WARREN REPORT CRITICISM

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200760016-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 19, 2016
• Sequence Number: 16
• Content Type: NEWSPAPER CLIPPING

0
"JERRMIAI1 O'LEARY
and sincere conclusions of the
men appointed to come as
close as humans can to the
;ultimate truth of the bloody,
I don't think anyone knows
nil the truth. I stood in the
basement of Dallas' police
station. and saw Lee Oswald
gunned down 12 feet from me
and I thought I saw.Tack Ruby
as a very short old man in tin
overcoat. But I cannot substi-
tute the theories of Lane or
;,Weisberg for the anguished
Approved For Release 2006/09/29 :'CIA-RDP8
A5H-rlNC/ION SL&
r J
"Sl1 '7) JUDGEMENT. By
'lark Lane. Holt, Rinehart
& Winston. 478 pages. $5.95.
WIITWAS:i. , By H a r o l d
:'cisberg. Pi-ivately printed.
208 paves. $4.95.
President Johnson set up
a commission of e ninent
? Americans, headed by Chief
.Justice Warr:-,, to investigate
? a;,r; report o;: the assassina-
tion of President Kennedy.
Since 'he commission
labored and brought forth its
findings (basically, that Lee
.Oswald was alone in his mad
a,ct) a number of individuals
?,ave set themselves up in
judgment over the Warren
Commission. The motives of
these critics are not particu- ?
larly important but their
impact, particularly outside
the United States, has .been
enormous.
These self-appointed critics
have succeeded to a remark-
'able degree in creating doubt
`that anything .done by the
Warren Commission will bear
scrutiny. Whether they intend- ? force."
have
riti
th
t
d
cs
e c
,
e
it or no
For the most part, the
nurtured the idea that, some- critics use the evidence with
show there was an unholy al- which.the Warren Commission
Hance involving Oswald, his worked but arrive at diamet-
'slayer Jack Ruby, murdered , rically opposite conclusions.
policeman J. D. Tippit and ex- If the - commission chose to
;tremists of eitherf the left or ,
rim ht.' Further, the critics accept the evidence or recol-
,have created the impression lection of one set of witnesses,
that the FBI, Secret Service' Lane is sure to lend more
and Dallas police collaborated weight to witnesses or evi-
with the Warren Commission dente which seems to contra-
. to conceal or distort any evi- diet. Lane's work teems with
dance pointing to the truth. the expressions: "as seems
' ,e first critic to rush into likely"; "is most unlikely";
print with his version of what this would indicate, et cet-
really happened was Thomas era ad nauseam.
Buchanan, ? an . expatriate Lane, among other points,
American who pitted. his ; concludes four shots were
conclusions against those of fired at the Kennedy car while
the . commission in. a book 'tile commission ' concluded
heavy with Marxist theory. there were three. Lane is
Another critique was the certain of the sequence of
product of ?a bright student's shots in terms of where they
master thesis. Harold Weis struck whereas the commis-
berg published his own hook, sion, with all the resources
hinted that publishers live in of government, could not be. '
C,, )1i~r^,7,
ti- iv il
Who does Lane-propose the
commission should
questioned? No other gii
W
lc c?.'~r 1 'L~`
shells were found on the knoll.
And. Weisberg, undermining f ~' $ .3 -O/ (~CC ati
his theories, writes ? that
anyone non
uote medical
q
evidence to aimost any ann.
,Both he and Lane make much
of the original impression of
some doctors that the wound
in the President's throat was a
wound of ' entrance, in short,
fired from in front of the car
and hence impossible for
Oswald to have fired.'
One of Lane's less subtle
techniques is to lambast the
commission for accepting the?
word of an umpromising
witness like Mrs. Helen Mark-
ham, who saw the fatal
shooting of Tippit. But Lane
does not boggle at shifting the
stick to his other hand and
whacking away at the com-
mission for not accepting Mrs.
Markham's recollections?as to
other events.
It is even less easy to ex-
plain why Lane testified
before the commission, since
he was not a witness to any-
thing. His credentials were
that he was chairman of a
citizens committee -of inquiry,
an organization he founded.
Lane also became attorney for
Oswald's mother and Attempt-
ed unsuccessfully to represent.
Oswald's interests before the
commission.
I do qot question the.right of
Lane or Weisberg to play the
game of ,demolishing ' the
commission report, splitting
hairs finer than the breath of
angels or of having theories of
Kennedy. But unless I am
prepared to believe that the
entire apparatus of the Ameri-
inquiries, then I conclude that
both authors are well-inten-
t.ioned amateur detectives at
.car of governmental wrath if, Lane also is critical that the best or guilty of committing
of the proliferation of such indicates may have been fired
i
i
i
i
h
f
ut cr
sms,
is
t
c
rett
ng head-on into the Kennedy car
about Bi' Brotherrdi ce and is the
publishers cowardice from a knoll near the overpass.
strange. It was approaching.
Indeed, Mark. Lane's . ...cn
on the Warren Commission
will be a special offerir.. of
the Book-of-the-Month .;:ub
and has been selected by the
Mid-Century Book Club for
September,
But what basis is there for
criticism of the Warren
Commission's performance or
'for suspecting odious and
undivulged ? depths to the
crimes committed in Dallas?
To believe much of what Lane
and Weisberger have to say is
? to stipulate that the commis-
sion was careless and lazy at
best or attempting a massive
cover-up c.?# a monstrous and
far-reachi;:" :lot at worst.
I can accept human error
by the commission and its
staff but not their involvement
'in Machiavellian designs. I can
accept the possibility that the
FBI is capable of error but
not Weisberg's conclusion that
the FBI report "is a tissue so
thin and a polemic so undis-
guised that it would demean
the labors- of a hick police