by Jim Marrs
I have a feeling that we have another obligation than the mere evaluation of the reports of agencies, many of which as you suggested, or some of them at least, may be interested, may be involved. There is a potential culpability here on the part of the Secret Service and even the FBI, and these reports . . . may have some self-serving aspects in them. And I think that if we didn’t have the right to subpoena documents, the right to subpoena witnesses if we needed them, that this Commission’s general standing might be somewhat impaired.
Not wishing to appear as simply a conduit for information from federal agencies, Commission members appealed to Congress for the right to issue subpoenas. This was granted on December 13, 1963, by the passage of Senate Joint Resolution 137. This law also authorized the Commission to compel testimony by providing immunity from prosecution—an authority that the Commission never once used.
During this meeting, Senator Russell noted the ongoing leaks of assassination information by the FBI while Commission members were still awaiting the bureau’s first full report. He asked pointedly, “How much of their findings does the FBI propose to release to the press before we present the findings of this Commission?”
This was the beginning of a quiet—yet intense—feud between the Commission and Hoover’s bureau.
The Commission’s second meeting was on December 6. There was considerable discussion about the proposed Texas court of inquiry. State Attorney General Carr had traveled from Texas to Washington but was put off from meeting with Warren for three days because the chief justice wanted a formal promise that there would be no Texas hearings until after his commission had completed its investigation. Warren read from a letter he had sent Carr stating, “It is the view of this Commission . . . that a public inquiry in Texas at this time might be more harmful than helpful in our search for the truth.”
It was during this meeting that the name of J. Lee Rankin was advanced as a possible general counsel for the Commission. Warren originally wanted Warren Olney III, head of the FBI Criminal division from 1953 to 1957, as chief counsel. However, Olney, an outspoken critic of director J. Edgar Hoover and most knowledgeable about the internal workings of the bureau, was rejected after the powerful Hoover voiced fierce opposition to his appointment, an indication of the director’s power over the investigation.
The Commission then recessed until December 16, when it reviewed the first formal report on the assassination issued by the FBI on December 9. Warren set the tone by commenting, “Well, gentlemen, to be very frank about it, I have read that FBI report two or three times and I have not seen anything in there yet that has not been in the press.”
Boggs commented, “Reading that FBI report leaves a million questions.”
Dulles said the CIA couldn’t finalize a report until the agency received more documents from the FBI. He commented, “They’ve been working for a long while, I know. It started when I was there.” This was the first admission that the CIA had been keeping an eye on Oswald since his trip to Russia in 1959.
On December 8, 1963, J. Lee Rankin, a fifty-six-year-old corporate attorney and US solicitor general under Eisenhower, had accepted the appointment as general counsel for the Commission and met for the first time with the commissioners. Rankin would take charge of the Commission’s investigation, serve as the primary liaison between the Commission and both the FBI and CIA, and act as coordinator between Commission members and the staff. Years later, one Commission attorney commented, “It was, very simply, a Rankin operation.” And Rankin appeared more concerned with wrapping up the Commission’s investigation swiftly than with fully probing each assassination issue.
When Commission assistant counsel Wesley Liebeler submitted a twenty-six-page memorandum to Rankin carefully outlining the serious deficiencies of the evidence against Oswald as the lone assassin, Rankin reportedly replied, “No more memorandums. The report has to be published.”
On another occasion when Liebeler tried to address the problems arising from the Silvia Odio affair, an angry Rankin said, “At this stage, we are supposed to be closing doors, not opening them.”
Initially, even Rankin voiced the suspicion that the Commission might have to do more than simply evaluate FBI reports. During the December 16 meeting, he stated:
The Chief Justice and I finally came to the conclusion . . . that we might have to . . . ask for some investigative help . . . because we might not get all we needed by just going back to the FBI and other agencies because the [FBI] report has so many loopholes in it. Anybody can look at it and see that it just doesn’t seem like they’re looking for things that this Commission has to look for in order to get the answers that it wants and is entitled to. . . . [This] might be a tender spot. I am sure the FBI is certainly tender about the knowledge they had [concerning Oswald’s presence in Dallas] and the fact that the Secret Service did not have that knowledge in order to do anything about it.
On January 21, 1964, the Commission met for the fourth time. Warren optimistically predicted an early end to the investigation, although there continued to be debate over whether to hurry up the Commission’s work prior to the election-year conventions or slow it down pending the outcome of the Texas trial of Jack Ruby, which was about to begin.
A lengthy discussion ensued regarding the Commission’s responsibility to question Mrs. Kennedy and the new president, Lyndon Johnson. However, almost a dozen pages of this discussion were marked “classified” and kept from the public.
The Commission then discussed the possibility of moving Oswald’s body, including another autopsy and even cremation. Although the transcripts make no mention that they suspected impersonation at this time, it is significant to note the Commission’s interest in Oswald’s body. McCloy said, “I don’t think we ought to have on the record that we are moving in this thing [an Oswald exhumation]. We are not saying anything about it.” In response to news articles that Marina Oswald was being held against her will, Warren suggested allowing someone with the American Civil Liberties Union to meet with her. Rankin added, “We do have a little problem because the Secret Service came to us and said, ‘Shall we quit our surveillance over her?’ . . . I said we can’t do that because she would slip right across the border and be gone.”
The Commission again grappled with the problem of interagency rivalries. And again the issue of FBI reliability was raised, this time in connection with the conflicting information commissioners were getting concerning the president’s wounds. McCloy said, “Let’s find out about these wounds, it is just as confusing now as could be. It left my mind muddy as to what really did happen. . . . Why did the FBI report come out with something which isn’t consistent with the autopsy?”
Senator Russell even suggested double-checking the FBI studies, but no action was taken.
Oswald and the FBI
On January 22, 1964, the Warren Commission was hurriedly called into secret session because of the explosive news that Texas authorities had information that Oswald had been an undercover informant for the FBI. Reports of this meeting were not made public until 1975.
Rankin told members:
Yes, it was being rumored that [Oswald] was an undercover agent. Now it is something that would be very difficult to prove out. There are events in connection with this that are curious, in that they might make it possible to check some of it out in time. I assume that the FBI records would never show it . . . or if their records do show anything, I would think their records would show some kind of number that could be assigned to a dozen different people according to how they wanted to describe them. . . . [Oswald] did use postal boxes practically every place he went, and that would be an ideal way to get money to anyone that you wanted as an undercover agent.
Rankin wondered aloud if Oswald had been operating for the FBI during his trip to Russia, but Warren pointed out “They haven’t any people in Russia.” Rankin was still wondering, “One of the strange things that happened . . . is the fact that this man who is a defector, and who was und
er observation at least by the FBI . . . could [obtain] a passport that permitted him to go to Russia.”
Rankin then connected his musings to the Commission’s problems with the bureau:
The FBI is very explicit that Oswald is the assassin or was the assassin, and they are very explicit that there was no conspiracy, and [yet] they are also saying in the same place that they are continuing their investigation. Now in my experience of almost nine years, in the first place it is hard to get them to say when you think you have got a case tight enough to convict somebody. . . . In my experience with the FBI, they don’t do that. They claim that they don’t evaluate. . . . Secondly, they have not run out of all kinds of leads in Mexico or in Russia and so forth which they could probably. . . . But they are concluding that there can’t be a conspiracy without those [leads] being run out. Now that is not [normal] from my experience with the FBI. . . . It raises questions.
The specter of Oswald’s being identified as an FBI agent caused great difficulty for the Commission. There appeared no way to fully resolve the matter, and as Representative Boggs pointed out, “[The] implications of this are fantastic, don’t you think so? . . . I don’t even like to see this being taken down.”
Dulles agreed, “Yes, I think this record ought to be destroyed.” But it wasn’t.
Five days after this secret meeting, the Commission met formally. The minutes of this meeting, on January 27, 1964, show that commissioners were still agonizing over Oswald’s possible involvement with the FBI. More than two hours of its three-and-a-half-hour afternoon session were spent trying to decide how to broach the subject with director J. Edgar Hoover. The problem was compounded by rumors that added the CIA to Oswald’s suspected intelligence connections.
The stories of Oswald’s spy connections were traced back from Texas attorney general Waggoner Carr to Dallas County district attorney Henry Wade and more specifically assistant district attorney William Alexander. Alexander claimed he got the story from Houston Post reporter Alonzo Hudkins, who said he got it from Dallas County deputy sheriff Allan Sweatt. Sweatt revealed his source for the story was none other than Alexander—who was on the scene of the Tippit slaying and reportedly also present at Oswald’s capture at the Texas Theater.
Apparently no attempt was made to determine just where Alexander got his information that Oswald was being paid $200 a month as FBI informant S-179.
Rankin dismissed the possibility of approaching attorney general Robert Kennedy with the problem, saying, “As the head of the [Justice] department, the FBI, of course, is under the attorney general, but I think we must frankly recognize amongst ourselves that there is a daily relationship there . . . and we wouldn’t want to make that more difficult.”
He then raised the possibility of going straight to FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. But since Hoover was already on record denying that Oswald had any connection with the bureau, Commission members were hesitant to anger the dour Hoover by initiating their own inquiries. Senator Russell noted, “There is no man in the employ of the federal government who stands higher in the opinion of the American people than J. Edgar Hoover.”
Furthermore, Commission member Allen Dulles, former head of the CIA, while admitting that government agencies and even local police departments employed “terribly bad characters” as undercover agents, bluntly implied there was no way to prove such allegations during the following exchange:
REP. BOGGS: Let’s say [someone] . . . was recruited by someone in the CIA. The man who recruited him would know, wouldn’t he?
DULLES: Yes, but he wouldn’t tell.
CHAIRMAN WARREN: Wouldn’t tell it under oath?
DULLES: I wouldn’t think he would tell it under oath, no. . . . He ought not tell it under oath. Maybe not tell it to his own government but wouldn’t tell it any other way.
MCCLOY: Wouldn’t he tell it to his own chief?
DULLES: He might or might not. If he was a bad one then he wouldn’t.
Dulles added that he would not reveal CIA business to anyone except the president and that questioning Hoover would not necessarily get to the truth. He explained:
If [Hoover] says no, I didn’t have anything to do with it. You can’t prove what the facts are. There are no external evidences. I would believe Mr. Hoover. Some people might not. I don’t think there is any external evidence other than the person’s word that he did or did not employ a particular man as a secret agent. No matter what.
McCloy voiced the Commission’s exasperation with its total dependence on the FBI: “The time is almost overdue for us to have a better perspective of the FBI investigation than we now have. . . . We are so dependent upon them for our facts.”
Commission members also were becoming suspicious that the bureau was not being totally open with them regarding certain aspects of the assassination. For example, Rankin recalled that Marina Oswald said her husband met with two FBI agents for nearly two hours shortly after their return from Russia, but added, “We don’t have any report that would cover anything like a two-hour conversation.”
Senator Russell summed up the Commission’s dilemma: “It seems to me we have two alternatives. One is we can just accept the FBI’s report and go on and write the report based on their findings and supported by the raw materials they gave us, or else we can go and try to run down some of these collateral rumors that have just not been dealt with directly in this raw material that we have.”
The Commission decided to allow Rankin to approach Hoover in the manner he thought best. But after all was said and done, the Warren Commission elected to accept the FBI’s information and conclusions without independent verification.
During the same meeting that commissioners agonized over Oswald’s possible connection with the FBI, Rankin outlined at length the six major areas of the Commission’s investigation.
Area one was “The Basic Facts of the Assassination,” dealing with the number and source of the shots. In charge of this area were Commission assistant counsels Francis W. H. Adams, who had served as a special assistant to the US attorney as well as police commissioner and chief assistant US attorney in New York City, and Arlen Specter, a Yale Law School graduate and an assistant district attorney in Philadelphia. In March 1964, Adams announced he could not fulfill his responsibility in the investigation. Specter went on to singlehandedly manage this critical area.
Area two was to establish the “Identity of the Assassin.” In charge were David Belin, an Iowa attorney with a distinguished academic record, and Joseph A. Ball, an Iowa-born attorney who was teaching criminal law and procedure at the University of Southern California. An investigation into the murder of policeman J. D. Tippit belatedly was added.
Area three was a study of “Oswald’s Background,” an aspect of the probe that clearly indicated the Commission’s predisposition toward Oswald’s guilt.
Area four was to determine “Possible Conspiratorial Relationships.” It was headed by William T. Coleman Jr., a Pennsylvania attorney who had served as law clerk to US Court of Appeals judge Herbert F. Goodrich and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter as well as a consultant with the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and W. David Slawson, a Denver, Colorado, attorney educated at Amherst College, Princeton, and Yale.
Area five was the study of “Oswald’s Death.” In charge were Burt Griffin and Leon Hubert, both former assistant US attorneys.
Area six was added later and dealt with “Presidential Protection,” a study of the security precautions of the Secret Service and the FBI. Samuel Stern, a former law clerk to Chief Justice Warren, was assigned to the job, but Chief Counsel Rankin supervised this “politically sensitive area.”
Rankin also outlined the questions already arising over the medical evidence. He said:
We think that the wound in the neck has to be related to one of these others, but the problem is difficult to determine because we have a statement from the hospital that the bullet that was more whole than the other was found on the stretche
r which they brought the President in to the hospital on and then we have testimony later that goes back over the same ground . . . [saying] that this bullet was found under the blanket on the stretcher Gov. Connally was on.
It was the beginning of years of controversy over the basic medical and ballistic evidence.
As with the later House Select Committee on Assassinations, the Warren Commission asked many experts with lengthy credentials to evaluate various assassination evidence, such as Oswald’s fingerprints and ballistics. And as with the House committee, while these experts supported the government’s conclusions, none of them could later state with any certainty that the materials they received from the government were originals. But the possibility that someone within the government would substitute or fabricate evidence never seemed to cross the minds of the experts or the commissioners.
There also was controversy over Oswald’s description as a loner. Rankin told the commissioners, “We have no evidence that is clear that Oswald was connected with anybody but we also have very great problems.” In regard to Oswald’s life in Russia, Rankin commented, “That entire period is just full of possibilities for training, for working with the Soviets, and its agents.”
On February 24, 1964, Warren, senator John Cooper, representative Gerald Ford, Allen Dulles, and Rankin met for about ten minutes. Rankin reported no significant progress in the problem area of Oswald’s possible connection with the FBI. He said affidavits from Hoover, FBI agents, and even Dallas officials “show negative.” However, he also reported one instance of the bureau’s lack of candor with the Commission, explaining:
As you recall, we informed you before that the address in the telephone book of Lee Oswald had in it the name of [FBI agent James] Hosty and his telephone number and his automobile license, and that it wasn’t in the transcript of that information which was furnished to us by the FBI. And we have written to the FBI to ask them, an official inquiry, how that could happen, and to furnish us all of the information concerning that occurrence. And we have not received a reply yet.
