It couldn't Happen to a Nicer Guy

[J. Raymond Carroll]

This is difficult to believe, but the ABA Journal, probably the most-read journal for lawyers in America

has this report:

“In addition to Pinkus and his wife, a lawyer who has represented Pinkus was also named as a defendant.”

THe ABA Journal airbrushed Gerald Posner, who is a household name in ABA circles, out of the story.

http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/author_harper_lee_sues_says_agent_tricked_her_into_signing_over_to_kill_a_m/

[J. Raymond Carroll]

All right, I promise to leave the poor Public Editor alone for awhile, and hope she has a great mother's day weekend

but I couldn't resist this:

Greetings again, Ms. Sullivan, and Happy Friday to you.

The Times may take some consolation from knowing

that others in the media business are also subject to the phenomenon known

as Cognitive Dissonance, "the distressing mental state that people feel when they "find themselves doing things that don't fit with what they know, or having opinions that do not fit with other opinions they hold" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance.

The Washington Post, longtime booster of Posner's credentials,

forgot to mention that their beloved Pulitzer nominee was being sued

by a real Pulitzer prizewinner.

But the winner in the Dissonance Stakes must be the ABA Journal. Gerald Posner is a household name in ABA circles

just as he he is a household name to longtime readers of the Times,

yet this is their report:

In addition to Pinkus and his wife, a lawyer who has represented Pinkus was also named as a defendant. They did not respond to requests for comment from Bloomberg last week.http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/author_harper_lee_sues_says_agent_tricked_her_into_signing_over_to_kill_a_m/?from=widget

Someone cannot bear the thought of revealing that the much-vaunted Gerald Posner is being sued along with the unknown Mr. Pinkus,

by one of America's most beloved little old ladies.

Yours, Sincerely,

Raymond Carroll

CC The Education Forum

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Some interesting backrgound on Gerald Posner, from Britain's Lobster magazine

Gerald Posner's revamping of the Warren Commission Report, Case Closed, got acres of coverage in this country. New evidence, however, indicates that Posner is a bit, shall we say, ethically-challenged. Of course, savvy folk knew Gerry had a wayward way with facts from his book's first sentence, which claims that more than 2,000 books have been written about the Kennedy assassination. The actual figure is somewhere under 400. Posner probably got the 2,000 figure from the struggling Assassination Research Center in Washington, DC, which does (or did) house roughly that number of books on its unsteady shelves. But those holdings include many titles not directly related to the assassination.

Posner goes on to claim that this avalanche of assassinology, foisted on the public by avaricious writers, has presented only the pro-conspiracy side of the Kennedy question. Let's first clear up this business of alleged avarice: JFK books normally sell well only when a movie or some other newsworthy event pushes the case into the spotlight. At other times, books in the genre do not do particularly well, with the exception of works by a few lucky authors, such as Linton, Lane, or Summers. Most assassination researchers don't quit their day job; they do what they do because they believe in the work. And a book which sells, say, 5,000 or 10,000 or even 20,000 copies can scarcely compete with the millions reached by Dan Rather, NBC, Time, Life, and Newsweek. All of these media outlets have steadfastly defended the lone nut scenario over the decades. If Posner asserts that the public hasn't had a chance to hear the Warren Commission's side of the story, he is (as Dave Letterman might say) just plain goofy.

False Quotation Syndrome

He may be worse than that. Researchers Harold Weisberg and Walt Brown, as well as medical expert Dr. Gary Aguilar, have been double-checking Posner's claimed interview subjects. Apparently, the Warren Commission's foremost apologist has seriously misrepresented some of those he supposedly inter-viewed.

For example: Posner testified to the Conyers Committee on November 17, 1993, that he interviewed JFK's autopsists, Doctors James Humes and J. Thornton Boswell. Both allegedly told Posner the skull wound was high. On March 30, 1994, Aguilar called Humes and Boswell to get their side of the story. Dr. Humes confirmed that he had spoken to Posner, but denied changing his mind about the skull wound, which he has always said was low. But here's the kicker: not only does Dr. Boswell also continue to say that the wound was low, he insisted to Aguilar twice, and without any equivocation, that he had never spoken to Posner at all! If that's true, then Posner is guilty of lying before a congressional committee. In other words, his sense of ethics has gone North. But it gets worse.

Case Closed also contains a putative Posner interview of James Tague, the third man hit in Dealey Plaza that day. For thirty years, Tague has always insisted that the first shot did not hit him and his insistence on this point has, for various reasons, always caused grave problems for the Warren Commission and its avatars. Posner solved these problems by quoting from his alleged recent interviews with Tague, which, we are led to believe, were conducted on two successive days. (Never mind that Posner elsewhere expresses contempt for witnesses who change their original testimony.) According to Case Closed, the 'Third Man' now agrees that a fragment of the first shot could have hit him. This revised standard version of Tague's testimony greatly aids the book's reconstruction of the crime. Dr. Aguilar and Harold Weisberg separately contacted Tague to ask why he told Posner a story differing from the one he has recited for years. The answer was clear and shocking: James Tague never spoke to Gerald Posner at all! And Tague stands by his oft-repeated story that the first shot most assuredly did not hit him.

Other instances of 'false quotation syndrome' are only now coming to light. For example, there's the case of Harold Norman, a Dealey Plaza witness located under the alleged sniper's window. Norman did speak to Posner. But this witness told another writer, Walt Brown, that the information ascribed to him in Case Closed does not resemble what he actually said 'not by a longshot.'

Posner even seems to have misquoted his own editor, Robert Loomis of Random House. The author of Case Closed has frequently recounted the story of his book's genesis: how in 1992 Random House hired him to write a book that would establish a conspiracy once and for all; Posner started investigating, found no evidence of a plot to kill JFK, and reported these findings to his publisher, who told him to go with what he found. 'Tis a pretty tale, and utter bullxxxx. Well before Case Closed, researcher Walt Brown sent a JFK assassination manuscript to Random House, and got a vehement rejection notice signed by editor Loomis stating in no uncertain terms that Random House would never publish any book critical of the Warren Commission's basic findings. If Loomis wants to maintain such an attitude, that's his privilege, of course. But how can Gerald Posner claim that Loomis originally tasked him to produce a work open to the idea of conspiracy?

During last November's media orgasms over Case Closed, the public frequently heard glowing remarks about Posner's background. For example, we heard that he was a Wall Street lawyer, which was comforting: All America instinctively trusts Wall Street lawyers. We also heard that he had acted as the attorney for an organization called CANDLES, which represents victims of Dr. Josef Mengele's horrifying experiments at Auschwitz. CANDLES IS run by a feisty and courageous woman named Eva Kor, an Auschwitz survivor now living in Terre Haute, Indiana. When I called her last February, she insisted that Gerald Posner never was a lawyer for her organization. She considers him untrustworthy, and expresses contempt for anyone who conjures up a false association with her group in order to bask in unearned moral authority. Posner, in her view, is 'a real son of a gun.' (She's too ladylike to swear, but she's cute when she's tempted.)

http://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk/articles/l28comp.htm

[Robert Prudhomme]

Mr. Carroll

Do you think it possible that Mr. Posner was paid to write disinformation in his book "Case Closed", in order to bolster and promote the Warren Commission findings?

[J. Raymond Carroll]

Mr. Carroll

Do you think it possible that Mr. Posner was paid to write disinformation in his book "Case Closed", in order to bolster and promote the Warren Commission findings?

Posner was paid an advance by Random House, the same company that cancelled Leo Sauvage's contract

when Sauvage's book argued that the police and the Warren Commission had failed to prove a case.

I suppose there is such a thing as institutional memory and institutional loyalty. It seems Random House, like the

New York Times, is committed to the Warren Commission. I don't think anyone gives them money, I'd say they have a natural human need

to appear consistent.

This need to appear consistent underlies the theory of Cognitive Dissonance.

[Ken Davies]

Robert, with all due respect, your question could be asked of many LN authors.

Most of those authors fail to spell out any credible motive for LHO's alleged crimes.

They project motives like rejection by his spouse, anger at JFK's policies on Cuba,

a desire for fame, etc., but the evidence doesn't support their claims.

[J. Raymond Carroll]

The new Vanity Fair features an article about the Harper Lee lawsuit, in which the author of CASE CLOSED receives mention as an "investigative reporter with a questionable reputation."

Filed in New York District Court, the suit names Pinkus, his wife, former TV-news writer Leigh Ann Winick, and Gerald Posner, a Miami-based attorney and investigative journalist with a questionable reputation, as defendants.

It claims that Pinkus “engaged in a scheme to dupe Harper Lee, then 80-years-old with declining hearing and eye sight, into assigning her valuable TKAM [To Kill a Mockingbird] copyright to [Pinkus’s company] for no consideration,” and then created shell companies and bank accounts to which the book’s royalties were funneled. (The defendants are not accused of stealing her royalties.)

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2013/08/harper-lee-dispute-royalties