by Jim Marrs
Considering the information presented in this section, it appears the sins of the Warren Commission went far beyond a few omissions and distortions. Little wonder that the vast majority of Americans today place little credence in the Commission’s findings of a lone assassin and no conspiracy. Once again the charge of cover-up can be laid at the feet of the federal government.
During the April 30 Commission meeting J. Lee Rankin openly admitted that the June 1 date for closing the investigation was unreasonable.
A brief discussion was held regarding Jack Ruby, who had been found guilty and been sentenced to death. However, his attorneys were appealing the conviction on the grounds of his mental incompetence. When one member asked if Ruby would go to prison, Commissioner McCloy responded, “He goes to a mental institution. It is perfectly clear we cannot examine him at this stage.” Rankin again referred to the problems arising from the contradictory medical evidence and suggested that some Commission members and a doctor should study the autopsy photographs “so that they could report to the commission that there is nothing inconsistent with the other findings.” Warren added, “But without putting those pictures in our record. We don’t want those in our record. . . . It would make it a morbid thing for all time to come.”
The inaccessibility of Kennedy’s autopsy X-rays and photographs have been a cornerstone of the criticism of the Warren Commission.
Before adjourning, commissioners agreed on the necessity of including a biography of Lee Harvey Oswald in their final report. It is significant to read Rankin’s explanation at this time—five months before their final report—for including Oswald’s background: “Some of it will be necessary to tell the story and to show why it is reasonable to assume that he did what the commission concludes that he did do.”
On April 10, 1964, in a memo to Commission assistant counsel Albert Jenner regarding a chronology of Oswald’s background by staffer John Hart Ely, Rankin wrote, “Our depositions and examinations of records and other data disclose that there are details in Mr. Ely’s memoranda which will require material alteration and, in some instances, omission.”
Despite the questions, contradictions, and gaps in the evidence at hand and with alterations and omissions, Oswald’s guilt was already decided.
The Single-Bullet Theory
Nowhere was the manipulation of the facts more evident than the government’s attempt to reconcile the ballistic and medical evidence by offering the idea that both President Kennedy and Governor Connally were struck by the same bullet.
On its face this concept is unpalatable. To believe the single-bullet theory, one must believe that a single rifle slug penetrated two men, causing seven wounds, shattering a rib and a wrist bone, then emerged almost totally unscathed to become the pristine Commission Exhibit 399.
Yet, to disbelieve the single-bullet theory means rejecting the Warren Commission’s entire version of the assassination. Despite the testimony of many witnesses, the Warren Commission concluded that only three shots were fired during the assassination, based solely on three spent shells found on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.
Having concluded that only three shots were fired—the absolute maximum allowable for only one assassin within the time frame of the Zapruder film—commissioners set about determining the timing and effects of each shot.
In late 1963 and early 1964 there was no problem. Since the FBI early on had established an assassination time sequence by studying the Zapruder film and Zapruder’s 8 mm camera, the Commission had a certain time frame to work within. This basis is now known to be questionable.
The original FBI and Secret Service reports made it clear that Kennedy was struck in the back by the first shot, Governor Connally hit by the second, and the president’s head wound caused by the third. While this stretched the allowable time for such shooting to the limit—and despite the contradiction of Connally, who testified he was hit after the first shot—the Commission accepted this believable scenario for a time.
But then came the problem of James Tague, the man who was struck by a piece of cement while standing near the Triple Underpass. Initially both the FBI and the Warren Commission tried to ignore Tague. But after assistant US attorney Martha Jo Stroud in Dallas sent commissioners both an account of the Tague wounding and a Dallas news photograph of the bullet mark on the curb, the Commission was forced to action.
In early 1964—while the FBI was denying any curb shot in Dallas—Commission attorney Arlen Specter learned that JFK autopsy doctor James Humes had hypothesized that a single bullet could have caused the wounds to both Kennedy and Connally. Specter eagerly latched onto this concept, which neatly explained how the two men were wounded by the same shot.
However, it is now clear that the Warren Commission knew the single-bullet theory did not fit the facts. Page 193 of transcripts from the Commission’s January 27, 1964, meeting revealed General Counsel Rankin’s thoughts on the matter:
It seems quite apparent now, since we have the picture of where the bullet entered in the back, that the bullet entered below the shoulder blade to the right of the backbone, which is below the place where the picture shows the bullet came out in the neck band of the shirt in front, and the bullet, according to the autopsy, didn’t strike any bone at all, that particular bullet, and go through so that how it could turn and . . .
Rankin stops in midsentence, having reached the point where he too now realizes that for the single-bullet theory to work requires a rifle bullet without striking bone to course upward and turn in midair, then take a different trajectory, a physical impossibility.
Yet, despite this early recognition that the single-bullet theory was impossible, the Warren Commission Report offered this somewhat vague conclusion:
Although it is not necessary to any essential findings of the commission to determine just which shot hit Governor Connally, there is very persuasive evidence from the experts to indicate that the same bullet which pierced the President’s throat also caused Governor Connally’s wounds. However, Governor Connally’s testimony and certain other factors have given rise to some difference of opinion as to this probability but there is no question in the mind of any member of the Commission that all the shots which caused the President’s and Governor Connally’s wounds were fired from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. The shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald.
What was essential was that Kennedy was never shot through the neck, as no exit wound from the throat was ever found.
Forensics expert Sherry Fiester said the single-bullet theory hinged on trajectory, the path of which “widely varied” in studies by the FBI and the House committee. She wrote in her 2012 book, Enemy of the Truth: Myth, Forensics, and the Kennedy Assassination, that aligning the trajectory of a bullet from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository to Kennedy’s two wounds and Connally’s back wound is impossible and therefore “the Single-Bullet Theory remains a myth.”
Douglas P. Horne, a staff member of the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s, noted, “The absurd single bullet theory of Arlen Specter [was]—a political invention rather than a scientific explanation—which has never convinced the American people, in spite of the best efforts of the HSCA’s Michael Baden and Robert Blakey, and later Gerald Posner and Vince Bugliosi.”
The presumption of Oswald’s guilt was the first topic of a Commission meeting on June 4, 1964. The Commission had met on May 19, 1964, but records of that meeting were kept from the public on the grounds that it dealt only with “personal and medical files.”
Also in May, Rankin had told Commission attorneys to “wrap up” their investigations and submit their area chapters by June 1 so that the final report could be issued by June 30. By June 1, however, only two attorneys had completed a draft and the deadline had to be moved back.
On June 17, it was announced that Commission hearings were completed. On June 30, i
t was announced that the final report would not be issued until after the Republican National Convention, set to begin July 13.
The Commission worked in secrecy, as evidenced by the minutes of an executive session conducted on June 23, 1964. These were withheld from the public by the National Archives with the following explanation: “Matters that are . . . specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive Order [are] to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive Order.”
The immense pressure to hurry up the investigation and close down the Commission may have accounted for the fact that five of the senior attorneys—Francis Adams, William Coleman, Joseph Ball, Leon Hubert, and Albert Jenner—returned to their private practices and made virtually no contribution to the final report.
On July 9, 1964, commissioners Allen Dulles and John McCloy met with three psychiatrists who had been asked to develop a psychological profile on Oswald. During the seven-hour meeting, the psychiatrists went over complex psychological conjectures regarding Oswald’s motives, but their interpretations of his thinking were severely limited due to the fact that first, they were operating under the assumption of Oswald’s guilt, and second, the material studied was based on Commission and FBI reports, which undoubtedly were one-sided. Even though the psychiatrists spent hours detailing their theories, they also cautioned against putting too much confidence in their psychological speculation since they had not had the opportunity to interview Oswald personally.
Yet in its final report the Warren Commission did use the psychiatrists’ opinions to underscore the case against Oswald as a lonely and troubled man. And the public did not laugh them off. After all, the Warren Commission represented some of the most prestigious men in the nation.
Dulles suspected the truth of the matter when, during a discussion of whether to present the psychological material in the final report, he opened this dialogue with Jenner:
DULLES: But nobody reads. Don’t believe people read in this country. There will be a few professors who will read the record . . .
JENNER: And a few newspaper reporters who will read parts of it.
DULLES: The public will read very little.
In its final report, the Warren Commission made no specific reference to the psychiatric panel. Yet portions of the report presented ideas that originated with the doctors. In the report, after fully detailing Oswald’s difficulty with human relationships, his discontent with the world, his search for personal truth and a place in history, his censure of certain aspects of American life, and his professed commitment to Marxism, commissioners wrote, “Out of these and many other factors which may have molded the character of Lee Harvey Oswald there emerged a man capable of assassinating President Kennedy.”
With the Commission investigation winding down and most of the senior attorneys gone, the job of writing the Warren Commission Report fell to assistant counsel Norman Redlich and staff member Alfred Goldberg. Redlich was a law professor at New York University School of Law and Dr. Goldberg (a PhD) was a historian for the US Air Force Historical Division.
When Goldberg told Warren it was impossible to complete the report by mid-July, the deadline again was moved back, this time to August 1. Through August, Goldberg and Redlich continued to rewrite the report’s chapters—some as many as twenty times—and the deadline was moved back into September. It was in this time period that Commission member Gerald Ford ordered the wording changed from “Kennedy was shot in the back” to “a shot through the throat.”
The Commission, well aware of the ever-nearing November presidential election, reportedly received intense pressure from Johnson aide McGeorge Bundy to hurry up and publish its findings.
On September 4, galley proofs of the final report draft were circulated among commissioners and staffers for last-minute comments. Two days later, a dissatisfied Liebeler submitted a twenty-six-page memorandum highly critical of the “Identity of the Assassin” chapter. It had to be revised again.
On September 7, commissioners Richard Russell, John Cooper, and Hale Boggs, still unsatisfied with the inevitable conclusion of Oswald’s guilt, traveled to Dallas to reexamine Marina Oswald. Under questioning, she changed significant aspects of her story, prompting even more rewriting of the report.
The final Warren Commission session was on September 18, 1964, less than ten days before its final report would be issued to President Lyndon Johnson. According to the National Archives, no transcripts of this important final meeting exist. However, some descriptions of the meeting show that great concern was being voiced to Chief Counsel Rankin that material within the report conflicted with its summary and conclusions chapter.
On September 24, 1964, the Warren Commission’s report was submitted to President Johnson by Chief Justice Warren with the introduction emphasizing its sponsorship:
Dear Mr. President,
Your Commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, having completed its assignment in accordance with Executive Order No. 11130 of November 29, 1963, herewith submits its final report.
The report was signed by all seven commissioners, though Senator Russell refused to sign until the wording regarding the single-bullet theory was softened to indicate the idea was only a probability.
Russell’s dissension and skepticism of the report’s conclusions may have been the topic of the September 18 meeting for which the transcripts are missing. Russell told researcher Harold Weisberg that several of the commissioners voiced doubts about the Commission’s conclusions at that meeting and he was “shaken” by the discovery that the record of these doubts was missing.
The Warren Commission Report was made public on September 28, 1964, with the news media voicing virtually unanimous praise and support for the document.
Upon receiving the report from Warren, President Johnson’s only comment was, “It’s heavy.”
Today it is intriguing to note that Johnson refused to answer questions from his own commission. According to Newsweek of August 15, 1966, “A list of questions [concerning the assassination] for him was in fact prepared and submitted to Johnson’s confidant, Abe Fortas. Fortas returned a veto of the idea.” Instead, both Johnson and his wife submitted unsworn statements.
Johnson’s action prompted Commission attorney David Belin to comment in later years:
If we could interrogate Mrs. Kennedy, whose husband has died before her eyes, there is no reason why President Johnson should not be examined in the same manner as every other witness [since] there was some speculation from abroad, however outlandish, that he might have had some indirect connection with the Dallas tragedy.
Two months after the Warren Commission Report was released with widespread publicity praising its thoroughness and conclusions, twenty-six volumes of Commission testimony and exhibits were quietly made public. It was only after years of diligent study that individual researchers finally were able to document the gross inconsistencies between these twenty-six volumes of material and the Commission’s report. And by then they were largely ignored except by a few low-circulation periodicals. No one was in a position to receive new or clarified information regarding the assassination since—having completed its work on September 28—the Warren Commission had disbanded.
Researcher Sylvia Meagher, in Accessories After the Fact, produced a meticulous dissection of the Commission and its conclusions. She stated, “One of the most reprehensible actions of the Warren Commission is that it disbanded the moment it handed over its Report, leaving no individual or corporate entity to answer legitimate questions arising from demonstrable misstatements of fact in the Report.”
After carefully researching both the activities and the conclusions of the Warren Commission, Meagher—who has never been successfully challenged in her assertions of the Commission’s incompetence—wrote:
Study has shown the Report to contain (1) statements of fact which are inaccurate
and untrue, in the light of the official Exhibits and objective verification; (2) statements for which the citations fail to provide authentication; (3) misrepresentation of testimony: (4) omission of references to testimony inimical to findings in the Report; (5) suppression of findings favorable to Oswald; (6) incomplete investigation of suspicious circumstances which remain unexplained; (7) misleading statements resulting from inadequate attention to the contents of Exhibits; (8) failure to obtain testimony from crucial witnesses; and (9) assertions which are diametrically opposite to the logical inferences to be drawn from the relevant testimony or evidence.
After reviewing Warren Commission meeting transcripts in the mid-1970s, author Tad Szulc wrote:
If the investigation was as inadequate and incompetent as is suggested by the Commission’s own internal documents, once Top Secret and now declassified, it IS [emphasis his] legitimate to question the specific conclusions of the report. The transcripts of the commission’s executive sessions, staff memoranda . . . and other internal documents reveal the commissioners to be consumed by doubts and fears; troubled by their own ignorance; suspicious of the investigatory work performed for them by the FBI and the CIA; lacking clear direction; worried about a competing inquiry in Texas; and finally suffering from a stunning lack of confidence in their own ability to produce a report that would be credible to the American people, the world, and, for that matter, credible to themselves. . . . So many of [their] doubts apparently were not resolved that the impression emerges from the private discussions among the commissioners that, in the end, the Report was the only possible compromise they could produce—in terms of their knowledge and their conscience.