From jxxl Fri Jan 19 19:59:01 PST 1996 Article: 63037 of alt.conspiracy.jfk Xref: netcom.com alt.conspiracy.jfk:63037 Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.jfk Path: netcom.com!jxxl From: jxxl@netcom.com (John Locke) Subject: "Farewell America" Message-ID: Organization: NETCOM On-line Communication Services (408 261-4700 guest) Date: Thu, 11 Jan 1996 16:28:18 GMT Lines: 105 Sender: jxxl@netcom.netcom.com Book Review--"Farewell America" The legendary "Farewell America," published overseas in 1968 but long available in the U.S. through specialty book dealers, is a peculiar work, even by conspiracy book standards. (A detailed account of its background can be found in the memoirs of Ramparts editor Warren Hinckle, "If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade.") The general unavailability in the U.S. of FA has been attributed to governmental suppression, but a reading of the book reveals the real reason it was never published here. It's clearly libelous. Conspiracy books are always careful to suggest that some witness' activities were "suspicious" rather than accusing them outright of being involved in a plot to assassinate the president. FA exhibits no such circumspection. It comes right out and names its villians. For example, "[Dallas Police Chief] Curry and his deputies were accustomed to covering [up] minor offenses, but the assassination of a President was in a class by itself. The plan didn't shock them." (Pg. 347) The thesis of FA is that a group called the Committee planned and executed the assassination. This group takes on (Oliver) Stonesian proportions with countless persons who either took part in the plan, knew about it, or helped cover it up: "The collaboration on which the Committee was dependent, and the cooperation of those who did nothing to stop it, turned the assassination into a national conspiracy in which not only the local police and certain judicial officers, but also the FBI through its negligence and the CIA through its double agents and its operational units, the Army with its dissident generals, Congress and its corruption, and the entire economic system through its ideals and certain members of the Committee were implicated. A plot on this level is equivalent to a revolt. Kennedy's assassins were the arms of a counter-revolution." (287) You don't say! The assassination itself, according to FA, was perpetrated by "a team of ten men, including four gunmen." (353) Many of the names who commonly turn up in conspiracy books are fingered in FA but, like the conspiracy books we're used to, the proof is never forthcoming. FA attempts to make up for its lack of evidence with a pretense to inside information. The book, in fact, is a blend of this unsubstantiated, omnipotent knowledge and the familiar conspiracy lore that had been developed by 1968, up to and including Jim Garrison's New Orleans fantasies. FA's "revelations" take the form of statements that are never established with evidence of any kind, e.g. "[Garrison suspect David Ferrie] knew Oswald, whom he had met in 1959 shortly before [Oswald's] departure for the U.S.S.R." (336) It's the classic proof-by-assertion style that will delight the buff and bore the scholar. Many passages bristle with authentic-sounding detail: "Nearly all of the active members of the Committee came from either Texas or Louisiana, but they had technical advisors from New York, California and Washington." (285) Or, "We estimate the cost of the preparation, the assassination itself and the post- assassination clean-up at between $5 and $10 million. Contributions [?] varied between $10,000 and $500,000, and there were about 100 beneficiaries." (293) The author does seem aware of the book's defiencies, though, and occasionally makes excuses, e.g. "If we were to expand on [Oswald], if we were to take his life apart piece by piece as the Warren Commission tried to do, we would only be attributing to Oswald a role far more important than the part he was destined to play in the Kennedy assassination. To do so would be to divert public attention, as the Warren Commission has done, from the essential matter at hand, the plot." (327) But the book does go on to dreg up the customary allegations that Oswald was a spy. Overall, buffs may be disappointed with FA. Of its twenty chapters, only six deal with the assassination. The rest comprise a tedious criticism of social conditions in America, from the effect of oil dependence to race relations to defense spending. One chapter attempts to pull in Robert Kennedy's assassination, but without much detail, probably because at the time of writing, there were no RFK conspiracy books to crib from. The oddness of FA brings up two questions. Who wrote it and why? The author is listed as James Hepburn, but we know that to be pseudonymous. Notwithstanding, the dust wrapper supplies a detailed biographical sketch of "Hepburn." It lists two universities, a Ph.D. in economics, and claims the author's previous acquaintance with both assassinated Kennedys and Jacqueline Bouvier. According to Hinckle, who thought the book had some relevance, it was probably produced by crypto-communists in French intelligence. This would certainly explain the book's frequent sneers about capitalists and its sweeping indictment of American society. And the notion that John Kennedy was the victim of a revolution is, of course, a monstrously silly suggestion, but the book also betrays in numerous small ways that the author's antipathy does not derive from an actual acquaince with America. For example, Hugh Hefner is quoted from Playboy magazine, but instead of identifying him as the editor, FA refers to him as a "gifted psychologist." (246) But why would you quote Hefner in a book of this nature, anyway? Similarly, former Joe McCarthy aide Roy Cohn is quoted--from remarks made at the Stork Club, no less--on the prospects of a second Kennedy term. (286) But why? Like Hefner, he was not considered a recognizable authority on national affairs. FA also makes egregious errors of fact, which suggests the real authors weren't much acquainted with the assassination, but instead hastily pulled the book together from a collection of research materials. For example: "On October 16 [Oswald] began taking inventory and moving boxes of books...One week later, President Kennedy drove beneath the windows of the Depository." (340) In another amusing error, a Wall Street Journal editorial of "December 9, 1963" is quoted as referring to the assassination of the previous Friday morning. (288) Obviously, FA is a rather elaborate hoax (making it not unlike most conspiracy books). What was its purpose? Assuming that it was written by communists, it was probably intended to discredit the United States to Europeans (FA was printed in several European editions), or foment discord within the United States. ---