Tuesday, November 27, 2012
"Frame 313: The JFK Assassination Theories": 2008 examination of conspiracy theories will be really relevant next year at 50th Anniversary
“Frame 313: The JFK Assassination Theories” (2008), by Chris
Anderson, for Sundown Entertainment and Monarch Films, gives an analysis of all
the major theories behind the assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy on
November 22, 1963. The 113-minute film has a rather straightforward narrative
style. Much of the film replays
fuzzy black-and-white (and sometimes
color) original film.
The film starts out by saying that there was no federal law
against such an act then, just state law, and wonders if one person could have
fired the first two shots in less than a second and a half.
Theory 1 refers to the lone gunman. Theory 2 refers to a CIA conspiracy. Theory 3
invokes the Soviet Union KGB, which could have involved French and Vietnamese
agemts. Theory 4 refers to Mafia hitmen.
Theory 5 refers to a CIA Cuban exile’s conspiracy, following the Cuban Missile
Crisis.
The film then launches a Prologue, with discussion of
post-Cuban crisis US Soviet relations, and then skips to that day. Dallas had
become a “city of hate” where posters showing Kennedy as “wanted for treason”
because of integration.
The film then chronicles the details of the event. The first shot was not fatal, and the
president said “My God, I’m hit”.
The 40 second Zapruder film (with its Frame 313,
corresponding to the wounding of bystander
James Tague as well as the explosion of Kennedy’s head), taken by an
ordinary citizen, could not prove one theory.
The film quickly presents the Warren Commission and the “Single
Bullet Theory”.
The film soon goes into the theory that the FBI and CIA
withheld information from the Warren Commission in order to defuse any
conspiracy. The HFCA (House) then issued
another theory suggesting conspiracy. For example, the House found that Jack
Ruby had made many calls to mob figures, a fact that the Warren Commission didn’t
uncover.
There are several potential enemies, who could have
conspired in several ways. These include
the CIA (Kennedy had transferred some power from the CIA back to the JCS), the
mob (with its connections to southeast Asia drug trafficking), and both
pro-Castro and right wing anti-Castro elements.
Some of the most telling evidence seems to come from the “double life”
apparently led by Oswald, who obviously could have been set up as a “patsy”. Late in the film, another man “confesses” to
having been a second gunman from the Grassy Knoll.
It sounds very unlikely to me that the last two of the three
shots could have come from one person (Oswald in the Depository). It does sound likely that the first two shots
did, including both that hit the president.
Wikipedia says that the last two bullets occur in rapid
succession, but the YouTube trailer (above) has
the first two closest together (which could not come from one person).
The film closes with the suggestion that the State of Texas
should convene a grand jury to re-open a new investigation.
I recall being at work at the National Bureau of Standards
(the old Van Ness campus) when my boss came into the lab and said that the
president had been shot. We heard about
the death from Cronkite on the radio shortly.
I remember waiting for the bus on K Street, wondering if there could be
a nuclear attack. (That moment would
lead to an uncanny retrospect months later, which I won’t get into now.)
I was in the back seat of the family car which my father was
driving down 17th St in NW Washington DC, leaving church, again
almost to K Street, when we heard Jack Ruby’s gunshot on live radio in the
car. I remember hearing the shot and the
words “He’s been shot!” Later, this
would be called “the first live telecast murder.” I was 20 then, and my own life had been
troubled by my own college expulsion for admitting homosexuality. I had the impression that the world was all
about people maneuvering to have power over one another, and I was “weak” and a
liability. So the conspiracy theories
fit well here. even if they do not with some of the “lone wolf” domestic
terrorism in much more recent history.
In November 2013, the
50th Anniversary of the JFK Assassination will occur. In October of
2012, this year, the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis,
mentioned in the film, took place.
Labels:
CIA ops,
indie documentary,
Kennedy,
military,
television-made
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