HOW ESTABLISHMENT HISTORIANS DISTORT

THE EVE OF DESTRUCTRION: HOW 1965 TRANSFORMED AMERICA

By James T Patterson, Winner of the Bancroft Prize (New York: Basic Books…,2012)

Rev. by Hugh Murray

            What’s wrong with history today?  This book provides an illustration of the narrowness and distortions of establishment history.  The blurbs on the book jacket from well-known historians, supplemented by much praise written by yet more prominent historians on amazon indicated that this book is regarded in high esteem by scholars.  That the author is a recipient of the prestigious Bancroft Prize, and a Ford Foundation Professor Emeritus only adds to the luster.  One naturally concludes that this book is excellent history.
            But it is not!  It is not good history because of what it omits.  Because it is well-written, including cultural features on music, television programs, films, theater, and popular books, the major omission may go unnoticed.  In reality, this is sleight-of-hand history.  Before discussion the omission, the elephant in the room, let me discuss what the book contains.

            1965 was pivotal because President Lyndon Johnson had won an overwhelming victory the previous November over conservative Republican Barry Goldwater.  The Democrats substantially increased their majorities in both the US Senate and the House of Representatives.  Johnson, aware that political power might slip slowly away, was determined to push his agenda through Congress as quickly as possible.  Furthermore, he hoped to outdo his idol, Franklin Roosevelt, in enacting progressive legislation.  Johnson also sought to build on the momentum following passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, extending government to guarantee equal opportunity and social justice.  He was extremely successful cajoling Congress to pass new laws that would effect the lives of millions of Americans.  In 1965 these included the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (April), the Medicare/Medicaid Act (July), the Voting Rights Act (Aug.), the Clean Air/Water Act (fall), Highway Beautification Act – “Lady Bird Bill” – (Oct.), the Immigration Act of 1965 (Oct.), that establishing the National Endowmen of the Arts, and the National Endowment of the Humanities, and the creation of a new Cabinet post of the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.  Patterson has a point when he writes “The high-water mark for postwar liberalism had crested in early August [1965], never to rise again during Johnson’s presidency.”(p. 201)

            Patterson might have aided his readers by including a short chronology of the major legislation enacted during Johnson’s time in office.

            Patterson concentrates some of the pivotal year into the pivotal months of late summer 1965: passage of the Voting Rights Act followed a few days later by the rioting in the Watts section of Los Angeles – burning, looting, and killing which lasted nearly a week.   By late 1965 Johnson faced more problems about implementing the War on Poverty and also the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Jurisdictional disputes erupted between mayors and other local elected officials on one side and “community organizers” on the other, both seeking to capture control of newly established boards that were to direct and disperse the federal funds to end poverty.  Yet, as government expanded, such disputes might have been considered inevitable.  Meanwhile, the newly established Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was unsure how to handle the many complaints of racial discrimination connected to the Civil Rights Act.  Moreover, the EEOC displayed no interest in acknowledging discrimination against women, even though women were specifically mentioned in the legislation.

            Patterson includes a chapter “A Credibility Gap,” as Lyndon decided not to “lose” South Vietnam to the Communists.  His advisors promised not victory, but sought to maintain the stability of the Saigon government by increasing ever more the number of American military “advisors.”  Johnson reiterated his determination to defend freedom in SE Asia, but did little to warn Americans of the escalation in the number of troops and in their growing role beyond advising into direct military combat.  With America’s larger role, there were larger numbers of casualties.

            Patterson reminds the reader of the highly successful American intervention in 1965 in the Dominican Republic, quickly overthrowing a Leftist government.  Though American troops remained until a new election was held the following year, the operation was the type most Americans hoped for in Asia.  A Gallup poll of May 1965 reported, Americans supported LBJ’s Dominican intervention by a wide margin – 76% to 17%.

            In Vietnam most Americans also supported LBJ’s actions.  Patterson’s statement below seems inaccurate: “…:the [Vietnam] war was rousing popular alarm…Moreover, the credibility gap Johnson had opened in the spring [of 1965] remained wide.  Though polls continued to show substantial support for the president’s policies, they did not measure the extent of popular unease that had been growing over the course of the fall.”(233)  Patterson quotes Gallup for Oct/Nov 1965 that Americans favored military involvement in SE Asia by a margin of 62% to 21% and 62% also approved of the way Johnson was conducting the war.(226)  This approval occurred when the numbers of American troops in Vietnam was rising from 23,000 to 184,000.   There were no polls I know of on “unease,” but Patterson states that by July 1966 only 33% believed Johnson was conducting the war properly.  Yet, that does not mean that 2/3s of Americans were against the war, only against LBJ’s conduct of that war.  Alabama’s fiery Gov. George Wallace would be running for President in 1968 with Gen. Curtis LeMay, a leading military figure as his running mate, demanding more pounding of the Communists.  Even in 1966 a song topped the charts for 5 weeks, the “Ballad of the Green Berets,” which many heard and hummed as a support-the-war song.

            Lyndon led the US Government to expand dramatically in his term in office.  Patterson maintains the crucial issues in the transforming year of 1965 were the Watts riots and Vietnam escalation.  Before that year, America was basically an extension of the 1950s.  After 1965, we entered what was to become the image of the angry 1960s.

            Why am I so critical of this book?  Patterson writes, “Meanwhile, at a the Matrix nightclub in San Francisco, a new group, Jefferson Airplane, received local notice.  Though they were far from headliners at that time, later in the decade they would become famous…”(193)

            In early 1964 attorney Mark Lane published an article in the Progressive National Guardian questioning the view that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President John Kennedy in Dallas the previous November.  He would represent the mother of Oswald, and attempt to defend the slain accused in hearings before the Warren Commission.  Like the Jefferson Airplane, Lane was not a major headliner in 1965, but he was preparing the groundwork.  In 1966 when his book on the assassination, Rush to Judgment, was released, it was on the New York Times best seller list of some five months.   In time, 2/3s of the American people would question the official version that a lone nut, Oswald, had alone killed Kennedy.  This is where the credibility gap was greatest.  If you could not believe the government about Dallas where there were numerous witnesses and people taking pictures, how could you believe the government about the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, or anything else on the other side of the world?

            It is the assassination of Kennedy, and the unease with the official story, the magic bullet theory proposed by attorney Arlen Spector, and the many other strange incidents that excavated the credibility gap.  LBJ, the great giver, the leader of the War on Poverty, becomes the great villain of the play MacBird, a MacBethian version of the killing of Kennedy.  By the time New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison launched his investigation of a conspiracy, and indicted businessman Clay Shaw for involvement with the murder, it was obvious that the Federal Government was doing everything possible to sabotage the prosecution.  The national media joined in the anti-Garrisonian chorus.

            Garrison lost the case, but many of the jurors acknowledged that they believed there was a conspiracy – though they thought there was insufficient evidence to convict Shaw.  At the trial I recall a doctor involved in the autopsy, Dr. Pierre Finck, who when asked about probing the path of the bullet from Kennedy’s back to the exit in the throat (others believed that the throat wound was an entrance wound, so the bullet could not have come from the Texas Depository), the doctor declared he did not probe the path.  Why?  He was ordered not to do so.  Who ordered you not to perform this task?  I do not know, for there were many generals and admirals present.  They were my superiors and I had to follow orders.  And such was the autopsy performed on President Kennedy!  And there are still many questions about the case, and still the government has not released all materials related to this murder in Dallas some 50 years ago.

            My point is that no issue caused greater unease with government, no issue caused a wider credibility gap, than the government’s handling of the murder of Kennedy.  If Patterson could mention Jefferson Airplane, he certainly should have mentioned the disputes about the Warren Commission, Mark Lane, whether Oswald was a government operative, etc.  Yet, nowhere in this book is there mention in the text of Mark Lane or Lee Oswald or the controversy concerning the Warren Report.

            Let me give one tidbit of information.  In October 1963 in New Orleans there was a raid by the Louisiana Un-American Activities Committee on the offices of the Southern Conference Education Fund, its leader James Dombrowski, and two attorneys associated with SCEF, which was an organization promoting integration.  Agents appeared at the home of attorney Ben Smith and used an axe to knock down the front door.  It was not easy to be an integrationist in New Orleans at the time.  Yet, in the summer of 1963, Lee Oswald, who had defected to the USSR, returns to New Orleans, and broadcasts on the radio on behalf of “socialism.”  He was arrested for handing out pro-Castro leaflets, but quickly released, after an interview with the FBI.  And he was seen producing the pro-Castro leaflets in the office of former FBI man, former acting Superintendent of the New Orleans Police, Guy Banister.  Indeed, some of the leaflets contained an address so had anyone mailed to the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, it would probably have ended up in the office of the vehemently anti-Castro, anti-Communist Banister.  Many in New Orleans, knowing more of the backgrounds, found the official version too implausible.  So did many, yea, most Americans.

            Some maintain that newspapers provide the first draft of history.  Reading Patterson’s book is something like browsing through 1965 volumes of Time and Newsweek magazines.  Unfortunately, the book seems more superficial than some of the articles that appeared in those magazines.  Yet, Patterson utterly ignores the Kennedy controversy.  And the prominent historians praise this book!  I think the “proper” historians will not admit that on some issues, the first draft of the real history was written not in the New York Times but in the National Enquirer !  Most intriguingly, some of the names mentioned in the who-killed-Kennedy literature would later resurface as names who were involved in the Watergate break in.

            There is a line of distrust in government that begins with Mark Lane and the conspiracy theory crowd, which continues into the Watergate cover-ups, and onto additional investigations of the Kennedy assassination in the 1970s, including the Senate probe that concluded that there probably was a conspiracy that killed Kennedy.

            Even if Patterson personally believes every word of the Warren Commission report that Lee Oswald was a nut who alone shot President Kennedy from the Texas School Depository Building, even if Patterson believes everyone who questioned that government document was a charlatan, a publicity seeker, and a con artist, still Patterson should have included material about the skeptics of the Warren Report.  These skeptics made the credibility gap wider thatn the Gulf of Tonkin.  And their skepticism would go beyond that jeer-leading “Hey Hey, LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?” to a far deeper fear that elements in the American government were sinister and dangerous.  And the skeptics would push the Congress to have another inquiry into the assassination, one that came to a different conclusion from the Warren crowd.

            Patterson writes of the growing credibility gap on Vietnam; but never mentions the even larger credibility gap on Dallas.  They were intertwined.  I suspect the skepticism on Kennedy was even more important.  However, there is no doubt both were important to the history of the US.  By ignoring the Dallas deniers, Patterson distorts history.  In deleting Dallas, Patterson may have written a more comfortable, comforting liberal history.  He also wrote a distorted history.

            It is hardly a secret that most people teaching at university are liberal and believe in the good works that government can do.  They do not want to believe in the possible sinister side that a democratic government might engage in, especially a government that proclaims itself liberal and seeks social justice.  So delete the dark clouds and present the sunshine.  I suspect that is why Patterson’s book has won such praise.  It may be deserved praise by liberals.  But it is not deserved for this work as history. 

Even if Patterson believes every word of the Warren Commission Report to be true, he should have discussed the extremely important brewing controversy over the topic of Kennedy’s murder.  Omitting it, Patterson distorted history.

            The elephant in the room is the dead President in Dallas, Mark Lane, and questions about the Warren Report.

            LBJ is not the only one with a credibility gap!  Some historians have a credibility gap too.