CHAPTER 12

"THROUGH THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL" AND "IN THE SEWERS"

What McCormack and St. Martin's next say is as big a lie as a publisher can tell when he is considering publishing a book like this one. On this subject it is not likely that St. Martin's could make up a bigger lie than in saying that

Our own search was begun in an effort to uncover anything that might disqualify the argument.1

The book itself reveals that this is not true.

So does the McCormack note.

There is not a word in it reporting what anyone asked anybody to "disqualify" what that "argument" says.

It has no bibliography of sources or of experts, if any were, it consulted in the alleged effort that was not made. That it is simply a deliberate lie any effort was made.

Next is another St. Martin's assault upon St. Martin's integrity and concept of simple honesty:

It was in that pursuit that we approached Hickey and talked with the Secret Service.2

Knowing from the Beltrante detective work that Hickey suffered serious psychological problems and would not respond? Knowing this for years and still telling so large a lie in a book to be printed in so many copies and to get all the added attention in publicity all around the world?

Yet St. Martin's did get responses from the Secret Service: no shot was fired.

So, what was the purpose of "speaking" to the Secret Service if what the Secret Service said was going to be ignored and the book published despite the unanimous response that no shot was fired and the total absence of any proof that one was?

Next is another mammoth deception that again is of enormous dishonesty:

Not only did we find nothing to invalidate Donahue's theory but with each passing week our respect for him grew and his ability to cite increasing amounts of evidential support for different aspects of his argument.3

Donahue remains a subject-matter ignoramus, despite the pretendedly high opinion of his knowledge of the assassination and its investigation — and no matter what kind of mousy language St. Martin's employs — this is what it is talking about, with his limited knowledge, pretty much limited to the shooting, and his knowledge of that, from the book, being severely limited.

That phony with an inflated opinion of himself, and the greed he was able to inspire in St. Martin's does not change it a bit, did not make any real investigation of the shooting and from his book, he remains ignorant of it! Besides which, as we have seen in the foregoing, the book also is not truthful where it gets into elements of the shooting, those very limited elements that it does describes.

If St. Martin's really "feel" that Donahue's command of and reasoning about the hard facts of Dealey Plaza are the strongest [it had] seen," it is certain, beyond any real question, that St. Martin's was careful not to look to be able to say anything like this about its subject-matter ignoramus who can claim so little knowledge about the crime itself and, this can not be repeated too often, not only made no real investigation of it, he actually refused access to hundreds of thousands of pages of official evidence that includes repetitious proof of his subject-matter ignorance and of the impossibility of his "argument." From this book Donahue is really a stranger to what St. Martin's refers to as "the hard facts of Dealey Plaza."

And this despite all the leads he had to all the other evidence in my books that he had.

He had that "command of the hard facts" when his book makes no mention of the certificate of death of which he had a copy in Post Mortem4?

And so much more evidence like this!

When among so many other elements of proof and fact that is missing in his book or is lied about, there was an official White House press conference to present the findings of the Dallas doctors to the people and that is not mentioned in the book — other than as we have seen, to lie about what the doctors, the only ones in the world with first-person knowledge, actually said about what they saw of the President's wounds?

Donahue had that alleged — really non-existing — "command" of the "hard facts" when he merely assumes every word he says about Oswald, and makes no effort to place Oswald at the scene of the crime at the time of the crime?

This catalogue could be extended indefinitely but there is no need because it is all clear enough in the examination we have made of this phony book by a phony "expert" and his hired-hand of a writer.

This St. Martin's publishers' "note" claims to have made "an effort to uncover anything that might prove Donahue wrong. But the note does not mention the name of a single person who worked in the field who was asked.

Or a single book that was consulted.

Or a single picture, still or motion, and they do exist and are well-known to authentic experts, as I'd told Donahue only to have him print his stupid, ridiculous lies as quoting me as telling him of "a hail of bullets from the grassy knoll and elsewhere in Dealey Plaza"5 when I have never conjectured, as he does, about the origin of any shot and never conceived of anything like what Donahue suggests, a "hail" of bullets."

He then quotes me as having said that "Every photograph from Dealey Plaza appeared to disprove the accident [sic] scenario."6 This is so blatantly impossible it is an obvious and a deliberately vicious lie.

I did tell him three photos proved him wrong. There is no mention of the parts of those photos in the book or its publisher's note. However, with regard to one, as we saw in the text, he lied about the time it was taken prior to the fatal shot to make it appear to be possible when it was not possible and when that picture alone proved the time for that "accident" did not exist.

It takes a particular kind of character deficiency to be able to tell lies like these for the money he could make from the fabrication he built. His reason for this is what may be his understatement of what I'd actually said, that, his words I "didn't know of any evidence that justified [his] conclusions."6

There is better behavior in an unruly barnyard. I asked nothing of him, fed him, offered him free access to years of work and all the records that yielded, and I asked nothing in return. So he makes these contemptible lies up, along with others exposed in the text.

When he has the kind of corrupted personality that makes him capable of this, not a word of his can be trusted.

Donahue expressed a high opinion of the work of Josiah Thompson. If St. Martin's spoke to him it does not say so.

Or, take me. The book itself discloses that I had sued the government and obtained a great volume of information that had been withheld. That made me that kind of expert, gave me that knowledge that others did not have.

Or take what Donahue says about me7 and what I wrote regarding criticism of the official investigation, especially its refusal to consider the very "possibility" on which this book is based? That is in the very first sentence of what Donahue quotes from my first book, which was the first book on the subject, so he and St. Martin's were aware of my having written that as they were of the fact that thereafter I wrote enormously more.

The man who first raised the question that Donahue adopted as his own was not one to be asked by the publisher who says he made a valiant "effort to uncover anything that might" prove Donahue either right or wrong. That man is not to be spoken to if that publisher is making the effort he says he did!

St. Martin's knew from the text of the book it published that I had sued the FBI for the results of its scientific testing yet it never asked me a word about that, about whether the information I got either tended to prove or disprove what it claims it wanted to prove or disprove?

The news that I had "peppered" the government with lawsuits to obtain withheld assassination information is clear enough.8

On that page Donahue/Menninger offer an opinion of the information I got in that (which reflects their ignorance of the fact that I sued for that information more than once, such being their "command" of those "hard facts" of Dealey Plaza) yet the supposedly diligent St. Martin's checking of the book prior to publishing it it never asked me if the book's reflection of the value of the information I got is truthful, even reasonable?

For that matter, if all those St. Martin's people spent all those hours referred to in this note in reading the literature in the field they would have known the answer and if they had been honest St. Martin's would not have published this atrocity of a book.

If St. Martin's had compared page 123 of their book with Post Mortem, and they could not fail to know about Post Mortem since it was cited as a reference in end note number three of chapter eleven, of if they had consulted Books in Print or other standard source, they would have known that on this page (and elsewhere) Donahue is just a straight-out liar.

And that about the area of his alleged expertise as a "firearms engineer" and as a "firearms examiner."

One page 213, St. Martin's published the fact that John Davis, whose book is referred to as a best-seller, urged Donahue to consult with me. What Davis told Donahue I have no way of knowing but he could have told Donahue that he had an assistant working for a long period of time in my files and made countless copies for him, all independently of me, with no supervision or intrusion by me.

That did not prompt St. Martin's, which was spending all that money, to write me a letter or call me on the phone?

If all those St. Martin's people read all the books this note says they read, then in the course of reading them they should have learned that what their book says on its page 213 about what I wrote is a lie and a very big lie, as addressed earlier in the text above. But they did not care about lies in their book.

Even when on this same page St. Martin's read in the book they published "that Weisberg did provide key information to Ralph Reppert back in 1977 concerning the government's neutron activation testing of bullet fragments removed from Kennedy's brain," important as that is in their book, nobody from St. Martin's, in their supposedly diligent effort to get confirmation or disproof of what they were considering publishing, got in touch with me at all and about anything at all.

An obvious check for a publisher wanting a check was to ask about what their book says about me or this page; was it true, was it untrue, and what proof did I have of either? But in its great diligence and its supposedly exhaustive effort to find what could disprove what they were about to publish, St. Martin's avoided this.

Which, if its people did the reading in the field of which it boasted in this note, its people had to know was false, they had to know that Donahue/Menninger just plain lied with no basis for their lies.

Menninger did the writing. Did St. Martin's ask him if he spoke to me? He did not, nor did he phone or have anyone speak to me for him to learn if a single word he wrote about me was true, or what would have meant more to an honest writer, was not true.

But important as information about those fragments from the President's brain is in this book, and St. Martin's knew that I had that information and gave it to Donahue's associate Ralph Reppert, it was "key information" and still nobody from St. Martin's spoke to me. That can mean only that it made no effort at all other than the futility of trying to find what could confirm Donahue's impossible fabrication.

St. Martin's was drooling into its till and wanted nothing to stop the flow of that anticipated profit from a dishonest, disreputable book.

After saying, still not disclosing the Beltrante operation and what was learned by it, that Hickey had every right not to respond — not that he had provided a lengthy report to the Secret Service that St. Martin's had and published — St. Martin's says that it had to face the question, "what was he, Donahue, to do?" An obvious answer was to come up with a single person of the large number in Dealey Plaza who could confirm that Hickey had fired that shot.

A single person. One!

That is not an obvious answer?

What else could Donahue do?

Get disproof of the Secret Service denials that a shot had been fired.

Or, as I suggest above, go after the definitive records under the Freedom of Information Act, of which they all knew.

St. Martin's then says it a had "an obligation [emphasis in original] to publish."9

An obligation to publish without a legitimate peer review, once the respected tradition in nonfiction publishing?

With no confirmation at all?

Without even consulting the one professional bibliographer in the field and speaking to him, Professor David Wrone of the University of Wisconsin?

As this grinds to an end St. Martin's says

We believe there are people or sealed paper out there whose evidence finally made public will settle Donahue's question.10

As we have seen, there are such people and there are such records and St. Martin's, as well as Donahue and Menninger, could not have been more determined in its avoidance of both.

And those records are not sealed and never have been.

Donahue refused to look at them!

His wife said she had to return and do that but never did!

"Sealed" paper? The Secret Service records of whether a shot had been fired or not, of its accounting of its bullets, are not subject to withholding under the Freedom of Information Act. St. Martin's refused to ask for them to be able to have them for this book, as Donahue and Menninger also refused to do.

As stated earlier, I am sent clippings by people from all around the world, and when this book appeared that continued to happen. Sometimes the clipping was not fully identified, sometimes in the cutting a bit was cut off by accident, but what was sent me discloses that this book that is so defamatory of an innocent man got extensive attention all around the country and elsewhere in the world.

One of those clippings appears to be from The Baltimore Sun. The date is missing but from the content it was about the time the book appeared. The article is about a full page newspaper column and a half. It is by the then book editor, Tom Warren.

The same St. Martin's lie is repeated, attributed to McCormack: "if anybody else could come up with material that would have invalidated the theory, it wouldn't have been published." But there could not be "anybody else" because St. Martin's kept the entire project secret and did not consult the obvious experts in the field.

Including the FBI!

Still quoting McCormack,

He said that between eight to 10 people at St. Martin's worked on the manuscript for several months and read "thousands of pages" of material related to the assassination. Including other books on the killing and the report of the Warren Commission.

This does represent a considerable investment much greater in cost than the traditional peer review. It also reflects the fact that St. Martin's read the books that disprove what it dignifies in calling a "theory."

Then comes the confession missing in the note in the publisher's note in the book, that the book "was edited in secrecy" and was not mentioned in the catalogue!

What a way that is to do what this "publisher's note," if the "note" can still be used for it, to try to learn what could disprove the complete fabrication about to be published! Keep it entirely secret from all those who could disprove that fabrication! And then claim to have made the most diligent efforts to establish the "truth."

In this inspired story of pre-publication workings, the amount of money St. Martin's expected to make from this desecration of our tragic history and its patently false accusation that the innocent Hickey killed the President — and it did know, no matter how much it pretends otherwise, for all the evidence is that he did not fire any shot — is reflected, almost boasted of:

St. Martin's spokesman John J. Murphy said advance orders for "Mortal Error" exceed 100,000. He said the book already has gone through three printings; Mr. McCormack said the first printing is 125,000 an unusually high number for a first-time author with no name recognition.

This story concludes with the Donahue admission of what he should have done, as indicated above, and did not do, in either of two ways to which we come. He concludes by claiming that the government covered up the assassination to be able to hide what he made up out of nothing but sick ego and he has absolutely nothing to confirm it:

Mr. Donahue maintains that there are two further tests that could instantly prove or disprove his theory, and he is surprised that if they have been made, no public acknowledgment of them has ever been announced.

For one thing, the composition of the jacket. of the AR-15 bullet is slightly different than the composition of a 6.5 Carcano bullet jacket. It is 90 percent copper, 9 percent zinc and 1 percent impurities. The Carcano jacket contains only copper. Thus any examination of the recovered ballistic copper bits that can be shown to contain zinc can only have come from a .223 bullet.

"I hate the word 'cover-up,' he says. It sounds so sinister. But the government was between a rock and a hard place. They did not want to admit that Kennedy was shot in the head by their own man. They tried to cover it up with the Warren Commission. And the Warren Commission was so inept that it led to much more widespread distrust of the government and its investigating agencies. Nobody really profited from it. The Warren Commission simply covered up. . ."

So now we know why Donahue refused to look at the FBI's records on its spectrographic and neutron activation analyses that I got by those lawsuits and to which I offered him access, as I did to all writing. in the field!

Now we know again why Donahue did not ask the FBI for those results. Once disclosed to me they are all readily available to the public — to everyone — and to get duplicates it is not necessary to file a lawsuit. In fact, records, once disclosed, are in the agency's public reading room and anyone can walk in and examine then and get copies!

Anyone but that "firearms engineer" who says he is also a "firearms examiner," Howard Donahue.

This man who claims to be those kind of expert is either a deliberate liar in what his book says about these tests or he is that ignorant! Or both!

It is not necessary in those examinations to compare jacket materials to learn whether fragments tested were of common origin — from the same bullet.

There are differences in the composition of the lead alloys used.

Perhaps this is why in the book this supposed firearms expert and engineer does not state that the cores are of alloys and instead lies and says they are of lead only and then claims that by testing the lead nothing can be learned when the courts have accepted this for a century.

Now it happens that Donahue referred to the testimony of Dr. Vincent Guinn to the House assassins committee. He had duplicated the neutron activation tests and had examined the records of the tests made earlier. Guinn testified to identifications of the core materials and if Donahue read his testimony, then Donahue knows this and lied about it to have his book, his fame, and his fortune!

The poorest of spectrographic tests in that era were fine to parts per million, and there are variations in the lead core materials used by different manufacturers.

So, Donahue, claiming to be an expert, has to be considered a deliberate liar in claiming that identification can be made by the copper jacket material only or is that ignorant.

Particularly not then with neutton activation analysis.

But spectrographic analysis had been made providing just those answers that Donahue says were needed for a century! And for that had used bullet core materials.

As with no effort at all this man who brags about his professional knowledge and is so ignorant in his field would have learned with ease if he had wanted to — assuming that he did not know, which is not a safe assumption.

In the book he pretends that he came to see me at John Davis' suggestion,11 waiting to say that until he was almost to the end of his book, chapter 16 which is the his next to last chapter.

But on the same page he acknowledged that when he and Ralph Reppert were working together, in 1977, and I had provided that "key information" quoted earlier. When at the latest Donahue knew that in 1977, he did not have to wait for 1985 to come up, particularly not when I offered in writing to share all I had with Reppert.

To able to file and litigate those lawsuits for the results or the FBI's scientific testing I had to do a great amount of research. Much of that was entered into the court record and although I am not a scientist or a "firearms engineer" or "examiner" it stacked in court. What I provided held up — and I was suing the vaunted FBI Laboratory.

This is because there is much dependable information readily available and if Donahue had wanted to see what we have just quoted him as saying was hidden, all he had to do was open file drawers and read.

And if he wanted the proof of the dependable use of core materials of bullets in making identifications or proving there was no common origin, he would have had free access to more than he could use.

Anybody can test this by going to any decent library. Also, the tests are not secret and the multitudinous studies are not secret.

And a speck as tiny as a single millimeter is enough for the spectrographic test, too.

It is clear that Donahue is not an expert — is a liar — or both — in what says about the testing of core materials of bullets.

But my what some people won't do for money!

Publishers, to, for St. Martin's did no checking with me and it knew about me and about my work.

As the bible says, it is not money but the love of money that is the root of evil. Conforming to the boasting of St. Martin's' in the newspaper I believe was The Baltimore Sun is David Streitfeld's story in The Washington Post of February 27, 1992. That was the day of publication. Here is an excerpt from what Streitfeld wrote:

Saint Martin's Press is publishing 125,000 copies of "Mortal Error," which is a hefty number in these recessionary times. But there is clearly a huge market out there. Last Sunday, the Nos. 6 and 14 hardcover nonfiction spots as well as Nos. 1, 4 and 8 paperback nonfiction books on the New York Times bestseller list were offering wildly conflicting viewpoints on whodunit to JFK and why.

"Mortal Error" has an unusual feature in a 17-page "note from the publisher" written by Saint Martin's Chairman Thomas McCormack justifying publication of the book as in the public interest. The note documents the unsuccessful attempts to convince the Secret Service agent, now retired and living in suburban Maryland, to talk or indeed respond at all, and the lengthy process through which they arrived at a decision to publish.

Streitfeld did what St. Martin's did not do and did not have to do, thanks to that secret Beltrante operation he blabbed about in Israel, and this follows:

The agent's phone number is unavailable at his request, and he could not be reached by The Washington Post for response, which is why his name isn't published here.

"He's very sick, and his family has asked that he not be contacted about this," said Secret Service spokesman, Carl Meyer, who added that "I don't see how this is going to do his mental health or well-being any good at all."

Of course, after publication St. Martin's had no interest in the truth it claimed to be seeking and kept itself from getting by the total secrecy with which it proceeded, But if he had any interest after publication, it had a lead in this Streitfeld story:

Harold Weisberg, author of the "Whitewash" series of assassination books, said, "I rank it with the tooth Fairy. Publishers have gone though the bottom of the barrel with JFK material, and are now in the sewers. The existing evidence that Donahue didn't use proves it didn't happen that way.

This is clear enough. Did I hear from St. Martin's then? From McCormack? From its spokesman, Murphy?

Of course not! They preferred tooth fairies and all those thousands and thousands of dollars.

It is obvious, though, that with Hickey in the shape he was in, not going out or answering the phone or letters, he was not in shape to go into a courtroom and testify and that is all the fact St . Martin's needed.

Among the many papers outside the United States making a big thing of this fakery was The Times of London.

All the way across the top of its first page and most of that page on Monday, March 2, 1992 is a picture of the limousine when it was on Stemmons Freeway rushing to the Hospital, plus a story on the back page. The photo showed an unidentifiable man sitting on the back seat of the follow-up car with a rifle in his hand. The first column has Donahue's smiling face. Besides this massive page-one attention, inside it has forty-eight column inches headlined: "Kennedy: the publisher's case." At the bottom is McCormack's name.

This should have sold many copies Britain.

And defamed Hickey more.

But with all that space, all that sanctimony, all that pretense of being fair to the man, Donahue began with the intent of defaming, his writing permitted nothing else, and St. Martin's publication assuring it world-wide and in a permanent record, they had no space for what the Post published about Hickey's health, which would have taken only two or three lines in the book.

And of course they had no space for the Beltrante blabbing of what they knew, that Hickey was not medically able to sue them no matter how they defamed him.

McCormack's note says "that fairness to Hickey was a necessity as we considered our decision about whether or not to publish. We now feel that every reasonable effort at fairness has been made."12

They have all redefined fairness, Donahue, Menninger, McCormack and his tribe at St. Martin's who also redefined what is meant by effort to learn when there is controversy — proceed in total secrecy.