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In The Oswald Affair, French Journalist Léo Sauvage concludes that it is "logically untenable, legally indefensible and morally inadmissible" to hold that Oswald killed Kennedy. In Whitewash, onetime Senate Investigator Harold Weisberg says that the commission is guilty of the "prostitution of science" as well as of "misrepresentation and perjury." In The Second Oswald, Richard H. Popkin, a professor of philosophy at the University of California, suggests a conspiracy in which Oswald and a man identical to Oswald threw red herrings over one another's trails to confuse investigators.
Two of the new books stand out for their provocative attacks. Inquest, by Edward Jay Epstein, is a slight (151 pages) text that began as Epstein's master's thesis in government at Cornell University; it accuses the commission, of hurrying through the investigation in slipshod fashion, because it wanted to establish a "version of the truth" that would "reassure the nation and protect the national interest." Rush to Judgment, now a bestseller, is by New York Attorney Mark Lane, who was retained as counsel for a time by Oswald's mother. Lane's book consists of a minutely detailed recital of what he might have done as adversary for the defense if Oswald had gone on trial. He concludes that "the commission covered itself with shame."
No Rigid Rules
The authors all brace up their criticisms with an enormous amount of bit-by-bit documentation—nearly all of it gleaned, ironically enough, from the commission's own evidence. They not only criticize the Warren group's procedures but, in most cases, seek to cast doubt on nearly every major conclusion reached in the report. They argue that the commission was determined to prove that Oswald was the lone assassin and that it blandly ignored or distorted any information that differed significantly from that premise. Some of them say that Oswald was not involved at all. Among the facts that they cite to support that contention:
> Although the commission said flatly that the President was shot from above and behind and that Oswald fired from the sixth floor after the limousine had passed, no fewer than 58 of the 90 eyewitnesses questioned about the source of the two shots thought that they came from a grassy knoll on the right side of the car.
> The only man who testified that he had actually seen Oswald fire—and subsequently identified him as the assassin—did not at first identify Oswald when he saw him in a Dallas police line-up the night of Nov. 22.
> Oswald was not really a very good marksman, yet his shooting on that day would have required remarkable skill: two direct hits on a moving target in less than six seconds with a rifle that had a defective scope. In the Marines, he scored only one point above the lowest ranking in one competition. When expert riflemen test-fired the weapon later, none could match Oswald's speed and accuracy.