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> Mark Lane (Rush to Judgment) and Harold Weisberg (Whitewash): These advocates adopted "a method of controversy that does not expose them to direct refutation: they offer no connected account of what they think occurred, Mr. Weisberg contenting himself with a ceaseless small-fire of rhetorical questions, Mr. Lane with a steady barrage of innuendo."
> Edward Epstein (Inquest): "Short, clear, extremely well-argued. But his book shows how a clever man can un wittingly allow parti pris to vitiate the building up and presentation of a case, so that a chain of reasoning leads to a conclusion that is in fact ill-founded.
In short, Mr. Epstein has proved about himself what he sought to prove about the commission."
>District Attorney Jim Garrison: "Now what about the 'Jolly Green Giant' of New Orleans? He is a quickwitted, forceful, ambitious man, with an engagingly frank and easy manner, but seriously lacking in judgment."
"How is it then," wonders Sparrow, "that people have fallen for the demonologists? The story proves, and has proved twice over, the truth of the old adage^-populus vult decipi: the public is very ready to be deceived." One reason, of course, is that "misrepresentation is too often like the Hydra. Cut off one of its heads and a score of others take its place."
In consequence, Warden Sparrow believes the U.S. will long be besmirched by a "stain deeper than the crime itself: that left by the appetite that could swallow scurrilities like MacBird! (for which Mr. Robert Lowell claims 'a kind of genius'), by the gullibility of the American public, and by the recklessness with which that gullibility has been exploited, under a law that allows almost unlimited calumny of public officials, at whatever cost to the reputation of the innocent."