Walking from Clinton to Locke after a class and people were buzzing talking about Kennedy was shot, but also said Johnson was shot too (first media reports)… of course turned out not to be true… the reports mixed up Johnson with Connelly… Kennedy made huge impression on me forever, the image of youth, dynamism, charisma, dramatic oratory to inspire, pride in country. Our beginning of political appreciation in a way wish were true now… No one since a better speaker to inspire… Maybe Roosevelt was before, but never heard it personally. So felt crushingly sad when heard the news.

Pictures on my wall at home office of my uncle and aunt with JFK at the White House November 19 1963, the three standing and smiling, the last family photo taken there with him before he went to Dallas, and a note on the back from my uncle, Martin, saying “Jerry and Bob, I received this photo November 22, 1963, the day of the assassination.” My uncle was an education ambassador for Kennedy—JFK sent him all over the world to push college education. My uncle, an inspiration for my feeling that government work is important, also gave me an official copy of the photo from Cecil Stoughton, the White House photographer, with Stoughton’s seal on the back, photo still on my wall, of Johnson’s swearing in on the plane on the way back to DC from Dallas with Jackie standing right next to him still wearing the dress with blobs of JFK’s blood still on it.

Conspiracy? Not shot by anyone but Oswald—evidence too strong—the rifle, fingerprints, the bullets, people one floor down in the depository who heard the shots from above and saw Oswald come down from there and run away, having the detailed parade route map on him… BUT what Sec State Kerry told TV a week ago is persuasive that “the influence on Oswald of Cuba and Russia” was a factor… he undoubtedly had conversations in his foreign travels including to Cuban embassy in Mexico he’d recently gone to and probably had conversations about Bay of Pigs and Kennedy’s efforts to overthrow Castro and all that… IE he got his ideas from his proclivities and his conversations but that does not mean those governments in any way helped him… and the nonsense about CIA or Johnson wanting it is just silly. We’ve experienced too many mass shootings let alone single murders since then by just plain individual nuts… CIA and FBI DID know about Oswald's travels and links with Russia and Cuba though… had a file on him…

Regards,

Bob Weiner

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Robert S. Weiner, President

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