Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  *A sixty-seven-page supplemental report was sent by the FBI to the Warren Commission on January 13, 1964, with additional exhibits. Most of this supplementary report dealt with Oswald’s biography, associates, and affiliations (CD 107). A separate thirty-nine-page FBI report dealing exclusively with Ruby, with emphasis on his background, was also submitted to the Warren Commission on January 13. That same day, the FBI issued a twenty-six-page supplementary report on Ruby, with more emphasis on Ruby’s killing of Oswald. Both reports concluded that up to that point the FBI’s investigation had not established that Ruby and Oswald had any connection or that Ruby had conspired with anyone to kill Oswald. (Both Ruby reports are listed under FBI Record 124-10062-10290.)

  *Rankin would later tell the HSCA that he gave some thought to an independent investigative staff “and I finally concluded that I would lose more than I would gain, that the whole intelligence community in the government would feel that the Commission was indicating a lack of confidence in them and that from then on I would not have any cooperation from them. They would universally be against the Commission and try to trip us up.” He said the Commission, pursuant to his recommendation, made the decision not to employ a separate unit of investigators. (JFK Document 014027, Transcript of deposition of J. Lee Rankin before HSCA on August 17, 1978, pp.43, 97–98) But as we will see (see later text), the Warren Commission did from time to time, on an ad hoc basis, employ independent experts and investigators to verify the conclusions of federal law enforcement agencies.

  *Two misconceptions about the Warren Commission hearings need to be clarified. First, Commission hearings were closed to the public unless the witness appearing before the Commission requested an open hearing. No witness except one (Mark Lane) requested an open hearing, and the testimony of that witness was taken in a public hearing. (WR, p.xiii; 2 H 33, WCT Mark R. Lane) Second, although the hearings (except one) were conducted in private, they were not secret. In a secret hearing, the witness is instructed not to disclose his testimony to any third party, and the hearing testimony is not published for public consumption. The witnesses who appeared before the Commission were free to repeat what they said to anyone they pleased, and all of their testimony was subsequently published in the first fifteen volumes put out by the Warren Commission.

  *For yet another example very representative of the Warren Commission’s being on top of the details of the assassination and literally directing the FBI’s investigation, as opposed to, as commonly believed, being completely reliant on whatever information the bureau chose to give it, see endnote for a verbatim letter from the Warren Commission General Counsel Rankin to FBI Director Hoover dated March 26, 1964.

  *The HSCA said that “the FBI’s investigation into a conspiracy was deficient in the areas that the committee decided were most worthy of suspicion—organized crime, pro-and anti-Castro Cubans, and the possible associations of individuals from these areas with Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. In those areas in particular, the committee found that the FBI’s investigation was in all likelihood insufficient to have uncovered a conspiracy” (HSCA Report, p.242).

  Even assuming the FBI could have done a better job in these areas, the HSCA’s observation would have far more virility if, as a result of the committee doing what it said the Warren Commission and FBI should have done (i.e., conduct a more expansive investigation), it had uncovered evidence of a conspiracy. But it did not. So in essence the HSCA is telling the FBI and Warren Commission, “You should have conducted a more in-depth investigation into these three areas so you could have come up with the same conclusion that we did, namely, that there was nothing.” I write this not in defense of the FBI and Warren Commission, but to put the HSCA’s observation into a proper perspective and thereby reduce it to its true dimensions.

  *For people to say that the Warren Commission and the FBI conducted a superficial investigation is the equivalent of their saying that they haven’t gotten within a hundred miles of the Warren Commission’s twenty-seven volumes. Though many don’t agree with his conclusions, virtually everyone agrees that the late Warren Commission critic Harold Weisberg studied the Kennedy assassination longer and more thoroughly than any other known person. And he certainly has written the most about it in his eight books. And Weisberg says the Warren Commission “checked into almost every breath Oswald drew.” As an example, he says the FBI “traced and chased all over the world those who traveled on the bus to Mexico City with Oswald…to collect every particle of information, no matter how minute, how seemingly inconsequential.” (Weisberg, Oswald in New Orleans, p.214) Weisberg’s criticism of the Warren Commission dealt mostly with his belief that the Commission itself suppressed much information and that its own documents reveal Oswald’s innocence and the existence of a conspiracy. Another severe Warren Commission critic, Sylvia Meagher, acknowledged the Commission’s and FBI’s “microscopic research into Oswald’s life” (Meagher, Accessories after the Fact, p.243).

  *Initially, Willens suggested five areas. A sixth, “Presidential Protection,” was added at the Commission’s request. (Epstein, Inquest, p.12)

  *Because Epstein’s book started as his master’s thesis in government at Cornell University and he was a doctoral student at Harvard by the time it was published, most readers assumed its accuracy without question since it came clothed in the robes of academe. But the reality is that although Epstein is far more sensible than most Warren Commission critics, and his book is valuable in that it was, for years, the only in-depth analysis of the inner workings of the Warren Commission and its internal fighting, disputes, and dynamics, it unquestionably suffers from a serious lack of credibility in one of its very most important areas: where he purports to quote Warren Commission staff. The Coleman example cited in the text is just one of many.

  In a 1967 article in the Law Quarterly Review, Professor Arthur L. Goodhart, who went directly for confirmation to some of the persons on the Commission staff whom Epstein quoted, published his findings (Goodhart, “Mysteries of the Kennedy Assassination and the English Press,” pp.23–63). They were startling. Joe Ball said that all the quotations attributed to him by Epstein were “wrong or false.” Wesley Liebeler denied telling Epstein that the Warren Commission members (as opposed to the staff) had done “nothing,” and was very angry overall about Epstein’s distortions and misstatements in his book. Norman Redlich said, “I am appalled by the inaccuracies of the book and the statements which he has attributed to me which I never made.” (Sparrow, After the Assassination, pp.36–37; Roberts, Truth about the Assassination, pp.122–123) And General Counsel J. Lee Rankin told Look magazine about Inquest, “This book is full of distortions” (Knebel, “New Wave of Doubt,” p.72).

  *This is evident when in reading the testimony of Warren Commission witnesses, one becomes, in many instances, exasperated over a Commission counsel beating around the bush without ever asking the obvious question, sometimes to the point where the witness will volunteer the relevant information without the question having yet been asked. And the lack of trial experience by most of the Warren Commission members and their assistant counsels was particularly betrayed in their frequent failure, at the beginning of their examination of a witness, to get the time and place (i.e., date, time of day, and location) of the event about which the witness would be testifying (something routinely done by experienced trial lawyers), the information coming out in bits and pieces later in the examination. Assistant Counsel Arlen Specter would later speak of the “limited courtroom experience” of the Warren Commission staff as a whole (Specter with Robbins, Passion for Truth, p.47).

  †“I had appeared in court before appellate judges, but had never tried a case or appeared in court at the trial level,” Redlich said (Telephone interview of Norman Redlich by author on September 6, 2005).

  *In testimony before the HSCA, when Marina was asked about the “inconsistencies” of some of her prior statements, which were not given under oath, she said, “At the beginning, if it is possible
to understand for people, I am just a human being and I did try to protect Lee…Some things I did not want to talk about because I tried to protect Lee. So they can hold this against me, there is nothing I can do about it. I had to protect myself too. I didn’t have any home to turn back to. I was not eligible or qualified to live right here…But it was not because I was afraid that I might betray some secrets that [I could] be punished for…I swear that I never worked for any government of any country [and] I was not aware of the crime he [Oswald] was planning” (12 HSCA 433). Marina had told the Warren Commission on her first day of testimony in 1964, “You must understand this was my husband. I didn’t want to say too much.” Shortly thereafter, Marina’s Russian interpreter, Leon I. Gopadze, volunteered to the Commission, “She says she was not sworn in before. But now inasmuch as she is sworn in, she is going to tell the truth.” (1 H 14, WCT Marina N. Oswald)

  †Marina explained to her biographer, Priscilla McMillan, that she didn’t tell the authorities about the Walker matter because the attempt by her husband on Walker’s life was unsuccessful and Walker was alive. She decided that she would be a witness against him only in a situation where she felt it really mattered. (McMillan, Marina and Lee, p.560; but see also 1 H 18, WCT Marina N. Oswald)

  *Although Commission members had their biggest disagreement among themselves over the single-bullet theory (see Zapruder film section), the biggest dispute they had with the staff was in the area of conspiracy. Gerald Ford would recall that “the staff draft said there was no conspiracy. Categorically, saying there was no conspiracy. And the Commission—and I don’t recall who raised the issue—said that goes too far. And so we inserted the language, ‘The Commission found no evidence of a conspiracy’…And there was a unanimous vote to have that language.” (Specter with Robbins, Passion for Truth, pp.119–120)

  *In addition to the basic conclusions noted, the Commission found that except for the force required to effect his arrest, Oswald was not subjected to any physical coercion by any law enforcement officials; that he was advised of his rights; and that he was given the opportunity to obtain legal counsel and was even offered legal assistance from the Dallas Bar Association, which he rejected. The Commission also reproached the Dallas Police Department for allowing the press to have uninhibited access to the area through which Oswald had to pass, thereby subjecting Oswald to harassment and creating chaotic conditions not conducive to orderly interrogation; and for making numerous, and sometimes erroneous, statements to the press that would have presented serious obstacles to the obtaining of a fair trial for Oswald. See WR, pp.18–25, for a complete listing of the Commission’s twelve conclusions.

  *When even people of the stature of Beschloss and Thomas, and writing with the implied endorsement of an important magazine like Newsweek, say that the Warren Commission engaged in a cover-up, no wonder the vast majority of everyday Americans believe they haven’t been told the whole truth about the assassination.

  *Syndicated columnist Jack Anderson came up with a slight variation of this. Anderson felt that because of Johnson’s suspicion that Castro was behind the assassination, “President Johnson felt, rightly or wrongly, that the American people could not be told this. They would demand retaliation against Cuba which could have…involved the Soviet Union…and meant World War III. So Johnson and his advisors felt that it was better that Americans not know the truth” (Jack Anderson, “Who Murdered JFK?” An American Exposé/The Jack Anderson Specials, television documentary, Saban Productions, November 1988).

  *And if Lane can mislead his readers about the Katzenbach memo, why can’t another conspiracy theorist mislead his students? Michael Kurtz has taught a class on the Kennedy assassination for years at Southeastern Louisiana University. In his conspiracy book, Crime of the Century, he actually writes (and hence, undoubtedly teaches) that “the purpose of such a commission [Warren Commission] was not to investigate the facts of the case. Rather, ‘the public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin.’” (Kurtz, Crime of the Century, p.144)

  Another college professor, Gerald D. McKnight, goes further than Kurtz, telling his readers that not just Katzenbach but also Johnson and Hoover “had settled on…the ‘facts’ of Dallas that they deemed safe for the ordinary understanding of the American people.” The remarkable professor, then, feels that the president of the United States, the head of the FBI, and the nation’s acting attorney general all agreed, early on, to cover up the assassination. (McKnight, Breach of Trust, p.22) And McKnight is actually a professor emeritus of history at Hood College in Frederick, Maryland.

  *In his testimony before the HSCA on July 28, 1978, Willens was asked, “Were you ever instructed by anyone while you served on the Warren Commission staff not to pursue any area of inquiry because the area might endanger the national security?” Answer: “No.” Question: “Did anyone ever suggest to you that certain matters should not be explored for whatever reason?” Answer: “No.” (11 HSCA 442)

  *Nothing done by the Warren Commission has convinced Americans more of a conspiracy in the assassination than the Commission’s allegedly “sealing the records” of the Commission for seventy-five years, thereby preventing Americans from learning “the real truth” about the assassination. The thinking goes that if the Warren Commission didn’t have anything to hide, why seal the records? This is a major misconception of the American people, and the entire matter is discussed in depth in an endnote on the Assassination Records Review Board. To summarize, the Warren Commission expressed, in writing, its desire that the American people have access to all the records. The sealing of the records (they are no longer sealed) was the result of a National Archives regulation that had nothing to do with the Warren Commission.

  †Under Texas law, “The husband and wife may, in all criminal actions, be witnesses for each other; but they shall in no case testify against each other except in a criminal prosecution for an offense committed by one against the other” (Vernon’s Ann. C.C.P. art. 714).

  *The mandate of the Church Committee was very broad: to investigate all improper and unlawful activities, domestic and foreign, engaged in by the FBI and CIA as well as American military intelligence agencies. It was not contemplated, however, that it would investigate the allegation that federal intelligence agencies like the CIA and FBI were involved in the murder of President Kennedy. But when a committee member, Senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania, proposed that the committee expand its mandate into an investigation of the assassination, Senator Church appointed Senator Schweiker and fellow committee member Senator Gary Hart of Colorado to be a two-member subcommittee of the Church Committee looking into the assassination. Though it was just a subcommittee of the Church Committee, many assassination researchers refer to the Church Committee as the Schweiker Committee (or Subcommittee). Since the ultimate report on the assassination came from the Church Committee, not the subcommittee, this book will only refer to the Church Committee.

  †In 1969, New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison charged Clay Shaw, a local businessman, with having conspired “with David W. Ferrie, Lee Harvey Oswald [both of whom were now deceased] and others” to murder President Kennedy. The investigation and trial of Shaw are covered in the conspiracy section of this book.

  *The first time the Zapruder film was ever shown to everyday Americans, albeit a very small number, was when Jim Garrison subpoenaed the film from Life magazine on February 13, 1969, and showed a multigenerational copy of it to the jury and a packed courtroom of spectators in the trial of Clay Shaw. And starting with its November 29, 1963, issue, Life magazine showed selected frames of the Zapruder film to its millions of readers at various times, such as in its undated memorial edition in December 1963 and its October 2, 1964, cover story on the Warren Commission’s findings.

  *Sprague said the budget for the second year would be for the same amount—a total of $13 million, more than the $10 million the Warren Commission spent. However, he pointed out that in addition to the HSCA also investigatin
g the assassination of Martin Luther King, the HSCA would be employing and paying for its own investigators, whereas the Warren Commission’s eighty-three-member staff was supplemented by 222 investigators borrowed from the FBI, CIA, and Secret Service, whose services the Warren Commission never had to pay for. (New York Times, December 10, 1976, p.19)

  *On February 2, by a vote of 237 to 164, the House of Representatives (House Resolution 222) had given the HSCA the authority to continue temporarily.

  †The lobbying of congressional members to get the HSCA reconstituted, mostly delegated by Sprague to Tanenbaum and his staff, was heavy, time-consuming, and not always pleasant. At a dinner meeting with several congressmen at a restaurant called the Chicken Place in Maryland, after Tanenbaum made his pitch, John Ashbrook, a conservative Republican from Ohio, said, “Well, we really don’t mind funding the Kennedy assassination, although I didn’t think much of the man, but we’ll be damned if we’re going to fund that nigger King’s.” (Telephone interview of Robert Tanenbaum by author on March 10, 2004. See also Fonzi, Last Investigation, pp.204–205. Gaeton Fonzi says Ashbrook called Tanenbaum aside to tell him this, but Tanenbaum told me it was right at the dinner table in front of everyone.)