Introduction to Bantam Edition

Reports of the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. are no less dreadful when read fifteen and ten years later.

Late in the afternoon of April 4, 1968, Dr. King was struck down by a sniper’s bullet.

Few of us over the age of twenty have forgotten where we were when we learned of President Kennedy’s death. My memory of that sad day is vivid. As a young lawyer with the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., I had spent the morning in a meeting with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy discussing investigations in Chicago, where I was going to work in a strike force in the Department’s drive on organized crime. We broke for lunch. While preparing to go out for a sandwich, I learned of the president’s death. The meeting was never reconvened, and I never made it to Chicago. When the organized crime program faltered after the assassination, I left the department to teach at Notre Dame Law School.

If our ability to recall the moment that we heard of Dr. King’s death is less precise, it is probably because not all of us were as intimately involved in his work as we should have been. It may also be because the civil rights leader, a man of peace, had lived so long under the threat of violence; in fact, his call for an end to racism, war, and economic injustice, in the context of the turbulent 1960s, almost seemed to invite attack. His death, coming after Kennedy’s, was not so shocking; it was almost expected. On the last night of his life, Dr. King himself seemed to anticipate what was going to happen to him. He told an audience at Mason Temple Church in Memphis:

The parallel between these two tragic events of a trying decade in our history are striking—a dynamic leader, in his prime, shot down by a sniper who was promptly determined to have been a lone assassin. That Lee Harvey Oswald and James Earl Ray had acted without accomplices were the conclusions of official investigations that immediately followed—by the Warren Commission in the case of Oswald in September 1964; by the FBI in the case of Ray, who concurred, at least momentarily, by pleading guilty on March 10, 1969.

In the aftermath of each assassination, there came, too, a questioning of the official findings, stated by critical authors, some of whom reflected an honest concern for the sufficiency and accuracy of the investigations, while others were apparently more motivated by the profit—financial and otherwise—that they could hope to extract from the emotions of a dispirited American people.

The effort of President Johnson and senior officials of his administration to assure the people that the Kennedy assassination was an isolated act had already been seriously undermined when Jack Ruby killed Oswald on November 24, 1963. A New York Times reporter wrote:

Nevertheless, the Warren Commission did much to still those doubts—at least for a time. Lord Devlin, one of Britain’s most distinguished jurists, wrote in The Atlantic of the Commission’s report:

There remained, however, a body of dissenting opinion. On October 19, 1964, the Washington Post reported on a survey by Louis Harris: 31 percent of the American people still thought that Oswald had not been alone.

By 1968 the doubters would more than double in number, thanks in large part to the work of assassination critics in books and articles. Four of the most prominent authors who made a distinct impression on the public attitude were:

By 1966 the popular press had also picked up the beat. In July Look featured an article titled, “The Warren Commission Report on the Assassination Is Struck by a Wave of Doubts.” In November Life published “A Matter of Reasonable Doubt,” a critical evaluation of the single-bullet hypothesis based on testimony by Governor Connally after examining a film of the assassination by Abraham Zapruder.

Finally, the investigation by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison seemed for a time to lend official sanction to the hunt for the conspirators. But Garrison’s bizarre tactics, which received national attention in the 1969 “show” trial of a New Orleans businessman, strained the patience of thinking people There was a lesson to be learned from the reaction to Garrison’s antics—dissent had to be able to withstand the same sort of hard analysis that the critics had applied to the work of the Warren Commission. There was irony, too, as it turned out. Some of what Garrison suggested in a manner that made mockery of due process did, in fact, deserve more serious attention than it received at the time.

The substance of the criticism of the work of the Warren Commission hinged on three general points:

It can be said today—with the advantage of the congressional investigation—that the alternative theories of the critics to the single-assassin hypothesis ranged from ridiculous to reasonable. Some can be dismissed as pure fancy—the idea, for example, that a man holding an umbrella in Dealey Plaza at the moment of the assassination was flashing a sinister signal.[1] Similarly, the notion is pure fancy that there were two Oswalds, one who defected to the Soviet Union in 1959, and another, a disguised KGB assassin, who returned to the United States in 1962. But other suspicions that there have been more than one gunman turned out to be not so farfetched.

Conspiracy theories in the assassination of Dr. King did not so readily find their way into print, not did they attract the widespread public attention accorded to putative plots to kill the president. Clearly, the best reason for this difference between the two assassination is that James Earl Ray lived to stand trial, plead guilty, and be sentenced to ninety-nine years in the Tennessee state penitentiary. Nevertheless, it was Ray himself who, at the time of his plea, put forth the initial hints that he had not been alone and that he had been an unwitting dupe in a wider conspiracy.

Ray himself realized that one of the most intriguing puzzles of the case was his source of income over the period leading up to the assassination and during his flight abroad. He offered the mysterious “Raoul” as his benefactor, claiming that Raoul had been the mastermind of the assassination. (See Report p. 402 and following for the Committee’s conclusion about Raoul.)

Authors of books about Ray and the murder of Dr. King generally reject the idea of conspiracy:

One writer who espoused a theory of conspiracy in Dr. King’s death was Mark Lane, who in 1977 collaborated with entertainer-activist Dick Gregory to produce Code Name “Zorro,” which argued a case for Ray’s defense. Lane also represented Ray when he appeared before the committee. In addition, Lane and Gregory submitted several points in behalf of their theory that Dr. King was the victim of a plot—possibly official in character. (See Report p. 557, for the committee’s assessment of Lane’s principal allegations and his conduct during the committee investigation.)

The House Select Committee on Assassinations was established in September 1976 by House Resolution 1540, which authorized a full and complete investigation of the circumstances surrounding the deaths of President Kennedy and Dr. King.[2] Although the critics had lobbied diligently congressional action, the principal impetus for the overwhelming support of HR 1540 (it passed the House by a vote of 280 to 65) came from another source—the Final Report of the senate Select Committee on Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities. In its report, dated April 1976, the Senate committee published revelations that raised in the minds of many the serious possibility of government complicity in both assassinations.

As it turned out, the House Select Committee found no evidence of complicity of the CIA, FBI, or any governmental agency in either assassination. (See Final Report, Section I C 2, p. 116 and following, for an analysis of the CIA-Mafia plots; Section II E 1, p. 566 and following, for an assessment of COINTELPRO.)

In its early days, the House Select Committee on Assassinations had some rough sailing. It could well be that the committee inherited from the critics a tendency to disagree among themselves. But there is little I can say about the internal strife of early 1977, since I only know what I read in the newspapers. The upshot was well publicized—a chairman submitted his resignation, and a chief counsel departed soon thereafter. What I do know is that a decent, honorable, and able man (an experienced trial lawyer) Louis Stokes of Ohio, was named chairman in March 1977, and I was appointed chief counsel and staff director in June. Neither of us came to our jobs with fixed intentions or presuppositions about either case. But each of us was determined to do a professional job, uphold the dignity of the House of Representatives, and not exploit the deaths of either President Kennedy or Dr. King for any partisan or personal advantage. Under the leadership of Chairman Stokes, it was resolved, then and there, that the committee would conduct its investigation in private until it was appropriate to hold public hearings, and it would do its best to remain immune from the fever of assassination demonology.

The mandate of the committee, as it had been stipulated in HR 222, prescribed four issues for the investigation:

It was quickly apparent that the first two issues posed potential dangers for a congressional committee, since they entailed an examination of the conduct of individuals that might well be criminal and that might, in view of the heinous nature of the crimes, arouse a public outcry of moral indignation. Our concern was not limited to the reputations of individuals who night become “subjects” of the investigation, that is, possible suspects. We also had to consider the rights of “innocent associates” of any subject.

Obviously, no fine or imprisonment could be imposed as a direct result of our investigation, for it was not a criminal investigation; it was a legislative inquiry by a committee of the House of Representatives. Nevertheless, the risk of injury to someone’s reputation demanded that we act with care. That is one reason, for example, that the committee rigidly adhered to a rule of the House by first taking testimony that might defame, degrade, or incriminate a person in executive session. That way, we could avoid publicly presenting baseless and harmful allegations.

Still, there were dangers inherent in the nature of a congressional investigation and the procedures employed by a House committee. These procedures are markedly different from those followed when individual conduct is examined by either the executive or judicial branch of government. An understanding of this report depends on an awareness of these procedures and their contrasts to a criminal inquiry.

The Constitution assigns to Congress the power and responsibility to legislate. And while Congress was not granted by the Constitution express authority to investigate, the Supreme Court has ruled that “the power of inquiry—with process to enforce it—is an essential and appropriate auxiliary to the legislative function.”

Congressional investigations differ sharply from judicial trials in several respects. There is no impartial judge presiding over a congressional hearing. Should a witness object to a question, he must seek a ruling from the chairman, who may himself have asked it. If the chairman overrules the objection and directs the witness to answer, he must do so or run the risk of being in contempt of Congress. Consequently, a witness in a congressional proceeding is under considerable pressure to answer questions.

Another difference between a congressional hearing and a trial is that an individual in a congressional proceeding can be compelled by a grant of immunity to testify despite his Fifth Amendment right to claim self-incrimination. In a trial, of course, a defendant cannot be forced to take the stand. In addition, there are no legal constraints on what committee members may say publicly prior to the appearance of a witness, who may also be subject of the investigation; a prosecutor in a criminal case must refrain from public comment in advance of a trial.

A witness before a congressional committee cannot object to the admission of evidence; even hearsay is admissible. Moreover, a “subject” of a congressional investigation has no right, as does the defendant in a trial, to cross-examine witnesses who have testified against him, to have subpoenas issued for witnesses, or to make a statement on his own behalf.

Finally, with respect to the rights of a witness, there is no constitutional provision for him to be represented by an attorney. A rule of the House does provide that witnesses may be accompanied by their lawyers, but it is only “for the purpose of advising them concerning their constitutional rights.”

Out of a deep concern for civil liberties, the select committee adopted certain rules of its own in an attempt to offset the risk inherent in conducting an assassination investigation in a congressional context. Public comment about the proceedings was, for example, tightly restricted. The chairman did not sit in the chair when he asked more than routine questions. In the event a witness was unable for financial or other reasons to obtain counsel, it was provided. A lawyer for a witness could submit questions to be asked of a client, and a witness or his lawyer could make a concluding statement to explain or amplify his testimony.

There are other even more important differences between a congressional hearing and a trial. The requirements, for example, that govern the outcome are radically dissimilar.

A congressional committee votes on its findings, as does a jury, but rather than unanimity, a simple majority will carry, as the dissents to this report illustrate. In addition, a congressional committee need not establish facts beyond a reasonable doubt—it may base recommendations or its legislation on facts it finds “probable” or even just “likely.” This has ominous implications for a “suspect,” who may be denied the opportunity for the vindication that would be associated with a judicial verdict of not guilty under a different standard.

It may be forcefully argued that when evidence of criminal conduct is introduced before a congressional committee—evidence that in the end falls short of clear and convincing persuasion—the responsible course of action for the committee might be to refrain from making the evidence public. We weighed this option by evaluating the importance of public knowledge about each of the four issues of our mandate in light of the risk to the reputations and rights of persons being investigated. Ultimately, we determined that a complete analysis of all four issues and public disclosure of that analysis were necessary, if the committee was going to fulfill its legislative responsibilities and its constitutional duty of informing the American public.

Beyond its duty to legislate and oversee executive agencies, the committee was constitutionally obligated, we believed, to make public the facts it had learned about the assassinations. This obligation was increased by the degree of public doubt about the earlier investigations. At the time the committee was established, according to the Gallup poll, 80 percent of the American people believed President Kennedy had been the victim of conspiracy, and 70 percent thought that the murder of Dr. King was likewise the result of a conspiracy.

Implicit in the informing function of Congress was the imperative that we respond to public concern over the performance of the federal agencies. The doubts that had stirred the public extended to serious suspicions that the agencies—principally the CIA and FBI—had engaged in a coverup, extending to complicity in the assassination themselves. With the integrity of the government at stake, the committee believed it would not suffice to respond simply by issuing its conclusions on government culpability. Conclusions without supporting facts would in the committee’s view, a view that I shared, merely have served to increase the suspicions. We had a responsibility, therefore, to state our conclusions as to who might have participated in the assassinations and to supply a factual basis for those conclusions.

The third issue of our mandate was based on another traditional responsibility of Congress—to oversee the performance of agencies in the executive branch. As Woodrow Wilson observed, “Quite as important as legislating is vigilant oversight of administration.” The committee considered its evaluation of such agencies as the CIA, FBI, and Secret Service as essential, and we realized that our evaluation would also depend on our own independent determination of the facts in each assassination. It would have been irresponsible for us to have passed judgment on, say, the FBI finding that Oswald had acted alone without first coming to our own conclusion on that crucial issue.

The fourth issue of the mandate—whether new laws should be enacted or existing laws amended—was the most appropriate in terms of the committee’s legislative responsibility. To make such a determination, however, the committee was also first required to assess the prior investigations themselves and to perform an independent and objective analysis of the facts in each assassination.

In planning the investigation, we had to realize we had a time deadline and limited resources. In thirty months, the committee spent about $5.5 million, which may sound like a lot, but it should be contrasted with the fact that the Warren Commission spent the equivalent in 1977 dollars of over 10 million in ten months. At any rate, it was mandatory that we establish priorities among the issues and concentrate on those where we thought we had the best chance of learning the truth and settling public doubts.

The actual investigation—that is, the period of rigorous factfinding—lasted only six months, from January to July 1978. But it was intense and wide ranging. Trips were made to foreign countries, including Mexico, Canada, Portugal, England, and Cuba. In all, there were 562 trips to 1,463 points for over a total of 4,758 days in the field; 335 witnesses were heard, either in public or executive session; a total of more than 4,924 interviews were conducted; 524 subpoenas were issued; and immunity orders were obtained for 165 witnesses.

Up until December 1977, we were largely consumed by exploratory work—rebuilding a staff, mastering the critical literature on both cases, preparing an investigative plan, and devising procedures for obtaining facts and presenting them effectively, both in public hearings during the latter half of 1978 and in this report.

We were acutely aware of the need for strict security precautions, not only because of the classified nature of much of the material we were to review, but also because the investigation could have been seriously compromised by premature discussion of its results. Further, we realized that a person’s reputation might be unjustly injured by publication of unverified information. Accordingly, each member of the staff was required to meet the requirements for a top-secret clearance. And strict discipline characterized our work.

In order that we could review the materials of a government agency, such as the CIA or FBI, much of which is classified, we entered into an agreement that was formalized in a memorandum of understanding, a document that established how the materials would be handled. The agreement with the CIA provided for access to unsanitized information, meaning nothing removed, not even “sources and methods” data. Such access was unprecedented in congressional dealings with an intelligence agency.

The information developed in the investigation fell under three general categories: scientific evidence, the results of analysis in the fields of forensic pathology, ballistics, photography, acoustics, photography [sic], fingerprinting, and so on; documentation, in the form of official government files; and the testimony of witnesses. We knew that the scientific evidence would be of the highest reliability; that official files could be of substantial value in certain areas of the investigation; and that witness testimony would have to be sharply qualified by the limits of human memory, bias, and possibly a motive to lie. We knew, too, that the trail was cold; that witnesses had died; and that we lacked the legal tools to conduct a criminal-type investigation. But we were determined to do what we could.

In the public hearing phase of the investigation, we held more than thirty-five days of evidentiary hearings and two days of public policy sessions. Hearings testimony is published in separate volumes that supplement this report, as are reports by the Committee staff and our scientific panels. In all, the committee’s published materials, in addition to this report, fill l27 volumes.

The committee’s last official act, in December 1978, was to approve its findings and recommendations, which were published in January 1979. This report is a commentary on those findings and recommendations; it summarize[s] the evidence on which they were based and presents the committee’s analysis of that evidence.

The final line in both assassinations is conspiracy. It is ironic in light of the suspicions that caused the committee to be created that we did not find government agency complicity, not even a coverup by the favorite targets of the critics, the CIA and FBI. What we did find was not so much “coverup” as a “failure to uncover” by those agencies and others in government that conspiracies were responsible for the deaths of President Kennedy and Dr. King. To put it bluntly, the official findings on the conspiracy question in both cases were wrong.

In stating its conclusions about the assassinations in this report, the committee, for good reason, speaks with muted tongue. As I have noted, we were deeply concerned about the inherent risk of a legislative investigation into criminal conduct. We decided, therefore, that our language ought to be moderate and that we ought not to state a finding beyond what is absolutely indicated by the evidence.

The committee realized further that ultimately individual responsibility in the conspiracies had to be determined, under our system of government, in a court of law. When it became apparent that follow-up investigation was necessary, we became more aware than ever that we must make our findings with moderation and limit them to the crucial facts in each case. It was a sobering experience for me to discover failures by our government to the degree that we set out in this report. The failures were so sobering that some members of the committee were not willing to carry the conclusions out to the full force of the evidence. Realizing that there would be an opportunity for others to fill in the details—that there might be indictments and trials as a result of future investigation—we decided to present an understated case. We chose a cautious approach.

Yes, there are still unanswered questions. It would have been neat and tidy if we simply could have put our stamp of approval on the official findings of 1964 and 1968. But they turn out to be inadequate and wrong, and we were left to ask, but not able to answer with assurance, questions like there:

Down Pennsylvania Avenue, not far from the Capitol, there is a department of government, called in Washington simply, “Justice.” The Attorney General and his deputies may feel there are matters of greater urgency than knowing the truth about the deaths of President Kennedy and Dr. King, that their limited time and resources might well be better spent on “current cases,” or that if these two cases were actively reopened, the department might fail in its efforts to solve them. If they do, they are overlooking something that has always seemed clear to me. The American people are willing to accept failure when there has been an honest effort to succeed. What they will not accept from our government—or anyone else—is a refusal to make that effort.

The committee, I believe, has done its job. By that I mean it has fully answered the questions posed in its mandate for its legislative purposes. It has assessed the performance of government agencies and found it to have been flawed. It has made recommendations for administrative and legislative reform.

As for issue one, the committee was satisfied with the identification of the killers of President Kennedy and Dr. King. But, on the issue of conspiracy, we have, I believe, drastically altered the verdict of history.

For reasons I have listed, we stopped short of that climactic point in mystery novels when the murderer is named. I do not apologize. I believe the committee fulfilled its mandate to the letter, given the restrictions that are appropriate in a legislative proceeding. We did what we could and what it was proper for us to do.

It is up to the government—the executive branch, specifically that department called “Justice.” In his recent national policy reconsideration at Camp David, President Carter is reported to have marked the Kennedy assassination as the beginning of the period of decline of public trust in the institutions of government. I agree. A frank recognition of the failures of the past and a courageous effort to rectify them now could make the beginning of a restoration of that public confidence. The place to begin is with the Kennedy assassination. The committee has provided a roadmap that indicates the points of departure for subsequent investigation that need not be limited as congressional investigations are—New Orleans, in the case of the Kennedy assassination; St. Louis, in the case of the King assassination. The government, to live up to the meaning of justice, can do no less than to pursue the course the committee has charted.

Why? Because statutes of limitation do not apply to murder, certainly not the murders of men like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.

[1] The “umbrella man,” in testimony before the committee, explained he was protesting U.S. foreign policy, using the umbrella to serve as a symbolic reminder of the appeasement policies of Neville Chamberlain, Great Britain’s prime minister in the years leading to World War II

[2] The committee expired as the term of the 94^th Congress ended on January 3, 1977. On February 2, 1977, the House passed HR 222, again authorizing the committee and directing it not only to investigate the deaths of President Kennedy and Dr. King, but also to determine whether existing laws that cover assassination are adequate and to see if there had bee a full sharing of information by federal agencies during the course of prior investigations. HR 222 extended the committee for only two months. Another resolution—HR 422—was passed on March 30, 1977, constituting the committee until January 3, 1979.