Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard. Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot.
New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2012.
As reviewed by Ted Odenwald
(Audio book sampling read by the author, courtesy of Macmillan Audio)
Following the success of their study of President Lincoln’s death, O’Reilly and Dugard have collaborated to examine our fourth presidential assassination—that of President John F. Kennedy. As in their earlier work, the authors trace the lives of the two men –the assassin and the victim—who were in no way similar, but whose “collision” was felt throughout the world as a tragedy as well as a wellspring of unanswered questions.
Approaching the fiftieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, one would expect that any recent study of the event would be definitive—or at least a summation of the voluminous collected data and theories. O’Reilly and Dugard have focused upon provable facts, primarily following conclusions drawn by the Warren Commission. The authors’ presentation is clear, direct, and probably convincing to readers born after the 60’s –or unacquainted with the alternative theories that emerged in the 70’s and 80’s and are resurrected in dissertations, movies, and websites.
According to the authors, Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. They trace his painfully frustrating life and delusional quest to be recognized as an extraordinary individual. He “…never fits in no matter where he goes…he is more dangerous than an outcast –he is a parallel member of society, a thin-skinned loner operating by his own rhythms and rules, constantly searching for that place …that will allow him to be the great man he so longs to be.” Disillusioned with democracy and capitalism, he had defected to Russia, where he lived for two years, only to return when his loyalties went unrewarded and unappreciated. In the U.S., despite his history and despite his being monitored by the FBI, he managed to obtain a job in a company that did highly classified photographic work for the government. In an attempt to gain notoriety as a world hero of communism, he attempted but failed to assassinate Major General Ted Walker, a virulent anti-communist. He also failed in his attempt to obtain a visa to enter Cuba. As his frustrations built, so did his delusional world. As Kennedy’s trip to Dallas was announced, Oswald was “…now [dealing] only in absolutes: either live happily ever after [with his estranged wife] or murder the President of the United States.”
The authors trace Kennedy’s rise to power. His older brother, Joe, had been their rich father’s hope for political greatness. But Joe was killed in a flying mission over Europe, leaving John, a lieutenant in the navy, as the heir apparent. John had been recognized for heroism in the Pacific in the famous incident of PT 109. Political advisors helped use his history to get him elected to the House of Representatives, the Senate, and eventually the Presidency. Kennedy would definitely have been viewed as the “enemy” by Oswald, for the President was actively combating the communist world as evidenced by his authorization of the Bay of Pigs invasion, his apparent authorization of plots by both the Mafia and the C.I.A. to assassinate Castro, and his facing down Khrushchev in the Cuban Missile Crisis.
According to O’Reilly and Dugard, the conspiracy theories concerning Kennedy’s killing originated with F.B.I. director, J. Edgar Hoover. In one of the oddities of our law, it was not a federal crime to assassinate a president; it was, however, a crime to plot an assassination. Hoover was allegedly claiming conspiracy in order to gain jurisdiction of the investigation. Our authors do admit that Kennedy had many enemies, a fact that encourages conspiracy sleuths: the C.I. A. was furious with him for reneging on his total commitment to the Bay of Pigs Invasion; the Joint Chiefs of Staff were angry that the President refused to launch a full-scale invasion of Cuba; the Mafia, particularly Sam Giancana, was furious that Kennedy, who had once been “cozy” with the mob, had unleashed Attorney General Robert Kennedy to conduct a “witch hunt” throughout organized crime; segregationists were furious with Kennedy’s civil rights objectives; integrationists were angry at the government’s slow-moving attempts to enforce equal rights. O’Reilly and Dugard do not totally dismiss the theories that link conspiracies to these flash points. Nor do they go much beyond mentioning other key issues: the “magic bullet”; the number of gunshots fired at the President; conflicting and missing autopsy records. The authors’ basic approach is saying, “This is what we know, and this is what others suspect.”
Killing Kennedy is a good starting point for young readers seeking understanding of a devastating event that shaped our modern history. To readers reliving that traumatic event, it will be a reminder of the shattering of a glittering period, which has been mythologized as a world of lost dreams. To historians, there probably is not much new information—and perhaps a frustrating brushing away of evidence that something was rotten in our country’s politics.
Ted Odenwald and his wife, Shirley have lived in Oakland for 43 years. He taught HS English at Glen Rock High School for all of those years plus one more. Now he is enjoying time spent with his family, singing in the North Jersey Chorus and quenching his wanderlust. Ted is also the Worship Leader at the Ramapo Valley Baptist Church in Oakland.