(Reprint)- The assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963 has become a virtual cottage industry over the years, with countless books, films, documentaries and well researched articles laying the blame on everyone from Lyndon Baines Johnson to the Illuminati … and pretty much everyone in between.
We all have our theories on how, what, when and why. In fact, the only fact that seems to not be in dispute is where. JFK died of gun shot wounds that were fired at his motorcade as it passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas on that fatal day.
The media and the government decided early on that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin and the narratives that finally morphed into the Warren Commission -- the official investigation of the assassination -- were all designed to convince the rest of us of that “fact”
Pretty much everything else is just speculation.
However, there is a link to the activities that surrounded the aftermath of the assassination to western Arkansas. A man who was born in Hackett in 1918 is reported to have shared a jail cell with Jack Ruby, who killed Oswald the day after the JFK assassination.
How, or if, he fits into the puzzle at all is an intriguing story.
Rex Harding Basinger was born in the sleepy little town of Hackett in October of 1918 to George Allen and Georgina Basinger. At the age of eighteen, Basinger worked in a Civilian Conservation Corps camp before he attended Arkansas State in Jonesboro and Arkansas Tech in Russellville.
According to the narrative published in the Warren Commission, from information that seems to have been based on an interview with his brother John (a minister in Lake City, Arkansas), Rex spent a year in the Coast Guard before transferring into the US Army from 1940-44.
In or around 1943, Rex married Mildred (maiden name unknown) from Tennessee who happened to be a “personal assistant to” powerful US Senator Kenneth McKeller of Tennessee. A Democrat, he served longer in both houses of Congress than anyone else in Tennessee history, and only a few others in American history have served longer in both houses.
McKeller had been a big supporter of FDR and the New Deal at one point, but he grew more conservative in his political stances and began opposing the administration’s appointments in later years.
As head of the Appropriations Committee, McKellar had full knowledge of the appropriations needed for the Manhattan Project to build an atomic bomb. He was often called upon to “keep the secret” of the Manhattan Project by mingling funds for the bomb project with other projects, or through carefully planned (secret) War Projects Funding.
The guy was a big deal. So, seemingly, his secretary would have been privy to a lot of inside information.
But Mildred is a bit of enigma.
In addition to the well-funded Warren Commission being unable to even unearth her maiden name and the fact that she was known to run in “elite circles”, her unlikely two-year marriage to PFC Basinger, resulted in the birth of one son.
Stay with me here.
A Tennessee blue blood, high placed in the US government, marries an Arkansas-born, newly-discharged PFC from the US Army. Nothing against Rex or recently discharged private first-class soldiers from Arkansas, but one would think she might have had other options suited to her rank in the pecking order.
By 1963 she had moved on to other jobs in the government and was in fact a government employee (although the branch is listed “as unknown”) in February of 1964 when investigators with the Warren Commission filed their report.
If you are keeping a scorecard at this point, it may be time to sharpen your pencil.
In addition to Mildred working for some unknown agency,, Rex Jr. was in the Marine Corps at the time. Brother Horace and sister Beatrice worked for the “VA in Denver” and a cousin, Tommy Basinger, was a US Postal Service employee in Fort Smith.
That’s five “Basinger’s” drawing a check from the federal government in 1963.
Let’s go back and look at Rex a little closer. After his marriage to Mildred went sideways he moved to Denver in 1948 where he lived the entire time until the date of the assassination except for a four year period (believed to be 1953-57) when he “joined” the US Air Force at the age of thirty-five.
So eleven years after separation from the US Army and at the age of 35, Rex suddenly gets the urge to join the Air Force just as the United States is coming out of the Korean Conflict and headed into the Cold War.
“This whole scenario has all the earmarks of a man who is working in military intelligence or in the intelligence community,” said one world renown JFK assassination expert. “In the culture of that era one doesn’t do a year in the Coast Guard, five years in the Army and then eleven years later just up and join the Air Force.”
The researcher, who didn’t want his name used, wouldn’t offer up much else. He’s one of those guys who makes a living off his work around the JFK killing. The questions about Basinger are one’s he has pursued himself over the years.
But, the Basinger information doesn’t fit into his published theories about the assassination, and his book is about to go into a fourth third printing.
So there you go.
After his stint in the Air Force, Basinger moved back to Denver and became a cab driver. In August of 1963 Rex left Denver and brother John gets a call in the middle of December (three weeks after the assassination) from Rex saying he’s staying at the Milan Hotel in Dallas. John mailed money to Rex at the hotel, which he apparently never received.
He ran out of money, left the hotel and was arrested on “vagrancy charges” by the Dallas Police Department.
Rex claimed he was put into the same cell block as Jack Ruby after his arrest. Jail records indicate that Rex was, in fact, in jail in Dallas from December 14-17. The “official ” investigation says that Ruby was transferred from the city jail to the county jail before Rex as incarcerated, but there is no evidence to show which jail Rex was housed in.
When Rex was arrested on December 14 on the “vagrancy charges” he was at Parkland Hospital. That Parkland Hospital. Three days later he was released to the same Parkland Hospital with a notation of “lunacy” on his records, where a Dr. Wirt Jackson tagged him with a with diagnosis of “probable psychosis”.
Shortly after Rex visited cousin and US Postal service employee Tommy in Fort Smith. On January 21 Rex arrives at John’s home in Lake City and stays until January 26 at which time he traveled to New Orleans and then “moved” to Monroe, Louisiana.
Monroe was the home of a U.S. Air Force base until the late 40’s that now serves as the Monroe airport and in fact, several wartime hangars “remain and are still in use” to this day. Louisiana has also long been know as a clandestine hot spot for CIA activity over the years, especially four hours south in New Orleans.
While in Lake City, Rex told John that while in the cell block with Ruby he was told about a “plot” to kill Oswald, seemingly to keep him quiet. He also said that Ruby told him abut a plan for a U.S.-funded invasion of Cuba on March 1, 1964 in which the participants were to meet in Key West, Florida.
Rex, the now 45-year-old ex CCC employee, Coast Guard, Army and Air Force veteran, taxi cab driver turned vagrant was headed to Key West to join the party.
Rex also told his brother some fanciful tales about his time as a Denver cab driver helping the Denver Police Department undercover to arrest “pushers.” He claimed the “underworld was after him” and that someone took two shots at him in December of 1963.
Hence his departure from Denver to Dallas.
According to the Warren Commission Report, John told investigators that Rex was having mental difficulties based on the stories he had told him in Lake City. John said later on that he never said that but agreed with investigators is was a possibility based upon their insistence on tagging Rex as “crazy”.
It wouldn’t be the first, or the last, time that an affidavit in the case would be customized to meet the immediate needs of the investigator.
Rex Basinger was never interviewed by the Warren Commission. He seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth in the spring of 1964.
Back to the expert.
“We have three distinct options,” said the researcher. “One … The guy was a crackpot looking to cash in on the infamy of all the hoopla surrounding the assassination. Two … he was a CIA operative put in place in Dallas after the assassination to ‘handle’ Ruby. Or three, he’s telling the absolute truth about what happened and therefore the notion that there was a conspiracy is a valid one.”
“I don’t have an opinion either way,” said he researcher. “There are a lot of unanswered questions out there about the entire deal.”
Spoken like a guy who is about to go into a fourth printing of his book deal.
