As the 50th
anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy approaches,
conspiracy theories and disputes over the events of November 22, 1963 are back
in the spotlight. In his new book, History
Will Prove Us Right: Inside the Warren Commission Report on the Assassination
of John F. Kennedy, Howard P. Willens gives an in-depth look at the
investigation conducted by the Warren Commission and the report they
produced. Willens is one of the only
living members of the supervisory staff of the Warren Commission that headed
the investigation surrounding President Kennedy’s assassination. Willens’ personal journal kept during the
time of the Warren Commission and correspondence files from the investigation
are the basis for this enlightening and surprising recount of America’s largest
criminal investigation. History Will Prove Us Right has been
met with outstanding praise and provides a one-of-a-kind account of the Warren
Commission’s investigation.
Excerpt from
Willens’ Journal:
On
Monday afternoon Mr. Stern and I went to the Federal Bureau of Investigation
for an appointment with Assistant Director Tavel. The purpose of the meeting
was to discuss informally the filing system currently maintained by the Bureau
prior to making any recommendations regarding liaison between investigative
agencies…. Mr. Stern outlined some of the specific questions we had, such as
procedures for conducting name checks, extent to which evidence in Bureau files
could be made available by categories or criteria to Secret Service, etc.
Mr.
Tavel gave a brief but useful description of the routing, classifying and
filing procedures maintained by the Bureau. He emphasized the number of
name checks conducted every day, which he estimated ranged about 10,000 or so,
and also emphasized the fact that the Bureau’s system was set up to
handle the needs of the Bureau. …
After
this discussion we went on a tour of their facilities. The FBI personnel were
completely frank and responsive to our questions. They clearly emphasized,
however, the superiority of their system to others and indicted that they had
not mechanized their system as yet because there were not adequate IBM machines
available to do the job. They stated that (1) no machine could handle the
information contained in the five million index cards currently in the Bureau’s
system which had to be queried many thousands of times a day and (2) they
emphasized that the file clerk would frequently have to exercise his own
judgment regarding the request and that a machine would not eliminate the need
for the exercise of human judgment in many cases. Mr. Stern and I did not
press this topic since we were not experts in the field and thought that it was
not necessary.
Praise for History Will Prove Us Right:
“A
magisterial assessment of how the Warren Commission’s investigation into the
assassination of President John F. Kennedy stands up after the passage of 50
years… A superbly written account by someone who knows precisely what needs to
be said and how to say it.”-Kirkus reviews
“This
fascinating book takes us through the commission’s lengthy investigation…(it)
serves a valuable function by laying out how it did its work.”-Booklist
“Finally, the much-needed book on the Warren
Commission. While the rest of us who
have written about the commission were only peeking in, Howard P. Willens was
there, a principal architect of the very history we could only write
about. Now, with his precise and very
discerning pen, he has written with unimpeachable authority what actually
happened, making his book an historically important one. I can’t imagine any future writer on the
commission doing so without having History
Will Prove Us Right at their side.
Highly recommended.” –Vincent Bugliosi, bestselling author of Reclaiming History: The Assassination of
President John F. Kennedy and Helter Skelter.
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