President Kennedy Essay, Research Paper

Kennedy?s Assassination

November 22, 1963. Another shot heard around the world. The

assassination of Kennedy is the one of the most trivial

events in the history of the United States. Many different

people have various opinions to who actually assassinated

President John F. Kennedy. Two authors who have written

books on the trivial subject of Kennedy?s assassination are:

Jim Garrison who wrote A Heritage of Stone, and Anthony

Summers who authored Conspiracy. They both share the idea

that Oswald was part of a conspiracy, and similarly they

think the assassination was carried out by a powerful group

of people. President Lyndon B. Johnson was appointed to

president after the death of J.F.K. and a commission was

set-up by him to investigate the assassination. The Warren

Commission, after analyzing the events for ten months,

reported that Lee Harvey Oswald was not part of any

conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President

Kennedy. The findings of the Warren Commission are

questioned in both books and are written about as though the

commission was lying about what actually happened. In

Anthony Summers book, Conspiracy, he presents to the reader

many possible organizations that could be linked to the

Kennedy assassination. Summers does not come out and say

whom he thinks killed Kennedy, rather he offers different

possibilities and allows the reader to decide. Not even one

of his possibilities agrees with the conclusion of the

Warren Commission of Oswald not being part of any

conspiracy. The organizations he presents, as ones

associated with the assassination are the Mafia, the

government intelligence agencies and Fidel Castro.

Similarly, to the conclusions of the Warren Commission, the

writings in the Conspiracy give no definite answer to who

actually murdered Kennedy. Primarily, Summers associates the

Kennedy assassination to have been carried out by the Mafia

leaders who were affected by the policies of Kennedy. His

interviews with mobsters show that it was a probable

organization connected with the Kennedy assassination.

Summers interviewed Jose Aleman to get information on the

feelings of the Florida Mafia boss, Santo Trafficante.

During the course of the interview, Aleman spoke about

Trafficante?s disgust with the Kennedy?s and their crack

down on organized crime. Trafficante was quoted as saying;

?Kennedy?s not going to make it to the election. He is going

to be hit.?(p.284) The ?hit? the Mafia boss referred to is a

word that the Mafia uses when they are going to kill someone

and the hit could have been when Kennedy was shot to death.

Summers also found Ed Becker, a mobster who had testified

for the Assassinations Committee and said that Carlos

Marcello, the New Orleans Mafia boss, had taken out

?insurance? for President Kennedy?s death. Becker also

testified that the ?insurance? could have been to, ?Set-up a

nut to take the blame.?(p. 290). One of the people on the

committee said after hearing testifiers, ?I am now firmly of

the opinion that the mob did it. It is a historical

truth.?(p. 290). Another organization possibly linked to the

assassination, according to Summers in his book is the

government agency called the Senate Select Committee on

Intelligence. In this possibility, he connects Oswald to the

government agencies when he interviewed Senator Schweiker, a

committee member, who said that he strongly believed that

Oswald was related to the assassination. Summers also found

another person who stated that he ?firmly believes President

Kennedy was killed as the direct result of a plot by an

element of American intelligence.?(p. 296) A third theory,

also presented in the Conspiracy, is that of Castro plotting

a plan to kill Kennedy. This theory is possible because

Kennedy was an enemy of Castro due to Kennedy?s

?theoretical? plot to kill Castro. Castro discovered this

plan and in retaliation he sent out troops to kill Kennedy

before he could kill him. John Roselli who said ?I was a

good friend of Castro and he told me that he had sent troops

to the United States? confirmed the troops that were sent by

Castro. (p. 121). All three theories were well supported by

Summers and the decision of what is true he has left up to

the reader. His interviews and his researching show that all

his theories have substance to them. Similar to the book

Conspiracy, A Heritage of Stone by Jim Garrison also

denounces the conclusions made by the Warren Commission and

he states that they gave the people ?unbelievable lies.? (p.

19). ?I believe that the Kennedy assassination was carried

out by the force inside the United States government and the

assassination is a conspiracy.? According to Garrison the

inside forces are the only groups that could have done this.

He presents a one sided point of view on the Kennedy

assassination and gives no other possibilities for the

reader to consider. Undoubtedly, Garrison takes a great

amount of time to show the contradictions and faults of the

conclusion of the Warren Commission. Through the entirety of

the novel, A Heritage of Stone, Garrison discover many

secret about the Commission and the information they

destroyed or hid away somewhere. He is so specific that he

even lists the actual file names that were that were missing

from the conclusion of the Commission. Garrison states ?

There was information given to the Secret Service about

Oswald and his past history which was not presented to the

Commission to analyze.? (p.93). The main theory, presented

by Garrison is that President Kennedy?s was assassinated by

?the real power, the CIA.? (p.73) He states that Kennedy?s

plan to abandon military troops in Vietnam and his attempt

to end the Cold War put him on a collision course with the

CIA. According to Garrison, Kennedy took on a foreign policy

that would end the spending of billions of dollars on the

military technology that the CIA wanted to advance. Garrison

also used interviews with members in the Warren Commission

to support his theory that the Kennedy incident was a

government set-up conspiracy. Garrison seems to have

believed in his theory greatly and he would do anything to

prove this. He did not care about anything else and he

thought what he said was true and nothing else. These were

one of the flaws in the writing of Garrison in the book A

Heritage of Stone. In the above two books, there are many

ideas shared by the authors, but there are more that differ

in their opinion and writing style. The both have the theme

of ?Who assassinated President Kennedy and why?? however

they express this by unique methods. Garrison and Summers

also share the idea that the conclusion made by the Warren

Commission were flat out lies and there was no substance to

what they declared. Both, Garrison and Summers investigated

the Kennedy assassination by interviewing people and going

to the true sources just in order to find the truth which

was not found by the Warren Commission. The two authors also

look at the government with suspicions finding evidence of a

cover up especially with the CIA and Oswald?s real identity.

The primary goals of the authors were to discover the truth

and present it to the people. They did not want the

government to get away with something by covering it up and

create a ?credibility gap?. Clearly, there are many

differences to what Garrison writes about and what Summers

writes about. On one hand there is Garrison who knows for

sure that the CIA planed and did assassinate Kennedy.

Whereon the other hand Summers, suggest this as only a

possibility with many other theories along with it. Both

authors do put their investigations in their books, but only

Garrison shows his stand on what really happened. He only

shows one possible theory and tries to drill it into the

reader, whereas Summers presents multiple ideas and lets the

reader decide. For example, Garrison presents his opinion in

his book when he states, ?I know that the government has

their hand behind any big event that goes on in the United

States, and I do not want the citizens of this nation to be

lied to.? (p.27). Whereas, for example, Summers presents an

idea and gives to the reader an interpretation of what it

is. This is one of the greatest differences between

Garrison, a strong opinion writer, and Summers, a powerful

factual writer. The theories of Summers are more spread

apart and are linked from in the Mafia to Fidel Castro.

Garrison views the Kennedy assassination as government

conspiracy that is trying to be covered up. Anthony Summers

sees the cover-up as a possible idea and also presents the

theory of Fidel Castro and the Mafia. Jim Garrison is very

single minded and does not want to perceive any other

possibilities even if their as possible as the Mafia

connection to the assassination. Garrison?s fault to not

include the Mafia possibility shows that does not believe in

anything else than what he stated. It is extremely clear

that Garrison has a total different approach to the Kennedy

assassination than Summers that is strong in its own way.

After analyzing the two books, I would say that Conspiracy

written by Summers is more powerful than Garrison?s A

Heritage of Stone. Although Garrison?s book is very

insightful due to his opinions that were made throughout the

course of the book, his claims were not as easy to believe.

He was very honest in his writing, which is strength, but

his weaknesses were the inability to fully support his

theory and one-sided perception of the assassination.

However Summers had great strengths that Garrison did not

possess. His momentous amount of quotations was believable

because it came from a first hand account. The variety of

theories presented allowed me to make my own decisions on

what I believed. His research and presentation of many

possibilities made his book more of an impact on me than did

the other by Garrison.