I mentioned to my brother that I felt the “Killing Kennedy” book by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard did not answer whether Lee Harvey Oswald was the single assassin of John F. Kennedy. He suggested that I read this book by Gerald Posner, which has the subtitle “Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK.” I must say that I was convinced after reading the 607 page book (there are over a hundred pages of appendices, acknowledgements, notes and the index). I agree with my brother that the book gives a definitive answer that Oswald was the lone assassin. I thought the strongest evidence was that some of Oswald’s coworkers were on the floor directly beneath where he was firing out the window at the President. They all said there were three loud shots directly over their heads, the concussion from the shots knocked loose “cement” from the ceiling that filtered down on them, they heard the bolt action of the rifle worked three times, and they heard three casings hit the floor directly over their heads. There is even a picture in the book of two of the men looking out the fifth floor window during the shooting to see what was happening on the floor above them where Oswald was firing.

I recommend the book to anyone, such as myself, who was swayed by the massive volume of books, news reports, and movies that wanted to convince the country it was impossible for a non-important person such as Oswald to have been able to kill the President of the United States without the support of a complex and massive conspiracy. The author responds to the allegations in the well-publicized conspiracy theories and explains their fallacies. The true basis for the conspiracy theories is explained on page 470, and it is a disturbing explanation. There were many people who made considerable amounts of money with what became a thriving conspiracy industry. “People are making lucrative livings off of selling conspiracy theories to the public. What happened to the truth? Hell, it got lost under a lot of dollar signs. No one wants to hear what really happened because it would be the end of their very profitable little businesses.”

There are many reasons why people are willing to listen to and perhaps believe the many ideas about a conspiracy. First, Lee Harvey Oswald was a very strange man who did go to the Soviet Union to live because he was a fervent believer in Communism. He became discouraged while there that he wasn’t attracting the attention he believed he deserved. He obtained approval for he and his wife Marina to return to the U.S. Oswald was an abusive husband, seldom interested in intimacy beyond his physical desires, seldom had enough money to provide anything other than day-to-day living expenses, and struck most people as being mentally unbalanced. He had a quite grandiose impression of himself despite all the signs that he was a loser.

The KGB watched him closely while he was in the Soviet Union. The man who was chief of the KGB, Yuriy Nosenko, said his request for an exit visa to return to the U.S.  was granted because they judged “…Oswald to be a useless man.” They considered whether he was working for American intelligence and concluded that neither the FBI nor CIA would ever “…use such a pathetic person to work against their archenemy.” Oswald was surprised and disgusted that the American press did not meet him for interviews when he returned to the U.S.

Oswald drifted between menial jobs and never made friendships that lasted after people got to know him. His family was in constant financial trouble. They only survived because of relatives and Russian immigrants who tried to make Marina’s life more tolerable. Oswald refused to allow Marina to learn English, which kept her under his control.

Oswald decided to attract what he thought was his much deserved attention by handing out pamphlets he had printed for the pro-Castro “Fair Play for Cuba Committee.” He sent letters to American Communists exaggerating the success of his efforts. He eventually travelled to Mexico to apply for entry into Cuba but did not get that approval.

Oswald decided to prove his pro-Communist beliefs and gain the attention he believed he deserved by attempting to assassinate the anti-Communist General Edwin Walker. The bullet from his Italian rifle was deflected by the wood lattice in the window in Walker’s study and Walker only “felt a breeze” of the bullet passing over his head. A fragment struck his arm. The investigation of the attempted Walker assassination failed to even come close to Oswald.

The book gives significant details about Oswald’s activities leading up to the day of the Presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. The official path of the motorcade that led it past the Texas School Book Depository wasn’t announced in the news until November 19^th. That left less than three days to develop elaborate conspiracies. The reality was that Oswald had almost accidentally landed a job in a building that allowed him to be in a location where he was able to kill President Kennedy without any elaborate plans or conspiracy. The President of the United States had to be driven slowly in a turn leading him past a building that had a deranged assassin who had grandiose thoughts of his importance. He was armed with a cheap Italian rifle and an accurate scope.

One eyewitness who saw Oswald shooting the rifle at the President also saw him looking out the window after he fired the shots “with a smirk.”

I was suspicions that Oswald was killed after the assassination to prevent investigations that would reveal the Mafia had ordered him killed by a man under their control (Jack Rudy) because they were irritated the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba did not give them back control of the lucrative Havana casinos. The book convinced me I was wrong in my suspicions, Jack Rudy was a gadfly who operated two strip clubs and had minor and inconsequential Mafia connections as a result. Mostly he was distraught that Kennedy had been killed. He was in a high emotional state when he sneaked in to where he could shoot the man who had killed the President.

Americans were convinced that Oswald was not the single assassin, “A Gallup poll taken a week after the assassination showed that only 29 percent of Americans believed that Oswald alone killed JFK.”

The most disturbing part of the book was the Garrison fiasco. The New Orleans attorney used the skepticism about the assassination to gain national attention for his outlandish and unfounded theories designed to gain him attention. He succeeded at getting television appearance (including on the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson) and a profitable movie by Oliver Stone that misrepresented facts. He also disturbingly was able to destroy the lives of people that had done nothing wrong through the power of conspiracy theories.

Bottom line; don’t believe everything you hear from the allegations of the media!