PLAYBOY
INTERVIEW: MARK LANE
a candid
conversation with the fiery attorney and author of “rush to
judgment of
the documented, best-selling indictment of the warren report
News of
the assassination of John
Fitzgerald
Kennedy had hardly reached a
stunned
world when the inevitable ques-
tion was
asked: Is this part of a conspir-
acy? When
Lee Harvey Oswald, charged
with the
assassination, was in turn assassi-
nated,
the whispers of doubt swelled to a
chorus.
Scripps-Howard columnist Rich-
ard
Starnes summed up the feelings of
many
Americans when he wrote: “Our
credentials
as a civilized people stand
suspect
before the world . . . but the real
depth of
the disaster that, has befallen us
cannot
yet be imagined. In its 188th
year, the
Republic has fallen upon
unspeakably
evil days, and great mischief
is afoot
in the land. It remains to be
seen
whether more convulsions will rack
us before
it is over . . .”
Starnes’ jeremiad, was echoed abroad,
where it was generally assumed that
the murders of Kennedy, Oswald and
Officer J. D. Tippit were all pieces in
a monstrous, conspiratorial jigsaw
puzzle.
The Communist nations were quick to
allege that the President had been mur-
dered by a plot originating within his
own Government, and that Oswald had
been silenced before he could
incriminate
other members of the cabal. Toss cabled
from
Washington to Moscoiv on Novem-
ber 25,
1963, just three days after the
assassination,
that “All circumstances of
President
Kennedy’s death allow one to
assume
that this murder was
planned and
carried out by the ultra-right-wing,
fascist
and racist circles, by those xuho
cannot
stomach any step aimed at the easing of
international tensions and the improve-
ment of Soviet-American relations.”
In other
countries, too, rumors of con-
spiracy
abounded. The London Daily
Telegraph's
Dallas correspondent re-
ported on
November 26 that “World
opinion
as much as American, is not fully
satisfied
about this terrible affair. This
has
resulted in an elephantine attempt
on the
part of the local authorities con-
cerned to
cover up for one another.”
On
November 27 , the conservative Lon-
don Daily
Mail declared editorially that
“ facts
can be produced that a right-wing
plot
against the President had caused his
death.”
French press opinion was even less
restrained.
Paris Jour carried a front-page
article
entitled “Oswald Cannot Have
Been
Alone in the Shooting,” while
Liberation
wrote that “There is no doubt
that
President Kennedy fell into a trap.
He was
the victim of a plot. And in this
plot it
is evident that the Dallas police,
protectors
of gangsters like Ruby, played
a role
one can only describe as question-
able.
They created a defendant, then
allowed
one of their stool pigeons to
kill
him.”
In hasty
pursuit of a scapegoat, con-
servatives
and reactionaries — at home as
well as
abroad — were eager to blame liber-
als and
leftists, who returned the charges.
To dispel
such divisive speculation.
President
Johnson appointed an ultra-
prestigious
Presidential Commission,
headed by
Chief Justice Earl Warren, to
investigate
the assassination. Serving un-
der
Warren were former CIA Director
Allen
Dulles; John McCloy, former As-
sistant
Secretary of War; Senators Rich-
ard
Russell and John Sherman Cooper;
and
Representatives Gerald Ford and
Hale
Boggs. J. Lee Rankin, former Solici-
tor
General of the United States, was
appointed
as the Commission’s Chief
Counsel,
directing a staff of 14 lawyers.
The very
appointment of such a blue-
ribbon
investigative body allayed many
fears, at
least in America. Ten months
after the
assassination, when the Warren
Commission
released its findings, Ameri-
cans
heaved a. national sigh of relief.
There had
been no conspiracy, the Com-
mission
concluded. Lee Harvey Oswald,
acting
alone and irrationally , had mur-
dered the
President. Jack Ruby had killed
Oswald on
his own and without premedi-
tation.
The verdict was in, and it was
almost
unanimously accepted — in the
United
States. Two months later, when
the
Commission released its 26 vol-
umes of
supporting evidence — a massive
17,815
pages — the case appeared for-
ever
closed. A grateful public hailed the
Commission
for settling its gnawing
doubts
and clearing the air of poisonous
rumors.
Harrison Salisbury, assistant
managing
editor of The New York
Times,
echoed popular sentiment when
he wrote
in the Times: “No material
“History
may come to know the Warren
Report as
the ' Warren Whitewash ’; it
may be
ranked with Teapot Dome as a
synonym
for political cover-up and cyni-
cal
manipulation of the truth.”
“There were 90 witnesses to the
assassina-
tion who were questioned and. were able
to give an assessment of the origin of
the
shots. Of those, 58 said they came from
behind the fence on the grassy knoll.”
“There
were at least two assassins. The
evidence
is conclusive on that score. But
the
Commission wanted to disprove a
conspiracy,
and this desire defeated its
investigative
function.”
question
now remains unsolved so far as
q the
death of President Kennedy is con-
cerned.
The evidence of Osxuald' s single-
® handed
guilt is overwhelming.”
>« But
historians know that often enough,
£« the
more they study a complex event, the
less they
know about it. For each ques-
tion
answered, seven more spring up to
take its
place. The Warren investigation,
with an
unlimited budget, a full-time
staff of
26 and complete access to the
massive
investigative apparatus of the
United
States Government, was the larg-
est
historical inquiry ever undertaken.
Inevitably,
it woidd produce a paper
mountain
of conflicting reports, contra-
dictory
testimony, expert disagreement
and
unanswered questions. By publishing
the 26
volumes of hearings and exhibits
—
containing considerable evidence con-
tradicting
its oxun findings — the Warren
Commission
implicitly acknoxuledged the
inscrutability
of fact. Doubts were to be
expected;
it’s surprising only that they
took so
long to surface. Discussions of
their
validity may occupy scholars for
generations
— or even centuries.
The
ripples preceding the xuave of
criticism
came first from England. The
day the
Report xuas issued, Lord
Bertrand Russell denounced it as a
xuhite-
wash and subsequently formed a “Who
Killed Kennedy?” committee to pursue
its own investigation of the
assassination.
And late in 1964, Hugh Trevor-Roper,
Regius Professor of History at Oxford
University, published a scathing'
attack
on the Commission in the pages of Eng-
land's establishmentarian London Sun-
day Times. According to Trevor-Roper,
the
Report was not only inaccurate but
“slovenly.”
In America, less prone to con-
spiratorial
viexus of history than intrigue-
rife
Europe, criticism was slower in
coming. The first two books attacking
the
Commission, Thomas Buchanan’s “Who
Killed Kennedy?” and Joachim Joesten’s
“Osxuald: Assassin or Fall Guy?” con-
tained xoild speculations that
generally
discredited, them as serious criticism.
But the
flood was only beginning. In
October
1965, Pulitzer Prize-xu inning
nexusman
Sylvan Fox, then— city editor
of the
New York World-Telegram and
Sun,
published a paperback entitled
“Unansxuered
Questions About President
Kennedy's
Assassination.” On May 9,
1966,
Harold Weisberg, a former Senate
investigator,
privately published “ White -
xuash: A
Report on the Warren Report.”
Sexjen
xueeks later, Viking Press published
“Inquest,”
by Edward Jay Epstein, a
31-
year-old Cornell graduate student.
Origi-
nally Epstein's master's thesis, the
book
sold moderately well. Then, on August
15, Holt,
Rinehart & Winston published
Mark Lane's “Rush to Judgment,” xuhich
has since forged its xuay to the top of
the
best-seller list. And on September 8,
World published “The Osxuald Affair,”
by Leo Sauvage, American correspond-
42 ent for Le Figaro of Paris.
This
barrage of books prompted The
New York
Times to comment editorially
on
September 1, 1966, that “ Debate on
the
accuracy and adequacy of the Warren
Commission's
work is now approachixig
the
dimensions of a lively small industry
in this
country.” The original band of
lonely
doubters had multiplied to a small
army. So
drastically had the climate
changed
that The New York Times’
White
House correspondent, Tom Wick-
er,
commented on September 25, 1966:
“A public
discussion group in New York
sought to
hold a roupd-table session
about the
Warren Report. ... The ma-
jor
difficulty for the group xuas in finding
anyone of
stature xuho xuas xuilling to
defend
the Warren Report and its
findings.”
Wicker went on to demand
appointment
of a nexu Commission to
investigate
the assassination. On Septem-
ber 28,
Nexu York Congressman Theo-
dore R.
Kupferman, citing the slexu of
critical
books on the Report, asked the
House of
Representatives to establish a
Senate-House
Committee to conduct its
oxun
investigation of the Warren Report.
Shortly
thereafter, Life also called for a
reopening
of the investigation. In the
November
1966 issue of The Progressive,
Harrison
Salisbury, xuho had earlier felt
that “no
material question remained un-
solved,”
reversed his field and xurote that
he was
convinced “there are questions —
some of
them of major importance —
xuhich
must be ansxuered.”
The one
'-man most' responsible jor
these
doubts and demands is New York
attorney
Mark Lane. He has been inves-
tigating
the assassination since early
December
1963, and since the publica-
tion of
“Rush to Judgment,” he has been
called
everything from a liar to a nation-
al hero.
In a lead reviexu for the Chicago
Tribune,
Jon Waltz of the Northwestern
University
Laxu School faculty wrote:
“This
latest critique of the Warren Com-
mission
Report is truly horrible. [It]
passes
beyond the merely superficial,
being
frequently dishonest as well. Lane's
fevered
arguments have no semblance
of logic
or even of organization. He
presents
a phantasmagoric hodgepodge
of
unrelated and often xuholly irrelevant
second-guessing.
If, in assembling his
collection
of quibbles, Lane had any ul-
timate
purpose other than confusion and
profit,
it goes unstated . . . the catalog
of this
book's distortions and apparent
fabrications,
large and small, is a long
and sony
one ... no one xuill thank
Lane for
his book.” But many people did
—
including Norman Mailer, xuho con-
cluded
his reviexu in Book Week xuith a
hurrah:
“Three cheers for Mark Lane.
His xuork
is not without a trace of that
stature
we call heroic. . . . Lane’s book
proves
once and forever that the assassi-
nation of
President Kennedy is more of a
mystery
today than xuhen it occurred.”
He called
Lane's 400 pages of evidence
“staggering
facts. ... If one tenth of
them
should prove to be significant, then
the xuork
of the Warren Commission xuill
be judged
by history to be a scandal
worse
than Teapot Dome.”
The hub of all this con trox>ersy ,
Mark Lane, xuas born 39 years ago in
Nexu York City, xuhere he has lived
most
of his life. Currently, hoxuever, he
travels
through Europe and America lecturing
on the assassination, frequently
appear-
ing on TV and radio talk shoxus, and
stopping
off occasionally in Denmark
with his
young xuife, xuhom he met xuhile
in
Copenhagen three years ago. They
plan to
settle in California shortly.
After
serving in Army Intelligence
during
World War Txuo, Lane attended
Long
Island University and received his
laxu
degree from Brooklyn Laxu School.
For 12
years he practiced law from a
storefront
in East Harlem; then, in 1958,
he gained
local prominence xuhen he
charged
that young people confined in
Nexu York
State homes for the menially
defective
xuere being brutally treated by
attendants.
Governor Rockefeller opened
hearings
on the issue, and a number of
guards
xuere dismissed. In 1960, Lane
xuas
elected to the Nexu York State Assem-
bly,
representing the black-ancl-xuhite
ghettos
of East Harlem and Yorkville.
He ran
with the strong endorsement
of
Eleanor Roosevelt and Senator Her-
bert
Lehman, xuith xuhom he had
earlier
helped establish a reform move-
ment
within the Nexu York Democratic
Party ; He also had the endorsement
of Senator John F. Kennedy, who
moved into the White House at the same
time Lane attended his first legislative
session in Albany. In 1961,
Lane became
the first legislator to be arrested on
a
Freedom Ride — in Jackson, Mississippi.
After
txuo stormy years in the state as-
sembly,
he found himself ostracized as
a
troublemaker by a bipartisan pre-
ponderance
of his fellow assemblymen,
and did
not run for re-election.
When
President Kennedy xuas assassi-
nated,
Lane initiated xuhat his supporters
have
termed “his lonely crusade.” His
involvement
began in December, xuhen
Mrs. Marguerite Osxuald appointed him
— at no fee — to represent her dead
son’s
interests at the Warren Commission
hear-
ings. The Commission refused to accept
Lane as a defense attorney, but it did
permit him to testify. Thus began his
three-year
investigation — independent,
if not
impartial — into the circumstances
surrounding
President Kennedy’s assas-
sination.
Lane traveled to Dallas eight
limes,
interviewing scores of xuitnesses,
assisted
by a group of amateur investiga-
tors xuho
called themselves the “Citizens’
Committee
of Inquiry.” The fruits of his
researches
and his conclusions comprise
his book
“Rush to Judgment” — and a
film of
the same title to be released this
month.
playboy
interviewed Lane in his txuo-
and-a-half-room
xualk-up apartment in
Lower
Manhattan. We began by asking
q for his
thoughts on the integrity of the
I Warrcn
Commission.
^
PLAYBOY: Iii your book, you wrote that
the
Warren Commission — composed of
some of
the most distinguished figures
in
American life — “covered itself with
pi
shame.” Are you accusing the Commis-
sion of
lying to the American people?
LANE: I
would not care to say that the
Commission
lied, but — however distin-
guished
its members may be — it did is-
sue a
false report. I know this because I
carefully
compared the one-volume Re-
port with
the 26 volumes of evidence
that
“supports” it and, in many cases, I
found no
relationship whatever between
the
Commission’s conclusions and the
Commission’s
evidence. The most inno-
cent
interpretation, of its shortcomings,
as Hugh
Trevor-Roper expresses it in his
introduction
to my book, is that the Com-
mission
members did what some poor
historians
do: They start with a
precon-
ceived theory — in this case, that
Oswald
was the lone assassin of President Ken-
nedy — and
sort out all the evidence
supporting
that theory, in the process un-
consciously
rejecting any contradictory
fact or
interpretation. I don’t know if
that’s
what happened here, but it’s one
explanation
and, compared with some
of the
other theories that have been ad-
vanced to
account for the Commission’s
behavior,
a relatively comforting one.
PLAYBOY:
Haven’t your critics accused
you of
committing the same sin you im-
pute to
the Commission — selecting from
the mass
of testimony those facts that
agree
with your preconceptions and dis-
carding
the rest?
LANE:
Yes. But my book is far more thor-
oughly
documented than the Warren
Commission
Report, and none of the
hundreds
of book reviewers across the
country
who’ve examined it has yet been
able to
discover a single inaccuracy, dis-
tortion
or out-of-context statement. And
let me
add right here that the statements
I will
make in this interview are based
either on
the Warren Commission’s 26
volumes
of evidence or on filmed inter-
views I
conducted in Dallas that will ap-
pear in
the documentary film Rush to
Judgment
that I made with Emile de
Antonio.
So I don’t expect you to pro-
ceed with
me on faith.
PLAYBOY:
You concluded in your book
that the
Warren Commission’s “criteria
for
investigating and accepting evidence
were
related less to the intrinsic value of
the
information than to its paramount
need to
allay fears of conspiracy.” Do
you
believe there was a conspiracy to kill
President
Kennedy?
LANE: Yes, I do. A conspiracy, as
defined
by the law, is simply two or more per-
sons acting in concert to secure an
illegal
end. There were at least two assassins.
The evidence is conclusive on that
score.
44 The
Commission wanted to disprove a
conspiracy,
and this desire defeated its
investigative
function. Remember, a
Gallup
poll taken shortly after the assas-
sination
revealed that the majority of
Americans
believed there was no lone
assassin,
but an organized plot to kill the
President.
It was this public fear of a
conspiracy,
and all it implied, that the
Commission
was determined to allay.
One of
the Commission’s members, John
J.
McCloy, said it was vital for the Com-
mission
to “show the world that America
is not a
banana republic, where a gov-
ernment
can be changed, by conspiracy.”
And
another member, Senator John
Sherman
Cooper, said right at the outset
that one
of the Commission’s major tasks
was “to
lift the cloud of doubts that had
been cast
over American institutions.”
PLAYBOY:
What was so wrong about the
Commission’s
trying to dispel false con-
spiracy
rumors?
LANE:
Nothing, if the rumors were false.
The
trouble was that from the very be-
ginning
the Commission operated on the
assumption
that Oswald did it and did it
alone,
and relegated all facts to the con-
trary
into this “false rumor” category. In
other
words, the Commission had con-
cluded
who killed Kennedy before they
even
began their investigation.
PLAYBOY:
Let's get down to the facts of
the
assassination. One of the
main points
of your book is that the fatal shot was
not fired from the sixth-floor window
of
the Book Depository, as the Warren
Commission concludes. -Do you have
any
evidence that shots came from
somewhere
else?
LANE: The
Warren Commission said un-
equivocally
that there was no credible
evidence
even suggesting that the shots
came from
anyplace else. This is vital to
their
whole case, because if the shots did
originate
from two locations, Oswald
couldn’t
have been the “lone assassin.”
Let’s
look at the evidence. When tiie
President
was shot, his limousine had
passed
the Book Depository. To the right
and in
front of the Presidential limou-
sine was
a grassy knoll topped by
a wooden
fence. Some time before the
motorcade
reached the area, a young
woman
named Julia Ann Mercer saw a
truck at
tiie base of the grassy knoll,
illegally
parked halfway up on the side-
walk,
protruding into Elm Street and
partially
blocking traffic. Dallas police-
men were
standing a short distance away,
but they
didn’t move the truck on.
Miss
Mercer saw a man leave the truck and
climb the grassy knoll. Another man re-
mained in the truck. She drove off, and
the truck was gone before the motorcade
appeared. In an affidavit for the
Dallas
sheriff’s office, she later said that
the man
was carrying “what appeared to be a gun
case” about three and a half to four
feet
long. Miss Mercer was never called as a
witness or even questioned by the Com-
mission. All we have is her affidavit,
signed before the Dallas sheriff’s
depart-
ment on November 22. I have not been
able to find her. She’s no longer in
Dallas.
PLAYBOY:
But this is just one woman’s
testimony.
LANE:
Yes, we begin with just one wom-
an’s
testimony, but let me show how it
fits into
a pattern of evidence proving
that at
least one of the shots was fired at
the
President from the grassy knoll. A
railroad man named Lee Bowers was in
a railroad tower overlooking the knoll,
and he testified that he saw two men
standing behind the wooden fence just
before the shots were fired. Bowers did
appear
before the Commission and he
testified
that the moment firing broke
out
something attracted his attention to
the
fence. He described it as “something
. . .
which was out of the ordinary,
which
attracted my eye for some reason,
which I
could not identify.” When asked
for
details, he said he had seen “nothing
that I could
pinpoint as having hap-
pened
that ” Here he was inter-
rupted by
a Commission lawyer. When l
subsequently
conducted a filmed and
tape-recorded
interview with Mr. Bowers
in
Dallas, I told him that for a year and
a half
I’d wondered what the end of that
sentence
was about to be. He told me,
“Yes, I was interrupted by the
Commis-
sion lawyers. Evidently they didn’t
want
to get the facts. I was just going to
tell
that at the time the shots were fired,
I
looked at the fence and saw a puff of
smoker or flash of light, -just- when
the
shots were fired.” Bowers gave me a de-
scription of the two men on the knoll
that
dovetails with the description Julia
Ann
Mercer gave the Dallas sheriff’s
office of
the two men in the truck. And
another
witness, J. C. Price, a
post office
employee, told the Dallas sheriff’s
office,
minutes after the assassination, that
he
was standing on top of the Terminal
Annex Building on Dealey Plaza — over-
looking the route of the Presidential
motorcade — when the shots were fired.
Price later told me that when he heard
gunfire, his attention was instantly
drawn
to the grassy knoll. In an interview with
me, he
said he saw a man run from be-
hind the
wooden fence and dash across
a parking
lot, disappearing behind the
Book
Depository. Price also said the man
was
carrying something in his hand that
could
have been a gun.
PLAYBOY:
So you have three witnesses
who
contradict the Commission's conclu-
sion that
the shots came only from the
Book
Depository. 'Why are you sure
these
three are right, and all the witness-
es the
Warren Commission relied on are
wrong?
LANE-. There are many more than three.
For example, three railroad employees
were standing on a railroad bridge run-
ning across Elm Street above and in
front of the Presidential limousine.
They
all said to me in filmed and taped
inter-
views, or to Federal or local
authorities,
that the moment they heard shots they
looked at the grassy knoll, because the
shots seemed to originate there. And
each one of these three men, independ-
ently, said he saw a pufF of white
smoke
coming from behind the wooden fence.
A Dallas police officer, who was among
the first to arrive behind the fence
just
after the shooting, said he smelled
gun-
powder there, and Senator Ralph Yar-
borough of Texas stated that when his
car passed the grassy knoll after the
shooting, he also smelled gunpowder. In
fact, the
majority of witnesses to the
assassination
who could place the shots
said — to
the Federal or local police, or
in their
testimony — that the shots came
from
behind the wooden fence.
PLAYBOY:
The majority? Can you give us
a
numerical breakdown?
LANE: There were 90 witnesses to the
assassination who were questioned and
who were able to give an assessment of
the origin of the shots. Of those, 58 —
or
almost two thirds — said the shots came
from behind the wooden fence on the
grassy knoll. I think the most
significant
fact here was the immediate reaction of
witnesses to the shots. Twenty-five
wit-
nesses gave statements to the FBI or
the
Dallas police on November 22 and 23,
and of those, 22 said the shots came
from behind the wooden fence on the
knoll, not from the Book Depository.
And there
were many others who never
made
statements but by their own ac-
tions
indicated that the shots Came irom
the
knoll. For example, 17 Dallas deputy
sheriffs
ran right past the Book Deposi-
tory just
as the shots were fired, and
rushed
behind the wooden fence to be-
gin their
search. One Dallas policeman,
J. M. Smith,
ran to the parking lot be-
hind the
knoll and there encountered a
stranger
who produced credentials to
show he
was a Secret Service agent.
Smith
couldn’t subsequently recall the
man’s
name, but his account is more or
less
corroborated by two other Dallas
officers.
However, Sylvia Meagher, an
independent
investigator, found after
painstaking
research that there were no
Secret
Service agents around the knoll or
parking
lot at that time and
suggested
that an assassin may have escaped using
fake Secret Service credentials. Certainly
something
was going on in that area.
The
Dallas police even established a
command
post behind the fence on the
knoll,
and they maintained it for more
than two
and a half hours. So there is
overwhelming
evidence that at least one
shot came
from the knoll.
PLAYBOY:
But didn’t the Commission have
eyewitness
evidence that shots did come
from the
sixth-floor window of the Book
Depository?
LANE: The
Commission had one “star”
witness
who testified that a man fired
from that
window. He was Howard L.
Brennan,
a / 15-year-old steamfitter.
There was
some other evidence that
shots
came from there, but it was vague
and
frequently contradictory, so the
Commission
relied largely on the testi-
mony of
Brennan. He told the
Commis-
sion he was seated on a concrete wall
across the street from the Book Deposi-
tory, 107 feet from the building and
about 120 feet from the sixth-floor
win-
dow. The
Commission concluded that
this
placed him “in an excellent position
to
observe anyone in the window.” Bren-
nan said
he heard a noise he at first
thought
was a motorcycle backfire — so,
naturally,
he looked up to the sixth floor
of the
Depository, and saw a man stand-
ing
behind the window firing a rifle.
Brennan
signed an affidavit to that effect
on November 22, swearing that the man
in the window “was standing up and
resting against the left window sill.”
However,
the Commission concluded
the
window was open only at the bot-
tom. So
if Oswald, or anybody else, fired
through
that window from a standing
position,
he would have had to fire
through
the glass — which was unbroken.
The
Commission slithered out of this
one by
determining that “although Bren-
nan
testified that the man in the window
was
standing when he fired the shots,
most probably he was either sitting or
kneeling.” The reason they gave was
that the
window ledge was only about a
foot and
a half from the floor, thus creat-
ing the
illusion from the street below
that a
person was standing rather than
sitting
or kneeling behind the window.
But Brennan himself invalidated this
explanation, for he swore he saw the
man both stand up and sit down — and
withdraw from the window more than
once. In any case, here we have the
Commission contradicting its own star
witness on a vital point of his
testimony
— the position of the assassin at the
time
of the crime.
PLAYBOY:
Important as it may be, this is
just one
point, on which anyone could be
mistaken.
Was Brennan’s testimony in-
consistent
in other respects?
LANE:
Yes, it was. When Brennan was
taken to
the police line-up on November
22, (o
pick out the man he claimed to
have seen
in the window, Oswald was
in
the line-up, but Brennan failed to make
a positive identification. When Brennan
later
testified before the Commission, he
said he
had known it was Oswald all
along —
but didn’t select him from the
police
line-up because of his fear that
the
assassination was a Communist plot
and “if
it got to be a known fact that I
was an
eyewitness, my family or I, either
one,
might not be safe,” In other words,
Brennan admitted to the Commission
that he had deliberately lied to the
Dal-
las police on November 22 when he told
them he could not definitely identify
Os-
wald in the line-up. And yet the Com-
mission
chose to believe his subsequent
identification
of Oswald as the man in
the
window. In any court of law, Bren-
nan would
almost certainly have been
discredited
as a witness. The Commis-
sion
concluded that Brennan was
able
to identify a man standing behind a
half-
closed window 120 feet away from him.
This was
the Commission’s star witness
to
support their conclusion that Lee
Harvey
Oswald fired at the President
from the
sixth-floor window of the Book
Depository.
PLAYBOY:
Do you think that no shots
actually
came from the Depository?
LANE:
It’s not as simple as that. I believe
there is
no convincing evidence that Os-
wald
fired a gun from the sixth-floor
window of
the Book Depository or any-
where
else on the day of the assassina-
tion; but
I’m not contending that it was
impossible
for any shots to have come
from that
window. Certainly some
shots
were fired from a location somewhere
behind the limousine. All I’m saying is
that shots also came from the grassy
knoll, and to prove that shots came
from the knoll is not to disprove that
shots may
have come from elsewhere as
well. But
this is most inconvenient for
the
Government’s case, because it means
there
must have been at least two assas-
sins,
since Oswald couldn’t fire at the
President
from both the grassy knoll and
the
Depository Building. So even if he
was
involved — and there’s not sufficient
proof
that he was — he must have had an
accomplice.
This means the Commis-
sion’s
“single assassin” theory flies right
out the
window- — --along with., I might
add,
their conclusion that there is no
credible
evidence that the shots came
from
anywhere but the Book Depository.
The evidence proves that some shots —
including the fatal one — came from be-
hind the wooden fence on the grassy
knoll.
PLAYBOY:
Is there any physical evidence
to back
up this assertion?
LANE:
Yes; the effect of the fatal shot on
the
President himself. Hie spectator per-
haps
closest to the President when the
fatal
bullet struck was Charles
Brehm, a
Dallas salesman. He was standing about
20 feet
away, to the left of the limousine,
facing
the grassy knoll. Brehm was inter-
viewed on
television in Dallas, and I
spoke
with him later. He told me
in a
filmed interview that a portion of the
President’s skull was driven back and
sharply to the left, over the rear of
the
President’s car. Unless the laws of phys-
ics were
temporarily suspended, this
offers
impressive corroboration for those
who say
the shot came from the right
front of
the car — in substantially the op-
posite
direction from the Depository.
PLAYBOY: Did the Commission call Brehm
as a witness?
LANE: No, lie was never called as a
wit-
ness, and no Commission lawyer ever
questioned him.
PLAYBOY:
Is there any photographic evi-
dence to
support your contention that 45
the fatal
shot came from the right front
of the
Presidential limousine?
LANE: Yes, there is. There’s an eight-
millimeter motion picture taken by a
Dallas amateur photographer, Abraham
Zapruder, some frames of which were
published in Life. It was taken while
the
shots were being fired. Frame 313 of
the
film — which appears in Volume 18 of
the Commission’s evidence — shows the
President just as the fatal shot struck
his head. An examination of the two
sub-
sequent frames — 314 and 315 — would
reveal whether he was driven backward
or forward by the impact of the bullet.
As the
frames are presented in the 26
volumes,
they seem to support the Com-
mission’s
contention that the shots came
from the
rear — that the President was
suddenly
driven forward. But the
Com-
mission created that illusion by trans-
posing frames 314 and 315, and by
mislabeling them. Actually, the
original
film shows that the President xuas
driven
back and to the left. One of our
investi-
gators analyzed the Commission frames
and wrote to J. Edgar Hoover pointing
out the deception. Mr. Hoover replied —
well, here’s the letter. Read it
yourself.
PLAYBOY: The letter, on FBI stationery
and signed “John Edgar Hoover, Direc-
tor,” reads, in part: “You are correct
in
the observation that frames labeled 314
and 315 of Commission Exhibit 885 are
transposed in Volume 18 as noted in
your letter.”
LANE:
There’s another interesting aspect
of the
Zapruder film: The Commission
published
most of the frames, but they
failed to
publish frames 208 to 211. A
street
sign visible in frame 207 is only
partially
visible in frame 212, because
Zapruder
panned his camera to photo-
graph the
moving Presidential limousine.
In frame
212, sharp lines of stress sud-
denly
appear on the back of the sign
— which
stood in a direct line of sight
between
the grassy knoll and the
Presidential
limousine — and the lines
lengthen
and deepen in succeeding
frames.
They appear to radiate from a
spot in
the lower left portion of the sign,
but that
portion is no longer visible by
the time
frame 212 was photographed.
These
stress lines appear to be the result
of the
impact of a bullet. Thus,
what the
Commission failed to publish — frames
208 to 211 — could well be photographs
of a
portion of the sign struck by a bullet
fired
from the grassy knoll: This sign
was
removed from Dealey Plaza just
after the
assassination and has since
disappeared.
The question of these
miss-
ing frames was brought before one of
the Commission’s lawyers last year by
David Lifton, a graduate engineering
student and an associate of the
Citizens’
Committee of Inquiry. The lawyer was so
concerned
that he wrote to Lee Rankin
and
Norman Redlich, two other Com-
mission
attorneys, admitting that Lifton's
evaluation
of the stress signs as a result
of bullet
impact “seemed plausible to
me.” This
Commission attorney com-
mented:
“1 have no recollection that any-
body
considered what happened to the
sign, or
that anybody was aware of the
fact that
the frames were omitted, or
that
there were peculiar marks on the
back of
the sign.” He understood the sig-
nificance
of the stress marks quite clear-
ly, for
he added: “Since Oswald could
not have
fired fast enough to have hit
the sign
with one shot at frame 208 and
the
President with another shot before
frame
225, when the President came out
from
behind the sign, the notion is that
someone
else must have been firing at
the
President, too.” Mr. Redlich’s
reply
was typical: “All of the evidence which
we have indicates quite conclusively that
no shots were fired from the front.” In
other words, since we start with the im-
mutable presumption that Oswald was
the lone assassin, firing from the rear,
all contrary evidence must be dismissed.
playboy-.
Is there any evidence that some
shots
could have come from other loca-
tions,
such as the railroad overpass?
LANE:
Some shots may have originated
from
other locations. My only point is
that it’s
impossible to conclude there was
a lone
assassin, Oswald or anyone else,
after we
determine that even one shot
originated
elsewhere. But I don’t see how
shots
could have been fired from the rail-
road
overpass without attracting the at-
tention
of the numerous witnesses there.
They
would have seen and heard some-
one
firing a rifle, since there is no easy
place to
hide on the overpass. But
I do
believe shots came from both the front
and the rear. It’s possible that some
shots
from the rear originated in the
building
housing the Dallas sheriff’s department
— as at least one eyewitness, Charles
Brehm, told me he thought at the time.
But let
me make clear that to say shots
might
have come from that building is
not to
imply a sheriff or policeman fired
them —
any more than the Commission’s
conclusion
that shots came from the
Book
Depository Building implicates
any
publishing firms with offices there.
Let's
just say that Dallas law-enforce-
ment
officers -would hardly be eager to
investigate
the possibility that the Presi-
dent of
the United States was shot from
one of their
own buildings.
PLAYBOY:
Are you charging, in effect, that
the
Warren Commission lied — by ignor-
ing all
evidence to the contrary — when it
concluded
that the President was shot
only from
the sixth-floor window of the
Book
Depository?
LANE:
“Lied” is not my word. After
all,
as news media have assured us for three
years now, the members of the Warren
Commission are all honorable men. But
concerning
Oswald’s presence in that
window,
there is one piece of crucial evi-
dence
that could prove fairly conclu-
sively
whether he was there or not. A
few
seconds before the first shot hit the
President,
a Polaroid photograph was
taken of
the Presidential limousine. It
was
developed on the scene, and
shows
the sixth-floor window of the Book De-
pository moments before the shots were
fired. The picture was taken by a
Dallas
resident named Mary Moorman. The 26
volumes
contain a report from a Dallas
deputy
sheriff, John Wiseman, who
requisitioned
the picture from Miss
Moorman.
On November 23, Wiseman
reported
to the Dallas sheriff’s depart-
ment that
he had looked at the picture—
but he
was never asked what it showed.
His
affidavit does state that the photo
shows the
window' where the gunman
was
alleged to have been firing, but it
doesn’t
mention whether anyone is in
the
window'. This picture was turned
over by
the Dallas deputy sheriff to
agents of
the Secret Service. It has never
been
published. No one will say where
it is. It
is not available in the National
Archives.
Presumably, the Government
has it
somewhere, but nobody is talking.
I think
it’s safe to assume that if this
photo,
taken a few seconds before the
shots
were fired, showed Lee Oswald or
anyone
else shooting at the President
from the
Depository window, it would
probably
have been published on the
cover of
the Warren Commission Report.
Certainly
it would have been published
somewhere
as irrefutable proof of Os-
wald’s
guilt — and the origin of at least
some of
the shots. In light of the picture’s
suppression,
you can draw your own
conclusions
as to what it did or did not
show'.
PLAYBOY:
Did the nature of President
Kennedy’s
wounds shed any light on the
origin of
the shots?
LANE:
That’s a key question. Remember
at the
moment the first shot was fired,
President Kennedy was facing to his
front and to his right — toward the
grassy
knoll. Even the
Commission concedes
this.
Now, if the bullet that struck his
throat
came from the knoll, then the
wound
would have to be an entrance
wound. On
the other hand, if the bullet
came from
the Book Depository Build-
ing,
behind the Presidential limousine,
then it
would have to be an exit wound.
Every doctor at Dallas’ Parkland Hos-
pital who examined the wound in
President Kennedy’s throat and made a
statement to the press on the day of
the
assassination said the throat wound was
an entrance w'ound. That means the
bullet entered from the front. As I said,
the
Commission itself concedes that the
President
was looking in the general
direction
of the knoll at that moment.
Thus, the
medical evidence supports the
eyewitness
testimony of people in Dealey
Plaza
that some shots — at least this shot
— came
from the grassy knoll.
PLAYBOY: But the Warren Commission
later concluded that the throat wound
was, in fact, an exit wound, supporting
their conclusion that the shots came
from the Book Depository.
LANE:
Sure they did. But just saying it’s
so
doesn’t make it so, even when it’s
said by —
as I think you called them —
“some of
die most distinguished figures
in
American life.” The fact is, the Com-
mission’s
conclusion that the wound was
an exit
wound was as questionable as the
rest of
their findings. They reached it
because
they had to; otherwise their
whole
case against Oswald as the lone
assassin
would fall apart. And to make
their
exit-wound conclusion stick, they
conveniently
disposed of — or ignored — all
the
embarrassing contradictory evidence.
PLAYBOY: If the throat wound w'as an
en-
trance wound, what happened to the
bullet? None was found in the Presi-
dent’s body.
LANE:
Whether or not a bullet remained
in the
President’s body can best, perhaps
only, be
determined by an examination
of the
autopsy X rays. But that evidence
—
constituting at law “the best evidence”
— has
been suppressed, and we
are left
with the opinions of military
physicians.
The
medical authorities who conducted
the
autopsy at the Bethesda, Maryland,
Naval
Hospital took one roll of 120 film,
22 color
photographs, 18 black-and-
white
prints, and 11 X rays of the Presi-
dent’s
body. Those photographs and X
rays
could answer the question of where
the
bullets came from. Naval
Command-
er J. }. Humes, the doctor at the Naval
Hospital who had the photos taken to
assist him in determining the path of
the bullet through the President’s
body,
testified they were taken from him by
agents of the Secret Service before
they
were even developed. The X rays and
photographs have never been seen by
any member of the Warren Commission,
nor by any of its attorneys. This in-
credible fact is reluctantly
corroborated
by former Commission Counsel Arlen
Specter, in an interview in the October
10, 1966, issue of U.S. Nexus &
World
Report. You’ll
recall that the where-
abouts of
the photos was unknowm until
early
last November, when, according
to The
Nezu York Times of November
2, the
Justice Department “disclosed
that
photographs and X rays
taken of
President Kennedy’s body at the autopsy
after his assassination were turned
over
to the National Archives ... by the
Kennedy family.” It’s comforting to
learn
that the photos haven’t dis-
appeared,
but no non-Government in-
vestigator
will be able to examine the
material
for at least five years. Anyway,
the main
point is not what the photos
and X
rays show, but why the Warren
Commission
never tried to secure them
in the
first place. The Commission’s
failure
to examine them epitomizes their
inadequate
investigation. If they had
done
everything else perfectly, this one
vital
omission would still be enough to
discredit
their work.
PLAYBOY:
Why didn’t the Warren 47
Commission
ask to examine the photos
q and X
rays?
LANE: I
don’t know. Perhaps they thought
® that
the evidence might confuse them.
It might
even interfere with their tidy
gj
preconceptions. When President
Jolin-
^ son was asked this at a press conference,
he replied, “I think every American can
understand the reasons why we wouldn’t
want to have the garments, the records
and everything paraded out in every
sewing circle in the country to be ex-
ploited and used without serving any
good or official purpose.” Well, no one
has
suggested that the evidence be
utilized
in that fashion — merely that the
Commission
should have seen the evi-
dence
before they signed their Report.
playboy:
What did the doctors who con-
ducted
the autopsy say about the Presi-
dent’s
wounds?
LANE: At first, nothing — for the simple
reason that the Government silenced
them. Humes, who conducted the autop-
sy, told a New York Times reporter he
‘‘had been forbidden to talk” by agents
of the FBI. Doctors at Parkland Hospital
who originally said the throat wound
was an entrance wound were similarly
visited by the FBI and told to make no
more public statements. In fact, if you
turn to
Volume 17 of the Warren Com-
mission
testimony, you’ll find a most ex-
traordinary
certificate written by Dr.
Humes. It
reads: “I, James J. Humes,
certify that I have destroyed by
burning
certain preliminary draft notes
relating
to Naval Medical School Autopsy Re-
port A63-272 . . .” Think about this
for a
moment. Here we have a com-
mander in
the United States Navy, who
is also a
doctor, assigned to perform the
autopsy
on the assassinated President of
the
United States, burning his
draft notes
on the autopsy — really, our notes —
and being silenced by the FBI. And we
have crucial evidence, the X rays and
photographs, never examined by the
Commission. If
Oswald was the lone assas-
sin, if
all the shots, came from the Book
Depository,
if everything is as cut and
dried as
the Commission assures us it is,
then why
the mystery? Why the official
suppression?
Are we really 17 years
from
1984? If you wonder why Dr. Humes
burned his notes, I refer you to the state-
ment of
one of the most inventive of the
Warren
Commission lawyers, Arlen
Specter,
in that interview with U. S.
News A*
World Report. Here Specter
explains
that Humes “had never per-
formed an
autopsy on a President” be-
fore. No
doubt he was out on a house
call when
Roosevelt died, and therefore
lacked
the prerequisite experience that
would
have taught him that valuable
Government
documents are not to be
destroyed.
PLAYBOY:
Have you tried to reach Humes
yourself
to find out why he burned his
48 notes?
LANE: I wrote to him but never received
an answer.
PLAYBOY:
Is there any physical evidence
to
support the Commission’s conclusion
that
Oswald was the lone assassin?
LANE:
Only Exhibit number 399.
PLAYBOY:
Which is?
LANE:
Exhibit 399 of the Warren Com-
mission
Report is a bullet that is the
only
substantial link between the assassi-
nation
and the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle
the
Commission claims belonged to Os-
wald.
There are some bullet fragments
that the
Commission also attempted to
link to
the Mannlicher-Carcano, but the
whole
body of ballistics literature dem-
onstrates
that they are valueless for pur-
poses of
identification. The significance
of
Exhibit 399, however, goes beyond
the fact
that it was used in an effort to
tie
Oswald to the murder. The
Commis-
sion’s whole single-assassin theory
rests
on the fact that this bullet hit both
Presi-
dent Kennedy and Governor Connally.
PLAYBOY: Why?
LANE: Because the Zapruder film shows
that the maximum time that could have
separated the wounding of the President
and of the governor was 1.8 seconds.
The
expert who tested the alleged assas-
sination
weapon for the Government said
it required a minimum of 2.3 seconds
simply to work the bolt of the Carcano
rifle. This was
the minimum interval be-
tween the
two shots, not including the
time
necessary to aim; thus Oswald could
not liave
fired twice in less than 2.3 sec-
onds. But
the Warren Commission was
faced
with the demonstrable fact that, at
most,
only 1.8 seconds elapsed between
the time
President Kennedy was shot and
the time
the governor, who was sitting on
a
jump-seat in front of Kennedy, was hit.
This meant the shot that wounded Gov-
ernor Connally was fired by somebody
else. As the Commission’s own counsel,
J. Lee Rankin, put it: “To say that they
were hit by separate bullets is synony-
mous with saying that there were two as-
sassins.” The
Commission resolved this
dilemma
with an imaginative invention:
that one
bullet struck the President in
the back
of his neck, exited through the
front of
his throat, and then struck
the
governor, whose reaction to being
wounded
was delayed. The bullet passed
into the
governor’s back, shattering his
fifth rib
into multiple fragments, exited
through
his chest, and passed through
his right
wrist, smashing the wristbone,
struck
his thighbone and lodged in his
left
thigh. The bullet that did all this.
Exhibit
399, is an almost pure, pristine,
undamaged
bullet. If you look at its
photograph
in the Warren Report, you’ll
see that
it isn’t even dented!
PLAYBOY: You mean this bullet made sev-
en wounds in two men, breaking three
different bones, and wasn’t materially
damaged in the process?
LANE: I don’t mean it — the Warren Com-
mission means it! I think the suggestion
is
preposterous — and so did
several of
the doctors who examined Connally and
his X rays at Parkland and Bethesda.
PLAYBOY:
Isn’t it barely possible that a
bullet
could do everything the Commis-
sion says
this one did and yet emerge
unscathed?
LANE: Not
even barely, I’m afraid. The
Commission’s
own experts fired other
bullets
from the Carcano into a variety
of
substances, and in each case the bullet
came out
deformed. And the Com-
mission
never tried to have one bullet do
everything
that they claim number 399
did. One
Commission expert, Dr. Alfred
G.
Olivier, a veterinarian, fired a bullet
through a
gelatin block supposedly rep-
resenting
the President’s neck. He wasn’t
asked
about the condition of the bullet
when it
emerged. He also fired a bullet
through
the carcass of a goat, supposed-
ly
simulating Governor Connally’s back
and
chest. That bullet was “quite flat-
tened,”
he testified. Then he fired a
bullet
into the Wrist of a corpse, and
testified
with pride that he had created a
fracture
in the cadaver almost identical
with the
fracture suffered by Governor
Connally.
He also testified, however, that
the spent
bullet from the cadaver was
not like
number 399 at all. He said,
“Commission Exhibit 399 is not
flattened
on the end. This one is very severely
flattened on the end.”
PLAYBOY: Did the bullet fragments found
in the governor’s wrist, rib and thigh
match Exhibit 399?
LANE: Of
course not. How do you put a
jigsaw
puzzle together if someone throws
in a few
extra pieces? Dr. Shaw, who
examined Connally, testified that there
seemed to be more than three grains of
metal from the bullet lodged in the
governor’s wrist wound, and still more
fragments were found in his thighbone.
But according to FBI tests, less than
three grains of metal all told are missing
from Exhibit 399. Time magazine, on
September
16, 1966, summed it up this
way: “The
bullet offered sufficient
grounds
to make the single-bullet theory
suspect.
. . . Medical men
testified that
it could not have done so much damage
to Connally and emerged in such good
shape.”
PLAYBOY:
The bullet in question, accord-
ing to
the Warren Report, was found on
Governor
Connally’s stretcher at Park-
land
Hospital. If it didn’t fall out of his
body,
where did it come from?
LANE: Who
knows? First of all, the War-
ren
Commission artfully distorted the
testimony
of the senior engineer at the
hospital,
Darrell C. Tomlinson, to con-
clude
that the bullet was in fact discov-
ered on
Connally’s stretcher. However,
if you
read Tomlinson’s testimony for
yourself,
you’ll find all he would ever say
was that
he saw it roll from a stretcher
that was
left in the hospital corridor. He
didn’t
know if it was Governor Connally’s
stretcher,
President Kennedy’s stretcher
or even
the siretcher of some totally un-
related
patient. Remember, many
people
bad access to the hospital that day;
even
Jack Ruby was there, according to two
reliable witnesses, including Scripps-
Howard newsman Seth Kantor, who tes-
tified that he talked to Ruby there.
The
Commission, of course, disregarded his
testimony.
PLAYBOY:
Do you think Ruby — or some-
one else
— planted this bullet on the
stretcher
to incriminate Oswald?
LANE:
That certainly is a possibility
that
should be examined, since it would
account
for a lot of baffling things about
Exhibit
S99 — including the pristine con-
dition of
the bullet after supposedly
smashing
the bodies and bones of two
men.
playboy:
Couldn’t there be a more in-
nocent
explanation for the contradic-
tions
surrounding this bullet than that
it was
deliberately planted as part ol a
conspiracy
to frame Oswald?
LANE:
Perhaps. But none seems appar-
ent. The
more I’ve studied the whole
question
of Exhibit 399, the more fan-
tastic it
becomes. For example, two
declassified FBI autopsy reports, dated
December 9, 1965, and January 13, 1964,
were
recently discovered in the National
Archives
in Washington. They state
flatly
that the bullet in question entered Presi-
dent Kennedy’s back — not his neck,
mind you, as the Commission claims —
and did not continue through his body.
The FBI
agents who attended the autop-
sy
reported that Commander Humes
said then
— whatever he may have since
claimed
to the contrary — that there was
“no point
of exit”; that the bullet
pene-
trated the President’s back a very short
distance. The two FBI agents, James
W. Sibert and Francis X. O’Neill, who
were present during the autopsy at
Bethesda Naval Hospital, said that Dr.
Humes probed the back wound with his
finger and determined that the bullet
had traveled “a short distance, inasmuch
as the
end of the opening could be felt
with the
finger.” Since no bullet was in
the
President’s back and “there was no
point of
exit,” the agents said Humes was
puzzled
as to the whereabouts of the
bullet.
After being informed that a bullet
was “found
on a stretcher’ at Parkland
Hospital
— presumably the President’s
stretcher
— and that the President had
been
subjected to external cardiac mas-
sage
there, “Dr. Humes stated
that the
pattern was clear that the one bullet
had
entered the President’s back and had
worked its way out of the body during
external cardiac massage.” This expla-
nation
appears to be corroborated by
Colonel Finck, another physician
present
at the autopsy, wdio was quoted by
Secret
Service agent Roy Kellcrman, also pres-
ent during the autopsy, as having said,
“There arc no lanes for an outlet of
this
entry in this man’s shoulder.” Perhaps
this
explains why Commander Humes
&
decided to burn his original notes after
@ the
Commission’s theory contradicted
what he
had written down. Not only is
® this a
further indication that the au-
!>«
topsy records were tampered with before
gg
publication in the Warren Report but
it also
rebuts the Commission’s fantasy
about
Exhibit 399 hitting both President
&
Kennedy and Governor Connally. In
addition,
Governor Connally himself
said on a CBS television show on Sep-
tember 27, 1964: “I understand there is
some question in the minds of the ex-
perts about whether or not we could
both have been hit by the same bullet
. . . the first bullet. I just don’t hap-
pen to believe that. I won’t believe it,
never will believe it, because, again, I
heard the first shot, I recognized it for
what I thought it was. I had time to
turn to try to see what had happened.
I was in the process of turning again be-
fore I felt the impact of a bullet.” Mrs.
Connally, who was seated next to the
governor, also swears President Ken-
nedy was hit before her husband and
by a separate bullet. The Warren Com-
mission
chose to ignore their testimony
— and if
they weren’t dealing with the
governor
of Texas, the Commission
would probably have impeached Con-
nally ’s integrity, as they did with less
prominent nonconforming witnesses.
And
here’s something I just found out:
I
recently spent several hours in the
studios
of WNEW-TV here in Manhat-
tan,
searching for footage for a docu-
mentary
program, and in their library
I
found what may be the sole remaining
video tape of the press conference held
in Dallas’ Parkland Hospital on the after-
noon of the assassination. This particular
film was taped by Station WFAA-TV in
Dallas, an ABC affiliate. WFAA and all
the other local stations were visited after
the assassination by FBI and Secret Serv-
ice agents and asked to surrender all their
tapes of the hospital news conference.
But this film segment was flown to New
York, sr'on after the assassination and
gathered dust in WNEW’s files for three
years, apparently without the FBI being
aware of its existence. The film shows
Dr. Robert Shaw, one of the physicians
attending Governor Connally, speaking
to the press at 4:30 p.m. on November
22. After Dr. Shaw described the gover-
nor’s wounds, he said the bullet that
caused the governor’s wounds remained
at that time in Connally’s thigh. This is
two and a
half hours after Exhibit 399 —
the
bullet that the Commission claims
caused
all the governor’s wounds, includ-
ing the
thigh wound — was found by Dar-
rell
Tomlinson. So if anything else was
needed to
discredit Exhibit 399, here it is.
If there
was a bullet in the governor's
thigh two
and a half hours after Exhibit
399 was
so conveniently found near the
stretcher,
where is it now?
PLAYBOY:
For that matter, where is the
50 bullet
that you quoted the FBI as say-
ing
entered the President's back and did
not exit?
LANE: As
I indicated a moment ago, that
may be
Exhibit 399.
PLAYBOY:
There seems to be some confu-
sion
about the number of bullets fired.
Would you
go over them one at a time?
LANE: The
Commission concluded that
three
bullets were fired, with two hits.
They say
one struck the back of the
President’s
neck, exited from his throat
and then
passed on into Governor Con-
nally.
Another shot missed. Another
bullet—
the fatal one— then struck the
President
in the head. But shooting from
the Depository window, Oswald simply
wouldn't have been able to aim and fire
three shots at a moving target in the time
he had to shoot. Other evidence further
rebuts
the Commission’s sequence. Roy
Kellerman, the Secret Service agent
rid-
ing in the Presidential limousine,
testified
that right after the first shot, he
distinctly
heard the President say, “My God, I am
hit!” Although
subjected to intense cross-
examination,
Kellerman insisted this is
what the
President said. Now when
could
Kennedy have said this in the se-
quence
offered us by the Commission?
Surely
not before he was hit. Surely not
after a
bullet ripped through his throat,
severely
damaging his vocal cords. Sure-
ly not
after the fatal shot drove a por-
tion of
his skull into the street. So the
Commission’s
review of events does not
accommodate
the President’s verbal re-
action to
the first shot. It also contravenes
the
testimony of Governor and Mrs.
Connally
about the first shot, and the
report on
the autopsy by the two FBI
agents, Sibert and O’Neill, who re-
ported, you will recall, that one bullet
had entered “a finger’s length” into the
President’s back and lodged there.
A more
plausible sequence, which —
unlike
the Warren Commission’s version
—
conflicts with none of the above evi-
dence, is
this: The first bullet struck the
President
in the back, causing the non-
fatal,
nonpenetrating “finger's length”
wound to
which Sibert and O’Neill tes-
tified in
their FBI report. This wound
was not in the back of the neck, but be-
low the President’s shoulder, correspond-
ing exactly to the holes in the back of his
shirt and jacket. I don’t see how a bullet
could have entered the back of his neck
and made a hole in the back of his shirt
and jacket more than five inches below
the top of his collar. In any case, after
this
first, nonlethal bullet struck, the
President
exclaimed, “My God, I am
hit!”
Another bullet — let's call it Bullet
Number Two, even though it may not
be the second in the sequence — was fired
from the knoll in front of the car, strik-
ing the President in the throat and caus-
ing the entrance wound to which the
doctors at Parkland Hospital referred in
their statements to the press on the day
of the assassination. A third bullet, evi-
dently from behind, struck Governor
Connally. A fourth bullet missed the
limousine and its occupants, striking
the
curb and leaving behind lead traces
later
discovered by the FBI. This bullet
shattered into fragments when it hit
the
curb, and one of the fragments — or
per-
haps a piece of concrete — struck a
spec-
tator, James Tague, wounding him
superficially in the face. A fifth bullet
then struck the President in the head,
killing him. This
bullet must also have
been
fired from in front of the car, from
the
direction of the grassy knoll, because
the
Zapruder frames — when arranged in
the
sequence in which they were taken
— show the President driven back into
his seat with considerable force under
the impact of the bullet. That could
not
have happened if the bullet had been
fired from behind the limousine. And as
I
mentioned earlier, a portion of the
President’s
skull was driven back to the
left and
rear, landing in the street be-
hind the
car; if the shot had come from
the rear,
that skull fragment would have
to have
been driven forward. So, all told,
we have
five shots fired — not including
the one
that may have hit the traffic sign
— four of
them hitting either the Presi-
dent or
Governor Connally, and at least
two of
them, or possibly three, fired from
in front
of the Presidential limousine.
PLAYBOY:
Didn’t the Commission consider
this
sequence?
LANE:
Possibly they considered it, but
they
certainly couldn’t accept it, because
they must
have seen at least two things
wrong
with it from their standpoint.
First of
all, five shots could not all be
fired by
the same man in the available
time, and
that would dispose of the
Commission's
single-assassin theory.
Sec-
ondly, shots came from both the front
and the rear of the car, and this would
also have canceled out the possibility
of
a single assassin. In order not to contra-
dict its
theory, the Warren Commission
ignored
the evidence and invented its
own
convenient three-bullet sequence.
Yet it
flow's from the evidence that there
were, in
fact, five shots.
PLAYBOY:
What about the rifle from which
the
Commission claims all the shots were
fired?
You indicate in your book that
Oswald’s
Mannlicher-Carcano couldn’t
have been
the sole weapon involved in
the
assassination. Why?
LANE: For
the simple reason that the rifle
just
couldn't have done what the Warren
Commission
said it did. It was an old,
inaccurate weapon.
PLAYBOY:
The Commission concluded
that
“various tests showed that the Mann-
licher-Carcano
was an accurate rifle and
that the
use of a four-power scope was
a
substantial aid to rapid, accurate fir-
ing . .
.” Do you challenge these tests?
LANE: I
don’t challenge the tests; I rely
upon
them. I challenge the conclusion
the
Warren Commission draws from
them. The
rifle tests prove the Mannlich-
er-Carcano
could not have fired the shots.
PLAYBOY:
How?
LANE:
Let’s begin at the beginning. The
Commission
says, as you just quoted,
that a
telescopic sight is an aid to rapid,
accurate
firing. As far as rapidity is con-
cerned —
and this is the critical factor —
that’s
nonsense. Any rifleman knows
it
requires more time to fire with the aid
of a telescopic sight than with an ordi-
nary iron sight. The Commission also
states
that the Mannlicher-Carcano
was an
accurate rifle. Nonsense again.
Rifle experts and rifle manuals and ency-
clopedias agree that this Italian carbine
is an extremely poor, cheap and inaccu-
rate weapon. The price alone is an indi-
cation. Oswald
was supposed to have
bought it
from a Chicago mail-order
house for
$ 12.78, plus .$7.1 3 for a scope.
In fact,
that surplus Italian carbine
presently
sells for $3 if you buy it in
lots of
25 or more. I don’t have
to tell
playboy readers how much a good,
accurate rifle with a scope costs; you
can’t get one for less than $60.
PLAYBOY:
You wrote in your book that Os-
wald's
ammunition was almost 20 years
old,
implying it was defective. Was it?
LANE: Let
me quote from the Warren
Commission
this time. The Report states
flatly
that the ammunition for the rifle is
currently
being manufactured by the
Olin-Mathieson
Company. In other
words,
the bullets could have been in
brand-new,
tiptop shape. Being a suspi-
cious type, one of my investigators wrote
to Olin-Mathieson, and learned that the
6.5-mm Mannlicher-Carcano cartridge
has not been manufactured since 1944.
Since the Commission could discover no
other sources for this bullet, and since
the powder in a bullet deteriorates in
time, we must conclude, as Olin-Mathie-
son did, that “the reliability of such am-
munition would be questionable today.”
PLAYBOY:
Let's accept your argument that
the rifle
was poor and the ammunition
antiquated.
Couldn’t Oswald still have
managed
to deliver three lucky shots?
LANE:
It’s mathematically possible. If I
leaned
out of this window and squeezed
off three
shots with my eyes closed, it’s
mathematically
possible that I could
bring
down a helicopter heading for the
Pan Am
Building. All I’m saying is it’s
not true,
as the Commission states, that
Oswald
had everything going for him
that day,
from an “accurate” rifle to
fresh
ammunition. Any man using
that
rifle, and firing at a moving target
with a
telescopic sight from a sixth-floor
win-
dow, was operating under a terrible
handicap. And die facts show that five
shots or more were fired. Since it takes
2.3 seconds just to work the bolt of the
Mannlicher-Carcano — according to the
testimony of FBI rifle expert Ronald
Simmons — that
is not mathematically
possible
in the 5.6 seconds that the Com-
mission
concedes is the maximum time
Oswald
would have had to fire from the
