new jfk tapes: ‘the rewards of politics are infinite'

from whdh: Newly discovered audio tapes provide a look inside the life of John F. Kennedy just as he was getting his 1960 presidential campaign started. The audio was recorded at a dinner party at the Kennedy home in Georgetown. Two journalists asked the young senator about life, health, and politics. The tapes were recorded just over three months before Kennedy's assassination in 1963.

jfk’s other world
from filmstew: Perhaps the strangest thing about the new documentary At the Center of the World: Hyannis Port and the Presidency of John F. Kennedy, which premiered to a standing ovation last Friday in Cape Cod, involves the credentials of its director Andrew Fone. Because the man responsible for this celebration of how important JFK’s “summer White House” was to his brief Presidential reign is a producer with Fox News in Boston. Talk about moonlighting for the other team. Senator Edward Kennedy was originally scheduled to attend the October 3rd premiere at the Hyannis Port Club, which benefited the John F. Kennedy Hyannis Museum Foundation. But due to his recent battles with brain cancer, he was present on screen only in the form of many warm-hearted recollections about his older brother... As an indication of just how much things have changed, Kennedy aide David Crawford - per a report in the Cape Cod Times - recalls for example in the film how JFK , while awaiting the final results of the 1960 Presidential election, relaxed by passing around a football with staff and Secret Service men. And sure enough, Kennedy spent many a weekend morning or afternoon sailing his own Wianno Senior named the Victura. Fone’s feature-length doc also touches on the ease with which JFK befriended children, giving them rides in his golf cart, buying them penny candy at the village's News Shop or skipping stones and having floating sea shell contests with them.

man grazed by jfk bullet spreading gospel of cover-up
from longview news-journal: In the hours after John F. Kennedy was assassinated, James T. Tague went down to the Dallas police station to give a statement of what he had seen. Speaking Tuesday night to a group of about 20 people at the Longview Public Library, Tague once again recounted the afternoon: Late for a date, he had gotten out of his car to find out why traffic had stopped. He soon realized it was because of the president's motorcade. As Tague watched the procession make its way down the street, he heard what sounded like a firecracker go off, followed by rifle shots. The next thing he knew, a man standing on the grassy knoll nearby yelled out, "His head exploded! His head exploded!" Kennedy had been shot. Caught up in the commotion, it took Tague a moment to realize that his face had been grazed by shrapnel after a bullet struck the curb near where he was standing. Like many other witnesses, Tague was drawn into the initial investigation, asked by officials to recount what he had seen. Nearly 45 years later, Tague continues to tell audiences of his observations and about the cover-up he believes the government was in on. "Kennedy was murdered by our own government," Tague said. "They wanted (Lyndon) Johnson in the White House. Everyone around Johnson wanted him" to be president. Tague's interest in the 1963 shooting led him to evidence that he says points to the government's involvement in the assassination. After years of digging, he has completed his book, "Truth Withheld." "The story needs to be told," Tague said... Tague admits that nobody will ever know the exact truth about what happened. There are a number of details that he said he isn't sure about — how many shooters there were, for instance. But he is positive of at least one thing: "This is a complete cover-up of a coup d'etat."

ready for another jfk conspiracy movie? here comes ‘dorothy kilgallen’
from moviesblog: Mulder and Scully may be in semi-retirement these days, but that doesn’t mean conspiracy theories are dead. Producer John Davis has optioned Paul Alexander’s soon-to-be-published book “Good Night, Dorothy Kilgallen,” an expose tying the death of journalist Kilgallen to her investigation of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination.

Kilgallen considered Kennedy a friend, and was obsessed with investigating the circumstances of his death. She became convinced his assassination was part of a conspiracy, and was determined to prove it. She managed to obtain enough evidence and interviews (including the only one with Jack Ruby, the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald) that the FBI kept her under close surveillance.

Alexander’s book alleges that Kilgallen was murdered after finishing her book, “Murder One,” and that all its chapters about JFK disappeared. Her death was certainly under mysterious circumstances, and many have argued that she simply knew too much. She was certainly a female Fox Mulder — in addition to investigating Kennedy’s death, she also alleged that the government had covered up the existence of UFO’s.

Davis is bringing the project to Fox (home of “The X-Files,” how appropriate!) and has set screenwriter Shane Salerno to pen the script. The movie will be a fictionalized conspiracy story, but this is definitely a story where the truth is stranger than fiction, don’t you think?

3-day forum explores kennedy & king slayings
from pittsburgh tribune-review: Four decades later, the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. will be dissected this weekend at Duquesne University.

"Making Sense of the Sixties," a three-day symposium starting Friday and hosted by the Cyril H. Wecht Institute of Forensic Science and Law, will examine theories of cover-ups and conspiracies surrounding the slayings as well as ripple effects still felt today.

"It's a pretty weighty thing for people to confront," said Isaac Farris Jr., King's nephew and CEO of The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. "Who knows how their deaths impacted our trajectory? Who knows where our nation might have been? My God, we wiped out three of the greatest leaders of a generation."