Josiah Thompson may have just cracked the John F. Kennedy assassination case. Fifty-four years after the publication of his 1967 book “Six Seconds in Dallas,” he is back with a follow-up book, “Last Second in Dallas,” that amplifies and revises his findings, using scientific means that weren’t available decades ago. Thompson, who lives in Bolinas and was a private detective in San Francisco for more than 30 years, is unique among writers in the genre in that he has never advanced a conspiracy theory. He doesn’t know who killed Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, or why. Instead, Thompson only concerns himself with what can be proved through forensics, photography, ballistics, sound recordings and witness testimony. His mission, which has lasted from his early 30s through today, at age 86, has been simply to find out what happened as the president’s motorcade passed through Dallas’ Dealey Plaza. I’ve seen Oliver Stone’s “JFK” six or seven times. So, what happened?
Josiah Thompson: “What happened that day was really simple: It’s what your eyes tell you happened when you see the Zapruder film,” Thompson tells me, referring to the recording of the shooting by Abraham Zapruder on his home-movie camera. The sequence of events, according to Thompson, is that there were five shots fired, in three bursts. First, Kennedy was shot in the back. Then came the fatal shot from the right front. And finally, less than a second later, Kennedy was shot in the back of the head. Thompson postulates that the shots were fired from three different directions. What makes Thompson’s findings a big deal is that, without setting out to do so, he all but proves that there was, indeed, a conspiracy. There had to have been one, by definition, because — according to Thompson — at least three people were involved (unless you believe that three lone assassins woke up that day with the same idea). Thompson further suggests that the very effectiveness of the assassination — it was practically a slaughter — argues in favor of professionals, not amateurs. Source: datebook.sfchronicle.com
The first definitive account of the rise and fall of the Secret Service, from the Kennedy assassination to the alarming mismanagement of the Obama and Trump years, right up to the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6—written by the Pulitzer Prize winner and #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump's Testing of America. Carol Leonnig has been reporting on the Secret Service for The Washington Post bringing to light the secrets, scandals, and shortcomings that plague the agency today—from a toxic work culture to dangerously outdated equipment to the deep resentment within the ranks at key agency leaders. The Secret Service was born in 1865, in the wake of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but its story begins in earnest in 1963, with the death of John F. Kennedy. Shocked into reform by its failure to protect the president on that fateful day in Dallas, this once-sleepy agency was radically transformed into an elite, highly trained unit that would redeem itself several times, most famously in 1981 by thwarting an assassination attempt against Ronald Reagan. But this reputation for courage and excellence would not last forever. By Barack Obama’s presidency, the once-proud Secret Service was running on fumes and beset by mistakes and alarming lapses in judgment. Carol Leonnig is a national investigative reporter at The Washington Post, where she has worked since 2000. Zero Fail will be released by Random House (May 18, 2021) Source: amazon.com
In Warner Bros.' Judas and the Black Messiah, Daniel Kaluuya plays Fred Hampton, the former chairman of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party and a co-founder of the Rainbow Coalition, whose killing in a 1969 raid was the result of an FBI counterintelligence operation. That government plot placed a petty thief named William O'Neal (played in the film by LaKeith Stanfield) undercover to infiltrate the party's dealings and undermine its community organizing. Speaking with THR, Kaluuya reveals the extensive research he did to prepare for the role, working with rising-star director Shaka King and how Hampton's philosophy can be applied in our current political moment. -How much about Fred Hampton and the Black Panthers did you already know coming into this role, and what did you learn right away?
-Daniel Kaluuya: I actually went through my stuff the other day, and I saw a school textbook that mentioned the Black Panthers. You learn about American history, and I think they really just scoot past the Black Panther section of it. [There's] a lot on Kennedy, quite a bit on Martin Luther King, not that much on Malcolm X, and then kind of just moving forward [to the] Vietnam War. I knew about the Panthers and chairman Fred Hampton just from living life and hearing stories from others and having conversations with others and realizing that's something later on in my life I would love to have a deep-knowledge dive on it, to understand that philosophy and those people. It was from references in art, references around me and in my community and the people I knew, where I got all my information about the Black Panthers before the film was proposed to me. Source: hollywoodreporter.com
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