(UNTITLED)

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP75-00001R000100060017-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: February 8, 1999
• Sequence Number: 17
• Publication Date: August 30, 1967
• Content Type: NSPR

FOIAb3b
1=afi~ Sanitized - Approve for F e`1ease bV-' DP7vf-W6601 R000100oWULo1 ii 1117
front its, of course. The minutes of tl c Com- He studied the 20 volumes of hearings, Now, the sate thing was true of the stag
n;ission meetings are locked up In the Na-
tional Archives and no one can see them.
vest amount of the evidence, F.B.T. reports,
d
C.I.A. reports, which may be directly relate
to the information we should have, are also
locked up In the Archives. No one can see
th alt.
The photographs and H-rays of the Presi-
dent's body, taken at the autopsy in Be-
tL?escla, Maryland, taken just before the au-
topsy was begun, taken by Naval technicians,
which in and or themselves alight receive
the whole question as to whether or not
there was a conspiracy, cannot be seen by
anyone today and, in fact, not one member
Of the Warren Commission over saw the most
Important documents in the ease, the photo-
graphs and the X-rays. And not one lawyer
for the Commission over saw-was curious
enough to examine the most important
evidence.
I think talc villain was the desire of gov-
er-nnlcnt of icials to be nice, to see to it that
nothing would upset the American people,
that the apathy which has seized us for all
of these years be permitted to remain un-
interrupted by a factual presentation of what
happencd. The American people would have
been upset surely if they were told there was
:. conspiracy which took the life of your
President.
CeossitiTa: But Mr. Lane, who accuses the
Commission of playing fast and loose with
the evidence, does not always allow facts to
get In the way of his own theories. In "Rush
To Judgment,'' for example, he writes: "The
statements of eyewitnesses close to the Presi-
dent tended to confirm the likelihood that
the shot came from the right and not from
the rear." Lane then quotes Associated Press
photographer James Altgens, and another
eyewitness, Charles Brehm, as giving testi-
mony that would support the idea of a killer
on the grassy knoll. Yet Mr. Altgens, as we
saw Monday night, Is entirely certain that
all of the shots canto from behind, a fact
that Mr. Lane does not mention.
As for Mr. Brehm, Eddie Barker discovered
that he holds no brief either for the grassy
knoll theory or for the use of his words by
Mark Lane,
EDDIE BAP.iscR: Well now, seine critics of
the Warren Report have taken your testi-
mony, or interviews with you, to indicate
that you thought the shots came from be-
hind the fence over there. What about that?
CHARLES Bazi-ins: Well, as I say, it was not
a number of critics. It was one critic, Mark
Lane, who takes very great liberties with
adding to my quotation. I never said that
the-any shot came from here like I was
quoted by Mr, Lane. Mr. Lane would like No
to have positively identified the-what I slew
'fly over here-his skull-although I told
hint I could not-I did not-I thought it
was but I could not. So, he has added his
interpretations to what I said, and conse-
quently that's where the story comes from
that-that I said that the shots cone from
hip there. No shot came from up there at any
time during the whole fiasco that after-
noon.
CROVitirz: Nor are these the only examples
of :her. Lane lifting remarks out of context
to support his tllcories. Perhaps the most
charitable explanation is that Mark Lano
still considers himself a defense attorney for
Lee Harvey Oswald-and a, defense attor-
ney's primary duty is not to abstract truth,
but to his client.
There exists, however, a less partisan, and
therefore perhaps more disturbing critique
of the Warren Commission Report.
Ra'r ssa: One of the most influential at-
tacks on the work of the Commission is the
book, "Inquest," by a young scholar named
Edward J. Epstein. It began as a thesis in
find out just how the Warren Commission
had gone about solving this crime of the
century,
then interviewed five of the seven Commis-
sion members, General Counsel J. Lee Ran-
kill and some of the Commission's top in-
vestigators. And the pattern that began to
emerge disturbed him.
-EPSTEI.,: Well, there were three, I think,
levels of comp taint. The first one was the
Institutional, you might say: the general
problem that a government has when it
searches for truth, The problem of trying
to leave an, autonomous investigation, free
from. political interference and at the snih:e
time, it's dealing by its very nature with is
political problem.
The second level might be called the or-
ganizational level of-was the Warren Com-
mission, organized in a way that prevented it
from finding facts, And here illy findings
were that by using a part time staff and by
the Conlmissioll's detaching themselves from
the Investigation-in other welds, not ac-
tively partaking in the investigation-it
raised some problems as to whether the WWWar-
ren Commission's investigation went deep
enough, so that if there was evidence of a
conspiracy, they would have in fact found
it.
The third level of my criticism concerned
the evidence itself, and this concerned the
problem of when the Warren Commission
was come--confronted with a very complex
problem. For example, the contradiction be-
tween the F.B.I. summery report on the
autopsy and the autopsy report they had in
mind-how they solved this ;,robleu],
whether they simply glossed over it or
whether' they called witnesses and-and
this-this, of course, brought up the ques-
tions of-of a second ..ssassin.
RATHER: One of the men Mr. Epstein in-
terviewed for his "Inquest" is Arlen Spec-
ter, now District Attorney of Philadelphia,
but In 100t, one Of the principal investiga-
tors for the Warren Commission, charged
with establishing the basic facts of the
assassination. Mr. Specter thinks the.Com-
mission did its job well and came. up with
the right answers,
SPECTER: I would say after having pros-
ecuted a great many cases that seldom would
you ever find a case which was as persua-
sive that Oswald was the assassin and, in
fact, the lone assassin, and we convict peo-
ple in the criminal courts every day right
here In City Hall, Philadelphia: And the
time; the d eatll_penalties are imposed or life
il.prisoIlmeilt-so that-so that the case
does lit together.
RATI.sa: in separate interviews we asked
critic Epstein and investigator Specter to
discuss some of the central issues that must
determine how well or how badly the Warren
Commission did its work.
EPSTeIrr: Part of the job of the Warren
Commission was restoring confidence in the
American goverlunont. And for this he had
to pick seven very respectable men, men who
would lend their name and lend probity to
the report. And so that the problem was,
in any seven men he picked of this sort, they
would have very little time for the investi-
gation.
They would also have two purposes. One
purpose would be to find the truth, all the
facts. The other purpose would be to allay
rumors, to dispel conspiracy theories and ma-
terial of that sort.
SPECTER: My view Is that there Is abso-
lutely no foundation for that type of a
charge. When the President selected the
Commissioners, he chose meal of unblemished
reputation and very high standing. The Chief
Justice of the Supreme Court of the United
States would have no reason whatsoever to be
expedient or to search for political truths.
Nor would Allen W. Dukes, the former head of
the C.I.A., nor would Jolla McCloy, with his
dirt ng fished service in government, nor
would the Congressional or Senatorial repro-
. . FOIAb3b
members. When it cane gore to select the
Individuals to serve as assistant counsel ,.id
general counsel,'men Were ChoseIl from Vari-
ous parts of the 'United States who had no
connection with government.
EPsT1iI;v : For example, there were rumors
concerning the F.B.I. or various intelligence
agencies. I noticed that there were a num-
ber of memorandums where the-where-
from Warren to the Secretary of the Tress-
ury, who was in charge of the Secret Service,
assuring that their findings wouldn't Impair
the eficicncy or the morale of the Secret
Service, And the same thing again with the
P.B.I., a question of whether there was over
ill]}' possible connection between Oswald-
end by connection I don't mean anything
sinister, I simply meant that he was furnish-
ing Infornlatloll and there were some rumors
to this effect- find they, rather than inves-
tigating these rumors, they preferred to give
it to the P.B.I. to investigate the rumors
ti]eniselves. As J, Lee Rankin, their General
Counsel, said, they would rather that agency
clear its own skirts. Well, what this meant, of
course, is that if the F.B.I. would have dis-
cretion if it ciid find a connection between
Oswald and itself, the discretion of either
reporting it or not reporting it.
SPECTER: In the saip, the P.B.I. conducted
the basic line of investigation. But the Cons-
mission used its Independent judgment
wherever, say, the F.B.I. or the Secret Serv-
ice was involved itself so that they would not
investigate themselves on the subjects where
they were directly involved, and I think the
Commission showed its independence in that
regard by criticizing the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and by criticizing the Secret
Service where the facts warranted such
criticism.
On every subject where the Federal Bu-
reau of Investigation had contact with the
area of investigation with which I was inti-
mr.tely connected, I was fully satisfied wl.tih
their thoroughness and with their compe-
tency and with their integrity.
CRorvitiTR: Despite Mr. Specter's defense, it
Is the opinion of CBS News that the role of
the F.B.I. as well as the Secret Service, both
in the assassination and its aftermath, has
been less than glorious. And, to some extent,
the perfornianco of these agencies weakens
the credibility of the Warren Report. As to
what the F.B.I. and the Secret Service did
wrong before the assassination, we need look
no further than the Report Itself.
It notes the Secret Service agents assigned
to protect the President had been drinking
beer and liquor into the early hours of the
morning, that no search was made of build-
er.;,;; along, the route, and that, quote: "The
procedures of the Secret Service, designed to
Identify and protect against persons consid-
ered serious threats to the President, were
not adequate prior to the assassination," end
of quote. That is, the Secret Service should
have known about Lee Harvey Oswald.
But the Report goes on to point out that
if the Secret Service did not know about him,
the F.B.I. did, and did not see fit to men-
tion his existence to the Secret Service. The
report issues a mildly phrases! yet devastating
rebuke to the charging that it took an
unduly restrictive view of its responsibilities.
Knowing what the F.B.I. knew about Oswald,
the Report says, an alert agency should have
listed him as a potential menace to the pres-
ident. Yet, after the assassination, the Con]-
mission itself relied heavily on these two
agencies as its i .vestigativc arms.
Did their performance Improve? We know
that some of the tests concluctccl by then, for
the Warren Commission were unsatisfactory.
In the first of these broadcasts we pointed out
that to stimulate Oswald'., problem of hitting
a moving target from a sixty foot high perch,
the 1 .B.T. conducted its firing tests on a fixed
target, from a 30-foot height. Certainly, if
CBS News could duplicate the conditions of
Sanitized - Approved For Releas - 0017-3