The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy
The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy(2003) This Emmy-winning Peter Jennings ABC documentary is, for me, the definitive rejoinder to the to the Kennedy assassination conspiracy devotees. At the outset of this 89-minute program, Mr. Jennings starts bluntly that the assassination was not a conspiracy and that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
The documentary focuses specifically on the conspiracy charges that Kevin Costner, as Jim Garrison in Oliver Stone’s JFK, presented in his summation to the jury in the Bernard Shaw trial. Frequently the film flashes back to Costner’s conjectures, and then matches it to credible contradictions. What I found most convincing was the use of #D computer modeling of the assassination scene and the enhancement of the Zapruder film.
The “magic bullet,” that, in JFK, twisted and turned as it struck Kennedy, then Governor John Connally, has a most credible alternative explanation. Through computer graphics and recreation, it seems clear that a single bullet went through President Kennedy’s head, then into Connally. Moreover, the fragments of this bullet were recovered and matched to the gun Oswald used in the book depository.
As far as the shots from the ‘grassy knoll,’ the documentary provides persuasive evidence that undercuts such speculation. It was illustrated that, had there been such shots, they could not have entered Kennedy’s head through the back of the skull. Regarding the motor cycle’s radio that caught what some interpreted to be a fourth shot, the testimony of three scientists, who claimed this had a high probability was refuted, with films from November 22nd as well as an interview with the police motor cyclist.
Much has been made of the impossibility of a single person being able to get off three accurate shots in the time span calculated from the Zapruder film. Enhanced technology demonstrates that there was an 8.3 second span between the first and the third shot. An elderly man demonstrated how he could fire three aimed shots in barely seven seconds. Oswald had been a Marine sharpshooter. His Marine records were displayed. He had scored 49 and 48 out of 50 in two range tests in which he had to hit a head-sized target over 200 yards away. By contrast, President Kennedy was in a slow moving car only 88 yards from the book depository window.
With checklist efficiency, the documentary examined, and then rejected, numerous suppositions. Regarding the Bernard Shaw trial (see The History Channel’s False Witness (1996), based on Patricia Lambert’s book of the same name), new evidence included an interview with the expert who conducted a lie detector test on Perry Russo, Garrison’s principal witness against Shaw. According to this expert, Russo flunked, when asked whether he had seen Shaw and Oswald together. Upon hearing this, Garrison went ballistic and refused to acknowledge that his key witness lacked credibility.
A detailed examination of Oswald’s background and travels strongly indicated that this was a troubled man who sought recognition. Regarding his curious defection to the Soviet Union, then return to the U. S. several years later, an ex-NKVD official (subsequently a defector now under cover in the U. S.), who had dealt with Oswald in the Soviet Union, stated that it was absurd to imagine that NKVD professionals would take an unbalanced Oswald seriously. As far as ‘extended conspiratorial planning,’ according to the documentary Oswald only learned, three days before November 22nd, that the Kennedy motorcade would pass close to the book bindery.
Cuban Premier Fidel Castro, in 1978, was asked whether he had been involved in the Kennedy assassination (the Kennedys had been associated with numerous plans to assassinate Castro). Castro promptly replied “Absolutely not,” adding that would have been the stupidest thing he could have done: it would have given the United States an excuse to invade Cuba.
Regarding Jack Ruby, and his killing Oswald to ‘silence him,’ this seemed most unlikely. Ruby was a shabby strip joint owner who, according to close associates, was on the very fringe of the Mafia. The theory that the Mafia, after being in league with Oswald, now engaged Ruby to kill Oswald, was ridiculed by one of America’s leading Mafia experts.
This documentary draws on the massive assassination-related documentation made public in the aftermath of the JFK movie. It goes far beyond Gerald Posner’s Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993). Under Mr. Jennings’ precise handling, a panoply of ‘conspiracy conjectures’ are subjected to sharp scrutiny and are found to lack substance.
According to polls, about 70% of the American public still believes that the assassination of President Kennedy was a conspiracy that involved others with Lee Harvey Oswald. In the 43 Amazon.com comments on The Kennedy Assassination, about the same number conclude ‘case closed’ as believe that the documentary is ‘garbage’ and that there was a yet-unrevealed conspiracy that killed President Kennedy.
This documentary has superb vignettes suitable for the classroom. Some of the most effective short clips include computer animation of the actual assassination and the discussion of the ‘single bullet’ compared to Mr. Costner’s ‘magic bullet’ trial pyrotechnics.
