Freeman on Dallas Rightists
Moscow TASS International Service in English 2246 GMT 25 November 1963--L
(Dispatch by TASS correspondent Harry Freeman)
(Excerpts) New York--The hatred of the Dallas
ultra-rightists for President Kennedy was so great that on 20 November, two days
before the President's murder, an 18-year-old student in Dallas wrote his mother
that he feared that the President would be assassinated when he came to Dallas.
The student's letter appeared on 23 November in THE REGISTER, a newspaper
published in New Haven, Connecticut. The student, Robert Rose, attends Southern
Methodist University in Dallas. He wrote his mother who lives in New Haven:
"Kennedy is coming nest week. Ten to one he will be assassinated by some of
these Dallas maniacs." (passage omitted quoting from Rose letter)
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren has said: " What
moved some misguided wretch to do this horrible deed may never be known to us,
but we do know that such acts are commonly stimulated by forces of hatred and
malevolence as are today eating their way into the bloodstream of American
life."
The killing of Oswald, whom the Dallas police alleged without
proof to be Kennedy's assassin, has strengthened growing suspicions that the
Dallas police are seeking to conceal the identity of the real murderer or
murderers. Those suspicions are beginning to appear in the press.
Anthony Lewis, legal observer for the New York TIMES, wrote
from Washington that even before Oswald's death, "there were factors in the case
disturbing to persons concerned with civil liberties. Among these factors were
the lengthy questioning of Oswald without legal counsel and police statements to
the press declaring him, in effect, to be guilty.
James Reston, head of the New York TIMES Washington Bureau,
pointed out that the true facts of Kennedy's murder and Oswald's death have not
yet come to light. The Dallas and Washington authorities, he said, have not as
yet "promised the nation a full objective inquiry into the deaths of President
Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald. Thoughtful men here are not satisfied...." (TASS
ellipsis).
Is the evidence against Oswald to remain with the Dallas
police and the FBI? Is the public not entitled to know what was said to and by
Oswald in Dallas jail? "The Dallas authorities," the New York TIMES editorial
declared, "have trampled every principle of justice in their handling of Lee
Oswald." Why did the Dallas police act in such a fashion? Why are they
concealing the facts? This question is on the lips of millions. The suspicion
grows that the police are shielding the "ultra" groups which play such a
prominent role in Dallas.