I don’t know how I missed it, having read most of the good
early critics of the Warren Report, but I never read Sylvia Meagher’s
“Accessories After the Fact,” and that is a pity because this book is one of
the most important ever written on the Kennedy assassination.
Ms. Meagher’s topic is exclusively “The Warren Report,” its
contents and the means and methods used to arrive at them. Ms. Meagher had a
unique advantage over some other critics and analysts: she not only studied the
entire 26 volumes of “Hearings and Exhibits” published to support the
single-volume summary report, she had undertaken the monumental task of
creating an index to “Hearings and Exhibits.” The Commission, as was its
bizarre and confusing way in so many things, published this massive collection
of evidence separately with no meaningful organization and no means to search
or study it, just tens of thousands of documents jammed into 26 covers like a
tidy pile of recycling. The summary
volume, “The Report,” therefore does not follow the most elemental academic
practice of citing an organized body of evidence for its claims and assertions.
It was almost as though the supporting documents were published to impress and
reassure the public, safe in the knowledge that few would ever try studying
them and that the few who did would find the task impossibly frustrating.
Ms. Meagher’s admirable indexing work not only created a
powerful tool for her own use and that of others but gave her in 1967, the
first publication date for “Accessories,” an almost unrivalled knowledge,
perhaps matched only by Harold Weisberg. But Weisberg was a fairly poor writer,
and his books, most famously, “Whitewash,” often are awkward and replete with
typographical errors. Ms. Meagher (at least in this edition) is almost the
polar opposite: she was a clear, logical writer, often quite forceful, writing
analytical reports having been part of her career work. She is a bit dry at
times, but that is in the nature of the material.
Ms. Meagher brought at least one more special talent to the
task of writing this book: she had eyes which missed almost nothing in the way
of detail. So much was this the case that there are points in the book where
you will simply feel a degree of awe for the threads she manages to pull
together. Time and time again, she marshals bits of material from the
supporting documents which contradict summary words in “The Report” they
supposedly were intended to support.
You might ask how is it relevant to read a book nearly fifty
years after its publication when so many new facts have emerged in the case. My
answer is, read her and find out: her judicious and detailed evaluation of
parts of “The Warren Report” has not been surpassed. Her words echo with acute
unanswered questions. She also demonstrated a remarkable prescience at times,
most of her best observations and conjectures being as fresh as they were when
she wrote. Altogether, an amazing feat of scholarship.
As to new evidence and facts, there actually is far less
than many assume. Yes, the Church Committee (1975) gave us some insights into
the CIA’s dirty work which Ms. Meagher did not know when writing, and, yes, the
House Select Committee (1979) developed some new evidence, and, still further,
the Assassination Records Review Board (1990s) published boxfuls of documents.
But what those who do not follow the assassination case do not know is how remarkably
little new material of genuine usefulness has appeared.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations (1978), while
uncovering important technical evidence of another shooter on the grassy knoll,
still feebly drew more or less the same conclusions as the Warren Report, and
their second-shooter evidence has been thoroughly muddied by other technical
claims about the recording. More importantly still, the huge release of
documents by the Assassination Records Review Board (1990s) is filled with
redactions and incomplete documents and a great many simply trivial documents
such as the fate of Kennedy’s original damaged bronze coffin. To this day, few
people realize that the most crucial documents remain buried in government
agency files, including information about the intelligence agency behind
Oswald’s phony defection, information about how his wife (daughter of a senior
Soviet police official at the peak of the Cold War) was permitted to migrate to
the United States, information about Oswald’s informer work for the FBI and about
the kind of people on which Oswald was informing both in New Orleans and Dallas,
information about Jack Ruby’s past (including his anti-Castro gun-running) and his
frenzied activities close to the assassination, information about the sickeningly-corrupt
Dallas Police and those who acted either to assist in, or cover-up details of, the
crime, information about the relationship (and there very much was a
relationship) between Oswald and Jack Ruby and David Ferry, information about
why the presidential limousine was quickly rebuilt to destroy ballistic evidence,
information about the pseudonym, A. Hidell, information about ex-FBI Agent Guy
Bannister’s dark operations in New Orleans out of a building Oswald frequented,
information about Oswald’s supposed visit to Mexico (genuine CIA observation
pictures and recording having never been released), and information about a
great many other things.
Perceptive readers will understand that those are “red meat”
matters in the case and that it is simply absurd to ask people to accept that clear
documents around them do not exist. We also need information on so basic a
matter as why the distinguished members of the Commission thought it was appropriate
to selectively ignore witnesses, to alter the printed version of other
witnesses’ testimony, and to write what is almost a complete fabrication from
start to finish. Lyndon Johnson’s suggestive stuff, reportedly whispered to convince
some recruits to join the commission, about “if you knew what I knew” and tens
of millions of “lives at risk” strikes one as unconvincing rubbish even then.
Remember, the most profound question ever asked about the
assassination goes unanswered to this day: Betrand Russell, after publication
of “The Report” asked, "If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin,
where is the issue of national security?"
Perhaps the most outstanding yet little asked issue around
the Warren Commission is why, instead of doing a straightforward investigation
of facts, it saw fit to conduct the prosecution of a single individual, “The
Report” being literally nothing more than a prosecutor’s brief, and a fairly poor
one at that. In a normal legal procedure, there is also a defence brief, the
opportunity to cross examine, and there is a judge and/or jury acting as
impartial receiver of all evidence. But the Warren Commission acted as
prosecution and jury combined. Indeed, as is not widely understood, the
Commission itself did almost no investigation (investigation being its true
mandate) and depended almost completely on the FBI for investigative work. So the
FBI, a poisonously political organization at the time under J. Edgar Hoover,
collected selected pieces of evidence and selected witness accounts, and the
Commission conducted selected questioning of selected witnesses and assembled a
dodgy prosecutorial brief. Nothing that could be called a true investigation
ever occurred.
Readers should understand that this book is not the kind of
gripping narrative of, say, Anthony Summers’ “Conspiracy.” It is a brilliant
dissection, although a bit dry at times, of what remains the government’s
foundation document explaining the assassination. “The Warren Report” does not
explain the assassination, as Ms. Meagher so amply proved in this book nearly
fifty years ago.
This book is recommended without qualification for all people
interested in the assassination, in American history, in the integrity of America’s
political or judicial institutions, and in the dark workings of powerful
government institutions.
Here is a footnote for those interested in how twisted the
assassination literature has become with unhelpful books now regularly dumped
into the market. Ms. Meagher cites Edward Jay Epstein’s “Inquest,” another
critique of the “The Report” published before hers. She treats him, given her
knowledge in 1967, as a fair-minded and able critic. And to a considerable
degree he was in that single instance, but Epstein wrote two more books after
“Inquest,” “Counterplot” and “Legend,” both serving only to reinforce the main
observations and conclusions of “The Report,” so much so, they are embarrassing
for a knowledgeable and critically-minded person to read. “Inquest” served the
purpose of what intelligence agencies call “chicken feed,” accurate but
non-essential information given by a spy to the other side in order to
establish bona fides. Following a number of pioneering and well-received
critical books, “Inquest” granted some of the flawed nature of the “The Report”
and even seemed to break a little new ground. But when you read the other two Epstein
books and some unrelated stuff he has churned out over the years, you conclude
he is part of what one retired CIA propaganda operative once called his mighty
Wurlitzer Organ, a huge console of keys sending all kinds of misinformation through
legitimate publication channels.
And so it continues today. Not only has Epstein written yet
another book, but a steady stream of books is published whose main purpose is
to support the Warren Commission’s “findings.” This is done along two paths.
First there are the Epstein-type books, supporting the Commission through a
semblance of analysis and investigation. Then there are the truly flaky
anti-Warren Commission books with all kinds of outlandish claims (i.e. Oswald
was a KGB spy or he was a Castro-hired assassin) and absolutely no evidence,
intended to spread a shadow of discredit across even legitimate critics. Both kinds
of books are produced by publishing channels friendly to the CIA, and their
authors often may not even realize that they are being used, it being a common
practice to use non-CIA assets with or without their knowledge as the case may
seem appropriate. Sadly, the author of one of the best books ever written on
the subject, Anthony Summers (“Conspiracy”), in his recent update of “Not in
Your Lifetime” seems to this author, wittingly or not, to have gone over to the
dark side in some of his observations and suggestions, just as he very much did
in his unfortunate book on 9/11 (also reviewed).
It is thus a rare thing to find a book on a highly
controversial public issue in the United States that is an honest effort to
analyze (and what else would you expect at the heart of a great empire which is
constantly working to deceive people about its purposes and methods?), and Ms.
Meagher’s book is one of a small number of them on the assassination.
The extent of American secret operations of all kinds was
not appreciated in 1967. Today, they march in platoons across the news -
Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq, Pakistan, Libya, Guantanamo, Diego Garcia, Yemen,
Syria, Ukraine, and others – but still the dark workings behind them are never
acknowledged. America’s intelligence agencies have gigantic budgets and operate
with almost no accountability, murdering and torturing and overthrowing like
the secret police serving a police state. America’s Congress questions and
opposes almost nothing done. America’s mainline press now never pretends to
report as it did during at least part of the Vietnam holocaust (the word being
justified by the killing of an estimated 3 million Vietnamese). Elected
presidents seem little more than figureheads formally authorizing the dark
establishment’s work, the public not being able to distinguish an Obama from a
Bush. The unexplained death of a president and the government’s contempt for
the understanding of America’s citizens has gone a long way to making this
world possible.
