Joseph McBride

Clint Hill's reaching the car and jumping aboard seems impossible on the extant, altered Z film.

Zapruder testified to the WC that he filmed the turn onto Elm Street.

Good for you, Doug! I look forward to reading it. I am glad you wrote it.

Not only does the Hemingway docu mislead about the FBI surveillance of Hemingway by simplistically calling him "paranoid" and not mentioning that it was actually happening, the docu also seriously undercounts the number of American deaths in the D-Day landings. And Hemingway biographer Mary Dearborn for some reason says on the docu that she doesn't know what Ernest and Mary did in bed together during their gender-bending sessions, even though her excellent book goes into detail about that subject.

My copy arrived in good shape a few days ago from Amazon, and I am finding it a gripping read. Kudos, Larry.

The unbelievable sentimentality of the Nixon funeral was quickly dashed by the publication soon after that of the Haldeman diaries, which showed a nonstop parade of screw-our-enemies discussions and anti-Semitism. I took my son to the Nixon funeral to see that historic occasion. The actual location was closed, but we were on the periphery and could hear the booming cannon fire. Five other presidents were there -- Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, and Clinton -- and I wanted to find a place to see them departing. There were several roads out of the closed area where the funeral was taking place. I did some reconnoitering and saw a Secret Service agent chatting with a pretty young woman. So I went over to eavesdrop. He was telling her that this was the road they would use (a major security breach). So I positioned us near the exit, and sure enough, all four former presidents rolled past in black SUVs (Bush was the only one behind dark windows), and Clinton (who was the sitting president at the time) ordered his SUV to stop ten feet from us. He jumped out to shake hands with the small crowd of about a dozen people. I took a step forward with my son on my shoulders to see if we could shake hands with Clinton, but the Secret Service expertly did a ballet-like maneuver to block Clinton. He shook hands for two minutes and left.

When de Gaulle was briefed by a reporter on the Warren Commission coming up with the single-bullet theory, he replied, "Vous me blaguez! [You're kidding me!] Cowboys and Indians!"

I am glad to hear it is on the way.

What's the deal with the continued delays?

What about the allegation that John Dean sponsored the burglaries?

The police sent Tippit and Mentzel out looking for Lee Oswald in Oak Cliff shortly after the assassination. Probably before 12:45 p.m. They knew his identity already and knew where he lived. He was an FBI informant.

It's possible, though it doesn't entirely pass my smell test as a reporter, partly because it seems too convenient (and Myers as a source is dubious). I tried to check every claim against other evidence. Tippit's last two transmssions to the dispatcher was at 1:08, so it is unlikely he was shot at 1:06. The likelihood is that he was shot at 1:08 or within the next minute. Larry Ray Harris and Greg Lowery, two very thorough Tippit researchers, agreed with me.

Thanks much for the kind words on my book, Richard. I did not say much about Mrs. Higgins because I could not verify her claim about that time being mentioned on local TV. I tried to include verifiable information. What she said about the TV station seemed possible but perhaps unlikely. Meanwhile, run, do not walk to get your copy of Condon's novel. Nabokov's LOLITA is a great novel, by the way. Graham Greene championed it past the censors and helped it get published in both the UK and the US.

Oddly credible, not "incredible" is how I would describe THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. We know about MK-ULTRA.

I read that Richard Condon was supposedly influenced in part by Roy Cohn in creating the monstrous mother figure who controls the Joe McCarthy character in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE, my favorite novel.

All that harassment is appalling, Vince. It is a backhanded tribute to how powerful and influential your investigation of Secret Service complicity in the assassination has been.

They ban reviewers because of "bias"? How do they define "bias"? Isn't all reviewing opinionated by nature? Legally there is no such thing as a right or wrong opinion; it has to be backed up by facts to mean anything.

That attack review on the book on Amazon is grossly unfair. The guy obviously had some animus toward it ahead of time and unleashed it. I recommend anyone here who likes the book (as I do) post a good review to counterbalance that garbage.

I received the book yesterday, Vince, and started reading it. A fine job, thorough and encyclopedic and lively to read, with fascinating documents and photographs as well. I look forward to reading the rest of this major work in the field. Thanks for your kind words on my work and that of other researchers -- you are working in the best scholarly tradition of acknowledging other scholars, which unfortunately is not always the case in this field. Beyond your unrivaled and deep knowledge of the role of the Secret Service -- a truly groundbreaking study that has changed our views of the case and followed Penn Jones's advice to take one area that has not received enough attention and "research the hell out of it" -- you have turned up a great deal of other information and have raised many provocative questions for us to ponder. We won't all agree with everything, but that's part of the scholarly process too. Kudos!

Thanks, Ken. I appreciate your good words. I don't recall what Summers wrote, but I found the claims about Hoover being a cross dresser very dubious.

FYI, the tired old Hoover-as-crossdresser myth originated solely with an unreliable source, the former wife of a mob figure who was sent to prison.

Pluralization is not accomplished with apostrophes. "Loose" does not mean "lose." I see this kind of stuff all the time. It's elementary or used to be. When you read such errors, you lose faith in the writer and get distracted from the intended content.

I was surprised (mildly, since I knew their bias) how few photos are in the WC files at the National Archives. I was dismayed too at how meager the shelf is on the assassination at the Kennedy Library. They just don't care. Those things are revealing. I also wanted to find a telegram Frank Capra claimed Joe Kennedy sent Harry Cohn recommending he not release MR. SMITH GOES TO WASHINGTON in Europe because it supposedly would hurt our country's reputation. I asked a librarian at the Kennedy Library to see the papers of Ambassador Kennedy. "WHO?," she said. I patiently replied, "Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr." "Oh!," she said, looking startled. "We don't let people look at THOSE!" This was 1984. Much later the library opened at least some of his papers to researchers, and someone found the telegram, which hadn't been in Capra's papers.

I wanted to see how Thompson dealt with those issues and thought he would in his book, since he is a leading dissenter from them and they affect any study of the evidence. So I was surprised he doesn't address them in what evidently is his final book.

I refer you to the section on the TWILIGHT ZONE film and crash in my Spielberg biograhy. There have been two good books on the crash and trial, Stephen Farber and Marc Green, OUTRAGEOUS C0NDUCT: ART, EGO, AND THE "TWILIGHT ZONE" CASE, Arbor House/Morrow, 1988, and Ron LaBrecque, SPECIAL EFFECTS: DISASTER AT "TWILIGHT ZONE": THE TRAGEDY AND THE TRIAL, Scribners, 1988. OUTRAGEOUS CONDUCT is better, but the other one also has useful information. An important article on the trial is by Gay Jervey, "Misfire in the Twilight Zone," The American Lawyer, December 1987.