Assassinations, Coups, Conspiracies & Cover-ups: Spilling The Beans At The Ann Arbor Teach-in

Assasinations, Coups, Conspiracies & Cover-Ups: Spilling the Beans at the Ann Arbor Teach-In

With each new revelation of illegal CIA activity and coverup of political assassinations, it becomes more and more likely that the Bicentennial year will go down in history as the year the lid came off America. Despite the cynicism or silence of the major media, more information is being developed and communicated daily on the overwhelming power of extra-legal institutions to control our lives and, in fact, determine the destiny of whole nations.

It was in this atmosphere that the University of Michigan campus last week hosted a four-day teach-in, titled The Bi-Centennial Dilemma: Who's In Control?'', ten years after the same campus witnessed the first teach-in against the Vietnam War. And just as that 1965 event set in motion a period of intense activity on and off college campuses all over the country, the veritable festival of information in Ann Arbor last week may well herald a new era of activism.

The teach-in, the first of its kind anywhere, brought together more than 30 internationally-known speakers under the aegis of an ad hoc group of U. of M. students. Assassination researchers Mark Lane and Donald Freed reduced the official explanations of the Kennedy assassinations to nonsense. David DuBois, spokesperson for the Black Panther Party, chronicled various police and Intelligence schemes to destroy his organization. Author William Burroughs held forth on mind control. Other dynamic participants included attorney William Kunstler, poet Ed Sanders, former SDS President Cari Oglesby (now with the Assassination Information Bureau), Regina Brave Dixon of the Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense team, and others too numerous to mention in this short space.

Among the numerous weighty topics tackled by the likes of these speakers were the abuse of intelligence agencies by ruling elites; the manipulation of labor by the CIA; the vast power of multinational corporations; conditioning techniques used in television advertising; and many other instances of subversion of the so-called "democratic process." Especially compelling in its implications was the astonishing flow of facts relative to the assassinations of the Kennedys, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X - all now clearly emerging as probable government/right-wing conspiracies.

Sad to say, all this vitally-needed information basically reached only those lucky enough to have learned in advance of the teach-in and personally attend, as the mass media of the Detroit-Ann Arbor region failed to cover the event except for occasional brief shots. Although the press was fully informed of the goings-on, a press conference in Detroit brought participants to the media, and several reporters evinced enthusiastic interest, management evidently killed their stories. 

Despite the overwhelming evidence to the effect that the truth about American political assassinations has been well hidden, the local and national media continue to scoff at those who are working to reopen the official investigations.

Nevertheless, it's beginning to look as if the frightening truth will soon spill over the media dam to shock the conscience of any and all Americans not yet hip to it. Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania is leading his committee deep into the contradictions in the Warren Commission Report, which he has said "is about to collapse like a house of cards." At least 102 members of Congress have called for a reopening of the investigations. And Time Magazine is scheduled to do a cover on new efforts to re-examine the evidence.

Of course, if the Warren Commission Report "collapses," so may its chief living apologist, Commission member Gerald "Whitey" Ford - who continúes to insist, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

Mark Lane of the Citizens' Commission of Inquiry has been fignting the Warren Report's conclusions since they were first thrust upon us. Once scorned and attacked, Lane's steadfast appraisal of the report is now winning legions of supporters.

It's no wonder. At Hill Auditorium last week.Lane showed how he has perfected his presentation of all the contradictions, covered-up or distorted testimony, and impossible claims of the Warren Report to the point where the audience was beyond shock. He had the entire auditorium laughing at the blatant ludicrousness of the Commission's methods and conclusions.

Lane showed the famous Zapruder film of the assassination, which clearly shows Kennedy hit by a gunman from the front - not only from behind, where Lee Harvey Oswald was stationed. He talked about the witnesses who have been murdered since Dallas; the "missing" Kennedy brain; the documents locked up by the Warren Commission until after the year 2000; and the official autopsy inexplicably burned by a doctor from Dallas' Parkland Memorial Hospital.

Lane went on to explain the utter impossibility of the single "magic" bullet the Commission claimed struck Kennedy and John Connally - even though the bullet emerged largely intact after its ordeal. (This, when the same bullet fired through cotton emerged more damaged!) Lane also revealed the employment of both Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald by the FBI, and described Ruby's underworld activity.

Researcher Donald Freed did up Robert Kennedy s assassination in like manner. He delved into the discrepancy between official accounts and Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas Noguchi's report that Kennedy was killed by a bullet fired two inches behind his ear - when Sirhan was placed by all witnesses no closer than four feet in front of Kennedy. Freed recalled ten bullets were recovered from the scene, while Sirhan's gun only held eight. Further: one newsman claimed to see a security guard standing behind RFK fire his gun during the melee. The guard was never questioned. Neither were a lot of other people - due to Sirhan's pleading guilty, and thereby avoiding a trial or cross-examination. Freed claims that Sirhan was hypnotized-programmed as the patsy in the case.

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TEACH-IN

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Sirhan's own story, however, is hard to get at - a cellmate of his who claimed to have been told the truth about the matter later murdered in prison.

The ceiling panels from the Ambassador Hotel, which would show the spot from which the shots were fired, have been "missing" since the night of the murder. Contrary to the misrepresentations in the press, the recent re-firing of Sirhan's gun failed to prove that bullets retrieved from the scene all came from his weapon. According to Freed, a movie examining such little-known discrepancies in the case will be released soon.

David DuBois of the Panthers traced the history of FBI subversion and harassment to his organization, most recently forcing Huey P. Newton to flee to Cuba. William Burroughs demonstrated the impossibility of the state's various methods of control.

Still other speakers pointed to the discrepancies in the Martin Luther King murder, where again, the evidence was never brought to cross-examination or trial due to James Earl Ray's guilty plea. Witnesses at the scene, including one of Dr. King's associates claim to have seen a man running away from a clump of bushes in front of Dr. King's motel - and not from the rooming house from where Ray allegedly fired the fatal shots.

But our limited space here could not possibly begin to contain all of what was revealed at last week's historic teach-in. The SUN's reporters, however, took in every word, and over the next few months will attempt to breach what looks, for all the world, like a media conspiracy to keep this potentially explosive information out of mass circulation. We will be offering in-depth explorations of several of the crucial areas examined in Ann Arbor. Watch this space for further details!