Muncie Times, Muncie, Delaware County, 7 May 1992 — Page 28

The Muncie Times, Thursday, 7 May, 1992, Page 28 After 29 Years JFK Death Remains Controversial

by Tim Carney Ed. Note: In the course of this article you’ll find some passages marked in italics. These passages can be found in one or more of the 26 volumes of testimony and exhibits in the Hearings Before the President’s Commission (Warren Commission) on the Assassination of President Kennedy. The controversy lives on! In my last article I sketched a rough drawing of some of the general circumstances of the assassination and events leading up to it. In this installment we’re going to delve even farther into that day in Dallas. In the almost 29 years since the assassination of President Kennedy, several critics have found numerous flaws in the Report of the Warren Commission. These inconsistencies have raised serious questions regarding the accuracy and, ultimately, the truthfulness of the commission’s findings. Of the 552 witnesses heard from, only 94 actually testified at commission hearings (the rest were either questioned by commission staff lawyers during their field investigations or had submitted affidavits). The 49 actual hearings were held from Feb. 3, 1964 to Sept. 6, 1964, or about seven hearings a month. A commission hearing was defined by the presence of one or more members of the commission. In all but one case, the hearings were closed to the public. In his book, inquest (The Warren Commission and the Establishment of Truth!, author . Edward J. Epstein had this to say about the hearings: “Although these hearings served to substantiate and formalize the investigation, they produced little, if any, new evideqcp pf conse-

quence. Possibly no new evidence or ‘truths’ came to light because all the significant facts were already known. There were other reasons why the commission hearings didn’t uncover any new evidence on the assassination. Only a minor portion of the hearings were devoted to testimony relative to the assassination itself. By far the biggest part of the hearings was testimony concerning Lee Harvey Oswald’s life. Marina Oswald’s testimony alone accounted for more than 12 percent of the total hearings. Although she might have had information concerning Oswald’s prior movements and motives, she seemed to know nothing about the assassination itself. Oswald’s mother and brother’s testimony took up another 14 percent of the hearings (neither had seen Lee for over a year prior to the assassination). Another 13 percent was testimony of people with whom the Oswalds had resided at one time or another. “In all, 43 percent of the Commission’s time was spent hearing testimony concerning Oswald’s life history—a fact which suggests that the main focus of the Commission hearings was Oswald, not the assassination itself.” (Epstein, Inquest). This all leads this author to the conclusion

that, in fact the commission had already decided that Oswald was guilty - before the fact! Was there a coverup? Was Oswald the lone assassin of Kennedy — or was there a conspiracy to make him the fall guy? Was the CIA and/or Cuban political groups involved? What was the role, if any, of Jack Ruby and the Mob? Did J. Edgar Hoover know more than he was saying? Why are there some files regarding the assassination still classified? What or who is the government hiding in these files? We may never know the answers to some of these questions. But there is evidence available that in my mind, unquestionably refutes at least two of the findings of the Warren panel - the findings that Oswald was the lone assassin, and the finding that all of the shots (including the fatal one) came from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD). Following is just a very small portion of that evidence. Regarding the direction and number of the shots fired, there are numerous eyewitnesses who heard shots from the grassy knoll. Immediately after the shooting, Dallas Police Chief Jesse E. Curry broadcast on his police radio, “Get a man on top of that

triple underpass (the railroad overpass) and see what happened up there. ” Dallas County Sheriff Bill Decker, who was in the lead car of the motorcade with Curry, radioed an order to get “all available men out of my office into the railroad yard to try to determine what happened in there... ” As other witnesses had reported and photographs have shown, right after the shots, dozens of police officers and bystanders charged up the grassy knoll. Within minutes after the shooting, at least 50 policemen were searching the railroad parking lot and surrounding railroad yard. A large crowd from the comer of Elm and Houston streets (near the TSBD) also swarmed toward the grassy knoll. The TSBD ‘in contrast, ’attracted no immediate attention from bystanders. An eyewitness, Gordon Arnold, home from army basic training, was watching standing about 3 feet in front of the stockade fence on the knoll as the motorcade approached. He said that he felt a bullet whiz by his left ear, and then heard a crack, as if he were “standing there under the muzzle.” (from Contract on America, by David Scheim). He hit the ground and then heard another shot go over him. There were also numerous railroad yard workers who said that they saw smoke

Police & bystanders charge up the grassy knoll after shooting.

from the direction of the stockade fence, immediately after the shots. Sen. Ralph Yarborough, who was riding in the fourth car in the motorcade, with Vice-Presi-dent Lyndon Johnson, swore that he saw gunsmoke coming from the fence on the knoll to his right front. He also said that he could smell gunpowder on the car all the way to Parkland Memorial Hospital. Nearly all of the eyewimesses present stated that they thought the shots came from the grassy knoll. Even witnesses in the TSBD thought that the shots had come from outside. Many of the employees had run to the west end of the building (toward the knoll) immediately following the shots. There are many more examples available (I will list books and films with this information later) but space prevents me from listing all of them. Witnesses said six or seven shots were fired — Dallas Times Herald, afternoon edition, Nov. 22,1963. During the course of the shooting, a Dallas police motorcycle officer’s mike on his radio was stuck in the on, or transmit position for about 6 minutes, preserving the incident on police dictabelt machine. An FBI examination of the recordings failed to indicate the presence of any sounds which could be interpreted as gunshots. The Warren Commission independently submitted the tape to Dr. Lawrence Kersta of Bell Telephone Acoustics and Speech Laboratory. The results indicated six nonvoiced noises...Dr. Kersta’s tests weren’t mentioned in the Warren Report. In 1978 the recordings were digitally analyzed by Dr. James Barger of Bolt, Baranek and Newman (the same firm hired to analyze (cent, on pg. 29)