The man in the center of the motorcade has learned to tie his shoes.

April 15, 2007 8:43 AM

On his deathbed, the former CIA spymaster E. Howard Hunt made a startling confession. Or so says his son, Saint...Maybe the Zapruder film can tell us if there was a second gunman on the grassy knoll. Or was that a hoax too?
posted by nasreddin (36 comments total)

The other hidden secret is that apparently the Sunday Times likes to steal articles from other publications without crediting the author.

More JFK assassination data here, via this previous MeFi post.
posted by nasreddin at 8:55 AM on April 15, 2007

He named his son Saint?
posted by watsondog at 8:57 AM on April 15, 2007

St. John is a given name, usually pronounced 'sin-jin' as in St. John Hawke or Norman St. John Polevaulter.
posted by xiffix at 9:05 AM on April 15, 2007

They don’t make White House bad guys the way they used to. It seems a little nutty now, but in 1972 it was serious business. These guys meant to take the powers of the presidency and run amok.

*cough*
posted by DU at 9:11 AM on April 15, 2007 [2 favorites]

The Hunt stuff strikes me more as conspiracy-buff fantasy than a believable scenario. Who knows, though.
posted by gubo at 9:11 AM on April 15, 2007

That's an interesting read, but damn, maybe Rolling Stone oughta find a new copyeditor.

Also. Eureka. That's almost close to Mendocino and Boonville. Maybe Wanda Tinasky was one of the tramps loitering with Hunt on the fringes of Dealey Plaza.
posted by notyou at 9:15 AM on April 15, 2007

Don't click the last link, if you are squeamish about closeup looping video of JFK's head exploding.

(A little warning in the post would have been nice.)
posted by The Deej at 9:18 AM on April 15, 2007

I used to think there was a conspiracy. Then I watched this.

I don't know why we should believe anything E. Howard Hunt says.
posted by interrobang at 10:03 AM on April 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

It's a really weird claim in that Hunt claims he immediately didn't see how he fit in and they just let him walk out while they planned an assassination. I mean, he could be failing to mention hush money, but it doesn't make sense that someone as admittedly ruthless as he was ended up supernumerary.
posted by dhartung at 10:20 AM on April 15, 2007

And frankly, the subtext that I get from Hedegaard is that his junkie son got deeply into JFK conspiracy theories and in an attempt to rationalize his relationship with his father inserted himself into the narrative. It's not like there's an attempt to corroborate any of these claims.
posted by dhartung at 10:23 AM on April 15, 2007

KENNEDY SLAIN BY CIA, MAFIA, CASTRO, LBJ, TEAMSTERS, FREEMASONS
President Shot 129 Times from 42 Different Angles
posted by edverb at 10:36 AM on April 15, 2007 [3 favorites]

The son doesn't seem like a very credible person and given his failed relationship with his father......
posted by caddis at 10:43 AM on April 15, 2007

wow... the author of last link makes some nutty claims. All of them can easily be explained away by simple common sense, something which the author clearly does not possess.
posted by WhipSmart at 10:53 AM on April 15, 2007

The Zapruder film deconstruction stuff is quite interesting I'd not heard about that before. What are people's opinions on that?
posted by mokey at 10:56 AM on April 15, 2007

It's not too hard to deconstruct the deconstruction, for anyone with knowledge of how photography works, and some common sense. But it would be too exhausting and annoying to do so.
posted by The Deej at 10:59 AM on April 15, 2007

I find it intriguing that America has such graphically violent footage of the death of one of it's leaders.
posted by PHINC at 11:19 AM on April 15, 2007

And?
posted by stenseng at 11:48 AM on April 15, 2007

I find it intriguing that America has such graphically violent footage of the death of one of it's leaders.

Just goes to show what a violent society America is. If we were a more peaceful society we would have footage of JFK fucking Marylin Monroe...
posted by Eekacat at 11:51 AM on April 15, 2007 [8 favorites]

Just goes to show what a violent society America is. If we were a more peaceful society we would have footage of JFK fucking Marylin Monroe...
posted by Eekacat at 11:51 AM on April 15

Pix plz.
posted by basicchannel at 11:55 AM on April 15, 2007 [2 favorites]

I vote we talk about the fact Mokey never heard about the Zapruder film deconstruction stuff, cuz I'm flabbergasted my own self. I think there's aboriginie tribes in Australia who wouldn't know a coca cola bottle if it hit them on the head but they could tell you about Zapruder.
posted by ZachsMind at 12:05 PM on April 15, 2007

Personally, I believe that JFK was kidnapped by aliens as a child and had an explosive device implanted in his medulla oblongata, timed to explode at the appropriate moment, with pieces of lead to create realistic-looking wounds.

Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy set up by the Kremlin to conceal the Russians' knowledge of the alien kidnapping, but Oswald was not really in the Book Depository--he was on the grassy knoll, and the man on the sixth floor was actually his double, a Mafia man with CIA connections.

Governor Connally's wrist was broken because it concealed a Yakuza crossbow that had been meant to kill Kennedy before the bomb went off, but malfunctioned.
posted by nasreddin at 12:22 PM on April 15, 2007 [1 favorite]

"The other hidden secret is that apparently the Sunday Times likes to steal articles from other publications without crediting the author."

It says ©2007 Rolling Stone at the bottom.
posted by Auz at 12:25 PM on April 15, 2007

My dad always blamed LBJ.
posted by konolia at 12:34 PM on April 15, 2007

The son doesn't seem like a very credible person and given his failed relationship with his father......
posted by caddis at 10:43 AM on April 15

the son doesn't seem like a very credible person given his 20 frickin' years of methamphetamine abuse. jesus, and i'm sure he got a twenty for bus fare at the end of the interview too, but just a loan mind you, he even wrote down the journalists name, address and everything...
posted by geos at 12:58 PM on April 15, 2007

The Zapruder film deconstruction stuff is quite interesting I'd not heard about that before. What are people's opinions on that?

Everything you need.
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 1:46 PM on April 15, 2007

The son doesn't seem like a very credible person and given his failed relationship with his father......

The father doesn't seem to be a very credible person, given his entire life. It seems likely enough that he'd make up something to discredit someone he didn't like, or in an attempt to earn his son some money from book/movie deals, or maybe just to get his name into the history books. If he'd told me the sky was blue, I don't think I'd believe it without looking up.
posted by Mitrovarr at 2:11 PM on April 15, 2007

The article mentions the photo of three tramps about four times but never says if its the same three tramps photo that was supposed to include Woody Harrelson's dad. If so, those tramps were identified long ago and none of them were Hunt, Sturgis or Harrelson pere.

basicchannel: There are accounts of Peter Lawford taking pictures of MM going down on JFK. Sooner or later, they'll show up on the internets even if they have to be re-created.
posted by CCBC at 2:12 PM on April 15, 2007

Debunking of the three tramps claim, which was dismissed by forensic investigators for the 1975 House Select Committee on Assassinations, including probable identifications of the actual vagrants, two of whom were tracked down and interviewed by A Current Affair in the 1990s (the third was deceased).

So on that point, at least, Hunt fils is full of merde.
posted by dhartung at 2:33 PM on April 15, 2007

JFK fucking Marylin Monroe

only J. Edgar and his sweetie Clyde ever saw that footage.
posted by quonsar at 2:46 PM on April 15, 2007

I find it intriguing that America has such graphically violent footage of the death of one of it's leaders.

The Sadat assassination video is pretty grim too, but you don't see it shown very often.
posted by smackfu at 4:12 PM on April 15, 2007

Geez...how obvious can it be?

Aliens.

No mention of the green orbs above the motorcade...I think that in it self points to the true masterminds
posted by shockingbluamp at 4:32 PM on April 15, 2007

Tramp identification - http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/3tramps.htm
posted by fire&wings at 4:51 PM on April 15, 2007

Many of us here in the States have seen this guy on TV doing health-related features on news programs. I learned only a few years ago that he was one of the emergency-room physicians who worked on Connally.

Also, a co-worker's ... uncle, I think? ... was normally one of the senior people on the Presidential detail during the JFK days. Oddly, just before the trip to Dallas, this SSS agent got sent to Alaska. Dunno details, just relatin'....
posted by pax digita at 6:32 AM on April 16, 2007

Oh, snap; let's try that link again: this guy, Dr. James "Red" Duke, Jr.
posted by pax digita at 6:49 AM on April 16, 2007

My mental image of Howard Hunt is 100% beholden to the way Mailer portrays him in Harlot's Ghost, so any time I read about him, I picture an ineffectual, pompous ass. Fortunately, it seems like Mailer got that right.

I do think the death of Dorothy Hunt seems mighty suspicious, but who know? There's every chance it really was an accident, and even if it wasn't, there's a wide range of high jinx she could've been caught up in.
posted by COBRA! at 7:02 AM on April 16, 2007

One evening in Eureka, over a barbecue meal, St. John explains how he first came to suspect that his father might somehow be involved in the Kennedy assassination. "Around 1975, I was in a phone booth in Maryland somewhere, when I saw a poster on a telephone pole about who killed JFK, and it had a picture of the three tramps. I saw that picture and I fucking -- like a cartoon character, my jaw dropped, my eyes popped out of my head, and smoke came out of my ears. It looks like my dad. There's nobody that has all those same facial features. People say it's not him. He's said it's not him. But I'm his son, and I've got a gut feeling."
[...]
After that, the meeting ends. E. Howard goes back to his "normal" life and "like the rest of the country . . . is stunned by JFK's death and realizes how lucky he is not to have had a direct role."

So if Hunt was informed of the conspiracy but turned down a direct role in it, what was he doing in Dallas that day to get his picture taken as one of the three hobos? Sorry, this story isn't even internally consistent. I think he just decided to play a cosmic joke on the world in revenge for being used up by the CIA.
posted by scalefree at 8:50 AM on April 16, 2007