Acknowledgments

This book has been a long time in coming and, as the reader will readily see, is a collective work. As with most books, the list of those to whom one wishes to express thanks is too lengthy to recite. I can name only a few.

First of all I must thank my family: my parents, who questioned arbitrary authority and conducted Talmudic dinner table discussions on justice; and my sister and brother, for unstinting support and encouragement.

Of my many teachers I must thank three. My first “college professor” was Jack Foner, Emeritus Professor of History, Colby College. His loss of a job due to political persecution in the pre-McCarthy era was my incalculable gain. For several years during my youth, our home was one of the stops of this college professor turned itinerant lecturer. Jack, with brilliance and wit, taught us all how much truth is buried in the back pages of our press and how to read between the lines. The late Karl Niebyl, Professor of Economics at San Jose State University, a profound student of revolution, taught me the role of dialectics and partisanship in knowledge. Rudi Cardona, Emeritus University Professor, Boston University, is a man whose breadth and depth of knowledge of literature is exceeded only by his warmth, sensitivity, and capacity to encourage a student to develop his own ideas and projects.

I thank a quartet of citizens who have for years tirelessly pursued the truth of President Kennedy’s assassination, and who, though little known throughout the land, are individuals to whom we all owe a tremendous debt: Gaeton Fonzi, Raymond Marcus, Vincent J. Salandria, and Christopher Sharrett. Gaeton Fonzi’s The Last Investigation, which appeared in 1993, literally served as the point of departure for this book. His example and personal encouragement to me have been very important. Ray Marcus has amassed a monumental archive of documents and correspondence, and has generously allowed me to republish anything I wished from his remarkable Addendum B. I first encountered Vincent Salandria in the pages of The Legal Intelligencer and Liberation, and then met him twenty-five years ago at a demonstration against the War in Vietnam. What do you say about someone with whom you talk almost daily (and sometimes more often) for twenty-five years? Chris Sharrett, whom I had not known until Salandria introduced us four years ago, is one of the unsung heroes of this work, a defiant critic of our society, a scholar with an encyclopedic knowledge of the case, a researcher who assisted the House Select Committee on Assassinations in its initial phase, but was much too honest and insightful to be tolerated for long by our government. This book would not have been published were it not for the support, encouragement, and editorial assistance which Chris has so selflessly offered.

Finally, I wish to thank Rudi Cardona, Electra Cardona, and Elaine Bresnick for reading the manuscript and offering editorial suggestions, and Sid Gottlieb, whose skills as an editor and production supervisor are responsible for the professional quality of the volume.