Sunday, October 13, 2013

JFK Conspiracy Fact #38: American Media's Galling Lack of Curiosity

Below I am reprinting a previous blog as an example of how media passivity and negligence has precluded any real investigative journalism when it comes to the JFK assassination. Former Dallas cop Jim Leavelle, now deceased made a speaking tour of the Midwest last spring and the Topeka Journal reported on it as if Leavelle were the end-all, be-all of JFK assassination experts:

In a stunning display of uncritical journalism yesterday, the Topeka Capital Journal reported that the Dallas cop who was supposed to protect Lee Harvey Oswald gave a speech at Washburn University where he insisted that Oswald acted alone. "Retired Dallas police detective Jim Leavelle told a standing-room-only crowd at Washburn University that Oswald killed Kennedy because he wanted to be famous." This raises many troubling questions: 1) They really have universities in Kansas? 2) Does anyone teach history at these universities? 3) Who would pay 92-year-old Jim Leavelle, who failed at the only important task he ever had in his life, to travel all the way to Kansas to spread his preposterous falsehoods? 4) What sort of real college students/journalists would let him get away with it? Well, as Dorothy said, we're not in Kansas anymore, Jim, and it's time to disspell your lies. According to the Capital Journal, Leavelle believes no shots missed the limousine. He said, "...the first shot struck Kennedy, the second shot struck Texas Gov. John Connally, sitting in front of Kennedy, and the third hit Kennedy." This would certainly be news to bystander James Tague who was struck in the face by a piece of pavement dislodged by a shot that completely missed the limousine. Either there was a second gunman (which means conspiracy) or there were four shots fired by Oswald (physically impossible given the timeframe indicated by the Zapruder film). However, the unthinking Kansans apparently swallowed Leavelle's whopper whole. Leavelle went on to say that "...the president didn't bear any entry wounds to the front of his body." Apparently Jim considers himself an expert on forensic anantomy too. Too bad the Dallas doctors did not agree with him. At a press conference immediately following the assassination, Dr. Malcolm Perry stated three times that the President had been shot from the front. He noted an entry wound at the base of the throat and an exit wound at the back of the head. Truth 2, Jim 0. Leavelle also claimed that "three tramps arrested a few blocks from the Kennedy shooting were just tramps travelling through Dallas." No mention of the fact that two of the tramps were CIA killers Charles Rogers and Charles V. Harrelson. And no mention of the fact that the "policemen" who made the "arrest" let an interloper come between them and their "prisoners." The interloper was positively indentified as Edward Lansdale, Air Force general and CIA officer. Strike three, Jim is out. If it weren't so appalling, Jim's appearance at some backwater school in Kansas would be amusing. But all critical thinkers and all who treasure historical truth cannot sit idly by and let people like Leavelle get away with their outlandish lies. Leavelle is particularly galling because he failed to protect Oswald. He let Ruby walk right up and shoot him. You've all seen the pictures of that murder...Leavelle is the one on Oswald's right, wearing a white suit and a Stetson hat. He merely stares passively as the most important prisoner of the 20th century is gunned down. Now Jim dresses in the same stupid hillbilly hat he wore on Nov. 24, 1963, as a sort of perverse celebrity traveling from hick town to hick town, getting paid for being historically incompetent. The most lamentable part is, had JFK's life not been taken by a sophisticated, diabolical, massive intelligence plot, we would never have to be subjected to rubes like Leavelle pissing on history and profiting from our dead president's demise. Being from Texas, and having been a detective in the Dallas police department (where membership in the John Birch Society or the KKK was a prerequisite for promotion), I'm sure ol' Jim despised President Kennedy.

Sure, the Topeka newspaper is not the New York Times, but the New York Times has spouted identical Oswald-did-it nonsense for years. How did the American media become so willing to regurgitate lies? Maybe the answer can be found in this quote from William Colby, head of the CIA from 1973-76. Colby said, "The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media."

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2 comments:

James L. said...

Washburn U is not backwater. It is a univ known for its law school... and therefore interested in the "official" version. You would have been less impressed if the neighbor Lawrence Journal World--often colloquially known as the Urinal World--had written something, god knows what.

Tim Fleming said...

My apologies for slandering Washburn; however, the "official version" is a pack of lies. And if universities are not about the search for intellectual truth, then they should fold up the campus and shutter the buidlings.