https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/secret-white-house-tapes/conversation-eugene-rostow-november-24-1963Conversation with EUGENE ROSTOW, November 24, 1963
Recorded conversation above resulted in the drafting of this memo :
https://www.maryferrell.org/pages/Katzenbach_Memo.html"On November 25 1963, the day of the Kennedy funeral, Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach sent a memo to Bill Moyers of the new Johnson White House. He had begun writing it the day earlier, within hours after Oswald's death at the hands of Jack Ruby.
The second paragraph stated: "The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial."Given that the authorities could not possibly by November 25 know these things to be true, and Katzenbach later admitted he knew very little at this stage,
the memo is clearly advocating a political course irrespective of the truth of the assassination. ..."In a nutshell, the reason "it", the WC "investigation" and Report seem suspect is because instead of following rules of evidence, conclusions were drafted by January, 1964, and then the evidence supporting the conclusions was obtained, organized, and an attempt was made to knit it all together,
versus acquiring and then following the evidence wherever it lead.... permitting findings to evolve into conclusions on the weight of the evidence.
David Lifton and I cannot be described as close. I do not quote him often but I think this recent post of his is worth sharing.
https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/27388-ce-2011/David Lifton - Posted
October 2, 2021 "...As everyone knows, the key "evidence against Oswald" consisted such items as "the rifle", "fingerprints at the sniper' nest", bullet fragments removed from JFK's body. And of course, thee was the body itself. The President's body was critical evidence in "the case against Oswald. So it, too, had to have a "chain of possession," (All of this is discussed in Chapter 16 of Best Evidence.")
Had Oswald lived--and the case against him gone to trial--many of the key items could not have been "admitted into evidence" without a valid "chain of possession."
Oswald was murdered on Sunday 11/24/63, so the case being built against him began with the Dallas Police file, and then the FBI file, and --finally--the Warren Commission investigation.
So... faced with these legal requirements, how did the Warren Commission legal staff behave?
Basically, they accepted all the basic evidence --the "found rifle," the "found bullets" (or bullet fragments) etc. --as evidence, without paying sufficient attention to the "chain of possession."
Accepting the validity of these items of evidence, the Warren Commission legal staff then set out to write their "report". But note: Just as when a high school or college student writes a term paper, the Warren Commission's legal staff first wrote an "outline" -- an "Oswald was guilty" outline as the basic structure for the Warren Report. These outlines --in the "office files" at the National Archives (and designated the "REP" files) --were dated between January and March, 1964. Once these outlines were approved by Warren Commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin, the work for the individual chapters was parceled out to individual staff lawyers, who then proceeded to write their 'preliminary drafts" for the document which, when completed, would emerge as the Warren Commission Report (the WCR). (All of this-- what I have just described here -- is documented in the "Office Files" of the Warren Commission -- abbreviated as the "REP" files in the "office files" of the Warren Commission. (I examined this material -- the REP files -- back around 1970. (Arlen Specter, for example, wrote the "original drafts" for the section of the Warren Report about the autopsy. Wesley Liebeler --and Albert Jenner -- were in charge of the chapters on Oswald's biography.)
What I found-- again, back around 1970, when I first examined the Warren Commission's "working paper's" at the National Archives-- was simply this: : The Warren Commission legal staff wrote their "first drafts" of the "Oswald-did-it" Warren Report in mid-January 1964!
Just consider what this means: President Kennedy was murdered on 11/22/63; the Warren Commission was created by 11/29/63; several weeks passed while staff was hired, the nation was told that the Warren Commission was hard work. Meanwhile, by January 1964, the earliest "Oswald did it" outlines were already created! (This same bizarre situation was addressed by author Howard Roffman, whose book -- appropriately titled "Presumed Guilty" --was published around 1970,
Bottom line: the "Oswald did it" fix was in by January 1964.
All i can say is: "Wow! What a betrayal of the public trust!"
Once this bizarre "preliminary outline" was adopted (i.e., "green lighted") by the WC's General Counsel), what happened next was predictable.
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT --i.e., starting in January 1964
Between January and June 1964, when the senior Warren Commission staff lawyers (e.g., Stuart Eisenberg, and Norman Redlich) were already drafting the document that became known as "the Warren Report-- some of the senior legal staff in effect recognized the emerging legal problem. Indeed, the documents show that senior members had a serious "Oops!" moment. Someone apparently realized "Oops! We are constructing this "Oswald did it" narrative based on the "sniper's nest evidence" (e.g the rifle, the bullet fragments, etc.) --but we (the WC legal staff) have neglected to establish a "chain of possession" on the key items of evidence!
In other words, it was as if they (the WC legal staff) were building a house that had no proper legal foundation!
So now, having conducted their investigation without bothering to establish a chain of possession, senior attorneys Eisenberg and Redlich let out an enormous "OOPS!" exclamation; consulted with Gen. Counsel Rankin, and that's how (and why) it wasn't until May 1964, that the Warren Commission legal staff set out to repair the situation. At this rather "late" date, the FBI was requested (by the Warren Commission) to establish a "chain of possession" on a whole array of "sniper's nest" items of evidence: i.e., the rifle, the bullets, the shells, etc.
All I can say is: "Welcome to law school, and the "legal way" of viewing theWarren Commission's view of 11/22/63.
This --of course-- was akin to putting the cart before the horse, but the legal eagles of the WC staff behaved as if none of this mattered. It was as if their attitude was: "Oswald killed the President. Here's the official narrative; we can worry about the legal details later."
The country deserved better."
https://educationforum.ipbhost.com/topic/17951-ce-399s-broken-chain-of-custody/Gil Jesus Posted July 19, 2011
"Commission Exhibit 2011 ( 24 H 412 )
shows the break in the chain of custody of bullet 399.
"Darrell C. Tomlinson...cannot positively identify the bullet as the one he found and showed to Mr. O. P. Wright."
"Mr. O.P. Wright could not positively identify C1 ( CE 399 ) as the bullet that was found on November 22, 1963."
"Special Agent Richard E. Johnson, United States Secret Service, could not identify this bullet as the one he obtained from O.P. Wright, Parkland Hospital, Dallas Texas, and gave to James Rowley, Chief, United States Secret Service, Washington, D.C. on November 22, 1963."
"James Rowley, Chief, United States Secret Service, advised that he could not identify this bullet as the one he received from Special Agent Richard E. Johnson and gave to Special Agent Todd on November 22, 1963."
All four of the people who handled the "stretcher bullet" before it came into the possession of the FBI could not identify CE 399 as being that bullet."
