Jim Marrs - Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy

CROSSFIRE

BASIC BOOKS

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

New York

Copyright 2013 by Jim Marrs

Published by Basic Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

First hardcover published by Carroll & Graf in 1989

Previous paperback edition published by Basic Books in 1993

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Designed by Jeff Williams

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Marrs, Jim.

Crossfire : the plot that killed Kennedy / Jim Marrs. -- Revised and updated edition.

pages cm

Originally published: New York : Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1989.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-465-05087-1 (e-book) 1. Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963Assassination. I. Title.

E842.9.M36 2013

973.922092dc23

2013030290

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The great masses of the people will more easily

fall victims to a great lie than to a small one...

ADOLF HITLER, MEIN KAMPF

CONTENTS

Photographs follow

When a final truth concerning the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is generally accepted by the population of the United States, it will have to be acknowledged that this truth came not from the government, the legal profession, or the news mediarather that truth will have come from the legion of individual citizens who have refused to accept official but superficial and unsupported explanations. At the fiftieth anniversary, this legion of researchers had grown too numerous to cite by name.

Special thanks for this edition of Crossfire go to Maritha Gan, Tom Ruffner, Larry Sells, Robert Fullilove, Chip DeNure, Stan Szerszen, Larry Hancock, and Ed Haslem, and to the superb editorial team at Basic Books, including Alex Littlefield, Collin Tracy, Jeff Williams, and Karl Yambert.

Every citizen who gave of their time, effort, and resources to study, assimilate, and disseminate assassination information should come to be regarded as an object lesson on how the individual citizen can make an impact on a system that has proven either unable or unwilling to police itself.

Will we ever know the truth about the Kennedy assassination?

This is a question I have been asked many times over the years.

The answer is unequivocally yes. We know the truth today. It has been staring us in the face at least since the public was able to see in the Zapruder film Kennedys body being thrust to the rear by a frontal shot.

If Lee Harvey Oswald was solely involved, then all information regarding him and the assassination should be available and Oswald should be as forgotten as Charles Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker who was the lone assassin of President James A. Garfield in 1881. Unlike with Guiteau, because of the ongoing questions and controversy over the JFK assassination, virtually everyone in the educated world knows the name Lee Harvey Oswald.

Fifty years after the event, basic evidence, such as location of wounds, autopsy photographs and X-rays, fingerprints, accuracy of the weapon, even the famous Zapruder film, remain controversial. This is indicative of conspiracy and cover-up.

But, it is argued, if there was a conspiracy, wouldnt someone have spoken out by now? They have. For years now, many books and speakers, along with myriad witnesses and whistle-blowers, have brought forward bits of the truth, only to be ignored, drowned out, and ridiculed by the corporate-controlled mass media, which to this very day has failed to present the full range of assassination information in a comprehensive manner.

Anyone could have shot the presidentCastro agents, Mafia hit men, rogue CIA operatives, KGB assassins, even the proverbial lone nut. But only high officials of the federal government and their financial rulers had the power to misdirect an honest investigation and keep the truth of the JFK assassination from the public for half a century.

So, the real question being asked is: Will there ever be a news conference in which a ranking government official gives us the truth about the assassination?

The answer to this question is probably no. Too many careers are involved. The Establishment fears the loss of public trust even though their attempts through the years to stifle the truth of many issues have merely resulted in that very loss.

In the case of the JFK assassination, trust has long been part of the problem. When it comes to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, dont trust any one source. Dont trust this book. Dont trust even the governments basic documentation and pronouncements. Today the evidence of duplicity and fraud is too apparent to ignore.

The assassination today is recognized as a turning point in American history. Beginning on November 22, 1963, American attitudes slowly changed from postWorld War II optimism and idealism to cynicism and mistrust of government. This loss of faith in government accelerated in the wake of the Vietnam War, Watergate, the Waco deaths, the Oklahoma City bombing cover-up, and the many unanswered questions about the attacks of September 11, 2001. The wide gulf between the official government version of the Kennedy assassination and the findings of those who have objectively studied the case has prompted cynicism and controversy.

This updated edition of Crossfire provides detailed background information on the men and organizations most likely to have been involved in a plot against the president. Also covered are the various attempts by governmental bodies to investigate and resolve what happened in Dallas. Attention is paid to the people behind these investigations, how they arrived at their conclusions, the reliability of the information made available to them, and the possibility of misdirection and deceit.

As an award-winning Texas journalist with more than fifty years of news-gathering experience, I have been in the singular position to learn the true story of the assassination. I have talked with many people involved, including Dallas-area government and law-enforcement officials and news reporters. I spent time with Oswalds wife, Marina, his mother, Marguerite, and Jeanne DeMohrenschildt, who along with her husband, George DeMohrenschildt, was a close friends of Oswalds. I have interviewed assassination witnesses, including James Tague, Jean Hill, Bill and Gayle Newman, Charles Brehm, Malcolm Summers, Phil Willis, and many others. I have interviewed witnesses never questioned by the official investigations, such as Ed Hoffman, Gordon Arnold, Ester Mash, Beverly Oliver, and Madeleine Brown. And I have kept in contact with serious researchers of the assassination, collecting and correlating their work.

Most important, I lived in the Dallas area during the time of the assassination.

As a university journalism major, I met Jack Ruby while visiting his Carousel Club in the fall of 1963. In the fall of 1964, I interviewed Major General Edwin A. Walker, himself a suspect. Within five years of the assassination, I was working as a professional reporter in the DallasFort Worth Metroplex.