Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation and Why - Tapa dura

"The Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy . . . was instantly implausible because the authors hid the secrets they knew (and ignored the ones they didn't)."--David Ignatius, Washington Post Book World "A shrewd, well-researched, deeply provocative investigation into the gross delinquencies of the Warren Commission. Essential reading."--Douglas Brinkley, author of Cronkite "An extraordinary and exceptionally well-written work that convincingly proves that political reasons, not high investigative standards, formed the Warren Commission, guided its inquiry, and dictated its conclusions."--David R. Wrone, author of The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK's Assassination "It's impossible in brief to do full justice to McKnight's persuasive study, which adds immeasurably to our knowledge of the assassination and ensuing investigation."--Michael L. Kurtz, author of The Crime of the Century: The Kennedy Assassination from a Historian's Perspective "Reopens old questions and poses new challenges to the 'official story.' No one interested in the Kennedy 'case' can afford not to read it."--Lloyd C. Gardner, author of The Case That Never Dies: The Lindbergh Kidnapping

That recent appraisal reflects a growing consensus that the Warren Commission largely failed in its duty to our nation. Echoing that sentiment, the Gallup organization has reported that 75 percent of Americans polled do not believe the Commission's major conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the "lone assassin." Gerald McKnight now gives profound substance to that view in the most meticulous and devastating dissection of the Commission's work to date. The Warren Commission produced 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits, more than 17,000 pages of testimony, and a 912-page report. Surely a definitive effort. Not at all, McKnight argues. "The Warren Report" itself, he contends, was little more than the capstone to a deceptive and shoddily improvised exercise in public relations designed to "prove" that Oswald had acted alone. McKnight argues that the Commission's own documents and collected testimony - as well as thousands of other items it never saw, refused to see, or actively suppressed - reveal two conspiracies: the still very murky one surrounding the assassination itself and the official one that covered it up. The cover-up actually began, he reveals, within days of Kennedy's death, when President Johnson, FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, and acting Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach all agreed that any official investigation must reach only one conclusion: Oswald was the assassin. While McKnight does not uncover any "smoking gun" that identifies the real conspirators, he nevertheless provides the strongest case yet that the Commission was wrong - and knew it. Oswald might have knowingly or unwittingly been involved, but the Commission's own evidence proves he could not have acted alone. Based on more than a quarter-million pages of government documents and, for the first time ever, the 50,000 file cards in the Dallas FBI's "Special Index," McKnight's book must now be the starting point for future debate on the assassination. It should also inspire readers to echo the "Journal of American History's" praise for his previous book: "McKnight's insistence upon remaining within the bounds of the evidence inspires confidence in his judgment."