Tom Bowden used his right forefinger to follow a pattern in the deep oak grain of his wood desktop.
“Do you see the face?” he asked his visitors. “A member of the King family pointed that out to me.”
The “face,” shown to him by a relative of Martin Luther King Jr., was there. It was as if someone had pointed out a form in the clouds. As visitors picked out the image too, he smiled, satisfied.
It is Bowden’s job these days to show people things they might otherwise miss. He is co-director of The Conspiracy Museum, an unconventional mix of interactive videos and Eastern philosophy and artwork designed to make people rethink the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy.
“It’s the where, the when and the how,” said R.B. Cutler, a Boston architect turned “assassinologist” who paid $400,000 to renovate a corner of the downtown building for the museum. “Then you go into the who and if you don’t know why, there’s something wrong with you because that’s the easiest. I mean everybody knows why.
“It’s like writing a detective story.”
If there is a need for The Conspiracy Museum’s story, then this city seems the place to tell it. Just a block from Dealey Plaza, the museum is right across the street from a monument the city built in Kennedy’s honor in 1970.
“We could have put it in Springfield but I don’t think many people go there now,” Bowden said, speaking of Abraham Lincoln’s resting place. Lincoln’s assassination is the subject of a temporary display on the museum’s first floor.
About 50 guests–Bowden called them “a mixture of conspiracy buffs, artists, musicians and plain ordinary citizens”–gathered in front of the Lincoln exhibit for the grand opening on April 4. The event coincided with the 27th anniversary of King’s assassination. (Cutler considers King’s death another conspiracy.)
Dressed in a light brown suit, yellow Oxford shirt, bow tie and round glasses, the 81-year-old Cutler stood out from the other revelers, for whom black was the predominant fashion color.
The unexpected pop of an uncorked champagne bottle interrupted his thoughts at one point. “Fire two,” he shouted and then laughed when asked if he heard one or three pops.
For Cutler it was a wonderful night. He told people the only time he was more thrilled was when Dan Rather interviewed him. He talked to the local television reporter who broadcast live from the party for the 6 o’clock news. He traded insights with Melizah, a German-born “energy artist” living in Dallas, as she explained her paintings as a combination of chaos and calm.
“God, this is fun,” he said, to no one in particular, as they moved to another work.
Whodunnit
If it is fun for Cutler, it is serious work too. Since the mid-’60s, he has devoted most of his time to reviewing assassination information and postulating on his own theories. He’s written books like “Umbrella Man,” in which he suggests a marksman using an umbrella fired a dart that immobilized Kennedy and made him an easier target for other gunmen. He publishes a monthly newsletter, the Grassy Knoll Gazette.
He had loaned money to an assassination information clearinghouse–the John F. Kennedy-Assassination Information Center–which operated in Dallas’ West End Marketplace, a trendy tourist and entertainment center just off downtown. The center closed in 1993. The plan was to move it to the same building where The Conspiracy Museum is now. That ended with the death of the center’s originator. The museum seemed the next logical step.
“I got into this because it was the truth. I am completely unemotional about John F. Kennedy.” Cutler said. “I think if you become emotional about it, you lose some of your ability to match shots and wounds.
“It’s hard to be totally objective because you have to keep beating the same horse to death to make damn sure you don’t make stupid conclusions.”
The conclusion Cutler is proposing has resounded ever sine the echoes of gunfire faded from Dealey Plaza 32 years ago. The “why” in Cutler’s detective novel scenario is foreign policy.
“He was getting out of Vietnam and they didn’t like that. They couldn’t change his mind and they couldn’t bribe him,” he said. “They couldn’t wait until 1964 to try and beat him because they knew they couldn’t.”
“They” are the “Professional War Machine.” Using touchscreen televisions, a dizzying spin of acronyms and pen and ink sketches he drew, Cutler theorizes the “PWM” worked to control the presidency through virtually every political assassinaton in the U.S. since World War II.
Subtley is not at work here. The museum’s logo is a drawing of the White House seen through the crosshairs of a rifle sight.
There are six kiosks, four grouped together in the center of the room topped by a pagoda-like roof. Each deals with a different part of Cutler’s theory on the development of the “PWM.” At the end of each video presentation, Cutler uses the phrase “ahimsa” which, he said, comes from The Dalai Lama and means “non-forcefulness.”
Cutler’s interest in Eastern philosophy permeates the museum. In explaining his adherence to Zen, he said: “Life is and Zen is.”
A 108-foot long mural along four walls–its flow broken in one spot by an unintentionally ironic emergency exit door–surrounds the four central kiosks. The mural, done by Dallas artist Brandy Redd-Smith, mixes Chinese and Japanese symbols depicting theories on the assassination of Kennedy, King and Robert F. Kennedy, along with Chappaquidick and the downing of Koren Air Lines Flight 007. All are referred to in the mural and in the videos by their initials JFK, RFK, MLK, KAL 007 even MJK for Mary Jo Kopechne. Kopechne died in 1969 when a car driven by Ted Kennedy plunged into a creek on Chappaquidick Island. The “PWM” orchestrated that to keep him from the presidency, Cutler reasons.
The “PWM” is depicted as vultures. Brushstrokes and red blotches show bullet paths and hits for each assassination. One circuitous line with several green circles implies the Single Bullet Theory in the JFK hit is impossible.
Not everything is dire, however. The members of the Warren Commission, which in 1964 concluded there was no conspiracy, are depicted as three prancing men “giving us a song and dance,” according to the museum brochure.
“You’ve got to have a little humor. I`ve been telling the other assassination theorists that for years.” Cutler said.
Another example of museum humor–tucked among the souvenir mugs, T-shirts, specially commissioned musical CD, assassination theory books and copies of Paranoia magazine–was behind him. The book “Case Closed” by Gerald Posner, an account supportive of the Warren Commission findings, is on sale as well and listed as “Best Fiction of the Century by the Museum’s Fictional Advisory Board.”
Humor helps keep people interested, co-director Bowden said.
“We want to make people think,” said the 57-year-old Bowden. “They don’t have to believe what we say here but, again, we hope they think and become more aware of what’s going on.”
For some, what’s going on is not much more than fantasy.
“It sounds like fun to me,” said Hugh Aynesworth, an award-winning Texas journalist nominated for four Pulitzer Prizes, including one for his coverage of the assassination. “They have a theory. The people don’t have to have fact to have fun.”
“I’ve seen all these people come along with their assassination theories,” he said, speaking of the hundreds of assassination theory books. There are so many, in fact, there is a guide to assassination theories. “They were out to make a name for themselves and make money,” he said.
An opposing viewpoint
If there’s money in the conspiracy angle, there’s plenty in the Lee Harvey Oswald-acted-alone version too.
Consider the Sixth Floor Museum, opened in 1989 in the former Texas Book Depository Building. Run by the Dallas County Historical Foundation, the museum is an exhibit of narrated films and displays discussing the assassination. The FBI model of the Kennedy motorcade passing through Dealey Plaza, used by the Warren Cimmission, is on temporary display. The corner “assassin’s nest” from which, the Warren Commission said, Oswald fired the shot that killed Kennedy, is set up as it was in 1963.
More than two million people have visited the museum, according to Bob Porter, the director of public programs for the Sixth Floor. (For adults, admission is $4; seniors and children pay $3).
While Bowden is only half-joking when he refers to it as “Posner’s museum,” Porter takes exception with the notion that the museum tells only the official account; indeed, it showcases a vast number of other and outre conspiracy theories, perhaps as a way of silencing conspiracy theorists who might shout “whitewash.”
“Our museum doesn’t take a point of view,” he said. “We say what the Warren Commission said but we mention other conspiracy theories as well. We leave it to the visitors to process that information individually.”
Porter has yet to visit the Conspiracy Museum but is interested.
“We think all pertinent information should be taken to the public,” he said.
Cutler agrees.
“You can go over and get one word, then come here and get another word. That’s how I look at it anyway,” he said. “I think in a way, if you have the Sixth Floor and you have this, that’s about enough.”
It seems likely the two will benefit each other, although the symbiotic image of a bird feeding off a rhino’s back comes to mind. The Conspiracy Musem could handle no more than 100,000 people a year. Bowden said. (Adults pay $7; seniors and students $6, children $3). There is a free walking tour of Dealey Palza included.
People already are attending both. Take for example the two audiologists in Dallas recently for a convention. They had first visited the Sixth Floor and then had happened upon the Conspiracy Museum on the way to their hotel.
They weren`t convinced by either exhibit, but Cutler’s offering left a definite imperssion.
“I feel just weirded out,” said Paulette Daniel of Michigan after leaving The Conspiracy Museum. Despite acknowledging her own doubts about official accounts, she added: “I don`t think they proved their point.”
Cutler understands.
“Of course, it’s just my thoery,” he said. “But there are a lot people who share my opinion, Believe me.”
