CHAPTER 11

ONE "ISSUE" ST MARTIN'S DID NOT CONSIDER IS TRUTH

That McCormack would also flack is not unusual. Publishers do what they can to sell what they publish. His flacking is to a large degree based on his "note" at the end of the book. It begins with what is not intended as what it is, a remarkable admission that clearly McCormack and his lawyers did not recognize or, if they did, did not care about. These are the first words of that "note":

When Mortal Error was first submitted to St. Martin's Press, three issues arose.

The first was the publisher's usual question: Does the manuscript say something interesting to the point of being compelling, and does it say this in a way that is clear and stylistically palatable? We thought the answer to this was not difficult: yes, it does.

The second was: Is its argument cogent enough to merit dissemination? Arriving at an answer to this, we found, was difficult. Some of the reasons we decided it was cogent enough will be explained in the following pages.

The third was an adjunct to the second: Given that Mortal Error would publish the name of the man who Howard Donahue honestly believes fired the bullet that killed John Kennedy, and the fact that that man is still alive, was the public airing of the argument's conclusion important enough to warrant subjecting that man to the kind of attention he would receive when Donahue's thesis became nationally known? This was the hardest question of all, and, again, this chapter will try to explain our decision.1

Although the third of these "issues" is written like a lawyer rather that than as a writer intending truth would write, it nonetheless does acknowledge that referring to Hickey as a killer, which McCormack does not say; saying that he assassinated the President, which McCormack also does not say; and saying that it would be forever hurtful to him and to his family, again not said, despite the care and indifference with which these words are stated, they do admit the more realistic version that McCormack was so careful to avoid.

This being the case, as it so obviously is, is it not at least strange that at the very least one other "issue" arose from the book: was it truthful?

This being the most important of the "issues" a decent, honest publisher should face, confront with this kind of book? And leave without question?

In this St. Martin's argues that it is responsible for a publisher to print and distribute as widely as he can as serious an accusation as can be made and treat it as an established fact if "its argument is cogent enough," with St. Martin's making that judgment.

"Argument" is not established fact. "Cogent" means "compelling" or "convincing" but neither of these nor any other meaning attributed to the word means it is established truth.

In this St. Martin's states that because it saw profit from the book, that first issue, and because it believed this terrible accusation against Hickey, it need not try to determine whether or not that terrible accusation was true.

Although the publisher has no need to state it, the language with which this "note" begins fails to say when the manuscript or idea, which not stated, "was first submitted."

It also does not state how Donahue, in the Baltimore area, was able to get as his hired hand in glorifying him a Kansas City financial news reporter, Menninger. There again is no need to for the publisher or for either Donahue or Menninger to state this but in the absence of any statement like they were old buddies, it does appear to be more likely that Menninger was known to St. Martin's rather than he was to Donahue and that it was St. Martin's that came up with the hired pen. Who was separated from the man he was glorifying in our history that he was simultaneously corrupting by almost t half a continent, and there is no statement in the book that they were even ever face to face. This makes it even more a certainty that what Menninger wrote he got from Donahue.

Before proceeding it should be emphasized that in this "Note" St, Martin's actually says that all it needs for this unprecedented defamation of Hickey is a "thesis." And thesis, again, means no more than "a statement of theory."

That is hardly fact, hardly established truth, which should be the minimum standard for the most serious defamation of Hickey. Calling him a killer, an assassin on the basis of a "theory" only, history tells us, means that established fact is being ignored. A few illustrations serve to make this clear.

Before Columbus it was the accepted theory that Fairies danced on the point of a needle, or perhaps danced through its eye, with the theorizing how many could do that dancing on the point or through the eye of the needle all at the same time. This was the subject of intense scientific debate, too.

Before Columbus it was the accepted "theory" that the world was flat.

And look at what happened to poor Galileo who confronted the "theory" that the sun revolved around the earth?

Or the theory that man could not fly.

There are so many invalid theories in history that any responsible publisher considering publishing so unprecedented, so horrible a charge against anyone ought at the least say that the truth of it is established. Failing in that he ought be able to state that he did make a valiant, a determined effort to establish the truth. But St. Martin's was content, anxious, really, to publish this monstrous accusation merely as a matter of belief.

As McCormack continues, he explains that one of the reasons St. Martin's was attracted to the Donahue fabrication, as rendered by Menninger, is that "Donahue' s . . . Dallas — pertinent data in particular, seemed substantial."2

A publisher does not have to rely on what may "seem substantial" to the subject-ignorant mind. There are experts and the responsible publisher intending responsible publishing has peer reviews, by those who can be regarded as authentic experts on the subject. With regard to this reason, there are those who are legitimate experts on "the Dallas-pertinent data in particular," as without question, Donahue is not.

Not one of those experts who are known work for St. Martin's press. In its own account, St. Martin's consulted no independent experts yet invested a fortune in time of its uninformed employees . It is obvious from this account that with St. Martin's it was as it was with Donahue when he finally came to see me! All he was interested in was what he could say confirmed his impossible concoction; and so also St. Martin's was not — could not have been — looking for anything else, regardless of what this note states:

We would, to verify this impression and to weigh the validity of his thesis, eventually read thousands of pages about guns, bullets, and the events in Dealey Plaza. We would study dozens of illustrations — photographs, movies, television videos, drawings, and diagrams. We would examine government reports and appendices, commentaries on them, and independent investigations. We brought Donahue and Menninger to New York twice for what amounted to interrogation, and called them repeatedly on the telephone with specific queries.

The aim in all of this was to prepare ourselves to understand certain facts essential to Donahue's thesis, and to test the reasoning with these facts. At the outset of the program, none of us on the team at St. Martin's was what is known as a Kennedy assassination buff. It is not hyperbole to say we had read "thousands" of pages; any student of the events in Dallas is able to show you a shelf with dozens of books. As our education increased we became able to discern disqualifying ignorance and wildly untenable assertions in many of these volumes.

We did not find such things in Donahue's thesis.3

The very first words of this quotation confirm what I say above: all they were looking for was what would or could "verify" their "impression" that what Donahue put together, what was very obviously was, to an authentic subject expert, not "valid."

What he knew about guns and bullets and the like is not relevant and he knew so little about Dallas that he did not even get an official copy of the Warren Report or those twenty-six appended volumes of testimony and exhibits and when he was offered free and unsupervised access to hundreds of thousands of pages of relevant FBI records he did not look at a single one. What he did not know about his claimed specialty is relevant, very relevant.

The St. Martin's questioning of Donahue and Menninger was limited to the state of St. Martin's ignorance of the subject matter. That St. Martin's acquired a large collection of the literary trash that other publishers treated as assassination information when it is not that was worse than a waste of time. It was a guarantee that all the time and money St. Martin's invested in its own effort to authenticate this fakery resulted in just that, publication of the fakery.

Which nobody at St. Martin's was in a position to question, or wanted to, from this account.

If from this account it can be believed that anybody at St. Martin's really wanted that with its approach rather than by getting a legitimate peer review, as responsible publishers of non-fiction have done for decades.

When the difference in costs is considered, that St. Martin's did not want a legitimate peer review becomes obvious.

The volume of utter irrelevancies in this "note" gives the same impression. The alleged "vulnerability of the HSCA's trajectory analysis" does not prove that Hickey fired a shot, for example.

The so-called "jiggle" in the Zapruder film, which dates back to the very first book on this subject,4 which Donahue/Menninger cite when it serves their purposes, also has not a thing to do with Hickey's firing a shot. Nor is it in any sense relevant to proof that Hickey fired a shot to ask "is it possible Zapruder held his camera tilted slightly to the right?"5

This kind of mumbo jumbo reflects that the St. Martin's intent to make the impossible appear to be possible was the real reason its invested so many hours in what is not relevant to the one essential if it was to publish an honest book: proof that Hickey fired a shot.

There is more like this that is not worth taking time for. What this note lacks is relevance. It is written as justification. The work St. Martin's did was aimed at justifying not at questioning the fiction that it found so attractive.

Statements like "Donahue's ballistics argument is the strongest yet put forth and it accounts for all the essential data"6 is both false and ignorant. These people, ranging from Donahue up or down and including McCormack, do not know what all that "ballistics data" is and the book ignores most of it, so much that it mocks Donahue and his claimed expertise and makes a cruel farce of the kind of effort St. Martin's describes as its substitute for the traditional and honored peer review.

In Donahue's case it is not because he did not read what is totally absent from his book that is ballistics fact, not argument, and is most basic in any account of the assassination and of the shooting in it.

Assuming that the fatal shot was not fired by Oswald, which is the Donahue assumption, and assuming that the caliber of the bullet that caused death was of a smaller caliber, that does not prove that the fatal bullet came from the Hickey's AR-15, which is the assumption that from the first lacked any proof at all and after all this effort still lacks that proof.

There were many other places from which shots could have been fired. When federal agents said they believed they heard shots from behind the limousine and that is what Governor Connally also said, and with the Donahue assumption that Oswald did not fire that shot, there were countless windows, for example, through which that and other shots could have been fired.

None of this is proof that Hickey fired a shot.

St. Martin's says, "We read all the statements of all of the agents. (They were published in the Warren Commission Report . . .)" They were, in fact, as we have seen, published not in the Report but in Appendix Volume 18. And it is not correct to state that the exhibit St. Martin's does not identify here by number includes every statement by every agent.7

It does not!

(So much for all those employees that St. Martin's had working all those many days when they can't even read the table of contents of a volume from which they copy some statements and can't even recognize the title on the cover and on the spine and on the title page of that volume!

So much, too, for what faith can be placed in anything any of them say about their "research" or its alleged meaning!)

But if it did, as we have seen, those statements are not in a single instance proof that Hickey fired a shot and there are uncontradicted statements that neither he nor any other agent fired any shot.

As we have seen and as St. Martin's knew before publishing this atrocity that seeks to rewrite our history, to exculpate the guilty, and to ruin the life of a decent man and of his family.

With what they decide "seems" continuously substituted for proof, this note states, "It seems unlikely to most of us that his fellow agents — or some of then — and even Hickey himself would not be aware of the AR-15 going off, but the possibility exists." (That is utter nonsense for agents experienced with firearms, particularly when St. Martin's had the written denials of this.) We are never told if or when or by whom a post-event gun examination was carried out.8

We, the reader, are not told what effort under the well-known and readily available law that, first, Donahue then Menninger and then St. Martin's made to learn. That information is not within any of the exemptions of the Freedom of Information Act and there is no record in the book or in this note of any of them making the effort. In a matter of ten days without response they were, under the law, entitled to file and appeal and then, again in just twenty days, if they got no response, they could have gone directly into federal court.

It cannot be assumed that this was not known to all of them.

Yet not one of them did it.

Donahue, albeit with his customary nastiness and persistent lack of fidelity to fact, did write about my use of FOIA and he referred to me as a lone old man. He could have filed the request under FOIA, as could Menninger, without even talking to a lawyer.

St. Martin's is a large and wealthy publisher with competent counsel. Had it wanted an answer to the question from its own account it did not even ask, it would have had that answer within days or it could have gone to court, where FOIA lawsuits take precedence, and gotten the answer. There was no way in which that information could be denied under that law.

As St. Martin's lawyers would have told the publisher if the publisher had asked its counsel.

Meanwhile let us not ignore the permeating dirtiness of this approach and of this writing. Neither Donahue nor McCormick nor Menninger state that it was the practice or was required that when guns were not used that there be "a post-event gun examination." They assume the truth of what Donahue made up and is totally denied and refuted and they make up the need for such an examination because they cite no regulation or procedure to back up what they make up on the alleged inspection, either.)

This note states in Donahue's name what we noted earlier he neglected to state in his book and Menninger did not state for him. They combined in saying that and this is imagined, that Hickey fell either forward or backward. We saw in considering this that the difference is great. Here is the note we find:

Hickey, jumping to his feet on the soft seat cushion of a moving car, tipped backward while clutching the AR-15.9

Now if one examines the St. Martin's illustration in Figure 13, the one we commented on and ridiculed a bit earlier, even if we assume that with that rifle under those feet and blocked in part by the backs of the jump seats that Hickey, was sitting on the back of that seat, not sitting on that seat itself, could have gotten it up, as all these people conjecture, before the car resumed its forward motion, after slowing down, which is not possible in any event; and even if we assume that the Hickey who was sitting on the back of that seat had any purpose in standing and having no footing when he was well planted sitting on the back of that seat; and particularly as Figure 1310 shows how he supposedly had hold of that rifle, the one thing he could not have done in being "tipped backward" was to fire that rifle downhill. Had he fired a shot, from this, the St. Martin's account that Donahue and Menninger were wise enough to omit from their text, it would not have been possible for that shot to have gone downward with Hickey going backward that rifle pointed more and more upward the more he went backward.

Not that there is a word of proof in any of this in St. Martin's/Donahue's/Menninger's presentation for there is none. The point is that what St. Martin's says happened and Donahue and Menninger were sly enough to omit is actually proof that if Hickey had fired a shot he could not have hit the President!

The rest at this point is self-serving and is more meaningless effort at justification that fails and means nothing except to those who know nothing about the subject.

Without saying who signed it, and perhaps it can be inferred that it was McCormack who wrote Hickey under the date of November 1, 1991, what is not included in the book is that they all knew that Hickey would not respond, that he was living like a recluse, did not answer the phone and did not respond to letters. So it is less than honest to include this letter written so long after they all knew the truth. As we know they all did, thanks to Beltrante's blabbing as recorded in the clipping that a friend in Israel to send me and I quoted above.

St. Martin's knew that Hickey was sick and would not respond to this letter. It sent the letter to be able to pretend that it was seeking to be fair to him and that he was not fair to it. St. Martin's brazenly and dishonestly misused it in this way.

The letter also contains what is not true, like the statement that "Donahue's thesis is based on a sifting of the available ballistics, medical and other evidence."11 Is that that what Donahue was "learning" when he had free access to the FBI's records on those "ballistics," including what was disclosed about the spectrographic and neutron activation testing, among countless other items of evidence, and he refused to look at a page of it?

After the book was published, Donahue and Menninger remained essentially ignorant of the medical evidence and as we saw, deliberately misrepresented some that was basic in their book.

"Other evidence?" When Donahue was interested in none of it and refused to look at it when it was offered to him? He knows nothing about "other" or "relevant" evidence. And the others know even less than he does!

In trying to entice Hickey to respond, St. Martin's ignores what is clear what is clear and on the record: there is official and confirmed denial that any shot was fired.

It also ignored the equally clear and irrefutable fact that Donahue and Menninger have no proof that the Hickey fired a shot.

So what if, to the knowledge of all of them, Hickey was not suffering serious psychological problems. What good could he do himself when these people just refused to believe all the official denials that were in their possession and in the public record. This writing/publishing cabal were unable to prove a single record was in error.

There was nothing Hickey could do that could do him any good.

And, of course, he also had to worry, if he gave this any thought, how with the twisting already done and of which he had knowledge, anything he might say would be twisted.

They all had the official statements he made. They use them in the appendix. He had nothing to add to them, Only St. Martin's wanted him to add to it so that it could misuse anything he did say or add.

In addition to the official Secret Service denials of Hickey firing any shot, St. Martin's here states what is not in the Donahue/Menninger text, that the President's dear friend Dave Powers was contacted by Menninger and Powers indicated that Hickey's rifle was not fired. Had it been it would have been mere inches from his ears and there is no chance he would not have heard and felt it, been hurt by that blast.12

There is no possibility, given the relationship between Powers and the President, that Powers would have lied if he knew who had fired the shot that killed the man he loved and served so faithfully for so many, many years.

As the efforts to get a statement continued, St. Martin's got a letter from Samuel Kinney, "the driver of the follow-up car: 'I was driving the car at the time . . . and I can assure you that there was no gun fired from the U.S.S.S. follow-up car.'"13

So, if he was believed, as if all other denials that any shot had been fired would have been believed, there would not have been the book for which they all lusted. So, Kinney wasn't believed, either.

The note then quotes McIntyre: ". . . no shots were fired by any agent."14

This note misrepresents what Secret Service Agent Bennett, who was next to Hickey, said in his statement we noted above. It misrepresents the number of shots Bennett said he heard. Bennett did state that "a second shot . . . hit the right rear high [sic] in note of the President's head."15

There is this astounding statement after more of these blind refusals to believe all the statements that no Secret Service shot was fired:

We at St. Martins do not unanimously feel that Donahue has proved his AR-15 case beyond a shadow of a doubt. His conviction is strong but we cannot say this argument absolutely precludes the possibility that he is wrong. Our own search was begun in an effort to uncover anything that might disqualify that argument. It was in that pursuit that we approached Hickey and talked with the Secret Service. Not only did we find nothing to invalidate Donahue's thesis, but with each passing week our respect grew for him and his ability to cite increasing amounts of evidential support for different aspects of his argument. We now feel that Donahue's command of and reasoning about the hard facts of Dealey Plaza are the strongest that we have seen, and if we cannot attest to certainty it may be because of a natural reluctance to concede that such bad luck, so unlikely and chaotic an accident, can prevail in this world. But to disbelieve solely because it was a long shot is its own species of irrationality.16

This lacks honesty.

It also lacks common sense.

St. Martin's admits the possibility that Donahue, meaning as it does not say also St. Martin's, the publisher, is wrong. Yet knowing that they can be wrong they make such heinous charges against Hickey?

Hickey did not assassinate the President but they say he did anyway, in all the copies they print and in all the enormous ancillary uses they arrange for? They admit that Hickey may not have killed the President but they make the charge anyway, terrible as that charge is?

Would St. Martin's say that a man who was a bank president robbed his own bank if it knew that maybe he did not? No, no money in the sale of books about it.

And, of course, St. Martin's would know that as soon as such a book was on sale it would be sued.

As from Beltrante's work it was confident Hickey would not, would not be up to doing it.