My new book, "Into the Nightmare"

[Joseph McBride]

Joseph McBride,
Thank you for answering, it was well worth the wait. In my follow-up, I was just clarifying that I had no problem with your thesis and was not attempting a sly dig at it by mentioning Buchanan's flawed work. Because while most sources maintain he was a blacklisted communist journalist working as a computer analyst in Paris there have been suspicions voiced (at least over at EF) that he was actually affiliated with the Agency somehow. Was not perhaps Sauvage (or was it Joeston?) raising that possibility when--in a review of "WHO KILLED KENNEDY?"--he mused that Buchanan had blamed every interest that could have potentially benefited from JFK's assassination except the big one--the one that mattered the most: i.e. the Warfare State. Any thoughts in that direction, i.e. that the book would have been an attempt to take highly skeptical Europeans in the wrong direction, away from the military/CIA to the southern racists is pure speculation however, not keeping in the spirit of your work. And no matter how you slice it looking back from the generations his hunch (inside info?) about Tippitt is indeed remarkable.

I look forward more than ever to reading your book and I'm glad you are busy doing press for it.

I recommend FRANK CAPRA: THE CATASTROPHE OF SUCCESS to anyone enamored with classic movies and interested in studio history. Along with a couple of others, it is in my accounting, the highest manifestation of the genre.

Hi, Matthew,

Thanks again for the good words about the post and about my Capra book. I think that's my best
biography, so am happy you recommend it.

I don't have any particular knowledge about Buchanan other than what I have read on him, which is sketchy. I admire
most of the skeptical people who tackled the story early, when information was hard to come by, and made
something valuable of their research, if only by raising questions that weren't being asked in most of the mainstream media. Whatever gaps and flaws there may be in Buchanan's book,
his insight about Tippit pursuing Oswald proved shrewd. M. S. Arnoni had already asked some
similar questions about Tippit in his December 1, 1963, article "Dark Thoughts about Dark Events" in "The Minority of One."
In my research in FBI files in the National Archives, I learned that Maggie
Daly of Chicago's American raised the possibility in her December 7, 1963, column that Tippit might have been sent
to silence Oswald. The FBI contacted her managing editor and got her to back off and retract the story. I trace
these early efforts and others over the years to try to crack the mystery of the Tippit killing.