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New Kennedy Books (An Ongoing List)


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Guest Robert Morrow

In my view, and in James Tague's view, he was almost murdered by Lyndon Johnson. Not only is James Tague a witness to the JFK assassination, he is a very credible JFK researcher who was close friends with Harold Weisberg for a very long time.

Tague also spent many years as the right hand man to super wealthy Dallas businessman Frank Late. Late was close friends with all those Dallas oil executives who are listed as high level perp suspects in the JFK assassination. In fact, Frank Late's best friend was Nelson Bunker Hunt, the son of H.L. Hunt.

Frank Late was also a good friend of Lyndon Johnson. So basically James Tague worked closely for a businessman who was close personal friends with people who many researchers considered at the epicenter of the JFK assassination. Tague also says Frank Late would never talk much (or at all) about the JFK assassination - sometimes Tague would say, hey, I am going to be interviewed again, and Late would just not really comment on that. In other words, Frank Late probably knew something about the JFK assassination, how it really happened, and did not want to talk about it.

Here is James Tague's website for his book LBJ and the Kennedy Killing: http://jtague.com/

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Here is James Tague's summary of his views and his book:

Once you understand that Lyndon Johnson and his cronies were behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy and that J. Edgar Hoover was in charge of the cover-up, the questions you have had start giving you answers. The Warren Commission did not stand a chance of presenting the truth. The 7 men appointed by President Johnson contributed little to finding the truth, Commission staff lawyer Wesley Liebeler probably said it best, and that was that “the 7 men we know as the Warren Commission were a joke.” The staff lawyers complained that these commissioners were absent most of the time, and while a staff lawyer was taking a deposition from a witness they would “step in for a few moments, ask a question and leave.” This would blow the staff lawyers line of questioning.

The Warren Commission had 14 staff lawyers, to start with, hired to do the majority of witness questioning and take statements/depositions from the witnesses. When one of these staff lawyers ran into something that needed farther investigation, he would go to J. Lee Rankin, who was chief Counsel for these lawyers. Rankin would turn down their request with the statement, “we are here to close doors not open new ones.” It is evident that when one of these staff lawyers stumbled onto the truth of who was behind the assassination and was controlling the investigation, they quit the Warren Commission. When they quit the Commission, they were were warned that whatever they had learned on the Commission, was considered to be lawyer client information and not to be discussed with anyone or they could face disbarment. The fact that several of the Commission lawyers quit the Commission was not made public, the lawyers that quit the investigation were still listed as staff lawyers in the Warren Report.

Through the years if someone discovered something important that differed from the Warren Commission, not only would that person’s discovery be attacked as false but he would be attacked personally. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison is a good example of these attacks. One problem is that there have been too many crazy theories advanced in the 2,000 books written in the last 50 years. That 2,000 books could probably be reduced to 25 reliable books that have been printed. The misleading conspiracy books have been a big contributor to the attacks, and they well deserved to be attacked for the misinformation they contained.

That leaves the 25 or so good honest books that did not deserve to be attacked. But some of these honest books have been attacked. To understand why a well documented book can be attacked, a book that names two of our countries most honored men as being part of a murder plot, one has to assume that some of the attackers had good intentions, they simply want our countries dirt swept under the rug.

To accept the fact that a United States President and a man who headed our FBI for 50 years were involved in a plot to kill another President puts our country in the same category as a “Banana Republic.” It has been 50 years and it is time for the truth, at least what we know of it, to be told. The attacks on the facts has to stop.

First, that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin and he had raced down 4 flights of stairs to be seen calmly buying a coke in the lunch room 75 seconds after the assassination of JFK, was calm, normal and not out of breath was hard to accept. Then Barry Ernest finally finally found the School Book Depository witnesses who were using the stairs, nullifying that Lee Harvey Oswald using the stairs. It was too simple, Oswald was actually eating his lunch in the second floor lunch room, just like he said he was and just like witnesses said he was.

Second, my facts come from direct conversations with Johnson insiders who have told me the exact same story years apart from each other. There was a fingerprint on a box on the sixth floor. There was also a United States Federal Marshall that knew the full story. For reference, I have a set of the 26 volume Warren Report that contains the testimony of nearly 600 witnesses. I have scores of internal FBI documents that my friend Harold Weisberg sent to me after he won his Freedom of Information Act law suit. I have spent hours and hours of

research for verification of what I have been told and many of the facts are taken from witness testimony right out of the full 26 volume report, not to be confused with the misleading one volume report. . That’s umpteen points of verification and then when I am through with my verification, I am handed the Russian KGB’s 1965 investigative report shows that Lyndon Johnson was behind the assassination of President Kennedy. And guess what? My hours and hours of work match the Russian KGB report to a tee, Lyndon Johnson was behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

The public loved President Kennedy, but he had stepped on some powerful toes, some big money toes, The President had made too many changes, too quick, too fast. President Kennedy had made enemies.

The assassination of President Kennedy was 2 years in its planning, the assassination was pulled off by professionals, there were many people involved. We now know that the planned assassination did have leaks, and little attention was paid to these leaks. One man even shot up a bank so he would be in jail and not associated with the killing when it happened.

The sad part is that many of the power brokers who pulled the strings with their influence on our Government, oil, banking, etc, they had no part in the assassination, but silently cheered in their hearts that Kennedy was gone. The public loved Jack and Jackie Kennedy, but Jack was making too many changes too quick to suit the big money. The hate this power and money bunch had bottled up, unknowingly helped in covering up what was behind the assassination. When someone in this power and money group stumbled onto what really happened, they kept silent about the truth, and used phrases like “for the good of the country,” and “for the sake of the Kennedy family,” that were popular in not seeking information beyond what the Warren Commission had to say.

The truth has been there all the time with a few good researchers and a few good authors, by each in their research being able to document a small piece of the truth. Putting the full story of the assassination together was like, in a way, working a cross word puzzle. There are a few pieces of the puzzle missing that have probably been destroyed and will never be found. When the 50th anniversary comes on November 22, 2013, I will be 77 years old and for reasons only the good lord knows, I have been given information that demands that I write this book so the public and future generations know the truth about the Kennedy assassination. This book started by me being in Dealey Plaza that day, November 22, 1963 it was an accident I was there, it was un-planned, I just happened to get stopped in traffic. Being injured in the shooting was minor, a sting on the cheek from the debris from a missed shot that had hit the street in front of me. I am proud that I spoke up 6 months after the assassination when it appeared the Warren Commission was about to make a total cover-up on the assassination of President Kennedy. My Warren Commission testimony was important, it changed history. Having Harold Weisberg,

the best, most dedicated and serious Kennedy assassination researcher alive as my dear friend for almost 35 years was important. Harold’s winning his FOIA lawsuit against the FBI and sharing the FBI documents with me was important. Having well meaning insiders to the assassination step into my life unsolicited was important. What amazes me is I did not go looking for any of this, it all came to me and dropped into my lap.

I have a thin skin, so I know I must brace myself for the dissenters when this book comes out. There are some people that will not accept the facts, even when it is shoved into their face. 40 some years ago while being interviewed on film, I was asked about my minor injury and without thinking I motioned to my left cheek for some reason. Actually I had been sprayed with debris on the right cheek. The point is, there are still people who want argue over which cheek I was stung on during the shooting. Then there are those that have read one of the many JFK assassination books that contain one of the many theories advanced through the years, many of these readers now have a mind-set that the theory presented in the book they read is the truth.

There have been over 2,000 books written about the assassination of President Kennedy the last 50 years, some of these books are excellent books, but far too many of these publications have done nothing but screw up the readers mind until the reader does not know what to believe anymore.

Harold Weisberg was constantly after me to write the story about the curb being altered, I struggled to start the book which, it was to be a book about my dealings with the FBI, the Warren Commission and the tampering with the curb. My struggle with writing was real, I tried to copy styles and it did not work, no assassination theories. Then Harold died, I had promised Harold he would be the first read the book, but he was gone. Suddenly it happened, I started writing what I knew, it was too simple, I had found out that the truth was easy to write about and I threw together a simple book “TRUTH WITHHELD, Why We Will Never Know the Truth About the JFK Assassination.” I self published the book in 2003 and it has sold a few thousand copies and still selling today. I have included a few of the chapters in “TRUTH WITHHELD,” in this book.

I took a break, the John F. Kennedy assassination had been a part of my life for over 40 years, I bought a nice country place in east Texas, 3 ½ mile south of Pittsburg and I sold the home in Plano I had owned for 30 years. Still, after all the years that had passed, people were still looking me up and coming to East Texas for an interview or whatever, I had not left the Kennedy assassination behind. Then it happened, I woke up one morning with my feet so swollen I could not put my shoes on and I had broke out all over with what I thought was the measles. My daughter Suanna took me to the doctor, he was puzzled but ordered a blood test and sent me home. At 7 AM the next morning the phone rang and it was my doctor. He told me to have someone drive me straight to the hospital in Tyler 50 miles away, that the doctors were waiting for me in the emergency room. I had had complete kidney failure and my body was shutting down. I was put on dialysis upon arrival.

Dialysis for 4 hours a day, 3 or 4 days a week is not fun, the misery and pain you are surrounded with is a new way of life. I do not think I had missed a total of 5 days of work due to illness in my entire life. It was a constant effort to get through each 4 hours without being bored to death. The health check-ups were a constant part of my life. Once your kidney’s quit on you, they are done, they are not supposed to ever work again. I was having a regular urine and blood check up on January 16, 1010 at my doctors office and out of the blue my doctor announced “Jim, your kidneys are working again and I am taking you off dialysis.” When I recovered from the shock he said the odds of my recovery were over 10,000 to 1. It has been over 3 years, I still get regular check-ups, and my doctor just shakes his head at my recovery.

I am not a regular church goer, but I am a god fearing man and I do say a silent prayer for my family every so often. I took this recovery as a signal that I am on this earth for a purpose. I did not need to guess what purpose. I knew in my heart I needed to tell the true story of the President John F. Kennedy assassination, there had been too much information dumped in my lap and there had been too many years of the “Lone nut assassin,” Lee Harvey Oswald did it, end of the story.

For you Historians it will not take much research to find out what a bi- polar sick man Lyndon Johnson was. I feel sorry for his 2 daughters by Lyndon and Ladybird, I hope they do not read this book. One of his Secret Service agents probably said it best “if he was not President, he would be locked up in a nut house.” His friend who handled the cover-up, head of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover was without morals, I cover Hoover in an earlier chapter. There was the big money and power, the men who where admired as pillars of society who let their power and greed get to them and allow a murder. They supplied the money without asking questions to keep their lilly white hands clean. There were the known and main planners, Lyndon Johnson’s attorney Edward Clark, Head of the National Democratic Party Clifford Carter, Owner of the School Book Depository, co-founder of LTV and Malcolm Wallaces employer David Harold Byrd, Billionaire oil man Clint Murchison Sr., Billionaire oil man H. L. Hunt, George and Herman Root of Brown & Root, and others.

Lee Harvey Oswald was a patsy to the shooting, but not completely innocent of involvement. There was at least 3 shooters, probably 4 shooters, and maybe as many as 5 shooters. Two shooters are known, Malcolm Wallace and Loy Factor, a third shooter was seen by Ed Hoffman behind the fence, and the forth shooter was probably the third man on the sixth floor. There is eyewitness and finger print evidence on Wallace and a confession by Loy Factor to three reputable men.

The clean escape from the assassination scene was handled by several men who pretended they were Secret Service agents, these false Secret Service agents mingled with the crowd, the fake agents carried fake Secret Service badges, and placed themselves all around the area of Dealey Plaza and the School Book Depository. More than one person, in the confusion of hearing shots fired and wondering what had just happened had a fake Secret Service badge pulled out by a stranger and used for identification by a phony Secret Service agent. The cover-up was in effect the moment the first shot was fired.

Edited by Robert Morrow
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Guest Robert Morrow

Jim DiEugenio has a new book coming out this fall: Reclaiming Parkland: Tom Hanks, Vincent Bugliosi, and the JFK Assassination in the New Hollywood.

http://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Parkland-Bugliosi-Assassination-Hollywood/dp/1626365334/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1375602892&sr=8-1&keywords=reclaiming+parkland

A hard-hitting, one-of-a-kind look at how Hollywood and the mainstream media are getting the Kennedy assassination all wrong!

Reclaiming Parkland details the failed attempt of Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman—cofounder of the production company Playtone—to make Vincent Bugliosi’s mammoth book about the Kennedy assassination, Reclaiming History, into a miniseries. It exposes the questionable origins of Reclaiming History in a dubious mock trial for cable television, in which Bugliosi played the role of an attorney prosecuting Lee Harvey Oswald for murder, and how this formed the basis for the epic tome. Author James DiEugenio details the myriad problems with Bugliosi’s book, and explores the cooperation of the mainstream press in concealing these many faults during the publicity campaign for the book and how this lack of scrutiny led Hanks and Goetzman to purchase the film rights. DiEugenio then shows how the film eventually adapted from that book, entitled Parkland, does not even resemble Reclaiming History, though the script for that film displays the same imbalance that Reclaiming History does.

Reclaiming Parkland also includes extended looks at the little-known aspects of the lives and careers of Bugliosi, Hanks, and Goetzman—including Bugliosi’s three attempts at political office and a review of the Tate-LaBianca murders in the light of today’s knowledge of that case. DiEugenio also looks at the connections between Washington and Hollywood, as well as the CIA influence in the film colony today. Reclaiming Parkland is a truly unique book that delves into the Kennedy assassination, the New Hollywood, and the political influence on how films are made today

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Guest Robert Morrow

Chris Anderson has written some fabulous books on the Clintons. I find him highly credible. He is a former reporter for TIME magazine that does a good job of uncovering the dirt on our high level politicians that the controlled MSM censors from our eyes. I am buying this book.

And btw, the "dirt" is extremely important in understanding who these people were ... and what enemies they made.

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Guest Robert Morrow

The National Enquirer dials in for the 50th: LBJ Did It! (Actually the Enquirer discusses various theories on the JFK assassination, but it does prominently feature Roger Stone.)

Available at bookstores now, such as Barnes & Noble -

50 YEARS AFTER JFK'S ASSASSINATION ...

WHO REALLY KILLED THE KENNEDYS!- A National Enquirer Special Report

The unanswered questions about the murders of JFK and his brother Robert Kennedy -- just a few years later -- remain a provocative and disturbing puzzle. In this blockbuster report, the editors of the National Enquirer, reveal the stunning web of lies and betrayals behind JFK's murder. Plus, the compelling new evidence in his new book from former Richard Nixon aide Roger Stone showing how Vice President Lyndon Johnson masterminded the assassination. Was LBJ behind Bobby's assassination too? Read all the bombshell revelations in this special issue.

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Guest Robert Morrow

James Reston, Jr.'s father was James Reston the dean of the NYT columnists and CFR member. The NYT and the CFR have been 2 of the absolute leaders in the cover up of the JFK assassination. And now Junior is dialing in with a spectacularly subpar work on the JFK assassination.

http://www.restonbooks.com/

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Was Texas governor John Connally, not President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald's actual target on that fated day fifty years ago? That's the startling theory argued by critically acclaimed, bestselling historian James Reston Jr. in his explosive forthcoming book THE ACCIDENTAL VICTIM: JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Real Target in Dallas (Zola Books, September 2013).

First suggested in his 1989 biography of Connally, THE LONE STAR, but now greatly expanded with a wealth of convincing new detail, Reston's argument focuses on little-appreciated facts outlining tensions between Connally and ex-Marine Oswald beginning as early as January 1961.

The Case for Connally

After Oswald attempted to defect to the Soviet Union upon his release from military service, he learned that his discharge had been changed from honorable to dishonorable without a proper hearing. Oswald protested this unfairness directly to his fellow Texan John Connally, then Secretary of Navy. In February 1962 he received a classic bureaucratic brush-off; the boilerplate arrived in a campaign envelope bearing the smiling face of the gubernatorial candidate.

Saddled with a dishonorable discharge, unable to find work in Texas, Oswald developed an obsessive grudge against Connally, Reston posits. Marina Oswald, Lee Harvey’s wife, testified three times that Connally was her husband’s target. Several important members of the Dallas Russian émigré community also spoke of the grudge. So why did the Warren Commission chose to ignore this evidence? It was political, Reston asserts; the Commission felt it could not sell the idea of President Kennedy being an accidental victim in Dallas.

Along with proof of Oswald’s animus toward Connally, Reston also presents ample evidence revealing that Oswald and his wife greatly admired both JFK and Jackie Kennedy.

A New View of JFK’s Death

In addition to this provocative theory of Oswald’s motivation, Reston advances a second controversial view destined to change the way we think about that day in Dallas. The back brace worn by President Kennedy, Reston contends, contributed to his death on November 22, 1963.

Reston makes the case that after Oswald’s first bullet passed through the president’s neck and into the back of Governor Connally, the back brace (recently examined by the author at the National Archives) held Kennedy upright and virtually stationary in the presidential limousine, while Connally writhed in pain and fell into his wife’s lap. As the famous Zapruder film shows, the president’s rigid posture lasted five full seconds, allowing Oswald to reload and fire a second time. That second shot killed the president immediately.

As the nation commemorates the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s tragic death this fall, THE ACCIDENTAL VICTIM will command wide attention.

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Guest Robert Morrow

Here is an essay about 2013 books relating to the JFK assassination from Publisher's Weekly: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/new-titles/adult-announcements/article/58575-a-dark-pivotal-moment-fifty-years-later.html

A Dark, Pivotal Moment: Fifty Years Later By Lenny Picker

Aug 02, 2013

Why is it that millions who were not even alive on November 22, 1963, are still fascinated by the assassination of President John F. Kennedy? And why do so many—a staggering 75% in a recent poll conducted by accomplished pollsters Peter Hart and Geoffrey Garin—question the findings of the Warren Commission that the killing was the work of one lone nut, Lee Harvey Oswald? As the 50th anniversary of his murder in Dallas’s Dealey Plaza nears, readers interested both in Kennedy’s life and the circumstances of his death have a lot of new options, ranging from widely differing assessments of his record in the Oval Office to a panoply of conspiracy theories.

It seems obvious that his death would have had less of an impact if Kennedy had been less admired during his lifetime, and had not been the bearer of the hopes of a generation for a better future. And that admiration continues a half-century later, with surveys ranking him the most highly rated president of the last 50 years. How come? Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, sums up the phenomenon as follows in The Kennedy Half-Century: The Presidency, Assassination, and Lasting Legacy of John F. Kennedy (Bloomsbury, Nov.): “The American people’s idealization of John Kennedy, their determination to overlook his obvious flaws, and successive presidents’ use of the Kennedy record for their own ends have been the sparks that have repeatedly reignited JFK’s influence.” Sabato was amazed to conclude from his research “just how much Kennedy had been cited by Republican and Democratic presidents alike. In fact, other than Lyndon Johnson, the most skillful use of Kennedy was made by Ronald Reagan, in pursuit of his tax cuts and anti-Communist policies.”

Article continues below.

Reagan’s utilization of J.F.K. as a political tool would come as no surprise to readers of JFK, Conservative (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Oct.) from Ira Stoll, the former editor of the New York Sun and the Forward. The book launches a full-bore assault on the popular prevailing view of Kennedy as a liberal: “JFK’s tax cuts, his domestic spending restraint, his military buildup, his pro-growth economic policy, his emphasis on free trade and a strong dollar, and his foreign policy driven by the idea that America had a God-given mission to defend freedom all make him, by the standards of both his time and our own, a conservative.” For Stoll, we continue to be interested in Kennedy “for some of the same reasons we are fascinated by Lincoln, and by the Founding Fathers. He understood the American idea that rights come from God and not from the state, and he articulated it in a way that inspired people at the time and that continues to inspire a lot of people.”

(Click here to read an essay about the assassination of J.F.K. that appeared in the Dec. 2, 1963, issue of PW.)

For those who consider J.F.K.’s ranking as one of our top presidents the result of valuing style over substance, U.N. Special Advisor Jeffrey Sachs focuses attention on what he believes was the president’s greatest achievement. In To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace (Random, June), Sachs studies in detail Kennedy’s leadership in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, which brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. “Through an astounding combination of soaring vision, stunning eloquence, and masterful political tactics, Kennedy forged the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev, and moved it through Senate ratification,” Sachs writes. “Kennedy’s leadership not only helped save the world, but also provided enduring lessons on the arts of world leadership.” That accomplishment could offer hope for today’s seemingly intractable foreign policy challenges. Sachs notes that in early June 1963, “peace with the Soviet Union seemed just as unlikely as U.S.-Iranian rapprochement or Israeli-Palestinian peace does today.”

Historian Thurston Clarke, author of The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America (Holt), offers another positive take on the Kennedy presidency in JFK’s Last Hundred Days: The Transformation of a Man and the Emergence of a Great President (Penguin, Aug.). While Clarke does not consider his subject to have been a great president, he does think that J.F.K. “gave every indication that he was becoming one.” Clarke writes, “His civil rights and American University speeches, given on successive days in June, addressed the two greatest threats to the United States: nuclear war and racial inequality and conflict.” For Clarke, “what Kennedy intended to do” was clear. That to-do list was boggling in its ambition: improved relations with the Soviet Union, a comprehensive test ban treaty, a joint U.S.-Soviet Moon mission (proposed just two months before his death), diplomacy intended to improve relations with Cuba and China, a poverty program, and civil rights legislation. But Clarke notes that over his entire career, J.F.K. “succeeded at what he intended to do,” and thus believes that much of that ambitious agenda would have been realized. Along with other historians, he is “convinced that JFK would never have sent combat units to Vietnam, as Johnson did. He resisted doing this throughout his presidency despite recommendations from Maxwell, McNamara, Bundy and others.” From this perspective, the fatal gunfire in Dallas may very well have led to the escalation of the Vietnam War, with its horrific butcher’s bill and its blows to the psyches of both the right and the left.

Kennedy (and L.B.J.) biographer Robert Dallek offers a new look at the deliberations of the best and the brightest in Camelot’s Court: Inside the Kennedy White House (Harper, Oct.), which offers a more skeptical take on what Kennedy’s next steps as president would have been. J.F.K.’s road to the White House gets a fresh assessment in John T. Shaw’s JFK in the Senate: Pathway to the Presidency (Palgrave Macmillan, Oct.); it includes details on an obscure, but to Shaw significant, chapter in Kennedy’s senatorial career—his work on a committee to name the country’s five greatest senators. And the paper of record’s reporting about J.F.K. is reproduced in The Kennedy Years: From the Pages of The New York Times, edited by Richard Reeves (Abrams, Oct.), featuring selected articles preceded by intelligent essays putting them in context.

A more down-to-earth view of Kennedy the man is afforded by The Letters of John F. Kennedy, edited by Martin W. Sandler (Bloomsbury, Nov.), the first collection of correspondence to and from J.F.K., starting with a letter from the 12-year-old Boy Scout pleading with his father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., for an increase in his allowance from 40¢. Barely a decade later, the younger Kennedy was giving his father political advice. Sandler was surprised to find how many letters and telegrams Kennedy and Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev exchanged. His study of them revealed that “it was Khrushchev, not Kennedy, who wrote that the magnitude of the holocaust that would follow if the two leaders could not lead the world back from the brink of war would be such that ‘the living would envy the dead.’” For Sandler, the letters are an underrated historical source, and more than just further evidence of the legendary J.F.K. wit, charm, sense of humor, and command of the language.

On the speculative side, there’s Jeff Greenfield’s If Kennedy Lived: The First and Second Terms of President John F. Kennedy: An Alternate History (Putnam, Oct.). Greenfield addresses such topics as how Kennedy would have approached Vietnam, civil rights, and the Cold War in a hypothetical second term.

For British investigative journalist Anthony Summers, the preoccupation with the president’s murder is due to its perception “as having been a dark pivotal moment after which Americans’ trust in government withered, when certainties were replaced by doubts.” Summers is one of the most respected authors asking whether the Warren Commission got things right, and October brings a thoroughly revised edition of his Not in Your Lifetime: the Defining Book on the JFK Assassination: Fifty Years On, Weighing the Evidence (Open Road), which incorporates thousands of relevant documents released in the past few decades, “some of which dispose of red herrings that once seemed important, some of which supply fresh facts and insights.”

Other credible revelations, conveyed in a similarly balanced approach, are expected in an embargoed and as-yet-untitled book that explores the Warren Commission’s work by Philip Shenon, a former New York Times reporter and author of an eye-opening behind-the-scenes look at the 9/11 Commission, to be released in October by Holt. According to Holt president and publisher Stephen Rubin, Shenon’s work “will rewrite much of the history of both the Kennedy assassination and the most controversial murder investigation of the twentieth century. No one who picks up Philip Shenon’s astonishing book will ever view the Kennedy assassination or the Warren Commission in the same way.”

Has Shenon found proof of a plot, or just a cover-up aimed at hiding the government’s dirty secrets (elaborate schemes to murder Fidel Castro, for example) and its failure to keep closer tabs on Oswald, who was known to the local FBI office? Holt isn’t saying for now. But plenty of other writers are using the 50th anniversary to offer new variations on the conspiracy theme.

Clarke’s book is evidence that historical researchers not focused on the assassination can still uncover facts that some will find relevant to the murder. Clarke had always been skeptical that just three days before the fatal trip to Dallas, Kennedy told his personal secretary Evelyn Lincoln that he did not plan on keeping L.B.J. as his running mate in 1964. But his research uncovered Lincoln’s shorthand notes of that conversation. In the light of that corroboration and the revelations in two other recent books, Ted Sorensen’s Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History (Harper) and Caroline Kennedy and Michael Beschloss’s Jacqueline Kennedy: Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy (Hyperion), which suggest that Kennedy had doubts in Johnson’s ability to succeed him, Clarke is convinced that Kennedy meant what he said.

Could that view of his v-p have played a role in what happened in Dallas, providing a motive for the man who did succeed Kennedy in office? While Johnson has been fingered before as the man who orchestrated the assassination, the theory gets new life in Roger Stone’s The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ (Skyhorse, Nov.). Stone assumes the reader agrees that the existence of a murderous conspiracy “has been fairly well established.” He points the finger at many of the usual suspects: “the Mob, the CIA, Cuban exiles,” throwing in “the Secret Service and the vice president’s staff” for good measure. But “the moving force and linchpin” was Lyndon Johnson, who used his total control of the Dallas police and sheriff to make sure that the plot unfolded as planned. Stone’s evidence includes the sensational claim that a “fingerprint found on a box in the so-called sniper’s nest in the Texas School Book Depository” was a match for Mac Wallace, labeled by some as L.B.J.’s hit man. A PW review of a similarly themed book, Barr McClellan’s Blood, Money, & Power: How LBJ Killed JFK, reprinted in 2011 by Skyhorse, found the theory “overwrought,” and the partial fingerprint evidence inconclusive at best.

But if you don’t buy L.B.J. as the evil mastermind, Skyhorse has still got you covered—between new books like Stone’s and reprints of conspiracy classics such as Sylvia Meagher’s well-respected Accessories After the Fact and Gaeton Fonzi’s The Last Investigation: A Former Federal Investigator Reveals the Plot to Kill JFK, the publisher has about two dozen titles due out this year on the killing, including a second L.B.J.-did-it, by Philip F. Nelson: LBJ: Mastermind of the Kennedy Assassination (July).

Skyhorse’s voluminous roster of relevant titles include They Killed Our President: 63 Facts That Prove a Conspiracy to Kill JFK by Jesse Ventura, with Dick Russell and David Wayne (Oct.), which also defiantly rejects Occam’s razor and takes the kitchen-sink approach in its theorizing, adding the military-industrial complex and “Texas Oil” to Stone’s cast of plotters. The title of The Poison Patriarch: How the Betrayals of Joseph P. Kennedy Caused the Assassination of JFK, by Mark Shaw (Oct.), pretty much says it all. Shaw believes that the president’s father’s relationship with organized crime, and his push for Robert Kennedy to serve his brother as Attorney General, led him to reap “what he had sown in a scenario tantamount to a Greek tragedy with a complex moral structure where abuse of power and broken promises pervaded at every turn, culminating in betrayals, revenge, and ultimately, murder.” A connection between Dallas and the murder of Robert Kennedy in 1968 is made in November’s CIA Rogues and the Killing of the Kennedys: How and Why U.S. Agents Conspired to Assassinate JFK and RFK by Patrick Nolan.

Skyhorse is not putting all its eggs in the second-gunman basket. We Were There: Revelations from the Dallas Doctors Who Attended to JFK on November 22, 1963, edited by Allan Childs (Nov.), is an original work of oral history, while the same month’s November 22, 1963: Reflections on the Life, Assassination, and Legacy of John F. Kennedy, edited by Dean R. Owen, collects interviews and commentaries about the murder from prominent figures such as Tom Brokaw and Congressman John Lewis.

But Skyhorse is certainly putting itself out there with its unparalleled volume of assassination-related books. Associate publisher Bill Wolfsthal says that he’s not concerned that sales of individual titles will be adversely affected by competition from within the same publishing house. “Every major bookseller has committed to carrying the new titles, and we’re pleased that we spread publication out from September to November. Some retailers will carry the reprints and some will not. But because such a large percentage of bookselling is either print books online or e-books, shelf space is not the issue it would have been five or 10 years ago.”

Other assassination-related titles likewise avoid the conspiracy issue. When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963 (Taylor Trade, Oct.) reprints the accounts of four journalists—Bob Huffaker, Bill Mercer, George Phenix, and Wes Wise—who provided some of the initial reports on the tragedy; Wise was part of history directly since Jack Ruby actually approached him a day before Oswald’s on-the-air murder.

A unique take on the case comes in Dallas 1963 (Twelve, Oct.), Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis’s look at what Dallas was really like during the Kennedy years. The pair capture the drama of the lead-up to the killing, with the flames of hatred directed against the president fanned by a motley crew of haters, including “a defrocked military general, the world’s richest oil baron, the leader of the largest Baptist congregation in the world, and the media mogul Ted Dealey, whose family name adorns the plaza where the president was murdered.”

Given the wild success of James L. Swanson’s Manhunt, about the pursuit of Lincoln’s killers (no one disputes that John Wilkes Booth was part of a plot), the author’s take on the Kennedy assassination is likely to be a hot title. In November, Morrow will publish End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, a present-day version of Jim Bishop’s The Day Kennedy Was Shot, providing a minute-by-minute account of the tragedy. For Swanson, the fact that so many doubt the Warren Commission findings is unsurprising: “Conspiracy theories are as American as apple pie. Throughout our history, for more than 250 years, we have turned to numerous conspiracy theories to explain catastrophic events or troubled times. It is not unusual that such theories arose after Dallas. We cannot accept that a peasant killed a king. Many people refused to believe that such an inconsequential man as Lee Oswald could change history is such a monumental way. The JFK assassination upset our national faith that the universe—and our own lives—can have order, meaning or predictability. If JFK can die, than random chance can strike any of us down.” Swanson has also written a YA title on the assassination, which will be published by Scholastic Press in October.

Finally, there’s Marina and Lee: The Tormented Love and Fatal Obsession Behind Lee Harvey Oswald’s Assassination of John F. Kennedy (Steerforth, Sept.), by Priscilla Johnson McMillan. According to Thomas Mallon, the author of Mrs. Paine’s Garage: And the Murder of John F. Kennedy (Pantheon), this reissue, which includes a new introduction by the author and a foreword by Joseph Finder, is “the single best book ever written about the Kennedy assassination.” For those who find the conspiracy arguments unpersuasive, McMillan provides all the important answers.

"One Brief Shining Moment"

For many, each picture of J.F.K. and his photogenic family is worth many more than a thousand words; iconic images, ranging from the new father playing peek-a-boo with daughter Caroline, to her brother John F. Kennedy Jr.’s heartbreaking salute at the funeral procession, are reproduced in Life magazine’s The Day Kennedy Died: 50 Years Later: LIFE Remembers the Man and the Moment (Oct.). The text includes a facsimile of the November 29, 1963, issue that appeared the week after the assassination, extensive commentary on individual frames of the Zapruder film, and personal reminiscences from notables, including Gay Talese, Tom Wolfe, Bill O’Reilly, and Barbara Streisand. A highlight is Jacqueline Kennedy’s post-assassination interview with Theodore H. White, which helped define how her husband’s administration would be viewed. She quoted the lyric from the Lerner and Loewe musical Camelot, a favorite of J.F.K.’s—“Don’t let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot”—forever creating an association between Camelot and the Kennedy White House.

Edited by Robert Morrow
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James Reston, Jr.'s father was James Reston the dean of the NYT columnists and CFR member. The NYT and the CFR have been 2 of the absolute leaders in the cover up of the JFK assassination. And now Junior is dialing in with a spectacularly subpar work on the JFK assassination.

http://www.restonbooks.com/

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Was Texas governor John Connally, not President Kennedy, Lee Harvey Oswald's actual target on that fated day fifty years ago? That's the startling theory argued by critically acclaimed, bestselling historian James Reston Jr. in his explosive forthcoming book THE ACCIDENTAL VICTIM: JFK, Lee Harvey Oswald, and the Real Target in Dallas (Zola Books, September 2013).

First suggested in his 1989 biography of Connally, THE LONE STAR, but now greatly expanded with a wealth of convincing new detail, Reston's argument focuses on little-appreciated facts outlining tensions between Connally and ex-Marine Oswald beginning as early as January 1961.

The Case for Connally

After Oswald attempted to defect to the Soviet Union upon his release from military service, he learned that his discharge had been changed from honorable to dishonorable without a proper hearing. Oswald protested this unfairness directly to his fellow Texan John Connally, then Secretary of Navy. In February 1962 he received a classic bureaucratic brush-off; the boilerplate arrived in a campaign envelope bearing the smiling face of the gubernatorial candidate.

Saddled with a dishonorable discharge, unable to find work in Texas, Oswald developed an obsessive grudge against Connally, Reston posits. Marina Oswald, Lee Harvey’s wife, testified three times that Connally was her husband’s target. Several important members of the Dallas Russian émigré community also spoke of the grudge. So why did the Warren Commission chose to ignore this evidence? It was political, Reston asserts; the Commission felt it could not sell the idea of President Kennedy being an accidental victim in Dallas.

Along with proof of Oswald’s animus toward Connally, Reston also presents ample evidence revealing that Oswald and his wife greatly admired both JFK and Jackie Kennedy.

A New View of JFK’s Death

In addition to this provocative theory of Oswald’s motivation, Reston advances a second controversial view destined to change the way we think about that day in Dallas. The back brace worn by President Kennedy, Reston contends, contributed to his death on November 22, 1963.

Reston makes the case that after Oswald’s first bullet passed through the president’s neck and into the back of Governor Connally, the back brace (recently examined by the author at the National Archives) held Kennedy upright and virtually stationary in the presidential limousine, while Connally writhed in pain and fell into his wife’s lap. As the famous Zapruder film shows, the president’s rigid posture lasted five full seconds, allowing Oswald to reload and fire a second time. That second shot killed the president immediately.

As the nation commemorates the 50th anniversary of President John F. Kennedy’s tragic death this fall, THE ACCIDENTAL VICTIM will command wide attention.

I contacted Reston last year regarding a document discussed in his book on Connally. He indicated that he'd long ago rid himself of his Connally-related materials. That makes me suspect that this new book was put together from The Lone Star, in an attempt to cash-in on the 50th. Shame shame shame.

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I looked over all the books about President Kennedy's Assassination. Although it's been out for 4+1/2 months, only 2 people congratulated me. I did not write the book. I was told my theory was going to be in it. The name of the book is "Hit List" by Richard Belzer. It's about the dead "witnesses" following the Kennedy Assassination, starting with Officer Tippit, then LHO, then Karyn Kupcinet. I guess she's a light-weight witness. She was killed because Irv Kupcinet, her father, became very interested in Jack Ruby, originally from Chicago. Irv sometimes had a co-writer write a portion of the column, Ivan Bunny. This Ivan was very good friends with Jack Ruby. The murder of their child both haIted any Kennedy investigation by Kupcinet; and also added a shocked distraction for Chicagoans that ripped Ruby off the cover page. Those stark headlines were terrible to behold. Then Frank Sinatra's son was kidnapped and that kept America in suspense and then the last effect happened: The Beatles came over.

The Kupcinets were an hour away from Chicago at the opening of a new Sara Lee factory. Irv knew many business people and would mention them in his columns. A friend of his was able to track him down at the plant. Irv was as surprised as was mobster Dorfman, whom Irv questioned right after Ruby shooting Oswald. Dorfman said, "What? Sparky wouldn't do that. He's a nebbish kind of guy."

Many years later, when the film JFK was coming out, Irv ripped into it, saying it told a lie. Kup mentioned this so often, that fellow columnist, Roger Ebert, felt compelled to mention it. But I found out from a gossip columnist I knew, John Austin, that the original treatment used Karyn Kupcinet as a character who knew beforehand about the assassination. Penn Jones put that story together. This was not the truth. He should have known better. Fortunately, they used Rose Cheramie.

I think it's all right to include Belzer's book as a Kennedy book in the 50th anniversary, even if you don't like one of the chapters, which fell to me.

Kathleen Collins

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