THE WARREN COMMISSION

[kenmurray]

The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, known unofficially as the Warren Commission, was established on November 27, 1963, by Lyndon B. Johnson to investigate the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.[1] Its 888-page final report was presented to President Johnson on September 24, 1964,[2] and made public three days later.[3] It concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the killing of Kennedy and the wounding of Texas Governor John Connally,[4] and that Jack Ruby acted alone in the murder of Oswald.[5] The Commission's findings have since proven controversial and been both challenged and supported by later studies.The Commission took its unofficial name—the Warren Commission—from its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren. According to published transcripts of Johnson's presidential phone conversations, some major officials were opposed to forming such a commission and several commission members took part only with extreme reluctance.[6] One of their chief reservations was that a commission would ultimately create more controversy than consensus, and those fears proved valid.[6] The Commission's report was printed at Doubleday book publishing company located in Smithsburg, MarylandMethodThe Commission conducted its business primarily in closed sessions, but these were not secret sessions."Two misconceptions about the Warren Commission hearing need to be clarified…hearings were closed to the public unless the witness appearing before the Commission requested an open hearing. No witness except one…requested an open hearing… Second, although the hearings (except one) were conducted in private, they were not secret. In a secret hearing, the witness is instructed not to disclose his testimony to any third party, and the hearing testimony is not published for public consumption. The witnesses who appeared before the Commission were free to repeat what they said to anyone they pleased, and all of their testimony was subsequently published in the first fifteen volumes put out by the Warren Commission."[8]security procedures.[edit] Commission recordsIn November 1964, two months after the publication of its 888-page report, the Commission published twenty-six volumes of supporting documents, including the testimony or depositions of 552 witnesses and more than 3,100 exhibits.[9][10] All of the commission's records were then transferred on November 23 to the National Archives. The unpublished portion of those records was initially sealed for 75 years (to 2039) under a general National Archives policy that applied to all federal investigations by the executive branch of government,[11] a period "intended to serve as protection for innocent persons who could otherwise be damaged because of their relationship with participants in the case.”[12] The 75-year rule no longer exists, supplanted by the Freedom of Information Act of 1966 and the JFK Records Act of 1992. By 1992, 98 percent of the Warren Commission records had been released to the public.[13] Six years later, at the conclusion of the Assassination Records Review Board's work, all Warren Commission records, except those records that contained tax return information, were available to the public with redactions.[14] The remaining Kennedy assassination related documents are scheduled to be released to the public by 2017, twenty-five years after the passage of the JFK Records Act.[15]In 1992, the Assassination Records Review Board was created by the JFK Records Act to collect and preserve the documents relating to the assassination. It pointed out in its final report:Doubts about the Warren Commission's findings were not restricted to ordinary Americans. Well before 1978, President Johnson, Robert Kennedy, and four of the seven members of the Warren Commission all articulated, if sometimes off the record, some level of skepticism about the Commission's basic findingsCriticisms Arlen Specter reproducing the assumed alignment of the single bullet theoryIn the years following the release of its report and 26 investigatory evidence volumes in 1964, the Warren Commission has been frequently criticized for some of its methods, important omissions, and conclusions.In the foreword to the last edition of the commission's report, A Presidential Legacy and The Warren Commission, Gerald Ford said the CIA destroyed or kept from investigators critical secrets connected to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. He said the commission's probe put "certain classified and potentially damaging operations in danger of being exposed." The CIA's reaction, he added, "was to hide or destroy some information, which can easily be misinterpreted as collusion in JFK's assassination."Witness testimonyThere were many criticisms about the witnesses and their testimonies. One is that many testimonies were heard by less than half of the commission and that only one of 94 testimonies was heard by everyone on the commission.

[kenmurray]

What The Warren Commssion Missed: Unwitting Participants And Unindicted Co-Conspirators.http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/183565-3

[kenmurray]

The Warren Commission's Failed Investigation:http://michaelgriffith1.tripod.com/failed.htm

[kenmurray]

A Commission Without Commissioners:http://www.manuscriptservice.com/DPQ/wobrow~1.htm