ustxtxb_obs_1970_07_24_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

Happiness Is Newspapers Magazines Political Specialists Printing Signs and Placards Bumperstrips By w p Office Supplies 100% Union Shop FUTURA PRESS Phone 512 /442-7836 1714 SOUTH CONGRESS P.O. BOX 3485 AUSTIN, TEXAS 1 #rlpitz’ Since 1866 The Place in Austin GOOD FOOD GOOD BEER 1607 San Jacinto GR 7-4171 ATHENA MONTESSORI SCHOOL Leo Nitch, Director NEW NORTHWEST LOCATION 7500 Woodrow Phone 454-4239 A-PLUS UNIVERSITY SERVICES With you in mind: typing theses resumes law briefs multilithing “‘dissertations ‘,graphic arts dept. Our prices are reasonable our service is good. Come by 504 West 24th St. \(in the same I 477-5651. MARTIN ELFANT Sun Life of Canada 1001 Century Building Houston, Texas CA 4-0686 Johnnies -come-lately to Dealy Plaza Albert H. Newman, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: The Reasons Why, Clarkson N. Potter, Inc., New York, 1970, 622 pages, $10. Judy Whitson Bonner, Investigation of a Homicide: The Murder of JFK, Drake House/Grosset & Dunlap, New York, 1969, 367 pages, $6.95. Brian McConnell, The History of A ssassination, Aurora Publishers, Nashville and London, 1970, 360 pages, $6.95. Sylvia Meagher New York Some 70 pages into Judy Bonner’s book one reads that “Tippit . . . spotted a man walking swiftly toward him” and that after a brief exchange “the man pumped three bullets into the officer’s body.” She is wrong on every point. The correct story is that the pedestrian was walking at a normal pace in the same direction as the police car. Tippit pulled up alongside him and stopped him, for unknown reasons, having seen him only from the rear up to that moment. They talked for a minute and then Tippit came out of the car and drew his revolver, whereupon the pedestrian shot him four times and the officer fell dead. Those are the undisputed facts accepted by Warren Report defenders and critics alike. They have not been challenged by anyone, nor is Mrs. Bonner challenging them. She merely misstates the details embodied in the Warren Report and the 26 volumes of testimony and exhibits \(which plain and inexcusable innacuracy. Her book, Investigation of a Homicide, is not a work of scholarship or objective inquiry it is an unvarnished apologia for the Dallas Police Department. Not content with trying to exonerate the police of the serious charges and suspicion surrounding their performance after the assassination and the scandalous manner in which they exercised custody of Oswald, Mrs. Bonner seeks to endow the cops with preposterous purity and heroism. Her study is careless of the elementary facts, fails to deal with the major criticisms of the official findings, does not even have an index, and is written in a naive and banal style which adds insult to injury. Even the supposedly authoritative police radio transcript which Mrs. Meagher is author of the Subject Index to the Warren Report and the Hearings and the Exhibits and Accessories After the Fact. A New Yorker, he is one of the leading critics of the Warren Report. A Review appears in an appendix to the book does not dignify it by providing a useful research tool it covers only a narrow time-span, does not identify the callers by name, and mixes paraphrasing with verbatim quotations. This transcript is therefore less informative than any of the three earlier versions published by the Commission. Mrs. Bonner’s transparent effort to improve the image of the Dallas Police will not enhance their reputation or her own. Her book might best have come never than now. BRIAN McCONNELL is described by his publishers as a senior journalist with the London Daily Mirror. His book, The History of Assassination, contains a section on the JFK assassination which is even more disgraceful than the Bonner book. Although he is dealing with a chapter of very recent history and with facts that are virtually household words, McConnell sets down a series of indecent errors. He says, not once but twice, that Oswald’s birthplace was New York, when he was born in New Orleans; he identifies Marguerite as Oswald’s wife, instead of his mother; he describes John F. Kennedy as the oldest son, when he was the second of four sons;, : and, on the assassination of Robert Kennedy, he writes that Sirhan “escaped” but was soon captured, when in reality he was seized on the spot, revolver still in hand. A “historian” who gratutitously mutilates the simplest, most familiar data in this way is beneath contempt. Need I add that McConnell, naturally and predictably, also swallows whole-hog the contaminated Warren Report? ALBERT H. NEWMAN’S book, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, is an entirely different kettle of fish. Although Newman, too, accepts the central findings of the Warren Report, he has done his homework on the 26 volumes and has done some investigation of his own in Dallas and elsewhere. So far as I know, he is the only author of a treatise defending the Warren Report who has carefully studied and assimilated the published documents and testimony. Regrettably, his source material does not include the unpublished documents in the National July 24, 1970 11