Completing the Story of the Assassination

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Author: rexbradford

JFK: ‘…and we are all mortal.’

rexbradford June 5, 2013

“…So, let us not be blind to our differences — but let us also direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.”

— JFK’s commencement speech at American University, June 10, 1963.
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RFK: ‘Don’t close them. If they’re going to shoot, they’ll shoot.’

rexbradford April 13, 2013

“Don’t close them. If they’re going to shoot, they’ll shoot.”

From Jules Witcover’s “85 Days: The Last Campaign of Robert Kennedy“ (p.147), regarding an incident on April 11, 1968:

Bill Barry came up and told Dutton … that local police had spotted a man with a rifle on a nearby rooftop. Dutton, not wanting to upset Kennedy, walked casually into the bedroom, went over to the window and drew the curtains. Kennedy, slipping on a clean shirt, looked up at once and said, “Don’t close them. If they’re going to shoot, they’ll shoot.”

Rankin: ‘We have an explanation there in the autopsy that probably a fragment came out the front of the neck’

rexbradford March 30, 2013

“We have an explanation there in the autopsy that probably a fragment came out the front of the neck.”

— Warren Commission Counsel J. Lee Rankin, in an executive session of Jan. 27, 1964. The official autopsy report contains no such statement, though there are some indications in the record that an early conclusion was that JFK’s throat wound was caused by the exit of a bullet fragment from the head shot. Autopsy witness Richard Lipsey, for instance, told the HSCA that the autopsy doctors discussed this.

There are reasons to believe that the original autopsy report was rewritten, and may have disappeared with the president’s brain and other materials while in Robert Kennedy’s hands. See this discussion by Assassination Records Review Board senior staffer Douglas Horne (part 1 and part 2). Later in the same session, Commissioner Richard Russell aptly observed of the medical evidence: “This isn’t going to be something that would run you stark mad?”

Jan. 20, 1964: Chief Justice seeks to quell rumors, then investigate

rexbradford January 22, 2013

As of January 20, 1964, the Warren Commission had yet to hear from its first witness. On that day, the head of the Commission, Chief Justice Earl Warren, held his first staff conference with the recently hired lawyers, some of whom would later go on to become prominent political figures. (Arlen Specter became a US senator, and William Coleman became Secretary of Transportation, for example.)

In the meeting, Warren explained why he took the job after declining it. According to one memo of the meeting, Warren said:
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Ray Rocca: ‘There was an earlier cable’

rexbradford January 10, 2013

“It is my impression that there were earlier cables, that there was an earlier cable.”

– Raymond Rocca, aide to Counterintelligence Staff chief James Angleton, testifying under oath to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, about CIA cables from Mexico City. The CI staff monitored Oswald’s travels, politics, and personal life  from October 1959 to November 1963.

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Nikita Khrushchev: ‘What really happened?’

rexbradford January 7, 2013
Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev with JFK.

“What really happened?”

– Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, expressing incredulity at the official account of JFK’s murder to journalist Drew Pearson during a meeting in May 1964. According to Pearson, Khrushchev was “utterly incredulous,” expressed “flat disbelief” and “did not believe that the American security services were this inept.”
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Dec 9 1963: FBI report completed, evidence lacking

rexbradford December 9, 2012

On December 9, the FBI completed its five-volume report on JFK’s assassination. The 400-page report was long on Lee Harvey Oswald’s background and the evidence tying Oswald to the shooting, and notably short on evidence regarding the assassination itself. Regarding the basic account of the shooting, Warren Commissioner Hale Boggs after reading it remarked, “There’s nothing in there about Governor Connally.”

Boggs’ statement was not literally true, but the lack of explanation of the basic evidence of the shooting was really even worse –for example, the FBI Report never once mentioned Kennedy’s throat wound, the one which Parkland Hospital doctors had called a wound of entrance. The FBI’s “three shots, three hits” scenario ignored the throad wound, and also failed acknowledge the wounding of bystander James Tague. A report that failed to mention all of the victims’ wounds had credibility problems from the start.
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Dec 5 1963: Warren Commission meets, urged to address ‘rumors’

rexbradford December 5, 2012

On this day in 1963, the Warren Commission had its first meeting behind closed doors in Washington. As the seven commissioners began to discuss how to proceed, they grappled with the question of whether they should endorse the FBI’s upcoming report on JFK’s murder, or conduct their own investigation. After some discussion, they chose the latter.

The public was demanding explanation of the incredible and baffling events of Nov. 22-24. The FBI’s findings were already being leaked to the press; Asst. Attorney General Katzenbach said the FBI had denied leaking but “I can’t think of anybody else it could have come from.”
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Nov 29 1963: Warren Commission announced

rexbradford November 29, 2012

Once President Johnson decided to back the idea of a Presidential Commission, he moved swiftly. By Friday, November 29, his selections had solidified, reluctant participants arm-wrestled into service, and the Commission was announced. It was to be headed by the most reluctant participant of all, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, and the story of how Johnson got him on board is revealing.

Warren Commission

First, the names had to be run by the all-powerful FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. Johnson was coy, asking if Hoover was “familiar with this proposed group they’re trying to put together?”
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Nov 28 1963: LBJ backs Commission to investigate the assassination

rexbradford November 28, 2012

Three days earlier, President Johnson had resisted the idea of a Presidential Commission inquiry into President Kennedy’s assassination, telling Joe Alsop “we don’t send in a bunch of carpetbaggers” and “the President must not inject himself into, ah, local killings.” To which Alsop had replied “I agree with that, but in this case it does happen to be the killing of the President.” …

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Top Russian at JFK funeral: U.S. ‘does not want to involve us’

rexbradford November 25, 2012

“Judging from everything, the U.S. government does not want to involve us in this matter, but neither does it want to get into a fight with the extreme rightists; it clearly prefers to consign the whole business to oblivion as soon as possible.”

– Soviet Deputy Premier Anastas Mikoyan, writing to his government after talks with U.S. officials at Kennedy’s funeral. The telegram was part of a collection of documents given by Russian President Boris Yeltsin to President Clinton in 1999.

At the funeral ceremony, Mikoyan approached Jacqueline Kennedy, who “clasped both his hands in hers and in a voice filled with deep emotion” said: “Please tell Mr. Chairman [Khrushchev] that I know he and my husband worked together for a peaceful world, and now he and you must carry on my husband’s work.” (Brothers, by David Talbot, p. 254)

Nov 24 1963: Ruby kills Oswald, and Washington scrambles to quell suspicion

rexbradford November 24, 2012

On the Sunday morning following the assassination, Kennedy’s body lay in state at the Capitol rotunda, for mourning visitors to see.

Meanwhile in Dallas, a handcuffed Lee Harvey Oswald was led into the basement of the Dallas city jail for transfer to the county jail. Suddenly, on live national television, Dallas nightclub owner Jack Ruby emerged from the crowd of reporters and fired one fatal gunshot into Oswald’s abdomen.

This stunning deed shocked and baffled the nation–and eliminated a key witness to the events that led to JFK’s murder. Not known for his sense of humor, FBI Director Hoover informed the White House in a memo that began: “There is nothing further on the Oswald case except that he is dead.”
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