My new book, "Into the Nightmare"

[Tracy Riddle]

Joseph have you ever wondered why JFK gets all the Roshomon metaphors? Why the rest of the presidents don't get their share? Perhaps we could start a campaign?

No seriously Joseph one of the things that most interests me about your book is your comments on The Nation magazine and, briefly, The Progressive.

You seem to want to stick to the reportorial mode here and not delve TOO deeply into the question of why these OSTENSIBLY "left" magazines would do so much to protect the National Security State. My questions are

1) have you done much background reading on propaganda history during the Cold War (lord knows I would not have had time for it, given all the research you did on this book, plus having a day job)

2) speaking more informally what would you speculate is the reason for these ostensibly left publications to be working so hand in noir glove with the intelligence agencies?

Increasingly, it seems to me "With a """"left""""" like this... (trilateral dot-fire)"

I personally think that when Jack Ruby shot Oswald, a lot of Jews on the left like I.F. Stone and A.L. Wirin panicked. All they could imagine was that some kind of Communist-Jewish plot might be uncovered, and this was a nightmare scenario. It would just confirm what the Radical Right was saying. According to Mark Lane, Wirin said, "I say thank God for Earl Warren. He saved us from a pogrom. He saved our nation. God bless him for what he has done in establishing that Oswald was the lone assassin." In response to a question from Lane, Wirin said that even if Oswald were innocent, Warren had done the right thing for the country. (Plausible Denial)