The Assassination & Mrs. Paine

I'm not a fanatical follower of this terrible event in American history, but I have been paying attention over the years. My father always said we would only get a small taste of the truth when all the principle players start dying. Now they're all in their 80-90's (or dead), so tongues are perhaps loosening, fears lessening - or maybe the victors are just that confident about their positions by now.

This is the story of Ruth Paine, the lady who hosted Marina Oswald (and their children) at her home during the assassination of President Kennedy. While she has always been an interesting - and central - character in this drama, you will be deeply surprised to hear the revelations about her and he family as presented in this excellent film.

After sixty years of interest, i didn't know: 1) her husband was a member of the wealthy and influential Forbes family, 2) they rubbed elbows with the elite of America's conservative establishment at the time (although she ostensibly harbors deeply liberal ideations), 3) her family vacationed with Allen Dulles that very summer (1963), 4) her best friend was Dulles' mistress, 5) on the way home from that vacation, she stopped by New Orleans to transport Marina and her children to her extremely modest home in Irving (a Dallas suburb where she was living at the time of the murder), 6) she later interacted with Nicuraguan Sandinistas in a role very similar to the one that brought her into the circle of Russian ex-patriots in Dallas (that is as an apparent information-gathering asset for the US government), 7) her husband and his family were instrumental in the development of Bell Helicopter (think Vietnam war profits), and 8) multiple members of her family including her sister - and Mrs. Paine heself - have documentad ties to the CIA.

Very strange. Viewed from a certain perspective then, she couild easily appear to be a well placed disinformation agent tasked with perpetrating and affirming the "lone gunman theory". So very, very strange....

I really enjoyed watching this film. There are so many layers to this mystery. It was like watching an onion getting peeled later by layer. The film was personal and engaging. I will definitely be watching it more than once!

They always use people close to the vest for such big operations as the jfk assassination. She has not changed her story all these years. They also lay out very well the psychological warefare game that the Paines laid with linking oswald to Kostikov ,and him possibly being a Russian agent. Then Johnson had to force the lone nut story because we cant risk nuclear war. We were forced to accept that for the good of the country. But we didn't.

As an intelligent person, hard to not come to the conclusion that the Paines were at least, very useful pawns in a bigger game. It is beyond coincidence that Mr Paine's mother was in a relationship with the head of the CIA, Alan Dulles and, despite the fact that her husband had a trust fund as one of the Forbes family and they holidayed on the Forbes private island that year, with Dulles, they chose to live in a working class neighbourhood of Dallas. There may be coincidences that don't always add up, but underneath the facade, it is clear that there is more to this couple than meet the eye. Oliver Stone did not invent the conspiracy theory, nor did Jim Garrison.

Always interesting to see photos, films and people interviewed, I haven't seen before . Opposing Arguments are well represented. I learned about The connections the Paine's had ,. What I enjoyed the most about the whole movie, was Ruth & Michael Paine, ! After reading about them all these years.