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.
“The Advance”1 page
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of questioning by the Lt and Commission lawyers. The evidence seems to me compelling that there was a second Oswald that his presence was being forced on people's notice, and that he played a role on November 22, 1903. If we take the cases at face value people saw someone who looked like Oswald, used Oswald's name, had Oswald's life and family—then how are they to be explained? sucers that the duplication had a crucial part in the events of November 22. Second Oswald was an excellent shot, real Oswald was not. Real Oswald's role was to be the prime suspect chased by the police, while second Oswald, one of the assassins, could vanish as Worrell and Craig saw him do. If the crime is reconstructed in this way, most of the puzzles and discrepancies can be more plausibly explained. Oswald, the methodical conspirator, goes to Irving on November 21, carrying nothing. He returns on November 22 with a package, about 27 inches long, attracting the attention of Frazier and his sister. The package vanishes by the time he enters the building. Oswald and second Oswald arrive separately. Since Oswald doesn't talk much to people, second Oswald can easily enter undetected. Previously, or that day, one of them has brought the gun into the building. How? Two intriguing details suggest that this may not have been a problem. First, according to Marina, when Oswald went off to shoot General Walker, he left without the rifle and returned without it. He had secreted it in advance and afterwards. So he may have known how to do this. Second, a day or two before the assassin floor window, either to establish another clue, or to make arrangements for the shooting, or both. (There is a set of still unidentified prints on the boxes [26:799-800], and all of the employees, police, and nat. who touched them have been eliminated.) Oswald seems to have spent a very normal morning at the Book Depository, and was seen working on various floors. He asked someone which way the parade was coming, as if to indicate that he was hardly concerned. Around noon Oswald told people he was going to have lunch. After that the next we know of him is that right after the shooting he was seen in the lunchroom, in complete calm, about to buy some soda pop. At 12:30 or 12:31, the shooting began and was of extreme accuracy, far beyond anything yet achieved with Oswald's title. Many of those present in the immediate area thought that the first shot at least came from the knoll area beyond the Book Depository. Some even saw smoke from this area (even though the Report claims there is no credible evidence of shots from any place except the Book Depository. It depends on what one considers credible). So, in keeping with the evidence, let us suppose that at least one shot came from the knoll. (This might account for the throat wound that looked like an entrance wound to the Dallas doctors.) Some others apparently came from the Book Depository. If these include Kennedy's back wound. Connally's wounds, and Kennedy's fatal wounds, the marksman was magnificent at hitting moving targets. Yet Oswald's rifle could not be aimed accurately, and may not have been used at all. Strange as it may seem, no one "One of the spring's biggest books- physically, and intellectually as well." - WILLIAM HOGAN. San Francisco Chronicle "A selection of some of the magazine's best articles written by some of the era's shrewdest minds: Sidney Hook, Lionel Trilling, Edmund Wilson, George Lichtheim, Daniel Bell. The book also contains a sampling of short stories (Saul-Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Wallace Markfield) which invariably carry a social message."-Time "One can scarcely open the book without encountering a fresh idea or an old one in new perspective." Chicago "A truly exciting, timeless anthology...a book both to be read and measured."-ALFRED BALK, Saturday. Review "So many of the contributions exhibit breadth and vitality... The contributors do not capitulate. In fiction, literary criticism and personal reminiscence, they explore intensely personal modes of resistance to a class society." - PETER LATHROP, The Nation "Commentary is generally recognized as having the greatest social relevance of any review in America. Several magazines have brought out such anthologies. The Commentary Reader is the latter of the lot, and in some ways the most significant."—ROBERT CORSAY
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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.