binaryg "Oswald's Ghost" just demonstrates how Kennedy's death is still being white-washed. The writer, director Robert Stone gives the viewer a series of repeating, talking heads with differing opinions about what happened in those days. Mark Lane is given a goodly amount of screen time. But Norman Mailer gets to put the final nail in Lee Oswald's coffin and if he was still with us should be ashamed for his part in the cherry-picking Mr. Stone does in the continuing obfuscation of what happened in Dallas.I believe you can get a much better sense of the Kennedy and Oswald assassinations by seeing "JFK: 3 Shots That Changed America." You'll be able to see for yourself what was going on in Dallas those few days, without talking heads trying to make up your mind for you. The Police work in Dallas that day was so amazing in how they found their man and all the evidence they needed to convict "their man" with certainty within hours while at the same time the President and his "assassin" were murdered in their jurisdiction. I wasn't aware the "powers that be" are still trying to make sure we end up believing the official version.

carmagnolahead Oswald's Ghost is far from a critical expose on the assassination, as Oliver Stone's JFK was. The very fact that Oswald's Ghost's director has the same last name as Oliver to direct the film, says volumes about the intelligence community's ( and the mainstream media's ) agenda to confuse future generations. The fact that classic dissemblers, like Priscilla Johnson McMillan, Dan Rather and J. Edward Epstein are given leading roles in the film, is the strongest indictment against the film. That Norman Mailer is given so much time in the film as well( and the last word ), makes me want to catalog the in the "Propaganda/Fiction Department Section, along with The Warren Report, and other books. The PBS and American Experience staff should all be ashamed of themselves for perpetuating the lies about the assassination.The only honest criticism given in the film are given by Tom Hayden, Josiah Thompson and Todd Getlin, but neither three give any real facts from the critical literature to educate the viewer. Hugh Aynesworth, a Dallas/Fortworth journalist who covered the assassination at the time and who comments on the Warren Report, spouts the official version, that Oswald acted alone. Aynesworth tells us a white lie when he says that he interviewed one witness who watched Oswald shoot from the sixth floor window of the Texas school depository Building. He may have interviewed witnesses that day, or sometime later, but no witnesses positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald in that window that day. Aynesworth's words, simply, can't be taken for granted.Robert Dallek, who also given prime time in the film, was one of the historian researchers who worked for The Assassination records and Review Bord ( ARRB )in the nineties. That board was created and pushed through Congress by President Herbert Walker Bush in 1991 as a last ditch effort to foist, literally, tons of heavily redacted ( and forged ) declassified Secret CIA, FBI, ONI ( Naval Intelligence) documents into the American public's lap. So much for Dallek's hidden agenda, as well. J. Edward Epstein, another spokesman in the film for the "we'll never know the truth about the assassination "theory, wrote some good books on the assassination, but he was Army Intelligence, so we can't trust him, either.Mark Lane, who wrote one of the very first critiques on the Warren commission Report's findings, Rush to Judgment, the film's only honest critic of the warren Commission Report, but he is overrided by the film's general dishonesty.Dan Rather, another journalist who speaks in the film is also dissembling. He was in Dallas that fateful day, as a cub reporter for CBS. Rather was one of the very first to see the Zapruder film, and he caved-in, changed his story, and sold his soul to the devil. Rather originally said that the President's head "fell backwards and to the left", which coincides with a shot from the front. Then he changed his tune to: "the President's head fell forwards and to the left", to go along with the warren Commission's magic bullet single lone nut theory. I have the two copies of Life magazine from January 1964, both printed on the same day. The first one, with Dan Rather's first line was pulled off of the press, and the second censored edition that was officially released, with Rather's changed tune is the one that the American Public got.That Priscilla Johnson shamelessly shows her face again on the assassination subject doesn't surprise me at all. She was one of the very first intelligence assets to disseminate mis and disinformation, with lies to the Warren Commission and to the American public( with her book, Marina and Lee ).I attended the ARRB's venued event when it came to Boston in the early nineties and convened at the State House on Beacon Hill. Priscilla Johnson McMillan, who is also given prime time in Oswald's Ghost was invited by the Review Board to testify. The first question that the Board asked Priscilla was whether she had ever been approached by the CIA. Priscilla never did answer that question, but instead,dissembled for a good twenty minutes or half hour and in so many words or less, basically told the panel and the audience that if anyone wanted to know who really killed John F. Kennedy, they should go to Russia and dig-up frozen KGB colonels, and ask the. In the film, Priscilla tells us that if Kennedy were alive today, that he'd be as puzzled as all of us are ( not me! ) as to who killed him and why. I have seen McMillan's CIA 201 file that has her checked-ff as a "witting asset". So much for her testimonial in the film.Norman Mailer is given way too much time ( and the last word ) in the film. He says that he spent twenty-five years studying the assassination, and then he admits that he as an amateur. From what he tells us in the film, it is obvious that he didn't read enough of the critical literature. Of course, he was a friend of Priscilla Johnson McMillan's, which says a lot. In his book, Oswald's Tale, Mailer leads his readers by the nose and after eight hundred and something pages, tells them that Oswald killed Kennedy because Marina didn't give him ( Oswald, not Kennedy ) enough sex. Mailer should have titled his book, Oswald's Tail ( two puns intended ). puns intended ). Mailer can be thus dismissed as either an unwitting fool, or a witting stooge.Basicaly, Oswald's Ghost is a total waste of time. Bruno Hrvat

Joe Stemme OSWALD'S GHOST got a brief theatrical release on it's way to an American EXPERIENCE broadcast on PBS. There is little to recommend for seeing it on the big screen as most of its footage is either archival stock that was meant to be shown on TV in the first place, or typical talking heads interviews from the present day.The film goes over familiar territory for anyone even vaguely familiar with the JFK assassination. Some of the talking heads such as Mark Lane and Dan Rather trot out stories most have seen before. More interesting are individuals like former Presidential Candidate Gary Hart and Norman Mailer who, rightly or wrongly, give us their insights into the matter (more on Mailer later). For the first hour or so, Director Robert Stone tries to portray a sort of kaleidescope (a word used in the documentary) of the Assassination, the official and conspiracy theories and a view of how it affected people of the immediate and subsequent generations. On that level, it sort of keeps one's interest. Some of the footage is less familiar than others, and it's edited together competently enough. Gary Lionelli's music itself is evocative, but, unfortunately, Stone mixes it too high and he drowns out some of the dialog in the process. Worse, much of the archival footage would be more effective without the intrusive music. *** Possible SPOILER AREA ***And, then, in the last 20 minutes, Stone completely flips the film on its end. Gone is the dispassionate, relatively even-handed approach and he gives the film over completely to one side of the argument. Norman Mailer and HIS theory of the assassination come to dominate the final section of the documentary. Mailer's conclusions become the film's conclusions. In light of Mailer's subsequent death, the film could just as easily been called, "Mailer's Ghost". And, then, it ends abruptly.Without knowing more about Stone (his surname an irony in itself that even he can't avoid as he includes behind-the-scenes footage of OLIVER Stone directing his film JFK!), it's impossible to know if this method of seemingly pulling the rug out from the viewer was an intentional act of the old in-and-out sucker punch, or if it naturally evolved that way through the editing process. In either case, it considerably weakens the film - setting all prejudice one way or another about one's particular view of the JFK assassination aside. Not only does it come out of nowhere, but it tarnishes what was good about that first hour.

Vincent Cadena I saw this today and I was impressed with some of the archival footage and some of the interviews given. It's worth checking out if you're interested and/or have some knowledge on the case. I guess I would have liked to have heard more from Mailer and more on Oswald. I do think they gave some good information on a few details JFK missed. This is an informative and sometimes stylish documentary, worth checking out, the only reason I won't give more details on some of the plot points is for the fact that they had a lot to do with the conspiracy and a lot of them were red herrings. What this documentary does is put a few things into perspective, i.e. Oswalds motive, Dan Rathers comment saying the presidents head went forward, etc. My reason for giving this a ten was simply because the rating's too low, it deserves a 7 out of 10. Recommended.