Steamshovel 11 The arrival of a new Steamshovel is an event. No matter that I am going to want to be picky about something in it, every issue contains items both substantial and intriguing – and much that would find a home nowhere else, that I can think of. (Except maybe Lobster. I wish I … Read more
Edited by James DiEugenio and Lisa Pease. Los Angeles: Feral House, 2003 $24 p/back ISBN 0-922915-82-2 Let me first clarify the meaning of the subtitle. Probe, now defunct, was a US magazine devoted chiefly to research on the assassinations of the 1960s. I saw it occasionally and it was very good. I assumed this … Read more
Paul Johnson, former editor of the New Statesman turned ‘new right’ Thatcherite, turned his hack hand to KAL 007 in a review of Alexander Dallin’s Black Box KAL 007 and the Superpowers (University of California Press 1985) in the Times Literary Supplement (August 23 1985). Johnson asks the question: “How could a Korean pilot skilful … Read more
Compromised Reporting Taking its cue from a powerful network of far-right radio commentators, the American press insists on noting only those financial scandals which don’t sully ultra-conservative politicians. Of either party. For example: Rush Limbaugh, who has become the Republican Party’s Goebbels, loudly applauded Clinton’s appointment of Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen, an appalling Texas (Democrat) … Read more
Two major American parapolitics journals closed at the beginning of this year. Both were primarily dedicated to the JFK assassination, though Probe also covered the King family’s landmark case and its successful outcome — establishing that Dr Martin Luther King was killed, not by a lone assassin, but by a conspiracy. This story was largely … Read more
The Last Investigation Gaeton Fonzi Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, 1993 Deep Politics and the Death of JFK Peter Dale Scott University of California Press London and Berkeley, 1993 With Dick Russell’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, reviewed above by Alex Cox, these books are the best of the post Oliver Stone wave that … Read more
The 80 Greatest Conspiracies of all Time Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen New York, Citadell; 2004; distributed in the UK by Turnaround (www.turnaround-uk.com); p/b, £13.99 The latest edition of the Vankin-Whalen book, all 700 pages of it. The previous version was ‘The 70 greatest…’ and the authors haven’t bothered to write a new introduction … Read more
In February this year, unnoticed by the press, a funeral took place in a quiet Sussex village. In attendance were some famous names from London society of the fifties and sixties, and two men in regulation dark suits from an undisclosed department of the Security Services. They had been contacts for the deceased, Maria Novotny, … Read more
Power Beyond Reason: The Mental Collapse of Lyndon Johnson D. Jablow Hershman New Jersey: Barricade, 2002, $27.95 Colin Challen MP I tend to the view, presented succinctly in Who Shot JFK?, (10) that whoever assassinated Kennedy did so with the objective of installing LBJ as President. The tantalising question that arises is: did LBJ … Read more
Mark Lane Plexus, London, £9.99 In 1978 a right-wing American magazine, Spotlight, published an article by former CIA officer Victor Marchetti which claimed that in response to the beginning of public hearings of the House Committee on Assassinations, the CIA was about to admit that one of its former employees, Howard Hunt, one of the … Read more
