Gaeton Fonzi - The Last Investigation: What Insiders Know about the Assassination of JFK

THE LAST

INVESTIGATION

Copyright 2013 by 1993, 2008, 2013 by Gaeton Fonzi

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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN: 978-1-62636-078-5

Printed in the United States of America

Time is precious, but truth
is more precious than time.
D ISRAELI

For my grandchildren
in the hope that their future will be
more precious than our past.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

M Y HUSBAND , Gaeton Fonzi, died on August 30, 2012. His body departed this earth, yet he remains with us in his legacy of impassioned words. Those words have filled the emptiness of the dark, bottomless hole which he so poignantly described in the prologue that follows this preface. I felt his presence as I reread The Last Investigation, listened to his speeches, and read the letters he wrote through the years.

I heard his voice reveal the motivations which propelled him, along with so many others, to unite in an effort to solve the murder of President Kennedy. Throughout the years his repeated message became more desperate: The American people should not consider the Kennedy assassination as something that is in the history books. When speaking at a Dealy Plaza candlelight ceremony on November 22, 1993, Gaeton explained his interpretation of the significance of the event. The murderers of John F. Kennedy killed more than a President. They killed something deep in the very soul of this countrythe innocent, untarnished beliefnaive, perhaps, but gloriously, constantly selffulfillingthat we are the free-willed possessors of our own destiny. The assassination of President Kennedy, he said, produced cracks of historic implications in that bedrock of democracy.

As I read Gaets passionate delivery, I doubted my ability to write a preface worthy of his book. Then I glanced at the message displayed in a frame above his computer: All youve got to do is word it in. I realized then that this preface to HIS book will be written by HIM, in the hope that through his words he will once again be a part of the readers moving, talking, touching, living world.

Numerous researchers called my husband a hero in their messages of condolence. However, if he were able to respond, he would brush aside that title even as he relished their recognition of his contributions. No, Gaet would counter as he cupped his chin within his thumb and fingers as he was wont to do when thinking, the real JFK heroes are Vince Salandria, Mary Ferrell, and Antonio Veciana, who gave so much in support of their beliefs.

Gaeton, in contrast, simply considered himself a paranoid cynic. Tongue in cheek, he often explained the roots of his paranoia as coming about as the result of a traumatic teenage experience. In a 1970 speech at the University of Michigan he told the faculty and students the whole story: My cynicism is not based on my years as an investigative reporter. The first morning I reported to work at the Shiny Bright Christmas Ball factory, they stuck me in a pit in the center of a horseshoe-shaped production line. He explained in great detail how the women would throw empty boxes into the pit and it was my job to break the boxes up as they came flying down at me, fold them flat, and put them into a pile. And when a woman along the line finished with one large box of Christmas balls, she would call for another one to be brought to her by the stock boys. So all day long the place echoed with the cry of women calling for more Christmas balls. However, when they would yelland some of those women had pretty good vocal chordsthey would yell only one word... and it wasnt Christmas!

And so I went out into my career with the echo of that cry careening through my head. And when youre hooked on that kind of ingrained response to life, you cant help being cynical.

Gaet never lost his impatience with a less-than-cynical mainstream media who blindly accepted the conclusions of the Warren Commission. In a piece entitled, The JFK Assassination Redux:: The Gold Coast Magazine Connection, he recalled, I didnt realize then that even the big media boys had screwed up, lured and then trapped into a defensive position on the JFK assassination that would last for years and still exists in some cases. The Commission had cleverly withheld release of its 26 volumes of evidence until more than two months after the release of its Report. A lengthy New York Times editorial, for instance, lavishly endorsed the Reports conclusions without having available any supporting or contradicting evidence.

He was no easier on himself for what he considered his inadequate condemnation of Commission findings when he wrote his groundbreaking article, The Warren Commission, The Truth, and Arlen Specter, which appeared in Philadelphia magazine two years after the issuance of the Report.

In a 2001 speech at a Faculty Forum at California State Polytech, he told his audience of his own naivete in failing to identify the motives of the Warren Commission Members. He described his reaction to early meetings with Vince Salandria which led to his three historic 1966 interviews with Arlen Specter (now available at the Mary Ferrell Foundations website). Ill never forget the numbing disbelief I came away with after my interviews with Specter. Vince Salandria was right, the Warren Report was wrong, there had to be a conspiracy. In the article I wrote: It is difficult to believe the Warren Commission Report is the truth. Arlen Specter knows it.

I look back on that now and I think: What a cowardly way to put it. Why didnt I myself tell the absolute truth? And the absolute truth is that the Warren Report is a deliberate lie. The truth is that the Warren Commissions own evidence proves there was a conspiracy to murder President Kennedy... And wasnt that conspiracy to keep the truth from the American people driven by the motivation to maintain political power for those in the core military, industrial and intelligence groups who possessed it? As such, wasnt that also an act of terrorism? We were young once and not so brave. We wanted to cling to the myth of a mystery.

Over the years I watched him become very brave as he fearlessly spoke out against every person and institution he considered dishonest even as he was developing an uncanny ability to see beyond the facade which most of us accepted. In an op-ed column in the New York Daily News in 1994, he disputed a CIA revelation that one of their counter-spies was actually a spy for the Soviet government. In buying the story, he warned, Congress and the media are making a couple of assumptions. One is that the CIA, in confessing its security lapses, is now telling the truth. Theyre also assuming the CIAs real priority conforms to its mandate of providing the President the intelligence necessary to protect this countrys national security. History has shown neither assumption valid.