OSWALD-1963-POLICE-AP.JPG

Former Warren Commission staff member Burt Griffin says all the evidence indicates that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin of President John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963.

(AP file)

As we honor the memory of John F. Kennedy, we are drawn to his tragic death

and to the questions so many ask as to who did it and why.

With 14 other lawyers, I shared the responsibility in 1964 of ascertaining the facts of

Nov. 22, 1963. We were the staff of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of

President Kennedy -- popularly known as the Warren Commission.

Of diverse backgrounds, regions and political views, we shared a common goal -- to find

the truth.

That was our instruction from the commission’s chairman, U.S. Chief Justice Earl

Warren. At our first staff meeting, the Chief Justice said, “Your only client is the truth.”

Warren had served in World War I. He had been chastened by the Second World War.

He told us a third world war could occur if we didn’t find the truth. The country was rife with

theorists who had everyone to blame for the assassination, and politicians were ready to exploit

them. The era of Sen. Joe McCarthy was not far behind.

We knew, also, that our own careers were at stake. If we got it wrong, we would be goats.

If we were correct, our futures would be secure. If we could find a conspiracy, one of us might

be president.

One of the exhibits in the Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, showing pro-Cuba flyers that Lee Harvey Oswald had handed out in New Orleans several months before the assassination.

When our 816-page

was issued, over 25,000 witnesses had been interviewed. We

took testimony from the most important 552. We published 26 volumes of testimony,

investigative reports and exhibits.

Although we began with a thousand questions, none of us doubted -- when we had

finished -- that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy.

We found no evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald had been associated with anyone who

wanted to kill Kennedy.

We recognized that anything was possible, but the evidence of a conspiracy simply was

not there. We also recognized that there might be undiscovered witnesses. In the years ahead, a

disgruntled girlfriend, an accused criminal hoping to save his neck or a death-bed memoir might

come forward.

After 50 years, none of that has happened. Indeed further investigations have confirmed

our original findings.

The autopsy photographs and X-rays of Kennedy have been viewed by

approximately 20 forensic pathologists. All agree that the shots which wounded and killed

Kennedy came from the rear.

No claims of a shooter from another direction have survived scrutiny.

Moreover, evidence withheld from the commission by the FBI affirms the conclusion

that Oswald’s decision to kill Kennedy was made at the last minute during a period when his

personal life was collapsing.

We now know that on about Nov. 11, 1963, Oswald left a threatening note for

Agent James Hosty at his FBI office in Dallas. Oswald was angry that Hosty had interviewed

his wife, Marina, who had delivered their second child three weeks earlier.

What man planning to kill the president would have left such a note for the FBI? He

could expect to be questioned and, perhaps, arrested almost immediately.

But Agent Hosty did not do that. He took no action, and Oswald remained free. After

Oswald was killed by Jack Ruby, Hosty destroyed Oswald’s note. It was to protect himself from

blame from his own boss -- J. Edgar Hoover.

After Oswald left the note, the separation of Marina and Lee intensified. On Sunday,

Nov. 17, Marina tried to telephone Lee at the rooming house where he lived. She learned

for the first time that he was there under a false name -- O.H. Lee -- used a month earlier, he told

her, to frustrate the FBI’s efforts to find him.

Marina became incensed at the “games” she thought he was playing. She hung up the

phone and refused to take calls from him.

Two days later, Nov. 19, word was first published that the president’s motorcade

would pass by the Texas School Book Depository where Oswald had coincidentally found a job

five weeks before.

One can well envision the thoughts that developed over the next two days in the mind of

this lonely, friendless man. He was a voracious reader of books about great men. He had

fantasized to Marina that one of his children would become president or that he would be the

leader of a Marxist revolution.

Now his own life was collapsing. With only a GED, he was working at the lowest-paid

job filling book orders at the school book depository. In June 1962, he had left the Soviet Union

in disillusionment. In October 1963, his revered Cuba had rebuffed his request for a visa.

American Marxists, the Communist Party U.S.A., the Socialist Workers’ Party and the Fair Play for

Cuba Committee kept him at arm's length. And now Marina would not talk with him.

A month ago, I got a vivid picture of Oswald’s life in November 1963. I visited the Dallas

room in which he lived. It could hold only a single bed and a tiny dresser. Scarcely enough space

to squeeze by when going to bed.

What must Oswald have been thinking about his own future when he learned that he

would be so close to President Kennedy on Nov. 22, yet lived in that lonely room?

If he killed the most powerful man in the world, he could shape history.

After work on Nov. 21, he went unannounced to see Marina

. He

asked her to live with him in Dallas. He said he would find an apartment. She said “No.”

Staying for the night, the next morning he retrieved his rifle from the garage where Marina was

staying.

He left her $170 and his wedding ring. He took with him $15. Enough for a bus ticket to

Mexico.

As you read one of the many books that suggest a conspiracy, ask what the conspiracy

writers are telling you about Oswald. Ask what sensible person wanting to kill President

Kennedy -- the Mafia, the CIA, a foreign government, a political activist -- would want Lee Harvey

Oswald as a co-conspirator.

Remember that the evidence is overwhelming that Lee Harvey Oswald shot

Kennedy and that no evidence exists that he had a relationship with any of Kennedy’s enemies at

a time when he could have known that he might have an opportunity to shoot the president.

Burt W. Griffin, a native Clevelander, retired in 2005 after three decades as a Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court judge. He served as an assistant counsel to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of JFK.