Having an email read by Bill on his show last August regarding how I was looking forward to this book so that someone would finally set the record straight for America, I was astonished by the complete lack of research that went into this drivel. It's a gossip-driven piece about JFK's womanizing, Jackie's smoking habit, and a cop-out to the erroneous pile of lies that constitute the 1964 Warren Commission Report (WC).
1. Bill and his cowriter make no mention of the Church Report, the findings of Jim Garrison's investigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations(HSCA), or the final investigation in 1994-98, the Assassination Record Review Board (ARRB), all of which found increasingly more evidence than each previous investigation,of the widespread FBI/CIA-led plot to kill the President and cover it up.
2. This book contains no eyewitness accounts vs their edited versions in the WC report, no details regarding the conflicts between the real-time TV reporting and later omissions/deletions by the WC. For example, the first rifle found in the TSBD was easily identified by the police on site, and immediately reported on TV, as a 7.65mm German Mauser. Only later was the 6.5mm Mannlicher found "hidden" among boxes near the east "sniper's nest". Subsequently, the Mauser finding is disregarded by Dallas police chief.
3. No real studies on the inability to actually fire the Mannlicher as it would have to have been fired from that window, angle, tree, etc? Bolt action MC action has never been repeated by the most expert marksmen (please post a study that shows that someone actually repeated Oswald's "feat".)
4. Rehash the Magic Bullet theory? A bullet that caused multiple injuries to two men, but is found in pristine condition on the stretcher at Parkland? You mention Malcolm Perry perfoming a tracheotomy, but you are perhaps the first author to forget to mention the wound in JFK's neck, which Perry characterized as an ENTRY wound! No discussion on a trained trauma surgeon's initial take n the head wounds? And then you mistakenly try to align the wounds with your multiple viewings of the Zapruder film by stating on page 268 the bullet "exits the front of his skull." Then how did his brain splatter backward onto the car where Jackie tried to retrieve it? How inconvenient, Mr. O'Reilly. You have now painted yourself into quite a messy corner of misinformation and physical impossibilty. And what "version" of the Zapruder film were you watching? There are many versions circulating...
5. This list could go on for pages, but answer this, Bill - you said on Fox & Friends that you and Dugard "found no credible evidence of a conspiracy" yet I went on YouTube and found a cub reporter in 1989 doing a piece on "the CIA's Involvement in the JFK Assassination". Who's the cub reporter? Bill O'Reilly. Did you forget that you had previously investigated this same issue? You include an appendix that puts you at the door when DeMorhenshildt commits suicide at his daughter's house before his scheduled testimony for the HSCA - did you report your presence to police as a witness? Or are you spinning this a bit?
You could have followed that up with a piece about the Masonic involvement in the cast of characters, including Chief Justice Earl Warren, LBJ's oilmen in Dallas, LBJ's "best friend" and neighbor J. Edgar Hoover, and on and on.
6. The FOIA led to the release over 100,000 documents on this crime after JFK the movie came out in 1991, after you did your piece on the CIA's involvement 2 years earlier. Now there's over 1,000,000 more documents to review, and the multi-volume ARRB report from 1998 - are you aware of any of this information? You did NO research at all for this book, did you, Bill? No mention of Permindex? No mention of the New Orleans connection to David Ferrie, Mob boss Carlos Marcello, or Guy Bannister? No mention of Jack Ruby's long connection for Marcello and the CIA running guns into Cuba, training anti-Castro Cubans? Rose Cheramie? Fletcher Prouty of the CIA? Clay Shaw, Board member of Permindex, the only person ever put on trial for the assassination, by Jim Garrison? You ignored an entire trial?
7. How about this - on his deathbed, Watergate mastermind and CIA superspy E. Howard Hunt confessed that he was asked to participate in the planning and execution of the plot to kill Kennedy, but he declined. He also drew a crude flowchart of the chain of command for the plotters. You can Google it, but I'll save you the effort: From the top down, he wrote "LBJ - Cord Meyer (CIA) - Bill Harvey/David Sanchez Morales (2 CIA "hitters") - French gunman on Grassy Knoll (a hired Corsican Assassin named Jean Soutre (aka Michel Roux). Again, no mention of CIA agent Fletcher Prouty's epic expose?
8. O'Reilly also said on Fox & Friends that the one character he couldn't figure out was George de Mohrenshildt, Oswald's handler in Dallas. You claimed, as I said earlier, to have been on the doorstep when he killed himself? There are many sources of information on deMorhenschlidt - how did you not find anything on him in your "research"? Call me, I'll fill you in!
9. No information found regarding the many false sightings of "Oswald" in and around Dallas, at the same time he was supposed to be in Mexico City, trying to get papers to travel to Cuba? No research on the CIA's funloving habit of running "doubles" as covers for different scenarios? You mention an incident at the rifle range, but no discussion on the conflict here. What about the car lots, etc. drawing attention to himself in the 2 weeks prior to the assassination? If LHO was in Dallas making a fool of himself, then who was in Mexico City?
10. Bill, you and Dugard didn't really do your homework here. Tippitt's killer? There were witnesses - where's their story of two men, one dark/Latino, possibly Cuban? Who told the military to "stand down" for JFK's parade route? Who told Dallas police to stand down in Dealey Plaza?
You mention the parade route violated multiple rules regarding motorcade safety, but who was responsible? Someone had to agree to use that route - Police Chief Curry had that responsibility as well as coordinate it with Secret Service. Why were the motocycles not flanking the car? JFK never had any problem with his security, so it was NOT he who told them to stay back so he could be closer to the crowd.
Sadly, Mr. O'Reilly, in fairness, I think that you wrote a puff piece just to capitalize on the success of Killing Lincoln, which is a very well done piece of work. Of course, it's much easier to write about a subject where there is no real controversy - we all know what happened to Lincoln, but the details of his struggles filled the pages nicely and created a vivid chronicle of the difficulties he faced.
Your decision to take on the most controversial crime in the history of America was ill-advised and deserved much better treatment - better you had just stopped your story on November 21, 1963, and left it as a titllating memoir of juicy tidbits rather than ruin your credibility by proceeding into the Masonic Shrine that is Dealey Plaza. (You probably didn't catch that, either...)
If anyone reads this review, I would recommend, as other reviews have, that you look elsewhere for real research, critical analysis and make the effort to honor the 50 years of research that has been done to uncover the people involved and their motives. This book is devoid of any real detective work. Sorry Bill, but you really missed an opportunity to serve your country had you done this with real intent and purpose.
Stick with yelling at your Liberal guests on your talk show every nite. You're much better at that than history, despite being a former teacher.
And that, Sir, is fair and balanced.
