Herold and Surratt

[John Fazio]

(11-01-2013 12:31 PM)L Verge Wrote:  John F.

Quite a few historians over the years have branded the Hanson Hiss article a fraud, including Clara Laughlin in The Death of Lincoln. Clara was a close friend of John Surratt's daughter and gave credence only to what Surratt had said in his Rockville Lecture. What is your opinion on the veracity of the Hiss article?

Laurie:

I always assumed that the Hanson Hiss interviews are genuine. It seems incredible to me that what was reported at great length in the Washington Post and in the Boston Post was in fact a total fabrication, a figment of Hiss's imagination. Likewise incredible is the supposition that Hiss could engineer such a gigantic fraud successfully, i.e. without someone, somewhere, exposing it as such, as well as the supposition that he would risk such a career-destroying gambit. It is most significant, too, that Surratt never denied the authenticity of Hiss's accounts of the interviews, a point made by Mike Kauffman, who holds for authenticity. I observe that Jampoler hedges a little on the issue, but does not state categorically that he believes the whole thing bogus. As for Laughlin, she is in the same category as DeWitt, i.e. early assassination authors (not to say historians) who argued forcefully for the single conspiracy theory, both in 1909, and who therefore would naturally question anything that suggested there was more to 4-14 than a half-crazed actor and a few grunts. As far as I am concerned, neither author can be relied upon. Indeed, DeWitt even believed Mrs. Surratt to be innocent, a wholly untenable position in my opinion, which says something about his knowledge of the subject and his research methodology. Furthermore, even if all we had were McMillan and Rockville, we still have major inconsistencies between Surratt's accounts of his whereabouts and activities between 4-12 and 4-20. In my judgment, Surratt's chosen calling demanded that he master the art of marketing falsehoods. He did. Everything we know about him attests to it.

John