Last Word: My Indictment of the CIA in the Murder of JFK

by Mark Lane

  The next month President Kennedy was assassinated.

  And today, more than four decades later, Bugliosi, in his attempt to blame one man and thus exonerate the CIA, could not find room in more than 1,600 pages of rhetoric, alleged “end notes and source notes,” to mention the president’s eminent friend and advisor who had predicted his demise based upon information coming from the White House just before the assassination.

  While deciding not to publish Krock’s words, Bugliosi thought far more relevant the allegation that Oswald had seen a couple of movies. Hence the entrance of Sinatra, Jennifer Jones and Sterling Hayden among others. Bugliosi relied upon the discredited words of a CIA employee, hearsay at best and a deliberate false statement at worst, to present a fictionalized version of Oswald’s alleged response to a fictional film that demonstrates, according to Bugliosi, that we cannot know what impact the non-event had upon Oswald. Those fiction works included scenes of attempted murders. For proof of their relevancy, Bugliosi wrote: “The impact of those films on Lee’s fantasy life cannot be known. He never discussed them with anyone beyond a comment made to Marina ….”58

  That comment was a hearsay allegation published by Priscilla Johnson, an old CIA hand who had interviewed Marina Oswald for a book.59 Years before, Johnson had interviewed Lee Harvey Oswald in Moscow for the CIA. Just after Oswald was murdered, the CIA arranged for Johnson to make false statements about Oswald as part of its disinformation campaign.

  Bugliosi had been published before with a book called Helter Skelter; which Bugliosi wrote with another person, Curt Gentry. Gentry was an award-winning author who had published numerous successful books before Helter Skelter; Bugliosi had earned neither of those distinctions. Bugliosi included no page of acknowledgements in Helter Skelter, no doubt, because there was, as a reader of the book will learn, no one worthy in Bugliosi’s view of being cited. Neither the police officers who investigated the murder scene, nor the police officers who had solved the crime, nor the police officers who had made the arrests, nor the other lawyers at the district attorney’s office who had drafted the indictment, nor the investigators at that office who carefully prepared the case, and not even Mr. Gentry who probably wrote the book.

  Bugliosi makes it clear in page after page that the Los Angeles Police Department and the District Attorney’s Office, which employed him, made numerous errors and serious mistakes in judgment; and when he entered the case his brilliance and knowledge won the day and saved the City of Los Angeles a humiliating defeat in court. He brings a bit of that approach to his present work proclaiming over and over that any rational person who reads it must, without exception, agree with all of his seminal conclusions.

  Does the fact that few bought Bugliosi’s book demonstrate that he is wrong? Of course not. It does reveal that an informed American public, in overwhelming numbers, simply cannot accept his conclusions, as he makes statements that even the Warren Commission would not seriously entertain. It reflects upon his methodology of proclaiming false and entirely unsupported charges and offering, instead of facts, wild accusations.

  A few years ago the United States Supreme Court made a decision. I publicly analyzed that finding, disagreed with it, and found it to be a disturbing precedent. Later Bugliosi wrote a book about the decision60 and referred to the five justices of the United States Supreme Court as “justices who committed one of the biggest crimes in American History.”61 Not content with that absurd and defamatory allegation, Bugliosi added the justices were “the felonious five.”62 A felon, as all lawyers, including former prosecutors, must know, is a person who has been charged with the commission of a felony through a grand jury indictment, then tried by a jury and found guilty (unless he had pleaded guilty) and then sentenced by a judge. Of course, none of the justices had even been charged with a crime in court, only in a book by Bugliosi.

  Still not content with his personal attack, Bugliosi stated that the majority of the Supreme Court justices had committed treason, a capital offense, and that they were “criminals in the very truest sense of the word.” When Bugliosi is on an emotional rampage, even rules about redundancy suffer. Bugliosi then added that the five United States Supreme Court Justices had “the morals of an alley cat.” In a somewhat intemperate remark he wrote that the Chief Justice of the United States “should be making license plates, not sitting as Chief Justice.”63

  Again Bugliosi demonstrated his lack of concern for language and the obligations imposed by a precise understanding of the law.

  Bugliosi brought that same understanding of the law and language to his current work, stating that Lee Harvey Oswald confessed his guilt by denying that he owned the rifle in question. With that standard the former prosecutor must have obtained many confessions in his career.

  Bugliosi came to this subject late, after many witnesses had died or quite reasonably remembered less than they had a quarter of a century earlier when their memories were fresh. He claims to have devoted the last twenty years of his life to examining the facts. In large measure he relied upon discredited FBI reports and CIA reports that had set forth the intelligence organizations’ view of the record. He apparently rejected the judgment of those lawyers for the Warren Commission who later stated that they had been misled by the intelligence agencies that they had so heavily relied upon.

  Bugliosi does not claim to have first-hand knowledge about the most relevant facts. He also claims that he debated with me three times.

  When did the most recent debate take place? Bugliosi could not pin the exact date down, but he believes that it was in the “late 1980s or early 1990s.” It is not just that he can’t recall the date; he can’t recall the decade. But he remembers quite accurately, he claims, what transpired. In reality, Bugliosi betrayed to the audience that he knew nothing about the facts surrounding the assassination. His ignorance was so blatantly apparent that audience members criticized me for debating someone who had no knowledge but who nevertheless insisted that the Warren Commission Report was accurate based upon his faith in our leaders.

  Bugliosi admits that he agreed to act in a foreign television program as the “prosecutor” for Oswald before he knew anything of substance about the case; only then, he states in his book, did his research begin. The Warren Commission merely concluded that it found no credible evidence of a conspiracy. Bugliosi states that if you do not agree with his conclusion that it is absolutely certain that Oswald was the lone assassin then you are ignorant, stupid, or a fraud.

  Many Americans viewed the assassination as one of the most tragic national events in their lifetime. They were offended that the Warren Commission took statements from the witnesses and sealed them so that the American people could neither know what the commission was doing nor what the witnesses had said and marked them “top secret” while no major newspaper or radio or television station called for public hearings. The American people then watched the murder of the suspect on television, an event that took place while Oswald was in the basement of the Dallas Police building surrounded by Dallas police officers. Most Americans longed for the truth. For decades Bugliosi, an attorney and a prosecutor, remained silent. Only when offered a role on a fake mock trial television program did he demonstrate any interest in the case, as he states in his book. He began his work to marshal the record in order to make his presentation for a television audience.

  There were many Americans motivated for love of their country, not for reasons of personal profit, separately for the most part and later together in large measure, who looked into the case and the surrounding facts. They interviewed witnesses, conducted forensic experiments, read the one-volume Warren Commission Report and the twenty-six volumes comprised of that evidence that the Commission was willing to make available. Others, at their own expense, made frequent trips to the National Archives to examine recently declassified documents.

  There were doctors and lawyers, journalists, housewives, teachers, forensic pathologists, retired women and men, and students—hundre
ds, then thousands of students. When some day we build a wall not just to honor those who have died in foreign wars but to celebrate those who worked tirelessly for the truth, their names should be engraved in a place of honor.

  Bugliosi is wrong again as he awards me with too much credit. No one person through lectures and books swayed millions of Americans.

  The FBI and J. Edgar Hoover had declared Oswald to be the lone assassin almost immediately after Oswald’s arrest and before any investigation had been initiated. The Warren Commission endorsed that conclusion and relied primarily upon the FBI and its agents to conduct its investigation. Bugliosi adopted that same approach. For example, in his book Bugliosi writes, “Every night for several months he (Lane) gave a rousing speech on the assassination at a small Manhattan theater he had rented, Theater Four on West Fifth Street.”64

  It was not “rousing,” it was a presentation of the facts, and I doubt Bugliosi was ever present when I spoke. In addition, Theater Four was never located on West Fifth Street. The first clue might be that it was not named Theatre Five. It was located on West Fourth Street. One citizen reviewer in correspondence with Amazon.com pointed out an anomaly: “while there is an East Fifth Street in Greenwich Village in Manhattan, there is no West Fifth Street there.” Bugliosi saw no need to consult a primary source before publishing his inaccurate statement with absolute certainty. The New York Times would have been a source, still is, and other newspapers that reviewed the speech and any number of Manhattan telephone books could have helped. Or Bugliosi might have called me. He did not. Since he devoted an entire chapter to me that would have been the accepted routine to follow.

  Bugliosi, never one to look for the facts once the FBI had instructed him as to what they were, relied upon an inaccurate FBI report initiated in Dallas, Texas, on July 31, 1964, which claimed that I had “spoken at Theatre Four, 424 West Fifth Street, NYC.” The FBI reported an address that did not exist on a street that did not exist. Good enough for Bugliosi, who accepted the inaccurate information and then adopted it as his own in his book.

  Clearly, the error in publishing the wrong address is not of significance except for disclosing, once again, that in small and large matters, Bugliosi relied upon flawed FBI documents while primary documents and witnesses to the contrary were readily available. Which brings us to another question. Did the publisher never hear of the term shared by the entire industry: fact checker? I have been published by small and large firms, and I am indebted to the many fact checkers that my publishers have consulted with, and I have never heard of a serious nonfiction work that was published without such a support system. They could have been busy here. Bugliosi’s book, page after page, swarms with hundreds of demonstrably inaccurate assurances.

  Bugliosi states that I never even mentioned in Rush to Judgment that Lee Harvey was arrested. He writes of me, “he doesn’t even mention Oswald’s arrest.”65 That statement, as is the case of hundreds of others, is false. In Rush to Judgment I not only stated that that Oswald was arrested, I provided the place of the arrest and the time of the arrest. I wrote that “Oswald was arrested in the Texas Theatre at approximately 1:50 PM that day” having previously referenced November 22, 1963, and explicitly citing the three pages of the Warren Commission Report where that information was set forth.66 That information was easily retrievable since it began Chapter 5, entitled “Why Oswald Was Wanted.” 67

  The evidence here indicates that this was not merely one of the numerous careless errors that abound; it provides a look into Bugliosi’s methodology. Years ago one of the defenders of the Warren Commission made the same false claim in a magazine article. At a debate later held at Stanford University, when shown the relevant page from Rush to Judgment he admitted that he was wrong and that, in fact, I had discussed that matter in my book on page 81. I set forth the details of that entire exchange in A Citizen’s Dissent, published in 1968.

  The evidence seems to suggest that Bugliosi directed his researchers to find any derogatory statement ever published about me, as well as others who disagreed with him, so that he could include it in his continuing diatribe. He clearly either failed to check the apparent sources for the facts or, having found them, decided not to allow the facts to stand in the way of his false conclusion. Bugliosi again demonstrated his standard; any accusation, even if patently false and demonstrably so, even if withdrawn by the original source, should be offered as fact, so long as it is aimed against one of his targets.

  Bugliosi has difficulty, and apparently no interest in, separating fact from fiction. He regularly refers to the staged television presentation he appeared in as the “trial of Lee Harvey Oswald.” There was no trial. Of course, generally one of the prerequisites for a trial is a live defendant. Often the defendant is an irreplaceable witness who can tell his lawyer what the facts are, or at least his version of them. In addition, the defendant is often the most important witness for the defense at trial as he testifies before the jury.

  Bugliosi swears that it was pretty damn close to a real trial since the witnesses who “testified” on television had taken “an oath” to tell the truth. Fear of a perjury indictment is the fuel that drives the energy of a real trial. No indictment could follow the television program. All Bugliosi could say to the untruthful witness was, “OK that’s it. You will never work in television again.”

  Bugliosi states that “the historical importance of the trial”68 made it more reliable than the Warren Commission Report and the investigation by the House Select Committee on Assassinations. It was a staged television program.

  Bugliosi looked the jurors in the eye. He spoke in an outraged and deadly serious tone, offering these thoughts: You jurors at this trial are about to serve as jurors at one of the most important trials in the history of this country. Except that they were not jurors, they were actors; there was going to be no trial, just a fictional television work, and “this country” was actually Great Britain as the television program was being taped, photographed and directed in London.

  While it is difficult to take Bugliosi’s work seriously, the subject matter, the death of the president, requires that we do so. Let us then examine just one area: the numerous allegations that Bugliosi has made regarding Acquilla Clemons and Helen Louise Markham, two witnesses to the murder of a police officer.

  First, the facts. In seeking to determine the circumstances surrounding the death of Officer J. D. Tippit, the Warren Commission reached only one conclusion that was a logical consequence of the evidence: that Tippit was shot to death near the intersection of East 10th Street and Patton Avenue in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas early in the afternoon of November 22. The FBI purportedly “conducted approximately 25,000 interviews and reinterviews” of persons having information of possible relevance to the investigation, but it inexplicably omitted to question an eyewitness to the Tippit shooting. Her name is Acquilla Clemons. The Warren Commission said that she did not exist. However, after the film Rush to Judgment, in which I was seen interviewing her, was released, that official position became, in intelligence doublespeak jargon, inoperable. Bugliosi defends the commission by stating rather clumsily that I had implied in Rush to Judgment “that the commission knew of her existence and didn’t want to know the truth she had to tell.” Bugliosi continued, “But Lane presents no evidence that the FBI or Warren Commission knew of Mrs. Clemons’ existence.” Every statement made by Bugliosi in this regard is false.

  I had implied nothing. I had stated, as a fact, that the FBI and the Warren Commission knew of the existence of Mrs. Clemons. I then presented not only the evidence for that assertion, but absolute proof of its accuracy. On August 21, 1964, before the Warren Commission Report was published, J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, sent a letter to J. Lee Rankin, the general counsel of the Warren Commission, stating that I had discussed “the existence” of Mrs. Clemons during a radio program. Hoover sent to the Warren Commission “two copies of a verbatim transcription” of that program. Bugliosi knew tha
t to be a fact since it was reported, with citations to the Warren Commission documents, inRush to Judgment, published in 1966. I had made the same point in numerous public lectures; the record reveals that the FBI was always present and often reported my remarks to the commission.

  Mrs. Clemons, a heroic African American woman living in the racist environment of Dallas in 1963, was warned by white Dallas police officers that if she told anyone what she had witnessed (that Oswald was not involved in the murder of Tippit and that two other men had been), she could be killed. She told me that she was afraid but said that since she was a religious woman she believed that she must tell the truth about the death of a police officer. Bugliosi referred to her as “another of the endless and countless kooks in the Kennedy assassination.”

  In this fashion Bugliosi disposed of the statement of this witness and many others who did not support his conclusions. The witness with inconvenient testimony was a liar, a fool, a nut or a kook. Only Bugliosi, who had not been there, had never talked to most of the witnesses, and was not concerned about the matter for almost a quarter of a century, knew the truth.

  Thank you for your patience as we have examined the Bugliosi methodology. Now let us go to the heart of the matter, Bugliosi’s reliance upon Helen Markham as a witness to the murder of Officer Tippit. Bugliosi states and restates that she is a reliable witness, and that he has relied upon her and her identification of Lee Harvey Oswald in a Dallas Police lineup. Markham is more than a reliable witness to the Tippit killing in Bugliosi’s mind. Perhaps recognizing that there is no credible evidence that implicates Oswald in the assassination of the president, Bugliosi makes a remarkable statement. He asserts that even without the “evidence proving that Oswald killed Kennedy, it was obvious that Oswald’s murder of Tippit alone proved it was he who murdered Kennedy”69 (italics added). As proof for this claim, he cites a Dallas police officer who, when he arrested Oswald in the Texas Theatre, without any evidence that Oswald had committed a crime, allegedly said, “I think we have got our man on both accounts.”70