As I pointed out in my blog post of February 15, Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly is in hot water over a lie he issued on a matter relating to the JFK assassination.
O’Reilly has repeatedly claimed that he was knocking on the front door of a man named George de Mohrenschildt, who had connections to U.S. intelligence and who was also a close friend of Lee Harvey Oswald, when he heard the gunshot that ended de Mohrenschildt’s life.
Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter who runs JFKfacts.org, pointed out that O’Reilly was actually in Dallas at the time of the event rather than in Florida where the shooting occurred. How does Morley know that? He posted the tape of a telephone conversation between O’Reilly and Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, in which O’Reilly is clearly stating that he is in Dallas, not Florida, when de Mohrenschildt is shot.
But let’s face it: O’Reilly’s lie is certainly not the biggest lie in the world and it certainly didn’t hurt anyone. That doesn’t excuse it, of course, but we should keep the size of the falsehood and its lack of damage in perspective.
After all, let’s compare O’Reilly’s lie to some of the lies issued by the U.S. national-security state, specifically relating to the autopsy of JFK’s body, which I explain in more detail in my ebook The Kennedy Autopsy, which can be purchased on Amazon for $.99.
Released last September, the book continues to rank among Amazon’s top 100 Best-Selling Books of 20th-Century American History. It has gotten as high as #8 and is #24 today. Also, be sure to check out the 60 comments posted on the book’s page on Amazon.
Be sure to also buy another FFF ebook, JFK’s War With the National Security Establishment by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s. It too has consistently been on the Top 100 of the same list and today is ranked #34. It also sells for $.99.
Lie #1: The Secret Service prevented an autopsy from being conducted at Parkland Hospital in Dallas because Lyndon Johnson, in an act of chivalry, didn’t want to return to Washington without Jacqueline Kennedy.
The truth was that Johnson wanted to prevent an honest autopsy from being conducted in Dallas in order to secure a false and fraudulent autopsy under the control of the U.S. military. It’s clear that the Secret Service was simply following Johnson’s orders to do whatever was necessary to prevent an autopsy at Parkland and to get JFK’s body delivered to Johnson, who was waiting at Dallas’s Love Field.
After all, why would the Secret Service use violence and the threat of deadly force against the Dallas County Medical Examiner who was just trying to do his job and complying with Texas state law? Wouldn’t you ordinarily expect federal and state law-enforcement officials to work together to solve a crime?
While the Secret Service was forcing its way out of Parkland Hospital with JFK’s body, Johnson’s people were removing seats from the back of Air Force One so that the casket carrying JFK’s body could be placed on the plane and returned to Washington.
Why did Johnson want the U.S. military to perform the autopsy? To secure a false and fraudulent autopsy, one that would hide the fact that shots had been fired from the front, i.e., from the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza.
What about Johnson’s chivalry claim?
When Jacqueline boarded Air Force One, no one had bothered to tell her that LBJ had transferred himself from Air Force Two to Air Force One. Guess who this grieving widow encountered when she entered her bedroom on the plane. You got it: Mr. Chivalry himself, Lyndon Johnson, who was lying on her bed.
Lie #2: Johnson was scared over the possibility that the assassination of JFK might be the first step in a Soviet nuclear attack on the United States.
The truth is that Johnson was play-acting when he repeatedly expressed that concern. His behavior establishes that he knew as a fact that the Soviets had had nothing to do with the assassination.
After all, if Johnson truly believed that the United States might be under a nuclear attack, would he have remained at Parkland Hospital waiting until Kennedy was officially declared dead? Or would he instead have immediately headed to the airport, boarded his plane, and gotten airborne so that he could direct America’s defense to such an attack?
Indeed, would Johnson have taken the time to wait for Kennedy’s casket or even for a federal judge to arrive to swear him in as president? Imagine the worst-case scenario: Soviet nuclear missiles are flying into the United States and Lyndon Johnson is sitting on the tarmac in Dallas, removing seats from Air Force One, and waiting for a federal judge to arrive to swear him in.
In fact, if Johnson really did fear the possibility of a Soviet attack, would he have taken the time to transfer from Air Force Two to Air Force One, including a transfer of all the luggage? The two planes were essentially duplicates of each other.
Lie #3: The president’s body arrived at 8:00 p.m. in the Dallas casket, along with Jacqueline Kennedy, in front of Bethesda National Naval Hospital.
The truth is that JFK’s body was secretly removed from the Dallas casket and surreptitiously delivered into the Bethesda morgue at 6:35 p.m., as confirmed by the military personnel who carried the body into the morgue in an ordinary shipping casket similar to those used during the Vietnam War, rather than in the heavy, ornate casket into which the body had been placed in Dallas.
Lie #4: The back of Kennedy’s head was intact, as reflected by the official autopsy photos.
The truth is that the official photographs falsely depict the actual state of Kennedy’s head, which had a huge blowout hole in the back, reflecting a gunshot from the front. That’s what the Dallas physicians and nurses stated and it’s also what several people at the Bethesda hospital confirmed. It’s also what several other people attested to, including a navy official named Saundra Spencer, who was petty officer in charge of the White House Laboratory at the Naval Photographic Center in Anacostia in Washington D.C. and who developed some of the autopsy photographs.
Lie #4: A magic bullet entered the back of Kennedy’s neck, exited the front, went through Governor Connolly’s back, striking his ribs, went through his wrist, and lodged in his leg, and ended up in virtually pristine condition.
The truth is that Kennedy was shot in the neck from the front, which is precisely what two of the Dallas physicians stated at a press conference immediately after JFK was pronounced dead. As he later admitted, Gerald Ford, who was serving on the Warren Commission, modified the Warren Report by moving a gunshot wound in JFK’s right shoulder over to the back of the neck so as to make the magic bullet theory palatable.
Lie #5: There was only one brain examination as part of the JFK autopsy.
The truth is that there were two brain exams, the first one involving Kennedy’s brain and the second one involving someone else’s. (See here and here.) Why did U.S. military autopsy officials need a second brain? Because Kennedy’s brain displayed the damage associated with a shot from the front and a blowout in the rear of his head. Since the purpose of the false and fraudulent autopsy was to conceal shots having been fired from the front, photographs of Kennedy’s brain clearly wouldn’t do. Since the Bethesda Naval complex includes a medical school, it wasn’t difficult to acquire a substitute brain and to have a second brain exam.
One problem, however, was that the official photographs of the second brain reflect a complete brain, while most everyone agrees that the actual brain had lost 1/3-1/2 of its mass owing to the gunshot.
Another problem is that the weight of the second brain (1500 grams) came in at more than that for an ordinary person in an undamaged state (1350 grams).
All these national-security state lies on the JFK assassination autopsy are more deeply explored and detailed in my ebook The Kennedy Autopsy–$.99.
So, maybe we ought to cut O’Reilly a bit of slack. His lie on the JFK assassination aftermath pales to insignificance compared to those of the U.S. national-security state.