Heller still obviously didn’t care who was listening to their conversation. "Well, the way it went was that JFK was a dead man either way, but if there was any civil unrest because people figured out what really happened, or one of the sources blabbed, then we needed someone ready to impose martial law overnight. There was the best part of an armed regiment in the air over Texas that day, just waiting for the word. That's the value of a puppet like Johnson, he was willing to do whatever it took to get rid of Kennedy, and that included declaring martial law if he needed to. We couldn’t have asked for better.”
Every time the old man presented Jason with yet another fact about the Kennedy murder, he felt like he sank one inch lower into a swamp he'd never quite be able to climb out of. This was the kind of muck that was going to stick to him forever. You never felt really clean after hearing information like this. He felt sick to his stomach.
"Didn't it ever cross your mind that you'd get caught? Or even that you might get caught?" Jason said.
"To be honest, actually organizing an operation like this involves a huge amount of risk, and we all knew that. There's every chance that it will fall apart, or some fool will go opening his mouth afterward. We had contingency plans for Oswald and Ruby, but you can never be 100% certain. We were lucky that Americans like neat little answers, tied up in a bow, so once Kennedy was in the ground, no one came asking any questions,” Heller explained.
“Most people never even asked how Oswald, a guy who spent his entire life avoiding work, had suddenly managed to get a job in the book depository just a few weeks before Kennedy was killed. Even that one thread could have caught us out. But it didn't, because the reality is that no one wants to hear the real truth about how the world works, Jason.”
Here he sat, being told possibly the greatest story in modern history, and he knew no one would ever believe a word of it. He just wished he had some way of recording what was going on. My phone, he realized and started to casually search his jeans pocket for some way to turn on the recorder on his new smartphone. He was careful not to even glance down at what his hands were up to, maintaining friendly eye contact with Heller all the time.
Stopping mid-sentence, Heller stared at him and said, "Don't do that, Jason. Don't try to record this. That wouldn't be very nice. Take your hand out of your pocket and put it back on the table, please. I might be dying, but I'm not stupid."
Chapter 15
Jason sheepishly put his hand back on the table. He knew that Heller could see the few drops of sweat that had sprung up like tiny lakes on his forehead. There was a lot of menace still left in this old man, even if he was at death's door. In a split second, he'd reduced him from a grown man to a frightened child, and he knew it. Here was a man who could mess with your head without even touching you. He shuddered at the thought of what Bill Heller might have been capable of as a younger man.
"You said, 'No one wants to hear the real truth about how the world works', what did you mean by that?" Jason asked.
"It's true. In fact, we were banking on that simple fact. Once we had rolled out the lame 'lone gunman' theory after Kennedy got hit, we could see that a lot of people knew it was total BS. Or at least they did when they took a good long look at the facts. But we also knew that they weren't willing to even consider anything else. Deep down in their hearts, people know that Kennedy was murdered. They can feel it. They know they were lied to.”
Heller paused.
"There's a small mountain of facts that don't add up, including everything from several police officers reporting seeing and hearing multiple gunshots, and then you had James Tague, the bystander who was hit by a stray bullet fragment. We even faked autopsy photographs and that famous picture of Oswald holding a rifle and a newspaper? Completely fake. They weren't even good fakes, but they bought us the time we needed. The Zapruder film clearly shows Kennedy being shot in the throat from the front, then in the back, and then in the head from somewhere to the left and in front of him. The 'Magic Bullet' theory is more complete crap. Any modern investigation would pull the case apart in about 2 minutes, but that won't ever happen," Heller explained.
Heller paused to slurp coffee before continuing. "The Zapruder film clearly showed Kennedy clutching at his throat when he was hit by the first round. He then slumped forward after being hit by a second bullet, and finally the fatal shot came from another angle again. This didn't even come close to explaining how Governor Connolly was shot several times, or the fact that numerous bystanders were also hit by ricochets and bullet fragments. Everything that day pointed to well over a dozen rounds being fired at the presidential motorcade."
Jason felt his head spinning again. Heller was right, people knew that Kennedy had been murdered but somehow wanted to accept the sugar pill of crazed gunman with Communist links killing their president instead. The masses might be outraged, but they definitely weren't ready to accept the real truth of what happened that day in 1963. Blaming communists had been an easy way to cover up a lot of the shit the U.S. government had gotten up to in the past, and it worked just as well for covering up the Kennedy hit.
"Look at it this way, Jason. The files on the Kennedy assassination should have been made public decades ago, but we still have to wait until at least 2017 for the CIA to release all of the 90,000+ pages of documentation they have. Why so long? Why do people have to wait over 50 years to find out what really happened to Kennedy? What does the CIA really know about the whole mess?"
Jason scratched his chin, and shrugged his shoulders, showing he had no clue why that might be the case. Listening to this guy was almost hypnotic, but then he imagined that natural charisma in Heller's game probably opened a lot of doors for him. The people behind those doors would obviously have had a lot of reason to regret ever allowing him to walk into a room with them.
Heller chuckled just enough for Jason to pay a little bit of extra attention to him. Somehow, this crazy old man had found something funny in his story.
"The men who know what happened are a dying breed, Jason. Literally. It won't be too long now for the last of us to be gone. We know the real secrets. We know where the bodies are buried. We know what happened to all the witnesses. Dead men don't talk, and by the time 2017 is rung in, the last of the Kennedy men will be dead men. Case closed."
"So what part did you play on the day, Heller? Where were you standing? What was your job?" Jason asked. He was in this deep now so he might as well get all the gory details, too, although he kinda hated himself for even wanting to know more about this. It was all a bit...unsettling.
"I took the first shot. Not as a manner of honor or priority, it was just how it went. Just before Kennedy turned into Dealey, we had most of his Secret Service detachment hang back, so he drove into that plaza completely naked; there was nothing or no one to protect him. I didn't need to take another shot, although I did, because the split second I saw Kennedy grab at his throat, I knew I'd hit the bull’s-eye. After that, it was up to the rest of the shooters to finish the job, which they obviously did. It's almost funny, looking back at how much evidence there was for multiple shooters, but how no one wanted to acknowledge it. It was blatantly obvious that Oswald could never have shot Kennedy in the throat. Not unless he was floating in front of the presidential motorcade, which he obviously wasn't."