JFK Investgation goes Online
Davy Sims - still here for William Crawley. ('Cause I'd rather work in my pajamas.)
When Newspapers or News Broadcasters use the Internet to engage with the audience it鈥檚 usually no more than 鈥淪end us your pictures鈥, or 鈥淭ell us what you think鈥. I鈥檓 Editor New Media in 麻豆官网首页入口 Northern Ireland and the response I get from the audience to the 鈥淭ell us what you think鈥 is 鈥淚 don鈥檛 care what they think. If I care what someone thinks, I prefer it is someone with an informed opinion rather than just an opinion.鈥
That鈥檚 what I was going to cover in this post, until I saw this. 鈥溾 (Free sign in required) The Dallas Morning News sets it up like a drama 鈥 which to some extent it is.
An old safe is discovered in a Dallas courthouse. Once opened, its contents reveal a secret cache of files related to the death of President John F. Kennedy. There is an assassin's gun holster, brass knuckles and a transcript of a "smoking gun" conversation to kill the president.
You can read the whole story on the Dallas Morning News Site. (BTW, although the internet now allows me to read newspapers I would never have dreamed of, I鈥檓 not a regular of the Dallas Morning News and should credit for pointing to this story.)
I know public participation in public broadcasting is important; it鈥檚 just sometimes I wish we in the Main Stream Media were more creative about how the public and they (we, of course) can work together. The classic public participation on the internet was - and still is - which helped and still helps scientists use your idle computer time by linking your computer to a grid. There is an idea floating around (perhaps now in operation) to use the power of CATCHPAs (that little test you get in some online forms to test whether you are a human). Part of the CATCHPA would also be part of a mathematical formula and by copying in letters/digits you would join with millions of others to perform a calculation. Don鈥檛 ask me for details, I鈥檓 only a DJ that made good.
This interesting thing about both the SETI and CATCHPA projects is that they are scientists asking for your help not your opinion. MSM only seem to be interested in your opinion (oh, and your photos).
Dallas Morning News are going the way of the scientists and in what would appear to be a very exciting way. On
Below is one, large chunk of the documents. In the coming days, dallasnews.com will share more of them for your review. The documents contained here are those that the district attorney's office made available in electronic form 鈥 an estimated 90 percent of all the documents from the vault. Another 10 percent had not yet been scanned when these files were released to The Dallas Morning News. The contents include transcripts, personal and official letters, newspaper clippings, lists of jurors, police reports, rap sheets, autopsy reports, trial notes, police notebooks, photographs and much more. The documents appear here exactly as they were received by The News . They are neither cataloged nor indexed, and they are in no apparent order. Given the volume, we haven't been able to review most of the files. That's why were calling on you. Here's your chance to review never-seen-before materials related to the JFK assassination.
So 鈥 I鈥檓 tempted to ask 鈥 what do you think?
I鈥檇 rather know what you found.
Comments
I live with someone who is obsessed with the life of Jackie Kennedy. She has read every fact ever published again and again and can recite every line of every one of over two hundred books about her chapter and verse. If there was a PHD course about the life of Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onasis, she could teach it. I've been dragged to Hammersmith Farm, the girlhood summer home of Jackie's stepfather Auschinclaus where Jackie was married, to the second auction pre auction viewing at Sotheby's in New York dubbed the "Camelot Crap" acution...twice, to the Jackie dresses exhibit at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art where gowns designed by Oleg Cassini for her were on exhibit...twice, and to a pre auction viewing of Kennedy memorabilia at the New York Historical Society where all kinds of junk from JFK's winter pajamas with a trap door in the seat to his Fisher Stereo system was on display. Wow am I glad none of our pre-auction absentee bids for some of this junk actually won. The last thing I wanted to do was rent a truck to drive to Sotheby's in New York City to pick up some stupid old sofa Jackie Kennedy once owned.
Naturally I have heard every theory in the known universe about the assassination and the more I've heard over the last 44 1/2 years about the Kennedys, the more I've come to hate them and hate hearing about them. At the Camelot Crap auction, I became aware that there are lots of people who have this same pathologic obsession about the Kennedys in general and Jackie in particular and they will argue arcane trivia about her with each other ad nauseum. I suppose it could be worse, she could obsessed about Elvis...or "The Duke."
OK, here's my "expert's" best theory, the one she believes true. Kennedy was assassinated on the orders of Sam Giancana, a mafia boss. It actually makes sense to me. The Kennedys double crossed the Mafia, something most people in America know you don't do if you want to stay alive. Senator Robert Kennedy was a young crusader against the mafia and was on the Senate Committee to wipe out organized crime. His book "The Enemy Within" was required reading when I was in college and still makes a fascinating read. The Kennedys have a long history with the Mafia, the father Joe Kennedy having made his fortune smuggling and bootlegging whiskey during Prohibition. The Mafia "bought" the 1960 election for Joe Kennedy through its corrupt Democratic political machine run by Mayor Daley in Chicago. Daley delivered Chicago and with it Illinois' electoral votes and the Presidency to Kennedy through every fraudulent voting scheme known to man. The election was a squeaker, the results not known until the next morning it was so close. Nixon for some reason never contested the election. If he had, the results might have been overturned.
And what did President Kennedy do to reward his business partner La Cosa Nostra in return? He appointed his brother Bobby as Attorney General where he had even more power to hurt the Mafia. Yes he had to pay, that's the code, the Mafia law. If they do you a favor, they own you.
There are other theories, the Kennedys had lots of enemies. Some said it was the CIA because of the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Cuban Missile Crisis. (The Mafia lost a lot of valuable property in the form of hotel resorts and casinos in Havana too as the result of Castro's expropriation of them.) Some said it was the Cubans or Russians as payback for the CIA's attempted assassination of Castro. The Warren Commission headed by former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Earl Warren concluded it was by the lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone. Many have tried to prove the single rifle fired by Oswald couldn't have killed both Kennedy and hit Governor Connoly of Texas at nearly exactly the same time. They focus on the likelihood of a second gunman on the nearby "grassy knoll. Funny how Jack Ruby knew exactly when to be in the right place at the right time to kill Oswald as he was being transferred out of the Dallas County jail. Was the Dallas Police Force owned and controlled by the Mafia also? And funny how everyone who interviewed Ruby in Jail soon died often mysteriously. This included the well known columnist Dorothy Kilgallen who appeared regularly on the weekly TV Quiz show "What's My Line?" You have to wonder if the Warren Commission had access to the contents of this safe, they probably didn't. Many people don't believe the conclusion of the report because they feel it was an effort to cover up the truth and thereby put the entire episode in the past. As a result, it never seems to die.
It should be noted that John Kennedy was a weak charismatic President in many ways similar to Barack Obama. That he cheated on his wife incessently (like Clinton but unlike anything we know about Obama) was well known and as a result he got the nickname "Jack the Zipper." It's just that in those days, the media didn't focus on such things the way they did later on with the likes of Gary Hart and President Clinton. Kennedy's weakness and incompetence nearly brought the world to an end in the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. It was Bobby who came up with the solution which avoided what seemed inevitably like World War III and the end of human life on earth. Bobby Kennedy was assassinated by an Arab Sirhan Sirhan in a hotel kitchen in California during his campaign bid to be elected President in the 1968 election. He probably would have won due to his popularity and opposition to the War in Vietnam. His assassination was believed to be payback for his support of Israel during the 1967 war.
The reference to Geraldo Rivera in the article for those who don't know or forgot is that about 10 or 15 years ago, Rivera, an Hispanic American charismatic reporter himself who works for Fox News hosted a two hour program which dragged on interminably through commercial after commercial where the climax was the opening of a locked safe room owned by Al Capone, the first time, it had been opened in around 40 or 50 years or more. And what did the world find in this secret locked room after what seemed an eternity of mindlessly boring television? Some bottles of beer.
Davey Sims, do you have a trap door in the seat of your winter pajamas too?
Mark - thanks for such an interesting comment. Can't think of anything to add even a smart comment about my 'jamas. Thanks for taking the time.
A few years ago I went to Border's Book Store to order the latest Jackie book that had just been published. I spoke to a young guy, maybe around 19 or 20, a kind of computer geek type at the information desk.
I asked him; "By the way, have you ever heard of Jackie Kennedy?"
"No"
"Hmmm, ever heard of Jack Benny?"
"No."
"Ever seen a vinyl phonograph record with your own eyes?"
"No."
At that moment I suddenly felt very old.