Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T01:16:19.619Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE WARREN COMMISSION AND THE DONS: AN ANGLO-AMERICAN MICROHISTORY*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2011

COLIN KIDD
COLIN KIDD*
Affiliation:
School of History and Anthropology, Queen's University Belfast Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Distortion in intellectual history is not a direct function of distance from the present. The recent past can create its own problems of perspective. The assassination of President John F. Kennedy is a case in point. Is the controversy surrounding the assassination a worthy subject for an intellectual historian? After all, there is now little serious debate as to what happened in Dallas on 22 November 1963. Mainstream historians regard the case as closed, an issue settled by the exhaustive and fair-minded deliberations of the Warren Commission, whose report, issued in the autumn of 1964, concluded that a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, a sad and unsettled individual from a dysfunctional background, had killed the president. However, as we know, the topic remains, almost half a century later, a matter of huge fascination, but only outside the gates of the academy. The study of Kennedy's assassination is now best known to academics as a counterculture, which grossly caricatures the best practices of the academy and where extravagant theories tend to trump sound scholarship, plausibility and common sense. Indeed, this disjunction between the obsessions of amateur historians, known as buffs, and the reluctance of academic historians to lose caste by exploring subjects such as the Kennedy assassination which the wider public—but only the wider public—seems to find worthy of further research and explanation is, as Professor W. D. Rubinstein notes, an interesting sociological and historiographical phenomenon in its own right. Writing in 1994, Max Holland, the journalist and intelligence historian, noted that the history of the Kennedy era was “bifurcated”. For academic historian writing on the Kennedy presidency the assassination is “treated as a footnote or afterthought if it is addressed at all”, while “very few of the more than 450 books and tens of thousands of articles that compose the vast assassination literature published since 1964 have been written by historians.”

Type
Essays
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , August 2011 , pp. 411 - 434
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Posner, G., Case Closed (New York, 1993)Google Scholar.

2 C. Trillin, “The Buffs”, New Yorker, 10 June 1967.

3 W. D. Rubinstein, “Oswald Shoots JFK: But Who Is the Real Target?” History Today (Oct. 1999), 15–21.

4 Holland, M., “After Thirty Years: Making Sense of the Assassination”, Reviews in American History 22 (1994), 191–209, 191CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Cf. Annan, N., The Dons (London, 1999)Google Scholar.

6 Hampshire, who would later become Warden of Wadham College, Oxford, and was knighted in 1979, had been a don at All Souls, Oxford (1936–40, 1955–60) and at New College, Oxford, (1950–55) and was Grote Professor at London (1960–63), but from 1963 to 1970 was based in the USA as professor of philosophy at Princeton.

7 Oxford University Gazette, 31 Oct. 1963, 243. R. Hofstadter, “The Paranoid Style”, in idem, The Paranoid Style in American politics and other essays (Cambridge, MA, 1996; first published 1964). For Hofstadter's career see Brown, D. S., Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography (Chicago, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Brogan, D. W., “The Presidency”, Encounter 22 (Jan. 1964), 3–7, 7Google Scholar.

9 Bugliosi, V., Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (New York, 2007), 993Google Scholar. Later, from 1967, another obscure niche magazine, Ramparts, became the leading vehicle for conspiracy theorists.

10 Hofstadter, “Paranoid Style”, 7 n.

11 Andrew, C. and Mitrokhin, V., The Mitrokhin Archive (London, 2000; firat published 1999), 294–6Google Scholar; Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, 990.

12 For Lane's career see Lewis, R. W., The Scavengers and Critics of the Warren Report (New York, 1967), 19–54Google Scholar; Kelin, J., Praise for a Future Generation: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy and the First Generation of Critics of the Warren Report (San Antonio, TX, 2007), 15–29Google Scholar; Moore, J., Conspiracy of One, rev edn. (Fort Worth, TX, 1991), 79–81Google Scholar; Bugliosi, Reclaiming history, 1001.

13 “Defense Brief for Oswald”, National Guardian, 19 Dec. 1963.

14 Monk, R., Bertrand Russell, vol 2, 1921–70 The Ghost of Madness (London, 2000), 401Google Scholar.

15 Moorehead, C., Bertrand Russell (London, 1993; first published 1992), 539Google Scholar.

16 Monk, Ghost of Madness, 435.

17 Ibid., 441–2.

18 List in Edith Russell's hand, McMaster University, Bertrand Russell Archive, RAI class 640.

19 Toynbee to Russell, 29 May 1964, Bertrand Russell Archive, RAI 640.

20 Brogan to Russell, 11 June 1964, Bertrand Russell Archive, RAI 640.

21 Haffenden, J., William Empson, vol. 2, Against the Christians (Oxford, 2006), 497Google Scholar.

22 Boyd Orr joined despite misgivings about Russell's Committee. See Griffin, N., ed., The Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell: The Public Years, 1914–1970 (London, 2001), 576–8Google Scholar.

23 See e.g. The Times, 10 June 1964.

24 See Hugh Trevor-Roper to Tom Miller, 4 Sept. 1976, Dacre Papers, Christ Church, Oxford.

25 Benn, T., Out of the Wilderness: Dairies 1963–67 (London, 1988; first published 1987), 119, 122Google Scholar.

26 Haffenden, Empson, 498.

27 “Sixteen Questions on the Assassination”, Minority of One (Sept. 1964), 6–8. Also published separately as pamphlet in USA. See Blackwell, K. and Ruja, H., eds., A Bibliography of Bertrand Russell (3 vols., London and New York, 1994), I, 264–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also reprinted in Russell, Autobiography, 3 vols. (London, 1967–9), 3: 197–204.

28 See e.g. Feinberg, B. and Kasrils, R., eds., Bertrand Russell's America, 2 vols. (London, 1973–84), 1: 110Google Scholar; Russell, Autobiography, 1: 16; 2: 177; Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. 15 (London, 2000), 327; Moorehead, Russell, 349, 385, 431.

29 Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol. 29 (Abingdon, 2005), 182–6.

30 “The Myth of American Freedom”, Frontier (April 1963); and Minority of One (May 1963), reprinted in Feinberg and Kasrils, Bertrand Russell's America, 2: 356–60. See Blackwell and Ruja, Bibliography, 2: 251.

31 Guttenplan, D. D., American Radical: The Life and Times of I. F. Stone (New York, 2009), 415Google Scholar; Wreszin, M., A Rebel in Defense of Tradition: The Life and Politics of Dwight Macdonald (New York, 1994), 388–9Google Scholar; Bugliosi, Reclaiming History, 992 n.

32 D. W. Brogan, “Death in Dallas”, Encounter 23 (Dec. 1964), 20–26.

33 Kidd, C., “Lord Dacre and the Politics of the Scottish Enlightenment”, Scottish Historical Review 84 (2005), 202–20, 211–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Worden, B. “Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, 1914–2003”, Proceedings of the British Academy 150 (2007), 247–84, 257Google Scholar.

34 Trevor-Roper's investigations are described in Sisman, Adam, Hugh Trevor-Roper: A Biography (London, 2010), 132–7Google Scholar.

35 “History Professional and Lay”, reprinted in Lloyd-Jones, H., Pearl, V. and Worden, B., eds., History and Imagination: Essays in Honour of H. R. Trevor-Roper (London, 1981), 13Google Scholar.

36 Hugh Trevor-Roper, “Kennedy Murder Inquiry Is Suspect”, Sunday Times, 13 Dec. 1964.

37 “John Sparrow on the Warren Report”, Sunday Times, 20 Dec. 1964.

38 Hugh Trevor-Roper, “The Warren Report Controversy”, Sunday Times, 3 Jan. 1965.

39 John Sparrow, “Making Mysteries about Oswald”, Sunday Times, 10 Jan. 1965.

40 See e.g. Davenport-Hines, R. (ed.), Letters from Oxford: Hugh Trevor-Roper to Bernard Berenson (London, 2006), 204 nGoogle Scholar; Worden, “Trevor-Roper”, 278.

41 Sparrow to Trevor-Roper, 25 Jan. 1965, in Sparrow Papers, All Souls College, Oxford, Box 49 (i).

42 Trevor-Roper to Sparrow, 19 Feb. 1965, Sparrow Papers Box 49 (i).

43 Sparrow to Trevor-Roper, 22 Feb. 1965, Sparrow Papers, Box 49 (i).

44 See Goodhart Papers, Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Eng c 3061–3.

45 Arthur Goodhart, “The Warren Commission from a Procedural Standpoint”, New York University Law Review (May 1965), 404–23.

46 Arthur Goodhart, “Where Warren's Critics Fail”, Sunday Telegraph, 25 Sept. 1966. See also idem, “The Mysteries of the Kennedy Assassination and the English Press”, Law Quarterly Review (Jan. 1967), 22–63.

47 “Myths and Myth-Makers: The Kennedy Assassination and the English Press”, New Law Journal no. 5269 (19 Jan. 1967), 77. Goodhart's reply is in the New Law Journal no. 5271 (2 Feb. 1967), 136–7. Cf. R. A. Cline (pseud.), “Postscript to Warren”, Spectator, 27 Jan., 1967.

48 For Foster, see Rothschild, M., “John Foster”, in Fraser, P., ed., Memorial Addresses of All Souls College Oxford (Oxford, privately published, 1989)Google Scholar.

49 According to the official version of events, Warren Commission Report (New York, 2003; first published 1964), 6, Oswald shot J. D. Tippit, a Dallas police officer, in a separate incident less than an hour after the assassination.

50 John Foster, “Kennedy: Unanswered Questions”, Daily Telegraph, 22 Sept. 1966.

51 Hampshire, Stuart, Spinoza (London, 1951)Google Scholar.

52 Richard Popkin, “The Second Oswald: The Case for a Conspiracy Theory”, New York Review of Books, 28 July 1966, 11–22; Popkin, , The Second Oswald (New York, 1966)Google Scholar.

53 See Silvers to Trevor-Roper, 10 March 1966; Trevor-Roper to Silvers, 25 March 1966; Silvers to Trevor-Roper, 31 March 1966, all in Dacre Papers. Popkin was the pioneering author of The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (Assen, 1960).

54 Wreszin, Rebel, 389.

55 Trevor-Roper to Paavo Soukka, 13 Oct. 1965, in Dacre Papers.

56 Lane's book would be reviewed by Sparrow in Town, Nov. 1966, 21–2.

57 Lane, Mark, Rush to Judgment (London, 1966)Google Scholar, “Acknowledgments”.

58 Hugh Trevor-Roper, “Testing the Toynbee System”, Sunday Times, 17 Oct. 1954; idem, “Arnold Toynbee's Millennium”, Encounter 8 (June 1957), 14–28.

59 Hugh Trevor-Roper, “Introduction”, Lane, Rush to Judgment, esp. 11–17.

60 See e.g. the anticlericalism of Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud, 1573–1645 (London, 1940); Worden, “Trevor-Roper”, 251, 256–7.

61 Hugh Trevor-Roper, “Qui a tué Kennedy?” L'express, 5–11 Sept. 1966, 58–70, at 60–63.

62 New York Times, 21 Nov. 1966.

63 “Mark Lane Interview”, Playboy, Feb. 1967, 41–68, at 68.

64 Trevor-Roper to Sparrow, 28 March 1967, in Sparrow Papers, Box 49 (i).

65 Trevor-Roper to Sparrow, 30 Oct. 1967, Sparrow Papers, Box 49 (i).

66 Sparrow to Trevor-Roper, 1 Nov. 1967, Sparrow Papers, Box 49 (i). See also Trevor-Roper to Sparrow, 23 Nov. 1967; Sparrow to Trevor-Roper, 6 Dec. 1967; and Sparrow to Trevor-Roper, 21 Dec. 1967, all in Box 49 (i). The exact nature of the “muddle” is not revealed.

67 John Sparrow, “After the Assassination”, Times Literary Supplement, 14 Dec. 1967, 1217–22.

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid., 1220.

70 Sparrow to Popkin, 15 Dec. 1967, Popkin Archive, Box 2, at the Assassination Archives and Research Center, Washington, DC.

71 For Roche's letter, 22 Dec. 1967, see Sparrow Papers, Box 49 (i); Times Literary Supplement, 4 Jan. 1968.

72 Sparrow to Trevor-Roper, 18 Jan. 1968, Sparrow Papers, Box 49 (i).

73 John Sparrow, “Whodunnit in Dallas?”, Times Literary Supplement, 8 Oct., 1982.

74 Summers, Anthony, The Kennedy Conspiracy (London, 1980)Google Scholar; Cf. Summers to Trevor-Roper, 28 Feb., 1980; and Trevor-Roper to Summers, 10 Mar. 1980, both in Dacre Papers.

75 For Trevor-Roper and the Hitler diaries see Harris, R., Selling Hitler (London, 1986)Google Scholar.