This episode marks the beginning of the end of our exposition on the boots on the ground on the Warren Commission - the staff lawyers. One of the most persuasive anti-conspiracy lines deployed against Warren Commission critics is, “how could all of those staffers on the Commission really be in on a coverup? They’re independent-minded guys with no political bag to carry!” Building on the work we did with Specter and others, this episode digs deep for a solid answer to that line of argument, and we zero in on probably the single most important lawyer on the whole staff, Albert E. Jenner, Jr. He’s another guy who, like Arlen Specter (and pretty much everyone else for that matter), came into the Commission with great ambition, contributed materially to bolstering the Commission’s reputation after the fact, and were rewarded for their loyalty to the lie.

Jenner was the senior staff lawyer in charge of the portion of the Commission’s investigation and report focused on profiling Lee Harvey Oswald.  We’ve picked Jenner because of his area of expertise on the Commission plus the fact that he has all the biomarkers of a tried-and-true Reichsman.  Jenner is a Chicago trial lawyer. A rainmaker. A lawyer’s lawyer. His most telling connection to the American Empire is his extremely close relationship with Chicago industrialist and financier Henry Crown, who rose to prominence as the controlling shareholder of the arms manufacturing giant General Dynamics.  You see, the Yale law trained Jenner was consiglieri to the Crown family—and lead outside counsel for General Dynamics—at the flashpoint in the 20th century when airpower became THE decisive factor in warfare, giving rise to the era of massive military contracts.

Well wouldn’t you know that a decisive moment in the history of aeronautic defense contracting was in the making right at the time of JFK’s assassination that put Jenner at the center of the action?  In the months leading up to Kennedy’s death, the administration was laser focused on achieving military superiority over the Soviet Union by harnessing the awesome power of long-range supersonic jets.  Enter General Dynamics.  With the advice and counsel of Jenner, General Dynamics won a record-breaking $7 billion government contract to build the next generation of flying death machines, the Tactical Fighter Experimental, or TFX. This episode spirals into deep and dark territory involving bribery, silk-topper lawyers with Pynchonesque names (ahem, “Roswell Gilpatrick”), synchornicities, and of course, plenty of Family History.

Keep your Fourth Reich field guide handy for this one, as there are many familiar artifacts we will encounter and identify.