Vodka at Versailles

 

This is the book by the Chief Counsel for the re-investigation of the Kennedy assassination that the House launched in the late 1970s. Cromwell's structure is scattershot. He doesn't develop a linear understanding of his issues with the Warren Commission (and boy, does he have issues with the Warren Commission); rather, each chapter hits from a different, and in many cases, unrelated angle. Some of it is interesting enough. His take on Oliver Stone's JFK actually heightens the value of the film, while at the same time it demolishes its value as an historical artifact. The big finding from Cromwell's work was the identification of a shot as being fired from the direction of the grassy knoll. Cromwell used up to date techniques to examine sound pulled from a motorcycle cop's open mic. He uses this data to state that there was by definition a conspiracy. He does not exonerate Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin. Nor does he offer an opinion as to the identity of the alleged second shooter. The soundcheck has been re-examined in the decades since the House investigation, and opinion remains divided (insofar as I can determine) over whether or not Cromwell's acoustic team were correct. Cromwell frequently laments the passage of time since November 22, 1963. Even in 1978, when his committee investigated, the intervening fifteen years had dried up witnesses, recollections or even a forensic trail. As he wrote in 1998, the problem was getting worse. Today, nearly 60 years later, the likely truth of the assassination will never be known. A fair read. The conspiracy theory is his most provocative conclusion, but it remains unproven.