At the Board's Oct. 16 meeting, Executive Director David Marwell said Eileen Sullivan is temporarily filling Samoluk's old job while a replacement is sought.
We would like to round up such stories for a future issue of Fair Play. What you have to say need not be profound, or all that original. We'd like to know when it was you were there, what drew you there, what you saw and what you felt. Send us your thoughts in an email, to jkelin@rmii.com; there's an email form in the Excuses file and the Reader Feedback file.
The Coalition on Political Assassinations (COPA) has scheduled meetings in Dallas for November 22-24. "The Killing of a President" will take place at the Paramount Hotel near Dealey Plaza, at 302 S. Houston Street. For reservations, call (214) 761-9090 by November 1. Special Coalition discount of $59 for single or double rooms. Registration: $10 for day events, $15 for evening events, $35 for COPA membership and all events if sent by November 1. Scheduled speakers (evening events) include Dr. Gary Aguilar, Walt Brown, Ph.D., Jim Marrs, Robert Groden, Jack White, John Armstrong, and John Judge.
JFK-Lancer will hold its first annual Dallas Conference November 21-23. Presentations are scheduled from Jospeh Riley, Ph.D., Mary Ferrell, author David Lifton, George Michael Evica, and Fourth Decade editor Dr. Jerry Rose. For more information contact Evica via email at evica@uhavax.hartford.edu, or snailmail at 107 N. Beacon St., Hartford CT, 06105. You can also phone (860) 232-9673.
So we are using this space to invite readers who note a missing title they feel should be there, to write a summary of the book and send it along. Take a look at the existing Bibliography to get an idea of length and style. (Some of the capsule reviews mince no words.) Send your review to jkelin@rmii.com for possible inclusion. Unless otherwise requested, sending such a review will be considered permission to include your name as the reviewer.
Titles we know are missing from the Bibliography include, but are not limited to, Oswald and the CIA, The Search for Lee Harvey Oswald, and Oswald Talked. Older titles, such as Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?, are also welcome.
I bought this book because it had come up in discussions within a newsgroup in which I participate. Unfortunately, I find that it has too few pictures, and that they are strangely selected and interpreted. Trask seems to have overlooked or mistated the importance of some of the pictures he reproduces, and he adduces questionable sources in support of his analysis. This is everywhere evident in his book.
For example, his account of the ammunition clip supposedly employed by Oswald can be found in chapter 22, ironically titled "The Sixth Floor: Evidence from Within." Trask explains the markings "SMI 952" found on the clip, and it even appears likely that the explanation is true. This misses the point smashingly, since it forces us to wonder why the FBI, in 1963 and 1964, was unable to resolve that very question. There is no indication in the record that the FBI made any attempt to determine where or when or even if Oswald bought the clip.
Trask prints a picture on page 550 (above, with contrasting photo) of the rifle being removed from the building, and there is clearly a clip in the rifle. However, on page 531, Trask also prints a still from the Alyea film showing Lt. Day removing the rifle from its hiding place and displaying it before the camera. The picture proves that the clip was not in the rifle when it was found. In short, Trask has proven conclusively that the official account of the clip is false, yet he seems not to realize that; and he writes as if there is no problem with the clip. It's a puzzle, isn't it?
On page 66, Trask repeats the Posneresque claim that Jacqueline Kennedy can be seen in the Zapruder film pulling at her husband's arm. I submit that muscle contractions in Mrs. Kennedy's arms cannot be discerned in the Zapruder film, and that Trask's and Posner's assertion is sheer speculation.
Worse, his entire interpretation of the Zapruder film implicitly rests on the truth of the Magic Bullet Theory. In his book, there is no discussion of the considerable evidence precluding the Magic Bullet Theory. He quotes Secret Service Agent Clinton Hill on Hill's willingness to take a bullet for the President, but he does not quote Hill on the location of the exit wound in the back of the President's skull.
Trask has an explanation on page 109 for the switching of frames 314 and 315 in the Zapruder film as printed by the Warren Commission. It was an unhappy accident. Presumably, only suspicious types would wonder about it.
Trask resorts to appeals to Dr. John Lattimer to explain the movement of Kennedy's head in reaction to the fatal shot. Unfortunately, Lattimer's work is speculative at best and false at worst. Although the Thorburn reaction Lattimer postulates requires damage in the vicinity of the 5th and 6th cervical vertebrae, the wound responsible for the imagined response was near the 1st thoracic vertebra - or lower, if the death certificate is to be believed. Trask has not done his homework here, and it shows.
In chapter 26, The Babushka Lady, Trask concludes that Beverly Oliver is not the woman in the picture. So what? The question is not whether Oliver is that woman, but whether that woman took any pictures and where they might be. On page 612, he writes:
Was this woman actually filming, did the film survive, or did some mechanical or human error intervene? Why did she not come forward with her story? All these questions, which beg either fantastic or mundane interpretation, still remain unanswered.Trask asks us to posit "error" of whatever sort, and "mundane" interpretations, against "fantastic" accounts. This is merely special pleading. Is it "fantastic" to imagine that the FBI simply contacted film developers in the Dallas area to learn if they developed and printed any film of the assassination? Of course it is not; they would certainly take such a step. Trask's questions display his bias, not his expertise.
On page XVI of the Introduction, Trask writes that he once believed in a conspiracy. He would have us believe that the evidence changed his mind, and he writes that he "began to feel manipulated by writers and critics." I submit his dilemma would have been easily resolved by a less credulous investigation of the evidence. Trask appears to have proved beyond question that the ammunition clip was planted. Why doesn't his own proof convince him?
Summers refers to accusations leveled by Carol Hewett and Anna Marie Kuhns-Walko in an essay appearing in both The Fourth Decade and Fair Play (see "Updates" in FP Issue #9, March-April 1996). In that essay, Hewett and Kuhns-Walko stated that they "had the unpleasant experience of finding out that a supposed newcomer to the 'amateur' research community who was picking our brains was, in fact, employed by a professional author well known to JFK researchers." They say that Summers, who was not mentioned by name, tried through an intermediary to obtain a manuscript by the late researcher, Cindy McNeill.
In his published response, Summers says, "Yes, I was interested in taking a look at the manuscript in question, because it seemed it might be relevant to my research for a forthcoming book on President Nixon. And yes, a freelance researcher working for me did make the enquiry --- one of perhaps three hundred minor tasks she had on her plate at the time --- without mentioning my name. But there was no attempt to deceive." Summers goes on to re-emphasize that he was not hiding behind the identity of the freelance researcher, Julie Ziegler, and calls the essay by Kuhns-Walko and Hewett "plain silly."
Responding to Summers' comments in the same Fourth Decade, Carol Hewett writes that since Summers has now identified himself, "we can tell the full story." Late last year or early this year, Ziegler called Hewett and Kuhns-Walko "out of the clear blue sky" seeking to obtain information about Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt, supposedly for a magazine article she was working on. Hewett and Kuhns-Walko grew suspicious when Ziegler declined to identify the magazine or provide any background on herself, but, Hewett writes, "we decided to assist anyway."
The crux of the matter is Ziegler's effort to obtain a manuscript by Cindy McNeill, which Hewett was evaluating for possible submission to a publisher. "All told I probably spent 1 to 1.5 hours on the phone with Ms. Zeigler and she never mentioned Mr. Summers. Anna-Marie did the same ... the conversations always came back to the manuscript to which she most definitely wanted access." Acting on their suspicions, Hewett and Kuhns-Walko checked up on Ziegler, decided she was not to be trusted, and stopped cooperating with her.
A few months later, Hewett writes, Summers entered the picture by contacting Hewett and enquiring about the manuscript himself. The link between him and Ziegler was soon made, as was the fact that Summers employed her as a research assisstant. Summers denied at that time that there had been any intent obtain the manuscript by deception. But according to Hewett, obtaining it was clearly his objective. She says he repeatedly offered "a modest sum" for it. But the manuscript, Hewett informed him, was not for sale.
Hewett concludes her letter to The Fourth Decade: "Perhaps I am just a silly lawyer writing silly letters to the editor, but I can assure Mr. Summers that in my silly legal opinion, he and [his] employee came perilously close to theft by fraud of proprietary material."
Return to Main Page
* * *