This morning I received an odd phone call from a stranger who identified himself as “Ed Victor from London.” He said he was an editor at the British publisher Jonathan Cape. He said that he had gotten my number from Emile De Antonio, a documentary film director. He explained that De Antonio had told him that I was writing a book on the Kennedy assassination based on FBI reports.
I had discussed my research with De Antonio, whom I had met that summer when he was shooting a film about New York City politics. So I confirmed to the caller that my thesis was indeed based on original documents, including FBI reports, I had obtained from Warren Commission lawyers. He then said he would like to obtain the British rights and could immediately pay me $500 for a first-refusal option. I was duly impressed by his bold decisiveness, and I certainly could use the $500 to help pay the next term’s tuition.
Could he come see me?, he asked. To my surprise, he said he happened to be in Ithaca, and was staying at the Ithaca Hotel. He said he was driving the next day to Toronto (which is 250 miles from Ithaca) to see one of his authors. He than arranged to come to my apartment at 3 PM to read the thesis, and, if it was appropriate for publication, to give me a check for $500.
As I had never before dealt with a publisher, I was not sure how I should present my thesis, but I excitedly awaited his arrival. At 3 PM, I placed its 80 typed pages on the coffee table and put on a jacket. I waited an hour and then called the Ithaca Hotel. The desk clerk told me that no one by the name of Ed Victor was registered at the hotel, or had been that morning. I sadly concluded the phone call was a practical joke by one of my fellow students.
Andrew Hacker, my thesis advisor, had invited me that evening to celebrate the completion of my thesis at Berry’s, a fancy seafood restaurant in Oswego, New York, which was about an hour from Ithaca. He and his wife, Lois, showed great interest in discussing the gaps I had found in the Warren Commission’s report. Because of a heavy snowstorm, I did not get back to my apartment until after midnight.
Around 2 AM, there was a loud, unrelenting knocking at the front door. When I opened it, I saw a short man in his early thirties standing there covered in snow. Shaking the snow off himself like a shaggy dog, he introduced himself as Ed Victor. He profusely apologized for missing our early appointment, saying that his car had skidded into a snow bank. I offered him tea, which he refused, explaining that he was in a hurry to leave for Toronto. Even though his excuse seemed lame, his clothes were disheveled, and his accent was unmistakably acquired in Brooklyn, I accepted him as the British publisher he claimed to be.
We sat at the coffee table as he leafed through the pages of my thesis. “This is definitely publishable,” he said, tossing the pages back on the table, “but I also need to see the FBI reports you mentioned.”
I went to the breakfast nook, which served as my office, and brought back a blue, bound 87-page FBI summary report entitled, “Investigation of Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, November 22, 1963.” It was the book Wesley Liebeler had given me. When I handed him the report, his eyes widened. The expression of glee on his face was so clear that he could have been someone who had just drawn the winning numbers in a lottery. Plainly, he had found what he was after. I suddenly realized that it was not my book that had brought him to Ithaca but the FBI reports. I assumed the reason he was not registered in the hotel, and why it took him 11 hours to get to my apartment, was that he had decided to drive to Ithaca only after I had confirmed I had FBI documents in my possession. The reason I swallowed his unlikely story was that I wanted to believe my thesis was of interest to a British publisher. Simply put, I had deceived myself.
To remedy my mistake, I pulled the FBI report out of his hands. I then told him I would send him a copy in London so he could read it at his leisure. “Could I have your business card?,” I asked. Claiming he had left it back at his hotel, he began writing out his address in block letters on a piece of paper.
As he was doing this, I took the FBI report back to the breakfast nook and sought a place to conceal it. Because he was short, I put it on top of a tall breakfront. The address, 3 Shavers Place, Haymarket, London, on the piece of paper he handed me further persuaded me he was an imposter. It was the same address that appeared on a letter I had received from Mark Lane, who I knew was himself working on a book on the assassination. It was a letter I did not answer.
Voicing my suspicion, I told him, “Your address is identical to Mark Lane’s address.” The implication was clear.
He bolted from his chair and rushed into the breakfast nook. I could see him wildly rooting through my papers, presumably intending to grab the FBI report. When I threatened to call the police (which was not a realistic option, since I did not want to have to explain to them how I came to possess highly sensitive FBI reports), he left, saying on his way out the door, “I have never been so insulted in my life. The hell with your book.”
The following morning I made several calls. It turned out that, yes, there was an editor at Jonathan Cape named Ed Victor, but he was in London, and his description in no way matched the appearance of the night visitor. Emile de Antonio told me that he had given my phone number just that Friday to someone called Ralph Schoenman, who said he urgently needed to talk to me. Schoenman was a 30-year-old Brooklyn-born political activist, and had lived in London, where, according to an article in The New York Times, he headed Bertrand Russell’s Peace Foundation, which was located at 3 Shavers Place, Haymarket I then learned he was also “volunteer head” of Mark Lane’s Citizens’ Committee of Enquiry in London, and the person in the picture accompanying the article looked very much like my visitor. Since Mark Lane was apparently staying at, or receiving mail at, Schoenman’s residence, I thought it likely that Lane had dispatched my visitor to get the FBI reports for his book.
I then called Arnold Krakower, the New York lawyer who had helped me before on my movie project. I knew Krakower loved a mystery (he had been married to the novelist Kathleen Winsor). When I told him about the incident, he said he was going to “read the riot act to Lane’s publisher.”
Krakower called me two days later to report that Lane’s manuscript, entitled “Rush to Judgment,” was at the Viking Press, to whose owner and publisher, Tom Guinzburg, he had spoken. He said that Guinzburg no longer wanted to publish Lane’s book but would be interested in my thesis. The editor there whom I was to contact was Clay Felker.