Reasons for CAPA

Reasons for CAPA

Friends

As you know we are re-organizing COPA as CAPA for a number of reasons – the loss of its coalition status by the withdraw of two of the three founding organizations, the death of long time director John Judge, and the co-mingling of COPA funds with the newly established Hidden History Museum.

Former COPA Board members at the Bethesda conference said they would support continuing COPA only if had a new name, new leadership and didn’t duplicate the activities of other, similar organizations.

We therefore have changed the name to more reflect the nature of our association as individuals with common goals and tolerant enough to accept different perspectives.

Most of COPA’s funds over the two decades went towards the production of yearly conferences in Los Angeles, Memphis and Dallas and the maintenance of the COPA archives, which are now part of the Hidden History Museum being established in Washington.

Without having to maintain any bricks and mortar, pay rent or produce conferences, CAPA members can channel their funds and energy towards research, FOIA requests and civil suits against the government, see to the oversight of the JFK Act and monitor the release of the records through at least October 2017, when the last remaining JFK assassination records will be released.

At the suggestion of our new lead attorney Bill Simpich, we will keep the organization structure small, with a four person Executive Committee – each representing one of four regions – East Coast – centered in Washington D.C., Mid-West centered in Dallas, West-Coast centered in San Fran and International – Centered on the Internet.

Each Regional Representative will have one vote on the Executive Committee, but since most issues will be long thought out proposals they should be approved by consensus, so the Chairman will only have to vote in case of a tie.

Dr. Cyril Wecht has agreed to stay on as Chairman of the Executive Committee and his son Ben will be asked to host the first conference call meeting of the Ex Com as soon as it is feasible.

Michael Nurko, a long-time COPA supporter will represent the East Coast at the first meeting of the Ex Com, while Gary Aguilar will be asked to represent the West Coast and Robert Groden, Tom Blackwell and Frank Caplet, who represented COPA at the Grassy Knoll on November 22, will decide who will represent the Mid-West.

An International Representative has yet to be chosen, but we are working on it, but in any case, after the official establishment of the organization at the first meeting, each region will choose their own representative for the Ex Com, which will meet once monthly or whenever necessary.

Attorney Bill Simpich has stepped forward and will help draw up the CAPA Charter and file official 501(c)3 tax papers establishing CAPA as a not-for-profit Political Action Organization that is not tax-deductable but permitted to endorse candidates, advance issues and sue the government, which we intend to do frequently.

Patrick McCarthy, Dennis Bartholomew and a few other lawyers will assist Simpich and formulate a Legal Action Committee that will oversee support for FOIA and civil action suits against different agencies and departments of government and maybe individuals.

I will represent the non-voting Research Committee at the first meeting, and along with other Ex Com members introduce for approval some proposals and measures that we have been working on, form new committees and focus groups and adopt a Mission Statement and budget.

An agenda for the first meeting will be forthcoming.

Peter Dale Scott will be asked to head up the Advisory Board, at least for the first meeting, while after the first meeting I will resign as representative of the Research Committee, hand it over to a researcher from Washington and take up the post of CAPA Security, with the job of seeing that we are not threatened, disrupted or kept from completing our goals and mission.

After the first mission each Region and Committee can chose their own representative on the Ex Com but only the four region representative will have voting power since committee members are already represented regionally.

While CAPA will be an open and inclusive organization that hopes to attract and recruit thousands of similar minded citizens, in order to more easily manage things we will have a broad popular base but a small Ex Com to make decisions, and the Ex Com will be selected by a Regional Committee made up of ten to twelve nominated volunteers drawn from the memberships of each region.

These sub-committees will consist of those with the knowledge and time to devote to special projects, research, legal issues, public relations and political action – we are, after all, a political action organization and we intend to be busy.

As we have learned in the past this issue attracts its share of loonies, who along with the Lone Nutters and weird conspiracy theorists there is the real opposition – those who commit political assassinations with impunity, who will certainly take exception to our work. That’s why an umbrella organization like CAPA is necessary – to protect the independent researcher who works out in the field and not only doesn’t get paid for it, doesn’t have the financial and administrative support that the government and corporate world provides. CAPA can fill that void, give support to independent researchers and writers, file FOIA and civil suits under the CAPA name, endorse candidates and make open records a campaign issue.

As our legal team has suggested, we will propose and adopt a three year plan with achievable goals that we can accomplish. 

After Legal and Research, the Ex Com will approve the establishment of other committees as it needs, including Public Relations, Fundraising and individual case committees – MLK, RFK, etc., and you can plug yourself into any committee you want to be a part of.

This should be the last mass mailing – as we will shift to more personal, private and secure interactions soon.

We have established a Blog – CAPAHQ http://capahq.blogspot.com/ and a Facebook Page – https://m.facebook.com/pages/Citizens-Against-Political-Assassination-CAPA/819677374745875?sk=timeline and will have a more sophisticated web site up soon to keep the public apprised of our activities.

A number of CAPA founders are working on important new issues and three former COPA members -John Newman, David Talbot and Jeff Morley are now polishing up years of research into books that when published in 2015 should greatly advance our knowledge of the JFK assassination. They all promised to join us in these efforts as soon as they are finished their present tasks.

I am looking forward to working with all of you over the next three years creating political havoc in Washington by achieving the goals and completing the missions we set out to accomplish twenty years ago, and hope you are looking forward to the battles ahead.

Bill Kelly