Free Reclaiming History by Vincent Bugliosi Page A

his section on mysterious deaths. 81 These tactics of authors of books on the assassination remind one of Oscar Levant’s observation about Leonard Bernstein: “Leonard Bernstein has been disclosing musical secrets that have been well known for over 400 years.” Many competent and hard-working people have labored diligently in the investigative vineyards of the Kennedy assassination case throughout the years, and this book will pay homage to their work and findings.
    Another, though more benign, feature of the constantly evolving literature on the assassination is the erroneous assertion or implication in book after book that they contain accounts of the assassination from new and previously unknown witnesses, or new revelations from known witnesses. Even the very prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association ( JAMA ) descended to this type of tabloid rhetoric by announcing in a press release that JFK’s autopsy doctors “broke their 29 year silence” on the case in JAMA ’s May 27, 1992, published interview with two of the doctors. JAMA ’s obvious intent was for the mass media to headline their stories with the “silence” hook, which they in fact did. To the public, the phrase “breaking one’s silence” can only mean that the person has never written or spoken about the subject before. But testifying for the public record before the Warren Commission, as the autopsy doctors did, and signing their name to an autopsy report that is published for the world to see, would hardly qualify as “silence.” And they were certainly under no obligation to reiterate their position. JAMA ’s press release also neglected to mention the fact that two of the three autopsy doctors (James J. Humes and Pierre A. Finck), in 1978, testified before the HSCA—again for public consumption—and the third (J. Thornton Boswell) was interviewed by the House Select Committee staff. And Humes, the main autopsy surgeon, gave an interview on his findings to Dan Rather on national television in June of 1967. I only mention the JAMA deception to point out that if there is misleading sensationalism about this case from the likes of JAMA , one can imagine why it’s only downhill from there.
    Because this is the most investigated case in world history, any witness (unless someone credible eventually gives testimony of the alleged conspiracy) who has not come forward by now is immediately suspect. Likewise with a known witness who suddenly comes forward with new and vital information. The incontrovertible fact is that the FBI, Secret Service, Warren Commission, and HSCA, as well as police, authors, journalists, historians, private investigators, and an army of ferocious amateur sleuths, have worn the evidentiary terrain in this case all the way through to China. Virtually every important witness has testified under oath, some several times. All important witnesses and almost all of the very peripheral, unimportant ones have already been interviewed. Therefore, as indicated, absent a member of one of the innumerable alleged conspiracies coming forward, the only likely remaining revelations about the case are in the area of new interpretations and analyses of existing evidence. This is not to suggest that these necessarily reduced possibilities render additional inquiry insignificant. Further analytical examination of the case can serve to either strengthen or weaken the official position on the issues of Oswald’s guilt and conspiracy, which is of no small moment. As suggested earlier, we are, after all, dealing with the most consequential murder in American, perhaps world, history. To the argument that unless one can reveal some new, critical evidence about the assassination, there’s no need to write another book about it, I would respond with the question, why write a book analyzing the New Testament, inasmuch as two thousand years later no one is about to come up with any new evidence on the life of Jesus? Indeed, no one has