New AARC FOIA Requests

AARC Counsel of Record for the "Hitler Plot" case going before the Supreme Court isn't wasting any time waiting for them to deliberate and make a decision, he's fired another round of Broadsides requesting the CIA records on D. H. Byrd, the owner of the Texas School Book Depository, Byrd's safari hunting partner Werner von Alvensleben, Jr., and records related to the Doolittle Report on CIA covert activities, that was prepared by General James Doolittle, another Byrd safari hunting partner. 

July 4, 2020

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT REQUEST

Information and Privacy Coordinator
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, D.C. 20505

Re: Freedom of Information Act Request

Dear Information and Privacy Coordinator:

On behalf of my clients Assassination Archives and Research Center, Inc. and attorney James
H. Lesar, I make the following request of the CIA under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 USC
Sec. 552:

1. Search for and release all records or information in any format related to David Harold
Byrd (deceased) of Dallas, Texas. Mr. Byrd died on September 14, 1986 (see attached
obituary from the Dallas Times-Herald). Mr. Byrd owned the Texas School Book
Depository Building at the time of the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, and
reportedly removed the “sniper’s window” from the building after the assassination and
displayed it in his mansion. Mr. Byrd was an owner and financier of government
contracting companies including Texas Engineering Manufacturing Company (TEMCO),
E-Systems, and Ling-TEMCO-Vaught (LTV). E-Systems was well known as a CIA
contractor, so much so that in 1975 CIA solicited E-Systems to purchase its proprietary
airline, Air America. David Harold Byrd was also active in the oil business and varied
other business enterprises. David Harold Byrd co-founded the Civil Air Patrol (CAP) in
1941 and served in command capacities in CAP until the early 1960’s. Civil Air Patrol is
the official auxilary of the US Air Force. In the 1950’s Mr. Byrd served with Cord
Meyer, Sr. on the national executive board of CAP (Cord Meyer, Jr. was a ranking CIA
executive).

2. Search for and release all records and information in any format related to Werner von
Alvensleben, Jr. (died 1998), of Mozambique (formerly Portuguese East Africa). Mr.
Alvensleben owned and operated the big game hunting company named Safarilandia in
Portuguese East Africa, later Mozambique. According to released Office of Strategic
Services (OSS) records, Mr. Alvensleben served as a valued double agent for OSS during
World War II in Portuguese East Africa. OSS records state that Mr. Alvensleben was a
member of the Bavarian Military Police in 1933, headed by Heinrich Himmler (the
Bavarian Military Police became the Nazi SS, according to OSS records). In 1933 Mr.
Alvensleben was sent to Austria to participate in the assassination of an Austrian official.
Mr. Alvensleben was arrested by the Austrians and imprisoned for this activity.

According to reports in the Dallas Morning News, Mr. Alvensleben was in Dallas, Texas
as a guest of David Harold Byrd in late 1963. Further, David Harold Byrd was reported
to be present at Mr. Alvensleben’s Safarilandia on November 22, 1963, the day of
President Kennedy’s murder. Due to Mr. Alvensleben’s service as a valued double agent
for OSS in World War II, it is likely that Mr. Alvensleben served as an asset of the CIA
after the war, or had contact with the CIA.

3. Search for and release all records and information in any format related to the Doolittle
Report of 1954 and its appendices A-D. The Doolittle Report was the result of a
commission established by President Eisenhower to study the activities of the CIA and
headed by General James Doolittle. The Doolittle Report called for more aggressive CIA
covert activities that had previously been believed to be repugnant and contrary to
American values. Requesters seek full release of the requested materials. As shown in
the attached obituary of David Harold Byrd, General Doolittle and Mr. Byrd were
substantial friends who shared an interest in aviation from the early years. Mr. Byrd and
General Doolittle were Safari hunting partners on several occasions.

If it is your position that any portion of the requested records is exempt from disclosure,
Requesters request that you provide them with an index of those documents as required under
Vaughn v. Rosen, 484 F.2d 820 (D.C. Cir. 1973), cert. denied, 415 U.S. 977 (1974). As you are
aware, a Vaughn index must describe each document claimed as exempt with sufficient
specificity “to permit a reasoned judgment as to whether the material is actually exempt under
FOIA.” Founding Church of Scientology v. Bell, 603 F.2d 945, 949 (D.C. Cir. 1979).
Moreover, the Vaughn index must “describe each document or portion thereof withheld, and for
each withholding it must discuss the consequences of supplying the sought-after information.”
King v. U.S. Dep’t of Justice, 830 F.2d 210, 223-24 (D.C. Cir. 1987) (emphasis added). Further,
“the withholding agency must supply ‘a relatively detailed justification, specifically identifying
the reasons why a particular exemption is relevant and correlating those claims with the
particular part of a withheld document to which they apply.’” Id. at 224 (citing Mead Data
Central v. U.S. Dep’t of the Air Force, 566 F.2d 242, 251 (D.C. Cir. 1977).

In the event that you contend some portions of the requested records are properly exempt
from disclosure, please disclose any reasonably segregable non-exempt portions of the requested
records. See 5 U.S.C. § 552(b). Claims of nonsegregability must be made with the same degree
of detail as required for claims of exemptions in a Vaughn index. If a request is denied in whole,
please state specifically that it is not reasonable to segregate portions of the record for release.

Public Interest Fee Waiver Request

In accordance with 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(A)(iii) requesters request a waiver of fees
associated with processing this request for records based on the fact that a waiver is in the public
interest. The subject of this request concerns the operations of the federal government and its
expenditures, and the disclosures will likely contribute to a better understanding of relevant
government procedures by the general public in a significant way. Moreover, the request is
primarily and fundamentally for non-commercial purposes. The DC Circuit Court of Appeals
has recognized that Congress amended FOIA to ensure that public interest fee waivers be
“liberally construed in favor of waivers for noncommercial requesters”. Judicial Watch, Inc. v.
Rossotti, 326 F.3d 1309,1312 (D.C.Cir. 2003). Assassination Archives and Research Center and
Mr. Lesar are noncommercial requesters and thus falls in the category of authors, researchers and
public interest groups favored for a fee waiver. Campbell v. U.S. Dept. of Justice, 164 F.3d
20,35 (D.C.Cir. 1998).

The Assassination Archives and Research Center (“AARC”) was founded in 1984 as a
non-profit organization to house records related to political assassinations and to encourage
research in the field. Mr. Lesar was a cofounder in 1984 and has served as President of the
Center since 1991. AARC maintains a website which includes a public library of released
government documents for use of the public. AARC maintains the largest collection of materials
on the assassination of President Kennedy in private hands.

\

Sincerely,
/s/ Daniel S. Alcorn
Daniel S. Alcorn
Counsel for Requesters

Enclosure-
Byrd-von Alvensleben- Doolittle FOIA request + obit

The Supreme Court Takes on a JFK Case

THE SUPREME COURT TAKES ON A JFK CASE

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Billkelly3@gmail.com

While most of the government and society grounded to a virtual halt during the pandemic of 2020, the Supreme Court of the United States kept chugging along, ruling on a number of cases that will have a major impact on laws, elections, the president’s finances and how government works. The gears of justice grind slow however.

Eight years ago, on August 25, 2012, lawyers for the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC) filed a Freedom of Information Act request (FOIA) for some specific records that are mentioned in another document that was previously released under the JFK Act of 1992.

The Assassination Archives and Research Center, is a privately funded, Maryland-based organization founded by Bud Fensterwald in 1984 “to provide a permanent organization which would acquire, preserve, and disseminate information on political assassinations.”  The attorney’s for AARC in this case are AARC director James Lesar and Dan Alcorn. [https://aarclibrary.org/  ]

Government agencies usualy drag their feet in response to all FOIA requests, and those filed by individuals often drag on until the requester loses interest or dies, but those filed by permanent organizations are not going to go away. So they get more attention.

The case stems from a document dated September 25, 1963 detailing a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who were briefed by CIA official Desmond FitzGerald on covert operations against Cuba.

Daniel Alcorn, the AARC attorney and Counsel of Record, said the document contained an intriguing reference to the CIA basing a plot to kill Fidel Castro in 1963 on an earlier plot to kill Adolph Hitler during World War II.

[ http://jfkcountercoup2.blogspot.com/2018/07/the-higgins-memo-of-jcs-meeting-of-sept.html ]

[Thanks to Rex Bradford at Mary Ferrell for the Original Documents: Sept. 23 memo Re: Special Group Security: 

https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=189164#relPageId=18

Sept 25 memo: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=10331&relPageId=3  ]

Known as the Higgins memo for its author, Colonel Walter Higgins, who was adjunct to General Victor “Brute” Krulak, USMC, the officer responsible for the military’s assistance to the CIA’s covert operations, especially against Cuba.

I listed the Higgins Memo - as the Number One Smoking Document released under the JFK Act for a number of reasons.

[http://jfkcountercoup.blogspot.com/2018/11/top-ten-jfk-assassination-records.html ]

The meeting was chaired by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Curtis LeMay because General Maxwell Taylor was in Vietnam on a special mission for the president. The purpose of the meeting was for the Joint Chiefs of Staff to be briefed on CIA Covert Operations against Cuba by Desmond FitzGerald, who had replaced William Harvey as head of the CIA Cuban desk -Task Force W. Renamed by FitzGerald as the Special Group of the National Security Council that was responsible for approving or disapproving covert operations.

The key paragraph is bullet point # (13):

 "He (Desmond FitzGerald) commented that there was nothing new in the propaganda field. However, he felt that there had been great success in getting closer to the military personnel who might break with Castro, and stated that there were at least ten high-level military personnel who are talking with CIA but as yet are not talking to each other, since that degree of confidence has not yet developed. He considers it as a parallel in history, i.e., the plot to kill Hitler, and this plot is being studied in detail to develop an approach.”

“This was new information to us when we saw it,” Alcorn said, so filed the AARC Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for any documents or records of this detailed study of the German military plot to kill Hitler.

Over the course of a few years the CIA responded by saying that it could not find any reference to the “detailed study” that the CIA had conducted in 1963 of the July 20, 1944 German military plot to kill Hitler that was being adapted “to develop an approach” for use against Castro.

Then the CIA reversed itself and acknowledged that they found one reference to the plot to kill Hitler in a 1964 propaganda pamphlet that blamed the failure of the 1944 plot on communists.

The CIA’s chief historian David Robarge was consulted, and he recommended that the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) records be checked at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

Frustrated, the center sued the agency in federal court in Washington, D.C. on January 25, 2017.

[ https://aarclibrary.org/center-seeks-cia-documents-on-plots-to-kill-hitler-castro/ ]

When a three judge appeals court reviewed the case, one of the judges asked the CIA some important questions, wondering if the CIA kept copies of OSS records, a question that went unanswered.

The case appeared to be dead in the water until June 8, 2020, when the Solicitor General of the United States, Noel J. Francisco, filed a waiver of response in AARC’s petition to the United States Supreme Court seeking documents related to new information related to the assassination of President Kennedy. 

“AARC seeks documents related to a briefing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff on September 25, 1963 by CIA Cuban operations head Desmond Fitzgerald.  Fitzgerald informed the Joint Chiefs that CIA was studying in detail a parallel in history to develop an approach to dealing with Fidel Castro- the July 20, 1944 plot by German military officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler."

As the AARC notes, one-time CIA Director Allen Dulles, and Warren Commissioner, was in close contact in 1944 with the German plotters from his position as head of European operations for OSS in Bern Switzerland. 

The CIA denied finding any such records and instead pointed to the National Archives as a possible source for information. Alcorn responded, “Clear Supreme Court case law holds that federal agencies cannot shirk their duties under the Freedom of Information Act by pointing requesters to another agency of the government, as CIA has done…. Solicitor General Francisco’s waiver of a response is another instance of CIA failing to address troubling facts related to the assassination of President Kennedy.”

A copy of the waiver is attached.  The Supreme Court is likely to take up AARC’s petition in late September and rule in October during its fall session.

AARC v. CIA12 CIA Waiver Letter 19-1273 AARC v. CIA12 CIA W

The Supreme Court had previously granted  a writ of certiorari on February 28, 2020 in case # 19-547, Fish and Wildlife Serv., et al. v. Sierra Club, Inc. According to the AARC, “That case presents an issue closely similar to one in Petitioner’s case involving the deliberate process privilege under Exemption 5 of the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(5). The results of the two cases arising from different circuits are in conflict.”

“The Fish and Wildlife Service case presents an issue of compelled release under the FOIA of draft documents for which the government asserts a deliberative process privilege under FOIA Exemption 5….Petitioner AARC’s case involves the Central Intelligence Agency’s successful assertion of the Exemption 5 deliberative process privilege for information reflecting CIA’s search activities in responding to Petitioner’s FOIA request. Petitioner’s FOIA request relates to a matter of public importance- new information about the circumstances of the assassination of President Kennedy.”

 [https://aarclibrary.org/8-june-2020-update-on-aarcs-petition-for-certiorari-to-the-united-states-supreme-court/]

The appeal to the Supreme Court centers on the “deliberative” process and exemption, which is being used in this case to withhold the inter-office memos, emails and phone calls that detail the extent to which the CIA searched for the relevant records.

According to the AARC attorneys, “The United States Supreme Court has officially requested that the Department of Justice file a response to the AARC’s ‘Hitler plot’ lawsuit. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has waived its right to file a brief opposing the AARC’s petition. Now at least one member of the Supreme Court has requested that the Solicitor General, acting on behalf of the Department of Justice, explain why the CIA has not set forth its position on the facts and legal issues raised by the AARC’s petition.”

“The ultimate goal in a petition for a writ of certiorari is to get the United States Supreme Court to issue the writ. The issuance of this week’s (16 July, 2020) request by the Supreme Court places the AARC just one step away from achieving this goal.”

“ The challenge of this effort remains a daunting and problematic process, but at least the AARC has reached the very threshold of success.  The AARC is encouraged by this development and remains optimistic about reaching the top of this nation’s judicial pyramid.”

The AARC will have the right to reply to the Solicitor General’s contentions.

View the Supreme Court’s request to the Office of the Acting Solicitor General by clicking HERE: 19-1273 Response Request.

The Acting Solicitor Genera must respond to the Supreme Court by mid-August, and the Supreme Court will begin review of the records on September 24, nearly fifty seven years to the day the Higgins Memo was written. They should have a ruling sometime in October. 

Oliver Stone's "Destiny Betrayed" Documentary

JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theories with Upcoming Documentary

https://ventsmagazine.com/2020/07/24/director-oliver-stone-reopens-jfk-assassination-conspiracy-theories-with-upcoming-documentary/

Director Oliver Stone Reopens JFK Assassination Conspiracy Theories with Upcoming Documentary

Ryan Vandergriff 2 days ago Entertainment News Leave a comment

"If you want to know what's in the JFK files, ask Bill Kelly." - Oliver Stone at 2019 CAPA Conference

It is perhaps the greatest murder mystery in the history of our country: On November 22, 1963, while riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, President John F. Kennedy was gunned down by a lone assassin from atop the Texas School Book Depository. At least that’s the way the government spear-headed Warren Report and American history books have sold it to the world over the last fifty six years.

 Legendary director Oliver Stone (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Nixon) laid out a far more sinister and insidious theory as to what exactly happened to the president on that long ago autumn day in his Oscar winning 1991 film, JFK. Through the eyes of New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner, rarely better), Stone methodically and dramatically presented evidence of a conspiracy by a shadowy group with potential ties to the U.S. government and military complex who were intent on taking out one of the most revered and controversial political figures of modern times.

 Almost thirty years after the premiere of JFK, Stone is returning to this sad and fertile ground for a follow-up to his original opus in the form of a docu-series for AGC Television which they describe as not only probing, but also explosive. AGC acquired worldwide rights to Stone’s reexamination of the tragedy late last year. 

Going by the title Oliver Stone’s “JFK: Destiny Betrayed” and based off of the riveting book Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case by author James DiEugenio, it promises to be a searing and illuminating indictment against the possible shadowy conspiracy that forever altered the shape of our future from ’63 onward.

 “Stone will put Kennedy’s assassination in context politically, and present interviews, documents, and forensics reports that will change forever how Kennedy’s life, political career, and assassination will be considered,” an AGC press release stated.

“Those interviewed in the series include John Tuneim, chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board, criminologist Henry Lee, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., James Galbraith, and Salon founder David Talbot.

  “It’s not an exaggeration to state that this series features the most distinguished collection of talent and knowledge on the JFK case ever assembled,” concluded the AGC statement.

A lot has happened in the JFK assassination investigations (mostly funded and undertaken by private citizens) since Stone took a turn at the wheel back in 1991 and much of that new material will serve as the foundation for the launch of the director’s new investigation into Kennedy’s demise in this new docu-series. Recently declassified files related to the president’s killing will be one of the damning bits of evidence put center-stage as the series follows Stone and author James DiEugenio as they put the new evidence in a much larger context.

AGC president Lourdes Diaz adds that AGC “have long admired Oliver Stone and his work, and the revelatory information his new documentary brings forward not only sheds a new light on JFK’s presidency and his assassination, it informs us about our contemporary world.”

 JFK: Destiny Betrayed will also feature a number of reunions between Oliver Stone and a lot of his original collaborators from JFK: Jeff Beal, who is a renowned composer and cut his teeth on the original film will return to assist on the score. “I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with Oliver Stone once again,” enthused Beal. Another JFK alumni returning is cinematographer par excellence Robert Richardson who shot Stone’s first foray into smoky, conspiracy-laden back rooms and who won the first of three Oscars in doing so.

 “This documentary film represents an important bookend to my 1991 film” Stone said in a statement. “It ties up many loose threads, and hopefully repudiates much of the ignorance around the case and the movie.”

JFK: Destiny Betrayed is being produced by Rob Wilson (late of Showtime’s excellent Stone series The Untold History of the United States) along with Ingenious Media.

Stuart Ford and Diaz, Ingenious Media’s Andrea Scarso, Peter Touche, Amit Pandya and Angela Ceccio and Fernando Sulichin act as executive producers.

An official air date for JFK: Destiny Betrayed has not yet been announced, but keep an eye on Vents for any updates as we get closer to the anniversary of President Kennedy’s death.

The Telegraph Article on Oliver Stone and Garrison Annotated

From the UK Daily Telegraph July 2020

Why Oliver Stone’s JFK is the greatest lie Hollywood ever told

BK: WHY IS THIS FILM STILL SO THREATENING TO PEOPLE? IT’S JUST A MOVIE ABOUT JIM GARRISON AND HOW HE GOT INVOLVED IN THE ASSASSINATION DRAMA.

JFK’s assassination came in a time of political divide, fake news, conspiracies and the unfulfilled promise of America. What has changed?

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/oliver-stones-jfk-greatest-lie-hollywood-ever-told/?fbclid=IwAR1M5tvqf9JJ3Q5UaQILRYTApidKc99gbgQp2rEySI_ALCOBPcyj-e33-AU

Under the watchful gaze of the Lincoln Memorial, Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner – Hollywood’s then-good and true leading man) meets a mysterious whistleblower known only as “X” (Donald Sutherland). Garrison is the New Orleans district attorney; X is a former black ops man-turned-deep throat. (“One of those secret guys in the Pentagon,” X says.) Garrison is investigating the assassination of President John F Kennedy – shot on November 22 1963, at the Dealey Plaza in Dallas – and determined to prove that Lee Harvey Oswald was just “a patsy” in a bigger plot.

BK: “X” IS BASED ON COL. FLETCHER PROUTY, WHO DID WORK AT THE PENTAGON.

“You’re close,” X tells him. “Closer than you think.”

In Oliver Stone’s three hours-plus JFK, this scene is the towering dramatic centrepiece: a blistering 15-minute monologue that blows apart the conspiracy that killed Kennedy – tensions between Kennedy and the CIA; Kennedy’s soft stance of communism and intention to pull out of Vietnam; the Cubans, the Mob, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, all gunning for Kennedy from the shadows; the teams of shooters brought in to kill him in a “turkey shoot” (with one shooter, of course, placed on the grassy knoll); and the “fiction” of the of the Warren Report, the official investigation into Kennedy’s murder.

BK: THE JOINT CHIEFS WERE GUNNING FOR KENNEDY FROM THE SHADOWS AND THERE WERE TEAMS OF SHOOTERS.

“Very strange things were happening, and your Lee Harvey Oswald had nothing to do with them,” says X, before asking the all-important questions that underpin Stone’s film: “Why was Kennedy killed? Who benefited? Who has the power to cover it up?”

The scene encapsulates JFK perfectly: densely packed with information; gripping from the start to finish; and a dizzying whirlpool of ever-deepening conspiracies. It’s also, rather disappointingly, hokum. In retelling the story of Jim Garrison, still the only man to bring a trial in the murder of Kennedy, and the conspiracy he claimed to have uncovered, Stone’s JFK treads the deliberately-blurred lines between half-truths, speculation, and bold-faced nonsense.

Michel J Gagné is a humanities lecturer at Champlain College St-Lambert, Quebec. He calls himself a historian of ideas and “a recovering conspiracist”. He’s written about how he was duped by the film when he first saw it back in 1991.

BK: YEA, A LOT OF PEOPLE WERE DUPPED, AND STILL ARE BEING DUPPED, ESPECIALLY THOSE CONSPIRACY FREAKS WHO FLIPPED AND ARE NOW DEVOTED LONE NUTTERS, AND THERE ARE MORE THAN A HANDFULL. THEY ARE ERIC HOFFER’S TRUE BELIEVERS WHO AS CONVERTS ARE EVEN MORE FAITHFUL THAN THOSE BORN AND BAPTIZED.

“People my age just took the film as fact – hook, line and sinker,” he tells me.

BK: IT ARE THOSE WHO BOUGHT THE WARREN REPORT’S CONCLUSION THAT ONE MAN ALONE WAS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ASSASSINATION WHO SWALLOWED THE HOOK, LINE AND SINKER.

The JFK assassination was the actual crime of the century. It changed America, and the events that surrounded it feel relevant today: civil rights, political division, fake news, deep suspicion of government.

“To this very day, JFK represents the unfulfilled promise of America,” says Tom Stone, a professor at Dallas’s Southern Methodist University. “This is the guy who seemed to aspire to move beyond militarism, beyond racism, beyond complacency. There are all sorts of ways in which the real America has failed to live up to our ideals. That gap between aspiration and reality is a reason why Kennedy is still an important figure to this day.”

More than just historical inaccuracy for Hollywood’s sake, JFK has an agenda. But did Oliver Stone have a greater responsibility to the known facts surrounding Kennedy? Is JFK a conspiracy to cover up the truth?

BK: OLIVER STONE’S JFK IS NOT HISTORICALLY INACCURATE. HE PUBLISHED A BOOK THAT DOCUMENTS EVERY SCENE WITH FOOTNOTES. IT’S THE STORY OF NEW ORLEANS DISTRICT ATTORNEY JIM GARRISION, AND HOW HE GOT INVOLVED INVESTIGATING THE NEW ORLEANS LINKS TO THE ASSASSINATION IN HIS JURISDICTION.

Tom Stone began teaching courses on John F Kennedy around the time the film was released. Each version of his course has begun with a screening of JFK.

“It’s a very well made movie and the best introduction to the conspiracy theories – even if the rest of the semester is spent poking holes in it,” he says. “I believe that nobody should trust any one source about the assassination. Everyone comes to it with an agenda. It’s easy to manipulate and cherry-pick because the evidence is contradictory and all over the place. It’s like the Bible. You can start plucking stuff out to prove just about anything.”

BK: THAT’S WHY ALL SILLY CONSPIRACY THEORISTS AND DEVOTED LONE NUTTERS ARE IN THE SAME SINKINIG BOAT ON SHIT’S CREEK WITHOUT A PADDLE – BECAUSE THEY ARE COCK SURE THEY KNOW WHO KILLED JFK WHILE THOSE OF US WHO DON’T KNOW WHO KILLED HIM ARE TRYING TO ANSWER THE STILL OUTSTANDING QUESTIONS, AND ARE DOING JUST THAT.

Dr Ken Drinkwater, a lecturer and conspiracy expert from Manchester Metropolitan University, says he keeps “an open mind” about JFK.

BK: NEITHER SILLY CT NOR DEVOTED LNS KEEP “AN OPEN MIND.”

“It’s about understanding how conspiracies can be formed,” he says. “You can take a belief system you already have, and it’s adapted by the information you think is more pertinent to your belief.”

BK: WHY DO LONE NUTTERS WANT TO STUDY THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SILLY CONSPIRACY THEORISTS? SOMEDAY THERE WILL BE A STUDY OF THOSE WHO BOUGHT THE OFFICIAL COVER STORY AND SEE HOW THEIR MINDS WORK.

That seems true of both Jim Garrison and Oliver Stone. Stone first learned of Garrison’s book, On the Trail of the Assassins, after a chance meeting with its publisher at a Cuban film festival in 1988. By then, Garrison had been written off as a kook. Even the conspiracy community saw Garrison as an embarrassment: his farcical trial of respected and popular New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw had damaged their cause. Garrison’s revisionist account was just as hokey.

BK: GARRISON DIDN’T INDICT CLAY SHAW – A GRAND JURY DID – AND THAT’S WHERE THE HOUMA BUNKER RAID FACTS CAME OUT – FACTS THAT PROVE THE BANNISTER-FERRIE-GORDON NOVEL-TOM BLACKMON AND CUBAN CLOWNS DID NOT PULL OFF THE CLEAN CUT DEALEY PLAZA OPERATION. AND THAT SHAW AND FERRIE WERE CONNECTED TO OSWALD WAS IN THE GRAND JURY TESTIMONY OF THE CLINTON –CORE WITNESSES, WHO DIDN’T TESTIFY AT THE TRIAL. WHY WEREN’T THE HOUMA BUNKER RAID AND THE CLINTON WITNESSES BROUGHT IN TO TESTIFY AT THE TRIAL AS THEY DID BEFORE THE GRAND JURY? THEN THE NEXT DA HARRY CONNACK ORDERED THE GRAND JURY RECORDS DESTROYED, BUT HIS OFFICE AIDE RECOGNIZED THEIR SIGNIFICANCE AND TURNED THEM OVER TO THE ASSSASSINATONS RECORDS REVIEW BOARD SO WE CAN READ THEM NOW.

“The book was riddled with striking inaccuracies and outright lies,” wrote Clay Shaw biographer Donald H Carpenter.

BK: I HOPE SHAW’S BIOGRAPHY CONTAINS HIS CIA FILE AND WORK FOR PERMINDEX..

Stone purchased the rights for $250,000 and hired Zachary Sklar, the editor of Garrison’s book, to co-write the screenplay.

“The movie is kind of quoting itself,” says Gagné. “There’s some of this circular reasoning going on. Sklar wrote the screenplay based on a book that he himself had heavily edited.”

Stone also snapped up Jim Marrs’s Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, a catch-all book on JFK conspiracies, and enlisted Robert Groden, Larry Howard and L Fletcher Prouty as advisors – all conspiracists. Prouty was one of the inspirations behind X. He was an Air Force chief-turned-conspiracy whistleblower who associated with Liberty Lobby, a Right-wing group with links to Holocaust denial.

BK: AND JEWISH LAWYER MARK LANE DEFENDED THE LIBERTY LOBBY AT TRIAL WHEN THEY WERE SUED BY DAVID ATLEE PHILLIPS.

“People who worked with him thought he was deeply paranoid,” says Gagné. “A lot of stuff in his books is paranoid anti-CIA speculation.”

BK: PROUTY WAS PARANOID ALL RIGHT, AND WITH GOOD REASON. HE WAS THE FIRST TO CALL ATTENTION TO THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF, WHOSE OFFICE WAS RIGHT DOWN THE PENTAGON HALL FROM HIM. HE WAS ALSO THE FIRST TO CALL ATTENTION TO GENERAL KRULAK – THE USMC WHO PROVIDED MILITARY SUPPORT TO THE CIA AND WHOSE AIDE COL. HIGGENS WROTE THE MEMO THAT IS NOW THE SUBJECT OF AN FOIA CASE THAT IS GOING BEFORE THE SUPREME COURT. AND IT WAS KRULAK AND PROUTY WHO BOTH AGREE THERE IS A PHOTO OF ED LANSDALE WALKING IN DEALEY PLAZA IN ONE OF THE TRAMP PHOTOS. WHAT’S LANSDALE DOING THERE? THEY WANTED TO KNOW, AND SO SHOULD WE.

"This murder in broad daylight ... Everything changed," said film director Oliver Stone while recreating the assassination on camera  

Oliver Stone wrote the introduction for Prouty’s book, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F Kennedy.

“They didn’t consult mainstream historians,” says Gagné. “Robert Dallek, for example – no one asked him to be an advisor, even though he’s one of the foremost experts on JFK. They used people from the fringe.”

BK: MAINSTEREAM HISTORIANS WON’T TOUCH THIS SUBJECT, IT’S TOO HOT FOR THEM TO HANDLE.

According to Patricia Lambert’s False Witness, a damning book on the Garrison-Shaw trial, Oliver Stone went into top-secret mode for JFK. He dubbed the film “Project X”, made the crew sign non-disclosures, and swept his office for bugs.

He also paid $50,000 to film on the sixth floor of the Book Depository, where Oswald shot Kennedy, and restored the “grassy knoll” area to how it looked in 1963. But his portrayal of Jim Garrison and Clay Shaw (played in the movie by Tommy Lee Jones) was less authentic, and more problematic: Garrison as a lone crusader of American justice, and Clay – a proven innocent man – as a smug, sexually deviant conspirator.

The real Garrison is often described as “larger than life” and hugely charismatic – but also bullish, narcissistic and manipulative.

BK: YOU SHOULD READ JACK ANDERSON’S REPORT TO THE FBI AFTER HAVING A SIX HOUR DINNER INTERVIEW WITH GARRISON.

“I believe the real Garrison was kind of a charlatan who would do anything to win and didn’t mind a bit of publicity,” says Tom Stone. “Anyone who sees the movie and thinks they know what the real Jim Garrison was like… it’s almost funny how wrong that is.”

Garrison investigated a former pilot named David Ferrie (played by Joe Pesci), an oddball who wore a homemade wig and stick-on eyebrows, and linked Ferrie to Clay Shaw.

Garrison accused Shaw of using the alias “Clay Bertrand”, a mystery man whom a shyster DA named Dean Andrews said contacted him about Lee Harvey Oswald (Gary Oldman in the film). Andrews later confessed he invented the story.

Garrison claimed that Shaw, Ferrie, and Oswald had conspired to shoot Kennedy as part of a “homosexual thrill kill”.

BK: WHILE FERRIE, SHAW AND BANNISTER WERE CONNECTED TO OSWALD THE PATSY IN THE SUMMER OF ’63, THEY WERE IN NO WAY RESPONSIBLE FOR WHAT WENT DOWN AT DEALEY PLAZA. THAT WAS A VERY WELL PLANNED – NOT PLOTTED, MILITARY STYLE AMBUSH, NOT ONE CONCOCKTED BY A BUNCH OF LOONEYS AND GAYS SITTING AROUND SMOKING AND DRINKING AND TALKING ABOUT WACKING KENNEDY.

But there was no proven link between the three men.

BK: WAIT A MINUTE. THERE’S A PHOTO OF OSWALD AND FERRIE TOGETHER IN THE CAP. AND THE THREE WERE LINKED TOGETHER IN CLINTON DURING THE CORE VOTER REGISTRATION DRIVE.

Later, Garrison claimed Shaw was a CIA agent, convinced by a story he’d seen on an Italian communist newspaper, Paese Sera – a story reportedly planted by the KGB.

BK: THE FAKE KGB DEFECTOR PLANTED THAT STORY – AND GARRISON DIDN’T READ THE STORY ABOUT SHAW’S CONNECTION TO PERMINDEX – HE GOT IT FROM BILL TURNER. AND IN ORDER TO ESTABLISH HIS BONIFIDES, MITROKIN GAVE UP A FORMER NSA CODE CLERK, WHO WHEN ARRESTED, TOLD THE JUDGE HE SAW AN NSA DOCUMENT WITH THE NAME OF JFK’S REAL ASSASSIN. WHEN A REPORTER ASKED HIM WHAT THE NAME WAS HE SAID – LUIS ANGEL CASTILO.

The CIA-killed-Kennedy theory continues to this day.

BK: YES, AND THE CIA DISINFORMATION CAMPAIGN TO BLAME THE DEALEY PLAZA OPERATION ON CASTRO CONTINUES TO THIS DAY AS AN ACTIVE MEASURE – WITH FORMER CIA AGENTS BRIAN LATELL AND BOB BAER AND THEIR MEDIA ASSETS GUS RUSSO AND PHIL SHENON PUBLISHING BOOKS AND MAKING MOVIES ON HOW CASTRO CONTROLLED OSWALD – THE GUY WHO DIDN’T KILL JFK.

“Garrison deduced a theory, then he marshalled his facts,” wrote Patricia Lambert. “And if the facts didn’t fit, he’d say they had been altered by the CIA.” 

David Ferrie died in February 1967 (not murdered for confessing, as depicted in the film, but killed by a brain aneurysm), and Garrison arrested Clay Shaw the following month. 

An insurance salesman named Perry Russo claimed that he’d witnessed Shaw, Ferrie, and Oswald plotting to kill JFK at a party. But he only made the claims after being subjected to hypnosis and the “truth serum”, sodium pentothal. Russo is omitted from the film. Also absent is a crackpot investigator who made up evidence and most of the case for the defence.

Unsurprisingly, Stone met resistance in New Orleans from people who were involved with the real trial. A defense attorney who represented Shaw told Oliver Stone that “he did not believe Garrison acted in good faith.” Rosemary James, a reporter who covered the trial, wrote: “I know for a fact that Garrison deliberately proceeded with a fraudulent case against Clay Shaw.” Harold Weisberg, a veteran assassination investigator, leaked an early draft of the script to The Washington Post, creating more high-profile criticism.

Stone defended himself in interviews by saying “I’ve created a counter-myth to the official one – is that so bad?” But he would also call himself a “cinematic historian” and hoped to be remembered as “a good historian as well as a good dramatist”.

Indeed, Stone’s documentary-style film making does pertain to absolute truth. Newsreel-like grainy, black-and-white handheld scenes blend with real archive footage, such as Walter Cronkite on live TV announcing to the nation that Kennedy has died, and the Zapruder film, amateur footage of Kennedy’s motorcade passing through Dealey Plaza.

Reclaiming History, a 1,500-page doctrine debunking JFK conspiracies, by American attorney and author Vincent Bugliosi, includes a searing chapter on the film.

“The problem with Stone is not, really, that he egregiously fictionalised the Kennedy assassination,” said Bugliosi. “It’s that he tried to convince everyone he was telling the truth.”

Stone said he wanted JFK to be like Japanese classic Rashomon, by offering up different perspectives, most of which have Oswald, Jack Ruby (Brian Doyle-Murray), and Clay Shaw wandering in and out. “It explores all the possible scenarios of why Kennedy was killed,” Stone told the New York Times.

Stone does throw in lots of theories: Oswald was framed for the murder of police officer JD Tippit, killed 45 minutes after Kennedy; a famous photograph of Oswald posing with his rifle was faked; witnesses at the Dealey Plaza heard six shots, not three; others saw suspicious men at the grassy knoll; Oswald was a poor shot; expert shooters couldn’t replicate the time of Oswald’s three shots at Kennedy. Different perspectives perhaps, but a unifying “truth”: it was conspiracy.

Bugliosi dismantles the film’s many claims with convincing ferocity. For instance, ten witnesses put Oswald on the scene of Tippit’s murder; Oswald was actually a sharpshooter; one of the expert shooters didn’t just replicate but improved on Oswald’s shooting; only one person at Dealey Plaza claimed to hear six shots, while 136 people heard three; and many witnesses quoted by Stone were unreliable.

According to Bugliosi, there’s also key evidence left out: “Evidence like Oswald carrying a large brown bag into the Book Depository Building on the morning of the assassination, his fingerprints and palm print being found at the sniper’s nest, his being the only employee of the building to flee the building after the shooting, the provable lies he told during his interrogation… Stone presented none of this to his audience.”

The claim that Kennedy would pull out of Vietnam is also misleading. Memo NSAM 273, which the film claims Lyndon Johnson signed to give the military its war, thereby reversing Kennedy’s position just days after his death, was actually drafted before Kennedy’s death.

“I don’t think anyone could have known for sure what Kennedy was going to do about Vietnam,” says Tom Stone. “The idea they took him out because of Vietnam is based on a false assumption.”

BK: THE FALSE ASSUMPTION IS THAT OSWALD KILLED JFK, NOT THAT JFK WAS GOING TO PULL OUT OF VIETNAM – WHICH HAS BEEN CLEARLY ESTABLISHED.

JFK’s biggest myth may be Kennedy himself, who was not a saint-like figure of progressive politics. Kennedy was late to embrace the civil rights; had mob connections; he was anti-communist; and had multiple affairs.

“He was a morally fraught person,” says Gagné. “One big criticism is that a lot of his decisions were made with his eye on opinion polls. He did not have a deep ideology.”

Still, Stone’s film is a persuasive masterclass. See the moment in which Costner’s Garrison explains the “magic bullet theory”.

As Garrison details, a single bullet caused a total of seven wounds between Kennedy and Governor John Connally, sat in front of Kennedy in the motorcade. To achieve this, the bullet must have stopped in mid air and made several unfathomable turns – through Kennedy's neck, and Connally’s back, chest, wrist, and leg. Surely there had to be more bullets, and therefore more shooters. But that isn’t what the Warren Report says. The magic bullet was the creation of conspiracists.

“When I read the Warren Report, I realised there is no zig-zagging bullet,” says Gagné. “Instead there’s a bullet that goes in a straight line and straight through both men. That’s when I realised Oliver Stone was manipulating information.”

In the film’s closing scene, Costner delivers a stirring speech about the dishonesty at the heart of America. He accuses every law agency within spitting distance of the conspiracy. The real Garrison didn’t mention the CIA. In fact, he only averaged one day per week in court and wasn’t he there to cross-examine Shaw. He was also absent when Shaw was acquitted in 54 minutes. But is the rousing Americana just fair dramatic licence?

“I think the film can be treated too harshly,” says Ken Drinkwater. “It’s entertainment and based on some facts. There is a licence for a filmmaker to present more of an exaggeration. If it was a documentary pointing to Lee Harvey Oswald not being the lone assassin, it wouldn’t have sold as many box office tickets!”

The film did convince audiences about conspiracies (me included). Its cultural impact turned political: George Bush established the Assassination Records Review Board, which led to the release of more than 3,000 documents in 2017, though there were no major revelations.

“I’m sure if there was a smoking gun in the files it was accidentally shredded and flushed,” laughs Tom Stone.

BK: OLIVER STONE SAID HE EXPECTED THE FILES TO BE LIKE A MERCEDEZ BENZ LEFT IN HARLEM FOR TWENTY YEARS – STRIPPED TO THE FRAME BUT STILL IDENTIFIABLE AS A MEERCEDEZ, JUST AS THE FILES SUPPORT THE FACT THAT THE ASSASSINATION WAS A COUP.

But as Ken Drinkwater points out, conspiracies have been proven in the past, such as the MK Ultra mind-control tests; or Kennedy signing off an attempted assassination of Field Castro, which is now widely known.

BK; HOLD ON THEIR NELL! “KENNDY SIGNING OFF AN ATTEMPTED ASSASSINATION OF FIELD (SIC FIDEL) CASTRO, WHICH IS NOW WIDELY KNOWN.” OH YEA, WHICH ONE OF THE ASSASSINATION ATTEMPTS DID HE SIGN OFF ON? NONE THAT I KNOW OF. AND THAT’S WIDELY KNOWN.

And there are still mysteries to be solved around JFK and files still unavailable.

BK: YES, LET’S SOLVE THE STILL RESOLIVABLE MYSTERIS AND MAKE THE REMAINDER OF THE FILES AVAILABLE – BUT WILL THE TELEGRAPH PRINT THAT?

Both Tom Stone and Michel Gagné cite a trip which Oswald took to Mexico City weeks before the assassination. Oswald made mysterious visits to the Cuban and Soviet Embassies. Did someone get in Oswald’s ear?

 BK: YEA, SHENNON WROTE A WHOLE BOOK ABOUT HOW OSWALD ATTENDED A TWIST PARTY AT SYLVIA DURANS WITH TWO AMERICAN GRINGOS – AND I TRACKED DOWN THE GRINGO AND INTERVIEWED THEM AND THEY WERE THERE AT THE TIME OF THE ASSASSINATION AND NOT WHEN OSWALD WAS THERE, SO NO ONE COLD ‘GET IN OSWALD’S EAR.”

“Just because Oswald was the only shooter,

BK: OSWALD WASN’T THE ONLY SHOOTER, HE WASN’T A SHOOTER OR EVEN ON THE SIXTH FLOOR AT THE TIME.

doesn’t mean there wasn’t some small-scale conspiracy to put him up to it,” says Stone. “I still think there are legitimate concerns about influence. If we could ever know who said what to Oswald in Mexico City, we’d have a solution to the case.”

With JFK, Oliver Stone may have become the new Jim Garrison. Gagné agrees: “He used a lot of the same methods, cherry-picking evidence to prove what he assumed at the beginning was true. He doesn’t seem to notice that historians exist. Maybe he thinks they’re part of the cover-up.”

And certainly, Oliver Stone knows the power of film. In the Clay Shaw trial, he screens the Zapruder film – just as the real Garrison had. The footage is gut-churning: Kennedy’s head bursts open, 

Jackie screams silently. As Costner’s Garrison says: “A picture speaks a thousand words, doesn’t it?”

BK: AND NOW WE CAN’T WAIT FOR STONE’S NEXT JFK FILM – A DOCUMENTARY WITH JIM DIEUGENIO CALLED “DESTINY BETRAYED,” THAT WILL ADDRESS MANY OF THESE ISSUES AND IS NEARING RELEASE. 

Peter Knight and Barry Ryder on JFK Assassination Annotated.

Barry Ryder's Amazon review of Peter Knight's book - Annotated by Bill Kelly billkelly3@gmail.com 

The Kennedy Assassination (Representing American Events) Paperback – 3 Sept. 2007

by Peter Knight  (Author), Tim Woods (Editor)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kennedy-Assassination-Representing-American-Events/product-reviews/0748624112/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews&fbclid=IwAR2mGY4EK2BwXM1eYYPGZrehhOdT-a5Q1lEkhDJGQw_lJ4gV9aNT7Ts5d8Q

November 22nd 1963, Dealey Plaza As a seminal event in late twentieth-century American history, the Kennedy assassination has permeated the American and world consciousness in a wide variety of ways. It has long fascinated American writers, filmmakers and artists, and this book offers an authoritative critical introduction to the way the event has been constructed in a range of discourses. It looks at a variety of historical, political and cultural attempts to understand Kennedy's death. 

Representations include: journalism from the time; historical accounts and memoirs; official investigations, government reports and sociological inquiries; the huge number of conspiracy-minded interpretations; novels, plays and other works of literature; and the Zapruder footage, photography, avant-garde art, and Hollywood films. 

Considering the continuities and contradictions in how the event has been represented, the author focuses on how it has been seen through the lens of ideas about conspiracy, celebrity and violence. He also explores how the arguments about exactly what happened on 22 November 1963 have come to serve as a substitute way of debating the significance of Kennedy's legacy and the meaning of the 1960s more generally. Key Features: * presents information about the event itself, the cultural context of the period, and the consequences of the event * considers the ways in which the event has been represented in subsequent years in a variety of discourses * includes an annotated bibliography and 10 illustrations.

BK NOTES: Okay, I haven't read this book yet but I will. I want to respond to Barry Ryder's commentary as he is now reading my work, thanks to his pal Patrick Collins, and I am now reading his. 

This is an excellent book. It’s not another in-depth study of the minutia of the Kennedy assassination. Such a volume would be unnecessary, tediously repetitive and wholly redundant. Instead, Peter Knight offers a fascinating discussion on how and why there are so many different, competing versions of what ‘really happened’.

BK NOTES: That's okay with me. And indeed there are many varied accounts of the event, but it only happened one way and it is the job of the journalist, historians, attorneys, investigators, researchers and ordinary citizens to search for the truth and determine exactly how it happened. And that's what I am doing and I have discovered the MO of what happened at Dealey Plaza - that is how it was made to occur, though I still don't know who killed JFK.  

The author examines the many sources which have informed and misinformed the public for more than half a century. He discusses press reports, historical accounts, official investigations, books, film and much more. 

BK NOTES: What, no mention of the JFK Act of 1992 that required the government to release all of its JFK assassination records in full by October 2017, something that still hasn't happened. But no mention of those records? 

It’s an engrossing read, replete with astute observations, salient points, educated insights and intelligent commentary.

There are a few factual errors within the 164 pages and I’m sure that readers who are familiar with the subject matter will spot them. However, as this book doesn’t seek to re-examine the details of the Dallas murders, their presence doesn’t affect Knight’s main purpose.

The introduction concludes with the observation that, “The event has usually been represented as a watershed moment in American history, often with the implication that Kennedy’s death marked the loss of [US] innocence,. […] But this common assumption is based on a naively optimistic faith in America as an exceptional nation, a beacon of light to the world, that would otherwise have remained innocent and uncorrupted if it had not been for the evil intentions of either conspiracy or lone gunman.”

BK NOTES: The JFK assassination was a watershed moment in American history, like the Revolution, Civil War, WWI, Pearl Harbor, Vietnam, Watergate and 9/11, but this common assumption is corrupted not by astute observations, salient points, educated insights or intelligent commentary but by one Brit's high brow, gray wigged opinion, very similar to the Irish opinion of the British. 

This is very important point and it’s well made. This widely held belief lies at the heart of the angst that underpins much of the conspiracy thinking.

BK NOTES: Wait a minute! What conspiracy thinking? All of those watershed events were conspiracies, and it is not what underpins conspiracy thinking that should be studied in angst, but the thinking of those allegedly scholars and educators like Peter Knight and Barry Ryder who accept the official cover stories and try to sell them to the public in books like this, and reviews like this. 

In chapter two the author examines the role that contemporaneous journalism played in reporting the news of the assassination. He notes that many of the earliest misunderstandings had their beginnings with hurried and erroneous dispatches. He cites Dr Perry’s chaotic press conference in which he ventured his mistaken belief that Kennedy had been shot from the front. Within 48 hours, Perry had acknowledged his mistake and corrected it yet his initial opinion still persists as ‘a fact’ among the conspiracy theorists; it’s become an integral part of conspiracy nomenclature as a result of ad nauseam repetition over the years – and it’s wrong.

BK NOTES: When Anthony Summers - a real UK investigative reporter took on the JFK case, he was astounded that no reputable journalist had been running down the leads before him. It's become an integral part of the acceptance of the official cover story for academics and professionals like this who ad nauseam repetition of the same trite stories over the years - and it's wrong. That Oswald killed JFK all by his lonesome is totally wrong, and it can be proven to a legal and moral certainty and will be. 

There are some other examples that Knight omits; for example, a Secret Service Agent was not killed during the shooting even though press, TV and radio reports all said that one was.

BK: I'm sure Knight omits quite a lot. For instance the original tape and transcripts of the Air Force One radio transmissions that have gone missing, and the Office of Naval Intelligence 119 investigative reports on Oswald after his defection and after the assassination - no longer in existence, and the US Army Intelligence file on Oswald and Hidell that was "routinely destroyed" before the Church Committee requested them. And the ONI defector file that was declared an Assassination Record but then removed from the records made available to the public. I'm sure Knight doesn't mention any of that, or speaking of the SS, the Tampa Advance reports that were requested by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) and then destroyed after the law was passed by Congress and signed by the President. 

Chapter three deals with the recorded history of the assassination. Knight discusses the books of William Manchester and Jim Bishop. Both were highly influential in conveying the story. Both were able to ‘narrate’ the events in ways that the Warren Commission volumes and report never could.

BK NOTES: Ah yes, Jim Bishop wrote the paperback book The Day The President Was Shot, that I read in grade school, and quotes one of the White House Communications Agency (WHCA) radio technicians repeating what he heard over the radio that are no longer on the existing tapes or transcripts. And William Manchester, he was one of three journalists - along with Pierre Salinger and the guy who wrote the book on the 1964 election - who LBJ gave permission to read and quote the original radio transmission transcript at the White House, none of what they quote is on the existing tape. Salinger said he sent his copy back to the Kennedy Library, where he got it, but it is now missing. Who could have edited that tape and made the transcripts disappear? Who? 

Knight returns to the notion that Kennedy’s murder was perceived as a Paradise Lost. He writes,

“..(is November 1963 when it all began to go horribly wrong?), and the role of counterfactual speculations about the significance of the assassination for the story of the Vietnam War (had he lived, would Kennedy have withdrawn US troops?). […] hagiographic accounts […] in effect turned the assassination into a mythical drama, a stirring story of a fallen warrior hero whose outline is more reminiscent of Arthurian legends than contemporary politics. […] After the assassination, Kennedy admirers promoted him as a liberal hero whose untimely death meant that his potential for energising change was never fulfilled. […] This interpretation of Kennedy’s death redirects attention from his arguably quite limited actual achievements to the wishful fantasy of what might have been.”

BK NOTES: Well, let's see, he got a good view of how the CIA and military work at the Bay of Pigs, and resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis through diplomacy rather than war, irritating the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who wanted to go to war. And he was brokering a back channel diplomacy with Castro, declined to commit more than advisors to Vietnam, and refused to approve the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Castro. That was enough to get him killed. 

Knight does a god job in challenging the deep-rooted myth of a nation and world cheated of a glorious destiny. In truth, there was no such cataclysm in the world – or, indeed, in the USA. Virtually nothing changed. The idea that Kennedy’s death was a turning-point in history is a fanciful, romantic notion.

BK NOTES: The Kennedy assassination IS STILL a Turning-point in history because the official records are still being withheld, we still don't know the total truth, and the Supreme Court will soon review the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding JFK assassination records that may be a decisive decision for all still withheld records on many issues other than the assassination of the President, not a fanciful, romantic notion, but a cold blooded one. 

Chapter 4 examines ‘The Official Version’. There are, of course, two ‘official versions’, The Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Neither one was perfect but both agreed on the key issues; Oswald fired three shots, one missed and two hit Kennedy. One struck him in the head and killed him and one passed through his body and struck Governor Connally. Both investigations also concluded that Oswald had attempted to murder Maj Gen Walker (Rtd.) in April, 1963.

BK NOTES: Yes, and both official inquiries were corrupted - the Warren Report by the FBI not informing them of the Hosty Note they destroyed, and the CIA by failure to inform them of the CIA-Mafia plots to kill Hitler. WC attorney Sam Stern told the HSCA that had they know those two things they would have conducted a different type of investigation, and not relying totally on the FBI and CIA to be truthful. And indeed the Walker shooting was a key aspect of the crime, and should be dealt with in detail, but I'm sure neither Knight nor Ryder will bother to do so. 

Knight has praise and criticism for both investigations. For the most part (though not always) he is fair. He is right to note that the WC did duck the issue of Oswald’s political motivation. He writes, “This tendency to depoliticise Oswald is obviously significant in the light of the overall implicit task of the Commission in calming rumours about foreign conspiracy,..”

BK NOTES: NO, it is not calming rumours about a foreign conspiracy, it was a domestic conspiracy that they didn't want to investigate. They tried to politicize Oswald as a Russian defector, Fair Play for Cuba Committee advocate who tried to get a visa to Cuba and thus blame the assassination on Castro, but LBJ didn't go along with that so they fell back on the depoliticized deranged lone nut scenario that is also wrong.

As a general observation of the WC report, he notes that, “..there are hundreds of pages of barely relevant testimony, an obsessive accumulation of documents that prove little or nothing..[…] There are case-making items such as the backyard photos, […] but there are also items that are tangential at best, and ludicrously incongruous at worse.”\

BK NOTES: It's not just the WC that includes tons of documents that prove little or nothing, MOST of the records released under the JFK Act includes literally millions of documents that have nothing to do with the assassination or even JFK, but were part of the document dump to make it more difficult for researchers to locate the relevant records. 

All of that is true. The Warren Commission made the mistake of trying to over-prove its case. In so doing it provided critics with an abundance of material to conflate, misrepresent and lie about. It made a rod for its own back.

The HSCA, of course, concluded that Kennedy had been murdered as the result of a ‘probable’ conspiracy. It’s reason for concluding that was the ‘acoustic evidence’ which supposedly revealed a fourth shot – a shot that Oswald could not have fired. Four members of the Committee were not persuaded by the evidence and three of them were able to include their dissenting views in the Final report. Knight notes that, “As several members of the HSCA already suspected, the acoustic evidence was soon found to be flawed, thereby undermining the major claim that there was a second gunman and hence a probable conspiracy.” (p. 72)

BK NOTES: First off, if you talk to the first chief council or second chief council of the HSCA neither will tell you that their conclusion of conspiracy rested only on the acoustical evidence. Sprague suspected the CIA while Blakey thought the Mafia responsible. And a bunch of scientists and a rock drummer tried to dismiss the HSCA Acoustical study and issued a paper full of words, but the only way to debunk a scientific study is to replicate it, and that has never been done, so there's no proof the Acoustics were flawed until that second study is conducted, and it will be eventually. 
This fascinating chapter moves to its close with, “.. the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK were not an unprecedented calamity in US history, but only the latest in a series of outbursts of political violence that had seen previous peaks in the 1820s, 1890s and 1930s.

BK NOTES: Those three assassinations remain unprecedented calamities in US history but they aren't even history yet, as we have yet to see the still withheld JFK records, MLK's first civil rights case is just beginning to be recorded, and we haven't discovered who fired the bullets that killed RFK. 

On page 67 he quotes from the 1968, NCCPV report ‘..assassinations in the U. S. are usually not part of concerted efforts to redirect the course of politics through the removal of leaders; the main effects of assassinations have been not a change in political direction but a sense of personal shock and despair coupled with a willingness to believe in conspiracy theories,’

BK NOTES: Well, JFK was in power and leading the nation in one direction, his brains were shot out and new people took over the government and took the nation in another direction - it was a coup d'etat, and included shock and despair, and has nothing to do with belief in conspiracies. I think both Knight and Ryder must have conspiracy theories on the brain as they keep referring to them, when I thought we were investigating homicides. 
Knight’s fifth chapter examines ‘The Unofficial Version’ of the assassination. These are my ‘selected highlights’:

“There is a vast literature on the Kennedy assassination, with over two thousand books, countless newspaper and magazine articles, along with novels and films, not to mention the dozens of  journals and websites devoted to the topic. The overwhelming majority develop a conspiracy theory of one stripe or another.” (p. 75)

Indeed they do and they are all different. Conspiracy theories are like religions; they can’t all be right but they can all be wrong.

BK NOTES: Well since the official version of events can not be true, one of the conspiracy theories must be right, as the assassination only happened one way. 

The author casts his eye over some of the earliest ‘critics’.

Thomas Buchanan is noted as being the first to have a book published about the assassination. This was on the shelves before the Warren Commission had even finished its investigation.

Joachim Joesten is mentioned and Knight accurately describes him as a “..one time member of the Communist Party,..” (p. 77)

BK NOTES: Yea, yea, Joestein was one of the KGB's dizinformation agents, along with Mark Lane and others. Pure hokum. And it is Knight and Ryder who are doing the bidding of the CIA in writing this trash.
He points out that,“But with the opening up of the Soviet archives after the fall of the Berlin Wall, evidence has emerged that Buchanan and Joesten might ave been motivated not by an implicit and vague ideological European fixation with conspiracy theories of political succession, but by a quite explicit disinformation campaign directed by the KGB..” (p. 78)

Naturally, Mark Lane and his ‘method’ are both discussed. Knight concludes that, “Lane’s approach is thus somewhat disingenuous..” (p.79) That’s putting it very mildly indeed. Not mentioned in the book is the fact that Lane’s European lecture road-show was partly funded by a KGB intermediary.

BK NOTES: Yea, with the opening of the Berlin Wall (I was there), KGB archivist V. Mitrokin tried to defect to the CIA but they wouldn't have him so he went to the British, who have worked closely with the KGB in the past - especially at Cambridge where Mitrokin's writer is based. To establish his bonifides Mitrokin gave up a NSA file clerk who passed on many documents to the KGB, and when he was arrested - thanks to Mitrokin, he told the judge at his preliminary hearing that he saw a NSA document that named the real assassin of President Kennedy. When a reporter asked him as he was being led away for the name, he said - Luis Angel Castillo. Oh, my. But I'm sure you won't read that in Knight's book. And I think Ryder is affiliated with the hallowed ivy strewn walls of Cambridge. 

Chapter 6 Literature

In this chapter Knight examines some of the most well-known literature that has been inspired by the assassination. He discusses the books of Mailer, De Lillo, Ellroy and Pynchon among others. I only skimmed this chapter as I don’t read novels or any fiction.

Chapter 7 Visual Culture and film

Much of this chapter is given over to discussing the Zapruder film; what it shows, what it doesn’t show and what it suggests. Knight gives a potted history of the film from the moment of its creation up until the present day. Also, of course, we read of how the film has been used and interpreted by just about everybody who has ever viewed it.

Other famous images are discussed; the back-yard photographs and other Dealey Plaza photographs are considered. Unfortunately, when discussing Ike Altgens, the author makes a rare mistake and I think that it should be noted. Knight writes, “There are few photos by professional photographers of the shooting in Dealey Plaza. The only one of note – and even that one was taken after the fatal head shot itself – is James ‘Ike’ Altgens black and white photo of Secret Service Agent Clint Hill stepping onto the back of the presidential limousine to help Jackie Kennedy as she scrambles toward the rear.”

In fact, Altgens took six other photos and one of them – usually referred to as Altgens ‘5’ - was taken whilst the gunfire was still occurring. It’s regarded by many as the most important still image of the assassination. It contains a wealth of detail and information but, regrettably, our author seems to have omitted it.

Oliver Stone’s ‘JFK’ draws the author’s attention and criticism. He writes, “Although Stone might claim that the film is merely presenting multiple perspectives, in reality it makes a passionate case for a particular theory, namely that Kennedy was killed because he was going to bring an end to the Cold War in general and the Vietnam War in particular.”

BK NOTES: We haven't heard the last of Oliver Stone, whose documentary film Destiny Betrayed, with Jim DiEugenio, should be released soon. I think that is why there is a flurry of anti-Stone propaganda emerging. 
Knight restates his point, “JFK continues to present Kennedy as a blemish-free president of tragic stature, more of a Cold War dove than the hawk he was in reality.”

BK NOTES: How can Kennedy be blemish-free if his brains were blown out? 

Peter Knight’s brief ‘conclusion’ makes reference to the age-old “historical controversies” which grew-up following Pearl Harbour and the Lincoln assassination. He writes that these historical events, “..are surrounded by a thriving subculture of conspiracy theory and revisionist history, along with the usual historical tourism that such controversies generate, but neither can be said to have any real impact on present-day politics.”


BK NOTES: This is the fake revisionist history. 

For my own summation, I’d like to offer some of my favourite lines from this outstanding book. The first is a direct quote from ‘The Day Kennedy Was Shot’ by Jim Bishop.

“..the simple became complex; the obvious, obtuse...The more people read, the more certain they became that they had not heard the facts.”

This is absolutely true of the conspiracy-buff. Bishop’s observation was true in 1968 and it still is.

BK NOTES: Yes it is still true because we still have not heard the facts - why are the assassination records still being withheld years after the JFK Act required their full release? 
On pages 99-101, Knight writes, “..it can seem that JFK conspiracy theories tend not toward a comforting closure, but to an infinite regress of suspicion, a ‘vertigo of interpretations’. […] As much as assassination researchers speak of their determination to bring closure to the case, they also often seem to have a personal investment in keeping research going, of sustaining a research dialogue almost for the sake of discussion – not to mention a financial investment in prolonging the process of inquiry, with the proliferation of convention speaking and web merchandising funding the amateur research network.”

BK NOTES: Well Priscilla Johnson, Max Holland, Gerald Posner, Vincent Bugliosi and Norman Mailer all got six figure advances and $20 million to play with, while I got a $3,000 grant from the Fund For Investigative Journalism - that I used to buy a round trip cross country AMTRACK pass that I used to visit and interview other researchers, witnesses and supects. The WC lawyers quickly raised a few million to counter the JFK movie, and they build the SPY Museum, the OSS museum and CIA covert action museums to glorify such things, while real investigators and researchers in the only "research network" I know, like John Newman, Bill Simpich, Larry Hancock and others have to scrounge around to get around. It's a falacy that people make a living off of this shit. 

Peter Knight hits the nail on the head. The ‘Researchers’ are nothing more than a self-interest group of hobbyists. They pursue their nebulous quarry with the same pointless zeal as those who search for Noah’s Ark or the Holy Grail. They know that their goal doesn’t even exist but, it’s the chase they want, not the kill. They’ve got a hobby for life. These people will continue on an ever-cycling treadmill, getting nowhere whilst covering the same old, familiar ground repeatedly.

BK NOTES: Well I am getting somewhere. I have figured out the MO Modus Operandi of Dealey Plaza, do not retread the old familiar ground repeatedly, and am confident we can wrap up the JFK case to a legal and moral certainty within a few years. 

In the 56 years since the Dallas murders, the critics and ‘research community’ have accomplished absolutely nothing. Despite countless books, conventions and essays, they have not overturned one single conclusion of the official investigations. 

BK NOTES: We have overturned the official conclusions in the mind of the general public and citizens - 80 percent of whom do not believe JFK was killed by a lone gunman, we got Congress to pass the JFK Act of 1992, thanks to Oliver Stone, and released millions of records that real historians are using and citing in books on a wide variety of subjects. Since Knight is allegedly an academic, he should recognize that as a major accomplishment. Indeed, the US Supreme Court will be considering and ruling on one of the issues related to the JFK assassination records this fall, so that should put the story back on the front pages and TV news. 

Indeed, the only conclusion that has ever been overturned was the ‘probable conspiracy’ that was postulated by the HSCA. The National Academy of Science empanelled eleven experts (collectively referred to as the Committee on Ballistic Acoustics) and it found that the HSCA’s acoustic evidence was wrong. There were no gunshots at all on the dictabelt tape. None.

BK NOTES: There is no new information in this book or this review worthy of noting. None. 

This is a superb book.

barry

 Peter Knight's lucid and intelligent essay is a fine summary of a big subject

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 March 2013

This short 166-page 2007 paperback publication is authored by Peter Knight, Senior Lecturer in American Studies at The University of Manchester UK, whose other published works include `Conspiracy Culture: from Kennedy to the X-Files' and `Conspiracy Nation'. The book presents an overview of the 1963 JFK assassination from historical, political, cultural and sociological perspectives.

Following a detailed introduction, a long chapter covers `the official version' in which the history of the Warren Commission Report, the Clark Panel and the work of the HSCA are summarised with admirable brevity but including a useful level of detail, highlighting their perceived shortcomings.

A companion-chapter follows: `the unofficial version' (should be `versions'). The author here presents the multiplicity of conspiracy narratives which have found traction in the public imagination since the 1960s. The works of Epstein, Lane, Weisberg, Penn Jones, Josiah Thompson and Sylvia Meagher are well summarised, and the evolution of the large number of mutually contradictory theories about motives for the assassination are covered:

"The list of theories and suspects began to seem endless: writers blamed the CIA, FBI, renegades from both, the Secret Service, Dallas police, Cuban exiles, the Mafia, Dallas oil millionaires, right-wing Texans, left-wing sympathisers, Corsican Mafia, President Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, Jimmy Hoffa, the military-industrial complex, the international banking cartel, the three hobos picked up in Dealy Plaza right after the shooting, and just about every combination of these groups" (p92)

The Soviet KGB origin of `US government conspiracy' and particularly `the CIA were involved' was discovered in the Soviet archives following the fall of the Berlin Wall, a disinformation campaign seeded into European political journals in the 1960s to ferment distrust of their government in the American population. Few details about this are given as the book is meant to be only an overview, but source references are quoted (p78).

Knight's writing is not without humour:

"The spoof newspaper `The Onion' captured the sense of a frenzied overproduction of theories in their headline `Kennedy slain by CIA, Mafia, Castro, LBJ, Teamsters, Freemasons: President shot 129 times from 43 different angles'" (p93).

Two further chapters cover the legacy of literature based around the event, and `Visual Culture and Film' including a long and detailed history of Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder's amateur 19-second film ("the Rosetta Stone of the assassination"), and Oliver Stone's disingenuous but lucrative exercise in Hollywood myth-making `JFK'.

There is a short concluding chapter, and two pages of `suggested further reading' which covers the whole gamut of theories and perspectives.

Knight's stance is essentially neutral; he has no axe to grind, does not push the lone gunman theory or any one of the multiplicity of mutually contradictory conspiracy theories. He retains a refreshingly intelligent perspective focusing on the iconic & cultural importance of the event, retrospectively seen by many as `the time when everything changed, when America lost its innocence.' The book's brevity and (for its size) thoroughness, its literate readable style and the author's clearly encyclopaedic knowledge of all aspects of the `JFK industry' makes it easy to recommend to the casual reader unfamiliar with the mountain of facts and theories piled on the JFK assassination. For the dyed-in-the-wool conspiracy theorist ideologically committed to one theory or another, the good-humoured neutrality and succinct writing style of Knight's book might come as a breath of fresh air.

Patrick Collins

 Deserves an award for condensing such a huge subject into a highly readable and informative 180 pages

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 25 February 2008

Peter Knight's scholarly book is surprisingly comprehensive given that it's a relatively short work. It succeeds in being both a fine introduction to the case and in being an incisive and fascinating history of the assassination in both American and World history and indeed in popular culture. The book provides an interesting and very reasonable and balanced assessment of most of the key aspects of the case - a summary of the Warren Report and all other official investigations, the major conspiracy theories, the problems with eye witness reliability, the so called problems with the Single Bullet Theory, the fatal head shot and issues with the flawed autopsy and so on.

But the book goes much further than providing a brief but very succinct history of the case, it also provides an excellent record of key works on the assassination together with some highly interesting observations regarding the event in news, fiction, film and even art. More over the author also finds the space to explain how and why the event has had such an impact on modern America and suggests that actually some degree of exaggeration has occurred in respect of the events true impact at the time. The book also examines the concept of the "conspiracy theory" in principle and asks if the Kennedy assassination has in fact changed the nature of conspiracy thinking giving some considerable thought to Oliver Stones film JFK and the unfortunate effect that that film has had - that a significant percentage of the American public believe Oliver Stones work to be an accurate rendition of the event, which it clearly is not.

It is actually quite rare to get a book on this subject that is essentially neutral, but still maintains a tantalizing glimpse into what author Vincent Bugliosi calls a "bottomless pit". When you consider that Philip Knight covers just about every angle on this case in some 180 pages, it is quite an achievement. If you are conspiracy buff I'd recommend this book as a dose of common sense. Peter Knight doesn't offer a personal conclusion in terms of was there or was there not a conspiracy, but its clear the author's intention was to provide a thorough assessment of the event and its place in history from 1963 to date in a resoundingly non sensationalist manner - frankly a breath of fresh air when you consider the utter none sense that has been written about the case.

Whilst the author is critical of the Warren Commission in respect of its failure to clarify and set to rest a good many of what would become perceived "unanswered questions", I rather suspect he believes Oswald acted alone, but that conclusion is not the aim of the book, its rather to educate the reader and bring some degree of common sense into a subject that has now been somehow lost into such a huge body of work that its almost impossible for any one, bar the dedicated student of the case, to make some degree of semblance as to what happened when Kennedy was shot and to understand the difference between the event itself and what it has become in popular culture - something far greater, far more reaching than it was. A resounding accomplishment - it joins some four hundred books on the subject in my collection and I would place it high high on the my list of recommended reading.

 Excellent (if a little short) book!!!!!!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 February 2013

Upon recommendation from another reviewer I purchased this book and I am very pleased I did, a very concise introduction into the JFK Assassination for someone who has only had an interest in this subject matter for a few months, the book does not lean to either conspiracy or lone assassin, therefore is very neutral in explaining what occured and how it has been portrayed in America over the years.

A good starting point for someone who is interested in the subject, only downside is that it is a little short (only 150 odd pages)

Lisette de Montmartre

 Clear, Comprehensive, Compelling

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 24 April 2008

The Kennedy Assassination has spawned its own conspiracy industry. Aptly described as a 'bottomless pit', it is equally a many-headed hydra, with each claim and counterclaim giving birth to dozens of others. And yet among the mountains of material there are few--if any--books that examine the event with the clarity of Peter Knight's book. Knight addresses both the official and unofficial versions, the significance of the assassination in US history, and its impact on American culture, in calm, rational prose that doesn't get bogged down in the excessive detail that threatens to capsize so much writing on the subject. This concise and extremely readable book contains probably all you need to know about the Kennedy Assassination. Highly recommended.