The reason for the assassination was to control the power of the presidency.
The following appeared in the October, 1975 issue of Gallery, a porno magazine which billed Fletcher Prouty as the "National Affairs Editor." Some people feel there is no credible way to justify associating oneself with such exploitative and demeaning media. Fletcher Prouty has told me that since the Ballentine paperback edition of >ratical.org/ratville/JFK /ST/"> The Secret Team was "disappeared" soon after it came out in February of 1974, it was very difficult for him to find publishers who would print his writings. From September 1974 to July 1975 he had 7 articles published in Genesis (another porno magazine), and from September 1975 to June 1978 he had 14 articles published in Gallery.
Up until the Ballentine paperback was squelched, he had been published in the likes of The Nation, The New Republic, (including cover-story features), and Air Force Magazine. It is a telling indictment of the reality of lack of public access to the mainstream corporate press, that a man like Fletcher Prouty—who served in the Air Force for 23 years, rose to the rank of Colonel, was a briefing officer in the Pentagon from 1955 thru 31 December 1963, serving also as Focal Point Officer (liason) between the DOD and the CIA, first in the Headquarters of the Air Force (1955 to 1960), where he set up and then ran the structures that supplied Air Force logistical (military hardware) support for CIA clandestine operations world-wide, then in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (1960 into 1961), and then in the Office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1961 thru 12/31/63) where he ran the same support for all branches of the military—that a man possessing such critical first- hand experience and knowledge of the mechanisms, methodogy and factual history of CIA covert operations in this seminal period, would find his writings and analysis of these important issues essentially barred from the most generally accessible publications. As long as the conglomerate press in this country continues to increasingly restrict the range and variety of points of view being published, writers will resort to certain types of publishers they would not choose to go to if they had a better alternative.
This article included a great deal of photograhic evidence of the events in Dealey Plaza. The photographic research was by Richard E. Sprague. An asterisk character, `*', delimits pictures not seen by Warren Commission.
—ratitor
THE GUNS OF DALLAS
© 1975 by L. Fletcher Prouty
Photographic Research by Richard E. Sprague
Reprinted with permission of the author
The shocking nature of what you are about to read in this article makes it imperative that you be aware of some of the credentials and experience of the author.
From 1955 to December 31, 1963, Col. L. Fletcher Prouty was the Focal Point (liason) officer between the Pentagon and the CIA. During 1962 and 1963 he was Director of Special Plans (clandestine operations) in the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In 1971 he was the president of the Financial Marketing Council, Washington, D.C.
He is the author of numerous articles and of The Secret Team, published by Prentice Hall (1973) and Ballantine Books (1974).
How was the Warren Commission kept from investigating and seeing evidence?
This is the real issue.
This is a crime to top the crime.
As we prepare now to celebrate the beginning of the third century of the founding of this country, we wonder if we live in the land of the free. We wonder if at least we still have a government of the people and by the people. Certainly, it is no longer a government for the people. The sound throughout the land is ugly: there is frustration, hate, and fear. We must act while there may still be time.
There is a grave conspiracy over the land. The people have come alive because of Vietnam and Watergate; but they have scarcely scratched the surface. A President and a Vice-President have been forced to resign. A President has been shot to death. Two Presidential candidates have been shot, one of them killed. Many of the President's men have been forced to leave, some have gone to jail; others are still under indictment.
Yes, history has been made by a series of murders, but not enough has been done to solve them. The trial of Watergate was the trial of the cover-up. There has been no trial about the real crime of Watergate. There has been no trial of the big power behind Watergate. The Hunts, Liddys, McCords, and the Cubans were not drawn into that drama solely for their own interests. They were working for someone much higher up. They were all pawns, just like Nixon was. This is a game for the biggest stake of all—absolute control of the government of the United States of America; and, with control of this government, control of the world. And yet the real crime underlying all of this has not even been identified, stated, and charged. The real criminals still walk the streets, run their corporations, control their banks, and pull strings throughout their political and financial machines.
This control mechanism did not start in 1972 with Watergate. It began, in a tentative way, in the Korean War era, when the military and the executive branch found out how easy it was to fool the Congress and the American public. And with that recognition, power- hungry and money-mad industrialists began to usurp more and more power. And when those rifles crackled over Dealey Plaza, in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963 and John F. Kennedy's brain was splattered across the road, they had made their move into the big time. They took over control of the President and of the Presidency. The man they had killed was no longer a problem and they had made certain that his successor, Lyndon Johnson, heard and remembered the sound of those guns. It is the sound of those guns in Dallas, and their ever-present threat, which is the real mechanism of control over the American government.
It is possible now to reconstruct the scenario of that day, and, with new information, to show why the murder of JFK may properly be called the "Crime of the Century." If we the people of the United States do not demand its resolution this year, it will stand in the way of a free election in 1976. It will doom a third century of democratic government in this country.
Almost everyone who has taken the time to do any reading and thinking about that crime knows by now that John Kennedy was killed not by a lone assassin, but by a group of hired "mechanics." Let's look at some of the hard facts of this murder and put to rest once and for all the "cover-up" report of the Warren Commission.
The Warren Commission categorically stated that Lee Harvey Oswald was the killer of JFK and that he acted alone. The Warren Commission says that Oswald fired three shots, only three shots, from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building and that his lair was at a window, number one from the right (eastern-most on the south side) on that sixth floor.
IMG# 1: Texas School Book Depository Building
NUMBER 1. The Texas School Book Depository Building. Arrow points to window from which Oswald supposedly shot Kennedy. (photo by Willis.)
If one breaks this contrived Warren Commission story, then the fundament of the "lone assassin" theory is undermined. Break this weak theory and you are confronted immediately with an awareness of the existence of a massive conspiracy. And we are equally convinced that this group hired at least four expert "mechanics" (assassins). This group wielded control over elements of the Dallas police, the Sheriff's office, the FBI, the Secret Service, and the CIA. This great cabal had control high enough in government, or at least in the councils of government, to be able to influence the travel plans of the President, the Vice-President and a Presidential candidate (Nixon), and all members of the Kennedy cabinet. They were powerful enough to have orders issued to the Army, and they were able to mount a massive campaign to control the media during and after the assassination. They were able to have Jack Ruby kill Oswald and to transfer jurisdiction of the murder from Texas and then to effectively control the outcome of the Warren Commission review.
Then as soon as JFK was dead, they began an even larger campaign to cover up that crime forever. Penn Jones, the tenacious editor of the Midlothian, Texas, Mirror, has devoted his life to "researching the hell" out of this conspiracy. He has a list of some eighty-five people who, because they knew too much or got too close, have died sudden and unnatural deaths since the JFK murder.
This great cabal had seen to it that Vice-President Lyndon Johnson was in the Kennedy procession, and they saw to it that he heard those hired guns, that he saw Kennedy die, and that he lived through that terrible nightmare of the trip back to Washington on Air Force One. From that day on, LBJ never again was that self-confident, swash-buckling, free-wheeling Texan. Before he died, LBJ told his old friend Tom Janos that he knew Oswald had not killed JFK alone.
The American public is now ready enough to have the cloak torn from the lies about the Kennedy murder and the cover-up; but the American public has not had the guts to face the fact of the massive conspiracy that arranged for that murder and which to this day perpetuates its cover-up.
Many of us have been convinced, as a result of careful and detailed study that the first of these glass barricades, the Warren Commission report, is a lie. And, we are equally convinced that the cover-up of the murder can be smashed and the conspiracy exposed. But if we don't act now, there will be consequences. These will begin with either the cancellation of elections in 1976 or with elections that will be a total sham. For who will dare run against the candidate of the conspiracy? Will it be Wallace with his wounds and from his wheelchair, or another Kennedy, or Ed Muskie, who was badly roughed up in 1972, or George McGovern, who was twice scheduled for assassination in 1972?
Who, unless he sells his soul to the cabal, can face those hired guns?
Today, our country is being run by a President and a Vice-President who have not been elected to office. This is merely a process to condition the American public.
Let's begin here by breaking apart the whole fabric of the lone- killer thesis. On November 28, 1963, less than one week after Kennedy's death, the Secret Service, the agency closest to the scene, reported that three shots were fired. The Secret Service said that the first hit the President, the second hit Governor John Connally of Texas, and the third struck the President. There were no other shots according to the Secret Service. The Secret Service was wrong!
Dealey Plaza
Firing Paths Schematic by architect Robert Cutler
ratical.org/r atville/JFK/DPschematic.html
This schematic by Robert Cutler pinpoints the exact location of all elements—buildings, vehicles, and people—on Dealey Plaza at the time of the shooting of the President. [click on image for hi-res version]
On December 9, 1963, the FBI reported that three shots had been fired and that two hit the President and that one hit John Connally. The FBI says there were no other shots. The FBI was less specific than the Secret Service. The FBI was wrong.
Then, much later, on September 27, 1964 (ten months after the crime), the Warren Commission issued its report along with twenty- six huge volumes of random data. This report states that there were three shots. The Warren Commission was wrong.
According to the Warren Commission, the first shot, the "miracle bullet" designed and dreamed up by one of its lawyers (Arlen Specter), is one of the most fascinating contrivances of our generation. Forced to account for a series of unrelated events, Arlen Specter came up with a weird solution. He says the first bullet hit JFK, passed through the muscle of his upper back exited from his lower throat, traveled a few feet in the air, changed course, and entered Connally's back, plunged through his body, broke about five inches of one of his right rib bones, came out again, and then slammed into his right wrist, where it broke two more bones, exited again, and then pierced his thigh and ended its strange journey embedded in his thigh bone.
An interpretation of this thesis, based on photographic and medical evidence, means the bullet would have had to have made a right and upward turn upon leaving JFK's throat, paused in midair for more than two seconds, made a left and steep downward turn as it entered Connally's back, made a right and upward turn as it left Connally's chest, passed through Connally's wrist in the direction backward from the way his wrist was facing, made another left and downward turn, then wound up in Connally's left thigh.
Right here we see the brazen, "To Hell with the Public" character of the Commission report. Can you imagine some lawyer, even the persuasive and imaginative Specter, selling that bullet and its bumble-bee flight to any jury of intelligent Americans? The Commission was stuck with a "three bullet" crime because the Secret Service and the FBI had both reported three bullets, because there were only 6.8 seconds of shooting[1], as proven precisely by a film of the event made by Abraham Zapruder, and because the character who planted the shells at the "Oswald lair" had only put three there. Furthermore, if they were going to stick with the "lone assassin" solution, they were faced with the hard task of making it appear feasible that Oswald alone could have gotten off just three bullets in 6.8 seconds, let alone four, five, or six.
The Zapruder movie film, which shows the entire scene from beginning to end, became invaluable as a master clock of the whole affair. It established a foolproof chronology of the crime. It is not too difficult to determine precisely when (what frame of the movie film) the first shot was fired; and it is equally simple to determine exactly the elapsed time until the last shot was fired. So, unless the Commission could accept that there might have been other gunmen who fired during the same 6.8 seconds—and this the Commission categorically denied—it was going to have to show that Oswald could have fired three bullets from that sixth-floor window, and that he performed this feat in super-marksmanship time of 6.8 seconds.[2] It is significant to stress here that the supposed murder weapon was a cheap Italian Mannlicher-Carcano mail-order rifle, a single-shot, bolt-action antique.
Another complication crept into the Commission's connivance. One of the bystanders at Dealey Plaza that day was a man named James Tague. He was hit by a fragment of concrete knocked off the curb by a bullet that had hit a curbstone near where he stood. He reported his injury to a hospital.
IMG# 2: James Tague
NUMBER 2.* James Tague, on the far right, with cut on face after he was hit by a fragment of concrete that was knocked off the curb by errant bullet. (photo by Allen.)
So there was another man on record as having been hit during these same 6.8 seconds. This forced the Commission to accept that one bullet, the second by their count, missed both JFK and Connally. This complicated their task. Remember, neither the Secret Service nor the FBI has accounted for that "missed" bullet and there were only three shell cases and no clips at Oswald's window. They both had said that three shots were fired and that two hit JFK and one hit Connally. The FBI later found the nick in the curbstone, took a section of it back to their labs in Washington, analyzed it, and decided that a bullet had indeed hit the curb.
The Zapruder film makes it abundantly clear that the top of the President's head was blown off and the skull and brain spattered as far as thirty-seven yards away by a third shot. Thus the Commission gives the "official" version: three shots. The third shot, the missed second shot, and none other than the contrived "Specter Miracle Bullet"—the first shot.
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