168 “The Itch”

IN DEFENSE OF COMMON SENSE
By Hetty Gray

November 5, 2013

# 168

We’ve all experienced it — that itch we cannot seem to scratch to assuage the unsettling feeling. But there is another kind of itch — the one to discover the truth.

For our generation, the people who were in their late teens or early twenties on November 22, 1963, the itch is profound when it concerns what really happened that day to President John Kennedy in Dealey Plaza along Elm Street in Dallas, Texas.

We all know the result, but new facts emerge. All documents were ordered sealed for fifty years. I was 19 on that day. I sat, taking dictation from then Shelby County Prosecuting Attorney Phil Brown. The topic was a bad check from Louden’s Supermarket, today Mickey’s T-Mart. I even remember the amount, $41.15. That moment is welded in my memory. It is the same for countless Americans who sat, fixated by the news on that day….

The voice of Walter Cronkite announcing Kennedy’s death… The specter of Lee Harvey Oswald crumpling to the ground in the basement of the Dallas Police Station, killed by a Louisiana businessman named Jack Ruby. Oswald had killed 39-year-old Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit.

With Oswald dead, the government ordered an “investigation,” but after listening to many eyewitnesses on the television broadcasts, a legion of Americans judged the Warren Report as odd.

It has been fifty years this month. In truth, fifty years elapsed in a flash for people my age. With the records unsealed, professional ballistic experts who lobbied for a more thorough examination of the bullets and the old Russian army surplus rifle had the opportunity to start anew.

This week the Discovery Channel airs a series of programs on Kennedy’s assassination. Last night’s program airs again tonight at 7PM EST. The content is, to say the least, enlightening.

While conspiracy theorists have had a field day with the Kennedy shooting, the experts who delved into the documents found many never publicized facts.

Sealing documents to protect the family of a president is understandable, but the Kennedy assassination is thought to have changed the course of American history. Few can imagine what would have happened with the nation led by a pro-military Democrat who believed that people should do something for their country before they asked their country to do something for them.

Rumors flew and now we may, for the first time, learn how deep the mystery roots within the people who surrounded the president on that fateful day.

Why bring this up at this time? We are in the throes of another tragedy, this one claiming four lives. Ah, yes. Benghazi. When Ambassador Christopher Stevens, communications specialist Sean Smith, and former Navy SEALs Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty died, the current administration put forth a story worthy of a class B soap opera.

Anyone with a modicum of common sense questioned it. When Congressmen and women demanded details and asked to question the survivors, they were told that the government had all CIA personnel on site sign documents that they would not speak to members of Congress. In essence, they imposed a gag order of the people who knew precisely what happened.

I am old enough to remember Watergate. President Nixon was complicit in a break-in at Democratic National Headquarters in the Watergate Complex. The price for Nixon? He resigned. Nobody died at Watergate. Four Americans died at Benghazi and witnesses are banned from talking to Congress. How does that smell?

Congress, the legislative branch exists, along with the judiciary, to balance the power of the executive. Here, we have an end run around the Congress.

Are these records sealed? Must Sean Smith’s mother and the families of Stevens, Woods, and Doherty wait for fifty years to learn what happened to their loved ones? Whose fingers belong to the bloody smears spread across the column in photos of the burned-out remains of the compound meant to protect the main diplomatic building? If you were a survivor of any of these

four murdered Americans, would you not ask that question?

A second assault came against the CIA annex early in the morning the next day. It has been more than a year — nearly twenty-six months, but some of the mainstream media are beginning to take notice. Clearly, some stories loom so large that they demand in-depth investigation.

I rarely ask my readers to contact their Congressional representatives and US Senators, but Benghazi is deadly serious. Four good men died and to this day the American people have no answers.

I wonder if Hillary Clinton would have quipped, “What difference does it make?” if her husband, brother, or child had died that day? I dare say not.

Press those whom you have elected to insist, yes demand, a Select Committee to investigate Benghazi. We dispatch US State Department personnel to the far corners of the earth. Would you be comfortable in one of these jobs knowing that your government would not come to your aid or explain, God forbid, what happened to you if you died in the line of service?

Resolve to make sure that witness testimony is released from the gag order. We need to hear from the people who were there.

And what does the Chief Executive know? Nothing. Just like “Fast and Furious,” the IRS harassing conservative groups, and everything else that comes down the pike that might be uncomfortable. Comfort? He needs comfort? That emotion comes slowly, if ever. The loss is permanent.

There is little comfort to the Kennedy family today — even if details emerging from sealed files solve the fifty-year-old mystery. Will we stand by and allow stonewalling in the case of the four murdered Americans in Libya? I pray not. America stands on truth and justice. Benghazi demands both.

Think about it.

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