Bills Best Books – on the JFK
Assassination
Bill Kelly's Best Books on the
Assassination of President Kennedy
The best book on the JFK Assassination
has yet to be written – the one that solves the crime to a legal
and moral certainty.
In the meantime we have hundreds of
books that stand out from the estimated over two thousand books that
have been published on the subject of the president's assassination,
of which I have selected a dozen or so for each of three categories –
the official version of events and mainstream interpretations,
critical conspiracy theories, which comprise most of the books
familiar to anyone who has an interest in the topic.
There's no particular order, though I would like to see an complete bibliography - the closest I've come across was the House Select Committee's duel bibliographies - one chronologically from the date of publication and the other by author, but that only goes up to 1978, and someone with time on their hands should update those lists to make them worthwhile to researchers.
There's no particular order, though I would like to see an complete bibliography - the closest I've come across was the House Select Committee's duel bibliographies - one chronologically from the date of publication and the other by author, but that only goes up to 1978, and someone with time on their hands should update those lists to make them worthwhile to researchers.
A – Official Version
- – Warren Report
- - Inquest by Edward J. Epstein
- - Phil Shennon's A Cruel and Shocking Act
- - Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi
- - Lee – by Robert Oswald
- - Lee and Marina – Priscilla Johnson McMillan
- - Real Answers – Gary Cornwell
- - Oswald's Politics – By Gary W. O'Brien
- - First Day Evidence - Chief Curry
- - Oswald's Game - Jean Davison
- - Mrs. Paine's Garage - Thomas Mallon
- - Gerald Posner's Case Closed
- - Carlos Bringuier - Red Friday
B – Critical and Conspiratorial
I put Tony Summers' books first because I do think they are the best and most "definitive," and I enjoyed working with him at the Assassination Archives and Research Center when he was researching the Vanity Fair article and updating "Conspiracy" for "Not In Your Lifetime."
The others are in no particular order, though I have grouped together all the Mafia books that I will comment on in more depth later.
I put Tony Summers' books first because I do think they are the best and most "definitive," and I enjoyed working with him at the Assassination Archives and Research Center when he was researching the Vanity Fair article and updating "Conspiracy" for "Not In Your Lifetime."
The others are in no particular order, though I have grouped together all the Mafia books that I will comment on in more depth later.
- – Anthony Summers' “Conspiracy” and “Not In Your Lifetime”
- - Church Committee Reports
- - HSCA Reports
- - Joshia Thompson's - “Six Seconds”
- - James Douglas' - “JFK and the Unspeakable”
- - David Talbot - “Brothers”
- - Jeff Morley - “Our Man in Mexico”
- - John Newman - “Oswald and the CIA”
- - Larry Hancock - “Someone Would Have Talked”
- - Robert Groden - “Absolute Proof”
- - Bill Turner – Fish is Red/Rearview Mirror/
- - Lamar Waldron and the Mafia Crowd
- - Joan Mellen - “Our Man in Haiti”
- - Phil Melanson - “Spy Saga”
- - Phil Nelson and LBJ “The Mastermind”
- - Jim DiEugenio – Lisa Pease's book
- - Dick Russell – On the Trail of the JFK Assassins/ The Man Who Knew Too Much
- - Howard Roffman's Presumed Guilty
- - Penn Jones - Forgive My Grief
- - Howard Weisberg - Whitewash
While both of these categories contain
books that go in depth and detail on who they propose killed JFK and
why they did it, I have devised a third category of books that are
required reading if you want to know how – that's HOW JFK was
killed.
At the very first meeting of the Warren
Commission Allen Dulles brought with him a copy of a book “The
Assassins of American Presidents” (Elek Books, London, 1956) by
James Donovan, who later was the author of PT-109.
In a conversation with other
commissioners Dulles called attention to the book and the idea it
expressed – that American assassins were, unlike European and Asian
assassins, uniquely deranged loners rather than part of a political
conspiracy.
As this idea sunk in, Commissioner John
J. McCloy, himself a party to many political conspiracies, disagreed
and called attention to the fact that others besides John Wilkes
Booth were hung for their role in the conspiracy to kill Lincoln, but
Dulles persisted in propagating the idea of the deranged lone
assassin. Dulles has firmly embraced the alternative Deranged
Lone-Nut cover-story even though many in his former agency – the
CIA, were still entertaining and promoting the original cover story
that pro-Castro Cuban Communists were behind the Dealey Plaza
operation.
In Peter Dale Scott's terms, LBJ
rejected the “Phase-One” Castro Cuban Committee cover story and
instead went with the Deranged Lone Nut alternative in order to avoid
war with the Cubans and Soviets, a nuclear war that would cost the
lives of millions, an argument he used to enlist Earl Warren and the
Warren Commissioners.
Dulles, following LBJ's lead, rejected
the original cover story, not because as LBJ put it – it would lead
to war, but because what happened at Dealey Plaza, in Dulles' view,
could not even be perceived as a covert intelligence operation at
all, and had to be viewed as the spontaneous actions of a deranged
loner nut - or all of the other on going historical covert
operations would be exposed.
Now, a half-century later, those
historic covert operations been exposed – Operation Success in
Guatemala, the U2, Bay of Pigs, Watergate, MKULTRA, Iran-Contra,
etc., and now whatever happened at Dealey Plaza must also be
universally viewed as a covert intelligence operation even if it was
carried out by one lone wolf assassin.
The book that Dulles should have taken
to the first meeting of the Warren Commission is the Sun Tzu, the
book that he promotes in his book “The Craft of Intelligence,”
even if only to read the chapter on “The Employment of Secret
Agents.”
Sun Tzu was a fourth century BC
military strategist whose book “The Art of War” emphasized the
idea that the army “was the instrument that delivered the coup de
grace to an enemy previously made vulnerable. Prior to hostilities,
secret agents separated the enemy's allies from him and conducted a
variety of clandestine subversive activities. Among their missions
were to spread false rumors and misleading information, to corrupt
and subvert officials, to create and exacerbate internal discord, and
to nurture Fifth Columns. Meanwhile, spies, active at all levels,
ascertained the enemy situation.”
Sun Tzu said:
What is called
'foreknowledge' cannot be elicited from spirits, nor from Gods, nor
by analogy with past events, nor from calculations. It must be
obtained from those who know the situation.
Now there are five sorts
of secret agents to be employed. There are native, inside, double,
expendable and living.
When those five types of
agents are all working simultaneously and no one knows their method
of operations they are called 'The Divine Skein' and are the treasure
of the sovereign.
(Note: The idea is that information may
be gathered in as fish are by pulling on a single cord and so drawing
together the various threads of a net.) [And hence the concept of an
intelligence network]
A. Native Agents are those of the
enemy country people whom we employ.
B. Inside Agents are enemy officials
whom we employ.
C. Doubled Agents are enemy agents
whom we employ.
D. Expendable Agents are those of our
own spies who are deliberately given fabricated information to pass
on to the enemy.
E. Living Agents are those who return
from enemy territory with information.
If plans relating to secret operations
are prematurely divulged the agent and all those to whom he spoke
shall be put to death.
Generally, in the case of armies, you
wish to strike, cities you wish to attack, and people you wish to
assassinate, you must know the names of the garrison commander, the
staff officer, the ushers, gate keepers and body guards. You must
instruct your agents to inquire into those matters in minute detail.
So Allen Dulles' “The Crafts of
Intelligence” and Sun Tzu's “The Art of War” are two of the books
that are required reading to understand how the assassination of JFK
was conducted and carried out.
In his book Dulles' explains how the
basic concepts on the employment of secret agents as expressed by Sun
Tzu over two thousand years ago are still utilized today, although
they have been enhanced and refined, especially by developing
technology.
Dulles also stresses the idea the “crafts” employed
by intelligence agents are not unique to the CIA but are utilized by
every nation's intelligence agency in the world.
While secret operations pretty much
escaped historical and news media attention until recent times, one
of the first and best books on the subject is “The Invisible
Government” by David Wise and Thomas Ross, that the CIA tried but
failed to suppress, and touches on the CIA in Guatemala, Cuba and
Iran, and blew the cover of dozens of CIA fronts and assets.
- “The Crafts of Intelligence” by Allen Dulles
- “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu
- “The Invisible Government” by David Wise and Thomas Ross
Then there are a number of books by CIA
insiders who give us a remarkably clear view of what they were doing,
like David Atlee Phillips' “Nightwatch” - subtitled “Twenty
Years of Peculiar Service,” and peculiar it is for giving out so
much despite being officially approved by CIA censors.
- “Nightwatch” - David Atlee Philolips
Among the non-approved books are Phil
Agee “Inside the Company,” Kim Philby's “My Silent War” and
Donald Baine's “Candy Jones,” the last of which gives a good
account of “Expendable Agents.” Brad Ayers' “The War that Never
Was” and “The Zenith Secret.” Since Ayers' was an US Army
Ranger captain assigned to the CIA's JMWAVE station to train Cuban
commandos in small arms and maritime tactics, he hadn't signed the
CIA's employee contract to have all writings for publication approved
by the CIA.
- Phil Agee -
- Kim Philby - “My Silent War”
- Donald Baine - “Candy Jones.”
- Bradley Ayers - “War that Never Was” and “The Zenith Secret.”
So how convenient was it for the CIA
when Ayers' first publisher – Bobbs-Merrell, of Indiana, who
maintained an office and had employes at the Texas School Book
Depository, hired William Harvey as their legal counsel and had
Ayers' book run past legal before they published it. According to
Ayers, he didn't know that Harvey, former chief of operations at
JMWAVE, left the CIA to work for Bobbs-Merrell and Harvey proof-read
his manuscript, but he did notice some major changes – like the
elimination of any mention of some of the CIA officers he worked with
on the Cuban operations.
Once Ayers learned of Harvey's
treachery, he re-wrote the book as “The Zenith Secret” and got a
obscure Brooklyn corner store to publish it before retreating back to
his remote hunters cabin in the wilderness.
The best of the lot of those books
officially approved by the CIA is Joseph Smith's “Portrait of a
Cold Warrior,” that details some of the Catherwood's CIA cover
activities in the Philippines, the CIA's Cuban operations, the
exposure of the Venezuelan Arms Cache as a possible North woods type
provocation, and the formal education of a Cold Warrior by Paul
Linebarger, the CIA's master propagandist and psych-warrior.
Smith tells us that Linebarger, who
trained three generations of Cold Warriors in the crafts of the black
arts, as he called them, not only used his own textbook on Propaganda
and Psychological Warfare, but also used David Maurer's “The Big
Con” as a key reference book.
Maurer was a Kentucky linguist whose
study of street slang led him to uncover an underground network of
big time confidence men who practiced the type of deception employed
in the movie The Sting,
- Joseph Smith - “Portrait of a Cold Warrior”
- Paul Linebarger - “Propaganda”
- David Maurer - “The Big Con”
Maurer's book underlines the importance
of language, the words we use and the names we ascribe to things, and
how its necessary to understand the unique slang and codes used among
those committing criminal enterprises to communicate yet to conceal
their activities..
How the CIA does this and how the Big
Con confidence men did it are remarkably similar – as both the Big
Con and the officers at JMWAVE both utilized “Inside” and
“Outside” operators, and each person n the Big Con game had a
specific job and purpose.
Even the fake storefronts were
employed, like the fake betting joint in the Sting and the false
Zenith Technical Services front used at JMWAVE.
And just as David Maurer had to learn
the lingo used by the con artists before he could understand the
nature of the Big Con and how it works, those who want to understand
how the Dealey Plaza operation was planned and conducted must learn
the covert language and lingo used by intelligence agents and
operatives, and its not that difficult.
“Our Man in Acapulco” is the 12th
and final book you must read to understand how JFK was killed a the
authorized biography of Col. Frank M. “Brandy” Brandstetter not
only shows you how one link in the intelligence net is connected to
all of the others, and how all of the good fish are collected
together and processed at one place where the intelligence is
analyzed.
Brandy, a Dallas Texan, was at the
epicenter of things as the manager of the Havana Hilton when Castro
made it his headquarters in the early days of the regime.
But Brandy reported not to the CIA, but
to Col. William B. Rose at the office of the Assistant Chief of
Staff, Intelligence for the US Army Reserves at the Pentagon - https://jfkcountercoup.wordpress.com/2010/12/29/614/
That just happens to be the same place where other relevant Colonels also
reported, including Sam Kail of Havana embassy fame, Jack Crichton,
who ran the Dallas CD Shelter and controlled Marina's early testimony, Lawrence Orlov,
who visited Oswald with George deMohrenschildt, and Col. George L. Whitmeyer, who led the
motorcade in the Pilot Car.
So there you have it – the top dozen
books you have on the official version of the assassination, the top
twelve critics and conspiracy theories that tell you who killed JFK
and why, and the twelve books you need to read if you want to know
how JFK was killed.
5 comments:
Its time Bill for you write the definitive book on Assassination of John and Robert Kennedy.
I would also include (under conspiratorial):
JFK and Sam by Antoinette Giancana
Mary's Monkey by Edward Haslam
Files on JFK by Wim Dankbaar
Me and Lee by Judyth Baker
I was reading your comments on Marrion Baker's timing in another blog post and have spent time trying to find your e-mail. I (along with three others) have definitively timed Baker to the bottom step of the TSBD. I'd be happy to send along the 5 page white paper. I can be reached at richievan@aol.com. Thanks.
Jonathan is right: Me and Lee is a must; so is Sherry Fiester's Enemy of the Truth. And, as good as Lifton's Best Evidence is, it has been superseded by Douglas Horne's 5-volume Inside the AARB . . .
First off the deadline for release of the remaining docs is October 2017 not 2039 - and the Mafia didn't frame Oswald, steal the AF1 tapes or cover up the truth.
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