John Kennedy: Beyond Conspiracy

[John Simkin]

In November, 2003, the BBC broadcast a television documentary on the JFK assassination entitled, John Kennedy: Beyond Conspiracy. At first the viewer will probably believe that they are watching a BBC documentary. The commentary is by Gavin Essler, one of the main presenters of Newsnight. However, if you stay with the documentary to the end and read the credits you will discover that other than adding the Essler commentary, the BBC had nothing to do with this programme. It was written and directed by Mark Obenhaus and produced by Peter Jennings. It was made by an American company called PJ Productions.

The BBC is of course associated with responsible journalism and this act of deception was done for a purpose. The day following the programme’s first broadcast the Guardian praised the documentary as “solving the assassination of JFK”. Would the journalist have written this if he had known that it had not been made by the BBC?

Since its first appearance the programme has been repeated several times by the BBC. In fact, it appears on a regular basis on the BBC History channel. Yesterday it was on 4 times. Today it only appeared three times. Over the years the BBC have made several outstanding documentaries on the JFK assassination. Yet none of these appear on the BBC History channel. I wonder why?

In the John Kennedy: Beyond Conspiracy the writer, Mark Obenhaus, argues that the Warren Commission got it right. Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who killed both JFK and J. D. Tippit. The only new evidence that Obenhaus provides is the animation work of Dale Myers. His animation of the Zapruder film is shown over and over again. Obenhaus tells us that this new technology has enabled us to discover what actually happened in Dealey Plaza. It doesn’t of course, but that is what Obenhaus wants us to believe. The only point that Myers appears to be making is that in his opinion the same bullet hit both John Connally and John Kennedy.

Myers says nothing about the other evidence that suggests there were at least two gunman firing at Oswald. Nor does the programme ever once attempt to deal with all the other evidence that suggests that Oswald was not a lone gunman. Instead the policy is to use historians like Robert Dalleck, Ted Sorenson, Robert Golding, Michael Beschloss, Evan Thomas and Hugh Aynesworth to explain why the majority of the American population believes that JFK was killed as part of a political conspiracy. They do not of course say he did not die as a result of a conspiracy, but that is what Obenhaus wants the people watching to think they have said.

Only two historians (if you can call them that): Gerald Posner and Priscilla Johnson McMillan, argue for the lone gunman theory. Others characters like Robert Oswald, Michael Paine, Ruth Paine, Robert Blakey, and Wallace Hietman are brought in to argue that Oswald was capable of killing JFK. Not one witness is shown pointing out problems with the evidence against Oswald. Nor does it even mention the House Senate Committee on Assassinations investigation. It really is an amazingly shoddy piece of work. However, there is no doubt it will convince those people who know very little about the case and are uneducated on the way that the media distorts the truth.

[Dawn Meredith]

[directed by Mark Obenhaus and produced by Peter Jennings. It was made by an American company called PJ Productions.

In the John Kennedy: Beyond Conspiracy the writer, Mark Obenhaus, argues that the Warren Commission got it right. Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who killed both JFK and J. D. Tippit. The only new evidence that Obenhaus provides is the animation work of Dale Myers. His animation of the Zapruder film is shown over and over again.

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I tried to watch this when it first aired on ABC in 2003. (In fact sent a long impassioned email to Peter Jennings begging him to get it axed). (No reply of course).

I got thru about 15 minutes and found I was way too angry to watch the rest, tho I did tape it. My husband kept calling it a "cartoon" but I found it to be one of the mose sophisticated pieces of disinformation I have ever seen. Apparently by the 40th anniversary there were enough people who knew of the impossibility of the magic bullet theory, so this farce animation was put together to "prove" that it was indeed possible for LHO to have "acted alone".

That it's being shown so often shows just how desperate the real "evil doers" are to continue to perpetuate this fraud.

The tv shows to watch that year were the three Men Who Killed Kennedy episodes, which, of course, were cancelled and cencored for all time. A lot has been already written about "The Guilty Men" and of course being friends with the main principals of this one, BarrMcClellan, Nathan Darby and J. Harrison, I am quite biased in how I feel about that progran -(GREAT)- but just as good was the hour titled "The Smoking Guns". Chalk one up for cencorship.

Dawn

Edited July 13, 2005 by Dawn Meredith

[Robert Howard]

I got thru about 15 minutes and found I was way too angry to watch the rest, tho I did tape it. My husband kept calling it a "cartoon" but I found it to be one of the mose sophisticated pieces of disinformation I have ever seen. Apparently by the 40th anniversary there were enough people who knew of the impossibility of the magic bullet theory, so this farce animation was put together to "prove" that it was indeed possible for LHO to have "acted alone".

That it's being shown so often shows just how desperate the real "evil doers" are to continue to perpetuate this fraud.

Dawn

Ditto, I found the show to be something akin to what a Nazi propaganda film rendition about the Holocaust would have appeared like if the Axis Powers won WW2, not literally of course, but more in the vein of 'the winners write history.' I have lived in Dallas all my life 47 years, and the irony of it all is in that time I have never, ever spoken to one single person, who believed the JFK Assassination was not a conspiracy.

The show was imbecilic on several levels one, it was presenting a very complicated chronology of events, giving it the simplification ala People Magazine, with apologies to People Magazine at least they don't pretend to be cerebral in what they do.

Additionally, the show heaped lies, half-truths, omission of pertinent facts, and obfuscations to the point that I would describe it as one British writer described a certain movie by the Beatles in 1967; "I have never seen such blatant rubbish."

I felt like the program was an insult to the American people, and in addition to the advent of FOX News, a clear sign that America is now in many way's a literal 'propaganda nation', when it comes to current politics and the JFK Assassination. The only program I have ever viewed in my life that even came close to agitating me as much as John Kennedy: Beyond Conspiracy, was a decades old National Geographic Program about Japanese Hunters in the Aleutians treatment of seals (beating them with lead pipes as if they were some thing instead of an animal) that was torture to watch, the JFK Peter Jennings Show was equally disturbing, and even 10 years ago I would have never believed such a thing was even possible.

Edited January 22, 2006 by Robert Howard