By my count, there have been 44 documentaries, docu-dramas and news specials that have aired during this 50th anniversary of the JFK murder.All 44 have somehow "concluded" that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone nut assassin of President Kennedy.
Really? 44 - 0? Well, actually just 43. The Smoking Gun (which aired on the Reelz Channel) concluded that both Oswald and a Secret Service agent were involved. Although not in cahoots. The latter, shooting his AR-15 automatic rifle by accident, blows a hole through Kennedy's head from the follow-up car. An event apparently missed by the more than 200 spectators in Dealey Plaza that day.)
In fact, the media is now certain that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of JFK. After all, could 44 film productions be wrong? Uh, 43, that is.
Here's a sign of the times. The word, "alleged," which until this year had been used by the media in reference to the solo JFK assassin, has strangely been dropped from current media vernacular. Now, Mr. Oswald, a man about whom Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry said in 1969: "We don't have any proof that Oswald fired the rifle, and never did. Nobody's yet been able to put him in that building with a gun in his hand," is simply referred to as "the assassin of JFK."
So much for fairness and accuracy in media.
But there may be some truth on the horizon.
The stunning new documentary, Killing Oswald, just might be the real smoking gun of JFK assassination cinema. Shane O'Sullivan, (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0642811/) a 44 year-old filmmaker from Ireland, has finally put together many of the jagged pieces of the JFK assassination jigsaw puzzle into one powerful, non-fiction film.
Keep in mind, there have been only three major published books that claim Oswald acted alone as the assassin of JFK. They are, in chronological order, Marina and Lee by Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Case Closed by Gerald Posner and Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi. To date, all three works have had their theories and conclusions savagely debunked by numerous scholarly articles. In addition, all three authors have had their pedigrees and biographies seriously challenged by additional JFK assassination researchers. Yet these three books are the basis of all 43 anti-conspiracy film and television projects this year.
On the JFK conspiracy theory side, there are nearly a thousand published books. Of that group, roughly one hundred are considered major scholarly, foot-noted works written by respected authors and researchers.
Some of these include: JFK and the Unspeakable by James Douglass, Brothers by David Talbot, Rush To Judgement by Mark Lane,Conspiracy by Anthony Summers, Destiny Betrayed and Reclaiming Parkland by Jim DiEugenio, Spy Saga by Philip H. Melanson,Accessories After The Fact by Sylvia Meagher, Breach of Trust by Gerald D. McKnight, plus those listed below.
That's why it seems rather odd that there were no airings of any JFK conspiracy-based documentaries on American television this fall. With 60-75% of the American public believing in such conspiracies, it would seem counter-productive for American commercial television to not feed the ratings beast.
Where are the likes of the award-winning, nine-part series, The Men Who Killed Kennedy, for instance? This series has run on the History Channel numerous times, yet it's now oddly invisible to American viewers for the 50th anniversary of the crime. (Here's Part Nine, The Guilty Men(2003) which is legally banned in America: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgNfQYpS1gQ)
Shane O'Sullivan's new documentary, Killing Oswald is simple in design and stunning in its veracity. It assembles some of the top JFK assassination scholars and authors and lets them speak. This is something the American media is apparently too reluctant or simply too terrified to do. Possibly both.
Here we finally see authors Joan Mellen (A Farewell To Justice), Dick Russell (The Man Who Knew Too Much), John Newman (Oswald and the CIA) and David Kaiser (The Road To Dallas), among others, telling the audience what they have uncovered after years of research.
It is powerful and damning testimony.
Killing Oswald is not about the nuts and bolts of the JFK assassination. It does not involve the mechanics of bullets and their trajectories. There are no lasers pointing to a sixth floor window. It is about Lee Harvey Oswald. His intelligence connections. His CIA connections. His FBI connections. His life in the Soviet Union. His politics. Killing Oswald is also about the players involved in the various plots to kill President John F. Kennedy. The documentary is about the making of a patsy from Mexico City to Minsk. From New Orleans to Dallas. Killing Oswald includes dramatic reconstructions, expert interviews and never-before-seen archival footage.
Anyone who watches this film will come away from it never again believing in the Warren Commission, Bill O'Reilly, NatGeo, CNN or the tooth fairy in regards to the conspiracy to kill JFK.
You will begin to understand the truth of the matter.And isn't that all we ever wanted?
To quote John Lennon:
I'm sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
I've had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth
For fifty years all we ever wanted was the truth. Killing Oswald (2013) by Shane O'Sullivan is a major piece of documentary cinema that'll give you some.
Here is the official website for Killing Oswald and where the film can be ordered as a DVD or for streaming.
http://www.killingoswald.com/.
