Robbyn Swan worked with her husband Anthony Summers on his JFK investigation, Not in Your Lifetime, which remains one of the best books ever written about the Dallas tragedy. Along the way, Swan got to know Mary Ferrell, the Dallas legal secretary who became one of the first and most exacting critics of the Warren Commission.
In a timely Facebook post, Swan
imagines Ferrell’s reaction to the muddled media coverage of the release of a small selection of the still-secret documents last week.
she would have chuckled to see some of the “revelations” from the “new” JFK files released by the National Archives last week. Some of these documents had been unearthed by Mary herself as long ago as the 1970s. Mary would have wagged a finger at such fool-hardiness and pointed out to journalists (or anyone who cared to listen) that the far bigger story at the moment is the number of documents – possibly as many as 30,000 – that have still not been released.
“For those who want to read further in selected areas,” Swan adds, “there are many worthwhile books from which to choose – those by former HSCA Chief Counsel G. Robert Blakey, Prof. Peter Dale Scott, Gaeton Fonzi, John Newman, Lamar Waldron, Philip Shenon, and Jefferson Morley to name a few.”