My name is Michael Briggs. I'm retired from a nearly 40-year career in academic book publishing, first at the University of Illinois Press and then at the University Press of Kansas, where I served as editor-in-chief during the final two decades of my career. I've been studying the Kennedy assassination since 1976 when I came across Carl Oglesby's The Yankee and Cowboy War: Conspiracies from Dallas to Watergate (published less than an hour away from where I now live), followed by reading the 1980 edition of Anthony Summers' Conspiracy.
During my tenure at Kansas, I took the plunge that most academic editors and publishers had flinched from and signed up a number of titles dealing with matters pertaining to JFK's assassination including The JFK Assassination Debates by Michael Kurtz, The Zapruder Film by David Wrone, Breach of Trust by Gerald McKnight, Our Man in Mexico by Jefferson Morley, Oliver Stone's USA edited by Robert Toplin, Lee Harvey Oswald as I Knew Him by George de Mohrenschildt (edited by Michael Rinella), and Reporting the Kennedy Assassination by Willem Oltmans (translated by David Stephenson). During that time I engaged directly with several members of the ARRB, including Jon Tunheim, Anna Nelson, and Kermit Hall (whose book on NYTimes v. Sullivan was published with Kansas). Beyond that narrow focus, I also shepherded a number of books into publication that dealt with the CIA and FBI.
After I retired, I provided editorial advice and support for author Josiah "Tink" Thompson, which led to the publication of his Last Second in Dallas by the University Press of Kansas and also served as an editorial advisor for Coup in Dallas by the late Hank Albarelli and Leslie Sharp, although that book had already been signed by Skyhorse. My assistance on the latter publication occurred late in the pre-publication phase and emerged from my efforts to determine the status of another work by Albarelli after he passed away--a book that would have focused entirely on Oswald in Mexico and which I had signed up for Kansas several years before I retired.
I try to maintain an open and critical mind in this highly fraught and at times toxic field of inquiry. Beyond that, I am a strong advocate for declassification and the transparency (and trust) that can come from such action.
