Dr. John Newman at COPA '95
The conference will feature speakers sharing their latest research into the JFK and other political assassinations of the sixties. Meetings of COPA's Working Panels are also scheduled. Click here for more information.
Fair Play readers can expect a report on the conference in the November-December issue. In the meantime we are repeating an overview of last year's conference.
"There is no 'bottom line' on the new evidence --- other than it's being opened up," said author and COPA member John Newman, in response to a reporter question. Newman was speaking at a press conference kicking off the 1995 Coalition on Political Assassinations National Conference, held at the Omni-Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. the weekend of October 20-22.
"For thirty years," Newman continued, "we've been guessing --- writing books, writing articles --- with about five cards from the deck. And when you do that kind of thing, you're going to make mistakes. Then, of course, you set yourself up --- people make fun of the person who made the guess. But that game's over. That game's finished. When the law was passed, and the government had to release all the files in its possession, everything changed. The force of law --- the presumption, actually --- is for full disclosure."
The 'law' is the JFK Records Act, known formally as The President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. It was signed by then-President Bush and established the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), an independent, five-member panel appointed by President Clinton to identify and make available all records related to the assassination of President Kennedy.
The theme and the focus of COPA's National Conference was any new information to come from the release of any such files. While there was new information, much of the weekend was given over to new interpretations of old evidence and networking by researchers --- in short, a meeting of the minds.
The material discussed here was gathered by one person. I've tried to make this [Fair Play issue's] coverage as comprehensive as possible, but with the multitude of events going on over the three days of the conference (and given the limits of human endurance), getting to everything was physically impossible. For starters, I have limited coverage to the JFK case. As it happens, that was about ninety percent of what went on at the conference. As interested as I am in the the assassinations of Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, all of which were discussed and were the subjects of presentations, those cases are simply beyond the scope of this magazine.
In addition to [research] presentations, there was one room given over to the sale of books, tapes, and other research aids. The Last Hurrah Bookshop had piles and piles of assassination literature for sale, as did Prevailing Winds. Some fellows from LMP Systems of Dallas were marketing a new JFK assassination CD-ROM. This room, over the course of the weekend, became a place to hang out between scheduled events.
It was in this room that author Harrison Livingstone made an unexpected, and apparently unwelcome, appearance on Saturday night. He brought a copy of his new book, Killing Kennedy, and the Hoax of the Century. Livingstone is something of a renegade in the research community, and the new book is said to further the venom of Killing the Truth. A noted author, who was also in the book room, muttered "Oh no" when Livingstone walked in, and proceeded to slink away. I, however, approached him and introduced myself.
"What are you working on?" Livingstone demanded. I tried to tell him a little bit about Fair Play, and even thrust a FP brochure into his hands. He accepted it, but said, "Computers give me headaches." He then turned to one of several admirers beginning to cluster about him.
A few hours later, I spied Livingstone in the hotel lobby, seated at a couch speaking with another admirer. This was the last I saw of him, and if he had a reason for showing up at this conference, where he was not scheduled to speak, I never heard it.
In remarks published in a conference program, Dr. Cyril Wecht wrote, "The American public has been decieved by our government regarding these great tragedies. The 'official' versions have been proven false. Our mission is to press the government to re-open these murder investigations and pursue the truth, no matter where and to whom those paths may lead."
Fair Play asked Dr. Wecht whether, in view of the government's track record in the JFK case, these were realistic objectives --- specifically, if he could truly expect any new investigation to reach an acceptable truth, no matter where the trail leads. "The answer is yes," he replied, "for this reason: if there were just going to be another appointed commission, then your skepticism would be well-founded. But by definition, I think, we're not about to get a re-opening with the appointment of a new commission, unless the evidence is hard and unyielding."
Other events scheduled for the weekend included an awards dinner, and a panel on Lee Harvey Oswald. Norman Mailer, author of Oswald's Tale, had been scheduled to appear on the Oswald panel. Though his appearance was announced as confirmed, he cancelled. Conference Chair Gary Aguilar commented, "I was advising [Mailer] that we would have him come and be here for the awards dinner, where we were giving lifetime achievement awards. And he was very keen to know who [the recipients] were. And so I mentioned Harold Weisberg, whereupon I was immediately informed that under no circumstances would he be there for that dinner. When I advised him Harold Weisberg wasn't well enough to travel and would not be here in person, then he perhaps began to reconsider, but he had so many other demands that ultimately bringing him here was unsuccessful."
By way of further explanation, Aguilar said, "He apparently took great exception to the fact that Harold Weisberg treated him very rudely in a series of letter exchanges. Now, I think that anyone here who has ever gotten a letter from Harold Weisberg --- if you have not been insulted more than once or twice, then you have not earned your stripes in this cause."
On Friday night, the keynote address was delivered by Robert Tannenbaum, Deputy Chief Counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He said that before serving on the HSCA he was with the District Attorney's office in New York City, where he learned a great respect for truth. "There is a historical point where we began to know, publicly, how our government began to publicly compromise the truth. And that was when the Warren Commission came down with its Report in 1964," he said. "I think back on [the JFK] case ... and when I went to Washington, I really wasn't hip to all the writings. So I read [Josiah] Thompson's material, and others --- I had an education ... "
Tannenbaum said the JFK assassination is a rare example of a murder that was captured on film. But he said this is an area where dishonesty creeps into the official story. "You see things, but are told that's not what you really see ... the President is hit in the head, and it goes backwards. I don't have to get a degree from Yale to figure it out --- if a guy's head goes backwards, it probably means someone hit him from the front!"
He left the HSCA in 1977, Tannenbaum said, when it became clear it was not going to be an honest investigation. "Once you, in some way, compromise on truth in the government, you lose all credibility. And we demean our government. And we have a great government ... my first week in Washington, Senator [Richard] Schweiker called me into his office. He sat down all his aides, he gave you an incredible file of material --- about Veciano, about Bishop, and Phillips ... and he told me, in his opinion, the CIA murdered the President.
"Well, you know ... that's heavy stuff. And [a TV interviewer] said to [Richard] Helms, 'People say that you're respnsible for the assassination of the President of the United States.' He said, 'That's crazy.' 'Well, why's it crazy?' 'Because the day of the assassination, we did a check to see what was going on with our operatives.'
"Do you want a better confession than that? On November 22, I was walking out of a philosophy lecture ... and the word flashed: the President has been shot. No rational, decent, patriotic American was thinking about anybody in the Government of the United States of America who in any way could have conceivably been responsible for this murder --- unless he knew things that 99.9% of the population didn't know. [And] Helms says he was checking this out on the day of the assassination."
Tannenbaum said he appeared on CNN's Crossfire several years ago, shortly after the movie JFK hit the theaters. "I was asked, 'Don't you think that it was obscene, what Garrison did? and what Oliver Stone did?' And I said, 'The only obscenity about the assassination of the President --- other than we lost a great American --- was that the American government didn't tell us the truth.' And that's really the mission of people who care." This comment brought great applause. "It matters what we do, and it matters on every level."
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