by Mark Lane
As we have seen, Bugliosi tends to characterize those he disagrees with by the use of unpleasant names. Five members of the United States Supreme Court are “traitors”; an important, sincere and honest witness, Clemons, is “a kook”; Bolden is apparently “a liar”; and I am, of course, “a fraud.” Clemons and Bolden, two crucially important witnesses, both African Americans, are not even mentioned in his book except in the index, which refers the reader to a note in a CD.
I have chosen a different method to present the facts. First we have Bugliosi’s view, then my statement of the facts, and now we will go to the record. The actual statements of the witness made under oath, observations by counsel for the Warren Commission and the Warren Commission Report follow so that you can reach your own conclusions.
While Bugliosi relies upon Markham, a lawyer for the Warren Commission, who had observed her unusual conduct and testimony, described her unkindly as a “screwball.” That description was uncharitable and no doubt resulted from the frustration of counsel trying to get one straight and consistent answer from the witness. Yet, when a witness to any event, certainly including a murder, testifies, that witness places his, or in this case, her, credibility before the triers of the facts. Mrs. Markham may have been a somewhat confused person before November 22, or perhaps the trauma of seeing a police officer murdered was so unsettling that her subsequent testimony was of little or no value. Whatever the cause of the almost unprecedented confusion, the testimony must be critically examined before stating as Bugliosi does that she was a reliable witness.
Bugliosi offers his own fictionalized description of what had transpired. He writes that Tippit had:
his right hand, like a western sheriff, on his gun butt … And then, “BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! Bullets fly across the hood of the car.
Bugliosi, in continuing his own account, offered as fact additional and undocumented speculation:
Tippit had a bad habit … of never looking anyone straight in the eye … This may have accounted for how Oswald got the jump on him.
Bugliosi then solemnly recounts what he told the “jury” at the trial of Lee Harvey Oswald about these events. He is, of course, referring to the actors in the fictionalized television presentation.
These are Bugliosi’s conclusions in his book about the testimony of Ms. Markham:
* I misidentified myself to Ms. Markham as “Captain Fritz of the Dallas Police Department” when I interviewed her.
* I refused to give a tape recording of my discussion with Markham to the Warren Commission but was ultimately forced to do so.
* I invented the description of the man Markham had seen as being “short, stocky and with bushy hair” and sought to put those words into her mouth.
* Markham was a reliable and truthful witness against Oswald.
* She picked Oswald out of a police lineup as the person she saw shooting Tippit.
* She testified before the Warren Commission positively identifying Oswald as the person she had seen.
Every statement made by Bugliosi referred to above is untrue.
Here I will present a brief summary of the responses to Bugliosi’s accusations as I invite you to read the documents and, if you wish, to check them against the documents published by the Warren Commission.71
While it is true that Markham finally did say that Oswald was the man she had seen, to call it a “positive identification” one must, as both the commission and Bugliosi were eager to do, ignore the circumstances of that identification. Markham had repeatedly under oath told the commission that she had not identified anyone at the police lineup. Oswald was in that lineup. For an extended time the only thing Markham was “positive” about was that she did not recognize anyone in the lineup.
The statement that Markham picked Oswald out of the lineup is also false as we have seen.
The statement that I tried to put words into Markham’s mouth, an original Bugliosi fabrication, is belied by a review of the facts. Since Markham had told reporters, long before I had spoken with her, that the man she had seen shoot Tippit was “short” (Oswald was not short) that he was “stocky” (Oswald was thin) and that he had “bushy hair” (Oswald had thinning hair and a receding hairline), I called her to discuss her original description. She in part conceded the accuracy of her original assessment of the shooter and in part rejected it. The original words were hers, not mine, as Bugliosi knew but declined to reveal.
I did not refuse to give a tape recording of the interview with Markham to the Warren Commission until I was forced to do so. Bugliosi knows that his assertion is not true.
Subsequently, after the commission received the tape recording, it submitted it to the FBI laboratory for examination. While I had made a copy of the recording, I had sent the original to the commission. The FBI confirmed that the recording was accurate, that it had been made from the start of the conversation to the end and had not been edited, altered, or deleted in any fashion.
Bugliosi wrote that I had introduced myself to Markham by stating that I was “Captain Fritz of the Dallas Police Department.”72 That statement is false, and Bugliosi knew it was false when he made it. The tape recording relied upon by the Warren Commission, a transcript that Bugliosi read, proved that I introduced myself as follows:
“My name is Mr. Lane. I’m an attorney investigating the Oswald case.”
The entire recording demonstrated that I never stated that I was from the Dallas or any other police department. Bugliosi knew those facts when he published his entirely fabricated accusation, an accusation that even the Warren Commission had rejected.
Was Markham a reliable and truthful witness as Bugliosi asserts? She had committed perjury before the Warren Commission, and she was aware that she had done so. She asked counsel for the commission if she would get into trouble for having lied under oath.
You now have read Bugliosi’s position and mine. Now let us read the testimony of Helen Louise Markham when she appeared before the Warren Commission. She was asked by commission counsel about the police lineup that she viewed. There were four men in the lineup including Lee Harvey Oswald.
Q: Now when you went into the room you looked these people over, these four men?
Markham: yes, sir.
Q: Did you recognize anyone in the lineup?
Markham: No, sir.
Q: You did not? Did you see anybody—I have asked you that question before—did you recognize anybody from their face?
Markham: From their face, no.
Q: Did you identify anybody in these four people?
Markham: I didn’t know nobody.
Q: I know you didn’t know anybody, but did anybody in that lineup look like anybody you had seen before?
Markham: No. I had never seen none of them, none of these men.
Q: No one of the four?
Markham: No one of them.
Q: No one of all four?
Markham: No, sir.
At that point, counsel decided that it was important to lead the witness.
Q: Was there a number two man in there?
Mrs. Markham replied, “Number two is the one I picked.”
Counsel began another question: “I thought you just told me that you hadn’t,” but Mrs. Markham interrupted to answer inexplicably, “I thought you wanted me to describe their clothing.”
Counsel then inquired:
Q: You recognized him from his appearance?
Markham: I asked—I looked at him. When I saw this man I wasn’t sure, but I had cold chills just run all over me.
From stating on several occasions that she recognized nobody in the lineup, she ended up saying that she “wasn’t sure.” Apparently good enough for Bugliosi and the Warren Commission to state that she had made a positive identification of Oswald, which seems to have been based upon the chill factor.
Approximately three weeks before Markham testified, she and I had a telephone conversation. When the commission asked me to testify I told them about it. At that poi
nt the Warren Commission invited Markham to Washington, D.C., where she testified that she had never spoken with me. Based upon her statement, Warren said that he doubted that my statement about the telephone call was accurate. I then informed the commission that I had tape-recorded the conversation, hoping that they would then direct me to make it available to them. At the time, it was not a crime to record the conversation, but it would have been a crime to make and divulge the tape. I thought that if the Chief Justice ordered me to divulge it, I would probably be safe from prosecution. He did not. Nevertheless, I subsequently sent the recording to the Warren Commission. I had made a copy for myself and sent the original to the commission. The recording was examined by experts at the Federal Bureau of Investigation who asserted, as we have seen, that it was a complete and unedited document. On July 23, 1964, the commission recalled Markham and played the tape for her. Counsel for the commission said, “We have a tape recording of a conversation that purports to be a conversation between you and Mark Lane on the telephone.” Markham stated, “I never talked to that man.” The exchange before the commission follows:
Q: Is that not your voice on the tape?
Markham: I can’t tell about my voice, but that man—I never talked to no woman or no man like that … I’ll tell the truth (raising right hand) and those words that he’s saying—that’s nothing like the telephone call I got—nothing.
As Markham listened to the tape, she heard herself agree that the man she saw was short, a little on the heavy side, with somewhat bushy hair. At that point, she said, “This man—I have never talked with. This lady was never on the telephone. This man that called me like I told you, he told me he was from the city hall, the police department, the police department of the city hall.”
Q: Well, now, do you remember having this conversation with somebody?
Markham: Yes, I do. But he told me he was from the police department of city hall and he had to get some information.
Counsel was aware of the fact, as was Markham, that the unedited tape began as follows:
Lane: Mrs. Markham?
Markham: Yes.
Lane: My name is Mr. Lane. I’m an attorney investigating the Oswald case.
Markham: Yes.
Nowhere on the tape was there any mention that I said I was from the Dallas Police Department or in any way associated with the police. While Markham seemed even more confused, it was quite clear to counsel for the Warren Commission that I had never said that I was from the Police Department.
Q: Now, did he tell you he was from the police department?
Markham: Yes, sir.
Q: Now, on this tape recording right here, this man is asking you what the police did.
Markham: I know it.
Q: And he said they—the police took you and took your affidavit.
Markham: That man—I have never talked to that man. I talked to a man that was supposed to have been from the police department of the city hall.
Q: Do you recognize this as the voice of the man you talked to?
Markham: No, it is not.
Q: This is not the same voice?
Markham: No.
Q: How do you explain the fact that the woman’s voice on this tape recording is your voice?
Markham: I never heard that.
Q: You never heard the man’s voice before?
Markham: And I never heard this lady’s voice before—this the first time.
Q: Do you have any doubt in your mind at all that the lady’ s voice on the tape now is your voice?
Markham: It is my voice, but this man told me he was from the city police.
The tape recording reveals that Markham gave a description of the events that was different from the statements made by every other witness who arrived on the scene. She said that she had talked with Officer Tippit as he was stretched out in the street and that he was talking to her, but he could not “get it plain enough” for her to hear or understand what he was saying. She said she was present when he was placed in an ambulance and he was still alive at that point. The Warren Commission concluded that several shots were fired, “hitting Tippit four times and killing him instantly.” Although she had stated that she had spent some time alone with him when no one else was present, every other witness stated that immediately after the shooting a large group of spectators appeared.
One is constrained to feel sorry for Mrs. Markham and whatever problems she was experiencing. What is unacceptable is to rely upon her “positive identification” of Oswald and her description of anything relating to the Tippit killing, including my conversation with her, especially if one is going to, as Bugliosi does, also rely upon her as proof that Oswald killed President Kennedy. She knew she had committed perjury, and she asked counsel for the commission if she was going to be prosecuted. She was assured that she would not be prosecuted.
While Bugliosi declined to talk with me, although he devoted an entire chapter to making statements about my work that were untrue, he did talk with Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, a distinguished forensic pathologist and attorney who had devoted a great deal of time to examining the medical evidence. Dr. Wecht had concluded, and had consistently stated over the years, that he was convinced by the evidence that two bullets struck JFK in the head, fired in synchronized fashion. One bullet had been fired from the grassy knoll area, in front and to the right of President Kennedy, and one bullet had been fired from the rear. Bugliosi’s chapter entitled “A Conversation with Dr. Cyril Wecht” tends to demonstrate that had Bugliosi interviewed me before writing about me it probably would have made little or no impact upon his determination to distort the record.
On July 11, 2007, I asked Cyril if he had read Bugliosi’s chapter about him and if it was true. He replied, “What is true is that I talked to him.” As to the content of the chapter, Dr. Wecht said, “He took bits and pieces out of context and presented my views and opinions in a much distorted and unrecognizable fashion.”
I told Dr. Wecht that Bugliosi concluded that chapter by stating that Dr. Wecht’s words demonstrated “that there is no credible evidence whatsoever that any shots were fired from the president’s right side or right front (grassy knoll)” and that “the conspiracy theorists’ leading medical forensic expert cannot even hypothesize a shooting from the right side or right front that is intellectually feasible.”
Dr. Wecht stated that Bugliosi’s words were inexplicable since he, Dr. Wecht, had stated to Bugliosi and continues to believe that all of the relevant evidence, including the medical evidence, the x-rays of the president that he had examined, and the statements of the physicians, had long ago convinced him that a shot had been fired from the grassy knoll area. He added that his view had been reinforced by all of the most recent tests and forensic examinations that demonstrate that a shot had been fired from the grassy knoll.
I have pointed out numerous distortions of the record present in just the few pages that I read of Bugliosi’s book and have offered proof that his assertions are inaccurate. I have read the reviews by informed citizens published on the Mary Ferrell Foundation website and even on the website of Amazon.com, an attempted purveyor of the book, and I have been impressed by the scholarship of those critics who have exposed the numerous other flaws in Bugliosi’s work including his lack of understanding of the forensic evidence and his reckless disregard for the truth regarding the testimony of witnesses.
The members of the Warren Commission offered an untruthful version of the facts during a time of national crisis. They acted politically, and whatever their motives had been (we cannot preclude a distorted view of patriotism and a genuine search for a falsely based national tranquility), they deliberately produced a document that sought to mislead our nation. For such conduct, traducing the law and violating their sacred obligation to report the truth, there can be neither an acceptable explanation nor excuse.
Bugliosi, four decades later, published a volume far more extreme in language and in conclusions. Likely, rarely before have so many
forests been sacrificed in so reckless a project.
Notes
38.Ben Sonnenberg, Lost Property: Memoirs and Confessions of a Bad Boy (Simon and Schuster, 1991).
39.I received copies of their reports through our Freedom of Information requests and motions to the United States District Court
40.“When forces that are hostile to socialism try to turn the development of some socialist country towards capitalism, it becomes not only a problem of the country concerned, but a common problem and concern of all socialist countries.”—Leonid Brezhnev
41.Agent Orange was so devastating that decades later a fourteen-member panel selected by the prestigious Institute of Medicine in the United States found that seventeen serious medical conditions still afflicted American former servicemen who had been exposed to the defoliant, possibly including Parkinson’s disease and ischemic heart disease (July 25, 2009, The New York Times). Since those GIs were not the chosen targets one must assume that the Vietnamese who were and who survived the attacks must have suffered greatly.
42.During May 2008, one hundred and eleven nations signed a treaty banning cluster bombs. The United States, at that time led by President George W. Bush, refused to participate.
43.Mark Lane, Plausible Denial (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1991).
44.For example, The Sword and the Shield, by Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, Basic Books, 1999.
45.Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Sword and the Shield, (Basic Books, 1999.)