Exploding the Truth: The JFK Jr. Assassination (2018) by Professor John Koerner presents evidence of a conspiracy to assassinate the only surviving son of President John F. Kennedy and considers the motives that many powerful forces had to make sure he never set foot in the White House. Divided into two parts, Part One examines the potential motives the C.I.A. and perhaps even Israeli intelligence, had to eliminate JFK Jr. Part Two systematically dismantles the official version of events, that JFK Jr. crashed his plane due to pilot error, and examines both the evidence of a government cover-up at the crime scene, and the extensive eyewitness reports of an explosion that brought the aircraft down. John Koerner is an author of several historical books and a professor of American History at Erie Community College in Williamsville, New York. John Koerner has also appeared on "America's Book of Secrets" on the History Channel.
When trying to prove the existence of a conspiracy it is essential to systematically dismantle the lies that filter into the accepted versions of historical events. It will be my purpose to logically dispel the notion that John F. Kennedy Jr.'s death was nothing more than a tragic accident, and prove beyond any reasonable doubt that the events of July 16, 1999, were instead a skillfully planned assassination. I consider myself in line with Jim DiEugenio, who recently confessed: "The idea that I have made money off of my research on the Kennedy's case is so polar to the facts that its bonkers." John F. Kennedy Jr. was the publisher of a political magazine, George, the loving husband to a beautiful wife, Carolyn Bessette, and the heir to the Kennedy throne if he ever chose to run for office. Towards the end of his life he increasingly felt the need to get more involved in politics, as confirmed by private discussions with his colleagues about continuing the Kennedy tradition of public service. He also became aware of the powerful forces behind his father’s assassination, and felt obligated to quietly pursue the truth. Was this making him a threat?
I have written previous books about JFK and President William McKinley, but none of these books have enjoyed the level of national impact that I had hoped. The only book that received a fair level of national media exposure was my book about the Kennedy assassination, titled Why the C.I.A. Killed JFK and Malcolm X (2014). During the research for this book, I learned about the death of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News who was likely killed by the C.I.A. Like me, Webb was also involved in exposing how the Intelligency Agency was involved in the drug trade. It scared me even further when I found out later that same year in 2014 a movie was released titled Kill the Messenger (directed by Homeland producer Michael Cuesta, starring Jeremy Renner), that chronicled Gary Webb’s research in his book Dark Alliance: The Cia, The Contras. Webb had revealed that a drug ring operating in the San Francisco Bay Area sold tons of cocaine to Los Angeles street gangs and funneled millions in drug profits to the CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras, making Oliver North the fall guy during the Iran–Contra affair.
It appears likely that at the end of his life, JFK Jr. was becoming increasingly aware that the C.I.A. had organized or at least greenlighted the assassination of his father. This fact may have been why he chose to become a publisher, to have a platform to expose the truth to the world, and bring to justice for those who planned his father’s execution. Let us first explore the possibility that John F. Kennedy, Jr. was seriously considering running for governor of New York, and eventually President. This, according to his closest friends, was exactly what was on his mind in the last months of his life. His assistant at George magazine, Rose Marie Terenzio, told People in a July 2016 interview that he was eventually planning on running for President. After Republican New York Senator Alphonse D’Amato told Kennedy he should run for mayor of New York City, he apparently laughed it off. After this encounter with D’Amato, Terenzio asked why he would not want to consider it. His answer pointed to a much loftier goal, a shrewd political calculation that would have made his father proud. “Well, Rosie, how many mayors do you know that become President?” Kennedy said to Terenzio. “I was so shocked I didn’t say anything. Then he smirked as if to say ‘That’s not the road you go down.’ The mayor of a city is not a large enough platform to stage a run for the White House. However, the U.S. Senate, or being the governor of a prominent state like New York could have been just the stepping stone that he had in mind to launch his presidential bid, likely in 2004. RoseMarie Terenzio: "Someone once asked me if John were alive, what would he think of Obama being elected president, and I responded if John were alive, Barack Obama would not be the President. John would have come into the presidency by then. He was approached to run for the Senate before Hillary Clinton joined the race. Carolyn knew it was an eventuality. She was nervous about it—”That’s gonna be crazy”—but she understood it would be in her future."
The next election for governor would have been in 2002. John Kennedy Jr. would have faced George Pataki, who at that time was seeking a third term. Most people voting that year did not vote for Pataki, as he garnered an unimpressive 49% of the popular vote. He largely ran on his record of leadership during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York City. The one candidate who could have counteracted this appeal would have been JFK Jr, a longtime resident of New York City. Kennedy probably would have personally known some of the people who died in the attack, and would have aided in the recovery. There is no doubt that his potential appeal as a candidate would have energized New York State Democrats. A fellow Democrat from New York, Mark Green, mulling over his own run for the Senate, conducted a private poll in 1997 to see who Democrats liked the most within their state. “He was by far the most popular Democrat,” Green said. “He had the highest favorable-unfavorable spread; 65% of Democrats rated him favorably and only 10% rated him unfavorably.” Former New York State Democratic Chairman John Marino said that if Kennedy ever ran for office, “it would have been, goodbye to anyone else.” Such a campaign would have been much like when his uncle Robert Kennedy won his New York U. S. Senate seat by an impressive 10-point margin, 53% to 43%, over incumbent Republican Kenneth Keating in 1964. Assuming Kennedy won the election in November 2002, he would have become New York’s 54th governor on January 1, 2003. Kennedy posed no political threat to Hillary Clinton in 1999 because he had decided not to run against her for the Senate nomination. Hence this fact removes the only motives the Clintons would have had to conspire to murder him.
Journalist Lawrence Leamer confirmed Kennedy’s reluctance to go against Clinton in his book Sons of Camelot (2011). He said that if Clinton wanted to run he would not fight her, and instead turn his political ambitions elsewhere. “He was too much of a gentleman,” Leamer said. In fact, the whole concept that the Clintons were behind Kennedy’s assassination is more akin to misinformation, deliberately placed in the fringe media to distract attention from the real forces behind his assassination. It is reminiscent of theories for the JFK assassination that Fidel Castro, or the Russians, conspired to kill Kennedy, which have no real basis. Removing the Clintons as conspirators is also helpful to allow us to pin the blame on a much more likely force behind JFK Jr.’s assassination, namely the C.I.A.
Therefore, let us try to establish that JFK Jr. was in fact researching his father’s death. The most credible source and most interesting lead was brought up by Don Jeffries, the author of Hidden History: An Expose of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics (2016). Jeffries pointed out that Meg Azzoni had a lot to reveal about JFK Jr.’s mindset when he interviewed her. Kennedy and Azzoni dated when they attended Phillips Academy in the late 1970s, ironically the same school that the Bush family sent their children to. It was here that the young Kennedy began to show an interest in finding out the truth behind the assassination. Was Kennedy able to obtain the attendance records of young George W. Bush for November 1963? Even later in his life, as an alumnus he probably had enough connections at the school to find out if George W. Bush was at Phillips Academy on November 22, 1963. As a Kennedy, he could have charmed his way to get those records from the administration, or obtained them covertly. Interestingly, his time at Phillips seems to correspond to the time when he began to form an obsession with who really killed his father. This was confirmed when Azzoni published a book in 2007 titled 11 Letters and a Poem: John F. Kennedy Jr. and Meg Azzoni. In it, she writes that as a teenager in the late 1970s, JFK Jr. was beginning to doubt the official version of events, and wanted to seek his own answers. “His heartfelt quest,” she wrote, “was to expose and bring to trial who killed his father, and covered it up.” Jeffries also said that he interviewed “another friend of JFK Jr.’s inner circle, who very adamantly requested to remain anonymous, and who verified that JFK Jr. was indeed quite knowledgeable about the assassination and often spoke of it in private.”
Jeffries also claimed George was set to launch an investigation into the assassination in the very near future: “Investigative reporter Wayne Madsen confirmed that he was scheduled to meet with JFK Jr. the following week to discuss joining George magazine, where his primary focus would be investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.” Which brings us to the strange story of a man named True Ott. Jeffries and Azonni provide ample evidence of Kennedy’s desire to investigate the assassination of his father. The assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr. should also be viewed in the prism of a lasting hatred that the C.I.A. has harbored towards the Kennedy family for decades. His death then would just be the latest example of how this agency consistently undermined the Kennedy administration and eventually eliminated JFK, RFK, and even twice targeted Edward Kennedy. For a full explanation of the C.I.A. motives for the Kennedy assassination, look no further than my book Why the C.I.A. Killed JFK and Malcolm X: The Secret Drug Trade in Laos. The rift between Kennedy and the agency began with the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The effort to depose Cuban dictator Fidel Castro completely failed. During the C.I.A.-backed invasion, the agency asked Kennedy to provide air support for the invaders, or stage a mass invasion. The president refused to do so, fearing the political fallout from attacking an unprovoked enemy, as well as a retaliatory response from the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, the agency felt the president could not be trusted to back their covert operations, and viewed him as soft on communism.
Privately, the president felt the agency was deliberately trying to provoke him into starting a wider war with the Russians. Kennedy eventually fired C.I.A. Director Allen Dulles, and C.I.A. Director of Operations Richard Bissell. The agency responded by infiltrating JFK’s pet program, the Peace Corps. Agents were pretending to be college students, and then joined the Peace Corps to go overseas to promote war. To this very day, if you were ever in the C.I.A. you cannot join the Peace Corps. After this the president became so angry with the agency that he told an administration official that he was “going to shatter the C.I.A. into a thousand pieces.” The following summer, the president did just that, issuing National Security Action Memorandums 55, 56, and 57. These directives shifted covert operations from the C.I.A. to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and to the Department of Defense. Here is what NSAM 55 said: "I regard the Joint Chiefs of Staff as my principal military advisor responsible both for initiating advice to me and for responding to requests for advice. I expect their advice to come to me direct and unfiltered. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have a responsibility for the defense of the nation in the Cold War similar to that which they have in conventional hostilities. They should know the military and paramilitary forces and resources available to the Department of Defense, verify their readiness, report on their accuracy, and make appropriate recommendations for their expansion and improvement. I look to the Chiefs to contribute dynamic and imaginative leadership in contributing to the success of the military and paramilitary aspects of Cold War programs. Any proposed paramilitary operation in the concept state will be presented to the Strategic Resources Group for initial consideration and for approval as necessary by the President." The Chiefs would now be the “principal military advisor,” not the C.I.A., and their advice must be “direct and unfiltered,” implying that the agency had lied to him, and hid information. JFK would now be counting on the Chiefs’ leadership in “paramilitary” operations, an area that had been assigned to the agency. As I said in my book, “This World War Two veteran was seeking to reestablish the model of ‘conventional’ warfare that worked during World War Two when there was no C.I.A., and the president and the Chiefs operated in tandem. NSAM 55 was a severe blow to the power, influence, and role of the Central Intelligence Agency. So was NSAM 57, issued that same day.” In the 1960s, Laos was one the best places to grow opium. Since the 1950s the C.I.A. had used the cover story of fighting communism in Southeast Asia to provide themselves easy access to the drug trade. The agency would use Air America planes to transport the opium and later convert it to heroin to sell to American GI’s in Vietnam. The agency and the Joint Chiefs consistently pressured the president to commit 60,000 ground troops to Southeast Asia which he resisted at every turn. A massive commitment would mean years of access to the drug trade and a susceptible customer base to sell heroin to. On July 23, 1962, a Declaration of Neutrality for Laos was signed in Geneva which ordered the C.I.A. to leave Laos. It was not long before the agency began to retaliate. On August 5, 1962, less than two weeks after the Laotian peace accords, Marilyn Monroe was found dead in her apartment. Instead of following the president’s orders, the agents defied this order, and brought war back to Laos. They assassinated leaders loyal to JFK, all to get him to commit ground forces to win the civil war there.
Richard Nixon recounted in his memoirs a revealing conversation that he had with Kennedy on April 20, 1961, one day after the Bay of Pigs Invasion failed. “I just don’t think we ought to get involved, particularly where we might find ourselves fighting millions of Chinese troops in the jungles,” Kennedy said. “In any event, I don’t see how we can make a move in Laos, which is thousands of miles away, if we don’t make a move in Cuba, which is only ninety miles away.” Kennedy felt the same way about Vietnam. The Sec Def Conference of May 1963, and another meeting of key JFK advisors in Hawaii in November 1963, both recommended a phased “De-Vietnamization” withdrawal from Vietnam by 1965. To this effect, JFK signed National Security Action Memorandum 263 on October 11, 1963, to recall the first 1,000 advisors of the 16,500 by December 1963. By November 1963 it was clear this president was not interested in any large-scale commitment to war in Southeast Asia which would spell an end to any hope for continued access to the drug trade. Not only that, there was a very good chance there was going to be four more years of JFK, considering his approval ratings, and polling done at the time against Barry Goldwater. A poll conducted in March 1963 of JFK against Goldwater had Kennedy trouncing him 67% to 27%. A second term could not be tolerated by this rogue agency. Proving the C.I.A.’s involvement in the Kennedy assassination is not even all that difficult any longer thanks to the work of many gifted historians, researchers, and investigators such as Jim Marrs, and New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison.
Most importantly though are the recent revelations of longtime C.I.A. agent E. Howard Hunt. Before Hunt passed away in 2007, he offered a deathbed confession to his son John that detailed C.I.A. involvement in the Kennedy assassination. Four months after Hunt died, Rolling Stone did an article explaining nearly every detail of Hunt’s deathbed confession regarding the JFK assassination. Much of what he said had been suspected by several researchers for years. Taken from my book, Why the C.I.A. Killed JFK and Malcom X, one of the six key men Hunt identified for the plot to kill the president was C.I.A. Agent David Morales, who died in 1978 before he could be questioned by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Like Hunt, Morales worked on the Bay Pigs Invasion fiasco, and blamed Kennedy for its failure. Another simple way to tie the agency to the John F. Kennedy assassination was provided by Jim Marrs in his book, Crossfire. The Mannlicher-Carcano rifle used to frame Lee Harvey Oswald had ammunition that could be traced back to the C.I.A. According to an F.B.I. document, the 6.5 mm ammunition found in the Texas School Book Depository was part of a batch manufactured on a U.S. government contract by Westin Cartridge Corporation of East Alton, Illinois, which is now a part of Winchester-Western Division of Olin Industries. Is it just a coincidence that on this same weekend exactly 30 years prior there was another Kennedy family party that ended in disaster? July 18, 1969, was when the C.I.A. ambushed Edward Kennedy at Chappaquiddick. Both parties were centered around the late Robert Kennedy; the 1969 party to honor RFK campaign workers, and the 1999 party to celebrate RFK’s youngest daughter getting married. We just noted above how much hatred the C.I.A. especially harbored towards “the little bastard” Robert Kennedy due to his plans to end the Vietnam War, and expose the truth of the JFK assassination.
The C.I.A. probably planned for JFK Jr.’s body to be recovered on July 18, 1999, the 30th anniversary of Chappaquiddick, in some sadistic twist. The recovery of the wreckage was not a matter of national security, nor a military operation. Three civilians had died. Nevertheless, within hours the C.I.A. was sweeping the area with three KH-11 photographic satellites to find the bodies. In fact, the agency knew that Edward Kennedy would of course be at this wedding party for his niece in the same location as the Chappaquiddick ambush 30 years early. Perhaps the irony was just too much for them to pass up. We can go back further with this date. We noted already how July 1962 was a bad month for the C.I.A. On July 23, 1962, a Declaration of Neutrality was signed for Laos, spelling a potential end to C.I.A. access to the opium market in Laos. Exactly one week before though, on July 16, 1962, the president did something else though that may have angered the agency even more deeply, on a personal level. Late on that Monday evening, Kennedy began an affair with the ex-wife of C.I.A. agent Cord Meyer. Her name was Mary Pinchot Meyer. Michael O’Brien in his book
John F. Kennedy: A Biography, briefly discusses the beginning of the affair with Meyer, who was also the sister of Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee’s wife Antoinette Pinchot.
In the months preceding his death, John Kennedy Jr’s magazine ran an article about the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister. The article implies that Rabin was the victim of a conspiracy, and that the lone gunman who was convicted of the crime was simply a patsy. The article in question ran in the March 1997 edition of George. It was written by the mother of the accused assassin, and specifically implicated people within the Shin Bet as being directly involved with the assassination, or suspiciously negligent in their protection of the prime minister. Therefore, the motive would be one of revenge against Kennedy, if the Shin Bet were indeed somehow involved in Kennedy’s death. If the motive was revenge, this is a motive based off human emotions that tend to be acted out soon after the wronged party feels victimized. Therefore, if they felt wronged by Kennedy, why let him live for almost two and a half more years? That does not make any sense. Also, logistically speaking, it would be difficult for this group to pull off an overseas operation, since they operate exclusively within Israel. A final point to make to argue against their involvement is what amounts to near definitive proof of the participation of the military industrial complex in the cover up of the crime scene. No doubt this article of George magazine, March 1997, was not well received within the C.I.A.
It showed John Kennedy Jr’s willingness to support conspiracy theories, and his ability to look beyond manufactured patsies to see the truth, much like with his father’s assassination. One final point we could make is that Mossad and the C.I.A. may have wanted to kill JFK Jr. because they did the same thing to his father. There is speculation that Israeli intelligence conspired with the C.I.A. to assassinate President Kennedy in a support role. Perhaps this article was a sign that JFK Jr. knew of this potential link and might one day expose it. The theory of an Israeli link to the JFK assassination was put forward by Press TV. Dr. Kevin Barrett, a founding member of the Scientific Panel for the Investigation of 9/11, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV. Dr. Barrett said Israel had a motive to kill Kennedy because the president was opposed to the regime’s nuclear weapons program which he believed could instigate a nuclear arms-race in the Middle East. Kennedy encountered tensions with former Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion who wanted to develop nuclear weapons, he said. “It seems very likely that indeed the Israelis played a significant role in the assassination as discussed in the Michael Collins Piper’s book, Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Conspiracy,” Barrett observed.
John Kennedy Jr. seemed to want to fly mainly for stress relief. It was reminiscent of his father’s love of sailing. Journalist Michael Daly of the New York Daily News did a profile of JFK Jr., aptly titled “Flying Truly Was His Passion” for the Sunday edition, July 18, 1999. In it, Daly discussed how being a pilot allowed him to escape the pressures of his high-profile life. “It gave him the peace he was looking for,” said Kennedy’s flight instructor Ralph Howard. “He got hounded by the paparazzis, and I think he realized this was where he could get away from everything. It was so peaceful up there for him, nobody bothered him. Many others had thrilled at the freedom of flight, but maybe no one ever needed it so much as him.” Howard also put to rest any notion that Kennedy was a reckless pilot. In fact, he was the opposite, especially when loved ones were on board. According to Daly, “On November 25, 1997, three days after the 34th anniversary of his father’s assassination, Kennedy traveled with his wife to Indiana to trade in the Buckeye plane for a two-seater. Howard and his brother Chris noted that Kennedy had become a very careful pilot, always conducting a meticulous preflight check. ‘Every nut and bolt on the airplane,’ Chris Howard remembers. ‘He was very safety oriented.’”
Daly also noted that Kennedy’s love of flying became infectious with his wife. “Chris Howard took Carolyn Bessette Kennedy up for a flight in the two-seater. She threw her arms up and shouted like she was on a roller coaster. ‘She said, ‘I see now why John likes it so much,’ Chris Howard remembers. After landing, she literally was jumping up and down with excitement. She and Kennedy ran toward each other. ‘They just hugged and kissed,’ Chris Howard says. Daly also reported how easily Kennedy got his pilot’s license. “After Kennedy headed back East, he stayed in touch with Ralph Howard by phone and E-mail. Kennedy reported that his wife was asking to go along whenever he went flying. ‘She loved it, and he loved it,’ Ralph Howard says. Kennedy himself sounded as excited as ever when he spoke of taking flight lessons in Vero Beach, Florida. He had no trouble getting the pilot’s license needed for bigger planes in May 1998. ‘John was a natural in flying,’ Ralph Howard says.” Although he obtained his pilot’s license in April 1998, Kennedy had been taking flying lessons for at least 10 years. Arthur Marx, who teaches flying at Martha’s Vineyard Airport, says he gave Kennedy lessons 10 times over that period. “He was a very good pilot,” Marx says. “He wasn’t the least bit cocky.” The NTSB report also noted that he had flown this route many times. “In the 15 months before the accident, the pilot had flown about 35 flight legs either to or from the Essex County/Teterboro, New Jersey, area and the Martha’s Vineyard/Hyannis, Massachusetts, area."
The JFK assassination and the RFK assassination both can be proven to be conspiracies using eyewitness testimony. In both cases, credible people saw more than one person shooting at the crime scene. Although there was no gun involved in the JFK Jr.'s plane crash (that we know of) we can still rely on eyewitness testimony to bring us closer to the truth. Three people heard an explosion in the sky near Martha’s Vineyard on the night of July 16, 1999. This would contradict the official version of events that the plane crashed due to pilot error. The fact that luggage (and possibly other debris) was found scattered miles away from the crash site, indicated that the cabin had been breached by an internal explosion. If eyewitness testimony could back up this claim, there would be no reasonable way to avoid concluding that a bomb brought down the Piper Saratoga. Journalist Lawrence Patterson in the July 31, 1999, edition of the journal Criminal Politics reported the following information. “A report at 3:00 p.m. Saturday, by Shepard Smith of Fox TV, named another of these witnesses of an explosion. In fact, the witness was a guest at the scheduled wedding that J.F.K Jr. and his wife were on their way to attend. The witness was also a friend of Shepard Smith, who is a producer at Fox TV.” In other references, this witness was referred to as a cousin of a producer at Fox News.
“Several witnesses on the ground that night reported seeing and hearing an airborne explosion in the area where Kennedy’s plane went down, and these were all very credible witnesses,” said Scott Meyers who listed three witnesses to an explosion in the sky. This particular (anonymous) witness “was actually in town for Rory Kennedy’s wedding which was to take place that weekend, the very event John and Carolyn were headed for when their plane went down. These eyewitness stories were widely reported by all kinds of media outlets including United Press International, ABC News, and Fox TV.” I want to highlight how the recovery of the emergency locator beacon proved that the U.S. government was involved in this conspiracy to assassinate John F. Kennedy Jr. The second witness in question was a reporter for the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette who was walking along the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard that night, and just happened to be looking in the right place at the right time. What is important about this witness is that he both saw and heard an explosion. Investigator Don Jeffries had this to say about this “mysterious reporter.” WCVB-TV reporter Steve Sbraccia, who covered the story, wrote in a 2006 email, “I’ve always felt there was something wrong about that crash… from the way the police swept through that beach forcing everyone off – to the way they kept the wreck site closely guarded until they pulled up every bit of debris.” Sbraccia had encountered the enigmatic reporter from the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette, who claimed to have seen an explosion in the air and then seemingly vanished from the face of the earth. In another email to me, from 2012, Sbraccia reiterated, “I can swear in court that man was real – and I reported exactly what he told me he saw.” Researcher John DiNardo had attempted to track down this elusive reporter shortly after the incident, but the paper refused to even furnish his name. I encountered the same resistance, when the present editor, who claimed to have personally covered the story for the paper, informed me that she had no recollection at all of any such reporter.
As well as a follower of JFK, I was intrigued by the path his son would choose. I am sure JFK Jr. could have achieved so much more greatness had he lived. It was somehow surprising to find out JFK's son was a rather decent, loyal guy. How rare is it for someone so famous and handsome to not be a complete brat; instead, he was really an outstanding person, a man who, in spite of his wealth and good looks seemed humble and only wanted to do something to alleviate the ills of his country. As his friend John Perry Barlow recalled in 2016: "John really was a serial monogamist, in spite of the fact that it was very difficult for his girlfriends to believe it, because he was under a continuous barrage of opportunities. Most of those flings reported by the press were fake. They made a lot out of that stuff, you know. Sarah Jessica Parker and John had no relationship, not really, and he had nothing with Madonna, not really. John had a crush on Claire Danes, but he never told her. Claire wrote an essay for George in the October 1996 issue. She was 17 at the time, right around Romeo & Juliet. John had a genuine connection with Molly Ringwald in the late 80s, and he had a serious relationship with Daryl Hannah which lasted five years. But he realized Daryl had been lying to him about her priorities. "I was so enamored of Daryl for a long time, but I don't love her anymore," he said to me in 1995. I really think his wife Carolyn was his true love. John and me talked on the phone two weeks before he died. I asked him, 'Do you remember that conversation we had about being a good man?' And he said, 'Of course, I think about it a lot.' Then I said to him, 'I just want you to know that you have spectacularly achieved that objective. You are a good man, the best man I know."
My mission now was to find a male reporter who began writing for the Gazette in May or June 1999, and then stopped reporting for them in August or September 1999. It would confirm the information from John DiNardo’s interview, and it would give us solid proof that this person did exist. I would like to thank Vanessa Mitchell, librarian at the Newspaper & Current Periodical Reading Room and Government Publications Division at the Library of Congress for making sure I was able to obtain the microfilm I was looking for. I picked up another microfilm at the The Buffalo & Erie County Public Library and viewed it at the Grosvenor Room (the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library's Special Collections department) with a second person who wishes to remain anonymous. We began looking at the Gazette in April 1999 and wrote down the names of all male reporters until the September 1999 editions. The process was tedious, but we eventually found what we were looking for. There was a male reporter who began writing for the Gazette in late May 1999, and then once September 1999 arrived, his name no longer appeared. I will not reveal the name of this man who will probably be in his early 40s by 2020. In retrospect, I suppose the Gazette editor wanted to shield this young man from scrutiny or danger. If anyone is interested in finding out his name, you are welcome to look at the microfilm yourself, and verify this through the same process. My advice though if you are going to request this film through interlibrary loan, do not bother trying to get it through any libraries in Massachusetts, go directly through the Library of Congress.
Eyewitness Number Three: Victor Pribanic, who was also mentioned in
The Day John Died (2001) by Christopher Anderson. “The lone fisherman angling for bass off Squibnocket Pond on Martha’s Vineyard looked up to see a small aircraft flying toward the Island. Victor Pribanic, a forty-five-year-old Pittsburg attorney who had been coming to the Vineyard for twenty years, thought nothing of it and went back to his fishing. Within moments there was a loud bang…” Also, Anderson mentioned that Pribanic looked out towards the Atlantic to follow the sound of the explosion. This of course is the opposite direction of Falmouth. All three witnesses heard a single bang in the Atlantic, the opposite direction of Falmouth. Squibnocket Pond is on the extreme western end of Martha’s Vineyard Island. To look at something going on in Falmouth would be impossible from there. He would have to turn around and look across the entire length of the island. Also, the editor said fireworks were going off in Falmouth. None of the witnesses heard fireworks going off. They heard a single explosion. If fireworks were going off over 30 miles away in Falmouth that is an entirely different event from what these witnesses saw and heard. This is how the New York Daily News reported Pribanic’s account in a story on July 21, 1999. “I heard an explosion over my right shoulder,” Pribanic said yesterday in the first interview he has granted since the crash that killed JFK Jr.; his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister Lauren Bessette. “It sounded like an explosion. There was no shock wave, but it was a large bang.” Pribanic, who has spent his summers on Martha’s Vineyard for 20 years, pinpointed the source of the sound about 4 miles offshore, near Nomans Island. He said that just before hearing the noise, he noticed a small aircraft flying low over the water toward the island… Pribanic said he fished until 1 a.m., pulling in one large striper before heading home to bed. When he woke up Saturday morning, he heard the initial reports that Kennedy’s plane was missing and felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He immediately phoned the Martha’s Vineyard Airport. Officials there put him in touch with West Tisbury police, who relayed his information to the National Transportation Safety Board. United Press International, ABC News and WCVB-TV fully confirmed this story. All was well and the sky was moderately clear… All of sudden as a lightning bolt, Pribanic turned abruptly towards the explosion: “I heard a loud impact like a bomb,” said Pribanic, a skilled trial lawyer from White Oak, Pennsylvania. At first, he thought it could have been the military, exploding one of their bombs off of No-Man’s Island, a small island off the shore. But that couldn’t be, since they stopped that years ago. Where Victor Pribanic had pointed as the location of the explosion is exactly where the Coast Guard recovered scattered items from the blown-up plane and near where other debris from the plane had washed ashore. I asked Mr. Pribanic, who returned my call, if he felt that JFK Jr. and his family was murdered. He said, “Yes, it’s certainly in the realm of possibility.”
For a man who was so universally loved and respected by Democrats and Republicans alike for his ability to rise above politics, JFK Jr. is still missed today in our polarized country. He might have been the kind of president to remind us about the value of service not to yourself, but to the greater good of the people. The hope and promise of President Kennedy’s call to service, efforts at racial equality, and struggles for world peace may have lived on in his son, as JFK Jr. faced the challenges of the strife-filled 21st century. JFK Jr. was 38 years-old when he died. JFK had used his brief time in the Congress in the 1950s as the beginning of his path to the White House. A brief sojourn in Albany as governor of New York beginning in 2003 could have put JFK Jr. on a similar trajectory path to the presidency in 2004. John F. Kennedy Jr. would have been 43 years-old on election day that year, the same age that his father was when he took the oath of office on January 20, 1961. JFK Jr. was unique in terms of what he represented in our culture, that's gone, it has not been replaced, and I don't think it ever will be. There was certainly motive on the part of powerful people and groups to kill John F. Kennedy Jr., due to his potential threat as a political candidate, and his investigation into the assassination of his father. The official version of this accident as put forward by the NTSB is counterintuitive. As it's been demonstrated, JFK Jr. was a skilled and careful pilot who knew how to use autopilot. The weather that night was clear. His call in to air traffic control, exactly one hour into the flight proved he was not suffering from spatial disorientation. The only conclusion any logical person would make then is that this crash was no accident. On July 16, 1999, John Fitzgerald Kennedy Jr. was assassinated. This realization has tremendous and painful implications. If we could get to the point where a reopening into this investigation was possible, those responsible of the assassination of John F. Kennedy Jr. could still be held legally accountable.
—"Exploding the Truth: The JFK Jr. Assassination" (2018) by Professor John Koerner
