Two days later, on Nov. 24, 1963, a live national television audience witnessed the murder of the assassination’s prime suspect, Lee Harvey Oswald. Consequently, there was no doubt that Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub operator, was the trigger-man. What made him do it is still being questioned.
Shortly after JFK’s death, columnist Mary McGrory expressed her dark feelings to Daniel Patrick Moynihan: “We’ll never laugh again.”
Moynihan, who was an Assistant Secretary of Labor then, famously replied, “Heavens, Mary, we’ll laugh again. It’s just that we’ll never be young again.”
The cynicism spawned by the cloaked-in-secrecy aftermath of the JFK assassination has tinted everything the aforementioned children have seen since those dark days. Especially, everything to do with political investigations.
However, I’m not at all convinced there must have been a far-flung and complicated conspiracy to kill the president and cover up the tracks. Furthermore, after he was dead, just because some people deliberately obscured related information, we don't necessarily know why they did it. In some cases it was probably people trying to cover asses for a myriad of reasons.
So, for now, let's skip past the argument over whether, or not, Oswald acted alone. For the moment, let's not speculate about whether Oswald was a dupe, or one of the greatest marksmen who ever lived. The point of this piece is to recognize that the secrecy that rushed in obscured the truth about what happened in November of 1963 and poisoned the American culture in a way that is still being felt.
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known as the Warren Commission, published its report on Sept. 24, 1964: Essentially, Oswald was found to have been a lone wolf assassin. Which immediately unleashed the questioning of the Commission’s findings.
Perhaps its famous “single bullet theory,” which had one projectile traveling circuitously through two victims was great sleuthing. Or maybe it was just an unbelievable reach.
In 1965 unknown gunmen murdered Malcolm X in an auditorium in Manhattan. I say "unknown" because the two men convicted of that assassination were exonerated last week. So Muhammad A. Aziz, 83, and the late Khalil Islam have had their names cleared. Too bad about all the time they served in prison.
The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known as the Warren Commission, published its report on Sept. 24, 1964: Essentially, Oswald was found to have been a lone wolf assassin. Which immediately unleashed the questioning of the Commission’s findings.
Perhaps its famous “single bullet theory,” which had one projectile traveling circuitously through two victims was great sleuthing. Or maybe it was just an unbelievable reach.
*
In 1965 unknown gunmen murdered Malcolm X in an auditorium in Manhattan. I say "unknown" because the two men convicted of that assassination were exonerated last week. So Muhammad A. Aziz, 83, and the late Khalil Islam have had their names cleared. Too bad about all the time they served in prison.
Three years after the murder of Malcolm X, Rev. Martin Luther King was killed on a motel balcony in Memphis by a sniper. Only two months later, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's presidential run ended when he was shot to death in a Los Angeles hotel. It was a shock, but in the crazy year of violence 1968 was, it was not such a surprise.
Unfortunately, at the time the official stories on those three shootings were widely doubted, even disbelieved. In the ‘60s more public scrutiny of how those assassination probes were conducted might have led to different conclusions. More importantly, even if more sunlight into those investigations failed to produce different outcomes, at least Americans might have felt better about the good faith of the processes.
Instead, it seemed then the authorities generally believed the American people didn't really have a right to see the whole truth and nothing-but. Too often it seems to have been decided on high that the public was better off not knowing some things, as if we were all children.
Of course, secrecy of that sort can hide everyday malfeasance, as well. Shielding the citizenry from such information is the sort of thinking that went during world wars, with spies lucking about. In the 1960s, perhaps as part of the Cold War, the public more or less expected its government to routinely withhold all sorts of secrets.
That, whether the public like it, or not. Eventually, it took a series of brutal revelations to snap many Americans out of blithely tolerating an over-abundance of secrecy:
In 1997 Sen. Moynihan’s book, “Secrecy: The American Experience,” was published. In the opening chapter he wrote:
Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote:
So while I hope for the best, when it comes to the process and the findings of the Select Committee in the House of Representatives investigating the January 6th riot and insurrection, history tells me there are a lot of reasons it can all go wrong. The Republicans in that chamber seem determined to sabotage the process.
Lastly, for democracy to have a chance of working properly and delivering good government, we the voters need to know whose money is behind every politician's ploy. Knowing who paid for what always helps. Brandeis was spot on about the power of sunlight.
Taking it home: Single bullet theory, you say?
Great name for a punk era band.
Unfortunately, at the time the official stories on those three shootings were widely doubted, even disbelieved. In the ‘60s more public scrutiny of how those assassination probes were conducted might have led to different conclusions. More importantly, even if more sunlight into those investigations failed to produce different outcomes, at least Americans might have felt better about the good faith of the processes.
Instead, it seemed then the authorities generally believed the American people didn't really have a right to see the whole truth and nothing-but. Too often it seems to have been decided on high that the public was better off not knowing some things, as if we were all children.
Of course, secrecy of that sort can hide everyday malfeasance, as well. Shielding the citizenry from such information is the sort of thinking that went during world wars, with spies lucking about. In the 1960s, perhaps as part of the Cold War, the public more or less expected its government to routinely withhold all sorts of secrets.
That, whether the public like it, or not. Eventually, it took a series of brutal revelations to snap many Americans out of blithely tolerating an over-abundance of secrecy:
- The My Lai Massacre horrors.
- The publishing of the Pentagon Papers.
- The Watergate Scandal hearings.
- The Iran-Contra Scandal hearings.
- The bogus justification for invading Iraq.
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In 1997 Sen. Moynihan’s book, “Secrecy: The American Experience,” was published. In the opening chapter he wrote:
In the United States, secrecy is an institution of the administrative state that developed during the great conflicts of the twentieth century. It is distinctive primarily in that it is all but unexamined. There is a formidable literature on regulation of the public mode, virtually none on secrecy. Rather, there is a considerable literature, but it is mostly secret. Indeed, the modes of secrecy remain for the most part -- well, secret.
On inquiry there are regularities: patterns that fit well enough with what we have learned about other forms of regulation. But there has been so little inquiry that the actors involved seem hardly to know the set roles they play. Most important, they seem never to know the damage they can do. This is something more than inconveniencing to the citizen. At times, in the name of national security, secrecy has put that very security in harm's way.Fifty-eight years after the murder of JFK, it’s high time to stop tolerating unnecessary secrecy in government at all levels. After all, secrets that invite speculation and provoke conspiracy theories serve a nefarious agenda just as well as a lie.
Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote:
"Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman."Today, to trust official conclusions, we need plenty of Brandeis' sunlight. We not only need investigations, we need to be able to see into the investigations. So televised expert testimony at Congressional hearings is a good thing.
So while I hope for the best, when it comes to the process and the findings of the Select Committee in the House of Representatives investigating the January 6th riot and insurrection, history tells me there are a lot of reasons it can all go wrong. The Republicans in that chamber seem determined to sabotage the process.
Lastly, for democracy to have a chance of working properly and delivering good government, we the voters need to know whose money is behind every politician's ploy. Knowing who paid for what always helps. Brandeis was spot on about the power of sunlight.
Taking it home: Single bullet theory, you say?
Great name for a punk era band.
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