by H. N. Lloyd
No more was the Commissions lack of power more obvious than in their dealings with the CIA, and how members of the Commission itself tried to sabotage their own investigations. For years the Central Intelligence Agency had been carrying out a top secret operation known as Operation Mongoose. This operation was a wholly unsanctioned ongoing plot to murder Fidel Castro, the pro-communism leader of Cuba. The CIA wanting to distance themselves as much as possible from the grubby plot, sub-contracted out the mission to kill Fidel to a most unlikely source, the Mafia. The Mafia were disaffected because Fidel had kicked them out of Cuba, where the Mafia had once held a lucrative gambling operation. So over the next few years the Mafia attempted to kill Fidel using loony plots like poisonous wet suits, exploding cigars, flasks of airborne cancer; and some plain old fashioned snipers hidden on rooftops. The fact that these operations were ongoing; gave Fidel Castro and Cuba a perfect motive for wanting Kennedy dead, simple self-defence and revenge, you want me dead, so I’m going to kill you first. Yet despite this the Warren Commission was kept in the dark by the CIA about its ongoing missions to kill Fidel, and its dealings with an organised crime ring the Kennedy brothers were desperately trying to shut down. When members of the Commission did find out about Operation Mongoose, years after they had submitted their final report, they were said to be furious that the CIA had so misled them. What made the situation all the more unbelievable was that a member of the Commission itself, Allen Welsh Dulles, knew about Operation Mongoose, in fact he had been the Director of the CIA when Operation Mongoose was conceived. Yet Dulles kept his mouth shut, he deliberately manipulated the Commission; and the answers they would get from CIA agents. He had CIA agents run their testimony past him, he would make them rehearse their answers to ensure they would not slip up and give too much away. He even liaised with J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI agents; so that the evidence the employees of both agencies gave would be consistent. It was a clear case of orchestrated subterfuge and contempt for the processes of justice that he was involved within. The CIA were not just evasive to the Commission, they tried to be deliberately misleading. They produced the photographs of a man entering the Russian and Cuban embassies in Mexico City, and claimed that they were photos of Oswald. The photographs still fooled no one on the Commission, when it was pointed out that the man quite clearly wasn’t Lee Harvey Oswald, the CIA petulantly claimed that Oswald had visited the two embassies, but that the CIA agents photographic equipment had been broken at the time. They now claimed for the first time that the wiretapped telephone calls allegedly between Oswald and the Cuban and Russian officials had been accidently erased. What was the point of all this subterfuge? It seemed to make no sense. If the CIA did have something to hide they should have just kept their mouths shut; instead of drawing attention to themselves in such a silly and almost amateurish manner. The CIA’s ham-fisted attempts to incriminate Oswald during the FBI investigation and the Warren Commission only served to reflect guilt onto the organisation itself, which in turn feeds conspiracy theories to this day.
The Commission has also been criticised for the manner in which it handled witnesses. Witnesses stated that after testifying before the Commission; they felt they had been bullied by the FBI into giving statements that were factually inaccurate. Other’s who witnessed events that did not fit in with the Commission’s view of the assassination, were simply not invited to give evidence at all, despite many of them asking on numerous occasions. People such as S. M. ‘Skinny’ Holland, who was watching the President’s motorcade from a bridge at the far end of Elm Street, he had a full view of the whole of Dealey Plaza, he was certain that he saw a puff of white smoke, possibly from a fired rifle, coming from the picket fence at the back of the grassy knoll, just as the President was shot. The Warren Commission pooh-poohed Holland’s evidence; and stated that what he actually saw was steam coming from a steam-pipe that was in the railroad close to Dealey Plaza. Now this clearly couldn’t be the case, from where Holland had been stood the steam-pipe was at least fifteen degrees to the left of where Holland had been looking. Lee Bowers was a railroad worker sat in a signal tower which overlooked Dealey Plaza, and therefore he had a unique view of the area behind the picket fence on the grassy knoll. He saw two men acting suspiciously shortly before the Presidents’ murder, he too saw smoke coming from the area where the two men had been clandestinely stood. Eyewitness Ed Hoffman confirmed this version of events. He had been stood on the Stemmsons Freeway, two hundred yards to the west of Dealey Plaza, he saw two men stood in the railway yard behind the grassy knoll, he saw a puff of white smoke, then he watched as one of the men passed a rifle to the other, this second man dismantled the rifle, put it in a holdall and made good his escape. Hoffman was a deaf mute, and he tried on several occasions to give a witness statement to the FBI. Each time he did so, he felt threatened and intimidated by the FBI agents, and eventually gave up trying to give the Commission his version of events. Joe Marshall Smith and Seymour Weitzman were both officers with the Dallas Police Department; they both believed that shots had come from the grassy knoll. In the seconds after the assassination they both; independently of each other, ran up the grassy knoll to where Smith stated he could smell gun-smoke. Both Smith and Weitzman were then confronted by an alleged Secret Service agent who told them to leave the area. Gordon Arnold, a trained serving soldier, who was on leave in Dallas, believed the bullets came from the knoll, and dropped to ground as his training taught him; when fired on from behind. After picking himself up off the ground, he ran up the grassy knoll where he witnessed Smith and Weitzman’s altercation with the alleged Secret Service agent. Arnold subsequently gave a corroborating statement supporting Smith and Weitzman’s version of events. The Secret Service refuted the claim; they stated that they had no one on patrol in that area, therefore the man was not a bona fide Secret Service agent. The Warren Commission ignored the evidence of these two experienced lawmen. Buell Wesley Frazier, Billy Lovelady and Otis Williams, were all stood directly underneath the window where Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly fired his shots, these three men all reported that the gunshots came from the grassy knoll. Charles Brehm gave a statement to the FBI; informing them that the shots came from the front and to the side of the President, i.e. the grassy knoll. Yet he was shocked beyond belief when in the Warren Commission’s final report his statement had been altered to say that he thought the bullets had come from behind the President, from the corner of Elm and Houston. Arnold Rowland saw a man in sixth floor window of the Texas Schoolbook Depository holding a gun, yet he also told the FBI that shots definitely came from the grassy knoll as well. Kenneth O’Donnell and David Powers felt pressured by the FBI into saying in their Commission testimony; that they had heard shots coming from the Texas Schoolbook Depository, when in actual fact they wanted to report them coming from the grassy knoll. The two men felt unable to go against the FBI, and so told the Commission what the FBI told them to say.
The events that occurred in and around the Texas School Book Depository where examined by the Commission and became crucial to Oswald being portrayed as the lone gunman in their report, yet their version of the events in the Texas School Book Depository that day were wholly inaccurate. The problems began as soon as Oswald arrived at work that morning, the Commission concluded that Oswald had taken the rifle into the School Book Depository with him on the morning of the assassination, and had hidden it somewhere on the sixth floor until it was needed. Jack Edwin Dougherty had walked into the depository with Oswald that morning, and he made a police statement that contradicted the Commissions’ conclusion, he was adamant that Oswald was carrying no packages with him on the morning of the assassination, and he certainly would have noticed and commented if Oswald had been coming into work with something as large and bulky as a dismantled snipers rifle. In fact the only person who did see Oswald carrying a package into the Book Depository that morning was Wesley Buell Frazier; whose testimony was disputed by his own mother.
Further problems arose
when the Warren Commission concluded that at 11.55 a.m. Oswald’s co-workers on the fifth floor of the depository left Oswald alone; whilst they all went to get their lunch. It was whilst Oswald was left alone on the fifth floor that he allegedly made his way up to the sixth and made his snipers nest out of the boxes of books in the warehouse, retrieved his rifle from its hiding place, constructed the weapon and then lay in wait to kill the President at 12.30 p.m. The Warren Commission concluded, ‘None of the depository employees is known to have seen Oswald from 11.55 a.m. until after the shooting’. This was simply a lie; the Commission were in possession of several witness statements from Texas School Book Depository staff which contradicted this conclusion. The depository’s janitor, Eddie Piper, categorically stated that he had seen Oswald at midday on the ground floor of the depository, the pair had entered into a brief conversation where Oswald had told Piper that he was about to go and have his lunch, and would be in the canteen on the second floor if he was needed. Karoline Arnold, a secretary at the Texas School Book Depository, also made a statement the day after the assassination; which confirmed Piper’s statement. She told the FBI that between 12.15 p.m. and 12.20 p.m. she had been in the canteen on the second floor of the depository, and she clearly remembered Oswald sitting in the canteen eating his lunch. Karoline Arnold’s statement was problematic to the Commission, because the Commission had accepted statements from witnesses outside the depository who stated that they had seen a man in the sixth floor window constructing the snipers nest, this was happening at the exact same time that Karoline Arnold was eating her lunch with Oswald. Not only this, the motorcade was running six minutes late, yet Oswald had no way of knowing of the delay President Kennedy had caused to the motorcade with his antics. If Oswald had been intending to kill the President, surely he should not have been sat in the canteen with Karoline Arnold, languidly eating his lunch, but up on the sixth floor waiting to take his shot. Karoline Arnold’s witness statement could be taken as solid evidence that more than one person was involved in the assassination; and therefore that the Commission’s findings were wrong. So instead of asking difficult questions, the Commission decided to ignore Karoline Arnold’s witness statement and refused to call her to give evidence. Supporting Karoline Arnold’s statement; was that of Bonnie Ray Williams, he returned to the sixth floor with his lunch at around about midday, he found the sixth floor to be deserted, so he sat and ate his chicken legs and cola by himself. He categorically stated that Oswald was not hanging around the sixth floor of the warehouse, if he was then he would have seen him. Williams left the sixth floor again at around 12.20 p.m. whereupon he went to the fourth floor of the depository; and watched the motorcade with his co-workers Victoria Adams, Sandy Styles, Elise T. Dorman, James Jarman, Harold Norman and Dorothy May Garner. Williams later found to his horror; that in the Warren Report the Commission had erroneously stated that he was only on the sixth floor until 12.03 p.m.
Further problems arose in the Commissions timings after the assassination, Marion L. Baker, the Dallas Motor Cycle Policeman; had perceived the assassins shots as coming from the Texas School Book Depository; and was inside the building within ten seconds of the last shot being fired. After finding the elevator dead, he had raced up the stairs to the upper floors; at about ninety seconds after the final shot had been fired, Officer Baker raced into the second floor canteen of the Texas School Book Depository; and found Lee Harvey Oswald walking across the room to another exit. Baker was adamant that Oswald was calm and did not appear to be sweating or out of breath, in fact he was exhibiting none of the clear indications of someone who had just assassinated a high ranking government official; and then fled frantically from the scene down five flights of stairs. This fact was crucial as for the Commission’s version of events to work; Oswald had to allegedly race across the sixth floor of the depository to the stairwell, race down five flights of stairs to the canteen, enter the canteen unflustered by his minute and a half mad dash. For years the conspiracy buffs argued that this was just plain wrong, it would have been physically impossible for Oswald to have made the trip in under ninety seconds, even Gary Mack; the curator of the 6th Floor Museum, a man who arguably knows the layout of the Texas School Book Depository better than anyone else, was at a loss to explain how Oswald could have done it in so little a time. Then in 2008; TV programme Unsolved Histories; finally proved that it would have been possible for Oswald to make the journey from the sixth floor snipers window; to the second floor canteen in well under the crucial ninety seconds. Their Oswald stand in, who was of the same weight and physical build as Oswald, did the journey in a shockingly quick forty-eight seconds, without even being out of breath or physically discombobulated. So the Commission got these possible timings right at least, but cold water was to be poured on other elements of the Commission’s theory when it was discovered that the Commission had repressed further witness statements from Texas School Book Depository staff. After watching the assassination from the fourth floor; Victoria Adams, Sandy Styles, Elise T. Dorman, James Jarman, Harold Norman and Dorothy May Garner; spilled out from the storeroom onto the stairwell that Oswald would have to have used to get from his snipers nest on the sixth floor to the canteen on the second. Not one of these four witnesses saw Oswald descending these stairs, and they unquestioningly would have done, as Oswald would have been forced to jostle past them in the cramped conditions of the stairwell. Mrs Garner reported that she had remained gathering her shocked thoughts in the stairwell of the fourth floor for several minutes after the assassination, to the point where Officer Baker passed Mrs Garner on the stairwell as he made his way up to the sixth floor. If these statements are to be believed, and there is no reason why they shouldn’t be, then Oswald could not have made the journey from the sixth to the second floor as the Commission stated.
When the Commission did use eyewitness testimony from in and around the Depository; it seemed to become riddled with mistakes and abridgements; and unbelievable alterations. Howard Brennan, a steamfitter who had been watching the motorcade, informed the police directly after the assassination that he had seen the sniper in the south-eastern most window of the sixth floor of the School Book Depository. Brennan had been stood some 115 feet from the window; and described the man in some detail to the officer on the scene. Brennan stated confidently that he definitely would recognise the assassin again if he saw him, yet later that night at a police line-up; Brennan failed to pick out Lee Harvey Oswald, he was also the only witness who refused to pick out someone who simply looked like the man he had seen. Brennan was subsequently spoken to by the ‘feds’, according to his friend and colleague Sandy Speaker, Brennan disappeared for three weeks after the assassination and when he came back to work he was ‘a nervous wreck’ and ‘scared to death’. During his three week disappearance; Brennan had reconsidered his identification of Oswald; and suddenly positively identified Oswald’s body as that of the man he had seen in the depository window. The Commission excluded large parts of Brennan’s original police statement from their final report, including his original description of the killer as being taller, fatter, older and having different coloured hair to Oswald, and that after taking the killing shot the assassin appeared to be in no hurry to leave the scene. The Commission of course couldn’t include these details from the original statement because they needed Oswald to be in a great rush after the last shot, in order for him to make it across the building; and down five flights of stairs to be in the canteen; where Officer Marion found Oswald a mere minute and a half later.
The Commission either lied or misrepresented several other facts from the depository, they stated that Oswald was the only member of staff missing in the wake of the assassination, this was a lie. At least fifteen members of staff had wandered off out of the building in the aftermath of the shootings, some in a state of shock, all of them deeply upset. Less than fifteen minutes after the assassination; at 12.45 p.m. the dispatch unit put out a description of a suspect that exactly matched Os
wald, the police and subsequently the Commission could not explain where this description had come from, and they were forced to fall back on the old lie that it was because Oswald was the only member of staff missing from the depository, leading to his description being released as a cautionary measure. Ochus V. Campbell, the President of the Texas School Book Depository, had been watching the motorcade from the pavement outside of the building, after the shooting Campbell made his way back into the book depository, and he subsequently told a Dallas Times Herald reporter that he had met Oswald on the ground floor; he was standing in a store cupboard filing away some sales slips, in other words Oswald was calmly getting on with his job, not frantically waiting for a chance to flee the scene. Campbell had a brief word with Oswald about the assassination, before leaving him to get on with his work. By the time of his official police statement two days later; Campbell had changed his story for some reason, not only did he now claim not to have seen Oswald working in the storeroom, but he claimed not to know Oswald at all. Why? Was it because Oswald calmly carrying on with his job in the wake of the assassination didn’t fit in with what was quickly shaping up to be the official version of events, Oswald being a panicked lone assassin desperate to flee the scene of his crime? So desperate he would later kill a police officer in his emotionally panicked state? All mention of Campbell and his contradictory evidence was dropped from the Warren Commission’s final report. Then there was the evidence of Amos L. Euins; who stated that he saw a man with a rifle in the sixth floor window of the Texas Schoolbook Depository. Euins told the police in no uncertain terms that he had seen a black man in the window holding the rifle, yet the police told the world that Euins reported seeing a white man who matched Oswald’s description that day. When a shocked Euins, who was only fifteen-years-old at the time, was asked to sign an affidavit about what he had seen, he was not informed that in the legal document he was signing; the police had altered his statement to state he had seen a white man who looked the spit of Oswald. Yet it was this altered statement that the Warren Commission chose to publish. Cecil McWatters, the bus driver whom the Commission said spoke with Oswald, and who Oswald informed the President had been shot in the temple, well, his testimony had been twisted and manipulated until what truth was in it was tantamount to useless to any serious investigator. In his original testimony; McWatters had positively identified the individual that he had this conversation with as being a ‘teenager’ who regularly rode on his bus. This teenager was later successfully identified as Roy Milton Jones, of East Brownlee Avenue. McWatters did not see Oswald, did not describe Oswald, did not identify Oswald, but the Commission blithely went ahead and lied, and told the world he had.