The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy

by David E. Kaiser

Book Overview

Neither a random event nor the act of a lone madman--the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was an appalling and grisly conspiracy. This is the unvarnished story. With deft investigative skill, David Kaiser shows that the events of November 22, 1963, cannot be understood without fully grasping the two larger stories of which they were a part: the U.S. government's campaign against organized crime, which began in the late 1950s and accelerated...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674027663
• ISBN13: 9780674027664
• Release Date: March 2008
• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Length: 509 Pages
• Weight: 2.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.8" x 6.5" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Thorough, best is at the end

Full disclosure: I haven't read that many books on the subject but have always tended to believe it was a setup of some kind involving the mob and someone else. Principal reasons being Ruby's killing Oswald, and the murders of prime Mob suspects in 1975 during the Congressional investigation. Now the review: This book is painstakingly researched. The accumulation of detail makes for a difficult read for a while. It could have used an editor in the early chapters. For example, the minor figure Irving Davidson is introduced three times by his full name with a brief biographic sentence. Toward the end, it really picks up speed. The week of the assassination reads quite well and conveys many convincing details. The author - who teaches at the Naval War College - has apparently picked up the work of certain investigators on the 1970's Congressional investigation and I imagine they provided some direction to his efforts. They are cited in the book from time to time. The data in this volume, however, is not a pure rehash. It includes some recently declassified CIA documents. The evidence is utterly circumstantial, and there is of course no smoking gun or the book would have a lot more publicity. Every once in a while the author's speculation went past my threshold of credulity. I think he fails to recognize the healthy possibility that in the hysteria of the aftermath of the assassination there were many people who, like Catholics who convince themselves of apparitions of the Blessed Mother, convinced themselves of having seen Oswald or Ruby or that they heard someone make a veiled reference to plans for the assassination. Midway through the book, I was losing confidence in my own beliefs as it didn't seem the details were adding up to anything at all. The author speculates Oswald may have been a double agent for the CIA - his pro-Castro public persona is suggested to be a cover for an attempt by someone, presumably the CIA, to introduce him into Cuba to shoot Castro. I didn't find that all that compelling as there is no rational explanation how he then goes off and shoots JFK. Still, the details that come from more reliable sources, like telephone records, and so forth, eventually become compelling. And once Oswald goes to Mexico to attempt to obtain a visa for Cuba, the story picks up some traction. Oswald comes off as a totally unstable person. As one mob figure is quoted years later, Oswald didn't know if he was working for a pro-Castro or an anti-Castro organization. And the book definitely convinces in relation to that. For a while, I was thinking to myself, this is proving the nutty lone gunman theory. Then I realized, just because the guy is a nut, doesn't mean he wasn't being used by somebody. And when you read about Ruby's and a few other low-level mob figures' actions around the day of the assassination, and that Oswald had an uncle in Marcello's crime family, it becomes hard to doubt that the somebody was the mob. The thesis of

Details-Details

Haven't finished yet, but; This is good! Very detailed but not hard to read. Some of these assassination books have you bogged down before you find out that it's Kennedy that they are talking about. Nice to have a professional historian that doesn't seem to have an axe to grind. I go into this with a disposition toward paranoia; but some of the theories are just too far out. This is a reasoned and introspective approach that leads to the hope that "the truth will out". Will finish soon.

impressive

An impressive and exhaustive compilation of facts that provide a solid circumstancial case that a network of diverse anti-kennedy groups came together to kill Kennedy in Dallas. Oswald was not a patsy but a sometimes unwilling actor in this plot hatched by anti-Castro,Mafia and right wing conspirators. Kaiser is a reputable historian and his conspiracy theory is thouroughly grounded in the evidence that has emerged over the decades since that fateful day in Dallas. Yet once again the interested reader is left with a hypothesis that seems impossible to verify. I am afraid we will never find out what really happened in Dallas.

For once a sensible work from the pro conspiracy viewpoint

I must be honest and say I only received the book a couple of days ago and have not read it in its entirety. What I have read proves to be a decent read, though I cannot accept the authors conclusion that whilst Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK, he was either duped, misled or guided towards committing the assassination by some hybrid force of mafia and anti Castro Cubans. The book however is not sensationalist and is a valuable addition to the "Who shot JFK" collection. The major problem I have in Oswald being put forward as a "duped" assassin is quite simply that the plot would have had to have been hatched just a few days prior to the assassination given the announcement of the motorcade route earlier that week and it would also have been subject to a good deal of luck in respect of Oswald getting lone access to the sixth floor and making a get away. The book focuses on the alleged meeting between Oswald and two companions possibly hispanics, at the apartment of Cuban exile Silvia Odio in Dallas in either late September or early October 1963 and uses this as evidence of Oswald being linked to a group of sorts involved in plots to kill Castro or Kennedy. Whilst the Odio incident is one of the major areas of interest for any researcher investigating Oswalds movements in the few months before the assassination, it is essentially in the end conjecture to tie the Odio meeting to the assassination. We will simply never know if the man was Oswald or if the whole incident was a red herring and unrelated to Oswalds actions on 22nd November 1963. If like me you believe there was no conspiracy, this book dangles a small carrot that may make you think about Oswald's "Patsy" demeanor - could it possibly have been true - that he realised he was a patsy, that he had indeed been set up. Personally I don't think so, but this book offers a scholarly and erudite counter argument to that belief.