Miscellanea, Errata, Et Cetera

This section of Fair Play contains a variety of stuff that didn't quite fit in anywhere else.

"COPA Is Not Gone..."

The Coalition on Political Assassinations recently sent out an undated form letter, which arrived at Fair Play with a December 8, 1999 postmark.

The letter states that following its 1998 annual conference, "COPA's board decided to put the organization in standby mode, pending major developments in the cases that would require any response. Currently, no plans exist for another annual conference ... Dr. Gary Aguilar has taken responsibility for being our contact point for communications, and will serve as Chairman of the Governing Board."

The letter also states that "COPA is not gone ... We will continue to alert interested people about key developments through out email broadcasts ... We have filed a suit in court against Army Intelligence agencies for refusing to release surveillance files on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. which we requested under FOIA. We are building a new web page under the direction of Dr. Aguilar."

COPA's new address is given as:

COPA
P.O. Box 640425
San Francisco, CA 94164-0425
(415) 563-4453 (voice & fax)

Dear NYT

Sunday, December 5, 1999, The New York Times, Arts and Leisure, Section 2,p. 4 OLIVER STONE

Of Plots and Dreams

To the Editor:
Bruce Newman, in dismissing Oliver Stone's "J.F.K." and his proposed movie on the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, "Memphis," as "fevered dreams," serves neither as truth nor justice. ["Sporting Life; Oliver Stone Goes to War Again, With Cleats On," Nov. 14]

Interested readers will find in E. Martin Schotz's "History Will Not Absolve Us" a devastating critique of the Warren Commission Report and in William F. Pepper's "Orders to Kill" evidence of James Earl Ray's innocence sufficient to earn him the verdict of "not guilty" in a 1993 television trial. Each book makes the officiial government acounts--what Mr. Newman characterizes as "historical orthodoxies"- look like "fevered dreams." And each presents convincing evidence of cover-ups and government involvement in the murders of men who had challenged the orthodoxies of their time. Both men appeared to be soft on the communist enemy: Kennedy, because of his willingness to negotiate during and after the Cuban missile crisis; King, because of his critique of the Vietnam War.

Stone's constitutents may be few, but they are not, as Mr. Newman writes, "doom-playing, drug-bingeing, anomie-addled assassination theorists and 12-step conspiracists."

KEN GRUNO
New York

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