Books

Possibly the most common reaction to learning that yet another book on the Kennedy assassination has been published is a yawn. To date, more than 3,000 titles on the topic have been issued. Recent discoveries in the Dallas County district attorney's office will doubtless generate more.

The central issue surrounding the murder of John F. Kennedy boils down to three questions: Was Lee Harvey Oswald the lone shooter; was Oswald part of a conspiracy; and why, truly, did Jack Ruby murder Oswald? Almost every new title proposes to settle those questions; none does.

Mr. Kaiser states that his examination is the first by a "professional historian." Although he advances no scholarly credentials besides a teaching post at the Navy War College, he has written two tepidly received previous books, one on the Kennedy-Johnson era. Nevertheless, his capability as a research historian is evident.

After more than 400 thick pages of close examination of minute details and an adroit unraveling of a spaghetti-like mass of connections, he concludes that Oswald was indeed the only shooter (who hit his target), that he was part of a conspiracy (the patsy), and that Jack Ruby was ordered ("an offer he couldn't refuse") by the conspirators to eliminate Oswald before he could talk.

Mr. Kaiser asserts that Oswald was used by a "provocateur," possibly a rogue agent of the CIA, posing as a left-wing fanatic whose actions were designed to provoke the United States into a retaliatory invasion of Cuba. His examination of Oswald's life and behavior, however, reveals (perhaps inadvertently) a bumbling, unstable and generally incompetent man incapable of such a cunning deception.

Mr. Kaiser's Oswald was a poor instrument of more sinister and smarter men who allegedly used him. These men had ready access to professional assassins who were skilled at covert action and escape. Why use a comparative bungler with a history of high-profile legal problems? This question is not answered.

The conspirators named here will be familiar to assassination buffs. Mr. Kaiser's theory is that Attorney General Robert Kennedy's almost personal vendetta against organized crime bosses created a murderous animosity against the Kennedys. The origins of their discontent, Mr. Kaiser avers, was the regime of Fidel Castro, who had seized mob assets in Cuba. Their goal, therefore, was to ease federal prosecution of their operations and to eliminate Castro, by assassination or overthrow; this required JFK's death.

Following Mr. Kaiser's logic requires patience and fortitude. Readers must be prepared to thread their way through a dense forest of odd names, pseudonyms and code names. There are acronyms, cryptonyms and euphemisms, as well as double-agents, triple-agents and moles. Merely keeping everyone straight is a challenge.

Typically, much of the data cited, including recently declassified documents, are either incomplete or have redacted passages that could be key. Much has been lost or was never transcribed. Most of the material is based on testimony (sworn and unsworn), interviews (formal and informal), incomplete transcripts and idle statements of people who were professional criminals, pathological liars, angry or in fear of their lives, jobs or prosecution.

Mr. Kaiser's style also is burdened by redundancy, repetition and annoying pronoun ambiguity.

Assassination enthusiasts will find much here to debate. It would be hard to imagine a more complete compendium of available evidence, usefully if obtusely arranged. For general readers, the appeal will lie more in the revelation of Dallas at a time when it was smaller, seedier, more intimate and far less cosmopolitan and upscale than today.

In the end, the same obstacles that befuddle almost all who write about the Kennedy assassination ultimately block Mr. Kaiser from anything more than another supposition. His ultimate reliance on coincidence and speculation leads him to the same spongy conclusions and underscores the fact that the only ones who know for sure took the answers to their graves.

Novelist Clay Reynolds is professor of arts and humanities at the University of Texas at Dallas. His most recent book is Sandhill County Lines.

David Kaiser

(Harvard, $35)

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