Oliver Stone: JFK conspiracy deniers are in denial

Oliver Stone

Living through the news media assault of the past few weeks leading up to this 50th year's commemoration marking the violent end of JFK's presidency, I'm amazed there is any single adult left in the USA who would not think that Lee Harvey Oswald was the one and only assassin.

Although polls from 1964 on clearly signal the public's distrust of the official story, the mainstream media have never given up telling us how superstitious or illogical the common people are in this belief. As one of that multitude, the motivating factor for my disbelief has not been my idealistic view of Kennedy or what he might have done had he lived, but the very evidence of the shooting itself, which remains, then and now, dubious. Some basic examples:

The single bullet theory allows for one bullet, fired from the sixth floor, on a downward trajectory, to enter Kennedy's back and then move upward, out his throat and into Texas Gov. John Connally to his front, where it zigs and zags breaking two bones and creating seven wounds. Now, I've been in the infantry and I've seen enough combat to tell you that in all the craziness of war, this "Alice in Wonderland" scenario defies physics and common sense. The American people are not stupid.

The theory asks us to believe that the president, moving away from the alleged sharpshooter, up six floors, can be shot in the back of his head and snap suddenly back and to the left — although common sense and the naked eye tell us that he should be going forward when he receives that shot.

And that, coincidentally, there was a supposedly empty fence to the right front of the president, which when you stand there in Dealey Plaza presents a nearly perfect line of sight at the president — and would naturally justify the motion of the president back and to the left if he were shot from the front right. Now the fact that the fence was supposedly unoccupied during this whole time when the entire plaza was filled with eager observers of the popular president further defies common sense.

We're supposed to accept all that even though:

More than 50 witnesses testified at the time to the Warren Commission that they heard or saw a shot coming from that fence area to the front of the president.

The Assassination Records Review Board (1994-1998) found that over 40 witnesses in two locations saw a large avulsive (i.e. penetrating outward) wound in the rear of JFK's skull. This includes highly qualified medical personnel at hospitals in Dallas and Bethesda, as well as FBI agents James Sibert and Frank O'Neill, who were at the autopsy in 1963 and restated it to the board. This wound again indicates an exit wound from a shot to the front. Conclusion: The president was shot from at least two sides, front and back — not one location.

An accidental film made that day, the Zapruder film, shows a sequence of motions that indicate five, probably six shots fired. It also shows that when the president is shot in the back by the "single bullet," that he's moving forward while Connally is still holding his Stetson hat, which is impossible if Connally was hit by the same bullet in his right wrist. The governor himself said he was not hit by the same bullet as Kennedy and added, "I do not for one second believe the conclusions of the Warren Commission."

Yet the mainstream media in recent weeks tell us more strongly than ever that Oswald, with his twisted motives, did it alone with his Mannlicher-Carcano Word War II rifle. What kind of history are they talking about? Not the one that is perhaps too dark for them to deal with and unsettling to their smug belief in some form of American exceptionalism, by which our politics are unflawed by such corruption. Is this why the media, with very few exceptions, have not allowed any serious presentation of the evidence against their official story from qualified pathologists, scientists, photographic and ballistics experts, and doctors who disagree?

I've rarely seen the many fine works by these qualified individuals reviewed: Robert Groden's JFK: Absolute Proof (2013), James W. Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable (2008), and James DiEugenio's Reclaiming Parkland(2013). Particularly note in DiEugenio's book Chapters 4-7. They deconstruct the massive 2000-paged tome by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, overly praised by the media probably because very few people have actually read it. To read DiEugenio's deconstruction is to fully understand the shaping of the lie.

As Friday approaches, please take a moment to remember that no professional marksman has replicated the Warren Commission scenario with Oswald's flawed rifle. To my knowledge, there have been at least four attempts with professionals to simulate the shooting without that rifle. No person ever achieved what the commission said Oswald did on the first try, i.e., attain two of three direct hits in the head and shoulder area to Kennedy in six seconds. This alleged shooting has been achieved only with computer simulations.

In the face of this recent onslaught on the truth, let us be very exact about Oswald's alleged guilt. He was never given a trial, either staged or fair. As such, he should always be identified as the alleged assassin.

History is a struggle of the memory. But when the counter evidence is stifled, we are closer to a Soviet-era manufacturing of history in which the mainstream media deeply discredit our country and continue to demean our common sense. We must always question those who tell us what to think.

Oliver Stone is a director, screenwriter, and producer. He has won numerous Academy Awards for his work on such iconic films as Platoon, Wall Street, JFK, Born on the Fourth of July, Natural Born Killers, and Nixon.

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