What will always impress me most about this film is Stone’s willingness to broach the military industrial complex as an impetus behind the Kennedy assassination. He focus on means, motive and opportunity. Around this:
The organizing principle of any society, Mr. Garrison, is for war. The authority of the state over its people resides in its war powers. Kennedy wanted to end the Cold War in his second term. He wanted to call off the moon race and cooperate with the Soviets. He signed a treaty to ban nuclear testing. He refused to invade Cuba in 1962. He set out to withdraw from Vietnam. But all that ended on the 22nd of November, 1963.
Is this entirely true? Perhaps not. But, with billions of dollars at stake, why take chances?
IMDb
[b]The film generated intense controversy upon its release with many accusing Oliver Stone of making up many of the facts. In fact, Stone published an annotated version of his screenplay, in which he justifies and attributes every claim made in the film. Stone later addressed the controversy in his TV movie Wild Palms in which he has a cameo. That film takes place in the 21st Century and has Stone appearing on a talk show discussing how all his conspiracy theories surrounding “JFK” had been proven true.
Dr. Marion Jenkins, the anesthetist, plays himself in the film. He was genuinely surprised at the level of detail and research that had gone into preparation for that key scene. Even the tiles for the set of Trauma Room One were exactly the same shade of green he remembered (even though the scene itself is black and white in the finished film).
Shortly after the film’s release, film critic Roger Ebert received a tongue-lashing from Walter Cronkite, berating him for praising “JFK”. Cronkite was adamant that there wasn’t a shred of truth to the film.[/b]
Bashing the bashers from Huffington Post:
huffingtonpost.com/jefferson … 73722.html
And for those who want to bash them right back:
mcadams.posc.mu.edu/jfkmovie.htm
Like Ferrie said: a mystery inside a riddle inside an enigma.
JFK
Written and directed by Oliver Stone
[b]title card: “To sin by silence when we should protest makes cowards of men.” - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
President Eisenhower: …We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. And to do this three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishement. We annually spend on military security alone…
Narrator: January, 1961. President Dwight D. Eisenhowers’s Farewell Address to the Nation.
President Eisenhower: …This conjunction of an immense military establishment and arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence - economic, political, even spiritual - is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office in the federal government. We must guard against the aquisition of unwarranted influence - whether sought or unsought - by the military-industrial complex. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
…
Banister: Here’s to the New Frontier. Camelot in smithereens. I’ll drink to that.
…
Garrison: Thank you for your time, David. I’m sorry this has to end inconveniently for you but I am going to have to detain you for further questioning by the FBI.
Ferrie: Why, what’s wrong?
Garrison: David, I find your story simply not believable.
Ferrie: Really? What part?
…
Dean: You’re a mouse fighting a gorilla. JFK’s dead as that crabmeat. The government’s still breathing.
…
David Ferrie: Oh man, why don’t you fuckin’ stop it? Shit, this is too fuckin’ big for you, you know that? Who did the president, who killed Kennedy, fuck man! It’s a mystery! It’s a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma! The fuckin’ shooters don’t even know! Don’t you get it?
…
X: After I came back, I asked myself, why was I, the chief special officer, selected to travel to the South Pole at that time that any number of others could have done? And I wondered if it was because one of my routine duties if I had been in Washington would have been to arrange for additional security in Texas, so I decided to check it out. And sure enough, someone had told the 112th Military Intelligence Group at Fourth Army Headquarters at Fort Sam Houston in Texas to stand down that day, over the protests of the Unit Commander, Colonal Rike. This is significant because it is standard operating procedure, especially in a lnown hostile city like Dallas.
…
X: We would have arrived days ahead, studied the route, checked all the buildings. Never would have allowed all those wide-open windows overlooking Dealy Plaza, never! We would have had our own snipers covering the area the minute a window went up! They would have been on the radio. We would have been watching the building, checking for baggage, coat under the arms… Never would have allowed a man to open an umbrella along the way! Never would have allowed the car to slow down to 11 miles an hour, much less take that unusual curve at Houston and Elm! You would have felt an army presence on the streets that day. But none of this happened. It was a violation of the most basic protection code we have, and it’s an indication of a massive plot based in Dallas.
…
X: Don’t underestimate the budget cuts that Kennedy called for in March of 1963. Nearly 52 military installations in 25 states. Twenty-one overseas bases. Big money. You know how many helicopters have been lost in Vietnam? Nearly 3,000 so far. Who makes them? Bell Helicopter. Who owns Bell? Bell was nearly bankrupt when First National Bank of Boston asked the CIA to use the helicopter in Indochina. How about the F-111 fighter? General Dynamics of Fort Worth, Texas. Who owns that? Find out the defense budget since the war began. $75 going on $100 billion. Nearly $200 billion will be spent before it’s over. In 1949, it was $10 billion. No war…no money.
…
Garrison [to his wife after watching a damning NBC special report]: There’s only 20 or 30 million people watching this tonight. At least my reputation is still fine with people watching “Laugh In”.
…
Broussard: How the hell can you keep a conspiracy going between the mob, CIA, FBl, Army Intelligence and who knows what else when you can’t keep a secret in this room between 12 people?
Here’s where some say the “conspiracy” goes off the deep end:
…
Garrison: Could the Mob change the parade route, Bill, or eliminate the protection for the President? Could the Mob send Oswald to Russia and get him back? Could the Mob get the FBI the CIA, and the Dallas Police to make a mess of the investigation? Could the Mob appoint the Warren Commission to cover it up? Could the Mob wreck the autopsy? Could the Mob influence the national media to go to sleep? And since when has the Mob used anything but .38’s for hits, up close. The Mob wouldn’t have the guts or the power for something of this magnitude. Assassins need payrolls, orders, times, schedules. This was a military-style ambush from start to finish… a coup d’etat with Lyndon Johnson waiting in the wings.
Broussard: You’re saying Lyndon Johnson was involved? The President?
Garrison: Johnson got $1 billion for his friends, Brown and Root to dredge Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.
Broussard: Boss, are you calling the President a murderer?!
Garrison: If I’m so far from the truth, why is the FBI bugging our offices? Why are witnesses being bought off and murdered? Why are federal agencies blocking our extraditions and subpoenas?
Broussard: I don’t know.
…
Broussard: This is Louisiana, chief! I mean, how do you know who your daddy is? Because your mama told you so? You are taking a crap in the wind. And I am not going along on this one.[/b]
The heart of the conspiracy:
[b]Garrison: The Warren Commission thought they had an open-and-shut case. Three bullets, one assassin. But two unpredictable things happened that day that made it virtually impossible. One, the eight-millimeter home movie taken by Abraham Zapruder while standing by the grassy knoll. Two, the third wounded man, James Tague, who was knicked by a fragment, standing near the triple underpass. The time frame, five point six seconds, determined by the Zapruder film, left no possibility of a fourth shot. So the shot or fragment that left a superficial wound on Tague’s cheek had to come from the three shots fired from the sixth floor depository. That leaves just two bullets. And we know one of them was the fatal head shot that killed Kennedy. So now a single bullet remains. A single bullet now has to account for the remaining seven wounds in Kennedy and Connelly. But rather than admit to a conspiracy or investigate further, the Warren Commission chose to endorse the theory put forth by an ambitious junior counselor, Arlen Spector, one of the grossest lies ever forced on the American people. We’ve come to know it as the “Magic Bullet Theory.” The magic bullet enters the President’s back, headed downward at a 17-degree angle. It then moves upwards to leave Kennedy’s body from the front of his neck wound #2 where it waits 1.6 seconds presumably in midair, where it turns right, then left right, then left and continues into Connally’s right armpit. Wound #3. The bullet then heads down at an angle of 27 degrees, shattering his rib and exiting from the right side of his chest. Wound #4. The bullet turns right, reentering Connally’s body at his right wrist. Wound #5. Shattering the radius bone the bullet exits Connally’s wrist, wound #6 makes a dramatic U-turn, then buries itself in Connally’s left thigh. Wound #7, from which it later falls out and is found in almost pristine condition on a stretcher in a corridor of Parkland Hospital. Some bullet. Any combat vet can tell you, never in the history of gunfire has there been a bullet this ridiculous.
…
Garrison: When my office or you, the people, asked those questions, demanded evidence the answer from on high has always been: national security. What kind of national security do we have when we’re robbed of our leaders? What national security permits the removal of fundamental power from the people and validates the ascendancy of an invisible government in the US? That kind of national security is when it smells like it, feels like it, and looks like it you call it what it is: Fascism! I submit to you that what took place on November 22, 1963 was a coup d’état. Its most direct and tragic result was the reversal of Kennedy’s decision to withdraw from Vietnam. The war is the biggest business in America worth billions of dollars a year. President Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy planned at the highest levels of our government carried out by fanatical and disciplined cold warriors in the Pentagon and CIA’s covert-operation apparatus. Among them, Clay Shaw, here before you.
…
Garrison: There’s a simple way to determine if I am paranoid. Ask the two men who profited most from the assassination former President Johnson and your new President, Nixon to release the 51 CIA documents pertaining to Lee Oswald and Jack Ruby. Or the secret CIA memo on Oswald’s activities in Russia that was destroyed while being photocopied. These documents are yours. The people’s property. You pay for it. But as the government sees you as children who might be too disturbed to face this reality or because you might lynch those involved you cannot see these documents for another 75 years. I’m in my 40’s so I’ll have “shuffled off this mortal coil” by then. But I’m telling my eight-year-old son to keep himself physically fit so that one glorious September morning, in 2038 he can go to the National Archives and learn what the CIA and FBI knew. They may push it back then.[/b]