Final_Judgment

[428] Final Judgment 525
Note, also, that the ADL dismissed Mark Lane as simply "Liberty
Lobby's chief counsel," as though that were Lane's sole claim to fame and
that his own pioneering work in the JFK assassination arena—long before
his association with Liberty Lobby—was of no substance. The ADL—
obviously—wants people to forget that it was Lane's book, Rush to Judgment
that started the whole JFK "craze."
It is interesting that the ADL commented that Liberty Lobby's socalled
"mania" was "inclusive enough to assimilate both theses" [presented,
presumably in Final Judgment and Plausible Denial]. Obviously, however,
the books do not actually present two different theses at all, but it's not in
the interests of the ADL to accurately report the specific details that appear
in either of the volumes.
The ADL dismisses these "outlandish ideas" but it is interesting that
the ADL felt compelled to take a slam at Final Judgment in the pages of
this assembly of essays. Clearly, two years after the release of the first
edition of Final Judgment, the book was making its impact felt—and the
ADL knew it. There were enough people beginning to take the book
seriously, so much so that the ADL felt it necessary to respond.
Later, when the ADL released its own outlandish report in 1996
entitled Danger: Extremism—The Major Vehicles and Voices on America's
Far Right Fringe, the ADL rehashed Foxman's earlier essay and added,
gratuitously—and falsely—that Final Judgment "attempted to blame the
assassination of President Kennedy on Jews." 1088
Although, frankly, I was tempted to bring suit against the ADL for
libel, it would have cost more time and money and trouble than it was
worth. However, if the suit had reached trial—as did E. Howard Hunt's
libel suit against The Spotlight, relating to the JFK assassination (described
in Chapter 16)—it might have brought forth some interesting revelations.
In any event, it's obvious that Final Judgment, by this time, was a
subject of real concern on the part of the ADL. They realized that this book
cannot be ignored. Thus, it is no surprise than when—in the fall of 1997—I
was invited to address the topic of the book at a community college seminar
in Orange County, California, that all Hell broke loose.
In my foreword to this fourth edition of Final Judgment I've described
that controversy in detail. But needless to say, as I said earlier, the ADL has
not heard the last of Final Judgment. This is only the beginning. Although
Uri Palti, an Israeli diplomat in Los Angeles, told the press that the thesis
presented in Final Judgment is "nonsense," the big problem for the ADL
and for Israel is that—obviously—a lot of people don't agree.
In light of all this frenzy stimulated by the ADL in its attempt to silence
me, I cannot help but echo the words of an ADL ally, super-lawyer Alan
Dershowitz, who loudly proclaimed himself a defender of academic
freedom and came to the defense of another controversial researcher who
came under fire for his studies of purported alien abductions. Dershowitz
said that those who had criticisms of that research should "respond to it on