Has anyone else read "Reclaimaing History The Assassination of JFK" by Bugliosi?

[Hamlette]

I remember seeing a poll on DU not long ago and was shocked at what a large number of "us" believe Oswald did not act alone.

Bugliosi destroys each and every conspiracy theory out there.

If you believe them, you should read this book and learn the truth.

For the rest of us, who never bought into the conspiracy theories, it is a fascinating tale of the events in Dallas as well as the Warren Commission and how the conspiracy theories started.

[SDuderstadt]

1. It's an excellent book...

JFK assassination conspiracists have been smearing Bugliosi ever since.

[northoftheborder]

2. JFK

Thom Hartmann, along with a co-writer, has written a book about all of the theories surrounding the JFK assassination, which is based on new evidence becoming declassified, and new people revealing what they know. I heard him talking about it a few months ago, and meant to read his book, but I haven't gotten it. It's probably at his web-site. His theories sound very plausible and well documented.

[Hamlette]

7. not sure what "new evidence" became declassified when Hartman wrote his book

but from what I've read about the book, Bugliosi destroys it. With actual evidence.

He's quite convincing. Hartman might want to read it. (I know, I know, conspiracy theories sell books and hence make money but still, we do owe it to ourselves to be truthful.)

[northoftheborder]

3. Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK… by Lamar Waldron, Thom Hartman

available at Amazon

[cliffordu]

4. Not a conspiracy buff, but as a shooter, I gotta say:

Oswald took stupid shots.


http://journals.democraticunderground.com/cliffordu/11

[Hamlette]

6. actually, what you say is debunked in the book

completely debunked.

The experts say that Oswald's first shot was a "very easy shot" for a person with his training (he was a sharp shooter in the marines) and the second shot was an "easy" shot.

You might want to pick up the book.

[TomClash]

Actually, he's right

He took stupid shots. The easiest shot was before the turn on Elm.

Oswald was firing 60 feet down at a moving target with a Cal. 6.5 Mannlicher Carcano. I don't see how that's an easy shot for a guy who barely qualified as a marksman.

[Hamlette]

14. why do you two suppose he did that?

I can't really understand why you're saying but trusting you are right, why would he have waited?

[cliffordu]

15. After seeing those photos I figured it was because he thought he could

get away after the shooting - he nearly got out of the building.

A guy who was willing to die to make the kill would have taken the easy shots.

Or just started dropping shot puts.

[Hamlette]

17. he did get out of the building

he was long gone

had he not killed a cop later that day, in a different part of the city, he would have gotten away. They arrested him in a movie theater after the cop killing.

[cliffordu]

19. Right - but he was stopped by a cop on the way out of the book depository

right??

Or was it on the way in......

I was in 5th grade, IIRC, a very hazy memory....

[Hamlette]

21. no, he got clean away, went home, changed his clothes, got a hand gun

and was stopped by a police officer while walking down the street. He shot and killed the officer then went to a movie theater, probably to hide out. A witness to the cop killing told the police he was in the theater, and he was arrested there. They arrested him for the murder of the cop and not for JFK until they learned he worked at the book depository. He had two different identifications on him too which was suspicious.

[TomClash]

25. Assuming he took the shots

My guess would be he got up there late or he was hesitant about taking the shot.

[cliffordu]

12. I'll do that, but killing someone at 80 feet at 3 MPH is easier than

a going away shot at any speed.

I shot the highest score in my basic training battalion going away and I could hit I could ANYTHING I could see.

It's why I wound up in that fucking tower every night, all night for and entire tour instead of doing what I was trained to do -

Helicopter mechanic,

Fuck Oswald, he took the wrong fucking shots, book or no.

In one of those photos Oswald could have killed Kennedy with a fucking shot put.

His shots were stupid, considering what he had to chose from.

[TomClash]

10. You're right

And you probably had a better rifle on that tower.

[cliffordu]

13. I did, actually.

But I had an unnatural talent for it....I could just see the bullet float out to distance and hit where I lobbed it before pulling the trigger...

I was shooting a modified M-14 that tossed a 7.62mm round - (.308 deer cartridge).

There was a specific nomenclature for the rifle, but I never learned it, they saw my shooting scores, gave me the rifle, the scope and the starlight scope, let me sight the fucker in and put me to work in the tower.

[TomClash]

24. I hate you!

:)

That's amazing. What a skill. I am a decent shot but nowhere near that good.

[cliffordu]

26. I had fired a rifle exactly twice before basic training.

I couldn't run, do push ups, fight with the pugil sticks or keep my shit squared away.

But I could shoot. Prolly the only reason I made it out of Basic.

[Hamlette]

18. wish I could see those scopes with the same type of car kennedy was in

with Connelly in the jump seat, it might not have been such a good shot.

[Skink]

5. Check out the movie Flashpoint.

[Hamlette]

8. I've not seen it, and prolly won't, a fictional movie can't stand up to evidence

unless it is pure entertainment. In which case I object as it tends to misinform americans. As did the movie.

[Peace Patriot]

9. I recommend, "JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died And Why It Matters," by James Douglass.

Very convincing book that the CIA did it--and why. The all important question. What had JFK done to bring this down upon him?

I lived through that assassination and Douglass really nails the anti-communist hysteria of that era, in which the Joint Chiefs and the CIA were strongly pressuring JFK to nuke Russia while we had missile superiority. He wouldn't do it. And that is basically why they killed him. He had opened back-channels to Krushchev and Castro to end the Cold War--to disarm the nukes, to end all the proxy wars, to create world peace, with two peacefully competing systems. He thought they were nuts for advocating a first strike. They thought he was a traitor. They killed him. And what happened afterwards, according to Douglass and his meticulously documented book, is that, with the CIA having laid the trail of the assassination to Russia to pressure JFK's successor, LBJ, into nuking Russia, LBJ found out about it right away (from Hoover), did not want to nuke Russia for something they didn't do, and agreed to the coverup, which, among other things, covered up and messed up/confused the trail the CIA had laid to Russia. Douglass straightens it out and it's plain to see. The CIA wanted the upshot of their assassination to be the nuking of Russia.

Three days after the assassination, LBJ said, "Now they can have their war." He was talking about the CIA and Vietnam--one of the proxy wars that JFK had decided to de-escalate and end. THAT was the war profiteering, anti-communist "sop" thrown to the CIA and the Joint Chiefs, and the "military-industrial complex," in lieu of annihilating Russia.

JFK was convinced that the American people would be with him on his plan for world peace. And it's interesting what happened after he was killed. LBJ ran for president in 1964 as the peace candidate. I remember this well. It was my first vote for president. I voted for peace. LBJ won that election with the biggest mandate in presidential history. A mandate for peace. But, at the same he was talking peace, he was vastly escalating the war on Vietnam, which would ultimately claim over 55,000 U.S. soldier's lives and the lives to some 2 million Southeast Asians. So peace WOULD HAVE won. JFK was right. The difference is that JFK would have meant it.

And that is why all this matters, to this day. This country was deliberately turned away from peace. The war profiteers WON! We shouldn't have had this nuclear and conventional arsenal. We shouldn't have had a bloated military for Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld to hijack for a corporate resource war and world domination. JFK would have won the 1964 election with a landslide, on a platform of peace. And we would be living in a different world.

I'm willing to read another interpretation. I haven't read Bugliosi's book but I will. However, Douglass' book is so good, so well-documented, so attentive to sources and details, so full of original research and so true to that era, that I doubt that it can convince me of any other conclusion than that the CIA did it.

Douglass gets as far up the chain as Richard Helms, but that's far enough to know that it was a CIA plot--not a rogue plot. JFK had fired the CIA Director after the Bay of Pigs and had vowed to "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces." That provided the CIA with additional motivation. JFK and the CIA were deadly enemies. But the real key to their actions was that they truly believed that JFK's plan for peace was treason. Accommodating "communists" was treason. Letting them live was treason. I can see, in retrospect, that "treason" to them meant interfering with war profiteer profits. They had equated the MIC with patriotism--and also with capitalism and with God. "Godless communism" was the phrase of the day. They couldn't see past it. JFK, on the other hand, could see past it, and Douglass documents that change in JFK, after the Cuban Missile Crisis, very well. The CIA and the MIC simply couldn't abide JFK getting re-elected with a big mandate for world peace. It flew in the face of all their beliefs and worldly attachments. They had the power--the secret, separate government within the government--to stop it, and that's what they did.

Maybe you had to have lived through it to grasp how brilliant Douglass' book is--but he lays out the details of the assassination and the reasons for the assassination so well, that I think even youngsters will understand what happened. My husband was an AF jet fighter pilot during that era and generals used to visit the pilots and try to pump them up for annihilating Russia while we had the chance. That's what the generals wanted. Nobody knew about the "Cold and the Dark" in those days--as later elucidated by Carl Sagan--that even a limited nuclear exchange would kill the entire planet in months. They thought they could WIN. They thought it was okay to lose the east coast! The U.S. would win a nuclear war and recover! JFK's opposition to this madness infuriated the MIC establishment and they finally took him out. And guess who was the most unhappy man on earth, after that happened--Nikita Krushchev! He considered JFK a friend. He believed they were partners in peace. He was trying to change Russia the way JFK was trying to change the USA--to reduce the paranoia, to get rid of nuclear weapons, and even to help each other out (the Kennedy wheat deal with Russia, after a Russian crop failure--totally opposed by the Joint Chiefs).

Anyway, I'd say, read both books. Decide for yourself.

[TomClash]

11. Agreed an excellent book nt

[Hamlette]

16. there is more evidence that Obama was born in Kenya.

I've been around this all my life, remember the assassination etc. I have not read Douglass' book but I don't read the birther stuff either.

Does he argue there were two gunmen? If not, why Oswald? And if it was Oswald, why not equip him better or why is there no trail? No money, no escape plan. Did the CIA just go out and find a kook and say kill JKF for nothing and Oswald said okay? And why couldn't didn't the Warren Commission and all the subsequent investigations discover one whiff of this plot? And why has no one, except a rather kookie author, talk? There had to be dozens if not hundreds of ppl in on the plot (if, as you say it was not a rogue) and all of them kept it secret? It makes no sense.

Read Bugliosi. With an open mind. No other plot makes one bit of sense if you accept it was Oswald and there is no way to say Oswald was not involved.

[cliffordu]

20. I fully believe that Oswald was involved.

Just like I believe that OJ committed double homicide, and the LA police tried to frame a guilty man, and fucked it up.

I believe Oswald shot his rifle. Whether he was the one of two shooters, or whether he was just a dude who shot a round or two at the Prez and got lucky remains a question.

Just based on the shooting, I dunno.

[Hamlette]

22. read the book, you might feel differently

According to experts, given that Oswald was an expert shot (had been a sharp shooter in the Marines and his wife said he did lots of target practice) the experts say the shots were not difficult, that one shot was very easy and the other was easy.

There was no other gunman.

[cliffordu]

23. Being a Marine sharpshooter was about as difficult as getting

an "Expert" medal in the Army.

BFD.


I have no dog in this fight, I'm just a guy who has experience shooting under less than optimal conditions, in a hurry.

Fuck Oswald. He should have been aborted.

[zacherystaylor]

29. Chris Mathews made that claim without evidece too

The biggest problem is with the incompetence of the Warren report which Bugliosi refereed to as "admirable." They acknowledge numerous problems, including the fact that Governor Connolly's suit was cleaned before they checked it for evidence, and fail to address them properly; instead they used a lot of hype and propaganda. I haven't read Bugliosi's book but I fail to see how he could possibly put Humpty Dumpty back together again.

I mentioned Mathew's review recently and it could just as easily apply to your claim. Douglass is far more credible than the birther stuff; here is what I wrote previously:


Chris Mathews has labeled the investigators and people who don’t believe the official story a bunch of “crazies” or “grassy knollers;” and he has equated them with the conspiracy theorist who have challenged whether or not Obama was born in the USA. Chris Mathews isn’t the only high profile person from the media or government to do this; in most case they have been more subtle. They didn’t back this claim up by reviewing the evidence instead they have indicated that past attempts have done this successfully and therefore it should be put to rest. The problem is, of course, that a review of past “debunking” attempts hasn’t been very credible if you actually look at the efforts.

There have of course been many of these efforts including one high profile TV show that stated that the bullet couldn’t possibly have come from the grassy knoll because then it would have hit Jacqueline after passing through JFK instead of Governor Connelly. This was presented without any review as a credible debunking effort even though anyone who looks at a map can clearly see that both the knoll and the depository were to the right of the limo, one in the front the other in the rear; neither of these would have put Jacqueline in the line of fire right behind JFK. On many other occasions they have focused an enormous amount of attention on an alleged conspiracy that claims that JFK was shot from a sewer. They claim that this is a high profile conspiracy and they debunk it quite easily since it is so clearly flawed. I have rarely if ever read a sincere conspiracy theorist that mentions this much if at all and certainly none that spend much time on it. If they want to do a good debunking job they might want to spend a modest amount of time on something like this but they should spend the majority of their time on the more credible theories and they should spend more time reviewing the details of the official reports.

This came from a recent blog which also mentions a problem with the way Bugliosi described Hearsay:

Also another thing that Bugliosi might want to address in his book is his definition of hearsay. The reason for this is that in his forst major book “Helter Skelter” he argued that hearsay is almost always admissible and that the cases where it is banned should be considered the exception not the rule. If he “debunked” all conspiracy theories then he should have included the Clay Shaw and he should have a good explanation to the bizarre hearsay rules implemented by the judge in that case which clearly contradicts his claim in “Helter Skelter.”

for complete review see:

http://open.salon.com/blog/zacherydtaylor/2011/06/13/jfk_and_the_unspeakable_james_douglass

[zappaman]

30. well, that explains a lot

"I haven't read Bugliosi's book but I fail to see how he could possibly put Humpty Dumpty back together again."

I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books, should I explain to you the problems in them?

[Matilda]

28. A very good book; collates the evidence in a very clear way.

A better-written book, IMO, is "Brothers", by David Talbot, founder of Salon. He examines the professional partnership between Jack and Bobby, and the relationships they each had with the CIA. It focuses a little more on Bobby; why he kept quiet about the assassination, and what prompted him to run for president earlier than he'd planned.

Talbot has an easier writing style than Douglass, and I found his book easier to read because of it, while admiring Douglass's attention to detail. Talbot gives Mafia involvement greater credit than Douglass, and his arguments are reasonable. He puts less emphasis on the "secret second state" run by the CIA, but he certainly believes they undermined JFK's presidency.

I don't believe any theory that calls for a "magic bullet".

And I believe the world would have been a better place had both Kennedys lived.

[SheilaT]

27. I've read it and it's excellent.

Anyone who wants to learn about the assassination who's not old enough to remember those days well, should start with the William Manchester book The Death of a President. Among other things, it's important to remember that all of the "evidence" about a second shooter and CIA and Mafia and all the other supposed plots are late fabrications.

Over the years I've read several other books about the assassination, including a couple that present seemingly plausible "proof" that someone other than Oswald did it. Often, they are simply making up what they want to believe, sort of like Republicans who think the Health Care Bill destroys jobs. Or the wonderful Obama Kenyan birth certificates Orly Taitz has come up with.

Another good book is Gerald Posner's Case Closed. But what I love about the Bugliosi book is how he goes detail by detail over everything. Or as close to everything as is realistic, because at some point as I recall, when discussing some trivial detail or another related to the assassination, he finally says that there's no point in going over it any more because conspiracists out there simply invent new "what if's" all the time.

[Name removed]

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