True Believers Part 2: Conspiracy-Denial Bigotry in Mass Media
Excerpt from "The Gun that Didn’t Smoke," in my book, The Deep State in the Heart of Texas
Author's note: Two years after writing “True Believers: Tom Snyder Talks to Arlen Specter,” I took another close look at the media’s aiding and abetting the government’s big lies. I have learned that I could study this totalitarian behavior at any given period and get the same results. As social media has matured, so has public savviness of official gaslighting. In the last few years I noticed an exponential increase in public awareness of this mass media bigotry, but also a symmetrical increase in the government's desperation to keep the public under control. This psychological “cold civil war” continues. I sense that zugzwang is close at hand, if not already achieved, and by keeping that momentum, a successful public endgame is possible. It is an old, long war. George Orwell wrote about the effect of a weaponized daily news cycle in his novel, Nineteen Eighty-Four: “And when they become discontented, as they sometimes did, their discontentment led nowhere, because being without general ideas, they could only focus it on petty specific grievances.” (Endnote reference numbers herein include numbers from the original essay. Nos. 172, 173, and 174 are redacted at ellipsis.)
Bias to the extent of bigotry revealed itself in both interviewer and interviewee when talk-show host Tom Snyder interviewed presidential candidate Arlen Specter. When “Charlie in New York City” called and asked the former Warren Commission counsel if his views had changed over the years regarding his single bullet theory, Specter failed to make any sense despite embarrassing effort. Snyder, declaring that he “truly” believed the theory, supplied his own embarrassment by attempting damage control through the next night’s broadcast. He finally said, “...I’m not going to try and change your mind. Don’t try and change mine.”1-¹⁷¹
But at least Snyder figured out that the only way to be a true believer is to avoid being confused by the facts. …
With the aide of coincidental timing, Tom Snyder again illustrated the folly of bigotry by using ridicule to silence debate about conspiracy. During a televised interview with writer Harlan Ellison in early February 1997, Snyder mentioned the subject of a retrial for James Earl Ray, the accused assassin of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Ellison, a white man, talked of having marched with King and of having participated in the freedom rides during the 1960s. Ellison was disparaging African-American solidarity with the conspiracy theory in the O.J. Simpson civil trial by calling those who believed it “stupid” and arguing that he was “more black than O.J.” Snyder expressed doubt that Ray could reveal anything that had not managed to surface in thirty years, adding his opinion that “the government can’t keep a secret for fifteen minutes.” Ellison agreed, saying he found conspiracy theorists entertaining. With a broad brush, he then ridiculed them (and, subtly, the espionage technique of faking one’s death) by pointing out that there are those who believe actor James Dean is still alive.2-¹⁷⁵
The next morning, The San Francisco Examiner, ran a story by Christopher Matthews revealing that newly released Nixon White House tapes confirm that Nixon himself had ordered the illegal spying that led to the Watergate scandal. Nixon’s role as mastermind of those conspiracies had been kept secret for nearly twenty-five years.3-¹⁷⁶
Less than a week later, the King family broke a thirty-year silence in support of a new trial for Ray. On that day, in stark contrast to Snyder, Dexter King stated that questions surrounding his father’s assassination lack satisfactory answers, and that every effort to determine the truth can only be accomplished in a court of law. A week later, a judge ruled that new ballistics tests could and should be applied to Ray’s rifle to determine whether it was the murder weapon or a “throwdown” gun.4-¹⁷⁷
One month after that, the Liggett Tobacco Company was forced to admit that cigarette smoking causes health problems including cancer, that nicotine is addictive, and that the tobacco industry specifically markets to minors. They agreed to turn over thousands of incriminating documents about thirty years of meetings with attorneys from other tobacco companies detailing industrywide discussions on nicotine and other subjects, including conversations among tobacco industry lawyers, and Philip Morris, R.J. Reynolds, Lorillard and Brown & Williamson. Attorney General Scott Harshbarger of Massachusetts, head of the National Association of Attorneys General, said the documents show “what big tobacco knew and when they knew it.” Thus ending a conspiracy that addicts forty-six million Americans and kills 400,000 a year.5-¹⁷⁸
Exactly three weeks after the tobacco conspiracy was confessed, after weeks of speculation in the media about a decades long government conspiracy by Switzerland, Nazi Gold author Tom Bower documented in his book that the Swiss government had knowingly conspired to steal the assets of Jewish Holocaust victims and to cover up those anti-Semitic crimes. The Swiss had returned Nazi loot to gentiles after the war, but not to Jews. Bower emphasized that it has taken fifty years for the Swiss government to reluctantly admit to its evil. A U.S. government report by Commerce Undersecretary Stuart Eizenstat, released a few weeks later, “faulted the United States for not forcing the Swiss to come clean during and after World War II.” Compounding that evil, the Swiss conspiracy was maintained for five years after Argentine authorities admitted and documented that Argentina conspired to give many Nazi war criminals, including Joseph Mengele and Walter Kutschman, safe haven in their country for forty seven years following World War II.6-¹⁷⁹
Three months after Snyder’s conspiracy scoff, President Clinton gave a national apology to survivors of the forty-year conspiracy known as the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, in which poor black men were unwittingly denied treatment, starting in 1932, for the disease they were told was “bad blood.” [Editor’s Note: See the fine book Bad Blood by James H. Jones for the full story.] One editorial said, “Thousands of Americans and millions of Europeans died in the war to stop Hitler. And still the Tuskegee experiment went on. No, we cannot afford to ‘close’ this chapter, ever.” In February, 1997, the very same month of Snyder's self-professed belief in a fifteen-minute maximum time limit on government conspiracies, on CBS, the very same network as Snyder’s talk show, 60 Minutes first aired a report by Mike Wallace about hundreds of Nazis and Nazi collaborators hiding in Canada. Wallace noted that Canada did virtually nothing to pursue war criminals after the Nuremberg Trials. By 1997, the U.S. had deported fifty Nazis, Wallace reported, while Canada had deported only one. One of Canada’s accused war criminals was even found living in the same building as an Auschwitz survivor.7‐¹⁸⁰
As a veteran journalist, Tom Snyder was neither naive about, nor uninformed about such enormous, evil and long-lived government conspiracies when he spouted his conspiracy denial nonsense. Some 650-750,000 pages are still kept secret by the U.S. House of Representatives as part of the HSCA’s investigation of King’s murder in the 1970s, although tens of thousands of citizens have already signed a national petition for their release. Under House Rule thirty-six, HSCA Chairman Louis Stokes sealed those files for a period of fifty years, until 2028. Yet none of those facts prevented Ray’s prosecutor, Shelby County Assistant District Attorney John Campbell, from saying, “The government can’t keep anything secret.” When news first broke that bullets test fired from Ray’s rifle did not match the bullet that killed King, Cable News Network anchor Donna Kelley asked CNN legal correspondent, Roger Cossack, about the legality of the HSCA sealing their rifle test results for fifty years. Cossack stumbled over his answer, saying it is “just done” in “high profile cases.” He concluded his answer by reminding viewers that Ray pled guilty, so there was “no reason” to release the earlier test results. Cossack failed, therefore, to report two good reasons for full disclosure: Ray quickly recanted his guilty plea and requested a trial; and Chairman Stokes stated in a Congressionally mandated report that the HSCA “intends to conclude a thorough, professional investigation of the assassinations by establishing the facts to prove or disprove, once and for all, the disparate theories that have arisen since the murders took place in Dallas and Memphis.”8-¹⁸¹
As a veteran journalist, Tom Snyder was neither naive about, nor uninformed about such enormous, evil and long-lived government conspiracies when he spouted his conspiracy denial nonsense.
If crucial evidence of Nixon’s guilt could be kept secret for twenty five years, so can evidence of other executive-branch conspiracies. If the King family could keep their assassination conspiracy questions secret for twenty-eight years, so can the families of other assassination victims. If crucial ballistics evidence in the King murder could be obscured, neglected and kept secret for decades, so can crucial ballistics evidence in the Kennedy murder. If the tobacco industry, the Argentine government, the Swiss government, the Canadian government and the U.S. government could keep their enormous genocidal conspiracies secret for thirty, forty and fifty years, the U.S. government and its military-industrial complex can, and does, do far more than “keep a secret for fifteen minutes.”
Tom Snyder’s faux erudition was directly exposed during three later broadcasts, the first of which aired just two months and eleven days after he declared long-term government secrecy impossible. Snyder listened uncritically, and seemingly in sincere sympathy, as his guest Patrick Eddington discussed his new book, Gassed In the Gulf. Eddington’s investigation expanded and supported recent news reports of a CIA coverup of U.S. military errors during Operation Desert Storm that resulted in Gulf War Syndrome. Eddington claimed that former President George Bush, and Generals Norman Schwartzkopf and Colin Powell were continuing to deny the errors although they were knowledgeable of the coverup. Yet Snyder did not object to, nor did he ridicule, Eddington’s charges.
A week after his interview of Eddington, Snyder’s guest was James Sanders, who had just released his book, The Downing of Flight 800. Sanders told of how an unsolicited U.S. Navy source told reporter Dave Hendricks, within seventy-two hours of the crash, that TWA flight 800 had been destroyed by a direct hit from a “friendly-fire” missile. That source was corroborated by Captain Bower, an Air National Guard helicopter pilot who saw the missile travel from east to west and hit the plane. Sanders reported that the White House got radar summaries at a 2 a.m. briefing, during which the missile was discussed. He further told Snyder that the day after Hendricks’ report about the missile and the radar summaries appeared in the March 10th edition of The Riverside Enterprise, the FBI seized the radar data.
Sanders’ investigation had already made headlines before his book was released. He had secretly obtained samples of a residue found on some of the plane’s seats. That residue, according to independent analyses, was found to be a chemical component of solid rocket fuel. The same residue was identified as glue by the official investigators. However, Sanders pointed out that modern airliner seats are glueless.
After listening to Sanders, Snyder attempted the kind of denial he had expressed over assassination conspiracies. If Sanders’ reports were true, Snyder reasoned, “Someone must have talked.” But this time Snyder’s guest was not so accommodating. Sanders replied, “A lot of somebodys have talked.” That simple, sensible answer applies equally to the conspiracies behind Kennedy’s and King’s unresolved murders, and many others. Snyder revealed a psychological motive behind his bigotry and denial — a motive shared by most people, no doubt — when he ended the interview by saying, “I hope you’re wrong.”
FBI Director Louis Freeh fueled Snyder’s hope on NBC-TV’s “Meet the Press,” ten days after Sanders’ television appearance. But despite headlines and sound bites trumpeting “mechanical failure,” Freeh’s statement was convoluted: “I think that the evidence as we have developed it to date and particularly the evidence we have not found, would lead toward the conclusion that this was a catastrophic mechanical failure.” Freeh stressed that none of the investigators can state definitively that the cause of the crash was due to a mechanical problem. The headline and soundbite writers had what they needed for their preferred spin, however.
Bringing his bigotry full circle on the first day of ballistics tests on James Earl Ray’s gun, and the night before Clinton’s apology to the Tuskegee victims, Snyder had as his guest, Christopher Matthews, the reporter who exposed Nixon’s role as Watergate mastermind. But Snyder did not ask about Nixon, even after Matthews compared the Whitewater scandal to Watergate. During the seven topics discussed, he did find time, however, to predict the end of the Kennedy political dynasty based on the latest sexual and marital problems of the Kennedys. And, in a derisive tone of voice, Snyder found time to call people who, like Dexter King, think James Earl Ray might be innocent, “Those conspiracy theory buffs....” Finally, as if to perfectly summarize his three month folly, Snyder ended that broadcast by gushing over Christopher Anderson and his book, An Affair to Remember, about the long adultery between Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn, which was kept totally secret by movie studios, Hollywood colleagues and the press.9-¹⁸²
Media bigotry like Snyder’s is not confined to his late-night broadcast, talk-show hosts or to the medium of talk shows. His behavior is symptomatic of the mainstream news media. ABC News boasts that more Americans get their news from it than from any other source. Yet one of its most visible news programs, “This Week With David Brinkley,” exemplified national coverage of the August, 1996, San Jose Mercury News series called “Dark Alliance,” a story by investigative reporter Gary Webb which suggested a direct connection between the start of the nation’s crack epidemic and efforts to raise money in the 1980s for the CIA organized Contra rebel force in Nicaragua.
Media bigotry like Snyder’s is not confined to his late-night broadcast, talk-show hosts or to the medium of talk shows. His behavior is symptomatic of the mainstream news media.
A month after the series ran, William Bennett, former Drug Czar under President Bush, and Secretary of Education under President Reagan, appeared on “This Week With David Brinkley” and said, “I don’t believe it...Investigate it and then nip it in the bud...Having people going around saying the government is killing people is a very bad thing.” Nearly nine months after Webb’s series ran, the show’s panel of pundits was quick to declare the investigation nipped. During its May 18, 1997 broadcast, Cokie Roberts echoed many national headlines in her sound bite announcement that the story had been “recanted” by Mercury News Executive Editor Jerry Ceppos, in an “Epilogue” he published on May 11, 1997. Roberts hammered home her soundbite spin by lamenting that the country’s state of mind was so “fraught with conspiracy.” Sam Donaldson merely voiced the lame argument that the CIA was vulnerable to such accusations because of its inability to “prove a negative.”
None of them quoted Ceppos, who wrote: “Our series solidly documented disturbing information: A drug ring associated with the Contras sold large quantities of cocaine in inner-city Los Angeles in the 1980s at the time of the crack explosion there. Some of the drug profits from those sales went to the Contras. Given our government’s involvement with the Contras, I believe this is a major public policy issue worthy of further investigation.” [Editor’s Note: see Gary Webb’s brilliant book, Dark Alliance.]
His so-called recantation consisted of admitting to giving one interpretation of evidence, not labeling a best estimate as an estimate, oversimplifying, and “Through imprecise language and graphics,” creating “impressions that were open to misinterpretation”— all of which have long happened daily in the government and major news media, especially regarding the JFK assassination. Bennett’s statement, therefore, proved not only prophetic in terms of what would happen with the “Dark Alliance” story, but why it happened.10-¹⁸³
As a perfect example of these broadcasters’ bigotry and hypocrisy, no one associated with ABC News or “This Week With David Brinkley” recanted, or again mentioned, an incident of questionable journalism on their own program: the Sunday following John F. Kennedy, Jr.’s wedding, Brinkley and his fellow pundits ended the broadcast by laughing off tabloid reports of the marriage, arrogantly scoffing at the notion that such a thing could happen without the major media learning of it in advance. It is poetic justice, perhaps, that the son of the murdered president proved to the media that major national events can be plotted and executed in total secrecy by a large number of people. Nonetheless, when the news reports, mentioned above, first revealed that bullets test fired from Ray’s rifle did not match the bullet that killed King, CNN anchor Bill Hendricks asked news correspondent Russ Jamieson, who was at the court hearing in Memphis where the test results were announced, the following question preceded by the following editorial comment: “A lot of people in this country are conspiracy happy. Does this hearing play into that? Or will we, by the end of the day, have information that will move this case forward?” Jamieson, to his credit, simply reviewed the plating and bubbling characteristics on twelve of the test bullets which were not present on the death slug.
It is poetic justice, perhaps, that the son of the murdered president proved to the media that major national events can be plotted and executed in total secrecy by a large number of people.
In another example of media bias, The Dallas Morning News, seldom outdone in its conspiracy-denial bigotry or ridicule of conspiracy realists, seized yet another opportunity for both when “shock jock” radio personality Howard Stern staged a publicity stunt in Dealey Plaza in late July, 1997, to protest his syndicated radio talk show’s cancellation by Dallas station KEGL-FM. In what appeared to be an objective reporting of news, after an opening sentence describing a rare circus atmosphere at the usually solemn site of the brutal murder of the President, the News editorialized: “As if that weren’t enough, a conspiracy theorist showed up.” The man’s conspiracy “theory,” worthy of topping Howard Stern’s hoopla and humbuggery, according to the News, was actually one of the most basic, solid facts disproving the many single-bullet theories: “‘...you can’t get a bullet to do that [which is alleged of CE 399] and stay [as] pristine,’ said Greg Boatright, 28, a dental technician from Dallas.” The Dallas Morning News, in its singleminded attempt to discredit Mr. Boatright’s rational position, failed to do its journalistic duty and justify its ridicule by presenting history’s first tenable single-bullet theory.11-¹⁸⁴
In another example, bias against conspiracy was used by attorneys to sway a jury and repeated by the media to mislead the public about the jury’s verdict. Stephen Bright, a former Texas State Treasury employee, sued the former state treasurer and current state comptroller in federal district court alleging that they had him fired for writing a letter to the editor opposing their political agenda to abolish the treasury. Jury members who were interviewed by Bright’s attorneys after the trial said they believed Bright was fired because he wrote the letter, but they felt they could not adequately make the causal link based solely on the evidence they were given. Jurors can vote their conscience in spite of their perceptions about the evidence they are given. But they seldom do because attorneys know how to prevent such bold actions. In closing arguments, James Todd, an assistant attorney general representing the state officials, called Bright’s allegations speculation, despite the fact that Todd and his legal team failed to have the case dismissed on such grounds during the trial. He then told the jury, “Reality is not as entertaining as fantasy. We’re conditioned to look for conspiracy and diabolical plots.” The reporter for the local newspaper used that quote to conclude her reporting of the case without any mention of the jurors’ statements or thoughts. Neither the lawyers nor the reporter pointed out that such conditioning is abundantly justified by the existence and public exposure of many high level conspiracies over the lifetime of the jurors. Nor did they point out that being conditioned to look for such conspiracies is far less dangerous than being conditioned to ignore them.
Jurors can vote their conscience in spite of their perceptions about the evidence they are given. But they seldom do because attorneys know how to prevent such bold actions.
In a final, but hardly minimal, example of media ridicule of conspiracy realists, columnist, humorist and commentator Andy Rooney reached a new low. On the subject of men’s hats, during his spot at the end of CBS’s 60 Minutes, Rooney noted that the most popular men’s hat was the fedora, until Kennedy became president and never wore one. Rooney then joked that Oliver Stone was planning to make a movie based on the theory that hat makers killed Kennedy.12-¹⁸⁵
The media’s desperate tale that its pundits are more sane than most of its consumers, is the opposite of reality: one symptom of the public’s actual fear, ignorance and gullibility, is that we believe no one has come forward with evidence of conspiracy, and that “a lot” of us are “conspiracy happy,” simply because our government and media tell us so. Moreover, if the statement, “The government can’t keep anything secret,” is the best argument a government prosecutor can make against overwhelming evidence of conspiracy, it is proof of extreme desperation within the government to keep conspiracies secret.
ENDNOTES:
171. Richard Bartholomew, “True Believers: Tom Snyder talks to Arlen Specter,” The Fourth Decade, Jul. 1995, pp. 29-32. [republished in Garrison: The Journal of History and Deep Politics, Issue 002, Jun./Jul./Aug. 2019, pp. 8-12, and here at bartholoviews.substack.com]
175. Richard Bartholomew’s contemporaneous notes from “Late Late Show with Tom Snyder,” CBS-TV, Feb. 6, 1997.
176. Christopher Matthews, “Tricky Dick: Tapes show Nixon ordered huge spy effort,” The San Francisco Examiner, Feb. 7, 1997. The specter of Nixon's possible involvement in assassination conspiracies, including the JFK assassination, continued to haunt his own statements three years before his death. In a 1991 interview on 60 Minutes, Nixon said that if he wer e still in charge he would have ordered the assassination of Saddam Hussein: “If I could find a way to get him out of there, even putting a contract out on him, if the CIA still did that sort of thing, assuming it ever did, I would be for it.” (“Dubious Achievement Awards of 1991,” Esquire, January, 1992, p. 98.)
177. King Family to Support Ray’s Trial Request,” Reuters New Media, 2:11 p.m. EST, Feb. 13, 1997 (text from Examiner and Reuters Internet World Wide Web sites). Richard Bartholomew’s contemporaneous notes from Tennessee v. James Earl Ray (hearing before Judge Joseph Brown, Jr., Shelby County Criminal Court, broadcast live by Court-TV cable network, Feb. 20, 1997). On Mar. 27th, after a face-to-face meeting with Ray, Dexter King publicly stated his belief that Ray is innocent. The new ballistics tests were soon ordered and conducted. (“New tests OK’d for rifle, bullet in King’s slaying,” Austin American-Statesman, Apr. 10, 1997, p. A-8. “Ray's rifle gets ballistics tests” Austin American-Statesman, May 15, 1997, p. A-5 (from news services). According to a confidential source developed by HSCA investigator Morris Davis, on the day of the shooting, the rifle Ray had purchased “was fired once and the cartridge left in the gun. Its sole purpose was to be a throw-down gun for the coverup of the killing” (Dr. William F. Pepper, Orders to Kill: The Truth Behind the Murder of Martin Luther King, [New York: Carrol & Graf, 1995] pp. 128, 131). If true, Ray was framed in a manner almost identical to the framing of Oswald five years earlier. The first report on the ballistics test results, broadcast by Cable News Network (CNN, 4:41 p.m., EDT, Jul. 10, 1997), stated “Sources tell CNN that the tests will not exclude Ray.” Eighteen hours later, however, Judge Brown announced that the tests revealed identifying characteristics consistent with the alleged murder weapon on each of twelve test bullets, which were not present on the death slug, indicating the tests do exclude Ray. CNN reported that the prosecution had been told before the hearing that the tests were inconclusive, and that the prosecution claimed it was shocked to hear in court that there was no match (Richard Bartholomew’s contemporaneous notes from Tennessee v. James Earl Ray (hearing before Judge Joseph Brown, Jr., Shelby County Criminal Court, partially broadcast live by CNN, 10:24 a.m. to 10:58 a.m., followed by review and commentary until 11:25 a.m. EDT, Jul. 11, 1997).
178. “Liggett Tobacco Co. Admits Danger,” Associated Press, 3:36 p.m. EST, Mar. 20, 1997. Five years earlier, U.S. District Judge Lee Sarokin ordered the Council for Tobacco Research to open its files to a woman suing several tobacco companies for fraud. The Council, funded by tobacco companies, was founded in 1954 as an “independent” group formed to investigate possible tobacco hazards and report their findings. Sarokin said that “All too often in the choice between the physical health of consumers and the financial well-being of business, concealment is chosen over disclosure, sales over safety, and money over morality.” Citing memos from the council’s files, Sarokin wrote that a jury could conclude it “was nothing but a public relations ploy — a fraud.” Tobacco company attorney William Allinder said a jury would disagree with Sarokin’s conclusions. (Associated Press, “Judge: Tobacco firms lied abo ut dangers,” Austin American-Statesman, Feb. 8, 1992, p. A-11.)
179. NBC News interview of Tom Bower, “Today,” NBC-TV, Apr. 10, 1997. Carol Rosenberg (The Miami Herald), “U.S. report flails Swiss for profits from Nazis,” Austin American-Statesman, May 8, 1 997, p. A3. “Nazi war criminals lived safely in Argentina, documents reveal,” (New York Times News Service) Austin American-Statesman, Feb. 11, 1992, p. A-5. On May 1st, the Swiss government appointed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel as honorary chairman of a seven-member board that will administer a multi-million dollar fund for Holocaust victims. (Wire service reports, “Nobel winner to head panel over Holocaust funds,” Austin American-Statesman documentary overview, May 2, 1997, p. A-18.) For a film of the extent of Switzerland’s crimes, see “Blood Money: Switzerland's Nazi Gold,” Investigative Reports (Arts & Entertainment Cable Network, Jul 26, 1997, 2 hrs.).
180. “Apologize but don't forget” (editorial); Eddie Pells (Associated Press), “Tuskegee victim tenders forgiveness in advance;” Julia Malone, “Tuskegee survivors receive apology,” Austin American-Statesman, May 16, 1997, pp. A-14, A-17; May 17, 1997, p. A-1. Richard Bartholomew’s contemporaneous notes from “Canada's Dark Secret,” 60 Minutes (CBS-News, reported by Mike Wallace, produced by Robert G. Anderson, Feb. 1997, rebroadcast Jul. 20, 1997, 7:37 p.m. EDT).
181. John Judge, “National Coalition Demands Release of King Assassination Files, Public Review of Evidence: Researchers Suggest Several Ways to Determine the Truth,” Coalition on Political Assassinations Press Release, Mar. 30, 1997. Richard Bartholomew’s contemporaneous notes from ABC News interview of John Campbell by Sam Donaldson, “Prime Time Live,” ABC-TV, Apr. 2, 1997. Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations [pursuant to mandate of H. Resolution 222]. H. Report 95119, 95th Cong., 1st sess., Mar. 28, 1977. Committee Print. v, 14 pp. The Stokes Mandate Report; cited in Guth and Wrone, p. 23, item no. 71.
182. Richard Bartholomew’s contemporaneous notes from “Late Late Show with Tom Snyder,” CBS TV, Apr. 17, 1997 (Patrick Eddington); Apr. 25, 1997 (James Sanders); May 15, 1997 (Christopher Matthews & Christopher Anderson). John J. Goldman and Eric Malnic (Los Angeles Times), “FBI points to mechanical failure in TWA crash,” Austin American-Statesman, May 5, 1997, p. A3. On the first anniversary of the downing of TWA flight 800, the “mechanical failure” media spin continued. Introducing a story on the first anniversary of the crash, and a follow-up story on terrorist profiling by U.S. airlines, National Public Radio’s Robert Segal said, “Investigators have turned their attention to mechanical failure,” and added that investigators are “close to abandoning” a terrorist act as the cause. Note the inconclusive rhetoric indicative of editorial bias. NPR failed in attempts to bolster its bias, however. The main element of the anniversary story was an interview with crash-victim relative Joseph Lychner. Lychner said he had accepted a supposed “spark of static electricity” as the cause of the crash, despite finding it hard to believe that it could cause such great loss of life. Lychner’s reason for rejecting a terrorist cause was equally inadequate: “I believe in the goodness of people,” he said. (Robert Segal, National Public Radio, Jul. 17, 1997, broadcast 5:38 to 5:51 p.m., CDT, on KUT, 90.5 FM, Austin, Texas.) On the subject of Gulf War illness, the Presidential Advisory Committee on Gulf War Veterans’ Illnesses reported: “In the face of substantial, credible evidence to the contrary, DOD’s consistent denials to June 1996 of the possibility of exposure of U.S. troops to chemical warfare agents cannot be justified.” (Associated Press, “War illness panel blasts CIA, Pentagon,” Austin American-Statesman, May 2, 1997, p. A-2.) A later report by the General Accounting Office criticized that presidential committee for not going further. “It said Pentagon officials and the White House panel also were wrong to rule out the nerve gas sarin and other chemical weapons as a cause of the health problems because ‘there is substantial evidence that such compounds are associated with delayed or longterm health effects similar to those experienced by Gulf War veterans.’” (Philip Shenon [The New York Times], “Study links chemicals to Gulf War illnesses,” Austin American-Statesman, Jun. 15, 1997, p. A-6.)
183. Jerry Ceppos, “Epilogue: To readers of our ‘Dark Alliance’ series” (“Dark Alliance: The Story Behind the Crack Explosion,” San Jose Mercury News Internet Web site, http://www.sjmercury.com/drugs/postscriptstart.htm, May 18, 1997). “This Week With David Brinkley,” ABC News, Sept. 22, 1996, May 18, 1997.
184. Al Brumley, “Mourning men/Stern’s buddies lament his final days in Dallas,” The Dallas Morning News (online edition, dallasnews.com/arts nf/over1073.htm, Jul. 24, 1997).
185. Michele Kay, “Dismissed employee loses suit against Sharp, Whitehead,” Austin American-Statesman, Oct. 17, 1997, pp. B-1, B-7. Co-author Richard Bartholomew, a 20year friend of Bright, personally observed the Oct. 14-16, 1997 trial and its background, and noted his observations in this text the day after the trial ended. “A Few Minutes with Andy Rooney,” 60 Minutes, CBS-News, August 3, 1997.