Sunday, 15 May 2011 20:41

The Real Wikipedia? The Wikipedia Fraud Pt. 3: Wales Covers Up for the Warren Commission

Written by

Jim DiEugenio examines Wikipedia's entry on the Warren Commission, showing once more that, far from being a “People's Encyclopedia,” regarding the John F. Kennedy assassination, Wikipedia is nothing but a tightly controlled, one-sided, and unrelenting psy-op.


Part 1

Part 2

Addendum


As with many aspects of John F. Kennedy's assassination, when one enters the term “Warren Commission” into Yahoo, the first site that comes up is the citation on Wikipedia. This is unfortunate.

For as JP Mroz has delineated in detail in two previous articles, Jimmy Wales invention of the so-called “People's Encyclopedia” has not worked out quite as one would expect. In fact, to those interested in the assassination of President Kennedy, it has pretty much been an echo of the MSM. That is, it has been protective of the Warren Commission, selective in its source material, and as Mroz proved in his first article, it even used false evidence to connect Oswald to the alleged murder weapon.1 When Wikipedia was exposed on this, they then tried to cover their tracks.2

There are two things quite odd about this stance. First, it does not at all accord with being a “People's Encyclopedia”. Because the great majority of citizens do not believe the Warren Commission, it does not accurately reflect public opinion.3 Second, it does not accurately reflect the most recently declassified material on the Commission either. For with the work of the Assassination Records Review Board, the criticism of the Commission has become even more heated.4 For instance, Commissioner Gerald Ford arbitrarily moved up the position of the wound in Kennedy's back5 to align with the Commission's most controversial invention: the Single Bullet Theory. As recent books have shown, the Commission's performance in accurately recording witness testimony has been shown to be even more problematic than most thought.6

Because of all this, Wikipedia has resorted to censorship in order to keep up its show of deference for the Warren Commission and its now thoroughly discredited 888-page report. As Mroz pointed out in his first article, the man in charge of the censorship office at Wikipedia on the JFK case is Robert Fernandez of Tampa, Florida. (Screen name of Gamaliel.) Fernandez is most proud of his (disgraceful) Lee Harvey Oswald page—a page that seems to have been composed with the cooperation of the infamous John McAdams.7 As Mroz further pointed out, the censorship at Wikipedia on this subject is pretty much total. And it is conducted in three ways.

First, the sources used in the footnoting are severely limited in their scope. The vast majority of the footnotes come from either official sources, or those who support the official story e.g. Vincent Bugliosi's book "Reclaiming History."8 This of course severely impacts the contents of the articles.

Second, the “Back Talk” pages (where people try to comment and edit articles) are patrolled by the staffers who work for Wikipedia. Since the organization is a hierarchy, these staffers ultimately enforce Gamaliel's line. In his articles on Wiki, Mroz detailed his interaction with one of these staffers, which very much illustrated this point. John McAdams is perhaps the most frequent party involved in these discussions.9 The fact that his site is often used in the final articles contributes to the traffic flow at his (abominable) web page.

Third, although the actual “References” or “Further Reading” category at the bottom of the article may contain certain books critical of the official story, this is, for all intents and purposes, simply a fig leaf to disguise the actual control of the contents. For, as we shall see here, there is very little relationship between the titles listed in the Reference section and the actual sources in the material, as none of the reference book's information seems to be utilized on the page, perhaps this section should be labeled “Find-the-Relation-Yourself Reading.” Additionally, there are valuable sources that you will simply never see listed even in the Reference/Further Reading section e.g. John Armstrong's "Harvey and Lee," or articles from "Probe Magazine."10

As the reader can see, far from being a “People's Encyclopedia,” regarding the John F. Kennedy assassination, Wikipedia is nothing but a tightly controlled, one-sided, and unrelenting psy-op. Jimmy Wales might as well have turned the editorship of these pages over to say, former Warren Commission counsel Arlen Specter, who must be quite pleased with Wales and Wikipedia, who have done little more than cover up for him.

I

All of JP Mroz' work in this field provides good background for the Wikipedia entry on the Warren Commission. The best thing that one can say about it is that it is relatively short. But in every other aspect it is a typical Wales/Gamaliel production.

It begins with the actual appointment of the Commission by President Johnson.11 It deals with this very important decision in—get this—one sentence! So in other words, one never understands a key point about Johnson's decision: He originally did not want to appoint a so-called “blue-ribbon panel.” This decision was imparted on the White House by forces that were not even in the government at this time. As Donald Gibson exposed so magnificently for “Probe Magazine”12 there were two men who were responsible for suggesting the idea on the White House staff: Eugene Rostow and Joe Alsop.13 They began their siege right after Jack Ruby killed Oswald.

rostow
Eugene Rostow
stew joe alsop
Joseph Alsop, standing
Stewart Alsop, seated

 

What we know as a fact is that Johnson initially planned to resolve the matter of an investigation into the assassination by turning over the FBI report to a Texas Committee of Inquiry. That was one reason that he sent his private attorney to meet with the Texas Attorney General. Johnson floated that idea with Stewart Alsop on the evening of Nov. 25, telling him he had spent most of the day putting together how it was going to work, implying he had met with Texas AG Carr. But after a long and forceful call from Joe Alsop, his allegiance to the Texas inquiry was loosened.14 Alsop's advice to the President to expand a plan for a Texas “inquiry” to include at least two non-Texas jurists and to leave the Attorney General's office out of the Texas group all together.

25 two non Texas jurists

 

Alsop also assured LBJ, “I'm not talking about an investigative body, I am talking about a body which will take all evidence the FBI has amassed when they have completed their inquiry and produce a report…” This is ultimately what the Warren Commission accomplished.15

not talking about an investigative body

This points out how effective the Wales/Gamaliel policy of limiting sourcing material is. So to imply, as this entry does, that the Warren Commission was Johnson's original idea is not really accurate. The declassified phone calls by the Assassination Records Review Board show that it was not that simple.16

As I exposed in my discussion of “Reclaiming History,” this whole issue of Johnson being maneuvered and cajoled into creating something he did not originate is mostly cut out of Bugliosi's book.17 Although Bugliosi clearly had read Gibson's article, which was excerpted in the book "The Assassinations,"18 he completely eliminated the call to LBJ by Alsop. Yet, anyone who reads the transcript of that call will understand this was a most important step in changing President Johnson's mind on the issue. Needless to say, this article uses Bugliosi's book as an important source.

This is a crucial point. Why? Because the process had been covered up before. Since the House Select Committee on Assassinations had not declassified the phone calls (that Gibson used in his article), the actual circumstances of the Commission's creation were shrouded in secrecy for decades—not only the creation, but also the purpose.

What Wiki is leaving out of its story is that the Warren commissioners later said they didn't agree with what they handed to the President and the American people, but they were convinced they stopped World War III by going along with the FBI's investigation. Eventually, even the HSCA agreed with this in their final report, that they were convinced they stopped WW3. As we all know even the HSCA “concluded in their final report that the Commission was reasonably thorough and acted in good faith, but failed to adequately address the possibility of conspiracy.”19

Therefore, the Commission idea had been credited to other persons previously e.g. Abe Fortas, Nicolas Katzenbach.20 Some even attributed it to Johnson himself, but it was actually instigated by people outside the government who were accurately labeled as members of the Eastern Establishment.

lyndond johnson and abe fortas
LBJ with Abe Fortas

The next Wiki paragraph contains a rather amusing piece of understatement. It says that “some major officials were opposed to forming such a commission, and several commission members took part only with extreme reluctance.” This most likely refers to Chief Justice Earl Warren's resistance to head the commission that would eventually take his name.21 Again, by leaving out certain important details, Wikipedia disguises a dark but very significant truth.

Warren was reluctant to chair such a commission because he did not think it appropriate to give it the imprimatur of the Supreme Court. In fact, in an interview Warren gave to the LBJ Library, he specifically cited this as a reason for turning down Katzenbach's first overture on the subject.22 Warren continued by saying that Johnson then called him in personally. The president said he was greatly disturbed by the rumors going around the world about a conspiracy, perhaps involving Castro or the Russians. And that if these continued to grow, it could catapult the world into a nuclear war. Johnson then told Warren that he had just talked to Secretary of Defense Bob McNamara, and if such a thing occurred, a first strike by the Soviets would cost the USA as many as sixty million lives. Johnson then said that he had all the members of the Commission now set up. But there was one thing missing: “I think this thing is of such great importance that the world is entitled to have the thing presided over by the highest judicial officer of the United States. You've worn a uniform; you were in the Army in World War I. This job is more important than anything you ever did in the uniform.”23 According to some sources, Warren left the meeting so emotionally distraught that he had tears in his eyes.24

In a transcribed conversation that Johnson had with Senator Richard Russell, he went into a bit more detail about the process.25 He said that once Warren was in his office, he refused the offer two more times. Johnson then decided to play his ace card. He said he pulled out a piece of information given to him by FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover. This concerned Oswald in Mexico City. Johnson said, “Now, I don't want Mr. Khrushchev to be told tomorrow and be testifying before a camera that he killed this fellow…and that Castro killed him.” Johnson then confirmed that Warren did start to weep.26

Johnson then used the same technique on Russell. He said, “…we've got to take this out of the arena where they're testifying that Khrushchev and Castro did this and did that and check us into a war that can kill 40 million Americans in an hour….”27

The important point to note here is the material Johnson used to seal the deal with Warren. Clearly, this was the information about Oswald's visits to the Russian and Cuban consulates in Mexico City and his alleged talk with Valery Kostikov at the Soviet consulate. Kostikov would be revealed to be a secret KGB agent in charge of assassinations in the Western Hemisphere.

Incredibly, Wikipedia leaves all of the above out. Yet it is of utmost importance in relation to what will happen inside the Commission, because Johnson's intimidation tactics worked all too well with Warren. At the very first Warren Commission executive session meeting of December 5th, the former District Attorney of Alameda County, California came out as meek as a kitten. In his opening remarks this is what he said:

  1. He did not want the Commission to employ any of their own investigators.
  2. He did not want the Commission to gather evidence. Instead he wished for them to rely on reports made by other agencies like the FBI and Secret Service.
  3. He did not want their hearings to be public. He did not want to employ the power of subpoena.
  4. Incredibly, he did not even want to call any witnesses! He wanted to rely on interviews done by other agencies.
  5. He then made a very curious comment, “Meetings where witnesses would be brought in would retard rather than help our investigation.”28

What Warren meant by this and why he said it seems to be of the utmost importance in figuring out what he did and what his role was on the Commission.

But whatever his ultimate meaning, it is clear that Warren had been neutered by Johnson's warning of impending nuclear doom. Here is the Chief Justice of the United States saying that his fact finding commission on the murder of President Kennedy should not have any of its own investigators, should not hold public hearings, should not have subpoena power, and should not even call any witnesses! Because these things would “retard rather than help our investigation.” Just what kind of murder investigation could one have without these elements?

Now, it is true that two of these strictures were taken back later. That is, the Commission did eventually have subpoena power and they did call witnesses. But the reason this was done was because the FBI report submitted by Hoover a few days later was incredibly shabby in every way. The Commission members knew it would never fly, even with the MSM. But yet, the FBI report is the kind of thing Warren was willing to tolerate at the start. This is how cowed he was. By leaving out these details, Wikipedia conceals the truth of how bad the Commission was, what its intentions really were, and why.

But it's actually even worse than that. Recall what Johnson used to intimidate Warren into his cover up stance of doing no investigation. It was information given to him by Hoover about Oswald's alleged activities in Mexico City. Again, the ARRB went further in this regard. As John Newman discovered in the released documents, Hoover later realized he had been gulled by the CIA about this subject, that is, Oswald's activities in Mexico. Seven weeks later, in the margin of a document describing CIA operations in the USA, Hoover wrote “OK, but I hope you are not being taken in. I can't forget the CIA withholding the French espionage activities in the USA, nor the false story re Oswald's trip to Mexico only to mention two instances of their double dealing.”29 (italics added) After all, Hoover's agents discovered that the tapes sent by the CIA to Dallas supposedly recording Oswald's consulate visits did not contain Oswald's voice on them.30

So if properly informed, most readers would understand that Johnson used false information to neutralize Warren. Whether LBJ did this knowingly, or whether like Hoover, he did not understand at the time, that is a secondary question to this discussion. The point is that any reader of Wikipedia would not be aware of any of it. They would only know that some members of the Commission were “extremely reluctant” to take part, without understanding who they were, why they were reluctant, and how they were then coerced into joining up and most of all, how that coercion, the threat of nuclear war, compromised the Commission from the very start. After all, Warren was told that if he probed too deeply, thermonuclear war was in the wings.

So on the two key points in how the Commission was started—whose idea it was, and how certain members were convinced to join—Wikipedia has told us literally nothing. When, in fact, there is a lot to tell.

II

From here, the Wikipedia entry now lists the seven members of the Commission, General Counsel, J. Lee Rankin, the assistant counsels and then the staff positions. They do not differentiate between the senior and junior counsel members. Nor do they indicate that the two sets of counsels worked in tandem with each other in certain areas of inquiry. For instance, Leon Hubert was a senior counsel who worked with junior counsel Burt Griffin on the case of Jack Ruby. The entry also does not define what certain staff members did, like Alfredda Scobey, or who interfaced with the working members and the actual Commission members.

The next section is rather nebulously entitled “Method.” This could refer to any number of things like how the inner workings of the Commission were structured, or how the staff members prepared to interview a witness. It refers to neither. In a long direct quote from Bugliosi's “Reclaiming History,” the entry seeks to defend against the closed nature of the proceedings. Bugliosi makes the distinction between “closed” and “secret” hearings. The Warren Commission was the former not the latter. In other words, if a witness wanted to talk about his testimony with others he could, and the transcripts were eventually published.

Talk about damning with faint praise. President Johnson announced the appointment of the Warren Commission to the public. There was much publicity about this appointment, photo opportunities, personal profiles, etc. It was announced that by law that the Commission would issue a report. Everyone knew they were conducting closed hearings. How on earth could a fact-finding inquiry about President Kennedy's death then be held in secret? Who would have believed such a proceeding? Especially after Ruby shot Oswald on national TV.

What would have been much more interesting, honest, and relevant was to reveal here what Howard Roffman did in his fine book, “Presumed Guilty.”31 Roffman discovered that by January 11, 1964 Rankin had put together an outline for investigation that had some rather revealing headings:

  • Lee Harvey Oswald as the Assassin of President Kennedy.
  • Lee Harvey Oswald: Background and Possible Motives
  • Murder of Tippit
  • Evidence Demonstrating Oswald's Guilt

In dealing with the charges of conspiracy, which were already floating around, Rankin wrote the following rubric: Refutation of Allegations.32 In reality this outline was all too revealing about the actual methodology behind the Commission. For the simple reason that at this point in time Rankin had just assembled a staff and not a single witness had been heard. Yet, clearly, the Commission had made up its mind as to who the chief—and only—suspect was. In other words, the evidence would now be fit into a scenario of Oswald's guilt. And no matter how ridiculous that scenario got, Rankin and the Commission would stick with it.

And it got pretty ridiculous. Oswald getting off three shots from a manual bolt-action rifle in six seconds, no problem. A single bullet going through both Kennedy and Governor John Connally, making seven wounds and shattering two bones yet emerging almost unscathed and discovered on the wrong stretcher at Parkland Hospital. No problem. No employee of the Texas School Book Depository placing Oswald on the 6th floor near the time of the shooting, no problem. We can just get Mr. Givens to change his story and, in all probability, lie to us.33

I could go on and on. But this was the real methodology of the Warren Commission—to fit a square peg into a round hole. If the evidence did not fit, it did not really matter. The question then becomes: How did such a thing occur? Wikipedia does not have to answer that since they never describe the bizarre evidentiary details. But one thing they could have done under the rubric “method” is to note that the Commission never provided a defense counsel for the dead Oswald. In most fact-finding committees in Washington for example, each side gets a counsel: majority and minority. That did not happen here. In fact, it was explicitly refused. When Marguerite Oswald requested Mark Lane to represent her son's interests before the Commission, the request was denied.34

Now, as any attorney or judge will tell you, if there is no adversary procedure, any kind of legal hearing becomes a phony sideshow. Why? Because there is no real check on what the prosecution can do. This is why rules of procedure and evidence have evolved over time—to make sure that a modicum of fairness presides over the proceedings. The method of the Warren Commission from a legal standpoint was so bizarre as to be unrecognizable. Not only were Oswald's interests not represented by a lawyer, there actually was no judge to control the questioning and decide on the legality and admissibility of exhibits. And since there was no defense, there was no cross examination of so-called expert testimony.

In sum, as former HSCA photographic analyst Chris Sharrett has said, the Nazis at Nuremburg got more justice than Oswald. And as anyone who surveys the Nuremburg trial proceedings can see, this is certainly true. But in not describing the actual circumstances of the Warren Commission's method, Wikipedia can avoid that accurate comparison.

Another point that the entry avoids is in describing the personalities who made up the Commission. There is no mention that Allen Dulles was fired by President Kennedy as CIA Director because Kennedy felt Dulles had deceived him about the Bay of Pigs operation. There is no mention of John McCloy's national security background or his part in the illegal Japanese internment during World War II. Nor is there mention of how he helped Klaus Barbie escape from Europe to South America. Or how as High Commissioner of Germany, he and Dulles cooperated in placing former Nazi Reinhard Gehlen in charge of West Germany's intelligence apparatus. And, of course, there is no mention in the entry about Gerald Ford's role as an FBI informant on the Commission for Cartha De Loach. These are all common knowledge today. Yet somehow, with Wikipedia, they do not exist.

There is one other point about “method' that should be noted. As most informed people realize today, the idea that the Warren Commission was a solid bloc, united on each and every question concerning Oswald and the evidence, this is a myth. Sen. Richard Russell was so disappointed by the proceedings that not only did he stop coming to hearings, he started his own private investigation.35 By the end he had the two other southern commissioners, Sen. Cooper and Rep. Boggs, halfway convinced that the whole thing was a dog and pony show. And in fact, Russell refused to sign the Commission report since he did not buy the Single Bullet Theory. Rankin tricked him into signing onto somewhat modified language penned by McCloy on condition that his reservations were recorded. They were not recorded.36

For Fernandez and Jimmy Wales, that trenchant fact of deception, which tells us so much about the Commission's ‘method', is not worth elucidating the reader about.

I wonder why?

III

The entry then goes to a large heading which will contain five subheads. The large heading is titled ‘Aftermath'. The five small headings grouped underneath it are: Secret Service, Commission Records, Criticisms, Witness testimony, and Other Investigations.

Wikipedia's first and only sentence dealing with the Secret Service reads as follows: “The specific findings prompted the Secret Service to make numerous modifications to their security procedures.” This is accurate, but again an understatement. The first part of the Warren Report, titled Summary and Conclusions, ends with a list of 12 Commission recommendations. Of the 12, eight are squarely aimed at the Secret Service.37 These are expanded upon at greater length later on in the volume.38 The most obvious and famous one was to make the assassination of a president a federal crime.

What is interesting about these recommendations is this: The Commission named virtually no specific failures by the Secret Service in its report. For instance, although tacitly admitting that the FBI should have relayed information about Oswald so he would have been on the Secret Service Watch List, the Commission goes out of its way not to assign blame for this thundering failure.39 What Wikipedia does not tell the reader is that Hoover actually did blame someone. He secretly suspended 17 agents for this precise reason: the failure to monitor and relay proper information about Oswald to other authorities. But further, the Commission did not take time to explain the circumstances of several agents drinking liquor at Pat Kirkwood's bar early on the morning of the 22nd.40 Nor did they say anything about the Secret Service altering the protection in the motorcade by lessening the number of side motorcycles and dropping men from the rear bumper of the Kennedy limo.41 Third, there was no criticism of the very questionable decision by Winston Lawson to maintain the almost insane dogleg through Dealey Plaza, which constituted a virtual assassin's dream of an ambush. And fourth, the Commission never comes close to mentioning the most serious Secret Service lapse of all: the failure to relay the evidence of a plot to kill Kennedy in Chicago to the advance detail in Dallas. Because of the marked similarities of Chicago to Dallas—riflemen firing from tall buildings after the limo has exited an expressway—this would have made the Secret Service alter the parade route. Additionally, they probably would even have picked up Oswald since his profile was so similar to the patsy in the Chicago plot, Thomas Vallee42.

We can understand why the Commission never went into any explanation of the above. It's harder to understand why Wikipedia did not.

The entry then describes the release of documents that had been previously classified by the Commission. It is true that the Commission published 26 volumes of testimony and exhibits. But it is also true that nowhere to be found in those volumes were any of the internal working papers of the Commission or any transcript of their executive session hearings. Therefore, one could gain no insight into how these men came to their rather strange conclusions. What actually began the declassification process was when author Edward Epstein revealed in his 1966 book Inquest, that the FBI report on Kennedy's death did not utilize the “Single Bullet Theory,” and did not account for the hit to James Tague. In that same year, the Freedom of Information Act was passed. And since it was aimed at declassifying executive branch documents, the interested public now began to see how the inner workings of the Commission were navigated.

The next heading is titled "Criticisms." This is how it begins: “In the years following the release of its report and 26 investigatory evidence volumes in 1964, the Warren Commission has been frequently criticized for some of its methods, omissions, and conclusion.” Well, yep, I guess you could say that. It would be sort of like saying that George W. Bush sustained some criticism for invading Iraq. The criticism has been so overwhelming that every major thesis of the Commission has been rendered dubious. And the Commission's methodology has been shown to be so unfair and agenda driven as to be an insult to any kind of true fact-finding mission. Since it had no true investigative staff of its own, it was largely reliant on the FBI. And since J. Edgar Hoover had decided upon Oswald's guilt within 48 hours, there was no way he would reverse field.

The next heading is ‘Witness Testimony'. Let me quote the entirety of the contents under this: “There were many criticisms about the witnesses and their testimonies. One is that many testimonies were heard by less than half of the commission and that only one of 94 testimonies was heard by everyone on the commission.”

It's true that the attendance record for the Commission to be sitting en toto and hearing a witness was sparse. But this is rather a minor failing. Since, for example, commission lawyers interviewing people in say Dallas or New Orleans heard the majority of live testimony. In fact, as Walt Brown has pointed out, the actual Commission itself heard about twenty per cent of the testimony.43

The far more serious criticisms of the testimony are:

1.  As Barry Ernest shows in his "The Girl on the Stairs," a book about Texas School Book Depository employee Victoria Adams, witness testimony was manipulated in more than one way. It was falsely discredited, some of it was altered, and some of it was ‘off the record'.

2.  The Commission, e.g. Adams' friend Sandra Styles, never called certain witnesses.

3.  Key witnesses are never even mentioned in the Warren Report, e.g. O. P. Wright, the man who co-discovered a bullet at Parkland Hospital, which later became CE 399, the Magic Bullet.

4.  Key witnesses were never interviewed at all, e.g. Guy Banister, the man who employed Oswald in the summer of 1963 from his 544 Camp Street office.

5. Important witnesses were asked far too few questions e.g. Thornton Boswell, one of the three pathologists who examined President Kennedy's body for autopsy was asked only 14 questions.[44]

6.  Important witnesses were never asked crucial questions, e.g. pathologist James Humes was never asked why he did not dissect the track of the back wound in President Kennedy.

These failures all seem to indicate an investigative body that did not really want to find all the facts, or even the most important ones. Further they reveal a commission that had its mind made up early, and then tapered their inquiry in a dishonest way to shore up that very early decision.

The last heading is called "Other Investigations." What happens here is a recurrent ploy by Fernandez/Gamaliel. He tries to imply that somehow the Commission was correct by adding that other investigations of the case “agreed” with the original one. Yet, he cannot bring himself to say that not even the FBI agreed with the Commission since it did not buy the “Single Bullet Theory.” The Ramsey Clark Panel is mentioned, but this was not even an inquiry but was a review of the medical evidence, and it changed the location of the head wound in JFK by raising it up four inches on the skull thereby forming a second “Magic Bullet.” Because according to this panel, the head and tail of this projectile were found in the front of the car and the middle was left in the rear of Kennedy's skull. The Rockefeller Commission was run by Warren Commission counsel David Belin and investigated only a very few elements of the crime. The House Select Committee on Assassinations was altered in midstream by the fact that its original Chief and Deputy Counsel were replaced when it was clear they were going to run a full and honest inquiry into the case.

But further, this entry does not even mention the Schweiker-Hart report for the Church Committee. This report reviewed the performance of the FBI and CIA for the Warren Commission and found it clearly lacking to the point that, what the two bodies left out had a negative effect on the performance of the Commission. Also not mentioned by Wikipedia is the investigation of New Orleans DA Jim Garrison, which surely differed in conclusions from the Commission. Finally and inexplicably, Wiki does not mention the Assassination Records Review Board that declassified tens of thousands of documents and conducted its own inquiry into the medical evidence. This inquiry concluded that the original autopsy performance left many unanswered questions about Kennedy's death, including whether or not the photos taken now in the National Archives actually depict Kennedy's brain.45 By deliberately leaving out these three bodies, Wikipedia/Gamaliel can falsely imply that each and every official inquiry that followed agreed or backed up the Commission.

In the hands of Mr. Fernandez, Wikipedia has shown itself to be as bad, if not worse, than the "New York Times" on the subject of President Kennedy's death. And it does this by using the same shameful techniques of censorship that the "Times" used.

CTKA will continue to expose Fernandez and Wikipedia as long as they continue to misinform the public and to censor key facts about the murder of President Kennedy. We hope our readership spreads the word far and wide about these troubling practices. If Wiki cannot be trusted with the JFK case, what controversial subject in contemporary history can it be trusted with? And should it be taken seriously at all?

Notes


3 Wiki's own page on the Kennedy assassination links to a 2003 Gallup poll reporting that 75% of Americans do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination#cite_note-132

5 “Gerald Ford's Terrible Fiction” http://www.jfklancer.com/Ford-Rankin.html

6 See Barry Ernest's book, The Girl on the Stairs, CreateSpace, 2011, for the most recent example.

8 Bugliosi, Vincent. Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Norton, 2007, 1632 p. ISBN 0393045250.

10 Armstrong's Harvey and Lee, or articles from Probe Magazine.

11 LBJ did ultimately become involved with selecting the members and coerced most of them to join. http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Walkthrough_-_Formation_of_the_Warren_Commission

12 Gibson, Donald. “The Creation of the Warren Commission,” Probe Vol. 3 No. 4, "The Creation of the Warren Commission"

13 Vol. 3 No. 4 p. 27).  Rostow actually proposed ‘a commission of seven or nine people ... to look into the whole affair of the murder of the President.' (Ibid)  That fall, in a staff shuffle, he went to the State Department as chairman of the Policy Planning Council at the State Department. In 1964, President Johnson gave him the additional duty of U.S. member of the Inter-American Committee on the Alliance for Progress, with the rank of ambassador.

“[Joseph and Stewart] were columnists with a huge reach. They were in 200 newspapers with a combined circulation of 25 million, and they wrote consistently for the "Saturday Evening Post," and the "Washington Post." So they had an immense reach in a country that had 170 million people, maybe 180 million people.” From a review by Eric Alterman of “I've Seen The Best Of It” by Joseph W. Alsop with Adam Platt, in the Columbia Journalism Review, May/June 1992.

15] The FBI took over the case from the Dallas authorities and conducted a brief investigation; the Warren Commission subsequently relied upon the FBI as its primary investigative arm. http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/JFK_Documents_-_FBI

16 See Mary Ferrell Foundation for audio and transcripts of the calls with LBJ and others. http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Walkthrough_-_Formation_of_the_Warren_Commission

17 Part 9 of my Bugliosi review, Part 9, now in Reclaiming Parkland.

18 DiEugenio, James, Lisa Pease and Judge Joe Brown The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK, and Malcolm X, 2003, Feral House pp. 3-17.

19“ The Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President. This deficiency was attributable in part to the failure of the commission to receive all the relevant information that was in the possession of other agencies and departments of the Government.” HSCA Report, p. 256. Read more here: http://michaelgriffith1.tripod.com/failed.htm

20 Fortas, Washington attorney and LBJ confidant since the 1930s. Mary Ferrell Foundation, Nov 29, 1:15PM - Phone call between President Johnson and Abe Fortas http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/lbjlib/phone_calls/Nov_1963/html/LBJ-Nov-1963_0231a.htm
LBJ and advisor Fortas bandy about several names as possible Commissioners. After mentioning some possibilities include General Norstadt and James Eastland, at the end of the call LBJ selects the seven Commissioners named later that day to serve on the President's Commission.

21 Member Cooper initially refused to serve also. See History Matters http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/lbjlib/phone_calls/Nov_1963/html/LBJ-Nov-1963_0309a.htm Cooper's Wiki page has a limited mention of his serving on the Warren Commission, listing only, “He was a member of the Warren Commission, which investigated the assassination of John F. Kennedy,” and at the very bottom of the page under a hidden link that simply takes the reader back to the Wiki Warren Commission page with a listing of members, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Russell,_Jr.

22Transcript, Earl Warren Oral History Interview I, 9/21/71, by Joe B. Frantz, Internet Copy, LBJ Library, pg. 11. http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/oralhistory.hom/Warren-E/Warren-e.PDF

23 ibid., p. 11

24 Lane, Mark, Plausible Denial, p. 42.

25 Transcript of phone call of 11/29/3 between the President and Senator Richard Russell. History Matters http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/lbjlib/phone_calls/Nov_1963/html/LBJ-Nov-1963_0308a.htm

26 Transcript of phone call of 11/29/63 between President Johnson and Joe Alsop. Mary Ferrell Foundation http://www.maryferrell.org/mffweb/archive/viewer/showDoc.do?docId=838

27 ibid.

28 ibid., pp. 1, 2.

29 The Assassinations, op cit, p. 224.

30 ibid.

31 Rothman, Howard, Presumed Guilty: Lee Harvey Oswald in the Assassination of President Kennedy, 1975. http://www.american-buddha.com/presumeguiltyintro.htm

32 DiEugenio, James, Destiny Betrayed, pp. 96-97

33 Meagher, Sylvia, Accessories After the Fact, pp. 65-69.

34 Lane, Mark,Rush to Judgment, p. 9.

35 Russell, Dick, On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, pp. 126-27

36 McKnight, Gerald, Breach of Trust, p. 295.

37 Warren Report, titled Summary and Conclusions pp. 25-26

38 ibid., pp. 454-69.

39 ibid., p. 458.

40 Marrs, Jim, Crossfire, p. 246.

41 Horne, Doug, Inside the ARRB, Vol. V, pp. 1403-1409.

42 “The allegation, as outlined by James Douglass in ‘JFK the Unspeakable,' Thomas Arthur Vallee was being set up and framed as a possible patsy, had JFK been assassinated in Chicago Nov. 1, 1963. The former USMC had a basic covert operational background similar to Oswald, and appears to have been set up in a similar fashion.” Bill Kelly on the Education Forum.

43 Brown, Walt, The Warren Omission, p. 79.

44 Ibid, p. 260.

45 See Washington Post 11/10/98. Also, "Investigations" Mary Ferrell Foundation http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Investigations

Last modified on Sunday, 23 October 2016 15:27
James DiEugenio

One of the most respected researchers and writers on the political assassinations of the 1960s, Jim DiEugenio is the author of two books, Destiny Betrayed (1992/2012) and The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today (2018), co-author of The Assassinations, and co-edited Probe Magazine (1993-2000).   See "About Us" for a fuller bio.

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