Harold Weisberg (April 8, 1913 – February 21, 2002)[ Weisberg was one of the foremost members of the so-called first-generation critics of the Warren Commission. His best-known work was the four-part series, Whitewash. He also wrote about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.]
Biography
Early life
Harold Weisberg, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants, was born in Philadelphia in 1913. When he was in the fifth grade, his family moved to Wilmington, Delaware, where he spent the remainder of his childhood.[ He left college before graduating when his father died unexpectedly in 1934. Weisberg relocated to Washington, D.C., in order to obtain a better-paying job than he was earning as a reporter.
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Government service
After working in the Agriculture Deparment, he landed a position in 1936 with the new Senate Civil Liberties Committee under Chairman Robert M. La Follette Jr. Created as a result of the Wagner Act, the committee's tasks included probing anti-union activities by corporations. Weisberg assisted Justice Department lawyers in preparing subpoenas for witnesses, and he investigated labor-rights violations in Harlan County, Kentucky.[ He enjoyed working for the La Follette committee but was fired in October 1939 for allegedly leaking confidential information to the press (he disputed the allegation). For the next three years he was a freelance journalist, mostly writing articles for Click magazine on subjects such as Nazi Germany cartels and illegal German-American business arrangements. In late 1942 he joined the U.S. Army. He was assigned to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), where he was an analyst and troubleshooter.
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After the war, Weisberg and other former OSS members were moved to the State Department. In June 1947, he became a casualty of the Second Red Scare when he was one of ten State Department employees fired following pressure from the House Un-American Activities Committee. Although there were no hearings held or charges filed, the presumed explanation is that the employees were dismissed for being potential security risks.
Not long after this episode, Weisberg sought to distance himself from Washington, D.C., and government work by starting a new career as a Poultry farming. He and his wife Lillian bought a tract of land on the northwestern end of Montgomery County, Maryland. Their business thrived in the 1950s, but then adversity struck when a nearby military base began flying helicopters directly over their farm.
JFK assassination
When the Warren Report was published in September 1964, Weisberg purchased and studied it, and he did the same with the 26-volume Warren Commission Hearings & Exhibits released two months later. Incensed by what he regarded as a shoddy, deceptive government investigation,[ Dell Publishing put out a reprint edition of the book in 1966.
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In a New Republic review of Whitewash and of Edward Jay Epstein's Inquest, Alex Campbell lauded both authors for poring over the published assassination materials and spotting discrepancies and unanswered questions. Campbell mentioned how Weisberg identified numerous instances of conflicting eyewitness testimony about the bullet wounds in JFK, and in murdered Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit, and yet the Warren Report "showed absolutely no curiosity about those glaring contradictions".
Whitewash was followed by Whitewash II, self-published in late 1966. The latter book gives a harsh assessment of the JFK autopsy, citing how basic autopsy documents were never made public and were missing from the Warren Commission's files. Weisberg says the president "got an autopsy unworthy of a Bowery Bum."[ He went on to publish two more volumes in the Whitewash series.
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In the late 1960s, Weisberg worked with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison in his prosecution of Clay Shaw for conspiring to assassinate JFK.[ Garrison called Weisberg "one of the most indefatigable critics of the Warren report."]
King assassination
Weisberg also devoted time to studying the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. After being hired as an investigator by convicted assassin James Earl Ray, Weisberg came to believe his client had not fired the bullet that killed King.[ In his book Frame-Up (1971), Weisberg characterizes Ray as filling the same role as Oswald: "the decoy, the patsy, the man meant to be caught."][ Weisberg contends that Ray was pressured into pleading guilty (which he subsequently recanted) to avoid the disclosures of a full trial. Weisberg finds similar motifs in the King and JFK assassinations, for example, Ray, like Oswald, seemed to have a "double"— somebody else knew about and was using Ray's aliases; a duplicate driver's license for Ray was picked up by somebody other than him in Birmingham, Alabama; two white Mustangs (one containing Ray) fled the scene after the King shooting in Memphis][—and that a double points to conspiracy.][ This edition contains an Afterword by James Earl Ray.]
In his review of Frame-Up, Fred J. Cook said of Weisberg:
Weisberg was a frequent user of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to petition the U.S. government for assassination records. He filed multiple FOIA lawsuits to obtain copies of photographs and documents related to the King assassination.
Clashes with other critics
Despite his role as a leader within the community of Warren Commission critics,
After having cooperated with Jim Garrison in the late 1960s, Weisberg developed an animus toward the former New Orleans DA, and wrote that his "proliferating conspiracy theories mislead and confuse as much or more than the faulted official conclusions."[ In a letter to The Washington Post, Weisberg labeled JFK a "monumental piece of disinformation".][
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Later years
In Weisberg's later years, his assassination research work was curtailed by health issues. He battled a kidney ailment, diabetes, and sepsis.[ In 1989 he had open-heart surgery. He did manage to produce two final books: Case Open (1994)—a rebuttal to Gerald Posner's bestseller, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993)—and Never Again! The Government Conspiracy in the JFK Assassination (1995).
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On February 21, 2002, Harold Weisberg died of cardiovascular disease at his home in Frederick, Maryland.[ He was 88.
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Media appearances
With his reputation as an assassination expert, Weisberg was a guest commentator in documentary films and TV programs. He was interviewed in the documentaries, The Men Who Killed Kennedy (1988),
Harold Weisberg Archive
In 1992, Weisberg decided to leave his voluminous assassination research files to Hood College in Frederick, Maryland.
Publications
Books
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Republished by Skyhorse in 2013 under the title, Whitewash III: The Photographic Whitewash of the JFK Assassination.
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Foreword by Jim Garrison.
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Republished by Carroll & Graf in 1993 with a postscript by James Earl Ray.
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Includes a legal analysis by Jim Lesar.
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This was a reissue of Frame-Up under a new title.
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Manuscripts
Articles
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"Darken Your House for... More Docule Birds Less Cannibalism". Everybody's Poultry Magazine (October 1962): 9, 11, 36.
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"Hysteria in Meat-Tyoe Birds". Everybody's Poultry Magazine (December 1962): 9-10, 35.
Book reviews
Speeches
Testimony
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Testimony, with Jim Garrison. Grand Jury Proceedings Special Investigations. Orleans Parish Grand Jury (April 28, 1967)
Other
- :This item has been digitized from Oliver Stone's personal copy of the first version of the film script, and it contains handwritten notes from Harold Weisberg.
See also
Further reading
External links
