The official account of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination has pointed to evidence many conspiracy theorists believe shows that he was shot twice, from different directions.
New documentary JFK: The Smoking Gun has come up with a new twist on the conspiracy theory, claiming that a Secret Service agent was the man who fired that shot by accident.
JFK: The Smoking Gun claims that George Hickey, a Secret Service man riding in the car behind JFK, accidentally fired his weapon on November 22, 1963.
It alleges that a cover-up was then carried out to save the blushes of the agency whose main role is to protect serving and former U.S. leaders – leaving the many loose ends that have long raised suspicions.
It is said that as much as 75% of the American public do not believe the official account of JFK’s assassination.
The new documentary is based on the work of Colin McLaren, a veteran Australian police detective, who has undertaken a four-year investigation into the killing.
Colin McLaren’s theories are based on the work of Howard Donahue, who himself has spent two decades probing the assassination and had his findings documented in Bonar Menninger’s book Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK. Bonar Menninger and Colin McLaren spoke yesterday about the film at the Television Critics Association press tour in Los Angeles, California.
Central to their case is the claim that Agent George Hickey and his Secret Service colleagues had been out partying the night before Kennedy’s motorcade drove through Dallas.
To compound the problems the hungover agent faced, Colin McLaren says he has found evidence that George Hickey had not been properly trained to use the AR-15 gun he was carrying that morning.
“It was his first time in the follow car, his first time holding the assault weapon he was using,” the Huffington Post reported Colin McLaren as saying.
The theory is that as the assassin opened fire, George Hickey grabbed his own gun. But when the whole motorcade shunted to a halt, the agent was jolted by the sudden stop and accidentally pulled the trigger – firing a bullet straight at the back of JFK’s head.
Colin McLaren said he believes George Hickey’s AR-15 was loaded with different from the ammunition used by Lee Harvey Oswald, who the Warren Commission declared in 1964 to be the lone gunman in the assassination. That, he claims, explains what they believe are the different ballistic profiles of the two bullets that struck Kennedy.
Lee Harvey Oswald was himself assassinated before he could stand trial over the killing.
Bonar Menninger insisted that they do not believe that George Hickey intentionally fired at JFK. Rather, the Huffington Post reported him as saying: “This was a tragic accident in the heat of the moment.”
Both of them do allege that the government moved swiftly, with the help of JFK’s brother Robert Kennedy, to cover up the Secret Service’s involvement and save the agency from embarrassment.
JFK: The Smoking Gun will be broadcast on the Reelz Channel on November 3. A spokesman for the network said: “What makes McLaren’s investigation different than those that came before it is the fact that he had all the evidence, facts and eyewitness testimony from fifty years ago as well as modern forensic technology.
“McLaren’s findings are a far cry from the fanciful conspiracy theories that usually surround this assassination.
“His case is methodically constructed from simple logic and available evidence using time-tested investigative techniques to solve the crime; including key archival photographic evidence, medical reports and bullet science.”
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OK. I’ve seen the documentary.
The evidence presented in this documentary is very convincing in terms of the fatal shot that killed the U.S. President. I don’t quibble on this aspect. McLaren is a top notch Australian police detective, together with a quality American expert who came up with the essential ballistic evidence. But in terms of why it happened, I am still not convinced. As much as I like to think it was an accident, something is telling me it wasn’t.
The thing that bugs me the most is that if secret agent
George Hickey, Jr. was the man who fired the fatal shot (accidentally or
otherwise) while briefly standing up in the back seat together with his
colleague next to him, both men would have realized on returning to their seats
that the gun had been fired by Hickey. The smell of gun powder in the air would
have been heavy in their vehicle. When both men sat or fell down on the back
seat, they must have known what happened, looked at each other, and Hickey’s
colleague would have said:
1. “You idiot, look at what you did!”
or
2. “Great shot.”
If it was an accident, as we are led to believe, why would Hickey’s colleague continue to let Hickey carry the gun? Why not just take it off him? Instead Hickey is allowed to continue carrying the gun and brandish it around mindlessly when he stood up again to give the impression he was protecting the president.
Then at the Dallas hospital, the entire secret service would have been aware of what happened. I can understand the reason why the secret service would start covering up the evidence of Hickey’s blunder. But incredibly, even after knowing it was Hickey who fired the fatal shot, the head of the secret service still asked Hickey to continue carrying the gun and go with a colleague to protect Vice President Johnson at the hospital. Well, didn’t Hickey realised what he did? Surely he would have felt remorseful and decided in his mind and later tell his superior, “I fucked up. I need to step down”, or “Here is the gun, you take it away”. In fact, the gun itself was not the standard issue for secret agents at the time.
Indeed, I would have expected Mr Hickey to make the decision to step aside, letting his colleagues take over.
Then, to make it even worse, in the 1990s, Hickey would be prepared to sue anyone for claiming he might be responsible even though we are told that it probably was an accident. Why? He only made it worse by trying to sue people.
Looking at this situation more completely, I think it is just as probable that it could have been done deliberately. Sure, we might think it is unthinkable, but why not?
John F. Kennedy had grand plans to turn his country into a great nation. He was a risk taker. He was also prepared to compromise some aspects of national security following a memo he wrote within days of his death that would have seen his country share secrets with Russia to show his country had nothing to hide. That memo made a special mention about UFOs being held in secret by the CIA and the USAF.
UFOs? That’s all hogwash stuff isn’t it? Well, I don’t know about that.
We know from the Freedom of Information Act in 1976 that the CIA has UFO documents. No doubt the CIA would hate the idea of sharing sensitive UFO information with the Russians. Even the CIA had been known to use the Mafia in an attempt to kill the Cuban leader in the Bay of Pigs fiascoe, but failed. The Mafia was again at the heart of the matter by killing Lee Harvey Oswald. And Mr Oswald probably knew why he was made the scapegoat. But we will never know what he knew.
Don’t want to think it is deliberate?
Well, let’s pretend it is an accident. Okay, so why did Hickey get protected by his colleagues and yet he didn’t step aside or feel bad about what happened and handed over the gun to someone else? He didn’t look remorseful at any point, even to his death. He could have said, “I’m sorry, I made a mistake.” It is totally understandable. In the commotion that followed Mr Oswald’s two bullets that he fired, it could have been seen quite easily as an accident. People will understand. But to still be allowed to carry the same gun into the Dallas hospital and continue his job as if nothing happened and still sue people who claim it might be him even despite making the claim that it was probably an accident?
Something doesn’t seem right.