27-04-2009, 08:17 PM
Charles Drago Wrote:Paul,
This material is invaluable, and we thank you for presenting it.
How early did we understand what went down?
That conspirators struck JFK was known by astute, non-complicit observers during the coordinated firing sequence. The word went forth from that time and place.
It is my understanding that the classified reading room of the library of a certain military institution of higher learning contains a relatively small assassination archive comprised solely of official Communist Party-originating contemporary analyses of the event.
CD
CD,
I compiled the anthology you're reading out of curiosity; for my daughters; and in the hope that someday we shall see anthologies of similar from the US and around the world. The US, in particular, boasts a rich store of unjustly neglected pieces scattered all over the place. Time we brought them together and rendered them readily accessible. For better, and sometimes worse, this is our tradition, in all its imperfections - and occasional glories.
Anyway, here's two more additions, the first of which remains, nearly half a century on, an outstanding example of honest and logical reasoning:
Quote:The Spectator, 6 March 1964, pp.305-306
The Riddle of Dallas
By Mordecai Brienberg
The author of this article, a former Rhodes Scholar from Canada, is a lecturer in sociology at Berkeley, California.
There are two widely held interpretations of President Kennedy’s assassination and the events in Dallas. The ‘liberal’ position contends that Lee Harvey Oswald was a product of the hatred and the violence preached by the ‘extremists of all kinds.’ In this view, radicals of the right and the left are responsible for the assassination. The ‘conservative’ interpretation traces responsibility for the assassination to ‘leftists and Communists’ alone; for, they contend, ‘was not Oswald a professed Marxist?’ But more crucial than the differences in these to postures are their similarities. Both presume that Lee Harvey Oswald was, in fact, guilty of the murder of the President; both by-pass an examination of whether or not this assertion is demonstrable.
Some very few Americans have taken seriously the tradition that a man is presumed innocent until proven guilty. These individuals have attempted to assess the evidence in the case. My purpose in this article is to summarise their minority enquiries, in order to make more widely known some pertinent information.*
The complete case against Lee Harvey Oswald is contained in the F.B.I. and Secret Service report submitted to the Warren Commission, which is unavailable to the public. However, the essence of the ‘water-tight case’ against Oswald was presented in a nation-wide radio and television statement made by the District Attorney of Dallas, Henry Wade. This statement was made after Oswald was murdered, while still in police custody. The F.B.I. and the Secret Service have themselves ‘leaked’ to the news media information from their own subsequent investigation. What follows is a brief resume of the official reconstruction of the assassination.
Lee Harvey Oswald, positioned at the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository building (TSBD), fired three rifle shots at the President’s car as it was moving away from the building. The President was struck twice, once in the neck and once in the head; Governor Connally of Texas was struck once. This occurred between 12.30 and 12.31. Oswald then walked down four flights of stairs to the second floor of the building, where he took a coke from the coke-machine. A policeman who rushed into the building immediately after the shooting approached Oswald, selecting him from among several persons gathered around the coke-machine. But the owner of the TSBD, who was accompanying the policeman, intervened and stated that Oswald ‘works in the building.’ Presumably satisfied by this comment, the policeman discontinued his interrogation and ran to the sixth floor. It is only after this brief encounter with the law that Oswald is alleged to have fled the building itself. He supposedly walked several blocks to catch a bus, which he rode for several more blocks; he then hailed a taxi and rode four miles to his apartment. After taking a jacket from his room, he left; and some time later he shot a policeman, officer Tippit. Finally, it is alleged, Oswald entered a movie theatre where his ‘suspicious movements’ caused the cashier to call for the police. It was in the theatre that Oswald was arrested.
The official account of the Kennedy assassination consists of assertions about (a) the murder weapon; (b) the place from which the shots were fired, and the number of shots fired; © the escape of the alleged assassin; and (d) the murder of officer Tippit. I will critically examine each aspect in turn, questioning the plausibility of the official account and pointing out the significant discrepancies that appear when earlier explanations are matched against the final account that I have just outlined.
(a) Weapon
There is on file in Dallas an affidavit by the police officer who found a rifle on the sixth floor of the TSBD. That affidavit states that the weapon was a 7.65 mm Mauser. Wade, on November 22, stated that this was the murder weapon, and that Oswald’s palm-print was found on the weapon. The next day the F.B.I. released a report that Oswald had purchased a rifle in March under the alias Hiddel. But this rifle was a 6.5 mm Italian carbine. After this report, Wade reversed his position; the rifle he had in his possession was now an Italian carbine; it was no longer a Mauser. It was after this F.B.I. report that Wade announced that he knew Oswald used the alias Hiddel – because he had found an identification card in this name on Oswald’s person at the time of his arrest. But Wade did not explain why this alias was not released the previous day when he had asserted that Oswald used the alias Lee. The omission is most puzzling when one considers that the alias Lee was not immediately accessible to the Dallas authorities (as was the alias Hiddel), but had to be uncovered by a separate investigation.
Aside from questions about the rifle itself and the alias under which it was purchased, what evidence is there that Oswald fired the rifle? The results of paraffin tests, administered to Oswald to determine whether or not he had recently fired a weapon, are on record in Dallas. While positive results in such tests can be produced by contact with substances other than gunpowder, negative results definitely indicate that a person has not recently fired a weapon. The firing of a rifle leaves gunpowder traces on the hands and face, if it is fired from the shoulder. And it would seem rather ridiculous for a person to have fired a rifle with telescopic sights from the hip. The results of the paraffin tests were positive for Oswald’s right and left hands. The paraffin tests on Oswald’s face proved negative. Moreover, contrary to Wade’s assertion on November 22 about palm-prints, the F.B.I. now states that ‘no palm-prints were found on the rifle.’
(b) Scene of the Shooting
The crucial question here is to reconcile the nature of the wounds inflicted on the President with the unwavering contention that the shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository building. Let us follow the changing official reports as they attempt such a reconciliation.
The three doctors who attended the President at Parkland Memorial Hospital immediately after the shooting stated to reporters at the hospital that one of the bullets had entered the President’s throat ‘just below the Adam’s apple.’ There is a great deal of difference between an entrance and an exit wound, and all three doctors claimed to have dealt daily with gun wounds. The bullet, these doctors further stated, ranged downward without exiting. If the President had been shot as his car approached the TSBD along Houston Street, then the nature of the throat wound would be consistent with the allegation that the shots were fired from the sixth floor of that building. This was the first F.B.I. interpretation. But all the witnesses as well as the photographs of the shooting made clear that the car had already made the turn and was heading towards the overpass when the first shot was fired in the President’s throat. Photographs indicate his car was seventy-five to one hundred yards past[i] the building. The F.B.I. next argued that the President had turned his head around (almost 180 degrees) and was looking back when the first shot was fired. Mrs. Connally contradicted this by stating that she was speaking to the President immediately before he was shot – and she was sitting directly in front of Mrs. Kennedy. The films also show the President facing forward as the first shot struck him. How, then, can a bullet shot from behind enter Kennedy’s throat from the front?
If the place of the shooting is fixed, if the posture of the President is fixed, then the consistency of the final account can only be achieved by altering the initial interpretation about the nature of the President’s wound. After the three physicians were questioned by the F.B.I. they issued a statement reversing their earlier view – on which they had been unanimous and definite. The throat wound, they now say, is an [i]exit wound. These doctors state that they are, however, unable to talk to reporters or to discuss the matter further.
But there remain other pieces of information which officials have not reconciled with the latest statement of the doctors. The first police bulletin, overheard by a reporter waiting for the President’s motorcade at a point farther along the route, was that ‘all firing appears to have come from the overpass’ – in front of the car. The first radio accounts of the assassination stated that a policeman rushed to the overpass and was seen chasing two persons on the overpass. Ominously, nothing further is ever mentioned about this report. The front windshield of the President’s car had a bullet hole in it. The Secret Service prevented reporters at the hospital from coming close enough to determine the direction of the bullet. The car was then flown back to Washington and remained in the custody of the Secret Service. Eight days later, the windshield of the car was replaced. (It is not known whether the shattered windshield was destroyed.) Finally, four reporters of the Dallas Morning News, witnesses to the assassination, who were standing between the overpass and the TSBD, all claim that the shots were fired from in front of the President’s car.
How many shots were there altogether? According to the official report three shots were fired. But there appears to be five bullets. A fragmented bullet was found in the car (this is most likely the bullet which struck the President in the head and then exited); there was the bullet that ‘struck’ the President in the throat; there was the bullet that struck Governor Connally; there was a bullet found by the Secret Service on a stretcher, presumably the President’s (although its origin is by no means definite); and there was a bullet found by a Dallas policeman in the grass at the point where the other shots struck the President and the Governor. Did Oswald now fire five shots in five and a half seconds, when rifle experts are highly sceptical that an excellent marksman could have accurately fired three shots in that time?
© The Escape
Is it possible for Oswald to have done everything the official account attributes to him between the time of the shooting and his arrival at his apartment? The shooting took place between 12.30 and 12.31. Oswald arrived at his apartment, according to his landlady, at 12.45. Another account states he arrived at 1.0 p.m. This report also mentions ‘choked downtown traffic.’
According to the official version, Oswald’s taxi ride was about four miles. In uncongested traffic, the taxi could average twenty miles per hour, and the journey would then take twelve minutes. Thus if Oswald arrived at 12.45, he would have had two minutes to (a) hide the weapon; (b) walk from the sixth floor to the second floor; © find coins and get a coke from the machine; (d) converse with a policeman; (e) leave the building and walk four blocks to a bus; (f) ride the bus several blocks; and (g) get off the bus and hail a taxi. But if the traffic were congested, a taxi could only average about ten miles per hour. Even if we allow that Oswald did not arrive in this case until 1.0 p.m., he would still have not more than five minutes to accomplish these same acts.
It does not seem too plausible that the alleged sequence of events could have taken place within the allotted time. But official reversals cast even further doubt on the validity of their interpretations. According to Wade’s first account, the taxi-driver who picked up Oswald was named Darryl Click. But when private investigation indicated that Mr. Click had never driven a taxi in Dallas, District Attorney Wade reversed his statement. The name of the taxi-driver was now given as one William Waley.
If Oswald were the assassin, what motive would he have for returning to his apartment? Was it only to pick up his jacket, which is the police account? Mrs. Kennedy complained that afternoon of the ‘sweltering heat.’ If Oswald was returning to facilitate his escape, why, then, did he leave 150 dollars in the dresser of his room? He had only thirteen dollars in his pocket when he was arrested. For a man who had supposedly planned the assassination and carried it out so successfully, he was remarkably ‘unplanned’ and chaotic in making his escape.
(d) Murder of Tippit
Oswald, it should be remembered, was first arrested for the murder of officer Tippit. This, too, was a ‘water-tight case.’ District Attorney Wade claimed that he had sent twenty-three men to the electric chair on less evidence than that which he had against Oswald. After making several conflicting statements about where Tippit was shot, Wade ultimately acknowledged he didn’t know the scene of the crime. The one witness of the Tippit murder has sworn an affidavit describing the murderer as ‘short, stocky, and with bushy hair.’ I would describe Oswald, from the pictures I have seen, as slight, balding, and perhaps short. And what of the pistol with which Tippit was murdered? No statement was made by the police as to whether the pistol found on Oswald at the time of his arrest was the pistol which fired the shots killing Tippit. A strange omission in a ‘water-tight case.’ Wade did claim, however, that the police had a marked bullet which ‘mis-fired’ when Oswald supposedly tried to kill the arresting officer. The policeman himself gave a different account of the arrest, stating that he prevented Oswald from firing the pistol at all by placing his finger behind the trigger before Oswald could pull it. Confronted by this contradiction, Wade yet again changed his version to accord with that of the policeman. Thus at one moment Wade claims to have a marked bullet in his possession; the next moment he denies he has such physical evidence. In the Tippit case, as in the Kennedy case, there is distortion, a reversal of interpretations and a mishandling of crucial physical evidence.
It might be argued in defence of the investigating agencies that in the atmosphere of excitement that followed Kennedy’s assassination contradictions and imprecisions were due to ‘honest’ confusion. Granted that confusion existed, why then should the officials be continuously certain of one thing, Oswald’s guilt? Why is Oswald’s presumed guilt the constant in this sea of incomplete and conflicting evidence? Now, supposedly, the confusions have been clarified into a single consistent and convincing account. But if the case is consistent and convincing, why should witnesses refuse to comment to the press after they have been questioned by the F.B.I.? Why has Marina Oswald been held in the custody of the Secret Service since the murder of her husband, more than two months ago? She has had no direct and personal contact with any of her friends, with her mother-in-law, or with any reporter. Every communication to her, and every statement by her, first passes through the hands of a public-relations officer and a lawyer appointed ‘in her interest’ by the Secret Service. Why, if the case is so convincing, has physical evidence, such as the windshield of the President’s car, been unavailable for public examination? An alternative hypothesis to that of ‘honest’ confusion is the hypothesis that the initial confusion and the present secrecy are attributable to incongruities between the presumption of Oswald’s guilt and the inadequacy and intransigence of the evidence which would validate such a presumption.
And if the evidence is ‘intransigent,’ as a critical examination of the official account seems to demonstrate, why have the Dallas police, the F.B.I. and the Secret Service been so unrelenting in their efforts to prove Oswald’s guilt? In the pressure for an arrest, did the Dallas police consider Oswald an appropriate scapegoat because he was first on their[i] list of ‘subversives’?
The Federal agencies may have different motives. One hypothesis, which certainly cannot be conclusively demonstrated, suggests that Oswald worked for Federal investigatory agencies such as the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. This hypothesis seeks to account for otherwise unexplained incidents in Oswald’s life. While Oswald was employed he worked at minimum wages; but more frequently he was unemployed. Yet somehow he had the financial resources to travel to Mexico, to print political literature privately, and to pay a stenographer to transcribe a book critical of the Soviet Union which he was writing. The F.B.I. early acknowledged that Oswald regularly received money through the mail; but it has not yet stated the source. If the money came from a ‘left-wing’ organisation, what reason could the F.B.I. have for keeping this secret? Oswald had in his possession the private phone number and the automobile license number of the F.B.I. official in charge of ‘subversives’ in Dallas. This information is not obtainable from the telephone directory. Moreover, the agent had contacted Oswald several times before the assassination.
Passports are not quickly granted; and Cuban sympathisers have found them particularly difficult to obtain. But despite Oswald’s ‘defection’ to the Soviet Union, despite his activity in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, he was able to obtain a passport ‘within a single day.’ With this passport he travelled to Mexico City to try to obtain visas to travel to Cuba and the Soviet Union. Both countries refused him entrance.
Most striking is the fact that Oswald was not under surveillance during the President’s visit. Supposedly, the greatest security precautions ever taken to protect a President were instituted in Dallas. (The night before Kennedy’s arrival, posters were pasted which showed front and side views of the President under the caption: ‘Wanted – Dead or Alive.’) People who advocated integration of Texas schools were under surveillance, but this ‘Marxist,’ ‘defector,’ ‘pro-Castroite’ was unwatched. One is led to ask: is the F.B.I. trying to close the case in order to hide the fact that Oswald was in their employ, or in the employ of another investigatory agency?
The Warren Commission – which includes Allen Dulles, former head of the C.I.A.; John McCloy; Senator Russell of Georgia; Congressman Boggs of Louisiana; Senator Cooper of Kentucky; Congressman Ford of Michigan – might be a source of some consolation if it were probing for an answer to these worrisome questions. Ironically, the Commission provokes more questions about its own operation than it allays about the operation of other agencies. Its hearings are conducted in secret; and it appears to be restricting itself to a re-examination of the F.B.I. and Secret Service evidence. The accused’s constitutional rights to due process of the law, to public trial, to a defence attorney, to the cross-examination of prosecution evidence and witnesses – all these safeguards institutionalised in court procedure have been ignored in the hearing of this Commission. Why, one must ask, does the Warren Commission judge [i]in camera, and by such arbitrary procedures?
*For those readers who wish to pursue these arguments further, I refer them to the following articles: ‘Defense Brief for Oswald,’ by Mark Lane (National Guardian, December 19, 1963); ‘Seeds of Doubt,’ by Jack Minnis and Staughton Lynd (New Republic, December 21, 1963); ‘Oswald and the F.B.I.,’ by Harold Feldman (Nation, January 27, 1964).
The pre-Murdoch version of the NOTW, with a response to the above:
Quote:News of the World, 15 March 1964, p.4
How many in the gunmen in the Kennedy killing?
By Jack Miller
The verdict on that nut Ruby doesn’t matter. The hell of it remains, that by killing Lee Harvey he removed the one man who could answer beyond shadow of doubt: Who – and how many – shot President Kennedy?
Mystery was always there under the surface, and still is.
G-men and police can deny all they like but people are still going to ask if Oswald was a scapegoat, if he had a strange if slight link with the FBI – a top operator’s “secret” phone number was found on him – and it was too easy for Ruby to get at him.
While Ruby’s trial went on in all the ballyhoo, august investigators sitting as the Warren Commission probed in private the murder of Kennedy.
Some details somehow leaked out, but neither the trial nor the Commission has ended the doubts and whispers. Just the reverse.
For overlooking the principle that a man is innocent until proved otherwise Jack Ruby, his gaolers and Judges have assumed that Oswald, that lonely, twisted young political delinquent, was a one-man assassination plot.
So easy
It was so easy, so glib, so open-and-shut.
But Oswald’s mother hit one big nail squarely on the head this past week when she tried, and failed, to get into the courtroom circus at Dallas.
“Lee Harvey Oswald,” she said, “should be up there now having a trial of his own.” How right ma’am, how right.
You remember that day a thousand years ago – or was it only one Friday last November? – when Jack and Jackie Kennedy drove through Dallas with Governor Connally of Texas in an open car.
There was a book warehouse on their route, and 175 yards of that was a roadway over another road – an overpass.
Almost midway between the two the shooting started and in five and a half seconds it was all over with two bullets in Jack Kennedy and one Governor Connally.
Doctors with experience of such things decided they had come from behind – from the warehouse where Oswald undoubtedly was.
Experts said that 100 yards more and the Kennedy car would have reached the safety of the overpass. But did safety lie there?
Because four voices which were small then but are now becoming strident said at the time, and they say it now that the shooting came from the overpass itself. Not from behind, but from the front.
In that case, it couldn’t have been Oswald.
The police were sure that only three shots were fired.
But up pipes a 20-year-old Dallas man, James Richard Worrall: “I don’t care what the police say, I heard four shots.”
And California sociologist, Rhodes scholar Mordecai Brienberg who has been probing events before and after the assassination, as many of us have, says there “appear to be five bullets”; one that went through Kennedy’s head into the car, one that lodged in his throat, one that hit Connally and one that was found on the grass.
Plus one that was found on the stretchers taking the wounded men to hospital; the report is not too clear about this.
But I think the bullet on the stretcher was the one that hit Kennedy in the throat…and came out. So I go along with witness Worrall: four shots.
The expert doctors have complicated things by doing a switch-around, first deciding that the wound in Kennedy’s throat was caused by the bullet going in then saying no, it was caused by the bullet coming out.
Now we know Kennedy was looking ahead when the shooting started so if the doctors are right this second time the bullet must have come from the warehouse.
Shattered
In that case it couldn’t have been anybody but Oswald!
And yet the windscreen of the car was shattered by a bullet from the front. Curiouser and curiouser.
Mr. Brienberg makes much ado about Oswald’s alleged time table which, if he was the killer, would have given him very few minutes to get back to his digs where, though it was a sweltering day, he collected his jacket and where, though he had only 13 dollars on him, he left 150 behind.
“For a man who supposedly planned the assassination and carried it out so successfully,” he says, “Oswald was remarkably unplanned in making his escape.”
I agree. But let’s not forget that Oswald was most certainly in that warehouse; a policeman saw him there and would have arrested him but for the owner saying: “He works here.”
A newspaperman swears he saw a rifle poking out of an upstairs window and a rifle was found there afterwards.
I know the police boobed here, first saying it was a German one of a certain calibre and then saying it was Italian, of different calibre.
Crazy ?
The fact is that a picture exists of Oswald holding such an Italian rifle and wearing a pistol on his hip, too. Remember a pursuing policeman was shot dead with a revolver before Oswald was arrested in a cinema.
So what have we got?- People swearing that shots came from the front of the car, police sure that they came from behind.
Crazy?- or was Oswald just a “fall guy,” are the F.B.I. trying to close the dossier as quickly as they can, or were there in fact two gunmen in Dallas that day?
The accuracy of Oswald’s rapid-fire marksmanship was impressive but if two men were dividing the shots it would be easy!
The Warren Commission is still collecting evidence and it may be for months, which is a pity because while they sit in secret and the world waits, the rumours will grow. We don’t need them; we have mystery enough already.
And we are left with the thought that Jack Ruby’s greatest crime was not in killing Lee Harvey Oswald, but in making a mess of history.