Sylvia Meagher's interview on KPFK, January 1967

[Paul Rigby]

From Pacifica Radio Archives #BB4658

Sylvia Meagher examines the activities of Lee Harvey Oswald in the Soviet Union and the United States prior to President Kennedy's assassination. She goes on to explain how this information refutes the findings of the Warren Commission. Interviewer William O'Connell.

RECORDED: 26 Jan. 1967. BROADCAST: KPFK, 18 Apr. 1967

[video=youtube_share;Hh7Sp9M8tEE]http://youtu.be/Hh7Sp9M8tEE[/video]

Extract from transcript:

William O'Connell This is William O'Connell, and we're talking again about the assassination of President Kennedy and the Warren Commission Report. Our guest today is Mrs. Sylvia Meagher or New York City. Mrs. Meagher, as some of you may already know, is the author of a number of articles that have appeared recently in The Minority of One. Her principal contribution in the field of scholarly research is a subject index to The Warren Report, which is indeed an index not only of the report itself, but the 26 volumes of testimony and exhibits printed by the Government Printing Office.

Mrs. Meagher resides in New York City. She happens to be out here on a tour at the present time. We have prevailed upon her to come to Los Angeles. If my listeners will forgive me, a personal note: I want to say that this is, perhaps of all the interviews I've conducted, the one that I've been most looking forward to. I want to say, and I'm glad to be able to say, finally - welcome Mrs. Meagher to KPFK.

Sylvia Meagher Thank you. It's very good to be here.

William O'Connell Let me begin straight away by asking you what it was that brought you to a serious and scholarly study of the assassination? Also, I think part of that question that follows is how did the subject iIndex itself come about?

Sylvia Meagher Well, in common with many other people in this country, I found that the initial story out of Dallas on Friday the 22nd of November 1963 was so highly implausible and unconvincing. I began from that day to follow with very great interest all the information that was published during the succeeding year published in the press and in the magazines, seeking some kind of rational explanation of these events and of the alleged motivation and commission of this crime.

At no point during that time did I find that there was coherence, plausibility, and directness. In fact, I think it is extraordinary how many revisions continually took place unabashedly, revisions of the evidence that would flow through the papers, especially the revisions of the autopsy and medical findings, an area of evidence which should not have been subject to so many contradictions and changes.

In spite of this strong skepticism I felt from the beginning, when The Warren Report was published, I think I was quite prepared - if that was a thoroughly convincing and straightforward, well-supported document, I think I would have accepted it. I would've come to accept that all of these improbabilities, coincidences, changes in the presentation of the case by the various authorities, whether the Dallas police and district attorney, the FBI, or the commission itself during the term of its work, I would have accepted all of that as unfortunate evidences of certain confusion and non-coordination.

However, The Warren Report -- speaking out only of the 888-page document that was published in September 1964 -- seemed to me marked by internal contradictions to some degree, but more particularly marked by an evasiveness of language that troubled me deeply. There were many passages and many points on which the language of the report was so obfuscatory and lacking in a directness and candor, it seemed to me, that I wondered and was deeply concerned about the reasons for the writers of the report to have gone through these rather exquisite efforts to say certain things in a way that seemed overcautious, overcontrived, and began to await the publication of the 26 volumes of the hearings and exhibits in the hope that these volumes would throw light upon many of the areas, which left me still greatly in doubt and with many misgivings.

William O'Connell May I ask how long was the time lapse between the appearance of The Warren Report itself and the actual issuance of the 26 volumes of testimony and exhibits?

Sylvia Meagher It was two months. I remember my own personal excitement when the crate arrived. It was, I believe, the day before Thanksgiving in 1964. I plunged into these volumes with truly enormous interest and curiosity in the hope of, again, finding those answers which I had failed to find in The Warren Report itself.

Now I must say that reading these volumes, far from allaying these misgivings that's in common with many other people, I have felt greatly intensified. I found not only contradictions which indicated carelessness, predisposition of the commission to certain findings, unfair tactics in the examination of witnesses, I found, as many other people have pointed out, that there were favorable witnesses. I'm using the wrong terminology here. There were the witnesses that ... friendly witnesses, friendly witnesses and hostile witnesses, which in itself is entirely inappropriate to any fact-finding investigation. You should not have friendly or hostile witnesses.

Aside from these evidences of carelessness and bias, I found absolutely unambiguous instances of misrepresentation of fact, misrepresentation of the facts in the 26 volumes as they were reflected in The Warren Report itself. These, in a number of instances, were on crucial points of the evidence.

In the study of the 26 volumes, which, as you know, Bill, I'm sure that you've encountered the same difficulty, it is very difficult to locate material. I found that what was happening was something that I had seen somewhere in the volumes, in which I wanted to find again, caused me to spend four and five hours at times looking for this. There was no way to locate it. In many instances, there was absolutely no way to locate it either by the footnotes in the report or any other method.

And so I began to draw up something of an index for my own personal use to save the time that I was losing in scouring the hearings and exhibits. This was just done on just pieces of paper with notations in pencil. I intended it only for my private use in checking out the evidence on any particular point as far as it could be checked out.

As I was engaged on this work, and I think one or two people with whom I was in contact at that time knew that I was working on this index for myself, they impressed upon me the fact that all of the researches would have equal need for such an index that would all be able to save time. It was suggested to me by Vince Salandria of Philadelphia that it would be of such great help to all the researchers to have such an index. He urged me to drop all my other studies in the report and hearings and exhibits as of that time and concentrate on the subject index and to have it published and distributed, an idea which I must admit had not occurred to me.

Full transcript here: http://ourhiddenhistory.org/entry/sylvia...ren-report