The Dissenters Ask Too Much

Are the conspiracy theories really any more believable than the Warren Report?

James J. Kilpatrick
Skeptic Magazine, Issue No. 9, Sept/Oct 1975, pages 29 ff.

© Washington Star Syndicate

Important questions about John F. Kennedy's assassination remain unanswered, but in view of what the conspiracy theorists ask us to believe, syndicated columnist James J. Kilpatrick is inclined "to stick with the Warren Report." Besides, he asks in his May 27, 1975 column, if a new inquiry were to be made, where would we find an investigative body objective enough to satisfy both the defenders and the critics?

John F. Kennedy, had he lived, would have been 58 on May 29. He died, as we know, nearly 12 years ago, the victim of assassination. The anniversary of his birth offers an opportunity for a few observations on the burgeoning demands for a new investigation of his death.

These demands are cropping up everywhere—in Congress, on college campuses, in popular magazines. Watergate left a fertile soil behind: it is just right for the growing of cover-up theories. These have taken root, and they are flowering.

Kennedy died of bullet wounds suffered at 12:30 p.m. on Nov. 22, 1963, as he was riding in a motorcade in Dallas. Shortly before 2 p.m., following the fatal shooting of police officer J. D. Tippit, police arrested Lee Harvey Oswald and charged him with both crimes. Less than 48 hours later, Oswald himself was slain by Jack Ruby, a night club operator.

One week after the assassination, President Johnson named a seven-man investigating commission, headed by Chief Justice Earl Warren. The Commission made its report in September of 1964. The report advanced these conclusions:

"There is no question in the mind of any member of the Commission that all the shots which caused the President's and Governor Connally's wounds were fired from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository. The shots…were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald…. The Commission has found no evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy."

These conclusions were strongly attacked when the Warren Report first appeared. After a few years of quiescence, the controversy has now been revived. Non-believers contend that Kennedy was slain by a conspiracy; that Oswald did not act alone; that the ultimately fatal shot was not fired from a building behind the President, but from a point in front of his limousine; that the Warren Commission collaborated in a massive cover-up to prevent the truth from coming out. They want the investigation reopened.

Some of the critics' arguments strike me as persuasive. Some purported ballistics evidence, if credible, would appear to provide convincing proof that another rifleman was involved. Many puzzling questions remain unanswered. But it takes a very accommodating gullet to swallow the conspiracy theory whole, and my present inclination is to stick with the Warren Report.

During the course of its investigation, the Commission took testimony from 552 witnesses. The FBI conducted 25,000 interviews and submitted 2,300 reports amounting to 25,000 pages. The Secret Service conducted 1,550 interviews and made 800 reports of 4,600 pages. This tremendous mass of material simply cannot be discarded as so much whitewash.

In order to believe the conspiracy theory, one must believe that all these were parties to a gigantic cover-up: The Commission members, the Commission staff, the slain President's brother Robert, the President's successor in office, the FBI, the Secret Service, the CIA, and the Dallas police. That is for starters. One must discount the sworn testimony of ballistics experts, the evidence of Oswald's fingerprints, and the testimony of eyewitnesses.

The dissenters ask too much. The disillusioning experience of Watergate may have taught us that criminal conspiracies can be formed in high places, but the bugging of a Democratic chairman truly cannot be equated with the slaying of a President. The gauzy speculations that tie in Gordon Liddy, E. Howard Hunt, the Mafia and "Texas millionaires" have no more substance than moonbeams.

If a fresh investigation were to be made, who would make it? The doubters would scorn a commission by President Ford (he served as a congressman on the Warren Commission.) A congressional commission also would be establishment tainted. At this late date a new grand jury in Dallas seems unlikely. The dissenters themselves are too zealously committed to their conspiracy theories to have any appearance of objectivity.

Yes, the critics have raised some troublesome doubts, but great crimes inevitably produce great doubts. Whole schools of scholars still sift the assassination of Lincoln. You can hear arguments on the role of Brutus in the assassination of Caesar. I wouldn't gag the dissenters for the world—we ought always to pursue truth—but for the moment, I wouldn't buy the hyped-up conjectures they're trying to sell.

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