Editor's Introduction

To mark the 50th Anniversary of the assassination of U.S. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who died in Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963, the author of this blog has chosen to re-present a classic work, The Torbitt Document: Nomenclature of An Assassination Cabal, which surfaced in 1970 as an anonymous, copyright-free document published under the pseudonym William Torbitt.

"The Torbitt Document," as it became known, created a huge sensation.

Penned by an attorney who once worked as an investigator for the office of New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, it argues that Kennedy died in a right-wing (fascist) coup d'etat, conceived and executed by the FBI's Division Five, with the aid and assistance of elements from the Defense Industrial Security Command (DISC), a secretive action branch of the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency.

Above:  Jim Garrison, District Attorney of Orleans Parish, 1961 - 1973, is best known for his investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy, portrayed in Oliver Stone's film JFK.  William Torbitt was one of Garrison's investigators.

Long before Oliver Stone's 1991 film JFK, the Torbitt Document confronted the American public with a deadly serious and (some say) heroic effort to name the conspirators who killed President John Kennedy.

As an attempt to martial immense amounts of legal evidence in a short space, it certainly is a tour de force, and it stands in very stark contrast to the government's 26-volume Warren Commission Hearings, whose 898-page summary concluded that the president died at the hands of a lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald,.

 

Above: Chief Justice Earl Warren and other members of the Warren Commission present a copy of the finished Warren Report to President Johnson on September 24, 1964. To the far left stands John J. McCloy, an assistant Secretary of War who oversaw the American occupation of Germany after World War II. Just to the left of Warren stands future president Gerald Ford.  To the right of Johnson stands Allen Dulles, a former head of the CIA who was fired by Kennedy in September 1961.  On the far right stands Rep. Hale Boggs, the only member of the Warren Commission to disagree with its conclusion that Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman.  Boggs died in a mysterious plane crash in 1972.


The author of the Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal names names: One will find here a fearless, no-nonsense summary of all the people whom Torbitt considers guilty of participating in a criminal conspiracy to kill Kennedy, from the White House and the highest levels of military command, down to the field operatives and gunmen suspected of firing the fatal shots that changed American history forever on 22 November 1963.

 Above: A Polaroid snapshot taken by witness Mary Moorman on 22 November 1963, moments after the fatal shot. 

Today, as in November 1963, one must decide for oneself whom to believe and just how persuasive one finds the evidence presented. The advantage of the internet is that one may now easily fact-check Torbitt's research and cross-reference the Torbitt Document to many online books, photographs, documentaries, databases and legal documents.

Chapter Titles, Photos, Illustrations and Links

The original manuscript includes no chapter titles or illustrations: It was a wall of words divided only by chapter numbers. The editor of this blog has therefore provided chapter titles (content summaries) not found in the original manuscript, in order to help the reader with navigation.

The Blogger search tool ("Search This Blog" at the top of the column to the right) also provides a means for searching the entire Torbitt Document.  Just type a name or subject that interests you in the box, then click the search button. Please be sure to click on the "Linked from Here" tab to view additional results.

Whenever possible, photographs of the people named by the "nomenclature" have been provided, usually with cross-links to their Wikipedia biographies.  To learn more about an individual, just click on the name.

An effort has also been made to cross-link to book titles mentioned by Torbitt.  

Eventually, this blog will cross-link all references found in Torbitt to the Warren Commission Hearings and the Warren Exhibits cited by Torbitt.  To read and explore the Warren Report for yourself, see the History Matters Warren Commission Archive here.

The Rockefeller Commission Investigation

As the Wikipedia article on the Assassination of John F. Kennedy points out:

"The United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States was set up under President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the CIA within the United States. The commission was led by Vice-President Nelson Rockefeller, and is sometimes referred to as the Rockefeller Commission.

"Part of the commission's work dealt with the Kennedy assassination, specifically the head snap as seen in the Zapruder film (first shown to the general public in 1975), and the possible presence of E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis in Dallas.  The commission concluded that neither Hunt nor Sturgis was in Dallas at the time of the assassination."

Above:  A rare photo of Operation 40 members, taken from the cover of Barry and the Boys: The CIA, The Mob, and America's Secret History.  The photo allegedly shows Porter Goss, head of CIA from 2004 to 2006, sitting next to Barry Seal and Felix Rodriguez.  See Daniel Hopsicker's story "Porter and The Boys" here.  

Continued Relevance of Torbitt Document

Lest one think that the Torbitt document is now entirely irrelevant, it is interesting to note that Porter Goss, a congressman who co-sponsored the USA Patriot Act in 2002 and co-chaired the Joint 911 Intelligence Inquiry, once participated in Operation 40 during his days as a young CIA operative.  Goss, in other words, was very much associated with the "cabal" so carefully examined by William Torbitt below.  Goss went on to serve as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency from 2004 to 2006, at the height of the United States' recent war in Iraq.

William Torbitt investigated the JFK assassination passionately, professionally and with such brilliant accuracy that his masterpiece, the Nomenclature of an Assassination Cabal remains a highly readable and alarming wake-up call to America -- a wake-up call which many Americans ignored.

Perhaps now, on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the time has finally come to ask ourselves a simple question: Was William Torbitt wrong to predict that a pro-fascist, mafia-connected syndicate -- the men who killed Kennedy -- would continue to use their positions within the U.S. intelligence community to create war, chaos and confusion?

What's past is, indeed, prologue.  JFK's assassination continues to cast its dark shadow upon us all.

William Tobitt's Notice (1970)

This manuscript is the result of research and investigation by the investigator and author. It is compiled for the sole purpose of research and the statements and averments of fact contained herein are the result of investigation and research of agencies both private and public. The purpose of this document is to place into perspective such research and investigative findings and is to be used only at a time in the future when it may be legally published and circulated as an historical document. The name of the author is a cognomen and nom de plume.