Who Killed Kennedy? Thomas Buchanan

[Albert Doyle]

This book was written in March 1964 and nailed a lot of the conspiracy evidence before the Warren Report came out.


It is possible that Buchanan was fed conspiracy information by Washington insiders who could have investigated the assassination early-on. This may have involved Bobby Kennedy who, because of his position, could not release information he had gathered so he chose Buchanan as a leak. Buchanan wrote the book too quickly and got way too much right to not have been assisted by serious insiders. This means that there could be a whole unknown history of an inside investigation that went on immediately after the assassination of which there is no record. It is possible that it was conducted by Bobby and covered-up by CIA with his assassination. Since Buchanan got his information out before conspiracy research had began it suggests that perhaps he got his information from directly knowledgeable persons or even participants like Ruby:



http://www.amazon.com/Who-killed-Kennedy...F+Buchanan

[LR Trotter]

I would not be surprised to learn that the JFK surviving siblings had a major investigation underway before sunrise on 11/23/63. I have seen pictures of Patricia Kennedy Lawford in late November '63, and she looked hurt, and quite angry.

::fury::

[Dawn Meredith]

I would not be surprised to learn that the JFK surviving siblings had a major investigation underway before sunrise on 11/23/63. I have seen pictures of Patricia Kennedy Lawford in late November '63, and she looked hurt, and quite angry.

::fury::

I agree completely. You know Bobby did. And of course the first generation researchers may have had contact with the family, however there is no mention of such in John Kelin's book.

Dawn

[O. Austrud]

Anyone know of a downloadable version of this book? pdf, epub, mobi, or whatever.
Thanks.

[Albert Doyle]

There are used copies in good condition for 4 bucks on that Amazon link.

[O. Austrud]

There are used copies in good condition for 4 bucks on that Amazon link.

Yes, if you live in the US. I am in Europe. Anyway, it's interesting stuff, if it really was written in 63-64. A man ahead of it's time. I'll see what I can get...
Thanks, Albert

[John Kelin]

Hi all,

I would suggest to anyone interested that an excellent starting point re: Thomas G. Buchanan is here:

http://thomasgbuchanan.com

[Lauren Johnson]

Hi all,

I would suggest to anyone interested that an excellent starting point re: Thomas G. Buchanan is here:

http://thomasgbuchanan.com

Oh, dear. A review by Robert Morrow on this book:

Thomas Buchanan wrote a fabulous work on the JFK assassination in early 1964, perhaps the first book written on it (not sure, but probably). And he solved it at a time when the murderers of JFK were running the government and holding positions of high power in business.
I give Buchanan an A+ on his research and intuition. So much of it has been confirmed over the decades.
Buchanan astutely fingered Texas oil interests as perps behind the JFK that would be the Dallas, TX oil men who were so close to Lyndon Johnson who the Kennedys were on the verge of destroying utterly.
Lyndon Johnson, a key perp himself, was in total agreement with Buchanan's thesis and he was telling one of his key mistresses Madeleine Brown that Dallas, TX oil men and military contractors were behind the JFK assassination:
Madeleine Duncan Brown was a mistress of Lyndon Johnson for 21 years and had a son with him named Steven Mark Brown in 1950. Madeleine mixed with the Texas elite and had many trysts with Lyndon Johnson over the years, including one at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, TX, on New Year's Eve 12/31/63. In the late evening of 12/31/63, just 6 weeks after the JFK assassination, Madeleine asked Lyndon Johnson:
"Lyndon, you know that a lot of people believe you had something to do with President Kennedy's assassination."
He shot up out of bed and began pacing and waving his arms screaming like a madman. I was scared!
"That's bull___, Madeleine Brown!" he yelled. "Don't tell me you believe that crap!"
"Of course not." I answered meekly, trying to cool his temper.
"It was Texas oil and those _____ renegade intelligence bastards in Washington." [said Lyndon Johnson] [Texas in the Morning, p. 189]

[LBJ told this to Madeleine in the late night of 12/31/63 in the Driskill Hotel, Austin, TX in room #434, a suite permanently reserved for LBJ. They spent New Year's Eve together here six weeks post JFK assassination. Room #434 was the room that LBJ used to have rendevous' with his girlfriends.Today another room #254 -which used to be known as the "Blue Room" and now it is known as the "LBJ Suite" and rents for $600-1,000/night as a Presidential suite at the Driskill; #254 is located on the Mezzanine Level. Note: Lyndon Johnson's presidential schedule and other contemporary accounts confirm that LBJ indeed was at the Driskill Hotel on the night of 12/31/63 for a White House press party.]

[Anthony Thorne]

Thomas Buchanan wrote a fabulous work on the JFK assassination in early 1964, perhaps the first book written on it (not sure, but probably). And he solved it at a time when the murderers of JFK were running the government and holding positions of high power in business.
I give Buchanan an A+ on his research and intuition. So much of it has been confirmed over the decades.

I generally agree with the above quote by Morrow, sort of. The Buchanan book is an interesting one and worth reading.

The rest of Morrow's review (i.e everything from 'Lyndon Johnson, a key perp himself' onwards) is Morrow's typical LBJ-did-it speculation which he rams into every review or forum post on the subject of JFK regardless of context, and doesn't reflect the actual content within Buchanan's book at all.

[Tracy Riddle]

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)