LBJ forms commission to investigate Kennedy assassination - Nov 29, 1963 - HISTORY.com LBJ forms commission to investigate Kennedy assassination Share this: LBJ forms commission to investigate Kennedy assassination Author LBJ forms commission to investigate Kennedy assassination URL Publisher A+E Networks On this day in 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson appoints a special commission to investigate the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which had occurred a week earlier, on November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas. According to his memoirs and biographer Doris Kearns Goodwin, Johnson knew he had to provide strong leadership in the wake of the shocking murder of President Kennedy. One of his first official acts was to initiate an investigation into the assassination.

Johnson later wrote that, in the weeks after the assassination, the American public, and the government that he now headed was in a state of confusion and disorientation “like a bunch of cattle caught in a swamp.” He felt the weight of his new responsibility keenly “in a world that is never more than minutes away from catastrophe” and knew that “the whole world would be anxiously following every move I made.” On November 29, Johnson issued Executive Order No. 11130, appointing the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy–commonly referred to as the Warren Commission, after its leader, Chief Justice Earl Warren. Since the president’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was himself killed by Jack Ruby almost immediately after Oswald killed Kennedy, details of Oswald’s motive for the assassination remained murky. During its almost year-long investigation, the Warren Commission reviewed reports by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Secret Service, Department of State and the attorney general of Texas. It also poured over Oswald’s personal history, political affiliation and military record. Overall, the Warren Commission listened to the testimony of 552 witnesses and even traveled to Dallas several times to visit the site where Kennedy was shot.

The commission concluded that Oswald had acted alone and that the Secret Service had made poor preparations for JFK’s visit to Dallas and had subsequently failed to sufficiently protect him. The circumstances surrounding Kennedy’s death, however, have since given rise to several conspiracy theories involving such disparate characters as the Mafia, Cuban exiles, military leaders and even President Johnson. The Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald was a “lone gunman” failed to satisfy some who witnessed the attack and others whose research found conflicting details in the commission’s report. Critics of the Warren Commission’s report believed that additional ballistics experts’ conclusions and a home movie shot at the scene disputed the theory that three bullets fired from Oswald’s gun could have caused Kennedy’s fatal wounds as well as the injuries to Texas Governor John Connally, who was riding with the president in an open car as it traveled through Dallas’ Dealey Plaza that fateful day. So persistent was the controversy that another congressional investigation was conducted in 1979. That committee agreed with the Warren Commission that Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots that killed the president and that the Secret Service failed to protect Kennedy. It did, however, also allow for the possibility that a second gunman might have been involved, but did not pursue the matter further.

Related Videos Warren Commission - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com Google Warren Commission: President Kennedy is assassinated The 46-year-old Kennedy was shot while traveling in a motorcade in an open-top limousine as it passed the Texas School Book Depository Building in downtown Dallas at approximately 12:30 p.m. First lady Jacqueline Kennedy, Texas Governor John Connally (1917-1993) and his wife Nellie were riding with the president, and the governor also was shot and seriously wounded. Kennedy was pronounced dead 30 minutes later at Dallas’ Parkland Hospital. Vice President Johnson, who was three cars behind Kennedy in the motorcade, was sworn in as the 36th U.S. president at 2:39 p.m., taking the oath of office aboard Air Force One as it sat on the runway at Dallas Love Field airport. Less than an hour after Kennedy was shot, Oswald, a former Marine who had recently started working at the Texas School Book Depository Building, killed a policeman who questioned him on the street near his Dallas rooming house. Thirty minutes later, Oswald was arrested in a movie theater by police responding to reports of a suspect.

Oswald was formally arraigned on November 23 for the murders of Kennedy and Officer J.D. Tippit. The next day, Oswald was brought to the basement of the Dallas police headquarters on his way to a more secure county jail. A crowd of police and press with live television cameras rolling gathered to witness his departure. As Oswald came into the room, Jack Ruby (1911-1967) emerged from the crowd and fatally wounded him with a single shot from a concealed .38 revolver. Ruby, who operated strip joints and dance halls in Dallas and had minor connections to organized crime, was immediately detained. He claimed that rage at Kennedy’s murder was the motive for his action. Johnson appoints Warren Commission Since Oswald was killed so soon after murdering Kennedy, his motive for the crime remained unknown. On November 29, 1963, Johnson established the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy in order to investigate his predecessor’s death. The commission was led by Chief Justice Warren, a former governor of California who was appointed to the Supreme Court in 1953. The commission also included two U.S. senators, two U.S.

representatives, a former CIA director and a former World Bank president. During its almost yearlong investigation, the Warren Commission, as it was commonly known, reviewed reports by the FBI, Secret Service, Department of State and the attorney general of Texas, and also pored over Oswald’s personal history, political affiliations and military record. The group listened to the testimony of hundreds of witnesses and traveled to Dallas several times to visit the site where Kennedy was shot. In its 888-page report presented to Johnson on September 24, 1964 (and released to the public three days later), the commission concluded that the bullets that killed Kennedy and injured Connally were fired by Oswald in three shots from a rifle pointed out of a sixth-floor window in the Texas School Book Depository. Oswald’s life, including a visit he made to the Soviet Union, was described in detail, but the report made no attempt to analyze his motives. Additionally, the commission found that the Secret Service had made poor preparations for Kennedy’s visit to Dallas and had failed to sufficiently protect him, and concluded that Ruby had acted alone in killing Oswald.

Warren Commission Report proves controversial The Warren Commission’s conclusion that Oswald was a “lone gunman” failed to satisfy some who witnessed the attack and others whose research found conflicting details in the commission’s report. A number of conspiracy theories arose, involving such disparate suspects as the Cuban and Soviet governments, organized crime, the FBI and CIA and even Johnson himself. Some critics of the Warren Commission’s report believed that additional ballistics experts’ conclusions and a home movie shot at the scene disputed the theory that three bullets fired from Oswald’s gun could have caused Kennedy’s fatal wounds as well as the injuries to the Texas governor. In the late 1970s, the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) launched a new investigation into Kennedy’s death. In its final report, issued in 1979, the HSCA agreed with the Warren Commission’s findings that two bullets fired by Oswald had killed Kennedy and wounded Connally. However, the HSCA also concluded there was a high probability that a second gunman fired at Kennedy, and that the president was probably assassinated as a result of an unspecified conspiracy. The committee’s findings, as with the those of the Warren Commission, continue to be debated.

The enormous volume of documentation from the Warren Commission was placed in the National Archives and much of it is now available to the public. However, access to Kennedy’s autopsy records is highly restricted. To view them requires membership in a presidential or congressional commission or the permission of the Kennedy family. Tags BBC ON THIS DAY | 28 | 1964: Kennedy murder was 'no conspiracy' About This Site | Text Only 1964: Kennedy murder was 'no conspiracy' There was no conspiracy surrounding the death of President Kennedy but there were serious failures by those responsible for his protection, according to a government report. The 300,000-word document, prepared by a special commission set up by President Johnson to investigate the assassination, ends months of speculation about the death of the president on 22 November 1963 in Dallas, Texas. The commission, led by Chief Justice Earl Warren of the Supreme Court, concludes in its report that gunman Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he fired three rifle shots at the president from the Texas School Book Depository.

Security services criticised It rules out suggestions that Oswald, 24, had an accomplice and that shots were fired from an overpass situated in front of the president's car. It states that Oswald was also to blame for shooting a police officer with a revolver approximately three-quarters of an hour later on a Dallas street. Ballistics analysis revealed both guns were owned by Oswald. The report also found that Jack Ruby, 53, who shot Oswald dead two days after the president's death at a Dallas police station also acted on his own initiative. But the security services responsible for protecting the president were severely criticised by the report. The Secret Service was criticised for not taking adequate safety precautions prior to the trip and for not liaising enough with other government departments. It is understood the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Office of Naval Intelligence all had dossiers on Oswald prior to the shooting following his defection from Russia to America in 1961. The Secret Service, however, was unaware of his existence, the report stated.

The FBI was criticised for taking "an unduly restrictive view of its responsibilities in preventive intelligence work prior to the assassination." The press and the media were also criticised for turning Dallas police station into "bedlam" after the assassination and the police officers themselves were condemned for not following correct interviewing procedures when quizzing Oswald about the shooting. In Context President Johnson immediately appointed a committee to look into the recommendations in the report. In the years since the assassination there has been much debate about who actually killed JFK. In 1979 the US Congress House Select Committee on Assassinations said four shots could be heard on audio tape of the assassination, and they appeared to come from two different locations. The committee concluded Oswald probably did not act alone. However, the sound of shots cannot be distinguished as such by the ear and the committee's report was later described as "seriously flawed" by the US National Academy of Sciences. US scientists are in the process of digitising the original tape, never heard by the Warren Commission, and which is now too fragile to be played. A number of conspiracy theories ranging from an elaborately staged suicide to a right-wing government conspiracy have been suggested.

Oliver Stone's 1992 movie "JFK" supported the conspiracy theorists however an official government review in 1998 again concluded there had been no conspiracy. The debate still continues with strong opinions on both sides. Fact Box The Warren Commission's Investigation of the JFK Assassination The Reaction of the Public The media approved of the Warren Report ’s conclusions, but in most cases failed to compare those conclusions to the evidence on which they were supposedly based. Many citizens did take the trouble to examine the Commission’s treatment of the evidence, and were less impressed. For example: Mark Lane, the lawyer and former political associate of President Kennedy, wrote Oswald Innocent? A Lawyer’s Brief , in which he denounced the behaviour of the Warren Commission and other official bodies during the first few weeks after the assassination. The eminent philosopher, Bertrand Russell, in his 16 Questions on the Assassination , pointed out many inconsistencies in the Commission’s treatment of witnesses. In the first few years after the publication of the Warren Report , several critical books were published, explaining in detail how the Warren Commission’s conclusions failed to reflect the evidence. For more about the early critics, see Further Reading about the JFK Assassination .

Although the critics were given little publicity in the media, their ideas gradually influenced public opinion. According to a series of opinion polls , a majority of the US population has consistently refused to believe the Warren Report ’s main conclusion, that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of President Kennedy. The public’s disbelief in the Warren Report ’s conclusions is reflected in its attitude to the Warren Commission itself, which is widely assumed to have been a politically expedient whitewash rather than an honest attempt to discover the facts and causes of the JFK assassination. Whitewash or Honest Investigation? There are bound to be mistakes in the investigation of any case as complex as the JFK assassination. It is easy to point to instances in which the Warren Commission either overlooked an important witness or misinterpreted an item of physical evidence. By themselves, isolated instances do not prove that the Warren Commission was deliberately deceptive. It is necessary to: look at how comprehensively the Commission investigated suspects other than Lee Harvey Oswald; examine the essential elements of the investigation, and in particular the evidence that the Commission used to make its case against Oswald , and see whether a pattern emerges.

The Warren Commission and the Suspects The Facts of the Assassination Most people who look at the ’s table of contents are struck by one thing: only two of the Report ’s eight chapters deal with the facts of the assassination. The other six chapters and the 18 appendices of the 900–page Report are largely comprised of an extended biography of Lee Harvey Oswald. Other peripheral topics include a biography of Jack Ruby and a discussion of how best to protect presidents in the future. Assuming Oswald’s Guilt The Warren Report gives the impression that no suspect other than Oswald was seriously considered. This impression was confirmed when transcripts of the Commission’s executive sessions and other internal documents were made public several years later. Oswald was indeed the only suspect, and his guilt was assumed even before the Commission had begun to assemble any evidence: On 11 January 1964, J.

Lee Rankin, the Commission’s General Counsel, supplied the Commissioners with an outline of the proposed report ( Rankin papers , box 1, folder 5, National Archives; reproduced as Appendix A in Howard Roffman, Presumed Guilty : How and Why the Warren Commission Framed Lee Harvey Oswald , Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1975). Part II of the outline is headed ‘Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy’. The Commission did not hear its first witness until three weeks later. Two months later, Alfred Goldberg, the military historian who was to write a sizeable part of the Warren Report , submitted another outline (Goldberg to Rankin, c.14 March 1964; reproduced in Harold Weisberg, Post Mortem , 1975, p.123). The proposed Chapter Four is titled ‘Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin’, and lists topics that will prove Oswald’s guilt, such as the ballistics evidence, the witnesses to Oswald’s bringing the rifle into the Texas School Book Depository, and the witness to his firing the rifle. None of this evidence was considered by the Commission until after the outline had been written.

The Political Aspect of the Warren Commission Other secret official documents, released many years later, reveal that the Warren Commission’s predetermined conclusions were imposed upon it even before the Commission had been established. Early reports in the media of shots from more than one direction, and of the arrest of a suspect who appeared to be linked to the Soviet and Cuban regimes, generated two competing conspiracy theories : either the Soviet or Cuban regimes were behind the assassination, or those regimes had been falsely implicated by their political enemies. Washington insiders were aware of the threat posed by these conspiracy theories to public trust in political institutions. On Sunday 24 November, within hours of Oswald’s murder by Jack Ruby, and long before any real investigation of the crime had taken place, J. Edgar Hoover reported the result of a conversation with the acting Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach: The thing I am concerned about, and so is Mr Katzenbach, is having something issued so that we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin. Mr Katzenbach thinks that the President might appoint a Presidential Commission of three outstanding citizens to make a determination.

( , appendix vol.3, p.472 ) Later that day, Katzenbach wrote a memo in which he reiterated the problem and his preferred solution: The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial. Speculation about Oswald’s motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or (as the Iron Curtain press is saying) a right–wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists. Unfortunately the facts on Oswald seem about too pat — too obvious (Marxist, Cuba, Russian wife, etc.). The Dallas police have put out statements on the Communist conspiracy theory, and it was they who were in charge when he was shot and thus silenced. … We need something to head off public speculation or Congressional hearings of the wrong sort. ( FBI HQ JFK Assassination File, 62–109060–18 ) President Johnson set up the Warren Commission five days later. The transcripts of the Commission’s executive sessions reveal that the purpose of the Commission was clearly understood and consistently acted upon.

The Commission’s Case Against Oswald The fact that the Warren Commission worked from the assumption that Oswald was guilty does not, of course, rule out the possibility that Oswald actually was guilty. The evidence, however, suggests otherwise. Where Was Lee Harvey Oswald? The Warren Commission’s treatment of the evidence is exemplified by the way it dealt with the fundamental task of placing its only suspect at the scene of the crime. If Lee Harvey Oswald had fired any shots at President Kennedy, he must have done so from the south–easternmost window on the sixth floor of the TSBD , where the three empty bullet shells were found. Almost all of the relevant evidence indicates that Oswald had been on either the first or second floor at the time of the assassination: Only one witness, Howard Brennan, described someone in the sixth–floor window who matched Oswald’s appearance. Other witnesses gave descriptions that did not match Oswald. Brennan was not a strong witness: he testified to seeing things he cannot have seen, and he failed to identify Oswald when he came face to face with the alleged gunman just a few hours after the shooting, despite having already seen Oswald’s photograph on television.

The Warren Commission ignored the evidence of Brennan’s unreliability and brushed aside the evidence that contradicted his account. The Warren Commission recognised that if Oswald was the assassin, he must have been on the sixth floor for some time before the assassination, assembling his rifle and his sniper’s nest. The Commission supported this assumption by claiming falsely that “Charles Givens … was the last known employee to see Oswald inside the building prior to the assassination … at 11:45am” ( , vol. 6, pp. 388–90 ). Although the relevant evidence suggests very strongly that Lee Harvey Oswald had not been on the sixth floor at the time of the assassination, the evidence is not conclusive. It is possible that all the witnesses were mistaken, and that Oswald had in fact handled several of the cartons during the assassination without leaving his fingerprints on them. This evidence could reasonably be dismissed if irrefutable proof existed of Oswald’s guilt . Unfortunately, almost all of the other evidence suggested otherwise: Oswald’s ownership, transportation, and use of the rifle demonstrated that he had not committed the crime. The evidence of eye–witnesses in Dealey Plaza suggested strongly that shots had been fired from more than one direction.

The number of bullet shells could not be matched credibly to the injuries, which suggested that more than one gunman had been involved. Oswald had no motive for assassinating President Kennedy. This evidence, too, was misrepresented by the Warren Report . Lee Harvey Oswald and the Rifle The only item of evidence linking Lee Harvey Oswald with the killing of President Kennedy was his apparent ownership of the gun that was discovered on the sixth floor (see the Basic Facts of the JFK Assassination ). Everything else to do with the rifle suggested strongly that Oswald had not been the assassin: According to experts from the US Army and the FBI, the rifle Oswald was supposed to have used was too inaccurate and unreliable to have hit the target twice in three attempts within a few seconds. According to his Marine Corps records and to what is known about his use of guns in the four and a half years since he left the Marines, Oswald’s marksmanship was clearly much worse than it needed to be. All the witnesses who saw Oswald early on the morning of the assassination testified that he did not bring the rifle into the Texas School Book Depository. Paraffin tests , supported by neutron activation analysis , showed that Oswald almost certainly did not fire a rifle at all on the day of the assassination.

The Grassy Knoll Witnesses The Warren Commission was expected to demonstrate that Oswald was not just an assassin but that he was the assassin. About 40 witnesses in Dealey Plaza claimed that at least one shot was fired from the general direction of the infamous grassy knoll, in the opposite direction from the Texas School Book Depository. The testimony of most of these witnesses was ignored; the rest was dismissed on spurious grounds. The Single–Bullet Theory The other essential element of the case against Oswald as the lone assassin required that all the injuries must have been caused by the three bullets whose shells were found by the sixth–floor window. Here again the Commission misrepresented the evidence. The Warren Commission’s single–bullet theory was contradicted by almost all of the relevant evidence: The bullet holes in President Kennedy’s jacket and shirt were far too low to have been caused by a bullet fired from the sixth floor which went on to come out of the president’s throat. Several official documents confirmed that JFK’s back wound was too low to be consistent with the single–bullet theory: the death certificate, the autopsy descriptive sheet, and the only contemporary written account of the autopsy. Several of the closest witnesses stated that Governor Connally was hit after President Kennedy had already been hit.

Connally himself was particularly emphatic that the single–bullet theory could not be true. No witnesses claimed that Connally and Kennedy were hit by the same bullet. Oswald’s Motive The Warren Commission tried hard to discover plausible reasons why Oswald killed JFK , but admitted that it “could not make any definitive determination of Oswald’s motives”. The Commission did, however, try “to isolate factors which contributed to his character and which might have influenced his decision to assassinate President Kennedy” ( , p.22 ), hence the large part of the Report that was given over to a biography of Oswald. As with the questions of where Oswald was at the time of the assassination and whether he brought a rifle into the Texas School Book Depository, every item of relevant evidence contradicted the Warren Report ’s preconceived conclusion that Oswald alone was guilty of the assassination. The Warren Commission and Secrecy Although the Commission published thousands of official documents in its 26 volumes of Hearings and Exhibits , many other documents were withheld from the public. Some were simply placed in the National Archives. Others were classified secret, and their contents only became known as a result of litigation under the Freedom of Information Act.

In almost every case, the documents were brought to public attention by private researchers rather than professional journalists. Unsurprisingly, many of the secret documents either flatly contradicted the Warren Commission’s predetermined conclusions or were embarrassing in some other way. To take a few examples: Parkland Hospital Press Conference Perhaps the most shameful example of the Warren Commission’s attitude to the evidence was its de facto suppression of the transcript of a press conference at Parkland Hospital in Dallas by two of the doctors who had treated President Kennedy. Dr Malcolm Perry stated three times that in his opinion the wound to Kennedy’s throat had been caused by a shot from the front. If true, this fact would prove that at least two gunmen shot at JFK. In conjunction with the Secret Service, the Commission failed to track down a contemporary record of the press conference, a transcript of which had been sitting in the White House press office since shortly after the assassination. Arlen Specter, the Commission counsel who interviewed Perry, persuaded the doctor to state that the newspaper reports of the conference were mistaken, and that he had not said what it later transpired he had in fact said.

Sibert and O’Neill Report The report by James Sibert and Francis O’Neill , the two FBI agents who attended President Kennedy’s autopsy, contained several observations that contradicted the single–bullet theory : The wound in President Kennedy’s back was “below the shoulders”. The bullet that caused the wound could not have come out of JFK’s throat: “the trajectory of the missile entering at this point had entered at a downward position of 45 to 60 degrees”. The wound was probed by one of the pathologists, who discovered that “the end of the opening could be felt with the finger”. The Sibert and O’Neill report was ignored by the Commission, was kept out of the Hearings and Exhibits , and was only discovered in the National Archives in 1966. The two FBI agents were not called as witnesses. When later investigations did call them as witnesses, they gave evidence that contradicted the lone–gunman theory. Neutron Activation Analysis Standard paraffin tests were applied to Oswald’s hands and right cheek a few hours after the assassination, and appeared to show that he had not fired a rifle.

Such tests, however, are far from conclusive: positive results do not necessarily indicate that the chemicals which are present are from gunpowder residues, and negative results do not necessarily indicate the absence of gunpowder residues. A more incisive test, neutron activation analysis , was carried out on: the paraffin casts of Oswald’s hands and right cheek; paraffin casts from a controlled test in which several gunmen fired rifles of the same type as that found on the sixth floor; and the fragments of bullets retrieved from Kennedy, Connally and the car. The results of the neutron activation analysis were kept secret by the Warren Commission, the FBI, and the Department of Justice. The matter was dealt with perfunctorily by the Commission: The FBI scientist who oversaw the tests was the Commission’s final witness; he testified after the Warren Report had been written, and while it was being prepared for publication. The topics that would be covered and ignored were rehearsed prior to his testimony. The witness implied that the paraffin cast of Oswald’s right cheek contained no incriminating quantities of gunpowder residues. No details or measurements were asked for or given. The existence of the controlled tests was not mentioned.

As might be expected, the results of these tests exonerated Oswald: each rifle deposited substantial amounts of gunpowder residues on the gunman’s cheek. The existence of NAA tests of the bullet fragments was not mentioned. The suppression of the results of objective, uncontroversial scientific tests for 17 years on the grounds of ‘national security’ is a blatant admission that the results of the tests were unfavourable to the lone–nut hypothesis. Edgewood Arsenal Ballistics Tests The Department of Defense conducted ballistics tests to determine whether or not the so–called magic bullet, Commission Exhibit 399 , could plausibly have caused the damage to Governor Connally’s ribs and wrist bones. The resulting report, Wound Ballistics of 6.5–mm Mannlicher–Carcano Ammunition , demonstrated that any bullet causing such injuries would have been substantially more deformed than was CE 399. The report was kept secret for ten years, at the instigation of firstly the Warren Commission and then the Department of Defense. Rumours that Oswald Was an Undercover Agent The Warren Commission was confronted by rumours that Lee Harvey Oswald had been an employee of one sort or another of the FBI or the CIA or both.

The matter was considered to be so damaging to the notion of Oswald as a lone assassin that Earl Warren and J. Lee Rankin: withheld knowledge of some of the accusations from some members of the Warren Commission; ensured that an emergency meeting of the Commission took place partially off the record, and had the stenographer’s notes of the meeting destroyed; and ensured that another meeting took place entirely off the record, with no stenographer or recording device present. The only record of the second secret meeting was a memorandum by J. Lee Rankin , which only came to light many years later. Richard Russell’s Dissent One of the Warren Commission’s final acts was to suppress the dissent of one of its own members. Senator Richard Russell had been impressed by the testimony of Governor Connally, who claimed that he had not been hit by the same bullet that had wounded President Kennedy. If Connally’s recollection was accurate, the single–bullet theory cannot be correct, and more than one gunman must have been involved. Russell demanded a special meeting of the Commission, during which he laid out his objections and offered two written statements.

Although a stenographer was present at this meeting, the minutes turned out to be merely a book–keeping record of trivial procedural items, rather than the usual verbatim transcript. Russell’s objections vanished from the Commission’s records. They survive in his personal papers and in a telephone call between Senator Russell and President Johnson , a recording of which was itself kept secret for many years. Further Reading For detailed accounts of the Warren Commission and its working methods, see: Silvia Meagher, Warren Commission The collection includes 26 volumes The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, commonly known as the Warren Commission, was created by President Lyndon Johnson and chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren to investigate President Kennedy's assassination. The Commission presented their findings in a report to President Johnson on September 24, 1964. The Commission also released 26 hearing volumes on November 23, 1964 comprised of testimonies from 550 witnesses and evidence. GPO produced the Warren Commission Report and 26 hearing volumes in 1964.

Altogether, GPO's work for the Commission resulted in nearly 235,000 copies of the report and nearly 5,600 sets of the hearings. Warren Commission Report— Full Report Warren Commission Hearings More Info Contains testimony of the following witnesses: Mrs. Marina Oswald, the widow of Lee Harvey Oswald; Mrs. Marguerite Oswald, Oswald's mother; Robert Edward Lee Oswald, Oswald's brother; and James Herbert Martin, who acted for a brief period as Mrs. Marina Oswald's business manager. More Info Contains testimony of the following witnesses: James Herbert Martin, who acted for a brief period as the business manager of Mrs. Marina Oswald; Mark Lane, a New York attorney; William Robert Greer, who was driving the President's car at the time of the assassination; and others. Contains testimony of the following witnesses: Ruth Hyde Paine, an acquaintance of Lee Harvey Oswald and his wife; Howard Leslie Brennan, who was present at the assassination scene; Bonnie Ray Williams, Harold Norman, James Jarman, Jr., and others. More Info Contains testimony of the following witnesses: Sebastian F.

Latona, a fingerprint expert with the Federal Bureau of Investigation ; Arthur Mandella, a fingerprint expert with the New York City Police Department; Winston G. Lawson, a Secret Service agent who worked on advance preparations for the President's trip to Dallas; Alwyn Cole, a questioned document examiner with the Treasury Department ; and John W. Fain, John Lester Quigley, and James Patrick Hosty, Jr., agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation who interviewed Oswald, or people connected with him, at various times during the period between Oswald's return from Russia in 1962 and the assassination; and others. More Info Contains testimony of the following witnesses: Alan H. Belmont, assistant to the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; Jack Revill and V. J. Brian of the Dallas police, who testified concerning conversations Revill had with James Patrick Hosty, Jr., a special agent of the FBI; Robert A. Frazier, a firearms expert with the FBI ; Drs. Alfred Olivier, Arthur Dziemian and Frederick W. Light, Jr., wound ballistics experts with the U.S. Army laboratories at Edgewood Arsenal, Md.; J.

Edgar Hoover, Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and others. More Info Contains testimony of the following witnesses: Drs. Charles J. Carrico, Malcolm Oliver Perry, William Kemp Clark, Robert Nelson McClelland, Charles Rufus Baxter, Marion Thomas Jenkins, Ronald Coy Jones, Don Teel Curtis, Fouad A. Bashour, Gene Coleman Akin, Paul Conrad Peters, Adolph Hartung Giesecke, Jr., Jackie Hansen Hunt, Kenneth Everett Salyer, and Martin G. White, who attended President Kennedy at Parkland Hospital; and others. Contains testimony of the following witnesses: Drs. Charles J. Carrico, Malcolm Oliver Perry, William Kemp Clark, Robert Nelson McClelland, Charles Rufus Baxter, Marion Thomas Jenkins, Ronald Coy Jones, Don Teel Curtis, Fouad A. Bashour; and others. More Info Contains testimony of the following witnesses: Edward Voebel, William E. Wulf, Bennierita Smith, Frederick S.

O'Sullivan, Mildred Sawyer, Anne Boudreaux, Viola Peterman, Myrtle Evans, Julian Evans, Philip Eugene Vinson, and Hiram Conway, who were associated with Lee Harvey Oswald in his youth; Lillian Murret, Marilyn Dorothea Murret, Charles Murret, John M. Murret, and Edward John Pic, Jr., who were related to Oswald; and others. More Info Contains testimony of the following witnesses: Paul M. Raigorodsky, Natalie Ray, Thomas M. Ray, Samuel B. Ballen, Lydia Dymitruk, Gary E. Taylor, Ilya A. Mamantov, Dorothy Gravitis, Paul Roderick Gregory, Helen Leslie, George S. De Mohrenschildt, Jeanne De Mohrenschildt and Ruth Hyde Paine, all of whom became acquainted with Lee Harvey Oswald and/or his wife after their return to Texas in 1962 ; and others. More Info Contains testimony of the following witnesses: Everett D. Glover, who became acquainted with Lee Harvey Oswald following his return to Texas in 1962; Carlos Bringuier, Francis L.

Martello, Charles Hall Steele, Jr., Charles Hall Steele, Sr., Philip Geraci III, Vance Blalock, Vincent T. Lee, Arnold Samuel Johnson, James J. Tormey, Farrell Dobbs, and John J. Abt, who testified concerning Oswald's political activities and associations; and others. More Info Contains testimony of the following witnesses: John Edward Pic, Lee Harvey Oswald's halfbrother; Edward John Pic, Jr., John Edward Pic's father; Kerry Wendell Thornley, a Marine Corps acquaintance of Oswald George B. Church, Jr., Mrs. George B. Church, Jr., and Billy Joe Lord, who were on the boat Oswald took when he left the United States for Russia; and others. More Info Contains testimony of the following witnesses: Dallas law enforcement officers who were responsible for planning and executing the transfer of Lee Harvey Oswald from the Dallas City Jail to the Dallas County Jail; and Don Ray Archer, Barnard S. Clardy, and Patrick Trevore Dean, who participated in the arrest and questioning of Jack L. Ruby; and others. More Info Contains testimony of the following witnesses: L. C. Graves, James Robert Leavelle, L. D. Montgomery.

Thomas Donald McMillon, and Forrest V. Sorrels, who participated in the arrest and questioning of Jack L. Ruby; Dr. Fred A. Bieberdorf, Frances Cason, Michael Hardin, and C. E. Hulse, who testified concerning the time at which Lee Harvey Oswald was shot; and others. More Info Contains testimony of the following witnesses: Curtis LaVerne Crafard, Wilbyrn Waldon (Robert) Litchfield II, Robert Carl Patterson, Alice Reaves Nichols, Ralph Paul, George Senator, Nancy Perrin Rich, Breck Wall (Billy Ray Wilson), Joseph Alexander Peterson, Harry N. Olsen, and Kay Helen Olsen, all of whom were friends, acquaintances, employees, or business associates of Jack L. Ruby; Earl Ruby and Sam Ruby, two of Ruby's brothers, and Mrs. Eva Grant, one of his sisters; Jack L. Ruby; Dr. William Robert Beavers, a psychiatrist who examined Ruby; and Bell P. Herndon, an FBI polygraph expert who administered a polygraph test to Ruby. More Info Contains testimony of the following witnesses: Hyman Rubenstein, a brother of Jack L. Ruby; Glen D.

King, administrative assistant to the chief of the Dallas police; C. Ray Hall, an FBI agent who interviewed Ruby; Charles Batchelor, assistant chief of the Dallas police; Jesse E. Curry, chief of the Dallas police; M. W. Stevenson, deputy chief of the Dallas police; and others. Also includes an index to Volumes I - XV. Volumes XVI—XXVI These volumes contain reproductions of exhibits received into evidence by the Commission. The exhibits received in connection with testimony before the Commission are printed first, arranged in numerical order from 1 to 1053. Next are printed exhibits received in connection with depositions or affidavits, arranged alphabetically by name of witness, and then numerically— e.g., Adams Exhibits Nos. 1-, Baker Exhibits Nos. 1-22. Finally are printed other materials relied upon by the Commission, consisting principally of investigative reports by law enforcement agencies, arranged in numerical order beginning with 1054. Each volume begins with a table of contents—a descriptive listing of the exhibits in the volume and the page or pages on which each exhibit is printed.

The numbering of the exhibits received in testimony before the Commission is not completely consecutive; the unused numbers are noted in the table of contents. Also, various systems of designation were used in connection with deposition and affidavit exhibits, so that the designation of some of these exhibits begins either with a letter or a number higher than 1—e.g., Jones Exhibits A-C, Smith Exhibits Nos. 5000-5006. Almost all of the reproductions contained in the exhibit volumes consist of photographs of the exhibits. The legibility of many documentary exhibits is poor, because some exhibits were copies rather than originals and many others were discolored when tested for fingerprints. In some cases where legibility was particularly bad, the contents of the document have been typed out, and reproduced together with a miniature photograph of the exhibit. A few exhibits of negligible relevance were not reproduced because of their length or for reasons of taste. The omissions are described in the tables of contents. In a very small number of cases, names, dates, or numbers have been deleted from exhibits for security reasons or for the protection of named individuals.

John F Kennedy Assassination: Warren Commission FBI Files John F Kennedy Assassination Warren Commission FBI Files 8,155 pages of internal FBI files covering the Bureau's interactions with the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, commonly called the Warren Commission, archived on CD-ROM. Archival copy on CD-ROM PC/MAC These sets of documents are from the FBI headquarters file serial number 62-109060. They record the interaction between the FBI and members of the Warren Commission. They document the work performed by the FBI at the request of the Warren Commission. President Johnson appointed the Warren Commission on November 29, 1963, to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, at Dallas, Texas. President Johnson directed the Commission to evaluate matters relating to the assassination and the subsequent killing of the alleged assassin, and to report its findings and conclusions to him. The following members served on the Commission: Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States; Richard B.

Russell, Democratic Senator from Georgia and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; John Sherman Cooper, Republican Senator from Kentucky; Hale Boggs, Democratic Representative from Louisiana and majority whip in the House of Representatives; Gerald R. Ford, Republican Representative from Michigan; Allen W. Dulles, lawyer and former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John J. McCloy, lawyer, former President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and former United States High Commissioner for Germany. The Commission acted promptly to obtain a staff to meet its needs. J. Lee Rankin, former Solicitor General of the United States, was sworn in as general counsel for the Commission on December 16, 1963. He was aided in his work by 14 assistant counsels who were divided into teams to deal with the various subject areas of the investigation. The Commission was also assisted by lawyers, Internal Revenue Service agents, a senior historian, an editor, and secretarial and administrative personnel who were assigned to the Commission by Federal agencies at its request.

The Commission reviewed reports by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Secret Service, Department of State, and the Attorney General of Texas, and then requested additional information from federal agencies, Congressional committees, and state and local experts. The Commission held hearings and took the testimony of 552 witnesses. On several occasions, the Commission went to Dallas to visit the scene of the assassination and other places. The Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy and wounding Texas Governor John Connally and that Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald a few days later. In 1978 the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations released its report. The report made conclusions about the work of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Warren Commission). It reported that it found that: "The Warren Commission performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfillment of its duties. The Warren Commission conducted a thorough and professional investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination. The Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President.

This deficiency was attributable in part to the failure of the Commission to receive all the relevant information that was in the possession of other agencies and departments of the Government. The Warren Commission arrived at its conclusions, based on the evidence available to it, in good faith. The Warren Commission presented the conclusions in its report in a fashion that was too definitive." Source: National Archives and Records Administration John F Kennedy Assassination Warren Commission FBI Fil John F Kennedy Assassination Warren Commission FBI Files John F Kennedy Assassination Warren Commission FBI Files 8,155 pages of internal FBI files covering the Bureau's interactions with the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, commonly called the Warren Commission. These sets of documents are from the FBI headquarters file serial number 62-109060. They record the interaction between the FBI and members of the Warren Commission. They document the work performed by the FBI at the request of the Warren Commission. President Johnson appointed the Warren Commission on November 29, 1963, to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy on November 22, 1963, at Dallas, Texas.

President Johnson directed the Commission to evaluate matters relating to the assassination and the subsequent killing of the alleged assassin, and to report its findings and conclusions to him. The following members served on the Commission: Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States; Richard B. Russell, Democratic Senator from Georgia and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee; John Sherman Cooper, Republican Senator from Kentucky; Hale Boggs, Democratic Representative from Louisiana and majority whip in the House of Representatives; Gerald R. Ford, Republican Representative from Michigan; Allen W. Dulles, lawyer and former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; John J. McCloy, lawyer, former President of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and former United States High Commissioner for Germany. The Commission acted promptly to obtain a staff to meet its needs. J. Lee Rankin, former Solicitor General of the United States, was sworn in as general counsel for the Commission on December 16, 1963. He was aided in his work by 14 assistant counsels who were divided into teams to deal with the various subject areas of the investigation.

The Commission was also assisted by lawyers, Internal Revenue Service agents, a senior historian, an editor, and secretarial and administrative personnel who were assigned to the Commission by Federal agencies at its request. The Commission reviewed reports by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Secret Service, Department of State, and the Attorney General of Texas, and then requested additional information from federal agencies, Congressional committees, and state and local experts. The Commission held hearings and took the testimony of 552 witnesses. On several occasions, the Commission went to Dallas to visit the scene of the assassination and other places. The Commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy and wounding Texas Governor John Connally and that Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald a few days later. In 1978 the United States House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations released its report. The report made conclusions about the work of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Warren Commission). It reported that it found that: "The Warren Commission performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfillment of its duties. The Warren Commission conducted a thorough and professional investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination.

The Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President. This deficiency was attributable in part to the failure of the Commission to receive all the relevant information that was in the possession of other agencies and departments of the Government. The Warren Commission arrived at its conclusions, based on the evidence available to it, in good faith. The Warren Commission presented the conclusions in its report in a fashion that was too definitive." Source: National Archives and Records Administration 0 Summary of Findings | National Archives Summary of Findings Recommendations of the Select Committee on Assassinations I. Findings of the Select Committee on Assassinations in the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas, Tex., November 22, 1963 Lee Harvey Oswald fired three shots at President John F. Kennedy. The second and third shots he fired struck the President. The third shot he fired killed the President. President Kennedy was struck by two rifle shots fired from behind him. The shots that struck President Kennedy from behind him were fired from the sixth floor window of the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository building.

Lee Harvey Oswald owned the rifle that was used to fire the shots from the sixth floor window of the southeast comer of the Texas School Book Depository building. Lee Harvey Oswald, shortly before the assassination, had access to and was present on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building. Lee Harvey Oswald's other actions tend to support the conclusion that he assassinated President Kennedy. Scientific acoustical evidence establishes a high probability that two gunmen fired at President John F. Kennedy. Other scientific evidence does not preclude the possibility of two gunmen firing at the President. Scientific evidence negates some specific conspiracy allegations. The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that President John F. Kennedy was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. The committee is unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy. The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Soviet Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Cuban Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy.

The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that anti-Castro Cuban groups, as groups, were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved. The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the national syndicate of organized crime, as a group, was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved. The Secret Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Central Intelligence Agency were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. Agencies and departments of the U.S. Government performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfillment of their duties. President John F. Kennedy did not receive adequate protection. A thorough and reliable investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy was conducted. The investigation into the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination was inadequate. The conclusions of the investigations were arrived at in good faith, but presented in a fashion that was too definitive. The Secret Service was deficient in the performance of its duties.

The Secret Service possessed information that was not properly analyzed, investigated or used by the Secret Service in connection with the President's trip to Dallas; in addition, Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper. The responsibility of the Secret Service to investigate the assassination was terminated when the Federal Bureau of Investigation assumed primary investigative responsibility. The Department of Justice failed to exercise initiative in supervising and directing the investigation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the assassination. The Federal Bureau of Investigation performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfillment of its duties. The Federal Bureau of Investigation adequately investigated Lee Harvey Oswald prior to the assassination and properly evaluated the evidence it possessed to assess his potential to endanger the public safety in a national emergency. The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted a thorough and professional investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination. The Federal Bureau of Investigation failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was deficient in its sharing of information with other agencies and departments. The Central Intelligence Agency was deficient in its collection and sharing of information both prior to and subsequent to the assassination. The Warren Commission performed with varying degrees of competency in the fulfillment of its duties.

The Warren Commission conducted a thorough and professional investigation into the responsibility of Lee Harvey Oswald for the assassination. The Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President. This deficiency was attributable in part to the failure of the Commission to receive all the relevant information that was in the possession of other agencies and departments of the Government. The Warren Commission arrived at its conclusions, based on the evidence available to it, in good faith. The Warren Commission presented the conclusions in its report in a fashion that was too definitive. Page 3 Findings of the Select Committee on Assassinations in the Assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Memphis, Tenn. April 4, 1968 James Earl Ray fired one shot at Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The shot killed Dr. King. Dr. King was killed by one rifle shot fired from in front of him. The shot that killed Dr. King was fired from the bathroom window at the rear of a roominghouse at 422 1/2 South Main Street, Memphis, Tenn. James Earl Ray purchased the rifle that was used to shoot Dr. King and transported it from Birmingham, Ala.

to Memphis, Tenn., where he rented a room at 422 1/2 South Main Street, and moments after the assassination, he dropped it near 424 South Main Street. It is highly probable that James Earl Ray stalked Dr. King for a period immediately preceding the assassination. James Earl Ray fled the scene of the crime immediately after the assassination. James Earl Ray's alibi for the time of the assassination, his story of "Raoul", and other allegedly exculpatory evidence are not worthy of belief. James Earl Ray knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily pleaded guilty to the first degree murder of Dr. King. The committee believes, on the basis of the circumstantial evidence available to it, that there is a likelihood that James Earl Ray assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King as a result of a conspiracy. The committee believed on the basis of the evidence available to it, that no private organizations or individuals, other than those discussed under section B, were involved in the assassination of Dr. King. No Federal, State or local government agency was involved in the assassination of Dr. King. The Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation performed with varying degrees of competency and legality in the fulfillment of their duties.

The Department of Justice failed to supervise adequately the Domestic Intelligence Division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. In addition, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, in the Domestic Intelligence Division's COINTELPRO campaign against Dr. King, grossly abused and exceeded its legal authority and failed to consider the possibility that actions threatening bodily harm to Dr. King might be encouraged by the program. The Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation performed a thorough investigation into the responsibility of James Earl Ray for the assassination of Dr. King, and conducted a thorough fugitive investigation, but failed to investigate adequately the possibility of conspiracy in the assassination. The Federal Bureau of Investigation manifested a lack of concern for constitutional rights in the manner in which it conducted parts of the investigation. Page 4 III. Recommendations of the Select Committee on Assassinations I. Legislative recommendations on issues involving the prohibition, prevention and prosecution of assassinations and federally cognizable homicides Prohibition and prevention-- The Judiciary Committee should process for early consideration by the House legislation that would make the assassination of a Chief of State of any country, or his political equivalent, a Federal offense, if the offender is an American citizen or acts on behalf of an American citizen, or if the offender can be located in the United States.

The Judiciary Committee should process for early consideration by the House comprehensive legislation that would codify, revise and reform the Federal law of homicide, paying special attention to assassinations. The Judiciary Committee should give appropriate attention to the related offenses of conspiracy, attempt, assault and kidnaping in the context of assassinations. Such legislation should be processed independently of the general proposals for the codification, revision or reform of the Federal criminal law.

The committee should address the following issues in considering the legislation: Distinguishing between those persons who should receive the protection of Federal law because of the official positions they occupy and those persons who should receive protection of Federal law only in the performance of their official duties, Extending the protection of Federal law to persons who occupy high judicial and executive positions, including Justices of the Supreme Court and Cabinet officers, The applicability of these laws to private individuals the exercise of constitutional rights, The penalty to be provided for homicide and the related offenses, including the applicability and the constitutionality of the death penalty, The basis for the exercise of Federal jurisdiction, including domestic and extraterritorial reach, The preemption of State jurisdiction without the necessity of any action on the part of the Attorney General where the President is assassinated, The circumstances under which Federal jurisdiction should preempt State jurisdiction in other cases, The power of Federal investigative agencies to require autopsies to be performed, The ability of Federal investigative agencies to secure the assistance of other Federal or State agencies, including the military, other laws notwithstanding, The authority to offer rewards to apprehend the perpetrators of the crime, A requirement of forfeiture of the instrumentalities of the crime, The condemnation of personal or other effects of historical interest,

 The advisability of providing, consistent with the first amendment, legal trust devices to hold for the benefit of victims, their families, or the general treasury, the profits realized from books, movie rights, or public appearances by the perpetrator of the crime, and The applicability of threat and physical zone of protection legislation to persons under the physical protection of Federal investigative or law enforcement agencies.

The appropriate committees of the House should process for early consideration by the House charter legislation for the Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The committees should address the following issues in considering the charter legislation: The proper foreign and domestic intelligence functions of the intelligence and investigative agencies of the United States, The relationship between the domestic intelligence functions and the interference with the exercise of individual constitutional rights, The delineation of proper law enforcement functions and techniques including: The use of informants and electronic surveillance, guidelines to circumscribe the use of informants or electronic surveillance to gather intelligence on, or investigate, groups that may be exercising first amendment freedoms, and the proper response of intelligence or investigative agencies where information is developed that an informant has committed a crime, Guidelines to consider the circumstances, if any, when an investigative agency or a component of that agency should be disqualified from taking an active role in an investigation because of an appearance of impropriety growing out of a particular intelligence or investigative action, Definitions of the legislative scope and extent of "sources and methods" and the "informant privilege" as a rationale for the executive branch withholding information in response to congressional or judicial process or other demand for information, Institutionalizing efforts to coordinate the gathering, sharing, and analysis of intelligence information, Insuring those agencies that primarily gather intelligence perform their function so as to serve the needs of other agencies that primarily engage in physical protection, and Implement

ing mechanisms that would permit inter-agency tasking of particular functions.

Prosecution-- The Judiciary Committee should consider the impact of the provisions of law dealing with third-party records, bail and speedy trial as it applies to both the investigation and prosecution of federally cognizable homicides. The Judiciary Committee should examine recently passed special prosecutor legislation to determine if its provisions should be modified to extend them to Presidential assassinations and the circumstances, if any, under which they should be applicable to other federally cognizable homicides. II. Administrative recommendations to the Executive The Department of Justice should reexamine its contingency plans for the handling of assassinations and federally cognizable homicides in light of the record and findings of the committee.

Such an examination should consider the following issues: Insuring that its response takes full advantage of inter- and intra-agency task forces and the strike force approach to investigations and prosecutions, Insuring that its response takes full advantage of the advances of science and technology, and determining when it should secure independent panels of scientists to review or perform necessary scientific tasks, or secure qualified independent forensic pathologists to perform a forensic autopsy, Insuring that its fair trial/free press guidelines consistent with an alleged offender's right to a fair trial, allow information about the facts and circumstances surrounding an assassination promptly be made public, and promptly be corrected when erroneous information is mistakenly released, and Entering at the current time into negotiations with representatives of the media to secure voluntary agreements providing that photographs, audio tapes, television tapes, and related matters, made in and around the site of assassinations, be made available to the Government by consent immediately following an assassination. III. General recommendations for congressional investigations The appropriate committees of the House should consider amending the rules of the House to provide for a right to appointive counsel in investigative hearings where a witness is unable to provide counsel from private funds.

The appropriate committees of the House should examine the rules of the House governing the conduct of counsel in legislative and investigative hearings and consider delineating guidelines for professional conduct and ethics, including guidelines to deal with conflicts of interest in the representation of multiple witnesses before a committee. The Judiciary Committee should examine the adequacy of Federal law as it provides for the production of Federal and State prisoners before legislative or investigative committees under a writ of habeas corpus ad testificandum. The appropriate committees of the House should examine and clarify the applicability to congressional subpoenas of recently enacted legislative restrictions on access to records and other documents. The appropriate committees of the House should consider legislation that would authorize the establishment of a legislative counsel to conduct litigation on behalf of committees of the House incident to the investigative or legislative activities and confer jurisdiction on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to hear such lawsuits. The appropriate committees of the House should consider if rule 11 of the House should be amended, so as to restrict the current access by all Members of the House to the classified information in the possession of any committee. IV. Recommendations for further investigation The Department of Justice should contract for the examination of a film taken by Charles L.

Bronson to determine its significance if any, to the assassination of President Kennedy. The National Institute of Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice of the Department of Justice and the National Science Foundation should make a study of the theory and application of the principles of acoustics to forensic questions, using the materials available in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy as a case study. The Department of Justice should review the committee's findings and report in the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and after completion of the recommended investigation enumerated in sections A and B, analyze whether further official investigation is warranted in either case. The Department of Justice should report its analyses to the Judiciary Committee. Bibliographic note: Web version based on the Report of the Select Committee on Assassinations of the U.S. House of Representatives, Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1979. 1 volume, 686 pages. The formatting of this Web version may differ from the original. This page was last reviewed on August 15, 2016. Nov. 22, 1963: Zapruder Films JFK Assassination | WIRED Nov.

22, 1963: Zapruder Films JFK Assassination subscribe 6 months for $5 - plus a FREE Portable Phone Charger. 3 hours There is no future. There is no past. There is only Donald Glover rocking this look. bit.ly/2jEg1wW Author: Tony Long. Tony Long Date of Publication: 11.22.10. Time of Publication: 7:00 am. 7:00 am Nov. 22, 1963: Zapruder Films JFK Assassination 1963: President John F. Kennedy is assassinated as his motorcade passes through Dealey Plaza in downtown Dallas. Texas Gov. John Connally, riding in the same car as Kennedy, is seriously wounded. A spectator unwittingly films the assassination on his 8mm home-movie camera , contributing one of the 20th century’s earliest and most significant pieces of user-generated content.

The funerary weekend that follows will be telecast by satellite worldwide in the first giant example of the “global village.” See Also: Magic Bullet, Tragic Path — A Look at the JFK Assassination The Warren Commission, set up by order of President Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination, concluded that Kennedy was killed by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, firing from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. Although the report was widely accepted at first, skepticism grew as more information concerning possible conspiracies leaked out. Oswald denied having anything to do with the shooting at all, let alone being part of any conspiracy, but he was killed — and silenced — two days after the assassination while in the custody of Dallas police. That, coupled with the FBI’s miserable handling of the initial investigation, did nothing to quell the suspicions of those who believed Kennedy’s assassination was the work of (pick one, or more than one ): the CIA, Johnson, the mob, Fidel Castro, the anti-Castro Cubans, J. Edgar Hoover. Whether the shooter was acting alone or as part of a bigger conspiracy may never be known. Most of the available evidence, such as the Warren Commission Report , is inconclusive.

But the other big assertion — that Oswald (or whoever the Book Depository gunman was) had help from shooters on the ground — has never been adequately supported by hard evidence, either. The so-called “grassy knoll” theory maintains that one, or possibly two, gunmen shot from ground level in Dealey Plaza. A number of eyewitnesses claimed to have heard gunfire coming from the grassy knoll, but nobody actually saw a gunman, and no shells were ever recovered. The Warren Report, basing its findings on the autopsy and forensics reports, concluded that two bullets struck Kennedy. They came from the same weapon, a bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano military rifle of Italian manufacture that was recovered at the Book Depository. Three shots were fired, all from above and behind the target. The first missed. The second, the so-called “ magic bullet ,” passed through Kennedy and tore into Gov. Connally, causing all his wounds. The third shot, the killing one, exploded into the right side of Kennedy’s head.

Conspiracy theorists point to the impossible trajectory of the magic bullet, and to the 26 seconds of silent film shot by Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder , which shows Kennedy’s head snapping backwards as the fatal third shot takes off the right side of his head, as evidence that shots came from more than one direction. Forensics experts disagree, however, arguing that the described path of the second bullet, while improbable, was not impossible and that Kennedy’s head snap at the moment of impact suggests a reaction to the first bullet striking him and not the second. Half-a-century later, we’re still not entirely sure what happened in Dallas that day. The assassination changed the political landscape of the United States. The aftermath changed the media landscape of the world. Zapruder sold the publication rights to his film images to Life magazine, which ran the jarring, graphic still frames in its next issue a week later. The sequence was not shown as a film clip on network television until 1975. Where were the TV cameras? They were in studios. Most television cameras of the time were still bulky and barely mobile, the size of refrigerators. Mobile TV vans usually relied on landlines.

The president of the United States was not yet under constant video watch. The era of compact TV cameras and anywhere-hookups, even for professionals using microwave and satellite uplinks, was still in the future. (Hundreds of witnesses carrying video-ready smartphones? Even further into the future.) But what was on television from Friday to Monday of that November weekend was the return of Kennedy’s coffin to Washington, D.C., his repose in the East Room of the White House and lying-in-state in the Capitol Rotunda, the funeral at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, the burial at Arlington National Cemetery and the various processions and corteges linking these events. That and, of course, the live onscreen killing of Lee Harvey Oswald in the Dallas police headquarters. It was a harbinger of the media world to come. Transoceanic satellite links were new and expensive, but this was a story of such unexpectedness, such importance and such personal drama that TV pulled out all the stops. The weekend’s events were watched in grief, shock and horror by millions around the world. Communications theorist Marshall McLuhan deemed the Kennedy assassination and funeral a founding instance of the global village, a media experience shared in real time across borders and continents.

Source: Various Photo: President John F. Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally (in jump seat) ride in a motorcade in Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963, moments before bullets would injure Connally and fatally wound Kennedy. (Bettmann/Corbis) An earlier version of this article appeared on Wired.com Nov. 22, 2007.

Question: Which Commission was set up to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy?
Answer: Warren Commission