Collection of Assorted Newspaper and Magazine Clippings: Jfk Assassination, Conspiracy Theories, Etc

# The greatest cover-up of all

By Robert Sam Anson

It was one of those coincidences.

No one could have known that the bus would be stopping in front of Jacqueline Kennedy's apartment at precisely the moment she would be walking through the front door on her way to yet another funeral, but there, bizarrely, macabrely, it was: the bus with the big ad spread across its side, announcing in two-foot-high letters that "Lee Harvey Oswald Was Innocent." For a moment, there was an embarrassed silence. All that indicated recognition was a slight widening of the eyes and an almost imperceptible tightening of the muscles of her face. And then she was gone, disappearing in her limousine.

Even now, 11 and a half years since that sunny day in Dallas, it is the murder no one will ever forget. Two presidents have come and gone, a war, rebellions, changes without number. And still the image persists. A young president, pledged "to do better," riding in an open limousine, waving to cheering crowds. A turn, then another turn, and the car is heading past a tall building, slowly gliding toward the tunnel that lies just beyond a grassy knoll. The wife of the governor turns toward him and smiles. "You can't say the people of Dallas don't love you. Mr. President." There is no answer, only a sharp, popping

noise, a sound like firecrackers. In that moment everything changes.

The furies that were released with the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy have never gone away. Nor have the doubts that have surrounded the circumstances of his killing. The Warren Commission's verdict that a "deranged" young man named Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, murdered President Kennedy and seriously wounded Governor John Connally, only to be killed himself two days later by another deranged, lone assassin named Jack Ruby, raised as many questions as it answered Two years after the

## The "dirty rumors" the Warren Commission tried to squash have not gone away. Now Watergate and new evidence have forced another look. The conclusion: a conspiracy for sure

publication of the commission's findings-a report and 26 volumes of documents and testimony. based on 25.000 interviews-the Gallup and Harris polls found that nearly two-thirds of the American people disbelieved its conclusions.

They were not the only doubters. Lyndon Johnson, who had appointed the commission, went to his grave believing that his predecessor had been the victim of a "communist" conspiracy. John Connally loudly proclaimed his objections to the commission's finding that he had been wounded by the same bullet that had allegedly passed through the President's throat. The commission's version of Connally's wounding was crucial, since, as one commission lawyer put it, "more shots means more assassins." Several members of the commission itself were less than convinced of the accuracy of the report they signed. Rep. Hale Boggs of Louisiana, a commission member, was particularly upset by many of the findings and wanted to issue a minority report, until the commission agreed to insert "probables" in front of many items that had been marked certainties. Even so. Boggs was less than satisfied. Until his mysterious disappearance in a light plane flying over Alaska in 1972, he continued to tell friends that the Warren Commission was in error. Similarly, the late Senator Richard Russell, who had been placed on the commission in deference to his power as chairman of the Armed Ser-

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