Understanding the JFK Assassination Conspiracy Cover-Up

[Michael T. Griffith]

Ken O'Donnell denied the allegations that he changed his testimony under pressure from anyone. He told the Chicago Tribune in an interview that they were "an absolute, outright lie." And Dave Powers, also quoted by O'Neill, denied the story as well.

I'll be lazy here and quote Wikipedia on this:

"In their memoir of Kennedy, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, both O'Donnell and David Powers reported hearing only three shots and did not offer any speculation as to their origin.[12] According to a June 15, 1975 report in the Chicago Tribune, an unnamed "Central Intelligence Agency liaison man" told Congressmen that O'Donnell and David Powers had initially told assassination investigators that the shots that struck Kennedy came from a location other than the Texas School Book Depository, but that the two men were convinced, reportedly by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover or his main aides, to alter their accounts to the Warren Commission to avoid the possibility of revealing the CIA's plots to kill Fidel Castro which might result in an international incident.[12] During a telephone interview, O'Donnell said he testified truthfully and called the allegations "an absolute, outright lie."[12]

In his 1987 autobiography Man of the House, former House Speaker Tip O'Neill wrote that he had dinner with O'Donnell and Powers in 1968, and that both men indicated that two shots were fired from behind the fence on the grassy knoll at Dealey Plaza.[13] According to O'Neill, he pointed out to O'Donnell that he gave different information to the Warren Commission, and O'Donnell replied: "I told the FBI what I had heard, but they said it couldn't have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to. I just didn't want to stir up any more pain and trouble for the family."[13] However, Dave Powers denied such conversation and claim occurred and criticized his autobiography.[14]

Again, O'Neill's allegations were denied by both men.

See here: https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=lQhIAAAAIBAJ&sjid=TQANAAAAIBAJ&pg=1934%2C3948488&hl=en

This is another example of how Michael Griffith uncritically accepts information that supports his pre-determined conspiracy view. And it doesn't matter whether it contradicts other claims he believes. Remember again he believes in the acoustics evidence that concluded three shots were fired from the TSBD and another shot came from behind the fence. But he quotes allegations that O'Donnell said the shots came from in front of the limo. That is, of course, completely at odds with the acoustics analysis. But he doesn't care.

Uh-huh, to believe Powers, you'd have to believe that O'Neill must have inexplicably fabricated the conversation.

I don't buy Powers' denial. I can't imagine why someone like Tip O'Neill, a close friend of the Kennedys and a sober and serious elected official who was not a WC skeptic at the time, would have lied about this. 

Did it ever occur to you that Powers didn't realize how much publicity O'Neill's account would generate and didn't want to spark controversy by acknowledging that he had in fact confirmed O'Neill's account at the dinner and later when O'Neill checked with him?

So do you think O'Neill also lied about contacting Powers to confirm his account before deciding to include the account in his memoir? Why would he have done such a thing?

I find it much more plausible to believe that Powers gave a false denial because he was surprised by the attention sparked by O'Neill's account and because he did not want to cause further controversy by acknowledging that O'Neill's account was correct.

[Michael T. Griffith]

I can tell you have no idea how badly you've embarrassed yourself here.

I pointed out that Kenny O'Donnell said that FBI agents pressured him into changing his account of where he heard shots coming from. And you replied by ignoring O'Donnell's account and posed a question that assumed the whole issue was hypothetical, as if O'Donnell never said that FBI agents pressured him into changing this story.

It's as if I pointed that Ronald Reagan cut taxes and you answered by saying, "Why would he have cut taxes?" as if he did not cut taxes.

The valid question to ask is, Why did some FBI agents pressure witnesses into changing their stories, and why did they misrepresent what some witnesses told them? We know this happened. It's been documented in spades. The question is, why did it happen?

Well, it's not complicated: There was a high-level cover-up underway. Some federal agents were ordered to suppress unwelcome testimony and evidence. Some agents did not even need to be told to do this because they didn't want to be the agents who forwarded reports that contained information that contradicted the government's version of the shooting. Some agents may have actually been totally convinced that the government's version was correct and believed that therefore witnesses whose accounts contradicted that version must have been mistaken, must have "imagined" that they heard shots from the knoll, must have "imagined" that they heard more than three shots (or must have heard echoes of the three shots), etc., etc.

We see similarly serious and varied actions of cover-up and reasons for those actions in the Iran-Contra Scandal of the 1980s. Many of the personnel who aided in the attempted massive cover-up did not realize they were aiding a massive cover-up. Some of the personnel suppressed or destroyed evidence because they were ordered to do so. And some personnel, the higher-level ones, knew exactly what they were doing and why they were doing it. Moreover, the cover-up came very close to succeeding. If just a few more key documents had been shredded, the Iran-Contra conspiracy may not have been exposed for years or even decades.

Sometimes I'm almost tempted to ask if you live on a different planet or in some alternative reality where federal agents and police officers never plant evidence, never alter photos or films, never misrepresent witness interviews, never suppress evidence, never destroy evidence, never try to pressure witnesses into changing their stories, etc., etc. That's a fantasy world, not the world that we inhabit.

Do you have any idea how many times FBI agents have been caught altering evidence, suppressing evidence, giving false statements, etc., etc.?

Here's what a Google AI response says on the subject:

Documented instances of FBI personnel planting or altering evidence or official records include the following cases:

Kevin Clinesmith (2020): An FBI lawyer pleaded guilty to altering an email submitted for a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) application during the "Crossfire Hurricane" investigation. The Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General Special Report found he had changed the wording of an email from another agency to incorrectly state that an individual was not a "source" for another government agency.

Matthew Lowry (2015): An FBI agent in Washington, D.C., was charged with obstructing justice and falsifying records after he allegedly stole heroin from evidence, ingested it, and replaced the missing volume with a cutting agent before returning the evidence bags to the vault.

The FBI Crime Lab Scandal (1990s): Following reports by whistleblower Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, an extensive Department of Justice Inspector General investigation revealed systemic misconduct inside the elite FBI Crime Lab. The findings highlighted cases of scientists and agents altering reports, selectively presenting evidence, and providing scientifically invalid, pro-prosecution testimony in major criminal trials.

Frederic Whitehurst's reports to agency officials ultimately forced the bureau to overhaul its lab practices and launch widespread reviews of historical forensic testimony.

Links:

https://whistleblowersblog.org/government-whistleblowers/intelligence-community-whistleblowers/dr-whitehurst-and-the-fbi-lab-scandal/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-32380051

Shall we talk about the conduct of some FBI agents and the FBI lab in the JFK case? Let's see: destruction of evidence, contradictory lab reports, producing witness interview reports that misrepresented what the witnesses said, etc. etc. I just have to wonder what you have read on the JFK case to not know these things. 

Ditto for some police departments, especially the Dallas and Los Angeles police departments. Do you have any idea how many times the Dallas police and the LA police have been caught planting evidence, suppressing evidence, giving false statements, etc.?

Heard of the Ramparts Scandal involving the LA police where some officers and detectives were found to have planted evidence and given false statements? The city of LA had to pay a massive settlement to settle all the lawsuits that came when these cases were exposed.

Some links for your education:

https://journals.library.wustl.edu/lawreview/article/4627/galley/21460/view/

https://peabodyawards.com/award-profile/fake-drugs-real-lives/

https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2006/mar/15/dallas-fake-drug-cases-settle-for-millions-jury-awards-damages/

https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1208&context=fac_pm

"Dallas Police Officer Accused of Planting Evidence Turns Himself In"

"Crooked Cop Caught Red Handed Planting Evidence"

https://www.congress.gov/117/bills/hr129/BILLS-117hr129ih.htm
EXCERPT: In what became known nationally as the ``Sheetrock'' scandal, Dallas police officers and undercover informants were found to have set up dozens of innocent people, mostly Mexican immigrants, by planting fake drugs on them consisting of chalk-like material used in sheetrock and other        brands of wallboard. The revelations led to the dismissal of over 40 cases (although some of those arrested were already deported). In April 2005, a former Dallas narcotics detective was sentenced to five years in prison for his role in the scheme. Charges against others are pending.

https://pelleylaw.com/blog/2017/08/cops-planting-drugs-it-doesnt-just-happen-in-the-movies/

https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2004/January/04_crt_041.htm

https://markshawbooks.com/assets/docs/New-Evidence-Proving-Warren-Commission-Corruption_Oct-26-2023-1.pdf

FBI Crime Lab scandal and Other Cases of Evidence Tampering/fabrication:

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/k/kelly-evidence.html?scp=8&sq=Ultraviolet&st=Search

https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/9704a/index.htm (even this quasi-whitewash of the crime lab scandal by the DOJ IG contains a great deal of damning evidence of misconduct and incompetence by FBI crime lab experts)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1998/08/06/minimal-punishment-meted-in-fbi-lab-flap/074b8ecc-8190-4983-a112-86504ff21be4/

https://makejusticeblind.com/a-roundup-of-the-key-facts-of-the-tampering/ (discusses a case where photos were altered by the FBI to help convict someone--gee, sound familiar?)

https://www.forensicscolleges.com/blog/resources/real-cases-of-forensic-fraud-flawed-evidence

Secret Service Misconduct in JFK Case and Other Cases:

We now know that HSCA staff counsel Belford Lawson, who conducted the Committee’s investigation of the Secret Service, suspected that a Secret Service agent planted CE 399 at Parkland Hospital. In a memo on the interview with Nathan Pool, who had seen a bullet on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital, Lawson noted that a Secret Service agent was close enough to the area where the bullet was found to have planted the bullet, and that following up on Pool’s testimony could have led to identifying the agent:

A Secret Service agent was for a significant period of time close enough to the elevator to plant a bullet; may lead to an identification of that agent; and will reveal the superficiality of the Warren Commission’s approach. (“Untaped Interview of January 10, 1977, with Nathan Pool,” HSCA memorandum from Belford Lawson to Robert Tanenbaum, January 12, 1977, record number 180-10089-10189, available at
https://ia801206.us.archive.org/31/items/nsia-PoolNathan/nsia-PoolNathan/Pool%20Nathan%2001.pdf)

Dr. Donald Wilkes, "The Secret Service and the JFK Assassination"
https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1174&context=fac_pm

https://www.amazon.com/Survivors-Guilt-Service-Failure-President/dp/1937584607

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/slideshows/prostitutes-grenades-and-drunk-driving-20-years-of-secret-service-scandals

https://time.com/3449641/secret-service-scandal/

A good introduction to the subject of the dubious evidence cited against Oswald is Donald Wilkes' article "Lee Harvey Oswald, the Patsy: An Objective Review of the Evidence Concludes That Oswald Was Framed," published by the University of Georgia in 2013 on the University of Georgia Digital Commons: Popular Media website. At the time, Wilkes was an emeritus professor of law at the University of Georgia. Here's a link to his article:

https://digitalcommons.law.uga.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?httpsredir=1&article=1184&context=fac_pm

The case of Randall Adams. The award-winning 1988 Errol Morris documentary The Thin Blue Line documents the now-infamous case of Randall Adams, who was framed and railroaded by the DPD and the Dallas District Attorney's (DA's) office in 1976 on the false charge of killing a police officer named Robert Wood.

The film documents that the DPD used false witnesses, suppressed exculpatory evidence, discarded the most likely suspect (who later confessed), and refused to let Adams talk to a lawyer for two weeks. Gee, sound familiar? The DA was Henry Wade. The DPD officer who engineered the frame-up was Gus Rose. Humm, do those names sound familiar?

The Texas Criminal Court of Appeals overturned Adams' conviction in 1989 on the grounds of prosecutorial malfeasance (misconduct) and inconsistencies in the evidence. It had become clear that Adams had nothing whatsoever to do with Officer Wood's murder.

Yet, even after the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals voided Adams' conviction, DA Wade vowed to retry Adams, saying there was no room in his book "for a cop-killer getting off with anything else than the death penalty"! Mind you, this was after the state's criminal appeals court had found the DA's office guilty of misconduct! This says volumes about Wade's ethics and integrity.

Because of public pressure created by the release of The Thin Blue Line and pressure from state government officials, the Dallas DA's office eventually decided against retrying Adams.

Here's the transcript of The Thin Blue Line:

https://www.errolmorris.com/film/tbl_transcript.html

Here are links with more information on the DPD's sleazy record, running clear into the 2020s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dallas_Police_Department#:~:text=in%20July%202008.-,Fake%20drug%20scandal,were%20actually%20not%20illegal%20substances.

https://www.wfaa.com/article/news/local/fourth-former-dallas-officer-in-fake-drug-scandal-gets-one-year-probation/287-338790876

https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Dallas-police-hammered-for-fake-drug-scandal-1486478.php

https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/6-dallas-police-officers-on-leave-linked-to-illegal-search/2748127/

Here are links with information on cases of other police departments planting and fabricating evidence:

https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6013&context=law_lawreview

https://www.themarshallproject.org/records/4692-cops-planting-evidence

https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?params=/context/faculty_scholarship/article/1903/&path_info=S_Fisher_Just_the_Facts.pdf

https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/law/police-corruption-revealed-los-angeless-rampart-division
Discusses the LAPD's Rampart scandal, where the LAPD was caught planting and fabricating evidence in the 1990s. The city of LA eventually was forced to pay millions to settle the civil lawsuit brought by some of the victims.

https://jmarshlaw.com/chicago-police-planted-evidence/
Discusses three cases where the Chicago Police Department was caught planting evidence from the 1980s to the mid-2000s.

https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/249850.pdf

Just so no one gets the wrong impression, I am not saying that federal agents or local police officers frequently fabricate, alter, or suppress evidence. These are not things that happen all the time or very frequently, but they have happened, and they will likely continue to happen on an occasional basis.

As some here know, I am very pro-law enforcement. I strongly oppose the leftist push to defund local police forces. Also, in my many years in the intelligence community, I worked with a number of FBI agents and found the vast majority of them to be honorable and trustworthy.

I am confident that most of the federal agents and military officers who altered evidence, suppressed evidence, misrepresented witness accounts, etc., in JFK case were ordered to do so and were led to believe they were acting in the interest of national security. 

Harold Rydberg, the person who drew the diagrams of JFK's wounds that were published in the Warren Commission's (WC's) report, was the director of the Medical Illustration School at Bethesda Naval Hospital at the time. He knew Dr. James Humes and Dr. J. Thornton Boswell, two of the autopsy doctors, quite well. In fact, Humes and Boswell attended Rydberg's wedding.

When interviewed in 2003 by William Matson Law, Rydberg said he believed that the autopsy doctors were ordered to misrepresent JFK's wounds and to suppress evidence of any frontal shots to JFK. (William Matson Law, In The Eye Of History; Disclosures in the JFK Assassination Medical Evidence, 2004, pp. 152-153, 420-428).

I find it interesting that Rydberg held the same view of Humes that I formed a few years ago: that Humes tried to leave clues to indicate there was more information about JFK's wounds than was described in the autopsy report.

Rydberg also said the following:

-- That the "stare of death" autopsy photo does not show the damage that was visible on JFK's face during the autopsy.

-- That there are many autopsy photos missing from the official collection.

-- That he doubted that the autopsy photos in evidence are the authentic autopsy photos.

-- That he and other hospital personnel involved with the autopsy or JFK medical evidence in any way were placed under strict gag orders. 

[John Corbett]

Rydberg also said the following:

-- That the "stare of death" autopsy photo does not show the damage that was visible on JFK's face during the autopsy.

-- That there are many autopsy photos missing from the official collection.

-- That he doubted that the autopsy photos in evidence are the authentic autopsy photos.

-- That he and other hospital personnel involved with the autopsy or JFK medical evidence in any way were placed under strict gag orders.

It's nice that Ryberg has skill as an artist. If he believes some of the things you attribute to him, he is a real kook.