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A history of Ramparts magazine
#3
Paul Rigby Wrote:Metamorphosed from mildly modernising/dissident Catholic think-rag (featuring, at least once, Thomas Merton) of the period 1962-65, into ultimate radical chic provocateur (1967-75).

Ran a number of influential - and, in some instances, thoroughly misleading - pieces on the Dallas coup; the CIA; and some intermittent Chomsky.

Predictably, I thought it was rather closer to a wing of the CIA than it let on. But that's just me.

In its October 1966 edition, Ramparts dedicated its central section to a lengthy, advert-free, investigation of the JFK assassination, the David Welsh-edited In The Shadow of Dallas. In the same edition, on the worn heels of William W. Turner’s penitential memoir of FBI service – “I was a burglar, wiretapper, bugger and spy for the FBI,” a title that read rather more prosaically, one imagines, in the US than the UK - not to mention three pages of vintage Ginsberg gibberish, it served up the most famous spoof in the canon of JFK assassination literature, the review by Jacob Brackman (“a staff editor of the New Yorker magazine”) and Faye Levin (“a graduate of Radcliffe…published in the Harvard crimson”) of a non-existent book by an imaginary author: Ulov G. K. Leboeuf’s self-published tetralogy, Time of the Assassins.

As with most successful satires, the review prepared its trap with some care. It began by examining three real works - by Epstein (Legend), Weisberg (Whitewash I), and Lane (Rush to Judgment) – which the duo briskly considered before dismissing them with a judgment of some acuity. All three works, they noted, suffered from an “overweaning reluctance to point a finger.” Then it was on to Leboeuf, and a piece of sustained mockery which combined the knowingness of Monocle, that who’s who of CIA officers and literary fellow-travellers, with a buff’s eye for testimony detail, albeit of a special kind – that which the nominal opposition under review never mentioned. One paragraph has lingered with me ever since I first read it:

Quote:One eyewitness to the shooting, Merriweather Really, described the initial reaction as appearing to be an awkward, insufficiently rehearsed play. Two shots rang out in quick succession, he stated, sounding like they were coming from Kennedy’s car itself, or from one of the cars right behind. “The Vice-President slapped Andy Youngblood on the back and whooped, and the entire brigade of police and secret service men made a dash for the Knoll, almost as if,” testified Really, “they had known in advance they were going to head that way.”

Which, of course, they did:

Quote:Jack Franzen: “He noticed the men, who were presumed to be Secret Service Agents, riding in the car directly behind the President's car, unloading from the car, some with firearms in their hands, and noticed police officers and these plain clothesmen [sic] running up the grassy slope across Elm Street from his location and toward a wooded and bushy area located across Elm Street from him,” Statement to the FBI, November 24, 1963.

http://www.jfk-online.com/franzen.html
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Messages In This Thread
A history of Ramparts magazine - by Paul Rigby - 06-09-2009, 04:27 PM
A history of Ramparts magazine - by Paul Rigby - 11-10-2009, 07:24 PM
A history of Ramparts magazine - by Paul Rigby - 16-10-2009, 10:08 PM

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