A Return to the Scene of the Crime

How Dealey Plaza Became the Cornerstone of America's Quest for Empire

by Douglas Herman

“The real power structures are always the invisible ones behind the visible sovereign powers.” ~ Buckminster Fuller

Who benefited most by the death of JFK?  Who had the most to gain—in terms of wealth and power—by the death of Kennedy?  Forty years after that professional killing, with four decades of evidence, the answer is clear.  In October 1963, one month before his death, Kennedy wrote National Security Action Memorandum #263, calling for the first return of troops from Vietnam.  Earlier Kennedy made known his intentions to “smash the CIA into a thousand pieces” and scatter them to the wind. Certainly a president who threatened the enormous profits and seats of power of the hydra-headed, military/industrial/intelligence machine had to go.

“The affairs of man and nature are not determined at random or by mere chance,” wrote CIA liaison, Colonel Fletcher Prouty in JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy .  “1963 marked a major turning point in this century because the power elite moved that year to remove John F. Kennedy from the White House and to take the course of the Ship of State into their own hands.” But the assassination of JFK according to history books probably didn’t occur from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, but from the Dal-Tex building to the east (right in photo #1) and the Grassy Knoll to the west. (photo #2). If the nature of a successful conspiracy is the concealment of individuals involved and their true motives, the same was true of the site.  From the perspective of a sniper, ( Kill Zone: A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza ) the second or third floor windows of the Dal-Tex building and the Grassy Knoll (only 65 feet to JFK) offered complete and unrestricted line-of-sight, unlike the TSBD which required a sharpshooter using a superb weapon—that Oswald did NOT have—to perform an extraordinary act of shooting, which three of the best sharpshooters were unable to duplicate in a documented test.

As I stated, the Texas School Book Depository may not have been the origin of ANY of the shots.  The great majority of people interviewed by the Dallas police, FBI and Secret Service, who were asked where they thought the shots originated, said from the Grassy Knoll.  Curiously the Warren Commission Report offered this conclusion: “In contrast to the testimony of the witnesses who heard and observed shots fired from the Depository, the Commission’s investigation has disclosed no credible evidence that any shots were fired from anywhere else.” Perhaps the truest indication of a conspiracy by the military/industrial complex was the blatant distortion of so much evidence and testimony by the high commissioners and the acceptance of these conclusions by the corporate owned media.

One of the biggest supporters of the Warren Report on its publication, The New York Times, reported recently that America’s military power, measured in military spending, now exceeded that of all NATO countries combined—plus China, Russia, Japan, Iraq and North Korea.  After 40 years of uneasy sleep, the American people awaken from a narcotized slumber to find that our institutions, elected officials and most respected newspapers have been accessories to a crime.

If the Times refused to ask the tough questions, others would put them in print, including Mark Lane, author of “Rush To Judgment” and Bertrand Russell in “16 Questions On The Assassination” published in the U.S. in September 1964.  Only in the last decade have critics, among them former CIA officer Prouty, begun to ask the most pertinent question: Who benefited from the killing of Kennedy? Who continues to benefit—in terms of wealth and power—by a shift in policy?

The greatest indictment of the military/industrial/intelligence troika remains the enormous profits they reaped—an estimated $200 billion—upon the murder of Kennedy and the installation of LBJ and the escalation of the Vietnam War.  Ironically, one of the foremost beneficiaries in 1963 was Texas-based LBJ backer, Brown & Root.  One of the foremost beneficiaries of the Iraq War in 2003?  Kellogg, Brown & Root.  The day Kennedy was killed in Dallas signaled an enormous shift into the profit column of hundreds of companies like KBR.

Dealey Plaza today is like the silent stage of a forgotten Shakespearean tragedy or, better yet, a well preserved Civil War battlefield signifying a dynamic shift of history.  Instead of bronze cannon, however, we see a plaque affixed to the TSBD building. Etched deeply into that metal plaque--by a thousand concerned citizens who view it--is an incision underlining the word “alleged” before the word Oswald.  Perhaps in time—another 40 years perhaps—the complete effacement of falsehood will reveal the scale of our bondage to the imperial lie that threatens to bankrupt us financially as well as morally.