Recently released FBI documents on Gerald Ford, made public as a result of FOIA requests at the time of Ford's death, elaborate on his role as J. Edgar Hoover's "mole" on the Warren Commission. Further documents will be released in several batches.

Max Holland was the subject of a sarcastic article in the Washington Post on 7-24. His book A Need to Know: Inside the Warren Commission, which got a $45,000 "Work-in Progress" award in 2001(!) still has no publication date, twelve years after Knopf advanced him $131,000. Post writer Neely Tucker writes that she wanted to grab Holland and shout "SNAP OUT OF IT." A centerpiece of the new tome is his theory, advanced in a New York Times op-ed last November 22, that the first shot was fired before the start of the Z film. For this, Dale Myers calls him "out to lunch". No respect.

New York Post columnist Liz Smith, who gushed uncontrollably over Ultimate Sacrifice, has now plugged Lamar Waldron's new book Legacy of Secrecy, which is due in November. Smith reports that it contains new information on Johnny Roselli and links between the JFK, RFK, and MLK killings. According to Waldron, a street map found in James Earl Ray's rooming house was marked to show Roselli's Los Angeles apartment. Material from Ultimate Sacrifice on the mobster's life and death will be the basis for an upcoming movie, written by Stephen Kronish and starring Dennis Farina ("Crime Story" and "Law & Order") as Roselli.

Angela Clemente, a New Jersey paralegal who has taken on the mob at great risk to her well-being, has sued the FBI and the Justice Dept. to pry loose its complete file on Brooklyn mafia murderer and FBI informant Gregory Scarpa Sr., which could shed light on Carlos Marcello and JFK's assassination. The redacted papers on Scarpa that Ms. Clemente already has contain tantalizing references to Scarpa's involvement in FBI New Orleans "projects' in New Orleans in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Scarpa has already acknowledged his role in helping the Kennedy administration find the bodies of the three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964. Ms Clemente's courageous investigative work resulted in the Brooklyn murder case against Scarpa's FBI handler Lindley DeVecchio, but the case fell apart when a key witness was discredited. We can only hope that Ms. Clemente, who is represented in her lawsuit by Jim Lesar, becomes an active player in the JFK case.

Graham Pierce, the last active member of the DPD who was on duty on November 22, 1963, has retired.

An article in an Albany, Oregon, newspaper featured Bill McWilliams, a dictabelt expert who is assisting a digital analysis of the Dallas police recording that many claim contain the sound of the gunshots that killed JFK. The real news in the story is that McWilliams was in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and serviced the machine that recorded the DPD transmissions. There were some misstatements in the story and we are attempting to get clarification from McWilliams.

Space considerations precluded running a review of David Kaiser's The Road to Dallas. We hope we can run it in the next issue. The book, while claiming Oswald was the lone shooter, does posit a mob conspiracy, sticking closely to Robert Blakey's conclusions.