Oliver Stone
“I’m enclosing the letter Jim DiEugenio and I wrote in response to Rolling Stone’s attack on our film, “JFK Revisited.” –Tim Weiner’s review of “JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass” suffers from “Russiagate” paranoia, as do many of his colleagues embedded in our Government-Media world, wherein the malevolent Russians seem to be responsible not only for the election of Trump, but the continuing sabotage of our cyber-infrastructures. Supposedly wanting their glorious Communist Empire back, they are prepared to invade both Ukraine and NATO countries. Good vs. Evil scenarios seem to work for most American people. But Weiner goes far afield when he includes “JFK” in his contempt for so-called “tinfoil-hatted fabricators” who have no reason to believe the Warren Commission cover-up. Weiner has failed to update his tired angle on the assassination. In fact, the Russians were working successfully at a détente with JFK, leading to the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. When he was killed, Russian hopes — and the hopes of many liberated regions of the world (Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Africa) — were smashed as the hardliners in our Government once again protected their interests. (1) He accuses Jim DiEugenio, the writer of the documentary, and myself of falling for Russia’s trickery in using an Italian newspaper to blame Allen Dulles for his involvement in a military coup to overthrow Charles de Gaulle in ’61. But we did not use this Italian newspaper. We used David Talbot’s books, “The Devil’s Chessboard” and “Brothers,” The London Observer, and Weiner’s employer at that time, The New York Times — as well as French newspapers L’Express and Le Monde and sources close to de Gaulle like André Malraux and Alain Peyrefitte to pinpoint the enmity of Dulles, working with the mutinous generals against the policies of de Gaulle in Algeria. (2) Nor did Jim Garrison base his ideas about Kennedy’s assassination on that same marginal Italian newspaper. He did so by investigating the things Lee Harvey Oswald did in the summer of ’63 in New Orleans and the people he associated with. Authors like Jeff Morley (“The Ghost: The Secret Life of CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton”) and John Newman (“Oswald and the CIA”) have taken those discoveries further, and we interviewed both men in our film. Weiner does not mention either interview.(3) We largely relied on the database of documents that was released by the Assassination Records Review Board (1994-1998), which Weiner covered as a reporter for The New York Times, but did us no favors with his tepid interpretations of their work. We interviewed three technical experts who worked for that Board. And we display many documents the Board declassified. “JFK Revisited” is the first documentary to do this. We are not mystical or faith-based. We are data-based.Signed,Oliver Stone & Jim DiEugenio –My 1991 film “JFK” still bothers people like Tim Weiner deeply. Why? Because it’s true, and in its largest implications, it’s devastating. It defeats the meaning of their life’s work propping up the CIA.Based on our past ‘success’ with America’s major media, we have to assume Rolling Stone will not publish our letter on this seemingly taboo subject. And on that basis I publish this letter here first for those who care; it’s a worthy struggle to fact-check ill-intended slander and malice in the belief that we can seek and achieve the truth in the JFK murder for its own sake.
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