Live with Regis and Harvey Lee

Have you ever heard of Regis Blahut? But I'm getting ahead of myself. Have you heard of Robert Groden?

Groden was a photographic consultant for the doomed House Select Committee on Assassinations. (To see just how doomed it was, you ought to read the account of its own frustrated investigator, Gaeton Fonzi.) He gave Chief Counsel and Patron Saint of the Limited Hangout, Robert Blakey, some serious grief.

Here's Groden, from Fonzi's book:

One of the first things I did was ask to see the autopsy photographs in the National Archives. I wanted to find out how it was that the Warren Commission concluded the shots came from the rear when all the doctors at Parkland Hospital, every one of them, wrote in their reports that Kennedy's head was blasted out. When I saw the autopsy photographs I was shocked. After years in photo optic work I knew what I saw, and what I saw was a matte line in the photograph of the back of the President's head. That's when two photographic elements come together visually and there's an overlap. I saw a soft edged matte insertion forgery of very high quality which made it appear as if there were a small wound of entry in the rear of the President's head.

After performing photo-optical tests on copies to confirm what he saw, Groden wrote a report about it to Blakey, saying that it was his professional opinion that the autopsy photographs of President Kennedy had been retouched.

Now, enter Regis Blahut.

Under the deal Blakey worked out with the CIA (which he never regarded so much as a material witness) for access to confidential records, the agency agreed that certain documents could be transferred to committee offices for examination, but only in a secure room under guard of a CIA representative. In an adjoining secure room was a safe containing evidence such as the autopsy photographs Groden had determined to be skillful hoaxes. Even committee staff were forbidden from touching them without Blakey's permission, and each visit to the safe was logged.

Fonzi's account of what happened next:

One day, a staffer, with authorization, removed some photographs for study in another office and closed the safe but neglected to lock it. When she returned, she noted that one of the autopsy photographs, instead of being in its plastic jacket in its book, was loose and lying on top. It was as if someone had removed it for examination and then, perhaps hearing her return, quickly tossed the photograph back without putting it back in its protective jacket. Blakey called the FBI and a fingerprint check revealed that the person who had touched the photograph was Regis Blahut, the CIA's security representative. Confronted, Blahut first denied and then, after failing three polygraph tests, admitted he had handled the autopsy photo. Blakey later attributed Blahut's act to "curiosity," but Blahut blurted to a reporter, "There are other things involved that are detrimental to other things." The CIA fired him but, in the end, the committee never did find out what the incident was really all about, or whether it was related to any of Bob Groden's claims.

Claims, Fonzi adds, which Blakey never really confronted in his report.

There are other things involved that are detrimental to other things. I don't even know how to begin parsing that. Still, to me, those inelegant words hang over recent American history like a thunderhead. Each official inquiry into the high crimes of the National Security State, from Warren to the reluctantly-struck 9/11 commission, has shown the dead hand of state-sanctioned cover-up: stonewalling, lies, supression and falsification of evidence, intimidation and murder of witnesses. With sleight of hand more adroit than the bumbling Blahut, the security apparatus sends the message, Don't go there.

America is well on its way to paying an apocalyptic price for not having gone there in the immediate aftermath of Kennedy's murder. The truth may have been too awful then, but in the 40 years since the crimes have only compounded, the lies become more fantastic, the cognitive dissonance more acute. The petro-fascist Cheney/Bush cabal would never have seized power if Kennedy's killers had been brought to justice, because they are Kennedy's killers, all in spirit and some in deed. Americans cannot forever ignore or excuse the CIA's perpetual tampering with the storehouse of their historical memory. There will be a reckoning for not going there, and it will be terrible.