Revisiting the JFK Assassination (Again)
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By Bill Hoagland
By BILL HOAGLAND
Unless you are old enough to personally remember the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated, you probably don’t really care what happened on that fateful day. But for many of us who do remember where we were when we heard that JFK had just been shot, it still matters. For years, I drank the cool-aide and accepted the finding that Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin; that conclusion was convenient because it brought closure for me. But starting with a book entitled “Last Second in Dallas”, I became convinced that this assassination was the result of a conspiracy. Since then, I have read many books on the subject and I have read many of the declassified documents. Despite this, I am still puzzling over who was ultimately responsible for the conspiracy.
Truth be told, I still go back and forth as to who was responsible: The Russians, Fidel Castro; Anti-Castro participants in the Bay of Pigs invasion; the CIA; the FBI; the Mafia; LBJ; the hawks for the war in Viet Nam; and the Dallas police department are some of the “usual suspects” that have a plausible relationship to the assassination.
I am at the point now where I read only books about the assassination published within the past two years because I generally am aware of most of the facts revealed in books written prior to 2022 (such as the fact that Oswald, Ruby and Carlos Marcello, the Mafia boss, knew each other before the assassination.) But surprisingly, even the most recent books I have read reveal facts that I did not know. One of those books is “The JFK Assassination, Conspiracies and Coverups”, by M.J. Trow. That book makes a convincing case that there were four active shooters in Dealey Plaza, one in the Dal-Tex Building, two on the sixth floor of the School Book Depository and one behind the picket fence above the “grassy knoll”. Another recent book is “Admitted Assassin—Roscoe White and the Murder of President Kennedy”, which involves an alleged “death-bed confession” by a Dallas police officer, in which he admits that he was directly involved in the killing of both Kennedy and JD Tippit. That account, despite being fragmented and incomplete, makes a credible case that members of the Dallas police force participated in the assassination.
So now it’s 2025, and I am still unsure as to who was ultimately responsible. At this late date, with most of the witnesses deceased, what else can we possibly learn? Well, there are still 4,000 classified documents in control of the government that pertain to the assassination. Those documents by law should all have been declassified in 2017 but they weren’t because of pressure from persons within the government—the real “deep state”, perhaps? President Trump has acknowledged that in 2017, he agreed not to release some of the documents due to pressure specifically from Mike Pompeo, who then head of the CIA; President Biden was also pressured and although he released many documents, he ruled in early 2024 that there would be no more declassifications during his term, leaving the 4,000 files that are still classified. But now President Trump has said that he intends to declassify these remaining 4,000 documents and he plans to do it soon. Do I think these remaining documents will include a reliable confession from someone within the government? No, I don’t, but I do believe that these remaining documents will show that someone in the government facilitated this assassination and that in turn may ultimately reveal the most plausible suspects.
The long and the short of it is that for students of the JFK assassination, and assuming Trump doesn’t get talked out of declassifying these documents, 2025 promises to be an intriguing year. Stay tuned.
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■ Bill Hoagland has practiced law in Alton for more than 50 years, but he has spent more than 70 years hunting, fishing and generally being in the great outdoors. His wife, Annie, shares his love of the outdoor life. Much of their spare time is spent on their farm in Calhoun County. Bill can be reached at [email protected].
