CHAPTER 7
ON MONDAY, JUNE 1, THE NEW YORK TIMES CARRIED A FRONT PAGE STORY on our investigation, the conclusions reached, and a projected publication date of our report by the end of June. Relying on a “Commission spokesman,” the article reported that the commission would conclude that there was no credible evidence of any conspiracy. The reporter—Anthony Lewis—described the commission as “aware and concerned about the foreign skepticism” and considers “that its job is to dispel uncertainty and suspicions about the assassination as far as possible.”1
Lewis reported that the commission would conclude that three shots were fired—the first wounded Kennedy but probably not fatally, the second fatal shot followed, and a third bullet, “fired either before or after these two, went wild.” According to the unidentified “spokesman,” the commission’s report “would completely explode the theories published by such persons as Mr. Buchanan” and anticipated that “not even the authors of the theories would stand by them.” In short, the “spokesman” said, “We’ll knock them out of those positions.” I could not believe that anyone on the commission or its staff could have broadcast such an improbable assessment of our likely impact on the conspiracy theorists.
The commission could hardly ignore this article. When they discussed it on June 4, they wondered if there was a “Commission spokesman” and, if so, who it was. After unanimously denying that each was the “spokesman,” they authorized the release of a short public statement: “The Commission is nearing the conclusion of the taking of testimony and is giving thought to the content and form of its report. The Commission has reached no final conclusions and has not discussed final conclusions as a Commission.”2
The Chicago Tribune seized upon the Times report as further evidence of an effort by the Johnson administration “to dictate the conclusions of the Warren commission on the Kennedy assassination.”3 The Tribune reported that the commission members were disturbed by the numerous alleged reports of their conclusions that Oswald acted alone and there was no foreign involvement in the assassination. The article stated that “The White House and state department, for diplomatic reasons, reportedly are adamant” that the commission reach these conclusions and that newspapers “frequently chosen by the Johnson administration for the hoisting of trial balloons began carrying such stories … before the Warren commission could even set up shop.” It observed that “a rash” of such stories appeared this week “in newspapers from coast to coast” and that the commission “met in special session” and issued its release about not having reached any conclusions. Newspaper speculation aside, June did prove to be the month in which the commission started making the key decisions that would be presented in its report.
Jacqueline Kennedy Testifies
The commission members had not yet decided how to secure the testimony of Mrs. John F. Kennedy about the events on November 22. Everyone recognized the sensitivity of the matter, not wanting to intrude unnecessarily into the details of the assassination that would be deeply emotional to the still-grieving widow. Rankin asked me to raise this issue with her brother-in-law and my boss, Robert Kennedy. The commission also wished to know whether he would testify or file a statement asserting that the Justice Department had no evidence showing a domestic or foreign conspiracy. As the commission’s liaison with the Justice Department, discussing these sensitive questions with the attorney general was my responsibility.
Before I met with the attorney general, I consulted with Ed Guthman on May 28 and with Nick Katzenbach on June 3. Guthman was the department’s public information officer and a close friend of Robert Kennedy. Guthman agreed that Mrs. Kennedy should be questioned and said that he would take it up with the attorney general. We also considered the question of Robert Kennedy’s appearing before the commission or, alternatively, submitting a statement informing the commission that the department had no evidence of any domestic or foreign conspiracy. Guthman thought that such a statement might reduce the need for Kennedy to make a public statement after the commission issued its report. He promised to discuss these matters with the attorney general and get back to me the next week.4
After the meeting with Guthman, I prepared a draft statement for Robert Kennedy’s consideration. I proposed that he say that he was familiar with the executive order creating the commission and had received reports from the FBI and others about the commission’s work, but did not have any detailed information about its investigation. I thought he should also say that all of the information that had come to his attention relating to the assassination had been sent to the FBI or to the commission for appropriate investigation. On the critical element of conspiracy, my draft statement suggested that Kennedy state that, although he was aware of allegations of a domestic or foreign conspiracy involved in the assassination, he knew of no credible evidence to support these allegations.5
I also prepared a memo for him about a proposed interview of Jacqueline Kennedy. I explained that the commission wanted to hear from all of those in the presidential vehicle, and she might have particular recollections about the events that could clarify some of the unresolved questions. “The area of the greatest importance to the Commission concerns the few seconds during which the shots were fired,” I wrote. “The Commission would like to have Mrs. Kennedy’s recollections regarding the reactions and statements made by the occupants of the Presidential car during this period of time. Answers to questions such as those attached to this memorandum may supply detail which will be helpful to the Commission.”6
If this memo seems insensitive and unseemly under the circumstances, the attached questions were even more so. But they had to be proposed. While everyone on the commission staff was concerned for Mrs. Kennedy, we needed whatever she knew if we were to complete a thorough investigation of her husband’s murder. There was no getting around it. If we did not get her testimony at some point before publishing our report, the commission would get lambasted and the integrity of the report would be questioned.
Specter had prepared a list of over one hundred questions for Mrs. Kennedy, probably with input from Belin, Redlich, and others. It was thorough and specific—perhaps too much so for this witness at this time. His outline of proposed questions was divided into seven sections: events of November 22 preceding the assassination; general questions about President Kennedy; the shooting; immediate post-shooting events; activities at Parkland Hospital; the return trip to Washington; and other general information.7
The list of questions attached to my letter to the attorney general was much shorter, only forty questions in total. I consulted with Rankin about reducing the number of questions for Mrs. Kennedy and he agreed that Specter’s list was simply too long and detailed.
My proposed questions addressed the circumstances before, during, and immediately after the president was shot. They began with the conversations in the presidential vehicle shortly before the shots, and then her recollections as to where she was looking at the time of the individual shots, the interval between the shots, the president’s reaction to each shot, what he said if anything, the reactions and words spoken by each of the six occupants in the vehicle including herself (the others being the two Secret Service agents, Governor and Mrs. Connally, and President Kennedy). Additional questions sought her recollection as to what was going on outside the vehicle, the vehicle speed at the time of the shots, her observation of bullet fragments in the car, comments by Secret Service Agent Clinton J. Hill, who was in the car immediately behind the presidential limousine and when the shots were fired jumped onto the back of the car to shield Mrs. Kennedy, what happened when she crawled onto the trunk of the vehicle, the condition of the president on the way to the hospital, her observations of his wounds, what was said en route to the hospital, and what happened after the vehicle arrived at the hospital.
We were only going to get one opportunity to talk to Mrs. Kennedy, so our questions had to get to the point. Still, I thought that this streamlined approach was more likely to be accepted by Robert Kennedy. Rankin was the only person at the commission whom I kept informed of my dealings with the attorney general.
I took the proposed statement for the attorney general and my memo regarding Mrs. Kennedy’s testimony to my next meeting at the Justice Department, this time with Guthman and Katzenbach. After reviewing the proposed questions for Mrs. Kennedy, Katzenbach said that they were still too detailed. When discussing the attorney general’s own participation, he suggested another alternative—an exchange of letters between Robert Kennedy and Warren. He thought that a letter from the attorney general could meet the commission’s needs and thereby justify the commission’s decision not to call him as a witness. They both agreed that the statement I had prepared was “a sterile and unsatisfactory device”—which it was.8
Accompanied by Katzenbach, I met with Robert Kennedy on June 4 for about thirty-five minutes. In my three years with the Justice Department I had been in the attorney general’s office on a few dozen occasions. Several of these were substantive meetings when Jack Miller took me along to participate in discussing particular investigations, pending lawsuits, or congressional inquiries. As I gained confidence, I felt increasingly comfortable in answering Kennedy’s questions and offering my views. This meeting with him, however, was a wholly different matter. The room seemed larger; he seemed smaller; and the intensely personal nature of our discussion was palpable.
Notwithstanding the circumstances, the attorney general “was quite cordial and easy to speak to about these problems. He asked me what we wanted to ask Mrs. Kennedy about, reviewed the questions and found some of them a little less significant than others and indicated that he would make the necessary arrangements.” He then asked my advice about how the interview should be handled and I suggested that the chief justice and Rankin should be present, along with a court reporter. He said that he was “perfectly willing for the Chief Justice and a reporter to be present as well as himself, but that he wished to reserve judgment until he met Mr. Rankin and saw how Mrs. Kennedy responded.”9
The next subject was Kennedy’s participation in the work of the commission. As Katzenbach had suggested, I had prepared two letters for the attorney general’s review. The first was a draft letter from Warren asking whether Robert Kennedy was aware of any information relating to the assassination that had not been sent to the commission, particularly information regarding an alleged conspiracy. The draft letter also asked Kennedy if he had any suggestions to make about the commission’s investigation.10
The second letter was a proposed response to Warren’s letter. This draft acknowledged Robert Kennedy’s awareness of the extensive investigation conducted by the FBI and the allegations of a possible conspiracy. The draft proposed that he say: “Based on reports I have received from the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other persons familiar with the investigation, I know of no credible evidence to support these allegations.” The letter concluded with his statement that he had no suggestions for the commission and was willing to appear as a witness if the members so requested.11
The attorney general told us that he was “willing to do anything necessary for the country and thought that he making a statement about the non-existence of a conspiracy would be desirable.” Although he did not say so, I got the clear impression that he would prefer not being a witness before the commission and hoped that the exchange of letters would be an acceptable alternative. He commented that the draft letter prepared for his signature was inaccurate in that he had never received any reports from the FBI regarding the assassination. He said that his only sources of information about the assassination were Warren, Katzenbach, and me. Based on these reports, he was “perfectly willing to make a broad and definite statement regarding his confidence in the commission and the adequacy of the investigation.” The meeting ended with the understanding that the exchange of letters was the preferred course of action and I was asked to prepare them for signature.12
Unlike President Johnson and Jacqueline Kennedy, Robert Kennedy was not in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, and was unable to provide information about the shooting. In contrast with the directors of the FBI, CIA, and Secret Service, his Justice Department (except for the FBI) was not engaged in any investigative work on the assassination, because that responsibility went to the commission. The only reasons for his appearance before the commission would be to tell the members that the Justice Department had provided all relevant information to the commission, he had no knowledge of any possible conspiracy, and he had confidence in the commission. The commission concluded that the proposed exchange of letters between Warren and Kennedy would satisfy its desire for these assurances.
I was pleased to hear Robert Kennedy express confidence in the commission’s work. We certainly hoped that he would publicly approve our final conclusions. But—as he said on so many occasions—nothing was going to bring his brother back to life. He had very little interest in the scope of the commission’s investigation (except any possible Teamsters aspect). Because the FBI reports on the investigation to the Justice Department were routinely addressed to the attorney general, I was initially surprised that Kennedy had decided that all such reports should go directly to Katzenbach and Miller. But I recognized soon after November 22 that Kennedy did not wish to be personally involved in the government’s response to the assassination, leaving that role to Katzenbach.
During the meeting, Kennedy asked me about the commission’s work. I told him that I thought the commission was doing a good job. When he asked whether we were going to be critical of the Secret Service, I replied that I thought we would be. When he asked the same question about the FBI, I told him that I expected the commission would be “critical to a much lesser extent.” I volunteered that the commission “was not meeting the difficult issue,” specifically whether the responsibility should be transferred from the Secret Service to the FBI. The attorney general commented that he did not believe that the Secret Service was “very capable” although both he and Mrs. Kennedy had “reservations” about the FBI as well. Katzenbach weighed in to express his view that the FBI was better suited to handle this responsibility. At the end of the meeting, the attorney general told me to “tell the Commission to consider this issue.”13
On June 11, the letter from Warren to Robert Kennedy was mailed. The next day, I sent a copy of the letter to Katzenbach, as well as a copy of the proposed response from the attorney general that I had prepared. I advised Katzenbach that Warren believed that the proposed response by Robert Kennedy would eliminate any need for him to testify before the commission.14
One day after our meeting, the attorney general arranged for Mrs. Kennedy to testify before the commission. The questioning took place in her Washington apartment, with only Warren, Rankin, Robert Kennedy, and a court reporter present. Rankin conducted the brief interrogation, which lasted only nine or ten minutes.15
Specter was waiting at the commission office late that afternoon to see Rankin about Specter’s proposed trip with Warren to Dallas on Sunday. When Rankin told him that he had just been at Mrs. Kennedy’s apartment taking her testimony, Specter recalled, “He braced for my response. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t have to. Rankin knew I was livid.”16
Belin and Specter were extremely critical of Rankin’s interview of Mrs. Kennedy. Rankin did not advise Specter (or anyone of the staff to my knowledge) about Warren’s decision not to call her before the full commission. Specter had assumed that he would take the lead in questioning her, using his list of more than one hundred questions. He later reviewed the transcript of the “abbreviated, nine-minute session” and concluded that the interview “omitted most of the lines of questioning I had proposed. It was almost worthless.”17
Rankin asked twenty-six questions during the interview.18 He started with Mrs. Kennedy’s recollections of the motorcade as it approached the Texas School Book Depository. She remembered Mrs. Connally’s comment about the friendly welcome that the people of Dallas were giving the president. When asked what she recalled about the shooting of her husband, she testified:
You know, there is always noise in a motorcade and there are always motorcycles besides us, a lot of them backfiring. So I was looking to the left. I guess there was a noise, but it didn’t seem like any different noise really because there is so much noise, motorcycles and things. But then suddenly Governor Connally was yelling, “Oh, no, no, no.”19
Rankin asked “Did he turn toward you?” Mrs. Kennedy replied:
No: I was looking this way, to the left, and I heard these terrible noises. You know. And my husband never made any sound. So I turned to the right. And all I remember is seeing my husband, he had this sort of quizzical look on his face, and his hand was up, it must have been his left hand. And just as I turned and looked at him, I could see a piece of his skull and I remember it was flesh colored. I remember thinking he just looked as if he had a slight headache. And I just remember seeing that. No blood or anything. And then he sort of did this [indicating], put his hand to his forehead and fell in my lap. And then I remember falling on him and saying, ‘Oh, no, no, no.’ I mean, ‘Oh, my God, they have shot my husband.’ And ‘I love you, Jack,’ I remember that I was shouting. And just being down in the car with his head in my lap. And it seemed an eternity.20
Mrs. Kennedy testified that she did not recall climbing onto the trunk of the car. Nor did she remember Special Agent Hill of the Secret Service coming to help. She did recall someone yelling, “Get to the hospital.” When Rankin asked her whether there were one or more shots, she testified:
Well, there must have been two because the one that made me turn around was Governor Connally yelling. And it used to confuse me because first I remembered there were three and I used to think that my husband didn’t make any sound when he was shot. And Governor Connally screamed. And then I read the other day that it was the same shot that hit them both. But I used to think if only I had been looking to the right I would have seen the first shot hit him, then I could have pulled him down, and then the second shot would not have hit him. But I heard Governor Connally yelling and that made me turn around, and as I turned to the right my husband was doing this [indicating with hand at neck]. He was receiving a bullet. And those are the only two I remember. And I read there was a third shot. But I don’t know. Just those two.21
She testified also about the drive to the hospital, but could not recall any conversations that took place in the presidential vehicle. When Rankin asked her whether she could think of anything more about these events, Warren interrupted and said, “No, I think not. I think that is the story and that is what we came for. We thank you very much, Mrs. Kennedy.”22
To his credit, Rankin was not deterred from asking her whether she recalled anything that the president’s bodyguard, Roy Kellerman, who was in the front seat of the president’s car, said to her after the vehicle turned the corner and proceeded down Elm Street. She said she could not recall any such conversation. In response to Rankin’s very last question, she assured him and Warren that she had told them everything she remembered about the entire event.23
Specter’s description of this testimony as being “worthless” was harsh, but it is true that any reasonably competent lawyer could have taken this testimony and proceeded, detail after detail, to question her further about her recollections, which if done thoroughly would have taken more than an hour. Whether more detailed, and persistent, questioning would have produced additional information is a matter of speculation. I am confident that Specter would have admitted that his outline included many questions on general subjects that need not have been put to Mrs. Kennedy. And I am equally sure that he would have conceded that in light of Mrs. Kennedy’s answers many of his proposed questions would not have been appropriate. However, Specter had prepared for the interrogation as thoroughly and competently as he did all of his commission assignments. Years later, he made this final important point: “Extensive questioning of Jacqueline Kennedy would probably not have produced any revelations. But we will never know. I continue to believe that far more questions should have been put to the former first lady.”24
It was clear to me that more vigorous questioning of Mrs. Kennedy wasn’t going to happen. We had to tread a thin line. Robert Kennedy had made it clear that he wanted to keep the questioning as brief as possible in order to protect his sister-in-law from the more horrific recollections that she alluded to in her brief session with Warren and Rankin. I knew also that Warren, whose courtliness and concern for women would seem archaic today, was eager to limit the questioning of Mrs. Kennedy. Given these obstacles, I was prepared to accept what we were able to obtain from her testimony and tried to persuade my colleagues that further complaints on the subject would not be productive. Upon reflection after several decades, I believe that the commission got from Mrs. Kennedy all she had to give on issues important to our investigation.
On the other hand, I believed that no such justifications could explain the commission’s decision that same week to do without direct testimony from President and Mrs. Johnson. Again, most of the commission lawyers were critical of this decision. They thought that the testimony of all the riders in the vice president’s car (as well as the presidential car) should be obtained, not only because they might have some recollections that were significant to the investigation but also so that the commission’s investigation could be seen for what we wanted it to be—namely, thorough in all respects without any special treatment for grieving widows or the current incumbent in the White House.
To this day, I think the public would have taken President Johnson’s willingness to testify as evidence of his commitment to the commission and might have helped defuse the more salacious rumors about conspiracies involving him or his Texas oil industry supporters. The commission was pursuing these allegations along with all others that came to its attention. But I also don’t believe that either the president or Mrs. Johnson would have said anything that would have caused us to conduct additional investigation or alter our report.
I met with Katzenbach on June 17 to follow up on Mrs. Kennedy’s testimony and the attorney general’s response to Warren’s letter. I told him: “I would prefer that the letter not be answered immediately.” By way of explanation, I mentioned that “I expected there would be a considerable difference of views between the Chief Justice and the staff regarding the quality of the report.” If this situation developed, I told Katzenbach, “I intended to fight for a report I considered satisfactory, and indicated that a delay in sending this letter would bolster my position.” Katzenbach said that he would hold the letter while the attorney general was in Europe from June 23 to June 30.25
I had no reason at the time to believe that Warren (or the other members of the commission) might try to limit the investigation or shape its conclusions in a way that would be unacceptable to me or other members of the staff. I may have been thinking of our difficulties with the Treasury Department on presidential protection issues. But I was obviously anticipating the worst, and being able to employ the persuasive force of the Justice Department and Robert Kennedy, if necessary, was a precautionary step that seemed appropriate at the time. As it developed, the attorney general did not answer the letter for about seven weeks.
The Autopsy Photographs and X-rays
Securing testimony from Mrs. Kennedy had been difficult, but getting our hands on the autopsy photographs and X-rays proved even more so. Although the public might accept our delicate handling of Mrs. Kennedy, we doubted they would be as sympathetic to our failure to get the hard evidence that the autopsy materials represented. The Kennedy family had deep, long-term, emotional interests at stake but, for us, it was much more difficult to take a pass on this issue. We all believed we could not back down.
Most of the staff was convinced that the commission’s failure to consider these materials carefully in its report would be used to attack our competence and integrity. Specter had taken the testimony of the three autopsy doctors three months earlier, at a time when neither he nor the doctors had access to the autopsy X-rays and photographs. He and others were satisfied that the testimony of the doctors did accurately reflect the trajectory of the bullets and the nature of the wounds suffered by both Kennedy and Connally. However, the corpsman’s sketch introduced during this testimony was inaccurate as to the location of the wounds and to that extent inconsistent with that testimony.
Specter and other lawyers pressed Rankin hard on this issue, emphasizing the need for these materials in order to make more definitive judgments regarding key issues in the investigation. Specter believed that Secret Service inspector Thomas Kelley, who had reportedly talked to the attorney general about this matter, might not have fully appreciated why these materials were necessary and that the commission should present its own reasons to Robert Kennedy. At the commission meeting of April 30, Rankin obtained Warren’s approval to try and obtain access to the X-rays and photos.26
Specter thought that the autopsy records were “indispensable” in determining with certainty the origin of the shots and identifying any major variations between the autopsy images and the artist’s drawings used by the doctors in their testimony. He was convinced that James Humes, one of the autopsy doctors, could use the photographs and X-rays to pinpoint the exact location of the entrance wound on the president’s upper back, the exact location of the entrance wound on the back of the president’s head, and the exact area of his skull that was hit by the second bullet. In addition, Specter proposed that the specifics of Kennedy’s wounds be examined closely in the photographs and X-rays to determine whether they were characteristic of entrance wounds under the criteria used by the autopsy doctors and by the Dallas doctors who examined the president after he was shot. Specter proposed that Humes, after examining these materials, indicate whether he needed to make any changes in his earlier testimony. Unknown to Specter, the question of the commission’s access to these materials was still unresolved when I met with Katzenbach on June 17.27
I understood at this time that the attorney general had agreed to let Warren and Rankin see the autopsy materials. I urged Katzenbach to get Kennedy’s approval for Specter rather than Rankin to examine them. I told him that it was very important to have the most knowledgeable lawyer on the staff assume this responsibility and that Specter was known to the attorney general as the prosecutor who had successfully won the Roy Cohn Teamster case in Philadelphia.28
Katzenbach raised the question a few days later with Kennedy, who decided that Warren could view these materials on behalf of the commission, but that no one else could be present and the X-rays and photographs would remain in the possession of the custodian who brought them. Kennedy was understandably wary of any opportunity to copy them.
Warren promptly arranged to have the materials brought to his chambers at the Supreme Court. He looked at them reluctantly and only briefly. He reported back to Rankin, and presumably the other commission members, that the photographs were so gruesome that he did not believe that they should be included among the commission’s records. Due to Warren’s extreme distaste for these materials and his previous public commitment to publishing everything relied on by the commission, Rankin concluded that there was no possibility of Specter being permitted to view these materials to confirm the accuracy of Humes’s earlier testimony.
With the exception of Rankin, the commission’s lawyers considered this decision by Warren to be a serious mistake. I agreed. Without the autopsy photos, we had to deal only with a medical corpsman’s sketch made several months later based on a doctor’s memory of his examination of the patient. The sketch opened the door to all kinds of speculation about the wounds, and therefore the shots that caused the wounds, that could have been avoided easily if we had the X-rays and photos. We were right in the conclusions we drew from the corpsman’s sketches and the testimony of the doctors, but we could have supported our conclusions better if we had the documentary evidence as well as the medical testimony.
As it happened, our fears were realized and critics eagerly embraced the corpsman’s inaccurate sketch to question the commission’s conclusions about the nature of the wounds and the single-bullet analysis. David Belin later characterized it as “a disastrous decision” which “gave rise to wild speculation and rumor.” Belin attributed the decision to the Kennedy family, and especially Robert Kennedy, claiming that they “did not want these pictures and X-rays to become a matter of public display.” Belin believed passionately that the family’s “desire for privacy was outweighed by the need for public knowledge on what actually happened in Dallas on Nov. 22.” He worried that such deference to the Kennedy family was indicative of “a dangerous trend toward preferred treatment for high governmental officials.”29
Specter shared Belin’s assessment. He also attributed the decision to the Kennedy family and their worries that “those ghastly images might reach the public.” Specter believed this concern could have been met by including “an analysis of the autopsy materials in the commission report without including the images as a commission exhibit. That approach should have satisfied the Kennedy family.” Specter did not learn that Warren had examined the autopsy materials until long after the commission report was filed. He recalled that he and Belin had dinner together “after the commission nixed the photos and X-rays” and discussed resigning from the commission staff. But neither of them seriously considered doing that.30
It is clear that the Kennedy family’s objections to releasing the images found a sympathetic ear in Warren. As Redlich later recalled:
My impression, and I cannot be more precise than that, my impression was that the Kennedy family was concerned about the publicity, about a public display of the President’s skull in those pictures. The Chief Justice was very sensitive to that. He felt that that family had undergone just tremendous trauma, and he was very sensitive to that, perhaps by retrospect overly sensitive. But he was very sensitive to it. Now, I don’t believe that it would be fair to the Kennedys, at least on the basis of anything I know of, to conclude that it was because of their directly saying to the Chief Justice that we want it this way, that it was done this way. I have no information of that kind.31
I do not have any information of that kind either. Based on my conversations with Robert Kennedy, I believe that he might have been persuaded to let the autopsy materials be used for the forensic purposes described by Specter so long as they did not become part of the commission’s records. Because Warren responded so negatively to any commission use of the materials—with no apparent challenge from other members—Rankin and the staff never had the opportunity to develop such a proposal and present it to Robert Kennedy, with the strong endorsement that I believe Katzenbach and Miller would have provided.
Rankin, however, later defended Warren’s position on this question:
We thought we had good evidence from the doctors who were involved at the hospital in Dallas and also at the autopsy, and we did not want the President’s memory to be presented in that manner, and we had already promised the American people that the investigation, that everything that we obtained, except for such matters as involved national security, would be made available to them, so we would have had to publish it, if we used it ourselves.32
I did not find this explanation acceptable—and still don’t. It invited further questioning by the critics as to what else the commission may have excluded from its records to avoid embarrassing individuals or agencies. Once the commission had decided to suppress anything from its published records, including documents withheld in the name of national security, the withholding of the X-rays and photographs could have been explained in a way that I believe would have been accepted by the vast majority of the American public. Whatever criticism the commission might have received for such withholding would have been trivial compared with the criticism it did receive (and deserve) for not letting these materials be used by the testifying doctors to make certain that their testimony was accurate.
On Other Investigative Fronts
Meanwhile, our investigative work in other areas was moving along well. On June 4, the commission heard the testimony of three FBI agents and Inspector Kelley of the Secret Service about the results of the Dallas reenactment project. The agents were now able to provide detailed information regarding the location, timing, and approximate distances of the shots from the depository.
On June 8, District Attorney Henry Wade testified concerning his role in the investigation of the assassination, statements made by him to the press, and conversations with Secret Service agent Forrest Sorrels and police officer Patrick Dean about what Jack Ruby said on November 22. Rankin led the interrogation of Wade, with both Redlich and Goldberg available to assist him.33
Wade, a onetime FBI agent, had been the Dallas district attorney since 1951. He described how he first heard about the assassination, consulted with US Attorney Barefoot Sanders to confirm that this was a local rather than federal matter, and went to the hospital to visit with Governor Connally, who was a friend of his. He then went to the Dallas police headquarters, whose officers had the responsibility for investigating both the assassination and the murder of Patrolman Tippit, arriving there at about seven in the evening. Immediately upon his arrival, Chief Curry showed him the report by Lieutenant Revill regarding the statement by FBI agent Hosty earlier in the day. When Wade asked Curry what he was going to do about the Revill report, Curry responded that he didn’t know.34
Wade described in colorful detail the “mob scene” at police headquarters on the evening of November 22. He recalled seeing Ruby amidst the crowd of an estimated three hundred news reporters and bystanders in the hallways. He told the commission he was focused on ensuring that Oswald be advised of his right to counsel and resolving the confusion over what kind of charge to file under Texas law for his killing of President Kennedy. He was not personally involved in any questioning of Oswald. He denied answering any of the many questions from the press about fingerprints and other evidence, although he did say that he referred to the statement by Oswald’s wife that her husband had a gun—a statement that Wade said would be inadmissible under Texas law. He also said that Ruby, whom he didn’t know at the time, was in the group of reporters and bystanders when Wade made a reference to Oswald’s reported connection with the “Free Cuba Movement” and Ruby yelled out to say, “No, it is the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.”35
Wade told the commission that Ruby’s appearance at the department on Friday night caused him to believe that Ruby had decided then to kill Oswald. He said that he had not heard of Dean’s testimony on this subject until the day before he put Dean on the stand in the Ruby trial a few months later, because he had been busy picking a jury. Wade told the commission of the many rumors and allegations about the assassination that passed through his office, but emphasized that his responsibilities were limited to preparing for the Ruby trial and he sent all information or allegations about Oswald to the FBI or some other agency.36
Wade’s testimony was followed by that of Officer Dean, who had requested the opportunity to appear after his deposition had been taken in Dallas. In response to Rankin’s questions, Dean said that his deposition testimony was truthful in every regard and that he had nothing to add to it. He testified that he was shocked and offended by Griffin’s suggestion that he was not telling the truth regarding Ruby’s entry into the basement on November 24, and his statement about Ruby wanting to kill Oswald two days earlier. Rankin asked Dean why he had not reported Ruby’s statement on November 22 until his report on February 18, before the Ruby trial. Dean’s only response was that his earlier report within the department related only to the basement security issue and not the interview of Ruby at which he and Sorrels were present.37
When Dean complained about Griffin accusing him of perjury, Warren said: “I have never talked to Mr. Griffin about this. I didn’t know that you had this altercation with him, but I want to say this: That so far as the jurisdiction of this Commission is concerned and its procedures, no member of our staff has a right to tell any witness that he is lying or that he is testifying falsely. That is not his business. It is the business of this Commission to appraise the testimony of all the witnesses.” I don’t recall that Rankin ever told the staff of Warren’s statement to Dean, whose appearance before the commission marked the end of the Griffin/Dean controversy.38
The State Department Defends Itself
From September 4, 1959, when he applied for his first passport, until shortly before the assassination, Oswald had numerous dealings with the Department of State, the American embassy in Moscow, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) within the Justice Department. To respond to Oswald’s various requests, the State Department and INS had to decide many legal and administrative questions under the applicable US laws. Within hours of the identification of Oswald as the alleged assassin, speculations arose about the legality and propriety of the decisions made by State—a favorite target of the press—that permitted a defector to return to the United States, to be reissued a passport, and to travel to Mexico for the stated purpose of returning to the Soviet Union.
Bill Coleman and David Slawson wanted to know if Oswald’s dealings with federal agencies were lawful and handled in the normal course of business. On June 9 and 10, the commission heard from the two consular officers who had dealt with Oswald in Moscow, officials in Washington responsible for the passport decision, the State Department’s legal adviser, Abram Chayes, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk. Most of the commission members participated actively in these hearings—in part reflecting the widespread public suspicion that some of these State decisions must have been flawed in some critical way.
The first consular witness was Richard Snyder, who was second secretary and consul in the American embassy in Moscow from 1959 through mid-1961. He testified about Oswald’s appearance at the embassy on Saturday, October 31, 1959, when he declared his desire to renounce his US citizenship. Snyder recalled that Oswald told him that he had applied for Soviet citizenship because, he said, “I am a Marxist.” In his report, Snyder described Oswald as “arrogant and aggressive” and had volunteered that “he had offered to the Soviet authorities any information which he had acquired as an enlisted radar operator in the Marines.” Consistent with State Department policy, Snyder proposed to delay completing the renunciation procedure “until the action of the Soviet authorities on his request for Soviet citizenship is known or the Department advises.” Snyder retained Oswald’s passport after Oswald left his office.39
Snyder told the commission that Oswald subsequently complained about the embassy’s failure to proceed with the renunciation and Snyder advised him in writing of the need to follow regulations. Over the next several months, the State Department received inquiries about Oswald’s whereabouts, some resulting from his mother’s complaints. State actually considered a request to the Soviet government for assistance in locating Oswald. As of early 1960, Snyder and the State Department still considered Oswald an American citizen because he had not completed the appropriate forms implementing his proposed renunciation.40
Snyder next heard from Oswald in February 1961, when a letter arrived from him at the embassy requesting the return of his passport and expressing his desire to return to the United States. From Minsk he wrote that he was unable to come to Moscow to complete in person the requisite forms but, in fact, he showed up a few months later. According to Snyder, this was now an important matter; Oswald’s mother had enlisted the assistance of Texas representative (and later Speaker of the House) Jim Wright from Fort Worth to help get her son back home. The State Department’s central concern was whether Oswald had “expatriated himself” by committing any one of the acts amounting to expatriation, such as swearing allegiance to a foreign country or serving in its armed forces. State concluded that Oswald had not committed any of these acts and was therefore still a United States citizen and entitled to his passport.41
Commission members examined Snyder closely about his initial decision to delay Oswald’s request to renounce his citizenship, as reflected in this exchange with Ford:
REPRESENTATIVE FORD: In retrospect, assuming the tragic events that did transpire last year didn’t take place, and this circumstance was presented to you again in the Embassy in Moscow, would you handle the case any differently?
MR.SNYDER: No, I don’t think so, Mr. Ford. You mean in terms of would I have taken his renunciation? No, I think not.
REPRESENTATIVE FORD: In other words, you would have put him off, or stalled him off, in this first interview, make him come back again?
MR. SNYDER: Yes; I would have.
Snyder explained that he was influenced by the fact that Oswald was young—barely twenty when he first showed up at the embassy—and he thought it was important to give Oswald some time outside the office, for even a few hours, to consider the significance of what he was seeking to do.42
The next State witness was John McVickar, who served as consul in the American embassy in Moscow along with Snyder from 1959 to mid-1961. McVickar shared an office with Snyder at the embassy and generally confirmed Snyder’s testimony about the substance of his conversation with Oswald, in which McVickar did not participate, and Snyder’s description of Oswald’s appearance and attitude. The commission members and Bill Coleman questioned McVickar about his recollection that Oswald appeared to have had some knowledgeable assistance in seeking renunciation of his US citizenship. McVickar said his assessment of Oswald’s competence was based in part on Oswald’s going to Helsinki to obtain a tourist visa to enter the Soviet Union. Oswald’s choice of Helsinki, McVickar said, was a shrewd one because it was an unusual place for an individual tourist to seek a visa. McVickar testified that “[i]t is a well enough known fact among people who are working in the Soviet Union and undoubtedly people who are associated with Soviet matters” that Helsinki would be a good place to go to get a visa into Russia, but that “it was not a commonly known fact among the ordinary run of people in the United States.”43
McVickar had occasion to meet with Marina Oswald as well, in July of 1961, a few days after her husband had returned to the embassy to regain his passport in order to return to the United States. As part of this initial security interview, Marina Oswald told McVickar that she was not a member of the Communist youth organization but was in her factory union. McVickar accepted her answer and initiated the process for the State Department to consider granting her a visa to enter the United States with her husband.44
Shortly before he left Moscow in September, McVickar submitted a petition to the department to classify her status as eligible for an immigrant visa and enclosed Lee Oswald’s sworn statement of July 11, 1961. The State Department would not generally process such applications for visas to enter the United States until the applicant had obtained permission to leave the Soviet Union. However, McVickar recommended approving Marina Oswald’s petition and a waiver of the sanctions otherwise applicable under the law—and described this action as “a routine request which would have been made in any similar case using almost exactly that type of language.” He told the commission that her membership in the trade union for medical workers would be considered involuntary and therefore not a potential bar to her admission. McVickar emphasized that it “was my responsibility to make these recommendations, and I did so of my own free will as the officer-in-charge of this particular aspect of the case.”45
Bernice Waterman had the responsibility in State’s Passport Office to consider Oswald’s request for reissuance of his passport in 1961. She testified that the passport could be returned only after the embassy had thoroughly questioned Oswald about his residence in the Soviet Union and his possible commitment of acts of expatriation. In August 1961, she concurred in the embassy’s conclusion that he had not expatriated himself. Ford challenged this statement and quoted again from Oswald’s initial written declaration of his desire to renounce his American citizenship. Waterman insisted that such a statement alone was not sufficient and Oswald was required to complete the necessary forms in order to achieve this termination of his citizenship, and he never did so.46
Frances Knight, the head of the Passport Office, addressed some of the same issues and confirmed the decisions reached. In addition, she addressed the issuance of a new passport to Oswald in June 1963 when he was living in New Orleans. There simply was no legal basis for declining to give Oswald his passport, she informed the commission. She emphasized that “there was no request in the file from any Government agency or any area of the Government for a lookout card on Oswald … at the time that his 1963 passport was issued.”47
Abram Chayes, legal adviser to the State Department, testified further about State’s decisions about Oswald. He had not heard of Oswald before November 22, 1963, and was asked by Under Secretary of State George Ball immediately after the assassination to review State’s files on Oswald. In discussing his opinion that Oswald had not officially renounced his citizenship in 1959, Chayes referred to several court decisions imposing a heavy burden on the State Department in proving the expatriation of an American citizen. Later in his testimony, Chayes agreed with Ford that if Oswald had returned to the consular office on a workday and persisted in his desire to renounce his citizenship—and filled out the requisite forms—that the consular officers would have been obligated to approve the renunciation. Regarding the issuance of a passport to Oswald in 1963, Chayes reminded the commission that State was not entitled “to withhold a passport on grounds related to political association and beliefs” and, accordingly, the Passport Office had acted properly in issuing a new passport to Oswald in 1963.48
Ford vigorously questioned Chayes about the decision to let Oswald return to the United States and then to issue a new passport to him in 1963, despite all the information in the file including his willingness to provide information to the Soviet Union acquired during his service in the Marines. Chayes defended State’s decision and, at one point, emphasized again the restrictions imposed by the US Supreme Court on State’s discretion to deny passports to persons with anti-American views by referring to the fact that “[w]e have got Malcolm X traveling across Africa making one speech after the other about how terrible our policies on the race question are.” He also pointed out that the FBI had interviewed Oswald after his return to the United States and that neither that agency nor any other investigative agency asked that a lookout card be placed in State’s file regarding any future issuance of a passport.49
Secretary of State Dean Rusk testified before the commission on the afternoon of June 10. He and several other US officials had been on their way to Japan at the time of the assassination, but turned back to return home after getting the news. During the flight back, Rusk said, he reflected on “the dozens and dozens of implications and ramifications of this event as it affects our foreign relations all over the world” and asked himself “could some foreign government somehow be involved in such an episode.”50
So far as the Soviet Union was concerned, Rusk testified:
I have not seen or heard of any scrap of evidence indicating that the Soviet Union had any desire to eliminate President Kennedy nor in any way participated in any such event. Now standing back and trying to look at that question objectively despite the ideological differences between our two great systems, I can’t see how it could be to the interest of the Soviet Union to make any such effort.… I do think that the Soviet Union, again objectively considered, has an interest in the correctness of state relations. This would be particularly true among the great powers, with which the major interests of the Soviet Union are directly engaged.
Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev and Kennedy, Rusk said, shared “a certain mutual respect” and realized that they “necessarily bear somewhat special responsibility for the general peace of the world.” In his opinion, “it would be an act of rashness and madness for Soviet leaders to undertake such an action as an active policy. Because everything would have been put in jeopardy or at stake in connection with such an act.”51
Rusk acknowledged that Cuba presented a more difficult question because the United States had so few contacts with the Castro government. However, he expressed the same basic conclusion—that he had seen no evidence pointing in the direction of Cuba’s involvement in the assassination. He went on to say that “it would be of even greater madness for Castro or his government to be involved in any such enterprise than almost for anyone else, because literally the issue of war and peace would mean the issue of the existence of his regime and perhaps of his country might have been involved in that question.”52
The commission questioned Rusk about a report in the Washington Post on November 24, 1963, that the State Department had “no evidence indicating involvement of any foreign power in the assassination.” Rusk defended the statement as reflecting the situation at the time and said that “the implications of suggesting evidence in the absence of evidence would have been enormous.” He elaborated on this point by emphasizing that State could not afford “to leave the impression that we had evidence that we could not describe or discuss, when in fact we didn’t have the evidence on a matter of such overriding importance could have created a very dangerous situation.” When Ford suggested that a response of “no comment” might have been just as effective, Rusk responded that the press would certainly have taken such a response to confirm that there was in fact evidence that could not be disclosed.53
Marina Oswald Testifies Again
After hearing from these State Department officials, the commission on June 11 had a second opportunity to question Marina Oswald. The principal reason for calling her back was to explore her recollection that her husband had threatened to kill former vice president Richard Nixon, a fact not mentioned in her earlier testimony. She apologized for this omission and told the commission she had not intended “to deceive you the first time.”54
She testified that Oswald’s remark about Nixon came after his General Walker attempt on April 10, but before he left for New Orleans on April 24. After Oswald returned from getting the morning newspaper, she said, he put a suit on and took his pistol. When she asked where he was going, he answered: “Nixon is coming. I want to go and have a look.” She expressed concern about the “look” he was intending to have with his pistol, went into the bathroom in tears, and reminded him of his promise after the Walker incident never to do anything like that again. When he came into the bathroom, she tried to keep him from leaving. She had not seen or heard anything about Nixon coming to Dallas.55
When pressed, she became uncertain where they lived at the time and whether she did struggle to keep him in the bathroom, but “there is no doubt he got dressed and had a gun.” She did not remember her husband previously expressing any hostility toward Nixon, but said he told her the next day that Nixon had not come to Dallas after all.56
Mrs. Oswald testified she and her husband argued about this incident and that he became angry at her. She told him that she was pregnant and reminded him repeatedly of his previous promise not to repeat the Walker attack. He took the pistol out of his belt and put it back in his room. When asked how he reacted to her interfering with him, she said:
At first he was extremely angry, and he said, “You are always getting in my way.” But then rather quickly he gave in, which was rather unusual for him. At the time I didn’t give this any thought, but now I think it was just rather a kind of nasty joke he was playing with me. Sometimes Lee was—he had a sadistic—my husband had a sadistic streak in him and he got pleasure out of harming people, and out of harming me, not physically but emotionally and mentally.
Under questioning by Cooper, she recalled that her husband told her that “I am going to go out and find out if there will be an appropriate opportunity and if there is I will use the pistol.” She testified that he did not seem angry at the time: “He looked more preoccupied and had sort of a concentrated look.” She said that the whole incident took about twenty minutes.27
The commission members found her testimony on the Nixon event inconclusive and unsatisfactory. Dulles questioned her about her reactions to this incident in light of the assurances she had gotten from her husband earlier. She admitted the Walker attack had made a strong impression on her, but as for her reaction to the Nixon threat she said: “I don’t know. I was pregnant at the time. I had a lot of other things to worry about. I was getting pretty well tired of all of these escapades of his.” When asked whether her husband had made any other threats at other persons, including President Kennedy, she said that he had not.58
After informing her that Vice President Johnson had come to Dallas around April 23, the commission questioned whether it might have been Johnson that her husband wanted to take a “look” at. She was still certain that it was Nixon, rather than Johnson, that her husband was interested in. She said: “Yes, no. I am getting a little confused with so many questions. I was absolutely convinced it was Nixon and now after all these questions I wonder if I am right in my mind.” She added: “I never heard about Johnson. I never heard about Johnson. I never knew anything about Johnson. I just don’t think it was Johnson. I didn’t know his name.”59
The commission pursued several other subjects that had developed in the investigation. She was asked about signing a card using the alias “A. J. Hidell” that he had previously used. She testified that Oswald asked her to sign the name so he could plausibly claim more than one person was involved in the Fair Play for Cuba Committee chapter. He threatened to beat her if she did not sign the card. Although she initially said she signed only one such membership card, she later indicated it might have been two or three cards.60
The commission also wanted to learn more about the couple’s life in Minsk. When asked how Lee spent his leisure time, she replied that “he was a great lover of classical music and used to go to concerts a lot, and theaters, and movies, symphony concerts, and we used to go out on the lakes around Minsk.” She said Lee did not read very much because reading books in Russian was difficult for him. He did belong to a Russian hunting club, she testified, “in order to be able to acquire a rifle because only apparently members of such hunting clubs have the right in the Soviet Union to own a rifle.” She recalled only one time that he went out with friends to shoot game, but was unsuccessful. She said her husband was friendly with many Cuban students who, he told her, were not impressed with the Soviet Union and worried that life in Castro’s Cuba might become too much like the Soviet Union.61
When asked about any marital difficulties in Minsk, she answered that their only difficulty arose when, contrary to Lee’s wishes, she told her uncle and aunt that she and Lee were going to leave for the United States. They had some additional arguments after arriving in the United States, one prompted by her telling their Dallas landlady that she was from Russia. Her husband had told the landlady she was from Czechoslovakia and “he became very angry with me for telling her I was from Russia, and said that I talked too much.” She testified that her husband would get angry with her because of her association with Russian-speaking friends. She said that “he was jealous of me and didn’t want me to see them.” She said that he hit her on occasion.62
Jack Ruby Testifies
Jack Ruby had been on everyone’s list of witnesses since the investigation began. After he was convicted in mid-March, we debated whether we should even discuss his murder of Oswald in our report. Hubert and Griffin recommended at one point that the commission report not discuss Ruby’s murder of Oswald, worried that any commission assessment of Ruby’s responsibility for Oswald’s death might prejudice either his appeal or the prosecutor’s effort to sustain the jury’s verdict. Hubert and Griffin questioned whether it was proper for a prestigious commission to comment extensively about a person whose case was on appeal and likely headed for the US Supreme Court. They recommended that the commission state in its report that “conclusions relative to any aspect of Ruby or his activities are considered improper because of his pending appeal and that a report will be made later.”63
I urged them to address the remaining issues about Ruby as thoroughly as possible. I told them that the staff could not make the decision about publication of the Ruby material at this time, and we should proceed as though Ruby would definitely be included in the report. Rankin agreed with me that we should reserve decision on this problem until we had a draft in front of us.64
The commission had not decided whether to question Ruby, but the possibility of a polygraph examination had been raised. Hubert and Griffin opposed it, believing that it was not an accepted method of arriving at truth. In fact, the commission had rejected an earlier proposal to use a polygraph test with Marina Oswald because the results of such an examination were not admissible in court.65
David Belin, taking depositions in Dallas during March and April, had heard of a possible polygraph examination of Ruby. During the summer of 1963, Belin had met Hillel E. Silverman, the rabbi of a Dallas synagogue that Ruby attended. After the murder of Oswald, Silverman visited Ruby regularly in the Dallas County Jail. Belin met with Silverman, who was convinced that Ruby had not been involved in any conspiracy. Belin proposed a strategy for Silverman to discuss with Ruby—Ruby would ask to be given a polygraph examination even though it was probable that his attorneys would advise him against it. After considering the matter carefully, Silverman later advised Belin that Ruby had agreed to request a polygraph test. Belin did not disclose his role in this matter until many years later.66
By the commission’s April 30 meeting, Warren had decided he wanted to interview Ruby if he was willing. Ruby had been insisting that he wanted to take a polygraph examination in order to prove that he hadn’t been involved in any conspiracy. In early May, Rankin asked Ruby’s counsel if they would agree to his testifying. We were aware that a motion had been filed seeking a hearing on Ruby’s mental competency. Some commission members thought that Ruby’s appearance should be postponed until all post-trial motions were resolved. Rankin asked Ruby’s lawyer, Joe H. Tonahill, what he wanted to do.67
Ruby’s lawyers told Rankin that Ruby’s mental condition prevented them from consulting with him and for that reason they were obliged to decline any waiver of the attorney-client privilege. Ruby’s lawyers had presented a defense of insanity at trial, and his appellate lawyers were unwilling to undercut this defense by having Ruby be found by the commission to be competent to testify for its purposes. Hubert thought the commission would be criticized for obtaining testimony protected by the privilege where the client involved could not make the waiver decision himself. Hubert advised Rankin that he and Griffin also believed that Ruby’s mental condition precluded any appearance before the commission.68
Warren was not deterred. If Ruby wanted to testify, the chief justice wanted to hear that testimony. We scheduled Ruby to give his testimony on Sunday, June 7, at the sheriff’s office in Dallas. Warren planned to preside at this session, accompanied by Ford and Specter from the staff. Warren also wanted a complete tour of the various locations that figured in the investigation. Rankin proposed an agenda that would have taken an entire week, but Warren said that he only had that Sunday, because he had oral arguments in the Supreme Court the next day.
Rankin wanted Specter to educate Warren on the critical elements of the single-bullet theory. Although Warren had heard considerable testimony supporting this theory, Rankin sensed some reservations among the commission members and thought that this trip provided a unique opportunity for Warren to better understand the issue. On the morning of June 7, after flying together to Dallas, Specter and Warren stood together by the sixth floor window at the southeast corner of the depository, where the assassination scene had been recreated with the requisite number of cartons arranged to shape Oswald’s “nest.”
According to Specter, Warren “assumed a silent and thoughtful pose at the window” as Specter detailed the evidence that supported Oswald’s identity as the assassin. He summarized the medical evidence regarding the wounds suffered by Kennedy and Connally, the ballistics results and the speed of the bullets, the trajectory of the shots at the moving vehicle, the reactions of the two victims as shown on the Zapruder film, and the alignment of the two men in the vehicle at the critical time, as confirmed by the reenactment two weeks earlier. Specter told Warren that it
all boiled down to one key fact. When the bullet exited the President’s neck, the limousine was in such a position that the bullet had to strike the car’s interior or someone in it. Our exhaustive examination of the limousine had shown that no bullet had struck the car’s interior. Then there was Connally, sitting right in the line of fire, directly in front of Kennedy, about to collapse from gunshot wounds. Could the President’s neck wound and all of the governor’s wounds have been caused by a single bullet?
Specter told Warren that the physical evidence, ballistics experts’ analyses, wound tests, and clothing examination all supported the conclusion that the nearly whole bullet found on Connally’s stretcher struck both men.69
Specter identified for Warren two of the major criticisms of the single-bullet theory: (1) the condition of the apparently whole bullet demonstrated that it could not have caused all the wounds; and (2) the holes in the president’s clothing were inconsistent with the projected path of the single bullet at issue. Specter summarized briefly the evidence that countered these possibilities and the staff’s conviction after the reenactment project that the single-bullet theory was the only logical and supportable explanation of what actually happened. When Specter completed his explanation, Warren “remained silent. After a moment he turned on his heel and stepped away, still saying nothing.”70
In the afternoon, Warren was accompanied by too many federal and local officials—each asserting his obligation to be personally involved—to fit into Sheriff Decker’s small kitchen, where Ruby was to be questioned. The only person that Warren thought he could exclude was Specter, who happily went off to watch a baseball game on television. An hour later, a Secret Service agent rushed in and asked Specter to return to the kitchen because Ruby was insisting that there be one Jewish person in the room. Specter did as he was told and joined the crowd in the kitchen. But he steadfastly refused to acknowledge Ruby’s silent mouthing of an inquiry to get him to confirm that he was Jewish.71
When the session began, Ruby asked for a “lie detector test” as orchestrated by Belin and Rabbi Silverman. Warren refused to answer Ruby’s question about Warren’s confidence in such a test, saying, “I can’t tell you just how much confidence I have in it, because it depends so much on who is taking it, and so forth. But I will say this to you, that if you and your counsel want any kind of a test, I will arrange it for you. I would be glad to do that, if you want it.”72
Ruby started his testimony by reiterating that he never engaged in any conspiracy with anyone, and had acted entirely on his own on November 24. He said that he always had a gun in his bag of money, and shot Oswald on the spur of the moment in order to save Mrs. Kennedy the ordeal of a trial.72
On the flight back to Washington, Warren told Specter that he regretted agreeing to a polygraph examination for Ruby, presumably because he thought it was inappropriate for him to be appearing to endorse a controversial interrogation technique. Specter, who did not customarily instruct chief justices, told Warren that we had no choice now but to go forward and honor his commitment.74
Ruby’s testimony before the commission and a possible polygraph examination did not affect Griffin’s assessment of his investigative mission. For Griffin, many details still required follow-up. Both Rankin and Redlich participated with me in the discussion about the need for further investigation in the Ruby area. I wanted to be certain they understood the extent of the investigative effort to date, the strongly expressed conviction of Hubert and Griffin that much additional effort was needed, and that the investigation involving Ruby’s background, associations, and actions over the weekend of November 22 to 24 required more time and effort than we had anticipated earlier. I confess that, as a matter of bureaucratic self-interest, I did not want to be the sole decision maker on what needed to done in the Ruby area as contrasted with what might be done.
Griffin now had the assistance of Murray Laulicht, a recent graduate from the Columbia University School of Law who was recommended to me by a Justice Department friend. Rankin hired him with the initial thought that Laulicht would serve as his law clerk. But, in light of Hubert and Griffin’s complaints about a lack of manpower, we decided to assign Laulicht to work exclusively with them. His work was excellent. He brought fresh eyes to problems that Hubert and Griffin had been working on for months. Griffin particularly welcomed his arrival because Hubert would have limited future availability for our work.75
Hubert told Rankin that he could not remain with the commission “on a permanent-duty status” after June 3, though he was prepared to return to Washington on weekends or to go to Dallas if necessary. In a handwritten note to the commission staff on June 5, Hubert advised all of us of his need to return to New Orleans and said: “I cannot leave however without saying to all of you that I have never been associated with a group of people as able and dedicated as this group.” Later in June, Rankin took advantage of Hubert’s offer, and asked him to obtain the testimony of twenty-two additional witnesses in Dallas.76
I asked Griffin on June 1 to give me every investigative request he believed was necessary to complete his investigation. He and Hubert agreed to do so with the qualification that additional requests might be required due to future developments in Ruby’s criminal case. Their investigative requests to the FBI—more than 30 in number—began arriving on June 1 and kept flowing through the full month. Some were very small—like Griffin’s desire to follow up on the deposition of Hyman Rubenstein (Ruby’s brother) about an allegation that Ruby years ago had attempted to hit a person with a chair who made a derogatory remark about President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Some were more involved—such as a request for a review of the arrest records and summaries of FBI reports about any alleged criminal or subversive activities of ten acquaintances of Ruby and an exploration of a 1959 FBI report describing Ruby as a “known Dallas criminal.”77
In their entirety, these requests reflected a prodigious effort by Griffin to supervise an investigative effort that met his professional standards and to be prepared to draft portions of the commission’s report with a high level of confidence in the facts. No lawyer on the staff worked more diligently or thoughtfully than Griffin.
The Commission Starts Making Decisions
By mid-June, most of the teams, except the Ruby lawyers, had finished their investigative work and were drafting portions of the report. During this process, questions inevitably emerged that stimulated requests to the FBI, the Secret Service, the Department of State, the National Security Agency, and the CIA.78
Rankin, Redlich, and I agreed on our shared role in editing the report. In a discussion with Rankin on June 8, I told him that “I thought my function during the next several weeks in the course of preparing the report would probably be to make his life unpleasant.” I recommended that nothing should go to the commission unless he, Redlich, and I agreed that it met our standards. I was confident he would not be offended by the suggestion and would recognize that, together with Redlich, we were already operating in this manner. I also recommended that no one person should have final responsibility for any section of the report, but that each section should be reviewed (and edited) by several persons to ensure consistency of style and quality of the final product. 79
When Redlich joined the meeting, we took several steps to implement these objectives. He agreed to review and edit the draft foreword which I had prepared, and he agreed that his draft summary of conclusions should not go to the commission until the members had reviewed all the chapters in the report. We decided that the report’s discussion of the source of the shots that hit the president should be a separate chapter rather than included—as it currently was—as part of Specter’s draft narrative of the events of November 22 and the Ball/Belin chapter dealing with Oswald as the assassin. I reshaped this material, including the first draft of a separate chapter discussing the shots, starting with the material presently in the Ball/Belin and Specter drafts. I did not realize at the time how contentious this decision would become.80
We now had established a routine of sending draft sections of the report—in no particular order—to commission members for their review after clearance by Rankin. On June 12, Redlich sent Dulles five separate drafts: the foreword, drafted by me; a section dealing with the basic facts of the assassination, drafted by Specter; a draft dealing with presidential protection, written by Stern; a section dealing with Oswald’s life from birth through his military service, written by Ely; and a memo on foreign conspiracies from Coleman and Slawson.81
Three days later, I sent two draft chapters of the report to Warren with a brief explanation of how we proposed to present the material in the report. The first was a draft chapter entitled “The Trip to Dallas.” I explained that this draft “incorporates material from earlier drafts prepared by Mr. Specter and Mr. Stern which you have seen. The effort here has been to minimize duplication and to bring together in one chapter all the material dealing with the selection of the motorcade route, the composition of the motorcade, the reaction of the Secret Service personnel to the assassination, and the subsequent events at Parkland Memorial Hospital.”82
The second was a draft chapter entitled “The Shots from the Texas School Book Depository.” I explained that this draft
was prepared to bring together all the evidence which might be relied upon by the Commission for the conclusion that the shots were fired from the sixth floor of the Depository. The chapter includes, for the most part, material prepared by Specter, supplemented by the discussion of eyewitness testimony and ballistics evidence which was prepared initially by Ball and Belin. If this organization of the material is approved, it is planned that this chapter and the chapter dealing with the trip to Dallas will be revised by the responsible attorneys and footnoted appropriately.
I also included a draft prepared by Ely dealing with Oswald’s pre-Russian period. I advised the chief justice that it was being reviewed by Jenner and Liebeler.83 Unfortunately, I made the mistake of not forwarding to each commission member everything sent to Warren. The chief justice forcefully brought this lapse in our administrative process to our attention a few weeks later.
At this point, our available manpower was shrinking. Both Belin and Specter found it increasingly difficult to work on a full-time basis in Washington in light of their responsibilities in Des Moines and Philadelphia. We had lost Ely in mid-June because of a military commitment, but we still had the full-time assistance of Richard Mosk, who had been with us since February; Stuart Pollak, who had been at the commission since April; and Murray Laulicht, who had joined us for the summer.
On June 16, Rankin, Redlich, and I examined each of the six areas of our work. In the first area, we discussed my reorganization of the Specter draft. We agreed that the reorganization worked, but that the draft needed polishing and appropriate footnoting. We decided to ask Specter to undertake this task. I called him and asked him to come to Washington to consult with Rankin on the subject. Specter seemed to understand the need for an overall perspective of the report into which his work, and that of other lawyers, had to be integrated.84
We had a much more difficult problem with the work of Joe Ball and David Belin dealing with Oswald as the assassin. A week earlier, Joe Ball expressed his strong disagreement with the edits proposed by Redlich in the draft that he and Belin had prepared. In a meeting attended by the three of us and Ball, “Redlich tried very hard to be diplomatic and minimize the extent of his differences with Mr. Ball in handling the material. Mr. Ball really didn’t seem to recognize the extent of the differences and maintained that his handling of the facts was every bit as competent as Mr. Redlich’s.” Rankin tried his best to mediate, but was unsuccessful. The end result was that Ball and Belin were free to prepare another draft using whatever suggestions from Redlich or me were acceptable to them. I did not think this was going to end well—and it did not.85
When Rankin, Redlich, and I met on June 16, this situation remained unresolved. Three major issues about the Ball/Belin draft generated this very intense discussion. First, Ball and Belin disagreed with the tentative decision to have a separate chapter, using material from their draft chapter, about the shots from the depository. Second, their draft contained a lengthy discussion of procedural issues—such as documenting in detail the chain of custody for each major piece of evidence—that seemed unnecessary. Third, the Ball/Belin team disagreed with our view—which was supported by most of the other lawyers—that we needed to present our evidence in a way that both supported our conclusions and addressed major questions raised by the commission’s critics. Redlich prepared an alternative outline of the chapter, which I thought was a substantial improvement over the Ball/Belin draft.86
We then turned to Area 3, where Bert Jenner and Jim Liebeler were reviewing Ely’s memo on Oswald’s pre-Russia life. Jenner had been concentrating on various aspects of Oswald’s life after he returned to the United States. In this connection, he had taken depositions and prepared long affidavits for witnesses who knew Lee and Marina Oswald during their residency in Texas. Jenner had been given a “Dutch Uncle” talk by the chief justice and promised to have his report submitted within a few days. I had received an outline from Mosk covering Oswald’s life following his return to the United States, which would be used by Jenner in writing this portion of Oswald’s history. We continued to worry about when, and how, we would see these various reports dealing with Oswald put together in some coherent form.87
In Area 4, dealing with Oswald’s foreign activities, the Mexican government’s report regarding its investigation of Oswald’s activities in Mexico had finally arrived. The report of the Cuban government, obtained through the assistance of the Swiss government, was received later in the month. David Slawson was carrying the major burden in this area in a competent and well-organized manner. Because Bill Coleman had not been able to devote sufficient time to the commission, I had arranged for both Mosk and Pollak to assist Slawson on his various projects.88
An important development in this area was the FBI response to Slawson’s request for detailed information on the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and certain well-known anti-Castro groups. I had previously discussed with Malley our interest in getting background information on three anti-Castro groups identified in the letter: DRE, JURE, and the 30th of November movement. We asked for information on (1) the origin and growth of the organizations; (2) their activities, both at present and over the past few years, including the interrelationships, if any, among these organizations; (3) names, places of residence, areas of operation, and activities of the organizations’ leaders, both at present and over the last few years; (4) locations of the headquarters and other important or special places of activities, if any; (5) sources and methods for obtaining financing and other material support, if known; and (6) known or suspected underworld contacts, if any. We wanted the information on a national level, but also the same information regarding the organizations with contacts in Dallas, New Orleans, Chicago, Miami, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Puerto Rico, and Mexico City.89
The FBI responded in June with fifteen reports on leaders of these groups and forty-six memoranda from the bureau’s field offices on the organizations. We learned years later from a congressional investigation that this cursory response did not reflect any supervision by the FBI official responsible for submitting it to the commission. Nor did it reflect any input from the FBI’s own experts on Cuban exile organizations or from its established network of informants in key areas such as Miami. The FBI reports on the Alpha 66 group, which had attacked a Soviet vessel near Cuba in 1963, failed to advise the commission that this group continued to plan paramilitary operations against Cuba. In particular, the FBI knew that the leaders of the Alpha 66 group in September 1963 had been negotiating with those involved in a New Orleans anti-Castro training camp for the use of aircraft with which to conduct raids against Cuba.90
The FBI told us that the CIA and the Department of the Army might have pertinent information concerning these organizations. It did not tell us that both the CIA and the Army actually had an “operational interest,” which meant “that those agencies might be using the groups or individuals for intelligence collection or in covert operations.” There was no indication that the FBI contacted these two agencies itself as part of its investigation of a possible conspiracy in which Oswald was involved. Nor was there any indication that either the CIA or the Army independently contacted their sources in these groups to determine what they might be able to contribute to the commission’s investigation.91
The FBI’s inadequate response regarding Cuban groups was not accidental. Hoover had assigned the FBI’s investigation of the assassination to its general investigative division, which dealt primarily with the physical aspects of the case (e.g., the weapons, the bullets, the scientific evidence), Oswald’s apprehension, and his subsequent murder by Ruby. Hoover maintained effective bureaucratic walls around the principal parts of his organization so that only he and a few trusted lieutenants had an overview of the bureau’s entire capabilities or its relations with other government entities. The head of the general investigative division and his personnel working on the assassination were unaware of CIA efforts to kill Castro, Castro’s threat to retaliate, and any consideration of possible Cuban involvement in the assassination.92
When Rankin, Redlich, and I evaluated Area 5 dealing with Ruby on June 16, we faced the same concerns that we had discussed over the last few weeks—the need for more investigative requests and the difficulty in writing a draft of Ruby’s background without the results of previous requests. Our new associate, Murray Laulicht, and Griffin collaborated in producing a forty-page draft that discussed primarily the Dallas Police Department’s plans for transfer of Oswald on November 24 and the question of Ruby’s entry into the basement. Griffin estimated that he needed two more weeks to turn out a finished draft. This was longer than we had hoped, but none of the three of us had any productive suggestions for expediting the preparation of this important section of our report.93
The last area we discussed was Sam Stern’s work on presidential protection. Chief Rowley was scheduled to testify in a few days and Stern would incorporate this new material into his draft section on recommendations for improving presidential protection. We were still unsure whether the commission would have a chance to review the Rowley report before completing our work. Remembering my last conversation with Robert Kennedy, I told Rankin and Redlich that the commission “had to deal with the question of transferring responsibilities” from the Secret Service to the FBI. “Neither of them seemed particularly enthused about discussing this.”94
After our review of the six areas, we considered a few additional matters. The most important was the issuance of a subpoena to Bernard Weissman for the next week. Weissman was one of the sponsors of an ad published in the Dallas morning newspaper on November 22, 1963, critical of Kennedy. Although there was no evidence that Oswald had seen this black-bordered advertisement, with several questions challenging the policies of the Kennedy administration, the commission wished to investigate the individuals behind the ad and ascertain whether they ever had any association with Oswald.95
Secret Service Chief Rowley Testifies
Chief James Rowley of the Secret Service testified on June 18. Although the commission had heard from key agency officials, it was eager to hear Rowley before making recommendations. It was uncertain whether Rowley would be permitted to testify about changes in policies and practices recommended in his report, still being withheld by Treasury. Rowley was accompanied by Robert Carswell, Secretary Dillon’s special assistant who had been intimately engaged in the negotiations with the commission about the scope of its investigation. Rankin proposed that, if Rowley believed that any questions invited disclosure of confidential information, he could request that such questions and answers be conducted off the record. Warren agreed.96
The commission asked Rowley about the conduct of nine agents in Dallas the night before the motorcade. We had learned that these off-duty agents went to the Fort Worth Press Club and, between midnight and two A.M., drank beer or mixed drinks. After leaving the Press Club, seven of the agents went to an all-night coffeehouse that did not serve alcoholic beverages. Several of the agents stayed there until shortly before three A.M. All of them had duty assignments beginning no later than eight A.M. that day. Rowley confirmed that their drinking of any alcoholic beverage while on duty was a violation of the service’s regulations. But Rowley insisted that this violation did not affect the agents’ performance the next day in protecting the president, even though some of the agents involved had critical responsibilities in guarding the presidential vehicle.97
When asked whether the agents involved had been reprimanded, Rowley, after some equivocating, admitted they had not. “I felt that these men, by their conduct, had no bearing on the assassination of the President in Dallas,” he said. “[T]o institute formal punishment or disciplinary action would inevitably lead the public to conclude that they were responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy. I did not think in the light of history that they should be stigmatized with something like that, or their families or children. And, for that reason, I took the position that I did.”98
Warren’s disapproval was clear. “Chief, it seems to me that on an assignment of that kind, to be alert at all times is one of the necessities of the situation,” Warren told Rowley. “And I just wonder if you believe that men who did what these men did, being out until early morning hours, doing a little—even a small amount of drinking—would be as alert the next day as men should be when they are charged with the tremendous responsibility of protecting the President.” Rowley tried to stand his ground. “Well, we checked on that, Mr. Chief Justice, and the agent in charge reported that they were in good physical condition. I don’t condone these late hours; no. This is not a rule. This case is an exception.… I don’t condone this at all. But these men are young. They are of such age that I think that they responded in this instance adequately and sufficiently as anyone could under the circumstances.”98
Despite further questioning about this incident and the publicity it engendered, Rowley insisted that no official reprimand or disciplinary action was appropriate. He found no shortcoming whatsoever in the performance of the agents accompanying Kennedy that fatal day and never could explain why several witnesses—but no Secret Service agents—saw a man with a rifle shooting from the sixth floor of the depository. Scanning the windows along the motorcade route was unquestionably one of the major duties of the agents in the motorcade. Rowley’s refusal to acknowledge the failure of his agents to perform this task effectively on November 22, coupled with his refusal to discipline agents who violated regulations, provided a sharp contrast with Hoover’s severe disciplinary actions for the failure of his agents to pursue the Oswald investigation more aggressively before November 22.
When the commission asked about the advance planning for the trip, Rowley stated that he had read Lawson’s report on the subject and was satisfied that Lawson had done a satisfactory job. He said that the report “follows the standard procedure that we have exercised over the years, and in many of the trips we had taken with the President. He covered everything with the police and all that we have normally covered on such visits.” He told the commission he thought that advance notice of a motorcade route should be as short as possible, but that presidents often preferred an earlier notice for political purposes.100
He was also familiar with Bouck’s report and testimony regarding the Protective Research Service, but told the commission for the first time that the Secret Service had conducted “a complete reexamination of” the operations of this intelligence operation. Specifically, Rowley testified that his agency had enlisted the services of the Rand Corporation, Research Analysis Corporation, and the President’s Science Advisory Committee to assist the agency in revising its criteria and analyzing the reports received from other agencies.101
Rowley said the Secret Service had added three new factors to the criteria for determining who represented a threat to harm or embarrass the president: “the interest of the individual or the organization, capabilities of the individual or the organization, and the activities of the individual or organization. The interests of the individual or organization is the prime factor to be considered in the criteria, but must be coupled with the capability and activity of the individual or organization in any determination for referral to the Secret Service.” Rowley said this new standard had become effective three weeks earlier and that his agency would be soliciting comments and suggestions from those agencies which customarily filed reports with the Secret Service about potential threats.102
Under questioning, Rowley confirmed that the buildings along motorcade routes outside Washington are not examined in advance of the motorcade. When he suggested that some change in this practice may have been made, or was under consideration, the commission went off the record so that he could testify candidly about this issue. Rowley submitted statements of several agents reporting that Kennedy did not want them to ride on the rear step of the presidential limo, and thought agents in the follow-up car were better situated to respond in an emergency than an agent on the presidential vehicle’s rear step. He emphasized that the president does not control the agents protecting him.103
After an extended discussion of the budgetary needs of the Secret Service and its recent funding by Congress, Ford brought up a matter that Lawson had raised in his testimony. Ford told Rowley of his impression that “there was no clear delineation” of responsibilities among the various law enforcement agencies during a presidential visit and asked whether “a more precise checklist, a clear understanding, would be wholesome and better.” Rowley said his agency had now revised its policies to address that issue. In its manual of presidential protection, he reported, there was now “a more precise procedure for the relationships of the Secret Service on the one hand and local law enforcement agencies on the other.” While commission members were skeptical of Rowley’s refusal to censure his agents for drinking on duty, they did appreciate his indication that the Secret Service was taking steps to improve its procedure.104
A Staff Failure Angers the Chief Justice
As we tried to do every week, Redlich and I sent on June 19 several draft sections of the report to Warren and Ford, who had requested that drafts be sent to him on a regular basis.105 The next day, McCloy came to the office to pick up some materials and we spent some forty-five minutes together while copies were being made of various drafts. I reviewed with him the status of our drafting efforts and some major pending issues:
Specifically I mentioned such problems as dealing with the transfer of the Secret Service responsibilities to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the need for the Commission to at least consider this issue. I mentioned the trouble areas as being areas 3 [Oswald background] and 5 [Ruby]. I outlined to him the reorganization that had been made in Chapter 2 [on the assassination] and Chapter 3 [shots from the depository] and also the disagreement regarding the handling of the material in the projected Chapter 4 [Oswald as assassin]. He did not express himself on many of these issues. He was interested in knowing why Marina Oswald had not been cross-examined more rigorously, why former Mayor [of Dallas] and Mrs. Cabell had not been deposed, etc. I told him about some of the recent testimony of Marina Oswald, the need to conduct more investigation on the Irving Sport Shop matter, the subpoena of Bernard Weissman, and the taking of the Fifth [Amendment] by [Robert] Surry106 during the prior week.107
McCloy’s most telling comment was about Marina Oswald’s testimony. He had not been present at her second appearance, but had apparently heard some negative comments from other members (or staff lawyers) to the effect that she had not been questioned vigorously enough. Presumably these complaints were aimed at Rankin, because the members at the hearing did participate substantially in her questioning, although they were often frustrated by her responses. I was impressed by McCloy’s willingness to look at the details of the commission’s work and his understanding of the staff’s role. I was a little taken aback though by his outspoken criticism of Rankin and Warren for not being sufficiently aggressive with the witnesses and not moving more rapidly to prepare the report.108
McCloy sent in detailed comments on the draft Chapter 2 (facts of the assassination) and Chapter 3 (shots from the depository) a few days later. McCloy was most concerned with Chapter 3 because he believed that our discussion of the shots was “the most important chapter in the Report and it should be the most convincing considering the evidence we have.” His comments were aimed at improving the clarity and force of the chapter’s analysis of the evidence.109
Before he left for New York on June 23, Rankin discussed with Warren the possibility of a commission meeting to consider draft sections of the report. Warren wanted to have this meeting as soon as possible. He told Rankin that he wanted the commission to “decide the basic questions involved in the writing of the report and then have the staff prepare a draft of the report based on these decisions.” Apparently some of the commission members were concerned that “certain matters were discussed in the drafts although the basic decisions had not been made by the Commission.” Warren wanted to emphasize that the commission—not the staff—was responsible for the conclusions in its report. When Rankin told the chief justice that he would not be in town on Wednesday, Warren said that he would talk with Redlich and me “to assist us in preparing the questions” for the commission to decide. Rankin suggested over the phone that Jenner be present at our meeting with the chief justice because of their personal relationship and Rankin’s desire to have “someone of senior status” present to support us.110
On Wednesday morning, the three of us met with the chief justice for about ninety minutes. Before the meeting, Redlich and I tried to figure out how to respond to Warren’s comments to Rankin. The staff had the responsibility to develop the facts through investigative requests and testimony and then present findings (or conclusions), supported by the evidence, to the commission, identifying along the way the questions that required more investigation or analysis. This is the traditional way in which law-firm associates and junior partners prepare a draft memo or brief for a senior partner to review, revise, or discard as the senior wishes. The commission members wanted the staff lawyers to undertake the investigative and drafting tasks, but wanted to make certain that the ultimate conclusions reflected their judgments. Redlich and I respected these concerns and welcomed their initiative in identifying the questions to be addressed. We knew, of course, that the staff necessarily would be making proposed findings based on the evidence for the commission to consider and—like the senior partner—revise or discard. Although we discussed some of the questions that we thought the commission would want to decide, we decided not to present this list to the chief justice, but rather see what he had prepared and wanted to discuss with us. Rankin had told us that we were free to try to persuade the chief justice not to have a commission meeting on Thursday but to schedule it for a later day.111
At the beginning of our meeting Warren read forty or so questions that he had prepared earlier that day. The questions pertained principally to the facts of the assassination, and the identification of the assassin, and were quite detailed and appropriate. His recital of the questions took only three or four minutes. When he asked us what we thought of his approach, we were enthusiastic about his questions as a method for organizing the commission’s discussions. “We did suggest to him, however, that in some instance the Commission might feel that they needed some discussion of the evidence before they could resolve the questions,” but the chief justice “thought this might be true on only a few of the questions.” Warren had written his questions on a yellow pad, a staple of lawyer work. He handed over his list to me. His questions went to the heart of the matters we had investigated, his first five being: At what hour was the President assassinated? How many shots were fired? How many times was he wounded? What was the course of the bullets through his body? Were both shots lethal?112
During the meeting, it became apparent that Warren assumed that each commission member had received all of the draft memos and sections of the report that he had. When we told him that was not so, he became “extremely mad.” He said that he had “instructed Mr. Rankin to see that every Commissioner received everything that he had received.” Redlich and I were stunned. We looked at each other with dismay and then, very hesitantly, told him that we had not received any such instructions. At this point the chief justice realized that a commission meeting the next day to address his questions was not feasible if all the commissioners did not have the necessary materials. When he was called out of the room to take a call, I checked with Rankin’s secretary and learned that she had not been instructed to schedule a commission meeting for the next day. When Warren returned, Redlich told him that no meeting had been scheduled. “I thought he was going to have a heart attack but then he became very quiet and disheartened. It was clear that he felt that he had been deceived and that everyone was making it difficult for him to complete this job on time. It was either here or a little later that the Chief Justice said ‘Well, Gentlemen, we are here for the duration.’” We took this to mean that our failure to distribute the drafts to the members as he had hoped caused him to fear that “the work was going to stretch on for months.”113
Redlich and I were shaken by Warren’s reaction—and watched as this commanding and self-confident giant of a man so quickly became depressed by events beyond his control. We both had enormous respect for him and admired the time and energy he committed to the commission. His proposed questions for the commission were right on point, but he clearly had lost any interest in discussing them with us. Our practice in distributing drafts to members was not the result of any policy decision Rankin made; it developed gradually as some members expressed more interest than others in getting whatever materials the staff had produced. I should have seen this problem developing earlier and taken steps to correct it. Warren’s concern that this failure would cause the commission’s work “to stretch on for months” seemed a bit extreme under the circumstances, and likely reflected both his fatigue and his eagerness to finish a job he had not wanted.
We tried very hard to “soothe” the chief justice and “persuade him that all was not lost.” Redlich suggested that we have the meeting on Monday and we promised that we would distribute the available material to all commission members by the end of the week. We described how much material could be distributed, but he “did not seem particularly persuaded that this was any kind of accomplishment.”114
Although by this point we all wanted to bring the meeting to a speedy conclusion, two other matters required attention. On the subject of Oswald’s motive, Warren said that the commission “should not try to determine his motive with any precision. He did allow, however that we could spell out alternative motives.” Our colleague Jenner, who had been very quiet during the entire meeting, “said how relieved he was” that the chief justice felt this way because he “had filled his wastepaper basket with his writings dealing with motive because of his inability to fix on any certain motive.” There certainly was no lack of possible motives underlying Oswald’s assassination of the president. I knew that most of the staff tended to favor one motive over others, even if they didn’t agree what that dominant motive was. But the range of our views, likely to be matched by the views of commission members, would have presented a formidable challenge if we felt compelled to agree on a single dominant motive, or even a ranking of possible motives. So I too was glad to hear Warren express himself on this subject.115
Looking forward to the commission’s consideration of the questions to be decided, we suggested that members of the staff might participate. Without hesitation, the chief justice responded “that we should find something else for the beatnik to do”—referring to Jim Liebeler’s luxurious red beard. After a moment of awkward silence, I said that Liebeler “was doing a good job” for the commission and Redlich countered that “we all have different ways of expressing ourselves.” The chief justice said that he did not mean Liebeler was not doing a good job, but that “his beard might antagonize some of the conservative members of the Commission.” Taken aback by Warren’s unexpected bias, we just let the matter drop.116
Warren’s characterization of Jim Liebeler as a beatnik was, on the one hand, humorous because Liebeler, perhaps the most conservative lawyer on the staff, warranted the “beatnik” label less than anyone else. On the other hand, it was profoundly unfair because he brought enormous energy and intellectual force to his work and deserved our respect. Warren’s disappointment about our administrative failures probably produced the frustration that prompted this comment. When we reported this conversation to Liebeler, he took it in good humor, but thought it was serious enough to justify shaving his beard shortly thereafter. This was, after all, the 1960s.
Although I had concerns about some of Warren’s decisions, they had to be considered in light of the extraordinary commitment he brought to this assignment. He probably spent more time on the commission’s work than the other six members combined and, at the same time, attended to his duties at the Supreme Court. I believed also that, when the facts developed by the investigation were put before him, he would listen carefully to Rankin and consider what conclusions were justified.
After the meeting, Redlich and I quickly called Rankin. He was very concerned by Warren’s reactions at the meeting, but assumed full responsibility for our failure to distribute the materials as Warren had wanted. We immediately took steps to distribute materials to members who had not received them earlier. I advised each member that we would be sending additional drafts on Friday for their review before the meeting now scheduled for the following Monday.117
Redlich and I had each undertaken substantial writing responsibilities, which occupied me, at least, for the remainder of the week. We agreed that I would continue work on the narrative for Redlich to edit, while he would continue rewriting the Ball-Belin piece. The next few days were extremely hectic and tiring as we made an effort to edit and duplicate additional material for distribution. On Friday afternoon, Warren came to talk with Rankin, and I delivered the new drafts to him. Afterward Rankin told Redlich and me that the chief justice “was not particularly impressed.”118
I was not surprised at his initial reaction to these various drafts. They were isolated sections of what would ultimately, we hoped, be a coherent presentation of all the relevant facts. Some were more polished than others. I was certain that Warren wanted to see more work product than we had available. His comments may have also reflected his disappointment that the commission was seemingly unable to finish its work as rapidly as he had hoped.
Despite Warren’s misgivings, we now had on the table the set of questions to be decided by the commission. We also had delivered preliminary drafts of five out of eight chapters, which I thought was a considerable accomplishment. The absent chapters—Chapter 3 (dealing with the shots from the depository), Chapter 5 (dealing primarily with Ruby issues), and Chapter 7 (dealing with Oswald’s motive)—either required more investigation or necessitated integrating the work of different lawyers. To assist the commission in considering the questions put to them by Warren and to begin to shape materials for appendices to the report, we also delivered a draft portion of Oswald’s biography dealing with his boyhood and Marine career; a draft explaining the legal bases on which the State Department and INS made their decisions concerning the Oswalds; and a draft entitled “Press and Police in Dallas” (with a note from Rankin asking whether the commission wished to address this subject in its report).
At the following Monday’s staff meeting, we discussed several necessary but relatively minor aspects of the report. This involved questions about the analysis of Oswald’s finances, the inclusion of our chronology in the report, and the possibility of a subject index to the report and the other published material. The most important question—not discussed but on everyone’s mind—was whether any staff lawyers would be invited to consult with the commission later that day when it begin its consideration of the seventy-two questions that Redlich and I had prepared using Warren’s list as a starting point. By the end of our meeting, it was clear we were going to be excluded.119
This was the first staff meeting since Marina Oswald had returned to testify before the commission and stimulated some very frank comments. Jenner and Coleman (among others) complained that she had not been vigorously examined by the chief justice and Rankin. Redlich took on the task of defending Rankin, challenging the critics to identify any specific instance where they thought that more aggressive interrogation would have produced new information. In any event, he emphasized that it was evident that her testimony would not be given any significant credibility.120
I do not recall any discussion with Rankin after this meeting about the criticism of his handling of Marina Oswald. He and Redlich were the only two staff lawyers in the room when she testified. After reading her testimony, I think the criticism was directed particularly at the commission’s inability at the time to get a straight statement from Marina Oswald about her recollection of her husband’s desire to take a shot at Vice President Nixon.
The staff remained available throughout the afternoon of June 29 as the commission members considered the seventy-two questions before them. As it became apparent that no lawyers other than Rankin would be asked to discuss draft report sections with the commission, their discontent grew. Like most of my colleagues, I believed that the commission failed on this occasion and others to take full advantage of the expertise that individual members of the staff had acquired over several months. The commissioners, on the other hand, may have felt well-enough informed to decide the basic questions before them without any need for additional facts that Rankin himself could not provide. They understandably relied on Rankin to advise whether their discussion of an issue required information that he was not personally able to provide, in which event another lawyer might have been summoned to join the discussion.
In retrospect, Warren conducted the affairs of the commission just as he did with his fellow justices (with no law clerks present) in deciding cases before the Supreme Court. He expected each commission member to be fully prepared to discuss the issues, to listen to the views of his colleagues, and then to exercise his best judgment in reaching the conclusions that President Johnson had asked each of them personally to make. This may have been an unrealistic expectation for two reasons. First, Supreme Court justices devote their full-time efforts to consider the cases before them, whereas commission members had other, in some instances demanding, obligations requiring time and attention. Second, Supreme Court justices have law clerks to help them analyze the issues raised by the cases and to conduct additional research for them, whereas commission members for the most part lacked this kind of skilled and dedicated assistance. Notwithstanding these differences, I believe that Warren, by this stage of the commission’s work, had a good sense of the other members and their ability and commitment to prepare a report under his leadership that would respond to President Johnson’s mandate.
When the commission ended its meeting at about 6:45, a group of us marched into Rankin’s office to find out what had happened. Rankin told us that the members had done a considerable amount of reading and that “the meeting had gone well.” He said that they had resolved the first fifty-one questions unanimously, reserving decision on a few matters. The commission had agreed with the staff on all of these questions. This provided considerable relief to Redlich and me as all of our drafting and editing work had been based on our assumptions how the members would decide these questions.121
Although the staff’s collective ego was still bruised by the commission’s lack of interest in its views, most of the lawyers were pleased with the outcome. There was one exception. Ball still forcefully protested the way things were being handled. He was critical of the way he had been treated as consultant and critical of Rankin and those of us who were involved in the editing process. Although I knew he was upset by our rewriting his chapter, I never understood exactly what prompted Ball’s sharply worded criticism of the process.122
Ball, more than twenty-five years older than I was, had attained great professional success as a criminal defense lawyer, where success depends to a much larger extent (than on the civil side) on the personality, technical courtroom skills, and persuasive advocacy of the lawyer in charge of the defense. He was a charming and influential colleague, and I regret that he felt so mistreated by Rankin and those of us assisting him. We were all striving to produce a well-organized and coherent report that would assess the evidence fairly and, in the process, dispose of allegations that had been given wide circulation. Because he was a close friend of the chief justice, I thought it was especially important that Ball not become so disenchanted as to not endorse the commission’s report.
One unexpected decision emerged from the commission meeting of June 29. That day, the commission learned that the contents of Oswald’s diary had been published in the Dallas Morning News. Oswald called the diary of his mundane life in the Soviet Union a “Historic Diary,” reflecting his conviction that “he personally played a historically important role.” The commission was concerned by this disclosure not only because it had entrusted the confidentiality of such documents to the Dallas officials who had them, but also because evidence being disclosed piecemeal could be misleading. In addition, the commission had assured Marina Oswald’s counsel during her appearance on June 11 that the commission would make every effort to preserve her legal rights to the documents and other materials that she made available to the commission.123
The commission unanimously voted to request the FBI to investigate this matter. The Dallas Morning News accepted the FBI investigation as an accolade, stating, “The American people have a right to know, particularly any facet of an assassination of a president of the United States. The American press, large and small, has an obligation to tell them.” As with most such investigations, the leaker was never identified, but Warren became even more adamant about security before we published our report.124
Rankin made two other disclosures of importance to the press after this meeting. Rankin announced that the commission’s report would not be completed until after the Republican National Convention, scheduled to start on July 13, and the commission was not prepared to announce a target date for its public release. Rankin also said that the commission did not discuss the first published comments by Attorney General Kennedy about the assassination of his brother during a recent visit to Poland. On that occasion, Kennedy was quoted as saying that there was no question that Oswald did it alone and by himself. He expressed the additional view that ideology “did not motivate his act. It was the single act of an individual protesting against society.”125
I was as surprised as the commission members that Robert Kennedy had chosen that occasion to express such a definitive opinion on the issues under investigation by the commission and wondered who, if anyone, had recommended that he make such a statement at this time. I never asked and was never told. But our focus was elsewhere. We had a report to write.