Sylvia Meagher was a research
analyst at the UN’s World Health Organization in New
York. She took a strong interest in the assassination of John
F. Kennedy
and in 1965 she published
Subject Index to the Warren Report and Hearings
and Exhibits. As Meagher pointed out, studying the entire
twenty-six volumes without a subject index would be "tantamount
to a search for information in the Encylopedia Britannica if the contents
were untitled, unalphabetized, and in random sequence."
A deep study of the Warren
Commission Report
convinced her that the its
detailed evidence contradicted its general conclusions. Meagher therefore
published Accessories After the Fact: The
Warren Commission, the Authorities, and the Report (1967).
Meagher was unconvinced that Lee
Harvey Oswald had
been a lone gunman and concluded that the Warren Commission had attempted
to cover-up details of the real people behind the assassination. Meagher
believed that John
F. Kennedy
had been killed by a group
Anti-Castro exiles.
Meagher helped
Edward
Jay Epstein
(Inquest:
The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth) and
Mark
Lane (Rush
to Judgement) in their research. However, she was highly
critical of other investigators such as Jim
Garrison and
David
Lifton.
In 1975 Richard
Schweiker, who
later became a member of the House
Select Committee on Assassinations,
pointed out that the Accessories After the
Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities, and the Report
"clearly establish Sylvia Meagher’s major contribution to
understanding this tragic incident in our nation’s history...
and was instrumental in finally causing a committee of Congress -
with full subpoena power, access to classified documents, and a working
knowledge of the nuances of the FBI and CIA - to take a second official
look at what happened in Dallas November 22, 1963.”
In 1980 Meagher co-authored with Gary Owen, the Master
Index to the John F.Kennedy Assassination Investigations.
This book incorporated
the House
Select Committee on Assassinations
volumes with the original
Warren
Commission Report.
Open
Debate on the Kennedy Assassination
(1)
Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact (1967)
Decision after decision,
the State Department removed every obstacle before Oswald... on his
path from Minsk to Dallas. The State Department's extraordinary and
unorthodox decisions and the decisions taken by other U.S. official
agencies in regard to Oswald fall into several general categories:
(1) repeated failure to prepare a 'lookout card' to check Oswald's
movement outside the US; (2) grant and renewal of Oswalds passport
despite cause for negative action; (3) apparent inaction and indifference
to Oswald's possible disclosure of classified military data; and (4)
pressure exerted and exceptional measures taken on behalf of Marina
Oswald's entry into the US.
(2)
Calvin Trillin, The New Yorker
(June 1967)
When the
Warren Report was published, some ten months after the assassination,
most Americans seemed to accept its conclusions, most editorialists
praised it for its thoroughness and clarity, one or two reviewers
criticized it as taking the form of a brief for the prosecution, and
perhaps a dozen obscure citizens, unaware of each other’s existence,
began to pore over it to prove that it was wrong. Eventually, of course,
critical books were written on the Report by professional journalists
such as Léo Sauvage, an American correspondent for Le Figaro,
and Sylvan Fox, the former city editor of the World-Telegram &
Sun; Mark Lane, the author of Rush to Judgment, and Harold
Weisberg, the author of Whitewash and Whitewash II,
became more or less professional critics; Edward Jay Epstein, whose
book on the alleged bungling of the Warren Commission investigation,
Inquest, is generally considered the single greatest contribution
to making criticism of the Report respectable, entered the field through
the orthodox routine of scholarship - in order to earn a Master’s
degree by analyzing the workings of a governmental commission; and
James Garrison, operating on the premise that the Warren Commission
failed to fulfill its duties, launched an investigation of his own
as district attorney of New Orleans. But in the two and a half years
between the assassination and the publication of Epstein’s book,
most of the hours spent examining the official version of the President’s
murder were spent by people who had no professional reason for their
interest and no plans to make a full-time career out of criticizing
the Warren Report. They tend to refer to themselves (and the professionals)
as “investigators” or “researchers” or, most often,
“critics.” They are also known as “assassination buffs.”
(3)
New
York Review of Books (7th December, 1967)
A critic of the Warren
Report, it seems to me, is obliged to apply to Garrison's evidence
the same strict and objective tests which he applied to the Commission's
evidence. By that yardstick, I find little merit in the testimony
of Russo and Bundy, although for reasons other than those against
which Professor Popkin (NYR, September 14) argues. Russo's story,
quite apart from the questions raised about resort to hypnosis and
sodium pentothal to elicit his story, seems to me inherently bereft
of credibility. I can scarcely believe that three conspirators discussed
the logistics of a plan to assassinate President Kennedy in the presence
of a fourth person, whom they left at liberty to inform on them whenever
the spirit moved him - before or after the assassination was accomplished.
(Other objections to Russo's testimony may or may not be warranted;
for example, Professor Popkin concedes that the notes of the first
interview with Russo written by Garrison's aide Andrew Sciambra do
not include this episode, but he does not explain why it was omitted
if, as Sciambra insists, it was discussed. I have heard a number of
different explanations from Garrison's supporters among the critics,
none of which provided plausible reasons for the omission of what
was undeniably the central part of Russo's story.)
As for Bundy's
allegations, I am skeptical not because of his drug addiction in the
past but because I reject an identification by any witness, however
upright, of a person or persons viewed on one occasion, from a distance,
almost four years earlier.
Mr. Garrison
has not yet revealed the basis for his allegation that Clay Shaw met
with and passed money to Oswald and Jack Ruby at Baton Rouge on September
3, 1963. Perhaps his evidence for the Baton Rouge rendezvous will
be more substantial than his evidence for the meeting in Ferrie's
apartment. But I must remind Professor Popkin that long before the
Baton Rouge meeting was mentioned, Mr. Garrison claimed that he had
established a link between Shaw, Oswald, and Ruby by decoding identical
cryptograms ("P.O. Box 19106") in Oswald's and Shaw's address
books which, when decoded, proved to be Ruby's unpublished 1963 telephone
number. Professor Popkin's article does not mention this claim by
Garrison. Perhaps he shares my view that Mr. Garrison's cryptographic
"evidence" is an embarrassment, predicated on a misreading
of the Oswald entry and a false assumption about the Shaw entry. If
Professor Popkin does accept the "code," it is far more
solid than some of the other evidence he has mentioned as indicating
that Garrison is on the right track. But even if he does not accept
the "code," Professor Popkin should still have mentioned
it in his inventory of Garrison's evidence, since it is highly relevant
to an evaluation of the district attorney's forensic skill and scruples….
The question
is, can Garrison prove the theory correct and sustain his charges
that the persons he has accused were indeed parties to the assassination?
I am not so impressed as Professor Popkin with Garrison's procedural
successes to date, nor do I regard the conviction of Dean Andrews
as a triumph, since it leaves unresolved the exact nature of the perjury.
Was it that Andrews, knowing that Shaw was Bertrand, failed to make
a positive identification? Or was it that, knowing that Shaw was not
Bertrand, Andrews failed to make an explicit denial? And what of Andrews's
allegation that the District Attorney asked him over dinner not to
make an explicit denial that Shaw was Bertrand? I do not find this
necessarily inconceivable; nor do I forget that Dean Andrews insisted,
loud and clear, in July 1964, that Oswald did not commit the assassination
- almost three years before Mr. Garrison's public statement that there
was no evidence that Oswald had shot anyone on November 22, 1963….
I am willing to wait with
Professor Popkin for the trial, but since the known evidence on Mr.
Garrison's side (the Russo/Bundy testimony, the "code,"
and the Baton Rouge rendezvous) is, at best, vulnerable, I find no
basis for assuming that the still-submerged evidence will be convincing
or conclusive. On the contrary, there is more reason to fear that
it will be as contrived and insubstantial as the so-called code of
Ruby's phone number….
(4)
Russell Stetler, introduction to Sylvia
Meagher's
Master Index to the John F.Kennedy Assassination Investigations
(1980)
To the FBI agents
in Dallas - who at least were doing their research on company time-the
thought of plowing through thousands of pages of unindexed reference
material was indeed daunting. Should we not pause to imagine how intimidating
such work looked to spare-time researchers, that first generation
of Warren Commission critics? Sylvia Meagher’s index to the volumes
not only enabled many researchers to get to work, pushed them over
the first hurdle, so to speak; her efforts also provided a model of
scholarly rigor and selfless personal dedication which has only grown
more stunning with the passage of time.
The Warren Commission’s
failure to provide an index to its twenty-six volumes - if only for
the future use of the FBI - was inexcusable. An index would have cost
the taxpayers some money, to be sure; but the sum could have approached
one-half of the percent of what the Warren Commission had already
spent. The long-term saving might have been measured in the time that
the FBI could have saved in checking out future leads and rumors.
The best that can be said in defense of the Commission is that it
never dreamed that its volumes would receive such intense scrutiny
over the years.
(5)
Sylvia
Meagher
and Gary Owen, Master Index to the John F. Kennedy Assassination
Investigations (1980)
Study of the Hearings
and Exhibits has destroyed the grounds for confidence in the Warren
Report. Study has shown the Report to contain (1) statements of fact
which are inaccurate and untrue, in the light of the official Exhibits
and objective verification; (2) statements for which the citations
fail to provide authentication; (3) misrepresentation of the testimony;
(4) omission of references to testimony inimical to findings in the
Report; (5) suppression of findings favorable to Oswald; (6) incomplete
investigation of suspicious circumstances which remain unexplained;
(7) misleading statements resulting from inadequate attention to the
contents of Exhibits; (8) failure to obtain testimony from crucial
witnesses; and (9) assertions which are diametrically opposite to
the logical inferences to be drawn from the relevant testimony or
evidence.
(6)
Kenneth
A. Rahn,
Sylvia
Meagher (2003)
Meagher’s leftist
leanings can be seen in quotes from her. For example, the dedication
to her book reads: “This book is dedicated to the innocent victims
of a society which often inflicts indignity, imprisonment, and even
death on the obscure and helpless.” She wanted an “end to
the cold war and a beginning of genuine peace, for equality and mutual
respect among men, for the rule of law and an end to brute violence.”
A passage on page xxiii of her Foreword also shows her leanings: “On
the day of the assassination the national climate of arrogance and
passivity in the face of relentless violence - beatings, burnings,
bombings, and shootings - yielded in some quarters to a sudden hour
of humility and self-criticism. The painful moment passed quickly,
for the official thesis of the lone, random assassin destroyed the
impulse for national self-scrutiny and repentance. Thus, the climate
of cruelty and barbaric hatred was restored after what was scarcely
an interruption, and it was possible for Cuban émigrés
- virtually with impunity and without regard for the hundreds of people
who might be killed or injured - to fire a bazooka at the United Nations
Headquarters building to express displeasure at the presence there
of Che Guevara. Thus it was possible for American Nazi thugs to assault
peaceful citizens assembled at a public meeting in Dallas at Christmas
1965. This it is possible for Americans to look upon the napalmed
children of Vietnam and listen to their terror nightly over the television
tubes, and to go about their daily business as usual.”
From the minute the assassination
was announced, it seemed improbable to her, and she became “instantaneously
skeptical” of the official explanation. She was convinced that
the government’s story was false and that they (including the
Dallas authorities) would try to pin it on a Communist. This suspicion
was reinforced when Oswald’s name, background, and guilt was
announced. She felt that the Dallas authorities piled evidence on
Oswald too fast. In response, she started to read on the assassination
and save every article she could find on it. She attended several
of Mark Lane’s lectures in NYC but reserved judgment until the
Warren Report appeared. Feeling that she could not possibly understand
the Report as is, she created her own index, a work that took several
months and 152 pages. The results convinced her that the Warren Commission’s
detailed evidence contradicted its general conclusions. Three years
of study convinced her that she had been right.
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