One of the scarcer JFK assassination books, Mystique of Conspiracy, first published in 1978, is now available in a new edition. This is the only assassination book with a forward by one of the suspects: CIA officer David Atlee Phillips.

In the first edition the author, Brian Bugge, puts forward three criteria for evaluating conspiracy hypothesis:

1) that the data put forth supporting the conspiracy be presented accurately and undistorted;

2) that the interpretation given those facts must be sound and not in conflict with other uncontested facts;

3) that the hypothesis must be applied throughout the entire progression of events surrounding the Kennedy assassination, and the documented actions of Lee Harvey Oswald.

In the first edition he concluded that none of the conspiracy theories met these conditions. In 2007 he has reconsidered. "Some highly plausible theories have indeed surfaced since then." Moreover, he suggests that his change in views came about because of conversations he had with the man he calls his "mentor"--the late David Atlee Phillips.

"And what did David Atlee Phillips really tell me about the Kennedy assassination and the CIA's role in it (not to mention the attempt on Wallace's life and the murder of Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier in a car bomb in Washington D.C. in 1976--which some private researchers have accused David Phillips of being directly involved in)?

So what did Phillips tell him? He doesn't say, although he offers to help guide the reader in the right direction, for another $25! I will pass and would urge the author to tell the American people what he knows about the assassination of an American President, if anything.