Warren Commission: Senator Russell's Buried Dissent and a Benign Cover-Up

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After President John F. Kennedy was killed on November 22, 1963, and Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald on live television two days later, Lyndon B. Johnson moved fast to fill the vacuum. Chief Justice Earl Warren at first refused to lead an inquiry, citing the separation of powers, until Johnson warned that public hysteria aimed at the Soviet Union or Cuba could lead to nuclear war. A November 25 memo from Deputy Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach said the public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin, and Executive Order 11130 created a panel that included Richard Russell, John Sherman Cooper, Hale Boggs, Gerald Ford, John J. McCloy and Allen Dulles. Rather than hire its own investigators, the commission relied on the FBI and Secret Service, the agencies whose failures had allowed the killing.

The 888-page report of September 1964 named Oswald the lone gunman and endorsed the single bullet theory built around Commission Exhibit 399, found nearly pristine on a Parkland Hospital stretcher. Behind the unanimous front, Cooper, Boggs and Russell doubted that theory, and Warren refused even a footnote noting Russell's dissent. The commission never reviewed the autopsy photos or X-rays and never interviewed Kennedy's physician, Admiral George Burkley, while the FBI told a doctor to keep quiet about the Harper fragment and a 2014 CIA report admitted a benign cover-up to hide plots against Fidel Castro. The Church Committee and the House Select Committee on Assassinations later reopened the case, and the HSCA concluded in 1979 that Kennedy was probably killed as the result of a conspiracy.

• Journalist Dorothy Kilgallen leaked Jack Ruby's testimony to the press in August 1964.
• A 2008 FBI memo revealed that Gerald Ford reported the panel's private doubts to the FBI's deputy director.
• The commission released 26 volumes and about 16,000 pages with no index, and Sylvia Meagher built one herself.
• Unpublished records were sealed for 75 years, until 2039, before later laws forced earlier releases.
• The HSCA relied on a Dallas police Dictabelt recording from a motorcycle microphone stuck in the open position.