The State of the Case today: By Jim DiEugenio

Such epithets scant the very interesting discoveries in Shenon’s reporting, including:

that a Warren Commission staffer met secretly with Fidel Castro;  that a State Department official who sought a real investigation of Oswald activities in Mexico City was hounded out of the Foreign Service and into suicide. and that James Angleton threatened Warren Commission staffer David Slawson after Slawson complained about CIA’s withholding of information about Oswald. These stories are significant.

James DiEugenio wrote:This is a grand total of three points in a 550 page book.

And the middle one is very debatable as to the way he phrases it and the way Shenon uses it.

THe review in Salon brought up the other two points.  

Now, my review was something like 25 pages long.  And I brought up all the many problems with the book, which are plentiful.  The worst being that Shenon's book gets almost ridiculous and into the high camp at the end, where he deliberately misrepresents the evidence to advance his Castro did it plot.  And also his omissions with the evidence in order to revive the Single Bullet Theory. 

Morley objected to the Castro did it scenario in Latell's book.  Why not here?

My Shenon review is the number one essay at CTKA right now.  And it has been ever since it went up.  So some people appreciate the exposure of a black propaganda book.  Because today, any book that says Oswald killed  Kennedy for Castro has to be called that.

James DiEugenio wrote:I wouldn't call Shenon a journalist.

In one interview, he actually said that the assassination was easily preventable.  Mainly due to what Oswald was up to in Mexico City.   UFFA!, as they say in my family's dialect.

Now, if you use almost nothing from the Lopez Report in order to construct what Oswald was allegedly doing there, and you ignore the fact that the HSCA was going to issue three indictments for perjury about Mexico City--two for Phillips, one for Goodpasture--then, yep, you can say that.

But that is not journalism.  Because you are leaving out all the crucial information in the Lopez Report.  Which is unconscionable today.

Judging from journalism as we know it today, perhaps you are setting the bar too high, Jim?  There are hosts of hacks in the media who are journalists in name only.  In fact, it seems to me more the norm than the exception.