Correspondence
CORRESPONDENCE Faetm o r Fancies? New Brunswick, N.J. To the Editors: The unabashedly simplistic report by Thomas Powers on the continuing investigation into the murder of President...
...Richard John Neuhaus 470 ]DEATR AND TBERAPY: John Garvey 4TI JAMES O'GARA: /dffer JOHN DEEDY: Manna/rag |diter RAYMOND A. SGHROYH: Associate Editor ANNE M. ROBERTSOH, |diter/Id Assistant GOLIN L. WBST1ERRJECJ[, JR.: Movies JOHN PANDEL: Poetry PRANK GETLEIN: Washington BRIAN WICKER...
...S/If/e copy 7114...
...I've never been able to do anything of the sort since...
...Powers's piece belongs rather in the likes of Reader's Digest or the National Star, publications that assume their readers have suspended their critical intelligence and prefer escapes from complex and difficult realities...
...It is obvious that McNaspy has not read Ponchaud's book, but relies on Lacouture on both the carefulness of the research and the alleged boast...
...The Congress and state legislatures-in dialogue with philosophers and theologians, the medical profession, the media and the intellectual communityDthe "people" must frame laws that only partially answer unanswered questions: when human life begins...
...It's hard to take this position without sounding feckless, which is probably ~vhat makes Mr...
...I do not think our national destiny is in the hands of a secret cabal...
...Jimmy Carter says he once saw a UFO...
...Constitution nor federal Medicaid legislation requires the states to pay for abortions--coupled with the moves within both the Department of Health, Education and Welfare and the Congress to cut off federal funds for abortions except in cases of "medical necessity"Dboth simplifies and complicates, for pro- and anti-abortionists like, the future of the abortion debate...
...It complicates the issue by ushering in what might well be transformed into a period of constructive chaos...
...I can't explain any of these reports, or hundreds of others like them, but I do not conclude as a result that the case is proved, or even that the question is truly open...
...However, I hope Commonweal will provide for its readers future articles that bear less resemblance to press releases issued by the intelligence agencies that have been, in the very least, accessories after the fact in the assassinations of political leaders in the United States...
...Also interesting is the fact that a large and respectable literature claiming that Khmer Rouge atrocities are being systematically created and inflated is completely disregarded by the mass media, all closely analogous to Vietnamese atrocities, 1963-73...
...I think the evidence for these conjectures is thin and circumstantial in the extreme...
...etc.--are apparent enough to anyone with the time to pay attention...
...Commentary that assumes the posture of critique, but indulges itself with only the facile turn of a phrase, examines nothing...
...Commonweal Is ledezod In Reader's Guide to Periodical Llteratere, Catkellc Perled~ce/ lades, and leek Review Digest...
...SJecla~ two-]rear rate $29.S0...
...This overall American experience shows that the will to believe 22 July 1977:478...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 THE NEW ABORTION DEBATE The recent decision by the United States Supreme Court that neither the U.S...
...Continued naivet6, feigned or innocent, promises not greater understanding but only a willed oblivion...
...how far the state should go to promote childbirth~what other economic and individual values will be sacrificed and who will do the sacrificing...
...He thinks the murder of John F. Kennedy is a mystery with an answer, a clear and simple explanation which would tie together all or most of the evidence contradicting the Warren Commission Report, the sort of answer which might be written down on a piece of paper and hidden in a safe...
...Mitchell thinks it's thick and germane...
...The belief that such interest groups are only a sort of screen, that some secret group is manipulating all of them behind the scenes, strikes me as pathological...
...The fear that this nation may have gone the way of a "banana republic" in 1963 with the assassination of President Kennedy, and later with the murder of his brother, is frightening~but it must be faced...
...The interesting thing is how Lacouture's distortions have pushed a falsified version of Ponchaud into mass media stardom...
...But exam season at law school leaves but a finite amount of time for study...
...Mitchell and other conspiracy theorists, is, more than anything else, a matter of ternpermanent...
...whether fetal life has more value in one growth stage than another...
...McNaspy, S.J., takes David P. Chandler to task [May 27] for not having read Franqois Ponchaud's "carefully researched" book on Cambodia, citing Ponchaud's alleged claim that the Khmer Rouge leadership has "boasted" of having eliminated in one year a quarter of their own population...
...Not all conspiracy theorists go to this melodramatic extreme, of course, although they tend to believe that some secret group is hiding the truth...
...and its critical catalytic role in bringing on a horrendous civil conflict...
...To the Editors: The unabashedly simplistic report by Thomas Powers on the continuing investigation into the murder of President Kennedy is a disgrace to a publication like Commonweal [May 271...
...I don't know how to explain these things away, nor do I think most of them are by nature neatly explicable...
...But what separates us is not so much our evaluation of the evidence, as my feeling that doubts about the Oswald-alone theory amount to a pathological social condition...
...It's hard to read his statement in any other way...
...Ponchaud's book, while no great shakes as research, is deserving of attention-including his extensive discussion of the tremendous devastation wrought by the U.S...
...Mitchell feels the United States "may have gone the way of a 'ba~nana republic'" by which I take him to mean that Kennedy was killed by a group of people--"the Mafia," "the CIA," "right-wing Texas oilmen"--who are in secret control of the country...
...10014 Telephone: (211) MU 3-204~ A review of Public Aflalrs, Literature and the Arts...
...Wade decision which, on the basis of privacy, upheld the woman's right to choose abortion, virtually without restriction during the first six months of pregnancy, left open the possibility that the moderate elements on both sides of the controversy might, through dialogue, evolve some kind of compromise social policy: one that would both respect the fact that a large majority of Americans accept abortion in at least some circumstances and also confront the other fact that, in some way, every abortion~whether by the rich suburban socialite who doesn't want to be Commonweal: 451 OOOOOOOOO CORRESPONDENCE (Continued /rom page 451) political controversy in our nation...
...rifle...
...It's not that I don't care about the truth, but the fact that I think the Oswald-alone theory is the truth, and that evidence to the contrary can never be explained to the satisfaction of those convinced there is some other hidden answer, locked away...
...This is clear from the fact that neither the boast nor the claim of "elimination" are to be found anywhere in Ponchaud--they are purely a concoction of Lacouture, who acknowledges this in his "corrections" (New York Review, May 26...
...Mitchell so mad...
...I can't explain away the evidence for all of these things, any more than I can explain all the evidence which seems to contradict the Warren Report, and I confess I'm not inclined to try...
...Mitchell and I are very far apart...
...Powers's concern with "stories about awful possibilities" is that they be put to rest, not that the truth may be found...
...But the world is filled with unexplained mysteries...
...Trappers in the Northwest claim to have been abducted by Big Foot...
...I wish that the publication of this article had not come at a time which for me precludes a substantive response...
...To the Editors: Rev...
...An answer such as, "Castro did it" or "the Mafia did it" or "a disgruntled group of low-level CIA intelligence officers did it...
...epyflght O 1977 Cemmenwe~s/ Po/i~/sAinf Co., Inc.-US aod Gaoade: $17 a year...
...Comments such as "Faced with discrepancies I tend to shrug" or "I do not know of any facts which the Oswald Alone theory does not explain" should invite an editor's red pencil...
...Natle~Nrl S~als ~ ProgNll No.: ISSN 00|0-3330...
...The I973 Roe vs...
...when does "medical necessity" shade into personal convenience...
...PriBted In tke USA and pub/Is/pod b/-weo/dy by Commonweal Peb/hb/ng Co...
...The suggested solutions are endless...
...Micrdlms from Yel...
...R simplifies it in that we now know that the future debate will not take place in the courts...
...GARY MITCHELL Replg Mr...
...300 N. Z~b Read, Ann drh4w, Mlcb, 48106...
...THOMAS POWERS Distorting the Truth Narberth, Pa...
...I don't believe in Big Foot, the Loch Ness Monster, the Abominable Snowman, the tatzlewurm of the Alps, giant sloths in Argentina, giant Auks in New Zealand, 60-foot anacondas and two-ton armadillos in the Amazon, marsupial cats in Tasmania, the Bermuda Triangle, the Flying Dutchman, Flying Saucers, Atlantis, the curse of Tutankhamen, the children of Mu, the crash of a spaceship in Siberia in 1907, terrestrial visits by astronauts in Biblical times, or mermaids...
...1924, to date available tkrewgJb UMvel~llt 7 M/trail/ms...
...Powers continues the seemingly unending apologia for the Warren Commission's "Lone Assassin" theory that Gerald Ford helped fashion over a decade ago...
...Mountain climbers in the Himalayas say they've heard the Abominable Snowman howling about their tent at night, and found his footprints in the morning...
...Foreign S|9...
...Great Britain ALAIN WOODROW: Paris HENRY TEN KORTENAAR: Rome DESMONO IqSHll: DaMIm EDWARD S, SKILLIN: Pub/taker Star: LIHDA P. KAYLRR, PAMELA J. FITZGERALD, HARRIBTT| BALSKY COMMONWEAL 2~ MADISON AYE., NRW YORK: N.Y...
...The theories, of which there are a great many, most of them contradictory, are based for the most part on apparent discrepancies (Oswald did not distinguish himself as a marksman in the Marines, so how did he manage to hit Kennedy...
...When I was ten years old I once hit a blue tack at 75 feet with a .22 cal...
...487 VERSE: Mary Oliver 455 A[ LIFE FAIID UP: George Abbott White 4811 BOOKS" Jean Bethke Elshtain, Stereo Kroll, Kevin G. O'Connell, James F. McCur Raymond A. Schroth...
...Some Boston scientists think they've taken a picture of the Loch Ness Monster...
...It may not work quite as described iq sixth-grade American history textbooks, but the dominant interests-the military-industrial complex, organized labor, the automobile and oil industries, the Jewish organizations which support Israel, the cotton-growers, etc...
...As I suggested in my article, what separates me from Mr...
...I don't know, nor do I ever expect to know...
...Maybe Oswald got lucky, just as I did...
...or unsubstantiated reports (Ruby met Castro in Havana three weeks before the assassination, etc...
...The killing of Orlando Letelier was not the first time planned violent death heightened the stakes of (Continued on page 478) NEWS & VIEWS: 458 CORRESPONDENCR: 451 EDITORIAL: 451 WASHINGTON REPORT: Not Remarkablw Enterl~dn|t~: Frank Getlein 4~2 MORE GOVERNIIIENT IPRESSI[IRE: Tom Heneghan 4[$4 TIlE POLITICS OF ABORTION: Peter Stein]els 4S8 TBE 'DEItlUgSTIFICATION' OF fiFE: Robert J. Henle 41g7 TBE REIGN IN SPAIN: Kenneth E. Moore 480 "ONE OF ]ffBE IAUCIKIER ONES': Robert Joe Stout 48S TBE PRESS: The Memory Thereof: Thomas Powers 485 T i t l e SCREEN: Colin L. Westerbeck, Jr...
...Second class postage pe/d at New 7ark, N,Y...
...Foreign $33...
Vol. 104 • July 1977 • No. 15
