Last night was a late night as I neared the end of Last Second In Dallas, the book that prompted yesterday’s reflection. As a long-time audiophile and occasional audio engineer, junior grade, I was fascinated by the acoustic analysis that informed the book’s conclusions, and just as enthralled to see all the connections, mutual respect, and sheer determination lead to satisfying conclusions about not only the assassination but also the value of that determination and the possibility of real trust. Of good faith and its partner, the joyous humility of self-correction.

Two particularly stirring moments bring me to this postscript. One comes with Josiah Thompson’s analysis of complicity as opposed to conspiracy. The distinction was new to me. I found it deeply insightful, and painfully relevant to our times–well, to all times, obviously, though the pain is acute right now.

Here’s Thompson on the Ramsey Panel that in the early 80’s succeeded in dismissing, high-handedly and with extreme bias, what Thompson maintains is now revealed as conclusive acoustic evidence of multiple gunmen that day in Dealey Plaza:

Had [the panel’s] members conspired to discredit the validity of the acoustics evidence? Had they sat down at an initial meeting and decided to invalidate the acoustics evidence, no matter what they found out?

No. This all came about through no conspiracy. What happened here was much more complicated, more nuanced, and more human–indeed, all too human.

It was a complicity.

And this complicity had much to do with who these men were and what they had experienced earlier in their lives…. Bound together by decades of association and commonality of belief, many looked back over long years of aiding their country and saw serving on the Ramsey Panel as an extension of that service. Perhaps this was why the internal documents of the panel show no internal debate whatsoever. Most of the panel members had little to do with sculpting the final conclusions but instead simply approved what [the leaders] approved. In such an atmosphere, and in the absence of any panel member whose field was acoustics, it was easy for a powerful few to dominate. (349, my emphasis)

A panel studying acoustic evidence with no trained acousticians on the panel? Yes, and anyone who’s ever worked in an organization can probably guess how such a thing would happen.

Notice also, however, that training in an appropriate field–that is, specific expertise–is something Thompson believes could have made a difference in the Panel’s report. Not would, necessarily–plenty of experts are silenced or silence themselves in the face of power–but could. That’s the faith that underlies all investigation: faith in expertise that can identify and interpret relevant data while always checking itself for confirmation bias.

Looking for the truth, not just looking for a mirror.

Of the evidence and his conclusions, Thompson writes,

This truth emerged slowly, but once cracks in the facade were uncovered, it seemed that everywhere we looked, we found more evidence of what the [Ramsey Panel] report really was–an elaborate papier-mâché facade of science-as-revealed-wisdom assembled by a body of distinguished scientists, including one Nobel laureate and one soon-to-be-laureate, supported in its entirety by marvelously baroque but silly arguments.

See how complicated and difficult all this is? Imagine how hard it would be to be the one in the room constantly pointing out flaws in the argument, data that weren’t examined or acknowledged, bringing up and then examining all the details, proliferating details that can keep a committee from writing its report in a timely manner. You know, getting to the deliverables. It wasn’t a matter of science failing, but of scientists failing, but not just of scientists failing, but of a panel assembled (for a variety of reasons) without care and rigor in the selection of members. And yet all was not lost. Several investigators, Thompson chief among them, worked the case for decades to satisfy themselves that despite al these obstacles and minefields, an answer could be found to the question what happened.

The mix of provisionality, perspective, bias, reason, logic, and faith in truth is a stronger, weirder experience than most of us can imagine undergoing at all, let alone steadily and unwaveringly over weeks of uncertainty.

It’s hard, really hard, to say that you know you don’t know, and you know you may never know, and that you also know you might know, and that you know you must try to know–most of all, that there is something to know, whether you find it or not. In that committee room, it takes courage to insist, with charity yet persistently, on that kind of integrity and humility. And by the same token it takes complicity to keep that courage at bay, to prevent it from interfering with the “task at hand.”

Thompson concludes his book with an Epilogue, with this still moment.

I sat down on the steps where I had sat in 1966 and watched the cars go by [Dealey Plaza]. For a moment, the traffic flow stopped, and there was an almost perfect silence. Perhaps it was the silence that brought it on. For sitting there in the plaza–where it is always twelve thirty–I felt, for the first time in years, a sense of calm. It was done. It was my case, and now, finally, it was finished. I could leave it. (361)

The entire book supplies the silent response: but not a minute sooner.

No easy way to be free.