Recently there has been some discourse over the importance of sticking to the data and avoiding "speculation" about the assassination. The admonition against "speculation" is an old one within the critical community---but to my mind such admonitions are an insult at this late date, as they were by 1965. Educated speculation is common to the law, to science, to all the major disciplines. Without it, new knowledge cannot be achieved.
Anyone familiar with Vincent J. Salandria's historic articles on the microdata, published in the Philadelphia Legal Intelligencer and in Liberation magazine---pieces which are the foundation stone for all subsequent similar research---understand that he demonstrated beyond the shadow of a doubt that the Kennedy assassination was a political murder effectuated by the highest levels of state power. There is a strong tendency, nurtured by many researchers, to engage in a kind of collective denial about this essential fact. There is a tendency, in the words of Martin Schotz, to BELIEVE rather than to KNOW that this was a political assassination carried out by the state through its military/intelligence apparatus.
Because people choose to stay immersed in the minutiae, for over thirty years this crucially important matter has failed to gestate into a mass political movement (it came very close to that in the 70s, which resulted in the HSCA, which in turn tried to put to rest public concern over the issue in a very disingenuous way).
I must say that I feel great frustration and boredom as I continue to read interminable writings about shell casings, skull fragments, et al. ad nauseum, still in 1995. Does one have to go further than a look at JFK's shirt and coat? Or the absurd Rydberg drawings, authorized not just by Humes but by the state authority for whom he worked? A cursory glance at the Zapruder film, certainly if anyone has familiarity with bolt-action shoulder arms, informs one that this murder happened very quickly, and under virtually impossible circumstances for a single rifleman. What about the government shutting down all its options immediately, and embracing the scapegoat narrative? Does this bespeak of an innocent government? We are told now and then that the concern was to avert a nuclear war or similar international crisis. (I call this the McDonald's scenario, since the assertion is "We did it all for you.") Exactly how would such a crisis come about? The American people would demand a nuclear strike against the Soviets over Kennedy's death, thus annihilating all humanity over one dead politician? How would the American people move state authority to do this, considering that even with the massive protests against the Vietnam War that war dragged on for over a decade? What about the control of the (illegal and unconstitutional) investigation of the assassination by the architects of the postwar military/intelligence structure? Can there be any doubt in the minds of those who have ever had association with progressive politics (putting aside the data for a moment) that Oswald was an agent provocateur and an intelligence functionary? Do we have to keep agonizing over such things? Don't we have plenty of evidence?
In 1965, Vince Salandria asked researchers if it was reasonable to take seriously the notion that the Bethesda doctors did not contact the Parkland doctors before they proceeded with the autopsy, thus they had no prior knowledge of the throat entry wound. Vince asked if common sense and one's understanding of how professionals behave in adult society would not tell one that the assertion by the Bethesda doctors was patently absurd and risible. Thirty years later, reseachers finally seem convinced that they have sufficient data to allow their common sense to kick in and inform them that indeed such a notion is and always was absurd. But it is thirty years later. What have the assassins and their syncophants gained during the time we wasted playing intellectual badminton with such data?
What is our ambition? To finally nail Mr. Big? To this date we still do not know the full extent of Nixon's role in Watergate nor the precise role of Reagan in Iran/Contra, but is this all that important? We do know a great deal about what these crimes represent in the way of their destruction of our basic institutions and democratic principles, yet they seem meaningless today as a flashpoint to assist people both in educating themselves and in building truly alternative progressive politics and addressing the nature of the distribution of power and wealth in this country.
As far as newly released files are concerned, certainly useful information is being found there, but does one go to the criminal for redress of grievance? These files represent endless skins to a vast onion that we keep peeling away at. What we do find tends either to befuddle us or simply confirm what we already knew. If we are interested in the precise role of figures in the rogue's gallery (Hunt, Phillips, Banister, Dulles, et al), that information is already there for those who really wish to see it. Do we have to keep dignifying these hoodlums by making perverse superstars out of them, putting them into some sort of assassination murder-mystery pantheon?
I would suggest that interested people focus on the implication of the JFK assassination for our society, and to ask what then is to be done.
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