Posted on 11/23/2005 6:38:38 AM PST by mr. mojo risin
Was there a Mississippi link to the assassination of John F. Kennedy? Records show that a U. S. senator and a Mississippi private detective may have known about plans to kill JFK.
(PRWEB) November 17, 2005 -- Who killed JFK?
While conspiracy theorists keep the debate alive, few mention Mississippi's links to the murder of a U. S. president 42 years ago this week, says the author of two civil rights books that focus on the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta.
Susan Klopfer became intrigued with the Mississippi connection to JFK's assassination when she came across information linking a Delta icon to several others often associated with the tragic Dallas event, including a private detective from Vicksburg.
Seven years before John F. Kennedy's murder, the magnolia state's U. S. Sen. James O. Eastland met for the first time with Guy Banister, a controversial CIA operative and retired FBI agent in charge of the Chicago bureau, according to Klopfer.
"Banister was later linked to Lee Harvey Oswald and Mississippi's senator through involvement with Eastland's Senate Internal Security Subcommittee or SISS (sometimes called "SISSY")," writes the author of "Where Rebels Roost, Mississippi Civil Rights Revisited" and "The Emmett Till Book."
"The New Orleans Times-Picayune on March 23, 1956, reported that Robert Morrison, a former chief counsel for Sen. Joseph McCarthy's House UnAmerican Activities Committee or HUAC, and Banister traveled to Greenwood, Mississippi in the heart of the Delta, to confer personally with Senator Eastland for more than three hours," Klopfer said.
Describing the conference as "completely satisfactory," Morrison told the New Orleans reporter that "Mr. Banister has complete liaison with the committee's staff which was the main object of our trip."
Known as a notorious political extremist who was later described as the impetus for James Garrison’s 1967-1970 Kennedy assassination probe, Banister earlier became a brief focus of Mississippi's secret spy agency, the Sovereignty Commission, when it was suggested Banister should be hired to set up an "even tighter" domestic spying system throughout the state. Klopfer said she found this report in the state's Sovereignty Commission records.
A second Eastland operative, private investigator John D. Sullivan of Vicksburg, made this suggestion to the commission just months after the JFK assassination, also reported in released Sovereignty Commission records, Klopfer said.
"Former FBI agent Sullivan had worked for Banister (both inside the FBI and privately) and as a private self-employed investigator for the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission; the private white Citizens Councils, of which he was an active member; and for SISS, as had Banister and Lee Harvey Oswald.
"When Sullivan reportedly committed suicide soon after the Kennedy assassination, Sovereignty Commission investigators tried to acquire his library and files, but most of his confidential files were either reportedly burned by his widow or they had been lent out, and she 'could not remember' who had them, Sovereignty Commission files disclose."
Some twenty-nine years later, in testimony before the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board during a Dallas hearing on November 18, 1994, the late Senator Eastland was directly implicated in the president’s assassination by one of the author/theorists invited to testify, Klopfer said.
"Lee Harvey Oswald was quite possibly an agent of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and he was doing the bidding of [Sen. Thomas J. Dodd and Eastland and Morrison, author John McLaughlin swore."
Klopfer said that documentation that could support or even discredit such assertions could be present in the Eastland archives at the University of Mississippi, "but no objective scholar has been allowed to search these archives since the day they arrived on campus.
"Instead, Eastland's records were managed for years by a former associate and devotee who followed the papers from Washington, D.C. to Oxford," she said.
Eastland, a cotton planter from Doddsville, Mississippi in the heart of the Delta, was the consumate racist. "He often blocked money from coming into the Delta to feed and employ the poorest of Mississippians. Yet he was quite adept at collecting hundreds of thousands dollars of federal farming subsidies for himself," Klopfer said.
"There has been very little written about Eastland; his family and friends seem to be protecting what information is allowed to the public."
Eastland died in 1986 at the age of 82.
After an unsuccessful Freedom of Information Act or FOIA request to the University of Mississippi's law school by Klopfer, a historian was finally hired to organize the archives based in the James O. Eastland School of Law.
But there was still a waiting period scheduled before any of the files could be viewed, Klopfer said.
"I was informed that the plan was to release first all press releases, according to one Ole Miss historian who also told me that many important files were probably missing -- that the files looked cleaned out."
Klopfer asserts the law school dean, when presented with a freedom of information act request or FOIA for access to Eastland archives, asked her, while laughing, if he could "just show the rejection letter written to the last person who asked for this information."
Later, Klopfer said, it came back to her that “people at Ole Miss were really angry” over the FOIA request.
Klopfer said she once spoke with historian Carol Polsgrove from Indiana University who also wanted to see the Eastland records.
"Dr. Polsgrove was interested in the white resistance to the civil rights movement, that it has not received the kind of attention from historians that the movement itself has--understandably, since there is nothing heroic about the resistance.
"She once thought about writing a biography of Eastland, who she terms the political linchpin of the resistance, and went so far as to call the University of Mississippi Law School, where his papers were kept.
"Polsgrove said she was told they were stowed in boxes in a basement--uncataloged and inaccessible. A library staffer explained to her, in hushed tones, that Senator Eastland was not quite 'politically correct'."
Klopfer notes that "Even today, Ole Miss doesn't seem to advertise the law school's identity - the James O. Eastland School of Law."
But like the Indiana professor, Klopfer said that she, too, would "really would love to go through all of Eastland's records. ALL of them."
You can bet that Lyndon Johnson took a lot more JFK assassination secrets to his grave than these guys did.
Pinging Oliver Stone
And John Kerry was quite possibly an agent of communist North Vietnam, given his close working relationship with them in Paris. And Hillary is quite possibly an alien lizard, given how she looks. And Teddy Kennedy is quite possibly a murderer... wait, that's real... Too bad they're not dead yet, otherwise we could publish crap like this and they wouldn't have a chance to respond.
Moonbats with tin-foil hats. What a combination.
Oswald was a prime mover in the "Fair Play for Cuba" group (fact), a defector to the Soviet Union (fact) and a raving psycho (fact). But, of course, that was all a facade. It must have been created for him by his CIA handler, George H. W. Bush (fake - but that really is part of these loony toons theories).
I forget the name of the guy on the George Noory show last night who was spouting off nonsense left and right. Among other things, he speculated that Kennedy was assassinated because he knew too much about aliens visiting Earth. Also, the war mongers must have had a hand in it because the president was seeking to ease cold war tensions by working together with the USSR in spaceflight. Un huh.
"...a former chief counsel for Sen. Joseph McCarthy's House UnAmerican Activities Committee or HUAC"
This is a standard lefty mistake. Senator McCarthy could hardly have been in charge of a House committee.
"he speculated that Kennedy was assassinated because he knew too much about aliens visiting Earth."
The aliens did it.
Good point. I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy (despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of successful and attempted presidential assassins were sociopathic loners), but the Left will never admit the possibility that if the (John) Kennedy assassination was the work of a conspiracy, the most likely conspirators were in the Soviet Union or Cuba. As LBJ told respected journalist Howard K. Smith: "Kennedy wanted to get Castro, but Castro got him first".
Good point. I like a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy (despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of successful and attempted presidential assassins were sociopathic loners), but the Left will never admit the possibility that if the (John) Kennedy assassination was the work of a conspiracy, the most likely conspirators were in the Soviet Union or Cuba. As LBJ told respected journalist Howard K. Smith: "Kennedy wanted to get Castro, but Castro got him first".
I would be tempted to believe Oswald worked alone if it hadn't been for Ruby. The idea that some guy can waltz in and shoot the biggest assassinator in history makes me suspicious.
Ruby almost seemed like the guy that could be counted on to keep quiet where Oswald was not. The Kennedy's (Jack and Robert) made a pact with the wrong people, pissed them off and they both ended up dead.
I heard that buffoon on Noory last night as well. You know there are some interesting and well thought out conspiracy theories, but most of them are self serving bunk. And lasst night I heard that clown misstate Gerald Posner's book as well as lie about the Peter Jennings and TLC television shows debunking the Oliver Stone's of the world. For example, he claimed that no one made those shots, when in fact the tests with the same rifle from the same vantage point from the same distance shows that it can be done easily with a marksman, as Oswald was. Furthermoe, Oswald was a total loon. Remember he took a pot shot at a general in his house earlier that year in Dallas.
Jim Marrs was the name. He didn't really back up most of the info he was giving. For example, he is the only person I have heard claim that Marilyn Monroe said JFK had told her about aliens visiting Earth, and that there were missiles in Cuba months before the general public knew. Not to mention that President Nixon took his good friend Jackie Gleason to some Air Force base to see alien bodies. Gee, this all sounds so realistic!
I saw interview with Valenci, Johnson's chief of staff, the other day. Valenci said Johnson always told him he deeply belived the Cubans got Oswald to kill Kennedy in retaliation for Bay of Pigs. Oswald was the hit man. This was probably a Fidel Castro operation to recruit Oswald and get back at JFK.
My uncle covered the Ruby trial for the Saturday Evening Post. He knew plenty about JFK (whom he interviewed) and the murder of the President. He never thought there was anything to the conspiracy theories, and over time he has been proven right. Posner's book put all that nonsense to rest.
You may be right, and I have no idea who was behind the assassination of Kennedy (or if Oswald acted alone) -- but I understand that Lyndon Johnson went to his grave convinced that Fidel Castro was behind it. I think there is a lot of credence to this theory, and Johnson was obviously privy to a lot more information than I am.
Somehow the left will blame President Bush for it.
Because it was considered "fair play" in a certain sense. Kennedy ordered an assassination attempt on Castro, a disgraceful prelude to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam in which the Kennedy administration was alarmingly cavalier about killing off foreign heads of state. By the time all the official documents about his presidency are released, I expect we'll learn that for nearly three years this country was run by a chief executive who spent a substantial amount of his term under the influence of various prescription drugs and possibly other narcotics.
It was also understood at the time that Kennedy pretty much stole the 1960 election, and would probably have been remembered as one of the most inconsequential presidents in U.S. history if he hadn't been assassinated in 1963.
To put it bluntly -- even a third-rate hack like LBJ realized that Kennedy wasn't worth a regional war with a third-rate dictatorship.
JFK wasn't the first person Oswald tried to assassinate, FYI. Anyone who knows anything about Oswald knows he was a very disturbed person, and perfectly capable of killing the President. Alone, on his own, and that makes the whole thing all the more tragic and incomprehensible. One disturbed man can do so much harm, in a moment, and for all time. Even his own brother knew what Oswald had done, and he never tried to deny it.
We already know that. JFK had Addison's Disease and he took many drugs over time to deal with the symptoms, from amphetamines, to synthetic cortisone. Back then "uppers" were no big deal, however. People took them willy-nilly. "Bennys" they were called. Jackie and JFK both got speed injections from the famous "Dr. Feelgood" (Max something-or-other). Just a pick-me-up thing. Not to minimize it but JFK wasn't a junkie, just a man constantly in excruciating pain.
Not to minimize it but JFK wasn't a junkie, just a man constantly in excruciating pain.
I'd be curious to know: 1) exactly what drugs he was taking, and 2) the documented (today) side effects of those drugs.
I have no idea if Oswald acted alone. I'm simply pointing out what Lyndon Johnson believed for the rest of his days.
Wrong. We know he took cortisone. We know he took some form of speed. Addison's Disease is a disease of the adrenal glands. Cortisone was the "miracle cure." The reason JFK's face got more puffy in his final years is because steroids make your face swell. And it is matter of record that both Jackie and JFK were given speed, by Dr. Max Jacobson.
If you have some facts about what other drugs he took, or if you can dispute my information, DO post it. Until then, you're just spinning your wheels.
Were you his doctor?
I don't know what "evidence" LBJ had, if any. I do know that Johnson wanted desperately to believe that the Soviets were not involved in a plot, and may even have steered the Warren Commission away from investigating that. So maybe Johnson assumed that, lacking solid evidence of the sort that could be presented at the UN, the Soviets would regard an attack on Cuba as a violation of the "deal" that ended the Cuban Missile Crisis, and react accordingly.
Can't you do better that that?? :)
Don't tell me -- you also believe that the Kennedy family wasn't a criminal enterprise running illegal alcohol operations during Prohibition?
Direct evidence? No. But the circumstantial evidence is actually pretty overwhelming -- starting with Oswald's curious past and with his demise at the hands of Jack Ruby.
If John Hinckley had been bumped off in a similar manner, we'd be having the same discussions about conspiracy theories -- because that chain of events is simply too odd to be a coincidence.
Except there is hardly anything remarkable about Ruby having access. He was a cop groupie, a well known face.
He had attended the press conference in the same building the day before.
And the Dallas PD HQ was an absolute zoo, with practically no security or even crowd control.
Oswald was interrogated in a room with a window that allowed gawkers to watch from the hallway.
BS. Please outline that "circumstantial evidence." Have you read Gerald Posner's book, wherein he addresses all the "circumstantial evidence," btw?
I cited Jack Ruby and Oswald's past as two very odd aspects of this case. I'll add the subsequent investigation and the findings of the Warren Commission to that, too.
Since Clinton was brash enough to send Berger to the National Archives to steal documents you can rest assured that the records shipped to Little Rock have been thoroughly cleansed. He will look like a courageous saint to historians.
Since you guys seem knowledgeable, please explain something I have been confused about for awhile. What happened to the brain and why were the records sealed for 75 years? I don't buy the idea that it was "to protect the Kennedy family". Chapiquidick and other Kennedy family foibles have more than discredited that whole bunch so why the pretense?
Wrong. Posner addressed every issue regarding the various conspiracy theories, including Oswald and Ruby's past histories and associations. He was in fact initially more inclined to think there were possible facts that could lead to evidence of an explanation other than the Oswald lone gun theory, but his extensive research convinced him Oswald acted alone.
"The panel also seems to put one of the more gruesome mysteries of the murder to rest. The review board obtained the first testimony proving that Kennedy's military physician, Adm. George Burkley, left Bethesda carrying the president's brain in a bucket. He said he was going to "deliver it to Robert Kennedy." JFK's brain has never been found, and was presumably later interred with the president at Arlington. Indeed, family feeling, not official misconduct, seems to be a more plausible explanation for the questions that surround Dallas. Just after the autopsy, for example, the Kennedys asked many of those present to promise not to talk about the procedure for 25 years. Conspiracy buffs pointed to that wall of silence as proof of a continuing cover-up, when in fact the doctors and staff were merely adhering to the wishes of the family."
But it has not convinced millions of others.
Posners book has just as many holes as the Warren Report.
Okay...you conspiracy people...stop doing the drugs, get off the internet, turn off the X-files, and get a real life. It just offends me more that people--Mark Lane, Robert Grodon, Oliver Stone--are making thousands of dollars off of the paranoid delusions of people who have no control over their own lives. Pick up "Conspiracy of One" by Jim Moore, the best book ever written on the assassination.
PS. when was the last time that any of you conspiracy buffs have kissed a girl.
PSS. Get a real job, and move out of your parent's basement.
Thanks for the information but that just puts the question back where it started. What about the 75 year thing?
Also, I saw a TV reenactment of the shooting either produced by Possner or based on his book. I was disturbed that the computer simulation of the flight of the "magic bullet" did not seem to correspond with John Connally's body position at a key moment as shown in the Zepruder film. However, that was a long time ago and I don't have the material to recheck it.
And would you hire them?!
Would you rent a room to them?!
Let them stay with Mom.
" >> Pick up "Conspiracy of One" by Jim Moore, the best book ever written on the assassination."
Check out the reviews.. -- They belie the best book claims:
Amazon.com: Reviews for Conspiracy of One: The Definitive Book on the Kennedy Assassination: Books
Address:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/0962621927/ref=cm_cr_dp_2_1/103-1898763-5707000?%5Fencoding=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155
" >> PS. when was the last time that any of you conspiracy buffs have kissed a girl.
PSS. Get a real job, and move out of your parent's basement."
Get a grip. -- I've kissed hundreds of girls in 68 years of life, built quite a few houses, and never lived in a basement.
Add to that the difficulty of the shots that Oswald would have had to make to be the sole shooter, and the visual evidence of the President's head snapping back in the wrong direction for the shot to have been Oswald's (notwithstanding Lone Gunman theories that somehow getting shot from behind causes your head to explode backwards) and I (who was 3 at the time) and most of the American public are rightly skeptical of the Oswald as lone gunman whitewash.
It is conceivable that Oswald acted alone, that he got those shots off, was a terrific or lucky marksman, that Ruby was a distraught Kennedy follower, that all those witnesses were wrong about where the sounds came from, etc., etc. I just don't think it's likely. I also don't think it is appropriate for long gunman believers to deny legitimacy to these doubts. They are only a product of the application of common sense, logic and probability. Believe what you want, but the truth is, very few people on this earth know what happened, and you and I are not among them.
You should read Gerald Posner's book.
The world is not Euclidean. The Kennedy assassination has been examined as much as any act could be.
Posner's book presents the evidence clearly and definitively.
It's interesting to note that Mark Lane is the true father of these JFK conspracy theories. He was one the payroll of the KGB at the time his book came out (even before the Warren Commission.)
Mark Lane is also the bravo who brought us the "Winter Soldiers" movement and that hero John Kerry.
I believe the KGB was eager to divert attention away from the fact that a self-proclaimed Communist, a defector to the USSR, and a Fidel Castro afficianado killed Kennedy.
They put a lot of time and money into spinning alternate theories. We see the fruits of their efforts on every one of these benighted threads.
Everybody knows it was CGB Spender that did it.
Ruby's gang ties lead in one direction. The crappy Warren report. Later revelations about CIA assassination attempts against Castro. Later revelations about CIA ties with the mob, and about Jack and Bobby playing footsie with the mob, too. LBJ and his blinding ambition. (His own lawyer later claimed he did it).
As I said, who knows. The lone gunman theory is just one of many theories about who killed Kennedy, and how it was accomplished, and I think it is one of the less plausible theories. You may disagree, but I don't think you should rely on Posner or any one source as the final word.
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