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.