9 Things You May Not Know About the Warren Commission

[KurtNYC]

Recently compiled by researchers at The History Channel, I found this list of interest for a couple items I have not read elsewhere. Mostly, that LBJ privately disagreed with their report and that Castro had been interviewed by the Commission's lawyer.

Other items on the list focus on the things that have fueled doubts, theories and further investigation for 5 decades now:

5. The FBI and the CIA intentionally misled the Commission.
The FBI and the CIA had monitored Lee Harvey Oswald in the months before the assassination, but both agencies later tried to downplay their knowledge of him to the Warren Commission. Oswald had once even left a threatening note for an FBI agent at the Bureau’s office in Dallas. Fearful of catching blame for not preventing the assassination, the FBI later destroyed the note and even removed the agent’s name from a typewritten transcript of Oswald’s address book provided to the Warren Commission. Congressman Hale Boggs would later say that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover “lied his eyes out” to the Commission’s investigators.

Evidence also suggests that the CIA had Oswald under surveillance when he made a trip to Mexico in September 1963 and visited the Cuban and Soviet embassies, but the agency repeatedly denied any connection to the alleged shooter. The CIA also neglected to inform the Commission about its many covert operations in Cuba—including several schemes to assassinate Fidel Castro—even though those revelations might have helped shape the investigation.

6. The Commission offered no clear explanation of Oswald’s motives.
While the 888-page Warren report went into great detail outlining how Lee Harvey Oswald could have killed Kennedy, it gave little explanation of why he did it. In its findings, the Commission stated that Oswald’s actions could not be explained if “judged by the standards of reasonable men,” saying only that he was an isolated individual plagued by a life of failure and disappointment. The report would later conclude that, “the Commission does not believe that it can ascribe to him any one motive or group of motives.”
...
9. A second government investigation came to a different conclusion.
After the public release of new information including the Zapruder film—an amateur recording showing the Kennedy assassination in shocking detail—the U.S. House of Representatives formed the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations and reopened the investigation on the president’s murder. In 1979, the HSCA stated that acoustic evidence from a Dallas police officer’s radio showed it was likely that two shooters had fired on Kennedy’s limousine, and it concluded that the assassination “probably” involved a conspiracy. Although subsequent investigations have cast doubt on the radio evidence, the HSCA’s report helped fuel public dissatisfaction with the efforts of the Warren Commission.

The whole list is brief, dense and worth a read:

http://www.history.com/news/history-lists/9-things-you-may-not-know-about-the-warren-commission

[Scuba]

1. It was just a lone gunman.

It's always just a lone gunman.

[Spider Jerusalem]

2. Brief and misleading

the HSCA came to the same conclusion (that all the shots that struck Kennedy and Connally were fired from the TSBD, and were fired by Oswald). Their supposed evidence of conspiracy has been proven to not be evidence at all (the dictabelt recording is from a motorcycle that was nowhere near the motorcade).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictabelt_evidence_relating_to_the_assassination_of_John_F._Kennedy

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/acoustic.htm

http://www.thekennedyhalfcentury.com/pdf/Kennedy-Half-Century-Audio-Research.pdf

[JackRiddler]

3. Ford was informing FBI about Commission deviants...

2. Gerald Ford secretly provided information on the Commission to the FBI
While serving as a leading member of the Warren Commission, future U.S. President Gerald Ford also acted as an inside informant for J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI. Several months after his death in 2006, a cache of declassified documents revealed that Ford, then a U.S. congressman, had approached FBI Assistant Director Cartha DeLoach and offered to confidentially keep the Bureau informed on the Commission’s deliberations. Among Ford’s many leaks was the revelation that two unnamed members of the Commission—most likely Richard Russell and Hale Boggs—remained unconvinced by FBI evidence that the kill shot had been fired from the Texas School Book Depository.

[KurtNYC]

5. This one and part of 5 seem to be aimed at keeping the WCR from saying

anything embarassing about, or placing any blame on these agencies and I think that is to be expected. But this about Fordf points to a kind of feedback loop -- eg. if Ford is saying that 2 members are unconvinced what does the FBI do about that?

[JackRiddler]

6. Russell was conned directly by WCR staff.

He was told his dissent would be recorded and included, and it wasn't. Good soldier, unfortunately, did not go public but talked about it to various people, including Garrison.

Boggs, we'll never know if it's related, but some years later he went down in a small plane crash (never found) over Alaska, along with a Rep. Begich.

And in that vein...

The most suspicious JFK-related death is surely De Mohrenschildt's decision to murder himself with a shotgun to the mouth a day or two before he was due to testify to the HSCA in the 70s. Yeah, right.

[avaistheone1]

4. This is a great list.

I hope to add more items to it shortly.


k&r