Mark Gorton is a prominent financier and a respected entrepreneur. He founded the music sharing site Limewire, and he runs Tower Research, a famed high-frequency trading firm. Gorton also believes that the "ruthless" secret cabal that assassinated JFK and planned 9/11 could be coming to kill his family.

Mark Gorton does not have a reputation as a crackpot. Quite the opposite. He's been favorably profiled in the New York Times for his business acumen and charitable deeds. His experience as the head of Limewire—which disrupted the music industry and then lost a $100 million lawsuit as a result—was closely followed by the press. And when Michael Lewis's blockbuster new book about high frequency trading was published recently, prominent media outlets turned to Gorton to learn what HFT firms are really like. The Huffington Post even dubbed him "the new face of Wall Street." He is a very respected and very wealthy man.

This week, we were forwarded documents that Gorton was sending out to employees at Tower Research. These documents—embedded at the bottom of this post—are essays by Mark Gorton, laying out his theories on the secret high-level murderous criminal "Cabal" that is responsible for, among other things, the JFK and RFK assassinations, the presidential careers of the Bushes, Clinton, and Obama, the Oklahoma City bombing, the 9/11 plot, and the murder of countless witnesses, politicians, and journalists who sought to expose them, including Sen. Paul Wellstone and even Hunter S. Thompson. Everything, according to Gorton, has been an inside job.

It is really something.

The longest and most complete of Gorton's essays is titled "Fifty Years of the Deep State." To give you a taste of what he believes, a few brief excerpts. On the JFK assassination:

The assassination of JFK was part of a full scale Coup d'état, the violent takeover of our government by a group of criminals. I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that JFK's assassination was the work of a network of criminals embedded within the political system and power structure of the United States. Key among the players in the Coup of '63 were LBJ; Allen Dulles and the CIA; J Edgar Hoover and the FBI; right wing Texas oil executives including Clint Murchison Sr., H.L. Hunt and D.H. Byrd; the East Coast business establishment centered around Rockefeller interests and the Council on Foreign Relations; Curtis Le May (chairman of the joint chief of staff), other right wing leaders of the military and elements of military intelligence; and the Bush family (both Prescott and George H.W. Bush)... LBJ planned to kill JFK from the moment he considered becoming vice president.

And Gorton believes that the plotters of the assassination were ready to literally start a nuclear war as part of the coverup:

The contingencies beyond how to blame Oswald were much more serious. If it were superficially obvious that JFK's killing was the result of a conspiracy, Castro was to be blamed, and an invasion of Cuba was to quickly follow. Many anti-Castro Cubans who participated in the Coup were deeply disappointed that the invasion of Cuba never materialized. My studies of the Coup of '63 have led me to believe that even graver fall back strategies were embedded in the plot. If JFK's killing was obviously perceived as being part of large conspiracy, and the US public was not buying the Castro did it angle, the Coup plotters were in truly dire straits. These desperate men who ran the military, the FBI, some of largest companies in the world, and the US government faced the prospect of being hung for treason. I believe that the darkest scenarios envisioned by the Coup plotters involved declaring martial law and blaming the Russians and taking the country to (and possibly over) the brink of nuclear war with Russia...

The coverup, Gorton writes, has been deadly:

Over the years, certainly 50 and more likely more than 100 people have been killed to preserve the secrets of the Coup of '63. Many witnesses, reporters, people who knew too much, plot members at risk of being exposed, overzealous law enforcement officials have all been killed. Some of these deaths were clearly violent. Many were made to look like something else.

Another of Gorton's writings, "The Political Dominance of the Cabal" is a point-by-point primer on the Cabal's alleged members and murderous conspiracies.(Example: President Bill Clinton was a "Senior Member of the Dixie Mafia... Associated with dozens of suspicious deaths"; George HW Bush masterminded the savings and loan crisis, Reagan's shooting, and "domestic death squads.") The third document, "The Coup of '63, Part 1" is a JFK assassination-centric shorter version of "Fifty Years of the Deep State."

Yesterday, we called Mark Gorton to ask him about the authenticity of these documents. After a long pause, he said that he was mulling over the "consequences for me" if these documents came to light. Like what? "People killing me and my children," he said. "This has the potential to change my life."

Gorton did confirm that he wrote the essays, though, which he described as works in progress. He even agreed to send us the most recent versions of the documents, which are the versions we've embedded below. In his email to us yesterday, Gorton described his fears:

I am concerned because the criminal syndicate that I describe in these documents has a long history of harassing and killing people who describe what they do. They not only kill the people that speak up, on occasion, they also kill their family members. I have a good life and four great kids, and I would prefer not to bring the wrath of a criminal government down upon my head. I would ask that you completely read all three documents and think about what they have to say. Having these documents suddenly appear on a blog like Gawker changes my risk profile in life. That being said, I do think that the truth needs to be told about what has happened to our democracy. I have written these documents and I have sent them out to a limited audience. If you are interested in publishing this material, I ask that you talk to me and that this be done in a thoughtful manner. I would prefer that my life not be put in jeopardy by a casual, quick, one off, blog post.

We have decided to publish the material. We trust that any shadowy forces will be kept at bay by the public attention we are drawing to this topic.

[Image by Jim Cooke]