https://www.onthetrailofdelusion.com/post/oliver-stone-s-poverty-of-imagination
I watched his so-called documentary on the weekend. Yup, great cinematography, and great editing. But the content was just a bunch of soundbites with no coherent view of the evidence. And while the film bemoans that Lee Harvey Oswald did not receive a trial, it also presents a lot of hearsay evidence that would also have been excluded. Here is my initial take on the film.
Fred Litwin
Stone, DiEugenio et al have too vivid of an imagination and not a absence of one. This is Garrisonite conspiracism.
They're like the "cargo cultists" who think the only reason "X" occurs is because powerful forces - a God or Gods - make "X" happen. The only way the most powerful man in the world could be brought down is by great forces and not a nothing like Oswald. So they build these stories, perform these rituals of CIA misbehavior to explain why "X" occurred. Mock meetings between Shaw and Ferrie. And Veciana and Phillips. And this or that person and another one. All of this brings "X" to life. Great events must have a great cause behind it.
As to a trial: This is a dodge, an attempt to move the discussion away from what happened in the court of history to a court of law. Nobody would argue that Nixon was innocent of obstruction because he couldn't get a fair trial or that the evidence was tainted by Congressional hearings. Or substitute any other historic event for the assassination. We never discuss event "X" this way. Not unless we're in a law class.
It's also revealing that they use a legalistic standard to examine Oswald's guilt - no chain of custody here therefore we throw this out, other legal problems there therefore we throw that out - but then use all sorts of hearsay and rumors, i.e, the Garrison approach, to indicts others in the assassination. One standard to judge Oswald; one very low one to judge everyone else. That's not fooling anyone, I hope?
Stone made a HBO movie a few years ago where he argued that if Henry Wallace had been elected president in 1948 instead of Truman that we wouldn't have had a Cold War. That that engagement was due to the hawkish policies of Truman. Nothing about Stalin, nothing about the occupation of Europe, nothing about the betrayal of Yalta. It's a cargo cult view of the world where "X", the Cold War, was caused by great forces in the US. We're discussing misleading news, fake news, reckless conspiracy claims: well nobody does it better - and he is good at it - than Stone.