George Will’s Obtuseness on the JFK Assassination – The Future of Freedom Foundation

In a small section of his most recent column, Washington Post conservative columnist George Will demonstrates the deference to authority that has come to characterize the mainstream media with respect to the JFK assassination. Will writes:

For many years, some people insisted that a vast conspiracy, not a lone gunman, masterminded the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy near the grassy knoll in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza. To these people, the complete absence of evidence proved the conspiracy’s sophistication. They were demented.

Now, it stands to reason that mainstream journalists at the time of the Kennedy assassination would make that type of statement. That was a time when almost everyone placed undaunted faith in the U.S. national-security establishment and any official narrative it issued. This was especially true for conservative columnists, almost all of whom bought into the extreme anti-communist animus that was used to justify the Cold War and the conversion of the U.S. government to a national-security state. Of course, there was also Operation Mockingbird to consider. That was the CIA’s successful secret operation to acquire assets within the U.S. mainstream press who could be relied upon to publish articles reflecting the views and narratives of the national-security establishment.

Thus, when a mainstream journalist in 1963 or even 1964, immediately after the issuance of the Warren Report, made a statement similar to that made by Will, it was somewhat understandable. At that time, while there were people who suspected that something was amiss in the assassination, most of the evidence pointing to a U.S. national-security regime-change operation was hidden from view because of the shroud of national-security secrecy that was immediately placed over the assassination.

But that was 1963. Today things are entirely different. Over the decades, the national-security state secrecy surrounding the assassination has been pierced, which has brought forth a large body of incriminating evidence pointing to a joint Pentagon-CIA operation to protect “national security” from a president whose policies, they believed, were leading to a communist victory in the Cold War and, ultimately, a communist takeover of the United States.

This is what mainstream journalists like Will just don’t get. Owing to the large amount of evidence that has surfaced pointing toward a domestic regime-change operation, it is no longer sufficient for a mainstream journalist to mouth the standard mantras about the Kennedy assassination that were being mouthed in 1963 or to simply label people who challenge the official lone-nut narrative in the Kennedy assassination “conspiracy theorists.” Now, it is incumbent on mainstream journalists who wish to maintain the official narrative to confront and deal with the actual evidence that has surfaced since then, especially after the JFK Records Act in 1993, which was enacted in the wake of Oliver Stone’s movie JFK. That law forced the Pentagon, the CIA, and other federal agencies to disclose many, but certainly not all, of their long-secret records relating to the assassination,

Let me give you an example. In the late 1960s, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison brought a criminal prosecution against a man named Clay Shaw. In the trial, Garrison alleged that the JFK assassination was a highly sophisticated domestic regime-change operation carried out by the Pentagon and the CIA, no different in principle from those carried out both before and after the Kennedy assassination, ,most of which were supported and are still supported by conservatives — e.g., Iran 1953, Guatemala 1954, Congo 1961, Cuba 1960s, Chile 1973.

The mainstream press criticized and derided Garrison. Their mindset was one of complete deference to the authority of the national-security establishment and its official theory that a lone nut with no apparent motive had killed the president.

In the process, the mainstream press failed to note some extremely important aspects of the Shaw trial, especially those relating to the testimony of one of the military pathologists who had helped carried out the official autopsy on President Kennedy’s body, , Lt. Col. Pierre Finck.

Finck testified that he received a call at 8 p.m. on the night of the assassination from one of the other two pathologists for the autopsy, Commander James Humes, asking Finck to come over and help with the autopsy. In that 8 p.m. telephone call, Humes told Finck that they already had x-rays of the president’s head.

A big problem arises though: The president’s body was being carried into the Bethesda morgue at precisely 8 p.m. by a military color guard.

Do you see the problem? How could Humes already have x-rays of the president’s head if the president’s body had not yet been brought into the morgue?

To my knowledge, that testimony didn’t bother any mainstream journalist at the time. They were all so deferential to the national-security establishment that that problem didn’t seem to get their attention. But wouldn’t you think that any self-respecting investigative journalist would say, “I need to get to the bottom of this”?

How about you, George? How do you explain this problem? I would love to hear your explanation.

Another interesting aspect of Finck’s testimony was when he was asked by the prosecutor why the pathologists had failed to “dissect” Kennedy’s neck wound, which would ordinarily have been standard autopsy procedure. At first, Finck repeatedly refused to answer the question. When the judge finally required Finck to answer, he said that he had been ordered by someone in authority to refrain from doing so. Finck then maintained that he couldn’t remember the identity of the person in authority who issued that order to him.

Now, wouldn’t you think that any self-respecting investigative journalist would say, “I need to get to the bottom of this”? After all, the three autopsy pathologists were supposed to be in charge of the autopsy. Finck’s testimony established that there was obviously a secret super-force that had ultimate control over the autopsy and the autopsy physicians.

How about you, George? Aren’t you at least a bit curious as to who composed that force and how, when, where, and why it came into existence?

After the House Select Committee on Assassinations hearings in the 1970s, a group of enlisted men who were released from vows of secrecy that the military had forced then to sign immediately after the autopsy, began telling a remarkable story. They said that they had secretly carried the president’s body into the Bethesda morgue in a cheap, military-style shipping casket rather than the expensive, ornate casket into which the president’s body had been placed in Dallas, They maintained that they secretly brought the body into the morgue at 6:35 p.m., almost 1 1/2 hours before the official entry time of 8 p.m.

What’s up with that? How about it, George? You can’t say that witness statements don’t constitute evidence, can you? What’s your explanation for this phenomenon? I would love to hear it.

In the 1990s, the Assassination Records Review Board secured a written report from a Marine sergeant named Roger Boyajian, which was prepared soon after the November 22, 1963, weekend. In the report, Boyajian stated that his team did in fact carry the president’s body into the morgue at 6:35 p.m.

How about it, George? You can’t really maintain that Boyajian’s statement and his written report don’t constitute evidence, can you? How do you deal with that? What’s your explanation for it? I would love to hear what you have to say about it.

The ARRB also secured the testimony of Saundra Spencer, who worked in the military’s photography lab in Washington, D.C. She told the ARRB a remarkable story. She said that on the weekend of the assassination, she was asked to develop the official autopsy photographs of Kennedy’s body, on a top-secret basis. She had kept her secret for some 30 years. When shown the official photographs of the autopsy in the records today, she said that those weren’t the photographs she developed. The ones she developed showed a massive sized exit wound in the back of Kennedy’s head, which would imply a shot having been fired from the front. The official autopsy photographs show the back of the president’s head to be intact.

How about it, George? How about giving us your take on Spencer’s testimony? You can’t really say that sworn testimony doesn’t constitute evidence, can you? I would love to hear your explanation for Spencer’s sworn testimony.

Spencer’s testimony, of course, matched the statements of the Dallas treating physicians immediately after the assassination, in which they described a massive exit-sized wound in the back of Kennedy’s head.

How about it, George? How do you deal with the steadfast statements from Dr. Robert McClelland, Dr. Charles Crenshaw, and the other treating physicians describing the big exit-sized wound in the back of the president’s head, which matched up with what Saundra Spencer testified to 30 years later?

The ARRB also discovered that there were two separate examinations of President Kennedy’s brain. At the first examination, the brain was “sectioned” or cut up like a loaf of bread, which is standard procedure in gun shot wounds to the head. At the second brain exam, the brain was damaged but intact — i.e, not sectioned. There is no way that a sectioned brain can reconstitute itself, which means that the brain at the second exam could not possibly have been Kennedy’s,

How about it, George? How do you deal with that one? I would love to know.

Dr. David Mantik, a radiation oncologist in Rancho Mirage, California, has spent nine complete days closely examining the x-rays in the JFK autopsy. He has concluded that they are fraudulent.

How about it, George? How do you deal with Mantik’s detailed analysis? You can read it here. I would love to know.

Why is all this autopsy evidence important? Because there is no way to come up with an innocent explanation for a fraudulent autopsy. But George, if you can do so, please let us know what that explanation is. I don’t think you can. Certainly no one else has. And one thing is for sure: It was the national-security establishment that was solely responsible for carrying out the fraudulent autopsy on President Kennedy’s body just a few hours after the assassination.

In fact, George, maybe you wouldn’t mind providing your theory as to why the military, rather than the civilian authorities in Dallas, were even charged with carrying out the autopsy on President Kennedy’s body. After all, while conservatives love the national-security state form of governmental structure, the United States isn’t a military nation, like the Soviet Union was, or at least it’s not supposed to be.