THE ASSASSINATIONS: Dallas and Beyond--A Guide to Coverups and Investigations

An extensive anthology of articles and book extracts dealing with the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, plus the Warren and Rockefeller Commission investigations thereof. The editors promise that, rather than pegging the real assassins, they will ""tell alert readers about important covert processes of politics in America."" Much of the material is old hat and few extrapolations are new. The critiques by Mark Lane, Harold Weisberg and Sylvia Meagher appeared almost a decade ago. Engrossing selections include a CIA memo by E. Howard Hunt demanding Castro's blood; a Gore Vidal portrait of would-be Wallace killer Arthur Bremer; a muckrake of the Cuban underworld in Miami; and Peter Dale Scott's contention that JFK was murdered because of his challenge to Vietnam escalation. The net effect is to convince readers once again, or at least remind ""the alert reader,"" that Lee Harvey Oswald was probably a mere fall guy, Sirhan Sirhan may have been brainwashed, James Earl Ray did not instigate King's death--and that the official ""investigators"" have covered things up. Peter Dale Scott's piece is thus one of the few to ask why; yet Scott stops abruptly. If Kennedy was killed over policy differences, who were his opponents? Scott indicates some sinister force controlling the security-intelligence apparatus. But who would that be, and why would the official investigators decline to indict them? The editors seem largely content to display the evidence that some coverup took place, instead of driving directly at who-done-it. And, at this point, after too many hints, that is what the public demands. When one contributor refers to the British as engineers of Napoleon's death, we are reminded that after a decent interval, people are sometimes willing to view ""conspiracy theories"" as legitimate forces of history.