02VID SCOTTY;11/01,14:3611/2 1 tv DONE: TV COLUMN - 16 in.
Jack Anderson isn't trying to do much with American Expose: Who Murdered J.F.K.?, his prime time investigative special that airs tonight at 7 p.m. on Ch. 4.Just rewrite history, that's all.
"I believe I have enough evidence to overturn the report of the Warren Commission investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy," the nationally syndicated columnist said during a recent telephone interview. "I don't have absolute proof. I don't have a smoking gun. But then, neither did the Warren Commission.
"What I do have," Anderson continued, "is compelling evidence - enough, I think, to re-write history."
Anderson will present his evidence tonight in a two-hour special that focuses on the story of Johnny Roselli, who he identifies as "a leading underworld figure during the early 1960s." It's a complex story, involving a pre-Bay of Pigs attempt by the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro - an attempt that was foiled, according to Anderson, by a Cuban Mafia insider.
"Castro had a news conference," Anderson said. "He announced that the CIA was trying to kill Cuban leaders, and he warned them that two could play at that game. Two months later, President Kennedy was killed."
Anderson claims that Castro felt "he had to kill Kennedy before Kennedy killed him." So he turned the project over to the Cuban Mafia, who found "the perfect fall guy" in Lee Harvey Oswald. With the help of an American Mafia hit team (remember all the reports of shots being fired from "behind the grassy knoll"? Anderson claims those shots came from U.S. mobsters), the execution was carried out. Then Oswald was disposed of by Jack Ruby, who Anderson says was a low-ranking hood out of the Chicago mob.
Roselli is dead now ("He was killed for talking," Anderson says), but Anderson insists that "all the pieces of the jigsaw finally are fitting into place."
"For a long time I chose to believe the Warren Commission report," Anderson said. "But Johnny Roselli told me things he could have only known as a participant in the crime. And now I believe we have more evidence in support of his claims than the Warren Commission had for theirs. We can now re-write history."
But I don't know. How much can you trust the word of a Mafia hit man - especially one who is dead? Still, it probably wouldn't hurt to watch the show with an eraser handy - for the history books. Just in case.
-THE TECHNOLOGICAL BUGS that have kept the Vision Interfaith Satellite Network (VISN) off the air on most local cable systems have apparently been worked out, and the channel is now available to basic cable subscribers. VISN, found on Ch. 33 on most systems, is a religiously oriented program service sponsored by 18 different denominations, including the LDS Church, the Catholic Church and a variety of Protestant and Jewish organizations. The service stresses faith in God and moral issues through wholesome, informational, inspirational programming.
And they promise - no on-air fund-raising.
-HERE'S A SHOCKER - MTV has decided to discontinue advertising spots from National Lampoon magazine depicting a woman chopping up a dead, plucked, bloody chicken. Viewer complaints about the ads prompted the MTV action.
Which elicited a bemused reaction from National Lampoon chairman Matty Simmons: "It's strange that in television's world of illicit love affairs, under-the-cover romps, bikini-clad pitch people, rock videos choreographed with whips, chains and leather, lying politicians, overstated commercials, overpaid athletes, mediocre talents, hard sell and soft porn, we have had out commercial canceled because we showed a housewife chopping a dead, plucked chicken."
But then, what do you expect from a magazine that takes as its theme: "That's not funny, that's sick"?