We Still Need Justice for JFK and 61 years of Deep State Gaslighting
America has never recovered from the lies its government told us about the murder that rocked history.
Much was made of the release recently of some remaining JFK assassination documents. There was a farcical congressional hearing, where even those who were seeking the truth had no perspective of what the documents said and didn’t say. That’s what 61 years of lies and stonewalling will do—bury the truth under glacial layers of time that discount any new discovery.
It is rightly said we’ll probably never know the full truth of what happened that sunny day in November 1963, just past high noon in Dallas. That shouldn’t stop us from trying because America has never recovered from the lies its government told us about the murder that rocked history.
We talk these days about the blatant gaslighting of the last half-decade regarding COVID, Russiagate, and countless racial hoaxes. We can instantly see the government is lying but it proceeds anyway. It shocks the conscience. Yet November 1963 was the gaslighting to end all gaslighting. A plot to murder our President was carried out in open daylight and the government quickly told us a lone gunman who liked the President was the murderer.
The public could be partially excused for buying the official version wrapped up in the infamous Warren Commission report, but the eventual public airing of Abraham Zapruder film of the shooting should have demolished any remaining credibility in the government’s version of events. The film made it clear that at least some of the shots at John F. Kennedy came from his front instead of the government’s conclusion that all originated from Lee Harvey Oswald’s rifle on the 6th floor of the Texas School Book Depository, at JFK’s right rear.
Later, the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded the Warren Commission was wrong—there was a conspiracy of some unknown origin. The CIA, Mob, and others were named as possible engineers of the deadly scheme but the conclusion was ultimately unsatisfactory because many government documents remained under seal, furthering at least part of the plot.
However, the truth has never been deeply buried. Although I’m not foolhardy enough to litigate the dozens of theories about the assassination that abound, I go back to some original courageous truth tellers who proved the Warren Report was bogus early on. Like many of my generation, I have read many books and articles about the assassination, and, as a kid, read the Warren Commission report.
There are several facts that endure to this day and were pointed out then. Most were included in the meticulous and timeless book by researcher Sylvia Meagher, “Accessories After the Fact.” She read the Warren report and all its attachments and critiqued it thoroughly in her book. She is careful, precise, and does not overstate. Her findings stand the test of time.
She demolishes the report on point after point. No one can read her book and still believe the conclusions the Warren Commission draws. Perhaps the most convincing argument that Lee Harvey Oswald did not shoot JFK is that he was seen 90 seconds after the shooting on the building’s second floor, not the sixth. He was seen by the building’s superintendent and a Dallas police officer and briefly questioned. He was calm and not out of breath. Others saw him nearby drinking a Coke he presumably purchased from a vending machine. Further, a fellow employee, a woman, descended on the same stairs Oswald purportedly traveled from the sixth floor and didn’t see him. Newly revealed documents in Oliver Stone’s JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass movie indicate that two other women came down the same stairs and didn’t see Oswald. All the witnesses in this episode were certain of the timeline and appear credible, unlike many of the witnesses the Warren Commission relied on throughout the report.
Among the other baseline facts that Meagher discussed in detail was the fact that Oswald’s supposed murder weapon was a substandard rifle with a faulty sight, that Oswald was a crappy shooter, that there is no concrete evidence of Oswald ever practicing before the shooting or owning any ammunition. And there’s the nagging problem that Oswald by all accounts liked President Kennedy and never expressed any political differences with him.
There are many other reasons to doubt the Warren Commission’s report that anyone can read about if they have a few extra months to spare. The real heroes in this shameful saga are the researchers like Meagher who persevered in the face of tremendous pressure to buck the government’s lies. There are heroic witnesses who never changed their stories—and some may have paid for their courage with their lives. In the vast array of those who researched the assassination, there are those who got things horribly wrong and were shysters. Most, however, contributed something new to the public’s understanding of that fateful day.
Where does that bring up today? Full circle, in a way. We learned through the last 61 years that JFK was courageously fighting the CIA and Deep State and arguably paid the ultimate price. Another President named Trump also is fighting the Deep State was nearly murdered by perhaps the same type of forces that probably killed Kennedy.
We can do two things today: Draw from history the lessons hopefully we’ve learned about mindlessly trusting the government. We should always critically question everything our officials tell us. And we must demand full transparency of government records. No more decades of delays. We need all the documents related to Trump’s two assassination attempts to be released immediately. The gaslighting won’t stop unless we make it stop.
