Remembering 40th Anniversary of Kent State Massacre

May 4th marked the 40th anniversary of the 1970 killing of four students at Kent State University by members of Ohio's National Guard. Barry Levine was the boyfriend of Allison Krause, one of the slain students. In his eulogy for her, Levine described what happened on May 4, 1970 in Kent, Ohio:

"...We stood for a few seconds watching the soldiers move out behind a screen of gas, before deciding to retreat with the crowd of students.

"...A gas cannister landed at our feet, exploding in our faces...

"After a few seconds of recovery, Allison turned in her tracks and froze. She stood in the path of the pursuing troops screaming at the top of her lungs...The hand drawn to her face, holds a wet rag used to protect herself from the gas, and her other hand holds mine, with which I pulled her over the hill and into the parking lot, a safe distance from the troops.

"For several minutes we stood in the parking lot watching these men threaten us with their rifles...And then they turned..."

In his 1981 book Mayday: Kent State, J. Gregroy Payne also noted the following:

"In the fall of 1980, additional information from the FBI investigation on Kent State housed at the National Archives was released to the public. This information revealed that President Nixon instructed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover--who thought the four victims `got what they deserved'--to find information in the fall of 1970 to substantiate the Guardsmen's claims about the incident. Nixon's directive was issued during the FBI's investigation of the incident. Despite the recent shocking revelations, thousands of pages of the FBI report remain classified, therefore, unavailable for public scrutiny..."

(Downtown 4/27/94)

The FBI's Historical KKK Connections

The FBI apparently had a long history of being involved in the actions of U.S. right-wing groups like the Ku Klux Klan. As the 1992 book Spying On America: The FBI’s Counter-intelligence Program by James Kirkpatrick Davis revealed, by the end of 1965 the FBI “had more than 7,000 undercover informants in place and operating within the klaverns” and “undercover informants were used in 85 percent of Klan actions.” The same book also noted that “about 15 percent of the entire KKK” was composed of FBI “informants” and “about half” of the FBI informants “were elected to leadership positions” within the KKK in the 1960s. (Downtown 7/19/95)

Following the Oklahoma City bombing in April 1995, the Democratic Clinton Administration announced that it would hire yet another 1,000 FBI agents to “counter terrorism.” Yet as The True Story Of The Greensboro Massacre by Paul Bermanzohn and Sally Bermanzohn observed in 1980:

“The U.S. government has been using the Klan and other fascist groups for a long time. As far back as 1959 the FBI inserted Gary Rowe into the Alabama KKK. In the course of a 15-year terrorist career he instigated `many dozens’ of violent attacks, including a bloody assault on Birmingham freedom fighters in 1962, the church bombing murder of four schoolgirls and the murder of Viola Liuzzo. During the late 1960s, the FBI set up `more than 40’ all-informant Klan chapters in North Carolina alone.”

An FBI informant, Bill Wilkinson, apparently also set up the KKK’s Invisible Empire organization in 1980. As Blood In The Face by James Ridgeway recalled in 1990:

“In 1975 (David) Duke formed his own Knights of the Ku Klux Klan…

“In 1980, Duke ally, Bill Wilkinson, left the Knights to set up his own competing Invisible Empire…Wilkinson was able to persuade Duke to…sell the membership list of the Knights of the KKK for $35,000. Wilkinson secretly videotaped Duke making the deal. He then threatened to play the videotape for a Klan membership meeting. Soon thereafter, Duke quit the Klan…Klansmen later discovered that Wizard Wilkinson himself had been an FBI informer since 1974…”

Blood In The Face also pointed out that “an FBI informant was among the Klansmen who organized the 1961 attack on the Freedom Riders” during the Civil Rights Era, but “the FBI did nothing to stop the attack, and its silent complicity was not revealed until 14 years later.” (Downtown 5/17/95)

In the early 1970s, the FBI apparently also ordered one of its undercover agents to set up a terrorist bombing in Seattle. As Spying On America: The FBI’s Counter-Intelligence Program by James Kirkpatrick Davis also noted in 1992:

“David Sannes, a special agent, served as the undercover liaison…in the Seattle area. He later testified that he was instructed by bureau counter-intelligence officials to develop a terrorist bombing operation, and to develop the explosives in such a way that they would misfire and kill those who were doing the bombings. In May 1972, after he had left the bureau, Sannes said that he had `decided to make what I had done public so that the people of the United States could be informed of what was going on.’”

(Downtown 6/14/95)

Hidden History of Mort Zuckerman's `U.S. News & World Report'--Part 1

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown.)

Between 1948 and 1973, the editor of U.S. News & World Report was a politically conservative journalist named David Lawrence. Between 1948 and 1959, Lawrence also was the president of U.S. News & World Report. And between 1959 and his death in 1973, Lawrence was the chairman of the board of U.S. News & World Report.

Given the way Hoover’s FBI apparently was allowed to use U.S. News & World Report as a propaganda tool between 1948 and 1972, it is not surprising that U.S. News & World Report editor and chairman of the board Lawrence received in 1964 an FBI special award “in appreciation of his friendly and sympathetic assistance to the FBI,” according to The National Cyclopedia of American Biography. The same book also revealed that Lawrence also “received from Richard M. Nixon in 1970 the Medal of Freedom.”

Lawrence had established U.S. News & World Report in 1948 by combining his commercially successful United States News magazine with the commercially unsuccessful World Report magazine, under the U.S. News & World Report title. The commercially unsuccessful World Report had been launched by Lawrence in 1946.

United States News magazine had originally been published by Lawrence as a weekly newspaper between 1933 and 1939, before Lawrence turned it into a weekly magazine in 1940. Before starting to publish United States News as a weekly newspaper in 1933, Lawrence had published an editorially similar Washington, D.C. daily newspaper called United States Daily between 1926 and 1933, which attained a peak circulation of about 40,000.

In addition to assisting the FBI as U.S. News & World Report editor, president and chairman of the board, for many years, Lawrence also was able to assist the FBI in his role as a nationally-syndicated U.S. Establishment columnist. In 1968, Lawrence’s nationally-syndicated column was published in 325 different newspapers of the U.S. White Corporate Male Power Structure.

Prior to founding the U.S. News & World Report magazine in 1948, Lawrence had graduated from Princeton University in 1910 and worked for the Associated Press and the New York Post as a Washington, D.C. correspondent. He had also “became a pioneer in radio news broadcasting in the early 1920s” and “broadcast over the NBC network a weekly series of 15-minute radio talks on the topic `Our Government’ from 1927 to 1933,” according to The National Cyclopedia of American Biography.

After Lawrence realized that his children were not interested in running U.S. News & World Report, he decided to sell the magazine in 1962 to his U.S. News & World Report employees. Although Lawrence continued to be the U.S. News & World Report editor and chairman of the board until his death in 1973 at the age of 84, between 1962 and 1984 U.S. News & World Report was an employee-owned, pro-Establishment magazine, operated on an employee profit-sharing basis. Around 62,500 shares of U.S. News & World Report Inc. stock were owned by its employees and, in late 1983, each share of stock was worth about $625. (end of part 1)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

Mort Zuckerman's `U.S. News & World Report' As FBI Propaganda Sheet Historically--Conclusion

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown. See below for Part 1 of article).

A 1990 book, The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents From The FBI’s Secret War Against Domestic Dissent by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, described how the FBI and U.S. News & World Report also historically collaborated on projects which were designed to red-bait U.S. Baby-Boom Generation New Left radical groups and anti-war groups, such as the publication, under the “editors of U.S. News & World Report byline, of the book Communism and the New Left: What They’re Up To Now:

“Both the FBI and the `friendly journalists’ to whom it habitually fed information at U.S. News & World Report persisted in confusing both the CP, USA’s campus-based W.E.B. DuBois Clubs and the SWP’s Young Socialist Alliance with new left organizations for some time…Probably the best example of this is Editors of U.S. News and World Report, Communism and the New Left: What They’re Up To Now, Collier/Macmillan Company, London, 1969, in which the anonymous authors (thought to include several FBI `public relations specialists’) worry at great length about the…influence of Bettina Aptheker, head of the Berkeley DuBois Club and daughter of CP, USA historian Herbert Aptheker, on `the antiwar movement’…

A U.S. News & World Report article was also used by FBI agents in the 1980s to justify their visits to U.S. librarians in order to secure information about which people borrowed certain library books. As the book Alien Ink: The FBI’s War On Freedom Of Expression by Natalie Robins recalled:

“Fifteen libraries across the country had been targets of FBI inquiries from 1982 to 1988…These libraries had a total of 22 visits from FBI agents…Librarians said that agents invoked `national security,’ `counter-intelligence,’ aid against `hostile foreign agents,’ or `antiterrorism’ in asking for cooperation. One agent flashed a copy of a 1982 U.S. News and World Report article entitled `Drive to Keep Secrets Out of Russian Hands.’”

(Downtown 4/14/93)

Mort Zuckerman's `U.S. News & World Report' As FBI Propaganda Sheet Historically--Part 1

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown.)

In its mass media program, Hoover’s FBI apparently utilized U.S. News & World Report historically as one of its secret propaganda tools. Among the pro-FBI articles published by U.S. News & World Report between 1948 and Hoover’s death were the following:

1. “Is FBI’s anti-spy evidence wasted?” (Aug. 27, 1948 issue);
2. “Fight for secrecy of FBI files,” (June 24, 1949 issue);
3. “Spy trials cripple the FBI” (July 8, 1949 issue);
4. “55,000 Communists”—excerpt from Hoover speech in New York (May 12, 1950 issue);
5. “How Communists Operate”—interview with Hoover (Aug. 11, 1950 issue);
6. “FBI Director Hoover tells how Communists work”—interview with Hoover (June 23, 1950 issue);
7. “Communist Threat in U.S.”—interview with Hoover (March 30, 1951 issue);
8. “Hoover Speaks Out On Spies After Years Chasing Them”—(Nov. 27, 1953 issue);
9. “What J. Edgar Hoover Did About White”—article by Hoover (Nov. 22, 1953 issue)
10. “U.S. Communists hide deeper”—article by Hoover (Feb. 19, 1954 issue);
11. “People of the Week: Hoover portrait” (April 2, 1954 issue);
12. “Communism And Schools”—transcript of Hoover’s speech (Nov. 26, 1954 issue);
13. “Why crime is dropping”—interview with Hoover (Sept. 30, 1955 issue);
14. “Why U.S. uses ex-reds as informants” (Oct. 14, 1955 issue);
15. “How U.S. reds use pseudo-liberals as a front—excerpts from Hoover’s testimony before a subcommittee of House appropriations committee (April 13, 1956 issue);
16. “Hoover’s warnings: be alert to fanatics”—excerpt from Hoover speech (Dec. 16, 1963 issue);
17. “J. Edgar Hoover speaks out on reds in the Negro movement”—excerpt from Hoover testimony before house subcommittee (May 4, 1964 issue);
18. “Forty years as FBI Chief: no interest in retiring” (May 18, 1964 issue);
19. “FBI and civil rights; J. Edgar Hoover Speaks Out”—excerpts from Hoover news conference (Nov. 30, 1964 issue);
20. “Dispute between Hoover and King: the FBI’s answer to criticisms” (Dec. 7, 1964 issue);
21. “What J. Edgar Hoover says about pressure groups”—excerpt from Hoover speech (Dec. 7, 1964 issue);
22. “Enforcing the law”—interview with J. Edgar Hoover” (Dec. 21, 1964 issue);
23. “Sex books and rape. FBI chief sees close link” (March 11, 1968 issue);
24. “Reversing the crime trend”—interview with Hoover (Aug. 26, 1968 issue);
25. “New Left terrorism: a warning”—excerpt from Hoover report (Jan. 13, 1969 issue);
26. “U.S. unrest, as FBI chief sees it”—excerpt from Hoover report on 1969 (Jan. 12, 1970 issue);
27. “FBI’s J. Edgar Hoover report on a turbulent year”—excerpt from Hoover report (July 27, 1970 issue);
28. “Guerrilla warfare in the U.S.: FBI report” (Nov. 9, 1970 issue).

After Hoover’s death in 1972, U.S. News & World Report continued to apparently act as an FBI propaganda instrument. In its Feb. 18, 1980 issue, for example, it published an article titled “New FBI Swings Into Action.” And in its April 22, 1985 issue it published an interview with Reagan Administration FBI Director Webster, titled “Banks, drugs, terrorists: FBI picks its target.” (end of part 1)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

The FBI's Mass Media Program Historically--Conclusion

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown. See below for Parts 1, 2 and 3 of article).

Among the historical results of the FBI’s public relations operation and mass media program, according to Arthur Schlesinger, was that “It became impossible to write pieces about J. Edgar Hoover as Washington’s No. 1 snoop” and “By the ‘40s and ‘50s…the press had stopped saying anything at all” that was negative about Hoover. Schlesinger also noted at an October 1971 Princeton University conference that “I think you can search the New York Times for years and find nothing critical of J. Edgar Hoover.” In an essay, titled “The FBI As A Political Police,” which appeared in the 1973 book, Investigating The FBI, Yale University Law Professor Thomas Emerson observed that “Much of the Bureau’s publicity seems intended to arouse fears and anxieties about national security,” but “events have not borne out the dire predictions, and skeptics have suggested that the main purpose has been to assure an increase in appropriations.”

Hoover’s historical personal friends in the world of U.S. White Corporate Journalism who helped the FBI manipulate U.S. public opinion, included “Walter Trohan, the venerable chief of the Chicago Tribune’s Washington Bureau, columnist and TV personality Ed Sullivan, and, of course, Walter Winchell,” according to Hoover’s FBI: The Men And The Myth by former FBI agent William Turner. Another book, Alien Ink: The FBI’s War On Freedom Of Expression by Natalie Robins, recalled that “Hoover liked to leak items to friendly gossip columns like Winchell, [Louella] Parsons, and Hedda Hopper, but he also liked to leak them to political columnists as well” and “these leaks enabled him to control the depiction of the FBI in the media.”

Hoover apparently also became quite wealthy, personally, as a result of the FBI’s mass media program operation. Under Hoover’s by-line, the anti-communist book Masters of Deceit was published in 1958. Alien Ink noted that “according to former assistant director William Sullivan, who was one of six Bureau employees who `put together’ Masters of Deceit, the book made” Hoover “very rich, though most people thought he had given away his royalties to charity.”

Hoover’s Masters of Deceit was published by Henry Holt & Company, a firm which was then owned by Hoover’s close friend—Texas oil millionaire Clint Murchison—and the FBI helped make Masters of Deceit “an instant hit—by exerting pressure and buying up copies,” according to Alien Ink. Hoover’s Masters of Deceit is estimated to have sold about 250,000 copies, including 25,000 copies which were bought by former Schenley Industries Chairman of the Board Lewis Rosentiel’s “charitable foundation” for “distribution to educational institutions, an underwriting worth over $100,000 [in 1950s money],” according to Hoover’s FBI: The Men and The Myth. (end of article)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

The FBI's Mass Media Program Historically--Part 3

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown. See below for Parts 1 and 2 of article).

As part of the FBI’s 1960s mass media program in Puerto Rico, its agents also “systematically planted articles and editorials (often containing malicious gossip concerning independentista leaders’ alleged sexual and financial affairs) in `friendly’ newspapers, and dispensed `private’ warnings to the owners of island radio stations that their FCC licenses might be revoked if pro-independence material were aired,” according to The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents From The FBI’s Secret War Against Domestic Dissent by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall. Among the `friendly’ newspapers utilized as tools by the FBI in Puerto Rico were El Mundo, the San Juan Star and the El Imparcial, according to an unpublished 1979 study by Carmen Gautier, Maria Teresa Blanco and Maria del Pilar Arguella, titled “Persecution of the Puerto Rican Independence Movement and Their Leaders by the Counterintelligence Program [COINTELPRO] of the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI], 1960-1971.” Among the Puerto Rican radio stations whose owners were “talked to” by FBI agents in order to influence their programming, according to the same study, were WLEO in Ponce, WKFE in Yauco and WJRS in San German, and “a one-hour daily time-block allotted to `Radio Bandera,’” was cancelled as a result.

The FBI also used its mass media connections to distribute hostile propaganda about the U.S. Baby-Boom Generation’s New Left during the 1960s and to promote destructive factionalism within white and African-American New Left activist circles. In the words of a May 29, 1968 memo from the Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Philadelphia office to FBI Director Hoover, regarding “Disruption of the New Left:”

“As noted in referenced Bureau letters, we must seize upon every opportunity to capitalize upon organizational and personal conflicts of the New Left leaders. The creation of factionalism is a potent weapon which must not be overlooked…Cooperative news media representatives have been used in the past. Reliability and discreetness have been proven. Recommendations for specific action will include necessary assurances that the Bureau’s interest will be protected.”

The COINTELPRO Papers book also observed that of the FBI’s 290 separate COINTELPRO actions that targeted New Left activists between 1968 and 1971, “some 40 percent were designed to keep targeted activists from speaking, teaching, writing or publishing.” (end of part 3)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

The FBI's Mass Media Program Historically--Part 2

(The following article first appeared in the April 14, 1993 issue of the now-defunct Lower East Side alternative weekly, Downtown. See below for Part 1 of article).

A former FBI agent named William Turner also noted in his 1970 book, Hoover’s FBI: The Men and The Myth, that “the virtues of the FBI have been recited for years in a Niagara of books, articles, feature stories, movies, radio shows, and TV accounts” and that “burnished to brightness by publicity techniques that are the envy of Madison Avenue, Hoover” was “made to appear bigger than life” and, as a result, became “one of the most powerful men in America.” And in his 1990 introduction to The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents From The FBI’s Secret War Against Domestic Dissent by Ward Churchill and Jim Vander Wall, human rights lawyer Brian Glick wrote that “the old myth of the FBI as crime-busting protector of democratic rights have been revived in modern garb by films like Mississippi Burning and the television series, Mancuso FBI, in recent years.”

Human rights lawyer Glick also noted in his introduction to The COINTELPRO Papers that the FBI also “authored articles and editorials which `cooperative news media’ ran as their own.” During the 1960s, for example, an FBI mass media program operation targeting Martin Luther King and his Southern Christian Leadership Council [SCLC] civil rights organization “was approved by memo in an exchange between Assistant Director William C Sullivan and one of his aides, Fred J. Baumgardner, on Oct. 8 [1962],” according to The COINTELPRO Papers; and “the initial five newspapers selected for purposes of surfacing the anti-King propaganda were the Long Island Star-Journal, Augusta (GA) Chronicle, Birmingham (AL) News, New Orleans Times-Picayune, and the St. Louis Globe-Democrat (where the reporter utilized in spreading the lies was Patrick J. Buchanan, later part of the White House press corps under President Nixon and Reagan, as well as a…host on the Cable News Network’s Crossfire program)…” In addition, when “a group of editors from a well-known pro-Hoover magazine visited him in Washington,“ FBI Director Hoover also “entertained them with a rendition” of his Martin Luther King “hotel tapes,” which his FBI agents had recorded during their spying on King, according to the Investigating The FBI book. (end of part 2)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

The FBI's Mass Media Program Historically--Part 1

Although nobody ever elected him to be FBI director, J. Edgar Hoover monopolized his U.S. government position from 1924 until the day he died in May of 1972. And, in addition to being the director of the U.S. White Corporate Male Power Structure’s secret police, Hoover also apparently spent years moonlighting as a U.S. magazine writer, in order to whip up popular support for FBI activities. As Robert Sherrill noted in his essay, “The Selling Of The FBI,” which appeared in the 1973 book, Investigating The FBI:

“Let us now make a final survey of propaganda devices adroitly used by Hoover…By his death he had written well over a hundred articles for the major magazines—that is, magazines indexed by Reader’s Guide—not to mention probably an equal number in magazines of lesser repute and circulation.”

Hoover’s FBI apparently initiated its mass media program to manipulate U.S. public opinion in the 1930s, according to The FBI Nobody Knows by Fred Cook, when “Hoover finally decided to promote the image of the G-man as the incorruptible fighter against crime.” The same book also noted in 1964 that:

“All possible media of information that could be used to build the image have been tapped. Newspapers…have gloried in displaying cops-and-robbers features, with Hoover and the men of the FBI cast in infallible heroes’ roles. Magazines have followed in the footsteps of the press. Comic strips have featured the FBI in daily sequences…Radio and television have dramatized the great manhunts. Books bearing Hoover’s name or, if not his name his blessing, make the best-seller list. Movies have poured out documentaries and full-length feature dramas, lending visual impact to the promotion of the legend. The barrage has been overwhelming. Never before, on any level of government, have the American people been subjected to such brainwashing on behalf of any agency.” (end of part 1)

(Downtown 4/14/93)

`U.S. News & World Report' & Mort Zuckerman's Hidden History

“…The new publication was called U.S. News & World Report. Lawrence was editor until his death, publisher until 1958, and chairman of the board until 1973…He received the National Press Club of Washington’s Certificate of Appreciation in 1963 and a special award in 1964 from the Federal Bureau of Investigation in appreciation of his friendly and sympathetic assistance to the FBI.” (The National Cyclopedia of American Biography)

For most of the 20th Century, the U.S. White Corporate Male Power Structure’s Federal Bureau of Investigation [FBI] secret police operation was not too popular with U.S. political dissidents. But for most of the 20th Century the FBI was treated like a sacred cow by U.S. Establishment magazines like Mort Zuckerman’s U.S. News & World Report. And U.S. News & World Report apparently also acted covertly as a propaganda instrument of J.Edgar Hoover’s FBI between 1948 and 1972.

In a 1993 telephone interview, Downtown asked then-U.S. News & World Report senior vice-president for Communications, Sherrie Rollins, if U.S. News & World Report has ever acted as a public relations tool of the FBI since 1948?

“No. I’ve never heard anything like that. To my knowledge, U.S. News & World Report has never acted as a PR tool of the FBI,” replied the official spokesperson for U.S. News & World Report in 1993. She also said she was unaware of the existence of any past relationship between former FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and U.S. News & World Report founder David Lawrence.

Yet in 1973, the book Investigating The FBI revealed that “Over the years, Hoover maintained extremely close ties with several magazines—U.S. News & World Report and Reader’s Digest being perhaps the closest.”

(Downtown 4/14/93)

LBJ's Hoover Connection

Although former FBI Director J.Edgar Hoover was apparently not too fond of President Kennedy, he was apparently quite fond of President Johnson. As the book Alien Ink: The FBI’s War On Freedom of Expression by Natalie Robins recalled:

“On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was murdered in Dallas…A Hoover friend of over 20 years was sworn in as President…Johnson was the only American President whose autographed photograph hung on the living-room wall of J.Edgar Hoover’s home. The Director also kept a bust of Johnson in his dining room.”

In his 1970 book, Hoover’s FBI: The Men And The Myth, former FBI Agent William Turner described the nature of President Johnson’s relationship to former FBI Director Hoover:

“One of Lyndon Johnson’s first requests upon ensconcing himself in the White House was for 1,200 dossiers on his political adversaries from the FBI’s supposedly confidential files, plus the Bobby Baker volumes [of LBJ’s former aides]. Hoover, whose time for mandatory retirement was looming (only the president could extend it), was happy to oblige…

“Popular fable has it that the Hoover-Johnson friendship stemmed from nothing more than the fact they were neighbors when Johnson was in the Senate…

“But it was much deeper than that. In a very real sense, Hoover was part of the Texan’s political family [LBJ aide] Walter Jenkins’ brother had long been an FBI agent in Amarillo, and one of LBJ’s shirttail relatives moved from Texas state politics to the FBI (despite the fact that he was slightly under the height minimum), where his rise through the ranks was mercurial. And then there was old Clint Murchison, Hoover’s bosom pal, who was one of Johnson’s earliest political benefactors…

“The assassination of President Kennedy brought out the Hoover-Johnson team at its precision best. As Congress cranked up to investigate the momentous crime, Johnson took over with the announcement that he was forming his own blue-ribbon commission of inquiry and had asked the FBI to investigate. Less than three weeks after the assassination, far too little time to cover all the ground, Hoover handed the president a confidential summary report that concluded there was no conspiracy. Simultaneously…he leaked the report’s contents to the press. Thus was the public inculcated with the `no conspiracy’ theory, and the Warren Commission was handed it as a fait accompli…”

(Downtown 4/14/93)

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