November 21, 2004: Headlines: COS - Ghana: Presidents - Kennedy: Daily Nation: I was in Ghana when one of my peace corps teaching colleagues informed me that United States President ohn F. Kennedy (JFK) had been shot
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November 21, 2004: Headlines: COS - Ghana: Presidents - Kennedy: Daily Nation: I was in Ghana when one of my peace corps teaching colleagues informed me that United States President ohn F. Kennedy (JFK) had been shot
I was in Ghana when one of my peace corps teaching colleagues informed me that United States President ohn F. Kennedy (JFK) had been shot
I was in Ghana when one of my peace corps teaching colleagues informed me that United States President ohn F. Kennedy (JFK) had been shot
MARVELLING: Who really killed JFK? - Sunday 21, November-2004
I was in Ghana when one of my peace corps teaching colleagues informed me that United States President ohn F. Kennedy (JFK) had been shot.
I always wondered how this could happen with all the security that presidents and prime ministers of these large countries have. Then, in the case of JFK, everyone started talking about a conspiracy. Up to now the matter has not been cleared up to my satisfaction.
Not very long ago, an official analysis of the ballistics of the type of bullet that is supposed to have killed the president showed that it was possible for the bullet to accomplish its destruction of JFK and still end up in the arm or leg of someone else in the vehicle.
In a way, this must have been the official response to the conspiracy theory so beautifully examined in the film, JFK, and constantly denied by the United States authorities. I must say that with one of the Giancanas writing about Kennedy and claiming to have fixed the vote for JFK in Texas and Chicago and having to kill him because his father did not keep his promise to the mafia, it did seem like several wild theories wereout there.
Interestingly, an article published in a German newspaper purports to have been the confession of Jack Ruby’s woman on her death bed. According to her, both Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald were members of the mafia and Ruby killed Oswald to prevent him from talking. This tallied with the Giancana story which claimed that Oswald had been set up as a “patsy’, a fall guy for something he had not done.
A PBS version was frightening. It revealed that forty-two people who had had some close connection with the assassination had died rather mysteriously since that November date in 1963. Among them was Oswald, shot in broad daylight while being escorted by policemen, by his friend Ruby. Ruby died of cancer very soon after.
A more intriguing death, however, was a military official from the NIH, who had evidently been at the hospital when Kennedy’s body was brought in. According to a colleague, who was also there, and who had trained with him for a special military unit, Lieutenant Pitzer had been offered an excellent job outside the military with the media, when he is supposed to have committed suicide.
His body was found in his apartment with a gun lying to his right and a hole in the right side of his head. The most unusual thing about this “suicide” was that Pitzer was left-handed!
PBS also interviewed a Tom Wilson, who was an expert in computer imaging. Wilson went back to the photographs and analysed them in ways that would have been impossible at the time of JFK’s death.
He read the missile, as he calls it, as having entered Kennedy’s head at the forehead (and not from the back as it would have had to if we are to believe that Oswald shot him). It exited at the back, leaving a massive hole and taking a sizeable segment of his brain with it.
Evidently it was a bullet that splintered on impact or at least broke into two different projectiles while in the victim’s head. Wilson went to Texas to test his finding. Arrived there, he could find nowhere from which the bullet could have been fired. He realised that the bullet travelled upward and discovered a manhole covering a drainage system leading away to a river.
It would have been easily possible to shoot the president from the manhole and escape without coming above ground anywhere near the scene. Clearly, for this to have happened there had to have been a conspiracy to kill the president.
The theory that Oswald did the shooting does not hold water. He was a bad shot from all reports and he could not have fired the three shots from that gun in the time quoted. PBS came to the conclusion that it had to have been effected by a secret group that Bobby Kennedy had put together to get rid of Fidel Castro – a combination of a rogue element within the CIA andthe mafia.
JFK was disliked by the mafia in particular and by Cuban exiles in general for his failure to give air support to the invaders at the Bay of Pigs fiasco, many of whom were either killed or captured.
Wilson of the computer imaging technique indicated that JFK’s head had been filled with the sort of material that morticians use to fill in holes in a dead body.
He was made to have a full head of hair when, in fact, the back of his head had been blown open. Why would such cosmetic procedure occur on a body that is still to be examined?
It is now more than forty years after the death of President Kennedy and information has been made, in accordance with United States law, available to the public. One wonders what the nature of this information will be in so far as it relates to the assassination.
When the Senate was presented with information back in 1963, they were presented with documents from which several chunks had been blacked out, as if they were investigating some routine incident and could not be made privy to the workings of the company. All of this seems amazing in a country where the democratic process is cherished and is very often observed in ways that we would consider excessive in our own narrow ways. One wonders who will be next.
Forty years is a long time.
When this story was posted in November 2004, this was on the front page of PCOL:
| The Birth of the Peace Corps UMBC's Shriver Center and the Maryland Returned Volunteers hosted Scott Stossel, biographer of Sargent Shriver, who spoke on the Birth of the Peace Corps. This is the second annual Peace Corps History series - last year's speaker was Peace Corps Director Jack Vaughn. |
| Charges possible in 1976 PCV slaying Congressman Norm Dicks has asked the U.S. attorney in Seattle to consider pursuing charges against Dennis Priven, the man accused of killing Peace Corps Volunteer Deborah Gardner on the South Pacific island of Tonga 28 years ago. Background on this story here and here. |
| Director Gaddi Vasquez: The PCOL Interview PCOL sits down for an extended interview with Peace Corps Director Gaddi Vasquez. Read the entire interview from start to finish and we promise you will learn something about the Peace Corps you didn't know before.
Plus the debate continues over Safety and Security. |
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Story Source: Daily Nation
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; COS - Ghana; Presidents - Kennedy
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