Article: 382 of sgi.talk.ratical From: dave@ratmandu.corp.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe) Subject: Book Review: "On The Trial Of The Assassins" Keywords: this book provided basic inspiration to Stone for "JFK" Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Date: Fri, 20 Dec 1991 16:19:58 GMT Lines: 148 When They Murder Our President. Factual Conspiracy--It Did Happen Here by dave ratcliffe ___________________________________ ON THE TRIAL OF THE ASSASSINS; My Investigation and Prosecution of the Murder of President Kennedy by Jim Garrison As singularly important an event as the assassination of President Kennedy was in the context of post-WWII American history, the paramount tragedy that remains with us more than 25 years later is that collectively, as a nation, we still have been so misinformed about what actually occurred. Not only about the bursts of gunfire which, in six seconds, ended the administration of the 35th President of the United States, but integral events both before and after the murder itself, that successfully hid the real facts from the public during the initial days and weeks after that awful Friday, when the different news and government agencies were getting their story line "straightened out". Consider these facts: * Lee Oswald was given a nitrate test, which reveals deposits of nitrate on a person's cheek when she or he has recently fired a rifle, on the evening of the assassination. The nitrate test results indicated that Oswald had not fired a rifle on November 22, 1963. This fact was kept secret for ten months, only to be revealed in the Warren Commission Report. * Oswald was questioned on Friday night while in the custody of Captain Will Fritz, head of the Dallas Police Homocide Division. Recording of such questioning is routine even in minor felony cases. Yet, according to the Warren Commission hearings, the alleged murderer of the President of the United States was questioned for a total of 12 hours without any taping or shorthand notes by a stenographer. Nor was an attorney present. * Although at least twelve individuals were taken into custody by Dallas Police on November 22, there are no records of any arrests made that day within the confines of the Dallas Police Department. * The Dallas parade route, published on the right five-sixths of the front page of "The Dallas Morning News" for Friday, November 22, 1963, showed the motorcade running down Main Street straight through and beyond Dealey Plaza. As the chief city administrator, the Mayor of Dallas--who in 1963 was a Mr. Earle Cabell--would have to know and officially approve any such eleventh hour change. Earle Cabell had a brother named General Charles Cabell who had been the deputy director of the CIA--the number two man--under Allen Dulles for nine years, until he was fired by President Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs fiasco of which General Cabell had been the Agency's man in charge. General Cabell's subsequent hatred of John Kennedy became an open secret in Washington. However he was never even called as a witness before the Warren Commission. * Julia Ann Mercer, while stopped in traffic on Elm Street about an hour before the assassination, saw a young man get out of a pickup truck on her right, carrying a not very well concealed rifle, and then walk up the grassy hill which forms part of the overpass. At the local FBI office, on Saturday, November 23, she identified the driver of the pickup truck whos face she got a good look at, from a number of mug shots, as that of Jack Ruby. * For more than five years, the Zapruder film of the assassination was concealed from the public and locked in a vault by Life magazine. This moving picture showed Kennedy being slammed violently backwards--clear evidence of his being struck by a rifle shot from the front. The above are just a few of the striking assemblage of facts laid out in this new book by Jim Garrison, ex-District Attorney and now a Judge of the Court of Appeal in New Orleans. Not only is it an immensely engrossing story written by an eloquent man, it is also essential reading for all of us both who remember living through that seminal time, as well as a whole new generation of people who were not alive then, and for who the assassination remains a murky, unmeasured abyss. Jim Garrison describes what he believes happened at Dealey Plaza in Dallas as a coup d'etat. He defines a coup d'etat as "a sudden action by which an individual or group, usually employing limited violence, captures positions of governmental authority without conforming to the formal requirements for changing officeholders, as prescribed by the laws of constitution". He goes on to ennumerate the necessary elements for a successful coup: "extensive planning and preparation by the sponsors; the collaboration of the Praetorian Guard (officials whose job is to protect the government); a diversionary cover-up afterwards; the ratification of the assassination by the new government inheriting power; and the the dissemination of disinformation by major elements of the news media." Garrison believes the sponsors had instigated and planned this coup long in advance and that this group consisted of "fanatical anticommunists in the United States intelligence community; that it was carried out, most likely without official approval, by individuals in the C.I.A.'s covert operations apparatus and other extra-governmental collaborators, and covered up by like-minded individuals in the F.B.I., the Secret Service, and Dallas police department, and the military; and that its purpose was to stop Kennedy from seeking detente with the Soviet Union and Cuba and ending the Cold War." At one point, reflecting on the media's absolutely static rejection of even the idea of conspiracy, Garrison writes: "Then, perhaps for the first time, I realized what it was that petrified these people... To acknowledge that an organized conspiracy had occurred was to recognize that it had been done for a purpose--to change government policy. Having told the world for so many years how wonderful we all were, here in the greatest country in the world, the media people were not willing to admit that our national leader could be removed in such a brutal fashion in order to change government policy. That would put the lie to American democracy. That just could not be. Therefore, in their minds, the assassination had to be a random event, the work of a deranged loner." The final paragraph of the book, after suggesting that it may be too late for an honest investigation, states: However, it is not too late for us to learn the lessons of history, to understand where we are now and who runs this country. If my book can help illuminate this for a younger generation who never knew John Kennedy, then it will have served its purpose. -- daveus rattus yer friendly neighborhood ratman KOYAANISQATSI ko.yan.nis.qatsi (from the Hopi Language) n. 1. crazy life. 2. life in turmoil. 3. life out of balance. 4. life disintegrating. 5. a state of life that calls for another way of living.