Book Crossfire by Jim Marr's Term Paper

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Crossfire by Jim Marrs is an encyclopedic collection of information about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. As a trained journalist, Marrs fills the more than six hundred pages of his book with details both commonly known and potentially revelatory. Virtually every conspiracy theory ever applied to the assassination is examined along the supporting and disproving evidence.

The biggest problem with this book is the sheer amount of information it provides. There are so many minute details covered, it is easy to loose sight of the big picture. For instance, regarding the pace of the motorcade through Dealey Plaza, Marrs offers the following:

The [Presidential] party had come to a temporary halt before proceeding on to the underpass." Phil Willis (p. 24)

A]fter the third shot, I heard Roy Kellerman tell the driver, 'Bill, get out of line.' And then I saw him move, and I assumed he was moving a button or something on the panel of the automobile, and he said "Get us to a hospital quick,' [...] at about this time, we began to pull out of the cavalcade, out of line." Texas Governor John Connally (p.13)

T]he parade stopped right in front of the building [Texas School Book Depository]." L.P. Terry (p. 26)

After the shots, John Chism saw "the motorcade beginning to speed up." (p. 29)

T]he car momentarily stopped and the driver seemed to have a radio or phone up to his ear and he seemed to be waiting on some word. Some Secret Service men reached into the car and came out with some sort of machine gun. Then the cars roared off..."; "I've maintained that they stopped. I still say they did. It was only a momentary stop, but...

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." Bill Newman (p. 70)

But Marrs doesn't just use eyewitness accounts. He also mines the work of other writers for relevant minutia like: "If the Secret Service men in the front had reacted quicker to the first two shots at the President's car, if the driver had stepped on the gas before instead of after the fatal third shot was fired, would President Kennedy be alive today?" On page 248 was based on information revealed in the book Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye by O'Donnell & Powers.

The cumulative effect of all this detail is the inescapable conclusion that the President's assassination was the result of some kind of conspiracy. This, of course, is the effect Marrs is trying for. In the years since the assassination, "Crossfire" along with dozens of similar books, documentaries and investigations have steadily discredited the official "Lone Gunman" theory put forth by the Warren Commission and subsequently affirmed by Congressional investigations.

The whole public's consciousness has been expanding tremendously," Marrs notes. "When I started my investigation (in the early 1970's), it was something that wasn't talked about in polite society. Now, pretty much everybody accepts that something strange was going on." (Maurstad, 1997)

Still, accepting that something other than the official line occurred and believing that a conspiracy reaching to the highest levels of the American government and society was responsible, is a big step. Marrs tries to ease readers into it by examining most of the other conspiracy theories that have arisen over the years.

Marrs' background as a journalist serves him well as he examines theories claiming everyone from the Mob to the CIA to anti-Castro Cubans to J.Edgar Hoover's G-men to Lee Harvey Oswald….....

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