The assassinations of the 60s have been on my mind of late, thanks to these Beatle mysteries I'm writing (anybody interested in finding out when they're coming out should send an email to mikesnewbooks[at]gmail[dot]com). One of the most persistent canards about the JFK assassination is that it's incredibly difficult to understand, and that one must do a ton of reading to have any chance of "proving" a conspiracy. That's simply not true. While it does take a ton of reading to get some sense of the murder in a "global" sense, a conspiracy at the highest levels of government can be shown irrefutably in two photographs.

This first photograph is from the President's autopsy, performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital on the night of November 22nd, 1963. It's important to note that, at this point, the body has been solely in government hands; no mortician has touched it, and it should appear exactly as it did to the doctors at Parkland Hospital (there's considerable debate on this point, but that's not what I'm driving at). Look at the area of JFK's right temple, his forehead above his right eye, and his eye socket. Note where the wound clearly ends. While there appears to be some swelling in the eyebrow area, the structure of the President's face appears to be sound. In fact, judging from the shadow, the right eyebrow ridge seems to be quite pronounced.

This photo is an X-ray of President Kennedy's skull taken from the front. Note how far the defect in the bone extends, all the way down to the eye socket. According to this x-ray, there should be a chunk of forehead and eyebrow missing. That eyebrow ridge on the skull? Not only is it present in the photo we looked at earlier, it's actually casting a shadow.

These photos are both widely available, and I encourage you to check them out sometime in a higher resolution. More importantly, the veracity of these photos has never been questioned by the defenders of the "lone nut" theory. Unfortunately one of them has to be wrong. Wrong means "faked," and a faked autopsy photo says a lot of things. It says "coverup," and it says "inside the government." The mafia could, and perhaps was, part of the shooter team; ditto, the anti-Castro Cubans. But only the US government had access to the body and the autopsy photos.

Does this discrepancy prove a massive conspiracy to murder the President? No. It proves a massive cover-up. Who killed JFK and how is a different question. What this proves is the government's absolute unreliability as a custodian of evidence in politically sensitive crimes, which is probably worse news.

Just for good measure, here's another autopsy photo showing the same area. Note how the eyebrow and eyesocket appears normal. No part of the face shows any damage whatsoever--no hole, no sagging of flesh; the skin is taut, supported by bone. The right side casts the same shadows, in the same places, as the undamaged left.

There's more--a lot more--that I could talk about, but this discrepancy alone is enough to demonstrate that the government cannot be trusted on this matter, and that defending their conclusion is simply an act of faith.

I don't know why the government was faking photos--who or what they were trying to protect, or what the unfaked photos looked like. Evidence tampering renders that kind of precision impossible, and that's why criminals do it. In a manipulated murder, one must be content with broad conclusions, and in the case of JFK, these two or three photos say a lot.

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The CIA, that's who.

Today's New York Times details Agency stonewalling over 295 documents relating to George Joannides, an agent working with anti-Castro Cubans out of JM/WAVE, their Miami station. Groups under Joannides' direction "publicly clashed with" Lee Harvey Oswald. These clashes were some of the most significant ways that Oswald's personal politics--in other words, his entire motive--were presented to the public.

"The C.I.A. says it is only protecting legitimate secrets," writes Scott Shane. "But because of the agency’s history of stonewalling assassination inquiries, even researchers with no use for conspiracy thinking question its stance."

If things happened the way the Warren Report says they did--if it was one crazy person acting alone with a mail-order rifle--that's where the trail ends, and nothing in CIA's files can change that fact. But CIA has acted guilty from the start, misleading investigations and covering stuff up--and this is in the face of almost total support from the mainstream media. The New York Times is not digging at this story now, any more than it did in 1964. Yet CIA's gameplan has remained the same: stonewall until the information is a curious historical fact. The question is why?

It is completely understandable that CIA would control the flow of information to the Warren Commission, to protect ongoing operations and/or cover its ass in the wake of a huge failure. But this rationale weakens for Mr. Joannides' behavior as CIA liason to the Congressional investigation in 1976-78; and still further for its resistance to the Assassination Records Review Board in the 90s. It's completely ludicrous today.

These documents are nearly 50 years old. Joannides is dead, Castro nearly so. The only reasonable conclusion is that CIA has something to hide regarding the assassination, and it relates to JM/WAVE, Oswald, and anti-Castro Cubans. I don't know what it has to hide, but it has to be damaging enough to justify an organization-wide commitment over 50 years, in the face of sustained public interest and intermittent Congressional pressure. That's the story here, not what scraps of redacted paper eventually emerge.

The Times article trots out a few lone nut theorists--Gerald Posner and Max Holland--who predictably declare there's no "there" there. But CIA's behavior has already answered this question. We already know that when the documents eventually do come out, The New York Times will study them carefully, looking for Allen Dulles' handwritten scrawl, "Get Oswald to shoot Kennedy." Not finding it, the lone nut theory will be "proven" once again, and the rest of us will be treated to some more cognitive dissonance.

CIA has shown itself to be liars on this topic, so sensible people should stop listening to what they say. What they do is much more instructive, and that points a big, fat finger squarely at Langley--for what I don't know, but the enormous amount of other evidence makes that less important. Five decades of imperial government and a lapdog press means that the details will be obscured, but the larger picture is resolving, and it doesn't show Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone. Those of us who've known that for decades thank the CIA for helping get the word out.

ADDITION 10/22: Peter Dale Scott on the same NYT article.

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