JFK
The Last Dissenting Witness
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
"Her tale is often engaging . . . the feisty schoolteacher emerges ultimately as something of a folk heroine."-Publishers Weekly
November 22, 1963, is a day not easily forgotten. A sunny, picturesque Dallas day quickly turned into calamity when several mysterious shots descended on the presidential motorcade at Dealey Plaza near the Texas School Book Depository.
Amid the confusion were two people with unique vantage points: Abraham Zapruder and Jean Hill. Zapruder, armed with his Super Eight camera, filmed what would be the only movie footage of the assassination. Hill, the woman in red in the Zapruder film, stood less than ten feet away from the presidential limousine facing the now-famous grassy knoll. From there, she saw a gunman fire the shot that exploded the president's skull. That gunman was not Lee Harvey Oswald.
Despite years of inner turmoil and harassment from the Secret Service, FBI, CIA, and Warren Commission, this courageous Dallas schoolteacher has held firm to her belief that the truth must be known about what happened the day the president was murdered. Working as a key consultant on the Oliver Stone film JFK inspired Hill to finally tell of her ordeal. "My friendship with Oliver Stone and his belief in me gave me the confidence I needed to do this book," Hill says.
JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness tells the rest of Jean Hill's story--the part to which the film merely alludes. With the help of Bill Sloan, a Pulitzer Prize nominee and veteran Dallas newspaperman, Hill reveals long-kept secrets that federal authorities tried desperately to suppress. Hill is the last major witness to publicly dispute the findings of the Warren Commission. Her gripping, intimate account of that fateful autumn day, and the web of intrigue and conspiracy that followed, reveals more than ever the clumsiness and inaccuracy of the Warren Report.
Oliver Stone provides the foreword to what may well be the most thought-provoking story surrounding the Kennedy assassination.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
It seems surprising that there has never before been a book by Jean Hill, familiar to JFK assassination buffs as ``the lady in red'' who was standing only feet away from the presidential car when the shots were fired. She testified and insisted through years of discouragement, disbelief and distortions on the part of investigators, the FBI, the Warren Commission and others, that she saw an unidentifiable man firing from the grassy knoll and later a person who looked exactly like Jack Ruby running toward that man. Readers of this swollen account, coauthored with a Dallas journalist, will discover that Hill early on decided to add nothing further, having been intimidated by frequent phone threats, the sabotage of her car and an alarming move against one of her children. Only when she came to know Jim Marrs, author of one of the books on which Oliver Stone's film JFK was based , and later the movie people themselves, did she come out of her shell and rejoice in her standing as the last living major dissenting witness. Her tale is often engaging, sometimes infuriating; the feisty schoolteacher emerges ultimately as something of a folk heroine. Much of the later sections of the book, in which Hill becomes starry-eyed about the movie folk, could have been severely trimmed. Still, her story is salutary for those overly respectful of official authority.
