Book Intro: "Presumed Guilty, How & Why the WC Framed L. H. Oswald"
The unaccountability of government has gone to the point where the very
use of the law is the instrument of illegality.
-- Ralph Nader @ Harvard Law School, 1/15/92
This post is an introduction to the book,
Presumed Guilty
How and Why the Warren Commission Framed Lee Harvey Oswald
A factual account based on the Commission's public and private documents
(c) 1976, by Howard Roffman. It includes some excerpts from the Preface,
Introduction, and Conclusion. In the fifteen-plus years since I began
reading about the assassination of President Kennedy, one of the most
obvious (yet consistently denied) facts about the twisted "official
mythology" is the issue of who killed JFK. This matter was never
resolved because the crime itself was never legitimately investigated.
Period. If Lee Oswald had lived to stand trial, the prosecution would
*NOT* have been able to convict him of the murder in the way the "The
Warren Commission Show"--in the minds of enough people--was able to do.
This is THE BOOK to read for the best detailed and comprehensive
explanation of how Lee Oswald could not have killed President Kennedy as
the official reality consortium--acting through the Warren Commission,
the House Select Committee on Assassinations and state press/corporate
media--claim he did. Using as documentation the Commission's once-secret
working papers, Howard Roffman meticulously demonstrates how at every
turn, the Warren Commission's entire approach was based upon the
*presumption* of Lee Oswald's guilt. It didn't matter to the Commission
that the preponderance of facts in the case didn't support this
presumption. Roffman sums up the devastating result of "working
backwards" from such a pre-judged conclusion:
. . . 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.
Near the end of the preface, Roffman articulates some of the fundamental
implications that must be confronted by every citizen in a situation
where those in power consciously choose to betray the trust of the
people they are sworn to serve:
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.
Previous to this, Roffman quotes Harold Weisberg, one of the leading
"first generation" assassination researchers, and expands on the meaning
of his 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.
There are people who continue to cling to the belief that the Warren
Commission's and the House Select Committee on Assassinations'
conclusions were and are essentially sound, and that Lee Oswald, firing
3 shots from the sixth floor window, wounded Governor Connally and
killed President Kennedy. The powers that be will continue to attempt
to prop up such lies only so long as we the people continue to allow
them to do so by our own cultural propensity for denial. One of the
nation's founders (was it Jefferson?) said something to the effect that
in order for a democracy to remain vital and not become co-opted by
concentrated wealth and power, a revolution ought to be joined every 19
years or so. We are LONG overdue for our own.
In the final analysis, anything which is held in secrecy, is held above
accountability. Working in secret the Commission staff was able to
conduct their deliberations in a manner that was at odds with the facts
in the case. Such unaccountability, from the highest levels of
authority on down, has become the sine qua non of our society and "way
of life." The trappings of a "constitutional democratic republic" still
exist and are touted by corporate and elected leaders to serve their own
ends, but the reality is that these symbols are largely hollow and have
been uniformly pre-empted by inherently anti-democratic principles,
policies and laws. The crimes that have been committed under the rubric
of "national security" at least equal anything the Nazis ever attempted.
They are all the more hideous primarily because "we the people" are not
"allowed" to know about their breadth and depth which is a fundamental
prerequisite to addressing their consequences (like the more than
74,000 toxic waste dumps listed by the EPA's Superfund some years ago,
created secretly and beyond accountability by the military-industrial
complex) and stopping and dealing with their perpetrators.
* * * * * * *
The remainder of this introduction consists of excerpts taken from the
book that will follow this post in eleven parts. For those interested,
I have created a pure PostScript version of this book (minus the actual
photographs and drawings) which can simply be "lp"'d to a PostScript
[laser] printer for "prettified" hardcopy output. The size of the
PostScript file comprising the book is 1083277 bytes. Please feel free
to mail me at "dave@sgi.com" if you'd like me to e-mail you a copy.
Minus the names of publications or books (which are delimited with
double quote--`"'--characters), the convention of squiggly braces--
"{ ... }"--are used to denote words, phrases or sentences in italics.
. . . from the very beginning of its investigation, the
Commission planned its work under the presumption that Oswald was
guilty, and the staff consciously endeavored to construct a
prosecution case against Oswald. One Commission member actually
complained to the staff that he wanted to see more arguments in
support of the theory that Oswald was the assassin. There could
have been no more candid admission of how fraudulent the
"investigation" was than when a staff lawyer secretly wrote, "Our
intention is not to establish the point with complete accuracy, but
merely to substantiate the hypothesis which underlies the
conclusions that Oswald was the sole assassin." In its zeal to
posthumously frame Oswald--and falsify history--the staff often
considered ludicrous methods of avoiding the facts--as in the
suggestion of one staff lawyer that "the best evidence that Oswald
could fire as fast as he did and hit the target is the fact that he
did so." (pp. 249-250)
<<< ***** >>>
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. (pp. 23-24)
<<< ***** >>>
. . . 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. (p. 25)
<<< ***** >>>
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.
(pp. 9-11)
<<< ***** >>>
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] (pp. 32-33)
<<< ***** >>>
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. (pp. 30-31)
<<< ***** >>>
Once it is established that Oswald's rifle was not involved in
the shooting, there is not a shred of tangible or credible evidence
to indicate that Oswald was the assassin. The evidence proves
exactly the opposite.
The circumstantial evidence relating to Oswald himself is almost
entirely exculpatory. Every element of it was twisted by the
Commission to fit the preconceived conclusion of Oswald's guilt. I
have documented that, through its staff and its Report, the
Commission:
1. Drew undue suspicion to Oswald's return to Irving on
November 21, although the evidence indicated that
Oswald did not know the motorcade route and broke no
set pattern in making the return;
2. Ignored {all} evidence that could have provided an
innocent excuse for Oswald's visit;
3. Wrongly discredited the reliable and consistent
testimony of the only two witnesses who saw the package
Oswald carried to work on the morning of the
assassination; because their descriptions meant that
the package could {not} have contained the rifle, the
Commission claimed to have made this rejection on the
basis of "scientific evidence," which did not exist;
4. Concluded that Oswald made a paper sack to conceal the
rifle, citing no evidence in support of this notion and
suppressing evidence that tended to disprove it;
5. Concluded that the sack was used to transport the
rifle, although its evidence proved that the sack never
contained the rifle;
6. Used the testimony of Charles Givens to placed [sic]
Oswald at the alleged source of the shots {35 minutes
too early,} even though Givens described an event that
physically could not have taken place;
7. Claimed to know of no Depository employee who saw
Oswald between 11:55 and 12:30, basing its claim on an
inquiry in which it (through General Counsel Rankin)
had the FBI determine whether any employee had seen
Oswald {only} at 12:30, completely suppressing from the
Report three distinct pieces of evidence indicating
Oswald's presence on the first floor during the period
in question.
8. Failed to produce any witness who could identify the
sixth-floor gunman as Oswald; both rejected and
accepted the identification of one man who admitted
lying to the police, who constantly contradicted
himself, and who described physically impossible
events; and ignored evidence of clothing descriptions
that might have indicated that Oswald was {not} the
gunman;
9. Reconstructed the movements of Baker and Truly in such
a way as to lengthen the time of their ascent to the
second floor;
10. Reconstructed the movements of the "assassin" so as to
greatly reduce the time of his presumed descent; a
valid reconstruction would have proved that a sixth-
floor gunman could {not} have reached the second-floor
lunch-room before Baker and Truly;
11. Misrepresented Baker's position at the time he saw
Oswald entering the lunchroom, making it seem possible
that Oswald could have just descended from the third
floor, although, in fact, the events described by Baker
and Truly prove that Oswald must have been coming {up}
from the {first} floor (as Oswald himself told the
police he did);
12. Misrepresented the nature of the assassination shots by
omitting from its evaluation the time factor and other
physical obstacles, thus making it seem that the shots
were easy and that Oswald could have fired them;
13. Misrepresented the evidence relevant to Oswald's rifle
capability and practice, creating the impression that
he was a good shot with much practice, although the
evidence indicated exactly the opposite. The
conclusion dictated by all this evidence en masse is
inescapable and overwhelming: Lee Harvey Oswald never
fired a shot at President Kennedy; he was not even at
the Depository window during the assassination; and no
one fired his rifle, the Mannlicher-Carcano, on that
day. Beyond any doubt, he is innocent of the monstrous
crime with which he was charged and of which he was
presumed guilty. The official presumption of his guilt
effectively cut off any quest for truth and led to the
abandonment of the principles of law and honest
investigation. At {all} costs, the government has
denied (and, to judge from its record, will continue to
deny) Oswald's innocence and perpetuated the myth of
his lone guilt.
With this, a thousand other spiders emerge from the walls.
It can now be inferred that Oswald was framed; he was
deliberately set up as the Kennedy assassin. His rifle was found
in the Depository. We know that it had to have been put there; we
also know that it was not Oswald who put it there. {Someone else
did.}
We know that a whole bullet traceable to Oswald's rifle turned
up at Parkland Hospital; we also know that this bullet was never
in the body of either victim. {Someone had to have planted it at
the hospital.} The same applies to the two identifiable fragments
found in the front seat of the President's limousine.
We know that someone shot and killed President Kennedy; we also
know that Oswald did not do this. The real presidential murderers
have escaped punishment through our established judicial channels,
their crime tacitly sanctioned by those who endeavored to prove
Oswald guilty. The after-the-fact framing of Oswald by the federal
authorities means, in effect, that the federal government has
conspired to protect those who conspired to kill President Kennedy.
It is not my responsibility to explain why the Commission did
what it did, and I would deceive the reader if I made the slightest
pretense that it was within my capability to provide such an
explanation. I have presented the facts; no explanation of
motives, be they the highest and the purest or the lowest and the
most corrupt, will alter those facts or undo what the Commission
indisputably has done.
The government has lied about one of the most serious crimes
that can be committed in a democracy. Having lied without
restraint about the death of a president, it can not be believed on
anything. It has sacrificed its credibility.
Remedies are not clearly apparent or easily suggested.
Certainly, Congress has an obligation to investigate this
monumental abuse by the executive. But first and foremost, the
people must recognize that they have been lied to by their
government and denied the truth about the murder of their former
leader. They must demand the truth, whatever the price, and insist
that their government work honestly and properly.
Until then, the history of one of the world's most democratic
nations must suffer the stigma of a frighteningly immoral and
undemocratic act by its government. (pp. 251-255)
Subject: Book Intro: "Presumed Guilty, How & Why the WC Framed L. H. Oswald"
The unaccountability of government has gone to the point where the very
use of the law is the instrument of illegality.
-- Ralph Nader @ Harvard Law School, 1/15/92
This post is an introduction to the book,
Presumed Guilty
How and Why the Warren Commission Framed Lee Harvey Oswald
A factual account based on the Commission's public and private documents
(c) 1976, by Howard Roffman. It includes some excerpts from the Preface,
Introduction, and Conclusion. In the fifteen-plus years since I began
reading about the assassination of President Kennedy, one of the most
obvious (yet consistently denied) facts about the twisted "official
mythology" is the issue of who killed JFK. This matter was never
resolved because the crime itself was never legitimately investigated.
Period. If Lee Oswald had lived to stand trial, the prosecution would
*NOT* have been able to convict him of the murder in the way the "The
Warren Commission Show"--in the minds of enough people--was able to do.
This is THE BOOK to read for the best detailed and comprehensive
explanation of how Lee Oswald could not have killed President Kennedy as
the official reality consortium--acting through the Warren Commission,
the House Select Committee on Assassinations and state press/corporate
media--claim he did. Using as documentation the Commission's once-secret
working papers, Howard Roffman meticulously demonstrates how at every
turn, the Warren Commission's entire approach was based upon the
*presumption* of Lee Oswald's guilt. It didn't matter to the Commission
that the preponderance of facts in the case didn't support this
presumption. Roffman sums up the devastating result of "working
backwards" from such a pre-judged conclusion:
. . . 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.
Near the end of the preface, Roffman articulates some of the fundamental
implications that must be confronted by every citizen in a situation
where those in power consciously choose to betray the trust of the
people they are sworn to serve:
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.
Previous to this, Roffman quotes Harold Weisberg, one of the leading
"first generation" assassination researchers, and expands on the meaning
of his 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.
There are people who continue to cling to the belief that the Warren
Commission's and the House Select Committee on Assassinations'
conclusions were and are essentially sound, and that Lee Oswald, firing
3 shots from the sixth floor window, wounded Governor Connally and
killed President Kennedy. The powers that be will continue to attempt
to prop up such lies only so long as we the people continue to allow
them to do so by our own cultural propensity for denial. One of the
nation's founders (was it Jefferson?) said something to the effect that
in order for a democracy to remain vital and not become co-opted by
concentrated wealth and power, a revolution ought to be joined every 19
years or so. We are LONG overdue for our own.
In the final analysis, anything which is held in secrecy, is held above
accountability. Working in secret the Commission staff was able to
conduct their deliberations in a manner that was at odds with the facts
in the case. Such unaccountability, from the highest levels of
authority on down, has become the sine qua non of our society and "way
of life." The trappings of a "constitutional democratic republic" still
exist and are touted by corporate and elected leaders to serve their own
ends, but the reality is that these symbols are largely hollow and have
been uniformly pre-empted by inherently anti-democratic principles,
policies and laws. The crimes that have been committed under the rubric
of "national security" at least equal anything the Nazis ever attempted.
They are all the more hideous primarily because "we the people" are not
"allowed" to know about their breadth and depth which is a fundamental
prerequisite to addressing their consequences (like the more than
74,000 toxic waste dumps listed by the EPA's Superfund some years ago,
created secretly and beyond accountability by the military-industrial
complex) and stopping and dealing with their perpetrators.
* * * * * * *
The remainder of this introduction consists of excerpts taken from the
book that will follow this post in eleven parts. For those interested,
I have created a pure PostScript version of this book (minus the actual
photographs and drawings) which can simply be "lp"'d to a PostScript
[laser] printer for "prettified" hardcopy output. The size of the
PostScript file comprising the book is 1083277 bytes. Please feel free
to mail me at "dave@sgi.com" if you'd like me to e-mail you a copy.
Minus the names of publications or books (which are delimited with
double quote--`"'--characters), the convention of squiggly braces--
"{ ... }"--are used to denote words, phrases or sentences in italics.
. . . from the very beginning of its investigation, the
Commission planned its work under the presumption that Oswald was
guilty, and the staff consciously endeavored to construct a
prosecution case against Oswald. One Commission member actually
complained to the staff that he wanted to see more arguments in
support of the theory that Oswald was the assassin. There could
have been no more candid admission of how fraudulent the
"investigation" was than when a staff lawyer secretly wrote, "Our
intention is not to establish the point with complete accuracy, but
merely to substantiate the hypothesis which underlies the
conclusions that Oswald was the sole assassin." In its zeal to
posthumously frame Oswald--and falsify history--the staff often
considered ludicrous methods of avoiding the facts--as in the
suggestion of one staff lawyer that "the best evidence that Oswald
could fire as fast as he did and hit the target is the fact that he
did so." (pp. 249-250)
<<< ***** >>>
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. (pp. 23-24)
<<< ***** >>>
. . . 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. (p. 25)
<<< ***** >>>
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.
(pp. 9-11)
<<< ***** >>>
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] (pp. 32-33)
<<< ***** >>>
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. (pp. 30-31)
<<< ***** >>>
Once it is established that Oswald's rifle was not involved in
the shooting, there is not a shred of tangible or credible evidence
to indicate that Oswald was the assassin. The evidence proves
exactly the opposite.
The circumstantial evidence relating to Oswald himself is almost
entirely exculpatory. Every element of it was twisted by the
Commission to fit the preconceived conclusion of Oswald's guilt. I
have documented that, through its staff and its Report, the
Commission:
1. Drew undue suspicion to Oswald's return to Irving on
November 21, although the evidence indicated that
Oswald did not know the motorcade route and broke no
set pattern in making the return;
2. Ignored {all} evidence that could have provided an
innocent excuse for Oswald's visit;
3. Wrongly discredited the reliable and consistent
testimony of the only two witnesses who saw the package
Oswald carried to work on the morning of the
assassination; because their descriptions meant that
the package could {not} have contained the rifle, the
Commission claimed to have made this rejection on the
basis of "scientific evidence," which did not exist;
4. Concluded that Oswald made a paper sack to conceal the
rifle, citing no evidence in support of this notion and
suppressing evidence that tended to disprove it;
5. Concluded that the sack was used to transport the
rifle, although its evidence proved that the sack never
contained the rifle;
6. Used the testimony of Charles Givens to placed [sic]
Oswald at the alleged source of the shots {35 minutes
too early,} even though Givens described an event that
physically could not have taken place;
7. Claimed to know of no Depository employee who saw
Oswald between 11:55 and 12:30, basing its claim on an
inquiry in which it (through General Counsel Rankin)
had the FBI determine whether any employee had seen
Oswald {only} at 12:30, completely suppressing from the
Report three distinct pieces of evidence indicating
Oswald's presence on the first floor during the period
in question.
8. Failed to produce any witness who could identify the
sixth-floor gunman as Oswald; both rejected and
accepted the identification of one man who admitted
lying to the police, who constantly contradicted
himself, and who described physically impossible
events; and ignored evidence of clothing descriptions
that might have indicated that Oswald was {not} the
gunman;
9. Reconstructed the movements of Baker and Truly in such
a way as to lengthen the time of their ascent to the
second floor;
10. Reconstructed the movements of the "assassin" so as to
greatly reduce the time of his presumed descent; a
valid reconstruction would have proved that a sixth-
floor gunman could {not} have reached the second-floor
lunch-room before Baker and Truly;
11. Misrepresented Baker's position at the time he saw
Oswald entering the lunchroom, making it seem possible
that Oswald could have just descended from the third
floor, although, in fact, the events described by Baker
and Truly prove that Oswald must have been coming {up}
from the {first} floor (as Oswald himself told the
police he did);
12. Misrepresented the nature of the assassination shots by
omitting from its evaluation the time factor and other
physical obstacles, thus making it seem that the shots
were easy and that Oswald could have fired them;
13. Misrepresented the evidence relevant to Oswald's rifle
capability and practice, creating the impression that
he was a good shot with much practice, although the
evidence indicated exactly the opposite. The
conclusion dictated by all this evidence en masse is
inescapable and overwhelming: Lee Harvey Oswald never
fired a shot at President Kennedy; he was not even at
the Depository window during the assassination; and no
one fired his rifle, the Mannlicher-Carcano, on that
day. Beyond any doubt, he is innocent of the monstrous
crime with which he was charged and of which he was
presumed guilty. The official presumption of his guilt
effectively cut off any quest for truth and led to the
abandonment of the principles of law and honest
investigation. At {all} costs, the government has
denied (and, to judge from its record, will continue to
deny) Oswald's innocence and perpetuated the myth of
his lone guilt.
With this, a thousand other spiders emerge from the walls.
It can now be inferred that Oswald was framed; he was
deliberately set up as the Kennedy assassin. His rifle was found
in the Depository. We know that it had to have been put there; we
also know that it was not Oswald who put it there. {Someone else
did.}
We know that a whole bullet traceable to Oswald's rifle turned
up at Parkland Hospital; we also know that this bullet was never
in the body of either victim. {Someone had to have planted it at
the hospital.} The same applies to the two identifiable fragments
found in the front seat of the President's limousine.
We know that someone shot and killed President Kennedy; we also
know that Oswald did not do this. The real presidential murderers
have escaped punishment through our established judicial channels,
their crime tacitly sanctioned by those who endeavored to prove
Oswald guilty. The after-the-fact framing of Oswald by the federal
authorities means, in effect, that the federal government has
conspired to protect those who conspired to kill President Kennedy.
It is not my responsibility to explain why the Commission did
what it did, and I would deceive the reader if I made the slightest
pretense that it was within my capability to provide such an
explanation. I have presented the facts; no explanation of
motives, be they the highest and the purest or the lowest and the
most corrupt, will alter those facts or undo what the Commission
indisputably has done.
The government has lied about one of the most serious crimes
that can be committed in a democracy. Having lied without
restraint about the death of a president, it can not be believed on
anything. It has sacrificed its credibility.
Remedies are not clearly apparent or easily suggested.
Certainly, Congress has an obligation to investigate this
monumental abuse by the executive. But first and foremost, the
people must recognize that they have been lied to by their
government and denied the truth about the murder of their former
leader. They must demand the truth, whatever the price, and insist
that their government work honestly and properly.
Until then, the history of one of the world's most democratic
nations must suffer the stigma of a frighteningly immoral and
undemocratic act by its government. (pp. 251-255)
Subject: "Presumed Guilty, How & Why the W.C. Framed Lee Harvey Oswald" [2/11]
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 of one
whose marksmanship was as "poor" as Oswald's and whose known
practice prior to firing was virtually nil. Its test firers were
all experts--men whose daily routines involved working with and
shooting firearms. Liebeler, as a member of the Commission's
investigatory staff, was one of the severest critics of the rifle
tests. The following paragraphs, again from Liebeler's memorandum,
provide a good analysis of those tests as represented in the
Report:
As I read through the section on rifle capability it
appears that 15 different sets of three shots were fired by
supposedly expert riflemen of the FBI and other places.
According to my calculations those 15 sets of shots took a
total of 93.8 seconds to be fired. The average of all 15 is
a little over 6.2 seconds. Assuming that time calculated is
commencing with the firing of the first shot, that means the
average time it took to fire two remaining shots was about
6.2 seconds. That comes to about 3.1 seconds for each shot,
not counting the time consumed by the actual firing, which
would not be very much. I recall that Chapter Three said
that the minimum time that had to elapse between shots was
2.25 seconds, which is pretty close to the one set of fast
shots fired by Frazier of the FBI.
The conclusion indicates that Oswald had the capability
to fire 3 shots with two hits in from 4.8 to 5.6 seconds.
Of the fifteen sets of three shots described above, only
{three} were fired within 4.8 seconds. A total of five
sets, including the three just mentioned, were fired within
a total of 5.6 seconds. The conclusion at its most extreme
states Oswald could fire faster than the Commission experts
fired in 12 of their 15 tries and that in any event he could
fire faster than the experts did in 10 out of their 15
tries. . . .
The problems raised by the above analysis should be met
at some point in the text of the Report. The figure of 2.25
as a minimum firing time for each shot is used throughout
Chapter 3. The present discussion of rifle capability shows
that expert riflemen could not fire the assassination weapon
that fast. Only one of the experts managed to do so, and
his shots, like those of the other FBI experts, were high
and to the right of the target. The fact is that most of
the experts were much more proficient with a rifle than
Oswald could ever be expected to be, and the record
indicates that fact.[8]
Despite the obvious meaning of Liebeler's analysis, the rifle tests
are used in the Report to buttress the notion that it was within
Oswald's capability to fire the assassination shots (R195). The
kindest thing that can be said of this one-sided presentation of
the evidence was written by Liebeler himself: "To put it bluntly,
that sort of selection from the record could seriously affect the
integrity and credibility of the entire Report. . . . These
conclusions will never be accepted by critical persons anyway."[9]
The only possible conclusion warranted by the evidence set forth
in the Report is that Oswald left the Marines a "rather poor shot"
and, unless a major aspect of his life within a few months prior to
the assassination has been so well concealed as not to emerge
through the efforts of several investigative teams, he did not
engage in any activities sufficient to improve his proficiency with
his weapon to the extent of enabling him to murder the President
and wound the Governor unaided.
This is the official case, the development of the "proof" that
Oswald, alone and unaided, committed the assassination. To avoid
the detailed discussion required for a rebuttal, I have assumed
that the source of the shots was as the Commission postulated--the
sixth-floor window of the Depository, from "Oswald's rifle."
This was as far as the Commission could go in relation to the
question of Oswald's guilt. Obviously, the use of his rifle in the
crime does not mean he fired it. The Commission offers, in
essence, {no} evidence that Oswald brought his rifle to the
Depository, {no} evidence that Oswald was present at the window
during the shots, and {no} evidence that Oswald had the capability
to have fired the shots. This is not to say that such evidence
does not exist, but that none is presented in the Report. That,
for the scope of this chapter's analysis, is significant.
The Commission's conclusion that Oswald was the assassin is
invalid because it is, from beginning to end, a {non sequitur}.
This analysis of the derivation of that conclusion, based solely on
the evidence presented in the Report, demonstrates that evidence to
be without logical relationship, used by the Commission in total
disregard of logic. The Report's continued fabrication of false
premises from which are drawn invalid inferences is consistent with
one salient factor: that the Commission evaluated the evidence
relating to the assassin's identity on the presumption that Oswald
alone was guilty.
__________
[1] "Memorandum re Galley Proofs of Chapter IV of the Report," written
on September 6, 1964, by Wesley J. Liebeler, p. 5. (Hereinafter
referred to as Liebeler 9/6/64 Memorandum. This document is
available from the National Archives.)
[2] Ibid., p. 7.
[3] Ibid., p. 20.
[4] Ibid., p. 21 .
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid., p. 22.
[7] Ibid., p. 21.
[8] Ibid., p. 23.
[9] Ibid., p. 25.
[1] "Presumed Guilty, How & Why the W.C. Framed Lee Harvey Oswald" [3/11]
* * * * * * *
2
Presumed Guilty: The Official Disposition
The discussion in chapter 1 did not disprove the Commission's
conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy.
It merely showed that, based on the evidence presented in the
Report, Oswald's guilt was presumed, not established. The
Commission argued a case that is logical only on the premise that
Oswald alone was guilty.
The official assurance is, as is to be expected, the opposite.
In the Foreword to its Report, the Commission assures us that it
"has functioned neither as a court presiding over an adversary
proceeding nor as a prosecutor determined to prove a case, but as a
fact finding agency committed to the ascertainment of the truth"
(Rxiv). This is to say that neither innocence nor guilt was
presumed from the outset of the inquiry, in effect stating that the
Commission conducted a "chips-fall-where-they-may" investigation.
At no time after a final bullet snuffed out the life of the
young President did {any} agency conduct an investigation not based
on the premise of Oswald's guilt. Despite the many noble
assurances of impartiality, the fact remains that from the time
when he was in police custody, Oswald was officially thought to be
Kennedy's sole assassin. In violation of his every right and as a
guarantee that virtually no citizen would think otherwise, the
official belief of Oswald's guilt was shamefully offered to a
public grieved by the violent death of its leader, and anxious to
find and prosecute the perpetrator of the crime.
{The Police Presumption}
Two days after the assassination, the "New York Times" ran a
banner headline that read, in part, "Police Say Prisoner is the
Assassin," with a smaller--but likewise front-page--heading,
"Evidence Against Oswald Described as Conclusive." The article
quoted Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas Police Homicide Bureau as
having said, "We're convinced beyond any doubt that he killed the
President. . . . I think the case is cinched."[1]
Other newspapers echoed the "Times" that day. The "Philadelphia
Inquirer" reported: "Police on Saturday said they have an airtight
case against pro-Castro Marxist Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin
of President Kennedy."[2] On the front page of the "St. Louis
Post-Dispatch" was the headline "Dallas Police Insist Evidence
Proves Oswald Killed Kennedy."
Dallas police said today that Lee Harvey Oswald . . .
assassinated President John F. Kennedy and they have the
evidence to prove it. . . . "The man killed President
Kennedy. We are convinced without any doubt that he did the
killing. There were no accomplices," [Captain] Fritz
asserted.
Police Chief Jesse E. Curry outlined this web of evidence
that, he said, showed Oswald was the sniper.[3]
The following day, November 25, was the occasion for yet another
banner headline in the "Times." In one fell swoop, there was no
longer any doubt; it was no longer just the Dallas police who were
prematurely convinced of Oswald's guilt. "President's Assassin
Shot to Death in Jail Corridor by a Dallas Citizen," the headline
proclaimed. There was no room for such qualifiers as "alleged" or
"accused." Yet, in this very issue, the "Times" included a strong
editorial that criticized the police pronouncement of guilt:
The Dallas authorities, abetted and encouraged by the
newspaper, TV and radio press, trampled on every principle
of justice in their handling of Lee Harvey Oswald. . . .
The heinousness of the crime Oswald was alleged to have
committed made it doubly important that there be no cloud
over the establishment of his guilt.
Yet--before any indictment had been returned or any
evidence presented and in the face of continued denials by
the prisoner--the chief of police and the district attorney
pronounced Oswald guilty.[4]
It is unfortunate that this proper condemnation applies equally to
the source that issued it.
Transcripts of various police interviews and press conferences
over the weekend of the assassination (which confirm the above
newspaper accounts) demonstrate that, in addition to forming a bias
against Oswald through the press, the police made extensive use of
the electronic media to spread their improper and premature
conclusion.
On Friday night, November 22, NBC-TV broadcast a press interview
with District Attorney Henry Wade, whose comments included these:
"I figure we have sufficient evidence to convict him [Oswald] . . .
there's no one else but him" (24H751). The next day, Chief Curry,
though he cautioned that the evidence was not yet "positive," said
that he was convinced. In an interview carried by NBC, Curry
asserted, "Personally, I think we have the right man" (24H754). In
another interview broadcast by local station WFAA-TV, Curry was
asked, "Is there any doubt in your mind, Chief, that Oswald is the
man who killed the President?" His response was: "I think this is
the man who killed the President" (24H764). In another interview
that Saturday, Captain Fritz made the absolute statement:
There is only one thing that I can tell you without going
into the evidence before first talking to the District
Attorney. I can tell you that this case is cinched--that
this man killed the President. There's no question in my
mind about it. . . . I don't want to get into the evidence.
I just want to tell you that we are convinced beyond any
doubt that he did the killing. (24H787)
By November 24, Curry's remarks became much stronger. Local
station KRLD-TV aired this remark: "This is the man, we are sure,
that murdered the patrolman and murdered--assassinated the
President" (24H772). Fritz stuck to his earlier conviction that
Oswald was the assassin (24H788). Now D.A. Henry Wade joined in
pronouncing the verdict before trial or indictment:
WADE: I would say that without any doubt he's the
killer--the law says beyond a reasonable doubt and to a
moral certainty which I--there's no question that he was the
killer of President Kennedy.
Q. That case is closed in your mind?
WADE: As far as Oswald is concerned yes. (24H823)
{The FBI Presumption}
That same day the FBI announced, contrary to the police
assertion, that the case was still open and that its investigation,
begun the day of the shooting, would continue.[5] This continued
investigation climaxed after a duration just short of three weeks.
In a series of contrived news "leaks," the Bureau added to the
propaganda campaign started by the Dallas Police.
The decision of the FBI and the Commission was to keep the first
FBI Summary Report on the assassination secret.[6] However, even
prior to the completion of this report, the newspapers carried
frequent "leaked" stories telling in advance what the report would
contain. The Commission met in executive session on December 5,
1963, and questioned Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach
about these leaks. Katzenbach spoke bluntly. FBI Director Hoover,
he related, denied that the leaks originated within the FBI, but "I
say with candor to this committee, I can't think of anybody else it
could have come from, because I don't know of anybody else that
knew that information."[7]
On December 9, Katzenbach transmitted the completed FBI Report
to the Commission. In his covering letter of that date, he again
expressed the Justice Department's desire to keep the Report
secret, although he felt that "the Commission should consider
releasing--or allowing the Department of Justice to release--a
short press statement which would briefly make the following
points." Katzenbach wanted the Commission to assure the public
that the FBI had turned up no evidence of conspiracy and that "the
FBI report through scientific examination of evidence, testimony
and intensive investigation, establishes beyond a reasonable doubt
that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy."[8]
Although the Commission released no such statement, the
conclusions of which the Justice Department felt the public should
be informed were widely disseminated by the press, through leaks
which, according to Katzenbach, must have originated with the FBI.
On December 1, the "Washington Post" in a major article told its
readers that "all the police agencies with a hand in the
investigation . . . insist that [the case against Oswald] is an
unshakable one."[9] "Time" magazine, in the week before the FBI
report was forwarded to the Commission, said of the report, "it
will indicate that Oswald, acting in his own lunatic loneliness,
was indeed the President's assassin."[10] "Newsweek" reported that
"the report holds to the central conclusion that Federal and local
probers had long since reached: that Oswald was the assassin."[11]
The "New York Times" was privy to the most specific leak concerning
the FBI report. On December 10 it ran a front-page story headed
"Oswald Assassin Beyond a Doubt, FBI Concludes." This article, by
Joseph Loftus, began as follows:
A Federal Bureau of Investigation report went to a
special Presidential commission today and named Lee H.
Oswald as the assassin of President Kennedy.
The Report is known to emphasize that Oswald was beyond
doubt the assassin and that he acted alone. . . .
The Department of Justice, declining all comment on the
content of the report, announced only that on instruction of
President Johnson the report was sent directly to the
special Commission.[12]
All of these news stories, especially that which appeared in the
"Times," accurately reflect those findings of the FBI report which
Katzenbach felt should be made public. The FBI has long claimed
that it does not draw conclusions in its reports. The FBI report
on the assassination disproves this one of many FBI myths. This
report {does} draw conclusions, as the press reported. In the
preface to this once-secret report (released in 1965), the FBI
stated:
Part I briefly relates the assassination of the President
and the identification of Oswald as his slayer.
Part II sets forth the evidence conclusively showing that
Oswald did assassinate the President. (CD 1)
The Commission, in secret executive sessions, expressed its
exasperation at the leak of the FBI report. On December 16,
Chairman Warren stated:
CHAIRMAN: Well, gentlemen, to be very frank about it, I
have read that report two or three times and I have not seen
anything in there yet that has not been in the press.
SEN. RUSSELL: I couldn't agree with that more. I have
read it through once very carefully, and I went through it
again at places I had marked, and practically everything in
there has come out in the press at one time or another, a
bit here and a bit there.[13]
It should be noted here that even a casual reading of this FBI
report and its sequel, the "Supplemental Report" dated January 13,
1964, discloses that neither establishes Oswald's guilt, nor even
adequately accounts for all the known facts of the assassination.
In neither report is there mention of or accounting for the
President's anterior neck wound which, by the night of November 22,
was public knowledge around the world. The Supplemental Report, in
attempting to associate Oswald with the crime, asserts that a
full-jacketed bullet traveling at approximately 2,000 feet per
second stopped short after penetrating "less than a finger length"
of the President's back. One need not be an expert to discern that
this is an impossible event, and indeed later tests confirmed that
seventy-two inches of flesh were insufficient to stop such a bullet
(5H78). The Commission members themselves, in private, grumbled
about the unsatisfactory nature of the FBI report, as the following
passage from the December 16 Executive Session reveals:
MR. MC CLOY: . . . The grammar is bad and you can see
they did not polish it all up. It does leave you some
loopholes in this thing but I think you have to realize they
put this thing together very fast.
REP. BOGGS: There's nothing in there about Governor
Connally.
CHAIRMAN: No.
SEN. COOPER: And whether or not they found any bullets
in him.
MR. MC CLOY: This bullet business leaves me confused.
CHAIRMAN: It's totally inconclusive.[14]
Thus, by January 1964, the American public had been assured by
both the Dallas Police and the FBI that Oswald was the assassin
beyond all doubt. For those who had not taken the time to probe
the evidence, who were not aware of its inadequacies and
limitations, such a conclusion was easy to accept.
{The Commission Presumption}
Today there can be no doubt that, despite their assurances of
impartiality, the Commission and its staff consciously planned and
executed their work under the presumption that Oswald was guilty.
The once-secret working papers of the Commission explicitly reveal
the prejudice of the entire investigation.
General Counsel Rankin did not organize a staff of lawyers under
him until early in January 1964. Until that time, the Commission
had done essentially no work, and had merely received investigative
reports from other agencies. Now, Rankin and Warren drew up the
plans for the organization of the work that the staff was to
undertake for the Commission. In a "Progress Report" dated January
11, from the Chairman to the other members, Warren referred to a
"tentative outline prepared by Mr. Rankin which I think will assist
in organizing the evaluation of the investigative materials
received by the Commission."[15][see Appendix A -- ratitor] Two
subject headings in this outline are of concern here: "(2) Lee
Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy; (3) Lee Harvey
Oswald: Background and Possible Motives."[16] Thus, it is
painfully apparent that the Commission did, from the very
beginning, plan its work with a distinct bias. It would evaluate
the evidence from the perspective of "Oswald as the assassin," and
it would search for his "possible motives."
Attached to Warren's "Progress Report" was a copy of the
"Tentative Outline of the Work of the President's Commission."
This outline reveals in detail the extent to which the conclusion
of Oswald's guilt was pre-determined. Section II, "Lee Harvey
Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy," begins by outlining
Oswald's movements on the day of the assassination. Under the
heading "Murder of Tippit," there is the subheading "Evidence
demonstrating Oswald's guilt."[17] Even the FBI had refrained from
drawing a conclusion as to whether or not Oswald had murdered
Officer Tippit. Yet, at this very early point in its
investigation, the Commission was convinced it could muster
"evidence demonstrating Oswald's guilt."
Another heading under Section II of the outline is "Evidence
Identifying Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy," again a
presumptive designation made by a commission that had not yet
analyzed a single bit to evidence. The listings of evidence under
this heading are sketchy and hardly conclusive, and further reveal
the biases of the Commission. Some of the evidence that was to
"identify Oswald as the assassin" was "prior similar acts: a)
General Walker attack, b) General Eisenhower threat."[18] Thus we
learn that Oswald was also presumed guilty in the attempted
shooting of the right-wing General Walker in April 1963.
Under the additional heading "Evidence Implicating Others in
Assassination or Suggesting Accomplices," the Commission was to
consider only the possibility that others worked with {Oswald} in
planning or executing the assassination. The outline further
reveals that it had been concluded in advance that Oswald had no
accomplices, for the last category under this heading suggests that
the evidence be evaluated for the "refutation of allegations."[19]
The Commission was preoccupied with the question of motive.
According to the initial outline of its work, it had decided to
investigate Oswald's motives for killing the President {before} it
determined whether Oswald had in fact been involved in the
assassination {in any capacity.} At the executive session of
January 21, 1964, an illuminating discussion took place between
Chairman Warren, General Counsel Rankin, and member Dulles. Dulles
wanted to be sure that every possible action was taken to determine
Oswald's motive:
Mr. Dulles: I suggested to Mr. Rankin, Mr. Chairman, that
I thought it would be very useful for us, if the rest of you
agree, that as items come in that deal with motive, and I
have seen, I suppose, 20 or 30 of them already in these
various reports, those be pulled together by one of these
men, maybe Mr. Rankin himself so that we could see that
which would be so important to us.
Chairman Warren: In other words, to see what we are
running down on the question of motive.
Mr. Dulles: Just on the question of motive I found a
dozen or more statements of the various people as to why
they thought he [Oswald] did it.
Warren: Yes.
Mr. Dulles: Or what his character was, what his aim, and
so forth that go into motive and I think it would be very
useful to pull that together, under one of these headings,
not under a separate heading necessarily.
Warren: Well, I think that that would probably come
under Mr. [Albert] Jenner, wouldn't that, Lee [Rankin],
isn't he the one who is bringing together all the facts
concerning the life of Oswald?
Mr. Rankin: Yes, yes. We can get that done. We will
see that that is taken care of.
Warren: Yes.[20]
The staff, working under the direction of Rankin, was likewise
predisposed to the conclusion that Oswald was guilty. Staff lawyer
W. David Slawson wrote a memorandum dated January 27 concerning the
"timing of rifle shots." He suggested that:
In figuring the timing of the rifle shots, we should take
into account the distance travelled by the Presidential car
between the first and third shots. This tends to shorten
the time slightly during which {Oswald} would have had to
pull the trigger three times on his rifle.[21] (emphasis
added)
At this early point in the investigation, long before any of the
relevant testimony had been adduced, Slawson was positive that
Oswald "pulled the trigger three times on his rifle."
Another staff lawyer, Arlen Specter, expressed the bias of the
investigation in a memorandum, dated January 30, in which he
offered suggestions for the questioning of Oswald's widow, Marina.
Specter felt that certain questions "might provide some insight on
whether Oswald learned of the motorcade route from newspapers." He
added that "perhaps [Oswald] was inspired, in part by President
Kennedy's anti-Castro speech which was reported on November 19 on
the front page of the Dallas Times Herald."[22] The implication
here is obvious that the President's speech "inspired" Oswald to
commit the assassination. Again, it must be emphasized that until
Oswald's guilt was a proven fact, which it was {not} at the time
these memoranda were composed, it was mere folly to investigate the
factors that supposedly "inspired" Oswald. Such fraudulent
investigative efforts demonstrate that Oswald's guilt was taken for
granted.
Rankin had assigned teams of two staff lawyers each to evaluate
the evidence according to the five divisions of his "Tentative
Outline." Working in Area II, "Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin
of President Kennedy," were Joseph Ball as the senior lawyer and
David Belin as the junior.[23] On January 30, Belin wrote a very
revealing memorandum to Rankin, concerning "Oswald's knowledge that
Connally would be in the Presidential car and his intended
target."[24] This memorandum leaves no doubt that Belin was quite
sure of Oswald's guilt {before} he began his assigned
investigation. He was concerned that Oswald might not have known
that Governor Connally was to ride in the presidential limousine
because this "bears on the motive of the assassination and also on
the degree of marksmanship required, which in turn affects the
determination that Oswald was the assassin and that it was not too
difficult to hit the intended target two out of three times in this
particular situation." The alternatives, as stated by Belin, were
as follows:
In determining the accuracy of Oswald, we have three
major possibilities: Oswald was shooting at Connally and
missed two of the three shots, two misses striking Kennedy;
Oswald was shooting at both Kennedy and Connally and all
three shots struck their intended targets; Oswald was
shooting only at Kennedy and the second bullet missed its
intended target and hit Connally instead.[25]
Belin could not have been more explicit: Three shots were fired
and Oswald, whatever his motive, fired them all. Of course, at
that point Belin could not possibly have {proved} that Oswald was
the assassin. He merely presumed it and worked on that basis.
It is important to keep this January 30 Belin memorandum in mind
when we consider the 233-page "BALL - BELIN REPORT #1" dated
February 25, 1964, and submitted by the authors as a summation of
all the evidence they had evaluated up to that point. The
"tentative" conclusion reached in this report is that "Lee Harvey
Oswald is the assassin of President John F. Kennedy."[26]
However, Ball and Belin were careful to include here a new
interpretation of their assigned area of work. They wrote:
We should also point out that the tentative memorandum of
January 23 substantially differs from the original outline
of our work in this area which had as its subject, "Lee
Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy," and
which examined the evidence from that standpoint. At no
time have we assumed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin
of President Kennedy. Rather, our entire study has been
based on an independent examination of all the evidence in
an effort to determine who was the assassin of President
Kennedy.[27]
Although this new formulation was no doubt the proper one, the
Warren Report makes it abundantly clear that Ball and Belin failed
to follow the course outlined in their "Report #1." As we have
seen, the only context in which the evidence is presented in the
Report is "Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy,"
even though that blatant description is not used (as it was in the
secret working papers). Furthermore, that Belin a month before
could write so confidently that Oswald was the assassin completely
refutes this belatedly professed intention to examine the evidence
without preconceptions. It would appear that in including this
passage in "Report #1," Ball and Belin were more interested in
leaving a record that they could later cite in their own defense
than in conducting an honest, unbiased investigation. Indeed,
Belin has quoted this passage publicly to illustrate the
impartiality of his work, while neglecting to mention his
memorandum of January 30.[28]
The Warren Report was not completed until late in September
1964, with hearings and investigations extending into the period
during which the Report was set in type. Yet outlines for the
final Report were drawn up as early as mid-{March}. These outlines
demonstrate that Oswald's guilt was a definite conclusion at the
time that sworn testimony was first being taken by the Commission.
The first outline was submitted to Rankin at his request by staff
lawyer Alfred Goldberg on approximately March 14, according to
notations on the outline.[29] Under Goldberg's plan, Chapter Four
of the Commission's report would be entitled "Lee Harvey Oswald as
the Assassin." Goldberg elaborated:
This section should state the facts which lead to the
conclusion that Oswald pulled the trigger and should
indicate the elements in the case which have either not been
proven or are based on doubtful testimony. Each of the
facts listed below should be reviewed in that light.[30]
The "facts" enumberated [sic] by Goldberg are precarious.
Indeed, as of March 14, 1964, no testimony had been adduced on
almost all of the "facts" that Goldberg outlined as contributing to
the "conclusion that Oswald pulled the trigger." Goldberg felt
that this chapter of the Report should identify Oswald's rifle "as
the murder weapon." Under this category he listed "Ballistics" and
"Capability of Rifle." Yet the first ballistics testimony was not
heard by the Commission until March 31 (3H390ff.). Another of
Goldberg's categories is "Evidence of Oswald Carrying Weapon to
Texas School Book Depository." Here he does not specify which
evidence he had in mind. However, the expert testimony that
{might} have supported the thesis that Oswald carried his rifle to
work on the morning of the assassination was not adduced until
April 2 and 3 (4H1ff.). This pattern runs through several other
factors that Goldberg felt established Oswald's guilt {before} they
were scrutinized by the Commission or the staff. To illustrate:
"Testimony of eyewitnesses and employees on fifth floor"--this
testimony was not taken until March 24, at which time the witnesses
contradicted several of their previous statements to the federal
authorities (3H161ff.); "Medical testimony"--the autopsy surgeons
testified on March 16 (2H347ff.), and medical/ballistics testimony
concerning tests with Oswald's rifle was not taken until mid-May
(5H74ff.); "Eyewitness Identification of Oswald Shooting Rifle"--
only one witness claimed to make such an identification, and he
gave testimony on March 24 (3H140ff.) that was subsequently
rejected by the Commission (R145-46).
On March 26, staff lawyer Norman Redlich submitted another
outline of the final Report to Rankin; in almost all respects,
Redlich's outline is identical with Goldberg's. Chapter Four is
entitled "Lee H. Oswald as the Assassin," with the notation that
"this section should state the facts which lead to the conclusion
that Oswald pulled the trigger. . . ."[31] In general, Redlich is
vaguer than Goldberg in his listing of those "facts" which should
be presented to support the conclusion of Oswald's guilt. However,
he does specify what he considers to be "evidence of Oswald
carrying weapon to building." One factor, he wrote, is the "fake
curtain rod story." Yet, when Redlich submitted this outline, no
investigation had been conducted into the veracity of the "curtain
rod story." The first information relevant to this is contained in
an FBI report dated March 28 (24H460-61), and it was not until the
last day in {August} that further inquiry was made (CE2640).
The pattern is consistent. The Commission outlined its work and
concluded that Oswald was guilty before it did any investigation or
took any testimony. The Report was outlined, including a chapter
concluding that Oswald was guilty, before the bulk of the
Commission's work was completed. Most notably, these conclusions
were drafted {before} the staff arranged a series of tests that
were to demonstrate whether the official theories about how the
shooting occurred were physically possible. A series of ballistics
tests using Oswald's rifle, and an on-site reconstruction of the
crime in Dealey Plaza were conducted in May; the Report was
outlined in March. On April 27, Redlich wrote Rankin a memorandum
"to explain the reasons why certain members of the staff feel that
it is important" to reconstruct the events in Dealey Plaza as
depicted in motion pictures of the assassination. Redlich stated
that the Report would "presumably" set forth a version of the
assassination shots concluding "that the bullets were fired by one
person located in the sixth floor southeast corner window of the
TSBD building." He then pointed out:
As our investigation now stands, however, we have not
shown that these events could possibly have occurred in the
manner suggested above. All we have is a reasonable
hypothesis which appears to be supported by the medical
testimony but which has not been checked out against the
physical facts at the scene of the assassination.[32]
Thus, Redlich admitted that the Commission did not know if the
conclusions already outlined were even physically possible. But
his suggestion of on-site tests should not be taken to indicate his
desire to establish the untainted truth, for he explicitly denied
such a purpose in his memorandum. Instead, he wrote:
Our intention is not to establish the point with complete
accuracy, but merely to substantiate the hypothesis which
underlies the conclusions that Oswald was the sole
assassin.[33]
This is as unambiguous a statement as can be imagined. The
reconstruction was not to determine whether it was physically
possible for Oswald to have committed the murder as described by
the Commission; it was "merely to substantitate" [sic] the
preconceived conclusion "that Oswald was the sole assassin."
On April 30, three days after Redlich composed the above-quoted
memorandum, the Commission met in another secret executive session.
Here Rankin added to the abundant proof that the Commission had
already concluded that Oswald was guilty. The following exchange
was provoked when Dulles expressed his well-voiced preoccupation
with biographical data relating to Oswald:
Mr. Dulles: Detailed biography of Lee Harvey Oswald--I
think that ought to be somewhere.
Mr. Rankin: We thought it would be too voluminous to be
in the body of the report. We thought it would be helpful
as supplementary material at the end.
Mr. Dulles: Well, I don't feel too strongly about where
it should be. This would be--I think some of the biography
of Lee Harvey Oswald, though, ought to be in the main
report.
Mr. Rankin: {Some of it will be necessary to tell the
story and to show why it is reasonable to assume that he did
what the Commission concludes that he did do}.[34] (emphasis
added)
As late as the middle of May, long after the Commission and the
staff had decided, in advance of analyzing the evidence, that
Oswald was guilty, Commission member McCloy expressed his feeling
that the conclusion as to Oswald's guilt was not being pursued with
enough vigor by the staff. McCloy was not interested in a fair and
objective report. This story was related by David Belin in his
memorandum of May 15, which described his trip to Dallas with
certain Commission members, McCloy included. One night in Dallas,
Belin persuaded McCloy to read "Ball-Belin Report # 1," which by
then was almost three months old. Belin recounts McCloy's
reactions:
He seemed to misunderstand the basic purpose of the
report, for he suggested that we did not point up enough
arguments to show why Oswald was the assassin. . . .
Commissioner McCloy did state that in the final report he
thought that we should be rather complete in developing
reasons and affirmative statements why Oswald was the
assassin--he did not believe that it should just merely be a
factual restatement of what we had found.[35]
As quoted at the opening of this chapter, the Warren Report
asserted that the Commission functioned not "as a prosecutor
determined to prove a case, but as a fact finding agency committed
to the ascertainment of the truth." This statement is clearly a
misrepresentation of the Commission's real position, as expressed
in private by McCloy when he told Belin that he wanted a report
that argued a prosecution case, and not simply "a factual
restatement."
The Dallas Police and the FBI both announced their "conclusion"
before it could have been adequately substantiated by facts and, in
so doing, almost irrevocably prejudiced the American public against
Oswald and thwarted an honest and unbiased investigation. The
Commission operated under a facade of impartiality. Yet it
examined the evidence--and subsequently presented it--on the
premise that Oswald was guilty, a premise openly stated in secret
staff memoranda and reinforced when the members met in secret
sessions. Now, as the curtain of secrecy that once sheltered the
working papers of the investigation is lifted, the ugly and
improper presumption of guilt becomes obvious. Wesley Liebeler
expressed the prejudice of the entire "investigation" when he
argued to Rankin in a once-secret memorandum that " . . . the best
evidence that Oswald could fire as fast as he did and hit the
target is the fact that he did so."[36]
__________
[1] "New York Times," November 24, 1963, p. 1.
[2] "Philadelphia Inquirer," November 24, 1963.
[3] "St. Louis Post-Dispatch," November 24, 1963.
[4] "New York Times," November 25, 1963, p. 18.
[5] "St. Louis Post-Dispatch," November 24, 1963, p. 2.
[6] Transcript of the December 5, 1963, Executive Session of the Warren
Commission, pp. 10-11.
[7] Ibid., p. 8.
[8] Letter from Nicholas Katzenbach to Chief Justice Warren, dated
December 9, 1963. This letter is available from the National
Archives.
[9] "Washington Post," December 1, 1963.
[10] "Time," December 13, 1963, p. 26.
[11] "Newsweek," December 16, 1963, p. 26.
[12] "New York Times," December 10, 1963, p. 1.
[13] Transcript of the December 16, 1963, Executive Session of the
Warren Commission, p. 11.
[14] Ibid., p. 12.
[15] "Progress Report" by Chairman Warren, p. 4, attached to "Memorandum
for Members of the Commission" from Mr. Rankin, dated January 11,
1964.
[16] The "Tentative Outline of the Work of the President's Commission"
was attached to the memorandum mentioned in note 15.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Ibid.
[20] Transcript of the January 21, 1964, Executive Session of the Warren
Commission, pp. 10-11.
[21] Memorandum from W. David Slawson to Mr. Ball and Mr. Belin, dated
January 27, 1964, "SUBJECT: Time of Rifle Shots," located in the
"Slawson Chrono. File."
[22] Memorandum from Arlen Specter to Mr. Rankin, dated January 30, 1964,
concerning the questioning of Marina Oswald, p. 3.
[23] "Memorandum to the Staff," from Mr. Rankin, dated January 13, 1964,
p. 3.
[24] "Memorandum" from David W. Belin to J. Lee Rankin, dated January 30,
1964. This document was discovered in the National Archives by
Harold Weisberg and was first presented in "Post Mortem I," pp.
61-62.
[25] Ibid.
[26] "Ball-Belin Report #1," dated February 25, 1964, p. 233.
[27] Ibid., pp. 1-2.
[28] See "Truth Was My Only Goal," by David Belin in "The Texas
Observer," August 13, 1971, p. 14.
[29] "Memorandum" from Alfred Goldberg to J. Lee Rankin, dated "approx
3/14," 1964.
[30] "Proposed Outline of Report," attached to the memorandum referred
to in note 29. This outline was discovered in the National
Archives by Harold Weisberg and is presented in "Post Mortem I,"
p. 123.
[31] "Proposed Outline of Report (Submitted by Mr. Redlich)," attached
to "Memorandum" from Norman Redlich to J. Lee Rankin, dated March
26, 1964. This document was discovered in the National Archives by
Harold Weisberg and is presented in "Post Mortem I," p. 132.
[32] "Memorandum" from Norman Redlich to J. Lee Rankin, dated April 27,
1964. This document was discovered in the National Archives by
Harold Weisberg and is presented in "Post Mortem I," pp. 132-34.
[33] Ibid.
[34] Transcript of the April 30, 1964, Executive Session of the Warren
Commission, p. 5891.
[35] Memorandum from Mr. Belin to Mr. Rankin, dated May 15, 1964, p. 5.
[36] Liebeler 9/6/64 Memorandum, p. 25.
[1] "Presumed Guilty, How & Why the W.C. Framed Lee Harvey Oswald" [4/11]
In the final analysis, the Warren Commission had three pieces of
tangible evidence that linked Lee Harvey Oswald to the
assassination of President Kennedy: (1) A rifle purchased by
Oswald and three empty cartridge cases fired in that rifle were
discovered on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository,
(2) a nearly whole bullet that had been fired from Oswald's rifle
was found on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital, and (3) two
fragments of a bullet or bullets that had been fired from Oswald's
rifle were found on the front seat of the presidential limousine.
Yet, there is nothing in this evidence itself to prove either
that Oswald's rifle was used in the shooting or, if it was, that
Oswald fired it. The whole fault in the Commission's case relating
the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle to the shooting is this: bullets
identifiable with that rifle were found {outside} of the victims'
bodies. Pieces of metal not traceable to any rifle were found
{inside} the bodies. The Report merely assumes the legitimacy of
the specimens found externally and works on the assumption that
these bullets and fragments had once been {inside} the bodies, and
thus were involved in the shooting.
Obviously, bullets found outside the bodies are entirely
circumstantial evidence, for although they may be conclusively
linked with a particular weapon, their location of discovery does
not link them with a particular victim. No matter how close to the
victims or to the scene of the crime these bullets were found, as
long as they were not {in} the actual bodies when discovered, proof
is lacking that they were ever in the bodies at all. If Commission
Exhibit 399, the nearly whole bullet found on a stretcher at
Parkland, had been removed from Governor Connally's body, it could
be asserted that it had indeed produced his wounds. Likewise, if
the identifiable bullet fragments found on the front seat of the
limousine had instead been located in President Kennedy's head
wound, we would have the proof linking Oswald's rifle to the fatal
shot.
In the case of the assassination, there was an easy and
conclusive way to determine whether the bullet specimens found
{outside} the bodies had ever been {inside} the victims, thus
providing either the proof or the disproof of the notion that
Oswald's rifle was used in the shooting. This conclusive evidence
is the spectrographic comparison made between the metallic
compositions of the projectiles found outside of the victims and
the bits of metal removed from the wounds themselves.
Spectrography is an exact science. In spectrographic analysis,
a test substance is irradiated so that all of the elements
composing it emit a distinct spectrum. These spectra are recorded
on film and analyzed both qualitatively (to determine exactly which
elements compose the substance in question) and quantitatively (to
determine the exact percentage of each element present). Through
such analysis, two substances may be compared in extremely fine
detail, down to the percentages of even their most minor
constituents.[1]
Comparative chemical analysis such as spectrography has long
been a vital tool in crime solving. The following are actual cases
that illustrate the value of such comparison:
1. A deformed slug with some white metal adhering to it
was found at the scene where a man had been shot, but
not wounded. The white metal was first suspected to be
nickel, which would have indicated a nickel-coated
bullet, but was subsequently tested and found to be
silver from a cigarette case that had been penetrated.
The slugs in the cartridges taken from the suspect in
the attack were analyzed and found to differ in
composition from the projectile used in the shooting;
the suspect thus escaped conviction.
2. In another case, a man escaped conviction because of
dissimilarities in composition found upon comparative
analysis of the bullet removed from the wounded man and
bullets from cartridges seized in the suspect's house.
The former contained a trace of antimony and no tin and
the latter contained a comparatively large amount of
tin.
3. A night watchman shot at some unidentified persons
fleeing the scene of a robbery, but all escaped. Blood
found at the scene the next morning indicated that one
of the persons had been wounded and subsequently a man
was arrested with a bullet wound in his leg for which
he could provide no plausible explanation. Analysis
demonstrated that lead fragments removed from the wound
did not agree in composition with the slugs in the
watchman's cartridges and the man was released. The
impurities present in the lead were the same in each
case, consisting chiefly of antimony, but the fragments
from the wound contained much less antimony than the
watchman's slugs.[2]
The identifiable bullets and fragments found {outside} the
victims' bodies are the suspect specimens in the presidential
assassination. The tiny pieces of metal found {inside} the bodies
are, in effect, the control specimens. All of the specimens--
including those removed from the President and the Governor--were
subjected to spectrographic analysis. The results of these
analyses hold the conclusive answer to the problem that was the
central issue in the question of Oswald's guilt: Did the bullets
from Oswald's rifle produce the wounds of the victims?
The spectrographic analyses could solve this central problem
through minute qualitative and quantitative comparison. If a
fragment from a body was not {identical} in composition with a
suspect bullet, that bullet could not have entered the body and
left the fragment in question. The requirements for "identical"
composition are stringent; if the exact elements are not present
in the exact percentages from one sample to another, there is no
match and the samples must have originated from two different
sources. If a fragment is found to be identical in composition
with a suspect bullet, it is possible that the bullet deposited the
fragment in the body. However, before this can be conclusively
proven, it must be demonstrated that other bullets manufactured
from the same batch of metal were not employed in the crime.[3]
Some of the major comparisons that should have been made in the
case of the President's death are these:
1. The Commission apparently believed that the two large
bullet fragments (one containing part of a lead core)
found on the front seat of the car and traceable to
Oswald's rifle were responsible for the head wounds.
Two pieces of lead were recovered from the President's
head. The head fragments could have been compared to
the car fragment containing lead. Had the slightest
difference in composition been found, the car fragments
could not have caused the head wounds.
2. The Commission believed that the two car fragments were
part of the same bullet. Spectrographic comparison
might have determined this.
3. Copper traces were found on the bullet holes in the
back of the President's coat and shirt. Since the
Commission believed that bullet 399 penetrated the
President's neck, the copper residues on the clothing
could have been compared with the copper jacket of 399
for a conclusive answer. Any dissimilarity between the
two copper samples would rule out 399.
4. The Commission believed that 399 wounded Governor
Connally. Fragments of lead were removed from the
Governor's wrist. These could have been compared with
the lead core of 399. Again, any dissimilarity would
conclusively disassociate 399 from Connally's wounds.
An identical match might support the Commission's
belief.
5. The lead from the Governor's wrist could have been
compared with the lead from one of the identifiable car
fragments to determine whether this might have caused
Connally's wounds in the event that 399 did not. This
could have associated "Oswald's" rifle with the wounds
even if 399 had been proven "illegitimate."
6. The lead residue found on the crack in the windshield
of the car could have been compared with fragments from
the two bodies plus fragments from the car in an effort
to determine which shot caused the windshield damage.
7. As a control, the lead and copper composition of 399
could have been compared to that of the identifiable
car fragments to determine whether all were made from
the same batches of metal.
The government had in its possession the conclusive proof or
disproof of its theories. It is not presumptuous to assume that,
had the spectrographic analyses provided the incontrovertible proof
of the validity of the Warren Report's central conclusions, they
would have been employed in the Report, eliminating virtually all
of the controversy and doubt that have raged over the official
assertions.
But the complete results of the spectrographic analyses were
never reported to the Commission; there is no indication that the
Commission ever requested or desired them; they are not in the
printed exhibits or the Commission's unpublished files; no expert
testimony relevant to them was ever adduced; and to this day, the
Department of Justice is withholding the complete results from
researchers.
On November 23, 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a report
to Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry summarizing the results of FBI
laboratory examinations, including spectrographic analysis (see
24H262-64). On the matter of composition, Hoover said only that
the jackets of the found specimens were "copper alloy" and the
cores and other pieces, "lead." The element mixed with the copper
to form the "alloy" is not even mentioned. It is quite unlikely
that the other specimens were composed solely of "lead," for the
lead employed in practically all modern bullets is mixed with small
quantities of antimony, bismuth, and arsenic.[4] The only
spectrographic comparison mentioned in this report is meaningless:
The lead metal of [exhibits] Q4 and Q5 [fragments from
the President's head], Q9 [fragment(s) from the Governor's
wrist], Q14 [three pieces of lead found under the left jump
seat in the limousine] and Q15 [scraping from the windshield
crack] is similar to the lead of the core of the bullet
fragment, Q2 [found on the front seat of the car].
That two samples are "similar" in composition is without meaning in
terms of the precise data yielded through spectrographic analysis.
The crucial determination, "identical" or "not identical," is
consistently avoided. Also avoided is the essential comparison
between the "stretcher bullet," 399, and the metal fragments
removed from the Governor's wrist.
The Commission sought virtually no testimony relevant to the
spectrographic analysis. When it did seek this testimony, it asked
the wrong questions of the wrong people. FBI ballistics expert
Robert Frazier gave testimony about these tests on May 13, 1964.
At this time, he told the Commission and Arlen Specter, his
interrogator, that the spectrographics examinations were performed
by a spectrographer, John F. Gallager (5H67, 69). Frazier,
accepted by the Commission only as a "qualified witness on
firearms" (3H392), was not a spectrographic expert. His field was
ballistics and firearms identification, and while he might have
supplemented his findings with those from other fields, he was not
qualified in spectrography, which entails expertise in physics and
chemistry. Gallagher, the expert, could well be called the
Commission's most-avoided witness. His testimony, the {last} taken
in the entire investigation, was given in a deposition attended by
a stenographer and a staff member the week before the Warren Report
was submitted to President Johnson. At this time, he was not asked
a single question relating to the spectrographic analyses.[5] (See
15H746ff.)
Neither Specter nor the Commission members can deny having known
that Frazier was not the man qualified to testify about
spectrographic analysis; Frazier stated this in his testimony:
Mr. Specter: Was it your job to analyze all of the
bullets or bullet fragments which were found in the
President's car?
Mr. Frazier: Yes; it was, {except for the
spectrographic analysis of the composition}. (5H68;
emphasis added)
Frazier added, "I don't know actually whether I am expected to give
the results of (the spectrographer's) analysis or not" (5H59). If
this statement fails to make it clear that Frazier was not prepared
to testify about the results of the spectrographic analyses, an
earlier statement by him leaves no doubt: "[The spectrographic]
examination was performed by a spectrographer, John F. Gallagher,
and I do not have the results of his examination here" (5H67). If
Frazier did not have the actual report of the results of the tests
with him when he appeared before the Commission, there was
obviously no way of vouching for the accuracy of the findings to
which he testified, whether he was qualified as an expert in
spectrography or not. Also, Frazier's knowledge of the
spectrographic analysis was merely secondhand; he was aware of the
results of these tests because the spectrographer "submitted his
report to me" (5H69). Thus, Frazier played no role in conducting
this analysis. His only "qualification" for giving testimony about
the spectrographic analyses was that he had read a report about
them. Because this report is not part of the public records, we
have no way of determining whether Frazier accurately related the
results of the analyses, or whether the report upon which he based
his testimony was competent, complete, or satisfactory. In short,
we are asked to take Frazier on his word when (1) he knew of these
tests only secondhand, (2) he did not have the actual results with
him when he testified about them, and (3) he had no expertise in
spectrography. On this basis alone, Frazier's testimony concerning
the tests is not worthy of credence.
However, if we examine exactly what Frazier specified as the
results of the spectrographic analyses, it becomes apparent that
his testimony, if true, is meaningless and incomplete. Frazier
spoke of essentially the same comparisons that Hoover did in his
letter to police chief Curry, repeating Hoovers meaningless
designation that the ballistic specimens compared were "found to be
similar in metallic composition" (5H67, 69, 73-74). When the
{exact} composition had been determined to a minute degree and
could be compared for conclusive and meaningful answers, there was
no legitimate reason to accept this testimony about mere
"similarities" in composition. Furthermore, Frazier offered his
opinion that the spectrographic analyses were inconclusive in
determining the origin of certain of the ballistics specimens
(5H67, 69, 73-74). However, because Frazier was not a
spectrographic expert and because the actual report of these tests
is not available, his interpretation of the test results is
worthless. Even at that, Frazier and his Commission interrogator,
Arlen Specter, avoided mention of those comparisons affecting the
legitimacy of bullet 399--namely, the copper from the President's
clothing and the lead from Governor Connally's wrist as compared
with the copper and lead of 399.
Frazier was cross-examined at the New Orleans conspiracy trial
of Clay Shaw. Here he was pressed further on the spectrographic
analysis. When asked about any "similarity" in the compositions of
the various ballistic specimens he replied, "They all had the same
metallic composition as far as the lead core or lead portions of
these objects is concerned."[6]
This response prompts two inferences. First, Frazier
specifically excluded as being the "same in metallic composition"
the {copper} portions of the specimens. If this omission was
necessitated by the fact that the copper of the recovered specimens
did not match in composition, a significant part of the Warren
Report is disproved. Second, Frazier's description of the lead as
being the "same" in composition is ambiguous. Did he mean that the
{elements} of the composition or the {percentages} of the elements
were the "same"? In the former case, his testimony would again be
meaningless, for {what} is contained in the metal is not so
important as {how much} is contained. If the percentages were the
same, the Report could be confirmed.
Further questioning by Attorney Oser cleared up this ambiguity.
Mr. Oser: Am I correct in saying there is a similarity
in metallic composition or they are identical?
Mr. Frazier: It was identical as far as the metallic
{elements} are concerned.[7] (emphasis added)
Here Frazier leaves no doubt that the individual {elements} in the
various lead samples were identical. What he avoids saying is that
the percentages of those elements were identical throughout. This
is the crucial point. If anything, Frazier's specification that
the {elements} were identical (when questioned about the
{composition}) leads to the inference that the percentages of those
elements were not identical, hence the recovered specimens could
{not} be related and the Warren Report is necessarily invalid.
The Commission's failure to obtain the complete spectrographic
analyses and to adduce meaningful expert testimony on them can be
viewed only with suspicion. Here was the absolute proof or
disproof of the official theories. If truth was the Commission's
objective, there can be no explanation for the exclusion of these
tests from the record. If the Commission was right in its
"solution" of the assassination, for what reason could it
conceivably have omitted the {proof} of its validity? One is
reasonably led to believe that the spectrographic analyses proved
the opposite of what the Commission asserted.
If the Commission's failure to produce the spectrographic
analyses was no more than a glaring oversight, the remedy is indeed
a simple one. The government need only release these tests to the
public. They cannot contain the gore that makes publication of the
President's autopsy pictures a matter of questionable taste. They
cannot be injurious to living persons as other classified reports
might be. They cannot threaten our national defense. They are
merely a collection of highly scientific data that could support or
destroy the entire official solution to the assassination.
The government has to this day kept them squelched.
Harold Weisberg, the first researcher to recognize the
significance of the spectrographic tests and their omission from
the record, has fought and continues to fight for access to the
report detailing these tests. In 1967, Weisberg wrote as follows
of his efforts to obtain the tests:
On October 31, 1966, then Acting Attorney General Clark
ordered that everything considered by the Commission and in
the possession of the government be placed in the National
Archives. I had written [J. Edgar] Hoover five months
earlier, on May 23, 1966, asking for access to the
spectrographic analysis of the bullet allegedly used in the
assassination and the various bullet fragments, clearly the
most basic evidence, but not in the printed evidence. He
has not yet answered that letter. Since issuance of the
Attorney General's order, I have on a number of occasions
requested this evidence of the Archives. Hoover, as of
March 1967, had not turned it over. Once, in my presence,
one of his agents deceived the Archives by falsely reporting
this analysis was in an FBI file that was accessible. Since
then, silence, but no spectrographic analysis.[8]
Weisberg's efforts have continued. In 1970, he made available
to me all of his government correspondence. I saw, over the
signatures of then Attorney General John Mitchell and Deputy
Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, the government's constant
refusal to release the spectrographic analyses.[9] Having
exhausted his administrative remedies, Weisberg took the Justice
Department to court, suing for release under provisions of the
"Freedom of Information" law. The U.S. District Court for the
District of Columbia ruled against Weisberg in this case, Civil
Action No. 712-70. Weisberg and his attorney appealed this
decision, and the appeal, brief No. 71-1026, is currently before
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Without the spectrographic analyses, there is {no} evidence to
associate Oswald's rifle with the wounds suffered by President
Kennedy and Governor Connally. Nothing was found in the body of
either victim that would suggest a connection between that specific
Mannlicher-Carcano and the wounds. The spectrographic tests might
establish such a connection; they might also conclusively
{dissociate} that rifle from the wounds. However, omission of the
exact spectrographic results from the Commission's evidence and the
subsequent refusal of the government to release the
spectrographer's findings do not leave one at all confident that
these tests support the official solution to the assassination.
__________
[1] See "Spectrography" in "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (Chicago:
William Benton Publishers, 1963), vol. 21, and "Photography" in
vol. 17; Herbert Dingle, "Practical Applications of Spectrum
Analysis" (London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1950), pp. 1-3, 74-75,
122-24.
[2] A. Lucas, "Forensic Chemistry and Scientific Criminal Investigation"
(New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1935), pp. 265-66.
[3] Author's interview with Dr. John Nichols on April 16, 1970. See
also Nichols's statement in the "Dallas Morning News," June 19, 1970.
[4] "The Winchester-Western Ammunition Handbook" (New York: Pocket
Books, Inc., 1964), p. 120. (Hereinafter referred to as "Winchester
Handbook.")
[5] First public attention drawn to the spectrographic analyses and
their omission from the Commission's record was by Harold Weisberg
in "Whitewash," p. 164. Sylvia Meagher later discussed this topic
in her book, pp. 170-72.
[6] Transcript of court proceedings of February 21, 1969, in "State of
Louisiana v. Clay L. Shaw," p. 40. (Hereinafter referred to as
"Frazier 2/21/69 testimony.")
[7] Ibid., p. 41.
[8] Weisberg, "Oswald in New Orleans," pp. 148-49.
[9] Weisberg's attorney in this case, Bernard Fensterwald, requested
that his client be furnished with the spectrographic analyses in a
letter to Justice Department lawyer Joseph Cella, dated October 9,
1969. Then Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst responded to
this request in a letter dated November 13, 1969; he refused to
disclose the document, (These letters are a part of the public
record. They are part of the set of exhibits appended to the
"COMPLAINT" dated March 11, 1970, filed in U.S. District Court for
the District of Columbia in the case of "Harold Weisberg v. U.S.
Department of Justice and U.S. Department of State," Civil Action
No. 718-70.)
Weisberg has attempted to obtain the report of the spectrographer
through a series of written requests dated May 23, 1966, March 12,
1967, January 1, 1969, June 2, 1969, April 6, 1970, May 15, 1970,
and an official request form submitted on May 10, 1970. In a letter
dated June 4, 1970, then Attorney General John Mitchell personally
denied Weisberg's request for access. Richard Kleindienst, in a
letter dated June 12, 1970, also denied Weisberg's request. (These
letters are also a part of the public record. They are contained in
the appendix to Appeal No. 71-1026, "Weisberg v. U.S. Department of
Justice," filed by attorney for plaintiff-appellant in the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.)
[1] "Presumed Guilty, How & Why the W.C. Framed Lee Harvey Oswald" [6/11]
* * * * * * *
5
The Governor's Wounds and the Validity of the Essential Conclusions
In the case of Governor Connally, it is not possible to determine
the type of ammunition that produced his wounds. Three bones in
his body were struck by a bullet, two of them seriously broken and
fractured, and flecks of metal were observed in, and in one case
removed from, his injuries. The presence of these metallic
fragments in the Governor's wounds, however, does not specifically
indicate that he was struck by a type of sporting ammunition,
because the force with which the bone tissue was struck was
sufficient for military ammunition to have deposited the fragments
observed. It is the Warren Commission's belief that the Governor's
wounds were caused by the almost pristine bullet, CE 399, fired
from Oswald's rifle (R95). Therefore, in this chapter I will deal
not with the general question of the type of ammunition, but with a
specific bullet, CE 399. The question to be answered is this: Did
bullet 399 produce the wounds sustained by Governor Connally?
A bullet entered the back of the Governor's chest to the left of
his right armpit. This bullet struck the fifth rib and shattered
it, actually stripping away about 10 cm. of bone starting
immediately below the armpit (4H105; 6H86). The right lung was
severely lacerated (6H88). The bullet exited from the anterior
chest, causing a large sucking wound about 5 cm. in diameter just
below the right nipple (6H85). There was an atypical entrance
wound on the dorsal (back of the hand) side of the Governor's wrist
and an atypical exit wound on the volar (palm) side (6H07; R93).
The radius (wrist bone) had been broken into about seven or eight
pieces from the passage of the bullet (4H120). There was a 1 cm.
puncture wound located on the Governor's left thigh some five to
six inches above the knee (R93). X rays revealed a small metallic
fragment embedded in the left thigh bone, the femur (6H106). This
fragment was not surgically removed and still remains in Mr.
Connally's femur.
It is probable that one bullet caused all of Connally's
injuries. In support of this hypothesis, the Report paraphrases
the Parkland doctors as follows:
In their testimony, the three doctors who attended
Governor Connally expressed independently their opinion that
a single bullet had passed through his chest, tumbled
through his wrist with very little exit velocity, leaving
small metallic fragments from the rear portion of the
bullet; punctured his left thigh after the bullet had lost
virtually all of its velocity; and had fallen out of the
thigh wound. (R95)
A footnote to this statement cites portions of the doctors'
depositions taken in Dallas on March 23, before two of them were
brought to Washington to testify for the Commission a month later.
At this time, they had not seen bullet 399 and spoke on a strictly
hypothetical basis.
Dr. Tom Shires, who was involved in the Governor's medical
treatment, explained that, from the discussion among Connally's
surgeons, "everyone was under the impression this was one missile-
-through and through the chest, through and through the arm and the
thigh." When asked if any of the doctors had dissented from this
consensus he replied, "Not that I remember" (6H110).
Dr. Charles Gregory, who attended to the Governor's wrist wound,
best explained the reasoning behind the theory that one bullet
caused Connally's wounds:
Mr. Specter: Would you consider it possible, in your
professional opinion, for the same bullet to have inflicted
all of the wounds which you have described on Governor
Connally?
Dr. Gregory: Yes; I believe it is very possible, for a
number of reasons. One of these--is the apparent loss of
energy manifested at each of the various body surfaces,
which I transected, the greatest energy being at the point
of entry on the posterior aspect of the chest and of the
fifth rib, where considerable destruction was done and the
least destruction having been done in the medial aspect of
the thigh where the bullet apparently expended itself.
. . . We know that high velocity bullets striking bone
have a strong tendency to shatter bones and the degree to
which the fifth rib was shattered was considerably in excess
of the amount of shattering which occurred in the radius--
the forearm.
. . . I think that the missile was continually losing
velocity with each set of tissues which it encountered and
transected, and the amount of damage done is progressively
less from first entrance to the thorax to the last entrance
in the thigh. (6H101-2)
The Report is entirely misleading, however, when it asserts
that the doctors felt that the wrist fragments were left "from the
rear portion of the bullet" and that this {bullet} subsequently
punctured the thigh. In their original testimonies, the doctors
did not postulate from what part of the bullet the fragments had
come. The intent of the Report is obvious, when we consider that
the only possible surface from which CE 399 could have lost
fragments is its rear, or base, where the lead core was naturally
exposed. The thinking of the doctors, however, tended to rule out
the possibility of CE 399's having gone into the wrist at all,
because they felt that this wound was the result of an irregular or
fragmented missile (6H90-91, 98-99, 102). Dr. Robert Shaw, who
conducted the operation on the Governor's chest, was puzzled as to
how the wrist wounds could have appeared as they did if a whole
bullet had caused them (6H91).
According to Dr. Shaw, it is not exactly correct to assert that
a whole bullet entered the thigh. In the portion of his original
testimony cited by the Report, Dr. Shaw explained the theory of
one bullet's causing all the Governor's wounds in this way: "I
have always felt that the wounds of Governor Connally could be
explained by the passage of one missile through his chest, striking
his wrist and {a fragment of it} going on into his left thigh"
(6H91; emphasis added).
What the Report does not reflect is the substantial change in
Drs. Shaw's and Gregory's opinions when shown the bullet that
allegedly produced the Governor's wounds. The first indication of
varied opinions came through this exchange between Dr. Shaw and
Commissioners Cooper, Dulles, and McCloy. Dr. Shaw had been asked
about the possibility that one bullet had caused the Governor's
wounds:
Dr. Shaw: . . . this is still a possibility. But I
don't feel that it is the only possibility.
Sen. Cooper: Why do you say you don't think it is the
only possibility? What causes you {now} to say that it is
the location--
Dr. Shaw: This is again the testimony that I believe Dr.
Gregory will be giving, too. It is a matter of whether the
wrist wound could be caused by the same bullet, and we felt
that it could but {but we had not seen the bullets until
today,} and we still do not know which bullet actually
inflicted the wound on Governor Connally.
Mr. Dulles: Or whether it was one or two rounds?
Dr. Shaw: Yes.
Mr. Dulles: Or two bullets?
Dr. Shaw: Yes; or three.
Mr. McCloy: You have no firm opinion that all these
three wounds were caused by one bullet?
Dr. Shaw: I have no firm opinion. . . . Asking me now
if it was true. {If you had asked me a month ago I would
have} [had].
Mr. McCloy: Could they have been caused by one bullet,
in your opinion?
Dr. Shaw: They could.
Mr. McCloy: I gather that what the witness is saying is
that it is possible that they might have been caused by one
bullet. But that he has no firm opinion {now} that they
were.
Mr. Dulles: As I understand it too. Is our
understanding correct?
Dr. Shaw: That is correct. (4H109; emphasis added)
It might be regarded as highly culpable that Commissioners
Dulles and McCloy, who professed such a clear understanding of Dr.
Shaw's position, signed a report stating the opposite of what Dr.
Shaw had testified to, with a footnote referring to prior
statements withdrawn by Shaw in their presence. Dr. Shaw's
testimony is explicit that, prior to seeing the bullet in evidence,
he felt that all the Governor's wounds were caused by one bullet;
when shown the bullet, CE 399, which allegedly did this damage, he
retracted his original opinion. What was it about this bullet that
caused such a change of judgment?
Under questioning by Arlen Specter, Dr. Shaw summed up the
indications that CE 399 did not produce the Governor's wounds. He
had first been asked to comment on the possibility of a bullet's
having caused the wounds:
Mr. Specter: When you started to comment about it not
being possible, was that in reference to the existing mass
and shape of bullet 399?
Dr. Shaw: I thought you were referring directly to the
bullet shown as Exhibit 399.
Mr. Specter: What is your opinion as to whether bullet
399 could have inflicted all the wounds on the Governor
then, without respect at this point to the wound of the
President's neck?
Dr. Shaw: I feel that there would be some difficulty in
explaining all of the wounds as being inflicted by bullet
Exhibit 399 without causing more in the way of loss of
substance to the bullet or deformation of the bullet.
(4H114)
CE 399 is a virtually undistorted, intact bullet. Its weight is
approximately two grains below the average weight of an unfired
bullet of that type. As was mentioned in the previous chapter,
none of the copper jacket of 399 is missing. The nose and sides of
this bullet--as shown in photographs and as I saw in a personal
examination--are without gross deformity. The base of 399 has been
slightly squeezed so that, in contrast to its rounded shaft, the
tail end is slightly elliptical in shape. A small amount of lead,
which apparently has flowed from the open base, creates a slight
irregularity of the base.
Given the almost pristine condition of CE 399, it is
understandable that Drs. Shaw and Gregory were puzzled at the
inference that this bullet had caused the Governor's wounds.
Before having seen 399, they imagined the bullet that penetrated
Connally as being irregular or distorted, the natural consequence
of powerful impacts with two substantial bones. Dr. Shaw did not
think the bullet could even have remained intact (6H91). On the
basis of the nature of the wrist wound, Dr. Gregory thought that
"the missile that struck it could be virtually intact, insofar as
mass was concerned, but probably was {distorted}" (6H99).
According to Dr. Gregory, the wrist wound showed characteristics
of suffering the impact of an {irregular} missile (6H98, 102). In
his testimony before the Commission, Dr. Gregory expounded on the
nature of this "irregular" missile:
Dr. Gregory: The wound of entrance (on the wrist) is
characteristic in my view of an irregular missile in this
case, an irregular missile which has tipped itself off as
being irregular by the nature of itself.
Mr. Dulles: What do you mean by irregular?
Dr. Gregory: I mean one that has been distorted. It is
in some way angular, it has sharp edges or something of this
sort. It is not rounded or pointed in the fashion of an
ordinary missile. (4H124)
Obviously, the condition of the bullet that produced the wrist
wound, as described by Dr. Gregory, does not match that of bullet
399, which is not "distorted" or "irregular." There is only one
surface on CE 399 that is the least bit "irregular," the base end
where the lead core is naturally exposed. When Arlen Specter asked
Dr. Gregory about a possible correlation between CE 399 and the
wrist wound, the latter responded:
the only . . . deformity which I can find is at the base of
the missile. . . . The only way that this missile could
have produced this wound, in my view, was to have entered
the wrist backward. . . . That is the only possible
explanation I could offer to correlate this missile with
this particular wound. (4H121)
Dr. Gregory admitted, in response to a hypothetical question from
Counsel Specter, that the slight irregularity in the base of CE 399
"could have" been sufficient to produce the lacerated wounds
observed on the Governor's wrist (4H122).
Yet, Dr. Gregory's only correlation of CE 399 to the wrist wound
is not applicable to the circumstances of the shooting. Dr.
Gregory examined 399 in its spent state, long after it had been
fired and incurred its slight amount of damage. He related the
bullet in {this} state to a bullet in flight that had not suffered
the full extent of its damage. The irregularity of 399's base
would have occurred {after} it hit the wrist, as the Commission
postulates. Certainly a base-first strike on the radius would not
have left the base in the same condition as it was {prior} to
impact. Dr. Gregory's answer to Specter's hypothetical question
could not apply to the actual shooting.
Specter knew independently from wound ballistics experts that
the condition of CE 399 was not at all consistent with having
struck a wrist. Two conferences that Specter attended were held
during the week prior to Dr. Gregory's Commission testimony. The
consensus of the first meeting was, in part, that "the bullet
recovered from the Governor's stretcher does not appear to have
penetrated a wrist."[1] The expert opinion was more explicit at
the next meeting, held the day of the Shaw-Gregory testimony and
attended by those doctors, the wound ballistics experts, Specter,
McCloy, and others. A memorandum of this conference reports that
in a discussion after the conference Drs. Light and Dolce
(two wound ballistics experts from Edgewood Arsenal)
expressed themselves as being very strongly of the opinion
that Connally had been hit by two different bullets,
principally on the ground that the bullet recovered from
Connally's stretcher could not have broken his radius
without having suffered more distortion. Dr. Olivier
(another wound ballistics expert) withheld a conclusion
until he has had the opportunity to make tests on animal
tissue and bone with the actual rifle.[2]
_______________________________________________________________________
| photograph of 5 bullets: |
| |
| leftmost--virtually pristine |
| 2nd from left--flattened length-wise but not squished vertically |
| middle--top half missing/middle squished, bottom recognizable |
| 2nd from right--"apparent" [misshapen] top of middle bullet |
| rightmost--top 3rd of bullet is mushroomed into a "pancake" |
|_____________________________________________________________________|
Fig. 4. CE 399 (far left) is beautifully preserved as compared to
similar bullets fired from the Carcano: (from left to right) CE
853, fired through a goat's chest, CE 857 (in two pieces), fired
into a human skull, and CE 856, fired into a human wrist. Not one
of the three, each of which did less damage than the Commission
attributes to 399, emerged as undistorted as 399. It is
preposterous to assume that 399 could have struck so many
obstructions and remained so undamaged. (This photograph was taken
for Harold Weisberg by the National Archives.)
Dr. Olivier's tests, despite their shortcomings, demonstrated a
very common ballistics principle--that a bullet striking bone will
usually suffer some form of distortion.
As is apparent from Figure 4, none of Dr. Olivier's test bullets
admitted into evidence matched 399, since all were grossly deformed
by extreme flattening, indenting, or separation of jacket from core
(see also 17H849-51).
Although Dr. Olivier's tests included shots through ten cadaver
wrists, only one of the bullets recovered from this series was
admitted into evidence, CE 856 (see Fig. 4). The other bullets are
not in the National Archives, and until recently no researchers had
seen them. On March 27, 1973, the Archives declassified a once-
"Confidential" report written in March 1965 by Dr. Olivier and his
associate, Dr. Arthur J. Dziemian. This report is entitled "Wound
Ballistics of 6.5-MM Mannlicher-Carcano Ammunition," and represents
the final report of the research conducted for the Commission at
Edgewood Arsenal. This report includes photographs of four of the
test bullets fired through human wrists, published here for the
first time ever (Fig. 5). The bullet marked "B" in Figure 5 is
apparently CE 856. However, the other three bullets, which
produced damage similar to that suffered by Governor Connally's
wrist, are even more mutilated than the one bullet that was
preserved for the record. These newly released photographs
graphically reveal the degree of mutilation that might be found on
Mannlicher-Carcano bullets that had struck human wrists, and make
even more preposterous the Commission's assertion that near-
pristine 399 penetrated Connally's wrist. {goes below: .ll 75}
_______________________________________________________________________
| photograph of 4 bullets lying horizontally: 2 bullets in 2 rows: |
| |
| top left--head mashed slightly down (1 to 2 centimeters?) |
| top right--head mashed w/more deformity, (1-2 cms?) |
| bottom left--head mashed, more deformity (3-4 cms?) |
| bottom right--head mashed, extreme deformity (5-6 cms?) |
|_____________________________________________________________________|
Fig. 5. This photograph was considered "Confidential" by the
government and withheld from researchers for eight years. It
depicts "6.5-MM Mannlicher-Carcano Bullets Recovered after being
Fired Through Distal Ends of Radii of Cadaver Wrists."
The obvious conclusion dictated by the nature of the Governor's
wounds is that CE 399 could not have caused them. This is contrary
to the Report's assertion that "all the evidence indicated that the
bullet found on the Governor's stretcher could have caused all his
wounds" (R95). The substantiating argument of the Report is that
the total weight of the bullet fragments in the Governor's body
does not exceed the weight lost by 399. This argument is
nonsensical, for it ignores the thoroughly nonstatistical nature of
ballistics and the expected consequences of bullets striking bone;
such a line of reasoning attempts to replace imprecision with
pseudo-exactness and inapplicable mathematics.
It is therefore, in light of the well-preserved state of that
bullet, preposterous to postulate that CE 399 caused Governor
Connally's wounds. Drs. Shaw and Gregory, barraged by the official
contention that 399 was discovered on the Governor's stretcher and
thus must have caused his wounds, were reserved in expressing
themselves on the unlikelihood of such a proposition. Other
experts have been more free in voicing their opinions. I have yet
to find one expert who will concede the likelihood of an occurrence
such as the Commission assumes. When I spoke with ballistics
expert Charles Dickey at Frankford Arsenal, he cautioned me that he
could not speak out directly against the validity of the
government's beliefs relating to the assassination. Even he found
it hard to accept that 399 caused the Governor's wounds.[3] Among
the many forensic pathologists who have scoffed at this theory are
William Enos,[4] Halpert Fillinger,[5] Milton Helpern,[6] John
Nichols,[7] and Cyril Wecht.[8]
The absence of gross deformity in bullet 399 contradicts the
career of massive bone-smashing attributed to it. However, as I
learned from Dr. Fillinger and as Harold Weisberg pointed out
several years ago in a copyrighted study of the medical evidence,
the most crucial aspect of 399's state is its absence of
significant distortion detectable through microscopic
examination.[9]
The barrels of modern firearms are "rifled," that is, several
spiral grooves are cut into the barrel from end to end. As the
bullet is propelled through the barrel, these spiral grooves and
lands (the raised portions of the barrel between the grooves) set
the bullet spinning around its axis, giving it rotational as well
as forward movement, thus increasing its stability in flight. The
lands and grooves consequently etch a pattern of very fine striated
lines along the sides of the bullet, which will vary from one
weapon to another just as fingerprints vary from one person to
another. Like fingerprints, the lands and grooves scratched onto
the surface of the bullet can be microscopically identified with a
particular weapon to the exclusion of all others, provided that
they remain sufficiently intact subsequent to impact (R547-48).
The very fine lands and grooves along the copper sides of CE 399
allowed the conclusive determination that the bullet had been fired
from "Oswald's" rifle. FBI agent Frazier provided vital testimony
about the defacement of these microscopic markings on 399:
Mr. Eisenberg: Were the markings of the bullet at all
defaced?
Mr. Frazier: Yes; they were, in that the bullet is
distorted by having been slightly flattened or twisted.
Mr. Eisenberg: How material would you call that
defacement?
Mr. Frazier: It is hardly visible unless you look at the
base of the bullet and notice it is not round.
Mr. Eisenberg: How far does it affect your examination
for purposes of identification?
Mr. Frazier: It had no effect at all . . . because it
did not mutilate or distort the microscopic marks beyond the
point where you could recognize the pattern and find the
same pattern of marks on one bullet as were present on the
other. (3H430)
From Frazier's testimony it is apparent that the very slight
"defacement" of 399's lands and grooves could be better termed a
"displacement," for the microscopic marks were distorted only by an
almost insignificant change in the {contour} of the bullet as
opposed to a disruption in the continuity of the surface.
After closely examining 399 at a magnification of five
diameters, I was convinced of the veracity of Frazier's testimony.
I followed each set of lands and grooves on the bullet and saw that
all were continuous and without disruption, beginning just below
the rounded nose and running smoothly down to the tail end.
Dr. Fillinger emphasized to me that a jacketed bullet such as
399 could strike one bone and leave its lands and grooves intact so
far as visible {to the naked eye}. When I assured him that Agent
Frazier had found these marks still to be intact even through
microscopic examination, Fillinger seemed somewhat taken aback.
"Well, this is unlikely," he said. "It's very unlikely, as a
matter of fact. Even our own ballistics people here don't get that
kind of good luck."[10] One can readily appreciate that forceful
contact with firm bone tissue is bound to disrupt the fine
striations on a bullet's surface, even with a jacketed projectile.
If 399 wounded Governor Connally, then it was necessarily immune
to the conditions that distort and deform other bullets of its
kind. If it smashed through two substantial bones and rammed into
another one, it failed to manifest the normal indications of such a
flight, those which marked other bullets under even less stress.
The theory that 399 wounded the Governor is valid only on the
premise that it was a magic bullet capable of feats never before
performed in the history of ballistics.
Bullet 399 is not magic. It is just the typical mass of copper
and lead that constitutes other bullets of its kind. Governor
Connally was likewise not magic. His flesh and bones would deform
bullets as would anyone else's; his wounds showed very strong
indications that the bullet causing them had, in fact, become
distorted and irregular.
The only tenable conclusion warranted by the evidence of the
Governor's wounds, the condition of 399, and the laws of physics is
that 399 did not wound Governor Connally.
{The Search for Legitimacy}
Did 399 figure in the assassination shots?
As we have seen, there is no possible way by which bullet 399
can be related to the President's wounds. The extensive
fragmentation involving the fatal wounds rules out a missile left
intact. The presence of fragments in the President's neck likewise
rules out 399, for there is no possible circumstance under which it
could have deposited fragments in the neck and still account for
the other wounds, such as the tiny hole in the throat. Had the
President sustained a back wound of short penetration, it could not
have been caused by a bullet whose penetrating power was as great
as 399's.
Governor Connally, to judge from the nature of his wounds and
the predictable consequences of a strike such as he endured, was
hit by a missile that did not leave behind a very large percentage
of its substance but ended its flight in a distorted or mangled
condition.
Thus, CE 399 can not be related to any of the wounds inflicted
on either victim during the assassination. From this it follows
that 399 must have turned up at Parkland Hospital in a manner not
related to the victims and their treatment. It had to have been
placed on the stretcher at some time, manually and intentionally.
It can not be a legitimate assassination bullet.
The situation at Parkland on the afternoon of the assassination
would have enabled almost anyone to gain access to the area where
399 was discovered on the stretcher. A man identifying himself as
an FBI agent tried to enter the room in which the dead President
lay at the hospital. The Secret Servicemen who witnessed this
incident and had to restrain the man with force reported that he
"appeared to be {determined} to enter the President's room"
(18H798-99 and 795-96). The Commission apparently made no efforts
to determine the identity of this man and sought no further details
from other witnesses.
Two witnesses were positive that they saw Jack Ruby at Parkland
Hospital at about the time the President's death was announced
(15H80; 25H216).
Harold Weisberg, in his book "Oswald in New Orleans," reveals
that a Cuban refugee of "disruptive influence" was employed at
Parkland at the time of the assassination. Pointing out that the
Commission's best evidence indicated that 399 was a "plant,"
Weisberg finds it extremely suspicious that no effort was made to
identify this "political Cuban" when his existence was known to
both the Secret Service and the Commission.[11] Such a man would
have had access to the stretcher on which 399 was found and would
not have attracted the least suspicion, since he was an employee of
the hospital.
Nurse Margaret Henchcliffe related an incident that illustrates
how almost {anyone} could have made his way to the area of the
stretcher. She reported that a 16-year-old boy {carrying a camera}
had gotten into the Emergency Area, seeking to take pictures of the
room in which the President had died less than an hour before
(21H240).
There is currently no evidence against the possibility that the
two bullet fragments found in the front seat of the limousine and
traced to "Oswald's" rifle were likewise "planted" after the
victims were taken to the hospital. We should recall from the
discussion of the President's head wounds that the fatal damage
was, in no instance, consistent with the damage produced by
military ammunition of the type attributed to Oswald. Photographs
taken outside the hospital show substantial crowds in proximity to
the unguarded limousine.[12] As in the case of the stretcher
bullet, the circumstances {did} permit incriminating evidence to be
planted.
It cannot be said, and indeed I make no pretense of saying, that
a phony FBI man, a "disruptive Cuban," Jack Ruby, or a young boy
with a camera planted bullet 399 at Parkland Hospital. The thrust
of this discussion has been that anyone could have gained access to
the locations in which evidence pointing to Oswald was found. This
point may also be applied to the Book Depository, where Oswald's
rifle and three spent shells were discovered. Within fifteen
minutes of the assassination, the Depository was swarming with
unidentified people.[13] The medical evidence, as the discussion
in this and the previous chapter demonstrates, disassociates
military bullets from the President's wounds and proves that a
specific bullet traced to Oswald's rifle and found at Parkland
could {not} have wounded either victim in the assassination. The
spectrographic analyses, the only evidence that could correlate
Oswald's rifle with the wounds, was conspicuously avoided by the
Commission, and has been suppressed by the government so that no
one to this day may know the spectrographer's findings. It is
therefore not unreasonable to postulate, in accordance with the
only scientific evidence currently available, that the tangible
evidence that implicates Oswald was deliberately "planted," and did
not figure in the actual shooting. The unmistakable inference from
the medical evidence is that the rifle, the cartridge cases, and
the bullets {had} to have been planted. The circumstances at the
Book Depository and at Parkland Hospital indisputably could have
enabled a "conspirator" to plant evidence pointing to Oswald. The
Commission has produced no evidence that precludes the possibility
of a "plant."
The discussion in this section has removed the very foundation
of the official case against Oswald by demonstrating, to the degree
of certainty possible, that Oswald's rifle was not responsible for
the wounds of President Kennedy and Governor Connally. The
medical/ballistics evidence thus exculpates Oswald and presents
several unmistakable conspiratorial implications.
The Warren Commission claimed to have much evidence, apart from
the medical/ballistics findings, that proved or indicated that
Oswald was the assassin. This additional evidence, and the
Commission's treatment of it, I will consider in Part III.
__________
[1] "Memorandum for the Record," dated April 22, 1964, written by
Melvin Eisenberg about a conference held on April 14, l964.
[2] "Memorandum for the Record," dated April 22, 1964, written by
Melvin Eisenberg about a conference held on April 21, 1964.
[3] Dickey Interview.
[4] "CBS News Inquiry: `The Warren Report,'" Part II, broadcast over
the CBS Television Network on June 26, 1967, p. 18 of the
transcript prepared by CBS News.
[5] Fillinger Interview.
[6] Marshall Houts, "Where Death Delights" (New York: Coward-McCann,
1967), pp. 62-63.
[7] Nichols Interview and letter to author from Dr. John Nichols,
dated September 5, 1969.
[8] Thompson, p. 153.
[9] Fillinger Interview; Weisberg, "Post Mortem I," p. 25
[10] Ibid.
[11] Weisberg, "Oswald in New Orleans," pp. 292-93.
[12] E.g., see Jesse Curry, "Personal JFK Assassination File" (Dallas:
American Poster and Printing Co., Inc., 1969), pp. 34-37. The
"Dallas Morning News" of November 23, 1963, estimated that a
crowd or 200 had gathered outside the hospital (p. 9).
[10 photographs included over the next 10 pages (inserted between
page 148 and 149 of the text); for "ascii completeness," their
captions follow. -- ratitor ]
FIRST PAGE:
J. Lee Rankin, head of the Warren Commission's staff of lawyers.
(UPI photo)
Arlen Specter, Commission staff lawyer, and architect of the
single-bullet theory. (UPI photo)
SECOND PAGE:
Commission staff lawyer David Belin (center), in Dallas, with
Commission members Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky
(left) and John J. McCloy. Belin is responsible for assembling
much of the case against Oswald. (UPI photo)
THIRD PAGE:
Lee Harvey Oswald in police custody on November 22, 1963. Note
Oswald's dark shirt (rust brown), which witnesses recalled he wore
that entire day. The alleged gunman in the sixth floor of the Book
Depository wore a light, short-sleeved shirt consistently described
as white or khaki. (Wide World Photos)
FOURTH PAGE:
Lee Harvey Oswald is silenced forever by Jack Ruby as Oswald is
being escorted through Dallas city jail. (Wide World Photo)
FIFTH PAGE:
Lee Harvey Oswald, dying, refuses to confess to a crime that he did
not commit. (Wide World Photos)
SIXTH and SEVENTH PAGES:
Extreme close-up of the tail end of Bullet 399, shown in relation
to a millimeter scale. This photograph reveals the sole deformity
of this so-called magic bullet: there has been a slight squeezing
at the base with some disruption of the lead core that is exposed
at that point. It is difficult to believe that this bullet could
emerge so unscathed after penetrating two bodies, smashing two
bones, and brushing another, as the Warren Commission alleges.
However, it is {impossible} for this bullet to have left the lead
fragments demanded if it is a legitimate assassination bullet.
Metal fragments, some with dimensions greater than 3mm., were left
behind at each point 399 is alleged to have hit: The President's
neck, and the Governor's chest, wrist, and thigh. As this
photograph reveals, such an array of fragments could not have come
from 399's base, thus disassociating 399 from the shooting. The
one area of 399's lead base that is missing appears as a small
crater in this photograph; this is the result of FBI Agent
Frazier's having removed a slug of lead for spectographic analysis.
(Photo: National Archives)
EIGHTH and NINTH PAGES:
Suppressed Skull X rays--These [2] X rays depict gelatin-filled
human skulls shot with ammunition of the type allegedly used by
Oswald. They were classified by the government and remained
suppressed until recently; they are printed here for the first
time ever. What they reveal is that Oswald's rifle could not have
produced the head wounds suffered by President Kennedy. The bullet
that hit the president in the head exploded into a multitude of
minuscule fragments. One Secret Service agent described the
appearance of these metal fragments on the X rays: "The whole head
looked like a little mass of stars." The fragmentation depicted on
these test X rays obviously differs from that described in the
president's head. The upper X ray reveals only relatively large
fragments concentrated at the point of entrance; the lower reveals
only a few tiny fragments altogether. This gives dramatic,
suppressed proof that Oswald did not fire the shot that killed
President Kennedy. (Photo: National Archives)
TENTH PAGE:
Marina Oswald, widow of supposed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, being
escorted to testify before Warren Commission investigators. (UPI
Photo)