A Cruel and Shocking Act

The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination

By: Philip Shenon

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff, Philip Shenon (prologue)

A groundbreaking, explosive account of the Kennedy assassination that will rewrite the history of the 20th century's most controversial murder investigation. The questions have haunted our nation for half a century: Was the President killed by a single gunman? Was Lee Harvey Oswald part of a conspiracy? Did the Warren Commission discover the whole truth of what happened on November 22, 1963?

Philip Shenon, a veteran investigative journalist who spent most of his career at The New York Times, finally provides many of the answers. Though A Cruel and Shocking Act began as Shenon's attempt to write the first insider's history of the Warren Commission, it quickly became something much larger and more important when he discovered startling information that was withheld from the Warren Commission by the CIA, FBI, and others in power in Washington. Shenon shows how the commission's 10-month investigation was doomed to fail because the man leading it - Chief Justice Earl Warren - was more committed to protecting the Kennedy family than getting to the full truth about what happened on that tragic day.

A taut, narrative, Shenon's audiobook features some of the most compelling figures of the 20th century: Bobby Kennedy, Jackie Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, J. Edgar Hoover, Chief Justice Warren, CIA spymasters Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, as well as the CIA's treacherous "molehunter", James Jesus Angleton.

Based on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to the surviving commission staffers and many other key players, Philip Shenon's authoritative, scrupulously researched book will forever change the way we think about the Kennedy assassination and about the deeply flawed investigation that followed.

Includes a prologue read by the author.

©2013 Philip Shenon (P)2013 Macmillan Audio

Lots of interesting information

This book brings an interesting perspective on the Warren Commission's work and on many of the historical figures who were involved in investigating the assassination of President Kennedy.

A huge contribution to understanding the JFK Assassination and the flawed Warren Commission investigation

Phil Shenon has written one of the most important scholarly works on the JFK Assassiation in the past 30 years. He dug where the Warren Commission would not or could not. it begins and ends with a focus on Mexico City and Oswald's trip there approximately seven weeks prior to the Kennedy assassination. Shenon went to Mexico City and spoke to figures who were present to confirm or deny the presence of Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City at a party attended by high level individuals and Cuban communist officials.

For the Warren Commission apologists,...

What was the most interesting aspect of this story? The least interesting?

This story was told from the point of view of those who worked on the commission. It was interesting to hear how some of the members changed their views as the investigation progressed and how some stuck with their initial impressions no matter what evidence they came across. At first they decried the conspiracy theorists, but later understood why people still questioned who was actually involved in this henious crime. Everyone comes in for their share of criticism but in the end, the CIA, the Hoover era FBI and the Secret Service all still need to account for their lapses in sharing information before and after the assassination. Is it any wonder that conspiracy theories thrive when so many questions remain unanswered?

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

The narrator was good.

Could you see A Cruel and Shocking Act being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

Not really. If Hollywood got hold of this, a lot of the historical facts would probably be lost in favor of more drama.

Major journalistic achievement

From the first words to the last this book never ceases to surprise and alarm. It’s an exhaustive distillation of a mountain of internal documents enhanced by interviews with Warren Commission insiders and related persons. This investigation confirms in detail what is obvious in retrospect, that the investigation was botched and the the CIA and FBI stonewalled the commission at every turn to throw them off the trail of possible Oswald connections to Soviet and Cuban intelligence and to cover up their agency’s culpability in an assassination that could have been prevented. They did such an effective job that we can’t ever know for sure whether or not a conspiracy existed. I recommend without reservation.

Unbelievably rich in research

A deep thorough dive into the events, people, evidence and assumptions surrounded the 1963 assassination of JFK.