The Kennedy Assassination Revisited

Oswald of course did exactly the opposite of what anyone would do if they "wanted to be known as" killing the President.

When in custody of the Dallas police he continually denied having anything to do with the killing of the President, or police officer Tippit [who a man fitting Oswald's description shot Tippit just after the assassination].

Not only did Oswald continually deny everything, but the Dallas police detained and questioned him without any counsel despite his continual requests for such. Additionally the Dallas police kept absoutely no records of any kind of his questioning.

This bizarre and bungling behavor by the Dallas police was the genesis of the Warren Commission. In a phone conversation with President Johnson days after the assassination [available at the LBJ library] Dean of the Yale Law School Eugene Rostow stated that not only did the general public not believe that Oswald did it, but that attornies, judges and officials countrywide were also unconvinced,

Rostow:
"The way the Dallas police have handled this no one believes anything we say about it."

It was this counsel by Rostow which convinced Johnson to create the Warren Commission. At the same time, Eugene Rostow's brother Walt was in the White House as the Deputy National Security Advisor to Johnson. He was in the process of drafting a Presidential Directive for Johnson which was signed the following day. That was the Directive which reversed a former one signed by Kennedy weeks earlier mandating the withdrawl of all U.S. combat personnel from Vietnam.

Walt Rostow became Johnson's NSC advisor, and never wavered from his support of the Vietnam war. Consequently after 1969 he had nowhere else to go other than his boss's new graduate school in Austin. He therefore remained there as a Professor until he died in Austin in 2004. Disgraced in acedemics, he contented himself with teaching and doing research in the LBJ library. However in 1981 he became re-energized when his buddy from CIA, William Casey, became the Director of Central Intelligence under Ronald Reagan. He began spotting and recruiting students for intelligence training and careers. One of the places such students went was Pakistan, from which the war in Afghanistan was supported....and still is....all these years later.
Deniers and would-be debunkers continue the line that no one in government has ever confessed to involvement in the assassination. After a lifetime of denying involvement, CIA Station Chief E. Howard Hunt recanted all his previous denials moments before his impending death.

www.rense.com/general76/hunt.htm

Hunt's account is consistent with that of Austinite Barr McClellan, the first husband of Austin Mayor Carole McClellan Strayhorn, who was also the State Comptroller. Carole and Barr are also the parents of Scott and Mark, Mark being Pres. W. Bush's former Press Secretary. You can look up Barr McClellan and see his publications and allegations. He practiced law in Austin with Ed Clark, President Johnson's attorney.
AustinBusinessTraveler's Avatar
WikiLeaks.

Nobody keeps secrets for shit.

Shit, the only people who did were Woodward and Bernstein - reporters.
Kennedy was killed by assassins from the pharmaceutical industry because he was going to spill the beans on how dangerous vaccines are. Originally Posted by GneissGuy
"JFK" is something you are referencing? Oh Lord. And Gneiss is right. It was Dr. Wakefield in the library with the candlestick Originally Posted by AustinBusinessTraveler
Sweet.
Prowordsmith's Avatar
Well, I have it upon impeccable authority (a highly-placed goverment official at the time that I had gone to high school with and maintained contact with all of the subsequent years) that none other than Chuck Barris was the case officer who who recruited and directed LHO, participated from the Grassy Knoll (giving LHO to acccurately aim and fire two shots only) and arranged for LHOs murder to completely cover the operation..
Retired Air Force Lt. Col. David H. Strier lived in Austin [Los Colinas Condominiums, FM 2222] from the 1970s until his death in 2004. A heavyweight fighter and mob figure in New York in the 1930s, he was the Chief of the U.S. Counterintelligence office in Florence, Italy in the mid-1950s, until he was re-assigned to Havana in 1957. Perhaps the most active CIA operative to personally commit assassinations, his preferred method was to strike his victims first to render them unconscious, then throw them from a high building. His work was so successful it became the basis of the now infamous CIA "assassination manuel," "A Study in Assassination" which was de-classified and is available on the internet.

In Washington D.C. he shot to death Mary Pinchot Meyer, the ex-wife of CIA Officer Cord Meyer. In the 1950s Cord and Mary Meyer lived next door to John and Jacqueline Kennedy, and Mary and John had an affair that included taking LSD together. After John Kennedy's assassination Mary began sharing her views with friends; thereafter her body was found in a Washington D.C. park. It remains an unsolved crime according to District police records. CIA Chief of Counterintelligence James Angleton was discovered in Mary's home, whereupon he admitted that he was seeking her diary. The diary was in the possession of another CIA wife, who dutifully turned it over to Angleton, who thereafter verified its references to the Kennedy affair and LSD.

Among Strier's other notable assassinations was that of Army chemist Dr. Frank Olson, who was thrown out of the eleventh floor window of a Manhattan hotel in October 1953. After a re-examination of his remains, the DA of Manhattan County re-opened his case as a homicide in 1994, but closed the case when an informant led the investigation to Strier as one of two principal assailants.
Guest031411-2's Avatar
I confuse, twas I that did it all!
AustinBusinessTraveler's Avatar
Retired Air Force Lt. Col. David H. Strier lived in Austin.... Perhaps the most active CIA operative to personally commit assassinations Originally Posted by theaustinescorts
Hmm... I'm going to go with no, but thanks for playing. I'll stick with Felix Rodriguez (http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Warrior.../dp/0671667211). According to Frank Terpil (Michael, if you actually worked for the CIA, you should know who Frank is real well - he goes by Peter and lives on the island these days), Felix was active all over the world for decades as both a surgical strike assassin and a paramilitary leading combat missions.

Kennedy was shot by a Marine with mental problems trying to re-prove his loyalty to the USSR. Did Oswald think there was more to it... possibly in his own mind.

There was no magic bullet (once you know the correct seat heights and seating positions that goes to crap).

We all want to believe that there had to be a conspiracy to get a president but that isn't true. Even the Secret Service manual says there is no way to stop someone committed to killing the President if they are willing to exchange their life for the Presidents.
After the war Italy was the primary ratline for former nazis escaping Europe. To some extent the Vatican as well as some CIA officers [such as Frank Wisner] were complicit in that. Then Maj. Strier was very dismayed about that. Strier was a man who was easily upset anyway, as he had an as yet un-diagnosed brain injury from his fighting days which made him unable to control his violent impulses. Strier was Jewish, and after his father lost the family fortune in 1929 Strier had to turn to the mafia to obtain work, first as a stevadore at the age of 14, and then as a fighter when only 16, working with forged papers.

Strier made it a habit to kill anyone he encountered who had SS blood-type tattoos. In particular he confided to me that he killed two German tourists on the Island of Capri in 1955 who's tattoos he saw on the beach of the hotel where they were staying. When later assigned to Havana this habit became even worse, as many former nazis who escaped Europe were living there. Consequently Strier ended up being hunted there, but for reasons his government employers couldn't figure out. He was on a one man crusade which had nothing to do with U.S. policy. Actually maybe it wasn't a one man crusade, as there were Israeli "vengance teams" who were doing the same work, and it would be strange if Strier wasn't in communication with such groups.

Strier was a political progressive, a big supporter of labor, and a card-carrying Democrat. When in Havana he despised the Batista regime, and like others in the CIA Havana station he romanticised the Castro rebellion going on in the eastern part of the Island. Despite everything that Castro had done to un-mask himself as malevolant, as late as 1999 [the last he mentioned Castro to me] he spoke approvingly of him, and derisively about U.S. policy toward Cuba. He was actually seeking a way to return to Cuba clandestinely, and kept encouraging me to assist him in that, but I was definitely unavailable for such.

In general Strier was like many CIA officers who were not right-wing in that he was dismayed at American policy in working against anyone who wasn't solidly on the right in foreign countries. In particular he often was disgusted with the assassination targets he was given - he didn't think they were really Soviet spies, just socialists or non-Stalinist Marxists that had been tagged as such. Regarding this though he felt no particular guilt. He just said that he "had no choice" in the matter. He was just there to take orders, and if he didn't do the work someone else would.

Interestingly I heard a rumor that the Italian Carabinieri may have re-opened the case of the two missing German tourists.
Happy Diver's Avatar
Everyone knows that Carlos Hathcock shot Kennedy. They rewarded him by sending him to Vietnam where he fathered Jethro Gibbs.

I've always believed in Occam's Razor--The simplest explanation possible is most likely correct. There are just very few successful conspiracies because they always get found out. People like to talk. 'Nuff said.
Because of his brain injury and consequent ill-temperament David H. Strier had no friends, and spent all his time alone. He was a talented graphic artist who spent part of the Second World War in Hollywood as an art designer for Army Air Corps films. Sometimes he would spend hours on a drawing or illustration for something. Other times I would look in on him and I would find him playing solitaire alone at his desk.

Memorable David Strier sayings:

"Every operation is just a cunt's hair away from total failure."

"Oh killers can be very nice guys. Just don't get on their list."

"Don't worry about talking to that guy. He won't put a contract out on you."

"Living a long time is the best revenge."

"Michael...you shit!"
Doesn't the Zapruder home movie clearly show a kill shot striking the front of the head? What about the many people reporting hearing shots fired from the top of the rise ("grassy knoll")? And I doubt those sounds were echoes, as there are no buildings behind that fence.

Just asking--have you been to the scene? Behind that fence is the ideal spot for the job. Up in a building, waiting til after the car has passed the best opportunity for hitting the target?

Oh, and Mark Felt managed to keep a secret for a long time.
GneissGuy's Avatar
Doesn't the Zapruder home movie clearly show a kill shot striking the front of the head? Originally Posted by meldrick
That was debunked 40+ years ago, but the nutjobs keep bringing it up.

When you shoot something like a melon or an animal's head with a 6.5 mm hardball bullet like Oswald used, stuff squirts out of both the entry and exit holes. The bullet goes all the way through, and the target doesn't go flying downrange.

People have filmed experiments where they shoot a melon or pig's head and it doesn't necessarily jerk away from the bullet. Stuff shoots out in both directions. Hunting shows often show someone shooting a deer with a rifle*. With a good shot, the animal falls like puppet with its strings cut. It doesn't get knocked downrange.

The Mythbusters** did a show shooting dummies or pig carcasses with various kinds of weapons trying to duplicate the Hollywood "gunshot victim goes flying downrange when shot" scenario. Zero, zip, nada. The inanimate target gets a hole punched in it and doesn't jerk much.

When you poke a hole through a living being, it tends to jerk a lot as an involuntary reaction, especially if you poke a hole through the brain. The jerk is not necessarily in the direction away from the bullet. If I throw a dart and it sticks into you somewhere, you're probably going to jerk, and it won't necessarily be away from the dart.

By the way, that doesn't prove the shot came from behind, but it clearly doesn't show it came from the front.

*What a deer is doing with a rifle is beyond me.
**Yes, the Mythbusters are idiots, but I believe they actually did the experiment and filmed the results.
I absolutely believe in the single bullet theory. My problem with the shots in Dallas have to do with aiming the rifle, the testimony of Governor Connolly, government personnel in the plaza who are unaccounted for, and the fact that the President's body wasn't documented properly.

I'm inclined to believe it came from certain people in government because:

1.there is no concrete proof that Oswald acted alone

2.for Oswald to have accomplished this and then be killed right after relies on a multitude of strange coincidences

3.individuals in government were highly motivated to replace Kennedy with Johnson

4.such people had the means and opportunity to do so

5.my experience is that it was within their personal range of inclinations to do so

Regarding this last point you can see this yourself by reading Howard Hunt's biography, published in 2007 a year or so before his death. It's evident that he was executing covert operations for the Nixon White House simply because it was his habit, or pattern, of problem solving to use these kinds of tools.

That's the way many of these guys were, including the ones like Strier that I was exposed to. They had a certain toolbox of skills that they regularly used to solve particular political problems in foreign countries and it didn't matter to them if they were applied here or not, or if they were illegal or not. A spy is someone who breaks the law for what they believe is a justifiable cause. It's natural for someone with that as an assumption of their life not to see a clear distinction in what country this is applied. There were several occassions in which Strier or others proposed illegal and often hairbrain hijinks that they wanted to involve me in. They did this out of habit, because it's what they were familiar with.

Strier committed several killings in the U.S. as well as overseas. Particularly in New York, where Dr. Olson was killed, committing a homicide there was nothing particularly out of the ordinary.

In his book Hunt teases with the names of the CIA officers he later identifies in his deathbed confession. I will never know if his confession is true, but it may very well be. Despite all his earlier deceptions I regard Hunt as a well meaning and sincere person who only lied when he had a reason of principle for doing so.

p.s. here is one last David Strier truism -

"Don't ever believe that anyone can be made to do what you want. Most people will, but there's always that one guy who just won't ever agree to go along."