by Mark Lane
Dear Mr. Andrew:
I am in the process of completing a book which makes an analysis of your claim that the KGB maintained a “regular contact” with me and that that organization sent some funds to me through an intermediary who was a close friend of mine. Those assertions as well as numerous other assertions in your book, The Sword and the Shield, are untrue.
Although you had neither the courtesy nor the curiosity to contact me before publishing your false statements about me in spite of the fact that you claim to be an historian, I am interested in securing and publishing your version of the story. Therefore I would appreciate it if you would answer the following questions.
How many pages of the Mitrokhin Archive have you seen?
Is each page dated?
What is the name of the close friend of mine who was used by the KGB?
On what dates were funds allegedly given to me?
Since several witnesses have stated that they saw and talked with E. Howard Hunt in Dallas on November 22, 1963, since all of Hunt’s various and contradictory alibis have been proven to be false, since his own children refuse to support his first alibi that he was with them that day, since a jury sitting in a United States District Court has rejected his story, and finally since Hunt stated that he would tell the entire story of his role in the assassination if paid adequately, what is your basis that he was wrongly accused of being in Dallas on that day? I note that you offer no citation for that false allegation in your book.
Have you received funds from the Central Intelligence Agency for any services that you have rendered to them, including appearing at lectures for them, writing books for them which present the Agency’s views, and writing hostile criticism of books which do not?
I note that in an interview you spoke disparagingly of a committee of the United States Senate, chaired by Senator Frank Church. Most contemporary historians consider Senator Church’s work to have been a most worthwhile effort. On what basis do you disparage the work of Senator Church and the other members of the United States Senate who served with him in reviewing American intelligence agencies?
You state that I had limited success during the late 1960’s and early 1970’s because my work had been exposed by Gerald Posner in a book called Case Closed. Since Case Closed was published in 1993, can you explain how it impacted what you refer to as my limited success during the 1960’s and 1970’s?
As you know, Plausible Denial was published in 1991 in hardback, and the following year in paperback. That book was a New York Times bestseller in 1992 for months, and sold approximately as many books as did Rush to Judgment which was New York Times number one bestselling book in 1966. As you know, I am likely the only author to have written two books about the assassination of President Kennedy, approximately a quarter of a century apart, both of which were New York Times bestselling books.
Since you falsely assert that the KGB wanted to assist me, can you explain why Rush to Judgment was published widely and successfully in Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Spain, as well as throughout Asia and Latin America, while the book was not published to my knowledge in the Soviet Union or any nation allied with it and no publisher from any of those countries under the control of the Soviet Union ever sent me a single penny for my work on the Kennedy assassination investigation.
If the Soviets so approved of my work, why did they not publish it? This is an area in which you have some expertise; the CIA approves of your work, places you on high level committees about the future of American intelligence and, in all probability, compensates you for your services rendered to the CIA.
I know you have been represented by counsel, but this letter is not related to a lawsuit and I represent to you that none of your responses, should you respond, will be utilized in any legal action against you. As you probably are aware the statute of limitations has long since expired regarding your defamatory actions.
Very truly yours,
MARK LANE
Andrew has never replied.
But wait, there is more. Andrew and Mitrokhin tar with the same brush some other Americans as well. It seems that, according to them, “a Democratic activist in California” was “recruited as a KGB agent during a visit to Russia” and may have influenced his “wide circle of influential contacts.”48 Andrew lists them. They are Governor Jerry Brown, Senator Alan Cranston, Senator Eugene McCarthy, Senator Edward Kennedy, Senator Abraham Ribicoff, Senator J. William Fulbright and Congressman John Conyers.49 He also had “prolonged conversations” with Senator Jacob Javits. And he infiltrated the campaigns of Jimmy Carter, Governor Brown and Senators Cranston, Kennedy and Rubicoff.50 To make the list you must be a Democrat, Jewish or a very distinguished patriot. Being all three makes you a certain target.
Allow me to save you some effort and the cost of a postage stamp. There is no need to write a letter to Andrew asking for the name of the super KGB spy, the one likely without peer in history. Andrew states that the name of the KGB agent is not known. Perhaps Mitrokhin, with a mind so phenomenal that he could memorize thousands of documents and recite them verbatim, may have forgotten it or perhaps the KGB official who wrote the story forgot to mention his name. Something like my “friend” who never gave me any money.
The Government and the Media Respond
The CIA had refused to release thousands of documents describing its role in matters relating to the assassination. Together with the ACLU, I brought an action in the United States District Court under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain the records. In spite of claims of national security concerns made by the agency, the court ordered that it produce the documents. The CIA instructed its “assets” in the national news media in detail to criticize me and my work because, it said, the agency had been involved in the assassination. One CIA memorandum specifically stated the methods that journalists who were their “assets” should employ in that effort, even suggesting the language that should be used to destroy me. Remarkably, New York Times journalist Anthony Lewis, referred to as “a prominent liberal intellectual,” used in his stories the numerous and specific arguments suggested by the CIA; echoes of that campaign to falsify the record still persist.
When the Warren Commission Report was published in 1964, Lewis embraced its conclusions at once, although the report was allegedly based upon evidence, including testimony and exhibits, that was classified top secret and not available to the news media or the public. Lewis did not hesitate to make a profit from his work by writing introductions to commercial editions of the Warren Report, and I suspect he was paid more for that short and simplistic panegyrical endorsement than the sum offered to me as an advance for world rights to Rush to Judgment.
Later, when the commission released twenty-six volumes of thousands of pages of testimony and exhibits,51 Lewis, that very day, wrote that all of the evidence demonstrated that the Warren Commission conclusions were accurate. I studied the material for the better part of a year, working almost eighteen hours each day. It was only after I completed that enormous task that I wrote to Lewis and asked him how he had been able to get through the material in just a few hours. He has not replied. In criticizing his work I never characterized his motives, often did not even mention him, but rather referred to him generically and never engaged in name calling. But a recitation of the facts demonstrated that in this matter he was a stranger to the truth. Lewis was furious.
On November 29, 1978, Lewis wrote an unprecedented ad hominem attack devoted entirely to me that he published in The New York Times. He named it “The Mark of Zorro.” The title is interesting since “Zorro” was the vicious code name devised by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to designate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in its efforts to destroy him. It was chosen as a sexual innuendo to demean Dr. King by implying that he was a “swordsman.”
I had just returned from Jonestown, Guyana, and a number of publishers had contacted me, each seeking to publish a book to be written by me about the massacre. I had not solicited th
ose contacts. I had not decided to write a book about the matter, and had not stated that I was interested in writing one. I had no literary agent, and no one had stated on my behalf that I might write about the subject. Many television and news organizations sought interviews; network crews literally camped at my doorstep even after I asked them to leave and said I had no statement to make. Many people I had met in Guyana, some of them friends and many others children, had died there, and while it was obviously far less traumatic for me than for their families, I knew that I needed time to absorb the impact of the events before deciding if I was capable of understanding what had occurred and who was ultimately responsible. Among those offering book contracts were numerous major publishers, including the book publishing company for The New York Times. I declined to meet with any of them.
I remained in my home and office with my loyal collie, my law partner April Ferguson and her young daughter. Since the telephone rang incessantly (this was before the advent of e-mail), I severed communication with the insistent media by leaving it off the hook. However, my partner’s daughter wanted to make calls to her friends. I said that she could as long as she remembered to disconnect the line after each call. She forgot once; it rang immediately and she answered it. It was Barbara Walters asking to speak to me. It was one thing not to answer the phone but quite another to refuse to talk to Barbara when she knew where I was and since I knew her and respected her as an honest journalist. We talked and I agreed to an interview with her. It was the only media request that I accepted.
And then Lewis struck. His two-column article was featured on the op-ed page of the Times.52 He referred to me as a “ghoul,” a “pitchman,” one who had been “preying on the gullible” and a “creature.” He was outraged that I had questioned the findings of the Warren Commission. He falsely accused me of misconduct in Jonestown and said that there would be civil suits for damages against me and that there would be proceedings against me by the bar associations. He said, in reference to my work in writing Rush to Judgment, that I made a profit by selling “assassination bumper stickers” and charged “high lecture fees” for profit. Everything that Lewis said was untruthful and none of his fanciful predictions were realized. No bar association even looked into the matter since there was nothing for them to consider. No one filed a law suit since there was no basis for one. I never sold a bumper sticker or even displayed one nor have I seen one about an assassination. Often I spoke about the assassination of President Kennedy without asking for an honorarium, and when a modest fee was offered, the funds went directly to the Citizens’ Commission of Inquiry, a group with a distinguished board of directors, in order to send investigators and researchers to Dallas to interview witnesses.
Lewis had questioned my ethics, but presented no facts. Of course, I was not the only person Lewis defamed. When the great American filmmaker Oliver Stone made JFK, he was subject to unprecedented attacks. Lewis played a major role in the character assassination of .Stone. He condemned Oliver’s “character,” stating that to suggest that Warren engaged in a “cover-up” was “contemptible.” Yet years before, the lawyers for the Warren Commission had conceded that Warren had engaged in a cover-up and sought to justify those actions by stating that they were required for national security reasons.
However the sting of Lewis’s diatribe was not its falsity and name calling, but rather its direction to the news media and the publishing industry. Lewis, demonstrating his contempt for the First Amendment, directed “talk show hosts and editors” to refuse to permit me to be heard. He directed publishers to refuse to publish any book I might write. He said that “it is time for the decent people of the United States to tune out Mark Lane.” Immediately, The New York Times withdrew its offer to publish a book by me as an eyewitness to the Jonestown massacre. When I decided to write The Strongest Poison, every publisher in the United States that I contacted refused to consider it, citing the Lewis manifesto. One small publishing house, Hawthorn Books, a division of Elsevier-Dutton, a company based in Holland, offered a contract. I celebrated with the representative of the publishing company at a restaurant in New York after the contract was signed, and I asked her if she was familiar with the Lewis direction. She said the company had read the op-ed piece and decided that “This is America. You can’t do that here.”
Lewis has taught at Columbia University’s School of Journalism, has held the James Madison chair in First Amendment Issues since 1982, and has been honored by a coalition against censorship for his “commitment” to First Amendment rights. No, this is not an attempt at humor.
Apparently the Lewis concept of the First Amendment is that he will defend with all the honor he may muster the right of any American to exercise free speech so long as the content is consistent with the Lewis agenda. Failing that test he may attempt to deny the right to free speech and freedom of the press. Our founders, among them Tom Paine, Thomas Jefferson and John Peter Zenger, and yes, James Madison, had a different view.
Later, a false biography of me was published in The New York Times as a feature story under a four-column headline.53 It was written by Pranay Gupte. It said that “Representing the American Indians, he faced riot, arson and conspiracy charges after an incident at Wounded Knee South Dakota, he [Lane] declared that the trial would be a ‘major civil rights case for the American Indians.’ But the Indians were convicted, and legal experts do not view the case as a major civil rights test.” The “incident” Gupte referred to was a seventy-one day occupation of Wounded Knee by the American Indian Movement which became the most publicized story of 1973. The “Indians” who were defendants at the trial were Dennis Banks and Russell Means. We won the case. It was fully reported in The New York Times. The case was dismissed by United States District Court Judge Fred Nichol, based upon a motion I had filed, due to the ongoing misconduct of the government prosecutors. The government appealed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit; that appeal was unanimously rejected by the Court. The government declined to ask for a United States Supreme Court review, thereby finalizing the case and certifying the victory of the defendants.
Since all of that had been published in The New York Times, one would think that Mr. Gupte, who was at The New York Times, might have noticed it. Gupte also said that while I was a member of the New York State legislature from “Manhattan’s West Side,” I “questioned the ethics of a former Speaker.” He reported that several persons had characterized my conduct in that matter as “irresponsible.” I represented the East Side of Manhattan, including Yorkville, which is entirely on the East Side, and East Harlem, which, as its name implies, is also entirely on the East Side. Joseph Carlino was not the former Speaker when I raised the question; he was the Speaker of the Assembly. The New York Times supported and endorsed my work in that effort as did many thousands of people who journeyed to Albany to support the inquiry and to urge that Rockefeller’s $100 million fallout shelter program be abandoned. Due to the support of newspapers in New York City and the public, the program was never implemented and together we had saved the state a huge sum. All of that too was reported in The New York Times at the time.
I called Mr. Gupte at the Times in an attempt to secure the basis for his entirely false information. He never returned my calls. However, many of the reporters there and other staff members were friends or acquaintances of mine and I was able to obtain Mr. Gupte’s home telephone number, which I believe was in Brooklyn. I called him at home and after he admitted that he was Pranay Gupte, and that took several minutes, I asked him to name the “legal experts” who told him that the Wounded Knee case was not a major civil rights test. He said he did not remember a single name. Of course, I knew there was no expert because anyone familiar with the facts would have known that we had prevailed, the Indians were not convicted, and the case was dismissed. I asked Gupte how he had heard that we had lost the case. He said he could not remember. Of course, the Gupte piece began by stating that my opposition to the Warren Report “h
as proven remunerative,” thus echoing the CIA direction that my “financial interest” in the Kennedy assassination should be stressed whenever the subject of the murder was relevant.
I do not know if Gupte was paid by the CIA for his work on their behalf, but if he sought my counsel I would advise he might take that matter up with his shop steward and agent and remind them, in the words of Othello,he has done the state some service and they know’t.
Gupte publishes on his website his ethical standard for journalists that he has named, “The Pranay Principles.” I insist that I am not making this up. It is reassuring to know that he who defames you in The New York Times by publishing false allegations has created a code of ethics, albeit self-named and alliterative. His Second Commandment begins, “Never forget who signs your check.” He has demonstrated that he has not.
I have singled out The New York Times for this discussion, although its reportage was rather typical of major newspapers, primarily because it is the most august daily newspaper and the only one I read every day and generally feel comfortable relying upon. I have noticed similar coverage in many other publications. The exceptions of which I am aware are few, but do include the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, primarily due to the work of Richard Dudman, and the San Francisco Chronicle, due to the work of its book review editor.
