Crossfire

by Jim Marrs

  The Reluctant Chairman

  Earl Warren had no middle name. He once said, “My parents were too poor to afford the luxury of a middle name.” Born to Scandinavian immigrants on March 19, 1891, Warren grew up in Los Angeles and nearby Bakersfield. By delivering newspapers, working for the railroad where his father was employed, and performing other odd jobs, Warren managed to save enough money to enroll at the University of California at Berkeley.

  After receiving a bachelor of letters degree he entered law school. Warren graduated from the University of California Law School near the bottom of his class on May 14, 1914.

  His law practice was interrupted by World War I. After enlisting as an infantry private, Warren was accepted for officer training and became a lieutenant. However, the Armistice was signed before Lieutenant Warren could leave the United States. After the war, Warren became an assistant attorney for the City of Oakland and later a member of the district attorney’s staff. By the late 1920s, he had married Nina Palmquist Meyers and was elected as one of the nation’s youngest district attorneys.

  Building a reputation for honesty, hard work, and court convictions, Warren easily won reelection in 1930. As his family grew, so did his political reputation.

  In the late 1930s, Warren campaigned for and won the office of California attorney general.

  Almost immediately, Republican Warren was in a heated contest with the California Democratic governor Culbert Olson. Adding to their political differences were Olson’s support of unions and his outspoken isolationism on the eve of World War II. This conflict reached a breaking point when, after Pearl Harbor, Olson proclaimed a state of emergency in California. As attorney general, Warren challenged his authority to do so and shortly afterward declared himself a candidate for governor.

  In a surprising upset—Roosevelt and the Democrats were still in firm control nationally—Warren was elected governor of California in late 1942 by more than 342,000 votes.

  In 1946, Warren handily won reelection as governor and began to look toward Washington. During the 1948 Republican National Convention, Warren reluctantly agreed to run for vice president with Thomas Dewey, the former governor of New York. He may have actually been relieved when the team was defeated by Truman in the greatest upset victory in American politics.

  Still hoping for a national office, Warren announced he would seek the GOP presidential nomination in 1952. He was chagrined to quickly find himself pitted against the war hero Dwight “Ike” Eisenhower. Richard Nixon, who had signed a pledge to support Warren, nevertheless began to campaign for Eisenhower, hoping for the vice presidential nomination that he indeed later received. Eisenhower got the nomination and then the presidency. Nixon, who had been in public office for only six years, was the nation’s number-two man.

  Warren had been a strong contender and Nixon feared his clout in the next election. According to Warren biographer Jack Harrison Pollack:

  Nixon . . . badgered Eisenhower to find a suitable appointment for Governor Warren which would effectively separate him from his electoral constituency. The ideal solution presented itself in September 1953, when a vacancy arose on the Supreme Court after Chief Justice Fred Vinson suddenly died. Warren, who already had decided not to seek a fourth term as governor, was offered the prized seat and, to Nixon’s delight, accepted.

  New on the job and with the naïve Eisenhower years as a backdrop, Warren made initial decisions as chief justice that tended to support the status quo. But as he grew more comfortable in his position, his decisions began to reflect the progressive policies he advocated as California governor. It was under Warren’s leadership that the Supreme Court—after years of foot dragging—finally ruled on the touchy desegregation issues raised by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. Using private discussions as well as judicial conferences, where the justices took no positions, Warren was able to guide the court to its unanimous decision in favor of Brown, which virtually eliminated the old “Jim Crow” separate-but-equal segregation laws and paved the way for racial equality in the United States.

  Brown was a landmark decision and one that caused archconservatives to begin a campaign of bitter attacks against the chief justice. IMPEACH EARL WARREN signs were commonplace throughout the South. Later court opinions dealing with the rights of accused persons and the persecution of suspected communists added further fuel to the fires of Warren’s opponents.

  In the squeaky-close election of 1960, the Republican Warren found himself voting for young John F. Kennedy, apparently because he could not bring himself to vote for the ever-ambitious Nixon. Displaying considerable foresight, Warren told a California friend, “Nixon is a bad man.”

  Warren and Kennedy voiced mutual respect for each other and the new president supported the Warren Court’s progressive activism, even in such controversial cases as the June 1963 decision that outlawed compulsory prayer in public schools.

  Six months later, Warren was asked to head a federal panel to decide who had killed Kennedy.

  On November 29, the same day President Johnson announced his plans for a special commission, Warren was visited by deputy attorney general Nicholas D. Katzenbach and solicitor general Archibald Cox (years later fired by Nixon as special Watergate prosecutor). Warren was told he was being asked to serve as chairman of the presidential commission. He declined, saying, “Please tell the President that I am sorry but I cannot properly undertake this assignment.” Warren then explained that he did not feel it proper for a member of one branch of government to be employed by another branch.

  Two hours later, Warren received a telephone call from President Johnson. The new president wasn’t going to take no for an answer. He summoned Warren to his office. Dutifully, the chief justice reported to his president and received the famous “Johnson treatment”—a combination of back-patting and arm-twisting. According to Warren biographer Pollack:

  The President spoke gravely of the desperate need to restore public confidence. He hinted darkly at the possibility of dangerous international repercussions. He invoked Warren’s sense of duty and patriotism. . . . By the end of the interview, he had succeeded in making Warren feel that to refuse the President would be a betrayal of a public trust. As a man-to-man persuader, Lyndon Johnson had no equal. His trump card was: “Mr. Chief Justice, you were a soldier in World War I. There’s nothing you then did that compares with what you can do now for your country. As your Commander-in-Chief, I am ordering you back into service.”

  There may have been matters of more personal concern that Johnson transmitted to Warren. In an internal memorandum written on February 17, 1964, Warren Commission attorney Melvin Eisenberg mentioned what Warren told fellow commissioners regarding how he had been “pressured” by Johnson. Eisenberg wrote:

  The President stated that rumors of the most exaggerated kind were circulating in this country and overseas. . . . Some rumors went so far as attributing the assassination to a faction within the government wishing the presidency assumed by President Johnson. Others, if not quenched, could conceivably lead the country into a war. . . . No one could refuse to do something which might help prevent such a possibility. . . . He placed emphasis on the quenching of rumors and precluding further speculation.

  Warren left the emotional meeting with tears in his eyes, perhaps thinking of what had become of the country he loved. He had reluctantly agreed to chair the commission. It is obvious that Warren’s sense of patriotism outweighed his sense of legality in his acceptance of the Commission chairmanship.

  Later that same afternoon, Johnson signed Executive Order 11130, creating the seven-man Warren Commission.

  Commission members saw their work as having a dual purpose—one, to find the facts of the Kennedy assassination, the other, to calm public fears and suspicions both at home and abroad. Allen Dulles told author Edward Jay Epstein that since an atmosphere of rumors and suspicion interferes with the functioning of the government, especially abroad, one of the Commission’s main tasks was to
dispel rumors.

  Other Commission members also thought it their duty to protect the US image as reflected in these public statements:

  JOHN MCCLOY: [It was of paramount importance to] show the world that America is not a banana republic, where a government can be changed by conspiracy.

  JOHN COOPER: [An important purpose was] to lift the cloud of doubts that had been cast over American institutions.

  When evidence presented to the Commission supported this duality of purpose, there was no problem. But since so much evidence contradicted the official assassination theory and called into question certain government institutions, it must be asked which purpose became paramount to the commissioners.

  Johnson’s old friend, lawyer Abe Fortas, and Katzenbach had prepared a list of seven prominent persons to serve on the new presidential commission. President Johnson promptly approved this list without change.

  Headed by Chief Justice Warren, the Commission members were:

  Representative Hale Boggs (D-Louisiana): The most vocal critic among Commission members, Boggs became frustrated with the panel’s total reliance on the FBI for information. Speaking of the “single-bullet theory,” Boggs once commented, “I had strong doubts about it.” On April 1, 1971, House Majority Leader Boggs delivered a blistering attack on J. Edgar Hoover, charging that under his directorship the FBI had adopted “the tactics of the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Gestapo.” Boggs, who undoubtedly would have become Speaker of the House and a powerful ally in any reopening of the JFK assassination investigation, vanished on October 16, 1972, while on a military junket flight in Alaska. Despite a massive search, no trace of the airplane or of Boggs has ever been found.

  Senator John Sherman Cooper (R-Kentucky): A former member of the Kentucky General Assembly and county judge, Cooper served with the US 3rd Army in Europe during World War II and helped reorganize the judicial system in Bavaria. He also was a former ambassador to India and Nepal in the mid-1950s. Like Boggs, Cooper later voiced dissatisfaction with the Commission’s “single-bullet theory,” stating he was “unconvinced.”

  Allen W. Dulles: Dulles had been fired as director of the Central Intelligence Agency by Kennedy following the ill-fated Bay of Pigs Invasion. Today it seems more than ironic that Dulles would have been selected to sit in judgment on Kennedy’s death. Dulles also was tightly connected to the military, not only because of his years with the CIA, but because of his service in World War II, which included arranging the surrender of German troops in Italy. It is now acknowledged that Dulles withheld CIA information from the Warren Commission, particularly concerning assassination plots between the agency and organized crime.

  Representative Gerald Ford (R-Michigan): Former President Ford is now recognized as the FBI’s “spy” on the Warren Commission. This is confirmed by a memo from Cartha DeLoach, a close aide to Director Hoover, in which he noted:

  I had a long talk this morning [December 12, 1963] with congressman Gerald R. “Jerry” Ford. . . . He asked that I come up and see him. . . . Ford indicated he would keep me thoroughly advised as to the activities of the Commission. He stated this would have to be on a confidential basis, however, he thought it should be done. He also asked if he could call me from time to time and straighten out questions in his mind concerning our investigation. I told him by all means he should do this. He reiterated that our relationship would, of course, remain confidential.

  According to former New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, “Ford [also] enjoyed the reputation of being the CIA’s best friend in the House of Representatives.”

  Ford’s name as a member of the Warren Commission was recommended to President Johnson by Richard Nixon. A World War II Navy veteran, Ford became the Commission’s most industrious member, hearing seventy out of the ninety-four witnesses who actually met with commissioners. He also profited from his time on the Commission. Ford had his first campaign manager and former Nixon presidential campaign field director John R. Stiles hired as his special assistant. Ford and Stiles went on to write Portrait of the Assassin, a book that presented selective evidence of Oswald’s guilt. When their publisher found the book dull reading, Ford and Stiles spiced it up with rewritten transcripts of the January 27, 1964, Commission meeting where Oswald’s possible connection to the FBI was discussed. The minutes of this meeting were classified top secret and remained closed to the public. During confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1973, Ford was asked specifically about his use of classified Warren Commission material in his book. Ford replied, “We did not use in that book any material other than the material that was in the 26 volumes of testimony and other exhibits that were subsequently made public and sold to the public generally.”

  When it was discovered that the January 27, 1974, meeting transcripts were still classified, Ford belatedly said, “I cannot help but apologize if the circumstances are such that there was this violation, but there certainly was no attempt to do it.”

  Despite being caught in perjury, Ford was dutifully confirmed by his old friends in Congress and sworn in as this nation’s first appointed president. Six months later, Ford ordered the Commission material in question declassified.

  John J. McCloy: As coordinator for the Kennedy administration’s disarmaments activities since 1961, McCloy had a background for supporting Nazis, both before and after the war, and was a ranking member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He had been assistant secretary of war throughout World War II, military governor and high commissioner for Germany from 1949 to 1952, and president of the World Bank from 1947 to 1949. He also help build the US intelligence Establishment after the war. Despite his continued defense of the Warren Commission, McCloy himself voiced a prophetic skepticism of its work on December 5, 1963, stating, “The Commission is going to be criticized . . . no matter what we do, but I think we would be more criticized if we simply posed before the world as something that is evaluating Government agencies’ reports, who themselves may be culpable.”

  In Commission arguments over the “single-bullet theory,” it was McCloy who finally proposed that the evidence supporting this theory be called “persuasive,” a term all members finally agreed upon.

  Senator Richard B. Russell (D-Georgia): As chairman of the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, Russell carried much clout on Capitol Hill, usually employed to further the aims of the Pentagon. His work on behalf of defense projects brought sizable government contracts to Georgia. Governor there from 1931 to 1933, Russell was elected to the Senate in 1933. Russell also sat on the watchdog Subcommittee on CIA Oversight. Russell, widely regarded as one of the most intelligent senators, became the first Warren Commission member to publicly question its conclusions. In a 1970 Washington Post article, Russell said he had come to believe that a criminal conspiracy had resulted in Kennedy’s death. The senator even worked with assassination researcher Harold Weisberg in an effort to obtain Commission transcripts. In a court affidavit, Weisberg stated, “Privately Senator Russell told me that he was convinced that there were two areas in which Warren Commission members had been deceived by Federal agencies responsible for investigating the assassination of President Kennedy. These two areas were: (1) Oswald’s background; and (2) the ballistics evidence.”

  As can be seen, all of the Commission members had long-standing ties to both the military and intelligence establishments of the United States. They also were men accustomed to the delicacy of dealing with highly sensitive political issues.

  Each had received a copy of White House Executive Order 11130, which after naming the seven members of the President’s Commission, stated the Commission’s purpose was to “uncover all the facts concerning the assassination of President Kennedy and to determine if it was in any way directed or encouraged by unknown persons at home or abroad,” and that “necessary expenses” of the Commission would be paid from the “Emergency Fund for the President.”

  In an effort to obtain fairness for her son, Marguerite Oswald wrot
e to Warren Commission general counsel J. Lee Rankin and even President Johnson, stating, “I [am] . . . imploring both in the name of justice and our American way of life to let my son Lee Harvey Oswald be represented by council [sic] so that all witnesses including my son’s widow will be cross-examined.”

  Her request was denied.

  New York attorney Mark Lane, who in 1959 helped found the Reform Democratic Movement, volunteered to represent Oswald.

  His request was denied.

  In 1964, Lane was retained by Marguerite Oswald to represent her son’s interest but the Commission refused to accept him. Lane explained his persistence by writing:

  In all likelihood there does not exist a single American community where reside 12 men or women, good and true, who presume that Lee Harvey Oswald did not assassinate President Kennedy. No more savage comment can be made in reference to the breakdown of the Anglo-Saxon system of jurisprudence. At the very foundation of our judicial operation lies a cornerstone which shelters the innocent and guilty alike against group hysteria, manufactured evidence, overzealous law enforcement officials, in short, against those factors which militate for an automated, prejudged, neatly packaged verdict of guilty. It is the sacred right of every citizen accused of committing a crime to the presumption of innocence.

  In fact, every basic legal right guaranteed to even the lowliest street criminal—the right to legal representation, to face accusers, to cross-examine witnesses and evidence—was denied Lee Harvey Oswald. The Commission met behind closed doors, heard secret testimony, and emerged to announce its conclusions.

  The Warren Commission’s first official meeting took place on December 5, 1963. The primary purpose of this meeting was to get the investigation organized. During this process, Warren suggested that the Commission need not hire its own investigators or obtain subpoena powers from Congress. He was, however, overridden in this matter by other Commission members. McCloy stated: