The Warren Commission vs. the House Select Committee on Assassinations

[Michael T. Griffith]

Warren Commission (WC) apologists reject the key findings of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA). Many WC apologists claim it is unpatriotic and even harmful to attack the WC and to reject its lone-gunman finding, noting that it was a presidential commission whose seven members were chosen by President Johnson and that it was headed by the chief justice of the Supreme Court.

However, WC defenders fiercely attack the HSCA and reject its conspiracy finding, even though the HSCA was a committee created by the U.S. House of Representatives by an overwhelming bipartisan vote, even though its 12 members were all respected members of Congress, and even though its staff included respected and experienced prosecutors and investigators such as G. Robert Blakey, Gary Cornwell, Gaeton Fonzi, Kenneth Klein, and Peter Beeson. 

Let's compare the WC and the HSCA:

-- The WC investigated for only nine months. The HSCA investigated for two years.

-- Three of the WC's seven members rejected its key conclusions. Only three of the 12 HSCA members rejected the Committee's conspiracy finding.

-- The WC refused to acknowledge that three of its members dissented from its key findings, and also refused to include Senator Richard Russell's dissent in the final report after promising him it would do so. The HSCA acknowledged that three of its 12 members dissented, and it published their written dissents in its final report.

-- The WC was aware of the Dallas police dictabelt recording but failed to have it analyzed for gunfire. The HSCA hired a respected scientific firm, BBN, that specialized in acoustical science to do the first analysis of the dictabelt tape. To review and refine the BBN analysis, the Committee hired two respected acoustical experts from Queens College who specialized in military-related acoustics and who were recommended to the Committee by the Acoustical Society of America.

The HSCA's six acoustical experts determined that the police tape contains four gunshot impulses and that one of the shots came from the grassy knoll.

In doing research for his 2021 book Last Second in Dallas, Dr. Josiah Thompson spent several months consulting with BBN acoustical scientists James Barger and Richard Mullen, who agreed to reanalyze key aspects of the acoustical evidence. Barger and Mullen developed new evidence that supports the HSCA's conclusions about gunfire on the dictabelt. For example, Dr. Mullen established via a PCC test that the Fisher "I'll check it" transmission is positively crosstalk, proving that the gunshot impulses occurred during the assassination.

Barger and Mullen also found that Decker's "hold everything" transmission and the two Bellah transmissions were recorded during a separate recording session and not during the session that recorded the three scientifically established crosstalk transmissions, and that, crucially, they were recorded at a different recording speed. Barger and Mullen present this new research in separate chapters in Thompson's book.

Thompson makes a good case that the dictabelt contains five gunshot impulse patterns, and that the reasons given for rejecting the 140.3 impulse pattern as gunfire are invalid.

-- The WC rejected the account of Silvia Odio, even though WC attorney David Slawson said Odio was “checked out thoroughly” and that “the evidence is unanimously favorable, both as to her character and reliability, and as to her intelligence." The HSCA concluded that Ms. Odio was credible and that her account was truthful.

One of the reasons the WC rejected Odio's account is that it shows that Oswald was being framed for the assassination weeks before it occurred. Her account also suggests someone was impersonating Oswald, either in Mexico City or in Dallas, before the assassination.

-- The WC concluded that Jack Ruby had no Mafia ties, that he shot Oswald in a spontaneous fit or rage and grief, and that he entered the basement of the Dallas Police Department via the Main Street ramp. The HSCA established that Ruby had significant Mafia ties, that Ruby did not shoot Oswald in a spontaneous fit of rage, and that Ruby did not enter the basement via the Main Street ramp but must have entered through a side door and probably had help from someone already in the basement.

-- The WC concluded there was nothing suspicious about Ruby's phone calls in the weeks before the assassination. The HSCA found that Ruby made numerous phone calls to Mafia contacts all over the country in the weeks leading up to the assassination, and that not all of the calls could be explained as calls relating to Ruby's labor issues.

-- The WC said there were only three shots and one gunmen. The HSCA concluded there were four shots and two gunmen.

-- The WC said nothing about Oswald's association with radical right-winger and virulent JFK hater David Ferrie. The HSCA acknowledged the Oswald-Ferrie association and found new evidence relating to it.

-- The WC said Oswald acted entirely alone. The HSCA's photographic experts found photographic evidence that someone was rearranging boxes in the sixth-floor sniper's window within two minutes after the shooting, i.e., at a time when Oswald could not have been the one moving the boxes. The HSCA concluded that Oswald had accomplices.

-- The WC concluded that the bullet of the single-bullet theory (SBT) hit JFK while he was behind the freeway sign, that he is clearly reacting to a wound in frame 225 of the Zapruder film (when he reemerges from behind the freeway sign), and that Connally experienced a "delayed reaction" to his wounds because the Commission accepted his insistence that he was not hit before Z231. The HSCA determined that JFK was hit no later than Z190.

The HSCA also concluded that Connally was hit long before he said he was hit, opining that Connally shows a wound reaction in Z224, even though he insisted to the WC that he was not hit before Z231. The HSCA concluded that Z224 shows Connally reacting to a wound because he "appears to be frowning, and there is a distinct, stiffening of his shoulders and upper trunk."

Critics argue that a much more logical conclusion is that these slight reactions did not occur because Connally had been hit yet but because he had already recognized the sound of gunfire and was concerned about JFK--and that naturally Connally would frown and become tense after realizing he had heard gunfire. When Connally later viewed Zapruder frames under high magnification for Life magazine, he said he was certain he was not hit before Z229, and chose Z234 as the moment the bullet struck him.

-- The WC said the back wound was actually in the neck, at around C6 or C7 judging from the illustration in the WC's report. The HSCA's forensic experts determined that the back wound was at T1, least 1 inch lower than where the WC placed it, and they specifically described it as a "back" wound.

-- The WC said and illustrated that the back-wound bullet hit JFK at a downward angle. The HSCA's forensic experts determined from the autopsy photo of the wound that the bullet struck the back at a slightly upward angle and that the interior of the wound was tunneled upward.

-- The WC concluded there was nothing suspicious about Oswald's actions in Mexico City. The two HSCA staffers who investigated the Mexico City episode, Dan Hardway and Ed Lopez, wrote a 305-page report that raised questions about Oswald's activities there, that presented evidence that someone was impersonating Oswald in Mexico City, that the "Oswald" who called the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City could not have been the real Oswald.

https://share.google/AiLj9mDxqRwHrFpLp

-- -- The WC exonerated the Secret Service for their performance in Dallas. The HSCA was strongly critical of the Secret Service's performance, saying that the security for the motorcade "may have been uniquely insecure." Read the 28-page report filed by Belford Lawson, the HSCA attorney who conducted the Committee's investigation into the Secret Service's performance.

"The Warren Commission's Failed Investigation"
https://drive.google.com/file/d/12x-2gGg50JQPrEfxZSxha_EYjgSfq0kJ/view