Gerald Leo Posner (born 1954) is an American investigative journalist and author of thirteen books, including Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (1993), which explores the John F. Kennedy assassination and Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (1998), about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. A plagiarism scandal involving articles that Posner wrote for The Daily Beast and his book Miami Babylon arose in 2010.Gerald Posner RESIGNS From Daily Beast Over Plagiarism Scandal by Danny Shea, The Huffington Post, February 11, 2010.3 Lessons from Gerald Posner's Plagiarism Scandal by John Hudson, The Atlantic Wire, February 12, 2010Plagiarism Excuses. Taking—er, borrowing—a page out of the Gerald Posner playbook. by David Graham, Newsweek, February 11, 2010Amid book scandal, authors Gerald Posner and Frank Owen confront each other at Miami Beach Botanical Garden by Steve Rothaus, Miami Herald, April 2010
Early life and education Posner was born in San Francisco, California, the only child of Jerry and Gloria Posner. His father was Jewish and his mother Catholic, and both were native San Franciscans. His father was a labor union official.
Posner was raised Catholic. He was educated at St. Ignatius College Preparatory and graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, Berkeley in 1975. In 1978, he earned his J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where he served as the associate executive editor for the university's Law Review.
At age 23, he joined the law firm, Cravath, Swaine & Moore, as one of the youngest attorneys ever hired by the firm. In 1980, he went into private practice with a partner. In 1981, he represented Deborah Ann Fountain, Miss New York State, against the Miss America pageant after Fountain was disqualified for padding her bra. He left the law in 1986, when his first book, about Nazi Josef Mengele's life on the run, was published by McGraw Hill.
Journalism career
Mengele: The Complete Story Posner's first book, co-written with British journalist John Ware, was the 1986 biography Mengele: The Complete Story. The book was the result of a five-year pro bono lawsuit that Posner brought on behalf of survivors of Josef Mengele's medical experiments at Auschwitz. Posner and Ware obtained exclusive access to 5,000 pages of Mengele's diaries and personal papers for their book."How Nazi War Criminal Josef Mengele Cheated Justice for 34 Years," Chicago Tribune Magazine, May 18, 1986. The book was critically recognized as the "definitive" biography of Mengele. "A fascinating account of Mengele's life on the run and the fruitless efforts to apprehend him." "Mengele: The Complete Story: A Review," by Harry Trimborn, Los Angeles Times Book Review, July 13, 1986, p. 9 "The book effectively paints a picture of a lonely, embittered Nazi. It knocks down decades of myths that Mengele was shielded by a protective squad of underground Nazis." "Book Review: Mengele, Entertainment, United Press International, July 18, 1986, BC Cycle "The research is remarkable." "Escape for the Angel of Death, Mengele: The Complete Story," by John Gellner, The Globe and Mail (Canada), July 19, 1986, p. D17 "The Mengele story has now been told, excellently, by the authors of this book ..." Books: Evil of the Mediocre/Review of Mengele, by Norman Stone, The Sunday Times (London), August 31, 1986, Issue 8456 "Well researched and wonderfully free of all the customary fantasy and exaggeration ... Fascinating." "The Death Doctors," by Neal Ascherson, The New York Review of Books, May 28, 1987 "This highly engrossing book gives the fullest account yet published of Josef Mengele's life ..." "Mengele: Review," Publishers Weekly, June 1986 "It's a pity that the official search for him did not match the vigor with which Posner and Ware stalk their subject in print." Mengele: The Complete Story, Book Review Supplement, San Francisco Chronicle, July 1986.
Posner testified before the United States Senate in 1986 about how Mengele used an International Red Cross passport to travel safely from Europe to Argentina in 1949. He also testified about the discovery made by himself and Ware that Mengele had twice been captured by U.S. Army troops in 1945, but released both times before authorities realized he was on several wanted lists.
In June 1986, Posner appeared with Mengele's only son, Rolf Mengele, on the Phil Donahue Show. Syndicated columnist, Lewis Grizzard, called the hour-long live program "an incredibly compelling piece of television journalism."
Some of the content in Mengele: The Complete Story was used by the United States Department of Justice's Office of Special Investigations (OSI), which in, February 1985, began an in-depth investigation into Mengele's post-war activities and whereabouts. The investigation, done in conjunction with the United States Marshals Service, was launched after allegations that Mengele was at any time in the custody of or had any relationship with U.S. government institutions or personnel after World War II. In its official report to the Attorney General of the United States in 1992, In the Matter of Josef Mengele, OSI noted it was indebted to Posner for obtaining a witness statement concerning Mengele's whereabouts from October 1945 to August 1, 1948.
Warlords of Crime In 1988, Posner published Warlords of Crime: Chinese Secret Societies: The New Mafia, an exposé of Triads and international heroin syndicates. Posner, and his wife, Trisha, traveled to Hong Kong, the Golden Triangle, the Netherlands, San Francisco, London and New York to conduct in-person research with drug traffickers. Clarence Petersen, reviewing the book for the Chicago Tribune, commented, "Posner ... is persuasive for the facts he gathered, all the more so because his narrative is largely the story of how he got the story, what he was told by the criminals and by law enforcement agents here and abroad and, most persuasive of all, what he saw with his own eyes. He does not dramatize; he doesn't have to. The chilling story he unearthed speaks for itself." Former New York detective and best-selling novelist, Dorothy Uhnak, wrote in The New York Times that "Warlords of Crime is powerful, frightening and, unfortunately, nonfiction."Warlords of Crime: Review, by Dorothy Uhnak, The New York Times, Book Review, October 9, 1988, p. BR35
Touchstone Pictures purchased the film rights to Warlords of Crime."Outtakes: Coming to America," by Pat H. Broeske, Los Angeles Times, March 12, 1989, Calendar Section, p. 36
The Bio-Assassins Posner's only novel is a biological warfare thriller set in the Cold War. According to Publishers Weekly, "Posner's first novel, a thriller whose development depends heavily on the author's convincing descriptions of the technology in intelligence work. The narrative works within the current conventions of its genre: principle is a mask for expedience; cynicism displaces conviction; proficiency implies virtue. But Posner, author of nonfiction works on Josef Mengele and Chinese secret societies, handles his material well. His descriptions move smartly; his characters, while somewhat two-dimensional, are convincing in their context; and his plot is constructed to satisfy demanding readers."
Hitler's Children Posner's 1991 book, Hitler's Children: Sons and Daughters of Leaders of the Third Reich Talk About Themselves and Their Fathers, included in-depth interviews with a dozen children of top Nazi officials. The book was also well received. Karen Stabiner wrote in her review for the Los Angeles Times, "This is a mesmerizing, blood-chilling book, a set of oral histories of the sons and daughters of 11 of Hitler's top men. It is barely possible to read more than a few pages at a time; the contrast between innocent childhood experience, and the awful understanding of that experience that came with time, is enough to make you weep."
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt in The New York Times questioned whether Posner's book length treatment was necessary to study the children of Nazi perpetrators. "Perhaps it would have been more enlightening had Mr. Posner studied fewer cases more intensely, or even a single case from the most intimate point of view."
Case Closed In his 1993 book Case Closed, Posner contended that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and Oswald's murderer, Jack Ruby, acted independently as well. Case Closed was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the 1994 Pulitzer Prize for History. It was also the subject of a double issue of U.S. News & World Report, and featured on programs such as ABC's 20/20, CBS Special Reports, and PBS's Frontline. The book was optioned for a television miniseries by David L. Wolper, the producer of the miniseries Roots."The JFK Debate Gets 'Case Closed,' The Movie," Outlook: Science & Society, "U.S. News & World Report," November 1, 1993. In his 2003 autobiography, Producer: A Memoir, Wolper cited his failure to get movies made of Case Closed and the Cuban Missile Crisis book, One Hell of a Gamble: Khrushchev, Castro, and Kennedy, as his two major career disappointments.
In 1993, Posner testified before the Legislation and National Security Subcommittee of the United States House Committee on Government Operations about the findings in Case Closed. In 1998, the Assassination Records Review Board briefly referenced this testimony in discussing two unsuccessful attempts to acquire the interview notes of two physicians, James Humes and J. Thornton Boswell, that Posner said he possessed.
Case Closed generally drew critical acclaim from the media; the Chicago Tribune, the Toronto Sun, The Sydney Morning Herald and Newsday all cited Posner's "meticulous" research in their respective reviews. The Toronto Sun, February 22, 1994: "In fact, I think all conspiracy theories are blown out of the water by Posner's meticulous research and careful conclusions." The Sydney Morning Herald, November 27, 1993: "Painstaking re-examination of the greatest murder mystery of modern times: who killed JFK? It's no mystery concludes lawyer/journalist [Posner]: lone assassin Lee Harvey Oswald did it. And who would argue after reading this meticulous analysis, complete with graphics, illustrations and detailed appendices?" Chicago Tribune, October 3, 1993: "Half of 'Case Closed' is a meticulous examination of Oswald's entire life, culminating in an almost day-by-day chronicle of his movements in the last two months before the assassination ... Its appeal lies both in its thorough, apparently even-handed research, and the fact that, following the publication in recent years of a near-constant stream of conspiracy books, 'Case Closed' may be the first by a respected author to argue persuasively for the Oswald-alone theory, a scenario most Americans dismissed years ago." Newsday (New York), September 16, 1993: "Posner employs meticulous research to reach what counts as a novel conclusion: That, for all its flaws, the Warren Commission was right. Oswald killed JFK without help from anyone." Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL), September 18, 1993: "Posner's exact and thorough destruction of the conspiracy theorists gives you Oswald the man, not Oswald the brilliant secret agent or Oswald the hapless patsy." Florida Today, April 24, 2000: "The industry standard belongs perhaps to lawyer-turned- investigative reporter Gerald Posner, whose meticulous Case Closed in 1993 was an immersion into assassination minutiae."