Killing Kennedy and Liaquat Ali
By Mowahid Hussain Shah
50 years after the killing of President Kennedy, controversy continues to blaze on. The officially constituted Warren Commission concluded that the assassination was the solo act of a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald.
But most Americans dismiss that as implausible fiction, especially so, when Oswald was himself murdered in a Dallas police station by Jack Ruby, a nightclub owner with Mafia ties. Three major movies have, in effect, debunked the official version, most notably Oliver Stone’s 1991 counterpoint to it, “JFK.” Oliver Stone has received two Oscars for Best Director, and is co-author of the book and documentary series, “The Untold History of the United States.” Other well-regarded movies are “The Parallax View” (1974) and “Executive Action” (1973)
Oswald, too, had told the media that he was a “patsy”, meaning a scapegoat. His mother, Marguerite, denied his guilt, and his still-living Russian wife, Marina, recently told the Daily Mail of UK that Oswald didn’t do it. The son of Howard Hunt (CIA officer, personal assistant to ex- CIA head Allen Dulles, and one of the burglars of Democratic Party offices that led to the Watergate scandal in the 1970s and to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974) told Jesse Ven- tura (former Governor of Min- nesot a) that, at his death-bed, Howard Hunt confessed to participating in the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. A portion of Howard Hunt’s taped remarks was played for Jesse Ventura, in which Hunt states that he knew of the conspiracy to kill Kennedy and was “a benchwarmer on it,” as shown in a TV program broadcast on November 19, 2010.
There now seems to be an orchestrated push-back in mainstream US circles pitched at the young generation to show that Oswald acted alone. The lone gunman theory is not impossible, but it is improbable. It requires taking leave of common sense.
More clue-worthy is the historic pattern of alleged assassins being quickly disposed of. It controls the narrative. In 1865, the killing of President Abraham Lincoln was followed by the killing of his killer. Killed or silenced. Anti-Marcos Filipino leader Benigno Aquino, was killed at Manila airport in 1983 and his alleged killer was immediately slain by Marcos’ soldiers.
The power to cover up remains a crucial element. There are eerie parallels to Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan’s slaying in Rawalpindi on October 16, 1951. His alleged assailant, Said Akbar, was immediately shot dead on the spot. Pakistan continues to suffer its collateral consequences. In the late winter of 1978, I had a long conversation in Manhattan with noted lawyer A.K. Brohi who was there to attend a UN session. He told me that Said Akbar was with his 9-year-old son when he was killed, and then Brohi queried, “Would someone set out to assassinate the Prime Minister of Pakistan and willingly put the life of his young boy in jeopardy?” Both Oswald and Said Akbar were likely decoys. So who did it? Most likely, a cabal. There may have been a sole shooter, but were there other fingers on the trigger? To quote Lincoln, “You cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”
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