Jesse Ventura says he can prove there was a conspiracy in JFK's murder, and has vowed to expose it. But he won't get a chance to expound on his theory in his new reality show "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura", which debuted December 2nd on TruTV--unless the show is renewed for a second season. Among the seven episodes completed is a show on 9-11, but nothing yet on Dallas. The outspoken Ventura, who says he has studied the assassination "through my adult life", promises a show that will "wake up the lemmings". Here's hoping he can make a contribution to the subject.

1026 N. Beckley Ave. in Oak Cliff, the rooming house where Lee Oswald stayed in autumn 1963, is now open to the public. Patricia Hall, the current owner and granddaughter of Gladys Johnson, who owned the place in 1963, hopes that donations from visitors will finance the restoration of Oswald's room (all 40 square feet of it) and general repairs to the structure, which dates to the 1930's.

Speaking of Oswald residences, the current owner of 604 Elsbeth Street is attempting to restore the building and the Oswald apartment, but is running into bureaucratic red tape.

The city of Fort Worth plans to erect an 8-foot bronze statue of JFK in General Worth Square, one block from the hotel where Kennedy spent his last night and delivered his last speech. The statue, by Texas sculptor Lawrence Ludtke, has already been completed.

On October 17th, The New York Times belatedly gave some significant attention to the CIA's outrageous stonewalling in the George Joannides affair. The long story detailed the agency's six-year court fight to withhold a trove of documents about Joannides, the CIA case officer who oversaw a group of anti-Castro Cubans whose relationship to Lee Oswald has never been adequately investigated. The lawsuit for the files was brought by author and journalist Jefferson Morley, who is represented by Jim Lesar. The document release has been long backed by Judge John Tunheim, the chairman of the ARRB, and HSCA counsel Robert Blakey. The CIA claimed in a court filing that release of the files would compromise intelligence methods and damage national security. In 1964 the CIA concealed its schemes to kill Fidel Castro from the Warren Commission, and years later installed Joannides himself as their liaison to the HSCA. HSCA Mogul Blakey told the Times that, had he known of the arrangement, he would have put Joannides under oath, making him "a witness, not a facilitator".

CIA apologist Max Holland defended the agency, saying that "going through the files of every CIA officer who had anything to do with anything that touched the assassination, that would have no end" (reason enough to do so, if there were that many, Max.) Joannides died in 1990.

Speaking of the Times, the paper ran a misleading obit of Dr. Malcolm Perry, claiming he "inadvertently provided grist for assassination conspiracy theorists" with his statements to the press. The paper's own coverage on 11-23-63, by Tom Wicker, hardly a conspiracy theorist, reported that Perry gave a straightforward description of JFK's throat wound as an entrance wound.

A new history of Ramparts magazine, "A Bomb in Every Issue", by Peter Richardson, may be of interest to our readers. A frequent target of the CIA, Ramparts published a wealth of groundbreaking work on the assassinations of the 1960's.

Thanks are owing to an alert reader who sent us an 2004 St. Petersburg Times article about Ruth Paine's status as a "war tax resister". Calling her actions "patriotic dissent", the lifelong Quaker withheld $4000 from her taxes from 1982 to 1992. The government promptly recouped the money, plus penalties and interest, by levying her bank accounts.

On 11-20-09, J. D. Tippit was honored at the Oak Cliff intersection where he was killed in 1963. A restored 1963 Ford Galaxy, a replica of Tippit's squad car, was taken to 10th Street and Patton Avenue, for photos and remembrances. The car was taken to the Dallas Police Association headquarters, where it will be centerpiece of a memorial to Tippit and the other Dallas officers killed in the line of duty. It was not, however, the same car that did not stop in front of 1026 N. Beckley and toot its horn for Earlene Roberts NOT to hear.

During the annual knoll observances, a woman placed an infant on the Elm Street "X" that marks the point of the fatal shot. The Dallas News commented that she was "perhaps overcome by grief or bad judgment.”

The suspension of three secret service agents involved in November's gate-crashing of a White House state dinner contrasts starkly with the lack of action taken against any agents in 1963.

Gerald Posner weighed in (to the extent that a lightweight CAN “weigh in”) on The Lost JFK Tapes, claiming that the documentary showed how unreliable eyewitness accounts are, and gratuitously trashing Jean Hill in the process.

Doug Horne's monumental five-part book is now available from Amazon and the Mary Ferrell website. It promises to be required reading, especially for those interested in the medical evidence.