Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

From Professor James Norwood

Ralph,

I decided to go ahead and pay the $3 rental fee to view the entirety of James K. Lambert's video Conspiracy Theorists Lie.  As it turns out, you were spot on in your critique of his two trailers.  This 145-minute experience is pure propaganda with some of the poorest documentary film-making imaginable.  And I'm embarrassed to say that Lambert is a native of my home state of Minnesota.

Like so many amateur attempts to understand the assassination, Lambert fails to ground his film in the historical context of America in 1963.  With a focus on white supremacist Revilo P. Oliver, Lambert seeks to establish at the start of the film one of the most bizarre premises imaginable about the JFK assassination.  Lambert asserts that in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, the extreme right wing in America ushered in the pattern of conspiratorial thinking that would persist for the next half century.  For Lambert, the right wingers' contention that the Soviet Union was behind the assassination set in motion the future challenges to the Warren Report.  Lambert believes the Warren Commissioners were beyond reproach in their integrity and the Warren Report unassailable in its findings.

The film rarely makes use of JFK researchers as commentators, drawing instead on Lambert's encounters with bystanders in Dealey Plaza at the time of the 50th anniversary.  While visiting Dallas, Lambert filmed an interview with the late Gary Mack, who is equivocal about every point that is raised in the brief discussion with Lambert.  There is also a short segment with Jesse Ventura.  Roger Stone is also featured briefly.  But Lambert's main attempt is to discredit any challengers to the Warren Report.  The films Executive Action (described as a James Bond film) and JFK (attacked by Lambert because Garrison had a "reputation for dishonesty") are briefly described with the purpose of linking those two landmark films with wide-eyed conspiracy theories.

The main technique used by Lambert against those who challenge the Warren Report is that they are "cherry picking" in their criticisms.  But Lambert himself makes use of special pleading throughout the film:   For example,

• Lambert shows selected portions of the Katzenbach memo to Bill Moyers without addressing the most significant point made by Katzenbach:  "The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial." 

• Without a clear understanding of the facts, Lambert twists the magic bullet scenario into what he believes is a commonplace experience of a bullet that "yaws."  There is no attempt to gather primary evidence, such as the testimony of Dr. Robert Shaw immediately after performing surgery on Governor Connally. 

• Lambert refers to The Men Who Killed Kennedy series as "the same old lies," without providing any examples or discussing any of the valuable eyewitness testimony from those programs. 

The most serious shortcoming of the film is Lambert's poor handle on the facts of the JFK case.  He makes numerous, unsubstantiated and indeed false claims, such as JFK ordering the Secret Service to avoid riding on the limousine bumpers,  Robert Kennedy endorsing Dulles as a Warren Commission member, and inaccurate assumptions about the findings of Mark Lane.  There is very little evidence that Lambert has studied the JFK assassination, especially in the massive literature.   It was painfully obvious that this film was made primarily by scrolling around the internet, then showing up with a camcorder in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 2013.  Based on the film, it is not clear whether Lambert has read a single book on the assassination.

In the entire film, I found only one quote that was worthwhile, and it came from a video clip inserted by Lambert, as opposed to an actual interview.  The quote (excerpted below) is by Judge John Tunheim, as he was summarizing the findings of the ARRB.  Lambert struggled to show that there was no conspiratorial activity on the part of the government either in the murder of JFK or the aftermath.  Yet Judge Tunheim's statement is a demonstration of conspiracy and cover up that continued a half century after the event.

The only reason that this film may be worth viewing is as a troubling example of the hurdles we all must face in getting this nation to acknowledge the truth about the assassination of President Kennedy.  One of those hurdles is closed-mindedness.  And it is difficult to image anyone with as closed a mind as James K. Lambert.