How Kennedy Assassination Affected Some Stock Prices JONATHAN MARSHALL The San Francisco Chronicle, 18 November 1996

Full story: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1996/11/18/BU49588.DTL One of the first questions any murder investigator asks is cui bono -- who benef its. In the case of the John F. Kennedy assassination, whose 33rd anniversary falls o n Friday, new answers have come from a recent economic study called "Friends in High Places: The Wealth Effects of JFK's Assassination on the Assets of LBJ's Su pporters." . . . Aerospace firms saw their value rise three-quarters of a percent more tha n the market right after the assassination. And no wonder: Business Week, in its last pre-assassination issue, reported that "a major cut in defense spending is in the works." Johnson, more hawkish than K ennedy, eventually reversed that cut with a major escalation of the Vietnam War. Of all defense firms, perhaps none had a greater stake in the sudden transfer of power from Kennedy to Johnson than General Dynamics, whose main aircraft plant was located in Fort Worth, Texas. Its stock climbed from $23.75 on November 22 to $25.13 on November 26, and by Fe bruary 1964 was up over $30, a jump of around 30 percent in three months. Shortly before the assassination, General Dynamics was the subject of a major in fluence peddling investigation by the Senate Government Operations Committee. . . . But no more hearings were held after Johnson took power. . . . A postscript for assassination buffs: No individual stood to lose more from the TFX scandal than Chicago investor Henry Crown, who owned 20 percent of General D ynamics. His personal attorney, Albert Jenner, became a senior staff attorney on the Warren Commission, in charge of investigating the possibility of a conspira cy. In later years, Jenner also represented Chicago labor racketeer Allen Dorfman. D orfman's stepfather Paul, a leading figure in the Chicago mob, ran the Waste Han dlers Union in Chicago in 1939 with Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald's future killer . Both Dorfmans hated the Kennedy family. Robert Kennedy had hauled them before a Senate crime panel in the late 1950s, where they took the Fifth Amendment. Allen Dorfman was murdered, gangland-style, in 1983 in the company of another fr iend of Ruby, Irwin Weiner. Attorney Jenner obtained Weiner's acquittal in a 197 5 federal labor racketeering case after the government's leading witness was sho tgunned to death. Weiner was called to testify in 1978 before the House Select Committee on Assass inations about his relationship with Ruby, including a phone conversation with R uby shortly before the assassination. He said the call was innocent. The committee was investigating the theory -- which it never proved -- that orga nized crime had Ruby silence Oswald to disguise its own role in the Kennedy assa

ssination. Too bad the Mafia doesn't list its assets on the New York Stock Exchange, so we could see how organized crime was affected by the assassination.