I read Dan Barry’s piece on Nick Beef in which he asserted that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, and the sentence definitely stopped me short and stuck in my craw. I didn’t write in to complain because I have better things to do and the article wasn’t trying to carry any water for the lone gunman theory anyway. Mr. Barry just dropped the sentence in passing, forgetting to use the word “alleged.” I didn’t think there was anything sinister about it, although I shook my head at the fact that 50 years on we still have people who are not skeptical that Oswald acted alone.
I’ve studied the JFK assassination very thoroughly, although never with the commitment of a certified theorist. I have some theories on the case that I’ve come to feel pretty confident about. I think David Atlee Phillips and David Morales were probably involved. I think James Jesus Angleton was put in charge of the investigation because he had a 201 file on Oswald. I think George Joannides was made the liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) because he had been involved with Oswald while Oswald was still alive. I think a decision was made within a day of Oswald’s death that an investigation would be held and that it would conclude that Oswald acted alone.
There are other things that I find impenetrable. Did Oswald ever go to Mexico City? If he did, when did he go? Who was impersonating him in Mexico City? And was he actually one of the gunmen? Did he really kill Officer Tippit? And, if so, why?
The more I studied the assassination, the less I focused on Oswald and the more I focused on the behavior of the people under suspicion. David Atlee Phillips’ own brother refused to talk to him because he believed he was behind the assassination. David Morales’s closest friends said that he had confessed to them. This is not the behavior of innocent men. Why would the CIA surreptitiously bring a man out of “retirement” to be the liaison with the House Select Committee on Assassinations who was in charge of running Revolutionary Cuban Student Directorate (DRE) agents against the Fair Play for Cuba Committee? When the HSCA general counsel, Bob Blakey, learned of George Joannides’s role, he said that Joannides’s had obstructed Congress and committed a felony.
That he did so should be beyond dispute. But do innocent men commit that kind of felony?
All of these questions fade into the background when you take your eyes off of them and put them squarely on Oswald. Trying to put the puzzle together has defied every researcher, but the one thing that has become clear over the years is that Oswald was working as an FBI informant and was also being closely monitored by counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, who was put in charge of the investigation of the assassination.
Considering everything that researchers have uncovered, it really is journalistic malpractice to write that Oswald killed Kennedy without attaching some degree of skepticism to the charge. The HSCA concluded that Oswald was one of the gunman, but not the only one. But, of course, their investigation was infiltrated by one of the prime suspects.
