The Death of JFK: Was the Mob Involved?

The names or organized crime figures run throughout this story. They were unhappy with Bobby Kennedy and the president’s lack of gratitude. They saw the Bay of Pigs invasion as a way to recover their casions in Cuba. The mob had such a close working relationship with the C.I.A. that it is unthinkable that it would have attempted to take out the president without the agency’s consent and help.

Jimmy Hoffa, a mob and a target of persecution by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, hated the Kennedys and thought that the death of President Kennedy would diminish his problems. On July 23, 1963, he told Frank Ragano, his lawyer , “The time has come for your friend ( Santo Trafficante, Jr.) and Carlos ( Marcello) to get rid of him, kill that son-of-a-bitch John Kennedy.” Ragano passed on the message, and it was clear that Hoffa had siscussed this with the mobsters before. Speaking of the death of JFK, Hoffa later said, “I’ll never forget what Carlos and Santo did for me.” After Kennedy was shot, Hoffa called Ragano celebrating that the mob had killed Kennedy. Just before he died, Santo told Ragano, “I think Carlos fucked up in getting rid of Giovanni ( John)—maybe it should have been Bobby.” Santo has warned Rogano not to talk to Melvin Belli about Ruby’s reasons for killing Lee Harvey Osdwald, but it appearfs that Santos meant not to ask Belli about that, fefaring that Mel would somehow reveal a Trafficanti or Marcelllo link to the assassination. From what Santos said, it can be inferred that Marcello had some direct involvement in the aswsassination, but this would not mean it was completely a mob job.

Robert Kennedy who told associates that the mafia killed his brother but that there was nothing he could do about it. One of the witnesses against Bolden subsequently recanted. Waldron believed that the Mafia—namely godfathers Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante and Johnny Roselli-- alone engineered the death of Kennedy but used David Morales of the C.I.A. and the patsy Oswald. Robert Kennedy deported Marcello, the New Orleans mob boss, to Guatemalla in 1961, but the mob leader quickly returned to Louisiana aboard a small plane operated by David Ferrie. Ferrie had run Lee Harvey Oswald’s Civil Air Patrol Unit . Due to a condition called alope C.I.A., he had no hair, so he had false eyebrows and a red wig. Marcello, by all accounts, was furious with Bob by Kennedy. Ferrie was central to Jim Garrison’s theories about the assassination. But at the time, there was not conclusive evidence that Ferrie had not known Oswald. There is now a photograph and film footage that remove es all doubt about this.

Marcello and Ferrie’s alleged plot was to be covered by intertwining it with a secret plan to invade Cuba and set off a coup there. We know now that Morales ranked higher than David Attlee Phillips, who has often been mentioned in connection with the assassination. Maybe Morales was able to manipulate Phillips. Marcello had power in Dallas, where his underboss Joe Civello ran some rackets. The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigators thought they had good evidence that Phillips met with Oswald two months before the assassination, but Phillips testified that he did not know Oswald.

Roselli was a friend of William King Harvey, a shadowy C.I.A. agent known as “the American James Bond,” who has rarely been photographed. Very little is known or written about him. Harvey was instrumental in recruiting Roselli for the assassination of Fidel Castro, and the two had a small party after Bobby Kennedy pulled the plug on Operation Mongoose on June 20, 1963. Though the Kennedy brothers opposed the operation, Harvey continued his efforts to have Castro killed. Anthony Summers thinks Harvey tried to line up through the Corsican Mafia in Marseilles Thomas Davis, Christian David, and Lucien Sarti to assassinate John F. Kennedy. Noel Tyman thinks that in addition to this French squad, he organized a C.I.A. team and a US mafia hit squad. Tyman adds that Harvey’s motive was anger that JFK had stripped him of the power to order assassinations. According to the multiple team theory, the US mafia team consisted of Richard Cain, Chuckie Nicoletti, and Felix "Milwaukee Phil" Alderisio. There was a decoy team in the train yards to confuse the Secret Service, Alderisio. Peter Dale Scott believes the evidence against Harvey was part of a frame-up designed to protect some mafia biggies, J. Edgar Hoover, and James Jesus Angleton. One thing is certain, Harvey had been very effective in nailing Nazi networks and unearthing important Communist spies. After the assassination, he was moved to Italy to head the station there, and he hated Robert Kennedy for bringing about the transfer.



Some believe that in addition to Oswald and Eugene Hale Brading ( Jim Braden), the other shooters were named Jimmy Frattiano and Johnny Roselli. Roselli, a Chicago Mafioso serving under Sam Giancano, later claimed he knew what had happened and he told Jack Anderson that Jack Ruby was ordered to make sure Oswald remained silent. We know that Brading and Roselli were in Dallas that day. Braden arrived on November 21 and took a room at the Cabana Motel. He, along with Jack Ruby, met with millionaire H.L. Hunt. The night after the assassination, Ruby went to the Cabana Motel. In 1968, the LA Police interviewed him because he was there at the time of the assassination of RFK. The claim that Frattiano was there is based upon a doubful but interesting source, The Gemstone Files, being notes compiled by a man who seems to have spent years in a San Francisco bar frequented by C.I.A. and ONI agents. Mob motives would be President Kennedy’s lack of gratitude for mob support in the election of 1960 and anger over Bobby Kennedy’s harassment of organized crime.


A standard hit would have involved the three professionals having a timer, who told when to fire, and a back-up man to pick up the spent shells. Frattiano was supposedly in Dal-Tex building, across from the Texas School Book Depository. It houses the Dallas Police. It makes some sense that the shooters were there and other places behind Kennedy. Professional assassins have said that it would have been easier to hit the moving target from behind, and an added advantage was there were no Secret Service screen men running behind the car. They were in front of the car and might have been able to spot a shooter.

Roselli was supposed to be behind a fence on the knoll and this contradicts the above theory. There were witnesses who swore they saw a shooter there. Others swore they encountered two fake Secret Service men, who were probably there to protect the shooter. Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman ran toward the knoll and encountgered a man there who showed him Secret Service identification. Weitzman later identified the man as Bernard Barker, then a C.I.A. asset. The Secret Service said none of its people were there then. If there were a shooter there he would have to have been partially concealed. We will never know what happened since Kennedy’s brain was lost after it was moved from the National Archives.

Robert “Tosh” Plumlee was on the south knoll that day and did not see Roselli in D Plaza. Plumlee had often acted as a C.I.A. contract pilot over a 31 year period. He insists there is a Life photograph that shows him on the grassy knoll. At that time he was co-pilot and part of a military intelligence team that flew into Dallas aboard a Military Air Transport plane to abort the assassination. There were several Cubans who had worked for the C.I.A.. There were nine members of the team, one to look for each of the supposed nine people involved in triangulating Kennedy. Each of three units would have had a spotter, shooter, and break-down man. The abort team failed in its mission and left Dallas at 2 PM. Roselli did not return to the safe house on Bar Harbor Drive or to the plane. It is hard to believe that the military would have placed Roselli on the abort team given the fact that there were so many rumors afloat that the mob wanted to take Kennedy out. However, Plumlee stuck by his opinion that Roselli could be trusted and warned the F.B.I. that Roselli was slated for assassination two weeks before his death. In August, 1976, Roselli’s body was in a barrel. His legs were cut off also also stuffed in it.

Maybe Roselli was there to identify Charles Nicoletti, a Chicago mobster and ace hitman allegedly sent there to be one of the shooters. F.B.I. files show that Plumlee knew Roselli far better than he let on and that they had worked together since the late 50s on behalf of the C.I.A.. In 1963, Plumlee thought Roselli was working for the State Department. Perhaps the the plan was to have Roselli help find the shooters, but it is likely that he had other notions.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations was told by Colonel Robert E. Jones that there was an army intelligence team of about a dozen members in Dallas in plain clothes that day to protect Kennedy. The Pentagon denied this was true, saying it could find no records on Army personnel assigned to that duty. Perhaps Jones was talking about the abort team.

In 1994, James Files, an inmate in a Joliet prison, said that he shot John F. Kennedy from the grassy knoll. Later, a man and his son dug up a cartridge casing on the grassy knoll that Files later said was his. In fact, the casing was probably manufactured in 1971 or later. Files worked for David Atlee Phillips in training Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion and that he had met Oswald through Phillips. Through Phillips, he also met Clay Shaw, whom we now know had a history with the C.I.A.’s Special Operations Section. Some believe Phillips orchestrated the disinformation phase of the assassination plot because he was tied to so many anti-Castro Cubans.

At the time, he was 21 years old and using his real name, James Sutton. He was the driver for Chuck Nicoletti and drove a vehicle with weapons to Dallas. He claims to have spent a little time with Oswald, but never discussed the assassination of Kennedy with him. , Files claimed he was with Oswald in Mesquite, Texas, and he added that Oswald may not have had a drivers license but he could drive an automobile. He also described some men giving Jack Ruby and others Secret Service identifications. According to Files, the assassination was first planned for Chicago. He knew that Roselli had been flown into Dallas as part of an effort to abort the hit. He claimed to be a friend of anti-Castro leader Antonio Ve C.I.A.na and said that his friend was not involved in the assassination. Before the assassination David Atlee Phillips of the C.I.A. recruited him to train Cuban exiles for the Bay of Pigs invasion. Files claimed that George H.W. Bush was his supervisor at another point in his career. At that time, Bush was a Texas businessman, and it is possible that he was also serving as a part-time C.I.A. agent. Former C.I.A. agent wrote that in the 1950s the agency used some business men on a part time basis and others on an on-call basis. In other cases, they agents used business activity as a cover.

Files also implicates Johnny Roselli. Giancana had been contracted by Robert Maheu of the C.I.A. and F.B.I. to kill Castro. Giancana gave the task to Roselli. When the House Select Committee questioned him in 1978 he hinted that he had also been contyracted to kill Kennedy and that wealthy Cuban exiles put up the money. His body then turned up floating in a drum off the Florida Coast. Maheu was also Howard Hughes’ right hand man, and it is likely that Howard Hughes was used as a cover for the Castro hit. Hughes has long used the PR firm Carl Byoir Associates, which many have tied to Nazi interests.

Shortly before the assassination, Nicorelli recruited him as one of the shooters, and he was paid $30,000. Files said he was on the knoll and used redesigned Remington XD-100 Fireball pistol that used .221 long rounds. Files said he aimed to an eye but that Kennedy was hit from behind and that the Files mercury bullet went into the left temple. The sequence of those shots fits the Zapruder film and what some witnesses saw, particularly Lee Bowers, who operated the railroad tower. Nicoletti , firing from a building across the street from the Texas School Book Depositiory. To his knowledge the shooters were himself, Roselli, and Nicolett. Joe Granati, who was also connected to the Giancana organization, said that Nicoletti twice told him the shooters were : Nicoletti, Roselli, Marshall Caifano, and Jimmy Sutton (Files). More than a decade later Files was guarding Nicoletti after Roselli and Sam Giancana had been killed. Chuck allegedly gave Files a pasckage to hide, which included Secret Service identifications, a map of the parade route, and Nicoletti’s diary. Files claims he has stashed the diary and will not talk about it.

Nicoletti told interviewers that he had as habit of biting bullet casings after they were used and that he bit the Kennedy casing and set it on a fence on the Knoll. Seven years before that John Rademacher found a casing there five inches under ground. It was oval. Eventually four dental experts agreed that it had been bitten. Files did not reach out to investigators. Led by a tip from a retired F.B.I. agent, Joe West found Files, who refused to talk for a long time. West did not learn that much before his strange death in a hospital after a successful operation. His last attending physi C.I.A.n cannot be identified or found. Bob Vernon followed up where West left off, but there is much Files will not discuss. Files decided to say more when he concluded that West was murdered. He had written a note for his family urging them to get him out of the hospital before he was killed. Oliver Stone visited him thrice trying to get him to sign a contract. Files disliked the man and refused to sign or say anything.

There have been many attacks on Files, but his account his account does fit those of Chauncey Holt and Plumlee. A subtle attack says he said he drove Nicoletti to Dallas, whereas he clearly states that Nicoletti came in from an Arizona ranch. The main line of attack has been his weapon. Some said it did not exist yet, that it could not hit a moving target without a bipod, or that there was too much recoil. None of these claims hold up. As for the mercury bullet; that claim cannot be tested because Kennedy’s brain post mortem material has disappeared from the National Archives. The Soviet Intelligence Study of the assassination concludes that this bullet was filled with mercury which exploded and spread when it stopped. His claim to have met Richard Helms is bothersome, but it could have happened when he was helping prepare for the Bay of Pigs invasion. He said he did some intelligence work in Laos while in the service but all of those records have disappeared. It is a puzzle how he knew about the Plumlee abort flight, but it is now well documented. He did have conversations with Roselli in later years.

This story cannot be verified. Just to confuse things more, Files said that he had briefly worked for the C.I.A. in the early 1960s, training opponents of Castro. Perhaps this is when he met David Atlee Phillips. Files claims he was pressured by the F.B.I. to say Oswald was the lone shooter, and one agent was threatened with a loss of his pension if he told what he knew about Files and Nicoletti. Hoover argued, as did some subsequent researchers, that the mob had enough on Kennedy that a hit was unnecessary. However, this would not have prevented the mob from accepting payment for assisting in an effort initiated by others.

Witnesses have turned up who claim Files was at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963. A former C.I.A. agent/Army officer has also said Files ( then Sutton) was part of the Miami C.I.A. operation in 1961. Though Files knew many details concerning the event, some aspects of his story seem inconsistent. It would make good sense for someone connected with the C.I.A. to place Files at the murder scene. Likewise, the image of the mob as a powerful organization can only be enhanced by such claims.

Years later Sam Giancana bragged to relatives that he was in Dallas to supervise the assassination. He said "Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson knew about the whole damn thing” and added that he met with both of them just prior to the shooting. According to his son Sam and half brother Chuck, Nixon was doing favors for Sam, Sr. since he was a young Congressman. The older Sam told them, "Nixon's done me some favors, all right, got us some highway contracts, worked with the unions and overseas. And we've helped him and his C.I.A. buddies out, too. Shit, he even helped my guy in Texas, (Jack) Ruby, get out of testifying in front of Congress back in forty-seven … By sayin' Ruby worked for him." There is a 1947 memo from an F.B.I. official to a Congressional committee that states: "It is my sworn testimony that one Jack Rubenstein of Chicago ... is performing information functions for the staff of Congressman Richard Nixon, Republican of California. It is requested Rubenstein not be called for open testimony in the aforementioned hearings." Giancana once remarked that the mob and the C.I.A. are “two sides of the same coin.” Sometimes that was also true of the Outfit and the F.B.I..

In 1995, agent Gene Wheaton approached the Assassinations Information Review Board with the claim that he knew Cuban C.I.A. assets participated in the assassination. He was boarding in the home of a retired agent, Carl E. Jenkins, who had been helping Cubans get in and out of Cuba and his host as well as several Cubans talked about their roles. In 2005, he said both Jenkins and Rafael ‘Chi Chi’ Quintero were involved. Jenkins had been made head of the Cuban project in 1960.

There were many reports about mob discussions of impending death of John F. Kennedy. On November 20, 1963, Melba Christine Marcades (Rose Cheramie) was thrown out of a car in Louisiana. State Police Lieutenant France Fruge.interviewed her, found she might have been under the influence of a drug, and reported that two mafia members told her they were on the way to Dallas to kill Kennedy. Fruge informed Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas police, who did not follow up. Eunice, Louisiana authorities requestioned her after the assassination and she said Ruby was so close to Oswald they were in bed together. No record of that interrogation survives. She died September 4, 1965 after again being thrown from a car in Big Sandy, Texas. Speaking of strange deaths, Jim Koethe, who was with Ruby in his apartment before Jack killed Oswald, was murderes several months later.

The Nature of Parahistory, Part Two

Only a few mainstream historians have not touched the assassination of JFK, RFK, or Martin Luther King, Jr. The exception is David Kaiser of the Navy War College, who has written a good book on the death of JFK that was published by the Harvard University Press. Questions have been raised as to whether Harvard should give legitimacy to conspiracy theory. He asked “Cui bono” and tackled a question that can probably never be resolved—two characteristics of “conspiracy theory.”

Historians have also steered away from 9/11. In all of these cases, there is not enough evidence to establish irrefutable cases that conspiracy was involved. By not seriously exploring those subjects, historians tacitly endorse the lone nut theory in respect to the assassinations and some implausible official explanations of 9/11. It is forgotten that George Orwell was not so wrong when he wrote, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful . . . and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” He also said, “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." This is why coincidences, discrepancies, and holes in official stories. We owe this to future generations.

Many leading historians were reared in a time when it was simply unthinkable that Americans, some of whom being security employees, would plot to murder a US president or prominent political figure. In dealing with a great deal of United States history, they could safely join A. M.Schlesinger, Jr. in accepting Blaise Pascal’s dictum that “Man is neither angel nor brute.” But there have been other times and places when the opposite might be operable: man can be both and brute. This was scertainly applicable to Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin. One hesitates to place Oliver North and Dick Cheney in their company, but the possibility deserves examining.

In the 1950s, conservatives, led by Joe McCarthy, were propounding all sorts of conspiracy theories, and they enjoyed a lot of support in the mainstream press. Today, they offer knee-jerk denunciations of notions they violently oppose as “conspiracy theories,” and are joined in these comments by much of the mainstream press. They object to people who claim that some in government aim at enhancing the power and wealth of privileged elites. Of course, no one would gather in a Cabinet room, board room, or Pentagon office to strategize, plan, or conspire to accomplish goals that are not in the interest of most people. Watergate was not a conspiracy any more than effort to invade Iraq was! The suggestion that people at the top could have a secret agenda is usually met with a patronizing smile. We know they are just there to protect and serve.

“Conspiracy theorists” are said to be people who are inclined to doubt commonly accepted explanations of events and to look for more complex explanations. For example such people note that Winston Churchill’s grand history of World War II placed too emphasis upon the Soviet contribution to victory. They qestion the British official casualties figure for the third Battle of Ypres ( often called the battle of Passchendaele—238,000. Even General Haig put the figure at 500,000. The British Public Records Office is still sitting on records that could settle the matter. Even the cabinet records for 1914-1918 are still closed to the public. Since 1954, about 200,000 people in Guatemala have been tortured, raped, murdered, and disappeared. Much of this grisly activity was undertaken with the full cooperation of US intelligence agencies.

Our government refuses to open records on these deaths, though President Clinton reluctantly did open records on Americans who were killed there. More recently, the US seized the records of the thugs who ruled Haiti from 1991 to 1994 and has refused to return them. This is probably because those US-backed rulers killed 3,000 people and the records would show the complicity of our intelligence people. Who can forget Oliver North publicly explaining how he shredded hundreds of documents related to the Iran/Contra scandal? In all these matters, we are expected to accept the official explanation.
Most people would not object to the claim that the conspiracy theorists are probably psychologically disoriented in some way. The very term “conspiracy theorist” is a put-down and automatic dismissal and appeals to the belief that people work in secrecy very seldom, if ever. As William March said, “[G]ood people are rarely suspicious: they cannot imagine others doing the things they themselves are incapable of doing….” We don’t want to think ill of others, especially of those who rule. Most people are fundamentally decent and cannot imagine that elected officials would betray them in sinister ways. There are massive advertising operations, backed by deep research in psychology, that persuade people that nothing is amiss. A third rerason for being hostile to so-called conspiracy theories is that knowledge brings with it the responsibility to act on what we know.
We Americans know that in repressive societies the truth is manipulated on a daily basis because the ability to shape what is perceived is true is the untimate power mechanism. In a democracy, this cannot happen because we have an inquiring press and a well-informed public.

Over the years, the United States has become a national security state. To build this state, officials repeatedly relied on th eir own conspiracy theory, asserting that there was a communist conspiracy to take over the world. and domestically more and more power has been gathered in fewer and fewer corporate hands. These developments made it necessary and possible for the national security mechanism and the corporate powers to manipulate opinion more and more. To acknowledge such is not a pleasant matter, and some people can do so more easily than others. Even Albert Einstein lapsed into conspiracy theory when he suggested that there were powerful interests that benefited by continuation of the Cold War: “The men who possess real power in this country have no intention of ending the cold war."

It seems that denial is the best unconscious psychic self-defense mechanism for many. It shields us from anxiety and guilt. Six years after the US invaded Iraq, most Americans believe Saddah Husein was involved in 9/11. Not to believe so could bring about guilt that we are not doing enough to demand honesty in government. Or guilt that we twice entrusted the executive branch to scheming liars. Or the recognition could bring on fear. If Cheney and his friends could lie about Saddam and Weapons of Mass Destruction, they might lie about other things. This is why people talk about “unpleasant truths.” Truth is often very unsettling, and sometimes there is little we can do about really bad situations. To protect ones self from disinforemation, spin, and manipulation does not mean believing everything that comes down the pike.

Truth has a great deal to do with keeping democracy alive. When people stop looking hard for it, they have surrendered their power to influence what government does. Without truth, democracy and republicanism begin to wither. If someone can contol our view of the present they control us. Orwell noted "Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past." That is why it is so important that historians and journalists construct an accurate account of what is goind on today so that republicans and democracy can survive into tomorrow.

Mathematicians have combinatorial analysis, combinatory, or combinatorie. It uses the mathematics of probability to learn how likely it is for certain configurations of objects and sets to occur together. If only historians had a tool that precise. We know that odd coincidences sometimes occur in real life and that sometimes simple, seemingly explanations are accurate. At other times, simple explanations see all too facile and the coincidences seem too many and too improbable. We know that eye-witnesses to traumatic and chaotic events are often wrong, but what should we conclude when many of them insist they saw the same thing which is flat out excluded from an official account. These involve matters of judgment. Oddly, there is one great similarity between some people labeled as “conspiracy theorists” and those who willingly accept even the most improbably official explanations. They both want simple, all inclusive explanations that are built on too few facts. Hence, some build elaborate explanations that always lead back to the Vatican, Jesuits, Jews, Freemasons, or a murky group called the Illuminati. Those who seek the simplistic, thin explanations going back to the Illuminati or some other demonic group might deserve the term conspiracy theorist.
The problem is that the term “conspiracy theory” is used to marginalize other people who advance reasonable arguments based more than a few facts that are contrary to accepted truth. People in government and their apologist most commonly use the term and apply it to those who rock the boat by doubting official explanations. In earlier times, people who doubted the conventional wisdom were called heretics and witches. Even though the conspiracy theorists can point to implausible aspects of conventional wisdom and too many coincidences heaped upon coincidences, those who go about labeling people conspiracy theorists are really saying that those people should not be listened to. The word “theorist” is used to suggest that these people construct explanations out of thin air; hence, their views are based on theory and not evidence. A careful examination of “conspiracy theories” suggests that they are almost always based on facts. The problem is that they often rely on facts that have been overlooked by those who construct the conventional wisdom.

So called conspiracy theorists are accused of being paranoiac. Poet William Burroughs said “`Paranoia means having all the facts.” Of course, in dealing with historical events, all the facts simply cannot be found. It is enough to have fore reasonable factual information than that possessed by purveyors of the conventional wisdom. That justified raising questions, and, if there is ample evidence, even hypothesizing on what could be other explanations. Those who crave the CIA+Watergate stumble over the truth, but they pick themselves up and continue on as if nothing had happened.” None of us are that good at finding the truth. If we don’t look and develop a reverence for it, we mill rarely make its acquaintance.

The label came into widespread use after the assiassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. The implication was that the findings of the Warren Commission were to be taken on faith, including the crazy lone gunman and particularly the magical single bullet theory that claimed that the same bullet, following a very odd trajectory, hit Kennedy and Connally came out in pristine condition and turned up on a stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital. This is the famous exhibit #399, the mysterious, undamaged bullet. Conspiracy theories often attribute events to concealed plots by individuals or an individual effect events in some way. In this case, it might boil down to whether the death of Joyhn Kennedy was the work of one man’s plot or that of several people or groups. The official story is that three shots were fired, with one missing. That left two to inflict seven wounds in Kennedy and Connally. The House Select Committee on Assassinations ruled in the 1970s that four shots were fired.

Today, those who question the official explanation of 9/11 are considered unstable conspiracy theorists. The evidence is clear that just as J. Edgar Hoover moved heaven and earth to steer the Warren Commission toward predetermined conclusions. 9/11 staff director Philip Zelikow worked overtime to produce a report that concealed the Bush administration's low level of interest in the terrorist threat. The record shows that a NORAD two star general told the commission that he was above Washington coordinating a response when Flight 93 was to appear in the area. The fact is that commission investigators learned from NORAD tapes that he was lying; the Air Force was unaware of Flight 93, which was to crash in Pennsylvania. The commission would not have learned that had it not finally screwed up its courage to subpoena tapes, which it was first told did not exist. The Bush White House stonewalled on every front from the beginning, and Speaker Dennis Hastert stood in the way of the commission even getting all the records the congressional investigators had acquired. Yet, the so called benighted conspiracy theorists are denounced for not being sufficiently trusting.

Nellie Connelly kept notes on what she thought happened. She insisted that there three shots, but she seemed to reject the magic bullet theory.. The first bullet hit Kennedy, because the governor wheeled around and saw that Kennedy had been hit. The second hit John Connelly, and she said the third hit Kennedy in the head. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was generally considered a conspiracy theorist of the worst sort because his explanations of the assassination of John F. Kennedy seemed far-fetched. That judgment of Garrison was also rooted in solid fact and that there is a CIA memo dated April 1, 1967 reveals that the agency cranked up a disinformation campaign against Jim Garrison. When Garrison left office, his successor, Harry Connick, Sr., destroyed the records of the investigation.
TWA Flight 800, a 747-100, exploded over Long Island on July 17, 1996. 230 people perished. Scores of people saw something looking like a missile hit the plane. The official explanation was that the explosion was due to a bad electrical circuit. They were called “conspiracy theorists.” Three days after the crash, the Jerusalem Post reported that a French Defense official said the missile would have been US because terrorists weapons did not have the capability to do that much damage. .A retired White House press secretary, taken in by a former pilot trying to peddle a bogus radar tape, did himself some harm by claiming there was a cover-up and that he was privy to damning evidence. Two hundred miles south of the site and in September, 1996, two pilots reported seeing what they thought was a missile. We do not know if naval exercise were being conducted then, but they were underway when TWA exploded. Red residue was found in three rows of the plane, and some thought it similar to the color of rocket fuel. The NTSB report stated that Dr. Charles Bassett found that it was seat glue. However, the learned doctor later swore out a statement saying that was not what he found. . In this case, there probably is not enough evidence available to decide who is right or what happened. But if one persists in simply doubting what we have been told, one is a conspiracy theorist.

Some of us recall that The Washington Post insisted that those who claimed that Oliver North was engaged in illegal trade with Iran and forbidden supplying of right wing militias in Nicaragua were way off base. They were wacko conspiracy theorist. It even censored a Jack Anderson column on Iran/Contra. Readers had to be protected from conspiracy theorists! Then it distorted information coming out of Charles Rangel’s subcommittee investigation into the Contra drug trade and refused to print Rangel’s letter of complaint. More recently, the Post. joined the rest of the mainline press in protecting readers from information that the Bush Administration had lied about weapons of mass destruction in order to invade Iraq. There is a long history of the press avoiding such stories even though conspiracies of businessmen, politicians and others also have a long history. That’s how business is done here.

There is so much clamor about “conspiracy theories” that we have come to almost believe conspiracies do not occur. Adam Smith thought tradesmen got together to raise prices. There were all sorts of conspiracies to defraud US railroad investors in the late 19th century. In the early twentieth century, providers of electricity colluded to set p[ices and at mid century people met in hotel rooms to set prices in their bids for government contracts. How soon we forget. Watergate was a conspiracy, and who can be blamed for thinking there was a conspiracy to lead the US into invading Iraq. Someday, there might be enough printed evidence to prove this. At the moment, there are many intelligent people who canot figure out why the US made such a massive investment there. All they knmow is that the official story does not hold water.

Often so-called conspiracy theories gone too far in putting aside theories assign causation to large and distant social and economic forces. Conspiracy theorists prefer to look at concrete events and they believe that people are behind almost all events and that , as in the past, people have a way of scheming, lying, cheating, cooperating with others, and doing anything necessary to acquire money and power and then working overtime to cover their tracks.

If you were an historian writing a textbook about recent times, you might resort to stating that the US invaded Iraq, that the stated reason was belief that Saddam had WMDs, and that after the invasion many expressed doubts that the story about WMDs was fabricated. Rock solid evidence would not permit going much further. If one were to add a possible explanation that relied upon broad historical forces, or perhaps geopolitical theory, it would be methodologically acceptable and also could not be checked out. It can be argued that the default position for the historian is to fall back on official government sources and what is printed in newspapers of record. The method has a certain conservative bias. Four years after the invasion, the White House admitted that millions of its e-mails had inadvertently been lost. Are there aspects of what happened that could not be documented any other way than through those e-mails? Historians have a strong bias against conspiracy theories in part because they associate them with the ravings of the populists, Father Charles Coughlin, and Senator Joseph McCarthy.

On the other hand, leftists are not much given to conspiracy theories and are inclined to buy the official 9/11 story in its main outlines because they are more likely to think in terms of historical forces. A major basket of exceptions include the reasons for building and deploying the atomic bomb and US policy in t he early cold war. Perhaps some historians have come to consider conspiracies because a growing number of them no longer come from the moneyed elite, as had once been the case. It is still recalled with some embarrassment that a president of the American Historical Association nearly four decades ago worried about what would happen to the craft as Jews, Catholics, children of recent immigrants, and products of the working class entered the profession. Maybe these people would be less inclined to assume that those with power and wealth usually behaved as gentlemen and were animated by noblesse oblige.