Kennedy and King Family Members and Advisors Call for Congress to Reopen Assassination Probes

An unprecedented coalition of family members, researchers, film makers, and former law enforcement and other government officials is calling for a new investigation of the four iconic 1960s assassinations: President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., shown during the 1963 March on Washington

Today's announcement, timed for release before the Martin Luther King Jr. national holiday in the United States on Monday, is provided below and elsewhere. This editor is proud to have joined this effort by the newly formed Truth and Reconciliation Committee.

Please help spread the word via social media and any other method, including news editors in your locale and civic organizations. A petition signup page and new website for the committee will be announced early next week.

-- Andrew Kreig / Editor

 Kennedy and King Family Members and Advisors Call for Congress to Reopen Assassination Probes

Please scroll down to see the “Call” text and see attached for the list of signers

On the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a group of over 60 prominent American citizens is calling upon Congress to reopen the investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Signers of the joint statement include Isaac Newton Farris Jr., nephew of Reverend King and past president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference; Reverend James M. Lawson Jr., a close collaborator of Reverend King; and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [shown at right in his Twitter photo] and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, children of the late senator.

Other signatories include G. Robert Blakey, the chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which determined in 1979 that President Kennedy was the victim of a probable conspiracy; Dr. Robert McClelland, one of the surgeons at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas who tried to save President Kennedy’s life and saw clear evidence he had been struck by bullets from the front and the rear; Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower who served as a national security advisor to the Kennedy White House; Richard Falk, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University and a leading global authority on human rights; Hollywood artists Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner and Oliver Stone; political satirist Mort Sahl; and musician David Crosby.

The declaration is also signed by numerous historians, journalists, lawyers and other experts on the four major assassinations.

The joint statement calls for Congress to establish firm oversight on the release of all government documents related to the Kennedy presidency and assassination, as mandated by the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992. This public transparency law has been routinely defied by the CIA and other federal agencies. The Trump White House has allowed the CIA to continue its defiance of the law, even though the JFK Records Act called for the full release of relevant documents in 2017.

The group statement also calls for a public inquest into “the four major assassinations of the 1960s that together had a disastrous impact on the course of American history.” This tribunal -- which would hear testimony from living witnesses, legal experts, investigative journalists, historians and family members of the victims -- would be modeled on the Truth and Reconciliation hearings held in South Africa after the fall of apartheid. This American Truth and Reconciliation process is intended to encourage Congress or the Justice Department to reopen investigations into all four organized acts of political violence.

Signers of the joint statement, who call themselves the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, are also seeking to reopen the Robert F. Kennedy assassination case, stating that Sirhan Sirhan’s conviction was based on “a mockery of a trial.” The forensic evidence alone, observes the statement, demonstrates that Sirhan did not fire the fatal shot that killed Senator Kennedy -- a conclusion reached by, among others, Dr. Thomas Noguchi, the Los Angeles County Coroner who performed the official autopsy on RFK.

The joint statement -- which was co-written by Adam Walinsky (left), a speechwriter and top aide of Senator Kennedy -- declares that these “four major political murders traumatized American life in the 1960s and cast a shadow over the country for decades thereafter. John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were each in his own unique way attempting to turn the United States away from war toward disarmament and peace, away from domestic violence and division toward civil amity and justice. Their killings were together a savage, concerted assault on American democracy and the tragic consequences of these assassinations still haunt our nation.”

The Truth and Reconciliation Committee views its joint statement as the opening of a long campaign aimed at shining a light on dark national secrets. As the public transparency campaign proceeds, citizens across the country will be encouraged to add their names to the petition. The national effort seeks to confront the forces behind America’s democratic decline, a reign of secretive power that long precedes the recent rise of authoritarianism. “The organized killing of JFK, Malcolm, Martin, and RFK was a mortal attack on our democracy,” said historian James Douglass, author of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. “We've been walking in the valley of the dead ever since. Our campaign is all about recovering the truth embodied in the movement they led. Yes, the transforming, reconciling power of truth will indeed set us free."

The Truth and Reconciliation Committee’s Calls for Action:

1. We call upon Congress to establish continuing oversight on the release of government documents related to the presidency and assassination of President John F. Kennedy, to ensure public transparency as mandated by the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform should hold hearings on the Trump administration's failure to enforce the JFK Records Act.

(More on next page below)

2. We call for a major public inquest on the four major assassinations of the 1960s that together had a disastrous impact on the course of American history: the murders of John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. This public tribunal, shining a light on this dark chapter of our history, will be modeled on the Truth and Reconciliation process in post-apartheid South Africa. The inquest -- which will hear testimony from living witnesses, legal experts, investigative journalists, historians and family members of the victims -- is intended to show the need for Congress or the Justice Department to reopen investigations into all four assassinations.

3. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, we call for a full investigation of Reverend King’s assassination. The conviction of James Earl Ray for the crime has steadily lost credibility over the years, with a 1999 civil trial brought by Reverend King’s family placing blame on government agencies and organized crime elements. Following the verdict, Coretta Scott King, the slain leader’s widow, stated: “There is abundant evidence of a major, high-level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband.” The jury in the Memphis trial determined that various federal, state and local agencies “were deeply involved in the assassination … Mr. Ray was set up to take the blame.” Reverend King’s assassination was the culmination of years of mounting surveillance and harassment directed at the human rights leader by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and other agencies.

4. We call for a full investigation of the Robert F. Kennedy assassination case, the prosecution of which was a mockery of a trial that has been demolished by numerous eyewitnesses, investigators and experts -- including former Los Angeles County Coroner Dr. Thomas Noguchi, who performed the official autopsy on Senator Kennedy. The forensic evidence alone establishes that the shots fired by Sirhan Sirhan from in front of Senator Kennedy did not kill him; the fatal shot that struck RFK in the head was fired at point–blank range from the rear. Consequently, the case should be reopened for a new comprehensive investigation while there are still living witnesses -- as there are in all four assassination cases.

CONTACT:

Ira Arlook, Fenton Communications, c: 202 258 5437 This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
David Talbot, The Truth and Reconciliation Committee, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Signatory List

A Joint Statement on the Kennedy, King and Malcolm X Assassinations and Ongoing Cover-ups:

As the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979, President John F. Kennedy was probably killed as the result of a conspiracy.

In the four decades since this Congressional finding, a massive amount of evidence compiled by journalists, historians and independent researchers confirms this conclusion. This growing body of evidence strongly indicates that the conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy was organized at high levels of the U.S. power structure, and was implemented by top elements of the U.S. national security apparatus using, among others, figures in the criminal underworld to help carry out the crime and cover-up.

This stunning conclusion was also reached by the president’s own brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who himself was assassinated in 1968 while running for president -- after telling close aides that he intended to reopen the investigation into his brother’s murder if he won the election.

President Kennedy’s administration was badly fractured over his efforts to end the Cold War, including his back-channel peace feelers to the Soviet Union and Cuba and his plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam after the 1964 presidential election.

President Kennedy has long been portrayed as a Cold War hawk, but this grossly inaccurate view has been strongly challenged over the years by revisionist historians and researchers, who have demonstrated that Kennedy was frequently at odds with his own generals and espionage officials. This revisionist interpretation of the Kennedy presidency is now widely embraced, even by mainstream Kennedy biographers.

The official investigation into the JFK assassination immediately fell under the control of U.S. security agencies, ensuring a cover-up. The Warren Commission was dominated by former CIA director Allen Dulles and other officials with strong ties to the CIA and FBI.

The corporate media, with its own myriad connections to the national security establishment, aided the cover-up with its rush to embrace the Warren Report and to scorn any journalists or researchers who raised questions about the official story.

Despite the massive cover-up of the JFK assassination, polls have consistently shown that a majority of the American people believes Kennedy was the victim of a conspiracy -- leading to the deep erosion of confidence in the U.S. government and media.

The CIA continues to obstruct evidence about the JFK assassination, routinely blocking legitimate Freedom of Information requests and defying the JFK Records Collection Act of 1992, preventing the release of thousands of government documents as required by the law.

The JFK assassination was just one of four major political murders that traumatized American life in the 1960s and have cast a shadow over the country for decades thereafter. John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were each in his own unique way attempting to turn the United States away from war toward disarmament and peace, away from domestic violence and division toward civil amity and justice. Their killings were together a savage, concerted assault on American democracy and the tragic consequences of these assassinations still haunt our nation.

Gary Aguilar, M.D.
Daniel Alcorn
Russ Baker
Alec Baldwin
G. Robert Blakey
Denise Faura Bohdan
Abraham Bolden
Rex Bradford
Douglas Caddy
Rodnell Collins
Debra Conway
David Crosby
Edward Curtin
Donald T. Curtis, M.D.
Alan Dale
James DiEugenio
James Douglass
Laurie Dusek
Daniel Ellsberg
Karl Evanzz
Richard Falk
Isaac Newton Farris Jr.
Marie Fonzi
Libby Handros
Dan Hardway
Jacob Hornberger
Douglas Horne
Gayle Nix Jackson
Stephen Jaffe
James Jenkins
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Bill Kelly
Andrew Kreig
John Kirby
The Rev. James M. Lawson, Jr.
Jim Lesar
Edwin Lopez
David Mantik
Robert N. McClelland, M.D.
Mark Crispin Miller
Jefferson Morley
John Newman
Len Osanic
Lisa Pease
William F. Pepper
Jerry Policoff
Rob Reiner
Abby Rockefeller
Dick Russell
Mort Sahl
Vincent Salandria
Lawrence P. Schnapf
E. Martin Schotz, M.D.
Paul Schrade
Peter Dale Scott
Martin Sheen
John Simkin
Bill Simpich
Oliver Stone
Dan Storper
David Talbot
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
Adam Walinsky
Benjamin Wecht
Cyril H. Wecht, M.D.
Betty Windsor

Biographies:

Gary L. Aguilar, MD, is a private practicing ophthalmologist in San Francisco, a clinical professor of ophthalmology at the University of California-San Francisco, and the vice chief of staff at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital. One of the few physicians outside the federal government who has ever been allowed to review President Kennedy's still-restricted autopsy photographs and X-rays, Aguilar has delivered lectures on JFK's autopsy evidence before numerous medical and legal conferences. With coauthor Cyril Wecht, MD, JD, Aguilar has published articles on the Kennedy case in journals such as The American Scholar and the Journal of the American Medical Association, and has contributed chapters to several anthologies exploring the JFK assassination. Dr. Aguilar’s writings on various aspects of the Kennedy case are available online, most notably a multipart essay that examines the five investigations of Kennedy's medical and autopsy evidence that have been conducted by the U.S. government.

Daniel Alcorn was a law partner of the late Bud Fensterwald, co-founder of the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC). He has served on the AARC board since 1992, and was a founding director of the Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) on behalf of AARC, and served on COPA's board until the end of the Assassination Records Review Board process in 1998. Alcorn has represented requesters in precedent-setting Freedom of Information Act cases in the trial and appellate courts in Washington, D.C., including cases related to the JFK assassination, the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, allegations of misconduct in the FBI crime laboratory, death squad activity in Central America, intelligence abuses, and PTSD, among other issues.

Russ Baker is the founder, editor-in-chief and CEO of WhoWhatWhy, a nonprofit news organization devoted to covering stories and angles ignored by the media. WhoWhatWhy has a special team poring over thousands of declassified JFK records. Baker is the author of Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years. It includes five chapters of new information related to the assassination of John Kennedy.

Alec Baldwin has appeared in numerous productions onstage, in films and on television. He has received a Tony nomination (A Streetcar Named Desire, 1992), an Oscar nomination (The Cooler, 2004) and has won three Emmy awards, three Golden Globes and seven consecutive Screen Actors Guild Awards as Best Actor in a Comedy Series for his role on NBC-TV's 30 Rock. His films include The Hunt for Red October, Glengarry Glen Ross, Malice, Blue Jasmine, and Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. He has authored three books: A Promise to Ourselves; his memoir, Nevertheless; and You Can’t Spell America Without Me, with Kurt Andersen. He serves on numerous boards related to the arts, the environment and progressive politics.

G. Robert Blakey is retired as the William J. & Dorothy K. O'Neill Professor of Law (now emeritus) at the Notre Dame Law School, where he taught criminal law, the law of terrorism, and jurisprudence. He also was a professor of law and the director of the Cornell Institute on Organized Crime, where he taught criminal law in the law school. Blakey also served as a special attorney in the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section of the United States Department of Justice. From 1977 to 1979, he was the chief counsel and staff director, United States House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Denise Faura Bohdan is a lawyer, film producer and the daughter of Fernando Faura, author of The Polka Dot File on the Robert F. Kennedy Killing: The Paris Peace Talks Connection, chronicling the search for an alleged conspirator in the assassination of RFK. Faura’s investigation in 1968 is regarded by most researchers as one of the most important, linking Sirhan Sirhan to co-conspirators. Ms. Bohdan is producing a film on his investigation to shine more light on the assassination and conspiracy. Her previous film work focuses on human rights abuses, freedom of speech and pursuit of justice.

Abraham Bolden was the first African-American assigned to the White House Secret Service Detail, at President Kennedy's personal request. When he later tried to testify to the Warren Commission about rampant misconduct in the Secret Service, he was punished for his courage by a trumped-up bribery charge that resulted in his imprisonment for over three years. He is the author of a 2008 memoir, The Echo From Dealey Plaza.

Rex Bradford pioneered the digital dissemination of declassified JFK assassination documents, creating the History Matters website and publishing document collections on CD-ROM with the Assassination Archives and Research Center. He then went on to build the website of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, where he is now President. More than 1.5 million pages of declassified documents on the assassinations of the 1960s are available for reading and searching there, including all of the records recently released in 2017 and 2018.

Douglas Caddy is a Houston-based attorney and the author of six books, most recently his memoir Being There: Eyewitness To History. In 1959, he published an article in the National Review that began a long friendship with founding publisher William F. Buckley as they worked together to help found what’s now known as the modern conservative movement. In 1960, Caddy was elected as the founding national director of Young Americans For Freedom. His conservative activism made him an early campaigner for 1964 Republican presidential nominee Barry Goldwater. Caddy then worked in Washington, DC, as an attorney involved in many high-profile cases. In one, he became the original defense attorney for the Watergate burglars. His legal work has included cutting-edge research and whistle-blowing on the JFK assassination, Koreagate, CIA influences and other justice-related issues.

Rodnell Collins, Malcolm X’s first cousin, is the founder of the Malcolm X, Ella L. Little Collins Family Foundation and curator of the childhood home that he and Malcolm shared in Duxbury, Massachusetts, now a national historic landmark. Collins is working on turning it into a museum. Collins’s memoir, Seventh Child, tells Malcolm’s story from a family member’s point of view. Most recently Collins participated in the 50th anniversary commemoration of the famous Oxford Union debate, “The Night Malcolm Spoke Out.”

Debra Conway is co-founder and president of JFK Lancer Productions & Publications, which has specialized since 1995 in collecting U.S. government documents relating to the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and MLK, Jr. to make research materials widely available. She has interviewed many JFK assassination witnesses, often those speaking about their experiences for the first time. Lancer's annual conferences in Dallas have hosted such witnesses and also respected authors and researchers from around the world. She has been editor and publisher for many assassination-related books, including those by researchers Larry Hancock, William Matson Law, Casey J. Quinlan, Brian K. Edwards and Joan Mellen and the witnesses Ed Hoffman, Aubrey Rike, and Rose Cherami's son Michael Marcades. Details here. 

David Crosby is a musician and songwriter. He has been speaking out about the JFK assassination since the 1960s, including onstage with the Byrds at the legendary Monterey Pop Festival in 1967.

Edward Curtin is a sociologist who teaches at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. He is a widely published essayist who has written extensively about the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Dr. Donald T. Curtis is a retired oral and maxillofacial surgeon who participated in the resuscitation attempt of President Kennedy at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas.

Alan Dale is executive director of the Assassination Archives and Research Center. He is the host of JFKConversations.com. He is affiliated with the research groups JFK Lancer and CAPA, and is responsible for administration and content at History in the Making. He is an administrative and research assistant to Dr. John Newman and is the editor of jfkessentials.com.

Jim DiEugenio is a retired educator and historian. From 1995 to 2000, he was the editor of Probe Magazine. He has written for Consortium News and Deep Truth Journal. He is the co-editor of the anthology, The Assassinations, and the author of Destiny Betrayed, and The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today. Currently, he is the editor and publisher of the web site, KennedysandKing.com.

James Douglass is the author of JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters. A longtime peace activist and write, he and his wife Shelley are cofounders of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Pueblo, Washington and Mary's House, a Catholic Worker house of hospitality in Birmingham, Alabama. 

Laurie Dusek, a longtime lawyer based in Forest Hills, New York, has served as legal counsel to Sirhan Sirhan in a pro bono capacity for the last 11 years.

Daniel Ellsberg was a national security consultant to the Kennedy White House. Later he leaked the Pentagon Papers. A senior fellow of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, he is the author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner and a memoir, Secrets, which became the subject of the Oscar-nominated documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America. He is also a key figure in Steven Spielberg's film about the Pentagon Papers, The Post.

Karl Evanzz is the author of six books, including two highly acclaimed studies of the Nation of Islam: The Judas Factor: The Plot to Kill Malcolm X (1992) and The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad (1999). A literary and film consultant, Evanzz worked on Malcolm X: Make It Plain (Blackside Productions, 1994) and Ali (2001), starring Will Smith. Evanzz worked at the Washington Post for 32 years in its news department before retiring in 2008.

Richard Falk is professor of international law, emeritus, at Princeton University and author of Power Shift: On the New Global Order (2016). He has also published  Law, War, and Morality in the Contemporary World; The Role of Domestic Courts in the International Legal Order; Legal Order in a Violent World; The Status of Law in International Society, among other works. He has been the editor or co-editor of more than twenty books.

Isaac Newton Farris Jr. is the nephew of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He has served as the president and CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and in 2011 was elected president and CEO of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the organization founded by Dr. King. Farris currently serves as senior fellow of the King Center where he not only continues to write, research and lecture on the life, philosophy, and legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., but also on how Kingian nonviolence should guide American society as we confront the social, religious, economic and war issues of America and of the world today.

Marie Fonzi, Ed.U., is the widow of Gaeton Fonzi, a top investigator on both the Senate and House Committees that probed the death of President Kennedy in the 1970s. Marie wrote the preface and afterword of the 2016 paperback edition of The Last Investigation, Fonzi's inside story of this fateful Congressional drama.

Libby Handros is an award-winning TV producer and documentary filmmaker. Since beginning her career on the PBS team that produced Inside Story, the first regularly scheduled examination of the American press ever to appear on television, she has gone on to develop and produce over one hundred hours of prime-time programming on a wide array of subjects. Along with director John Kirby, Handros produced the critically acclaimed documentary feature The American Ruling Class and Cape Spin: An American Power Struggle, among other films. Currently she is Kirby’s producing partner on Four Died Trying, a multi-part series on the political murders of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, which changed the course of history.

Dan Hardway, a graduate of Cornell Law School, has practiced law for the past 37 years. His firm, based in Cowen, West Virginia, focuses on representing nonprofit organizations, especially Christian churches and ministries, and Freedom of Information Act litigants. From 1977 to 1978, Hardway worked as a researcher for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and assisted Ed Lopez in writing the section of the committee report titled, “Oswald, the CIA, and Mexico City.” He shares his occasional commentary at Real Hillbilly Views.

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation (fff.org), a libertarian nonprofit educational foundation, and the author or editor of several books published by the foundation, including The Kennedy Autopsy; Regime Change: The JFK Assassination; The CIA, Terrorism, and The Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State. His 29-part video series on the JFK assassination is posted on the foundation’s website.

Douglas Horne served for three years on the staff of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB), from 1995-1998. He was hired by the ARRB as a senior analyst on the Military Records Team, and was later promoted to the position of chief analyst for Military Records; while on the ARRB staff, Mr. Horne ensured the release of historical records on Cuba and Vietnam policy; played a key role in the sworn depositions of ten JFK autopsy witnesses; and became the primary ARRB point-of-contact for all matters related to the Zapruder film. He is the author of the five-volume work Inside the Assassination Records Review Board (2009), and the e-book JFK's War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated (2014).

Gayle Nix Jackson is the granddaughter of Orville Nix, the man who took the film of the JFK assassination opposite from Abraham Zapruder. Following three decades of research on the background of the government's loss of this film, she has written two books, Orville Nix: The Missing JFK Assassination Film and Pieces of the Puzzle: An Anthology.

Stephen N. Jaffe was an investigator and photo-analyst for New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison 1967-68, testified before the Rockefeller Commission, was an associate producer/technical advisor for the film Executive Action, associate producer/technical adviser for documentaries The Garrison Tapes and the sequel by filmmaker John Barbour, and is the producer of the new documentary, A Rush to Judgment: Conspiracy in America, with Mark Lane. Jaffe was an investigator for the Lane Law Firm for the past 50 years and has written numerous articles on the assassination of President Kennedy.

James Jenkins was a medical corpsman assigned to work with pathologists on the autopsy of President Kennedy at the Bethesda Naval Hospital. He reports his eyewitness account in his book At the Cold Shoulder of History, co-written with William Matson Law.

William Klaber was the producer of The RFK Tapes, a 1993 public radio documentary on the murder of Senator Robert Kennedy. In 1997 he co-authored, with Philip Melanson, the book Shadow Play, which examined the evidence of police misconduct in the RFK murder investigation, evidence found in the LAPD’s own files that was finally made public in 1988.

Bill Kelly is a co-founder of the Committee for an Open Archives and the Coalition on Political Assassinations. He was the recipient of the 2013 Mary Ferrell Award for his work on the Air Force One radio transmission tapes. He is currently the coordinator of the research committee for Citizens Against Political Assassinations. His blog is JFKCountercoup.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is the author of American Values: Lessons I Learned From My Family. One of the nation's leading environmental activists, he is president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, a law firm partner specializing in environmental litigation, and a multiple New York Times best-selling author who has published hundreds of articles on politics, science, history and the environment.

John Kirby made his directorial debut with the Tribeca Festival-award-winning film The American Ruling Class, made for the BBC and the Sundance Channel. He is currently directing and editing Four Died Trying, a multi-part documentary series on the extraordinary lives and calamitous deaths of John Kennedy, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy.

Andrew Kreig is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit executive, attorney, author and commentator who edits the non-partisan Justice Integrity Project, which examines the performance of legal institutions. Its work includes publication of separate “Readers Guides" to the JFK, MLK and RFK assassinations that that show in one place the leading books, films, archives representing all major points of view, plus events and news developments. He holds law degrees from Yale and the University of Chicago and has published Spiked and Presidential Puppetry, books that reveal systemic scandals and adverse trends in the newspaper business and U.S. political system, respectively.

The Reverend James M. Lawson Jr. was a long-time collaborator with Martin Luther King Jr. and, after the Reverend King, the major teacher in the non-violent struggles for desegregation and justice. King called Lawson "the greatest teacher of nonviolence in America." After meeting King in 1957 at Oberlin College, Lawson heeded King's advice to go to the South in order to share nonviolent methods with the Civil Rights Movement. Lawson became a field officer for the Fellowship of Reconciliation and moved to Nashville in 1958; that fall, he enrolled in the divinity school at Vanderbilt University. Rep. John Lewis called him “the architect of the non-violent movement.” He was involved with the struggle to desegregate downtown Nashville, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Freedom Rides and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1968, he supported the Memphis sanitation workers' strike, and invited Martin Luther King Jr. to give a speech in Memphis; on this visit, King was assassinated. Throughout his life, Lawson has remained committed to nonviolence, protest and civil disobedience to effect positive social change.

Jim Lesar is president of the Assassination Archives and Research Center, a nonprofit organization whose goal is to disclose information on political assassinations to the public. During the past 49 years Lesar has litigated more than 200 Freedom of Information Act cases, resulting in the release of several hundred thousand pages of documents prior to the enactment of the JFK Records Act. He then testified before several House and Senate committees in favor of greatly expanded release of withheld government records pertaining to the assassination of President Kennedy. After the passage of the JFK Act, Lesar testified several times before the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) regarding the definition and scope of the term “JFK-assassinated-related” records. In 2006, in a suit in which he represented journalist and author Jefferson Morley, he won a significant precedent that subjected the CIA’s ultra-secret operational files to judicial review. This ultimately resulted in the disclosure of significant operational records, and in the process the CIA admitted under oath that it had hired a case officer linked to Lee Harvey Oswald’s pre-assassination activities to undermine the investigation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

Edwin Lopez is an attorney practicing in New York. He has served as the general counsel at the Rochester City School District and is currently on the faculty of the Yang Tan Employment and Disability Institute at the Industrial Labor Relations School at Cornell University. In 1977 and 1978 he was a researcher for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), where he was involved, among other areas, in the research and investigation of anti-Castro Cuban groups, their possible involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy, possible Cuban government complicity in the assassination of President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald’s activities in Mexico City and the performance of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in monitoring and reporting those activities. With the assistance of other staff members, he wrote the HSCA’s “Lopez Report.”

David Mantik holds an MD from the University of Michigan and a PhD in physics from the University of Wisconsin. He is former faculty member in the physics department at the University of Michigan and in the radiation oncology department at Loma Linda University. He is the author of JFK's Head Wounds (an e-book).

Dr. Robert N. McClelland is professor emeritus in the Department of Surgery at The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, an adjunct professor of law at Dedman School of Law at Southern Methodist University, and a member of the attending staff at Zale Lipshy University Hospital. Previously, he served for 30 years as the UT Southwestern Medical Center’s Alvin W. Baldwin Chair in Surgery, where he had first come to work as an instructor in surgery in 1962. Two years prior to that, Dr. McClelland had begun his career on the senior attending staff at Parkland Memorial Hospital, where his duties would include the attempt to save the life of President Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. While working on the mortally wounded JFK, Dr. McClelland saw clear evidence that the president had been struck by bullets from the front and rear, indicating more than one shooter was involved. The gruesome injury to the back of JFK’s head was caused by a bullet exiting the skull rather than entering it, McClelland determined, suggesting it was fired from the front of the presidential limousine, instead of from the rear, where Lee Harvey Oswald was allegedly shooting from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building.

Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media, culture and communication at New York University, and author of several books, including Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform. As editor of Discovering America, a book series published by the University of Texas Press, he commissioned Lance DeHaven-Smith to write Conspiracy Theory in America, and his Forbidden Bookshelf series, published by Open Road Media, has revived dozens of essential books long out of print, and many of them killed at birth, including works by I.F. Stone, Peter Dale Scott, Christopher Simpson, Ralph McGehee and Gerald Colby.

Jefferson Morley is the founder of The Deep State, a news blog that illuminates the influence of secret intelligence agencies. He worked for 15 years as an editor and reporter at the Washington Post. He is the author of Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton and of Our Man in Mexico, a biography of the CIA’s Mexico City station chief Winston Scott.

Major John M. Newman, U.S. Army (retired), is adjunct professor of political science at James Madison University. He is the author of JFK and Vietnam, Oswald and the CIA and the multi-part series The Assassination of President Kennedy: Volume I, Where Angels Tread Lightly; Volume II, Countdown to Darkness, and Volume III, Into the Storm.

Len Osanic is host of Black Op Radio and producer of The Collected Works of Col. L. Fletcher Prouty.

Lisa Pease is the author of A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. Based on more than two decades of investigative research, Pease’s recently published book has already been hailed as “the magnum opus of RFK assassination research” by acclaimed Kennedy biographer James Douglass.

Dr. William F. Pepper is an American lawyer, English barrister and best-selling author. His legal career has included representation of governments and heads of state, and teaching human rights law at Oxford University. A political activist, Pepper was a 1960s friend and supporter of Robert F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The King family asked his help to address their doubts about the guilt of accused assassin James Earl Ray. Pepper’s investigation concluded that Ray was a patsy. Representing both the imprisoned Ray before his 1998 death and the King family pro bono, Pepper then won a Memphis civil jury verdict in 1999 for the family concluding the murder was a conspiracy. Pepper authored three books on the evidence, most recently The Plot to Kill King (2016). In 2007, Pepper began representing pro bono Robert F. Kennedy’s accused assassin Sirhan Sirhan based on similar evidence that Sirhan did not fire any of the shots that struck RFK. Along with other RFK friends, Pepper has advocated for Sirhan to be released on parole and/or granted a first-ever hearing to examine the relevant scientific evidence.

Jerry Policoff has been a JFK assassination researcher since 1966, specializing in the role of the media. Widely published in magazines and book anthologies, Policoff covered the House Select Committee on Assassinations for New Times magazine, breaking many exclusives. He is the former executive director of the Assassination Archives and Research Center.

Rob Reiner is an actor and director best known for his role in the iconic TV show All in the Family and for his films A Few Good Men, When Harry Met Sally, and This Is Spinal Tap. His 2017 political thriller Shock and Awe was the first Hollywood movie to examine the tragic run-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Reiner is now developing a docudrama TV series on the Kennedy assassinations.

Abby Rockefeller has participated in the sponsoring and organizing of several conferences concerning the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

Dick Russell is the author of thirteen books, including three on the assassination of President Kennedy: The Man Who Knew Too Much," (1992/2003), "On the Trail of the JFK Assassins (2008), and They Killed Our President!, co-authored with Jesse Ventura (2013, a New York Times best-seller.) He authored Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017), which was edited and introduced by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and with a forward by David Talbot. Also, he is a prominent author of environmental articles, with commentary also at DickRussellblog. Russell has been featured in several documentary films and is a recipient of the Citizen's Chevron Conservation Award (1988).

Mort Sahl is an entertainer and political satirist. He helped write speeches for John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign, and later worked closely with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison to solve the Kennedy assassination even though doing so severely damaged his career. "Crowned as leading the new breed of modern comedians by Time magazine in 1960," according to his imdb bio, "Mort Sahl is the first entertainer ever to appear on its cover. He differed from other comedians, appearing in casual clothing rather than a suit, skewering popular politicians such as Eisenhower, Joe McCarthy and JFK. When JFK was assassinated in 1963, Sahl regularly targeted the government's official Warren Commission Report during his routines, resulting in the loss of much of Hollywood's support, while maintaining audience popularity with college tours and a best-selling book, Heartland."

Vincent J. Salandria is a Philadelphia attorney who began studying the Kennedy assassination on November 23, 1963. One of the original critics of the 'lone assassin' concept, he promptly raised his suspicions to contemporaries that accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald would be killed (as Oswald was shortly thereafter) if Oswald were just "a patsy," as the suspect claimed after his arrest. At a public forum in 1964 soon after announcement of the Warren Commission report blaming Oswald as the killing's sole culprit, Salandria challenged Commission staffer Arlen Specter about the ballistics analysis that Specter had supervised. On Nov. 2, 1964, Salandria published in The Legal Intelligencer, the nation's oldest extant legal journal, a pioneering critique of the Commission's claims that bullet trajectories and victim wounds prove blame for Oswald alone. Salandria is the author of False Mystery, a 1999 anthology of his essays incriminating the national security state for the murder of JFK. In 2012, Specter (by then a longtime U.S. Senator representing Pennsylvania and facing death from cancer), sought out Salandria for reconciliation, as reported by Philadelphia Magazine. Earlier, Salandria had shared with congressional investigator Gaeton Fonzi his conclusion: "The cover story was transparent and designed not to hold, to fall apart at the slightest scrutiny. The forces that killed Kennedy wanted the message clear: 'We are in control and no one -- not the President, nor Congress, nor any elected official -- no one can do anything about it.' It was a message to the people that their Government was powerless."

Lawrence P. Schnapf is the principal attorney of Schnapf LLC and has been an adjunct professor at the New York Law School for many years. He serves on the board of Citizens Against Political Assassinations. He has more than 30 years of environmental law experience with Fortune 500 companies and international law firms. He has researched President Kennedy’s assassination since the late 1960s and has taken a leadership role in organizing a major mock trial in 2017 for accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.

E. Martin Schotz, M.D., a longtime practicing psychiatrist in Boston, authored History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial and the Murder of President Kennedy (1996). Two years later, he amplified the book's findings in a Dallas speech dissecting what he called the JFK assassination cover-up and why "people don't want to know the truth." He lives in Western Massachusetts, where he works with Pioneer Valley Physicians for Social Responsibility. His sees his essay on the need for an international movement to ban nuclear weapons as "continuing the struggle for which President Kennedy gave his life."

 Paul Schrade Paul Schrade is a former United Auto Workers official who knew both of the Kennedy brothers and worked in their campaigns. The labor chairman for Robert F. Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign, Schrade is shown at left with the senator on a visit with California farm workers. Shrade was wounded in the hail of gunfire that mortally wounded the candidate. Schrade, who has spent decades researching the RFK assassination, believes that Sirhan Sirhan did not fire the shots that struck Kennedy, although he did shoot Schrade. Schrade is working for Sirhan’s release from prison, saying: “New forensic evidence discovered in 2005 in the FBI’s files by CNN along with other evidence from the Los Angeles Grand Jury and Trial Jury files provides conclusive evidence that a second gunman fatally wounded Robert Kennedy….This evidence has been submitted to all appropriate authorities. They have failed to act for 45 years in their duty to provide justice to Robert Kennedy, his family and the American people.” Schrade’s longtime board memberships include the Dolores Huerta Foundation, the Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools, and the Watts Labor Community Action Committee.

Peter Dale Scott is a professor emeritus of English at the University of California, Berkeley. A former Canadian diplomat, he is a a poet, writer, and researcher. His books include Deep Politics and the Death of JFK; Oswald, Mexico, and Deep Politics; The War Conspiracy: JFK, 9/11, and the Deep Politics of War; The American Deep State; and Poetry and Terror.

Christopher Sharrett, Ph.D. is a professor of visual and sound media at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. He has lectured dozens of times over the last four decades on the political assassinations of the 1960s. Author of the introduction to Vincent Salandria's collection False Mystery, he has contributed regularly to The Third Decade, The Continuing Inquiry, People and the Pursuit of Truth and other journals focused on the House Select Committee on Assassination years of strong public interest in the JFK, RFK, MLK, and Malcolm X assassinations.

Martin Sheen is an actor and activist. A multiple Emmy- and Golden Globe-winner, his starring roles include President John F. Kennedy in the 1983 NBC-TV three-part series Kennedy (portrayed at right) and President Josiah "Jed" Bartlet in The West Wing, which NBC-TV broadcast from 1999 to 2006. Also in 2006, he joined an all-star ensemble cast for the highly acclaimed feature Bobby, written and directed by his son, Emilio Estevez. Bobby was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and a SAG Award; and starred Anthony Hopkins, Harry Belafonte, Laurence Fishburne, Sharon Stone, William H. Macy, Elijah Wood, Demi Moore and Heather Graham. It is the story of the assassination of U.S. Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was shot in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968 in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California, and twenty-two people in the hotel whose lives were never the same.

John Simkin established the Spartacus Educational website in 1999, an important section of which was devoted to the Kennedy assassination. He is the author of the e-book Assassination of John F. Kennedy Encyclopedia.

Bill Simpich is a civil rights attorney in the San Francisco Bay Area. The main areas of his law practice are government misconduct, housing and toxic tort violations. A contributor to Reader Supported News, he is the author of e-book State Secret: Wiretapping in Mexico City, Double Agents, and the Framing of Lee Oswald. He is on the board of the Mary Ferrell Foundation and is analyzing CIA cryptonyms at the foundation's website. Also, he is reviewing the forensic evidence indicating that Oswald did not use a weapon on Nov. 22, 1963.

Oliver Stone is an Academy Award-winning director and screenwriter best known for his movies Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Wall Street and JFK. His 1991 feature film JFK provoked a nationwide uproar about the Kennedy assassination that led to Congressional passage of the 1992 JFK Records Collection Act and the release of thousands of important and previously withheld government documents. Shown at left, he co-authored with Dr. Peter Kuznick of American University, shown on the right with him, the book and film series The Hidden History of the United States.

Dan Storper is the Founder/CEO of the music, book and travel company, Putumayo. Dan’s father was active in Democratic politics in the 1950’s and ‘60s. A Latin American Studies major, he became interested in the political struggles of the 1960s after moving to New Orleans and hearing a story about a friend’s mother’s involvement in secret political activities of the time. Dan is currently writing a book about JFK and others who struggled to achieve peace and justice in the face of Cold War tensions.

David Talbot is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years and The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA and the Rise of America’s Secret Government. He is the founder and original editor-in-chief of Salon and a former senior editor of Mother Jones magazine.

Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is the eldest of Robert F. and Ethel Kennedy’s children. She is the former lieutenant governor of Maryland. She has taught foreign policy at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maryland and is currently a research professor at Georgetown University, where she founded the Center for Retirement Initiatives.

Adam Walinsky served in the United States Department of Justice in 1963-64. He joined Robert Kennedy’s campaign for U.S. Senate in 1964, and then served as counsel and speechwriter for the senator through the presidential campaign of 1968. He was one of the coordinators of the Vietnam Moratorium of 1969-70, and was the Democratic nominee for Attorney General of New York in 1970. He practiced law in New York City until 1994, serving as chairman of the New York State Investigations Commission in 1979-81. Walinsky created and led the Police Corps, a federal program that offered scholarships to college students who agreed in return to train intensively for six months, and then serve four years in a state or local police force. Police Corps programs were created in 30 states, and although funding ended in 2004, many of its graduates are still serving in law enforcement and other civic endeavors across the country. From 2008 to 2012, he led a complete retraining of the Police Department in Baltimore, Maryland. He served in the United States Marine Corps Reserve.

Ben Wecht is the administrator of Duquesne University’s Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law, an internationally acclaimed center for professional and general education that presents academic conferences and seminars on critical societal topics, including the the assassinations of President Kennedy, Senator Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. He also serves as managing member of the Forensic Sciences and Law Education Group, a business dedicated to disseminating educational video products and online resources relating to topics at the interface of forensic investigation and historical inquiry. Ben is also a freelance writer and editor.

Cyril H. Wecht, M.D., J.D., is past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and the American College of Legal Medicine. He is a clinical professor of pathology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and adjunct professor of law at Duquesne University. Dr. Wecht served as a consultant or expert witness on several major JFK inquests, including New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw, the Rockefeller Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He is the author or co-author of more than 40 books and the author of more than 585 professional publications. He has also been an editorial board member of more than 20 national and international medical-legal and forensic scientific publications and the editor of the five-volume set, Forensic Sciences (Matthew Bender), among other reference works. He has performed more than 20,000 autopsies and has supervised, reviewed or been consulted on approximately 30,000 additional postmortem examinations.

Betty Windsor was a close friend of Dallas Times-Herald journalist Jim Koethe, who was murdered in his home in 1964 while working to solve the JFK case. Since the reporter’s murder, she has worked to solve both the Koethe case and the JFK case. Many researchers consider her the most important source on the events in Dallas during that era.

# # #

News Coverage of Announcement Includes:

Breakthrough Print Coverage on Jan. 25

Assassinated 1960s civil rights leaders, from left: President John F. Kennedy, Attorney Gen. Robert F. Kennedy (JFK's brother), the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and preacher and activist Malcolm X (photo graphic from the site Kennedys and King)

Washington Post, Kennedy, King, Malcolm X relatives and scholars seek new assassination probes, Tom Jackman (right), Jan. 25, 2019. Their letter calls for a Truth and Reconciliation Committee on the JFK, RFK, MLK and Malcolm X slayings. Joined by relatives of Robert F. Kennedy, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, a group of more than 60 authors and investigators have called for a new congressional investigation into the assassinations of the three men and President John F. Kennedy, saying that the four slayings were not resolved and “had a disastrous impact on the course of American history.”

In a public statement, they demanded a public tribunal modeled on South Africa’s “Truth and Reconciliation” process to persuade either Congress or the Justice Department to revisit all four assassinations.

The Deep State, Commentary: Washington Post’s Remarkable Story on the Kennedy and King Assassination Letter, Jefferson Morley (right, a former Washington Post reporter who worked there for 15 years), Jan. 26, 2019. One national security veteran told me it is the most remarkable story he has seen in the mainstream media in the past 50 years. It appeared in The Washington Post online edition on Friday, headlined Kennedy, King, Malcolm X relatives and scholars seek new assassination probes.

Written by Tom Jackman, the story reported on the open letter on the assassinations of the 1960s that I reported on last Monday. "Joined by relatives of Robert F. Kennedy, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, a group of more than 60 authors and investigators have called for a new congressional investigation into the assassinations of the three men and President John F. Kennedy."

What is remarkable is that the story treats the subject of the assassinations of the 1960s with the sort of straightforward journalism that this subject has rarely received from major news organizations.

Mass Media Online Coverage

Jan. 19

TMZ, MLK, JFK, RFK, Malcolm X Celebs and Fams of Kennedy, MLK Demand New Probes ... Assassinations Were Conspiracies, Staff report, Jan. 19, 2019. Sixty prominent citizens are marking Martin Luther King Jr. Day by calling for new investigations into the assassinations of 4 men -- assassinations that changed the world -- John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X.

The group -- The Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC) -- believes all 4 assassinations were the result of conspiracies that were covered up by the government.

Members of TRC include Oliver Stone, Alec Baldwin, Martin Sheen, Rob Reiner, David Crosby, Mort Sahl, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kathleen Kennedy Townsend and MLK's nephew Isaac Newton Farris Jr.

Jan. 20

Mail Online, Celebs and relatives of Martin Luther King Jr. call for new probe into his death ahead of his public holiday as they claim his assassination and JFK, RFK and Malcolm X's killing were conspiracies covered up by the government, Stephanie Haney, Jan. 20, 2019. A group of at least 60 US citizens including journalists, lawyers and historians are calling for new investigations into four history-making assassinations.

The Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC) has called for probes into deaths of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. TRC also wants a public inquest, to elicit 'testimony from living witnesses, legal experts, investigative journalists, historians and family members of the victims. The undertaking 'would be modeled on the Truth and Reconciliation hearings held in South Africa after the fall of apartheid,' a statement from TRC said.