Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Although I have done far, far more work on this book than any other book I’ve ever written, I can honestly say I enjoyed my labor, because apart from the terrible tragedy of Kennedy’s death (other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?), the case, as any long-time assassination researcher will tell you, is endlessly intriguing and fascinating. Only one section, Oswald’s biography, was pure pain for me to write. One reason is that I am a nonfiction, true-crime writer normally working with trial transcripts, police and autopsy reports, witness statements, et cetera, and writing someone’s biography is not my cup of tea. Secondly, I was dealing with a subject (Oswald) who moved no fewer than seventeen times in a sixteen-year period before joining the Marines, and had been in the military and in Russia. Nearly every day while writing this section I spent a good part of it with a magnifying glass looking at sketchy, faint, and often difficult-to-decipher grade school, military, and other records, and trying to reconcile conflicting memories of chronological events with documentary evidence that just didn’t seem to fit. So it was an unpleasant task, but I had no choice but to “bite the bullet” and do it. I questioned when it would ever end, at one point envisioning a large, empty tub that I knew would one day be full of water, but only because of my putting one drop of water into it at a time. I took to telling people I was on a “lead diet” (biting the bullet) and working “eight days a week,” because it was the only section of the book I wrote in which almost without exception, I worked on the case throughout the night in my dreams. I thought the “eight days a week” line was original and clever and so did those I used it on until one day someone reminded me, “Hey, that’s a Beatles song,” and it rang a distant bell to me. It was a great relief to finally finish this section and return to the luxury of working only seven days a week.

  I’ve always been able to work seven days a week for months on end, sometimes, when required, a hundred or more hours a week, without manifesting any physical problems. In other words, I find work easy. When I was a prosecutor, trying a two-or three-month murder case before a jury wasn’t fatiguing at all, although I knew some trial lawyers who, after a two-or three-day drunk driving case, would say they had to go to Palm Springs to recuperate. For whatever reason, I always seemed to be immune to the deprivations of hard work. But I had never encountered the Kennedy assassination before. Although I feel I can still get up and run around the block without any problem, for the first time in my life I feel (I’m not sure and certainly hope it’s not true) that the research and writing of this book may have taken a toll on me. And one reason is that, as I’ve indicated, there simply is no end to the case, and more than once I wondered if I had bitten off more than I could chew.

  What I can say with a lot more confidence is that without all the help I got from so many people along the way in this long journey of mine, not only wouldn’t this book be the book it is, but I would have had a much more difficult time reaching the finish line to write these acknowledgments.

  Bibliography

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