Read Shadow Play!: Klaber and Melanson '97 book is a jaw-dropper

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Hi, citizens. I am by no means a verteran of RFK "research". I am a middle aged social studies teacher in the middle of my second book.

That book is Shadow Play: The Murder of Robert F. Kennedy. Unlike the ALSO UNBELIEVEABLY GOOD BOOK BY TURNER AND CHRISTIAN that was reissued last year (anyone who has not read this book has missed not-only a non-fiction very well documented Crying of Lot 49, but also a book replete with hundreds of footnotes connected to 1960s rightwing groups and also related to the the JFK assasssination.)

Lots of stuff on California Birchers for Frawley fans!

Oh, wrong book-edict.

Melanson and Klaber's book is different but also outstanding. It largely confines itself to the trial and the spiral staircase of jusrisprudence within the LAPD. A lot of the background research of Turner and Christian's, that focussed on the right wing mix that had surrounded Sirhan is not covered in the Melanson book. Instead it is a very scrupulous deconstruction of the offical proceedings. It is no less incredible, no less a remaining-jaw-dropper, in that in exposes gaping caverns in the offical pillars of justice as practiced by the Los Angeles DA and the LAPD.

Readers of books about the JFK assassination are familiar with countless numbers of instances of witnesses saying one thing in thier initial interviews by officials and then being pressured into saying something else. They are also aware of how many times witnesses testify one way and then, years later, end up dumbfounded as to how their testimony was twisted into supporting a diametrically opposed conclusion.

Well this book actually SHOWS these processes at work better than any I have read. It is the best education on how witnesses testimony can be manipulated. The authors manage to reconstruct an incredible amount of actual dialoge from the synchronized arm-twisting that went on inside LAPD interrogation rooms.

This police witness-tampering is shown so clearly, it's incredible there isn't more awareness about the RFK case.

Edited November 18, 2007 by Nathaniel Heidenheimer