JFK's Death and Oliver Stone's Propaganda

In his signature film, JFK (1991), Oliver Stone used almost every propaganda trick available for his thesis that Kennedy was murdered by the Military-Industrial Complex for moving toward détente.

He portrayed dingbat Jim Garrison (whose paranoid fantasies and illegal methods alienated all but the most feverish of the Grassy Knoll crowd) in Capresque terms, a Mr. Smith Goes to Washington type going against a corrupt Washington establishment. As peddled by Stone, Garrison was everything admirable - a patriot with decades of service in the military; a family man who loved and lusted after only his wife.

By contrast, the conspiracy crowd were sweaty homosexuals bathed in harsh lights that emphasized every wart and furrow.

Then and now, such tricks were not enough to bolster Stone's theory. Kennedy was not a dove seeking to normalize relations with Castro and to withdraw troops from Vietnam. Instead, he was approving sabotage operations against Castro two weeks before the assassination and had greenlit an invasion of the island scheduled for December 1963. Most wounding to Stone's monomania regarding Vietnam, Kennedy fully intended to stay the course there. In a March 1963 letter to Bobbie Lou Pendergast, whose brother was killed in Vietnam, the president argued that the U.S. must stay the course there:

"Americans are in Vietnam because we have determined that this country must not fall under Communist domination. ...Your brother was in Viet Nam because the threat to the Vietnamese people is, in the long run, a threat to the Free World communist, and ultimately a threat to us also. For when freedom is destroyed in one country, it is threatened throughout the world."

In a September 1963 interview with Walter Cronkite - used in a considerably edited sequence in Stone's film, he continued this stance: "I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake. ... I think we should stay."

And Bobby Kennedy, the figure most privy to his brother's private thoughts, told an interviewer in 1964 that JFK would have kept the advisers there.

Either Stone has become aware that his portrayal of Kennedy as an American Gorbachev has not held up - an unlikely event - or he knows that Vietnam has been overshadowed by 9-11. Nonetheless, he has backtracked from the top-level argument of his thesis as evidenced by his op-ed in USA Today.

In it, he argues that the ballistics and marksmanship are more important than what Kennedy may or may not have done had he lived. Moreover, he has adopted arguments positively Nixonesque. He co-opts the conservative narrative that the mainstream media tries and fails to propagandize the "common people" who have too much common sense to accept such an onslaught. Specifically, the media then and now has bombarded the populace that Oswald acted alone.  

Stone counters that not one marksman has ever duplicated Oswald's shot, and that Lee was a poor shot at best. He asserts that nitrate tests show that Oswald didn't even fire a rifle that day, and that evidenced by Kennedy lurching back and to the left the fatal shot had to have come from the Grassy Knoll.

But like his other propaganda tricks, this silent majority one cannot disguise the hollowness of his assertions. Marksmen then and now have duplicated the shots. Computer graphics by apolitical techno-geeks have traced the trajectories back to the Sixth Floor. A recent test shot by an equally apolitical sniper revealed that for a shot to have come from the Grassy Knoll it would have exited Kennedy and tore Jackie's face off. Oswald was enough of a rifleman to qualify for "marksman" status in the Marines. Kennedy's lurch toward the left occurred because he was wearing a back brace that day. And nitrate tests were notoriously unreliable; and another test, a fingerprint one, showed Oswald's fingerprints on the trigger of the Manlicher-Carcano.

A case could be made that it was the common people who provided evidence that Oswald acted alone. Several proletariat types present that day saw Oswald firing from the Sixth Floor window. A co-worker who also earned only $1.75 an hour stacking books alongside Lee reported seeing him taking a wrapped up cylindrical object to work that day which Lee claimed were curtain rods. Another worker on the fifth floor testified that he heard bullets being ejected above him.

Admittedly, many among the populace still subscribe to a conspiracy (although polls show that such beliefs have dropped 29 points in recent years). Meanwhile, it is millionaires like Stone and Jesse Ventura who are the loudest proponents of a conspiracy.

Stone will no doubt continue peddling his conspiracy thesis no matter the mounting counter-evidence. But he is running out of propaganda tricks. To appeal to the Occupy Wall Street youngsters, he would have to promote Kennedy's anti-corporates views getting him killed by big business, and he already used this two decades ago.

What will he use next? It will require more inventiveness, and on this, Stone is a master.