Book Review: The Witnesses

 

© 1964, 1965 by the New York Times Company

 

The cover reads: the testimony of 75 key witnesses to the assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald … selected and edited from the Warren Commission’s Hearings by The New York Times with an introduction by Anthony Lewis.

I’m glad I picked this book up. I found it randomly at a used book store back in December and later realized it would be something good to read as soon as we moved down to Texas. Dealey Plaza is, in fact, 32 miles straight south from our new home. I think in the fall I’m going to take the girls down there for an afternoon, to see the Texas School Book Depository (now the Sixth Floor Museum of the assassination), the “grassy knoll” of the plaza, and the X that marks the spot on Elm Street where JFK was gunned down.

I had never read the actual testimony. Well, I do remember borrowing the first book of the Warren Commission report from the library (if I remember correctly it’s a summation of sorts, I think), but I never got more than a dozen pages in. From 2009-2012 I was pretty heavily into the assassination. I must’ve read eight or ten books on the subject. Mailer’s book on Oswald was good, Posner’s and Bugliosi’s books were good on the Lone Gunman theory, and probably convinced me of that.

This book, too, was good on the Lone Gunman theory.

Or is that what they want us to believe???

Anyway, reading the testimonies of Marina Oswald, Jack Ruby, Ruth Paine, George De Mohrenschildt, the Dallas Police officials, brought a sense of déjà vu to me. I’ve heard a lot of this before, paraphrased, in other books. But – and I’m only partially being facetious here – not warped or cherry-picked to advance a particular theory or point of view. And strangely enough, it was a page turner. Far from being dry.

One part of the testimony stuck out to me – almost in a laugh out loud way. This exchange between Gerald Ford, Allan Dulles, Robert Inman Bouck of the Secret Service, and Samuel Stern, one of fourteen assistant counsels for the Warren Commission:

 

FORD: How often do your people check to see procedures which are used by these various agencies for the determination of whether an individual is a dangerous person?

BOUCK: We don’t do that systematically. We frequently have such discussions but they are usually on a specific basis. Our representatives will call up and say, “We just received this information. Would this be of interest to you?”

DULLES: Have you made any study going back in history of the various attempts that have been made, and successful and unsuccessful attempts, that have been made against Presidents or –

BOUCK: Rulers.

DULLES: Or people about to be President, or who have been President?

BOUCK: Yes, yes. We have not only studied all of our own but we have studied all of the assassinations that we could find any record of for 2,000 years back. And strangely enough some of the thinking that went on 2,000 years ago seems to show up in thinking of assassinations today.

STERN: Do you increase protection on the Ides of March?

(pages 552-553)

 

A good worthwhile read for any armchair historian interested in the assassination.