Plausible Denial (copyright 1991, published by Thunder's Mouth Press, New York, NY, ISBN 1-56025-000-3) is a book by American lawyer, Mark Lane that chronicles his legal defense of Victor Marchetti, a former-CIA agent who wrote an article for The Spotlight about the JFK assassination and was sued for defamation by E. Howard Hunt.
The drama of this book intensifies when E. Howard Hunt is subjected to cross-examination by Mark Lane. It intensifies further when the sworn testimony of Marita Lorenz is offered as evidence for the defense. Plausible Denial suggests that Mark Lane convinced the jury that sworn testimony provided by certain high-ranking CIA witnesses could not be verified, and must be doubted based on the very nature of their business.
Although his 1963 book, Rush to Judgment, was a best-seller, this book did not enjoy the same popular success. However, among JFK assassination researchers, this book was a key event that led to 1992 and 1998 legislation regarding the Freedom of Information Act as it applies to the JFK assassination.
Famous quotes containing the words plausible and/or denial:
“The idea that information can be stored in a changing world without an overwhelming depreciation of its value is false. It is scarcely less false than the more plausible claim that after a war we may take our existing weapons, fill their barrels with cylinder oil, and coat their outsides with sprayed rubber film, and let them statically await the next emergency.”
—Norbert Wiener (1894–1964)
“Advocating the mere tolerance of difference between women is the grossest reformism. It is a total denial of the creative function of difference in our lives. Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.”
—Audre Lorde (1934–1992)