Epstein Defends Kennedys In Fight With Manchester

A Harvard graduate student has written an article attacking William Manchester, and defending the right of the Kennedys to censor Manchester's book, Death of a President.

Edward Jay Epstein, who wrote the article for the July issue of Commentary magazine, explains that he was given an opportunity to read the original, unrevised edition of Manchester's book, then tentatively titled Death of Lancer (Kennedy's Secret Service code name was "Lancer")

"Far from being simply a detailed and objective chronicle of the assassination," Epstein writes, Death of Lancer was "a mythopoeic melodrama organized around the theme of the struggle for power between two men, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson . . . [But] the characters bearing these names in Death of Lancer have at best a questionable relation to the real persons themselves and at worst no relation at all outside the heated imagination of the author."

According to Epstein, Manchester described Johnson in the book as "a crafty schemer," and "an oyster who patiently converts bits of grit into salable pearls." He also says that Manchester pictured Johnson, after three years as Vice-President, as "virtually impotent," and that expecting Johnson to help with Congress was, in Manchester's words, "like expecting an erection from a paramecium. It couldn't work. The creature had no member."

Epstein charges that the original document was filled with dozens of historical inaccuracies as well as many tasteless references to Johnson.

Epstein is the author of the book Inquest which deals with the assassination of President Kennedy and the conclusions of the Warren Commission.