This TV special started me on my "assassination conspiracy phase" and had me buttonholing friends and acquaintances with the "secrets" behind JFK's killing. Over the course of 2 years I spoke with authors of conspiracy books, read and watched everything I could on the case and even met Jean Hill, the "lady in the red raincoat" from JFK's motorcade, who told me straight-faced that "the truth is out there." "The Men Who Killed Kennedy" accepts at face value the dubious accounts of various "witnesses" to JFK's killing, whom photographs of the grassy knoll and nearby places show were not there at all or whose vision would have been completely obscured. This 6-part program was an attempt to show some of the conspiracy theories current in the late 1980's and it resembles Oliver Stone's "JFK" in the way it postulates so much speculation as fact, presents the word of so many unreliable sources as "the truth," and even names a French/Corsican as JFK's killer. Everything in this program has since been debunked by far more knowledgeable sources. <br /><br />My first real acquaintance with the truth came with Gerald Posner's book "Case Closed," which debunks conspiracy lore with modern science and far more accurate and detailed information than was ever available before. Posner's book uses such irrefutable evidence as Abraham Zapruder's famous film of the assassination and photos of the so-called "pristine bullet" to throw new light on the true positions of Kennedy and Connally in the presidential limousine, the timing and trajectories of Oswald's bullets and the fact that said pristine bullet isn't so pristine. <br /><br />"Case Closed" educates the reader by examining at great length Lee Harvey Oswald's bizarre life and the psychology and movements of Jack Ruby on the weekend of the assassination. The book makes a frame-by-frame examination of the Zapruder film and uses computer modeling to render the accurate positions of the relevant people and vehicles in the motorcade. "Case Closed" makes it clear why Oswald made the perfect killer, why he needed no accomplices and why no one with a brain in his head would trust unreliable misfits like Osward and Jack Ruby to be part of the crime of the century.<br /><br />Another recent piece of work which may open conspiracy buff's minds is a revealing History Channel video entitled "The Kennedy Assassination - Beyond Conspiracy." This documentary completely negates the 1976-78 Senate Select Committee on Assassinations' contention that a conspiracy was involved. The senate committee relied on acoustics "evidence," which "Beyond Conspiracy" shows to be completely bogus (the motorcycle with the microphone stuck in the "On" position was nowhere near where the acoustics "experts" claimed).<br /><br />Conspiracy buffs have an agenda to follow (as I once did) and it isn't easy to shake their convictions, which they cling to like a cult religion. The facts of the JFK case, however, point straight at Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone killer and only at Oswald. Chasing ghosts on the grassy knoll is no substitute for the truth, which the book and video I've mentioned will bring you much closer to than all the conspiracy lore in the world.