Evidence of a conspiracy to assassinate President John F.  Kennedy has always been right in front of our eyes.

One glaring immediate example: the behavior of the Secret Service agent driving the limousine in which were riding the president and Mrs. Kennedy along with Texas Gov. John Connally and his wife, Nellie. It was incompetent at the very best and more likely part of the death plan.

Every existing film of the motorcade shows that when the first bullet rang out, the vehicle unaccountably slows down and almost stops. Why? There was an obvious threat to the president’s safety; mere seconds could mean the difference between life and death.

Proper action to protect the president would have been to floor the accelerator and zoom toward the freeway entrance straight ahead, on the other side of a tunnel. (I have driven this route numerous times during my 28+ years as a Dallas area resident.)

Instead, the limousine strangely crawls along while more shots are fired. Then it finally speeds up, after it is too late. Again, why the deadly delay?

“In Dallas, the Secret Service would step out of the way not just individually, but collectively,” James W. Douglass writes in JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (Orbis Books, 2008).

Another odd aspect to the aftermath of the JFK murder. How did the authorities come up with a named suspect within 20 minutes of the president’s death? After the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, it took a nationwide search involving almost every law enforcement agent in the country two days to produce the same results.

The almost instaneous speed at which a suspect in the JFK killing emerged screams not only that the assassination was a conspiracy, but that those who conspired had high-level law enforcement connections. Lee Harvey Oswald spoke the truth before he, too, was murdered. He was a patsy.

One of the most interesting parts of Douglass’s unique account of the events leading up to and beyond Nov. 22, 1963 in Dallas is his take on Abraham W. Bolden, whom Kennedy appointed to be the first African-American member of the Secret Service’s White House detail.

At the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Bolden saw the open hostility of Secret Service agents toward Kennedy. He soon asked to be sent back to the Chicago field office. After Kennedy’s death, Bolden returned to Washington, D.C., for job training. He tried to contact the Warren Commission to tell members about a Chicago-based attempt to kill Kennedy that failed when the president’s trip to the Windy City was canceled at the last minute.

For his efforts, Bolden was arrested and charged with soliciting money to commit fraud, obstructing justice, and conspiracy. The first jury deadlocked; a second one convicted him on all three counts.

Later, in a trial before the same judge, the forger charged in the case admitted to perjury when fingering Bolden on the witness stand during Bolden’s trial. Yet Bolden was not released or re-tried, instead serving more than half of a six-year prison sentence. His wife and family survived several mysterious attempts to kill them.

Bolden, who died some years ago without ever having the chacen to clear his name, and his loved ones are among the many who paid dearly for their efforts to bring the truth about the JFK plot to light.

Douglass’s book is one of the finest of many efforts to make sense of this killing, which in reality was a coup d’etat that took place 46 years ago to this day