JFK Umbrella Man - More Doubts
If you read my
recent piece on the
New York Times’ credulous
video about the “Umbrella Man” and his curious behavior at the scene of
the JFK assassination, you’re ready for what follows. If not, please
take a few minutes and get up to speed, by clicking
here.
The article has struck a nerve, and generated considerable interest.
With that in mind, I’d like to offer some additional thoughts on the
subject.
NEVILLE CHAMBERLAIN
As you’ll recall, the New York Times’ preferred explanation
for why a man opened an umbrella on a sunny day, just as JFK’s limousine
passed—and just as the bullets poured into the car— was an entirely
benign one.
Strange, but benign.
Recap: Fifteen years after the assassination, as the special House
Select Committee on Assassinations was taking the first serious look at
the death of JFK (and others), a man came forward to identify himself as
the so-called “Umbrella Man” and to explain his bizarre behavior.
The man, Steven Louie Witt, said that, no, it was not someone
signaling the shooters, and no, it had nothing at all to do with the
assassination. Instead, he said, it was a message against appeasement of
enemies. He hoped to signal his disapproval of what he considered JFK’s
forbearance of America’s enemies.
How to signal that? Here’s where it gets complicated. Witt claimed he
held up the umbrella as an icon symbolizing the treachery of Neville
Chamberlain, the 1930s British prime minister. Chamberlain, who tried to
preserve peace with Hitler by ceding him a part of Czechoslovakia (the
Sudetenland), became a reviled symbol of appeasement. The self-described
Umbrella Man said that he had been identifying appeasement with
Chamberlain’s trademark umbrella. The connection to JFK came via his
father, Joseph P. Kennedy, ambassador to Britain at the time and an
anti-war isolationist.
Only a very unusual 15-year-old American (Witt’s approximate age in
1938) would have strong feelings about a British prime minister’s
behavior, and still harbor those feelings a quarter century later. It is
even harder to accept that he could believe JFK, himself a young man in
1938, might “get” the message somehow via the umbrella.
Even if we are to accept that Witt really was the man pumping the
umbrella on the Grassy Knoll, and even if he was cognizant of
Chamberlain, and even if he did think he could get a message to JFK via
the Chamberlain affair, we still have a big problem with this claim.
According to John Simkin, a retired British history teacher and textbook author who runs the historical website Spartacus Educational, the umbrella was never the symbol of Chamberlain that the “umbrella man” claimed it was.
“In Britain, there was never any association with an umbrella at all,” Simkin told me. “Everyone had umbrellas and bowlers in those days.” According to Simkin, the only proper symbol for Chamberlain and appeasement was a piece of paper. That was the document he
held aloft, with Hitler’s signature to the so-called Munich
Agreement—in which Hitler agreed not to seek any further territorial
gains in Europe—as Chamberlain famously declared that he had secured
“peace in our time.” (In this old newsreel, you can see Chamberlain hold aloft that document.)
Simkin finds the New York Times video’s assertion that the purpose of opening the umbrella and pumping it in the air to signal Munich simply laughable.
More likely, it was exactly what it appeared to be: a method of
signaling shooters, perhaps that JFK had been hit, perhaps that he still
seemed to be alive, perhaps to keep shooting. Although it was a sunny
day, it had rained the night before, and there was a wind, so it would
not have been operationally illogical to move forward with using an
umbrella. The fact that the New York Times and the
establishment in general have never considered the umbrella worthy of
real, serious inquiry, tells us that if the umbrella was part of a plot, it was not so bad a choice.
RIO GRANDE BUILDING
In the last article, I mentioned that Witt, the self-proclaimed
“Umbrella Man,” worked for Rio Grande National Life Insurance in the Rio
Grande building. I mentioned that the same building housed the
Immigration office frequented by Lee Harvey Oswald, and the local office
of the highly negligent Secret Service. I mentioned that Rio Grande
wrote a lot of insurance for the military. And, separately, I noted the
strong military intelligence connections to key figures connected with
11/22/63.
One thing I did not mention, but should have, was that Military Intelligence itself had offices in that Rio Grande building.
Now, all of that could be coincidence. But there’s a reason certain
entities signed leases with particular landlords and not
others—especially so in Dallas circa 1963 (more on this in
Family of Secrets.)
DARK COMPLECTED MAN
Some of our readers wondered why I did not mention another figure who
acted strangely as Kennedy’s limo passed. This was the so-called “Dark
Complected Man”—so named because his complexion was his most readily
identifiable feature in photos from November 22.
I left him out of the initial piece because I wanted to focus solely
on Umbrella Man, who, after all, was the sole subject of that New York Times video I was considering.
Nevertheless, Dark Complected Man is without question an extremely
important character. Maybe even more deserving of scrutiny than Umbrella
Man.
Dark Complected Man (DCM), like Umbrella Man, was on the Grassy
Knoll, and, like Umbrella Man, appears to reasonable observers to have
been signaling. At the precise moment that JFK’s car passed, as Umbrella
Man opened and pumped his umbrella repeatedly, Dark Complected Man shot
his fist up into the air. To some, DCM seemed to be calling for a halt
to the presidential limo, which did in fact either come to a complete
halt or slowed down to a crawl.
It’s not just their actions at the moment that Kennedy’s head is blown apart. It’s how they behave afterwards.
Instead of reacting with horror and springing into action, these two
purported strangers sit down together, on the curb, and calmly survey
the chaos. In their icy nonchalance, they exhibit an almost professional
detachment.
Another intriguing thing about DCM is that in photos, something that
looks like a radio or walkie-talkie appears to be protruding from his
back pocket.
Taken together, Dark Complected Man and Umbrella Man add real bulk to
the mountain of circumstantial evidence for a conspiracy in the death
of JFK.
Maybe we do have The Times to thank, after all. Although that whimsical video
was intended to discourage inquiry, it has had exactly the opposite
effect. It goads us to focus diligently on long-ago events that “the
paper of record” will not scrutinize—and that cast a shadow over
democracy to the present moment.
WhoWhatWhy plans to continue doing this kind of
groundbreaking original reporting. You can count on it. But can we count
on you? We cannot do our work without your support. Please click here to donate; it’s tax deductible. And it packs a punch.
GRAPHIC: http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c54e70c7c73d.jpg
