Reply #132: I recommend "Executive Action"

[dflprincess]

it's not a documentary it's in the styple of Stone's "JFK" though better and more chilling. Mark Lane was one of the writers and the cast included noted Hollywood liberals like Robert Ryan, Will Geer and Burt Lancaster. It doesn't prove or disprove anything but it does give you something to think about. It is told from the conspirators point of view.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Action_(film)

Executive Action is a 1973 movie about the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy.

Opening scene is set in June 1963 at a gathering of shadowy industrial, political and former US intelligence figures who are giving vent to their growing dissatisfaction with the Kennedy administration. The scene takes place in the plush surroundings of the lead conspirator, Robert Ryan, presumably a Texas oil baron. He and the others are trying to convince Ferguson, a white-suited and mustachioed figure — a hugely powerful oil magnate — to back their plans for an assassination of Kennedy. He remains unconvinced saying 'I don't like such schemes. They're only tolerable when necessary, and only permissible when they work.' Burt Lancaster, a black ops specialist, is also among the group. The film then cuts to somewhere in the desert where a shooting team is doing target practice at a moving object (note: this looks just like those tests the Discovery Channel did in their recent show on the assassination). One of the shooters says that they can only guarantee the operation's success by slowing down the target to 15 mph.

We then see sequences of the man in the white suit watching contemporary newsreel and becoming clearly concerned at Kennedy's increasingly 'liberal' direction: action on civil rights, Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, nuclear disarmament. The deciding moment comes when he's watching an anti-Kennedy news report on the deteriorating situation in South Vietnam. It is followed by Kennedy's 'suicidal' October 1963 decision to withdraw all US advisors from Vietnam by the end of 1965, effectively ending America's direct involvement in the Vietnam War. He picks up the phone to tell Ryan he now fully supports their project.

The film postulates the same theory as JFK that Lee Harvey Oswald is being steered to become the conspiracy's 'patsy', but unlike JFK, the conspirators use a double of Oswald to shadow him in the weeks leading up to the assassination to leave behind a trail that the authorities can easily follow and link Oswald to the assassination. The film makes no explicit link to US government agencies and the conspiracy, although the professionalism of Lancaster's shooting team clearly indicates they have worked for the CIA on special assignments. The film implies that most of the law enforcement and government agencies were not involved, but just grossly inept: no special measures were taken for the president's safety in Dallas; there is no communication between the FBI, CIA and Secret Service on possible security risks; even the head of the Secret Service stays in Washington during the visit. This explanation helps understand why the authorities were so keen to pin the blame on Oswald, the rogue assassin, who is 'served up' by the conspirators to the authorities as an easy escape from any accusations of their own negligence.

The post-assassination conspiracy is also covered in the film. Lancaster tells Chris, the head of the shooting teams, who at this point don't know who their target is, that after this job he and his men will never have to work again. All the assassins are black ops professionals trained never to talk about operations they are involved in. Each one is offered $25,000 per year for the next five years provided the operation's cover isn't blown. If the cover remains intact in five years time (1968) 'every man jack of them' (Lancaster) will receive a further $100,000 into their Swiss bank accounts. The head of the shooting teams then tells Lancaster: 'You just told me who we're going to hit.'

At the end of the film a photo collage is shown of 18 witnesses all but two of whom died from unnatural causes within three years of the assassination. A voice-over says that an actuary of the British newspaper The Sunday Times calculated the probability that all these people who witnessed the assassination would die within that period of time to be 1000 trillion to one.<1>