_ A Report by Tad-i Szulc 11: The Warren Commission in its :Own :Words

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A Journal of Pcilitigsl.andithe Arts:-7September '7:;--..-3975, 50 cents

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THE NEW REPUBLIC A joUrn.al. PLFolitics and the Arts, Vol. 173, No. 13, Issue 3768, September: 27, 1915: Published weekly (eicePt :the issues of January 4, July 12, August 9; August 23) and distributed by The 'Flew Republic, 1244 19th Street, N.W. WashingtOri, DC 2003'6. Rhoh?..3.1111-.7494. Single.. copy, 50t;Yearly subscriptions, Si 7; foreign, $20; students! 11- remittances and corresponderice, • about .subscriptions, undelivered copies and changes" of addreis to Subscription DePartment; The New Republic, 381

CeLtifer Street, Mariok, Ohio 43802.. Copyright 7975- by The New'RepUblic, Inc: Item .g. Second class ePAid at Washington, DC and .additional mailing offices: Indexed in.Reader's Guide: The prestudy for, he

ail John F. Kennedy, on the cover, "Copyright. 197 1 .by Jainek.W.yetlf.- : . . .

o te t

°U r: n.F. Kennedy—James Wyeth

7 1C mm ri • IIT e Gho t Will Not Rest

91T eW.ir ;Commission in its Own Words

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48 Af e Marshall

52 :Fill4s tail Kauffmann

53 4,edi .the Silver Screen Lcerni

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57 pobks R iews by Millicent Bell, Neil Harris,

I tecirge Frank E. Vandiver

64 Re on ide Lion: Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky .B.ibla lion, Jr.

65.TI F the Book—Roger Rosenblatt

.67: reJpp dente

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• t i•'—Lincoln Caplan

cQn r g Editors—Robert Brustein, ber:t gOles, Joseph Featherstone, Gerald

'!1/ ;Jloh ion, Nathan Lewin, Roger Morris, r). gnibene, John Seelye, Tad Szulc,

I it I./knell; Michael Walzer, • R leek

Fil heater-Stanley Kauffmann We CO st Editor—Peter Barnes

Mahager—Ilene Briggin Kahane • As i tan rbduction Manager—

?Ritter • Circ liti jManager-

Frl zeb !Scanlan:O'Brien 'Bu ii1 s Mahager—Pearl Wilmer RamSey Assi$t nt business Manager—,. •

Co't tan e Cole Twining NeWalic Feature Syndicate—.

1t.i I el' Seigrave i g:apd Promotion—

Be iiJelwburger. Rete0 lo 't!—Ruby McGowan

• Adijet Isi Representative—._ - EU:• elte White,,50 E. 92nd St.,

N "et ' 0017, (212) 986-6210 •

1 !. T he ,Warren :CorMhisSion, .appointed by `President Johnson to investigate, the assassination ofli his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, finished its tudy and published its 27-voltime report 11 years ago this •'—

' week. Claiming that Wand its staff had examine_ dallavailable evide ce and .leads, the Commission cqncluded that' Lee Harvey Oswa ,.

. psychologically troubled-and acting alone, had killed the President. It . alsb found, then, nothing to support the hypothesiS of conspiracy to

i assassinate Kennedy. hi'-this, lits considered judgment was fully consistent with that of the FBI 1-1c1 other intelligende agencies. . The Commission corriposedi of seven 'pblitically eminent and

powerful men; hoped that the .iesults. of its deliberations would be accepted by the Ainerican people as the'full and final truth. VOt a ShadOw of doubt has always hUng over the investigati6nS the murders of Martin Luther King, Jr. and P esident Kennedy'.s,biother Robert in 1968, even:the attempted,assai inati6n sof COI/. George Wallace, fed the suspicions: Though not in ate context of the Kennedy assassina-tion, various revelations, implicating .both the FBI and the Gilt, in , b-irninal activity, On theii' own mild in association with gangsters, fired the imagination of the During the last decade, moreover, a

'Colioi-Cof.-"aSsassinatiorJ. buffs';' has. developed ' a body of material , .poking holes in theCcimrnission's•■;trOrk here, establiShing alternative

!• ekplanations there. The ghost of John Kennedy,.it seerits, simply will not rest:. . . ' • ' ' '1i. - I. Gradually the National-A;Ohities available deClaSsified and made ailable to 1 . , public scrutiny a mass of Warren Commission raw materials that are riot part '.of the originil reports most. interesting of these items •

I Were 'releasedlast March and ikpril. What is in the 'Archives has, recei:red far less q ttentibn 'W

i an it deserves: The mass of information .

clties not in itself •refute the •CornMiSsion'S! ultimate juclgment about ?swald's responsibility;for the crime. We do. not have- suppressed

:evidence pointing to:another killer. : : [ L. .- • I •, Nonetheless...the materials we have examined point to.:a hitherto

unrevealed2bUt torte ted and at tagonistic relatiorthhip between the ,, commission and The FBI. This 0-month strUggle,.the study, below - •

. • indicates, grayely distorted the. Vweitigation 'in various ways. Only now for' ekample, .do we knoi that . the '.FBI 'concealed from the

::Commission that 10 days before the assassination Oswald'wrote the '

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GI^ rrrlia Editorial Board—Martin Peretz PtU Iishe Robert). Myers •

ditor—David Sanford . itor—Roger Rosenblatt r— John Osborne

-•ditor—Eliot Marshall qhe Editors—Gweri Somers • -

A r t n jt 'the Literary pditor— • olt

The New Republic

bureau threatening to blow up the Dallas police station. Not only did the FBI fail to.inform the Commission; but it destroyed Oswald's letter.

Moreover the Commission's published record is not a complete and accurate account of what the Warren panel had been told. A case in point is the sketchy and ambiguous quality of its inquiry into the life And associations of Jack Ruby, the presumed assassin's killer. We have not tried to follow thg tantalizing trail. Among the documents now available, however, are the bulk of the transcripts of the panel's executive sessions. Two of these transcripts remain classified, inevitably raising corrosive but reasonable specUlation as to why any transcripts of a commission, which concluded the assassin to be a disturbed individUal uninvolved with political conspiracies or government agencies, need be • kept secret at all. But what we have read conftitutes an internal history of the Warren Comimission, its ambivalences and torments, its outrage at being stam-peded into preordained judgments—and this is diturb- ing enough. 1 • -

We asked Tad Szulc, one of ouricontributing editors, to do .his own report on these transcripts. We devote the bulk of this expanded issue of The New Republic to his analysis and annotated text of the Warren Commission proceedings and related matter from the Archives: That is followed by a postmortem on the Commission by Associate Editor Eliot Marshall, based on interviews With some of the surviving principals. All of this makes, we think, gripping reading. We understand' that the words of the Cominissioners,,self-assured men of the

i world involved in what 'ma' Have been the most traumatic undertaking of their careers, are likely firther to undermine public confidence in their work.

- • The quegtion is, then, whether the investigation should be reopened now. It is possible, though, that the trail is now already cold, covered over by death and history and the contrivances of men anxious to protect their professional reputaltions or perhap 'even to disguise their complicity in the great crime. 1

We would feel more comfortable if we were certain . that following the injunction of Justice BrandeisHto pursue "truth even unto its innermost parfs":---would at this late date be a very rewarding undertaking. It may well be, that others; ferreting out stray and fugitive clues, will be persuasive that another; inquiry is 4bsolutely essential. -There are many responsible people, in, public life and out—some with relevant information and others with intuitionwhO are convinced that a fresh investigation is called for. If!this

r were clearly to meet the claims of justice itind conscience, we would be eager that it happen. Perhaps*

I those claims are', now so great that only a new I examination. of the case will satisfy the American

people. But nations, like individual men and women, must learn . to liVe with mystery and doubt, which 7 .

Study for Portraitiof President John F. Kennedy by AarOn Shikler, means also that sometimes the most terrible truths are Courtesy of Davis and 6ng Company, New York. beyond ;knowim'

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