The KA Project

Hey, something just kinda popped into my head yesterday. You want to know one thing I would do if I was one of those fantastically wealthy entrepreneurs? Someone like Paul Allen or the Google guy? That JFK book I was reading last week put this thought in my mind:

I would hire someone competent and capable to head what would be called the Kennedy Assassination Project. I’d pay this Coordinator well with a one-year contract of, oh, I don’t know, say $150,000 plus expenses. Maybe more, depending on the economy and his qualifications. But anyway, this person would be tasked to come up with a plausible theory of what really happened, really, on November 22, 1963.

The first thing the Coordinator will do would be to hit all the top schools and recruit the best dozen historians-in-training he can find. If they were willing to work on the Project, I’d pay them each $100,000 for the year’s work plus a percentage of any sales from the Project (more about that later) plus letters of recommendations, etc. We’d get twelve of them, and each would focus on one major segment of the whole JFK mystery:

For example,

1. Kennedy himself and his family and cabinet
2. Lee Harvey Oswald and his background
3. The events of November 22-24, 1963, and the Zapruder film
4. The political climate 1953-1967
5. The CIA
6. The FBI and the Dallas Police Department
7. Castro and Cuba
8. The anti-Castro Cuban exile community in America
9. The right-wing presence in the South
10. Jack Ruby and his background
11. The Mafia in the South in the 1960s
12. The Ins and Outs of the Garrison Investigation

Each one of these twelve would become an expert in his respective area.

The Coordinator would follow a tight but flexible schedule during the Project, something like this:

2 months – In-depth study of all government reports (Warren Commission, Clark Panel, Rockefeller Commission, the Church Committee, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations). The group must be intimately familiar with the hundreds of pages of official pronouncements on the assassination.

4 months – In-depth study of all previously published theories of what happened that day. Divvy up the 450-plus books by subject (ie, the Mafia-did-it books, the CIA-did-it books, etc) and allow each historian to read through and separate what seems plausible and valuable from what seems fringe. Again, the group must become intimately familiar with this vast body of thought and speculation.

2 months – Brain-storming and proposals. The group must come together and throw ideas out, weigh them, argue them, and gradually narrow down to some consensus. One of the first decisions to be made, of course, is whether Oswald was the sole assassin. Then, whether or not there was a conspiracy would be addressed.

4 months – Define the Project’s idea of what actually occurred on November 22, 1963. All the data will be assembled, assimilated, collated, triaged, and, with the assistance of a writer-slash-publishing insider, sculpted and molded and written up into a Thesis fit for publication.

Throughout the year there will be weekly Roundtables, discussions on progress which will be recorded (and transcribed) for posterity and publication. The historians’ notes will be submitted and become the Project’s property. There would be, possibly, bimonthly written progress reports, also for future publication but more importantly so the Coordinator would have a feel for where the investigation was heading. There would be monthly Recap meetings to keep the whole dang thing on track.

At the end of the year the Project should have enough material to publish a book on its conclusions. Individual historian notes, transcriptions, recap meeting minutes – all would be published for inspection. I’d give the historians, Coordinator, and writer each some percentage of the profits (depending on if they themselves decide to publish their own findings – that’s for the lawyers to haggle out).

The Project would cost about $2 million –

$1.2 million for the twelve historians’ salaries
$150,000 for Coordinator salary
$150,000 for Writer salary
$500,000 for a legal kitty, just in case, and for any expenses …

And could bring in upwards of – I have no idea. Book sales? DVD documentary sales? History Channel tie-ins? There would be lots of possibilities, I think, especially with the fiftieth anniversary of the assassination coming up in four short years.

$2 million for this eccentric entrepreneur would have to be something like, say, two $20 bills are to me now for this thing to ever see the light of day. Who knows? Stranger things may have happened, like what may have happened that sunny, crisp fall day in Dallas …