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The Murder of Oswald Was Obvious Witness-Silencing

If you weren’t around in 1963, it’s almost impossible to convey how crazy it was when Oswald was gunned down, right in the middle of a damn police station on live television.

People were outraged, and rightfully so. It was an unforgettable shock. Something clearly stunk about the whole thing and everyone sensed it. It was like an obvious aberration of justice.

In the most obvious case of witness elimination in history, the accused assassin—there was never a trial or eyewitnesses—of President Kennedy was gunned down in broad daylight, even though he was surrounded by a bevy of law enforcement officers, as the prisoner was being transferred to another jail. A stunned nation watched in silent disbelief because the event had been televised and everyone had wanted to get a look at the accused killer. We all got much more than a look. We got a taste of incredulity because people literally could not believe the obviousness of a crucial witness being eliminated before their eyes.²⁹¹

A popular national columnist named Dorothy Kilgallen was pretty darned shocked by it all, too. She was also obviously disgusted at the blatant dismissive manner by which the government handled the whole case. This is from her column, full of righteous indignation, right after Oswald got shot:

The case is closed is it? Well I’d like to know how in a big smart town like Dallas, a man like Jack Ruby—operator of a striptease honky tonk—could stroll in and out of police headquarters as if it were a health club at a time when a small army of law enforcers was keeping a “tight security guard” on Oswald.

Security! What a word for it.

I wouldn’t try to speak for Dallas, but around here, the people
I talk to really believe that a man has the right to be tried in court.

When that right is taken away from any man by the incredible combination of Jack Ruby and insufficient security, we feel chilled.²⁹²

If Oswald would have been eliminated at his original location—as was presumably the conspirators’ plan—there would have been little to question as far as the crime.

Think about that for a second. If Oswald had been killed by police (or anyone else) while he was still in that building, the whole thing would have turned out very differently. We all would have gone to bed that night, horrified by the assassination, yes; but also secretly relieved that the President’s killer had been eliminated.

Well, the guy that they had set-up to “take the fall” actually was eliminated. It just took a little bit longer than they’d originally planned.

But Oswald must have smelled a rat and he ducked out of that book depository building and for some reason—which may have been to meet his intelligence handler at a pre-set safe point, because it’s the only thing that actually makes sense—he headed straight for the one spot that no one has been able to explain. You guessed right: a movie theater.

So that was probably the conspirators plan: snuff out Oswald at the spot and presto, case closed. The President’s dead, but at least we got the guy who did it. People would’ve swallowed that right down with no problem at all. You know it’s true. It’s just human nature. Then, instead of a nation in shock, we would have been a nation in shock that could come to closure about it.

That’s why a lot of people figured that Oswald then had to be killed to keep him from ever telling his story in a courtroom. And guess what? That’s not only exactly what happened, it’s also just what some people close to some of the probable conspirators have said was exactly the motivation behind killing Oswald. They didn’t want to kill Oswald; they had to kill Oswald.

Johnny Roselli was a mobster who was part of the CIA’s efforts to try and assassinate Fidel Castro. I should point out here that it’s against the law to attempt to assassinate foreign heads of state; and U.S. presidents have historically respected that.²⁹³ The reasons are obvious. It’s impossible to have successful diplomatic relations with most countries if it’s known that you have no respect for the sanctioned leaders of foreign states. Formal U.S. policy forbids assassinations and forbids them very clearly. Executive Order 12333 is still in effect and specifically bans U.S. intelligence agencies from taking part in assassinations.²⁹⁴ Yet, in defiance of that policy, the CIA has an established record of using assassination to remove its political enemies. Here’s an example:

The CIA’s Secret Assassination Manual . . . a 19-page CIA document that was prepared as part of a coup against the Guatemalan government in 1954 and declassified in 1997. Maybe they should change the name to the CIA’s ‘secret-first degree murder manual.’ How is it that we are allowed to kill other people if we’re not in a declared war with them? Clearly this is a premeditated conspiracy involving more than one person. My big question is, who makes the call on this? To arbitrarily go out in the world and kill someone without their being charged with a crime!²⁹⁵

President Kennedy respected that policy and was genuinely shocked when he learned that the CIA had assisted in the “fatal removal” of President Diem in Vietnam.²⁹⁶ But that longstanding policy, of course, didn’t stop the CIA in 1963, a few weeks before Kennedy was himself killed.

Roselli was a key component of that whole anti-Cuban nexus from which the plan to assassinate JFK was hatched; and himself had to be eliminated, as we’ll see in a later entry.

A nationally syndicated columnist named Jack Anderson got to know Johnny Roselli and developed him as a source. Here’s how Roselli explained the killing to Anderson. Anderson published this after Roselli had been killed in 1976:

When Oswald was picked up, Roselli suggested, the underworld conspirators feared he would crack and disclose information that might lead to them. This almost certainly would have brought a massive US crackdown on the Mafia. So Jack Ruby was ordered to eliminate Oswald, making it appear as an act of reprisal against the President’s killer.²⁹⁷

Other information indicated the same thing. Frank Sheeran was a well-connected mobster who summarized the whole sordid story pretty well in a book that was basically his “deathbed statement.” Sheeran referred to the rumors among mobsters that Jack Ruby’s role in the conspiracy had been to silence Oswald by arranging to have the President’s alleged assassin conveniently killed by the police:

Jack Ruby’s cops were supposed to take care of Oswald, but Ruby bungled it. That’s why he had to go in and finish the job on Oswald. If he didn’t take care of Oswald, what do you think they would have done to him—put Ruby on a meat hook.²⁹⁸

The context of the “meat hook” is in reference to the fact that the Chicago Mob had recently murdered a suspected FBI informant—Chicago bookmaker William “Action” Jackson—in a brutal torture killing that was meant to serve as an example to anyone who defied them. Jackson’s body had been placed on a meat hook and gangsters around the country were well aware of the message.²⁹⁹

Whether it was the Mob or some other group, it was crystal clear to most people that somebody did not want Lee Harvey Oswald talking in a courtroom about the things that he knew. That sure as hell made a lot more sense to everyone who watched it happen, myself included, than what the Warren Commission made up! Wanna know what they said?

The Commission has found no evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy.³⁰⁰

Maybe they didn’t find any because, as I said, they weren’t looking for any! The Warren Commission also said that “Virtually all of Ruby’s Chicago friends stated he had no close connection with organized crime.”³⁰¹ And as historian John Simkin pointed out, “This information came from friends of Ruby, including Dave Yaras, a Mafia hitman.”³⁰²

When Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy got a look at Ruby’s phone records, he said it reminded him of his witness list of mobsters:

The list was almost a duplicate of the people I called before the Senate Rackets Committee.³⁰³

So come off it! Ruby was up to his eyeballs with the mob and everyone knew it! What a joke. The whole scenario was obvious witness-silencing, and anyone with a functioning brain at the time concluded that.

The U.S. Congress disagreed with the Warren Commission, by the way, at least on that point. This is right from their final report:

. . . Ruby’s shooting of Oswald was not a spontaneous act, in that it involved at least some premeditation. Similarly, the committee believed it was less likely that Ruby entered the police basement without assistance, even though the assistance may have been provided with no knowledge of Ruby’s intentions. . . . The committee was troubled by the apparently unlocked doors along the stairway route and the removal of security guards from the area of the garage nearest the stairway shortly before the shooting . . . There is also evidence that the Dallas Police Department withheld relevant information from the Warren Commission concerning Ruby’s entry to the scene of the Oswald transfer.³⁰⁴

And Jack Ruby said it himself:

I was framed to kill Oswald!³⁰⁵

²⁹¹ Belzer & Wayne, Hit List, 27.

²⁹² Dorothy Kilgallen, 29 November 1963, New York Journal American.

²⁹³ Title 18, United States Code, 1116, “Murder or manslaughter of foreign officials, official guests, or internationally protected persons”: law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1116

²⁹⁴ Executive Order 12333: United States Intelligence Activities: fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/eo-12333-2008.pdf

²⁹⁵ Jesse Ventura & Dick Russell, 63 Documents the Government Doesn’t Want You to Read (Skyhorse Publishing: 2011), 16.

²⁹⁶ John F. Kennedy Tapes, “Memoirs Dictation (w/ His Children) & Diem,” November 4, 1963: youtube.com/watch?v=xEJdtodFcDQ

²⁹⁷ Jack Anderson & Les Whitten, “Behind John F. Kennedy’s Murder,” September 7, 1976, The Washington Post: jfk.hood.edu/Collection/Weisberg%20Subject%20Index%20 Files/R%20Disk/Roselli%20John/Item%2022.pdf

²⁹⁸ Charles Brandt, “I Heard You Paint Houses”: Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran and the Inside Story of the Mafia, the Teamsters, and the Last Ride of Jimmy Hoffa (Steerforth Press: 2005).

²⁹⁹ Sam Giancana & Chuck Giancana, Double Cross: The Explosive Inside Story of the Mobster Who Controlled America (Skyhorse Publishing: 2010).

³⁰⁰ President Gerald R. Ford, President John F. Kennedy: Assassination Report of the Warren Commission (Flatsigned Press: 2005), 17.

³⁰¹ Ibid, 589.

³⁰² John Simkin, “Jack Ruby: Biography,” Spartacus Educational, retrieved 3 May 2013: spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKruby.htm

³⁰³ Talbot, Brothers, 21.

³⁰⁴ House Select Committee on Assassinations, “HSCA Final Assassinations Report,” 157–158.

³⁰⁵ Don Freed, Jim Cookson & Jeff Cohen, “Jack Ruby: ‘I was framed to kill Oswald!,’” May 10–16, 1975, Los Angeles Free Press: jfk.hood.edu/Collection/White%20Materials/White%20 Magazines%20And%20Articles/LA%20Free%20Press%2005–10-16–75/Item%2001.pdf