Pat Shannan's MUSINGS
THE NEW WARREN COMMISSION
Oklahoma Grand Jury Issues Its Sanitized Report
"All I know is what I read in the papers," said that lovable curmudgeon Will Rogers. Will was a liberal Democrat to whom nothing beyond truth was sacred and who delighted in poking fun at all politicians, especially Republicans. Taking sight of today's fact that the philosophies of the two major parties have been twisted into an Orwellian perversion of everything once constitutional, wholesome, and holy, I suspect that Mr. Rogers would wear the label of neither. He undoubtedly would be ashamed of those deceptive blatherskites in his beloved state of Oklahoma.
In December of 1963, ascended President Lyndon Baines Johnson hand-picked a panel of professional deceivers - politicians who had spent most of their hypocritical lives honing the beguiling art of plausible seduction - to "convict" an already dead Lee Harvey Oswald in the minds of the American people. It was known as the "Warren Commission," headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren, who was appointed to that position in 1953 by President Eisenhower. "Ike" later said, "That was the biggest damn-fool mistake I ever made."
But make no mistake about Johnson's "chosen few," because he certainly did not blunder with his appointments to the Warren Commission. It was all by design. The team went behind closed doors for nine months with but one goal in mind: Emerge with the "proof" that there was no conspiracy in the murder of John Kennedy and that it was all carried out by one lone communistic nut, bent on some nebulous revenge. They succeeded, to a point and for awhile.
David Martin, author of America's Dreyfus Affair, has written a piece entitled "Thirteen Techniques for Truth Suppression," wherein he says, "Strong, credible allegations of high-level criminal activity can bring down a government. When the government lacks an effective, fact-based defense, other techniques must be employed. The success of these techniques depends heavily upon a cooperative, compliant press and a mere token opposition party."
His techniques include:
1. Dummy up. If it's not reported, if it's not news, it didn't happen.
2. Wax indignant. This is also known as the "how dare you?" gambit.
3. Characterize the charges as "rumors" or, better yet, "wild rumors." If, in spite of the news blackout, the public is still able to learn about the suspicious facts, it can only be through "rumors."
4. Knock down straw men. Deal only with the weakest aspect of the weakest charges. Even better, create your own straw men. Make up wild rumors and give them lead play when you appear to debunk all the charges, real and fanciful alike.
5. Call the skeptics names like "conspiracy theorist," "nut," "ranter," "kook," "crackpot," and of course, "rumor monger." You must then carefully avoid fair and open debate with any of the people you have thus maligned.
6. Impugn motives. Attempt to marginalize the critics by suggesting strongly that they are not really interested in the truth but are simply pursuing a partisan political agenda or are out to make money.
7. Invoke authority. Here the controlled press and the sham opposition can be very useful.
8. Dismiss the charges as "old news."
9. Come half-clean. This is also known as "confession and avoidance" or "taking the limited hang-out route." This way, you create the impression of candor and honesty while you admit only to relatively harmless, less-than-criminal "mistakes." This stratagem often requires the embrace of a fall-back position quite different from the one originally taken.
10. Characterize the crimes as impossibly complex and the truth as ultimately unknowable.
11. Reason backward, using the deductive method with a vengeance. With thoroughly rigorous deduction, troublesome evidence is irrelevant. For example: We have a completely free press. If they know of evidence that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) had prior knowledge of the Oklahoma City bombing they would have reported it. They haven't reported it, so there was no prior knowledge by the BATF. Another variation on this theme involves the likelihood of a conspiracy leaker and a press that would report it.
12. Require the skeptics to solve the crime completely. For example: If Vince Foster was murdered, who did it and why?
13. Change the subject. This technique includes creating and/or reporting a distraction.
To those too young to remember the autumn of 1963, it is difficult to convey the effect President Kennedy's assassination had on the nation. It was a cataclysmic event; a tidal wave roaring out of Dallas across the news wires to every corner of the world, spreading gloom in its wake. But when the smoke cloud of shock had lifted, we still had confidence in our government's leaders. Without yet realizing the propagandizing power of the moving picture medium, we had been mesmerized by TV's Robert Stack ("The Untouchables") and Efram Zimbalist, Jr. ("The FBI"), and James Stewart's theater heroics in "The FBI Story." Whatever the problem, J. Edgar Hoover would soon be on his white horse, riding to our rescue.
Then we began to grow up and live in the real world. Gradually, as more pieces of information surfaced, we reluctantly faced the facts. Not only had Hoover and his FBI agents gone out of their way to suppress the truths surrounding the John Kennedy murder case but had repeated this role twice more five years later and were even highly suspect of actual participation in the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. And, holy moley, wonder of wonders, J. Edgar Hoover wore a dress!
Three decades later, the image of the great Red-White&Blue was tarnished. By the time of the Oklahoma bombing(s) in`95, Americans were fed up with the legalized murders in Arkansas, California, Idaho, and Texas (to mention only a few). Witnesses with testimony contrary to the government's spin of events were coerced so often into changing their stories to fit, that they began to remark that the acronym for the agency which used to boast that it was the greatest investigative assemblage on earth now stood for "Federal Bureau of Intimidation." Even those septuagenarians who had fought, bled, and watched their buddies die in the last real war for freedom had been heard to mutter over newspapers in a coffee shop, "This is not the America I went to war for in 1942."
It was no surprise then to see the headline on the last day of 1998: JURY FINDS NO LARGER CONSPIRACY IN BOMBING. No more surprising than it was the first day when we learned that the FBI had "invoked authority" and had kept out all but its own from the crime scene; or the government's razing of the Murrah Building and all its evidence only 34 days later. If the truth be known, we almost certainly would find that this historical novel was written not by any grand jury members but liaryers from the prosecution team, skilled in the arts of double-talk.
The some twenty-page report is a zig-zagging, slippin' and a'slidin', peepin' and a-hidin', political tap dance; highlighting impertinent tidbits and previous disinformation (e.g. the ANFO residue found on McVeigh's clothing) which had previously biased potential petit and grand jurors everywhere and would now serve as an attempt to pacify the world. It won't work, Spin Meisters. We're not so naïve anymore. Many of us have reached such an elevated level of cynicism regarding your antics that we now don't believe anything you say without first checking it further.
In contrast, factual information such as that provided by USAF Brig. Gen. (ret.) Benton Partin, an expert witness on the subject of demolition, was ignored. Partin's 8-page report was delivered to some sixty congressmen and senators in May of 1995, imploring them to prevent the demolition of the Murrah Building prior to examination. His facts, showing how the building was blown from the inside - presented simply enough for a child to comprehend - were conspicuously missing from both the trial court and this new Warren Report.
Just connect the dots. The Oklahoma City tragedy is the biggest cover-up in American history. As predicted, even a bigger blanket has been thrown over this one than those still-unsolved mysteries of the sixties. In those cases, establishment reporters were at least asking questions. Any network or newswire reporter today who challenges the government party line soon discovers that his articles never make it through the censoring web of editors in New York, Washington, or Atlanta.
For the details about much of what was left out of the New Warren Commission Report, see the November `98 issue of Media Bypass. In this column we will stick only to the basics for one final comparison with the old Commission. It was these simple rudiments which were glossed over in each case.
The Warren Commission alleged that Lee Oswald was on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository when he fired a rifle three times from the southeast window, but this placement proved to be impossible. TSBD Superintendent Roy Truly and Dallas Police Officer Marion Baker inadvertently discovered Oswald in the second floor lunch room "No more than ninety seconds after the shooting." Baker had leveled his police revolver at Oswald and was demanding identification before Truly told him, "He's okay. He works here." The two men left Oswald standing at the soft drink machine, scurried up the stairs, and continued a search of the building for anyone who didn't belong there. Baker later said that Oswald was calm and did not appear to be out of breath or stressed in any way.
For Oswald to have committed the murder, it meant that he would have had to run 100+ feet from the southeast corner to the northwest corner of the sixth floor, stash the rifle behind several boxes of books, run to the stairwell, descend four flights, and get into the break room without being seen - all within 90 seconds. Later, the best athletically conditioned federal agents could not duplicate this feat with several tries.
This scenario, incidentally, was precluded anyway by the presence in the stairwell at the time of another employee, Victoria Adams, who said no one passed her. Nor could Oswald have come down the elevator. It was stopped on the fifth floor with the door propped open. All this information came from the Commission's own transcripts of its hearings. What additional iota of testimony could they possibly need to eliminate Lee Oswald as a suspect?
Dallas Police gave Oswald a paraffin test, which proved conclusively that he had not fired a weapon that day. Two witnesses to Officer J. D. Tippett's murder, Acquilla Clemons and Domingo Benavides, each said Oswald was not the killer. Benavides, the closest witness to the incident, gave a description of the shooter which so completely eliminated the suspect that he was never called to the lineup to look at Oswald. These two pieces of news did not go around the world, but this alone would have exonerated Oswald of both murders, had he gotten a fair trial. For the charade of cover-up to continue, Lee Harvey Oswald had to die.
The New Warren Commission of 1998 had exculpatory evidence, too. Something so rudimentary and elementary that anyone conducting a serious investigation seeking truth could not have missed. Something which blatantly shows that Tim McVeigh's involvement that day was, at most, no more than one of the players on the fringes. Something to prove Tim McVeigh could not have murdered any of the eight people for which he was prosecuted. Something hiding in plain sight.
Pssst. C'mere. Bend over close, because what I'm about to whisper in your ear could get you in a lotta trouble. Are you ready for this? ANFO air blasts cannot dislodge reinforced concrete and steel. That's a fact. It couldn't even do it in the basement of the World Trade Center with the truck parked next to a column. We've talked with dozens of explosives experts over the years - from farmers who have blown up tree stumps to demolition company heads, to Navy Seals who have sunken ships. All said, "Impossible! ANFO can't do this!" Gen. Partin showed us how the dissipated air blast from their alleged forty-eight-hundred-pounder on the street would have been down to 27 lbs. psi by the time it reached that last collapsed column. That's like a bicycle tire blowing out! A pea-shooter bringing down a spaceship. And if ANFO on the street couldn't do it, then Tim couldn't have done it. And the building being blown from the inside means that someone with a key had to. . . Uhh Oh! Look, just forget it will ya'? And keep this conversation under your hat. I never saw you before in my life.