Alexander Chancellor Review of my book today in The Spectator
//www.spectator.co.uk/books/8969551/the-annals-of-unsolved-crime-by-edw=rd-jay-epstein-review/ The Annals of Unsolved Crime Edward Jay Epstein Melville House, pp.333, £12.99 Edward Jay Epstein is an American investigative journalist who has =pent at least half a century trying to find answers to the troubling =heories and nagging questions that always swirl around notorious =rimes. The more famous the crime, the harder it is to get at the =ruth, especially if the crime has political consequences. For example, =ohn Wilkes Booth, who murdered Abraham Lincoln in 1865, was quickly =roven to have been part of a conspiracy involving leaders of the =efeated Confederate states; but when a reunited country was later =eeking reconciliation, it was found expedient to suppress this fact =nd portray him instead as a deranged individual who had acted alone.
In the case of the Reichstag fire of 1933, which brought Adolf Hitler =o power, the opposite was the case. It suited the Nazis to blame it on = conspiracy by the communists, and the communists on a conspiracy by =he Nazis; and most people believed in one or other of these two =onspiracy theories. But it seems that in reality there may have been =nly one individual involved — the unbalanced Dutch arsonist Marinus =an der Lubbe, who actually lit the fire and was later beheaded for =oing it.
As for the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, which Epstein =imself investigated in depth, and about which he wrote the first of =is 14 books, The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth, he =till doubts the Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted =lone and believes that he was following instructions from the Cuban =ntelligence service, which was bent on revenge for the CIA's =ttempts to assassinate Fidel Castro. The 54 'unsolved crimes' analysed in this stimulating book range in =ime from the Lincoln assassination and the 'Jack the Ripper' =rostitute murders of the 19th century to the 21st-century murder of =eredith Kercher in Perugia and arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn in New =ork for the alleged sexual assault of a hotel maid. Having carefully =tudied all the evidence, Epstein upholds the innocence of Amanda Knox =nd DSK (against whom the charge was anyway dropped), but is convinced =hat French intelligence deliberately exploited DSK's voracious =exual appetite to bring about his political downfall. His account of =he DSK affair shows how thorough an investigator he is, for he not =nly managed to interview the man himself but watched hours of =ideotape from security cameras at the Sofitel hotel where the alleged =ssault took place.
Not all the crimes in this book are strictly speaking 'unsolved' =97 some just have peripheral mysteries attached to them — but the =nes that tend to defeat investigators most often are air crashes (like =hose that killed Dag HammarskjOld of the UN, Lin Biao of China, and =eneral Zia of Pakistan) in which no witness survives and the condition =f the plane's wreckage is such that it is impossible to tell if =abotage has been involved. Crimes perpetrated by government =ntelligence services are also extremely hard to crack because of the =horoughness and skill that has typically gone into their preparation =nd execution. While acknowledging this, Epstein comes nevertheless to =he conclusion that the death in London in 2006 of the former KGB =fficer Alexander Litvinenko was not the consequence of a murder. Litvinenko, a former KGB officer who had fled Russia for Britain to =upport the exiled Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky in his obsessive =ampaign against President Vladimir Putin, died on 23 November 2006, =fter ingesting a lethal does of a rare radioactive isotope, =olonium-210. On his deathbed he claimed to have been administered it =n Putin's orders by a former KGB colleague, Anatoli Lugovoi. Britain =emanded Lugovoi's extradition to face a charge of murder, but Russia =efused, and Britain retaliated by expelling four Russian diplomats =rom London. It was like the Cold War all over again. After Litvinenko died, traces of polonium-210 were found on various =eople (including Lugovoi) with whom he had previously consorted in =ondon, and in places such as bars, bedrooms and lap-dance clubs that =hey had frequented; but there was no evidence as to where the polonium =ame from or to who might have administered it to whom. Epstein flew to =oscow, interviewed Lugovoi, and even got access there to the British =xtradition request document, which he found uninformative and lacking =n any incriminating evidence against Lugovoi.
What the polonium was doing in London nobody knows, but it is the sort =f material that comes furtively into the hands of intelligence =peratives from time to time, maybe for nefarious purposes but not =sually for murder. It leaks easily and with potentially lethal =onsequences. Before Litvinenko, six people in France, Israel and =ussia are known to have died from exposure to polonium-210, all as a =esult of accidental leakage. This, Epstein believes, is why Litvinenko =ied, too.
as ever
Ed