The conspiracy theory that won’t go away - Robert F Kennedy and the secrets behind the assassination of JFK

Robert F. Kennedy Jr

Early in Oliver Stone’s hyper-paranoid film JFK, Guy Bannister (played by Ed Asner) grumbles that he hates the fact that, by 1963, African Americans could  more or less vote safely.  He adds, “[Blacks] get together with the Jews and the  Catholics and elect an Irish bleeding heart.”

According to the film, Bannister -- and a whole bunch of other people -- did  something to stop that “Irish bleeding heart.” 

Bannister and the mob and the CIA and Lyndon Johnson and perhaps even Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

The Warren Commission later argued that Oswald, in fact, acted alone. But most Americans remain skeptical of the Warren Report.

Bobby Kennedy Jr., it turns out, is one of them.  Earlier this month, JFK’s nephew, as well as his niece, Rory, sat down for an interview in Dallas.

Eventually, Bobby Kennedy’s two children were asked about the conspiracy theories swirling around JFK’s murder. “The evidence at this point I think is very, very convincing that it was not a lone gunman,” RFK Jr. said, though he didn’t elaborate much beyond that. 

He did add that his father, who himself was assassinated in June of 1968, also believed their was another killer aside from Oswald. According to RFK Jr., his father considered the Warren Commission report “shoddy.”

RFK Jr. added, “He publicly supported the Warren Commission report but  privately he was dismissive of it."

RFK Jr. also suggested that the most likely co-conspirators were mafia leaders who were targeted by JFK’s attorney general -- who was none other than Bobby Kennedy Sr.

To quote another famous mafia figure, “Every time I think I’m out...they pull me  back in!”

Things have been quiet on the JFK conspiracy front.  And then, RFK Jr. went and made his comments. 

And then, a few days later, an apartment in Dallas which Oswald called home in 1962 and 1963 was torn down, briefly resurrecting interest in Oswald’s bizarre life prior to being thrust onto the world stage.

And so we have, arguably, the most compelling defender yet of a conspiracy  theory to kill JFK -- his own martyred brother and his crusading son. 

It means nothing to me.  For years I waded into the muck and mire of the JFK conspiracy underworld and emerged unconvinced. 

Yes, there is a lot of evidence to suggest others were involved in the Kennedy killing.  Yes, the Warren report is flawed. 

But I also discovered that most people who buy into the JFK conspiracy do so not only based on facts, but also on something that can only be described as vaguely  religious.

You also see this from those who buy into conspiracies surrounding another  tragedy which hit Irish America hard -- the 9/11 attacks.  Part of the allure of  conspiracy theories surrounding both 9/11 and JFK is that they explain the seemingly unexplainable.  

How could one Marxist loser end Camelot?  How could 20 fanatics with a few hours of flying lessons murder 3,000 people? No, it must have been something larger.

But have you ever noticed that people don’t talk much about conspiracy theories when it comes to plots that more or less failed?

In December of 1960, a man named Richard Pavlick packed his car with dynamite and was going to ram the vehicle into a Kennedy home in Florida.  He chickened out and was arrested. 

Had he succeeded, perhaps great energy would have gone into uncovering a broader conspiracy. Instead, the truth was fairly easy to swallow.  The guy was an anti-Catholic nut who hated JFK.

And why so few conspiracy theories about the 1993 effort to topple the World Trade Center?  Why do theories about rogue government elements, and, yes, even Israel and the Jews, flourish only around the 2001 attack that actually brought the towers down?

It is generally futile to go detail for detail with conspiracy theorists.  They are dogged in their shaping of facts which support their view, and, like the  religiously faithful, defend their organization of those facts. 

As for me, once I read Gerald Posner’s book Case Closed, I was able to accept the fact that Oswald acted alone.

The odd thing in all of this is why RFK Jr. was not asked if he believes Sirhan Sirhan acted alone when he killed Bobby Kennedy in Los Angeles in 1968?  Why not ask that question?

Must be a conspiracy.

(Contact Sidewalks at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

'Gangster Squad', Whitey Bulger, the Westies and more - It’s prime time for Irish crime - VIDEO

Josh Brolin stars as John O'Mara in 'Gangster Squad'

Gangster Squad is currently filling movie theaters across the nation with the rat-tat-tat sound of Tommy guns firing off endless rounds.  The film stars Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, as well as Josh Brolin, who plays an Irish American cop named John O’Mara.

But as several recent crime cases indicate, Irish Americans are still very much  on the wrong side of the law as well.

The case against Irish Godfather Whitey Bulger, for example, drags on.  The  senior citizen mobster, this week, argued that he could not get a fair trial with the current judge presiding over the case. 

Bulger -- who himself is  expected to be the subject of a forthcoming Hollywood flick directed by newly minted Golden Globe winner Ben Affleck -- is arguing that the judge’s prior experience  prosecuting Boston criminals creates the appearance of a conflict.

God knows how you could find anyone in Boston law enforcement who did not, at one point, have some sort of involvement in the massive, decades-long hunt to nab Bulger.  One gets the feeling that Bulger will be sentenced to a  hole six-feet in the ground well before he is ever officially sentenced to a  prison cell.

Meanwhile, late last year, federal law enforcement officials announced the arrest of an Irish American member of the Westies street gang, accused of extortion in a case that also involved a shootout. 

Read more: Irish American mob lawyer Gerald McMahon targets “rats” as he calls informers

New Jersey resident Daniel Hanley -- identified by the feds as a member of the long-standing West Side Irish  gang the Westies -- has been accused of teaming up with members of the Gambino crime family and an offshoot of the Hell’s Angel motorcycle gang to run a violent loan sharking operation.

“With alleged involvement of the Gambinos, Westies and Hell’s Angels, this case hit the trifecta of loan sharking and extortion,” New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly commented.

But by the far the most intriguing Irish American criminal in the news these  days is Anthony “Tony O” O’Donnell. 

O’Donnell has been identified as a long-time associate of the Gambino crime family and has faced a slew of charges  related to various shakedowns in the construction industry.

Back in 2000, O’Donnell, as well as Finbar O’Neill and other Irish Americans, were named in an indictment by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau following a three year investigation.

Meanwhile, at a January 2011 press conference, Justice Department officials  outlined O’Donnell’s long career in the New York-New Jersey underworld.

O’Donnell “served as the right hand man to Edward Garafola, a Gambino soldier  who was a member of the Gambino family’s ‘construction panel,’” a Justice  Department report noted, before outlining a host of complex shakedown schemes the Gambino expert “panel” oversaw.

In 1993, O’Donnell was arrested and charged with participating in the armed robbery of a UPS truck moving goods from New York to New Jersey.  In 2008, he also plead guilty to what the Justice Department termed “extortion conspiracy.”

Read more: Like Big Tobacco, the Big Guns of the NRA are about to fade

In his latest round of legal woes, O’Donnell has been accused of shaking down a Midtown Manhattan real estate investment firm.  In an effort to polish his image before sentencing, O’Donnell submitted chummy letters from political heavyweights including New York Senator Chuck Schumer, former president Bill Clinton and even current one Barack Obama.

Trouble is, the correspondence between these bold-faced politicos and O’Donnell was hardly personal.  Many of the documents were form letters sent out in mass mailings to constituents, supporters, donors or others.

Either way, O’Donnell’s shakedown shenanigans, Whitey Bulger’s stall tactics and the return of the old-school Westies goes to show that America’s real-life “Gangster Squad” still had a decidedly green tint -- for better or worse. 

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

What now for the Catholic Church? Obama’s reelection and schools among questions that need to be answered

Cardinal Timothy Dolan

When the Academy Award nominations are announced on January 10, Mea Maxima Culpa may or may not be one of the five films up for Best Documentary.

The film, about the sexual abuse horrors Wisconsin’s Reverend Lawrence Murphy is accused of, was on a shortlist of 15 top documentaries back in December.

Either way, the film directed by Alex Gibney has already made a troubling case not only against Murphy, but the Vatican as well.

With the New Year upon us, and a grueling election which grappled with tough religious questions behind us, it is probably time to ask -- what is the future of the Catholic Church in America?

Given the revelations in Mea Maxima Culpa, given the election results and the ongoing restructuring of Catholic schools across the U.S., it is surprising fewer people have not raised this question.

After President Obama’s reelection, for example, most commentators argued that it was time for the Republican Party to take a long look in the mirror.

But what about the church and the election? New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan was on the offensive much of the electoral season, denouncing the Obama administration on several fronts.

Read more: New York Times surprised over Cardinal Dolan's support for beatification of Dorothy Day

Irish Catholic pundits such as Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity, meanwhile, suggested the election was nothing short of a referendum on religious freedom.  A vote for Obama, many argued, was a vote against the Catholic Church.

Yet according to most polling data, Catholics supported Obama by a slim majority. (Though it appears that Irish and other white Catholics supported Mitt Romney.)

Either way, given the lengths vocal church leaders went to steer Catholics away from Obama -- Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria likened the Obama administration to those who mocked Jesus -- these numbers do not bode well.

And while it is tempting to say the church is engaged in spiritual rather than political matters, to pretend the church is an apolitical institution is to simply ignore reality.

But politics is only part of what church leaders need to be thinking about.

The true cost of the damage inflicted by the sex abuse scandal.  The purpose -- and  price -- of Catholic education. The dwindling number of priests.

The future of the church hinges on these and other messy, weighty questions.

Irish American scholar Patrick J. McCloskey offered some interesting thoughts this Monday in The New York Times. “Catholic parochial education is in crisis,” McCloskey, and his co-author Joseph Claude Harris, declared in an op-ed piece entitled “Catholic Education, In Need of Salvation.”

They note that Catholic schools have long played a key role for the Irish and other immigrants in America, but are no longer playing that role.

One reason?  Tuition has risen sharply, though not because church revenues have fallen off.

“Despite the sex-abuse scandals and two recessions, church revenue...grew to $11.9 billion in 2010, an inflation-adjusted increase of $2.2 billion from a  decade earlier,” they write.

“Yet educational subsidies have fallen; the church now pays at least 12.6 percent of parochial elementary school costs, down from  63 percent in 1965.”

One possible solution?  Given the falling numbers of priests, McCloskey suggests deacons be given more power.  This, however, would in all likelihood eventually  lead to a “married priesthood.”

“Celibacy should be a sacrifice offered freely, not an excuse for institutional  suicide,” McCloskey writes.

Good luck convincing Pope Benedict -- or, for that matter, Sean Hannity -- of that. But it’s pretty clear something has got to give.

Read more: Cardinal Dolan congratulates Bishop Dennis Sullivan on appointment as bishop of Camden

Something spiritual, yes, but also financial, educational and cultural.  It’s tempting to say it’s time for another Vatican Council, like those meetings held between 1962 and 1965, to take up these profound questions.

Rather than sit and wait for that, perhaps the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops need to confront this moment head on and hold some sort of council of their own. 

If for no other reason, then to shed light on the many good things the church still does. For all of its flaws, we would be a poorer nation without a vibrant, relevant Catholic Church. 

Right now, that does not seem to be what the future holds.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net.)