Description
The President and the Provocateur explores the parallel lives of John F. Kennedy, born into wealth and celebrity, destined for glory and a violent death, and of Lee Harvey Oswald, born into poverty and obscurity, murdered in police custody and convicted - without a lawyer or a trial - of the killing of JFK.
50 years after both men were murdered, Alex Cox provides a chronological account of their lives' strange intersections, their shared interests, and the increasing body of evidence which suggests that Lee Harvey Oswald was working for some branch of the government - most likely the FBI or IRS - as an infiltrator of subversive groups, and agent provocateur.
The President and the Provocateur draws on five decades of accumulated evidence that Oswald was an intelligence agent and agent provocateur. Far from being an active Communist, Oswald was mainly interested in infiltrating right-wing groups (including the White Russian community of Fort Worth, the National States Rights Party, the Minutemen, and the Cuban Alpha 66 terrorist organization in Dallas and New Orleans). From this perspective his alleged purchasing of guns by mail may be the actions of someone attempting to build a case against right-wing gun-runners and their suppliers - something the IRS and Senator Christopher Dodd's Subcommittee were also doing, at exactly the same time.
The possibility that Oswald was sent as a spy to Russia has been raised before, but this is the first book to detail Oswald's continued pattern of intelligence-gathering and infiltration of political groups on his return to the USA.
About the Author
Maverick British filmmaker Alex Cox is responsible for directing a host of acclaimed films from Sleep is for Sissies, Repo Man, Sid and Nancy, Straight to Hell, Walker and Highway Patrolman to Death and the Compass, Three Businessmen, Revenger's Tragedy, Searchers 2.0 and more recently Tombstone Rashomon. From 1987 to 1994, he presented the acclaimed BBC TV series 'Moviedrome', bringing unknown or forgotten films to new audiences. He's also the author of X Films: True Confessions of a Radical Filmmaker, 10,000 Ways to Die, The President and the Provocateur and Alex Cox's Introduction to Film and has written on the subject of film for publications including Sight and Sound, The Guardian, The Independent and Film Comment.
Reviews
Cox has done his best to unravel the tangled mess of information and weave it into something resembling coherency with an eye towards as an objective a view as possible -- Richard Marcus * Seattle PI via blogcritics.org *
Alex Cox attacks official line on JFK assassination -- Adrian Mack * straight.com *
compelling * Sabotage Times *
an original treatment of over-familiar material, a fine book, nicely written -- Robin Ramsay * Lobster Magazine *
Book Information
ISBN 9781842439418
Author Alex Cox
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint Oldcastle Books Ltd
Publisher Oldcastle Books Ltd