by Mark Lane
I prepared a resolution calling for the establishment of a Select Committee and began to call upon members of the House of Representatives. The first congressman I visited was Herman Badillo. He had been a volunteer in my campaign for election to the state legislature in 1960, remained active in politics and was a friend. Ten years later he was elected to the House. He greeted me warmly and was happy that I had moved to D.C. He said that Congress would never conduct an investigation into the two murders and that he doubted that a single member of the House would sign on. I asked him if he would. He said “of course” and he became the first sponsor of the resolution I had drafted.
The following week, I invited three first-term Democrats to dinner that I cooked at my apartment. It was as close to a Chinese banquet as I could come. After the last course I suggested discussing the resolution. One of them said that they had all read it and added jocularly that the food was so good they would rely upon my judgment. All three signed the resolution while still at the dining room table.
One morning I walked from my office to meet with Andrew Young in his congressional suite. He took me into his private office and said that he would sign the resolution. He suggested that I consider amending it to include an inquiry into Dr. King’s assassination. I met with those few who had already joined the effort and all favored the amendment. Andy arranged a meeting for me with the leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, Yvonne Brathwaite Burke. She had been the first African American woman elected to the California Assembly and the first to be elected to Congress from that state. She was also the first woman elected to lead the caucus. She agreed to enthusiastically endorse the resolution and to seek the support of the caucus.
While support for the resolution was growing, one white member of the House from a Southern state raised questions about why a black minister should be in the same resolution with a former president. My answer—because they were both assassinated and because there remain unanswered questions about their death—did not really satisfy him, but he remained a loyal and important supporter of the amended resolution.
We filed a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act [FOIA] for the declassification and release of hundreds of thousands of documents related to the assassination of President Kennedy. We were supported in that effort by the American Civil Liberties Union; Morton Halperin, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense; and the Center for National Security Studies.119
The Department of Justice opposed the lawsuit we had filed in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. Its lawyers told the federal judge that the publication of the documents would violate the nation’s security. I argued that since the government had said that one man, Lee Harvey Oswald, had acted alone, I could not imagine how there could be a national security problem. That is, unless the government would like to confess that there had been a conspiracy and there was an ongoing investigation.
The judge agreed with me, and over the heated objections of the Department of Justice, the CIA and the FBI, he ordered that copies of the documents be delivered to our office. It was one of the first major court victories regarding the release of documents under the newly amended Freedom of Information Act and it was celebrated in a novel written by Robert Tanenbaum.120
I soon learned the wisdom of the advice that you should be careful what you wish for, since it may be granted. The court gave the intelligence agencies a deadline for the production of the documents. Neither the CIA nor the FBI had enough experts in the subject matter since they had shared their awful secrets only on a need-to-know basis, which had been strictly adhered to. They were obligated to allow clerks without specific knowledge of the complex case to review the material and to decide what should be redacted. Admissions of blatant CIA or FBI misconduct were initially removed, for the most part. Later we demanded and received some of those documents as well.
The first production took place one afternoon when a huge truck filled with file boxes of material was unloaded at the curb outside of our office. It was soon followed by another. At first we estimated that approximately 100,000 documents had been delivered. We were surprised by the volume and almost, but not quite, overwhelmed as we had prepared to the best of our ability. Many very bright and dedicated volunteers had joined us. One college and one university gave a semester of credit for those who spent five months with us. I had participated with others in teaching classes to the students as to what type of documents might be useful. They were far more expert in the subject than the government employees who had made the decision as to what should be produced. The kids worked through the night, sometimes fifteen or twenty at a time, dividing the reports and reading every page. It was an exciting time, for often the silence was broken by a student holding a document and shouting, “Look what I found! Listen to this!” The reading aloud was often concluded with enthusiastic applause. They were not just learning about American history; they were writing it. Many of their discoveries were subsequently provided to members of Congress.
Among the hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper we plowed through was a ten-page, single-spaced group of three documents, the first one dated August 2, 1966, which was a CIA review of Rush to Judgment written two weeks before the book was published. It bears the hand-printed legend “ONLY COPY.” Well not anymore; some assurances have less staying power than others. The second document, dated January 4, 1967, attacks every author who raised any question about the Warren Commission Report. It sought to dismiss Joachim Joeston who fled from Germany to warn the allies about Hitler’s intentions to wage war, by stating that he was politically unreliable. Its source, the CIA wrote, was “a Gestapo document of 8 November 1937 among the German Foreign Ministry files.” Hitler may have been a mass murderer, perhaps the CIA reasoned, but no one ever said he was a poor judge of his fellow man.
The third document was a top secret “DISPATCH” advising the CIA “Chiefs, Certain Stations and Bases” to “employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics.”121
It set forth in detail the questions and assertions interviewers, book reviewers and writers of feature articles should be told to utilize when interviewing or discussing me or any other critic of the Warren Report. Throughout the first part of my investigation into the Kennedy assassination, as I traveled to speak about the assassination and as I wrote and tried to publish and then publicize Rush to Judgment, I had not known that the CIA was engaged in an organized campaign to discredit me. The CIA, expecting that its memorandum would never be seen by non-officials without high-level clearance, had written regarding the murder of President Kennedy:
“Our organization itself is directly involved: among other facts we contributed information to the investigation.”
I believe that they had indicated responsibility for the cover-up and had not excluded “among other facts” their direct “involvement” in the assassination.
The CIA instructed its officers to discuss this effort with “liaison and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)” and tell them that doubts about the FBI conclusion that Oswald had acted alone, a view held by most Americans, “appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists.”
I had always been baffled by the report of the huge sums of money I received for writing Rush to Judgment.122 The memo cleared that up for me as well. In the section instructing what information to use to attack Warren Commission critics, the memo states: “Another factor has been the financial reward obtainable for sensational books,” and then proceeds to recount the success of “Mark Lane’s Rush to Judgment.” The CIA had sent written instructions to its assets in the news media stating that I had written the book in exchange for huge sums. The media ran incessantly with that story.
The CIA proclaimed to its “assets” in the news media, including reporters, editors, and publishers who were paid or given other benefits to present the CIA view, that the Warren Commission and its helpers, investigating on behalf of America, were “men
of integrity, experience and prominence,” getting two out of three right. The CIA memorandum accused me of being unpatriotic and un-American. In fact, the commission members were all elderly white men (no women, no African Americans, no Hispanics), most with flawed backgrounds, including directing assassinations, arranging the odd coup or so in foreign countries and usually covering them up, or excusing war crimes or unlawfully withholding information in order to convict innocent victims.
The major news media, all television and radio networks and national newspapers, acted in accordance with the directives from the CIA for a protracted time. No doubts about the accuracy of the FBI or Dulles–Warren Report were permitted and the dark side of the illicit background of the official “chosen investigators” was never mentioned. Walter Cronkite, for one example, used his stentorian voice to demand that we “have faith” in these men of unquestioned integrity, rather than suggest that we look at the evidence.
Our office was located on Second Street across the street from the United States Supreme Court and just down the block from the Library of Congress, a virtue that was of enormous importance in that ancient time before the Internet and Google. It was also a short walk to the House and Senate office buildings that flanked us and that convenience was even more relevant.
One night, a staff member was having her friend, Peter Jennings, over for a private dinner in our office. She had purchased two frozen game hens, each wrapped in heavy-duty plastic that had been secured by large staples. She imprudently left them on a kitchen counter to thaw as she left to purchase some wine. Peter, Kathy, and the wine arrived at the same time to discover that the plastic and staple survived but the hens were gone. Sean, my collie, had eaten them, still almost frozen, as dessert. Kathy was furious as her new relationship was secret and the nearby restaurants were off-limits. Even a thank-you note left the next morning and signed by Sean, albeit with a suggestion that he hoped in the future the hens might be better cooked, did not mollify her. In most other respects, our efforts in Washington were a success.
One morning I received a call from a man who identified himself as Dick Schweiker. He said that he was interested in my work and asked if I could visit him. He gave me the name of the Senate building and the room number where I could find him. Richard S. Schweiker, Republican, was a United States senator from Pennsylvania. He was the chairman of a subcommittee of the Church Committee,123 which was charged with the responsibility of reviewing and investigating the role of the CIA and the FBI in providing information and conclusions to the Warren Commission. This was the first federal inquiry into a matter related to the assassination since the publication of the Warren Report.
Later that day we met in his office, the first of a number of meetings comprised almost exclusively of my answering his probing questions and providing documents to him. “Mark, please don’t think of me as someone who only seeks information about things you can prove. Use my office for any leads you have. Our staff will investigate. I know that all leads will not check out. I will not judge you if they don’t; I will thank you for the effort.”
I was impressed by his grasp of the complex material and was not surprised to learn that he had graduated Phi Beta Kappa, was elected to the Senate in 1968, and was reelected in 1974 in the midst of a strong Democratic Party showing nationwide. I was hesitant to accept his invitation to submit untested data out of a concern that it might later be said that I had made claims that could not be substantiated. I had become aware and wary of unfair attacks. As I came to know him, I became convinced that he was a man of his word and I offered numerous areas for inquiry, almost all of which, but not all, proved to be useful. Sen. Schweiker and his staff never made any public or private comment about me that was less than gracious.
The Schweiker Committee Report asserted that it “has developed evidence which impeaches the process by which intelligence agencies arrived at their own conclusions about the assassination, and by which they provided evidence to the Warren Commission.” It added that “the evidence indicates that the investigation of the assassination was deficient.” Sen. Schweiker said that the Warren Report “had collapsed like a house of cards.” He concluded that the investigation into the death of the president was “snuffed out before it began” by “senior officials who directed the cover-up.” His findings became the basis of a media campaign against him led by TIME, which reported in an article entitled “The Road from Slippery Rock,” that “A student of the John Kennedy assassination, Schweicker embarrassed himself” by “impetuously calling previous investigations of the murder ‘a coverup.’” Since the article was unsigned it is difficult to know if it was written by any of the CIA’s full- or part-time owned journalists. Schweicker declined to run for reelection in 1980 and was appointed as the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services. He was succeeded in the Senate by Arlen Specter, the creator of the Magic Bullet Theory.
During 1975, I also met with Representative Don Edwards of California. He had been a special agent of the FBI in 1940 and 1941. He was the chairman of the House Judiciary’s Civil and Constitutional Rights Subcommittee. The Edwards Committee had been given oversight duties of the FBI. I spent many days with him and with his excellent staff. It was decided that the committee had jurisdiction over FBI record keeping; we discussed the FBI treatment of records relating to the assassination. Edwards held public hearings on the subject and uncovered facts about the note that Oswald had left for FBI agent James Hosty on November 6, 1963. It had been destroyed by Hosty upon instructions from his superior, Special Agent in Charge J. Gordon Shanklin. These and other revelations were helpful in getting to the truth and were a significant contribution to educating his colleagues about the unanswered questions about the previous government investigation.
Finally, during 1976, we had more than one hundred congressional sponsors of the resolution. Among the other stalwarts were Christopher Dodd, later a Senator, then a representative, Richardson Preyer, Mervyn Dymally and Bella Abzug. A date for the vote was set, and we began to contact our supporters nationwide with the urgent request that Congress hear from them. Texts, fax machines and e-mails were not available. In their stead were telephones, telegrams and the U.S. mail.
I continued to organize at colleges and at meetings in places chosen for congressional districts where opponents to the resolution were located. We were able to circulate petitions and encourage letters to numerous members of Congress, sometimes as many as four thousand messages to a representative within one week. More than one million letters, telegrams and signatures on petitions were sent to members of Congress by their constituents, in addition to countless telephone calls that we could not, by definition, count.
The resolution was set for a vote. I was in the first row of a gallery seat next to my associate, April Ferguson. On the floor voices against the proposal were raised, and when the votes were cast it seemed for a short time that it was going to be defeated. I gave April my wallet and the keys to my apartment and car. If the resolution was rejected, I had decided to tell our representatives that they had acted shamefully in turning their backs upon both their late president and hopes for the truth. I knew if I spoke I would be arrested within moments.
The bill passed. Rep. Don Edwards looked toward me, held the resolution in his hand and said, “This should be called the Mark Lane resolution.” April handed the keys and wallet back to me and I sighed with relief. I had never liked the D.C. jail even when I visited it to represent Dick Gregory every Christmas day when he was arrested for protesting at the South African embassy during the long apartheid nightmare.
The Gallup Poll taken in 1976 revealed 81 percent of Americans believed that there had been a conspiracy to murder President Kennedy. And ABC News confirmed it was still 81 percent in 1993. Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, appeared on the Jim Lehrer News Hour on November 20, 2003. When asked why 81 percent believed there was a conspiracy in 1976 and whether it tied “in to any particular event,” Newport replied
, “not that I am aware of,” and that “we just came back into the field and lo and behold discovered that it had gotten high at that point and stayed that time [sic] every time we decided to ask it since, it remains at that height.” On one of their trips into the field, Gallup might have asked the question and then have been in a position to provide a more scientific and precise answer than lo and behold; people probably knew the basis for their beliefs.
The House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) was authorized and given a down payment for its budget, but it had not retained someone to lead. Two members of the committee suggested that I become the counsel. I said that even I would object since my objectivity had long since evaporated in view of the undeniable evidence. The committee was moribund and finger pointing had begun.
Two of the members asked me for recommendations for staff director and general counsel. I thought of Ed Ennis, the former Justice Department official who during World War II had opposed the internment of Japanese residents who were innocent civilians. He later became chairman of the ACLU. He was a friend and a scholar of unquestioned integrity. A colleague of mine reminded me that we were in need of a tough prosecutor who did not have a liberal background. He suggested Richard Sprague. I immediately looked into Sprague’s legal accomplishments and discovered that he was a brilliant lawyer, had served as a prosecuting attorney and had prosecuted and convicted all those complicit in the labor union–organized criminal conspiracy to murder the Yablonski family.124 Sprague was praised by judges, defense lawyers, prosecutors and the press for his ability and integrity.
I called Richard Sprague and asked him if he would take the job if it was offered. He asked if I had the authority to make an offer. “No, no authority at all, just an abiding interest.” He invited me to meet with him in his office in Philadelphia. We discussed the case and I warned him that if he conducted a fair investigation he would suffer unfair and continuing attacks. He smiled and said that his record precluded that possibility.
