11/22/11: 48 YEARS AGO TODAY (The Kennedy Detail failed)- various news articles

Modern Dallas coming to grips with Kennedy assassination
A museum plans a 50th anniversary event in 2013 and a restoration of Dealey Plaza, part of an effort to shed for good any lingering collective guilt in the city.


By Molly Hennessy-Fiske, Los Angeles Times
November 22, 2011
Reporting from Dallas

On Tuesday, a few of the faithful will make a pilgrimage to Dealey Plaza to mark the moment at 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 22, 1963, when the Kennedy motorcade came gliding down Elm Street and shots rang out.

There will be no official ceremony. For most of the last 48 years, the city has let the anniversary slide past quietly, drawing no more attention to it than an aspiring actor would to a brutal facial scar.

That's all about to change.

Dallas officials and the Sixth Floor Museum — located in the former Texas School Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald fired upon President Kennedy — have announced plans for a large 50th anniversary event in 2013, and are raising $2.2 million in public and private money to restore Dealey Plaza.

Although some conspiracy theorists fear they will be excluded, and traditionalists worry about change, many locals praise the effort, saying it's time they shed their collective guilt as "the city that killed Kennedy."

"Dallas is still scarred and wounded," said Nicola Longford, executive director of the Sixth Floor Museum, which last year drew 330,000 visitors from 133 countries. "For Dallas, this is an opportunity to look back and not ignore it, to move through it and be inspired."

In the past, city officials said they were honoring requests by the Kennedy family not to observe the anniversary in Dallas.

Those organizing the 50th anniversary event — many of whom, like Longford, are not from Dallas or were born after 1963 — say they are not capitalizing on memories of Camelot. They want to show the world how far "Big D," the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country, has come from its days as a conservative outpost of big-haired socialites, oil tycoons and cowboys.

"People arrive and expect to see people walking down the street in cowboy hats," said Phillip Jones, head of the Dallas Convention and Visitors Bureau. "Instead, they find a city with the sixth-largest gay and lesbian population in the country, where 40% of the population is Hispanic and more than 20% is African American."

Many residents walking the city's streets this weekend said Dallas should embrace the anniversary. They included suburbanites, painters in the downtown arts district and hipsters in the Deep Ellum neighborhood.

"You can't get away from it — it's one of the things people associate with the city," said Robert Escobar, 38, who lives in suburban Irving and was downtown with his family perusing holiday displays at the flagship Neiman Marcus store.

Escobar, a self-described "history nerd," said he hoped the attention on the anniversary helped dispel the stigma that haunted Dallas, reinforced over time by the "Dallas" of J.R. Ewing.

"Dallas is really working to find its identity. I feel it grasping sometimes," said Jeff Sprick, 33, of suburban Flower Mound as he shared a beer outside a vintage Dallas bar called Lee Harvey's, which was also hosting the Assassination City Roller Derby after-party.

Pauline Medrano, who represents the Dealey Plaza area on the City Council, has watched the Dallas area diversify into what she calls a "blue county" that has an African American police chief, a Democratic mayor and the state's only female sheriff, who also happens to be a lesbian.

Medrano was standing with her class from Sam Houston Elementary School when Kennedy's motorcade drove by. Her older brother watched the motorcade on Main Street, and his photo hangs in the Sixth Floor Museum.

Medrano recalls the reputation Dallas had after the killing.

"Any time that we traveled anywhere and said we were from Dallas, you just saw the 'Hmmm!' " she said.

Darwin Payne, then a reporter with the Dallas Times Herald, had run to Dealey Plaza to interview a teary Abraham Zapruder, who filmed his iconic footage of the assassination while standing at one of the pergolas, a spot that came to be known as Zapruder's Perch. Payne said many Dallasites felt guilty because they had ignored or condoned other conflicts leading up to the assassination, including an attack by conservative activists on U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson.
We were defensive at first. Then the realization came — we let the extreme right wing go on too long. We let them do too much," said Payne, author of "Big D: Triumphs and Troubles of an American Supercity in the 20th Century."

But in time, Payne said, "the attitude became, 'We have to be tolerant of other viewpoints and not allow extremists to run rampant.' "

Lindalyn Adams is among those whose attitudes toward the assassination evolved through the years. Adams, 81, recalls how her physician husband reported seeing a comatose Oswald being wheeled into an elevator at Parkland Hospital after he had been shot by Jack Ruby. Adams long had trouble visiting the book depository, even after she was chosen to lead the Dallas Historical Commission.

"I was down in the area all the time and had never wanted to even look in the direction of that notorious building," she said. "But I noticed how many people were visiting, at all hours."

Adams went on to champion the founding of the Sixth Floor Museum in 1989, in part because of the success of Ford's Theatre in Washington. Four years later, a ceremony was held on Nov. 22 to dedicate Dealey Plaza as a national historic landmark.

Tom Knock, an associate professor of history at Southern Methodist University, called the museum "a kind of penance" that, along with Oliver Stone's 1991 film "JFK," has "convinced a lot people that Dallas was not responsible" for the assassination, or at least, "did a lot to dim that memory."

Work at Dealy Plaza is scheduled to start no later than October 2012, and planners hope to finish the summer before the anniversary. Improvements include fixing up the pergolas, making the grassy knoll accessible to handicapped people and adding historical signs.

Willis Winters, assistant director of planning, design and construction for the Dallas Park and Recreation Department, said the goal was to better serve those who already frequented the plaza.

"I don't want to interpret for anyone the events, whether there was a conspiracy or not," he said. "What I do want to achieve is that Dealey Plaza is in pristine condition so that when millions of people come there, they're going to see a well-restored site — not peeling paint, broken light fixtures and broken-up sidewalks."

Debra Conway, president of JFK Lancer, a group that has sponsored an annual conference on the assassination in Dallas for 16 years, said some members feared being excluded from official 50th anniversary events, but she believed it could be a watershed moment uniting Kennedy historians and the city.

"The city has realized the museum can work and fill the gap in the fence between the old Dallas and what Dallas wants to be," she said.

Among those already planning to attend the 50th anniversary is Beverly Oliver Massegee, 65, who on Sunday gathered with about 50 other members of Conway's group for a remembrance at Dealey Plaza. Some grew teary. Some could not look at the knoll. At 12:30 p.m., they paused for a moment of silence. A train rattled nearby and a breeze barely stirred the live oaks. Then Massegee, a well-known witness to the assassination, sang "Amazing Grace."

In 1963, Massegee was a 17-year-old singer at the downtown Colony Club, an acquaintance of competing club owner Jack Ruby, when, she says, she strolled up Commerce Street to watch the motorcade pass. She wore a scarf over her blond bouffant, which earned her the nickname "babushka lady" and a cameo in "JFK." She has returned to Dealey Plaza almost every year since.

She gazed out at the plaza, where tourists from Japan and Germany snapped photos. "To me, this is hallowed ground," she said.

· Wayne Dorothy was reading his Sunday Abilene Reporter-News when he almost fell out of his chair, he said.
On Page 8A, in black and white, was a photo of part of a letter Gene Boone wrote to Dallas County Sheriff Bill Decker on Nov. 22, 1963.
Boone was a Dallas sheriff's deputy when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. On the day of the shooting, Boone discovered a rifle later linked to Lee Harvey Oswald on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. As part of his duties, Boone said, he was required to notify the sheriff of anything peculiar that occurred during his shift.
So he wrote his "Decker letter" saying he had been involved in the search of the building, and had found what "appeared to be a 7.65 Mauser with a telescope sight on the rifle."
That's what nearly unseated Dorothy.
"That was the first document I've ever seen — from someone who was there — that indicated the rifle they found was a Mauser, not a Mannicher-Carcano," Dorothy said.
The exact make and model of the rifle is one of the controversies that continue to swirl around Kennedy's assassination 48 years after the fact.
Dorothy, who is the director of bands at Hardin-Simmons University, said he became interested in the various theories surrounding Kennedy's death while teaching in Tennessee in 1984.
While the band director at Tullahoma High School, Dorothy said he attended a continuing education course about the assassination taught by the high school's head football coach.
"He had always enjoyed reading about the assassination, and ever since taking his course, I've been fascinated," Dorothy said.
For almost 30 years, Dorothy and his father, who also is an armchair assassination enthusiast, have amassed a large library of films, videos and books on the topic.
The more than 40 books Dorothy currently owns is just a tiny portion of the corpus of material that exists pertaining to just what happened in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22, 1963.
"There are theories out there that run the gamut from absolute crackpot to more sober ideas," Dorothy said. "You have some real nuts, and you have serious scientists weighing in on it."
"I mean, on the one hand you have some folks out there claiming that the Zapruder film shows the driver of Kennedy's limo turning around and shooting the president. That's absolute bunk," he said.
On the other, he said, is a book "Assassination Science," written by James H. Fetzer, a professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. In that book, Fetzer uses expert testimony from a number of doctors and scientists to look at the facts of the assassination, Dorothy said.
Dorothy said he has his own questions about the case, but he doesn't think they will ever be fully resolved.
"There's enough variation in all the theories out there that I don't think we'll ever be able to prove anything beyond a shadow of a doubt. Look, we have two different official government reports (the 1964 Warren Commission report and the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations report) that basically contradict each other," he said.
The Warren Commission ultimately decided that Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman, and that gunman was Lee Harvey Oswald. The House Select Committee reported that it was likely Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy.
Boone, who initially found the rifle, said he doesn't put much stock in conspiracy theories. He said he believes the Warren Commission's finding that only one shooter was involved.
"But, because of the political climate at the time, if it ever came out that there was a conspiracy, I wouldn't be surprised," Boone said. "If there was a conspiracy, I'd say it involved getting Oswald into the right place at the right time."
Any possible conspiracy could only have involved a handful of people, Boone said, "otherwise, something would have come out already."
Dorothy said he doesn't believe Oswald was the lone assassin, and that he doubts whether he even fired a single round. The amount of metal recovered from bullet fragments raises doubts about the number of shots fired, he said. Discrepancies between official medical reports from Parkland Hospital in Dallas, and the official autopsy performed in Maryland several days later need to be explained, he said.
But as for the rifle, identified initially as a German Mauser then later as an Italian infantry rifle?
"Well, I was mistaken," Boone said. He said he used the term "Mauser" to describe the weapon — which he only saw from two to three feet away — as a bolt-action rifle, not the particular brand.
Dorothy, however, is skeptical.
"The very first information out of Dallas said the rifle was a Mauser. Then it all changed, and it was said to be a Mannlicher-Carcano. How did three police officers all misidentify it?" he said.
"You know, the more I read about the assassination, the more questions I tend to have," he said.
Sarasota doctor was at hospital when JFK died
By JAY BRADY
Correspondent
Published: Monday, November 21, 2011 at 6:08 p.m.
Last Modified: Monday, November 21, 2011 at 6:08 p.m.
"Oh, they're bringing them in. They've all been shot!'" It was the scream of a secretary rushing into the cafeteria of Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, the beginning of a series of days that Malouf Abraham will never forget. Today, the 72-year-old is a retired allergy doctor, who spends part of his time as a Sarasota resident.
Forty-eight years ago — on Nov. 22, 1963 — Abraham was 24, the youngest of his 85 classmates at the teaching hospital for the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School.
A dying President John F. Kennedy — shot by assassin Lee Harvey Oswald only 10 minutes earlier — had just arrived in his blood-stained limousine.
Abraham, now one of a shrinking group on hand that day, would see the president's limousine before it was scrubbed by Secret Service agents. His friend at the hospital would help console a shocked Jackie Kennedy minutes before she was informed of her husband's death.
Only a week before Kennedy's shooting, the young Lebanese-American medical student from Canadian, Texas, would watch Jack Ruby, the assassin's assassin, parade around on the runway of his Dallas nightclub.
Years later, a chance meeting with JFK's mother at a mass in Palm Beach would remind Abraham of the shared grief of those who lived through November 1963.
On that Friday, Abraham was on duty at the hospital when the open-air limousine carrying Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally screeched up to the trauma center's "AMBULANCES ONLY" entrance, the end of a four-mile sprint from Dealey Plaza.
The medical student was midway through a 12-hour shift and was getting something to eat, just setting his tray on a table in the hospital cafeteria when the secretary rushed in yelling
I never sat down. I ran." Taking nearby stairs, he went down into the trauma center hallway separating rooms one and two. The area was packed with the Secret Service, FBI, police and the press.
Five minutes later, NBC interrupted its normal coverage to report that Kennedy and Connally had been shot.
Deciding it would be best to stay out of the way, Abraham moved to the adjoining ER waiting room at the opposite end of the hallway.
Somewhere nearby stood First Lady Jackie Kennedy, who had just helped 22-year-old trauma room nurse Diana Bowron lift her husband out of the limousine on to a four-wheeled stretcher.
Abraham went through the back door into the ambulance arrival area.
Before him, unattended, sat the president's bloodied 1961 Lincoln Continental four-door convertible limousine. A half hour before, Abraham's fiancé, Therese Browne, had watched the car proceed down Lemmon Avenue, the first leg of the fateful journey.
"I went immediately over to it and I did not put my hands on it, but I just stood — standing right there," Abraham said.
There were not huge amounts of blood, Abraham said.
"What I remember is flowers and blood, you know, like flowers that Jackie would have had," referring to the red roses and lavender asters given to her at Dallas' Love Field airport when the Kennedys arrived.
"I've waded through a lot of blood and guts, but this wasn't really that."
According to a classmate Abraham spoke to later, while doctors attended to the president, an aide to Jackie Kennedy asked the first lady if she would like to change her clothes. They were the now famous raspberry dress with matching pillbox hat.
"No, let them see what they've done," the first lady replied, according to William Manchester's account in his book, "The Death of a President."
Another Abraham classmate — close friend Norman Borge — encountered Jackie Kennedy as she briefly stood alone outside the trauma room.
Borge recalled in an interview with the Herald-Tribune that a priest had surprised her by trying to remove her bloody glove.
Borge, 81, a retired general practitioner from Fort Worth, found her a folding chair and a glass of water.
Later, Father Oscar Huber, pastor of Holy Trinity Church in Dallas, and Rev. James Thompson, two local Catholic priests from Abraham's church, administered last rites to the president. They were the same men who provided Abraham and his wife the couple's Pre-Cana marriage counseling.
Minutes later, it was 1 p.m. when Dr. Kemp Clark, one of Abraham's professors and the hospital's chief of neurosurgery, pronounced the president dead.
According to news accounts of the day, Kemp also was the doctor who informed Jackie Kennedy.
The next day, Abraham returned to Parkland, where he had trauma room duty.
Nearly 50 years later, Abraham says he still has a vivid memory of the spray of flowers attached to the door of the room where Kennedy died.
"We had these flowers on the door like a funeral spray — hanging on the outside door," Abraham said, pausing to collect himself. "We had the door just ajar and the only light was from the X-ray view box."
On Sunday, the engaged Abrahams — who married five weeks later — attended mass at Holy Trinity Church.
Eight days earlier the couple had been at Ruby's Carousel Club in Dallas for the first and last time.
As the couple exited the church the Sunday after Kennedy's assassination, they noticed a commotion and people chattering.
"We came out of church and here's all this buzz out in the church parking lot, people getting worried that Jack Ruby had shot Oswald in the Dallas jail," Abraham said. "We went from the church back to the hospital — Parkland."
Leaving the hospital, Abraham and his future wife went to Dealey Plaza, the site of the shooting. There was gridlock, forcing them to park blocks away and to walk.
"Everybody in the world was there," recalled Abraham, choking back tears again. "Everybody was crying, laying flowers, notes, posters. I've never seen anything like it. It was highly, highly emotional."
Fourteen years later, by a chance encounter, the Abrahams had another brush with the Kennedys at a mass at St. Edwards Catholic Church in Palm Beach.
There were three empty rows of pews in front of Abraham and the Kennedy group took some of them.
"I'm looking at the back of Rose Kennedy through this mass, and I'm just being bombarded with all these thoughts of things that I saw that she didn't have to see," Abraham said.
Then Abraham thought about the cup of communion, soon to be offered to each of those attending the mass.
"I thought we are — really in this life — we're all in this same leaky little boat," Abraham said. "We're drinking out of the same cup. Some people think they have their own cup.
"They really don't in this life, you know."
November 21, 2011
Kennedy Assassination Transformed US Secret Service
The assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963, 48 years ago, stunned the world. It was the first time since 1901- when President William McKinley was killed - that a U.S. president fell to an assassin’s bullet.
The Secret Service is responsible for protecting the president and his family. President Kennedy’s death put the service on the defensive. In conversations with several former Secret Service agents, our correspondent reports that the assassination, and later attempts on Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan, led to changes in how the President and first family are protected.
On November 22, 1963, when shots rang out in Dallas, Secret Service Agent Clint Hill was in the best position to react. His analysis of that day is simple.

“There’s no question that we failed in providing protection for President Kennedy," said Hill.

Agent Gerald Blaine was also in Texas that day, but not in Dallas. He says a lack of manpower was partly responsible. “In 1963 we had 330 agents; we had about 34 agents on the White House detail," said Blaine.

The agents were visible. Some ran alongside or stood on cars in the presidential motorcade. But Blaine says they couldn't communicate with each other.

“We didn’t have radios," he said. "We operated through hand signals. We had photographs of subjects that we had concerns about, and we would memorize those subjects. And we had to rely on each other to work together as a team."

Author Lisa McCubbin collaborated with Blaine on the book The Kennedy Detail.

She says weaknesses exposed by the Kennedy assassination forced a change in how the Secret Service was funded.

“So it made them realize even more how important their mission was, and they were able then to convince Congress to get more money," said McCubbin. "They had been asking for more money for years and years, to get more people. They knew they couldn't protect the president with what they had."

Clint Hill stayed with the Secret Service after the assassination.

He rose to assistant director, and witnessed changes in the agency: no more travel in open automobiles and more agents, more money, and better communication.

But Hill suffered from guilt after the assassination. He retired in 1975.

Several months later, not once but twice, assailants tried to kill President Gerald Ford during visits he made to California.

And in 1981, another disaster was narrowly averted.

President Ronald Reagan, emerging from a Washington hotel, was shot by John Hinckley Jr. Reagan was rushed to a nearby hospital for life-saving surgery.

Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy was shot in the abdomen. Press Secretary James Brady was struck in the head and seriously disabled..

But no one died in the attack.

McCarthy says the incident led to even more changes. “After that, metal detectors were used to screen anyone who gets near the president," said McCarthy. "Shortly thereafter, and the legacy is that since that time, there has not been an attack on any of our presidents by the historic assassin which is the lone gunman."

Though the assassination of President Kennedy was a transforming event for the Secret Service, recent incidents are a reminder that the president is still a target.

At 21-year-old Idaho man is under arrest for allegedly firing several shots at the White House on November 11.
November 21, 2011
Secret Service Agents Open Up About Kennedy Assassination
President John F. Kennedy’s trip to Dallas on November 22, 1963 was intended to boost support in Texas for his 1964 re-election campaign. An assassin’s bullet ended his life, however, remaining an event still shrouded in controversy. Since that time, Secret Service agents assigned to protect President Kennedy have spoken only rarely about that day. But in a recent book, called The Kennedy Detail, and in an interview with VOA, former agent Clint Hill explains how the day unfolded, and how it changed his life.

Former Secret Service agent Clint Hill said providing security for President John F. Kennedy was a challenge.

“With President Kennedy it was mix and mingle. He didn’t like anybody to be, come between he and the people,” said Hill.
November 22, 1963 began like most presidential visits... even though it was in a part of the country - Texas - that was not enthusiastic about the president.

“This was an extremely conservative area. Kennedy was not labeled as a conservative by any stretch of the imagination, so it was considered that there could be some problems that could develop. But we had no threats, no information that would lead us to believe that we would have a major problem,” said Hill.

As the president's motorcade made its way through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Hill was on a vehicle behind the presidential limousine.

“I heard an explosive noise to my right rear, the rear of the motorcade," said Hill. "I saw the president grab at his throat and move to his left and I knew something was wrong, so I jumped and ran toward the presidential car with the idea of getting up on top.

"By the time I just about got to the car, the third shot had been fired, hit the President in the head, caused a massive wound, which caused blood, brains and other material to be exploded out on to the car, onto me, onto Mrs. Kennedy. She was trying to retrieve some material that had come off from the president’s head and went to the right rear. I grabbed her and did the best I could to get her back in the seat.

"When I did that, the president fell to his left into her lap. I got up on top and lay on top behind both of them, and I turned and gave a thumbs down to the follow up car," said Hill.

That event lasted less than a minute, but it scarred Hill for life.

“I feel guilt, I feel responsibility. I was the only agent who was in a position to do anything that day,” said Hill.

The assassination shook the nation, and the Secret Service.

Clint Hill protected three more presidents, but in 1975, overcome by depression, he retired.

In 2009, author Lisa McCubbin requested an interview with Hill for a possible book.

“He did one interview in 1975 with 60 Minutes that’s a classic interview in which he had basically a nervous breakdown on television. Then he went into seclusion," said McCubbin.

Encouraged by friend, former agent and now author Gerald Blaine, Hill and other agents in Dallas on that day decided to talk, in part, to document how the assassination affected them.

Hill said the release last year of The Kennedy Detail has been therapeutic.

“...especially being able to go out and talk to people about the book and answer it, a lot of the questions that they have because there are still a lot of questions out there,” said Hill.

One question often asked is whether or not there was more than one assassin. Hill supports the findings of the Warren Commission, which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman.

New Book Marks 48th Anniversary of U.S. Kennedy Assassination
Posted Tuesday, November 22nd, 2011 at 1:25 am
As U.S. citizens reflect on the 48th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, a former member of the agency responsible for guarding the U.S. president tells VOA that the shooting exposed weaknesses in the security detail.
Former U.S. Secret Service agent Gerald Blaine says a lack of manpower contributed to Mr. Kennedy's assassination during a presidential motorcade on November 22, 1963. He said the 34 agents accompanying the president in Dallas, Texas, that day communicated with hand signals rather than radios, as the president traveled with his wife and the state governor in an open-air convertible.
The sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, from where suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald is believed to have made the fatal shots, has been turned into a museum.
Blaine said the assassination of the young president, which shocked the world, led to security improvements such as better funding for the Secret Service and closed vehicles for motorcades.
He said security tightened further after an unsuccessful attempts on the lives of Presidents Gerald Ford in 1975, and Ronald Reagan and 1981. Now, anyone who will be near the president must be screened by metal detector. Blaine has written a book about the Kennedy assassination called The Kennedy Detail.
But despite all the security, a U.S. president is still under threat of attack. On November 11 of this year, shots were fired at the White House. Authorities have detained a 21-year-old man in connection with the shooting. He appeared in court for the first time Monday.
New Book Indicts CIA in Kennedy Assassination
22 Nov, 2011 03:19 CET
Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK
New York Times number one bestselling author and JFK historian Mark Lane tried the only U.S. court case in which jurors concluded that the CIA plotted the murder of President Kennedy, but there were always missing pieces: How did the CIA control Dallas police and Secret Service agents on the ground in Dealey Plaza? How did federal authorities prevent the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations from discovering the truth about the complicity of the CIA?
Now, Lane tells all in his explosive new book – Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK – with exclusive new interviews, sworn statements and meticulous new research (including interviews with Oliver Stone, Dallas Police deputy sheriffs, Robert K. Tanenbaum, and Secret Service agent Abraham Bolden) Lane finds out first hand exactly what went on the day JFK was assassinated. Lane includes testimony given to the Warren Commission by a police officer who confronted a man who he thought was the assassin. The officer testified that he drew his gun and pointed it at the suspect who showed Secret Service ID. Yet, the Secret Service later reported that there were no Secret Service agents on foot in Dealey Plaza.
Last Word proves that the CIA, operating through a secret small group, prepared and distributed all credentials for Secret Service agents in Dallas for the two days that Kennedy was going to be there including providing the assassins with those credentials.
The nation’s most respected and ethical former high ranking prosecutor, Robert K. Tanenbaum (Chief of Homicide for the New York District Attorney’s Office under the legendary Frank Hogan), wrote : “Lane’s Last Word reveals his courageous challenge to the Warren Commission report and his scathing critique of unconscionable CIA outrages. The penetrating accuracy of his reportage may be measured by the personal attacks he endured that were orchestrated by upper-echelon rogue CIA operatives…. Whether one agrees with Mark Lane’s conclusions or not, everyone should read Last Word. His courageous efforts, his scholarly research and remarkable advocacy are a tribute to his enormous capacity to seek the truth. We are all better people because of that he has done.” – Robert K. Tanenbaum, Deputy Chief Counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations to investigate the John F. Kennedy assassination.
Skyhorse Publishing, November, 2011. Available on Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and wherever fine books are sold.

JFK theories won't die
By CARTER VANDERHOOF / Reformer Staff
Posted: 11/22/2011 03:00:00 AM EST
Updated: 11/22/2011 07:10:31 AM EST

Tuesday November 22, 2011
BRATTLEBORO -- 48 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, new evidence and theories are still being brought to light.
Bill Holiday, a social studies teacher at Brattleboro Union High School, will be giving a presentation at the Brooks Memorial Library today at 7 p.m. discussing eyewitness testimony and conspiracy theories surrounding the assassination of JFK.
The presentation is being held on the anniversary of the assassination that occurred Nov. 22, 1963, as JFK rode in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas.
Jack Houk, a student at BUHS, said he got a chance to make his own theory about one of the most controversial events in history. Houk traveled last week to Dallas with Holiday and about six other high school students to meet eyewitnesses and researchers, and study the Kennedy assassination.
Houk said he got to learn some new information about the assassination, but was still just scratching the surface.
"There's a lot more I need to know," he said.
Houk said making the trip to Dallas was a great opportunity to learn more. He said it helped put things into perspective when he got to see the actual location of the assassination.
He believes there is a 95-percent certainty that there was a shooter on the grassy knoll.
"I think it means there were two shooters," said Houk.
He said most history books don't even mention a second shooter.
"We keep



learning more about stuff that happened a long time ago," said Houk.
Holiday has been giving presentations on the Kennedy assassination since a video of the incident was broadcast on public television -- the Zapruder film, a video shot by private citizen Abraham Zapruder capturing the assassination as it happened. The film was aired on ABC's Good Night America in 1975 for the first time on network television.
"I don't think there is any better experience than being out in the field," said Holiday. "It gives students the opportunity to question and come up with their own conclusions."
He said the trip to Dallas exposed the students to researchers that work to find the truth.
"There are people still digging," said Holiday.
He said 48 years later, details are still unclear about how and what actually happened. Holiday said some theories involve the mob or the Secret Service.
"People want to know why," said Holiday.
He said one of the things that has gotten him interested in the assassination is details that don't make since. Holiday has spoken with eyewitnesses and researchers over the years and has found particular details that may have led to Kennedy's assassination.
He said there were no officers on the presidential limousine that day, and the president's car was the first in the motorcade, which Holiday said doesn't usually happen.
"The way they did things in Dallas was different," he said.
There have been about two dozen incidents involving people who were in a place to offer testimony about the assassination or who may have shed some light on the case, but died due to suspicious circumstances. He said there was one reporter about to testify but died as a result of a karate chop to the neck. Another man, Lee Bowers, had given testimony that he saw three cars enter a forbidden area just before the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He also stated that he saw two strangers on the grassy knoll. Bowers was killed shortly after in 1966 as a result of a motor vehicle crash. However, eyewitnesses report that he was run off the road by another car.
"One of the tragedies of the Kennedy assassination; there was never an autopsy," said Holiday.
Holiday said the doctor was told to ignore procedures in a normal autopsy.
While researchers have been pondering what really happened for almost 50 years, questions about the assassination may never be fully answered, said Holiday.