TO KILL A PRESIDENT

Ex-FBI agent and whistleblower Swearingen details his research and suspicions behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

“I believe the American Government and its investigative agencies are bankrupt,” writes the author. As a 25-year veteran of the FBI, he has plenty of examples to back up that assertion, beginning with the numerous black-bag jobs he carried out during his career, to which the Bureau never owned up. If Swearingen has an axe to grind, it is motivated by a higher purpose: He is appalled that various governmental bodies–the executive branch and the CIA in particular–have violated criminal laws and forsworn their oath to defend the Constitution. Here Swearingen tries to make sense of the well-circulated theory that a witch’s brew of organized crime, violent Cuban exiles and the CIA were determined to kill Kennedy. Why? Because the president declined to commit U.S. troops to the Bay of Pigs operation after quailing before the William Fulbright memorandum denouncing covert interventions, and because he appeared inclined to disband the CIA. Swearingen provides hard-boiled profiles of players he thinks were involved in the Dallas assassination, including Chicago crime boss Sam Giancana, “a totally demented whoremonger and scum bag.” In his wizened narrative voice, Swearingen covers once again why the lone-gunman hypothesis is preposterous, and delineates why many of the allegedly accidental deaths that befell reporters and investigators following the assassination suggest fabrications on the part of the government. The author unleashes his experience-fueled intuition to detail the motive of other players in the conspiracy, including the Chicago Mob. Names are named, associations are made, reasonable conjectures are served and Swearingen comes across as the real deal. He virtually dares readers to prove him wrong.

For a bone so well gnawed, Swearingen surprises with unexplored pockets of meat.