American Conspiracies: Lies, Lies, and More Dirty Lies That the Government Tells Us (7 page)

Life
published a story headlined “End of Nagging Rumors: The Critical Six Seconds” (December 6, 1963), that claimed to show precisely how Oswald had succeeded in hitting his target. Supposedly based on the Zapruder film, the magazine said that the president had been turning to wave to someone in the crowd when one of Oswald's bullets hit him in the throat. But guess what? That sequence is nowhere to be seen in the film.

From the get-go, Oswald was damned as guilty by the media. The headline in the
New York Times
: “Career of Suspect Has Been Bizarre.” In the
New York Herald Tribune
: “Left Wing Lunacy, Not Right is Suspect.” In
Time
magazine: “Evidence Against Oswald Described as Conclusive.”

Here's what media critic Jerry Policoff later had to say: “Thus, the press' curiosity was not aroused when a 7.65 caliber German Mauser mutated into a 6.5 caliber Italian Mannlicher-Carcano; or when the grassy knoll receded into oblivion; or when an entrance wound in the President's throat became an exit wound (first for a fragment from the head wound and then for a bullet from the back wound); or when a wound six inches below the President's shoulder became a wound at the back of the neck. The press was thereby weaving a web that would inevitably commit it to the official findings.”

Three months before the
Warren Report
appeared in September 1964, the
New York Times
ran a Page One exclusive: “Panel To Reject Theories of Plot in Kennedy Death.” They then printed the whole report as a 48-page supplement, and collaborated with Bantam Books and the Book-of-the-Month Club to publish both hardcover and paperback editions. “The commission analyzed every issue in exhaustive, almost archaeological detail,” according to reporter Anthony Lewis.

The
Times
also put together another book,
The Witnesses
, which contained “highlights” from testimony before the Warren Commission. All these were aimed at shoring up the lone-gunman notion. In one instance, a witness who reported having seen a man with a rifle on the sixth floor had other portions of his testimony eliminated—namely, that he'd actually seen
two
men but been told to “forget it” by an FBI agent. Witnesses like Zapruder, who believed some of the shots came from in front, were left out entirely.

Life
magazine devoted most of its October 2, 1964, issue to the
Warren Report
, assigning commission member (and future president) Gerald Ford the job of evaluating it. In 1997, the Assassination Records Review Board would release handwritten notes by Ford, revealing that he had misrepresented the placement of the president's back wound—raising it several inches to suggest he'd instead been struck in the neck—in order to make it fit the theory that a single bullet had hit both Kennedy and Connally. Otherwise, the entire lone-assassin notion would have collapsed.

That same issue of
Life
underwent two major revisions
after
it went on sale. One of the articles was illustrated with eight frames from the Zapruder film. But Frame 323 turned out to contradict the
Warren Report
's conclusion about the shots all coming from the rear. So the issue was recalled, the plates broken and re-set (this was all pre-computer), and Frame 313 showing the president's head exploding became the replacement. A second “error” forced still another such change. When a Warren Commission critic, Vincent Salandria, asked
Life
editor Ed Kearns about this two years later, Kearns wrote back: “I am at a loss to explain the discrepancies between the three versions of LIFE which you cite. I've heard of breaking a plate to correct an error. I've never heard of doing it twice for a single issue, much less a single story. Nobody here seems to remember who worked on the early Kennedy story... ”

And so it went. Skeptics of the
Warren Report
were often labeled “leftists” or “Communists.” After Mark Lane's book
Rush to Judgment
and Josiah Thompson's
Six Seconds in Dallas
came out in 1966 questioning the official version, and became best-sellers, the
New York Times
decided to conduct its own investigation. One of its unit, Houston bureau chief Martin Waldron, later said they'd found “a lot of unanswered questions” that the paper then wouldn't pursue. “I'd be off on a good lead and then somebody'd call me off and send me out to California on another story or something. We never really detached anyone for this. We weren't really serious.”

Life
magazine also took a fresh look at the case. “Did Oswald Act Alone? A Matter of Reasonable Doubt,” an article in the November 26, 1966 issue was headlined. A reexamination of the Zapruder film, the magazine said, had reached the conclusion that the single-bullet theory didn't hold up and a new investigation was called for. This was to be the first of a series of articles but, in January 1967, editor Richard Billings says he was informed that “It is not
Life
's function to investigate the Kennedy assassination.” That was the last time they'd challenge the Warren Commission's findings. Billings resigned from the magazine and took a job with a newspaper in St. Petersburg, Florida. In 1967, led by Dan Rather, CBS News did a four-part study that again upheld the
Warren Report
. Warren Commission member John McCloy was the network's behind-the-scenes advisor.

Another decade went by before the Bernstein piece in
Rolling Stone
showed just how strongly these news organizations were all tied to the CIA. “By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the
New York Times
, CBS and Time Inc.,” Bernstein wrote. “Over the years, the [CBS] network provided cover for CIA employees, including at least one well-known foreign correspondent and several stringers; it supplied outtakes of newsfilm to the CIA.... A high-level CIA official with a prodigious memory says that the
New York Times
provided cover for about ten CIA operatives between 1950 and 1966.”

Bernstein's article began by describing how Joseph Alsop, a leading syndicated columnist, had gone to the Philippines in 1953 to cover an election, at the CIA's request. It would be Alsop, transcripts of President Johnson's taped telephone conversations later revealed, who first urged LBJ to form the Warren Commission to answer any unresolved doubts about the assassination. “Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past twenty-five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency, according to documents on file at CIA headquarters,” Bernstein wrote. “Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence-gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries.”

The article went on: “James Angleton, who was recently removed as the Agency's head of counterintelligence operations, ran a completely independent group of journalist-operatives who performed sensitive and frequently dangerous missions; little is known about this group for the simple reason that Angleton deliberately kept only the vaguest of files.”

Among the CIA's most valuable relationships in the 1960s, Bernstein continued, was a
Miami News
reporter who covered Latin America named Hal Hendrix. He regularly provided information about individuals within Miami's Cuban exile community. He was the conduit through which the CIA passed word to then-Senator Kenneth Keating that the Soviets were putting missiles in Cuba in 1962, and got awarded the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Missile Crisis. On the afternoon of the assassination, another reporter, Seth Kantor, has said that Hendrix provided him considerable yet-unrevealed information about Oswald's history—including his supposed defection to Russia and his activities with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The setup seems to have been “on,” and it involved the media.

The cover-up still does. After the House Assassinations Committee concluded late in 1978 that the president “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy,” the
New York Times
buried the story—“Experts Say That Second Gunman Almost Certainly Shot at Kennedy”—on page 37, right alongside the classified ads. Later, a
Times
editorial said that the committee seemed “more interested in inflaming than informing.” And whenever there were intimations of conspiracy in the media, the finger pointed elsewhere—like a CBS documentary, “The CIA's Secret Army,” which strongly hinted that Fidel Castro had ordered Kennedy's murder in retaliation for the attempts on his own life.

When Oliver Stone's movie
JFK
came out in 1991, the strongest attacks came from news outlets and journalists “with the longest records of error and obstruction in defense of the flawed Warren Commission inquiry.”
²³
Are we surprised? They'll cheerlead for Posner's and Bugliosi's books, but I'll bet you a free lunch they're not going to be reviewing this one anytime soon.

Let me start with my perception of Malcolm X when I was growing up. I was terrified of him. He was this black man with an “X” attached to his name. The TV announcers portrayed him as some crazy revolutionary who wanted to kill every white man on the planet and take control. It was only when I read his autobiography in the late Eighties or early Nineties, and learned more about him and what he went through, that I came to look upon him as one of my heroes.

Sure, he'd gone the wrong way a couple of times in his life and there was a time when I probably should have feared Malcolm. But in the end, he was a brave, good man who had the ability to grow and change. After being as low as you could go, he was saved in prison by turning to religion through the Nation of Islam. Later, that became his prison and he had to break free again. He went to Mecca and had that huge transformation and admitted he was wrong, that we shouldn't segregate by color. Then to have him return to America and shortly thereafter be gunned down and silenced, I think did a terrible disservice to humanity.

I was wrestling in Atlanta when I first read
The Auto biography of Malcolm X
. I remember I was so moved by it, that I went out and bought one of those beautiful ball caps that had the “X” on it, standing for Malcolm X. I would wear that hat while taking the train downtown to the TV studio. Of course, it's predominantly black people that ride the rail in Atlanta. They'd kind of give me a double-take, like they didn't know what to think. As Jesse the Body, I could get away with it. People knew I could take the most bizarre positions and make them look normal. But I'd always chuckle to myself to watch the reaction of black people seeing this big white guy wearing a Malcolm X cap. I often sat and thought, do they think I'm just naïve and stupid? Or do they maybe think I know and understand, and there's a reason I'm wearing it? Because I'm a bit of a revolutionary myself, who can relate to him, in a humble way.

Malcolm X was only 39 when he died in a hail of shotgun and pistol fire, executed inside the Audubon Ballroom after giving a speech in Harlem. Clearly, by some of the things he said in the last month or so of his life, Malcolm knew it was inevitable. He told Alex Haley, who worked with him on the autobiography, that he didn't believe he'd live to see the book published. And he didn't. He was murdered on February 21, 1965, only a little more than a year after JFK's assassination. Since the gunmen were all part of the Black Muslims, and loyal followers of Elijah Muhammad, it was pretty much accepted that Malcolm X was the victim of a bitter feud between the two leaders. Today, we know that what happened on that Sunday afternoon was a whole lot bigger than that.
²

After his pilgrimage to Mecca, Malcolm was no longer preaching what some had called his “message of hate.” He'd already broken away from Elijah Muhammad, who was an advocate for a separate black state. He was forming alliances with revolutionary leaders in Africa and elsewhere—even making friends with Che Guevara, another of my heroes—and talking about civil rights as a human rights issue that the United Nations should take up. It looked like Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. might even come together in a powerful alliance. I can imagine there were people in high places, like J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI, who didn't want that to take place. And I could certainly see where the status quo might decide, “This isn't going to happen, and we're going to make sure of that.”

We've come a long way since those days in terms of race relations, but in the 1960s integration was still only beginning—the Voting Rights Act hadn't even become law when Malcolm X was alive. Those were the years of the Freedom Riders getting the crap beat out of them when they rode buses into the South, and “Bull” Connor fire-hosing African-Americans down in Birmingham, and James Meredith having to walk a National Guard gauntlet just to enroll at the University of Mississippi. It was a tempestuous period in our history, and Malcolm X was right at the forefront.

The FBI had been watching Malcolm as far back as 1950, when he was still in prison for grand larceny and first discovered the Nation of Islam [NOI].
³
When he was paroled after serving six years, he soon became a leading spokesman for Elijah Muhammad. In 1957, when the police beat a Black Muslim badly in Harlem and reluctantly agreed to hospitalize him thanks to Malcolm X's insistence, with a simple wave of his hand Malcolm had stopped what might have been a bloody riot of some 2,600 people. “No man should have that much power,” a police inspector said.
⁴
Not surprisingly, the FBI's COINTELPRO agents were soon all over him. After Hoover learned that Malcolm would be Elijah Muhammad's likely successor, one COINTELPRO file said bluntly: “The secret to disabling the [NOI] movement, therefore, lay in neutralizing Malcolm X.”
⁵

In 1958, a fellow named John Ali was an adviser, friend, and housemate to Malcolm X. Five years later, he became National Secretary of the Black Muslims. When Elijah Muhammad left Chicago and moved to Phoenix because of his failing health, John Ali took over handling the group's finances and administration. At the same time, unbeknownst to the Muslims, he was working closely with the FBI. The main man he was keeping an eye on was Malcolm X.
⁶

Isn't it interesting that for many of our public figures who've been killed—I'm thinking of John Lennon, Malcolm X, and Dr. King—they all seem to be under surveillance first and then assassinated later. Viewing it from a military standpoint, that would be the Standard Operating Procedure you'd expect: heavy surveillance to learn how you live, what way would be best to do it, how do we set up the patsy and get away with it? Look at it this way—if they're following these people around, wouldn't it turn up that somebody else was doing the same thing? But turning up the killers never seems to happen, does it?

By 1963, Malcolm was being pushed out of the Muslim hierarchy. The FBI, using informants and wiretaps to keep up with the rift, started spreading tales about Elijah Muhammad having affairs with young women—The FBI pretending it was Malcolm X doing the rumormongering. After Malcolm made comments about “chickens coming home to roost” following Kennedy's assassination, Elijah Muhammad seized the opportunity to suspend him for 90 days. At that point, FBI agents came around with a bribe offer that Malcolm refused. Not long after that, he was warned about a plot to wire his car to blow up as soon as he started the engine.

On March 8, 1964, Malcolm X announced he was leaving the NOI and founding a new mosque in New York. A few weeks later, he and Martin Luther King met for the one and only time in Washington, where they were both attending a Senate hearing on civil rights legislation. They spent time together on the Capitol steps, finding common ground. King said soon after that, unless Congress moved quickly, they could expect that “our nation is in for a dark night of social disruption.”
⁷
Malcolm X was saying: “We need to expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level—to the level of human rights.”

Then he went off to Mecca. While he was gone, the NYPD's unit known as BOSSI (Bureau of Special Service and Investigation) was busy infiltrating Malcolm X's new mosque and passing along information to the FBI and CIA. The fellow in charge of the operation was Anthony Ulasewicz, who later became President Nixon's private detective for purposes of undercover ops and gained infamy during Watergate.
⁸
He brought onboard a 25-year-old black detective named Gene Roberts, a martial arts expert who joined up with Malcolm X as a bodyguard. “When he came back from Mecca and Africa, I went wherever he went, as long as it was in the city,” Roberts said later.
⁹

Toward the end of May 1964, the five men who'd be directly involved in assassinating Malcolm X met for the first time. They were part of a paramilitary training unit, known as the Fruit of Islam, based out of Newark, New Jersey.
¹⁰
That summer, when Malcolm left on an extended trip to Africa, John Ali said on a Chicago call-in radio station: “I predict that anyone who opposes the Honorable Elijah Muhammad puts their life in jeopardy.”
¹¹

The CIA was aware that Malcolm was putting together information for African leaders at the second conference of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) in Cairo. One informant report claimed he was out “to embarrass the United States” by telling Africa about our “ill treatment of the Negro.” Malcolm knew he was being shadowed by government agents, telling a friend that “our Muslims don't have the resources to finance a worldwide spy network.”
¹²
While he was eating at the Nile Hilton, he recognized the waiter as a man he'd seen before in New York. Malcolm was rushed to a hospital just in time to have his stomach pumped. The doctor said there'd been something toxic in the food. By then, of course, the waiter had disappeared. Malcolm recovered, and urged the OAU leaders to consider African-American problems like their own and talk about this at the U.N.

The State Department then alerted President Johnson of an informant's report that Malcolm X and related “extremist groups” were receiving money from certain African states to ignite race riots. Johnson asked Hoover to look into this, and the State Department sent a memo to Richard Helms, the man in charge of clandestine operations at the CIA. The FBI told the CIA that the charges were trumped up. But Helms went ahead and authorized increasing surveillance on Malcolm X.
¹³
Over at the FBI, Director Hoover wrote in a memo: “There are clear and unmistakeable signs that we are in the midst of a social revolution with the racial movement at its core. The Bureau, in meeting its responsibilities in this area, is an integral part of this revolution.”
¹⁴

John Lewis, the future congressman, was part of SNCC (the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) at the time, when he happened to run into Malcolm X in Nairobi. Lewis remembers Malcolm telling him “in a calm, measured way he was convinced that somebody wanted him killed.”
¹⁵
He kept extending his stay abroad, before finally flying back to the U.S. Louis X, known today as Louis Farrakhan, released a public statement: “Such a man as Malcolm is worthy of death.” Years later, Farrakhan admitted to filmmaker Spike Lee that he'd “helped contribute to the atmosphere that led to the assassination of Malcolm X.”
¹⁶

As Malcolm's influence grew, the CIA and FBI were only too happy to take advantage of the worsening divide between him and the followers of Elijah Muhammad. Malcolm seemed resigned to this. “Those talks [overseas] broadened my outlook and made it crystal clear to me that I had to look at the struggle in America's ghettos against the background of a worldwide struggle of oppressed peoples,” he told a friend. “That's why, after every one of my trips abroad, America's rulers see me as being more and more dangerous. That's why I feel in my bones the plots to kill me have already been hatched in high places. The triggermen will only be doing what they were paid to do.”

Alex Haley said that “Malcolm X complained repeatedly that the police would not take his requests for protection seriously.” One headquarters officer put it like this: “The guy had a bad [rap] sheet. You don't offer somebody like that protection.”
¹⁷
As 1965 began, he was being shadowed at every stop by potential assassins. John Ali was there waiting for his arrival in L.A., along with a group from the NOI. In Chicago, fifteen NOI members hung around outside his hotel. When Malcolm X flew to Paris to give a talk, the French authorities wouldn't let him enter the country. Later, a journalist named Eric Norden found out from a diplomat “that the CIA planned Malcolm's murder, and France feared he might be liquidated on its soil.”
¹⁸

On February 4, 1965, Hoover sent a “confidential” memo that outlined Malcolm's travel plans to Helms at the CIA and intel experts with all three branches of the military. At the same time, Elijah Muhammad was writing: “Malcolm—the Chief Hypocrite—was beyond the point of no return.” On February 14, Malcolm's house was firebombed. He managed to get his pregnant wife, Betty, out along with their four daughters, into the 20-degree temperature outside. The NOI started a rumor that he'd burned his own house to get publicity. When a fireman left a bottle of gasoline on the dresser to make it look like that, Malcolm knew the plot against him went beyond the NOI.
¹⁹
The truth was, the main man spreading the rumor (Captain Joseph X) had been part of the firebombing team.