Following the historic release of new JFK assassination documents since this summer, two three-day annual JFK assassination research conferences in Dallas will focus on the latest insights beginning Friday.
Many of the nation’s most prominent and committed experts are convening at the JFK Lancer Productions and Publications 21st Annual 2017 November In Dallas Conference at the historic Adolphus Hotel and at the Fifth Annual 2017 JFK Assassination Conference organized by author and lecturer Judyth Vary Baker and her team at the nearby Crowne Plaza Hotel on Elm Street.
The latter hotel is several blocks from where President John F. Kennedy (shown at right with his daughter Caroline) was killed on that street on Nov. 22, 1963.
Two conferences with minimal overlap provide an extraordinary opportunity for speakers and audiences alike to hear in-depth presentations from notable, still-living witnesses, medical doctors, historians, legal experts and authors who are expert in the topic.
That expertise includes those sensitive matters that the mainstream media normally ignore or suppress because the evidence would, among other things, show how careless (at best) and dishonest their coverage has been since the shooting occurred.
Registration and speaker program details are here for the JFK Conference, whose program begins at 10:30 a.m. Friday, Nov. 17. That information can be found by clicking on the title here of the 21st Annual 2017 November In Dallas Conference, whose program begins at 1 p.m. Friday. The conference is named for Kennedy’s Secret Service code name “Lancer” and is led by a team of researchers, authors and book publishers that include Debra Conway and Larry Hancock.
The Justice Integrity Project (JIP) and the Citizens Against Political Assassinations (CAPA), on whose boards this editor serves, supports each conference as important to both the public.
Recapping The History For New Readers
The challenge for researchers is that we are steeped in evidence, facts, disputed facts, and even misinformation distributed by trolls, amateurs, provocateurs and fools on this topic. But we inevitably must start at the beginning and with basic facts in order to engage new audiences, particularly those born recently. So, in that spirit, here are a few paragraphs about the basics agreed upon by nearly all critics of the Warren Report and even many supporters of it:
Immediately after the shooting, law enforcement and the media spoke almost with one voice in stating that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in firing three shots from the president’s rear and had no accomplices before or during the shooting. The seven-member presidentially appointed Warren Commission (shown at left with two staff attorneys) issued a report in 1964 claiming to confirm those and other dubious FBI findings.
But citizen critics, eye-witnesses and a few iconoclastic credentialed experts bravely withstood fear of reprisal to point out inconsistencies and even impossibilities in the official story: That the former U.S. Marine Oswald shot Kennedy from behind with three bullets in less than eight seconds for no known reason, and that nightclub owner Jack Ruby then killed Oswald on Nov. 25 in a Dallas police station for no known reason except Ruby’s claim that he did not want the slain president’s widow Jacqueline to have to endure a trial of Oswald.
More than 2,500 books have since been published on the topic and more than four million pages of declassified documents have assisted the public in learning the falsity of major points in the official story. Critics claim the impossibility of Oswald’s firing all the relevant shots by himself and that the Warren Report was at best in error when it stated that Ruby had no organized crime connections.
Opinion, Commentary and Analysis
Ruby’s easily documented mob ties would have opened a Pandora’s box if disclosed at the outset. Mob ties would have raised the likelihood that someone wanted Oswald silenced before he could talk. That shooting by Ruby, at right, is shown in the iconic photo adjoining.
More generally, even a superficial inquiry would have exposed then-covert ties between the New Orleans mob led by Carlos Marcello that controlled Dallas and the mob’s sometime allies in the Cuban exile community, FBI and CIA who secretly shared the goal of overthrowing Fidel Castro’s Communist government in Cuba.
Some critics would say the mob, Cubans, FBI and CIA, among others such as segregationists, many parts of Big Business and Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson and his allies shared also a goal of removing from power President Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
This editor (Andrew Kreig) is one of relatively few speakers who deliver lectures at both programs. They are on similar topics and each seek to link this fall’s revelations via JFK assassination document disclosures to patterns known about the 1968 assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK). (The two are shown together in a file photo.)
The 50th anniversaries of those assassinations next spring are expected to revive media interest in their circumstances and implications. My argument is that substantial evidence exists that the accused “lone nut” assassins, James Earl Ray for MLK and Sirhan Sirhan for RFK, could not have inflicted the fatal shot and thus did not act alone, and certainly had no power to confuse the public with cover-ups extending to the major media then until now.
Thus, the patterns that we can discern from document declassifications and other solid evidence in the JFK assassination research can serve as inspiration for similar research and commentary regarding both the MLK and RFK deaths — and more recent public mysteries, particularly involving pivotal and still-mysteries power shifts in the United States.
The power of the loss is sometimes symbolized by President Kennedy’s commencement address at the American University on June 10, 1963 (portrayed in the accompanying photo) in which he laid out his vision for deescalating the Cold War.
On Saturday, Nov. 18, the JFK Conferences event at the Crowne Plaza begins at 8:40 a.m. with opening remarks by conference moderator and longtime radio personality John B. Wells. Five minutes later, my talk begins on “Connecting Dots to Today: 2017’s JFK Secret Records and 2018’s 50th – RFK & MLK.”
The following day on Nov. 19, the JFK Lancer event begins at 8:30 a.m. with a lecture on “ZR/RIFLE: Origins and Realities” by Hancock and Bill Simpich, each authors and otherwise experts on “ZR/Rifle,” the CIA code name for its secret plot to murder Castro. Some Warren Report proponents claim that these attempts prompted a desire for Castro for revenge. But most in the JFK research community do not believe that argument and that the forces that sought to kill Castro turned their attention to a president, whom they came to believe jeopardized American interests by refusing to invade Cuba or otherwise decisively oust its Communist leader.
At 9:30 a.m. on Sunday, I speak on “Be the Media: Connecting JFK Records Disclosures To Next Year’s 50th Focus On MLK, RFK.” The theme is action-oriented: What each of us can do to overcome apathy and ignorance on topics that are not only fascinating and important on their own, but serve as a Rosetta Stone for current topics dominating the news.
There are many other vita
lly important topics and speakers, plus books and films for sale. An almost priceless opportunity is to meet in person experts and surviving witnesses to get to question them in person. So readers here may want to review the entire programs on the websites above, and make an effort either to attend or look for news reports on the speakers.
The annual events are timed also, of course, with similar events that we have previously reported. These include the mock trial of Oswald that CAPA and the South Texas College of Law Houston have organized at the law school from Nov. 16-17, a CAPA-organized lecture and book signing by TV star Alec Baldwin in a nearby Houston Hotel, and a series of film screenings and lectures by film maker and former TV star John Barbour in Washington, DC on Nov. 15, 16, and 22.
Regarding the Dallas conferences, we reprint excerpts from the organizers’ welcome overviews below. The organizers of both conferences are members and strong supporters of CAPA.
First is that from Hancock, whose books include Shadow Warfare: the History of America’s Undeclared Wars (with Stuart Wexler) and Nexus: The CIA and Political Assassination.
“Welcome to the 22nd annual November in Dallas (NID) Conference held by JFK Lancer,” Hancock wrote. “Each year we honor the legacy of President Kennedy, and strive to better understand the facts of his assassination. Speakers and guests from all over the globe come together for this exciting event to share the latest findings in the case, revisit eyewitness testimonies, and dare to challenge the status quo. This year, our focus will be on the 3,000+ government documents that are being released just months before this year’s conference.”
Judyth Vary Baker’s books include Me and Lee, which portrays what she describes as her friendship, collaboration in patriotic intelligence but non-assassination matters, and a romantic affair with her work colleague Oswald in the spring and summer of 1963 in New Orleans. She is shown at left in a file photo. Her introduction to this year’s conference is at follows:
“Welcome to the 5th annual JFK Assassination Conference!” she wrote. “This fast-growing conference will bring you info on the latest secret records released, opportunities to hear and meet important witnesses, authors and researchers in the JFK, RFK and MLK 
assassinations, as well as honest and reliable information necessary to understand and prepare for a world that was created by murdering a great President – an act of treason that changed our government and country forever.
This is a priceless opportunity to meet first-hand witnesses and noted researchers of the first generation, who will not be with us much longer! Hear from their own lips what really happened – not what the government or schoolbooks tell you.”
Additional background (most notably on recent document releases) is cited in the CAPA News section and on the Justice Integrity Project appendix to its version of this column.