Article: 723 of sgi.talk.ratical From: dave@ratmandu.esd.sgi.com (dave "who can do? ratmandu!" ratcliffe) Subject: "Presumed Guilty, How & Why the W.C. Framed Lee Harvey Oswald" Summary: A factual account based on the Commission's public & private documents Keywords: continued endemic denial of our true history consigns us to oblivion Organization: Silicon Graphics, Inc. Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1992 13:18:15 GMT Lines: 9864 __________________________________________________________________________ PRESUMED GUILTY How and why the Warren Commission framed Lee Harvey Oswald A factual account based on the Commission's public and private documents by Howard Roffman (c)1976 by A.S. Barnes and Co., Inc. (c)1975 by Associated University Presses, Inc. ISBN 0-498-01933-0 * * * * * * * From the inside front and back jacket of the 1976 issue of "Presumed Guilty:" If Howard Roffman is right, and his careful documentation argues that he is, Lee Harvey Oswald could not have been the assassin of John F. Kennedy. He could not have been the gunman in the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building, as is shown by his close analysis of both the circumstantial evidence and the ballistics of the case. The implications are serious indeed, and the Introduction deals with them extensively, besides assessing the contributions of other critics. The documentation here presented, extracted from the once-secret working papers of the Warren Commission, demonstrates conclusively that the Commission prejudged Oswald guilty and made use of only circumstantial evidence to bolster its assumption, while suppressing information that tended to undermine it. Roffman in this book states the charge explicitly: "When the Commissioners decided in advance that the wrong man was the lone assassin, whatever their intentions, they protected the real assassins. Through their staff, they misinformed the American public and falsified history." About the Author Howard Roffman, now 23, was born and raised in Philadelphia, Pa., where he attended public school. His interest in the assassination of President Kennedy began when he was fourteen, and he read everything he could lay his hands on on the subject. By the 11th grade he had bought all 26 volumes of the Warren Report ($76), and, convinced of the inadequacy of the conclusions, he went to the National Archives and studied the files--the youngest researcher ever to see them. Alarmed at what he discovered, he writes, "I can't think of anything more threatening than when the government lies about the murder of its leader." Mr. Roffman completed his undergraduate studies as a History major at the University of Pennsylvania, and graduated with honors in 1974. At present studying law at the Holland Law Center, Gainesville, Fla., he is the author of a second book, "Understanding the Cold War." * * * * * * * Acknowledgments I wish to thank the following publishers for having given me permission to quote from published works: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., for permission to quote from "Accessories After the Fact," copyright (c) 1967 by Sylvia Meagher, reprinted by permission of the publisher, The Bobbs- Merrill Company, Inc. CBS News, for permission to quote from "CBS News Extra: `November 22 and the Warren Report,'" 1964, and "CBS News Inquiry: `The Warren Report,'" 1967. Harold Weisberg, for permission to quote from his books "Whitewash," 1965, "Whitewash II," 1966, "Photographic Whitewash," 1967, and "Oswald in New Orleans," 1967. I would also like to express my deepest gratitude to Dick Bernabei and Harold Weisberg, who gave so unselfishly of themselves to help further my research and my personal development. Special thanks go to Sylvia Meagher for her encouragement and assistance with my manuscript, and to Halpert Fillinger for his time and invaluable advice concerning the medical/ballistics aspects of this study. To those too numerous to name who helped in so many ways, I offer my thanks and appreciation. * * * * * * * Contents Acknowledgments Preface Introduction Note on Citations PART I: THE PRESUMPTION OF GUILT 1 Assassination: The Official Case 2 Presumed Guilty: The Official Disposition PART II: THE MEDICAL/BALLISTICS EVIDENCE 3 Suppressed Spectrography 4 The President's Wounds 5 The Governor's wounds and the Validity of the Essential Conclusions PART III: THE ACCUSED 6 The Rifle in the Building 7 Oswald at Window? 8 The Alibi: Oswald's Actions after the Shots 9 Oswald's Rifle Capability Conclusion Appendix A: Tentative Outline of the Work of the President's Commission Appendix B: Memorandum to J. Lee Rankin from David W. Belin Appendix C: Memorandum to J. Lee Rankin from Norman Redlich Appendix D: A Later Memorandum to J. Lee Rankin from Norman Redlich Appendix E: Report of the FBI's First Interview with Charles Givens Appendix F: FBI Report on Mrs. R. E. Arnold Bibliography Index * * * * * * * Preface A Decade of Deceit: From the Warren Commission to Watergate Whoever killed President John F. Kennedy got away with it because the Warren Commission, the executive commission responsible for investigating the murder, engaged in a cover-up of the truth and issued a report that misrepresented or distorted almost every relevant fact about the crime. The Warren Commission, in turn, got away with disseminating falsehood and covering up because virtually every institution in our society that is supposed to make sure that the government works properly and honestly failed to function in the face of a profound challenge; the Congress, the law, and the press all failed to do a single meaningful thing to correct the massive abuse committed by the Warren Commission. To anyone who understood these basic facts, and there were few who did, the frightening abuses of the Nixon Administration that have come to be known as "Watergate" were not unexpected and were surprising only in their nature and degree. This is not a presumptuous statement. I do not mean to imply that anyone who knew what the Warren Commission did could predict the events that have taken place in the last few years. My point is that the reaction to the Warren Report, if properly understood, demonstrated that our society had {nothing} that could be depended upon to protect it from the abuses of power that have long been inherent in the Presidency. The dynamics of our system of government are such that every check on the abuse of power is vital; if the executive branch were to be trusted as the sole guardian of the best interests of the people, we would not have a constitution that divides power among three branches of government to act as checks on each other, and we would need no Bill of Rights. Power invites abuses and excesses, and at least since the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, an enormous amount of power has been assumed and acquired by the president. Political deception is an abuse that democracy invites; in a system where the leaders are ultimately accountable to the people, where their political future is decided by the people, there is inevitably the temptation to deceive, to speak with the primary interest of pleasing the people and preserving political power. There probably has not been a president who has not lied for political reasons. I need only cite some more recent examples: Franklin Roosevelt assured the parents of America in October 1940 that "your boys are not going to be sent into foreign wars"; at the time he knew that American involvement in World War II was inevitable, even imminent, but he chose not to be frank with the people for fear of losing the 1940 election. Dwight Eisenhower in 1960 denied that the American aircraft shot down by the Russians over their territory was a spy-plane, when he {and} the Russians knew very well that the plane, a U-2, had been on a CIA reconnaissance flight; John F. Kennedy had the American ambassador at the United Nations deny that the unsuccessful invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs was an American responsibility when exactly the opposite was true. So, deception and cover-up per se did not originate with the Warren Commission in 1964 or the Nixon administration in 1972. They had always been an unfortunate part of our political system. With the Warren Commission they entered a new and more dangerous phase. Never before, to my knowledge, had there been such a systematic plan for a cover-up, or had such an extensive and pervasive amount of deception been attempted. And certainly never before had our government collaborated to deny the public the true story of how its leader was assassinated. In the face of this new and monumental abuse of authority by the executive, all the institutions that are supposed to protect society from such abuses failed and, in effect, helped perpetrate the abuse itself. As with Watergate, numerous lawyers were involved with the Warren Commission; in neither case did these lawyers act as lawyers. Rather, they participated in a cover-up and acted as accessories in serious crimes. The Congress accepted the Warren Report as the final solution to the assassination and thus acquiesced in the cover-up of a President's murder. And, perhaps most fundamentally, the press failed in its responsibility to the people and became, in effect, an unofficial mouthpiece of the government. For a short time the press publicized some of the inconsistencies between the Warren Report's conclusions and the evidence; yet never did the press seriously question the legitimacy of the official findings on the assassination or attempt to ascertain why the Johnson administration lied about the murder that brought it into power and what was hidden by those lies. It was only a small body of powerless and unheralded citizens who undertook to critically examine the official investigation of President Kennedy's murder, and among them it was still fewer who clearly understood the ominous meaning of a whitewashed inquiry that was accepted virtually without question. It was only these few who asked what would happen to our country if an executive disposed to abuse its authority could do so with impunity. It was in 1966, long before the press and the public saw through the thicket of deception with which we had been led into a war in Vietnam, long before this country was to suffer the horrors of Watergate, that a leading assassination researcher, Harold Weisberg, wrote and published the following words: If the government can manufacture, suppress and lie when a President is cut down--and get away with it--what cannot follow? Of what is it not capable, regardless of motive . . .? This government {did} manufacture, suppress and lie when it pretended to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. If it can do that, it can do anything. And will, if we let it. Weisberg, in effect, warned that the executive would inevitably commit wrongdoing beyond imagination so long as there was no institution of government or society that was willing to stop it. That one man of modest means could make this simple deduction in 1966 is less a credit to him than it is an indictment of a whole system of institutions that failed in their fundamental responsibility to society. My political maturity began to develop only in the past few years; all of my research on the assassination was conducted while I was a teenager. Yet the basic knowledge that my government could get away with what it did at the murder of a president made me fearful of the future. On October 10, 1971, when I was eighteen years old, I wrote what I hoped would be the last letter in a long and fruitless correspondence with a lawyer who had participated in the official cover-up as an investigator for the Warren Commission. I concluded that letter with these words: I ask myself if this country can survive when men like you, who are supposed to represent law and justice, are the foremost merchants of official falsification, deceit, and criminality. It was to take three years and the worst political crisis in our history for the press and the public to even begin to awaken to the great dangers a democracy faces when lawyers are criminals. It is with pain and not pride that I look back and see that so few were able to understand what the Warren Commission and the acceptance of its fraudulent Report meant for this country. This was not omniscience, but simple deduction from basic facts. I cannot escape the conviction that had the Congress, or the lawyers, or especially the press seriously endeavored to establish the basic facts and then considered the implications of these facts, we all might have been spared the frightening and threatening abuses of Watergate. If the institutions designed to protect society from such excesses of power had functioned in 1964, it is possible that they would not have had to mobilize so incompletely and almost ineffectively in 1972 and 1973. Watergate has brought us into a new era, hopefully one in which all institutions will work diligently to see that our government functions properly and honestly. As of now, the reasons for optimism are still limited. It was not the press as an institution that probed beneath the official lies about Watergate and demanded answers; essentially, it was {one} newspaper, the "Washington Post," that, true to its obligations, bulldogged the story that most of the nation's press buried until it became a national scandal. It was not the law as an institution that insisted on the truth; it was one judge, John Sirica, who best served the law by settling for no less than the whole truth, and he was and continues to be deceived and lied to by those whose responsibility it is to uphold and defend the law. Whether Congress will adequately respond to the crimes and abuses of the Nixon administration remains to be seen. Our very system of government and law faces its most profound challenge today. A nation that did not learn from the Warren Commission has survived to relive a far worse version of that past in Watergate. It would do well to live by the wisdom of Santayana, for it is doubtful that American democracy could survive another Watergate. Howard Roffman January, 1974 * * * * * * * Introduction On January 22, 1964, the members of the then two-month old Warren Commission were hastily assembled for a top-secret meeting. Half-way into their executive session, the Commissioners decided their words were so sensitive that they should not be recorded. Commission member Allen Dulles, the former CIA director, even suggested "this record ought to be destroyed." The incomplete stenographer's tape remained locked in government vaults for eleven years until, under pressure from a persistent researcher named Harold Weisberg, the National Archives retrieved it and forwarded it to the Pentagon for transcription. The result was a blow to anyone who ever entertained the belief that the Warren Commission set out in good faith to investigate the murder of President Kennedy and discover the full truth. It was never a secret that the Commission relied almost entirely on the FBI to conduct the bulk of its investigation. In its own Report, the Commission boasted of this relationship: "Because of the diligence, cooperation, and facilities of the Federal investigative agencies, it was unnecessary for the Commission to employ investigators other than the members of the Commission's legal staff" (Rxiii). It was also no secret that this relationship was inherently compromising because the investigative agencies, particularly the FBI, had a vested interest in the conclusion that the President's murder was the unforeseeable act of a lone madman. In the aftermath of the assassination, the FBI was left holding the bag. Rumors immediately spread that Oswald had been an FBI informant and that the FBI knew of Oswald's potential for violence but failed to report his identity to the Secret Service. As Harold Weisberg succinctly put it as early as 1965, after President Kennedy was killed, all the federal agencies "had one objective, to take the heat off themselves."[1] By any reasonable standard, the last investigator to have been entrusted with the task of developing the facts surrounding the assassination was the FBI. The Warren Commission realized this, but decided to rely on the FBI nonetheless. Its public position would be one of praise for the FBI's diligent cooperation. But the secret executive sessions and confidential memoranda tell another story: The Commission knew what J. Edgar Hoover was up to and played along. The Commission convened in secret that January 22 to discuss the rumor that Oswald had been a paid informant for the FBI. As chapter 2 of this book documents, the FBI had already preempted the Commission by publicly claiming to have solved the assassination within three weeks of the event. At the January 22 session, an unidentified speaker, probably General Counsel J. Lee Rankin, explained the basic problem to the Commission: "That is that the FBI is very explicit that Oswald is the assassin . . . and they are very explicit that there was no conspiracy." However, the speaker noted, "they have not run out all kinds of leads in Mexico or in Russia. . . . But they are concluding that there can't be a conspiracy without those being run out." The inevitable question was raised: "Why are they so eager to make both of those conclusions . . . ?" Mr. Dulles claimed to be confused as to why the FBI would want to dispose of the case by finding Oswald guilty if, at the same time, Oswald was rumored to have been in the FBI's employ. Dulles's question was quickly answered by Rankin: A: They would like to have us fold up and quit. Boggs: This closes the case, you see. Don't you see? Dulles: Yes, I see that. Rawkin [{sic}]: They found the man. There is nothing more to do. The Commission supports their conclusions, and we can go on home and that is the end of it.[2] The Commission engaged in a more explicit discussion of the problem at its secret session five days later, on January 27. John J. McCloy noted "we are so dependent upon them [the FBI] for our facts that it might be a useful thing to have him [Hoover] before us" for the purpose of requesting further investigation "of the things that are still troubling us." The following discussion ensued: Mr. Rankin: Part of our difficulty in regard to it is that they have no problems. They have decided that it is Oswald who committed the assassination, they have decided that no one else was involved, they have decided-- Sen. Russell: They have tried the case and reached a verdict on every aspect. Rep. Boggs: You have put your finger on it. . . . Mr. Rankin: . . . They have decided the case, and we are going to have maybe a thousand further inquiries that we say the Commission has to know all these things before it can pass on this. And I think their reaction probably would be, "Why do you want all that. It is clear." Sen. Russell: "You have our statement, what else do you need?" Mr. McCloy: Yes, "We know who killed cock robin."[3] Thus, the Commission recognized the untenable position it faced being put in if it relied on the FBI for additional investigation when the FBI was claiming that the crime had been solved and no more investigation was necessary. Hoover had already staked the very reputation of his agency on a solution that demanded Oswald as the lone assassin. It would have been a naive Commission indeed that would have expected the FBI to destroy its own "solution" of the crime with further investigation. In light of these secret discussions, the Commission's heavy dependence on the FBI is nothing less than culpable. The central FBI conclusion, which the Commission adopted as its own, was that Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President Kennedy. This conclusion was sustained solely on the finding that bullets from Oswald's rifle had caused the wounds to President Kennedy and Governor Connally. If this one finding crumbles, the case for Oswald's guilt must crumble with it. It was thus of paramount importance that the Commission independently verify this FBI finding. The Commission was certainly aware of its responsibility. In secret, the members admitted to each other the inadequacy of the Bureau's ballistics findings as set forth in the FBI Report. At the executive session held December 16, 1963, Mr. McCloy complained, "This bullet business leaves me totally confused." Chairman Warren concurred: "It's totally inconclusive."[4] Members of the Commission's staff, noting the FBI's sloppy work, recognized a need "to facilitate independent analysis of the Bureau's ballistic conclusions"[5] and to "secure from the FBI and consider the underlying documents and reports related to the rifle and shells."[6] As I explain in chapter 3, the only way the Commission could possibly have established a firm link between bullets fired from Oswald's rifle and the wounds inflicted during the assassination was to compare the metallic composition of all the ballistic specimens through a meticulous scientific process called spectrographic analysis. The FBI claimed to have run such tests and arrived at inconclusive results. The Commission took the FBI at its word, based on nonexpert testimony, without ever having looked at the spectrographer's report or having put the relevant documents into its record. Evidence has since been developed by Harold Weisberg that a far more detailed comparative process, neutron activation analysis (NAA), was utilized by the Commission through the Atomic Energy Commission.[7] Proper NAA testing could at once have settled the doubts that plagued the Commission. The Commission knew the value of NAA and recognized the need to apply the technology to the evidence in the assassination. Indeed, the AEC had immediately offered its services to the FBI, only to be snubbed by Hoover. Then, on December 11, 1963, Paul C. Aebersold of the AEC wrote a letter to Herbert J. Miller at the Department of Justice explaining how the NAA process might be of vital importance in the investigation of the President's murder.[8] Aebersold noted that "it may be possible to determine by trace-element measurements whether the fatal bullets were of composition identical to that of the purportedly unfired shell" found in the chamber of Oswald's rifle. Likewise, "Other pieces of physical evidence in the case, such as clothing . . . might lend themselves to characterization by means of their trace-element levels." The Justice Department forwarded Aebersold's letter to the Commission, which immediately took the matter up with Hoover. The Commission sought "your advice regarding the feasibility and desirability of taking advantage of [the AEC's] offer."[9] When the Commission assembled on January 27, 1964, Mr. Rankin advised as follows: Now, the bullet fragments are now, part of them are now, with the Atomic Energy Commission, who are trying to determine by a new method, a process that they have, of whether they can relate them to various guns and the different parts, the fragments, whether they are part of one of the bullets that was broken and came out in part through the neck, and just what particular assembly of bullet they were part of. They have had it for the better part of two and a-half weeks, and we ought to get an answer.[10] Indeed, an investigative Commission aware of its obligation to verify ballistic findings on which the case against an alleged presidential assassin depended "ought" to have insisted upon and received an immediate "answer" from an independent agency employing a sensitive new technology. But {this} Commission {never} got an answer. And that was exactly how J. Edgar Hoover wanted things. Still awaiting the AEC's test results, the Commission on March 16, 1964, had staff lawyer Melvin Eisenberg discuss the NAA process with FBI Special Agent John F. Gallagher, the man who had run the Bureau's earlier spectrographic analysis. Among the questions raised by Eisenberg was the application of NAA to President Kennedy's clothing, particularly to the overlapping holes in the shirt near the collar button, which the FBI had been unable to relate spectrographically to the passage of a bullet. Hoover disapproved the idea, writing the Commission on March 18 that "It is not felt that the increased sensitivity of neutron activation analysis would contribute substantially to the understanding of the origin of this hole and frayed area" (20H2). The Commission bowed to Hoover's wish and never subjected the alleged bullet damage in President Kennedy's and Governor Connally's clothing to NAA. The secrets that might be held by the minuscule traces of metal left on the clothing would not be unlocked by this Commission charged with evaluating "{all} the facts" of the assassination (R471). For what its own record discloses, the Commission merely forgot about the scientific tests it knew were crucial and proceeded without them to assemble a case against Oswald (see chapter 2). The Commission took not a word of testimony about NAA's of the ballistic specimens, and allowed into the published evidence references only to NAA's of the paraffin casts of Oswald's hands and cheek made by the Dallas Police (R562). Even at that, as late as September 5, 1964, a week before the Warren Report was set in type, the staff was still trying to obtain from the FBI a description of the NAA process.[11] The only word the Commission ever officially received relating to these vital tests was communicated not through the AEC but through Hoover, whose brief letter remained buried in the Commission's unpublished files until Harold Weisberg dug it out.[12] Hoover did not write the Commission until July 8, 1964, after sections of the Report naming Oswald as the assassin had been preliminarily drafted. Although he then attempted to play down the value of the NAA's, his letter stands as a monument to the deliberate inadequacy of the Commission's investigation. To begin, Hoover's July 8 letter informed the Commission that the NAA's conducted were incomplete: Because of the higher sensitivity of the neutron activation analysis, certain of the small lead fragments were then subjected to neutron activation analysis and comparisons with larger bullet fragments. Thus, according to Hoover, there were no NAA comparisons of any of the copper components of the recovered bullets and fragments. Hoover's listing also excluded several items of ballistics evidence possessed by the Commission, among them the unfired cartridge and the metallic traces on the clothing. What were the results of this examination of fatally limited scope? Hoover reported the following only: While minor variations in composition were found by this method, these were not considered sufficient to permit positively differentiating among the larger bullet fragments and thus positively determining from which of the larger bullet fragments any given small lead fragment may have come. I invite the reader to unscramble these semantics. It is indeed impossible to know what Hoover considered a "larger bullet fragment," especially because a whole bullet, Commission Exhibit 399, was alleged to have been tested but seems not to have been included within the above description of the test results. In short, Hoover told the Commission very little, if anything, about the NAA results, and provided no documentation to support or clarify his incomprehensible summary. The Commission, having already decided that Oswald was the assassin, was content to leave the record in this hopeless state. One researcher, Harold Weisberg, was not, and tried to force the government to release the entire record concerning the spectrographic analysis by filing a suit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), as described in chapter 3. After I completed the text of this book, a federal court of appeals decided against Weisberg and allowed the Department of Justice to continue suppression of the spectrographer's report.[13] The decision was so contrary to the FOIA that Congress almost immediately moved to overrule it legislatively. A 1974 amendment to the FOIA cited the {Weisberg} case as a frightening precedent and expressed Congress's intent that the government not be permitted to suppress reports involving well-known scientific procedures such as spectrography.[14] By February 1975, when the new law took effect, Weisberg was back in court, demanding not only the spectrographer's report but also the full report on the NAA's performed by the AEC for the Warren Commission. The government produced a batch of almost incomprehensible working papers, most of them incomplete, some containing tables of elements with statistical data missing. These, it claimed, represented the full extent of the relevant documents within its files. The government's claims defied belief: the spectrographer's report that FBI Agent Robert Frazier swore had been made "a part of the permanent records of the FBI" (5H69) did not exist; the NAA's that Rankin described to the Commission on January 27 had not been conducted until May 15; and the experts of the FBI and AEC are equipped with such computerlike memories that they could understand and evaluate the results of the spectrographic and NAA testing without tabulating or recording literally thousands of multi-digit figures. Bald as the government's representations were, they satisfied a federal district judge.[15] Once again, release of meaningful, possibly determinative scientific data on the assassination awaits the appellate process. One need not await the release of the full documentation, if it exists, to ask why it was not published by the Warren Commission and made part of a complete historical record. Nor can one avoid the observation that the Commission's investigation cannot have been complete or legitimate absent this most fundamental scientific evidence, the value of which was only too well known to the Commission. One conclusion is both basic and irrefutable: the people have been lied to about the murder of their president and how that murder was investigated by the government. Without a doubt, the falsehoods and misrepresentations disseminated by the government and the media concerning the assassination of President Kennedy are as odious in our society as the assassination itself. The freedoms guaranteed under the law are without meaning unless the people are honestly and competently informed. Indeed, when a government can get away with whitewashing the truth about a president's murder, the suggestion of authoritarianism is more than apparent. The reader should understand that I regard the significance of the Warren Commission's failure not as part of an intriguing "whodunnit" but rather as a frightening breakdown of the principle of governmental accountability. Surely the question of who killed the President must concern us all, but over twelve years after the murder, speculation about who was responsible becomes a futile exercise of questionable value. I have yet to see a shred of credible evidence linking any known group or individual with the President's murder. Yet speculation on that score is as rife today as it is profitable. Those who engage in it have been dubbed "conspiracy theorists." In this book I do not deal with theory; I deal with fact. The facts are that we do not know who killed President Kennedy, that the Warren Commission named the wrong man as the assassin and never searched for the truth of the crime. Although I do not allege that the Commission or its staff knew that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the assassin, the documents presented here reveal that no possibility other than Oswald as the assassin was ever considered in the investigation. What this means, regardless of motives (about which I am not competent to speculate), is that the Commission left President Kennedy's murder unsolved, tacitly allowing the real assassin or assassins to go free. A reader approaching the field of critical works on the assassination faces a thicket of conflicting theories, doctrines, and allegations. I think it only fair to let the reader know in advance where I believe my book stands within the maze. First, however, it would be helpful to review briefly the events of the assassination and its subsequent history. President Kennedy was shot to death at 12:30 P.M., c.s.t., on November 22, 1963, as he rode through the streets of Dallas, Texas, in a motorcade. Texas Governor John Connally, seated in the President's open limousine, received serious bullet wounds in the shooting. Immediately, the motorcade sped to nearby Parkland Hospital, where a team of doctors tried in vain to save the President's life. The President's death was announced, and, over the objections of the local authorities, who then had exclusive jurisdiction in the crime, the body was forcefully removed from the hospital and flown back to Washington. Before the plane bearing the President's body took off, Vice-President Lyndon Johnson, who had ridden in the motorcade, took the oath of office and assumed the duties of President. Within forty-five minutes of the assassination, a Dallas Police Officer, J. D. Tippit, was shot to death in a Dallas suburb. A half-hour later, Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested in a movie theater a half mile from the site of the Tippit murder. He was first accused of killing only Tippit, but by that evening he became the prime suspect in the murder of the President as well. Throughout that hectic weekend, the Dallas Police made repeated public accusations of Oswald's guilt. Oswald steadfastly maintained that he was innocent and said he would prove it when he was brought to trial. The trial never came, however. On November 24, Oswald, still in police custody, was shot to death by Jack Ruby. Elimination of the only suspect in the assassination precluded a trial that might have turned up the facts about the President's murder through the adversary system of justice. In its stead, President Johnson on November 29 appointed a commission to "evaluate and report upon the facts relating to the assassination . . . and the subsequent violent death of the man charged with the assassination"(R471). Earl Warren, then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, presided over this commission, whose members included Senators Richard Russell and John Sherman Cooper, Representatives Hale Boggs and Gerald Ford, Allen Dulles, and John J. McCloy. This panel, which became known as the Warren Commission, appointed a General Counsel, J. Lee Rankin, who headed a group of fourteen Assistant Counsel and twelve staff members. Throughout the Warren Commission's ten-month investigation, it was this staff of lawyers under Rankin who took virtually all the testimony and composed the final report. The Commission itself conceded that its task was not executed by its prestigious but preoccupied members. In the words of the Warren Report, it was the staff that "undertook the work of the Commission with a wealth of legal and investigative experience." "Highly qualified personnel from several Federal agencies, assigned to the Commission at its request" also assisted in the investigation(Rxi). Members of the legal staff, divided by subject into teams, were responsible for analyzing and summarizing much of the information originally received from the various agencies, and for "determin[ing] the issues, sort[ing] out the unresolved problems, and recommend[ing] additional investigation to the Commission"(Rxii). On September 24, 1964, the Warren Commission submitted an 888- page report to the President. (This report was later to become known as the Warren Report.) The Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald alone had assassinated President Kennedy, and maintained that it had seen no evidence indicating that Oswald and Ruby, together or alone, had been part of a conspiracy to murder the President. Two months after the issuance of its Report, the Commission published as a massive appendix the evidence upon which the Report was allegedly based, including transcripts of witness testimony, evidential exhibits, and thousands of documents. This evidence is contained in twenty-six volumes. Immediately upon its release, the Warren Report was met by an overwhelmingly favorable response from the nation's "establishment" press.[16] This response, analyzed objectively, was in fact a blatant instance of irresponsible journalism, for newsmen lavished praise on the Report before they could have read and analyzed it-- {two months} before the evidence upon which it rested was released to the public. Nevertheless, the Warren Report, which was introduced to the public as the definitive and final word on the assassination, was soon to be seriously questioned; a national controversy would erupt in which the Warren Commission, its Report, its evidence, and its workings would be challenged by a broad range of critics. Criticism of the Commission and doubts about the assassination were brewing prior to the issuance of the Report, although they did not command broad public attention and were regarded more as suspicious rumblings of foreign origin. By the end of 1965 things were beginning to change. Vincent Salandria published a well- documented critique of the medical/ballistics conclusions of the Commission in a small left-of-center magazine. "The Oswald Affair," by respected correspondent Leo Sauvage, was published in France, challenging the conclusion that Oswald was guilty. In late 1965, "The Unanswered Questions About President Kennedy's Assassination," a hasty critical analysis by reporter Sylvan Fox, was published. "Whitewash," written in 1965 by Harold Weisberg, was the first full-length book to examine in detail the Commission's investigation, and bore the unenviable burden of "breaking" the subject of Warren Report criticism in the United States. After Weisberg published his book in a private printing at his own expense, several other works critical of the official version of the assassination appeared on the market, including, in chronological order of publication: "Inquest," by Edward Jay Epstein; "Rush to Judgment," by Mark Lane (Lane had been among the first to defend the dead Oswald, and, at his own urging, gave testimony before the Warren Commission); "The Second Oswald," by Richard Popkin; "Whitewash II" and "Photographic Whitewash," by Harold Weisberg; "Accessories After the Fact," by Sylvia Meagher; and "Six Seconds in Dallas," by Josiah Thompson. These books were widely reviewed and often appeared on best- seller lists. They were responsible for generating a considerable national controversy over the findings of the Warren Commission, in which several responsible periodicals called for a new investigation[17] and about two-thirds of the public rejected the allegation of Oswald's lone guilt.[18] Early in 1967, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison made the dubitable announcement that his office, after conducting an extensive investigation, had "solved" the assassination.[19] One figure in the plot alleged by Garrison died immediately before he was to be arrested.[20] Soon after, a New Orleans businessman, Clay Shaw, was arrested and charged with conspiring to murder President Kennedy.[21] Finally the assassination was to get its day in court. But Shaw did not come to trial until January 1969, and he was easily acquitted after a two-month proceeding in which all the shocking evidence against him promised by Garrison failed to materialize.[22] Garrison was in consequence widely condemned by the media, and the New Orleans fiasco caused the virtual destruction of whatever foundation for credibility had previously been established by critics of the Warren Report. Garrison did not refute or in any tangible way diminish the legitimacy of several responsible and documented criticisms of the official version of the assassination. But his unethical behavior and the mockery of justice (involving only Shaw) perpetrated under him were "bad press"; it left the public and the media highly suspicious of Warren Report criticism. Then, in June 1972, there was the break-in at the Watergate and the beginning of a new national consciousness, a skepticism toward government and an unwillingness to believe the official word. By the time President Nixon resigned in August 1974, deception, dishonesty, and malfeasance in government were accepted as the reality, even expected as the norm. Suddenly, the notion that the government had not told the truth about John Kennedy's murder did not seem so outrageous. It was not long before there formed a new wave of doubt about the Warren Commission's findings. Revelations about the illegal domestic activities of the CIA led President Ford to appoint a presidential commission in February 1975. This commission's scope was quickly expanded to include allegations that the CIA had been involved in the Kennedy assassination as well as numerous plots against foreign leaders, notably Fidel Castro of Cuba.[23] However, the commission, whose investigation was headed by an ex- staff lawyer for the Warren Commission, David Belin, chose to "investigate" only the most unfounded of the charges against the CIA relating to the assassination. The outlandish allegations of Dick Gregory and A. J. Weberman that E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis were arrested in Dealey Plaza on November 22 provided easy targets for Mr. Belin's selectively aimed investigative cannons.[24] It soon became public knowledge that the United States had indeed been involved in the assassination business, having used the CIA and the Mafia to make attempts on the lives of Castro, Trujillo, and Lumumba, among others. Doubts grew. In the fall of 1975 it was revealed that the Dallas office of the FBI, on orders from J. Edgar Hoover, had destroyed a threatening note left there by Oswald.[25] After the FBI confirmed this deliberate destruction of evidence,[26] no one could deny that there {had} been some sort of conspiracy to conceal by the government. Representative Don Edwards announced that his subcommittee would hold hearings into the FBI's withholding of evidence from the Warren Commission, and two Senators on a select committee investigating the CIA formed a special subcommittee to study the need for a congressional investigation of the assassination. Clearly the tide was turning. Even the Commission's staunchest defenders were forced to call for a new investigation, including David Belin[27] and President Ford,[28] both Warren Commission alumni. I support the movement toward a new investigation, but the vital question now concerns {what} should be investigated. A congressional reopening of the case should focus on those areas which will yield meaningful findings and serve a constructive national purpose. Such an investigation would inevitably have to deal with the question of "Who killed Kennedy?" However, my own familiarity with the evidence leads me to believe that an inquiry limited only to that question would be doomed to achieving very little. The major question at this point is "Who covered up the truth about the murder, how, and why?" A congressional investigation could establish with little effort that the Warren Report's "solution" of the crime is erroneous; the Commission's files, as well as the files of other federal agencies, would provide a fertile starting point for the determination of responsibility in the cover-up. The participants in all stages of the official investigation of the assassination are either known or identifiable, and those individuals still living can be subjected to cross-examination. I do not personally believe that the federal investigators knew who killed President Kennedy. But the evidence is certain that decisions were made, at times and levels now unknown, that the truth about the assassination should not be discovered, that falsehood should be disseminated to the people. When such decisions are made by the government, the Congress has a reason, indeed an obligation, to investigate and to assure that the executive is made to account. Thus, it is my conviction that the only responsible approach to be taken toward the assassination at this point is to focus upon the question of the Warren Commission's failure, rather than to speculate about conspiracies and solutions for which there is no evidence. My own review of the critical literature and the varied positions of those opposing the Warren Report persuades me that this approach is in fact the only viable one. I hope that a brief elaboration will help the reader to understand my position. The early writings on the assassination by Weisberg, Meagher, Lane, and Epstein focused on the inadequacy of the official solution to the crime. Each author approached the subject in his or her own manner, although, in my estimate, the books by Lane and Epstein were seriously flawed. Harold Weisberg was the first and the strongest advocate of the doctrine that the assassination should be studied from the perspective of the official noninvestigation. Weisberg has continually stressed the great implications of the fraudulent investigation for our government and our society. His own words on the subject forcefully convey his approach: In its approach, operations and Report, the Commission considered one possibility alone--that Lee Harvey Oswald, without assistance, assassinated the President and killed Officer Tippit. Never has such a tremendous array of power been turned against a single man, and he was dead. Yet even without opposition the Commission failed. . . . A crime such as the assassination of the President of the United States cannot be left as the Report . . . has left it, without even the probability of a solution, with assassins and murderers free, and free to repeat their crimes and enjoy what benefits they may have expected to enjoy therefrom. No President is ever safe if Presidential assassins are exculpated. Yet that is what the Commission has done. In finding Oswald "guilty," it has found those who assassinated him "innocent." If the President is not safe, then neither is the country.[29] Much more does it relate to each individual American, to the integrity of the institutions of our society, when anything happens to any president--especially when he is assassinated. The consignment of President John F. Kennedy to history with the dubious epitaph of the whitewashed investigation is a grievous event.[30] Above all, the Report leaves in jeopardy the rights of all Americans and the honor of the nation. When what happened to Oswald once he was in the hands of the public authority can occur in this country with neither reprimand nor question, no one is safe. When the Federal government puts its stamp of approval on such unabashed and open denial of the most basic legal rights of any American, no matter how insignificant he may be, then no American can depend on having those rights, no matter what his power or connections. The rights of all Americans, as the Commission's chairman said when wearing his Chief Justice's hat, depend upon each American's enjoyment of these same rights.[31] Perhaps the simplest statement of the context enunciated by Weisberg is contained in the quotation that I included in the Preface of this book: "If the government can manufacture, suppress and lie when a President is cut down--and get away with it--what cannot follow?"[32] The basic focus of Mrs. Meagher's book is set forth in its very appropriate title, "Accessories After the Fact: The Warren Commission, The Authorities and The Report." Mrs. Meagher scrupulously contrasts the statements contained in the Warren Report with the Commission's published hearings and exhibits. She finds that: The first pronounces Oswald guilty; the second, instead of corroborating the verdict reached by the Warren Commission, creates a reasonable doubt of Oswald's guilt and even a powerful presumption of his complete innocence of all the crimes of which he was accused.[33] As stated by Mrs. Meagher, the corollary to this finding is as follows: Because of the nature of the investigation, it is probable that the assassins who shot down President John F. Kennedy have gone free, undetected. The Warren Report has served merely to delay their identification and the process of justice.[34] This is to say that the Warren Commission and the federal authorities, regardless of their motives or conscious intent, made themselves accessories after the fact in the President's murder by constructing a false solution that allowed the real criminals to go free. Mark Lane's best-selling "Rush to Judgment" was presented as a critique of the Commission's investigation. One may question Lane's selection and presentation of evidence; certain basic flaws in the book raise more serious questions about its value as a "critique" of the official inquiry. The Warren Commission's investigation cannot be understood without reference to the relationship between the Commission and its staff, for it was the staff that handled virtually all of the work and digested the information that filtered up to the Commission members. Yet in "Rush to Judgment" the staff is never identified. Where questioning of a particular witness is quoted, names of individual staff members have been replaced by an anonymous "Q." An introduction by Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper states: "It is clear that the bulk of the work fell upon the Chairman and upon the assistant counsel and staff [who for Lane's readers are nameless]."[35] This assertion unjustly singles out Earl Warren for blame, although he never came close to doing "the bulk of the work." Trevor-Roper seems immediately to thwart the supposed purpose of the book by offering the assurance that "moderate, rational men will naturally and . . . rightly" reject the idea that the Commission and the "existing agencies" "sought to reach a certain conclusion at the expense of the facts . . . that they . . . were dishonest . . . [that the] Commission . . . engaged in a conspiracy to cover up a crime. . . ."[36] Lane surely no longer accepts this kind but false view of the Commission's work, and has omitted the introduction by the prestigious Trevor-Roper from the 1975 paperback reissue of his book. In the intervening years, however, Lane has taken public stances that have seriously compromised his credibility. In the midst of his close association with Jim Garrison prior to the acquittal of Clay Shaw, Lane told the press that he knew the identities of the real murderers of President Kennedy.[37] During the 1968 presidential campaign, in which he ran for Vice-President on a ticket with Dick Gregory, Lane held a press conference in Philadelphia to announce that Garrison "has substantially solved the assassination conspiracy. He knows who was involved and has strong evidence. I've seen the evidence; I've talked to the witnesses."[38] Lane also claimed to have two copies of this evidence, which he promised to release if the government kept Shaw from going to trial. The evidence presented at Shaw's trial, needless to say, did not solve the assassination; neither Garrison nor Lane ever possessed the dispositive evidence each claimed to have. Doubters who sought a rational and scholarly treatment of the Commission's failure flocked to Edward Jay Epstein when his critique of the inner workings of the Commission, "Inquest," was published in 1966; they were soon to be disappointed. Many of Epstein's most telling points were based on unrecorded interviews with Commission members and staff lawyers and thus could not be verified when the inevitable denials came. Yet, for all his pretenses, Epstein actually defended the official investigation. According to Epstein, the Warren Commission was involved in a situation that might have excused lying in the "national interest." He rightly asserted that the "nation's faith in its own institutions was held to be at stake."[39] But, in concluding his book, he found that "in establishing its version of the truth, the Warren Commission acted to reassure the nation and protect the national interest."[40] This, he implied, justified the failure to make "it clear that very substantial evidence indicated the presence of a second assassin."[41] Three years after writing his book, Epstein totally reversed his position in a "New York Times Magazine" article.[42] "Nor is there any substantial evidence that I know of," he wrote in 1969, "that indicates there was more than one rifleman firing." Suddenly, to Epstein, it was incidental that the Commission "had conducted a less than exhaustive investigation." Of the "great number of inconsistencies" between the official evidence and the official conclusions, he could say only that "there is no formula for adding up inconsistencies and arriving at the truth," as if this platitude would rescue the Commission's findings. Those who suggest that these massive "inconsistencies" prove the invalidity of the Warren Report, Epstein opined, merely engage in "obfuscatory rhetoric." Perhaps the two best-known books departing from the perspective of the inadequacies of the official investigation and entering into the realm of alternative theories are Richard Popkin's "The Second Oswald" and Josiah Thompson's "Six Seconds in Dallas." Both books cite a wealth of evidence but are thoroughly inadequate in themselves, and thus, to my thinking, are counterproductive. "The Second Oswald" was introduced as "the third stage of a great case" and promoted as "the startling new theory of the assassination."[43] The theory--that someone, resembling and posing as Oswald, planted incriminating circumstantial evidence during the two months before the assassination--was hardly new. Harold Weisberg had devoted a chapter of his "Whitewash" to it, although not in the context of suggesting a solution to the crime. Weisberg's copyrighted work was never acknowledged by Popkin, who falsely claimed singular and original credit. Popkin's preoccupation with the importance of solving the crime has led him into strange pursuits, the latest of which was to inform President Ford that John Kennedy was killed by "zombie assassins," programmed like robots by the CIA.[44] Professor Thompson's book, a slick presentation utilizing numerous photographs, refuses to name any assassins but offers a scenerio [sic] in which three assassins fired four shots in Dealey Plaza. The theory is hopelessly flawed. It is based on a first shot fired later than the evidence indicates;[45] it relies heavily on interpretations of the Zapruder film that are tenuous at best;[46] it fails to account for at least one shot that missed the car;[47] and it is riddled with basic inaccuracies such as the misidentification of a cartridge case first forwarded to the FBI by the Dallas Police (an integral part of the "theory").[48] Of all those critics who began with a desire to help but who wound up damaging their credibility through irresponsible action, no one has been more of a disappointment than Dr. Cyril Wecht. For years Dr. Wecht was an outspoken and highly qualified critic of President Kennedy's autopsy. His exceptional credentials in forensic pathology were of great value to many critics researching the case. Then, in 1972, Dr. Wecht applied for and was granted access to the photographs and X rays of President Kennedy's body taken during the autopsy. Most critics rejoiced that finally an expert from "our side" would be allowed to study this long- suppressed evidence. I had great reservations as to the advisability of Dr. Wecht's viewing this material. Affirmatively, there was little that the pictures and X rays could tell because the autopsy itself had been hopelessly botched. The report of an earlier examination by an expert panel convened at the government's behest in 1968 had already revealed enough information to destroy the official reconstruction of the crime and suggest perjury in the testimony of the autopsy pathologists before the Warren Commission.[49] Thus, I felt that an examination by Dr. Wecht in 1972 could accomplish little and actually be disserving, because Dr. Wecht, for all his expertise in forensic pathology, was never an expert {on the assassination}. I knew that Dr. Wecht was closely advised by critics whom I considered irresponsible, and I feared the sort of public posture he would assume as a result of their counsels. When Dr. Wecht solicited my help prior to viewing the pictures and X rays,[50] I advised him of my position[51] and received no response. Years later I learned that he was so enraged at my suggestions of caution that he forbade his panel of "advisers" from ever communicating his findings to me.[52] Dr. Wecht's behavior subsequent to viewing the suppressed photographic material has exceeded my worst expectations. His early statements and writings sensationalized the fact that President Kennedy's brain was missing,[53] seriously overrating the evidential value of the brain.[54] He initially chose to temper his remarks about the pictures and X rays themselves by claiming that the incomplete state of the evidence made a conclusive determination of the source of the shots impossible.[55] However, Dr. Wecht did not hesitate to offer unfounded speculation about the assassination or the murder of Officer Tippit.[56] On one occasion he stated: "I believe the evidence shows conclusively . . . that the assassination was the work of a conspiracy, and that the Central Intelligence Agency--the CIA--was definitely involved."[57] When Dr. Wecht ultimately reduced his findings to an article for a medical journal, his position changed, although hardly for the better. He toned down his earlier caveats about the limits of the medical evidence and concluded that the available evidence led him to believe that President Kennedy was struck by two bullets from the rear.[58] In my opinion, it was highly irresponsible for Dr. Wecht to announce such a tenuous conclusion while ignoring the irrefutable evidence that the pictures and X rays destroy the integrity of all the medical evidence upon which the Warren Report was based--as he himself had testified in open court years before. In some cases it is difficult to believe that errors in Dr. Wecht's article could have been inadvertent. The article casually notes that an X ray of the President's head revealed at least three fragments of metal in the {left} hemisphere of the brain;[59] the article also claims to vouch for the accuracy of the description of the same X ray contained in the report of the 1968 panel review.[60] What Dr. Wecht failed to tell his readers is that the 1968 panel stated that there were {no} metallic fragments depicted on the X ray to the left of the midline of the head, a finding which, according to that panel, renders the theory of a frontal shot "not reasonable to postulate."[61] If Dr. Wecht's observation is correct, he deceived his readers in claiming to verify the earlier panel report and in failing to note the glaring discrepancy. Dr. Wecht's apparent desire to solve a crime that cannot be solved has earned him the dubious honor of being quoted extensively by defenders of the Warren Report.[62] Even the 1975 presidential commission investigating the CIA cited Dr. Wecht's testimony and writings to support the notion that President Kennedy was shot only from behind.[63] Dr. Wecht, ostensibly still a "critic," protested that he had been misrepresented and promised to eat the transcript of his testimony--on the steps of the White House--if he really said what had been attributed to him.[64] Soon Wecht admitted that his words had merely been used out of context.[65] But there would be no eating on the White House steps; the testimony had already consumed Dr. Wecht. Facts, not theories, documentation, not speculation, are the only responsible approach to the sordid history of President Kennedy's murder. The evidence is simply insufficient to allow any determination of what really happened on November 22, 1963, and a critic attempting to fashion a solution without respecting the limits of the evidence is doomed to sacrifice his credibility. The crime remains unsolved, and, as I document here, the federal government played a direct and deliberate role in assuring that it would remain unsolved. This is a fact far more frightening than even the most outrageous theory about who committed the crime. It is also intolerable. One of the few remedies available to the average citizen is to set the record straight, however and wherever it can be done, in order to lay the foundation for responsible congressional action. To set the record straight is the purpose of this book. Here I present documented proof of two points essential to any understanding of the assassination and its official "investigation": 1. Lee Harvey Oswald did not fire any shots in the assassination; 2. The Warren Commission considered no possibility other than that Oswald was the lone assassin, and consciously endeavored to fabricate a case against Oswald. It is not the critic's responsibility to explain the motives of the Commission members or their staff, or to name assassins and conspirators. The only responsibility of the critic is to deal with the facts and never to avoid or attempt to modify, without factual basis, the implications of the evidence. So, when the Commissioners decided in advance that the wrong man was the lone assassin, whatever their intentions, they protected the real assassins. Through their staff they misinformed the American people and falsified history. Regardless of whether their false solution to the crime was a "politically acceptable explanation," they did nothing to rectify the politically "unacceptable" fact. When a government can get away with what ours did at the death of its president, the presidency and the people are betrayed. The assassination of a president is a total negation of the electoral process, which is the very foundation of democratic institutions. With the Warren Report, the government sacrificed its credibility, and undermined any legitimate basis the people might have had for confidence in it. Very simply, a government that disseminates blatant falsehoods about the murder of its chief executive and frames an innocent man is not accountable to and does not deserve the confidence of the people. This is a disquieting reality, but one that must be faced if integrity is to be restored to our government and its institutions. The government must function properly, with decency, honesty, and respect for the law. In framing Oswald and exculpating presidential assassins, the Commission mocked the law and every principle of justice. In the words of former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, "In a government of laws, the very existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously."[66] This book is not a call to the people to lose faith in their government. It is a call to reason, so that no one will unquestioningly accept governmental assurances without first checking the facts. In the end we must face reality; we must reckon with truth no matter where it is found. __________ [1] Harold Weisberg, "Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report" (Hyattstown, Md.: Harold Weisberg, 1965), p. 189. [2] Transcript of Warren Commission executive session of January 22, 1964, pp. 11-13. The transcript is reproduced in Harold Weisberg's "Post Mortem" (Frederick, Md.: Harold Weisberg, 1975), pp. 475ff. [3] Transcript of Warren Commission executive session of January 27, 1964, pp. 170-71. The full transcript is reproduced in Harold Weisberg's "Whitewash IV: JFK Assassination Transcript" (Frederick, Md.: Harold Weisberg, 1974). [4] Transcript of Warren Commission executive session of December 16, 1963, p. 11. [5] Memorandum dated February 10, 1964, from Charles Shaffer to Howard Willens, available from the National Archives. This document is reproduced in Weisberg's "Post Mortem" at p. 488. [6] Memorandum dated January 23, 1964, from Francis Adams and Arlen Specter to J. Lee Rankin, attachment II, item (c), available from the National Archives. This document is reproduced in Weisberg's "Post Mortem" at p. 490. [7] See "Post Mortem," chap. 29 and pp. 407ff. [8] Aebersold's letter is available from the National Archives. The letter notes: "Our work leads one to expect that the tremendous sensitivity of the activation analysis method is capable of providing useful information that may not be otherwise attainable." [9] Letter from J. Lee Rankin to J. Edgar Hoover, dated January 7, 1964. [10] Transcript of Warren Commission executive session of January 27, 1964, p. 194. [11] Memorandum from Melvin Eisenberg to Norman Redlich dated September 5, 1964. This document is reproduced in Weisberg's "Post Mortem" at p. 477. [12] See "Post Mortem," chap. 29 and p. 607. [13] "Weisberg v. U.S. Department of Justice," 489 F.2d 1195 (D.C. Dir. 1973). [14] During the Senate debate on the 1974 FOIA amendments, Senator Edward Kennedy expressed his understanding that one of the proposed amendments would "in effect override the court decisions in the court of appeals on the Weisberg against United States." Senator Philip Hart, who had written the amendment, responded: "That is its purpose." "Congressional Record" of May 30, 1974, S9329-30. The official legislative history is contained in the Conference Report, H. Rep. 93-1380, 93d Congress, 2d Session, 1974. [15] Weisberg's second FOIA suit for the spectrographic and NAA results is described in detail with much of the accompanying documentation reproduced in "Post Mortem," pp. 407ff. See also the affidavit of FBI Agent John W. Kilty filed by the government in the suit, at pp. 623-24. [16] E.g., see Anthony Lewis's coverage of the Warren Report and editorial comment by James Reston, "New York Times," September 28, 1964; "Washington Post" coverage of the same date, including praise by Robert Donovan, p. A14, Roscoe Drummond, p. A13, Marquis Childs, and an editorial saying the Report "deserves acceptance as the whole truth, and nothing but the truth", a favorable editorial in the "Washington Evening Star," September 28, 1964, p. A-8; "Time" (October 2, 1964) and "Newsweek" (October 5, 1964) carried lengthy "news" features praising the Report. [17] E.g., see "Life," November 25, 1966, pp. 38-48; "Ramparts," October 1966, p. 3; "Saturday Evening Post," January 14, 1967, and December 2, 1967, p. 88. [18] In May 1967 a Harris Survey revealed that 66 percent of the American public believed that the assassination was not the work of one man but was part of a broader plot. [19] "Philadelphia Inquirer," February 25, 1967. [20] "Washington Post," February 23, 1967. [21] "Philadelphia Inquirer," March 2, 1967. [22] Ibid., March 2, 1969. [23] "New York Times," March 8, 1975. [24] "New York Times," May 12, 1975. See "Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States" (June 1975), Chap. 19. [25] "Dallas Times Herald," August 31, 1975. [26] "New York Times," September 1, 1975, p. 7. [27] "New York Times," November 23, 1975. [28] "New York Times," November 27, 1975. [29] Weisberg, "Whitewash," p. 188. [30] Weisberg, "Whitewash II," p. 7. [31] Weisberg, "Whitewash," p. 189. [32] Weisberg, "Photographic Whitewash," p. 137. [33] Sylvia Meagher, "Accessories After the Fact" (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., Inc., 1967), p. xxiii. [34] Ibid., p. 456. [35] Mark Lane, "Rush to Judgment" (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1966), p. 8. [36] Ibid., pp. 15-16. [37] "Lane: I Know the Assassin," "New York Post," March 21, 1967, p. 14. [38] Philadelphia "Distant Drummer" for bi-weekly period beginning November 1, 1968, p. 9. [39] Edward J. Epstein, "Inquest" (New York: Bantam Books, 1966), p. 2. [40] Ibid., p. 125. [41] Ibid. [42] Edward J. Epstein, "The Final Chapter in the Assassination Controversy?", "New York Times Magazine," April 20, 1969. [43] Richard Popkin, "The Second Oswald" (New York: Avon Books, 1966), p. 9 and jacket blurb, back cover. [44] Dick Russell, "'Dear President Ford: I Know Who Killed JFK . . . ,' " "Village Voice," September 1, 1975. [45] Compare Josiah Thompson, "Six Seconds in Dallas" (New York: Bernard Geis Associates, 1967), pp. 34- 35, with Olson and Turner, "Photographic Evidence and the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy," "Journal of Forensic Sciences," October 1971. [46] For example, Thompson claims that the precise moment of impact on Governor Connally is ascertainable because the Governor's right shoulder slumps, his cheeks puff, and a lock of hair flies up. "Six Seconds," pp. 71-75. The shoulder slump would occur coincidentally with the impact of the bullet; the other signs necessarily would appear an instant {after}. Yet, the film reveals the shoulder slump at frame 238, with the secondary signs of impact first appearing in frame 237, {before} the supposed momentum transfer occurs. [47] Thompson suggests that a fragment from the head shot might have retained enough energy to travel 270 feet, strike a curbstone, and ricochet to wound a bystander, but adds that "270 feet is a long way for a fragment to fly." Ibid., pp. 230-33. [48] The three cartridge cases found in the Book Depository were given FBI identification numbers C6, C7, and C38. Only two cases were forwarded to the FBI on the night of the assassination. Thompson, attempting to "excite . . . suspicion" about C6, alleges that C6 was the case initially withheld from the FBI by the Dallas Police. Ibid., p. 143. However, the evidence establishes beyond question that C38 was the withheld case and that C6 and C7 were immediately forwarded to the FBI. See CE 717, and 24H262. In support of his assertion that C6 had been withheld, Thompson cites testimony by Dallas Police Lt. J. C. Day (4H254-55), which was erroneous and was later retracted by Day in a sworn affidavit (7H402). Thompson does not mention the retraction. [49] See Weisberg, "Post Mortem," Part II. [50] Letter from Dr. Cyril H. Wecht to the author, dated July 20, 1972. [51] Letter from author to Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, dated July 26, 1972. [52] Tape of a conference between Dr. Wecht and several Warren Report critics, recorded August 23, 1972. The tape was made available to me by a participant in the conference. Of my letter, Dr. Wecht stated: "I'm a little too big of a boy to receive a letter from a punk kid like that, you know, 18 year old snotty nose kid." Dr. Wecht also expressed anger that Harold Weisberg disapproved of his examination. [53] "Mystery Cloaks Fate of Brain of Kennedy," "New York Times," August 27, 1972, p. 1. [54] Philip Nobile questioned Dr. Wecht about the brain in a nationally syndicated column: WECHT: The brain has disappeared because it would give us hard physical evidence that the Warren Commission is inaccurate regarding (1) the number of bullets that struck the president's head and (2) the direction the bullets came from. NOBILE: In other words, you think the brain is the key to solving the assassination? WECHT: Yes, it is. "Fort Lauderdale News and Sun-Sentinel," November 19, 1972, p. 4E. [55] See Dr. Wecht's article in "Modern Medicine," November 27, 1972. [56] E.g., see source cited in note 54. [57] "National Enquirer," October 15, 1972. [58] In 1972 Dr. Wecht wrote, "So far as the available materials show, there might even have been shots fired from the front and right. . . ." "Modern Medicine," November 27, 1972, p. 31. In 1974 Dr. Wecht wrote: "So far as the available medical evidence shows, all shots were fired from the rear. No support can be found for theories which postulate gunmen to the front or right-front of the Presidential car." Wecht and Smith, "The Medical Evidence in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy," "Forensic Science Gazette," April 1974, p. 128. [59] Wecht and Smith, "Forensic Science Gazette," April 1974, p. 118. [60] Ibid., p. 114. [61] Report of the Ramsey Clark panel, 1968, p. 12. [62] E.g., see Jacob Cohen, "Conspiracy Fever," "Commentary," October 1975. My citation of Cohen's article should not in any way be construed as an endorsement of it, for it is a gross and deliberate misstatement of fact, as I documented in collaboration with Jerry Policoff in the "Washington Star," October 26, 1975, Section H. [63] "Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States," June 1975, p. 264. [64] "New York Times," June 12, 1975. [65] "Philadelphia Inquirer," June 15, 1975, p. 3-A. [66] Dissenting opinion of Justice Brandeis in "Olmstead v. United States," 277 U.S. 438 (1928). __________________________________________________________________________ PART I: THE PRESUMPTION OF GUILT A Note on Citations References to the 26-volume "Hearings Before the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy" follow this form: volume number, H, page number; thus, for example, 4H165 refers to volume 4, page 165. Exhibits introduced in evidence before the Commission are designated CE and a number; CE399, for example, refers to the Commission's 399th exhibit. References to the "Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy" (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1964) follow this form: R, page number; R150, for example indicates page 150 of the Report. Most references to the Commission's unpublished files deposited in the National Archives follow this form: CD, number: page number; CD5:260, for example, indicates page 260 of Commission Document 5. * * * * * * * 1 Assassination: The Official Case As stated in its Report, one of the Warren Commission's main objectives was "to identify the person or persons responsible for both the assassination of President Kennedy and the killing of Oswald through an examination of the evidence" (Rxiv). Accordingly, the Commission produced one person whom it claimed to be solely responsible for the assassination: Lee Harvey Oswald (R18-23). Because the scope of the present study is limited to Oswald's role in the shooting, it is vital that we first understand the foundations for the Commission's conclusion that Oswald was guilty. In this chapter I will deal solely with the evidence that is alleged to prove Oswald's guilt, as presented in the Report. I will make no attempt to criticize the selection of evidence, but rather will take the final report at face value, probing its logic and structure so that it can be judged whether the determination of Oswald's guilt is warranted by the "facts" set forth. The first and most vital step in determining who shot at the President involved ascertaining the location(s) and weapon(s) from which the shots came. In a chapter entitled "The Shots From the Texas School Book Depository," the Commission "analyzes the evidence and sets forth its conclusions concerning the source, effect, number and timing of the shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally" (R61). {The Scene} The scene of the assassination was Dealey Plaza, the so-called heart of Dallas, made up of three streets that converge at a railroad overpass. At the opposite side of the plaza are several buildings, many city owned. Along each side leading to the underpass are grassy banks adorned with shrubbery and masonry structures. Two grassy plots separate the three streets--Elm, Main, and Commerce--all of which intersect with Houston at the head of the plaza. The shooting occurred as the Presidential limousine cruised down Elm Street toward the underpass. One of the major conclusions of the Commission is that the shots "were fired from the sixth floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository" (R18), a book warehouse located on the northwest corner of Elm and Houston. (Oswald was employed in this building.) Several factors influenced this conclusion. The Report first calls upon the witnesses who indicated in some way that the shots originated from this source. It refers to two spectators who claimed to see "a rifle being fired" from the Depository window, two others who "saw a rifle in this window immediately after the assassination," and "three employees of the Depository, observing the parade from the fifth floor," who "heard the shots fired from the floor immediately above them" (R61). {The Limousine} Discussed next is the presidential automobile (R76-77). On the night of the assassination, Secret Service agents found two relatively large bullet fragments in the front seat of the car--one consisting of the nose portion of a bullet, the other a section of the base portion. An examination of the limousine on November 23 by FBI agents disclosed three very small lead particles on the rug beneath the left jump seat, which had been occupied by Mrs. Connally, and a small lead residue on the inside surface of the windshield, with a corresponding series of cracks on the outer surface. All of the metallic pieces were compared by spectrographic analysis by the FBI and "found to be similar in metallic composition, but it was not possible to determine whether two or more of the fragments came from the same bullet." The physical characteristics of the windshield damage indicated that it was struck on the inside surface from behind, by a bullet fragment traveling at "fairly high velocity." {Ballistics} In a crime involving firearms, the ballistics evidence is always of vital importance. This was especially true of the ballistics evidence adduced by the Commission relating to the President's murder. As used in the Report, this evidence seems to have a clarifying effect, bringing together loose ends and creating a circumstantial but superficially persuasive case. The relevant discussion is summarized in the Report as follows, based on unanimous expert testimony: The nearly whole bullet found on Governor Connally's stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital [the President and the Governor were rushed to this hospital after the shooting] and the two bullet fragments found on the front seat of the Presidential limousine were fired from the 6.5- millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor of the Depository Building to the exclusion of all other weapons. The three used cartridge cases found near the window on the sixth floor at the southeast corner of the building were fired from the same rifle which fired the above-described bullet and fragments, to the exclusion of all other weapons. (R18) Here the Commission has related a rifle and three spent cartridge cases found at the scene of the crime to a bullet found in a location presumably occupied by Governor Connally as well as to fragments found in the car in which both victims rode. The circumstantial aspect of the ballistics evidence presented by the Commission is this: it does not directly relate the weapon to a specific shooter nor the bullet specimens to a specific victim's body. {Autopsy} An autopsy is a central piece of evidence in violent or unnatural death. In the case of death by gunshot wounds, an autopsy can reveal a wealth of information, indicating the type(s) of ammunition used by the assailant(s), as well as the general relationship of the gun to the victim's body. Bullets or fragments found in the body can sometimes conclusively establish the specific weapon used in the crime. The medical evidence used by the Commission emanated from (a) the doctors who observed the President's and the Governor's wounds at Parkland Hospital, (b) the autopsy on the President performed at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, Maryland, on the night of the assassination, (c) the clothing worn by the two victims, and (d) ballistics tests conducted with the Carcano found in the Depository and ammunition of the same type as that found in the hospital and the car. From this information the Commission drew the following conclusions: The nature of the bullet wounds suffered by President Kennedy and Governor Connally and the location of the car at the time of the shots establish that the bullets were fired from above and behind the Presidential limousine, striking the President and the Governor as follows: (1) President Kennedy was first struck by a bullet which entered at the back of his neck and exited through the lower front portion of his neck, causing a wound which would not necessarily have been lethal. The President was struck a second time by a bullet which entered the right-rear portion of his head, causing a massive and fatal wound. (2) Governor Connally was struck by a bullet which entered on the right side of his back and travelled downward through the right side of his chest, exiting below his right nipple. This bullet then passed through his right wrist and entered his left thigh where it caused a superficial wound. (R18-19) For each set of wounds, the Report cites ballistics tests in support of the notion that the injuries observed were consistent with bullets fired from the Carcano (R87, 91, 94-95). In two instances it is asserted that the tests further indicated that the wounds could have been produced by the bullet specimens traceable to the {specific} Carcano found in the Depository, as opposed to merely being consistent with a {similar} rifle firing similar ammunition (R87, 95). {The Trajectory} "The trajectory" is the next topic of discussion in the Report, which says: " . . . to insure that all data were consistent with the shots having been fired from the sixth floor window, the Commission requested additional investigation, including analysis of motion picture films of the assassination and on-site tests" (R96). The films referred to by the Commission were those taken of the assassination by spectators Abraham Zapruder, Orville Nix, and Mary Muchmore. Only Zapruder's film, taken from the President's side of the street, provided a photographic record of the entire shooting. (Zapruder's position is shown in the sketch of Dealey Plaza.) Motion picture footage is composed of a series of still pictures called "frames" taken in extremely rapid succession which, when projected at approximately the same speed of exposure, create the illusion of motion. The frames of the Zapruder film were numbered by the FBI for convenient reference, and it is not until frame 130 that the President's car appears in the film. From that point on, this is basically what we see in terms of frames: The car continues down Elm for a brief period, gradually approaching a road sign that loomed in Zapruder's view. At frame 210, President Kennedy goes out of view behind this sign. Governor Connally, also temporarily blocked from Zapruder's sight, first reappears in frame 222. At 225 the President comes into view again, and he has obviously been wounded, for his face has a grimace and his hands are rising toward his chin. Within about ten frames, the Governor is struck; he manifests a violent reaction. In the succeeding frames we see Mrs. Kennedy reach over to help her husband, her attention temporarily diverted by Connally, who is screaming. Finally, at frame 313, the President is struck in the head, as can be clearly seen by the great rupturing of skull and brain tissues. Mrs. Kennedy scrambles frantically onto the trunk of the limousine and is forced back into her seat by a Secret Service agent who had run to the car from the follow-up vehicle. Subsequent to the head shot, the limousine accelerated in its approach toward the underpass. Once the car is out of view, the film stops. The Nix and Muchmore films depict sequences immediately before, during, and after the head shot. Examination of Zapruder's camera by the FBI established that an average of 18.3 film frames was exposed during each second of operation; thus the timing of certain events could be calculated by allowing 1/18.3 seconds for the action depicted from one frame to the next. Tests of the "assassin's" rifle disclosed that at least 2.3 seconds (or 41-42 film frames) were required between shots (R97). The on-site tests were conducted by the FBI and Secret Service in Dealey Plaza on May 24, 1964. A car simulating the Presidential limousine was driven down Elm Street, as depicted in the various assassination films, with stand-ins occupying the general positions of the President and the Governor. An agent situated in the sixth-floor window tracked the car through the telescopic sight on the Carcano as the assassin allegedly did on November 22. Films depicting the "assassin's view" were made through the rifle scope (R97). During these tests it was ascertained that the foliage of a live oak tree would have blocked a sixth-floor view of the President during his span of travel corresponding to frames 166 through 210. An opening among the leaves permitted viewing the President's back at frame 186, for a duration of about 1/18 second (R98). The Commission concluded that the first shot to wound the President in the neck occurred between frames 210 to 225, largely because (a) a sixth-floor gunman could not have shot at the President for a substantial time prior to 210 because of the tree, and (b) the President seems to show an obvious reaction to his neck wounds at 225. Exact determination of the time of impact was prevented because Mr. Kennedy was blocked from Zapruder's view by a road sign from 210 to 224 (R98, 105). The Report next argues that the trajectory from the sixth-floor window strongly indicated that a bullet exiting from the President's throat and traveling at a substantial velocity would not have missed both the car and its occupants. No damage to the limousine was found consistent with the impact of such a missile. "Since [the bullet] did not hit the automobile, [FBI expert] Frazier testified that it probably struck Governor Connally," says the Report, adding, "The relative positions of President Kennedy and Governor Connally at the time when the President was struck in the neck confirm that the same bullet probably passed through both men" (R105). The evidence allegedly supporting this double-hit theory is then discussed, and the Commission concludes that one bullet probably was responsible for all the nonfatal wounds to the two victims (R19). {Number of Shots} "The weight of the evidence indicates that there were three shots fired," declares the Report (R19). This conclusion is based not so much on witness recollections as on the physical evidence at the scene--namely, the presence of three cartridge cases (R110-11). The Commission reasons that, because (a) one shot passed through the President's neck and probably went on to wound the Governor, (b) a subsequent shot penetrated the President's head, (c) no other shot struck the car, and (d) three shots were fired, "it follows that one shot probably missed the car and its occupants. The evidence is inconclusive as to whether it was the first, second, or third shot which missed" (R111). {Time Span} Determination of the time span of the shots, according to the Commission's theory, is dependent on which of the three shots missed. As calculated by use of the Zapruder film, the time span from the first shot to wound the President to the one that killed him was 4.8 to 5.6 seconds. Had the missed shot occurred between these two, says the Report, all the shots could still have been fired from the Carcano, which required at least 2.3 seconds (or 42 frames) between successive shots. If the first or third shots missed, the time span grows to at least 7.1 to 7.9 seconds for the three shots. Thus, the Commission concluded that the shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally were fired from the sixth-floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository Building. Two bullets probably caused all the wounds suffered by President Kennedy and Governor Connally. Since the preponderance of the evidence indicated that three shots were fired, the Commission concluded that one shot probably missed the Presidential limousine and its occupants, and that the three shots were fired in a time period ranging from approximately 4.8 to in excess of 7 seconds. (R117) {The Assassin} In a preface to its discussion of the evidence relevant to the identity of President Kennedy's assassin, the Report adds a new conclusion to those of its preceding chapter. Here it asserts not only that it has established the source of the shots as the specific Depository window, but also "that the weapon which fired [the] bullets was a Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5-millimeter Italian rifle bearing the serial number C2766" (R118). Although it had previously traced the found bullet specimens to this rifle discovered in the Depository, the Report never specifically concluded that these bullets were responsible for the wounds. Making such an assertion at this point provided the premise for associating the owner of that rifle with the murder. Who owned the rifle? The Report announces: Having reviewed the evidence that (1) Lee Harvey Oswald purchased the rifle used in the assassination [although the name under which the rifle was ordered was "A. Hidell," the order forms were in Oswald's handwriting (R118-119)], (2) Oswald's palmprint was on the rifle in a position which shows that he had handled it while it was disassembled, (3) fibers found on the rifle most probably came from the shirt Oswald was wearing on the day of the assassination [although the Commission's expert felt that these fibers had been picked up "in the recent past," he could not say definitely how long they had adhered to the rifle (R125)]. The Commission never considered the possibility that they were deposited on the rifle subsequent to Oswald's arrest.], (4) a photograph taken in the yard of Oswald's apartment shows him holding this rifle [the photographic expert could render no opinion as to whether the rifle shown in these pictures was the C2766 and not another rifle of the same configuration (R127)], and (5) the rifle was kept among Oswald's possessions from the time of its purchase until the day of the assassination [The Commission cites no evidence that the specific C2766 rifle was in Oswald's possession.], the Commission concluded that the rifle used to assassinate President Kennedy and wound Governor Connally was owned and possessed by Lee Harvey Oswald. (R129) At this point the Commission has related Oswald to the President's murder in two ways. It has posited the source of the shots at a location accessible to Oswald, and has named as the assassination weapon a rifle purchased and possibly possessed by Oswald. This, although circumstantial, obviously laid the foundation for the ultimate conclusion that Oswald was the assassin. Now his activities on the day of the shooting had to be considered in light of this charge. In a section headed "The Rifle in the Building," the Report takes up the problem of how the C2766 rifle was brought into the Depository. The search for an answer was not difficult for the Commission. Between Thursday night, November 21, and Friday morning, Oswald had engaged in what could have been construed as incriminating behavior. As the Report explains, During October and November of 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald lived in a roominghouse in Dallas while his wife and children lived in Irving, at the home of Ruth Paine, approximately 15 miles from Oswald's place of work at the . . . Depository. Oswald travelled between Dallas and Irving on weekends in a car driven by a neighbor of the Paine's, Buell Wesley Frazier, who also worked at the Depository. Oswald generally would go to Irving on Friday afternoon and return to Dallas Monday morning. (R129) On Thursday, November 21, Oswald asked Frazier whether he could ride home with him to Irving that afternoon, saying that he had to pick up some curtain rods for his apartment. The Report would lead us to believe that Oswald's Irving visit on the day prior to the assassination was a departure from his normal schedule. Adding further suspicion to this visit, the Report asserts "It would appear, however, that obtaining curtain rods was not the purpose of Oswald's trip to Irving on November 21," noting that Oswald's apartment, according to his landlady, did not need curtains or rods, and no curtain rods were discovered in the Depository after the assassination (R130). By seeming to disprove Oswald's excuse for the weekday trip to Irving, the Report establishes a basis for more sinister explanations; they hinge on the assumption that the rifle was stored in the Paine garage. Asserting that Oswald had the opportunity to enter the garage Thursday night without being detected, the Report emphasizes that, by the afternoon of November 22 the rifle was missing from "its accustomed place." The implication is that Oswald removed it (R130-31). To top off this progression of hypotheses is the fact that Oswald carried a "long and bulky package" to work on the morning of the assassination. As he walked to Frazier's house for a ride to the Depository, Frazier's sister, Linnie May Randle, saw him carrying a package that she estimated to be about 28 inches long and 8 inches wide. Frazier was the next to see the brown paper container, as he got into the car and again as he and Oswald walked toward the Depository after parking in a nearby lot. He thought the package was around 2 feet long and 5 or 6 inches wide, recalling that Oswald held it cupped in his right hand with the upper end wedged in his right armpit. The Report expresses its apparent exasperation that both Frazier's and Mrs. Randle's estimates and descriptions were of a package shorter than the longest component of the Carcano which, when disassembled, is 34.8 inches in length. It asserts that "Mrs. Randle saw the bag fleetingly" and quotes Frazier as saying that he paid it little attention, and concludes that the two "are mistaken as to the length of the bag" (R131-34). Had they not been "mistaken" in their recollections, Oswald's package could not have contained the rifle. "A handmade bag of wrapping paper and tape was found in the southeast corner of the sixth floor along-side the window from which the shots were fired (R134)," says the Report, citing scientific evidence that this bag was (a) made from materials obtained in the Depository's shipping room, and (b) handled by Oswald so that he left a palmprint and fingerprint on it. After connecting this sack with the "assassin's" window and Oswald, the Report attempts a further connection with the rifle by asserting that some fibers found inside the bag matched some of those which composed the blanket in which the rifle was allegedly stored, suggesting that perhaps the rifle "picked up the fibers from the blanket and transferred them to the paper bag." This feeble evidence is all the Commission could produce to suggest a connection between the rifle and the bag. A Commission staff lawyer, Wesley Liebeler, called it "very thin."[1] Likewise, the Commission asserts that Oswald {constructed} this bag, while it presents evidence only that he {handled} it (R134-37). One may indeed express concern that, on the basis of the above- cited evidence, the Commission asserts, "The preponderance of the evidence supports the conclusions that" Oswald: "(1) told the curtain rod story to Frazier to explain both the return to Irving on a Thursday and the obvious bulk of the package he intended to bring to work the next day," even though no explanation other than the transporting of the rifle was considered by the Commission (e.g., that perhaps Oswald told the "curtain rod story" to Frazier to cover a personal reason such as making up with his wife, with whom he had quarreled earlier that week, bringing a large package the following morning to substantiate the false excuse); "(2) took paper and tape from the wrapping bench of the Depository and fashioned a bag large enough to carry the disassembled rifle," although no evidence is offered that Oswald ever constructed the bag; "(3) removed the rifle from the Paine's garage on Thursday evening," citing no evidence that it might not have been someone other than Oswald who removed the rifle, if it was ever there at all; "(4) carried the rifle into the Depository Building, concealed in the bag," even though, to make this assertion, it had to reject the stories of the only witnesses who saw the package, and could produce no direct evidence that the rifle had been in the bag; and "(5) left the bag alongside the window from which the shots were fired," offering no substantiation that it was Oswald who left the bag in this position (R137). The Commission's conclusion from this evidence is that "Oswald carried [his] rifle into the Depository building on the morning of November 22, 1963" (R19), although the prefabrication of the bag demands premeditation of the murder, and the presence of the bag by the "assassin's" window implies, according to the Report, that Oswald brought the rifle to this window. Because its logic was faulty, the Commission's interpretation of "the preponderance of the evidence" loses substantial foundation. Not one of the five above-quoted subconclusions relating to the rifle in the building is confirmed by evidence; a conclusive determination is precluded by insufficient evidence. The most the Commission could fairly have asserted from the facts presented is that, although there was no conclusive evidence that Oswald brought his rifle to the Depository, there was likewise no conclusive disproof, that is, the state of the evidence could not dictate a reliable conclusion. As the Commission edged toward its ultimate conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin, it reached a comfortable position in having concluded that Oswald brought his rifle to the Depository. It next had to consider the question of Oswald's presence at the right window at the right time. Assured that Oswald "worked principally on the first and sixth floors of the building," we learn that "the Commission evaluated the physical evidence found near the window after the assassination and the testimony of eyewitnesses in deciding whether Lee Harvey Oswald was present at this window at the time of the assassination" (R137). The Report presents only one form of "physical evidence"-- fingerprints--asserting that a total of four of Oswald's prints were left on two boxes near the window and on the paper sack found in that area. In evaluating the significance of this evidence, the Commission considered the possibility that Oswald handled these cartons as part of his normal duties. . . . Although a person could handle a carton and not leave identifiable prints, none of these employees [who might have handled the cartons] except Oswald left identifiable prints on the cartons. This finding, in addition to the freshness of one of the prints . . . led the Commission to attach some probative value to the fingerprint and palmprint identifications in reaching the conclusion that Oswald was present at the window from which the shots were fired, although the prints do not establish the exact time he was there. (R141) The Report's reasoning is that the presence of Oswald's prints on objects present at the sixth-floor window is probative evidence of his presence at this window at some time. Liebeler felt that this evidence "seems to have very little significance indeed," and pointed out that the absence of other employees' fingerprints "does not help to convince me that [Oswald] moved [the boxes] in connection with the assassination. It shows the opposite just as well."[2] Both Liebeler and the Report avoid the logical, and the only precise, meaning of these fingerprint data: the presence of Oswald's prints on the cartons and the bag means {only} that he handled them; it does not disclose {when} or {where}. Oswald {could} have touched these objects on the first floor of the Depository prior to the time when they were moved to their location by the "assassin's" window, perhaps by another person. Thus, this evidence does not connect Oswald with the source of the shots and is meaningless, because Oswald normally handled such cartons in the building as part of his work. "Additional testimony linking Oswald with the point from which the shots were fired was provided by the testimony of Charles Givens," the Report continues, "who was the last known employee to see Oswald inside the building prior to the assassination." According to the Report, Givens saw Oswald walking {away} from the southeast corner of the sixth floor at 11:55, 35 minutes before the shooting (R143). That Oswald was seen where he normally worked such a substantial amount of the time prior to the shots connects him with nothing except his expected routine. That "none of the Depository employees is known to have seen Oswald again until after the shooting," if true, is likewise of little significance, especially since most of the employees had left the building to view the motorcade. In its next section relevant to the discussion of "Oswald at Window," the Report--best expressed in colloquial terms--"pulls a fast one." This section is entitled "Eyewitness Identification of Assassin," but contains {no} identification accepted by the Commission (R143-49). The first eyewitness mentioned is Howard Brennan who, 120 feet from the window, said he saw a man fire at the President. "During the evening of November 22, Brennan identified Oswald as the person in the [police] lineup who bore the closest resemblance to the man in the window but said he was unable to make a positive identification." Prior to this lineup, Brennan had seen Oswald's picture on television. In the months before his Warren Commission testimony, Brennan underwent some serious changes of heart. A month after the assassination he was suddenly positive that the man he saw was Oswald. Three weeks later, he was again unable to make a positive identification. In two months, when he appeared before the Commission, he was again ready to swear that the man was Oswald, claiming to have been capable of such an identification all along. Brennan's vacillation on the crucial matter of identifying Oswald renders all of his varying statements unworthy of credence. The Report recognized the worthlessness of Brennan's after-the-fact identification, although it managed to use his testimony for the most it could yield: Although the record indicates that Brennan was an accurate observer, he declined to make a positive identification of Oswald when he first saw him in the police lineup. {The Commission therefore, does not base its conclusion concerning the identity of the assassin on Brennan's subsequent certain identification of Lee Harvey Oswald as the man he saw fire the rifle}. . . . The Commission is satisfied that . . . Brennan saw a man in the window who closely resembled . . . Oswald. (R145-46; emphasis added) If the Commission did not base its conclusion as to Oswald's presence at the window on Brennan's identification, upon whose "eyewitness identification of assassin" did it rely? Under this section it presents three additional witnesses who saw a man in the window, all of whom gave sketchy descriptions, and {none} of whom were able to identify the man. Thus, the Report, having rejected Brennan's story, could offer {no} eyewitness capable of identifying the assassin. In pulling its "fast one," the Commission sticks to its justified rejection of Brennan's identification for only 11 pages for, when the conclusion to the "Oswald at Window" section is drawn, his incredible identification is suddenly accepted. Here the Commission concludes "that Oswald, at the time of the assassination, was present at the window from which the shots were fired" on the basis of findings stipulated above. One of these "findings" involves "an eyewitness to the shooting" who "identified Oswald in a lineup as the man most nearly resembling the man he saw and later identified Oswald as the man he observed" (R156). Through this double standard the Report manifests itself to be no more credible than Brennan. "In considering whether Oswald was at the southeast corner window at the time the shots were fired, the Commission . . . reviewed the testimony of witnesses who saw Oswald in the building within minutes after the assassination" (R149). Immediately after the shots, Patrolman M. L. Baker, riding a motorcycle in the procession, drove to a point near the front entrance of the Depository, entered the building, and sought assistance in reaching the roof, for he "had it in mind that the shots came from the top of this building." He met manager Roy Truly, and the two ran up the steps toward the roof. Baker stopped on the second floor and saw Oswald entering the lunchroom there. This encounter in the lunchroom presented a problem to the Commission: In an effort to determine whether Oswald could have descended to the lunchroom from the sixth floor by the time Baker and Truly arrived Commission counsel asked Baker and Truly to repeat their movements from the time of the shot until Baker came upon Oswald in the lunchroom. . . . On the first test, the elapsed time between the simulated first shot and Baker's arrival on the second-floor stair landing was one minute and 30 seconds. The second test run required one minute and 15 seconds. A test was also conducted to determine the time required to walk from the southeast corner of the sixth floor to the second-floor lunchroom by stairway [Oswald could not have used the elevator.]. . . . The first test, run at normal walking pace, required one minute, 18 seconds; the second test, at a "fast walk" took one minute, 14 seconds. (R152) Thus, as presented in the Report, these tests could prove that Oswald was {not} at the sixth-floor window, for had his time of descent been one minute, 18 seconds and Baker's time of ascent been one minute, {14} seconds, Oswald would have arrived at the lunchroom {after} Baker, which was not the case on November 22. Recognizing this, the Report assures us that the reconstruction of Baker's movements was invalid in that it failed to simulate actions that would have lengthened Baker's time. Thus, it is able to conclude "that Oswald could have fired the shots and still have been present in the second floor lunchroom when seen by Baker and Truly" (R152-53). Here the Commission is playing games. It tells us that its reconstructions could support or destroy the assumption of Oswald's presence at the window. This point is crucial in determining the identity of the assassin, for it could potentially have provided Oswald with an alibi. Instead of conducting the tests properly, the Commission tells us that it neglected to simulate some of Baker's actions, and on the premise that its test was invalid, draws a conclusion incriminating Oswald. One of the factors mentioned by the Report as influencing the conclusion that Oswald was at the window is that his actions after the assassination "are consistent with" his having been there. Because the premise of an invalid reconstruction makes debatable any inferences drawn from it, and because Oswald's actions after the shooting were consistent with his having been almost {anywhere} in the building, this aspect of the Report's conclusion is a {non sequitur}. The Report ultimately attempts to combine its four logically deficient arguments in support of the conclusion that Oswald was present during the assassination at the window from which the shots were fired. The facts presented are not sufficient to support such a conclusion. The fingerprint evidence does not place Oswald at that window, for the objects on which he left prints were mobile and therefore may have been in a location other than the window when he handled them. That someone saw Oswald near this area 35 minutes before the shots does not mean he was there during the shots, nor does the alleged fact that no one else saw Oswald eliminate the possibility of his having been elsewhere. The one witness who claimed to have seen Oswald in the window could do so only at intervals, rendering his story incredible. Oswald's actions after the assassination do not place him at any specific location during the shots and might even preclude his having been at the window. The only fair conclusion from the facts presented is that there is no evidence that Oswald was at the window at the time of the assassination. At this point in the development of the Commission's case, Oswald "officially" possessed the murder weapon, brought it to the Depository on the day of the assassination, and was present at the "assassin's" window during the shots. There would seem to be only one additional consideration relevant to the proof of his guilt: his capability with a rifle. This issue is addressed only after several unrelated matters are considered. The Commission's conclusion that Oswald was the assassin is not based on a constant set of considerations. The chapter "The Assassin" draws its conclusion from eight factors (R195). The chapter "Summary and Conclusions" omits two of these factors and adds another. The eight-part conclusion states that: On the basis of the evidence reviewed in this chapter the Commission has found that Lee Harvey Oswald (1) owned and possessed the rifle used to kill President Kennedy and wound Governor Connally, (2) brought this rifle to the Depository Building on the morning of the assassination, (3) was present, at the time of the assassination, at the window from which the shots were fired, (4) killed Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit in an apparent attempt to escape, (5) resisted arrest by drawing a fully loaded pistol and attempting to shoot another police officer, (6) lied to the police after his arrest concerning important substantive matters, (7) attempted, in April 1963, to kill Major General Edwin A. Walker, and (8) possessed the capability with a rifle which would have enabled him to commit the assassination. On the basis of these findings the Commission has concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy. (R195) Obviously, considerations 4, 5, 6, and 7 do not relate to the question of whether Oswald did or did not pull the trigger of the gun that killed the President and wounded the Governor. In the alternate version of the Commission's conclusions, 4 and 5 are omitted from the factors upon which the guilty "verdict" is based. Added in this section is the consideration that the Mannlicher- Carcano and the paper sack were found on the sixth floor subsequent to the shooting (R19-20). "In deciding whether Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots . . .," says the Report, "the Commission considered whether Oswald, using his own rifle, possessed the capability to hit his target with two out of three shots under the conditions described in Chapter III [concerning the source of the shots]" (R189). The Commission's previous conclusions leave little room for an assertion other than one indicating that Oswald had the capability to fire the assassination shots. If he could not have done this from lack of sufficient skill, the other factors seeming to relate him to the assassination will have to be accounted for by some other explanation. First considered under this section is the nature of the shots (R189-91). Several experts are quoted as saying that the shots, fired at ranges of 177 to 266 feet and employing a four-power scope, were "not . . . particularly difficult" and "very easy." However, in no case did the experts take into account the time element involved in the assassination shots. Without this consideration, Wesley Liebeler could not understand the basis for any conclusion on the nature of the shots. He wrote: The section on the nature of the shots deals basically with the range and the effect of a telescopic sight. Several experts conclude that the shots were easy. There is, however, no consideration given here to the time allowed for the shots. I do not see how someone can conclude that a shot is easy or hard unless he knows something about how long the firer has to shoot, i.e., how much time is allotted for the shots.[3] Liebeler's criticism had no effect on the final report, which ignores the time question in evaluating the nature of the shots. The evaluation of the shots as "easy" should therefore be considered void and all inferences based on it at best questionable. In considering "Oswald's Marine Training," the Report deceives its readers by use of common and frequent {non sequiturs}. First it includes, as relevant to Oswald's {rifle} capability, his training in the use of weapons other than rifles, such as pistols and shotguns. Of this Liebeler said bluntly, "That is completely irrevelant to the question of his ability to fire a rifle. . . . It is, furthermore, prejudicial to some extent."[4] The Report then reveals with total dispassion Oswald's official Marine Corps evaluation based on firing tests: when first tested in the Marines, Oswald was "a fairly good shot"; on the basis of his last recorded test he was a {"rather poor shot."} A Marine marksmanship expert who had absolutely no association with Oswald is next quoted as offering various excuses for the "poor shot" rating, including bad weather and lack of motivation. No substantiation in any form is put forth to buttress these "excuses." As the record presented in the Report stands, Oswald left the Marines a "fairly poor shot." However, the unqualified use of the expert's unsubstantiated hypothesizing gives the impression that Oswald was not such a "poor shot." On the basis of this questionable premise, the Report quotes more experts who, in meaningless comparisons, contradicted the official evaluation of Oswald's performance with a rifle and called him "a good to excellent shot" (R191-92). One may indeed question the state of our national "defense" when "rather poor shots" from the Marines are considered "excellent" marksmen. In discussing "Oswald's Rifle Practice Outside the Marines" (R192-93), the Report cites a total of 11 instances in which Oswald could be physically associated with a firearm. Most of these instances involved hunting trips, six of which took place in the Soviet Union. However, as Liebeler pointed out in his critical memorandum, Oswald used a shotgun when hunting in Russia. Liebeler's concern can be sensed in his question "Under what theory do we include activities concerning a {shotgun} under a heading relating to {rifle} practice, and then presume not to advise the reader of that?"[5] The latest time the Report places a weapon in Oswald's hands is May 1963, when his wife, Marina, said he practiced operating the bolt and looking through the scope {on a screened porch at night}. Liebeler thought "the support for that proposition is thin indeed," adding that "Marina Oswald first testified that she did not know what he was doing out there and then she was clearly led into the only answer that gives any support to this proposition."[6] The Report evoked its own support, noting that the cartridge cases found in the Depository "had been previously loaded and ejected from the assassination rifle, which would indicate that Oswald practiced opening the bolt." Marks on these cases could not show that {Oswald,} to the exclusion of all other people, loaded and ejected the cases. In the end, the Commission was able to cite only two instances in which Oswald handled the Carcano, both based on Marina's tenuous assertions. It produced {no} evidence that Oswald ever fired his rifle. Despite this and the other major gaps in its arguments, the Report concludes that "Oswald's Marine training in marksmanship, his other rifle experience and his established familiarity with this particular weapon show that he possessed ample capability to commit the assassination" (R195). Because the Report offers no evidence to support it, this conclusion is necessarily dishonest. Liebeler cautioned the Commission on this point but was apparently ignored. He wrote: The statements concerning Oswald's practice with the assassination weapon are misleading. They tend to give the impression that he did more practicing than the record suggests he did. My recollection is that there is only one specific time when he might have practiced. We should be more precise in this area, because the Commission is going to have its work in this area examined very closely.[7] That a shooter can be only as good as the weapon he fires is a much-repeated expression. In fact, the proficiency of the shooter and the quality of his shooting apparatus combine to affect the outcome of the shot. To test the accuracy of the assassination rifle, the Commission did not put the weapon in the hands