John F. Kennedy was fascinating in his death as he was in his life. The mystery of his assassination continues spawning new stories, podcasts, books, movies and keeps the midnight oil burning for thousands of conspiracy theorists. Everyone, especially if you live in the United States, gets lost in the fog of Kennedy mystery, at least once. If you get hooked, there is no telling that the unsolved mystery of the late President's death won't comeback to haunt you on an idle Saturday afternoon.
I have been to Dealey Plaza in Dallas once. The grassy knoll, the brick buildings flanking it and the smooth curve of the black top had seemed to me like a serene hideaway tucked just beyond the reach of urban throes. It was hard to visualize a Presidential assassination happening there.
With the recent release of all confidential JFK files, which according to our current President should put all JFK conspiracies to rest, there is more attention on the case which never left America's consciousness. I did some reading and watching related to JFK assassination and here are my notes.
Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale is a work of gargantuan proportions covering Lee Harvey Oswald's life - Kennedy's purported killer, in two separate sections - Oswald in Minsk and Oswald in America. Mailer went back to Russia in early 90s after Gorbachev, Perestroika and Glasnost made landfall in USSR and he was able to access a lot of information than before and discuss with 'newly talkative' people about Oswald's time in Russia. In the end it tows the Warren Commission line that Oswald was a disillusioned loner who acted alone. But Mailer never intended his book to solve the mystery of Kennedy's assassination, his work was a study about the evolution of the purported killer - Lee Harvey Oswald.
JFK, the Oliver Stone movie, which I re-watched recently provides a believable counter point to Warren Commission's bureaucratic fact finding mission. It brings out the discrepancies in the Warren Commission findings and showcases New Orlean's District Attorney Jim Garrison's work trying to unravel the Kennedy assassination mystery.
Garrison might have been one of the few true and honest investigators of this case for which he became a victim of a smear campaign, probably paid for by the CIA. But to my relief, Jim Garrison re-emerges victorious on the other side after all the plots to bring him down fizzle out. This led me to the best seller he authored which became one of the books on which Stone's JFK is based on - On the Trail of Assassins (1988). The other work that provides material for JFK, the movie is CrossFire : The plot that killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs.
Killing Kennedy is another movie starring Rob Lowe as JFK. Lowe's resemblance to Kennedy in the movie is uncanny, and in many places he appears more handsome than JFK. Nothing sensational about the movie, it is built up on the single shooter theory as is depicted in U.S. history books.
11/22/63 by Stephen King. King, one of the best writers practicing the art of fiction in our age could not stay away from the JFK charisma either. His novel, 11/22/63 is a fictional work of epic proportions where the protagonist (from Maine, of course) gets pulled into the JFK assassination through a time travel vortex. I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. But do not read or watch 11/22/63 (Hulu has come out a TV series of the same name) to provide a new and reasonable theory that will put an end to all other conspiracy theories. King's work agrees with Warren Commission findings of Lee Harvey Oswald being the sole assassin of Kennedy and builds the story around the premise of trying to stop Oswald.
To round things off I listened to Conspiracy Theories podcast and Gone podcast from Parcast Network. The podcast revealed further botch-ups that happened after Kennedy was assassinated - how rules were broken by his staffers taking his body for post mortem back to Washington, when as per the rule it should have been done at the hospital in Dallas where he was taken to after he was shot and how his post mortem was performed a pathologist, who has never done any post-mortems before?! This is the American president we are talking about, how could this happen to such an eminent figure ? In the movie JFK I remember one character saying, if they could kill Kennedy, what are you and me to them? Then the original post mortem notes were destroyed soon after they were written and was never found again including Kennedy's brain which disappeared after the post mortem. The most crucial piece of evidence that Kennedy's body could provide, his brain where those fatal bullets struck, disappeared under high security. WTH?!?
Robert Kennedy's assassination by Sirhan Sirhan (another pawn) five years later in 1968 is as mysterious and unsolved as his elder brother's. It is as if someone at the top was bent on removing the Kennedy 'contagion'. RFK, I think was the brainy brother, JFK being the handsome one. In an alternate reality where both Kennedy brothers are alive, I wonder what it would be like. In 11/22/63 Stephen King paints a discouraging picture of this parallel universe if it ever existed.
I have been to Dealey Plaza in Dallas once. The grassy knoll, the brick buildings flanking it and the smooth curve of the black top had seemed to me like a serene hideaway tucked just beyond the reach of urban throes. It was hard to visualize a Presidential assassination happening there.
With the recent release of all confidential JFK files, which according to our current President should put all JFK conspiracies to rest, there is more attention on the case which never left America's consciousness. I did some reading and watching related to JFK assassination and here are my notes.Norman Mailer's Oswald's Tale is a work of gargantuan proportions covering Lee Harvey Oswald's life - Kennedy's purported killer, in two separate sections - Oswald in Minsk and Oswald in America. Mailer went back to Russia in early 90s after Gorbachev, Perestroika and Glasnost made landfall in USSR and he was able to access a lot of information than before and discuss with 'newly talkative' people about Oswald's time in Russia. In the end it tows the Warren Commission line that Oswald was a disillusioned loner who acted alone. But Mailer never intended his book to solve the mystery of Kennedy's assassination, his work was a study about the evolution of the purported killer - Lee Harvey Oswald.
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| Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison in JFK |
JFK, the Oliver Stone movie, which I re-watched recently provides a believable counter point to Warren Commission's bureaucratic fact finding mission. It brings out the discrepancies in the Warren Commission findings and showcases New Orlean's District Attorney Jim Garrison's work trying to unravel the Kennedy assassination mystery.
Garrison might have been one of the few true and honest investigators of this case for which he became a victim of a smear campaign, probably paid for by the CIA. But to my relief, Jim Garrison re-emerges victorious on the other side after all the plots to bring him down fizzle out. This led me to the best seller he authored which became one of the books on which Stone's JFK is based on - On the Trail of Assassins (1988). The other work that provides material for JFK, the movie is CrossFire : The plot that killed Kennedy by Jim Marrs.
Killing Kennedy is another movie starring Rob Lowe as JFK. Lowe's resemblance to Kennedy in the movie is uncanny, and in many places he appears more handsome than JFK. Nothing sensational about the movie, it is built up on the single shooter theory as is depicted in U.S. history books.11/22/63 by Stephen King. King, one of the best writers practicing the art of fiction in our age could not stay away from the JFK charisma either. His novel, 11/22/63 is a fictional work of epic proportions where the protagonist (from Maine, of course) gets pulled into the JFK assassination through a time travel vortex. I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. But do not read or watch 11/22/63 (Hulu has come out a TV series of the same name) to provide a new and reasonable theory that will put an end to all other conspiracy theories. King's work agrees with Warren Commission findings of Lee Harvey Oswald being the sole assassin of Kennedy and builds the story around the premise of trying to stop Oswald.
To round things off I listened to Conspiracy Theories podcast and Gone podcast from Parcast Network. The podcast revealed further botch-ups that happened after Kennedy was assassinated - how rules were broken by his staffers taking his body for post mortem back to Washington, when as per the rule it should have been done at the hospital in Dallas where he was taken to after he was shot and how his post mortem was performed a pathologist, who has never done any post-mortems before?! This is the American president we are talking about, how could this happen to such an eminent figure ? In the movie JFK I remember one character saying, if they could kill Kennedy, what are you and me to them? Then the original post mortem notes were destroyed soon after they were written and was never found again including Kennedy's brain which disappeared after the post mortem. The most crucial piece of evidence that Kennedy's body could provide, his brain where those fatal bullets struck, disappeared under high security. WTH?!?
Robert Kennedy's assassination by Sirhan Sirhan (another pawn) five years later in 1968 is as mysterious and unsolved as his elder brother's. It is as if someone at the top was bent on removing the Kennedy 'contagion'. RFK, I think was the brainy brother, JFK being the handsome one. In an alternate reality where both Kennedy brothers are alive, I wonder what it would be like. In 11/22/63 Stephen King paints a discouraging picture of this parallel universe if it ever existed.
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