Now bringing BBC Two's Kennedy Night to a close,
slightly later than scheduled a Moviedrome special;
Alex Cox introduces a highly charged political thriller :
The Parallax View
In September 1963, a man called Richard Case Nagel
walked into A Bank in El Paso, Texas and fired
three shots into the wall he then sat down
outside the bank and waited to be arrested;
when The Police came for him, he surrendered
peacefully telling them he wanted to be
in federal custody because The President
of The United States was shortly to be
assassinated and he did not want to be
The Patsy when The Assassination occurred.
Nagel was a US Army Intelligence Agent
and if we can believe a new book about him, also
A Soviet spy and in itself is not implausible :
Double-agents with questionable loyalties
are the stuff of John le Carré novels and of
actual spycraft — consider our own
Kim Philby or Anthony Blunt.
Agents are always being turned and
working for bothsides simultaneously.
What's interesting about Nagel’s claims, reported
in the book The Man Who Knew Too Much by the
American journalist Dick Russell is that
he says Lee Harvey Oswald was a double
agent - you don't have to believe all of what
Nagel says; he's a slippery customer -- he served
several years in jail for bank robbery
although he made no actual attempt to rob The Bank
and he was later arrested by Stasi agents on
the wrong side of the old East German border
and exchanged for one of their top spies but
for The Record, Nagel says that he, Oswald
and a number of other military men were
sent by US Army or Naval Intelligence
to various Iron Curtain countries posing
as defectors -- their Mission was to win
the confidence of their KGB or Stasi minders,
plant falseinformation and come back with
the real goods -- in the case of Lee Oswald,
the real goods might even have been Marina,
the woman whom he married there : she was
the niece of a high-ranking Russian-
intelligence Colonel whom The West was
anxious to have defect.
Nagel says that he himself became uncertain of
his loyalties -- he alleges Oswald a mediocre marksman
whom The Marines had uncharacteristically
taught to speak Russian, actually went
over to the other side and returned to
The United States A Soviet agent just
as the right-wing conspiracy
always said he was.
In fact now, on The 30th anniversary of
The JFK assassination we're presented
with TV documentaries and books like
Case Closed and Conspiracy of One
which, surprise-surprise reveal that Oswald
really did act all alone; he wasn't A Spy
at all, not for Them, not for Us;
he didn't have any friends
or co-conspirators
I really find it risable to see these CIA
and KGB men shaking their heads and
saying "He was A Nut, We had
nothing to do with him --"
Well. what do you think
They're going to say?
these men have paid
professional spies employers of
assassins and killers I question the
common-sense of any TV or print reporter
who journeys to Minsk or Langley
Virginia pokes a camera in the face of
Lee Harvey Oswald's case officer and
expects to get the true truth out of the
guy :
it's a trifle naive to say the least
The true truth about The JFK assassination
was probably known to most
of the major intelligence organizations
within a few days if not a few hours of
its occurrence course --
The Russians have a big file on who killed JFK
and Robert Kennedy they wouldn't be doing their
jobs if they didn't in the same way The FBI
must have a file on who killed Enrico Mattei,
The Italian industrialist who went up against
the Texan oil boys in the 1960s;
The Indians undoubtedly know
who blew up General Zia's plane;
The Nicaraguans certainly know who ordered
The Murder of Olaf Palme -- they've been
dropping hints to that effect for years;
maybe The French can tell us who killed
Hilda Morel, but of course they won't
because The Purpose of secret intelligence
is that it be kept secret not from our enemies
because They know already, nor from our allies
because They're spying on us too but from us --
because it's very important We don't know now
thirty years on from the most notable
political assassination of the century --
Let's consider a few of the
others and they've been a lot and how
the media have explained
Mattei, General Zia, President of Pakistan
General Torrijos, President of Panama
all died in plane crashes, reason
for the accident unknown
Dr. Martin Luther King murdered
by a lone assassin definitely no
conspiracy there --
Palme murdered on the
street by a lone madman
who evaded The Police for months
who were no conspiracy there, either --
San Francisco Mayor Moscone and
supervisor Harvey Milk murdered by a
man who'd been driven temporarily manned
by eating candy bars, no one else involved --
Last year Petrocelli murdered
apparently by her lover who went mad
and shot himself as well
no conspiracy at all --
Or maybe it's comforting perhaps to
imagine all these murders mostly of
left-wing politicians were the work of
lone loonies, unpaid-for and unplanned
but what if they weren't?
What if there really were conspiracies
behind one or more of these crimes?
Which brings us to
the parallax view a feature film
directed in 1974 by Alan J Pakula in it
Warren Beatty and Paula Prentiss played
to reporters in Seattle a lone assassin
murder atop the Space Needle said some
thinking what if the assassin didn't act
alone what if a conspiracy was involved
in this case the murder itself seems
modeled on the Robert Kennedy
assassination but it's gun wielding
waiter
it's elusive second assassin and even a
briefly glimpsed girl in a polkadot
dress the aftermath however is pure JFK
a Warren Commission style cover-up
followed by a series of mysterious
deaths of witnesses and journalists the
JFK murder really was rough on reporters
and witnesses the catalog of witnesses
who died from heart attacks car and
plane crashes gun accidents karate chops
to the neck et cetera is very long and
justly notorious what's less known is
the small core of journalists who lost
their lives investigating the case
tonight Paula Prentiss plays a reporter
clearly based on the popular American
columnist Dorothy Killian
the only journalist allowed a private
interview with Jack Ruby who died of an
overdose of alcohol and barbiturates
after publishing several articles
indicating a conspiracy was involved two
other reporters who dug into the Jack
Ruby story also died one of them shot in
the head by a patrolman in Long Beach
City police headquarters the parallax
view was co-written by Lorenzo sample
jr. who penned the equally paranoid
three days of the Condor along with the
early Batman TV shows he has a fine dark
sense of humor as in the scene where
bait he finds himself aboard a plane
that's carrying a bomb the excellent
cinema scope photography is by Gordon
Willis who also shot the Godfather and
many of Woody Allen's films the parallax
view was influential both on Pakula zone
all the President's Men and on Oliver
Stone's JFK which revitalized the
media's interest in the Kennedy
assassination and contributed to the
release of a large quantity of doctored
US government files a none charitable
listener might suggest that John
Williams soundtrack for JFK was not
uninfluenced by Michael smalls excellent
musical score for parallax view Bakula's
film inevitably refers to the Manchurian
Candidate that prophetic tale of double
agents brainwashing and political
assassination magnificently filmed by
John Frankenheimer in 1962 interestingly
Frankenheimer also made a film about an
attempted military coup in the United
States seven days in May the same year
Kennedy was killed whodunit in tonight's
film a mysterious company called the
parallax corporation appears to be
hiring hit men and Patsy's in order to
commit perfect political crimes Jim
Garrison the New Orleans da who was the
hero of Oliver Stone's movie actually
accused the Canadian based company perm
index of doing much the same thing
hiring political hitmen to kill Kennedy
and to attempt to kill de Gaulle 70% of
the adult American population believed
their president was murdered by a
conspiracy who was behind the conspiracy
dependen
on the political and social informations
of the person that you talk to
right-wingers still claim from time to
time the Khrushchev or Castro did it via
their commie Protege Oswald almost
everyone in Texas seems to think that
Lyndon Johnson had a hand in it people
on the Left are not slow to point out
that Richard Nixon flew out of Dallas on
the morning President Kennedy died
there's tremendous circumstantial
evidence that the Mafia was involved not
least the use of mafia hitman Ruby to
silence the alleged assassin mark Lane
and Jim Garrison always said the CIA did
it Kennedy didn't like the CIA they said
because it led him into a political
fiasco at the Bay of Pigs
he threatened to splinter it into a
thousand pieces and he fired CIA head
Alan Dulles and deputy director Charles
P Cobell whose brother was the mayor of
Dallas on the fateful day it's possible
but the thesis of dick Russell's book
the man who knew too much
presents a new version the CIA says
Russel was by the early sixties pretty
thoroughly infiltrated by the Russians
remember CIA is theoretically a civilian
body which is for turf wars with the US
military since its inception in 1947
Russel speculates the clues pointing
towards CIA as culprits in the
assassination were in fact false laid
there by Texas oil men and an extreme
right-wing faction in the US military
this group stretching beyond the United
States in fact an international fascist
cabal had the president killed
they picked Oswald as the Patsy Russell
says because he had intelligence
fingerprints all over him American
Soviet and remember he was also a paid
informant of the Dallas FBI he was the
perfect fall guy disgruntled alienated
knowing just a little bit too much his
death and that of a few witnesses
satisfies the different power groups
allowing them to maintain much of their
status while the conspirators move a
little higher up the ladder and settle
comfortably into place if it was a coup
it was something of a gentlemanly one
compared to the bloodshed following
Pinochet's takeover of Chile Oh sue
Carter's reign of terror in Indonesia
all quite civilized except for those
witnesses of course and to Dorothy kill
again
these men have paid professional
spies employers of assassins and killers
I question the common sense of any TV or
print reporter who journeys to Minsk or
Langley Virginia pokes a camera in the
face of Lee Harvey Oswald's case officer
and expects to get the true truth out of
the guy it's a trifle naive to say the
least
the true truth about the JFK
assassination was probably known to most
of the major intelligence organizations
within a few days if not a few hours of
its occurrence of course the Russians
have a big file on who killed JFK and
Robert Kennedy they wouldn't be doing
their jobs if they didn't in the same
way the FBI must have a file on who
killed Enrico Mattei
Italian industrialist who went up
against the Texan oil boys in the 1960s
the Indians undoubtedly know who blew