On the Kennedy Assassination Questions for the Warren Commission
Sauvage, Léo
The following two comments were written independently; neither author saw the article of the other before writing his own.—En. Leo Sauvage A Few Questions for the Warren Commission Many...
...Apparently, he was to act as a kind of defense lawyer, since the appointment, Warren said, was made "in fairness to the alleged assassin and his family...
...When confronted with the demonstration that none of these "findings" is supported entirely by the available evidence and that some of them are contradicted by it and irrelevant in addition, the ultimate argument of the defenders of the Commission is that each becomes persuasive because of the existence of the others...
...But the Report then reveals that when called upon to determine the maximum age of the prints, two experts gave estimates of a day and a half and three days...
...a summary of its "findings...
...I am still waiting for someone to explain to me why the Commission thought that contradictory examination of witnesses and documents would hamper the establishment of -truth...
...mission, that is, of the version of the assassination which "identifies Lee Harvey Oswald as the assassin of President Kennedy and indicates that he acted alone in that event," must do two things: he must explain and refute the evidence showing that the Warren Commission's investigation has been prejudiced from the start and systematically one-sided in all its steps...
...Edwin A. Walker, (8) possessed the capability with a rifle which would have enabled him to commit the assassination...
...Irving Howe, that evening, haughtily dismissed the critics of the Commission as "inept," it was quite an achievement for them to have brought two former staff members of the Commission to publicly reject the testimony of Howard Brennan, one of 202 the Commission's three star witnesses...
...Jenner said he was pleased by the question for "the answer is yes...
...Is it too much to ask the Warren Commission to choose once and for all between what some of its lawyers now are replying to its critics and what the Report itself has tried to tell the world for two years...
...As far as the second point is concerned, the Commission has facilitated the discussion by publishing on page 195 of its Report (edition of the U.S...
...Brennan's name is waved under the eyes of the readers of the Report—including the thousands of news commentators and managing editors who gave him the lead in their stories—at every other occasion, without reference to the little sentence starting on the bottom of page 145...
...They did it by invoking "findings" number 2 and 3. When asked about the obviously and even glaringly unsubstantiated affirmation of "finding" number 3, they admitted there was not much substance in it but added that it should be considered in relation with "findings" 1 and 2. Though Mr...
...It is absolutely indispensable, however, to emphasize one major aspect of the Commission's investigative attitude because it represents the technical demonstration of the Commission's prejudice...
...On page 250, for instance, it is stated that Brennan "made a positive iden203 tification of Oswald as being the person at the window...
...Since Oswald's work led him to handle the cartons every day, including several hours that very morning, how could the prints prove that he was at the window "at the time of the assassination...
...Albert E. Jenner, Jr., made the sensational revelation, during a TV interview, that indeed there was a Santa Claus...
...There is not the slightest doubt, moreover, that this was exactly the impression the Warren Commission intended to create...
...Meanwhile, any defender of the "so201 lution" presented by the Warren Corn...
...would have been of no use to the Commission...
...The Report also mentions, in support of "finding" number 3, that "Oswald was seen in the vicinity of the southeast corner of the sixth floor approximately 35 minutes before the assassination...
...Once again, however, and without splitting hairs with the Commission, how does Oswald's presence, "approximately 35 minutes before the assassination," at a place where he was normally working prove that he was there, rifle in hand, "at the time of the assassination...
...I cannot imagine, for example, Congress deciding upon an investigation of its own, since the very decision would imply lack of confidence in a commission in which members of Congress from both houses and both parties formed a majority...
...that is, about the more or less voluntary confusion shrouding the investigation of the murder of President Kennedy...
...I am alluding here to the manner in which the Commission's lawyers chose the witnesses, "prepared" them privately for their official appearance, and then, in addition, used all the tricks of their trade in order to have the witnesses say only what the Commission wanted to hear, and nothing else...
...Once again, is it too much to ask the Warren Commission to step down from the pedestal where it keeps itself wrapped in a shroud of disdain, pretending that it would be below its dignity to answer questions requesting facts, while slyly benefiting from Mr...
...Is the Commission willing to maintain that there is a valid identification when the witness who "identifies" the man in a police lineup admits that he has seen him before on television...
...If, in its later fact-finding, the Commission were to establish Oswald's innocence in the shooting of the President, the mass of documentation collected during the month of February about Oswald's childhood, youth, social behavior, sexual complexes, etc...
...By the way, the Report says those lineups were "conducted fairly" while the transcript shows that they were grossly unfair to the suspect...
...Why then waste a full month with the widow, the mother, the brother of a suspect about whose actual involvment in the crime the Commission had not started yet collecting information...
...The whale world, meanwhile, had been led to believe that there was an eyewitness named Brennan who actually saw Oswald shooting the President...
...Would the Commission have wasted its time and the taxpayers' money if, at any moment before starting its investigation, it had considered the possibility that this investigation might not conclude with the of irmation that "Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy...
...Government Printing Office, Washington, D.C...
...It would be something new, of course, in the Commission's conception of impartial fact-finding...
...Nizer's ignorance or from Mr...
...The point which matters here is that no governmental body or fact-finding committee, in a democracy, has the right to consider itself above criticism, scornfully refusing to answer questions under the pretext that its work is done and that it does not have to defend it...
...The Report states that "finger print and palmprint evidence establishes that Oswald handled two of the four cartons next to the window and also handled a paper bag which was found near the cartons...
...or policeman McDonald who arrested Oswald at the "Texas Theatre" and provided several contradictory descriptions of the arrest...
...Most of all, however, I would like to know what Craig or his associates actually did, after February 25, in fairness to Oswald, for there is no further mention of Craig or his associates in the Report, and none of the few interventions mentioned in the volumes of hearings appears related to any kind of defense for the "alleged assassin...
...Was there anyone who was charged with the responsibility for tearing your theories apart...
...Perhaps Warren Commission staff member Albert E. Jenner, Jr., will consent, one day, to mention one example where what he so eloquently describes has really happened...
...And yet, on December 23, 1956, a member of the Commission's staff, Mr...
...Thus, during a discussion, last September, at the Theatre for Ideas, with two lawyers of the Commission, Wesley J. Liebeler and Burt W. Griffin, the lawyers had to defend the legal validity of "finding" number 1, as phrased in the Report...
...Reading the stenog• raphic transcript of the interrogation of certain witnesses by certain lawyers is really a traumatic experience: dozens of times, there is an absolutely obvious question which could solve an obscure point and which any firstyear law student would feel impelled to ask, but which the Commission's distinguished lawyers carefully refrain from asking...
...and as a result of his criticisms or his suggestions, we frequently started over again or made additional investigations...
...This witness identified Oswald in a lineup as the man most nearly resembling the man he saw and later identified Oswald as the man he observed...
...Supreme Court...
...The Commission is accused of having done its work badly, it is confronted with precise questions pertaining to grave errors, omissions, or distortions...
...I do not have the space to enumerate the full list of questions which the Commission should be obliged to answer...
...Jenner's vivid imagination...
...Compared to the atmosphere of smug complacency which prevailed in the U.S...
...The two lawyers did not show any willingness, either, to vouch for another star witness, Helen Markham, whom the Report expressly calls "reliable," nor did they appear to share Chief Justice Earl Warren's faith in the most shining star of the Commission's constellation: Marina Oswald...
...And without giving a name, he said that a man "was given absolute carte blanche," that "he sat 204 through every session of the Commission," and that "he would act as a devil's advocate against conclusions we'd reached, say, after several weeks of study...
...And if the Commission resigns itself, as several of its lawyers have already done individually, to dismissing Brennan's testimony, is it too much to ask the Warren Commission to announce that one of its major "findings" has to be dismissed too...
...Or may defense lawyers in the U.S...
...It's a 14-line paragraph which pinpoints the major factual issues as emphasized by the Commission itself...
...Which brings us back to the other aspect of what was fundamentally wrong with the Warren Commission: its prejudiced approach and selected methods in finding facts...
...In the absence of any trace of any such examples in the Report, in the Hearings, in the Exhibits, or in the private statements of the various staff members including Mr...
...It thus perfectly delimitates a valid field to which the discussion can be held, and on which the critics have the right to ask that it be fought out, the Commission having had the choice of weapons...
...1 shall not ask Professor Bickel how he could have found out, after two years of abetting silence as well as of "rhapsodic relief," if it had not been for the critics...
...he must establish that all of the affirmations on which the Warren Commission bases its conclusion are proved beyond a reasonable doubt...
...It is obvious that "finding" number 3 rests entirely on Brennan's "eyewitness identification," yet when faced with the no less obvious fact that Brennan's testimony does not withstand a five-minute scrutiny, Liebeler and Griffin were able to reject this testimony while claiming not to contradict the Report...
...But the pressure of public opinion could and should obtain one major result: force the Warren Commission to meet again in order simply to set its own record straight...
...Or is the Commission, presided over by the Chief Justice of the United States, willing to maintain that when a so-called witness —sometimes a reticent one who has to be prodded by his interrogators— "identifies" two months after the event a man whose every feature is known to everyone but the blind, this is a valid identification...
...Marguerite Oswald when she pleaded before him, on February 10, 1964, to have her dead son represented by counsel, I would also like to know why the same Chief Justice appointed on February 25 Mr...
...still retain 205 some hope that the Supreme Court will not admit, in ordinary criminal cases, identification based on the type of police lineups the Chief Justice has approved of in the Oswald case...
...The Commission was pressed for time, so pressed for time that later on, in March and April, it had to deal wholesale, hearing four or five of them the same day, with essential witnesses to the events: policeman Baker, for example, who saw Oswald in the second floor lunchroom immediately after the shooting and may have provided him with an alibi...
...On the basis of these findings the Commission has concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy...
...Jenner was still expressing his indignation about the "irresponsible" books published against the Warren Report (he was being very polite, for his colleague Joseph Ball, in Los Angeles, had called the books "scurrious"), when one of the interviewers asked him the following question: "Did you have the kind of devil's advocacy that these people are representing, within the Commission itself...
...It has the absolute duty to answer each question, either correcting the critics or admitting its inability to do so...
...For the critics can today be read and heard, and when some cynical gentleman denounces them as "scavenging journalists," the public at least has the possibility of wondering whether even "scavenging," in this case, is not better than pushing evidence under rugs and burying corpses in closets, archives, or Fort Worth cemeteries...
...But let's confine ourselves to "finding" number 3. If Brennan's "identification" is dismissed, on what basis does the Commission declare that Oswald "was present, at the time of the assassination, at the window from which the shots were fired...
...If one were to adopt the Commission's way of reasoning, one would note here that the witness who gave the Commission that precious information added that when he last saw him, Oswald was "walking from the southeast corner of the sixth floor toward the elevator," that is, away from the window...
...When one adds to this the Commission's literally monstrous indifference to the most elementary rules of eyewitness identification, one has the right to demand, before examining the possibilities of a new investigation, that the Warren Commission either justify its attitude or retract the affirmations based on it...
...Here they are: The Commission has found that Lee Harvey Oswald (1)owned and possessed the rifle used to kill President Kennedy and wound Governor Connally, (2)brought this rifle into the Depository Building on the morning of the assassination, (3) was present, at the time of the assassination, at the window from which the shots were fired, (4) killed Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit in an apparent attempt to escape, (5) resisted arrest by drawing a fully loaded pistol and attempting to shoot another police officer, (6) lied to the police after his arrest concerning important substantive matters, (7) attempted, in April 1963, to kill Maj...
...The conclusion leading to "finding" number 3 again openly stresses Brennan's testimony: "An eyewitness to the shooting immediately provided a description of the man in the window which was similar to Oswald's actual appearance...
...Jenner then concludes this eerie dream sequence by triumphently reaffirming: "So we did have a devil's advocate...
...Walter E. Craig, president of the American Bar Association, to "participate in the investigation...
...I confess, however, that I am rather skeptical about the chances of a new investigation either by private committees or—as proposed by Representative Theodore Kupferman—by a Congressional body...
...But that was notls ngg more than a built-in subterfuge meant precisely to furnish a saving quote to the Liebelers and Griffins in a limited discussion...
...Is Chief Justice Warren willing to recommend the procedure used in the Dallas police lineups as setting new standards for the U.S...
...not so long ago, especially in "liberal" and even "radical" circles, the fact that a controversy is now raging represents, in itself, tremendous progress...
...For the Report, in the last line of page 145, starts explaining that the Commission "does not base its conclusion concerning the identity of the assassin on Brennan's subsequent certain identification of Lee Harvey Oswald as the man he saw fire the rifle...
...I have made this paragraph the object of the key chapter of my book The Oswald Affair, and I believe that no one defending the Warren Commission's version of the assassination should be allowed to skip any of its eight "proofs...
...Leo Sauvage A Few Questions for the Warren Commission Many arguments, good and not so good, poor and spurious, have been invoked in the controversy about the Warren Commission...
...After that, I would also like to ask the Commission why, if its mind was not made up in advance as to Lee Harvey Oswald's guilt, it spent the first month of its hearings listening to Marina Oswald, to Marguerite Oswald, to Robert Oswald...
...Is it too much to ask the Commission to decide officially— and to declare publicly— whether or not Oswald was identified as the man at the window...
...Did they, indeed...
...Jenner, it seems obvious that his description is pure fiction...
...Even Professor Alexander Bickel, who is very hostile to critics of the Warren Report, has stated categorically: "We know now that the Commission did not satisfactorily investigate the assassination...
...The Commission, having so decided, and Chief Justice Warren having so informed Mrs...
Vol. 14 • March 1967 • No. 2
