J.F.K.: THE MURDER & THE MYTHS

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000600160028-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 18, 1999
• Sequence Number: 28
• Publication Date: June 12, 1964
• Content Type: MAGAZINE

Sanitized - Approved` WW5
EUROPE
. J.F.K.: The Murder & the Myths
John F. Kennedy's assassination is the
stubborn refusal of many Europeans to
accept the belief that the U.S. President
could have been killed by a lunatic
loner. Headline after headline and book
after book roll off the presses with a
bewildering array of theories suggesting
a deep, dark plot.
Loudest skeptics are Europe's leftists,
who will not be dissuaded from their
original conviction that Marxist Lee
Harvey Oswald was the unwitting tool
or the scapegoat of some well-oiled,
darker rightist conspiracy, and then was
silenced by Jack Ruby. This impres-
sion was fed by the "bad' assumptions
made by many reporters and commen-
tators in the first minutes after the as-
sassination in conservative Dallas, and
it has never been fully erased. ? "The
American press," declared Italy's left-
wing magazine Vie Nuove in a recent
issue, "has forgotten its glorious tradi-
tion of truth and democracy, playing
along with the FBI and Dallas police
to incriminate Oswald . who has
no chance to defend himself." In Brit-
ain, that sometime philosopher, Ber-
trand Russell, has already set up a
'."Who Killed Kennedy?" committee to
look into the situation.
Mr. X? The doubters abroad find
ammunition in the arguments of two
like-minded Americans. One is Balti-
more-born Thomas G. Buchanan, 44, a
onetime reporter fired by the Washing-
ton Star in 1948 after he admitted
membership in the Communist Party.
He now lives in Paris and is the author
of a widely discussed tome, Who Killed
Kennedy? Buchanan suggests 1) "that
the author of this crime is a millionaire
of Texas, called Mr. X"; 2) that Oswald
was an accomplice; but 3) that the
shooting was done not by Oswald but b
two triggermen, one from the Texas
School Book Depository building an
one stationed on an overpass ahead.
Buchanan's book is being published i
eight European countries, already is
bestseller.
'Rivaling Buchanan for attention i
Oswald's posthumous defender, wind-
mill-tilting Manhattan Attorney Mar
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Sane, who has been stumping the Con-
inent with denials that Oswald was the
ssassin. Both Buchanan and Lane have
eceived smash play in the Eastern Eu-
opean press, whose line has always
een that Kennedy was the victim of a
hree-way conspiracy among Southern
acists, Pentagon generals, and the nas-
ty CIA. Two months ago, Lane, ad-.
dressing the Communist-front Interna-
tional Association of Democratic Jurists
in Budapest, declared that the killer
or killers, whom he has described as
"motivated by diseased minds," are
"still running loose."
If Sells. Europe's anti-leftists have
their own theories about a plot. They'
find support in another book, The Red
Roses of Dallas,* published in France
by a correspondent for European publi-
cations, Nerin Gun, who covered the as-
sassination. Newsman Gun hints strong-
ly that it is possible that Oswald killed
Kennedy out of admiration for Castro
-a theory that still lingers in the minds
of some U.S. Goverriment officials who
cannot fully shake off the suspicion that
Oswald was acting for Castro.
The average European by no 'means
swallows every far-out theory, but their
own intrigue-steeped national histories
make it easy for millions to doubt that
Oswald did it alone. In Italy, where
Julius Caesar got his and where Ma-
chiavelli elevated plotting to respecta-
bility, the only question is when the
conspirators will be unmasked. Among
Frenchmen, who have long had a pen-
Named for the bouquet Jackie Kennedy
carried in the fatal. Dallas parade.
Continued
CPYRGHT
Sanitized Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000600160028-2