What do you think?
Rate this book
Appointment in Dallas: The Final Solution to the Assassination of JFK
Reissued for the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, a classic work offers a theory for a second shooter, who the author claims gained access to Dealey Plaza and delivered the shot that killed President Kennedy on that fateful day. Reissue.
- GenresNonfiction
211 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1975
52 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 11, 2013
If you like to read cia disinformation regarding the LBJ,J Edgar Hoover sponsored coup against one of the most forward and progressive thinkers of his time JFK then this book would be a good book for that.
The author was a long time stooge for the Cia within the ranks of the lapd. He did fine work covering up for the agency in 1968 when bumped off Rfk.The lack of interest most americans have for this subject always amazes me. Wake up people. JFK,MLK,RFK it was just a trio of lone nuts right? Wake up and smell your starbux.
B. Sparks
The author was a long time stooge for the Cia within the ranks of the lapd. He did fine work covering up for the agency in 1968 when bumped off Rfk.The lack of interest most americans have for this subject always amazes me. Wake up people. JFK,MLK,RFK it was just a trio of lone nuts right? Wake up and smell your starbux.
B. Sparks
July 21, 2022
Interesting perspective on the Kennedy assassination. Makes one think that the Warren Commission got it all wrong.
October 10, 2020
Interesting book by an interesting author with ties to military intelligence, the LA Police Department and the CIA.
After completing the book, read some of the reviews. I concur this book seems to be disinformation to deflect attention from the CIA. And yet the agency infiltrates the book in several scenes. The guy McDonald thinks gunned down JFK he first saw when the man burst into a CIA office and confronted a CIA operative involved in operations like the Bay of Pigs.
As usual there are contrasts. The suspect killer is a European, but is given a code name that would be Jewish in most interpretations. A clue within the misdirection? Like NASA releasing a photo of the former planet Pluto, and it contains the outline of the Disney Pluto within the image?
McDonald implies the CIA is mystified as to what really happened...and yet the contract assassin was said to be for hire by anyone, including the CIA who would use him for hits and assignments. How can the CIA use a guy and not know he might have killed the President? So the guy is not the guy?
One other thought....while the CIA is not implicated in the treasonous murder of a president, L. Fletcher Prouty in his book, The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to ASsassinate John F. Kennedy documents how the CIA flew a million Vietnamese from the North to the South. They were torn away from generations of economic stability and lifestyle and turned loose in a foreign land with no means of support. So the Vietnamese predictably became bandits to survive. In that language Prouty indicated the term bandits was easily smudged to become communists...and it was this "communist uprising" engineered by the CIA that was sold to Congress and the American people as the rationale for the war wanted by the millitary industrial establishment.
McDonald senses the plot to kill JFK was put together and funded by some rich powerful people...the kind of people who operate and get rich from war through the military industrial establishment.
This rings true in the book....and rememeber the CIA had ...by displacing a million people in a giant airlift...set the stage for war. How could they not stand by idly when a president would not champio n the war they wanted and planned?
McDonald wrote his book in 1975 and so this angle is not in his book at all...but clearly the CIA is involved in this, just from Prouty's book and the way McDonald wrote his.
Interesting that much of the book, though it is McDonald telling to the ghost writer, comes across as a novel...and the reconstruction of conversations makes it seem like fiction in a sense.
After completing the book, read some of the reviews. I concur this book seems to be disinformation to deflect attention from the CIA. And yet the agency infiltrates the book in several scenes. The guy McDonald thinks gunned down JFK he first saw when the man burst into a CIA office and confronted a CIA operative involved in operations like the Bay of Pigs.
As usual there are contrasts. The suspect killer is a European, but is given a code name that would be Jewish in most interpretations. A clue within the misdirection? Like NASA releasing a photo of the former planet Pluto, and it contains the outline of the Disney Pluto within the image?
McDonald implies the CIA is mystified as to what really happened...and yet the contract assassin was said to be for hire by anyone, including the CIA who would use him for hits and assignments. How can the CIA use a guy and not know he might have killed the President? So the guy is not the guy?
One other thought....while the CIA is not implicated in the treasonous murder of a president, L. Fletcher Prouty in his book, The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to ASsassinate John F. Kennedy documents how the CIA flew a million Vietnamese from the North to the South. They were torn away from generations of economic stability and lifestyle and turned loose in a foreign land with no means of support. So the Vietnamese predictably became bandits to survive. In that language Prouty indicated the term bandits was easily smudged to become communists...and it was this "communist uprising" engineered by the CIA that was sold to Congress and the American people as the rationale for the war wanted by the millitary industrial establishment.
McDonald senses the plot to kill JFK was put together and funded by some rich powerful people...the kind of people who operate and get rich from war through the military industrial establishment.
This rings true in the book....and rememeber the CIA had ...by displacing a million people in a giant airlift...set the stage for war. How could they not stand by idly when a president would not champio n the war they wanted and planned?
McDonald wrote his book in 1975 and so this angle is not in his book at all...but clearly the CIA is involved in this, just from Prouty's book and the way McDonald wrote his.
Interesting that much of the book, though it is McDonald telling to the ghost writer, comes across as a novel...and the reconstruction of conversations makes it seem like fiction in a sense.
January 29, 2024
The writing was so poor at first that I had to double-check that I wasn't reading a Zane Grey novel.
Then there's the author's self-stroking of his ego, how he was the best at this or that and how people kowtowed to him, etc. Was it true? Maybe, but sometimes it gets hard to believe.
As for the shooting of JFK and someone admitting they shot him, there are a number of people who make that claim.
This guy claims he shot JFK from behind. I don't believe it. If he was shot from behind, his brains would have been splattered all over the front seat. As it was, his brains were all over the lid of the trunk. That's a frontal shot. Period.
Then there's the author's self-stroking of his ego, how he was the best at this or that and how people kowtowed to him, etc. Was it true? Maybe, but sometimes it gets hard to believe.
As for the shooting of JFK and someone admitting they shot him, there are a number of people who make that claim.
This guy claims he shot JFK from behind. I don't believe it. If he was shot from behind, his brains would have been splattered all over the front seat. As it was, his brains were all over the lid of the trunk. That's a frontal shot. Period.
November 27, 2022
Just pulled this little paperback from 1975 down out of my attic. I'm on a jFK reading jag. McDonald seems to agree that there was a conspiracy and he was a CIA insider. I don't like the fake names but do plan to give this a look.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 24, 2016
I was very disappointed with this book. It starts with a questionable premise; Mr. McDonald is about to lead the security detail for the Barry Goldwater run for President, so his friend Herman Kimsey decided he "needed" to know the truth about the JFK assassination. Right. Kimsey knew the truth because the guy who actually shot the President told him the story in detail. Right. McDonald then, while working on a story about an island where the Russians were experimenting with germ warfare, asked his associates if they could contact the actual shooter. Right. And, after a few years and several incorrect identifications, they managed to put McDonald in contact with the shooter, whom he has decided to call Saul. And, of course, Saul told McDonald the entire story in the same detail as told to Kimsey years before, because, as explained in the book, assassins like to tell people about their work. Right.
The professes to be the truth, but offers no proof. And the story is full of holes. I didn't buy the story and, honestly, the writing wasn't that great. Not impressed.
The professes to be the truth, but offers no proof. And the story is full of holes. I didn't buy the story and, honestly, the writing wasn't that great. Not impressed.
April 15, 2017
I had heard about this book from a friend who is interested in history but quite frankly found it lacking. The author's creds are amazing, the list of expertise that he has in law enforcement are second to none. But I found the book reading a bit like a fiction novel, maybe it was the writing style. I also found it a bit lacking on facts, sure there were some but not many that could even be verified. I've read a few books on this subject and seen a lot of documentaries and this, by far, was the least of them. In no way did this book leave me contemplating the many issues that surround JFK's assassination.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews