CONSPIRACY

by Anthony Summers ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 8, 1980

Just when the conspiracy blitz has died down, a BBC investigative reporter has produced the most complete accounting yet of the evidence pointing to the biggest conspiracy of all, the assassination of JFK. Summers points out that the recent Assassinations Committee explicitly concluded that at least two gunmen shot at President Kennedy, and uncovered a lot of other important new information, only to be almost ignored by the news-media snoops. Summers accounts for this by news managers' reluctance to publish more stuff on the assassination conspiracy without real proof of who was involved. Specifically, Summers doesn't know; but the evidence, he thinks, makes a plausible case that the conspiracy to kill Kennedy was composed of members of the Mafia, Cuban exile groups, and an unnamed ""renegade element in U.S. intelligence."" At the time of the assassination, Summers notes, there was no ongoing tradition of tough investigative journalism aimed at government; and the sloppy work of the Warren Commission, the dropped leads and unchecked evidence, went through the press like water. Going back now isn't easy, since the original documentation is dubious--even JFK's autopsy was done by Army doctors untrained in dealing with gunshot wounds--and a lot of the principals have since died. But Summers lays it all out, including the thoughts of some that the messy autopsy was no accident; and once all the ambiguities about Oswald's connections with agents of both sides are bared, it does look pretty shady. But Summers has only innuendo and rational argument to go with. It is reasonable, he thinks, to guess that some people in the CIA conspired with anti-Castro Cubans and Mafia types to set up Oswald and kill Kennedy because of the President's handling of Cuban relations. On Summers' evidence, this theory makes as much sense as any, but all he can do finally is call for another investigation. If he's right, the conspiracy to kill Kennedy may go down as one of the most successful in history, along with the conspiracy to investigate the conspiracy to death.

Pub Date: June 8, 1980

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1980

Categories: NONFICTION