Gerald Posner
c/o Letters Editor
U.S. News & World Report
2400 N Street, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20037-1196

Dear Mr. Posner and US News,

    Regarding the excerpts of your book, Case Closed, in the August 30 -

September 6, 1993 issue of "U.S. News & World Report," space considerations do

not allow me to document every error in your article. I will just point out a

couple of simple errors of fact which anyone can verify.

    A high proportion of the pages consist of character assassination. Every

ridiculous theory that anyone has ever dreamed up is dredged up to assert that

anyone who does not accept the Warren Commission solution must be a kook. You

should be ashamed of ending your piece on the comment that those who seek the

truth are defenders of a murderer. No one ever said that Oswald was an angel,

but all the character assassination of Oswald does not prove that he killed

President Kennedy. Your thesis seems to be, "Oswald was a sloppy dresser,

therefore he killed the President."

    You have not investigated the case, nor offered anything new of your own.

You are only summarizing the work of other Warren Commission apologists. There

is nothing wrong with that and it performs a valuable function, but it hardly

qualifies as new research. And you have made some very simple errors which

indicate that you do not have the slightest idea of the simplest facts which any

student of the JFK assassination should have mastered by now.

    For example, you state that Howard Brennan was "leaning" against a

"4-foot-high" retaining wall, "93" feet away from Oswald's window. In the first

place, the Zapruder film shows that Brennan was sitting on top of that wall, not

leaning against it. In the second place, the wall was actually 4.7 feet high. I

don't know where you dreamed up the figure of 93 feet. Even the FBI

reconstruction shows that he was 120.2 feet away from Oswald's window ledge (the

distance actually was 125.3 feet). Personally, I don't care how far away Brennan

was, but this simple error proves that you have not done your homework.







    You tried to sneak one bit of propaganda past your innocent readers. You try

to imply that Jean Hill was lying about everything by suggesting that she did

not rush up the grassy knoll with the rest of the crowd to pursue the assassin.

You tell the reader that she is seen standing next to her friend Mary Moorman in

the Bond 6 photograph. You ignore or fail to inform the reader of the Mark Bell

film which shows her running up the steps to the pergola on the grassy knoll

along with the crowd.

    Your drawing of the single-bullet theory is deceptive. We can't discern the

vertical alinement of the two men. It appears as though Governor Connally is

placed several inches lower than President Kennedy to get low enough to allow a

single-bullet alinement. Careful analysis of other photographs would show that

Connally was only a couple of inches lower than JFK. The construction of the

jump seats on the limousine would not allow Connally to duck down another 3

inches just to line up properly for the single-bullet theory.

    I realize that US News is desperate to publish any pro-Warren Commission

tripe in order to counteract the rash of conspiracy books soon to hit the

bookstores, but at least there should have been someone along the line who could

have done some simple fact checking (a lost art in modern journalism it seems).

Please do your homework.



                                                                      Sincerely,




                                                                W. Anthony Marsh