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CIA Document 1035-960
Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report
CIA Document #1035-960
RE: Concerning Criticism of the Warren Report
1. Our Concern. From the day of President
Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about the responsibility for
his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the Warren Commission report,
(which appeared at the end of September 1964), various writers have now had time
to scan the Commission's published report and documents for new pretexts for questioning,
and there has been a new wave of books and articles criticizing the Commission's
findings. In most cases the critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind
of conspiracy, and often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved.
Presumably as a result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's report,
a public opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not
think that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that
the Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show
similar, or possibly more adverse results.
2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to
the U.S. government, including our organization. The members of the Warren Commission
were naturally chosen for their integrity, experience and prominence. They represented
both major parties, and they and their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections
of the country. Just because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn
their rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American
society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that President
Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have benefited, was in some
way responsible for the assassination.
Innuendo of such seriousness affects not only the
individual concerned, but also the whole reputation of the American government. Our
organization itself is directly involved: among other facts, we contributed information
to the investigation. Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our
organization, for example by falsely alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us.
The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims
of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other
countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number
of unclassified attachments.
3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of
the assassination question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where
discussion is active [business] addresses are requested:
a. To discuss the publicity problem with [?] and friendly
elite contacts (especially politicians and editors), pointing out that the Warren
Commission made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges
of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion
only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy
talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to
use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.
b. To employ propaganda assets to [negate] and refute
the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate
for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful
background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable,
that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (I)
politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in
their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of discussions
of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to single out Epstein's
theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher [?] article and Spectator piece for
background. (Although Mark Lane's book is much less convincing that Epstein's and
comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable critics, it is also much more difficult
to answer as a whole, as one becomes lost in a morass of unrelated details.)
4. In private to media discussions not directed at
any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming,
the following arguments should be useful:
a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the
Commission did not consider. The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim
Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the
attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have
been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better
parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which
some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was
set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists;
the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more
successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)
b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and
ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual
witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent--and hence offer more hand-holds
for criticism) and less on ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close
examination of the Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness
accounts are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good
and sufficient reason.
c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would
be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect
to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy, Attorney General at the
time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last man to overlook or conceal
any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would
hardly have held his tongue for the sake of the Democratic administration, and Senator
Russell would have had every political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part
of Chief Justice Warren. A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for
a shooting where so much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the
speed of the cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin would be discovered.
A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much more secure conditions.
d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual
pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the
Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one
way or the other. Actually, the make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent
safeguard against over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation
of probabilities into certainties.
e. Oswald would not have been any sensible person's
choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed up, of questionable
reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional intelligence service.
f. As to charges that the Commission's report was
a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the
degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due
to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming
from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new
criticisms.
g. Such vague accusations as that "more than
ten people have died mysteriously" can always be explained in some natural way
e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most part died of natural causes; the
Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the FBI interviewed far more people, conduction
25,000 interviews and re interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number
of deaths are to be expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten
mysterious deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the
deaths on his list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on
collision on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge abutment.)
5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging
reference to the Commission's Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still
be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed
with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to
add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found
it far superior to the work of its critics.
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