It’s no surprise that soon after JFK’s assassination, his successor, President Lyndon B. Jphnson, used the faked “Gulf of Tonkin Incident,” to carpet bomb Vietnam, and we were off and running into the valley of death, which left 58,000 Americans dead and 2 million dead Vietnamese.

This is old news, but then so am I: at 67, old enough to remember it day by day, and having to dodge the draft to keep from having to fight in that needless war. Old enough to remember I was teaching school in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, the day John F. Kennedy was shot.

There was early release from school that Tuesday, because everyone was freaked, including the young English teacher, Mr. Mazza, who rode home on the bus with his students and could see the panic that flashed in their eyes like those multiple gunshots from some six to eight different shooters from three different directions, that’s right, not one lone gunman, with a bolt-action World War II Italian Army rifle. Let’s form a thumbnail outline of some history.

The Truth Is in the Book and in the Wounds

Let’s start with a landmark book, The Great Zapruder Film Hoax, edited my McKnight Professor James Fetzer of the University of Minnesota at Duluth. For the unanointed, the Zapruder film is that 27 seconds of celluloid shot by bystander Abraham Zapruder, a Dallas dress manufacturer, as he stood on a pedestal at the Grassy Knoll as Kennedy rolled by and was shot. It is the only film record we have of the shooting. It was subsequently manipulated frame by frame by the CIA for purposes of obfuscation. There are at least four versions of the film on DVD and VHS floating around.

On page xiii of the Prologue of Fetzer’s The Great Zapruder Film Hoax, we learn that the National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC), run by the CIA ,was in possession of an original copy of the film. This may have been #0184, the one sold to Texas oilman, sometimes CIA man, H. L. Hunt, who might have had it taken to Rochester as a negative and turned into a positive and sent it to NPIC. In any case, CIA personnel saw the original on the very night of the assassination.

One CIA person in particular . . ."Homer McMahon, who was in charge of the color photo section for the NPIC at the time, substantiated that he was brought a home movie of the assassination by Secret Service Agent William Smith. McMahon had been instructed to review the film and prepare a briefing board displaying the impacts of bullets on bodies for an unspecified government official. McMahon reported that, after 10 or more viewings of the film, it was his opinion that President Kennedy was shot six to eight times from at least three directions, which, of course, is even more strikingly at variance with what can be observed on the film today.”

Fetzer also reports that Admiral George Burkley, the president’s personal physician, was with the body in Dallas, and accompanied it on the flight back, and was present during the autopsy in Bethesda.

According to his death certificate, the bullet that caused President Kennedy’s back wound did not exit through his throat. And did not pierce Governor Connally’s right back and chest, and exit at the right nipple, shatter his wrist, and lodge in his thigh, then fall out later on a gurney at Parkland. According to the good doctor, the back wound appeared at about the level of JFK’s third thoracic vertebra, which is too low to have been the entry location to exit from the president’s throat at the level of his tie knot, unless Oswald was shooting from inside the trunk. Burkley reported the back wound bullet entered at about a 45 degree to 60-degree angle downward, was not found in the body, and showed no exit wound.

Burkley also noted a massive (heel-size) wound in the right rear of Kennedy’s head (not at the cowlick top of his head). The bullet from this wound exited the right side of the skull, probably killing the president.

Yet Commander Hume, the titular head of operations at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center, with the help of CIA and Secret Service men, insisted the first bullet’s path did line up with the so-called throat exit wound. On the other hand, a diagram prepared by FBI special agent James W. Silbert, who witnessed the autopsy at Bethesda, supported Burkley’s observations. His illustration can be found in Noel Twyman’s Bloody Treason, 1997, (p. 100). It shows the paradox Dr. Burkley noted: that the wound, fired from a position behind the body, proceeded at somewhere between a 45 and 60 degree angle and did not exit the body.

Silbert, with another agent, Francis X. O Neill, submitted a report of their observations at the time . . ."Medical examination of the president’s body revealed that one of the bullets had entered just below his shoulder to the right of the spinal column at an angle of 45 to 60 degrees downward, that there was no point of exit, and that the bullet was not in the body.”

This bullet had worked its way out of JFK’s back during cardiac massage at Parkland Hospital. This information is found both in Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment 1966, Appendix IV, and Robert Groden’s The Killing of the President (199, pp.78-79). The angle was determined by a physician at Parkland using his finger to probe the wound. The bullet was not in the body, nor did it exit upon firing. Also, at the level of the third vertebrae, the bullet would have run into other thoracic bones if it had gone through the body. This shoots the hell out of the “magic bullet” theory.

What is also known is that a member of the Warren Commission’s Assassinations Records Review Board, one Gerald Ford (name sound familiar?) had the description of the back wound changed from Kennedy’s “uppermost back” to the “back of his neck.” This was discovered and noted in the New York Times, July 3, 1997, at which time Ford said his change “was intended to clarify meaning, not alter history.” I’ll bet.

Also, the House Select Committee on Assassinations years later moved the entry point of the head wound up four inches from the lower rear of the head to the cowlick region of the skull. This most likely to justify how the heel-size wound, originally drawn on the back right side of the head, had been extended upwards and forwards to become a footprint-size skull wound at Bethesda Naval Hospital in 1963.

Again from Hoax, page 9: in May 1992, a private investigator named Joe West interviewed Thomas Robinson, who had prepared Kennedy’s body for the funeral. West noted an additional wound and other interesting events that Robinson described:

“A large gaping hole in back of the head . . . Patched by stretching piece of rubber over it. Think skull full of Plaster of Paris.

"Small wound in right temple, crescent shape, flapped down (3”)

"(Approx 2) small shrapnel wounds in face . . . packed with wax.

"Wound in back (5 to 6 inches) below shoulder.

"Adrenal gland and brain removed.

"Other organs removed and then put back.

"No swelling or discoloration to face.

"Dr. Berkley (family Physician) came in to ask . . ."How much longer?" He was told (Funeral Director) ‘Take your time.’ Is in favor of Examining Body . . . to settle once . . . for all. ‘Good Pathologists would know exactly’”

The Wound to the Face

The small wound to the face was from a gunshot that shattered through the windshield and entered Kennedy’s right temple. The shrapnel wounds were probably windshield glass according to Dr. David W. Mantik, who also questioned the authenticity of the x-rays. The lack of discoloration in the face indicates instant death. Note that West notes that Robinson observed the brain missing and the cavity probably stuffed with Plaster of Paris. It was later replaced with another brain. Ghoulish but true.

Additionally, Dr. Malcolm Perry, who performed a tracheostomy to save the president’s life, described the wound to the throat as an entry wound three times during a press conference held at Parkland, beginning at 3:16 PM. His remarks were broadcast over radio and television, the transcript published in the New York Times, November 23, 1963.

If the throat wound was an entry wound, if the back wound bullet did not exit the body, it follows that Connally’s wounds must have been caused by separate shots from separate places -- and obviously not by a sole assassin. It seems that it’s not the conspiracy theorists who are fantasizing but the government, which is mired in an account produced solely for cover-up.

And so at 1:30 PM on that fateful day, while I was busy telling my English students in Bensonhurst that reading could open new worlds to them, Acting Press Secretary Malcolm Kilduff announced that the president was dead. He said that it had been “a simple matter of a bullet right through the head,” as he pointed to his right temple, Fetzer, p. 16, figure 23. He attributed this finding to Admiral George G. Burkley, the president’s personal physician.

When information of JFK’s four wounds from different angles began to sink into the public and reporters’ minds, questions began to arise how one person could do all this? It was then that the simple notion of reversing trajectories of the neck and temple wounds, and altering the location of the back and head wounds, became necessary. Alas, the whitewash was born, albeit with a little help from the Warren Commission’s friends, Arlen Specter, Gerald Ford, Allan Dulles, a few doctors, et al. And speaking of doctors let me add this piece from page xiii of the Prologue from Hoax . . .

“Charles Crenshaw, M.D., was a resident at Parkland Hospital when JFK was brought into Trauma Room #1. He was present during the vain effort to revive the moribund president and was the last physician to observe the body before it was prepared for transportation to Bethesda Naval Hospital, including closing the eyes of the deceased . . .

Crenshaw also drew the massive blow-out to the back of the head as he observed it at Parkland, which bears striking similarity to a similar diagram approved by another physician who was present at the time, Robert McClelland, M.D., as well as reports by more than 40 eyewitnesses who described a similar wound at the back/right of the head. Crenshaw’s original diagrams can be found in Assassination Science (1998, pp. 414-415). The McClelland diagram may be found in Murder in Dealey Plaza (200, p. 180 . . . )” The Parkland drawings are the original heel-size shots to the lower right of the head, Hoax, p. 16, figure 23.

I could go on but space doesn’t permit. But go to Fetzer and all the great writers that know JFK’s death was a conspiracy of the CIA, hateful Hoover’s FBI and the mob with which JFK’s father Joe had dealings that got him in trouble. And so, he promised the fealty of his sons John and Bobby to then Capo de Capos, Chicago's Sam Giancana. In return, if the mob could beat the drum and get the union vote out in Illinois, which they did, and help win the election by a slender margin, they would get their “man in the White House.” Instead they got John and Bobby’s unremitting scorn and wrath, a revival of the McClellan Committee's Crusade against organized crime, which drove Giancana to the top of America’s Most Wanted list. What’s more, Bobby had New Orleans Capo Santo Trafficante extradited to Guatemala. And so, they all had a hand in getting even, plus one . . .

Behind It All, Some Elite Giving the Order

As Fletcher Prouty described on page 345 of JFK- The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate Kennedy . . .

“US-TEC had been created in 1972, under President Nixon by the business interests of the former Dartmouth Conference that had been sponsored by Rockefeller interests. For the most part US-TEC membership is drawn from the list of FORTUNE 500 companies in America, and from their counterparts in Russia. US-TEC maintains regular offices in Moscow and New York and publishes regularly a 'Forbes-style' US-TEC Journal.

“As we look back at this Trade Show, at the 'Evil Empire' days and at the existence of this most important US-TEC organization we begin to find elements of that power elite structure that I have been describing. Comparable to Allen Dulles operating with the Germans during World War II, and to the activities of T.V. Soong in China during World War II, we see examples of how these higher echelons are above warfare, both hot and cold, as they continue their own games on a more exalted level.

”An item in a US-TEC Journal of 1977 was written by David Rockefeller, Chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank. He has been one of the world's most important bankers as head of one of the world’s most important banks. His letter made reference to: ' . . . an unbroken relationship with Russian financial institutions that straddles well over 50 years.'

“Think back 50 years from that 1977 to 1927 and then recall all of the enormous ideological, military, economic and political problems that existed between the East and the West; yet Rockefeller and Chase Manhattan took pride in the fact that they had been in Moscow during that time quietly doing business in the center of the maelstrom. Note that I mentioned above the statement of the American Charge in Saigon to the effect.

“' . . . that in case of bankruptcy [of the country] which we now confront, bankers have [the] right to organize a receivership.'

“That is the international banker’s way of putting it. He expected, as only natural, that bankers would arrange the policy for what took place in Vietnam, as they have done.

”All of these things come together. The President of the United States was haranguing on TV about the 'Evil Empire.' At the same time our senior businessmen were packing their briefcases for another big meeting in Moscow.

“Rockefeller had reminded all that he and his banking interests had been doing business there since 1927, and then as a small aside, he relates how 'the seventh session of the Dartmouth Conference in Hanover in 1972 had led to the idea of forming a joint high-level Trade and Economic Council.'

“With these examples I believe we have taken a good look at the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy and the atmosphere in which such planning took place. You can easily visualize a businessman's club in downtown Washington, New York, London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, or Toronto. A group of senior members have gathered after lunch for a third martini. One of them mentions that a director of his company had called that morning to say that Kennedy's denial of the TFX procurement contract to the Boeing Company had hit his company, a major subcontractor, very hard. This struck a nerve of one of the other members, who reported that Roz Gilpatric, who works with that 'goddamn' McNamara, had been telling the banders things were going to change. They could no longer count on the practices that had feathered their nests for so many years.

“Another member took a quick sip of his martini and said ‘I had a call from one of our bankers in the City early this morning. He wanted to know how we were doing and was it true that Kennedy was going to take all Americans out of Vietnam. By God, we can't have that. We've just sold McNamara on that electronic battlefield. It will be worth about one and one-half billion to us. That'll go down the drain.’

”An elderly member, who used to visit the Dulles family in their summer home on Henderson Bay, leaned over toward the center of that small group and almost in a whisper said that his boys had just completed a 10-year war in Vietnam. The total was in the thousands, and the cost ran into the billions of dollars. Then he looked around the group of old cronies and snarled, 'That goddamn Kennedy bastard has been working all summer with some of Old Joe's Irish Mafia and his favorite generals and they are planning every which way to get us out of Vietnam. This can't happen. He's got to go. Right now he's a sure thing for reelection and then there is Bobby and after him Teddy. I tell you that Kennedy has got to go.'

”On the perimeter of that intense group sat a younger man quietly attentive to every word and watching every move. Just then, as the speaker finished his words, he saw a wink in the eye of a senior member. He rose quietly and walked to a position behind his chair. That member turned and whispered a few words. They were all that he needed to hear, ‘In the fall, somewhere in the south. Find a way to get as many key people out of the city as possible. It's all up to you.’

”There was the decision. It had been the result of a consensus of not that one meeting, but of many. This meeting was the climax. This man was a skilled professional. He knew the codes, how to use them and who to call. He knew exactly how to set the train of events into operation. He knew then that his biggest job would be to put a small cadre of the men in the world at work right away on the cover story and on the deception plan.”

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. Bless you, JFK, wherever you are.

Jerry Mazza is a freelance writer, residing in Manhattan. Reach him at gvmaz@verizon.net.