Addendum 2017


Needless to say, much has happened since I wrote the above words. In
September, 2001, the World Trade Center was destroyed and part of the
Pentagon, inaugurating the term "9/11." I can't seem to convey to people that
there is at least one other 9/11, in Chile in 1973, when a CIA-backed coup
destroyed the presidential palace in Santiago, caused the death of
democratically-electing socialist President Salvador Allende, and turned the
nation into a torture-and-execution chamber for two decades; it exported its
evil to nations throughout Latin America, always with our help.

But no matter. The attack on the World Trade Center caused President George W.
Bush to declare a "war on terror" (that is, a war on a concept), sending
troops into both Iraq and Afghanistan, ripping to shreds already beleaguered
nations. It now seems that the U.S. is in a state of permanent war, reaping
huge profits for arms manufacturers and those in league with them, while our
own citizens go begging. The fate of people victimized by our violence is of
little matter to our media and government. Our violence has spurred
retaliatory violence in the form of bombings in cities here and abroad. The
horror escalates. To top things off, in 2016 our population elected real
estate grifter and con artist Donald Trump President of the United States, to
the shock of the world. Has America gone to sleep? Is it not aware that this
man, the delight of the tabloids for decades due to his sexual and financial
shenanigans, has nothing to offer our country? There is also the matter of
Hillary Clinton winning over three million more popular votes than Trump; the
other issue is Russian interference with our election, their intelligence
service assisting their client Trump through cybernetic shenanigans.

Is the Kennedy assassination still relevant? Is Vincent Salandria, the great
prophet of our times, still relevant? Of course they are, even as we face a
tidal wave of obloquy from the media (I mean the entire media, including
outlets like MSNBC) for being "conspiracy theorists." Our so-called theory has
been tested and proven many years ago -- and the work of the House Select
Committee on Assassinations in 1979 vindicated us, for all of its serious
flaws. But I think the media aren't thinking of the Kennedy research when they
bring up the problems with conspiracy theories. They really should talk not
about conspiracy, but rather the free-floating anxiety of our population, the
collapse of trust in institutions, the dumbing-down of our citizenry, and the
failure of our democratic process as people learn to vote against their own
interests. The JFK assassination has long since become, I'm afraid, merely a
piece of obsolete pop culture that floats on the Internet. I might mention
that all of this was essentially predicted by Vincent Salandria in the 1960s.

I mentioned the House Committee that reopened the assassination cases of JFK
and Dr. Martin Luther King in the 70s. That committee had an American hero,
and a dear friend to Vince Salandria and to all who knew him. Gaeton Fonzi
died in 2012. He was a journalist, investigator, patriot. His quiet research
proved beyond question that the CIA, in the person of the high-ranking officer
David Atlee Phillips, had a role in the JFK assassination. Phillips was no
lone cowboy. He was made director of Western Hemisphere Operations, and went
on to have a role in the Allende coup.

There are statues to actors and pop stars. Will Gaeton ever be rendered in a
statue? His widow Marie would not, I think, object. Gaeton Fonzi requires a
memorial the likes of which currently doesn't exist in the nation. There is a
piece of perverse nonsense attached to Gaeton's passing. The right-wing media
bully Bill O'Reilly tried to take credit for Gaeton's courageous research.
Fortunately he was called on it, and later fired for his constant sexual
assaults on women in the poisoned culture of Fox News.

And Vincent Salandria closed a chapter for us. In late 2011, Salandria was
invited, out of the blue, to lunch by the late Senator Arlen Specter. Specter
was dying of cancer and has since passed away, so we might see this luncheon
as a dying man's confession. Specter was on the staff of the Warren
Commission; he is the notorious author of the single-bullet theory that helped
to convict Lee Harvey Oswald -- who did not live to be tried -- in the public
mind. Specter was a nemesis of Salandria for decades, but always refused to
engage him in public debate (he was well-advised, since Salandria was a
champion debater at the University of Pennsylvania) despite public pleas back
in the day. Salandria greeted the ailing man cordially. Specter was oddly
quiet for much of the luncheon. Toward the end, he asked Salandria if he might
not be called dishonest, but merely incompetent, asking Salandria, at that
late date, if he was set up to fail by the Warren Commission. Retaining his
cordiality, Salandria could not grant his request. Specter, it seems, was
asking for an absolution that Salandria could not grant. But Salandria ended
the occasion by telling Specter he had a winning smile, and had he been his
adviser, he would have counseled Specter to use it more in his political
career. The whole affair is now available online at the website of
Philadelphia magazine ("Vince Salandria: The JFK Conspiracy Theorist").

We live in dark times. Perhaps we should have listened more closely to Vincent
Salandria and Gaeton Fonzi.

                                                          Christopher Sharrett
                                                                     May, 2017


                      https://ratical.org/FalseMystery