They
are derisively called “conspiracy theorists”. They carry the
torch for the beliefs that sixty to eighty percent of their fellow
citizens share since the assassination of President John Kennedy.
From October 17 to October 19, several hundred gathered in
Pittsburgh for the “Passing the Torch” symposium, a forum devoted
to many of the leading investigators discussing alternate visions to
the US government's official version of the murder of Kennedy.
For
three days, a group of ordinary-looking, very well-spoken, collegial
people discussed and debated the plausibility of conflicting
explanations of the Kennedy assassination. Those who have been misled
by the corporately-compromised media would be disappointed with the
participants: there were no ominous references to the Holy Grail,
Area 51, or Roswell, except in jest. Rather, the atmosphere of the
gathering was more akin to a convention of neurosurgeons without the
glamor of a glitzy destination. The few cranks-- anti-Federal Reserve
exponents and religious zealots-- saw their comments politely
dismissed.
Questions and
Answers
Broadly
speaking, there are two research methodologies that engage
assassination investigators. One group of researchers develop,
examine, analyze, and debate the physical evidence. The objects of
their study are the familiar artifacts: the Zapruder film, the
so-called “pristine bullet,” the rifle associated with Oswald,
autopsy photos, etc. Of course not all physical evidence is either
direct or clearly relevant. Photos, personal accounts, audio tapes,
documents, etc. may be merely suggestive and open to broad
interpretation. While physical evidence may count as “hard” data,
it virtually never fills all of the narrative space between the
premeditation to murder and the completion of the act. The judicial
system recognizes this oft-occurring opening by placing the “hard”
evidence before a jury with the hope that they will have the
collective judgment to satisfactorily fill the gaps and arrive at a
well-considered conclusion.
But
it would be naive to press the idealized courtroom analogy too hard.
The court of public opinion, like the real judicial system, allows of
differential resources, bias, and clandestine influence. But where
honest people recognize that the courts are “overly” fair to the
rich, and that the poor suffer a surfeit of fairness, the court of
public opinion dispenses entirely with the notion of fairness. With
the Kennedy assassination, the government and its agencies have
invested overwhelmingly in the Warren Commission/Oswald-did-it-alone
version. The US government has resisted, at every step, revealing
relevant evidence that might shed new light on the case; it has even
denied access to evidence developed to support the conventional view;
and it has actively interfered with independent investigations of the
assassination. Now-public documents show that the security agencies
spied on and interacted with the Garrison investigation in New
Orleans. Recent revelations demonstrate that the CIA established
their former (1963) chief of covert operations in Miami as their
liaison with the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations...
without revealing this relevant fact (the Joannides affair). This
revelation has belatedly driven the formerly compliant final head of
that investigation, G. Robert Blakey, into uncharacteristic fits of
indignation:
I am no longer confident
that the Central Intelligence Agency co-operated with the
committee.... I was not told of Joannides' background with the DRE
[Revolutionary Student Directorate], a focal point of the
investigation. Had I known who he was, he would have been a witness
who would have been interrogated under oath by the staff or by the
committee. He would never have been acceptable as a point of contact
with us to retrieve documents. In fact, I have now learned, as I note
above, that Joannides was the point of contact between the Agency and
DRE during the period Oswald was in contact with DRE. That the Agency
would put a 'material witness' in as a 'filter' between the committee
and its quests for documents was a flat out breach of the
understanding the committee had with the Agency that it would
co-operate with the investigation.
Given
that researchers face a hostile government and its lap-dog media, it
is truly amazing that researchers have advanced the study as far as
they have. Of course hostile intelligence agencies and a media with
blinders only reinforce the suspicions that the truth remains to be
uncovered.
Blending
into the physical evidence and further filling the evidentiary gaps
are the circumstances and personal ties of the key players in the
murder-- so-called “circumstantial evidence.” For example, the
bizarre trajectory of Lee Harvey Oswald's brief adult life is
breathtaking and complex. He crosses paths with a wide variety of
diverse and contradictory characters while taking on equally
contradictory personae.
Apologists
for the Warren Commission want us to believe that these oddities
reflect an isolated, but unstable personality. But the narrative
fails the “credible-movie-script” test: No one would believe this
tale if it were a movie.
Further,
Oswald's Mexico trip the month before the assassination is a surreal
saga fraught with confusion, misidentification, and mystery.
Beyond
Circumstances
Is
there anything that a Marxist could add to nearly fifty years of
skepticism over the Warren Commission and the account of the
assassination defended by the security agencies, US elites, and the
corporate media?
Certainly
a strong case could be made for the account offered by the former
head of Cuban counterintelligence, Fabian Escalante. His book, JFK:
The Cuba Files, based on his careful review of Cuban evidence,
presents many new elements of the days, events, and personalities
leading up to the assassination, though no citation of his work arose
during the three-day symposium in Pittsburgh. In fact, I inquired of
a lobby bookseller with a trove of assassination and associated books
why he failed to offer Escalante's book in his extensive collection.
He muttered something about how youthful Escalante looks in his
pictures despite his retirement-- clear recognition of Escalante's
work, but an evasion of its absence.
It
is unfortunate that investigators ignore his book because he
untangles much of the Mexico City puzzle. And his profiles of likely
suspects add much to the existing biographies. But one senses a
hesitance to accept a contribution from a Cuban official, a remnant
of Cold War distrust. Moreover, the investigators, with only a few
exceptions, own a rather conventional, naive politics. At the end of
the symposium, a panelist posed what proved to be an embarrassing,
but revealing question: How many here would welcome a Kennedy
Presidency today?
The
participants and audience demonstrated resounding approval with an
enthusiasm betraying frenzied devotion to a fallen martyr rather than
mere respect for a murdered President.
Perhaps
it is here that a Marxist can make a modest contribution to our
understanding of the Kennedy assassination by adding an element of
political realism and historical context.
Regard
Oswald's strange course from his adolescence in the mid 1950s through
his death in November of 1963. Many point to the incredible twists
and turns taken by him through this period. They argue that other
forces must be at play: Oswald must have been a puppet. Opponents
dismiss this as only indicative of his instability.
But
these arguments miss the point.
The
real conundrum is in reconciling that bizarre path with the known,
demonstrable behavior of the US security services. It was in that
period that their covert and overt surveillance reached unparalleled
heights. And it was in that time frame that their suppression and
prosecution of the left was at its pinnacle. It is simply impossible
for Oswald, posturing as a Communist or Marxist militant, to have
escaped their constant attention and, indeed, harassment, if anyone
in the higher echelons of the many bureaus and agencies believed that
posture. Consequently, it would be beyond comprehension that Oswald
would have been where he was alleged to be at the moment of the
assassination without those many security offices discounting his
“leftist” credentials.
Reflect
on the following:
● Oswald
was allegedly a self-proclaimed Communist in his adolescence before
his Marine Corps enlistment and remained so during his 35 months in
the Corps (Oct. 1956-September 1959), often sharing his politics with
fellow Marines. Despite his openness, he was given at least a
“confidential” security clearance
and assigned to a secret U-2 base in Japan. He was trained in
sophisticated radar tracking and had access to much sensitive
information.
At
the same time, hundreds of Communists and thousands of liberals were
under surveillance, lost their jobs, or were in jail. Communist
leader Claude Lightfoot was sent to jail in 1956 when Oswald joined
the Marines. A year earlier, copywriter Melvin Barnet was fired from
his job at the New York Times for his political views. The
infamous FBI COINTELPRO, a program of active measures against
Communists and other leftists, began in 1956. Leaders of the ACLU
were informing to the FBI in that period. A Professor at the
University of Michigan, Chandler Davis, went to jail for his views in
1959, at a time Oswald was espousing Communism to his fellow Marines.
Is
Oswald's story credible? Did he escape the net that captured liberals
who were victimized by snitches and liars? What accounts for his
immunity?
● Upon
discharge, Oswald set off within 10 days on his voyage to the Soviet
Union and defection. Investigators quibble over the formalities of
the defection, but no one questions that Oswald made the strongest
political statement by surrendering his passport and taking residence
in the USSR from late 1959 until June of 1962. After stating his
misgivings about the USSR, he was smoothly integrated into a nest of
anti-Bolshevik Russians living in arguably one of the most rabidly
reactionary, anti-Communist cities in the US, Dallas, Texas (the
other candidate being Miami, Florida). Oswald and his young wife
quickly find friends who would, by inclination, stand off from his
politics, social status, and manners. At no time does this produce a
backlash commensurate with the tenor of the times.
It
wasn't until late 1962 that Junius Scales, a district functionary of
the Communist Party in North Carolina, was released from prison for
merely being a Communist. The Smith Act, The Internal Security Act,
the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Communist Control Act
remained in full force in this period, all aimed at suppressing and
repressing Communists. Spanish Civil War vet and Communist Archie
Brown was arrested in 1961 under the Communist Control Act. In 1962
and 1963, Jack O'Dell was forced out of his leading role in the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference by the Kennedy
administration for his alleged Communist affiliation. The US
government pressed again to revoke Paul Robeson's passport in 1962.
The Berlin Crisis, the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 and the October
Cuban missile crisis of 1962 brought anti-Communism in the US to a
boil.
It was in the midst
of this atmosphere that Oswald brought his crackpot leftist ideas to
Dallas and into the arms of anti-Communist fanatics. While working at
an enterprise engaged in classified military work, Oswald contacted
both the Communist Party and the Socialist Workers Party-- he had
maintained subscriptions to their respective newspapers since his
return to the US. Unlike thousands of people who were denied
employment, experienced harassment, or found their names on watch
lists, Oswald enjoyed a charmed life within a cesspool of right-wing
intrigue and anti-Red hysteria.
●The spring of
1963 brought Oswald to New Orleans where he mounted a one-man
campaign to establish left credentials while blatantly drawing
attention to his activities, a bizarre goal for an authentic leftist
in a hostile environment and with no allies. Warren Commission
apologists like Gerald Posner answer that these actions only prove
that Oswald was unbalanced and unpredictable.
But that evades the
pertinent question.
Where were the
security services that were systematically hunting, harassing, and
persecuting everyone in the US with even a pinkish tint? How does
Oswald escape their net? Did anyone in the US leave such a trail of
provocative left-wing foot prints as did Oswald?
Before, during, and
after Oswald's pro-Cuban adventure in the deep South, critics were
threatened, beaten, and even killed for opposing segregation. And yet
Oswald's television notoriety earned by defending revolutionary Cuba
brought a violent reaction only when Oswald provoked one. Lee Harvey
Oswald was perhaps the only self-proclaimed leftist in the US who
traveled, lived, and acted with impunity during this repressive era.
● Immediately
before leaving for Mexico in September of 1963, Oswald telephoned the
head of the Texas Socialist Labor Party to mention that he wanted to
meet before he left for Mexico City, a conversation that was surely
overheard by authorities. What would be the likelihood that the
correspondence between two public Marxists would not be the subject of
interest in these repressive times and in the paranoid South?
Border crossings
were, as they are today, designed to filter those worthy of scrutiny
or detention. Yet Oswald went on his merry way to Mexico City with
his passport and visa intact. For years, Mexico had been a haven for
political expatriates and fleeing victims of the blacklist. All were
under constant attention from US and Mexican authorities. Like
Portugal and Spain in World War II, Mexico was to the Cold War a hot
bed of spying and intrigue where all the antagonists maintained
robust stations. Enter Lee Harvey Oswald. Flashing his leftist
credentials, Oswald visited and revisited the Cuban and Soviet
embassies loudly touting his desires to travel to Cuba and the Soviet
Union. Without doubt, these plans were exposed to US authorities,
who, uncharacteristically, did virtually nothing. Should his plans
have been actuated, he could have been the US's first
double-defector! No one seemed too alarmed in the higher echelons of
the CIA and FBI.
This tortured
history could easily be dismissed as the expression of an unstable,
twisted mind. But that dismissal would only strengthen the oddness of
the lack of action on the part of the US security services that would
have had to curiously dismiss Oswald's vocal leftism and uncommonly
audacious expression of that postured leftism.
Viewed from the
Marxist left, Oswald's showy exhibition with a gun in one hand and a
copy of The Worker and The Militant in the other smells
of a provocation. Even a newcomer to the culture of the left knows
that Trotskyists and Communists are water and oil. Thus, for a
“veteran” of the left like Oswald to go to some lengths to make
such a display is only intelligible if he were seeding evidence for
some unrevealed purpose. Was the carefully posed picture meant to
impress the left? Of course not. Was it meant to make a different
impression?
Oswald was likely
the only “leftist” in the US to never make first-hand, direct
contact with other leftists, to never attend a meeting, to never join
an organized demonstration or vigil in 6-8 years of off-and-on
“activism.” He was well known as a “leftist” to non-left
acquaintances and co-workers as well as much of the general public.
But the broad left only knew him through correspondences.
In the end, it is
impossible to reconcile Oswald the “leftist” with the unlikely
indifference of the US intelligence and police establishment. At the
same time, it is impossible to accept the authenticity of that
leftism.
But if Oswald was
not genuine, if he was only posing as a leftist, what was he really?
Since the
intelligence and police agencies ignored Oswald as though they knew
he were not a leftist, since he slipped easily through the net that
captured thousands of the faintly pink, who did they think he
was? He certainly did plenty to deserve their attention, attention
that they seemed determined not to give.
Until we know who
Oswald really was, we will never solve Kennedy's assassination.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
