\h/VGtle-1 L liqg 2-- 3 `JFK' is not the way Valenti remembers LBJ

Oliver Stone's " I FK" distorts lence," is to be published next history and degrades Lyndon week. Johnson with vicious lies, says Mo- Valenti's statement asked, tion Picture Assn. of America prexy "Does any sane human being truly Jack Valenti, a former aide to John- believe that President Johnson, the son. Warren Commission members, In a stinging, seven-page state- law enforcement officers, CIA, ment that Valenti said was uncon- FBI, aides, and as- nected to his role in the film indus- sorted thugs, weirdos, Frisbee try, he tackled Stone's depiction of throwers, all conspired together as a Kennedy assassination con- plotters in Garrison's wacky sight- spiracy that included then-Vice ings? President Johnson. "And then for almost 29 years Valenti dismissed the alleged nothing leaked? But you have to cover-up painted by the Oscar- believe it if you think well of any nominated best film as "quackery" part of this accusatory lunacy," plucked from a "slag heap of loony Valenti said. Garrison's book was theories" in a book by former New dismissed by Valenti as "hallucina- Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison. tory bleatings." Garrison, played by Kevin Cost- Stone said through a Warner ner in "JFK," became obsessed Bros. spokesman yesterday that he with trying to prove that President respected Valenti's loyalty to )(An- Kennedy was killed by conspira- son but found "his emotional dia- tors, not by Lee Harvey Oswald tribe off the mark." acting alone. "The overwhelming majority of However, another perspective Americans ... agree with the cen- on the assassination emerged this tral thesis of my film: that President week from Dr. Charles Crenshaw, Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy who had been part of the Parkland which included people in the gov- Memorial Hospital trauma team ernment," Stone said in a New that treated John F. Kennedy. York Times story yesterday. Crenshaw, breaking a 29-year- A call seeking comment from silence, told ABC's "20/20" that Garrison was not immediately re- Kennedy was shot from the front, turned yesterday, while Karl Mal- not from the rear, as maintained by den, president of the Academy of the Warren Commission. His Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, book, "IFK: Conspiracy of Si- Turn to page 30 FRIDAY, APRIL 3, 1992 `JFK' is not the way Valenti remembers LBJ Continued from page 3 how come places such was away filming and was unavail- faith in Garrison, whose wild sur- able for comment, an assistant mises leaked credibility from the said. start; whose proof is non-existent; Valenti, who became a special whose loose-fibered charges never assistant to Johnson immediately found allies among any group, even following the Nov. 22, 1963, assas- those who passionately support a sination in , cites an intimate "conspiracy theory"; whose in- knowledge of White House affairs dictments are as soiled as his de- in rebutting the film's portrayal of struction of an innocent man, Clay events. Shaw. It took the jury less than 30 He also defends the members of minutes to acquit Shaw of all the Warren Commission, ap- charges. pointed to investigate the slaying: "My own rebuttal to Mr. Stone "To indict these men of honor, comes down to this: I was there, along with Lyndon Johnson, is vi- and he wasn't.... cious, cruel and false." "As a newly minted Special As- Other thoughts from Valenti's sistant to the President ... I rarely letter: left the President's side during the long days and nights of his early "... in his movie, Oliver Stone presidency.... I was privy to the indicts President Lyndon Johnson innermost thoughts of the Presi- (and the Warren Commission) as a dent and I knew the views of JFK's conspirator in a vast cover-up of aides, all of whom LB/ asked to stay the assassination of President on to counsel him.... Kennedy. It is that accusation that prompts this statement.... I cannot "In scene after scene Mr. Stone plasters together the half true and and will not allow Mr. Stone to foul totally false and from that he man- the memory of Lyndon Johnson. ufactures the plausible. No wonder "I don't know how history will than many young people, gripped regard LBI a generation from now. by the movie, leave the theater con- Perhaps because of Vietnam, Pres- vinced they have been witness to ident Johnson will just have to set- the Truth. tle for being the greatest American "In much the same way, young President ever for the under- German boys and girls in 1941 educated young, the poor and the were mesmerized by Leni Reifen - old, the sick and the black, all those stahl's "Triumph of the Will," in pressed against the wall because of which Adolf Hitler was depicted as circumstances beyond their con- a new-born God. Both "IFK" and trol, and about whom few cared. "Triumph of the Will" are equally a But Lyndon Johnson cared. He propaganda masterpiece, and cared very much. That is why he equally a hoax. Mr. Stone and Leni put his political future to hazard to Reifenstahl have another genetic do something specific and lasting linkage: Neither of them carried a to remedy their plight.... disclaimer on their film that its "The question that this movie contents were mostly pure fic- doesn't ask, much less answer, is tion...."

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