Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot
Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot book cover

Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot

Hardcover – October 16, 2012

by
Price
$7.08
Format
Hardcover
Pages
325
Publisher
Henry Holt and Co.
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0805096668
Dimensions
6.2 x 1.4 x 9.4 inches
Weight
1.25 pounds

Description

“Immersively written . . . Mr. O'Reilly and Mr. Dugard succeed in investing a familiar national tragedy with fresh anguish. . . A powerful historical précis.” ― Janet Maslin, The New York Times “All the suspense and drama of a popular thriller.” ― Husna Haq, The Christian Science Monitor BILL O'REILLY is a trailblazing TV journalist who has experienced unprecedented success on cable news and in writing eighteen national number-one bestselling nonfiction books. There are more than eighteen million books in the Killing series in print. He lives on Long Island.MARTIN DUGARD is the New York Times bestselling author of several books of history, among them the Killing series, Into Africa , and Taking Paris. He and his wife live in Southern California. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Killing Kennedy The End of Camelot By Bill O'Reilly Henry Holt and Co. Copyright © 2012 Bill O'ReillyAll right reserved. ISBN: 9780805096668 Chapter 24 NOVEMBER 22, 1963TEXAS SCHOOL BOOK DEPOSITORY, DALLAS9:45 A.M. Crowds of eager Dallas residents stand on the curb in front of the Texas School Book Depository. The president won’t pass by for three hours, but they’ve come early to get a good spot. Best of all, it looks like the sun might come out. Maybe they’ll get a glimpse of John F. Kennedy and Jackie after all. Lee Harvey Oswald peers out a first-floor window of the depository building, assessing the president’s route by where the crowds stand. He can clearly see the corner of Elm and Houston, where John Kennedy’s limousine will make a slow left turn. This is important to Oswald. He’s selected a spot on the depository’s sixth floor as his sniper’s roost. The floor is dimly lit by bare 60-watt lightbulbs and is currently under renovation, and thus empty. Stacks of book boxes near the window overlooking Elm and Houston will form a natural hiding place, allowing Oswald to poke his rifle outside and sight the motorcade as it makes that deliberate turn. The marksman in Lee Harvey Oswald knows that he’ll have time for two shots, maybe even three if he works the bolt quickly enough. But one should be all he needs. ¦ ¦ ¦ Air Force One crabs into the wind as Colonel Jim Swindal eases her down onto the runway at Dallas’s Love Field. John Kennedy is ecstatic. Peering out the windows of his airplane, he sees that the weather has turned sunny and warm and that yet another large Texas crowd is waiting to greet him. “This trip is turning out to be terrific,” he happily confides to Kenny O’Donnell. “Here we are in Dallas and it looks like everything in Texas will turn out to be fine for us!” Police cars circle the field, and officers are even stationed on rooftops. But these are the only ominous sights at the airport. For the estimated welcoming party of two thousand are overjoyed to see Air Force One touch down, marking the first time a president has visited Dallas since 1948. Grown men stand on their tiptoes to see over the throngs in front of them. Airport personnel leave their desks inside the terminal and jostle into position near the chain-link fence separating the runway from the parking lot. The U.S. Air Force C-130 carrying the president’s armored limousine lands and opens its cargo ramp. The bubble top remains on board the plane. The convertible top is completely down. A local television newsman, who is covering the spectacle live on air, enthusiastically reports that the bubble top is nowhere in evidence and that people will be able to see the president and First Lady “in the flesh.” The reporter also reminds his audience that the president will be returning to Love Field between “2:15 and 2:30” to depart for Austin. Lyndon Johnson and his wife, Lady Bird, await the president on the tarmac, as they have on every leg of the Texas trip. The vice president’s job is to stand at the bottom of the ramp and greet the president. Johnson is not happy about this assignment, but he puts on a good face as Jackie emerges from the rear door of the plane, radiant in the pink Chanel suit with the matching pillbox hat. Two steps behind, and seen in person for the first time by the people of Dallas, comes John Kennedy. “I can see his suntan from here!” the local TV reporter gushes. The official plan is for JFK to head straight for his limousine to join the motorcade, but instead he breaks off and heads into the crowd. Not content with merely shaking a few hands, the president pushes deep into the throng, dragging Jackie along with him. The two of them remain surrounded by this wall of people for more than a full minute, much to the crowd’s delight. Then the president and First Lady reemerge, only to wade deep into another section of crowd. “Boy, this is something,” enthuses the local reporter. “This is a bonus for the people who have waited here!” The president and First Lady shake hands for what seems like an eternity to their very nervous Secret Service detail. “Kennedy is showing he is not afraid,” Ronnie Dugger of the Texas Observer writes in his notebook. Finally, John and Jackie Kennedy make their way to the presidential limousine. Awaiting them are Governor John Connally and his wife, Nellie. There are three rows of seats in the vehicle. Up front is the driver, fifty-four-year-old Bill Greer. To his right sits Roy Kellerman, like Greer, a longtime Secret Service agent. Special Agent Kellerman has served on the White House detail since the early days of World War II and has protected presidents Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, and now Kennedy. JFK sits in the backseat, on the right-hand side, patting his hair into place after his foray into the crowd. Jackie sits to his left. The First Lady was handed a bouquet of red roses upon landing in Dallas, and these now rest on the seat between her and the president. Governor Connally sits directly in front of the president, in the middle row, known as jump seats. Connally takes off his ten-gallon hat so that the crowds can see him. Nellie sits in front of Jackie and right behind the driver, Special Agent Greer. As the motorcade leaves Love Field at 11:55 a.m., the presidential limousine—Secret Service code name SS-100-X—is the second car in line, flanked on either side by four motorcycle escorts. Up front is an advance car filled with local police and Secret Service, among them Dallas police chief Jesse Curry and Secret Service special agent Winston Lawson. Behind John Kennedy’s vehicle is a follow-up convertible code-named Halfback. Kennedy’s two main members of the Irish Mafia, Dave Powers and Kenny O’Donnell, sit here, surrounded by Secret Service agents heavily armed with handguns and automatic weapons. Clint Hill, head of the First Lady’s Secret Service detail, stands on the left running board of Halfback. Special agents Bill McIntyre, John Ready, and Paul Landis also man the running boards. Car four is a convertible limousine that has been rented locally for the vice president. Even as the vehicles pull away from Love Field, it is obvious that LBJ is angry and pouting. While every other politician in the motorcade is waving to the crowds, he stares straight forward, unsmiling. Bringing up the rear is car five, code-named Varsity and filled with a Texas state policeman and four Secret Service agents. Way up at the front of the motorcade, driving several car lengths in front of SS-100-X, Dallas police chief Jesse Curry is committed to making the president’s visit as incident-free as possible. The fifty-year-old chief is a lifetime law enforcement officer. In addition to working his way up through the ranks of the Dallas police, he has augmented his knowledge by attending the FBI Academy. Curry has been involved in almost every aspect of the planning for John Kennedy’s visit and is dedicating 350 men—a full third of his force—to lining the motorcade route, handling security for the president’s airport arrival, and policing the crowd at the Trade Mart speech. However, Curry has chosen not to position any men in the vicinity of Dealey Plaza, thinking that the main crowd-control issues will take place prior to that destination. Once the motorcade turns from Houston Street and onto Elm, it goes under an overpass, turns right onto Stemmons Freeway, and through a relatively uncrowded area to the Trade Mart. Better to focus his officers on the busiest thoroughfares along the route, rather than waste them in a place where few people will be standing. Curry has also ordered his men to face toward the street, rather than toward the crowd, thinking it wouldn’t hurt for them to see the man they’re protecting as a reward for the many long hours they will be on their feet. This ignores the example of New York City, where policemen stand facing away from the street, so they can better help the Secret Service protect the president by scanning the city’s many windows for signs of a sniper’s rifle. But it doesn’t matter during the motorcade’s first easy miles. There is so little to do and so few people to see that a bored Jackie puts on her sunglasses and begins waving at billboards for fun. The white-collar workers along Lemmon Avenue are few in number and unexcited. They’d rather enjoy their lunch break from the IBM factory. ¦ ¦ ¦ At the exact same moment, it’s also lunchtime at the Texas School Book Depository. Most of Lee Harvey Oswald’s coworkers have left the building, hoping to get a glimpse of the president. Just down the block, FBI special agent James Hosty has forgotten all about investigating Lee Harvey Oswald and is just trying to make sure he gets a look at his hero, President Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald didn’t bring a lunch to work today. And he doesn’t plan on eating. Instead, he moves a pile of boxes into position on the grimy sixth floor of the depository building, fashioning a well-concealed shooting nest. At 12:24 p.m., nearly thirty minutes into the motorcade, the president’s car passes Special Agent James Hosty on the corner of Main Street and Field. The G-man gets his wish and sees Kennedy in the flesh, before spinning back around and walking into the Alamo Grill for lunch. At 12:28 the motorcade enters a seedy downtown neighborhood. Straight ahead, the beautiful green grass of Dealey Plaza is clearly visible. The Secret Service agents are stunned by the reception the president is now receiving, with people everywhere cheering and applauding. At 12:29 the motorcade makes the crucial sharp right-hand turn onto Houston Street. From high above, in his sixth-floor sniper’s lair, Lee Harvey Oswald sees John F. Kennedy in person for the first time. He quickly sights the Mannlicher-Carcano, taking aim through his scope as the motorcade skirts the edge of Dealey Plaza. The crowds here are still large and enthusiastic, despite Chief Curry’s prediction that they would have thinned by this point. The people shout for Jackie and the president to look their way. As per agreement, JFK waves at the people standing in front of buildings on the right side of the road, while Jackie waves at those standing along grassy Dealey Plaza, to their left. This ensures that no voter goes without a wave. The motorcade is just five minutes away from the Trade Mart, where Kennedy will make his speech. Almost there. Inside the presidential limousine, Nellie Connally stops waving long enough to look over her right shoulder and smile at John Kennedy. “You sure can’t say that Dallas doesn’t love you, Mr. President.” Ironically, at that very moment, if JFK had looked up to the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, he would have seen a rifle barrel sticking out of an open window, pointed directly at his head. But Kennedy doesn’t look up. Nor does the Secret Service. It is 12:30 p.m. The time has come for Special Agent Bill Greer to steer SS-100-X through the sweeping 120-degree left turn from Houston and onto Elm. ¦ ¦ ¦ Most people live their lives as if the end were always years away. They measure their days in love, laughter, accomplishment, and loss. There are moments of sunshine and storm. There are schedules, phone calls, careers, anxieties, joys, exotic trips, favorite foods, romance, shame, and hunger. A person can be defined by clothing, the smell of his breath, the way she combs her hair, the shape of his torso, or even the company she keeps. All over the world, children love their parents and yearn for love in return. They revel in the touch of parental hands on their faces. And even on the worst of days, each person has dreams about the future—dreams that sometimes come true. Such is life. Yet life can end in less time than it takes to draw one breath. Copyright © 2012 by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard Continues... Excerpted from Killing Kennedy by Bill O'Reilly Copyright © 2012 by Bill O'Reilly. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site. Read more

Features & Highlights

  • A riveting historical narrative of the shocking events surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and the follow-up to mega-bestselling author Bill O'Reilly's
  • Killing Lincoln
  • .
  • More than a million readers have thrilled to Bill O'Reilly's
  • Killing Lincoln
  • , the page-turning work of nonfiction about the shocking assassination that changed the course of American history. Now the anchor of
  • The O'Reilly Factor
  • ; recounts in gripping detail the brutal murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy--and how a sequence of gunshots on a Dallas afternoon not only killed a beloved president but also sent the nation into the cataclysmic division of the Vietnam War and its culture-changing aftermath.
  • In January 1961, as the Cold War escalates, John F. Kennedy struggles to contain the growth of Communism while he learns the hardships, solitude, and temptations of what it means to be president of the United States. Along the way he acquires a number of formidable enemies, among them Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, and Alan Dulles, director of the Central Intelligence Agency. In addition, powerful elements of organized crime have begun to talk about targeting the president and his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy.
  • In the midst of a 1963 campaign trip to Texas, Kennedy is gunned down by an erratic young drifter named Lee Harvey Oswald. The former Marine Corps sharpshooter escapes the scene, only to be caught and shot dead while in police custody.
  • The events leading up to the most notorious crime of the twentieth century are almost as shocking as the assassination itself.
  • Killing Kennedy
  • chronicles both the heroism and deceit of Camelot, bringing history to life in ways that will profoundly move the reader. This may well be the most talked about book of the year.

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Most Helpful Reviews

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SORRY BILL

I was working in downtown Washington, D.C. on November 22,1963, the day John F. Kennedy was killed. A few days later, I stood at Pennsylvania Avenue in bright November sunshine and watched an unforgettable funeral procession. A team of white horses pulled a two wheeled artillery cart carrying JKF's flag-draped casket, followed by a black, saddled but riderless horse. Boots, placed reversed, were in the stirrups. An unhurried, muffled drumbeat accompanied the inexpressible sensation of grief that pervaded the cool air. There was collective anguish for the man, of course, but also grief because it seemed our country would never be the same. What I am about to write is not a political rant. Rather, it concerns the ever-lengthening shadow that continues to be cast to this day by the unthinkable events of November 22, 1963.

I still have a copy of the Life magazine that came out just a few days after the assassination. An article in Life stated that the President had turned toward the School Book Depository, which explained the entrance wound that the Parkland doctors had discovered in his throat. Later this was corrected by the FBI, and we were told the Texas doctors were wrong about the entrance wound, it was an exit wound. By December 3rd a story was "leaked" to the press stating that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI had already determined that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. This information seemed to calm the distraught nation. Almost a year later, the Warren Commission Report was published. It was hailed by the mainstream media with virtually universal praise, although its supporting 26 volumes of evidence (with a supplementary FBI report) would not be published for another two months. I believe I am one of the very few people who ever read the 888 page Warren Commission Report.

The Warren Commission Report reassured Americans that there was no conspiracy, and that Jack Ruby, who had murdered Oswald, was also a lone assassin and in no way connected to organized crime. After reading the report, I explained to people how the first assassination bullet missed, how the second bullet hit Kennedy in the back, exited from his throat, and traveled on to wound Governor Connally, and how the third bullet inflicted the final fatal head wound.

But new books began to emerge from credible researchers who reported that much of the evidence in the Commission's 26 volumes of documentation is dramatically contrary to its own findings. Clearly the Warren Commission had gone to extreme measures to ignore Jack Ruby's organized crime connections. Even more disturbing, it was equally apparent that not one witness to the assassination testified that the event had taken place the way the Warren Commission described it. Not one. Especially not John and Nellie Connally. (Both of whom testified under oath that they were absolutely convinced that JFK was hit a moment before Governor Connally, and by a different shot. If this is true, there had to be at least two assassins.) Not Zapruder, who filmed the tragedy and testified (along with scores of witnesses) that a shot definitely came from the grassy knoll. Evidence accumulated, and there was a steady decline in the credibility of the Warren Commission Report between 1964 and 1976. Lyndon Johnson disowned it before he died. Driven by public entreaties, there was a new congressional inquiry, 1976 - 1978, called the House Select Committee on Assassinations.

The new governmental investigation managed to take a baby step toward reality. It determined that there had been a conspiracy that involved at least two shooters (one from the grassy knoll) and was probably orchestrated by organized crime. However, the government still could not tell us what happened, nor who was involved, and it still generally supported most of the incongruous conclusions of the Warren Commission Report. In 1993, the late Gaeton Fonzi, who spent three years as an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, lamented the failure in his book, The Last Investigation. Historians consider Fonzi's book among the preeminent and most scholarly of the six hundred or so that have been published on the Kennedy assassination. He wrote:

"Despite the clamor of the last few years, all the books, the films and the articles, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy is being allowed to go quietly into history. We must not let that happen-not yet, not ever ... The conspiracy to kill the President of the United States was a conspiracy against the democratic system-and thus a conspiracy against each and every one of us ... The Government has failed us. It is outrageous that in a democratic society, after two official investigations, our Government still tells us it doesn't know what happened."

I looked forward to Bill O'Reilly's new book. At last someone would shift through the morass of information and distill a reasonable, no-spin presentation about what really happened on that catastrophic day in 1963. I was certain O'Reilly would dare to open the forbidden doors. However, much as I like Bill O'Reilly, his book is mostly a sad rework of timeworn material. He finally gets around to addressing the assassination by page 245. In his final 50 pages the legendary "no-spin" man embraces the most flagrant spin-job in American history, the Warren Commission Report. How could O'Reilly examine the assassination without scrutinizing the Commission's own published documentation and the FBI supplemental report? In them the autopsy drawings by Dr. James Humes and FBI agent James Sibert both illustrate the back wound of JFK as lower than the supposed throat exit wound. Or how could O'Reilly ignore information in the FBI report by agents Sibert and O'Neil (who were present at the autopsy) that stated Dr. Humes probed the back wound and determined the bullet had entered at a trajectory of "45 to 60 degrees" and had penetrated less than the length of his finger? Or the testimony of Secret Service agent Glen Bennett who saw the bullet strike Kennedy "about four inches down from the right shoulder"? Or the testimony of Secret Service agent Clinton Hill who examined Kennedy's body in the morgue and again described a back wound that could not possibly have exited from the President's throat because it was "about six inches below the neckline and to the right hand-side of the spinal column"?

O'Reilly and his coauthor played it safe and wrote a book that pretends the research and investigations between 1964 and 2012 simply never happened. Beyond this, what they did write about is rife with all the errors, assumptions, and grievously incompetent conclusions of the Warren Commission Report. If Mr. O'Reilly's book had been submitted to a publisher by a non-celebrity, it would have been tossed in five minutes. "Killing Kennedy" is a colossal disappointment. Worse, it endangers the truth by assisting its submergence into fabricated history. "Killing Kennedy" is a disservice to the "folks" Mr. O'Reilly is supposed to be looking out for. Save your money. Or invest it in one of the more acclaimed books on the Kennedy assassination, such as The Last Investigation by Gaeton Fonzi.

LARRY MULLINS
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Losing time, wasting money

The corner stone of this book is this: Kennedy was killed by Oswald. End of story.

How does O'Reilly know? Because he read the Warren Report.

Fine. For a lone killer to have fired only three shots in the imparted six seconds, the Commission had to create the single-bullet theory: one bullet, seven wounds, two broken bones, one right turn, one left turn... So magic that the bullet is found in pristine condition on a stretcher. Are you ready to believe that? Well, in September 1964, two men were not.

One of the seven Warren Commisison members, Senator Richard Russell had this (recorded) conversation with his good buddy, President Lyndon Johnson:

RUSSELL: - The commission believes that the same bullet that hit Kennedy hit Connally. Well, I don't believe it.
JOHNSON: - I don't either.

Now,
- If you want to know how the story was concocted, you might want to read : [[ASIN:0700613900 Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why]].

- If you want some perspective on who killed Kennedy and why, you might want to read : [[ASIN:1439193886 JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters]]

- If you need a good dissection of the Warren Report, you could turn to : [[ASIN:0679743154 Accessories After the Fact]] (1967) or [[ASIN:1426917481 Biting the Elephant: The Warren Report]] (2009).

- If you don't mind a little file chasing, you might want to venture into : [[ASIN:1602392536 Oswald and the CIA: The Documented Truth About the Unknown Relationship Between the U.S. Government and the Alleged Killer of JFK]]

- If you want to know how does a well-sourced book looks like, you should read : [[ASIN:1620870568 Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case (Second Edition)]]

One book remains to be written, though. I will be more than happy to contribute title and subtitle:

BLINDING AMERICA
The 1963-2013 propaganda campaign to keep Americans in the dark following the assassination of President Kennedy.
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No Spin? Are you kidding me? You blew it Mr. O.

I am a huge Bill O'Reilly fan, and read his book, Killing Lincoln three times. It was excellent, and I purchased numerous copies for gifts. I could hardly wait for, Killing Kennedy, because I am a huge Kennedy fan, and have an impressive personal library on Kennedy, his presidency, and the assassination.

One of the recent books I read was Mary's Mosaic by Peter Janney, published April 2, 2012. The reviews for this book indicate that the author finally answers some key questions regarding the assassination, after years of painstaking research and interviews, and that he may have well solved Washington's most famous unsolved murder. I thought that with Bill's No Spin reputation, surely, his book would go even deeper in answering so many unanswered questions.

After reading, Killing Kennedy, I am of the opinion that Mr. O'Reilly and Mr. Dugan did not engage in "years of painstaking research and interviews," but simply regurgitated the same old government spin from 50 years ago. Is Mr. O'Reilly unaware that, contrary to the Warren Commission, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that the Kennedy assassination was probably the result of a conspiracy, and found both the original FBI investigation and the Warren Commission Report to be seriously flawed? Is he unaware that even the Kennedy family believed that there was a conspiracy?

When polls conducted from 1966 to 2004 found that as many as 80 percent of Americans have suspected that there was a plot or cover-up, I am dumbfounded that someone as astute as O'Reilly would author such a book. And, more disturbing, is the thought that this book, like Killing Lincoln, will end up as required reading for American students.

Shame on you, Bill O'Reilly, for writing a book with 50-year-old government spin. What happened to the No Spin Zone? You blew it big time.

I agree with Larry Mullins review on Amazon.com rating this book with 1 star: "O'Reilly and his coauthor played it safe and wrote a book that pretends the research and investigations between 1964 and 2012 simply never happened. Beyond this, what they did write about is rife with all the errors, assumptions, and grievously incompetent conclusions of the Warren Commission Report. If Mr. O'Reilly's book had been submitted to a publisher by a non-celebrity, it would have been tossed in five minutes. Killing Kennedy is a colossal disappointment. Worse, it endangers the truth by assisting its submergence into fabricated history. "Killing Kennedy" is a disservice to the "folks" Mr. O'Reilly is supposed to be looking out for. Save your money. Or invest it in one of the more acclaimed books on the Kennedy assassination, such as The Last Investigation by Gaeton Fonzi."

While "Killing Lincoln" has been deemed a page-turning work of nonfiction, I think we should we call Killing Kennedy a work of fiction. THIS BOOK GETS A "ONE" RATING - DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY.
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"The Summer of His Years"

It seems that every generation has one moment in time when the people can recall exactly where they were and what they were doing when some startling event occurred. For my parents' generation it was Pearl Harbor, and for my childrens' generation it was 9/11. For mine, of course, it's the early afternoon of November 22, 1963. I was in the second period of an extremely boring high school Physics class in my senior year when the loudspeaker crackled and the principal came on to tell us that the President had been shot.

Some things stay with you forever. To me it's the song, the title of which is the title of this review, that I heard that week on television on the show "That Was The Week That Was". Even after all of these years I can still recall all of the words, and can sing (quite badly) the melody.

Bill O'Reilly and his co-author have given us a worthy sequel to their best-selling "Killing Lincoln", and related the events around another horrid presidential assassination. It's more relevant because it is so much nearer to many of us than something that happened more than a century before.

As with the first book, the authors go into the backgrounds of both the killer and his victim. While I'm sure that there are a plethora of books that relate many of these facts, this book seems to have gotten together many of them in one place, and tell us, or at least tell me, many things about which I was unaware. Of course, the events are seared in the memory, but there are things that most of us probably did not know.

Kennedy's life is laid out in some detail, both the good and the bad, in what I thought was an evenhanded approach. Lately it seems that his reputation as a philanderer has stained his memory, but this book recounts all of the brave and honest things he did in his life, and in how he really tried to make the country a better place for all. Oswald's life is recounted also, and we see his miserable existence, and are given what the authors, at least, believe is his reason for his action.

There are no conspiracy theories scattered about in this book. The conclusion appears to be that Oswald acted alone. Whether that is correct I don't know, and none of us will probably ever know. I've been to Dealey Plaza and seen the "grassy knoll" of legend, and can't imagine how anyone could have fired from that spot without being seen by a multitude of spectators. The Plaza is a shrine to Kennedy, and the sixth floor window on the Texas Book Depository building is kept open, a chilling sight.

Those who are interested in history being delivered in a very readable way will like this book. Those who don't like the author for whatever reason will pan it, I'm sure, without even reading it. They should realize that Kennedy is presented in a very good light, and it just shows what this country lost when he died.
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Don't buy for a book on Kennedy Assassination

Bill O'Reilly chose a title to suck people in. After his great success with Killing Lincoln, which was a great book, one would have expected more insight into the actual assassination of President Kennedy. If that is what you are expecting from this book you will be highly disappointed. There is almost nothing about the assassination and what there is is so glossed over as to be useless. If you want alot of garbage about JFK's sex life and Jackie's fashion couture, this is the book for you. If you want a thimble full of insight into the Cuban Missile crisis, buy this book. If you want a half teaspoon of interesting material on our involvement in Viet Name leading up to LBJ's expansion of the war, you are going to love this book. But if you really think you are going to get anything out of the book dealing with whether Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, or whether there was a conspiracy, forget it. You can count in words, not even paragraphs the space that O'Reilly spends on the actual assassination. And then he gets so many things wrong it is ludicrous. For instance, he says Oswald had sawed off the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. Stupid. Look at the pictures in all the books, including the Warren Commission. That gun had not been sawed off. O'Reilly apparently was trying to make the point that if he sawed off the gun it would make it easier to conceal. Then he says, Oswald shot Kennedy standing up in the Book Depository window. That is ridiculous. In the sniper's nest, if it was one, only the lower window was open. How could a man standing up fire through the lower part of the window. If there was a shooter there, he was sitting on the floor resting the gun on the window sill. Also O'Reilly makes the absurd statement that Oswald dropped the gun and ran from the room. Wrong! He so carefully hid the gun behind a stack of boxes that it took a great deal of time for the police to find it that afternoon.
O'Reilly completely ignores key information about the assassination, such as the fact that every Trauma Room Doctor in Trauma Room 1 at Parkland Hospital called the wound in the front of Kennedy's throat an "entry wound." These were doctors who dealt with emergency room situations every day and had seen literally hundreds of gunshot wounds. And every one of them said the wound without any doubt was an entry wound. And O'Reilly has a wound in the back of Kennedy's neck. There was no such wound. It was in the upper back below the line of the shoulder blades. And the autopsy doctor wrote that he probed that wound and it stopped in the back. It did not traverse Kennedy's body, so it could not have exited the front.
How did Oswald, a malcontent and someone who never accomplished anything get into Russia - all on his own? Highly doubtful. And when he got there as a 22 or 23 year old man just out of the Marines, he spoke Russian so well that Marina though he was a Russian. How did that happen with his limited education? Military language school is a distinct possibility and there are many holes in Oswald's service record that have never been explained. If he was such a great marksman and if he tried to shoot General Walker, which O'Reilly actually spends more time on than the shooting of Kennedy, how did Oswald miss Walker from right outside his study window. Nothing in O'Reilly's book makes any sense.
Having said all that, just as with the Lincoln book, the Kennedy book is well written. It is easy to read and in places is enjoyable. But it is mostly pablum. It has very little of substance and is very gossipy. You can read a great deal about Frank Sinatra and Martin Luther King, Jr. You can read about Jackie going on a cruise with her sister, Lee aboard Aristotle Onassis' yacht after her baby died in August 1963. But this cannot be taken as a serious book. If you want to read about the assassination there are so many other books to choose from, don't waste your time on this piece of garbage.
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Very Disappointing

O'Reilly's book is sort of like a dumbed down version of the Warren Report. And a shortened version of it also.

He agrees with every major tenet of the Warren Report. Namely that Oswald killed Kennedy by himself, that Ruby shot Oswald alone and unaided, and that neither man knew each other or was part of a larger conspiracy.

In arriving at these conclusions, the authors ignore the results of every other inquiry since the Commission, which closed shop back in 1964. You will not see any mention of the Garrison investigation, the Church Committee, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, or the Assassination Records Review Board. Nor will you read the strong criticisms made of the Warren Commission by the lawyers involved in those inquiries.

The authors ignore all this important literature so that they can make their verdict stick. For instance, the HSCA inquiry determined that Ruby did not come down the Main Street ramp as the Warren Commission said he did. That he came through an alley way adjacent to the city hall building, opened a door to the ground floor, and from there got into the basement. They also discovered that Patrick Dean of the Dallas Police covered up the fact that this door did not need to be opened with a key. Further, they discovered a police witness the Warren Report ignored, Sgt. Don Flusche, who had parked his car across the street from the Main Street garage, was leaning on it at at the time, and knew Ruby. He swore that Ruby never came down that ramp.

The question then becomes: How did Ruby know when to walk down the alley way?

But that is just one element among many that is problematic in this dubious book. The authors write that Oswald was kicked out of the Marines due to a series of offenses. Oswald chose and got a hardship discharge from the Marines in order to help his mother out. He was released with no stigma applied. But the discharge was lowered later when he defected to Russia.

The authors even try and say that Oswald was thinking of killing Nixon. Yet this is a story that even the Warren Commission would not accept since Nixon was not close to Dallas at the time this was supposed to take place.

During the description of the actual assassination, the book does not even describe the tremendous force with which Kennedy's body rockets backwards in the car, indicating a shot from the front.

The book also spends a lot of time on the alleged extra marital affairs of King and JFK. Many of these stories are disputed, but what that has to do with the Kennedy assassination escapes me.

The book is sort of what the National Enquirer would put out on the subject.
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Do not waste any money on this book as you will be ...

If I could give this piece of trash ZERO stars, I would. This book still supports the Warren Commission LIES, which has been proven false multiple times. Do not waste any money on this book as you will be severely disappointed!! I will never read another O'reilly book again.
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Don't Waste Money on this error filled book.

First, this book is just another lame attempt to prop up the completely discredited Warren Report. Only those who have never read anything other than the official propaganda believe that, or others who still have "skin in the game" to keep the real truths hidden.

Secondly, Oswald was NOT a "crack shot," as stated in this book. As every real JFK assassination researcher knows, his fellow marines stated that he was not even interested in shooting rifles, much less becoming a marksman (his primary interest seems to have been the study of the Russian language, because he was being prepped for other, covert, work). Men who knew him in the Marine Corps have stated that he "lacked coordination" and called him "a very poor rifle marksman." See last paragraph for citations to those quotes. And, regardless of what O'Reilly says to the contrary, NO ONE has managed to duplicate that shooting sequence on a MOVING TARGET. The deceit of the authors on this single point is simply unbelievable, and I suspect that is the best description for the entire book.

Third, another error on the first page was the statement that the bubble top was left aboard the airplane. Not so; it was removed on the tarmac and put into the limo's trunk, as it was designed to be carried there in case of rain or whatever other reason the President might want it put back on. In fact, as soon as they arrived at Parkland Hospital (after the Secret Service crew washed the interior to clean up the blood and brains of the already dead president, destroying evidence in the process) they took the top out of the trunk and installed it on the car! There are photographs of it there at Parkland with the top on it. . . how did that happen if the top was still back at the airport, on the airplane???

Fourth, speaking of the limo, it was NOT armored, as stated in this intro piece. In fact, the glass windshield was not even bullet proof, let alone the bubble top. AFTER the killing, LBJ, within three days, had the Secret Service ship the car to Detroit to be repaired (including a new windshield, to replace the one with a hole in it from a shot from the FRONT) and a few weeks later, shipped it on to Cincinnati to be completely dismantled and rebuilt. Only THEN was it given armor and bullet proof glass, and Johnson rarely used it afterwards because he had a brand new one built for him (By then he had literally declared himself "King" of the world).

Seeing these kinds of errors on the FIRST PAGE leads me to the natural conclusion that the book is filled with them. In fact, that goes without saying, given that it supports the ridiculous "Lone Nut" theory, along with the even more absurd "Magic Bullet" thesis dreamed up by the equally discredited Arlen Specter.
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Cha-ching

O'Reilly sticks his name on the book primarily researched and written by Dugard because he knows his gullible minions will buy it. Ford Theater's official bookstore refused to sell O'Reilly's Lincoln book because of its historical inaccuracies; can't wait to see which institutions reject this one.
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For those who prefer historical fiction over fact . . .

There are many proofs that Lee Oswald did not kill JFK, which, of course, contradict the all-too-familiar thesis presented by Bill O'Reilly here. He got Lincoln right, but he has JFK wrong. Serious scientific, medical and ballistic research has shown that the autopsy X-rays were altered to conceal a massive blow-out at the back of his head, that another man's brain was substituted for that of JFK (since, after they had patched up the X-rays, there was no where for his brains to have gone), and that the home movies of the assassination, including the Zapruder film were edited to remove the limo stop, which more than 60 witnesses reported, because it was such a blatant indication of Secret Service complicity. See, for example, "US Government Official: JFK Cover-Up, Film Fabrication", "Who's telling the truth: Clint Hill or the Zapruder film?", and "Did Zapruder film 'the Zapruder film'?" Here I offer three short takes for anyone who has access to a computer, because the proof of conspiracy and cover-up is both abundant and compelling. Try these, all found on-line:

(1) The existence of conspiracy is proven by establishing where JFK was hit by the shot to his back. We have overwhelming evidence (from his shirt and jacket, the autopsy diagram, the FBI sketch, his personal physician's death certificate, the re-enactment photographs, and the mortician's description of the wounds) that it was about 5 1/2" below the collar and to the right of the spinal column, where it entered at a downward angle and had no point of exit. This means that the throat wound was a wound of entrance, as Malcolm Perry, M.D., explained during the Parkland Press Conference, which I published in ASSASSINATION SCIENCE (1998) along with a diagram by Charles Crenshaw, M.D., the last physician to observe the body before it was placed in the casket. I explain all this in "Reasoning about Assassinations" (on line), which I presented at Cambridge and published in an international, peer-reviewed journal. Look at the evidence for yourself. The "magic bullet" trajectory is not even anatomically possible. Gerald Ford (R-MI) had the description changed from his "uppermost back", already an exaggeration, alas, to "the base of the back of his neck".

(2) If the "magic bullet" did not pass through JFK's neck and exit his throat, then the wound to his throat and those to John Connally have to have been caused by other shots and other shooters, which proves conspiracy by itself. There is also an enormous body of proof that Lee was framed using manufactured evidence, among the most telling of which are the "backyard photographs". When Will Fritz showed one to Lee, he asserted that it was his face pasted on someone else's body--and he was right! Jim Marrs and I demonstrate the fakery in "Framing the Patsy: The Case of Lee Harvey Oswald". There are four poses, but the face and expression is exactly the same in all four, which is quite a stretch. Moreover, the chin is a block chin, not Oswald's rather pointed chin. And there is an insert line between the chin and his lower lip. As if that were not enough, the finger-tips of his right hand are cut off, where the newspapers he is holding have known dimensions. When they are used as an internal ruler, the subject is too short to be Lee or else they were introduced too large when the photos were faked. Yet there are shills who continue to insist Oswald was the assassin.

(3) It should not have been necessary to frame a guilty man, but he even passes his nitrate test, which showed he had not fired a rifle or a carbine that day. Indeed, a new line of research on the Altgens' photograph has produced fascinating proof that Lee was actually in the doorway watching the motorcade as it passed by. We knew that he had been observed by co-workers at 11:50, Noon, 12:15 and as late as 12:25 in and around the 2nd floor lunchroom, where he was confronted by Motorcycle Office Marrion Baker within 90 seconds of the shooting. New research has now established that he can been seen in the photo, where extremely patient and thorough study has shown that the figure often identified as Billy Lovelady was actually Lee Oswald--unless Billy was wearing Lee's clothes! This is one of the most astonishing revelations in the history of the study of the assassination, where you can follow it for yourself in a series of five articles, "JFK SPECIAL: Oswald was in the doorway, after all!", which I have published at Veterans Today. For the latest research on this issue, visit the "Oswald Innocence Project". If he was in the doorway, after all, he wasn't shooting at JFK.
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