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David S. Lifton

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Best Evidence Hardcover – 1 April 1982

by David Lifton (Author)

4.7 157 ratings

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Arguing that the evidence relied upon by the Warren Commission and the House Assassinations Committee was faked, Lifton describes how the cover-up plot worked and explains the numerous conflicts in the record

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Print length

510 pages
Language

English
Publisher

MacMillan Publishing Company
Publication date

1 April 1982
ISBN-10

0025718703
ISBN-13

978-0025718708
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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ MacMillan Publishing Company; 1st edition (1 April 1982)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 510 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0025718703
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0025718708

Best Sellers Rank: 1,060,821 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 1,796 in Political Violence
- 4,616 in 20th Century U.S. History
- 4,699 in Criminology

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4.7 157 ratings

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David S. Lifton

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4.7 out of 5

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Frances Stevenson

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 April 2015

Great read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 1 November 2013

I first read Best Evidence about 20 years ago (ordering it through the post in the days before the Internet) and have just finished re-reading it.

Okay, so it's an outlandish theory, but it's also one that deserves to be taken a lot more seriously than it has been. David Lifton's work manages to explain the undeniable (and mystifying) contradictions in the medical evidence in a way that makes sense.

For me, the weakest part of his argument has always been the idea that the wound-alteration (and trajectory-reversal) was intentional and pre-conceived. Given the circumstances, I find it easier to believe that any efforts to retrieve bullets were made in a well-meaning (but misguided) attempt to discover what had just happened as quickly as possible. The fact that these efforts changed the appearance of the wounds was inevitable, but probably not the original intention.

Having said that, it's still an absolutely brilliant and captivating read and there are still many parts of Lifton's work that remain to be explained. For example, the highly detailed and technical description of the condition of Kennedy's brain as found at autopsy does not (and can not) describe a brain suffering from a gunshot wound at the outset of an autopsy.

I've called this review essential, because even if you don't accept Lifton's central idea, it's by far the best analysis of the crucial medical evidence in this case and the terrible problems with it.

The evidence is what it is. So you either have to accept a totally unrealistic conspiracy of hundreds (few of whom can stick to the same story) - or you have to consider that Lifton has got it just about right.

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Mr. M. T. Quinn

Essential Reading

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 29 September 2014

Is this book not in print now? Has it not been republished agai and again? If not, why not?It is a very important book and the first to take you to the source of the conspiracy. All Americans and those who believe in real freedom and democracy should read this.

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jordan gill

Interesting at the start but becomes repetitive!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 July 2021

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Plot: The book focuses on the assassination of the US democratically elected President John F Kennedy and the assassination events and info surrounding the 22nd of November 1963 assassination. The author spent 15 years of his life from 1966 to 1981 researching the information including the Warren commission report and other info surrounding the book and presents his findings in the book.

Review: The book is fairly good for the first 300 pages but ends up becoming a bit boring after that as for someone who is not too educated on the assassination then this book is for you but to people who have already read a few JFK books it will be a bit boring. The book gives a alternative perspective stating that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the person who killed JFK and it was a part of major plot by a group of people who conspired together to deliberately cover up certain info on the assassination instead which the author states in detail.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 October 2014

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When Best Evidence was first published in 1980, it was widely ridiculed. The idea that the President's body was taken and worked on surreptitiously is inconceivable; preposterous. At least, it is until you read the book. Lifton uses not only the conventional evidence available, but also first hand interviews to determine that the body was not in the casket offloaded at Andrews Air Force base on the evening of November 22 1963.

Perhaps the best endorsement of this theory is that in the 1990s, the Assassination Records Review Board conducted interviews and collected evidence that supported Lifton's hypothesis. In fact, the ARRB uncovered even more evidence of misconduct and deception in the medical evidence. You can find out more about that by reading The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger and viewing the video series by ARRB analyst Doug Horne called Altered History on the FFF website.

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Daniel Jolley

A landmark work concerning the medical evidence in the JFK assassination

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 October 2013

I was probably thirteen or so when I first came across this book in my local bookstore. Back then, I didn't know that there was any reason to question the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald killed JFK; heck, I didn't even suspect that the American government would ever deliberately lie to the public. This book opened my eyes - and not just about the JFK assassination. It would take me a little while longer to learn to distrust every single thing the government tells me, but David Lifton definitely succeeded in convincing me that the truth about the JFK assassination was not to be found in the Warren Report. All these years later, Best Evidence remains a must-read for those searching for the truth about the events that took place in Dealey Plaza almost fifty years ago. As crowded as the field of books on this subject has grown, this book remains unique in a number of ways.

Lifton was one of the early Warren Report critics; the book was not published until 1980, but Lifton's research efforts began immediately after Life published frames from the Zapruder film. As a graduate student in physics, Lifton knew that a shot from behind would not have caused the violent "back and to the left" motion of President Kennedy's head following the moment of impact. That was the impetus of his work. It quickly became a passion that interrupted and eventually ended his graduate studies (it's pretty difficult to go through the 26 nonindexed volumes of evidence in the Warren Report while pursuing a graduate degree in physics). Unlike some researchers, he was never in this for the money; in fact, I don't know how he managed to support himself over the 15 years or so he devoted to this case. He did have one thing that other early Warren Report critics did not have, though - personal access to one of the Warren Report investigators, Wesley Liebeler. Lifton's record of his conversations with Liebeler - and the overwrought reaction of other Warren Report critics to his relationship with "the enemy" - paint quite a vivid picture of the early years of JFK assassination revisionism in the 1960s.

Lifton doesn't try to explain every facet of that awful weekend of November 22-24, 1963. You won't read much about Oswald, Ruby, or the group of standard suspects here. What distinguishes Lifton's work is his concentration on the medical evidence - ostensibly the "best evidence" in any murder case. While other early critics accused the Warren Commission as well as the autopsy doctors of covering up the truth, Lifton eventually came up with a scenario where all of these parties were actually truthful. In his view, it was the medical evidence - the body and the autopsy X-rays and photos - that lied. The autopsy doctors described completely different wounds than those reported by the Parkland doctors because the body of the slain President was altered somewhere between Dallas and the autopsy at Bethesda to make it look like JFK had been shot twice from behind. That is the crux of Lifton's argument.

While Lifton never truly succeeds at pinpointing when and where (or by whom) the body alterations were made, he does point to many confusing and unexplained aspects of the body's arrival and handling at Bethesda. His attempts to interview everyone who was there in and around the autopsy room that night led to an assembly of confusing stories involving decoy ambulances, two different coffins, and a team of mystery men on hand to watch and control everything that went on there that night. How do you explain reports of a hearse delivering a plain casket with JFK in a body bag vs. reports of the body arriving in an ornate casket with the President wrapped in a sheet? Different people reported entirely different stories taking place at entirely different times from that night in the morgue. The volume and complexity of all this information sort of gets the better of Lifton in the end, I think, as some of his attempts to figure out where and when the body was altered come across as fishing expeditions, but I really don't know what more he could have done in this regard.

Lifton's body alteration theory is - for obvious reasons - rather difficult to embrace, but that's not to say he is completely off base with his arguments. Frankly, I've long accepted the idea that almost anything is possible when it comes to this infinitely complex case. I think there was a conspiracy at the highest levels of government to eliminate Kennedy, and I think the masterminds behind it would have gone to any length - even such an unimaginable one as body alteration - to get the job done. I do not put anything past the secret rulers of this country.

Whatever you think of Lifton's theory, though, Best Evidence is still well worth reading. He walks you through his entire thinking process over the course of fifteen years of work, points out many of the inordinate number of flaws in the Warren Report and House Select Committee investigations, and raises a number of troubling questions about the conduct of numerous Secret Service agents (although he never goes so far as to point an accusing finger at them) - and he was really the first person to ask pointed questions about the autopsy results to Commander Humes, Colonel Finck, and those who X-rayed and photographed the body. This is a book that truly belongs on the shelf of anyone seeking the truth about the JFK assassination.

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Wojtek

Super interessant!

Reviewed in Germany on 31 March 2021

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Super interessant!

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Jeff Marzano

Powerful

Reviewed in the United States on 10 December 2017

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This is one of the best books about the JFK case I have ever read. The research is painstaking and convincing and Mr. Lifton's conclusions are powerful and ominous in their implications. Mr. Lifton had access to many very important players in the JFK case and he was personal friends with many people who became very helpful for his investigation.

What also makes the book interesting is the biographical information about author David Lifton. The book is written from his perspective of becoming immersed into the JFK mystery to the point where he stopped working on his Master's Degree and was subsequently expelled from the university.

Mr. Lifton was a physics and engineering major in college which gave him the ability to look at all of this in a very scientific and objective way. Sadly that's exactly what the Warren Commission and the HSCA panel were never willing or able to do. The Navy doctor who performed JFK's so called autopsy, Commander Humes, was an expert at saying things that were true but saying it in such a way that only he knew what he was talking about. That's exactly the kind of language that should never be used when discussing the results of an autopsy.

I suspect many JFK researchers have always wished someone could look at the Zapruder film, the Mary Moorman picture, and the other JFK visual evidence and see what is really there. Well someone was able to do that. His name was Tom Wilson. Wilson subjected those artifacts to his advanced photographic analysis technology which can peel away layers of light and shadow and reveal what is in those movies and pictures.

It's interesting to compare David Lifton's conclusions with what Tom Wilson said. Mr. Lifton was correct about many things but there were things he could not have known without the benefit of Tom Wilson's invention.

Among the many shocking things Tom Wilson discovered:

1. John Kennedy was hit by at least six bullets including three shots to his body. And that doesn't include the throat shot.

2. The head shot struck JFK in the right temple area and the bullet was travelling at an upward trajectory when it impacted with JFK's head. The missile fragmented into two pieces upon impact.

3. There could have been as many as 10 people shooting at JFK. There was a shooter in the Texas School Book Depository but not in the fake Oswald window. This shooter was in another window on the other side of the building.

4. Many, many changes were made to the famous Zapruder film before it was ever released to the public. The presidential limousine was 7 feet farther down the road than what the Zapruder film shows. How convenient that when the shooting started JFK was hidden behind the freeway sign in the modified Zapruder film. These alterations to the Zapruder film can be easily detected today using modern technology.

The book A Deeper, Darker Truth by Donald T. Phillips is based on Tom Wilson's work. I recommend reading this book by Mr. Lifton and then Phillips' book. Then maybe read some of Doug Horne's Inside The ARRB volumes to get the total picture about the medical evidence conspiracy.

This book by David Lifton describes a dismal, murky, gruesome abyss of murder, lies, confusion, and a massive abuse of trust and authority. According to author John M. Newman the CIA created fake connections between Oswald and the KGB when Oswald was in Mexico City. Lyndon Johnson told everyone that Lee Oswald was working for the Soviets when he assassinated JFK and if that horrible truth ever came to light World War III would begin.

John Newman calls this the World War III virus in Oswald's CIA records. And once Johnson started playing that card the truth was never going to come out of any government agencies. And it never has. No matter what evidence surfaced, what witnesses saw, etc., it would always come down to the secrecy being a matter of national security.

And hiding the truth about the JFK assassination really is a matter of national security. If the truth could ever be proven in court the entire American democratic system might start to fall apart at the seams. That's why they're still covering it up even today. The truth would raise too many questions about events like the Vietnam War and what else they may be lying about even now.

The only thing I didn't agree with Mr. Lifton about is he said Jim Garrison's Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans was a farce. Judyth Baker has now surfaced and shown that yes Clay Shaw was part of that murky CIA underworld in New Orleans when Lee Oswald was living there.

Tom Wilson appears in episode 6 of the great JFK documentary series The Men Who Killed Kennedy. The hypocrites took legal action and had some episode of this TV series banned from television forever. However they can still be viewed on the internet and I recommend that people view all 9 episodes.

A Deeper, Darker Truth: Tom Wilson's Journey into the Assassination of John F. Kennedy

Inside the Assassination Records Review Board: The U.S. Government's Final Attempt to Reconcile the Conflicting Medical Evidence in the Assassination of JFK - Volume 1

Trauma Room One: The JFK Medical Coverup Exposed

On the Trail of the Assassins: One Man's Quest to Solve the Murder of President Kennedy

Texas in the Morning: The Love Story of Madeleine Brown and President Lyndon Baines Johnson

The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ

The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson

Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination

Mary's Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F. Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision for World Peace: Third Edition

Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy

64 people found this helpful

Bonny Edwards

an I thought it was a great book. As I read I could visualize what ...

Reviewed in Canada on 8 November 2016

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Read this book many year's ago, an I thought it was a great book. As I read I could visualize what was taking place as I read. My conclusion was that Oswald WAS a patsy an did not kill Kennedy. Yes he killed the police officer an that is it. Someone I know took the book an marked in every picture that had the Grassy Knoll in a certain spot an said that is where the kill shot came from. Not behind, but from the front.

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Luigi Falasco

Good book, good seller

Reviewed in Italy on 29 November 2015

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Arrived in a short time. Seller very kind and rich in informations

Book in good condition, very interesting approach to JFK' case

FREDCHEZENKO

GREAT BOOK

Reviewed in Canada on 15 November 2021

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BEST BOOK ON JFK ASSASSINATION I HAVE READ

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Best Evidence Hardcover – 1 April 1982

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David S. Lifton

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