Books in Brief: A Heritage of Stone

A Heritage of Stone, by Jim Garrison (Putnam, $6.95). Make no mistake, Garrison’s book will be greeted gleefully on every campus this side of Bob Jones U. For one thing, it’s well written, with a galloping suspense-novel pace. For another, it tells every rad-lib in the country what he’s been dying to hear: John Kennedy was assassinated by agents of the Pentagon and the CIA because he wanted to bug out of Vietnam. Silly? Sure. But, unfortunately, given the structure of the book and the context in which the charge is made, plausible, especially if you want to believe it in the first place. Garrison builds the book within a critique of the Warren Commission report, and he manages to summarize succinctly, in good clear prose, every discrepancy which leaks from the report’s uncaulked seams. Then, having convincingly kayoed the Commission, he slips in his own solution to the murder. The shooting was a “coup d’état” which has resulted in “a military takeover of the U.S.” We now live in a military dictatorship, and the assassins—who also got Martin Luther King and RFK—may get us next. This raises some questions, of course. Why are the agents of “the warfare state” allowing Nixon to end the war? Why are important senators allowed to speak out against Vietnam? Why was Garrison allowed to publish this book? But these are

irrelevant questions, of course. The boys at Berkeley won’t ask them.

JC

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J. R. Coyne Jr.

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Martin Luther King Jr

Richard Nixon

A Heritage of Stone, by Jim Garrison (Putnam, $6.95). Make no mistake, Garrison’s book will be greeted gleefully on every campus this side of Bob Jones U. For one thing, it’s well written, with a galloping suspense-novel pace. For another, it tells every rad-lib in the country what he’s been dying to hear: John Kennedy was assassinated by agents of the Pentagon and the CIA because he wanted to bug out of Vietnam. Silly? Sure. But, unfortunately, given the structure of the book and the context in which the charge is made, plausible, especially if you want to believe it in the first place. Garrison builds the book within a critique of the Warren Commission report, and he manages to summarize succinctly, in good clear prose, every discrepancy which leaks from the report’s uncaulked seams. Then, having convincingly kayoed the Commission, he slips in his own solution to the murder. The shooting was a “coup d’état” which has resulted in “a military takeover of the U.S.” We now live in a military dictatorship, and the assassins—who also got Martin Luther King and RFK—may get us next. This raises some questions, of course. Why are the agents of “the warfare state” allowing Nixon to end the war? Why are important senators allowed to speak out against Vietnam? Why was Garrison allowed to publish this book? But these are

irrelevant questions, of course. The boys at Berkeley won’t ask them.