Rob Reiner's "Who Killed JFK?"

Reviewed by James DiEugenio

                         

At the 60^th anniversary of John Kennedy’s death, there were three media events which greatly helped even the playing field for those trying to promote the truth about JFK’s murder. They were Paul Landis’ book The Final Witness, Barbara Shearer’s TV documentary What the Doctors Saw and Rob Reiner’s podcast series Who Killed JFK? These prevented the 60^th from being a complete MSM wipeout like the 50^th anniversary had been.

Reiner’s podcast actually began as a TV mini-series, which was going to be styled as a docudrama. That presentation was to be based on three books: Gaeton Fonzi’s The Last Investigation, Jim Douglass’ JFK and the Unspeakable, and Dick Russell’s The Man Who Knew too Much. One can imagine how powerful and important such a TV series would have been with dramatic portrayals of people like David Phillips, Richard Case Nagell, and Sen. Richard Schweiker amid the Church Committee hearings. I know this because, for a brief time, I was working on the project as researcher and attended some planning meetings. But the executive who approved the project, Ted Gold, was let go by Paramount and the project was dropped. Reiner unsuccessfully tried to find financing elsewhere.  It was a real shame since the project had enormous potential as a ten part mini-series. It would have been broadcast right after JFK Revisited was on Showtime, and those two shows would have made a powerful one- two combination.

Reiner decided to salvage the project as a podcast for the very wide reaching IHeart network. He enlisted former CNN  newscaster Soledad O’Brien to be his co -host.  The writer was the same one who was going to write the scripts for the mini-series, Dave Hoffman, who is also a busy actor.  The podcast series ran in 10 installments with two short bonus adjuncts.  The total running time was over five hours.  I will review the series in three part segments so this critique will end up being in four installments.

After a brief  three minute overture, the first installment is called “Shots Have Been Fired”. It starts out with O’Brien interviewing Reiner about how he got interested in the case. He recalls his shock upon hearing about Kennedy’s death as a 16 year old in his physics class. Later on Reiner reveals that his interest was piqued by his talks with Mort Sahl at a place they were both performing at: The Hungry I. This was a nightclub in San Francisco where Sahl used to perform.  But Reiner said, at the time, Sahl would mostly talk about the JFK assassination. And this provoked him into doing some serious study of the case, starting out with Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment. This journey culminated with an introduction to Dick Russell by co-producer Matt George and Reiner says that is how the theoretical pieces began to fall into place.

The program proper begins at the end. That is with Jack Ruby shooting Oswald on TV, an event which Reiner—like myself-- saw live. And like millions of others the question became: Why did Ruby do it?  The program then matches up that rhetorical question with a statement made by Oswald the previous day, “I’m just a patsy.”  The deduction being that Ruby was sent to silence Oswald.

The show now reverts to a bit of history, with a commentator who is as surprising as the choice of O’Brien, namely Jon Meacham. Meacham is Mr. Establishment. He ran Newsweek for years, was a VP at Random House, and is a contributor to the New York Times and Washington Post. Meacham is going to set the historical period as the series begins to delve into the temper of the times and who Kennedy was. Meacham dutifully talks about the Cold war and the fervor against communism, the aftermath of McCarthyism and the rise of Castro in Cuba.

Predictably he then tries to say that Kennedy was not going to let Richard Nixon intimidate him and so he was a vigilant anti-communist in the 1960 presidential race. We now shift to the Bay of Pigs invasion which was planned under Eisenhower and ended up a disaster. To his credit Reiner does say that Kennedy did not authorize the so-called D-Day bombing sorties. Jeff Morley now steps in and says Kennedy got rid of CIA Director Allen Dulles afterwards and the show jumps to the Missile Crisis.

I thought the program missed a good opportunity here. Meacham mentions the Ex Comm group that Kennedy assembled to discuss the ongoing crisis.  But he does not say how this differed from the decision making on the Bay of Pigs.  In the latter, the grouping was all made up of military men and Cabinet advisors like Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. This time around Kennedy added his brother Robert and speech writer Ted Sorenson. And it was Robert who did the end run to the Russian ambassador which resulted in the compromise that ended the crisis. Also, I think the program underestimates how belligerent the initial proposals were.  At the first meeting, very few were willing to use any kind of diplomatic foray, most everyone either wanted to invade, or at least bomb the missile silos.  McNamara’s blockade was a milder alternative which Kennedy then latched onto.

I also disagreed with the interpretation that the show places around Kennedy: that somehow the man who was elected in 1960 was a very different individual than the one in 1963.  This was probably borrowed from Jim Douglass’ admirable book.  But the newest research in this area says that JFK turned from being a Truman style Democrat to being a Roosevelt Democrat much earlier in his career. The clear dividing line was Senator Kennedy’s great Algeria speech in 1957, which created a firestorm of controversy due to its radical critique of the Eisenhower/Nixon foreign policy in the Third World. And Kennedy enacted those views once he took office, for example, in the Congo.  So I disagree with the view of Kennedy coming in as a Cold Warrior and being transformed by 1963 to the Man Of Peace at American University.  In fact, I actually think the Algeria speech in 1957 was more daring and insightful than the Peace Speech.

The program tries to join the American University Peace Speech, an attempt by JFK at detente with Russia, with Kennedy’s back channel through ambassador William Attwood to Castro, which was also blossoming in the fall of 1963.  And it suggests that a note about Attwood Kennedy left behind on his desk was something he wanted to follow through on in his return from Dallas. Clearly suggesting the provocation for the assassination.

                                                            II

Part 2 is entitled “The Investigations”. It begins with the attempts at congressional investigations of Kennedy’s murder and the desire by both J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI and the new president, Lyndon Johnson, to try and nip them in the bud. It then accentuates the infamous Katzenbach Memo of 11/25/63 featuring the phrase that  “The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin.” But the show does not say this was actually inspired by Hoover the day before. (See NBC News story of October 26, 2017 by Alex Johnson). This is very important since it reveals that the man who is going to be the chief investigator was in cover up mode within 48 hours.

We then go to the creation of the Warren Commission.  Again, I had two reservations about this section. First, it does not mention the fact that Johnson did not want such a commission. That it was more or less forced on him by Eugene Rostow and especially Joe Alsop. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 3-17)  Second, it states that Earl Warren took the job of heading the Commission but does not explain why. It was because Johnson got a report from McNamara about how an initial atomic exchange with Russia would leave about 40 million dead. This intimidated Warren enough to take the position. And Johnson had CIA memos about Oswald visiting the Russian embassy in Mexico City and meeting with a KGB agent there under diplomatic cover. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 290, p. 313) The question then becomes, did Johnson believe those cables about Mexico City, since Hoover had problems with the information and he told the new president about them. Namely that the voice on the tape was not Oswald’s and the picture was not him either. (JFK Revisited, by James DiEugenio, pp.361-62)

The Warren Report was an “Oswald did it” tract issued in late September of 1964.  One of the first critiques of it focused on the sine qua non of the Report, namely the Single Bullet Theory.  Gaeton Fonzi was a reporter in Philadelphia and he questioned Arlen Specter, the Commission lawyer who devised the theory. Specter said he did not question any of the eyewitnesses while assembling his theory.   He also did not interview Admiral Burkley, Kennedy’s personal doctor who was the only physician at both Parkland Hospital where Kennedy was rushed to for ER treatment, and Bethesda Medical Center, where the autopsy was performed. Again, another way to have added to this was the belated information that the late Edward Epstein printed in his book Assume Nothing.  There, Epstein printed a disclosure by Specter to him in 1966 which explained why he created the Single Bullet Theory and how he convinced the Commission to adopt it: “I showed them the Zapruder film, frame by frame, and explained that they could either accept the single bullet theory or begin looking for a second assassin.” (Epstein, p. 70) That would have been a shocking spoken disclosure/confession.

O’Brien then notes how the belief in the Warren Report dropped from 56% to 33% from 1964 to 1966.  This was largely due to a series of books, like Lane’s Rush to Judgment, which flayed open the problems with the evidence.

The podcast then leaps ahead one decade to a nexus of two events that caused the case to be reopened. These were the broadcast of the Zapruder film in March of 1975 on ABC TV by Geraldo Rivera, and the hearings of the Church Committee exposing the crimes of the CIA and FBI. In the first the public finally got to see the shocking back and to the left movement of Kennedy’s body due to the hit at Z frame 313.  And as Dick Russell informs us, the Church Committee exposed plots by the CIA to kill Castro,  Patrice Lumumba in Congo, and Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic.  The combination of these showed many people that 1.) Kennedy had been killed in a crossfire and 2.) the CIA could be a prime suspect. Rivera’s show concluded with the plea there should be a new inquiry, and there was.

The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) opened with much promise, both Fonzi and Bob Groden—the man who brought the Zapruder film to Rivera-- were a part of it. Dick Russell plays an interview he did with the first Chief Counsel Richard Sprague.  Sprague says that 2 of the problems he had were that 1.) He was asking about Oswald’s possible relationship with the CIA, and 2.) He would not sign any non-disclosure agreements with the FBI or CIA.  He wanted to print and use all information that he got from them. Sprague was eventually let go, technically he was not fired as the program says.  He was forced to step down. (The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 62)

Robert Blakey took over from that point.  And I think the program downplays what a difference the change in chief counsel made. This author noted some of the differences between Sprague’s approach and Blakey’s. (DiEugenio and Pease, pp. 64-65) Blakey worked out agreements with the intelligence agencies which allowed his investigators to see classified documents, but they had to sign non-disclosure agreements and the agencies would have final say over what could be printed in the final report . He also accepted intelligence agencies liasons to the committee.  This last was a mistake, as Jeff Morley points out with his exposure of George Joannides, who the CIA said had no connection with the JFK case in 1963.  That turned out to be false, as he was a supervisor of the Cuban exile group, the Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil, the DRE, in New Orleans that summer. And this group interacted with Oswald.

At this point the program should have brought in HSCA investigators Dan Hardway and Ed Lopez, as they had firsthand knowledge of just what Joannides did to the inquiry. Hardway told me that Joannides would delay requests  for documents and when he finally handed them over, they would contain redactions.

On the perceived strength of the acoustics evidence, the HSCA concluded that Kennedy was killed as the result of a probable conspiracy. But neither the FBI, CIA nor the Secret Service was involved. They leaned toward a Mob did it scenario, and this is what Blakey announced shortly after the report was released. Which is another point the show leaves out. He then co-wrote a book on that subject.

                                                            III

Part 3 of the series is simply entitled “Forensics”.  It is rather narrowly focused on the medical evidence. The three key interviewees are Dr. Cyril Wecht, Dr. David Mantik and the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) analyst Doug Horne. Horne states at the start that neither Dr. Humes nor Dr. Boswell was qualified for the assignment of doing the autopsy on Kennedy at Bethesda. That is fine as far as it goes but the show could have added the testimony of the third pathologist Pierre Finck. At the Clay Shaw trial he said that the autopsy doctors were actually halted from doing a dissection of Kennedy’s back wound. (James DiEugenio, Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, pp. 299-302) Horne could have also added the explosive testimony of the official autopsy photographer John Stringer before the ARRB.  There, under oath, Stringer said that he did not take the photos of Kennedy’s brain in the archives, since he did not use that type of film or that type of photographic technique. (Inside the ARRB, by Douglas Horne, p. 809)

During this segment, Reiner made two comments that I did not understand.  He said that the Zapruder film reveals evidence of three shots. I did not comprehend his logic on this, since the film is silent, any kind of enumeration is purely visual. It is possible to visualize as many as five shots on the film, 3 to Kennedy and 2 to Connally. The other point Reiner makes returns to Joannides for some reason.  He said that Joannides oversaw a special ops program which had recruited Oswald. I have never seen this noted in any book or essay, even those by Jeff Morley. And he has studied Joannides more than anyone I know.  I don’t know if this is new or perhaps a mistake.

Mantik states that it was the hit to James Tague that gave the Commission some serious problems. And Wecht notes how the FBI experiments showed a timing problem in that it took about 2.3 seconds to recycle the rifle, but a much lesser period of time elapsed between when Kennedy was first hit, and when Connally showed signs of being hit.  The combination of the two likely necessitated the invention of the Single Bullet Theory. Wecht then explained how the trajectory of the bullet is truly remarkable. Plus, John Connally always insisted he was hit by a separate bullet from the one that hit Kennedy.  There follows an interview with Paul Landis, who describes his belatedly revealed discovery of a bullet in the back seat which he picked up and placed on Kennedy’s gurney.  This, of course would account for 4 shots, one more than the Warren Commission allowed,  or were possible for Oswald to get off in the 6-7 second time span.

I think this could have been improved with an interview with Josiah Thompson. In his first book, Six Seconds In Dallas, he makes a very strong case that the gurney that the Magic Bullet, CE 399, was found on was not Connally’s or Kennedy’s. It belonged to a little boy named Ronnie Fuller.  In other words, the plotters had the wrong stretcher. (Thompson, pp. 155-66). Even better would have been Thompson talking about what a nurse there told the late Wallace Milam: that they were discovering bullets in other places that day. (DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, p. 92)

Shifting to Dr. Malcolm Perry, Mantik refers to the article I wrote with information supplied to me by Rob Couteau.  Couteau discovered the online notebooks of reporter Martin Steadman which revealed that on a visit to Perry’s home about a week after the assassination, he told the reporter that he was getting calls the night of the assassination from Bethesda.  The doctors were trying to get him to change his story about a front neck wound which he announced that day at a press conference. If he did not they threatened to take away his medical license. (See, “The Ordeal of Malcom Perry” at Kennedys and King.com). The role of Elmer Moore is briefly gone into. He was the Secret Service agent who was assigned the task of talking Perry out of his story. (James DiEugenio, The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, pp.166-68)

The segment closes with O’Brien asking Horne and Mantik about the differences between the autopsy pictures showing an intact rear of the head with the scores of witnesses who saw a blown out rear of the skull. They refer to Sandra Spencer who said she saw a different set of pictures than the official ones. (James DiEugenio, JFK Revisited, p.167) They also refer to another differing photo set from people they do not name but are likely Robert Knudsen and Joe O’Donnell. (Horne, Inside the ARRB, p. 285). I wish they had described specifically what was depicted by these witnesses, named all of them, and when their observations were first made. The capper here could have been the exposure of the lie in the HSCA volumes, that only the Parkland doctors saw this hole.  As the ARRB revealed, over 20 people also saw it at Bethesda. And the HSCA knew it. (JFK Revisited, pp. 127-28)