I was probably 13 or so when I first came across this book in my local bookstore. Back then, I didn't know that there was any reason to question the fact that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy; heck, I didn't even suspect that the American government would ever deliberately lie to the public. This book opened my eyes -- and not just about the JFK assassination. It would take me a little while longer to learn to distrust every single thing the government tells me, but David Lifton definitely succeeded in convincing me that the truth about the JFK assassination was not to be found in the Warren Report.

All these years later, Best Evidence remains a must-read for those searching for the truth about the events that took place in Dealey Plaza almost 50 years ago. As crowded as the field of books on this subject has grown, this book remains unique in a number of ways.

Lifton was one of the early Warren Report critics; the book was not published until 1980, but Lifton's research efforts began immediately after Life published frames from the Zapruder film. As a graduate student in physics, Lifton knew that a shot from behind would not have caused the violent "back and to the left" motion of President Kennedy's head following the moment of impact. That was the impetus of his work. It quickly became a passion that interrupted and eventually ended his graduate studies (it's pretty difficult to go through the 26 non-indexed volumes of evidence in the Warren Report while pursuing a graduate degree in physics). Unlike some researchers, he was never in this for the money; in fact, I don't know how he managed to support himself over the 15 years or so he devoted to this case. He did have one thing that other early Warren Report critics did not have, though -- personal access to one of the Warren Report investigators, Wesley Liebeler. Lifton's record of his conversations with Liebeler -- and the overwrought reaction of other Warren Report critics to his relationship with "the enemy" -- paint quite a vivid picture of the early years of JFK assassination revisionism in the 1960s.

Lifton doesn't try to explain every facet of that awful weekend of November 22-24, 1963. You won't read much about Oswald, Ruby or the group of standard suspects here. What distinguishes Lifton's work is his concentration on the medical evidence -- ostensibly the "best evidence" in any murder case. While other early critics accused the Warren Commission as well as the autopsy doctors of covering up the truth, Lifton eventually came up with a scenario where all of these parties were actually truthful. In his view, it was the medical evidence -- the body and the autopsy X-rays and photos -- that lied. The autopsy doctors described completely different wounds than those reported by the Parkland doctors because the body of the slain President was altered somewhere between Dallas and the autopsy at Bethesda to make it look like JFK had been shot twice from behind. That is the crux of Lifton's argument.

While Lifton never truly succeeds at pinpointing when and where (or by whom) the body alterations were made, he does point to many confusing and unexplained aspects of the body's arrival and handling at Bethesda. His attempts to interview everyone who was there in and around the autopsy room that night led to an assembly of confusing stories involving decoy ambulances, two different coffins and a team of mystery men on hand to watch and control everything that went on there that night. How do you explain reports of a hearse delivering a plain casket with JFK in a body bag vs. reports of the body arriving in an ornate casket with the president wrapped in a sheet? Different people reported entirely different stories taking place at entirely different times from that night in the morgue. The volume and complexity of all this information sort of gets the better of Lifton in the end, I think, as some of his attempts to figure out where and when the body was altered come across as fishing expeditions, but I really don't know what more he could have done in this regard.

Lifton's body alteration theory is -- for obvious reasons -- rather difficult to embrace, but that's not to say he is completely off base with his arguments. Frankly, I've long accepted the idea that almost anything is possible when it comes to this infinitely complex case. I think there was a conspiracy at the highest levels of government to eliminate Kennedy, and I think the masterminds behind it would have gone to any length -- even such an unimaginable one as body alteration -- to get the job done. I do not put anything past the secret rulers of this country.

Whatever you think of Lifton's theory, though, Best Evidence is still well worth reading. He walks you through his entire thinking process over the course of 15 years of work, points out many of the inordinate number of flaws in the Warren Report and House Select Committee investigations, and raises a number of troubling questions about the conduct of numerous Secret Service agents (although he never goes so far as to point an accusing finger at them) -- and he was really the first person to ask pointed questions about the autopsy results to Commander Humes, Colonel Finck and those who X-rayed and photographed the body. This is a book that truly belongs on the shelf of anyone seeking the truth about the JFK assassination.