Richard Belzer - UFOs, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies You Dont Have to Be Crazy to Believe

S o what if Castro, the Mafia, or some disgruntled arm of the United States Government might have plugged the president back in 1963? As Ive plugged the hardcover edition of this fine book over the past year, it has elicited more comment, reaction, and excitement than did strangely dressed men carrying shotguns down the streets of Dallas, Texas, in broad daylight the day JFK took his ill-fated ride. But then again, what doesnt?

Since the publication of this book, Ive been hailed as a whistle-blower and pilloried as a paranoid. But however people react to me as a truth-seeker and assassination theorist, the evidence that President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy just keeps on floating to the surface.

A case in point: on June 1, 1989, the former administrator of the General Services Administration, Lawson Knott, revealed thatin February 1966the polished bronze casket used to transport John Kennedys body from Dallas to Washington was loaded with three eighty-pound bags of sand, drilled full of holes, and sunk nine thousand feet beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. As Knott tells it, Robert Kennedythen a U.S. Senator from New Yorkrequested the action to offset any possibility that the casket might become an object of public curiosity. In so doing, he destroyed government property, deep-sixed an invaluable piece of evidence, and ensured that the casket would always be an object of public curiosityparticularly since this costly and controversial burial-at-sea could not have taken place without the approval of U.S. attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach. As usual, the U.S. government seemed only too happy to do anything it could to sweep messy assassination evidence away from the public view and into the shipping lanes.

And that isnt all. In June 1999, Russian president Boris Yeltsin hand-delivered to Bill Clinton a package of eighty documents compiled by the KGB throughout the Cold War years and recently declassified. These documents clearly refute several of the governments favorite assassination-related explanations and open the door to years of continuing speculation. Among the highlights contained within these high-level papers is indisputable proof that Lee Harvey Oswald was welcomed in Moscow like a long-lost comrade in 1959 when Americans werent exactly on the Kremlins A-list.

This visit took place when Oswald was just an unknown, nineteen-year-old, former Marine with a six-day visa. Despite the fact that it would be more than four years before Oswald reached the height of his importance as a government patsy, memos announcing his arrival circulated through the office of the deputy premier, the Soviet foreign minister, and the head of the KGB. They also reveal that these officials had approved plans to provide Oswald with a job, an apartment, a five thousand dollar furniture allowance, and seven hundred rubles a month in spending money. To put it in perspective, thats a deal Rula Lenska has never been offered.

American intelligence sources are still unwilling to speculate on what might have elicited such a warm reception for such a nondescript nobody. But former Secret Service director in charge of protective operations Lem Jones remarked, People of that rank have a lot to worry about besides some kid tourist. They might have felt threatened in some way What kind of threat did he pose? Or was it something else? Was it? Gee, I dont know. Why dont you go ask Jack Ruby? Oh yeah. I forgot.

And lest the subject of JFKs brain and the botched autopsy reports has slipped your mind, you could always check the final report of the Assassination Records Review Board released in September 1998. There you will learn that, although there isnt much evidence to support a single-bullet theory, there is scads of information that suggest a cover-up, including:

• the testimony of Saundra Spencer. Spencer, who worked at the Naval Photographic Center, testified that she had developed postmortem photographs of President Kennedy. She also testified that the photos she developed were not those photos contained in the National Archives since 1966. This suggests the existence of two sets of photos.

• confirming evidence of an entry wound in the presidents right temple and of a gaping, grapefruit-size hole in the back of his head. How many times do we have to hear these reports before we believe them?

• many personal accounts pointing to the existence of bogus autopsy photographs. Gloria Knudsen, wife of White House photographer Robert Knudsen, reported that her husband had told her and their children that four autopsy photos were missing, another had been badly altered, and that four of five of the photographs did not represent what he had witnessed in the autopsy room. Several other witnesses told of seeing photographs in which up to three probes had been inserted into the presidents wounds. Curiously, since three wounds of entrance would indicate a conspiracy, these photos have gone missing.

• the account of X-ray technician Jerrol Custer, who testified to the AARB that he took films of numerous fragments imbedded in the presidents neck. He also reported that he saw a large bullet fragment fall from the back when the body was lifted. Oh, and did I mention that Custer was in the process of marking his films so that he could later identify them when he was ordered to stop by a senior military officer? Well, he mentioned it. But dont take my word for it. Go to the Internet and read it for yourself.

And speaking of the Internet, the Web is also the most up-to-date source for uncensored information on current UFO sightings, alien encounters, crashes, abductions, and, of course, the latest research on all of those incredibly well-documented incidents that the government will tell you never happened, like Roswell. Are these sites legit? Judge for yourself. Visit alienzoo.com, where youll find bulletins on the latest sightings, a great archive, coverage of recent UFO-science events, and even a message board where you can share information with other openminded people. Or go to earthfiles.com and check out the space-related headline news, dispatches on the latest animal attacks, crop circles, and mysterious floating spheres. While youre there, be sure to browse through the fascinating collection of Real Life X-Files. With evidence like that, no wonder even a conservative Republican like Barry Goldwater became a believer!