I was a sophomore in high school sitting in my English class when the PA System came on with the sound of a radio running over the stations until it hit a special news broadcast. It was about a quarter to eleven in the morning (Pacific Time) and the announcer told us that the President had been shot. About 5 minutes after the hour when the news report let the other shoe drop and said that the President was dead. I was profoundly affected by the news, as I suppose everyone was. I remember, when I was in 7th grade, I was home sick the day of his inauguration and watched it on television. I remember thinking that this is the beginning of a brand new decade, we are clearly in the latter half of the 20th Century. We have a brand new President, a young man. The world was brand new and it began an era of hope. The assassination was the first in a long line of disillusions of the sixties. For me, Kennedy is the quintessential symbol of the sixties; a new hope shot down in the prime of life.

When in September (or October?) of 1964 when the Warren Report was published, I bought a copy and began reading it. But I only got through the first few pages before I was over come with grief. I think it was how the one bullet nicked the knot on his tie on the way out.

But as time went on, I began hearing more and more about some inconsistencies about the assassination. Sometime in the first half of 1967, I saw an issue of Playboy that listed a whole bunch of photos of people who were witnesses to some aspect of the assassination and have since died (more or less under mysterious circumstances). I don't remember which issue it was (or even if it was Playboy, though I think it is). The first time I ever actually read anything about it was in the October 1967 issue of Playboy (to the left). The Playboy Interview was with Jim Garrison, District Attorney of New Orleans. I couldn't make much sense out of the article since he talked about people I didn't know (I had missed the earlier interview in February with Mark Lane (the right) and only discovered it a few years ago). I came away from the article with the sense that there was definitely something fishy about the Warren report.

That was really all I did until Oliver Stone's JFK  film came out on video. That reminded me of all the problems with the assassination. I even remember some of the things they mentioned in the film, and one of them was the Jim Garrison Playboy interview. Nevertheless, knowing that Hollywood is all about making it up. I noticed the film was based on Garrison's book On the Trail of the Assassins and Jim Marrs' book, Crossfire. So I picked those up and started to read them.

What seems to be clear and indisputable is that the Warren Commission did not "investigate" the Kennedy Assassination. They gathered documentation, with varying degrees of integrity that supported the pre-conceived theory that 1) Oswald did it. (2) He acted alone (no conspiracy) and (3) Oswald, Ruby and Officer Tippit  did not know each other.

That, of course, doesn't mean that the "conclusions" were wrong. It does mean that investigating the assassination was not an agenda item. The question, then, is what was the agenda? Were they part of a conspiracy or, as Col. L. Fletcher Prouty suggests, victims of a conspiracy? Or was it something completely unrelated?

One suggestion was that the threat of Nuclear War was very real (the assassination occurred barely a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis). If, the American public, the story goes, got wind of a connection between Oswald and Cuba or the Soviet Union, it may not be possible to thwart the pressure. This scenario is much easier to see, today, in light of our current situation with events begun on September 11, 2001. Their objective was to calm those fears.
 

Jim Marrs' Crossfire was published 1989 and is composed of a variety of data about the various conspiracy theories. It is almost an encyclopedia of plots. There is no conclusion and, as you might expect, some of the theories are mutually exclusive. They cover the CIA , FBI and  Mob involvement theories without making any judgments. Jim Marrs is a journalist, by trade, and this work constitutes a collection or compilation of the theories and background. He does present some seemingly far afield ideas. One thing that you cannot help to find while looking into this, is the extraordinary number of what appears to be (for the lack of a better term) "coincidences". Some of them are suggestive, but whether or not they're significant, requires a judgment call, which Marrs does not do. So these "facts" sometimes just hang out there, painfully ominous, but, maybe more so than is deserved.  One of the facts I remember falling into that category was that Richard Nixon was in Dallas that day. He was on the board of directors for Coca-Cola and they had a board meeting.

Dr Charles A Crenshaw was on of the doctors at Parkland in Dallas that worked on both Kennedy and, later, Oswald. His book, JFK, Conspiracy of Silence was a personal account of that day for him. The book is interspersed with recollections of Crenshaw and a historical chronology of the day provided by the "ghost writers" Jens Hansen and J. Gary Shaw. There is some very graphic detail about the presidents injuries, it will take some energy to get through it. One thing he said of note was "...there was no doubt in my mind that the bullet had entered his head through the front..." The book is sensitive, in spite of the necessity of its occasional graphic details.

Jim Moore's Conspiracy of One is an outline of his opinion on what happened that day in Dallas. I was less than thrilled with this book. He calls himself a Warren Report Critic, and, in fact disagrees with them in the end, but the vast majority of the book he spends criticizing other Warren report critics. He does it in a caustic, disparaging and, typically, uninformative way, as well. Only in the last chapter does he get down to what he thinks and it is anti-climatic. He does plead with you to read his book with an open mind and read it in order. One good thing about the book is that he does cite other critics and what their basic opinions are. That will, at least, give you a list of who else you might want to read.

James P. Hosty was the FBI agent from Dallas assigned to Oswald. In his book, Assignment: OSWALD he discusses his role in the period in and around the assassination. He was, apparently, just assigned to the office a month or so before the assassination and hadn't quite got a handle on all of those over whom he had responsibility. He did visit his home a couple times and talked with Oswald's wife, but beyond that, there wasn't much contact. One of the interesting things that may critics point out was that Oswald had come into the FBI office and left a note for Hosty, which Hosty read, destroyed. So what was in the note? Hosty says that it had nothing to do with the assassination. It was merely Oswald venting about him (Hosty) visiting his home and talking to his wife while he was not there.

Next on my list is this article from Gallery's October 1975 issue. Col. L Fletcher Prouty writes The Guns of Dallas. Intriguing is that there exists a schematic map that outlines trajectories and locations of the motorcade and where shots probably originated . The map suggests at least 10 men on the ground with four shooters; 2 from the Grassy Knoll, one from the Book Depository and one from The Dal Tex building across Houston street from the Book Depository.

The October 2, 1964 issue of Life Magazine had an article from, then, Representative Gerald R. Ford, member of the Warren Commission report. With the aid of some photos, most notably from the famous "Zapruder" film (Abraham Zapruder was taking movies at the time of the assassination and got it on film), the article chronicles the events of the assassination. In this article Ford asserts "...there is not a scintilla of credible evidence to suggest a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy...." Yeah, right.

JFK: The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy by L. Fetcher Prouty isn't so much a book about the assassination as it is about this country's involvement with Vietnam in particular and the CIA's agenda in more general. He does try to tie the two together, but it feels more like Monday Morning quarterbacking. Not in the sense that "hindsight is 20/20" but more like "everyone has their own opinion". He basically blames nebulous entities like the "power elite"  and "the military industrial complex" for the assassination. Col. L. Fletcher Prouty (Ret), was "The Man X" in the Oliver Stone film, JFK. It is Prouty's ideas and view that provides the major theme of the film. Oliver Stone wrote the introduction to this book.

Though the book was disappointing in the sense that it doesn't contain some revelation about the assassination, it was informative on a few points. First, it provides a detailed account of the evolution of the Vietnam situation. Secondly it explores Kennedy's role in Vietnam and third it provides a convincing argument that the assassination was, indeed, a conspiracy.

 
The Vietnam situation really didn't exist prior to 1945 (Vietnam or the situation). Immediately prior to 1945, the area, known as French Indochina, was controlled by the Japanese because of their involvement with WWII. At the surrender of Japan in 1945, Ho Chi Minh declared independence and the US provided him with military aid and other support in an effort to help clear out the Japanese from the area. According to Prouty, however, our objective was to keep the pot boiling on behalf of the "power elite" because war is big business. Then the French came back in and wanted to reassert themselves in the area with the US (according to Prouty) supporting both sides for a while. The CIA, again according to Prouty, was involved in various activities in Vietnam from 1945, through the French's defeat at Bin Dinh Phu in 1954 and until 1965 when the US Marines were brought in and even afterwards. One of the major points was that the CIA was instrumental in relocating about 1 million North Vietnamese catholics from the Hanoi area to the Mekong Delta region south of Saigon. These refugees became the "Vietcong" and were treated as Communist infiltrators when really they were merely dislocated refugees with no means of support and resorted to banditry (again, according to Prouty).

 
Prouty believes that Kennedy was trying to get out of Vietnam. Kennedy's feelings were changing from the time of the Bay Of Pigs fiasco in '61. He felt that the CIA was working behind his back and couldn't trust them and vowed to "break it into a thousand pieces". The clincher was the coup of the Diem regime (just three weeks before his own assassination). The total brutality of the coup convinced him that "…this is their war". He had already made plans to withdraw 1000 of the 12,000 troops in Vietnam by Christmas 1963 and expected a complete withdrawal by 1965. I have read speculation on this before, but most say "there is reason to believe that…" while Prouty states it as absolute fact.

 
Prouty also sites a number of examples on why he believes that there, without any doubt, was a conspiracy to assassinate the president. He attacks the "three bullet" theory, the lack of protection for the President, and he sites the speed at which information about the assassination and the assassin was distributed.

 
The ludicrous assumption of the "magic bullet" (which entered Kennedy's back with a downward projection, turned and exited the throat, turned again and hit Connelly in the back, exited his chest, entered his wrist, exited that and lodged into his leg later to be found on a stretcher in pristine condition at Parkland hospital) created all the damage it was purported to do means that where were at least four shots and probably many more. By itself this means there was more than one gunman and that means conspiracy.

 
As for protection, the motorcade route had it take very slow 90 degree and sharper turns without ground support. Windows were opened that should not have been, Military support troops who were to provide ground security were told to "Stand Down". Being a bureaucracy, it is very difficult to get the government (or military) to fail to do something that it was designed to do. This also points to a conspiracy very "high up".

Pouty said that he has been responsible for protection of the president in the past and wonders if he was sent to Antarctica earlier in the month to keep him from recognizing the security problems. He was on his way back (in New Zealand) when he heard about the assassination. In the New Zealand papers, it told of the assassination and of the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, with a detailed biography listing his stint in the Marines, his defection to the Soviet Union and his return. He said that at the time that edition of the paper went to press, Oswald, back in Dallas had just been arrested and charged with the murder of the police officer, not the assassination. So from where, Prouty, asks, and from whom did this information come? It has all the earmarks of a "cover story".
 
As I said, this book is not all that revealing, but it does paint a more detailed picture of the times.