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"Are you telling me that there was an actual coup? That the Ke
"Somewhere out there, there's always someone who wants to make the world as messed up as their head is, Jason. They don't know how to be happy, so their only goal is to make everyone as unhappy as they are right at that point in time. They're the kind of people I wound up working for in the end. Ke
Heller paused. “It’s also worth remembering that some of the biggest companies in the United States were making tens of billions of dollars from the Vietnam War – the United States lost over 10,000 aircraft in that war. Each of those had to be replaced, and someone was making a lot of money from that. Big business drives big war as much as any political idea, you’d do well to remember that.”
Jason knew that, back in the 50s and 60s, the whole Western world was living in fear of Communism and the looming threat of a Soviet Bear armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons. Of course, placing nuclear missiles within spitting distance of Florida was a dumb move, no matter what way you look at it, but Ke
"We found a willing partner-in-crime in Lyndon Baines Johnson, too. Good ole LBJ had been embarrassed by Ke
Trying to process this much information at once can be too much for most people, and Jason found his mind spi
Chapter 14
The background noise in the diner was always present but not loud enough to distract Jason from his train of thought, or to distract Heller from his story. It was just the usual mumbled conversations, with the odd burst of laughter thrown in. Diners were like a tiny, compressed version of the outside world. It’s like seeing every aspect of society crammed into one big room, all fighting to make their voices heard, grabbing their few seconds in the spotlight of life.
Jason found himself whispering across the table in surprise, "So now you're telling me the vice president of the United States was in on the deal, too? That seems a bit far-fetched Heller. People would have talked. Something would have leaked out!" This was followed up by a nervous glance over his shoulder to see if anyone had heard what the old man had just said.
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 Ke
Every time the old man presented Jason with yet another fact about the Ke
"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 Ke
“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 Ke
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 Ke
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 Ke