For the record, I believe that Oswald acted alone and assassinated John F. Kennedy. I've believed it for years long before this documentary was produced and even before Gerald Posner's book on the subject. If you apply something as simple as Occam's Razor* to all the "evidence" you can't help but come to the same conclusion. Those of you reading this review will know up front my bias regarding this horrible event that has grown into a maze of absurd allegations and recrimination. The event has become so murky and so muddled by those seeking to push their own agenda and achieve fame (Jim Garrison and all those conspiracy authors I'm thinking of you), that it becomes almost impossible to separate fact from fiction. Gerald Posner did an admirable job in his book on the Kennedy assassination but even he had his doubters that continued to try and poke holes in his theories, observations and facts. The fact of the matter is that once history consumes an event, it's impossible to separate fact from fiction. The PBS program "Oswald's Ghost" continues the road to enlightenment about this fictional conspiracy that began with Mark Lane's preposterous book RUSH TO JUDGMENT. Certainly there were errors made and while documentary maker Robert Stone (no relationship to Oliver Stone) doesn't directly attack all the absurd fictional ideas that have floated around for the last 40 plus years, he clearly doesn't buy into most of the baggage that this cottage industry of conspiracy "buffs" have caused to balloon into a multi-million dollar industry eventually impacting everything from the moon landing in 1969 (yes, folks we did indeed land on the moon and, no, it wasn't faked from a TV studio) to the assassination of John Lennon (the F.B.I. in spite of their nasty attempt to have Lennon kicked out the U.S. had nothing to do with murdering him when he was far past his prime as a political mover and shaker). ***

The reality is that, yes, sometimes conspiracies do happen (after all, a conspiracy can be just two people talking in a room about doing something illegal and then covering up what they've done--witness the Lincoln assassination which has historically documented evidence that John Wilkes Booth had tried to orchestrate the murder of more than the President) but usually it has do with fraud (for example, the Enron and Worldcom debacles where the participants weren't punished enough and the Federal government initially looked the other way rather than do their job an example of precisely why Milton Friedman's approach to the economy and government is flawed is just as flawed as too much government regulation) but when ordinary people can take out the President of the United States, it's clear from Stone's documentary that conspiracy is a form of comfort food for us ordinary folks to provide us with a sense of security that extraordinary people can't simply be snuffed out without some major, evil organization taking part. ***

The reality is that Stone's documentary is a solid dose of common sense in an absurd world where the media manages to feed this idiotic frenzy by putting everybody on TV that has a theory. It's amazing how far TV news has fallen when many people can't ask a single probing question like Stone does in this documentary questioning suspect information, motives and the like. While Stone's documentary doesn't quite go as far as Posner's book, it raises enough reasonable doubt in the conspiracy mill to make people take a second look at the industry that has risen on the bodies of people. ---

Image & Sound:

There must have been a conspiracy on the part of Stone and PBS to make this appear as "authentic" as possible. How else to explain the inconsistent quality between vintage news footage and new digital interviews (I'm being sarcastic here folks just in case anyone who actually believes the drivel about the conspiracy is still with us here). ***

Unlike Nixon's infamous tapes, there's nothing that I can detect that has been "accidentally" erased or altered but you never know.

"A Visit to Dealey Plaza" shows how absurd this has become. Anyone who wants to make a buck works the area to sell various theories and their wares to unsuspecting tourists who can't or won't ask the penetrating questions one would expect. Luckily, Stone gives each of these people their chance to stand on stage and hang themselves. At under 10 minutes it’s a fascinating look into the very mental process that gave birth to our tabloid culture. ***

The famous Zapruder film is examined in a long featurette focusing on the ins and outs of the home movie footage that launched a thousand books. ***

Finally Robert Stone himself discusses the making of his documentary, what he learned about himself and human nature in a fascinating featurette.

Final Words:

"Oswald's Ghost" is a terrific documentary that dispassionately takes us into the conspiracy industry that was generated from Kennedy's assassination allowing us to examine what happened, what those that have something to sell want us to BELIEVE happened and what probably happened. As often happens with those moments that are burned into memory and swallowed by history there aren't any easy answers but there is some common sense on display in Stone's documentary. Watch "Oswald's Ghost" and be enlightened.

*William of Occam was a 14th century logician and Franciscan friar who came up with this principle--simply put he stated that all things being equal the simplest solution is the best because it introduces the least amount of assumptions and because the solution is uncomplicated it is more likely to be true and stand best known from the latin phrase lex parsimoniae which roughly translates to the "law of succinctness". In a nut shell the more complex your solution is the less likely it is to be true or work.