"Dead Wrong" Right On

Dead Wrong  Right On 

Dead Wrong – Straight Facts on the Country’s Most Controversial Cover-Ups

(Skyhorse Publising, 2012) by Richard Belzer and David Wayne, Afterward by Jesse Ventura.

"I met Murder on the way –

He had a mask like Castlereagh:

Very smooth he looked, yet grim;

Seven bloodhounds followed him.

All were fat; and well they might

Be in admirable plight,

For one by one, and two by two,

He tossed them human hearts to chew."

-         The Masque of Anarchy. From: "Studies In Murder" by Edmund Lester Pearson.

Although it includes JFK and some other high profile crimes, Richard Belzer and David Wayne’s new book “Dead Wrong” is mainly about the killing of some of the other human hearts, the ones thrown by the wayside for the official bloodhounds to chew on while Kennedy’s real killers go free.

Richard Belzer, best known as a standup comic and popular TV actor (“Homicide” & “Law & Order –SVU”), has teamed up with researcher and writer David Wayne to produce a convincing file by file case study of a ten of America’s most newsworthy crimes and cover-ups – all of which we now know a great deal about, but none of which has received any semblance of justice.

With an afterward by Jesse Ventura, this book reminds me somewhat of the great coincidence that occurred when Dick Russell met up with Jesse Ventura at a below the Mexican border small town cafe, which led to them becoming fast friends and teaming up to produce a series of TV shows and conspiracy books by the same publisher - Skyhorse.

Here we have Belzer, the celebrity actor, who provides the style and the audience, working with David Wayne, a respected writer and researcher who compiles the necessary details that quickly convince you that something is indeed wrong here.

We can easily imagine Belzer, the TV homicide actor, as he walks us through the crime scenes using the forensic evidence compiled by David Wayne, a Chicago bred Stanford related journalist who gets his facts straight. It's laid out like a prosecutor's brief so just the information you need to know is included, along with sources so you can get more on the subject if you want to. 

As Wayne put it, “We included two types of entries; deaths that were alleged to be suicides or were originally ruled suicides, but have so many suspicious circumstances that they appear to have been murders and; deaths that were known to be murders but have so many irreconcilable issues that something is clearly amiss. In some cases, they were obvious: shooting one’s self in the head five times with a bolt-action rifle is a bit of a stretch to term a suicide – even in Texas. In others, the flawed official reasoning was more subtle but, upon examination, every bit as clear.” 

Wayne calls attention to the forensic studies of Texas A & M professor Cliff Spiegelman, who has called for re-opening the investigation into the JFK assassination due to “fundamentally flawed” evidence procedures.

In each case, everyone has a point where the evidence becomes so compelling it is eventually tipped in the favor of homicide or conspiracy.

Like Belzer, in the JFK case, I too am convinced that, based on the Warren Commission’s own account, it was physically impossible for Lee Harvey Oswald to have committed the assassination, since he was on the second floor at the time. While others have alternative versions of the events [See the evolution of the 2nd floor lunchroom story - JFK Assassination Debate - The Education Forum and  (Parker)   Reopen KENNEDY CASE! - Reopenkennedycase.net ], the official version of events is confirmed by the testimony of eyewitnesses Roy Truly and Marion Baker, who encountered Oswald in the second floor lunchroom less than a minute and a half after the last shot was fired. [ See: Why Oswald is Innocent of being the Sixth Floor Sniper].

The question then quickly becomes, since Oswald didn’t do it, who did?

The upcoming 50^th anniversary of the assassination of President Kenney will ensure that we get an appropriate review of those events, but the other cases included in this book are all significant and related in that the government refuses to recognize the truth or to pursue justice.

Not all the victims are popular celebrities like Marilyn Monroe, JFK, MLK and RFK, since Frank Olson, Henry Marshall and George Krutilek are not exactly household names, but they are “human hearts” and justice is supposed to serve everyone, regardless of status or wealth, and you can see how the criminal justice system – the bedrock on which our society rests, failed in each and every case.

Olson, the CIA scientist murdered in the course of an LSD experiment that went terribly astray, has been firmly documented in court and by Hank Albarelli [ H.P. Albarelli Jr.], while Marshall was a mid-level government administrator who got in LBJ’s way to the presidency and Krutilek was an accountant for a crook and con artist who apparently knew too much.

MM, JFK, MLK and RFK get the lion’s share of the book, but Belzer and Wayne also devote significant chapters to black activist Fred Hampton, Clinton administrator Vincent Foster and the most recent death of British biological warfare specialist Dr. David Kelly.

This list reminds me of Penn Jones’ attempt to keep track of the strange deaths that seemed to follow witnesses and suspects in the assassination of JFK. Jones, a small town Texas newspaper publisher, was the only one to go out of his way to visit Dealey Plaza at 12:30 PM on November 22, 1964, and thus begin the popular tradition to visit that place on that date since then.

Penn’s collection of obituaries of those connected with the assassination led someone to commission a London actuary that concluded the odds of so many witnesses dying within a certain amount of time was phenomenal. That stat was quoted at the end trailer of a major motion picture Executive Action, which portrayed the assassination as a covert intelligence operation. 

When the HSCA was established in 1976 to investigate the assassinations of President Kennedy and MLK, one of the researchers working for the committee was assigned to look into the strange deaths, but instead, proved how the London actuary was wrong.

So instead of researching each strange death individually, she merely questioned the math of the acturary, and instead of investigating each homicide the government concludes it was suicide or the suspected perpetrator (Oswald) is dead, or the mob did it and we’ll never know the truth.

At the time she issued her report, one of the HSCA Committee members asked her about some of the sudden deaths of witnesses they had ordered to testify – Sam Giancana, John Rosselli and others were murdered outright, and the “strange” and sudden deaths that occurred to others – George DeMohrenschildt, William Sullivan et al.

In response, she said that those deaths were part of another major investigation, separate from her inquiry into the allegations made by Penn Jones, the London actuary and the Executive Action trailer, which satisfied the Congressman at the time. Since the HSCA records have been released under the JFK Act however, it is quite clear that there was no other more thorough and complete investigation of those murders and strange deaths.

As I have previously pointed out [Related Unsolved Homicides / Jurisdictions], you don’t even have to include the “strange” deaths that were originally ruled suicide – Olsen, Marshall, Pitzer and others not included in this book, the government should at least make an effort to solve the open homicides (M. Meyer, S. Giancana, J. Rosselli, et al).

For awhile, a number of high profile cold cases from the 60s and early 70s (Medgar Evers assassination, Birmingham Church bombing, Philadelphia, Miss. Civil rights murders, etc.), were suddenly solved by the emergence of new evidence and witness as well as – more significantly – a new independent prosecutor who wasn’t afraid to bring the cases to justice.

Then the Emmett Till bill passed the house, which would have required the Dept. of Justice to create a special new unit dedicated to prosecute unsolved civil rights cases of the 60s and 70s, but as far as I can tell, the bill somehow got sidetracked in the Senate.

But the Emmett Till bill would have created the independent government unit that is necessary to investigate and solve the cold case murders of the 60s – including those of Sam Giancana, John Rosselli, JFK, MLK, RFK and those lesser known victims like J.D. Tippit and Emmett Till.

The government might be able to ignore the strange deaths, however bizarre they are, but the government does have a responsibility to properly investigate and prosecute these unresolved murders.

I was sitting on the Grassy Knoll one anniversary (2003) when Jesse Ventura gave a little speech and then came over and sat by me, giving us the opportunity to talk. Here he calls attention to the Jack Nicholson role in USMC film, “There is a famous movie quote that most people are familiar with where, during a trail, a Marine Corps Colonel is pressed on revealing the truth to a questioning attorney, until he gets to the point here the Colonel has finally had enough and he screams: ‘You can’t handle the truth!’”

“That’s a good metaphor for the place that we’re in right now because apparently – by order of our own government – our so-called leaders don’t seem to think that the American people are actually capable of handling the truth. Isn’t it ridiculous that documents related to the JFK assassination are still sealed by order of our own government? For what reason are they still sealed?  To protect us? To protect us from whom exactly? From them, apparently. Why are we being treated like babies who can’t handle the truth? I’ve traveled this land far and wide, and I’ve come to quite a different conclusion: Americans can handle the truth.”

“This book is a perfect example of how Americans have not been trusted with the truth; it profiles case after case where we have often been intentionally misled and even clearly lied to on the most basic points of important events that changed history. The fact that we have been lied to about the JFK assassination is so obvious that it’s outrageous. The government cover-up was – and still is- so transparent that it’s ridiculous.”

“As we approach the fiftieth anniversary of the JFK assassination, it would seem well time that we, as Americans, come to terms with some very simple truths. I will offer a couple, just to get us started. Beyond the slightest doubt, John F. Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy involving many individuals. That isn’t some theory – that’s the only way it could have happened. Here’s another one. Beyond a doubt, the American government in the years following the JFK assassination has intentionally clouded the issue with intentional obfuscations of the true facts of the matter.”

“So why are we still being lied to about these cases? They seem to be missing a basic point about Democracy – they are our employees. They’re employed by us – We, the People. How dare they withhold the truth from us! Can you imagine if any employee in an office intentionally withheld pertinent information from her or his boss? With what justification? Because she or he didn’t think that their boss could handle it? That employee would rightfully be thrown out of hat office on their ear, and that’s what should happen to a lot of people in Washington too. Somehow things have been twisted backwards, and we need to get them back the way the founders of our country originally intended.”

But remember something very important here. Our elected officials are officially servants of The People. Technically, there’re our employees, That’s the way this government was set up by its founders. I’d say that the time has now come when We, The People, need to oversee our employees quite a bit more carefully. We need to demand the truth.”

“There is one thing that is more powerful than all the armies in the world and that is an idea whose time has come. Mahatma Gandhi once said, ‘The truth is far more powerful than any weapon of mass destruction.’”

“In my opinion, it should be a peaceful revolution, and one which starts and continues from a very simple and basic foundation – demanding the truth from our elected representatives.”

“Some Americans are so demoralized that they may think that the truth doesn’t even really matter anymore. I respectfully disagree. I think that we, as Americans, have an obligation to the great foundations of this Democracy, as well as a debt to those who have literally laid down their lives to protect it. As the pages of this book have revealed, we have not been told the truth. So now it’s up to us to demand it. We can start with the JFK Assassination. We want all the records released and we want them NOW. Our elected officials need to be reminded of who their real employers are. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. American can handle the truth. And frankly, it’s time that we are allowed that opportunity.”

“Commit yourself to the process of reclaiming our Democracy. We outnumber them and we have the power of truth and history on our side. We can turn this great Republic of ours back into the Democracy it was intended to be. It won’t be easy – but it can be done. And we have to do it, because no one else will.”