KILLING THE TRUTH

Case reopened! Gutsy—if at times farfetched—overview of Livingstone's JFK conspiracy theses, first met in High Treason (1989—not reviewed) and High Treason 2 (1992). Livingstone may step off on the wrong foot when drawing himself as emotionally troubled by attacks on him by other researchers, allegedly conspiracy-sponsored, out to get him and to lead others into searches for red herrings—but he unveils plenty of new evidence on the Kennedy killing here. No one should miss his summary of the hard evidence for a conspiracy—which, if accepted, leaves the lone-gunman theory far behind. Livingstone has managed to interview Diana Bowran (uninterviewed in 27 years), a British nurse and the first medical worker at Parkland Hospital to touch JFK's body. Bowran got into the back seat with the President and Jackie; found that JFK had no pulse; stayed with the body the entire time it was in the Trauma Room (aside from three minutes spent getting a transfusion packet); washed the corpse; closed its eyes; packed JFK's nearly empty skull with cotton squares; saw the extra back wound; and wrapped the body and watched its removal in a bronze casket. Livingstone points out that Kennedy's brain could not possibly have weighed 1500 grams (the weight of an average brain), as the autopsy doctors said, because a third or more of it was missing. He asks why the steel-jacketed ``magic bullet'' remains fresh-looking while the head-wound bullet exploded into fine bits, and answers: two guns. Actually, Livingstone posits four. His heavies are Texan oil billionaires H.L. Hunt and Clint Murchison, Jr., with LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, Richard Nixon, and John J. McCloy all meeting at Murchison's house on the eve of the murder and focusing on raising the national debt and lining their pockets by beefing up the war machine JFK was out to reduce. Livingstone's list of conspirators may sound unlikely, but his examination of the forensic evidence is compelling—and makes this even more readable and exciting than his last. (Sixteen pages of photographs) (First printing of 50,000)