Smoking Gun documentary seeks to answer the question: Who shot JFK?

A NEW investigative documentary offers a compelling explanation of the JFK assassination.

A scene from the compelling documentary JFK: The Smoking Gun.

MANY of us have that lurking, nagging feeling that something important is being kept secret, that things are going on behind our backs; otherwise why would conspiracy theories be laid out so confidently and so sensationally?

Is it just possible that the paranoia behind our obsessions with political assassinations, gender and race relations, stalkers and hackers, mind control, bureaucracies and the power of corporations and governments is based on something tangible?

I'm always amazed at the amount of work that goes into the creation of these theories, whether it's the way governments are covering up the evidence of UFOs or the deeply held notion that mass school shootings in the US are part of a government hoax aimed at taking away people's guns.

The "who shot JKF?" conspiracies are still virulent as the 50th anniversary of his shooting approaches this month. Be assured though: it's possible JFK: The Smoking Gun, a quite mesmerising, shocking documentary film airing this week on SBS, will lay much intrigue to rest. It certainly convinced me, for the moment anyway, at least until the next incontrovertible theory surfaces.

The film is the culmination of celebrated former detective Colin McLaren's four-year investigation into what he calls "the holy grail of conspiracy theories", a monster of a cold case, and "the perfect example of a riddle wrapped in an enigma and shrouded in mystery". He's so right. Through five decades it's been like watching one of those mesmerising genre overlap TV shows: The X Files mixed with The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone and Altered States, all of which dealt with varying degrees of conspiracy, science and the occult.

The shooting, on a perfect Texan autumn day in 1963, was arguably the most tragic event of its kind, leading to more conjecture than any other public death in our time. Was it Lee Harvey Oswald alone, the Cubans, the mob, the Soviets, a UFO, the cartel of international bankers and industrialists known as the Illuminati, the CIA, J. Edgar Hoover, LBJ, Richard Nixon, or the jealous boyfriend of one of Jack Kennedy's many conquests?

Something else happened, too, when Oswald fired that Italian-made Mannlicher-Carcano bolt-action rifle bearing serial number C2766 from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building. Out of a pervasive distrust of government authorities to tell the truth, a sense of unease about the way law-abiding rank-and-file Americans were - and still are - being played for suckers by unaccountable and unseen powers began to seep into popular culture.

Ever since the demise of the 35th US president, as writer Wallace Baine suggested recently, the notion that clandestine forces sabotage democracy through covert, government-sanctioned violence has been an abiding trope of crime novels, films and TV series.

When it comes to popular culture, we all take for granted the idea that the world works the way it does just to serve the forces of conservative big business; perhaps it has something to do with a despondent sense of a looming dystopian future of diminished resources, global warming and increasing terrorism. What if it turned out to have no basis in fact whatsoever?

JFK: The Smoking Gun is produced by Australia's Cordell Jigsaw Zapruder and Canada's Muse Entertainment, and is an intriguing co-production between SBS, Discovery Channel Canada and US cable channel Reelz. It will have you debating forensics, ballistics and methods of detection for weeks. (During that time, to help your deliberations, SBS is presenting a series of films on the Kennedys, including One PM Central Standard Time, a doco about the moment Walter Cronkite announced the news of JFK's assassination.)

McLaren, a veteran Australian homicide detective, spent 4 1/2 years on his own cold case forensic investigation of the assassination. His inquiries mark the first and only time a qualified homicide detective has carefully analysed the complete catalogue of evidence and testimony surrounding the shooting.

He's sanguine, committed and insistent, and easily reminds one of the great fictional cold case detectives such as Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch, a tough cop haunted by all the cases he failed to solve, by every killer or rapist he failed to catch. McLaren's presentational style is unassuming, eschewing showiness; his only purpose is to communicate and explain. ("It's all about having the patience of a spider," he says.)

What is so gripping, just as in fictional crime, are the procedures of policing: routine interrogation, painstaking scrutiny of bureaucratic records, legwork, the use of witnesses and, especially, serendipitous trial and error. Not that there's much of that, though there's a lot of empathy at work. (Like McLaren, I've also stood in the window of the Texas School Book Depository from where Oswald took his shots at the passing motorcade at that extreme angle, and thought: "No way." You instantly become part of the scene, measuring angles, computing probabilities, identifying with the victims and feeling your way into the strange character of the gunman.)

McLaren's investigation, in fact, parallels and shadows that of Howard Donahue, a Baltimore gunsmith, marksman and firearms expert who spent 25 years conducting his own inquiry into Kennedy's death. With Bonar Menninger, a Kansas City journalist, he published the book Mortal Error: The Shot that Killed JFK about his research and findings.

Menninger followed up on Donahue's work, verified Donahue's sources and evidence, and is a key witness in McLaren's investigation. "My reaction to reading Mortal Error was profound and it was one of the finest, if not the finest, true-crime book I've ever read," he says in the film. "His ballistics are outstanding, faultless and beautifully explained. It actually made me want to jump in with Donahue at some point in my future and help him out."

Donahue examined the ballistic and forensic evidence, including the trajectories and performance of the bullets fired, and concluded that the shot that struck Kennedy in the head did not come from Oswald but from a second shooter. Despite criticism, Donahue held firmly to his views, repeating his findings to the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1977 and holding to them until his death in 1999.

McLaren focused strictly on the available crime scene evidence, including the full range of witness statements taken at the time of the shooting. He had at his disposal witness testimonies and autopsy reports that had been locked away by the US government but released during Bill Clinton's presidency.

He discovered detailed explanations of how it appeared certain JFK was hit by two distinct types of bullets fired from two different angles, as well as explosive evidence from key medical witnesses who participated in the autopsy but who were forced to sign oaths of silence - and who finally decided, decades later, to speak the truth of what they saw.

The Smoking Gun sees McLaren using ballistics, forensic evidence, eyewitness accounts and buried testimonies to conclude that the fatal gunshot came from a Secret Service agent riding in the car behind the president.

McLaren also reveals the Secret Service cover-up that followed JFK's assassination, using exhibits and interviews that have been previously hidden. And, as McLaren says in his just published book of the same title, what's so fascinating for the dedicated cop show fan or true TV crime nut is not so much the idea that the JFK murder is the ultimate whodunnit, it is the inside look at the way investigators get it wrong.

Tunnel vision, lack of resources, poor crime scene management, jumping the gun and playing to the media were all ticked off by the Dallas boys, McLaren discovered, leaving many stones unturned and so many avenues unvisited. "It was always going to be a crime to attract the crazies."

So McLaren's documentary convincingly purports to reveal what really happened that day: that there was a second shooter who fired his weapon accidentally and who was really responsible for the fatal shot to Kennedy - and subsequently one of the greatest cover-ups in American history.

This will really get the conspiracy buffs going, especially when it's released in the US, just after it airs here.

The film unfolds smoothly, reminding me of the historical thrillers of American author Ace Atkins, a brilliant writer I've just discovered, who uses characters from his country's true crime history to tell fictionalised stories of the best and worst of morality, and the ambiguity in between.

There are enough characters and intriguing situations in McLaren's work to fill several novels - "It's a lot like a Hollywood synopsis for a screenplay," he says - but here it's all real, the many enactments staged with just the right sense of late-50s noir.

It is engrossing and emphatic TV, stylishly directed by Malcolm McDonald, who knows all the ruses of the contemporary TV doco.

But will McLaren's exemplary detective work relieve the shadow of doubt that many of us had to live under for five decades?

Probably not. We have to have someone else to symbolically blame for our own predicaments, someone out there who is out to get us. Nothing happens randomly after all, does it?

DISCOVERY Channel has The Lost JFK Tapes, a slightly heavy-handed look at the events across the four days of the Kennedy assassination and the shooting of Oswald. It intercuts rather repetitive interviews with reporters and Secret Service men, who no doubt would have little time for McLaren's forensic conclusions.

But it does capture vividly the tumultuousness as well as the solemnity of the tragic weekend in November, the utter chaos of the crime scene that so concerned McLaren, and the bedlam of police HQ and the Parkland Hospital, where Kennedy was taken.

It's easy to see how the seeds for conspiracy-mongering were laid that very day. Shots were heard from different directions at Dealey Plaza and eyewitnesses are uncertain about the timing of when the president seemed to be struck by bullets. And I've always wondered just why so many spectators and bystanders were present at the various crime scenes, mingling, shouting and jostling.

But this film completely confused me. I was sure when I started watching that it was something I had seen before, and initially I had high expectations after seeing JFK: The Smoking Gun, wanting to test some of McLaren's arguments.

There's a National Geographic doco of the same title that is captivating if you have any interest in the events surrounding the assassination; the Discovery film seems to use much of the same footage as well as sharing the title, but by comparison is clumsy and a little dimwitted. The original, a remarkable record assembled in an unprecedented two-hour film, detailed the events of those four days in a way not seen in more than four decades, letting the images unfold in real time. What set it apart from so much documentary coverage of the tragedy was a kind of "you are there as it happens" approach.

The original film from producer and director Tom Jennings is based on the archives of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, a wonderfully orchestrated series of moments recorded on film, tape and radio. For more than 45 years, news footage and radio reports of Kennedy's assassination and the days following quietly languished in Dallas, first kept under wraps by the news stations who owned them, then in the vault of a museum dedicated to preserving the memory of the day Kennedy was cut down.

And Jennings's film is all original tape from that day and all from the local Dallas airwaves, largely shot by three local television stations, with some home movie footage thrown in as well. Though some of the images appeared in national broadcasts, much of what these crews filmed was not seen outside the Dallas TV market. Jennings digitally captured the material, saved from obsolete videotape, and electronically fine-tuned it into a masterful piece of documentary.

What is so compelling is the artful way Jennings avoids the conventional TV documentary intrusions. There are no present-day interviews with former Secret Service agents or functionaries sharing their memories; no interpretative commentary from history professors and no booming voiceover narration.

I still remember one startling image. When news of Kennedy's death comes to the Trade Mart where he was due to speak, a black waiter begins to weep quietly and then wipe away his tears; then a man silently takes down the seal of the president from the podium where JFK was to have addressed the expectant crowd.

JFK: The Smoking Gun, Sunday, 8.30pm, SBS One.

JFK: The Lost Tapes airs Tuesday, November 21, 8.30pm, Discovery.