Executive Action (1973)
- Genres: Crime, Drama, History
- Rating IMDb: 67
- Year: 1973
- Duration: 1:31
Summaries
Rogue intelligence agents, right-wing politicians, greedy capitalists, and free-lance assassins plot and carry out the JFK assassination in this speculative agitprop.
A dramatization about how the high level covert conspirators in the JFK assassination might have planned and plotted the assassination based on the data and facts of the case. It posits that a covert group of rogue intelligence agents, ultra-conservative politicians, unscrupulously greedy business interests, and free-lance assassins become increasingly alarmed at President Kennedy's policies, including his views on race relations, winding down the Vietnam War, and ending the oil depletion allowance. They decide to terminate him through an "executive action" utilizing three teams of well-trained snipers during JFK's visit to Dallas and place the blame on supposed CIA operative Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin.
Using on-the-record facts as the framework, a fictional account of an organized plot that led to the actual assassination of President John F. Kennedy is presented. It's late spring 1963. Harold Ferguson, a wealthy right wing American businessman, laments the possibility of liberally-minded Kennedy's reelection in 1964. As such, he has convened a small group of like minded individuals to devise a strategy for Kennedy not to be reelected. Among the group, the chief strategist is James Farrington, who has done similar work for Ferguson before. Farrington's idea: kill the President sometime before the election. His plan would have the starting point of past assassinations and assassination attempts of Presidents as its basis, all those precedents which were carried out by a lone citizen standing on his own principle, and without experience in military or revolutionary strategy. The plot would be meticulously thought out, but on the surface be made to look like a lone crazed gunman carried out the assassination on his own, that patsy of a person chosen ultimately being a Communist sympathizer named Lee Harvey Oswald who would have no idea of the actual plot. The one person who needs to be convinced is Ferguson as the sole financier, he who is an easy sell, admitting that he has authorized homicide in the past to achieve his business goals. As the plot goes into motion, they must ultimately sit back and watch it unfold to see if it happens the way Farrington believes this foolproof plan will unfold.