United States. Warren Commission

“ This is the salutary goal to which the Secret Service regulation is directed, when it absolutely forbids drinking by any agent accompanying the President on a trip. Nor is this goal served when agents remain out until early morning hours, and lose the opportunity to get a reasonable amount of sleep. It is conceivable that those men who had little sleep, and who had consumed alcoholic beverages, even in limited quantities, might have been more alert in the Dallas motorcade if they had retired promptly in Fort Worth. ”

“ Happiness is not based on oneself, it does not consist of a small home, of taking and getting, Happiness is taking part in the struggle, where there is no borderline between one’s own personal world, and the world in general. I never believed I would find more material advantages at this stage of development in the Soviet Union than I might of had in the U.S. ”

“ The rumors and theories about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln that are still being publicized were for the most part first bruited within months of his death. Wherever there is any element of mystery in such dramatic events misconceptions often result from sensational speculations.
Lacking the testimony of Lee Harvey Oswald, it has been necessary to reconstruct painstakingly all of the facts that led the Commission to the conclusion that Oswald assassinated President Kennedy, acting alone and without advice or assistance. ”

“ He cannot and will not take the precautions of a dictator or a sovereign. Under our system, measures must be sought to afford security without impeding the President’s performance of his many functions. The protection of the President must be thorough but inconspicuous to avoid even the suggestion of a garrison state. The rights of private individuals must not be infringed. If the protective job is well done, its performance will be evident only in the unexceptional fact of its success. ”

“ If Oswald had been tried for his murders of November 22, the effects of the news policy pursued by the Dallas authorities would have proven harmful both to the prosecution and the defense. The misinformation reported after the shootings might have been used by the defense to cast doubt on the reliability of the State’s entire case. Though each inaccuracy can be explained without great difficulty, the number and variety of misstatements issued by the police shortly after the assassination would have greatly assisted a skillful defense attorney attempting to influence the attitudes of jurors. ”

“ While appreciating the heavy and unique pressures with which the Dallas Police Department was confronted by reason of the assassination of President Kennedy, primary responsibility for having failed to control the press and to check the flow of undigested evidence to the public must be borne by the police department. It was the only agency that could have established orderly and sound operating procedures to control the multitude of newsmen gathered in the police building after the assassination. ”

“ Oswald’s attempt to go to Cuba was another act which expressed his hostility toward the United States and its institutions as well as a concomitant attachment to a country in which he must have thought were embodied the political principles to which he had been committed for so long. It should be noted that his interest in Cuba seems to have increased along with the sense of frustration which must have developed as he experienced successive failures in his jobs, in his political activity, and in his personal relationships. ”

“ Many factors were undoubtedly involved in Oswald’s motivation for the assassination, and the Commission does not believe that it can ascribe to him any one motive or group of motives. It is apparent, however, that Oswald was moved by an overriding hostility to his environment. He does not appear to have been able to establish meaningful relationships with other people. He was perpetually discontented with the world around him. Long before the assassination he expressed his hatred for American society and acted in protest against it. ”

“ The Commission has considered many possible motives for the assassination, including those which might flow from Oswald’s commitment to Marxism or communism, the existence of some personal grievance, a desire to effect changes in the structure of society or simply to go down in history as a well publicized assassin. None of these possibilities satisfactorily explains Oswald’s act if it is judged by the standards of reasonable men. The motives of any man, however, must be analyzed in terms of the character and state of mind of the particular individual involved. ”

“ However, neither the press nor the public had a right to be contemporaneously informed by the police or prosecuting authorities of the details of the evidence being accumulated against Oswald. Undoubtedly the public was interested in these disclosures, but its curiosity should not have been satisfied at the expense of the accused’s right to a trial by an impartial jury. The courtroom, not the newspaper or television screen, is the appropriate forum in our system for the trial of a man accused of a crime. ”

“ Agents are instructed that it is not their responsibility to investigate or evaluate a present danger, but to consider any untoward circumstances as serious and to afford the President maximum protection at all times. No responsibility rests upon those agents near the President for the identification or arrest of any assassin or an attacker. Their primary responsibility is to stay with and protect the President.
Beyond these two principles the Secret Service believes a detailed contingency or emergency plan is not feasible because the variations possible preclude effective planning. ”

“ Aside from the results of the Commission’s investigation reported above, there are other reasons to doubt that Jack Ruby would have shot Oswald as he did if he had been involved in a conspiracy to carry out the assassination, or that he would have been delegated to perform the shooting of Oswald on behalf of others who were involved in the slaying of the President. By striking in the city jail, Ruby was certain to be apprehended. An attempt to silence Oswald by having Ruby kill him would have presented exceptionally grave dangers to any other persons involved in the scheme. ”

“ A print taken by a law-enforcement agency is known as an “inked print,” and is carefully taken so that all the characteristics of the print are reproduced on the fingerprint card; a print which is left accidentally, such as a print left at the scene of a crime, is known as a latent print. To make an identification of a latent print, the expert compares the points in the latent print with the points in an inked print. If a point appearing in a latent print does not appear in the inked print, or vice versa, the expert concludes that the two prints were not made by the same finger or palm. ”

“ Prior to his own death Oswald had neither admitted his own involvement nor implicated any other persons in the assassination of the President. The problem of determining the existence or nonexistence of a conspiracy was compounded because of the possibility of subversive activity by a foreign power. Witnesses and evidence located in other countries were not subject to subpena, as they would have been if they had been located in the United States. When evidence was obtained from a foreign nation, it could not be appraised as effectively as if it had been derived from a domestic source. ”

“ Whether he thought about assassinating the President over the weekend can never be known, but it is reasonably certain that over the weekend he did think about his wife’s request that he not come to Irving, which was prompted by the birthday party being held at the Paine home. Oswald had a highly exaggerated sense of his own importance, but he had failed at almost everything he had ever tried to do. He had great difficulty in establishing meaningful relations with other people. ”

“ Oswald’s search for what he conceived to be the perfect society was doomed from the start. He sought for himself a place in history—a role as the “great man” who would be recognized as having been in advance of his times. His commitment to Marxism and communism appears to have been another important factor in his motivation. ”

“ While living in Forth Worth the Oswalds had been introduced to a group of Russian-speaking people in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Many of them assisted the Oswalds by providing small amounts of food, clothing, and household items. Oswald himself was disliked by almost all of this group whose help to the family was prompted primarily by sympathy for Marina Oswald and the child. Despite the fact that he had left the Soviet Union, disillusioned with its Government, Oswald seemed more firmly committed than ever to his concepts of Marxism. ”

“ Such an alternative was to be opposed both to capitalism and communism because:
No man, having known, having lived, under the Russian Communist and American capitalist system, could possibly make a choice between them, there is no choice, one offers oppresstion the other poverty. ”

“ The President’s car which had been going north made a sharp turn toward the southwest onto Elm Street. At a speed of about 11 miles per hour, it started down the gradual descent toward a railroad overpass under which the motorcade would proceed before reaching the Stemmons Freeway. The front of the Texas School Book Depository was now on the President’s right, and he waved to the crowd assembled there as he passed the building. Dealey Plaza—an open, landscaped area marking the western end of downtown Dallas—stretched out to the President’s left. ”

“ The Commission was not asked to apply itself as did the Hoover Commission in 1949, for example, to a determination of the optimum organization of the President’s protection. It would have been necessary for the Commission to take considerable testimony, much of it extraneous to the facts of the assassination of President Kennedy, to put it in a position to reach final conclusions in this respect. There are always dangers of divided responsibility, duplication, and confusion of authority where more than one agency is operating in the same field ”

“ The burden of insuring that appropriate action is taken to establish ethical standards of conduct for the news media must also be borne, however, by State and local governments, by the bar, and ultimately by the public. The experience in Dallas during November 22-24 is a dramatic affirmation of the need for steps to bring about a proper balance between the right of the public to be kept informed and the right of the individual to a fair and impartial trial. ”

“ With two Federal agencies operating in the same general field of preventive investigation, questions inevitably arise as to the scope of each agency’s authority and responsibility. As the testimony of J. Edgar Hoover and other Bureau officials revealed, the FBI did not believe that its directive required the Bureau to notify the Secret Service of the substantial information about Lee Harvey Oswald which the FBI had accumulated before the President reached Dallas. ”

“ Thus, close scrutiny of the records of the Federal agencies involved and the testimony of the responsible officials of the U.S. Government establish that there was absolutely no type of informant or undercover relationship between an agency of the U.S. Government and Lee Harvey Oswald at any time. ”

“ If the first shot missed, the assassin perhaps missed in an effort to fire a hurried shot before the President passed under the oak tree, or possibly he fired as the President passed under the tree and the tree obstructed his view. The bullet might have struck a portion of the tree and been completely deflected. On the other hand, the greatest cause for doubt that the first shot missed is the improbability that the same marksman who twice hit a moving target would be so inaccurate on the first and closest of his shots as to miss completely, not only the target, but the large automobile. ”

“ During the next 2 years the FBI continued to accumulate information, and kept itself informed on Oswald’s status by periodic reviews of State Department and Office of Naval Intelligence files. In this way, it learned that when Oswald had arrived in the Soviet Union he had attempted to renounce his U.S. citizenship and applied for Soviet citizenship, had described himself as a Marxist, had said he would give the Soviet Union any useful information he had acquired as a marine radar technician and had displayed an arrogant and aggressive attitude at the U.S. Embassy ”

“ A basic element of Presidential protection is the identification and elimination of possible sources of danger to the President before the danger becomes actual. The Secret Service has attempted to perform this function through the activities of its Protective Research Section and requests to other agencies, Federal and local, for useful information. The Commission has concluded that at the time of the assassination the arrangements relied upon by the Secret Service to perform this function were seriously deficient. ”

“ Waiver of the provisions of section 243 (g) .—Section 243 (g) of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, by its terms, prevented issuance of a visa to Marina Oswald by the Moscow Embassy. The section provides that upon notification of the Secretary of State by the Attorney General that a country has refused or unduly delayed the acceptance of a deportable alien from the United States who is a subject or was a resident of that country, consular officers in such country are not to issue visas to citizens of the country. ”

“ In view of the constant change in the nature of threats to the President and the diversity of the dangers which may arise in the various cities within the United States, the Commission believes that standard procedures in use for many years and applied in all parts of the country may not be sufficient. There is, for example, no Secret Service arrangement for evaluating before a trip particular difficulties that might be anticipated, which would bring to bear the judgment and experience of members of the White House detail other than the advance agent. ”

“ His attachment to Marxist and Communist doctrine was probably, in some measure, an expression of his hostility to his environment. While there is doubt about how fully Oswald understood the doctrine which he so often espoused, it seems clear that his commitment to Marxism was an important factor influencing his conduct during his adult years. It was an obvious element in his decision to go to Russia and later to Cuba and it probably influenced his decision to shoot at General Walker. ”

“ The occasional use of personnel from other Federal agencies to assist in protecting the President has a further advantage. It symbolizes the reality that the job of protecting the President has not been and cannot be exclusively the responsibility of the Secret Service. The Secret Service in the past has sometimes guarded its right to be acknowledged as the sole protector of the Chief Executive. ”

“ In 1962, Oswald was 22 years old and in good health. He had lived in the United States for 17 years before joining the Marine Corps and was, therefore, familiar with its language and customs. He had gained job experience by working 21⁄2 years in a factory which produced electronic equipment. Under these circumstances the Department was not unreasonable in concluding that Oswald’s own affidavit that he would support his wife was sufficient assurance that she was not likely to become a charge upon the public after her entry into the United States. ”

“ Among other things, Oswald said that Cuba should have folded full diplomatic relationship with the United States. I asked him if he thought that the President’s assassination would have any effect on the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He said there would be no change in the attitude of the American people toward Cuba with President Johnson becoming President because they both belonged to the same political party and the one would follow pretty generally the policies of the other. He stated that he is an avid reader of Russian literature whether it is communistic or not ”

“ With regard to all of the persons who claimed to have seen Ruby and Oswald together, it is significant that none had particular reason to pay close attention to either man, that substantial periods of time elapsed before the events they assertedly witnessed became meaningful, and that, unlike the eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen Oswald on November 22, none reported their observations soon after Oswald was arrested. In the course of its investigation, the Commission has encountered numerous clear mistakes of identification. ”