W. Tracy Parnell

Author Fred Litwin has found himself embroiled in a manufactured controversy regarding his first book about the JFK assassination entitled I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak . The individual who has created this bogus debate is Jim Garrison apologist James DiEugenio. The following quote from DiEugenio’s article “Litwin and the Warren Report” describes his alleged problems with Litwin’s book: The very title of Litwin’s book, I Was a Teenage JFK Conspiracy Freak , strikes this reviewer as being deliberately provocative, but at least a bit ersatz. The implication of that title would be that, at one time, the author really believed that a conspiracy killed President Kennedy. Litwin says this was so, yet somehow, he does not produce any evidence to demonstrate it was in his entire book. He notes articles and talks he gave which support the Warren Commission and ridicule the critics. In response, Litwin has prepared a blog piece that gives specific examples of his critical and sk...

Introduction What connects Lee Harvey Oswald, George De Mohrenschildt, George Bouhe and Jack Ruby in the mind of Jim Garrison? The answer is the theory of “propinquity,” but after reading Fred Litwin’s new book, On the Trail of Delusion: Jim Garrison: The Great Accuser , it is obvious that is the wrong question. The real query is—why did anyone believe that the nutty Garrison had one scintilla of substantive evidence to connect Clay Shaw or anyone else to the JFK assassination? And a great follow-up to that would be—why does the discredited Garrison continue to retain devotes to this very day? The question of why anyone listened to Garrison has at least a plausible answer, but the follow-up is harder to wrap your mind around. Litwin points out that Garrison, the sixties New Orleans District Attorney who was infamous for his prosecution of businessman Shaw, was a commanding 6 feet 6 inches tall and wielded an air of integrity by virtue of his charisma and booming voi...