Ventura Supporting Author Who Says Oswald Didn't Shoot JFK
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura has lent his high-profile support to an author who says she has proof Lee Harvey Oswald didn't assassinate President John Kennedy.
In Chicago Tuesday morning, Ventura called on the government to release more documents to reveal what he calls the truth about JFK's killing in 1963.
"My goal is to exonerate Lee Oswald, and also to get justice for John Kennedy," said author Judyth Baker.
Ventura joined Baker who claims to have been Lee Harvey Oswald's former girlfriend, and who has written a book to prove Oswald didn't kill JFK. She says she was Oswald's 19-year-old lover in the summer of 1963 and spoke to him just before the killing.
Baker and Ventura say the government is withholding documents that would reveal the purported truth about the assassination.
"If the government were telling the truth, there would be no reason to lock up anything from the people of this country. Clearly they are not, because here we are 50 years later, and they are still withholding documents from us," said Ventura.
But a prominent federal judge says all the evidence is out there and the verdict is in. In fact, assassination experts say virtually every known document is public.
Minnesota Federal District Judge Jack Tunheim led an independent fact-finding commission in Washington in the 1990s to review, and declassify, millions of pages of documents related to the Kennedy assassination.
Tunheim says all but a few of those documents are now public.
"Is there a cache of records someplace? I don't think so. We looked as far and as wide as we possibly could," said Tunheim. "It would have been a violation of law to not turn over records to us for our decision making. I just don't think there was much left."
Tunheim says after many years of seeing all the available evidence -- from Oswald's rifle and bullets to Kennedy's autopsy photos to FBI and CIA documents -- he has not seen any direct evidence of any kind to change the verdict, which is that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
