NOT ASKING QUESTIONS Murray Kempton in his article 'Waiting for
the Verdict on Oswald' (April 10) says that 'The Kennedy murder is full of puzzles; yet our journalists look at them with a languor and an
anxiety not to ask questions which has never fallen on us before.'
Never?
, In 1952, in the celebrated Hiss case, Hiss's lawyers made a motion for a new trial. The motion was based on evidence which seemed to indicate that the famed typewriter was a forgery which had been Planted for the defence to find. Professor Fred Rodell of the Yale Law School, after reading the
motion, said, 'If ever the press muffed a big story— whether inadvertently out of stupidity or deliberately °lit of c.owardice—it muffed this one,'
Similarly, and in connection with the same case, when Whittaker Chambers died in somewhat mysterious circumstances in the summer of 1961, the American press displayed a notable anxiety not to ask questions.
, Mr. Kempton's claim for the American reporter— 'at his very good best . . . the most active and persistent of his breed on earth'—seems a trifle hyperbolic. When it is inexpedient to be active, the American reporter, like others, succumbs to languor.
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