Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #803149 in Books
• Published on: 1997-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 909 pages

Customer Reviews

JFK Assassination Mystery Moves One Step Closer to Solution
It is not very often that one book can add so much that is new and invaluable when dealing with a topic as complex as the Assassination of JFK.

But in this case, that has been accomplished. Noel Twyman, author of Bloody Treason, has written a classic of giant proportions that will rank with the top five books on this topic ever written.

Noel covers the entire spectrum of the JFK plot from the very highest levels that includes FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon Baines Johnson through the middle layers that encompassed the machinations of H. L. Hunt, the Texas oil billionaire, and even included several defrocked former Generals like the head of Douglas MacArthur's G-2 for decades, Charles A. Willoughby and Maj Gen Edwin A. Walker who was indicted for insurrection when he led the anti-integration riots at Oxford, Mississippi in the 1960's. Walker had been forced to resign for leading a John Birch style indoctrination campaign of his troops in Germany during his last command there.

Perhaps some of the most valuable insights into the case came directly from extensive interviews with one of the most omnipresent Soldiers of Fortune involved with the anti-Castro machinations prevalent at that time, Gerry Patrick Hemming who was involved with numerous U.S. Gov sponsored and several unofficial actions against the Castro regime. Hemming, a skilled prevaricator, seems to have been involved with every major covert operation during the 1960s's from Cuba to Florida to Louisiana to Texas and even California, by his own telling. The chapters involving Hemming are well worth the price of the book by themselves. Separating the braggadaccio from the whole truth is a challenge presented to the reader by the author, and it is not an easy task.

The only disappointment that I felt after perusing the entire work and searching for the ultimate summation and conclusions was this one item. Even though Noel Twyman spends over 500 pages of the 700 page magnum opus discussing and analyzing and inte! rpreting the effect of the movement known as Right Wing Extremism in the conundrum surrounding the murder of JFK he pulls some punches at the end and fails to deliver what I believed to be a well deserved series of death blows to that movement and its membership.

Certainly he builds a very strong case to that effect and even comments how truly ironic it is that almost everyone who was involved with some aspect of the character assassination of JFK was not only a Right Wing Extremist but also quite likely involved somehow with the actual assassination or the discussion of those events.

That is the only shortcoming that I was able to find in an otherwise brilliantly composed and portrayed work that is a tribute to the intellectual capacity and patience of the author who was never published before this work. To be able to interpret and consume almost 35 years of the written and the spoken word about a topic as complex as the assassination of JFK is a feat onto itself. But to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff and to focus on the primary commonality that was shared by all of those who wanted to see JFK die, the Right Wing Extremists, is a courageous step in the right direction.

This book is even more relevant today in light of the continued character assassination attacks on our current President, William Jefferson Clinton that emmanate from the far right extremists of today. To stand by idly and do nothing is to invite a repeat performance of the 1960's, in my opinion. The direct lineage back to those who were involved in the attacks on JFK is apparent to all but the terminally obtuse.

I challenge all of you to buy this book and read it and then to mount a massive counter-attack on both the tactics and the tacticians of the far right before they are able to consummate the plan that they hatched over 35 years ago. Whether by hook or by crook they are determined to wrest control of the US Government from the duly elected representatives of the citizenry. Only your continue! d blase attitude and lack of action will allow these McCarthy style campaigns to succeed.

If you ever wanted to strike a blow at McCarthyism or Hitlerism or Right Wing Extremism, but were too young or too naive or too unprepared to do so, then now is the time to stand up and be counted and to do something to reverse their onslaught against both an elected Democracy and our system of Republicanism. Right Wing Extremism is nothing more or less than a combination of the worst of McCarthyism and Hitlerism and John Birchism whether you can accept it or not.

To quote Mary Ferrell, the grand dame of all JFK assassination researchers in her preface to Bloody Treason:

"I salute you, citizen Twyman for your efforts."

I join Mary in her salute to Noel Twyman and to anyone else who has the guts and the courage to stand up and be counted and to do something to fight back against the organized efforts of the right wing extremists who are counting on your apathy in order to install their candidates in the State Houses of this Nation, in the Senate and the House of Representatives and in the White House in Washington, DC. They shall not prevail.

New interviews with interesting perspective
"Another book on the assassination of president John F. Kennedy - what more can be said on the subject?" was my initial reaction, especially having read numerous books from differing perspectives.

However, after reading the 900-odd pages in Noel Twyman's book, I can emphatically write that there is indeed fresh information contained therein. It is especially worth noting that Bloody Treason has some intriguing new interviews with a diverse range of people. For example, Robert McNamara (JFK and LBJ's secretary of defence) is surprisingly ignorant of even the most basic facts regarding his friend's most public murder. McNamara says that he regards Allen Dulles (ex CIA boss until Kennedy fired him, member of the Warren Commission) as an honourable man and therefore accepted the conclusions he and others put forth in the first official enquiry into Kennedy's death. McNamara was unaware that the revised official conclusion - The House Select Committee on Assassinations - wrote in the late 1970s that JFK was killed by a, "...probable conspiracy."

Other interviewees include Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty (military-CIA liason in the Kennedy era), Gerald Patrick Hemming (paramilitary intelligence operative) and other researchers, such as Gaeton Fonzi.

Facets of this book that are particularly strong would include the analysis of the Zapruder footage, whereby the author argues (with the support of experts) that key frames have been removed; ownership of the film in the first few days is traced and was found to be in possession of ultra-right wing Texan oil billionaire H. L. Hunt and J. Edgar Hoover's FBI. This book is also strong on the autopsy analysis - again, the author concludes, again with the backing of experts in the field, that x-ray photographs and others of the president's body have been forged or tampered with.

Unlike Anthony Summers's superb Kennedy Conspiracy (which, for my money, is still the best single volume analysis of the myriad aspects of the case), which follows the evidence more towards army intelligence and Central Intelligence Agency aspects, Twyman's Bloody Treason leans more towards the "Southern Elite" - Hunt (mentioned above), mafia chieftans such as Santos Trafficante et al and retired right wing generals Willoughby and Walker.

Original, first-hand interviews, sharp photographs and in-depth exploration of unusual characters and murky events, make this a book that can comfortably stand alongside other pinnacles of Kennedy-related research and, with the death-bed confessions of longtime CIA operative E. Howard Hunt (implicating LBJ and William Harvey, amongst others), this excellent book gains even more credence.