Dorothy Kilgallen said 'The Oswald File must not Close', and she mocked any fool who suggested otherwise.
November 29, 1963
By Dorothy Kilgallen
nsnews guest of honor
President Lyndon Johnson has been elevated so swiftly to his new high post that in one sense, he has been snatched up into an ivory tower.
As Chief Executive, he is no longer in a position to hear the voices of ordinary people talking candidly.
If he could walk invisible along the streets of the nation and listen to ordinary people talking he would realize that he must make sure that the mystery of Lee Harvey Oswald is solved and laid before the nation down to the smallest shred of evidence.
If Oswald was President Kennedy's assassin, he was the most important prisoner the police of this country had in custody in 100 years, and no blithe announcement in Dallas is going to satisfy the American public that :the case is closed."
President Johnson has directed the FBI to look into every aspect of the case, but he must go a giant step further.
He must satssfy the public's uneasy mind about this peculiar assassination of the assassin or he will start his term in office by making a dire political mistake that could cost him the 1964 election.
The case is closed is it? Well I'd like to know how in a big smart town like Dallas, a man like Jack Ruby -operator of a striptease honky tonk -could stroll in and out of police headquarters as if it were a health club at a time when a small army of law enforcers was keeping a "tight security guard" on Oswald.
Security! What a word for it.
I wouldn't try to speak for the people of Dallas, but around here, the people I talk to really believe that a man has the right to be tried in court.
When that right is taken away from any man by the incredible combination of Jack Ruby and insufficient security, we feel chilled.
Justice is a big rug. When you pull it out from under one man, a lot of others fall too.
That is why so many people are saying there is "something queer" about the killing of Oswald, something strange about the way his case was handled, and a great deal missing in the official account of his crime.
The American people have just lost a beloved President.
It is a dark chapter in our history, but we have the right to read every word of it. It cannot be kept locked in a file in Dallas.
|
|
Dorothy Kilgallen was the first reporter with a national reputation to recognize and publish a total disaffection with the official case. She printed in 1964 that if Lee Oswald's widow, Marina, "ever gave out the 'whole story' of her life with President Kennedy's alleged assassin, it would split open the front pages of newspapers all over the world. Even if Marina explained why her late husband looked so different in an official Dallas photo and in the widely printed full-length picture featured on the cover of Life magazine, it would cause a sensation."
Regarding the Kennedy assassination investigation, Dorothy Kilgallen said, "That story is not going to die as long as there's a real reporter alive, and there are a lot of them." Dorothy Kilgallen said, "I am going to break the case" and when mark Lane asked her whether she feared for her life, she said, "That's all inconsequential. They killed the President of the United states. The government is not prepared to tell us how it happened or who did it. And I am going to do everything I can to find out how it happened." In the meantime, J. Edgar Hoover was doing everything that he could, to maintain the cover story about the murder of President John F. Kennedy.
|
