WARREN REPORT
UNDER INCREASING FIRE IN AMERICAN PRESS
. By Arthur Maglin
(Last of. three articles. ] . ‘Recently, articles critical of the Warren ‘Report have appeared in several wellknown publications. In the December 15 issue of The The Reporter, ‘the magazine's associate editor, Kenneth Goodall, writes in a review of Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment and Edward Jay Epstein's Inquest:
"Te Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy has failed to dispel the doubts that swept the country and the world in the aftermath of the tragedy three years ago in Dallas. A recent public-—opinion poll tells us that the conspiracy theory is very much alive in the minds of Americans, despite the overwhelming credence given to the single-assassin conclusion of the Warren Report when it was issued in September, 1964. .
"These two books not only have helped to feed the lingering doubts but also have infected persons heretofore immune. Some of the Warren Report's earliest and warmest admirers in the United States and Europe now have decided that their original estimates may have been too hasty.'
Later the article reports some interesting information about the disposition of the X-rays and photographs taken during the autopsy of President Kennedy which have become central to the discussion of the number and direction of the shots that killed him:
"Whatever these photographs show, the tight restrictions placed on them under an agreement between the government and the Kennedy family do not seem likely to diminish the suspicions of the critics. Although the first reports of the Justice Department's action [of obtaining the pictures from the Kennedy family for the National Archives] gave the impression that any Federal investigative agent would-be permitted to see them, this is not the case. Deputy Archivist James’ ‘B. Rhoads told me that for the lifetime of President Kennedy's immediate family, including his children, the X-rays and photographs will be freely available only to official investigators of any Federal body ‘that might be established to look further into the assassination. After five years, medical scientists approved ‘by the Kennedy family may also see’ them." io
The January 7 New New Republic carries an article by: contributing editor Alexander M. Bickel criticizing the Warren Report and calling ‘for a new investigation. . Bickel writes that "serious and responsible proposals for a renewed investigation -- a new trial, if you will -- have recently come from many quarters. :The idea was first broached last summer by Richard N. Goodwin, the former presidential assistant, in a review of: - Edward Jay Epstein's book, Inquest. Mr. Goodwin suggested merely that an independent group should determine whether a new investigation is necessary. Others have since * gone farther, among them Life magazine, Walter Lippmann, Arthur Schlesinger Jr.,- Senator Russell Long of Louisiana, the majority’ whip, and,.a number of congressmen. Even a member of the Warren Commission, Representative Hale Boggs of Louisiana,’ although he sees no reason for a full new investigation, has said that it might be well to have a panel of medical men and others report on photographs and, X-rays of President Kennedy's body, made in the course of an autopsy that was performed at Bethesda Naval Hospital . "
Perhaps the most significant in the latest batch: of articles is Richard J. Whalen's "The Kennedy Assassination" in the January 14 Saturday. Evening Post Post. The Post is a mass circulation magazine comparable to Life. Like Life's articlé before it, the. Post assumes that the Warren Commission's case against Oswald was a good one, put argues that the Commission did not sufficiently. investigate the existence of possible. accomplices. Both Life and the Post try to throw cold water on the arguments of such critics as Mark Lane, Harold Weisberg and Leo Sauvage, who contend that the Commission failed miserably in trying to prove Oswald was involved in the assassination. Whalen writes: 5
»
"The evidence against Oswala remains as ‘hard' as it was when Ruby's bullet killed him. Every piece of 'soft' evidence, from the puff of smoke to the tracing of the President's head-snap, tends to support the possibility of a second assassin."
The capitalist press seems to be joining the side of the critics in order to contain the controversy. Whatever the truth about Oswald's role in the assassination, it is certainly more expedient from a bourgeois point of view to believe that the august members of the Warren Commission did not reach a "guilty" verdict against an innocent man. After what was reported as the most complete criminal investigation
in the nation's history, such a mistake would suggest too vividly the existence of an excess of either moral bankruptcy or complete incompetence holding sway over such institutions as the Supreme Court, the Congress, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Presidency. From the point of view of the capitalist class, it would clearly be far better to believe that the Commission proved its case against Oswald, but that it failed to pursue its investigation far enough to discover if Oswald had an accomplice.
The same issue of The Saturday Evening Post which carried Whalen's article, also carried an editorial calling for a new inquiry:
"Publicity and politics are both dangers to such an inquiry. It would be difficult to find anyone totally immune to the pressures that would inevitably arise -pressures to suppress the unpleasant, to cover up any mistakes, to leak conflicting versions of the evidence. Nonetheless, it would be a total rejection of our society to assume that we cannot create a fact-finding committee of indisputable impartiality, skill, experience, rectitude, and concern for the truth."
For revolutionary socialists, who do totally reject American capitalist society, it is impossible to believe that anyone who-would be acceptable to either the President or the Congress to officially reinvestigate the Kennedy assassination could also be trusted to have "indisputable impartiality, skill, experience, rectitude, and concern for the truth." Therefore, socialists should not call for a new official inquiry. Their only demand on the government should be that all the files be opened and all the facts released.
MAKE IT NOW -- AND IN