Frederick Demond

[Pamela]

(08-10-2015 04:50 AM)RJNorton Wrote:  

(08-09-2015 09:13 PM)Susan Higginbotham Wrote:  I did a search...

Susan, I also did a search but a different one. I was curious as to which assassination author was the first to mention the interview in his/her book. And, as far as I can tell, it was Osborn Oldroyd in his book published in 1901. That's 3 years after the Hiss interview was published. Oldroyd quotes briefly from the interview on p. 163. Based on the way Oldroyd presented the quote there is no indication Oldroyd felt the interview was spurious (IMO).

Weichmann wrote his book around the same time as Oldroyd, although it wasn' t published until more than 70 years after his death. He discussed the HH interview, (which is included) published April 3, 1898, and wrote as though he believed it was genuine. Both he and A.C. Richards responded to the article and their responses were published in the Washington Post on April 18, 1898. Richards subscribed to the Post and had seen the interview, but the paper wrote to Weichmann on April 6, 1898, and offered him the courtesy of it's columns, "for any response you would like to make to John H. Surratt' s Story and furthermore would make the writing of a good historical story worth your while."-from Risvold's introduction to Weichmann's book.

Richards reaction to the interview was to doubt the identity of Hanson Hiss in a correspondence initiated by Weichmann after the HH interview was published, "Your letter as published is an admirable refutation of the dastardly and scandalous attack upon your character by John H. Surratt under the cognomen, 'Hanson Hiss."

In a subsequent letter dated May 7, 1998, Richards seemed to accept that HH was a journalist, "Your two letters of the 2d-inst. came to hand yesterday. I will be glad to see the article you send out to the papers for which Hiss is a correspondent and in which his Surratt "vindication" was published." There are 23 A.C. Richards letters in Weichmann's book.