20-04-2014, 02:41 PM
Some stuff I collected about Buchanan:
He was an American Communist living in Paris and a former reporter with the Washington Evening Star. He was educated at Lawrenceville School and Yale and George Washington universities; served four years in the Army in WWII, rising to the rank of captain. His book, first widely published in Europe by Secker & Warburg, was based on press accounts; a revised American edition late in 1964 also discussed the findings of the WC. A special edition was published by Pengo Manufacturing (earth-moving equipment-makers) president Gerald A.M. Petersen, who praised it as "exciting, well-reasoned" and an "important historical document." Reportedly, Jack Ruby read the book and liked it.
4/5/1964 London Observer published an article by Cyril Dunn, 'Who Really Killed Kennedy?', based on Buchanan's work on the subject which had been published in L'Express. The article described Buchanan's theory of two gunmen, neither one Oswald, with complicity by the police. Texas oil might have been behind the assassination, and Oswald was blamed to discredit communism. He believed that one of the bullets was fired from in front of the car (though from the Underpass, not the Grassy Knoll, which is never mentioned by Buchanan).
Gerald Posner says that David Lifton and Marjorie Field provided material for Buchanan's book. (Case Closed 417) Time wrote 6/12/1964 that Buchanan's conspiracy theory was groundless because he had been "fired from the Washington Star in 1948 after he admitted membership in the Communist party."
Here are my notes I took after reading the book many years ago:
Highlights of Who Killed Kennedy?: "Never in the history of crime has such an intricate, premeditated murder been so swiftly settled." He noted that the papers Oswald held in the backyard photos were ideologically hostile to each other. "The most anti-Communist of Europeans realize the death of Kennedy was more sincerely mourned in Moscow than in any other foreign capital, if only for the fact that leaders of the Soviet Union staked their whole political careers upon the chance of detente with the United States." He noted that no sane domestic Communist would kill the President, and risk bringing on a new era of McCarthyism. "One has but to read the very issue of The Worker Oswald is alleged to have been reading to observe that Kennedy was being treated at that time with a respect not far removed from admiration...the first people to proclaim their indignation that the President was murdered by the Communists were those who, one day earlier, had been attacking Kennedy as a 'pro-Communist' himself, and saying that he was the best friend that the Communists had ever had." He noted that the USSR and China took no opportunity of the changed in government to make aggressive actions. Buchanan recalled that when Ruby shot Oswald, most Americans (and especially most Europeans) just couldn't buy the idea that he was a grieving patriot. "Ruby, therefore, must have been involved in some way with the man he slew...and no one could conceive of Ruby as a dedicated Communist." Now it was necessary to portray Oswald and Ruby as lone nuts: "it was one madman who shot down another."
He interviewed Nicholas Katzenbach 3/1964, who stood by the description of JFK's wounds at that time (that the back wound was a separate shot and the throat wound was related to the head shot): "he said that it was based on an exhaustive study of the President's autopsy, and that there could be no doubt about it...He felt certain any person who had studied this autopsy would have reached the same conclusions. I asked him if I could see a copy of it, but he said that he could not release it...when the President's Commission issued its report, the explanation of the wounds had changed completely..." (p91-92)
Buchanan had been through basic training three times - once for the Army Air Corps, once as an officer candidate, and for three years as commander of an automatic weapons unit - and he recalled that Oswald's last score (191) was what he would expect from someone had fired a rifle for the first time. His best score, 212, was "still lower than the average for men in his branch of the service...To suppose that he shot better after four years of civilian life is perfectly fantastic; shooting, more than any other sport, takes practice...one wonders why he would have chosen such an unfamiliar type of rifle for his own use...it is not likely that, in ordinary training, Oswald received instruction on a weapon with a telescopic sight." (p99-102)
He was an American Communist living in Paris and a former reporter with the Washington Evening Star. He was educated at Lawrenceville School and Yale and George Washington universities; served four years in the Army in WWII, rising to the rank of captain. His book, first widely published in Europe by Secker & Warburg, was based on press accounts; a revised American edition late in 1964 also discussed the findings of the WC. A special edition was published by Pengo Manufacturing (earth-moving equipment-makers) president Gerald A.M. Petersen, who praised it as "exciting, well-reasoned" and an "important historical document." Reportedly, Jack Ruby read the book and liked it.
4/5/1964 London Observer published an article by Cyril Dunn, 'Who Really Killed Kennedy?', based on Buchanan's work on the subject which had been published in L'Express. The article described Buchanan's theory of two gunmen, neither one Oswald, with complicity by the police. Texas oil might have been behind the assassination, and Oswald was blamed to discredit communism. He believed that one of the bullets was fired from in front of the car (though from the Underpass, not the Grassy Knoll, which is never mentioned by Buchanan).
Gerald Posner says that David Lifton and Marjorie Field provided material for Buchanan's book. (Case Closed 417) Time wrote 6/12/1964 that Buchanan's conspiracy theory was groundless because he had been "fired from the Washington Star in 1948 after he admitted membership in the Communist party."
Here are my notes I took after reading the book many years ago:
Highlights of Who Killed Kennedy?: "Never in the history of crime has such an intricate, premeditated murder been so swiftly settled." He noted that the papers Oswald held in the backyard photos were ideologically hostile to each other. "The most anti-Communist of Europeans realize the death of Kennedy was more sincerely mourned in Moscow than in any other foreign capital, if only for the fact that leaders of the Soviet Union staked their whole political careers upon the chance of detente with the United States." He noted that no sane domestic Communist would kill the President, and risk bringing on a new era of McCarthyism. "One has but to read the very issue of The Worker Oswald is alleged to have been reading to observe that Kennedy was being treated at that time with a respect not far removed from admiration...the first people to proclaim their indignation that the President was murdered by the Communists were those who, one day earlier, had been attacking Kennedy as a 'pro-Communist' himself, and saying that he was the best friend that the Communists had ever had." He noted that the USSR and China took no opportunity of the changed in government to make aggressive actions. Buchanan recalled that when Ruby shot Oswald, most Americans (and especially most Europeans) just couldn't buy the idea that he was a grieving patriot. "Ruby, therefore, must have been involved in some way with the man he slew...and no one could conceive of Ruby as a dedicated Communist." Now it was necessary to portray Oswald and Ruby as lone nuts: "it was one madman who shot down another."
He interviewed Nicholas Katzenbach 3/1964, who stood by the description of JFK's wounds at that time (that the back wound was a separate shot and the throat wound was related to the head shot): "he said that it was based on an exhaustive study of the President's autopsy, and that there could be no doubt about it...He felt certain any person who had studied this autopsy would have reached the same conclusions. I asked him if I could see a copy of it, but he said that he could not release it...when the President's Commission issued its report, the explanation of the wounds had changed completely..." (p91-92)
Buchanan had been through basic training three times - once for the Army Air Corps, once as an officer candidate, and for three years as commander of an automatic weapons unit - and he recalled that Oswald's last score (191) was what he would expect from someone had fired a rifle for the first time. His best score, 212, was "still lower than the average for men in his branch of the service...To suppose that he shot better after four years of civilian life is perfectly fantastic; shooting, more than any other sport, takes practice...one wonders why he would have chosen such an unfamiliar type of rifle for his own use...it is not likely that, in ordinary training, Oswald received instruction on a weapon with a telescopic sight." (p99-102)