As certain as the storms of autumn, each anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination brings a new spate of books.
Almost as certain is that one will be by Harrison Edward Livingstone.The Baltimore-based writer is just one of many who devote vast time, energy and money to researching the president's slaying in Dallas 32 years ago today. And for each investigator, scholar, writer, researcher or scientist who claims a new discovery - some 500 books have been written on the subject - there is another who disagrees.
The result is a jealousy-torn "assassination research community" in which scholarly discussion often gives way to vitriol, scorn and slander.
Stocky, bearded and intense, Livingstone admits he is obsessed with exposing the "forces of darkness" responsible for Kennedy's assassination. But after four books in six years - all hardcovers of 500 to 700 pages - credibility still eludes him.
"I should have about four Pulitzer Prizes by now," Livingstone says. "I am very bitter about the treatment this work receives - or doesn't receive."
The field's most prolific writer, Harold Weisberg, has written seven books and says he has four others in manuscript form. Now 82 and in poor health, Weisberg is working on an assassination archive "for national posterity."
Livingstone, 58, and Weisberg agree that someone besides Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy. Still, there is only bad blood between them.
Livingstone scornfully says that Weisberg is responsible for "extraordinarily muddled thinking that has kept this nation in turmoil over the years." Weisberg refused to discuss Livingstone.
A Harvard graduate who studied law, Livingstone recalls hitchhiking to Dallas a month after Kennedy's death. He slept in the rail yards near Dealey Plaza, the site of the slaying.
"I was devastated by the assassination. I just wanted to go where he did," said Livingstone, who concluded that Kennedy was killed by Texas oil and industrial interests who stood to lose millions if the president withdrew from Vietnam.
In 1989, Livingstone published "High Treason," saying some autopsy photos had been doctored to conceal evidence that Kennedy was shot from in front, not the rear. It made The New York Times best-seller list in 1989 and again in 1993 when it was reissued to coincide with the film "JFK."
In 1992, "High Treason 2" also was a best seller, but 1994's "Killing the Truth," didn't sell nearly as well.
His latest, "Killing Kennedy and the Hoax of the Century," claims most amateur film from the scene was doctored while in FBI custody - including the famous Zapruder film.
"In my view he's something of a madman," said James Lesar of the Washington-based Assassination Archive Research Center. "He's gotten into the business of attacking other critics, and he's not well liked in the community."
But will all these researchers ever resolve what happened?
"Not in our lifetime," Weisberg says.