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May 22, 2013

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On anniversary of JFK assassination, investigator looks back

Q&A with Robert Blakey, former chief counsel of House Select Committee on Assassinations

Forty-nine years ago today, on Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza. The assassination and subsequent slaying of shooter Lee Harvey Oswald shocked the country. In the five decades since, the assassination continues to capture the imagination of authors, filmmakers and the public. It has sparked hundreds of conspiracy theories and studies into who — if not Oswald — was behind Kennedy’s slaying. Robert Blakey, an attorney who served in the Justice Department in the 1960s and worked on drafting the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations act, served on the House Select Committee on ...

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  1. We may never know who the actual killers of Pres.Kennedy were.It has been said that the mob and the CIA may have worked together on this Assassination conspiracy.Whether true or not,is anyone's guess.

    It has been mentioned that FBI director J.Edger Hoover has said that there is no such thing as a nationwide criminal organization (mafia) in the U.S. while he was director of the FBI at that time.

    It was not until the Appalachian gangland conference on Nov.14,1957 in Appalchia, New York. Attended by the heads of Mafia families from across the country. It was then that FBI director J. Edger Hoover finally admitted that organized crime did infact exist in the U.S.

    Pres.Kennedy was ahead of his time.Had he not been assassinated on Nov.22,1963 the world would have been in far better shape today because of him. The rest as they say is history.

  2. A single malcontent individual, starved for attention, starved for being "known" had motive, means and opportunity. In 50 years not one person who was a part of this so called conspiracy has been outed. Oswalds own brother who probably knew him better than anyone else stated he did not see any evidence of a conspiracy. There have been no verifiable death bed confessions. The American population just can't accept a lone gunman but when you put everything together, it's really the only logical explanation. The Oliver Stones of this world have perpetrated a lie that won't die. It should.

  3. Sadly, a bonafied forensic investigation was not undertaken. This has resulted in too many unanswered questions. The Warren Commission was very disappionting and shed very little light on this tragic event. Now with most of the participents deceased the truth will be hard to ascertain. Re-enforcing the adage, "The best way to keep a secret among three people, is if two are dead."

  4. Obviously the Kennedy clan ticked-off some determined ruthless folks during their power trips -- failed attempt(s) to assassinate Castro -- criminal inquisitions into organized crime and unions, etc"resulting in their comeuppance?

    Of course JFK's assassination involved a conspiracy as well as a government cover-up.

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  5. "Sometimes people sort of glaze over about the notion that the Mafia and U.S. intelligence and the anti-Castro activists were involved together in the assassination of President Kennedy. In fact, there's no contradiction there. Those three groups were all in bed together at the time and had been for several years in the fight to topple Fidel Castro." --Anthony Summers

  6. "In retrospect, the reason for the assassination is hardly a mystery. It is now abundantly clear ... why the C.I.A.'s covert operations element wanted John Kennedy out of the Oval Office and Lyndon Johnson in it. The new President elevated by rifle fire to control of our foreign policy had been one of the most enthusiastic American cold warriors.... Johnson had originally risen to power on the crest of the fulminating anti-communist crusade which marked American politics after World War II. Shortly after the end of that war, he declaimed that atomic power had become 'ours to use, either to Christianize the world or pulverize it' -- a Christian benediction if ever there was one. Johnson's demonstrated enthusiasm for American military intervention abroad ... earned him the sobriquet 'the senator from the Pentagon....'"
    --Jim Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins

  7. "When I mentioned about Adlai Stevenson, if he was vice-president there would never have been an assassination of our beloved President Kennedy." --Jack Ruby's comment to reporters while being transferred to his prison cell. When asked to explain what he meant, Ruby (Oswald's killer and a probable conspirator in the JFK assassination) replied, "Well the answer is the man in office now [Lyndon Johnson]." Note: Adlai Stevenson advocated a conciliatory approach to international affairs in stark contrast to Democratic Party hawks like Lyndon Johnson. Johnson assumed the presidency following JFK's murder and escalated the Vietnam War exponentially. With his comment, it seems that Ruby was dropping a hint about the assassination -- that the JFK conspirators could not have achieved their goal of putting a hawk in the White House had Stevenson been Kennedy's vice-president instead of Johnson.

  8. I don't buy all these ideas there were conspiracies. The trend is obvious that the different people who say conspiracy this, conspiracy that all seem to feed off of others. Others who are all into this conspiracy nonsense. And when one doesn't work, they go off on another tangent. It never ends.

    Enjoyed the article, but there is one person's research these conspiracy people dare not mention regarding the Kennedy assassination.

    A former Los Angeles district attorney by the name of Vincent Bugliosi performed research on this tragedy. And it took him twenty years to finish it.

    As an aside, Vincent Bugliosi attained 32 convictions out of 33 high profile murder trials in Los Angeles. One of them was the conviction of Charles Manson and his entire family for the murders they committed back in 1969. To which he wrote the book "Helter Skelter," a masterpiece in American true crime non-fiction. He also went on to write other books, as well as performing work as a defense attorney.

    Anyways, Vincent Bugliosi wrote a book entirely devoted to the Kennedy assassination called "Reclaiming History."

    He told the truth. And in his book, which is rather long, he laid out exactly what happened before, during and after the assassination, even the subsequent murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby. In his book, he even outlined, picked apart and destroyed every single conspiracy theory there is out there, no matter how outlandish nor believable to the gullible.

    As another aside, the book delved into how absolutely devastated Mrs. Kennedy was. She was in grief and shock so badly that she left Dallas on Air Force One wearing the same pink dress spattered with her husband's blood and brains that she wore in the motorcade. It brings home the sad fact of how unbelievable horrible this American tragedy this was. And still is.

    His meticulous and in depth research proved that Oswald acted alone. There was no conspiracy. It was the act of a mad man intent on killing the President of the United States of America. He wasn't directed to do it by anyone. He acted alone. Period.

    All hard evidence points at this being the case. You can't take facts and twist them around like the conspiracy theorists have been doing, and are still doing now. Every single piece of evidence, no matter if it's hard evidence or circumstantial, points any other way. There is nothing that says this is something other than the act of a single lone and crazed gun man.

  9. Besmirching History
    Vincent Bugliosi Assassinates Kennedy Again

    By Michael Green

    "The purpose of Bugliosi's Reclaiming History is to defend the integrity of the USG National Security State by grossly distorting its nature and function, by disguising that it is the servant of factions of the ruling classes within the United States, and by pretending that it did not and could not contemplate the assassination of a democratically elected President whose recalcitrant politics fell outside its parameters. According to Bugliosi, only the lunatic can seriously entertain that Kennedy was murdered because he pursued detente with the USSR, championed nuclear disarmament, decided not to back the invasion of the Bay of Pigs with US military, made a peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis when the military wanted invasion and war, and decided to withdraw US troops from Vietnam rather than pursue by brute force an imperial venture in Southeast Asia."

  10. Spare us. JFK was assassinated complements of the mob. By her own account, his mistress was told by LBJ the night before the assassination, that 'those SOBs would never embarrass'him again. 'Wish the liberal press would print the truth for a change.

  11. Bugliosi, at this point in his life has no interest in being a patsy for anyone, let alone a corrupt (as you feel) government. His life has been built on integrity from day one.

    The problem with the conspiracy nuts is they throw so much garbage out there they figure someone will believe something no matter how outlandish.

    A malcontent. He had already tried to assassinate a retired military man 6 months prior. Perfect opportunity. If he was truly hired by the mob they would have had him executed long before Ruby got to him. He would have never been arrested and questioned.

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