A Farewell to Justice
Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History

INTERVIEWS AND TRANSCRIPTS

Jan 28, 2007

Remarks at 92nd Street Y in New York "THE KENNEDY ASSASSINATION AND THE CURRENT POLITICAL MOMENT"

Read here

June 13, 2006

Remarks by Joan Mellen From the "Education Forum"

Here are some answers. Bear in mind that they are off the top of my head, and that anyone interested in the documentation and details should go to "A Farewell to Justice."

1. How do you decide what to write about? Every writer has certain stories that are "theirs," stories they need to tell and stories they are uniquely qualified to tell, either from the passion of their commitment, or because the writer has special access to information. I have wanted since 1966 to tell the story of the priest, Father Camilo Torres Restrepo, who joined the E.L.N. in Colombia, and was killed in a skirmish with the army in 1966. This has been one of "my" stories. I have yet to write this book, but I plan to. I knew Lillian Hellman, and so felt I could write a biography of her; the same was true of Kay Boyle, whose biography I chose to write, and which proceeded with some difficulty because several times she changed her mind about whether she wanted a biography written. At that point I decided never to write another biography of a living figure. Because basketball coach Bob Knight is the kind of teacher I am, and I wrote about that first in an article for the New York Times, I was able to write a book about Coach Knight as a teacher. I was able to write about Bob Knight in a way others might not be able to do so easily or readily.

2. It is misleading to say that my books are about "the creative arts." My book about Japanese film is, in fact, a study of Japanese history. The subtitle of "The Waves At Genji's Door" is "Japan Through Its Cinema." "The Waves At Genjji's Door" is a history of Japan from the 8th century on, as that history has been depicted by Japanese film artists. My book about Gabriel Garcia Marquez is as much about the history of Colombia as it is about Garcia Marquez as a novelist. My first published essay was about Franz Kafka's novel, "The Trial." Its title is "Joseph K and The Law," and it was about different concepts of the law that Kafka enlists. SO it appears that I've been interested in the question of justice from the very beginning. That essay was published in 1972, I believe, but please check my bibliography.

So my book about the Kennedy assassination follows themes with which I've dealt over thirty years. Remember that the last line of Don DeLillo's novel, "Libra," a great, great novel, about Oswald in New Orleans, is "history." We in the "creative arts" are often as keen researchers of history as the professional historians, whom, as we know, have avoided writing about the assassination of President Kennedy. Students should ponder that the biographers of President Kennedy (Robert Dallek, Michael Beschloss, a historian of the sixties) and of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (Taylor Branch) have committed an act no serious biographer would ever commit: they have written the story of the lives of their subject while avoiding how their subjects died. This represents a major default of course because their subjects were murdered. It is astonishing that these writers do not explore who was behind the deaths of their subjects. The reviewing media have given these writers  a pass, has allowed them to get away with avoiding the truth, and they have been showered with prizes. Writers should beware of awards and prizes, of course.

3. Would I get into trouble with those who have power and influence? "Trouble" is an odd word here. I knew that the New York Times, which named the Kay Boyle book and Hellman and Hammett as "New York Times notable books of the year," which is a major honor for writers, would never review "A Farewell to Justice." I hired a publicist named Barbara Monteiro who went to see Sam Tanenhaus, the editor of the NY Times Book Review and told him about my book. "I know who she is," he said. He made no comment. She left believing we had a chance of being reviewed in the Times. I knew otherwise. The Washington Post allowed a writer with a serious conflict of interest, Jefferson Morley, to review my book, and the Post later apologized to its readers: had they known of Morley's conflict of interest, they never would have permitted him to review my book. The damage, of course,had been done.

 I knew I would not be on "The Today Show" or "Good Morning America." Even Philadelphia radio was afraid to handle this subject matter. There were people like Gil Noble who has a television program on New York network tv who did put me on. I trusted to word of mouth, that people would tell others that they thought the book was valuable, and that was what happened.

4. Yes, I did have trouble getting "A Farewell to Justice" published. My first publisher was New York University press. When they read the manuscript, they said there was nothing new here, while, in fact, everything in my book, virtually, is new evidence. They said they REALLY only wanted a book about Jim Garrison as a district attorney (!), although Garrison was a liberal district attorney like many others, and that alone did not guarantee him a place in history. NYU then claimed they would only publish a 300 page book because that was what our contract stated, despite the fact that when I began I had no idea that I would be able to penetrate so deeply into the truth of the Kennedy assassination. Necessarily my book was longer than I originally intended that it would be.

Potomac Books is an independent publisher and they decided that they wanted truly to publish all sides, so while they publish the memoirs of CIA people too, they published my book without censoring any of it, a truly admirable act in my view. Freedom of the press remains alive today because such small publishers exist, and they should be supported by readers, I must say.

5. I have never been pressured not to write about controversial subjects. On the other hand, I have paid the expected price for writing about controversial ideas. I have been willing to pay that price (there will be no Pulitzer prizes for me) because I believe in the ideas of my books, and because I believe telling the truth, as I heard someone say the other day, in times like ours, is a revolutionary act. I am not interested in repeating received wisdom. Money and fame might be more likely to come my way were I not to have written positively, for example, about Jim Garrison, whom the CIA has spent forty years and continues to this day to attempt to discredit.

6. Historians and journalists are unwilling to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy, to cite our example, because they know that they will be punished, as you suggest in question number 5 were they to do so. They would get very small advances from the small publishers, and would have to finance the research themselves as I had to do. I wrote books about Japanese movies for the British Film Institute, I wrote those books about Latin America, to help pay for the research because my advance was so law.

As for the documents, many but not all are available at the National Archives. Anyone can view these documents. People are out there to be interviewed. These establishment historians have chosen, and this is a choice, not to explore what really happened to President Kennedy because they fear  reprisal in the form of damage to their careers and to their financial well being.

 Once the press rubber-stamped the Warren Report, and refused even to explore its contradictions, the press of our country became embedded in the official cover up. They continue to be embedded largely in official versions of events today, but it began, I believe, with the Kennedy assassination.

 Jim Garrison reopened his investigation of the Kennedy assassination when he read Dwight Macdonald's article in Esquire magazine about the Warren Report and its deficiencies. But Macdonald, an old radical, was an exception in recognizing that the Warren Commission had done no real investigation. Even the great journalist I.F. Stone refused to deal with the Kennedy assassination honestly.

 I do not believe that our country would have been damaged politically had the truth of government involvement in the murder of President Kennedy been reported. The reverse is the case. Democracy is weakened by the press maintaining official lies; please see "9/11 and 11/22," my op ed piece on my website www.joanmellen.net <http://www.joanmellen.net/>  which compares the lies of two Presidential commissions, the Warren Commission and the 9/11 Commission.

7. Which sources do we believe/how to get documents: this is a good question, and one I plan to go into in depth in the sequel to "A Farewell to Justice" that I am writing now, which will be called "Dear Sherlock," and will be a memoir taking the reader on the path of my investigation. Generally let me say that you believe a source when he talks against interest, when it does not benefit him nor does he profit from admitting what he knows. This was the case for me in two of my major sources, Angelo (Murgado) Kennedy and Thomas Edward Beckham. I have since corroborated and am continuing to corroborate, their testimony to me. But I had enough to corroborate them in "A Farewell to Justice."

Allow me to add that I am very dubious about the people who questioned the reliability of these sources. I have no doubt about them: they were telling the truth. Yes, what they told me was explosive. But it is all true. The context in which both men spoke to me alone corroborates their testimony. These were very reluctant witnesses.

Sometimes it is only petty jealousy that leads people who belong to what is known, euphemistically, as the "research community" to challenge a writer. Sometimes amateur historians don't understand how to evaluate a source. Sometimes these amateurs don't know enough history. If you knew the history of Cuba, for example, you could never claim that Che Guevara took money from the C.I.A. for personal gain.This is inconceivable. But you have to know a lot about Che to be able to make this statement with confidence.

There are no documents that alone tell the story of what happened to President Kennedy. Many documents have been destroyed by government agencies. We know of some that have never become available because the HSCA investigators were allowed to have a peek at them, but were forbidden to copy them or even to take notes. The documents generally offer "traces," bits of information, that it takes the historian a long time to put together and then to conclude from...I hope "Dear Sherlock," which I am now writing, will answer this question more fully.

Joan Mellen

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January 24, 2006

Lecture Delivered at the Ethical Culture Society, New York City

How the Failure To Identify, Prosecute and Convict President Kennedy's Assassins Has Led To Today's Crisis Of Democracy

Direct Link: http://nysoundposse.com/2006/01/event-who-planned-murder-of-jfk-who.html

October 2005

New Interview online now:

Taking Aim with Ralph Schoenman and Mya Shone. WBAI-NY, 99.5 FM, http://www.takingaim.info.

Direct link: http://www.radio4houston.org/takingaim/home/shows/audio.html#051011

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