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| JFK |
| Posted on 25/11/03 at 06:14 by bluestu |
Not strictly a fillum article, I know, more a review of that show on BBC2 on Sunday night.
A quick list of the difficulties I had with Sunday's programme
(1) The programme, from the outset, specifically set out to prove that there was no conspiracy. As so, its agenda had been set. It was hardly an open-minded investigation, open to all possibilities, it wanted to find no conspiracy, and so it did find no conspiracy.
(2) Out of 90 minutes of programme, some 60 minutes was devoted to character assassination of the leading players, 10 minutes to taking apart various conspiracy theories, 10 minutes to debunking errors in Oliver Stone's movie, and 10 minutes to reconstructions of the assassination scene.
(3) The talking heads on the programme gave evidence so dubious that it would be laughed out of even an American court. Hearsay, conjecture, uncorroborated second hand accounts of third-rate theories, they were all trotted out time and again. Still, as Lionel Hutz says, they're "kinds of evidence"... Want to discredit Jim Garrison? We'll use the testimony of an assistant DA who worked for him for 6 months 6 years prior to his investigation, not entirely coincidentally a gentleman also selling a book wherein he derides Garrison. Perry Russo? We'll not interview him, but instead a policeman who took a 5 minute polygraph examination of him 35 years ago, an examination which wouldnt have been admissible in court, and we'll rely on something Russo supposedly said to him. Lee Harvey Oswald? Let's hear from his estranged wife's former landlord giving his opinion on how Oswald's face looked when he appeared on TV.
(4) The show's lengthy examination of Oswalds back-history hardly pointed for or against conspiracy one way or another. They ignored his being taught Russian whilst still in the Marines (hardly the norm in 1959) and his work done for the Office of Naval Intelligence in New Orleans upon his return from Russia. Simultaneously they alleged he was too stupid to work for Russian intelligence (via the evidence of an alleged KGB defector filmed in shadow) yet showed he was in the top of his class in the Marines, versed in Marxist-Leninist doctrine (how familiar for a Marine) and formed several political societies once back in the States.
(5) The criticisms of Oliver Stone's film were often correct, other times awkwardly shoe-horned in to the picture they tried to present. Stone erred in some key facts, this much is true. He edited different film stocks in together to mix historical footage and fictional footage, but never went as far as showing a marksman on the knoll in that stock, and it is also a technique he has used before and since. They state that Jim Garrison 'didn't actually give the same speech as Kevin Costner in the film'. Really? You don't say?
(6) Garrison was also character-assassinated. He's a strange dude, and open to all manner of criticism, but the show openly referred to him as being corrupt and a crook, but gave no evidence to support these claims. Not something they'd have done were he still alive and capable of suing for libel. They ignored that he was re-elected as New Orleans District Attorney after the Shaw trial. The trial was portrayed as a farce, but they didn't mention that Shaw had to be indicted by a Grand Jury of his peers before facing trial. They passed over the fact that several key Garrison witnesses mysteriously died or went missing in the weeks before trial. Most damningly of all, they ignored the fact that in Louisiana, the DA's office can interview jurors post-trial, and every one of the 12 said that whilst they werent convinced Shaw was involved, they WERE convinced that a conspiracy had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. This remains the only prosecution to be brought arising from the assassination.
(7) Other theories for the assassination were briefly considered. The Mafia, the Russians, the Cubans, all were looked at and discounted. Show me a serious assassination researcher that considers that any of them were involved. As an aside Gavin Esler says 'the FBI, CIA and American Government' have also been mentioned as possible suspects. That was it. No other comment, no investigation. Lazy, but befitting the shows agenda.
(8) The acoustical evidence was debunked by the show, or so you'd think. The magic 'pink circle' which they used to show where the police constable's motorbike was only had to exist in that exact spot if the shots on the microphone were to come from the 6th floor window of the book depository and the grassy knoll. If the motorbike was further behind (and bear in mind that no-one disputes the fact the gunshots are accurately recorded, and in the same timescale as the Zapruder film something the show again skipped over) they shoot themselves in the foot, as they have sonic records of the event showing shots WEREN'T FIRED FROM THE BOOK DEPOSITORY EITHER. To further decry this evidence, they let us hear the original, static-filled recording from which it was impossible to distinguish any bullet sound, rather than playing the filtered version played to the House Committee on Assassinations.
(9) The magic bullet theory is 'proved' to have been fact. The CGI line going through Connolly, Kennedy and back up to the 'sniper's nest' is amazing pseudo science. Let's not use the evidence of ballistics experts, instead we'll draw a fancy line, and only show it from one angle, not from the reverse which would shot the shot going through the leaved branches of a tree. Let's ignore the fact that the Warren Commission thought there were two shots responsible for these injuries and only had to devise the single bullet theory because of the ricochet injury to James Teague, a bystander. We'll ignore the fact that the limousine was accelerating rapidly at that point, and even allowing for the rapid speed of the bullet, it wouldnt have kept travelling in the 'straight' line their diagram supposes. And that doesn't even allow for the distortion to the bullet's flight caused by it's passage through the bodies of Connolly and Kennedy. The bullet itself is produced and ballistic evidence shows it was fired from the same gun. They don't mention that the fragments taken out of Connolly in conjunction with the bullet found weighed more than an original bullet& They dont mention that no proper autopsy was done on Kennedy and nothing at all was recovered from his body. They ignore the fact that Connolly was still holding his hat in the Zapruder film AFTER Kennedy was holding his throat, yet at the same time his own wrist has been supposedly shattered&
(10) They show that Stone's timing of the shots fired was wrong. Their 'expert' poses aiming and loading a rifle in the timescale in question. They ignore that if the acoustic evidence was correct, then they had 4 shots to deal with, not 3. They show Oswald was a 'crack shot'. They pass over the fact he was aiming at stationary targets with a properly sighted rifle at the height of his military training back then, and even then he executed a head shot on less than 5% of occasions. They neglect to mention that was 5 years ago, with a superior rifle, and even then he finished in the lower of the three pass categories the US Marines offered in marksmanship. So poor, in fact, that he was given an administrative job rather than a field post. They dont mention that not one of the US Army's 10 best snipers could pull off the same shooting feat in tests for the Warren Commission. Tests which the documentary in question, despite it's undoubtedly substantial budget, chose not to even attempt to replicate. Something that they also ignored when it came to the acoustic evidence.
(11) The entire 'back and to the left' theory is discounted in a single sentence. 'Sometimes bodies move back and forward when shot' says Esler. Thanks, Gavin, but I'd prefer a bit more detail than that, if you don't mind, terribly. You'd previously said that the Mannlicher Carcano was used to hunt elephants. Would a rifle of that power caused someone to move in the opposite direction of the bullet strike? Would it cause their brains to fly in the opposite direction as well? I think Isaac Newton might have something to say to that. You show that the entry wound was in an area unreachable by a grassy knoll sniper. Yet you don't mention that the position of the entry wound was only known through the rushed pencil sketch of an autopsy technician, that photographs of the wound at the rear and the brain itself have been lost, never to be recovered. You neglect to mention that had Kennedy been shot from the rear left, then following your linear mechanics previously relied upon for the first shot, the exit wound would have been from the front right, not the front left of his head.
(12) You state that 'we know Oswald was in the sniper's nest' at the time Kennedy was shot. Erm, no, we don't. Not one single witness placed him there. In fact, one witness interviewed by the Warren Commission placed him 2 floors away at the time of the shooting. You ignore that witness just as you ignored Mary Mormon, Lee Bowers, and dozens of others, all of whom saw a gunman on the grassy knoll and led the chase up there afterwards. Archive footage of which exists and was shown on your show, but on which you never commented at all.
(13) In summary, the movie JFK and the various conspiracy theories were debunked by the show on the grounds of being poorly researched and/or selective with their evidence. I fail to see how this show was any better. It cherry-picked poorly based evidence to support it's contention, only worked to establish one possible outcome, and spent a substantial proportion of it's airtime on character assassination, hearsay and attempting to establish a motive. None of which would have ever stood up in court. Oswald was never tried in a court of law. Had he been, would there have been a reasonable doubt established? I think there may have been. Both Oswald and Ruby, in their testimony after being taken into custody made reference to being players in a wider game. 'I'm just a patsy' cried Oswald. 'This thing is bigger than you can possibly imagine' said Ruby to Earl Warren. Again, conveniently ignored by the show. No-one will ever know what happened in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and Oswald was undoubtedly involved at some level, but the evidence that he was a lone gunman is as full of as many holes as the evidence for conspiracy.
Don't have a lone gunman as such. Some people have organised some godawful conspiracy thing in schoolbook depository but I will givesomewhere that an Ed Reade.
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