The three women then described their astonishment when they saw photographs of Oswald in Mexican newspapers and on television in the hours after Kennedy’s assassination; they instantly remembered him from the “twist party.” The next day, they learned that Duran and her husband, Horacio, had been taken into custody by the Mexican police; the arrests “underlined” their certainty that it had been Oswald at the party. According to Cobb, Elena said she did not report any of her information about Oswald to the police out of fear that she and her daughter might be arrested, too. They did act immediately to distance themselves from the Durans, however. The Garros were “so sickened” at the thought that Silvia Duran and her family might have had some sort of connection to the president’s assassin that “they broke off their relations with the Durans.”
* * *
Scott might have hoped that the release of the Warren Commission meant he had put the questions about Oswald—and the threat they had once seemed to pose to Scott’s career—behind him. But given the potentially explosive information from June Cobb, he knew the embassy had to follow up. The job was given to FBI legal attaché Clark Anderson. He was the same FBI agent who, in the immediate aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination, had been in charge of the local investigation of Oswald’s activities in Mexico. If anyone should have tracked down the Garros earlier, it was Anderson.
The story that the Garros told Anderson was consistent, down to small details, with the account that Cobb had overheard. Elena Garro said she thought the party had taken place on Monday, September 30, 1963, or on one of the two following days: Tuesday, October 1, or Wednesday, October 2; she recalled thinking how unusual it was to have a dance party on a weekday. There had been about thirty people at the party, which was held at the home of Ruben Duran, Silvia’s brother-in-law. It was at about ten thirty p.m., she said, that “three young, white Americans arrived at the party. They were greeted by Silvia Duran and spoke only to her. They more or less isolated themselves from the rest of the party and, insofar as she observed, they had no conversation with anyone else.” Garro said the Americans “appeared to be between 22 and 24 years of age.” (Oswald was twenty-three at the time.) Oswald, she said, was dressed in a black sweater and appeared to be about five foot nine inches in height. (That was exactly Oswald’s height.) One of his two American companions was “about six feet tall, had blond, straight hair, a long chin, and was a bit ‘beatnik’ in appearance.” Anderson asked Garro if she recalled anyone else at the party. She did: a young Mexican who had flirted with her daughter. The man was contacted by the FBI and confirmed some elements of the Garros’ story, although he insisted he saw no one who looked like Oswald.
Anderson sent his report to Washington on December 11 and, his files suggest, did nothing more. There was no recorded effort to contact Garro’s sister, who had also been at the party. Anderson drew no final conclusion in the report but suggested that the Garros were simply mistaken about seeing Oswald. It was a judgment based largely on the fact that Oswald would not have been in Mexico City on two of the three possible dates offered by Elena Garro for the party, assuming that he was also seen on the street the next day. “It is noted that investigation has established that Lee Harvey Oswald departed Mexico City by bus at 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 2, 1963, and could not have been identical with the American allegedly observed by Mrs. Paz at the party if this party were held on the evening of Oct. 1 or Oct. 2,” Anderson reported. He did not point out the obvious: that on the first date offered by Garro, September 30, Oswald was in Mexico City and could have been seen on the street the next day.
It was not clear from Scott’s files that he notified CIA headquarters about any of this at the time. A later internal CIA chronology of the actions of the CIA Mexico City station suggested that none of the material reached Langley in 1964. If true, that would mean that CIA headquarters would learn nothing about the Garros—and the “twist party”—for another year.
* * *
As always, it seemed, Wesley Liebeler could not resist making trouble.
In the summer of 1965, he had agreed to meet a Cornell University graduate student, Edward Jay Epstein, who wanted to interview him about the Warren Commission. The thirty-year-old Epstein was writing a master’s thesis in government, using the commission as a case study in answering a question posed by one of his professors: “How does a government organization function in an extraordinary situation in which there are no rules or precedents to guide it?” Liebeler invited Epstein up to his vacation home in Vermont, where he had always found it easier to think.
In the ten months since the release of the commission’s report, Liebeler, now thirty-four, had made many changes in his life. Instead of resuming his promising career at a Manhattan law firm, he had moved west, accepting an appointment to teach law at the University of California at Los Angeles, specializing in antitrust law. The Southern California lifestyle was enticing to Liebeler, as were all the pretty young women on campus.
Liebeler was intrigued by Epstein’s Ivy League credentials. Here was a scholar, not a scandal-mongering reporter, and Liebeler thought Epstein’s research might help blunt the army of conspiracy theorists who were continuing to attack the commission’s findings. Several new books promoting conspiracy theories in Kennedy’s death, including one by Mark Lane, were in the works. Liebeler knew he was not alone in talking to Epstein, who also requested interviews with the seven commissioners. The young graduate student eventually talked to five of them—all except Warren, who declined, and Senator Russell, who was forced to cancel an interview because of illness. Epstein also interviewed Lee Rankin, Norman Redlich, and Howard Willens.
Liebeler told Epstein that, although he stood by the conclusions of the commission’s report, he was critical of the investigation. His comments were characteristically pithy—and indiscreet—and he would be quoted by name throughout Epstein’s thesis. Liebeler explained how the commission’s staff lawyers had done virtually all of the real detective work. Asked by Epstein how much work was done by the seven commissioners, Liebeler replied: “In one word, nothing.” (He would later say he did not recall making the comment to Epstein, although he did not dispute its accuracy.) Epstein would later recall how—in comments that were not published in his thesis—Liebeler “ridiculed the seven commissioners, saying the staff called them ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’ because of their refusal to question the claims of Oswald’s Russian wife, Marina, who was ‘Snow White.’” Liebeler had a slightly different roster than some of his colleagues in identifying which dwarf was which. He thought that “‘Dopey’ was Warren, who dismissed any testimony that impugned Marina’s credibility,” while “Sleepy” was Allen Dulles “because he often fell asleep during the testimony of witnesses and, when awakened, asked inappropriate questions.” John McCloy was “Grumpy” because “he became angry when staff lawyers did not pay sufficient attention to his theories about possible foreign involvement.”
Liebeler revealed the intense time constraints faced by the staff, a situation made worse by the FBI’s incompetence; he described the bureau’s investigation of the assassination as “a joke.” He told Epstein about Rankin’s ill-chosen comment at the end of the investigation regarding the need to draw the work to a close, even if there were still unanswered questions: “We are supposed to be closing doors, not opening them.” That quotation, when published by Epstein, would be cited regularly by conspiracy theorists as proof that the investigation had been rushed to a preordained conclusion.*
Liebeler went one step further to help Epstein: he turned over copies of most, if not all, of the internal files he had taken from the commission, including the memos he had written to protest that the report was being written as a “brief for the prosecution” against Oswald. In his thesis, a grateful Epstein did not identify Liebeler by name as the source of the files, offering thanks only to an unnamed “member of the staff.” Years later, Epstein would recall his excitement when Liebeler agreed to give him two large cardboard boxe
s crammed with “staff reports, draft chapters … and two blue-bound volumes of preliminary FBI reports, which had not been released to the public.”
Liebeler told friends that he did not foresee what was about to happen. Epstein, it turned out, had found a respected publisher, Viking Press, to turn his thesis into a book, Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth, with publication set for June 1966, just two months after he submitted his thesis to his advisers at Cornell. The publication date meant that his book would reach bookstores ahead of Lane’s Rush to Judgment, which was scheduled for release later that summer. Before publication, Epstein was coy about what would be in Inquest, telling the New York Times, “It may be dull—let’s wait and see.” Reviewers were intrigued that the book’s introduction would be written by Richard Rovere, the Washington correspondent for the New Yorker. Whatever was in the book, it would apparently be a serious work.
Inquest turned out to be a fierce attack on the Warren Commission, alleging that it had ignored evidence that pointed to a second gunman in Dealey Plaza. In his most alarming charge, Epstein suggested that Kennedy’s autopsy report had been altered to fit the single-bullet theory and that the theory itself might be fiction. His allegations centered on the discrepancies between the autopsy report and a pair of FBI memos, prepared within weeks of the assassination, about what had happened to the first bullet to hit the president; it was the bullet that the commission’s staff was certain had also struck Connally. The FBI memos stated that the bullet penetrated only a short distance into the president’s body from behind, possibly before falling out. The commission’s lawyers, especially Arlen Specter, had been convinced early on in their investigation that the FBI memos were wrong and reflected the initial confusion among the pathologists at Bethesda Naval Hospital about the bullet’s path; two FBI agents who witnessed the autopsy had taken down the doctor’s faulty speculation as fact. To Epstein, however, the differences between the FBI memos and the autopsy report were possible evidence of a cover-up. If the FBI reports were right, the bullet could not have hit Connally.
Epstein said he found other gaps in the commission’s investigation; he identified seemingly important witnesses who were never questioned by the commission. And he seemed to have the best possible evidence to back up his attacks—previously unpublished commission records, especially Liebeler’s detailed, harshly critical internal memos.
The book was a sensation, prompting respectful news articles, as well as glowing reviews, in major newspapers and magazines. In his introduction, Rovere praised Epstein as a “brilliant young academician” who had proved that the Warren Commission investigation “fell far short of being exhaustive” and that evidence supposedly showing Oswald to be the sole gunman was “highly vulnerable.” Inquest would be remembered as the book that gave credibility to the conspiracy-theory movement. Under the headline “Pandora’s Box,” Eliot Fremont-Smith, a critic for the New York Times, described it as “the first book to throw open to serious question, in the minds of thinking people, the findings of the Warren Commission.” For the paperback edition of Inquest, the cover was redesigned to make it more eye-catching, with a silhouette of a man with a rifle standing behind a photograph of Oswald beneath the words, in red: “Is one of the murderers of John F. Kennedy still on the loose?”
Liebeler’s obvious cooperation with Epstein infuriated some of his former colleagues; it was now one of their own, they thought, who was fueling the conspiracy movement. Albert Jenner, who already loathed Liebeler from their time together on the commission, wrote to David Belin that he “glanced through those portions of Epstein’s odious screed in which Herr Liebeler is copiously quoted” and could see that “Jim is still a frustrated, envious, inferiority-complex plagued man,” and went on: “I might forgive him this if he had exhibited good taste.” He thought that “Epstein and his Harvard Ph.D. supervisors should be, but very likely are not, thoroughly ashamed.” (Epstein had gone on to a doctoral program at Harvard.) Norman Redlich wrote to Epstein’s thesis adviser at Cornell to protest the book, which he described as a “wholly specious work.” He said he had been wildly misquoted. “Frankly,” he wrote, “I am appalled by the inaccuracies of the book and the statements which he had attributed to me which I never made.” Belin said he had sensed, during the investigation, that Liebeler would do something like this. “When I left Washington, I was sure on the basis of conversations I had with Jim Liebeler that he was going to talk to someone,” Belin said later. “The fact that he did and the fact that he tried to make himself out as the real hero of the investigation is not surprising.” In the months after publication of Inquest, Liebeler tried, futilely, it seemed, to distance himself from the book, insisting in letters to friends that he did not question the commission’s central findings. He described Epstein’s book as a “shallow, superficial and poorly thought-through piece of work.”
The damage, however, was done. In late July, Richard Goodwin, a former Kennedy speechwriter, became the first member of the slain president’s senior staff at the White House to call for an official reexamination of the findings of the Warren Commission. “Inquest,” Goodwin said, “not only raises questions but demands explorations and answers.”
At the Supreme Court, Warren refused to be drawn into any new debate, telling the court’s press office to make no comment to reporters about the book. Still, the questions came at the chief justice—to his face. He appeared startled in late June 1966 when, minutes after stepping off a plane in Israel, where he had gone to participate in the dedication of a memorial to President Kennedy, he was confronted by a reporter with questions about Inquest. “I would not care to comment,” Warren said. “We wrote our report—it was the best we could do after 10 months of intensive research.… It was unanimous.”
In August, Rush to Judgment was released. Lane’s book did not receive the overwhelming critical praise that Epstein had enjoyed; Lane was just too controversial, and too many reporters said they had learned from experience not to trust what he said. But there was praise. The Houston Post described it as “a compelling, powerful and patriotically impassioned plea in behalf of the unvarnished truth.” The New York Times Times said that while the book suffered from “bias and shrillness,” it was “an eloquent summary of the defense.” And the book became a massive bestseller, much larger than Inquest, and rose to number one on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. It would remain on the list for twenty-six weeks.*
* * *
After the commission, David Slawson had returned to work at his law firm in Denver, but he stayed only briefly in Colorado before turning around and heading back to Washington. Like Liebeler, who would remain a lifelong friend, Slawson decided that he did not want to spend the rest of his career behind a desk at a law firm. He, too, wanted a career in teaching. He decided to begin applying for faculty jobs at major law schools while taking another brief detour into public service. In the summer of 1965, he was delighted with an offer to join the staff of the Justice Department’s elite Office of Legal Counsel in Washington.
Slawson felt some regret that he had missed the chance to work at the department under Robert Kennedy, who had since been elected to the Senate; the Kennedy years at the department had obviously been a thrilling time. Slawson was also disappointed that he had so little chance to resume contact with a treasured old friend from Denver who now worked for Kennedy—Joseph Dolan. “I just loved Joe,” Slawson said. “A wonderful guy, with a big Irish sense of humor.”
Slawson and Dolan had both been active in Democratic politics in Colorado. They met when they worked together in John Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign; they were introduced by Kennedy’s campaign manager in the state, Byron “Whizzer” White, Slawson’s mentor at his law firm. After Kennedy’s victory, White and Dolan both left for jobs at the Justice Department in Washington. White had first worked as deputy attorney general under Robert Kennedy, and was then nominated to the Supreme Court. Dolan had emerged as one of Robert Kenn
edy’s “Irish mafia” of trusted aides in the attorney general’s office, and he then followed Kennedy to Capitol Hill, where he ran Kennedy’s Senate staff.
In his first months at the Justice Department, Slawson usually faced a sea of anonymous faces on the side streets of Pennsylvania Avenue when he left work for the day. As efficient as ever, he could usually get all of his work done by five p.m. and join the crush of federal workers heading home in the afternoon rush. So it was a happy surprise for Slawson when he left the office one afternoon and saw a face he instantly recognized.
It was Dolan, standing off in the distance on the sidewalk. He quickly began walking toward Slawson, his arm outstretched.
“Joe? Here? What’s he doing here?” Slawson thought to himself.
He said he realized almost instantly that this encounter was no coincidence; Dolan was not the sort of person you found loitering on a sidewalk in the middle of the afternoon, at least not anymore. Dolan, it seemed, had been standing there, waiting for Slawson to exit the building.
That this was no coincidence was reflected on Dolan’s face. If this had been a surprise, he would have been all smiles. Instead, as he walked toward Slawson, “he was somber, purposeful.”
“Dave, great to see you,” Dolan said. “Have you got a minute? Can we talk?”
“Of course,” Slawson replied.
“The senator has sent me over to ask a few questions.”
“Sure, Joe, sure,” said Slawson, trying to imagine what Kennedy might want to know from him and why the senator might want the information gathered in this cloak-and-dagger fashion—near a busy street at rush hour, with no formal record that the conversation had ever occurred.
Dolan got straight to the point. “Dave, it’s about his brother’s assassination. It’s about the Warren Commission.”
Slawson said he was taken aback.
“Dave, this needs to remain between us, but the senator is still concerned about a conspiracy. I’ve told the senator about your duties on the commission—that you investigated the whole conspiracy question. And he wants me to ask you: Are you sure the Warren Commission got it right? Are you sure that Oswald acted alone?”
A Cruel and Shocking Act: The Secret History of the Kennedy Assassination Page 58
