The Lingering Shadow
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
The Lingering Shadow... This document is a reprinf from The Dallas Times Herald Sunday, June 25, 1967. It is a scholarly report, prepared by Bernard Gauzer and Sid Moody, Associated Press writers, on Warren Report critics and their claims. It is offered as a public service. Warren Report... Doubts Dispelled The one slain has not died. Doubt will where the commission saw chance; doubt a death in the hearts of the nation. It was not let him. the commission saw fact. murder at the heart of the national struc- Doubt asks: "How did you fall? By Are these seekers ture. Assassination unsolved is assassination whose hand?" Doubt has heard an answer scavengers, as Texas at large, possibly free to strike again, cer- Gov. John B. Connall —"Lee Harvey Oswald did it"—from doc- y has called them? tainly free to poison and corrode by sus- Or are they tors, lawyers, government; from police, impassionedned skeptics, refusing picion, mistrust, fear. i friends, foe. to take it is most likely" for an answer? So it is not mere curiosity, not just to Are they creators of doubt? Or are they But doubt does not believe. Not quite. add a footnote to history, to ask who killed creatures of it? It is not always clear. Doubt knows the stature of the seven Kennedy. To preserve the absolutely vital But if the Warren. Report is now doubt- trust of the people in their leaders and somber men of the Warren Commission, ed by many, it is because of the books the breadth of their investigation, the institutions, the question must be answered. written by these few seekers. If their num- depth of their report. But doubt is not And stay answered. ber is small, Their impact is not. The very The quest may be long. It is still asked: appeased. Not quite. existence of a printed page has an aura Who killed Lincoln? John Wilkes Booth is Doubt has heard of the rifle, the shells, of authenticity above and beyond what it not the answer to all seekers. Nor is Lee the fingerprints, the handwriting, the states. As the critics' books are increas- Harvey Oswald. Lincoln, however, is for blunted bullets, the people who said they ingly read, they are increasingly believed. the archivist. The wound from Dallas is still saw. But doubt is not assured. Not quite. It is far easier to read one book from a red. It is tender to questions of who or Why is this so? single critic than a whole shelf of books why. It may ever be. Because doubt was denied the certain- by a commission. So doubt takes root. The Or, perhaps, the wound may have been ty of a trial. Because not all is known. Be- shelf lies fallow. salved all along. Perhaps the first investi- cause not all is answered and may never One could protest the whole argument gation need be the last. be. And because there have been other is macabre-ghoulish. John F. Kennedy is Or, perhaps, the pain of doubt may seekers than the commission. They have gone. Talk won't bring him home. But this throb the less if one were to ask the doubt- seen what the commission did not see: dif- was a president. The people he led have ers of their proof, ask of the askers: What ferent shots from different places; plots a right—nay, an obligation—to know what have you found, what news can you bring where the commission saw none; design struck him down, and why. It was not just us? The Warren Commission Report and Its Critics By BERNARD GAVZER and men blinded by the fear of Leo Sauvage, in "The Oswald EDWARD JAY EPSTEIN, in SID MOODY what they might see, the prec- Affair," has said: "It is logical- "Inquest," has said: "The con- Associated Press Writers edent of the Warren Commis- ly untenable, legally indefensi- clusions of the Warren Report sion Report will continue to im- ble and morally inadmissable must be viewed as expressions The critics of the Warren peril the life of the law and dis- to declare Lee Harvey Oswald of political truth." Commission Report have made honor those who wrote it little the assassin of President Ken- And the commission has stood grave charges. They have more than those who praise nedy." mute. made uncertainty. They have it." And the commission has stood It considered its first words; have made money. And the commission has stood mute. published in 27 volumes in the Have they made a case? mute. Have they proved that the most extensive murder investi- • gation in the nation's history, directed by some of its fore- mast citizens, was wrong, dead wrong? Was the commission guilty of haste, of bias, of a coverup and Lee Harvey Os- A. Public Service wald innocent of murder? Do Publication of the exhaustive documentary, The Lingering Shadow, is made events such as those recently in New Orleans indicate justice possible by the support of several Dallas institutions and individuals—some has not been cl9ne? desiring anonymity. It is presented on these pages as a public service. 14.116 suggest increasing num- bers of people think so. Book after carefully footnoted Dallas Clearing House Assn. Greatamerica Corp. book says so. The Warren Re- Dallas Times Herald Sanger-Harris port was once on the best- seller lists. Now Mark Lane's Frito-Lay Julius and Phil Schepps "Rush To Judgment" is. Which has spoken truth? The Industrial Properties Sears, Roebuck and Co. critics say they have. And the Ling-Temco-Vought Titche's commission has stood mute. Mark Lane has said: "As long as we rely for information upon The Warren Commission, 1-r: Rep. Gerald Ford, Rep. Hale Boggs, Sen. Richard Russell, Chief Justice Earl Warren, Sen. John Sher- man Cooper, John J. McCloy, Allen Dulles, J. Leo Rankin, chief counsel. fall of 1964, to be its last. It and bullets recovered from Tip- Delgado said something else. said no. The test indicated this has disbanded. pit's body. On the rifle range he said response was "true." Oswald "didn't give a darn. He Is such evidence relevant to The public, in the jury box, LANE SAYS NICOL "ap- may wonder at the commission's just qualified. He wasn't hardly why the commission felt Daniels peared less than certain" the going to exert himself." merited little credence? Lane work. But it must also ask after shells came from Oswald's gun. the critics'. Is it true where There is a footnote in the pas- And Walker himself testified evidently thought not. the commission's is not? Are sage referring to Volume III of that his assailant "could have One of Epstein's major points the critics innocent of the guilt the hearings, Page 511. Few been a very good shot and just concerns the report of the au- they charge the commission of: readers have the volumes, much by chance the bullet hit the topsy on Kennedy. It concluded distortion, sly selection of con- less the time, to check Lane's woodwork of a window. There he had been shot in the back of venient fact, editing of truth? thousands of citations. A pity. was enough deflection in it to the neck and the back of the miss me." head. An FBI report submitted On Page 511, Volume III Dec. 9, 1963 contradicted the 'Oversimplified' Nicol is asked by commission DON'T THESE PASSAGES doctors in several important Mark Lane wrote that the com- counsel Melvin Eisenberg if he have some bearing on Oswald's areas. Epstein makes much of mission "cited evidence out of was "certain in your own mind markmanship? Epstein evident- the difference. context, ignored and reshaped of the' identification" of the ly didn't think so. They don't Inquiry by the writers, how- evidence and which is worse shells. appear in his book. ever, has established that the oversimplified evidence." Lane devotes several pages to Nicol replied: "Yes; the FBI wrote its original report Did he? the testimony of a former Dallas marks on the firing pin partic- before getting that of the Lane and the other critics patrolman, Napoleon J. Daniels, ularly were very definitive. Ap- doctors, which reached the have produced little in the way who said he saw a man resem- parently this firing pin had been agency Dec. 23, 1963. The FBI of new evidence. What they bling Jack Ruby enter police subjected to some rather severe nonetheless stuck to its original have done is use what the com- headquarters lost before he shot abuse, and there were numerous version in a supplemental re- mission provides in its 26 Oswald. Lane takes issue with small and large striations which port Jan. 13, 1964. The agency volumes of testimony and exhib= the commission for deciding could be matched up very felt duty bound not to alter a its—but to different conclusions•. easily." Daniels' testimony "merits little The critics' case rests on the report by its agents—its custo- Yet Lane says Joseph D. Nicol credence." same bedrock as the commis- mary policy—even though other appeared "less than certain." In But nowhere does Lane men- sion's—the Warren Report. reports might contain other his book Epstein questions the tion that Daniels was given a facts. How have the critics used, or commission's conclusion that lie detector test. Daniels was abused, it? Oswald was a good shot. He asked if he had told the com- IT WAS THE commission's On page 199 of the hardcover mentions the shot at Maj.