COPA '96

by John Kelin

We can know in our lifetime.

That legend was printed on the front of booklets at the Coalition on Political Assassination's Third National Conference, which convened in Washington D.C. this past October 18-20. Researchers and others interested in the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were gathered to hear the latest developments in those crimes of the 1960s.

At the bottom of this page are links to a group of pieces relating to this event. There are two first-person accounts, one by researcher Martin Shackelford, and another by a writer known as Fatback.

Following these two items are a group of reprints from the abstract of papers presented at the conference. Articles have been grouped into rather broad categories. We are publishing those which relate directly to the JFK assassination. COPA and its member organizations also vigorously support an official accounting for the murders of RFK and Dr. King. (You will, however, find information on the RFK and King cases in the Shackelford and Fatback articles.)

COPA has noted:

Some of the abstracts were accompanied by longer articles, which we will seek to print and distribute in some form in the future, either in our newsletter, Open Secrets, or in booklet form, with the author's permission. We ask those presenting to provide their full articles to the Coalition...

The material published here cannot, of course, substitute for an author's actual presentation. As in years past, much of the conference was videotaped, and these tapes are available for sale. For more information on that or the papers mentioned above, we urge readers to contact (and financially support) COPA at:

Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA)
P. O. Box 772
Ben Franklin Station
Washington, DC 20044-0772
(202) 785-5299

Reports

The COPA Conference: First View This overview of the conference weekend was compiled by Martin Shackelford.
COPA Conference: Second View This take on the conference weekend provides another perspective, that of a writer we met in Washington last year who uses the net.handle Fatback. This article focuses on the issue of drug smuggling.

Presentations

The Assassination Records Review Board "A New Priority for the ARRB," by Peter Dale Scott; "ARRB Strategy," by John Judge.
Ballistics Evidence "Good News about Neutron Activation Analysis," by Kenneth A. Rahn, Sr., Ph.D.; "The Angle of Shots in the JFK Assassination," by Matthew Smith.
JFK, the CIA, and Cuba "Project Freedom: RFK's Plan to Bring Democracy to Cuba," by Lamar Waldron (with Thom Hartmann); "Pinning Dallas on RFK," by Peter Dale Scott; "Did JFK's Negotiations with Castro Trigger the Assassination?" by Wayne S. Smith, Ph.D.; "The Mysterious Death of Richard Case Nagell," by Dick Russell.
JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald "Oswald's Possessions," by John Armstrong; "The Warren Commission's 'Mission Impossible'," by Hal Verb.
Medical Evidence "The Legacy of Prior Investigations into the Medical Aspects of JFK's Death," by Gary L. Aguilar, M.D., and Kathleen Cunningham; "JAMA Distortions," by Dr. Charles Crenshaw.
Miscellaneous "Attorney for the Damned: Mark Lane and Robert Groden's Lawsuits against Random House;" by Roger Feinman (includes the notorious Case Closed ad); "The Houma Heist," by Mike Clark; "Hidden Signals and Covert Messages," by Gerry Satterfield and David T. Krall.
The Paines "The Paines' Participation in the Minox Camera Charade," by Carol Hewett; "Paine and the Patsy," by Steven Jones; "All In the Family," by Barbara LaMonica; "The Crux of the Matter," by William Kelley.

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