Why’d Oswald Do It? It May All Come Down To A Party In Mexico City.

[JaneyVee]

-SNIP-

Yes, that’s right, I’ve become convinced that, 50 years after the act, a real reporter—not some chat-room know-it-all—has through actual, on the ground, person-to-person investigation, through nonstop digging, tugging at the tangled heart of the mystery, brought us to the brink of answer. An achievement that, I believe, merits the Pulitzer Prize and the thanks of a grateful nation. (I should note I’d never met or spoken to Shenon before our phone call in early November.)

It certainly has been a turnaround for me, someone who’s written and read and retraced the assassination on the ground (and underground) in Dallas over the years. I’d always believed there was so much wrong with the Warren Report that its “lone gunman” conclusion could not possibly be valid. And rarely admitted to myself that even the worst investigation might, by some twist, come to the right conclusion. And what a twist it is. I’m not giving too much away when I say that it all comes down to a “twist party” in Mexico City, and what you believe happened there.

Shenon started his research five years ago, prompted by a call from a Warren Commission staffer who said the truth had never been told about how extensively they’d been lied to. (Here one must credit the O.G.s among the Warren Commission critics, even the deluded O. Stone and his nutso conspiracy film. Beautifully photographed—by the genius Bob Richardson—but intellectually worthless, the film nonetheless prompted the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, which resulted in the declassification of hundreds of thousands of CIA and FBI documents, some of which, when sifted through, tell an appalling story, about how U.S. intelligence agencies monitored Oswald before the event and then scrambled to cover up their failure to flag him as a potential assassin.)

Shenon excavates some of this intelligence agency misbehavior, including the ongoing harassment of Oswald that (even though it wasn’t a direct order to kill JFK) could have helped destabilize him and drive him to become an assassin under the right circumstances, which, alas, prevailed on Nov. 22,1963. But Shenon points to a far more salient reason for Oswald’s act, one that most conspiracy theorists have shuddered at contemplating because they can’t bear the idea that there might be even a hint of Cuban involvement. Because they will go to any lengths to refuse to take Oswald at his word—that he was a pro-Castro fanatic. Shenon’s terrific reportorial instincts led him pull on a loose thread in the tangled heart of the story: Oswald’s trip to Mexico City and his involvement with personnel from the Cuban Embassy there. And he actually came up with something new.

The rest: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/the_spectator/2013/11/philip_shenon_s_a_cruel_and_shocking_act_stunning_reporting_in_new_book.html

[lame54]

1. I love O. Stones amazing film so much I wrote a song about it...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024073404

[JaneyVee]

2. I don't know what to make of this article, and I wasn't alive when it happened,

Just thought I'd put this out there and let others decide.