Sauvage from Dallas November 29, appeared in the Paris morning daily Le Figaro of 30 Nov.l-Dec. The conclusions to which Léo Sauvage came are similar to those expressed by ail wings of the French press -- Editor. ]
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Where does the investigation on the assassination of the President of the United States stand today? In all honesty, without attempting to draw political conclusions yet, without attempting above all to follow those for wnom the political conclusions were already drawn before the investi-« gation began, the reply must be short, frank and brutal: -the investigation of the assassination of the President of the United States has bogged down in total confusion, The reason for this is that the main lines of this investigation were posed with ag much incompetence as fixed preconceptions, go that the display of errors, omissions, contradictions, improbabilities. is such that it would be difficult. to excuse it even in the investigation of a rural constable in the raid of - a hen roost,
Doubtless, it is necessary to be objective, to note first of all certain character traits of the Texans, because these traits, sympathetic in other circumstances, are playing their part in the impardonable dis- | order that one finds here,
The reporters who were in Dallas, from ‘the first day, have described with fright on looking back how they were able to walk around in the offices of police headquarters, sitting on the tables, helping themselves to the telephones, etc. I myself got declarations from the assistant prosecuting attorney, Jim Bowie, in the way I mentioned above, entering without any appointment and without being announced in his office, the © door being open, I introduced myself, he offered his hand and invited me to sit down. The office crew had lett when the conversation ended. We took the elevator together, leaving open all the doors of the Dallas courthouse, where the Oswald affair is considered closed, but where they are now undertaking the Ruby affair.
This: "good Joe" side -~- this Marseillais side, I would say, if I did not fear vexing my friends of the Old Port -- would be charming if the Oswald and Ruby affairs did not concern the assassination of President Kennedy, and also if the affable prosecuting attorney Bowie had shown
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himself able in some measure, during a,.conversation of more than an hour, to give a satisfactory response to at least one. of the five or six errors, omissions, contradictions and improbabilities which I asked him to explain.
I had already indicated the incongruity of the chicken bones (and the bottle of Coca Cola and the package of empty cigarettes), since the witnesses mentioned by the authorities affirmed that they had left Oswald in the building at the time they went down to see the Presidential motor cade, hence’ a very short time before the attempt. The remains of the meal, which seemed to attest that the assassin had been there for a long time, were never again mentioned, I therefore asked prosecuting attorney Jim Bowie to tell me what had become of them. I transcribe the conversa~ _ tion literally:
"Oh, that. . . Those remains were old, the bones weren't fresh, It wasntt Oswald. who ate the chicken, That was someone else, the evening before,'
"Has the person been found who ‘went to eat a chicken, the evening before, close to the window from which President Kennedy was killed?"
"Tl dontt know; I don't believe so,"
“are they looking for Him?"
"Without doubt,"
rT will return in the next article to ‘the other texplanations" of the same kind which I obtained around the Dallas court house, or which were ‘published by the local authorities, The inacceptable improbability of most of these "explanations" casts suspicion on the whole collection of proofs furnished, even those relating to the gun in the crime, which all of us had considered, up to now, as overwhelming, All the more so, since each time the possibility opens of verifying the affirmations of the authorities, one runs into omissions, deformations, or even flagrant inexactitudes, :
This morning, for example, the Dallas Morning News published an investigation by two of its reporters who, in passing, had interviewed the driver in particular of the bus taken by Oswald after the attempt. According to the driver, Oswald said absolutely nothing when he got on the bus, it was a man in the street who told the bus driver that the traffic jam that had stopped them was due to an attempt against the President, and when Oswald got off, he asked the driver for a transfer.
The Dallas Morning News is on excellent terms with the local authorities and refrained from insisting on the contradiction with "the incomplete reports published previously." Now these "incomplete reports" were in reality declarations made by prosecuting attorney Henry Wade in person, Sunday evening, during a televised press conference, The "grinning" Oswald announcing the assassination of the President to the passengers on the bus even held a place of honor among the prosecuting attorney!s "proofs, "Hence this proof, which proved nothing, now seems to be likewise revealed as false,
That's why if anyone were to ask me today to draw up a list indicating ‘the certain facts in this affair, I would reply that the only absolutely certain fact is the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22 in Dallas.
JOHNSON PUTS. EARL