Oliver Stone's film and the explosion of the internet have had a profound and positive impact on Kennedy assassination research. The Stone film (and in particular it's dramatic use of Abraham Zapruder's Dealey Plaza clip) has stimulated a new generation of researchers, many of whom weren't even born till after 1963. The addition of these eager, idealistic young people to the army of determined, still-dedicated veterans has re-energized the latter, who can mentor their younger counterparts in techniques for carrying the investigation forward using the worldwide web-- a medium youngpeople are particularly adept at. In addition to the hundreds of book that have been published concerning the assassination, thousands of websites are now springing up to carry "the cause" into the new century.
While veteran investigators still burn with the desire to have the facts fully and accurately disclosed (and the true perpetrators named and brought to justice-- for justice's sake, as well as for the sake of history and the lessons to be learned), some of the new-comers see the assassination as an intriguing puzzle to be solved for the intellectual pleasure involved. But whatever the motivation, it's results that count.
While the few Warren Commission defenders cling doggedly to the old fairy tale and show no sign of ever facing up to the truth, the mass media continues to praise the Posners, savage the Stones, and dismiss the dissenters as "buffs". Thus the investigation remains a purely populist effort; something it's always been, really-- though we didn't realize it till Vietnam and Watergate revealed how things really work.
Embattled New Orleans DA Jim Garrison perhaps spoke for all of us when (in On the Trail of the Assassins) he wrote: "I took it for granted that our goverment had our troops over there to bring democracy to South Vietnam. Like most Americans, I also took it for granted that our government had fully investigated President Kennedy's assassination and had found it to be indeed the result of a random act by a man acting alone...[although] I was aware of some of the odd contradictions about the assassination."
Contradictions indeed, Jim; especially to anyone who took the time to compare some of the testimony contained in the 26 volumes to the body of the WC Report, as he did. But most of us were too busy working and raising our families to bother doing that. We assumed the "watchdog" press and Congress were looking after our interests. Thoroughly disillusioned, we now realize what a naive assumption that was.
So here we are, still trying to solve a murder that occured more than 37 years ago. Two approaches seem possible: either investigate it from the "bottom up" or from the "top down"; either from a "Dealey Plaza" or "Deep Politics" viewpoint. Theoretically either approach will lead to the true facts, though the bottom up approach certainly seems more natural, and was for many years this writer's method-- till he was chastized by David Lifton for being too much of a "Dealey Plaza man"; i.e. one who focuses on the nuts and bolts, rather than the big picture. Not to say that the nuts and bolts aren't important, mind you, for they are. Unfortunately, however, there are so many of them that one can easily become overwhelmed and sidetracked trying to sort them out.
Most of the evidence is available to "bottom feeders", and most of the suspects named up to now are lower echelon operatives like Jack Ruby. Consequently it's only natural to focus on them; to try and find out what made them tick. Lee Harvey Oswald is undoubtedly a fascinating character and books like Gerald Posner's Case Closed seem to have fostered a honing in on him, to the exclusion of the bigger fish in the pond.
In Deep Politics, Peter Dale Scott points out that, "...beneath the open surface of our society lie connections and relationships of long standing, virtually immune to disclosure, and capable of great crimes, including serial murder".
In Coup D'Etat in America Weberman and Canfield write: "Kennedy fancied himself as an economic reformer in the tradition of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Instead of the New Deal, he offered the New Frontier and the Alliance for Progress. When the moment of truth arrived [quite early in his administration] regarding Cuba, Kennedy reversed the traditional American foreign policy of 'sending in the Marines' to any Latin American country where things had gotten out of hand". That is to say, where the exploitation of the native population was threatened by "socialists" like Salvador Allende, Fidel Castro, and Che Guevara.
Many people are unaware that the same powerful elite which were displeased with JFK had tried to control (or if not overthrow) FDR thirty years earlier. Their plot was thwarted by Marine Corps General Smedley Butler, who refused to play his designated "Fuhrer" role and blew the whistle instead. Butler later penned a scathing commentary about the use of the Marines to serve imperialistic interests. He said that during his thirty-three year career, "I spent most of my time being a high-class muscleman for big business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism...I helped make Mexico...safe for American oil interests...I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City bank boys...I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics...I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers...I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests...I helped make Honduras 'right' for the American fruit companies...I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested..."
Butler's indictment could serve just as well today as it did in 1933, for that courageous old soldier points the way for us. Unfortunately, we still haven't caught on to the idea that the bottom up approach leads only to plotters and shooters, while the top down approach can lead to those who WILLED the assassination and orchestrated its coverup; a coverup which continues to this day and shows no sign of cracking-- unless "we the people" (the ordionary people that is) crack it on behalf of our posterity. The way I see it, we owe it to them-- as well as to the memory of an admittedly imperfect man who nevertheless tried to be a real President and leader of the free world, rather than a self-serving politician.
The trouble is our research has been largely fragmented and uncoordinated; individuals toiling away over old records in poorly-lit archives; working in obscure isolation and silent anonimity. Even in some cases suspicious of sharing what we've uncovered, for fear of someone else stealing the credit. And, worse yet, carping and back-biting with our colleagues, who are all supposedly on the same team-- though daunted and easily discouraged by the enormity of the task.
Hasn't the time come to act in unison, just as the opposition does? Shouldn't we propose the establishment of an assassination academy; a research institute-- something along the lines of Princeton University's Institute for Advanced Study; a place where assassination scholars can meet and work together; an organization which would finance student research fellowships, conduct seminars and panel discussions?
There are plenty of individuals doing bottom up research, and an outstanding nucleus with highly specialized expertise on various aspects of the case. If their knowledge can be pooled with that of top down investigators concentrating initially on the Hoover/ Johnson/Warren/Dulles/McCloy strata (by no means the apex of the pyramid, but nevertheless a logical starting point), a meaningfull, logical and provable synthesis is, I believe, quite possible within a very short time.
Both Hoover and LBJ had reasons to hate the Kennedys and fear their own removal if he was re-elected. Thus they had a powerful motive for wanting to be rid of him (something Oswald certainly did not). Warren, Dulles and McCloy may also have had motives for participating in the coverup beyond those commonly ascribed to them. To ferret out those motives we must delve deeply into their backrounds and learn how they attained their places in the hierarchy of society, and also what became of them after they served on the Commission.
And although he played no known overt role in the plot, Richard Nixon must also come under scrutiny at the same level of the hierarchy as the above cited individuals, if for no other reason than that he wanted to be President so bad he could taste it and was faced instead with the prospect of a "Kennedy dynasty" (as were LBJ and a few other as yet unnamed aspirants also).
Powerful groups to be looked into should include not only the anti-Castro Cubans, Minutemen, Birchers, Neo-Nazis, Mafia, Teamsters, "renegade" CIA operatives and the like (none of which had enough clout to pull off such a massive and dazzling coverup), but also "kingmakers" within and without the United States; those semi-visible multi-national operators who've made use of the CIA (as well as the intelligence agencies of other countries) in much the same way the Marines were used during the first half of the 20th century.
Like Roosevelt, Kennedy was considered "a traitor to his class" by such moguls. But unlike FDR, he didn't have a Butler to clue him in to the danger. The most reliable friend he had was his brother Bob, who (even if he'd headed the CIA instead of the DOJ) probably couldn't have prevented what happened that sunny afternoon in Dallas. The Enemy Within was much too strong then, and is even stronger now. The clock is running, fellow "buffs". The new world order looms over us and our children. How will we use the time remaining to thwart it?
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