The Last Investigation: What Insiders Know about the Assassination of JFK by Gaeton Fonzi

Author:Gaeton Fonzi [Fonzi, Gaeton]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Published: 2013-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

By the time of the general staff meeting the next afternoon, all the teams in the JFK task force had gotten the word of the new investigative approach. Cornwell had held special conferences with each team. The big meeting was held in one of the large conference rooms on the fourth floor, above the staff offices, yet it still felt crowded with a few dozen people jammed into it. Cornwell sat at the head of a long conference table, a big cigar in his mouth, looking tweedy in an elbow-patch jacket. His chair was tilted back and, characteristically, his boots were up on the edge of the table. Blakey, in an uncharacteristic candy-yellow corduroy suit, had stationed himself against the wall behind Cornwell.

The room quickly grew still when Cornwell called for attention. “Allllright,” he drawled. “I understand there’s been a lot of bitching about the procedures we’ve instituted, so we’ll let anyone who has any critical comments to make speak up.”

He blew smoke from his cigar, put a Cheshire grin on his face and slowly looked around the silent room. One of the document clerks raised her hand and said she had a complaint about the new system of getting copies made. There was a discussion about that, and then someone else complained about another administrative wrinkle. Finally, Cornwell, mischievous grin still on his face and mock disappointment in his voice, said, “Gee, I thought someone would raise the big issue.”

“All right,” John Hornbeck piped up from the back of the room, “I’ll raise the big issue.” Hornbeck was the leader of Team Two, the Organized Crime unit. Sandy-haired and ruddy-faced, he had the open, ingenuous style of a “Doonesbury” good guy and impressive credentials as an Organized Crime prosecutor in Denver. (He would eventually resign early, disgusted with what he called the “craziness” of Washington, and flee back to his mountain home and his horses.)

“The big issue,” Hornbeck said, “is whether this investigation is going to be conducted in terms of restricted issues, in terms of getting out a report, or is it going to be a true, wide-ranging investigation?”

That summed it up. Cornwell answered it by repeating what he had told the individual teams: We were done foraging; we were not living in the real world, we were living in the legislative world; we had to get the report out.

Then Blakey spoke up. “Listen,” he said, “I’ve laid this all out to you from the beginning. I said we would spend the first months looking at the entire spectrum of the case and defining our goals. Well, we reached the point where we must start moving on the report. Our main priority is the report. Now you may say I’m trying to cover my ass, but you don’t have to worry about me covering my ass because I know how a report should be written. I know how to make a report look good. But I want more than that. I also want the report to be good.

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