Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK? - Hardcover

Lane, Mark

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1560250003 ISBN 13: 9781560250005

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Pr, 1991

Synopsis

An investigation into the assassination of John F. Kennedy draws on new documentation that links the CIA to the murder of the president

About this title

About the Author

Mark Lane is an author, lawyer, teacher, lecture, and filmmaker. He has written eight books on contemporary legal issues, ranging from an analysis of the assassination of Reverened Martin Luther King, Jr., to an account of the facts surrounding the Jonestown massacre. Mark Lane's highly acclaimed bestseller, "Rush to Judgement," a critique of the Warren Commission Report, marked the beginning of Lane's 25-year pursuit of the facts behind the Kennedy assassination, and "Plausible Denial" presents the startling results of that pursuit.

Reviews

Lane, the lawyer whose Rush to Judgment was the first in a flood of books calling into question the Warren Commission Report on the JFK assassination, has come up with a highly unusual angle this time. He tells, in enormous but only occasionally tedious detail, the story of a little-publicized 1985 trial in which he figured and which ended in a Florida jury endorsing the notion that the CIA was involved in Kennedy's killing. The case arose out of a libel suit brought by CIA officer E. Howard Hunt against Liberty Lobby and its magazine Spotlight for an article claiming he was in Dallas at the time of the assassination and played a role in it on behalf of the CIA. Representing Liberty Lobby, Lane called as witnesses an impressive roster of Agency figures, including Richard Helms, Stansfield Turner, Gordon Liddy and, of course, Hunt himself. Hunt's alibi, that he was in Washington on Nov. 22, 1963, could not be adequately supported, and an important witness, CIA operative Marita Lorenz, placed Hunt in Dallas, along with agent Frank Sturgis and a carload of guns, the day before the assassination. Lane's arguments convinced the jury. He justly excoriates the press for never having sufficiently followed his leads--and ends with an epilogue suggesting that President Bush was also associated with the CIA at that time, long before he became director. A highly stimulating, disturbing book, marred only by repetitiousness and excessive self-justification. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The author of Rush to Judgment, the first book to attack the Warren Commission Report on the assassination of JFK, takes on the CIA's possible role in the murder, by way of Florida jury trial. It was Mark Lane who found a CIA conspiracy behind the Jonestown massacre (he was there) in 1979's The Strongest Poison and FBI complicity in 1977's Code Name ``Zorro'': The murder of Martin Luther King, Jr. This time out he offers his most damning version yet of CIA wrongdoing. Lane assembles his evidence with a trial lawyer's cool skill and builds to a riveting climax: an eyewitness account of CIA spy E. Howard Hunt paying off a CIA- backed Cuban assassination team in Dallas the night before the murder and clearly setting up Jack Ruby--before the assassination- -to kill Oswald, the patsy, who never fired a shot. Lane's evidence is drawn from a trial he conducted in Florida in 1978 while defending a small political magazine, Spotlight, which had lost a $650,000 defamation suit brought against it by Hunt. The magazine claimed that Hunt was in Dallas at the time of the assassination while Hunt claimed he was in Washington, D.C. When the appellate court vacated the decision and called for a second trial, Spotlight's owner called in Lane to defend him. Lane saw a case he might well lose, but also his first opportunity ever to cross- examine top figures in Lane's assassination scenario. And indeed he deposes CIA directors Richard Helms and Stansfield Turner, G. Gordon Liddy, Hunt himself--and strikes gold in CIA agent Marita Lorenz, who accompanied two cars full of guns and assassins from Miami to Dallas and, under oath, names all of them, then tells of a follow-up talk with the proud top assassin who pulled off ``the really big one...we killed the president....'' Well-reasoned at every point, Lane's convincing report sounds like the last word on the assassination--but for an alternate scenario, see Mark North's Act of Treason (below). -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

In Rush to Judgement ( LJ 10/1/66), Lane challenged the Warren Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in assassinating President John F. Kennedy. In this sequel, Lane describes a court case that offers new evidence implicating the CIA in Kennedy's death. Lane was the defense lawyer for a small weekly newspaper that had been sued by E. Howard Hunt for defamation of character when it published an article by an ex-CIA officer asserting that Hunt and the CIA were responsible for the assassination. Among Lane's more interesting revelations: President Bush apparently served as a CIA operative who was involved in the Bay of Pigs fiasco; Gerald Ford, while a member of the Warren Commission, passed confidential information on to the FBI. Lane's book, which will undoubtedly be controversial (Lane was unable to find a major publisher willing to touch it), is a substantive contribution to the field. Highly recommended for most libraries. See also Mark North's Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the Assassination of President Kennedy , reviewed below.--Ed.
- Gary D. Barber, SUNY at Fredonia Lib.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Pr
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1560250003
• ISBN 13: 9781560250005
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 393