which drew heavily from Posner's work), and Texas School Book Depository. Previously, Case Closing? their conclusion, as Newsweek declared confi- only a palm print on the barrel of the rifle was dently, was that 'the Warren Commission was identified positively as Oswald's; conspiracy probably right.' In other words--go home, thinkers maintained that Dallas police could As Media Rush to Final folks, there's nothing to see here. have planted the print. Faint fingerprints on The eagerness to line up behind case closers the rifle's trigger guard could not be seen dear- Judgment on JFK such as Posner may be in part a backlash to the ly enough to use for identification purposes, Assassinologists Brace conspiracy frenzy that followed the release of until a former Dallas police officer named .* Oliver Stone's 1991 film, JFK But there seems Rusty Livingstone recently remembered that he Last Stand to be a very real need in the media to use the had a set of original photographs of the trigger- 30th anniversary to put the story to rest once guard prints in his closet—they'd been there In the midst of all the television hoopla sur- and for all. An air of finality pervaded all the for 30 years. rounding the 30th anniversary of the JFK assas- TV movies and special reports that littered the Vincent Scalice, former head of the New sination last week, the PBS series Frontline network schedules last week. York City Police Department's latent finger- aired an exhaustive three-hour documentary (9 Even Gerald Posner himself is a little sur- print unit, reexamined the photos (in 1978, p.m., November 16) dissecting the life and prised by all the attention he's getting. Seance had examined all the available prints times of Lee Harvey Oswald. The show's con- "1 really felt that I could be the lone wolf," and photos for the House Select Committee on clusion, reached somewhere around midnight, Posner says, speaking from his home in Assassinations and was unable to say whether was that this guy shot the president between talk-show appearances and live radio- the trigger-guard prints were Oswald's), and "As far as we can tell," Frontline senior pro- phone-in interviews. But there's a reevaluation now has determined that the prints on the rifle ducer Mike Sullivan said at a news conference taking place among the opinion makers.... The are indeed those of Lee Harvey Oswald. at the National Press Club in Washington, burden of proof has shifted back. The time is 'My head's been turned around one hundred D.C., on Monday, November 15, "[Oswald] here where we can say, 'Where is the evi- eighty degrees on this," Gus Russo now says. killed the president on his own." dence?'" `Oswald shot him. He really did it... Now the While that might not exactly be breaking Baltimore researcher Gus Russo, who was question is 'What got him CO do it?" news, the amount of attention the hoary lone- both a consultant for the Stone film and a To that end, Frontline also uncovered photo- nut theory has received in the past year is stag- reporter for the Frontline program, admits that graphic evidence definitively linking Oswald gering. You'd think they'd just thought of it. 'there is a real need to dose this up now." And with David Ferric, the notorious anti-Castro New York City author Gerald Posner's recent the new evidence that Frontline unveiled at its pilot who had strong connections to both the Gue Closet4which systematically debunks the Washington news conference works toward right-wing community and New Orleans mob underpinnings of many a conspiracy theory, what Russo calls 'narrowing the workload" on boss Carlos Marcell°. New Orleans district has been seized by most of the mainstream the case, while not dosing it. attorney Jim Garrison tried to arrest Ferric in media as a way out of the public's seemingly Frontline CUM up with three bits of new the course of his ill-fated 1967 investigation endless appetite for deconstruction of assassina- material, none of which is conclusive on its into the Kennedy assassination, but right up to tion mythology. The Washington Past and own but when taken together thicken the plot. Ferris's mysterious death that year, he main- Newsweek came out with much-ballyhooed First, there's a reexamination of the fingerprints tained he never knew Oswald. A photograph 'special investigations' last week (both of on the trigger guard of the Mannlicher- taken in 1955, however, seems to show Ferric Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor of the 01,4144-1 fik /1/ 6 --12/ 2A3 M O B T O W N BEAT and a teenage Oswald together at a. barbecue on Oswald.' "00" was a CIA symbol for its researcher and author Anthony Summers, who for the New Orleans squadron of the Civil Air Domestic Contacts Division. wrote the well-regarded 1980 book Conspiracy Patrol (CAP), a youth auxiliary of the U.S. Air "It is virtually certain that the CIA had con- and contributed heavily to the Frontline investi- Force. Ferric was a squadron leader, and tact with Oswald,' Fre:dine producer Mike gation, withdrew his name from the show's apparently, was a cadet in his group. Sullivan declared at the news conference. Why it doesn't prove anything,' Russo warns, credits after seeing a final cut. Summers' wife the CIA still steadfastly denies this, however, and fellow researcher, Robbyn Swan, also 'accept that (Oswald and Ferric) probably remains a mystery. Newman says the debriefing requested that her name be dropped from the knew each other.' issue is only "parr of the broader lie that the (=edits. According to the AARC release, The photo also seems IO undermine Gerald CIA has been telling for decades—that the CIA 'Summers described the program as 'too judg- Posner 's claim that the two men did not serve was just not interested in Oswald.' mental' for a subject with such conflicting evi- together in the CAP at the same rime; Ferric Newman, who wrote the best-selling 1992 was kicked out of the CAP in 1954, supposedly dence? JFK and Vietnam, says, "There'll be unhappy Reached at his home in County Waterford. for trying to indoctrinate his cadets in his right- people on both sides of the fence' in the wake wing philosophy, and Oswald did not join Ireland, Anthony Summers himself is reluctant of the Frontline show. He seems to be right. until the nest year. The group in the 1955 to discuss the couple's objections to the report The final judgment that despite the evidence of 'We don't want to dump on our colleagues` photo, Russo says, must have been a 'very further links to Ferric and the CIA, Oswald he says, adding that their withdrawal 'should small, renegade' squadron of some kind. And ultimately acted alone anyway is certain to according to Russo, chances arc that cadet speak volumes in itself and we don't wish to infuriate and/or confound plenty of conspiracy comment further.' Oswald got to know Ferric pretty well. supporters. 'These people redly knew (Ferric); Russo Gerald Posner, however, says that "(Summers 'People are upset about it,' says one promi- and Sward were furious' about the way the rays. 'Frontline won't say that, but I nent D.C.-based researcher who requested Frontline program turned out. Originally. FrontlOw's final piece dam evidence comes anonymity because of his position with the from the CIA's recently declassified files on Posner says, things were supposed to be differ- supposedly nonpartisan Assassination Archives ent. Oswald. (Last year's JFK Release Act called for and Research Center (AARC), located in D.C. the release of hundreds of thousands of pages of (The Frontline story) was going to be a 'Look az the people Frontline talked to; he CIA documents, but so far only a fraction have major conspiracy piece, and it came around says, citing Gerald Posner and House Select one hundred eighty degrees,' Posner claims. been made available to researchers.) The CIA Committee on Assassinations chief counsel Dr. always has denied that it had any contact with 'I'm very pleased where it ended up.... There Robert Blakey, both of whom got heaps of air- are things (in it) I disagree with, but the por- Oswald prior to the assassinarion, even main- time. "They don't really represent a wide range taining that the at-Marine and Soviet defector trait of Oswald is exactly the same as the one in of opinion in the field.' the first part of my book.' was not debriefed upon his return to the U.S. AARC functions as a sort of dearinghouse of However, Anthony Summers norm that 'at fromthe USSR in 1962. Researchers John assassinology literature, and officially it takes Newman and Scott Malone, however, stum- least Frontline has done a real thorough no position on Frontline's conclusions. But at bled upon a scrawled bit of marginalia on one research job,' which is more than he can say the Frontline conference, an'enigmatic long- about the rest of the American media. CIA document that read 'Andy Anderson 00 haired young man handed out a media release on AARC letterhead. It stared that prominent "I've been deeply unimpressed -. by their arrogance and ignorance: he Ur,. don't think your country has been well =wed by the media-- Of course, is true that the media would like to have closure on the case. Wouldn't we all? But if the evidence doesn't support it, it's simply a cheap way out.' Baltimore's Gus Russo notes that many members oldie sprawling and notoriously dis- sent-ridden JFK research community, muds of which gathered in Dallas last weekend for the third annual Asasssinarion Symposium on John F. Kennedy (see CP, 11/20/92), are unlikely to be moved by the Finatiint report. 'A lot of the trot far-out conspiracy people won't buy anything." Russo shrugs. 'racy think] it's ill forged." Anthony Summers agrees. If they are grownups, they'll find the posi- tive and imemning things fin the Frmiline report)," he says_ 'But in many cases, you might see a lot of unfocused anger." Summers says due at this point in history 'the only rational position (on the assassina- tion) is to be an agnostic We don't know what happened." And despite Gus Russo's newfound convic- tion that at least Oswald pulled the nigger that day in Dallas 30 years ago, the local researcher seal= resigned to a certain inability to lay the conspiracy beast to nest. les almost going to be impossible to find out what's going on in [Oswald's] head,' he says. 'And that might be the only thing left in his mystery.' in 'DAVID DUDLEY

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