Peter Black, Local Journalism Initiative reporter

peterblack@qctonline.com

As the 60th anniversary of the Nov. 22 assassination of John F. Kennedy is marked, CEGEP Champlain-St. Lawrence business professor and assassination researcher Paul Bleau found himself at the scene of the crime in Dallas, Texas.

Bleau is one of the five authors who contributed 10 chapters to a new compendium of research into the president’s killing, titled The JFK Assassination Chokeholds. The title refers to what the authors deem to be examples of incontestable proof “lone gunman” Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent and that there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy.

Last year, Bleau’s research drew national attention when he was featured in Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone’s documentary, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass. Stone screened the documentary in Quebec City at packed events in June 2022. (The documentary is running again at this time on the Crave channel.)

The release of Chokeholds comes in the wake of the recent stunning revelations from former Secret Service agent Paul Landis, “whose new evidence,” according to Bleau, “seriously calls into question the chain of custody and truth surrounding the alleged ‘magic bullet’ (which is the foundation of the ‘lone nut assassin’ fable of the Warren Commission).”

Besides Bleau, the other contributors are James DiEugenio, who wrote the script for the Stone documentary and is considered the “pre-eminent scholar” of assassination history, and lawyers Matt Crumpton, Andrew Iler and Mark Adamcyk.

Bleau flew last week to Dallas to present the book and his research at a conference and give at least five interviews to local media. It’s a place he has visited previously in the context of his JFK investigations. He confesses he got a souvenir of the famous Dealey Plaza site – a tiny piece of the picket fence behind the famous grassy knoll where some witnesses say they heard shots that did not come from the Texas Book Repository from where Oswald was alleged to have shot the president.

The longtime St. Lawrence business professor came to the attention of the assassination research community with an article he wrote, inspired by his access to education texts through his work at the college, about how the Kennedy assassination is taught to students.

It found that while some books acknowledged there was controversy, readers would conclude that the “lone nut” theory – that former Soviet defector Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone – was the established historical version of what happened.

Bleau’s contribution to the Stone documentary was based on another article he wrote looking into possible prior plots to kill Kennedy in Chicago, Tampa and Los Angeles in the months and weeks leading up to the Dallas killing.

Bleau said the goal of Chokeholds was not to suggest who might have committed the crime but to lay out a series of indisputable, meticulously researched facts that debunk the so-called official version.

Bleau said he is “particularly proud” of his opening chapter of the book which picks apart the inconsistencies, contradictions and omissions of the Warren Commission report.

In a release accompanying the launch of the book, Bleau said, “There is now an overwhelming mountain of evidence that would give a jury more than a reasonable doubt of Oswald’s guilt, and that there is clear and convincing evidence that there was indeed a conspiracy to assassinate the president and to cover up the true nature of the assassination, which has resulted in 60 years of obstruction of justice.”

He said the most recent example of obstruction is “the decisions of both presidents Trump and Biden to keep hidden the thousands of records about the assassination that remain held in secret by the CIA, FBI and other recalcitrant agencies.”
He said, “We’re getting down to the ‘smoking gun’ documents. We kind of know what the documents they are not releasing are about. Many people suspect they would be very, very troubling.”

As for Bleau personally, his JFK assassination curiosity and research have taken him not only to Dallas but to England where there is a community of interest in the mysterious, unsolved killing, what Bleau calls “the greatest whodunit of the 20th century.”

Chokeholds is available online and in bookstores.

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Chokeholds compiles evidence contradicting the official version of who killed JFK.