I watched the Zapruder film in my dormitory room on march 6, 1975, on Geraldo Rivera’s show on ABC called Good Night, America.  I had my doubts about the findings of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy—commonly known as the Warren Report.  Hence, the critical commentary of Robert Groden and Dick Gregory accompanied by my watching the film tended to confirm or corroborate my suspicions of the government’s stance as explained by the Warren Commission and presented to Lyndon Johnson on September 24, 1964.  From news reports that followed its publication, I was convinced that if Lee Harvey Oswald acted, he did not act alone; and that regardless of named potential conspirators, it was contemporaneous and former actors within the government of the United States who were responsible for the horrific act.  Subsequently, I explored Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment (1966) and Groden’s JFK: The Case for Conspiracy (1975).

I never entertained the role of a conspiracist.  Instead, I characterized my suspicions as based on the obvious coverup of the federal government and the news media.  As I increased in my knowledge and understanding of the Kennedy administration, especially with regards to the Bay of Pigs fiasco, the dynamics of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the emergence of a moral commitment to oppose racism, and the burgeoning peace initiatives of the president regarding the Soviet Union, the nuclear arms race, and the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Vietnam.  Furthermore, as I learned incrementally about the suspicious deaths of many related in some way to the covering up of factors involved in the lead up to and the follow through of the assassination, I peremptorily perceived that something was seriously amiss surrounding the whole macabre affair.

Moreover, my views on the murder of JFK found parallels with the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., which occurred on April 4, 1968–precisely one year after King had formally declared his opposition to U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam at the Riverside Church in New York City.  By the spring of 1968, the antiwar movement had grown exponentially, with the help of Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, Dr. Benjamin Spock, and King.  In addition, the lies about the Tet Offensive were exposed and the weakening and disruption of domestic policies such as the War on Poverty conspired to lower President Johnson’s approval ratings.  As a result, he felt coerced to withdraw his name from nomination for a second term on Sunday, March 31, 1968.  That surprising announcement was followed by an even more astonishing occurrence: the killing of Dr. King!  And even though I still harbored resentment for Bobby Kennedy for his collusion with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s wiretapping of King, my hermeneutic of suspicion was further reinforced by the murder and subsequent inconclusive investigation and coverage of the snuffing out of the life of the senator from New York who was running for the Democratic nomination for president on June 6 of that year.

With the narcissistic return of Richard Nixon to the White House, this time as President, and his clandestine approach to political matters, he demonstrated a brutality against opponents and protesters that further eroded my confidence in the ethics of the political leadership as a whole.

Consequently, by the time I watched the Zapruder film initially, I was despondent over the failure of Nixon’s ability to lead the country faithfully and responsibly and intensified my distrust of the government and its political machinations, subterfuge, and shenanigans.  Coupled with the knowledge of revelations concerning America’s involvement in regime changes in the world—Diem, Lumumba, Allende, et al.—I was secure in my mistrust by the summer of 1975, when I turned twenty in July.

By the time I was about to graduate from Wesleyan University with a bachelor’s in government, I found myself fiercely resistant to any participation in the political or legal professions.  Most recently, I had been involved in the student divestment movement on campus to force the South African government to dismantle its apartheid system that oppressed the Black majority as well as other citizens of color.  I had become an ardent supporter of the nonviolent movement in that republic.  I gave a eulogy for the activist Steven Biko, who was murdered in prison, and commiserated with the efforts of Bishop Desmond Tutu and Rev. Allan Boesak.  I continued my support of divestiture and the Free South Africa international campaign until Nelson Mandela was released from prison on February 11, 1990.

In addition to the murders if King and the two Kennedys, I was also wary of the death of King’s younger brother, the Rev. Alfred Daniel King, nine days shy of his thirty-ninth birthday.  The cause of death was drowning, although he was an excellent swimmer.   Of course, A.D. King did not have the recognition and public persona as his charismatic brother, he was a constant and prominent local figure in support of the Civil Rights Movement.  I felt at the time that his death was another way the U.S. government sought to prevent anybody else succeeding the inspirational activism of Dr. King.  

Soon, I found confirmation of my amassing suspicions by the piecemeal revelations of the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program, commonly called COINTELPRO.  Hoover was intent for a decade and a half on attacking activists through secret and substantially corrupt and illicit means.  Many government insiders were aware of Hoover’s hatred of so-called “subversives,” and were fluent in, despite being silent about, the sinister manner of his retributive measures.  In the mist of the first moon landing and the mysterious drowning of Mary Jo Kopechne in Poucha Pond off the Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island of Martha’s Vineyard, the curious death of King on July 21, 1969, just did not receive much media coverage or analysis.  And the story Sen. Edward “Ted” Kennedy told regarding the incident that caused Kopechne’s death was simply unbelievable.  Perhaps, the real incredulity was that he remained ensconced in the halls of Congress until his death from brain cancer forty years later on August 25, 2009, in Hyannis Port in Barnstable, Massachusetts.

From the vantage point of sixty-one years after the assassination of Pres. Kennedy, I doubt that I will ever know the truth about the aforementioned slayings before my own demise.  Meanwhile, my suspicions remain evermore strongly.