Lee was known to us.

I think I may have even run across him a time or two when I was serving in Europe.

A bright boy he was.

You wouldn’t know it by looking at him or listening to him talk.

He had perfected the persona of white trash.

It’s the little touches that make the difference.

Like saying aks instead of ask.

That’s the embellishment a good undercover operative needs.

As an aficionado of good magic I can appreciate a nice flourish.

It’s like adding picante to your entree.

I liked Lee.

He was just a kid when I first met him, only 22.

He was staying in Fort Worth; I was holed up in Big D.

Sometimes we’d meet at a local restaurant, but mostly we met at at the Y.

The Y was safer.

The Y was ours.

As well as other organizations.

Check out history, my friend.

I was Lee’s handler.  He would report to me.

www.thejfklie.com

Do you know how you become an assassination architect?

By not training to be an assassination architect.

How do you become an actor?

By not training to be an actor.

You can only be yourself and go where life leads you. If it leads you to be an actor, you’re an actor.

If it leads you to be an assassination architect, you’re an assassination architect.

Your  life and your experience elects you to be what you are.

No one can steal that.

Ulysses Grant said something similar. He said the office elects the man.

That is so true.

Such peace of mind comes with this.

 If I had tried to be an assassination architect, it would’ve taken me longer.

I was born to do this job.

I was born to kill the President.

Of course, I can’t go around telling people that.

So when I talk to Lee or the other people I use, I don’t tell them what the goal is.

I give them false objectives. They think they’re doing something else.

Ha ha.

www.thejfklie.com

Well, I knew that my choice of city was going to adversely affect that city.

Whenever you murder the President, that city is going to take the brunt.

Which city could absorb that pain?  Which city would care?

Do you see what aim talking about?

I needed a city that was a little rogue.

Sure, all cities have an attitude, and they are proud of it.

Rudyard Kipling said about Chicago: “I have struck a city – a real city – and they call it Chicago… I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages.”

Chicagoans are proud of that.

But that’s not exactly what I’m talking about.

I needed a city where the prevailing sentiment is rogue, where the leadership is rogue.

The people of Chicago or Miami may have attitude problems but they are not necessarily rogue.

These are older cities, but they were too close to the mainstream thought of the establishment.

No, I needed something different.

Dallas was different.  It didn’t even exist until 1856.

It was relatively disconnected, its leadership was stinking rich, super conservative and desirous of being in control.

Dallas was perfect.

And I had old contacts there and in neighboring areas from the wayback.

Here were some of my notes on Dallas that I sketched out.

• Settled by John Neely Bryan in 1839.
• Incorporated as a city on 2/2/1856.
• Named after VP George Dallas from Philadelphia – disputed.
• Climate:  Humid, subtropical, prone to extreme weather, sits in Tornado alley.  37 to 57 in the winter; 77 to 97 in the summer.
• Economy: Farming, ranching, cotton, oil and gas.

More important than all of that though were the different ethnic groups which I could enlist to help me- not that I would tell them I was doing.

Dallas was a good mix of people.  Plenty of WASPS, plenty of Jews, plenty of White Russians.

Oh, yes, blacks and bigots too.

They would all be useful to me.

I’m not a collaborator, my friend.  I’m it.  I am the shop.

Some people love the interplay of ideas – brainstorming I think is a word people use today.

Brainstorming?

Forget it.

I’ll call the shots.

www.fixthebus.com

Copyright 2019   Archer Crosley   All Rights Reserved.

This is a work of fiction based upon real events.

You see, my bosses didn’t like John Kennedy’s vision.

I’m sure there was a little jealousy of JFK – after all he was good looking and they were not – but primarily it was a business decision.

They just didn’t like his vision.

And after the Cuban missile crisis, and JFK’s “No Invasion” policy of Cuba, that was the final straw.  His goose was cooked.

Oh sure, I had been given my mission well before hand.

It was a contingency sort of deal.  Just in case.  We couldn’t predict the future.

I began recruiting Lee back in 1962 shortly after the Bay of Pigs.

I sat around for a few months thinking how I should do this.  I had to visit Dallas first, though, to get the lay of the land.

Preparation is everything.

I beat you all of you to Dealey Plaza.  Ha ha.

I was the first.

I love being first.

It’s always been part of my persona.

I have to win.

I don’t always win, but I have to win.

As a kid, if me and my friends were walking somewhere, let’s say to a store, I had to suddenly jump out ahead and touch the building first – like a sneak attack.

I just have to win.

Now, in an honest game like a sporting event where it’s dependent upon talent I couldn’t always win, and that’s because I wasn’t talented in sports.

I still wanted to win, though, and I was a vicious competitor.

I must admit I was a very poor sport when I lost.

I hate to lose, but I had to learn to accept that others were more talented.

I had to learn to not take it to heart. Losing did not make me a loser.

I had to commit myself to preparation.  

I knew that I could not win on talent. I also knew that my minimal brain dysfunction was a hindrance. I therefore needed to double-prepare. What would take others five hours would take me ten. What would take others two days would take me four.

So when I was given the mission,  I went to Dallas to prepare.

I could have selected other cities, sure.  And I did think extensively about that.

I always think to exhaustion.

So why Dallas?

www.fixthebus.com

Copyright 2019   Archer Crosley   All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction based upon real events.

I am an organized man, but I am also a brooding and lonely man.

I love humanity, and I hate humanity.

I am normal, and yet I am not normal.

I can fit in, and yet I cannot fit in.

There are two people living with in me – a product of a disrupted childhood.

Today I am depressed, very depressed.

I wanted great things for my life, fabulous things.

Time is running out for me.

The years are flying away.

I’ve struggled for peace and serenity.

I see others with money and love.  I have only my work.

Had I not two people  coexisting inside me I might have killed myself.

Oh, it’s easy to get out of a bad mood.

I just count my blessings.

I begin with the simple things – the easy chores of the day.

If I awaken in the morning without falling, that’s one positive.

If I brush my teeth and do a good job, that’s two positives.

If I make myself breakfast, that’s three positives.

It works every time.

I forget about my solitude.  My spirit freshens.

I’m ready for a new day at the office.

A killer needs his spirit right.

www.thejfklie.com

Copyright 2019   Archer Crosley   All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction based upon real events.

I love 1963.

I don’t like the modern world.

1963 was fun.

Life was simple in 1963.

America was happy.

Sure, we had problems.  There are always going to be problems.

Wars?

Of course there were wars.  Man will never be at peace.  

Are animals at peace?

War is the natural status of man.  Aggression and defense.

A world without war is a world that’s dead.

People say, well, we shouldn’t have war.

I don’t think that’s possible.  Do you?

Well, JFK must have thought so.

Ot at least we came to believe he thought so.

A world without war sounds noble, but it’s not reflective of reality.

You see, the world physically hurtles through the heavens.

Poor Earth is constantly bombarded by cosmic rays and gravitational forces.

Every day is a new event.

Every day poor Earth, our home in a lonely universe, is struck by new solar flares.

These forces change Earth and it’s geography.

Tides rise and fall differently, droughts occur, rivers change course.

This changes our food supply which then affects us.

This  is why we move, and it is that movement that causes war.

Sometimes we get a break.  It’s fun to kick back and enjoy the fruits of life.

That was 1963.

People were happy.

WWII was over.  Korea was over.  And Vietnam was a fly on an elephant’s ass.

That was about to change.

www.thejfklie.com

Copyright 2019   Archer Crosley   All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction based upon real events.

Was it moral to kill these guys, these two investigative reporters – Hunter and Koethe?

Maybe not.

I don’t set the objectives. My job is to achieve them.

If I were king of the world, we would not act immorally in an order to achieve our ends.

We live in an immoral world.

Yes, the universe is moral, but earth is anything of the sort.

I understand that the earth is under God’s dominion, but my bosses don’t have time for God.  

They want what they want now. God moves too slow for them.

Plus, the enemy does not believe in God and shows no inclination of reforming.

I am caught.

I do not like my world.

I handle what is before me.

I killed JFK.

I pinned it on Lee.

Lee lived.

Lee must die.

I recruited Jack to kill Lee.

Jack killed Lee.

Two reporters threatened to expose the plot I had so carefully planned.

If they expose me, I die.

They were trying to kill me.

I killed them in self defense.

Self defense is morally justifiable.

www.thejfklie.com

Copyright 2019   Archer Crosley   All Rights Reserved.

This is a work of fiction based upon real events.

I screwed up.

I must be a man and admit my weaknesses.

I involved too many people in killing Lee.

Humans are your biggest assets and your biggest variables.

You need people, but, man, they don’t always get the big picture.  Nor can they.  If they did, they’d know too much.

I needed George to be Jack’s alibi.  George had to be there at the apartment when Jack left.

My goal was to create the act of spontaneity.

Jack wakes up like any other morning, reads about JFKs funeral, becomes mildly upset, eats breakfast, gets the call from Little Lynn, grabs his cash and gun, heads down to Western Union, sends the money order to Little Lynn, walks down Main Street to the police station ramp.

And, well, you know the rest.

Too bad it didn’t happen that way.

Of course Jack was already in the garage before 10 AM.  Isn’t that obvious?

We didn’t know when Lee was coming down from the third floor.  Do you think we’re mind readers?

For the effect to work a) Jack has to be in the garage and b) the assistants, George and Little  Lynn, have to say their lines.

Yes, of course, I used assistants to pull the trick off.

Do you think Harry Houdini did every trick by himself?

No way.

For the uninitiated, George is George Senator, Jack’s roommate. He was in the apartment when Jack woke up and when Jack got the call from Little Lynn.

Little Lynn is Karen Bennett – a stripper at Jack’s club.  She was over in Fort Worth that morning.  She had called Jack the night before to tell him that he needed him to send her money.  She called again on Sunday, the day Lee was transported, to tell him again.

I only needed them to lie a little and be vague.

Technically they didn’t lie.  Read their testimony a little more closely.

On the whole I thought they both did their jobs well enough.  That wasn’t the problem.

The problem is that I can’t tell them the whole caper; I can’t even tell Jack the whole caper.

So if I can’t tell Jack, then Jack can’t tell George or Little Lynn.

That presents a problem when someone unexpected pops into the caper.

Unexpected people are unpleasant variables.

The variables in this equation were Bill Hunter and Jim Koethe – two investigative reporters who managed to find their way into Jack’s apartment the night Jack killed Lee.

I’m still not precisely sure what they found that night. I think it was more what they suspected that wasn’t right.  After all, these guys were experienced reporters.

I think they became suspicious of George.

George must have conveyed complicity in his body language.

The body doesn’t lie.

They knew George was lying about Jack’s whereabouts that day.

Or maybe they asked why Jack would have a copy of that morning’s Dallas Times Herald under his bed when George testified that they didn’t get a paper delivered? Hell, maybe Jack was out late and picked up an early edition at 3 AM. Jack was not exactly Ben Franklin’s role model for success. He was late to bed, late to rise.

At any rate, they were reporters, and good ones too. I couldn’t have them writing articles and books this early into the assassination.

So I took care of them.

Okay, upon looking at things now, years later, maybe I was a little hasty.

www.thejfklie.com

Copyright 2019   Archer Crosley   All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction based upon real events.

Every step of the way in this caper has to be thought out and questioned assiduously.

I have to think ten ways at once.

It’s a giant Sudoku puzzle, baby.

What are the ramifications of each decision?

Assiduously. Assidus.  Asidere.  Ad-sidere.

Ad means next to.  Sidere means to sit.

Assiduously means to sit next to.

I need to know what words meant to the ancients who invented our words.

Knowing what they thought gets me closer to the truth. It makes me better at my job.

I become more assiduous when I sit closer to my work.

In the case of Jack Ruby, I needed to think out how I was going to signal him so that he could get there in time.

I could put him down at the Western Union office only 300 feet from the Dallas Police Department, but how do I choreograph the event?

Do I hang out near Captain Fritz’s office and telephone Jack just before the move?  Do I wait in the police garage and wait until the word comes down that Lee is to be moved?  If I wait near Captain Fritz’s office until the move, I have to get down to the side door by the alley to let Jack in.   Will I have the time?

Should I use an assistant?  No, that’s one more variable in the equation – one more person that can talk.

How about magic?

What would Harry do?  Harry Houdini, of course.

Suppose I position Jack near the green car well before Lee arrives, clear the vehicle, then go to the Western Union office posing as Jack?

These are the questions that keep me up at night.

It’s no wonder I don’t have a life.

www.thejfklie.com

Copyright 2019   Archer Crosley   All Rights Reserved

This is a work of fiction based upon real events.