A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination

Asking Phil Shenon to tell you about the JFK assassination is like asking David Duke to give you the real low down on what happened in the Holocaust.

This book is a "cruel and shocking" assault on the truth. It reminds me of a girl being raped on a pool table by a vicious, drunken biker gang of LBJ, CIA, Dallas TX oil executives and New York Times reporters. Shenon does not just tell the Big Lie that a lone nut commie with no motive murdered John Kennedy, he implies Oswald was doing it at the behest of Castro Cubans. Google and read about what "Operation Northwoods" was and you will understand perfectly. The government's and MSM's lie about the JFK assassination is one of the big lies in World History. It is equal to any lie that the Nazis ever told: and Shenon is dishing it out again!

Lyndon Johnson and his Dallas, TX oil men and military contractors used their immaculate and long standing CIA/military intelligence to murder John Kennedy. LBJ's reasons were personal: he was within days of being utterly destroyed by the Kennedys both with an RFK-fed LIFE magazine expose and also with an RFK-fed Senate Rules Committee investigation into his ties to the Bobby Baker scandal and LBJ's corruption which was of Biblical proportions. CIA/military were enraged over Cuba policy, leaving Castro in power after he had let the Russians put nuclear weapons in Cuba was simply unacceptable to them. Dallas, TX oil men - folks like H.L. Hunt, Clint Murchison Sr. and D.H. Byrd - all LBJ insiders - wanted to preserve a massive tax break, the oil depreciation allowance and protect their decades long investment in Lyndon Johnson.

Post JFK assassination Lyndon Johnson and his good buddy and neighbor of 19 years J. Edgar Hoover immediately, within seconds, began orchestrating the cover up of JFK's murder. And on the Warren Commission, the most active member was Allen Dulles who was either personally involved in the JFK assassination or whose close professional friends were involved in the JFK assassination.

Philip Shenon's book is an absolute disgrace. I don't see how one can write a book on the Warren Commission and just ignore 50 years of very fine JFK research much of which points directly at Lyndon Johnson and the CIA as being perps in the JFK assassination. The reason the machine gun riddled Warren Commission was such a spectacular failure was that the murderers of John Kennedy were running the non-investigation into his death.

Asking LBJ and Hoover to investigate the murder of John Kennedy was about like asking John Gotti to investigate a mob hit. One would have to be literally insane to trust the evidentiary record of the JFK assassination; it is completely corrupted because the murderers of John Kennedy were running the non-investigation into his death. Either Hoover was in on the plot or he immediately, within seconds became an accessory-after-the-fact to the murder of John Kennedy.

The best books to read about the 1963 coup d'etat are those by Phillip Nelson, Roger Stone and James Douglass. The first 2 cover the critical role of Lyndon Johnson in the JFK assassination. Douglass' book focuses on the CIA's reasons and the peace angle. JFK wanted peace; they did not.

Shenon's book ought to be titled "The Secret History of the Warren Commission as Told to me by the Staffers who Endorsed and Rubber Stamped One of the Greatest Lies in World History."

The murder of John Kennedy is the most notorious political murder in world history, and the most notorious murder of someone except for the crucifixion of Jesus.

One of the biggest lies in world history is that a lone nut commie with absolutely no motive murdered JFK. It is a lie equal to anything that the Nazis ever put out and the people who have been pushing this lie were, of course, the murderers themselves, the New York Times, The Washington Post, the leaders of both the Democratic and Republican party and the USA's most acclaimed historians (Robert Dallek, Robert Caro, a few of many).

And now Philip Shenon, a former reporter for the New York Times is recycling it yet again with his utterly indefensible defense of the Warren Report, a document that has been urinated on more than a tree in a dog park.

Carl Bernstein wrote a really good article in the 1970's entitled: "The CIA and the Media: How America's Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up."

James Angleton and his special relationship with the New York Times was but one of hundreds of such connections of Operation Mockingbird. Bernstein said that 2 of the most valuable CIA-controlled media outlets were the New York Times and CBS News. Both are absolute and utter rot when it comes to the JFK assassination.

The Warren Commission, whose key cover up artists were Allen Dulles, Gerald Ford and John J. McCloy, was created by the man who actually murdered John Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson a man who was on the verge of being destroyed by the Kennedys.

If you want to learn about LBJ's complicity in the murder of John Kennedy, just listen to Madeleine Brown, Barr McClellan, E. Howard Hunt, Charles Crenshaw and especially Billie Sol Estes.

Or read Roger Stone's blockbuster book indicting Lyndon Johnson. Richard Nixon, Henry Cabot Lodge and Barry Goldwater were absolutely convinced that Lyndon Johnson murdered John Kennedy. Nixon and Lodge knew the CIA angle as well. Waggoner Carr, the Texas Attorney General, told John Mitchell that LBJ murdered John Kennedy. Roy Cohn and Tony "Fats" Salerno were both convinced that LBJ and Carlos Marcello did it.

One of the spectacular failures of Shenon's book is its treatment of Oswald who was US intelligence and an FBI informer. Walter Jenkins, LBJ's chief of staff, had an FBI friend in New Orleans who told him Oswald was an FBI informer. Then there is what former FBI and ultra-rightist Guy Banister told his secretary/mistress about Oswald - don't worry about him he is with the office. Banister had been one of Hoover's favorite FBI agents when he was the SAC of Chicago.

Shenon should have gone down to Miami and talked with Antonio Veciana - still alive at of this date 12/12/13 and asked him about Oswald. Veciana for 30+ years has been saying that his CIA handler was David Atlee Phillips, who he met with 25-35 times, and who Veciana had seen Oswald with in Dallas, TX at the Southland Building on September 1, 1963.

A reasonable person would say that Oswald was being run by the CIA's David Atlee Phillips and by former FBI Guy Banister when he was in New Orleans.

And there is a good chance that James Angleton, so close to Allen Dulles that he literally carried Dulles's ashes at his funeral, was running US intelligence agent and fake defector Oswald when he was in Russia. Angleton of course covered up the JFK assassination and he spent many years fraudulently pushing with journalists the "Russians did it" angle to the JFK assassination.

Key point: Lee Harvey Oswald was U.S. intelligence and he shot NO ONE on 11/22/63.

1) "Oswald and the CIA" book by John Newman
2) "The Last Investigtion: What Insiders Know about the Assassination of JFK" by Gaeton Fonzi
3) "Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and US Intelligence" book by Philip Melanson
4) "History Will Not Absolve Us" by Martin Schotz (Chapter 5 "Oswald and U.S. Intelligence" by Christopher Sharrett)
5) "Me and Lee" book by Judyth Vary Baker (Oswald's mistress in New Orleans, summer 1963)
6) "Destiny Betrayed" by Jim DiEugenio, Chapter 7 "On Instructions from His Government" (2012 edition)
7) "A Certain Arrogance: U.S. Intelligence's Manipulation of Religious Groups and Individuals in Two World Wars and the Cold War - and the Sacrificing of Lee Harvey Oswald" book by George Michael Evica
8) "Accessories After the Fact" by Sylvia Meagher, Chapter 19 "Oswald and the State Department'"
9) "Coup D'Etat in America: The CIA and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy" by Alan Weberman & Michael Canfield, Chapter 3 "Was Oswald a CIA Agent?"
11) "Oswald in New Orleans: Case for Conspiracy with the CIA" by Harold Weisberg
12) "Oswald: The Truth" by Joachim Joesten (1967)
13) Chapter 9 "Fingerprints of Intelligence" in "Reasonable Doubt" by Henry Hurt
14) Chapter 14 "Oswald and the CIA" in "Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy" by Joachim Joesten
15) Chapter 12 " Was Oswald a Government Agent" in "Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why" by Gerald McKnight
16) Chapter 13 "Spies" in "Farewell America" by James Hepburn
17) Google "Lee Harvey Oswald's reading habits summer 1963" by Judyth Vary Baker
18) Google " Lee Harvey Oswald--a U.S. Intelligence Agent: The Evidence by Hal Verb"
19) Google "The Death of a President by Eric Norden in The Minority of One, Jan, 1964"
20) "The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald" by Robert Groden
21) "I am a Patsy! I am a Patsy!" by George De Mohrenschildt
22) Google "Oswald and the FBI" by Harold Feldman, The Nation January, 1964, pp 86-89

Shenon on p. 600 recommends Bugliosi, Posner and Max Holland as a good reads on the JFK assassination. Asking those guys what happened in the JFK assassination is about like asking David Duke to give you the real low down on the Holocaust.

Shenon, like the Warren Commission, relies a lot on the 1963-1964 Marina Oswald to indict Oswald. Marina in 1963 was age 22 with a toddler, a new baby, she had no money, could not speak English; She was surrounded by US intelligence and given a White Russian interpreter named Ilya Mamantov who she came to hate because he would twist her words on Oswald, and she was in fear for her life as the media and government screamed full blast that her husband Oswald had murdered the sitting president of the United States.

So Marina was a marionette doll for US intelligence and anything that an utterly terrified Marina said in that time period can not be taken at face value. Marina's testimony was suborned perjury, warped and twisted to indict Oswald. Marina was in a spider web that was completely controlled by the LBJ/CIA murderers of John Kennedy.

As Marina Oswald told Jesse Ventura in 2010, "Would you sacrifice your children for the truth." That is Marina's way of saying she was coerced to tell many, many lies about Oswald in 1963-1964. Marina's testimony was of course sworn and she has not specifically and point by point refuted all her epic perjury - for obvious reasons - it was coerced and she has liability for that.

Back to Shenon. I don't see how you can write a book on the JFK assassination and not address the LBJ-Kennedy sub rosa war issues. Or leave out facts such as Gen. Edward Lansdale, the CIA's expert on coups, assassination, propaganda and counter-insurgency, was identified at Dealey Plaza by his peers Col. Fletcher Prouty and Gen. Victor Krulak. That is huge because it brings in both the CIA and military in the JFK assassination.

Then there is the issue of Operation Northwoods and the JFK assassination. I know some JFK researchers who think Gen. Lansdale, who ran Operation Mongoose for the Kennedys, was the one who actually wrote the JCS-approved Operation Northwoods, a plan for a series of false flag attacks to draw the USA into war with Cuba.

So sad. The JFK assassination was the ultimate expression of Operation Northwoods. Murder the hated Kennedy then blame it on the the other "Great Satan" of CIA/military: Fidel Castro.

Lyndon Johnson and the CIA immediately swung into action blaming the JFK assassination on Fidel Castro. LBJ told many, many people behind the scenes that Castro did it but we have to cover this thing up or we are going to have nuclear war and 40 million people are going to die. It was LBJ's greatest tool of manipulation and Earl Warren was just one of many that he tried this voodoo on.

Shenon's book is an absolute disaster: not only has he not figured out that Lyndon Johnson, Dallas oil men and the national security state were the perps in the JFK assassination, he has not figured out that Lee Harvey Oswald was U.S. intelligence with a fake public persona of a pro-Castro Marxist. That is what you do in "counter-intelligence" something that James Angleton specialized in.

Shenon describes James Angleton as liquor soaked, chain smoker, paranoid and close to J. Edgar Hoover. Actually that sounds like a perfect description of Lyndon Johnson himself except that I would add in the phrase "serial murderer" and "mass murderer" for LBJ.

Jack Ruby, who Shenon covers in this book, called LBJ a "Nazi of the worst order" and said that the JFK assassination never would have happened if Adlai Stevenson had been the vice president.

100% correct, Jack.

This book is an absolute disgrace. It endorses the utterly fraudulent Magic Bullet Theory. Has Oswald shooting at Edwin Walker (a lie and part of the posthumous frame up of patsy US intelligence agent Oswald). Has Oswald shooting Tippit (ditto all part of the frame up.)

And where it really goes off the rails is implying that Fidel Castro was behind the JFK assassination. Or that Oswald murdered John Kennedy at the behest of Castro Cubans in Mexico who wanted to see JFK dead.

I feel dirty even typing up those allegations. Fidel Castro and the Russians had absolutely nothing to do with the JFK assassination and both parties are sick of being framed for this. The actual murderer Lyndon Johnson tried to frame them from Day One.

The CIA murderers of JFK - people like David Atlee Phillips - were also trying to frame Fidel Castro from Day One. The first "conspiracy theory" misdirection the JFK assassination were CIA media assets pushing this exact line.

You can google "JFK Assassination: First JFK Conspiracy Theory Was Paid For by CIA" and get an article by Joseph Lazzaro of Ibtimes.

"A Cruel and Shocking Act" does not offer enlightenment on the JFK assassination. All it is is yet another whitewash of one of the most justly and vitriolicly criticized shams in World History: the LBJ-appointed Warren Commission.

It is not worth your money to buy or your precious time to read. I was reading in front of a fire last night and this book came dangerously close to being extra kindling. It is that awful.

Oswald did not shoot JFK, although as a intelligence asset he may have been involved in the plot. Fidel Castro and the Russians in no way shape for form murdered John Kennedy.

Lyndon Johnson and his traitorous friends in CIA/military murdered JFK.

The only communist involved in the JFK assassination was Lyndon Johnson.

LYNDON JOHNSON HAD A MURDEROUS ATTITUDE TOWARDS ROBERT KENNEDY - "I'll cut his throat if it's the last thing I do."

Robert Caro describes the LBJ-RFK relationship post 1960 Democratic convention, where RFK had moved heaven and earth attempting to keep LBJ off the 1960 Democratic ticket. Caro:

John Connally, who during long days of conversation with this author was willing to answer almost any question put to him, no matter how delicate the topic, wouldn't answer when asked what Johnson said about Robert Kennedy. When the author pressed him, he finally said flatly: "I am not going to tell you what he said about him." During the months after the convention, when Johnson was closeted alone back in Texas with an old ally he would sometimes be asked about Robert Kennedy. He would reply with a gesture. Raising his big right hand, he would draw the side of it across the neck in a slowing, slitting movement. Sometimes that gesture would be his only reply; sometimes, as during a meeting with Ed Clark in Austin, he would say, as his hand moved across his neck, "I'll cut his throat if it's the last thing I do." [Robert Caro, "The Passage of Power," p. 140]

Believe it or not, it's actually not a new idea that the CIA, FBI and other agencies engaged in a "benign cover-up" of the JFK assassination. The idea first surfaced in the 1970s during the investigations by the Church Committee, Rockefeller Commission, Pike Committee and HSCA. As the horrors and abuses of the CIA and FBI (and military intelligence) spilled out into public view, it became obvious to even the most innocent that the Warren Commission had been severely compromised.

So it's become the comfortable Establishment position since that time to admit that, yes, some agencies lied and destroyed evidence, but the Warren Commission still came to the right conclusions. All is well, America. The system works, as we were assured after Watergate.

However, three of the seven Warren Commission members (Richard Russell, Hale Boggs and John Sherman Cooper) did not really accept the official story. Another member, Gerald Ford, acted as an informant for J. Edgar Hoover. Allen Dulles had been fired by President Kennedy. John McCloy was a lifelong fixer for the Establishment. And Earl Warren had been persuaded by LBJ that 40 million Americans might die in a war if he didn't help put an end to conspiracy rumors.

Many of the Commission's own medical witnesses found the single bullet theory to be unbelievable. The Commission's own staffers assigned to investigate Jack Ruby (Leon Hubert and Burt Griffin) wrote memos urging a thorough investigation of his ties to crooked cops, Cuban exiles, gun-runners, Texas oilmen and organized crime, but were instead surprised to be left behind when the Commission went to Dallas to take Ruby's testimony.

Update: Now there is a paperback version of this book, in which David Slawson expresses his opinion that a few Castro supporters in Mexico talked Oswald into committing the assassination. This depends on the official version of the Mexico City incident, which has been shredded by researchers like Bill Simpich (read "State Secret" online at the Mary Ferrell website) and David Josephs (Google "The Evidence is the Conspiracy: Mexico City"). This will no doubt be a "big story" for some, and spur increased sales of Shenon's book. But it doesn't get us anywhere closer to the truth.

If you really want to educate yourself about the JFK assassination, look at my Listmania on my profile page.

This book was recommended to me by a friend. It sheds no further light on Warren Comm. Report inconstancies as author swallows FBI/CIA/WC assumptions that Oswald acted alone and executed unbelievable shots at motorcade. Book author accepts perceptions of WC investigators gushingly. JFK researchers have disclosed much earlier misrepresentations of FBI "fact" and CIA omissions., so nothing really new therein. Worst trouble: Anyone (I have) who has owned and fired the Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5 mm rifle knows you must fill the stripper clip with six bullets or you will jam the rifle trying to insert the clip. Rifle found with one live round in chamber and 3 hulls on floor. No way. I fired individual rounds one at a time and it took way too long to load, cock, aim, fire and eject three shots. Worse, those old WW rifles were usually in poor shape with corroded barrels and expired military ammo. I owned a 303. Enfield carbine ordered from Klein's in Chicago in 1959. Couldn't hit water aiming at a lake due to worn barrel. Swift action notwithstanding, this lacking in Mannlicher- Carcano that has a stiff action. How anyone could use a junk rifle with a defective scope to shoot through trees and fire three shots in 6.5 seconds is beyond me, much less aim the thing and overcome recoil each time fired.

If you want a book about the author's interviews of surviving members of
the Warren Commission STAFF, then this is the book for you. But the cover
of it is deceitful--you're lead to believe it's about untold facts regarding a
conspiracy. False advertising--I should have investigated a little better.
And so should the disgraceful Earl Warren, to whom the author is overly kind.

If you're thinking about buying this book -- do so.

I understand why some of the people who reviewed this book were disappointed. The book is likely not what they were hoping for. It isn't one of the many sensational conspiracy-theory based books. It is, in fact, an investigative journalist's exhaustive search for verifiable facts. It is because of that verifiability that some reviewers are frustrated or unfulfilled -- when your search is biased by your own beliefs then you are bound to be disappointed by anything that doesn't definitively support those beliefs -- but it is also the reason that the book is more than your run of the mill JFK assassination lit. It is, in fact, genuine scholarship.

Shenon is well known as a brilliant journalist, and his work on "The Commission" proved that he has the skills to document and investigate recent history in a thorough and uncompromising way. This book, however, is really an evolution for him. Now he isn't "just" a superior investigative journalist, he has effectively made the move to historian as well. Everything in this book is very clearly meticulously researched, verifiable, and reproducible. The notes alone are a treasure trove of information. Anyone can go to those notes and trace everything Shenon writes back to the original sources -- something that not only points to the legitimacy of the work itself, but also sets up future scholars in their own quest to review and add to the historical record.

A common complaint about this book is that there isn't really anything "new" in it. That is true from a certain perspective. No, it's not a new idea that the FBI and CIA were culpable in the destruction of evidence and impeding the Warren Commission's investigation, but it's also not a new idea that Kennedy was assassinated by aliens who now run the government. I, personally, don't subscribe to the latter theory, but it is out there. I bring it up to illustrate the idea that all kinds of theories, from the credible to the completely off-the-wall, have already been provided. In that sense, absolutely nothing Shenon could say could ever be considered a "new idea". What readers have to understand, though, is that very obviously wasn't Shenon's goal. His goal was to sort through the previous scholarship, add to that scholarship with genuinely new information in the form of interviews from the staff of the Warren Commission and the like, and clearly lay out a very complex story for the reader in a way that makes it all comprehensible. Some assassination buffs spend years and years absorbing any and all information they can find on a topic, including rumors, innuendo, and supposition. Shenon didn't write this book for them, he wrote it for those of us who want to have impartial facts in an organized format.

"A Cruel and Shocking Act" isn't a conspiracy book, it is a history book. It is worth noting, however, that even Shenon says that he doesn't rule out the possibility that there was a conspiracy (going so far as to explain that a conspiracy, by definition, only includes two or more people). Any readers who wanted Shenon to validate the theories that they hold to be true will be disappointed -- he is a legitimate researcher/investigator who doesn't make statements he can't support. For readers who want to hear the story of the Warren Commission investigation based on the facts that we can definitively know to be true, however, the book is exactly what they're looking for. For scholars seeking to study the Warren Commission, Kennedy, and/or the assassination, this book should be the first on the lit review.

If you want a thorough investigation to complement this book, read "JFK And The Unspeakable by James W. Douglas. Lee Harvey Oswald was indeed a Patsy and Jack Ruby had help twice to get it right. ("The Unspeakable" is a term coined by the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton to describe who would take out JFK.)

Philip Shenon's "A Cruel And Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assasination" is a lengthy, detailed study of the Warren Commission. Shenon goes into excruciating detail on how the commission was formed, what the various members did and thought about their work, various acts and omissions by the CIA, FBI, Dallas PD, and US Secret Service, and of course Oswald along with assorted tid-bits about his wife Marina and Oswald executioner Jack Ruby. Weighing in at 542 pages it's a long slog for any reader even if you're fascinated by the subject matter.

As a very young person when JFK was killed the event and aftermath and how it affected my parents, teachers, and other stuck with me. If you read the reviews for this book on Amazon you'll find many, many folks who are passionate on this topic and seem quite well informed on the tons of research and conspiracy theories that surround this tragedy who lambaste Shenon's efforts. I can't speak with the naysayers level of authority but indeed there doesn't seem to be anything "secret" in this historical account of the Warren Commission.

It's easy to criticize Warren & Co. in hindsight but they were given a Herculean task and under pressure to deliver a salve to the nation in relatively short order. So, if you want to spare yourself from wading through this work I will summarize the conclusions for you; Oswald was the lone gunman, a disenfranchised young man who acted alone and the single bullet theory makes the most sense to fit the evidence. That's pretty much it, nothing new, although Shenon is somewhat fixated on Oswald's activities in Mexico shortly before 11/22/63 and spends a good deal of time on the subject but in the end it's irrelevant. Personally, I was hoping for more and found the whole thing anticlimactic- maybe I'll just watch "JFK" again.

A superb and remarkable research effort which, at least in my vciew, debunks so many of the JFK conspiracy theories which have been with us for years.

For anyone old enough to have experienced the assassination of JFK, this book is an incredible and methodical treatment of what happened, what may have happened, and the failures of the FBI, CIA and Warren Commission to examine all the details. It's hard to believe today that so many evidence strands went unexplored and thus unreported. The author writes with clarity and detail, and I found myself aghast at some of the information! A great read.

Excellent account of the inside workings of the Warren Commission by a top flight reporter. Worth buying if you are an assassination buff.