Synopsis
A former federal investigator sheds new light on the Kennedy assassination, discussing the link between Lee Harvey Oswald and the CIA, the actions of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and his own investigation into the case. 50,000 first printing. Tour.
Reviews
Fonzi, an investigative journalist who acted as an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1977-1979, casts two significant lights on the continuing mystery of the Kennedy assassination and its aftermath. The first is a wealth of inside information about the workings of the committee, and how at almost every turn it was frustrated by political infighting, budget constraints and a determination not to upset "national security" by questioning the CIA too closely about its knowledge of Lee Harvey Oswald. The second is his detailed account of the story told him by anti-Castro underground leader Antonio Veciana: that he once saw Oswald together with Veciana's own CIA "control," a mysterious figure called Maurice Bishop. Fonzi remains convinced that Bishop was an alias for David Atlee Phillips, a career CIA officer--now five years dead--who at the time of the assassination was a key figure at the Mexico City CIA post and therefore responsible for the continued obfuscation of Oswald's alleged visit there. The book is too long for its content, and is occasionally naive in its dramatization of Fonzi's personal sense of outrage at the apathy that seems to have developed over the responsibility for the assassination. But he is a lively and convincing writer, and much of the book, with its confrontations and dramatic (and sometimes even farcical) twists, has the tension of a good spy novel. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
A laying of tombstones on 1964's Warren Commission Report and 1979's House Assassinations Committee report; by a former senior editor of Philadelphia magazine. Fonzi early found the Warren Report dependent almost entirely on doctored intelligence from the CIA and biased toward proving Oswald the lone gunman. An autopsy report written by FBI agents who witnessed the autopsy included a third bullet wound, in the shoulder, which the Warren Report ignored: Its inclusion, Fonzi says, would have undermined the Report's lone gunman bias. Elation filled Fonzi in 1975 when he was hired by Senator Richard Schweiker to head the Miami area of the reopened assassination investigation: This time, Congress was looking into the skewing of the Warren Report by US intelligence agencies. Said Schweiker: ``We don't know what happened but we do know Oswald had an intelligence connection. Everywhere you look with him, there are fingerprints of intelligence.'' But the Assassination Committee failed to break through the CIA's shield, Fonzi argues, then ``cover[ed] its ass'' by creating a biased report that diverted light on to the Mob and was the fruit of a ``pseudoinvestigation'' that was compromised at every turn by dark forces that chopped off its financial legs and disallowed resources for a real investigation. According to the author, three important witnesses committed suicide just hours before he was to interview them. Fonzi's own villain is ``Maurice Bishop,'' cover name for the CIA's David Atlee Phillips, who'd been observed with Oswald before the assassination. Fonzi's report turns on the identification of Phillips by Antonio Veciana, an anti- Castro assassin who worked for ``Maurice Bishop.'' Fonzi sticks mostly to personal knowledge, which adds persuasiveness to his theme that Oswald's ties to the CIA may veil the final answer to JFK's murder. (B&w photographs) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Fonzi was a federal investigator for the congressional committees that issued reports in the 1970s questioning some aspects of the Warren Commission Report. While he doesn't know the names of the people responsible for JFK's murder, he believes that Lee Harvey Oswald worked secretly for the CIA and that there was a conspiracy involving the intelligence agency. In detailed and lively prose, he describes his far-flung investigation into the possibility that Oswald met with CIA agents before the assassination, especially David Atlee Phillips, a fervent anti-Castro agent who later became head of the CIA's Western Hemisphere Division. Like other conspiracy proponents, Fonzi also argues that the "single bullet" theory is refuted by medical evidence. He accuses the congressional committees for which he worked of backing off from the evidence they uncovered that implicated the CIA in a political murder. Amidst the hundreds of conspiracy books published in the last 30 years, this is one of the most believable, although it only offers circumstantial evidence and educated speculation. See also Harrison Edward Livingstone's Killing the Truth , reviewed below.
- Jack Forman, Mesa Coll. Lib., San Diego
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
