Reviewing Oliver Stone’s Documentary – JFK: Revisited

What You Won’t See in the New Film or Read in the Book

(Graphic: DKM)

By DALE K. MYERS

I just finished viewing Oliver Stone’s mind-numbing documentary JFK: Revisited – The Complete Collection (released July 19), which includes nearly ten-hours of material. I also just finished reading James DiEugenio’s 463-page companion book of the film, JFK: Revisited – Through the Looking Glass (released July 5).

 

The two-hour documentary film version begins with a 7-minute and 42-second capsule summary of the events of November 22-24, 1963. The four-hour version excludes this summation.

 

Guess how many seconds are devoted to the murder of Officer J.D. Tippit? Answer: Three.

 

NBC News anchor Chet Huntley is heard in a three-second voice-over saying, “Police said he fired at them [in the theater], killing Patrolman J.D. Tippit.” [1]

 

There are no actual visuals in the film that show Officer Tippit, his car at the crime scene, or any of the other films and photographs that anyone well-versed in this subject is familiar with. None.

 

Stacked deck

 

You may feel that criticizing a documentary for what it does not show rather than what it does show is unfair, but I think this is the heart of why the film comes off like a stacked-deck.

 

I get that Oliver Stone would rather focus on the why behind the JFK assassination, but how can you get to the why if you don’t know the who and the what?

 

Author James DiEugenio offers this explanation in his semi-annotated book: “Although our film does not deal with the murder of Tippit, it is highly unlikely Oswald was the killer.” [2] Well, I guess that solves it.

 

What does DiEugenio offer to back up his statement? Answer: His own 2018 article, “The Tippit Case in the New Millennium,” which in fact borrows heavily from the embarrassing writings and musings of John Armstrong, Bill Simpich, Joseph McBride and Farris Rookstool. I say embarrassing because you couldn’t find four of the worst sources for truth and fact in the Tippit case anywhere on the planet. I know. I’ve written about what they’ve done with the case on this very blog and in my 1998 book With Malice – ad nauseum. Pick any aspect of the case – I dare you – and I’ll show you how they’ve avoided the truth and injected their own brand of crazy.

 

And if DiEugenio’s own article isn’t enough to convince you that Oswald is innocent of the Tippit murder, he suggests you read “a much longer treatment” by Joseph McBride. [3] I can only presume that he refers to McBride’s book Into the Nightmare – a dizzying collection of irrational and illogical thought that defies description. I pointed out just a small fraction of McBride’s idiocy on this subject in a blog review you’ll find HERE and HERE.

 

Rabbit snare

 

Oliver Stone and James DiEugenio won’t deal with the Tippit murder because it is the snare that entrapped Lee Harvey Oswald. It was Tippit’s murder that made Oswald a prime suspect in the JFK assassination. How can anyone taking a serious ten-hour look at JFK’s murder ignore it?

 

Because the evidence shows that Oswald lost his head when he spotted an approaching Dallas police squad car on an Oak Cliff side street. Why didn’t he just keep on walking? Tippit would have driven on by.

 

But Oswald’s own consciousness of guilt caused him to reverse direction on the sidewalk – an overt act that no doubt drew Tippit’s attention. Oswald’s own actions led to Tippit stopping alongside him. After a brief ten-second conversation through the passenger-side vent window, Tippit got out to question Oswald further and was met with a fuselage of fatal bullets from Oswald’s concealed pistol.

 

Broad daylight, a screaming witness, and more than a half-dozen eyewitnesses watch Oswald trot away from the scene reloading his revolver – ready for any future police encounters.

 

Thirty-five minutes later, Oswald screamed “Police brutality!” as Dallas police wrestled the Tippit murder weapon from Oswald’s clutched hand inside the Texas Theater. Oswald had just attempted to shoot one of the arresting officers.

 

Captain W.R. Westbrook, later quipped, “You just had a President of the United States shot down and you just had an officer killed in cold blood without even getting his gun out. I don’t think there could be any such thing as police brutality to a mad dog like that!” [4]

 

Apparently, this is all normal and completely unrelated to the fact that Oswald had worked at the Texas School Book Depository from which three shots were pumped into the presidential limousine by a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that Oswald himself had ordered from a Chicago mail-order house eight-months earlier.

 

Nothing to see here. Remain calm. All is normal.

 

Rehashed gibberish

 

Instead of truth and fact we get ten-hours of a rehash of decades-old, long-ago debunked allegations and gibberish. I took six-pages of notes while watching the film and reading the book, but to be honest, I just don’t have the energy or will to take the time to write it all up here.

 

Those familiar with the work of conspiracy advocates over the decades will recognize all the familiar allegations and faces in the film and book. None of it amounts to a hill of beans, but for the uninitiated, I’m sure it sounds like there must be something there, although they’re not quite sure what it is, exactly.

 

One thing that caught my attention, the filmmakers included their own animated “re-construction” of the assassination which shows Connally seated directly in front of Kennedy and turned slightly to his left (not considerably to his right as the Zapruder film shows), as a bullet zig-zags between them. Good gawd.

 

In the “Afterword” of the book of the film, DiEugenio writes, “Warren Commission defenders have done everything under the sun to try and make [Arlen] Specter’s seven-wound trajectory work. This necessitated the construction of several Rube Goldberg contraptions which, upon analysis, are rendered rather humorous. This includes the work of Thomas Canning for the House Select Committee on Assassinations. This effort reached the realm of low camp with what Dale Myers did on ABC for the 2003 program Beyond Conspiracy. Myers’s cartoon has been taken apart by Pat Speer, Bob Harris, Larry Schnapf, and John Orr.” [5]

 

Ah yes, those masters of forensic reconstruction – Bob Harris and Pat Speer. And let’s not forget Dr. David W. Mantik and Millicent Cranor. I destroyed all of their lame-ass arguments years ago, but that doesn’t keep DiEugenio from pretending it’s all still good.

 

And of course, Jimmy D would never mention Z-Axis Corporation, a legitimate forensic-science courtroom animation firm that vetted my work in person and concluded: “Mr. Myers has taken a comprehensive and reasoned approach to animating this event and has successfully incorporated many diverse visual records into a unified and consistent recreation. We believe that the thoroughness and detail incorporated into his work is well beyond that required to present a fair and accurate depiction.” [6]

 

Let’s just say that it is all so tedious and mind-numbing. Which is not to say that you shouldn’t watch it or read it. By all means, indulge in the nuttiness. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t believe what you’re seeing and reading.

 

The game is rigged and has been for years.

 

A move to silence

 

There is a movement currently underway in America to silence anyone who disagrees with anyone else about anything.

 

How dare one call out the insanity of those whose tactics are to ignore and obfuscate what really happened on November 22, 1963!

 

For the Oliver Stone and Jim DiEugenios of the world, acknowledging the truth that weekend hampers their agenda and undermines their power to control the narrative. Focus on the possible motive, they say, not the mechanics of what transpired.

 

Is any criminal investigation run this way? I’m not in law enforcement, but even from a layman’s perspective, it seems to me that you have to find out what happened before you can ever hope to know why it happened.

 

For normal people, who want to know whether their president was killed in a conspiracy, it’s indefensible to ignore what happened that weekend.

 

But JFK Revisited does exactly that – as does the long history of arguments that pass as “debate” on Internet forums claiming to explore the events in Dallas.

 

Anyone who sticks his head into these show rooms and remotely expresses a healthy skepticism about their pronouncement of Oswald’s innocence is immediately silenced and punished by an ever-growing chorus of crybullies.

 

This is precisely why these loud-mouthed zealots must be challenged and challenged often. To keep silent only emboldens their effort to crush all dissent.

 

And therein lies the truth of the matter: If they were so sure of their position, they why do they feel that they must stop anyone who calls them out? [END]

 

 

Footnotes

 

[1] DiEugenio, James, JFK: Revisited – Through the Looking Glass, Skyhorse Publishing, NY, 2022) p.19 [Note: Huntley’s remark is from an early report that had Tippit being shot in the Texas Theater during Oswald’s arrest rather than at Tenth and Patton, six blocks east of the theater, which precipitated the arrest. DiEugenio’s “annotated” transcript doesn’t identify Huntley by name, as any good annotated transcript should. This is a problem throughout the book but is especially lacking in the transcript of the weekend summary at the beginning of the film.]

 

[2] op. cit., DiEugenio, James, p.19 [Note: DiEugenio’s annotations are sparse and not original sources, but rather secondary sources – people he agrees with. This is not what most people expect in an annotated volume.]

 

[3] op. cit., DiEugenio, James, p.19

 

[4] Interview of W.R. Westbrook by Larry Sneed, 1986, p.7

 

[5] op. cit., James DiEugenio, p.223 [Note: My name does not appear in the Index of the book, a curious oversight. Or was it?]

 

[6] Letter, Z-Axis Corporation to Springs Media, Inc., October 14, 2003