06-05-2009, 07:49 PM
You take the high road...
Quote: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.