Attorney is only surviving member of the supervisory staff of the Warren Commission
By Denise M. Champagne
The Daily Record Newswire
ROCHESTER, NY - Conspiracy theories still abound over the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, but no evidence could be found to support such, according to a Washington, D.C. attorney who served as an assistant counsel on the Warren Commission.
Howard P. Willens was a 32-year-old lawyer working for the Department of Justice in 1963 when he was tapped to be one of 14 assistant counselors on the commission investigating the assassination, ultimately determining Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
While everyone in the audience knew the story's ending, few, if any, knew the interesting behind-the-scene details Willens discussed, which he also outlines in his 2013 book "History Will Prove Us Right: Inside the Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of John F. Kennedy."
Willens said after the assassination of Oswald, then-President Lyndon Johnson felt compelled to establish a commission, an idea he originally rejected.
"Once Jack Ruby killed Oswald, there could be no public trial," Willens said. "In the absence of a public trial, there was no standard method for ascertaining the facts of such a complicated event about which numerous conspiracy theories were already being circulated around the world, many of them being promoted and circulated by the Soviet Union, so the president decided that he had to have a presidential commission."
The commission was headed by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, whom Willens said initially turned down a proposed appointment when approached by the deputy attorney general.
Willens said Johnson decided he needed four members from Congress, projecting the House and Senate would likely conduct separate investigations and membership on the commission would ensure they would wait until the commission completed its work.
He said the only one that was reluctant was Sen. Richard Russell, a Georgia Democrat and close friend of Johnson, who said he would do anything to help the country, but could not work with Justice Warren, whom he called a liberal chief justice whose opinions had transformed the Southern way of life.
Willens said Johnson pleaded personal loyalty and international concerns, to no avail. "Finally, out of exasperation, President Johnson said, 'You have to take this position; I've already announced this to the press.'"
The commission originally consisted of seven committee members, whom Willens said quickly determined they could not rely on interviews submitted to them by the FBI, Secret Service and other government agencies; that none were under oath and there was no routine for penalizing people who lied.
The committee next decided it needed subpoena power and a staff. Congress granted the former and Willens became part of the latter after Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach told J. Lee Rankin, the commission's general counsel, that he might have a warm body at the Justice Department to help get the commission organized.
"I was the warm body," Willens said. "I showed up on Dec. 17 and was called into my boss' office, who was head of the Criminal Division, and he told me I had been volunteered to assist the commission. I got my hair cut and went to visit with J. Lee Rankin and the chief justice."
Willens said Justice Warren made it clear from the beginning he did not want people from any government agency so there would be no bias, and kept looking at him for the next eight months, wondering why he had not returned to the Justice Department.
He said from the beginning, Justice Warren ran a tight ship, but provided excellent leadership. Willens said the chief justice, who died in 1974, wanted to put his stamp on the commission so people would know results came from it and not its talented staff.
He said Justice Warren developed a series of questions he presented to the staff on a yellow piece of paper, asking what they thought.
"Well now, imagine the scene," Willens said. "You're sitting there. You're 32 years old and the chief justice of the United States is saying 'What do you think of my approach?' We fell over ourselves complimenting the chief justice about the wisdom, the thoroughness, the precision of his questions" and then added considerably to the list until it had grown to 72 questions.
Willens said conspiracy theories were fed by a "too casual statement" Justice Warren later made to the press when they were calling out to him, asking when they would learn about the testimony of Marina Oswald, the assassin's wife, who appeared before the commission three times.
He said Warren answered 'Perhaps not in your lifetime" and went on to say because some of it may be highly classified material.
"Well, the 'not in your lifetime' was the shorthand for what he said and it aroused members of Congress who immediately sought his impeachment and persuaded people around the world they would never know what the facts really were," Willens said, noting Justice Warren and Norman Redlich, another assistant counselor, scrambled to clarify everything would be made public unless prevented by national security interests.
Willens said the statement got the commission off on the wrong foot with the press and contributed to skepticism months and years later that the true facts would never be known.
The commission met formally for the first time on Dec. 5, 1963, at the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., and more than 65 times in the next eight months. Its 889-page report was published the following September, followed up two months later with the release of 26 volumes of appendixes, including the testimony of 552 witnesses.
Willens said all volumes were transferred on Nov. 23, 1964 to the National Archives, which had its own policy that materials of an investigative nature would not be released for 75 years without approval of the investigative agencies.
Willens said Justice Warren communicated his concerns to Johnson, who issued a presidential directive to start processing the materials of the Warren Commission as rapidly as possible. He said 98 percent of them were available for inspection by the time Oliver Stone's "JFK" movie was released in 1991, prompting new concerns about the work of the commission.
Willens said he testified before the Assassination Records Review Board, formed by Congress in 1992, that Stone made a pretty good movie, but was not much of a historian.
What the commission did find out, according to Willens, was the FBI and CIA lied, the FBI should have informed the Secret Service of a potential threat from Oswald and his whereabouts during the president's visit, Ruby was not involved in some conspiracy, there was no shooter on the grassy knoll, Kennedy's head snapping back was a neuro-physical reaction to a bullet striking him from behind and above and that three shots were fired, two struck Kennedy, one - the single or magic bullet theory - passing through his neck and striking Texas Gov. John Connally.
Willens said Connally resisted the rationale of a single bullet until his death in 1993, insisting he had been shot with a separate bullet. He said there have been extensive investigations of the Warren Commission's work but allegations of a shooter on the grassy knoll are unfounded. Oswald did it, he said, and there is no evidence of a conspiracy, foreign or domestic.
Willens, the highlight of the MCBA Litigation Section's annual meeting, was introduced by Rochester attorney Paul Nunes, a counsel member of the section who shared his memories of Nov. 22, 1963, when his sixth-grade teacher in Ludlow, Massachusetts, told the class the president had been shot in Dallas and sent them all home.
Nunes went to his father's jewelry store, which was attached to their house, and noticed the generally noisy shop was quiet, no longer filled with sounds of the swinging pendulums of dozens of clocks.
"My dad was on a step stool stopping every pendulum because, in keeping with Portuguese tradition, when someone dies in the family, all the clocks are stopped," Nunes explained. "Time must stand still and that's how I knew the president had died."
Then he warned conspiracy theorists to watch out, because Willens would be presenting the truth.
"So all you conspiracy theorists, I hope the truth has come out," Nunes said after Willens finished speaking.
Willens is the only surviving member of the three-person supervisory staff of the Warren Commission, the seven original members of which all have died, the last one being former President Gerald Ford in 2006.
Published: Mon, May 25, 2015
