JFK bits and pieces Paul Hoch recommends JFK:The Book of the Film (Applause Books, 211 West 71 St NY, NY 10023). This contains a footnoted JFK screenplay and about 350 pages of published articles, including some of the best anti-Stone stories.
The final badge of honour was bestowed upon Stone’s movie by a long, ludicrous assault on it in Commentary (June 1992). The most significant expression of the American Israeli lobby, Commentary was one of the agenda setters for the neo-conservatives of the 1970s. Robert Moss found a congenial climate there. With enemies like this, who needs friends?
One of the many JFK mail order book lists is published by the JFK Assassination Center, 603 Munger Box 40, Dallas, Texas 75202. The President is Larry Howard, to whom inquiries should be addressed. The best general parapolitical mail-order service remains Tom Davis Books, whose catalogue is available on request from the address below.
One of the elements in the Stone movie which has angered people, especially on the left, is its claim that JFK was planning to get out of Vietnam. Support for this came from JFK’s Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs, Roger Hilsman. In a letter to the New York Times, January 20, 1992, Hilsman concluded: ‘The historical record, in sum, is clear: President Kennedy was determined not to let Vietnam become an American war — that is, he was determined not to send U.S. combat troops (as opposed to advisers) to fight in Vietnam nor to bomb North Vietnam. This does not prove he would have withdrawn completely, including the 16,500 advisers. However, the record is clear that he had laid the groundwork for doing so.’
Mind you, 16,500 ‘advisers’…. a lot of advice, Kemo Sabe.
The Hilsman letter was part of a mail-out from the Assassination Archives and Research Centre, which continues despite the death of Bud Fensterwald, at 918 F Stret, NW, Suite 510 Washington DC 20004.
The inability of the Left to get the political significance of the American assassinations in the sixties is very striking. There could be few potentially more destructive, radicalising, consciousness shifting, eye-opening, left enhancing events than the discovery that the Kennedys and Dr King were murdered by political conspiracies that got away with it. Which is why the spooks and their media assets have spent so much time and money defending the Warren Commission and trying to rubbish the assassination researchers. There is a very amusing congruence of view between the U.S. state and the Anglo-American Left: both agree that the sixties assassinations are not important.
That the Warren Commission didn’t get away with their snow job about Oswald, is down to the work of the assassination buffs. In 1964 virtually the entire U.S. establishment — media, politicians, U.S. state authorities — agreed on the ‘lone nut’ line, said ‘This is reality.’ A few Americans knew they were being sold a pup and refused to buy the official version. An even smaller minority, the ‘buffs’, maybe 100 people in all of significance over the past 30 years, beavered away and have overturned the official version of reality. Without significant financial or political support, and with massive hostility, ridicule and, in some cases harassment from the state, the buffs have won. A remarkable achievement. Pity Stone didn’t use the movie to say this more emphatically.
Tom Davis Books
PO Box 1107, Aptos, CA 95001. USA