Product: Frame 313: The JFK Assassination Theories (2008)
Rating: 1.0
Fairy Tale Theater
This documentary wishes to give the appearance of presenting an evenhanded look at several conspiracy theories explaining the Kennedy assassination, as well as the lone assassin theory propounded by the Warren commission. However, it is clear that its purpose is to promulgate the same old debunked conspiracy theories that have already been presented elsewhere. The bulk of this video--it really doesn't deserve to be called a documentary, since much of it is fiction--is devoted to various proponents of conspiracy theories of the assassination holding forth. Very little time is devoted to the lone assassin theory. What we really have here is a low-budget remake of the film JFK done as a documentary, complete with a charlatan named Chauncey Holt getting tearful over poor victim Lee Harvey Oswald, concluding with a plea for justice to be done, complete with a heavenly choir. Throughout the documentary, the bland, seemingly authoritative narrator makes statements which are blatantly false, which the documentary claims there is evidence for. The most egregious example of this occurs about one hour into the documentary. The narrator says, "In recent released evidence, retired CIA agents reported that a plot to kill President Kennedy was being planned. An abort team, of which Oswald was undoubtedly one, was supposed to stop the killing." The documentary then presents interviews with three men, the retired CIA agents the narrator mentioned. They are "Tosh" Plumlee, James Files, and Chauncey Holt, none of whose claims are the least bit credible. The late Holt claimed he was one of the three tramps who were arrested on November 22 in the rail yards near the grassy knoll, among other things. He wasn't. The video even places a legend under Holt, "Fmr. Mafia Assoc./CIA Contract Agent." He was neither. He was a former circus performer and teller of tale tales. Pro-conspiracy authors Thom Hartmann and Lamar Waldron met Holt and listened to his story in September 1991. Waldron later emailed Dave Perry in November 2005, writing, "Hartmann and I neither discovered or represented Holt. We were simply invited to question him, which we did. We did not find his claims about being one of the 'three tramps' to be credible." After the release of the film JFK, the Dallas City Council voted to release all city records relating to the events on Nov. 22. Journalist Mary La Fontaine was looking through those records when she found documents previously released in 1989, including the arrest record of the three tramps. Those records proved that the tramps were Harold Doyle, John Forrester Gedney, and Gus W. Abrams. James Files is a convicted criminal and BS artist who claims he was the shooter on the grassy knoll. Since Amazon's rules prohibit me from embedding hyperlinks into my review, I recommend that you Google "JFK Murder Confession Video by Edward Bell" for Bell's review of a commercially produced video "The Murder of JFK--Confession of An Assassin," containing Files' interview and confession. Plumlee's claims have no merit. He claims that he was a CIA pilot who flew in the abort team, and was then asked if he wanted to watch the presidential motorcade. On his website, John McAdams examines Plumlee's story, writing, "Plumlee told a class of Jim Marrs' students at the University of Texas at Arlington that he was standing on the Commerce street sidewalk at the time the shots were fired. This places him on the South Knoll which is pictured in the Cancellare photo and the Couch Film. Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, was in this class and asked Plumlee to point himself out in both of these photos. He was unable to because there is no one there." At the beginning of this video, the narrator says that it intends to present various theories of the assassination, and there is an element of truth to each of them, but it is up to the viewer to decide. That is an attempt by the creators of this video to give it a veneer of evenhandedness and objectivity that it clearly doesn't deserve.