Plausible Denial
The assassination of President Kennedy in 1963 continues to be shrouded in mystery and controversy. Now, for the first time in almost thirty years, explosive new evidence reveals much about the CIA’s involvement in an event that devastated the entire nation and irrevocably altered the course of history. In Plausible Denial, Mark Lane, the author of Rush to Judgment, the provocative and bestselling critique of the Warren Commission’s official report on the assassination, makes startling revelations about the CIS’s involvement in a plot to murder the president.
Plausible Denial is the result of documents made available by the Freedom of Information Act and by sworn depositions Lane was able to take from former CIA operatives and officials for a little-publicized libel trial in the US District Court of Miami. In 1978, when a small magazine published a story by CIA renegade Victor Marchetti linking ex-CIA operative and convicted Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt to the assassination, Hunt sued for defamation. Lane signed on as defense counsel for the publication, and set out to prove the truth of the fundamental allegations against Hunt and the CIA. Lane’s investigation uncovered a web of conspiracy and coverup that involved anti-Castro Cubans, Watergate conspirators, and public officials, reaching into the highest levels of the intelligence community – allowing Lane to obtain sworn statements from past CIA heads Stansfield Turner and Richard Helms, as well as David Atlee Phillips, G. Gordon Liddy and Hunt himself. The forewoman of the jury, Leslie Armstrong, stated that “Mr. Lane was asking us to do something very difficult. He was asking us to believe that John Kennedy had been killed by our own government. Yet when we examined the evidence, we were compelled to conclude that the CIA had indeed killed President Kennedy.” In the end, the jury found in favor of Lane and his client. Meticulously documented and compellingly written, this book at last makes public the contents of this historic, yet curiously unpublicized, trial, the only jury verdict directly related to the concept that the CIA was involved in the assassination.
Plausible Denial
Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, 1991.
Reviews and Comments
E. Howard Hunt, ex-CIA operative
“The principle of plausible denial is simply if an operation or action is later disclosed, for example, as an action by the United States government, the government can plausibly deny it, deny any involvement or connection with the action.”
L. Fletcher Prouty, Former Chief of the Office of Special Operations in charge of all military support of the clandestine operations of the CIA.
It has been clearly evident for years that the American public, and the people of the world, do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald killed John F. Kennedy, president of the United States of America, on November 22, 1963 … Mark Lane, author of this book and the bestseller Rush to Judgment, is one of the few who have been able to tear aside this curtain of lies to reveal the hidden elements of the true story.
Publishers Weekly
A highly stimulating, disturbing book.
Kirkus Reviews
Lane’s convincing report sounds like the last work on the assassination.
Representative Mervyn Dymally (D California) addressing Congress, November 1991
The assassination remained a mystery until the publication of a new book, Plausible Denial.
Len Deighton, bestselling author of Ipcress File.
His new book Plausible Denial takes us another step on a worrying voyage of discovery.”
Time Magazine
The first and most relentless conspiracy theorist of them all, Mark Lane, has come out with a book, Plausible Denial, which targets high level CIA figures as the plotters behind the assassination.