Case Closed: a letter to Gerald Posner (re: Kennedy assassination)

I paid no attention to the many television programs broadcast this past week on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination. The reason for my lack of interest was that the questions about the assassination that had obsessed me all my life—and not only the factual questions, but the deeper moral and emotional issues left by Kennedy’s killing—were resolved for me by Gerald Posner’s 1993 book Case Closed. Here is a letter I wrote to Posner about his book ten years ago, shortly after the 30th anniversary of the assassination: December 15, 1993

I would like to tell you how deeply grateful I am to you for your magnificent book, Case Closed.

Over the years, I had shared the general sense that we did not have the truth about the Kennedy assassination. While I never gave credence to the various wild conspiracy theories, I did feel that there was probably a second gunman, and perhaps Mafia involvement. But it seemed impossible ever to get closer to the truth. A year or two ago there were new television programs and articles about the assassination with some interesting information, but trying to follow the issues that were raised only led one into a morass of confusion.

One of the problems was that, while the conspiracy proponents seemed a contemptible bunch (especially Oliver Stone, who I think is truly evil), the defenders of the Warren Commission report, such as David Belin, also seemed fishy. They just went after the most obvious weaknesses in the conspiracy theories while blandly and self-righteously insisting on the “total correctness” of the obviously flawed Warren report. (It was that same sort of bland defense of the Warren report, the glossing over of its many troubling flaws and gaps, that had helped set off the conspiracy paranoia, along with the general suspicion of our government, back in the mid 1960s.) The Warren defenders never responded to the hard questions that continued to trouble me and everyone else who thought about the issue; and they never seemed to appreciate the fact—which you certainly bring out in your book—that there were many odd events surrounding the assassination that could reasonably give rise to suspicions of a conspiracy. It was all terribly, deeply frustrating. It seemed that this mystery would last forever, and that there was no point in even trying to figure it out.

Then one day this past September, at the National Airport in Washington, D.C., I picked up the U.S. News and World Report with the long excerpt from Case Closed. Reading the article on the shuttle flight back to New York, I experienced an epiphany. The clarity of your presentation, your story of Oswald, the fascinating new information about the timing of the shots and many other things all added up to an account that for the first time in all these years had the ring of truth. The magazine excerpt, of course, did not answer all my questions (I had to wait to read the book for that), but it did satisfy me that Oswald did it alone. Oswald emerged as a totally believable, real person, not this shadowy figure upon whom the conspiracy theorists could cast any fantasy they wanted.

There is another, perhaps unintended, benefit of Case Closed. Reading it made me realize that for years, all the bedeviling issues surrounding the assassination had blocked the assassination itself—the horror and tragedy and poignancy of it—from full consciousness. The conspiracy theories had become the main historical event, not Kennedy’s terrible death and what it did to the country. But your account, by clearing away those questions, has restored the assassination itself as an event in my experience and I think our collective experience as well. It was as though I began feeling the trauma and the meaning of Kennedy’s death afresh, undiminished after three decades.

Apart from the tragedy of the event itself, it was truly a fateful turning point in our country’s history—but, I believe, in a sense exactly opposite to what Oliver Stone imagines. Rather than marking the rise of Stone’s fictional militaristic right-wing to national power, it marked the rise to influence of a left-wing culture of alienation typified by people like Oliver Stone himself. These members of the adversary culture, unable to absorb Kennedy’s murder as the terrible event it was, chose to see it as a confirmation that America itself was evil, that America would always block the exaggerated hopes for unlimited individual fulfillment and social progress that Kennedy seemed to personify for many people. It was shortly after Kennedy’s death that the deadly notion became current that the “system” was blame for everything, thus turning Americans against their own country. Of course, the rise of black rage, the Vietnam war and so on were also important parts of this historic catastrophe, but the Kennedy assassination was crucial.

The unresolved assassination puzzle also fed the alienating notion that truth is indeterminable, that all we can know are self-serving narratives. This idea opens the gates to all kinds of viciousness. For example, the egregious Stone could present his paranoid fantasy as a revelation of “hidden truth” to a mass audience of millions of unformed, suggestible minds, and at the same time cover himself with the elites by saying that his movie was a mere “counter-myth,” not intended to be a factual presentation. Thus he got to convince millions of people that horrible lies were the truth, while denying that that he was doing anything of the kind. With Case Closed, you have not only uncovered the specific truth of the assassination; you’ve demonstrated that truth itself exists and can be known.

But for me, what is most remarkable about Case Closed is that this old festering sore of uncertainty and discouragement surrounding the assassination, which I never expected to be cured, has been cured. In bringing the truth to light out of all that confusion, you have performed not only a great public service, but a heroic act.

Posner says Oswald and Ferrie didn't know each other in the CAP and weren't in at the same time. FRONTLINE had a photo the other night that showed them together. CASE OPENED AGAIN.

This is what Posner says in an update interview with Frontline:

What did your investigation show about a possible link between David Ferrie and Oswald?

I used to believe it was unlikely that Oswald and Ferrie ever had any contact at all. But when FRONTLINE discovered a photo of the two in the same group at a Civil Air Patrol gathering in 1955, the evidence shows the two were briefly acquainted with each other. The key question then becomes whether they revived any relationship when, in the summer of 1963, Oswald returned to New Orleans. This is the critical period, because it is only months before JFK's assassination.

But there is no credible evidence that the two encountered each other again during that 1963 summer.

Even assuming that the photo is authentic (a big if) and that those men are in fact Oswald and Ferrie (another big if), the fact that they served in the same civil air patrol unit years before the assassination does not prove (1) that they were anything more than casual acquaintances, as easily forgotten as most of your fellow students in a college math class; (2) that they maintained a friendship up until the time of the assassination; or (3) that they conspired to kill President Kennedy. What about the other guys in the picture? Were they part of the plot too? After all, their picture was taken with Oswald.

If true, this notion also pretty well kills the liberal, anti-Second Amendment argument that small arms in the hands of individuals aren't useful or effective against the government, its principles, or its agents. Of course, it also reveals why most politicians, even ostensible conservatives, only half-heartedly defend the right. When people fear the government there is tyranny, when government fears the people, the elite's worst impulses are held in check.

By today's standards JFK would have been a standard bearer of republican virtue (maybe not on all issues), and certainly the left resort to violent action more commonly than the right, reports of "right wing militias" not withstanding. I've always wondered where the radicals at Wounded Knee got their AK-47s.

In the Lincoln conspiracy case, we found out about it. We know who was involved. Why would the Kennedy conspirators have been able to completely get away with it? It's childish to believe that you could conspire to kill a President of the U.S., and for 40 years, no one would spill your secret. How much money would someone who knew the truth about your conspiracy make if they told all? Was there a conspiracy to kill Gerald Ford, Reagan, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King? Are all these cases coverups, too? All those cases involved lone assassins and would-be assassins who were losers seeking social attention. To some ego-damaged individuals, even negative attention is better than none at all. The Marxists have succeeded in conning a lot of people. They don't want people to realize that Kennedy was killed by a fellow Communist. They want you to think that he was killed by a "vast Right-Wing conspiracy." It's the same kind of deception that Hillary Clinton tried to perpetrate when her husband was in trouble. "Don't look at the truth, look over there." Leftist are masters of deceit.

Has anybody ever been to boot camp in the marine corp? I have, and guess what, it would be very easy to take out kennedy. By just one former marine. Also if you see where Oswald was shooting from, and the angle of attack of the bullet. Any marine could have easily have done the same exact thing! Hey people what do you think a marine can do with a M-16 at 500 yards open sight! Think about it!

There is NO credible evidence of any conspiracy. None.

Sorry, this isn't Alice In Wonderland, and the Zapruder images make it eminently clear that the fatal head shot cme from in front of the motorcade, not from Oswald behind.

You really have to twist your brain in several different directions to believe otherwise.

"The conspiracy frenzy was a direct result of the federal government's obstruction of the local Dallas coroner by whisking the body off to Washington. There was no reason the Dallas coroner could not have been allowed to do his job in the normal manner of any murder under his jurisdiction, other than arrogance on the parts of the federal agents involved."

I agree with you. In particular, the autopsy should have been done immediately in Texas as the Texas law enforcement community expected. There were medical examiners who were experienced in gunshot deaths in Dallas. It was Jackie, in part, who screwed that up, by both dramatically refusing to leave her husband's body and also insisting on going immediately back to Washington D.C. on Airforce One with the new President. She also accompanied the body to Bethesda for the autopsy that was performed there and then demanded that those doing the autopsy finish fast because she was tired and wanted to go back to the WH. Word was sent in to the people during the autopsy of Jackie's wishes that they finish up, and they did not do a really thorough job.

I remember the actual events, and some of the eventual doubts were caused initially by enormous over sensitivity to the Kennedy family shown by investigators. The autopsist destroying his original notes because they had blood on them, and he never wanted the bloody notes to see the light of day and add to the family's suffering is another example.

You really had to be alive then and remember some things that are not common knowledge now to appreciate how investigators bent over backward, and covered up gruesome details, to spare the Kennedy family (particularly Jackie).

"In the Lincoln conspiracy case, we found out about it. We know who was involved. Why would the Kennedy conspirators have been able to completely get away with it? It's childish to believe that you could conspire to kill a President of the U.S., and for 40 years, no one would spill your secret. How much money would someone who knew the truth about your conspiracy make if they told all? Was there a conspiracy to kill Gerald Ford, Reagan, Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King? Are all these cases coverups, too? All those cases involved lone assassins and would-be assassins who were losers seeking social attention. To some ego-damaged individuals, even negative attention is better than none at all. The Marxists have succeeded in conning a lot of people. They don't want people to realize that Kennedy was killed by a fellow Communist. They want you to think that he was killed by a "vast Right-Wing conspiracy." It's the same kind of deception that Hillary Clinton tried to perpetrate when her husband was in trouble. "Don't look at the truth, look over there." Leftist are masters of deceit."

I agree that Oswald the maxist did it and that Leftists would like for us to believe otherwise.

Not true. In the two frames of the Zapruder film just before and when Kennedy was shot in the head it is clearly seen that Kenndy's head moves forward several inches as the bullet enters the back of his head.

Also he was not lined up with the grassy knoll to take a shot from the front. He would have gotten hit in the right side of his head and that would have blown the left side of his head off and the left side of his head is fully intact.

OK, so Kennedy's assassination was not a conspiracy, but now President McKinley's assassination -- there's a conspiracy for you! Just who was Leon Czolgosz working for? Did he have mob/CIA/KGB connections? Were there two shooters or one? How could someone just walk up to the President of the United States and shoot him? Where was the security? No one could fire two shots in the amount of time Czolgosz had. Why did McKinley linger? Did the doctors snuff him out even though he was healthy? < /sarcasm >

Eyewitnesses saw Oswald in the window of the TSBD as he was doing the shooting; several co-workers were directly below him as he fired - they heard the shots right over their head and heard the shell casings drop on the floor. No credible witness saw any other shooter in Dealey Plaza, nor has any concrete evidence ever been found of a fourth shot or a second shooter. (Posner demolishes the contradictory and evolving testimony of many of the "witnesses" who formed the basis for the film "JFK"; he also analyzes and explains the head movements etc. shown in the Zapruder film.)

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