Did the U.S. Government Cover-up JFK Assassination Details? Five renowned experts present new findings in DC

WASHINGTON, DC, May 15, 2006 Five prominent John F. Kennedy assassination experts will convene today at the Willard Hotel in the nation's capitol to present new findings and make the case that the U.S. government's investigation of the JFK assassination was replete with errors and, most likely, a deliberate cover-up.

These experts will also raise an important question: Does the JFK assassination 43 years ago (and the U.S. government's likely cover-up of the details of that assassination) hold the key to regaining public trust in government?

These five experts appearing for the first time in a national forum together each have meticulously assembled key parts of a complex puzzle that lead any objective observer to just one conclusion: that the government deliberately covered up the details of the JFK assassination and misled the American public.

For instance, one expert has assembled new photographic evidence that raises substantial questions about whether the Zapruder film was altered while in the government's possession. Others will present new suggestions that a second brain was, in fact, used in an autopsy cover-up.

A CBS poll on the 40th observance of the JFK assassination in 2003 indicated that only 10% of the American people believe The Warren Report, while 74% think believe there was a cover-up. Many experts believe that the U.S. government's mishandling of its investigation of the Kennedy assassination began what is by now a deep inclination for the American public to distrust it.

A Washington publishing company executive, Paul Kuntzler, hopes that, by bringing nationally renowned JFK assassination experts together for the first time to reveal important findings on the errors in how the government handled the JFK assassination, Congress and the administration will re-open the case in an effort to finally get to the truth.

Kuntzler's company, Miller Reporting, has a proven record for integrity in handling records and transcripts for government agencies for more than 30 years. Ironically the records it transcribed for The Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) in 1998 were the ones that troubled him the most. They were the most exhaustive attempt at reconstructing the evidence to date. And he is bringing together a group of some of the nation's leading experts on the death of JFK to help sort things out at a meeting at the Willard Hotel at 11AM on Monday, May 15th.

"My belief is that our country has lost its way," Kuntzler said. "If we could find out what happened in Dallas, it might help us to figure out a way to regain a sense of trust in government." His concern is that this may be a seminal instance in which the American government lied to the American people.

"If it is possible for someone to assassinate a President in broad daylight in a major American city, and then have the federal government fake the autopsy evidence and conceal the nature of the crime itself, then those who exercised that kind of power are emboldened to repeat performances of that kind over and over again. The American people are not unreasonable to suspect that that has happened to them many times by now."

The ARRB was created by the JFK Records Act passed by Congress in 1992. It had the unprecedented power to declassify documents and records held by the CIA, the FBI, the Secret Service, and other agencies of the government. Only the President could override its decisions. President George H.W. Bush opposed the legislation and, when it passed over his opposition, refused to appoint its members, which had to await the incoming Clinton administration. The five experts Kuntzler will present include: James H. Fetzer, McKnight Professor at the University of Minnesota. Fetzer has chaired or co-chaired four conferences on the death of JFK and has published three books on this event: Assassination Science, Murder in Dealey Plaza, and The Great Zapruder Film Hoax. Fetzer is not surprised at the unprecedented level of public disbelief in the Warren Report. "Considering that the crux of the government's position, the 'magic bullet' theory, is not even anatomically possible, it should be even higher."

David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., has worked with the tangled web of inconsistent and contradictory medical evidence, including the autopsy X-rays and photographs, for many years. "It's hardly surprising that most Americans don't know what to make of this case," he observed. "Even a Ph.D. in physics and an M.D. did not adequately prepare me for this chaotic record. It was probably fortuitous that John Ebersole, M.D., who was the officer in charge of radiology at Bethesda during the autopsy, and I happen to have the same medical specialty, radiation oncology. Otherwise, I might not have been able to figure out what happened to the official records during the autopsy."

Douglas Horne, the Senior Analyst for Military Affairs for the ARRB who discovered the existence of records demonstrating the conduct of two postmortem brain exams, described the experience of searching through seemingly endless documents for a few nuggets of truth as frustrating and exasperating. "This just may be the single most bizarre case in the history of forensic science," he observed. "I can certainly understand why Mr. Kuntzler has found this case the most disturbing. I was there during the ARRB's search for records, but I still find it challenging to take the case apart and put it together and make all the pieces fit."

Thomas Lipscomb, the noted journalist and publisher, was President of Times Books, the New York Times book division when it published The Final Report of the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1979. "As a young officer in charge of a US Army Rifle and Pistol Team at the time of the Kennedy assassination," he said, "I was asked to try to replicate the feats attributed to Oswald with a mail order carbine exactly like his. I couldn't. But I feel a lot better now that no one else has either, including teams at CBS and the Discovery channel." A senior fellow at the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future, Lipscomb has been investigating the authenticity of the photographic record, including the Zapruder film, and has unearthed disturbing discrepancies.

Joan Mellen, a professor at Temple University, is the author of Farewell to Justice, a new study of the trial of Clay Shaw brought by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, which led her to important discoveries showing CIA and FBI involvement in the Kennedy assassination. After going through thousands of documents released since the Assassination Records and Review Act, and doing 1,200 interviews, I've learned that Jim Garrison had a host of suspects who played a role in the implementation of the assassination of President Kennedy.

Like any criminal investigator, he sometimes found himself in a blind alley. He would have been no investigator if that hadn't happened. Yet he came up with the truth closer than anyone has before or since.

EVENT DETAILS:

Where: Willard Hotel, Grand Ballroom, 1401 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC When: 11 AM, Monday, May 15

CONTACT:

Jeff Nesbit
Waterford Consulting Group
(Work) 540-882-9062
(Cell) 703-577-6664
(Email) jeffnesbit@hotmail.com
Thomas H. Lipscomb
Annenberg Center for the Digital Future (USC)
1360 York Avenue, Suite 3D
New York NY 10021

646-625-9700