Chapter 3

Scholar And Demon Investigator

Even in its structure this book of Brown's is strange. It is almost as though he took odds and ends of earlier writing and added them together to make a book.

He has the book broken into three Parts but before getting to the first of those parts he has what he titles "Theories." In this he separates his own theory, if it is even that, lacking in proof as it does, and pretends his is fact whereas the others are not. It is not until page 123 that the reader gets to the first "Book" and then he finds a cute trick, those three parts are colored to make them appear to be patriotic. They are colored first blue, then red and then white. Together they are, as we see, all black.

He then has almost thirty pages he titles "Hypothesis" in which he again pretends he is not theorizing. Then he has "appendices" that in the book itself lack this identification. The first of them is preceded by a page that in large black type says, "TABLES", page 341. They are largely childish stuff and if they had any value, that would have been thirty years ago.

The first is titled "SUSPECTED 'SHOOTERS' IN KENNEDY ASSASSINATION." page 343. Some are obviously impossible yet he lists them, with what he identifies as "Likely Affiliations, if Available." There is no fiction not suitable for him for this listing of silliness. (He apparently does the suspecting. He gives no source or sources.)

Next he tabulates "Suspects Considered for all Three Phrases of the Assassination."

Of those non-existing Oswald connections with right-wing groups in New Orleans, Brown's belief that it was "possible" that Oswald had such connections is enough to warrant correlating them with him. And in his scholar's mind "right-wing" and "oil" are synonymous. That an unidentified "some see" that fake letter "as addressed to H. L. Hunt" is all that is required for inclusion in Brown's listings.

Whatever he means by "Conceive Assassination?" all but one of them has "yes" after it. That one is "Secret Service." It is also one of the two who under "Carry It Out?" that have "no" after them. The only other "no" in this column is after "Nixon." He does have Nixon as one who will, would or did "conceive" an assassination Others in his "Conceive" listing are the CIA, Hoover/FBI, Right, LBJ, Oil, Mob, Castro & Co., Anti-Castro and KGB. Of them all, under "Cover It Up" he has but two "Yes" notations, one for Hoover/FBI and one for Nixon. Whatever any of this means or can mean.

Whatever the tabulation itself means, among those excluded are his own killers, those about whom he has written this book, the Dallas police. Perhaps this is his way of arguing without seeming to argue that what he says is fact and all else isn't.

Among those many who had been suspects he fails to list any of the military or any of what Eisenhower referred to as the military-industrial complex.

He next page (page 346) expands this listing of the allegedly suspected, by whom he does not say, under the heading of "Group," still without explaining why they are suspects, with a second column in which he asks "Was Oswald Part?" He thus has Oswald "part" of the conspiracies of the CIA, the Right, Oil, the Mob, and the Secret Service (of which he has three listings, (1), (2) and (3) with the only "no" after (3)) of his assassination plots, White Supremacists, Castro & Co. and the KGB. He also has the Secret Service in his group of assassin suspects, broken into three separate listings, each with a number by it. It is only of Secret Service (3) that according to Brown he could place a "no."

How does he have Oswald connected with "Oil?" Here are his scholarly words, of the former FBI agent he was, with a concern on both counts for fact, allegedly:

Oswald's oil involvement stems largely from his possible associations with right-wing groups in New Orleans, plus the "Dear Mr. Hunt" letter discussed elsewhere, that some see as addressed to H. L. Hunt.

His concept of scholarship eliminates the need to explain what he says are those "Three Phases of the Assassination!" although there is ample white space on the page for that explanation. He has only ten lines of "suspects." Those ten he tabulates under headings that he may intend to represent his three phases, "Conceive Assassination," Carry It Out?" and "Cover It Up?" There are other "Phases," if not to him.

That Hunt letter was a well-executed fake that was mailed to most critics, including me, from Mexico City.

In this heap of political, intellectual and factual garbage, Brown does not bother to try to explain how he has Oswald "part" of what he refers to as "White Supremacists." Or the CIA or the Right or the Mob. Brown wants it so it is and it requires no evidence or proof or even reasonableness and it is true no matter how untrue it is.

His next table (page 347) is of the "Dates of Witnesses Appearances" before the Warren Commission. Once upon a time there may have been some purpose served by this tabulation but not more than thirty years later. And, thirty years later, this scholar does not give it the meaning it can have in serious scholarship in terms of the testimony to be adduced. Even then the dates may be less significant than other factors, like what was testified to, when the Commission planned to issue its Report in June. It then had not even interviewed its more important Dallas witnesses like Abraham Zapruder who took the movies so important in the Commission's work, or Jim Tague, the third man wounded in the assassination.

Next he has a breakdown on "Witness Totals By Category" (page 348). Again, if this had any value it was thirty years ago or in different writing than is in this book. None of this or his earlier tabulations has the remotest connection with the Brown invention that the Dallas police killed the President.

This leads us to what he says are his appendices. The first of them is of thirty-two pages. It is a listing of the Commission's witnesses. That the Commission published in 1964 in its Report. Brown adds his beliefs to his computer printout and he represents them with abbreviations he added to the list -- thirteen of them. If there could be any purpose in this, having to remember or go back and check the meaning of those thirteen abbreviations of the questions asked of those witnesses pretty much eliminates any usefulness this could have had. But it still has no relevance in this book. Much of it is just plain silly, like the abbreviation "PRE" to represent what is normal in all testimony, "Preliminary questions, Name, job, education, etc," (unnumbered page 350). And, of course, this represents Brown's interpretations of the testimony, his beliefs of whether the questions asked were to the point.

His next appendix is of "Witnesses Not Called by the Warren Commission." It runs for nine pages (381-9). Such a list can be long even without the silliness of Brown's ignorance imposed upon it or the no less silly theories of the assassination. But without wasting the time, these not being in alphabetical order, to see those who really should have been called and were not, the irrationality of it all is at the its very beginning. His third witness to have been called and the reason for it is "Gordon Novel -- covert operative believed to have been in Dealey Plaza." This is nut stuff and it does not even suggest that if in fact Novel had been a "covert operative" for whom or for what purpose. And even then it is only some weird belief that he was in Dealey Plaza at the time of the assassination and that if he had been there was some connection with it.

The accredited scholar, this former FBI special agent depends on the street information, as it is called, he could pick up and then is not in a position to evaluate its accuracy. Take his listing of "Capt. Alexis Davidson" on page 382. First of all his name is not "Davidson." It is "Davison." This is not a typographical error. Brown spells the name incorrectly in his text, too, and it is also misspelled in the index. Of him Brown then says, "Gave physical to the Oswalds before their departure from USSR; knew Oleg Penkovsky, Soviet Officer executed for passing secrets to the United States; Oswald was believed to have the family address in Atlanta, and his flight to Texas made a stopover there."

It was not the "family" address at all, and rather than "believed" if Brown had the knowledge he pretends of those twenty-six volumes from which he spent all those hours making useless and needless tabulations of dubious accuracy to pay attention to fact and evidence he would have known it was he address of Davison's mother. Oswald wrote what Davison told him in his address book and the Commission published that address book in facsimile as Exhibit 18 in Volume 16, pages 37-70. On page 50, lettered black and clearly, is under "Mother of U.S. Embassy doctor, her name and address: Mrs. Hal Davison, 4047 Tuxedo Road, Atlanta, Georgia." Brown had the remotest notion of what all of this is about, he would have known that it was not possible to find anyone in the United States more virulently anti-Soviet than Davison's mother. So why would Davison, who was in the United States embassy in Moscow, Brown does not say and probably did not know, send the supposed Communist Oswald to see his Communist and anti-Soviet mother?

Davison was a doctor in the United States Embassy in Moscow. So, why would Davison, who was at least to a limited degree involved in United States spying in Russia — and Brown does not say that Davison was in the embassy or in any way involved in spying — send the supposed Communist Oswald to see his so strongly anti-Soviet mother?

How anti-Soviet was she?

At the end of World War I, as the historian Brown should know, the United States was one of six countries that invaded the then just established Soviet Union. Alexis Davison's father, also a doctor, was part of that United Stated invading army. It invaded from the Pacific and was in Siberia.

Davison's mother then a young nurse, was in the army of the White Russian General Wrangel, which had been driven into Siberia. She was a volunteer in that anti-Soviet army when she met the American doctor who became her husband.

Captain Davison's mother and father have this clear and strong anti-Soviet and anti- Communist record. Each risked life and limb to be anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.

It cannot be assumed, as Brown makes assumptions and then treats them as realities, that Captain Alexis Davison sent Oswald to see his aging mother just to provoke her, as Oswald being a Communist would.

Only one rational explanation suggests itself, that Captain Davison knew very well the truth that also is nowhere in Brown's book, that Oswald was no less anti-Communist and anti- Soviet than his mother.

Davison did not merely "know" Penkovsky, and whether he did is a question. The fact is that Davison, a doctor, was caught by the Soviets servicing dead drops in which Penkovsky left espionage information for the CIA. For that he did not have to know Penkovsky.

There was a public trial and Davison was expelled.

Brown, the expert on those 26 volumes who plays school-boy games in making pointless lists from them and when in his book the CIA, which he lists as possibly involved in the assassination and Oswald are so important in his book spends days making up meaningless lists of witnesses when the Commission published its own list, but misses this in the very first volume of the Commission's exhibits.

Brown's scholarship and his devotion to fact coming from his FBI training and experience are all exemplified by the fact that he can't get straight even the fact that it was only Marina who was required to have a physical examination before she could be admitted to this country. Lee did not require or have one.

These are but two of the thousands of illustrations that when he hears any rumors to which by some flight on an uninhibited imagination he can imagine some significance, Brown adopts it and adds what he can from his own ignorance.

I have taken this time for this minor Davison business because it does so clearly reflect that none of Brown's qualifications are reflected in this book and because what he does with this Davison matter is the exact opposite of what should be expected from a writer who is a former FBI agent and has a Ph.D. degree in history.

Brown got nothing straight, not even the spelling of the name. He did not know, although it is in the sources he uses, that Davison was expelled because he was connected with Penkovsky in espionage, not because he "knew" Penkovsky , as he well may not have.

What kind of investigator is this former FBI agent if he did not pick up the clear clue that Oswald was in fact strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist that he would ask Oswald to visit his aging anti-Soviet mother?

What use did the historian with that Ph.D. make of those twenty-six volumes when he missed this truth about Oswald's politics in them?

How could he, supposed scholar that he is, have missed the leads to where all of that is published in those twenty-six volumes when he from his bibliography used two books that go into actualities of Oswald's actual politics in considerable detail, Whitewash and Oswald in New Orleans? In those two books I used only what is in those twenty-six volumes about Oswald's being so strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist, and in each instance I provided the citations.

The silliness of those essentially pointless and valueless "tables" that have no relevance in this book took Brown a considerable amount of time. Had he not used, wasted that time and instead paid attention to what he should have known, he should from his Ph.D. in history and his FBI career, whatever that was or how little it may have been, has relevance.

How relevant?

Brown himself says quite relevant.

In his Table 2 in which he says he "correlates suspects with Oswald, first on that "suspects" list he made up is the CIA.

Captain Davison was caught engaging in espionage for the CIA.

First in Brown's Table 2, of suspects is the CIA (page 345); and in that table he has "yes" under his heading "Conceive Assassination?" and "Carry It Out,"

If, demon researcher and. investigator with those fine credentials he has, Brown did not perceive this and yet knew about Davison and not only made these factual errors in writing about him, what kind of researcher and scholar is he?

The alternative, of course, is that he knew and suppressed it. If that is true, and from the endless ignorance that permeates his book I do not believe it is true, it would also be its own kind of self-created condemnation of Brown as writer, as scholar, as researcher and as former FBI agent/investigator.

Without doubt there are many the Commission should have heard that it did not call. But all that those assassination nuts, of whom Brown is one, imagine can have some relevance could not have been called or the Commission would still be sitting.

In addition to the multitude from the nuts there are those of whom the Commission had no knowledge and had no way of knowing about. Faulting the Commission for not calling them is at least unfair.

The ignorance and the stupidity represented by this Brown list is staggering!

It is also a fair representation of Brown and of his book.

But again, still again, there is no relevance at all to his book in which he undertakes to say that the Dallas police killed the President.

The simply astounding ignorance if not also the dishonesty of this Davison business led me to check his source on his one mention of Davison in his text. One page 225 he does not even have Davison's first name. There he has it merely as "a Captain Davidson in the USSR who had family in Atlanta." His source (page 413) is not a source because he gave none. Rather than a source note it is a substitute for a footnote. In it he merely quotes Marina as having "mentioned the stopover in Atlanta."

With his own account some 200 people in his list of those he says the Commission should have called and didn't (page 389), I wondered if he included one of the more important medical experts of whom the Commission knew and did not call him. Dr. Joseph Dolce disapproved the possibility of the single-bullet theory without which this Report could not have been written. If Brown had made any use at all of Post Mortem, in which I brought Dolce and his disproof of that basis of the Report to light, Brown would have known of it (pages 91, 503-4). I carried this much further in Never Again! And it was published quite some time before Brown's Treachery, so he could have drawn on it too.

What I have on pages 503-4 illustrates what is at the very least the most a unscholarly method Brown uses for his book, of limiting himself to what the Commission published. Where I learned about Dolce, whose name is not in anything the Commission did publish, is from its files. So, I published Commission staff counsel Melvin Eisenberg's "MEMORANDUM FOR THE RECORD" of April 22, 1964 on this.

Eisenberg reports on a staff conference with experts of whom Dolce was one and a unique one. He was the army's top consultant on wounds and with VIP's he was to have been called on immediately. He was not called when the most VIP of VIPs, the President, was shot to death.

He was asked by the Commission to go back to the army's Edgewood, Maryland Arsenal proving grounds and perform the tests for the Commission he said would disprove the single- bullet theory. He did, the tests confirmed what he said and the Commission never talked to him again or used the test results it asked of him. (I go into this in detail in Never Again! In the chapters "The Commission Deceived Its Own Dissenting Members" beginning on page 231 and "The Army Protected The Conspiracy. Why?" beginning on page 291)

With some two hundred Brown says should have been called, Dolce is not one. His name is not in Brown's book. But, scholar and demon investigator that he is, among the two hundred he lists is Marita Lorenz (page 387). Of her he says, "key witness who implicated [E. Howard] Hunt, [Frank] Sturgis and Gary Hemming among Dallas plotters." Now if this scholar, this demon, former FBI, investigator, had not had another published trash heap for his source, if he had gone to what Lorenz did say, he'd have known a bigger liar never lived. In the story she made up to get her the attention it did she had those names Brown uses and others in a motorcade from Miami to Dallas along with Oswald, a two day trip ending in the assassination. But, as Brown himself says, if there is one thing certain about Oswald's whereabouts on November 21, it is that he as in Dallas and spent that night in Irving. So he knew it was impossible for him to have been in Miami and then on that two-day trip.

She did not "implicate" anyone.

She had it a two-car caravan with a young arsenal.

She was not even a good liar. She is so ignorant of the assassination she included the absolutely impossible, that Oswald was in it.

Yet in his text Brown also uses her as proof positive (pages 69-70, 101 and 124).

He says she should have been called by the Commission but not Dolce.

And he concludes this book boasting that it for the first time tells people the truth, that "government pronouncements" are what "robbed us of the truth." He follows this, with italics, boasting of his book as the first with truth, "Until now" (page 335).

So there need be no doubt about my characterization of Brown's incredible flaunting of astounding subject-matter ignorance and of plain common sense in this list of those he says should have been called, I add a few more illustrations of the so many in it.

We find this on page 383: "Loran Hall - admitted he was "Oswald" at the Odio residence; and in deposition denied it shortly thereafter."

This is one of the myriad of instances where Brown refers to anything on paper as a "deposition." He is actually referring to an FBI report I brought to light in Whitewash II, which is in his bibliography. In a deposition, which is a proceeding under order of a court, witnesses are sworn and are examined by both sides. That is not want an FBI report is.

And in that FBI report Hall did not "admit" that he passed himself off to the Cuban refugee woman, Odio, as Oswald. That Brown can be so ignorant of that rather significant and sensational matter is incredible. Especially when he read the truth in both of my first books.

But this is what he says is why Hall should have been called as a witness, this and nothing else. Yet Brown has him in his list of "Suspected 'Shooters' In Kennedy Assassination" (page 343). That was not a reason for him to be called as a witness?

But what he did not say was?

Brown refers to Hall in his book:

Loran Hall, an interesting stage extra in the events in Dallas, reportedly turned down a $50,000 offer from right-wingers to kill Kennedy. Having spoken at length with Dick Russell, whose The Man Who Knew Too Much carried the allegation, I have no reason to doubt the veracity of the claim . . ." (page 86)

This is not reason for Hall to have been called as a witness whereas the Liar Lorenz and other effluvia of the nuttery should have been?

But note this scholarly formulation, this demon investigator intensity on what is precise, accurate and dependable, that because Russell says Hall said it, what Hall said has to be true.

Therefore, without question, the moon is made of green cheese.

I knew Hall. He is quite a story-teller. It is not always possible to know whether he is talking about what really happened in his many adventures in and about Cuba or what he thinks can be interesting.

He twice asked me to appear with him instead of a lawyer, which I would not do. The first time was when Jim Garrison wanted him to testify to the New Orleans grand jury. That happened two decades ago during the three days I spent with him when he was a patient in the Los Angeles veteran's hospital. It is all on tape. The second time was when the House Assassinations committee called him the late 1970's. I told him he needed a lawyer for that and he got two, one a cousin and the other the cousin's assistant. I said I'd try to be there and I was, a bit late. But the committee had not yet gotten there. When he, at the front of the hearing room and at the witness table, turned around and saw me at the extreme end, at the door, he shouted something like, "Hey old buddy" and came rushing back. That caused quite a stir. He then said "How's about we go get a drink when this shit is over," and I agreed, taking The Washington Post's George Lardner along. We spent the last half of that day drinking in what was then known as The Wardman Park Hotel, after which they drove me home. I made no notes, Lardner did. I've not asked him if he recalls Hall telling us about that offer to kill JFK and I'm not checking my tapes to be reminded if he did in that Los Angeles hospital. It is not in those FBI reports and that, in addition to Hall's well-earned reputation for sometimes taking liberties with the truth, made a real problem for anyone using him as a witness. There is little he could say that could not be contradicted by what Loran Hall had also said.

For example, Brown says he denied ever being at Odio's apartment. He told the FBI he had been. He told me he had no clear recollection but it was possible. All on the reason Brown says he should have been called as a witness.

He was a real character, though.

At the end of those three days at that hospital, when I was getting ready to leave, he reached under the pillow and got and pointed what looked like a cannon at me. I did not notice whether it was a revolver or an automatic pistol. Smiling he said, "This is what I had for you if you turned out not to be for real."

How he got that weapon into the hospital and how it went undetected for a fairly long stay I cannot imagine, but he did.

When I was with him a doctor gave him a pain-killing shot of morphine, not calculated to improve judgment.

Brown knew nothing about Hall other than whatever Dick Russell told him.

That was enough for Brown to list him without knowing anything at all about this rather offbeat man or what kind of witness he could or would have made.

How surprisingly uninformed Brown is about well-known names, as in "Gary" for Gerry Hemming, is repeated often enough. He says on page 385 that the very well-known son of H. L. Hunt is Nelson Baker Hunt. His middle name is Bunker.

Another sample is on page 388. There he says that a man who should have been called is "Tom Howard - attorney with strong ties to Ruby."

Tom Howard, having been Jack Ruby's first attorney after he killed Oswald, does qualify as a "strong tie." But Brown apparently did not know he was Ruby's lawyer. Yet in the course of getting his Ph.D. and taking his FBI training and then having whatever FBI experience he had he did not learn that an attorney cannot testify against his client - that he cannot testify at all without his client's assent?

These are but a few samples of what Brown concludes saying are those "with knowledge at least as valuable" as the testimony the Commission did take (page 389). He adds about their not being called, "Perhaps there was a perception that America was not prepared for the truth in 1963 and 1964."

The Marita Lorenz truth?

This - and there could be so much more like it - before we get into Brown's book and its first "Book" that he has as not a Part for more than a hundred pages.

He begins his concoctions and real stupidities in his Prologue in which has not the Dallas police but "the Texas elements" of the assassination conspiracy he makes up having the need "to neutralize the FBI, the one agency in America with the resources to the talent, and dedication to duty that would have guaranteed that the President's killing would have been honestly solved in a relatively short period of time. They accomplished this with relative ease by using the secret homosexual lifestyle of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as blackmail, for if Hoover were silenced, the FBI was silenced" (page 7). No source because it just is not true, not in any part.

He then quotes Madeleine Brown, who he says was "LBJ's mistress of twenty-one years," as saying Johnson knew about the assassination "before it happened, and had discussed the event with Hoover in advance, in effect giving Hoover deniability as he could always claim he passed the news to someone 'within the White House,' and it allowed Johnson to use discretionary power to stop the planned murder if he chose" (page 7).

Johnson, Brown then says, "ignored Hoover's 'warning'" because he had so many friends like Billie Sol Estes who were in trouble and whose troubles were a danger to Johnson. As they were not.

As I did at so many points in reading Brown's Treachery I wondered what kind of FBI agent he was not to know there was no immunity for either Hoover or Johnson if they both knew about the coming assassination and neither did a thing to prevent it. They were both, under Title 18 of the United States code, guilty of a terrible felony because they were both accessories before the fact.

This is not something so rare it should not have come up during the many studies required for a Ph.D. degree in history. Which Brown has.

And, naturally, assuming that for once Madeleine Brown told the truth, which would be rare, was it normal pillow talk for LBJ to confess being an accessory in the coming assassination to her when they were abed? Thereby making an accessory before the fact of his supposed lover.

If scholars and FBI agents need sources, there are no sources given on any of these Brown ravings.

This kind of dumb stuff would not ordinarily be accepted in a novel.

But it permeates this work of supposed nonfiction.

Brown's sole source on Hoover's alleged homosexuality is Anthony Summers' Official and Confidential, published by Putnams in 1993. Summers has a single source who was a Hoover enemy and had little or no credibility. It was so widely disbelieved and so widely disbelieved and so thoroughly criticized by the media it hurt the book's sales very much.

Aside from this supermarket-tabloid journalism there is a record, a very well-known and persuasive record: the Mafia did not and could not blackmail Hoover when for years it had motive to do that.

While Hoover did long pretend there was no Mafia, when Robert Kennedy as Attorney General went after it the FBI did his bidding. And that did not require, as the Mafia knew, not only Hoover's assent but his willingness to do a thorough job.

Which he did do.

Evidence was collected, including by electronic surveillance, with hundreds of phone and bug tapes resulting in hundreds of thousands of pages of transcripts, the Mafia was prosecuted and many went to jail. Many, including some of the top dons.

In any event, this nonsense is essential to Brown's fabrication that the Dallas police did the dirty deed. In phonying that up, he substitutes a series of questions for statement of fact (page 9), all intended to point to the Dallas police as the assassins. Aside from who was right-wing enough, who had "the necessary sniper/weapons skills" and "could blend into the scenery of Dallas" and control the investigation he has the Dallas police also responsible for Oswald's murder by Jack Ruby: "Who could see to it that the lone suspect, and hence the case, would never make it to a courtroom where both sides of the issue could be presented" (pages 9-10).

In order to seem to validate this blaming of the Dallas police he runs along with a series of allegations that are false. Whether they are false from ignorance or for other reasons are false, they're false, and that is true of his entire case against the Dallas police.

Like saying that the police "arrested him [Oswald] at about the same time that insider J. Edgar Hoover was announcing Oswald's guilt (page 10). Brown has no source note on this because Hoover made no such announcement then.

He says of limitations imposed on the Commission that "The second constraint was the Commission's limitation of being allowed to deal only with materials, testimony and evidence previously approved by J. Edgar Hoover" (page 10).

Again no source note and again completely false. There was no limitation imposed on the Commission and none that could be imposed externally. The Commission was limited only to the degree it limited itself.

Then there is a loaded question supposed to reinforce what he has just made up: Oswald and Ruby were both long dead; if they were, as we have been told, "lone nuts," why are so many hundreds of thousands of documents being withheld?" (his emphasis page 10).

He says "documents" when he is talking pages.

What was withheld and to a degree has been and is being disclosed has nothing to do with whether either Oswald or Ruby is dead. The probability is, as is true of what has been disclosed, that it was withheld improperly. In a dozen or so Freedom of Information Act lawsuits I got about a quarter million pages of these FBI documents. Not a single page of any of them was withheld because Ruby or Oswald was alive or dead. The single exception was that what could be prejudicial to Ruby during his court efforts was required to be withheld in the interest of a fair trial.

The real reason for most withholdings is just to stonewall and make compelling disclosure costly and time-consuming. The other major reason is to hide what can cause official embarrassment. Then there are legitimate reasons for withholding under the law. Like defaming the innocent or violating privacy or disclosing confidential sources that should continue to be confidential, especially when disclosure will cause injury or death.

Whether Brown says this from ignorance or not, it is dirty pool and there is no connection as he makes upon there is. Ruby and Oswald are no factor in withholding information.

He then flaunts ignorance or is again dirty or both in writing of "the placement of the vast majority of the evidence under seal until the years 2039" (page 10).

Not a word of this is true.

There was no "seal" of any kind.

When the Commission's life ended its records were, as is always the case, transferred to the National Archives where they were processed for disclosure and where those asks to be withheld by the agencies were withheld. I published some of what Brown says were placed "under seal until 2039" in 1965. And once the Freedom of Information law was enacted that year all government records were to become accessible under it. Stonewalling and excessive claims to exemption are the reasons for withholdings that continued and there is no 2039 date involved or even mentioned. Brown picked this up, without citing any of them as his source, from his brothers in ignorance.

And so hundreds of thousands of pages have been made available under the 1992 Act requiring it. I have not seen or heard of a single page of which had anything at all to do with whether Oswald or Ruby was dead or alive.

Sourceless throughout, as Brown continues phonying up a nonexisting case and steadfastly misleading and misinforming the reader, in an unhidden effort to prejudice the reader he continues with misstatements that also raise questions of personal and professional honesty and integrity in addition to accrediting him as an authentic subject-matter ignoramus. A few more in his Prologue are enough to add illustrations of this!

J, Edgar Hoover, for reasons he could not reveal, chose to extend octopus-like tentacles over every facet of an investigation of a murder that was the strict jurisdiction of the State of Texas - that is, until President Johnson issued Executive Order 11130, establishing the [Warren Commission]. Seven prominent Americans supervised a team of unknown attorneys . . . (page 13).

Those reasons Hoover had for controlling the investigation that of Brown's invention, his utter nonsense of the Mafia blackmailing Hoover to control him over the assassination.

Hoover did assert all the control he could and that from almost the first instant. As he testified to the Warren Commission and said to William Manchester he actually entered the case illegally the afternoon of the assassination. Hoover's concern was for his reputation and that of the FBI. His propaganda had been aimed at convincing all Americans there was no crime he could not solve yet he and the FBI were caught entirely by surprise when the President was killed and they hadn't the slightest notion of who was behind it. Hoover saw his reputation and that of the FBI suffering greatly.

Then with the report, begun by the Texas-based 112th domestic-intelligence component of Army intelligence, that Oswald had "defected" to the Soviet Union, Hoover saw his and the FBI's salvation: there was no conspiracy, only a lone nut. The FBI could penetrate a conspiracy but it could not penetrate the mind of a lone nut. Thus it could not be faulted for not preventing the assassination. Nor could Hoover himself.

Brown's world-class subject-matter ignorance is reflected in his saying that Hoover controlled the investigation only until Johnson appointed his commission. That is when Hoover really had to control and he did in every way that can be imagined.

The first overt sign he gave the Commission was his leaking of the part he wanted leaked of that five-volume special report on the assassination order of the FBI by LBJ the night of the assassination. As the Commission itself recognized and as Brown would have know if his taste in scholarship did not run to fake books he cites as solid information throughout. I published those Commission executive sessions in facsimile in books Brown has.

For example, in their executive session of January 22, the night of the day they learned that the Texas Court of Inquiry had information that Oswald had had some connection with the FBI, as they agonized expecting perpetual secrecy, they decided that the FBI "would like us to fold up and quit. This closes the case . . . They found the man. There is nothing more to do. The Commission supports their conclusions, and we can go home and that is the end of it" (Post Mortem, pages 486-7). There is more, much more in that transcript and in others, but this should suffice to reflect the Commission's recognition so soon after their appointment, before it took its first testimony, that Hoover had boxed them in, and there was nothing they could do other than agree with what he had decided.

Which is precisely what they did.

There was nobody in Washington, particularly in the government, who did not know that there was little prospect of political survival in any conflict with Hoover. Almost nobody ever dared it and survived it.

Hoover even controlled who would be the Commission's general counsel, the employee who ran it. He did not like the man Earl Warren selected, Warren Olney. Olney had refused to agree blindly with what the FBI wanted and he, at times, did not when he was in the Department's criminal division. Hoover, using his influence with some of the Commission Members, saw to it that Olney did not get the job. The man who did had spent nine years getting along with Hoover when he was in the department. The last eight of those years, J. Lee Rankin was the Solicitor General of the United States. He took the department's, including the FBI's cases to the Supreme Court. He knew not to contend with Hoover and he didn't.

If Brown did not pick this up from what the Commission published he could and would have if he had been scholarly enough to use the vast quantity of information readily available to him beginning more than two decades before he wrote his book. He not only knew about that available information if from none of the other many sources, including newspapers, from my books which he had. I print some of that information in facsimile. The executive session transcript cited above I published two decades before his book was published. And when he was here I invited him to examine anything he wanted.

If from no other sources, and it is not possible to do any work in the field without knowing it, Brown knew from Gerald Posner 's Case Closed that I gave even those I do not agree free and unsupervised access to all the information I have and to our copier. Posner wrote he had the run of the place and Brown knew it. Thus Brown is ignorant because he wants to be ignorant. Ignorance is a big help if one intends writing the kind of disgrace to scholarship that Brown's Treachery is.

So those "seven prominent Americans supervised a team of unknown attorneys," did they? In the pig's eye! They had neither the time nor the disposition. They influenced Commission policy through their general counsel. It was he who "supervised" their staff.

How unknown were these attorneys?

General Counsel Rankin had been Solicitor General of the United States. He took all those cases to the Supreme Court, including the FBI's. Hardly an unknown.

Elmer Jenner was running for President of the American Bar Association while he was a Commission assistant counsel. Unknown?

Francis W. H. Adams, who did not stay long, had been New York City's police commissioner. He was a prominent lawyer after that. Unknown?

Joseph A. Ball was one of the most prominent attorneys in California, and not "unknown."

Nor was Leon D. Hubert, Jr., who had been New Orleans' district attorney.

Several of the others were from some of the country's most prominent law firms.

That Brown could refer to these as "unknowns" gets to his failure to recognize that what is unknown to him was not unknown to others. His whole entire book is written with this arrogance of mind and ignorance of fact.

With feigned modesty he concludes his Epilogue expressing the hope that his book will be a "road map" to those who follow him (page 14).

Those foolish enough to try to use it will be fortunate if all they end up with is a dead end.

While claiming to have solved the case with his bum rap of the Dallas police, he pretends modestly in saying he hopes what he has written "will point future researchers in the direction of the ultimate truth" because "No single book will solve this case" (page 14).

That is his wish for what for some reason not immediately apparent he does not consider a "Part" of his book while devoting eleven chapters to it in almost a hundred pages. He titles it "Theories" and in those theories he addresses he is careful to omit his own, pretending that it is not theory but is fact.

It is neither because it is not even a theory, having no rational basis for it or any part of it.

It is the misbegotten offspring of consummate ego and incredible ignorance.