JFK'S MURDER: SOWERS OF DOUBT

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00149R000600160046-2
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 18, 1999
• Sequence Number: 46
• Publication Date: April 6, 1964
• Content Type: NSPR

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Sonic at hone, many more abroad, raise skeptical questions
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JFK's I urden. Sowers of Doubt
Almost from the first, the crime of the that Lyndon B. Johnson named his ex-
century seemed hardly a mystery. A traordinary commission of inquiry with
bare 90 minutes after John F. Kennedy Chief Justice Earl Warren as chairman.
was shot down in Dallas last Nov. 22, But the commission is still taking testi-
Lee Harvey Oswald was trader arrest. mony in private, its verdict still two or
Before the night was out, he was for- three months away. Until that verdict is
mally charged with the assassination. in, the public case against Oswald re-
Within two clays, he had been tried in mains a collage of statements and mis-
the press, convicted in the public mind, statements by Dallas authorities in
and executed by small-time strip-joint the first chaotic days after the assas-
impresario jack Ruby. It was open and sination, patched' up piecemeal by un-
shut-or .ti as it? attributed leaks from Washington and
A nagging chorus of doubts was amateur sleuthing by newsmen.
abroad on both sides of the Atlantic last Grab tram: That mixed bag has been
week, the dissenting opinions of a world a grab bag for the doubters, a source of
not yet wholly convinced that Oswald- loopholes and contradictions for anyone
and Oswald alone-killed the President, with the time and the will to subject the
Some of the alternate views were press accounts to a close, selective exe-
plainly farfetched: it was a plot by the gesis. Conspiracy theories are common.
Syndicate, or the CIA, or labor rack- currency abroad. And an ex-Communist
eteers, or a ring of Dallas cops. Yet such American in Paris, Thomas Buchanan,
tales are only the most imaginative mak- seems destined for the widest circulation
ing the rounds in the absence of a final, with one of the most fanciful recon-
authoritative account of the case. Some structions of all; :Oswald was little more
of the doubts are political, the specula- than an errand boy and, finally, the fall
tions of those given to a conspiratorial guy in a plot involving several Dallas
view of events. The far right has been policemen. His account-serialized in,
relatively quiet, content to rest its case the Paris tabloid L'Express-has been
on Oswald's private "Marxism" and his snapped up by book publishers through
two-year defection to Russia as ipso out Europe.
facto evidence of a Communist plot. The And Oswald is not without defenders'
voice of the ]eft has been lustier. in the U.S. His most ardent advocate
Thrown onto the defensive by Oswald's has been Mark Lane, a New York law-
politique, it has applied reverse English yer who made his name as a controver
to the conspiracy theory: the suspect sialist in a. lonely, losing campaign for
was really an FBI hireling, } crypto- conflict-of-interest legislation as a one-
rightist-if he was involved at all. .,,term state assemblyman. He had al-
But even in the middle, some Ameri- 'ready argued Oswald's innocence in a
cans-and many Europeans-simply find lengthy "brief" published in the leftist
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it hard to believe that so great a crime National Guardian when the suspect's much as a bump on the outer layer,
should be so randonn, so absurd, so de- mother, Marguerite, named him de-
, . , , . - I said one commission insider-and there
seems in the official view. he has carried his cause onto the col-', was .no u e o e.
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fission riseir granted him a hearing.
And critiques by other skeptics have
appeared in several liberal journals,
among them The New Republic, The
Nation, and Commentary.
Questions:- The critiques are a
mixed lot, some based entirely on news
paper accounts, others-including Lane'
-fleshed out by on-scene inquiries ii
Dallas. Yet they share an instinct for
the soft spots in the case thus far mad
public. With official sources under or
dens to button up until the Warren re
pc,rt is in, the doubters have raises
some puzzling questions for which onl
incomplete answers are now available
The key points:
Did all the shots fired at the Ken
nedy motorcade really come from th
sixth floor of the Texas School Boo
Depository, where Oswald worked?
The doubters argue that one, at least
came from a railroad overpass or
grassy knoll dead ahead of the motor
cade-not from the Depository to th
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the angle ot re, and so r e cop
who first broadcast a report of the as-
sassination. Moreover, doctors at first
described a wound just below the Presi-
dent's Adam's apple as an entry wound
-an impossible shot from the rear. Two
newsmen reported seeing a bullet hole
in the windshield of the Kennedy lim-
ousine. And some press tallies of the
number of recovered bullets suggest
that four or five shots were fired-not
three as officially indicated.
Investigators simply dismiss ear-wit-
ness accounts of where the shots came
from; besides, no known witnesses saw
a rifle on the knoll or the overpass,
while some reported seeing a gun bar-
rel in the Depository window. They
also discount the entry-wound diagnosis
as the fleeting impression of doctors be-
fore they opened the President's throat
in the attempt to save his life. Accord-
ing to subsequent leaks, an autopsy at
Bethesda, Md., showed the President
had been hit twice from behind-once
in the back of the shoulder, once in the
back of the head. A third shot hit Texas
Gov. John Connally in the back.
Authorities remain convinced that no
other shots were fired. By their count,
the bullet that hit Connally lodged in
his leg. Another fell from Mr. Ken-
nedy's body when he was placed on a
stretcher-thus giving rise to reports of
a fourth bullet. The third bullet frag-
mented: one chunk exited through Mr.
Kennedy's throat, and another scarred
the inner layer of glass in the three-ply
wasn't so
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CIA
Sanitized - Approved For Release : -RDP75-00149R00060016QO9d'
 d ob R
Sanitized - Appro eOIA
Sanitized - Approved For Release : CIA-RDP75-00149R000600160046-2