What was unthinkable to men like Commager was that the first investigation was not an actual investigation. Earl Warren, they thought, would not put his name on a cover-up. Historians, in general, took at face value the forensic evidence dished up by Specter and the eyewitness evidence dished up by Ball and Belin, without realizing the evidence avoided and the short-cuts taken. To this day, in fact, one encounters those who dismiss any complaint about the forensic evidence or witness evidence as digging through minutiae. And I know this because I have engaged members of the WC staff and supposedly prominent thinkers of the Oswald did-it belief in discussions of the single-bullet theory, where they ran for the hills once I showed them the trajectory was doubtful and that Canning's study for the HSCA was a fraud. And they all told me the same thing--something they picked up from some blow-hard like Commager--that you can not get to the truth by looking closely at the evidence, that you must instead surrender to some general feeling that the evidence points in Oswald's direction. Well...why? Has anyone done a detailed study of criminal cases and discovered how much counter-evidence exists in cases where there is slam-dunk evidence (let's say a video-tape, 10 eyewitnesses, and a confession)? I mean, beyond that most suspects don't get killed before reaching trial, do palm prints on a weapon routinely show up in the record after the suspect's death? And what about eyewitnesses? Do eyewitnesses who refuse to make a positive ID routinely come forward after the suspect's death, and after the FBI has paid a visit to their house? And what about the shirt fibers? Are fibers to a shirt worn when a suspect was arrested routinely found on the presumed murder weapon by the FBI (when they went unnoticed by the officer first inspecting the weapon), and how often does it later come out that the suspect had claimed he'd worn a different shirt at the time of the murder? And that the shirt he'd claimed to have been wearing was in fact collected by the police and studied by the FBI, but inaccurately described in their records so that no one would know this was the shirt he'd said he'd been wearing?
I mean, at what point, when one studies the evidence, should this "general feeling" Oswald acted alone turn to a "general feeling" the case against him was in large part a frame-up? And, perhaps more importantly, in the words of Commager, is there a "psychological force" that prevents one from changing one's "general feeling" once that "feeling" has taken root?
