Biography: Nathaniel Heidenheimer

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

Name: Nathaniel Heidenheimer

DOB: 11/18/63, Gainesville Florida

BREIF BIO: I came out of the hospital in north Florida on 11/22/63. My mom said the guy who cleaned the windshield said "Did you hear the news" with a big grin on his face Possibly he was trying to mess with the blatant university types. That night cold war liberals gave me their meagre benediction: may he not grow up to be president.

My dad was a political scientist. Observing from around the age of two I could tell that this was a frightened cold war discipline. As I grew older I grew curious about the sociological structure of knowledge, especially around the cold war.

I went to Grinnell College, then, sadly Teachers College at Columbia university. Now I teach U.S. History in a Public High School in NYC. I have a growing interest in communications and the CIA.

My reading in the Kennedy Assassination took a great leap forward two years ago when I learned of Peter Dale Scott through another book by Roger Morris and Sally Denton. I then read Deep Politics and was bowled over. This book seemed to completely repudiate the dichotomy between "conspiracy theory" and "structural analysis”. Later I read The Man Who Knew too Much. Now I am reading the new book by Joan Mellon, and finding it fascinating.

I was a history major, and have read a ton of history. I think that’s real important when one approaches this stuff: it help approach questions of causality from a wide angle.

My other interests include baseball and writing poetry. I am actually writing poems about the Kennedy assassination. The goal here is not glibness, but to get people to unpack the baggage from this ubiquitous roadblock, this term "Conspiracy theory". I think it is largely a function of the media doing its job: preventing a mediated discussion.