Final_Judgment

484 The Battle of the Books [387]
Richard Condon's Winter Kills, a loosely-disguised treatment of the
JFK assassination, is a satire but people may find it interesting. I think it's
interesting in that it provides a good overview of the intrigue in a Kennedylike
family and their inter-play with the American Establishment. (This
book was later made into a Hollywood film, available on videotape.)
Promises to Keep by George Bernau—another novel—paints a
Kennedy-like president actually surviving the assassination attempt and
shows the post-attempt intrigue involving some very recognizable
characters. It concludes by explaining how the assassination attempt came
about. It's only a novel, of course, but it's interesting.
Libra by Don DeLillo has Lee Harvey Oswald as its main character and
shows how Oswald may have been manipulated into the assassination
conspiracy by CIA-connected plotters. This rather surreal volume might
even contain a few nuggets of truth. There's a character in the book who is a
CIA operative along the lines of the real-life E. Howard Hunt and this
character is portrayed setting up a "dummy" assassination attempt that
others turn into the real thing. (As I say in Final Judgment, I think this is
probably along the lines of what may have happened.)
American Tabloid by James Elliott presents the interplay between
Organized Crime, Jimmy Hoffa, the FBI and the Kennedy family and ends
with the JFK assassination. Quite a good read, this book is interesting in
that it sets the tone for what undoubtedly was a lot of the inter-play between
these real-life figures who appear as characters in the book. There may be a
few "fictitious" elements that are really not far off the mark.
STUDIES OF THE GARRISON CASE
The books that have appeared on the Jim Garrison-Clay Shaw case are
in a category of their own and are important. The first major book on this
was Paris Flammonde's The Kennedy Conspiracy. This is a very hard-tofind
volume that is a classic on the subject. The book contains much on
Shaw's Permindex Connection (and this may be one reason why the book
has never been reprinted, if I may digress into paranoid conspiratorial
thinking for a moment.). Although the book was published before the
Shaw trial was finished, it contains much valuable material and is
interesting reading. I should point out that although Flammonde does
mention Permindex, he does not draw the Israeli Connection out as he could
have done and should have done. But that's only a minor flaw in a wonderful
book that should be "must" reading for all JFK assassination researchers.
James Kirkwood's American Grotesque is fiercely critical of Garrison.
Kirkwood was a major Shaw booster, but the book contains a lot of
material taken directly from the Shaw trial itself and contains a lot of detail
about many of the interesting people who appeared in the course of the
Garrison investigation. Frankly, every time I re-read the book I continue to
be amazed that the author couldn't see how much evidence there really was
against Shaw and it's evidence that Kirkwood actually presents in his book.