Robert
J. Groden first became interested in the assassination of JFK
in 1964. A harsh critic of the Warren
Commission,
he was the Staff Photographic Consultant to the House
Select Committee on Assassinations and a consultant on Oliver
Stone's film JFK.
Groden
is the author of several books on the assassination of High
Treason: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: What Really
Happened (1989),
High
Treason: The Great Cover-Up: The Assassination of President John F.
Kennedy (1992),
The
Killing of a President: The Complete Photographic Record of the JFK
Assassination, the Conspiracy, and the Cover-up (1993)
and The
Search for Lee Harvey Oswald: A Comprehensive Photographic Record
(1995).
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Robert
J. Groden, The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald (1995)
On Monday, August 12, 1963, Lee and Carlos Bringuier appeared
in Second Municipal Court at 1:00 p.m. The charges were dismissed
against Bringuier, and Lee was fined $10.00. Marina Oswald confirmed
that Lee actually wanted to be arrested. He wanted the exposure. He
wanted to get the publicity as a pro-Castroite. She referred to this
as "self-advertising." Marina was right, but the question
still remains: Why?
Lee was back handing out
his Fair Play for Cuba Committee flyers on the streets of New Orleans
on August 16. He had hired three men to help with distribution: odd,
since he was nearly without funds for himself and his family. They
stood in front of the International Trade Mart, whose director, Clay
Shaw, would be charged with conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy
four years later by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. Somebody
(probably Lee himself or, possibly, Carlos Bringuier) called WDSU-TV
and other members of the New Orleans news media to announce that he
was distributing the pro-Castro literature. More self-advertising.
That evening's television news broadcast his activity, and the resulting
bad publicity made it nearly impossible for him to obtain employment.
(2)
Robert
J. Groden,
The
Search for Lee Harvey Oswald (1995)
How to pin the president's death on Castro? Simple.
Have a pro-Castroite accused as the assassin. The perfect
candidate for "designated patsy" was Lee Harvey
Oswald.
In all likelihood, the
CIA kept Oswald on as an inactive
agent, as perhaps they had been since his defection
to the USSR. In September 1962, he went to work
for the FBI as a $200-per-month informant (Warren
Commission executive session, January 27, 1964).
But on what or whom could he inform? One
possibility is that he was supposed to observe the White
Russian community in and around Dallas, which included
the late George DeMohrenschildt.
A very probable scenario
is that in mid-1963 Lee Oswald was reactivated by the CIA and sent
to New Orleans to create a pro-Castro cover by starting the New Orleans
chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. It appears at this point
that CIA agent payroll number 110669 had been ordered by his superiors
to furnish himself with a pro-Castro cover in order to enable
him to enter Cuba by way of Mexico City possibly in order to infiltrate
Cuban intelligence, or perhaps to try to assassinate Castro. Possibly,
those members of the CIA involved in the Kennedy assassination plot
were setting Oswald up as "the missing link," the connection
between Fidel Castro and the assassination.
(3)
Giles
Hugo, review of Robert J. Groden's, The
Killing of a President (1993)
The most
intriguing new contribution to the Kennedy debate, to my mind, is
undoubtedly Robert J. Groden's The Killing of a President. The subtitle
- 'The Complete Photographic Record of the JFK Assassination, the
Conspiracy, and the Cover-up' - spells out its chief attraction -
more than 650 pix, many in colour, which conclusively trash any lingering
'lone nut assassin' or 'magic bullet' fantasies. The graphic evidence
presented by Groden points to one conclusion: JFK was butchered in
a brilliantly conceived and ruthlessly executed act of extermination.
Period.
It makes the Warren Commission's
findings appear more than just ridiculous - in fact they would seem
to cloak deeply sinister motives and bizarre operations. The perpetrators
of the assassination have effectively escaped justice for three decades,
and in the cover-up process many individuals have been harassed or
even 'terminated with extreme prejudice'...
The only fault I can find
with Groden's book it is that a small proportion of the evidence presented
seems trivial or just highly improbable - I am a bit dubious about
the relevance of some of the entries from the 'Mysterious Death Project',
a listing by writer Penn Jones of over 300 people 'associated' - some
very obscurely - with the assassination, who have since died or disappeared.
But even while picking through such minor dross, some absolute gems
emerge, such as: '(Warren) Commission member Congressman Hale Boggs
did not believe the single bullet theory and said, "I had strong
doubts about it." In a speech in 1971, Boggs accused the FBI
of tapping his phone... and publicly denounced the Bureau's "gestapo
tactics". Boggs disappeared, never to be found, while on a flight
to Alaska.'
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