My Small World of JFK Conspiracy
Introduction excerpted from my book, The Deep State in the Heart of Texas
I know about vivid memory of JFK assassination-related scenes. I lived in Mesquite on 11/22/63, less than 13 miles from Dealey Plaza.
I was born in South Oak Cliff in early 1956, not far from 1026 North Beckley, where Oswald later lived, and 3126 Harlandale, a CIA safehouse used for “Operation 40” assassins at the time of the JFK assassination. Warren Commission testimony and depositions include addresses, and many are in Mesquite.
In 1964 we moved to Garland where I graduated from Garland High School. Assassination witness Beverly Oliver graduated from GHS a decade earlier. There are many significant conspiracy links to Garland.
My dad worked at Collins Radio in Richardson, with Kenneth Porter, Marina Oswald’s second husband. I married the granddaughter and niece, respectively, of Abraham Zapruder’s business partners. Abe’s wife, Lillian, was one of our wedding guests. Their daughter, Myrna, and her son Adam, who is a lawyer in Austin, are still family friends. My brother married the great niece of DPD detective B.H. Combest, the last man to talk to Oswald.
In Texas, the conspiracy is a small world, yet unknown to most.
I’ve been to Dealey Plaza many times since 1964. I attended several of Penn Jones’ anniversary ceremonies. I was at the 20th, 30th, 40th, and many in between. I was in my second grade classroom on the day of the assassination. Our principal was there and returned to announce the bad news and dismiss class. In a real sense, I am always in Dealey Plaza. It is the defining moment of my life.
Many of us who were college students in the late ‘70s, myself and John Kelin included, saw Richard Sprague, Henry B. Gonzalez, and Mark Lane at our respective campuses during their college tour in 1976-77 at which they showed the Zapruder film and Rush to Judgment. They packed auditoriums. It is a major part of our individual awakenings as researchers.
I was at the SXSW media panel, “Who Shot JFK?” in 1991. The panelists were Bob Huffacker, Earl Golz, and Gary Shaw. Joe Nick Patoski moderated. The room was filled to standing room only. It went over the scheduled time because of the flurry of questions during the Q&A. When they finally had to clear the room for the next panel, the panelists and a group of attendees continued for some time in a back hallway.
Afterward, I approached the moderator and said, “You saw what just happened in there. Nobody wanted to end it. You guys are in the conference business. What if you had a conference devoted entirely to the assassination?” I saw the wheels turning in his mind. Next thing I heard about it was when I got a call five months later from SXSW asking to get my address to send a brochure about the first “Assassination Symposium on John F. Kennedy.”
I was in Dealey Plaza the day Oliver Stone filmed the assassination. Larry Howard introduced me to Robert Groden and the actor who played Zapruder. I watched three takes from the sixth-floor windows. The detail was astounding, right down to the cigarette butts behind the picket fence. All the action was perfect. And I knew all the action by heart, even in the railroad yard and parking lot. When I came outside after Stone wrapped for lunch, I was surrounded by the costumed extras. It was like the Twilight Zone.
After graduating from The University of Texas at Austin,1 and 17 years in the graghic arts, I became an editorial cartoonist in 1995.2 My talent, education, training, and professional experience have been primarily in the visual arts.
My historiography and criminal investigations of the JFK assassination, began in earnest in 1988 with the realization that the U.S. was about to get its first CIA-veteran president. I was further motivated by a civic duty to report a suspicious automobile, which I spotted in 1989 on the campus of The University of Texas at Austin, fitting the description of a getaway car seen by several JFK assassination witnesses leaving Dealey Plaza in my hometown of Dallas. My police chief, Jesse Curry, went on TV the week of the assassination and asked all citizens to report anything suspicious. So I did, albeit 30 years later at Jerry Rose’s Third Decade Conference in Providence Rhode Island.3
My investigative work has been more in the tradition of a self-taught Sherlock Holmes than a professional Inspector Lestrade.
My research of the JFK assassination includes my discovery of a 1959 Rambler station wagon possibly used in the conspiracy;4 a study co-authored with Walter F. Graf5 involving a rifle clip that contaminates the ballistic evidence;6 a chronological reconstruction and placement of missing movements edited out of the Zapruder film;7 an in-depth interview of Erwin Schwartz, with author Noel Twyman, regarding Mr. Schwartz's and Mr. Zapruder’s early chain of possession of Zapruder's film;8 and work for author Barr McClellan resulting in my monograph establishing the methods by which the FBI and the Warren Commission concealed and obfuscated latent fingerprints from the alleged sniper's nest.9
My family does not support, and strongly discourages my activism against the conspiracy, especially anything involving the Zapruders. Emotional denial and avoidance regarding the assassination have always been the overriding family dynamic. None of my family has ever encouraged, or even read my research. Except one. My wife’s uncle, Erwin Schwartz, told me his story often, and allowed Noel Twyman and me to record an interview with him. He took no position on the issue of conspiracy. But he was honest and open about his personal involvement. He adamantly defended his personal story against misrepresentation.
Erwin’s sister, my mother-in-law, even hated that Erwin talked about it. After his death in 1999, she was the family matriarch until her death in 2014. My sister-in-law, Allison Silberberg, was elected mayor of Alexandria, VA in 2015, which further complicates this dynamic.
Since 1990, my research has been presented at scholarly conferences, and published in books and journals on the JFK assassination. In over two decades, my findings have had no serious, negative criticism in a field rife with such.
In 2016, after years of planning, several colleagues and I founded the first think tank devoted to the honest study of deep politics, the Center for Deep Political Research. Our mission is to provide the premier venue for journalists and researchers dedicated to the dissemination of existing and new research in counter-measure to official versions of Deep State-orchestrated events.
My friend and colleague at the Center for Deep Political Research, Joseph Green, has now generously edited this selected compilation of my JFK assassination writings and published them for the first time in a single volume.
I have no illusions that yet another book will make a difference. In the very first book on this subject, Who Killed Kennedy? by Thomas G. Buchanan, published May 1964, Buchanan ended with these words: “The President of the United States went down to Dallas, trusting these men to protect him. But they failed him. We, the people, are the only watchmen Kennedy will ever have now. Let these watchmen, then, awaken.”
But we failed him. As the Navajo saying goes, “You can’t wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.”
It is folly for us to dig and beg for scraps of truth for another fifty years. When we end the official propaganda of denial of these crimes, we will also end any and all corrupt justification for hiding their details. Critical mass will not come from shouting louder, as the boy did in “The Emperor's New Clothes.” It will come from putting the truth on public, legal record. It was not the end of denial by the king’s subjects, it was the king’s own acceptance that he was naked that changed everything. Let us now force that acceptance.
See my essay, “The Lies of Texas: Alma Mater Coniurationis (Mother of Conspiracy),” bartholoviews.substack.com
See my cartoon archive at Artizans Entertainment, Inc. https://www.artizans.com/browse.htm?artist=145
See my essay, “Roger & Me,” bartholoviews.substack.com
Ibid.
See my tribute, Walter F. Graf and The Gun that Didn't Smoke,” bartholoviews.substack.com
See my essay, “Ten Things That Prove the Ballistic Evidence was Planted,” bartholoviews.substack.com
See my essay, “Z-film: Red Frame, White Light,” bartholoviews.substack.com
See my notes of the interview, “Erwin Schwartz Interview, ,November 21, 1994,” bartholoviews.substack.com
See the text of my speech, “Conflicts in Official Accounts of the Cardboard Carton Prints,” bartholoviews.substack.com