Photo:Warren Commission presenting report on assassination of John F. Kennedy to Lyndon Johnson; Author:Cecil Stoughton; Public Domain
If Watergate is this century’s most famous example of a coverup, then the new report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Activities should be labelled the classic example of a coverup of a coverup. This is the Committee that was set up to study governmental intelligence activities and whose prior reports have sensationally exposed covert operations of the CIA and its plots against foreign leaders.
The latest report of the Senate Committee deals exclusively with how Federal agencies investigated the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. In making its report, the Senate Committee pins the charge of coverup on the CIA and the FBI, but commits its own coverup by whitewashing the actions of the Federal agency which had been given prime official responsibility for the investigation of the Kennedy assassination, namely, the Warren Commission.
The Senate Committee Report, which was written by Senators Gary Hart and Richard Schweiker, makes a series of blunt accusations against both the CIA and the FBI. The Committee charges the CIA with ignoring a connection between its own attempt to murder Castro and the Kennedy assassination, and with failing to investigate Lee Harvey Oswald’s connections with Castro.
The Senate Committee charges the FBI with focusing its investigation too “narrowly” on Lee Harvey Oswald and with failing to investigate “all significant circumstances including all possibilities of conspiracy.” The Report accuses J. Edgar Hoover of neglecting to call for a broad and unprejudiced inquiry into Kennedy’s murder, and of succumbing to pressure to conduct the FBI investigation “too swiftly.”
The Senate Committee charges both the CIA and the FBI with failing to fulfill their duties, possibly because of a “concern with public reputation,” thereby leaving unpursued important leads on a possible involvement of persons other than Oswald, including the mysterious person who, the day after the murder, went from Texas to Mexico and then on to Cuba. The Senate Report concludes that the Kennedy assassination remains a “jigsawn puzzle with some of the pieces still missing.
Contrary to the Hart-Schweiker Report, the blame for all these coverup charges should be placed on the shoulders of the Presidential Commission appointed by Lyndon Johnson, whose chairman was Earl Warren and whose most famous member was Gerald Ford, then a Congressman from Michigan.
It certainly wasn’t J. Edgar Hoover’s job, for example, to call for a broad and unprejudiced inquiry after President Johnson had just appointed such a prestigious Conmission headed by the then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The FBI cannot be faulted for succumbing to pressure to conduct its investigation “too swiftly” when the pressure for speed came from the Warren Commission itself. Earl Warren was determined to complete the investigation ·before the onset of the 1964 presidential campaign, stating that “it would be very bad for the country” to let the investigation drag on.
The Warren Commission decided a priori that there was no conspiracy to murder President Kennedy, built a case to support its conclusion that Oswald was the lone assassin, and then closed the door on leads that might have led to a contrary report.
Congressman Gerald Ford suffered a few fleeting moments of concern about this peremptory conclusion. On June 4, 1964, he charged that outside forces were trying to pressure the Commission to decide in advance that Oswald was a solitary assassin. By September 27, 1964, however, Gerald Ford sealed his lips and signed the establishment coverup report.
It should come as no surprise that President Ford is a go-alonger who permits Henry Kissinger to dictate every foreign policy and defense policy decision. Gerald Ford learned how to take orders when he served on the Earl Warren Commission.
