.

Interrogation at the Grassy Knoll:
November 22, 1963

Who are you guys? We’re from the CIA.
And you? I’m Lucien Sarti from Marseilles.
What about you swarthy types? Who, us?
We’re Cuban exiles, and we won’t discuss
The reason why we’re here. And how about you?
I’m sent by Sam Giancana and his crew.
And you? J. Edgar Hoover is my chief.
And you there, fella? Clay Shaw has a beef
With JFK, and that’s why I’m around.
And you two guys there, squatting on the ground?
Wall Street and the oil-rich tycoons
Paid our way here. What about you goons?
Fidel Castro and the Revolution
Must be defended. This is the solution.
And you guys? We were sent by LBJ—
That snotty Harvard brahmin’s in his way.
And you there, buddy? Santo Trafficante
Wants to send down to the hell of Dante
That little Irish prick. Man, what a mob!
So much muscle just for one small job!
And all you others, crowding in the aisles?
E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, Jimmy Files,
David Atlee Phillips, Chauncey Holt…
Enough already! I’m about to bolt.
You sure there’s room behind this picket fence
For all of you to shoot? It makes no sense
For me to hang around and spoil the fun.

Hey fella—who are YOU? And where’s your gun?

Me? I’m Oswald, and I’m gonna split—
It looks like you don’t need me for the hit.

.

Possible persons or groups implicated in the Kennedy assassination:

CIA: The Central Intelligence Agency. Many theories of the JFK assassination center on this powerful governmental body, which held a serious grudge against the President for the failure of Bay of Pigs invasion, the dismissal of Allen Dulles, and for fear that JFK was planning to dismantle the agency or seriously downgrade its influence.

Lucien Sarti: A French drug trafficker and gangster accused of being the shooter at the grassy knoll in Dallas. Sarti never denied this, but did reveal certain facts about his connection with criminals in Marseilles who were subjects of investigation into JFK’s assassination. Other persons questioned in connection with the assassination have spoken of “a French gunman.”

Cuban exiles: Many have thought that the intense anger Cuban exiles felt about JFK’s betrayal of them in the Bay of Pigs fiasco, and his suppression of their privately organized attacks on Cuba, prompted some of them to undertake the killing.

Sam Giancana: The Mafia boss of Chicago, who was part of the successful Democratic plan to steal the 1960 election via fake ballots and the counting of deceased persons as voters in Illinois. The subsequent effort of Robert F. Kennedy, as Attorney General, to vigorously prosecute organized crime figures was taken as an ungrateful stab in the back. Some have claimed that this led to a Mafia-arranged assassination of JFK, designed to undercut his brother’s power.

J. Edgar Hoover: Head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. It has been argued that Hoover was well aware in advance of the Mafia plot to kill JFK, but did nothing to stop it out of hatred for the President and his policies.

Clay Shaw: A New Orleans businessman who was accused and charged by District Attorney James Garrison of that city with participation in the conspiracy to assassinate JFK. Shaw was acquitted after a lengthy trial.

Wall Street: Some have argued that investment, corporate, and banking interests were outraged by JFK’s economic policies, and surreptitiously provided the financing for his assassination.

Oil tycoons: Wealthy Texas oil barons Clint Murchison and H.L. Hunt have been accused of orchestrating the JFK assassination, because the President was planning to end certain legal arrangements that favored their businesses, and which gave them huge relief from taxation.

Fidel Castro: Communist dictator of Cuba, and the target of various failed assassination attempts by the CIA. Many believe that Castro coordinated the assassination of JFK as revenge.

LBJ: Lyndon Baines Johnson, Vice President of the United States. A spectacularly corrupt politician, Johnson has been accused of having arranged the JFK assassination in Texas out of hatred for the Kennedy family, and so as to succeed to the Presidency. Johnson had already been implicated in the contract murder of John Kinser, and of his own sister Josefa Johnson.

Santo Trafficante: A major figure in the Mafia’s Florida operations, who spoke on several occasions of his knowledge of organized crime’s plan to kill JFK, and of his certainty that the President would be “hit” prior to the 1964 election.

E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis: two long-time CIA operatives who were suspected of being part of the suspicious trio of “tramps” photographed in Dallas on the day of the assassination, near the Texas Book Depository. Two of Hunt’s sons claim that their father privately admitted to them his involvement in the plot to kill JFK.

Jimmy Files: A gunman working for organized crime who has confessed to being the shooter on the grassy knoll in Dallas, and who has provided a great deal of plausible information concerning the details of the assassination.

David Atlee Phillips: A CIA officer who was accused by several persons of being Lee Harvey Oswald’s connection to the agency as a civilian “operative.”

Chauncey Holt: A CIA agent who claimed to be one of the trio of “tramps” at Dallas on the day of the assassination, and who also confessed to being assigned to deliver false Secret Service credentials to others involved in the plot.

Lee Harvey Oswald: the young man arrested for firing rifle shots at JFK from the Texas Book Depository, and who was killed two days later by Jack Ruby.

.

.

Joseph S. Salemi has published five books of poetry, and his poems, translations and scholarly articles have appeared in over one hundred publications world-wide.  He is the editor of the literary magazine TRINACRIA and writes for Expansive Poetry On-line. He teaches in the Department of Humanities at New York University and in the Department of Classical Languages at Hunter College.

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18 Responses

  1. C.B. Anderson

    Mark Lane could not have said it as well as you did, Joseph. Another irrelevant but possibly interesting item: Murchison’s son, Burke, was in my class at Wesleyan University and lived on my hall freshman year.

    Reply
  2. Phil S. Rogers

    Enlightening, there were actually a couple names here I was not familiar with, Phillips and Holt. Unfortunately we will never know how all was coordinated or who was really the person to put everything together. I remember the day, they let high school out early. Thank you for the poem and additional information.
    One has to wonder how close the country is to a similar situation.

    Reply
  3. Joseph S. Salemi

    It’s clear today that there was a conspiracy to murder JFK, but now, after sixty years, it has become impossible to unravel the details or find out exactly who was responsible. Too many witnesses have died, and the governmental agencies that know the truth have had ample time to purge or hide their documents. But the lying Warren Commission Report is still held up as a sacred text by our Deep State, and court historians like Vincent Bugliosi have spent years maintaining the fraud.

    The point of my poem is that not all of the various plausible conspiracies can be true — there simply are too many of them. The best investigation was done by a British team in a multi-part documentary than ran for several hours, but although every single possible explanation was extremely convincing, the sheer number of them made it impossible to decide which could be true.

    This has all the hallmarks of a CIA deliberate disinformation operation. It works this way: create a huge number of conflicting and incompatible “reports,” and hope that the resulting confusion will force people to throw up their hands in despair and drop the question.

    Hasn’t anybody asked this question: why, after sixty years, are the CIA and the FBI and other security agencies still fighting tooth and nail to prevent a complete release of all the unredacted documents pertaining to this case? Why was President Trump badgered endlessly (and finally successfully) to NOT allow a full release of the remaining documents? What the swiving hell is going on?

    Reply
    • Mike Bryant

      Exactly, Joe. RFK,Jr. lays the blame for the murders of his father and uncle at the feet of the CIA.

      Reply
  4. Roy Eugene Peterson

    This is a great collection of miscreant suspects. When I taught history at universities, I used to ask the students to conduct research and make plausible cases for their final answer of who shot JFK. You perfectly covered all the possibilities in specific motivations. I was an ROTC cadet with flag duty on our campus the day JFK was shot and was ordered to lower the flag to half-mast. Surprisingly, we were also told ROTC cadets might be called to duty to replace troops at various forts who might be sent to Cuba. I am still dubious of whether that would have happened, but I never forgot the “rumor.” This poem is such a great concise exercise in revealing the additional candidates who may have been involved in the assassination.

    Reply
  5. Yael

    I like this format of good classical poetry concisely relating a barrage of complex and conflicting information so that a simple picture emerges. This information is usually presented in lengthy essay format and piecemeal, which gets many readers lost in a mind labyrinth of inefficiency and causes them to lose interest. Your poetic device of the hypothetical interrogation in one place and time is genius.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Thank you, Yael. Lengthy prose does have the disadvantage that you describe. It’s useful for recording all the pertinent details of something, but it does not hold the reader in the way that a poem can.

      Reply
  6. Margaret Coats

    Joe, when everything is as clear as mud after sixty years for the dirt to settle, the best you can do is say why as briefly as possible. Congratulations!

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Margaret, many thanks. I understand that Rob Reiner has just made a multi-part podcast about the assassination, in which he claims that he has definitely identified and named the responsible parties. But frankly, I am disinclined to see it, as the whole subject has summoned up (and then dismissed) countless theories.

      Reply
  7. Mike Bryant

    Joe, Tucker Carlson recently shed a little more light on the assassination of JFK and also on the takedown of Nixon, who won the election by over seventeen million votes, a record.

    https://twitter.com/WallStreetApes/status/1727154678549688610?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1727154678549688610%7Ctwgr%5E490f7d2a4bb434cee23618b37b70069e518140da%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fchoiceclips.whatfinger.com%2F2023%2F11%2F22%2Ftucker-on-how-the-deep-state-cia-fabricated-a-crime-then-replaced-the-most-popular-president-in-history%2F

    The transcript doesn’t contain everything that the video does, so better just to scroll down to the video.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Someone very high up in the American government wanted Kennedy dead. And that same party (or its operatives) were willing to bring down Richard Nixon and his administration simply because Nixon had learned who was behind the operation, and why. The CIA chief Richard Helms was silent because total silence is the only thing that works when one is caught up in evil as deep and pervasive as this.

      These kinds of revelations are shattering.

      Reply
  8. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Joe, I would like to echo Yael in her appreciation for your poem. I love the powerful punch of poetry when it comes to relaying significant points that often get lost in a news article or opinion piece. Your poem – a poem which has inspired some excellent comments – is artistic and effective in equal measure. It’s also inspiring. Thank you!

    Reply
  9. Joseph S. Salemi

    Many thanks, Susan. I find that rhymed couplets make for very incisive and readable poems.

    Reply
  10. Stephen Binns

    Brilliant, Joseph, as literature and as history. Unlike many historians, you (wittily) demonstrate the elusiveness (by its very nature) of the past.

    Reply
  11. James A. Tweedie

    Odd that we seem to have a clearer understanding of the assassinations of nearly every historical figure (including Julius Caesar and Marat) than we have of the trifecta of King, Jr. and the two Kennedy’s. Your poem illustrates and illumes the fog of history in all its conspiratorial obfuscation. But seriously, nicely done and the footnotes were helpful, too.

    Reply
  12. Joseph S. Salemi

    I sincerely thank you all for your comments, even though I have not been able to answer each commenter specifically at this busy time.

    Reply
  13. Adam Sedia

    I finally had time to sit down and take this in. I particularly enjoy the new “twist” on the heroic couplet, turning it into a dialogue. It shows that even a form long derided as exhausted still has potential.

    The poem itself is a nice compendium of the various theories behind the assassination, and the end leaves things open to interpretation, much like the assassination itself.

    I was in Dallas for a deposition some years ago and had to visit Dealy Plaza. It’s a lot smaller in person than it looks on film: an easy shot for anyone (from the depository or the knoll).

    Reply

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