Warren Commission

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Warren Commission report cover page

The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as The Warren Commission, was established on November 29, 1963, by Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of the U.S. President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. It concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy. The Commisson's findings have since proved extremely controversial and have frequently been challenged.

The Commission took its unofficial name—the Warren Commission—from its chairman, Chief Justice of the United States Earl Warren.

Contents

1 Overview
2 Findings
3 Aftermath
4 References
5 External links

Overview

After Lee Harvey Oswald was shot to death, President Johnson consulted with various government officials, many of them by telephone, regarding having some form of investigation into the assassination. On November 26, 1963, The Washington Post published an editorial advocating the formation of an investigative commission.

After many consultations throughout the week, Johnson, by executive order on November 29, 1963, created an investigatory commission to be headed by Warren. He also called on the following members and told them that they would be members of the commission:

Representative Hale Boggs (Democrat - Louisiana)
Senator John Sherman Cooper (Republican - Kentucky)
Former CIA Director Allen Dulles
Representative Gerald Ford (Republican - Michigan), a future Vice President and U.S. President; and sole surviving member of the commission.
Former World Bank president and diplomat John J. McCloy
Senator Richard Russell, Jr. (Democrat - Georgia)

Future Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter worked as a staff attorney for the commission.

During its investigation, the commission heard testimony from 552 witnesses and the reports of 10 federal agencies, including the Secret Service, the FBI, the Department of State, the CIA, and military intelligence. The hearings were closed to the public unless the person giving testimony requested otherwise; only two witnesses made that request. Some of the witnesses gave sworn affidavits; two witnesses gave just written statements. On September 27, 1964, after a 10 month investigation (and about 5 weeks before the presidential election), the Warren Commission Report was published.

Findings

The report concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was solely responsible for the assassination of Kennedy and that the commission could not find any persuasive evidence of a conspiracy—either domestic or foreign—involving any other person(s), group(s), or country(ies). The theory that Oswald acted alone is informally called the lone gunman theory.

The commission concluded that only three bullets were fired during the assassination and that Lee Harvey Oswald fired all three bullets from the Texas School Book Depository behind the motorcade. It noted that three empty shells were found in the sixth floor sniper's nest in the book depository, and the rifle was found (with one live cartridge left in its chamber) on the sixth floor, balanced unsupported on its buttstock.

The commission's determination was that:

it was likely that all injuries inside the limousine were caused by only two bullets, and thus one shot likely missed the motorcade, but it could not determine which of the three. (The 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations agreed that two shots caused all the injuries.)
the first shot to hit anyone struck President Kennedy in the upper back, exited at his throat, and likely continued on to cause all of Governor John Connally's injuries,
the second shot to hit anyone fatally struck Kennedy in the head 4.8 to 5.6 seconds later.

The commission concluded that the first bullet entered Connally's back, exited his chest, went through his right wrist, lodged in his left thigh, and later fell out onto his stretcher at the hospital. Many conspiracy theorists argue that this "magic bullet" exited Connally in nearly pristine condition, which is actually not the case. The bullet does appear undamaged from one angle but is actually severely flattened on one side, with a large quantity of lead extruded out its back. This theory has become known as the single bullet theory, and it is important because there was not enough time for one shooter to fire twice in the apparently very brief time between the injuries of the two men. Some ballistic evidence has suggested that such a bullet trajectory was possible, and there are some frames of the Zapruder film in which the position and reaction of the two men could be consistent with this scenario, but this particular point is a source of much contention and disagreement. The 1979 House Select Committee on Assassinations Report agreed with this theory but differed on the time frame.

The Warren Commission Report in chapter 8 details flaws in the United States Secret Service security at the time of the assassination. Procedures in place and not in place combined with events of the day presented security lapses that enabled the assassination. These included:

Not telling Dallas police, specifically, who 'authorized personnel' were, to stand on bridges or overpasses
Not having in place the policy of searching all buildings, windows, and roof tops surrounding the path of a motorcade
Not properly and thoroughly checking the backgrounds of those in potential close contact with Kennedy and those who were potential threats to Kennedy—that program was new and undermanned in 1963
Assuming that security measures taken in a 1936 Franklin Delano Roosevelt visit to Dallas could be used to model Kennedy's visit
Generally insufficient personnel to accomplish the task at hand of planning and executing the motorcade
Incomplete coordination of information between U.S. and local law enforcement bodies
Not having a car with a bulletproof top available for the President (one had been proposed in October 1963 but had not been acted upon, and no such car had existed for the White House since 1953 because such a car would have a top difficult to add and remove on demand)
* When on the phone with FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, a week after the assassination, Johnson asked him if he had a bulletproof car. Hoover replied "Yes, I do." Johnson asked if he should have one, he was told, yes. [link]
Allowing Kennedy enough leeway within security plans that put him in harm's way
Letting the motorcade slow down dramatically at several turns—which probably gave ample times for shots

Aftermath

The specific findings prompted the Secret Service to make numerous modifications to their security procedures.

Upon its release in 1964, all files of the Warren Commission were sealed from public view for 75 years (until 2039) by executive order of President Johnson. According to the Assassination Records Review Board, Kennedy assassination related documents that have not been destroyed are scheduled to be released to the public by 2017.

In the years following the release of its report and 26 investigatory evidence volumes in 1964, the Warren Commission has been frequently criticized for some of its methods, important omissions, and conclusions—in particular its lack of comment on the destruction of crucial evidence by law enforcement authorities and intelligence agencies. Comments were apparently made on this behind closed doors, but these did not reach the published report. Several individual pieces of the commission's findings also have been called into question since its completion.

The CIA urged its agents to use their "propaganda assets" to attack those who didn't agree with the Warren Report. In a dispatch from CIA headquarters, the Agency instructed its agents at field stations:

1---To counteract the "new wave of books and articles criticizing the [Warren] Commission's findings...[and proposing] conspiracy theories ...[that] have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization";

2---To "discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts, especially politicians and editors ";and

3---To "employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. ...Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. ... "The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists..."

"Cable Sought to Discredit Critics of Warren Report" New York Times, December 26, 1977,p.A3

The Assassination Records Review Board was created in 1992 by the JFK Records Act to collect and preserve the documents relating to the assassination. It pointed out in its final report:

:Doubts about the Warren Commission's findings were not restricted to ordinary Americans. Well before 1978, President Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and four of the seven members of the Warren Commission all articulated, if sometimes off the record, some level of skepticism about the Commission's basic findings. [link]

Three other U.S. government investigations have agreed with the Warren Commission's conclusion that two shots struck JFK from the rear: the 1968 panel set by Attorney General Ramsey Clark, the 1975 Rockefeller Commission, and the 1978-79 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), which reexamined the evidence with the help of the largest forensics panel. The HSCA involved Congressional hearings and ultimately concluded there was a conspiracy wherein four shots were fired. The HSCA concluded that Oswald fired shots number one, two, and four, and that an unknown assassin fired shot number three (but missed) from near the corner of a picket fence that was above and to President Kennedy's right front on the Dealey Plaza grassy knoll. However, this conclusion has also been criticized, especially for its reliance upon questionable audio evidence.

References

Inquest—The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth, Edward Jay Epstein, 1966, Viking Press.

This book was originally a master's thesis. It discusses the formation of the Warren Commission, its members and their responsibilities.

External links

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