Book Intro: "Presumed Guilty, How & Why the WC Framed L. H. Oswald"The unaccountability of government has gone to the point where the very use of the law is the instrument of illegality. -- Ralph Nader @ Harvard Law School, 1/15/92 This post is an introduction to the book, Presumed Guilty How and Why the Warren Commission Framed Lee Harvey Oswald A factual account based on the Commission's public and private documents (c) 1976, by Howard Roffman. It includes some excerpts from the Preface, Introduction, and Conclusion. In the fifteen-plus years since I began reading about the assassination of President Kennedy, one of the most obvious (yet consistently denied) facts about the twisted "official mythology" is the issue of who killed JFK. This matter was never resolved because the crime itself was never legitimately investigated. Period. If Lee Oswald had lived to stand trial, the prosecution would *NOT* have been able to convict him of the murder in the way the "The Warren Commission Show"--in the minds of enough people--was able to do. This is THE BOOK to read for the best detailed and comprehensive explanation of how Lee Oswald could not have killed President Kennedy as the official reality consortium--acting through the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations and state press/corporate media--claim he did. Using as documentation the Commission's once-secret working papers, Howard Roffman meticulously demonstrates how at every turn, the Warren Commission's entire approach was based upon the *presumption* of Lee Oswald's guilt. It didn't matter to the Commission that the preponderance of facts in the case didn't support this presumption. Roffman sums up the devastating result of "working backwards" from such a pre-judged conclusion: . . . when the Commissioners decided in advance that the wrong man was the lone assassin, whatever their intentions, they protected the real assassins. Through their staff they misinformed the American people and falsified history. Near the end of the preface, Roffman articulates some of the fundamental implications that must be confronted by every citizen in a situation where those in power consciously choose to betray the trust of the people they are sworn to serve: My political maturity began to develop only in the past few years; all of my research on the assassination was conducted while I was a teenager. Yet the basic knowledge that my government could get away with what it did at the murder of a president made me fearful of the future. On October 10, 1971, when I was eighteen years old, I wrote what I hoped would be the last letter in a long and fruitless correspondence with a lawyer who had participated in the official cover-up as an investigator for the Warren Commission. I concluded that letter with these words: I ask myself if this country can survive when men like you, who are supposed to represent law and justice, are the foremost merchants of official falsification, deceit, and criminality. It was to take three years and the worst political crisis in our history for the press and the public to even begin to awaken to the great dangers a democracy faces when lawyers are criminals. Previous to this, Roffman quotes Harold Weisberg, one of the leading "first generation" assassination researchers, and expands on the meaning of his words: If the government can manufacture, suppress and lie when a President is cut down--and get away with it--what cannot follow? Of what is it not capable, regardless of motive...? This government {did} manufacture, suppress and lie when it pretended to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. If it can do that, it can do anything. And will, if we let it. Weisberg, in effect, warned that the executive would inevitably commit wrongdoing beyond imagination so long as there was no institution of government or society that was willing to stop it. That one man of modest means could make this simple deduction in 1966 is less a credit to him than it is an indictment of a whole system of institutions that failed in their fundamental responsibility to society. There are people who continue to cling to the belief that the Warren Commission's and the House Select Committee on Assassinations' conclusions were and are essentially sound, and that Lee Oswald, firing 3 shots from the sixth floor window, wounded Governor Connally and killed President Kennedy. The powers that be will continue to attempt to prop up such lies only so long as we the people continue to allow them to do so by our own cultural propensity for denial. One of the nation's founders (was it Jefferson?) said something to the effect that in order for a democracy to remain vital and not become co-opted by concentrated wealth and power, a revolution ought to be joined every 19 years or so. We are LONG overdue for our own. In the final analysis, anything which is held in secrecy, is held above accountability. Working in secret the Commission staff was able to conduct their deliberations in a manner that was at odds with the facts in the case. Such unaccountability, from the highest levels of authority on down, has become the sine qua non of our society and "way of life." The trappings of a "constitutional democratic republic" still exist and are touted by corporate and elected leaders to serve their own ends, but the reality is that these symbols are largely hollow and have been uniformly pre-empted by inherently anti-democratic principles, policies and laws. The crimes that have been committed under the rubric of "national security" at least equal anything the Nazis ever attempted. They are all the more hideous primarily because "we the people" are not "allowed" to know about their breadth and depth which is a fundamental prerequisite to addressing their consequences (like the more than 74,000 toxic waste dumps listed by the EPA's Superfund some years ago, created secretly and beyond accountability by the military-industrial complex) and stopping and dealing with their perpetrators. * * * * * * * The remainder of this introduction consists of excerpts taken from the book that will follow this post in eleven parts. For those interested, I have created a pure PostScript version of this book (minus the actual photographs and drawings) which can simply be "lp"'d to a PostScript [laser] printer for "prettified" hardcopy output. The size of the PostScript file comprising the book is 1083277 bytes. Please feel free to mail me at "dave@sgi.com" if you'd like me to e-mail you a copy. Minus the names of publications or books (which are delimited with double quote--`"'--characters), the convention of squiggly braces-- "{ ... }"--are used to denote words, phrases or sentences in italics. __________________________________________________________________________ . . . from the very beginning of its investigation, the Commission planned its work under the presumption that Oswald was guilty, and the staff consciously endeavored to construct a prosecution case against Oswald. One Commission member actually complained to the staff that he wanted to see more arguments in support of the theory that Oswald was the assassin. There could have been no more candid admission of how fraudulent the "investigation" was than when a staff lawyer secretly wrote, "Our intention is not to establish the point with complete accuracy, but merely to substantiate the hypothesis which underlies the conclusions that Oswald was the sole assassin." In its zeal to posthumously frame Oswald--and falsify history--the staff often considered ludicrous methods of avoiding the facts--as in the suggestion of one staff lawyer that "the best evidence that Oswald could fire as fast as he did and hit the target is the fact that he did so." (pp. 249-250) <<< ***** >>> Without a doubt, the falsehoods and misrepresentations disseminated by the government and the media concerning the assassination of President Kennedy are as odious in our society as the assassination itself. The freedoms guaranteed under the law are without meaning unless the people are honestly and competently informed. Indeed, when a government can get away with whitewashing the truth about a president's murder, the suggestion of authoritarianism is more than apparent. (pp. 23-24) <<< ***** >>> . . . Throughout that hectic weekend, the Dallas Police made repeated public accusations of Oswald's guilt. Oswald steadfastly maintained that he was innocent and said he would prove it when he was brought to trial. (p. 25) <<< ***** >>> Whoever killed President John F. Kennedy got away with it because the Warren Commission, the executive commission responsible for investigating the murder, engaged in a cover-up of the truth and issued a report that misrepresented or distorted almost every relevant fact about the crime. The Warren Commission, in turn, got away with disseminating falsehood and covering up because virtually every institution in our society that is supposed to make sure that the government works properly and honestly failed to function in the face of a profound challenge; the Congress, the law, and the press all failed to do a single meaningful thing to correct the massive abuse committed by the Warren Commission. To anyone who understood these basic facts, and there were few who did, the frightening abuses of the Nixon Administration that have come to be known as "Watergate" were not unexpected and were surprising only in their nature and degree. This is not a presumptuous statement. I do not mean to imply that anyone who knew what the Warren Commission did could predict the events that have taken place in the last few years. My point is that the reaction to the Warren Report, if properly understood, demonstrated that our society had {nothing} that could be depended upon to protect it from the abuses of power that have long been inherent in the Presidency. The dynamics of our system of government are such that every check on the abuse of power is vital; if the executive branch were to be trusted as the sole guardian of the best interests of the people, we would not have a constitution that divides power among three branches of government to act as checks on each other, and we would need no Bill of Rights. Power invites abuses and excesses, and at least since the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, an enormous amount of power has been assumed and acquired by the president. Political deception is an abuse that democracy invites; in a system where the leaders are ultimately accountable to the people, where their political future is decided by the people, there is inevitably the temptation to deceive, to speak with the primary interest of pleasing the people and preserving political power. There probably has not been a president who has not lied for political reasons. I need only cite some more recent examples: Franklin Roosevelt assured the parents of America in October 1940 that "your boys are not going to be sent into foreign wars"; at the time he knew that American involvement in World War II was inevitable, even imminent, but he chose not to be frank with the people for fear of losing the 1940 election. Dwight Eisenhower in 1960 denied that the American aircraft shot down by the Russians over their territory was a spy-plane, when he {and} the Russians knew very well that the plane, a U-2, had been on a CIA reconnaissance flight; John F. Kennedy had the American ambassador at the United Nations deny that the unsuccessful invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs was an American responsibility when exactly the opposite was true. So, deception and cover-up per se did not originate with the Warren Commission in 1964 or the Nixon administration in 1972. They had always been an unfortunate part of our political system. With the Warren Commission they entered a new and more dangerous phase. Never before, to my knowledge, had there been such a systematic plan for a cover-up, or had such an extensive and pervasive amount of deception been attempted. And certainly never before had our government collaborated to deny the public the true story of how its leader was assassinated. In the face of this new and monumental abuse of authority by the executive, all the institutions that are supposed to protect society from such abuses failed and, in effect, helped perpetrate the abuse itself. As with Watergate, numerous lawyers were involved with the Warren Commission; in neither case did these lawyers act as lawyers. Rather, they participated in a cover-up and acted as accessories in serious crimes. The Congress accepted the Warren Report as the final solution to the assassination and thus acquiesced in the cover-up of a President's murder. And, perhaps most fundamentally, the press failed in its responsibility to the people and became, in effect, an unofficial mouthpiece of the government. For a short time the press publicized some of the inconsistencies between the Warren Report's conclusions and the evidence; yet never did the press seriously question the legitimacy of the official findings on the assassination or attempt to ascertain why the Johnson administration lied about the murder that brought it into power and what was hidden by those lies. (pp. 9-11) <<< ***** >>> In its approach, operations and Report, the Commission considered one possibility alone--that Lee Harvey Oswald, without assistance, assassinated the President and killed Officer Tippit. Never has such a tremendous array of power been turned against a single man, and he was dead. Yet even without opposition the Commission failed. . . . A crime such as the assassination of the President of the United States cannot be left as the Report . . . has left it, without even the probability of a solution, with assassins and murderers free, and free to repeat their crimes and enjoy what benefits they may have expected to enjoy therefrom. No President is ever safe if Presidential assassins are exculpated. Yet that is what the Commission has done. In finding Oswald "guilty," it has found those who assassinated him "innocent." If the President is not safe, then neither is the country.[29] Much more does it relate to each individual American, to the integrity of the institutions of our society, when anything happens to any president--especially when he is assassinated. The consignment of President John F. Kennedy to history with the dubious epitaph of the whitewashed investigation is a grievous event.[30] Above all, the Report leaves in jeopardy the rights of all Americans and the honor of the nation. When what happened to Oswald once he was in the hands of the public authority can occur in this country with neither reprimand nor question, no one is safe. When the Federal government puts its stamp of approval on such unabashed and open denial of the most basic legal rights of any American, no matter how insignificant he may be, then no American can depend on having those rights, no matter what his power or connections. The rights of all Americans, as the Commission's chairman said when wearing his Chief Justice's hat, depend upon each American's enjoyment of these same rights.[31] Perhaps the simplest statement of the context enunciated by Weisberg is contained in the quotation that I included in the Preface of this book: "If the government can manufacture, suppress and lie when a President is cut down--and get away with it--what cannot follow?"[32] (pp. 32-33) <<< ***** >>> I support the movement toward a new investigation, but the vital question now concerns {what} should be investigated. A congressional reopening of the case should focus on those areas which will yield meaningful findings and serve a constructive national purpose. Such an investigation would inevitably have to deal with the question of "Who killed Kennedy?" However, my own familiarity with the evidence leads me to believe that an inquiry limited only to that question would be doomed to achieving very little. The major question at this point is "Who covered up the truth about the murder, how, and why?" A congressional investigation could establish with little effort that the Warren Report's "solution" of the crime is erroneous; the Commission's files, as well as the files of other federal agencies, would provide a fertile starting point for the determination of responsibility in the cover-up. The participants in all stages of the official investigation of the assassination are either known or identifiable, and those individuals still living can be subjected to cross-examination. I do not personally believe that the federal investigators knew who killed President Kennedy. But the evidence is certain that decisions were made, at times and levels now unknown, that the truth about the assassination should not be discovered, that falsehood should be disseminated to the people. When such decisions are made by the government, the Congress has a reason, indeed an obligation, to investigate and to assure that the executive is made to account. (pp. 30-31) <<< ***** >>> Once it is established that Oswald's rifle was not involved in the shooting, there is not a shred of tangible or credible evidence to indicate that Oswald was the assassin. The evidence proves exactly the opposite. The circumstantial evidence relating to Oswald himself is almost entirely exculpatory. Every element of it was twisted by the Commission to fit the preconceived conclusion of Oswald's guilt. I have documented that, through its staff and its Report, the Commission: 1. Drew undue suspicion to Oswald's return to Irving on November 21, although the evidence indicated that Oswald did not know the motorcade route and broke no set pattern in making the return; 2. Ignored {all} evidence that could have provided an innocent excuse for Oswald's visit; 3. Wrongly discredited the reliable and consistent testimony of the only two witnesses who saw the package Oswald carried to work on the morning of the assassination; because their descriptions meant that the package could {not} have contained the rifle, the Commission claimed to have made this rejection on the basis of "scientific evidence," which did not exist; 4. Concluded that Oswald made a paper sack to conceal the rifle, citing no evidence in support of this notion and suppressing evidence that tended to disprove it; 5. Concluded that the sack was used to transport the rifle, although its evidence proved that the sack never contained the rifle; 6. Used the testimony of Charles Givens to placed [sic] Oswald at the alleged source of the shots {35 minutes too early,} even though Givens described an event that physically could not have taken place; 7. Claimed to know of no Depository employee who saw Oswald between 11:55 and 12:30, basing its claim on an inquiry in which it (through General Counsel Rankin) had the FBI determine whether any employee had seen Oswald {only} at 12:30, completely suppressing from the Report three distinct pieces of evidence indicating Oswald's presence on the first floor during the period in question. 8. Failed to produce any witness who could identify the sixth-floor gunman as Oswald; both rejected and accepted the identification of one man who admitted lying to the police, who constantly contradicted himself, and who described physically impossible events; and ignored evidence of clothing descriptions that might have indicated that Oswald was {not} the gunman; 9. Reconstructed the movements of Baker and Truly in such a way as to lengthen the time of their ascent to the second floor; 10. Reconstructed the movements of the "assassin" so as to greatly reduce the time of his presumed descent; a valid reconstruction would have proved that a sixth- floor gunman could {not} have reached the second-floor lunch-room before Baker and Truly; 11. Misrepresented Baker's position at the time he saw Oswald entering the lunchroom, making it seem possible that Oswald could have just descended from the third floor, although, in fact, the events described by Baker and Truly prove that Oswald must have been coming {up} from the {first} floor (as Oswald himself told the police he did); 12. Misrepresented the nature of the assassination shots by omitting from its evaluation the time factor and other physical obstacles, thus making it seem that the shots were easy and that Oswald could have fired them; 13. Misrepresented the evidence relevant to Oswald's rifle capability and practice, creating the impression that he was a good shot with much practice, although the evidence indicated exactly the opposite. The conclusion dictated by all this evidence en masse is inescapable and overwhelming: Lee Harvey Oswald never fired a shot at President Kennedy; he was not even at the Depository window during the assassination; and no one fired his rifle, the Mannlicher-Carcano, on that day. Beyond any doubt, he is innocent of the monstrous crime with which he was charged and of which he was presumed guilty. The official presumption of his guilt effectively cut off any quest for truth and led to the abandonment of the principles of law and honest investigation. At {all} costs, the government has denied (and, to judge from its record, will continue to deny) Oswald's innocence and perpetuated the myth of his lone guilt. With this, a thousand other spiders emerge from the walls. It can now be inferred that Oswald was framed; he was deliberately set up as the Kennedy assassin. His rifle was found in the Depository. We know that it had to have been put there; we also know that it was not Oswald who put it there. {Someone else did.} We know that a whole bullet traceable to Oswald's rifle turned up at Parkland Hospital; we also know that this bullet was never in the body of either victim. {Someone had to have planted it at the hospital.} The same applies to the two identifiable fragments found in the front seat of the President's limousine. We know that someone shot and killed President Kennedy; we also know that Oswald did not do this. The real presidential murderers have escaped punishment through our established judicial channels, their crime tacitly sanctioned by those who endeavored to prove Oswald guilty. The after-the-fact framing of Oswald by the federal authorities means, in effect, that the federal government has conspired to protect those who conspired to kill President Kennedy. It is not my responsibility to explain why the Commission did what it did, and I would deceive the reader if I made the slightest pretense that it was within my capability to provide such an explanation. I have presented the facts; no explanation of motives, be they the highest and the purest or the lowest and the most corrupt, will alter those facts or undo what the Commission indisputably has done. The government has lied about one of the most serious crimes that can be committed in a democracy. Having lied without restraint about the death of a president, it can not be believed on anything. It has sacrificed its credibility. Remedies are not clearly apparent or easily suggested. Certainly, Congress has an obligation to investigate this monumental abuse by the executive. But first and foremost, the people must recognize that they have been lied to by their government and denied the truth about the murder of their former leader. They must demand the truth, whatever the price, and insist that their government work honestly and properly. Until then, the history of one of the world's most democratic nations must suffer the stigma of a frighteningly immoral and undemocratic act by its government. (pp. 251-255) Subject: Book Intro: "Presumed Guilty, How & Why the WC Framed L. H. Oswald" The unaccountability of government has gone to the point where the very use of the law is the instrument of illegality. -- Ralph Nader @ Harvard Law School, 1/15/92 This post is an introduction to the book, Presumed Guilty How and Why the Warren Commission Framed Lee Harvey Oswald A factual account based on the Commission's public and private documents (c) 1976, by Howard Roffman. It includes some excerpts from the Preface, Introduction, and Conclusion. In the fifteen-plus years since I began reading about the assassination of President Kennedy, one of the most obvious (yet consistently denied) facts about the twisted "official mythology" is the issue of who killed JFK. This matter was never resolved because the crime itself was never legitimately investigated. Period. If Lee Oswald had lived to stand trial, the prosecution would *NOT* have been able to convict him of the murder in the way the "The Warren Commission Show"--in the minds of enough people--was able to do. This is THE BOOK to read for the best detailed and comprehensive explanation of how Lee Oswald could not have killed President Kennedy as the official reality consortium--acting through the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations and state press/corporate media--claim he did. Using as documentation the Commission's once-secret working papers, Howard Roffman meticulously demonstrates how at every turn, the Warren Commission's entire approach was based upon the *presumption* of Lee Oswald's guilt. It didn't matter to the Commission that the preponderance of facts in the case didn't support this presumption. Roffman sums up the devastating result of "working backwards" from such a pre-judged conclusion: . . . when the Commissioners decided in advance that the wrong man was the lone assassin, whatever their intentions, they protected the real assassins. Through their staff they misinformed the American people and falsified history. Near the end of the preface, Roffman articulates some of the fundamental implications that must be confronted by every citizen in a situation where those in power consciously choose to betray the trust of the people they are sworn to serve: My political maturity began to develop only in the past few years; all of my research on the assassination was conducted while I was a teenager. Yet the basic knowledge that my government could get away with what it did at the murder of a president made me fearful of the future. On October 10, 1971, when I was eighteen years old, I wrote what I hoped would be the last letter in a long and fruitless correspondence with a lawyer who had participated in the official cover-up as an investigator for the Warren Commission. I concluded that letter with these words: I ask myself if this country can survive when men like you, who are supposed to represent law and justice, are the foremost merchants of official falsification, deceit, and criminality. It was to take three years and the worst political crisis in our history for the press and the public to even begin to awaken to the great dangers a democracy faces when lawyers are criminals. Previous to this, Roffman quotes Harold Weisberg, one of the leading "first generation" assassination researchers, and expands on the meaning of his words: If the government can manufacture, suppress and lie when a President is cut down--and get away with it--what cannot follow? Of what is it not capable, regardless of motive...? This government {did} manufacture, suppress and lie when it pretended to investigate the assassination of John F. Kennedy. If it can do that, it can do anything. And will, if we let it. Weisberg, in effect, warned that the executive would inevitably commit wrongdoing beyond imagination so long as there was no institution of government or society that was willing to stop it. That one man of modest means could make this simple deduction in 1966 is less a credit to him than it is an indictment of a whole system of institutions that failed in their fundamental responsibility to society. There are people who continue to cling to the belief that the Warren Commission's and the House Select Committee on Assassinations' conclusions were and are essentially sound, and that Lee Oswald, firing 3 shots from the sixth floor window, wounded Governor Connally and killed President Kennedy. The powers that be will continue to attempt to prop up such lies only so long as we the people continue to allow them to do so by our own cultural propensity for denial. One of the nation's founders (was it Jefferson?) said something to the effect that in order for a democracy to remain vital and not become co-opted by concentrated wealth and power, a revolution ought to be joined every 19 years or so. We are LONG overdue for our own. In the final analysis, anything which is held in secrecy, is held above accountability. Working in secret the Commission staff was able to conduct their deliberations in a manner that was at odds with the facts in the case. Such unaccountability, from the highest levels of authority on down, has become the sine qua non of our society and "way of life." The trappings of a "constitutional democratic republic" still exist and are touted by corporate and elected leaders to serve their own ends, but the reality is that these symbols are largely hollow and have been uniformly pre-empted by inherently anti-democratic principles, policies and laws. The crimes that have been committed under the rubric of "national security" at least equal anything the Nazis ever attempted. They are all the more hideous primarily because "we the people" are not "allowed" to know about their breadth and depth which is a fundamental prerequisite to addressing their consequences (like the more than 74,000 toxic waste dumps listed by the EPA's Superfund some years ago, created secretly and beyond accountability by the military-industrial complex) and stopping and dealing with their perpetrators. * * * * * * * The remainder of this introduction consists of excerpts taken from the book that will follow this post in eleven parts. For those interested, I have created a pure PostScript version of this book (minus the actual photographs and drawings) which can simply be "lp"'d to a PostScript [laser] printer for "prettified" hardcopy output. The size of the PostScript file comprising the book is 1083277 bytes. Please feel free to mail me at "dave@sgi.com" if you'd like me to e-mail you a copy. Minus the names of publications or books (which are delimited with double quote--`"'--characters), the convention of squiggly braces-- "{ ... }"--are used to denote words, phrases or sentences in italics. __________________________________________________________________________ . . . from the very beginning of its investigation, the Commission planned its work under the presumption that Oswald was guilty, and the staff consciously endeavored to construct a prosecution case against Oswald. One Commission member actually complained to the staff that he wanted to see more arguments in support of the theory that Oswald was the assassin. There could have been no more candid admission of how fraudulent the "investigation" was than when a staff lawyer secretly wrote, "Our intention is not to establish the point with complete accuracy, but merely to substantiate the hypothesis which underlies the conclusions that Oswald was the sole assassin." In its zeal to posthumously frame Oswald--and falsify history--the staff often considered ludicrous methods of avoiding the facts--as in the suggestion of one staff lawyer that "the best evidence that Oswald could fire as fast as he did and hit the target is the fact that he did so." (pp. 249-250) <<< ***** >>> Without a doubt, the falsehoods and misrepresentations disseminated by the government and the media concerning the assassination of President Kennedy are as odious in our society as the assassination itself. The freedoms guaranteed under the law are without meaning unless the people are honestly and competently informed. Indeed, when a government can get away with whitewashing the truth about a president's murder, the suggestion of authoritarianism is more than apparent. (pp. 23-24) <<< ***** >>> . . . Throughout that hectic weekend, the Dallas Police made repeated public accusations of Oswald's guilt. Oswald steadfastly maintained that he was innocent and said he would prove it when he was brought to trial. (p. 25) <<< ***** >>> Whoever killed President John F. Kennedy got away with it because the Warren Commission, the executive commission responsible for investigating the murder, engaged in a cover-up of the truth and issued a report that misrepresented or distorted almost every relevant fact about the crime. The Warren Commission, in turn, got away with disseminating falsehood and covering up because virtually every institution in our society that is supposed to make sure that the government works properly and honestly failed to function in the face of a profound challenge; the Congress, the law, and the press all failed to do a single meaningful thing to correct the massive abuse committed by the Warren Commission. To anyone who understood these basic facts, and there were few who did, the frightening abuses of the Nixon Administration that have come to be known as "Watergate" were not unexpected and were surprising only in their nature and degree. This is not a presumptuous statement. I do not mean to imply that anyone who knew what the Warren Commission did could predict the events that have taken place in the last few years. My point is that the reaction to the Warren Report, if properly understood, demonstrated that our society had {nothing} that could be depended upon to protect it from the abuses of power that have long been inherent in the Presidency. The dynamics of our system of government are such that every check on the abuse of power is vital; if the executive branch were to be trusted as the sole guardian of the best interests of the people, we would not have a constitution that divides power among three branches of government to act as checks on each other, and we would need no Bill of Rights. Power invites abuses and excesses, and at least since the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, an enormous amount of power has been assumed and acquired by the president. Political deception is an abuse that democracy invites; in a system where the leaders are ultimately accountable to the people, where their political future is decided by the people, there is inevitably the temptation to deceive, to speak with the primary interest of pleasing the people and preserving political power. There probably has not been a president who has not lied for political reasons. I need only cite some more recent examples: Franklin Roosevelt assured the parents of America in October 1940 that "your boys are not going to be sent into foreign wars"; at the time he knew that American involvement in World War II was inevitable, even imminent, but he chose not to be frank with the people for fear of losing the 1940 election. Dwight Eisenhower in 1960 denied that the American aircraft shot down by the Russians over their territory was a spy-plane, when he {and} the Russians knew very well that the plane, a U-2, had been on a CIA reconnaissance flight; John F. Kennedy had the American ambassador at the United Nations deny that the unsuccessful invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs was an American responsibility when exactly the opposite was true. So, deception and cover-up per se did not originate with the Warren Commission in 1964 or the Nixon administration in 1972. They had always been an unfortunate part of our political system. With the Warren Commission they entered a new and more dangerous phase. Never before, to my knowledge, had there been such a systematic plan for a cover-up, or had such an extensive and pervasive amount of deception been attempted. And certainly never before had our government collaborated to deny the public the true story of how its leader was assassinated. In the face of this new and monumental abuse of authority by the executive, all the institutions that are supposed to protect society from such abuses failed and, in effect, helped perpetrate the abuse itself. As with Watergate, numerous lawyers were involved with the Warren Commission; in neither case did these lawyers act as lawyers. Rather, they participated in a cover-up and acted as accessories in serious crimes. The Congress accepted the Warren Report as the final solution to the assassination and thus acquiesced in the cover-up of a President's murder. And, perhaps most fundamentally, the press failed in its responsibility to the people and became, in effect, an unofficial mouthpiece of the government. For a short time the press publicized some of the inconsistencies between the Warren Report's conclusions and the evidence; yet never did the press seriously question the legitimacy of the official findings on the assassination or attempt to ascertain why the Johnson administration lied about the murder that brought it into power and what was hidden by those lies. (pp. 9-11) <<< ***** >>> In its approach, operations and Report, the Commission considered one possibility alone--that Lee Harvey Oswald, without assistance, assassinated the President and killed Officer Tippit. Never has such a tremendous array of power been turned against a single man, and he was dead. Yet even without opposition the Commission failed. . . . A crime such as the assassination of the President of the United States cannot be left as the Report . . . has left it, without even the probability of a solution, with assassins and murderers free, and free to repeat their crimes and enjoy what benefits they may have expected to enjoy therefrom. No President is ever safe if Presidential assassins are exculpated. Yet that is what the Commission has done. In finding Oswald "guilty," it has found those who assassinated him "innocent." If the President is not safe, then neither is the country.[29] Much more does it relate to each individual American, to the integrity of the institutions of our society, when anything happens to any president--especially when he is assassinated. The consignment of President John F. Kennedy to history with the dubious epitaph of the whitewashed investigation is a grievous event.[30] Above all, the Report leaves in jeopardy the rights of all Americans and the honor of the nation. When what happened to Oswald once he was in the hands of the public authority can occur in this country with neither reprimand nor question, no one is safe. When the Federal government puts its stamp of approval on such unabashed and open denial of the most basic legal rights of any American, no matter how insignificant he may be, then no American can depend on having those rights, no matter what his power or connections. The rights of all Americans, as the Commission's chairman said when wearing his Chief Justice's hat, depend upon each American's enjoyment of these same rights.[31] Perhaps the simplest statement of the context enunciated by Weisberg is contained in the quotation that I included in the Preface of this book: "If the government can manufacture, suppress and lie when a President is cut down--and get away with it--what cannot follow?"[32] (pp. 32-33) <<< ***** >>> I support the movement toward a new investigation, but the vital question now concerns {what} should be investigated. A congressional reopening of the case should focus on those areas which will yield meaningful findings and serve a constructive national purpose. Such an investigation would inevitably have to deal with the question of "Who killed Kennedy?" However, my own familiarity with the evidence leads me to believe that an inquiry limited only to that question would be doomed to achieving very little. The major question at this point is "Who covered up the truth about the murder, how, and why?" A congressional investigation could establish with little effort that the Warren Report's "solution" of the crime is erroneous; the Commission's files, as well as the files of other federal agencies, would provide a fertile starting point for the determination of responsibility in the cover-up. The participants in all stages of the official investigation of the assassination are either known or identifiable, and those individuals still living can be subjected to cross-examination. I do not personally believe that the federal investigators knew who killed President Kennedy. But the evidence is certain that decisions were made, at times and levels now unknown, that the truth about the assassination should not be discovered, that falsehood should be disseminated to the people. When such decisions are made by the government, the Congress has a reason, indeed an obligation, to investigate and to assure that the executive is made to account. (pp. 30-31) <<< ***** >>> Once it is established that Oswald's rifle was not involved in the shooting, there is not a shred of tangible or credible evidence to indicate that Oswald was the assassin. The evidence proves exactly the opposite. The circumstantial evidence relating to Oswald himself is almost entirely exculpatory. Every element of it was twisted by the Commission to fit the preconceived conclusion of Oswald's guilt. I have documented that, through its staff and its Report, the Commission: 1. Drew undue suspicion to Oswald's return to Irving on November 21, although the evidence indicated that Oswald did not know the motorcade route and broke no set pattern in making the return; 2. Ignored {all} evidence that could have provided an innocent excuse for Oswald's visit; 3. Wrongly discredited the reliable and consistent testimony of the only two witnesses who saw the package Oswald carried to work on the morning of the assassination; because their descriptions meant that the package could {not} have contained the rifle, the Commission claimed to have made this rejection on the basis of "scientific evidence," which did not exist; 4. Concluded that Oswald made a paper sack to conceal the rifle, citing no evidence in support of this notion and suppressing evidence that tended to disprove it; 5. Concluded that the sack was used to transport the rifle, although its evidence proved that the sack never contained the rifle; 6. Used the testimony of Charles Givens to placed [sic] Oswald at the alleged source of the shots {35 minutes too early,} even though Givens described an event that physically could not have taken place; 7. Claimed to know of no Depository employee who saw Oswald between 11:55 and 12:30, basing its claim on an inquiry in which it (through General Counsel Rankin) had the FBI determine whether any employee had seen Oswald {only} at 12:30, completely suppressing from the Report three distinct pieces of evidence indicating Oswald's presence on the first floor during the period in question. 8. Failed to produce any witness who could identify the sixth-floor gunman as Oswald; both rejected and accepted the identification of one man who admitted lying to the police, who constantly contradicted himself, and who described physically impossible events; and ignored evidence of clothing descriptions that might have indicated that Oswald was {not} the gunman; 9. Reconstructed the movements of Baker and Truly in such a way as to lengthen the time of their ascent to the second floor; 10. Reconstructed the movements of the "assassin" so as to greatly reduce the time of his presumed descent; a valid reconstruction would have proved that a sixth- floor gunman could {not} have reached the second-floor lunch-room before Baker and Truly; 11. Misrepresented Baker's position at the time he saw Oswald entering the lunchroom, making it seem possible that Oswald could have just descended from the third floor, although, in fact, the events described by Baker and Truly prove that Oswald must have been coming {up} from the {first} floor (as Oswald himself told the police he did); 12. Misrepresented the nature of the assassination shots by omitting from its evaluation the time factor and other physical obstacles, thus making it seem that the shots were easy and that Oswald could have fired them; 13. Misrepresented the evidence relevant to Oswald's rifle capability and practice, creating the impression that he was a good shot with much practice, although the evidence indicated exactly the opposite. The conclusion dictated by all this evidence en masse is inescapable and overwhelming: Lee Harvey Oswald never fired a shot at President Kennedy; he was not even at the Depository window during the assassination; and no one fired his rifle, the Mannlicher-Carcano, on that day. Beyond any doubt, he is innocent of the monstrous crime with which he was charged and of which he was presumed guilty. The official presumption of his guilt effectively cut off any quest for truth and led to the abandonment of the principles of law and honest investigation. At {all} costs, the government has denied (and, to judge from its record, will continue to deny) Oswald's innocence and perpetuated the myth of his lone guilt. With this, a thousand other spiders emerge from the walls. It can now be inferred that Oswald was framed; he was deliberately set up as the Kennedy assassin. His rifle was found in the Depository. We know that it had to have been put there; we also know that it was not Oswald who put it there. {Someone else did.} We know that a whole bullet traceable to Oswald's rifle turned up at Parkland Hospital; we also know that this bullet was never in the body of either victim. {Someone had to have planted it at the hospital.} The same applies to the two identifiable fragments found in the front seat of the President's limousine. We know that someone shot and killed President Kennedy; we also know that Oswald did not do this. The real presidential murderers have escaped punishment through our established judicial channels, their crime tacitly sanctioned by those who endeavored to prove Oswald guilty. The after-the-fact framing of Oswald by the federal authorities means, in effect, that the federal government has conspired to protect those who conspired to kill President Kennedy. It is not my responsibility to explain why the Commission did what it did, and I would deceive the reader if I made the slightest pretense that it was within my capability to provide such an explanation. I have presented the facts; no explanation of motives, be they the highest and the purest or the lowest and the most corrupt, will alter those facts or undo what the Commission indisputably has done. The government has lied about one of the most serious crimes that can be committed in a democracy. Having lied without restraint about the death of a president, it can not be believed on anything. It has sacrificed its credibility. Remedies are not clearly apparent or easily suggested. Certainly, Congress has an obligation to investigate this monumental abuse by the executive. But first and foremost, the people must recognize that they have been lied to by their government and denied the truth about the murder of their former leader. They must demand the truth, whatever the price, and insist that their government work honestly and properly. Until then, the history of one of the world's most democratic nations must suffer the stigma of a frighteningly immoral and undemocratic act by its government. (pp. 251-255) Subject: "Presumed Guilty, How & Why the W.C. Framed Lee Harvey Oswald" [2/11] __________________________________________________________________________ PART I: THE PRESUMPTION OF GUILT A Note on Citations References to the 26-volume "Hearings Before the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy" follow this form: volume number, H, page number; thus, for example, 4H165 refers to volume 4, page 165. Exhibits introduced in evidence before the Commission are designated CE and a number; CE399, for example, refers to the Commission's 399th exhibit. References to the "Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy" (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1964) follow this form: R, page number; R150, for example indicates page 150 of the Report. Most references to the Commission's unpublished files deposited in the National Archives follow this form: CD, number: page number; CD5:260, for example, indicates page 260 of Commission Document 5. * * * * * * * 1 Assassination: The Official Case As stated in its Report, one of the Warren Commission's main objectives was "to identify the person or persons responsible for both the assassination of President Kennedy and the killing of Oswald through an examination of the evidence" (Rxiv). Accordingly, the Commission produced one person whom it claimed to be solely responsible for the assassination: Lee Harvey Oswald (R18-23). Because the scope of the present study is limited to Oswald's role in the shooting, it is vital that we first understand the foundations for the Commission's conclusion that Oswald was guilty. In this chapter I will deal solely with the evidence that is alleged to prove Oswald's guilt, as presented in the Report. I will make no attempt to criticize the selection of evidence, but rather will take the final report at face value, probing its logic and structure so that it can be judged whether the determination of Oswald's guilt is warranted by the "facts" set forth. The first and most vital step in determining who shot at the President involved ascertaining the location(s) and weapon(s) from which the shots came. In a chapter entitled "The Shots From the Texas School Book Depository," the Commission "analyzes the evidence and sets forth its conclusions concerning the source, effect, number and timing of the shots that killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally" (R61). {The Scene} The scene of the assassination was Dealey Plaza, the so-called heart of Dallas, made up of three streets that converge at a railroad overpass. At the opposite side of the plaza are several buildings, many city owned. Along each side leading to the underpass are grassy banks adorned with shrubbery and masonry structures. Two grassy plots separate the three streets--Elm, Main, and Commerce--all of which intersect with Houston at the head of the plaza. The shooting occurred as the Presidential limousine cruised down Elm Street toward the underpass. One of the major conclusions of the Commission is that the shots "were fired from the sixth floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository" (R18), a book warehouse located on the northwest corner of Elm and Houston. (Oswald was employed in this building.) Several factors influenced this conclusion. The Report first calls upon the witnesses who indicated in some way that the shots originated from this source. It refers to two spectators who claimed to see "a rifle being fired" from the Depository window, two others who "saw a rifle in this window immediately after the assassination," and "three employees of the Depository, observing the parade from the fifth floor," who "heard the shots fired from the floor immediately above them" (R61). {The Limousine} Discussed next is the presidential automobile (R76-77). On the night of the assassination, Secret Service agents found two relatively large bullet fragments in the front seat of the car--one consisting of the nose portion of a bullet, the other a section of the base portion. An examination of the limousine on November 23 by FBI agents disclosed three very small lead particles on the rug beneath the left jump seat, which had been occupied by Mrs. Connally, and a small lead residue on the inside surface of the windshield, with a corresponding series of cracks on the outer surface. All of the metallic pieces were compared by spectrographic analysis by the FBI and "found to be similar in metallic composition, but it was not possible to determine whether two or more of the fragments came from the same bullet." The physical characteristics of the windshield damage indicated that it was struck on the inside surface from behind, by a bullet fragment traveling at "fairly high velocity." {Ballistics} In a crime involving firearms, the ballistics evidence is always of vital importance. This was especially true of the ballistics evidence adduced by the Commission relating to the President's murder. As used in the Report, this evidence seems to have a clarifying effect, bringing together loose ends and creating a circumstantial but superficially persuasive case. The relevant discussion is summarized in the Report as follows, based on unanimous expert testimony: The nearly whole bullet found on Governor Connally's stretcher at Parkland Memorial Hospital [the President and the Governor were rushed to this hospital after the shooting] and the two bullet fragments found on the front seat of the Presidential limousine were fired from the 6.5- millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor of the Depository Building to the exclusion of all other weapons. The three used cartridge cases found near the window on the sixth floor at the southeast corner of the building were fired from the same rifle which fired the above-described bullet and fragments, to the exclusion of all other weapons. (R18) Here the Commission has related a rifle and three spent cartridge cases found at the scene of the crime to a bullet found in a location presumably occupied by Governor Connally as well as to fragments found in the car in which both victims rode. The circumstantial aspect of the ballistics evidence presented by the Commission is this: it does not directly relate the weapon to a specific shooter nor the bullet specimens to a specific victim's body. {Autopsy} An autopsy is a central piece of evidence in violent or unnatural death. In the case of death by gunshot wounds, an autopsy can reveal a wealth of information, indicating the type(s) of ammunition used by the assailant(s), as well as the general relationship of the gun to the victim's body. Bullets or fragments found in the body can sometimes conclusively establish the specific weapon used in the crime. The medical evidence used by the Commission emanated from (a) the doctors who observed the President's and the Governor's wounds at Parkland Hospital, (b) the autopsy on the President performed at the Bethesda Naval Hospital, Maryland, on the night of the assassination, (c) the clothing worn by the two victims, and (d) ballistics tests conducted with the Carcano found in the Depository and ammunition of the same type as that found in the hospital and the car. From this information the Commission drew the following conclusions: The nature of the bullet wounds suffered by President Kennedy and Governor Connally and the location of the car at the time of the shots establish that the bullets were fired from above and behind the Presidential limousine, striking the President and the Governor as follows: (1) President Kennedy was first struck by a bullet which entered at the back of his neck and exited through the lower front portion of his neck, causing a wound which would not necessarily have been lethal. The President was struck a second time by a bullet which entered the right-rear portion of his head, causing a massive and fatal wound. (2) Governor Connally was struck by a bullet which entered on the right side of his back and travelled downward through the right side of his chest, exiting below his right nipple. This bullet then passed through his right wrist and entered his left thigh where it caused a superficial wound. (R18-19) For each set of wounds, the Report cites ballistics tests in support of the notion that the injuries observed were consistent with bullets fired from the Carcano (R87, 91, 94-95). In two instances it is asserted that the tests further indicated that the wounds could have been produced by the bullet specimens traceable to the {specific} Carcano found in the Depository, as opposed to merely being consistent with a {similar} rifle firing similar ammunition (R87, 95). {The Trajectory} "The trajectory" is the next topic of discussion in the Report, which says: " . . . to insure that all data were consistent with the shots having been fired from the sixth floor window, the Commission requested additional investigation, including analysis of motion picture films of the assassination and on-site tests" (R96). The films referred to by the Commission were those taken of the assassination by spectators Abraham Zapruder, Orville Nix, and Mary Muchmore. Only Zapruder's film, taken from the President's side of the street, provided a photographic record of the entire shooting. (Zapruder's position is shown in the sketch of Dealey Plaza.) Motion picture footage is composed of a series of still pictures called "frames" taken in extremely rapid succession which, when projected at approximately the same speed of exposure, create the illusion of motion. The frames of the Zapruder film were numbered by the FBI for convenient reference, and it is not until frame 130 that the President's car appears in the film. From that point on, this is basically what we see in terms of frames: The car continues down Elm for a brief period, gradually approaching a road sign that loomed in Zapruder's view. At frame 210, President Kennedy goes out of view behind this sign. Governor Connally, also temporarily blocked from Zapruder's sight, first reappears in frame 222. At 225 the President comes into view again, and he has obviously been wounded, for his face has a grimace and his hands are rising toward his chin. Within about ten frames, the Governor is struck; he manifests a violent reaction. In the succeeding frames we see Mrs. Kennedy reach over to help her husband, her attention temporarily diverted by Connally, who is screaming. Finally, at frame 313, the President is struck in the head, as can be clearly seen by the great rupturing of skull and brain tissues. Mrs. Kennedy scrambles frantically onto the trunk of the limousine and is forced back into her seat by a Secret Service agent who had run to the car from the follow-up vehicle. Subsequent to the head shot, the limousine accelerated in its approach toward the underpass. Once the car is out of view, the film stops. The Nix and Muchmore films depict sequences immediately before, during, and after the head shot. Examination of Zapruder's camera by the FBI established that an average of 18.3 film frames was exposed during each second of operation; thus the timing of certain events could be calculated by allowing 1/18.3 seconds for the action depicted from one frame to the next. Tests of the "assassin's" rifle disclosed that at least 2.3 seconds (or 41-42 film frames) were required between shots (R97). The on-site tests were conducted by the FBI and Secret Service in Dealey Plaza on May 24, 1964. A car simulating the Presidential limousine was driven down Elm Street, as depicted in the various assassination films, with stand-ins occupying the general positions of the President and the Governor. An agent situated in the sixth-floor window tracked the car through the telescopic sight on the Carcano as the assassin allegedly did on November 22. Films depicting the "assassin's view" were made through the rifle scope (R97). During these tests it was ascertained that the foliage of a live oak tree would have blocked a sixth-floor view of the President during his span of travel corresponding to frames 166 through 210. An opening among the leaves permitted viewing the President's back at frame 186, for a duration of about 1/18 second (R98). The Commission concluded that the first shot to wound the President in the neck occurred between frames 210 to 225, largely because (a) a sixth-floor gunman could not have shot at the President for a substantial time prior to 210 because of the tree, and (b) the President seems to show an obvious reaction to his neck wounds at 225. Exact determination of the time of impact was prevented because Mr. Kennedy was blocked from Zapruder's view by a road sign from 210 to 224 (R98, 105). The Report next argues that the trajectory from the sixth-floor window strongly indicated that a bullet exiting from the President's throat and traveling at a substantial velocity would not have missed both the car and its occupants. No damage to the limousine was found consistent with the impact of such a missile. "Since [the bullet] did not hit the automobile, [FBI expert] Frazier testified that it probably struck Governor Connally," says the Report, adding, "The relative positions of President Kennedy and Governor Connally at the time when the President was struck in the neck confirm that the same bullet probably passed through both men" (R105). The evidence allegedly supporting this double-hit theory is then discussed, and the Commission concludes that one bullet probably was responsible for all the nonfatal wounds to the two victims (R19). {Number of Shots} "The weight of the evidence indicates that there were three shots fired," declares the Report (R19). This conclusion is based not so much on witness recollections as on the physical evidence at the scene--namely, the presence of three cartridge cases (R110-11). The Commission reasons that, because (a) one shot passed through the President's neck and probably went on to wound the Governor, (b) a subsequent shot penetrated the President's head, (c) no other shot struck the car, and (d) three shots were fired, "it follows that one shot probably missed the car and its occupants. The evidence is inconclusive as to whether it was the first, second, or third shot which missed" (R111). {Time Span} Determination of the time span of the shots, according to the Commission's theory, is dependent on which of the three shots missed. As calculated by use of the Zapruder film, the time span from the first shot to wound the President to the one that killed him was 4.8 to 5.6 seconds. Had the missed shot occurred between these two, says the Report, all the shots could still have been fired from the Carcano, which required at least 2.3 seconds (or 42 frames) between successive shots. If the first or third shots missed, the time span grows to at least 7.1 to 7.9 seconds for the three shots. Thus, the Commission concluded that the shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally were fired from the sixth-floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository Building. Two bullets probably caused all the wounds suffered by President Kennedy and Governor Connally. Since the preponderance of the evidence indicated that three shots were fired, the Commission concluded that one shot probably missed the Presidential limousine and its occupants, and that the three shots were fired in a time period ranging from approximately 4.8 to in excess of 7 seconds. (R117) {The Assassin} In a preface to its discussion of the evidence relevant to the identity of President Kennedy's assassin, the Report adds a new conclusion to those of its preceding chapter. Here it asserts not only that it has established the source of the shots as the specific Depository window, but also "that the weapon which fired [the] bullets was a Mannlicher-Carcano 6.5-millimeter Italian rifle bearing the serial number C2766" (R118). Although it had previously traced the found bullet specimens to this rifle discovered in the Depository, the Report never specifically concluded that these bullets were responsible for the wounds. Making such an assertion at this point provided the premise for associating the owner of that rifle with the murder. Who owned the rifle? The Report announces: Having reviewed the evidence that (1) Lee Harvey Oswald purchased the rifle used in the assassination [although the name under which the rifle was ordered was "A. Hidell," the order forms were in Oswald's handwriting (R118-119)], (2) Oswald's palmprint was on the rifle in a position which shows that he had handled it while it was disassembled, (3) fibers found on the rifle most probably came from the shirt Oswald was wearing on the day of the assassination [although the Commission's expert felt that these fibers had been picked up "in the recent past," he could not say definitely how long they had adhered to the rifle (R125)]. The Commission never considered the possibility that they were deposited on the rifle subsequent to Oswald's arrest.], (4) a photograph taken in the yard of Oswald's apartment shows him holding this rifle [the photographic expert could render no opinion as to whether the rifle shown in these pictures was the C2766 and not another rifle of the same configuration (R127)], and (5) the rifle was kept among Oswald's possessions from the time of its purchase until the day of the assassination [The Commission cites no evidence that the specific C2766 rifle was in Oswald's possession.], the Commission concluded that the rifle used to assassinate President Kennedy and wound Governor Connally was owned and possessed by Lee Harvey Oswald. (R129) At this point the Commission has related Oswald to the President's murder in two ways. It has posited the source of the shots at a location accessible to Oswald, and has named as the assassination weapon a rifle purchased and possibly possessed by Oswald. This, although circumstantial, obviously laid the foundation for the ultimate conclusion that Oswald was the assassin. Now his activities on the day of the shooting had to be considered in light of this charge. In a section headed "The Rifle in the Building," the Report takes up the problem of how the C2766 rifle was brought into the Depository. The search for an answer was not difficult for the Commission. Between Thursday night, November 21, and Friday morning, Oswald had engaged in what could have been construed as incriminating behavior. As the Report explains, During October and November of 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald lived in a roominghouse in Dallas while his wife and children lived in Irving, at the home of Ruth Paine, approximately 15 miles from Oswald's place of work at the . . . Depository. Oswald travelled between Dallas and Irving on weekends in a car driven by a neighbor of the Paine's, Buell Wesley Frazier, who also worked at the Depository. Oswald generally would go to Irving on Friday afternoon and return to Dallas Monday morning. (R129) On Thursday, November 21, Oswald asked Frazier whether he could ride home with him to Irving that afternoon, saying that he had to pick up some curtain rods for his apartment. The Report would lead us to believe that Oswald's Irving visit on the day prior to the assassination was a departure from his normal schedule. Adding further suspicion to this visit, the Report asserts "It would appear, however, that obtaining curtain rods was not the purpose of Oswald's trip to Irving on November 21," noting that Oswald's apartment, according to his landlady, did not need curtains or rods, and no curtain rods were discovered in the Depository after the assassination (R130). By seeming to disprove Oswald's excuse for the weekday trip to Irving, the Report establishes a basis for more sinister explanations; they hinge on the assumption that the rifle was stored in the Paine garage. Asserting that Oswald had the opportunity to enter the garage Thursday night without being detected, the Report emphasizes that, by the afternoon of November 22 the rifle was missing from "its accustomed place." The implication is that Oswald removed it (R130-31). To top off this progression of hypotheses is the fact that Oswald carried a "long and bulky package" to work on the morning of the assassination. As he walked to Frazier's house for a ride to the Depository, Frazier's sister, Linnie May Randle, saw him carrying a package that she estimated to be about 28 inches long and 8 inches wide. Frazier was the next to see the brown paper container, as he got into the car and again as he and Oswald walked toward the Depository after parking in a nearby lot. He thought the package was around 2 feet long and 5 or 6 inches wide, recalling that Oswald held it cupped in his right hand with the upper end wedged in his right armpit. The Report expresses its apparent exasperation that both Frazier's and Mrs. Randle's estimates and descriptions were of a package shorter than the longest component of the Carcano which, when disassembled, is 34.8 inches in length. It asserts that "Mrs. Randle saw the bag fleetingly" and quotes Frazier as saying that he paid it little attention, and concludes that the two "are mistaken as to the length of the bag" (R131-34). Had they not been "mistaken" in their recollections, Oswald's package could not have contained the rifle. "A handmade bag of wrapping paper and tape was found in the southeast corner of the sixth floor along-side the window from which the shots were fired (R134)," says the Report, citing scientific evidence that this bag was (a) made from materials obtained in the Depository's shipping room, and (b) handled by Oswald so that he left a palmprint and fingerprint on it. After connecting this sack with the "assassin's" window and Oswald, the Report attempts a further connection with the rifle by asserting that some fibers found inside the bag matched some of those which composed the blanket in which the rifle was allegedly stored, suggesting that perhaps the rifle "picked up the fibers from the blanket and transferred them to the paper bag." This feeble evidence is all the Commission could produce to suggest a connection between the rifle and the bag. A Commission staff lawyer, Wesley Liebeler, called it "very thin."[1] Likewise, the Commission asserts that Oswald {constructed} this bag, while it presents evidence only that he {handled} it (R134-37). One may indeed express concern that, on the basis of the above- cited evidence, the Commission asserts, "The preponderance of the evidence supports the conclusions that" Oswald: "(1) told the curtain rod story to Frazier to explain both the return to Irving on a Thursday and the obvious bulk of the package he intended to bring to work the next day," even though no explanation other than the transporting of the rifle was considered by the Commission (e.g., that perhaps Oswald told the "curtain rod story" to Frazier to cover a personal reason such as making up with his wife, with whom he had quarreled earlier that week, bringing a large package the following morning to substantiate the false excuse); "(2) took paper and tape from the wrapping bench of the Depository and fashioned a bag large enough to carry the disassembled rifle," although no evidence is offered that Oswald ever constructed the bag; "(3) removed the rifle from the Paine's garage on Thursday evening," citing no evidence that it might not have been someone other than Oswald who removed the rifle, if it was ever there at all; "(4) carried the rifle into the Depository Building, concealed in the bag," even though, to make this assertion, it had to reject the stories of the only witnesses who saw the package, and could produce no direct evidence that the rifle had been in the bag; and "(5) left the bag alongside the window from which the shots were fired," offering no substantiation that it was Oswald who left the bag in this position (R137). The Commission's conclusion from this evidence is that "Oswald carried [his] rifle into the Depository building on the morning of November 22, 1963" (R19), although the prefabrication of the bag demands premeditation of the murder, and the presence of the bag by the "assassin's" window implies, according to the Report, that Oswald brought the rifle to this window. Because its logic was faulty, the Commission's interpretation of "the preponderance of the evidence" loses substantial foundation. Not one of the five above-quoted subconclusions relating to the rifle in the building is confirmed by evidence; a conclusive determination is precluded by insufficient evidence. The most the Commission could fairly have asserted from the facts presented is that, although there was no conclusive evidence that Oswald brought his rifle to the Depository, there was likewise no conclusive disproof, that is, the state of the evidence could not dictate a reliable conclusion. As the Commission edged toward its ultimate conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin, it reached a comfortable position in having concluded that Oswald brought his rifle to the Depository. It next had to consider the question of Oswald's presence at the right window at the right time. Assured that Oswald "worked principally on the first and sixth floors of the building," we learn that "the Commission evaluated the physical evidence found near the window after the assassination and the testimony of eyewitnesses in deciding whether Lee Harvey Oswald was present at this window at the time of the assassination" (R137). The Report presents only one form of "physical evidence"-- fingerprints--asserting that a total of four of Oswald's prints were left on two boxes near the window and on the paper sack found in that area. In evaluating the significance of this evidence, the Commission considered the possibility that Oswald handled these cartons as part of his normal duties. . . . Although a person could handle a carton and not leave identifiable prints, none of these employees [who might have handled the cartons] except Oswald left identifiable prints on the cartons. This finding, in addition to the freshness of one of the prints . . . led the Commission to attach some probative value to the fingerprint and palmprint identifications in reaching the conclusion that Oswald was present at the window from which the shots were fired, although the prints do not establish the exact time he was there. (R141) The Report's reasoning is that the presence of Oswald's prints on objects present at the sixth-floor window is probative evidence of his presence at this window at some time. Liebeler felt that this evidence "seems to have very little significance indeed," and pointed out that the absence of other employees' fingerprints "does not help to convince me that [Oswald] moved [the boxes] in connection with the assassination. It shows the opposite just as well."[2] Both Liebeler and the Report avoid the logical, and the only precise, meaning of these fingerprint data: the presence of Oswald's prints on the cartons and the bag means {only} that he handled them; it does not disclose {when} or {where}. Oswald {could} have touched these objects on the first floor of the Depository prior to the time when they were moved to their location by the "assassin's" window, perhaps by another person. Thus, this evidence does not connect Oswald with the source of the shots and is meaningless, because Oswald normally handled such cartons in the building as part of his work. "Additional testimony linking Oswald with the point from which the shots were fired was provided by the testimony of Charles Givens," the Report continues, "who was the last known employee to see Oswald inside the building prior to the assassination." According to the Report, Givens saw Oswald walking {away} from the southeast corner of the sixth floor at 11:55, 35 minutes before the shooting (R143). That Oswald was seen where he normally worked such a substantial amount of the time prior to the shots connects him with nothing except his expected routine. That "none of the Depository employees is known to have seen Oswald again until after the shooting," if true, is likewise of little significance, especially since most of the employees had left the building to view the motorcade. In its next section relevant to the discussion of "Oswald at Window," the Report--best expressed in colloquial terms--"pulls a fast one." This section is entitled "Eyewitness Identification of Assassin," but contains {no} identification accepted by the Commission (R143-49). The first eyewitness mentioned is Howard Brennan who, 120 feet from the window, said he saw a man fire at the President. "During the evening of November 22, Brennan identified Oswald as the person in the [police] lineup who bore the closest resemblance to the man in the window but said he was unable to make a positive identification." Prior to this lineup, Brennan had seen Oswald's picture on television. In the months before his Warren Commission testimony, Brennan underwent some serious changes of heart. A month after the assassination he was suddenly positive that the man he saw was Oswald. Three weeks later, he was again unable to make a positive identification. In two months, when he appeared before the Commission, he was again ready to swear that the man was Oswald, claiming to have been capable of such an identification all along. Brennan's vacillation on the crucial matter of identifying Oswald renders all of his varying statements unworthy of credence. The Report recognized the worthlessness of Brennan's after-the-fact identification, although it managed to use his testimony for the most it could yield: Although the record indicates that Brennan was an accurate observer, he declined to make a positive identification of Oswald when he first saw him in the police lineup. {The Commission therefore, does not base its conclusion concerning the identity of the assassin on Brennan's subsequent certain identification of Lee Harvey Oswald as the man he saw fire the rifle}. . . . The Commission is satisfied that . . . Brennan saw a man in the window who closely resembled . . . Oswald. (R145-46; emphasis added) If the Commission did not base its conclusion as to Oswald's presence at the window on Brennan's identification, upon whose "eyewitness identification of assassin" did it rely? Under this section it presents three additional witnesses who saw a man in the window, all of whom gave sketchy descriptions, and {none} of whom were able to identify the man. Thus, the Report, having rejected Brennan's story, could offer {no} eyewitness capable of identifying the assassin. In pulling its "fast one," the Commission sticks to its justified rejection of Brennan's identification for only 11 pages for, when the conclusion to the "Oswald at Window" section is drawn, his incredible identification is suddenly accepted. Here the Commission concludes "that Oswald, at the time of the assassination, was present at the window from which the shots were fired" on the basis of findings stipulated above. One of these "findings" involves "an eyewitness to the shooting" who "identified Oswald in a lineup as the man most nearly resembling the man he saw and later identified Oswald as the man he observed" (R156). Through this double standard the Report manifests itself to be no more credible than Brennan. "In considering whether Oswald was at the southeast corner window at the time the shots were fired, the Commission . . . reviewed the testimony of witnesses who saw Oswald in the building within minutes after the assassination" (R149). Immediately after the shots, Patrolman M. L. Baker, riding a motorcycle in the procession, drove to a point near the front entrance of the Depository, entered the building, and sought assistance in reaching the roof, for he "had it in mind that the shots came from the top of this building." He met manager Roy Truly, and the two ran up the steps toward the roof. Baker stopped on the second floor and saw Oswald entering the lunchroom there. This encounter in the lunchroom presented a problem to the Commission: In an effort to determine whether Oswald could have descended to the lunchroom from the sixth floor by the time Baker and Truly arrived Commission counsel asked Baker and Truly to repeat their movements from the time of the shot until Baker came upon Oswald in the lunchroom. . . . On the first test, the elapsed time between the simulated first shot and Baker's arrival on the second-floor stair landing was one minute and 30 seconds. The second test run required one minute and 15 seconds. A test was also conducted to determine the time required to walk from the southeast corner of the sixth floor to the second-floor lunchroom by stairway [Oswald could not have used the elevator.]. . . . The first test, run at normal walking pace, required one minute, 18 seconds; the second test, at a "fast walk" took one minute, 14 seconds. (R152) Thus, as presented in the Report, these tests could prove that Oswald was {not} at the sixth-floor window, for had his time of descent been one minute, 18 seconds and Baker's time of ascent been one minute, {14} seconds, Oswald would have arrived at the lunchroom {after} Baker, which was not the case on November 22. Recognizing this, the Report assures us that the reconstruction of Baker's movements was invalid in that it failed to simulate actions that would have lengthened Baker's time. Thus, it is able to conclude "that Oswald could have fired the shots and still have been present in the second floor lunchroom when seen by Baker and Truly" (R152-53). Here the Commission is playing games. It tells us that its reconstructions could support or destroy the assumption of Oswald's presence at the window. This point is crucial in determining the identity of the assassin, for it could potentially have provided Oswald with an alibi. Instead of conducting the tests properly, the Commission tells us that it neglected to simulate some of Baker's actions, and on the premise that its test was invalid, draws a conclusion incriminating Oswald. One of the factors mentioned by the Report as influencing the conclusion that Oswald was at the window is that his actions after the assassination "are consistent with" his having been there. Because the premise of an invalid reconstruction makes debatable any inferences drawn from it, and because Oswald's actions after the shooting were consistent with his having been almost {anywhere} in the building, this aspect of the Report's conclusion is a {non sequitur}. The Report ultimately attempts to combine its four logically deficient arguments in support of the conclusion that Oswald was present during the assassination at the window from which the shots were fired. The facts presented are not sufficient to support such a conclusion. The fingerprint evidence does not place Oswald at that window, for the objects on which he left prints were mobile and therefore may have been in a location other than the window when he handled them. That someone saw Oswald near this area 35 minutes before the shots does not mean he was there during the shots, nor does the alleged fact that no one else saw Oswald eliminate the possibility of his having been elsewhere. The one witness who claimed to have seen Oswald in the window could do so only at intervals, rendering his story incredible. Oswald's actions after the assassination do not place him at any specific location during the shots and might even preclude his having been at the window. The only fair conclusion from the facts presented is that there is no evidence that Oswald was at the window at the time of the assassination. At this point in the development of the Commission's case, Oswald "officially" possessed the murder weapon, brought it to the Depository on the day of the assassination, and was present at the "assassin's" window during the shots. There would seem to be only one additional consideration relevant to the proof of his guilt: his capability with a rifle. This issue is addressed only after several unrelated matters are considered. The Commission's conclusion that Oswald was the assassin is not based on a constant set of considerations. The chapter "The Assassin" draws its conclusion from eight factors (R195). The chapter "Summary and Conclusions" omits two of these factors and adds another. The eight-part conclusion states that: On the basis of the evidence reviewed in this chapter the Commission has found that Lee Harvey Oswald (1) owned and possessed the rifle used to kill President Kennedy and wound Governor Connally, (2) brought this rifle to the Depository Building on the morning of the assassination, (3) was present, at the time of the assassination, at the window from which the shots were fired, (4) killed Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit in an apparent attempt to escape, (5) resisted arrest by drawing a fully loaded pistol and attempting to shoot another police officer, (6) lied to the police after his arrest concerning important substantive matters, (7) attempted, in April 1963, to kill Major General Edwin A. Walker, and (8) possessed the capability with a rifle which would have enabled him to commit the assassination. On the basis of these findings the Commission has concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy. (R195) Obviously, considerations 4, 5, 6, and 7 do not relate to the question of whether Oswald did or did not pull the trigger of the gun that killed the President and wounded the Governor. In the alternate version of the Commission's conclusions, 4 and 5 are omitted from the factors upon which the guilty "verdict" is based. Added in this section is the consideration that the Mannlicher- Carcano and the paper sack were found on the sixth floor subsequent to the shooting (R19-20). "In deciding whether Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots . . .," says the Report, "the Commission considered whether Oswald, using his own rifle, possessed the capability to hit his target with two out of three shots under the conditions described in Chapter III [concerning the source of the shots]" (R189). The Commission's previous conclusions leave little room for an assertion other than one indicating that Oswald had the capability to fire the assassination shots. If he could not have done this from lack of sufficient skill, the other factors seeming to relate him to the assassination will have to be accounted for by some other explanation. First considered under this section is the nature of the shots (R189-91). Several experts are quoted as saying that the shots, fired at ranges of 177 to 266 feet and employing a four-power scope, were "not . . . particularly difficult" and "very easy." However, in no case did the experts take into account the time element involved in the assassination shots. Without this consideration, Wesley Liebeler could not understand the basis for any conclusion on the nature of the shots. He wrote: The section on the nature of the shots deals basically with the range and the effect of a telescopic sight. Several experts conclude that the shots were easy. There is, however, no consideration given here to the time allowed for the shots. I do not see how someone can conclude that a shot is easy or hard unless he knows something about how long the firer has to shoot, i.e., how much time is allotted for the shots.[3] Liebeler's criticism had no effect on the final report, which ignores the time question in evaluating the nature of the shots. The evaluation of the shots as "easy" should therefore be considered void and all inferences based on it at best questionable. In considering "Oswald's Marine Training," the Report deceives its readers by use of common and frequent {non sequiturs}. First it includes, as relevant to Oswald's {rifle} capability, his training in the use of weapons other than rifles, such as pistols and shotguns. Of this Liebeler said bluntly, "That is completely irrevelant to the question of his ability to fire a rifle. . . . It is, furthermore, prejudicial to some extent."[4] The Report then reveals with total dispassion Oswald's official Marine Corps evaluation based on firing tests: when first tested in the Marines, Oswald was "a fairly good shot"; on the basis of his last recorded test he was a {"rather poor shot."} A Marine marksmanship expert who had absolutely no association with Oswald is next quoted as offering various excuses for the "poor shot" rating, including bad weather and lack of motivation. No substantiation in any form is put forth to buttress these "excuses." As the record presented in the Report stands, Oswald left the Marines a "fairly poor shot." However, the unqualified use of the expert's unsubstantiated hypothesizing gives the impression that Oswald was not such a "poor shot." On the basis of this questionable premise, the Report quotes more experts who, in meaningless comparisons, contradicted the official evaluation of Oswald's performance with a rifle and called him "a good to excellent shot" (R191-92). One may indeed question the state of our national "defense" when "rather poor shots" from the Marines are considered "excellent" marksmen. In discussing "Oswald's Rifle Practice Outside the Marines" (R192-93), the Report cites a total of 11 instances in which Oswald could be physically associated with a firearm. Most of these instances involved hunting trips, six of which took place in the Soviet Union. However, as Liebeler pointed out in his critical memorandum, Oswald used a shotgun when hunting in Russia. Liebeler's concern can be sensed in his question "Under what theory do we include activities concerning a {shotgun} under a heading relating to {rifle} practice, and then presume not to advise the reader of that?"[5] The latest time the Report places a weapon in Oswald's hands is May 1963, when his wife, Marina, said he practiced operating the bolt and looking through the scope {on a screened porch at night}. Liebeler thought "the support for that proposition is thin indeed," adding that "Marina Oswald first testified that she did not know what he was doing out there and then she was clearly led into the only answer that gives any support to this proposition."[6] The Report evoked its own support, noting that the cartridge cases found in the Depository "had been previously loaded and ejected from the assassination rifle, which would indicate that Oswald practiced opening the bolt." Marks on these cases could not show that {Oswald,} to the exclusion of all other people, loaded and ejected the cases. In the end, the Commission was able to cite only two instances in which Oswald handled the Carcano, both based on Marina's tenuous assertions. It produced {no} evidence that Oswald ever fired his rifle. Despite this and the other major gaps in its arguments, the Report concludes that "Oswald's Marine training in marksmanship, his other rifle experience and his established familiarity with this particular weapon show that he possessed ample capability to commit the assassination" (R195). Because the Report offers no evidence to support it, this conclusion is necessarily dishonest. Liebeler cautioned the Commission on this point but was apparently ignored. He wrote: The statements concerning Oswald's practice with the assassination weapon are misleading. They tend to give the impression that he did more practicing than the record suggests he did. My recollection is that there is only one specific time when he might have practiced. We should be more precise in this area, because the Commission is going to have its work in this area examined very closely.[7] That a shooter can be only as good as the weapon he fires is a much-repeated expression. In fact, the proficiency of the shooter and the quality of his shooting apparatus combine to affect the outcome of the shot. To test the accuracy of the assassination rifle, the Commission did not put the weapon in the hands of one whose marksmanship was as "poor" as Oswald's and whose known practice prior to firing was virtually nil. Its test firers were all experts--men whose daily routines involved working with and shooting firearms. Liebeler, as a member of the Commission's investigatory staff, was one of the severest critics of the rifle tests. The following paragraphs, again from Liebeler's memorandum, provide a good analysis of those tests as represented in the Report: As I read through the section on rifle capability it appears that 15 different sets of three shots were fired by supposedly expert riflemen of the FBI and other places. According to my calculations those 15 sets of shots took a total of 93.8 seconds to be fired. The average of all 15 is a little over 6.2 seconds. Assuming that time calculated is commencing with the firing of the first shot, that means the average time it took to fire two remaining shots was about 6.2 seconds. That comes to about 3.1 seconds for each shot, not counting the time consumed by the actual firing, which would not be very much. I recall that Chapter Three said that the minimum time that had to elapse between shots was 2.25 seconds, which is pretty close to the one set of fast shots fired by Frazier of the FBI. The conclusion indicates that Oswald had the capability to fire 3 shots with two hits in from 4.8 to 5.6 seconds. Of the fifteen sets of three shots described above, only {three} were fired within 4.8 seconds. A total of five sets, including the three just mentioned, were fired within a total of 5.6 seconds. The conclusion at its most extreme states Oswald could fire faster than the Commission experts fired in 12 of their 15 tries and that in any event he could fire faster than the experts did in 10 out of their 15 tries. . . . The problems raised by the above analysis should be met at some point in the text of the Report. The figure of 2.25 as a minimum firing time for each shot is used throughout Chapter 3. The present discussion of rifle capability shows that expert riflemen could not fire the assassination weapon that fast. Only one of the experts managed to do so, and his shots, like those of the other FBI experts, were high and to the right of the target. The fact is that most of the experts were much more proficient with a rifle than Oswald could ever be expected to be, and the record indicates that fact.[8] Despite the obvious meaning of Liebeler's analysis, the rifle tests are used in the Report to buttress the notion that it was within Oswald's capability to fire the assassination shots (R195). The kindest thing that can be said of this one-sided presentation of the evidence was written by Liebeler himself: "To put it bluntly, that sort of selection from the record could seriously affect the integrity and credibility of the entire Report. . . . These conclusions will never be accepted by critical persons anyway."[9] The only possible conclusion warranted by the evidence set forth in the Report is that Oswald left the Marines a "rather poor shot" and, unless a major aspect of his life within a few months prior to the assassination has been so well concealed as not to emerge through the efforts of several investigative teams, he did not engage in any activities sufficient to improve his proficiency with his weapon to the extent of enabling him to murder the President and wound the Governor unaided. This is the official case, the development of the "proof" that Oswald, alone and unaided, committed the assassination. To avoid the detailed discussion required for a rebuttal, I have assumed that the source of the shots was as the Commission postulated--the sixth-floor window of the Depository, from "Oswald's rifle." This was as far as the Commission could go in relation to the question of Oswald's guilt. Obviously, the use of his rifle in the crime does not mean he fired it. The Commission offers, in essence, {no} evidence that Oswald brought his rifle to the Depository, {no} evidence that Oswald was present at the window during the shots, and {no} evidence that Oswald had the capability to have fired the shots. This is not to say that such evidence does not exist, but that none is presented in the Report. That, for the scope of this chapter's analysis, is significant. The Commission's conclusion that Oswald was the assassin is invalid because it is, from beginning to end, a {non sequitur}. This analysis of the derivation of that conclusion, based solely on the evidence presented in the Report, demonstrates that evidence to be without logical relationship, used by the Commission in total disregard of logic. The Report's continued fabrication of false premises from which are drawn invalid inferences is consistent with one salient factor: that the Commission evaluated the evidence relating to the assassin's identity on the presumption that Oswald alone was guilty. __________ [1] "Memorandum re Galley Proofs of Chapter IV of the Report," written on September 6, 1964, by Wesley J. Liebeler, p. 5. (Hereinafter referred to as Liebeler 9/6/64 Memorandum. This document is available from the National Archives.) [2] Ibid., p. 7. [3] Ibid., p. 20. [4] Ibid., p. 21 . [5] Ibid. [6] Ibid., p. 22. [7] Ibid., p. 21. [8] Ibid., p. 23. [9] Ibid., p. 25. [1] "Presumed Guilty, How & Why the W.C. Framed Lee Harvey Oswald" [3/11] * * * * * * * 2 Presumed Guilty: The Official Disposition The discussion in chapter 1 did not disprove the Commission's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated President Kennedy. It merely showed that, based on the evidence presented in the Report, Oswald's guilt was presumed, not established. The Commission argued a case that is logical only on the premise that Oswald alone was guilty. The official assurance is, as is to be expected, the opposite. In the Foreword to its Report, the Commission assures us that it "has functioned neither as a court presiding over an adversary proceeding nor as a prosecutor determined to prove a case, but as a fact finding agency committed to the ascertainment of the truth" (Rxiv). This is to say that neither innocence nor guilt was presumed from the outset of the inquiry, in effect stating that the Commission conducted a "chips-fall-where-they-may" investigation. At no time after a final bullet snuffed out the life of the young President did {any} agency conduct an investigation not based on the premise of Oswald's guilt. Despite the many noble assurances of impartiality, the fact remains that from the time when he was in police custody, Oswald was officially thought to be Kennedy's sole assassin. In violation of his every right and as a guarantee that virtually no citizen would think otherwise, the official belief of Oswald's guilt was shamefully offered to a public grieved by the violent death of its leader, and anxious to find and prosecute the perpetrator of the crime. {The Police Presumption} Two days after the assassination, the "New York Times" ran a banner headline that read, in part, "Police Say Prisoner is the Assassin," with a smaller--but likewise front-page--heading, "Evidence Against Oswald Described as Conclusive." The article quoted Captain Will Fritz of the Dallas Police Homicide Bureau as having said, "We're convinced beyond any doubt that he killed the President. . . . I think the case is cinched."[1] Other newspapers echoed the "Times" that day. The "Philadelphia Inquirer" reported: "Police on Saturday said they have an airtight case against pro-Castro Marxist Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin of President Kennedy."[2] On the front page of the "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" was the headline "Dallas Police Insist Evidence Proves Oswald Killed Kennedy." Dallas police said today that Lee Harvey Oswald . . . assassinated President John F. Kennedy and they have the evidence to prove it. . . . "The man killed President Kennedy. We are convinced without any doubt that he did the killing. There were no accomplices," [Captain] Fritz asserted. Police Chief Jesse E. Curry outlined this web of evidence that, he said, showed Oswald was the sniper.[3] The following day, November 25, was the occasion for yet another banner headline in the "Times." In one fell swoop, there was no longer any doubt; it was no longer just the Dallas police who were prematurely convinced of Oswald's guilt. "President's Assassin Shot to Death in Jail Corridor by a Dallas Citizen," the headline proclaimed. There was no room for such qualifiers as "alleged" or "accused." Yet, in this very issue, the "Times" included a strong editorial that criticized the police pronouncement of guilt: The Dallas authorities, abetted and encouraged by the newspaper, TV and radio press, trampled on every principle of justice in their handling of Lee Harvey Oswald. . . . The heinousness of the crime Oswald was alleged to have committed made it doubly important that there be no cloud over the establishment of his guilt. Yet--before any indictment had been returned or any evidence presented and in the face of continued denials by the prisoner--the chief of police and the district attorney pronounced Oswald guilty.[4] It is unfortunate that this proper condemnation applies equally to the source that issued it. Transcripts of various police interviews and press conferences over the weekend of the assassination (which confirm the above newspaper accounts) demonstrate that, in addition to forming a bias against Oswald through the press, the police made extensive use of the electronic media to spread their improper and premature conclusion. On Friday night, November 22, NBC-TV broadcast a press interview with District Attorney Henry Wade, whose comments included these: "I figure we have sufficient evidence to convict him [Oswald] . . . there's no one else but him" (24H751). The next day, Chief Curry, though he cautioned that the evidence was not yet "positive," said that he was convinced. In an interview carried by NBC, Curry asserted, "Personally, I think we have the right man" (24H754). In another interview broadcast by local station WFAA-TV, Curry was asked, "Is there any doubt in your mind, Chief, that Oswald is the man who killed the President?" His response was: "I think this is the man who killed the President" (24H764). In another interview that Saturday, Captain Fritz made the absolute statement: There is only one thing that I can tell you without going into the evidence before first talking to the District Attorney. I can tell you that this case is cinched--that this man killed the President. There's no question in my mind about it. . . . I don't want to get into the evidence. I just want to tell you that we are convinced beyond any doubt that he did the killing. (24H787) By November 24, Curry's remarks became much stronger. Local station KRLD-TV aired this remark: "This is the man, we are sure, that murdered the patrolman and murdered--assassinated the President" (24H772). Fritz stuck to his earlier conviction that Oswald was the assassin (24H788). Now D.A. Henry Wade joined in pronouncing the verdict before trial or indictment: WADE: I would say that without any doubt he's the killer--the law says beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty which I--there's no question that he was the killer of President Kennedy. Q. That case is closed in your mind? WADE: As far as Oswald is concerned yes. (24H823) {The FBI Presumption} That same day the FBI announced, contrary to the police assertion, that the case was still open and that its investigation, begun the day of the shooting, would continue.[5] This continued investigation climaxed after a duration just short of three weeks. In a series of contrived news "leaks," the Bureau added to the propaganda campaign started by the Dallas Police. The decision of the FBI and the Commission was to keep the first FBI Summary Report on the assassination secret.[6] However, even prior to the completion of this report, the newspapers carried frequent "leaked" stories telling in advance what the report would contain. The Commission met in executive session on December 5, 1963, and questioned Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach about these leaks. Katzenbach spoke bluntly. FBI Director Hoover, he related, denied that the leaks originated within the FBI, but "I say with candor to this committee, I can't think of anybody else it could have come from, because I don't know of anybody else that knew that information."[7] On December 9, Katzenbach transmitted the completed FBI Report to the Commission. In his covering letter of that date, he again expressed the Justice Department's desire to keep the Report secret, although he felt that "the Commission should consider releasing--or allowing the Department of Justice to release--a short press statement which would briefly make the following points." Katzenbach wanted the Commission to assure the public that the FBI had turned up no evidence of conspiracy and that "the FBI report through scientific examination of evidence, testimony and intensive investigation, establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald shot President Kennedy."[8] Although the Commission released no such statement, the conclusions of which the Justice Department felt the public should be informed were widely disseminated by the press, through leaks which, according to Katzenbach, must have originated with the FBI. On December 1, the "Washington Post" in a major article told its readers that "all the police agencies with a hand in the investigation . . . insist that [the case against Oswald] is an unshakable one."[9] "Time" magazine, in the week before the FBI report was forwarded to the Commission, said of the report, "it will indicate that Oswald, acting in his own lunatic loneliness, was indeed the President's assassin."[10] "Newsweek" reported that "the report holds to the central conclusion that Federal and local probers had long since reached: that Oswald was the assassin."[11] The "New York Times" was privy to the most specific leak concerning the FBI report. On December 10 it ran a front-page story headed "Oswald Assassin Beyond a Doubt, FBI Concludes." This article, by Joseph Loftus, began as follows: A Federal Bureau of Investigation report went to a special Presidential commission today and named Lee H. Oswald as the assassin of President Kennedy. The Report is known to emphasize that Oswald was beyond doubt the assassin and that he acted alone. . . . The Department of Justice, declining all comment on the content of the report, announced only that on instruction of President Johnson the report was sent directly to the special Commission.[12] All of these news stories, especially that which appeared in the "Times," accurately reflect those findings of the FBI report which Katzenbach felt should be made public. The FBI has long claimed that it does not draw conclusions in its reports. The FBI report on the assassination disproves this one of many FBI myths. This report {does} draw conclusions, as the press reported. In the preface to this once-secret report (released in 1965), the FBI stated: Part I briefly relates the assassination of the President and the identification of Oswald as his slayer. Part II sets forth the evidence conclusively showing that Oswald did assassinate the President. (CD 1) The Commission, in secret executive sessions, expressed its exasperation at the leak of the FBI report. On December 16, Chairman Warren stated: CHAIRMAN: Well, gentlemen, to be very frank about it, I have read that report two or three times and I have not seen anything in there yet that has not been in the press. SEN. RUSSELL: I couldn't agree with that more. I have read it through once very carefully, and I went through it again at places I had marked, and practically everything in there has come out in the press at one time or another, a bit here and a bit there.[13] It should be noted here that even a casual reading of this FBI report and its sequel, the "Supplemental Report" dated January 13, 1964, discloses that neither establishes Oswald's guilt, nor even adequately accounts for all the known facts of the assassination. In neither report is there mention of or accounting for the President's anterior neck wound which, by the night of November 22, was public knowledge around the world. The Supplemental Report, in attempting to associate Oswald with the crime, asserts that a full-jacketed bullet traveling at approximately 2,000 feet per second stopped short after penetrating "less than a finger length" of the President's back. One need not be an expert to discern that this is an impossible event, and indeed later tests confirmed that seventy-two inches of flesh were insufficient to stop such a bullet (5H78). The Commission members themselves, in private, grumbled about the unsatisfactory nature of the FBI report, as the following passage from the December 16 Executive Session reveals: MR. MC CLOY: . . . The grammar is bad and you can see they did not polish it all up. It does leave you some loopholes in this thing but I think you have to realize they put this thing together very fast. REP. BOGGS: There's nothing in there about Governor Connally. CHAIRMAN: No. SEN. COOPER: And whether or not they found any bullets in him. MR. MC CLOY: This bullet business leaves me confused. CHAIRMAN: It's totally inconclusive.[14] Thus, by January 1964, the American public had been assured by both the Dallas Police and the FBI that Oswald was the assassin beyond all doubt. For those who had not taken the time to probe the evidence, who were not aware of its inadequacies and limitations, such a conclusion was easy to accept. {The Commission Presumption} Today there can be no doubt that, despite their assurances of impartiality, the Commission and its staff consciously planned and executed their work under the presumption that Oswald was guilty. The once-secret working papers of the Commission explicitly reveal the prejudice of the entire investigation. General Counsel Rankin did not organize a staff of lawyers under him until early in January 1964. Until that time, the Commission had done essentially no work, and had merely received investigative reports from other agencies. Now, Rankin and Warren drew up the plans for the organization of the work that the staff was to undertake for the Commission. In a "Progress Report" dated January 11, from the Chairman to the other members, Warren referred to a "tentative outline prepared by Mr. Rankin which I think will assist in organizing the evaluation of the investigative materials received by the Commission."[15][see Appendix A -- ratitor] Two subject headings in this outline are of concern here: "(2) Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy; (3) Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives."[16] Thus, it is painfully apparent that the Commission did, from the very beginning, plan its work with a distinct bias. It would evaluate the evidence from the perspective of "Oswald as the assassin," and it would search for his "possible motives." Attached to Warren's "Progress Report" was a copy of the "Tentative Outline of the Work of the President's Commission." This outline reveals in detail the extent to which the conclusion of Oswald's guilt was pre-determined. Section II, "Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy," begins by outlining Oswald's movements on the day of the assassination. Under the heading "Murder of Tippit," there is the subheading "Evidence demonstrating Oswald's guilt."[17] Even the FBI had refrained from drawing a conclusion as to whether or not Oswald had murdered Officer Tippit. Yet, at this very early point in its investigation, the Commission was convinced it could muster "evidence demonstrating Oswald's guilt." Another heading under Section II of the outline is "Evidence Identifying Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy," again a presumptive designation made by a commission that had not yet analyzed a single bit to evidence. The listings of evidence under this heading are sketchy and hardly conclusive, and further reveal the biases of the Commission. Some of the evidence that was to "identify Oswald as the assassin" was "prior similar acts: a) General Walker attack, b) General Eisenhower threat."[18] Thus we learn that Oswald was also presumed guilty in the attempted shooting of the right-wing General Walker in April 1963. Under the additional heading "Evidence Implicating Others in Assassination or Suggesting Accomplices," the Commission was to consider only the possibility that others worked with {Oswald} in planning or executing the assassination. The outline further reveals that it had been concluded in advance that Oswald had no accomplices, for the last category under this heading suggests that the evidence be evaluated for the "refutation of allegations."[19] The Commission was preoccupied with the question of motive. According to the initial outline of its work, it had decided to investigate Oswald's motives for killing the President {before} it determined whether Oswald had in fact been involved in the assassination {in any capacity.} At the executive session of January 21, 1964, an illuminating discussion took place between Chairman Warren, General Counsel Rankin, and member Dulles. Dulles wanted to be sure that every possible action was taken to determine Oswald's motive: Mr. Dulles: I suggested to Mr. Rankin, Mr. Chairman, that I thought it would be very useful for us, if the rest of you agree, that as items come in that deal with motive, and I have seen, I suppose, 20 or 30 of them already in these various reports, those be pulled together by one of these men, maybe Mr. Rankin himself so that we could see that which would be so important to us. Chairman Warren: In other words, to see what we are running down on the question of motive. Mr. Dulles: Just on the question of motive I found a dozen or more statements of the various people as to why they thought he [Oswald] did it. Warren: Yes. Mr. Dulles: Or what his character was, what his aim, and so forth that go into motive and I think it would be very useful to pull that together, under one of these headings, not under a separate heading necessarily. Warren: Well, I think that that would probably come under Mr. [Albert] Jenner, wouldn't that, Lee [Rankin], isn't he the one who is bringing together all the facts concerning the life of Oswald? Mr. Rankin: Yes, yes. We can get that done. We will see that that is taken care of. Warren: Yes.[20] The staff, working under the direction of Rankin, was likewise predisposed to the conclusion that Oswald was guilty. Staff lawyer W. David Slawson wrote a memorandum dated January 27 concerning the "timing of rifle shots." He suggested that: In figuring the timing of the rifle shots, we should take into account the distance travelled by the Presidential car between the first and third shots. This tends to shorten the time slightly during which {Oswald} would have had to pull the trigger three times on his rifle.[21] (emphasis added) At this early point in the investigation, long before any of the relevant testimony had been adduced, Slawson was positive that Oswald "pulled the trigger three times on his rifle." Another staff lawyer, Arlen Specter, expressed the bias of the investigation in a memorandum, dated January 30, in which he offered suggestions for the questioning of Oswald's widow, Marina. Specter felt that certain questions "might provide some insight on whether Oswald learned of the motorcade route from newspapers." He added that "perhaps [Oswald] was inspired, in part by President Kennedy's anti-Castro speech which was reported on November 19 on the front page of the Dallas Times Herald."[22] The implication here is obvious that the President's speech "inspired" Oswald to commit the assassination. Again, it must be emphasized that until Oswald's guilt was a proven fact, which it was {not} at the time these memoranda were composed, it was mere folly to investigate the factors that supposedly "inspired" Oswald. Such fraudulent investigative efforts demonstrate that Oswald's guilt was taken for granted. Rankin had assigned teams of two staff lawyers each to evaluate the evidence according to the five divisions of his "Tentative Outline." Working in Area II, "Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy," were Joseph Ball as the senior lawyer and David Belin as the junior.[23] On January 30, Belin wrote a very revealing memorandum to Rankin, concerning "Oswald's knowledge that Connally would be in the Presidential car and his intended target."[24] This memorandum leaves no doubt that Belin was quite sure of Oswald's guilt {before} he began his assigned investigation. He was concerned that Oswald might not have known that Governor Connally was to ride in the presidential limousine because this "bears on the motive of the assassination and also on the degree of marksmanship required, which in turn affects the determination that Oswald was the assassin and that it was not too difficult to hit the intended target two out of three times in this particular situation." The alternatives, as stated by Belin, were as follows: In determining the accuracy of Oswald, we have three major possibilities: Oswald was shooting at Connally and missed two of the three shots, two misses striking Kennedy; Oswald was shooting at both Kennedy and Connally and all three shots struck their intended targets; Oswald was shooting only at Kennedy and the second bullet missed its intended target and hit Connally instead.[25] Belin could not have been more explicit: Three shots were fired and Oswald, whatever his motive, fired them all. Of course, at that point Belin could not possibly have {proved} that Oswald was the assassin. He merely presumed it and worked on that basis. It is important to keep this January 30 Belin memorandum in mind when we consider the 233-page "BALL - BELIN REPORT #1" dated February 25, 1964, and submitted by the authors as a summation of all the evidence they had evaluated up to that point. The "tentative" conclusion reached in this report is that "Lee Harvey Oswald is the assassin of President John F. Kennedy."[26] However, Ball and Belin were careful to include here a new interpretation of their assigned area of work. They wrote: We should also point out that the tentative memorandum of January 23 substantially differs from the original outline of our work in this area which had as its subject, "Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy," and which examined the evidence from that standpoint. At no time have we assumed that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy. Rather, our entire study has been based on an independent examination of all the evidence in an effort to determine who was the assassin of President Kennedy.[27] Although this new formulation was no doubt the proper one, the Warren Report makes it abundantly clear that Ball and Belin failed to follow the course outlined in their "Report #1." As we have seen, the only context in which the evidence is presented in the Report is "Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy," even though that blatant description is not used (as it was in the secret working papers). Furthermore, that Belin a month before could write so confidently that Oswald was the assassin completely refutes this belatedly professed intention to examine the evidence without preconceptions. It would appear that in including this passage in "Report #1," Ball and Belin were more interested in leaving a record that they could later cite in their own defense than in conducting an honest, unbiased investigation. Indeed, Belin has quoted this passage publicly to illustrate the impartiality of his work, while neglecting to mention his memorandum of January 30.[28] The Warren Report was not completed until late in September 1964, with hearings and investigations extending into the period during which the Report was set in type. Yet outlines for the final Report were drawn up as early as mid-{March}. These outlines demonstrate that Oswald's guilt was a definite conclusion at the time that sworn testimony was first being taken by the Commission. The first outline was submitted to Rankin at his request by staff lawyer Alfred Goldberg on approximately March 14, according to notations on the outline.[29] Under Goldberg's plan, Chapter Four of the Commission's report would be entitled "Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin." Goldberg elaborated: This section should state the facts which lead to the conclusion that Oswald pulled the trigger and should indicate the elements in the case which have either not been proven or are based on doubtful testimony. Each of the facts listed below should be reviewed in that light.[30] The "facts" enumberated [sic] by Goldberg are precarious. Indeed, as of March 14, 1964, no testimony had been adduced on almost all of the "facts" that Goldberg outlined as contributing to the "conclusion that Oswald pulled the trigger." Goldberg felt that this chapter of the Report should identify Oswald's rifle "as the murder weapon." Under this category he listed "Ballistics" and "Capability of Rifle." Yet the first ballistics testimony was not heard by the Commission until March 31 (3H390ff.). Another of Goldberg's categories is "Evidence of Oswald Carrying Weapon to Texas School Book Depository." Here he does not specify which evidence he had in mind. However, the expert testimony that {might} have supported the thesis that Oswald carried his rifle to work on the morning of the assassination was not adduced until April 2 and 3 (4H1ff.). This pattern runs through several other factors that Goldberg felt established Oswald's guilt {before} they were scrutinized by the Commission or the staff. To illustrate: "Testimony of eyewitnesses and employees on fifth floor"--this testimony was not taken until March 24, at which time the witnesses contradicted several of their previous statements to the federal authorities (3H161ff.); "Medical testimony"--the autopsy surgeons testified on March 16 (2H347ff.), and medical/ballistics testimony concerning tests with Oswald's rifle was not taken until mid-May (5H74ff.); "Eyewitness Identification of Oswald Shooting Rifle"-- only one witness claimed to make such an identification, and he gave testimony on March 24 (3H140ff.) that was subsequently rejected by the Commission (R145-46). On March 26, staff lawyer Norman Redlich submitted another outline of the final Report to Rankin; in almost all respects, Redlich's outline is identical with Goldberg's. Chapter Four is entitled "Lee H. Oswald as the Assassin," with the notation that "this section should state the facts which lead to the conclusion that Oswald pulled the trigger. . . ."[31] In general, Redlich is vaguer than Goldberg in his listing of those "facts" which should be presented to support the conclusion of Oswald's guilt. However, he does specify what he considers to be "evidence of Oswald carrying weapon to building." One factor, he wrote, is the "fake curtain rod story." Yet, when Redlich submitted this outline, no investigation had been conducted into the veracity of the "curtain rod story." The first information relevant to this is contained in an FBI report dated March 28 (24H460-61), and it was not until the last day in {August} that further inquiry was made (CE2640). The pattern is consistent. The Commission outlined its work and concluded that Oswald was guilty before it did any investigation or took any testimony. The Report was outlined, including a chapter concluding that Oswald was guilty, before the bulk of the Commission's work was completed. Most notably, these conclusions were drafted {before} the staff arranged a series of tests that were to demonstrate whether the official theories about how the shooting occurred were physically possible. A series of ballistics tests using Oswald's rifle, and an on-site reconstruction of the crime in Dealey Plaza were conducted in May; the Report was outlined in March. On April 27, Redlich wrote Rankin a memorandum "to explain the reasons why certain members of the staff feel that it is important" to reconstruct the events in Dealey Plaza as depicted in motion pictures of the assassination. Redlich stated that the Report would "presumably" set forth a version of the assassination shots concluding "that the bullets were fired by one person located in the sixth floor southeast corner window of the TSBD building." He then pointed out: As our investigation now stands, however, we have not shown that these events could possibly have occurred in the manner suggested above. All we have is a reasonable hypothesis which appears to be supported by the medical testimony but which has not been checked out against the physical facts at the scene of the assassination.[32] Thus, Redlich admitted that the Commission did not know if the conclusions already outlined were even physically possible. But his suggestion of on-site tests should not be taken to indicate his desire to establish the untainted truth, for he explicitly denied such a purpose in his memorandum. Instead, he wrote: Our intention is not to establish the point with complete accuracy, but merely to substantiate the hypothesis which underlies the conclusions that Oswald was the sole assassin.[33] This is as unambiguous a statement as can be imagined. The reconstruction was not to determine whether it was physically possible for Oswald to have committed the murder as described by the Commission; it was "merely to substantitate" [sic] the preconceived conclusion "that Oswald was the sole assassin." On April 30, three days after Redlich composed the above-quoted memorandum, the Commission met in another secret executive session. Here Rankin added to the abundant proof that the Commission had already concluded that Oswald was guilty. The following exchange was provoked when Dulles expressed his well-voiced preoccupation with biographical data relating to Oswald: Mr. Dulles: Detailed biography of Lee Harvey Oswald--I think that ought to be somewhere. Mr. Rankin: We thought it would be too voluminous to be in the body of the report. We thought it would be helpful as supplementary material at the end. Mr. Dulles: Well, I don't feel too strongly about where it should be. This would be--I think some of the biography of Lee Harvey Oswald, though, ought to be in the main report. Mr. Rankin: {Some of it will be necessary to tell the story and to show why it is reasonable to assume that he did what the Commission concludes that he did do}.[34] (emphasis added) As late as the middle of May, long after the Commission and the staff had decided, in advance of analyzing the evidence, that Oswald was guilty, Commission member McCloy expressed his feeling that the conclusion as to Oswald's guilt was not being pursued with enough vigor by the staff. McCloy was not interested in a fair and objective report. This story was related by David Belin in his memorandum of May 15, which described his trip to Dallas with certain Commission members, McCloy included. One night in Dallas, Belin persuaded McCloy to read "Ball-Belin Report # 1," which by then was almost three months old. Belin recounts McCloy's reactions: He seemed to misunderstand the basic purpose of the report, for he suggested that we did not point up enough arguments to show why Oswald was the assassin. . . . Commissioner McCloy did state that in the final report he thought that we should be rather complete in developing reasons and affirmative statements why Oswald was the assassin--he did not believe that it should just merely be a factual restatement of what we had found.[35] As quoted at the opening of this chapter, the Warren Report asserted that the Commission functioned not "as a prosecutor determined to prove a case, but as a fact finding agency committed to the ascertainment of the truth." This statement is clearly a misrepresentation of the Commission's real position, as expressed in private by McCloy when he told Belin that he wanted a report that argued a prosecution case, and not simply "a factual restatement." The Dallas Police and the FBI both announced their "conclusion" before it could have been adequately substantiated by facts and, in so doing, almost irrevocably prejudiced the American public against Oswald and thwarted an honest and unbiased investigation. The Commission operated under a facade of impartiality. Yet it examined the evidence--and subsequently presented it--on the premise that Oswald was guilty, a premise openly stated in secret staff memoranda and reinforced when the members met in secret sessions. Now, as the curtain of secrecy that once sheltered the working papers of the investigation is lifted, the ugly and improper presumption of guilt becomes obvious. Wesley Liebeler expressed the prejudice of the entire "investigation" when he argued to Rankin in a once-secret memorandum that " . . . the best evidence that Oswald could fire as fast as he did and hit the target is the fact that he did so."[36] __________ [1] "New York Times," November 24, 1963, p. 1. [2] "Philadelphia Inquirer," November 24, 1963. [3] "St. Louis Post-Dispatch," November 24, 1963. [4] "New York Times," November 25, 1963, p. 18. [5] "St. Louis Post-Dispatch," November 24, 1963, p. 2. [6] Transcript of the December 5, 1963, Executive Session of the Warren Commission, pp. 10-11. [7] Ibid., p. 8. [8] Letter from Nicholas Katzenbach to Chief Justice Warren, dated December 9, 1963. This letter is available from the National Archives. [9] "Washington Post," December 1, 1963. [10] "Time," December 13, 1963, p. 26. [11] "Newsweek," December 16, 1963, p. 26. [12] "New York Times," December 10, 1963, p. 1. [13] Transcript of the December 16, 1963, Executive Session of the Warren Commission, p. 11. [14] Ibid., p. 12. [15] "Progress Report" by Chairman Warren, p. 4, attached to "Memorandum for Members of the Commission" from Mr. Rankin, dated January 11, 1964. [16] The "Tentative Outline of the Work of the President's Commission" was attached to the memorandum mentioned in note 15. [17] Ibid. [18] Ibid. [19] Ibid. [20] Transcript of the January 21, 1964, Executive Session of the Warren Commission, pp. 10-11. [21] Memorandum from W. David Slawson to Mr. Ball and Mr. Belin, dated January 27, 1964, "SUBJECT: Time of Rifle Shots," located in the "Slawson Chrono. File." [22] Memorandum from Arlen Specter to Mr. Rankin, dated January 30, 1964, concerning the questioning of Marina Oswald, p. 3. [23] "Memorandum to the Staff," from Mr. Rankin, dated January 13, 1964, p. 3. [24] "Memorandum" from David W. Belin to J. Lee Rankin, dated January 30, 1964. This document was discovered in the National Archives by Harold Weisberg and was first presented in "Post Mortem I," pp. 61-62. [25] Ibid. [26] "Ball-Belin Report #1," dated February 25, 1964, p. 233. [27] Ibid., pp. 1-2. [28] See "Truth Was My Only Goal," by David Belin in "The Texas Observer," August 13, 1971, p. 14. [29] "Memorandum" from Alfred Goldberg to J. Lee Rankin, dated "approx 3/14," 1964. [30] "Proposed Outline of Report," attached to the memorandum referred to in note 29. This outline was discovered in the National Archives by Harold Weisberg and is presented in "Post Mortem I," p. 123. [31] "Proposed Outline of Report (Submitted by Mr. Redlich)," attached to "Memorandum" from Norman Redlich to J. Lee Rankin, dated March 26, 1964. This document was discovered in the National Archives by Harold Weisberg and is presented in "Post Mortem I," p. 132. [32] "Memorandum" from Norman Redlich to J. Lee Rankin, dated April 27, 1964. This document was discovered in the National Archives by Harold Weisberg and is presented in "Post Mortem I," pp. 132-34. [33] Ibid. [34] Transcript of the April 30, 1964, Executive Session of the Warren Commission, p. 5891. [35] Memorandum from Mr. Belin to Mr. Rankin, dated May 15, 1964, p. 5. [36] Liebeler 9/6/64 Memorandum, p. 25. [1] "Presumed Guilty, How & Why the W.C. Framed Lee Harvey Oswald" [4/11] __________________________________________________________________________ PART II: THE MEDICAL/BALLISTICS EVIDENCE * * * * * * * 3 Suppressed Spectrography In the final analysis, the Warren Commission had three pieces of tangible evidence that linked Lee Harvey Oswald to the assassination of President Kennedy: (1) A rifle purchased by Oswald and three empty cartridge cases fired in that rifle were discovered on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, (2) a nearly whole bullet that had been fired from Oswald's rifle was found on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital, and (3) two fragments of a bullet or bullets that had been fired from Oswald's rifle were found on the front seat of the presidential limousine. Yet, there is nothing in this evidence itself to prove either that Oswald's rifle was used in the shooting or, if it was, that Oswald fired it. The whole fault in the Commission's case relating the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle to the shooting is this: bullets identifiable with that rifle were found {outside} of the victims' bodies. Pieces of metal not traceable to any rifle were found {inside} the bodies. The Report merely assumes the legitimacy of the specimens found externally and works on the assumption that these bullets and fragments had once been {inside} the bodies, and thus were involved in the shooting. Obviously, bullets found outside the bodies are entirely circumstantial evidence, for although they may be conclusively linked with a particular weapon, their location of discovery does not link them with a particular victim. No matter how close to the victims or to the scene of the crime these bullets were found, as long as they were not {in} the actual bodies when discovered, proof is lacking that they were ever in the bodies at all. If Commission Exhibit 399, the nearly whole bullet found on a stretcher at Parkland, had been removed from Governor Connally's body, it could be asserted that it had indeed produced his wounds. Likewise, if the identifiable bullet fragments found on the front seat of the limousine had instead been located in President Kennedy's head wound, we would have the proof linking Oswald's rifle to the fatal shot. In the case of the assassination, there was an easy and conclusive way to determine whether the bullet specimens found {outside} the bodies had ever been {inside} the victims, thus providing either the proof or the disproof of the notion that Oswald's rifle was used in the shooting. This conclusive evidence is the spectrographic comparison made between the metallic compositions of the projectiles found outside of the victims and the bits of metal removed from the wounds themselves. Spectrography is an exact science. In spectrographic analysis, a test substance is irradiated so that all of the elements composing it emit a distinct spectrum. These spectra are recorded on film and analyzed both qualitatively (to determine exactly which elements compose the substance in question) and quantitatively (to determine the exact percentage of each element present). Through such analysis, two substances may be compared in extremely fine detail, down to the percentages of even their most minor constituents.[1] Comparative chemical analysis such as spectrography has long been a vital tool in crime solving. The following are actual cases that illustrate the value of such comparison: 1. A deformed slug with some white metal adhering to it was found at the scene where a man had been shot, but not wounded. The white metal was first suspected to be nickel, which would have indicated a nickel-coated bullet, but was subsequently tested and found to be silver from a cigarette case that had been penetrated. The slugs in the cartridges taken from the suspect in the attack were analyzed and found to differ in composition from the projectile used in the shooting; the suspect thus escaped conviction. 2. In another case, a man escaped conviction because of dissimilarities in composition found upon comparative analysis of the bullet removed from the wounded man and bullets from cartridges seized in the suspect's house. The former contained a trace of antimony and no tin and the latter contained a comparatively large amount of tin. 3. A night watchman shot at some unidentified persons fleeing the scene of a robbery, but all escaped. Blood found at the scene the next morning indicated that one of the persons had been wounded and subsequently a man was arrested with a bullet wound in his leg for which he could provide no plausible explanation. Analysis demonstrated that lead fragments removed from the wound did not agree in composition with the slugs in the watchman's cartridges and the man was released. The impurities present in the lead were the same in each case, consisting chiefly of antimony, but the fragments from the wound contained much less antimony than the watchman's slugs.[2] The identifiable bullets and fragments found {outside} the victims' bodies are the suspect specimens in the presidential assassination. The tiny pieces of metal found {inside} the bodies are, in effect, the control specimens. All of the specimens-- including those removed from the President and the Governor--were subjected to spectrographic analysis. The results of these analyses hold the conclusive answer to the problem that was the central issue in the question of Oswald's guilt: Did the bullets from Oswald's rifle produce the wounds of the victims? The spectrographic analyses could solve this central problem through minute qualitative and quantitative comparison. If a fragment from a body was not {identical} in composition with a suspect bullet, that bullet could not have entered the body and left the fragment in question. The requirements for "identical" composition are stringent; if the exact elements are not present in the exact percentages from one sample to another, there is no match and the samples must have originated from two different sources. If a fragment is found to be identical in composition with a suspect bullet, it is possible that the bullet deposited the fragment in the body. However, before this can be conclusively proven, it must be demonstrated that other bullets manufactured from the same batch of metal were not employed in the crime.[3] Some of the major comparisons that should have been made in the case of the President's death are these: 1. The Commission apparently believed that the two large bullet fragments (one containing part of a lead core) found on the front seat of the car and traceable to Oswald's rifle were responsible for the head wounds. Two pieces of lead were recovered from the President's head. The head fragments could have been compared to the car fragment containing lead. Had the slightest difference in composition been found, the car fragments could not have caused the head wounds. 2. The Commission believed that the two car fragments were part of the same bullet. Spectrographic comparison might have determined this. 3. Copper traces were found on the bullet holes in the back of the President's coat and shirt. Since the Commission believed that bullet 399 penetrated the President's neck, the copper residues on the clothing could have been compared with the copper jacket of 399 for a conclusive answer. Any dissimilarity between the two copper samples would rule out 399. 4. The Commission believed that 399 wounded Governor Connally. Fragments of lead were removed from the Governor's wrist. These could have been compared with the lead core of 399. Again, any dissimilarity would conclusively disassociate 399 from Connally's wounds. An identical match might support the Commission's belief. 5. The lead from the Governor's wrist could have been compared with the lead from one of the identifiable car fragments to determine whether this might have caused Connally's wounds in the event that 399 did not. This could have associated "Oswald's" rifle with the wounds even if 399 had been proven "illegitimate." 6. The lead residue found on the crack in the windshield of the car could have been compared with fragments from the two bodies plus fragments from the car in an effort to determine which shot caused the windshield damage. 7. As a control, the lead and copper composition of 399 could have been compared to that of the identifiable car fragments to determine whether all were made from the same batches of metal. The government had in its possession the conclusive proof or disproof of its theories. It is not presumptuous to assume that, had the spectrographic analyses provided the incontrovertible proof of the validity of the Warren Report's central conclusions, they would have been employed in the Report, eliminating virtually all of the controversy and doubt that have raged over the official assertions. But the complete results of the spectrographic analyses were never reported to the Commission; there is no indication that the Commission ever requested or desired them; they are not in the printed exhibits or the Commission's unpublished files; no expert testimony relevant to them was ever adduced; and to this day, the Department of Justice is withholding the complete results from researchers. On November 23, 1963, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover sent a report to Dallas Police Chief Jesse Curry summarizing the results of FBI laboratory examinations, including spectrographic analysis (see 24H262-64). On the matter of composition, Hoover said only that the jackets of the found specimens were "copper alloy" and the cores and other pieces, "lead." The element mixed with the copper to form the "alloy" is not even mentioned. It is quite unlikely that the other specimens were composed solely of "lead," for the lead employed in practically all modern bullets is mixed with small quantities of antimony, bismuth, and arsenic.[4] The only spectrographic comparison mentioned in this report is meaningless: The lead metal of [exhibits] Q4 and Q5 [fragments from the President's head], Q9 [fragment(s) from the Governor's wrist], Q14 [three pieces of lead found under the left jump seat in the limousine] and Q15 [scraping from the windshield crack] is similar to the lead of the core of the bullet fragment, Q2 [found on the front seat of the car]. That two samples are "similar" in composition is without meaning in terms of the precise data yielded through spectrographic analysis. The crucial determination, "identical" or "not identical," is consistently avoided. Also avoided is the essential comparison between the "stretcher bullet," 399, and the metal fragments removed from the Governor's wrist. The Commission sought virtually no testimony relevant to the spectrographic analysis. When it did seek this testimony, it asked the wrong questions of the wrong people. FBI ballistics expert Robert Frazier gave testimony about these tests on May 13, 1964. At this time, he told the Commission and Arlen Specter, his interrogator, that the spectrographics examinations were performed by a spectrographer, John F. Gallager (5H67, 69). Frazier, accepted by the Commission only as a "qualified witness on firearms" (3H392), was not a spectrographic expert. His field was ballistics and firearms identification, and while he might have supplemented his findings with those from other fields, he was not qualified in spectrography, which entails expertise in physics and chemistry. Gallagher, the expert, could well be called the Commission's most-avoided witness. His testimony, the {last} taken in the entire investigation, was given in a deposition attended by a stenographer and a staff member the week before the Warren Report was submitted to President Johnson. At this time, he was not asked a single question relating to the spectrographic analyses.[5] (See 15H746ff.) Neither Specter nor the Commission members can deny having known that Frazier was not the man qualified to testify about spectrographic analysis; Frazier stated this in his testimony: Mr. Specter: Was it your job to analyze all of the bullets or bullet fragments which were found in the President's car? Mr. Frazier: Yes; it was, {except for the spectrographic analysis of the composition}. (5H68; emphasis added) Frazier added, "I don't know actually whether I am expected to give the results of (the spectrographer's) analysis or not" (5H59). If this statement fails to make it clear that Frazier was not prepared to testify about the results of the spectrographic analyses, an earlier statement by him leaves no doubt: "[The spectrographic] examination was performed by a spectrographer, John F. Gallagher, and I do not have the results of his examination here" (5H67). If Frazier did not have the actual report of the results of the tests with him when he appeared before the Commission, there was obviously no way of vouching for the accuracy of the findings to which he testified, whether he was qualified as an expert in spectrography or not. Also, Frazier's knowledge of the spectrographic analysis was merely secondhand; he was aware of the results of these tests because the spectrographer "submitted his report to me" (5H69). Thus, Frazier played no role in conducting this analysis. His only "qualification" for giving testimony about the spectrographic analyses was that he had read a report about them. Because this report is not part of the public records, we have no way of determining whether Frazier accurately related the results of the analyses, or whether the report upon which he based his testimony was competent, complete, or satisfactory. In short, we are asked to take Frazier on his word when (1) he knew of these tests only secondhand, (2) he did not have the actual results with him when he testified about them, and (3) he had no expertise in spectrography. On this basis alone, Frazier's testimony concerning the tests is not worthy of credence. However, if we examine exactly what Frazier specified as the results of the spectrographic analyses, it becomes apparent that his testimony, if true, is meaningless and incomplete. Frazier spoke of essentially the same comparisons that Hoover did in his letter to police chief Curry, repeating Hoovers meaningless designation that the ballistic specimens compared were "found to be similar in metallic composition" (5H67, 69, 73-74). When the {exact} composition had been determined to a minute degree and could be compared for conclusive and meaningful answers, there was no legitimate reason to accept this testimony about mere "similarities" in composition. Furthermore, Frazier offered his opinion that the spectrographic analyses were inconclusive in determining the origin of certain of the ballistics specimens (5H67, 69, 73-74). However, because Frazier was not a spectrographic expert and because the actual report of these tests is not available, his interpretation of the test results is worthless. Even at that, Frazier and his Commission interrogator, Arlen Specter, avoided mention of those comparisons affecting the legitimacy of bullet 399--namely, the copper from the President's clothing and the lead from Governor Connally's wrist as compared with the copper and lead of 399. Frazier was cross-examined at the New Orleans conspiracy trial of Clay Shaw. Here he was pressed further on the spectrographic analysis. When asked about any "similarity" in the compositions of the various ballistic specimens he replied, "They all had the same metallic composition as far as the lead core or lead portions of these objects is concerned."[6] This response prompts two inferences. First, Frazier specifically excluded as being the "same in metallic composition" the {copper} portions of the specimens. If this omission was necessitated by the fact that the copper of the recovered specimens did not match in composition, a significant part of the Warren Report is disproved. Second, Frazier's description of the lead as being the "same" in composition is ambiguous. Did he mean that the {elements} of the composition or the {percentages} of the elements were the "same"? In the former case, his testimony would again be meaningless, for {what} is contained in the metal is not so important as {how much} is contained. If the percentages were the same, the Report could be confirmed. Further questioning by Attorney Oser cleared up this ambiguity. Mr. Oser: Am I correct in saying there is a similarity in metallic composition or they are identical? Mr. Frazier: It was identical as far as the metallic {elements} are concerned.[7] (emphasis added) Here Frazier leaves no doubt that the individual {elements} in the various lead samples were identical. What he avoids saying is that the percentages of those elements were identical throughout. This is the crucial point. If anything, Frazier's specification that the {elements} were identical (when questioned about the {composition}) leads to the inference that the percentages of those elements were not identical, hence the recovered specimens could {not} be related and the Warren Report is necessarily invalid. The Commission's failure to obtain the complete spectrographic analyses and to adduce meaningful expert testimony on them can be viewed only with suspicion. Here was the absolute proof or disproof of the official theories. If truth was the Commission's objective, there can be no explanation for the exclusion of these tests from the record. If the Commission was right in its "solution" of the assassination, for what reason could it conceivably have omitted the {proof} of its validity? One is reasonably led to believe that the spectrographic analyses proved the opposite of what the Commission asserted. If the Commission's failure to produce the spectrographic analyses was no more than a glaring oversight, the remedy is indeed a simple one. The government need only release these tests to the public. They cannot contain the gore that makes publication of the President's autopsy pictures a matter of questionable taste. They cannot be injurious to living persons as other classified reports might be. They cannot threaten our national defense. They are merely a collection of highly scientific data that could support or destroy the entire official solution to the assassination. The government has to this day kept them squelched. Harold Weisberg, the first researcher to recognize the significance of the spectrographic tests and their omission from the record, has fought and continues to fight for access to the report detailing these tests. In 1967, Weisberg wrote as follows of his efforts to obtain the tests: On October 31, 1966, then Acting Attorney General Clark ordered that everything considered by the Commission and in the possession of the government be placed in the National Archives. I had written [J. Edgar] Hoover five months earlier, on May 23, 1966, asking for access to the spectrographic analysis of the bullet allegedly used in the assassination and the various bullet fragments, clearly the most basic evidence, but not in the printed evidence. He has not yet answered that letter. Since issuance of the Attorney General's order, I have on a number of occasions requested this evidence of the Archives. Hoover, as of March 1967, had not turned it over. Once, in my presence, one of his agents deceived the Archives by falsely reporting this analysis was in an FBI file that was accessible. Since then, silence, but no spectrographic analysis.[8] Weisberg's efforts have continued. In 1970, he made available to me all of his government correspondence. I saw, over the signatures of then Attorney General John Mitchell and Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst, the government's constant refusal to release the spectrographic analyses.[9] Having exhausted his administrative remedies, Weisberg took the Justice Department to court, suing for release under provisions of the "Freedom of Information" law. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled against Weisberg in this case, Civil Action No. 712-70. Weisberg and his attorney appealed this decision, and the appeal, brief No. 71-1026, is currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Without the spectrographic analyses, there is {no} evidence to associate Oswald's rifle with the wounds suffered by President Kennedy and Governor Connally. Nothing was found in the body of either victim that would suggest a connection between that specific Mannlicher-Carcano and the wounds. The spectrographic tests might establish such a connection; they might also conclusively {dissociate} that rifle from the wounds. However, omission of the exact spectrographic results from the Commission's evidence and the subsequent refusal of the government to release the spectrographer's findings do not leave one at all confident that these tests support the official solution to the assassination. __________ [1] See "Spectrography" in "Encyclopaedia Britannica" (Chicago: William Benton Publishers, 1963), vol. 21, and "Photography" in vol. 17; Herbert Dingle, "Practical Applications of Spectrum Analysis" (London: Chapman and Hall, Ltd., 1950), pp. 1-3, 74-75, 122-24. [2] A. Lucas, "Forensic Chemistry and Scientific Criminal Investigation" (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1935), pp. 265-66. [3] Author's interview with Dr. John Nichols on April 16, 1970. See also Nichols's statement in the "Dallas Morning News," June 19, 1970. [4] "The Winchester-Western Ammunition Handbook" (New York: Pocket Books, Inc., 1964), p. 120. (Hereinafter referred to as "Winchester Handbook.") [5] First public attention drawn to the spectrographic analyses and their omission from the Commission's record was by Harold Weisberg in "Whitewash," p. 164. Sylvia Meagher later discussed this topic in her book, pp. 170-72. [6] Transcript of court proceedings of February 21, 1969, in "State of Louisiana v. Clay L. Shaw," p. 40. (Hereinafter referred to as "Frazier 2/21/69 testimony.") [7] Ibid., p. 41. [8] Weisberg, "Oswald in New Orleans," pp. 148-49. [9] Weisberg's attorney in this case, Bernard Fensterwald, requested that his client be furnished with the spectrographic analyses in a letter to Justice Department lawyer Joseph Cella, dated October 9, 1969. Then Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst responded to this request in a letter dated November 13, 1969; he refused to disclose the document, (These letters are a part of the public record. They are part of the set of exhibits appended to the "COMPLAINT" dated March 11, 1970, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia in the case of "Harold Weisberg v. U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Department of State," Civil Action No. 718-70.) Weisberg has attempted to obtain the report of the spectrographer through a series of written requests dated May 23, 1966, March 12, 1967, January 1, 1969, June 2, 1969, April 6, 1970, May 15, 1970, and an official request form submitted on May 10, 1970. In a letter dated June 4, 1970, then Attorney General John Mitchell personally denied Weisberg's request for access. Richard Kleindienst, in a letter dated June 12, 1970, also denied Weisberg's request. (These letters are also a part of the public record. They are contained in the appendix to Appeal No. 71-1026, "Weisberg v. U.S. Department of Justice," filed by attorney for plaintiff-appellant in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.) [1] "Presumed Guilty, How & Why the W.C. Framed Lee Harvey Oswald" [6/11] * * * * * * * 5 The Governor's Wounds and the Validity of the Essential Conclusions In the case of Governor Connally, it is not possible to determine the type of ammunition that produced his wounds. Three bones in his body were struck by a bullet, two of them seriously broken and fractured, and flecks of metal were observed in, and in one case removed from, his injuries. The presence of these metallic fragments in the Governor's wounds, however, does not specifically indicate that he was struck by a type of sporting ammunition, because the force with which the bone tissue was struck was sufficient for military ammunition to have deposited the fragments observed. It is the Warren Commission's belief that the Governor's wounds were caused by the almost pristine bullet, CE 399, fired from Oswald's rifle (R95). Therefore, in this chapter I will deal not with the general question of the type of ammunition, but with a specific bullet, CE 399. The question to be answered is this: Did bullet 399 produce the wounds sustained by Governor Connally? A bullet entered the back of the Governor's chest to the left of his right armpit. This bullet struck the fifth rib and shattered it, actually stripping away about 10 cm. of bone starting immediately below the armpit (4H105; 6H86). The right lung was severely lacerated (6H88). The bullet exited from the anterior chest, causing a large sucking wound about 5 cm. in diameter just below the right nipple (6H85). There was an atypical entrance wound on the dorsal (back of the hand) side of the Governor's wrist and an atypical exit wound on the volar (palm) side (6H07; R93). The radius (wrist bone) had been broken into about seven or eight pieces from the passage of the bullet (4H120). There was a 1 cm. puncture wound located on the Governor's left thigh some five to six inches above the knee (R93). X rays revealed a small metallic fragment embedded in the left thigh bone, the femur (6H106). This fragment was not surgically removed and still remains in Mr. Connally's femur. It is probable that one bullet caused all of Connally's injuries. In support of this hypothesis, the Report paraphrases the Parkland doctors as follows: In their testimony, the three doctors who attended Governor Connally expressed independently their opinion that a single bullet had passed through his chest, tumbled through his wrist with very little exit velocity, leaving small metallic fragments from the rear portion of the bullet; punctured his left thigh after the bullet had lost virtually all of its velocity; and had fallen out of the thigh wound. (R95) A footnote to this statement cites portions of the doctors' depositions taken in Dallas on March 23, before two of them were brought to Washington to testify for the Commission a month later. At this time, they had not seen bullet 399 and spoke on a strictly hypothetical basis. Dr. Tom Shires, who was involved in the Governor's medical treatment, explained that, from the discussion among Connally's surgeons, "everyone was under the impression this was one missile- -through and through the chest, through and through the arm and the thigh." When asked if any of the doctors had dissented from this consensus he replied, "Not that I remember" (6H110). Dr. Charles Gregory, who attended to the Governor's wrist wound, best explained the reasoning behind the theory that one bullet caused Connally's wounds: Mr. Specter: Would you consider it possible, in your professional opinion, for the same bullet to have inflicted all of the wounds which you have described on Governor Connally? Dr. Gregory: Yes; I believe it is very possible, for a number of reasons. One of these--is the apparent loss of energy manifested at each of the various body surfaces, which I transected, the greatest energy being at the point of entry on the posterior aspect of the chest and of the fifth rib, where considerable destruction was done and the least destruction having been done in the medial aspect of the thigh where the bullet apparently expended itself. . . . We know that high velocity bullets striking bone have a strong tendency to shatter bones and the degree to which the fifth rib was shattered was considerably in excess of the amount of shattering which occurred in the radius-- the forearm. . . . I think that the missile was continually losing velocity with each set of tissues which it encountered and transected, and the amount of damage done is progressively less from first entrance to the thorax to the last entrance in the thigh. (6H101-2) The Report is entirely misleading, however, when it asserts that the doctors felt that the wrist fragments were left "from the rear portion of the bullet" and that this {bullet} subsequently punctured the thigh. In their original testimonies, the doctors did not postulate from what part of the bullet the fragments had come. The intent of the Report is obvious, when we consider that the only possible surface from which CE 399 could have lost fragments is its rear, or base, where the lead core was naturally exposed. The thinking of the doctors, however, tended to rule out the possibility of CE 399's having gone into the wrist at all, because they felt that this wound was the result of an irregular or fragmented missile (6H90-91, 98-99, 102). Dr. Robert Shaw, who conducted the operation on the Governor's chest, was puzzled as to how the wrist wounds could have appeared as they did if a whole bullet had caused them (6H91). According to Dr. Shaw, it is not exactly correct to assert that a whole bullet entered the thigh. In the portion of his original testimony cited by the Report, Dr. Shaw explained the theory of one bullet's causing all the Governor's wounds in this way: "I have always felt that the wounds of Governor Connally could be explained by the passage of one missile through his chest, striking his wrist and {a fragment of it} going on into his left thigh" (6H91; emphasis added). What the Report does not reflect is the substantial change in Drs. Shaw's and Gregory's opinions when shown the bullet that allegedly produced the Governor's wounds. The first indication of varied opinions came through this exchange between Dr. Shaw and Commissioners Cooper, Dulles, and McCloy. Dr. Shaw had been asked about the possibility that one bullet had caused the Governor's wounds: Dr. Shaw: . . . this is still a possibility. But I don't feel that it is the only possibility. Sen. Cooper: Why do you say you don't think it is the only possibility? What causes you {now} to say that it is the location-- Dr. Shaw: This is again the testimony that I believe Dr. Gregory will be giving, too. It is a matter of whether the wrist wound could be caused by the same bullet, and we felt that it could but {but we had not seen the bullets until today,} and we still do not know which bullet actually inflicted the wound on Governor Connally. Mr. Dulles: Or whether it was one or two rounds? Dr. Shaw: Yes. Mr. Dulles: Or two bullets? Dr. Shaw: Yes; or three. Mr. McCloy: You have no firm opinion that all these three wounds were caused by one bullet? Dr. Shaw: I have no firm opinion. . . . Asking me now if it was true. {If you had asked me a month ago I would have} [had]. Mr. McCloy: Could they have been caused by one bullet, in your opinion? Dr. Shaw: They could. Mr. McCloy: I gather that what the witness is saying is that it is possible that they might have been caused by one bullet. But that he has no firm opinion {now} that they were. Mr. Dulles: As I understand it too. Is our understanding correct? Dr. Shaw: That is correct. (4H109; emphasis added) It might be regarded as highly culpable that Commissioners Dulles and McCloy, who professed such a clear understanding of Dr. Shaw's position, signed a report stating the opposite of what Dr. Shaw had testified to, with a footnote referring to prior statements withdrawn by Shaw in their presence. Dr. Shaw's testimony is explicit that, prior to seeing the bullet in evidence, he felt that all the Governor's wounds were caused by one bullet; when shown the bullet, CE 399, which allegedly did this damage, he retracted his original opinion. What was it about this bullet that caused such a change of judgment? Under questioning by Arlen Specter, Dr. Shaw summed up the indications that CE 399 did not produce the Governor's wounds. He had first been asked to comment on the possibility of a bullet's having caused the wounds: Mr. Specter: When you started to comment about it not being possible, was that in reference to the existing mass and shape of bullet 399? Dr. Shaw: I thought you were referring directly to the bullet shown as Exhibit 399. Mr. Specter: What is your opinion as to whether bullet 399 could have inflicted all the wounds on the Governor then, without respect at this point to the wound of the President's neck? Dr. Shaw: I feel that there would be some difficulty in explaining all of the wounds as being inflicted by bullet Exhibit 399 without causing more in the way of loss of substance to the bullet or deformation of the bullet. (4H114) CE 399 is a virtually undistorted, intact bullet. Its weight is approximately two grains below the average weight of an unfired bullet of that type. As was mentioned in the previous chapter, none of the copper jacket of 399 is missing. The nose and sides of this bullet--as shown in photographs and as I saw in a personal examination--are without gross deformity. The base of 399 has been slightly squeezed so that, in contrast to its rounded shaft, the tail end is slightly elliptical in shape. A small amount of lead, which apparently has flowed from the open base, creates a slight irregularity of the base. Given the almost pristine condition of CE 399, it is understandable that Drs. Shaw and Gregory were puzzled at the inference that this bullet had caused the Governor's wounds. Before having seen 399, they imagined the bullet that penetrated Connally as being irregular or distorted, the natural consequence of powerful impacts with two substantial bones. Dr. Shaw did not think the bullet could even have remained intact (6H91). On the basis of the nature of the wrist wound, Dr. Gregory thought that "the missile that struck it could be virtually intact, insofar as mass was concerned, but probably was {distorted}" (6H99). According to Dr. Gregory, the wrist wound showed characteristics of suffering the impact of an {irregular} missile (6H98, 102). In his testimony before the Commission, Dr. Gregory expounded on the nature of this "irregular" missile: Dr. Gregory: The wound of entrance (on the wrist) is characteristic in my view of an irregular missile in this case, an irregular missile which has tipped itself off as being irregular by the nature of itself. Mr. Dulles: What do you mean by irregular? Dr. Gregory: I mean one that has been distorted. It is in some way angular, it has sharp edges or something of this sort. It is not rounded or pointed in the fashion of an ordinary missile. (4H124) Obviously, the condition of the bullet that produced the wrist wound, as described by Dr. Gregory, does not match that of bullet 399, which is not "distorted" or "irregular." There is only one surface on CE 399 that is the least bit "irregular," the base end where the lead core is naturally exposed. When Arlen Specter asked Dr. Gregory about a possible correlation between CE 399 and the wrist wound, the latter responded: the only . . . deformity which I can find is at the base of the missile. . . . The only way that this missile could have produced this wound, in my view, was to have entered the wrist backward. . . . That is the only possible explanation I could offer to correlate this missile with this particular wound. (4H121) Dr. Gregory admitted, in response to a hypothetical question from Counsel Specter, that the slight irregularity in the base of CE 399 "could have" been sufficient to produce the lacerated wounds observed on the Governor's wrist (4H122). Yet, Dr. Gregory's only correlation of CE 399 to the wrist wound is not applicable to the circumstances of the shooting. Dr. Gregory examined 399 in its spent state, long after it had been fired and incurred its slight amount of damage. He related the bullet in {this} state to a bullet in flight that had not suffered the full extent of its damage. The irregularity of 399's base would have occurred {after} it hit the wrist, as the Commission postulates. Certainly a base-first strike on the radius would not have left the base in the same condition as it was {prior} to impact. Dr. Gregory's answer to Specter's hypothetical question could not apply to the actual shooting. Specter knew independently from wound ballistics experts that the condition of CE 399 was not at all consistent with having struck a wrist. Two conferences that Specter attended were held during the week prior to Dr. Gregory's Commission testimony. The consensus of the first meeting was, in part, that "the bullet recovered from the Governor's stretcher does not appear to have penetrated a wrist."[1] The expert opinion was more explicit at the next meeting, held the day of the Shaw-Gregory testimony and attended by those doctors, the wound ballistics experts, Specter, McCloy, and others. A memorandum of this conference reports that in a discussion after the conference Drs. Light and Dolce (two wound ballistics experts from Edgewood Arsenal) expressed themselves as being very strongly of the opinion that Connally had been hit by two different bullets, principally on the ground that the bullet recovered from Connally's stretcher could not have broken his radius without having suffered more distortion. Dr. Olivier (another wound ballistics expert) withheld a conclusion until he has had the opportunity to make tests on animal tissue and bone with the actual rifle.[2] _______________________________________________________________________ | photograph of 5 bullets: | | | | leftmost--virtually pristine | | 2nd from left--flattened length-wise but not squished vertically | | middle--top half missing/middle squished, bottom recognizable | | 2nd from right--"apparent" [misshapen] top of middle bullet | | rightmost--top 3rd of bullet is mushroomed into a "pancake" | |_____________________________________________________________________| Fig. 4. CE 399 (far left) is beautifully preserved as compared to similar bullets fired from the Carcano: (from left to right) CE 853, fired through a goat's chest, CE 857 (in two pieces), fired into a human skull, and CE 856, fired into a human wrist. Not one of the three, each of which did less damage than the Commission attributes to 399, emerged as undistorted as 399. It is preposterous to assume that 399 could have struck so many obstructions and remained so undamaged. (This photograph was taken for Harold Weisberg by the National Archives.) Dr. Olivier's tests, despite their shortcomings, demonstrated a very common ballistics principle--that a bullet striking bone will usually suffer some form of distortion. As is apparent from Figure 4, none of Dr. Olivier's test bullets admitted into evidence matched 399, since all were grossly deformed by extreme flattening, indenting, or separation of jacket from core (see also 17H849-51). Although Dr. Olivier's tests included shots through ten cadaver wrists, only one of the bullets recovered from this series was admitted into evidence, CE 856 (see Fig. 4). The other bullets are not in the National Archives, and until recently no researchers had seen them. On March 27, 1973, the Archives declassified a once- "Confidential" report written in March 1965 by Dr. Olivier and his associate, Dr. Arthur J. Dziemian. This report is entitled "Wound Ballistics of 6.5-MM Mannlicher-Carcano Ammunition," and represents the final report of the research conducted for the Commission at Edgewood Arsenal. This report includes photographs of four of the test bullets fired through human wrists, published here for the first time ever (Fig. 5). The bullet marked "B" in Figure 5 is apparently CE 856. However, the other three bullets, which produced damage similar to that suffered by Governor Connally's wrist, are even more mutilated than the one bullet that was preserved for the record. These newly released photographs graphically reveal the degree of mutilation that might be found on Mannlicher-Carcano bullets that had struck human wrists, and make even more preposterous the Commission's assertion that near- pristine 399 penetrated Connally's wrist. {goes below: .ll 75} _______________________________________________________________________ | photograph of 4 bullets lying horizontally: 2 bullets in 2 rows: | | | | top left--head mashed slightly down (1 to 2 centimeters?) | | top right--head mashed w/more deformity, (1-2 cms?) | | bottom left--head mashed, more deformity (3-4 cms?) | | bottom right--head mashed, extreme deformity (5-6 cms?) | |_____________________________________________________________________| Fig. 5. This photograph was considered "Confidential" by the government and withheld from researchers for eight years. It depicts "6.5-MM Mannlicher-Carcano Bullets Recovered after being Fired Through Distal Ends of Radii of Cadaver Wrists." The obvious conclusion dictated by the nature of the Governor's wounds is that CE 399 could not have caused them. This is contrary to the Report's assertion that "all the evidence indicated that the bullet found on the Governor's stretcher could have caused all his wounds" (R95). The substantiating argument of the Report is that the total weight of the bullet fragments in the Governor's body does not exceed the weight lost by 399. This argument is nonsensical, for it ignores the thoroughly nonstatistical nature of ballistics and the expected consequences of bullets striking bone; such a line of reasoning attempts to replace imprecision with pseudo-exactness and inapplicable mathematics. It is therefore, in light of the well-preserved state of that bullet, preposterous to postulate that CE 399 caused Governor Connally's wounds. Drs. Shaw and Gregory, barraged by the official contention that 399 was discovered on the Governor's stretcher and thus must have caused his wounds, were reserved in expressing themselves on the unlikelihood of such a proposition. Other experts have been more free in voicing their opinions. I have yet to find one expert who will concede the likelihood of an occurrence such as the Commission assumes. When I spoke with ballistics expert Charles Dickey at Frankford Arsenal, he cautioned me that he could not speak out directly against the validity of the government's beliefs relating to the assassination. Even he found it hard to accept that 399 caused the Governor's wounds.[3] Among the many forensic pathologists who have scoffed at this theory are William Enos,[4] Halpert Fillinger,[5] Milton Helpern,[6] John Nichols,[7] and Cyril Wecht.[8] The absence of gross deformity in bullet 399 contradicts the career of massive bone-smashing attributed to it. However, as I learned from Dr. Fillinger and as Harold Weisberg pointed out several years ago in a copyrighted study of the medical evidence, the most crucial aspect of 399's state is its absence of significant distortion detectable through microscopic examination.[9] The barrels of modern firearms are "rifled," that is, several spiral grooves are cut into the barrel from end to end. As the bullet is propelled through the barrel, these spiral grooves and lands (the raised portions of the barrel between the grooves) set the bullet spinning around its axis, giving it rotational as well as forward movement, thus increasing its stability in flight. The lands and grooves consequently etch a pattern of very fine striated lines along the sides of the bullet, which will vary from one weapon to another just as fingerprints vary from one person to another. Like fingerprints, the lands and grooves scratched onto the surface of the bullet can be microscopically identified with a particular weapon to the exclusion of all others, provided that they remain sufficiently intact subsequent to impact (R547-48). The very fine lands and grooves along the copper sides of CE 399 allowed the conclusive determination that the bullet had been fired from "Oswald's" rifle. FBI agent Frazier provided vital testimony about the defacement of these microscopic markings on 399: Mr. Eisenberg: Were the markings of the bullet at all defaced? Mr. Frazier: Yes; they were, in that the bullet is distorted by having been slightly flattened or twisted. Mr. Eisenberg: How material would you call that defacement? Mr. Frazier: It is hardly visible unless you look at the base of the bullet and notice it is not round. Mr. Eisenberg: How far does it affect your examination for purposes of identification? Mr. Frazier: It had no effect at all . . . because it did not mutilate or distort the microscopic marks beyond the point where you could recognize the pattern and find the same pattern of marks on one bullet as were present on the other. (3H430) From Frazier's testimony it is apparent that the very slight "defacement" of 399's lands and grooves could be better termed a "displacement," for the microscopic marks were distorted only by an almost insignificant change in the {contour} of the bullet as opposed to a disruption in the continuity of the surface. After closely examining 399 at a magnification of five diameters, I was convinced of the veracity of Frazier's testimony. I followed each set of lands and grooves on the bullet and saw that all were continuous and without disruption, beginning just below the rounded nose and running smoothly down to the tail end. Dr. Fillinger emphasized to me that a jacketed bullet such as 399 could strike one bone and leave its lands and grooves intact so far as visible {to the naked eye}. When I assured him that Agent Frazier had found these marks still to be intact even through microscopic examination, Fillinger seemed somewhat taken aback. "Well, this is unlikely," he said. "It's very unlikely, as a matter of fact. Even our own ballistics people here don't get that kind of good luck."[10] One can readily appreciate that forceful contact with firm bone tissue is bound to disrupt the fine striations on a bullet's surface, even with a jacketed projectile. If 399 wounded Governor Connally, then it was necessarily immune to the conditions that distort and deform other bullets of its kind. If it smashed through two substantial bones and rammed into another one, it failed to manifest the normal indications of such a flight, those which marked other bullets under even less stress. The theory that 399 wounded the Governor is valid only on the premise that it was a magic bullet capable of feats never before performed in the history of ballistics. Bullet 399 is not magic. It is just the typical mass of copper and lead that constitutes other bullets of its kind. Governor Connally was likewise not magic. His flesh and bones would deform bullets as would anyone else's; his wounds showed very strong indications that the bullet causing them had, in fact, become distorted and irregular. The only tenable conclusion warranted by the evidence of the Governor's wounds, the condition of 399, and the laws of physics is that 399 did not wound Governor Connally. {The Search for Legitimacy} Did 399 figure in the assassination shots? As we have seen, there is no possible way by which bullet 399 can be related to the President's wounds. The extensive fragmentation involving the fatal wounds rules out a missile left intact. The presence of fragments in the President's neck likewise rules out 399, for there is no possible circumstance under which it could have deposited fragments in the neck and still account for the other wounds, such as the tiny hole in the throat. Had the President sustained a back wound of short penetration, it could not have been caused by a bullet whose penetrating power was as great as 399's. Governor Connally, to judge from the nature of his wounds and the predictable consequences of a strike such as he endured, was hit by a missile that did not leave behind a very large percentage of its substance but ended its flight in a distorted or mangled condition. Thus, CE 399 can not be related to any of the wounds inflicted on either victim during the assassination. From this it follows that 399 must have turned up at Parkland Hospital in a manner not related to the victims and their treatment. It had to have been placed on the stretcher at some time, manually and intentionally. It can not be a legitimate assassination bullet. The situation at Parkland on the afternoon of the assassination would have enabled almost anyone to gain access to the area where 399 was discovered on the stretcher. A man identifying himself as an FBI agent tried to enter the room in which the dead President lay at the hospital. The Secret Servicemen who witnessed this incident and had to restrain the man with force reported that he "appeared to be {determined} to enter the President's room" (18H798-99 and 795-96). The Commission apparently made no efforts to determine the identity of this man and sought no further details from other witnesses. Two witnesses were positive that they saw Jack Ruby at Parkland Hospital at about the time the President's death was announced (15H80; 25H216). Harold Weisberg, in his book "Oswald in New Orleans," reveals that a Cuban refugee of "disruptive influence" was employed at Parkland at the time of the assassination. Pointing out that the Commission's best evidence indicated that 399 was a "plant," Weisberg finds it extremely suspicious that no effort was made to identify this "political Cuban" when his existence was known to both the Secret Service and the Commission.[11] Such a man would have had access to the stretcher on which 399 was found and would not have attracted the least suspicion, since he was an employee of the hospital. Nurse Margaret Henchcliffe related an incident that illustrates how almost {anyone} could have made his way to the area of the stretcher. She reported that a 16-year-old boy {carrying a camera} had gotten into the Emergency Area, seeking to take pictures of the room in which the President had died less than an hour before (21H240). There is currently no evidence against the possibility that the two bullet fragments found in the front seat of the limousine and traced to "Oswald's" rifle were likewise "planted" after the victims were taken to the hospital. We should recall from the discussion of the President's head wounds that the fatal damage was, in no instance, consistent with the damage produced by military ammunition of the type attributed to Oswald. Photographs taken outside the hospital show substantial crowds in proximity to the unguarded limousine.[12] As in the case of the stretcher bullet, the circumstances {did} permit incriminating evidence to be planted. It cannot be said, and indeed I make no pretense of saying, that a phony FBI man, a "disruptive Cuban," Jack Ruby, or a young boy with a camera planted bullet 399 at Parkland Hospital. The thrust of this discussion has been that anyone could have gained access to the locations in which evidence pointing to Oswald was found. This point may also be applied to the Book Depository, where Oswald's rifle and three spent shells were discovered. Within fifteen minutes of the assassination, the Depository was swarming with unidentified people.[13] The medical evidence, as the discussion in this and the previous chapter demonstrates, disassociates military bullets from the President's wounds and proves that a specific bullet traced to Oswald's rifle and found at Parkland could {not} have wounded either victim in the assassination. The spectrographic analyses, the only evidence that could correlate Oswald's rifle with the wounds, was conspicuously avoided by the Commission, and has been suppressed by the government so that no one to this day may know the spectrographer's findings. It is therefore not unreasonable to postulate, in accordance with the only scientific evidence currently available, that the tangible evidence that implicates Oswald was deliberately "planted," and did not figure in the actual shooting. The unmistakable inference from the medical evidence is that the rifle, the cartridge cases, and the bullets {had} to have been planted. The circumstances at the Book Depository and at Parkland Hospital indisputably could have enabled a "conspirator" to plant evidence pointing to Oswald. The Commission has produced no evidence that precludes the possibility of a "plant." The discussion in this section has removed the very foundation of the official case against Oswald by demonstrating, to the degree of certainty possible, that Oswald's rifle was not responsible for the wounds of President Kennedy and Governor Connally. The medical/ballistics evidence thus exculpates Oswald and presents several unmistakable conspiratorial implications. The Warren Commission claimed to have much evidence, apart from the medical/ballistics findings, that proved or indicated that Oswald was the assassin. This additional evidence, and the Commission's treatment of it, I will consider in Part III. __________ [1] "Memorandum for the Record," dated April 22, 1964, written by Melvin Eisenberg about a conference held on April 14, l964. [2] "Memorandum for the Record," dated April 22, 1964, written by Melvin Eisenberg about a conference held on April 21, 1964. [3] Dickey Interview. [4] "CBS News Inquiry: `The Warren Report,'" Part II, broadcast over the CBS Television Network on June 26, 1967, p. 18 of the transcript prepared by CBS News. [5] Fillinger Interview. [6] Marshall Houts, "Where Death Delights" (New York: Coward-McCann, 1967), pp. 62-63. [7] Nichols Interview and letter to author from Dr. John Nichols, dated September 5, 1969. [8] Thompson, p. 153. [9] Fillinger Interview; Weisberg, "Post Mortem I," p. 25 [10] Ibid. [11] Weisberg, "Oswald in New Orleans," pp. 292-93. [12] E.g., see Jesse Curry, "Personal JFK Assassination File" (Dallas: American Poster and Printing Co., Inc., 1969), pp. 34-37. The "Dallas Morning News" of November 23, 1963, estimated that a crowd or 200 had gathered outside the hospital (p. 9). [13] See Weisberg, "Whitewash II," p. 35. __________________________________________________________________________ [10 photographs included over the next 10 pages (inserted between page 148 and 149 of the text); for "ascii completeness," their captions follow. -- ratitor ] FIRST PAGE: J. Lee Rankin, head of the Warren Commission's staff of lawyers. (UPI photo) Arlen Specter, Commission staff lawyer, and architect of the single-bullet theory. (UPI photo) SECOND PAGE: Commission staff lawyer David Belin (center), in Dallas, with Commission members Senator John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky (left) and John J. McCloy. Belin is responsible for assembling much of the case against Oswald. (UPI photo) THIRD PAGE: Lee Harvey Oswald in police custody on November 22, 1963. Note Oswald's dark shirt (rust brown), which witnesses recalled he wore that entire day. The alleged gunman in the sixth floor of the Book Depository wore a light, short-sleeved shirt consistently described as white or khaki. (Wide World Photos) FOURTH PAGE: Lee Harvey Oswald is silenced forever by Jack Ruby as Oswald is being escorted through Dallas city jail. (Wide World Photo) FIFTH PAGE: Lee Harvey Oswald, dying, refuses to confess to a crime that he did not commit. (Wide World Photos) SIXTH and SEVENTH PAGES: Extreme close-up of the tail end of Bullet 399, shown in relation to a millimeter scale. This photograph reveals the sole deformity of this so-called magic bullet: there has been a slight squeezing at the base with some disruption of the lead core that is exposed at that point. It is difficult to believe that this bullet could emerge so unscathed after penetrating two bodies, smashing two bones, and brushing another, as the Warren Commission alleges. However, it is {impossible} for this bullet to have left the lead fragments demanded if it is a legitimate assassination bullet. Metal fragments, some with dimensions greater than 3mm., were left behind at each point 399 is alleged to have hit: The President's neck, and the Governor's chest, wrist, and thigh. As this photograph reveals, such an array of fragments could not have come from 399's base, thus disassociating 399 from the shooting. The one area of 399's lead base that is missing appears as a small crater in this photograph; this is the result of FBI Agent Frazier's having removed a slug of lead for spectographic analysis. (Photo: National Archives) EIGHTH and NINTH PAGES: Suppressed Skull X rays--These [2] X rays depict gelatin-filled human skulls shot with ammunition of the type allegedly used by Oswald. They were classified by the government and remained suppressed until recently; they are printed here for the first time ever. What they reveal is that Oswald's rifle could not have produced the head wounds suffered by President Kennedy. The bullet that hit the president in the head exploded into a multitude of minuscule fragments. One Secret Service agent described the appearance of these metal fragments on the X rays: "The whole head looked like a little mass of stars." The fragmentation depicted on these test X rays obviously differs from that described in the president's head. The upper X ray reveals only relatively large fragments concentrated at the point of entrance; the lower reveals only a few tiny fragments altogether. This gives dramatic, suppressed proof that Oswald did not fire the shot that killed President Kennedy. (Photo: National Archives) TENTH PAGE: Marina Oswald, widow of supposed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, being escorted to testify before Warren Commission investigators. (UPI Photo) |