Essential JFK Assassination Trivia, Volume 1
by Alternative Reel Staff
"In the mountains of truth you will never climb in vain: either you will get up higher today or you will exercise your strength so as to be able to get up higher tomorrow." — Friedrich Nietzsche
Dedicated to all those who still give a shit ...
- "I didn't shoot anybody, no sir . . . I'm just a patsy." —Lee Harvey Oswald, who was just 24 years old at the time of the JFK assassination
- ". . . we might have ridden into an ambush." —JFK aide David Powers
- ". . . [I]t is the most bizarre conspiracy in the history of the world. It'll come out at a future date." —Jack Ruby
- It was not a federal felony to assassinate a United States president until after JFK was murdered.
- "I know there is a terrible conspiracy going on in the world right now . . . The world has the right to hear the truth." —Jack Ruby
- "Oh man, why don't you fuckin' stop it? Shit, this is too fuckin' big for you, you know that? Who did the president, who killed Kennedy, fuck man! It's a mystery! It's a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The fuckin' shooters don't even know! Don't you get it?" —David Ferrie, JFK [1991]
- "I now fully realize that only the powers of the Presidency will reveal the secrets of my brother's death." —Robert Kennedy, June 3, 1968, two days before he was assassinated
- Jack Ruby's real name was Jacob Rubenstein, He had been involved in organized crime since childhood, according to The Killing of a President, working for "Al Capone, Jake 'Greasy Spoon' Guzik and Frank "The Enforcer" Nitti."
- Richard Nixon flew out of Dallas the morning of November 22, 1963; he later denied being there, making him perhaps the only American who did not remember where he was on that fateful day.
- Oswald purchased the alleged murder weapon, an Italian-made Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, through the mail for $21.45.
- "A week before Dallas some woman got within two feet of JFK and took his picture. 'She may have assassinated the President,' an official stated flatly . . . If I were a politician in danger of assassination and someone got within two feet of me I'd fire every bodyguard in my entourage and borrow some guns from de Gaulle. Nobody ever got within two feet of Le General. And I'd stay the hell out of Dallas on November 22." —William S. Burroughs, A Report from the Bunker, 1981
- In October of 1963, Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald were spotted together at Ruby's strip club, The Carousel.
- "We have not been told the truth about Oswald." —Hale Boggs, Warren Commission member
- ". . . and it wasn't Oswald that did [the Tippet shooting] - of course you know it was Jack Ruby . . . [Oswald] was supposed to meet with J.D. Tippet and have their 'breakfast of infamy' [at the Steak and Egg Kitchen]. Yeah, the waitresses went on record, in the Warren Report, as saying that Oswald didn't like his eggs and used bad language." —JFK Buff, Slacker, 1991
- CIA operative Robert Maheu recruited mobster Johnny Roselli to assassinate Fidel Castro in 1961. Roselli reportedly met with Jack Ruby twice within two months of the assassination. In 1976, Roselli was stabbed and stuffed into an oil drum shortly before he was scheduled to testify to a Senate committee investigating the JFK assassination.
- At the conclusion of JFK's autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, the presiding surgeon destroyed his notes as well as the first draft of the autopsy report.
- An armed Ruby attended a midnight press conference at Dallas Police Headquarters on November 23, 1963.
- On the day of the assassination, Governor Connally's jacket was sent to the dry cleaners, completely destroying its value as evidence.
- "His brain has not only been washed, it's been, as they say, dry cleaned." —Dr. Yen Lo, The Manchurian Candidate [1962]
- The publisher of Life magazine bought the Zapruder film and promptly locked the film away from the public's view. A copy of the film wasn't aired nationally until 1975.
- The so-called "magic bullet," the hero of the "single-bullet theory," was found lying on a stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
- Fellow Marines gave Oswald the nickname "SHITBIRD" since he was a terrible shot and couldn't qualify with his rifle. Other nicknames Oswald picked up in the military include OZZIE RABBIT, OSWALDSKOVICH and BUGS.
- "The figure of the gunman in the window was inextricable from the victim and his history. This sustained Oswald in his cell. It gave him what he needed to live. The more time he spent in a cell, the stronger he would get. Everybody knew who he was now." —Don Delillo, Libra
- In 1961, the CIA enlisted mobsters Sam Giancana, John Roselli and Santo Trafficante in a plot to assassinate Fidel Castro through its top-secret ZR/Rifle program.
- "Does anybody know who Lee Harvey Oswald was? . . . He was two hundred and fifty feet away and shooting at a moving target. He got off three shots with a bolt action rifle in six seconds, and got two hits, including a head shot. Do you know where [he] learned to shoot like that? . . . In the Marines." —Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, Full Metal Jacket
- ". . . Oswald had intelligence connections. Everywhere you look with him, there are the fingerprints of intelligence." —Senate Intelligence Committee member Richard Schweiker
- In 1957, Oswald was assigned to Japan, specifically the Atsugi Air Station in Japan, home to the U-2 spy plane. He worked as a radar operator.
- "The car was covered with matter, bloody matter. Tiny little specks on the car, my clothes, everything." —Nellie Connally, wife of Gov. John Connally
- It is believed that Oswald suffered from dyslexia.
- At least nine Secret Service agents assigned to protect Kennedy in Dallas spent the night before the assassination partying hard at a nightclub called the Cellar.
- "My God, they are going to kill us all." —Gov. John Connally
- In 1964, President Lyndon Johnson signed Executive Order No. 11652, which stipulated that assassination evidence be locked up in the National Archives until the year 2039.
- After defecting to the Soviet Union, Oswald moved to Minsk and worked at the Belorussian Radio and Television factory.
- Oswald's known aliases include Alex J. Hiddell and O.H. Lee.
- "The Warren Commission thought they had an open-and-shut case. Three bullets, one assassin. But two unpredictable things happened that day that made it virtually impossible. One, the eight-millimeter home movie taken by Abraham Zapruder while standing by the grassy knoll. Two, the third wounded man, James Tague, who was knicked by a fragment, standing near the triple underpass. The time frame, five point six seconds, determined by the Zapruder film, left no possibility of a fourth shot. So the shot or fragment that left a superficial wound on Tague's cheek had to come from the three shots fired from the sixth floor depository. That leaves just two bullets. And we know one of them was the fatal head shot that killed Kennedy. So now a single bullet remains. A single bullet now has to account for the remaining seven wounds in Kennedy and Connelly. But rather than admit to a conspiracy or investigate further, the Warren Commission chose to endorse the theory put forth by an ambitious junior counselor, Arlen Spector, one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people. We've come to know it as the 'Magic Bullet Theory.' This single-bullet explanation is the foundation of the Warren Commission's claim of a lone assassin. Once you conclude the magic bullet could not create all seven of those wounds, you'd have to conclude that there was a fourth shot and a second rifle. And if there was a second rifleman, then by definition, there had to be a conspiracy." —Jim Garrison, JFK [1991]
- "I'm sure you've all heard the old wives' tale that no hypnotized subject may be forced to do that which is repellent to his moral nature, whatever that may be. Nonsense of course." --Dr. Yen Lo, The Manchurian Candidate [1962]
- Oswald started his job at the Texas School Book Depository on October 16, 1963, just a little over a month before the assassination. He earned $1.25 an hour as a shipping clerk.
- "Mr. President, you certainly can't say that Dallas doesn't love you." —Nellie Connally, wife of Gov. John Connally, to JFK, November 22, 1963
- An inventory of JFK assassination evidence in 1966 revealed that the president's brain and skull fragments were missing from the National Archives.
- The first reports from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository indicated that a 7.5 German Mauser was found; by the final report, the murder weapon had morphed into a 6.5 Mannlicher Carcano.
- The double feature War is Hell and Cry of Battle was playing at the Texas Theater where Oswald was captured.
- "What did happen to you that day? Only one agent reacted to the gunfire, and you were closer to Kennedy than he was. You must have looked up at the window of the Texas Book Depository, but you didn't react. Late at night, when the demons come, do you see the rifle coming out of that window, or do you see Kennedy's head being blown apart? If you'd reacted to that first shot, could you have gotten there in time to stop the big bullet? And if you had-that could've been your head being blown apart. Do you wish you'd succeeded, Frank? Or is life too precious?" —In the Line of Fire [1993]
- A woman named Silvia Odio claimed that two anti-Castro Cubans and a man called "Leon Oswald" visited her Dallas apartment in September 1963. A couple of days later, one of the Cubans called Odio, claiming that Oswald was an ex-Marine and expert marksman who had blamed Kennedy for the Bay of Pigs debacle and also said that Kennedy should be shot.
- Secret Service agents were ordered to wash the President's car out while it was still parked at Parkland Memorial Hospital.
- Just minutes after the shooting, Oswald was observed in the Depository's second-floor lunchroom, casually drinking a Coke.
- "Oh, my God, they have shot my husband . . . I have his brains in my hand." —Jackie Kennedy, quoted in Bloodletters and Badmen, Jay Robert Nash, 1973
- Oswald has been suspected of being a member of the CIA's so-called fake defector program, which was set up in the 1950s as a way to send spies into the USSR.
- "One of the true heroes of American history . . . Leon Czolgosz. The man who assassinated William McKinley. He was an unknown Polish émigré who happened to be an anarchist of the 'propaganda by the deed' variety. If there were a hundred like him around today, they could change the world. The only political assassination of a U.S. president . . . well, except for Lincoln, I guess, and Kennedy, probably, but Leon was the only anarchist in the bunch. There was such a thing as belief put into action in those days." —Old Anarchist, Slacker, 1991
- According to a CIA document released in 1977, French assassin Jean Soutre was in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Soutre, or a man claiming to be him, was detained by U.S. authorities and deported within 48 hours of the assassination.
- "You never know what's hit you. A gunshot is the perfect way." —John F. Kennedy, quoted in The Kennedys (1984)
- Right before he was scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 1975, mafia boss Sam Giancana was murdered in his home gangland-style - a bullet hole was discovered in the back of his head as well as five bullet holes around his mouth.
- "We said that the Commission found no evidence of conspiracy, foreign or domestic. Those words were very carefully drafted." —Warren Commission member Gerald Ford
- President Lyndon Baines Johnson on Lee Harvey Oswald: "He was quite a mysterious fellow, and he did have a connection . . . The extent of the influence of those connections on him I think history will deal with more than we're able to now."
- Jack Ruby, who died in jail of a rare form of cancer on January 3, 1967, believed that he had been injected with cancer cells.
- "It all began so beautifully. After a drizzle in the morning, the sun came out bright and clear. We were driving into Dallas. In the lead car were President and Mrs. Kennedy." —Lady Bird Johnson, diary entry, November 22, 1963
- "We don't have any proof that Oswald fired the rifle. No one has been able to put him in that building with a gun in his hand." —Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry, quoted by United Press International, November 5, 1969
- In 1979, the House Select Committee of Assassinations (HSCA) released its final report on the Kennedy assassination: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy."
- Earl Warren denied Jack Ruby's repeated requests to take him to Washington D.C. to reveal the truth about the assassination.
- "In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies." —Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America
- To avoid a media frenzy, Oswald was buried quietly under the name "William Bobo." The Shannon Rose Hill Memorial Park in Fort Worth, Texas, serves as Oswald's final resting place.
- "When you get in to these people, say: 'Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that' . . . ah, I mean, without going into the details of, of lying to them to the extent to say that there is no involvement. But, you can say, 'This is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre,' without getting into it, 'The President's belief is that this is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again.' And, ah because ah these people are playing for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that . . . that we wish for the country, don't go any further into this case, period!" —President Richard Nixon, taped conversation with his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, who revealed in his book The Ends of Power that he believed Nixon's references to the Bay of Pigs were actually allusions to the JFK assassination
- "Serial killers have only two names. But lone gunmen assassins have three names: John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, Mark David Chapman." —Conspiracy Theory [1997]
- The only witness to the Tippit shooting, Aquilla Clemmons, claimed she saw two men involved in the shooting. None of her two descriptions matched Oswald and she was never called to testify before the Warren Commission.
- "Mrs. Oswald tells me that her son, Lee Harvey, was a good boy and that she loved him. And today, Lord, we commit his spirit to Your divine care." —The Rev. Louis A. Saunders, eulogy for Lee Harvey Oswald, Rose Hill Cemetery, Ft. Worth, Texas, 1963
- Oswald allegedly attempted to place a call to John Hurt, a former U.S. Army Counterintelligence officer, in Raleigh, North Carolina, on the night of November 23, 1963. The switchboard operator disconnected Oswald before the call ever went through.
- "It was a bad deal. A $15 gun and a scrambled-egg mind caused all that horror." —Nellie Connally
- On November 9, 1963, wealthy right-wing extremist Joseph Milteer told Willie Somersett, a Miami police informant, that a hit on Kennedy was in the works: "The more bodyguards he has, the easier it is to get him . . . From an office building with a high-powered rifle . . . Whenever he goes anyplace, he knows he is a marked man . . . it is in the works . . . You don't have to take a gun up there, you can take it up in pieces. All those guns come knock down. You can take them apart . . . They wouldn't leave any stone unturned there. No way. They will pick up somebody within hours afterwards. If anything like that would happen, just to throw the public off."
- "Well, it's all over now." —Oswald, after being arrested in the Texas Theater
CODA
- "On the basis of these findings, the Commission has concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy." —The Warren Report, Sept. 24, 1964
- "If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act." —Don Delillo, Libra
- "Well that's the real question, isn't it? Why? The how and the who is just scenery for the public. Oswald, Ruby, Cuba, the Mafia. Keeps 'em guessing like some kind of parlor game, prevents them from asking the most important question, why? Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up? Who?" —Mr. X, JFK [1991]
SOURCES
- The Big Book of Conspiracies, Doug Moench, Paradox Press, 1995
- Conspiracies, Cover-Ups and Crimes, Jonathan Vankin, Dell Publishing, 1992
- Coup d'Etat in America, Michael Canfield and Alan J. Weberman, The Third Press, 1975
- Crossfire, Jim Marrs, Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1988
- Forgive My Grief, Penn Jones, Midlothian Mirro, 1966
- The Killing of a President, Robert J. Groden, Penguin Books, 1993
- The Secret Team, Fletcher L. Prouty, Prentice-Hall, 1973
- The Texas Connection: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Craig I. Zirbel, The Texas Connection Company Publishers, 1991
