The United States of America has never really had its J'Accuse! -- until now. While the Dreyfus Affair was mere curiosity compared to the permanent, global-reaching effects of the national security state execution of President John F. Kennedy (don't think they're permanent? -- pick up a newspaper), quite a few books on the crime have been labeled Zolaesque: Rush to Judgment, Weisberg's Whitewash, Sylvia Meagher's Accessories After the Fact (a worthy forerunner to Farewell to Justice -- Meagher and Mellen being sisters of heart, toughness, and understanding -- if not conclusion), Anthony Summers's Conspiracy and, of course, Gerald Posner's Case Closed. (Just kidding). But they weren't, because they couldn't be. The cover-up of the crime continued well into the 1990s and -- like the film or not -- it was Stone's JFK which caused the break in the dam. The wave of the past couple decades, beginning with the publication and media-embrace of the malignant Case Closed, has been intensely anti-conspiracy. As all US society has seemingly moved toward the worship of power for power's sake, leading to the establishment of the Bush/Cheney Reich, anti-conspiracy ideology has become its own form of totalitarianism: in the power-saturated universe of Millennial America, seething with plots, anti-plot pronouncements have become as necessary as squeals in a slaughterhouse. But there has been a counterwave, now tidal. More fresh evidence regarding 11/22/63 has become available these past years than was available to the Warren Commission, Jim Garrison, or the House Assassinations Committee when they were conducting their investigations/cover-ups. We've had to be patient, and now it's pay-off time: Christopher Lawford on the family, Gareth Porter on JFK and Vietnam, Bradley Ayers and Richard Whalen on Kennedy and Cuba, Gerald McKnight on the Commission, and David Talbot's coming book on Bobby and the murder (`though the Mellen book may've made that release somewhat compromised).Farewell to Justice is the book we've been waiting for since the day the music died. Professor Joan Mellen's always been one of the world's best film critics, a magnificent biographer (Kay Boyle, Marilyn Monroe, Bobby Knight!), and a great writing teacher. Now she has broken the case. There's no guessing here. No theoretical chapters on the validity of the Zapruder Film, the DalTex Building vs. a storm-drain opening, no jacket holes or bullet fragments. Just the moment-by-moment narrative of what happened to Jack Kennedy, 46 years ago. And, best of all, why it happened. The names are here: initiators, designers, the middle-managers, and the mechanics. Mellen is also overwhelming in her recapture of what was really happening in early 60s USA. Not only those who care not about history relive it. As Americans, all of us re-live Dallas every day of our lives. Everywhere we look, we can see the ghost of John F. Kennedy -- and the shadows of the men and women who killed him. There is only one way to finally let him -- and us -- rest in peace: a cleaning-out from power of all those directly and indirectly responsible for the murder, and of all those who have knowingly benefited from it. Germany could only put the ghosts of the Third Reich to rest through a complete de-Nazification. The United States must do the same.
There is also sadness in the book, for those of us who see the Kennedys as true heroes. (And they were.) Mellen has solved many mysteries in the book and one of the most startling is her clinching the case as to whether or not Robert Kennedy knew of the Castro murder plots. As Mellen demonstrates, his involvement went beyond mere knowledge. By answering this question, she also answers the question as to why the Kennedy Family has been so forceful in impairing post-Warren investigations of the crime.
Mellen's passion, brilliance, understanding, writing talent and just-plain-sleuthing-genius has resulted in a book which will change history. The corporate media will no doubt try to burn her at the stake. They will fail. Because there is no answer to this book. Except justice and revenge.
