Was the Warren Commission (WC) looking for the truth as they claimed? Or were they looking to manufacture a theory for what happened and avoid the areas that may shed light on the real culprits?
This has been debated for nearly 55 years now, and the only way one can really answer the question for themselves is to study how the WC approached their ?search for the truth.?
Let?s look at the statistics of the WC in terms of the type of questions they asked of the witnesses before them. We will rely on a man who has studied this area for a long time and has written several books on the assassination.
He will show that LESS THAN 2% (1.87%) of all the questions asked were DESIGNED to gather vital information pertaining to the death of JFK. The exhibits section (26 volumes) is even worse as ONLY 1% of them are serious and to the point of who killed President John F. Kennedy (JFK)!
This is NOT CT ?nuttiness? either as he simply used the WC?s own questions along with the standards our legal system has used for a long time! Here goes!
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In his book, "Treachery in Dallas" (pp.279-85), Walt Brown looks at the questions that were asked by the commission and the counselors.
He breaks the questions into 7 categories:
1) Preliminaries - intro questions designed to learn of the witness's background, education, and nature of employment or family.
2) To the point - questions that would materially add to the investigation or have the potential to add such value.
3) Not vital - questions that did not, or did not lead to, anything being added to the record.
4) Clarification - questions that clarified earlier answers.
5) Leading/hearsay - "The WC shattered the rules of evidence, frequently telling the witnesses the answers to the questions and then having the witnesses harmlessly -- and meaninglessly -- rattle of a string of "yes?s" and "no's"."
6) Conclusionary - questions that called the witness to draw a conclusion.
7) Foregone conclusion - questions that reflected the official verdict yet could not be substantiated by the witness.
Commission witnesses (meaning some or all of the 7 members were present) were asked a total of 39, 097 questions. Here are the breakdowns by types:
1. Preliminaries - 805 (2.10%)
2. To the point - 1,537 (4.10%)
3. Not vital - 16,073 (43.30%)
4. Clarification - 7,354 (19.80%)
5. Leading/hearsay - 9,676 (26.00%)
6. Conclusionary - 922 (2.40%)
7. Foregone Conclusion - 323 (0.80%)
8. Nonsense - 407 (1.09%)
Mr. Brown points out that ONLY 4.1% were probative while 69.3% were either NOT vital or of a leading nature. He further points out that if the 43.30% of the NOT vital questions were constant for all witnesses, this would have taken up the same percentage of the 7,909 pages of published testimony. IOWs, 43.30% of the report and 26 volumes were of a NOT vital variety.
How about the questions asked by the counselors? Let's add them in and this brings the total to 109,930 questions being asked. Here is the breakdown:
Commission
1. Preliminaries - 805 (2.10%)
2. To the point - 1,537 (4.10%)
3. Not vital - 16,073 (43.30%)
4. Clarification - 7,354 (19.80%)
5. Leading/hearsay - 9,676 (26.00%)
6. Conclusionary - 922 (2.40%)
7. Foregone Conclusion - 323 (0.80%)
8. Nonsense - 407 (1.09%)
{Off the record - 185}
Total Questions: 37,097
Additional Counselor questions
1. Preliminaries - 6,200 (5.60%)
2. To the point - 4,928 (4.40%)
3. Not vital ? 48,164 (43.80%)
4. Clarification - 15,233 (13.80%)
5. Leading/hearsay - 30,796 (28.00%)
6. Conclusionary - 2,580 (2.30%)
7. Foregone Conclusion - 610 (0.005%)
8. Nonsense - 1,419 (1.20%)
{Off the record - 342}
Total questions -- 109,930
Of the 109,930 questions posed, ONLY 4,928 were to the point! As Walt Brown kids though, "...a decent number of the 30,796 leading questions were abruptly to the point."
Leading a witness is NOT allowed in a court of law, yet we see an astonishing number of leading questions in this case! So much for it being treated the same as a court of law, huh? How about the nearly 45% of NOT vital questions? How can one say they were searching for the truth when nearly half of the questions they asked were NOT relevant and did NOT add anything to the case?
It gets worse. ONLY 30,530 (27.77%) questions were related to the JFK killing! The LHO murder warranted over half this amount at 16,836. By far the largest group was the "Character" sections that dealt with witnesses who had NO provable knowledge of the crime or gave testimony to the fact they had NO knowledge of the crime. They also knew, well or poorly as Brown points out, LHO, Ruby or Tippit.
The questions for this group with no provable knowledge of the crime totaled 57,254!!!! This was 52.05 percent of the total!!!! Some search for the truth, huh?
Walt Brown lays out the top 10 witnesses in terms of questions asked of them. Here they are:
1) Ruth Paine (5,236)
2) Curtis LaVerne Crafard+ (3,972)
3) George Senator (2,792)
4) Marina Oswald (2,615)
5) Robert Oswald (2,351)
6) George DeMohrenschildt* (1,628)
7) Andrew Armstrong (1,592)
8 ) John Edward Pic (1,325)
9) Michael Paine (1,019)
10) Jesse Curry (1,002)
*DeMohrenschildt went to Haiti in April 1963 so what information could he possibly have about the assassination? And yet, he was asked 1,628 questions! What about? Mostly LHO's character and his inclinations in regards to shooting people.
+Crafard worked for Jack Ruby and even the Commission was forced to admit he "bears a strong resemblance to Oswald." Why was the WC asking a man who worked for Ruby so many questions (3,972 -- 2nd most)? I can bet NONE of them dealt with the suggestion that LHO and Ruby knew each other or exploring the idea Crafard could have been impersonating LHO in the weeks leading up to the assassination. Crafard would skip town for northern Michigan and was ONLY available to be questioned because the FBI found him and brought him back to be questioned.
Walt Brown points out neither Robert Oswald nor John Edward Pic had seen LHO for over a year BEFORE the assassination. Senator, Crafard and Armstrong were employees or acquaintances of Ruby and added virtually nothing to the record. ONLY 554 to the point questions were asked of these top 10 and more than 200 were asked of Marina alone.
If we take the number of to the point questions (2,065) and compared to the total number of questions asked (109,930) we get a whopping 1.87%! This means as Brown points out, the WC's work was made up of 1.87% of the questions asked!
He moved on to the Exhibits then and gives this chart:
Number of Exhibits
Useless - 2,668 (68.20%)
Of little value - 437 (11.10%)
Of some value - 458 (11.70%)
Of interest - 270 (6.90%)
Of serious interest - 79 (2.00%)
Totals 3,912 (100.00%)
Pages of Exhibits
Useless - 5,492.33 (55.86%)
Of little value - 1,583.33 (16.10%)
Of some value - 1,473.91 (15.00%)
Of interest - 1,191.58 (12.12%)
Of serious interest - 89.93 (0.90%)
Totals 9,831 (100.00%)
As you can see in all of the 26 volumes the WC committed less than THREE PERCENT space on pages and exhibits that were of a serious interest nature in their VAST TWENTY-SIX VOLUMES! This sums up their work better than anything a CTer could say!
If we are generous and add in the "of some interest category" we go up to twenty-two percent level which is somewhat better, but when we look at what space and words were committed to things of a USELESS nature this number is tiny. In the exhibits section of the volumes the WC committed SIXTY-EIGHT percent of USELESS pieces of "evidence" and committed nearly FIFTY-SIX percent of their pages to useless things! Why would you do this IF you were really searching for the truth? The WC had a huge budget behind them. They had the best of the best helping them (FBI, CIA, SS, and other federal agencies) and this is the best they could come up with?
Any lawyer would be out of business if they committed this much time and effort to "useless" stuff and NON-probative questions. IT is the job of the DA (and the WC was playing DA no matter what they claimed) to find the truth and PROVE it beyond a reasonable doubt. How can you do this when you ask LESS THAN TWO PERCENT of probative questions?
It can't be done of course. This breakdown shows us that the word Henry Wade got on the night of the assassination from LBJ, via his aide Cliff Carter, was still IN EFFECT when the WC was doing their work. It can't be any more obvious a CONSPIRACY occurred and the truth was buried based on these statistics.
