BENNINGTON P.I. “BONITA” (17 page)

My mouth opened to say something using language I was certain would be objectionable to most church-going people, but the congresswoman held up a hand to cut me off.

“Just a minute Frank, before you say anything more, I want to show you something, something that very few people have seen since the original incident.  Something that was among the very first things the modern version of the T3 Group was involved with regarding the dissemination of truth in the face of a cover-up.  Perhaps it will help you understand what we do in a way my words can’t.”

I had to admit to myself the congresswoman had my full attention.  If her intent was to simply sell me on something, she had the skills of a world class carnival barker.  Reaching into one of her desk drawers, Congresswoman Mears withdrew her own manila envelope, and from that, removed a single, portrait sized black and white photograph, which she then slid across the desk so it sat directly in front of me.

“Please take a close look at that Frank.”

The image looked vaguely familiar to me, though the quality of the photo presented an overly grainy and somewhat difficult to make out picture of a man’s upper body peering over a concrete wall with what I guessed to be a cloud of smoke drifting over his head.  There also appeared to be the dark outline of a scoped rifle resting on the man’s right shoulder.

The congresswoman was again staring at me intently, allowing me more time to continue looking over the photograph.  When I began to speak, she again raised her hand to silence me.

“Not yet Frank, I want you to now look at the entire photograph here.  What you have in front of you is a portion of the original photo, blown up and pixel enhanced to show just that particular area.  Here’s a copy of the full image as originally developed.”

Congresswoman Mears slid a second black and white photograph across her desk.  A voice within me, somehow not quite my own, cried out that I not look at the photo, for in doing so, I would be opening a door that could never again be closed.  Truth may in fact set one free, but freedom also has a price, namely the loss of ignorant bliss.

I knew the image instantly, that day irreparably burned into the collective experience of all who were alive at that time in America’s history.  I knew the outline of the large convertible automobile, and more important, the passengers it carried – one passenger in particular.

At the bottom of the photograph was a simple date stamp:

November 22, 1963.

I was looking at the assassination of John F. Kennedy
.

24.

“What do you see in that photograph Frank
?”

I wasn’t ready to respond.  While my eyes told me it was clearly a man with a rifle standing behind what I assumed to be the infamous grassy knoll so prevalent in almost all JFK assassination conspiracies, my mind pushed away the possibility captured by that image.  It wasn’t possible such evidence could escape being known all these years.

Could it?

“Mr. Bennington?”

Now I know shit happens in D.C.  All kinds of backroom shady deals 24/7.  It’s the fuel that drives this place.  I’ve never been one for conspiracy though.  Always considered it crackpot bullshit for the most part.

“I’m either seeing proof of a conspiracy, or an example of a hoax, and frankly, I have no idea which one it is.”

Congresswoman Mears seemed pleased by my answer.

“It’s that very approach I think makes you so valuable to us Frank.  You don’t
want
to believe, but at the same time, are willing to at least consider the possibility of something like what this photograph indicates – that Lee Harvey Oswald in fact did
not
act alone on that terrible day in November of 1963.”

I glanced back down at the photo, my eyes drawn to the smoke drifting above the possible shooter’s head.

“How is it this hasn’t been reported?  Why keep it locked up in a drawer?”

Betty Mears pointed to what she indicated was a copy of the original image.

“Turn that over Frank, and you’ll see a name.  Does it sound familiar to you?”

I flipped the photograph over, and found the name Jim Koty scrawled in black ink along the bottom edge.  The name meant nothing to me.

“Jim Koty?  Never heard of him.”

The congresswoman frowned slightly, but her eyes again indicated I told her something she expected to hear.

“That’s right – most haven’t.  He was a Dallas reporter.  Young man, single, thirty years old.  He took that photograph.  Didn’t realize what he had taken until days later after he developed it, and by then, he was already in a panic over events happening in and around Dallas following the assassination.  This photograph just made his panic worse.  He believed it would be the death of him.  He was right – it was.”

Once again, Congresswoman Mears was drawing me into her story, making me want to know more.

“He died?  How?”

The congresswoman leaned back in her seat and looked past me toward the large, floor to ceiling window of her office where the outline of a large oak tree’s limbs could be seen swaying softly in the breeze.

“We’re not here to discuss the details of this one example Frank.  I showed you that photograph as evidence of what we do.  While Jim Koty died for what he knew, his parents survived because of the efforts of the T3.  We take information, and disseminate it in such a way that those who are threatened by others who wish to silence that information, are then protected enough that they no longer fear death and intimidation. We reveal truth, but do it safely, and leave knowledge of that proof to eventually multiply and be known in greater numbers over time.

You asked how Jim Koty died.  He was found with his neck broken inside of his Dallas apartment months after the assassination.  To this day, the murder remains classified as unsolved.  The apartment had been ransacked, though few items of value were actually stolen.  Whoever killed him was looking for something very specific – that photograph.”

Now my mind was truly racing. 

Could this shit actually be for real?

“You said you didn’t save the reporter, but you saved his parents.  How?”

The congresswoman’s eyes returned from looking outside and settled back onto me.

“When their son was killed so soon after he had delivered them a package containing that image, they realized they too were now in danger as well, so they sought the help of one of our organization’s founding members.  A politician of some note from their home state.  He took a meeting with them, recognized instantly what they had in their possession, and set out to protect them from harm. They were very fortunate to have chosen him to reveal that image to.  He was one of the few people in the country at that time who knew what needed to be done in order to save the lives of Jim Koty’s parents while at the same leaving the evidence of that photograph intact.”

My internal rolodex was already trying to determine who the “politician of some note” could have been.  I was something of a political historian, and knew the names and brief bios of several Texas politicians from the 1960’s.  Congresswoman Mears knew exactly what I was doing, shaking her head at my attempt to come up with a name.

“I won’t divulge the name of the politician Frank.  That’s not important.  Not to us.  What is important is that those people were protected, and the truth was told.  That truth is still out there.  More and more people have found it, shared it, and the walls of the cover up are crumbling, however slowly.”

Time to switch gears here – try and catch her off guard.

“So how does the JFK assassination and Walt’s file have anything in common?”

Without missing a beat, the congresswoman replied, her eyes flashing with a hint of amusement at my still considerable doubt over what she was attempting to explain to me.

“They both involve significant conspiracies Frank.  In fact, Walt’s work involved a conspiracy of even greater impact and influence than the death of a president.  You’ve looked over the file – what is your understanding of the details Frank?  Take a moment to share your thoughts with me.”

I recalled my earlier thoughts on why Walt had come to me for help.

He knew he needed help with this.  Probably thought my political connections could give him an idea of who to hand all of this over to.  That still doesn’t tell me who had him doing this work in the first place though.

“This thing you do, this T3 group – you’re a hand off service.  I’m right aren’t I?”

Betty Mears gave one brief nod of her head.

“Yes, in a rather generalized way of thinking, that is exactly what we are Frank.”

“So what does it stand for?  T3?”

The congresswoman looked down briefly at the large bible on her desk.

“It stands for ‘tell the truth’, Frank.  Nothing clever or mysterious - just tell the truth.”

I stared back at the congresswoman for several seconds after that, my mind contemplating what to ask her next.  Finally I settled on the question that remained the most unanswered.  I had Walt’s file, but I had no clue who initiated its creation.

“Who was Walt working for?  Was it you?  And I’m gonna remind you of something congresswoman – tell the truth.”

25.

“Is it ok if I look through the folder Frank?  It will give me a little better perspective on exactly where you are at in all of this.”

I shrugged.  At this point, I’d given up trying to pretend to be anything other than a guy who wanted some answers.

Congresswoman Mears withdrew the contents of Walt’s file and carefully looked over each of the papers. A group of papers was separated from the rest.  I recognized them as being the ones outlining what appeared to be a global temperature study by some professor in Idaho.

“This professor here, were you the one who underlined his name where it appears?”

I shook my head.  I didn’t recognize the name when I first saw it while sitting inside the
Off the Record
, and had in fact, already forgotten it.  The congresswoman opened another drawer behind her desk and withdrew a print out of a recent obituary which she then handed to me.

“That’s the death notice for Professor Roy Boyle.  He worked at a small state college in Idaho for nearly thirty years, but died six weeks ago in an apparent house fire.  He was a climatologist.  The global temperature study that’s part of Walt’s investigative work here was never published, though it had been completed nearly two years earlier. The head of the university’s science department wouldn’t allow it, and was soon joined by the university president.  Their stated reason was fear of legal challenge.  The truth was likely loss of funding from Washington D.C. There’s big money for universities willing to play along with the global warming industry Frank, very big money. What Professor Boyle had uncovered was an alternative program to decipher the thousands upon thousands of existing temperature data entries that has been compiled for over the last few decades.  In doing so, he had created a very powerful argument that the earth’s temperatures have actually declined by nearly a half degree over the last seventeen years, and he was using the very data being manipulated by the global warming industry against them.  Basically, he was prepared to blow up the entire premise for human-made global warming, and had the scientific data to do just that.

Professor Boyle shared his frustration over the university’s unwillingness to publish his findings with a former Idaho governor, who in turn, was likely the one who gave the professor Walt’s contact information.  The former governor and Walt actually served in the military together, and had kept in touch ever since.  Walt took the case, and began looking into the global warming lobby.  A short time later he put together this pyramid graphic linking specific names of powerful individuals with financial reward via Global Electric.