Killing the Truth: Deceit and Deception in the JFK Case - Hardcover

Case reopened! Gutsy--if at times farfetched--overview of Livingstone's JFK conspiracy theses, first met in High Treason (1989--not reviewed) and High Treason 2 (1992). Livingstone may step off on the wrong foot when drawing himself as emotionally troubled by attacks on him by other researchers, allegedly conspiracy-sponsored, out to get him and to lead others into searches for red herrings--but he unveils plenty of new evidence on the Kennedy killing here. No one should miss his summary of the hard evidence for a conspiracy--which, if accepted, leaves the lone-gunman theory far behind. Livingstone has managed to interview Diana Bowran (uninterviewed in 27 years), a British nurse and the first medical worker at Parkland Hospital to touch JFK's body. Bowran got into the back seat with the President and Jackie; found that JFK had no pulse; stayed with the body the entire time it was in the Trauma Room (aside from three minutes spent getting a transfusion packet); washed the corpse; closed its eyes; packed JFK's nearly empty skull with cotton squares; saw the extra back wound; and wrapped the body and watched its removal in a bronze casket. Livingstone points out that Kennedy's brain could not possibly have weighed 1500 grams (the weight of an average brain), as the autopsy doctors said, because a third or more of it was missing. He asks why the steel-jacketed ``magic bullet'' remains fresh-looking while the head-wound bullet exploded into fine bits, and answers: two guns. Actually, Livingstone posits four. His heavies are Texan oil billionaires H.L. Hunt and Clint Murchison, Jr., with LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, and John J. McCloy all meeting at Murchison's house on the eve of the murder and focusing on raising the national debt and lining their pockets by beefing up the war machine JFK was out to reduce. Livingstone's list of conspirators may sound unlikely, but his examination of the forensic evidence is compelling--and makes this even more readable and exciting than his last. (Sixteen pages of photographs) (First printing of 50,000) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This work is Livingstone's third take on the Kennedy assassination squabbles; he wrote High Treason 2 ( LJ 5/15/92), which was an update of High Treason (Conservatory Pr., 1989). He revisits, yet again, his thesis that JFK's autopsy photos were faked. Sloppy scholarship and argumentative writing destroy whatever merit exits in Livingstone's case. He states that James Hepburn's Farewell America (Frontiers, 1968) "was almost completely suppressed in the United States." Yet a quick check of OCLC reveals that 46 libraries in 26 states own it. After Gerald Posner's Case Closed ( LJ 10/15/93), it is difficult to know what to believe about the JFK assassination. Livingstone states that the media is put off by the disinformation. "They are simply exhausted by thirty years of bullshit." He got that right. Not recommended. See also Gaeton Fonzi's The Last Investigation , reviewed above.--Ed.
- Randall L. Schroeder, Augustana Coll. Lib., Rock Island, Ill.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.