Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/041392/0413600.000

Text File | 1992-10-19 | 5KB | 123 lines

                                                                                HISTORY, Page 64

Did J.F.K. Really Commit Suicide?


Of course not, but it's about the only theory that doesn't turn
up in a fusillade of best-selling books on the assassination

By DAVID ELLIS


     So you think America has lost its creative edge, that its
citizens can no longer devise innovative solutions to what ails
the country and the world? Well, stroll through your local
bookstore and think again: no fewer than seven new books on the
Kennedy assassination have recently been published. Several have
made it to the best-seller lists, where they joined two
paperbacks: On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison and
Crossfire by Jim Marrs, both of which inspired Oliver Stone's
film JFK.

     The latest addition to the shelf is JFK: Conspiracy of
Silence (Signet; 205 pages; $4.99 paper) by Charles A. Crenshaw.
It is the first account written by a doctor who was part of the
Parkland Memorial Hospital trauma team that tried to save
Kennedy and, two days later, his assassin (sorry, alleged
assassin), Lee Harvey Oswald.

     Crenshaw says that until now, he and his colleagues
refused to "rock the boat" by publicly disputing the Warren
Commission's finding that Oswald was the lone assassin. But he
is adamant that the head wound suffered by the President came
from the front of the motorcade, thus making it impossible for
Oswald to have murdered Kennedy from a sixth-floor rear perch.
The physician says it is clear that "someone had tampered with
the body" during its extralegal transfer from Texas to the
autopsy room at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland, presumably
to support a single-gunman scenario. The injuries shown on
autopsy photos, Crenshaw says, "are not the same wounds I saw
at Parkland."

     That theory isn't new, but Crenshaw's account contains a
vivid anecdote that will no doubt be seized upon by those who
argue that there was a government conspiracy. When Oswald, shot
by Jack Ruby, wound up at Parkland, Crenshaw noted the presence
of a heavyset armed man in the operating room. Moments later
came a telephone call from Washington. On the other end of the
line, according to Crenshaw, was Lyndon Johnson, who demanded
that the medical team obtain "a deathbed confession from the
accused assassin," to be recorded by the mysterious agent. When
Oswald died minutes later, the man disappeared.

     In The Texas Connection (Texas Connection Co.; 323 pages;
$21.95), Craig I. Zirbel claims to provide the "final answer"
on Johnson's role. Zirbel says Johnson probably organized the
murder with a group of right-wing oilmen as a shortcut to the
Oval Office. The author provides no persuasive evidence to
support the allegation, relying instead on the argument that
Johnson was a murderer because he had the turpitude to behave
like one. Zirbel ticks off Johnson's egomania, drinking habits
and philandering as examples of his "violations of moral rules."
The author dismisses opposing speculations of why Kennedy was
killed, saying the Mafia did not participate in the
assassination because "for a hit to have been made against the
President, [Chicago Mob boss] Sam Giancana would have had to
consent."

     Surprise. Double Cross (Warner Books; 366 pages; $22.95),
written by Giancana's brother Chuck and godson Sam, says that
is exactly what happened. Chuck Giancana played the role of
underworld Candide, charting his brother's rise as the most
powerful Mob boss west of the Mississippi and taking note of his
snuff work for the CIA. "It's beautiful," says Sam. "The Outfit
even has the same enemies as the government."

     But the government soon became the enemy. Although
Giancana boasted that he fixed votes, funneled thousands into
the 1960 Democratic campaign and picked up girlfriend Judith
Campbell from J.F.K., the Kennedys forgot their debts to the
Mob. In 1961 New Orleans crime boss Carlos Marcello was deported
in Robert Kennedy's crackdown on organized crime. An outraged
Giancana began monitoring the private lives of both brothers.
Along the way, the book says, Marilyn Monroe was murdered in a
Mafia attempt to blow the lid off her affair with R.F.K. When
that didn't play out, Giancana spent a year planning the
assassination, which was carried out by a loose association of
professional killers. According to the book, Oswald was a former
spy sacrificed by anti-Kennedy elements in the CIA to take the
fall. Then Ruby, Giancana's "Dallas representative," dispatched
Oswald. The CIA turns up in Mark Lane's Plausible Denial
(Thunder's Mouth Press; 393 pages; $22.95), which claims
Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt played a key role in killing
J.F.K., who intended to disband the spy agency.

     For readers who want just a little spice added to the
Oswald-did-it scenario, there is Bonar Menninger's Mortal Error
(St. Martin's Press; 361 pages; $23.95). According to Howard
Donahue, a Baltimore ballistics expert, Kennedy was killed by
a Secret Service agent in the presidential motorcade who
accidentally discharged his AR-15 rifle. But Donahue says that
Kennedy probably would have died anyway from the neck wound
inflicted by Oswald. Among those unconvinced by this scenario
is Menninger's publisher, who added a 17-page disclaimer to the
book.