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5 comments about Real Answers: The True Story Told by Gary Cornwell, Deputy Chief Counsel for the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations, in Charge of the Investigation of the John F. Kennedy Assassination.

1. Ready to take a trip into the HCSA's records and find some real answers to many unanswered questions over the last 30 plus years? Gary Cornwell has done just that with his excellent work Real Answers.

   As a former prosecutor for the Department of Justice, Cornwell knows how to obtain and present facts. This book is the perfect example of, what I would consider, his best work. Cornwell has an exceptional ability to make the reader want to know more.

   Unable to put this book down, I was completely drawn into 1963 and the streets of Dallas. Cornwell presented information in a clear, concise and well-researched manner. Cornwell is able to sift through the assumption and present the Real Answers.

   For anyone interested in the JFK assassination, or for those researching the case, here is a definite addition to your collection. I have read over twenty books on the subject and for the first time, Real Answers makes real sense. A job well done.




2. Ready to take a trip into the HCSA's records and find some real answers to many unanswered questions over the last 30 plus years? Gary Cornwell has done just that with his excellent work Real Answers.

   As a former prosecutor for the Department of Justice, Cornwell knows how to obtain and present facts. This book is the perfect example of, what I would consider, his best work. Cornwell has an exceptional ability to make the reader want to know more.

   Unable to put this book down, I was completely drawn into 1963 and the streets of Dallas. Cornwell presented information in a clear, concise and well-researched manner. Cornwell is able to sift through the assumption and present the Real Answers.

   For anyone interested in the JFK assassination, or for those researching the case, here is a definite addition to your collection. I have read over twenty books on the subject and for the first time, Real Answers makes real sense. A job well done.




3. Cornwell had access to much or what has been "sealed" in the Warren and HSCA investigations...this amounts to a lot of nothing when you realize just how sanitized, limited, and incomplete those investigations were. So many times the leads and "rabbit trails" that should have been followed were not. It's all too apparent that Jack Ruby's investigation didn't go deep enough, that the HSCA was an organizational fiasco with political turf battles promoting certain views over another, and yet there was some value in the HSCA looking a little deeper than the Warren group did. In his unique role, Cornwell should have had more to say, but he merely ads to the sham forced upon us. If you want something more scholarly and in depth, I would look to "Bloody Treason" by Noel Twyman, "Cover Up" by Stewart Galanor, or "Assassination Science" by Jim Fetzer and company. "Real Answers" only skims a small surface of what information could be told. It's too bad for the reader that it doesn't go more into the areas which need to be told.



4. Although the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) in the late 1970s made significant progress in beginning to piece together the Kennedy assassination jigsaw puzzle, you would never know it from this book. The HSCA did a great deal of work in interviewing and assessing the anti-Castro Cubans that were responsible for the assassination, but you will need to read other materials to learn that--it isn't covered in this book at all. If you want a book that focuses on the work of the HSCA, far better to get Gaeton Fonzi's The Last Investigation. He was the investigator for the HSCA who focused on the anti-Castro Cubans, and developed information pertinent to the case. His book is well-written and a must read. Fonzi's book goes in depth into some of the most important JFK-assassination related issues that are essential for an understanding of the assassination. Cornwell's book, on the other hand, is extremely superficial, the opposite of Fonzi's work. Cornwell says little beyond that there was a conspiracy. You won't learn anything about the nature of the conspiracy in this book. He either slept through the investigation, or through the writing of his book about it.



5. This book, written by former Deputy Chief Counsel to the HSCA Gary Cornwell, is an o.k. book, factually speaking, but a good read, nonetheless. No major revelations.
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2 comments about Target Hitler: The Plots to Kill Adolf Hitler.

1. Most books about the Third Reich mention the von Stauffenberg plot (sometimes called the General's Plot) against Hitler, and a few allude to "other" plots, but Target Hitler attempts to provide a history of not only the General's Plot, but the other serious (and sometimes tragically comic) plots against Hitler. Contrary to some other writings on the subject, Duffy & Ricci assert that Rommel was not a conspirator in the Stauffenberg scheme, but simply one of the many officers who chose to remain silent about the plot, waiting for the risks to be taken by others.

   There were plots discussed here that were completely new to me, such as the bomb that appears to have been planted with Himmler's active assistance -- though it is unclear whether this was an internal power struggle of Himmler to replace Hitler, or an attempt to produce a plot for propaganda purposes, for which it was well used.

   There are tragicomic efforts here, such as Maurice Bavaud's. Bavaud was an anti-Communist Swiss seminary student who sought to assassinate Hitler for cozying up to the Communists -- and thought he was going to succeed using a .25 pocket pistol, which even Bavaud knew was only accurate enough with this gun to kill Hitler if he could get with 25 feet of his target! Unfortunately, Hitler walked down the wrong side of the street in Munich in commemoration of the Beer Hall Putsch.

   Duffy & Ricci also demonstrate that, contrary to the view taken by some other historians, the General's Plot was not simply the result of the German officer corps attempting to save their own necks once the war was lost, but the last in a long series of efforts made before the war to remove Hitler from power, out of opposition to the immorality of National Socialist Party rule. Much of the opposition was founded on the belief that Hitler's actions in provoking wars, passing of the Nuremburg laws, and other such actions against the Jews, were contrary to Christianity. Especially among the military and diplomatic opposition, this Christian basis to opposition to Hitler created a serious problem, because of a profound reluctance to commit murder, even of someone such as Hitler. Eventually, as the nature of the brutality of the Nazi policies became impossible to miss, the major plotters, such as von Stauffenberg, overcame their reluctance. The plot to depose Hitler became a plot to assassinate.

   After the war, many officers sought to find protection in the argument, "I was only following orders." Duffy & Ricci provide an example of the traditional German military view with a quote from General Beck's memorandum of July 16, 1938:

   "Vital decisions for the future of the nation are at stake. History will indict these commanders [who blindly follow Hitler's orders] of blood guilt if, in the light of their professional and political knowledge, they do not obey the dictates of their conscience. A soldier's duty to obey ends when his knowledge, his conscience, and his sense of responsibility forbid him to carry out a certain order."

   There were many officers in the German military who, because they had sworn a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler in the early days of the National Socialist government of Germany, were reluctant to directly participate in the plot against Hitler -- but were ready to help as soon as Hitler was dead.

   There were other factions as well, including labor leaders not already incarcerated, and various Social Democrats. While they and the aristocratic conservative elements that made up the plot were not able to completely agree on what the new Germany should be, they were able to reach agreement that Hitler had to be removed, one way or another.

   The courage of many of the conspirators is astonishing. Duffy & Ricci recount a number of instances where high officers put plastic explosive charges in their pockets, started the fuses, then attempted to get close enough to Hitler to grab hold. Other generals attempted to enter Hitler's presence while armed, in the hopes of getting at least one lethal wound inflicted on Hitler before being killed themselves.

   Hitler's luck is also astonishing. Plot after plot were foiled by Hitler's habit of changing plans and schedules at the last moment. The General's Plot, however, failed because many elements in the plot failed to take action immediately after the bomb went off -- and in failing to take action, provided enough time for Hitler loyalists to mobilize.

   One annoying error is that throughout the book the military intelligence organization, which was a center of the conspiracy against Hitler, even going so far as to give military intelligence ID cards to Berlin Jews, to enable them to leave the country safely posing as military intelligence officers, is consistently misspelled as "Abwer" instead of "Abwehr." Since the authors have relied heavily on memoirs of survivors of the plots, this error is all the more mystifying.

   The book concludes with a description of what finally happened to the major participants in the General's Plot. The courage of these people, confronting the Nazi People's Court, destroyed whatever propaganda value these trials might have had. As Field Marshal Erwin von Witzleben told Judge Freisler, "You can hand us over to the executioner, but in three months' time this outraged and suffering people will call you to account and drag you alive through the mud of the streets."




2. This book is amazing read for everyone interested in the little known and mysterious folds of Hitler's life. Mr Duffy presents at least 25 attempts to kill Hitler that had been made before the well known Stauffenberg plot of July 1944. I was surprised to learn that attempts against Hitler's life were made even in the early 1920s, that many individuals made desperate trials and paid with their lives and that even Himmler may be the mastermind behind a bomb explosion in Munich which missed Hitler only for a few minutes. The Stauffenberg affair is also analysed in a simple but terrific way, with all the interesting details. The author also gives some clues of how Hitler managed to escape death so many times and one of this is surely his love for the unpredictable: "Most assassination plots relied on Hitler's adherence to a predetermined agenda, but the assassins were invariably thwarted by Hitler's practice of avoiding routine or established schedules in his travels. Hitler's policy was to live his life "irregularly", as he put it. "Walk, drive and travel at irregular times and unexpectedly" was his personal formula for security against assassins". Some times though, he was saved just from his intuition, when he apparently sensed that something was wrong with the attitude of officers who met or invited him. The author's conclusion is very realistic and interesting: "Was Providence really on Hitler's side, as he so often claimed? In truth the answer is simple. The men who plotted the destruction of the Nazi government were simply not revolutionaries. They were not assassins. Many of them were too deeply religious to act in a manner required to bring down a bloodthirsty tyrannical government. Such an act requires men who can become as bloodthirsty as their opponents". No maps or photographs are included in the book. There are also some annoying and persistent errors, like spelling Abwehr as Abwer, or Speidel as Spiedel etc. but this is a minor problem which does not damage the excellent value of this book.

3 comments about Killer: The Game of Assassination.

1. This book is awesome!!! The idea behind the book is to give the reader all the information they need to play a game of Killer a.k.a. Assassination. The point behind this popular game is to use either water guns, household objects, whatever, as a method to "kill" your opponent or opponents. This book gives different gaming scenarios like Mafia and Round Robin, as well as plenty of methods for killing. The best part of the book is this last part which lists tons of ways to get your opponent like taping a note under their car hood like a car bomb, poisoning their food and drinks by a similar method, or even setting up contraptions to drop "acid" on their head when they open the door! The beauty of these games is that they are done in real life, not sitting around a table ...like in D&D. Playing one of these games can make you a little paranoid that the world is out to get you, but it is fun! This book is a must have for any lovers of the game and is well worth the price for all of the information inside.



2. I had the opportunity to participate in and run a few of these games back in high school. This manual makes it extremely easy to set up and play a game tailored to whatever situation. It's very easy to read, and present the material in a manner that's easy to under stand & comprehensive. The hardest part about running this game is finding people who will be honest and take the game seriously. This game can still be fun, even in a post-September 11th world (just use common sense when setting up the rules). I highly recommend it.



3. Nowhere is safe from sticky and evil traps.
   
   
   An entertaining idea for running around with a group of friends and leaving notes saying 'hah-hah I just atomised you with my death trap that you forgot to account for', while just noticing the sticky mess they left on your door handle indicating an insidious contact poison is now all over your hand.
   
   A fair bit of fun and hi-jinks.

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