Literary Las Vegas: Robert Ries
On Nov. 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Nearly 50 years later, despite a government commission concluding the case was closed, Americans still search for answers surrounding Kennedy’s death. Las Vegas resident Robert Ries takes up the quest for clues in the book “Who Really Killed Kennedy? The Conspiracy.”
Ries, who served in the U.S. Navy in the Mediterranean and in Europe, received a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago. In addition to work in the corporate world, Ries worked as a college professor and has pursued historic research as a hobby all his life.
In seeking answers to the Kennedy assassination, Ries pored over books on the topic and searched through the Warren Commission Report. He also interviewed a U.S. Army sniper and a U.S. Marine who served alongside Oswald.
Excerpt from ‘Who Really Killed Kennedy? The Conspiracy’
To understand why, and how Jack Kennedy was assassinated, it is necessary to review his actions in office, and how these could have so upset some very powerful people. In fact, upset them so much that they would go so far as to plan his assassination.
Jack Kennedy had alienated two powerful groups of business people. First, there was the steel industry. Kennedy thought he had an agreement that the steel companies were not going to raise steel prices. However, they did raise prices. Kennedy then excoriated them in public, with the steel companies ultimately rescinding their price increases. Naturally, these people were not pleased with what had happened.
Jack Kennedy had also alienated the oil industry. In 1962, he proposed a bill to reduce or eliminate the oil depletion allowance. The result would have been that Texas oilmen, such as Clint Murchison and H.L. Hunt, would have had their incomes reduced by millions of dollars. This definitely was not a pretty prospect to these men.
