The Kennedy Assassination: Final Answer
By Thomas Dehel
To my knowledge, Thomas Dehel has written one book about the JFK case, plus an online addendum. To subtitle that book Final Answer, and the addendum, Final Proof, is, I believe, really stretching it. Especially since, as we shall see, neither title really fulfills its pretension.
I
Dehel begins his book by going after the 1991 film JFK. He assails the film by demeaning its three main questions about the assassination: Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? And who had the power to cover it up? He says that this was somehow misleading because keeping information secret is not the same as covering up a crime. (p. 14)
To somehow imply at this late date that the Warren Commission was not a cover-up is really a tough one to swallow. We all know today that, as Howard Roffman revealed many years ago in Presumed Guilty, the commission was rigged toward a verdict against Oswald within weeks of its formation, before the first witness was heard. (p. 81) Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin had already assembled an outline with headings like “Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy” and “Evidence Demonstrating Oswald’s Guilt”.
We also know that the Commission lawyers acted on this presumption. Because Sylvia Odio, in an in-person interview with investigator Gaeton Fonzi, revealed that Commission lawyer Wesley Liebeler told her that if they found any indications of conspiracy, Chairman Earl Warren had told them to cover it up. (Fonzi memo of 1/16/76 for the Church Committee, see Probe Magazine, Vol . 3 No. 6) As Fonzi later discovered, that is just what Hoover did in the Odio case at the request of J. Lee Rankin.
Instead of trying to find the three visitors at her door in late September of 1963—Angel, Leopoldo and Leon Oswald—Hoover pasted together a cock and bull story about Loran Hall, Lawrence Howard and William Seymour being the trio Odio saw. As Sylvia Meagher noted in her book, Hoover’s story was made of papier-mache. (Warren Report, p. 324) It fell apart almost as soon as Hoover constructed it. She makes the case that the FBI and the Commission knew this was hogwash before the 26 volumes were issued in November of 1964. But they did not include this countering evidence so they could keep the conclusion that it was not Oswald at Odio’s door. (Accessories After the Fact, p. 387) If that does not qualify as a cover-up, then what does?
Now, if the Commission had allowed Marguerite Oswald’s request for a lawyer to represent her son’s interests before the Commission, this kind of farrago likely would not have happened. But the Commission would not hear of this representation even though she appealed for it.. (Mark Lane, Plausible Denial, pp. 21-22)
Now, if you have decided on the defendant’s guilt before you begin your proceedings, if you have advance orders to cover up anything indicating a conspiracy, and you then deny the defendant any kind of defense during your proceedings, how does this present a fair hearing? To me, these strictures violated at least two key precepts of the judicial system: 1) The presumption of innocence, and 2) The defendant’s right to a defense counsel. Does that not qualify as a rigged game? In addition, the hearings they did hold were closed to the public. So no one knew what was going on at the time they were happening.
Then, if the main resources for your inquiry are J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, James Rowley at the Secret Service and James Angleton at the CIA, how can you trust the incoming information? Does that not constitute a cover-up? Just consider the fact that, as Philip Shenon revealed in A Cruel and Shocking Act, the Warren Commission never talked to Sylvia Duran in Mexico City. And she was the person who had the most interaction with Oswald while he was allegedly there. The Commission never discovered that the CIA had no picture of Oswald entering or exiting either the Russian or the Cuban embassies. And further, as Hoover revealed to President Johnson within days of the assassination, the voice the CIA sent up on audiotape that was supposed to be Oswald was not. (Lane, p. 64)
None of these crucial matters is dealt with in the Warren Report. In fact, they are never even mentioned amid the 888 pages of that report. Yet, they seem to this reviewer to be of the utmost importance to the case. Did Oswald go to Mexico City and do the things the commission says he did? If so, then why can the CIA produce no contemporaneous evidence that he was there? And in the intervening 63 years, they still have not been able to do so. Yet the Warren Report went with what the CIA and, to a lesser extent, what the FBI said he did there. And Dehel appears to go along with this dubious official story about Oswald and his visits in Mexico City. He does not delve into this serious and basic evidentiary problem embedded in the record. (Dehel, pp. 112-16) As we shall see later, there may be a reason for this that is basic to his book.
II
For me, the three questions that Mr. X—played by Donald Sutherland-- posed in Stone’s film are quite valid. Finding a motive is always important in seeking the solution to a crime. That will lead you to who benefited from the crime, in this case a political murder. And in a case as obvious as this one was, the question of who had the power to cover the crime up is, to me, almost integral.
In reality, the three men I mentioned above—Hoover, Rowley and Angleton-- had much to do with that cover-up. On the actual Warren Commission itself, the three most active members were Allen Dulles, John McCloy and Gerald Ford. They disposed of Earl Warren’s first choice for Chief Counsel, Warren Olney, and foisted Lee Rankin on him—with the Oswald did it outline result I mentioned above. (Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, p. 41). And, as he told Valery Giscard d’Estaing of France, Ford went along with the cover-up even though he knew better. (Le Parisien magazine, November 21, 2013) Surprisingly, Dehel calls these men extremely respected Americans. (p. 29)
Dehel then states that the 1991 film JFK conveys the message that Lyndon Johnson was behind the concept of the Warren Commission. In watching the film as many times as I have—which is several—I do not come away with that message. I have always felt that the film points toward a combination CIA/Pentagon/Wall Street plot and, in turn, that power base chose covert operator Col. Ed Lansdale to organize the scheme.
It is true, as the author states, that the idea of the Commission was not Johnson’s. It came in from two principal outside sources: Yale Law School Dean Gene Rostow and nationally syndicated columnist Joe Alsop. Dehel names the first. (Dehel, pp. 15-18) He all but ignores Alsop. Even though Alsop was very much more influential on Johnson’s decision than Rostow was. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 3-16)
Dehel tries to make the case that the pressure that Johnson placed on men like Senator Richard Russell and Earl Warren to serve on the Commission was because of his sincere belief that there was a danger of nuclear war breaking out. This was due to the CIA information about the alleged activities of Oswald in Mexico City. This is a defensible position, but it should be noted that Johnson was told by Hoover that neither the picture nor the audio tape sent up by the Agency was of Oswald. That did not deter him. Although, as we know, six weeks later, Hoover understood that the CIA had given him a snow job on Oswald in Mexico City. He wrote such in the marginalia of a memo. (DiEugenio and Pease, p. 224)
Dehel also assails JFK for its insinuation of a plot designed to promote the Vietnam War. (p. 14). Whether or not this was the reason, or a main reason for the conspiracy, is something that will never be known for sure. (As we shall see, it is more plausible than the motivating factor that Dehel is going to proffer.)
But it turns out that everything that the film said about JFK vs LBJ on Vietnam was accurate. Kennedy was getting out of Vietnam at the time of his death. Johnson reversed that decision with NSAM 273 and especially NSAM 288 in March. The Assassination Records Review Board declassified a tranche of documents that proved this point quite cogently. (NY Times, 12/23/97, story by Tim Weiner.) Afterward, a series of books followed to further hammer that point home, e.g., Gordon Goldstein’s Lessons in Disaster, David Kaiser’s American Tragedy, James Blight’s Virtual JFK, and more.
So whether or not this was the deciding issue for the plotters is an unknown factor. But the point the film made, that the policy was reversed and that Johnson was instrumental in that reversal, is now proven and cannot be debated. Mr. Dehel is quite obsolete on the issue. He sounds like the late George Lardner of the Washington Post in the summer of 1991.
III
From here, Dehel goes into the Bay of Pigs episode of 1961 and the Missile Crisis of 1962. I have written and researched both of these events at length and in depth. I disagree with his rather brief takes on both of them. But it is true that the Cuban exiles were not happy with the result of either. (p. 42)
Following this, the author says that there are four threads to the story that linked up with Oswald “and his very peculiar life trail”. And supposedly led him to participate in the JFK murder. These were specifically:
- The radical right hatred of JFK, as exhibited by General Walker
- The so-called Central American Plan
- The CIA’s AM/LASH plot to kill Castro
- Mercenary forces and their paramilitary operations against Fidel.
After having reviewed the author’s data, I have a hard time buying this thesis of the four threads. For instance, agreeing with Gerald McKnight, I do not think Oswald had anything to do with the Walker shooting. I believe that it was an FBI concoction to frame Oswald for committing a violent crime prior to the JFK assassination. (Breach of Trust, pp. 49-58) Dehel admits some of these problems, but he discounts them. (pp. 104-05)
Having read his entire book and taken notes, I still do not understand how Cuban national Rolando Cubela—the subject of the AM/LASH plot- fits into Oswald’s life.
Which leaves us with the Central American Plan and the mercenaries. And this is the key nexus point of the book. Dehel is saying something that I do not recall anyone else ever proclaiming. Namely, that Luis Somoza of Nicaragua wanted Castro out in 1963 and had begun a campaign of infiltration and subversion against Cuba, which resulted in a plot to kill JFK. (p. 65)
To make a long story short, Somoza—who was not even president of Nicaragua when Kennedy was killed—understood that he and his allies were not strong enough to overthrow Castro. So they utilized a plan that is rather familiar to anyone who has read, say, twenty books on the JFK case. They were going to set up a Castro sympathizer in order to blame Fidel and get the USA to overthrow the Cuban dictator.
Now, who does the author use to further this Nicaragua remodeled paradigm? Gerry Hemming and Gilberto Alvarado. Hemming was a member of Interpen, one of these paramilitary groups operating in the south against Cuba. Interpen operated a lot out of Florida, but also in Louisiana and Texas. Hemming told so many stories to so many different writers that I ended up not taking him very seriously.
Hemming talked at length to Harry Livingstone, AJ Weberman, John Newman, Tony Summers, Noel Twyman, Mark Lane, Gordon Winslow and more. According to Lane, he even seemed to agree with the whole Marita Lorenz traveling caravan to Dallas to kill Kennedy. He once said that he introduced Oswald to Jim Angleton. He also said that Oswald was in Florida and in Havana. Two places he was never supposed to be. Hemming told Tim Gratz that Trujillo was financing the Kennedy murder. Hemming also said that he knew who one of the spotters was in Dealey Plaza, and how the real shooters disabled the elevator shaft in the depository and climbed down by ropes to escape. (See Spartacus Educational, Hemming entry)
For many reasons—which I do not have to explain-- I do not find much of the above to be credible. But Dehel somehow believes Hemming. A point we will get to later.
IV
Dehel seems to be cynical about Oswald being any kind of intelligence agent. (p. 95). He even frowns on George DeMohrenschildt being on a mission when he befriended the Oswalds. According to Dehel, this was done out of compassion and pity. He then says that Ruth Paine was an interesting character, but perhaps not a direct factor in the JFK assassination. I should add that George himself told Edward Epstein he would have never met Oswald unless he was asked to do so by CIA Station Chief J. Walton Moore. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, second edition, p. 338) As per Ruth Paine, I refer the reader to Max Good’s fine film, The Assassination and Mrs. Paine. But, although he frowns on these two, he takes seriously the Marina Oswald story about Oswald wanting to hijack a plane to Cuba. (p. 110). I think he does this in order to make Oswald out to be a real communist. Another way he does this is by discounting Oswald’s associations with Guy Banister and David Ferrie in New Orleans. He treats both men in the space of about four sentences total. (pp. 224-25)
To cut to the chase: Dehel uses Howard Brennan as a witness to Oswald being on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository at the time of the assassination. And he thinks Oswald fired two shots at Kennedy that day. But there was a second assassin on the grassy knoll. He apparently takes seriously the whole Gilberto Alvarado story about Oswald being paid 6,500 dollars to kill Kennedy. Alvarado was born in Nicaragua and said he witnessed this payment in the Cuban embassy in September in Mexico City. (p. 174)
The Alvarado story has been discredited so many times, as has Howard Brennan, that I really do not want to deal with it anymore. (For a good demolition of the former, see Gerald McKnight, Breach of Trust, pp. 72-79; for a destruction of Brennan, see Vince Palamara, Honest Answers, pp. 186-89) There has never been any credible evidence that Oswald was on the sixth floor of the depository at the time of the shooting. And the fact that Sebastian La Tona of the FBI could not get any prints of value off the rifle in evidence the night of the murder is compelling evidence that someone else was firing from behind. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 214) The other problem that Dehel does not address is that, as the film JFK Revisited showed, the rifle in evidence is not the rifle in the alleged backyard photograph. Therefore, on these key issues, the book’s main thesis does not hold water for this reader.
Should I add that the author also thinks Oswald killed Tippit—and he spells the patrolman’s name wrong on top of it. (p. 218) He also states that Oswald actually tried to draw his gun in the Texas Theater as the police approached him. (ibid) As per the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby, he says there was no connection between the two men. (p. 220)
To give him his due, in his online discussion called The Proof, he is much more persuasive on the acoustical evidence proving there was a crossfire in Dealey Plaza that day. I give him credit for that, even though I was convinced by other evidence of this fact.
All in all, the book was a disappointment. I still do not understand why so many authors ignore the evidence of the Assassination Records Review Board when writing their books. It’s almost like that body never existed.
