The Kennedy Conspiracy Part One

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by Michael Shrimpton

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Next Friday marks the 50^th anniversary of the DVD’s disgraceful assassination of the 35^th President of the United States, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, in Dallas, TX, on November 22^nd 1963, also a Friday.  I have devoted a chapter to the assassination in Spyhunter, which should now be published in January.
It is a complex subject, worthy of a book on its own.  Many books have been written of course, but since they have all failed to identify the intelligence agency which set up the assassination, none has been able to fully explain it.  I am sure these few thoughts will provoke a lively discussion, to which I look forward.  I shall do my best to respond to any serious points.  The cunning plan is to make this the first in a series of columns.
The Key Points
The first point is that all successful assassinations are state-sponsored.  Of course the occasional nutter will take the occasional potshot at a Head of State or government – and fail.  There are no lone assassins.  Every assassination in history has been set up by a hostile intelligence agency.  You can argue about the point at which the murder of a politician, member of a royal family or military figure becomes an assassination.
A lone Moslem nutter, no offense, who had persuaded herself that Britain was wrong to invade Iraq, stabbed the Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham a few years back, but it scarcely counted as an ‘assassination’ attempt.  He just wasn’t important enough, again no offence intended.
When you have an assassination the first thing you do is work out which state was behind it.  In the case of President Kennedy it was the Federal Republic of West Germany, although in practice, in intelligence terms, there was no East and West Germany.
There was only Germany – the West German BND and the East German Stasi each reported to the DVD, as Markus Wolf, number 2 at the Stasi, once confirmed to me.  Markus – a nice chap, by the way – was one of Admiral Canaris’s brighter proteges. When Thames Valley Police unlawfully raided my new apartment last year they found the general’s former home telephone number in East Berlin.  I didn’t get it out of the ‘spies’ section of the East Berlin Yellow Pages.
The second point is that nearly all assassinations require inside help, typically arranged by double agents.  President Kennedy’s Secret Service close protection detail was withdrawn shortly before he was shot.  That was not arranged by Lee Harvey Oswald.
The third point is that the hostile state’s involvement is usually covert, as was Germany’s role in the Kennedy Assassination.  The sponsoring of an assassination is an Act of War.  Even after ninety-nine years Germany still cannot bring herself to acknowledge German responsibility for the assassinations of the Archduke and Archduchess in Sarajevo in 1914.  In fairness the ‘Jerries’ are not alone.  Paris has still to acknowledge French responsibility for the assassination of British Prime Minister Spenser Perceval during the Second Napoleonic War.
The fourth point is that people can get so terrified by the awesome consequences of a finding of state responsibility for an assassination that like little children hiding behind the sofa they take refuge from reality.  The mainstream media’s embrace of the daft theory that President Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald is a case in point.
No point becomes too silly if adopting it leads away from state responsibility toward the act of a lone madman.  It is not terribly surprising that ‘mainstream’ journalists abuse anyone holding rational or informed views about the Kennedy Assassination.  Abuse is a typical reaction from those holding extreme or irrational views, and in many cases stems from the subconscious realization that the abuser has lost his or her grip on reality.
Believers in man-made global warming can be very rude, e.g. – rather like Ed Davey, the absurd LibDem Energy Secretary, no offense intended, who kept interrupting that nice man Lord Lawson on BBC’s Question Time this week.
The fifth point is that in a shooting the first thing you should look at is the ballistic analysis.  There has never been a ballistic comparison between the bullets which hit President Kennedy and the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle allegedly owned by Lee Harvey Oswald.  The only comparison which was done, which was forensically worthless, was with rounds which did not hit the President.
You also have to analyse the trajectories.  Oswald could not have fired the minimum four shots which were fired in Dallas that fateful afternoon (I respectfully agree with the House Select Committee on Assassinations that we are looking at a minimum of four shots).  That is because they came from different directions.
It follows a fortiori that there were at least two shooters.  The lone gunman theory does not even get off the ground.  I respectfully agree with the late Judge Jim Garrison’s work on this point.  Ballistic trajectory analysis by the way rules out any of the fatal shots having been fired from the grassy knoll, as there was no firing solution which would not have shattered the windshield of the Lincoln.  That does not mean that there wasn’t a team on the knoll, merely that the order to ceasefire was given before they could get a round off.
The seventh point is that a trained sniper, let alone a trained Marine, does not mount an operation with a rifle the sights of which have not been scoped in.  The Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 mil (I know some call it a Carcano – I prefer the compound name, which fairly emphasizes the ancient, late 19^th century, origins of this weapon, at one time a standard infantry weapon of the imperial Austro-Hungarian army) was not the choice of a competent marksman.
The eighth point is that a competent marksman does not pass up his or her best firing solution and wait until they no longer have a clear shot.
The ninth point is that secondary assassinations, such as those of Oswald by Jack Ruby, and then in turn of Ruby himself, are classic evidence of a conspiracy.  Lone gunmen do not organize their own assassinations, let alone assassinations of key witnesses long after they themselves have been taken out.
My final preliminary point (there are many more I could make) is that the political beneficiaries of assassinations are usually in the loop.  It is not a hard and fast rule.  There is very little evidence that Vice-President Andrew Johnson was in the loop on the assassination of another great president, Abraham Lincoln, e.g., although there is evidence that he was under a high degree of stress in the weeks beforehand.  His namesake was nailed by the CIA as being in the loop (it was the phone records from his office before the assassination which clinched it) in 1963.
That should be enough to get a discussion going!
Response to Comments
Apologies for the typo last week – trust a lawyer to say ‘mooted’ instead of ‘muted’!  Nobody asked me, by the way, how I spotted that the plane in the Kojak episode I referred to was a B-52.  The stock footage was only of the undercarriage, but that was enough.  The B-52’s tandem undercarriage was of a unique design, although it was inspired by that of the B-47 Stratojet.  You could also see the inner engine pods – for the early J-57 turbojets, not the TF-33s.  There aren’t that many 8-engined 727s around!
Yes I was General Pinochet’s lawyer, or at least one of them.  I did the negotiating bit, in Washington, with dear old Lt-General ‘Dick’ Walters, a fine man.  Augusto Pinochet wasn’t a fascist, or anywhere near being a fascist, and was a most charming man.  In fact he was quite the nicest military dictator I have ever met.
I am glad ‘Dieter the Hun’ and I have something in common – it seems that we both like Fawlty Towers!
And no, the external space suits worn on the Apollo Program did not have zippers, airtight or otherwise.  Only the inner suits had a zipper, as I understand it.
Midway
Shown once again on British TV last week, Midway is a fine tribute to the US Navy.  Featuring an outstanding cast led by Henry Fonda (in my book, if Henry Fonda’s in the movie, he leads the cast!), including the late, great Charlton Heston, James Coburn and Hal Halbrook, a favorite of mine, it has an inspiring score by John Williams.
Attacked by left-wing critics for its supposedly ‘cliched dialogue’, the movie was in fact an important reminder that in the eternal struggle between good and evil America, and more particularly the US Navy, is on the side of Good.
Many of the scenes were shot aboard USS Lexington (CV-16).  This was inevitable, as she was almost the only WWII era flat-top still at sea, albeit that she was not commissioned until March 1943.  The movie is let down by poor selection of stock footage – F6F Hellcats instead of F4F Wildcats, e.g.
There is no doubt more could have been spent on getting the flying sequences right, but that is a quibble.  It is a great tribute to a wonderful naval victory.  Of course Axis-sympathizers on the New York Times hated the movie, but that was just sour grapes.  If their side had won they’d have made a lot more movies about the war than we did.
For intelligence students there is much to admire in the fine work of Joe Rochefort, who was not from Texas by the way, even though he was smart.  The intelligence aspects of the battle are given some prominence, but it’s a pity that Ernest King’s role in trying to aid the Japanese was not fleshed out a bit more.  Joe was a brilliant naval intelligence officer, in the Ian Fleming class.  The story of how his career was blighted by King, in revenge for his success, is worthy of a movie in itself.
Squadron Leader Tony Iveson DFC
I am very sorry indeed to have to relate that Tony passed on November 5^th.  A fine chairman of Bomber Command Association and a brilliant bomber pilot, Tony was the only man I knew who could truthfully claim to have sunk a battleship.  Others had to make the claim for him however – excessive modesty was a fault we both had in common (!).
His 12,000 lb Tallboy was one of the two which hit the Tirpitz, in the last great raid on her, on November 12^th 1944.  The Tallboy was a serious bomb, just what you want to prang a battleship.  As Tony pointed out to me they had to modify the planes to carry the bomb over that distance, leaving them very short of protection.  God Bless you Tony, and Rest in Peace.  You deserve it.

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Michael Shrimpton

Michael Shrimpton was a barrister from his call to the Bar in London in 1983 until being disbarred in 2019 over a fraudulently obtained conviction. He is a specialist in National Security and Constitutional Law, Strategic Intelligence and Counter-terrorism. He is a former Adjunct Professor of Intelligence Studies at the American Military University.

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