Who Killed George Polk?

Book excerpt: Reconstructing the murder, investigation, trial, and aftermath, Who Killed George Polk? offers a penetrating analysis of the willingness of the American media - including CBS and a committee of prominent journalists headed by Walter Lippmann - to accept the government's version of events despite numerous inconsistencies. The book also explores the fate of the handful of journalists who had questioned the original coverup and shows that even when additional developments turned the official version on its head, they were no longer in a position to press for a new investigation. All had become victims of anticommunist witchhunts. Arguing that the mainstream media and U.S. government were so blinded by cold war political considerations that they overlooked the most obvious culprits for the Polk murder, Elias Vlanton proves that Polk was likely killed neither by the communists, as originally charged, nor by corrupt Greek government officials, as claimed by a recent book and a CBS 60 Minutes broadcast. Instead, based on evidence uncovered during Vlanton's nineteen-year investigation of the case, the author presents the only plausible scenario of how and why Polk was murdered.