John Kennedy Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

JFK asassination: second shooter?

NARA

I like to think of myself as not prone to conspiracy theories. After President John F. Kennedy was assassinated on 22 November 1963, I was obsessed with the killing of the 35th President, especially after watching Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby on live television two days later.

The Warren Commission Report was released in September 1964. It was designed to clarify what happened ten months earlier in Dallas, TX. The report was excerpted in the local Binghamton, NY, newspaper then, and I cut out the articles, taping them into a three-ring binder. It may be somewhere in my attic, even now.

For that 11-year-old, that was definitive. A single assassin, no second shooter. The end.

Except, of course, it wasn’t. The United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was established in 1976 to investigate the assassinations of JFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963 and 1968, respectively. Concerning the former, the committee determined… that the probable conspiracy did not involve the governments of Cuba or the Soviet Union. The committee also stated that the conspiracy did not involve any organized crime group, anti-Castro group, nor the FBI, CIA, or Secret Service.” But it could have involved mob players, or others, acting without organizational authorization.

Lone gunman?

Oddly, the JFK Library seized on one aspect of the HSCA report. “The committee had found ‘a high probability that two gunmen fired’ at the president. This conclusion resulted from the last-minute ‘discovery’ of a Dallas police radio transmission tape that allegedly provided evidence that four or more shots were fired in Dealey Plaza. After the report appeared in print, acoustic experts analyzed the tape and proved conclusively that it was completely worthless—thus negating the finding in Point 1B.”True enough about the sound, but Point 1C suggests “another gunman,” though it cannot identify who.

Based on this article in New York magazine’s The Intelligencer, it’s become increasingly apparent that “the CIA lied about Oswald and Cuba.” Early on, it also explains how the Oliver Stone 1991 movie JFK, which naturally, I saw, was largely dismissed.

Sunlight

Documents are still being released, as recently as 2023. “The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is processing previously withheld… records to comply with President Biden’s Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies on the Temporary Certification Regarding Disclosure of Information in Certain Records Related to the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, requiring disclosure of releasable records by June 30, 2023. NARA worked in concert with agencies to jointly review the remaining redactions in 3,648 documents in compliance with the President’s directive. Between April and June 2023, NARA posted 2,672 documents containing newly released information.” This means roughly a thousand records still have not been revealed.

Paramount + released JFK: What The Doctors Saw on November 14. “Previously unreleased footage unveils an extraordinary reunion involving seven doctors who were present in the Parkland Hospital Emergency Room where [JFK] was rushed after being shot on November 22, 1963. Their testimonies divulge unsettling medical details surrounding the assassination, raising doubt about government investigations that found Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.” It is compelling. Why would these physicians, in concert, lie about the events of six decades ago?

I don’t know THE answer to the story, but the questions have not gone away.

In a Kennedy state of mind

JFK Assassination Records Collection Act

I’ve been in a Kennedy state of mind. It’s been going on long before this recent JEOPARDY clue in the category EVERYTHING’S COMING UP ROSE for $200: Born in Boston in 1890, she had 9 children, including John, Robert, Edward & Eunice.

ITEM: This is the 55th anniversary of the assassination of Robert Francis Kennedy. I’d expressed my reservations about Bobby back in 2008. I was no fan when he ran for US Senator from New York -the carpetbagger! – in 1964. Tom Lehrer quipped the following year that Massachusetts was the only state with THREE Senators.

Related-

ITEM: This year, August 28, marks the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs & Freedom. This discussion is informative. “SNCC chairman John Lewis’s speech… on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial criticized the Kennedy administration…, which caused considerable difficulties. “

A draft of Lewis’ speech was circulated beforehand. “The speech… directly confronted Robert F. Kennedy’s Justice Department for its refusal to pursue and prosecute racist assaults on activists and black Southerners. The original speech, written by a committee of SNCC activists, included the rhetorical question, ‘I want to know, which side is the federal government on?'”

RFK 37

ITEM: I recently saw a question on a website about whether RFK would have become president in 1968 if he had not been killed. Almost certainly, yes.

From this 2021 article: “There was empathy in him that grew, especially after his brother’s assassination. He attacked childhood poverty, faced down the generals who wanted to attack Cuba with nuclear weapons, and broke with his Democratic president over the Vietnam War, opposing it not only on political grounds but morally.”

Just before he got shot, he said, “On to Chicago.” From Larry Tye, author of Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon: “Sure, Bobby Kennedy was talking about his hope of capturing the nomination at that summer’s Democratic National Convention in this Windy City. But he had no intention of waiting until August to wrap things up.

“This master of political maestros was planning to stop in Chicago on his way back East from Los Angeles. And he felt sure that a planned meeting with Mayor Richard J. Daley would yield both an endorsement and a critical leg up on the only rival who still mattered, Vice President Hubert Humphrey.”

With RFK as the Democratic nominee, there would not have been violent clashes between police and demonstrators in Chicago. Despite a splintered party, Humphrey almost beat Nixon in November; RFK whips RMN.

Like father, like son?

ITEM: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced in April 2023 that he is running for the Democratic nomination for President in 2024. I shan’t be voting for him.

“He’s suing Daily Kos, trying to force the entity to reveal the identity of a pseudonymous community writer who criticized his participation in a Berlin rally organized and attended by Nazis. He mourned the loss of Tucker Carlson’s right-wing hatefest of a TV show.

“In May 2019, Kennedy‘s siblings said he had ‘helped to spread dangerous misinformation over social media and is complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines.’ But COVID was the anti-vax movement’s ‘moment to shine,’ where he grew in profile, getting nearly a million Instagram followers before it was shut down for misinformation.”

11/22/63

ITEM: JFK was killed on November 22, 1963, also sixty years ago this year. From the National Archives: “Nearly 30 years after his death, Congress enacted the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. The Act mandated that all assassination-related material be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration.

“The resulting Collection consists of more than 5 million pages of assassination-related records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings, and artifacts (approximately 2,000 cubic feet of records).”

You have the opportunity to facilitate history. “Visit the JFK Assassination Records Collection Transcription Mission to get started. Various Citizen Archivist missions have been created featuring records from this collection. Select a mission and get started transcribing to help make the records more searchable and accessible.”

Presidents Day: living exes

The pendulum now swings the other way

herbert hoover — Herbert Hoover, 31st President (1929-1933) lived until 1964

There have been times in this nation’s history when the United States has had only one living President, and others when we’ve had as many as six current and former Commanders-in-Chief.

Of course, George Washington was the first President (April 30, 1789-March 4, 1797). When he died on December 14, 1799, his successor, John Adams, was the only living President until March 4, 1801, when Thomas Jefferson took over.

These things wax and wane. From March 4, 1861 to January 18, 1862, Martin Van Buren, John Tyler (who died on the latter date), Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and the then-current occupant, Abraham Lincoln were all alive.

Yet, a decade and a half later, the US experienced the longest period with no living ex-Presidents, from July 31, 1875, when Andrew Johnson died, until the end of Ulysses Grant’s term on March 4, 1877. Taylor (1850) and Lincoln (1865) had died in office, and other ex-Presidents died relatively shortly after leaving the office.

And then, there were none

When Grover Cleveland died on June 24, 1908, there were no living ex-Presidents until Theodore Roosevelt’s term ended in March 1909, and Howard Taft became President.

Calvin Coolidge died on January 5, 1933, making lame-duck Herbert Hoover as the only living President until Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s inauguration in March.

Richard Nixon became the only living President when Lyndon B. Johnson died on January 22, 1973 until Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford took over on August 9, 1974.

The pendulum now swings the other way.
From January 20, 1993 to April 22, 1994: Nixon (died on the latter date), Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton (incumbent)

From January 20, 2001 to June 4, 2004: Ford, Carter, Reagan (died on the latter date), GHW Bush, Clinton, George W. Bush (incumbent)

From January 20, 2017 to November 30, 2018: Carter, GHW Bush (died on the latter date), Clinton, GW Bush, Barack Obama, Trump (incumbent)

Losing for winning

Sometimes, the person who loses the popular vote wins the Presidency.
1824 – John Quincy Adams lost both the electoral and popular votes but won the election. Because none of the four candidates, including his eventual successor Andrew Jackson, won a majority in the Electoral College, the vote was sent to the House of Representatives. They decided JQ was the best man for the job.

1876 – Rutherford B. Hayes who won the disputed electoral vote v. Samuel J. Tilden who won the popular vote

1888 – Benjamin Harrison won the electoral vote v. Grover Cleveland who won the popular vote. Cleveland both preceded and succeeded Harison

2000 – George W. Bush won the electoral vote v. Al Gore who won the popular vote.

2016 = Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by 2.8 million, a lead of 48.3% to 46.2%. But her opponent received 304 electoral votes to her 227.

Also

Why No One Can Agree on What George Washington Thought About the Relationship Between Church and State

Lincoln bible unveiled in Springfield, IL

Now I Know: Almost Saved By the Bell

Z is for Abraham Zapruder, who filmed JFK’s asassination

Presidents Day 2019: Second Bill of Rights

“The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.”

Abraham Lincoln 1836 — Abraham Lincoln, Congressman-elect from Illinois. icholas H. Shepherd, photographer. Springfield, Ill., 1846 or 1847

Some Presidential trivia:

From Summer Bowl 9 (Chuck Miller)

Donald Trump has 24, Ronald Reagan has 10, and John Tyler has the most at 30. The most what?

Who was the last U.S. President who did not nominate a judge for the U.S. Supreme Court?

JEOPARDY! game #7807 aired 2018-07-17

CITING THE PRESIDENT $400: In the 1970s: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal”
CITING THE PRESIDENT $800: In the 1970s: “Our long national nightmare is over”
CITING THE PRESIDENT $1200: “I do not expect the Union to be dissolved–I do not expect the house to fall–but I do expect it will cease to be divided”
CITING THE PRESIDENT $2000: In an early 20th c. message to Congress: “We have stood apart, studiously neutral”
CITING THE PRESIDENT $2,000 (Daily Double): In the early 20th c.: “I took the canal zone, & let Congress debate, & while the debate goes on the canal does also”

JEOPARDY! game #7806 aired 2018-07-16

4, 4 (two words, each with four letters) $1000: In 1848 Martin Van Buren was the presidential candidate of this party that opposed slavery in western territories

JEOPARDY! game #7868 aired 2018-11-21

PRESIDENTIAL IRONY, Final Jeopardy! 1 of the 2 Presidents who offered Daniel Webster the VP slot; he declined both, thinking the job went nowhere.

Answers below.

Why Thomas Jefferson Owned a Qur’an

Why James Madison would say our real problem is not misinformation

“The unrestricted competition so commonly advocated does not leave us the survival of the fittest. The unscrupulous succeed best in accumulating wealth.” Rutherford B. Hayes

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s State of the Union Message to Congress, January 11, 1944, including the Second Bill of Rights:
“We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence… People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
“In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all — regardless of station, race, or creed.”

“I don’t give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them, and they think it’s Hell.” – Harry S Truman, 1948

“If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1956

The Eisenhower Matrix

When the President and His Chef Feuded Over Cold Beans

Thursday, August 8, 1974: the night that Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency (three hours)

Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter pass up riches to live modest, giving and truthful lives

George HW Bush was a complex man who somehow perfectly embodied a simpler time: both a blue-blood and, to quote Nixon, a ‘nut-cutter’ who knew how to carry out the dirty work of politics

When New York Tried to Take Away a W

What Obama secretly did at Sandy Hook Elementary School

Pastor: When White Folks Say Obama Was an ‘Embarrassment’, Here’s What You Say

One Last Time (44 Remix) – Christopher Jackson, Barack Obama, Bebe Winans #Hamildrop

Answers to quizzes:

Summer Bowl 9:
The number of the age difference between the President and his First Lady
Jimmy Carter

JEOPARDY!
Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Abe Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Teddy Roosevelt
Free Soil
William Henry Harrison or Zachary Taylor

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy and John Kennedy talking at their wedding reception, Newport, Rhode Island / Toni Frissell. 1907-1988, photographer, 12 September 1953

Photos from the Library of Congress. No known copyright restrictions.