Famed news and entertainment leader John Barbour will host two free screenings of his latest film, “The American Media: The Second Assassination of President John F. Kennedy,” and will deliver a lecture at the National Press Club over the next 10 days to underscore the media cover-up, continuing “fake news” on TV, and the ongoing importance of the true facts of President Kennedy’s 1963 assassination.
Barbour, the only man to win TV Emmys for both news and entertainment, will premiere in the nation’s capital his documentary at the American University on Nov. 15 and on Capitol Hill on Nov. 22.
Also, he will deliver a dinner lecture on Nov. 16 at the press club “The Last Hurrah for JFK and America.” All three events are free and open to the public, although the dinner is a no-host, Dutch-treat event before the McClendon Group speaker society. The society, named for famed White House correspondent Sarah McClendon, has featured important speakers with alternative viewpoints at the club for the past quarter century.
Barbour, 84, a five-time Emmy winner, is also known as “The Godfather of Reality TV” for his co-producing and co-hosting NBC-TV’s No. 1 hit “Real People” credited with spawning the genre. He is shown at left in a photo from the show.
“No matter what people know about the assassination of JFK,” says Barbour, “they will be stunned by what they learn in this film. It is the definitive film about the assassination and the birth of fake news, which plagues us to this day. Fake news impeded New Orleans District Attorney’s Garrison’s 1960s investigation at every turn.”
Timed for the anniversary of President Kennedy’s murder on Nov. 22, 1963, Barbour shows shows how America’s major media have suppressed the truth that Garrison (shown at right) discovered about the 1963 conspiracy to kill JFK.
The 130-minute documentary subtitled “The Garrison Tapes Part II” draws on 3 ½ hours of taped interviews Garrison granted Barbour about the DA’s murder conspiracy case against New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw.
A jury acquitted Shaw (shown at left) after many prosecution witnesses died and powerful news outlets smeared Garrison for disputing the Warren Report’s claims that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone to murder the president with three shots, all fired from behind.
“Garrison announced that he would prove in court that the CIA did it, just as they had murdered democratically elected presidents in Iran and Guatemala,” Barbour explains. “Garrison called it a ‘no risk’ operation for the CIA, aided by some in the media before the murder with the killers all being protected by the media after the murder. This film proves that, along with the CIA’s own documents, Garrison was right on both counts.”
“This amazing movie tells the story of how the CIA took over the media with ‘Project Mockingbird’ to create fake news in order to pursue their foreign policy military objectives in Cuba and Vietnam,” adds Barbour. “It tells the story of President Kennedy’s war with the CIA over the agency’s lust for permanent war. It shows the flood of fake news that overwhelmed Americans and helped drown the truth of Garrison’s case. It also tells the story of my 40-year career-challenging ordeals in struggling to get a media platform for Garrison to tell his story. In the final analysis, this film is the ultimate American story.”
“Everything depicted in the film is verified by actual documents, video, stills, and other important interviews and historical matter,” Barbour says. “Ultimately, it proves that Garrison in 1967 solved the case — which to this day is still open in the Justice Department.” Garrison, New Orleans district attorney from 1962 to 1973 and later a judge until his death, told Barbour that he was cooperating because he found the film maker to be “unusually honest and interested in the truth of what really happened to JFK.”
Barbour (shown in his Facebook photo) wrote and directed the film’s Part I, released in 1992. Oliver Stone endorsed it then as a companion piece to his hit JFK, which created the public pressure for Congress to enact unanimously the “JFK Act” requiring release of all suppressed assassination documents. In 1992, Part I of The Garrison Tapes won an award at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain while winning worldwide acclaim. But it was stifled from significant distribution in the United States.
The topic is back in the news with more concern about censorship, fake news and the truth about the JFK killing. More than four million pages have been released so far under congressional requirements to release suppressed JFK records. But President Trump released only two percent of the remaining 30,000 documents by the scheduled final deadline Oct. 26 because of objections by federal agencies, most notably the CIA.
Regarding the DC screenings and Q&A with Barbour:
The first screening and lecture will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 15 at the American University, the locale of JFK’s iconic “Peace Speech” in at the university’s 1963 commencement (shown above) that many experts think helped lead to his murder by war-mongers. That iconic speech is here, with a transcript and audio recording via the JFK Library and here in a 27-minute video via YouTube. One of many iconic excerpts is at right.
The speech was notable because it came during Cold War tensions the year after the Cuban Missile Crisis that threatened the world with nuclear annihilation.
It was also while Kennedy was in the midst of reflection on how to advance peace and scale back war, including an end to the Vietnam War, according to historians that include current American University history professor Peter Kuznick. He co-authored with Oliver Stone of The Untold History of the United States, a multi-part documentary and also a New York Times best-selling book.
This week’s film screening locale is Room T-01 at the McKinley Building, headquarters of the university’s School of Communications at 4400 Massachusetts Ave. NW.
The second free screening, along with a reception, will be from 2 to 5 p.m. on Nov. 22 on Capitol Hill at the Stewart Mott Foundation, 122 Maryland Ave., NE,, just across Constitution Avenue from the U.S. Senate buildings.
The press club lecture on Nov. 16 begins at 6:30 p.m. with the optional dinner in the Cosgrove Room. The lecture and Q&A start at 7 p.m. The club is at 529 14th St., NW, with entrance on the 13th floor. Free parking with validation is available at the PMI garage, 1325 G St. NW.
Barbour’s first Emmy was as the original host for “AM Los Angeles” on KABC-TV. He won three of his Emmys as Critic-At-Large on KNBC’s 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. news for five years. He won his fifth Emmy hosting and producing a one-hour live Entertainment Special on KCOP-LA, Channel 13. ‘John Barbour’s First Live Telethon To Save New York City.” He additionally won a Golden Mike as the Critic-At-Large on KTTV-LA, Channel 11, for his commentary on the Munich Olympics Massacre. John was the film critic for Los Angeles Magazine for 10 years
Other JFK Assassination and Public Education Events This Week
This editor helped arrange the events to foster public education on suppressed documents and witness statements about important historical events.The showings are part of our efforts in collaboration with multiple other groups over the next week.
These include a mock trial in Houston, State of Texas vs. Lee Harvey Oswald (details here), that Citizens Against Political Assassination (CAPA) has organized from Nov. 16-17 with the South Texas College of Law / Houston at the school.
On the evening of Nov. 16, TV, stage and film star Alec Baldwin (shown at left) will speak at a related banquet and book signing for his new memoir, Nevertheless. Video streaming of the mock trial is available for a modest fee. The trial features top medical, scientific and legal experts who will argue that Oswald as a matter of basic science could not have fired the bullet that killed Kennedy.
This weekend I will deliver lectures along with many other leaders in the assassination research community at two different annual conferences being held from Nov. 17 to 19 in downtown Dallas near the site of Kennedy’s death on Elm Street in Dealey Plaza. One of the three-day research and networking conferences has been organized by JFK Lancer Books and Events. The other is by JFK Conferences. The public is welcome at all events, with details available on CAPA’s website in the events section, a previously reported.
We hope to see all readers at one or more of these events!