"RFK Must Die" and "Oswald's Ghost" are two recent "pro-Lone Gunman" documentaries that do not reveal their bias until deep into the films, a pair of highly sophisticated disinformation efforts from 2007. The RFK film is newly released on DVD and was made by an Irish/UK documentarian named Shane O'Sullivan. The Oswald film is a documentary by Robert Stone, who has a number of relatively well-known documentaries to his name.
I made the mistake of purchasing the DVD of "RFK Must Die" based on the trailer and a 'news alert' about it from the RI General Discussion board. The raison d'etre justifying this documentary is a series of new leads based on film footage taken at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5 in the aftermath of the assassination, as well as some photographic evidence from the Ambassador Hotel during the week of the assassination.
Some of this new evidence seems to identify David Morales as being ubiquitous on the scene that night.
The first half of "RFK Must Die" is weak and off-topic for the "Conspiracy Research" audience that, like me, would have rented or purchased this film. Spending too much time on historical context of the 1960s and RFK, the first half of "RFK Must Die" then sketches the events of June 5 and gives an incomplete biography of Sirhan Sirhan. Many details and significant players are left out, presumably for the sake of brevity (but perhaps not, as the film proceeds with a trend toward the "Lone Gunman Theory" later in the film).
The weakest part of the first half is its implausible, far-fetched explanation of Operation Artichoke, hypnotic suggestion, and mind control. Ostensibly presented as a primer for newcomers to the subject, it offers no conclusive evidence that would persuade the newcomer of the deep history or veracity of such phenomena as "mind control," but relies heavily instead on historical footage of a vintage 1960s NBC documentary on hypnotic suggestion which is cringeworthy and laughable.
The second half of "RFK Must Die" is the Honeypot, in the worst connotation of that term. The second half is filled with new footage and uncovered leads which purport to identify David Morales as well as other possible CIA bigwigs who were present at the Ambassador Hotel on June 5. There are many new interviews with key players and eyewitnesses (including "Polka-Dot Dress Woman" eyewitness Sandra Serrano). The resurrected audio of Serrano's interrogation by an LAPD investigator who had CIA ties is chilling and damning. But for every new piece of compelling information uncovered, Shane O'Sullivan works mightily to undermine and discredit his own potential conclusions. Most of the time, this is done in a "bending-over-backwards-to-be-fair" vein, but considering the major leads that are left unfollowed, key pieces of information skimmed over (e.g., Manny Pena), and old bombshells that are left out and unmentioned, the effect is that we are witnessing a sophisticated effort to sow seeds of doubt that anyone but Sirhan was responsible.
"Oswald's Ghost" takes the opposite approach to arrive at the same conclusions ("it was all just a Lone Nut"). Whereas "RFK Must Die" purports to be "pro-conspiracy with a fair mind" and lets the viewer arrive at the conclusion that it was just Sirhan -- a far more perfidious method, if you ask me -- "Oswald's Ghost" bides its time in revealing its open bias. "Oswald's Ghost" begins with a first half that includes spooky contemporary shots of a deserted (Sunday morning at dawn, probably) Dealey Plaza and the Book Depository, and includes a lot of new and mint footage of Oswald. If any researchers would need a reason to own the film, it's for access to the crystal-clear video of Oswald in the aftermath of November 22, which looks as if it was filmed yesterday, it's so fresh.
Ironically, this footage (some new footage, some not, some probably just "new to me") is vital evidence for me that the rest of the film cannot destroy: Oswald's own testimony, in vivid black & white video (not grainy film) gives one a sense of Oswald's sincerity in a way that suggests he must have been an Oscar-worthy actor to fake what we undeniably see: Oswald is hurt, confused, and scared -- and it's all in the eyes. There's just no doubt that we're seeing a person who knows the implicatons of what's happening, and has none of the "grandiose pretensions for historical attention" that is ascribed to him by Official Defenders of the Lone Nut theory. At a few moments, there are flashes of anger in Oswald's eyes that shift so rapidly into defensiveness and hurt that it's a tour de force of thespian skill if it's faked. The detail in his face is remarkable due to the quality of the video (I saw it in digital, projected on a large screen).
"Oswald's Ghost" hides its bias until the final half-hour. It appears to have an open mind about conspiracy, trotting out such dubious talking heads as Mark Lane, reviewing the Zapruder film, footage of the young Dan Rather lying on-air ("his head bounced forward") and Perry Russo's audio "deposition" under sodium pentothal about David Ferrie and the triangulation turkey shoot. But then "Oswald's Ghost" relies on interviews with Edward Jay Epstein, Norman Mailer ("There was no conspiracy. Oswald acted alone"), and others to discredit Garrison as "mentally ill," Arlen Specter as a genius, and Oswald as both "illiterate" and "ferociously clever enough" to pull off the murder alone.
Even though there's plenty of new archival footage in both films to interest serious researchers, "Oswald's Ghost" gives us the usual cherry-picking/ad hominem/presentation of group consensus that Oswald Did It Alone, and "RFK Must Die" works overtime to undermine itself using the "But Maybe I'm Wrong" approach. Strangely, although both films are disheartening if you expect (as you're led to by the deceptive promotional campaigns for both films) a pro-assassination film, oddly, each film contains material that inherently affirms and reinforces the unanswered, unaddressed questions: just seeing the dozens of people running toward the knoll again, hearing Oswald's own post-assassination interviews, and seeing what was left out of each film. It's a wonder that even now, 40 years later, there's such a powerful effort to create lies about the events. It simply makes you perk-up and wonder: after all this time, why so much energy to avoid the unanswered questions?
