1964
Government Reports
Report of the President’s Commission
on the Assassination of President Kennedy
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, Sept. 27, 1964.
Note: 888-page USGPO version is the standard for citation.
If more critics would actually read this book (aka The Warren Report) with an open-mind, there would be fewer doubts. It’s all here—medical, ballistics, wound forensics, Oswald’s isolation and possible motivations—and surprisingly readable for a tome composed by lawyers. Flawed by 5.6 second time restraint for three shots (considered to be 8 seconds today), and tests that showed how easily a bullet could have deformed if it directly struck bone, “proving” CE399 didn’t (today, tests are available that duplicate CE399’s entire journey through soft tissue, along a rib and sideways off the wrist).
Why do conspiracy theories come and go, while the object of their scorn continues to survive? Find out for yourself.
Hardcover/softcover, 888 pages, 92 photos, 13 illus, 74 docs, no DJ. Simultaneously reprinted in hardcover and paperback by numerous publishers, most common of which is Bantam’s 726 page paperback (inset) Report of the Warren Commission. Longmeadow Press hardcover reissue Feb. 1992. St. Martin’s Press softcover reissue (888-page format) Feb. 1992.
The Warren Commission
The new President, Lyndon Baines Johnson, tentatively supported the Texas public court of inquiry called by Texas attorney general Waggoner Carr on Nov. 25, 1963. When Congress proposed a joint committee, LBJ acted on a suggestion by acting US attorney general Nicholas Katzenbach to appoint a blue-ribbon committee. On Friday, Nov. 29th, Johnson issued an executive order creating a Presidential Commission of Inquiry with the mandate “to evaluate all the facts and circumstances surrounding the assassination.”
As chairman, President Johnson chose 72-year-old Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, sidestepping Warren’s reluctance to serve with notions of nuclear ruin if rumors went unchallenged. Four ranking members of Congress were appointed:
Sen. Richard B. Russell (D. Georgia), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Comm.
Sen. John Sherman Cooper (R. Kentucky), former ambassador to India;
Rep. Hale Boggs (D. Louisiana), majority whip of the House;
Rep. Gerald R. Ford (R. Michigan), chairman of the House Republican Conference.
From the executive branch, LBJ named two prominent attorneys with long careers: Allen W. Dulles, WWII spymaster and former CIA director, and John J. McCloy, former high commissioner for Germany and president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. These seven influential and busy men—with little criminal investigative experience—essentially were to oversee the work of its staff and the federal agencies, whom were called upon to furnish assistance.
The Commission appointed as general counsel J. Lee Rankin, former US Solicitor General. Fourteen assistant counsel—with investigative experience—were hired (seven senior and seven junior), who did most of the Commission’s actual work, assisted in the field largely by the FBI (its scope limited by Hoover). The original deadline for the final report was June 30, 1964.
Hearings Before the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy
Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, Nov. 23, 1964.
The notorious 26 volumes that ultimately supplied fodder for critics already disillusioned with the Warren Report. Researchers even complained that the material here wasn’t presented in chronological or subject order. First five volumes present testimony transcripts of witnesses and officials who appeared before the Commission. Volumes VI-XV have transcripts of testimony before the legal staff. Last eleven volumes (XVI-VVVI) consist of exhibits, arguably more interesting than most of the testimony.
Most striking are the number of witnesses who testified or signed affidavits alleging shots or commotion from the Grassy Knoll. Be aware that eyewitnesses tend to embellish when they’ve not seen something clearly or, in this case, are immersed with viewing a Presidential entourage (contrast the Tippit murder witnesses). Some 3000 copies were printed. A projected 1977 reprint did not occur. If you have difficulty accessing the WCH, try law school libraries.
Hardcover, 18,205 pages total, numerous B/W photos, illus and docs, no DJ. Originally sold as complete sets only (for $76 per set).
Books
The Torch Is Passed
The Associated Press Story of the Death of a President
New York: Associated Press, 1963.
Four Days
The Historical Record of the Death of President Kennedy
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1964.
Impressive effort, on the scale of Life or Look magazine, to explain and memorialize the assassination and funeral. Notable inclusion of the more important photos by AP professional James Altgens—and several seldom-seen photos of the limousine speeding to Parkland Hospital [only Jackie, Mrs. Connally and Agent Hill visible in rear]. Large photos of the Kennedys’ arrival at Love Field airport; two full-page photos of the Oswald slaying. Plenty of large photos of the funeral.Folio hardcover, 100 pages, 89 B/W and color photos, no DJ. Parallax paperback (inset) 1967.
Very nicely-complied presentation of the assassination weekend from UPI and American Heritage magazine. Written prior to the WCR, it reveals the widely-held impression that JFK and Connally were wounded separately, which at that time didn’t cast doubt on Oswald’s guilt. The book futher asks if Connally was Oswald’s “true target for killing.” Full-page photos, several in color, abound from UPI’s extensive coverage of events, ranging from the arrival at Love Field to burial at Arlington Cemetery.
Featured are large color stills from the Muchmore and Nix films, and a two-page enlargement of the important Moorman Polaroid—used as a research aid by early assassination sleuths. Includes some UPI news stories, the official eulogies and resolutions, the funeral eulogy and graveside prayer. Large excerpts from BBC’s That Was the Week That Was tribute, and smaller excerpts from editorials and personal/official statements from around the world. Foreword by Bruce Catton.
Large-format hardcover, 143 pages, 15 color and 113 B/W photos, 7 docs, 3 cartoons.
Joachim Joesten
Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy?
New York: Marzani & Munsell, June 1964.
Little-known today, the quarrelsome Joesten was Europe’s leading WC critic for a decade. Relying on newspaper clippings, the Munich-based journalist published the first widely-circulated book critical of the lone assassin scenario, months before the Commission finished its work.
Joesten, then 57, lays out a right-wing conspiracy that included elements of the federal government, along with (wholly innocent) people like Larry Crafard (a Ruby employee) and Ruth Paine (she arranged Oswald’s job at the Depository). Postulates Officer Tippit in the Oswald window firing diversionary shots to implicate Oswald and cover assassins in the Dal-Tex Building and on the knoll.
Because “fall guy” Oswald escaped the Depository, plans were improvised to eliminate Tippit and—once in custody—Oswald. “Tool” Ruby deployed for hit “in approved gangland style.” Warren Report addressed Joachim’s assertions in its “Speculations and Rumors” section. The WC inquisitively obtained Joesten’s CIA dossier, enriched with old Gestapo records. Book dedicated to Mark Lane for his 1963 “Brief for Oswald” newspaper article.
Hardcover, 177 pages, 24 photos, 14 illus. Softcover reprint (shown) 1965 (with 50-page analysis of Report).
Joachim Joesten (1907-75)
Joesten’s brush with authorities went back to persecution from the Gestapo for being a German Communist. He fled his homeland for France, moved to the US—gaining citizenship—but eventually returned to Germany. Joesten was immediately suspicious of the case emerging against Oswald and rashly investigated the case through secondary sources that were pliable enough to formulate just about any hypothesis. His first book on the controversy turned out to be the best.
In the years to come, the prolific Joesten published a string of mimeographed books about the assassination filled with even wilder speculation and innuendo. He was the principal subject of the article “Battle of the Disinformers” in the Sunday Times of Oct. 3, 1965. Totally delusional—and recklessly fueled by American researchers—Joesten published the scrambled conspiracy bulletin Truth Letter (1968-72). He reportedly coined the phrase: “Something’s fishy in Denmark.”
Thomas Buchanan
Who Killed Kennedy?
New York: Putnams, 1964.
Barely known—and even less consulted—this book fingers Texas oil monopolies behind an assassination plot (a theory still popular in the cow country). The maverick oilmen wanted to protect their interests when Kennedy threatened the oil depletion allowance—were going to clip Khrushchev, too. Had these oleaginous tar globs then had their current profit margins, they would have taken over the world.
Buchanan assembled a series of apparent contradictions between Oswald acting alone and hints of a large conspiracy that was covered-up. Postulates shots from the Triple Underpass, based on news report about “hole” in limousine windshield (actually a crack on the interior surface of the glass most likely caused by a bullet fragment from the skull wound). See Warren Report’s “Speculations and Rumors” for series of rebuttals.
In the 2007 book Reclaiming History, Vincent Bugliosi espouses the rightwing American perception that the notion of a JFK conspiracy received initial impetus from the European left, citing the early appearance there of the Joesten and Buchanan works. It is true that some democratic-socialists—who account for most of the European electorate—couldn’t accept that an isolated extremist who shared some of their beliefs might have done it. Some communists in Eastern Europe, reading the Soviet view, would suspect the US was trying to pin the murder on a disgruntled Marxist.
However, Bugliosi is wrong to imply the European New Left was anything like the Soviet-inspired old left, or that the initital suspicion wasn't also strongly felt and expressed in the US, stoked by the Oswald slaying. (At the time, Mark Lane was living in Europe doing lectures while working on his 1966 book Rush to Judgment. He was instrumental in establishing the ill-fated British "Who Killed Kennedy?" committee.) From 1964 to late 1966, the British press offered far more assassination debate—largely scholarly and insightful; and skeptical—than their reluctant American counterparts.
Originally published early May in London by Secker & Warburg (shown); in US, Putnams edited for content. Hardcover, 207 pages. London: Macfadden paperback 1965 (inset).
Thomas G. Buchanan (1919-98)
Some sites have Buchanan born in the “deep south” though it was Baltimore. A reporter for the Washington Evening Star until fired in 1948 after admitting membership in the Communist Party. Buchanan became an American expatriot living in Paris who went into computer programming.
In his book, he advocates non-violent action, such as detente with Russia and China, free-trader and the fulfillment of civil rights for all Americans, suggesting that American communists would never use violent means as Oswald was alleged to have done.
This was his only book on the assassination controversy. It developed from a series of newspaper articles published in L’Express in Feb. and March. In an article widely-published in Europe to mark the second anniversary, Buchanan wrote a piece based on research sent him by David Lifton and Raymond Marcus.
