Kennedy John Fitzgerald - JFK: the CIA, Vietnam, and the plot to assassinate John F. Kennedy

To Victor H. Krulak, lieutenant general, USMC (Retd), my boss and friend in the Pentagon during the Kennedy years.

To Oliver Stone, for discovering in my ideas and experience the ingredient that made the theme of his great movie a challenge to America.

To my son, David, his wife, Bonnie, and my daughters, Jane and Lauren, all computer experts, without whose encouragement and assistance I could never have accomplished the burden of this work.

To Lauren Michele Prouty, again because she did all the computer chores essential to the technical quality of the final product.

To my editor, Hillel Black, for his understanding a complex manuscript and an intricate subject and for his inspiration.

To Thomas Whittle, editor of Freedom. magazine, for recognizing the value of this work and publishing some of these earlier articles.

To Michael Baybak, my literary agent, for steering me through the intricate pathways of publishing with good sense and good humor.

Gelb had all but concealed Kennedys NSAM #263 in the Pentagon Papers, by dividing it into meaningless sections, and continued his assault on that Kennedy policy as he berated Stone for his film.

Another of these prominent writers was Tom Wicker of the New York Times. He also attacked Stones use of Kennedys Vietnam policy statement, NSAM #263, with the comment, I know of no reputable historian who has documented Kennedys intentions. NSAM #263 is the official and complete documentation of Kennedys intentions. It was derived from a series of White House conferences and from the McNamara-Taylor Vietnam Trip Report, and it stated the views of the President and of his closest advisers as is made clear in the U.S. government publication Foreign Relations of the United States, 19611963, vol. IV, Vietnam: August-December 1963. That source is reliable history Wickers December 22, 1991, Times article was a lengthy and unnecessarily demeaning diatribe against Stone and his movie.

So many of these professional writers attacked the film, even well before it was on the screens of the nation, that Oliver Stone took the unusual step of publishing The Book of the Film in 1992. In this important work, Stone does what few others have done. He presents the full JFK debate by publishing the demeaning articles of his detractors and the responses of his supporters side by side in the text. This evenhanded approach is rare in such public debates.

For the record, these reactions and commentaries came from the following people (number of articles in parentheses):

David Ansen, (2); Robert Sam Anson, (1); David W. Belin, (3); Jimmy Breslin, (1); Joseph A. Califano, Jr., (1); Alexander Cockburn, (4); Alan M. Dershowitz, (1); Roger Ebert, (2); Gerald R. Ford, (1); Leslie H. Gelb, (1); Tom Hayden, (1); Robert Hennelly, (2); George Lardner, Jr. (4); Anthony Lewis, (1); Norman Mailer, (1); William Manchester, (1); Richard M. Mosk, (1); Daniel Patrick Moynihan, (1); John Newman, (1); Andrew OHehir, (1); L. Fletcher Prouty, (2); Ron Rosenbaum, (1); Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., (1); Katherine Seelye, (1); Brent Staples, (1); Oliver Stone, (12); Garry Trudeau, (1); and Tom Wicker, (1); and others.

This latter group, among them Robert Sam Anson, Leslie Gelb, George Lardner, Anthony Lewis, William Manchester, Arthur Schlesinger, and Tom Wicker came out of nowhere to attack Oliver Stone, Jim Garrison and myself for what the movie offered the public: much of their work was done before the film had been produced and shown to the public. This is a rare form of movie review and was almost universally adversarial, even though, in most cases, they, the writers, were in error and not the film itself. What is it that bonds these major writers together? The truth?

What is most interesting about this latter group of professional writers, most of whom work for major media bosses, is that they all wrote negatively about the film and all wrote in support of the anticonspiracy, lone-gunman, Warren Commission theory. They are a highly motived clan... for money.

Here is where this remarkable film of Stones hits the hardest among all of these experts. It strengthens the arguments of those who believe that there was a massive conspiracy, and it does battle, as did David versus Goliath, against the power of the throne. To all of this, the filmfor both sidesenlivened the game and created new flocks of believers.

One of the films major achievements was that it aroused the United States Congress to mandate a comprehensive review of all federal government records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, including the records of the Warren Commission, the House Assassinations Committee, the Church Committee, and all Executive branch agencies, including the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. This was well intentioned; but in reality it is a sham. The answers to the source of the decision to murder John F. Kennedy are not in government files.