New Orleans is famous for many things. But more than 100 people gathered over the weekend to reflect on another aspect -- its connections to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
It was a spectacular fall day outside, but inside a windowless conference room of a Kenner hotel, dozens of people listened intently to an author who’s looking into the Kennedy assassination.
Russ Baker has written a book about the Bush family. And when he read that George H. W. Bush couldn’t remember where he was that day in 1963, he just didn’t buy it.
“In a sense this country, you know, was effectively taken over by the military and they never gave it back," he told the audience.
It’s a belief that many still have more than 50 years after sometime-New Orleanian Lee Harvey Oswald was named the assassin. They gathered on his birthday to review the case.
Baker says New Orleans is a national-security town. Conference coordinator Kris Millegan is a musician and book publisher from Oregon.
“It’s a port city, and ports are things that, you know, a lot of things happen in," said Millegan. "So it lends itself to being a national security town because the powers that be want to stay in power.”
Baker said after his speech that he doesn’t want to be known as a “conspiracy theorist.”
He said that saying conspiracy theory is a clear way to end a conversation.