Documents / FOIA release
This CIA Historical Review Program release, dated 1966-07-28 and released under the JFK Act, reproduces a New York Review article by Richard H. Popkin reviewing Edward Jay Epstein's Inquest and Harold Weisberg's Whitewash. The article argues that Oswald could not have fired all the shots in the Kennedy assassination. It points to FBI reports, the Zapruder film and bullet No. 399. Popkin proposes a two-assassin conspiracy involving a 'second Oswald' and calls for release of the autopsy photographs and X-rays.
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males aged thirty, 5 feet 9, weighing around 165 pounds (which description doesn't fit Oswald, who was twenty-four and weighed much less). The legal evidence that Oswald shot Tippit is pretty bad, and a good defense lawyer might have prevented a conviction. None of those present could offer any explanation for what happened. If Oswald did the shooting, as I am inclined to believe, what could be the reason? If Tippit was suspicious of Oswald, Oswald had all sorts of fake (A. J. Hidell) identification on him to satisfy the none-too-bright Tippit. If Oswald was trying to disappear, shooting Tippit in broad daylight would hardly seem to be a way of accomplishing that. I should like to suggest an explanation of the Tippit affair with reference to some of the above points. If Oswald's role was to become the prime suspect, he did his job well. Within an hour he had become the principal person sought by the police, independent of the Tippit murder. If this was a conspiracy, and Oswald had his role qua suspect, how was he to get away? The two assassins are rescued right away. Oswald goes off on his own to his rooming house. Just then a police car arrives. What better get-away than a police car, fake or real? (As it happens, the Report mentions the fact that old Dallas police cars had been sold to private individuals.) Oswald misses his ride, looks for it at the bus stop, and then starts up the street looking for it. Tippit comes along slowly. Oswald thinks it is his ride, and approaches the car. Tippit has had a confrontation with second Oswald at the Dobbs House on November 20, recognizes him, and stops to give him a lecture on good behavior. A monumental misunderstanding then mammoth police search for Oswald, while the others could vanish. The conflicting data, due to the two Oswalds, would confuse the search. Oswald presumably had some get-away planned, so that he, too, would disappear. Then, possibly, as Fidel Castro suggested in his analysis of November 29, 1963, all of Oswald's fake Cuban activities would lead to cries that Oswald had fled to Cuba (26:433). The Tippit affair and the arrest in the movie theater are all that went awry. If I am right that the Tippit affair was an accident, it also led to the arrest by getting a large group of policemen into the area searching for Oswald. Only if he wanted to be arrested can I believe that the Tippit shooting was deliberate. It certainly would make it harder, if not impossible, for Oswald ever to get released from jail. If Oswald's role was to attract all suspicion, while not being an actual assassin, his behavior in prison certainly fits this. Marina claimed at one point that he wanted a page in history. If so, and if he had done it, he would have gained lasting fame and shame by proclaiming his achievements. Instead he calmly insisted on his innocence, and contended that as soon as he got his lawyer it would be established. The police, the riot, and the Secret Service were all amazed by his sane-fraid and his continual protestations of innocence. His brother Robert tells us that Lee assured him of his innocence and told him not to believe the "so-called evidence" (16:900). If the plot was as I have suggested, Oswald played this role well. The police chased him and found him, and ignored all other clues, suspects, and possibilities. The second Oswald data would probably have made all eye- # Two books by one of America's foremost philosophers and logicians W.V. QUINE ## SELECTED LOGIC PAPERS SELECTED LOGIC PAPERS Twenty-three papers on mathematical logic, including discussions of set theory, proof theory, truth functions, and the techniques of deduction. Two have never appeared in print before. $6.95 ## THE WAYS OF PARADOX AND OTHER ESSAYS Twenty-one essays ranging from the foundations of math- ematics to the philosophy of mind and matter, the nature of necessity, the meaning of existence, and the logic of belief. $6.95 KING AT 100TH NEWYORK RANDOM HOUSE 437 WASHINGTON AV. NEW YORK, N. Y. 10022
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 15 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.