Suspicion in Plenty: An anthology of scepticism published in Britain 1963-1973

[Paul Rigby]

An inexpensive place to begin...

Evening Standard, 22 September 1966, p.7

Who else killed Kennedy?

By Len Deighton

“This is the spoon in the motorcade and I’m the Depository Building…” An urgent wave of interest and concern about the Warren Commission’s Kennedy Assassination Report is sweeping America.

Doubts about the Commission’s conclusions are hardening into ill-ease as the most coldly forensic book on the subject – Mark Lane’s Rust to Judgment, published in London today – climbs the U.S. best-seller list.

Backed by this and books and like Inquest by Edward Jay Epstein – also published today – (which began life as a master’s thesis in government at Cornell University), men like Professor Richard H. Popkin Professor of Philosophy at the University of California say: “This material suggests not that the ‘official theory’ is implausible or improbable, or that it is not legally convincing, but that by reasonable standards accepted by thoughtful men, it is impossible…”

These are some of the points made:

The description of the assassin - Oswald’s description was broadcast by the Dallas police just before 12.45 p.m. (15 minutes after Kennedy was shot).

Police Chief Jesse Curry said Oswald became a subject “after the police found the rifle on the sixth floor…”

But the rifle on the sixth floor wasn’t found until 1:22 (more than half an hour after the broadcast description had gone out.)

So how did the broadcast description originate? - The Commission conceded it did not know the answer, but it indicated a willingness to hazard a guess. “Most probably,” the report said, Howard L. Brennan was the source of the description.

Brennan was across the street 107feet from the base of the Depository and as Dallas police captain Fritz (who was in charge there) said: …you can’t tell five or six floors up whether a man is tall or short.”

Rifleman

Brennan remembers telling Sorrels – a Secret Service man – what the rifleman at the windows looked like. He talked to Sorrels on the Book Depository steps within 10 minutes of the shots.

Sorrels, however, testified that he was in the lead car which rushed to the hospital ahead of the Presidential limousine. It was after watching Kennedy and Connally carried into hospital that he went back to the Depository. Sorrel couldn’t have talked with Brennan before 1:00 p.m. (15 minutes after the description was broadcast).

But the broadcast description was precise: “White, slender, weighing about 165 lbs, about 5ft. 10in. tall.” And Brennan admitted his sight was “not good” when before the Commission.

The police car at 1026 North Beckley – At about 1 p.m. between the killing of the President and a few minutes before the death of Patrolman Tippit in a police car, Oswald entered his rooming house, went to his room, and left after three or four minutes.

The housekeeper said that during this time a police car drew up outside the house, sounded a tit-tit on the hooter and drove away just before Oswald came out.

The Commission said “Investigation has not produced any evidence that there was a police vehicle in that area …” The housekeeper, however, was quite specific saying it was a marked “Police Car No. 207.” The Commission replied: “Squad car 207 was at the Texas School Book Depository Building,” relying solely on the statements and assignments of various men and cars on November 22.

Not asked

The officer assigned to car 207 told the FBI that he arrived at the Depository just after 12:45 p.m. and parked outside. He gave the keys to a sergeant and then remained in the building for more than three hours. The sergeant testified twice before the Commission counsel but it was not asked if he had driven the automobile to North Beckley Avenue or if any other person had access to car 207 at 1:00 p.m..

After Oswald left the rooming house he was last seen standing at a bus stop waiting for a northbound bus. Some eight or ten minutes later Tippet was killed a mile south.

A difficulty that the Commission faced was that the Government released its conclusions before securing the facts, and even with the best will in the world there was a natural tendency for witnesses to help the Commission by supporting the Government’s story. As one witness said when asked how many shots he heard: “I heard one more shot than was fired.”

The timing of the shots – This is a vital part of the Commission’s case, for the exact time between the first shot and the last shot is known from the piece of film of the assassination. Therefore, unless there is time for all damage to be accounted for the only conclusion is that there was another assassin with an additional rifle.

It is very difficult to credit any marksman with the ability to fire three shots from a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle within 5.6 seconds, and even this timing is only possible if we accept the Commission’s contention that one bullet went through Kennedy’s neck, out again, and into Governor Connally’s back, wrist and thigh.

Quite apart from the fact that both Connally and his wife clearly state that it was a different shot, with a pause long enough for him to look toward the President and then pivot back to his left before feeling the bullet him, the condition of the bullet is quite out of keeping with the damage done to bone.

The trajectory of the bullet that went into the President’s throat is one of Lane’s most telling points. The autopsy sketches and Kennedy’s clothing put the bullet hole at six inches below Kennedy’s collar (although the Commission describe the wound as “near the base of the neck”). The corresponding wound for the same bullet is the hole just behind the knot of his tie.

Quite apart from any argument about which were exit or entry wounds, such holes are not consistent with a bullet fired from six storeys above ground. They are consistent with a theory that shots were fired from a grassy knoll ahead of the car. (And don’t say the President might have been leaning forward: the movie proves he wasn’t.) These photos of the clothing were not included in the Warren Report (nor in any of the 26 volumes of evidence). Mr. Epstein’s Inquest is best read after Rush to Judgment, for it gives a close-up look at the Warren Investigating machine. It is a picture of busy men, their slipshod methods in part accounted for by the absence of senior officials attending their everyday business, and by constant hurry-ups from above.

Hostile

When they were there, however, the members of the Commission had no doubt that their function “was to dispel rumours,” and “show the world that America is not a banana republic where government can be changed by conspiracy.”

So right from the beginning it was hostile to stories like the one that Oswald was an FBI agent. The story came from no lesser person than the Attorney-General of Texas and the Dallas District Attorney: it gave Oswald’s FBI number – 179 – and his rate of pay – 200 dollars per month.

The Dallas DA was an ex-FBI man himself; he heard also that Oswald’s notebook had contained the phone number of a Dallas FBI agent but that the FBI omitted this item from the facts when forwarding the notebook contents to the Warren Commission.

The Warren Commission’s reaction was anger, not against the FBI but against the story itself. “We have a dirty rumour,” says J. Lee Rankin, General Counsel for the Commission, “and it must be wiped out insofar as it is possible to do so by this Commission.”

It is wiped out by the simple process of giving the FBI a chance to deny that Oswald was one of their employees. Although the FBI admit that they left out the phone number when forwarding the Oswald notebook contents, the whole thing quietly died and was never, never mentioned again.

When the Warren Report was first published, many prestigious and public-spirited commentators, reassured by the credentials of the participating members, rushed to endorse unequivocally the findings of the Commission. These same commentators now find themselves in the difficult position of reconciling Lane and Epstein’s careful and unanswerable research with their own former enthusiasm for the Warren Report.

Personally, I have never had much time for books written by committee: fiction by committee is terrible.

RUSH TO JUDGMENT by Mark Lane. Bodley Head. 42s.
INQUEST by E. J. Epstein. Hutchinson. 30s.

[Paul Rigby]

You take the high road...

Glasgow Herald, 22 September 1966, p.10

Who Killed John Kennedy?

By Esmond Wright

There is still considerable doubt surrounding the death of President Kennedy. The findings of the Warren Report are challenged in two books, one by Lee Harvey Oswald’s defence counsel, Mark Lane.

In Britain, they say, or they used to say, there’s a divinity doth hedge a king; certainly, in a long and all but unbroken history, few of our masters have been assassinated and in modern times none at all – except, was it were, legitimately, as in 1649. Other countries are less fortunate, as we have once again been all too vividly reminded in South Africa. And in the United States, despite the Secret Service detail, the FBI officers on rooftops, and the protective squadrons of motor-cycle outriders, murder walks with Presidents.

Four have been killed: Lincoln in 1865, Garfield in 1881, McKinley in 1901 and Kennedy in 1963; and attempts were made to kill Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt – whose life was saved by the 50-page manuscript of his speech in his pocket – Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 – the shots fired by Giuseppe Zangara (“I do not hate President Roosevelt personally, I hate all Presidents… and everybody who is rich”) missed the President but killed Mayor Cermak of Chicago – and Harry S. Truman.

In all cases but Kennedy’s, there is no doubt who the murderer or would-be murderer was. Around the shooting in Dallas mystery still persists. And not only mystery but a suspicion of conspiracy. The thought of it began within 10 minutes of the assassination in 1963. For when the Vice-President got out of his own car at the hospital in Dallas and slowly stretched himself after having been lying under the protesting body of his own Secret Service guard, his physical jerks led radio commentators to say that he too must have been hurt. Perhaps in 1963 as in the past it was an attempt not only on the President but on a number of other offices of state? Legends begin casually, and once they are born they are slow to die.

Other Theories

The Warren Commission reported in September 1964: a report of 888 pages in length; product of 250 hours of interviewing of 550 witnesses by a large team of lawyers; and supported by 26 thick volumes of testimony. It found that the shots which killed the President and wounded Governor Connolly were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald: that there was no evidence that either Oswald or Jack Ruby (real name Rubinstein) was part of any conspiracy, foreign or domestic; that no one assisted Oswald; and that there was nothing to support the speculation that Oswald was an agent or informant of the FBI, the CIA, or of any other Government Agency.

This view, however, has been strongly contested. Even before the Report appeared other more dramatic theories had been advanced. Thomas G. Buchanan (Who Killed Kennedy? published in May, 1964) and Joachim Joesten (Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy? published in June, 1964) argued that Oswald was either a minor figure in the murder or even an FBI agent at the time. Even before the Warren Commission was appointed the FBI had already begun its own investigation (five volumes) and handed its findings over to the Warren Commission. In one major item, and in a number of minor, there remain discrepancies between the two.

The FBI Report, based on the autopsy, proves that the first bullet hit the President in the back and did not exit from his throat (although the doctors at Parkland Hospital said the bullet entered “just below the Adam’s apple” and did not exit): in either event it could not have been this bullet that wounded Governor Connolly, who was sitting in front of the President; and yet from the film of the assassination which onlooker Abraham Zapruder happened to take of the affair, it is clear that the assassination could have been committed by one man alone only on the condition that Kennedy and Connolly were hit by the same bullet.

The Warren Report ignores the evidence of a second assassin – evidence (“the dark face in the shadows”) supported by a number of witnesses; it was indeed preoccupied less with establishing the circumstances of the assassination than with identifying Oswald as the likely murderer. There is a strong case to be made (and it has been by Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper) that its purpose was political and psychological: to end the rumours, to restore domestic tranquillity, and to protect the national interest by marshalling the evidence against Oswald and, in doing so, to close the whole ugly affair.

Edward J. Epstein submits the Warren Report to a devastating critique in a book that has already aroused a furore in the United States (where it was published in June this year). He does not analyse the murder but the Commission’s findings and at his hands they become very suspect indeed. He proves that it was not the Commission – a group of distinguished names – but its hired lawyers who did the actual probing and wrote the Report. They worked in a hurry and they ignored much conflicting material.

They passed over some particular questions altogether: exactly how many shots were fired?; was there a second man in the Depository?; did not a shot (or some shots?) come from the “grassy knoll” nearer the motorcade (as eight witnesses testified)?; how could a marksman with so undistinguished a record as Oswald’s aim so unerringly, and in such remarkably quick time?; What exactly were Oswald’s FBI connections? What put the police so quickly on Oswald’s trail? What was Ruby’s connection with Oswald, and with the police?

The Epstein assessment, a cold and clinical piece of research, that began as a study for an advanced degree at Cornell, proves at least that the Warren Commission did a superficial job; that they were determined to convict Oswald post facto, although not from any sinister motives; and that, thought the case for Oswald’s guilt seems solidly established there is every likelihood, from the evidence of the shoots and the timing, that he could not have been the sole assassin. This report on a Report is vivid and disturbing reading.

Mark Lane is equally ruthless in his analysis and comes to a similar conclusion. He was retained by Mrs Oswald in 1963 to defend her son, and he works from a defence lawyer’s assumption that Oswald might, after all, be innocent. He re-examines the evidence given to the Warren Commission and shows that the conclusions the Commission drew were highly selective. They were looking for evidence against Oswald and they found it; but there is other evidence – which the chose to ignore. But he goes beyond this. He and the organisation which supported him, the Citizens’ Committee of Inquiry, have followed up newspapers’ clues, investigated independent reports, and interviewed new witnesses.

Fall Guy

He argues that there was a close association between Ruby, Tippit and Right-Wing groups in Texas; that Ruby was afraid to give evidence in Dallas; and that police pressure was brought to bear on Oswald’s wife to persuade her that her husband was guilty. In his view others were involved in the assassination, and attention was being drawn to Oswald as the prospective assassin before November 23. Oswald was, in other words, the fall guy. Even if one does not accept his conclusions, the joint indictment of the Warren Commission by Mssrs Epstein and Lane is massive. It is clear that the Commission admitted hearsay evidence, and excluded key eye-witness testimony; that it rejected or ignored important facts; and that its procedures and conclusions have brought discredit and shame upon the Federal law and the Federal Government.

Inquest: The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth, by Edward J. Epstein, published by Hutchinson: price 30s.
Rush to Judgement, by Mark Lane, published by Bodley Head: price 42s.

[Paul Rigby]

Greet the new law, same as the old law...

The New Law Journal, 22 September 1966, p.1330

Books: The Case for Oswald

By R.S.A.

On May 14, 1964, Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the FBI, gave evidence before the Warren Commission upon the assassination of President Kennedy. He alleged that the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, Mrs. Marguerite Oswald, was emotionally unstable and proved this to his own satisfaction by saying: “The first indication of her emotional instability was the retaining of a lawyer that anyone would not have retained if they were really serious in trying to get down to the facts.” This lawyer was Mark Lane, whose book, Rush to Judgment*, published in this country today, constitutes a most serious and responsible inquiry into the facts.

The critics of the Warren Report have emerged from being branded as nut-cases to a recognised serious status. The result must be disturbing. America was relieved and grateful to be told that there was no conspiracy, no second gun, and that the crime was solved. Three recent publications – those of Harold Weisberg, Edward Jay Epstein and the book under review – throw these conclusions wholly in doubt.

Rush to Judgment analyses in depth the findings of the Commission and in doing so will not only satisfy many that the great mystery of the assassination is unsolved, but will illuminate the defects in the manner of the Commission’s workings. Mr. Lane notes that the Commission took as the starting point of their investigations the conclusions which had been reached by the FBI, namely (a) that Oswald shot Kennedy and (b) that Oswald was not connected with any conspiracy of any kind, nature or description. At the request of Mrs. Marguerite Oswald he therefore asked to appear before the Commission to represent Oswald’s interests. Permission was refused. Instead Mr. Walter Craig, President of the American Bar Association, was invited to protect Oswald’s interests. He attended two of the 51 sessions of the Commission; in only one of these did he intervene, and then not on behalf of Oswald. The increasing doubt which surrounds the findings of the Commission is – irrespective of whether those findings are right – a direct result of their failure to have regard to the fundamental maxim audi alteram partem.

Consequently, Mr. Lane formed a citizens’ committee of inquiry to investigate the assassination. Newspaper clues and independent reports were followed up as leads to new material. Witnesses were seen who had not been called before the Commission or, if called, not required to testify fully. Naturally such amateur detective work leading to untested, unsworn evidence must be treated critically. Nevertheless, its incorporation in this book reinforces the unease which is created by re-examination of the evidence on which the Commission based its own findings.

The most fundamental question raised by Mr. Lane is whether the Commission was justified in finding that the bullets came from one rifle. Evidence that many onlookers first thought shots came from a knoll some distance from the book depository from which Oswald is said to have fired is strong but impressionist. The evidence upon the gun is scientifically formidable. Abraham Zapruder took a motion picture on a film which the Commission agreed ran at 18.3 frames per second. The President could not have been shot from the sixth-floor window before frame 210. The alleged weapon needed a minimum of 2.3 seconds and therefore 42.09 frames of film between each shot – Governor Connally, riding with the President, was not in a position to be shot later than frame 240.

Upon these figures – which err if at all on the side of caution – Governor Connally and the President could not have been shot from the sixth-floor window by the alleged single murder weapon. The Commission therefore searched for an alternative explanation and found that the same bullet struck both the President and the Governor. This finding was achieved only by unsatisfactory conclusions, often inconsistent with the medical evidence, as to the nature of the wounds received.. Further, it overrides the Governor’s evidence on which bullet caused the injury to his chest: “Well, in my judgment, it just couldn’t have been the first one because I heard the sound of the shot. In the first place, I don’t know anything about the velocity of this particular bullet, but any rifle has a velocity which exceeds the speed of sound and when I heard the sound of that first shot that bullet had already reached that far, and after I heard that shot, I had the time to turn to my right, and start to turn to my left before I felt anything.”

Mrs. Connally’s evidence corroborates that of the Governor. The only theory upon which the finding that all bullets came from the alleged weapon at the sixth-floor window can be based is therefore wholly in doubt.

One condensed example can illustrate the numerous legitimate and disturbing arguments ranging over the whole field of the murders of President Kennedy, Officer Tippit and Oswald, presented by Mr. Lane. Too often the feeling arises that findings were against the weight of the evidence. Of course, Mr. Lane is approaching the case as advocate for Oswald and may unconsciously, as he alleges the Commission did, select such evidence as supports his case. No one who has not had access to the evidence can judge the merits of the rival arguments. This cogent, factual, detailed book is of great importance because it presents the case for the defence. It is well-presented, indexed and referenced, with a forceful introduction by Professor Trevor-Roper, himself an early critic of the Warren Report. Above all, for lawyers, it leaves the feeling that if the Commission had not rushed to judgment, but had heard Mr. Lane on behalf of Oswald, its verdict would have been either different or strengthened.

* RUSH TO JUDGMENT. By Mark Lane. Bodley Head: pp.472 + vi; 42s.

[Paul Rigby]

By way of a break from earnest analyses of Epstein and Lane, a two-pronged insight into the BBC at work. What it couldn't achieve by rational argument, good old Aunty Beeb, power's most dutiful whore, sought to achieve by crass reconstruction. John Mortimer was having none of it:

The Listener and BBC Television Review, Vol. LXXV, No. 1930, 24 March 1966, p. 446

Lee Oswald - Assassin

By John Mortimer

John Mortimer’s latest works include his translation of Feydeau’s ‘A Flea in Her Ear’, at present playing at the National Theatre, and (with Penelope Mortimer) the screenplay for the film ‘Bunny Lake is Missing’

Art is not life and cannot be
The handmaid of society…

The television spectacular Lee Oswald – Assassin (BBC-1, March 15), billed as a ‘documentary play’, did not exactly throw a flood of penetrating light on the incredible tragedy which took place in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Indeed it accepted the findings of the Warren Commission in toto and attempted no psychological or political explanation. What Mr. Felix Lutzkendorf’s documentary did raise, however, is the whole question of the relationship of the event to its dramatization, of art to life, and the validity of painfully recreating painful events in order to make no comment on them whatsoever.

If the play had been better written perhaps these questions would have been raised in a more acute form. It would have been, no doubt, more valuable to argue the ‘documentary’ idea in the face of the sort of chillingly brilliant reporting Truman Capote has achieved with the Kansas murders. Even so I believe this kind of thoughtless surrender of creative responsibility to be unjustified. In the present example all we got was further proof, if proof be needed, that nothing is more unreal in art than the slavish reconstruction of reality. Lee Oswald – Assassin can take its proud place beside such other works as Highland Cattle Fording a Stream or Co-operative Workers Getting in a Bumper Harvest in the Ukraine in the gallery of ingenuity misapplied.

Much of my early life was spent in working in ‘documentary films’ which, although adequately efficient at showing the herring fleet putting out to sea, or bombers rising into the air to the accompaniment of symphonic music by Dr. Vaughn Williams, were poor at dealing with human motives or dilemmas. Indeed our documentary characters seldom said much except ‘Gerry a little naughty tonight’ or ‘Pass the tea, George’. We also had a great fear of actors, and thought that if a man were to be shown working a lathe on the screen he must work a lathe in what’s known as ‘real life’. It was almost with nostalgia that I read Mr. Rudolph Cartier’s note in Radio Times on his reasons for choosing Tony Brill (an excellent young American actor) to play the part of Lee Oswald. ‘Not only is he of the same age, height, and build’, writes Mr. Cartier triumphantly, ‘but he is also, like Oswald, a family man with two small children’. It is as if a director staging Julius Caesar chose an actor for the title role who was bald, bisexual, and able to speak Latin.

Having found an actor of the right height, the quest for Lee Oswald was carried on in two very distinct parts: before and after the assassination. In the first part the scenes were frequently slow, stagey, and heavy with unreality. Oswald was shown unhappy in the Marines and happy in Russia. No part was played by his mother – a character surely vital to any understanding of the Dallas tragedy – and the dialogue was loaded with historical foresight. ‘I brought you a present’, an Intourist guide, dressed more like the star of an ice show than any Intourist guide I’ve ever met, says to Oswald in a room at Moscow’s Hotel Berlin. Of course he opens it with delight and exclaims ‘Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky’. ‘Read what I’ve put inside it – “May all your dreams come true”’.

On such scenes it is unnecessary to dwell, or on the bit in America when the good-hearted neighbours come round and find the gun Oswald has just used to fire at General Walker propped up against the gas cooker. ‘Don’t tell me it was you that took that post shot at General Walker. Ha! Ha! Ha!’ Here the play loses the documentary conviction of The Avengers. However, after the assassination, with Oswald’s capture and questioning in the Dallas police station, in his extraordinary presentation to the reporters, the quality of the production changes. Mr. Cartier’s undoubted mastery of crowds on television emerges, and for the first time the surface of reality is caught.

But as the production achieves efficiency the basic questions become even more pressing. What is the intention, if any? What exactly are we meant to be experiencing? Because the extraordinary thing is that we having recreated for us on television, by actors dressed as the real participants, events which were actually seen, to the horror and amazement of the world, taking place on television. No comment, no creation; simply an event once seen real repeated in all its detail but with the reality removed – and what in the name of Luigi Pirandello can be the purpose of that?

Before the endless reflecting mirrors of reality which this question conjures up, the mind no doubt boggles. But what is also certain is that the minds of Messrs Lutzkendorf and Cartier have not boggled at all; indeed they have carried on, carefully choosing the sheriff’s hats and noting down the reporters’ actual questions, as if there were no problem at all.

If they had stayed tuned to their television sets after the production, instead of no doubt tramping off for a relieved brown ale in the BBC Club, those responsible for Lee Oswald – Assassin would have seen another sight on television. Another American folk hero, the curious, Hitler-admiring General Ky of South Vietnam for whose regime we are apparently expected to care so much, had ordered the public execution, with the victim’s wife and children present, of a Chinese businessman. We saw his wife, we saw the children, and they were crying. We saw a dim figure, standing behind parked lorries, waiting to be shot. Now I don’t know if we should sit in our comfortable chairs and peer at such events. I don’t even know if it is salutary or corrupting or what it is for us to do so. But I think I do know this – such a tragedy should not be imitated by actors unless it is to make some deeply felt or hard-thought-out statement about it. To do otherwise is to play at charades, to diminish our responsibility, and, finally, to offer a sort of insult in the terrible face of life.

The BBC in 1966/7 contained some of the most experienced and artful sykewarfare practioners the British establishment has produced (or conscripted). Curious, then, to see how crude was the partisanship deployed against Mark Lane:

Oz, March 1967

“Shut That Guy Up!”

By Mark Lane

What really happened at the BBC’s Lime Grove studios on January 29? Ostensibly, a much fan-fared impartial investigation into the death of Kennedy which pitted Mark Lane, author of ‘Rush to Judgement’ against two Warren Commission lawyers, Arlen Specter and David Belin and two of the Warren Commission’s influential defenders, Lord Devlin and Professor Bickel. What actually happened on TV screens outraged an undisclosed number of viewers; prompting them to jam BBC switchboards. The strict format of the programme seemed loaded against Lane, to say nothing of compere Kenneth Harris’s compulsive partiality. What didn’t appear on camera is even more fascinating. Here Mark Lane recounts his negotiations with the BBC, reveals how rehearsals with other protagonists were underway 12 days before he arrived and discloses astonishing occurrences behind-the-scenes.

If you were watching BBC-2 for almost five hours on January 29 you should have been informed that the distortion was not caused by a faulty television set in your home. It originated at BBC’s Lime Grove studio. It was, in fact, planned that way.

On January 17 I drove to a college in Philadelphia with anticipation of a debate with Arlen Specter, one of the most inventive of the Warren Commission’s lawyers. Mr Specter had been, I was informed, a young Democrat, given an assignment as an assistant district attorney by the Democratic District Attorney of Philadelphia. His employer permitted him to serve as a Commission lawyer, an extra-curricular bit of activity that enhanced both his reputation and his finances. Mr Specter returned from the Washington crusade. He changed his political party, announced his candidacy for the office of District Attorney, and the prestige that his work for President Johnson’s Commission brought him enabled him to defeat his former friend and supporter. On the very afternoon of my arrival in Philadelphia the leading newspaper announced that Mr Specter would be the Republican candidate for Mayor. You may well imagine my desire to meet so famous a person in public debate in his own city. But, alas, it was not to be. Mr Specter’s office announced that he must retire early that night (the debate was set for 7:30pm) for he was required to catch with me – twelve days later. (In the interim I flew to California, appeared on radio and television programmes there and debated another Warren Commission lawyer at the University of California at Los Angeles before flying to London.)

However, as the reader will discover, perhaps to his amusement, and as I discovered, much to my regret, my absence from London was apparently in error for I missed the BBC rehearsals for the extemporaneous debate programme. In retrospect I must add that I am not now sure that my mere presence in London would have ensured my knowledge of the rehearsal schedule or an invitation to the preparations.

It seemed just a bit odd to me that so astute a politician as Mr Specter would refuse to debate me in America (the major networks and leading universities had sought to arrange such debates on many occasions but Mr Specter was adamant in his rejection of every such invitation) and so quickly agree to escape across the ocean for the encounter. One less naïve would have had a clue that the BBC had somehow made the confrontation most attractive to the Commission’s representatives. I confess to having speculated about the matter with myself for a moment or two. I concluded that the suites at the Connaught, the expense account, the trip to London for the lawyers and presumably for their wives or associates, and perhaps even a fee might have tipped the balance. No – it could not be any assurances regarding the programme’s format. My own genuine admiration for the English respect for fair play ruled out that consideration.

The format was, of course, soon to become the question of the day. This being so let me trace my contact with it from the outset. The film’s director, Emile de Antonio (who having now been identified to you I must henceforth refer to as D, for I have only known him so, and I should forget who it is I write about if I call him anyone else), bore the burden of the original negotiation with the BBC officials.

He told me that the BBC had agreed to show the film on January 29, that there would be an intermission, and that it would be followed by a general discussion in which it was hoped that I would participate. I agreed at once. BBC insisted that I sign a document in which I agreed not to appear on any radio or television programme to be broadcast in England prior to January 29. This effort at the creation of a very small monopoly hardly seemed appropriate, but as it was the condition for the showing of the film, and as I did not plan to be in London much before that date anyway, I executed the document and it was submitted to the BBC. Subsequently, the BBC officials signed the contract purchasing the film for one showing.

My first direct contact with a BBC staffer came when I was in Los Angeles. A call came from London. A very correct and polite English voice informed me that it was owned by Peter Pagnamenta who was the assistant director of the programme which had been named “The Death of Kennedy”. He called me to find out when I would arrive and to be sure that I understood the approach that the director had taken to the programme. I would arrive on the 28th, I said, and should like to hear the director’s approach. He explained that the film would be shown. It would constitute the opening statement of “your case” as he put it. Then the Commission lawyer would be permitted to make comments. Didn’t I think it fair that they should speak next? I did, indeed. And then you will rebut and the debate will proceed. It all sounded fine, I said, but weren’t there to be two other participants? Oh yes. Lord Devlin, you now who he is? I did. Well he and a Professor Bickel will speak later in the programme. In other words, I said, you will have four Commission supporters present the Commission’s case and I alone will speak for the critics? In a sense you might say that, he replied, but Lord Devlin and Professor Bickel are not Commission personnel. I let that one pass not saying that they had been more effective for the Commission even if more ignorant of the facts. I said I would like to make a suggestion. Perhaps you might invite Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper – you know who he is? Among his credentials to qualify as a participant was the fact that he has read the 26 volumes, and his writings on the subject seemed to demonstrate that he was almost the only person in England to have bothered to examine the evidence. Certainly Lord Devlin gave no sign of such an acquaintance with the facts. The answer was that Professor Trevor-Roper was not to be a participant. And now that that’s out of the way, what hotel would you like to stay at. I couldn’t care less. Any will do. Well, then we’ll make a reservation for you at the X hotel, and if there is any change we’ll have a message waiting for you when you arrive at the airport. Please cable Dick Francis the time of your arrival and contact Paul Fox after you’ve settled in your hotel in London. The cable was sent.—Arrive January 28th 7:00AM.

And that was the first and last word regarding the format of the programme before my 7,000 mile journey from Los Angeles to London in reliance upon that conversation.

Arrived at 7:00 AM. It was raining. I was tired from the trip from New York to Los Angeles, a busy schedule on the west coast, the flight to London from Los Angeles, and the thought of flying back to New York in three days for two days there before flying back to Paris. But this was an important programme and well worth the effort. By worth the effort, I meant not that it would be worth it financially, for since I was not paid a farthing for the programme, and in fact was compelled to cancel speaking engagements for it which were to have paid handsomely, the programme was, in that sense, to be worse than a total loss. But the chance to meet the imaginative creator of the single bullet theory in an open, no holds barred encounter, before some seven million viewers, with the knowledge that it would be fully reported in my own country, was worth any sacrifice of time or money or effort. Still, I was tired. I cleared Immigration quickly with a greeting from the clerk. He said he’d be watching the programme. Customs, too, was fast and pleasant.

There was no message waiting. I called the X hotel to find that there was no reservation. Since D had told me that the Commission lawyers, Mr Specter who you have already met, and Mr Belin from Iowa, were to stay in rather luxurious quarters at the Connaught, I called there as well. No reservation for me. I called the BBC. A gentleman, obviously a night-time receptionist hoping the morning would pass without the kind of problem I was about to present, answered. He said he had no authority. Of course Mr Fox was not in and wouldn’t be for hours and, sir, no one is in, except me and I know nothing about hotels, perhaps you might call back in a couple of hours. Two hours passed rather slowly in the drafty terminal building. It was almost nine and I had left New York the evening before and hadn’t yet been to sleep. In due course a responsible and concerned young lady at the BBC was located and a reservation made at a hotel. I was too tired to care that the hotel was undergoing noisy renovation and that the lobby resembled a bombed out village or that the room was dark and musty.

Before I left the States, D had told me that the BBC had constructed a most elaborate model of Dealey Plaza and that it was hoped, by the BBC, that instead of aerial photographs of the area which appeared in our film, live, on camera, shots of the model might be substituted. D agreed to the substitution upon my agreement that the model was accurate. I took a shower, shaved, and called Paul Fox. The operator at the BBC cut me off. I called again. He was not in but would call back. He never did. I called Peter Pagnamenta. He was at a meeting and his office would switch me to the meeting room. We were cut off again. I called back. Mr Pagnamenta will call you in a minute. He didn’t. I called back in fifteen minutes and reached him. I said I would like to see the model. He said, sorry about the renovation at the hotel; hope it hasn’t disturbed you. I said that it is quite all right, thinking that if he knew about it why didn’t he book a room at some other hotel. I would like to see the model. He said, how would tomorrow do. Not too well, I said, for if any changes have to be made you may need some time and tomorrow is the day of the programme. Well, let’s see what time might be convenient for us for you to arrive. He said he’d call back. The phone rang and it was Per Hanghoj, a journalist for the Danish afternoon newspaper Ekstrabladet.

I said, how would you like to see the BBC model and meet some BBC officials? He said he’d like to and we took a taxicab to the BBC Lime Grove studio. There we met Mr Pagnamenta who permitted us to see the model. It was breath-taking in detail.

And in each crucial respect it was inaccurate.

One of the participants, Mr Bickel, in an effort to prove that no shots could have come from behind the wooden fence, the area from which some of the shots originated, had written in an American publication (Commentary, October 1966) “people were milling about this area and looking down on it from the railroad bridge over the underpass, and no one saw an armed man.” Mr Bickel’s argument obviously rests upon the allegation that one can observe the area behind the wooden fence from the railroad bridge which is above it. His abysmal ignorance of the geography of the area can probably be explained by his failure to visit the location. The railroad bridge is the same height as the base of the five foot wooden fences, not above it, and the fence area is heavily landscaped with bushes and trees so dense that it is absolutely impossible to see anyone behind the fence from the bridge. Yet the BBC model seemed almost designed to accommodate Mr Bickel’s false impression, although I felt quite certain that slovenly supervision, not mischievousness, was responsible for the model which placed the bridge above the fence and removed all the bushes and most of the trees from the area thus giving the model witnesses a view which the real witnesses could never secure.

In its Report, the Commission had said that an important witness, S. M. Holland, was living proof that no shots came from behind the fence since he ran to the area behind the fence from the railroad bridge “immediately” after the shots were fired. In our film Holland answered that incorrect conclusion by stating that it took him two or two and a half minutes to get to the fence since the area between him and that destination was “a sea of cars”. He said, they were tightly packed, bumper to bumper, that he had to climb over them. Again the BBC model accommodated the Commission rather than the facts. There was no sea of cars, just a few scattered models that would not have prevented Holland speeding to the fence.

Mr Pagnamenta resisted my suggestions for changes in the model. I suggested that we compare model to photographs. We don’t have any photographs in the studio, was the reply. How could you construct a model without photographs, I asked, but interrupting myself said, never mind, I have some at the hotel and I’ll fetch them now. Before I left to get them I observed the remainder of the set. On the far left, appearing almost as if it were in ??? was a small table, at which I was told I would sit during the programme. A larger table, raised, as is a judge’s bench, was in the middle, and it was this that created the hole in the ground impression for my table. To the right was another large table for two, and still further along, the set for our impartial moderator, Kenneth Harris.

Why the elevated table, I asked? For the two judges or assessors, as we call them, was the reply. I asked who might they be? As I told you before, Lord Devlin and Professor Bickel. I thought that they were participants in the debate. Well, they will participate as judges, that is they will give their verdict at the end of the programme, and as for the debate, it will not really be a debate. That is you will be given a chance to speak when you are personally attacked. When or if? You make it sound as if it is already set. Surely I didn’t come all this way to defend myself. I came to discuss the facts surrounding the death of the President. Isn’t that the name of the programme? Well, you had better talk with Mr Fox about that was the answer.

Mr Hanghoj and I were ushered into a small upstairs room to await Mr Fox. In time he appeared with Kenneth Harris. We were offered a drink as is the custom of the BBC. I accepted. My scotch arrived at once with ice and water as all Americans presumably like it, although I said I would prefer it straight. Mr Harris’ gin arrived just after we began to depart.

Mr Fox seemed deeply perturbed. I understand you have some problems, he said. I explained the problems. The model was not accurate. How can two Warren Commission sycophants be judges. Lord Devlin has served as the all-but official salesman for the Warren Report in England for more than two years. He endorsed the Report before the evidence was published, and since the publication of the 26 volumes has betrayed no trace of having examined them. Bickel, on a smaller scale, has tried to serve the establishment in his own country much the same way. How can you suggest that they be judges? Mr Fox said, after all are showing your two hour film and there is no need for everyone on the panel to agree with you. He submitted that he did not understand my point. If he desired, he could have a dozen Warren Commission spokesmen on the programme, and I would not object. What I objected to was the BBC establishing two such spokesmen as judges. Mr Fox, aided by the impartial moderator, said that we can hardly be expected to withdraw the invitation to Lord Devlin. I did not expect or hope that would be done. Just take off their black robes and make them mere mortals as were the rest of us. Cannot be done, said Mr Fox. Well, then, I said, introduce them properly. That is let the audience know that they written in support of the Commission’s central conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin. Surely, said Mr Fox, you don’t doubt the integrity of two such important men in public life. Surely you believe that they can be swayed by the evidence if it proves that their previously held position was wrong. Their integrity was irrelevant to the discussion – their prejudice central, I offered. Mr Harris resolved the problem by stating that he would introduce them as two men who have supported the Commission’s view. He added that if I wanted to discuss my objections to them on the air, I would be given every opportunity to do so. I said that I would do so.

When we approached the crux of the matter – my role in the debate. It was set, it could not be changed. I could only respond to personal attacks, said Harris and Fox in one voice and several times. I doubt that the audience cares much for hearing personal attacks made or defended against, I said. I think, perhaps they would like to hear about the death of the President – that is why they will turn to the programme called The Death of Kennedy. If you want to do another programme, called Mark Lane Attacked and Defended, I will come back for it, but I do not suppose that anyone will care to watch it!

The format is set. The format is set. It cannot be changed. It cannot be changed. The film will be presented in four segments, the Commission lawyers will attack each portion and if, in doing so, they make any personal attacks upon you, you will be permitted some time to respond. In addition, as we have agreed, you will be given ample time to point out what you consider to be weaknesses in the programme’s format and with its choice of assessors.

In four segments, I asked? We worked for two years to make that film. We drove from New York to Dallas and back because we could not afford the air fare. My wife cooked dinner for us all in Texas because we could not afford to eat in restaurants. We have sacrificed to make that film. And you intend to chop it up into four pieces. Let it be seen as it was made, and then let your critics say what they will. The film has an integrity and an identity of its own. Do not destroy that.

Mr Fox said that in the contract, that Mr de Antonio signed, we have the right to show the film in four segments and that we intend to do it that way.

I called D. He said that the BBC had told him that the film would be shown with just one intermission.

I wrung but one concession from the BBC. Harris and Fox both agreed, both gave solemn commitments, that I would be given ample time at the outset of the programme to dissent from the format, to explain my objection to the judges, to explain that the film could not possibly present the case against the Report but only those portions which were, for want of a better word, filmic, and that, in my view, the BBC formula defeated a genuine exchange of the facts. We shook hands and were about to depart when Mr Hanghoj, as journalists will do, asked a few questions of Mr Harris.

Q: Don’t you write for the Observer?
Harris: Yes, I do.
Q: What is the Observer’s position on the assassination?
Harris: We don’t have one.
Q: You don’t have one?
Harris: No.
Q: Don’t you think that the subject is sufficiently important for you to think about it and take a position?
Harris: Well, we did do that when the Report came out.
Q: Yes?
Harris: Well, we supported the Commission.
Q: Have you taken another position since then?
Harris: No, we haven’t.
Q: Then the Observer’s position is in support of the Warren Commission?
Harris: Well, you might say that.
Q: Wouldn’t you say that?
Harris: Yes, I suppose so.
Q: You will be the moderator tonight?
Harris: Yes.

We arrived back at the studio one hour and a half before air time. The parties were well separated. I was placed in a small cubicle, lavishly furnished with food, liquor, and excellent wine. Some doors away were Specter and Belin and the visiting BBC brass, all of whom, we were told in whispers, had arrived for the programme – the longest live studio production in British history.

Just before air time I asked what was to be done about make-up. A veteran of three to four hundred appearances in America, I had expected that matter to be disposed of in a dressing room long before then. It will be taken care of in the studio. Make-up was applied to some but not to me. Of serious concern was the fact that there was but one set of the 26 volumes and these were given to Belin and Specter and placed far out of my reach. As the programme began it became clear that Harris was working from a script and that both Belin and Specter had copies of the script. I had none and, in fact, I thought that the spontaneous programme which had been described to me would preclude the use of one.

I shall not offer an account of the programme here. The English press was fair in its reportage, more fair than the American press has been on this subject. The Times reported on its front page that the BBC switchboard was jammed with viewers complaining that the programme was unfair. The Daily Mirror said, “Chairman Kenneth Harris officiously and for me, embarrassingly clumsily silenced Mr Lane whenever he tried to cross verbal swords with the rival lawyers…” The Daily Sketch said that Harris conducted the programme “far too brusquely”. The Daily Express headlined its story, “Viewers Protest ‘Unfair’ During TV Marathon” and added “Harris did appear to behave pompously”. In a story headed “Verdict on Harris” the Londoner’s Diary in the Evening Standard evidently found him, Harris, guilty of being “nervous”, “too abrupt”, and “fairly childish”. On the facts, the Times pointed out that many witnesses did insist that the shots came from behind a fence on a grassy knoll, and the Guardian, an original supporter of the Commission, did a complete turn about: “Mark Lane seems now to have won his case, or Oswald’s case.” And, “Now it seems clear to almost everyone but the Warren Commission that it was indeed a rush to judgment.” Could one bullet have hit both the President and Governor Connolly? If not, there were at least two assassins. Said the Daily Mirror, “It just doesn’t seem possible.”

The next day the Times ran a fairly lengthy and scrupulously fair and accurate story presenting some of my objections and the BBC reply. By combining that reply with the Kenneth Harris statement to the Standard the day before the definitive establishment position can be ascertained. But before that some more facts.

After the witnesses in the film said that they heard shots come from behind the fence, and saw a puff of smoke from that location as well, Cliff Michelmore, not waiting for the Belin-Specter response, said for the BBC, the whole of Dealey Plaza is bowl shaped and that the area behind the fence is criss-crossed with steam pipes, thereby accounting for the “smoke”. Ignorance, Mr Bickel’s only excuse, cannot be brought forward in defence of that false allegation since the BBC had sent Mr Michelmore to Dallas to look about. I know not what passes for a bowl in England but there would be little room for so flat a bowl to accommodate enough porridge for a very young child in my country. The area behind the fence is not criss-crossed with steam pipes. There is but one pipe anywhere in the entire area and it runs in a straight line from the overpass and not behind the fence. Does Mr Michelmore really think that a man who spent 42 years working that section of the railroad yards, as in the case of Mr Holland, would state that he saw smoke, that he knows that it came from a weapon, and be totally unaware of the presence of steam pipes that the clever Mr Michelmore found in his first trip there? I mention Mr Michelmore’s criss-crossed pipes because it was unfortunately typical of several false statements that he made – all of which conformed to the Commission’s case, if not to the facts.

But, of course, you saw all this and I should tell you of the programme that BBC did not transmit. While the film was playing, the debate in the studio flourished, only to die under Mr Harris’ heavy hand when the live broadcast, so to speak, commenced. An example. During an early segment of the programme Mr Harris began questioning Mr Belin, asking him in effect if he had engaged in any correspondence with me regarding the making of the film. Mr Belin, it seems, wished to become a movie star and, unable to make it on his own, felt that we should provide a camera, film, a crew and an opportunity for him to speak in our film for a minimum of thirty minutes. Mr Belin was well prepared for the leading questions put to him. He had the correspondence in question spread out before him even before the first question was asked which, I must confess, raised some question in my normally unsuspicious mind regarding the possibility that the area had been explored before the programme began. I quickly put the evil thought aside but it recurred in a more persistent form shortly thereafter when, for a moment, Mr Harris forgot what he was about and departed from the script. Mr Harris, perhaps to establish his own identity, asked Mr Specter about a glaring inconsistency that the BBC had tracked down in the Warren Report. The FBI agent, Frazier, had testified that an examination of the President’s shirt did not prove that a shot came from the rear but only that it was “possible” that a shot came from the rear. In the Report the word “possible” was escalated into “probable”. Despite Mr Harris’ sheepish grin regarding this discovery, it must be said that he appeared to have been fishing in shark water and to have hooked a baby minnow. Specter had no answer for the first misdemeanour. Then Belin handed him the wrong page of the volume, after I had volunteered the correct one, and there the word “probable” did appear but in another context. Specter read probable with his booming district attorney voice and thus the matter was settled. That is almost settled. I asked if I might comment upon that just for a moment. The answer from Mr Harris, who had now regained his composure and commitment, was a stern no. The matter was settled. But it was not forgotten. Soon a portion of the film was shown.

This would generally herald an immediate period of relaxation, but when the cameras in the studio were off the tension began to build. Specter scowled and raised his voice so that it registered in menacing terms. His anger was directed at a crumbling Harris. Why did you ask that question? We never went over that. If you do that again – well you had better not. I’m not fooling now. And then the prosecution attorney gestured towards me while I’m still addressing Harris. And you’d better shut that guy up too – I’m telling you now! I had spoken but a few words, mostly they were, “May I say something now?” Harris apologized. He promised to depart from the pre-arrangement no further. I left my little table and casually approached Mr Harris. Sir, I said, I have the feeling that I have missed something by not arriving a week ago. Have you been having rehearsals in my absence? Mr Harris said that they had gone over the general area of the questions with the Commission lawyers, yes we have. I suggested that it appeared that even some specifics had been agreed upon, based upon Mr Specter’s anger regarding one question and Mr Harris’s agreement to stray never again. Mr Harris replied that Mr Specter only meant that if he was not prepared for a specific question then he would be placed in the embarrassing position of having to fumble for papers and, added Mr Harris, Mr Specter was certainly more than half right about that. But, I said, you never even discussed general areas with me. No answer. I then asked Mr Harris if I might have a copy of the script. He said that there were but three, his, Belin’s and Specter’s. Of course, I could not doubt his word, but in my own country we rarely mimeograph just three copies of a document, we use carbon paper, and it was that which prevented me from fully accepting his answer. During the next four hours I made fifteen, count them, fifteen, requests to four different BBC representatives for a copy of the script.

At about eleven o’clock I found Mr Fox and told him that he had made a solemn commitment to me the day before. That it had been agreed that at the outset of the programme I might register a dissent from the programme format and choice of judges. Mr Fox said that I would be able to have time at 11:30. While that did not meet my definition of the programme’s outset, I agreed. Closer to midnight than eleven, Mr Fox said I could have a few minutes. I began by saying that the BBC had rendered a disservice to the truth when Mr Harris stopped me and then picked up his phone to converse with the powers that be at the BBC. Silence. More on camera silence. Then Mr Harris spoke. I could have almost sympathised with him had he appeared torn between his commitment to his word of honour and the word from above. But that conflict evidently did not confront him. He said, you may not discuss that subject at all. I then began to discuss the single bullet theory. At this moment, Specter, who invented the whole thing left his seat and charged over to Harris telling him quite loudly and now on camera, that I should not be allowed to trifle with his theory. (It had made him a district attorney and a candidate for the mayoralty and was not to be fooled with.) Mr Harris supinely yielded once again saying that I could only discuss subjects that came up in the second part of the programme. I asked him to tell me what to talk about and promised to any subject he wished to hear when he informed me that my time was up.

During a studio intermission it had become plain that Prof. Bickel had a surprise in store. He was going to depart somewhat from his previously published position and say that he was not quite satisfied with the single bullet theory and that if the single bullet failed there were two assassins. Specter was livid. The fixed jury was no longer under control. Specter demanded an opportunity to answer Prof. Bickel who had hardly uttered a word for almost five hours. Harris approached Bickel and asked if he would mind if Specter answered him when he rendered his verdict. They must have wild court scenes in Philadelphia I kept on thinking. Bickel was a bit put out. Harris was insistent – at last showing the stern stuff he was made of. Bickel reluctantly yielded.

After Bickel spoke briefly, Harris, as if the thought just struck him, turned to Specter and said, sir, would you like to comment on that. Well, as long as he was asked, Specter was willing. It did occur to me during this exchange that this was the very subject that I was prevented from discussing because it was not in the ‘second part of the programme’, whatever that meant. Surely, now that it had been introduced twice more, I would not be denied my first comment on the subject. Waiting until Specter concluded I addressed a rather brief request to our chairman. May I comment upon that? The reply was no.

The evening ended on an unmistakably light note. Lord Devlin summed up. He wanted us to let President Kennedy’s soul rest in peace. Anyway, suppose there was another assassin, no one has proved that he was a subversive, and if he wasn’t subversive what difference does it make? I was about to ask Lord Devlin for a definition of the word “subversive” that does not include one who kills his own President, but I decided not to.

The BBC officials invited me to wine and dine in my cubicle below. I was somehow neither hungry nor thirsty, just anxious to say a few words. Reporters from two London daily papers were there. They asked for an interview. I agreed. A young BBC officialette approached. He said no rooms were available for a press conference. It was not much before one in the morning and I found it difficult to believe that they could not scare up one empty room. Oh, it’s not that, the young man replied, but we cannot permit you to talk with the press here. I said that the BBC had made a room available to me and that I wished to utilize it for a conference. Cannot be done. Against the rules. The reporters were incredulous. We began to pack our belongings for a trip back to my hotel for the conference when the BBC relented and permitted it to take place there. I said that the programme had been rigged by the BBC to protect the Warren Commission lawyers from debate. I added that we never ran into that sort of trouble in countries, France as one example, whose economies are not entirely dependent upon the United States. The Socialist government indeed. Lenin must be twirling in his tomb.

I left BBC’s Lime Grove studio to find a few citizens waiting outside. One offered his hand and his sympathy and said that the BBC does not speak for the English people, not this disgraceful night it doesn’t, he added. Others agreed.

At my hotel a delegation of three, sent by twenty who had watched the programme, expressed similar views but in stronger language.

At Oxford University the next day the students made their views known also.

Mr Harris told the Evening Standard, “I don’t think Mark Lane has any grounds for complaint. He was there for one purpose, and one purpose only. As it was stated weeks ago, he was invited to attend so that if anybody made charges against him personally – for example he was just interested in making money out of the whole business or that he was a Communist – he could answer the charges against him.” Mr Harris added that if he permitted me to debate with Specter or Belin “I should have had trouble with the two lawyers. They only came on the basis of this agreement.” Mr Harris added that if he allowed me to enter the debate the two Commission lawyers “would have walked off”. I have never refused a debate on equal grounds with Commission personnel. One must wonder what the two lawyers know about their own case which would cause them to walk away rather than debate.

BBC told the Evening Standard, “We arranged a viewing session for a number of representatives from foreign TV networks, and they all made a point of saying how impressed they were by Mr Harris’s handling of the programme.” That statement appears to be untrue. I spoke with just one representative, Klaus Toksvig, of Danish TV. He told me that the BBC programme was extremely unfair. Perhaps the representative of the Austin, Texas, TV station took another view.

The BBC spokesman concluded, “We arranged a press conference for Mr Lane after the programme ended.”

As I prepared to leave London a BBC programme announced that Barrow and Southampton had tied 2-2. I just knew that I couldn’t be sure unless I read it in the Times the next morning.

Mark Lane,
Nykobing, Danmark.
9 February 1967.

[Paul Rigby]

"He also taught himself Russian." Bet you never knew that!

Radio Times, Vol. 170, No. 2209, 10 March 1966, p. 27

Lee Oswald - Assassin

By Rudolph Cartier

Tonight’s Play of the Month* tells the story of the man who killed President Kennedy and is introduced here by its director Rudolph Cartier.

Nine years ago this month, my wife and I stopped overnight in Terni, a small Italian town about 100 kilometres north of Rome. It was a dull place at the foot of the Abruzzi mountains with a lot of industrial buildings – among them a small arms factory. I could not guess at that time that its vast store of surplus weapons from the second world war contained a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, serial number 2766, built in 1940, which one day would fire the shots which would kill John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States.

Tonight’s play is about the man who fired these shots: Lee Harvey Oswald. It is based on Dallas – 22 November by the German author Felix Lutzkendorf. That work was written in the tradition of the modern German ‘documentaries’ like Heinar Kipphardt’s In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer and The Joel Brand Story (a previous Play of the Month). Based on the Warren Report and other documentary evidence like Lee Oswald’s diary, Lutzkendorf’s play traced the life of the assassin from the time of his discharge from the U.S. Marines to the moment when he was killed by Jack Ruby.

After I had spent last summer translating Dallas – 22 November, I joined forces with Reed de Rouen, American actor and playwright, and together we re-wrote it, filling in the gaps with material from the Warren Report, and giving it its final narrative shape for the television screen and a new title.

Our play does not try to whitewash or blacken the perpetrator of the most monstrous deed of our century. Like the Warren Report on which it is based, it gives a precise and unbiased account of what made Oswald ‘tick.’ He grew up in poverty, spending his childhood in various orphanages because his widowed mother had to go to work to fend for her three children, and he soon nourished a profound hatred against authority and ‘the rich.’

Although he was later described as lazy, work-shy, and self-opinionated, one must also mention that he tried to improve his education by reading – Walt Whitman and George Orwell in particular. Animal Farm and 1984 were his favourites. He also taught himself Russian. The evidence of all witnesses points to the fact that Oswald, although only semi-literate, was not unintelligent.

No other event in the history of the world has been so fully documented as those two November days in Dallas. But as I did not intend to use any of the abundant newsreel material we had to stage and shoot our own ‘newsreels’ for the production – including the incredible scenes at the Dallas Police H.Q., where the hordes of reporters, photographers, television and film cameramen behaved like savages.

Our main problem was the casting of the title-role. The actor had to be an American speaking with the Southern drawl (which Oswald never lost), and somebody who was capable of portraying his schizophrenic mixture of sullen resentment and boyish charm.

I had heard of a new young actor working in Hollywood, and remembered having seen him play Frank Sinatra’s kid-brother in Come Blow Your Horn. But I had to see him first in a dramatic role, and sent for a television film – in which he played a pathological killer – made in New York last year. When the producer of tonight’s play, Peter Luke, and I emerged from the projection theatre, we knew we had found our Oswald in Tony Bill. Not only is he of the same age, height, and build, but he is also, like Oswald, a family man with a young wife and two small children.

* A fifty-minute long ‘docuplay’ broadcast on Tuesday, 15 March 1966, at 8 p.m., in BBC1’s Play of the Month series.

[Peter Lemkin]

16 Questions
On The Assassination

by Bertrand Russell

The Minority of One, September 6, 1964, pp. 6-8.


The official version of the assassination of President Kennedy has been so riddled with contradictions that it is been abandoned and rewritten no less than three times. Blatant fabrications have received very widespread coverage by the mass media, but denials of these same lies have gone unpublished. Photographs, evidence and affidavits have been doctored out of recognition. Some of the most important aspects of the case against Lee Harvey Oswald have been completely blacked out. Meanwhile, the F.B.I., the police and the Secret Service have tried to silence key witnesses or instruct them what evidence to give. Others involved have disappeared or died in extraordinary circumstances.


It is facts such as these that demand attention, and which the Warren Commission should have regarded as vital. Although I am writing before the publication of the Warren Commission’s report, leaks to the press have made much of its contents predictable. Because of the high office of its members and the fact of its establishment by President Johnson, the Commission has been widely regarded as a body of holy men appointed to pronounce the truth. An impartial examination of the composition and conduct of the Commission suggests quite otherwise.


The Warren Commission has been utterly unrepresentative of the American people. It consisted of two Democrats, Senator Russell of Georgia and Congressman Boggs of Louisiana, both of whose racist views have brought shame on the United States; two Republicans, Senator Cooper of Kentucky and Congressman Gerald R. Ford of Michigan, the latter of whom is a leader of his local Goldwater movement and an associate of the F.B.I.; Allen Dulles, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and Mr. McCloy, who has been referred to as the spokesman for the business community. Leadership of the filibuster in the Senate against the Civil Rights Bill prevented Senator Russell from attending hearings during the period. The Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Earl Warren, who rightly commands respect, was finally persuaded, much against his will, to preside over the Commission, and it was his involvement above all else that helped lend the Commission an aura of legality and authority. Yet many of its members were also members of those very groups which have done so much to distort and suppress the facts about the assassination. Because of their connection with the Government, not one member would have been permitted under U.S. law to serve on a jury had Oswald faced trial. It is small wonder that the Chief Justice himself remarked that the release of some of the Commission’s information “might not be in your lifetime” Here, then, is my first question: Why were all the members of the Warren Commission closely connected with the U.S. Government?


If the composition of the Commission was suspect, its conduct confirmed one’s worst fears. No counsel was permitted to act for Oswald, so that cross-examination was barred. Later, under pressure, the Commission appointed the President of the American Bar Association, Walter Craig, one of the supporters of the Goldwater movement in Arizona, to represent Oswald. To my knowledge, he did not attend hearings, but satisfied himself with representation by observers.


In the name of national security, the Commission’s hearings were held in secret, thereby continuing the policy which has marked the entire course of the case. This prompts my second question: If, as we are told, Oswald was the lone assassin, where is the issue of national security? Indeed, precisely the same question must be put here as was posed in France during the Dreyfus case: If the Government is so certain of its case, why has it conducted all its inquiries in the strictest secrecy?


At the outset the Commission appointed six panels through which it would conduct its enquiry. They considered: (1) What did Oswald do on November 22, 1963? (2) What was Oswald’s background? (3) What did Oswald do in the U.S. Marine Corps, and in the Soviet Union? (4) How did Ruby kill Oswald? (5) What is Ruby’s background? (6) What efforts were taken to protect the President on November 22? This raises my fourth question: Why did the Warren Commission not establish a panel to deal with the question of who killed President Kennedy?


All the evidence given to the Commission has been classified “Top Secret,” including even a request that hearings be held in public. Despite this the Commission itself leaked much of the evidence to the press, though only if the evidence tended to prove Oswald the lone assassin. Thus, Chief Justice Warren held a press conference after Oswald’s wife, Marina, had testified. He said, that she believed her husband was the assassin. Before Oswald’s brother Robert testified, he gained the Commission’s agreement not to comment on what he said. After he had testified for two days, the newspapers were full of stories that “a member of the Commission” had told the press that Robert Oswald had just testified that he believed that his brother was an agent of the Soviet Union. Robert Oswald was outraged by this, and he said that he could not remain silent while lies were told about his testimony. He had never said this and he had never believed it. All that he had told the Commission was that he believed his brother was innocent and was in no way involved in the assassination.


The methods adopted by the Commission have indeed been deplorable, but it is important to challenge the entire role of the Warren Commission. It stated that it would not conduct its own investigation, but rely instead on the existing governmental agencies—the F.B.I., the Secret Service and the Dallas police. Confidence in the Warren Commission thus presupposes confidence in these three institutions. Why have so many liberals abandoned their own responsibility to a Commission whose circumstances they refuse to examine?


It is known that the strictest and most elaborate security precautions ever taken for a President of the United States were ordered for November 22 in Dallas. The city had a reputation for violence and was the home of some of the most extreme right-wing fanatics in America. Mr. and Mrs. Lyndon Johnson had been assailed there in 1960 when he was a candidate for the Vice-Presidency. Adlai Stevenson had been physically attacked when he spoke in the city only a month before Kennedy’s visit. On the morning of November 22, the Dallas Morning News carried a full-page advertisement associating the President with Communism. The city was covered with posters showing the President’s picture and headed “Wanted for Treason.” The Dallas list of subversives comprised 23 names, of which Oswald’s was the first. All of them were followed that day, except Oswald. Why did the authorities follow many persons as potential assassins and fail to observe Oswald’s entry into the book depository building while allegedly carrying a rifle over three feet long?


The President’s route for his drive through Dallas was widely known and was printed in the Dallas Morning News on November 22. At the last minute the Secret Service changed a small part of their plans so that the President left Main Street and turned into Houston and Elm Streets. This alteration took the President past the book depository building from which it is alleged that Oswald shot him. How Oswald is supposed to have known of this change has never been explained. Why was the President’s route changed at the last minute to take him past Oswald’s place of work?


After the assassination and Oswald’s arrest, judgment was pronounced swiftly: Oswald was the assassin, and he had acted alone. No attempt was made to arrest others, no road blocks were set up round the area, and every piece of evidence which tended to incriminate Oswald was announced to the press by the Dallas District Attorney, Mr. Wade. In such a way millions of people were prejudiced against Oswald before there was any opportunity for him to be brought to trial. The first theory announced by the authorities was that the President’s car was in Houston Street, approaching the book depository building, when Oswald opened fire. When available photographs and eyewitnesses had shown this to be quite untrue, the theory was abandoned and a new one formulated which placed the vehicle in its correct position. Meanwhile, however, D.A. Wade had announced that three days after Oswald’s room in Dallas had been searched, a map had been found there on which the book depository building had been circled and dotted lines drawn from the building to a vehicle on Houston Street, showing the alleged bullet trajectory had been planned in advance. After the first theory was proved false, the Associated Press put out the following story on November 27: “Dallas authorities announced today that there never was a map.”


The second theory correctly placed the President’s car on Elm Street, 50 to 75 yards past the book depository, but had to contend with the difficulty that the President was shot from the front, in the throat. How did Oswald manage to shoot the President in the front from behind? The F.B.I. held a series of background briefing sessions for Life magazine, which in its issue of December 6 explained that the President had turned completely round just at the time he was shot. This too, was soon shown to be entirely false. It was denied by several witnesses and films, and the previous issue of Life itself had shown the President looking forward as he was hit. Theory number two was abandoned.


In order to retain the basis of all official thinking, that Oswald was the lone assassin, it now became necessary to construct a third theory with the medical evidence altered to fit it. For the first month no Secret Service agent had ever spoken to the three doctors who had tried to save Kennedy’s life in the Parkland Memorial Hospital. Now two agents spent three hours with the doctors and persuaded them that they were all misinformed: the entrance wound in the President’s throat had been an exit wound, and the bullet had not ranged down towards the lungs. Asked by the press how they could have been so mistaken, Dr. McClelland advanced two reasons: they had not seen the autopsy report—and they had not known that Oswald was behind the President! The autopsy report, they had been told by the Secret Service, showed that Kennedy had been shot from behind. The agents, however, had refused to show the report to the doctors, who were entirely dependent on the word of the Secret Service for this suggestion. The doctors made it clear that they were not permitted to discuss the case. The third theory, with the medical evidence rewritten, remains the basis of the case against Oswald at this moment. Why has the medical evidence concerning the President’s death been altered out of recognition?


Although Oswald is alleged to have shot the President from behind, there are many witnesses who are confident that the shots came from the front. Among them are two reporters from the Forth Worth Star Telegram, four from the Dallas Morning News, and two people who were standing in front of the book depository building itself, the director of the book depository and the vice-president of the firm. It appears that only two people immediately entered the building: the director, Mr. Roy S. Truly, and a Dallas police officer, Seymour Weitzman. Both thought that the shots had come from in front of the President’s vehicle. On first running in that direction, Weitzman was informed by “someone” that he thought the shots had come from the building, so he rushed back there. Truly entered with him in order to assist with his knowledge of the building. Mr. Jesse Curry, the Chief of Police in Dallas, has stated that he was immediately convinced that the shots came from the building. If anyone else believes this, he has been reluctant to say so to date. It is also known that the first bulletin to go out on Dallas police radios stated that “the shots came from a triple overpass in front of the presidential automobile.” In addition, there is the consideration that after the first shot the vehicle was brought almost to a halt by the trained Secret Service driver, an unlikely response if the shots had indeed come from behind. Certainly Mr. Roy Kellerman, who was in charge of the Secret Service operation in Dallas that day, and travelled in the presidential car, looked to the front as the shots were fired. The Secret Service has had all the evidence removed from the car, so it is no longer possible to examine it. What is the evidence to substantiate the allegation that the President was shot from behind?


Photographs taken at the scene of the crime could be most helpful. One young lady standing just to the left of the presidential car as the shots were fired took photographs of the vehicle just before and during the shooting, and was thus able to get into her picture the entire front of the book depository building. Two F.B.I. agents immediately took the film which she took. Why has the F.B.I. refused to publish what could be the most reliable piece of evidence in the whole case?


In this connection it is noteworthy also that it is impossible to obtain the originals of photographs bearing upon the case. When Time magazine published a photograph of Oswald’s arrest—the only one ever seen—the entire background was blacked out for reasons which have never been explained. It is difficult to recall an occasion for so much falsification of photographs as has happened in the Oswald case.


The affidavit by Police Office Weitzman, who entered the book depository building, stated that he found the alleged murder rifle on the sixth floor. (It was first announced that the rifle had been found on the fifth floor, but this was soon altered.) It was a German 7.65 mm. Mauser. Late the following day, the F.B.I. issued its first proclamation. Oswald had purchased in March 1963 an Italian 6.5 mm. Mannlicher-Carcano. D.A. Wade immediately altered the nationality and size of the weapon to conform to the F.B.I. statement.


Several photographs have been published of the alleged murder weapon. On February 21, Life magazine carried on its cover a picture of “Lee Oswald with the weapons he used to kill President Kennedy and Officer Tippitt [sic].” On page 80, Life explained that the photograph was taken during March or April of 1963. According to the F.B.I., Oswald purchased his pistol in September 1963. The New York Times carried a picture of the alleged murder weapon being taken by police into the Dallas police station. The rifle is quite different. Experts have stated that no rifle resembling the one in the Life picture has even been manufactured. The New York Times also carried the same photograph as Life, but left out the telescopic sights. On March 2, Newsweek used the same photograph but painted in an entirely new rifle. Then on April 13 the Latin American edition of Life carried the same picture on its cover as the U.S. edition had on February 21, but in the same issue on page 18 it had the same picture with the rifle altered. How is it that millions of people have been misled by complete forgeries in the press?


The authorities interrogated Oswald for nearly 48 hours without allowing him to contact a lawyer, despite his repeated requests to do so. The director of the F.B.I. in Dallas was a man with considerable experience. American Civil Liberties Union lawyers were in Dallas requesting to see Oswald and were not allowed to do so. By interrogating Oswald for 48 hours without access to lawyers, the F.B.I. created conditions which made a trial of Oswald more difficult. A confession or evidence obtained from a man held 48 hours in custody is likely to be inadmissible in a U.S. court of law. The F.B.I. director conducted his interrogation in a manner which made the use of material secured in such a fashion worthless to him. This raises the question of whether he expected the trial to take place.


Another falsehood concerning the shooting was a story circulated by the Associated Press on November 23 from Los Angeles. This reported Oswald’s former superior officer in the Marine Corps as saying that Oswald was a crack shot and a hot-head. The story was published widely. Three hours later AP sent out a correction deleting the entire story from Los Angeles. The officer had checked his records and it had turned out that he was talking about another man. He had never known Oswald. To my knowledge the correction has yet to be published by a single major publication.


The Dallas police took a paraffin test on Oswald’s face and hands to try to establish that he had fired a weapon on November 22. The Chief of the Dallas Police, Jesse Curry, announced on November 23 that the result of the test “proves Oswald is the assassin.” The Director of the F.B.I. in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in charge of the investigation stated: “I have seen the paraffin test. The paraffin test proves that Oswald had nitrates and gunpowder on his hands and face. It proves he fired a rifle on November 22.” Not only does this unreliable test not prove any such thing, it was later discovered that the test on Oswald’s face was in fact negative, suggesting that it was unlikely he fired a rifle that day. Why was the result of the paraffin test altered before being announced by the authorities?


Oswald, it will be recalled, was originally arrested and charged with the murder of Patrolman Tippitt [sic]. Tippitt was killed at 1:06 p.m. on November 22 by a man who first engaged him in conversation, then caused him to get out of the stationary police car in which he was sitting and shot him with a pistol Miss Helen L. Markham, who states that she is the sole eye-witness to this crime, gave the Dallas police a description of the assailant. After signing her affidavit, she was instructed by the F.B.I., the Secret Service and many police officers that she was not permitted to discuss the case with anyone. The affidavit’s only description of the killer was that he was a “young white man.” Miss Markham later revealed that the killer had run right up to her and past her, brandishing the pistol, and she repeated the description of the murderer which she had given to the police. He was, she said, “short, a little heavy, and had somewhat bushy hair.” (The police description of Oswald was that he was of average height, or a little taller, was slim and had receding fair hair.) Miss Markham’s affidavit is the entire case against Oswald for the murder of Patrolman Tippitt, yet District Attorney Wade asserted: “We have more evidence to prove Oswald killed Tippit than we have to show he killed the President.” The case against Oswald for the murder of Tippitt, he continued, was an absolutely strong case. Why was the only description of Tippitt’s killer deliberately omitted by the police from the affidavit of the sole eye-witness?


Oswald’s description was broadcast by the Dallas police only 12 minutes after the President was shot. This raises one of the most extraordinary questions ever posed in a murder case: Why was Oswald’s description in connection with the murder of Patrolman Tippitt broadcast over Dallas police radio at 12:43 p.m. on November 22, when Tippitt was not shot until 1:06 p.m.?


According to Mr. Bob Considine, writing in the New York Journal American, there had been another person who had heard the shots that were fired at Tippitt. Warren Reynolds had heard shooting in the street from a nearby room and had rushed to the window to see the murderer run off. Reynolds himself was later shot through the head by a rifleman. A man was arrested for this crime but produced an alibi. His girl-friend, Betty Mooney McDonald, told the police she had been with him at the time Reynolds was shot, according to Mr. Considine. The Dallas police immediately dropped the charges, even before Reynolds had time to recover consciousness, and attempt to identify his assailant. The man at once disappeared, and two days later the police arrested Betty Mooney McDonald on a minor charge and it was announced that she had hanged herself in the police cell. She had been a striptease artist in Jack Ruby’s nightclub, according to Mr. Considine.


Another witness to receive extraordinary treatment in the Oswald case was his wife, Marina. She was taken to the jail while her husband was still alive and shown a rifle by Chief of Police Jesse Curry. Asked if it were Oswald’s, she replied that she believed Oswald had a rifle but that it didn’t look like that. She and her mother-in-law were in great danger following the assassination because of the threat of public revenge on them. At this time they were unable to obtain a single police officer to protect them. Immediately after Oswald was killed, however, the Secret service illegally held both women against their will. After three days they were separated and Marina has never again been accessible to the public. Held in custody for nine weeks and questioned almost daily by the F.B.I. and Secret Service, she finally testified to the Warren Commission and, according to Earl Warren, said that she believed her husband was the assassin. The Chief Justice added that the next day they intended to show Mrs. Oswald the murder weapon and the Commission was fairly confident that she would identify it as her husband’s. The following day it was announced that this had indeed happened. Mrs. Oswald, we are informed, is still in the custody of the Secret Service. To isolate a witness for nine weeks and to subject her to repeated questioning by the Secret Service in this manner is reminiscent of police behavior in other countries, where it is called brainwashing. The only witness produced to show that Oswald carried a rifle before the assassination stated that he saw a brown paper parcel about two feet long in the back seat of Oswald’s car. The rifle which the police “produced” was almost 3½ feet long. How was it possible for Earl Warren to forecast that Marina Oswald’s evidence would be exactly the reverse of what she had previously testified?


After Ruby had killed Oswald, D.A. Wade made a statement about Oswald’s movements following the assassination. He explained that Oswald had taken a bus, but he described the point at which Oswald had entered the vehicle as seven blocks away from the point located by the bus driver in his affidavit. Oswald, Wade continued, then took a taxi driven by a Daryll Click, who had signed an affidavit. An inquiry at the City Transportation Company revealed that no such taxi driver had ever existed in Dallas. Presented with this evidence, Wade altered the driver’s name to William Whaley. The driver’s log book showed that a man answering Oswald’s description had been picked up at 12:30. The President was shot at 12:31. D.A. Wade made no mention of this. Wade has been D.A. in Dallas for 14 years and before that was an F.B.I. agent. How does a District Attorney of Wade’s great experience account for all the extraordinary changes in evidence and testimony which he has announced during the Oswald case?


These are only a few of the questions raised by the official versions of the assassination and by the way in which the entire case against Oswald has been conducted. Sixteen questions are no substitute for a full examination of all the factors in this case, but I hope that they indicate the importance of such an investigation. I am indebted to Mr. Mark Lane, the New York criminal lawyer who was appointed counsel for Oswald by his mother, for much of the information in this article. Mr. Lane’s enquiries, which are continuing, deserve widespread support. A Citizen’s Committee of Inquiry has been established in New York, at Room 422, 156 Fifth Avenue, New York. N.Y. (telephone YU9-6850) for such a purpose, and comparable committees are being set up in Europe.


In Britain, I invited people eminent in the intellectual life of the country to join a “Who Killed Kennedy Committee,” which at the moment of writing consists of the following people: Mr. John Arden, playwright; Mrs. Carolyn Wedgwood Benn, from Cincinnati, wife of Anthony Wedgwood Benn, M.P.; Lord Boyd-Orr, former director-general of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization and a Nobel Peace Prize winner; Mr. John Calder, publisher; Professor William Empsom, Professor of English Literature at Sheffield University; Mr. Victor Golancz, publisher; Mr. Michael Foot, Member of Parliament; Mr. Kingsley Martin, former editor of the New Statesman; Sir Compton Mackenzie, writer; Mr. J.B. Priestley, playwright and author; Sir Herbert Read, art critic; Mr. Tony Richardson, film director; Dr. Mervyn Stockwood, Bishop of Southwark; Professor Hugh Trevor-Roper, Regius Professor of Modern History at Oxford University; Mr. Kenneth Tynan, Literary Manager of the National Theatre; and myself.


We view the problem with the utmost seriousness. U.S. Embassies have long ago reported to Washington world-wide disbelief in the official charges against Oswald, but this has scarcely been reflected by the American press. No U.S. television program or mass circulation newspaper has challenged the permanent basis of all the allegations—that Oswald was the assassin, and that he acted alone. It is a task which is left to the American people.


Source: http://tinyurl.com/5ymbx

[Paul Rigby]

Radio Times, Vol. 170, No. 2209, 10 March 1966, p. 27

Lee Oswald - Assassin

By Rudolph Cartier

Tonight’s Play of the Month* tells the story of the man who killed President Kennedy and is introduced here by its director Rudolph Cartier.

Nine years ago this month, my wife and I stopped overnight in Terni, a small Italian town about 100 kilometres north of Rome. It was a dull place at the foot of the Abruzzi mountains with a lot of industrial buildings – among them a small arms factory. I could not guess at that time that its vast store of surplus weapons from the second world war contained a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, serial number 2766, built in 1940, which one day would fire the shots which would kill John F. Kennedy, the President of the United States.

Tonight’s play is about the man who fired these shots: Lee Harvey Oswald. It is based on Dallas – 22 November by the German author Felix Lutzkendorf. That work was written in the tradition of the modern German ‘documentaries’ like Heinar Kipphardt’s In the Matter of J. Robert Oppenheimer and The Joel Brand Story (a previous Play of the Month). Based on the Warren Report and other documentary evidence like Lee Oswald’s diary, Lutzkendorf’s play traced the life of the assassin from the time of his discharge from the U.S. Marines to the moment when he was killed by Jack Ruby.

How much filthy lucre, one can't help wondering, did the CIA splurge on the "artistic" campaign?

The Stage & Television Today, No. 4468, 1 December 1966, p. 13

Oswald Mystery Remains

By R.B.M.

Review of Michael Hastings’ play, “The Silence of Lee Harvey Oswald.”

In the latest of the Hampstead Theatre Club series of plays and documentaries in Living Theatre, “The Silence of Lee Harvey Oswald”, by Michael Hastings, speaks persuasively as Oswald the Guilty man, undoubted slayer of President Kennedy. At least, this is how the play seemed to me, though Mr. Hastings’ primary object is to build up a character study of Oswald and not to pronounce a verdict. This he does through an adaptation of extracts from the Warren Report and authentic newsreels. A character is built up, with an impression of the relationship between Oswald and his wife Marina and of the relationship of both with Oswald’s possessive mother. This is skilfully done, and up to a point is of interest. Yet it is a superficial account, as it must be when Oswald himself remains elusive and distant, a person of mystery whose life, motives and actions, and guilt or innocence are still being probed and questioned over the world.

Vital Figures

Oswald’s wife and mother emerge as much more real and vital figures than Oswald, mainly on account of the newsreels, though there are scenes during the Warren Commission that are very gripping. We see Oswald as a neurotic figure of small talent, determined somehow or other to impose himself on society, perhaps on history. He reminds one sometimes of William Joyce, another man of intentions compounded of good and evil, of undeveloped gifts, a misfit who never adjusted himself to being just that, or was able to find a way of expressing himself that would give him the place in the sun he longed for.

It is evident from photographs and reports that Lee Harvey Oswald had considerable charm, but this does not appear in Mr. Hastings’ play, nor in the dour, cold performance of Alan Dobie. The seething life beneath the surface of Oswald must have been considerable: there are glimpses of it in extracts from his writings, the words of a man of mind and thought, but malformed and too deeply involved with personal neurosis to be integrated into something worthwhile. We are given only a sketchy indication of this. Of course, Mr. Hastings’ cannot tell us anything about the mysteries concerning the actual assassination: how many shots were fired and by how many people; of Oswald’s connections with espionage and so forth. No one yet has solved any of these mysteries, at least publicly, and so Oswald himself becomes a bigger mystery every day.

“The Silence of Lee Harvey Oswald” is nonetheless a fascinating piece of theatre-documentary. One expected more of Mr. Hastings but what he has done was well worth doing. It is brilliantly directed by Peter Coe and has two very fine, subtle, penetrating performances, by Bessie Love as Marguerite Oswald and Sarah Miles as Marina Oswald.

Cast:

The Silence of Lee Harvey Oswald

Play by Michael Hastings. Presented in the Living Theatre Series by Hampstead Theatre Club on November 23. Designed by Michael Knight; lighting by John Harrison; stage director, Robert Gabriel.

Interrogation………….Ronan O’Casey
Marina Oswald……….Sarah Miles
Lee Harvey Oswald…..Peter Dobie
Marguerite Oswald…...Bessie Love

Directed by Peter Coe

[Photograph accompanying text is of Dobie holding the rifle and newspapers in back garden]

[Paul Rigby]

From Oz to the rather staider pages of Peace News...

Oz, March 1967

“Shut That Guy Up!”

By Mark Lane

What really happened at the BBC’s Lime Grove studios on January 29? Ostensibly, a much fan-fared impartial investigation into the death of Kennedy which pitted Mark Lane, author of ‘Rush to Judgement’ against two Warren Commission lawyers, Arlen Specter and David Belin and two of the Warren Commission’s influential defenders, Lord Devlin and Professor Bickel. What actually happened on TV screens outraged an undisclosed number of viewers; prompting them to jam BBC switchboards. The strict format of the programme seemed loaded against Lane, to say nothing of compere Kenneth Harris’s compulsive partiality. What didn’t appear on camera is even more fascinating. Here Mark Lane recounts his negotiations with the BBC, reveals how rehearsals with other protagonists were underway 12 days before he arrived and discloses astonishing occurrences behind-the-scenes.

If you were watching BBC-2 for almost five hours on January 29 you should have been informed that the distortion was not caused by a faulty television set in your home. It originated at BBC’s Lime Grove studio. It was, in fact, planned that way...

...As I prepared to leave London a BBC programme announced that Barrow and Southampton had tied 2-2. I just knew that I couldn’t be sure unless I read it in the Times the next morning.

Mark Lane,
Nykobing, Danmark.
9 February 1967.

Peace News, 7 October 1966, pp.3-4

An Interview with Mark Lane

By Roger Barnard

I interviewed Mark Lane just before he was due to fly to Sweden; the time factor was a bit worrying, but we talked for about two hours, and covered a wide range of subjects. Apart from the Warren Commission Report and his own book, he spoke about the harassment he’s had to put up with in the past two years from the various security, law enforcement, and secret para-military agencies in the States, about the sneers and insults from the mass media directed at him and his work, about the David Mitchell draft-card case, in which he’s currently acting as defence counsel, about the sudden shift towards a hard line in American foreign policy which occurred almost exactly after Kennedy’s assassination, about the personality of Johnson, and about his own fears that Johnson was poised on the brink of a large escalation of the Vietnam war.

I left the interview with the impression that here was a man who, far from being the histrionic exhibitionist he’s frequently been made out to be, was quietly confident that he was right, that the facts showed him to be right, and that time would prove him right eventually. The following is a much shortened version of our discussion.

Your books been out in the States now for about five weeks, Mark, and over here it’s only just been published, and I see you’re still getting a bad press from one or two quarters: “Time” magazine laid into you with both fists flying, Bernard Levin was hysterical in the “Daily Mail,” Alastair Cook did a very lukewarm “let’s all be responsible” kind of piece in the “Guardian,” and then there’s Pitman in the “Daily Express” and Goodhart in the “Sunday Telegraph” and Devlin in the “Observer.” Now why do you think these people are still telling lies, to put it bluntly, even after all the painstaking documentation by you and a lot of other people which goes right against the established grain as far as the Warren Commission Report is concerned?

Well, I think one has to distinguish one from the other. Bernard Levin is one case; he was so completely and thoroughly committed to the Warren Commission Report at the beginning of the whole affair, and he so vindictively attacked anyone who doubted the conclusions of the Warren Commission Report, that he may well feel that his position has been so absolutely set that it’s impossible for him to withdraw from it. But his original endorsement of the Report was based solely upon his abysmal ignorance, and I think his present endorsement of the Report is based upon that as well.

Time magazine, again, was one of those publications which endorsed the Warren Commission Report from the outset, hinting in the process that anyone who doubted its conclusions was some kind of crackpot. The Guardian piece, I think, is different from the other two, and it comes a little closer to an analysis of what it is we have to say.

But I think there is a general reluctance, both in America and here in England, to believe the fact that we can have been so monumentally defrauded during the last three years. Oddly enough, I’ve noticed a change in the approach to the case. First we were told that, while the evidence might not prove Oswald’s guilt, and while one might be able to poke a few minor holes in the evidence at the beginning, nevertheless Chief Justice Earl Warren and his distinguished colleagues had studied the evidence before them, come up with this Report, and therefore their statement that Oswald was the lone assassin, must be accepted.

But now, with the books out, I think that it’s impossible for anyone to say that the Warren Commission Report is a sound document. So now we’ve moved a little further, to stage two. We’re no longer asked to have faith in the Warren Commission Report; indeed, a New York newspaper recently referred to it as a “discredited piece of goods,” but then went on to say that nevertheless it still believed that Oswald was the lone assassin. On what kind of evidence they base that belief now, I just do not know: there never was any evidence. There was a time when one was supposed to have faith in the Warren Commission, but no one can have that any more; and even those who support the conclusions of the Warren Commission Report, that Oswald was the lone assassin, indicate that they do not do so simply because Earl Warren says so.

I just cannot understand what the basis is for this new stage we’ve entered; namely, that the Warren Commission did everything wrong, its Report is false, and yet somehow it stumbled upon the correct conclusions. Crazy logic! I suppose it is, again, the difficulty of facing reality and saying: we don’t know who killed President Kennedy, the assassins may well be at large, and for some reason which we cannot comprehend, the US government seems totally unconcerned about this. A very difficult area to comprehend, certainly. I think that most people prefer to avoid this question, and the way to avoid it is to remain totally committed, intellectually and emotionally, to the concept that Oswald did it and he did it alone,

There’s been a lot of people taking the Warren Commission Report apart during the last two years: Feldman, Russell, Buchanan, Sylvia Meagher in “The Minority of One,” Fred Cook in “The Nation,” Vincent Salandria in “Liberation,” now your book and Epstein’s, and I believe there’s another new one coming up soon called “Whitewash” by Harold Weisberg. Since it does seem by now to so transparently obvious to anyone but a child, I should think, that the Warren Commission Report is, as you said “a discredited piece of goods,” what do you think is now going to happen? That is, a certain point has been reached, the demolition job has been done and the Warren Commission Report is in pieces: what do you think are the next immediate steps beyond this?

I think we’re still at the stage if trying to convince large numbers of people in the States and in Britain that the Report cannot be credited. Once that’s been established, we’re going to have to try to have the National Archives opened. There’s an awful lot of evidence missing, you know: the autopsy photographs, the X-rays, no-one knows where they are; and then there’s all the physical evidence such as the rifle, the bullets, the pistol, none of that is in the Archives. I think our first demand is that all evidence of that nature should be placed in the National Archives, and that everything should be made readily available to all scholars and other persons who are experts in various fields so that they may examine the evidence.

I think there would be sufficient revelations from such careful examinations, so that the next step would then become clear: that is, some method whereby the evidence can be officially evaluated. In order to bring this about, I think there’s going to have to be some kind of pressure movement organised in the States. We're giving serious consideration now to bringing back to life our Citizen’s Committee of Enquiry, and organising petition campaigns, and perhaps a march on the National Archives, demanding that they be opened on behalf of the people.

I’m not sure we’re quite ready for that. It depends, I think, on how many people decide that they should acquaint themselves with the facts. I’ve just heard that my book, which has been on the New York Times bestseller list twice, first in 9th place and then at 7th, has now moved up to 4th place on the list, an indication that it’s now being pretty widely read in the US. I think this will be of great use when we come to the next stage, which is trying to secure some action from the American people.

I’ve just been reading Norman Mailer’s review of your book in “Village Voice.” He takes the line that the seemingly insoluble mystery of the whole affair will be seen to rest, ultimately, on the enigma of “the cop” as a human type, more particularly on the terrifying self-contradictions inherent in the average American cop. Well, obviously the Dallas police were in on the thing at some stage. Now, do you think the entire police force was in on it? I find it difficult myself to believe that an entire city police force was involved; you’re not presupposing an entire police conspiracy in Dallas, are you?

No, not at all; the Dallas police turned up some very good evidence immediately, I think, and did an excellent job in many ways. On the scene, Weissman found a piece of skull, he interviewed people behind the wooden fence area, he found a rifle in the building, and so on.

So in that case, one would imagine that there were one or two cops in on it who knew what was happening, and who used their influence to smother enquiries perhaps later on.

I think that’s possible, yes, that’s nearer the real explanations.

Three questions now. First, since your book is specifically a critique of the Warren Commission Report, and since the Commission was in Earl Warren’s name, have you had any kind of public or private reaction from Warren himself, or indeed from any members of the Kennedy family? Third, since the constituent members of the Warren Commission were virtually handpicked by Johnson, it seems to me that from now on, anyone who knocks the Warren Commission Report is, by implication, knocking Johnson. Now, will this unstated assumption have any immediate bad effects upon the state of political dissent in America today? The subtle or overt pressures placed upon event the mildest of dissenters in the States today seem rough enough already; do you think your book is going to goad authority into an even tighter closing of the ranks?

Well, Earl Warren has not responded to any of the attacks that have been made upon the Commission or the Report, and no other member of the Commission has made any comment either. I think there’s an agreement among the members of the Warren Commission not to make any comment; yes, that was an agreement entered into just before the Report was published. But it may be that the attacks will become so sharp and widespread that they will be compelled to respond.

As to your second point, one of the main criticisms always made against me is that no member of the Kennedy family has ever supported my work publicly. But as a matter of fact, the Oxford professor, Hugh Trevor Roper, who’s very interested in the whole thing and has written the preface to my book, received a telegram from Bobby Kennedy last year which read: “Keep up the good work.” And of course, there’s this book by William Manchester, called The Death Of A President, which is due out soon, which was written with the express consent and authorisation of Jackie Kennedy and the Kennedy family, and which could be potential dynamite, politically.

Thirdly, you’re quite right, it was officially called “The President’s Commission On The Assassination Of President Kennedy,” the members were chosen by Johnson, and he is responsible, ultimately, for the Commission’s Report, he is responsible for the suppression of the evidence, and he is responsible for the fact that vital material evidence in the National Archives cannot be seen or examined: that is an executive decision. Now, the latest polls in the States have shown a sharp decline in Johnson’s popularity; and while they’ve not yet taken a poll on the feelings of the American people relative to the assassination of President Kennedy, I have taken some rather informal polls on my own, because I’ve been on more than 100 radio and TV programmes during the last five weeks, and a lot of the programmes were the “phone in and ask a question” type of affair, and over 20% of the people who phoned in to talk to me stated quite categorically that they believed Johnson was behind the assassination. Now, I’m not in a position to pass judgment on their beliefs, or to say whether or not they’re right or wrong; but I think it’s a good indication of the way in which the whole controversy is gradually becoming more and more a political issue. And I can assure you that Johnson’s drop in the polls coming at the same time as the publication of my book and Epstein’s well, the two things are not entirely coincidental. But I think Johnson’s running scared on a whole lot of issues right now. As for the pressures on dissent getting worse, I just don’t know. Perhaps; but they’re so bad already, and the ranks are so closed right now, that I don’t see how it’s possible.

[Paul Rigby]

...for three pieces from Lords, a British version of Playboy, from the summer of 1969. Among them is a rare – only? – appearance in the UK from Joachim Joesten; a little-known Eric Norden; and an anonymous pseudo-editorial which repeats that canard that Kennedy removed Diem the better to cut a deal with Hanoi :

Lords, Summer 1969, pp.46-48, 50.

High Noon in Dallas

“The police were in on the job. Either they ordered it to be done, or else they allowed it to be done…they got hold of this Communist who really wasn’t one…just the man they needed for the accusation…to set off an anti-communist witch-hunt to divert attention…A trial! That would have been unthinkable. Everyone would have talked. So the police got hold of an informer, someone they could do what they liked with. And this character kills the false assassin on the pretext of defending Kennedy’s murder” – Charles de Gaulle.

This was how the General interpreted the assassination of President Kennedy after his return from the funeral in December 1963. Nine months later the Warren Commission decided that the General was wrong and reported that two madmen had acted alone in Dallas, the first killing Kennedy, the second Oswald. The official investigation was then considered finished. But private investigations suggest a different version of events: “a case”, according to District Attorney Jim Garrison, “that already makes Dr. No and Goldfinger look like auditors’ reports.”

Today more Americans agree with the General than with the Warren Commission. The murders of Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and other liberal leaders give rise to the fear that conspirators continue to strike. In this Lords investigation ERIC NORDEN sums up the views of those who can no longer accept the official story.

By Eric Norden

At 11.40 a.m., Friday, 22 November 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, landed at Love Field, Dallas, Texas. At 12.30 p.m., as the Presidential motorcade crossed the intersection of Houston and Elm Streets, shots rent the air, and bullets tore through the President’s body, shattering his brain. At 1.00 p.m., doctors at Parkland Hospital pronounced him dead. At 2.35 p.m. Dallas authorities announced the arrest of Lee Harvey Oswald, ex-Marine and avowed Marxist who had defected to the U.S.S.R. in 1959 and since his return to the United States had proclaimed himself an avid follower of Fidel Castro. At 2.38 p.m., Judge Sarah Hughes of Dallas District Court swore in Lyndon Baines Johnson as 36th President.

On Sunday, 24 November as Lee Harvey Oswald was frog-marched through the corridors of Dallas police headquarters shouting “I’m a patsy! I didn’t kill anyone!” nightclub proprietor Jack Ruby lunged forward, shoved the barrel of a .38 revolver into the alleged assassin’s stomach and sent a single bullet ripping through Oswald’s spleen, pancreas, aorta, liver and kidneys, Oswald died in the same Parkland Hospital where John Kennedy had died 48 hours before.

On Monday, 25 November the hoofbeats of a riderless horse echoed along Pennsylvania Avenue and across the world.

But it had not ended. It had only begun.

As the aftermath of the assassination the United States experienced a profound moral and political trauma. “Our credentials as a civilized people,” commented syndicated columnist Richard Starnes, “stand suspect before the world.” At home, dark rumours of a well-orchestrated conspiracy were rife, compounded by the circumstances of the alleged assassin’s death at the hands of Jack Ruby, a shady character with links to both organized crime and the Dallas police force.

The international communist propaganda apparatus, predictably eager to undermine America’s world position, seized on the assassination as a Cold War weapon. A typical TASS dispatch charged that “All circumstances of President Kennedy’s tragic death allow one to assume that this murder was planned and carried out by the ultra right-wing, fascist and racist circles, by those who cannot stomach any step aimed at the easing of international tensions and the improvement of Soviet-American relations.” Even in those Western nations most staunchly allied to Washington, many echoed the view that Kennedy’s assassination was a plot, probably carried out by extreme right-wing and segregationist elements. No less a personage than Charles de Gaulle shared these lurid suspicions, according to his biographer, Jean-Raymond Tournoux (editor of Paris Match), who quotes him as saying: “It looks like a cowboy and Indian story, but it’s really only an OAS story. The police are in cahoots with the ultras. In this case, the ultras are represented by the Ku Klux Klan, the John Birch Society and all those secret extreme rightist associations.

“They got hold of this communist who wasn’t really one, a nullity, a fanatic. He was just the man they needed – ideal for the accusation. A fable was created to make people believe that this man had acted out of fanaticism and love for communism. It was designed to set off an anti-communist witch hunt to divert attention…A trial! That would have been unthinkable. Everybody would have talked. So the police get hold of an informer, someone they could do what they liked with. And this character kills the false assassin on the pretext of defending Kennedy’s memory.”

Concluded de Gaulle: “America is becoming less and less a stable country, one that cannot be relied on. It is returning to its old demons.”

To reassure the world, as well as a stunned and disbelieving public at home, that the United States was indeed a stable country, and that the assassination was not part of a broader political conspiracy, President Johnson set up a federal commission under the chairmanship of Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren “to ascertain, evaluate and report on the facts of the assassination…and to satisfy itself that the truth is known as far as it can be discovered and to report its finding and conclusion to the American people and to the world.”

From the beginning, however, it was clear that the Commission had accepted Oswald’s sole guilt as its starting point, and was attempting to confirm how and why – rather than if – he killed the President. As one Commission member, John McCloy, stated bluntly at the outset of the hearings, “Our function is to convince the world that America is not a banana republic where governments can be changed by assassination.” In short, the Commission had a tranquillizing rather than investigative function, though, even if it had initiated a searching probe of the case, the results would have been questionable, inasmuch as it was set up with no independent investigative staff of its own, but was dependent on the F.B.I., the C.I.A., the Dallas police and the Secret Service – all of which were involved, by omission or commission, in the events of 22 November.

So it was no surprise when the report was released on 7 September 1964 with the conclusion that there was “no credible evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was part of a conspiracy.” Most Americans breathed a sigh of relief and even sceptical Europeans were impressed by the sheer size of the Report.

The Report was so enormous that only a handful bothered to study it. Those who did, however, gradually found it to raise as many questions as it answered. A barrage of critical books and magazine articles showed the Commission’s methods were superficial and challenged its essential conclusions. The Warren Report, so impressive at a distance, was found to be riddled with distortions, omissions, half-truths and outright inaccuracies, and public-opinion polls throughout 1967 and 1968 showed that by then some 70 to 80 per cent of the American people had, in the words of pollster Louis Harris, “deep and abiding doubts about the official explanation of the assassination of John F. Kennedy.”

In the original story Oswald shot Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Book Depository, ran down the stairs, was seen having a drink, jumped on the bus, transferred to a taxi, went back home, collected a jacket, rushed down the streets, shot patrolman Tippit and ran into a cinema. That was the essential outline, with the added colour that Oswald had eaten a chicken leg while waiting for his moment. Supporting evidence was given to the effect that Oswald was an expert marksman, that he had bought a deadly accurate rifle, that he was a communist sympathizer, that he had previously attempted to assassinate General Walker, and that he had only had the Depository job six weeks –just time enough to plan the assassination.

Investigations, not by the police, but by lawyers, journalists, and other interested outsiders, revealed a different story. There was no proof that Oswald was even on the sixth floor, no proof that he had brought in his Mannlicher-Carcano that day, no proof that bullet from his gun hit the President or Connally. There was no proof that Oswald took the described route by bus and taxi as both drivers failed to identify him. There was no proof that Oswald killed Tippit. He was allegedly seen waiting at a bus-stop to go in the opposite direction after he had left his house. The witness to the Tippit killing variously reported seeing two men, neither of whom looked like Oswald.

There was no proof that Oswald was a communist fanatic. To the contrary, several allegations were made that he was on the payroll of both the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. Event he chicken leg had been eaten by another employee. There was also the mystery to be solved of who put out the police call for Oswald only 15 minutes after the assassination when, in theory, no one was yet suspected. And the further mystery of the police car that was said to have stopped outside Oswald’s home in the few minutes he was there, hooted twice, and moved on.

The Oswald of the early press stories was a tormented, pro-communist fanatic acting on his own. The Oswald that came into focus after less cursory investigation was a different man – a suspected intelligence agent who defected to the Soviet Union on instructions of the C.I.A., and on his return served in a minor capacity both the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. There are files in the National Archives which cannot be opened until 2038, entitled Oswald’s access to information about the U-2, Official CIA dossier on Oswald, and Activity of Oswald in Mexico. One file not there was headed Oswald in Russia which the Warren Commission asked to see but were informed by the C.I.A. that it had unfortunately been destroyed while being photocopied. When was this? Curiously, 23 November 1963 – in the afternoon.

What was in the file was perhaps the information on Oswald’s activities in Texas. According to Allan Sweatt of the Dallas Sheriff’s office, Oswald was paid $200 a month by the F.B.I. and his number was S172. When the Warren Commission heard of Oswald’s connection with officialdom, J. Lee Rankin, its General Counsel, informed them that “we have a dirty rumour that is very bad for the Commission…very damaging to the agencies that are involved in it, and it must be wiped out insofar as possible to do so by the Commission.” So they accepted the denials by the F.B.I. and C.I.A. that they had ever heard of Oswald and never investigated it.

After the investigations of Mark Lane and others, even those who accepted that Oswald may have helped to kill Kennedy, found it hard to swallow the Tippit story. Not only did the first description of the killer as a tall man, 5ft 11ins with wavy black hair and carrying a .32 automatic pistol hardly tally with the diminutive Oswald, but the Commission put the time of the murder as 1.15 p.m., presumably as it was impossible for Oswald to arrive there earlier. Contrary evidence, which the Commission ignored by not calling him, is that T.F. Bowley looked at his watch after he saw the killing and swears that Tippit was already dead by 1.10 p.m. Of course the watch may have been incorrect, but why no investigation? Why not check with Mr. & Mrs. Wright, who saw the killing, telephoned for an ambulance and phoned the police? They also were not called.

This kind of sloveliness characterized most aspects of the Commission’s story. Perhaps it was true, as journalists and investigators were continually told in Dallas in 1964, that no one dare talk. By a mixture of blackmail, threats, beatings-up, deaths, and promises those who could give key evidence against the official theory were quietened, and the myth was sanctified by Earl Warren and his part-time, powerless Commission.

So thoroughly discredited has the Warren Commission become in America now that not even those few who still believe that Oswald killed the President alone, will rely on its report for substantiation.

And yet basic questions remain unanswered. If Oswald did not assassinate President Kennedy, then who did? And why? As Commission member Allen Dulles, former C.I.A. chief, recently challenged the critics: “If they have found another assassin, let them name names and produce evidence.”

Until now, this has still not been done. Earlier this year New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison charged Clay Shaw with conspiracy to assassinate the President, but the jury gave Shaw the benefit of the doubt. Garrison, a character who fails to inspire confidence in the uncommitted, has nevertheless reindicted Shaw on a perjury charge and has nine others on charges relating to the assassination.

Not that over the years there haven’t been a host of other suggestions. Jack Ruby wrote: “I walked into a trap the moment I walked down the ramp Sunday morning…They alone had planned the killing, by ‘they’ I mean Johnson and others.”

Still others lay the responsibility on the White Russian community in Dallas, a group of Texas oil millionaires, the Mafia, the C.I.A., the “military-industrial complex,” and Moscow.

The multiplicity of views and theories without proof provides believers in the Warren Report with grounds for scorn. “Why search for a different explanation,” they ask, “when there is a simple, easy one already on offer?” There are three answers. First, even assuming that President Kennedy was killed by Oswald acting alone, who in turn was killed by Ruby acting alone, then why, in the name of justice, was the whole thing treated like a bad joke and given even less investigation than a simple, small-town murder? One student of the assassination has listed 347 important questions left unanswered. Why were key-witnesses like Pierce Allman and Sandra Styles never called? Allman talked with Oswald outside the Depository after the shooting, while Styles ran down the stairs of the Depository and met neither Oswald, supposedly running down then, nor the policeman, Baker, supposedly running up?

Second, why was so much evidence destroyed – or at least unavailable? – like the all-important police interview with Oswald after his arrest. Third, why was the scene of crime so quickly altered when every detective magazine reader knows it should be left untouched? What happened to the tree in the Plaza that was cut down? Where did the signpost, said to be marked by a bullet, disappear to? Who filled in the manhole in the road by Kennedy’s car from where one witness said she saw a man shoot the President?

Other fundamental questions are still unanswered. Why choose a route that was an assassin’s dream, with at least five positions to shoot from? Why is nothing clear about the Tippit shooting – the time, the number of killers, their movements, why Tippit was there in the first place? Why did the Commission state that Tippit and Oswald had never met, when they were seen in the same restaurant two days before?

There may be simple or acceptable explanations for these and the other hundreds of questions but why, then, in a democracy, was justice not seen to be done?

Everything about the official theory defies probability. Lloyds have estimated the chances of 15 or more close witnesses dying of natural causes within three years as one hundred million trillion to one. In the Kennedy case the toll is approaching 40. Even discounting 50 per cent of these as irrelevant – which critics of the Warren Report deny – the laws of probability seem to have been far exceeded. And the methods of death are interesting – karate chops, hanging in police cells, head split with a hatchet, body hacked with a kitchen knife, run over, suicide by shooting behind left ear though right-handed, and so on. A selection of the dead appears on a later page which makes it perhaps less surprising that none of the murderer’s names nave yet been given.

A final reason for questioning the official version is relevant to the whole world. If there was a conspiracy, may there not be a link between the murders of Jack Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, Martin Luther King and others? Is there an assassination bureau, a group of people who will stop at nothing to get what they want, and who are still at large? According to the Warren Commission the Kennedy assassination was a coup de folie. But to the unbelievers it was a coup d’etat.

The conclusion of Garrison, the Committee to Investigate Assassinations and a number of others is that the shots fired in Dallas were merely the opening salvo in a take-over campaign of the United States by fanatic right-wing elements within and outside the government. “We are fighting for the soul of the United States,” one prominent critic confided to LORDS. “If we don’t expose the assassins and break their grip we’ll all be living in a Praetorian era of assassination and counter-assassination, and we’ll find ourselves in a country where bullets, not ballots, decide political issues. If the bastards get away with it, they’re just as capable of starting a third world war as shooting a President down in the street because they disagree with his policies.”

The critics may be unduly apocalyptic in their analysis, or simply wrong in their facts. But their case deserves to be considered – especially as it is shared, though generally in private, by many liberal figures in high places.

Despite evidence from investigators like Mark Lane and Epstein, indicating that shots were fired at Kennedy from in front as well as from behind, and that there was, at least in legal terms, a conspiracy, there has been no move by the United States government to reopen the investigation. The Clay Shaw trial in New Orleans earlier this year hinted at difficulties facing any investigation – even by a District Attorney like Garrison. His office claims that more than half of their key witnesses were restrained from giving evidence in court by government or police pressure. Key files on the assassination have been locked away until 2038 and consequently denied to investigators. When Clay Shaw was acquitted, the press in general saw his acquittal as a vindication of the Warren Report. Very few newspapers published the trial’s evidence showing that Kennedy was indeed fired on form several directions.

In their efforts to have the investigation of Kennedy’s murder reopened, most critics have concentrated on the actual facts of the assassination, attempting to answer the questions how and by whom? What is perhaps more important now is the basic question Why? It might just be that among the list of those who benefited could be the real assassins.

BOOKS FOR FURTHER READING:

Rush to Judgement by Mark Lane (Bodley Head, 42s and Penguin paperback, 8s 6d). Whitewash – the report on the Warren Report by Harold Weisberg (Mayflower-Dell 5s). Inquest by Edward Jay Epstein (Hutchinson 30s). The Garrison Inquiry and How Kennedy was killed Joachim Joesten (Peter Dawnay in association with Tandem Books). The Warren Report (Bantam 7s 6d). Six Seconds in Dallas by Josiah Thompson (available in USA only). The Assassination of President Kennedy, Jackdaw Special distributed by Cape.

The aforementioned pseudo-editorial:

Lords, Summer 1969, pp.51 & 95

The Reasons Why

When John Fitzgerald Kennedy was inaugurated as 35th President of the United States, his foreign and domestic policy hardly constituted a dramatic break with his predecessors in the White House. At home, Kennedy initiated a programme of tepid liberalism which belied the ringing New Frontier rhetoric of his gifted speechwriters, and abroad his foreign policy differed in few major respects from that of John Foster Dulles. A brilliant but inherently cautious politician, Kennedy initially seemed to feel ill at ease in the international arena, and trusted the major policy-making decisions to professional Cold Warriors. These were men committed to an international chessboard starkly divided between the legions of good, as championed by Washington, and the hordes of absolute evil, as exemplified by Moscow and Peking.

In the Bay of Pigs debacle which first cast the seeds of doubt in Kennedy’s mind about the good judgement of his principal foreign policy advisers and the ability of the Central Intelligence Agency to evaluate accurately the decisions crucial to U.S. foreign policy. In the wake of the abortive invasion of Cuba, Kennedy privately told friends he would like “to splinter the C.I.A. in 1,000 pieces and scatter it to the winds” – but, bowing to the realities of the Washington balance of power, he was content for the time being merely to sack its director, Allen Dulles, and the principal architects of the Bay of Pigs fiasco. (Ironically, Dulles would later be a member of the Warren Commission investigating Kennedy's death, and the first CIA head Kennedy lopped off was that of General Pierre Cabell, Chief of Planning for the Bay of Pigs operation – and brother of Earl Cabell, Mayor of Dallas at the time Kennedy was assassinated.)

The Bay of Pigs did not, however, generate a basic re-evaluation of America’s Cold War stance, and for the next 18 months the Kennedy Administration adhered to its view of the United States as the stern but righteous policeman of the world. But with the 1962 Congressional elections approaching, Kennedy was particularly vulnerable to the charge of being “soft on Castro” – and when in early October, CIA U-2 reconnaissance planes detected Soviet missiles with nuclear delivery capability on the island, he felt he had no choice but to take drastic action.

The Cuban missile crisis ended in near-total victory for the United States, Khrushchev’s 11th-hour capitulation and pledge to withdraw his missiles from Cuba was hailed across the world as one of America’s greatest victories of the Cold War. But, as Kennedy confided sombrely to personal friends and journalistic confidants, it was a sour victory. He determined that never again would a decision of his, whether of omission or commission, propel the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon.

From that point on there was a subtle but distinct change in US foreign policy. Secret agreements, details of which have still not been revealed, were signed with Khrushchev stipulating that the US would never invade Cuba in return for a Soviet pledge not to reintroduce missiles and to mute the tempo of subversive activities in other Latin American republics. Instructions were dispatched to US diplomatic missions around the globe that “peaceful co-existence” was no mere slogan but the official foreign policy of the United States.

Finally in the spring of 1963 Kennedy made the decision to replace the obdurate Vietnamese dictator Ngo Dinh Diem with a military junta more receptive to negotiations and an eventual coalition government with the Communists – a decision which led to the subsequent replacement of US Ambassador Frederick Nolting by Henry Cabot Lodge and the sacking of the pro-Diem CIA station chief. The US organized and financed the military coup that overthrew and assassinated Diem and his brother on All Hallows’ Eve 1963 – to the open fury and dismay of the CIA, which told journalists “off the record” that by betraying Diem we were selling Vietnam down the river to the Communists. (They needn’t have worried – within three weeks Kennedy was dead in Dallas and the Johnson Administration, reverting to a hard-line policy in Vietnam, in turn organized a coup to overthrow the pro-peace junta of General Minh, which had replaced Diem and made tentative overtures to the Vietcong.)

Kennedy gave his most forceful expression to the new US foreign policy in an address at the American University in Washington, D.C., on 10 June 1963, where he movingly outlined his hopes for a peaceful future:

“Both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race. Agreements to this end are in the interests of the Soviet Union as well as ours…So let us not be blind to our differences, but let us also direct attention to our common interests and the means by which these differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

The official Soviet newspaper Izvestia reported: “For the first time in the 20 years of the Cold War a President of the United States has come out publicly for the need of a basic re-evaluation of Soviet-American relations and recognised the need for peaceful co-existence.” Soviet authorities also made the full text of Kennedy’s speech available to the public, a rare sign of official approval.

Analysing the international reaction to Kennedy’s speech, Max Frankel wrote in The New York Times, “There was a new threat of international peace in the air this week, the kind of threat that leaves the sophisticates smirking and the rest of us dumfounded.”

No one was more dumfounded than the leaders of the anti-Castro exile underground in the United States – for they knew that Kennedy was not only initiating warmer relationships with the Soviet bloc, but paving the way for a détente with Communist China as well. Aware that Cuban-American hostility had twice precipitated major international crises, Kennedy was determined to finally normalize relations between the two countries. After a tentative peace signal from Cuban Premier Fidel Castro, the President chose US Ambassador to Guinea William Attwood, a trusted friend, as intermediary between Washington and Havana. James Wechsler, former editor of the New York Post and a close friend of the Kennedy family, has written that “In his final days on earth John F. Kennedy was actively and inquisitively responding to overtures from Fidel Castro for a détente with the United States…”

By November 22 1963, the day of the assassination, the negotiations had reached the stage where US television broadcaster Lisa Howard, acting as an intermediary for the President, was making final arrangements for a top-secret meeting in Mexico between Che Guevara and Robert Kennedy. A few days later Cuban Ambassador Carlos Lechunga was instructed by Castro to begin “formal discussions” with the United States. Ambassador Attwood writes in his book: “I informed [Johnson aide McGeorge] Bundy and later was told that the Cuban exercise would be put on ice for a while – which it was and where it has been ever since.”

A peace plan that went on ice with the body of the President who formulated it – was there a connection? Critics of the Warren Report believe there was, and contend that when John Kennedy initiated peace overtures with the Soviet bloc in general, and Cuba in particular, he also signed his own death warrant.

There is no doubt that the Cuban exile community seethed with fanatic anti-Kennedy sentiment throughout 1963. The most prominent Cuban exile leader, Dr. Jose Miro Cardona, president of the Cuban Revolutionary Council (a coalition of exile groups organised by the CIA at the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion), resigned in the spring of 1963 with a vitriolic onslaught on President Kennedy.

The more fanatical exiles then pledged themselves to fight to the death against Castro, with or without American support – and, if necessary, to violently resist curtailment of their para-military activities by Washington.

One training ground for such activities was a site north of Lake Ponchartrain where, according to New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, “the CIA was training a mixed bag of Minutemen, Cuban exiles and other anti-Castro adventurers for a foray into Cuba and an assassination attempt on Fidel Castro. David Ferrie…was deeply involved in this effort. The CIA itself did not take the new Kennedy détente too seriously until the late summer of 1963, because it continued its financing and training of anti-Castro adventurers. There was, in fact, a triangulation of CIA-supported anti-Castro activity between Dallas, where Jack Ruby was involved in collecting guns and ammunition for the underground, and Miami and New Orleans, where most of the training was going on. But then, Kennedy began to crack down on CIA operations against Cuba. As a result, on 31 July 1963, the FBI raided the headquarters of the group of Cuban exiles and Minutemen training north of Lake Ponchartrain and confiscated their guns and ammunition – despite the fact that the operation had the sanction of the CIA.”

It is the contention of Garrison and the other independent investigators of the Kennedy assassination that by reneging on his earlier promises to “liberate” Cuba and clamping down on exile activities Kennedy was marked for revenge by a handful of bitter and desperate men within the exiles’ ranks. But these Cuban fanatics, they believe, were only the triggermen of the plot, human guns loaded and aimed by more powerful and sophisticated forces, including lower-echelon elements of the CIA who believed that Kennedy’s new policy of peaceful co-existence was undermining the vital security interests of the nation. The Cuban exiles were convenient tools because they were totally dependent on the CIA for funds and because their ideological hatred of Kennedy ensured their silence after the assassination and ruled out costly blackmail attempts.

On 19 November 1963, a leading right-wing Cuban exile leader, Sergio Carbo, addressed a militant Cuban exile audience and, after an anti-Kennedy tirade, assured his listeners: “I believe that a coming serious event will oblige Washington to change its policy of peaceful co-existence.” Coming as it did only three days before the President’s murder, this was a remarkable prophecy. Was it clairvoyance? Or complicity? In any case, Kennedy’s policy of détente died with him. As the New York Post commented shortly after Lyndon Johnson’s accession to the Presidency, “Mr. Johnson has never believed that the fundamental issues which divide Russia and the democratic nations can be settled by negotiation.”

The investigations of many Warren Report critics have led them to one ineluctable conclusion: John Kennedy’s assassination was a profoundly political act, designed less to liquidate an individual than to change the policies he espoused and implemented. Jim Garrison sums up the conclusions of all the leading American investigators of the assassination when he concludes:

“President Kennedy was killed for one reason: because he was working for a reconciliation with the USSR and Castro’s Cuba. His assassins were a group of fanatic anti-Communists with a fusion of interests in preventing Kennedy from achieving peaceful relations with the Communist world. On the operative level of the conspiracy, you find anti-Castro Cuban exiles who believed sincerely that Kennedy had sold them out to the Communists. On a higher, control level you find a number of people of ultra-right-wing persuasion – not conservatives, mind you, but people who could be described as neo-Nazi…Both of these groups had a vital stake in changing US foreign policy – ideological on the part of the para-military rightists and both ideological and personal with the anti-Castro exiles, many of whom felt they would never see their homes again if Kennedy’s policy of détente was allowed to succeed.”

Of one thing there can be no doubt: the foreign and domestic policies of the United States have changed radically since 22 November 1963. The critics of the Warren Commission have provided a persuasive motive for the assassination, but understanding why Kennedy was killed is but one element of the equation. If justice is ever to be done – and the United States ever returned to the course which John Kennedy died setting for it – then the final question must be answered: who killed Kennedy? Where are the assassins now? Who is protecting them?

Can they be exposed before they strike again? It is the answer to these questions that powerful forces in Washington and Texas have worked for six years to suppress. Possibly no private investigations will ever find the evidence necessary to accuse those considered to be the real assassins. A complete reopening of the case and a change of climate in Washington is needed that will ensure co-operation throughout all government organisations. It was hardly to be expected that President Johnson would pave the way for those wishing to disprove the Report of the Commission that he set up. It is perhaps Utopian to hope that Richard Nixon will wish to reopen old sores, but if public pressure is strong enough we may yet see a breakthrough.

And finally Joesten, given the sort of intro more normally associated with a poison-pen letter:

Lords, Summer 1969, pp.100-101

J’Accuse

By Joachim Joesten, interviewed by Paul Tabori

Protagonist of the theory that the murderers of Kennedy are still walking free is the German-born American author Joachim Joesten. He is obsessed with the assassination, and wrote his first book from Dallas in the early days of December 1963. Since then he has written eight books with titles like Oswald: assassin or fall guy?, How Kennedy was killed, and The dark side of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Instead of concentrating on the weaknesses of the Warren Report he is more concerned to elaborate his conspiracy thesis, which he believes could be proved if District Attorney Garrison ever succeeds in bringing various witnesses to court. His opponents accuse him of indiscriminately using anything suspicious to support his case. Reviewing his book in the Sunday Times, Cyril Connolly found him “in a perpetual state of indignation.” Joesten confesses he came close to losing his mind at least twice as the ramifications of the conspiracy seemed to keep widening. His books provoke doubts but are short on answering questions with hard proof. LORDS finds it impossible to endorse his case on the evidence he offers, but a summary of his views is necessary to an understanding of the controversy. The following extracts from his books, and a special LORDS interview with Paul Tabori, outline his sensational charges.

The conspiracy to kill President Kennedy sprang from a consensus of Texas political figures, big business men, and right-wing extremists, with the C.I.A. at all levels as the connecting and cementing link. It was ordered and paid for by a handful of oil-rich psychotic millionaires, with elements of the Dallas police force deeply involved, and the help of some members of the Dallas White Russian community.

As early as 1964 I openly accused the then Dallas chief of police, Jess Curry, of complicity in the slaying of the President. I also accused his chief of homicide, J. Will Fritz, of being directly implicated in the Kennedy murder.

I also firmly believe that one or more of the President’s personal Secret Servicemen were involved in the conspiracy, as I see no other explanation for their failure to react at the sound of the first shot. It is a matter of undisputed record that nine of the Secret Servicemen who were supposed to guard Kennedy on his motorcade were out drinking the night before, some of them staying at the bar of the Fort Worth Press Club until three in the morning. This was a flagrant breach of discipline. Whether they were simply suffering from a hang-over, or had been doped I don’t know, but the fact is that the only people in a position to help the President seemed stunned. What makes their behaviour even more questionable is that, four days before, the Miami police had been told of a plot to assassinate Kennedy during his visit there and had immediately cancelled the motorcade. The report of the proposed assassination was forwarded to the Secret Service which made no attempt to take extra precautions in Dallas despite the fact that even Governor Connally attempted to dissuade Kennedy from going because of the hostile feelings towards him.

For a long time I have believed that patrolman Tippit rather than Oswald may have been the man who fired at the President’s motorcade from the 6th-floor window of the Book Depository. It has always seemed strange to me that, even though Tippit was turned into a national hero to whose widow the American people sent over $600,000, only one photograph of Tippit was ever issued to the press. Why was this? Perhaps the answer is that Oswald and Tippit’s faces looked similar, except that Tippit’s face is heavier and 10 years older. The description of the man in the Depository window given by the principal eye-witness, Howard L. Brennan, does not fit Oswald. Brennan (whose evidence is the key to the Oswald case) described the man as in his early 30s, possibly 5ft 10ins…160-170lbs. Oswald was 24 and weighed 136lbs, but this description fits Tippit.

Facts also undisclosed about Tippit at his time of death were that he was an old pal of Jack Ruby, consistently in and out of the Carousel Club, and, a week before the assassination, had there met Ruby, Bernard Weissman (author of the despicable “Welcome Kennedy” advertisement in the Dallas Morning News) and an unnamed third man. Tippit, I am satisfied, was up to his neck in the conspiracy. A member of the John Birch Society, an excellent marksman and a friend of Ruby’s, he was probably silenced for his part in the conspiracy.

Few can have had a greater desire to see Kennedy out of the way than Haroldson Lafayette Hunt. As the boss of the Hunt Oil Company his annual income is about 30 million dollars a year on which he pays little income tax because of the depletion allowance. By 1963 the oil industry’s most powerful defenders in Congress, Sam Rayburn and Senator Robert S. Kerr, had died and their third man, Lyndon Johnson, was powerless in the Vice-Presidency. Kennedy was tired of the oil magnates receiving so many benefits and proposed a new law which would take out $185 million. At the same time an investigation began into Hunt’s propaganda organization called Life Line Foundation Inc. Through this Hunt puts over his right-wing views while insisting on tax-exempt status as a charity. This too was to have been stopped by Kennedy at the end of the year. But both these charges, like so many other Kennedy proposals, were quietly dropped by Johnson. I know of no evidence directly connecting Hunt with the assassination conspiracy. It is just unfortunate that it happened in his city where he is said to control everything.

It has always been my firm belief that the original plan to kill Kennedy was hatched in 1960, but the specific murder plot seems to have begun about 3 September 1963 when - according to District Attorney Garrison – a meeting took place between Clay Shaw, Jack Ruby, David Ferrie, and Lee Harvey Oswald at the Jack Tar Capital House, a Baton Rouge hotel. The second meeting took place about a fortnight later and, according to eye-witness Perry Russo, it was held at Ferrie’s apartment attended by Shaw, a man who called himself Leon Oswald, and two Cubans.

The two interesting points here are the absence of Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. There is a great deal of evidence that one of the conspirators impersonated Oswald before the assassination in order to create the impression of an unstable and suspicious character whom people would remember. There were undoubtedly two Oswalds, as I have shown in my book Oswald: the Truth, and the conspirators were following an old tradition of setting up a fall guy. Oswald was certainly involved in some way but I am convinced that he killed neither Kennedy nor Tippit, as he persistently claimed. This second Oswald has never been named by other investigators but I believe that it was Larry Crayford, Ruby’s barman at the Carousel. After the assassination, he disappeared and has not been heard of since.

Ruby, on the other hand, may have thought he was in a plot to kill Governor Connally. My reading of the evidence is that Ruby served his gangster bosses as efficiently as he served the C.I.A. and, knowing that Connally was a hindrance to the criminal element, was happy to remove him, but not Kennedy.
But the actual assassination was left, I believe, in the capable hands of David Ferrie. He was the executive mind of Operation Overkill in the Dealey Plaza in Dallas on 23 November 1963.

Because a sniper has the opportunity of shooting but once before being seen and then having to make his getaway, an operation like this would require at least three gunmen. In fact I believe that David Ferrie stationed no less than five and possibly six gunmen at different points around the Plaza, and a further squad of three men who would complete the execution while the first squad were concealing themselves and their weapons. For this to work perfectly the assassins would have to keep in touch by radio. At his famous press conference Jim Garrison showed reporters a photograph in which a bystander, a few yards ahead of the Presidential car, is holding an open black umbrella above his head although the sky was a beautiful, cloudless blue. Garrison pointed at this and said: “There, gentlemen, is the murder weapon.” What better way to hide a walky-talky aerial than with an umbrella?

Now where were the assassins standing? Two F.B.I. agents, Sibert and O’Neil, attending the Kennedy autopsy reported that the bullet entered the body at an angle of between 40 and 60 degrees. There is only one point from which this bullet could have been fired – from the top of the clock on the roof of the Book Depository. The second assassin fired from directly behind Zapruder, an amateur movie enthusiast, who made the only film of the assassination. The evidence for this is the dark spot on the back of the road sign in frame 207 suggesting that a bullet had either gone through or bounced off it. We shall never be able to check this, as the sign was removed that day and its whereabouts never detected.

The third assassin was perhaps in the tree on the far side of Elm Street. In frames 211 and 212 of Zapruder’s film we can see a shape that could be that of a man sitting on a branch, and a bullet mark was found by F.B.I. agents in the wall directly in line after the assassination. I wonder why?

The fourth sniper fired from a window in the Dal-Tex building. His bullet also missed and struck a kerb on the south side of Main Street. The fifth sniper was hidden behind the stone wall that runs down from the end of the arcade. Garrison claims that he has a photograph showing this man and his accomplice, whose job was presumably to pick up ejected cartridges. The sixth sniper was on top of the records building, as is clearly shown by Josiah Thompson in his book Six Seconds in Dallas. It was his bullet, I believe, that hit Governor Connally.

Thus, so far, two shots have missed, two hit Kennedy, one Connally and the sixth bullet is not accounted for. It was now time for the second team of assassins. One shot comes from the Book Depository where a sniper was seen by Howard Brennan. A second from the picket fence and again Garrison claims to have photographs showing three men behind the fence. The third was fired through the grating of a manhole in the road near Kennedy’s car. The witness of this is Miss Lillian Costellano who saw a man crouching there.

From the first to the ninth shot was a matter of five or six seconds. The first five shots were fired simultaneously, the sixth shot which hit Connally was a fraction later and the last three shots were again simultaneous. I know no evidence among 190 witnesses which does not fit in with this plan. For the Warren Report to be believed, Oswald had to fire his three shots in the space of 5.6 seconds with almost exactly even spacing between the shots. And yet of the 190 witnesses questioned only 13 described them as evenly spaced. It is very difficult to in any confined space to say where a sound comes from and how many there are. But it is interesting that a witness, J.C. Price, standing on the roof of the Terminal Annex Building, far enough from the source of the shots to distinguish them more clearly, stated that he heard six shots, a volley of five and, five seconds later, the sixth.

To sum up, the statements of Garrison leave me in no doubt that President Kennedy was killed by C.I.A. agents on behalf of Lyndon B. Johnson, with the Dallas police helping to set up the ambush, with the Secret Service looking the other way, and with the F.B.I. covering up. That is the hideous truth about the assassination.

[Paul Rigby]

A personal favourite – I met him very briefly at JFK conference in Liverpool in the mid-1990s - two extracts from the short-lived newsletter of Peter Dawnay, the UK publisher of Joachim Joesten. Note his speculation on the fate of Nixon; and a glimpse of Garrison midway through his protracted battle with Shaw and his cohorts:

Assassination 68 [Newsletter], Vol.1 Issue 1, (18 October 1968), p.1

Editorial

By Peter Dawnay

This is the first issue of a publication which has a number of specific and very clearly defined aims. The most important is to give its readers the news that is being systematically suppressed by the newspapers and electronic media concerning the developments in the three major political assassination cases that have occurred in the past five years.

It is not possible at this date to give a detailed account of how and why this suppression takes place. No one would be so stupid as to suggest that all editors and journalists are engaged in a gigantic conspiracy but the outlines of the system are beginning to become apparent. I believe that it depends to a limited extent on the outright bribery or blackmail of a few selected or key figures in the news media, but far more importantly it depends on the now highly developed art of news manipulation. This art, in turn, depends for its success on the following known human weaknesses: (1) the shortness of human memory; (2) the rooted objection of the majority to being made to think; (3) the inability of even highly paid newsmen to apply rational criteria to official statements, and (4) the herd instinct.

The last is probably the most important of the four. One of the strongest human instincts is the desire to conform, and this applies as much to fashions in dress as it does to fashions in thought. When Galileo said that the earth went round the sun instead of vice-versa, he was guilty of a heresy for which the penalty was death at the stake. It didn’t matter that he could demonstrate proof positive of his contention. What mattered was that by calling into question the whole authority of the Church and undermining religious faith, he was challenging the power structure of the time.

Every establishment will seek to destroy those who challenge it and in consequence the vast majority will cold shoulder the non-conformists simply because they prefer the safety of the herd and would rather not be associated with those who are courting destruction. The herd will therefore eagerly seize on the slightest pretext for ignoring and forgetting about them. A whisper to the effect that so-and-so is a communist, or a crackpot will be enough. However absurd and demonstrably false the story the herd will prefer it to the uncomfortable and disturbing ideas which may reach it from outside and to the painful necessity of having to think.

History has repeatedly born eloquent witness to this fact. Time and again the stone which the builders reject eventually becomes the head of the corner. Throughout the thirties Churchill warned against the renascence of German militarism but until war actually broke out he was despised and rejected of men.

Today we see a new world system coming into force. The 1939-45 war was the last of the European wars fought between rival colonial powers and it gave birth to the two super powers who will henceforth dominate world affairs and to the two most powerful military forces that the world has ever seen.

Europe is caught between these two gigantic rivals, the one capitalist and the other communist. If it wishes to avoid being crushed between them, it must declare its independence of both.

But how and why does this concern the murders of Luther King and the two Kennedys? The answer is chillingly simple. These murders ensured the end of the policy of peaceful co-existence and non-violence and put into power men determined to solve the problems of the world not by persuasion but by force. The blackman in America is now to be held down by force, hence the cry for ‘law and order,’ and puppet military regimes are to be installed in countries bordering on the communist bloc, as has already occurred in Greece and South Viet Nam.

The arm of the American Government which is most responsible for this policy is the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA. It is a huge organisation disposing of billions of dollars and subject to no form of democratic control. It operates secretly in every country in the world, subverting cabinet ministers and eliminating influential people who oppose its policy. Its weapons are blackmail, bribery and intimidation at best, and at worst assassination. But it uses the latter method only when others fail. Its enemies are more usually disposed of by framing them on trumped up charges or otherwise discrediting them.

There are 60 agents of the CIA operating in this country. The cover for their headquarters is a bogus commercial firm with offices at 7, Cleveland Row, just by St. James’ Palace. They tap telephones, they listen, observe, monitor and watch. They infiltrate the news media, they put stories into circulation and attempt with considerable success to influence and control opinion. No doubt they also employ agents provocateurs to discredit left wing groups. And no doubt, they are not above bribing public officials. This editor has first hand experience of their methods.

Thus the second most important purpose of this newsletter is to make the public aware of the operations of the CIA in this country and to counteract the pernicious lies which they circulate. It will therefore attempt to investigate and bring to light the hidden hand that often lies behind the seemingly inexplicable events that appear from time to time in the newspapers. (For example the kidnapping of Moses Tshombe.)

And the third purpose is to warn the public as to where the present policies of the CIA are leading. The last world war was preceded by smaller wars in Abyssinia and Spain. I believe the Vietnam, the Israeli-Egyptian war and Biafra are the forerunners of the next.

And I also believe that the war party in America, driven more by the necessity to conceal its former crimes as much as anything else, will resort to desperate measures to consolidate its control of the political machine. It therefore follows that there will be either no election (the assassination of Humphrey followed by deliberately incited riots could postpone it indefinitely), or that the next President will be assassinated if he steps out of line. Since this is likely to be Nixon, it is worth remembering that Spiro Agnew, his running-mate, is a stooge of the CIA.

The Economist, it should be noted, was, and remains, a notorious “front” for the ghastly SIS:

Assassination 68, Vol. 1 Issue 1, (18 October 1968), pp.2-3

Stalling of Justice

By Peter Dawnay

In its issue of July 20, 1968, the London Economist blandly suggested that Jim Garrison, the DA of New Orleans, may be “losing interest” in his case against Clay Shaw because the long-awaited trail “has not yet taken place.” This comment is typical of the systematic distortion of every aspect of the Garrison enquiry the press constantly indulges in, both in the US and abroad.

It is certainly not Garrison’s fault that the Shaw trial has not yet taken place. He had done everything in his power to bring the defendant to trial within a reasonable time after his March 1, 1967, arrest, but normal disposition of the case has been blocked time and again by the tricky legal manoeuvering of Shaw’s lawyers.

Originally, the trial had been scheduled to take place in October 1967, but on September 26 of that year the defence applied for six months’ cooling-off period on account of the publicity surrounding the case. The court granted a 4 months’ stay of execution and the trial was then set for February 13, 1968. As this date approached, however, Shaw’s lawyers moved for a change of venue, asking that the case be tried in a place at least 100 miles from New Orleans. After a lengthy hearing of prospective jurors, Judge Edward A. Haggerty ruled on April 14 that Shaw could get a fair trial in New Orleans and denied the motion for a change of venue. The ruling was promptly appealed by Shaw’s lawyers but on April 23, the Louisiana Supreme Court, by a unanimous decision, turned down this appeal.

The stage now seemed definitely set for the start of the long-delayed trial. On May 8, Garrison, through his aid, Assistant DA James Alcock, issued a statement that said: “Now that Mr. Shaw’s defence attorneys have exhausted their pretrial actions, the law permits the state to set the case for trial. Today we have set the trial of Clay L. Shaw for June 11, 1968. Trial of this case has been delayed unduly long and it is our hope that we can go to trial on this date. The state is ready for trial and will oppose any more attempts to postpone the trial.”

At the moment, however, Shaw’s lawyers were already all set for their most massive attempt yet to prevent the case from ever reaching the trial stage. On May 27, they filed a petition in Federal District Court for a temporary restraining order, to be followed by a permanent injunction barring the DA’s office from prosecuting Shaw further. The petition challenged the constitutionality of Louisiana’s conspiracy law and contended that Garrison, through a “reign of terror,” was depriving the defendant of his constitutional rights. Not content with this humbug, the defence asked the federal court to rule the Warren Report “valid, accurate, binding and controlling upon all courts in the United States.”

Thus a patently spurious document, concocted in a flagrantly nonjudicial proceeding, by a panel that had deliberately set aside all guarantees of due process, was to be made for all time a binding instrument of American jurisprudence. And that of course would have been the end of the Clay Shaw case, without a trial.

As soon as Garrison learnt that Shaw’s lawyers were about to move into the federal courts system, he issued a statement in which he said that “the federal courts have as much jurisdiction over this case as the courts of England or India.” When Federal District Judge Frederick J.R. Heebe issued the temporary restraining order on May 28, Garrison issued another and very lengthy prepared statement (on May 29), in which he declared that the federal government had a special interest in the outcome of the Shaw case because it does not want “it known that it conducted a fraudulent inquiry, using altered evidence and false evidence to fool the people of this country.”

He went on to say: “Another reason that the federal government has a special interest in this case – and should therefore keep its large nose out of it – is the very deep involvement of agents of the Central Intelligence Agency.

“The concealment of the involvement of the CIA was the major objective of the false federal investigation and the false inquiry by the Warren Commission. Many people in this country still do not know that CIA – which is completely uncontrolled by Congress – has been engaged in the assassination business for some years.

In the same statement, Garrison made the specific allegation that President Kennedy, after he had begun removing troops from Vietnam and had made other moves toward ending the Cold War, “and began to institute controls on the previously uncontrolled CIA, was killed in an ambush by men connected with the Department of Covert Activity.” Needless to say, this most important statement, about the frankest that Garrison has ever made concerning the role of the CIA in the assassination, found no echo in the corrupt press of America outside New Orleans, nor indeed was it reported abroad.

In the same context, Garrison pointed out that his detractors, who constantly reiterate that he has “no case” against Shaw, could easily prove their point in a court of law. “If the case of the State of Louisiana is as fraudulent as Shaw’s attorneys pretend,” he said (and he might well have added, as the news media keeps pretending) “why not let him go to trial and be acquitted? Why is there suddenly such a loss of faith in trial by jury?”

While Judge Heebe could and did issue the temporary restraining order on his own, he was compelled under federal procedure to ask the Chief Judge of the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to designate two other judges to sit with him in considering the petition for a permanent injunction. Judges Robert A. Ainsworth and James A. Comiskey were then appointed to hear the case with him.

The next move by Shaw’s lawyers was to file a motion on June 13 designed to bring US Attorney General Clark into the case by alleging that the purpose of the Garrison investigation was to discredit the Warren Report. Therefore, the lawyers argued, Clark should be made a party to the suit “to protect the interests and integrity of the United States,” by which of course they meant the interests and pseudo-integrity of President Johnson and his henchmen.

On July 23, the three judges handed down a unanimous decision rejecting every single point in the defence motion. “As a matter of law,” the ruling noted, “plaintiff Shaw’s request for relief in the Federal Court is premature, for under our system of Federalism in the circumstances presented here, he must first seek vindication of his rights in the state courts as to his pending prosecution…We entertain serious doubts about the appropriateness of stopping a pending state court prosecution to consider a request of plaintiff for a declaratory judgement as to the constitutionality of …the conspiracy statute under which he is being prosecuted.” Such a procedure, the court held, “would open the door to a constant disruption of state court criminal proceedings.” The judges also rejected Mr. Shaw’s plea for a ruling that the Warren Report should be valid and binding on all courts.

Thereupon Judge Haggerty on August 1 once again set the date for the start of Shaw’s trial for September 10, but within a few days the proceedings were once again obstructed. The defence lawyers filed notice with the District Federal Court announcing their intention to appeal the ruling of three judges to the US Supreme Court. Despite the firm tone with which they had made their own decision, the three judges acceded, and on August 13 they granted a further stay of the trial pending the hearing of the appeal by the United States Supreme Court.

Not surprisingly, Jim Garrison was once again up in arms. After all, Shaw was in effect running for protection to Earl Warren, the very man whose Report was designed to put the lid on all further investigations of Kennedy’s assassination. Garrison therefore announced that he would challenge Warren’s right to take any part in hearing the appeal. And he also aimed some heavy artillery at another Supreme Court Justice, Abe Fortas, a life long friend of President Johnson from whom he received his judge’s robes. (Incidentally, one of the first people whom Johnson called on the telephone after the assassination was Abe Fortas, and the lawyer was dutifully waiting at the airfield when Air Force One touched down that evening.)

“Justice Fortas,” Garrison said, “helped work out for the President the creation of the Warren Commission whose finding have now been totally discredited.” And it turned out to be “an excellent device for falsifying the truth…and prevented the appointment by Congress of its own investigating committee.” This could have been catastrophic for the government.” And then turning to Johnson, Garrison once more accused him of actively “concealing vital evidence with regard to the murder of his predecessor.”

It may now perhaps be clear to the reader why Johnson tried so desperately to have his nomination of Abe Fortas, as Chief Justice and Chairman of the Supreme Court, confirmed by the Senate. Having failed he will have to resort to measures of utter desperation. That is why another assassination is in the air.

CONTINUED in next issue

I can’t remember if there was another issue. I have it mind that there wasn't. Anyone know for sure?