How I Became Convinced
-by Bill Watkins 4/26/2017
Over fifty-nine years have passed since the murder of JFK, and here we are. To me, the facts are there. The testimony, the evidence. All pointing away from the “official” Oswald story.
And when taken as a whole, held to the light, facts and evidence point to the Central Intelligence Agency as the likely killers of our country’s 35th president. I could dive in here with all I have, or I could back up, recall how I got here. The latter course seems wise, as the treacherous forest of November 22, 1963 is best navigated without emotion, when inspecting for legal guilt or innocence.
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I grew up on the military right wing. My father was Navy, his brothers were Navy. One of them was Chief of Naval Operations from 1982-5, then went on to serve as George H.W. Bush’s Secretary of Energy. That is right wing. That is as right as you get.
On that extreme right wing you will find sympathy for war, covert operations, secrets and anything thought to contribute to “National Security.” When Iraq invaded Kuwait, and Bush put American soldiers there to fight, I cried “Gung Ho!!” and “Go get’em, boys!!!” And if the JFK assassination ever came up in conversation or thought, I saw two sides to the issue, one blaring—one a distant murmur.
The blaring “truth” to me at the time was that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, because it was in my textbook, and my family never disputed this claim. I had not studied, nor had little use or care regarding the law, constitutional or otherwise that might frown upon condemning a man as guilty of a crime without a trial.
I mentioned a “distant murmur,” and that was this wacky conspiracy theory group of “kooks,” always worried about stuff, never accepting what the government told them. Those weirdos didn’t want to go and win wars like Trump, were communists or close to it, and nothing they said really mattered.
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Then I got sober in March of 2002. Before that, I had a spiritual awakening in 1995, so had begun to adore truth. Some twelve years into my sobriety, Oliver Stone’s JFK was playing repeatedly on HBO, and of course I repeatedly passed it up, knowing Stone to be one of “those conspiracy kooks.”
The CIA had me, I later understood. All their propaganda, the pains they take to infiltrate media, something they prided themselves in abroad and at home—from influencing Latin American elections to blaming Kennedy for the murder of a Vietnamese head of state.
I was locked into the hype and hoopla of American exceptionalism; that we were the greatest country on earth. It must be true because my government and military told me so… But when that dang JFK movie aired for the fourth time in four days on my television, my spiritual recovery told me to open my mind and watch it.
On October 24, 2014 I had a Political Awakening while watching Oliver Stone’s JFK. I was not yet Convinced of the facts around the JFK murder; I was now just interested, shocked by the plausible story I was watching that painted the U.S. Government in a shady light. The Oswald story began to look like the terd that it is, and I started to investigate.
The Road to “Convinced:”
There are two major primers to apply, if you wanted to follow my personal path to becoming convinced of Oswald’s innocence and CIA’s guilt for the murder of JFK:
1. Watch JFK by Oliver Stone. Good overview, and an entertaining way to start.
2. Read On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison, and browse A Farewell to Justice by Joan Mellon. You might not be convinced yet, if you do those primer steps. But you will be ready for…
***Mark Lane:
Read Rush to Judgment, and you will become convinced before you are half-way through, that CIA killed Kennedy. I wrote this piece, after I had finished Rush to Judgment:
https://travelingpoet.net/2017/03/28/the-coup-of-1963/
It’s very hard to become more convinced than “convinced,” but of course one keeps studying, investigating and verifying. I moved on to Mark Lane’s second book, A Citizen’s Dissent; it was while reading it that I first considered writing a movie screenplay about Mark, his defense of Oswald, and indicting CIA.
Before writing anything, though, I started reading Mark Lane’s third book, Plausible Denial. It was by reading this book that I could feel more confident publishing against CIA and on behalf of the framed Lee Harvey Oswald.
Plausible Denial was damning to CIA and Howard Hunt. The trial that it depicted was Hunt v. Liberty Lobby (1985 in Miami, Florida)—in which a jury sided with Lane that CIA and Hunt were involved in the JFK murder.
http://www.libertylobby.org/articles/2000/20000207cia.html
You may not know about Hunt v. Liberty Lobby, because that is how the CIA likes it.
In that case, the testimony of Marita Lorenz was introduced. Marita had nothing materially to gain by putting herself on a hit list, but offered the truth out of her conscience to right past wrongs. Though I was already convinced before reading her deposition, her placement of CIA’s Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis and Anti-Castro Cuban CIA shooters in Dallas on November 21, 1963—Hunt the bagman…
Was the nail in the CIA coffin for this “job.”
The half-sick, half-patriotic organization that began half a ruse on the White House steps in 1946, with their cloak and dagger ceremony, had finally been hurt and scared enough to off the President of the United States, their supposed boss. Kennedy had threatened to dismantle the CIA after the Bay of Pigs failure, had fired superspy Allen Dulles, the godfather of American espionage.
Kennedy was talking “peace” everywhere he went, closing the divide between black and white, Soviet red and our red, white and blue. He was not even going to allow CIA their Vietnam. He had to “go,” Hunt and others diabolically decided. So some Anti-Castro Cubans and CIA killers shot and killed JFK, cowardly from behind some bushes, covered with police and Secret Service uniforms; and of course aided by the complicit Dallas Police Department, whose mayor was the Kennedy-fired Deputy CIA Head Charles Cabell’s brother, Earle.
Oswald’s affiliation with FBI kept Hoover in line, CIA mapping out a cover-up, putting Allen Dulles in the middle of Johnson’s Warren Commission to protect the agency from any close scrutiny. Obfuscating, hiding, destroying and “classifying” documents. CIA omerta and promises of “national security.” Every criminal organization has to have a legitimate front and plausible deniability, so there you go…
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This article should not have convinced you that CIA killed John F. Kennedy, but I hope there is a map laid out for those who seek to find. And to the CIA: God bless you to better.
Bill Watkins, Traveling Poet 