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I'm in the middle of reading Chuck Helppie's novel Kennedy Must Be Killed. Anyone else familiar with it? It's pretty well done. The plot is told from the point of view of the Grassy Knoll gunman (fictional character Patrick McCarthy), how he is recruited into the plot by "The Patriots," and then later (during the HSCA) how he worries about being killed by them.
McCarthy is an idealistic all-American Boy Scout type, coming of age at the beginning of the Cold War, convinced that Communism is threatening America. He rises rapidly in the CIA and participates in many major covert operations. He also becomes a first-rate sniper. The Patriots are powerful men convinced that the America they know is threatened by JFK, whom they view as dangerously naive in his policies, reckless and undisciplined in his personal life, and on too many drugs to deal with his health problems. He is a security threat, in other words. I remember Noel Twyman advancing this theory in Bloody Treason.
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That sounds very interesting. I'll plan on reading it.
Does Helppie write about the actual HSCA witness slaughter? The seven FBI guys who died within a few months of testifying is the one that always struck me... uh... dead. The conveniently deceased included Cadigan, Sullivan, and Belmont, among others, guys who no doubt had real tales to tell. Fascinating premise for fiction! Thanks.
Jim
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Jim Hargrove Wrote:That sounds very interesting. I'll plan on reading it.
Does Helppie write about the actual HSCA witness slaughter?
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Yes, he does. I'm only about 1/3rd into it. The plot jumps back and forth between 1978 (when McCarthy is hiding in a flophouse in New Orleans while a hitman is tracking him down) and various years starting in the late 1940s as we follow his personal life and career. His wife is a friend of Jackie Kennedy. McCarthy meets JFK and Bobby when they are starting out in politics (he thinks Jack is a shallow womanizer, but he likes Bobby), J. Edgar Hoover, LBJ, Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell, David Atlee Phillips, Joe McCarthy and will probably meet a lot more people.
Obviously McCarthy is a fictional vehicle designed to move the plot along so the reader can learn about Iran, Guatemala, MK-ULTRA, the U-2, the fake defector program, Cuba, the Cold War, the nuclear arms race, Vietnam and other events. Helppie has really done a lot of research, though he probably relied on Hersh's Dark Side of Camelot a bit too much.
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This title is available for $3.03 from the Kindle store. (If you don't have a Kindle Reader, you can get free reader software for your phone or tablet, and order titles directly from the app.)
I'm three percent into the book now (that's how the Kindle measures "pages") and it's obvious that the author has done some significant homework. So far, I'm loving it. I'll bet others here will really enjoy it also.
Thanks again for the tip!
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Some times fiction is more revealing that 'non fiction'.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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Magda Hassan Wrote:Some times fiction is more revealing that 'non fiction'.
Sibel Edmonds' The Long Gladio is a good example of this.
“The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.â€
― Leo Tolstoy,
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He even worked the Harvey & Lee theory into the plot. Patrick McCarthy meets the "other" Oswald, whose family is from Latvia. Then he meets the other (Marine) Oswald stationed at Atsugi, and is stunned by how much they resemble each other.
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R.K. Locke Wrote:Magda Hassan Wrote:Some times fiction is more revealing that 'non fiction'.
Sibel Edmonds' The Long Gladio is a good example of this.
That's on my list of must read books. Have you enjoyed reading it R.K. ?
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it." Karl Marx
"He would, wouldn't he?" Mandy Rice-Davies. When asked in court whether she knew that Lord Astor had denied having sex with her.
“I think it would be a good idea” Ghandi, when asked about Western Civilisation.
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According to the Kindle reader, I'm 14 percent through Kennedy Must be Killed, and I'm ticked off that I don't have more free time right now.
Potential readers should be warned that the author, early on, thoroughly trashes the young JFK for his sexual successes, his war record, his father's influence, his rise in politics, and everything else that could possibly be criticized. My guess is that he will trash the more mature Kennedy for those things and for "reckless" political acts near the end of his life.
Nevertheless, if you can live with that, this book is a hoot! Currently, the young assassin-to-be is being hosted by a humorless, poker-playing J. Edgar Hoover, with Clyde Tolson playing the live-in maid. I'm seriously entertaining the notion that this is some kind of professional, limited hang-out, which I'm predicting now will conclude that JFK was killed for the good of the nation.
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Jim Hargrove Wrote:According to the Kindle reader, I'm 14 percent through Kennedy Must be Killed, and I'm ticked off that I don't have more free time right now.
Potential readers should be warned that the author, early on, thoroughly trashes the young JFK for his sexual successes, his war record, his father's influence, his rise in politics, and everything else that could possibly be criticized. My guess is that he will trash the more mature Kennedy for those things and for "reckless" political acts near the end of his life.
Nevertheless, if you can live with that, this book is a hoot! Currently, the young assassin-to-be is being hosted by a humorless, poker-playing J. Edgar Hoover, with Clyde Tolson playing the live-in maid. I'm seriously entertaining the notion that this is some kind of professional, limited hang-out, which I'm predicting now will conclude that JFK was killed for the good of the nation.
As I said in my original post. It's not that the author agrees with this viewpoint; he is expressing the point of view of the plotters and how they justified the assassination in their minds. It must be read from the point of view of fanatical right-wing "patriots."
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