Jesse Ventura takes his complaints to the U.S. Capitol

WASHINGTON - Jesse Ventura has found two new reasons not to trust the government, and he's telling anybody in the halls of Congress who will listen.

The first bit of intrigue involves what he sees as the military's move to undermine his reality truTV series, "Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura," by not letting him film a stand-up in front of the Eternal Flame at the gravesite of John F. Kennedy.

The former Minnesota governor also claims the U.S. is fighting in Afghanistan to secretly secure a massive lithium deposit to make the world safe for cell phone, computer and electric car batteries.

"We're still buying that we're there to fight terrorism and the Taliban? Gimmie a break," Ventura said in a random encounter with a lifestyle journalist in a U.S. Capitol hallway a few days ago. "The whole war on terror is a red herring to get what they want. It's the lithium."

Spotted in D.C. buying cigars in recent days, the former Minnesota governor has been up on Capitol Hill complaining to "every congressman I run into" about being barred from filming in front of the Eternal Flame at Arlington National Cemetery.

Though he quickly added, "I did it anyway."

"They felt I offended them with my last series, because I look into government things, Conspiracy Theory, my TV show," Ventura told E.W. Scripps's Ann Sharpsteen, who said she ran into him on assignment last Thursday. Sharpsteen had a camera, and Ventura obliged her by talking. The video was posted on the Internet Tuesday, both on YouTube and her Web site.

Ventura said in the video that he went through "proper channels" to do a stand-up in front of the Eternal Flame for an episode implying that government officials had something to do with the JFK assassination.

The answer from the military was no. "They said, 'because we don't like your television show,'" Ventura said.

Ventura's producer, "Tabloid Baby" author Burt Kearns, directed reporters to Ken Hawes, director of the U.S. Army's Public Affairs Office in Los Angeles, which acts as a liaison to the entertainment industry.

Hawes told the Star Tribune Tuesday that the late president's final resting place is "hallowed ground" surrounded by a working cemetery that averages 30 burials a day.

"We don't allow stand-ups next to the eternal flame for anyone," Hawes said.

Hawes acknowledged that his office did not think it proper to cooperate with a show alleging that JFK's death was an inside government job. But he denied Ventura's assertion that they turned ex-governor down simply because they don't like his show.

"The bottom line is we said we didn't want to be part of his television program," Hawes said. "We support all kinds of programs, but that one was just a little out of bounds."

Ventura is a long-time JFK assassination conspiracy buff. On a trip to Havana in 2002, he asked Fidel Castro if he was in involved in Kennedy's death.

As for nixing the photo op, Ventura said he was outraged as a taxpayer, as a governor, and as a former Navy veteran. "I highly think that if the president were alive today he would approve it, because John Kennedy was also a Navy man," said the former pro-wrestler and Navy SEAL.

Hawes said Ventura was told to ask the Kennedy family for permission. If they granted it, Hawes said, the military would make and exception.

On the lithium issue, Ventura added as a postscript that he's never owned a cell phone, and hopes to inscribe an epitaph to that effect on his gravestone when he dies. "That's a life mission for me," he said.

But the Scripps video concludes with Ventura taking a phone call. It's a cell phone.

Kevin Diaz is a correspondent in the Star Tribune Washington Bureau.