11.22.63, Hidden History, JFK Jr and Carolyn

We have come to 1962. Jake Epping (James Franco) is at Love Field when Lee Oswald (played by Daniel Webber) arrives in town from his overseas stay in the USSR. Oswald asks his mother Marguerite why there is no cadre of press awaiting him, hinting at Oswald being an unstable publicity hound, which is pretty much what Warren Commission lawyer Wesley Liebeler decided upon when he could not think of any other reason why Oswald might have shot Kennedy. In its attempts at caricaturing Oswald, the 11.22.63 series goes even beyond the Warren Report. Which is a bit stunning since there has been a quantum leap since 1964 in our knowledge and understanding of Oswald. This takes us to October of 1963. Oswald is applying for his position at the Texas School Book Depository. Which will put him on the Kennedy motorcade route on November 22nd.

Ruth Paine, with whom Marina Oswald was staying in October and November of 1963, arranged that job for Oswald. The script cuts out Ruth Paine’s role in all this. And Ruth Paine is portrayed—ever so briefly—as the kindly Quaker lady from the Warren Report. There was something else just as odd in the script. Even though it is October of 1963, George DeMohrenschildt is still on the scene in Dallas. This is really kind of inexplicable. I know Stephen King wrote a novel, but it is still based upon history. George DeMohrenschildt left Dallas in April of 1963 for Haiti. So the events depicted here with DeMohrenschildt simply could not have happened—they are an impossibility.

Jake and Sadie now end up in Dealey Plaza in the very wee hours of the morning of the 22nd. Then the script adds in a Twilight Zone motif. A man who King calls the "yellow card man” (he has such a card in his hat) now appears in Jake’s car, replacing Sadie. This figure has been seen several times throughout the film. He usually says, “You’re not supposed to be here.” The script now gets even wilder. We see Oswald—with his long package--walking right next to Wesley Frazier as they cross the street and enter the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald then goes right up to the sixth floor!  He is, of course, whistling "Soldier Boy." He then walks to the window, starts setting up the boxes for the so-called “sniper’s nest”. And then, incredibly, he just sits there, waiting for the motorcade to pass. This is as impossible as having George DeMohrenschildt in Dallas in October. I mean do the writers really expect the audience to be so stupid as to think Oswald would sit at a window with a rifle for three and a half hours waiting to kill Kennedy? With witnesses both inside and outside to see him? This is just plain silliness. We now see Jake and Sadie on a high-speed chase to get near Dealey Plaza. When they do get near, guess who they see? Jake sees Frank Dunning, and Sadie sees her ex-husband. Both of whom have been killed by Jake. What this means is anyone’s guess.

Jake now returns to Lisbon, Maine. He goes to Al’s diner, but it's gone. But just standing there, near the portal, now transports him to what King calls a “time tributary,” or in plainer parlance, an alternative universe. A world that looks completely desolate and abandoned. He meets up with Harry Dunning who is being attacked by a pack of thugs. Jake helps run them off. Harry takes him back to his home, which is inside what looks like a deserted factory. There he tells him that he knows that Jake saved his family from his father. Jake asks him about history. Harry tells him that Kennedy was re-elected and then George Wallace won in 1968, since RFK did not run. He then tells Jake that Kennedy set up confinement camps throughout the country. Why and how this happened is not explained.

Stephen King actually called Oswald a dangerous little fame-junkie who happened to be in the right place at the right time. Those comments really make you wonder about the “research” King did. Every objective researcher who has taken a look at the JFK case in an official capacity since the issuance of the Warren Report in 1964 has disagreed with its conclusions. The last one being Jeremy Gunn of the Assassination Records Review Board. Who looked at the declassified documents. In light of that, King’s comments are bizarre. If Oswald was a fame junkie, why did he never take credit for killing Kennedy? In fact, he did the opposite. He called himself a patsy. Well, if you leave out Oswald’s call to former military intelligence officer John Hurt the night before; if one does not tell the viewer that the rifle the Warren Report says killed Kennedy is not the same rifle that Oswald allegedly ordered; if one does not mention 544 Camp Street in New Orleans or Guy Banister, David  Ferrie and Clay Shaw; if one does not mention Oswald with Shaw and Ferrie in the Clinton-Jackson area in the summer of 1963; if one does not show all the problems with Oswald allegedly being in Mexico City, while he is supposed to be at Sylvia Odio’s door in Dallas with two Cubans—well yeah Stephen King, then you can tell us all about randomness and Occam’s Razor logic. Those events I mentioned are not theories, Mr. King. They are facts.

King more or less spilled the beans when he stated what books were most important to him in his research phase. He named Gerald Posner’s Case Closed, Legend by Edward Epstein and Mrs. Paine’s Garage by Thomas Mallon. King reduces Oswald in his story again to the drunken wife-beater, although even Ruth Paine, who sent so much obviously false evidence to the FBI, testified that Oswald neither drank nor beat Marina. Add the gun range thing which was totally gratuitous. Even the FBI admitted they couldn't find any evidence that LHO ever went to a shooting range for practice. A TV mini-series like '11.22.63' doesn't bring us closer to the truth, it acts more like its own depiction of 'the past fighting back'. Maybe Mr. King will use that as his crutch? I wonder how much King changed his draft from his first attempt at it all those many years ago? In other words, just how much work did he do on it once he went back to it and how much did Gary Mack help him?

From what I understand, the actual book deals less with the JFK case than the mini series does. The little bit about the surviving JFK putting people in camps was just an extension of King's antipathy for the Kennedys. Like so many leftists, King has admitted to never liking them. Isn't that strange? A native New Englander, loyal "liberal," and he just never liked the most prominent political family to emerge from his neck of the country. Although I will add that Bridget Carpenter, the main screen writer of the 11.22.63 series said that by the end of the production she felt that Oswald was really a CIA operative. Geez, you mean there was one semi-conscious person working on this pile of rubbish?  Her path is pretty common when you see Oswald had to be connected to the American Intelligence. The next step is dumping all that phony evidence about the rifle, the phony print that LaTona could not find, and most of all, the complete fantasy of CE 399 (single bullet theory). Then what you are left with is a rogue CIA operation using Oswald without his knowledge. Source: www.kennedysandking.com

Bridget Carpenter—the writer/producer who developed the new miniseries version of Stephen King’s acclaimed bestseller—used to accept the Lone Gunman Theory as fact, too. “But after two years of working on Stephen’s story, I don’t believe it anymore,” she says. “There were too many strange things surrounding Oswald for me to believe he did it completely alone.” Carpenter, the executive producer and showrunner for 11.22.63, suspects now that Oswald had to have been connected to the CIA, that maybe he went rogue in Dallas on the morning of Nov. 22, 1963, that a massive cover-up was organized to hide the embarrassing truth. Source: www.star-telegram.com

The mantra that "conspiracy theorists" simply can't accept that a great man could be taken down by a lone nut is almost as prevalent as the "someone would have talked" line; the "that many people couldn't keep a secret" came directly from the infamous 1967 CIA memo "Countering the Critics of the Warren Report." Stephen King's central thesis is that Oswald wanted to "be somebody," in King's updated parlance-a "fame junkie." King avoids the whole Ruby angle, which really would make it look like a conspiracy to frame and then shut up Oswald. In other words, Oswald never claimed credit for killing of Kennedy, and then was murdered two days later by Jack Ruby. Some fame junkie. I tried to ask Dan Moldea this same question years ago; if Sirhan "wanted to be famous," why did he always deny the crime? Moldea never responded, and I suspect King wouldn't respond either. I don't believe for a second that King thinks Oswald acted alone. Neither does Tom Hanks. Despite the fact he is a native New Englander, King admits to never "being a fan" of Kennedy. We see this same curious dislike of the Kennedys on the part of many high profile "liberals." Although Stephen King seems to dismiss the "conspiracy theorists," he seems to believe every one of Judith Campbell Exner's inconsistent allegations against JFK. In addition to having Jack Ruby on screen for maybe a minute or so in 11.22.63, the Oswald story is picked up only upon his return from Russia. Therefore, all the bizarre things that are so suspicious about his time in the military and his defection can be bypassed. Things like the Rosaleen Quinn testimony about Oswald being fluent in Russian while in the Marines, his association with the U2 radar operations, the false defector program, Oswald's staying in two five star hotels in Helsnki, etc. With all that eliminated, and the complete cutting out of New Orleans and Mexico City, then you can excise any and all intel connections to Oswald. Even John F Kennedy Jr told several friends he didn't believe Oswald was the guilty party either. —Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics (2016) by Donald Jeffries

NY Fix News interviews a few friends who knew John Kennedy Jr and Carolyn (by Sheila Tasco, 2004). -NYFIX: There have been several reports that have been written about the state of John Jr. and Carolyn's marriage towards the ends of their lives, why do you think there are different viewpoints on that aspect?

-Billy Way: I was around them a lot, before and after they got married, and I can tell you it depended on who was around them on what days of the week. Every couple has problems, they were no exception, and sometimes they had bad fights. When they would have a big fight, they would usually do it in the privacy of their home. They usually also made up afterwards. Once I heard an argument about another woman calling John and leaving a message on his phone, and Carolyn was mad. She started accusing him of cheating on her, and yelled at him slurs, and John started yelling right back. They yelled for about twenty minutes before a picture, frame and all, went sailing across the room. I couldn't believe she had broken the picture. When they were done arguing, John was upset sitting on the sofa, and Carolyn came back and dropped to her knees in front of him saying she was sorry for yelling at him like that. They started kissing and making up. 

NYFIX: How did their relationship change after they got married? Did you see anything change in their relationship?

BW: John told us they barely left the hotel room during their honeymoon. But after the honeymoon, they started to have some fights. The last big fight I saw was in May of 1999. It was about some business trip that Carolyn hadn't been aware of, she just didn't want John going off on trips without her. She was literally screaming about him having an affair with some other woman, and how she was glad that she had been seeing Michael Bergin. John said she better shut up, she was just putting a show to make him jealous and he persuaded her to attend pyschological therapy. Meanwhile, John had reconnected with Amber Norman, whom he saw as just a friend. John had dated her briefly in 1993, but she disappeared when Carolyn entered the scene. 

NYFIX: So they were having extramarital affairs or not?

BW: It wasn't like that. The word affair has a very negative meaning. Their relationships weren't like that at all. They loved each other, but they had other people that they saw for different, emotional needs. But John was really a one woman man. He only loved Carolyn, although he met another girlfriends like Amber, Sasha, or Julie Baker during difficult periods during their relationship. John had learned from his mother about keeping things private, and he was doing just that.

NYFIX: What would John have been doing at this point?

BW: John was preparing himself for a new life in politics. He wanted to run for public office as an extension of his community services, and he was getting ready for it. He wanted that people would have been able to see what he could accomplish in politics.

NYFIX: There has been much debate about the truth between John and Carolyn's lives together. Would you ever consider writing a book?

BW: I am not planning any book. I plan to stand up to every author that has made a mess of things, Edward Klein included. His version of the story made Carolyn out to be a harridan, and that's not correct at all. He didn't include the full story. Things weren't as dramatic as he tried to pass off. That was some hack job on their relationship. Carolyn was a very loving person, and I think that should have come out. She was also a very headstrong woman, but in a good way. 

NYFIX: What do you miss most about your friend John Jr?

BW: I miss his friendship a lot, it's like when he died, the streets of New York ceased to have life anymore. Everything stopped suddenly. It's been tough to go on and have a life knowing that his apartment wasn't filled with his presence, he wasn't there anymore, as if the rooms were all dark now. I miss him more than I could ever be able to express.

John Perry Barlow: I first heard of Carolyn when John told me about her one night at Tramps in early 1994. He was still very attached to Daryl Hannah. But there was a woman he'd met who was having a heavy effect on him. He didn't want to pursue it, he declared, because he was still loyal to Daryl. Loyalty was one of his many virtues. But it was hard for him, because he couldn't get his mind off this girl. "Who is she?" I asked. He said, "Ah, she's some employee at Calvin Klein's. She's an ordinary person." Which of course she manifestly was not. She was anything but an ordinary person, but as far as the rest of the world, she was. He wanted to maintain a platonic relationship with Carolyn until he and Daryl had broken up. John was not, as some believed, a dog with the ladies. In fact, there were not so many women in his life that he took seriously. And there were even fewer that he took casually. In this regard John was anything but a Kennedy.

Years after he and Daryl broke up, he was always asking me about how she was doing, hoping that I was being the friend to her that he could no longer be. For some reason only she could possibly fathom, Daryl started talking to the press about Jackson Browne at Jackie's funeral, about how he'd picked her out of the crowd at a Chicago concert and asked her to dance onstage. I was hoping Browne or anybody else could do the same thing at this moment and shut her up. On Memorial Day, John chose to stay at the Presidential house on the Cape instead of the Vineyard, where Jackie had built a house in the early eighties. The Vineyard was much more isolated, but also his mother’s home and he needed a different environment. When I stopped by, John was making a bowl of pasta, his eyes as big as quarters, like a deer caught in the headlights. He was still shaken by the loss of his mother. Daryl was there and you could feel the tension. I think John knew at this point that their relationship was too broken to fix.

I didn't meet Carolyn until the fall of 1994. At once, I found her to be as charismatic as John was. "Charisma," you may know, was once a theological term meaning "grace." She had that quality. She was utterly compelling and attractive. I was also impressed with the fact that she was more than a little eccentric. She was not conventional in any sense. Carolyn seemed a lot like John's mother in her quirkiness and also in her capacity to engage one's total attention. She could be really sexy. Although she definitely was not a vamp. I think she was actually some kind of angel. But like many angels, her empathy was her main enemy. She was too raw to the pain of others. She felt it as deeply herself. And after the wedding, she became the "Howard Hughes of Brides," as she found it so hard going out in public. I think Carolyn not ever giving an interview is what pushed that "ice queen" image. She kept to herself and rejected everyone when they tried to butter her up for an interview.

NYFIX: Speaking of coming clean, while John's buddies like Robert Littell and Richard Blow have found solace in writing about their famous friend, why is it that his former girlfriends have barely talked?

JPB: I think it's a return of loyalty and respect that he showed for them to keep their relationships private. John's relationships with women were always very mature, which I think had something to do with his mother's upbringing. And Carolyn wasn't threatened by longtime friends like Sasha Chermayeff, Jennifer Christian, or Christina Haag whom John once thought was wife material. Indeed, he had called Sasha her 'platonic wife' for a while. John was always a monogamous guy. And I don't think that Carolyn was so jealous because she really had nothing to be jealous about. He was very happy with her, at home. It's kind of goofy to say, but he was like a Norman Rockwell character.

NYFIX: But was she really happy? Not according to her old flame, Michael Bergin, who wrote "The Other Man."

Robert Littell: Carolyn seemed happy when I saw them together in private. I think Bergin should lose some sleep over that book. He wrote it because he was angry at Carolyn for shutting him out of her life. John had to hang up the phone on Bergin, because this guy had become a stalker. Kate Moss said Bergin was a loser, and she was harassed by him too. Carolyn didn't ever love Bergin, but he was so obsessed with her it was scary. Carolyn was a beautiful, empathetic person who was too sensitive for the press maelstrom. But by 1999, she seemed to be getting used to it. John had always been looking for stability. He said when Christina Haag called him in 1984, 'My wife is available now', because she'd broken up with her boyfriend. And so he thought he was going to marry Christina, who was Jackie's favorite. I don't think John ever thought he was going to marry Daryl Hannah, because she could be shallow and immature, but he was always looking for a wife.

John was truly a monogamous guy. And he was a loyal guy. And it wasn't just loyalty amongst guys. It wasn't like he was just a great pal with men and not with women. He'd been brought up by an extraordinary woman, and he respected women probably more than he did guys. He was always looking for his wife, that person whose feelings would be as important for him as his own feelings. And when he was younger he of course had some fun here and there, but nothing remotely similar to his father's track. John was a man who had to handle tremendous grief throughout his life while still maintaining that Kennedy image and legacy. His mother put overwhelming pressure on him to be in politics. John told me he knew deep in his heart Carolyn wouldn't ever betray him, despite her moods and head games.

Carolyn collaborated occasionally with the Robin Hood Foundation. I know John drawed a will where Carolyn would have gotten his money, the loft and all his belongings. With exception of small bequeaths (half million dollars each) to Sasha Chermayeff and RoseMarie Terenzio, and donations to several charities, he left everything to any children they would've had and named Carolyn as his children's guardian. John didn't give Carolyn an allowance, because he didn't want she felt like a kept woman. She had full access to his bank accounts, and she had her own bank account along with credit cards. John was visiting Keith Stein in Toronto in June 1999. During that trip, Keith recalled that John had indicated that he was very upbeat about his marriage and looking forward to fatherhood. Keith Stein said to me, "He talked about having kids as if it were imminent in their future." For all we know Carolyn could've been pregnant when she took that fatal flight. —The Men We Became: My Friendship with John F. Kennedy, Jr. (2004) by Robert T. Littell

Richard Blow, former executive editor of Kennedy's political magazine "George" recounts some stories from his memoir about John Kennedy Jr. in "American Son" (2002). Blow paints a picture of a charming, charismatic man with an occasionally explosive temper who viewed his own celebrity and frequent appearances in the gossip columns with "a sort of bemused fascination as if they were covering a stranger who happened to share his name." Blow thinks Kennedy decided not to run for the New York Senate seat being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan out of deference to his wife. In the spring of 1999, Kennedy considered running for the Senate but then worried Carolyn wouldn't be able to handle more media scrutiny. Blow said the couple occasionally had painful fights followed by periods of intense closeness. "John was ecstatic in her company. He would gaze upon her as if he couldn't completely believe he had found a woman so special." His magazine was at the time owned by publisher Hachette Filipacchi, which was losing money steadily. George magazine was shut down shortly after his death. Blow also makes several references to the frightening possibility of John's Piper Saratoga having been sabotaged prior to the takeoff, since prominent figures in the Kennedy clan had always had powerful enemies. Source: www.amazon.com