be allowed to return, Mol’otov and Malenkov, for ,example? Molotov 1s 74, an,d in his case it is doubtful, though his pra-C%iaese line might now be regarded as correct. Mden- kov is still popular in Russia as the “more-consumer-goods” man, despite IGhrushchev’s attempts to blacken him as a bloodbhirsty mlIain on a par with Besia. But is Malenlcov alive? Nobody knms .

Anyway, the IChrushchev era, the best domesti,c aspe8cts of ,which were a far greater persand freedom and “fxeedom f r o m fear,” is over. HOW f a r “de-Khrushchevizatiol?” will go, and whether i t will take on violent forms, it is stdl too early LG say But leven last summer I often heard rernadcs llke this frum industrial executives. “Our people are getting lazy; you can say what you hk’e,

The Warren Cornmission has ad- mirably fulfil1,ed its ,central objec- tive by producing an account of the circumstances under which Presi- dent Kennedy was assassinated that is adequate ,to ,satisfy all reasomble doubts about the imane’diate, es.sen- tial facts We now lmow as much as wle are evep hkely to lcmw about what happened in Dallas. Why It happened remains, perhaps forever, obscure. If there are m i n o s flaws in the report-some uqavoidable, others, as I shall sulggest, that might have been correcied-they are 1hrcm7n into shadow by the consci- entious and at times brilliant job that the commission has done. Only those who SOT whatevefr Teasons of personal or pohtical myopia cannot bring themselves to face mality wiU continue to think that, the t’ragedy was proximately the wmk of lnor,e than o m 1nau and therefore ulti- mately the outcolmle orf a conspiracy., The fantasts will continue to differ about whose conspiracy it was- T’exas 011 mnillionaixes or Kremlin operatives-,but their central pre- mise will continue to hold. Talle irn- portant difference is that now the supposed factual basis ‘for their pre- mise, as well as SOT more reasoned doubts about what :aplaedred to be the truth, has heen dissolved.

The commission’s relations with dle outside world during t h e period

. OF its investigation have not keen dlo~gebller fortunate. .Reg.l-ettably, the difficulties have not ceased and must now a$fect any immediate

Helbert L. Packer, professor of law at Sta7zfo1-d Unioersity, is the author of Ex-Communist Witnesses: Four Studies in Fact-Finding $Stanford Unzvel-sity Press). NovelnbeI- 2, 1964

JudPm,ent on their product. The problem during the investigatory permd was one of too much infor- mation Th’ere was a series of leaks, some unplanned, others bearmg at least the appearance 08 ca,lculation, that suggesteld the crystallizine of a “position” lonlg ;before one could con- fidently have been arrived at. The m o s t spectaculay of these was the revelation, scant weeks after the commission was onganized, that the FBI report comfirmed the theory that Oswal’d, acting alone, was the as- sassin. T’hat !leak may well have hem heyond thc,comlmismsion’s con- trol bul, taken ili coqunction with others lhat were n o ~ t , i t cieated an impression ob prejudgment that could not hlelp Ibut detract $ram the confidence with which the findings would be received It is the measure of the commisslon’s achievement that ,qualms8 of this’ ‘sort have been. at Beast in the immediate aftelmath, muted. Whether they will continue to be so remains to be seen and will depend to a considerable exbent on what happens whlen the nelw prob- I,elm o f ’ too little infimmation is rec- tified.

I refer to the fact that the sup- p r t jng volumes of transcripts and exhibits, originally ‘slated for se- lease si,multanemcausly wit11 the re- port volume, are still not available and apparently d l not be releatsed for same weeks. This should not have been allowed to happen. Whefher the fault lies wjth the com- mission or ,with sthe WMte House, it is a grievous one. What it means, very shnply, is +hat bhwe is not at this t h e an adequate basis for evalpating the quality of the com- mission’s Ifact-finding proces’s. The

but fiere was m80re disciphe under Stal1n.”

Kosygin, the able administrator and technimcian, has been, in the past, vely mech a St- man. For the pres’ent, I should hate ,to prophe- sy holw little, os how much, “‘re- Stdinization” theae is going to be. But one thing is certain: there will be a rad&cal change in Soviet- Climese relations.

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Herbert L. Packer

problem is particularly acute in the case Icrf findings that yest wholly or largely on testilmony by eyewit- nesses. By a careful reading of the report one lmeams who some of these witnesses were and what the com- mission thou.ght was establishe’d by their te,sLirnony. What one cannot 1,eam is haw their testimony was psobed by the inquizy. Much of that process is doubtless contained in working papers that will never be published, but the pub1i.c record of the commission will include a good deal of it. ‘One assumes 5rom the quality of ‘the report that the prob- ing was detailed and penetrating; but that remains a,sumnisle until t h ~ raw materid is available .for exam- ination.

It may well Ibe that once the re- port was in the Presideat’,s hands he had n o alternative but to eelease it at once. ‘If so, the commission shoulmd not have la-ansmitteld i t until , ,the ,supporting data could be made publicly available. That kind of reti- cence may heave' been rendwed dif- ficult. by the apparent ease with which the press was able to l e a n how far along in its work the com- -mission was. If so, i t is suffimcient a,nsIwer that this body had unique reason to Ictmw that accoinlncdating the press is not the summum bonum.

, Portiunately, ‘the repor1 and some of its appendi’ces permit evd- uation af the ‘central findings. The factual controversies have been so numerous that it is easy to lose ‘sight of the dis,tinction ,,between what is important lanld ‘what is mer;ely in- teresting. What is primarily imipor- tant is the physical facts s f the BS- sassination. ‘We nlow have as reliable

29 5

evidence o n that score as -we axe' ever likely to get. That evidence fatany impairs the viabfiity of the various conspiracy, 01 revisionist, theories that have been'advmced in the months since the assassi,nation., I do not propose to analyze the evi-' dence iri ,detail. Readers Os this arti- cle have presumably read the report. (lt should, hut pkobably 'does not, go without saying that no one who' has nmot read the report, and reald i t carefully as a whole, shodd feel himselmf entitled to bold an opinion about its virtues or hd,efects.) What I shall do is separate out the central core of evidence bhat demonstrates beyond peradventure that one man, acting' done, fired dl shaots rhat were &ed at the Presildentid limou- sine and that the man was, beyond ,a reasonable doubt, Lee Harvey Oswald.

(1) All o f the wounds sustained by President Kennedy and by Gov- ernor Connally were inflicted by bullets f ired f r o m the rear alld above. This is demonstrated by the medical report on Governor Connally and the autopsy report on the Presi- dent, as corrolborated by (a ) exam- ination of the bullet holes in the Presi'dlent's clothing, which showed that the ,first shot that hi t ,him en- tered his back and exlted through the lower part of his neck; (b) the damage to the inside of the wind- shield caus'ed by a spent bullet frag- ,merit, ( c ) ,the aibsence of any dam- age that could have been caused by a bullet or bullets fired from the front.

(2) All of the shots were fired fro& t he si,xth-floo~ zvzndow of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD). This is demonstrated by ( a ) the re-enactment of the shoot- ing accomplished with the aid of , the mohon picture of the actual dhooting taken by Abraham Zapru- der, which proved consistent with the medical and balhstics evidence with r,espect to the wounds; (b) the presence of three used cartridge cases on the floor near the window from which the shots were hypothe- sized to have been fired; ( c ) the presence of a ri,fle on the same floor; (a) the absence of any bul- lets or bullet fra,gments not ac- counted far by the fire from the TSBD.

(3) The shots were fired f r o m the Manlzlicher~Cnrcano rifle found on the sixth floor of t h e T S B D This is demonstrated by the results of the ballistic tests on the bullet and 'bullet fragments that wel;e re- covered, ahd on the cartridge cases found on the sixth floor of the TSBD. (4) OszvnZd was the owner of

296

the rifle used fn t he nsscrssiadtion. This is demonstrated by, ( a ) identi- fication of the handwritihg on the order for ,the rifle, its envelope and the accompanying money order as Qswald's; (b) the use in ordering the rifle of a $alee name correspond- ing to that on spurious identifica- hon 'documenks found in Oswald's possession.

(5) T h e shots could h d ~ e beem dnd probably were fired by 'Oszoald. This is demonstrated by (a) Os- wald's admitted presence in the TSBD at ,the time of the assassina- hon; (ib )-the presence on tihe south- east corner of ,the sixth floor of a homemade paper bag bearing Os- wald's left index finger print and right pdm print, (c) the presence on #the rifle Ibarel 09 Oswald's palm print; (d) the presence in a crevice on the rifle of fibers corresponding with samples ,taken from the shirt worn by Oswald at the time of his arrest; (e) the dpenoe of any evi- dence pointing ,to &e probability t R a t any other person in the TSBD fired the shots

That is the minimal case against Olswald, I t wCi be hoticed that in no detail does it require ,the acceptance of eyewitness testismmy, disputed or undisputed. It is corroborated by the weight of the available eyewitness testimony, but for OUT pmumpos8e we need not even consi'der that. It is also corroborated ' by the physical evidence demonstrating khat Patrd- man Tippit was +killed by bullets fired from a revolver found in Os- wald's possession at the 'time of his arrest, but .we need not oonsider that.

No one has yet suggested any basis for controverting any part of what I have described as the mini- mal case. 'Of course, it does not conclusively establish that Oswdd Idled the Presidsemt. It is in theory possirb18e that soqe other person or persons either used Oswald's rifle to shoot the President or used his pistol to shoot Tippit, or hoth. But in the absence of evidence that jt was physically imposs?ble $or Oswzdd to bave done both killings, or of evi- denoe $trongly-pointing to the prob- ability that one killing, or Iboth, were done by solmeone else, a jury might be expected to conclude on the basis of the minimal case alone that Os- wald *was the ld1,er. No such dis- crediting evi'dence has been ad- duced, nor has its possible existence been made even remotely plausible.

The minimal 'case is supported rather than negabed by ,what eyewit- ness testimony is available. But as

every t r ia l 1a-wy.x ~tnows, eyc~ivitness testimony is notoriously umeliaible as comipm;red with physical evjdence. It is hardly cause for clmcern in any garden-variety criminal case that eyewitnesses disagree about such matters as how many shots were fixed, whether a man was 5' 11" OI! 5' 8", was wearing dwhite or a light- colored jacket, had lbushy hair or simply neede,d a haincut-. Disagrtee- ments o n rnatLens of this kind are the everyday grist of the trial courls. The minimal case against Os8wakl is far stronger than that againsl marry criminal defendants who are with perfejct propriety oonvi'cted and sen- tenced every day. 50 far as eyewit- ness testimony ;goes, it needs to be remembered that in must criminal proseoutions there is either none at all or far less than was available here,

The dis'crepancies of evidenc'e re- #corded by the commission are mar- ginal. When there is a con€lict of eyewitness testimlony, someone has to b e believe'd and someone disbe- lieved. Other indices of veracity aside, the basis on which choices of this kind are normally made is to ask oneself, consciously or uncon- sciously, wthich ~f the c80nflicting versions (better accords ,with what is known to be tru'e There dways comes a point in Iact finding at which ,one says to himself. "This is the way it probably 'happened; now let us see how the hypothesis stands up." In that sense, any fact-finding process always involves at some. sta,ge the foTmation of a hypothesis. Here *the hmothesis against which the evidence was tested was. as the weight of the initial evidence com- pelled it to be, that Oswald acting alone was the #killer. The question about the Warren Commission, as about any fact-finding body, is whether it made proper use of its working bypothesis. Did it ciose its mind to other possibilities? Did it refuse t o d'eal with evidence incon- sistent with its hypothesis? Did it suppress evidence? The answer to all these questions revealed by pe- rusal of ,the report is an emphatic negative. Only slorneone irrevocably wedded to a contrary hypothesis could hqnestly (or woul'd dishon- estly) say that the Warren Cornmis- sion was guilty of faults such as these.

)One .of th,e ;revisionists has said bhat whjen the full truth is known the Warren Commission report ?will rank in history with the $inding that

The NATTON

Dreyfus was guilty of treason.” The comparison 1s instructive, for it pre- sents us with a measure of what would have had to be the case for the Warren ‘Corniselon to suppness or ignore the t m b h about the Pres- dent’s assassinatlon The Dreyfus case involved a corrupt conspimcy among a reactiona’y group of French amny ofi.cers to promote their own polltical ends by pmning the theft of certain secret d’ocuments on a Jewish army olfficer and, later, by supp.ressing evdence 08f his ia- nocence. I t wodd have requned rot- tenness 111 an entire caste to achieve ~ t s purpose, in bhe end it failed be- cause even in as monolitlvc a group as the French officer cmys there was a Colonel Picquart who refused to be elven a d e n t party to such dcgrad,ation The rewsionists ,would have us believe that a similar con- spiracy must have existed among Lhe much more diveme group who made up &e commission and its staff. It’will fialte m o x than vague rehrences to “the Establishment”-to demonstrate the loamnion Mas of Earl Wfarren and Richard Russell, 01 the sinlster motlves that would unite John J. McCloy knd Hale Boggs in a conspiracy to’ suppress the truth. And, of course, bhe issue extends beyond the seven mem1be.m of the commisslon, on wbom most of the revisionist &-e bas been concen- 1

bated. Ally ‘conspiracy to swppress evidence must also, have included the staff, consisting mostly of out- standing young lawyer,s, several of them of chstinctly liberal polltical persuasion, lone of )whom has bad the Icomphnent 08 being denounced on the $loor of Congress as unfit to serve with the commission because of his membership in the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee and the Amer~can Civil Liberties Union Only someone ,deeply ignot-wt of American society or deeply coni- mitted to a /belief in its cormption, OT both, could seriously maintain tllal a conspiracy o€ sdence has been mainlained by this group.

The commissi’on’s report con- villcingly demonstxates, as I have s a d , that Oswald, acting alone, was the assassin of the President. Let us consider now the significance o’f “a:cting alone.” All that has been shown convincingly i s that the i m - . mediate physimcd acts were bhose of Oswald alone. That has been dem- onstrated beyond waaonable doubt. The colmmiesion “fonnd n o evidence Nuvewzber~ 2, 296‘4

that anyone asslsted Oslwald i a plan- ning or carrying out the assassina- tion” We may expect revisionist theoTi’es to ,move imw from the dis” credited asserti’on that Oswdd was not the Idler or the sole Id l e r to t h e much less dlsprovabl’e assertlon that he was the mstrument 'elf a con- spiracy. We may ,also ’ expect that the theones w d all be variations on t,he theme ,&at the conspiracy was composed of T’exas oil millionaires or ‘of Sowet (,or perhaps Chinese OF Cuban) agents, ‘d’epending on the views of the prorponent It is neces- sary to admit that the commission did not suclceed in excluding the possibility that Omald was the In- st’nunent of ei6her ,a rightist or a Communist conspiracy Nor dld it exclude the possibility Ithat he was

acting as the agent of R,evilo P. O11v8er or :Mark Lane It is a little difficult to se’e homw the commmsion, or any other buman agency, could have ldcolne so Even their careful re- view of what could be learned about Oswald’s past lcould not Ifashion a net so. fine that no si,gnificaal evenl: or acquaintance might sbp ~tl~rongh. Anyone who supposes that the com- mission could silences ld80ubts 01 this mcler is deluded We may confident- ly expect a spate of theories *about Oswald‘s motivation. And it is mot beyond the sedan of possibillly that one of them may turn out to have something to it. The commission’s report did not purport t’o close what is obviously an unclosable door.

The revislonlsts have alneady fall- ,en out among l2mnselve.s. Mr. Leo

23 7

Sauvage, ,who alone among them had the comparatlve good sense to ask questions rabher than pr,opound answers, has wcog+fully IdiSmjssed the third5rate James Bond $llrjller produc,ed by Mr. Thomas Buc13ana.n. We have yet to see yvhethcr Jqr sauvage wjshes to stand 'by his as- sertion that the case against Byyald is "a tissue o l imgrobahilitjes, ~ 4 n - tradiclions, and o;Y$rj&t fq1sifjca- tions " The case of ~(vkich be spqlce was, ,of course, the Gase Fnpcje t o t]Je press by, the incredible ant~cs of the Dallas authorities m fhe weelmnd of the ,assassination That IS not the case m?de by the Warfrm Comm$s- sion. But the revisionists have ai- ready demonstrated that ,they iqtelga to 'go 'on flogging a lclead horse. R/Ir Mark Lane, currently bhe most ac- tive of their nurnher, has produced an appraisal that #perfoms the in- teresting feat of attacking the report without once confronting its $en- tral findings. Instead, he devotes

- himself to the ,easy 5ut now i.frele- vant task of attacking th'e inaccu- racies in District Attormy Wade's oafysh pulblic statemenbs. And Mr. Lane .has the temerity to assert that he has th'e name of a witness to the Tippit shooting that the commis- sion does not lknow about, without vouchsafing a n explanation ob his refusal to revea1 the name when he teqtified lbefore the commission.

What was merely tiresmomme in the days lbe'fore the commission made its report is nolw mischievous. J4r cane and his friends arc: of course en- titled to carry 'on. But they d,eserve attention if, and only if, th'ey con- front the central finldings OLE the commissi80n and demonstrate their falsity in any regard. These findings, to repeat, are: (1) All the wounds sustained by President >Kenneck/ and Governor Connally were inflicted by bullets fired from the rear and above. (2) All the shots werg fired from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book DepositoTy (TSBD). (3 ) T h e shots w e z f ired fi'onz the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found on the sixth floor of the T S B D . (4) Oswald zuas the owner of the Tifle used in the assassination. ( 5 ) The shots could have been and prob- ably were fired by Oswald. None of these findings d'epends on resolving conflicts among eyewitnesses of the kind abunldantly preaenl in the per- ception of any disturbinlg event. This central clore Olf physical evi- dence is the case against Lee Har- vey Oswald. It is the case that would

29 8 I

have had to (be discredited in a court of law ~f Os~wal~d had lived to be tged It 1-s the case that th'e revision- ists !myst diqcsedit if they wish us to Qelieye that th'eir a gg~ri view 08 history happens this time to recoad ,a fFct rather than a.q ideolggue's fan ta,sy

Sa mu* Tor the ~+~gpll and so f3r ugsh&kabl,e lcqve of the cpq- missj~11's figdiags. I t peg& to be sharply fllstiqguished fraw spme peripheral aspGcts that ipvplve eith'er issues of &'act u p m which judgmeqt upusst f o y the inQmsnt re- m a n suspended, pr issues of opin-

cpptanue for a long time ts 'come. I shall give soFe examples of each. First, there is the finding that Os- wald attempted to Bill Mal.. Gen. Edwio Walker in A p a , 1963. This finding rests on evidence vg-y dif- Serent in quality $ f r f r s m that +hid1 we have lbey Pjseusin.g. Fiqt, +ere is a note in Osw&Ts hand$yricin,g that could have ;been (bpt wqs not proved t,o be) Written juqt ;before the attemp!€ on Walker's llfe .md that is lconsisten't ,with the theory that 'Oswald intended to make such an attempt. Second, piqtures of General Walker's house talcen with a camera, owned @y Qswald were 5mnd among his1 sf@cta.. Third', tke evidence of hallistics experts tended to show chat the bullet GI- legedly fired at Genepal WaJlcer could har7e coge from jQsw@d2s rifle

All of 'this ad@ up to nqt a great d'eal W,hat persubded 'the commis- sion that IQswald vas Walker's as- 'sailant appears primarily to be the testimony olf 0swald:s wife. The commission obviously concluded that *Mrs. ,Oslwal,d was a bruthful wit- nes's. With,out studying the trans- cript 'of her testimony and, pasticu- Jarlly, without evaluating rhe quality of the cotmission's exaunination of her story, one simply has n o basis for reaching a juldgment as to whether th'e commission's reliance an Mrs. O~swaadIs testi,momy was well founded. This is just one of sev- eral instan,ces in which what I have described as the premature release of the report is unfortunate.

A second pair of instances in- volves the telstimony ob th,e prin,cipal eyewitnesses to the shootings: How- ard Brennan, who observed the as- sassin at the SixthAfloor window and later identitied him as Oswald, and Helen Markthaw, 'who seems to have

5 O q U p o n Which IC~OJl~~QJQ$SY tyiU

been t k h e main witness toPatrolman' Tippit's slaying. While the mrnrnnls- sion's report appears t o contain a fair appraisal OX rpossfble inoons~st- enpies in their testimony (particu- larly Mrs. Marfiam's), an inde- pendent evaluation of their proba- tive value, difficult at best, is im- possible without access to the trans- cript of their examinations. It wlll be re,called that the commission. in one of several pu~blic ceversals 01 its announced policy, decided to ap- point counsel 'to Yepresent Os~yald's. interests I disagree with P,rcfessor Maurice Rosenberg's appraisal, ex- pressed in these pages a few weeks ago ["The W m e n Commission," Septeniber 141, that this decision rep- resented an inevitable (anld if I read '

him comectly, a 'desirable) recogni- tion of the essentially advensary quality of Ghe inquiry. Rather, It seems to m,e' that the commission compromised the iutegrity of the distinctive #act=finding process for whioh it was constituted by making the appointment. But that is water over the d m . The question is whether the quality of the commie- sion's prcmss was impmoved by the participation of W counsel who in some msetaphysical sense "represent- ed Qswald's interests." 'No better evi- dence on that dssubject should be available than the quality and ex- tent of the examination by Ckwald's counsel of the alleged eyewitnesses to the two slayings. Judsgment on that issue will, again, have to await the publication of the transcript vol- umes.

Finally, there are the portions 04 the mmmission'ss findings that ex- pres's judgments on matters 04 policy extrinsic to the central question of what, physically, happened in Pallas between 12: 30 and 1 : 50 on $he afternoon of INovernbeT 22, 1963. @ong the severaI issues of public i~mportance camvaslseld by the cow- mission, kwo stand out as calling fol: ,mitical comment: thse implied conclusion that ,Oslwald's custodia1 treatmment by the p o k e was proper, and the absence of any specif" 1 1c con- demnatory 'conclusion about the p u k h statements of Chief of Police Curry and District Attomey Wa,de. Qne suspects that (these matters gave the commission some difficul- ty. Chapter V, which deals wifih Os- wald:s 'detention and death, is the anly substantive charpter in the xe- port that does not contain in its text sepaately stated mnlclusions (aside fmm Chapter H, which is simply a

The NATION

narrative of the assassination). In- stead, one has to pick out #from the text isolated conclusory stat,ements like the cone asJcribing “primary re- sponsibility” for having 'failed to control the press to the Dallas Police Department (a statement not picked up in the mild slap on th,e m5st ad- ministere’d to the Dallas autharitie’s in the introductory statemmt d Conclusions). Tlhe ‘clear implicati’on is that there were irreconcilable views within the commission on either the nature of the value judg- ments to be made or on the desira- bility of 0makin.g them What will ag.pear to many as an ethical Eailure on‘ the commiswion’s part is likely, I think, to impair the report’s lasting quality as a state paper.

The commission goes to extra- 1 ordinary lengths to avoid the con-

clusion that OsWalId was efgectively dgxivkd Q$- the assistance of counael duriag the crupial hours of his in- terrogation both before and a f t q being fonmally “amaigneId” (or, with techpical accuracy, advised of the charges against him) far the bwo murders. The commission suppres- ses no facts but it draws (or? per- hap.s, avoids nqt drawing) a cunclu- sion quite at variance with the facts. The f x t s we : ( 1) op FridGy rep- resentatives of bhe ACLU hied to see Oswald, (2) on Saturday he trield unsuccesshlly to plhone John Abt in New York; ( 3 ) on Saturday afternoon he delclineld a n offer of aid from the Dallas Bar Ass’ociation, saying that he preferred Abt or, as a second choice, an AlCLU lawyer; (4) he in fact ,saw 110 lawyer. We do not Icnow whether Oswald was ever told that ACLU representatives w’ere pre- paTed to supply him )with counsel;

it seems a fair assumption that if he had been apprised of thls immcdl- ately avadable assistance and had declined to aocept it, that fact would have been disclosed, What emerges, then, is a clear case of deprivation Iby omission The Dallas police Itnew that Oswald wanted a lawyer and knew that one he was prepared to accept was immechateily available Instead of informing him of the availability of imrnedmte ald from a saurce they knew he trusted, the polilce chase to play a game of blmd- man‘s huff. ‘If Qswald had hved to be tried, the incriminatory false statements that he made dunng h s interrogation would in all likelihood have been held madmissable in evi- dence algainst him, under rec’eat de- cisions of the other trirbunal over which E p l Warren presides. One suspects that, unl+ke that other tri- bund, the Warren Commis’sion dis-

America’s ‘Dirty’ War . . : When Henri Mleg’s La Qukstion first appeared in France in 1958, it was almost i,mmediatedy banned, which n o qdoulbt stimulated its wide circulation. AUeg, the C o m u n i s t editor of Alger Rkpublicaiv , had supported tlie Algez2aq rebellion, and was consequently seized by French paratroopers apd tortvured

Chandler Davidson, a folrner associate edit01 of the Texas Observer, i s a graduate student m soctdogy at Prince- ton University. November 2, 1964

I

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unmercifully. La Question, the ac- count of his “interrogation,” was recognized by the {government as a politi,cally explosive indictment of the French war.

It is imposs+ble accurately to as- sess bhhe influence which the revela- tion olf widespread tortuq-e and bru- tality by Frenoh troops had upon the course of the war; but it is evid’ent that the .government, was c’orrect in predicting its effe’ct upon important segments of France’s intellectual community. The public outrage of

couragcd dissenting opinions and followed a rule o~f unanimlty: nobh- ing was expressed that did not com- mand the ,assent of all its members. 1

And ‘so the ,opportunity was lost to a5finn standards of police practice that .were disgracefully flouted in Dallas.

Equally disappointing, its the gin- gerly treatment of Messrs. Carry a n d Wade It is true, as the commission said, that their “som~eti~mes errone- ous” statements would have present- ed “serious obstacles’’ to a fair trial and that those same statements helped to create “doubts, specula- tmas, and fears” that might other- wise not have arisen. B u t surely that is not all, ‘or even the gist, d what n,eedmed to be said and vhat the commission should have s a d : that the conduct of these mountebanks, quite apart from its instrumental lconsequence,s, was an u.gly and squalid perversion of the law-en- forcepent process, all the more de- p1,orable because so familiar.

The verdict of Mstory will be a long time ,coming. We have not seen the lend of this affair. What the Warren Commis.sion has done is to refute or render irrelevant the spec- ulations of tihose who, out of what- ever aberrant neecds, still re fuse to beli’eve that Oswald, Ruby and the Dallas authorities. were what they appear to be and not something more sinister. Most of those who on that fatal ,day leaped to a conclu- sion zbout who in Dallas would kill John F Kennedy have since accept- ed or will now accept their disap- pointment. The die-hard regsicmists now must start over again. That is the measure of the commission's achievement, and i t is no mean one.

. Chandler Davidson 4

thos’e for whom Gestapo-adminis- tered lbrutalities were still a poign- ant ‘memory y a s undaubteldly a con- tr3bbnting cause 08 the war’s denoue- ment at Evian4es-Bainms.

In @e light of these facts, the strange silence of Ameri,cans faced by similar hytalities, committed both by our personnel and by the troops ‘we %e advising and main- tainhg in South Viletnam, is puz- zling. .One, would have thought that in the course of a conflict which has remained relatively unpopular

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