sign in sign up
<<
Home , Warren Commission

R.I.P., conspiracy

Gerald Posner says Oswald alone killed JFK, and "the facts are incontrovertible." He is confident he has cloip d the case. But, in fact, he has dot — and nobody could.

CASE CLOSED and the Assassination of JFK By r, I I_ 40-eL ok Random House. 607 pp. $25 O Reviewed by Mary Perot Nichols erald Posner, a former Wall Street lawyer, is an author with the most as- tounding hubris. He con- elx_ctfr)-3 tends that his new book, GCase Closed, will do what its title says: close the case on the assassina- tion of President John F. Kennedy. Posner's thesis is that Lee Harvey Oswald did it all by himself. "Well, good luck, Mr. Posner," I said to myself as I sat down to 'read Case Closed. My own opinion is that neither God nor whatever higher power one might subscribe to could achieve Posner's goal. Kennedy hagi- ographer Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. once described the welter of facts, factoids and inconsistencies that make the Kennedy assassination the most fascinating murder mystery of our time as "a quagmire for histori- ans." It is, in fact, a quagmire for almost anybody. Let's see if Gerald Posner sinks in it. Posner is confident that he is on solid ground. "Lee Harvey Oswald, driven by his own twisted and impenetrable fur- ies, was the only assassin at on November 22, 1963," he mission was right. (The subsequent Lee Harvey Oswald posed in writes. "To say otherwise, in light of the overwhelming evidence, is to ab- shot that killed Kelinedy hit the back April 1963 with the rifle he solve a man with blood on his hands, of his head.) used to kill Kennedy. The and to mock the President he killed." Posnef attempts ,to debunk the Posner works very hard to show work of the various conspiracy re- assassin, in Posner's view as in that Oswald killed Kennedy alone. searchers — a mixed bag of serious the Warren Commission's, was The book includes a chapter and people who care about history; ob- a maladjusted loner. an appendix on the Warren Commis- sessed people, who aren't necessarily sion's conclusion that the first bullet wrong, and crazies — and even de- to hit Kennedy struck him high in votes a chapter to the psychological the back, went through his throat underpinnings of an apparent na- and struck Texas Gov. John Connal- tional need to believe in a conspir- ly. Conspiracy theorists have scoffed acy. at the single-bullet theory; they have "The search for a darker truth claimed that Connally was hit by than the lone assassin seems un- another bullet, fired by another quenchable," Posner writes. But, he shooter. Posner, citing evidence de- adds, "... for those seeking the truth, veloped in recent years by new tech- the facts are incontrovertible. ... nology, argues that the Warren Com- Chasing shadows on the grassy knoll theories?

United Press International will never substitute for real his- mission. The President and tory." Posner writes extremely well. His Jacqueline Kennedy with In fact, Posner does not close the narrative about Oswald's life is Gov. in case and, indeed, nobody could. worth the price of the book for those motorcade on Questions remain to be answered who are new to the subject. For about who Oswald really was. The those, like me, who have read the 26 Nov. 22, 1963. "Lee most important question is whether Harvey Oswald," writes he was trained as an agent by some volumes of the Warren Commission branch of U.S. intelligence. Posner See OSWALD on K4 Posner, ". . was the doesn't satisfactorily answer that only assassin at Dealey question. Mary Perot Nichols, an adjunct Posner rests his case largely on professor of social sciences at New Plaza" that day. who he thinks Oswald really was. York University, teaches a course "Understanding [Oswald]," Posner called "Who Killed JFK?" She is a former journalism professor and writes, and I agree, "is the key to former president of WNYC, a finding out what happened in Dallas communications group made up of on Nov. 22, 1963." Posner views Os- New York City's three public wald as pretty much the maladjusted r.r. broadcasting stations. She is working

OSWALD from K1 - hearings and some of the declassi- • fled documents and. tend tO -think Oswald did. not act alone or was set up as "a patsy," which is what he told _ the Dallas police after his arrest, it will not be enough. So Posner starts by giving us a portrait of Oswald, most of it gleaned from the findings of the Warren Commission, appointed by Kennedy's successor, Lyndon B. Johnson. Headed by Chief Justice Earl War- ren, its purpose was to investigate the assassination of Kennedy and the murder of Oswald two days later by . Reading the volumes of testimony, jumbled material, exhibits and the detritus of Oswald's life is a daunting task undertaken by few, including, - unfortunately, most journalists. Posner is to • be congratulated for plowing through it. We learn from Posner of Oswald's nomadic childhood — he lived in New Orleans, in various Texas towns and in New York City — and his "domineering" mother, Marguerite, who was "consumed with self-pity both over the death of her husband [Lee's father] and because she had to work to support Lee, his brother Rob- ert, and a stepbrother, John Pic, from the first of her three mar- riages." We learn that, as a youth in New York, Oswald once threatened his mother with a penknife. But every teenager with an impos- • • • sible mother or aggressive -Widen- The assassin's assassin, jack Ruby, Leaving court in December Cies doesn't grow up to be a presiden- ' 1963. Ruby killed Oswald two assassin. Posner makes much of days after JFK's murder. the Warren Commission testimony of Renatus Hartogs, the staff psychol- New York City shoved in his handl a Posner never explains why, if Os- °Ott at New York City's Youth pamphlet about the Rosenberg case, wald had such a low security clear- House, where Oswald was remanded followed his older brother into the ance, the Marines went into a tizzy for truancy. Hartogs told the com- Marines. Posner observes, and I see over his defection and, according to mission, according to Posner, that no reason to disagree, that "if noth- Warren Commission testimony by "this child had a potential for explo- ing else, being in the Marines pro- former Marine Lt. John Donovan, sive, aggressive, assaultive acting vided Oswald the opportunity to • changed "a lot of ... aircraft call .out...." - break away from his mother." signs, codes, radio frequencies, radar To Posner, Oswald's New York pe- Oswald reported for duty on Oct. frequencies." hod, and especially the diagnosis of 26, 1956; when the Cold War was still Six months after Oswald's defec- his personality by Hartogs. is so im- very hot. tion and threat to spill the secrets, portant that he goes out of his way to His service in the Marines is shot the Russians shot down the U-2 spy attack other Kennedy-assassination through with strange circumstances plane piloted by Francis Gary Pow- writers — including , Josi- that suggest to me — but not to ers on May 1, -1960. The crisis ah Thompson: , John Po,sner — that he could have been in wrecked scheduled talks between Davis, Robert J. Groden and Harri- training as an American spy. President Dwight D. Eisenhower and son Livingstone, Henry Hurt, David Neither Posner nor anyone else I Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, Scheim and — for ig- have read has ever explained how Some researchers have suggested noring Hartogs' testimony. Oswald, who was loudmouthed about that Oswald provided the informs- But Posner himself is just as guilty his Marxism, survived in the Ma- .. tion, for whatever reasan,•-en idea Of playing down details of Oswald's rines, hardly a bastion of liberal that Posner discounts. He also ne- short and lonely life that show quite thinking, or how he got any security glects to mention that Powers wrote another side of him. clearance, although Posner con- in his autobiography that he be- ' Neither Posner nor the Warren tends, as did the .House Select Com- lieved Oswald had something to do Commission made much of Oswald as mittee on Assassinations in the late with the U-2 downing. an anomaly in his Southern, lower- 1970s, that his clearance was low- Posner has a fascinating chapter middle-class milieu: a voracious level. called "The War of the Defectors" reader rho loved history, poetry and When Oswald defected to the So- that tells the story of a mysterious classical music. He also loved guns, viet Union in October 1959, he strode Soviet defector who arrived on the an interest not unusual for a boy in arrogantly into the American Em- American scene two months after the South, especially in Texas, where bassy in Moscow, slapped down his the Kennedy assassination. The de- Oswald lived for a short time., He did passport and told an amazingly calm rector, Yuriy Nosenko, said that the make a few friends among those rare second secretary, Richard Snyder, Russians had nothing to do with the adolescents who shared his interests, not only that he wanted to defect but Kennedy assassination and that Os- At 17, this young man with a strong that he was going to tell the Russians wald was not one of their agents. The leaning toward communism, first ac- the radar secrets he had learned in interview with Nosenko was a real quired when an elderly woman in the Marines.— . coup for Posner, although I wish he had told us how he got to Nosenko. Nosenko lives hidden somewhere in the United States under the protec- tion of the CIA. In this chapter, we learn how rot- ten the CIA can be. Nosenko's arrival started a war within the CIA, with one section believing him and an- other not. Nosenko was badly mis- treated, put first in an attic and then in a concete bunker where he was kept in isolation for years, according to Posner. Reading about what the CIA did to Nosenko on American soil is like reading about the KGIrtortur- ing a prisoner in the Soviet Union. Because the CIA couldn't resolve the issue of Nosenko's reliability, he was never presented to the Warren Commission. The House Select Com- mittee on Assassinations in 1978 'wrongly found Nosenko Unreliable, according to Posner. But the real issue that troubles many Warren Commission critics Is not whether Oswald was a Russian agent but whether he was one of ours, trained to go into the Soviet Union as a fake defector. Posner seeks to disprove this idea by quoting Vladimir Semichastny, who at the time of Oswald's defection was the chairman of the KGB. Semi- chastny told NBC News on May 25: "I had always respected the CIA and the FBI and we knew their work and what they were capable of. It was clear Oswald was not an agent, couldn't be _ an' agent, for the U.S. secret serVices;eitheilliitrA or the FBI." What Posner ignores is that mem- bers of the Warren Commission, in- cluding CIA Director (whose participation was a conflict of interest as great as could be imag- ined), could conceive of Oswald as an American intelligence agent. A declassified Warren Commission ex- ecutive session on Jan. 27, 1964, makes that very clear. Historian Philip H. Melanson has made the best case I know of that Oswald was connected to some Amer ican intelligence agency; in a book published in 1990 called Spy Saga: Lee Harvey Oswald and U.S. Intelli- gence. Posner includes the book it his bibliography. Melanson makes much of a clear statement by the Warren Commission's chief counsel, J. Lee Rankin, that Oswald had stud- ied at the Monterey School (known as the Defense Language Institute of the Army). Rankin said on Jan. 27, 1964: "... we are trying to ... find out what he studied at the Monterey School of the Army in the way of languages. ..." , But while Rankin clearly said Os- wald attended the Monterey School, Posner distorts the quote to make Oswald's attendance at the school appear less certain. No, Gerald Posner has not gotten out of the quagmire. If anything, his book has thrown out some new information and new interviews that will have the conspiracy community working overtime to refute.