Assassination Science (CL)

This is an extremely technical book on aspects of the Kennedy assassination and therefore probably for buffs only, though the accumulation of carefully researched detail will impress those with an open mind. Fetzer, a professor of philosophy at the University of Minnesota, takes the position that thorough and disinterested scientific research cannot but conclude that more than one assassin was involved. He asserts that attempts were made to falsify the president's autopsy records, and that the Zapruder film of the assassination was tampered with when it was in government hands, both in an effort to eliminate evidence of a second shooter. He offers detailed papers by, among others, Charles Crenshaw, the doctor who treated the president immediately before he died, and by David Livingston, a brain surgeon, and bitterly attacks the Journal of the American Medical Association, which, he charges, became an apologist for the lone-assassin theory. The discussion of the Zapruder film is especially noteworthy, and the book is only marred by reproductions of Fetzer's many letters of protest to the Justice Department, the New York Times and everyone else he felt distorted the truth. Photos. (Dec.)