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“The trouble with the world is not that people know too little; it’s that they know so many things that just aren’t so.” Mark Twain
On Nov. 22, 1963, I was a Private First Class in the United States Army. That afternoon, I was completing a daily report about my U.S. Army unit in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, and was interrupted by the news that President Kennedy had been assassinated in Dallas, Texas. This news had no effect on the report I was working on, but it was history making and had a huge impact on our nation. We had a new Commander in Chief. This probably also made a huge impact on the conduct of the hostilities then under way in Vietnam.
Sixty-two years later, just a few weeks ago, President Trump made the announcement that he will release all the information available about this assassination and others.
I recently read two very interesting books written about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Both were well written but ended with very different conclusions about how and why President Kennedy was killed.
The first of the two books is titled “Killing Kennedy, the End of Camelot,” written by the team of Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard and published in 2012.
The second book is titled “The Man Who Killed Kennedy, the Case Against LBJ,” written by Roger Stone and Mike Colapietro and published in 2013.
Both books were carefully researched, contained immense amounts of information and yet the authors arrived at entirely different conclusions.
Those of us who remember the presidency of John F. Kennedy remember the respect and admiration our nation held for President Kennedy. This president was considered by myriads of admirers to be a modern King Arthur, and his presidency was often favorably compared to the mythical Camelot. It seemed to the admiring public that all the romance of the current Broadway musical “Camelot” was somehow being duplicated by the dashing young war hero John F. Kennedy and his beautiful wife Jackie.
O’Reilly and Dugard begin their tale with a description of Navy Lietenant John F. Kennedy’s perilous night in 1943, when his PT boat was sliced in two by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri in the middle of the night. They continue with a vivid description of the heroic efforts of Lieutenant Kennedy to rescue the survivors.
“Killing Kennedy” pretty much agrees with the conclusion of the “Warren Commission Report,” written following the official investigation of the assassination of President Kennedy. The Warren Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy. Oswald worked alone and was killed by Jack Ruby. Ruby was tried and convicted for the murder of Oswald. He appealed the conviction but died of cancer before the second trial could begin.
On the other hand, the Roger Stone book arrives at a totally different conclusion. Stone builds a compelling case that Lyndon Baines Johnson supposedly was heavily involved with the mob. Johnson was furious that the upstart Kennedy was the president instead of him.
Stone makes a strong case that Johnson’s mob connections were used to get rid of President Kennedy. In the Stone account, Vice President Johnson was able to use his connections to arrange for the assassination of President Kennedy. According to Roger Stone, Johnson stopped at nothing to gain the presidency.
President Trump has said that he will make all known records about the Kennedy assassination public information. It will be very interesting how much this new information will both agree and disagree with the official Warren Commission and other information that may be available. I wonder if we will ever really know the truth.
Mike Lang, member, Union County Republican Central Committee