Kindle edition and preview of POLITICAL TRUTH: THE MEDIA AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY

[Joseph McBride]

I am pleased to report that the Kindle edition of my new book POLITICAL TRUTH:

THE MEDIA AND THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY is now

available on Amazon, along with the higher-priced paperback edition. The "Look Inside"

function is now activated too, so people can preview part of the book. POLITICAL TRUTH,

which I began outlining in the 1990s while working on INTO THE NIGHTMARE and wrote over the past couple of years,

reexamines the long history of mainstream media lying and coverup about the assassination

case and the Tippit murder, the contrary truth-telling by independent researchers, and the damaging effects

this systemic lying by the media and government has had on our country.

 

Although the roots of the

lack of trust and belief in the government and media are usually traced back to

the Vietnam War, I argue that this process actually began with Dallas, which led directly

to the widening of the war (the media are still lying about that too, partly since to face

the facts would lead to reexamining what happened in Dallas and why). I argue

that the widespread failure to acknowledge that a successful coup d'état

took place in the US on November 22, 1963, has led to the failure by many

in the media and elsewhere to prepare for or even recognize the reality of what happened when a coup attempt

took place in 2020-21.  Though that coup attempt was unsuccessful, another attempt will probably happen again.

And in the meantime, the toxic disbelief in reality by many people, fostered by the assassination coverup and government and media lies about other major events, has divided our country into two warring camps.

 

As the epigraph to my last chapter, I use the comment that Jack Ruby addressed to Earl

Warren during his Warren Commission testimony in the Dallas County Jail in June 1964: "[A] whole new form of government is going to take over our country . . .

it is a very serious situation. I guess it is too late to stop it, isn’t it?"

 

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by Joseph McBride

[Ron Bulman]

Quite prescient for a mid level mob operative, used to shut up Oswald.  All too true.  

[Denny Zartman]

Thanks for the heads up, Joseph. I'm reading it now.

[Jim Hargrove]

I love the simple clarity of the statement Richard Dudman made just days after the hit:

“How could the president have been shot in the front from the back?”

[Gary Murr]

Congratulations Joseph - I have the Kindle version ready for reading and am looking forward to getting into what I am sure will be a most enlightening study of the mainstream media. 

[Joseph McBride]

Thank you, Gary. And thank you for your fine, groundbreaking monograph on the Tippit

murder. You were way ahead of us all.

[Joseph McBride]

Ruby was indeed knowledgeable, since he was part of the plot. Carl Oglesby

in The YANKEE AND COWBOY WAR has a brilliant and moving deconstruction of Ruby's anguished Warren

Commission testimony, in which he struggled to tell parts of the truth even though

Warren was not interested in hearing it. He begged to be taken to DC to testify

more frankly but was refused.

Edited January 9, 2022 by Joseph McBride

[Jeff Carter]

Also looking forward to this. I've been enjoying the Lubitsch book over the past few weeks in concert with the films available on the Criterion Channel.

Perhaps you could make a comment here on the dichotomy between the "remarkable immediacy" of the media over the course of the assassination weekend against the later production of deceptive documentaries relying on the authority of the hosts - such as Cronkite.

[Joseph McBride]

Thanks, Jeff. I am glad you are enjoying the Lubitsch book. I am grateful

for your excellent work as a videographer on a related project of mine,

"Political Truth: The Media and the Asssassination," on Len Osanic's

2013 series FIFTY REASONS . . . FIFTY YEARS. I've been studying

the role of the media in the assassination since 12:40 p.m. on November 22, 1963, and wrote a chapter in my 2013 book

INTO THE NIGHTMARE on what I call the four-day assassination TV docudrama,

which helped tranquillize the traumatized public and keep them at home

rather than out in the streets demanding answers, as would happen in

other countries. We did get to see and hear Oswald declare his innocence

repeatedly, and many other truthful pieces of information and witness reports came out

before the official story came together. But I heard on the network radio 

the shots mysteriously changing direction by 1 p.m. on Nov. 22 from the earlier reported

frontal shots (from the railroad bridge area or the hill, as was reported) to the back

in the Texas School Book Depository. And as Cronkite, Brinkley, Rather et al tried Oswald and convicted

him on live TV with the help of the Dallas authorities, that opened my youthful

eyes to trial-by-media and the failure to adhere to the principle of innocent

until proven guilty.

 

In POLITICAL TRUTH I analyze how the official story came

together that weekend and (despite loose ends that emerged here and there in the

media) was solidified over the next weeks and months before it was carved in stone by

the Warren Report and by the mainstream media's lying and support of that document. The

later disgraceful network TV documentaries that have proliferated since 1964 have mostly

kept reiterating those lies, though between the cracks I found some doubts

expressed even by Cronkite & Rather. An obscure CBS special in December

1963, THE LAW AND LEE OSWALD, is often insightful and thoughtful, which

is probably why it's never repeated.

 

But it's mostly the dissident, independent journalists, researchers, and documentarians such as you and Len Osanic and Oliver

Stone and Jim DiEugenio, who have countered the lying network propaganda shows.

Throughout POLITICAL TRUTH I contrast the official story and the independent researchers'

work and show how the systematic falsification of the assassination story

by the government and its propaganda arm, the mainstream media, was the beginning of our

current toxic atmosphere of living in two divided senses of reality.

Edited January 10, 2022 by Joseph McBride

[Denny Zartman]

Quote

FBI official William C. Sullivan wrote in his book, The Bureau: My Thirty Years in Hoover’s FBI, “Hoover was delighted when Gerald Ford was named to the Warren Commission. The director wrote in one of his internal memos that the bureau could expect Ford to ‘look after FBI interests,’ and he did, keeping us fully advised of what was going on behind closed doors. He was our man, our informant, on the Warren Commission.”

If true (and I have no reason to doubt it) then the "controversy" over Ford's book had to be totally manufactured, wouldn't you say?

[Denny Zartman]

Quote

But by the time of the assassination, Johnson and members of the Joint Chiefs and other Vietnam hawks in the administration were not only resisting withdrawal but conniving to bring about an escalation. Top figures in the administration, including Rusk, McNamara, Lodge, and Taylor, met in a secret Honolulu conference to discuss the situation on November 20–21.

Interesting. I had not heard of this secret meeting in Hawaii. I'd be interested in learning more.

[Denny Zartman]

Quote

McNamara claimed that he learned of the shooting in a telephone call from Robert Kennedy and that he and the others in the meeting continued for forty-five minutes because “we were in such shock that we simply did not know what to do.”

They must have been the only people in America not watching tv or listening to the radio after hearing the news.

[Joseph McBride]

That story by McNamara is clearly incredible and some kind of

coverup, as I write in POLITICAL TRUTH. The notion that

I as a sixteen-year-old high school student in Milwaukee

learned of the shooting long before the secretary of defense

is ludicrous. John Newman's

JFK AND VIETNAM has a lot on the Hawaii conference.

Edited January 10, 2022 by Joseph McBride

[Chuck Schwartz]

Denny , John Newman, in his book, " JFK and Vietnam" dedicates his last chapter (The Honululu Agenda) to this meeting in Honolulu.  ( I have the original "JFK and Vietnam"- John Newman did have some updates to his original book in a recently released new version.)

[Denny Zartman]

Thanks! I look forward to getting "JFK and Vietnam" as soon as I can and learning more about that meeting.