When John F. Kennedy Jr. Threatened to Revive the Kennedy Political Dynasty 26 Years Ago , His Plane Went Down Amidst a Cloud of Suspicion

The evidence of foul play is significant

[Source: allthatsinteresting.com]

John F. Kennedy Jr. was a dashing heir to the Kennedy political dynasty who, prior to his death at the age of 39, had made a name for himself as the publisher of George, a glossy politics and lifestyle magazine which had grown to a circulation of over 400,000.

Before his plane went down under a cloud of suspicion on July 16, 1999, Kennedy Jr. was planning to run for a U.S. Senate seat that would have put him in the crosshairs of the Clinton political machine since Hillary Clinton was also running for Senate in the 2000 election cycle.

JFK Jr. had held an exploratory meeting in March, 1999, hired some top political consultants (including Roger Ailes) and publicly announced his run.[1]

Historian John Koerner suggests that JFK Jr. alternatively planned to become governor of New York as a stepping stone to the presidency—as it had been for Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt and Grover Cleveland.[2]

The next election for New York Governor was scheduled for 2002. Kennedy Jr. would have stood an excellent chance of beating Republican incumbent George Pataki who wound up winning an unimpressive 49% of the popular vote.

A private poll showed that Kennedy Jr. had huge favorability ratings in New York, which he had been a resident of. Former New York State Democratic Chairman John Marino said that if Kennedy—with his movie star looks, good public speaking skills and intelligence and family pedigree—ever ran for office “it would have been goodbye anyone else.”[3]

The CIA would never allow this to happen because of its deep hatred for the Kennedy family and because of the skeletons in its closet that another President Kennedy would unearth. JFK Jr. knew that the CIA was behind the death of his father and uncle and wanted to reopen the investigation.

He had published an article in George by Oliver Stone about the JFK assassination conspiracy and lying history books, and hired Wayne Madsen just before his death to carry out further investigation.[4] Journalist Leon Wagner wrote that “with his own money, [JFK Jr.] was going to reopen the investigation [into the JFK assassination], and then that’s when he died and that was obviously the end of it.”[5]

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in 2024 that the evidence was overwhelming of the CIA’s role in the assassination of his father and uncle and that George “could have been used to expose CIA crimes” and that the agency “feared his [cousin’s] influence.”

Robert F. Kennedy [Source: abcnews.com]

According to John Koerner, Kennedy had amassed evidence about former president George H.W. Bush’s involvement in the JFK assassination when his son, George W. was about to make a run for the presidency. Investigator John Hankey reported that Kennedy had been supplied incriminating information about Bush by a Utah health store owner, True Ott, who said that he had received a call from JFK Jr. a few weeks before the crash in which he was told about the file that was going to bring down Bush the Elder and make it impossible for Dubya to “run for dogcatcher after this grand jury convenes.

Kennedy allegedly told Ott “I feel my father’s spirit beside me on this, and finally, I can exorcise a few demons from my life.” After the crash, when Ott spoke to an editor from George Magazine, they told him that the magazine was folding and that their offices had been burglarized so that “all evidence went with John.”[6]

Researchers have identified a man displaying Bush’s features in a photograph in Dealey Plaza when JFK was shot on November 22^nd, 1963.[7] Some researchers believe that Bush coordinated the CIA assassination team, consisting of anti-Castro Cubans who shot JFK from the Grassy knoll and Dal-Tex building (the shots from the Texas School Book Depository did not kill Kennedy and functioned as a diversion).[8] According to Koerner, Bush was arrested and taken into custody after JFK was killed and then quickly released.[9]

Bush was a representative of Texas oil interests who wanted Kennedy killed because of his efforts to end the oil depletion allowance, a tax subsidy that saved Texas oilmen from paying millions of dollars in taxes. These same oil interests had invested in Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, who sustained the oil depletion allowance when he became president. Johnson also expanded the war in Vietnam, which the Texas oil men and other friends of Johnson profited massively from.

Many in the CIA hated Kennedy because of his perceived betrayal at the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba when he didn’t provide adequate air support, and because of a threat to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces. Bush had helped supervise the Bay of Pigs operation so was a the forefront of the CIA-Kennedy haters. When Robert Kennedy emerged as the leading presidential contender in the 1968 election, the CIA orchestrated his assassination, cultivating Sirhan Sirhan as a patsy.

The head of security at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles where Kennedy was killed was Robert Maheu, who had longstanding ties to the CIA. Two CIA officers—George Joannides (who had spied on Lee Harvey Oswald) and David Morales—were spotted at the Ambassador hotel the night Kennedy was killed, and the suspected gunman, who shot Kennedy behind his ear, Thane Eugene Cesar, had worked for Lockheed as a CIA contractor.[10]

John Koerner wrote that JFK Jr. was planning to run an exposé in the aptly named George magazine about Bush’s role in the JFK assassination and about other crimes committed by the Bush family.[11] This would have ruined the political prospects of George W. Bush who was at the time of JFK Jr.’s death in the process of developing his campaign for the presidency.[12]

The Monday after Kennedy’s plane went down, fake stories were planted in the media asserting that JFK Jr. was worried about landing at Martha's Vineyard, but reckless enough to try it.[13]

Other stories suggested that Kennedy was taking vicodin for pain in his broken ankle, ritalin for attention deficit disorder, and another medication for a thyroid condition, that he had ignored warnings about bad weather conditions, and that he had been observed beforehand at a service station holding what looked like a bottle of wine.[14]

This was designed to eliminate any public perception of foul play in the crash and place blame for it on Kennedy himself.

It was consistent with other murders in which the CIA or other government agencies spread false stories through media assets or disinformation that was designed to quell any public suspicion that might prompt demand for an investigation.

[Source: whatreallyhappened.com]

Another parallel to past coverups was the fact that Kennedy’s remains were rapidly cremated after their discovery and dumped at sea along with those of Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, his pregnant wife who died with him in the crash. The Coroner’s report was “full of holes” that looked like a “coverup,” according to an ex-homicide detective who investigated the case. Famed pathologist Cyril Wecht wrote that “JFK Jr. was certainly not the first Kennedy to have his coroner’s report adjusted.”[15]

Another curiosity is the fact that the Coast Guard search for the ruins of Kennedy’s plane was delayed by two hours after an emergency beacon signal had been received.[16]

The cockpit recording device on the plane also appeared to have been sabotaged, and another voice box recorder was later found crushed with the backup battery missing, causing it to retain no data.[17]

Further an air traffic controller who was on duty the night of the crash, Buddy Wyatt, was instructed by the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) to destroy flight communication logs between Kennedy’s plane and air traffic control.[18] It remains a mystery as to what those logs might reveal.

Motive to Kill

The Bush family and CIA had motives to kill Kennedy Jr.: they wanted to prevent him from unearthing the truth about the JFK and RFK assassinations. The same was true of elements in the U.S. Air Force, FBI and military who were involved in the JFK assassination and assassination coverup. Furthermore, the CIA was intent on continuing its vendetta against the Kennedy clan and efforts to destroy it.[19]

Besides murdering John and Bobby, there is evidence that would indicate that the CIA set up Edward Kennedy in the Chappaquidick incident on July 19, 1969 when a drunken Kennedy allegedly drove his car off a pier on Martha’s Vineyard, killing one of RFK’s former secretaries, Mary Joe Kopechne, 28[20], whom he was having an affair with.

Assassination expert R.B. Cutler wrote that Chappaquidick was “a CIA orchestrated political assassination [of Kopechne] to remove any chance of Edward Kennedy running for president in 1972.”[21] The CIA at the time could not directly murder Edward because that would have awakened the country to the obvious fact that the CIA was killing the Kennedy’s, so instead engineered an automobile accident, which left Edward politically dead.

The evidence for this is that: a) the skid marks on the bridge where Kennedy allegedly drove off do not follow the direction the car went off the bridge, indicating they were put there at a different time; b) the speed of the car had to have been much greater than Kennedy claimed to have gone off the bridge; c) friends reported that Kopechne had nothing alcoholic to drink at the party before the incident (and never drank at all), yet the coroner’s report said she had .10 blood alcohol level. This suggests she was injected with alcohol or forced to drink against her will, a theory that would explain blood traces on Kopechne’s clothes.

Kopechne was found with blood on her blouse and a wound on the back of her head, indicating she had been struck before the car went off the pier. The cause of her death was not drowning but asphyxiation. She was found at the back of the car, which is where she had to have been placed as there was no way she could have gone from front to back amidst onrushing water.

Damage to the car’s rear view mirror stanchion and windshield indicated damage had to have been inflicted on the car before it went off the bridge. Kennedy knew the roads like the back of his hand so it is unlikely that he would have driven off the pier.

Also it would have been a superhuman feat to have swum the length of the channel and impossible after a night of drinking, and the direction in which Ted claimed that he swam and the tide in the channel did not match.

The accident allegedly occurred at 11 PM, however, Deputy Sherrif Huck Look spotted the Kennedy car on dry land at 12:45 AM with two passengers in front and a slumped dark shape in the back. Edward was never spotted asking for police help, as in the official story; rather it was someone possibly using a voice box to impersonate Kennedy who stood in the shadows and called for assistance.[22]

[Source: townandcountrymag.com]

The Senate Watergate hearings revealed that two “deep state” operatives who have been linked to other assassinations made curious visits to Chappaquidick around the time of the car crash: E. Howard Hunt and Tony Ulasewicz. The two were there supposedly to “dig up dirt” on Kennedy and wore disguises.[23] Additionally, the daughter of a known “spook,” Louis J. Russell, helped the White House to “investigate” (ie. coverup) Kopechne’s death.[24]

R.B. Cutler believes that Kennedy was stopped and taken from his car before Kopechne died and drugged or knocked unconscious and taken across the ferry to the Shiretown Inn where he was told the next day that Kopechne was dead (the official story has him swimming across the bay to the inn). Kopechne was in turn taken by two CIA agents, drugged and sent to her watery death in Kennedy’s car.

Cutler wrote that “they have a whole bunch of people in the CIA who’ve been doing this sort of thing all over the world. All they do is sit around and figure out how to pull it off. And they have a wonderful time. I still maintain they had a boat; a small outboard was seen at about two-thirty by a few witnesses. There are so many details, the information is there.”[25]

Evidence of Foul Play

JFK Jr’s plane went down while traveling to his cousin Rory Kennedy’s wedding in Martha’s Vineyard with his wife, Carolyn Bessette, who was pregnant, and his sister-in-law, Lauren Bessette.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) afterwards released a report attributing the crash to “the pilot’s failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was the result of spatial disorientation. Factors in the accident were haze and the dark night.”[26]

John Koerner shows clearly, however, that the conditions did not exist that would have created spatial disorientation, a condition where the pilot does not know where he is.

An FAA flight specialist, Edward Meyer, determined the weather to be good. Kennedy was a cautious pilot who had flown the same route five times before at night and would not have been fazed by a little haze, which radar images showed there to be very little of.[27]

Also new lights installed in Martha’s Vineyard made the center of the island as “bright as the Boston skyline.” An airport tower manager at Martha’s Vineyard stated that “there were stars out” and that “visibility was between ten and twelve miles” which was good.[28]

An aircraft similar to the single-engine Piper Saratoga II HP airplane that JFK Jr. flew on the day of his tragic death. [Source: allthatsinteresting.com]

That Kennedy was never disoriented is evident in the fact that a mere two minutes before the crash and over an hour after takeoff, he contacted the Martha’s Vineyard airport on approach asking to land the plane at 9:39 PM.[29]

If the aircraft were in distress, he would have asked for help at this point, which he did not. Kennedy was reportedly calm and collected, saying that he planned to drop off his sister-in-law, and then take off for Hyannis airport at around 11 PM.[30]

Journalist John A. Quinn found that tapes confirming Kennedy’s remarks to air traffic controllers was deliberately removed from archived tape transcripts of WCB-TV channel 5s broadcast of July 17, 1999, and covered up by WCB-TV and all subsequent government and media reports.[31]

According to researcher Jim Marrs, Kennedy’s contact with air traffic control is key to unraveling the official story, as it shows unequivocally that he was not disoriented or lost. Seconds later radar showed his plane dropped more than 1,000 feet in a manner of seconds, meaning something catastrophic happened to the plane.[32]

That luggage was found nearly two miles from the crash site indicated that something internally breached the cabin. This was most likely an explosion on the plane that caused the crash. Three people heard an explosion in the sky near Martha’s Vineyard on the night of July 16, 1999.[33]

One was a reporter for the Martha Vineyard’s Gazette walking along the beaches of Martha’s Vineyard that night who said he saw a big white flash in the sky near where JFK Jr.’s plane went missing. Another was a forty-five year old attorney from Pittsburgh, Victor Pribanic, who was out fishing.[34] He thought that the military was testing a bomb.

When he heard that Kennedy’s plane had crashed the next day, feeling a sinking pit in his stomach, he called local airport officials who put him in touch with West Tisbury police who relayed his information to the NTSB, though with little followup.[35] The location he pointed to of the explosion was exactly where the Coast Guard recovered scattered items from the blown-up plane and near where debris from the plane washed ashore.[36]

Journalist Sherman Skolnick wrote that the recovered aircraft showed evidence that an explosive device of the kind used by certain foreign intelligence agencies was glued or affixed within the tail luggage compartment and that the device was activated by barometric trigger. Satellite images provided by the National Reconnaisance Office (NRO) recorded an outbursting flash from the aircraft just prior to it going into perpetual descent, which confirms the eyewitness accounts.[37]

John Koerner notes that more evidence that Kennedy’s plane was sabotaged could be found buried in the NTSB report, which noted that the bottom of the fuel sector valve was missing and that the valve had been turned off even though it had a safety device preventing that.[38]

Paul Dawson, author of JFK Jr. Murdered, believes that a mysterious flight instructor said to be on-board the plane but who was written out of the media, could have been preprogrammed under the CIA’s Operation MK-ULTRA (mind control programs) to turn off the valve, which caused the engine to die within 45 seconds and the plane to plunge to the ground.

There is a precedent in that Sirhan Sirhan is believed to have been brainwashed under MK-ULTRA in order to set him up as a patsy in the RFK assassination by firing diversionary shots.[39]

Dawson points to a coverup in which the rescue mission was delayed and JFK Jr’s downed plane was only “discovered” five days after the emergency locator was removed, the cockpit recorder was disabled, the flight log was taken, and the body of the flight instructor was secretly taken away.[40]

[Source: patriotuncensored.com]

On July 17, 1999, ABC News anchor Peter Jennings reported that a rescue beacon[41] from Kennedy’s plane was discovered by the Coast Guard at 2:17 AM, though ABC retracted the assumption that it was from Kennedy’s plane and said it came from a downed U.S. Navy aircraft.

The media, however, never reported on the crash of any U.S. Navy planes near Kennedy’s or deaths of any naval pilots, pointing to the likelihood of a coverup that was designed to hide the fact that Kennedy’s plane crashed because of a bomb.[42]

The only alternative scenario, according to Koerner, was that Kennedy’s plane was destroyed by a drone missile fired from an unmanned Navy aircraft first used in the Balkans War that then crashed.[43] However, Koerner said there shouldn’t have been any confusion because the beacons from Navy and commercial planes emit different sounds.[44]

Koerner believes that the cover story was designed to buy time to suppress evidence from the crash site. After the crash, the military immediately instituted a 17 nautical mile no fly zone and no entry zone around the crash site. No civilians or media were allowed in this area until the bodies and wreckage were recovered. This would have allowed the military to destroy evidence of a bomb on the aircraft, or any other inconvenient proof of anything other than the official story of events.[45]

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[1] Caroline Halemann, “Before his Before His Death, JFK Jr. Was Considering a Run for Executive Office,” Town & Country, July 16, 2019; Steven Gillon, America’s Reluctant Prince: The Life of John F. Kennedy Jr. (London: E.P. Dutton, 2019).

[2] John Koerner, Exploding the Truth: The JFK Jr., Assassination (Washington, D.C.: Chronos Books, 2018), 6, 7. This was according to friends and his assistant at George, Rose Marie Terenzio, Kennedy.

[3] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 7. Journalist Sherman Skolnick suggests that Kennedy was soon to announce his run for the presidency in 2000 before he was killed. Sherman Skolnick, Ahead of the Parade: A Who’s Who of Treason and High Crimes (Tempe, Arizona: Dandelion Books, 2003), 237. Caroline Kennedy’s political career was also quietly derailed after the crash. Her bid to become U.S. Senator from New York was dashed when Senator Charles Schumer and Rahm Emmanuel conspired to have New York Governor David Paterson appoint a virtual unknown, Kirsten Gillibrand to the seat. Kennedy was only offered the consolation prize of the inncuous post of U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, which it was known she would never accept.

[4] Paul Dawson, JFK Jr. Murdered: Coverup & Conspiracy to Kill JFK Jr. (Create Space Independent Publishing, 2017), 82.

[5] “John F. Kennedy Jr.’s 1999 Plane Crash Was ‘Not an Accident,’ Podcast Claims: Weather Was Fine,” U.S. Weekly, March 11, 2020, https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-news/news/jfk-jr-s-1999-plane-crash-was-not-an-accident-podcast-claims/. See also Donald Jeffries, American Memory Hole: How the Court Historians Promote Disinformation (New York: Skyhorse, 2024), 296. Jeffries wrote that JFK Jr. “was obsessed with finding out the truth about his father’s assassination.” Journalist Wayne Madsen told Jeffries that he was about to be hired by George Magazine at the time of JFK Jr.’s death and that his first assignment was to be the JFK assassination. Wagner stated “when he was 17 years old…he’s doing his own research. He [JFK Jr.] reads the books written at that time…there’s an article about there being three assassins. He was well versed in the research on it.”

[6] Jeffries, American Memory Hole, 300.

[7] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 25.

[8] JFK Who, How and Why: Solving the World’s Greatest Murder Mystery, ed. Jim Fetzer and Mike Palecek (Crestview Florida: Moon Rock Books, 2017).

[9] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 27.

[10] Jeremy Kuzmarov, “New Evidence Implicates CIA, LAPD, FBI and Mafia as Plotters in Elaborate ‘Hit’ Plan to Prevent RFK From Ever Reaching White House,” CovertAction Magazine, June 5, 2022, https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/06/05/new-evidence-implicates-cia-lapd-fbi-and-mafia-as-plotters-in-elaborate-hit-plan-to-prevent-rfk-from-ever-reaching-white-house-2/

[11] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 16; Skolnick, Ahead of the Parade, 237.

[12] According to Koerner, there is evidence that suggests George W. Bush was present at Dealey Plaza when Kennedy was killed, having possibly been taken out of school (he went to Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts) and flown into Dallas with his dad. A picture of a young boy wondering around Dealy Plaza eerily looks like Bush Jr. W. Bush’s whereabouts on the weekend that JFK Jr. was killed were unknown. Reporters could not find him and he only released a statement about JFK Jr.’s death on Monday (JFK Jr. was killed on a Friday night). Dawson, JFK Jr. Murdered, 87.

[13] https://whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/CRASH/JFK_JR/phonyphone.html. The press also covered up that JFK was planning to enter politics before his death. A Newsweek story planned for July 26, 1999 was recalled, for example, and it was left out of his obituaries.

[14] Jeffries, American Memory Hole, 297, 298. A number of the fake news stories were written by C. David Heymann in The New York Post. Heymann authored the scurrilous book American Legacy: The Story of John and Caroline Kennedy (New York: Atria Books, 2008).

[15] Jeffries, American Memory Hole, 295. RFK Jr.’s journal reveals that Caroline Kennedy’s husband Edwin Schlossberg bullied the Bessette family who had their own plans for their daughters' burial. According to Jeffries, clear inferences in RFK Jr’s journal that both the Kennedys and Bessettes wanted their loved ones buried makes the rush and secretive cremation and ash spreading ceremony at sea deeply suspicious.

[16] Jeffries, American Memory Hole, 308.

[17] Jeffries, American Memory Hole, 308, 309.

[18] Jeffries, American Memory Hole, 303.

[19] Paul Dawson suggests that the Israeli Mossad also had a motive to kill RFk Jr. because an article in George had exposed how Yigal Amir was set up as a patsy in the murder of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. Some authors have tried to connect the Clinton’s to JFK Jr’s death because JFK Jr. was poised to challenge Hillary Clinton’s New York Senate seat. John Koerner emphatically states that JFK Jr. was planning to run for New York Governor and not the U.S. Senate and that JFK Jr. had a good relationship with the Clinton’s. See Dawson, JFK Jr. Murdered, 87; and Koerner, Exploding the Truth.

[20] Kopechne had been one of RFK’s boiler room girls, who according to Sherman Skolnick, kept index cards of delegates to the 1968 Democratic Party convention who could be bought off with sex or money. Skolnick, Ahead of the Parade, ch. 18.

[21] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 58; R.B. Cutler, “Chappaquidick: Water Under the Bridge,” in Joan d’Arc and Al Hidell, Conspiracy Reader: From the Deaths of JFK and John Lennon to Government Sponsored Alien Coverups (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2012), 40-50. If Kennedy ran, there was a good chance he could defeat Richard Nixon and then would reopen the investigation into the JFK assassination.

[22] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 58; Joan d’Arc and Al Hidell, Conspiracy Reader: From the Deaths of JFK and John Lennon to Government Sponsored Alien Coverups (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2012); Mae Brussel, “Ted Kennedy Framed at Chappaquidick,” July 28, 1971,

. Wounds on the back of Kennedy’s skull indicated that he too had been knocked out before Kopechne was killed. No autopsy was performed on Kopechne at the request of her parents and her body was buried very quickly thereafter preventing a full investigation. Ted Kennedy had threats levied against his children who required secret service protection until he dropped out of the presidential race. See also R.B. Cutler, You, the Jury—in re. Chappaquiddick (Whitehouse, 1980).

[23] https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToAchp7.html.

[24] https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKrussellL.htm. Russell’s background as a “spook” is detailed in Anthony Summers, with Robyn Swan, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon (New York: Viking, 2000), 73, 491, and Jim Hougan Spooks: The Haunting of America—The Private Use of Secret Agents (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1978), 289, 290, 291.

[25] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 58; Cutler, “Chappaquidick,” in d’arc and Hiddel, Conspiracy Reader. John Dean told Richard Nixon on a recorded White House Tape: “if Teddy Kennedy knew the bear trap he was walking into at Chappaquidick.”

[26] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 80; Dawson, JFK Jr. Murdered, 22.

[27] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 87; Dawson, JFK Jr. Murdered, 28, 38. CNN actually reported on the day after the crash that weather could be ruled out as a factor. WCBV-TV reported that visibility had been clear enough to fly without instruments. A news article on the local paper further quoted an eyewitness report that conditions on Martha’s Vineyard were not hazy, and said that people on the shore of the island could see the aircraft on approach out over the sea, proving that aircraft out over the ocean could see the coast.

[28] Dawson, JFK Jr. Murdered, 38, 77. It was suggested that Kennedy was hampered in his piloting ability by a leg injury, however, the injury had fully healed, and Kenndy would not have been able to take off succesfully if his leg were still damaged.

[29] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 88; Dawson, JFK Jr. Murdered, 32.

[30] The plane had autopilot capable of flying to within 100 feet of the airport, meaning that all Kennedy had to do at this point was sit back and let the plane fly itself.

[31] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 88.

[32] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 89.

[33] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 112.

[34] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 121; Dawson, JFK Jr. Murdered, 33; Patrick Barkham, “Web of Conspiracy Surrounds JFK Jr.’s Death,” The Guardian, July 21, 1999, https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/jul/21/kennedy.usa

[35] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 124; Dawson, JFK Jr. Murdered, 40.

[36] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 124, 125. False stories were also planted in the media suggesting that Kennedy had refused a flight instructor when he was an experienced pilot who did not need one.

[37] Skolnick, Ahead of the Parade, 248.

[38] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 96; Dawson, JFK Jr. Murdered, 40. Exactly what happened remains uncertain but Koerner believes that someone may have turned the fuel selector switch off after the crash to make it look like Kennedy was an inexperienced pilot, even idiotic, or that he was committing suicide.

[39] Kuzmarov, New Evidence Implicates CIA, LAPD, FBI and Mafia as Plotters in Elaborate “Hit” Plan to Prevent RFK From Ever Reaching White House.” The CIA and Bush crime family have been implicated in plane crashes before. The CIA is believed to have been behind the crash of a United Airlines flight in 1972 that killed CIA operative Dorothy Hunt and the downing of a Pan-Am flight over Lockerbie Scotland in 1988, and Bush family behind a 2002 plane crash that killed Paul Wellstone, who stood as a barrier to U.S. Senate support for the Iraq War. The CIA may prefer plane crashes as a method of assassination because the investigation inevitably centers on how the plane went down, and the public is prone to believe that the plane could have crashed naturally.

[40] Dawson, JFK Jr. Murdered, 40. Dawson noted that turning off the valve during the flight would have been suicidal since at top speed the engine would die in 45 seconds. “Because the results are potentially deadly, the valve cannot be turned by accident. A safety release button must be pushed down and held while turning the valve. This piece of evidence is the smoking gun. It is definitive proof of foul play,” Dawson wrote.

[41] The beacon was designed to send out a signal if the aircraft was involved in a sudden impact.

[42] The U.S. Navy generally cannot operate on U.S. soil.

[43] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 93.

[44] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 92.

[45] Koerner, Exploding the Truth, 96.

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