BEST EVIDENCE: Disguise and Deception in the
Assassination of John F. Kennedy. By David S. Lifton.
Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., New York, 1980. 747
pp., indexed. $16.95 hardcover.

Like millions of others in this country, I have de-
veloped an attitude toward the Warren Commission
findings that has ranged from skepticism to ridicule.
There are just too many questions. The same bullet
couldn’t have passed through Kennedy’s neck and
throat, caused all of the wounds of Texas Governor John
Connally, and then turn up intact on a stretcher at Park-
land Hospital. Yet, the Warren group based its con-
clusions on this single-bullet theory.

There are other questions. In repeated trials, military

sharpshooters had difficulty duplicating Oswald’s

“‘feat’’ of two hits out of three within 5.6 seconds, shoot-
ing from an elevated position with a partially obstructed
view at a target moving away from him, using a bolt-
action rifle with a defective scope; a rifle manufactured
prior to World War II, with ammunition at least 20 years
old.

Answers still lacking !

And then what about the. dozens of witnesses who
swore the shots came from behind the fence on the
grassy knoll? What about the photograph — printed in
Europe before U.S. media picked it up — showing a
shadow and a puff of smoke behind that fence just as
Kennedy’s motorcade was approaching, and Kennedy
himself reeling from the impact of a bullet(s) that caught
him in the head?

Best. Evidence is one of the many books printed since
the assassination that provides a possible explanation of
what happened on Nov. 22, 1963. We can’t limit the
discussion to what happened in Dallas that day, because
Lifton carries us aboard Air Force One, brings us to
Washington, and ends up at Bethesda Naval Hospital.
Lifton believes Kennedy’s body was tampered with be-
fore the official autopsy that night at Bethesda. He cites
evidence that the emergency medical team at Dallas’
Parkland Hospital, receiving Kennedy minutes after he
was shot, surmised that he had been shot from the front.
But, as we all know, the Bethesda autopsy — as related
in the Warren Commission’s report — concluded Ken-

by racism, cold war

EYEWITNESS. Screenplay by Steve Tesich. Produced and
directed by Peter Yates. Starring William Hurt, Sigourney
Weaver, Christopher Plummer and James Woods. Rated R.
Welcome to the world of ‘‘Eyewitness.’’ Welcome to a world
in which the Jews are all rich, and the Asians all inscrutable and
suspicious. Welcome to a world in which a poor janitor can woo
and win the rich and famous girl of his dreams. Welcome to a

Films

‘

world in which six Soviet Jews will ‘‘perish’’ unless Soviet of-
ficials are bribed to let them emigrate.

One very nice thing about this obviously questionable movie is
its choice of hero: Daryll Deever (William Hurt) is Irish-
American and working class. He is portrayed as intelligent,
brave, charming and resourceful. But ‘‘Eyewitness’’ is damaged
beyond redemption by its false, racist stereotypes and its slan-
derous anti-Sovietism.

Deever is an office building janitor with a crush on television
newscaster Tony Sokolow (Sigourney Weaver). When Long, a
Vietnamese businessman, is murdered in Daryll’s office building,
he suspects his old army buddy, Aldo (James Woods).

Aldo is virulently anti- Vietnamese and Long had him fired from
his job as Daryll’s co-worker for a racist insult. Daryll is con-
cerned for Aldo, yet when Tony shows up on the scene with her
camera crew, Daryllimplies to her he knows something about the
murder, in order to give himself an ‘‘in’’ with the lady of his
dreams. Ironically, the people in Tony’s life have more to do with
the murder than anyone Daryll’ knows.

movie has vitality and interest. Daryll is a well-conceived and
well-written part, and Hurt brings it to life convincingly. But as
soon as Tony comes into view, situations start to look contrived,
and lines sound wooden and pretentious.

This doesn’t seem to be the fault of actress Sigourney Weaver.
Tony’s lover, Joseph (Christopher Plummer) and her parents
also sound like they are reading aloud from the Scriptures, in-
stead of speaking to each other. Maybe this is the director’s
notion of how rich and ‘‘cultured’’ people talk.

The murder and the mystery surrounding it create a pretext for
some very suspenseful sequences. When Daryll on his motor-
cycle rescues Tony from would-be kidnappers, the effect is
exhilarating. Daryll’s dog is transformed from a playful com-
panion into a murderous instrument in another spine-tingling turn
of events. However, the suspense doesn’t build cumulatively.
This creates a more relaxed, but uneven, pace.

The murder is also the device that throws together Tony and
Daryll and their two very different worlds. But the movie seems
to, want to be two things at once — a suspenseful mystery with
overtones of international intrigue, and a relaxed, reflective study
of contrasting characters and social milieux. This mix never quite
jells into coherence.

It is unfortunate that a note of gratuitous and outrageously
preposterous anti-Sovietism is injected into the proceedings. The
movie's tendency to reinforce racist and anti-Semitic stereotypes
is totally objectionable.

Thus what could have been a pleasant and innocuous piece of
entertainment makes its small, yet destructive, contribution to
the poisonous spread of racism, anti-Semitism and cold war
ideology.

‘ Film potential ruined °

minutes before his as-

JOHN KENNEDY ...
sassination in Dallas Texas. New book gives
ample evidence that the murder was an inside
job.

in JFK murder

 £(G? __Books _

nedy was shot from the rear.

Why the deception? Lifton claims that people in high
places decided, Kennedy had to die, and plotted to cloud
the facts. To throw suspicion away from themselves, the
plotters manufactured a mountain of ‘‘evidence’’:
constructing a false ‘‘sniper’s nest’ on the sixth floor of
the Texas School Book Depository, planting false wit-
nesses — including Secret Service agents — who would
confuse things even more, and gaining possession of

Kennedy’s body in order to make the ‘‘best evidence’’ »

— in any murder scenario, the best piece of evidence is
the body — consistent with the other ‘‘evidence.”’
There are so many indications of lies and deception
surrounding the Kennedy assassination that adding a
few more to the pot will only make a quantitative dif-
ference. There is no question that evidence was manu-
factured. When shown a photo of himself holding a rifle
and carrying a pistol on his hip, Lee Harvey Oswald said
his face had been superimposed on someone else’s body.
Oswald has a lot of support in his claim that the photo

was forged. Depending on what version of the photo you ©

happened to see in the days after the assassination (there
were several versions), Oswald was also carrying a copy
of the Daily Worker, or the: Militant, or both, in his

- pocket. Those photos curiously dropped out of circula-

tion, and a photo showing a newspaper with an illegible
masthead was circulated later.
Another plus for Best Evidence is Lifton’s supportive

data to be found in the public record — one example
being a report filed by two FBI agents who, in routine
note-taking at Bethesda on the evening of the assas-
sination, wrote that they heard a doctor. mention that
from the looks of things, ‘‘surgery’’ had been performed
on Kennedy’s head before the autopsy ‘“‘officially’’ be-
gan. Lifton notes that the Parkland Hospital doctors
never reported taking a scalpel to Kennedy’s head. On
that matter, Lifton offers interviews with named witnes-
ses who claim the body arrived at Bethesda without a
brain, and with a larger hole in the head than the one
reported by the Dallas doctors, nurses, attendants, and
other witnesses. :

The step-by-step chronology has its liabilities, how-
ever. Best Evidence reads like a cloak-and-dagger novel
at times. It is too cliffhanger-ish for this reviewer’s taste.

The upshot is that when we consider the COIN TEL-
PRO operation, the essence of Watergate, the manufac-
turing of evidence against political activists, the Hoover
lists of ‘‘nationalists’’ and ‘‘communists,”’ it could very
well be true that the hit on Kennedy was an inside job.

— from a review by Ron Tyson

Everything about corporate U.S.

When Daryll, his friends and his family are on screen, the -

EVERYBODY’S BUSINESS, The Irreverent
Guide to Corporate America, edited by Milton
Moskowitz, et. al, (New York: Harper & Row,
1980), 916 pp. $9.00

This is everything — or nearly everything — you
always wanted to know about corporate America
but couldn’t find because of the dummy boards of
directors. It is a funny, witty and very informative
breakdown of every major corporation in the
United States with a lot of important data. The
details for each company include sales, profits,
Forbes 500 rank, rank in their area of sales, found-
ing date, number of employees, and the address of
their headquarters. In addition, there are lengthy
examinations of such areas as ‘‘What they do,”’
“History,” ‘Reputation,’ ‘‘What they own,”
‘‘Who owns and runs the company,”’ ‘‘In the Pub-
lic Eye”’ (such as Dow Chemical, Firestone Tires,
General Motors, etc.), ‘‘Where they’re going,”
and ‘‘Stock performances.”

Take, for instance, Bantam Books. They rank
number one in paperback books, were founded in
1945 and have 450 employees. It’s had a colorful
history; initially owned by Ian Ballantine (of beer
fame) and now owned by the German company,
Bertelsmann Group, which is headed by a former
Afrika Korps officer named Reinhard Mohn.
Bertelsmann owns the influential magazine, ‘‘Der

- iY

Spiegel’’ and ‘‘Der Stern.’’ Not surprising, Ban-
tam is making a bundle by re-issuing such out-of-
ring WW II titles as I Flew for the Fuehrer.

Another example is the Gillette Company. Sales:
$2 billion. Profits: $11 million. Rank in razor
blades: 1. Rank in deodorants: 2. Rank in ballpoint
pens: 2. Rank in disposable lighters: 3. Get the
picture? Gillette owns such things as Right Guard
and Soft & Dri deodorants, Flair and Papermate
pens, Toni and Adorn hair products, and the list
goes on.

Take BAT, the British-American Tobacco
company. It’s actually a British company and is the
largest seller of cigarettes in the world. They also
own Saks Fifth Avenue, Gimbel Brothers, Yardley
cosmetics, paper companies in Britain and the
U.S., and supermarkets and department stores in
Wisconsin.

No self-respecting muckraker should be without

Books

this book.Given the domination of our economy by

these U.S. multi-nationals Canadians should find it
interesting since it does touch of their foreign hold-

ings. —L.U.

& <7 — Marian Irving

PASS THIS PAPER ON TO A FRIEND

PACIFIC TRIBUNE— MAY 22, 1981—Page 10

ee