Gaeton Fonzi
(This biographical sketch comes from G. Fonzi's home
page, http://cuban-exile.com/0fonzi.html)
Gaeton Fonzi was raised in West New York, New Jersey, and was graduated with
journalism honors from the University of Pennsylvania in 1957. He served as an
officer in the U.S. Army Infantry and a Civil Affairs Reserve Company. He worked
briefly as a reporter with the Delaware County (Pa.) Daily Times and as an
associate editor with the Chilton Company.
In 1959, Fonzi joined Philadelphia magazine and was later
senior editor. Fonzi won the magazine's first national journalism award and
wrote more than 100 major feature articles.
In 1972, Fonzi became editor of Miami magazine and
senior editor of its sister publication, Gold Coast in Fort Lauderdale.
In 1975, on the basis of articles he had written on the subject while at Philadelphia
magazine, Fonzi was asked by U.S. Senator Richard Schweiker, then a member
of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to become a staff investigator
probing the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In 1977, Fonzi was
invited to join the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations as a staff
investigator. Later, as a special team director, he wrote and edited a major
appendix, Volume X, of the Committee's Final Report. Subsequently, his
article for Washingtonian magazine, detailing the political limitations of the
Committee's investigation, received national media coverage and earned the
magazine record readership. Fonzi has been a contributing editor of Gold
Coast and South Florida magazine, a feature writer for New York's
Avenue magazine and contributed to Penthouse, Esquire and The
New York Times Magazine. He has worked on special investigative projects for
the New York Daily News and the Chicago Tribune involving the
FBI's use of criminal informants in political investigations. In addition he has
been a consultant to "60 Minutes," "NBC Nightly News," and
"Inside Edition."
Among the awards given Fonzi's articles are the Philadelphia
Business Club Award, the Philadelphia Bar Association Award, two local Sigma
Delta Chi Awards, a National Sigma Delta Chi Award, four Florida Magazine
Association Awards, a City Regional Magazine Association Award, a
Florida-Atlantic University Enterprise Reporting Special Award and a Washington
Monthly Award. Fonzi has been a finalist in Columbia's National Magazine Awards
and has received the William Allen White Investigative Journalism Award from the
University of Kansas. He has been a guest lecturer in journalism at the
University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan.
Fonzi is the co-author of an article TIME magazine
honored in 1970 as one of the ten most significant press stories of the decade.
That article appeared in the book, The Best Magazine Articles of 1968.
He is the author of Annenberg: A Biography of Power,
published in 1970 by Weybright & Talley in New York and by Anthony Blond in
London, and of The Last Investigation, published by Thunder's Mouth
Press in 1993 and, in trade paperback, in 1994.
In 1995 he was one of a select few to attend an International
Conference on President Kennedy's assassination Rio de Janeiro and later
attended the meeting of historians with Cuban State Security in Nassau on
matters pertaining to the assassination.
Because of his government investigative experience on the
Kennedy assassination, he is recognized as an authority on those aspects of the
assassination involving anti-Castro Cubans and the Intelligence agencies. He is
often consulted by other authors and researchers for advise, documentation and
firsthand knowledge of his investigations into the subject.
He is a member of the South Florida Researcher's Group and a
participant in the Researcher Directory.
The Warren Commission, The Truth, and Arlen Specter (Greater Philadelphia Magazine,1966)