A Citizen’s Dissent

324 Pages·1968·10.588 MB·English

by  Mark Lane

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A CITIZEN’S
DISSENT
to Vickie Martin
THIS BOOK CONTAINS THE COMPLETE TEXT OF THE
ORIGINAL HARDCOVER EDITION.
A Fawcett Crest Book reprinted by arrangement with,
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
Copyright © 1968 by Mark Lane. All rights reserved, including
the right to reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 68-13044
Printing History
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., edition published June 1968.
First printing, April 1968 and June 1968.
First Fawcett Crest printing, April 1969
Published by Fawcett World Library
67 West 44th Street, New York, N.Y. 10036
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION 8
AUTHOR'S NOTE 12
Part One: The Dissent
I • THE DEATH
1 The First Question 14
2 The Call 20
3 Reports From Dallas 22
II 9 THE GREAT SILENCE
4 The Police Are Interested—In Me 29
5 Banned for Life 36
6 The Debates That Never Occurred 45
III • THE RESPONSE
7 The Making of a Book 49
8 The Electronic Reversal 58
9 The Making of a Film 64
10 A World Premiere 72
Part Two: The Detenders
I 9 A CBS NEWS INQUIRY
11 Two Documentaries 88
12 Did Oswald Shoot the President? 98
13 CBS Is Contented 108
INTRODUCTION
During my trips to Europe following the death of President
Kennedy, I became aware of an area of concern that prevailed
when knowledgeable Continental sophisticates discussed the
subject. None believed the Warren Report, yet many were
puzzled by the obvious endorsement of the document by the
American press. Chief Justice Warren’s reputation was largely
national; and while Americans asked how his findings could
be doubted, or even examined, Europeans, even those well
known in the legal profession and judiciary, with the excep¬
tion of some Londoners, were less than fully acquainted with
his image of integrity. Instead, they asked how the indepen¬
dent American newspapermen had been silenced or cajoled
into supporting the Report.
Hollywood has played a large part in convincing the world
that the old-fashioned reporter is still at large; that his spiri¬
tual inheritance flows from the man of unshakable indepen¬
dence who set type by hand out West somewhere, while his
wary wife and beautiful daughter fretted, because he exposed
the corrupt established power in town. Half a century later
the same character, often played by the same actor, drank
coffee at his desk, whiskey in the saloon and in between dashed
unimpeded about the metropolis in search of the scoop—
letting the chips fall where they may. His honest white-haired
boss, the publisher, always backed him up and, while a trifle
disconcerted by his occasional drinking, often encouraged him
to take on the biggest and most evil forces in the power
structure.
The assignment we have undertaken precludes the possibility
of exploring the validity of such stereotypes, but it seems
doubtful that the movie-script accolades were ever universally
merited. How do the American media act when a matter of
historic dimensions occurs and when the Government takes the
very firm position that that which is demonstrably false is
true? How does organized society respond?
The Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassi-
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nation of President Kennedy (the Warren Commission Re¬
port) provides an admirable laboratory for research, for the
subject with which it is concerned and the Report itself are
both not without historical significance. In concluding the
CBS-TV four-hour documentary defense of the Report’s con¬
clusions, Walter Cronkite stated that “there has been a loss
of morale, a loss of confidence among the American people
toward their own government and the men who serve it.”1
Cronkite’s presentation here is accurate, for the most respected
polls had indicated that two-thirds of the American people did
not believe the Warren Commission.2
Cronkite continued: “The damage that Lee Harvey Oswald
did the United States . . . did not end when the shots were
fired from the Texas School Book Depository. The most griev¬
ous wounds persist and there is little reason to believe that
they will soon be healed.”8
The lack of confidence by the American people in an im¬
portant governmental finding and in the media for their many
efforts to endorse the Report is a matter of some concern.
Since the Report is without merit, the response to it by a bid¬
dable press is indicative that wounds persist which may not
soon be healed. We must examine this response in an entirely
different light from that which illuminated Mr. Cronkite’s
assessment. So conscious was I of that circumstance that I
concluded Rush to Judgment with these words: “As long as
we rely for information upon men blinded by the fear of what
they might see, the precedent of the Warren Commission Re¬
port will continue to imperil the life of the law and dishonor
those who wrote it little more than those who praise it.”4
The list of those who have praised the finding that Lee Har¬
vey Oswald was the lone assassin has grown since those words
were written. This book is about them, the powerful, the in¬
fluential men and forces who have been enlisted in the sad
cause of saving the unsalvable. If they appear desperate on
occasion, bitter and humorless almost throughout, it is under¬
standable, since the burden they have assumed is without ade¬
quate compensation. And so we observe the modus operandi
of the Establishment. No giant conspiracy, save the conspiracy
of life and all its complications, brought J. Edgar Hoover,
Earl Warren and a couple of otherwise reputable law profes¬
sors to the same crusade. Yet, lemming-like, they are there,
marching toward oblivion under the banner, “Save us and
what we believe in,” while the Associated Press, Newsweek,
Time, CBS, NBC and many others provide the almost pathetic
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and consistent accompaniment. The organized liberals, if those
two terms not be mutually exclusive, are in the forefront,
although armed with the tools of yesterday. This army may
well be motivated not at all by greed or avarice, but by a gen¬
uine desire to insure the stability of its country. Almost any
motive save that one could be endured.
Rush to Judgment was a difficult book to write. First, be¬
cause writing is hard work for me, and also because in the
Commission’s work there was a plethora of witnesses, exhibits
and questions that had been raised for which solutions were
not forthcoming. It was only after many months of sifting
through the verbiage, the superfluity of often inconsequential
documents with which the Commission burdened its record,
that I was to determine that the evidence bore little relation
to the Commission’s conclusions. Since that determination was
made before I began to write, the conclusions that flowed
from the writing did not surprise me at all.
This work has been more difficult, for its conclusions proved
to be somewhat startling. An analysis of the Warren Report
called into question the integrity of a local police force and
of the Federal police agencies. An ad hoc committee, admit¬
tedly comprised of important men, was shown to have issued
an invalid document. Surely not for the first time and not for
the last had such an event taken place. The full significance
of that act and of the circumstances that surrounded it and
subsequently flowed from it offers a view far more frightening.
If Rush to Judgment and other critical works helped to iso¬
late a symptom, then this volume seeks to take the full measure
of the disease. If a numerically insignificant segment of society
was discovered in that episode to have been involved in cor¬
rupt practices, then a phalanx of patricians are here found to
be their associates, their accessories after the fact. The ease
with which the princes of the networks, who share a Govern¬
ment-created monopoly, at first accepted and, when that was
proven to be insufficient, then embraced the conclusion that
Lee Harvey Oswald alone assassinated President Kennedy
suggests a closer than arm’s length relationship between the
media and the Government.
The difficulty of presenting a dissenting view in the face of
such constraint is predictable. The draconic power of those
who would negate reasonable disagreement is our subject. In
pursuing it we will meet police directors, television commen¬
tators, Pulitzer Prize winners, doctors, lawyers and FBI chiefs
—the makers of public opinion, except perhaps in this instance.
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