09-11-2013, 03:38 PM
The first of a multi-part story on the Kennedy Assassination in the Huffington Post is here. A few excerpts:
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On December 9, 1963, only four days after the Commission's first meeting, FBI Director Hoover sent its members a summary report concluding beyond any doubt that Lee Oswald acted alone when he killed the President and Jack Ruby acted alone when he killed Oswald. Nine months later, that same outcome, embroidered with thousands of pages full of smoke and mirrors, would become the Warren Commission's final word on the assassination. The whole exercise, all twenty-six windy volumes and the 800-page Warren Report, was just an overblown amplification of Hoover's original conclusion. To make matters worse, Hoover leaked his report to the press, (a common practice for Hoover), which angered Warren and other Commissioners, and set the template for the public's understanding of the crime even before the "investigation" got off the ground.
Moreover, the Commissioners were totally dependent on whatever evidence the FBI and CIA wanted them to see or not to see. According to one of the staff lawyers assigned to look into Jack Ruby's background, Burt Griffin, staff director Rankin, "was fearful that our own investigation of the assassination could be interpreted by the FBI or CIA as an attempt to investigate them." (Kantor The Ruby Cover-Up 1978, 174)
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Another peculiar action of the Warren Commission (there are many) was its intentionally substandard reproduction of the famous photo taken by Dallas Associated Press photographer James Altgens. The Warren Report's reprinted version of the photo is a "reduced, cropped, indistinct printing of an FBI copy of a magazine copy of the originally crystal-clear picture." (Douglass 2009, 285) Captured in the background of the unspoiled version of the photograph is a man resembling Lee Oswald standing in the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository calmly watching the presidential motorcade.
"By deliberately using a smaller fourth-generation print," James Douglass writes in JFK and the Unspeakable, "the government made the image of the man too tiny and blurred to be recognizable. The Report's deliberately flawed reproduction of the Altgens photo changed the man in the doorway from a challenging image into abstract speculation, which could then be disposed of without making any visual comparisons to pictures of Oswald taken later that day in strikingly similar clothing." (Douglass 2009, 285)
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Given its epic flaws and omissions, it's little wonder that the Warren Report, which the Commission presented to President Johnson with great fanfare on September 28, 1964, has been over the years widely condemned as a monumental government fraud. Privately, even Robert F. Kennedy dismissed the Warren Report as nothing more than an exercise designed to reassure the public. (Talbot 2007, 278-280) And in late 1975, the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, Richard Schweiker, who was a key participant in the Church Committee's inquiry into CIA wrongdoing, called for a congressional committee to reopen the assassination case. Schweiker told the press: "I think the Warren Commission is like a house of cards. It's going to collapse." (Talbot 2007, 232)
(Next segment: Part Two, Jack Ruby/Lee Oswald)
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Amazing to read some actual reporting in the mainstream press, which Huffington Post has certainly by now joined. We need to see much more.
Jim
============================ QUOTE ON ===========================
On December 9, 1963, only four days after the Commission's first meeting, FBI Director Hoover sent its members a summary report concluding beyond any doubt that Lee Oswald acted alone when he killed the President and Jack Ruby acted alone when he killed Oswald. Nine months later, that same outcome, embroidered with thousands of pages full of smoke and mirrors, would become the Warren Commission's final word on the assassination. The whole exercise, all twenty-six windy volumes and the 800-page Warren Report, was just an overblown amplification of Hoover's original conclusion. To make matters worse, Hoover leaked his report to the press, (a common practice for Hoover), which angered Warren and other Commissioners, and set the template for the public's understanding of the crime even before the "investigation" got off the ground.
Moreover, the Commissioners were totally dependent on whatever evidence the FBI and CIA wanted them to see or not to see. According to one of the staff lawyers assigned to look into Jack Ruby's background, Burt Griffin, staff director Rankin, "was fearful that our own investigation of the assassination could be interpreted by the FBI or CIA as an attempt to investigate them." (Kantor The Ruby Cover-Up 1978, 174)
...............
Another peculiar action of the Warren Commission (there are many) was its intentionally substandard reproduction of the famous photo taken by Dallas Associated Press photographer James Altgens. The Warren Report's reprinted version of the photo is a "reduced, cropped, indistinct printing of an FBI copy of a magazine copy of the originally crystal-clear picture." (Douglass 2009, 285) Captured in the background of the unspoiled version of the photograph is a man resembling Lee Oswald standing in the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository calmly watching the presidential motorcade.
"By deliberately using a smaller fourth-generation print," James Douglass writes in JFK and the Unspeakable, "the government made the image of the man too tiny and blurred to be recognizable. The Report's deliberately flawed reproduction of the Altgens photo changed the man in the doorway from a challenging image into abstract speculation, which could then be disposed of without making any visual comparisons to pictures of Oswald taken later that day in strikingly similar clothing." (Douglass 2009, 285)
..............................
Given its epic flaws and omissions, it's little wonder that the Warren Report, which the Commission presented to President Johnson with great fanfare on September 28, 1964, has been over the years widely condemned as a monumental government fraud. Privately, even Robert F. Kennedy dismissed the Warren Report as nothing more than an exercise designed to reassure the public. (Talbot 2007, 278-280) And in late 1975, the Republican Senator from Pennsylvania, Richard Schweiker, who was a key participant in the Church Committee's inquiry into CIA wrongdoing, called for a congressional committee to reopen the assassination case. Schweiker told the press: "I think the Warren Commission is like a house of cards. It's going to collapse." (Talbot 2007, 232)
(Next segment: Part Two, Jack Ruby/Lee Oswald)
=================== QUOTE OFF =================
Amazing to read some actual reporting in the mainstream press, which Huffington Post has certainly by now joined. We need to see much more.
Jim
