ELITE ETHNOGRAPHY

Russell Baker's new book, Family of Secrets, is chock full of previously untold tales of one of America's great corrupt families, the Bushes, which led Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times to describe it as "preposterous." That's the sort of statement establishment types feel entitled to make without any supporting evidence despite the fact that their complaint is about some one else's evidence. Rutten goes further, offering this delicious ex cathedra statement: "I regard the belief that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone as an important indicium of mental health."

In fact, the JFK death remains one of the great unsolved mysteries and those who have expressed some doubt some part of the official findings have included Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Milhous Nixon, Don Hewitt of CBS, U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on the Assassination, Stephen Rosenfeld, Washington Post, Senator Ted Kennedy, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, Senator Richard B. Russell (member of Warren Commission), Rep. Hale Boggs (member of Warren Commission), Texas Governor John B. Connally and his wife, Nellie, Presidential assistant Kenneth O'Donnell (at Dealey Plaza during the shooting), Presidential assistant David Powers (at Dealey Plaza during the shooting), Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill, Senator Richard Schweiker, Senator Gary Hart, Senator Russell B. Long, Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker and President of France Charles de Gaulle.

One of these insane types, Stephen Rosenfeld of the Washington Post, even wrote, "That the assassination probably encompassed more than a lone gunman now seems beyond cavil."

In fact, the story of the past half century or so of American politics has been filled with unsolved mysteries, unexplained anomalies and stories about which we only know some of the facts. Books like Baker's are immensely helpful not because they necessarily provide ultimate answers but because they provide new information, especially information that the establishment would just as soon didn't get around.

Besides, you don't have to accept an author's theories or inferences to find the evidence of interest, but if you do want to shoot down a particular theory about people and events, at least put some bullets in your gun.