Newman at A.S.K '93 Case Closed panel

Newman at A.S.K '93

Case Closed panel

Tape one

            This case is not closed (applause) and the people that are in this room, and I agree with Jim Moore, have a lot to do with that but the real reason is because of the American people.  This case will never be closed until every last file is open.  Belittling the feelings of the American people is part of the problem here.  This isn’t an argument about details, although we should argue about them, in fact I’ve met Gerald Posner yesterday, we talked about a couple of details, he admitted he was wrong on a couple of details, I did as well, it’s about his title. It is about his book.

            It’s all about the obsequious and lavish praise that the media has jumped onto this book without having looked at it thoroughly, and the reason is because of the American people, and it is because of their views, and it is because all of the American people, not all of the American people, but the vast majority of American people are conspiratorialists.  That’s really what’s going on here, and that’s why we have this law. 

            And Jim, I know you said this tongue in cheek but I can’t resist this, God has not come down from the mount to tell us Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, nor has Jesus Christ.  I haven’t seen them myself yet.

            Now the empty chair here speaks for itself to me this morning.  I do want to thank Jim Moore and Bob Artwohl for having the courage to come here.  We need back and forth.  We need more sanity.  We do not need a zero sum game here, because there are mistakes on all sides of the question, and I wish we had Gerald here those that he’s made and to defend those that he hasn’t.

            I am against the thesis that the case was closed, and I want to make a crucial distinction here. There are really two requirement for this thesis, the first being that Lee Harvey Oswald “did it,” the second that he acted alone when he did it. If either of these two requirements cannot be established the case for “Case Closed” collapses.  The focus of my remarks today will be on the second of these, that he acted alone. 

            For whatever might be said about the circumstantial evidence on point one, that he did it, the simple fact is that we do not have all the evidence that he acted alone.  And I can’t say it any simpler than this, the public overwhelmingly believes that Lee Harvey Oswald had accomplices, half of them suspect government involvement, so the case cannot be closed until we have the government files.  It’s that simple.

            Now what is deeply troubling to me about Posner’s book isn’t just the little mistakes, it’s that he violates the very rules he accuses his opponents of violating, and that’s selective use of the evidence.  And that would include focusing on key witnesses later recollections instead of the ones they made contemporaneously, and not just on small points I might add, on key points, the medical evidence, FBI reports and this sort of thing.  I believe David [Lifton] has something to say about that so I won’t go into that I want to focus on the thesis itself, that’s what bothers me.

            And I want to confirm also what Gerry said about the title of his book, excuse me, what Jim said, Gerry also told me that yesterday, that it was his publisher's idea to use this phrase, not his.  And he asked me why we have to pay so much attention to it.  And the problem is that is what this is all about, is this case closed or not?

            That's what the media wants.

            As we sit here today, poised for I think a great chance at some redemption, a redemption which can only come if we have all of the facts, Gerry’s book can be no more than a prediction by the prosecution.  Gerry is guessing, perhaps an educated guess, perhaps not, in the same way that he says in his book that the Warren Commission had no way of really knowing if the Single Bullet Theory was valid or not, it was a guess.

            When Gerry testified with me on Wednesday,1 at the oversight hearing in congress he said that his research includes quote, a review of the body of work generated by both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations, unquote. 

            Well, I think he’s made a mistake because he hasn’t seen all of that work.  There are boxes by the cubic foot load he has never seen.

            Gerry explains that he has been somewhat distracted by the furor over his book and that this distinction has kept him, has denied him the opportunity really to take a look at these new files.

            Not a problem he assured the Congress on Wednesday.  He knows some “private researchers” who have, he argues, and he hastens to add he has even spoken to some individuals who have had a hand in creating these secret files.                         

            Now I’m sorry.  This really will not do.  It’s not satisfactory by historical or academic standards, and I would think not by ABA standards either.

            It is pretty common in the media however.

            Certainly there is a danger in such an approach.  Allow me to illustrate.  One of the individuals that Gerry bases his views on, and that he interviewed, who created these secret files is none other than [G.] Robert Blakey (the chief counsel of the HSCA), who along with [David] Belin, (a lawyer on the Warren Commission staff, and the Warren Commission’s greatest apologist) Posner argues, saw or knew most if not all of these secret government files.

            I submitted in 1992, in testimony before the same committee that we testified to on Wednesday a document from the CIA which in essence said something that somewhere about less than half of all the files that they had in the CIA were never seen, not just by Blakey, but not by anyone on the HSCA.  That’s just a fact. 

            The foundation therefore, and these were important documents by the way, some were the 201 files on Oswald, some were files that the HSCA had specifically asked to see, therefore the foundation itself is not good enough.  We cannot rely upon it to close the case.

            All I’m asking, and I would ask of Gerry if he were here this morning, is that he accept that crucial distinction, that is the one between making a case and closing the case.

            If you want to argue that you have closed the case, in my book, you lose.  If you want to assert that the case is closed before having seen all the documents that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone you will appear more reasonable but nonetheless as an advocate of prediction, not the savior of U.S. News and World Report.

            In terms of specific areas that are coming out in these new releases, and I must tell you that it’s not going very well, there are reasons for optimism, I think mostly in two categories, one would be the Central Intelligence Agency, and the other would be the House Select Committee, in these two cases we are really starting to get an awful lot of new material, material that many of you here today would not have thought a year ago that we would be looking at.

            The FBI has not made one page of it’s half a million documents available.  I believe that startled the committee on Wednesday.  And it was our understanding that Chairman Conyers intends to call the FBI before the committee sometime in January to find out what the reason for this is.

            There are files that are being withheld that are extremely intriguing.  They bear upon the issue of whether or not, for example, Oswald and Ruby had an association just prior to the assassination, that would be a central issue.  And without these types of documents closing the case on Oswald’s associations is a dubious proposition at best.

            What about the issue of Oswald and the CIA?  I spent about 5 months from about 4 or 5 in the afternoon till about 10 o’clock at night going through the 52 boxes of Oswald’s 201 file, his CIA file.  I think it’s incredible what we’re seeing. I never thought we would be seeing material like this.  I’ll have a chance to present that this afternoon.  Some quick points I will make about that now rather than wait completely until this afternoon.  It is apparent to me that the CIA has lied about a couple of things with respect to Lee Harvey Oswald but it concerns most of all their relationship with him.  They did in fact have a relationship with him.  They have denied that over the years.  These files make it clear that contact occurred, a debrief occurred and we know the name of the person who worked in [the] Domestic Contact Division who conducted the debrief.  The basis for this is not only documentary but in fact witnesses at the time, and the recollections of several clandestine services employees, who are now on the record, in fact I think you saw one on FRONTLINE, two but there are others as well.  There is more to that, I am going to delay going into that until this afternoon but for me the idea of, the question of whether or not Oswald was associated with underworld figures, or intelligence agencies is central to the idea that he was acting alone.  If you don’t deal with that, if you don’t thoroughly vet that issue you can’t possible say the case has been closed.

            The issue is broader than whether the case is closed or not, it’s nothing less than whether or not our institutions function and whether our people have faith in them.