Vincent J. Salandria

Vincent J. Salandria died this past August at the age of ninety-two. It was my great privilege to befriend Vince after meeting him in Dallas in 1998.

Shortly after his death I was contacted by the host of “Black Op Radio,” a show out of Vancouver, and asked to be one of many participants in a tribute episode. My portion was recorded by phone on a Wednesday and the show was webcast the following evening.

To be blunt, I did not want to be involved. This was in part because I don’t do well on the air. But I felt I owed it to Vince, so I wrote up some remarks. When the host called to record our conversation I said I would simply read what I had written: “It lasts about four minutes.” After a long pause the host replied, “The last guy talked for over an hour.” Clearly he expected more. Regardless, I read the text reproduced below (trying to sound spontaneous), suffered through a Q&A that extended my participation by another ten or fifteen minutes, then wrapped it up.

The host did not ask about my book (the subject of this blog). No great loss – but I would like to say here that, for better or worse, it would not have been written without Vince Salandria. As described below, he gave me several boxes of his assassination-related correspondence that formed the initial raw material that got me started, and in time evolved into the book.

Vincent J. Salandria was one of just a handful of people who began to independently investigate the JFK assassination immediately after it happened. With his brother-in-law Harold Feldman he traveled to Dallas in the summer of 1964, where he talked to Marguerite Oswald and interviewed key witnesses like Helen Markham. That same year he wrote one of the earliest articles demonstrating what we might charitably refer to as flaws in the Warren Commission version of events.

Before I continue, Len, I have to say that I suspect Vince would not approve of any tributes to his work, like what we’re doing now. He was known for his humility, and not all that interested in getting credit for any of his research. To him it was much more important to find the truth, and put that truth before the public. Sylvia Meagher once said that while other early critics might bicker over credit for one discovery or another, Vince never concerned himself with any of that. Some of his friends even teased him about his humility, calling him “St. Vincent.” But he knew what he was about. As Christopher Sharrett once observed, Salandria “always knew he packed the gear.”

His contribution to our common cause is undeniable and immeasurable. He and Harold Feldman saw, virtually from Day One, what had really happened. Even at that early stage they both viewed it as a high-level killing, and felt the only the real question was the scope of the conspiracy.

In the 1970s Vince told Gaeton Fonzi that, and I quote, “the tyranny of power is here. Current events tell us that those who killed Kennedy can only perpetuate their power by promoting social upheaval both at home and abroad. And that will lead not to revolution but to repression...” end quote. He said that nearly fifty years ago, but we need look no further than Lafayette Square in Washington, DC this past June to see that Vince Salandria’s insight remains valid, and that there is a direct line from November 1963 to today.

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I met Vince at the 1998 COPA conference in Dallas. About a year later he asked me whether I’d be interested in taking possession of his assassination-related correspondence, much of it dating back to the 1960s.

When I hesitated, he added, “My wife will just burn it all as soon as I’m dead.”

I think he was only joking, but that ended up tipping the scales. I said yes, and wound up with what I still consider raw material of great historic significance.

I only met Vince in person that one time, but over the next dozen or more years we had countless telephone conversations and emails. He consistently impressed me – not just with his insight, but with his encouragement and generosity.

In 2013, just before the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, I asked him for his thoughts on the occasion. I’ll conclude my remarks to you by quoting his reply:

“The debate over the killing of President John F. Kennedy interminably rambles on. It dumps mountains of trash on the public in an effort to bury the self-evident truth of the JFK assassination coup and its cover-up. In the debate, the national security state and its puppets (the military industrial complex and the nation’s press), desperately seek to substitute for the plain historical truth of their guilt, a seemingly impenetrable mystery which is no mystery at all.”