From the September-October, 1998 issue (Vol. 5 No. 6)

From the Chairman's Desk

The Assassination Records Review Board is approaching its sunset date. As of this writing they actually have less than 25 working days until they close. According to new director Laura Denk, her main focus in the last few weeks will be on constructing the Final Report which we look forward to reading. But even before that, there are two achievements of the Board that are already available to the public and which we make note of in this issue. First, Abraham Zapruder's 26-second film of the JFK assassination is now at your local video store. We discuss some of the history of that film and mention the fact that, even in this much improved version there still seem to be some frames missing and/or out of place. Also, before he left and Denk took over, Jeremy Gunn did some extraordinary work on the medical evidence in this case. On August 1st, the Review Board made this material public. It looks like some very interesting new evidence is now on the sworn record. It's so powerful that even the mainstream press could not ignore it.

Now that the Review Board is winding down, one of the clear questions facing those people who are still interested in this case is: What do we do next? Probe subscriber Dennis Bartholomew has also been thinking long and hard about this particular subject. He articulates those thoughts and ideas in this issue and shares them with our readers. We do hope that at the fall conferences, this issue is thoroughly discussed. It does appear with Gunn's work we now have the material to blow apart the HSCA's conclusions on the medical evidence.

Speaking of the House Select Committee, the time is long overdue for someone to take a long and serious critical/historical overview of the work of that body. There have been such looks at the Warren Commission and the Garrison investigation, yet not the Sprague/Blakey inquiry. I make an attempt here to jump start the process. The preliminary picture is not pretty.
On other fronts, Lisa Pease looks at the most recent media meltdown over the Operation Tailwind controversy. The craven press gatekeepers appear to have taken another dive on this one, and, no surprise, after CNN's propaganda blitz, the working press decided to sit it out. Remember Gary Webb? April Oliver now joins him. Lisa also informs our readers on how to help Sirhan's defense team regain access to the evidence in the RFK case. Let the California State Archives in Sacramento know you are outraged at the spectacle of Sirhan's lead investigator, Lynn Mangan being denied access to the evidence. Finally, Raymond Gallagher, new to Probe, delves into the unique sales history of Oswald's Mannlicher-Carcano. How did the bank deposit Oswald's money order for the weapon before Oswald wrote it?

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