Museum curator seeks to solve JFK mystery

Knight Ridder Newspapers ^ | 11/21/2002 | MIKE COCHRAN

[mlo]

	Posted on Thu, Nov. 21, 2002
	Museum curator seeks to solve JFK mystery BY MIKE COCHRAN Knight Ridder Newspapers DALLAS - (KRT) - It was 39 years ago today, a Friday, in fact, that President John F. Kennedy was slain on the streets of Dallas. For researchers such as Gary Mack, the echoes of gunfire in Dealey Plaza remain as haunting as ever. Maybe more so. "There's crazy stuff going on," Mack says. "It's so screwy, now, that there are people out there who are actually confessing to having a role in the crime. "There are people who claim they were on the grassy knoll firing away." It's little wonder then, Mack says, that polls conducted by Gallup and Zogby International over the years show that a vast majority of Americans believe Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy. Mack, 56, is curator of the Sixth Floor Museum, located in the old Texas School Book Depository overlooking Dealey Plaza, where Kennedy was fatally shot on Nov. 22, 1963. For 27 years, Mack - with relentless curiosity, an academic's eye and an investigator's skepticism - has sought answers to the JFK mystery. He joined the Sixth Floor Museum as an archivist in 1994. Founded by the Dallas County Historical Foundation and funded by visitor fees, the nonprofit museum is one of the most popular historic sites in North Texas with 450,000 visitors a year. "My role as curator is to be able to put this story in context and to present it objectively and accurately," Mack says. "Whatever history records is what the museum exhibits eventually will include. "The museum's role is to educate and inform its visitors in a way that does not push any one point of view or any particular theory." But one widely known conspiracy theorist sings Mack's praises. "Gary is an excellent researcher," says Jim Marrs, whose book "Crossfire" was the basis in part for Oliver Stone's controversial movie, "JFK." Today, Marrs teaches a class on the assassination at UT-Arlington. Says Mack, with a humorless laugh, "The important thing is President Kennedy's life and legacy ... but Oliver Stone's movie is what most people think of first." It was in 1975 in Wichita, Kan., where he worked at a radio station, that Mack first saw Abraham Zapruder's film of the assassination. "It changed my life," he says. He's been hooked ever since. "I don't know that (Lee Harvey) Oswald did anything that day, but I know the Warren Commission decided he killed President Kennedy," he says. "I know that the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the late seventies also said he killed President Kennedy, but that he had a second shooter working with him. "So there are two official versions of history, and I don't know which one's right." He's hardly alone. Almost four decades later, after numerous books, movies, TV documentaries, independent investigative efforts, scattered "confessions" and two formal governmental investigations, including the Warren Commission in the 1960s, millions of Americans still ask: "Who killed JFK?" Mack believes that new information on the assassination still could surface. "There were people in Dealey Plaza with cameras whose pictures have never been seen. Maybe one of those pictures will turn up and you can see the face of a guy who can answer some of the questions raised through the years," he says. But, he adds, "I'm not even sure if the truth came out today that people would believe it." Conflicting medical evidence, the location of the fatal head wound and the so-called "single-bullet theory"_ the Warren Commission's proposal that the same bullet killed Kennedy and struck Texas Gov. John Connally - are among the most familiar areas of dispute. But Mack says acoustical evidence - sound recordings from that day in Dealey Plaza - gathered in the late 1970s by the House Assassinations Committee offers the greatest potential of resolving the conspiracy puzzle. In November 1994, when testifying before the Assassination Records Review Board, Mack stressed that the acoustics issue, "despite its difficulties," was far from dead. He praised review board members for their efforts in obtaining the release of secret, JFK-related information and documents, then told them: "I don't think (the information and documents) is going to tell us whether there was or was not a conspiracy to kill the president," he testified, "but the acoustics evidence can certainly do that." Nothing has happened to change his mind, Mack says. "Based on everything I know about this subject," he says, acoustics could provide a breakthrough. "Unless there's something totally new out there that no one knows about, the acoustics evidence is the only hard evidence that has the potential to answer "the" question: "How many shots were fired that day and where did they come from?" The acoustics came from a motorcycle officer's radio microphone, which clicked on a few minutes before the assassination and may have inadvertently allowed the sound of the shots to be recorded by police dispatchers. "Along with the motorcycle noise, you can hear some pops and clicks that may or may not be shots," Mack says. "The House Assassinations Committee found some acoustics experts to analyze the recordings ... and they concluded there were four shots. They could tell from the data that the third of the four came from the grassy knoll and the other three came from the window of the Texas School Book Depository. "Because that information was so convincing, and the people who did the work were so well-respected in their fields, the committee concluded there was a conspiracy because there were two shooters." Three years later, after a follow-up study, another group of scientists decided there were no shots on that recording. Thus, Mack says, the potential key to a great puzzle remains in limbo because of the conflicting interpretations. Marrs describes the dispute over the acoustics as part of the "continuing pattern of cover-up by obfuscation" of the assassination. But Mack acknowledges that the intricacies of the acoustics evidence are difficult for the public to grasp and that the Assassination Committee's findings are not definitive and remain in dispute. Of course, conspiracy theorists have said the same thing for years about the Warren Report, which concluded that Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy. " ... It seems to me, as one who's studied this long before the Sixth Floor Museum was ever dreamed of, that if there's some solid evidence out there, then reasonable efforts ought to be made to find the answer," Mack says. The annual JFK "November in Dallas" research conference, which is open to the public, begins Friday at the Dallas Radisson and includes a keynote address by Texas researcher Don Thomas, who has conducted his own detailed study of "echo correlation" in Dealey Plaza. Thomas' findings would tend to support Mack, who says: "I personally believe the original acoustics study was correct, that there are shots on there and the original scientists came to the right conclusion. "But I can't prove it either way." Marrs, meanwhile, has labeled the assassination "one of the world's greatest murder mysteries" and argues that there were two conspiracies. "One was the conspiracy to kill the president," he said during an appearance before the same Assassinations Records and Review Board that heard Mack in 1994. "Who did it, who committed it, how many gunmen, from which trajectory, how many shots, we don't know," he said. "But the second conspiracy was the conspiracy to cover up the first conspiracy, and this one was not quite so successful." Marrs insists that "officials high within the U.S. government committed acts designed not to find truthful answers but rather to hide the truth from the American public." Mack is less cynical, and is concerned that many Americans formed their concept of the assassination from Stone's "JFK." "What it's come down to now is, the Oliver Stone film has made it very easy for people to think they, too, can solve the crime of the century," he said. History, he says, will probably record that the movie was one of the best and one of the worst things to happen to the Kennedy assassination story. "The best thing about it is it made the subject legitimate again," he said. "Stone gave people a reason to reconsider." On the other hand, Mack says, Stone based his story on a flawed theory. "To read the Oliver Stone version of history, you get ... the opinion that nothing was investigated. Or what was investigated was not investigated properly. That's not true. They dug up a mountain of information, some of which is relevant." Recalling that government investigators have collected millions of pages of assassination-related documents over the years, Mack poses this question: "If there's just one guy, how come there's so many pages?" ---

---

[tpaine]

Yep, as I commented on the first JFK thread of the 'season' just a few days ago:

To: mlo; Jim Noble; Fred25

Whoever killed JFK has been able to sustain a decades-long coverup. -JN-

Yep. And they have, because the Warren Report investigation itself was the start of the coverup. - tpaine

But you *presume* the existence of a cover-up. That is not how you start. Shooter is correct, you must start with the crime itself. -mlo-

The Warren Report did exactly that. Ineptly. -- Anyone who believes the report is based on unbiased fact is in denial, and making an act of faith in the face of obvious governmental meddling with the evidence.
Why did the government 'cover up'? -- Your guess is as good as mine. But they did meddle. - They may have even had an incorrect reason for doing so.

[IE, - Fred25's theory, - they covered up for the KGB, to prevent WWIII]

65 posted on 11/21/2002 4:15 PM PST by tpaine

[Steve Eisenberg]

Fred25's theory, - they covered up for the KGB, to prevent WWIII

The Warren Commission did not "cover up" for "the KGB," or for any other communist institution. Instead, the Commission named a communist as the assasin, and pointed out how this communist, a former Soviet resident, had been in touch with other communists at both the Cuban and Russian embassies in Mexico City in the two months leading up to the assasination. If anyone covered up the centrality of international communism to this assasination, it is 90% of the conspiracy theorists.

[leadpenny]

I have thought about it. A lot. I have read so many conflicting theories that I have decided, for myself, we will probably never know the truth beyond a shadow of doubt. These arguments pop up from time to time on FR, and I usually jump in. But, like most people, I have some kind of bedrock pre-conceived notion about one or more of the key players and/or one or more of the key events.

Almost everything, taken by itself, can be argued away:

Oswald defecting to the USSR

Oswald returning from the USSR.

His mysterious handler, DeMoerenschilt(sp)

The suicide of DeMoerenschilt the day before he was to testify in the 70's.

MG Edwin A. Walker being fired by JFK in April 61. A lot of people don't know this but Walker was about to receive his third star at the time he was fired.

Walker's behavior and associations between April 61 and Nov 63. He hated Kennedy with a passion.

Oswald firing a shot at Walker in April 63, And this fact not revealed until the Warren Commission Report.

Oswald being in New Orleans around, what appear to be, mob figures, Cubans and possibly rogue elements of the US.

The rush by LBJ to get the Warren Report out before the election of 64.

LBJ personally tinkering with the motorcade route in Dallas months before Nov 63.

LBJ's insistance that JFK's body be on the plane back to Washington.

Jack Ruby's association with the mob in some capacity.

The Warren Commission's refusal to bring Ruby to DC.

All of these points, and countless others, can be debated and dismissed. For me it comes back to the question of who stood to gain and who could put a hit into motion. If one looks at LBJ's political life before Nov 63, most would agree he was beyond driven. He had a ruthlessness and an ambition that could be defined as blind. In a sense, LBJ appeared to seek power in much the same way as x42 did. They used different MO's but both sought power for power's sake, IMO.

I, for one, am not ready to explain away the unanswered big picture of the 60's anymore than I am ready to explain away all that happened in the 90's

[tpaine]

Please, can you eleborate on what you see as the reasons for the botched 'report'?

[Austin Willard Wright]

One also to admit that the Bannister/Ferrie/Oswald connection is hard to explain away including Oswald and Ferrie's association in the Civil Air Patrol and the Ferrie/Bannister/Oswald tie at the 544 Camp Street address.

[Ann Archy]

No kidding!! I always thought that or his wife were part of the cospiracy. Just Fri. on Imus, Jack Valenti said LBJ as cool as a cucumber before being sworn in on Air Force One. I thought maybe Jackie stayed in those bloody clothes for him and Lady Bird to see.

[leadpenny]

Ferrie was a freakie guy. And wasn't he some kind of currier/pilot for the mob in Cuba?

[claptrap]

What does it matter, who really would be affected, and isnt
really kind of boring, when you have masses of bloodthirsty
muslims waiting for a chance to wipe your butt off the face of the planet, maybe Im overly focused on the here and now!

[Austin Willard Wright]

Ferrie was Oswald's commander in the Civil Air Patrol in the mid 1950s and there is even a picture of both of them which has been authenticated. There is no proof, however, that they continued an association once Oswald joined the marines. Later, Ferrie ran guns to anti-Castro groups and operated out of an office on 544 Camp Street (as did Bannister). One of Oswald's Fair Play for Cuba committee flyers had a stamp with the Camp Street address.

Ferrie was a freaky guy....but apparently quite intelligent and charismatic. I hate to say it but had he lived he would have probably become an avid Freeper.

[leadpenny]

What does it matter

I'm sure AA has a better answer but mine is that we should not accept our leaders being changed by coup or assassination.

[leadpenny]

And did I read somewhere that he was a former Eastern Airlines pilot and lost that job because he was (not that there's anything wrong that) gay?

[Austin Willard Wright]

Yes....that is true. I think that the expression was that he had committed "a crime against nature."

[tpaine]

"Fred25's theory, - they covered up for the KGB, to prevent WWIII" -tpaine -


The Warren Commission did not "cover up" for "the KGB," or for any other communist institution. Instead, the Commission named a communist as the assasin, and pointed out how this communist, a former Soviet resident, had been in touch with other communists at both the Cuban and Russian embassies in Mexico City in the two months leading up to the assasination. If anyone covered up the centrality of international communism to this assasination, it is 90% of the conspiracy theorists.

82 posted on 11/24/2002 1:09 PM PST by Steve Eisenberg
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 81 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]
To: Steve Eisenberg
Please, can you elaborate on what you see as the reasons for the botched 'report'? -- You said:

"The Warren Commission did not "cover up" for "the KGB," or for any other communist institution."

Who did they 'cover up' for, in your opinion?

[Leatherneck_MT]

"Your post, I'm afraid, is typical of those who doubt the Warren Report."

No, I don't believe the Warren Commission. Outside of The Lord of the Rings it's the biggest piece of Fantasy that's ever been written.

Oswald didn't have the skill to do the shooting, Period. No amount of practice with any kind of weapon would have improved on that. In the Marines he had the finest marksmanship trainers in the world trying to just get him good enough to QUALIFY. Anyone who has ever shot a KD course, or taught young Marines how to shoot (as I have) knows that it's not rocket science. However it does take a certain amount of skill and any Marine on this board can tell you that there are some people who just cannot be taught how to accurately fire a rifle. Lee was one of those people.

"Throw out all the eyewitness testimony, all the medical and ballistic evidence, the fact that Oswald fled the scene and fought with police, all of that, because one conclusion you make does not square with the facts of the case."

Yes, precisely. That's what the Government did. The end result was the Warren Commission. They threw out eyewitness testimony. Hundreds of people saw and heard shots being fired from the Grassy Knoll. Dozens were run out of the parking lot area behind the fence by people identifying themselves as Secret Service Agents. The Secret Service didn't have anyone IN Dealy Plaza that day. Who were these people? Dallas Police Officers reported this event. Accoustical Evidence report 4 shots fired. 4th shot and you have 2 shooters. 2 shooters = conspiracy to commit murder.
Even if Oswald was ONE of the shooters (which in my Professional opinion he was not) who was the other shooter? Out of 245 (approx number) witnesses in Dealy Plaza that day, within 3 years 225 (again approx) of them would be dead. What are the odds against that? Maybe the same odds that Lee could have done the shooting that day. Maybe the same odds that a 6MM soft nose round could go through 2 human bodies, cause 7 wounds, fracture and splinter bones and then fall out on a hosptital stretcher in absolute perfect condition?

"The actual interpretation of Oswald's performance shooting in the Marines has been debated"

Oswald went Unq (Unqualified) on several occasions. His rifle scores barely qualified him, there's no debat here. A KD (Known Distance) course is fired at 200, 300 and 600 yards. These are all done in a "Tight" sling position. Even with this kind of advantage and training, Oswald barely qualified. Coupled with this he was qualifying with a Highly Accurate rifle (the M14). The Manlicher Carcano that he allegedly killed the President with, is a NOTORIOUSLY Inaccurate rifle. (I've fired one). The Bolt sticks and makes it difficult to get your sight picture back on target. Furthermore the scope on the rifle had not even been boresighted to it. True, the shot would not have been difficult to someone who was a Rifle Expert. But to Oswald it would have been extremely difficult.

What about after the shots were fired. Where was he? A Dallas police officer ran across him 90 seconds later in the 2nd floor lunch room. Was he nervous? Was he out of breath? Was he sweating? No, absolutely not according to the Officer and Oswald's supervisor. How did he achieve running down 4 flights of stairs and end up where he was found completely unperterbed? (Sp) What was he doing there? He said he was buying a coke. But was he waiting for a phone call? Could be.. Could be he was also buying a coke like he said.

Prior to 11/22/1963 Oswald had been seen several times in the company of Jack Ruby. When he was in New Orleans, his address for his "Fair play for Cuba Committee" was 544 Camp Street. This is right in the heart of the United States Governments Intelligence community in 1962. Kind of an odd place for a Pro Communist sympathizer to be operating don't you think?

Oswald was exactly what he said he was. He was a patsy. Lee was the fall guy for this. He was American Intelligence from the day he joined the Marine Corps and was at the very least a DIA Operative (if not CIA) until the day he died.

"all the medical and ballistic evidence"

Strange that we would use this in a rebuttal especially since the Ballistic and Medical Evidence has been lost and or destroyed. Kennedy's brain could have provided current investigators with concrete proof that the shot that killed him came from his right front and not his left rear. However your government has "Lost" this evidence. The Doctor at the Parkland Hospital considered the wound in the rear of his head nothing more than an EXIT wound. Not an entrance wound. Exit wounds are always much larger than entrance wounds. Continuing on this point, the Bethesda Naval doctors said that an exit wound in Kennedy's throat had been eradicated by a tracheotomy performed at Parkland. That is so much hogwash it's not funny. There is no way physically possible that a small incision in the Trachea can eliminate evidence of an exit wound in the throat.

The tests given to Oswald that day (Parafin tests) indicated he had fired NOTHING. Someone else earlier intimated that his palm print was found on the stock of the rifle. This palm print didn't show up until after Oswald died. The director of the Funeral Home where Oswald was being prepared for burial stated that Federal Officers came to the Funeral home and demanded to be left alone with the body. Why were they in there?

I understand your inability or unwillingness to believe the "Conspiracy" theory. For many years I didn't want to believe it either. But then I started doing some investigating on my own and reading the accounts of investigators and I had to form my own opinions and conclusions and those are that Oswald never pulled the trigger.

I appreciate your views on this, but unfortunately your views do not hold up to the wealth of evidence out there that a Conspiracty to Assassinate the President did in fact exist. The House Committee on Assassinations concluded that Oswald did the shooting but he was not the only one. They directed the Justice Dept to investigate this and get to the bottom of it, but to this day the Justice Dept has done precisely NOTHING.

Semper Fi

[Leatherneck_MT]

Sorry, Nobody saw Oswald shoot anyone. They said they saw "Someone". Not Oswald.

The palm print found on the rifle was not found until after Oswald's death. If I remember correctly it was found after taking the stock off of the weapon and the print was found on the barrel itself UNDER the stock. Kind of odd how this evidence appears after the FBI and possibly some other federal agents visited the Funeral home where Oswalds body lay in state.

[Shooter 2.5]

One in particular, Howard Brennon, saw a man fire the fatal shot. His description of the killer was the one that went out on the police radio just 15 minutes after the killing.

That description led to his arrest in the movie theatre after he killed Kennedy and then gunned down Officer Tippit.

The Mannlicher-Carcano was Oswald's. He ordered the rifle, signed for it using the alias that he commonly used, posed for a camera with it, practiced in the Trinity River bottoms with it and left it at his workplace. The three fired cartridge cases came from the rifle to the exclusion of all others. Owald's handprint was on the wrapping paper and his palm print was on the barrel. No curtain rods were found anywhere in the Depository.

You don't think he tried to wipe the rifle down before he stashed it?
How else do you think the investigators were able to compare a palm print off a rifle? Are your palm prints on file somewhere?

[tpaine]

Well said. The 'report' is hogwash.

As an aside, anyone who went through basic in those days, ['55 for me] can testify to cadre 'helping' recruits qualify at marksmanship.
And annual requalifications were an even bigger joke. Some pencil jockeys never ever even picked up a rifle after basic.

[SBprone]

JFK was hit by a team hired by Carlos Marcello under a contract from Sam "Momo" Giancana of Chicago.

If there were ex-mercenaries and Cubans on the team it would only make sense because a lot of these folks were out of work and living in Marcello's turf following the Bay of Pigs project.

Somebody was positioned to the rear of JFK who made three or four lousy shots but one in the back that probably would have been a killer. I always assumed that shooter was Oswald but who knows? The insurance shot was the one from the front and that guy was a real shooter. Maybe somebody who trained to whack Castro himself.

As for the Mob connection, I got that from the movie "The Rat Pack." Don't laugh, its a great movie and about the most logically satisfying conspiracy theory I have heard. Basically, Joe Kennedy gets help from Giancanna that enables JFK to win the West Virginia Democratic Primary. Joe freelances this project by using Peter Lawford to approach Frank Sinatra who in turn approaches his pal Momo. After JFK takes office he repudiates the deal his dad made and allows Bobby to investigage the Mob.

From this point JFK is a dead man. When he realizes how screwed he is he tries to make amends by sending Momo satchells full of cash via mutual GF Judith Exner. This is the part that really sells me. It is so Sicilian Mafia to make a transgressor first beg for mercy and then give you all his ready cash in exchange for leniency, and finally to just whack him like you meant to all along.

The Mob today is the spent shell of its former self. People don't remember how powerful they were in the early 60s. They thought they elected JFK (like everybody else that helped in that tight race) and they thought they were big enough to make him pay. Hit team members later got offed so the only ones left to tell the tale were made guys. Made guys didn't talk back then.

In the aftermath, the Warren Commission just didn't want to know about it. The truth was just too disgusting to be allowed to taint the Presidency and the Kennedys.

[tpaine]

Careful my boy, you are getting close to violating FR's unwritten rules pertaining to conspiracy theory.
- Apparently, it is OK to challenge conventional wisdom on subjects that have a 'politically correct' aspect, as long as you are not too definite in your charges of who/what/when/where.
If you are deemed a 'kook' in your opinions by any of the known or unknown powers that be, beware of the Rivero solution.

[SBprone]

Thanks for the heads up. I guess it's time for a disclaimer.

The aforementioned conspiracy theory does not purport to be a true account of the demise of Prince Jack. It is most likely false and delusional.

I only brought it up because of its artistic merits which I believe place it among the most dramatically satisfying of conspiracy theories. I have made this contribution for entertainment purposes only.

Do not take seriously.