Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #619 Interview with Paris Flammonde about the Assassination of President Kennedy

Record­ed Novem­ber 18, 2007
MP3: Side 1 | Side 2
REALAUDIO

As the 44th anniver­sary of Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion approached, Mr. Emory inter­viewed Paris Flam­monde, author, radio pro­duc­er and inves­tiga­tive reporter. The author of The Kennedy Con­spir­a­cy—one of the first books Mr. Emory read about the Kennedy assassination—Flammonde has worked as the pro­duc­er for the near leg­endary “Long John Nebel Show,” a pio­neer­ing late-night radio talk show that helped to define that type of pro­gram. Paris has pub­lished a four-vol­ume set about the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion enti­tled The Assas­si­na­tion of Amer­i­ca. In this inter­view, Paris and Mr. Emory review some of the basics of the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion inves­ti­ga­tion. Begin­ning with dis­cus­sion of the unten­able sin­gle bul­let hypoth­e­sis, the pro­gram sorts through the evi­dence in the slay­ing of Dal­las patrol­man J.D. Tippit—also alleged­ly com­mit­ted by Oswald. After dis­cussing the orga­nized crime back­ground of Jack Ruby, the slay­er of Oswald, the pro­gram high­lights key fea­tures of New Orleans Dis­trict Attor­ney Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion. The broad­cast con­cludes with Paris’s analy­sis of the assas­si­na­tion as a coup d’e­tat.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Rebut­tal of the offi­cial, non­sense ver­sion of the assas­si­na­tion as set forth by the likes of Ger­ald Pos­ner; analy­sis of the chang­ing ver­sions of the rifle alleged­ly used to kill Kennedy; an account of Paris’s own work with Jim Gar­ri­son in New Orleans; Paris’s own expe­ri­ence with some of the Chica­go area gang­sters who were part of Jack Ruby’s milieu.

1. Paris begins by high­light­ing some of the key dis­crep­an­cies in the foren­sic evi­dence in the assas­si­na­tion. In addi­tion to high­light­ing the numer­ous wit­ness­es who saw a shot fired at Pres­i­dent Kennedy from the grassy knoll to Kennedy’s right, Paris notes that the fun­da­men­tals of the War­ren Com­mis­sion’s the­sis are not only demon­stra­bly incor­rect, but phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble as well.

2. Among the phys­i­cal impos­si­bil­i­ties embraced by the War­ren Com­mis­sion is the sin­gle bul­let hypoth­e­sis. One shot fired at Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s motor­cade missed alto­geth­er and wound­ed a bystander named James Teague after ric­o­chet­ing off of a curb. Anoth­er shot dis­in­te­grat­ed Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s head, killing him instant­ly. That left one bul­let to account for all sev­en non-fatal wounds in Pres­i­dent Kennedy and gov­er­nor John Connally—if more than three shots were fired, there must have been more than one gun­man. There­fore, the War­ren Com­mis­sion was oblig­ed to attribute all the non-fatal wounds in the Pres­i­dent and gov­er­nor Con­nal­ly to one bullet—the round dubbed by crit­ics as “The Mag­ic Bul­let.” The term comes from the fact that the bul­let per­formed con­trary to the laws of physics in a num­ber of ways. The bul­let had to have exe­cut­ed sharp turns in mid-air with­out being act­ed upon by anoth­er object in con­tra­dic­tion of the law of iner­tia. In addi­tion, the mate­r­i­al recov­ered from the non-fatal wounds exceeds the amount of mate­r­i­al miss­ing from the bul­let that sup­pos­ed­ly made the wounds—in the case of the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, the whole is NOT equal to the sum of its parts. It should also be not­ed that the bul­let was found under­neath the stretch­er on which Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s body was placed.

3. In addi­tion to set­ting forth the sin­gle bul­let the­o­ry, Paris not­ed the prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with attempt­ing to iden­ti­fy the mur­der weapon, which ulti­mate­ly was fin­gered as a Mannlicher/Carcano. The lat­ter was an all but use­less weapon that was ulti­mate­ly retired from ser­vice with the Ital­ian army due to its unre­li­a­bil­i­ty. Ini­tial­ly iden­ti­fied as a Ger­man 7.62 Mauser, as well as a British Enfield, the weapon was sight­ed in for a shoot­er oth­er than Oswald. The FBI’s sharp­shoot­ers who attempt­ed to dupli­cate the feat of marks­man­ship alleged­ly per­formed by Oswald were unable to do so. In that con­text, it is impor­tant to note that Oswald was a poor shot.

4. The mythol­o­gy that has evolved around 11/22/1963 incor­po­rates the fic­tion­al­iza­tion of anoth­er murder—that of Dal­las patrol­man J.D. Tip­pitt. Once again, there are fun­da­men­tal con­tra­dic­tions in the offi­cial account. There are sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences between the bul­lets recov­ered from Tip­pit­t’s body and the car­tridge cas­es in the pis­tol alleged­ly used by Oswald to shoot the police­man. The only tes­ti­mo­ny that the War­ren Com­mis­sion could muster in sup­port of their con­tention that Oswald was the slay­er of Tip­pitt was the account of one Helen Markham. That account is devoid of cred­i­bil­i­ty. Oth­er wit­ness­es, such as Acquila Clem­mons, iden­ti­fied Tip­pit­t’s slay­er as some­one oth­er than Oswald.

5. Paris also details key fea­tures of the back­ground of Jack Ruby, the oth­er “lone nut” assas­sin of Dal­las. Far from being a “lone nut,” Ruby was an impor­tant orga­nized crime fig­ure in the Dal­las area. Orig­i­nal­ly from Chica­go, Ruby was part of the Capone milieu and had some acquain­tances in com­mon with Paris, him­self a native of the Chica­go area.

6. Much of he sec­ond side of the pro­gram under­scored key fea­tures of Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion in New Orleans. For more detailed dis­cus­sion of this, see FTR#620.

7. In order to sup­ple­ment the infor­ma­tion in Paris’ books and the inter­view, check out Mr. Emory’s volu­mi­nous pro­grams on the JFK assas­si­na­tion. See The Guns of Novem­ber.

8. Paris’ four-vol­ume set can be obtained from Scanuscrip­tion; Tarot; RR 6, Box 6199; Strouds­burg, PA 18360. Vis­it the web­site at: www.assassinationofamerica.com. Paris can be reached at: flammonde@assassinationofamerica.com.

9. Two video pro­duc­tions are being gen­er­at­ed by a cou­ple of doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ers. One is a DVD of a three-lec­ture series called “The First Refuge of a Scoundrel: The Rela­tion­ship Between Fas­cism and Reli­gion.” In addi­tion, there will soon be a doc­u­men­tary about Mr. Emory, titled “The Anti-Fas­cist.” For more about this project, vis­it TheAntiFascist.com.

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