Case Open: The Unanswered JFK Assassination Questions

by Harold Weisberg

No one knows more about the assassination of President Kennedy than Harold Weisberg, so said the FBI in open court.
Harold Weisberg - a former OSS and Senate Investigatorwrote and published. Whitewash in 1965, the first book criticizing the conclusion of the Warren Commission. Since then, he has written and published seven books on President Kennedy's assassination. Case Open is a book Mr. Weisberg felt compelled to write. He felt a need and determination to set the record straight.
In proving that Gerald Posner, in Case Closed, has proven nothing, Mr. Weisberg has proven that President Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy.
In analyzing Case Closed, he demonstrates that Gerald Posner has distorted evidence, suppressed evidence, omitted evidence, developed no new evidence, omitted sources, misappropriated the research of others and misled the reader into believing that he had sponsored new scientific computer enhancements.
At best, Gerald Posner has provided a case for the prosecution. Now it is time to present the case for Case Open.
Let the American public decide who has presented the stronger Gerald Posner or Harold Weisberg.

Genres: Nonfiction

188 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1994

About the author

Harold Weisberg was a prolific author & persistent critic of the official report that found a lone gunman responsible for the death of President John F. Kennedy & who was often dubbed the dean of assassination researchers.

Mr. Weisberg's career as the writer of about 10 published & roughly 35 unpublished books on the murders of Kennedy & the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. came last in a series of endeavors. He had been a journalist, a labor investigator for then-Progressive Party Sen. Robert M. La Follette Jr. (Wis.), an investigator for a World War II spy agency, a State Department intelligence analyst & a prize-winning Montgomery County poultry farmer.

In an obsession that kept him in financial hardship during the last 35 years, Mr. Weisberg collected in his home more than 250,000 government papers on the 1963 Kennedy assassination & scoured millions more at the National Archives. He produced one of the earliest books about the president's death, in 1965.

Mr. Weisberg also became a leading authority on the 1968 King killing & was an investigator on behalf of James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty to the crime but later recanted his story.

Mr. Weisberg came to believe that neither Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused Kennedy gunman, nor Ray was responsible for the deaths of the prominent leaders. He focused on what he considered the inadequacies of the government investigations, specifically an improper probe of the available evidence. But for all his work, he never found definitive answers.

He detested many other students of conspiracy, foremost filmmaker Oliver Stone, whose 1991 "JFK" spun out all kinds of theories about the president's death.

"To do a mishmash like this is out of love for the victim & respect for history?" Mr. Weisberg said to The Washington Post. "I think people who sell sex have more principle."

In contrast, Mr. Weisberg presented information he gleaned from government investigative papers in an often dry manner--even if that belied his cover tag lines promising "the end of the cover-up--official lies exposed. Never such an investigation--never such evidence!"

His first literary success was a self-published work called Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report (1965). After being turned down by several publishers, he publicized the book himself & sold more than 30,000 copies. Dell then published it & a follow up, Whitewash II: The FBI-Secret Service Cover Up (both 1966).

Other books followed, including: Oswald in New Orleans: Case of Conspiracy with the C.I.A. (Canyon Books, 1967); Martin Luther King: The Assassination (Carroll & Graf, 1993); and Case Open: The Unanswered JFK Assassination Questions (Carroll & Graf, 1994).

Mr. Weisberg, a Philadelphia native, grew up in Wilmington DE, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. He attended the University of Delaware & then wrote articles for the Wilmington Morning News & the Sunday supplement of the Philadelphia Ledger.

In the late 1930s, he worked for La Follette, who chaired a special Senate investigating committee commonly called the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee. Mr. Weisberg was sent to look at suspected labor-rights violations in Harlan County, Ky.

During World War II, he served in the Army & the Office of Strategic Services. He joined State after the war but left in the late 1940s. He turned to farm life near Hyattsville with his wife, & they won prizes for their poultry. They also were early participants in a Peace Corps program called "Geese for Peace," in which the birds were shipped overseas to be raised in poverty-stricken countries. He turned to writing full-time after relinquishing farm life in the mid-1960s.

By that time, Mr. Weisberg's fascination with the Kennedy death was solidified. In September 1964, the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy -- called the Warren Commission -- concluded that Oswald was solely responsible for

Reviews

[Pete daPixie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Harold Weisberg's 'Case Open' from 1994 may well mislead the reader who sees 'Case Open:The Unanswered JFK Assassination Questions' as a revelatory key to the crime of the 20th century.
Not so. The front cover does state that 'Case Open' deals with the omissions, distortions and falsifications of 'Case Closed' the much vaunted fiction from Gerald Posner.
The pioneer of critical research into the JFK assassination, old Harold sends such a devastating broadside into the creaking Posner hulk, that when the smoke clears poor Gerald hasn't got a case, let alone a closed one.
Actually, this 170 page rant from Mr Angry becomes quite amusing, but the unanswered JFK assassination questions remain hidden and marked classified/top secret.

[Donald · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the last book the great JFK assassination researcher Harold Weisberg ever wrote. He was well over 80 years old at the time, but was so outraged over Gerald Posner's ridiculous "Case Open" that he was compelled to pick up his pen one more time. This book is basically a point-by-point counter to Posner's inaccurate, overhyped production. As with all of Weisberg's writings, one must acquire a taste for his bitter, acerbic style. Personally, I loved the passionate way he wrote, and no one can deny his importance to the JFK assassination research community. Harold Weisberg was a great American, and a personal hero of mine. I highly recommend this book.

[Steven H · Rating 2 out of 5]

A STRONG (AND ‘PERSONAL’) ATTACK ON POSNER’S BOOK, ‘CASE CLOSED’

Harold Weisberg (1913-2002) was an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) analyst during World War II, and as a U.S. Senate staff member and investigative reporter, who wrote numerous books about the Kennedy assassination.

He wrote in the Preface to this 1994 book, “When President John F. Kennedy was killed… I---like most Americans---spent every minute possible before the tube… to keep up with the news… I did not see how the lone accused, Lee Harvey Oswald, could be tried… I decided to analyze the official report on the assassination when it was issued… Perforce my work on the assassination and its investigation also became a study of how our basic institutions work, or failed to work…”

He says in the ‘Author’s Preface,’ “[Gerald] Posner’s small-minded effort to diminish my work and question has the effect… of making himself smaller… in his little-man dirtiness… the character assassination he intended … cannot make him any larger than the small man he is.” (Pg. xv)

He states, “What Posner also keeps secret in his … book is that a little more than 20 percent of the image captured in the film is not seen when the film is projected or when it is duplicated…this 20 percent of the image that is lost when the film is projected … holds quintessential evidence not seen on projection.” (Pg. 5-6)

He continues, “He gets into his great discovery saying, ‘a young girl … began turning to her right… less then 1.5 seconds later, the enhancement clearly shows that she has stopped… and was staring back at the School Book Depository…’ … What Posner really says boils down to that one ten-year-old Willis girl and the meaning he gives to her actions.” (Pg. 11-14) He adds, “it is the entire basis for [Posner’s] book: that little girl and those ‘enhancements’ and how Posner handled it.” (Pg. 23)

He continues, “Posner indicates no source other than himself for what he alone saw in the ‘enhanced film.’ He says that this is how HE timed the first shot at Zapruder Frame 162… There is no such ‘confirmation… There is no such testimony. Posner makes it up… Posner boasts of his 200 interviews. He does not say that he interviewed Connelly….” (Pg. 28)

He recounts an earlier encounter with Posner: “I did not know what kind of book he was writing. But he deceived me about what he was writing. He told me he was writing a book limited to exposing commercialization and exploitation of the assassination by … ‘critics’ and on all the deception of the people about that tragedy... If Posner had not lied to me about the book he was writing, if he had told me of any interest in Nosenko, I would have told him of my file drawer of Nosenko records. From the book he published, however, it is clear that he had no interest in the truth and would have had no interest in that considerable volume of Nosenko records.” (Pg. 43-44)

He reports, “Failure Analysis Associates, Inc. (FaAA) is the nation’s leading consulting firm dedicated to the investigation, analysis, and prevention of failures of an engineering or scientific nature. Our work is well-known throughput the litigation field… The ABA [American Bar Association] approached FaAA to assist with a Mock Trial… We were very pleased with… the materials that we produced… I know of not a single major media comment on or reporting for Posner’s taking Failure Analysis’s work for the ABA and presenting it as done for him… This presentation, while referred to as a ‘mock trial, was not that at all. It was much too limited to be referred to properly as a ‘mock trial.’… It definitely was not ‘a forum to prove or disprove that Oswald killed President Kennedy.” (Pg. 60-66)

He notes, “It did not convince the jury: the Journal of the bar association headlined its account, ‘Jury Deadlocks in Oswald Mock Trial.’ … This is an entire disproof of Posner’s entire book… The jury itself refused to accept what Posner himself represents as beyond any question at all, as absolutely unquestionable.” (Pg. 72-73)

He notes, “As there is no accounting for how that barricade of cartons was surmounted twice without a single fingerprint being detected, there is also no accounting for the time required for that careful hiding of the rifle…” (Pg. 88)

He states, “Then there is the Failure Analysis treatment of ‘The Single Bullet’… it does depict the point of that bullet’s entry well to the Presidents right… it shows the exit lower. This is to make the bullet’s imputed career inside the governor seem possible. But in its exit from JFK… that bullet has to have made holes in the front of the President’s shirt and tie that are not in them. Magical shirt and collar, too?” (Pg. 98)

He argues, “Even after the protective covering had been partly removed it is apparent that placing the rifle as it was found took some care and time, should have left fingerprints, which it did not, and none of the considerable amount of time this alone took is included in any time reconstruction, notoriously not in Posner’s contrived one. When a writer can be this thoroughly dishonest when writing about … the assassination of a President, his word cannot be taken for anything at all. It is beyond belief that anyone could to this for money and for the attention diligent and competent publisher could and did get hm… But it is too early to ask ‘can anyone be more dishonest?’” (Pg. 117)

He summarizes, “What then is the actual evidence, not Posner’s fabrication, and what does it show and mean? The actual official evidence is that Oswald did not and could not have carried a rifle into the building that morning. That the blanket in which it had allegedly been stored and the handmade paper bad in which he allegedly carried the rifle to the building did not have any oil on them from the ‘well-oiled’ rifle. That he could not have been in that so-called ‘sniper’s nest’ at the time the shots were fired. And on this limited basis, from the actual official evidence only, could not have been that sixth-floor assassin.” (Pg. 125)

He speculates, “he too, two days to interview Jim Tague?... can it possibly be---that not later than January 19 and 20, 1992, he knew without question that there had been a conspiracy to kill the President and he still went ahead and published … the exact opposite of what he had from other sources when right there in front of him he had the best first-person source on some of it in the entire world to give him all the details? That is investigating?... Well, it is. Posner-style, apparently.” (Pg. 145)

He says, “This is the way that crime was investigate… This is what made it possible for the President to be consigned to history with the dubious epitaph of a dishonest noninvestigation that was officially decided upon virtually the instant Osward died… The engineering report, too, was in the ‘Curbstone’ file Posner either did not look at or looked in and ignored… And this is, too, only one of the many reasons Posner and his ilk should be consigned to history’s refuse heaps.” (Pg. 166)
He concludes, “the assassination of a President… nullifies our entire system of government. It is the greatest subversion. Yet the major media failed to meet its responsibilities then and ever since then… No major book publisher has ever published this kind of criticism… and when such a book can be published, it is by a small publisher. They have the courage. We are in a bad shape when this can happen in our country AND IT HAS HAPPENED!” (Pg. 177)

Weisberg’s antipathy toward Posner and the exaggerated personal attacks he makes on him greatly reduces the effectiveness of this book. (Some of his earlier books are more ‘evidence-based.’)