David Lifton, George Michael Evica, Hal Verb, host Tony Mancuso.
The only conference-related event I knew about scheduled for Sunday, November 24, was a bus ride that would tour all of the key sites from the assassination weekend thirty-three years earlier.
But I found out about something else going on: a live radio program originating in the Dallas Grand's Silver Room, being broadcast back to Columbus, Ohio. This wasn't really a conference event, but several people associated with it were participating, and the topic was JFK. So I ditched the bus tour, and sat in as an audience member (one of about five) for the radio show.
The program was Lay It On the Line, a weekly current events show airing on WCOL in Columbus. Before the program started, host Anthony Mancuso, an Ohio attorney, told Fair Play that he was planning to be in Dallas to attend the conference anyway, so he decided to do a show from there. "I'm going to look at it [the JFK case] from every angle, but I believe my guests are more conspiracy thinkers. I am, too, but I don't know if it's to that extent."
His guest panel consisted of Hal Verb, David Lifton, and George Michael Evica. They sat around a table, each with his own telephone. There was no monitor, so none of us in the audience could hear the the program as it sounded to Mancuso's listeners back in Ohio, but it didn't matter all that much. Although his listeners were calling in questions, the best exchanges took place between Mancuso and his panel of experts.
Mancuso began his broadcast by calling the JFK case "certainly the most notorious criminal act in the history of our country." He said he'd been at the November in Dallas conference for the previous few days, studying many aspects of the case; he called his guests "not a blue-ribbon panel, this is like a dark blue, or bright blue-ribbon panel..."
Quite naturally, subjects that had been discussed in the preceding days came up. One of the most controversial may be what seems to be a growing consensus that the Zapruder film --- that 18-second motion picture of JFK's murder --- may be a false record of the assassination.
"It's not just controversy," said George Michael Evica. "We had a thirteen-hour closed session examination, for the first time in history, of the Zapruder film. And ten of the premier researchers in the JFK scholars community, including Dr. David Mantik and David Lifton, examined the film. And I can tell you, Tony, and I can tell your listeners, there's no question --- something is very, very wrong with the Zapruder film." Evica then deferred to Lifton, whom he said attended all thirteen hours of the examination of the film. But Evica kept talking on another matter, and Mancuso either didn't want to get back to the Z-film, forgot to get Lifton's input, or perhaps felt it was an area too specialized for his limited air time. Whatever the reason, this tantalizing assertion was left hanging in the air.
Instead of tossing it to Lifton, Evica continued, "Let me just say this. I'm already in the process --- I've already gone through one hundred UPI newspapers from November 24th through November 25th. Now that was a controlled situation, I can assure you. Merriman Smith's story controls the way people look at the assassination. And it's got a very curious opening, and it's this: 'Three shots were fired at the Presidential motorcade.' Notice it didn't say, 'A sniper,' or 'snipers.' It's in the passive tense, and it says 'three shots.' This story went out almost before --- in fact, it was before the president was declared dead ... that was the official story from the motorcade, and it never changed. The problem is, of course, all the doctors [who] observed or reported on the President's wounds at Parkland Memorial Hospital talked about a round, neat hole of entry. Now if that's so ... obviously, it's one of the fastest moving sniper-assassins in the history of the world! First, he puts a shot through the President's throat from the front; then he runs like hell, up the stairs and onto the sixth floor, and he fires and he hits people in the back. It won't wash --- it's fiction."
"Well," Mancuso broke in, obviously playing devil's advocate, "think about this. You've got the bullet, supposedly found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, or at least the shells of the bullets. You've got the rifle that was found a few moments after the assassination, and it belonged to Lee Harvey Oswald."
"That's not true," Evica replied.
"You got --- you tell me why it's not true! You got a guy who worked there. He had every opportunity --- he left the scene! He left the scene, and went to a movie theater, supposedly shot a policeman. Why is that not an open-and-shut situation, just on those facts?"
Hal Verb broke in. "Let me just back up a little bit here," he said, pointing out that while the radio panel consisted of experts on the case, many of Mancuso's listeners were not --- and indeed may not even have been born yet, at the time of the assassination. "You talk about the Warren Report --- now, the Warren Report was a prosecution brief, issued by the U.S. government. There was no defense ---"
"Yeah, one-sided," Mancusco said.
"It was a court decision --- an Alice in Wonderland court decision," Verb continued. "The panel associated with that Warren Commission folds up, and you can't reach them, to ask them, 'Hey, wait a second --- I've got a lot of questions for you ... so you have a functioning governmental body that no longer can answer questions."
After a commercial break, a caller brought up the question of whether Lyndon Johnson might have been somehow involved in killing JFK.
David Lifton fielded this question, and first summarized his theory of alteration to the President's body between Dallas and Bethesda Naval Hospital. "You get into a theory that the body was altered, then you get into --- you necessarily get into the theory that the assassination happened another way, and it was preconfigured. That is, you have an artificial cross-path situation set up between the President to be murdered, and the patsy to be framed, Oswald, by altering the body. Who brings Kennedy to Dallas? You cannot deal with that question without the issue of Lyndon Johnson asking Kennedy to come to Texas. So --- what I'm saying, in shorthand, is that when you reconstruct this thing along other lines, inevitably you end up dealing with the office of the Vice Presidency. That's just the way it works out historically ... you can't deal with these events, and rearrange them, without high level authority being implicated."
"But wait a minute," Mancuso sputtered. "There is some thought that Lyndon Johnson was, kinda either knew about it beforehand? Or knew about it during, and certainly knew what happened afterward? I mean, how can that be, in our American system that we all know and love?"
"It's part of the American way of life," George Evica responded. "It's happened over and over in the history of the country. Attempted coups --- assassinations --- attempted assassination..."
Evica said there was "major security stripping" throughout Kennedy's final swing through Texas, and even before that in Miami. "And ultimately, [certain] Secret Service agents will be found to be treasonous in the JFK assassination."
"Who did this? Who shot John F. Kennedy?" Mancuso asked. "I don't need you to tell me a name ... Just tell me, what group, or what people, were behind this."
"Well, we've called them for some time now, the National Security State," Evica replied. "It's the power structure in the United States, both in and out of the government ... [but] the [real] question is, Who was JFK? And that, I think, will help us get to the truth. Because he constituted a major threat to an extraordinary number of greedy, profit-driven, power-mad people, both within the government and outside. And when he finally became a major threat, I think a contract went out from those people who decided he should die. It was facilitated, probably, through rogue agents and organized crime people. The shooters were chosen, probably a couple of false teams. John F. Kennedy died in a crossfire because he threatened the National Security State."
Mancuso turned to Hal Verb. "How could all this happen in the United States? If this really happened, wouldn't people know about it? If we know the FBI or the CIA or anything was involved, I mean, wouldn't we know about it by now?" When Verb replied in the negative, Mancuso asked, "Why not?"
"Well, the reason is very obvious," Verb told him. "Who conducted the investigation? The government did. So, right away, you have a stacked deck ... There was no defense evidence presented, whatsoever. Walter Craig, who represented, quote, 'Oswald's interests,' what did he do during all the hearings? Read Walt Brown's book, The Warren Omission. He didn't ask a single question --- relevant question --- of any of the witnesses who were present, testifying before the Warren Commission. Representing Oswald's interests? Remember, Oswald's interests are your interests --- the People's interests. He is innocent until proven guilty. We are all innocent until proven guilty. It isn't just Oswald --- it's us."
"I agree with much of what Hal said," David Lifton chimed in, "but I'd like to add a couple other dimensions to it. Which is, the reason we don't know the truth is not just because the Warren Commission, and the FBI, and this and that, had these biases ... the real reason is the camouflage put up from the get-go is so good in some areas, is so clever, that it looks that way ... there's two things going on here. There's two elements to this dynamic. One is the camouflage that's erected right away --- there's a guy in a building, there's three shots, there's a body that looks a certain way in the autopsy room. And that stuff carries a lot of intertia. And you get going with official reports, the bureaucracy generates this case against Oswald. On the other hand, you've got agencies that don't want to look too hard, let's say, or accept the official version too easily. Never underestimate --- never underestimate --- the power of the official, falsified evidence. That is really crucial to understand."
"Wow, powerful stuff," Mancuso said, and with that, went into a commercial break.
When he resumed, Mancuso took up with David Lifton again, asking him what was going on in the case today. Lifton replied that getting to the truth requires recognizing there is a disguise, and tearing it down. He listed the Zapruder film and the autopsy photographs as examples of this, and stressed that the best mechanism for this is scholarship, and getting an extension for the Assassination Records Review Board, which is currently set to expire in October of 1997. He added that the ARRB should, in his view, be made a permanent division of the Justice Department, and urged Mancuso's listeners to write their Congressional representatives and demand the Board be extended by at least two years. "We're talking chump change," Lifton said of the cost to taxpayers. "If you care about truth in the Kennedy assassination, this is what you can do."
Mancuso then turned back to Hal Verb. "Will there ever be an answer to who killed John F. Kennedy?"
"If you want my personal opinion as to whether or not we'll ever find out --- I will have to be very, quite blunt with you. We may never find out."
"Oh, Hal," said George Michael Evica, "I think we will."
"Okay," Verb replied, "but I'm just trying to be as objective as I can. Sometimes I'm very optimistic, and sometimes I'm very pessimisitic."
"You guys' efforts have been absolutely fantastic on this," Mancuso said, as he began to wrap up his broadcast. He posed a final question to George Michael Evica. "This is thirty-three years later. Do people in our country still care about who shot John Kennedy?"
"We the People, who are present in body and spirit, had a re-dedication on Dealey Plaza just a few days ago, on November 22, 1996," Evica replied. "It was an extraordinary moment. Hundreds of people were there, and millions of people were there throughout the United States in spirit. Those who wept there, and those who wept across the nation, remembering the sacrifice of the President --- we are the living memorial who care, and will care, until this case is really closed."
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