I believe it did. I can't speak for Roger Stone's book other than the article on it that I linked to previously, but I found Jim Marrs' book Crossfire, originally published in 1989, to be most informative in this regard.
The John F. Kennedy Assassination
- Thread starter Scott
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I believe it did. I can't speak for Roger Stone's book other than the article on it that I linked to previously, but I found Jim Marrs' book Crossfire, originally published in 1989, to be most informative in this regard.
Mason Michaels
Verified User
The book that changed my mind was Death of a President by William Manchester. He was a top top writer at the time, and Jackie Kennedy asked him to write it.
He had other great books too.
Alright, but that book was published in 1967, long before the Zapruder film of 1975. Jim Marrs had over 20 years longer to find more information on what really happened in his first edition of Crossfire that he published in 1989.
He also apparently makes a fair amount of mistakes, according some purchasers of the book on Amazon. Some quotes from them:
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Robert Caro's "Passage of Power" tells a totally different story regarding the relationship between the Kennedys and Johnsons, both before and after JFK was elected President. LBJ was a necessary evil for Kennedy to win the election, and was treated as an unnecessary evil as VP, a job "not worth a buck of warm spit"...except "spit" is the less-vulgar version of the aphorism.
The Manchester book makes the relationship between JFK and LBJ warm and fuzzy, while multiple historians have painted a different picture.
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Source:
Edited by the Kennedys | Amazon.com
Here's another:
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Like so many establishment figures of that era, Manchester gets hung up on the window dressing of the Kennedy Era--"Camelot," as they called it in the purple parlance of the time. There's a lot of uninteresting detail here about numerous trivialities that happened that weekend, but the author totally glosses over the truly strange and meaningful events taking place at that time. Manchester ultimately sticks with the three-bullets-and-Oswald untruth perpetrated by the Warren Commission. Most of the world had moved on from that farce by the time Geraldo showed the Zapruder film on national TV in 1975. In that way, Manchester's is a view on the JFK assassination that is stuck in time, a time when the nation still generally believed the government version of events and concerned itself with minutia like Jackie's fashion choices and the majesty of the funeral procession. Time has passed this volume by, and that makes it difficult reading for anyone with more than a cursory knowledge of the Kennedy assassination.
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Source:
JFK for neophytes, an overlong delve into the superficialities of a turning point in our history | amazon.com
And another:
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Writing about the dispute over the Single Bullet Theory before the bootlegged release of some autopsy photos and X-rays in the 1970s: "The issue is resolved by the X-rays and photographs which were taken from every conceivable angle during the autopsy on the President's body. Because this material is unsightly it will be unavailable until 1971. However, the author has discussed it with three men who examined it before it was placed under seal. All three carried special professional qualifications. Each was a stranger to the other two. Nevertheless their accounts were identical. The X-rays show no entry wound `below the shoulder,' as argued by [Edward J. Epstein]...the photographs support them in this case - and reveal that the wound was in the neck."
I don't know which photos these men were looking at, but the one we have available today clearly shows the bullet hole in the upper back below the shoulder, not in the neck.
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Source:
Entertaining but not always reliable | Amazon.com
Another:
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Regarding Manchester, Edward Jay Epstein wrote ". . .a more critical test of a historian's probity than his ability to discriminate between the relevant and the irrelevant is his way of coping with material which tends to conflict with his major theses. Does he take such material into proper account, even if that might entail revising or reconstructing his prime argument, or does he simply omit it or disingenuously attempt to discount its significance?" For Manchester, the final was the assassination itself. He flunked. His failure had to do with the number of shots. The Warren Report's second conclusion was "The weight of the evidence indicates that there were three shots fired." Essentially, the Commission concluded that all of the shots were fired from the the southeast corner of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and that three empty cartridge cases were found there, so three shots were fired. It admits a weakness in the second half of the inference: the assassin might have come to the Depository with an empty shell in his rifle and fired two shots. Manchester, marching in lockstep with the Commission, echoes this reasoning: "A majority of witnesses say they heard three detonations, and three spent shells were fund in the sniper's perch. . . . And it would have been typical of [Lee Harvey] Oswald's laxity to have come to the warehouse with an expended cartridge in the breech, which would have required removal before he could commence firing." (p. 155) To assess the Commission's reasoning, you'll have to read Chapter III of the Warren Report, "The Shots from the Texas School Book Depository." If you do, you'll find something you won't find in TheDoaP: James Tague. He was standing near the west end of Dealey Plaza, watching the motorcade, when he felt something strike his cheek. He later found a mark on the curb near the place where he stood. Analysis of the mark revealed it contained lead and other elements found in a bullet's core. The Report gave two ways that this mark may have come to be: a fragment from President Kennedy's head wound might have struck the curb, or a bullet fired from the Depository might have struck some object and the core separated from the jacket and went on to strike the curb. The first way is highly unlikely, since the wound was on the right side of President Kennedy's head and the mark was almost directly in front of him. If the mark was created the latter way, at least three shots were fired, since it took at least two shots to wound President Kennedy and Governor Connally. There is no mention of the struck curb or Tague in TheDoaP. It's not because Manchester was sparing with details: he gave the mileage on Oneal's hearse when he left for Parkland Hospital. (p.292. It was exactly nine hundred miles. Yeah, right.) He interviewed Caroline and John's nanny, but not Tague.
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Source:
The Manchester Monument | Amazon.com
A final one:
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I had a real problem with this book. This was one of the early books that came out on the Kennedy assassination. In this book Manchester accepts the lone gunman theory. I still can't buy it. There is too much information and too many books to the contrary - even congressional investigations. My opinion is that the national crisis and Manchester's friendship with the Kennedy family influenced his history. The entire Kennedy family has been mysteriously quiet on this subject. I have my own theory as to why. I am sorry, but I just don't believe his account. I don't consider this work up to Manchester's standards or ethics.
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Source:
The Hobo Philosopher | Amazon.com