world of conspiracy theories.

For example, New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison thought it highly significant that a phone call was placed in September 1963 from a New Orleans attorney's office, where an alleged Oswald associate named David Ferrie (more about whom below) was employed, to a Chicago apartment building where a woman named Jean Aase (and many other people) lived; Jean Aase would later be connected to a sporting goods salesman named Lawrence Meyers, who would visit Texas and socialize with Oswald's assassin Jack Ruby on the evening prior to JFK's assassination.⁽⁵⁶⁾

Political scientist John McAdams writes:

 

Thus, David Ferrie had a (very tenuous) "connection" with Oswald, and a tenuous "connection" with Jean Aase. Aase, in turn, had a real connection with Lawrence Meyers who had a real connection with Jack Ruby who had a real connection with Lee Oswald: he shot and killed him.

Given that each of these people had equally close "connections" with at least dozens, and sometimes hundreds of people, there had to be hundreds of thousands, and probably millions, of people with as close a connection to Oswald as Ruby had through Meyers and Aase and Ferrie.⁽⁵⁷⁾

 

 

"Representativeness"⁽⁵⁸⁾

"We forget most of the insignificant coincidences and remember the meaningful ones," observes Michael Shermer. He writes:⁽⁵⁹⁾

 

We must always remember the larger context in which a seemingly unusual event occurs, and we must always analyze unusual events for their representativeness of their class of phenomena. In the case of the "Bermuda Triangle," an area of the Atlantic Ocean where ships and planes "mysteriously" disappear, there is the assumption that something strange or alien is at work. But we must consider how representative such events are in that area. Far more shipping lanes run through the Bermuda Triangle than its surrounding areas, so accidents and mishaps and disappearances are more likely to happen in the area. As it turns out, the accident rate is actually lower in the Bermuda Triangle than in surrounding areas. Perhaps this area should be called the "Non-Bermuda Triangle."⁽⁶⁰⁾

 

One of the most durable bits of folklore surrounding the JFK assassination concerns the "mysterious" or "convenient" deaths of assassination witnesses. In 1967 Penn Jones, the editor of a small Texas weekly newspaper, publicized a list of eighteen deaths he claimed were related to the assassination. In a widely reported blunder, The Sunday Times in London used Jones's list to conclude that the odds against all eighteen dying within three years of the assassination were one hundred thousand trillion to one. But the Times had not taken into account the tremendous number of people involved with or tangentially related to the Warren Commission investigation (for example, Jones's list included the cab driver who gave Oswald a ride shortly after the assassination, journalists who wrote about the case, and the husband of one of Ruby's strippers), and discovered, after publishing its first edition, that its calculation of odds was nothing more than "a careless journalistic mistake."⁽⁶¹⁾

In cases involving the paranormal, Shermer concludes, one "would be well advised to first thoroughly understand the probable worldly explanation before turning to other-worldly ones."⁽⁶²⁾ One should also give full consideration to non-conspiratorial possibilities before assuming that a conspiracy is required.

 

Missing Links

Thousands of conspiracy-oriented claims have been advanced about the Kennedy assassination, but examining them calls to mind acclaimed astronomer and astrophysicist Carl Sagan's conclusion about his youthful interest in the extraterrestrial hypothesis of UFOs: "All in all, the alleged evidence seemed thin — most often devolving into gullibility, hoax, hallucination, misunderstanding of the natural world, hopes and fears disguised as evidence, and a craving for attention, fame, and fortune."⁽⁶³⁾

On that same subject, Sagan notes:

 

Everything hinges on the matter of evidence. On so important a question, the evidence must be airtight. The more we want it to be true, the more careful we have to be. No witness's say-so is good enough. People make mistakes. People play practical jokes. People stretch the truth for money or attention or fame. People occasionally misunderstand what they're seeing. People sometimes even see things that aren't there.⁽⁶⁴⁾

 

 

Carl Sagan

 

Other observations of Sagan's regarding belief in extraterrestrial visitors seem relevant as well:

 

I've found that the going-in attitude of many people is highly predetermined. Some are convinced that eyewitness testimony is reliable, that people do not make things up, that hallucinations or hoaxes on such a scale are impossible, and that there must be a long-standing, high-level government conspiracy to keep the truth from the rest of us. Gullibility about UFOs thrives on widespread mistrust of government, arising naturally enough from all those circumstances where — in the tension between public well-being and "national security" — the government lies.⁽⁶⁵⁾

 

Here Sagan has isolated two causes that apply equally well to JFK conspiracy believers: belief in the reliability of eyewitness testimony and mistrust of the government.

With the coming of the Atomic Age and the Cold War, the U.S. public was vulnerable to fears of threatening technologies and insidious infiltrators around any corner. With the unexplained death of the President in 1963 followed by growing discontent, both in the domestic and international arenas, Americans became increasingly prone to conspiracy theories. As Senator Joseph McCarthy vividly demonstrated in the 1950s, such a climate can be exploited to devastating effect.

In the right environment and with a little fortuitous help, pseudoscientific or paranormal movements can catch fire due to the efforts of as little as a single person. For example, hairy wild men roaming the Pacific Northwest were little more than a legend until a prankster named Ray L. Wallace reportedly strapped on some 16-inch, wooden "feet" in 1958. Thanks to the tracks found at the construction site Wallace was managing in Humbolt County, California, "Bigfoot" became a national craze.⁽⁶⁶⁾

 

Ray Wallace

 

Writer John A. Keel likewise attributes much of the credit for the widespread interest in UFOs to Raymond Palmer, whom Keel dubs "The Man Who Invented Flying Saucers."⁽⁶⁷⁾ Ray Palmer was a science-fiction writer who, as editor of the pulp magazine Amazing Stories in the 1940s, boosted sales with yarns about bug-eyed monsters and other visitors from outer space, occasionally decorating the covers with circular, saucer-like spaceships. Such phenomena, Palmer strongly suggested, were real.⁽⁶⁸⁾

 

Ray Palmer

 

The Coming of the Saucers

As writer Martin Kottmeyer observes, the term "flying saucers" came into being in a rather ironic fashion. On June 24, 1947, businessman Kenneth Arnold was piloting his private airplane over Washington State's Mount Rainier when he saw what he described as a series of nine somewhat crescent-shaped, flying objects. The way they flew, he said, was "erratic, like a saucer if you skip it across the water."⁽⁶⁹⁾

 

Kenneth Arnold displays an artist's rendering of one of the objects he described

 

The objects Arnold reported "were not circular" like saucers, he would clarify, but "flying saucers" is what they were dubbed by the national press. "Soon everyone was looking for these new aircraft which according to the papers were saucer-like in shape," Kottmeyer writes. "Within weeks hundreds of reports of these flying saucers were made across the nation."⁽⁷⁰⁾

In the words of writer Lionel Beer, "Possibly no one was more surprised by Kenneth Arnold's 1947 story, regarded as the UFO sighting that triggered off the 'modern era' and certainly gave the phenomenon its first popular name — flying saucers — than Ray Palmer. Palmer's fiction had become a reality!"⁽⁷¹⁾

 

Publisher Ray Palmer launches Fate magazine with Kenneth Arnold's story

 

If the field of JFK conspiracy theories has a Ray Palmer of its own, a strong candidate for the position would be Jim Garrison.

 

The D.A.

By his own account, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison saw no reason to question the findings of the Warren Commission when they were announced in 1964. A chance conversation in 1966 sparked his interest, however, and he launched headlong into a study of the 26 officially published volumes of evidence and the handful of books that had appeared to question or attack the commission's findings. Oswald had spent the summer before the assassination in New Orleans, so Garrison wondered whether there could be a local angle.⁽⁷²⁾

 

Jim Garrison

 

The D.A. even had a suspect of sorts, an eccentric former pilot and jack of all trades named David W. Ferrie with questionable ties to Lee Oswald (they had crossed paths in 1955). Ferrie and two friends had driven from New Orleans to Houston late in the evening following the assassination. "It was," Garrison declared, "a curious trip, a most curious trip, by a curious man to a curious place at a curious time."⁽⁷³⁾ The D.A. never did manage to tie the trip to the assassination, but that did not deter him.⁽⁷⁴⁾ Ferrie was a CIA operative, Garrison decided; the CIA had killed Kennedy, he informed his closest associates, and Ferrie was the key to the case.⁽⁷⁵⁾

 

David Ferrie suffered from alopecia areata, which cost him much of his hair in later life. This photo shows him sporting a crude, homemade wig and hand-drawn eyebrows.

David Ferrie in younger days

 

When the local news media got wind of the D.A.'s probe and questioned its legitimacy, Garrison blasted the press for doubting him. His office had determined that the Warren Commission had been mistaken, he said; that there indeed had been a conspiracy to kill Kennedy, and that the conspiracy had been hatched in New Orleans. "We already have the names of the people in the initial planning," the D.A. claimed. "We are not wasting our time and we will prove it. Arrests will be made, charges will be filed, and convictions will be obtained."⁽⁷⁶⁾

Then, just as Kenneth Arnold's story had ignited the kindling arranged by Ray Palmer, something happened that forever altered Jim Garrison's fortunes: David Ferrie died of a stroke. The District Attorney handily brushed the coroner's verdict aside: "The apparent suicide of David Ferrie," Garrison declared, "ends the life of a man who, in my judgment, was one of history's most important individuals." "Evidence developed by our office has long since confirmed he was involved in events culminating in the assassination of President Kennedy."⁽⁷⁷⁾

And as the national and international press descended in droves upon New Orleans, Jim Garrison's pronouncements grew even bolder. "My staff and I solved the case weeks ago," he proclaimed. "I wouldn't say this if I didn't have evidence beyond a shadow of a doubt. We know the key individuals, the cities involved, and how it was done."⁽⁷⁸⁾

In fact, Garrison had absolutely nothing, not even a live suspect.⁽⁷⁹⁾ Except . . .

A New Orleans attorney, Dean Adams Andrews, Jr., had testified to the Warren Commission that he was telephoned the day after the assassination and asked to fly to Dallas to represent Lee Harvey Oswald by a mysterious "Clay Bertrand." He would admit under oath in 1969 that there was no truth to the story, but when Garrison asked him about it in 1966, Andrews was pleased enough to repeat the tale. He was shocked when Garrison informed him shortly thereafter that he had identified Bertrand as a prominent local businessman named Clay Lavergne Shaw. "One, Bertrand is homosexual," Garrison had told members of his staff — and Shaw was rumored to be gay. "Two, Bertrand speaks Spanish" (or so Garrison gathered); Shaw spoke fluent Spanish. "Three, his first name is Clay." Shaw fit these criteria therefore Shaw was Bertrand.⁽⁸⁰⁾

 

Dean Andrews

 

The D.A.'s office began showing Shaw's photograph to acquaintances of Dave Ferrie, and soon enough they came up with a young insurance salesman named Perry Raymond Russo, who said he recognized Shaw as someone he had glimpsed with Ferrie once at a gas station. (Russo said he had never met Lee Harvey Oswald.) But after a series of interviews, including one conducted under the influence of sodium Pentothal and at least three under the influence of hypnosis (techniques later linked to generating false reports of everything from sexual abuse to alien abductions), Russo was ready to testify that he had been in attendance at Ferrie's apartment on an occasion when Clay Shaw, David Ferrie and Lee Oswald had plotted the assassination of President Kennedy.⁽⁸¹⁾

 

JFK admirer Clay L. Shaw was the only person ever prosecuted for conspiring to assassinate John F. Kennedy. It took less than an hour for the jury to acquit.

 

Perry Russo

 

On March 1, 1967, the New Orleans District Attorney's office arrested Clay Shaw and charged him with conspiracy to assassinate the President. Though the CIA was one of Garrison's prime suspects, it was Shaw's homosexuality that the D.A. initially believed to be the key to the businessman's motive. Shaw, Ferrie, Oswald, and Jack Ruby were all gay, Garrison claimed to select confidantes; so while the CIA and anti-Castro Cuban emigrants provided the guerrilla team in Dealey Plaza, it was the kick of a homosexual "thrill-killing" that attracted his suspect to the plot. All that remained was to somehow link Shaw to the CIA.⁽⁸²⁾

Three days later Paese Sera, a crypto-Communist, Italian newspaper known for its anti-American slant, sensationalistic style, and propensity for "imaginative" stories with "made-up," "synthetical" details, launched a series of articles linking Clay Shaw to the CIA. Paese Sera would later be identified as a vehicle for Soviet disinformation, and reputable news media steered clear of its claims, but other left-leaning newspapers around the world picked up the story. A March 8 issue of l'Humanité, the official newspaper of the French Communist Party, came to Garrison's attention, with the headline: "Clay Shaw a travaillé â Rome pour les services U.S. d'espionnage" ("Clay Shaw Worked in Rome for U.S. Intelligence").⁽⁸³⁾

There it was in black and white: like Ray Palmer's flying saucers, Jim Garrison's fantasies were becoming reality.

 

NOTES:

1. Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1964), pp. 79-156. The Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (better known as the Warren Commission Report) is available online at http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/index.html. The Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives (HSCA), which confirmed the Warren Commission's conclusions about Oswald, is available online at http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/. The HSCA muddied the waters terribly, however, by endorsing a theory that an additional shot was fired from another location, based on evidence that was discredited shortly thereafter by a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) committee, with the assistance of an amateur assassination researcher named Steve Barber — the only instance (ironically) in which a "buff" has critically influenced the course of a Kennedy assassination investigation. The NAS Report and other relevant studies are available online at http://www.jfk-online.com/acousticarc.html.

2. Two online articles that deal with the corrosive nature of conspiracy theories include Paul Mitchinson, "J.F.K. Conspiracy a KGB Hoax?", National Post, August 4, 2001, at http://web.archive.org/web/20060816044019/paulmitchinson.com/articles/jfk-conspiracy-a-kgb-hoax/ and Chip Berlet, "Toxic to Democracy: Conspiracy Theories, Demonization, & Scapegoating," Political Research Associates, at http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/toxic2democracy/. For book-length discussions of the political and cultural ramifications of conspiracy theories, see David Aaronovitch, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History (New York: Riverhead Books, 2010), and Daniel Pipes, Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes From (New York: The Free Press, 1997).

3. Gary Langer, "Legacy of Suspicion: Decades After, Few Accept the Official Explanation for JFK Assassination." Online at http://abcnews.go.com/sections/wnt/US/JFK_poll_031116.html.

4. Fox: online at http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,102511,00.html. Scripps: online at http://scrippsnews.com/911polldata.

5. Online at http://www.gallup.com/poll/9751/americans-kennedy-assassination-conspiracy.aspx.

6. For a thorough discussion of the issues raised by Stone's film, see Dave Reitzes, "The JFK 100: One Hundred Errors of Fact and Judgment in Oliver Stone's JFK," online at http://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100menu.html. "JFK at the Fringe of Reason" does not address the possibility that Oswald assassinated the President on behalf of organized crime or a foreign government (such as Cuba or the Soviet Union), although many of the same arguments would apply.

7. David Aaronovitch, Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History (New York: Riverhead Books, 2010), p. 9. The Watergate scandal actually makes for an instructive object lesson about conspiracies. While JFK conspiracy theories typically involve dozens or even hundreds of conspirators, accessories, and assorted minions in plots that can seem positively Byzantine, Charles Colson, former Special Counsel for President Richard Nixon (and one of the "Watergate Seven" who were indicted by a grand jury on March 1, 1974, for their role in the Watergate scandal), has observed, "With the most powerful office in the world at stake, a small band of hand-picked loyalists [of President Nixon] . . . could not hold a conspiracy together for more than two weeks." (Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy [New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007], p. 1442.)

8. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 35. Interested readers are strongly urged to visit the website of Skeptic magazine (http://www.skeptic.com) and Michael Shermer's own website (http://www.michaelshermer.com/).

9. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), pp. 211-41.

10. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 35.

11. Milton E. Brener, The Garrison Case: A Study in the Abuse of Power (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1969), p. 84.

12. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 20.

13. James Kirkwood, American Grotesque: An Account of the Clay Shaw-Jim Garrison Kennedy Assassination Trial in the City of New Orleans (New York: Harper Perennial, 1992), p. 568.

14. See for example: David Lifton, Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1988). Harrison Edward Livingstone and Robert J. Groden, High Treason: The Assassination of JFK & the Case for Conspiracy (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1998). James H. Fetzer, ed., Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998). James H. Fetzer, ed., Murder in Dealey Plaza: What We Know Now That We Didn't Know Then about the Death of JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2002).

15. James H. Fetzer, ed., Murder in Dealey Plaza: What We Know Now That We Didn't Know Then about the Death of JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2002), pp. 299-310.

16. John Armstrong, Harvey and Lee: How the CIA Framed Oswald (Quasar Books, 2003).

17. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 48.

18. Harrison Edward Livingstone, Killing the Truth: Deceit and Deception in the JFK Case (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1993), p. 52.

19. Harrison Edward Livingstone, High Treason 2: The Great Cover-Up: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1992), p. 71.

20. James H. Fetzer, ed., Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998), pp. 265-66).

21. Milton E. Brener, The Garrison Case: A Study in the Abuse of Power (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1969), p. 55.

22. James Phelan, Scandals, Scamps, and Scoundrels: The Casebook of an Investigative Reporter (New York: Random House, 1982), p. 169. According to Elizabeth Short's biographer, John Gilmore, approximately fifty individuals contacted the Los Angeles Police Department to confess to Short's murder. For more on problems with eyewitness testimony, see http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/witnesses.htm and http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/memory.htm.

23. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 49.

24. James H. Fetzer, ed., Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998), p. xiv.

25. James H. Fetzer, ed., Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998), p. 405.

26. James H. Fetzer, ed., Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998), pp. 401-02.

27. James H. Fetzer, ed., Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998), p. 408.

28. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 48.

29. Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997), p. 66.

30. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 45.

31. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 49.

32. James H. Fetzer, ed., Murder in Dealey Plaza: What We Know Now That We Didn't Know Then about the Death of JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2002), p. 15.

33. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 50.

34. Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy (New York: Warner Books, 1991), p. xv.

35. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), pp. 50-51.

36. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), pp. 50-51, 125-72.

37. See for example the Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (better known as the Warren Commission Report), available online at http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/index.html, and the Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives (HSCA), online at http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/. (The HSCA muddied the waters terribly, however, by endorsing a theory that an additional shot was fired from another location, based on evidence that was discredited shortly thereafter by a National Academy of Sciences committee. The NAS Report and other relevant studies are available online at http://www.jfk-online.com/acousticarc.html.) The Academic JFK Assassination Site (http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/JFK.html) is an excellent online resource for understanding the evidence in the assassination. Detailed discussions of the evidence can be found in Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007), and Larry M. Sturdivan, The JFK Myths: A Scientific Investigation of the Kennedy Assassination (St. Paul: Paragon House, 2005).

38. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 51.

39. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), pp. 52-33.

40. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 52.

41. For a discussion of this issue, see Dave Reitzes, "Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?", available online at http://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100wholho.html.

42. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 53.

43. The HSCA Report is available online at http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/select-committee-report/.

44. Josiah Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas: A Micro-Study of the Kennedy Assassination (New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1967), p. 282.

45. Hearings Before the Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, 95th Congress, 2d session (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1979), Vol. 1, p. 346.

46. Hearings Before the Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, 95th Congress, 2d session (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1979), Vol. 1, p. 354.

47. Hearings Before the Select Committee on Assassinations, U.S. House of Representatives, 95th Congress, 2d session (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1979), Vol. 7, pp. 37-71, online at http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/hsca/reportvols/vol7/html/HSCA_Vol7_0024a.htm.

48. See for example: David Lifton, Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1988). Harrison Edward Livingstone and Robert J. Groden, High Treason: The Assassination of JFK & the Case for Conspiracy (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1998). James H. Fetzer, ed., Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 1998). James H. Fetzer, ed., Murder in Dealey Plaza: What We Know Now That We Didn't Know Then about the Death of JFK (Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2002).

49. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 53.

50. Gerald Posner, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 363.

51. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 53.

52. Gerald Posner, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 363.

53. Gerald Posner, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 363. For more on Ruby and conspiracy theories, see Dave Reitzes, "In Defense of Jack Ruby," online at http://www.jfk-online.com/rubydef.html.

54. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 54.

55. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 54.

56. See Dave Reitzes, "Phone Factoid: Tortured Connection," available online at http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/factoid.htm.

57. John McAdams, "Kennedy Assassination "Coincidences: Sinister Connections: How Likely?", available online at http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/logic3.htm.

58. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 54.

59. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 54.

60. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), pp. 54-55.

61. Gerald Posner, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 483. For a detailed, online analysis of the "mysterious deaths" myth, see http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/deaths.htm.

62. Michael Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things: Pseudoscience, Superstition, and Other Confusions of Our Time (New York: MJF Books, 1997), p. 55.

63. Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997), p. 72.

64. Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997), p. 69. For more on problems with eyewitness testimony, see http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/witnesses.htm and http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/memory.htm.

65. Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark (New York: Ballantine Books, 1997), p. 82.

66. Daniel Loxton, "Big Foot, Bigger Hoax," Skeptic, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 18-19, online at http://www.theeway.com/skepticc/10-1-bigfoot.html.

67. Ted Schultz, ed., The Fringes of Reason: A Whole Earth Catalog (New York: Harmony Books, 1989), p. 139.

68. Ted Schultz, ed., The Fringes of Reason: A Whole Earth Catalog (New York: Harmony Books, 1989), p. 139. Joe Nickell, Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1995), p. 192.

69. Martin Kottmeyer, "The Saucer Error," The REALL News: The Official Newsletter of the Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land, Vol. 1, No. 4, available online at http://www.debunker.com/texts/SaucerError.html.

70. Martin Kottmeyer, "The Saucer Error," The REALL News: The Official Newsletter of the Rational Examination Association of Lincoln Land, Vol. 1, No. 4, available online at http://www.debunker.com/texts/SaucerError.html.

71. Joe Nickell, Entities: Angels, Spirits, Demons, and Other Alien Beings (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1995), p. 192. Along with Palmer, Kenneth Arnold became a vigorous promoter of highly dubious tales of extraterrestrial visitations; see Martin Gardner, Fads & Fallacies in the Name of Science (New York: Dover Publications, 1957), pp. 55-62, for further information.

72. Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins: My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy (New York: Warner Books, 1991), pp. 12-25.

73. James Phelan, Scandals, Scamps, and Scoundrels: The Casebook of an Investigative Reporter (New York: Random House, 1982), p. 147.

74. See for example Patricia Lambert, False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's JFK (New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 1998), pp. 23-65. For an online evaluation of the charges against Ferrie, see Dave Reitzes, "David Ferrie: Presumed Guilty: Garrison's Villain and Hollywood's Clown," online at http://www.jfk-online.com/ferriepre.html.

75. Patricia Lambert, False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's JFK (New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 1998), p. 45.

76. Patricia Lambert, False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's JFK (New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 1998), p. 58.

77. Milton E. Brener, The Garrison Case: A Study in the Abuse of Power (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1969), p. 83. Ferrie's death: Patricia Lambert, False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's JFK (New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 1998), p.60. See also Dave Reitzes, "The Death of David Ferrie," online at http://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100ferdeath.html.

78. Milton E. Brener, The Garrison Case: A Study in the Abuse of Power (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., 1969), p. 84.

79. See for example Patricia Lambert, False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's JFK (New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 1998), pp. 23-65. For an online evaluation of the charges against Ferrie, see Dave Reitzes, "David Ferrie: Presumed Guilty: Garrison's Villain and Hollywood's Clown," online at http://www.jfk-online.com/ferriepre.html.

80. Patricia Lambert, False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's JFK (New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 1998), pp. 30-37, 47-52. For a detailed evaluation of the charges against Shaw, see Dave Reitzes, "Who Speaks for Clay Shaw?", available online at http://www.jfk-online.com/clayshaw1.html.

81. Patricia Lambert, False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's JFK (New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 1998), pp. 30-37, 47-52. See Part 3 of Dave Reitzes, "Who Speaks for Clay Shaw?", available online at http://www.jfk-online.com/clayshaw3.html.

82. Patricia Lambert, False Witness: The Real Story of Jim Garrison's Investigation and Oliver Stone's JFK (New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 1998), p. 89. See also Dave Reitzes, "Jim Garrison's Bizarre Behavior - 5: Assassination a Homosexual Thrillkilling," online at http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/jimloon5.htm. While Garrison publicly expressed his view that the CIA was behind Kennedy's death, the prosecution did not do so at Shaw's trial. Garrison outlined his claims about Shaw's CIA ties in his 1988 memoir, On the Trail of the Assassins.

83. See Part 4 of Dave Reitzes, "Who Speaks for Clay Shaw?", available online at http://www.jfk-online.com/clayshaw4.html.

 

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