"With the Warren Report on JFK's assassination under attack in the
mid-1960s, there was a chance to correct the errors and reassess the
findings, but CBS News intervened to silence the critics, reports James
DiEugenio."
Longtime CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite. (photo: NBC News)
How CBS News Aided the JFK Cover-Up
By James DiEugenio, Consortium News
23 April 16
With the Warren Report on JFK's assassination under attack in the mid-1960s,
there was a chance to correct the errors and reassess the findings, but CBS
News intervened to silence the critics, reports James DiEugenio.
In the mid-1960s, amid growing skepticism about the Warren Commission's
lone-gunman findings on John F. Kennedy's assassination, there was a
struggle inside CBS News about whether to allow the critics a fair public
hearing at the then-dominant news network. Some CBS producers pushed for a
debate between believers and doubters and one even submitted a proposal to
put the Warren Report "on trial," according to internal CBS documents.
But CBS executives, who were staunch supporters of the Warren findings and
had personal ties to some commission members, spiked those plans and instead
insisted on presenting a defense of the lone-gunman theory while dismissing
doubts as baseless conspiracy theories, the documents show.
Though it may be hard to remember - amid today's proliferation of cable
channels and Internet sites - CBS, along with NBC and ABC, wielded powerful
control over what the American people got to see, hear and take seriously in
the 1960s. By slapping down any criticism of the Warren Commission, CBS
executives effectively prevented the case surrounding the 1963 assassination
of President Kennedy from ever receiving the full airing that it deserved.
Beyond that historical significance, the internal documents - compiled by
onetime CBS News assistant producer Roger Feinman - show how a major
mainstream news organization green-lights one approach to presenting
sensitive national security news while blocking another. The documents also
shed light on how senior news executives, who have bought into one
interpretation of the facts, are highly resistant to revisit the evidence.
Buying In
CBS News jumped onboard the blue-ribbon Warren Commission's findings as soon
as they were released on Sept. 27, 1964, just over 10 months after President
Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963. In a special
report, CBS and its anchor Walter Cronkite preempted regular programming
and, with the assistance of reporter Dan Rather, devoted two commercial-free
hours to endorsing the main tenets of that report.
However, despite Cronkite and Rather giving the Warren Report their public
embrace, other people, who were not in the employ of the mainstream media,
examined critically the report and the accompanying 26 volumes. Some of
these citizens were lawyers and others were professors, the likes of Vincent
Salandria and Richard Popkin. They came to the conclusion that CBS had been
less than rigorous in its examination.
By 1967, the analyses challenging the Warren Report's conclusions had become
widespread, including popular books by Edward Epstein, Mark Lane, Sylvia
Meagher and Josiah Thompson. Thompson's book, Six Seconds in Dallas, was
excerpted and placed on the cover of the wide-circulation magazine Saturday
Evening Post. Lane was appearing on talk shows. Prosecutor Jim Garrison had
announced a reopening of the JFK case in New Orleans. The dam was
threatening to break.
The doubts about the Warren Report had even spread into the ranks at CBS
News, where correspondent Daniel Schorr and Washington Bureau chief Bill
Small recommended a fair and critical look at the report's methodology and
findings. Top prime-time producer Les Midgley later joined the effort.
CBS News vice president Gordon Manning sent the proposal on to CBS News
president Richard Salant in August 1966, but it was declined. Manning tried
again in October, suggesting an open debate between the critics of the
Warren Report and former Commission counsels, moderated by a law school dean
or the president of the American Bar Association. The idea was to give the
two sides a chance to make their best points before the viewing public.
Zapruder Evidence
One month after Manning's debate proposal, Life Magazine published a
front-page story in which the Warren Commission's verdict was questioned by
photographic evidence from the Zapruder film (which the magazine owned).
Life also interviewed Texas Gov. John Connally who disagreed that he and
Kennedy had been hit by the same shot, a claim that undercut the "single
bullet theory" at the heart of the Warren Report.
Without the assertion that a single bullet inflicted multiple wounds on
Kennedy and Connally, who was riding in front of the President, the
commission's verdict collapses. The magazine story ended with a call to
reopen the case. Indeed, Life had put together a small journalistic team to
do its own internal investigation.
A few days after this issue appeared, Manning again pressed for a CBS
special. This time he suggested the title "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald,"
with a panel of law school deans reviewing the evidence against Oswald in a
mock trial, including evidence that the Warren Commission had not included.
In other words, there would be a chance for American "jurors" to weigh the
evidence that might have been presented against Oswald if he had lived and
to make a judgment on his guilt. Again, this approach offered the potential
for a reasonably balanced examination of the Kennedy assassination.
At this point, Manning was joined by producer Midgley, who had produced the
two-hour 1964 CBS special. Midgley's suggestion differed from Manning's in
that he wanted to title the show "The Warren Report on Trial." Midgley
suggested a three-night, three-hour series with one night given over to the
commission defenders, one night including all the witnesses that the
commission overlooked or discounted, and the last night including a verdict
produced by legal experts. But the title itself suggested a level of
skepticism that had not been part of the earlier proposals.
The Higher-ups Intervene
However, then CBS senior executives began to intervene. On Dec. 1, 1966,
Salant wrote a memo to John Schneider, president of CBS Broadcast Group,
telling him that he might refer the proposal to the CBS News Executive
Committee (CNEC). According to information that a former CBS assistant
producer Roger Feinman obtained during a legal hearing against CBS, plus
secondary sources, CNEC was a secretive group that was created in the wake
of Edward R. Murrow's departure from CBS.
Murrow was a true investigative reporter who became famous through his
reports on Sen. Joe McCarthy's abuses and the mistreatment of migrant farm
workers. The upper management at CBS did not like the controversies that
these reports generated among influential segments of the American power
structure. There was a perceived need to tamp down on such wide-ranging and
independent-minded investigations. After all, the CBS executives were part
of that power structure.
CBS News president Salant epitomized that blurring of high-level corporate
journalism and America's ruling class. Salant had gone to Exeter Academy,
Harvard, and then Harvard Law School. He was handpicked from the network's
Manhattan legal firm by CBS President Frank Stanton to join his management
team.
During World War II, Stanton had worked in the Office of War Information,
the psychological warfare branch. In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower
had appointed Stanton to a small committee to organize how the United States
would survive a nuclear attack. From 1961-67, Stanton was chairman of Rand
Corporation, a CIA-associated think tank.
The other two members of CNEC were Sig Mickelson, who had preceded Salant as
CBS News president and then became a director of Time-Life Broadcasting, and
CBS founder Bill Paley, who had also served in the World War II psy-war
branch of the Office of War Information and - after the war - let CIA
Director Allen Dulles have the spy agency informally debrief CBS overseas
correspondents.
When Salant turned the Warren Commission issue over to CNEC, the prospects
for any objective or skeptical treatment of the JFK case faded. "The
establishment of CNEC effectively curtailed the news division's
independence," Feinman later wrote about his discoveries.
Further, Salant had no journalistic experience and was in almost daily
communication with Stanton, whose background was in government propaganda.
Scaling Back
The day after Salant informed CNEC about the proposed JFK assassination
special, Salant told CBS News vice president Manning that he was wavering on
the mock trial concept. Salant's next move was even more ominous. He sent
both Manning and prime-time news producer Midgley to California to talk to
two lawyers about the project.
One of the attorneys was Edwin Huddleson, a partner in the San Francisco
firm of Cooley, Godward, Castro and Huddleson. Huddleson attended Harvard
Law with Salant and, like Stanton, was on the board of the Rand Corporation.
The other lawyer was Bayless Manning, Dean of Stanford Law School. They told
the CBS representatives that they were against the network undertaking the
project on the grounds of "the national interest" and because of the topic's
"political implications."
CBS News vice president Manning reported that both attorneys advised the CBS
team to ignore the critics of the Warren Commission or to appoint a special
panel to critique their books, in other words, to put the critics on trial.
Huddleson also steered the CBS team to cooperative scientists who would
counter the critics.
On his return to CBS headquarters, Manning saw the writing on the wall. He
knew what his CBS superiors really wanted and it wasn't some no-holds-barred
examination of the Warren Commission's flaws. So, he suggested a new title
for the series, "In Defense of the Warren Report," and wrote that CBS should
dismiss "the inane, irresponsible, and hare-brained challenges of Mark Lane
and others of that stripe."
Out on a Limb
Manning's defection from an open-minded treatment of the evidence to a
one-sided Warren Commission defense left producer Midgley out on a limb.
However, unaware of what Salant was up to, on Dec. 14, 1966, Midgley
circulated a memo about how he planned on approaching the Warren Report
project. He proposed running experiments that were more scientific than "the
ridiculous ones run by the FBI." He still wanted a mock trial to show how
the operation of the Commission was "almost incredibly inadequate."
In response, Salant circulated an anonymous, undated, paragraph-by-paragraph
rebuttal to Midgley's plan, which Feinman's later investigation determined
was written by Warren Commissioner John McCloy, then Chairman of the Council
on Foreign Relations and the father of Ellen McCloy, Salant's administrative
assistant.
In this memo, McCloy wrote that "the chief evidence that Oswald acted alone
and shot alone is not to be found in the ballistics and pathology of the
assassination, but in the fact of his loner life." As many Warren Commission
critics have noted, it was this approach - discounting or ignoring the
medical and ballistics evidence, but concentrating on Oswald's alleged
social life - that was a fatal flaw of the Warren Report.
Despite the familial conflict of interest, Ellen McCloy was added to the
distribution list for almost all memos related to the Kennedy assassination
project and thus could serve as a secret back-channel between CBS and her
father.
A Stonewall Defense
Clearly, the original idea for a fresh examination of the Warren Commission
and the evidence that had arisen since its report was published in 1964 had
been turned on its head. The CBS brass wanted a defense, not a critique.
Salant asked producer Midgley, "Is the question whether Oswald was a CIA or
FBI informant really so substantial that we have to deal with it?" Midgley,
increasingly alone out on the limb, replied, "Yes, we must treat it."
As the initial plan for a forthright examination of the Warren Commission's
shortcomings was transformed into a stonewall defense of the official
findings, there was still the problem of Midgley, the last holdout. But
eventually his head was turned, too.
While the four-night special was in production, Midgley became engaged to
Betty Furness, a former actress-turned-television-commercial pitchwoman whom
President Lyndon Johnson appointed as his special assistant for consumer
affairs, even though her only experience in the field had been selling
Westinghouse appliances for 11 years on television. She was sworn in on
April 27, 1967, which was about two months before the CBS production aired.
Two weeks after it was broadcast, Midgley and Furness were married.
As Kai Bird's biography of McCloy, The Chairman, makes clear, Johnson and
McCloy were friends and colleagues. But there is another point about how
Midgley was convinced to go along with McCloy's view of the Warren
Commission. Around the same time he married Furness, he received a
significant promotion, elevated to executive editor of the network's
flagship news program, "The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite." This
made him, in essence, the top news editor at CBS, a decision that required
the consultation and approval of Salant, Cronkite and Stanton - and very
likely the CNEC.
So, instead of a serious investigation into the murder of President Kennedy
- at a time when there was the possibility of effective national action to
get at the truth - CBS News delivered a stalwart defense of the Warren
Commission's conclusions and heaped ridicule on anyone who dared question
those findings.
Shaping that approach was not only the influence of Warren Commission member
John McCloy, an icon of the Establishment, but the carrots and sticks
applied to senior CBS producers, such as Gordon Manning and Les Midgley, who
initially favored a more skeptical approach but were convinced to abandon
that goal.
Curious Consultants
Once McCloy was brought onboard, the complexion of CBS's treatment of the
JFK assassination changed. CBS hired consultants who were rabidly pro-Warren
Report to appear as on-air experts while others would be hidden in the
shadows. In addition to the clandestine role of McCloy, some of these
consultants included Dallas police officer Gerald Hill, physicist Luis
Alvarez and reporter Lawrence Schiller.
Officer Hill was just about everywhere in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. He was at
the Texas School Book Depository where Oswald worked and allegedly shot the
President from the sixth floor; Hill was at the murder scene of Officer J. D
Tippit, who was allegedly shot by Oswald after he fled Dealey Plaza; and he
was at the Texas Theater where Oswald was arrested.
Hill appeared in the CBS 1967 program show as a speaker. But Roger Feinman
found out that Hill also was paid for six weeks work on the show as a
consultant. During his consulting, Hill revealed that the police did a "fast
frisk" on Oswald while in the theater. They found nothing in his pockets at
the time, which begs the question of where the bullets the police said they
found in his pockets later at the station came from. That question did not
arise during the program since CBS never revealed the contradiction. (Click
here and go to page 20 of the transcript.)
Physicist Luis Alvarez, who had a served as an adviser to the CIA and to the
U.S. military in the Vietnam War, spent a considerable amount of time
lending his name to articles supporting the Warren Report and conducting
questionable experiments supporting its findings. As demonstrated by authors
Josiah Thompson (in 2013) and Gary Aguilar (in 2014), Alvarez misrepresented
some data in some of his JFK experiments. (Click here and go to the 37:00
mark for Aguilar's presentation.)
Making Fun
The same year of the 1967 CBS broadcast, reporter Lawrence Schiller had
co-written a book entitled The Scavengers and Critics of the Warren Report,
a picaresque journey through America where Schiller interviewed some of the
prominent - and not so prominent - critics of the report and caricatured
them hideously.
Secretly, he had been an informant for the FBI for many years keeping an eye
on people like Mark Lane and Jim Garrison, whom Schiller attacked despite
discovering witnesses who attested to Garrison's suspect Clay Shaw using the
alias Clay Bertrand, a key point in Garrison's case. The relevant documents
were not declassified until the Assassination Records and Reviews Board was
set up in the 1990s. [See Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, by James
DiEugenio, p. 388]
This cast of consultants - along with McCloy - influenced the direction of
the 1967 CBS Special Report. The last thing these consultants wanted to do
was to expose the faulty methodology that the Warren Commission had
employed.
As in 1964, Walter Cronkite manned the anchor desk and Dan Rather was the
main field reporter. Again, CBS could find no serious problems with the
Warren Report. The critics were misguided, CBS said. After all, Cronkite
and Rather had done a seven-month inquiry.
'Unimpeachable Credentials'
In the broadcast, Cronkite names the men on the Warren Commission as their
pictures appear on screen. He calls them "men of unimpeachable credentials"
but left out the fact that President Kennedy fired Commissioner Allen Dulles
from the CIA in 1961 for lying to him about the Bay of Pigs invasion of
Cuba.
When Cronkite got to the crux of the program, he said the Warren Commission
assured the American people that they would get the most searching
investigation in history. Then, Cronkite showed books and articles critical
of the commission and mentioned that polls showed that a majority of
Americans had lost faith in the Warren Report.
At that point, the network special revealed its purpose, to discredit the
critics and reassure the public that these people could not be trusted.
Cronkite went through a list of points that the critics had raised,
including key issues such as how many shots were fired and how quickly they
could be discharged from the suspect rifle. On each point, Cronkite took the
Warren Commission's side, saying Oswald fired three shots from the sixth
floor with the rifle attributed to him by the Warren Commission. Two of
three were direct hits - to Kennedy's head and shoulder area - within six
seconds.
One way that CBS fortified the case for just three shots was Alvarez's
examination of the Zapruder film, Abraham Zapruder's 26-second film of
Kennedy's assassination taken from Zapruder's position in Dealey Plaza, a
sequence that CBS did not actually show.
Alvarez proclaimed that by doing something called a "jiggle analysis," he
computed that there were three shots fired during the film. What the jiggle
amounted to was a blurring of frames on the film (presumably because
Zapruder would have flinched at the sound of gunshots).
Dan Rather took this Alvarez idea to Charles Wyckoff, a professional photo
analyst in Massachusetts. Agreeing with Alvarez, at least on camera, Wyckoff
mapped out the three areas of "jiggles." The Alvarez/Wyckoff formula was
simple: three jiggles, three shots.
But as Feinman found out through his legal discovery and hearings, there was
a big problem with this declaration. Wyckoff had actually discovered four
jiggles, not three. Therefore, by the Alvarez formula, there was a second
gunman and thus a conspiracy.
Wyckoff's on-camera discussion of this was cut out and not included in the
official transcript. But it is interesting to note just how committed
Wyckoff was to the CBS agenda, for he tried to explain the fourth jiggle as
Zapruder's reaction to a siren. As Feinman noted, how Wyckoff could
determine this from a silent 8 mm film is puzzling. But the point is, this
analysis did not support the commission. It undermined the Warren Report and
was left on the cutting-room floor.
There were other problems with the Alverez-Wyckoff "jiggle" theory, since
the first jiggle was at around Zapruder frame 190, or a few frames previous
to that, which would have meant that Oswald would have had to be firing
through the branches of an oak tree, which is why the Warren Commission
moved this shot up to frame 210.
But CBS left itself an out, claiming there was an opening in the tree
branches at frame 186 and Oswald could have fired at that point. But that is
patently ridiculous, since the opening at frame 186 lasted for 1/18th of a
second. To say that Oswald anticipated a less than split-second opening, and
then steeled himself in a flash to align the target, aim, and fire is all
stuff from the realm of comic books super heroes. Yet, in its blind
obeisance to the Warren Report, this is what CBS had reduced itself to.
Another way that CBS tried to bolster the Warren Report was to have Wyckoff
purchase other Bell and Howell movie cameras (since CBS was not allowed to
handle the actual Zapruder camera.) After winding up these cameras, CBS
hypothesized that Zapruder's camera might have been running a little slow,
giving Oswald a longer firing sequence.
The problem with this theory, however, was that both the FBI and Bell and
Howell had tested the speed of Zapruder's actual camera. Even Dick Salant
commented that this was "logically inconclusive and unpersuasive," but it
stayed in the program.
The Shot Sequence
But why did Rather and Wyckoff have to stoop this low? The answer is because
of the results of their rifle firing tests. As the critics of the Warren
Report had pointed out, the commission had used two tests to see if Oswald
could have gotten off three shots in the allotted 5.6 seconds indicated by
the Zapruder film.
These tests ended up as failing to prove Oswald could have performed this
feat of marksmanship. What made it worse is that the commission had used
very proficient rifleman to try and duplicate what the commission said
Oswald had done. [See Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact, p. 108]
So CBS tried again. This time they set up a track with a sled on it to
simulate the back of Kennedy's head. They then elevated a firing point to
simulate the sixth floor "sniper's nest," though there were differences from
Dealey Plaza including the oak tree and a rise in the street in the real
crime scene. Nevertheless, the CBS experimenters released the target on its
sled and had a marksman named Ed Crossman fire his three shots.
Crossman had a considerable reputation in the field, but - even though he
was given a week to practice with a version of the Mannlicher Carcano rifle
- his results were not up to snuff. According to a report by producer
Midgley, Crossman never broke 6.25 seconds (longer than Oswald's purported
5.6 seconds) and - even with an enlarged target - he got only two of three
hits in about 50 percent of his attempts.
Crossman explained that the rifle had a sticky bolt action and a faulty
viewing scope. But what the professional sniper did not know is that the
actual rifle in evidence was even harder to work. Crossman said that to
perform such a feat on the first time out would require a lot of luck.
However, since that evidence did not fit the show's agenda, it was
discarded, both the test and the comments. To resolve that problem, CBS
called in 11 professional marksmen who first went to an indoor firing range
and practiced to their heart's content, though the Warren Commission could
find no evidence that Oswald practiced.
The 11 men then took 37 runs at duplicating what Oswald was supposed to have
done. There were three instances where two out of three hits were recorded
in 5.6 seconds. The best time was achieved by Howard Donahue on his third
attempt after his first two attempts were complete failures.
But CBS claimed that the average recorded time was 5.6 seconds, without
including the 17 attempts that were thrown out because of mechanical
failure. CBS also didn't tell the public the surviving average was 1.2 hits
out of three with an enlarged target.
The truly striking characteristic of these trials was the amount of
instances where the shooter could not get any result at all. More often than
not, once the clip was loaded, the bolt action jammed. The sniper had to
realign the target and fire again. According to the Warren Report, that
could not have happened with Oswald.
There is also the anomaly of James Tague, who was struck by one bullet that
the Warren Commission said had ricocheted off the curb of a different
street, about 260 feet away from the limousine. But how could Oswald have
missed by that much if he was so accurate on his other two shots? That was
another discrepancy deleted by the CBS editors.
The Autopsy Disputes
CBS also obscured what was said by the two chief medical witnesses after the
assassination by Dr. Malcolm Perry from Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where
Kennedy was taken after he was hit, and James Humes, the chief pathologist
at the autopsy examination at Bethesda Medical Center that evening.
In their research for the series, CBS had discovered a transcript of Dr.
Perry's press conference that the Warren Commission did not have. But CBS
camouflaged what Perry said on Nov. 22, 1963, specifically about Kennedy's
anterior neck wound. Perry said it had the appearance to him of being an
entrance wound, and he said this three times.
Cronkite tried to characterize the conference as Perry being rushed out to
the press and badgered. But that wasn't true, since the press conference was
about two hours after Perry had done a tracheotomy over the front neck
wound. The performance of that incision had given Perry the closest and most
deliberate look at that wound.
Perry therefore had the time to recover from the pressure of the operation
and there was no badgering of Perry. Newsmen were simply asking him
questions about the wounds he saw. Perry had the opportunity to answer the
questions on his own terms. Again, CBS seemed intent on concealing evidence
of a possible second assassin - because Oswald could not have fired at
Kennedy from the front.
Commander James Humes, the pathologist, did not want to appear on the
program, but was pressured by Attorney General Ramsey Clark, possibly with
McCloy's assistance. As Feinman discovered, the preliminary talks with Humes
were done through a friend of his at the church he attended.
There were two things that Humes said in these early discussions that were
bracing. First, he said that he recalled an x-ray of the President, which
showed a malleable probe connecting the rear back wound with the front neck
wound. Second, he said that he had orders not to do a complete autopsy. He
would not reveal who gave him these orders, except to say that it was not
Robert Kennedy. [Charles Crenshaw, Trauma Room One, p. 182]
The significance of the malleable probe is that, if Humes was correct, the
front and back wounds would have come from the same bullet. However, we
learned almost 30 years later from the Assassination Records Review Board
that other witnesses also saw a malleable probe go through Kennedy's back,
but said the probe did not go through the body since the wounds did not
connect. However, x-rays that might confirm the presence of the probe are
missing. [DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, pgs. 116-18]
Location of the Wounds
On camera, Humes also said the posterior body wound was at the base of the
neck. Dan Rather then showed Humes the drawings made of the wound in the
back as depicted by medical illustrator Harold Rydberg for the Warren
Commission, also depicting the wound as being in the neck, which Humes
agreed with on camera. He added that they had reviewed the photos and
referred to measurements and this all indicated the wound was in the neck.
Even for CBS - and Warren Commissioner John McCloy - this must have been
surprising since the autopsy photos do not reveal the wound to be at the
base of the neck but clearly in the back. (Click here and scroll down.) CBS
should have sent its own independent expert to the archive because Humes
clearly had a vested interest in seeing his autopsy report bolstered,
especially since it was under attack by more than one critic.
The second point that makes Humes's interview curious is his comments on the
Rydberg drawings' accuracy. These do not coincide with what Rydberg said
later, not understanding why he was chosen to make these drawings for the
Warren Commission since he was only 22 and had been drawing for only one
year. There were many other veteran illustrators in the area the Warren
Commission could have called upon, but Rydberg came to believe that it was
his inexperience that caused the commission to pick him.
When Humes and Dr. Thornton Boswell appeared before him, they had nothing
with them: no photos, no x-rays, no official measurements, speaking only
from memory, nearly four months after the autopsy, Rydberg said. [DiEugenio,
Reclaiming Parkland, pgs. 119-22] The Rydberg drawings have become infamous
for not corresponding to the pictures, measurements, or the Zapruder film.
For Humes to endorse these on national television - and for CBS to allow
this without any fact-checking - shows what a case of false journalism the
special had become.
Limiting Access
CBS also knew that Humes said he had been limited in what he was allowed to
do in the Kennedy autopsy, a potentially big scoop if CBS had followed it.
Instead, the public had to wait another two years for the story to surface
at Garrison's trial of Clay Shaw when autopsy doctor Pierre Finck took the
stand in Shaw's defense. Finck said the same thing: that Dr. Humes was
limited in his autopsy practice on Kennedy. [ibid, p. 115]
The difference was that this disclosure would have had much more exposure,
impact and vibrancy if CBS had broken it in 1967 rather than having the fact
come up during Garrison's prosecution, in part, because the press corps'
hostility toward Garrison distorted the trial coverage.
So, in the summer of 1967, CBS again had come to the defense of the official
story with a four-hour, four-night extravaganza that again endorsed the
findings of the Warren Commission.
At the time of broadcast, it was the most expensive documentary CBS ever
produced. It concluded: Acting alone, Lee Harvey Oswald killed President
Kennedy. Acting alone, Jack Ruby killed Oswald. And Oswald and Ruby did not
know each other. All the controversy was Much Ado about Nothing.
Unwinding the Back Story
In 1967, the clandestine relationship between CBS News President Salant and
Warren Commissioner McCloy was known to very few people. In fact, as
assistant producer Roger Feinman later deduced, it was likely known only to
the very small circle in the memo distribution chain. That Salant
deliberately wished to keep it hidden is indicated by the fact that he
allowed McCloy to write these early memos anonymously.
As Feinman concluded, McCloy's influence over the program was almost
certainly a violation of the network's own guidelines, which prohibit
conflicts of interest in the news production, probably another reason Salant
kept McCloy's connection hidden.
In the 1970s, after Feinman was fired over a later dispute regarding another
example of CBS News' highhanded handling of the JFK assassination - and then
obtained internal documents as part of a legal hearing on his dismissal - he
briefly thought of publicizing the whole affair (which he eventually decided
against doing).
But Feinman wrote to Warren Commissioner McCloy in March 1977 about the
ex-commissioner's clandestine role in the four-night special a decade
earlier. McCloy declined to be interviewed on the subject, but added that he
did not recall any contribution he made to the special.
But Feinman persisted. On April 4, 1977, he wrote McCloy again. This time he
revealed that he had written evidence that McCloy had participated
extensively in the production of the four-night series. Very quickly, McCloy
got in contact with Salant and wrote that he did not recall any such
back-channel relationship.
In turn, Salant contacted Midgley and told the producer to check his files
to see if there was any evidence that would reveal a CBS secret
collaboration with McCloy. Salant then wrote back to McCloy saying that at
no time did Ellen McCloy ever act as a conduit between CBS News and her
father.
However, in 1992 in an article for The Village Voice, both Ellen McCloy and
Salant were confronted with memos that revealed Salant was lying in 1977.
McCloy's daughter admitted to the clandestine courier relationship. Salant
finally admitted it also, but he tried to say there was nothing unusual
about it.
Reassuring Americans
So, in 1967, CBS News had again reassured the American people that there was
no conspiracy in President Kennedy's murder, just a misguided lone gunman
who had done it all by himself. Anyone who thought otherwise was confused,
deceptive or delusional.
However, in 1975, eight years after the broadcast, two events revived
interest in the JFK case again. First, the Church Committee was formed in
Congress to explore the crimes of the CIA and FBI, revealing that before
Kennedy was killed, the CIA had farmed out the assassination of Fidel Castro
to the Mafia, a fact that was kept from the Warren Commission even though
one of its members, Allen Dulles, had been CIA director when the plots were
formulated.
Secondly, in the summer of 1975, in prime time, ABC broadcast the Zapruder
film, the first time that the American public had seen the shocking image of
President Kennedy's head being knocked back and to the left by what appeared
to be a shot from his front and right, a shot Oswald could not have fired.
The confluence of these two events caused a furor in Washington and the
creation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) to reopen
the JFK case.
Having become a chief defender of the original Warren Commission findings,
CBS News moved preemptively to influence the new investigation by planning
another special about the JFK case.
CBS's Sixty Minutes decided to do a story on whether or not Jack Ruby and
Lee Oswald knew each other. After several months of research, Salant killed
the project with the investigative files turned over to senior producer Les
Midgley before becoming the basis for the 1975 CBS special, which was
entitled The American Assassins.
Originally this was planned as a four-night special. One night each on the
JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King and the George Wallace shootings. But at the
last moment, in a very late press release, CBS announced that the first two
nights would be devoted to the JFK case. Midgley was the producer, but this
time Cronkite was absent. Rather took his place behind the desk.
In general terms, it was more of the same. The photographic consultant was
Itek Corporation, a company that was very close to the CIA, having helped
build the CORONA spy satellite system. Itek's CEO in the mid-1960s, Franklin
Lindsay, was a former CIA officer. With Itek's help, CBS did everything they
could to move their Magic Bullet shot from about frame 190 to about frames
223-226.
Yet, Josiah Thompson, who appeared on the show, had written there was no
evidence Gov. Connally was hit before frames 230-236. Further, there are
indications that President Kennedy is clearly hit as he disappears behind
the Stemmons Freeway sign at about frame 190, e.g., his head seems to
collapse both sideways and forward in a buckling motion.
But with Itek in hand, this became the scenario for the CBS version of the
"single bullet theory." It differed from the Warren Commission's in that it
did not rely upon a "delayed reaction" on Connally's part to the same
bullet.
Ballistics Tests
CBS also employed Alfred Olivier, a research veterinarian who worked for
Army wound ballistics branch and did tests with the alleged rifle used in
the assassination. He was a chief witness for junior counsel Arlen Specter
before the Warren Commission. [See Warren Commission, Volume V, pgs. 74ff]
For CBS in 1975, Olivier said that the Magic Bullet, CE 399, was not
actually "pristine." For CBS and Dan Rather, this made the "single bullet
theory" not impossible, just hard to believe.
Apparently, no one explained to Rather that the only deformation on the
bullet is a slight flattening at the base, which would occur as the bullet
is blasted through the barrel of a rifle. There is no deformation at its tip
where it would have struck its multiple targets. There is only a tiny amount
of mass missing from the bullet.
In other words, as more than one author has written, it has all the
indications of being fired into a carton of water or a bale of cotton. If
CBS had interviewed the legendary medical examiner Milton Helpern of New
York - not far from CBS headquarters - that is pretty much what he would
have said. [Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, p. 69.]
Rather realized, without being explicit, that something was wrong with
Kennedy's autopsy. He called the autopsy below par and reversed field on his
opinion about pathologist Humes, whose experience Rather had praised in
1967. In the 1975 broadcast, Rather said that neither Humes nor Boswell were
qualified to perform Kennedy's autopsy and that parts of it were botched.
But let us make no mistake about what CBS was up to here. The entire
corporate upper structure - Salant, Stanton, Paley - had overrun the working
producers and journalists, including Midgley, Manning and Schorr. And those
subordinates decided not to utter a peep to the outside world about what had
happened.
Not only Cronkite and Rather participated in this appalling exercise, so too
did Eric Sevareid, appearing at the end of the last show and saying that
there are always those who believe in conspiracies, whether it be about
Yalta, China or Pearl Harbor. He then poured it on by saying some people
still think Hitler is alive and concluding that it would be impossible to
cover up the assassination of a President.
But simply in examining how a major news outlet like CBS handled the
evidence shows precisely how something as dreadful and significant as the
murder of a President could be covered up.
Much of this history also would have remained unknown, except that Roger
Feinman, an assistant producer at CBS News, had become a friend and follower
of the estimable Warren Commission critic Sylvia Meagher. So, Feinman knew
that the Warren Commission was a deeply flawed report and that CBS had
employed some very questionable methods in the 1967 special in order to
conceal those flaws.
When the assassination issue returned in the mid-1970s, Feinman began to
write some memoranda to those in charge of the renewed CBS investigation
warning that they shouldn't repeat their 1967 performance. His first memo
went to CBS president Dick Salant. Many of the other memos were directed to
the Office of Standards and Practices.
In preparing these memos, Feinman researched some of the odd methodologies
that CBS used in 1967. Since he had been at CBS for three years, he got to
know some of the people who had worked on that series. They supplied him
with documents and information which revealed that what Cronkite and Rather
were telling the audience had been arrived at through a process that was as
flawed as the one the Warren Commission had used.
Feinman requested a formal review of the process by which CBS had arrived at
its forensic conclusions. He felt the documentary had violated company
guidelines in doing so.
Establishment Strikes Back
As Feinman's memos began to circulate through the executive and management
suites - including Salant's and Vice-President Bill Small's - it was made
clear to him that he should cease and desist from his one-man campaign. When
he wouldn't let up, CBS moved to terminate its dissident employee.
But since Feinman was working under a union contract, he had certain
administrative rights to a fair hearing, including the process of discovery
through which he could request certain documents to make his case. His
research allowed him to pinpoint where these documents would be and who
prepared them.
On Sept. 7, 1976, CBS succeeded in terminating Feinman. But the collection
of documents he secured through his hearing was extraordinary, allowing
outsiders for the first time to see how the 1967 series was conceived and
executed. Further, the documents took us into the group psychology of a
large media corporation when it collides with controversial matters
involving national security.
Only Roger Feinman, who was not at the top of CBS or anywhere near it, had
the guts to try to get to the bottom of the whole internal scandal.
And Feinman paid a high personal price for doing so. Feinman's contribution
to American history did not help him get his journalistic career back on
track. When he passed away in the fall of 2011, he was freelancing as a
computer programmer.
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Longtime CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite. (photo: NBC News)
https://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/22/how-cbs-news-aided-the-jfk-cover-up/ht
tps://consortiumnews.com/2016/04/22/how-cbs-news-aided-the-jfk-cover-up/
How CBS News Aided the JFK Cover-Up
By James DiEugenio, Consortium News
23 April 16
With the Warren Report on JFK's assassination under attack in the mid-1960s,
there was a chance to correct the errors and reassess the findings, but CBS
News intervened to silence the critics, reports James DiEugenio.
n the mid-1960s, amid growing skepticism about the Warren Commission's
lone-gunman findings on John F. Kennedy's assassination, there was a
struggle inside CBS News about whether to allow the critics a fair public
hearing at the then-dominant news network. Some CBS producers pushed for a
debate between believers and doubters and one even submitted a proposal to
put the Warren Report "on trial," according to internal CBS documents.
But CBS executives, who were staunch supporters of the Warren findings and
had personal ties to some commission members, spiked those plans and instead
insisted on presenting a defense of the lone-gunman theory while dismissing
doubts as baseless conspiracy theories, the documents show.
Though it may be hard to remember - amid today's proliferation of cable
channels and Internet sites - CBS, along with NBC and ABC, wielded powerful
control over what the American people got to see, hear and take seriously in
the 1960s. By slapping down any criticism of the Warren Commission, CBS
executives effectively prevented the case surrounding the 1963 assassination
of President Kennedy from ever receiving the full airing that it deserved.
Beyond that historical significance, the internal documents - compiled by
onetime CBS News assistant producer Roger Feinman - show how a major
mainstream news organization green-lights one approach to presenting
sensitive national security news while blocking another. The documents also
shed light on how senior news executives, who have bought into one
interpretation of the facts, are highly resistant to revisit the evidence.
Buying In
CBS News jumped onboard the blue-ribbon Warren Commission's findings as soon
as they were released on Sept. 27, 1964, just over 10 months after President
Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on Nov. 22, 1963. In a special
report, CBS and its anchor Walter Cronkite preempted regular programming
and, with the assistance of reporter Dan Rather, devoted two commercial-free
hours to endorsing the main tenets of that report.
However, despite Cronkite and Rather giving the Warren Report their public
embrace, other people, who were not in the employ of the mainstream media,
examined critically the report and the accompanying 26 volumes. Some of
these citizens were lawyers and others were professors, the likes of Vincent
Salandria and Richard Popkin. They came to the conclusion that CBS had been
less than rigorous in its examination.
By 1967, the analyses challenging the Warren Report's conclusions had become
widespread, including popular books by Edward Epstein, Mark Lane, Sylvia
Meagher and Josiah Thompson. Thompson's book, Six Seconds in Dallas, was
excerpted and placed on the cover of the wide-circulation magazine Saturday
Evening Post. Lane was appearing on talk shows. Prosecutor Jim Garrison had
announced a reopening of the JFK case in New Orleans. The dam was
threatening to break.
The doubts about the Warren Report had even spread into the ranks at CBS
News, where correspondent Daniel Schorr and Washington Bureau chief Bill
Small recommended a fair and critical look at the report's methodology and
findings. Top prime-time producer Les Midgley later joined the effort.
CBS News vice president Gordon Manning sent the proposal on to CBS News
president Richard Salant in August 1966, but it was declined. Manning tried
again in October, suggesting an open debate between the critics of the
Warren Report and former Commission counsels, moderated by a law school dean
or the president of the American Bar Association. The idea was to give the
two sides a chance to make their best points before the viewing public.
Zapruder Evidence
One month after Manning's debate proposal, Life Magazine published a
front-page story in which the Warren Commission's verdict was questioned by
photographic evidence from the Zapruder film (which the magazine owned).
Life also interviewed Texas Gov. John Connally who disagreed that he and
Kennedy had been hit by the same shot, a claim that undercut the "single
bullet theory" at the heart of the Warren Report.
Without the assertion that a single bullet inflicted multiple wounds on
Kennedy and Connally, who was riding in front of the President, the
commission's verdict collapses. The magazine story ended with a call to
reopen the case. Indeed, Life had put together a small journalistic team to
do its own internal investigation.
A few days after this issue appeared, Manning again pressed for a CBS
special. This time he suggested the title "The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald,"
with a panel of law school deans reviewing the evidence against Oswald in a
mock trial, including evidence that the Warren Commission had not included.
In other words, there would be a chance for American "jurors" to weigh the
evidence that might have been presented against Oswald if he had lived and
to make a judgment on his guilt. Again, this approach offered the potential
for a reasonably balanced examination of the Kennedy assassination.
At this point, Manning was joined by producer Midgley, who had produced the
two-hour 1964 CBS special. Midgley's suggestion differed from Manning's in
that he wanted to title the show "The Warren Report on Trial." Midgley
suggested a three-night, three-hour series with one night given over to the
commission defenders, one night including all the witnesses that the
commission overlooked or discounted, and the last night including a verdict
produced by legal experts. But the title itself suggested a level of
skepticism that had not been part of the earlier proposals.
The Higher-ups Intervene
However, then CBS senior executives began to intervene. On Dec. 1, 1966,
Salant wrote a memo to John Schneider, president of CBS Broadcast Group,
telling him that he might refer the proposal to the CBS News Executive
Committee (CNEC). According to information that a former CBS assistant
producer Roger Feinman obtained during a legal hearing against CBS, plus
secondary sources, CNEC was a secretive group that was created in the wake
of Edward R. Murrow's departure from CBS.
Murrow was a true investigative reporter who became famous through his
reports on Sen. Joe McCarthy's abuses and the mistreatment of migrant farm
workers. The upper management at CBS did not like the controversies that
these reports generated among influential segments of the American power
structure. There was a perceived need to tamp down on such wide-ranging and
independent-minded investigations. After all, the CBS executives were part
of that power structure.
CBS News president Salant epitomized that blurring of high-level corporate
journalism and America's ruling class. Salant had gone to Exeter Academy,
Harvard, and then Harvard Law School. He was handpicked from the network's
Manhattan legal firm by CBS President Frank Stanton to join his management
team.
During World War II, Stanton had worked in the Office of War Information,
the psychological warfare branch. In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower
had appointed Stanton to a small committee to organize how the United States
would survive a nuclear attack. From 1961-67, Stanton was chairman of Rand
Corporation, a CIA-associated think tank.
The other two members of CNEC were Sig Mickelson, who had preceded Salant as
CBS News president and then became a director of Time-Life Broadcasting, and
CBS founder Bill Paley, who had also served in the World War II psy-war
branch of the Office of War Information and - after the war - let CIA
Director Allen Dulles have the spy agency informally debrief CBS overseas
correspondents.
When Salant turned the Warren Commission issue over to CNEC, the prospects
for any objective or skeptical treatment of the JFK case faded. "The
establishment of CNEC effectively curtailed the news division's
independence," Feinman later wrote about his discoveries.
Further, Salant had no journalistic experience and was in almost daily
communication with Stanton, whose background was in government propaganda.
Scaling Back
The day after Salant informed CNEC about the proposed JFK assassination
special, Salant told CBS News vice president Manning that he was wavering on
the mock trial concept. Salant's next move was even more ominous. He sent
both Manning and prime-time news producer Midgley to California to talk to
two lawyers about the project.
One of the attorneys was Edwin Huddleson, a partner in the San Francisco
firm of Cooley, Godward, Castro and Huddleson. Huddleson attended Harvard
Law with Salant and, like Stanton, was on the board of the Rand Corporation.
The other lawyer was Bayless Manning, Dean of Stanford Law School. They told
the CBS representatives that they were against the network undertaking the
project on the grounds of "the national interest" and because of the topic's
"political implications."
CBS News vice president Manning reported that both attorneys advised the CBS
team to ignore the critics of the Warren Commission or to appoint a special
panel to critique their books, in other words, to put the critics on trial.
Huddleson also steered the CBS team to cooperative scientists who would
counter the critics.
On his return to CBS headquarters, Manning saw the writing on the wall. He
knew what his CBS superiors really wanted and it wasn't some no-holds-barred
examination of the Warren Commission's flaws. So, he suggested a new title
for the series, "In Defense of the Warren Report," and wrote that CBS should
dismiss "the inane, irresponsible, and hare-brained challenges of Mark Lane
and others of that stripe."
Out on a Limb
Manning's defection from an open-minded treatment of the evidence to a
one-sided Warren Commission defense left producer Midgley out on a limb.
However, unaware of what Salant was up to, on Dec. 14, 1966, Midgley
circulated a memo about how he planned on approaching the Warren Report
project. He proposed running experiments that were more scientific than "the
ridiculous ones run by the FBI." He still wanted a mock trial to show how
the operation of the Commission was "almost incredibly inadequate."
In response, Salant circulated an anonymous, undated, paragraph-by-paragraph
rebuttal to Midgley's plan, which Feinman's later investigation determined
was written by Warren Commissioner John McCloy, then Chairman of the Council
on Foreign Relations and the father of Ellen McCloy, Salant's administrative
assistant.
In this memo, McCloy wrote that "the chief evidence that Oswald acted alone
and shot alone is not to be found in the ballistics and pathology of the
assassination, but in the fact of his loner life." As many Warren Commission
critics have noted, it was this approach - discounting or ignoring the
medical and ballistics evidence, but concentrating on Oswald's alleged
social life - that was a fatal flaw of the Warren Report.
Despite the familial conflict of interest, Ellen McCloy was added to the
distribution list for almost all memos related to the Kennedy assassination
project and thus could serve as a secret back-channel between CBS and her
father.
A Stonewall Defense
Clearly, the original idea for a fresh examination of the Warren Commission
and the evidence that had arisen since its report was published in 1964 had
been turned on its head. The CBS brass wanted a defense, not a critique.
Salant asked producer Midgley, "Is the question whether Oswald was a CIA or
FBI informant really so substantial that we have to deal with it?" Midgley,
increasingly alone out on the limb, replied, "Yes, we must treat it."
As the initial plan for a forthright examination of the Warren Commission's
shortcomings was transformed into a stonewall defense of the official
findings, there was still the problem of Midgley, the last holdout. But
eventually his head was turned, too.
While the four-night special was in production, Midgley became engaged to
Betty Furness, a former actress-turned-television-commercial pitchwoman whom
President Lyndon Johnson appointed as his special assistant for consumer
affairs, even though her only experience in the field had been selling
Westinghouse appliances for 11 years on television. She was sworn in on
April 27, 1967, which was about two months before the CBS production aired.
Two weeks after it was broadcast, Midgley and Furness were married.
As Kai Bird's biography of McCloy, The Chairman, makes clear, Johnson and
McCloy were friends and colleagues. But there is another point about how
Midgley was convinced to go along with McCloy's view of the Warren
Commission. Around the same time he married Furness, he received a
significant promotion, elevated to executive editor of the network's
flagship news program, "The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite." This
made him, in essence, the top news editor at CBS, a decision that required
the consultation and approval of Salant, Cronkite and Stanton - and very
likely the CNEC.
So, instead of a serious investigation into the murder of President Kennedy
- at a time when there was the possibility of effective national action to
get at the truth - CBS News delivered a stalwart defense of the Warren
Commission's conclusions and heaped ridicule on anyone who dared question
those findings.
Shaping that approach was not only the influence of Warren Commission member
John McCloy, an icon of the Establishment, but the carrots and sticks
applied to senior CBS producers, such as Gordon Manning and Les Midgley, who
initially favored a more skeptical approach but were convinced to abandon
that goal.
Curious Consultants
Once McCloy was brought onboard, the complexion of CBS's treatment of the
JFK assassination changed. CBS hired consultants who were rabidly pro-Warren
Report to appear as on-air experts while others would be hidden in the
shadows. In addition to the clandestine role of McCloy, some of these
consultants included Dallas police officer Gerald Hill, physicist Luis
Alvarez and reporter Lawrence Schiller.
Officer Hill was just about everywhere in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. He was at
the Texas School Book Depository where Oswald worked and allegedly shot the
President from the sixth floor; Hill was at the murder scene of Officer J. D
Tippit, who was allegedly shot by Oswald after he fled Dealey Plaza; and he
was at the Texas Theater where Oswald was arrested.
Hill appeared in the CBS 1967 program show as a speaker. But Roger Feinman
found out that Hill also was paid for six weeks work on the show as a
consultant. During his consulting, Hill revealed that the police did a "fast
frisk" on Oswald while in the theater. They found nothing in his pockets at
the time, which begs the question of where the bullets the police said they
found in his pockets later at the station came from. That question did not
arise during the program since CBS never revealed the contradiction. (Click
here and go to page 20 of the transcript.)
Physicist Luis Alvarez, who had a served as an adviser to the CIA and to the
U.S. military in the Vietnam War, spent a considerable amount of time
lending his name to articles supporting the Warren Report and conducting
questionable experiments supporting its findings. As demonstrated by authors
Josiah Thompson (in 2013) and Gary Aguilar (in 2014), Alvarez misrepresented
some data in some of his JFK experiments. (Click here and go to the 37:00
mark for Aguilar's presentation.)
Making Fun
The same year of the 1967 CBS broadcast, reporter Lawrence Schiller had
co-written a book entitled The Scavengers and Critics of the Warren Report,
a picaresque journey through America where Schiller interviewed some of the
prominent - and not so prominent - critics of the report and caricatured
them hideously.
Secretly, he had been an informant for the FBI for many years keeping an eye
on people like Mark Lane and Jim Garrison, whom Schiller attacked despite
discovering witnesses who attested to Garrison's suspect Clay Shaw using the
alias Clay Bertrand, a key point in Garrison's case. The relevant documents
were not declassified until the Assassination Records and Reviews Board was
set up in the 1990s. [See Destiny Betrayed, Second Edition, by James
DiEugenio, p. 388]
This cast of consultants - along with McCloy - influenced the direction of
the 1967 CBS Special Report. The last thing these consultants wanted to do
was to expose the faulty methodology that the Warren Commission had
employed.
As in 1964, Walter Cronkite manned the anchor desk and Dan Rather was the
main field reporter. Again, CBS could find no serious problems with the
Warren Report. The critics were misguided, CBS said. After all, Cronkite and
Rather had done a seven-month inquiry.
'Unimpeachable Credentials'
In the broadcast, Cronkite names the men on the Warren Commission as their
pictures appear on screen. He calls them "men of unimpeachable credentials"
but left out the fact that President Kennedy fired Commissioner Allen Dulles
from the CIA in 1961 for lying to him about the Bay of Pigs invasion of
Cuba.
When Cronkite got to the crux of the program, he said the Warren Commission
assured the American people that they would get the most searching
investigation in history. Then, Cronkite showed books and articles critical
of the commission and mentioned that polls showed that a majority of
Americans had lost faith in the Warren Report.
At that point, the network special revealed its purpose, to discredit the
critics and reassure the public that these people could not be trusted.
Cronkite went through a list of points that the critics had raised,
including key issues such as how many shots were fired and how quickly they
could be discharged from the suspect rifle. On each point, Cronkite took the
Warren Commission's side, saying Oswald fired three shots from the sixth
floor with the rifle attributed to him by the Warren Commission. Two of
three were direct hits - to Kennedy's head and shoulder area - within six
seconds.
One way that CBS fortified the case for just three shots was Alvarez's
examination of the Zapruder film, Abraham Zapruder's 26-second film of
Kennedy's assassination taken from Zapruder's position in Dealey Plaza, a
sequence that CBS did not actually show.
Alvarez proclaimed that by doing something called a "jiggle analysis," he
computed that there were three shots fired during the film. What the jiggle
amounted to was a blurring of frames on the film (presumably because
Zapruder would have flinched at the sound of gunshots).
Dan Rather took this Alvarez idea to Charles Wyckoff, a professional photo
analyst in Massachusetts. Agreeing with Alvarez, at least on camera, Wyckoff
mapped out the three areas of "jiggles." The Alvarez/Wyckoff formula was
simple: three jiggles, three shots.
But as Feinman found out through his legal discovery and hearings, there was
a big problem with this declaration. Wyckoff had actually discovered four
jiggles, not three. Therefore, by the Alvarez formula, there was a second
gunman and thus a conspiracy.
Wyckoff's on-camera discussion of this was cut out and not included in the
official transcript. But it is interesting to note just how committed
Wyckoff was to the CBS agenda, for he tried to explain the fourth jiggle as
Zapruder's reaction to a siren. As Feinman noted, how Wyckoff could
determine this from a silent 8 mm film is puzzling. But the point is, this
analysis did not support the commission. It undermined the Warren Report and
was left on the cutting-room floor.
There were other problems with the Alverez-Wyckoff "jiggle" theory, since
the first jiggle was at around Zapruder frame 190, or a few frames previous
to that, which would have meant that Oswald would have had to be firing
through the branches of an oak tree, which is why the Warren Commission
moved this shot up to frame 210.
But CBS left itself an out, claiming there was an opening in the tree
branches at frame 186 and Oswald could have fired at that point. But that is
patently ridiculous, since the opening at frame 186 lasted for 1/18th of a
second. To say that Oswald anticipated a less than split-second opening, and
then steeled himself in a flash to align the target, aim, and fire is all
stuff from the realm of comic books super heroes. Yet, in its blind
obeisance to the Warren Report, this is what CBS had reduced itself to.
Another way that CBS tried to bolster the Warren Report was to have Wyckoff
purchase other Bell and Howell movie cameras (since CBS was not allowed to
handle the actual Zapruder camera.) After winding up these cameras, CBS
hypothesized that Zapruder's camera might have been running a little slow,
giving Oswald a longer firing sequence.
The problem with this theory, however, was that both the FBI and Bell and
Howell had tested the speed of Zapruder's actual camera. Even Dick Salant
commented that this was "logically inconclusive and unpersuasive," but it
stayed in the program.
The Shot Sequence
But why did Rather and Wyckoff have to stoop this low? The answer is because
of the results of their rifle firing tests. As the critics of the Warren
Report had pointed out, the commission had used two tests to see if Oswald
could have gotten off three shots in the allotted 5.6 seconds indicated by
the Zapruder film.
These tests ended up as failing to prove Oswald could have performed this
feat of marksmanship. What made it worse is that the commission had used
very proficient rifleman to try and duplicate what the commission said
Oswald had done. [See Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact, p. 108]
So CBS tried again. This time they set up a track with a sled on it to
simulate the back of Kennedy's head. They then elevated a firing point to
simulate the sixth floor "sniper's nest," though there were differences from
Dealey Plaza including the oak tree and a rise in the street in the real
crime scene. Nevertheless, the CBS experimenters released the target on its
sled and had a marksman named Ed Crossman fire his three shots.
Crossman had a considerable reputation in the field, but - even though he
was given a week to practice with a version of the Mannlicher Carcano rifle
- his results were not up to snuff. According to a report by producer
Midgley, Crossman never broke 6.25 seconds (longer than Oswald's purported
5.6 seconds) and - even with an enlarged target - he got only two of three
hits in about 50 percent of his attempts.
Crossman explained that the rifle had a sticky bolt action and a faulty
viewing scope. But what the professional sniper did not know is that the
actual rifle in evidence was even harder to work. Crossman said that to
perform such a feat on the first time out would require a lot of luck.
However, since that evidence did not fit the show's agenda, it was
discarded, both the test and the comments. To resolve that problem, CBS
called in 11 professional marksmen who first went to an indoor firing range
and practiced to their heart's content, though the Warren Commission could
find no evidence that Oswald practiced.
The 11 men then took 37 runs at duplicating what Oswald was supposed to have
done. There were three instances where two out of three hits were recorded
in 5.6 seconds. The best time was achieved by Howard Donahue on his third
attempt after his first two attempts were complete failures.
But CBS claimed that the average recorded time was 5.6 seconds, without
including the 17 attempts that were thrown out because of mechanical
failure. CBS also didn't tell the public the surviving average was 1.2 hits
out of three with an enlarged target.
The truly striking characteristic of these trials was the amount of
instances where the shooter could not get any result at all. More often than
not, once the clip was loaded, the bolt action jammed. The sniper had to
realign the target and fire again. According to the Warren Report, that
could not have happened with Oswald.
There is also the anomaly of James Tague, who was struck by one bullet that
the Warren Commission said had ricocheted off the curb of a different
street, about 260 feet away from the limousine. But how could Oswald have
missed by that much if he was so accurate on his other two shots? That was
another discrepancy deleted by the CBS editors.
The Autopsy Disputes
CBS also obscured what was said by the two chief medical witnesses after the
assassination by Dr. Malcolm Perry from Parkland Hospital in Dallas, where
Kennedy was taken after he was hit, and James Humes, the chief pathologist
at the autopsy examination at Bethesda Medical Center that evening.
In their research for the series, CBS had discovered a transcript of Dr.
Perry's press conference that the Warren Commission did not have. But CBS
camouflaged what Perry said on Nov. 22, 1963, specifically about Kennedy's
anterior neck wound. Perry said it had the appearance to him of being an
entrance wound, and he said this three times.
Cronkite tried to characterize the conference as Perry being rushed out to
the press and badgered. But that wasn't true, since the press conference was
about two hours after Perry had done a tracheotomy over the front neck
wound. The performance of that incision had given Perry the closest and most
deliberate look at that wound.
Perry therefore had the time to recover from the pressure of the operation
and there was no badgering of Perry. Newsmen were simply asking him
questions about the wounds he saw. Perry had the opportunity to answer the
questions on his own terms. Again, CBS seemed intent on concealing evidence
of a possible second assassin - because Oswald could not have fired at
Kennedy from the front.
Commander James Humes, the pathologist, did not want to appear on the
program, but was pressured by Attorney General Ramsey Clark, possibly with
McCloy's assistance. As Feinman discovered, the preliminary talks with Humes
were done through a friend of his at the church he attended.
There were two things that Humes said in these early discussions that were
bracing. First, he said that he recalled an x-ray of the President, which
showed a malleable probe connecting the rear back wound with the front neck
wound. Second, he said that he had orders not to do a complete autopsy. He
would not reveal who gave him these orders, except to say that it was not
Robert Kennedy. [Charles Crenshaw, Trauma Room One, p. 182]
The significance of the malleable probe is that, if Humes was correct, the
front and back wounds would have come from the same bullet. However, we
learned almost 30 years later from the Assassination Records Review Board
that other witnesses also saw a malleable probe go through Kennedy's back,
but said the probe did not go through the body since the wounds did not
connect. However, x-rays that might confirm the presence of the probe are
missing. [DiEugenio, Reclaiming Parkland, pgs. 116-18]
Location of the Wounds
On camera, Humes also said the posterior body wound was at the base of the
neck. Dan Rather then showed Humes the drawings made of the wound in the
back as depicted by medical illustrator Harold Rydberg for the Warren
Commission, also depicting the wound as being in the neck, which Humes
agreed with on camera. He added that they had reviewed the photos and
referred to measurements and this all indicated the wound was in the neck.
Even for CBS - and Warren Commissioner John McCloy - this must have been
surprising since the autopsy photos do not reveal the wound to be at the
base of the neck but clearly in the back. (Click here and scroll down.) CBS
should have sent its own independent expert to the archive because Humes
clearly had a vested interest in seeing his autopsy report bolstered,
especially since it was under attack by more than one critic.
The second point that makes Humes's interview curious is his comments on the
Rydberg drawings' accuracy. These do not coincide with what Rydberg said
later, not understanding why he was chosen to make these drawings for the
Warren Commission since he was only 22 and had been drawing for only one
year. There were many other veteran illustrators in the area the Warren
Commission could have called upon, but Rydberg came to believe that it was
his inexperience that caused the commission to pick him.
When Humes and Dr. Thornton Boswell appeared before him, they had nothing
with them: no photos, no x-rays, no official measurements, speaking only
from memory, nearly four months after the autopsy, Rydberg said. [DiEugenio,
Reclaiming Parkland, pgs. 119-22] The Rydberg drawings have become infamous
for not corresponding to the pictures, measurements, or the Zapruder film.
For Humes to endorse these on national television - and for CBS to allow
this without any fact-checking - shows what a case of false journalism the
special had become.
Limiting Access
CBS also knew that Humes said he had been limited in what he was allowed to
do in the Kennedy autopsy, a potentially big scoop if CBS had followed it.
Instead, the public had to wait another two years for the story to surface
at Garrison's trial of Clay Shaw when autopsy doctor Pierre Finck took the
stand in Shaw's defense. Finck said the same thing: that Dr. Humes was
limited in his autopsy practice on Kennedy. [ibid, p. 115]
The difference was that this disclosure would have had much more exposure,
impact and vibrancy if CBS had broken it in 1967 rather than having the fact
come up during Garrison's prosecution, in part, because the press corps'
hostility toward Garrison distorted the trial coverage.
So, in the summer of 1967, CBS again had come to the defense of the official
story with a four-hour, four-night extravaganza that again endorsed the
findings of the Warren Commission.
At the time of broadcast, it was the most expensive documentary CBS ever
produced. It concluded: Acting alone, Lee Harvey Oswald killed President
Kennedy. Acting alone, Jack Ruby killed Oswald. And Oswald and Ruby did not
know each other. All the controversy was Much Ado about Nothing.
Unwinding the Back Story
In 1967, the clandestine relationship between CBS News President Salant and
Warren Commissioner McCloy was known to very few people. In fact, as
assistant producer Roger Feinman later deduced, it was likely known only to
the very small circle in the memo distribution chain. That Salant
deliberately wished to keep it hidden is indicated by the fact that he
allowed McCloy to write these early memos anonymously.
As Feinman concluded, McCloy's influence over the program was almost
certainly a violation of the network's own guidelines, which prohibit
conflicts of interest in the news production, probably another reason Salant
kept McCloy's connection hidden.
In the 1970s, after Feinman was fired over a later dispute regarding another
example of CBS News' highhanded handling of the JFK assassination - and then
obtained internal documents as part of a legal hearing on his dismissal - he
briefly thought of publicizing the whole affair (which he eventually decided
against doing).
But Feinman wrote to Warren Commissioner McCloy in March 1977 about the
ex-commissioner's clandestine role in the four-night special a decade
earlier. McCloy declined to be interviewed on the subject, but added that he
did not recall any contribution he made to the special.
But Feinman persisted. On April 4, 1977, he wrote McCloy again. This time he
revealed that he had written evidence that McCloy had participated
extensively in the production of the four-night series. Very quickly, McCloy
got in contact with Salant and wrote that he did not recall any such
back-channel relationship.
In turn, Salant contacted Midgley and told the producer to check his files
to see if there was any evidence that would reveal a CBS secret
collaboration with McCloy. Salant then wrote back to McCloy saying that at
no time did Ellen McCloy ever act as a conduit between CBS News and her
father.
However, in 1992 in an article for The Village Voice, both Ellen McCloy and
Salant were confronted with memos that revealed Salant was lying in 1977.
McCloy's daughter admitted to the clandestine courier relationship. Salant
finally admitted it also, but he tried to say there was nothing unusual
about it.
Reassuring Americans
So, in 1967, CBS News had again reassured the American people that there was
no conspiracy in President Kennedy's murder, just a misguided lone gunman
who had done it all by himself. Anyone who thought otherwise was confused,
deceptive or delusional.
However, in 1975, eight years after the broadcast, two events revived
interest in the JFK case again. First, the Church Committee was formed in
Congress to explore the crimes of the CIA and FBI, revealing that before
Kennedy was killed, the CIA had farmed out the assassination of Fidel Castro
to the Mafia, a fact that was kept from the Warren Commission even though
one of its members, Allen Dulles, had been CIA director when the plots were
formulated.
Secondly, in the summer of 1975, in prime time, ABC broadcast the Zapruder
film, the first time that the American public had seen the shocking image of
President Kennedy's head being knocked back and to the left by what appeared
to be a shot from his front and right, a shot Oswald could not have fired.
The confluence of these two events caused a furor in Washington and the
creation of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) to reopen
the JFK case.
Having become a chief defender of the original Warren Commission findings,
CBS News moved preemptively to influence the new investigation by planning
another special about the JFK case.
CBS's Sixty Minutes decided to do a story on whether or not Jack Ruby and
Lee Oswald knew each other. After several months of research, Salant killed
the project with the investigative files turned over to senior producer Les
Midgley before becoming the basis for the 1975 CBS special, which was
entitled The American Assassins.
Originally this was planned as a four-night special. One night each on the
JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King and the George Wallace shootings. But at the
last moment, in a very late press release, CBS announced that the first two
nights would be devoted to the JFK case. Midgley was the producer, but this
time Cronkite was absent. Rather took his place behind the desk.
In general terms, it was more of the same. The photographic consultant was
Itek Corporation, a company that was very close to the CIA, having helped
build the CORONA spy satellite system. Itek's CEO in the mid-1960s, Franklin
Lindsay, was a former CIA officer. With Itek's help, CBS did everything they
could to move their Magic Bullet shot from about frame 190 to about frames
223-226.
Yet, Josiah Thompson, who appeared on the show, had written there was no
evidence Gov. Connally was hit before frames 230-236. Further, there are
indications that President Kennedy is clearly hit as he disappears behind
the Stemmons Freeway sign at about frame 190, e.g., his head seems to
collapse both sideways and forward in a buckling motion.
But with Itek in hand, this became the scenario for the CBS version of the
"single bullet theory." It differed from the Warren Commission's in that it
did not rely upon a "delayed reaction" on Connally's part to the same
bullet.
Ballistics Tests
CBS also employed Alfred Olivier, a research veterinarian who worked for
Army wound ballistics branch and did tests with the alleged rifle used in
the assassination. He was a chief witness for junior counsel Arlen Specter
before the Warren Commission. [See Warren Commission, Volume V, pgs. 74ff]
For CBS in 1975, Olivier said that the Magic Bullet, CE 399, was not
actually "pristine." For CBS and Dan Rather, this made the "single bullet
theory" not impossible, just hard to believe.
Apparently, no one explained to Rather that the only deformation on the
bullet is a slight flattening at the base, which would occur as the bullet
is blasted through the barrel of a rifle. There is no deformation at its tip
where it would have struck its multiple targets. There is only a tiny amount
of mass missing from the bullet.
In other words, as more than one author has written, it has all the
indications of being fired into a carton of water or a bale of cotton. If
CBS had interviewed the legendary medical examiner Milton Helpern of New
York - not far from CBS headquarters - that is pretty much what he would
have said. [Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, p. 69.]
Rather realized, without being explicit, that something was wrong with
Kennedy's autopsy. He called the autopsy below par and reversed field on his
opinion about pathologist Humes, whose experience Rather had praised in
1967. In the 1975 broadcast, Rather said that neither Humes nor Boswell were
qualified to perform Kennedy's autopsy and that parts of it were botched.
But let us make no mistake about what CBS was up to here. The entire
corporate upper structure - Salant, Stanton, Paley - had overrun the working
producers and journalists, including Midgley, Manning and Schorr. And those
subordinates decided not to utter a peep to the outside world about what had
happened.
Not only Cronkite and Rather participated in this appalling exercise, so too
did Eric Sevareid, appearing at the end of the last show and saying that
there are always those who believe in conspiracies, whether it be about
Yalta, China or Pearl Harbor. He then poured it on by saying some people
still think Hitler is alive and concluding that it would be impossible to
cover up the assassination of a President.
But simply in examining how a major news outlet like CBS handled the
evidence shows precisely how something as dreadful and significant as the
murder of a President could be covered up.
Much of this history also would have remained unknown, except that Roger
Feinman, an assistant producer at CBS News, had become a friend and follower
of the estimable Warren Commission critic Sylvia Meagher. So, Feinman knew
that the Warren Commission was a deeply flawed report and that CBS had
employed some very questionable methods in the 1967 special in order to
conceal those flaws.
When the assassination issue returned in the mid-1970s, Feinman began to
write some memoranda to those in charge of the renewed CBS investigation
warning that they shouldn't repeat their 1967 performance. His first memo
went to CBS president Dick Salant. Many of the other memos were directed to
the Office of Standards and Practices.
In preparing these memos, Feinman researched some of the odd methodologies
that CBS used in 1967. Since he had been at CBS for three years, he got to
know some of the people who had worked on that series. They supplied him
with documents and information which revealed that what Cronkite and Rather
were telling the audience had been arrived at through a process that was as
flawed as the one the Warren Commission had used.
Feinman requested a formal review of the process by which CBS had arrived at
its forensic conclusions. He felt the documentary had violated company
guidelines in doing so.
Establishment Strikes Back
As Feinman's memos began to circulate through the executive and management
suites - including Salant's and Vice-President Bill Small's - it was made
clear to him that he should cease and desist from his one-man campaign. When
he wouldn't let up, CBS moved to terminate its dissident employee.
But since Feinman was working under a union contract, he had certain
administrative rights to a fair hearing, including the process of discovery
through which he could request certain documents to make his case. His
research allowed him to pinpoint where these documents would be and who
prepared them.
On Sept. 7, 1976, CBS succeeded in terminating Feinman. But the collection
of documents he secured through his hearing was extraordinary, allowing
outsiders for the first time to see how the 1967 series was conceived and
executed. Further, the documents took us into the group psychology of a
large media corporation when it collides with controversial matters
involving national security.
Only Roger Feinman, who was not at the top of CBS or anywhere near it, had
the guts to try to get to the bottom of the whole internal scandal.
And Feinman paid a high personal price for doing so. Feinman's contribution
to American history did not help him get his journalistic career back on
track. When he passed away in the fall of 2011, he was freelancing as a
computer programmer.
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
http://e-max.it/posizionamento-siti-web/socialize
