This document caused
quite a stir when it was discovered in 1977. Dated 4/1/67, and marked "DESTROY WHEN NO LONGER NEEDED", this
document is a stunning testimony to how concerned the CIA was over
investigations into the Kennedy assassination. Emphasis has been added to
facilitate scanning.
__________
CIA Document #1035-960,
marked "PSYCH" for presumably Psychological Warfare Operations, in the division
"CS", the Clandestine Services, sometimes known as the "dirty tricks"
department.
RE: Concerning Criticism
of the Warren Report
1. Our Concern. From the
day of President Kennedy's assassination on, there has been speculation about
the responsibility for his murder. Although this was stemmed for a time by the
Warren Commission report, (which appeared at the end of September 1964), various
writers have now had time to scan the Commission's published report and
documents for new pretexts for questioning, and there has been a new wave of
books and articles criticizing the Commission's findings. In most cases the
critics have speculated as to the existence of some kind of conspiracy, and
often they have implied that the Commission itself was involved. Presumably as a
result of the increasing challenge to the Warren Commission's report, a public
opinion poll recently indicated that 46% of the American public did not think
that Oswald acted alone, while more than half of those polled thought that the
Commission had left some questions unresolved. Doubtless polls abroad would show
similar, or possibly more adverse
results.
2. This trend of opinion is a
matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization. The
members of the Warren Commission were naturally chosen for their integrity,
experience and prominence. They represented both major parties, and they and
their staff were deliberately drawn from all sections of the country. Just
because of the standing of the Commissioners, efforts to impugn their
rectitude and wisdom tend to cast doubt on the whole leadership of American
society. Moreover, there seems to be an increasing tendency to hint that
President Johnson himself, as the one person who might be said to have
benefited, was in some way responsible for the assassination. Innuendo of such
seriousness affects not only the individual concerned, but also the whole
reputation of the American government. Our organization itself is directly
involved: among other facts, we contributed information to the investigation.
Conspiracy theories have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization, for
example by falsely
alleging that Lee Harvey Oswald worked for us. The aim of this dispatch
is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy
theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries.
Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of
unclassified attachments.
3. Action. We do not
recommend that discussion of the assassination question be initiated where it is
not already taking place. Where discussion is active [business] addresses are
requested:
a. To discuss the
publicity problem with [?] and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians
and editors), pointing out that the Warren Commission made as thorough an
investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without
serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the
hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear
to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists. Urge them to use their
influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible
speculation.
b. To employ propaganda
assets to [negate] and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and
feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified
attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for
passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics
are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically
interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their
research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories. In the course of
discussions of the whole phenomenon of criticism, a useful strategy may be to
single out Epstein's theory for attack, using the attached Fletcher [?] article
and Spectator piece for background. (Although Mark Lane's book is much less
convincing that Epstein's and comes off badly where confronted by knowledgeable
critics, it is also much more difficult to answer as a whole, as one becomes
lost in a morass of unrelated details.)
4. In private to media
discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications
which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be
useful:
a. No significant new
evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider. The assassination is
sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and
Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack
on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have
been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A
better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of
1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt)
now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own
initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to
pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in
convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)
b. Critics usually
overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis
on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more
divergent--and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) and less on
ballistics, autopsy, and photographic evidence. A close examination of the
Commission's records will usually show that the conflicting eyewitness accounts
are quoted out of context, or were discarded by the Commission for good and
sufficient reason.
c. Conspiracy on the
large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States,
esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc. Note that Robert Kennedy,
Attorney General at the time and John F. Kennedy's brother, would be the last
man to overlook or conceal any conspiracy. And as one reviewer pointed
out, Congressman Gerald R. Ford would hardly have held his tongue for the sake
of the Democratic administration, and Senator Russell would have had every
political interest in exposing any misdeeds on the part of Chief Justice Warren.
A conspirator moreover would hardly choose a location for a shooting where so
much depended on conditions beyond his control: the route, the speed of the
cars, the moving target, the risk that the assassin
would be discovered. A group of wealthy conspirators could have arranged much
more secure conditions.
d. Critics have often
been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall
in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always
answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other. Actually, the
make-up of the Commission and its staff was an excellent safeguard against
over-commitment to any one theory, or against the illicit transformation of
probabilities into certainties.
e. Oswald would not have
been any sensible person's choice for a co-conspirator. He was a "loner," mixed
up, of questionable reliability and an unknown quantity to any professional
intelligence service. [Archivist's note: This claim is demonstrably untrue with
the latest file releases. The CIA had an operational interest in Oswald less
than a month before the assassination. Source: Oswald and the CIA, John Newman
and newly released files from the National Archives.]
f. As to charges that
the Commission's report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the
deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up
its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of
irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same
critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new
criticisms.
g. Such vague
accusations as that "more than ten people have died mysteriously" can always be
explained in some natural way e.g.: the individuals concerned have for the most
part died of natural causes; the Commission staff questioned 418 witnesses (the
FBI interviewed far more people, conduction 25,000 interviews and re
interviews), and in such a large group, a certain number of deaths are to be
expected. (When Penn Jones, one of the originators of the "ten mysterious
deaths" line, appeared on television, it emerged that two of the deaths on his
list were from heart attacks, one from cancer, one was from a head-on collision
on a bridge, and one occurred when a driver drifted into a bridge
abutment.)
5. Where possible,
counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission's Report itself.
Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness,
objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books
might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with
the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its
critics.
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