Two Posthumous Confessions: JFK and Roswell

Perhaps the favorite shibboleth wielded by skeptics or “debunkers” against conspiracy theorists is this: “No conspiracy could endure this long without exposure. Surely, somebody would have spilled the beans by now”—typically uttered by the average Clueless Clark who has never bothered to crack a single tome in the often vast literature generated by certain conspiratorial subjects. The elusive inside bean-spiller can be found in many of these pages—and that’s where he stays, quarantined from broader exposure by the powerful clergy of American mainstream media editors. If the panjandrums of the NY Times do not hear the tree falling, then it has not been felled.

Two recent cases in point, totally blacked out by our presshood: 1) E. Howard Hunt’s posthumous confession about the JFK assassination. 2) Lt. Walter Haut’s posthumous affidavit about the alleged Roswell UFO crash (reported in the British Daily Mail). First:

Lt. Walter Haut
who died last year (2006), and whose sworn affidavit dated Dec. 2002, to be opened only after his death, was so revealed this June. (read it here) Lt. Haut was the public relations officer at the Roswell Army Air Field in 1947, year of the infamous crash. He issued the original press releases about the crash being no more than a weather balloon, on the order of the base commander, Col. William Blanchard. Haut’s affidavit now claims that was a cover story, and that he observed the recovered wreckage in a tightly guarded hangar:

“It was approx. 12 to 15 feet in length, not quite as wide, about 6 feet high, and more of an egg shape. Lighting was poor, but its surface did appear metallic. No windows, portholes, wings, tail section, or landing gear were visible… Also from a distance, I was able to see a couple of bodies under a canvas tarpaulin. Only the heads extended beyond the covering, and I was not able to make out any features. The heads did appear larger than normal and the contour of the canvas suggested the size of a 10-year-old child. At a later date in Blanchard's office, he would extend his arm about 4 feet above the floor to indicate the height…

“I am convinced that what I personally observed was some type of craft and its crew from outer space… I have not been paid nor given anything of value to make this statement, and it is the truth to the best of my recollection.”

The hardcore debunker will aver that the affidavit could have—or must have—been forged. Or that the whole hangar scene was staged to bedazzle Haut and others in some kind of psywar/disinfo campaign by Army intelligence (the UFO phenomenon was a serious concern within the Cold War defense establishment, with documented discussions of how to either exploit it, or defend against possible mass hysteria). But the debunker himself becomes a conspiracy theorist himself at this point, and may be hoisted on his own petard: where’s your proof?

The reflexive skeptic often argues from certain faith-based presumptions: Aliens do not exist. Political assassinations are impossible in God’s country. Hence evidence of either is, ipso facto, fraudulent or misconstrued. A standard accusation, or slander—that the conspiracy/cover-up author is a charlatan, retailing sensationalist fables for fame and profit—is hard to pin on Lt. Haut. He avoided all publicity about the matter during his lifetime, the affidavit is not generating any profit, and the only fame accruing to him is in the afterlife.

E. Howard Hunt
has been an alleged conspirator in the JFK assassination almost since the beginning, when he was accused of being one of the three tramps arrested in Dealey Plaza on Nov. 22. In 1985, he lost a libel trial—Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby—that was successfully turned into a virtual trial of the JFK assassination by defendant attorney Mark Lane, who also represented Lee Harvey Oswald before his untimely murder by mobster Jack Ruby. Lane brilliantly dissected Hunt on the witness stand, exposing the multiple, contradictory lies about his whereabouts on Nov. 22 (in Dallas, acting as paymaster of the hit, according to witness Marita Lorenz), and convincing the jury that the CIA (Hunt’s longtime employer before he joined Nixon’s plumbers’ squad) participated in the assassination.

It should be one of the most famous trials in American history, but it also was successfully quarantined by our own Pravda poodles, never making headlines beyond the local Miami news (see Lane’s book about the trial, Plausible Denial).

Hunt died in January of this year. In April, his handwritten and taped confession, delivered to his son, was published in Rolling Stone, alleging a chain of command with LBJ at the top, and CIA operatives Cord Meyer and David Atlee Phillips as the two main capos organizing the JFK hit. Hunt’s own role, according to the confession, was only as a “benchwarmer.”

True believers have heralded the confession as the long-awaited lost gospel, while the debunkers and MSM have simply ignored it, diverting the public’s attention to Vincent Bugliosi’s massive defense of the Warren Commission, the just published Reclaiming History. Like the 16 volumes of the Warren Commission, it attempts to awe by sheer weight (1600 pages!), but it must struggle against the Himalayan mass of pro-conspiracy literature (much of it exceptionally well-researched) over the last 45 years. I have yet to read his account of the Magic Bullet theory (concocted by Arlen Specter), but I’m sure it’s as risible as all the other absurd rationalizations.

As a longtime student of the JFK assassination, I judge Hunt’s confession to be a mixture of truth and disinformation—typical of spook work, and typical of Hunt himself, who published numerous James Bond-like novels, and forged documents to implicate JFK in the Diem assassination. LBJ and Phillips—I would rate their involvement as 90% certain (along with Hoover and a few other characters from military intelligence and the radical anti-Castro exile community). But Cord Meyer’s involvement, and Hunt’s role as “benchwarmer” are doubtful. Meyer was a liberal, accused of Communist sympathies by McCarthy, while Hunt evinced a visceral hatred of JFK, even claiming years after the event that the Soviet missiles were never removed from Cuba after the October crisis.

Hunt asserts the affair between Mary Pinchot Meyer, Cord’s ex-wife, as a motive for his involvement, but the Meyers were divorced in 1958 and the affair began in 1960. Mary was murdered in 1964 and the case remains unsolved. In a 2001 interview with writer David Heymann, Cord was asked about Mary’s murder—who could have done it? Cord replied, “The same sons of bitches that killed John F. Kennedy.” (Read the full story about Mary Meyer including her acid trips with JFK here.)

One of those SOBs was probably E. Howard Hunt. I credit the information brought out in the Hunt vs. Liberty Lobby trial. Replace Hunt himself for Cord Meyer at some level, and the amended confession rings true.