Dallas Mystery: Who Shot JFK?. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2049540 Dallas Mystery: Who Shot JFK?. The Washington Post, December 20, 1991, FINAL Edition By: Desson Howe Section: WEEKEND, p. n55 Story Type: Review Line Count: 62 Word Count: 689 THE FIRST order of business concerning "JFK," Oliver Stone's movie about the Kennedy assassination, is entertainment. As such, Stone creates a riveting marriage of fact and fiction, hypothesis and empirical proof in the edge-of-the-seat spirit of a conspiracy thriller. It doesn't hurt matters that his subject-who really killed Kennedy-is the most fascinating whodunit in modern history. Of course, the Warren Commission has entered its conclusions: Gunman Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president-and did it alone. Whether or not this is true, it's apparently not enough for most Americans-73 percent, according to one Gallup poll. Too many unanswered questions remain. They've been posed, and re-posed, by conspiracy theorists for nearly 30 years. Another reason to disbelieve the Warren Commission is dramaturgical. As with other tragic fellings, from Robert F. Kennedy to John Lennon, Oswald the loner is too banal to accept. Dramatically speaking, Kennedy deserved better. This was the end of Camelot, a classic tragedy. It needed Morgan le Fay and Mordred. Or Brutus and Cassius. If you believe Stone, it also needed the entire military-industrial complex. Stone also throws in the CIA, the FBI, the military, Time magazine, the Justice Department, the Mafia, Cubans, right-wingers-oh, and a certain "General Y." "JFK" is actually about real-life New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner), who charged businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones) with conspiracy to kill the president. As Stone has publicly stated, the Garrison plot serves as a mere conduit for the director's vision. "JFK" also incorporates findings by other researchers, Stone's own research, as well as Jim Marrs's book, "Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy." Stone adds countless fictional elements, including Kevin Bacon as a call boy who knew everyone; a group of shady, anti-Castro Cubans; and Donald Sutherland, who functions as the movie's Deep Throat, a savvy intelligence officer who advises Garrison to find out why, not who. In "JFK," the why is this: Kennedy angered right-wing elements by trying to pull out of Vietnam and by not liberating Cuba during the Bay of Pigs incident. Messing with the war machine was his fatal flaw. This wasn't just a conspiracy. It was a junta. The most stunning element in "JFK," without question, is bystander Abraham Zapruder's real-life, home-movie record of the fatal incident. Stone uses the actual film to maximum advantage. The real Kennedy starts his final motorcade ride. He waves at onlookers. They wave back. The car slows. Then things change forever. As Costner makes his case against Shaw, the film's played and replayed with eerie effectiveness. Stone also reenacts the scene from different vantage points, to pose the unanswered questions. Were there only three shots? How could the bullets follow such impossible trajectories? How many gunmen were there? Was there a shot from the nearby grassy knoll? Fiction or not, it makes compelling viewing. On the downside, many of Stone's dramatic efforts are dulled by Costner. As Garrison, he's a dead, vacant performer. Perhaps the milquetoast casting is ironically appropriate; the real story's about Kennedy. Someone with a personality would only get in the way. Stone has suggested this is the case. But was it also the director's intention to build a second-rate domestic subplot? In his zeal to pursue smoking guns, Costner ignores wife Sissy Spacek and his children. "You're missing most of your life," she whines. "And you don't even know it, honey." But behind Costner, there are strong supporting performances, most notably by Joe Pesci as Oswald's toupee-toting associate David Ferrie. Jones is also highly memorable as Shaw. There are smaller successes, by Bacon, Ed Asner, Jack Lemmon and Gary Oldman, who makes a believably nutsy Oswald. Despite its three hours, "JFK" is almost always absorbing to watch. It's not journalism. It's not history. It is not legal evidence. Much of it is ludicrous. It's a piece of art or entertainment. Stone, who has acknowledged his fusing of the known and the invented, has exercised his full prerogative to use poetic license. He should feel more than mere craftsman's satisfaction at the result. JFK (R) - Area theaters. CAPTIONS: Kevin Costner in "JFK." DESCRIPTORS: Films Kennedy Assassination: How About the Truth?. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2048895 Kennedy Assassination: How About the Truth?. The Washington Post, December 17, 1991, FINAL Edition By: Gerald R. Ford, David W. Belin Section: EDITIORIAL, p. a21 Story Type: OP-ED Line Count: 169 Word Count: 1861 The media treatment of the Kennedy assassination tragedy and the Warren Commission Report is a microcosm of one of the central problems facing our democratic society: False sensationalist claims are given wide dissemination, the truth is submerged, and the responsible press usually does not undertake sufficient effort to expose the fraud that is being perpetrated. Two vivid examples are the recent series of five one-hour A&E television programs about the Kennedy assassination called "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" and the new Oliver Stone-Kevin Costner film, "JFK." The common denominator of these commercial productions is the big lie-the assertion that the top echelons of our government were conspiratorially involved in the assassination and that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the lone gunman who killed President Kennedy and Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit. In "JFK," the big lie is disseminated through Kevin Costner, who portrays New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison. Repeatedly, he asserts the assassination was a coup d'etat"-a "public execution" with a cover-up "all the way" to the top, including Lyndon Johnson, whom he calls an accessory after the fact. In the A&E series, the big lie is disseminated through key interviewees who are portrayed as purported experts, such as Col. Fletcher Prouty (a consultant to Oliver Stone in the production of "JFK"), who asserts: "You see, you're dealing with a very high echelon of power ... otherwise, how could you have gotten people like the chief justice of the Supreme Court to participate in the cover-up?" False charges of this kind are a desecration to the memory of President Kennedy, a desecration to the memory of Earl Warren and a fraudulent misrepresentation of the truth to the American public. The basic format underlying the dissemination of lies is to cover up the overwhelming weight of the evidence and instead paste together scraps of testimony to form a case for conspiracy and an attempt to cover up the guilt of Lee Harvey Oswald. For instance, approximately 20 doctors have examined the autopsy photographs and X-rays of President Kennedy as members of formal panels. Nineteen of these experts have concluded that all of the shots that struck President Kennedy came from the rear. The 20th asserts that there was supposedly a simultaneous fourth shot that struck President Kennedy in the head and disintegrated, leaving no physical evidence of the bullet. This odd-man-out appeared repeatedly on the A&E network in a number of the sequences. Nowhere does any one of the overwhelming majority of 19 experts appear in the telecast or in "JFK. " Nowhere is there any mention of the fact that they concluded that all of the shots came from the rear and that this conclusion is confirmed by the unequivocal ballistic evidence which shows that the bullet that struck President Kennedy's head and the bullet that passed through President Kennedy's neck and struck Gov. Connally were fired from Oswald's rifle found at the Texas School Book Depository Building. Instead "JFK" and the television production emphasize the backward movement of President Kennedy's head when he was struck, without telling the audience that wound ballistic experts unequivocally testified that the movement was not caused by the impact of the bullet but was rather caused by a massive neuromuscular reaction that occurs when there is major damage inflicted to nerve centers of the brain. The A&E network is owned one-third by NBC and one-third by Capital Cities/ABC. When Michael Millardi, president of the broadcast group of Capital Cities/ABC, Inc., was asked about the A&E network's misrepresentations, he sidestepped the issue and instead replied that "it is our judgment that the extreme interest in the subject matter" and "the international perspective ... all warranted A&E's decision to telecast the program." Robert Wright, president of NBC, when contacted about the misrepresentations in the A&E program, chose to have Brooke Bailey Johnson, an A&E executive, reply. Johnson refused to comment about why none of the majority of 19 medical experts was ever shown on A&E. Instead, Johnson wrote, "We elected to purchase and telecast these programs for a number of reasons. The ongoing interest in the subject matter was a factor, as was a belief that the multi-channel environment in which we operate is a highly appropriate one for the debate of controversial issues. " But so far as the public is concerned, there is no debate because the other side-which happens to be the truth-is almost never shown to the public. Certainly, it is not shown in the Oliver Stone-Kevin Costner film, reputedly produced at a cost approaching $40 million. Like the A&E series, "JFK," alleges a conspiracy supposedly including elements of the CIA, with the ultimate proof of the conspiracy supposedly being the killing of Oswald by Jack Ruby on Nov. 24, 1963. Oliver Stone's fantasy involves what Garrison calls "triangulation"-three separate gunmen firing a total of six shots, with Oswald as the "patsy" who is killed by the conspirators' hit man, Jack Ruby. But nowhere in the movie do viewers see anything about the overwhelming evidence that disproves the conspiracy claims, including central witnesses to these events such as Postal Inspector Harry Holmes. On Sunday morning, Nov. 24, 1963, Holmes was on his way to church with his wife. At the last minute, he decided instead to go to the Dallas police station to see if he could help his friend, Capt. Fritz. Holmes had been assisting Fritz in the investigation of the murder of President Kennedy and the murder of Officer Tippit, the Dallas policeman who was killed by Oswald about 45 minutes after the Kennedy assassination and whose murder is really the Rosetta Stone to understanding the truth about the assassination. Holmes entered Capt. Fritz's office, where Oswald was being interrogated by Fritz and representatives of the Secret Service and the FBI. After they finished their interrogation, Fritz turned to Holmes and gave him the opportunity to ask questions, and the session was extended for approximately another half-hour. Jack Ruby meanwhile had come downtown to the Western Union office to send a money order to one of his employees. The time stamp on the money order showed that he was at the Western Union office at 11:17 a.m. Jack Ruby went from the Western Union office to the basement of the nearby police station, where he joined a group of newspersons awaiting the transfer of Oswald to the county jail. Oswald was killed at 11:21 a.m. If Harry Holmes had just continued on to church that morning, the interrogation session would have ended a half hour earlier, and Oswald would have been transferred long before Jack Ruby ever got to the Western Union office. Obviously, if Jack Ruby were part of a conspiracy, he would have been downtown at least a half hour earlier. Of course, common sense would also dictate that a would-be conspiratorial "hit man" would not kill his target in the middle of a police station, where he would be certain to be apprehended for murder. But nowhere do the movie audiences seeing "JFK" or A&E's television audience ever learn about Postal Inspector Holmes, whose testimony is one of many elements showing that Jack Ruby was not conspiratorially involved. Nor does "JFK" or A&E include any portion of the testimony of Rabbi Hillel Silverman, who saw Jack Ruby many times in Ruby's cell and who is convinced that Ruby was truthful when he said that he was not conspiratorially involved. Nor do viewers of the movie or the A&E television series learn about Jack Ruby's request for a lie detector test and the results of that test, which, although not 100 percent accurate, confirmed that Jack Ruby was not part of any conspiracy. Nowhere does the A&E telecast or the movie show the vivid testimony of the single most important witness to the assassination-Howard Brennan, who actually saw the gunman fire from the southeast corner window of the Texas School Book Depository Building-the window where cartridge cases were found, which ballistically were shown to have come from Oswald's rifle. It was Brennan who notified the police of the source of the shots and who described the assassin as slender, about 5 feet, 10 inches, 150 to 160 pounds, white-a description remarkably close to Oswald. Nowhere do the viewers learn that the most probable time span of Oswald's three shots was around 10 seconds, in light of the fact that one of Oswald's shots missed-most likely the first or the last. Instead, Garrison speaks only of three shots being fired within 5.6 seconds, when most likely the 5.6-second time span was between the two shots that struck the president. Nowhere in "JFK" (or in the A&E television script) does the viewer ever learn that six eye-witnesses, including cabdriver William Scoggins, who saw Oswald from as close a range as 12 feet, saw Oswald at the Tippit murder scene or running away from the Tippit murder scene with gun in hand, and positively identified Oswald as the gunman. Oswald was apprehended in the Texas Theater because an alert Dallas citizen, Johnny Calvin Brewer, became suspicious when he saw Oswald duck into Brewer's show store as police sirens were heard coming down the street. Brewer trailed Oswald to the Texas Theater and had the cashier call the police. When they approached Oswald, he pulled out his revolver, and ballistic evidence proved that this was the Tippit murder weapon. The viewers of "JFK" and "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" never learn about these facts, nor do they ever learn about all of the other massive body of evidence which conclusively proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Oswald was the lone gunman who killed President Kennedy and Officer Tippit and that there was no cover-up by Earl Warren or by the Warren Commission. When will Hollywood produce a movie that tells the truth? When will the A&E network-when will NBC and Capital Cities/ABC-produce five hours of commercial television that presents the truth? When will the responsible leaders of our free press, who owe so much to Earl Warren, stand up for the truth, expose the techniques that have been used to disseminate the big lie and fully defend Earl Warren's name from the slanderous charges that have been made against him and the Warren Commission? There are some who assert in the face of this conspiracy barrage by the mass media, particularly movies and television, that we will never know the truth. That simply is not accurate. The truth is known: Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who killed President Kennedy and Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit. Those of us who served on the Warren Commission and those lawyers on the staff who examined the evidence in depth know that to be the truth-beyond a reasonable doubt. And if the press were ever to approach this with the kind of diligence and with the kind of fairness that the American people have the right to expect, then the overwhelming majority of Americans will not only eventually understand the truth but will also understand the techniques of the perpetration of the big lie so that the kind of deceptive techniques used by the producer of "JFK" and the A&E series "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" will be exposed for all to see. The press owes that obligation to the memory of President Kennedy, to the memory of Earl Warren and, indeed, to the American people. Former President Gerald R. Ford was a member of the Warren Commission. David W. Belin was counsel to the commission. NAMED PERSONS: FORD, GERALD R.; BELIN, DAVID W.; KENNEDY, JOHN F. ORGANIZATION NAME: KENNEDY ASSASSINATION DESCRIPTORS: Assassination Conspiracies: The Many Winding Roads to Dallas. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2048592 Conspiracies: The Many Winding Roads to Dallas. The Washington Post, December 15, 1991, FINAL Edition By: Rory Quirk Section: BOOK WORLD, p. x08 Story Type: Review Line Count: 79 Word Count: 871 WAS THE CIA involved in the assassination of JFK? Mark Lane, whose bestselling Rush to Judgment questioned the findings and conclusions of the Warren Commission's report on the assassination, thinks so. And in Plausible Denial, he presents his case. Lane's thesis: The Warren Commission Report is "false." There was a conspiracy to murder the president. The CIA planned the murder prior to Oct. 1, 1963, framed accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald and killed President Kennedy. Why? Activists in the CIA leadership believed Kennedy had abandoned efforts to overthrow Fidel Castro, planned to withdraw U.S. personnel from Vietnam, and intended to dismantle the CIA after the 1964 election. "The CIA had other plans," Lane writes. "John Kennedy would not live to face the voters in 1964. He would have to be assassinated during 1963, in a fashion that would diminish neither the image not the power of the Agency." Damning allegations-which Lane believes he has proved in a court of law. Plausible Denial is his account of how he is certain this has come to pass. The path is tortuous. In limited summary: In 1978, a small newsletter, the Spotlight, published an article titled "CIA To Admit Hunt Involvement in Kennedy Slaying," asserting that ex-CIA operative (and convicted Watergate burglar) E. Howard Hunt may have been implicated in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The article referred to an internal CIA memorandum which "said in essence: Some day we will have to explain Hunt's presence in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963-the day President Kennedy was killed." Hunt sued the publisher (the ultra-right wing Liberty Lobby) for libel. In 1981, the case (Hunt v. Liberty Lobby) was tried in federal court in Miami. The newspaper, through counsel, admitted the story was not true, and conceded that Hunt was not in Dallas on the date of the assassination. A jury returned a verdict in favor of Hunt and awarded him $650,000 in damages. The newspaper appealed, on the ground that the judge's instructions to the jury were flawed. The appeals court agreed and sent the case back to the trial court for a new trial. In 1985, at the second trial, Lane served as defense counsel for the newspaper, and took a different tack: "I revealed to opposing counsel during a telephone conversation that I intended to offer evidence both that Hunt was in Dallas at the time of the assassination, and that Hunt, and his employers in the Central Intelligence Agency, had been implicated in the murder." (Or as Lane characterizes it: "I was no longer defending the defamation case; I was prosecuting a murder case within a civil action.") At the new trial, Hunt testified that he has been in Washington, not Dallas, on Nov. 22, 1963. Lane introduced, through a stand-in, the deposition testimony of Marita Lorenz (who previously had appeared before the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978) that in November 1963 she transported weapons from Miami to Dallas; that while there, she had observed Hunt pay money to one of her CIA colleagues on Nov. 21, 1963-the evening before the assassination; that after Hunt departed, a man she identified as Jack Ruby (Oswald's killer) appeared at the door; that she left Dallas the evening of Nov. 21 before the assassination; and that the colleague subsequently advised her "We killed the president that day." The jury returned a verdict in favor of the publication. The foreperson of the jury, Lane relates, explained her reasoning to reporters: The evidence was clear, she said. "The CIA had killed President Kennedy, Hunt had been part of it, and that evidence, so painstakingly presented, should now be examined by the institutions of the United States government so that those responsible for the assassination might be brought to justice." Throughout, Lane weaves deposition, courtroom exchanges and personal experience and recollections with his views on law and litigation. The effort is complicated by the fact that the path from Dallas to the Miami courtroom does not proceed in a linear fashion. Lane is forced to jump forward and back in time to pull the strands of the story together. Generally, he succeeds (though a tougher editor would have excised the likes of "Snyder reacted as if he had been struck across the face with a wet fish.") As to the merits, Lane acknowledges that the transformation he sought to effect in Miami is novel: "There is no legal precedent for Hunt v. Liberty Lobby." He maintains: "More than two decades after the murder of John F. Kennedy in Dallas, the case against his killers was finally tried in a civil action suit brought in the federal courthouse in Miami." Lane is critical of the national media for failing to seize upon the Miami verdict and reopen an inquiry into the assassination. A casual reader, unsteeped in the myriad controversies surrounding the Kennedy assassination (yet possessed of a belief that Oswald was a triggerman, coupled with a skepticism that the Warren Commission Report effectively explains all facts of the events in Dallas nearly 30 years ago) is left with a respect for Lane's decades-long doggedness in pursuit of his theory without necessarily sharing Lane's certitude or concurring in his conclusions based on the record recounted in this book. Rory Quirk, a Washington lawyer, frequently reviews for Book World. CAPTIONS: Author mark Lane with a model of Dealey Plaza, the assassination scene in Dallas. NAMED PERSONS: LANE, MARK DESCRIPTORS: Books FREE FOR ALL - The JFK Conspiracy. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2018269 FREE FOR ALL - The JFK Conspiracy. The Washington Post, June 08, 1991, FINAL Edition Section: EDITORIAL, p. a19 Story Type: Letter Line Count: 93 Word Count: 1024 In his criticism of Oliver Stone's upcoming film on the JFK assassination ("Just a Sloppy Mess?" Outlook, June 2), George Lardner condemns the assertion that your paper stood by "silently" while agencies it covered for the public "allowed historical documents to be stolen or destroyed." It is not the destruction of documents related to the Kennedy assassination that concerns me here, even though it probably occurred on a grand scale (with or without the knowledge of your paper). What I am concerned about is your paper's silence when a pertinent document is released to the public about the Kennedy assassination. The document that I'm referring to is a memo from J.Edgar Hoover to the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, dated Nov. 29, 1963, and discovered in 1988, which refers to a George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency. According to the memo, the FBI briefed George Bush on the reaction of the anti-Castro community one day after the Kennedy assassination. (1) Why did your paper devote little more than a descriptive article on this back in 1988? (2) Why did your paper later take Bush and the CIA's spokesmen at their word when they claimed that the Bush mentioned in the memo was another George Bush? (3) Where was your paper when it was shown that the other George Bush who was said to be briefed by the FBI was a 24-year-old, GS-5 research analyst who had worked at the CIA for only six months and who claimed he never had an "interagency meeting" while employed there? --Jeremiah Cohen Lardner is no doubt correct that the forthcoming movie about the Kennedy assassination is a "mishmash" of inaccuracies. But let's place the blame where it belongs--on the original, official investigations that were badly bungled by design, incompetence or both. The Warren Commission appeared bent on proving the single-bullet, fired by a lone nut, theory. Witnesses to the contrary were ignored or intimidated. Evidence to the contrary was lost or destroyed. After it became evident the single-bullet theory could not be supported, there was a House of Representatives investigation, but it did almost nothing to dispel the fog. The official version also had Jack Ruby as a "loner" nut, which turned out to be far from the truth. He had close ties with the underworld, having helped ransom gangsters from Castro's clutches. The part played by organized crime simply cannot be ignored by any objective study of the assassination. Important records of this situation have been sealed until the year 2039. That leaves things wide open for amateur sleuthing and conclusions that can only be conjecture. God and the perpetrators know what really happened that terrible November day in Dallas. No one else does. But that won't stop the stories, or the movies. --H. Paul Murray It is depressingly predictable that your paper and Lardner would seize on Stone's film project in Dallas in yet another attempt to discredit critics of the "official" findings in the assassination of John Kennedy. One hardly need argue for Jim Garrison as a paragon of prosecutorial propriety to recognize the many half-truths and superficialities in Lardner's account of the New Orleans district attorney's 1966-69 investigation of conspiracy. To raise just two examples: There is ample evidence that David Ferrie (1) had been active in anti-Castro operations during the Bay of Pigs period and thereafter, both in New Orleans and elsewhere; and (2) had worked in several capacities for a reputed mobster (Carlos Marcello) who had expressed in forceful, concrete terms his intention to "get" the Kennedys. It is also highly relevant that top officials of the Central Intelligence Agency were much concerned to assist Clay Shaw in fighting Garrison's prosecution and that Shaw's death in 1975 raised all sorts of questions about handling of the body, failure to order an autopsy etc. But the gestalt of such matters lies outside Lardner's journalistic curiosity. Lardner sustains for your paper what Hugh Aynesworth (whom I interviewed for a book on the JFK case in the early '70s) sustained for Newsweek (under Post ownership): a hopelessly slanted approach to "the crime of the century" and its meaning for our country. If your paper had spent as much energy on an open-ended and honest probe of the JFK case as it has expended for decades in putting down the "conspiratorialists," the American people might have in hand today--almost 30 years after the fact--the truth about the murder of the 35th president and the many repercussions of that pivotal event. What goes around comes around. Do your readers imagine, for example, that there is no connection between John Kennedy's assassination and the unprecedented audacity of a "stolen election" in 1980, engineered by the likes of William Casey? If so, they should think again. --H.C. Nash I enjoyed Lardner's "Dallas in Wonderland" (Outlook, May 19) article very much. I'm one of the journalists who met and photographed Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans in August 1963, three months before the assassination of President Kennedy. I took the pictures of Oswald handing out pro-Castro leaflets at the International Trade Mart. Stone's film company contacted me in February and asked if I would send them a copy of my old Oswald footage. They said Stone is going to restage the leafleting and wants the scene to be historically accurate. I was led to believe I might be used as a technical consultant for that scene, but I've just learned that since I'm convinced Oswald acted alone and was not involved in a conspiracy, they won't let me go anywhere near the movie's shooting locations in New Orleans. Last Friday I went to Camp Street in New Orleans to shoot a little video of the movie-making, but one of Stone's security people called over a cop who ordered me to stop taking pictures and leave. Earlier I put the film company in touch with Carlos Bringuier (the Cuban exile who scuffled with Oswald on Canal Street) and Bill Stuckey (the freelance reporter who interviewed Oswald for WDSU Radio), but Stone is not going to use either as a consultant--even though I understand these two are going to be portrayed in the movie. It appears that Stone is rewriting history again and doesn't want any of the people who actually met Oswald to confuse him with the facts of the case. --Johann W. Rush CAPTIONS: John F. Kennedy 'JFK': History Through A Prism. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2049625 'JFK': History Through A Prism. The Washington Post, December 20, 1991, FINAL Edition By: Rita Kempley, Washington Post Staff Writer Section: STYLE, p. d01 Story Type: Review Line Count: 75 Word Count: 829 Whether you buy it or not, Oliver Stone's "JFK" makes compelling info-ganda. Part whodunit, part documentary, part soapbox diatribe, the controversial agit-pic owes as much to the brash style of tabloid television as it does the populist mythology of Capra movies. Focused on a crusading DA's investigation of the assassination, it is a visual and dramatic melding of "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" and "America's Most Wanted," a vivid collage of history, hypothesis and baldfaced speculation in which Stone goes searching for our wonder years. America, he tells us in no uncertain terms, was headed toward a glorious, pacifistic future when President John F. Kennedy was shot down in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. It was a sunny afternoon and the handsome First Couple, heedless of danger, rode waving at the crowd. Three, four, six bullets later, the torch was doused in blood and the lights of Camelot went out forever. Whatever the evidence to the contrary, that is Stone's fervently held contention and he expresses it with his customary bare-knuckled sincerity as well as a stunning technical virtuosity. The screenplay by Stone and Zachary Sklar is largely based on the books "On the Trail of the Assassins" by Jim Garrison and "Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy" by Jim Marrs, but also incorporates the findings of other researchers. Quoting everyone from Shakespeare to Hitler to bolster their arguments, Stone and Sklar present a gripping alternative to the Warren Commission's conclusion. A marvelously paranoid thriller featuring a closetful of spies, moles, pro-commies and Cuban freedom-fighters, the whole thing might have been thought up by Robert Ludlum. As far as Stone's many detractors-Gerald Ford among them-are concerned he might as well have. Kevin Costner's low-key performance as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison is key to the movie's seeming credibility in that it moderates the director's stridency. Costner's DA is a portrait of a man as obsessed by ghosts as the Iowa farmer in "Field of Dreams." Here as there, his mission is to restore America's lost values-not by building a baseball field in a corn patch but by bringing an alleged conspirator to justice. While he hasn't exactly slipped under Garrison's skin, he is, as he proved in "Dances With Wolves," an actor we can live with for three hours. And having learned to drawl, Costner is at home in the French Quarter as he never was in Sherwood Forest. Besides Costner, "JFK's" cast includes every liberal sympathizer in Hollywood except Jane Fonda. Veterans like Jack Lemmon, Ed Asner, Donald Sutherland and Walter Matthau routinely steal scenes in the roles (respectively) of gambler, gumshoe, undercover operative and wily old politician. Sissy Spacek does what she can with the role of Garrison's wife, whose job it is to remind the protagonist to come to dinner. John Candy plays a flamboyant lawyer friend of Garrison's, but the flashiest roles go to Joe Pesci, Tommy Lee Jones and Kevin Bacon as a cabal of gay fascists. Homosexual groups have already protested the homophobic portraits, but they will have to get in line with everybody else. Gary Oldman lends a Billy Budd-like presence as Lee Harvey Oswald, who is acquitted by the evidence-however warped-presented here. Brian Doyle-Murray virtually becomes Jack Ruby, the Dallas mobster who shot Oswald. Unrecognizable as Roseanne's TV sister, Laurie Metcalf is an assistant district attorney who, with Jay O. Sanders as chief investigator, helps Garrison press his cause. In their period clothing, Garrison, Metcalf and Sanders might have just walked out of an old "Perry Mason" episode. Certainly the movie shares with that whodunit a hokey steadfastness and stolid narrative drive. Stone, however, has as much to say about why it was done as who done it. Find out who would benefit the most, suggests one of Garrison's covert contacts, and you'll discover not only who and why, but also how the assassination was accomplished. "War is the biggest business in America," he points out. And in this version of history, Kennedy threatened the war machine by planning to pull the troops out of Vietnam. But anybody who tries to prove it-Garrison and by inference Stone-is discredited by the insidious shadow government. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't plotting against you. Another futile attempt to exorcise the nightmare of Vietnam, "JFK" is Stone's best and most emotional film since "Platoon." Like that brutal elegy-and all his films for that matter-this one yanks our chains as grievously as Marley's ghost. Here Stone taps into a ready-made well of national remorse, showing us images we've seen a thousand times a thousand times more. Some of them are real, such as Abraham Zapruder's home movie. Some of them, especially the autopsy photos, are appallingly graphic. All are seen through Stone's fantastic kaleidoscope, an instrument that reflects and bends the truth with mirrors. JFK, at area theaters, is rated R for graphic violence. CAPTIONS: Kevin Costner in "JFK." The "JFK" reenactment of President Kennedy's assassination. (This photo ran in earlier edition.) ORGANIZATION NAME: JFK DESCRIPTORS: Films Oliver Stone, Returning the Fire In Defending His 'JFK' C WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2049738 Oliver Stone, Returning the Fire In Defending His 'JFK' Conspiracy Film, the Director Reveals His Rage and Reasoning. The Washington Post, December 21, 1991, FINAL Edition By: Phil McCombs, Washington Post Staff Writer Section: STYLE, p. f01 Story Type: News National; Bio Line Count: 235 Word Count: 2589 The CNN makeup room is crowded. Moviemaker Oliver Stone drops happily into a chair to have his face wiped. He's just done "Larry King Live," and King has called his new film, "JFK," which revisits every grisly detail of the assassination just in time for the holidays, "a full-blown operatic conspiracy tale" that has critics "raving and historians ... raving mad." Stone is elated. One of his worst nightmares-and he has many-is not being taken seriously in Washington, but this seems to be fading somewhat in the glare of the public relations blitz arranged by Frank Mankiewicz of Hill and Knowlton, who was once Bobby Kennedy's press secretary and who now stands in the doorway wearing a white shirt and bow tie and with a huge belly hanging over his belt like a guy who's just stacked his 18-wheeler and walked into an all-night truck stop in Kansas. But there's a hitch. In the chair next to Stone is columnist and commentator Robert Novak, a conservative affectionately known around town as the Prince of Darkness, perhaps for his dark-eyed glances, who knows. In any case, Novak is wearing a bright red Christmas vest and doesn't seem to be in a great mood. "How come you wouldn't let us in the screening?" he snarls at Stone. Stone winces visibly. Actually manages to crouch down in his chair. He has no idea who Novak is. "How come we didn't let this gentleman into the screening?" he implores of Mankiewicz in his soft wounded little-boy voice. " 'Cause you're only making trouble!" Mankiewicz growls directly into Novak's face. "Well, I'll make trouble anyway-I'll be worse now," snaps Novak. "I thought you were smarter than that, Frank. I really did." He exits in disgust. Silence. Then Stone smiles. "That was a good moment," he says. Stone has been working Washington hard on this one. Been here several times in the past few months. Off-the-record lunches with the tweedier editors and correspondents. Deep-background chats with folks on the Hill. Op-Ed pieces. Appearances on "Nightline," National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition," this and that. And yesterday, a private screening for a bunch of mass media types deemed acceptable by Mankiewicz, followed by a press conference and luncheon. "It's not the normal procedure," admits Stone, settling on the couch in his suite at the Four Seasons the other day for a quickie interview before taking off for a benefit opening of the film in Dallas. "But it seemed to have to be done, because there was so much being written that was destroying the credibility of the movie before it was made, and it's wrong. When Dan Rather editorializes against you on 'CBS Evening News,' you know you have a problem." Stone's problem is this: The film's hypothesis, based on former New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison's unsuccessful prosecution of businessman Clay Shaw, is that a huge conspiracy-including the CIA, FBI, Dallas police force, the Mob, the military, LBJ and possibly the Tooth Fairy-brought off the murder of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963, as his limousine, having slowed for a curve, entered the carefully prepared "killing ground" at Dealey Plaza in Dallas at a speed of 11 mph. In this view, there were three shooters, a deadly triangulation of fire. The perfect ambush, with the marksman on the grassy knoll having time for a couple of leisurely flat, straight shots right into Kennedy's face-"he didn't even need a scope," as Stone puts it. And the motive? It was political. Not just because Kennedy was going to get out of Vietnam (a view that most scholars say is simply unsupported speculation), but also because "he was trying to wind down the entire Cold War. In Kennedy we see a form of an early Gorbachev, a sort of a political conformist politician becoming more of a statesman, reaching out for a detente." In Stone we see a form of a brilliant, passionate filmmaker reaching for larger and larger themes, who flunked out of Yale and signed up for heavy combat in Vietnam because he was so "unhappy" and filled with "self-loathing" that he "had a strong suicidal wish (but) I didn't want to do it myself." Who then transmuted his "rage" into art-the scripts for "Midnight Express" and "Scarface," then his direction of the Oscar-winning "Platoon" and "Wall Street," "Born on the Fourth of July," "The Doors." And now "JFK." Here's a 45-year-old filmmaker who has taken much of the rage and disillusion of the '60s, ripped it out of his own guts, put it on the screen. And everybody's quibbling! At least that's what Stone thinks. Heck, he says, he hired 15 or 16 "experts" to study the assassination, keep the movie straight. So when Newsweek comes out with a cover story calling the film "Twisted Truth" and warning that "Oliver Stone's New Movie Can't Be Trusted," he is deeply hurt. The criticism, he tells Larry King, "comes from older journalists, political journalists who have a stake in their version of reality." Like Tom Wicker of the New York Times, who called the Garrison/Stone thesis "paranoid and fantastic," and George Lardner of The Washington Post, who quipped that its "baseless claims come like fastballs." Stone, faced with criticism from people like these, who have spent their careers in the gritty journalistic search for truth, is able to take refuge in the age-old mandate of the artist. In the Dallas Morning News he compared himself to Shakespeare shaping for all time the image of Henry V, and it is quite possible that years from now, when the work of Wicker and Lardner has gone to fish-wrap, Stone's film will be viewed as just about all anyone knows or cares of the truth. "The artist's obligation, in my opinion, is to his conscience only," Stone says. "If he accepts the concept of social responsibility, it smacks of censorship. The Soviets told their artists that they had a social responsibility to realism. What is realism? It becomes social realism. The Nazis told their artists you have an obligation to fascism, and they had to represent Nazi art. You cannot tell an artist what to do. It's the First Amendment." So why did he hire all those experts? Why Frank Mankiewicz? "I believe an artist has to do his homework, but that's my personal belief. Another artist may not have to do his homework. I did my homework... . We did a lot of fact-checking. We openly admit that the film has quite a bit of speculation in it." Which is exactly why a lot of folks are so upset about it. Yet who's to say? A Washington Post poll shows that the American people, by an overwhelming 56 percent, with 24 percent undecided, believe that a conspiracy of some sort was behind the killing, and not the lone, crazy gunman Lee Harvey Oswald, as the Warren Commission concluded. And in the summer of 1979, the House Assassinations Committee reported that Kennedy was "probably assassinated as the result of a conspiracy" involving an assortment of gangland figures and anti-Castro activists. All Stone is doing, he claims, is pointing out a possibility. "I'm not making this movie to yell fire in the theater," he insists. "I'm not. It's too taboo a subject and it's too sacred a subject. It doesn't do me any good to make a movie that stirs and boils everybody's passion up, because that doesn't necessarily lead to critical and financial success. Controversy can hurt you, it can backfire. You're playing with fire here." Not a first for Stone. In fact, this whole media battle is reminiscent, for him, of Vietnam. His adrenalin is up. "I feel like an infantry unit," he says, "where I'm basically low in the bunker and the bullets are flying over." The thought makes his dark eyes twinkle, and he laughs aloud. A State of Rage Stone is a charmer, there's no getting around it. A teddy bear, boyish and moody, with bushy dark eyebrows. That soft voice. He wears one of those Hollywood sport coat combinations where the jacket is just-perfectly-a little too big, so that when he sits at a table with his hands folded, for example, you can't see much of his hands. And when he moves he sort of flops around, gracefully though. You don't automatically think of him as a family man, though he and his wife, Elizabeth, are the happy parents of two young sons. Not infrequently he's been known to drink a lot, and at breakfast one day with some journalists at the Jefferson Hotel he begins the conversation by moaning melodramatically, "Oh God, I'm so hung over!" He says he's very worried about being discredited as just another crazy Vietnam veteran, and yet the portrait he paints of himself is of a man full of terrible pain and angst, who is ultimately "saved" through his art in the classical and familiar romantic scenario. The son of a stockbroker who married his French sweetheart during World War II, Stone was a child of privilege-the Hill School, vacations in France, Yale. He hated it all. In 1965, still a teenager, he went to Saigon as a teacher. "I wanted to change my reality," he says. "I had a turbulent adolescence. My mom and my father were divorced and there were a lot of social problems and family problems, and I wanted to get out of this country. I didn't like Yale. I felt that there was another world out there. I felt like I was being processed like a socioeconomic product into a world that I had no interest in." His literary heroes were Jack London and Joseph Conrad, who painted "this vision of the Far East as a salvation, as a second world, an orphan world in a sense. So I went out there, I saw it, I was really mesmerized and sucked up into it." Then he went into the merchant marine, wrote a book, went to Yale, dropped out. "Emotionally distraught" and with "suicidal tendencies," he enlisted in the Army as a private, frantic that the Vietnam War would be over before he could get into combat there. "As the Charlie Sheen guy says in 'Platoon,' " he recalls, "I wanted to experience the bottom of the barrel... . I can't respect myself-if I can go to the bottom of the barrel, I can start over. I didn't want any privileges. I wanted to be anonymous. I wanted infantry, and I wanted 'Nam." He got it all, serving with the 25th Infantry Division out of Cu Chi and then Dau Tieng, seeing heavy combat, getting wounded, seeing the "disgusting" corruption in Saigon, "the PX system, these fat cat sergeants with their liquor, the prostitution of the Vietnamese people." When he returned through Fort Lewis, Wash., he realized that "the country was booming. The vast majority of people were totally indifferent to the war. I started to hide my uniform right away, tried to disappear into the crowd." He split for Mexico, "to escape. I couldn't stand it. California seemed like Mars. I went to Mexico and got into some trouble right away. I was in jail eight or nine days after I got back from Vietnam." Drug charges. "The jail immediately told me what was going on in America-with a capital K... . There were 5,000 kids in a 2,000-bed jail in San Diego. I saw right away the problem, the civil war... . I saw the potential for revolution and the brewing underside, that the war was not just in Vietnam." The next few years were "a very dark period" for Stone. He lived in New York and worked on screenplays, went to film school, married his first wife, who managed to keep him somewhat glued together. "I had a very hard time in terms of my mental state," he recalls. "During that Woodstock thing, I felt like a rage, I felt like, an anger inside that they were not serious about this counterrevolution, that if they really meant it, they had to get serious in order for it to work, that it had to be militarized and politicized. "I felt like, stop screwing around with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Yuppie or whatever his name is, Jerry Rubin... . If the war is being fought in Vietnam, then let's bring the war home, because you know, power comes from the barrel of a gun. I was into that concept. If you're going to do it, do it! Get together a cadre of tough soldiers, people who had been over there, and the jail population, and try to make the revolution." He was "serious" about all this at the time, but realizes now that it was "an internal state of rage. Eventually, I mellowed, and it was integrated ... and I went to New York University film school, where I had the good fortune to be able to really funnel my anger and my rage into movies." Whew! Of course, the anger-whatever it was-kept smoldering away in Stone as he read, and listened, and watched. The Pentagon Papers helped him "understand the degree of duplicity of the government, with the fake body counts, the corruption, the immorality of the way we fought the war." There was Watergate. The revelations about the Phoenix program. Deception after deception by the government. "By the time the mid-'70s rolled around," he says, "my screenplays were 'Platoon,' 'Born on the Fourth of July.' They took on an increasingly political tone." The eventual success of these two movies, he told Larry King, in a sense "gave me permission to attack another taboo subject," the Kennedy assassination. But is "JFK" fact, or is it fiction? "The conclusions that we reached may seem to some to be hyperbolic," he says, "but I think once you grant that there may be a political motive for Kennedy's murder-the winding down of the Cold War-if you accept that assumption, then my conclusions about who and how are not so hyperbolic." How come he doesn't help the viewer distinguish between the archived footage (the Zapruder film etc.) and the fictional, speculative scenes? "What am I supposed to do," he answers, "put a disclaimer before each scene, like a prescription drug label? ... I think people are very smart. I think the point of the movie is to get you into the movie, get you past that looking glass so that you're part of the event, so that you can feel it and understand our hypothesis. You're free to walk out of that movie and say this is baloney. You don't have to accept it." How could such a big conspiracy hang together-hundreds of co-conspirators? "I see a cellular organization, much like the battle of Algiers," he answers. "Two or three hundred people can give silent assent, or 20 people. I never got up to 200 or 300. I mean, it says clearly in the movie, 'It's in the wind, it's in the air. Nothing is on paper ...' A lot of people hated this president, a lot of people in powerful positions. That doesn't necessarily mean that they all meet in one place and say we're going to cut the head off the snake at such-and-such a place. "No, I don't think it happens that way. I say it's in the air. It's in the wind. Calls are made. Discussions are had. At one point, at one secret point-the most secret point-a call is made. And there is a shot of a call being made to a man in silhouette. That person, whoever he be, is a technician. So there's one call, to one technician. One technician activates. How does he activate? Same cellular structure, moving down! ... You don't know who you're working for... . You have no evidence." Stone, leaning back into the sofa, talks on and on, apparently mesmerized by his inner vision. And given what we've seen these last few decades, who dares call him crazy? Working Washington Meanwhile, Stone has apparently enjoyed his lesson in How to Work Washington. Has even learned a thing or two. Maybe there's a movie in it somewhere, or a scene anyway. After the King show, he crowds into the elevator with Mankiewicz and others at CNN headquarters downtown. "Novak," mutters Mankiewicz without completing the thought, "is sort of becoming the Robin Hood of ..." "I didn't know, I called him Mr. Evans!" says Stone. "That's even better," says an aide. Stone: "Is it Rowland and Evans? Novak and Evans?" Aide: "Evans and Novak." Stone: "And they're both on the right, is that correct?" Mankiewicz: "Oh yeah." Stone continues the questioning, about their column, their television appearances. Then, as the elevator door opens, he says brightly, "You missed the grimace he gave me!" CAPTIONS: Oliver Stone directing a scene from "JFK" in Dealey Plaza earlier this year. Director Oliver Stone, right, with talk show host Larry King. NAMED PERSONS: STONE, OLIVER; MANKIEWICZ, FRANK; NOVAK, ROBERT; KENNEDY, JOHN F. ORGANIZATION NAME: JFK DESCRIPTORS: Films; Assassination The JFK Assassination-What About the Evidence?. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2050135 The JFK Assassination-What About the Evidence?. The Washington Post, December 24, 1991, FINAL Edition By: Oliver Stone Section: EDITIORIAL, p. a13 Story Type: OP-ED Line Count: 177 Word Count: 1949 One day after prominently displaying a "news" story in which David Belin-the ultimate frustrated losing prosecutor as almost the lone defender of the Warren Commission's version of the assassination of President Kennedy-called me a "prostitute" and my unreleased film, "JFK," a lie worthy of Adolf Hitler, The Washington Post saw fit last Tuesday to give him nearly half its op-ed page to continue his intemperate assault. Belin and former president Gerald Ford are the last of a dying breed: Warren Commission apologists. Today, not even the government itself contends the Warren Commission investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy was an adequate one. The 1976-79 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that the CIA, the FBI and military intelligence withheld information from the Warren Commission, and these agencies and the commission never thoroughly investigated even the possibility of conspiracy. Belin and Ford make their case by using a combination of ignorance of new evidence and a selective presentation of Warren Commission material. As the reader will see from this presentation of their bald assertions versus the evidence, it is not a very good case. Belin and Ford: Nineteen medical experts have examined the autopsy photographs and x-rays of President Kennedy and concluded that all the shots struck Kennedy from the rear. Evidence: While the "official" autopsy photos and x-rays do show that all shots came from the rear, the 26 trained medical personnel-doctors, nurses, technicians-who treated the president at Parkland Hospital testified to the Warren Commission that they saw an exit-type wound in the back of the head, a wound that is inconsistent with the photos and x-rays. Neither the Warren Commission nor the HSCA showed the photos and x-rays to the Dallas doctors. Until this happens, the medical evidence proves absolutely nothing. Belin and Ford: Unequivocal ballistics evidence shows that the bullet that struck the president in the head and the bullet that passed through President Kennedy's neck and struck Gov. Connally were fired from Oswald's rifle. Evidence: The evidence is far from unequivocal. The Warren Commission tests reported "minor variations" in the various bullet fragments, making the results at best inconclusive. More sophisticated analysis by the HSCA came to the same non-conclusion-that it was "highly likely" but not certain that the fragments matched each other in composition. Belin still believes (as of his 1988 book, "Final Disclosure") that Kennedy was shot in the back of the neck. The autopsy photographs show that the wound was in his upper back, making it even more unlikely that the "magic bullet" exited through his throat and struck Gov. Connally. Moreover, Belin and Ford are obviously unaware of the declassified FBI document stating the bullet in the back penetrated only about two inches and did not exit-proving that the "single bullet" scenario could not have happened at all. Belin and Ford: A "massive neuromuscular reaction" caused the presi- dent's head to move backward when struck from the rear by a bullet. Evidence: A "massive neuromuscular reaction," according to Messrs. Ford and Belin, occurs when there is "massive damage inflicted to nerve centers of the brain." The nerve centers of the brain are the pons, the medulla, the cerebellum-all located in the rear of the brain. According to the Warren Commission and the HSCA, the head shot damaged the right cerebral hemisphere of Kennedy's brain-not a nerve coordination center, not capable of causing a "massive neuromuscular reaction." Belin and Ford: Postal Inspector Holmes delayed Oswald's transfer, thus proving Ruby was not part of any conspiracy. Evidence: If Ruby was part of a conspiracy and Ruby was allowed into the police station by a contact there, then the Holmes excuse is nonsense: The conspirators would make sure Ruby was there for the transfer. Ford and Belin argue that no would-be hit man would kill his target in a police station. No, of course not, unless he had help. Belin and Ford: Rabbi Hillel Silverman said he is convinced Ruby was telling him the truth when he says he wasn't conspiratorially involved. Evidence: Ruby told the Warren Commission he couldn't tell the truth in Dallas and begged to be taken to Washington. He also gave press conferences in 1966 saying he would like to tell the truth. By then Ruby was no longer in contact with Silverman. The rabbi left the Dallas area in 1965. Why Belin thinks we should take Silverman's word over Ruby's is unclear. Belin and Ford: Jack Ruby's lie detector test results-although not 100 percent accurate, confirmed that Ruby was not part of any conspiracy. Evidence: While the polygraph results show Ruby was not lying when he said he acted alone, Belin and Ford conveniently leave out J. Edgar Hoover's comment in Appendix XVII of the Warren Report that, based on a psychiatrist's diagnosis of Ruby as a "psychotic depressive," the polygraph results should be considered "nonconclusive." Belin and Ford: Witness Howard Brennan saw the gunman fire out of the sixth-floor window and gave his description to the police. Evidence: Warren Commission counsel Joseph A. Ball questioned Brennan and found several reasons to doubt his credibility: Brennan's account had several glaring inaccuracies with respect to the gunman's clothing and his shooting position. Brennan could not identify Oswald as the gunman when he first viewed the police lineup. Two months later, Brennan repeated to the FBI that he wasn't able to identify Oswald at the lineup. But in March 1964 Brennan told the Warren Commission that he could have identified Oswald as the gunman but he lied to protect himself and his family. Belin and Ford: The most probable time span of Oswald's three shots was around 10 seconds. Evidence: Nowhere is there evidence of 10 seconds. The Warren Commission concluded the time frame was from 4.8 to 7.9 seconds, depending on which of the three shots missed the car completely. The HSCA set a maximum time span of 8.3 seconds-but based on four shots and two gunmen. Most serious research agrees on the 5.6 seconds indicated by the Zapruder film. Belin and Ford: Cabdriver William Scoggins saw Tippit's killer from within 12 feet and identified him as Oswald. Evidence: Although Scoggins did identify Oswald as the culprit, we know the lineups Scoggins viewed were heavily biased. Fellow cabbie William Whaley saw the lineups at the same time as Scoggins and told the Warren Commission: ". . . you could have picked Oswald without identifying him just by listening to them because he was bawling out the policemen, telling them it wasn't right to put him in with these teenagers. . . . he told them they were trying to railroad him and he wanted his lawyer. . . ." Scoggins saw the lineup on Saturday, long after Oswald's name and occupation had been broadcast widely. Unlike the other men in the lineups, Oswald gave his correct name and place of work. What Belin and Ford never mention is that Scoggins (as well as another credible witness) reported that Tippit's killer was walking west on 10th Street-the wrong direction for Oswald to be walking. Belin and Ford: Ballistics evidence proved that Oswald's revolver was the Tippit murder weapon. Evidence: There is no chain of evidence for the four cartridge cases found at the scene. Both policemen who handled them marked them with their initials, but neither could identify the cases as the ones they turned in when they testified to the Warren Commission-they couldn't find their initials. Furthermore, the cartridge cases-two Western-Winchester and two Remington-Peters-don't match the bullets-three Western-Winchester, one Remington-Peters-recovered from Tippit's body. Belin and Ford: Those of us who served on the Warren Commission and its staff know it to be the truth-beyond a reasonable doubt-that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who killed President Kennedy and Officer Tippit. Evidence: Apparently Ford and Belin didn't keep in touch with their colleagues. Commissioners Hale Boggs, Richard Russell and John Sherman Cooper had grave doubts from the start about the "single bullet" theory. In later years they went public with their dissatisfaction with the commission's finding. "I had strong doubts," Boggs said. Cooper was "unconvinced" by the single-bullet theory. In a 1970 Washington Post article, Russell said he believed President Kennedy was killed as the result of a criminal conspiracy and joined forces with researcher Harold Weisberg in an effort to declassify commission transcripts. Conveniently, Ford and Belin wrap up their presentation by referring to the "other massive body of evidence which conclusively proves beyond a reasonable doubt that Oswald was the lone gunman." They decline to present this massive body of evidence to the readers. Should we take these men at their word? Probably not. Former president Ford's actions have been called into question more than once in the JFK case. For example, Ford seems to have reported on the Warren Commission to the FBI. A Dec. 12, 1963, internal FBI memo from Hoover aide Cartha DeLoach noted: "Ford indicated he would keep me thoroughly advised as to the activities of the commission. He stated this would have to be done on a confidential basis, however, he thought it had to be done. He also asked if he could call me from time to time and straighten out questions in his mind concerning our investigation." With regard to Belin, there is overwhelming evidence that he was less than truthful in taking Charles Givens's testimony for the Warren Commission. Givens, a co-worker of Oswald's at the Book Depository, originally told Dallas police he saw Oswald on the first floor shortly before noon on the day of the assassination. Later, he told the Warren Commission he had seen Oswald all alone on the sixth floor at that same time. In a memo written before he spoke to Givens, Belin made note of the first statement, yet he did not mention it when Givens told him the new "sixth-floor" version. An FBI document found at the National Archives-available to the commission-put Givens's credibility in doubt. The document quoted Dallas policeman Jack Revill as saying Givens "would probably change his testimony for money." In his books and articles, Belin champions Givens as the man who placed Oswald on the sixth floor shortly before the shooting. Researchers have asked Belin about this on many occasions; he has yet to provide an answer. In earlier tandem performance, Belin appeared as Ford's counsel when the former president testified before the HSCA. During a break in a hearing, Ford, obviously thinking the microphones were turned off, leaned over to Belin and asked, "Have I compromised anything yet?"-a rather curious statement under the circumstances. All of Ford and Belin's "evidence" comes from the commission volumes and report-they ignore all of the Commission Documents (not published within the volumes), all of the evidence turned up by the Jim Garrison investigation, the 1975 Senate Intelligence (Church) Committee hearings, the House Select Committee on Assassinations investigation and all of the evidence brought to light over the years by private researchers and scholars through Freedom of Information Act suits and rigorous document analysis. The reason is simple: None of this evidence strengthens their dog-eared conclusions. Most of it contradicts them. The Ford/Belin piece is tired, obsolete, highly selective information, printed many times before over the past 28 years, not believed by 75 percent of the American people or even supported by the conservative findings of the HSCA that JFK was killed as the result of a "probable" conspiracy. It is disappointing that prominent men like Belin and Ford are so narrow and vindictive in their rendering of history and their ugly condemnation of me and my film. It is more disappointing The Washington Post gives them a forum for their discredited views. Oliver Stone directed the movie "JFK" and was co-writer of its screenplay. NAMED PERSONS: KENNEDY, JOHN F. DESCRIPTORS: Assassination; U.S. president; Evidence 'JFK': Paranoid History. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2050338 'JFK': Paranoid History. The Washington Post, December 26, 1991, FINAL Edition By: George F. Will Section: EDITIORIAL, p. a23 Story Type: OP-ED Line Count: 77 Word Count: 850 Oliver Stone's movie "JFK" will give paranoia a bad name and give us all pause. Viewing his travesty about the Kennedy assassination makes one wonder what Stone would have thought about the century's most consequential assassination. On June 28, 1914, six young men were poised in Sarajevo, Bosnia, to throw bombs at the car of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. Five of them, intimidated by the crowds or unwilling to hurt the archduke's wife, did nothing. However, one asked a policeman which car was the archduke's, the policeman identified it, and the boy threw his bomb, which bounced off the archduke's car and exploded under the following car. One of the others, Gavrilo Princip, went off disconsolately for coffee at a corner cafe, where he loitered. Later, the archduke, going to a museum, decided to visit the people injured by the bomb. His driver, confused about the route to the hospital, stopped in front of the cafe where the astonished Princip sat. Princip leapt up and shot the archduke and his wife, thereby lighting Europe's fuse. Stone's portrayal of this would be: Like, wow. What a complex conspiracy brought the victim to the assassin's cleverly contrived coffee break. The driver was not confused, the first bomb "miss" was a ruse, the policeman was in on the plot, and there must have been hundreds of others, too. Who was behind it all? Well, who benefited? Munitions makers-merchants of death. That is the message of Stone's celluloid diatribe. Much of America's establishment conspired to kill Kennedy because he loved peace and "they" wanted war. Strange that a society so sick allowed such a saint to be president at all, but this is cartoon history by Stone, who is 45 going on 8. In his three-hour lie, Stone falsifies so much that he may be an intellectual sociopath, indifferent to truth. Or perhaps he is just another propagandist frozen in the 1960s like a fly in amber, combining moral arrogance with historical ignorance. He is a specimen of 1960s arrested development, the result of the self-absorption encouraged by all the rubbish written about his generation being so unprecedentedly moral, idealistic, caring etc. He is one of those "activists" who have been so busy trying to make history they have not learned any. Of America's two other assassinations of the 1960s-of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.-Stone says, "There's no doubt that these three killings are linked, and it worked. That's what's amazing. They pulled it off." Ah, yes: "They." Who are "they" who used Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray as well as Lee Harvey Oswald for their purposes? They are, he says, "a moving, fluid thing, a series of forces at play." Can he be a tad more specific? Okay. They are "a parallel covert government." They are merchants of death, omnipresent, omnipowerful-but unable to stop Stone from unmasking them. Amazing indeed. History teaches that as a conspiracy increases in size arithmetically, the chances of its unraveling increase exponentially. Yet Stone asserts that a conspiracy of many thousands (involving the FBI, the CIA, the armed forces, the Secret Service, the Mafia, doctors, Earl Warren and the other members of his commission, the press and many others) succeeded until, 28 years later, there came a hero: Stone. Back in Stone's formative years-those 1960s he loves so ardently-members of the John Birch Society thought President Eisenhower had been a Communist. Intellectually, Stone is on all fours with his mirror images, the Birchers, who, like Stone, thought Earl Warren was a traitor. Stone and they are part of a long fringe tradition, the paranoid style in American politics, a style ravenous for conspiracy theories. Why is actor Kevin Costner lending himself to this libel of America? Is he invincibly ignorant or just banally venal? Nothing else can explain his willingness to portray as a hero Jim Garrison, who, as New Orleans' district attorney, staged an assassination "investigation" that involved recklessness, cruelty, abuse of power, publicity mongering and dishonesty, all on a scale that strongly suggested lunacy leavened by cynicism. After covering the assassination story for 28 years, the journalist who knows most about it is The Post's George Lardner. He documents Stone "stomping on presumptions of innocence, cooking up false admissions, ignoring contrary evidence and giving a conspiratorial tone to inconsequential facets of the tragedy that were explained long ago." Stone himself should have played Garrison. Every viewer will have his or her favorite Stone fabrication. Mine is either the assertion that U.S. troops from Germany were airborne over America as part of the plot, or the assertion that President Johnson reversed a Kennedy order about Vietnam that in fact Johnson approved four days after the assassination, or the assertion that the CIA had stories about Oswald's arrest in some foreign papers almost at the moment he was arrested. The through-the-looking-glass premise of this movie is: Proof of the vastness of the conspiracy is that no one can prove it exists. Stone's pose is that he loves America and the truth equally. That is true. "JFK" is an act of execrable history and contemptible citizenship by a man of technical skill, scant education and negligible conscience. NAMED PERSONS: KENNEDY, JOHN F.; STONE, OLIVER ORGANIZATION NAME: JFK DESCRIPTORS: Assassination; U.S. president; Films H-e-e-e-e-r-e's Conspiracy! Why Did Oliver Stone Omit (or WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2050893 H-e-e-e-e-r-e's Conspiracy! Why Did Oliver Stone Omit (or Suppress!) the Role of Johnny Carson?. The Washington Post, December 29, 1991, FINAL Edition By: Michael Isikoff Section: OUTLOOK, p. c02 Story Type: Features Line Count: 104 Word Count: 1153 FOR ALL the hoopla surrounding Oliver Stone's "JFK," it is remarkable that nobody has mentioned what must surely be its most glaring omission-the role in the Kennedy assassination cover-up allegedly played by Johnny Carson. Compared to, say, the mysterious disappearance of President Kennedy's brain or the three "tramps" behind the grassy knoll, the evidence implicating America's most popular late-night talk show host is not well known even to close students of the assassination. But it ought to be familiar to Stone. Carson's suspicious behavior on matters relating to Kennedy's murder is spelled out in one of the many overlooked passages in "On the Trail of the Assassins," the 1988 book by Jim Garrison, the former New Orleans district attorney. Garrison's book, of course, forms much of the basis for Stone's three-hour blockbuster. As thousands of moviegoers are now aware, Garrison, portrayed by superstar Kevin Costner, is the hero of Stone's film-the one public official with the courage to expose the true dimensions of the JFK assassination plot. In the movie's view, this is a conspiracy of gargantuan proportions, including, among other participants, the CIA, anti-Castro Cubans, Pentagon covert-operations specialists, Navy doctors, military contractors (Bell Helicopter and General Dynamics Corp. are specifically mentioned), the Mafia and the Dallas police force. Not to mention FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon B. Johnson, who the Garrison-Costner figure says, in a stirring jury peroration, "I consider accomplices after the fact." So why does Stone flinch when it comes to Carson? Why does he fail to include the one figure in Garrison's grand conspiracy theory who is still very much on the scene-the seemingly genial talk-show host who appears most weekday nights in the bedrooms of millions of Americans? Indeed, what I call "the Carson connection" leaps out at anybody who reads through Garrison's field guide to the assassination, specifically Chapter 16, entitled "Escape of the Assassins." It is only there that one finally discovers the truly sinister reach of the plotters. The time is early 1968 and Garrison has spent more than a year pursuing would-be conspirators in the New Orleans netherworld. Through this pursuit, he has just obtained what he believes to be one of his strongest pieces of "evidence" to date-unpublished Dallas newspaper photographs of the now-famous "three tramps" arrested in a boxcar in the railroad yards near Dealey Plaza. In conspiracy lore, the tramps have long been key to unlocking the mystery of who killed Kennedy. Some theorists have speculated that one of the tramps bears a striking resemblance to E. Howard Hunt, the Watergate conspirator and ex-CIA agent. Others believe another looks like Charles V. Harrelson, a professional hit-man and father of actor Woody Harrelson (the bartender in "Cheers"), convicted in the 1982 murder of federal judge John Wood. Garrison calls them "among the most important photographs ever taken." At about this time, one of Garrison's volunteer investigators, comedian Mort Sahl, appears on the Carson show and talks about the assassination. When he asks the audience if they would like to hear from Garrsion directly, "The response was so demonstrably affirmative that it left Carson and the network with no alternative," writes Garrison. A telegram requesting his appearance arrived a few days later and Garrison promptly accepted. But when Garrison showed up at the NBC studio the afternoon of his scheduled appearance (Jan. 31, 1968), strange things began to happen. "Three or four well-dressed men," apparently NBC lawyers, entered the room and started grilling him for several hours. Carson himself, "stiff and ill at ease," popped in for some small chat and then just as quickly disappeared. A few hours later, Garrison was back for the taping. Carson's "small humorless eyes, like a pair of tiny dark marbles, were fixed on me," writes Garrison. The talk show host fired off questions from a list prepared for him by the NBC lawyers. Garrison refused to play along with the pre-arranged script. Carson out of frustration finally asked why the government would still be concealing evidence. Garrison now decides his moment had arrived-to show for the first time on national television the pictures of the tramps. "'Don't ask me, John,' I said, opening my briefcase," he writes. "'Ask Lyndon Johnson. You know he has to have the answer.'" For true conspiracy buffs, what happened in the next few seconds is hair-raising indeed. As Garrison starts holding the pictures in front of the camera, he writes, Carson "lunged at my arm like a cobra, pulling it down violently so that the pictures were out of the camera's view. 'Photographs like this don't show up on television,' he said sharply." Garrison is undeterred. "'Sure they do,' I replied. 'The camera can pick this up.'" "This time he (Carson) yanked my arm down ever harder. 'No it can't,' he snapped." Nevertheless, Garrison for a third time swings the pictures up in front of the cameras. "This time, I however, I saw the red light blink off and realized that the director of the show had cut the camera off . . . . Then before anyone could change the subject, I said loudly, 'Those arrested men you just saw were never seen again. They all got away.' " What precisely is the meaning of this unsettling incident? As he flies back to New Orleans, Garrison speculates. Why had Carson pulled his arm away? And "why had the director and control room switched off the cameras so that the photophraphs could not have been seen?" Skeptics might suggest that Carson and his producers were worried about the potential libel of accusing some strangers in a photograph of having killed the president. Or perhaps they concluded that most TV viewers wouldn't have been able to make any sense of the tramp pictures. An NBC spokesman said Carson was away for the holidays last week and unavailable for comment. "Carson was probably trying to keep this thing calm and nice and not raise a lot of hell," suggested Frank Mankiewicz of Hill & Knowlton, the designated Washington spokesman for Stone, when I called to ask him why Stone had neglected to include the scene in his movie. But for Garrison, Stone's hero, such innocent explanations are clearly the height of naivete. "The only reasonable, realistic explanation, I found myself concluding, was control," he writes. Only a few months earlier, Garrison writes of doing his own research on NBC after the network ran a documentary attacking his New Orleans probe. Eventually, Garrison discovered that RCA, the corporate owner of NBC had been "an integral part of the American defense structure . . . part of the warfare machine." To the true conspiratorialists, such findings illustrate the real size of the enemy; even today, they conclude, the vice-like grip of the conspirators maintains its hold on the American people. But perhaps there is hope. Next spring, the veteran "Tonight Show" host is scheduled to retire, to be replaced by Jay Leno. At long last, will America finally learn the truth? Michael Isikoff is a Washington Post reporter. NAMED PERSONS: KENNEDY, JOHN F.; STONE, OLIVER DESCRIPTORS: Films; Assassination 'JFK': A Lie, But Harmless. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2052546 'JFK': A Lie, But Harmless. The Washington Post, January 10, 1992, FINAL Edition By: Charles Krauthammer Section: EDITIORIAL, p. a19 Story Type: OP-ED Line Count: 80 Word Count: 886 "JFK," Oliver Stone's paranoid fantasy about the Kennedy assassination, has been widely attacked in print. For Stone, the attacks are an extension of the monstrous conspiracy to kill Kennedy, with the media auxiliaries again taking up their places 28 years after the fact. For others, like Garry Trudeau, the attacks are a lapse of journalistic manners, a case of overkill. Yet the simplest explanation for the fact that many of those who know anything about the Kennedy era have felt compelled to point out the fantastic and mendacious quality of the film is that the film is fantastic and mendacious. The idea of Stone, lone and courageous, standing up to triangulated fire from Establishment lackeys is appealing to Stone's paranoia and self-righteousness. But it is a laugh. In one corner: a $40 million Hollywood film, featuring the nation's number one heartthrob, endowed with a publicity budget of millions, showing in 900 movie theaters. In the other corner: perhaps a dozen scribblers writing in various magazines and op-ed pages. You don't need Marshall McLuhan to figure out who's got more clout. I make no apology, therefore, for piling on. I feel it something of a duty. As film, "JFK" is a success: a big lie told with such self-assurance and technical skill that it can disturb, even convince, the most skeptical. As history, "JFK" is a travesty. It has the structure and texture of a Stalinist show trial. Stalin, of course, had to torture his victims into their public, scripted confessions of participation in a vast and nefarious conspiracy. Stone had only to recruit actors to do the same. If you want to see a spiritual ancestor of "JFK," go see "Mission to Moscow," the 1943 memoir of a particularly gullible U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union, Joseph Davies. "Mission to Moscow," a paean to "Uncle Joe" (Stalin), earnestly whitewashed the Moscow show trials of the 1930s and endorsed the guilt of those accused of (and condemned for) an absurdly complicated conspiracy of Trotskyites, Nazis and Western agents to sabotage the workers' paradise. Half a century later, the same studio (Warner: a nice historical touch) brings you the new show trial. The crime this time is larger-the overthrow of American democracy-and the conspiracy even more vast: the CIA, the FBI, Bell Helicopter, anti-Castro Cubans, a New Orleans homosexual underground, the mob, the Secret Service, Dallas police, the whole damn military-industrial complex-with autopsy doctors, the chief justice of the United States and the next president as accessories after the fact. It is testimony to the power of film as propaganda, and to the skill of Oliver Stone as propagandist, that the film works. Interspersing fabricated characters, dialogue and events with real footage, Stone can persuade the perfectly reasonable and unsuspecting viewer. It is only upon reflection one realizes the absurdity of the film's premise: That in a country where the fixing of a handful of game shows could not be held secret, a near-universal assassination conspiracy has remained airtight for 28 years. In fact, the film rests on a dozen such absurdities. My favorite is the charge that Earl Warren, a liberal so principled that he would not countenance the conviction of one Ernesto Miranda on the grounds that police had neglected to read him his rights, was accessory to a fascist coup d'etat. My only dissent from "JFK's" critics has to do not with the nature of Stone's lies but with the lies' lasting impact. There will be little. Yes, there will be kids who, knowing nothing of the era (and little about anything else), will believe the movie. But what is the quality of that belief? Anyone who truly believes this film should immediately sign up with the Red Brigades. Its point, after all, is that in 1963 America was taken over by a fascist conspiracy, that post-Kennedy America is a vast Orwellian system of deception and repression. Where are the anti-fascist protests? The kids have certainly not been pacified by a few skeptical op-ed pieces. By what then? They have been pacified by the very same popular culture Stone seeks to harness for his political agenda. He fails, however, because American popular culture is a poor vehicle for serious political dissent. Its capacity to trivialize everything-even riveting, raging political paranoia-is just too great. When Stone argues the great fascist plot on the morning chat show circuit, sandwiched between Willard Scott and a new legume diet, one is hardly moved to run to the barricades. Early in the days of glasnost, a formerly suppressed anti-Stalinist movie, "Repentance," caused a sensation when shown in Moscow. It helped begin a revolution in political consciousness that ultimately brought down the Soviet Union. That is what happens in a serious political culture. Which is why it does not happen here. "JFK's" message is at least as disturbing as that of "Repentance." Yet it is received by a citizenry so overwhelmed with cultural messages, and so anesthetized to them, that a message as explosive as Stone's might raise an eyebrow, but never a fist. A politics so trivialized is conducive to neither great decision making nor decisive leadership. But it is also nicely immunized from the worst of political pathologies. In the end, Oliver Stone-like David Duke and Louis Farrakhan and the rest of America's dealers in paranoia-is just another entertainment, another day at the movies. The shallowness of our political culture has a saving grace. NAMED PERSONS: STONE, OLIVER ORGANIZATION NAME: JFK DESCRIPTORS: Films 'Bugsy,' 'JFK,', 'Tides' Top Oscar Nominees 'Boyz' Up for 2 WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2059366 'Bugsy,' 'JFK,', 'Tides' Top Oscar Nominees 'Boyz' Up for 2 Awards Barbra Streisand Snubbed. The Washington Post, February 20, 1992, FINAL Edition By: Rita Kempley, Kim Masters, Washington Post Staff Writers Section: STYLE, p. c01 Story Type: News National; List Line Count: 150 Word Count: 1654 The directors of "Bugsy" and "JFK" enjoyed a feeling of vindication yesterday as their movies racked up 10 and eight Oscar nominations, respectively, for the 64th annual Academy Awards. Barbra Streisand had a bittersweet celebration, snubbed in the Best Director category even though her "Prince of Tides" scored seven nominations, including Best Picture. "Bugsy" director Barry Levinson described his film's first-place finish as the culmination of "an uphill battle against a lot of negative vibes." Other gangster movies didn't do well last year, he noted, and audiences weren't flocking to see another effort in that genre. Added James Toback, who was nominated for his "Bugsy" screenplay: "I was hoping to get enough (votes) to give the movie a transfusion. Otherwise it would have just died." Warren Beatty, nominated for his role as the notorious gangster Benjamin Siegel, said he was "surprised we got the audience we did. ... I mean, a movie about a seedy, sleazy character who, if you get to like him at all, gets killed off in the end? You know going in that you're not making 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.' " Oliver Stone, whose "JFK" was denounced as a distorted political polemic in many quarters, said: "The people voted, in a way. The people came to the movies in large quantities; that's a vindication in itself." Like "Bugsy," "JFK" could use a box office boost, though "The Prince of Tides" is still holding in the Top 10. All three films were nominated for Best Picture, along with the psycho-thriller "The Silence of the Lambs" and the animated Disney romance "Beauty and the Beast." A slight, if not staggering surprise, "B&B" is the first animated feature ever nominated in this category. "It's a historic day for us animator folk," said producer Don Hahn, who got up at 5:30 a.m. yesterday to catch the moment. "I only spilled a little coffee." Disney Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg was also ecstatic about the nomination, one of six in all for the film. Just getting the nomination was a triumph, he said in a voice hoarse from accepting congratulations. There were other history-making nominations. The academy recognized, for the first time, a black director, John Singleton. His Best Director nomination for "Boyz N the Hood" also makes him, at 24, the youngest filmmaker ever to be nominated in the category. Singleton also was nominated for Best Original Screenplay for his first film, a coming-of-age story set in a tough Los Angeles neighborhood. He wrote "Boyz" as his final 1990 project at the University of Southern California's undergraduate Filmic Writing Program, and the picture was made for a mere $6 million. "The Silence of the Lambs' " producer Ken Utt, a self-described North Carolina pea picker, was "absolutely tickled to death" with the film's seven nominations. "The movie began in Washington at the FBI headquarters," added Utt, who sends his thanks to all the G-men who helped make the film a success. "If we win or not, it's still terrific." Meanwhile, some in Hollywood were not crowing but carping. In a statement, Mark Canton, chairman of Columbia Pictures, called it "truly shocking that Barbra Streisand was overlooked as a Best Director nominee for 'The Prince of Tides.' We think this is Barbra's movie, and that she deserves recognition for the absolutely vital role she played in every aspect of making the film." (Her male lead, Nick Nolte, was nominated, as expected.) The fact that she received a Best Director tap for "Prince" from the Director's Guild "makes this oversight ... particularly hard to accept," wrote Canton, who went to Columbia after the picture was filmed. (Previously he was at Warner Bros., which passed on "Prince.") But some in Hollywood said the temperamental Streisand has only herself to blame. A publicist at a rival studio said, "People try to make you believe it's a thing about women. It's about her. It's about being Barbra Streisand." Streisand's directorial work on 1983's "Yentl" also was snubbed, though the film won for Best Original Song Score or Adaptation. Ridley Scott was nominated for his direction of the distaff road picture "Thelma & Louise," whose leading ladies Geena Davis and Susan Sarandon were nominated for Best Actress, along with Jodie Foster ("The Silence of the Lambs"), Laura Dern ("Rambling Rose") and Bette Midler ("For the Boys"). Midler, who also won a Golden Globe for her role as a brassy USO entertainer, sent a fax: "I always knew my fellow actors had exquisite taste. But seriously, I'm absolutely knocked out." Word is that Academy members felt sorry for Midler, who has been distraught over the titanic failure of "Boys." Notably missing from this category was Annette Bening, whose work as "Bugsy's" slinky moll went unrecognized. "I told Jim (Toback) the Academy might blame her for Bugsy's death," said Levinson, who has been around long enough now to understand these things. Beatty was disappointed for his leading lady: "I was surprised, because the picture worked because of her performance." Nolte's Oscar nomination, for his role as the repressed coach of "The Prince of Tides," was his first. He has already received a Golden Globe and a Los Angeles Film Critics' award. He is expected to win the statuette over his fellow nominees-Robin Williams ("The Fisher King"), Robert De Niro ("Cape Fear"), Anthony Hopkins ("The Silence of the Lambs") and Beatty. One notable omission from the Best Actor list was "JFK" star Kevin Costner. Oliver Stone expressed disappointment: "Considering what this movie has been through, it is really wonderful to have your peers regard its values. I'm really sad for Kevin, who did a powerful job of anchoring this movie in an underestimated way, but I am very, very happy for Tommy Lee Jones, for whom it has been a long time coming." Jones was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his role of Clay Shaw, one of the conspirators in "JFK." His competition in the category includes Harvey Keitel and Ben Kingsley of "Bugsy," Michael Lerner of "Barton Fink" and Jack Palance of "City Slickers." Palance, who hasn't been nominated since his heyday in the '50s, will probably nab the prize for a lifetime's achievement. Diane Ladd, nominated last year for "Wild at Heart," is in the running again for Best Supporting Actress for her role as the sensible matriarch in "Rambling Rose." A relentless self-promoter, she faces feisty competition from Juliette Lewis, the teenage prey in "Cape Fear"; Kate Nelligan, the mother in "The Prince of Tides"; Mercedes Ruehl, the girlfriend in "The Fisher King"; and Jessica Tandy, the storytelling granny in "Fried Green Tomatoes." The race is wide open. "Bugsy" likely has the inside track now for Best Picture, though pre-nomination conventional wisdom had favored "Prince of Tides." Now people say the academy will not give its top honor to a a picture about a serial killer who dresses in human skin, or a much-maligned political polemic ... but then, what do they know. AND THE NOMINEES ARE ... PICTURE: "Beauty and the Beast," "Bugsy," "JFK," "The Prince of Tides," "The Silence of the Lambs." ACTOR: Warren Beatty, "Bugsy"; Robert De Niro, "Cape Fear"; Anthony Hopkins, "The Silence of the Lambs"; Nick Nolte, "The Prince of Tides"; Robin Williams, "The Fisher King." ACTRESS: Geena Davis, "Thelma & Louise"; Laura Dern, "Rambling Rose"; Jodie Foster, "The Silence of the Lambs"; Bette Midler, "For the Boys"; Susan Sarandon, "Thelma & Louise." SUPPORTING ACTOR: Tommy Lee Jones, "JFK"; Harvey Keitel, "Bugsy"; Ben Kingsley, "Bugsy"; Michael Lerner, "Barton Fink"; Jack Palance, "City Slickers." SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Diane Ladd, "Rambling Rose"; Juliette Lewis, "Cape Fear"; Kate Nelligan, "The Prince of Tides"; Mercedes Ruehl, "The Fisher King"; Jessica Tandy, "Fried Green Tomatoes." DIRECTOR: John Singleton, "Boyz N the Hood"; Barry Levinson, "Bugsy"; Oliver Stone, "JFK"; Jonathan Demme, "The Silence of the Lambs"; Ridley Scott, "Thelma & Louise." ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: John Singleton, "Boyz N the Hood"; James Toback, "Bugsy"; Richard LaGravenese, "The Fisher King"; Lawrence Kasdan and Meg Kasdan, "Grand Canyon"; Callie Khouri, "Thelma & Louise." ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Agniesvka Holland, "Europa Europa"; Fannie Flagg and Carol Sovieski, "Fried Green Tomatoes"; Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, "JFK"; Pat Conroy and Becky Johnston, "The Prince of Tides"; Ted Tally, "The Silence of the Lambs." FOREIGN FILM: "Children of Nature," Iceland; "The Elementary School," Czechoslovakia; "Mediterraneo," Italy; "The Ox," Sweden; "Raise the Red Lantern," Hong Kong. ART DIRECTION: "Barton Fink," "Bugsy," "The Fisher King," "Hook," "The Prince of Tides." CINEMATOGRAPHY: "Bugsy," "JFK," "The Prince of Tides," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," "Thelma & Louise." COSTUME DESIGN: "The Addams Family," "Barton Fink," "Bugsy," "Hook," "Madame Bovary." DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: "Death on the Job," "Doing Time: Life Inside the Big House," "In the Shadow of the Stars," "The Restless Conscience: Resistance to Hitler Within Germany 1933-1945," "Wild by Law." DOCUMENTARY SHORT SUBJECT: "Birdnesters of Thailand (Shadow Hunters)," "Deadly Deception: General Electric, Nuclear Weapons and Our Environment," "A Little Vicious," "The Mark of the Maker," "Memorial: Letters From American Soldiers." FILM EDITING: "The Commitments," "JFK," "The Silence of the Lambs," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," "Thelma & Louise." MAKEUP: "Hook," "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." MUSIC ORIGINAL SCORE: "Beauty and the Beast," "Bugsy," "The Fisher King," "JFK," "The Prince of Tides." MUSIC ORIGINAL SONG: "Beauty and the Beast" from "Beauty and the Beast"; "Belle" from "Beauty and the Beast"; "Be Our Guest" from "Beauty and the Beast"; "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You" from "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves"; "When You're Alone" from "Hook." ANIMATED SHORT FILM: "Blackfly," "Manipulation," "Strings." LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM: "Birch Street Gym," "Last Breeze of Summer," "Session Man." Sound: "Backdraft," "Beauty and the Beast," "JFK," "The Silence of the Lambs," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." SOUND EFFECTS EDITING: "Backdraft," "Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." VISUAL EFFECTS: "Backdraft," "Hook," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." NAMED PERSONS: STONE, OLIVER; LEVINSON, BARRY; BEATTY, WARREN; STREISAND, BARBRA ORGANIZATION NAME: ACADEMY AWARDS; JFK DESCRIPTORS: Films; Awards; Actors; Directors, producers Historians, Buffs and Crackpots. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2055331 Historians, Buffs and Crackpots. The Washington Post, January 26, 1992, FINAL Edition By: John G. Leyden Section: BOOK WORLD, p. x08 Story Type: Review Line Count: 153 Word Count: 1687 YOU'VE SEEN the movie "JFK"; now you want to read the book. The question is which book? The list is almost endless-a recent Life magazine article put the number of books about the Nov. 22, 1963, assassination of President John F. Kennedy at "more than 600." There's even an entire book about the rifle Lee Harvey Oswald used to kill the president. What follows is a roundup, by no means complete, of some of the books-both pro- and anti-conspiracy-that have been written about the Kennedy assassination. Many of the assassination books are out of print, including some of the earlier ones listed here. Readers can try libraries, but a word of caution: Even the Library of Congress doesn't have them all. And requests for those it supposedly has frequently come back marked "Not on Shelf." Whether you believe, as I do, that Oswald acted alone, or are convinced that there was a conspiracy, or simply are curious and want to know more-don't expect the research to come easy. The conspiracy books, in particular, make for a difficult read, since many lack a narrative flow and jump from premise to premise and from point to point. One notable exception is Jim Garrison's On the Trail of the Assassins, which reads like a mystery novel where the names are the same but the facts have been changed. That book-with Jim Marrs's Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy-is reported to have inspired Oliver Stone, and one can see how Stone might have been intrigued by the dramatic possibilities. But had Stone begun by reading David Lifton's turgid Best Evidence, for example, he might have thrown in the towel after the first or second chapter, and the country would have been spared the renewed debate over who killed Kennedy. These three books have all been issued in paperback, and should be readily available on the shelves of many local bookstores. Also readily available in paperback are a number of other popular books that allege a conspiracy, such as High Treason by Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone, as well as an "Oswald-acted-alone" book, Conspiracy of One by Jim Moore. With little effort, one might also dig up a couple of recent hardbacks, David Belin's defense of the Warren Commission, Final Disclosure, and Mark North's Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy. And Mark Lane has a new book out, too, Plausible Denial, pointing the finger of suspicion at the CIA. It's at least his fourth trip to the well on the JFK assassination, including the 1966 best seller, Rush to Judgment, and another book, which was clearly labeled fiction, Executive Action. BUT THE obvious starting point for anyone interested in knowing more about the Kennedy assassination is the 1964 Warren Commission Report, which can be found in most libraries or in good second-hand book stores. The Warren Commission, of course, found that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, killed Kennedy and Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit and that, then, Jack Ruby, acting on impulse, killed Oswald. The report was intended to resolve public doubts about the president's murder, but the voluminous testimony and materials collected during the investigation only served to fuel debate. The conspiracy-minded could use the commission's own archives to support any theory that struck their fancy. In 1966, several books were published that raised questions about the Warren Commission report. The most influential was Edward Jay Epstein's Inquest. The book focused public attention on the commission's shortcomings and charged, among other things, that the staff had failed to investigate fully the possibility of a second assassin. At the same time, however, Epstein found that "a prima facie case" existed for Oswald's involvement in the murders of both Kennedy and Tippit and dismissed out of hand the idea that Oswald had been framed for the crimes. Epstein also wrote Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald and Counterplot, an expose' of the Garrison investigation. In Legend, published in 1978, Epstein amended some of his earlier criticism of the Warren Commission Report, stating that he believed the bullets were fired from the Texas School Book Depository, though he still contended that it was "logically impossible" to rule out the presence of a second gunman. Other critics, such as Mark Lane, have not been as charitable in their interpretations of the commission's findings. Their charges of a massive cover-up eventually helped prompt a new investigation by the House of Representatives' Select Committee on Assassinations. However, the December 1978 committee report satisfied almost no one, and copies are difficult to find. On the one hand, the report said that Oswald had killed both Kennedy and Tippit, and it validated most of the other major Warren Commission findings, including the controversial "single bullet" theory. At the same time, it threw the assassination buffs a bone by concluding-on the basis of a hotly disputed Dallas police recording-that a second gunman and "co-conspirator" probably fired an errant fourth shot at the president from the area of the grassy knoll in Dealy Plaza. (This conclusion later was challenged by a National Academy of Sciences acoustics panel.) The committee's conspiracy finding actually resulted from a last-minute change that many critics say was the work of Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey to accommodate the possibility of involvement by organized crime figures. Indeed, in 1981, Blakey published The Plot to Kill the President, which concluded that "elements of organized crime participated in the assassination plot." Others also have picked up on this theme, including David Scheim, in Contract on America, and John Davis in Mafia Kingfish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. THE FIRST generation of assassination writers tended to present rather simplified conspiracy theories. For example, Thomas Buchanan saw the assassination as a means of preserving the oil depletion allowances in Who Killed Kennedy? (1964) and Leo Sauvage viewed it as part of a racist plot to maintain white supremacy in America in The Oswald Affair (1966). The Soviet Union was another popular suspect (along with Castro's Cuba), and English writer Michael Eddowes took it to extremes by arguing in The Oswald File that the real Oswald was replaced by a KGB "double" not long after his 1959 defection. Eddowes's allegations prompted Oswald's exhumation in 1981, only to have the medical examiner verify the authenticity of the remains in blunt, unequivocal language. Most of the contemporary crop of assassination writers have a more global view and tend to mix and match their conspiracy theories according to the latest fashion. The only consistent element throughout is the alleged involvement of the CIA. Garrison's On the Trail of the Assassins, for example, blames rogue CIA elements and their "extra-governmental collaborators," the FBI, the Secret Service, the Dallas police and the U.S. military, all of whom wanted to keep peace from breaking out. At the same time, Garrison went to considerable lengths to exonerate organized crime from any involvement. Jim Marr's Crossfire, on the other hand, claims that Kennedy was killed "in a military-style ambush orchestrated by organized crime" with government backing. He even implies that Vice President Lyndon Johnson may have given tacit approval. Kennedy's "public execution," he adds, was intended to serve as a sort of object lesson to the nation not to mess with the military-industrial complex. In High Treason, Robert Groden and Harrison Livingstone sound another familiar theme of the assassination buffs. They believe the murders of John and Robert Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., together with the shooting of George Wallace, are all related. They also said that Watergate was "intimately connected" to the assassinations (Did you know Nixon was in Dallas on the day JFK was shot?) and repeated allegations that Watergate figure G. Gordon Liddy may have poisoned former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to keep him quiet. David Lifton could win the prize (if one were given) as the most imaginative writer among the current crop, although some might argue that the plot for Best Evidence was borrowed from the cult film "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Lifton became convinced at an early age, watching the famous Abraham Zapruder film of the assassination, that the fatal shots came from the front of the president's Dallas motorcade and has spent virtually his entire adult life trying to prove it. Rather than arguing that the official autopsy photos and X-rays are fakes, as others have done, Lifton alleges that Kennedy's body was taken from Air Force One, surgically altered to make it look as if the fatal shots came from the rear, and then put back in the casket at the Bethesda Naval Hospital before the autoposy began. However, in 1988, when the PBS "Nova" series brought four of the doctors who treated Kennedy at Dallas Parkland Hospital to Washington to view the official X-rays and autopsy photos, none could find any evidence of altered wounds. Where does Oswald fit in all these theories? Well, many conspiracy writers have reduced him to a walk-on role. David Scheim, for example, ignores him almost completely in Contract on America, noting that "his marksmanship was marginal and he had no apparent motive to kill President Kennedy." Compared to the conspiracy scenarios, the books by David Belin (Final Disclosure) and Jim Moore (Conspiracy of One) are pretty tame stuff. Both support the "lone assassin" theory and their books devote considerable space to point-by-point rebuttals of its critics. However, former Warren Commission lawyer Belin now concedes that the commission invited public distrust of its final report by conducting most of its work in secret and deciding to withhold the publication of the X-rays and autopsy photographs in deference to the Kennedy family. He also severely criticizes the CIA and the National Security Council for their lack of cooperation in the investigation. Still, he has no doubt that the Commission was right in naming Oswald as the lone assassin and is confident that history eventually will sustain that judgment. "The truth has a long fuse," he added hopefully, "and ultimately it prevails." John G. Leyden is a freelance writer who lives in Davidsonville, Md. CAPTIONS: Actor Kevin Costner as Jim Garrison in Oliver Stone's movie "JFK." DESCRIPTORS: Books Free the JFK Papers. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2053956 Free the JFK Papers. The Washington Post, January 18, 1992, FINAL Edition By: Jim Lesar Section: EDITIORIAL, p. a23 Story Type: OP-ED Line Count: 79 Word Count: 875 Whatever the merits of Oliver Stone's "JFK," it has focused new attention on unanswered questions about the president's assassination. At its conclusion, the movie pointedly notes that Congress itself is responsible for suppressing much information that could shed light on such questions. Until recently, release of the congressional records was being blocked by Rep. Louis Stokes (D-Ohio), former chairman of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which investigated the murders of President Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in the late 1970s. After a two-year probe costing more than $5 million, the HSCA released its final report in 1979. It concluded that there was a "high probability" Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy and that the "likelihood" was that King was too. The HSCA's official report concluded that two gunmen had fired at Kennedy in Dealey Plaza, including one from the famous "grassy knoll" to the right front of the president's limousine. The HSCA did not identify this second gunman. It did identify three persons it considered likely suspects in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy: former Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa and two Mafia figures, Santos Trafficante and Carlos Marcello. Marcello, who was later jailed on unrelated bribery charges, is still alive. The House committee's investigation, which followed disclosures in the mid-'70s of CIA assassination plots against Fidel Castro and other foreign leaders, was the most extensive investigation of the Kennedy assassination to date. Nevertheless, many students of the Kennedy assassination believe the committee's probe was badly flawed, noting, among other things, that its inquiry focused almost obsessively on the organized crime angle to the exclusion of other possible leads. By its own admission, the committee ran out of time and money before it could answer many of the questions raised by its own investigation. It passed the buck to the Justice Department, recommending that Justice investigate certain matters the committee had not resolved. But Justice sat on the matter for nearly a decade before dismissing the need for further investigation. The HSCA's final report succinctly stated the case for public disclosure of the facts surrounding the murders of Kennedy and King. "It is essential," it said, "not only that persons be able to judge the performance of the executive agencies but that they be able to judge the committee's performance as well. Such is the very essence of representative democracy." Notwithstanding this accolade to openness, the HSCA went out of existence without making any provision for public access to its records. As a result, by letter dated April 2, 1979, the Clerk of the House sent 848 boxes of HSCA documents on its Kennedy-King probes to the National Archives. There, under a House rule, they remain sealed for a period of 50 years. They are now scheduled for release on April 1, 2029. Realizing the enormous potential significance of these files, the late Rep. Stewart McKinney, a Republican from Connecticut who had served on the House committee, introduced a resolution in 1983 to make the records public. The McKinney resolution, which was reintroduced in 1985, enlisted 64 cosponsors in the House, including all of the former members of the select committee still serving except for their chairman, Rep. Stokes. But it was never voted on by the full House and never became law because of the opposition by Stokes. The McKinney resolution adopted the guidelines that were used to release the Warren Commission's records. Most of the 300 cubic feet of Warren Commission records have been released by the National Archives. While those that remain withheld should be released, they are dwarfed in magnitude and potential significance by the House committee's records. Stokes opposed release of the House committee's records until only recently, saying that the material it had not published had come mainly from the FBI and consisted of rumors and defamatory material. The first claim is in error. In 1984, G. Robert Blakey, who served as the HSCA's chief counsel, swore in an affidavit filed in federal court that the committee "was not able to publish everything it wanted to publish or which was relevant to the President's assassination, as it ran out of time and appropriations." As to "rumors and defamatory material," the McKinney resolution would exclude such information from release. Release of HSCA records has been sought not only by students of the Kennedy assassination but by supporters of the Warren Commission as well. Ironically, the KGB in Moscow has now opened its files on Lee Harvey Oswald to ABC News, yet the files Congress accumulated at enormous public expense remain locked up in the National Archives-the keeper of our national history-until the year 2029. William Webster, former FBI and CIA chief, recently said that he knows of no national security reasons for keeping records on the Kennedy assassination secret, and it is clear that the end of the Cold War and the disintegration of the Soviet Union have extinguished this justification for secrecy. It is time to release the House committee's records. The writer is a Washington lawyer specializing in Freedom of Information Act work. He is also president of the Assassination Archives and Research Center, a nonprofit organization that fosters the study of political assassinations. NAMED PERSONS: STONE, OLIVER; KENNEDY, JOHN F. DESCRIPTORS: U.S. president; Assassination; Conspiracy WHY THINGS ARE STYLE PLUS - JFK Conspiracy: Myth vs. the Fa WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2060856 WHY THINGS ARE STYLE PLUS - JFK Conspiracy: Myth vs. the Facts. The Washington Post, February 28, 1992, FINAL Edition By: Joel Achenbach, Washington Post Staff Writer Section: STYLE, p. c05 Story Type: Column Line Count: 129 Word Count: 1425 Why hasn't JFK's assassination been solved once and for all? JFK's murder never will be solved. Sorry! In 100 years they'll still be rehashing it, with ever more complicated and Byzantine conspiracy theories. They still will be arguing about the trajectory of the bullets, the nature of the wounds, and the significance of tiny shapes in grainy snapshots. The argument never can end because we never can know everything about a given moment in time, even one that lasted only about six seconds. We reached this sad conclusion after seeing Oliver Stone's "JFK," a film with roughly as much historical veracity as your average episode of "Lost in Space." It made us wonder: Why is there a seemingly permanent gap between the official history of the assassination and the various unofficial, populist versions? Between the simple lone-nut hypothesis and the foreboding vision of dark, unseen conspirators? Our best guess: Official history (Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone) is based on what we do know, while unofficial history (Kennedy was killed in a conspiracy) is based on what we don't know-on contradictions, ambiguities, mysteries. Evidence is stuff like this: The gun, the bullets, the bullet holes in the clothing, the autopsy photos and X-rays, the eyewitnesses who saw Oswald etc. This evidence indicates that Oswald shot Kennedy. This evidence, in a less sensational murder, probably would send a man to his death in the electric chair. Evidence is not stuff like this: HEY, CHUMP, HOW COME THAT BULLET DID ALL THAT ZIGZAGGING? HUH? HOW COME? That is not evidence. That is a question, wrapped around a mystery, inside an enigma. If you choose to believe in conspiracy theories, you have a wide assortment to choose from. Be judicious. A modest choice would be to believe that Oswald was in someone's hire; there is certainly evidence that people were plotting against Kennedy and there is nothing in the physical evidence of Dealey Plaza to contradict that kind of limited conspiracy. But you are taking a bigger risk to believe, as "JFK" and most conspiracy books have it, that there was another gunman. There is no solid evidence of such a second (or third or fourth) gunman. What there is-and this is the core of most conspiracy theories-is information that's inexplicable. Or suggestive. Stuff that's fishy. Like, the brain disappeared after the autopsy! Doesn't that mean something? Maybe. But while a brain itself is surely evidence, the fact that a brain is missing isn't necessarily evidence of anything. Conspiracy theorists exploit doubt. Like, how could Oswald have fired three shots from a bolt-action rifle in merely 5.6 seconds, the interval between Kennedy's wounds? One possible answer: "Easily." The gun requires about 2.3 seconds between shots. Figure it out. Boom, reload, boom, reload, boom. You need 4.6 seconds. Amazingly, this is still cited as evidence of a conspiracy. Then there's the "single-bullet theory," another doubt-sower. The Warren Commission said there was "persuasive evidence" that a single bullet caused the nonfatal neck wound to Kennedy and the wounds to Gov. John Connally. But the Zapruder film seems to contradict the idea, and Connally says he was hit by a separate shot. What does this mean? Maybe it means that the single-bullet theory is wrong. But the flimsiness of the official theory is not itself evidence of a second gunman. Pony up an actual name, an actual gun, an actual bullet, an actual eyewitness, then we'll talk. You might ask, what about the evidence of a gunshot from the grassy knoll? The fact is, a small minority of the people at Dealey Plaza heard a shot from that location. And, darn the luck, no one saw that gunman fire. No shell casings were found. And if an invisible gunman did manage to fire a bullet from his invisible gun, the bullet remained invisible too-it vanished in thin air. But what do you know, someone who looked a lot like Lee Harvey Oswald was actually seen firing a rifle out a window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Police immediately put out a description of the gunman, and shortly thereafter police officer J.D. Tippit was slain when he stopped a man who matched the specifics. The Tippit killer was seen by six witnesses as he fled into a theater. The police converged and arrested the man-Oswald, who, lo and behold, was an employee of the Texas School Book Depository, and already was being sought for having suddenly disappeared after the shooting. This is the pattern: Sounds and shadows on one side, warm bodies and physical evidence on the other. "Oswald's fingerprint is on the stock of the gun. I like those things. And that's what juries like too, by the way," says Ron Wright, a Fort Lauderdale medical examiner who weighs evidence for a living. The Kennedy murder is fishy through and through: Why was the autopsy botched? Why were there two caskets? Who were the three tramps? Why did that man have an umbrella on a cloudless day? Is that a man with a badge over there on the grassy knoll? Why did a cop honk twice outside Oswald's boardinghouse? Why don't the shadows look right on that photo of Oswald? And so on. Whether you think this adds up to a conspiracy depends on your tolerance for fishiness. But some of us die-hard skeptics don't crave a reality that is neat, clean and odorless. The thing about conspiracy theories is, they can't be disproved. For one thing, the proof that there's no conspiracy is, by definition, a manufactured artifact of the conspiracy itself. For example, "JFK" shows one fiend pressing a rifle against Oswald's dead hand, for a fake palm print. The movie shows another fiend planting the "magic bullet" on a stretcher. Scary stuff! Except both scenes are entirely invented. There is one item of real "evidence" for a second gunman: the acoustic analysis of a policeman's tape recording. A number of experts say it shows, with great probability, that three shots were fired from Oswald's perch and a fourth shot (that missed) from the grassy knoll. From this one piece of evidence, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded in 1979 that Kennedy probably was killed as the result of a conspiracy. But a subsequent panel of experts disagreed with the acoustic analysis. Who's right? Who knows. In the meantime, that's a small nail upon which to hang a multiple-gunman (much less "triangulation of gunfire") scenario. Okay, so what about the Zapruder film? Doesn't it show Kennedy's head violently jerking back and to the left? Yes. But that's merely a layman's idea of evidence. "The concept that a body goes in the direction that a bullet is going is a Hollywood concept," says Michael Baden, who served as chairman of the Forensic Pathology Panel for the House assassinations committee. In fact, it doesn't matter why Kennedy jerked backward: Unmentioned by Stone is that Baden and his colleagues examined the X-rays and autopsy photos and concluded, with one dissent, that Kennedy was shot from the rear. (Ah, but we forget: David Lifton's "Best Evidence" argues that this is because some mysterious person surgically altered the corpse immediately after the assassination.) "The whole thing is silly," says Baden. "When you look at the hard evidence, the scientific evidence, everything fits with Oswald being the lone killer." The silliness of "JFK" is that it is probably 180 degrees wrong. The movie argues that our government (the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Department, the Secret Service, the Pentagon, the Dallas Police Department etc.) is so diabolically brilliant, so brutally efficient, that it could perpetrate an assassination of the president, rearrange evidence and plant a plausible cover story, then cover up the crime for three decades. The truth is that our government is inept, boneheaded and bumbling-and conspires to delude the public into thinking otherwise. The Mailbag: Julia Finkel, a 9-year-old in Silver Spring, asks, "Why isn't W pronounced double-V?" Dear Julia: What you've discovered is an ancient tradition. The letters V and U have a long history of being interchangeable. Go to an old government building, like a post office, and you might see Roman lettering on the facade using a V instead of a U (for example, "JVSTICE"). The "V" in ancient times was multipurpose. It could be used as both a consonant and a vowel. Meanwhile, there was no letter that connoted the "W" sound. In Old English, scribes used two U's side by side. Eventually they ligatured the two letters, and the "double-U" was born. The question, really, is why the Norman scribes of the 11th century then reverted to the Roman letter V instead of U, turning the double-U into a double-V. Probably this was an attempt to be more pompously Romanesque. Just like the people who built those old post offices. The French have the best solution: They call it "double-V." NAMED PERSONS: KENNEDY, JOHN F. DESCRIPTORS: Assassination POPULAR VIDEOS - In the Wake of 'JFK': There Are Videos, Too WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2061229 POPULAR VIDEOS - In the Wake of 'JFK': There Are Videos, Too. The Washington Post, March 01, 1992, FINAL Edition By: Dennis Hunt, Los Angeles Times Section: T.V. TAB, p. y06 Story Type: Review; List Line Count: 88 Word Count: 968 Since director-writer Oliver Stone's "JFK" has become so controversial and popular - grossing more than $50 million so far - video retailers have reported a surge in interest in videos about former President Kennedy and his 1963 assassination. Here's a guide to JFK videos, all available for rent or sale in the $10-$20 range. The assassination videos: -"Who Didn't Kill JFK" (3-G). Fascinating, 50-minute documentary challenging the authenticity of the back-yard photos of Lee Harvey Oswald posing with a rifle. It argues, like Stone's film, that the photos were doctored - without speculating on culprits. -"JFK: The Day the Nation Cried" (VIEW). An often gripping overview of JFK, combining remembrances by people such as Gerald Ford and Coretta King with assassination-related footage shot by a Dallas TV station, covering the period from his arrival in Dallas up to his funeral. -"Reasonable Doubt: The Single Bullet Theory" (Kultur). Compelling hourlong documentary tackles the Warren Commission report, focusing on what facts were overlooked - maybe intentionally. -"Best Evidence: The Research Video" (Rhino). Riveting half-hour video, hosted by David Lipton, takes a medical approach, charging doctoring of medical reports as well as pre-autopsy tampering with Kennedy's body. -"Declassified: The Plot to Kill President Kennedy" (VidAmerica). In one intriguing hour, assembled by former CBS documentary film maker John Sharnik, it builds a strong case, using FBI and CIA files, that the mob orchestrated Kennedy's murder. Arguably the best of the assassination-theory videos. -"Four Days in November" (MGM-UA). David Wolper and Mel Stuart's 1964, two-hour documentary about the assassination and its aftermath is still one of the most thorough, harrowing accounts of that tragedy. Offers revealing glimpses of Oswald and his killer, Jack Ruby. -"The Plot to Kill JFK: Rush to Judgment" (MPI). Based on the book by Mark Lane, this one-hour, 1965 documentary - slow in spots and spellbinding in others - argues that the Warren Commission's probe was more of a cover-up of a conspiracy than an investigation. -"The Two Kennedys" (MPI). A 115-minute documentary contending that the Kennedy brothers were murdered via a conspiracy spearheaded by the likes of the mob and oil barons. Holds your interest but it's not as exciting as its theme and point of view would suggest. -"Marilyn: Say Goodbye to the President" (Key Video). JFK isn't the major focus, but this absorbing, no-holds-barred, 71-minute BBC documentary from 1985 is a must-see. It probes Marilyn Monroe's affairs with John and Bobby Kennedy while charging that those liaisons were shadowed both by the Mafia and Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, a bitter Kennedy enemy. The videos about Kennedy's life and White House years: -"JFK Remembered" (Vestron). An hourlong ABC News documentary, hosted by Peter Jennings, focusing on Kennedy's White House days. Laced with interviews of politicians, historians and friends, it's an informative, balanced analysis of the key political events of his Administration. -"John F. Kennedy: The Commemorative Video Album" (CBS-Fox). This is a made-for-video, 110-minute documentary based on CBS News footage, accentuating the positive. The accounts of Kennedy's presidency and assassination are presented more vividly in other videos but this offers Rose Kennedy reminiscing about her son's boyhood. -"The Life and Times of John F. Kennedy" (Kodak). Narrated by Cliff Robertson, this hour documentary might have been called "Saint John." It's pleasant, folksy fluff - the way friends and family would like JFK remembered. -"Life in Camelot: The Kennedy Years" (HBO). More fluff, this time made in conjunction with Life magazine, making use of its photo archives. The most interesting footage in this one-hour documentary deals with Kennedy in the '50s - particularly his courtship of Jackie and his Senatorial campaign in Massachusetts. -"The Speeches of John F. Kennedy" (MPI). This one-hour sampling of his campaign and presidential speeches - some quite stirring - gives you a good feel for the Kennedy charisma and for his political ideology. -"Thank You, Mr. President" (Worldvision). Narrated by E.G. Marshall, this somewhat enaging, hourlong, 1984 documentary features excerpts from Kennedy press conferences, emphasizing his wit and illuminating his policies. It's valuable because it drums home the point that JFK was the first president to use TV extensively. -"The Kennedys" (MPI). Aided by rare footage, narrator Cliff Robertson presents a thorough, entertaining, 100-minute history of the Kennedy clan, going all the way back to Ireland in the mid-1800s. The fictional dramas: -"Executive Action" (Warner, 1973). This semi-documentary effort, starring Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan, tries to be a thriller but, due to director David Miller's snail pacing, lacks any charge. Co-written by assassination theorist Mark Lane, it blames the murder on rich right-wingers. -"Kennedy: The Presidential Years" (Starmaker Entertainment). This 278-minute, 1983 mini-series features Martin Sheen as JFK and Blair Brown as Jackie. It's both an admirable summary of his presidency and decent drama. Sheen's J.F.K. imitation, however, sometimes borders on parody. -"The Missiles of October" (MPI). Starring William Devane (as JFK) and Martin Sheen (this time playing Bobby), this 1974, 155-minute TV movie is a surprisingly taut dramatization of the 1962 Cuban missle crisis. -"PT 109" (Warner). An excessively long 1963 drama starring Cliff Robertson, it chronicles Kennedy's heroics as a PT boat commander in the Pacific during World War II. Routine war movie with Kennedy portrayed as insufferably noble. -"LBJ: The Early Years" (Fries). Kennedy is just a background figure in this 96-minute account of Lyndon Johnson's life before he became president. Randy Quaid gives one of the best performances of his career as Johnson - who, in the Oliver Stone movie, is mentioned as a possible consipirator. CAPTIONS: John F. Kennedy. NAMED PERSONS: KENNEDY, JOHN F. DESCRIPTORS: Videos 'Ruby': The Likable Loser. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2065346 'Ruby': The Likable Loser. The Washington Post, March 27, 1992, FINAL Edition By: Rita Kempley, Washington Post Staff Writer Section: STYLE, p. b01 Story Type: Review Line Count: 52 Word Count: 572 Though rife with audacious conjecture and titillating improbabilities, "Ruby" is far from a clone of "JFK." A wonderfully gossipy biography, it portrays the killer of Lee Harvey Oswald as a has-been Mafia henchman looking for a way back into the godfather's good graces. It is a curiously warmhearted portrait of Jack Ruby as romantic chump, dog-lover and struggling businessman. That's not to say that "Ruby's" makers don't have their own rather wacky theory on who killed Kennedy. The way writer Stephen Davis adds up the clues-factual and speculative-the CIA conspired with the Mafia against Kennedy, who was out to dismantle both organizations. He theorizes that Ruby, a bit player with more connections than good sense-simply became a pawn of the spooks and the Sicilians by meddling in their dealings. Once a foot soldier in the Chicago mob, Ruby has fallen out of favor when an up-and-coming capo solicits his help in smuggling mobster Santos Alicante (Marc Lawrence) out of one of Fidel Castro's prison camps. After successfully completing the mission, Ruby seems to be in favor with the Cosa Nostra once again, but he is just smart enough to know he's gotten himself into a terrible trap. Danny Aiello plays Ruby as a highly sympathetic underdog-a Rodney Dangerfield character who gets no respect from the mob dons, the owner of a strip joint who faces unfair competition from the bigger burlesque club down the street. He's tough enough to shoot a man between the eyes, but he still sees himself as a peashooter in a gallery full of high-powered guns. Then he gains a cheerleader in young stripper Candy Cane (Sherilyn Fenn), a pert blonde running from a bad marriage who becomes a headliner at his Carousel Club. An ambitious kid from Rising Star, Tex., Candy persuades Jack to take her with him to Havana-"Nothing like a fresh broad on your arm to make you look nice," she says-where she is a hit with Santos, who later tries to use her to access the Kennedy bedroom. But Candy is made of stern Texas stuff. Drawn from a composite of Ruby's acquaintances, she's tough as an armadillo and she isn't about to be used by anybody. Like her friend Ruby, the girl's got a strongly defined sense of right and wrong-even if it's not exactly a biblical one. The love story, a sweetly platonic one, not only spruces up the scene, but also gives Jack a chivalrous side that jibes with his transformation into a sort of good guy. Aiello and Fenn, who play off each other as comfortably as a father-daughter sitcom team, are surrounded by a fine furtive lot of supporting players. Most notable are Arliss Howard as a maniacally threatening CIA operative and Tobin Bell as the menacing David Ferrie, an anti-Cuban-connected mobster who was ludicrously portrayed by Joe Pesci in "JFK." "Ruby" is in general far less hysterical than Oliver Stone's drama, perhaps because it was made by Englishmen. Davis's screenplay, which he adapted from his stage play "Love Field," is directed by John Mackenzie, who did the 1980 gangster drama "The Long Good Friday." Mackenzie steers an easy course through the melodramatic plot machinations, which had the potential to be as convoluted as the Warren Commission's magic-bullet theory. In any case, you don't have to believe in the scheme to enjoy this powerful character study cum murder mystery, just as you don't have to believe horoscopes to read them. Ruby, at area theaters, is rated R for strong language, violence and adult situations. CAPTIONS: Danny Aiello as Jack Ruby firing the fatal shot at Lee Harvey Oswald. ORGANIZATION NAME: RUBY DESCRIPTORS: Films LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - Privacy and the JFK Files. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2084684 LETTERS TO THE EDITOR - Privacy and the JFK Files. The Washington Post, July 27, 1992, FINAL Edition Section: EDITIORIAL, p. a16 Story Type: Letter Line Count: 49 Word Count: 542 In the July 22 editorial "The JFK Assassination Files," The Post offerred a provocative interpretation of legislation that would accelerate the review, declassification and release of documents relating to President Kennedy's assassination. The Post asserted that most of the materials in question are to be found in several presidential libraries. In fact, most are agency records and files created by House and Senate investigators. Within the libraries, the materials range from the official records of the Rockefeller Commission on the Central Intelligence Agency to the routine personal papers of many associates of presidents Kennedy and Johnson, to the diaries and reflections of those most affected by President Kennedy's assassination. Most of these records are already open for research or will be in time. The key question is how and under what circumstances. The records of the Rockefeller Commission are not the issue. The status of those records has been discussed at length, and the records have been made available time and again for official inquiries and will be made available again. The focus of the amendment and much of the public's attention is the small amount of personal materials housed in the libraries and still under restrictions requested by the donors and agreed to by the government. These small collections contain the personal observations and recollections of those close to the events or close to the individuals involved. We at the Archives have testified that many of these materials have been opened to government inquiries, and I have pledged full support and assistance in working with donors on this latest effort. Disclosure to ensure the public that there are no "secrets" is a laudable goal. But this goal must be balanced against the privacy rights of the donors and the long-term impact on historical sources. These materials would never have been recorded or transferred to the Archives' custody if the authors felt that Congress or another authority could throw them open to public scrutiny without some level of donor control. The purpose of the amendment exempting donor materials is not to protect "secrets" but to protect rights. Those who would legislate away the privacy rights of donors are in the curious position of arguing that government can only win the trust of the public by betraying the trust of individual donors. America's presidential libraries were created to preserve the historical record for scholars and to share that record in time with the American public. Every presidential library boasts rich veins of primary material, much of it given with the understanding that reasonable time restrictions would apply, if only so that nothing in the documents could be used to embarrass living persons. If Congress abrogates lawful agreements, it will not only empty the vaults of future libraries, it will risk the destruction of confidential or revealing accounts of history in the making. While instant release might provide a field day for tabloid journalism, it would be a severe loss for history. As archivist of the United States, it is my job to safeguard America's documentary heritage. Perhaps, just for once, the cynics and conspiracy theorists could accept the stated reason for the amendment because it is the right thing to do. DON W. WILSON Archivist of the United States Washington THE FEDERAL PAGE - JFK Records Bill Runs Into Logjam On Capi WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2093785 THE FEDERAL PAGE - JFK Records Bill Runs Into Logjam On Capitol Hill. The Washington Post, September 22, 1992, FINAL Edition By: George Lardner Jr., Washington Post Staff Writer Section: A SECTION, p. a19 Story Type: News National Line Count: 41 Word Count: 459 The JFK records bill, warmly embraced by Democrats and Republicans alike, is in trouble on Capitol Hill. The Senate passed it on July 27. The House passed another version on Aug. 12. But so far, as one House staffer put it yesterday, "all you have is two bills passing each other in the night." With less than two weeks to go before a scheduled adjournment, conferees have not even been appointed to discuss the differences. The jockeying has been so complicated that the House bill was not formally sent over to the Senate until late yesterday afternoon. The logjam, however, may have been broken yesterday when House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jack Brooks (D-Tex.) indicated in a statement that he might relent on the key issue. He said he was "committed to seeing a bill enacted into law before the end of this Congress." Both measures would require disclosure of government records concerning the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but they have become embroiled in the ongoing dispute over the independent counsel law, due to expire this year unless Congress renews it. The big difference in the bills is in the method of appointing a five-member review board to preside over the release of the documents. The House, taking its cue from Brooks, has called for the appointments to be made by the judges of the special, three-member court that names independent counsels in criminal cases involving high government officials. The Bush administration contends such an approach could be unconstitutional and the Justice Department has indicated it might recommend a veto if Congress insists on it. The Senate measure provides for presidential appointment and Senate confirmation of review board members. The Justice Department has said it would recommend that President Bush sign this bill. Brooks has strongly favored judicial appointment of review board members, arguing that they are the kind of "inferior officers" the Supreme Court had in mind when it upheld the independent counsel law four years ago. Brooks said the House bill was aimed at lifting "the cloud cast over" the Warren Commission by setting up a review panel free of "any possible political taint." On the other side of the fence, congressional staffers say, is Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who reportedly is concerned about getting the independent counsel law renewed. Levin is chairman of the Senate subcommittee in charge of the law. Brooks said the president and Senate "seem intent on replicating" a system of appointment that ultimately led to demands for the bill, but added that "the method of appointment should not by itself hold up this most important piece of legislation." Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), a key author of the Senate-passed bill, said he hoped that given the short congressional schedule Brooks would agree to it without a Senate-House conference. NAMED PERSONS: BROOKS, JACK; KENNEDY, JOHN F.; LEVIN, CARL ORGANIZATION NAME: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT DESCRIPTORS: Classified documents; Assassination; U.S. Senate; House of Representatives; State government; Records management THE FEDERAL PAGE - Bill to Release JFK Files Moves to White WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2095289 THE FEDERAL PAGE - Bill to Release JFK Files Moves to White House. The Washington Post, October 01, 1992, FINAL Edition By: George Lardner Jr., Washington Post Staff Writer Section: A SECTION, p. a25 Story Type: News National Line Count: 49 Word Count: 546 The House passed a comprehensive JFK records bill yesterday, calling for the disclosure of virtually all the government's files on President John F. Kennedy's assassination and setting up a review board to track them down. The measure, drafted and passed in the Senate in August, now goes to the White House. The Justice Department has said it would recommend that President Bush sign it. The records, many still secret, are held by Congress, federal agencies and presidential libraries and include everything from CIA and FBI reports to newspaper clippings and tax returns. Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Tex.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, rescued the bill from death-by-adjournment by accepting the Senate version and dropping his demand that the board be appointed by a special panel of federal judges rather than by the president. Brooks contended that his approach, approved by the House in August, would have been preferable to the Senate-backed measure calling for appointment by the president and confirmation by the Senate. Brooks said he took the step "with some misgivings" but was committed above all to enactment of a bill in this Congress. Senate Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman John Glenn (D-Ohio), a key author of the Senate measure, said the records would be released with little bureaucratic delay. Even before the review board is appointed, affected agencies would be required to start identifying and organizing all their records pertaining to the JFK assassination. Those records that could be made public immediately would be transmitted to a National Archives special collection that would be set up 60 days after the bill became law. Documents that seem to qualify for "postponement" would be sent to the review board for a decision. Its decisions would be final for congressional records and reversible only by the president for executive branch records. "Postponements" in the release of certain records would be granted only when, for example, disclosure would identify "an intelligence agent whose identity currently requires protection" or confidential sources who would face "substantial risk of harm" if their identities were made public. It is expected that the board would need three years to complete its work. It would have the power to direct certain agencies to search for additional records or information, and if necessary, investigate the facts of that information. The board also would have the power to subpoena private parties, conduct hearings and require any government agency "to account in writing for the destruction" of any JFK assassination records. The measure orders the archivist of the United States to grant public-interest fee waivers for copies of the records. The JFK records bill, expected to cost $4.5 million a year, was introduced in March by Senate intelligence committee Chairman David L. Boren (D-Okla.) and Rep. Louis Stokes (D-Ohio), former chairman of the House Assassinations Committee, in response to the renewed controversy sparked by Oliver Stone's film "JFK" and its charges of government conspiracy and coverup regarding the assassination. Glenn tightened the measure to give the review board more authority and to provide for a systematic disclosure process. CAPTIONS: Two soldiers pause near the tomb of John F. Kennedy after placing flags on graves at Arlington National Cemetery for a past Memorial Day observance. NAMED PERSONS: KENNEDY, JOHN F.; BROOKS, JACK; GLENN, JOHN; BOREN, DAVID L. ; STOKES, LOUIS ORGANIZATION NAME: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT DESCRIPTORS: Classified documents; U.S. president; Time and History; House of Representatives; Assassination; Documents The Crowd on the Grassy Knoll The JFK Assassination: Risin WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2104456 The Crowd on the Grassy Knoll The JFK Assassination: Rising Stakes in the Contest of Confession and Conspiracy. The Washington Post, November 22, 1992, FINAL Edition By: Charles Paul Freund Section: OUTLOOK, p. c01 Story Type: News National; Analysis Line Count: 157 Word Count: 1734 THE MAN who shot Kennedy in Dallas 29 years ago today was a Frenchman who, during the Algerian war, was part of the fascist OAS; he may also have tried to shoot Charles de Gaulle. Another man who shot JFK that day was later discovered by his parents to have been a Dallas assassin; he then killed them too. A third man who shot Kennedy in Dealey Plaza was a Secret Service agent in the motorcade behind the president. The fourth and fifth men who killed JFK resemble remarkably men who were later to participate in the Watergate burglary. A sixth man who shot the president was a Dallas cop; his own son has implicated him. A seventh man was a Dallas Lincoln-Mercury salesman. An eighth man, a Mob hit man, once confessed to police to killing JFK. There are many others who shot Kennedy, among them Lee Harvey Oswald, who pulled the trigger in response to impulses set off in his brain by a device implanted there during a hospital stay in Minsk. They all shot JFK, according to one book or another speculating on the apparent mysteries of Dealey Plaza. This past year has seen a huge boom in such works, a fusillade of theories, solutions and scenarios: Several of the purported gunmen described above have been presented to the general public for the first time this year, and many older theories have been updated (or at least repackaged) and put back in print, or otherwise rehashed. It has been one of the biggest years in assassinology in a long time. The reason, of course, is the influence of Oliver Stone's movie, "JFK." Stone's extremely controversial film sparked huge interest, with possibly beneficial results. Several people have come forward with tales of inside knowledge that may help eventually to resolve questions about the case. Even the government's files on the shooting will, by an act of Congress, be opened. But judging from the enormous amount of material that has appeared in its wake, Stone's movie has done much more than reawaken interest in the murder; it has rearranged the landscape of public speculation. Kennedy conspiracism, a field with its own history, has entered yet another phase. For one thing, Stone's revisionist movie has improved the reputation of the just deceased Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney portrayed by Kevin Costner. Prior to the film, Garrison was widely reviled by Warren Report critics who believed that his grotesque investigation had set back efforts to ascertain the truth. Some thought Garrison was dishonest, protecting New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, whom some believe was instrumental in the assassination. Ironically, the success of Stone's film may have prompted former Mafia lawyer Frank Ragano to tell his story in a "Frontline" documentary last week, in which he said that Marcello had had Garrison in his pocket. Others wondered if Garrison himself was an agent of the conspiracy. However, such "agent-baiting," in which critics accuse each other of being part of the continuing conspiracy, has long plagued the Kennedy underground. Another, more recent target is Mark Lane, the author of the newly reissued "Rush to Judgment." Years ago, Lane made a documentary featuring Dealey Plaza witnesses whose recollections were at variance with the Warren Report. Many of these witnesses later died under what are said to be suspicious circumstances. A rival critic named John Judge has lately been suggesting in lectures that Lane's movie set up these witnesses. In any event, Garrison and his role in the investigation have now been Costner-ized and it is news to the Stone-inspired buffs that Garrison was ever controversial. A new essay critical of the D.A. by David Lifton appears as a forward in a new book by one of Oswald's Marine buddies, Kerry Thornley, who likes to speculate about whether Oswald and he were products of a Nazi breeding experiment. Anyway, Lifton's essay about the Garrison-Thornley relationship has been called "sobering" in the current issue of the conspiracy tabloid/catalogue, Flatland. At another level, interest awakened in the last year has helped to raise the stakes in the mass-market literature. It is no longer enough, for example, to sift through the evidence and weigh it against the Warren Commission's conclusions. Such books still appear, of course: "The People vs. Lee Harvey Oswald," a sort of novel by Walt Brown, is a newly released account of the trial Oswald never had. But it's a throwback; Oswald trials were on TV 20 years ago. The last time there was a general reconsideration of the shooting was 1988, the 25th anniversary. It was still fairly daring then for critics to attempt an identification of alternative assassins. Now, to stay at the cutting edge, you should either offer a solution to the crime, identify the triggermen, or confess your own role in the plot. At least six new and reissued books do just that (see adjoining story.) The mental landscape of the Dealey Plaza inferno has long featured the following circles: at the center, those who accept the Warren Report's conclusions that Oswald acted alone; beyond them, skeptics troubled by the so-called "magic-bullet" thesis, the unlikely Kennedy head snap, the never-produced notes of Oswald's interrogation, etc., but who don't accept any alternative conspiratorial explanation; beyond these, those who believe that the murder was an act of hatred or revenge perpetrated by the Mafia, anti-Castro Cubans, rogue CIA elements or wealthy American fascists (or a combination of these), or by Castro or the Soviets; farther out, those who believe that the murder was a political act, a coup d'etat. Beyond all these lies an outland of assassination gnosticism that deals in interchangeable identities, hypnotics, historical mysticism, ambiguous intelligence-agency realities, robotics and genetic engineering. Back in 1988, much of the focus was on the revenge thesis, especially the Mafia-hit argument that had been endorsed, more or less, a decade earlier by the House assassinations committee. The Mafia theory was, as journalist Ron Rosenbaum once observed, a way out of the assassination: It offered many answers, especially why no one ever talked. Stone's movie, by ultimately focusing on Donald Sutherland's extended and ambiguous coup d'etat lecture, has retrained the spotlight in a more problematic direction. The result is that the coup d'etat thesis has been extended by more authors to explain subsequent history. A number of authors, for example, link escalation of the Vietnam war with the assassination (Kennedy's intentions are the subject of continuing debate). And, it is becoming common to find references amid the new literature to the "Coup of '63," to the fact that They Took Camelot Away From Us, to the idea that history, if not an outright plot, is planned. This view, subscribed to by an increasing number of conspiracist authors, has become sufficiently widespread that leftist columnist Andrew Cockburn has decried it in the Nation magazine as the latest outburst of what Lenin dismissed as "infantile Leftism." A new example of the extension of the assination appears in Dick Russell's "The Man Who Knew Too Much." The book carries a blurb from Stone ("(A)nother turn to the light in the unfolding labyrinth of clues to the murder at the heart of the American century.") and acknowledges among its many inspirers not only Stone, but also jailed Native American activist "Leonard Peltier and others like him, whose human rights have been assassinated by the same forces that took the life of the thirty-fifth president." The link between injustice to Native Americans and the "forces" behind the JFK shooting locates the conspirators under an unexpected bed. When right-wingers attributed everything they saw as evil to the same set of powerful, secret conspirators, when they suggested that Dwight Eisenhower and Chief Justice Warren were serving communism, they were widely derogated and dismissed as kooks. The kind of fevered conspiracism that Stone's film has helped into the mainstream appears, on the other hand, to be politically correct. The two conspiracisms share not only a pillorying of Earl Warren as a tool of mirror-image conspiracies. Each may also have been encouraged by Time-Life, now Time Warner. Time-Life, when it had the Abraham Zapruder film locked away in its vault, printed misleading descriptions in Life magazine about what that film showed: One issue of Life, for example, featuring a Zapruder frame blow-up of the head snap, was recalled and replaced with an issue featuring a different frame blow-up. The substitution has never been explained. Today, Time Warner, which underwrote Stone's movie, is marketing "JFK" to schools, complete with a study guide. Indeed, the assassination has now become a bizarre throughway between right-wing and left-wing conspiracism. Mark Lane traversed it when he defended Liberty Lobby against Howard Hunt. Liberty Lobby's newspaper, The Spotlight, has a history of printing articles suggesting that blacks are an inferior race, and that the Holocaust never happened. It ran an article suggesting that Hunt was in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. Hunt sued sucessfully, but Lane-who is not known to subscribe to Liberty Lobby's views on other matters-defended the organization in a second trial, pled truth and won. Lane too has a new book about the assassination. Stone doesn't subscribe to Liberty Lobby's views either, but he took "JFK" along the same route. His connection to the right was Fletcher Prouty, whose scenario for the assassination is delineated in Donald Sutherland's long and soliloquy; Sutherland's "Mr. X" character, in fact, is Prouty. Prouty, a former chief of the Pentagon's spcial operations office, had long expounded his view that a "Secret Team" was shaping American history to its own ends. His theoretical work appeared frequently in Gallery, a magazine whose central feature is Polaroids of its readers' undressed girlfriends. Prouty's insights into 20th century history may or may not be judged by his presence on Liberty Lobby's board. His view of whether there was a Holocaust was quoted in Esquire last year: "I'm not an expert on that," he said. Stone recently told Cineaste, a leftist film magazine, that he doesn't agree with everything Prouty says, and that he didn't use Prouty's name in the film because Prouty didn't want to be known. But Prouty's changed his mind. He too has a new book out: "JFK," it's called, "by L. Fletcher Prouty, whose theories inspired the movie 'JFK,' with an introduction by Oliver Stone." "A Machiavellian viper pit from which you will never quite return the way you left," Stone says of the book. "A look into the way the world really works." Charles Paul Freund writes frequently for Outlook NAMED PERSONS: FREUND, CHARLES PAUL; KENNEDY, JOHN F.; OSWALD, LEE HARVEY; STONE, OLIVER ORGANIZATION NAME: JFK DESCRIPTORS: Assassination; U.S. president; Conspiracy; Criminal investigation; Books All the President's Triggermen. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2104462 All the President's Triggermen. The Washington Post, November 22, 1992, FINAL Edition By: Charles Paul Freund Section: OUTLOOK, p. c04 Story Type: News National; Analysis Line Count: 76 Word Count: 845 THE WARREN Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone to shoot JFK. Edward Epstein suggests in "Legend" that Oswald might have been a KGB agent out of control. Michael Eddowes argued in "The Oswald File" that the Oswald who returned from Minsk was a Soviet changeling and had the Oswald body exhumed to try to prove it. Lincoln Lawrence claimed in "Were We Controlled?" that Oswald had been robotized in Minsk with a device implanted in his brain, that Jack Ruby had been hynotized and that somebody made a lot of money that day on Wall Street. In 1967, a Puerto Rican named Luis Castillo was arrested in the Phillipines for trying to shoot Marcos; while hypnotized, he blurted out that he had been a programmed assassin in Dallas. In 1980, Charles Harrelson (father of actor Woody) shot a Texas judge. During a standoff with police, Harrelson, high on cocaine, said he'd shot JFK. Often interviewed, he most recently claimed he was in Houston that day. Harrelson, said to be a mob hit man, is thought by several authors to be one of the famous "tramps" arrested and photographed after the shooting. In 1985, ex-con Robert Easterling told author Henry Hurt that he shot JFK for Castro. In 1965, the parents of Charles Rogers were found dismembered and stuffed into their refrigerator. John R. Craig and Phil A. Rogers argue in "The Man on the Grassy Knoll" (a new book) that Charles Rogers was a CIA agent, that he and Harrelson shot JFK together from the Grassy Knoll, that they and Chauncey Holt are the tramps and that Rogers murdered his parents when his mother deduced he'd killed JFK. (Two men, Chaucey Holt and Harold Doyle, have said this year that they are in the tramp photos. Holt says he was with Harrelson; Doyle says that he and two other men were not involved in the shooting.) Alan J. Weberman and Michael Canfield argue in "Coup d'Etat in America" (updated and reissued) that the tramps were the triggermen and that two of them look like Watergate burglars Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis; the third one is a CIA man called "Carswell." They offer acetate photo overlays to try to prove their point. Jim Marrs wrote in "Crossfire" that the case of Jack Lawrence "deserves serious study." Lawrence, a recently hired Dallas car salesman, showed up for work on Nov. 22 after the shooting, muddy, pale and sweating, and promptly vomited; his car was found behind the Grassy Knoll. Turned in by co-workers, Lawrence, said to have been an Air Force expert marksman, left town after being released by police. Geneva White, a former Ruby stripper, said before she died in 1990 that her late husband Roscoe, a Dallas cop in '63, had once been a hit man, and that he and Ruby discussed killing JFK. Ricky White, their son, said last year that he'd found his father's diary, which contained evidence that the CIA had ordered Roscoe to shoot JFK; he was unable to produce the diary. In 1975, Hugh C. McDonald wrote in "Appointment in Dallas" (reissued) that a European assassin named Saul told him he'd shot JFK from the second floor of the Dallas County Records building while on contract for a private group. In 1977, Soviet journalist Mikhail Lebedev deduced that the head shot was fired by a gunman code-named "Zed" working for fascists. Steve Rivele concluded that the gunmen were three French Corsican mobsters led by Lucien Sarti, who shot from the Grassy Knoll wearing a cop's uniform. Robert Morrow, a contract CIA man, writes in "First Hand Knowledge" (a new book that is a rewrite of his 1976 work, "Betrayal") that he bought three rifles used in the shooting from Sunny's Surplus in Baltimore. David Ferrie planned the assassination and Clay Shaw was involved. Morrow says one team of assassins was led by a French gunman named John Michael Mertz. Gary Shaw says CIA records indicate that French gunman Jean Souetre was in Dallas on Nov. 22, and was expelled from the country the day after. The FBI says that was another Frenchman named Michel Roux. Souetre used "Roux" as an alias, notes Anthony Summers in "Conspiracy," though Roux is also a real person. Souetre said in 1983 that the man in Dallas was Mertz, using Souetre's name. In "The Man Who Knew Too Much," (a new work) Dick Russell writes about Richard Case Nagell, who says he was a double agent given a mission, perhaps by the KGB, to stop Oswald. Russell's book is "The Magus" of JFK literature, with Nagell operating in a world of shifting identities. Russell also writes of the Souetre-Roux-Mertz connection, noting the role of Mertz (or whoever) in the Corsican mafia. Souetre has his own card in Paul Brancato's deck of "Coup d'Etat" assassination trading cards. Bonar Meninger's "Mortal Error" (released this year) describes the theory of firearm's expert Howard Donahue: Trajectory and ballistic factors prove that the head shot was fired from the car behind JFK. Donahue says that a Secret Service agent grabbed a firearm on hearing shots, tried to stand, but fell and squeezed off the round. In films and photos, a man is seen waving an umbrella as JFK is shot. Robert Cutler argues that Umbrella Man shot JFK with an umbrella-borne biodegradable dart. In 1978, Louis Steven Witt said he'd been the Umbrella Man and had waved it to heckle JFK. NAMED PERSONS: OSWALD, LEE HARVEY; KENNEDY, JOHN F. DESCRIPTORS: Assassination; U.S. president; Conspiracy; Criminal investigation The Video Monitor - 'JFK': The 17 Lost Minutes. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2108297 The Video Monitor - 'JFK': The 17 Lost Minutes. The Washington Post, December 17, 1992, FINAL Edition By: Tom Spain, Special to The Washington Post Section: STYLE, p. d07 Story Type: Column Line Count: 61 Word Count: 671 Call it revisionist revisionism. This time last year, Oliver Stone's "JFK" occasioned a fresh look at decades' worth of conspiracy theories on the John F. Kennedy assassination that dominated bestseller lists, newsstands and multiplexes for months. Now we can get a fresh look at Stone's fresh look when Warner Home Video releases the "director's cut" of "JFK" next month. Included in Stone's latest version of the story are 17 minutes of footage not included in the film's initial theatrical and home video releases. Billing the scenes depicted in the restored footage as "thought-provoking speculation," Warner has taken the unusual step of detailing several of the film's new sequences, which include dramatizations of such conspiracy-theory standbys as mysterious sightings (Lee Harvey Oswald with alleged conspirators David Ferrie and Clay Shaw; a "second Oswald" shopping for cars in Dallas at the time of the crime), attempted character assassination (an airport men's room setup designed to frame Jim Garrison as a homosexual) and information suppression (a popular late-night talk-show host rebuffing Garrison's attempt to show provocative evidence on the air). "JFK: The Director's Cut" is due in stores on Inauguration Day priced at $24.98. On the same day, Warner will also release "Beyond JFK: The Question of Conspiracy," a new 90-minute documentary by Danny Schechter and Barbara Kopple (the latter an Academy Award winner for "Harlan County, USA" and "American Dream"). In addition to interviews with a pair of grassy knoll witnesses, a woman who claims to have been LBJ's mistress, and Jim Garrison in his last known interview, "Beyond Conspiracy" also presents the clip from a 1969 Walter Cronkite interview of Lyndon Johnson in which the former president acknowledges the possibility of a conspiracy in JFK's death-a quote that Cronkite claims was excised from the broadcast at LBJ's behest. "Beyond Conspiracy" is priced at $19.98; a three-tape gift set, with both the documentary and the two-tape "JFK," is priced at $39.98. Horde of Directors The "director's cut" phenomenon-which allows Hollywood's top directors the occasional opportunity to revisit and fine-tune their films after the initial release-is one way the home video industry has sought to win the support of directors, who have tended to complain about video's penchant for shrinking, slicing and colorizing their images. The folks at MGM/UA have come up with another way of honoring directors-at least those from overseas. Next month brings the second installment in MGM/UA's "International Directors Collection," which brings foreign-language films from some of the world's finest directors to the home video audience for the first time. Among the eight films making their video debuts next month are four from Ingmar Bergman (1969's "The Passion of Anna," 1966's "Persona" and 1968's "Hour of the Wolf" and "The Shama"), two from Francois Truffaut (1977's "The Man Who Loved Women" and 1978's "The Green Room"), as well as Diane Kurys's "Entre Nous" (1983) and Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's "Kaos" (1986). All are presented in their original languages with English subtitles, and are priced (with the exception of the $29.98 double-cassette "Kaos") at $19.98 each. Di-Vision The subject of no fewer than three recent best-selling books and countless current magazine cover stories is about to be served up as a double dose of home video as well. Diana, queen of the newsstands, is the focus of a pair of 50-minute home video profiles on their way next month. "Diana: A Portrait" focuses on the private life and marital problems of the princess of Wales and includes an interview with biographer Andrew Morton, whose No. 1 blockbuster "Diana: Her True Story" is regarded as the definitive Diana book (this year at least). "Diana: A Model Princess" looks at the public Diana-the royal trips, state functions and official visits-as well as her life before she moved into the palace and the ensuing image transformation. Produced this year for British television and never before seen in the United States, the tapes come from Pacific Arts Video and are priced at $14.95 each. ORGANIZATION NAME: JFK DESCRIPTORS: Videos What the Mob Knew About JFK's Murder The Death of R WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2123626 What the Mob Knew About JFK's Murder The Death of Racketeer Carlos Marcello Raises Important Old Questions. The Washington Post, March 14, 1993, FINAL Edition By: Ronald Goldfarb Section: OUTLOOK, p. c01 Story Type: Features Line Count: 198 Word Count: 2183 IT WAS ODD to read the brief obituary on March 2 and to see that old man's face and eerie stare. What a sad irony, I thought, that in the same year America will mourn the 30th anniversary of the murder of President Kennedy and the 25th anniversary of the death of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, Carlos Marcello died at home of natural causes at the age of 83. Though there is reputable suspicion that the long-time Louisiana mob boss helped mastermind the JFK assassination, he has finally eluded his legions of persistent investigators. His death should not, however, close the file on the mob and JFK's murder. The link between Marcello and the murder of John F. Kennedy is based on much more than idle speculation. Robert Kennedy's chief and abiding interest as attorney general was organized crime. As soon as he took office, he sought legislation and resources to wage an unprecedented legal war on racketeers. He set up a special organized crime section in the criminal division and recruited an elite staff of lawyers to fight the battle. As part of our strategy, we developed a list of the top 40 racketeers (a list that grew considerably over the years), and each of us was assigned responsibility for a person or area of the country. If not the Mafia boss, Marcello certainly was one of the top bosses. John Diuguid, a young member of our new group, was assigned several Southeastern states, including Louisiana. At one of our first regular morning meetings, Kennedy questioned Diuguid about the status of the Marcello investigations and his long-pending deportation case. Carlos Marcello was born Cologers Minacore in 1910 in Tunis, Tunisia, of Italian parents. They brought him to the United States when he was a baby but he never obtained U.S. citizenship. Marcello's career in New Orleans included numerous arrests, convictions, reversals and some jail time as he rose to the influential leadership of the local Mafia branch. When called before the Kefauver and McClellan committees investigating organized crime, Marcello cited the Fifth Amendment and kept his silence. Marcello liked to describe himself as a $1,600-a-month tomato salesman who had done well with land investments. The New Orleans Crime Commission reported that under Marcello's direction the local Mafia made over $1.1 billion annually from gambling, prostitution, burglaries and various legitimate businesses. Despite his criminal record, the FBI in New Orleans had left Marcello alone, reporting that he was not involved in organized crime, and that he was "too smart" to allow himself to be wiretapped. The Kennedy Justice Department was not the first to target Marcello. The U.S. government had been trying to deport him as an undesirable alien since 1952 because of a conviction for a drug violation. Italy eventually agreed to admit him, but Marcello arranged to get phony proof of citizenship in Guatemala. A Marcello intermediary, Carl Noll, negotiated a deal with a local fixer to enter Marcello's birth in the ledger of a small Guatemalan village. This information was tracked down in Guatemala by Diuguid, who recalls that he was followed by Marcello associate David Ferrie. In 1956, Marcello filed a lawsuit in the Italian courts to establish that he was not an Italian citizen. When we sought to deport Marcello to Guatemala, his immigration lawyer filed suit to enjoin his deportation, claiming Marcello knew nothing of the forged birth certificate. Indeed, Guatemala was a country, Marcello now said, whose language and customs were strange to him; the United States government must have forged his birth certificate. If Marcello was going to be tough and ingenious, Kennedy would be the same. In 1961, Kennedy moved to deport Marcello as a Guatemalan-a decision carried out in a highly questionable manner. On April 4, 1961, Marcello was arrested, handcuffed, whisked away to the New Orleans airport, not allowed to call anyone, and flown to Guatemala City on a government plane. He had been shanghaied-denied notice or hearing. Within two months, Marcello worked and paid his way back to the United States through Central America; he said it cost him more in Guatemalan payoffs than he ever paid in the United States. In an act of high chutzpah, the INS brought an illegal entry case against him. That case was eventually dropped. In October 1961, after Marcello had returned to the United States, he and his brother Joseph were indicted in the federal court in Louisiana for perjury and for conspiring to defraud the INS. In a plea-bargain arrangement, the government had gotten Noll to testify about his work obtaining the false Guatemalan birth certificate. In effect, Marcello had defrauded three governments-Italy, Guatemala and the United States-by creating the phony document, relying on it and disclaiming it to suit his purposes, in different courts at different times. Marcello's base of operations was a room in the Town and Country Motel in Jefferson Parish, outside New Orleans. When an informant told government agents that Marcello had hired him to kill a witness in our pending INS case, investigators wired the now-immunized witness and sent him back to the motel. What was overheard were conversations that there was a "contract" out on a prosecution witness. During Marcello's trial, his associate David Ferrie was often in the courtroom. He is the same David Ferrie who shadowed Diuguid in Guatelmala and that New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison later charged had been involved in the events leading up to the Kennedy assassination. On Nov. 22, 1963, the day Marcello was acquitted and Kennedy was killed, Ferrie and two unidentified friends drove 400 miles to Houston, Texas, supposedly on a hunting trip. Ferrie (a memorable character in Oliver Stone's "JFK") died in February 1967. The INS trial indicated Marcello's capacity for mischief. Diuguid and his government team began receiving reports that several jurors were fixed. Eventually they got proof that tied payoffs to Marcello, right down to pictures of four jurors cashing checks traceable to Marcello. The four bribed jurors were given immunity and testified, admitting they received the bribes. The trial judge refused a second time to take extra precautions to protect the next round of trial jurors from being influenced in the jury-fixing case that followed. Marcello was acquitted again. In the end, Marcello fell in the flukiest way-he threw a punch at an FBI agent who had made a provocative personal remark. Marcello ended up serving six months for assaulting a federal officer. In 1981, Marcello was convicted in California of a racketeering conspiracy to bribe a federal judge. In 1982 he was convicted in Louisiana for mail fraud. The Supreme Court threw out the latter conviction, but he did serve time for the RICO case. Our efforts with Marcello demonstrated both the elusiveness and power of our quarry-and Kennedy's persistence and commitment to fight hard. There is no question Marcello hated Robert Kennedy. At a September 1962 meeting at Marcello's farm, he blurted a Sicilian curse of revenge at Kennedy; translated it meant, "Get that stone out of my shoe." According to one account of that meeting, Marcello raged: "Don't worry about that little Bobby son of a bitch. He's going to be taken care of." Hyperbole or threat? In 1979 the House Select Committee on Assassinations disagreed with the Warren Commission's official history and concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had not acted alone. The Committee report could not prove who had participated in the assassination, but stated that Marcello, along with Tampa mobster Santos Trafficante and Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa, "had the motive, means and opportunity to plan and execute a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy." Of course they did: Multiple indictments resulting from years of concentrated investigations were pending against Hoffa and Marcello. Trafficante was enraged that his wife had just been subpoenaed to a federal grand jury in Florida. Many others hated Robert Kennedy for similar reasons. Until last year, however, there was no new credible evidence to support the committee's thesis. Then last summer, Frank Ragano, a long-time lawyer for Trafficante and Hoffa, told Jack Newfield of the New York Post and PBS's "Frontline" of conversations between his two notorious clients and Marcello that gave credence to the committee's speculation. According to Ragano, now 70, Hoffa and Trafficante conspired with Marcello to kill the president. He had discussions with Hoffa in 1963 in which Hoffa indicated before the fact that he would like to have Kennedy killed. "This has to be done," Hoffa railed to Ragano. Ragano, Newfield reported, told Trafficante and Marcello that Hoffa wanted Kennedy killed ("I want him dead") and says they thought it was an acceptable idea. In November 1963, Ragano celebrated with Trafficante, who toasted the news that Kennedy was dead: "Our problems are over. I hope Jimmy is happy now," he remembers Trafficante saying. According to Ragano, Hoffa was delighted. "Have you heard the good news?" he quotes Hoffa saying. "They got the S.O.B." A few weeks later, Marcello told Ragano, "Jimmy owes me, and he owes me big." Years later, in 1987, in a deathbed conversation, Trafficante told Ragano that the mob got rid of Hoffa, and that "Carlos (expletive) up. We should've killed Bobby, not Giovanni." Ragano says that Trafficante once told him, "History is bullshit." Newfield reported that three witnesses support Ragano's statement that Marcello arranged the assassination. An FBI informant in 1976 said Trafficante told him Kennedy was "not going to make it to the election. He was going to be hit." The informant later recanted; in 1978, he was murdered. In 1976, mobster Johnny Roselli said Sam Giancana told him he plotted the assassination with Trafficante and Marcello; Roselli was also was murdered. The House assassinations committee sought to interview Giancana about the allegations; before Giancana could testify, he was shot dead by unknown assailants. A Las Vegas "entrepreneur," Ed Becker, was told by Marcello in September 1962 that he would take care of Robert Kennedy, and that he would recruit some "nut" to kill JFK so it couldn't be traced to him, according to several accounts. Marcello told Becker that "the dog (President Kennedy) will keep biting you if you only cut off its tail (the attorney general)," but the biting would end if the dog's head was cut off. Becker's information that Marcello was going to arrange the murder of JFK was reported to the FBI, though the FBI says it has no records of the Marcello or the Trafficante threats, nor of wiretapped remarks of Trafficante and Marcello in 1975 that only they knew who killed Kennedy. Newfield believes Trafficante and Marcello eventually will be shown to be the missing pieces to the "30-year jigsaw puzzle" about the assassination. So does Robert Blakey, a former member of the organized crime section and the counsel to the House assassinations committee. At the time of the committee's report, Blakey concluded, "The mob did it. It's a historical fact." Ragano told John H. Davis, a Marcello biographer, that Marcello was "the central planner" of the assassination, and that Trafficante and Hoffa supplied "the shooters." What else Ragano knows presumably will come with his book unless his immunized testimony should be compelled sooner by a congressional committee or grand jury. Carlos Marcello reportedly kept a sign in his office stating, "Three can keep a secret if two are dead." Now, Hoffa, Trafficante and Marcello are all dead. But the final obituary of Carlos Marcello cannot be written until several known sources of information are plumbed. In 1980, Blakey was told by an assistant director of the FBI that the bureau had 1,350 reels of tape of Marcello, including some of him discussing the assassination. It would not, then, turn over the tapes. John Davis has sued the FBI to gain access to 161 excerpts of tapes compiled by prosecutors who used them when they tried Marcello in 1981 for racketeering. Davis says that some of the tapes include incriminating remarks by Marcello about the assassination. The case is pending in the Federal District Court in Washington. The "President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992" established a five-member review board to be appointed by the president to insure the preservation and to facilitate the public disclosure of all government records relating to the JFK murder. One reason for passage of the act was the failure of the Freedom of Information Act to assure public disclosure of known assassination records. The president was authorized to appoint the review board within 90 days of enactment of the law, which was signed by President Bush on Oct. 26, 1992. President Clinton should act immediately to carry out Congress's intent and to satisfy this legitimate public interest. Would the existing evidence, as well as any possible new evidence, add up to a case that would hold up in court? Adequate motive abounds. The means were there: Contract murder was in the Marcello and Trafficante repertoires. Marcello had associates in contact with Oswald and Oswald's killer, Jack Ruby. But as a prosecutor I would not go forward with such a circumstantial case. Not yet. Ronald Goldfarb, a Washington lawyer, worked for Robert Kennedy in the Justice Department's organized crime section from 1961-64. His book about that experience will be published next year. NAMED PERSONS: KENNEDY, JOHN F.; MARCELLO, CARLOS; KENNEDY, ROBERT F. ORGANIZATION NAME: MAFIA DESCRIPTORS: Time and History; Assassination; U.S. president; Organized crime Who Really Killed Martin Luther King? The Unanswered Questi WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2126880 Who Really Killed Martin Luther King? The Unanswered Questions About James Earl Ray. The Washington Post, April 04, 1993, FINAL Edition By: Robert Andrews Section: OUTLOOK, p. c05 Story Type: Features Line Count: 130 Word Count: 1430 OLIVER STONE missed the mark. The questions clouding the death of Martin Luther King Jr. make JFK's assassination look open-and-shut by comparison. The questions slash to the very core of the conventional wisdom that, 25 years ago in Memphis, James Earl Ray acted alone. I'm skeptical of conspiracy theories. Underlying any octopus scenario is a presumption that the government is: 1) leakproof and 2) capable of faultless operations of mind-boggling complexity. My skepticism comes first-hand from Vietnam tours as a Green Beret, as a CIA officer working a beat that stretched from the Koreas to Burma and as a Senate staffer for intelligence and national security affairs. You can't put together an obviously illegal operation with hundreds of people and keep it quiet. There's going to be a leak; there's bound to be a deathbed confession. If you're up to no good, don't do it in government. Read the Pentagon Papers. Ask Richard Nixon. But the intelligence officer's skepticism cuts both ways. And looking at the evidence, I can't help but wonder-who did kill Martin Luther King? My questions about the King assassination began indirectly, starting with a passage I came across in "Parting the Waters." In that towering account of the civil rights movement, Taylor Branch complains about the government's reluctance to open up files regarding J. Edgar Hoover's claims that King was surrounded by communist agents. Branch's accusation stuck, and within days, I was sketching the plot for a novel about an intelligence officer who stumbles into the King files. I thought I could do only minimal research, but within a short time I sensed a discordance, a note off-key about Ray, the convicted assassin. My doubts persuaded me to dig more than I'd ever intended: the official records in the National Archives, the files of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, books on the subject. Like Taylor Branch, I found doors closed all around me; crucial files on the King assassination were sealed, not to be opened until 2027. I also traveled to Toronto, where I traced Ray's path of a quarter-century ago. Out of this came my conviction that the official version is wrong-that James Earl Ray did not act alone. What is particularly striking from the intelligence perspective is how Ray suddenly threw off a lifetime of incompetency to outwit the world's best law enforcement agencies. Ray, after all, was one of life's perpetual losers. The army threw him out for unsuitability. He botched the theft of a typewriter from an L.A. restaurant. He robbed a cab driver of $12 and fled into a dead-end alley, where he was caught. In 1959, he flubbed a $120 supermarket holdup in St. Louis and was sentenced to 20 years in the Missouri state penitentiary. But Ray defied this pattern in April 1967, when he escaped from the Missouri prison. Almost a year later, on April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was murdered. Two months after that, on June 8, Ray was arrested in London. From his prison escape until his arrest, Ray behaved more like a trained spy than a failed petty criminal. If it takes a spy to catch a spy, it also takes a spy to recognize red flags that criminal investigators may miss. Such a red flag was James Earl Ray's use of aliases. After his prison escape, Ray chose the names of four men: Eric S. Galt, John Willard, Paul Bridgeman and Ramon George Sneyd. All four were men then living in Toronto. All four resembled Ray-dark hair, medium build, same age bracket. That's the kind of cover professionals build. One doesn't pick names like that from a phone book. The chiller: James Earl Ray had never been in Toronto in his life. How did Ray-this loser, this loner-get these names? Why Toronto, of all places? And why, after King's assassination, did Ray go straight to that city? It is a choice that would set off alarms in any intelligence agency, for Toronto has long been known in espionage circles as a "passport mill." Leon Trotsky-and his murderer-traveled under Canadian passports obtained there. So did KGB master spy Rudolf Abel. Was it mere coincidence that Ray, the former bungler, got a Canadian passport there? Ray stayed in Toronto for two months, during which time he lived at two different room-ing houses; his landladies reported that he received visitors and phone calls. Ray also frequented a bar called the Silver Dollar Tavern. Interrogating the bar's staff, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police got the description of a male companion who spent hours drinking and talking with Ray. A man fitting that description called on Ray at his rooming house, and a landlady testified that she saw Ray's caller pass him something "like papers" that Ray put inside his coat pocket. The following day, Ray bought a round-trip airline ticket to London. Who were these people? By the time Ray was arrested in London, he had been on the run for 14 months. During that time he had purchased a Mustang convertible (shortly after his prison break-out) and traveled extensively-Mexico, Los Angeles, Birmingham, New Orleans. In Los Angeles, a month before King's death, he underwent plastic surgery to disguise his features. The FBI tried-and failed-to pin various bank robberies on Ray. As the House assassinations committee later reported, "a specific answer to Ray's manner of funding alluded (sic) the FBI." The committee did raise an intriguing matter missing from the original FBI investigation: that Ray might have been connected with a white racist in St. Louis who had put out a $50,000 contract on Martin Luther King. But then-Rep. Christopher Dodd dismissed this theory as weak: " . . . I am unable to say with any degree of certainty who conspired with James Earl Ray or under what plan they were acting." According to all testimony, Ray was not an obsessed racist. From records of his earlier stays in prison, it appears that Ray had no problems with blacks. After escaping, he chose to hide out in ethnically mixed neighborhoods. Unlike Lee Harvey Oswald, who had a history of fringe political associations, Ray never took up with any of the white supremacist causes or organizations of the '60s. He was never more than a small-time hood on the run. What, then, did Ray have to gain by killing Martin Luther King? Nowhere has Ray himself addressed these questions. It's not as if he has been in isolation. He has been interviewed by assassinations scholars; he has appeared on television; he has written his autobiography; he will be a participant in a mock trial to be televised tonight by HBO. Ray contends that he is innocent, that he was set up as a fall guy. Nonetheless, questions about funding and the aliases seem to bother him. In a 1984 interview, assassination expert Philip Melanson pushed Ray on these topics, and Ray doggedly persisted in dodging them. These questions-and others-were never pursued because Ray never had a jury trial. Under pressure from his attorney, he pleaded guilty before a judge in Tennessee and, within an hour, received a sentence of 99 years. Ironically, there's every likelihood that a jury would never have convicted Ray because of the lack of evidence: No witness placed him at the scene of the crime. Memphis police officers investigating the rooming house from which the shot was supposedly fired described the prime witnesses, a couple named Stephens, as intoxicated. Charles Stephens, who later claimed he had seen Ray run away after a shot was fired, initially swore that he had only seen the back of a man running away down a dimly lit hallway. The House committee later determined that Stephens had been "in a drunken stupor" at the time of the assassination and "could never really identify the assailant." Unknown fingerprints on Ray's rifle were never identified. There were also unknown fingerprints on other evidence said to belong to Ray. Ballistics tests failed to connect the bullet that killed King to the rifle Ray allegedly used. The fatal bullet broke into three fragments and no ballistics tests could be run. Ray's fingerprints weren't found in the room from which the shot was supposedly fired. What does this add up to? Mere coincidence? Deliberate deception? Professional tradecraft? And do you dare say that darkest of all words in the lexicon of an open society-conspiracy? Jesse Jackson, one of the survivors of that killing day in Memphis, recently wrote the introduction to Ray's autobiography. Jackson maintains that J. Edgar Hoover was responsible for the assassination. Experience tells me that a top-down conspiracy would have sprung a million leaks by now, but I also know there are important questions with no answers. And we won't get those answers unless we do what we should have done 25 years ago-open all the files on the King case and put James Earl Ray's case before a jury. Robert Andrews's forthcoming novel, "Death in a Promised Land," is published by Pocket Books. NAMED PERSONS: MARTIN LUTHER, JR., KING; RAY, JAMES EARL DESCRIPTORS: Assassination Body of Evidence: Clues Buried With John Connally. WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2139871 Body of Evidence: Clues Buried With John Connally. The Washington Post, June 18, 1993, FINAL Edition By: Joel Garreau , Jason Vest, Washington Post Staff Writers Section: STYLE, p. g01 Story Type: News National Line Count: 61 Word Count: 672 Even as John Connally was being laid to rest yesterday, the controversy over who shot JFK wasn't. Assassination investigators of all persuasions embraced the idea of removing one or more tiny bullet fragments from Connally's body even as that body was being interred in the State Cemetery in Austin, Tex. "This is science as opposed to speculation," said Ron Rosenbaum, a frequent writer about the Kennedy assassination. "It is one of the finest opportunities we've ever had," said a former staffer on the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations who, in the time-encrusted tradition of conspiracy theorists, insisted on anonymity. "It is the one piece of physical evidence the chain of custody of which is not questioned. It has always been in Connally's body." Connally was riding with President Kennedy when he was killed in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. A bullet called "Warren Commission Exhibit 399" has been identified as coming out of Lee Harvey Oswald's Carcano rifle. The Warren Commission concluded that this bullet, called "the magic bullet" by some, hit both Kennedy and Connally almost simultaneously before Kennedy was hit by another, fatal bullet. "The significance of what we're attempting to do is that these fragments must have come from that bullet, according to the Warren Commission," said Cyril H. Wecht, the past president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences and a vocal critic of the Warren Commission. "They cannot have come from anywhere else. It is the linchpin of the sole-assassin conclusion. Everybody on both sides agrees." If the fragments thought to be in the former Texas governor's body were proven to come from "399," then that "basically shows that the shot that hit Connally came from the depository's sniper's nest," said Josiah Thompson, author of the 1967 book "Six Seconds in Dallas." "Three-ninety-nine, the oddest bullet in history, did what the Warren Commission said it did." If tests were to show that Connally was not hit by "399," or if the fragments turned out to have more mass than is missing from "399," then the logic becomes overwhelming that Oswald did not act alone. Either way, the investigators see the fragments as, in effect, the "smoking gun" of the Kennedy assassination. George Christian, who was Connally's press secretary that day in November, was nonetheless outraged yesterday by those urging that the corpse be searched for evidence. Christian, who was serving as a Connally family spokesman, said: "I flat can't understand it. It's very offensive to come up on the day he dies and threaten to go to court. It really is outrageous. I think it ought to be dropped right now. It's just so bizarre to do something like this." James H. Lesar, head of the nonprofit Assassination Archives and Research Center in Washington, urged Attorney General Janet Reno immediately after Connally's death to have the fragments removed as evidence. However, even Mark Lane-who in 1966 wrote the best-selling "Rush to Judgment," a critique of the Warren Commission, and who says he hates being called a "conspiracy theorist"-found the proceedings "macabre and ghoulish." "It's not necessary to gather more evidence to prove either that more than three shots were fired that day or that the world is round," Lane said. But he added: "I think we all understand that millions of Americans believe the government of the United States at the highest possible level has not been truthful about the murder of President Kennedy. While doubt exists, it is appropriate to look at all the evidence." Oliver Stone, director of the movie "JFK," issued a statement that said: "If the Warren Commission defenders ... are as sure of themselves as they profess to be, they should be spearheading this effort to obtain these fragments. This is their golden opportunity to prove their case. How come we haven't heard from them?" The reason investigators had not urged that the tiny fragments be removed before Connally's death, Wecht said, was that the surgery involved could have crippled Connally's wrist. Thompson, meanwhile, was still upset yesterday that Connally had died; Thompson had a few last questions he had wanted to ask. NAMED PERSONS: KENNEDY, JOHN F.; CONNALLY, JOHN B., JR. DESCRIPTORS: Assassination Deadlines Missed on Release of JFK Data Review Boar WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2164421 Deadlines Missed on Release of JFK Data Review Board Not in Place Agencies Have Not Produced Records. The Washington Post, November 18, 1993, CAPITAL Edition By: George Lardner Jr., Washington Post Staff Writer Section: A SECTION, p. a04 Story Type: News National Line Count: 47 Word Count: 520 There are plenty of scofflaws in town when it comes to the JFK records act, a House committee was told yesterday. Not all of the offenders were listed at the hearing by name, but they include President Clinton, two congressional committees, the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the Office of Naval Intelligence (now the Naval Investigative Service). The underlying principles of the law, according to the Senate report on the measure, are "independence, public confidence, efficiency and cost effectiveness, speed of records disclosure and enforceability," Washington lawyer James H. Lesar told the House Government Operations Committee yesterday. Lesar, who is head of the nonprofit Assassinations Archives and Research Center, added that with the law now more than a year old, "it can only be said that these principles have been repeatedly violated. At best, only 10 to 20 percent of the total universe of Kennedy assassination records has been released." The law, enacted by Congress 13 month ago, called for public disclosure of all government records on the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy unless there are "clear and convincing" reasons for continued secrecy. Government agencies and affected congressional committees were to make initial disclosures under the law no later than last Aug. 23. A five-member review board, appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, was to sift through remaining records and decide which should be made public. The board can hold hearings and subpoena witnesses and documents if necessary. The deadline for Clinton to make his nominations under the law expired last Jan. 25, five days after his inauguration. His first four appointments were made public in late August and early September, but the formal nomination papers were not all sent to the Senate until late October, the White House said yesterday. The fifth name was submitted on Nov. 4. Under the meticulously written law, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee is supposed to hold confirmation hearings "within 30 days in which the Senate is in session after the nomination of three review board members." With the 30th anniversary of the Kennedy assassination coming up Monday, there had been talk of holding hearings then, but it appeared yesterday that the Senate would adjourn this weekend. That would make it impossible for the review board to begin work until next year. Steve Tilley, who is JFK liaison officer at the National Archives, where all the records are to be kept, confirmed yesterday that the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the Naval Investigative Service, and both House and Senate intelligence committees have yet to produce a single page under the law. The FBI, Lesar complained, also is taking the position in federal court that more than 265,000 pages of records it made available to the House Assassinations Committee in the late 1970s "are not Kennedy assassination records because they relate to organized crime activities." It will be up to the review board to try to settle such disputes. Under the law, it was given three years at most "from the date of enactment" to do its work; more than a third of that time already has expired. NAMED PERSONS: KENNEDY, JOHN F.; CLINTON, BILL; LESAR, JAMES H. ORGANIZATION NAME: ASSASSINATIONS ARCHIVES AND RESEARCH CENTER; FBI DESCRIPTORS: House of Representatives; Documents; Archives; U.S. president; Assassination; Records management THE FEDERAL PAGE - FBI Set to Release JFK Assassination Pap WP (c) 1994 Washington Post. All rts. reserv. 2168196 THE FEDERAL PAGE - FBI Set to Release JFK Assassination Papers Previously Censored Files Will Be Turned Over to National Archives for Public Perusal. The Washington Post, December 13, 1993, FINAL Edition By: George Lardner Jr., Walter Pincus, Washington Post Staff Writers Section: A SECTION, p. a19 Story Type: News National Line Count: 85 Word Count: 939 Under the JFK Records Act, the FBI is about to release the first of what will eventually be more than 1 million pages of documents related to President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. All government records concerning the assassination should carry a "presumption of immediate disclosure," according to the law, enacted in October 1992. As a result, files previously censored in whole or in part by the FBI will now be made public in their entirety, whether directly relevant to the assassination or not. About 95 percent of the "core files," totaling about a half-million pages, have been available to the public for more than a decade, FBI officials say. The other half-million-plus pages include records submitted to the House Assassinations Committee and other investigating panels in the 1970s, such as documents concerning organized crime figures. The records were scheduled to be turned over to the National Archives last August, but FBI officials say they did not realize the task they faced in screening the records under the standards of the new law and in meticulously labeling each document. They say they have had 60 people working on the project since April and now have 87 assigned to it, working two shifts a day, seven days a week. "We want this information out," said FBI Assistant Director William E. Baugh Jr. "We have the largest and most interesting bloc of information on this subject." Baugh, who is in charge of the FBI's information resources division, said the JFK task force is consuming about 20 percent of all the overtime that the entire bureau has at its disposal. "Every division, every field office is involved," Baugh said. However, it will be months before the FBI finishes its first cut on the collection, sending most of it to the Archives while withholding release of the documents it considers the most sensitive. "We will have more than 500,000 pages released in the next few months and we are working toward completion by July 4," said Terry T. O'Connor, one of the JFK task force directors. O'Connor and co-director John A. Hartingh said the records of the House Assassinations Committee and those of other investigative panels of the 1970s will be reviewed last. They indicated that the organized crime files will be withheld until the bureau gets a ruling from a special review board set up under the law on whether they must be made public. The five-member review board, nominated by President Clinton, is still awaiting Senate confirmation. The files to be released within the next few days concern Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub operator who killed Lee Harvey Oswald on Nov. 24, 1963, two days after Oswald was arrested and charged with killing the president. Baugh said the FBI's 21,224- page "headquarters file" on Ruby will be the first records to be made public at the Archives. Of that, only 31 pages will be withheld in their entirety, some because they are tax records, others because the information came from foreign governments. Another 364 pages, Baugh said, have been partly censored and disclosure of the blacked-out segments will be "postponed" until the review board has a chance to rule on them. The FBI's field office files on Ruby, about 52,000 pages, are likely to be turned over to the Archives later this month. Beyond the Ruby files, the bureau's "core files" also include documents from FBI headquarters and field offices, many duplicated from file to file: on the assassination investigation (280,000 pages); Oswald (270,000 pages); the Warren Commission (45,000 to 50,000 pages); and "related materials" (25,000 pages), such as records on Oswald's wife, Marina, and his mother, Marguerite. Some previously censored files will also be made public. For example, a Dec. 3, 1963, internal FBI memo on Ruby was half-censored when first released in 1980. It concerned a Hollywood publicity agent who was promoting a biography of Ruby to be written by an author who had previously written a book on a California killer. The full memo, now to be released, shows that the blacked-out portions primarily concern the alleged Communist Party backgrounds of the publicity agent, his two brothers and a sister-in-law. Another deletion identifies sources who described the prospective writer as an alleged publicity hound. O'Connor said the FBI is still withholding the names of FBI informants and others who were expressly promised confidentiality by authorities. The law says an informant's name is to be withheld only if the person is alive and disclosure "would pose a substantial risk of harm to that person," but FBI officials say they will leave such determinations to the review board. The bureau is also withholding information that it feels would constitute "an unwarranted invasion of privacy," leaving the review board to decide, as the law states, whether "the public interest" still requires disclosure. As an aid to researchers, Baugh said, the 87-member JFK task force is compiling an inventory sheet indexing the documents in each thick volume or section that will enable researchers to take a document from a headquarters file and track it down in a field office file even though the numbering systems differ. The law was passed largely as a result of congressional indignation over Oliver Stone's 1991 movie "JFK" and its allegations of wide-ranging government involvement in the Kennedy assassination. FBI Director Louis J. Freeh wants "the fullest disclosure possible," Baugh said. "We've spent about $1.5 million on this so far. Ours is going to be the most comprehensive and thorough collection (at the National Archives)." CAPTIONS: FBI Assistant Director William E. Baugh Jr. says the files to be released within the next few days concern Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub operator who killed Lee Harvey Oswald two days after the Kennedy assassination. NAMED PERSONS: KENNEDY, JOHN F.; BAUGH, WILLIAM E., JR.; O'CONNOR, TERRY T. ; RUBY, JACK; OSWALD, LEE HARVEY; FREEH, LOUIS J. ORGANIZATION NAME: JFK RECORDS ACT; FBI; NATIONAL ARCHIVES DESCRIPTORS: Documents; U.S. president; Time and History; Records management; Assassination; Archives