Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

The cover-up of the murder of JFK was, of course, much bigger than the murder itself, and I think it's fascinating to consider that some of the people who were avidly involved in covering it up never at any time had conscious knowledge that they were doing that. They simply refused to have such knowledge. 

Take, for instance, Warren Commission lawyer David Belin.

Now, I certainly don't think that anyone tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Hey, Dave. You know we're killing Kennedy on Friday, right? And I don't think that after the assassination anyone tapped him on the shoulder and said, "Hey, Dave. You know that was us who took out Kennedy, don't you?" So, did he EVER have a candid conversation with anyone about it? No! Never. Did he ever have a candid thought about it? No! Never. That's the frickin' point. And that's the beauty of the system, that you can plan a thing like this- whether it's killing JFK or 9/11 or whatever- and know that there is going to be an army of people doing your bidding and covering your back afterwards without ever having to tell them what you did.    

So, even in his last conscious moment, his dying breath, did David Belin ever face the fact that he railroaded an innocent man, Lee Harvey Oswald? I doubt it. I doubt he ever left the page of the official story. That's where he existed. That was his realm. And he didn't leave that realm. He stayed confined within it, and that's because he wanted to be confined within it. 

But, why? Why would anybody want to be confined in that realm? 

Here's why: When it was first announced that Kennedy had been shot, the first thought that most Americans had was that some crazy, deranged, evil, demented person or persons did it. The idea that the government did it was unthinkable to most people. That idea didn't exist even conceptually for them for this reason: this is the United States of America, and shit like that doesn't happen here.

So, when the government came up with Oswald, he fit most people's pre-existing model. It wasn't a hard sell. And there he was, looking scruffy, in nothing but a ragged t-shirt, his eye swollen from fighting with police- of course, the fucker did it. 

Plus, it was an emergency, a crisis, a national crisis. And, who do you turn to at such a time for information, for guidance, and for reassurance? To authority. To the government. To the leaders. 

Let's return to Belin. His mind-set in response to the assassination worked exactly as described above except in spades. Why in spades? Because he could NEVER fault the system when he was so successful within it. He wasn't just a successful lawyer with his own firm. He was also a successful businessman. He personally owned several newspapers. One of them was the Daily Tribune out of Ames, Iowa, which he owned in partnership with Michael Gartner, who became the head of NBC News. 

The integration of government and newspapers is more deepseated today than ever before, this being essentially a fascist system, but even then it was like that. Belin was a lawyer and a newspaper man; so of course he was going to believe the government.

And, Belin's allegiance to the official story was self-imposed. Like Allen Dulles, Belin had encounters with hecklers and deniers in the years following the Warren Commission. And apparently, it rattled him. He would get very defensive and start arguing with his challengers- and down to the minutia of the case. Well, I'm glad to hear that he got heckled. Way to go, hecklers.  And I'm glad to know that it rattled him.  As I read more about him, it seems apparent that he did, to a great extent, wear an albatross around his neck.  

But, the bottom line is that there was a choice that he and others were subconsciously making. Not consciously, but subconsciously. And that is: that either the government's story (that Oswald did it alone) is true, or else the government, itself, did it, killed Kennedy. And since Belin, like a lot of people, could not contemplate the latter, it meant that, for him, accepting the former was a necessity. It had to be true; it had to be embraced; it had to be accepted. 

There is something that I will never forget about David Belin. He, somehow, divined, or at least claimed to know, that Oswald's plan was to escape to Mexico. He claimed to know (somehow) that that's where Oswald was going, essentially, when he killed Tippit (of course, Oswald didn't do it): to Mexico. But, Oswald only had a little bit of cash on him. He left most of his cash with Marina the night before. (we are told) So, people would ask Belin how Oswald expected to travel all the way to Mexico with so little cash. And Belin would say that as long as Oswald had his pistol, he could hold people up any time he wanted and get all the money he needed.

Is it necessary for me to point out that that was a very fanciful and childish projection on Belin's part? It was based on absolutely nothing but a generalized contempt for Oswald. Belin truly just pulled it from out his ass and plopped it down. The totally whimsical, flimsy, flighty mentality involved in that shabby mental projection shows you just how unfit mentally Belin was to conduct an honest investigation. 

But, it's why he was chosen- because he had that attitude they wanted; from the start. Believing in Oswald's guilt became a litmus test for patriotism; for loyalty to the government; and more than that; it became a litmus test for believing in America, in the goodness of America; in the greatness of America; in the values of America; in the moral fiber of America. And he believed in all those things.

It's been said that before you can delude others, you have to delude yourself. David Belin did that. And the plotters who killed Kennedy knew ahead of time that the David Belins of this country would be there to support them.