In all the JFK confessions and babel, voices do occasionally break through in support of the Warren Commission’s “lone gunman” theory, headed by Gerald Posner’s
The lone gunman arguments fall on disbelieving ears. An ABC News poll in 2003 found that 70 per cent of American respondents “suspect a plot” in the assassination of President Kennedy. Jack Leon Ruby is the weak link in the lone gunman, anti-conspiracy case. Why did Ruby step out of the crowd and gun down Oswald? Because he was so morally or politically outraged by Oswald’s murder of JFK that he had to take revenge? Hardly. Ruby was a hood of no fixed moral views. For the fame of it? Possibly, but the HSCA found no evidence that 56-year-old Ruby was psychologically flawed to the degree that he wished to make his mark in history as a shootist. And, when Ruby informed the Warren Commission that he would “come clean” what was he about to divulge? On balance, it must be assumed that Ruby stepped forward with his gun because he was either paid or pressurized by others to silence Oswald permanently. If someone needed to silence Lee Harvey Oswald, then there was a conspiracy
Mark Fuhrman,
Jim Marrs,
Barr McClellan,
Mark North,
Gerald Posner,
Robin Ramsay,
David E. Scheim,
Peter Dale Scott,
Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann,
DOCUMENT: EXTRACTS FROM THE REPORT OF THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS OF THE US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
Organized crime is a term of many meanings. It can be used to refer to the crimes committed by organized criminal groups—gambling, narcotics, loan-sharking, theft and fencing, and the like. It can also be used to refer to the criminal group that commit those crimes. Here, a distinction may be drawn between an organized crime enterprise that engages in providing illicit goods and services and an organized crime syndicate that regulates relations between individual enterprises—allocating territory, settling personal disputes, establishing gambling payoffs, etc. Syndicates, too, are of different types. They may be metropolitan, regional, national or international in scope; they may be limited to one field of endeavor—for example, narcotics—or they may cover a broad range of illicit activities.
Often, but not always, the term organized crime refers to a particular organized crime syndicate, variously known as the Mafia or La Cosa Nostra and it is in this sense that the committee has used the phrase. This organized crime syndicate was the principal target of the committee investigation.
The committee found that by 1964 the fundamental structure and operations of organized crime in America had changed little since the early 1950s, when, after conducting what was then the most extensive investigation of organized crime in history, the Kefauver committee concluded:
1) There is a nationwide crime syndicate known as the Mafia, whose tentacles are found in many large cities. It has international ramifications which appear most clearly in connection with the narcotics traffic.
2) Its leaders are usually found in control of the most lucrative rackets in their cities.
3) There are indications of a centralized direction and control of these rackets, but leadership appears to be in a group rather than in a single individual.
4) The Mafia is the cement that helps to bind the… syndicate of New York and the… syndicate of Chicago as well as smaller criminal gangs and individual criminals through the country.
5) The domination of the Mafia is based fundamentally on “muscle” and “murder.” The Mafia is a secret conspiracy against law and order which will ruthlessly eliminate anyone who stands in the way of its success in any criminal enterprise in which it is interested. It will destroy anyone who betrays its secrets. It will use any means available—political influence, bribery, intimidation, et cetera, to defeat any attempt on the part of law enforcement to touch its top figures…
The committee reviewed the evolution of the national crime syndicate in the years after the Kefauver committee and found continuing vitality, even more sophisticated techniques, and an increased concern for the awareness by law enforcement authorities of the danger it posed to the Nation. In 1967, after having conducted a lengthy examination of organized crime in the United States, the President’s Crime Commission offered another description of the power and influence of the American underworld in the 1960s:
Organized crime is a society that seeks to operate outside the control of the American people and their governments. It involves thousands of criminals, working within structures as complex as those of any large corporation, subject to laws more rigidly enforced than those of legitimate governments. Its actions are not impulsive but rather the result of intricate conspiracies, carried on over many years and aimed at gaining control over whole fields of activity in order to amass huge profits.
An analysis by the committee revealed that the Kennedy administration brought about the strongest effort against organized crime that had ever been coordinated by the Federal Government. John and Robert Kennedy brought to their respective positions as President and Attorney General an unprecedented familiarity with the threat of organized crime—and a commitment to prosecute its leaders—based on their service as member and chief counsel respectively of the McClellan Committee during its extensive investigation of labor racketeering in the late 1950s. A review of the electronic surveillance conducted by the FBI from 1961 to 1964 demonstrated that members of La Cosa Nostra, as well as other organized crime figures, were quite cognizant of the stepped-up effort against them, and they placed responsibility for it directly upon President Kennedy and Attorney General Kennedy.
During this period, the FBI had comprehensive electronic coverage of the major underworld figures, particularly those who comprised the commission. The committee had access to and analyzed the product of this electronic coverage; it reviewed literally thousands of pages of electronic surveillance logs that revealed the innermost workings of organized crime in the United States. The committee saw in stark terms a record of murder, violence, bribery, corruption, and an untold variety of other crimes. Uniquely among congressional committees, and in contrast to the Warren Commission, the committee became familiar with the nature and scope of organized crime in the years before and after the Kennedy assassination, using as its evidence the words of the participants themselves.
An analysis of the work of the Justice Department before and after the tenure of Robert Kennedy as Attorney General also led to the conclusion that organized crime directly benefited substantially from the changes in Government policy that occurred after the assassination. That organized crime had the motive, opportunity and means to kill the President cannot be questioned. Whether it did so is another matter.
In its investigation of the decision making process and dynamics of organized crime murders and intrasyndicate assassinations during the early 1960s, the committee noted the extraordinary web of insulation, secrecy, and complex machinations that frequently surrounded organized crime leaders who ordered such acts. In testimony before the Senate on 25 September 1963, 2 months before his brother’s assassination, Attorney General Kennedy spoke of the Government’s continuing difficulty in solving murders carried out by organized crime elements, particularly those ordered by members of the La Cosa Nostra commission. Attorney General Kennedy testified that:
