Gaeton Fonzi

Gaeton Fonzi (October 10, 1935 – August 30, 2012^[1]) was an American investigative journalist and author known for his work on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He was a reporter and editor for Philadelphia magazine from 1959 to 1972,^[2] and contributed to a range of other publications, including the New York Times and Penthouse.^[1] He was hired as a researcher in 1975 by the Church Committee and by the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations in 1977, and in 1993 published a book on the subject, The Last Investigation, detailing his experiences as a Congressional researcher as well as his conclusions.^[3]

Background

Fonzi was born Gaetano Fonzi (he later shortened his first name)^[3] in Philadelphia in 1935 but grew up in West New York, New Jersey.^[1] He studied journalism at the University of Pennsylvania and edited its daily newspaper.^[1]

Career

Fonzi began his journalism career at the Delaware County Daily Times, before moving to Philadelphia magazine after serving in the army.^[1] Fonzi later said that when the Warren Report into the assassination of John F. Kennedy was published in 1964, he did not doubt it, and when he came across an article by Vincent Salandria criticizing the single-bullet theory, he expected an interview with Arlen Specter (a Philadelphia local who had been an investigator for the Warren Commission and had returned to become a district attorney) to clear the matter up, as Specter was the author of the theory. Interviewing Specter in 1966, however (for almost four hours over two sessions), Fonzi was shocked at Specter's hesitant responses in particular regarding the location of the wound in Kennedy's back, concluding with Specter saying "I don’t really remember..."^[4] In August 1966, Fonzi published an article in Philadelphia concluding "It is difficult to believe the Warren Commission report is the truth".^[5][6]

In 1967, following a three-year investigation, Fonzi co-authored a Philadelphia magazine article exposing the activities of Harry Karafin, an award-winning American investigative journalist associated with The Philadelphia Inquirer who sought and accepted payment from potential reporting subjects in order to avoid negative coverage.^[7][8] Karafin was fired and then convicted on 40 counts of blackmail and corrupt solicitation.^[9]

In 1970, Fonzi published a book about Walter Annenberg and his publishing empire, which included The Philadelphia Inquirer. In 1972, having helped Philadelphia to its first National Magazine Award,^[10] Fonzi left Philadelphia and moved to Miami, where he worked on Miami Monthly and Gold Coast magazines.^[1][2]

In 1975, he was hired by Senator Richard Schweiker as a researcher for the Church Committee into the activities of US intelligence agencies, and in 1977 he was hired as a researcher for the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). At the HSCA he focused on the role of Cuban exile groups and the links of these groups with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Mafia. Fonzi obtained testimony from Antonio Veciana that Veciana had once seen his CIA contact, who Fonzi established was David Atlee Phillips, conferring with Lee Harvey Oswald.^[1] In the course of these investigations Fonzi attempted to contact Oswald's friend George de Mohrenschildt on March 31, 1977; hours later, de Mohrenschildt was dead, an apparent suicide.^[11] Frustrated by the HSCA's failure to fully pursue these leads, and to tackle head on the CIA's refusal to release key documents, Fonzi published a 1980 The Washingtonian article on the subject which aroused enough interest from the CIA for it to investigate whether Fonzi had breached his 1978 non-disclosure agreement with the CIA, which he had signed in order to gain access to classified files (it concluded that Fonzi had not).^[12] The article later formed the basis for his 1993 book, The Last Investigation.^[1][3][13]

The New York Times said in 2012 of Fonzi's The Last Investigation that "historians and researchers consider Mr. Fonzi's book among the best of the roughly 600 published on the Kennedy assassination, and credit him with raising doubts about the government’s willingness to share everything it knew".^[3]

Books

• Annenberg: a biography of power, Weybright and Talley, 1970
• The Last Investigation, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1993

References