Comment on Gold’s reply of 2 August:
This can hardly be called a triumph of the attorney’s art. Our original
letter with enclosures took care to say that the attached articles were
"representative" not exhaustive. And the
Los Angeles Times essay is in
any case a digest and summary of many earlier ones. The white-shoe artists
at Cravath Swaine and Moore attempt to suggest that there is extra material
concealed in the other named articles. But they wisely make no attempt at
citation. (The extra articles appear below, though there’s nothing from
The Flat Hat because I’ve never written for it.) Epstein’s statements
were never "widely reported" and it wasn’t him to whom I was complaining.
But does this mean that it was he on whom Kissinger was relying? If so,
it looks as if a potentially beautiful friendship between them may be over.
The "reading" of the
Los Angeles Times essay is hilarious, as anyone
who consults it can see at once. And the clumsy insinuation - that I may
have once been a "denier" but now seem to have mended my ways - is not
attended by a shred of quotation. One wonders what rates these people
charge for their services.
Mealy-mouthed and surly and grudging
though it is, this does constitute a retraction, And one does not look
for grace from Kissinger, or from the old firm of Craven, Swine and Boor.
These people think that an allegation of such gravity can be picked up at
random and, when it proves false, discarded without shame. A small but
suggestive insult to the memory of the victims.
Minority Report, The Nation, October 3, 1994
"Hitler's Ghost", Vanity Fair June 1996