Oswald's Ghost

I was in the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper's library when I heard the news of Kennedy's assassination. Thus began a great mystery in the U.S. and around the world that continues to this day. Trillions of words and thousands of books have been written about the assassination, and that alone tells us that there is no one satisfactory theory about why or how Kennedy was murdered.

Robert Stone's documentary is both odd and disjointed. As someone else on this board has already noted, director Stone starts off with a reasonably balanced view of the assassination, leads us through various conspiracy theories and talking heads, and then, boom, just like that, in the final 10 minutes, allows noted author Norman Mailer to wrap it up for us: Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

Mailer offers his 'evidence' more from a novelist's point of view than from one of evidence. Mailer's 'proof': Oswald was living in desperate straits, he was frustrated but bright and articulate, he had delusions of grandeur, he wanted a permanent place in American history, he worked in a building on the parade route, and voila: it all came together.

Director Stone ends his movie focused on Mailer's fanciful artistic interpretation of events (Oswald's ghost knows the answers, but a ghost will not tell us). It's quizzical to say the least.

Mailer (and ultimately filmmaker Stone himself) leaves out a glaring contradiction that still stares at conspiracy theorists today. It's a glaring contradiction not wrapped in Maileresque language: the famous Zapruder film (now digitalized for even more vivid inspection), which clearly shows that Kennedy had the top of his head blown off by a shot from the FRONT, not from the Texas Schoolbook Depository in the rear, where Lee Harvey Oswald was purportedly firing three shots in six seconds.

It is peculiar that Mailer, Stone, Elliott Jay Epstein (author of a book on the murder), former student radical-activist Todd Gatlin, and disgraced former Senator Gary Hart have all attached themselves to the 'single gunman' theory. Oswald may well have been involved up to his skinny little neck, but it still doesn't explain Zapruder's remarkable film, which has nothing to do with Oswald the Man, but merely frightening evidence that something else was happening on that fateful day in November 1963. That 'something else' has never been explained, and this film basically ignores it.

This film ultimately leaves the viewer with more questions than answers. Exactly what we needed: even more questions about the Kennedy assassination.

'Oswald's Ghost' left me with this uncomfortable feeling that too many people are desperate to put this whole messy business behind us. It is, after all, much easier, and much neater, to blame it all on a single shooter who also happened to be crazy.

It's impossible to review this film without having a bias. I do believe a conspiracy was responsible for the assassination of John F. Kennedy but, as always when dealing with these matters, I do keep an open mind. While the film ostensibly is not on the whodunit but that question has done to us, Oswald's Ghost has a definite bias in it. And that bias is what kills the film.

Director Robert Stone seems to have done his homework. His interviews cover many proponents of both sides of the argument. He also goes a step further to present unseen or rarely seen / heard materials including news clips and the actual Dallas police recordings. Stone also chooses to employ some interesting visual techniques in the film as well. For example there is the whirlpool of Oswald and Warren Commission images at the start of the film, the (apparent) black hole of conspiracy books, and the positive / negative effect on stock footage during the playing of the recording of Perry Russo's sodium pentothal questioning. These are all well done, but their use in Stone's context is questionable.

Thus the film's fault lies in its bias. Stone seems convinced that the mystery is solved and has been for nearly forty-five years. The film then proceeds to essentially say that independent researchers (that is to say conspiracy theorists) have led the public on a wild goose chase of truly epic proportions. Stone seems to use the film and virtually every frame to saying this. Stone's film is not just, as he claims, a study of the effect of a mystery on the public. For the most part the film feels like an indictment of those who dare not agree with his point of view.

Would the film have been better without this bias? That's hard to say, really. I suspect that one's own opinion on the topic determines how one interprets the film. While one can argue over the factuality of the film, it is visually striking in its presentation as if to shock and awe. Does it succeed in that aim? I'll leave you to be the judge

I saw this today and I was impressed with some of the archival footage and some of the interviews given. It's worth checking out if you're interested and/or have some knowledge on the case. I guess I would have liked to have heard more from Mailer and more on Oswald. I do think they gave some good information on a few details JFK missed. This is an informative and sometimes stylish documentary, worth checking out, the only reason I won't give more details on some of the plot points is for the fact that they had a lot to do with the conspiracy and a lot of them were red herrings. What this documentary does is put a few things into perspective, i.e. Oswalds motive, Dan Rathers comment saying the presidents head went forward, etc. My reason for giving this a ten was simply because the rating's too low, it deserves a 7 out of 10. Recommended.

Here is my soapbox dispelling the myths as promoted by the film. Please bear with me.

While the documentary strive to supply the information in conjunction with rare footages, Robert Stone did a dismal job ignoring the central heart of the conspiracy connected to the CIA (not rogue but whole) and the Mossad in the elimination of President Kennedy, partly in revenge over Bay of Pigs fiasco and JFK's private threat to "splinter the CIA in a thousand pieces and scatter to the winds" & withdraw from Vietnam where CIA place its stake and most importantly reversing JFK's foreign policy towards Israel on the matter of clandestine development of the nuclear arsenal at the secret nuclear reactor Dimona. JFK signed National Security Action Memoranda 55, 56 and 57 that stripped CIA of its power to freely operate in covert ops and to account for its actions, which outraged senior members of the CIA. (JFK fired CIA director Allen Dulles after Bay of Pigs failure, and that same person ended up as a member of the Warren Commission.) The tension between Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion & his subsequent successor Levi Eshkol and JFK was well-documented in the telegram correspondences ("Israel and the Bomb" by Avner Cohen). David stepped down abruptly on June 23, 1963 over argument with JFK concerning Israel's right to develop nuclear weaponry, ostensibly for self-defense in case of warring with hostile enemy neighbors.

CIA and Mossad, through the coordination of chief of counterintelligence James Jesus Angleton as liaison to Israel, cooperated in the joint operation to "remove" JFK to protect their geopolitical interests as well as the reputation, and the end result were the escalation of Vietnam War due to Gulf of Tonkin hoax and the complete turnaround of U.S. foreign policy to unconditionally respect Israel's power and sovereignty as an erstwhile ally in Middle Eastern affairs.

Lee Harvey Oswald may well have been involved in the conspiracy but only as an intelligence agent through myriad of contacts (US Naval Intelligence and possibly KGB), but he was a patsy as he said -- he was simply framed up as a useful covert intelligence asset for disposal by the CIA and the conspirators. In other words, Lee was certainly not guilty.

Lyndon Barnes Johnson was undoubtedly a traitor as were the high-ranking members of the US government and military who knew what faction removed JFK. Because LBJ usurped the power to appease the military-industrial complex, fabricating Gulf of Tonkin incident to begin escalating the Vietnam War to a larger level and extract the blood money & introduce sophisticated weaponry, tactical strategies and military technology in the process of brutalizing Vietnam to a perpetual third world nation status. The "communist domino theory" is non-sense as an excuse framed to justify the illegal and pointlessly bloody war.

After JFK's assassination, it is likely that President Johnson had contemplated invading Cuba after fabricating the intelligence that Castro ordered the murder of JFK in retaliation for the attempted invasion as well as spreading the fear of communist onslaught if not contained; USSR agreed to withdraw the missile bases, with the condition that USSR will once again retaliate to destruct United States should U.S. invade Cuba in a massive effort again.

JFK died a true patriot for America in defending her sovereignty against foreign and internal threats that converged to murder President Kennedy. The nuclear fires of World War III will be traced back to the assassination of JFK that have changed the course of human civilization forever, with the military-industrial-Congressional complex and State of Israel consolidating the ultimate power to decide the manifest destiny for the current world affairs at large...

Fascinating spools of rare footages aside, "Oswald's Ghost" offer absolutely nothing new for the knowledgeable readers of the pivotal event like me. The problem is that propaganda is an easy and persuading media to bamboozle the uninformed viewers, which is why this movie infuriate me every other minute with disinfo (omitted, half-truth, lies).

Robert Stone and the producers, why have you forsaken America with the film that only the Establishment and lone assassin-magic bullet theory/Warren Commission defenders would approve of? Forsaking the truth lead to America's demise and disintegration as a sovereign republic subservient to Israel and the ruling oligarch Elite's pernicious influence. (For reference: "Plausible Denial" by Mark Lane; "Final Judgment" by Michael Collins Piper; "The Last Confessions of E. Howard Hunt" by Erik Hedegaard, Rolling Stone, March 21, 2007; George Washington farewell address, Sept. 1796; President Kennedy's speech "The President and the Press: Address before the American Newspaper Publishers Association" in NYC, April 1961)

1/2 out of 4

Postscript: I recommend reading Citizens for Truth about Kennedy Assassination chairman James DiEugenio's critical review of Oswald's Ghost. Google his name combined with the film title.

Postscript II: Watched the ABC News special The Kennedy Assassination: Beyond Conspiracy originally aired on ABC in fall 2003 on History Channel on February 19, 2008. It's a sham with the predicably biased narration doling out lie after lie, exaggeration and half-truths. Do your research, not what the media tell you to believe Oswald was responsible alone and alone.

Oswald's Ghost is far from a critical expose on the assassination, as Oliver Stone's JFK was. The very fact that Oswald's Ghost's director has the same last name as Oliver to direct the film, says volumes about the intelligence community's ( and the mainstream media's ) agenda to confuse future generations.

The fact that classic dissemblers, like Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Dan Rather and J. Edward Epstein are given leading roles in the film, is the strongest indictment against the film. That Norman Mailer is given so much time in the film as well( and the last word ), makes me want to catalog the in the "Propaganda/Fiction Department Section, along with The Warren Report, and other books. The PBS and American Experience staff should all be ashamed of themselves for perpetuating the lies about the assassination.

The only honest criticism given in the film are given by Tom Hayden, Josiah Thompson and Todd Getlin, but neither three give any real facts from the critical literature to educate the viewer.

Hugh Aynesworth, a Dallas/Fortworth journalist who covered the assassination at the time and who comments on the Warren Report, spouts the official version, that Oswald acted alone. Aynesworth tells us a white lie when he says that he interviewed one witness who watched Oswald shoot from the sixth floor window of the Texas school depository Building. He may have interviewed witnesses that day, or sometime later, but no witnesses positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald in that window that day. Aynesworth's words, simply, can't be taken for granted.

Robert Dallek, who also given prime time in the film, was one of the historian researchers who worked for The Assassination records and Review Bord ( ARRB )in the nineties. That board was created and pushed through Congress by President Herbert Walker Bush in 1991 as a last ditch effort to foist, literally, tons of heavily redacted ( and forged ) declassified Secret CIA, FBI, ONI ( Naval Intelligence) documents into the American public's lap. So much for Dallek's hidden agenda, as well.

J. Edward Epstein, another spokesman in the film for the "we'll never know the truth about the assassination "theory, wrote some good books on the assassination, but he was Army Intelligence, so we can't trust him, either.

Mark Lane, who wrote one of the very first critiques on the Warren commission Report's findings, Rush to Judgment, the film's only honest critic of the warren Commission Report, but he is overrided by the film's general dishonesty.

Dan Rather, another journalist who speaks in the film is also dissembling. He was in Dallas that fateful day, as a cub reporter for CBS. Rather was one of the very first to see the Zapruder film, and he caved-in, changed his story, and sold his soul to the devil. Rather originally said that the President's head "fell backwards and to the left", which coincides with a shot from the front. Then he changed his tune to: "the President's head fell forwards and to the left", to go along with the warren Commission's magic bullet single lone nut theory. I have the two copies of Life magazine from January 1964, both printed on the same day. The first one, with Dan Rather's first line was pulled off of the press, and the second censored edition that was officially released, with Rather's changed tune is the one that the American Public got.

That Priscilla Johnson shamelessly shows her face again on the assassination subject doesn't surprise me at all. She was one of the very first intelligence assets to disseminate mis and disinformation, with lies to the Warren Commission and to the American public( with her book, Marina and Lee ).

I attended the ARRB's venued event when it came to Boston in the early nineties and convened at the State House on Beacon Hill. Priscilla Johnson McMillan, who is also given prime time in Oswald's Ghost was invited by the Review Board to testify. The first question that the Board asked Priscilla was whether she had ever been approached by the CIA. Priscilla never did answer that question, but instead,dissembled for a good twenty minutes or half hour and in so many words or less, basically told the panel and the audience that if anyone wanted to know who really killed John F. Kennedy, they should go to Russia and dig-up frozen KGB colonels, and ask the. In the film, Priscilla tells us that if Kennedy were alive today, that he'd be as puzzled as all of us are ( not me! ) as to who killed him and why. I have seen McMillan's CIA 201 file that has her checked-ff as a "witting asset". So much for her testimonial in the film.

Norman Mailer is given way too much time ( and the last word ) in the film. He says that he spent twenty-five years studying the assassination, and then he admits that he as an amateur. From what he tells us in the film, it is obvious that he didn't read enough of the critical literature. Of course, he was a friend of Priscilla Johnson McMillan's, which says a lot. In his book, Oswald's Tale, Mailer leads his readers by the nose and after eight hundred and something pages, tells them that Oswald killed Kennedy because Marina didn't give him ( Oswald, not Kennedy ) enough sex. Mailer should have titled his book, Oswald's Tail ( two puns intended ). puns intended ). Mailer can be thus dismissed as either an unwitting fool, or a witting stooge.

Basicaly, Oswald's Ghost is a total waste of time.

Bruno Hrvat