The Case for Assassination Books
By Andrew
Winiarczyk
Dateline: Dallas, Volume 1: Numbers 2 & 3, Summer/Fall 1992, page 5
(Reprinted with permission of the author)
(Andy Winiarczyk has operated the Last Hurrah Bookshop in Williamsport, PA, for nearly 20 years. The shop specializes in books on political assassinations, modern American politics, and espionage. Andy is known as a friend to all researchers of the JFK assassination.)
The shots that rang out in Dealey Plaza set off an arsenal of typewriters
and printing presses. Seemingly overnight, books appeared. First entries were Four
Days and The Torch is Passed. They were full of pictures but void of
controversy. These books were ordered by people everywhere and an industry was
born.
I count many authors and researchers among
my customers; a smaller number I regard as friends. It would be presumptuous of
me to state what the best books were since I’ve never written one, so let’s
focus on those that have been the most influential.
We have to begin with the Warren Report,
the one volume digest of conventional wisdom. Since GPO titles can’t be
copyrighted, multiple companies printed it. For the critic, it is the report’s
big brother, Hearings Before the President’s Commission on the
Assassination of President Kennedy (1964) that really matters. This sets
forth the field of battle and provides useful leads.
Immediately, issue was taken with its
findings (or lack thereof). If Edward Jay Epstein’s Inquest (1966) was
a volley, then Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgement (1966) was a frontal
assault. This is the volume that people, just plain folks remember.
The next year brought us two classics. Accessories
After The Fact by Sylvia Meagher was a primer on the case. If some books
sounded like a manifesto and others read like a legal document, then Six Seconds
In Dallas by Josiah Thompson was a training manual for intellectual warfare.
Though other volumes are scarcer, none is more frequently requested.
The subject of mystique reminds us of Farewell
America. Published in Liechenstein (home of many an honest enterprise) in
1968, distributed in Canada, and purportedly written by James Hepburn. Hepburn
was a front for the French Intelligence. Right wing oil men (ever met a left
winger?) did in JFK. The U.S. Customs Service was seizing copies of this book,
however, they must have been over paid because helpful Canadians manage to get
it past the ‘Dobermans.’
On the other side was JFK Assassination
File (1969) composed by Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry. It is no little
irony that it is the conspiracy minded who examines it. (Of course those who
believe in magic bullets don’t read books; they read newspapers and magazines
that tell them what they ought to know.)
If one person fed the myth of Dealey Plaza
as the “killing fields” it was Penn Jones. In five volumes Forgive My
Grief catalogs the unexplained deaths that befell those with knowledge of
the day.
At some point it must have seemed that the
struggle was truly dead and gone; it was with John Kennedy in the grave. Then
came a Watergate. Suddenly, there was a door ajar. If that was a lie and Vietnam
was an ambush at credibility gap, then maybe the smart guys were wrong about the
death of a President. Probings into the heart of Clandestine America led to Hearing
Before the Select Committee on Assassinations. When the report came out in
1979, it re-ignited old flames. Talk of organized crime and a probable
conspiracy settled nothing.
Mafia books were inevitable. The
pathfinder was Seth Kantor in Who Was Jack Ruby? (1978) Kantor was both a
mainstream journalist and an acquaintance of Ruby. David Scheim’s Contract
on America (1983) was self-published. When it was reprinted as a hardcover
in 1988 it became a best-seller. John Davis would write Mafia Kingfish
(1989), a remarkably comprehensive portrait of Carlos Marcello.
Others argued that Kennedy was caught in a
web of mobsters, rogue spooks, and Cuban exiles. Well known English journalist
Anthony Summers in 1980 rode Conspiracy to both commercial and critical
success. A personal favorite has been And We Are All Mortal by George
Michael Evica (1978). His work covers the unholy trinity and physical evidence.
University Press publication meant it modestly sold itself around the league.
With more active distribution by our shop and personal appearances by Evica it
was transformed into a must.
Another hit on the circuit was Cover-Up
by Gary Shaw and Larry Harris (1967). One can speculate as to how many copies
would have been sold if it received wider distribution. The same could be said
for the Whitewash series by Harold Weisberg.
There are two volumes about which people
are quite partisan. Coup d’état in America (1975) by Michael Canfield
and Alan Weberman where they alleged that E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis were
two of the three tramps arrested in Dealey Plaza. Rumors of suppression made it
a cult item. More controversial was Best Evidence (1980). David Lifton
argued that the conflicts between the medical personnel in Dallas and Bethesda
could only be explained buy alteration of the President’s body. Throw in
coffin switches and you have the making of a tale out of Duvalier’s Haiti.
The 25th anniversary brought
retrospectives and a surge. Instead of a last post the memorials offered a call
to action. Two big books took on the saddest story and hit paydirt. High
Treason by Robert Groden and Harrison E. Livingstone (1989) attacked the
authenticity of autopsy photos. Jim Marrs’ Crossfire (1989) provided a
superb synthesis of all previous theories and made the phrase “motive, means
and opportunity” into something of a mantra.
The final event in the chronology is
naturally the film JFK: The Story That Won’t Go Away. It brought to
light the work of Col. Fletcher Prouty, renewed interest in the character of Jim
Garrison, and gave a boost to Crossfire. This last year has virtually
given us as assassination book of the month club. Which will soon leave a
lasting impact will be known soon enough. Let it suffice to say that William
Butler Yeats could just as easily have had Oliver Stone and JFK in mind
when he wrote “all changed, changed utterly. A terrible beauty is born.”