Woodcut by Albert Berghaus of Booth *booting Lincoln at Ford's Theater:

Now, dear reader, here's a proposition: ing led from Worthington. Mass., to Salt Every day you've got to determine, if yott Lake City, Utah, and ended at the Steam- read us at all, what's true, what's false, and, boat Square Book Shop in Albany, N.Y., as in most cases, what lies inconclusively in where Mr. Lynch was said to receive mes- between. Witness today. sages. "He's a very private man who jealous- Elsewhere in these pages, you'll find a ly guards his privacy,"the proprietor said, column by our colleagues, Jack Anderson cautiously. Mr. Lynch maintains a phone in and Les Whitten. It begins with the rivet- the Albany area, but it, too, is unlisted. ing words: "The FBI has quietly entered the Finally, late in the day, after more enter- investigation of another presidential assassi- prising investigative reporting, the elusive nation—this one the 112-year-old shooting Mr. Lynch himself was on the phone. of Abraham Lincoln . ." The column goes "I'm always interested in the subject of; on to say: "The belated FBI inquiry into Lincoln's death may help to resolve such shall we say, Americana, the artifacts of mysteries as these: Was Lincoln the victim history," he pronounced, in a Brooklyn ac- of a secret conspiracy reaching into his own cent. "One might call me a dealer-collector. cabinet? . . ." Credit for this monumental In general, I know a lot about American his- investigation ("new light on these questions") tory. It's the thing I liked best in school. I'm not a liberal in my politics. No one's 19 given to "some 18 pages that mysteriously ever accused me disappeared from Booth's diary but may now of being a Communist. If anything, I'm conservative in my views. I'm have turned up." And: "Now an indefatig- able American expert, Joseph Lynch of totally amateur, I admit. My education is limited to high school and the business Worthington, Mass., has found what appears to be the missing pages." arena, as we know it—making a living from Not having much else to report in this one day to next. I'm not Charlie Big Bucks, most normal summer since the '50s, which either." is to say dull, aside from the recent dis- Mr. Lynch then proceeded to tell the fol- covery of that long-extinct prehistoric mon- lowing story: ster, the plesiosaurus, from the murky depths Some 31/2 years ago, he was conducting an of the southern seas off New Zealand, or a inventory and appraisal of papers in the sociological examination of the deeper sig- possession of heirs of Edwin M. Stanton, nificance of the latest phenomenon, the Lincoln's secretary of war. As is his custom, film "Star Wars," we turn now to that burn- he read out a description of various letters ing question—not who killed Kennedy, but and manuscript pages into a tape recorder., who killed Lincoln. And also how that sub- Among the papers were some 18 pages of ject happens to surface in the press this handwriting, which seemed to have been first week of August, '77. torn from a diary. In checking into the con; tents, he determined that these were the C4J missing pages from John Wilkes Booth's The American expert, Joseph Lynch, lists diary. No matter how. He did. his address as P.O. Box 72, Worthington, In the course of his work, he happened to Mass. His phone, the operator says, has been mention his discovery to another dealer, who disconnected. A day of indefatigable track- in turn passed it on to another, who in turn Photos from the Bettmann Archive Matthew Brady photo of Stanton. From a book on Booth, rendition of his captitre by 'New York cavalry.

. .. Anyway, you get the picture: The word seeds of the crime, and so forth. Watergate or where they live. And they aren't talking. was out. lives. And sells. Even before the fact. Too much bad publicity, too much embar- Fast curtain, exit Mr. Lynch, enter a David Balsiger, described as "an investi- rassment to the, old family name. David Balsiger, end act one. Plot thickens. gative snooper" by the company, was doing "And what about that FBI investigation?" yea the gumshoe work that all reporter-research; you ask. Read on. Denouement to come. er investigators must do when he stumbled David Balsiger was in the East research- on a lead. ing a movie on "The Lincoln Conspiracy," he was in Washington, D.C., at a Sometime last fall, Michael (Mike) Har- to he produced by Sunn Classic Pictures, He says Civil War type gun show, when he heard mon, curator of the Ford's Theater Museum, with offices in Salt Lake City and Los about an Americana collector who had found got a call. It might be worth his time to con- Angeles. Sunn Classic describes itself as the missing pages from Booth's diary. "It tact a film company, Sunn Classic, in Salt "a unique family film company." In its pro, took me nearly six weeks to track Lynch Lake City, he was told. Seems new material motional material, Sunn says of itself: "Be- down," Balsiger says. After calling dealers on the Lincoln assassination had been fore starting a picture, this innovative corn- from New York to Boston, be finally got a turned up. New material is always turning call back. He and Lynch began negotiations up, but Harmon made the call. In time, he over the material. And here, if it hasn't al- met Lynch, Balsiger and other people from ready, the story becomes too complex to un- the movie company. One of them asked for, Haynes ohnson ravel at this Writing. But the essence: and got, permission to photograph the origi- Balsiger says Lynch estimated the value of nal Booth diary on display in the museum. the material at a quarter of a million to a There had been rumors, among the hordes million dollars, and that Lynch, acting as of Lincoln assassination conspiracy buffs. the middleman for the heirs, first put a that Booth's diary contained "invisible" HYPE price writing. The keys to the case. of a quarter million on it. Lynch denies this. After that, Harmon says, the government The Stanton heirs, he -says, didn't want to decided to protect itself. "We asked the FBI pang locates the special group of people who deal with anyone. "So far as they were con- to examine the diary in our possession to will enjoy that particular kind of film and cerned, the diary was a black spot on every- alleviate any future uncertainty as to its authenticity, or any questions pertaining to then shapes it to their preferences like a one concerned," he says. That is, Stanton clearly was implicated as the master con- 'hidden' writing." That was done. The diary custom tailor." is now back in its case in Ford's Theater. In other words, it uses the modern tech- spirator.. How would you like to be known as a direct descendant of the man who had The FBI has never looked at the "missing niques that serve us in everything from sell- Father Abraham slain? pages" from the diary. As Harmon says: "Being a cautious historian, I have to say ing cigarettes to politicians: mass market re- In the end, Lynch sold to the movie com- search, polling, computer readouts to de- pany a transcript of the supposed diary, made this: The burden of historical proof rests on Lynch. If a guy says, 'Hey, I have the docu- termine what the audience wants. Then it from his tape-recorded descriptions. The price was somewhere between $5,000 and ments that say Mary Lincoln did it,' it's the makes the films. "Docu-dramas," it, calls $10,000. The movie company claims to have burden of that person to produce the docu- them. Some of Sunn's credits, for film and done exhaustive work into authenticating the ments in question. The only way anybody's TV: "The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams," pages. They were evaluated "by historical going to be able to determine their authen- ticity is when they become public "The Mysterious Monsters" and "The Amaz- experts," and by other means. Voice analyses documents were performed on numerous taped inter. subject to public scrutiny and examination." ing World of Psychic Phenomena." views "using the psychological stress evalu- Harmon's a Civil War buff himself. He re- The company modestly claims "The Lin- ator (PSE), a `truth' machine used by Iaw- calls being fascinated by an event a year coln Conspiracy" will uncover "the most enforcement agencies and the CIA." ago. Lincoln's wallet had been sealed inside shocking historical conspiracy of our times." Now you must understand one fact: At a box maintained at the Smithsonian. It was this point, no one has opened during the bicentennial .celebration. It's sort of a Watergate-revisited, before seen those newly found pages. No one has met the Stanton heirs. No Guess what they found. Watergate ever happened, of course. The one, aside from Lynch, knows who they are. Five dollars—in Confederate money.