John F. Kennedy, Jr., made one grave mistake. He trusted the presidential campaign officials of Albert Gore, Jr. . . .
John F. Kennedy Jr. and Princess Diana were arguably the two most iconic pop culture celebrities of the 1990s. Diana was killed in a car crash in 1997, and Kennedy was killed in a small-plane crash in 1999—but the conspiracy theories about their deaths live on and probably will never die.
One can at least understand why some conspiracy theorists would find rich material in the circumstances surrounding Diana’s death—but Kennedy’s plane crash, while terribly sad, was a pretty straightforward accident, right? We all know that Kennedy; his wife, Carolyn; and his wife’s sister, Lauren, were killed when Kennedy lost control of his single-engine plane—end of story.
Yeah, right.
Here was the reaction on the Rense.com Web site after the National Transportation Safety Board released its official report citing pilot error as the cause of the crash:
Note—we rate this “final, official” report of “pilot error” as the cause of the JFK, Jr., plane crash right up there with that outrage called the Warren Commission Report, and at least as disgusting as the NTSB’s claim that TWA 800 crashed because of a “center fuel tank spark and explosion.” Nearly all major evidence and circumstance of the JFK crash point to the opposite conclusion of “pilot error.”
The conspiracy site North Star Zone has a home page linking to articles with headlines such as “Ten Lies Your Doctor Told You,” “Pearl Harbor: The Great Deception,” “When They Kill a Pope,” and “The Truth Behind the Virginia Tech Massacre.” (It was “hypnotic mind control. Including [the killer], 33 were killed. 33 is the highest degree of Freemasonry one can attain, and is used as an Illuminati signal passing a message to ‘those in the know’ that one of their Manchurian Candidates has carried out his orders.”)
Think of any major news event, assassination, or public tragedy of the last several decades, and the North Star Zone is there to explain what really happened—which is never the “official” version of events.
“Was JFK Jr. Murdered?” the site asks.
“Many unbiased researchers have spent the years since JFK Jr.’s July 1999 plane crash and untimely death, carefully gathering the facts about what really happened, and this investigation leads them to only one conclusion: MURDER, from a bomb placed aboard his aircraft. Their painstaking investigations reveal a massive cover-up by the controlled national media. They expose the false statements and lies that were fed to the apathetic and gullible American public, who only too gladly will swallow the swill dished out daily by the managed news and disinformation networks.”
“Swallow the Swill”—I believe that was one of the test slogans for the Fox News Channel, but they settled on “Fair and Balanced.”
Despite the grandiose claims in the introduction about a “murder” and “massive cover-up,” the article offers no proof whatsoever of either bombshell.
“Who would have killed JFK Jr.? The same people that murdered his father,” states the article. “The International Bankers, the Shadow Government, the One Worlders, the Illuminati, the secret societies, those who will not hesitate to get rid of anyone who gets in their way in building their socialistic One World Government.”
Wow, that’s an awful lot of people working together in a conspiracy of silence. Doesn’t anybody ever break ranks and spill the beans? Guess they’d be killed immediately if they tried, right?
As for that whole “One World Government” theory, what world are they talking about? Where is that taking place? Not on this planet.
So why exactly was John Jr. killed? Turns out he was going to turn George magazine into “a true political vehicle for change.”
Apparently he was in the process of documenting and proving with facts that ... hidden forces, along with the international bankers and their operatives, the CIA, were responsible for the foul acts against his father ... and his uncle RFK….Several investigators have asserted that JFK Jr. was planning to announce he was running for president as a traditional Democrat, or even possibly as a third party independent candidate in the 2000 election.
The “article,” and at this point we really do have to put the word article in quotation marks, points a finger at George W. Bush as someone who would “most naturally have an interest in the demise of JFK Jr.” and makes the claim that “the FBI covered up the bombing of JFK Jr.’s plane.” It goes on to say that if Kennedy had run for president, he would have “swept the field of presidential candidates. Conservatives and liberals, both could join together to support him.”
Right. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Ann Coulter would have supported a John-John run for the presidency. Now we’re really getting into fantasy territory.
Another essay on the same site makes the argument that Kennedy was “highly experienced” and that his trainers said he was “excellent.” A page later, the author makes the unsubstantiated claim that there was a flight instructor on the plane (apparently the instructor’s body mysteriously disappeared, and he had no family or friends to report him missing) and that the flight instructor “disappeared from the reports.” A few paragraphs after lauding Kennedy’s experience and skill as a pilot, the author states, “It is almost unthinkable that he would not have taken an instructor.”
But if Kennedy did bring along an instructor, how did the instructor’s body mysteriously vanish? I guess we’re supposed to believe that while the official word was that Kennedy’s plane had gone down and rescue/recovery efforts were under way, a secret team had already plucked the instructor’s remains from the sea and had erased all traces of his existence in order to give more credence to the NTSB’s bogus “pilot error” report.
Which had yet to be filed.
According to a DVD titled The Assassination of JFK Jr.—Murder by Manchurian Candidate, there is “overwhelming, jaw-dropping evidence of foul play in the death of John Kennedy Jr., all based on official government documents.”
The search of the crash site was delayed an incomprehensible 15 hours. There was, indeed, a flight instructor on the plane, whose body is missing. It is clear that someone on that plane committed suicide, shutting off the fuel control valve before plunging the plane into the sea. The prime suspect, George W. Bush, though very publicly running for president, disappeared the day of the murder and stayed missing for three days.
All of this “evidence” and more is presented via a “documentary” with production values that make the typical teenager’s lip synching-to-Beyoncé video on YouTube look like a production number from Dreamgirls.
The idea that George W. Bush would mastermind the murder of JFK Jr. is beyond ludicrous—but even if you were to buy into that insanity, it’s simply not true that Bush “disappeared the day of the murder.” As dozens of wire stories and newspaper articles reported, Bush was in Iowa on that Friday, making numerous campaign stops. Bush did take the weekend off from public campaign appearances—as had been planned—but by Monday morning, he was in Austin, Texas, publicly expressing sympathy for the Kennedy family.
In the meantime, Democratic candidate Al Gore canceled three campaign appearances for that Saturday out of respect for the Kennedy family—or was it because he was a part of the plot as well?
According to some conspiracy theorists, that’s exactly the case. You see, Bush and Gore teamed up for this murder! Sigh.
Let’s remember that by the time of Kennedy’s tragic accident, Bush was a shoo-in for the Republican nomination. He had a presidential-sized security contingent and a pool of reporters assigned to cover him—even on his days off. The idea that the governor of Texas, who was the clear front-runner for his party’s nomination for president, could fall off the radar for hours, let alone days, is just silly.
But not as silly as the DVD’s assertion that Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers were in a boat off Martha’s Vineyard on the night of the crash, orchestrating Kennedy’s assassination.
Not to mention the idea that either Kennedy, his wife, her sister, or the nonexistent instructor sabotaged the plane and then committed suicide.
Watching the DVD, I began to wonder if this was performance art. I mean, these people have to be kidding, right?
Sadly, I think they’re serious.
According to the NTSB’s official report, a flight instructor offered to fly with Kennedy that night but Kennedy refused. We know this because the flight instructor is still alive to be quoted in the report.
Despite the claims of conspiracy theorists that Kennedy was an expert pilot, the truth is he was rated to fly under visual flight rules only. That means he did not have the expertise to fly a plane based only on cockpit instrument readings.
When the plane was about 35 miles west of Martha’s Vineyard, Kennedy reportedly experienced a well-known phenomenon called “spatial disorientation.” Even though his plane had begun descending, his instincts would have told him it was climbing—and “corrective” measures would actually make the situation much worse.
The NTSB found no evidence of an explosion or fire. No evidence of foul play.
Although the conspiracy theorists love to point out that conditions were clear that night, the truth is that while Kennedy received a weather report two hours before takeoff that provided a reasonable visibility forecast, pilots who took the same path taken by Kennedy on the night of the crash said conditions had turned hazy, resulting in “significantly reduced visibility.”
Bob Stone, a Martha’s Vineyard glider pilot with 40 years of experience, told the Providence Journal-Bulletin, “I’ve flown enough around this island to know that not only can those hazy conditions persist for days, that haze can pop at low levels almost instantly. When you’re in it, down becomes up and up becomes down. It happens.”
Of course, Stone was probably recruited by the Illuminati back in the 1950s to pose as a glider pilot for all those decades, just so he’d be in place to offer up that quote after the plan was carried out.
Dr. Bob Arnot, a veteran pilot and a reporter for NBC, took off from the same airport as Kennedy on the night of the crash. He told NBC’s Dateline the air was extremely dark to the point of being “inky,” and said he thought to himself that night that if someone wasn’t experienced in reading instruments, they could run into serious trouble. (Remember, Kennedy wasn’t licensed to fly the plane by cockpit readings.)
Then again, how can we believe someone who is part of the media conspiracy? Obviously the Pentagon got to Arnot.
The sad, not-sensational reality is that John Kennedy was a good but not great pilot who almost certainly lost control of his plane and lacked the experience and knowledge to save himself, his wife, and her sister.