So, Like, Wanna Know Who Killed J.F.K.?

Think you know who killed J.F.K.? Yup, you were right: super patriots. No, not Captain America, although you never know. We're talking "neo-patriots who thought they were doing something good for the country" by offing Kennedy during his trip to Dallas in November 1963. Actually, we're not talking anything; me, I'm a one-shooter kind of guy myself, Lee Harvey or bust. Case closed, dig?

No, that comes from the mouth of Southlake's Debra Conway, who operates the 11-year-old JFK Lancer Web site and has just published Larry Hancock's 620-page book Someone Would Have Talked: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the Conspiracy to Mislead History. Can't vouch for its quality -- haven't seen the book, though some on Amazon compare it to the works of James Ellroy, and excerpts found on Hancock's estimable Web site suggest that, if nothing else, it's a good read should you approach it as fiction or non-fiction. Nonetheless, it's probably the longest Kennedy assassination book published in a good while. That has to count for something. Thirty-five bucks too. A regular bargain -- the perfect Christmas present for the paranoid on your shopping list.

Conway insists the tome isn't not conspiracy-spreading book, but the result of years of research culled from docs the Oklahoma-based Hancock got from the National Archives as a result of the JFK Act. "This was a group of people who were involved in off-the-book activities and were supposed to be going after Castro," Conway says. "And when that failed, the next best thing was to get rid of this Communist-sympathizing weak president."

The book -- JFK Lancer's fourth official publication, in addition to myriad "research manuscripts," and its first hardcover release -- is just available online and in stores (though none of the big chains in my neighborhood stock it). It was, of course, released officially on November 22. There was another JFK Lancer publication by the same name, but Conway says this is the one that ties together all the loose strands found in the archives -- most significantly, she says, the documentation of a White House meeting on August 21, 1963, between Lyndon Johnson and Fred Black, one of Johnson's political advisers and a close friend of Mafia boss John Roselli.

"We've always wondered if there was a connection here to the cover-up," Conway says. "In the book Mr. Hancock differentiates between the plot to kill Kennedy and the cover-up, and the cover-up was run by LBJ, but is there any way to connect him to anything? Going though the daily diaries he found that link: a meeting with Fred Black, a known Mafia associate and a friend of Bobby Baker, who worked for Johnson and had gotten a lot of military contracts. Well, you know the rest of the story. Had the assasisnation not happened, LBJ would have been indicted with Bobby Baker, but that whole committe investigation was dropped. That leads you to think possibly Johnson he was compromised. They were saying, 'You need to go along and say this is what happened or we'll talk about all your connections or kickbacks.' That could have driven him with the cover-up, but not the plot."

OK, maybe it was Captain America after all. --Robert Wilonsky