Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy (97 page)

Senator John Sherman Cooper (R-Ky.)-A former member of the Kentucky General Assembly and county judge, Cooper served with the
U.S. 3rd Army in Europe during World War 11 and helped reorganize
the judicial system in Bavaria. He also was a former ambassador to
India and Nepal in the mid-1950s. Like Boggs, Cooper later voiced
dissatisfaction with the Commission's "single-bullet theory," stating
he was "unconvinced."

Allen W. Dulles-Dulles had been fired as director of the Central
Intelligence Agency by Kennedy following the ill-fated Bay of Pigs
Invasion. Today it seems more than ironic that Dulles would have
been selected to sit in judgment on Kennedy's death. Dulles also was
tightly connected to the military, not only because of his years with
the CIA, but because of his service in World War II, which included
arranging the surrender of German troops in Italy. It is now acknowledged that Dulles withheld CIA information from the Warren Commission, particularly concerning assassination plots between the Agency
and organized crime.

Representative Gerald Ford (R-Mich. )-Former President Ford is now
recognized as the FBI's "spy" on the Warren Commission. This is
confirmed by a memo from Cartha DeLoach, a close aide to Director
Hoover, in which he noted:

I had a long talk this morning [December 12, 1963] with Congressman Gerald R. "Jerry" Ford . . . He asked that I come up
and see him . . . Ford indicated he would keep me thoroughly
advised as to the activities of the Commission. He stated this
would have to be on a confidential basis, however, he thought it
should be done. He also asked if he could call me from time to
time and straighten out questions in his mind concerning our
investigation. I told him by all means he should do this. He
reiterated that our relationship would, of course, remain confidential.

According to former New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison:
. .. Ford [also] enjoyed the reputation of being the CIA's best
friend in the House of Representatives.

Ford's name as a member of the Warren Commission was recommended to President Johnson by Richard Nixon. A World War II
Navy veteran, Ford became the Commission's most industrious member, hearing seventy out of the ninety-four witnesses who actually met
with commissioners. He also profited from his time on the Commission. Ford had his first campaign manager and former Nixon for
President campaign field director John R. Stiles hired as his special
assistant. Ford and Stiles went on to write Portrait of the Assassin, a
book that presented selective evidence of Oswald's guilt. When their
publisher found the book dull reading, Ford and Stiles spiced it up with rewritten transcripts of the January 27, 1964 Commission meeting where Oswald's possible connection to the FBI was discussed. The
minutes of this meeting were classified Top Secret and remained
closed to the public. During confirmation hearings before the Senate
Judiciary Committee in 1973, Ford was asked specifically about his
use of classified Warren Commission material in his book. Ford
replied:

. . . we did not use in that book any material other than the
material that was in the 26 volumes of testimony and other exhibits
that were subsequently made public and sold to the public generally.

When it was discovered that the January 27, 1974, meeting transcripts
were still classified, Ford belatedly said:

I cannot help but apologize if the circumstances are such that there
was this violation, but there certainly was no attempt to do it.

Despite being caught in perjury, Ford was dutifully confirmed by his old friends
in Congress and sworn in as this nation's first unelected president. Six
months later, Ford ordered the Commission material in question declassified.

John J. McCloy-As coordinator for the Kennedy administration's disarmaments activities since 1961, McCloy had a distinguished background. He had been assistant secretary of war throughout World War
II, military governor and high commissioner for Germany from 1949
to 1952, and president of the World Bank from 1947 to 1949. He also
help build the U.S. intelligence establishment after the war. Despite
his continued defense of the Warren Commission, McCloy himself voiced
a prophetic skepticism of its work on December 5, 1963, stating:

The Commission is going to be criticized . . . no matter what we
do, but I think we would be more criticized if we simply posed
before the world as something that is evaluating Government
agencies' reports, who themselves may be culpable.

In Commission arguments over the "single-bullet theory," it was
McCloy who finally proposed that the evidence supporting this theory
be called "persuasive," a term all members finally agreed upon.

Senator Richard B. Russell (D-Ga.)-As chairman of the powerful Senate
Armed Services Committee, Russell carried much clout on Capitol
Hill, usually employed to further the aims of the Pentagon. His work
on behalf of defense projects brought sizable government contracts to
Georgia. A former governor there from 1931 to 1933, Russell was
elected to the Senate in 1933. Russell also sat on the watchdog
Subcommittee on CIA Oversight. Russell, widely regarded as one of
the most intelligent senators, became the first Warren Commission
member to publicly question its conclusions. In a 1970 Washington
Post article, Russell said he had come to believe that a criminal
conspiracy had resulted in Kennedy's death. The senator even worked with assassination researcher Harold Weisberg in an effort to obtain
Commission transcripts. In a court affidavit, Weisberg stated:

Privately Senator Russell told me that he was convinced that there
were two areas in which Warren Commission members had been
deceived by Federal agencies responsible for investigating the
assassination of President Kennedy. These two areas were: (1)
Oswald's background; and (2) the ballistics evidence.

As can be seen, all of the Commission members had long-standing ties
to both the military and intelligence establishments of the United States.
They also were men accustomed to the delicacy of dealing with highly
sensitive political issues.

Each had received a copy of White House Executive Order 11130,
which, after naming the seven members of the President's Commission,
stated:

The purposes of the Commission are to examine the evidence developed
by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and any additional evidence that
may hereafter come to light or be uncovered by federal or state authorities; to make further investigation as the Commission finds desirable; to
evaluate all the facts and circumstances surrounding such assassination,
including the subsequent violent death of the man charged with the
assassination, and to report to me its findings and conclusions.

The Commission is empowered to prescribe its own procedures and to
employ such assistants as it deems necessary.

Necessary expenses of the Commission may be paid from the "Emergency Fund for the President."

In an effort to obtain fairness for her son, Marguerite Oswald wrote to
Warren Commission general counsel J. Lee Rankin and even President
Johnson, stating: "I [am] . . . imploring both in the name of justice and
our American way of life to let my son Lee Harvey Oswald be represented
by council Isic] so that all witnesses including my son's widow will be
cross-examined."

Her request was denied.

In fact, every basic legal right guaranteed to even the lowliest street
criminal-the right to legal representation, to face accusers, to crossexamine witnesses and evidence-was denied Lee Harvey Oswald. The
Commission met behind closed doors, heard secret testimony, and emerged
to announce its conclusions.

Armed with a mandate to ". . . uncover all the facts concerning the
assassination of President Kennedy and to determine if it was in any way
directed or encouraged by unknown persons at home or abroad," the
Commission set to work.

The Warren Commission's first official meeting took place on Decem ber 5, 1963. The primary purpose of this meeting was to get the investigation organized. During this process, Warren suggested that the Commission
need not hire its own investigators nor obtain subpoena powers from
Congress. He was, however, overridden in this matter by other Commission members. McCloy stated:

I have a feeling that we have another obligation than the mere
evaluation of the reports of agencies, many of which as you suggested,
or some of them at least, may be interested, may be involved. There is a
potential culpability here on the part of the Secret Service and even the
FBI, and these reports . .. may have some self-serving aspects in them.
And I think that if we didn't have the right to subpoena documents, the
right to subpoena witnesses if we needed them, that this Commission's
general standing might be somewhat impaired.

Not wishing to appear as simply a conduit for information from federal
agencies, Commission members appealed to Congress for the right to issue
subpoenas. This was granted on December 13, 1963, by the passage of
Senate Joint Resolution 137. This law also authorized the Commission to
compel testimony by providing immunity from prosecution-an authority
that the Commission never once used.

During this meeting, Senator Russell noted the ongoing leaks of assassination information by the FBI while Commission members were still
awaiting the Bureau's first full report. He asked pointedly: ". . . how
much of their findings does the FBI propose to release to the press before
we present the findings of this Commission?"

This was the beginning of a quiet-yet intense-feud between the
Commission and Hoover's Bureau.

There followed a discussion of the hiring of a general counsel, with
Dulles remarking: "I don't think it should be anybody from Texas."

Finally the members tried to decide on a time to reconvene. Ford asked
Warren to clarify his plans for Commission meetings later in December
because "we have a holiday season coming up, at least I have, with some
family plans."

A meeting was scheduled for the next day, but McCloy begged off,
saying: "I have this luncheon with the President, whatever it is. They
made it clear to me it was a command performance."

The Commission's second meeting was on December 6. Both then as
the day before there was considerable discussion about the proposed Texas
court of inquiry.

State Attorney General Can had traveled from Texas to Washington but
was put off from meeting with Warren for three days because the chief
justice wanted a formal promise that there would be no Texas hearings
until after his Commission had completed its investigation. Warren read
from a letter he had sent Can stating: ". . . it is the view of this Commission . . . that a public inquiry in Texas at this time might be more
harmful than helpful in our search for the truth."

Warren then told his fellow commissioners:

I think that we have to show a spirit of cooperation with these people
and still . . . not reveal everything we have got or anything about our
innermost secrets.. .. I've cooperated with the federal government in a
thousand things when I was in state government and we didn't tell
everything .. .

It was during this meeting that the name of J. Lee Rankin was advanced
as a possible general counsel for the Commission.

Warren originally wanted Warren Olney III, head of the FBI Criminal
Division from 1953 to 1957, as chief counsel. However, Olney, an
outspoken critic of Director J. Edgar Hoover and most knowledgeable
about the internal workings of the Bureau, was rejected after the powerful
Hoover voiced fierce opposition to his appointment.

The Commission then recessed until December 16, when it reviewed the
first formal report on the assassination issued by the FBI on December 9.
Warren set the tone by commenting: "Well, gentlemen, to be very frank
about it, I have read that FBI report two or three times and I have not seen
anything in there yet that has not been in the press."

Boggs commented: "... reading that FBI report leaves a million
questions."

Dulles said the CIA couldn't finalize a report until the Agency received
more documents from the FBI. He commented: "They've been working
for a long while, I know. It started when I was there." This was the first
admission that the CIA had been keeping an eye on Oswald since his trip
to Russia in 1959.

On December 8, 1963, J. Lee Rankin, a fifty-six-year-old corporate
attorney and U.S. solicitor general under Eisenhower, had accepted the
appointment as general counsel for the commission and met for the first
time with the commissioners. Rankin would take charge of the Commission's investigation, serve as the primary liaison between the Commission
and both the FBI and CIA, and act as cordinator between Commission
members and the staff. One Commission attorney said years later: "It was,
very simply, a Rankin operation." And Rankin appeared more concerned
with wrapping up the Commission's investigation swiftly than fully probing each assassination issue.

When Commission assistant counsel Wesley Liebeler submitted a twentysix-page memorandum to Rankin carefully outlining the serious deficiencies of the evidence against Oswald as the lone assassin, Rankin reportedly
replied: "No more memorandums. The report has to be published. "

On another occasion when Liebeler tried to address the problems arising from the Silvia Odio affair an angry Rankin said: At this stage,
we are supposed to be closing doors, not opening them."

Initially, even Rankin voiced the suspicion that the Commission might
have to do more than simply evaluate FBI reports. During the December
16 meeting, he stated:

The Chief Justice and I finally came to the conclusion . . . that we
might have to . . . ask for some investigative help . . . because we
might not get all we needed by just going back to the FBI and other
agencies because the [FBIJ report has so many loopholes in it. Anybody
can look at it and see that it just doesn't seem like they're looking for
things that this Commission has to look for in order to get the answers
that it wants and is entitled to . . . [This] might be a tender spot. I am
sure the FBI is certainly tender about the knowledge they had (concerning
Oswald's presence in Dallas] and the fact that the Secret Service did not
have that knowledge in order to do anything about it.