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

Gibbs, David N.

The Road to Dallas: The Assassination of John. F. Kennedy. By David Kaiser. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2008. 509 pp.

The November 22, 1963, assassination of President John E Kennedy is an awkward topic for professional historians. Despite the obvious importance of this event, no one has conclusively established who was behind the assassination and why. On the one hand, the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, without accomplices, is widely viewed as a whitewash. On the other hand, the numerous conspiracy theories disseminated on the Internet and elsewhere seem sensationalist, careless, and (in many cases) embarrassing to read. It is thus a welcome development that David Kaiser--a respected historian at the U.S. Naval War College--has waded into the proverbial minefield, and produced a sober and objective analysis.

The Road to Dallas relies heavily on investigative files that have been declassified in recent years, following the passage of the 1992 Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act. In essence, Kaiser argues that Oswald was directed by an organized criminal network, which was carrying out a vendetta against the Kennedy family. While the conclusion that organized crime ordered the assassination is hardly original, Kaiser argues this point with more primary source material and far more authority than previous accounts.

Kaiser begins the story by establishing the larger political and international context of the early 1960s, providing a detailed (and generally excellent) account of the administration's relationship with organized crime. Despite the Kennedy family's intermittent associations with criminals, the president's brother Bobby Kennedy was relentlessly pursuing prosecutions against many key Mafia figures. In Kaiser's view, these anticrime crusades helped set the stage for the 1963 assassination. The principal figures behind the assassination, Kaiser argues, were probably Santo Trafficante, Johnny Roselli, Carlos Marcello, and Sam Giancana, as well as the corrupt Teamster boss Jimmy Hoffa. Despite the absence of any clear "smoking gun," Kaiser presents considerable circumstantial evidence that these criminals detested Kennedy and that several of them had connections with Oswald or with Oswald's killer, Jack Ruby. In addition, Kaiser produces significant (though again inconclusive) evidence that several anti-Communist Cubans and rightwing Americans may also have participated in the assassination because of Kennedy's failure to overthrow Castro.

After reading this book, one is left with the impression that Kaiser presents a compelling case but that it is far from a complete account. There are too many bizarre and unexplained details, which still remain, especially pertaining to Oswald's role: that Oswald served in the U.S. Marine Corps, then defected to the USSR, and was later readmitted to the United States--all of which elicited remarkably few questions from U.S. officials--are among the facts that are not adequately explained. In addition, Kaiser acknowledges that Oswald maintained a number of peculiar friendships, which included George de Mohrenschildt, a petroleum geologist with a wide range of ties to many famous political and business figures, such as Jacqueline Kennedy, George H. W. Bush, and oil magnate Clint Murchison, as well as numerous intelligence connections. Kaiser seems unable to explain why so prominent a figure as de Mohrenschildt would befriend the volatile Oswald. In 1977, de Mohrenschildt committed suicide while being investigated by the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which adds to the mystery. And indeed several key figures in this story were murdered or disappeared, as Kaiser readily acknowledges.

Kaiser nevertheless remains dismissive of accounts that suggest any broadly based conspiracy, which included the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or other elements of the political establishment. He is especially critical of the sensational 1991 Oliver Stone film, JFK, as well as an earlier criminal investigation by Jim Garrison, on which JFK was based. Kaiser notes (plausibly) that there is no hard evidence to support accusations of any large-scale conspiracy.

Yet at the very end of his book, Kaiser shifts his stance somewhat and leaves the door open to CIA involvement: "The CIA and its agents cannot logically claim a presumption of innocence in matters like this.... Our inability to establish clearly whether the president's assassin [Oswald] worked for the CIA ... is simply part of the price we pay for maintaining a government agency that operates outside the law. Whether the price is worth the gain is a political question for all Americans to ponder" (p. 417).

It seems doubtful that we will ever have the complete story. However, David Kaiser has provided a real service by writing an admirably balanced and well-researched book, which brings us as close as we are likely to get to a definitive account of the Kennedy assassination.

--David N. Gibbs

University of Arizona