Don Fulsom

Sept. 17, 2009 Updated May 8, 2013

Micheal Jackson

The King of Pop could not fall asleep and then he could not wake up. For his role in Michael Jackson's death, Dr. Conrad Murray was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter on November 7, 2011. On November 29, 2011 he was sentenced to four years in prison.

by Don Fulsom

Two days before Michael Jackson’s death on June 25, 2009, the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists warned hospitals to restrict access to Propofol because some doctors and nurses were addicted to the substance.  Mainlining Propofol for recreational reasons is known as “dancing with the white rabbit.”

That phrase derives from the potent liquid’s milky color and its comparison to the hallucinogenic drugs of the 1960s, according to the Wall Street Journal—which says Propofol brings on “a brief but captivating high as the sedation wears off.”  In 1967, Jefferson Airplane recorded a psychedelic Grace Slick song called "White Rabbit,” with references to a character in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland as metaphors for drug-induced experiences.

Propofol, also known as Diprivan, is a heavy-duty general anesthetic.  It can reportedly make a 10-minute nap feel like you’ve slept a full night.  It is readily available in hospitals, which makes it appealing to certain medical professionals who want to catch 40 winks quickly and effectively during a long shift. That’s called “pronapping.”

Updated 09/19/09

John F. Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy

Despite a 1990s law mandating the release of all JFK assassination-related documents, an estimated one million such CIA records have yet to be declassified. Some of the most critical pertain to CIA agent George Joannides (a.k.a. Walter Newby) who violated the CIA’s pledge that no CIA operational officer from the time of the JFK assassination would work with U.S. House investigators.

by Don Fulsom

FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and his agents concealed critical evidence about the gruesome murder of President John F. Kennedy in the streets of Dallas in 1963.

A mid-70s conclusion by a Senate Committee headed by Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat, found that the Warren Commission’s investigation of the assassination—conducted mainly by the FBI—“was deficient” and “impeaches the process whereby the intelligence agencies arrived at their own conclusions.”

In 1979, a special House investigating committee concurred—describing the FBI’s probe as “seriously flawed” and “insufficient to have uncovered a conspiracy.”

That committee’s own investigation showed a probable plot to kill the President, a plot likely involving the Mafia and certain anti-Castro groups.

October 16, 2006

President Kennedy and Jackie arriving at Love Field,
Dallas, Texas, November 22, 1963. Photo courtesy NARA.

New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello – with Jimmy Hoffa as his bagman – funded Richard Nixon's 1960 presidential bid with $500,000 in cash stuffed in a suitcase. Later Marcello – known as the Big Daddy of the Big Easy – would be named a key conspirator in President Kennedy's assassination.

by Don Fulsom

At the start of the 1920s, marijuana use in America was concentrated in New Orleans – and its intoxicating vapors were mainly inhaled by migrant workers from Mexico, by blacks, and by a growing number of "low-class" whites. Sailors and immigrants from the Caribbean brought this "new" (Its known uses go back to 7,000 B.C.) drug into major southern U.S. ports – above all into the Crescent City.

Along with jazz, pot traveled north to Chicago, and then east to Harlem – where it soon became an indispensable part of the music scene, even entering the language of the black hits of the day (Louis Armstrong's "Muggles," Cab Calloway's "That Funny Reefer Man" and Fats Waller's "Viper's Drag").

A squat but muscular fireplug of a man, rising New Orleans mobster Carlos Marcello was perfectly placed to make boatloads of money from illegal marijuana shipped into his territory. In 1938, though, Marcello sold 23 pounds of pot to an undercover agent. Convicted and sentenced to one year in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, Marcello was also fined more than $75,000. Using his political influence, that particular "Reefer Man" was able to get the fine reduced to just $400. And he was out of prison in nine months. With Louisiana Mafia boss Sam Carolla pulling the strings, Gov. O.K. Allen – a former stooge of assassinated Sen. Huey Long – provided the leniency. Legend has it that Marcello eventually had a tailor sew a foot-long pocket into the left leg of his trousers, "which he would stuff with cash as he made his rounds through (Jefferson) Parish paying off the police one by one."

From pot dealing, police-and politician-corrupting street thug, Marcello graduated to godfather of New Orleans (and Dallas), governing a vast and violent criminal empire that brought in an estimated $2 billion-a-year. He succeeded Sam Carolla, who was deported to Sicily in 1947. Marcello quickly became a generous financial supporter of Richard Nixon; and, eventually, a suspect in the murder of Nixon's nemesis: President John F. Kennedy.

Nov. 11. 2006 Updated March 12, 2007

Members of the Warren Commission present their report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.  L-R: John McCloy, J. Lee Rankin (General Counsel), Senator Richard Russell, Representative Gerald Ford, Chief Justice Earl Warren, President Lyndon B. Johnson, Allen Dulles, Senator John Sherman Cooper, and Representative Hale Boggs. Credit: LBJ Library photo by Cecil Stoughton

Warren Commission member Congressman Gerald Ford pressed the panel to change its description of the bullet wound in President Kennedy's back and place it higher to make "the magic bullet" theory plausible, enabling the Warren Commission to conclude that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman. Ford was J. Edgar Hoover's informant on the commission and did the FBI director's bidding to squelch the investigation from naming other assassins. When a Dallas County deputy constable heard shots coming from the nearby grassy knoll, he rushed there to find veteran CIA asset Bernard Barker, posing as a Secret Service agent. No Secret Service agents had been assigned to cover the grassy knoll and all accompanied President Kennedy to the hospital.

by Don Fulsom

At approximately 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 22 1963, in Dallas's downtown Dealey Plaza, a large and friendly crowd lined the street, cheering and waving excitedly at the approaching presidential motorcade. Riding in the third car – an oversized Lincoln with its Plexiglas "bubble" top removed – were President John F. Kennedy and his wife, Jackie, and Texas Gov. John Connally and his wife, Nellie. As the limousine carrying the Connallys and the Kennedys wound its way through the hospitable crowds, Nellie Connally turned to President Kennedy, who was seated behind her, and said, "Mr. President, you can't say Dallas doesn't love you." Then the shots rang out.

Today, more than four decades later, the details on specifically how and by whom President Kennedy was assassinated are still open to question.

According to the report of the Warren Commission, released in September 1964 after a full year investigation, one single shooter – Lee Harvey Oswald – killed Kennedy and wounded Gov. Connally by firing three bullets from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.

January 9, 2008

Former US President Gerald Ford in 2004

In a foreword to a new edition of the Warren Commission Report, the late president states that the CIA destroyed or kept from investigators critical secrets connected to the assassination of President Kennedy.

by Don Fulsom

In his final public words, former President Gerald R. Ford said the CIA destroyed or kept from investigators critical secrets connected to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The stunning admission by Ford—a member of the Warren Commission that investigated the JFK assassination—is contained in the foreword to a new edition of the commission's report, A Presidential Legacy and The Warren Commission. Ford died in late 2006 at the age of 93.

In the new book, Ford said the commission's probe put "certain classified and potentially damaging operations in danger of being exposed." The CIA's reaction, he added, "was to hide or destroy some information, which can easily be misinterpreted as collusion in JFK's assassination."

June 6, 2007 updated Jan. 25, 2010

E. Howard Hunt

Howard St. John Hunt, the son of super-spook E. Howard Hunt is now peddling a story that his father rejected an offer to take part in plot by rogue CIA agents to kill President Kennedy. Isn't it about time a congressional committee finds out what the CIA's role was in the assassination?

by Don Fulsom

Was a key Richard Nixon cohort in past and future covert intelligence operations – then-CIA agent E. Howard Hunt – in Dallas the day President Kennedy was killed in 1963? During a 1985 libel trial brought by Hunt against Spotlight – a newsletter owned by rightwing Liberty Lobby – for publishing an article in August of 1978 written by former CIA agent Victor Marchetti entitled "CIA to Admit Hunt Involvement in Kennedy Slaying," CIA operative Marita Lorenz swore she saw Hunt in Dallas the night before the assassination; Hunt co-worker Walter Kuzmuk at the CIA said he could not recall having seen Hunt between November 18th and sometime in December of 1963; and Joseph Trento, a reporter for the Wilmington News & Journal, insisted he had once seen an internal CIA memo that said, "Someday we will have to explain Hunt's presence in Dallas on November 22, 1963." Hunt, by the way, lost the case.

Most notorious for directing Nixon's Watergate burglary, Hunt died at 88 in January, 2007, in Miami. But Hunt's son – Howard St. John (known as "St. John") Hunt of Eureka, Calif., – is now peddling a story that his dad rejected an offer to take part in plot by rogue CIA agents to kill President Kennedy.

March 8, 2009

Rose Cherami

A dope courier for Jack Ruby informed a Louisiana State Police lieutenant and numerous hospital personnel of the planned assassination of President John F. Kennedy two days before he was gunned down in Dallas.

by Don Fulsom

One of the most fascinating and underreported stories in the JFK assassination mystery deals with the Jack Ruby dope courier who accurately predicted the President's murder.

Two days before John F. Kennedy was killed in Dealey Plaza, 34-year-old Rose Cherami (sometimes spelled Cheramie)—a hooker, junkie, drug-runner and ex-stripper at Jack Ruby's Carousel Club in Dallas—was on a Florida-to-Texas heroin run for Ruby.

In rural Louisiana, a violent drunken argument with her two Ruby-connected male traveling companions broke out both inside and outside a seedy roadside tavern/house of prostitution. The argument continued during the next leg of their ride. Rose was tossed out of the gangsters' vehicle and then run over by another car near Eunice, La.

On the way to a nearby hospital, the cut and bruised Cheramie told Louisiana State Police Lt. Francis Fruge that her pending business in Dallas included picking up cash (for the eight kilos of heroin she'd been assigned to purchase in Houston). She said her fellow travelers were out to kill President Kennedy. At the hospital, she told doctors, nurses and others JFK would soon be murdered in Dallas.