Transcription of Mark Lane and William F. Buckley Debate
I am unsure exactly what drew me to this exchange between Mark Lane and William F. Buckley Jr., but I returned to it over and over again and finally decided to transcribe the televised discussion. The text-only version of the debate removes some of the layers of rhetoric found in tone and body language and provides a very different document of the event. The debate was over the findings of the Warren Commission on the assassination of President Kennedy and aired on Buckley’s Firing Line in 1966, and since viewing it the first time about a year ago it has lingered with me. There remains a ghost from this exchange itself regardless of the theories surrounding the assassination, disregarding the deathbed confessions by Howard E. Hunt or Lane’s basic accusation of Hunt’s involvement in a CIA operation to assassinate President Kennedy in his Plausible Denial. This debate achieves something beyond the desire to decipher the motive and conspirators of the assassination.
The television forum and the interest of open debate by non-governmental figures, it goes without saying, is dissolving. Or at least the need for and reception of this type of forum is in decline. Additionally, satire has proven to be one of the most effective conduits today of transmitting news to a large amount of people. The use of satire is nothing new, but its dominance is symptomatic of complete distrust currently in the discourse and method of any news media outlet.
The decline of the specialist and the surge of the generally informed has transformed merit into a loose field of interest, that is, that which can gain the most interest—the most hits, so-to-speak, has increasingly become the value of merit. Communities online are defined continually by this new merit or by its converse, by exclusive or unknown communities. Open-sourced networks, incessant modulation, and the unleashing of a nearly primeval human drive to be heard and to comment is the atmosphere of today.
What the debate below crystallizes is a moment of complete ambivalence, terror, and mistrust with the grantor that defines freedom and law, the State. It is heavy with rhetoric and posturing as well as the use and abuse of reason. The elbow between WWII into civil rights is bending here, and the debate now expresses the preconceptions and the forward-looking gaze of the then coming global spirit of contradiction, somewhere between fact and belief.
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Firing Line: William F. Buckley Interviews Mark Lane, December 1, 1966
Warren Report: Fact or Fiction?
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William F. Buckley Jr.
Mr. Mark Lane has been around for many years, identifying himself gladly with causes worthy, controversial and unworthy. He has been a special favorite of the left liberal community in New York City, which he greatly pleas by his myriad of activities, ranging from the organization of rent strikes, opposition to bomb shelter programs, involvement in legal and civil rights groups, irrespective of government claims that they were Communist infiltrated. He was in short a hero in important circles in New York, well before the assassination of President Kennedy by whoever assassinated president Kennedy, not, we must assume, from Mr. Lane, Harvey Lee Oswald [sic]. Mr. Lane is a skillful lawyer and has written a best selling book, called Rush to Judgment. The publishers maintain that this book has “changed history.” That single-handedly Mr. Lane has discredited the Warren Report.
We are not here to discuss the minutiae of the controversies raised by the Warren Commission and its critics for the simple reason that is impractical to do so. Rather we will treat more general questions. I’d like to begin by asking Mr. Lane this: It is widely alleged that sinister forces who have a vested interest in suppressing the real truth as to the identity of the assassin have been here and there killing off crucial people—former strippers at Ruby’s Joint in Dallas, truck driver roommates and friends of Oswald’s—that kind of thing. How come if you are the man who has changed history these forces haven’t bumped you off, Mr. Lane?
Mark Lane
Well, I think fortunately we haven’t come to that. I would like to comment, if I may, upon portions of your introduction. It is not just liberals and leftists who can not accept the Warren Commission Report. Of course, I think the very best review and most favorable review, which my book received, was in your publication, The National Review—
WFB
—I was talking about your pre-Kennedy reputation by way of background.
ML
Before the assassination?
WFB
Yes sir.
ML
When I was elected to the State Legislature—
WFB
—There was an assassination, wasn’t there?
ML
Yes, there’s no question about that. When I was elected to the State Legislature with the endorsement and support of President Kennedy—that’s the “left-liberal” approach you’re talking about. In terms of the assassination though, in terms of the Warren Report, of course the Lou Harris Poll shows now that two-thirds of the American people indicate that they can not accept its conclusions. So I think that it’s not even an unpopular cause with which I’m associated any longer. And regarding the earlier comments you made, I think that the best way to respond to them is probably with the opening line of your book, which I’m afraid I may butcher because I’ll just paraphrase it, but it was something like, “When you are a controversialist, you can either go mad or ignore genuinely unjust criticism.” And I prefer, as you do, the latter cause.
WFB
Well, I hope there hasn’t been any genuinely unjust criticism yet on this show. It is a matter of some importance, as long as the American thinking community is concerned, to investigate motives, to investigate one’s general attitude towards the events in Dallas. For instance, Harrison Salisbury, of The New York Times, who has himself been accused of being much too liberal—
ML
—Who’s accused him of that?
WFB
Me.
ML
Oh.
WFB
He has said that Mr. Mark Lane “is a New York attorney who has made a career in of insinuating that Mr. Kennedy was a victim of a right-wing plot.”
ML
Now what I mean by unjust criticism is to take that early comment, which he wrote when he did the introduction to the Warren Report, and to ignore his present statement, where he states now—and although the The New York Times will not tell you this, although he’s the associate managing editor, in the recent review in the Progressive, he’s indicated that he finds much substance in my charges, and in a recent Canadian Broadcast Company broadcast, he said if asked again he would not do the introduction to the Warren Report because he doesn’t have sufficient confidence in it.
WFB
Well, that I was not aware of. What I’m trying to simply place into perspective is where you figure in terms of the general criticism of the report. Would this be fair or not fair to say, Mr. Lane, since we are going to strike out for justice, that certain people, ever since the assassination, both on the left and the right were highly dissatisfied by the findings of the Warren Commission, highly dissatisfied because it didn’t fit their ideological predisposition. Certain members of the right, for instance, are terribly anxious to find out that somebody in the Kremlin pushed a button and that Oswald was immediately energized, raised his rifle and pulled the trigger. You consider this naive, I assume, but by the same token, we have for instance, professor H. Stuart Hughes, shortly after the assassination, writing in The Nation Magazine, “What most of us had first thought was that the crime had been committed by a southern racist. Indeed, if we look deeply into our souls, I think many of us would recognize that we were disappointed that such was not the case.”
ML
I think it’s true: those on the right would like to believe that those on the left were involved in a conspiratorial way, and those on the left have the same feelings about those on the right.
WFB
Yes, but your reputation has been as a left-liberal within the spectrum of New York politics, so that people who first look into your association with this particular venture might believe unjustly, I hasten add, that you are somebody who is trying to rescue Oswald as the punitive killer, because Oswald was a Communist.
ML
Since I don’t even say in my book that Oswald was innocent, of course one cannot really accuse me of that.
WFB
Yes, but this is the effect of your book, isn’t it?
ML
No. I think my book shows quite conclusively that shots came from at least two directions and that the law of conspiracy is nothing more, of course, than two or more persons acting in concert to effect an illegal end. So the book says there was a conspiracy to kill the President.
WFB
Is it or is it not fair to say then that your book does not go further than to say that the Warren Commission didn’t take all of the evidence into account but by no means goes so far as to say that Oswald is exonerated on the basis of your reading of the findings?
ML
Well, it goes beyond, I think, the former and not quite as far as the latter. I think my book states quite clearly that the Warren Report is a fraudulent document. Not merely did they not take sufficient evidence into consideration, but they distorted evidence, they misused evidence, and what’s worse I think that they over-simplified evidence.
WFB
Well let me ask you then this, assuming that Oswald would rise up from the dead, come up here and say, “Mr. Lane I did fire the fatal shot.” This would not invalidate your book in any way, would it?
ML
Well I don’t think he could have fired the fatal shot because that shot came from the right-front—
WFB
—But if he said I fired one of the shots?
ML
Yes, that certainly is a possibility. The mere fact that the Warren Commission was totally unable to prove that doesn’t mean that it’s not true.
WFB
Would you or would you not agree that even though this was a wild, desperate crime, pretty much in the category of the criminal who killed McKinley, that even though we are prepared to say that there is no reason to assume that Oswald got order from the Communist apparatus that nevertheless there is a very considerable record of Oswald’s sympathy with the Communists, which for some reason isn’t stressed in your book. I say “for some reason” because you might have simply thought it methodologically irrelevant.
ML
I think that the political commitments of those who, in terms of the evidence, are proven to be nothing more than spectators, I think that’s quite irrelevant to a determination as to where the shots came.
WFB
Wait a minute, we’re not rushing off to say that Oswald was a spectator, are we? I thought that you said that it would not surprise you that in fact he pulled one of the…
ML
I said it would not invalidate my book. It would surprise me, because I think there is no evidence to show that. I take the same position Alfredda Scobey, one of the lawyers for the Warren Commission takes, and that is had Oswald lived he could not have been proven guilty had he faced trial based on the evidence the Commission was able to secure.
WFB
And of course, Warren says that he was a practicing district attorney for 10 or 12 years and that he could have gotten a conviction out of Oswald in 48 hours with the evidence. But you disagree with him professionally.
ML
That’s nonsense. It would take longer then that to pick a jury, of course.
WFB
Do you think Warren should be impeached?
ML
I don’t think he should be impeached I think his report should be impeached.
WFB
Well, we certainly don’t want incompetent Chief Justices around, do we?
ML
Well, we’re used to those, we’ve had them for many years.
WFB
But this is the first one you would not impeach?
ML
No, I would not impeach any of them. I don’t know if any of the Chief Justices should be impeached. I think mere incompetence is not a reason to disqualify a judge—we’d have an empty bench.
WFB
So you take a rather severe view about the competence of our Supreme Court Justices. So do I, as a matter of fact, in case you wanted to retreat from your position.
ML
You see, that goes back to your earlier position. My position is not arrived at either by my political view or your political view. The integerity of my book depends not upon my own political bias, and of course, I have several of them and many of them, but upon the 5000 citations and references to the Warren Commission’s own evidence which mark the book from the beginning to the end. Either they’re in context or they’re not, either they’re accurate or they’re not. I suggest that they’re accurate and they have not yet been proven by any of the 2000 reviewers to be inaccurate or out of context so far.
WFB
Well, you just finished quoting a lawyer, Mr. Scobey, that I never heard about. Suppose I quote one that maybe you haven’t heard about? He is with the UCLA Law School, and he says that, “Mr. Lane misstated or distorted the record in at least 15 instances. Mr. Lane has threatened to sue, he hasn’t.” Is that just because you are otherwise engaged, or what?
ML
I am going to sue Wesley Liebeler for libel, no question about that. He is clearly pathologically committed to the Commission’s case, it’s an unfortunate matter but it’s a personal matter, and he has to deal with that with those in another discipline.
WFB
How would you feel about people who have said the reverse about you, that you are pathologically committed to its opposite?
ML
I’d say they’re in error. That’s that unjust criticism that you made reference to in your first sentence.
WFB
When you say that there really isn’t sufficient evidence to incriminate Oswald, is it or is it not true that it is conceded the gun was sent to Oswald.
ML
It is conceded by the Warren Commission, yes.
WFB
And the post office?
ML
Well no, not really. The post office regulations would prohibit the reception of that rifle by Oswald since it was sent addressed to a “Adele”. The Commission got around that by accepting false testimony from one of the postal inspectors which was completely contrary to the regulations.
WFB
Well, the law prohibits a lot of things. For instance, the bugged conversations that you had with some of your pet witnesses. And nevertheless those bugged conversations continued, right? That which the law prohibits does not necessarily get—the law prohibits the assassination of Presidents.
ML
Yes, and we know the President was assassinated. We know also that when you deal with a violation of the regulations of the post office, which regulations would prohibit the rifle from reaching Oswald since it was sent to someone named Adele, that the way to handle that is just as you have, to say that the regulations prohibit this, but a mistake was made. The way the Commission did it was through the over-simplification I made reference to, they accepted testimony falsely as to what the regulations are. That’s true.
WFB
Why?
ML
To show that Oswald was the lone assassin, which was the Commission’s preconception at the very outset.
WFB
Why?
ML
I think we have to back to that period of November 22nd, 1963, and the trauma that was in our country, which was compounded by the murder of the alleged assassin while he was being protected by some 70 police officers and various FBI agents and Secret Service agents, he was shot to death by an old, intimate and corrupt friend by the Dallas police force, Jack Ruby. And that added further to the trauma of the country. And there was only one way, as Mr. Rankin, counsel for the Commission said, to meet his commitment, he said that the commitment of the Commission was to reassure the American people. How could they do it, by Mr. Hoover saying, “Ladies and gentlemen of America, the assassins of your president have escaped. They are walking the streets of your cities tonight. Sorry about that. It was in the midst of the greatest security precautions ever taken, but next time we’ll try to do better.” The very least, people would have demanded the retirement of Mr. Hoover, which would have been, certainly, one valuable asset, I think—byproduct—of the terrible event.
WFB
Oh ho, that was hit in run, wasn’t it? They wouldn’t allow that in court, would they?
ML
What’s that? Oh we’re not in court.
WFB
Your hit-and-run attack on Mr. Hoover.
ML
Well should we slow down, I’d be happy to discuss it in great detail?
WFB
We’re not here to discuss Mr. Hoover’s credentials.
ML
No, just Mr. Warren’s, right?
WFB
Sure, Mr. Warren—you most specifically accuse him of residing over a whitewash or a kangaroo court or whatever you want. Now, in the course of approaching the problem the way you did, aren’t you really asking the question, what kind of investigation is absolutely necessary to establish that which is commonly regarded as a certitude. For instance, suppose one would decide at this moment to convene a commission to establish the innocence of Dreyfus. It might, in fact, be hard to do. But isn’t the certitude of the innocence of Dreyfus a part of your sort of natural equipment? Aren’t you willing to come to historical terms with that datum?
ML
Well, the French government, which originally said he was guilty, reversed itself after Esterhazy had confessed that he was guilty.
WFB
Yes, but there are a lot of Mark Lane’s around though, you know, who will make the same objections to the French government’s actions in the case of Dreyfus.
ML
But the man who was guilty confessed and said that Dreyfus was in no way involved.
WFB
Oh you wouldn’t have had that—that would have taken you half a chapter to have handled a confession by Oswald, wouldn’t it? You said all kinds of things about witnesses.
ML
Are you suggesting that Dreyfus was guilty?
WFB
No. I’m simply saying that as much as a case can be made for the innocence of Dreyfus can be made to the innocence of Oswald.
ML
And they both may have been innocent, yes.
WFB
And your techniques which are highly ingenious…let me put it another way, if you’re willing to believe that either a combination of ruthlessness, cynicism and sloth committed J. Edgar Hoover and Earl Warren and seven or eight distinguished Americans appointed by the President, with the tacit acquiescence of Robert Kennedy, and a bunch of hardworking professional lawyers and investigators to come up with a verdict that was palpably indefensible, then if you’re willing to accept that assumption, it becomes simply a matter of legal ingenuity. And you’re extremely ingenious to contrive an extremely interesting case to go ahead and approve your assumptions. So, methodologically, aren’t you as much at error as the Warren Commission?
ML
I think if you adopt that approach you say there is no truth, we can never discover what has ever happened. I don’t believe that is so. I think we can and I think that there are mechanisms developed so that we can. And I think the American judicial system is a sound one. Cross examination, open and public hearings, the right to a counsel for the accused, I think these things tend to assist a determination of the truth.
WFB
I’m glad that they tend, because we know of an awful lot of innocent people who have been convicted and guilty people who have are let go.
ML
Let’s think about how many innocent people would have been convicted if they didn’t have those protections. The fact is the Warren Commission made none of those protections available. You know what they did? They took testimony—they’ve never published the transcripts of the testimony—that’s locked up by order of your President for 75 years.
WFB
Yours too, by the way. You voted for him, you see.
ML
No, I did not vote for him, as a matter of fact. Until September, 2039, time must past until we can examine that. But what the commission did is to publish a printed version, but in Volume 1 of the reports, the Commission states that it reserved the right to edit the testimony, to edit the transcript, to improve the accuracy and the clarity of the witnesses statement. Now doesn’t that frighten you a little bit about their power?
WFB
No more so than that I don’t have access to the notes that went into your book. I’m sure that every time you bumped into a witness who said, “Yes, Mr. Lane, I saw him and he was Oswald,” he very likely didn’t figure prominently in your book.
WFB
I gather that the burden of your charge is that that evidence that the Warren Committee secreted away, the loose notes, the notebooks and so on, were it publicly accessible, tend to undermine the Warren Commission’s case. Otherwise, would it not simply be, a perfectly matter of fact and conventional way of exercising editorial judgment? For instance, I find it impossible to read everything that Ruby said in his own interview with the Warren Commission investigators, simply on the grounds of its inherent unintelligibility. Now, don’t they have some sort of right to exercise editorial judgement, assuming that we trust their integrity.
ML
I’m surprised you ask that questions because you know that can never be done in a trial, in any court, no judge edits the testimony and then presents it to the jury, or to the public. And in this, our most important case, the jury was the American people. And we have a right to look at the unintelligible statements made by Mr. Ruby, and the unintelligible questions asked by Chief Justice Warren as well. I think that’s one of our basic rights in a democratic society. Which we have, right?
WFB
Yes, I think it may be a basic right which is in and of itself an interesting question. It is not necessarily an interesting question to ask whether or not one must suppose from the fact that certain of the evidence—let’s say CIA reports from Havana to Washington—it’s not necessarily an interesting question whether or not access to those is indispensable to the making of a responsible judgment.
ML
Oh I don’t think the secret material of that nature should be revealed. But that’s not the problem. We have the photographs and x-rays of the president’s body, which would resolve the classic question of the case: the origin of the shots. Now, President Johnson was asked at a recent press conference by Mr. Spivak why it was that the Warren Commission never examined those invaluable documents and why no non-governmental person can now look at them. And President Johnson replied that they were available to the Commission. I think that didn’t answer the question, the first portion. And secondly he said, “We wouldn’t want them paraded around every sewing circle in America.” Well, no one really suggested that. I think that competent pathologists should have examined these invaluable documents and rendered an opinion to the Commission, and today, independent experts not associated with the government should be given the right to do that. Don’t you believe that’s so?
WFB
Yes I do, yes I do. But I do think that it’s not exactly fair to blame Lyndon Johnson for what (incomplete).
ML
…The Commission said this was the first bullet from the back, ripped through the Adam’s apple. But Roy Kellerman said that after the first shot was fired, the President said, “My God, I am hit!” in a clear, New England, Boston accent. He said it wasn’t governor Connally, he doesn’t talk that way at all, which I think is quite so. Now the question is, if the bullet hit the president from the back of the neck and ripped through the Adam’s apple, and that was the first shot, how is possible for him to say clearly and distinctly in that New England accent, “My God, I am hit!”
WFB
I don’t know, nor do I know whether it can be done or whether it can’t be done.
ML
With one’s Adam’s apple torn out?
WFB
Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t know what you can do without an Adam’s apple or without a liver.
ML
He may have said it without a liver, but that’s not the question.
WFB
I think this is one of these pyrotechnically impressive points.
ML
Well then we’ll go to another one.
WFB
Ok. But let’s in the meanwhile meditate over the fact that doctors who are not, so far as we know, engaged in any kind of conspiracy to deny you the truth, reaffirm their judgement of the likelihood that it did emerge from the throat, recognize that as a result of the mutilation of the throat at the time the tracheotomy was performed, it was impossible by visual inspection to prove or not prove it. Let’s also recognize Mr. Redlich of the Warren Commission said that he was principally impelled to the single bullet thesis by the fact of the bullet’s not existing, and that under the circumstances he grants that it’s a hypothesis but grants that it’s the most reasonable and conceivable hypothesis.
ML
It’s the only hypothesis which will explain why Oswald could have been the lone assassin. And that’s why it was chosen. It’s more than just the inability to speak with one’s Adam’s apple torn out, the FBI agents, Sibert and O’Neill, who were present during the autopsy on November 22nd, quote Dr. Humes stating, they were there they saw the wounds, the wound was some 5 inches down in the back and two inches to the right of the spinal column. Dr. Humes probed the wound with his fingertip and said the bullet went in a short distance and did not exit. Now that’s the first contradiction. The doctors at Parham Hospital who examined the wound, there was a tracheotomy, but they performed it, and before they performed it they examined it and they said that the wound in throat was a clear puncture wound, an entrance wound. And each of the three doctors who made a public statement that day said the wound was clearly an entrance wound. So all I say is there is a sufficient question on this point, so that Earl Warren or anyone else who wishes to conduct a thorough investigation, was compelled to examine the best evidence—the photographs and the x-rays.
WFB
Look, I wish he had, and if he doesn’t that somebody else will, preferably before sundown tomorrow, but I also believe that the investigators of the Warran Commission had every reason to suppose that the report of the autopsists was legitimate. And that the report of the autopsists took every conceivable hypothesis and opted for the one they reported as the compelling one under the circumstances.
ML
Well we don’t know that because the original notes, which were prepared by Dr. Humes, who performed the autopsy, we cannot see. If we turn to volume 17, page 48, I think, we see the statement “This is to certify that I have destroyed by burning my original autopsy notes.” The photographs and x-rays, no one has seen, unfortunately, and the testimony of Jacqueline Kennedy…
WFB
Only recently, one of the autopsists divulged a sketch that he had made at the point in which he actually measured the distance between the wound and the neck line, and it was very inconvenient to your own thesis.
ML
Not at all because he put the bullet down 5 inches from the neck. And if the bullet was fired from 6 stories above, and entered 5 inches below the throat, how could it come out of the throat? And if it did come out in that fashion, how did it then in mid-air decide to go downward and into Governor Connally’s back?
WFB
For the record I can answer that argument. He maintains that there was a discrepancy between his free-hand drawing of the “x” on the back, and the actual measurement, and I can understand that no doctor is supposed to be an artist with an absolute total precision as a draftsman when he actually had to sketch out…
ML
No, but most doctors know the difference between the neck and the back, I think, even if they’re not artistic. And again the question is present and there is a way to resolve it. Why can’t we resolve it by examining the photographs?
WFB
I’m all for it. But what I think we ought to discuss primarily is the extent to which whatever the delinquencies of this examination were, and I think you will probably agree, especially as a lawyer, that if one turns someone like you loose on the most open and shut case in the history of the world, you’d be able to write an extraordinary ingenious book.
ML
That’s very kind of you, but I don’t think it’s accurate.
WFB
But under the circumstances, what we really have is a sort of national obsession. And all the tributaries that flow into making that an obsession are themselves interesting. There’s a natural desire for sleuthery—everyone is interested in it and some even think it’s fun.
ML
Some people would like to know who killed their President and why he died, and that’s not really an obsession, is it?
WFB
Well, it is in a sense, because if you could bring him back to life, I’d agree with you that it’s not an obsession. Let’s assume that Oswald had a cousin. And that that cousin conspired with him on that grassy knoll—I think that it’s in and of itself an interesting venture to try and find out who he is, I’m all for finding out who he is. But I smell something else going on here, because, if there is that cousin, I doubt that he will ever be found. But whether he’s found or not, something else has meanwhile happened. And that is that you have apparently succeeded in persuading the majority of the american people that we can not trust the most august, conceivable panel to do a responsible job.
ML
Yes, I believe that that is true: we can not trust them.
WFB
And I think the criticism is different from that. I think that we are entitled to say that this august panel didn’t do the kind of a job that would protect them from the Mark Lane’s of the future and should have, but this is very different from the first charge.
ML
Well, I think what we can say—I think we can go a bit beyond that—that the American people have a right to say that we can not trust Earl Warren or the other four republicans or the two southern democrats who made up the commission, which the The New York Times referred to as a politically well balanced commission.
WFB
Why do you say two southern democrats? Did you mean to insinuate something? What, they’re racists?
ML
Surely you understand that in the democratic party there’s a split. And that we ended up with a commission that The New York Times assured us was politically well balanced, but in fact we had a commission that wasn’t made up of a single Kennedy supporter. I think that raises the question at outset in terms of faith. But I’d like to go beyond that, because I think that faith is really…
WFB
Not a single Kennedy supporter?
ML
No.
WFB
Would you say that Warren was anti-Kennedy?
ML
I don’t know if he was anti-Kennedy; he was a republican governor, a republican attorney general, he was a republican candidate for the vice presidency.
WFB
But he’s not a Kennedy supporter? Do you think that he would have preferred Nixon to Kennedy in 1960?
ML
That’s a question you’d have to put to him, I don’t know what his politics are.
WFB
You’re apparently very much interested by this, this is the workings of your mind. “Two southern democrats and no Kennedy supporter” equals a fix.
ML
Well that’s your conclusion. Certainly, you may be right.
WFB
But there are intonations, I think—you’re an interesting man, and the way you approach this is in and of itself interesting.
ML
I approach it in this way: I say if it’s a politically well balanced commission, which it was not, it still is not entitled to our faith. You talk about faith in these institutions or faith in the FBI as if it’s a religious experience to read the Warren Report. I think to the contrary, that the only way you’re supposed to have faith in a democracy is in our own ability to look at the facts and reach our own conclusions. I have not known you in the past to have invested such a vast amount of faith in either Earl Warren or the government. I am surprised that in this one instance you’re willing.
WFB
I haven’t. Here, I think, is the distinction, Mr. Lane: it is one thing to say that the Warren Court or the President of the United States has bungled a job, that they have reached the wrong conclusions, that we need all the facts on the basis of which we can wether they were right or were wrong. And incidentally in a democracy, it is commonplace not to have all of the facts. You say you don’t have all the facts on foreign policy on which the basis you could say yes or no. But you, I think, are going a very considerable step further. You’re implying something very like perfidy. And in doing, it seems to me, there is a certain kinship between your approach and that, say, of Mr. Robert Welch on Eisenhower. He figures a posteriori that you can conclude that Mr. Eisenhower was a Communist on the basis of the configuration of the evidence of his entire career. Now, you do understand that this is a graver charge than simply to say that Mr. Eisenhower was sort of an inadequate President. But aren’t you saying that Mr. Warren—I mean you actually say that the police in Dallas suppressed the right rifle.
ML
I haven’t said that. I raised the facts.
WFB
Your committee in 1964 said that “serious questions must be asked as to possible police participation” in the assassination of Mr. Kennedy.
ML
Well the Commission said the same position, that those questions had to be asked, conducted an investigation, and they were satisfied. I’m not satisfied that the investigation on that question was adequately conducted.
WFB
Who’s is the word serious, yours?
ML
In what context?
WFB
Suppose I were to say, “The question has arisen whether or not Eisenhower is a Communist.” That’s different from saying “Serious questions have arisen whether or not he’s a Communist,” isn’t it? Obviously the Warren Commission has to recognize the raising of questions, but the word serious is an evaluative adjective, and that is yours, as I understand it.
ML
I don’t know if would use it, I would use it at this point, certainly in examining the evidence: serious questions. We have a Dallas police officer who finds a weapon, says it’s a German Mauser 7.65-mm—
WFB
Mr. Weitzman?
ML
Yes.
WFB
But he never examined it personally, did he?
ML
Well, this is what else he said: it had a 4×18 scope, the bolt was worn in the back, it was blue, he described the sling and the stock. That’s a great deal of information to have, as the Commission said, “at a glance.” Then we have Captain Fritz, who picked up the weapon, and ejected one live round from it and said it was a German Mauser. And we have another Dallas Deputy Sherif also saying it was a German Mauser. And now we have the Warren Commission reporting that the FBI the following day said their records show that Oswald had purchased an Italian Carbine, caliber 6.5, and all of the sudden the Dallas police saying “That’s what we mean we found yesterday.” Now I examined that rifle when I testified before the Commission—I don’t know very much about foreign weapons, I know a little bit about American Army weapons—but at once I knew it was not a German Mauser, 7.65mm, because in large clear letters, it said on it, “Made Italy, Caliber 6.5.” The Commission implies that Weitzman must be some kind of fool, and one, assuming he’s a Dallas policeman, might accept that too quickly. But he was in fact a graduate college engineer, he owned a sporting goods shop were he sold rifles, and said he’s quite familiar with weapons. Well then Weitzman testified before the Commission. It is not elementary to show him the weapon, the Italian—
WFB
—You know other things are elementary too. I think that if I were a Dallas policeman, prepared to devote my life to confusing you, one of the things I would do, if in the course of the working day I assassinated the President of the United States, is to simply not arrange for it so that a policeman that I wasn’t sure of wouldn’t be the first into this room to make that—
ML
But you say the policeman were involved in the assassination, which is not an assumption I’ve made.
WFB
It’s something which you want to raise “serious” questions to.
ML
Well, certainly serious questions must be raised when an old, corrupt and intimate friend of the Dallas police force, when there’s evidence given to the Commission that this man, Jack Ruby, was the bagman to the Dallas underworld, paying off the Dallas police. There’s a vast amount of evidence of that nature. Which the Commission, of course, discounted and never even considered. BUt in any event, it was an old friend of the Dallas police force.
WFB
Well it’s irrelevant, why should they consider it?
ML
Why should they consider how Ruby entered the basement to kill Oswald, and whether or not his relationship with the Dallas police, who allowed him to enter?
WFB
I think everybody knows that Ruby was sort of a character around town, that he was known to the police, that he was sort of a camp follower of the police. There seems to be no question that he got in precisely because people would think he was harmless. There are a dozen people in this room who could get in precisely because of their familiarity of the surroundings.
ML
Well that’s a broad generalization, but when you look at the specific evidence we have a former Dallas police officer, MJ Daniels, standing at the Main Street ramp. With him is officer Vaughn, the officer on guard. And Daniels testifies that he saw Ruby coming, Ruby had his hand in his jacket pocket, there was a large bulge, it appeared to him that Ruby had a pistol in his pocket. He was alarmed, he thought that Vaughn was going to stop him, but Vaughn looked at him and seemed to recognize him and Ruby went right in. It was only a nine foot entrance, and there were two men standing there. Ruby would practically have to say, “Excuse me,” to pass by. Now, the Commission said that he didn’t notice him go in. But that’s not what the evidence shows.
WFB
Mr. Lane, surely one of your difficulties is, that when you get down to focusing on improbabilities, you would really be committed to the notion that no chief of state could ever get murdered, because such are the improbabilities that we know. I’m sure Julius Caesar was more surprised than the chief of the Dallas police when Brutus pulled his knife out. I’m sure there was a bulge there, but nobody thought to detain him.
ML
And they know who did it right on the scene, and I think that those who criticize the Dallas police should remember that they did catch Oswald’s assailant very quickly.
WFB
Yes.
ML
Yes, that’s something in their favor.
WFB
That’s right—that’s sarcastic, isn’t it?
ML
For a moment, I wasn’t sure you got that.
WFB
I’ve been practicing.
ML
It certainly was intended that way, I’m not sure if it achieved it. But the point is that in the midst of the greatest security precautions ever taken, it was not Caesar that was killed by Brutus but President Kennedy who was killed by someone, and with the FBI, Secret Service and Dallas police on hand whoever did it escaped from the scene. If for no other reason, I think we have to give consideration to the very poor protection and poor detective work done on the scene and the poor security done by Mr. Hoover’s legions and by the Secret Service and by the Dallas police and Deputy Sherifs.
WFB
Let me at this point level with you, Mr. Lane, because I’m not a natural adversary of yours here. I don’t really care who killed Mr. Kennedy. I care very much that he’s dead. But I don’t care very much who killed him, and if it turns out to be somebody else, than I say alright it’s somebody else, let’s prosecute him, let’s string him up, let’s do whatever—
ML
Well, that’s if it’s Oswald’s cousin, but if it’s something that is more significant than that, you would care.
WFB
I would say this, that nobody who probably assassinated Kennedy, other than Oswald, would the discovery of do more to disrupt this nation than if your thesis is ultimately taken seriously: that we have Dallas policeman, in what we have serious questions in whether they participated in assassinating President Kennedy, that we have a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court that is willing to conspire to prevent us from having the truth, that we have a crooked and corrupt President and indifferent members of the Kennedy family who are not willing to cooperate in a true investigation. So nothing much worse is going to happen, even if we forage in that knoll of yours than what in effect would happen as a result of people’s lazy acceptance of your own thesis.
ML
It wasn’t lazy, it was very hard to come by.
WFB
No, no, lazy acceptance—no I think you’re a canonite worker on this. I don’t know anybody who knows as much about the case as you do. That’s right, you’ve only sold a quarter of a million books. And you say 65% of the American people agree with your thesis, so obviously a lot of people agree with your thesis who haven’t read your book.
ML
Well, originally everyone agreed with the Warren Report before there even was one, including you as a matter of fact, because you said very soon after the assassination that you completely accepted, and it wasn’t Earl Warren then, it was the Dallas police you accepted, you had faith in them. I think that’s going too far.
WFB
Well, yes, it may be going too far, but there is a sense I felt the interest in truth was being defended by Robert Kennedy.
ML
Robert Kennedy was in Indonesia at the time.
WFB
Robert Kennedy was in the airport in Washington when the body arrived.
ML
Oh yes, at that time
WFB
I felt that Mr. Kennedy would look after the interest of truth, and if Mr. Kennedy was willing to accept the judgement, I was willing to accept it, because I assume that because he was the Attorney General of the United States, he would look into people who were being debonaire about his brother the President.
ML
Well, of course, you don’t put that faith in Robert Kennedy in everything he says.
WFB
Certainly not.
ML
And I think it’s with good reason that you don’t.
WFB
Well, now, that’s irrelevant. I’m talking about something highly personal. I would have great faith in you if you told me that you were satisfied that Mr. X was the person that killed your brother and vice versa even though I would disagree with you about a number of political matters.
ML
Let’s look at Robert Kennedy as an expert on the question. He’s never read the Warren Report, much less the 26 volumes of evidence, I think that eliminates him as an expert.
WFB
This is naive.
ML
Why is it naive? To think that an examination of the evidence is irrelevant to what happened?
WFB
Most of what we know, we know proscriptively. I know how to establish that the earth is round, because I read somewhere in the encyclopedia how you go about doing it. But I never have.
ML
Well, that’s not a matter of contention at the moment, but who killed President Kennedy is.
WFB
But if you were to ask me at this moment, “Have you ever checked on the roundness of the earth?—You are otherwise not qualified to speak on it.”
ML
But the analogy I think fails, because there is a question as to who killed President Kennedy, and there is no question today with thinking people as to wether or not the earth is round. Let’s take a controversial question and see if you are willing to accept the conclusion based upon no knowledge but just faith.