The upcoming  50th anniversary  of the murder of President John
F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald already has produced, in
addition to thoughtful commemorations, all-too-familiar attempts
by some to smear the city in which the crime happened to take
place. Not since  Archduke Ferdinand  was killed in Sarajevo
have so many people persisted in trying to treat the scene of a
crime as though it were somehow a culprit. Dallas, Texas, has
spent generations trying to live down its reputation as "the
city that killed Kennedy."  The crude version of the Dallas-
killed-Kennedy thesis was popularized in Oliver Stone's 1995
movie   (which built upon a conspiracy theory Stone had promoted
in his earlier film   ). In one scene, Nixon visits Dallas
shortly before the assassination and receives ominous hints from
a mysterious Cuban and a right-wing Dallas businessman. The
businessman was portrayed by my distant relative the late actor
Larry Hagman  , of "  J.R. Ewing  " fame. Now I understand,
Oliver Stone. Lee Harvey Oswald d