|
Edited on Tue Nov-23-10 06:30 PM by Mimosa
Excerpt from link:
The HSCA reached much different conclusions about the JFK assassination than the Warren Commission reached. Among other things, the HSCA concluded Kennedy was probably killed by a conspiracy, that four shots were fired, that there were two gunmen, that one of the shots came from the grassy knoll, that Jack Ruby had extensive Mafia ties, that Ruby lied about how he got into the basement of the police department to shoot Oswald, and that Ruby's story about why he killed Oswald was false.
Critics of the Warren Commission have identified numerous errors, omissions, and shortcomings in the commission's investigation, many of which were also identified by the HSCA. Here are some of them:
1. The commission failed to produce a credible explanation for the wounding of bystander James Tague in Dealey Plaza during the shooting. The Tague wounding is evidence that more than three shots were fired.
2. The commission missed, or ignored, indications in the Zapruder film (1) that a shot was fired prior to frame 166, i.e., before the limousine passed beneath the oak tree on Elm Street, and (2) that another shot was fired while the sixth-floor gunman's view of the limousine would have been obscured and even blocked, i.e., at around frames 185-190.
3. The commission misrepresented the results of its own wound ballistics tests with regard to both the single-bullet theory and the fatal head shot.
4. The commission failed to mention in its report that one of its members, Senator Richard Russell, had very strong doubts about the single-bullet theory, and that two other members of the commission shared some of Russell's doubts. We now know that Russell outright rejected the theory, and that the commission suppressed from the official record Russell's objections to it. Russell forced one last executive meeting of the commission, in order to put on the record his objections to the single-bullet theory. The meeting was held on September 18, 1964. At the meeting, Russell distributed copies of a memo in which he outlined his objections to the single-bullet scenario. Russell naturally expected that the minutes of the meeting would reflect his objections. However, someone created a fake transcript of the meeting. The existing transcript of the September 18 meeting says nothing about Russell's strong objections to the single-bullet theory. Nor does it mention that Russell forced the meeting to have his objections recorded for the official record. Nor does it mention that Russell handed out a copy of his written objections at the meeting. None of these things is even mentioned in the extant transcript of the meeting. When the fake transcript of the meeting was brought to light in 1968, Russell was very upset after reading it. The Assassination Records Review Board attempted to locate the original transcript, but was unable to do so. (Incidentally, one year after the bogus transcript was released, Russell stated in a filmed interview that he was not convinced Oswald had acted alone.)
5. The commission rejected the account of Silvia Odio on the basis of bogus evidence and unproven assertions. The Odio incident indicates that Oswald was involved with anti-Castro Cuban exiles who were talking about killing Kennedy or that someone was impersonating Oswald while he was in Mexico City. Apparently the Warren Commission didn't want to deal with either implication of the Odio incident, so it dismissed Odio's story.
6. The commission never even mentioned that in the Zapruder film Kennedy's head and upper body snap violently backward and to the left when the fatal head shot occurs. In fact, when the commission printed the frames from the film, it reversed two key frames of the head shot sequence. When this fact was made public, the changing of the order of the frames was blamed on a "printing error."
7. The commission erroneously claimed Jack Ruby did not have extensive ties to the Mafia. The HSCA later proved this claim to be utterly false. The record indicates the commission suppressed evidence of Ruby's links to organized crime. Dr. David Scheim points out the following:
Benign excuses . . . fail to cover the Commission's gross mishandling of its second target of investigation, Jack Ruby. In early news reports and in voluminous FBI files, one fact plainly emerged: Ruby was affiliated with the Mob--the same organization with the clear motive and means to murder President Kennedy. But amazingly, the Commission concluded that there was "no credible evidence that Jack Ruby was active in the criminal underworld." This bizarre reversal of reality was noted by Congressman Steward McKinney in a question to an FBI spokesman during the House Assassination hearings:
"Wasn't it pretty well known to the FBI that Jack Ruby, No. 1, was a member of organized crime; No. 2, he ran a strip joint and had been somewhat commonly referred to as a supplier of both women and booze to political and police figures in the city of Dallas?"
"Didn't you find it a little difficult to accept the Warren Commission's final output on Ruby with the knowledge that the FBI had put into the commission?"
In a similar vein, Time noted how "the Warren Commission failed abysmally to pursue leads linking Oswald's own assassin, Jack Ruby, to the Mob."
Indeed, it was only by the crudest suppression and distortion of evidence that the Warren Commission could hide Ruby's Mob connection. Again and again, materials in the National Archives files relating to organized crime were omitted from the 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits published by the Commission. Sometimes, documents were published in the hearings and exhibits excluding the particular pages dealing with underworld involvement. In one instance, the paragraphs reporting Ruby's frequent association with the Mafia boss of Dallas were blanked out of an otherwise perfect photoreproduction.
Even after such censorship, however, many more clues to Ruby's Syndicate involvement remained in the published hearings and exhibits on which the Commission's report was based. For its absolution of Ruby, therefore, the Commission was forced into such audacious sleights of hand as the previously quoted gem: "Virtually all of Ruby's Chicago friends stated he had no close connection with organized crime. The Commission neglected to report that one of the cited "Chicago friends" was in fact a top Mafia executioner and that five others had assorted criminal involvements. (The Mafia Killed President Kennedy, London: Virgin Publishing, 1988, pp. 253-254)
Incredibly, Burt Griffin, one of the two commission attorneys who had been assigned to investigate Ruby, told the HSCA, over a decade after the assassination, that he'd never heard of Carlos Marcello and Santos Trafficante, two of the biggest Mafia bosses in the country (G. Robert Blakey, Fatal Hour: The Assassination of President Kennedy By Organized Crime, New York: Berkley Books, 1992, p. 93). Equally incredibly, Griffin said that at the time of the commission's investigation he didn't think the Mafia had any motive to kill Kennedy (Blakey, Fatal Hour, pp. 93-94).
8. The commission accepted Ruby's doubtful story about how he gained access to the basement of the police department to shoot Oswald. The HSCA rejected Ruby's belated story, noting that the available evidence overwhelmingly indicated Ruby's story was false.
9. The commission used faulty logic and unreasonable criteria to reject the accounts of witnesses whose reports suggested or proved a conspiracy was involved. Yet, when it came to witnesses whose stories at least seemed to support the lone-gunman theory, the commission bent over backwards to accept them.
10. The commission brazenly misrepresented the results of its rifle tests. In those tests, which supposedly proved Oswald could have shot Kennedy in the manner alleged by the commission, three Master-rated marksmen missed the head and neck area of the target boards 20 out of 21 times, and some of their misses were far apart and even missed the human silhouette on the target boards, even though the target boards were stationary, even though the marksmen fired from an elevation of only 30 feet and were allowed to take as much time as they desired for the first shot, and even though two of them took longer than 6 seconds to fire their shots. Those rifle tests showed it was highly unlikely that a mediocre marksman like Oswald could have shot President Kennedy. We now know that one of the commission staff members, Wesley Liebeler, was very critical of the commission's handling of the evidence relating to the rifle tests and Oswald's marksmanship. He warned in an internal memo that critical people would not take the commission's claims about Oswald's alleged shooting performance seriously. But the commission ignored Liebeler's memo and cited the rifle tests as evidence that Oswald could have performed the alleged shooting feat.
11. On a related note, the commission created the false impression that Oswald was proficient with a rifle and that he had ample practice with the alleged murder weapon.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
