JFK Murder Column Prompts Expert Reader Reactions

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JFK Murder Column Prompts Expert Reader Reactions
Today I share expert reactions to my Dec. 9 argument against the Warren Commission's finding that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing President Kennedy. That column, JFK Murder, The CIA, and 8 Things Every American Should Know , was based on recent books, interviews and conferences about the murder on Nov. 22, 1963. Pro and con reactions and other news developments are presented below in this tenth segment segment in the Justice Integrity Project's "JFK Murder Readers Guide."
As context, this kind of inquiry faces unusually difficult obstacles. We now know that the government narrowed its focus to Oswald and encouraged media self-censorship immediately after Kennedy's death, thereby distorting the official inquiries, news accounts and other records. Just three days after the Nov. 22 killing, for example, Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach , the top aide to Attorney Gen. Robert Kennedy, wrote Bill Moyers, the major communications advisor to incoming President Lyndon Johnson. "The public must be satisfied," Katzenbach wrote Moyers, "that Oswald was the assassin; that he had no confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial." Katzenbach, shown at left in 1968 White House photo after LBJ promoted him to the post of attorney general, clearly was orienting the Justice Department to a predetermined conclusion based on scanty evidence against Oswald. The major media, encouraged by that government direction and such secret programs as the CIA's propaganda program Operation Mockingbird , cooperated from the outset in a near-exclusive focus on Oswald, who was quickly murdered while in police custody. The State Department and CIA had secretly urged opinion-leaders, including those controlling major media outlets, to mock critics of the Warren Commission as "conspiracy theorists" unworthy of credibility or, by implication, continued employment in significant media and academic jobs. The joint government-media public relations campaign organized virtually all of the most prestigious publications and their top commentators in the 1960s, even those otherwise renowned for independent work. This made it extraordinarily difficult for the organizations and commentators to change their views. Thus, the propaganda campaign persists today even though, in retrospect, the evidence against Oswald -- a likely double agent working with federal authorities -- could be challenged on many grounds, as our previous column indicated. Doubts loomed so large just after the murder that even Robert Kennedy, right, reputedly telephoned CIA Director John McCone promptly after the shooting and screamed, "Did the CIA kill my brother?" Yet Kennedy himself soon helped suppressing a full investigation for reasons intensely debated to this day. Fact-finding in the 1960s has remained difficult. Law enforcement, intelligence, and military personnel typically operate in secrecy, as did relevant operatives suspected of involvement from the Mafia and from the Cuban exile community. Also, the investigation still arouses strong political, ideological, and other passions.