David Lifton

David Samuel Lifton (September 20, 1939 – December 6, 2022) was an American author who wrote the 1980 bestseller Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy, a work that puts forth evidence of a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963.[1]

Biography

Lifton grew up in Rockaway Beach, New York.[1] He graduated from Cornell University's School of Engineering Physics in 1962, and then enrolled in UCLA to pursue an advanced degree in engineering.[1][2] While there, he worked nights as a computer engineer for North American Aviation, a contractor for the Apollo program.[1]

Early JFK assassination interest

In autumn 1964, at roughly the time when the Warren Report was published, Lifton attended a lecture on the JFK assassination given by Warren Commission critic Mark Lane.[1] Lifton's interest was piqued. He purchased the 26-volume set of Warren Commission Hearings and Exhibits, and started his own research on the case.[1]

In May 1965, he became fascinated by a photograph he chanced upon in a Hollywood bookstore. He was flipping through a commemorative magazine, Four Dark Days in History, that included a reproduction of a Polaroid photo taken by Mary Moorman at the moment of the fatal JFK assassination shot. She was standing on the opposite side of the street from the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza. Her photo was not part of the Warren Commission's published evidence: "Lifton was stunned to see, obscured in the shadows of the knoll, what he took to be a puff of smoke and the figure of a gunman in the act of shooting."[3] He acquired a copy of the negative, had it enlarged, and shared it with assassination researchers Ray Marcus and Maggie Field.[4] Although the enlarged photo's images were still murky,[1] Marcus and Field agreed that Lifton had made an important discovery.[4]

In December 1965, ex-CIA Director and Warren Commission member Allen Dulles spoke at UCLA to a group of students, including Lifton who arrived at the event with two of the 26 volumes.[5] In the Q&A section, Lifton tried to show Dulles evidence that:

the Zapruder film did not support the lone-gunman thesis. Dulles first grew angry, then condescending, and finally said that if there were going to be any more questions about the Warren Commission he'd just as soon go to bed.[6]

In 1966, Lifton was dismissed from UCLA graduate school for neglecting his studies. He quit the aerospace job and began devoting all his time to the Kennedy assassination.[1]

The January 1967 issue of Ramparts magazine presented a lengthy "special report" article, titled "The Case for Three Assassins", co-written by Lifton and David Welsh. The article laid out the scenario that more than one assassin was firing at Kennedy based on anomalies in the medical evidence.[7]

In 1968, Lifton edited and wrote an introduction to the book, Document Addendum to the Warren Report, which anthologized three assassination-related documents that were not part of the Warren Commission's 26 volumes.[8] Among them is the "Liebeler Memorandum", named after former Warren Commission lawyer Wesley Liebeler, who Lifton became acquainted with at UCLA. The memo contains Liebeler's "devil's advocate" criticisms after reviewing a draft of the Warren Report chapter on accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald.[9] Lifton was credited as a researcher for the 1973 film Executive Action.[10]

Best Evidence

Main article: Best Evidence (book)

Lifton is most known for his 1980 book, Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. It chronicles the author's 15-year search for the truth about the JFK assassination. He describes his quest to resolve what he considered a troubling contradiction in the assassination record: the differing descriptions of President Kennedy's gunshot wounds, when comparing the accounts by Dallas medical personnel immediately after the shooting vs. the findings by autopsy doctors at Bethesda Naval Hospital later in the evening. Lifton's controversial conclusion was that JFK's body was surgically altered prior to the autopsy so that it would conform to the government's narrative of a lone gunman shooting from behind.[11] The book identifies several breaks in the body's chain of custody on November 22, when the pre-autopsy surgery could have occurred.[12]

Best Evidence was widely criticized in the mainstream press as "bizarre",[11][13] but it rose to #4 on The New York Times bestseller list. In 1988, Lifton put out an expanded edition, which included graphic autopsy photos he had recently obtained, and it led to another period of robust sales.[14]

Later Life

In 1991 the documentary Best Evidence: The Research Video, produced and directed by Lifton, was released. The production presents the arguments in Lifton's book in documentary-form.[15] In 1993, Lifton was played by Robert Picardo in the television movie Fatal Deception: Mrs. Lee Harvey Oswald.[16] He testified at the Assassination Records Review Board's "Review Board Experts' Conference" in May 1995 and on 17 September 1996 at a public hearing of the Board in Los Angeles.[17] He also provided the Board with various materials including 35mm interpositives of the Zapruder film, alongside copies of audiotapes, videotapes, and transcripts of witness interviews he conducted.[18]

Lifton lived most of his adult life in West Los Angeles. As of 2010, he was working there full-time on a major volume about Oswald titled Final Charade.[19]

On the kennedysandking.com assassination website (successor to the ctka.net website that lobbied for declassification of all JFK files), researcher and author James DiEugenio commented on Lifton's unpublished manuscript a few weeks after his death:

At the time of his death, Lifton had been working for a very long time - decades actually - on a biography of Lee Harvey Oswald. That book was entitled Final Charade. This was to be part of a trilogy of Best Evidence, Final Charade and a volume on the Zapruder film. In the anthology The Great Zapruder Film Hoax, Lifton submitted an essay called "Pig on a Leash" about his theories of Z film alteration. We should all hope that the manuscript of Final Charade will eventually be published. Lifton spent so many years on it, so much money, and so much effort, that it needs to be printed. Only then can it be judged as part of the Lifton canon.[9]

He was interviewed for the 2022 documentary The Assassination & Mrs. Paine about Ruth Paine.

Death

Lifton died on December 6, 2022, in Las Vegas, Nevada, at the age of 83.[20]

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Green, Lee (November 20, 1988). "His J.F.K. Obsession: For David Lifton, the Assassination Is a Labyrinth Without End". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved March 9, 2012.
  2. ^ McDowell, Edwin (January 12, 1981). "New Books On John Kennedy Death Quietly Issued". The New York Times. New York. p. 17.
  3. ^ Kelin 2007, p. 220.
  4. ^ a b Kelin 2007, p. 221.
  5. ^ Lifton, David S. (1992) [1980]. Best Evidence: Disguise and Deception in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Signet Books. pp. 38–42. ISBN 978-0451175731.
  6. ^ Kelin, John (2007). Praise from a Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation Critics of the Warren Report. San Antonio, Texas: Wings Press. p. 153. ISBN 978-0916727321.
  7. ^ Welsh, David; Lifton, David (January 1967). "The Case For Three Assassins" (PDF). Ramparts. 5 (7): 77–100. Retrieved May 22, 2012.
  8. ^ Lifton, David, ed. (1968). Document Addendum to the Warren Report: Three Documents. El Segundo, California: Sightext Publications. OCLC 64051097.
  9. ^ a b DiEugenio, James. "David Lifton Has Passed On". Kennedys and King. Retrieved November 15, 2023.
  10. ^ Frewin, Anthony (1993). The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: An Annotated Film, TV, and Videography, 1963-1992. Greenwood Press. p. 99.
  11. ^ a b Magnuson, Ed (January 19, 1981). "Now, a 'Two-Casket' Argument: A bizarre new Kennedy assassination theory". TIME. Vol. 117, no. 3. p. 22. Retrieved May 25, 2012.
  12. ^ Lifton 1992, p. 493.
  13. ^ Powers, Thomas (February 23, 1981). "Robbing the Grave". New York. Vol. 14, no. 8. News Group Publications, Inc. pp. 46–47. ISSN 0028-7369. Retrieved May 21, 2012.
  14. ^ McDowell, Edwin (November 21, 1990). "Book Notes". The New York Times.
  15. ^ Wickstrom, Andy (December 17, 1991). "One eve of 'JFK' film, a video raises new doubts". The Pittsburgh Press.
  16. ^ O'Connor, John J. (November 15, 1993). "Review/Television; A New Round of Programs on J. F. K." The New York Times. New York. Retrieved May 22, 2012.
  17. ^ Final Report of the Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. DIANE Publishing Company. 1999. pp. 207–8.
  18. ^ "Chapter Seven: Pursuit of Records" (PDF). Final Report of the Assassination Records Review Board (pdf). Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office. September 30, 1998. p. 133.
  19. ^ Lifton, David. "Blogging about JFK & 'Final Charade'--My first post." davidlifton-bestevidence-finalcharade.blogspot.com (April 15, 2010). Retrieved May 20, 2012.
  20. ^ "David Lifton Obituary (2022)". Legacy.com. Retrieved 2022-12-15.

Further reading

  • Hoffman, Jim. Conversations with David S. Lifton: Best Evidence to Final Charade. Chicago: Trine Day (2024). ISBN 978-1634244787.
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