I just finished watching the 2022 documentary, “The Assassin and Mrs. Paine,” at the suggestion 0f Matt Orfalea.

I also recommend this well-crafted documentary. That said, every time I revisit the facts around Kennedy’s assassination it feels like a kick in the stomach. The bits and pieces that we know do not add up to the official narrative. And, as mentioned in the film, why is the U.S. government still withholding thousands of records from the public, even though the release of all remaining documents should have been made public  in 2017 under a 1992 law? It’s been more than 60 years since the murder of a U.S. President, yet one or more people still have significant political power, as well as the incentive and the ability, to keep this compelling information from the public. The official narrative has dozens of holes you could drive a truck through. This film carefully explores many of those holes, suggesting disturbing answers along the way.

My gut tells me that sweet old Ruth Paine knows a hell of a lot more than she’s currently admitting. If so, however, why was she willing to sit and talk with the film-maker at length in 2022? Because she is still on the clock? Because it is her job to maintain the narrative (for the same reasons that thousands of records remain secret?). Or was she duped many years ago and needs to maintain the narrative for self-preservation?  Maybe many of us would prefer that the murder be committed by one madman rather than acknowledge that a coup of the U.S. government happened in plain daylight, given a enormous assist by the Warren Commission, one member being Allen Dulles, who Kennedy fired as CIA Director in 1961 following the failed Bay of Pigs  mission. As Philadelphia lawyer Vince Salandria, an fervent critic of the official narrative stated, You can’t close the circle without the Paines. There is no way they can be innocent. No way.”

At the end of the film, he added:

There is no mystery here. It’s all self-evident. It was a coup. It was designed to be a false mystery and the debate would be eternal and why it [killing JFK] was done – forgotten. To commit yourself to the truth here, you are changing your real identity from a citizen of a democracy to a subject of a military empire. A big step.

Here’s one other mini-spoiler: One woman who was interviewed in the film said that right after Kennedy was assassinated, she called her sister, a fifth grade teacher in Texas. Her sister told her that immediately after the class learned that Kennedy was assassinated, the students cheered because they considered Kennedy to be a communist. I had never heard anything like this before.