In Memory of Robert Tanenbaum
The announcement of Robert K. Tanenbaum’s death at age 83 was made on January 7th by his only daughter, Rachael. According to friends of his, he had been suffering from a case of cancer which he had tried hard to keep quiet and hidden from the public.
Bob was born in New York, and he went to the University of California, Berkeley on a basketball scholarship. He attended Boalt Hall School of Law and then applied for a position back in Manhattan under the legendary DA Frank Hogan. While in his employ, he never lost a felony case and rose to be supervisor of the Homicide Division. From that position, he oversaw literally scores of cases. He often said that if Hogan had not become stricken in office and forced to resign, he most likely would have finished his career there. For the simple reason that he loved the man, and Hogan was never going to lose an election.
But Hogan did die on April 2, 1974, at age 72. After an interim DA was appointed, Robert Morgenthau won a special election and took office in January of 1975. To put it mildly, Tanenbaum did not think much of Morgenthau as DA. He always thought that what made Hogan unique was the fact that he was not political in his practice. For instance, Bob disagreed with Morgenthau’s later decision to set aside the verdicts in the Central Park Five case. (Click here https://www.hoplofobia.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Robert-Tanenbaums-report-on-the-Central-Park-Jogger.pdf)
Once he worked with Morgenthau up close, Tanenbaum was ready to leave in the mid-seventies. At about that time, he got an unexpected invitation from another very successful first assistant DA, Richard A. Sprague, from Philadelphia. Sprague was a superb practicing first assistant. He made a name for himself as a special prosecutor in solving the famous Jock Yablonski murder conspiracy case. Sprague won a series of pyramiding trials, which resulted in the conviction of union leader Tony Boyle for the 1969 murders of his opponent Yablonski, his wife and daughter. Tanenbaum wrote a 2023 book on this subject called Coal Country Killing.
The reason he wrote that book is because the two prosecutors became friends. Once appointed Chief Counsel, Sprague invited Tanenbaum to become his Deputy Chief for the first phase of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Sprague had been chosen by representatives Tom Downing and Henry Gonzalez in late 1976. Since Tanenbaum had grown disenchanted with his office, he took Sprague up on the offer, even though he did not know him personally. Bob became the supervisor of the JFK side of the inquiry. His colleague in the Manhattan office, Robert Lehner, supervised the MLK side.
When Sprague and Tanenbaum were first appointed, the JFK community had reason to be excited. Why? Because unlike with the Warren Commission, these two men were very experienced in investigating and solving homicide cases. Plus, they both had reputations as being uncompromising in their procedures. Those two characteristics were about the inverse of what the Warren Commission was. For instance, Commission lawyer David Belin was a specialist in corporate law and estate planning. Wesley Liebeler was a professor of antitrust law. Chief counsel J. Lee Rankin focused on corporate affairs back in Nebraska. That was not the case with Sprague and Tanenbaum. They practiced criminal law, and they prosecuted felonies and murder cases every day.
In addition, both men had reputations for being straight arrows as far as not cutting corners or compromising in court. For example, in the Yablonksi case, Spague had offers to close deals with suspects before trial. He would not. Tanenbaum once said at a speech in Chicago, that there was no toleration for anyone ever interfering with one of his prosecutions.
And this is one of the things that made their service for the HSCA rather difficult. Congress works on the whole principle of compromise. But as Tanenbaum often said, there was no Democratic or Republican way of solving a felony case. This is why he had such scorn for the Warren Commission. And this is why he found the behavior of Earl Warren so inexplicable, since Warren had been the DA of Alameda County and also the Attorney General of California.
During a TV special with Dan Rather, Tanenbaum ended up in Dealey Plaza, facing off with Belin. After Belin ended up reciting one of his canned spiels, Tanenbaum said something like, I don’t know how many homicide cases this guy has tried, but I did dozens of them through to jury verdict--and what the Commission did will not wash. He told me that then, off camera, Rather said to him, “We really blew it on the Kennedy case.” That is how convincing Bob was to the public.
One of the most startling episodes Tanenbaum talked about was his meeting with Senator Richard Schweiker. Along with Gary Hart, Schweiker had been running an investigation of the Kennedy case under the Church Committee. He was working with people like attorney Dave Marston and field investigator Gaeton Fonzi. That committee had made public the CIA/Mafia plots to kill Fidel Castro. And this had shocked and sickened Schweiker.
When Tanenbaum arrived in town, the Church Committee was winding down, as the HSCA was just forming. Tanenbaum had brought down his chief detective from New York, Cliff Fenton. They both went over to see Schweiker. After talking about the general outlines of what he and Hart had discovered, Schweiker told Tanenbaum he wanted Fenton to leave for a moment. Which he did. Schweiker then pulled out a file that Fonzi and Marston had put together. He handed it to Tanenbaum. As he did so, he said, “The CIA killed President Kennedy.”
Shocked, Tanenbaum and Fenton read the file until the wee hours of the next morning. At dawn, Fenton wiped his eyes and told his boss quite simply that they were in over their heads. This was not a typical New York murder case; it was not a typical anything. Tanenbaum insisted they had to move forward in good faith since that is what they were tasked to do. What Bob did not know was that the CIA, the FBI and certain members of Congress were not going to let him and Sprague shoulder forward.
As Tom Downing told me, he had decided he was going to retire at the end of 1976. He had served his district for 18 years. He wanted to get back to private practice. Which he did, in his large, luxurious office in beautiful Newport News. He told me there that, as he was trying to get the HSCA passed into law, it was the CIA who lobbied against the Kennedy side and the FBI who opposed the King side. But after he accomplished that astounding feat, he was going to leave.
Without him, the committee was easy pickings for the intel community. As Mark Lane said, they created a phony feud between the new chairman, Henry Gonzalez, and Sprague. The press joined in, through the likes of David Burnham at the New York Times and Nicholas Horrock at Newsweek. They began to attack Sprague, and there was a showdown in which the committee backed Sprague and forced Gonzalez to resign. Which led to Gonzalez taking the floor of the House and unremittingly attacking Sprague. It got so bad that Sprague was told that the committee would not survive a continuing vote with him as Chief Counsel. As with Jim Garrison, and as would be later with Judge Joe Brown, the media had made Sprague radioactive. (The Assassinations, edited by Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, p. 62)
Sprague fell on his sword and resigned. He and Tanenbaum had made a compact that if one was forced to leave, the other would also. But Sprague insisted that Tanenbaum stay on so it would not look like they had sunk the committee completely. So Tanenbaum stayed on as a kind of caretaker, with Sprague’s colleague Al Lewis.
But Bob told me that he understood what had happened. The Powers That Be had won out. They had fired a warning shot, and it had hit home. Therefore, no experienced and skilled prosecutor would now take the job. They understood they would not be protected by Congress. As famed civil rights lawyer Joe Rauh told Jerry Policoff, “You know, I never thought the Kennedy case was a conspiracy until now. But if they can do that to Dick Sprague, it must have been.” (ibid, p. 66)
In the waning days, Tanenbaum hired investigators L. J. Delsa and Bob Buras to inquire into New Orleans. He told me he was very curious as to why the CIA was lying about Clay Shaw. He also hired Gaeton Fonzi to look into JM/Wave and Miami. To show the reader the impact of his leaving, he had hired both Cyril Wecht and Mike Baden to be his pathology experts. Tanenbaum told me that while he was there, Baden agreed with him that it was a conspiracy. Of course, that did not last after the new leadership took over.
Tanenbaum was also quite curious about CIA officer David Phillips. He was puzzled about why there was no picture of Oswald entering or exiting either the Cuban or Russian embassy in Mexico City. He was also bewildered that the CIA claimed there was no tape of Oswald’s voice that survived. Phillips told him that concerning the former, their camera happened to be out those days. Concerning the latter, they recycled their audio tapes every 7 or 8 days. Tanenbaum accepted this until Mark Lane presented him with the evidence that J. Edgar Hoover’s agents had listened to tapes of Oswald in Dallas while the suspect was in detention. As he said in Chicago in 1993, he now wanted to get Phillips back and charge him with perjury. But the committee faltered in doing that. It should also be added that both Ed Lopez and Dan Hardway wanted to indict, not just Phillips, but also Anne Goodpasture. But the committee would not do that under Robert Blakey either. (AARC Conference of 2014)
The JFK case never left Bob Tanenbaum. He always regretted that he and Sprague were not left to their own devices. I believe that they both thought that they had a chance at solving the great murder mystery of the 20th century. In 1996, Bob wrote an interesting novelization of his experience with the HSCA called Corruption of Blood. He was always willing to talk about the case either on the phone or in person. Often to complete strangers. Which is how I first met him back in 1992.
Now, one of our strongest advocates for truth in that case is gone. He will be sorely missed, as both a friend and a sterling colleague in a great cause.
