Midnight in the Plaza of Good and Evil

MIDNIGHT IN DEALEY PLAZA

Ever stood on the Grassy Knoll at midnight? Only the truly brave dare. But there’s no reason to fear (despite all you hear about Elm Street, it’s perfectly safe to walk, even at that late hour). Actually, you might find it a perfect moment to visit the Scene of the Crime and do a bit of quiet reflecting.

At midnight, Dealey Plaza is silent, almost strangely serene but for the occasional car whizzing by en route to Stemmons Freeway. The old School Book Depository (now the 6th Floor Museum, as it’s called) building sits dark. The tourists, museum visitors, downtown businessmen and County office workers who keep this public park a bustling beehive of activity won’t be along for a few more hours yet. No street vendors or conspiracy buffs to disturb your thoughts, sell you something, or try to engage you in a debate about Who Shot John.

No – at midnight in Dealey Plaza, it’s just you, the night, the place, the memories, and God.

In the stillness, you can’t help but wonder why someone picked such a beautiful spot to do such an ugly thing. How could anyone want to destroy a nation’s highest hopes and dreams in a lush and lovely green tree-lined square, surrounded by Art Deco edifices, statues and a historic marker which informs all who come here that on this very spot, the city of Dallas was founded. This bluff selected because of its’ exquisite natural beauty.

And you wonder why more people don’t seem to care. The average Dallas citizen drives though this plaza several times a week, if not every day. They’ve passed over the “X” marking the spot where JFK lost his life so many times in their normal daily commute, most of them honestly don’t even realize or notice anymore. They just walk or drive on by; going about their lives with nary a thought as to how many tears have watered the ground beneath their feet.

Looking around, you’d never know this place is one of the most historic killing zones in American history. The locals enjoy concerts and events here; families gather on Sunday afternoons; downtown dwellers walk their dogs around, and occasionally you’ll even see some young office boy trying to impress an attractive coworker with a picnic lunch. (Strange place for a date, one can’t help but think…)

TRANSFORMING TRAGEDY INTO HOPE

I just returned from a weekend in Dallas, and can only write of this experience because I had it myself. As it turned out, the hotel my employer had arranged was located two blocks from Dealey Plaza and to make matters even a bit stranger still, my window overlooked the Plaza with a Bird’s Eye View of History.  That in itself was enough to give me the creeps.

They say you should always do the things you are afraid of, and then you won’t be afraid anymore. Although I’ve visited Dealey Plaza many times through the years during daytime hours, I always wondered if I had the guts to try it at midnight. All by myself. Alone. Somehow, I summoned the courage and am glad I did. The moments of insight I experienced there at such a quiet hour could never be equalled during the hustle-bustle of day. 

Not that it wasn’t a little strange, mind you. Imagine strolling through a Civil War battlefield or walking around Pearl Harbor late at night. Imagine sitting in Lincoln’s box at the Ford Theatre after hours. An experience not for the faint of heart, or for anyone who is afeard of ghosts.

On this warm, breezy, moonless early June night, my thoughts turned to President Kennedy’s life, even while I sat here in the place where he died. In those quiet moments of reflection I thought that this November will mark 45 years since that awful day in Dallas, and what have we done since then?

This is not the world JFK envisioned for future generations. In those solitary moments of meditation, I felt the urgency of Robert Kennedy’s efforts; how hard he worked to bring about more enlightened world, and recalled that he too was prevented from that goal by an assassin’s bullet exactly 40 years ago this weekend.

On the 40th anniversary of his father’s murder and being in the place where President Kennedy was assassinated nearly a half-century ago only stressed to me the central point of why this generation must continue their work.

Because people are starting to forget…what the Kennedys lived, fought and died for…and we can’t let that happen.

Some say that the Kennedys are already forgotten relics of an earlier age; that they hold no real power in American politics anymore – and perhaps in some circles that’s true. But just ask those college kids (and younger) at a  Barack Obama rally why they’re “fired up” and “ready to go!” – they’ll tell `ya “because Barack is the black JFK!” – and you begin to hope anew again.

Copyright RFKin2008.com.

Dallas D.A. Releases Secret Stash of JFK Assassination Files

New JFK Assassination Evidence “Found” in Dallas

(Moments before the tragedy, the President, Mrs. Kennedy, and Texas first lady Nellie Connolly are all smiles. Governor John Connally looks surprisingly somber as the motorcade makes its’ way towards Dealey Plaza. November 22, 1963)

15 BOXES OF FILES MAY PROVIDE NEW CLUES FOR RESEARCHERS

In a peculiar President’s Day present to historians, The Dallas County District Attorney’s Office has announced the discovery of a trove of documents relating to the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Locked away in a man-size safe for 44 years, these rare documents and artifacts (which reportedly include Jack Ruby’s gun holster and the clothing Oswald wore when he was shot) were kept secret from the public for decades — although their existence was certainly no secret to every Dallas County D.A. since 1963.

Among the documents is an alleged transcript of a conversation between Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby, planning the assassination together on behalf of the Mafia. This document has aroused the greatest amount of interest but has also been described as “highly suspect” and immediately dismissed as either a forgery or a possible movie script.

Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins explained at a news conference today that the documents were “found” in a safe about a year ago — soon after he took office — and that his staff have been examining and cataloging them ever since. Previous DA’s had decided not to reveal the information, but Watkins said his administration is devoted to openness and felt it was “too important to keep secret.”

“It will open up the debate as to whether there was a conspiracy to assassinate the president,” Watkins stated.

(Watkins, elected in 2006, is the first African-American D.A. in Dallas history.)

Ruby, the owner of a Dallas burlesque club, shot Oswald while he was in police custody two days after the November 22, 1963 assassination. The transcript has Oswald telling Ruby, “the [Mafia] boys in Chicago want to get rid of the Attorney General [Robert Kennedy]. … There is a way to get rid of him without killing him. … I can shoot his brother.”

Gary Mack, curator of the 6th Floor Museum in Dealey Plaza has pointed out that Oswald is known to have been elsewhere on October 4, the alleged date of the alleged conversation.

The transcript resembles one published in a report by the Warren Commission, which investigated Kennedy’s assassination and determined that Oswald was the lone gunman. The FBI determined that conversation – again between Oswald and Ruby, but this time about killing the governor – was definitely fake.

Mr. Mack suggested that the transcript in the Warren Commission report was probably used as a model for the one found in the district attorney’s safe.

The conversation published in the commission report was a fake account of a conversation between Ruby and Oswald on the same night at the Carousel Club. A now-deceased Dallas attorney “re-created” the conversation after Kennedy’s assassination for authorities after he claimed he recognized Oswald in a newspaper photo as the man he saw talking to Ruby that night.

“The fact that it’s sitting in Henry Wade’s file, and he didn’t do anything, indicates he thought it wasn’t worth anything,” Mr. Mack said of the newly found transcript. “He probably kept it because it was funny. It’s hilarious. It’s like a bad B movie.”

IS THE TRANSCRIPT BOGUS OR EVIDENCE WITHHELD FROM TRIAL?

William J. Alexander, the only surviving prosecutor from Ruby’s trial for killing Oswald in the days after Kennedy’s assassination, told the district attorney’s office he’d never seen the Ruby-Oswald transcript. But it’s labeled with a sticker that says, “Plaintiff’s Exhibit 27.” Typically, exhibits for criminal trials are marked as state’s exhibits or defense exhibits.

The DA’s office said Mr. Alexander, who rarely talks about the Ruby trial, declined to be interviewed.

While the two-page transcript is most likely fake, District Attorney Watkins says he’s never believed Oswald acted alone.

“You know me: I’m always a conspiracy theorist,” Mr. Watkins said. “It was too simple of an explanation. I don’t see that.”

COUNTDOWN IN DALLAS

The safe also contained a 1967 million-dollar contract with the then-district attorney Henry Wade for a movie about the assassination, and the DA’s assistant has suggested that the Ruby/Oswald “transcript” was part of a proposed movie script.

The film, tentatively titled Countdown In Dallas, never went into production. But the timing of the film’s making is certainly curious.

By 1967, a large segment of the American public had openly expressed disdain for the conclusions of the Warren Commission. Several books suggesting a conspiracy were already on the shelves, and most importantly – New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was at that very moment bringing murder charges against Clay Shaw for the murder of President Kennedy, the only such court case in history.

As all this concurrent activity was brewing, the need for a big-budget Hollywood film to refute the charges of conspiracy seems more than plausible; something to placate the general public and put their concerns to rest once and for all.

While many suspected that Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby knew one another, the “transcript” of thier alleged October 4 conversation would have been quite helpful in pursuading the people that although there was some advance conspiratorial planning between the two men, Oswald ultimately was the lone assassin.

The suspect transcript/movie script notwithstanding, perhaps the real hidden treasure within these 15 newly-released boxes is yet to be found. Once the documents are fully opened to researchers (which Dallas officials tell us will be soon), it will be fascinating to see what, if any, previously undiscovered evidence in the case may come to light.

We’ll keep you posted.

(Click here for video of the Dallas D.A.’s press conference from earlier today.)

Copyright RFKin2008.com

Death of a President Revisited

THE SPIN NEVER ENDS

Well, it looks like the usual suspects are at it again, making yet another effort under the guise of “educational programming” to convince the American public that there was no conspiracy in the assassination of our 35th president, John F. Kennedy.

Tonight PBS will air a new documentary film, “Oswald’s Ghost.” It’s produced by Robert Stone, not Oliver Stone – an important distinction — indeed, the two filmmakers’ approaches to this subject are worlds apart.

Expect it to be another narrative of Lee Oswald as a troubled loner who somehow miraculously managed to take down the President of the United States at high noon on a busy downtown Dallas street, all by himself. This version of events is likely to appeal to those who prefer the accidental view of history, or who find the very notion of a domestic conspiracy just far too disturbing to even contemplate.

Expect to see more attacks on JFK assassination researchers who have taken the conspiratorial view of history, the late Jim Garrison and of course, Oliver Stone. Expect to see Arlen Specter once again wheezing through his explanation of why that one bullet was so magical. Even Norman Mailer chimes in with a few final words on Oswald.

Oswald’s ghost cannot speak to clarify the record or defend himself. If he could, I somehow get the feeling he would not give this documentary a resounding endorsement.

We present below a preview from (who else?) The Dallas Morning News, where one can always expect to find fair and balanced coverage of anything JFK-related. (cough)

OSWALD’S GHOST

Why one deadly day in Dallas continues to fascinate us

12:00 AM CST on Monday, January 14, 2008

By CHRIS VOGNAR / The Dallas Morning News
cvognar@dallasnews.com

How long does it take to exorcise a ghost? This is no garden-variety specter, mind you. It ripped a hole in the center of the country’s universe some 44 years back, then left vexing questions in its wake. It has haunted us ever since.

It pays another visit tonight at 9, summoned by documentary maker Robert Stone. Mr. Stone’s Oswald’s Ghost kicks off the new season of American Experience then hits DVD shelves Tuesday. The film had its regional premiere in November at the Texas Theatre in Oak Cliff, where one Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested Nov. 22, 1963.

Ruby moves in for the kill. Dallas Police Headquarters, Nov. 24, 1963

“METICULOUS AND RESPONSIBLE” – So Sayeth the Morning News 

Oswald’s Ghost is a meticulous and responsible dissection of the Kennedy assassination, but it’s also much more. Using archival footage (much of it never before seen) and interviews with the likes of Dan Rather, former Dallas Morning News reporter Hugh Aynesworth and the late Norman Mailer, Ghost examines the unfulfilled need for closure born of an improbable and life-shattering Dallas day. It’s not just a film about conspiracy theories, but an examination of that within us that needs to keep the theories alive.

The driving question, as stated early on by presidential historian Robert Dallek, is this: “How could someone as inconsequential as Lee Harvey Oswald kill someone as consequential as John F. Kennedy?” Doesn’t there have to be a bigger, shadowy answer? Multiple gunmen? Anti-communist conspirators? Foreign governments seeking payback for previous CIA plots? Such explanations help make sense of a senseless act. And human beings have never been particularly comfortable with that which doesn’t make sense.

So Mr. Stone takes us through various conspiracy theories, engaging some, dismissing others. Jim Garrison, the former New Orleans district attorney played by Kevin Costner in the controversial JFK, goes in for a thorough and convincing drubbing, with some suggesting that he forever set back the efforts of more reasonable theorists. We see a young Philadelphia lawyer and Warren Commission junior counsel named Arlen Specter explain the “magic bullet” theory,” and we’re confronted with the unsettling but undeniable notion that the late ’60s zeitgeist, soaked in distrust and the blood of two Kennedys and a King, made conspiracy seem like the only logical explanation.

Mr. Stone achieves something greater than nuts and bolts here. He explores the qualities that make us want to fathom the unfathomable. “The real shock was philosophical,” explains Mailer, “as if God had renounced his sanction from America.” It’s a shock from which we haven’t really recovered, though Mr. Stone renders our attempts with quietly poetic flourishes. At one point he shows the covers of various conspiracy books slowly spiraling into the abyss of a black screen, a bottomless pit of irresolvable frustration and grief.

Some of the images are as familiar as your morning commute. You’ve seen the mobs of tourists that flock to Dealey Plaza during all seasons. They stand and get their pictures taken with loved ones. They look for the spot where it happened. It’s a fairly ghoulish enterprise when you think about it, but the place has some kind of magnetic pull. They all crowd around as if they’re looking for something. But what do they expect to find?

And are they all that different from the rest of us?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Here is one document PBS will not show you tonight — one which specifically states that Oswald in fact worked for the CIA, under cover of ONI. He was also an FBI informant, information J. Edgar Hoover was not ignorant of. Facts are stubborn, if not inconvenient, things.

>* Assassination researchers have yet to reach consensus on the authenticity of this document. If it is genuine, however, it only serves to confirm the long-suspected — that Lee Harvey Oswald had been a government agent for at least six years, working for a variety of intelligence agencies. If the document is a fake, you’d have to call its creator a genius.

Here is a link to another blog that discusses the validity of the McCone/Rowley document in greater detail.