Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (1993) - Plot & Excerpts
In the world of conspiracy theories, the JFK conspiracy reigns supreme as one of the enduring mysteries of the twentieth century whose effects are still being felt today. It was all the more shocking because the assassination was carried out in front of hundreds of people in broad daylight, and in its aftermath it seemed Camelot had died. With the subsequent government cover up, allegations of CIA, FBI, Secret Service, and Mafia involvement we in the twenty first century are still left wondering. Who did it? As a child growing up the sixties and seventies Oswald’s guilt was always accepted carte blanche by my father and passed onto me as gospel, a communist plot to get rid of the American president. It was only when I saw Oliver Stone’s film, JFK that I saw how a coup d’etat could have occurred, and when two of the retired pathologists were trotted out for the public in the hype around the film I sensed the stench of corruption again.Jim Marrs’ book Crossfire, The Plot that Killed Kennedy is one of the books used as a reference point for Stone’s Counter Mythology to counter the Government Mythology. At 590 pages it’s a hefty tome and has an extensive bibliography at the back. It doesn’t tell us whodunit but it gathers all the evidence that had been uncovered from 1963 up until 1989 and lays it all out in easy bite sized chapters. At the end of every chapter you find a brief summary of the major points, which I found crucial when you have to absorb so much information at once. Part one is the Kill Zone, setting the scene for the assassination, the Texas School Depository, the Triple Underpass, the Grassy Knoll, and also gives you background information on the Kennedy rise to power.Part Two is Means, Motives, and Opportunities, which goes into who might have wanted Kennedy dead. Lee Harvey Oswald’s history, the Russians, the Cubans, Mobsters, the CIA, the FBI, Rednecks and Oilmen, and the Military.Part Three is the Aftermath. Dallas, the two hospitals where two autopsies produced different results, the Jack Ruby connection, the evidence used to convict Oswald is debunked, the Warren Commission, the Garrison Investigation, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, the Oswald Exhumation years later and finally a list of ‘convenient deaths.’ Witnesses who could have or actually contradicted official FBI and Intelligence reports.At the very end is a re-enactment, similar to the conversation Costner’s character has with X in JFK, where a possible assassination plot is put into motion.It makes for stirring and thought provoking reading although other evidence that has since come to light obviously won’t appear. However for anyone interested in what happened that November 22, 1963 this is an indispensable book to have on your shelf. It is probably the base text that will start you on your own journey. The summaries at the end of each chapter as mentioned mean you can condense the critical information in short bullet points. But why we should care about the assassination of a US president back in 1963? I could probably point to the many government cover ups, lies. From Watergate through to the invasion of Iraq to search for WMDs, but I think I’ll leave the last word to Jim Marrs, quoting from page 590 of the book where he states.‘The Kennedy assassination was a true coup d’etat, a sudden and violent shift of power to the right in this country. And that power, though weakened by revelations of corruption and unachieved goals, remains with us today.Few people have shown a willingness to confront and accuse this power. But until the people of the United States confront the reality of Kennedy’s death and face up to the power behind it, the wars, near wars, the wasteful military build up, foreign adventurism, squandered millions, trampled human rights, moral decline, and environmental pollution will continue.’ 1 I’ve given it five out of five and lament the fact there are only five stars to give, it deserves more than that for its commitment to truth.1 Crossfire The Plot That Killed Kennedy page 590By Jim Marrs, Published 1989 Carroll and Graf Publishers.Written by Alastair Rosie
Certainly, I have to say that if the torch is passed to a new generation of the twenty first century, who look back to the tumultuous years of the twentieth, i.e. 1914-19, 1929, 1939-46, the date that must live in infamy is not just 7th December 1941, but with far longer and greater impact is 22nd November 1963 in Dallas, Texas.After almost fifty years, the official spin remains of the lone nut, and until that lie is eradicated from the pages of history, then the laws of moral justice and social values in the western world remain sullied and stolen.'Crossfire-The Plot That Killed Kennedy' by Jim Marrs, published 1989, is the book that is the basis for Oliver Stone's movie JFK. As pronounced by David Ferrie's character, played by the excellent Joe Pesci in that movie, "It's a riddle, wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma." Maybe, but for the reader wishing to enter this enigma, Marr's 'Crossfire' is not far short of five star. It's an encyclopaedic work that covers a vast amount of research that acknowledges the legion of past truth seekers such as Jones, Lane, Salandria, Weisberg, Meagher, Ferrell, Garrison, Thomson, Prouty, Summers, Lifton, Fonzi, Groden...the list goes on. As the author writes in his preface 'whether it is read from start to finish or simply kept as a reference source, Crossfire is intended to be a thorough source book for the library of anyone with the slightest interest in learning what actually happened in Dallas in 1963.' Marr adds 'Why seek the truth of Kennedy's death? The answer is simple. Unless we, as a nation, (I take a wider view) come to a truthful understanding of what happened to our chief elected official in 1963, we obviously cannot begin to correctly understand the events that are effecting us today.' Marrs wrote this over twenty years ago, and it still stands.Beati Pacifici. Has any world leader since 63 ever made a speech of such magnitude as that Commencement Address at the American University in Washington of June 10th 1963. 'What kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war.' This was blown away in Dealey Plaza, in a military coup, leading us all into the industrial-military complex led world we reside in today. 'For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breath the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.'November 22nd 2013. Just purchased the revised and updated 'Crossfire' and signed by the author. New review to follow.
What do You think about Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (1993)?
yeah, even though marrs has continued to float off into the ufo/secret societies still control everything/nazis ate all the cheese on the dark side of the moon & didn't leave shit for anybody else netherworld, the particular book is still--i believe--one of the best places to start w/ a near complete overview of the possible players & their motivations in the jfk assassination. this is prob'ly the 4th time i've read it, & but for only the occasional lapse into opinionated language, the only problem i've ever had w/ this book is the subtitle, the plot that killed kennedy, & only b/c it does a disservice to the book by wrongly presenting it as a specific theory regarding what happened, instead of what it is, which is--for the year it came out, 1989--an excellent presentation of the major theories w/o pointing to one or another specifically as the theory. there are many other, much better books, written both before & after, that do the same thing, but marrs' book is encyclopedic & an easy & entertaining read, perfect for both the neophyte & the experiencedlooking to brush up on the basics.
—j. ergo
Spoiler alert: The CIA did it. Now we can al rest easy. I read recently that it had become impossible to write an effective satire of American society because reality had become so perposterously absurd that any attempt to satirize it will strike the reader more as a prophetic nightmare than as a satirization. This is one of the primary texts Oliver Stone used to plot out the film JFK, and is basically the Encyclopedeia of JFK assassination theories. This also proves the satire quote from above,
—Adrian Stumpp
"In the three-year period which followed the murder of President Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald, 18 material witnesses died... the London Sunday Times concluded that on November 22, 1963, the odds against these witnesses being dead by February 1967, were one hundred thousand trillion to one." - Crossfire, page 555Like so many people who changed their story following the assassination, The London Sunday Times later claimed that this quote was taken in the wrong context and that the odds were actually much lower, blah blah blah. If the odds that this many witnesses would die within 3.5 years of the assassination were 5% of this number, it would still be way too high. This shocking point is just one little tidbit that Jim Marrs has put in a book that will shock, disgust and terrify you by the time you finish it. What impressed me the most about this 590 page book is how little the author repeated himself. At the end of every section he summarized the main points then quickly moved on to the mountains of other information he has researched. He is completely thorough and makes it easy for someone who knows very little about the Kennedy assassination to gain a solid understanding of the events that had begun to unfold decades before Kennedy took office through the years following and mass confusion about the events of that fateful day. The reader will have an idea of the political climate of the day and be horrified of the lies and mishandling of evidence and information in investigations led by our own government. He presents an excellent case that will leave you without doubt that there was some type of conspiracy and leaves you with plenty of suspects. At the end of the day (and reading this book) you won't trust many of the people in power in this world and I think that is the point.
—Anna
