The Plot to Assassinate the Warren Commission

As a member of the staff of the Warren Commission, I have concluded that there may have been a conspiracy. It was not to assassinate President Kennedy. Instead, it has been by publishers and the entertainment industry to distort history for profit. The Oliver Stone film “JFK” is the most recent example.

The Times’ review of “JFK” (Calendar, Dec. 20) recognizes that the film is short on accuracy. But reviewer Kenneth Turan did not know by how much.

“JFK” constructed a conspiracy of the gay underground, the FBI, the CIA, the military, President Johnson, state officials and local police. Also included are the Warren Commission members and staff and even those in later Administrations, all of whom allegedly engaged in the continuing cover-up.

That all of these individuals and organizations could effectively carry out such a monumental task and keep quiet for 28 years defies logic and common sense. For example, why would I, a young private-sector lawyer who had just completed active military service and whose father was close to President Kennedy, participate in a cover-up?

While the reviewers reject “JFK’s” preposterous thesis, they somehow are willing to accept many of the film’s factual misstatements.

After decades of continuous misinformed and, in many cases, fraudulent (and mostly profit-seeking) attacks on the Warren Commission, even well-regarded commentators, including film critics, now assume--incorrectly--that the commission was wrong or sloppy.

The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald, acting alone, shot President Kennedy from behind. “JFK” contends that there were multiple gunmen because Oswald could not have fired all three of the shots within 5.6 seconds; that one bullet could not have hit both Kennedy and Gov. John Connally, and that Kennedy’s head went back, suggesting he was hit from the front.

The probable time span of Oswald’s three shots was around 10 seconds, not 5.6 seconds, because one of the shots missed--most likely the first or the last.

Contrary to “JFK’s” speculation about shots from the front, over the years 19 doctors examined the Kennedy autopsy photographs and X-rays and concluded that all of the shots struck President Kennedy from the rear. Ballistics evidence demonstrated that the bullets came from Oswald’s rifle found at the Texas School Book Depository, which was behind Kennedy.

Ballistics and medical experts explained that the backward movement of Kennedy’s head when he was struck was not caused by the impact of a bullet from the front, but by a predictable neuromuscular reaction and a “jet effect” from the explosion at the front of the head from which the bullet exited.

Scientific evidence (including neutron-activation analysis, which “JFK” dismisses as “mere physics”) has repeatedly established the single bullet conclusion--that is, one shot struck Kennedy’s neck, exited the front without hitting any bones and hit Gov. Connally, causing all of his wounds. To inflict those wounds, the bullet did not have to be deformed or change course, as sarcastically suggested in “JFK.”

Over the years there have been a number of federal and state investigations of the assassination, none of which has unearthed anything new. After spending $5.8 million, a congressional committee in the 1970s supported the single-bullet concept, but at the last moment found that acoustics evidence suggested the likelihood of a second gunman.

Subsequently, a ballistics acoustics group of the National Research Council determined that the committee’s acoustics conclusion was wrong. The Justice Department thereafter also concluded there was no acoustical evidence of a second gunman shooting from the front.

Strangely, only a few well-informed commentators have noted how flawed “JFK’s” representations were about Kennedy Administration policies regarding Vietnam and other foreign policy matters.

No matter how incomprehensible it may seem, the overwhelming evidence establishes that the events occurred as found by the Warren Commission. And this is so, no matter how much we need to interpret the assassination as rational and orderly or to have it fit some particular dysfunctional world view.

Because of the power of film, many may well accept “JFK’s” false history about the assassination and other policies and events. For motion picture moguls after a fast buck to portray fiction as fact and to assassinate the characters of the living as well as the dead is irresponsible and inexcusable.