Movie Documentary Review: JFK: The Lost Bullet

JFK: The Lost Bullet, National Geographic, 2013.
This documentary takes a new look at the assassination of John F. Kennedy using the various home movies taken that day, and also talking again with eye witnesses as well as using laser evidence to examine the route of the three shots people heard.  The first shot is the lost bullet. 
They first examine the last two bullets.  Bullet two is often referred to the magic bullet.  Using laser, and getting the car in the exact position of when this shot takes place using the Zapruder film (famous home video of the assassination) they demonstrate that the course was strait through the presidents back, out his neck and then into the Governor's back.  
The issue with bullet three is that the president's head whipped back instead of forward.  There are two conspiracy theories surrounding this shot.   The first, the driver shot him.  Digital enhancement clarifies this.  The driver did turn around and look at the president.  However he has nothing in his hand.  The second, the theory of a shooter on the grassy knoll.  They use other films from a different angle to refute this argument as nothing is seen on the hill.  Also the shot would have been fired form the side, and had to of hit the president in the side of the head, and then possibly hitting Jacklyn Kennedy.  The digital enhancement of the film does show a puff of moisture going forward after the president is struck.  Then his head jerks back in a reverse reaction effect.
Then the lost bullet, or the first bullet.  The contention here is that first, the Zapruder film does not record this bullet; the camera had been turned off for a few seconds to save film.  They say it took  six seconds between the first shot and the other two shots.  This is confirmed by two eye witnesses.  Then when they tried to reenact the scene using the laxer, they discovered a stop light would have obstructed the shot.  Looking back at pictures of the light, there was a mark which could have been the result of the bullet.  The bullet may have ricocheted and been lost in the street.  One woman was injured when she was struck by concrete form the curb. 
This is the conclusion of this film.  This uses high tech lasers to confirm the Warren Report.

Book Review: Killing Kennedy

Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot, by: Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2012.

This was a very good look back.  Some of the things in this book were done very well; well most of it was done well, there were just some things I didn’t like.  I didn’t like the way Kennedy was made out to be such a womanizer.  They focused, initially in the book, on some of his sexual conquests, including Marilyn Monroe.  However the chapters on Martin Luther King I thought were well done (although they also talked about his sexual exploits as uncovered by the FBI), particularly the conversation about his “I have a dream” speech. 

Of course the description of the actual murder of John F. Kennedy has been heard many times before.  This book brought to my knowledge some things I hadn’t realized.  It was the girdle the president was wearing which made it so he did not slump down, and was a more inviting target for the third bullet.  Also the statements of Jackie Kennedy with her dying husband to her side I had not heard before.  She was very candid.  “They have killed my husband,” “ They blew his head off.”   I could not imagine being in that situation.

There are also some insights about Lee Harvey Oswald.  That his motivation was to make a name for himself and prove he wasn’t a failure.  This section is called “Evil Wins.”  That is what Oswald represented, evil.

I enjoyed this book.  It talks about the legacy of Camelot, and how it died the day the route was selected, which made a turn in front of the Texas Book Depository.  Of course the Depository was where Oswald was working.  This made for a temptation he could not pass up.  A slow target, and he armed with a high powered scope, and a history as a marksman.