Best book about the JFK assassination

[John Korienek]

I would like to add the two Donald Gibson books to your list:"Battling Wall Street" and "The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up".

Anyone who can connect the dots (as the author himself apparently cannot) will have understood a great deal about the assassination.

[Jack White]

Ville,

I appreciate and applaud what you are trying to do here - but you need to be more specific. What do you mean by 'best'? The best written? The most persuasive in favour of conspiracy? The most persuasive against conspiracy? The book with the best illustrations? The one with the best document reproductions? The best book for beginners?

For what it's worth, here is a short list of the books I personally feel are the most important (no particular order):

The Warren Report. The most important book of all. If you do not know what the lies are, then you can hardly criticize them!

Accessories After The Fact. Remains the best criticism of the above.

Cover-Up (Stuart Galenor). Highly recommended for all newcomers to the case.

Pictures Of The Pain. Well-written and studiously compiled. A very important book.

No More Silence. Larry Snead's masterpiece gives us the opportunity to learn exactly what so many important eyewitnesses saw, heard and did. We should all be gratfeul to Larry for getting to these people and recording their thoughts. AsI have stressed many times before, you cannot interview a name on a tombstone. Larry got there first!

With Malice. A deeply-resesarched work, brilliantly illustrated and with valuable document reproductions. Okay, in the opinion of many of us, Dale Myers comes to the wrong conclusion but that does not mean that all his research is flawed. This should be on every researcher's bookshelf.

Kill Zone (Craig Roberts). An acknowledged expert marksman (USMC) exp[lains that Oswald could not have pulled off that feat of marksmanship because he (Roberts) couldn't have done it.

Just my own ideas. I doubt that any two people would produce the same list.

Ready for the flak!

IAN

Hi, Ian...a good list...but

Armstrong's HARVEY & LEE must

top any list. If you don't know

who Oswald was, you cannot understand

the assassination.

Jack

[Tony Frank]

The book that I wrote, "Secret Works Of Darkness: Ongoing Corruption In The Government & The CIA," is the best book on the Kennedy assassination. It says who did it and why and it proves it. I am about to undertake an effort to have it published.

[Brian LeCloux]

For best books about the JFK assassination, I'd rank all of the Weisberg's books ahead of any other books. His knowledge of the documentary evidence is unsurpassed. He really did smash the cover up with his 1975 Post Mortem volume and never got credit in the mainstream media for the awesome work he did forcing the truth out in dozens of FOIA cases. I was never turned off by his passion. It seemed acceptable given the issue involved: the cover up of the killing of the president and the failure by the Congress, the Courts, the mainstream media, the critical liberal intellectual community and the general public to properly respond to the negation of democracy.

Next, I'd go with Presumed Guilty by Howard Roffman. Especially since the young man was only 21. I saw a video tape of presentations he gave in 1976 at UW Stevens Point (along with Wrone, Lesar and Weisberg). Unbelievable. Using only Warren Commision evidence Roffman clearly and logically destroyed the frame up of Oswald. His only book on the case seems to have the best presenation for LHO's alibi. The chapter on how he could not possibly have been a sixth floor shooter and within approximately one minute been on the second floor drinking a coke could have been key to his acquital had there been a trial. We need no speculation or theorizing here: official evidence supports the contention that he cannot have gotten down the stairs in time. The reconstructions and witness statements make this unsupportable. He would have arrived after patrolman Baker. Witnesses on the stairwell would have seen him run past them. It did not happen; officially. Game over.

Next would be David R. Wrone's new book about the Zapruder film and related issues. I've always enjoyed Wrone's take on the facts and issues in this case. I like how he just thrashes Posner and Seymour Hersh about their sloppy scholarship and unsourced claims. Wrone's work is overlooked as it should not be. He's a trained historian with a superior understanding of government, politics and history.

He seems to know the documentary evidentiary base almost as well as Weisberg did. He and Weisberg highlight the information provided by Dr. Joseph Dolce. Dolce just blew apart the single bullet theory. Interviewed by the Warren Commission he just told them flat out, the theory is wrong, after having proved it with experiments. So, of course, they couldn't include him in the Report. And if you're a critic and you're writing a book length treatment of this case, how can you not include Dolce? Well, I don't know, but many writers don't include the Dolce study conducted for the Warren Commission disproving their own theory.

The Chip Selby doc, Reasonable Doubt, has a great interview with him. Critics should be throwing this guy's material in the face of guys like Posner and McAdams.

The 1980 bibliography Wrone compiled with DeLloyd J. Guth is superb. In the introduction Wrone just anihilates Blakey and the HSCA for their failure to properly investigate the JFK case. He cites seven key facts/areas supporting conspiracy - not including LHO as a shooter - that the HSCA badly handled.

Next, would be The Assassinations compilation by Pease and DiEugenio. These two authors are rare in the field of assassination research. They seem to not only write well but also have an excellent command of the documents. Further, they seem to avoid ridiculous speculations found in many other popular treatments.

Next, for me, would by Accessories After the Fact. Meagher did a great job revealing the evidenc of conspiracy and the flaws in the case against LHO without engaging in factless speculation.

Nearing the end of my list I'd add Not in Your Lifetime by Summers. I like how he seems to engage a mass of material and write about in a consise manner.

I'd conclude my list with The Last Investigation by Fonzi. I enjoyed reading this insider's account of the promising, but politically crushed, HSCA. An excellent history of the HSCA has yet to be written.

Not a long list because most of the books on this case are marred by speculation, lack of foundation, procrustean bed theorizing, false connections, poor scholarship, etc.

[Nathaniel Heidenheimer]

I vote Deep Politics by Peter Dale Scott as my favorite.

[Allan Eaglesham]

Walt Brown's Treachery in Dallas is in my top three with Best Evidence and The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Pictures of the Pain and The Killing of a President are indispensable resources.

Allan

[Dawn Meredith]

[quote name='Allan Eaglesham' date='Nov 17 2005, 07:51 PM' post='45572']

Walt Brown's Treachery in Dallas is in my top three with Best Evidence and The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Pictures of the Pain and The Killing of a President are indispensable resources.

Allan

There are really too many really great books on this case to say which is the BEST. Walt is a friend so I am partial to his work. For a very long time my personal favorite was Carl Oglesby's "Yankee and Cowboy War". Loved Fonzi's Last Investigation. Loved Best Evidence, but thought it should have been shorter.

Prouty's "JFK" is great, as is "Crossfire" (Mars)....this list is endless in terms of must haves, as far as I am concernbed. Mark Lane's "Plausible Denial", Newman's "JFK and Vietnam" and "Oswald and the CIA". Dick Russell's "Man Who Knew TOo Much"...

All books by Prof Phil Melanson.... Dr Crehshaw's "JFK Conspiracy of Silence"....

But right now the most important book is Joan Mellen's. I cannot recommend it highly enough.!!!

Dawn

[Tim Gratz]

Dawn, how do you explain her claim (no citation) that Hemming told someone (book doesn't say who) that Helms was behind the assassination?

I'll have more comments on the book later. By the way, if the book points toward anyone, it points toward Carlos Marcello, by the way. Beckham's hard-to-believe claim that he was given the assassination plans to fly to Dallas (the claim, I assert, is incredible on its face) came not from Shaw or Shaw's lawyer but the lawyer for Carlos Marcello. This is only one incident in the book that apparently connects Gill to the plot.

[Terry Mauro]

I would like to add the two Donald Gibson books to your list:"Battling Wall Street" and "The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up".

Anyone who can connect the dots (as the author himself apparently cannot) will have understood a great deal about the assassination.

********************************************************************************

**

"I would like to add the two Donald Gibson books to your list:"Battling Wall Street" and "The Kennedy Assassination Cover-Up"."

Right on, John! I'd also like to add " The Secret Team" by Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, "Never Again" by Harold Weisberg, "The Assassinations" by Pease and DiEugenio, and "Plausible Denial" by Mark Lane, just for starters. And, even though "Best Evidence" was long, I stayed glued to it. "The Man Who Knew Too Much" was HUGE, as well. But, I like those large tomes. Get quite attached to them myself. I almost feel as if I've just dropped off a wonderful house guest at the airport after spending a grand couple of weeks together, when finishing one. Great reference books, though. You keep them forever. Except for The Secret Team which I must have given away four or five copies of over a five year period. Talk about an eye-opener.

Wait a minute! I already did this once before, didn't I? Jeez Louise! Must have had a senior moment, there... LOL LLH

Edited November 18, 2005 by Terry Mauro

[Tim Gratz]

Re Mellen's book [this is my Popst #36 on the "Book" thread]:

I found one incident cited in Mellen's book that is so preposterous that it staggers the mind! Lambert covers it in her review:

[From Lambert's review:]

Phantom Loan

Consider too this allegation regarding David Ferrie, a pilot posthumously named by Garrison as one of Clay Shaw’s two co-conspirators (the other being Lee Harvey Oswald). The week of the assassination, supposedly needing money to rent a plane, Ferrie supposedly signed a $400 loan document and Clay Shaw supposedly co-signed it. [Needing money: Mellen pp. 38, 39, co-signed, p. 39, 40.]

In one of those stunning extrapolations that mark this work, Mellen declares:

“The document proved not only that Ferrie and Shaw knew each other, but that they participated together in preparations for the assassination, reflecting their mutual foreknowledge of the crime.” [“The document proved,” p. 40.]

What does Mellen have to prove this document existed? Not the document, not even an author’s interview with the alleged lender. What she has is a single witness who claims he spoke to the lender and saw the contract thirty-five years earlier. [Mellen, single witness, p. 40.]

Moreover, the reader is supposed to believe that the same CIA which sponsored the assassination couldn’t scrape together $400 in cash so Ferrie and Shaw would not leave behind a paper trail.

Forget about the verification claim. Mellen reports a story that Ferrie is given an assignment to fly a plane to Dallas but was not given any money to rent the plane. So rather than giving him cash Shaw co-signs a loan for Ferrie! Had this been the case, Shaw should have been acquitted on an insanity defense!

So according to Mellen's book, Shaw, the man her hero Garrison says planned the assassination, decides to leave a paper trail linking him to David Ferrie and a plane used for a mysterious flight to Dallas the week before the assassination.

Professor Mellen spent years working on the book and interviewing witnesses. It is unfortunate she cheapened and discredited her own work by including such peposterous tales. Even more unfortunate, some gullible readers will "suspend disbelief" and taken them at face value.

Does any Forum member really believe that as part of the assassination plot the wealthy businessman Shaw co-signed a promissory note so David Ferrie could rent a plane to fly an assassination-related trip to Dallas? If so, speak up!

Edited November 18, 2005 by Tim Gratz

[Dawn Meredith]

[i]Does any Forum member really believe that as part of the assassination plot the wealthy businessman Shaw co-signed a promissory note so David Ferrie could rent a plane to fly an assassination-related trip to Dallas? If so, speak up! [/i]

Tim:

Since you had the luxury of reading this book in advance of it being offered to the public, before you start asking forum members to comment on the contents of same, may I suggest you give those of us who work long hours the time to read this book before you quiz us?

So now it's Marcello eh? Not Castro:) And I totally disagree (what's new?); that is NOT what she is saying. It's just your take on it.

As much as I disagree with you, at least you make coherent points, and offer some logic for same, even if it's right wing Bush- loving logic I don't consider you a xxxxx here. And you do read books, even when they don't back your Castro- did -it theory. Unlike one of the newest posters, the one note wonder who we're all now just ignoring.

[Tim Carroll]

Professor Mellen spent years working on the book and interviewing witnesses. It is unfortunate she cheapened and discredited her own work by including such peposterous tales. Even more unfortunate, some gullible readers will "suspend disbelief" and taken them at face value.

From:

To:

Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 9:14 PM

Subject: Re: New book, A Farewell To Justice by Prof. Joan Mellen

______________,

As always, thanks for the information. There is a serious problem with the footnotes. About midway in the book, they do not correspond to the correct page making it tedious, if not impossible to check her sources. Incredible that the publisher would let this happen. I believe this begins with Chapter 12.

One thing that caught my attention very early (Jim Root's too, I'd well imagine): Edwin Walker made visits to Guy Banister's place in New Orleans.

What evidence does Mellen cite that shows Walker at Banister's office in New Orleans?

Tim, from page 69: "Other visitors to Banister's office included Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell, in town to protest the screening of Leon Uris' Exodus, and who was introduced to Banister by Jack Martin; General Edwin Walker; the ubiquitous Ed Butler; and Klan stalwarts Alvin Cobb and A. Roswell Thompson, who drove up in a big black Cadillac.... I saw no reference at the back of the book for this claim.

Now that I've purchased the book, the footnoting/sourcing problem in Ms. Mellen's book is immediately apparent. As the reviewer quoted by Gerry observed, "about midway in the book, [the footnotes] do not correspond to the correct page...." As for my earlier questions about the evidence that General Walker was a visitor to Banister's office, there is no cited evidence whatsoever. It also appears that the book relies too heavily on single-sourced assertions which don't meet the minimum standards of journalism. All of that said, I'll now shut up and read the book.

Tim Carroll

[Dawn Meredith]

[quote name='Tim Gratz' date='Nov 18 2005, 07:33 AM' post='45610']

Re Mellen's book [this is my Popst #36 on the "Book" thread]:

I found one incident cited in Mellen's book that is so preposterous that it staggers the mind! Lambert covers it in her review:

[From Lambert's review:]

I would not trust a thing by Patricia Lambert. Her book "False Witness" (On Garrison) is horrendoous and error filled. JimDiEugenio did a GREAT job in Probe a few years back setting the record (and Ms Lambert) straight on this hatchet job. The article may be online. I suggest you READ it before you start to quote Lambert as someone trustworthy.

Dawn

[Owen Parsons]

Professor Mellen spent years working on the book and interviewing witnesses. It is unfortunate she cheapened and discredited her own work by including such peposterous tales. Even more unfortunate, some gullible readers will "suspend disbelief" and taken them at face value.

From:

To:

Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2005 9:14 PM

Subject: Re: New book, A Farewell To Justice by Prof. Joan Mellen

______________,

As always, thanks for the information. There is a serious problem with the footnotes. About midway in the book, they do not correspond to the correct page making it tedious, if not impossible to check her sources. Incredible that the publisher would let this happen. I believe this begins with Chapter 12.

One thing that caught my attention very early (Jim Root's too, I'd well imagine): Edwin Walker made visits to Guy Banister's place in New Orleans.

What evidence does Mellen cite that shows Walker at Banister's office in New Orleans?

Tim, from page 69: "Other visitors to Banister's office included Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell, in town to protest the screening of Leon Uris' Exodus, and who was introduced to Banister by Jack Martin; General Edwin Walker; the ubiquitous Ed Butler; and Klan stalwarts Alvin Cobb and A. Roswell Thompson, who drove up in a big black Cadillac.... I saw no reference at the back of the book for this claim.

Now that I've purchased the book, the footnoting/sourcing problem in Ms. Mellen's book is immediately apparent. As the reviewer quoted by Gerry observed, "about midway in the book, [the footnotes] do not correspond to the correct page...." As for my earlier questions about the evidence that General Walker was a visitor to Banister's office, there is no cited evidence whatsoever. It also appears that the book relies too heavily on single-sourced assertions which don't meet the minimum standards of journalism. All of that said, I'll now shut up and read the book.

Tim Carroll

Tim, Mellen goes over the Walker-Banister connection in a paragraph in the "Unsung Hero" chapter.

A few quick comments on the Lambert review. First, she is very deceptive in mentioning Judge Christenberry's dismissal of the Shaw perjury charges. She doesn't mention that the good Judge was a Clay Shaw buddy and that his wife wrote a congratulatory letter to Shaw after the charges were dismissed.

Lambert is not a trustworthy source. She seriously misrepresented Anne Dischler's information to suite her anti-Garrison thesis, as Mellen shows. Unsurprisingly, Lambert doesn't mention this in her little review (which really just picks around the edges of Mellen's book).

I think that the evidence of the loan would be less impressive if it wasn't for all the independent confirmation of Ferrie's Dallas trip, a week before the assassination, from other witnesses. So yes, I do believe it.

Lambert also doesn't tell much about Beckham that isn't already in Mellen's book. What Lambert's rendition lacks is context.

Edited November 19, 2005 by Owen Parsons

[Tim Carroll]

As for my earlier questions about the evidence that General Walker was a visitor to Banister's office, there is no cited evidence whatsoever.

Tim, Mellen goes over the Walker-Banister connection in a paragraph in the "Unsung Hero" chapter.

The segment mentioned by Owen asserts that Banister attended a speech given by Walker in Baton Rouge. Attendance at a speech isn't the same sort of connection that a meeting at Banister's office would connote. The Notes section erroneously has this as page 223 rather than 224.

Tim Carroll