< PREVIOUS ] [ 1993 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
After years of research and investigation, it's obvious that no one knows whether Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, 30 years ago tomorrow, and that no one knows why Jack Ruby killed Oswald three days later.
So I called my favorite inside source, Col. Ananias Ziegler, media relations director of the Committee That Really Runs America. He was surprised that I'd never asked earlier, but he was less than forthcoming.
First, I want to know your favorite theory,
he
said.
I didn't want to make a commitment. Angry anti-Castro
Cuban exiles sounds pretty plausible,
I began. They
can still be pretty violent in Miami.
Don't you think that if they could organize the
assassination of a head of state, Fidel Castro would be the
target?
he asked, thereby deflating that
possibility.
There's organized crime -- a contract hit. They had a
lot of reasons to be mad at JFK,
I countered.
And there's the way that Ruby took out Oswald before
he could talk,
Ziegler added. And Ruby's story that
he just wanted to spare Jackie the pain of later testifying
in Dallas makes about as much sense as a CIA denial that it
overthrew some Third-World government.
It was exciting that he was about to spill the beans,
but the thrill soon faded. Omerta or no omerta, those
wise guys rat on each other all the time,
Ziegler said.
Don't you think that, in 30 years, one would have sang
by now?
Good point. I mentioned the military-industrial complex.
But JFK was a hard-core Cold Warrior,
Ziegler
explained. He promised to go any distance and pay any
price. He raised military spending. He got elected on a
phony 'missile gap.' There's no credible evidence that he
planned to pull out of Vietnam, or that our dirty little
war there would have taken a different course if he had
lived. Our military-industrial complex lost one of its most
fervent supporters with Jack Kennedy.
Ziegler was right. Desperate, I mentioned a theory that
emerged once when some friends were drinking coffee at our
kitchen table. JFK was quite the skirt-chaser,
I
noted, and no one has investigated the possibility that
he was shot by a jealous husband -- from what I gather,
that's not all that uncommon in Texas.
That would explain plenty,
Ziegler conceded.
As soon as the establishment figured it out, then they
rushed to preserve the Camelot legend by covering up the
truth post-haste. But then again, a motorcade ambush isn't
exactly the preferred modus operendi of an angry Lone Stare
good ol' boy. He'd want a direct confrontation, and he'd be
bragging on it afterward.
Good point. So who was responsible?
Well, who profited?
Ziegler said. Think about
it. Before 1963, network newscasts were only 15 minutes
long, and most Americans got their news from newspapers and
radio. TV was far from sitting at the core of American
culture.
So what?
I wondered.
Then there's the assassination, followed by a long
weekend of everyone sitting at home, grief-stricken and
glued to the tube. It put TV at the center of American
life. And every five years, during the November ratings
sweeps, we relive it all on TV, from every imaginable
perspective -- Marina Oswald's recollections, JFK's boyhood
escapades, Oliver Stone's fantasies -- and we again sit
there entranced, almost hypnotized, forming a huge
susceptible audience that the TV industry can sell to
advertisers.
That's preposterous,
I complained. If they'd
set it up, don't you think they'd have something besides
the Zapruder film, some definitive footage that showed what
really happened in Dealy Plaza that terrible day?
They probably do,
he agreed, but that would
remove all the suspense and intrigue, and then there
wouldn't be any reason to watch all the November
specials.
Aghast, I asked if that was the official explanation from the Committee.
Of course not,
he said. Our policy is to keep
everybody guessing in the dark. That's how we really run
America.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1993 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >