In the Shadow of Kennedy's Murder (Part 1 of 3)

What I have written so far is merely prologue. I am about to explore how, solely due to the nature of his work on the John F. Kennedy assassination and the threat that his lawsuit presented to the established order in America, the case of Robert J. Groden v. Random House, Inc., et al. changed two important branches of law -- indeed, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit had to invent new law -- for the exclusive purpose of defeasing one man of the entitlements enjoyed by others prior to his lawsuit, even though his case presented no novel nor especially challenging issues. This week, however, as one of the harshest winters in recent memory begins to recede, I pause briefly to begin setting that case within its larger context: What is its place in the long saga of the Kennedy assassination controversy, and why does it matter?

Living my life, I have learned at first-hand, to my great discomfort and disadvantage, that there are some news stories that the American media cannot uncover, and some legal matters that cannot be brought before an American court of law. There are, in fact, invisible constraints upon our freedom of thought, our freedom to know, and our freedom to act upon our knowledge, which constitute the unwritten rules of living in America. These constraints impair the quality of my life as a citizen of a supposedly free country. The foundation of our society is our common faith in the myths we construct of our own history and in the institutions that uphold them. We live according to these myths because we believe they help us to survive, nay, that we require them to survive. We believe in our Constitution, yet it is merely parchment encased in glass, wholly dependent upon the good faith and honest intentions of fallible men and women to honor it and imbue its values with the aura of legitimacy. That common faith is at once our greatest strength and our greatest vulnerability, for when it is grievously wounded, the basic weakness of American society is laid bare.

More than a momentary interruption of continuity and confidence, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy struck deeply at that heart of American society: our common faith, and our ability to maintain an elemental cohesiveness in that faith against all challenges. The assassination was a homicide under Texas law, preceding the enactment of a federal statute criminalizing physical assaults against high federal officers. The federal government, however, de facto revoked the jurisdiction of Texas over the crime and confiscated the evidence, repositing all further investigative responsibility in an ad hoc presidential commission, which relied upon the FBI for its leg work. Quelling rumors and suspicion assumed priority over standard legal processes, with the unhappy result that the Warren Commission settled nothing, except to validate Lyndon Johnson's ascension to the presidency. Conspiracy theories were only perpetuated and our faith in government irreparably damaged. Sober and responsible members of the first generation critics of the Warren Report were not the cause; their only transgression was to expose the weaknesses and shortcomings of the Report which, in the absence of redress, inevitably fed the growth of speculation and doubt. Our nation owes these individuals, most of whom remain obscure to the general public, a debt of gratitude for their dedication, determination, hard work and, in some instances, self-sacrifice without any promise of reward or recompense.

A man died on the streets of Dallas that day. America's involvement in Vietnam escalated within months thereafter, lasting until the war's end in 1975. Some have argued persuasively for a linkage between these events, and that Kennedy did not intend to pursue the course followed by his successor. JFK's last surviving brother, Ted, delicately affirmed this belief in his posthumously published memoir, and there is an abundance of evidence to support it. An entire generation was thrown into turmoil. Besides its toll in human lives, the deficits incurred by that war would make it more expensive for them to purchase homes, more difficult for them to find decent jobs, more doubtful of what the American dream meant to them. Job security, affordable higher education, and, for many working people, a safe pension, became quaint and outmoded notions. Increasingly, they found themselves competing for scarce resources. America became more fractious. A man died and nothing was ever the same, or as good, as it had been.

When future historians look at that period, the Sixties, perhaps they will take account of the central themes tying the Kennedy and King assassinations to each other: All three men opposed the escalation of American military involvement in the Vietnam War. All three were dead and the official "lone nut" verdicts for each murder were cast in stone by the time Lyndon Johnson left the Oval Office. Notably, before their deaths both Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. had positioned themselves in the vanguard of campaigns for economic and social justice in America.

Yet, there is a second discernible pattern to the events of that era. It can no longer be disputed that the original and all follow-up commissions of inquiry into President Kennedy's death were waylaid from within. Allen Dulles, a member of the Warren Commission and former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, withheld from the Commission vital information about government assassination plots against Fidel Castro. The Rocketeller Commission was headed by one of the Agency's original creators. The House Select Committee on Assassinations' liason with the Agency had personally coordinated its anti-Castro operations, however, his role was concealed from the Committee's staff. Likewise, the Pentagon withheld information about a scheme ("Operation North Woods") to foment violent incidents on American soil and blame them on the Cuban dictator in the hope of inciting a public outcry for a military invasion. By the time the HSCA was formed, the Pentagon had already destroyed many of its records from the early 1960s, claiming routine record retention practices. Over time, it became obvious that the public's disempowered gaze alone could not be relied upon to exact from public officials the candor required to dispel the questions and doubts about Dallas.

Whatever those future historians may conclude from these patterns, their musings will come too late to bring any comfort to the survivors of the Kennedy era. As a practical matter, through no fault of their own but owing instead to official intransigence and the passing of years, they were condemned to perpetual uncertainty and mistrust because the assassination could no longer be addressed through any legal apparatus, but only through historical and political analysis. Nevertheless, that should not prevent those living today from assigning justly deserved blame and demanding accountability for their having been cast in ignorance and subservience while American blood and treasure were squandered.

Today, a majority of Americans have no living memory of November 1963. We have deceived ourselves that we survived that crisis and overcame that tragedy. It's old news. It's off the table. Worse still, it has become boring except to those few dedicated souls who persist in probing its mysteries. We are, after all, beset by urgent problems and distracted by a constant drone of non-news and the endless diversions of the entertainment world. We are absorbed by our Blackberries and iPhones. We are transfixed by the feats of wealthy athletes and the latest celebrity gossip. Contemporary everyday life is so frenetic and crowded, there is so little time to relax, to read, to think, to converse at length. Out of necessity, we rely upon our presumptions of regularity. The sun will rise tomorrow morning; someone else, somewhere, has looked at the assassinations of the Sixties; so, the sun will set again in the evening. More self-preservation than apathy, it is easier not to remember and reflect, but instead to let the past slip away.

We may have endured the Kennedy assassination, but we did not really survive it intact. Rather, we simply failed and refused to confront it. We swept it under the rug and preferred to live in denial. What those who lived through the 1960s cannot deny, however, is that America is a far different country today than it once was. Younger generations do not know -- and they may never know -- the same standard of living that the "baby boom" generation witnessed and enjoyed. A culture of greed and corruption permeates both the public and private sectors. It has brought us to the precipice of a twenty percent unemployment rate and a virtual standstill of national production. The national conversation is coarse and acrimonious. Commonly held aspirations have yielded to special interest pleading. And, as Michael Moore recently reminded us, before his latest documentary understandably disappeared from theatres in the blink of an eye, since the 1960s we have long lacked for visionary and forceful leadership at the top of our society. Hard though it may be for people under the age of 50 to grasp, today's America is not only different but diminished, and they are none the wiser for it.

Next: The mainstream media and Gerald Posner.