Nearly 40 years after JFK was shot, a Yorkshire author claims to know what really happened that day. CHRIS TITLEY investigates

LIKE the rest of his generation, Matthew Smith remembers the moment with freeze-frame precision. "I was in Oxfam House in Oxford - I worked with Oxfam for a year," he said. "In a corridor I met one of the executives, and he said 'Have you heard about John F Kennedy? He's been shot.'

"My first instinct was to laugh. I've since learnt this is quite a common reaction to news of this kind."

Unlike others of his generation, however, Mr Smith's shock developed into a quest for the truth which continues to this day.

The 'truth', according to the American government, is that Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone, shot President Kennedy. Conveniently, Oswald, too, was shot dead before he could testify, by Jack Ruby.

So when did Mr Smith's suspicions about this version of events begin?

"They began when it happened - or rather two days after it happened when Lee Harvey Oswald was shot being transferred to the county jail. I smelt a rat then."

He did not begin his investigation for another ten years. In the meantime, he had completed a teacher training course at St John's College in York. He now lives in Sheffield, but still regards York as his second home, making frequent visits here to see his son.

It was when he was a lecturer on the media, and looking for a subject that encompassed film, television and print, that Mr Smith returned to the Kennedy assassination.

The research he did for that lecture led to his first book on the subject, JFK: The Second Plot. It had to compete with countless other conspiracy theories, but the book established his credentials as a serious researcher. The Independent On Sunday called it the "most comprehensive, coherent account yet".

In The Second Plot, Mr Smith argued that logically, Oswald could not have had anything to do with the murder of the President.

His latest work, Say Goodbye To America, expands on this theory. Mr Smith teamed up with Joachim Markus, a German software expert, to work on a four-year project.

"We built, in three dimensions, a computer model of the Dealey Plaza where it all happened.

"Effectively, we re-ran the assassination, but we were able to stop it at any point."

Using this new technology, "we discovered what really happened on the day the President was shot".

The results, complete with diagrams from the computer program, are reproduced in the book. "If that evidence had been available to a court of law, Lee Harvey Oswald would have walked out a free man," he says.

Another revelation is the testimony of Hank Gordon. He was a mechanic who was preparing a DC-3 aircraft at Dallas for a mystery buyer in the week running up to Kennedy's death. One day Gordon was shocked when the pilot working alongside him told him: "They are going to kill your President".

Hank Gordon's real name has been kept confidential. He fears for his life if his identity ever emerges: too many people connected with the JFK assassination have already died in odd circumstances.

Mr Smith said: "It was mind-blowing that somebody could sit on top of that for 30-odd years.

"There must be other people, getting older, sitting on top of all manner of information that could change our view of this."

The truth is out there, he says.

"I believe there are people who know exactly what happened. Ask me if we will ever know, and my answer is: I really don't know, because the people concerned have so much at stake."

Mr Smith's fascination with November 22, 1963 is fuelled by a deep respect for Kennedy, irrespective of the more recent exposs of his lurid private life.

"To look at what he achieved in just three years, it was quite astounding. And what he planned to keep on doing was the reason why they couldn't let him carry on."

"They" are "the establishment that ran the country: the bankers, the steel people, the armaments people, the oil people. These are the people who run America.

"He was in the process of putting American government in order, instead of their interests coming first."

It was agents of this establishment, backed by the CIA, who killed the president, Mr Smith maintains.

He called his book Say Goodbye To America because he believes the Kennedy assassination and subsequent cover-up changed the attitude of many Americans. It took, he points out, ten years before the authorities allowed the broadcast of the now notorious Zapruder film of the assassination.

"Before they saw that, a great many people took the view that if the government says it's so, it must be so.

"But then they discovered the government had told them a pack of lies and is still telling them a pack of lies. Confidence in the government and politicians dropped to zero."

If Kennedy was shot to ensure that big business kept control of government, the plot succeeded. The collapse of energy firm Enron has shown how corporate power now feeds into the heart of American - and British - politics.

Mr Smith puts it simply. "You don't know who controls your government because you don't know where the money comes from.

"It's money that dictates."

Say Goodbye To America: the sensational and untold story behind the assassination of John F Kennedy by Matthew Smith is published by Mainstream, price £15.99.

His book JFK: The Second Plot is due to be republished by Mainstream next month, price £9.99

Updated: 09:39 Wednesday, January 30, 2002