After the sellers of the "JFK Papers" filed a $100 million libel suit against several media outlets that labeled the documents bogus, "60 Minutes" has come to the same conclusion: The papers are fake.
In a piece airing Sunday night, the CBS television program hired an expert to examine the documents allegedly discovered by Lawrence X. Cusack III."It is not the writing of President Kennedy," Duayne Dillon, a respected handwriting expert, tells "60 Minutes."
Cusack has netted an estimated $2.2 million from the 300 documents, supposedly in John F. Kennedy's handwriting. The docu- ments show the president allegedly offering hush money to his lover, Marilyn Monroe, and allegedly conspiring with organized crime to topple Cuban dictator Fidel Castro.
Cusack says he found the papers while cleaning out the files of his late father, prominent New York lawyer Lawrence Cusack. And he repeatedly insists that the documents are legitimate.
"I think for somebody to embark on a hoax like this would be insanity," he says during the "60 Minutes" interview.
On Friday, Cusack and document dealer Thomas Cloud filed a 67-page complaint in federal court in Manhattan.
They and Cusack's wife, Jennifer, filed suit against ABC News and two magazines - Vanity Fair and The New Yorker - along with ABC News Chairman Roone Ar- ledge, ABC anchor Peter Jennings and Pulitzer Prize winning author Seymour Hersh.
Hersh's recent book, "The Dark Side of Camelot," contained a chapter on the papers until he decided they were fake.
The suit cites 16 civil violations ranging from fraud to libel to breach of contract to "infliction of emotional stress." They are seeking at least $100 million in damages.
The lawsuit stems from an ABC News report on Sept. 25 that called the documents forgeries and later reports by other media that discredited the documents. Cloud sold all but a few of the papers to about 140 investors.