JFK's murder still draws conspiracy buffs

Dateline: Sudbury , Ont.

Two researchers into the assassination of John F. Kennedy are chatting with
a reporter before a symposium on conspiracy theories. When the reporter
admits that he is attending the Sudbury conference in place of someone who
was sent elsewhere, one researcher turns conspiratorially to the other and
says: ``He was probably sent to Antarctica.'' The two nearly collapse in
laughter. Steeped in assassination minutiae, the researchers know that the
man in charge of security for Kennedy's ill-fated visit to Dallas in
November, 1963, had been sent to Antarctica at the last minute. It was a
joke. Get it?

The 200 symposium delegates certainly would. They came from near and far,
descending on Sudbury's Laurentian University late last week, intent on
examining who really killed Kennedy that day in Dallas, and who was behind
it, and why. They do not buy the Warren Commission's official
explanation--that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. But their pursuit is not
easy. Most official documents have been kept secret until recently; last
week, the CIA announced that it would release another 23,000 pages- -less
than 10 per cent of what it has. And while buffs were buoyed by the 1991
movie JFK which depicts a wide-ranging conspiracy--and polls showing that 80
per cent of Americans suspect a plot as well--they are still treated with
the respect accorded those who claim to have seen Elvis aboard a UFO.

But for them, the snickers are a small price for seeking the truth. Don
Scott, 69, a former Sudbury teacher who organized the symposium, says that
he finds the JFK case endlessly fascinating. ``The more you learn, the more
there is to learn,'' he says. It is also something to do. ``I used to play
golf and curl in bonspiels,'' says Tony Centa, a retired shop teacher from
Richmond Hill, Ont. ``Now, I do this.''

The conference coup was Oswald's widow, now Marina Porter, who flew up from
Fort Worth, Tex., where she lives with her current husband. When Porter, 52,
arrived at Laurentian's Alphonse Raymond Building, she was led through the
foyer where a recording of Walter Cronkite intoned, ``the President has been
shot,'' and past a home-made model of Dallas's Dealey Plaza, with
multicolored strands of wool denoting the path of bullets. ``Hell, I never
expected to ever meet Marina,'' said Centa. ``This is unbelievable. '' Wading
through the crowd, Porter admitted that she is uncomfortable at meetings of
assassination scholars. Yet, Scott said, she demanded no appearance fee.
``I'm not doing this to help myself,'' Porter said in her still-thick
Russian accent. ``The issue is much bigger than just me. This business
should have been resolved 25 years ago.''

Few of the delegates have anything but amateur credentials as conspiracy
hunters. Martin Shackleford, who drove up from his home in Saginaw, Mich.,
is a social worker who collects photographic and film evidence. Peter
Whitmey, who flew in from Abbotsford, B.C., is a social studies teacher. But
others, such as John Newman, a historian from Odenton, Md., have brought
intense scholarship to the subject. Newman, a major in U.S. army
intelligence, is the author of JFK and Vietnam, which draws a link between
Kennedy's death and his supposed plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Vietnam.
``It's debatable whether he was killed to enable the United States to get
into the war,'' said Newman, ``but it seems clear that we only went to war
because he died.''

For some, the trip was personal. Beverley Oliver, 47, was a would- be singer
who, in 1963, worked at the Dallas nightclub owned by Jack Ruby, who would
later gun down Oswald. And she was filming the presidential motorcade on a
home movie camera when Kennedy was shot. But Secret Service agents
confiscated her film, she says, and the Warren Commission did not ask her to
testify. So when she heard about the Sudbury symposium, she and her husband
and daughter loaded up their 36-foot motor home and drove up from west
Texas. ``I want my story to be recorded accurately,'' Oliver said, ``and not
played with to fit somebody's assassination theory.'' If he could, Kennedy
himself might say the same thing.

PHOTO: Oswald's widow: coup (GINO DONATO)

PHOTO: From the movie JFK, the assassination scene in Dallas's Dealey Plaza:
`The more you learn, the more there is to learn' (DAVID WOO/GAMMA- LIAISON)

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By James Deacon

Copyright 1993 by Maclean's Magazine. Text may not be copied without the express written permission of Maclean's Magazine.

Deacon, James, The Kennedy clan.., Vol. 106, Maclean's, 08-30-1993, pp 58.