Stafford Creates a Quote for A Mother in History

[James DiEugenio]

John Kelin does some research that could only appear at Kennedys and King.  He found the original audio and transcripts for the one off book A Mother In History, which was a pretty one sided caricature of Marguerite Oswald, early in the case.  It was clearly designed to neutralize her.  Or as Specter said to Jean Hill, keep it up and we will do to you what we did to Marguerite Oswald.  

Stafford was a fairly distinguished novelist and short story writer who did not do very much non fiction.  And then only essays near the end of her life. The book A Mother In History is really a long essay padded out to make it look book length and feature that godawful cover which assumes Oswald's guilt.  As John notes, this was not the only deception Stafford pulled, I almost wish he would write a part 2.  Reportedly, Hugh Aynseworth had a role in this.

https://www.kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/a-mother-in-history-the-stafford-archive

Edited September 26, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[W. Niederhut]

Interesting.  It sounds like Jean Stafford may have been paid by Operation Mockingbird to publish A Mother in History.

FWIW, her second husband, Oliver Jensen, (after her first marriage to poet Robert Lowell) was a staff writer for Skull & Bones man Henry Luce's Life magazine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Stafford

[James DiEugenio]

Thanks for that interesting detail.

William always has something useful to toss in the ring.

The book was an out and out smear job.  And she must have been paid a pretty penny for something this bad to mar her rather illustrious career.

[Joseph McBride]

From my book POLITICAL TRUTH, about Jean Stafford and Marguerite Oswald:

 

It has been argued that [Lyndon] Johnson, in covering up the assassination, acted relatively “benignly” in doing so to prevent a nuclear war with Russia or Cuba, if they were found responsible. That was the argument Johnson presented to [Earl] Warren, who also has been given the benefit of doubt by some commentators as participating reluctantly in a “benign” coverup; it is reported that after their meeting about his heading the commission, he left Johnson’s office with tears in his eyes. Those who consider Johnson a more witting member of the conspiracy before the fact would dispute how benign his indisputable involvement in the coverup after the fact actually was.

[Peter Dale] Scott nevertheless gives Johnson credit for thwarting what he calls “phase one” of the conspiracy, a plot designed to provoke an invasion of Cuba by framing the patsy as a pro-Castro, pro-USSR sympathizer, and a possible nuclear confrontation with the Soviets. That stigmatized identity was manufactured from day one with the help of the media, including Hendrix [the CIA-connected, Miami-based Hal Hendrix of the Scripps-Howard News Service] and Clare Boothe Luce, even though Oswald was only posing as a Castroite communist while actually working as a U.S. government asset and informant. Oswald’s involvement with the government — which was rumored from the beginning in various quarters; publicly proclaimed by his mother, Marguerite; and leaked to the Warren Commission soon after its formation — obviously had to be covered up in the process of claiming that he acted for purely irrational psychological reasons. So little discussion of that topic appeared in the press in the initial months, and Marguerite Oswald was widely mocked as a nut and reviled as a shameless seeker of publicity and financial advantage. Although with her erratic behavior and relentless self-promotion, Marguerite sometimes came off as her own worst enemy, it was obvious that there was a concerted effort in the media to avoid taking anything she said seriously and instead to malign her. One of the most vicious books dealing with the case was A Mother in History (1965), a portrait of Mrs. Oswald by the well-known short story writer and novelist Jean Stafford that seemed little more than a smear job rather than an attempt to understand the subject, even from a critical viewpoint.

Edited September 27, 2022 by Joseph McBride

[Benjamin Cole]

Great stuff by all. 

You wonder if Operation Mockingbird in the 1960s-70s, like the entire intel state, was only an early and unsophisticated stage of state-managed  media in the US, and for that matter, globally.