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Recalling that day in 1963 when I heard our president had been shot
Thursday, November 20, 2008 6:26 AM PST
Everyone over the age of 55 seems to remember his or her whereabouts on Nov. 22, 1963. It was on that fateful day in Dallas, Texas, that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President John F. Kennedy.
I was just coming out of my college history class, when I noticed the campus seemed subdued. Some students were walking like zombies in a state of shock. I climbed into my Volkswagen and turned on the radio. Reports were still incomplete. Some claimed Vice President Johnson had been shot as well.
As I entered my driveway in Bethesda, Md., the drama continued to unfold. My mother was at home and had not heard the news. She was preparing an evening dinner party, ironically for some that would be involved in the investigation that night. My mother could not believe what I was saying until she turned on the black and white television set. Suddenly, reality hit, as another report stated that an unknown assailant had also killed a Dallas police officer.
We lived across the street from the National Naval Medical Center, where my father was an oral pathologist. I remember the helicopter delivering Kennedy's body that night. While Dad was not on the autopsy team, he did know the three doctors who took part in the examination: J. Thornton Boswell, James Humes and Pierre Finck. He was also a close friend of the president's dentist, Dr. John Pepper.
After the Warren Commission released their assassination report, my father asked Dr. Humes if the conclusions were in line with what he saw. Humes told him "absolutely," but failed to mention that the commanding officer had sworn him to secrecy under threat of court-martial. The same physician also admitted that his original autopsy notes were destroyed in his home fireplace.
Rumors circulated that there had been not one gunman, but two. Dr. Robert McClelland, who examined the president at Parkland Hospital, reported a large wound in the occipito-parietal part of the skull. This suggested that the final shot might have come from the front. The bullet, found on Gov. Connelly's stretcher, was mildly damaged. No one has been able to duplicate that shot and leave a bullet in relatively good condition. Navy medical technicians Jerrol Custer, Paul O'Connor and photographer Floyd Riebe, contradicted much of the official findings. The president's brain, which allegedly was at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (where my father had been chief of the oral pathology division), mysteriously disappeared. Other inconsistencies haunt historians as well.
The 1978 House Assassinations Committee suggested that two gunmen had been responsible for the killing. They based this conclusion on acoustical evidence at the time, which sounded like four shots, not three. Recently, these findings have been disputed by digital equipment that was not available at the time. Modern investigators have also been able to duplicate the three shots of Oswald and discount additional theories, such as the grassy knoll photograph of "Badge Man."
It was reported in now declassified documents, that President Johnson believed the Cubans might have been involved. He wanted the Warren Commission to do a "case-closed" investigation, with "no doubt" to the circumstances of the crime. Reputed mob figures bragged that they had done the deed as payback for John and Robert Kennedy's investigation of the underworld organization in 1961.
They believed their efforts had helped Kennedy get elected via voter fraud in Chicago. This supposedly happened during the 1960 election, when JFK won by a slim margin. They were also upset about mafia boss Carlos Marcello, who was deported by RFK to Guatemala.
That day of tragedy remains etched in my mind as if it were yesterday. After 45 years and despite hundreds of books and articles being written on the subject, the story still draws unanswerable questions. It remains, and most likely will continue to remain, an unsolved mystery for many years to come.
Steve Hansen is a Lodi writer.
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lodisafeway wrote on Nov 20, 2008 9:22 AM:
wtf wrote on Nov 20, 2008 8:32 AM:
http://endthefed.us/
Contrary to popular belief, the Federal Reserve is **not** a government entity. It is a **privately** held corporation; to be more precise, it is what is called a quasi-private corporation...but corporation for profit, it is with shareholders who make big bucks off the shmoes (that's us). "
wtf wrote on Nov 20, 2008 8:25 AM:
wtf wrote on Nov 20, 2008 8:25 AM:
wtf wrote on Nov 20, 2008 8:25 AM:
wtf wrote on Nov 20, 2008 8:24 AM:
wtf wrote on Nov 20, 2008 8:24 AM:
wtf wrote on Nov 20, 2008 8:23 AM:
wtf wrote on Nov 20, 2008 8:23 AM:
wtf wrote on Nov 20, 2008 8:22 AM:
wtf wrote on Nov 20, 2008 8:21 AM:
What do these two dates have to do with each other? "
wtf wrote on Nov 20, 2008 8:21 AM:
wtf wrote on Nov 20, 2008 8:20 AM:
1910- On the night of November 22, 1910, a group of newspaper reporters stood disconsolately in the railway station at Hoboken, New Jersey. They had just watched a delegation of the nations leading financiers leave the station on a secret mission. It would be years before they discovered what that mission was, and even then they would not understand that the history of the United States underwent a drastic change after that night in Hoboken.From Secrets of the Federal Reserve, by Eustace Mullins. "
wtf wrote on Nov 20, 2008 8:20 AM:
Is the MSM getting the public prepared? Why all the references to JFK now? "
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