JFK: Breaking the Silence

As the 30th anniversary of JFK's assassination approaches, the books continue to multiply. This one isn't a necessary one, but there are a few good stories here, well told in a crisp journalistic manner (the author is a Dallas reporter). Sloan focuses on a dozen seldom-told tales that reveal credible aspects of the assassination, most of which are already familiar at least in part to buffs. Here is the deaf and dumb Ed Hoffman, who saw a man shoot from the grassy knoll but could not communicate what he witnessed; bystander Jim Tague, who was clipped by a flying splinter from a bullet the Warren Commission concluded did not exist; the couple, the Newmans, who heard shots from behind them on the knoll, and were never asked about them. There is also a hokey account from a former Secret Service agent of a Kremlin plot to kill the President, and an even weirder one by a so-called CIA ``hit man'' who identifies three of four shooters, including Frank Sturgis firing from a sewer grating on Elm Street. And there are pointless yarns, like the later violent deaths of two reporters who visited Jack Ruby's apartment. At his best, Sloan offers food for thought; at his worst, entertaining escapist speculation. Photos not seen by PW . (Oct.)