David Mamet: Lee Harvey Oswald Was 'Obviously a CIA Low-level Throwaway'
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and film director talked with Bill Maher about the JFK assassination, including a script he wrote about doctoring of the Zapruder film
Award-winning playwright, screenwriter and film director David Mamet doubts Lee Harvey Oswald took any shots on Nov. 22, 1963. The accused assassin of President John F. Kennedy was a “perfect patsy,” Mamet added in a recent interview with comedian and political commentator Bill Maher.
What’s more, Mamet said, Oswald “was fairly obviously a CIA low-level throwaway.”
The Pulitzer Prize winner went on to reveal that he had penned a fictional movie script about a man who doctored the Zapruder film.
Mamet, who just published his book “The Disenlightenment: Politics, Horror and Entertainment,” appeared on Maher’s ”Club Random” program, and the two discussed a range of issues over 90 minutes (the JFK discussion is at 42:04).
The subject of the Kennedy assassination came up because Mamet was originally set to direct a “mob did it” feature film on the subject, co-written with the great nephew of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana. Shia LaBeouf was to play Oswald, Louis CK would have played Jack Ruby. John Travolta, Al Pacino and Courtney Love were also slated to appear.
But the project suffered numerous setbacks. Mamet was replaced by Academy Award-winning director Barry Levinson (“Diner,” “Rain Man”). The cast for the film now includes Jessica Chastain, Brendan Fraser and Bryan Cranston, however the production is mired in lawsuits.
‘Everybody Knows it’s Faked’
While Maher agreed that there was a conspiracy of some sort behind JFK’s killing, Mamet’s pointed views on the assassination appeared to take the outspoken comedian aback.
“You don’t think [Oswald] shot the president?” Maher asked, voice slightly aquiver with incredulity.
“No, I don’t think so,” replied Mamet. There were “certainly other gunmen and I don’t know that he was one.”
Maher, for his part, saw the assassination as an unholy marriage between New Orleans mob boss Carlos Marcello, gun-runner David Ferrie and right-wing former FBI agent Guy Banister. He expressed wonder that more isn’t made of Oswald’s trip to the Soviet Union.
Mamet declared that Marcello had an affair with Oswald’s mother. (That claim is not especially supported by evidence, though Marguerite Oswald did supposedly date Marcello crew members.)
Mamet continued to blow Maher’s mind when asked about the authenticity of the Zapruder film.
“Everybody knows it’s faked,” said Mamet, who has been nominated for several Academy and Tony awards.
According to Mamet, several frames are missing from the film taken by Abraham Zapruder that captured Kennedy’s killing; he also claimed that blood spatter seen in the gruesome frame 313 had been painted on to the film.
Discussion of Zapruder led Mamet to reveal he’d written a script about a Hollywood technical whiz who helped doctor the famous 26-second film. Academy Award-winner Cate Blanchett offered to appear in the film for scale, Mamet said, but funding fell through.
Mamet also claimed that Zapruder had once been a member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the World War II-era US intelligence agency that morphed into the CIA. (It’s not clear if he meant that literally, or that in his script Zapruder was part of the OSS. There is no evidence that Zapruder had been a member of the OSS.)
Mamet said that for his money, “The Parallax View,” a 1974 thriller starring Warren Beatty, is the best film about the Kennedy assassination (though the movie explores the case thematically, not directly).
He noted that his friend, the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, told him that he had learned while clerking in Washington, D.C., at the time of the assassination that the truth of the incident was covered up for “national security reasons.” (Mamet seemed to suggest that Dershowitz was clerking for someone on the Warren Commission; in fact, Dershowitz was clerking for Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg.)
Maher agreed the truth was covered up in the JFK assassination, and also concurred that the single-bullet theory is bunk.
Nevertheless, Mamet noted in regard to the single-bullet theory, “anyone who objects is a conspiracy nut.”
Speaking of the so-called “magic bullet” — CE 399 — James DiEugenio, the highly respected JFK researcher who appeared before Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets in April, told of having lunch with Mamet and Oliver Stone in Los Angeles in 2023.
Mamet asked for the lunch after viewing Stone's documentary “JFK Revisited.” According to DiEugenio, Mamet brought the script of his Zapruder film, entitled "Black Bird," to the lunch.
"That lunch originated with him e mailing Oliver after he saw ‘JFK Revisited.’ He said he used to be part of a pistol shooting team and if CE 399 did everything the Commission said it did then he was a monkey's uncle. He has nothing but scorn for the Warren Report."
David Mamet made an important statement in his discussion with Bill Maher: namely, that the Zapruder film is an altered film, and that the "head explosion" in frame 313 is fake, i.e., painted on in that frame (and that other frames associated with the "headshot" are missing from the film). Unfortunately, Mamet made three mistakes about the Z film when talking about his unproduced screenplay about the Z film's alteration: mistake #1 was when he said the original film was not developed in Dallas; actually, it was, and the ARRB commissioned a report that proved this as an undeniable fact; mistake #2 was when he said that the film was altered in Los Angeles. The film was actually altered at Kodak's R&D laboratory called "Hawkeyeworks" in Rochester, N.Y. at Kodak Headquarters, on November 24, 1963. You can read all about this in chapter 14 of my book, "Inside the ARRB." Mistake #3 was when Mamet claimed that the Zapruder film was shot at a speed of 24 frames per second; in actuality, Zapruder's Bell and Howell camera was designed to operate at 16 fps, and ran a bit fast, according to the FBI, at an average of 18.3 fps. [The 24 fps cited by Mamet is the operating speed for commercial motion pictures, not home movie cameras like Zapruder's.] I would love to see Mamet make such a film, but the actual tale of the film's interrupted chain-of-custody and alteration the weekend of the assassination is already dramatic enough; it doesn't need to be fictionalized in a way that introduces errors into the story. The real story is dramatic enough. Viewers should watch two YouTube programs to learn about this: "L'image 313," and "The Zapruder Film Mystery." They both recount what happened to the film the weekend of the assassination, based on my 2011 video interview of the CIA's Dino Brugioni, and interviews of other CIA personnel by the ARRB staff. Mamet should become more familiar with the FACTS surrounding the film's alteration---I don't think he is familiar with the actual facts, as revealed by his misstatements. David Mamet should rewrite his screenplay based on the factual account of what happened to the Zapruder film the weekend of the assassination, instead of creating a completely fictional story centered on Hollywood. I believe it was hubris on Mamet's part to make Hollywood the center of the alteration story; he should become acquainted with the true facts of the alteration, and make a film about those dramatic events. END
Anyone interested in alleged alteration of the Z film should read Doug Horne's recent comments on this site. There is unquestionably a crude black patch which was applied to the right lower occiput in Z-317. JFK's in-house film analyst (Bruno _____?) who studied the U-2 photos of the Cuban missile sites in 1962, saw the film within 24 hours and said the publicly distributed version is NOT what he saw.
In addition, look at the photos of JFK's shirt, preferably in color. The left side is pristine; the right side is completely smeared with blood and detritis. Listen to the DPD motorcycle outriders, one of whom was splattered with debris as he rode left outboard of the president. Finally, look at the Nix film after its frame matching Z-313. You can see debris flowing rearward on the trunk of the Lincoln.