The Alias Program

[14], 239, [3] pages. Decorative front cover. DJ is worn, torn, chipped, with front flap separated but present. Inscribed by the author on the fep. UNIQUE INSCRIPTION which reads To those loved parents who bred and guided me to be what I am--Love, Fred 8-31-77. Fred Patterson Graham (October 6, 1931 - December 28, 2019) was an American legal affairs journalist, television news anchor, and attorney. He won a Peabody award for his work as a CBS law correspondent. In January 1963, he moved to Washington D.C. to serve as the chief counsel to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Constitutional Amendments. In October 1963, he then worked as a special assistant to Secretary of Labor W. Willard Wirtz. In February 1965, he was the first attorney hired to be a Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times. He also covered the Justice Department. He was a legal correspondent for CBS News from 1972 to 1987, covering the FBI, the Department of Justice, the Supreme Court, and the legal profession. He covered the Watergate scandal, President Richard M. Nixon's resignation, and abortion rights. Graham found a position as a local news anchor of WKRN-TV, the ABC affiliate in Nashville, for two years. During this time he wrote Happy Talk: Confessions of a TV Newsman which was published in 1990. In 1991, cameras were allowed in the courtroom for criminal trials. Graham hired the managing editor, chief anchor, and one of the first four anchors of Court TV, the nickname for the new Courtroom Television Network. He is most known for his coverage of the O. J. Simpson murder case. Derived from a Kirkus review: Fred Graham, legal correspondent for CBS, points out that no other nation has ever felt the need to create a special bureau to authorize counterfeit lives. The implications--legal, moral, and bureaucratic--are staggering, and by recounting the story of one relocated individual--the Mafia stock swindler George Zelmanowitz who became prosperous San Francisco garment manufacturer Paul Maris--Graham pries into the Justice Department program that equips felons, murderers, and other Mafia informers with "foolproof" new identities and springs them into unsuspecting communities. The program, which came into full bloom during the Nixon-Mitchell years, is, argues Graham, fraught with perils for both the individuals and society, and subject to appalling political abuses. The aliases seldom qualify men for anything more than menial jobs; they leave such matters as insurance, credit, and Social Security to chance; they have "swallowed up" innocent children in the interests of security and, moreover, the newly-minted identities have "almost always been dismal." Graham notes that the alias program began so inconspicuously that it never received the benefit of Congressional debate. And yet, the rise and fall of Paul Marls chillingly illustrates the creeping Orwellianism of the federal government: secrecy, deception, contempt for Congress, bureaucratic arrogance. . . . Graham gives the story the kind of low-keyed, tight-knit presentation that heightens the surreal qualities of this most unusual of government projects. And Paul Maris is more than a foil--you'll care what happens to him. First Edition [stated], presumed first printing.…