President Kennedy and Chief Justice Warren, whose names would be forever intertwined, are here shown with their wives at a White House reception honoring the judiciary on November 20, 1963, the evening before the president departed for Texas. (National Archives)
The President and the First Lady are welcomed in Dallas on November 22 after flying from Fort Worth, where they had spent the night after a busy schedule in San Antonio and Houston the previous day. (JFK Presidential Library)
The close relationship between the president and the attorney general made my service in the Justice Department under Robert Kennedy a very special professional experience. (Library of Congress)
As shown here, President Kennedy, Mrs. Kennedy, Texas Governor Connally, and Mrs. Connally were very pleased with the warm reception they got from the Dallas crowd as their limousine moved slowly down Main Street. The motorcade turned into Dealey Plaza just moments later. (Library of Congress)
The official homicide report prepared by the Dallas Police Department records the murder of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963 and the testimony of witnesses at the scene. (Library of Congress)
If he had lived, Oswald, shown here escorted by police officials, would have been tried under Texas law for the murder of President Kennedy because there was no US law at the time making assassination of the president a federal crime. (Library of Congress)
As shown here in London, the news of President Kennedy’s assassination spread immediately around the world and raised concerns about the motives of the alleged assassin and whether some conspiracy was involved. (Library of Congress)
Requesting that Mrs. Kennedy be at his side on the presidential plane to reassure the nation of the passage of power, Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as the 36th President of the United States by Federal District Court Judge Sarah T. Hughes. (Library of Congress)
Journalists and bystanders swarmed Dallas police headquarters during Oswald’s incarceration, and public statements at press conference like the one shown prompted worries in Washington whether Oswald could get a fair trial in Dallas. (Library of Congress)
On the morning of Sunday, November 24, Jack Ruby went to Western Union to send a money order to an employee, walked one block to police headquarters, entered the basement down an auto ramp, and fatally shot Oswald before millions watching on television. (Library of Congress)
Jack Ruby, shown here being taken into custody for shooting Oswald, maintained from the moment of his arrest that he had acted alone. He took—and passed—a polygraph test conducted by Warren Commission staff members in which he testified to that effect.
(Bill Winfrey Collection / The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza)
On November 29, 1963, President Johnson appointed a commission chaired by Chief Justice Warren to investigate the assassination. From left to right, this picture shows Representative Gerald R. Ford, Representative Hale Boggs, Senator Richard B. Russell, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Senator John Sherman Cooper, John J. McCloy, Allen W. Dulles, and General Counsel J. Lee Rankin.
(Courtesy of the author’s personal collection)
The first witness who appeared before the Warren Commission was Lee Harvey Oswald’s wife, Marina, shown here with counsel approaching the commission’s offices on February 3, 1964.
(©Bettmann/CORBIS)
Marina Oswald testified that she took this picture of her husband holding a rifle, a pistol, and issues of two newspapers later identified as the Worker and the Militant at his request before he attempted to kill General Walker in April 1963.
Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt Collection / The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza)
This rifle was purchased by Oswald and found on the sixth floor of the depository. Ballistics experts determined that it fired the bullets that hit Kennedy and Connally. (National Archives)
Rigorous testing and forensic analysis concluded that this nearly intact bullet caused the Kennedy’s back and neck wounds and subsequently caused Connally’s wounds. (National Archives)
This is one of the three cartridges found on the sixth floor of the depository, which led the commission to conclude that three shots had probably been fired by Oswald and that one of those shots had missed the limousine and its occupants. (National Archives)
Oswald purchased this revolver using an alias. Experts testified before the commission that Oswald used this weapon to kill Patrolman Tippit when the officer got out of his police car to question the suspect. (National Archives)
These boxes were piled high in the corner of the sixth floor of the depository so that Oswald would not be seen when he was at the window aiming his rifle at the presidential limousine.
(Library of Congress)
The commission tried to learn as much as possible about Oswald’s life in the Soviet Union where he and Marina Oswald lived in Minsk, as pictured here.
(National Archives)
Jack Ruby failed to get his trial removed from Dallas and was convicted on March 14, 1964, for murder with malice and received a death sentence. Ruby died of cancer before his conviction was reversed by the appeals court in 1967.
(Library of Congress)
Assistant counsel David Belin (at left) and I visited the depository in Dallas in March 1964 where we arranged to take the sworn statements of several employees.
(©Bettmann/CORBIS)
J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI at the time, testified before the commission on May 14, 1964, that the FBI had no obligation to identify Oswald to the Secret Service before the assassination, even though in December 1963 he punished seventeen officials and agents in his organization for their failure to do so.
(Library of Congress)
Using the actual assassination rifle with an attached camera, the FBI agent pictured here was able to determine that Kennedy and Connally were aligned in the vehicle so that a bullet exiting Kennedy’s throat would necessarily hit Connally.
(Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt Collection/The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza)
The Secret Service provided this limousine for use in the reenactment on May 24, 1964. Two stand-ins for President Kennedy and Governor Connally were used in the analysis.
(Malcolm E. Barker Collection / The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza)
Assistant Counsel Norman Redlich played a critical role in assisting Rankin to supervise the commission staff and was instrumental in persuading Rankin that a reenactment of the assassination was necessary to ensure the accuracy of the commission’s conclusions. (Barton Silverman/The New York Times)
This is how I spent much of my time at the commission, at my desk dealing with assorted documents and talking on the phone. (Courtesy of the author’s personal collection)
Assistant counsel Arlen Specter—later a long-serving senator from Pennsylvania—accompanied Warren to Dallas on June 7, 1964, to take Jack Ruby’s testimony and used the occasion to discuss the evidence supporting the single bullet hypothesis while the two men stood at the assassin’s window at the depository. (Arlen Specter Center for Public Policy at Philadelphia University)
All members of the commission visited Dallas to inspect sites related to the assassination; here Senator Cooper, Senator Russell, and Representative Boggs (left to right) are seen leaving the depository.
(©Bettmann/CORBIS)
This picture shows Allen Dulles (far left) and John McCloy (fourth from the left) looking up at the depository along with David Belin (at McCloy’s left side) and local law enforcement officials.
(Bill Winfrey Collection / The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza)
When he resigned as attorney general in order to run for the US Senate, on September 4, 1964, Robert Kennedy sent me this nice letter.
(Courtesy of the author’s personal collection)
On September 24, 1964, Chief Justice Warren, the members of the commission, and Lee Rankin presented the report to President Johnson and it was released to the public three days later.
(Cecil Stoughton / LBJ Library)