"Some of my old colleagues and I collaborated a few years ago in a protest to the History Channel over a scurrilous documentary about LBJ and the assassination, but that's been the extent of the attention I've given it," he wrote. "The Warren Commission settled the matter for me, and conspiracy theories of any kind have always seemed a waste of time. I don't even believe George W. Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks, and as a result am a constant target of those conspiracy theorists."
When I recently asked Ventura, the former governor of Minnesota, during a live interview who fired the shots that killed Kennedy, he could not answer. ("That's impossible. How can you ask me to do that?") How many people were in on it? ("It's hard to say.")
Typical was this exchange between us:
MS: You wrote the book "They Killed Our President." Who are "they"?
JV: No one will ever know, no one will ever know. All I know is, Lee Harvey Oswald didn't.
Part of Ventura's explanation is that Oswald had a body double. I kid you not. While he doesn't know who killed Kennedy, he believes FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was in on it. President Johnson, too. And he impugned the integrity of Arlen Specter, who was, of course, a Warren Commission lawyer who developed what came to be known as the "single-bullet theory."
Writes Ventura:
"Arlen Specter also had an extremely successful career after his acrobatics with the truth, supporting this crazy theory. I'm not suggesting that he was rewarded for his 'services' — or maybe I am. It's definitely something that should be looked into, at the very least, because that's how high-level politics seems to operate in this country these days."
Too bad Specter, who died last year, isn't here to defend himself. He didn't take JFK conspiracies lightly. I recall how very angry he was over Oliver Stone's movie "JFK." Specter thought he'd been defamed by the director and considered filing a lawsuit.
So passionate was Specter for the truth about the Warren Commission that he told me he intended to maintain an active speaking schedule during the 50th anniversary in order to defend his conclusion of many years ago. And I'll never forget once scheduling a radio interview with Specter back-to-back with pathologist Cyril Wecht, a Warren Commission skeptic.
Wecht went first, and Specter insisted on sitting on hold so he could hear his sparring partner. He then responded to all of Wecht's assertions. For example, he said: "When Dr. Wecht talks about the direction of the bullet, many people have challenged the direction because the hole in President Kennedy's shirt was way down, and they said: 'Well, if the bullet entered there, it had to go up.' But the issue is not where the hole is on the shirt, but where it is on the body, and President Kennedy's shirt rode up."
On the 40th anniversary, Specter told me this:
"I wrote it all down because hardly a week goes by that I'm not asked about it, at high schools and colleges, and I thought the guy who came up with it ought to write it all down because people will be interested in this for a long time."
About that last statement, there is no debate. |
