The JFK Assassination: From the Oval Office to Dealey Plaza

                     The JFK Assassination: From the Oval Office to Dealey Plaza

Brent Holland is  a longtime and popular independent radio and TV host from Canada. He began his broadcasting career in earnest from Sudbury and now operates out of Kingston. He has been doing radio and TV for well over a dozen years.  Fright Night is both a radio and TV broadcast, while The Brent Holland Show is primarily a radio broadcast.  Holland’s announced goal is to try and get younger people more interested in the JFK case.

To my knowledge, Holland has released three previous documentaries.  As entitled above the fourth, his most recent version, is the one under discussion. In a  key way it contains the previous three in its interview subjects, and goes beyond them.

Brent has been doing interviews on the John Kennedy assassination for many, many years.  He has had a wide variety of guests on his program.  He may have been the last host to interview the late David Lifton. Perhaps his most famous guest was John Kennedy’s speechwriter Ted Sorenson who he talked to at his New York City home. Aptly, Sorenson begins the film by addressing the topic of some of the domestic and foreign policy changes that Kennedy was trying to make—and later with the fact that the White House found out later that the CIA knew the Bay of Pigs would fail and lied to Kennedy about it. This all clearly suggests that the Powers That Be  did not like some of the changes Kennedy was enacting e.g. civil rights, Kennedy’s Peace Speech at American University.  The film goes on to say that the groups opposed to Kennedy were quite powerful enough to remove him by force.

A recurring visual motif in the film are the communications from the White House to the plane carrying Kennedy’s advisors and cabinet members  across the Pacific.  These men were being alerted to the events in Dallas as they happened. They were on a return flight from Tokyo and this flight included:

 Secretary of State Dean Rusk

 Treasury Secretary Doug Dillon

 Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall

 Secretary of Agriculture Orville Freeman

 Secretary of Commerce Luther Hodges

 Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz

 Press Secretary Pierre Salinger

Holland intercuts this with scenes from Dallas, like Jackie Kennedy arriving at the Chamber of Commerce breakfast in Fort Worth; and then to Dealey Plaza and the reactions by the crowd, e.g. the Newman couple hitting the ground during the crossfire.

The film then goes to a four person panel pointing  at the  exit hole in the rear of Kennedy’s skull. But to me, the only person on the panel who was really relevant to this issue was Dr. Robert McClelland. Because he undoubtedly saw it at Parkland Hospital. People like Dr. Cyril Wecht are not prime witnesses to it.  Why Holland did not use the 15-17 person eye witness panels arranged by photographic authority Bob Groden eludes me.

Next to Sorenson, the most important witness in the film is probably McClelland. McClelland passed on in 2019.  But he tried to save the lives of both Kennedy and Oswald at Parkland Hospital.  He is quite clear in the film as to how he saw the hole in the rear of Kennedy’s skull.  It was from his positioning with a piece of equipment as requested by Dr. Malcolm Perry.  And he also explains why the single shot by Jack Ruby into Lee Oswald’s abdomen was fatal: because Oswald twisted his body at the last second, therefore the bullet hit two important blood arteries on the way through. If he had not done that Oswald likely would have survived.

James Tague passed on in 2014.  He was in Dealey Plaza that day, standing on Commerce Street, one over from Elm where the president and Governor Connally were struck. In the film, he reviews how the FBI tried to conceal the bullet strike on the curb in front of him that then ricocheted upward to hit his cheek.   The FBI did everything they could to hide this shot, which missed the entire car and street. But I think the film was wrong in deducing that this was the primary reason the Commission came up with the Single Bullet Theory.  In the film JFK Revisited Dr. Wecht describes that it was really due to the timing problem presented by the Zapruder film. There was too short a time between when Kennedy was first hit and when Connally was first hit. And this is what made Arlen Specter propose the fallacy.

Paul Chambers, who wrote the book Head Shot,  tells us how he talked to Robert Blakey, the second chief counsel to the House Select Committee on Assassinations.  Chambers says that Blakey told him that there were no federal agents in Dealey Plaza after the assassination. Therefore, where does the testimony of people, like Dallas Patrolman Joe Smith, who said a man told him he was Secret Service come from?

There are some quite questionable spots.  I have never been a fan of Lamar Waldron and his C Day theory of how the Mafia killed Kennedy.  And, as I have pointed out, the so called CAMTEX documents about Carlos Marcello confessing his role in the JFK case while in prison are dubious. For the simple reason that Marcello was clearly suffering from dementia at the time. 

Concerning the suspicions about Jim Braden who was in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination, Bill Kelly has done some good work on the man. It turns out that not only did Braden testify before the HSCA, he actually wanted to testify.  He did so--for two days. And beyond that, he wanted to testify in public and not in executive session.  Braden told the HSCA that he petitioned the committee to be formed so he could testify before it. Why? Because he had blamed writers like Peter Noyes—who first connected him to the JFK case-- for ruining his life.

On the day of the assassination he was on parole and his officer knew where he was. He was visiting Dallas with three partners. Braden was in the oil business and they were in town to meet with a son of H. L. Hunt.  He was stopped in the Dal Tex building while trying to make a phone call because the elevator operator did not know  who he was. An officer then detained him.  He was not arrested. And he flew to Houston after on more oil business. In that business he worked with geologist Vernon Main, who had an office on the same floor of the Pierre Marquette building as G Wray Gill, a part -time attorney for Carlos Marcello.

Because of the events of 11/22/63, he did not visit the Hunt offices. As for the RFK case, he said he was in bed with his wife at a hotel about a mile from the Ambassador when RFK was shot.  They watched the coverage on TV. (One can find Braden’s HSCA testimony at the Mary Ferrell Foundation, he testified on May 16, 1978 and July 26, 1978)

About Beverly Oliver, the so-called Babushka Lady, it seems she may have company for claiming that role due to Mary Haverstick and her book A Woman I Know.  Plus there is the problem posed by the late John Hunt.  Hunt said that photos she claimed she took with her Yashica camera were actually shot from the Nix film.  And Hunt said it was corrected for the slope of Elm Street likely by Bob Groden. (Click here for more https://www.jfk-assassination.net/huntpost.txt)

Holland adds the frequently used the Joseph Milteer/William Somersett tape, in which a threat was made prior to Kennedy’s death by rightwing extremist Joseph MIlteer. That has been played so often that it really does not have much impact to it left. Another problem I had was with the thesis about the origins of the Warren Commission, which somehow Waldron says owes itself to Robert Kennedy. The formation of that body was directly caused by heavyweight journalist Joe Alsop and his impact on President Johnson; and Don Gibson proved that with clear and convincing evidence declassified by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB). (See The Assassinations, edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, pp. 3-16)

The film relies a lot on the late Sherry Fiester for its medical evidence. She does a decent enough job, although I wish she had mentioned the importance of the fact that neither wound in Kennedy was dissected.  Which, according to Henry Lee, makes it very difficult to map out a bullet trajectory. But she makes the case for a fatal shot from the south knoll, which is on the opposite side of the trestle from the infamous Grassy Knoll.  She then brings in the book by Craig Roberts, Kill Zone.  Roberts was a military sniper and he has said that the firing feat attributed by the Commission to Oswald was very hard to swallow. 

Cyril Wecht finally expounds on his specialty: the lack of credibility for CE 399 as the Magic Bullet and the fact that Dr. Kemp Clark at Parkland noted that the cerebellum had been damaged. Yet lead pathologist James Humes said it was intact. Wecht clearly noted that he trusts Clark and not Humes on this. 

The film ends with Holland asking Sorenson if there is anyone on the political scene today who reminds him of JFK.  There is a long silence. Which infers that no there is not. This point would have been more forcefully made I think if Holland had gone into some specifics of Kennedy’s foreign policy reforms more deeply, and also perhaps his civil rights program and economic programs.

As per cinematic skill, some of the pictures did not seem to me to match the content of the film. But considering the fact that there was not a big production budget, it is adequately put together.

Holland’s film is a lot better than JFK X: Solving the Crime of the Century. And I give him credit for still being on the case.