Ron Ecker was born in Jacksonville,
Florida, on 8th February, 1942. He received his BA in English at the
University of Florida in 1964, and spent two years as a Peace
Corps Volunteer in Peru. He earned a Masters in Library Science
degree at Florida State University, and spent almost 20 years as a
librarian with the state of Florida.
Ecker became interested
in the assassination of John
F. Kennedy after
reading Best Evidence (David
Lifton). He created a website on the assassination called Ecker's
JFK Web Pages. It includes articles he has written on the JFK
assassination, as well as links to other JFK materials.
The author of several books,
Ecker took early retirement in 2000 to become a full-time writer.
His books include the Dictionary of Science
and Creationism, And Adam Knew
Eve: A Dictionary of Sex in the Bible, The
Evolutionary Tales: Rhyme and Reason on Creation/Evolution,
and the vampire novel (writing as William Pridgen) Night
of the Dragon’s Blood. His modern-English translation
of The Canterbury Tales has been
a widely adopted text in college and university literature courses.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
Ecker's
JFK Web Pages
(1)
Ron
Ecker, The
Umbrella Man (June, 2004)
Imagine
this. U.S. President John F. Kennedy rides in an open limousine into
Dallas's Dealey Plaza. The limo is followed in the motorcade by a
car full of Secret Service agents. Nothing looks suspicious, unless
you count the absence of police motorcycles both in front of and beside
the limo (the Secret Service ordered that the motorcycles stay to
the rear of JFK's car, which led the House Select Committee on Assassinations
to call the Dallas motorcade "uniquely insecure"). 1 There
was also the choice of motorcade route, with that slow, tight turn
onto Elm Street, seconds before rifle shots ring out. Such slow speed
and tight turns can clearly be dangerous for a president riding in
an open car. (One familiar with presidential motorcades might also
wonder about the absence in Dallas of the usual press truck, with
all of its cameras, in front of the President's limo.) And when shots
are heard, and Secret Service agent John Ready jumps off the running
board of the follow-up car, intent to run to JFK's limo (which driver
William Greer slows down, of all things), SS agent in charge Emory
Roberts in the follow-up car calls Ready back. Agent Clint Hill runs
to the limo anyway, climbing onto the back of it, as the limo finally
speeds up after JFK has been fatally shot in the head.
But never mind the unique
insecurity, the route, and the behavior of the Secret Service. Nothing
else looks suspicious, till after that slow turn onto Elm Street.
Imagine this. There's a man, on this bright sunny day, standing on
the sidewalk right where the President is about to pass, who opens
an umbrella. Not only that, but (as seen in the Zapruder film) he
rotates the open umbrella while he's standing under it, as if somehow
tracking the President with it as the limo approaches. Now the man
pumps the umbrella up and down, as if signaling, right after JFK is
first shot. Not only that, but there's a slim, dark-complected man
standing on the sidewalk near the umbrella man who, after JFK has
been hit, raises one hand high in the air. And after more shots have
been fired, fatally wounding the President, and while everyone else
is running about or fearfully lying low on the plaza grass, the man
with the umbrella calmly lowers and closes it. Then he and the dark-complected
man, with chaos all around them, casually sit down together on the
curb. The dark-complected man apparently says something into a radio,
then conceals it in his back when he and the umbrella man, having
taken their respite on the curb, stroll away in opposite directions.
(2)
Ron
Ecker, The
Tokyo Flight (October, 2004)
When
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on November
22, 1963, six members of his Cabinet plus his press secretary were
out of the country, together on an airplane en route to Tokyo, Japan.
Some JFK conspiracy theorists have seen this group absence of key
government officials from Washington during the assassination as more
than a coincidence.
"We believe it was
by design," J. Gary Shaw writes in his book Cover-Up, "that
Secretary of State (Dean) Rusk, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon,
Interior Secretary Stewart Udall and Labor Secretary W.W. Wirtz, as
well as other administration officials like Press Secretary (Pierre)
Salinger, were trapped in an airplane over the Pacific Ocean at such
a critical time." 1 (The other two Cabinet members aboard were
Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges and Secretary of Agriculture Orville
Freeman. Cabinet members not on the trip were Defense Secretary Robert
McNamara, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, HEW Secretary Anthony Celebrezze,
and Postmaster General John Gronouski.)
Shaw also writes of a problem
the Rusk party had in communicating by radio with the White House
because "the official code book was missing from its special
place aboard the plane" (italics in original), a suspicious circumstance
reiterated by Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone in their best-selling
book High Treason.
The late Colonel L. Fletcher
Prouty, who in 1963 was Chief of Special Operations for the Joint
Chiefs of Staff (and who was the basis for the military character
"X" in the Oliver Stone film JFK), was also out of the country
that day, having been sent on a mission to the South Pole. In his
1992 book JFK, Prouty wonders, "Were there things that I knew,
or would have discovered, that made it wise to have me far from Washington,
along with others, such as the Kennedy cabinet . . . ?"
Similarly, researcher Vince
Palamara is suspicious about the presence of Salinger on the Tokyo
flight instead of in Dallas, where the press secretary's knowledge
of motorcade planning and security might conceivably have made a difference.
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