Breach of Trust: How the Warren Commission Failed the Nation And Why [Hardcover]

Gerald D. McKnight (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2005

The Warren Commission Report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy . . . was instantly implausible because the authors hid the secrets they knew (and ignored the ones they didn't).--David Ignatius, Washington Post Book World

That recent appraisal reflects a growing consensus that the Warren Commission largely failed in its duty to our nation. Echoing that sentiment, the Gallup organization has reported that 75 percent of Americans polled do not believe the Commission's major conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the "lone assassin." Gerald McKnight now gives profound substance to that view in the most meticulous and devastating dissection of the Commission's work to date.

The Warren Commission produced 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits, more than 17,000 pages of testimony, and a 912-page report. Surely a definitive effort. Not at all, McKnight argues. The Warren Report itself, he contends, was little more than the capstone to a deceptive and shoddily improvised exercise in public relations designed to "prove" that Oswald had acted alone.

McKnight argues that the Commission's own documents and collected testimony--as well as thousands of other items it never saw, refused to see, or actively suppressed--reveal two conspiracies: the still very murky one surrounding the assassination itself and the official one that covered it up. The cover-up actually began, he reveals, within days of Kennedy's death, when President Johnson, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, and acting Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach all agreed that any official investigation must reach only one conclusion: Oswald was the assassin.

While McKnight does not uncover any "smoking gun" that identifies the real conspirators, he nevertheless provides the strongest case yet that the Commission was wrong--and knew it. Oswald might have knowingly or unwittingly been involved, but the Commission's own evidence proves he could not have acted alone.

Based on more than a quarter-million pages of government documents and, for the first time ever, the 50,000 file cards in the Dallas FBI's "Special Index," McKnight's book must now be the starting point for future debate on the assassination. It should also inspire readers to echo the Journal of American History's praise for his previous book: "McKnight's insistence upon remaining within the bounds of the evidence inspires confidence in his judgment."

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This meticulous but tendentious dissection of the official JFK assassination probe commits the very sins it condemns. Historian McKnight (The Last Crusade: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the FBI and the Poor People's Campaign) argues that the commission embraced the politically safe lone-gunman theory from the outset and therefore slanted its investigation, ignored crucial leads and discounted contradictory evidence and witnesses. Examining mountains of documents, McKnight presents a well-researched, if dense and disjointed, indictment of a biased and sloppy commission and an obstructionist FBI. He interprets the errors and irregularities as the cover-up of a conspiracy, as he revisits such conspiracist touchstones as the Zapruder film, the position of Kennedy's neck wound, the single-bullet theory and the "false Oswald" reports. Insisting on Oswald's innocence, he floats the far-fetched conjecture that "CIA hardliners" killed Kennedy and implicated Fidel Castro in the murder as a pretext for war against Cuba. By restricting his discussion largely to Warren Commission findings, McKnight sidesteps later research supporting the Oswald-acted-alone scenario, particularly Gerald Posner's 1993 study Case Closed, which answered most of his objections and remains the best account of the assassination. 21 b&w photos.
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Review

Important and scrupulously researched. . . . Provides a chilling and convincing rebuttal to Gerald Posner's lone gunman, no conspiracy account. -- Library Journal

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 478 pages
• Publisher: Univ Pr of Kansas (September 12, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0700613900
• ISBN-13: 978-0700613908
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.6 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #591,449 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

59 of 63 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Continues the work of Weisberg October 16, 2005

By B. W. LeCloux

Format:Hardcover

In his preface McKnight thanks Harold Weisberg, the dean of assassination critics who passed on in 2002. McKnight's volume presents many of the approaches to the evidence established in Weisberg's writings dating back to 1965.
McKnight essentially relies on Warren Commission evidence to devastate the claim---by the Warren Commission---that only LHO was involved in the JFK assassination. In this sense his work is similar to Professor David R. Wrone, Howard Roffman and Sylvia Meagher. All of these authors use mainly the official findings to disprove the official conclusions. For the most part this small group of critics has been ignored by the mainstream media and defenders of the official fiction.
They maintain that there were two conspiracies. One killed Kennedy and the other failed to properly investigate the crime.
There are dozens of gems in this book which destroy the official findings. Most of them are ignored by defenders of the official theory.
Here, I'll list just six:

1. The results of the tests on LHO's cheek and hands are that he fired no rifle on November 22. McKnight takes the reader through all of the available official documentation to support this fact. Those who continue to support the Warren Commission findings must ignore alot of evidence to claim Oswald fired the Mannlicher Carcano.
2. The time reconstructions of Oswald's movements along with the eyewitness evidence shows that LHO cannot have been the shooter and been where we know he was shortly after the assassination. McKnight cites the witnesses who did not see---but should have seen LHO---coming down the stairwell if he was the shooter. Oswald's alibi was first carefully laid out in full detail by Howard Roffman in his excellent Presumed Guilty volume of 1975. This book is usually ignored by supporters of the lone gunman theory---as they must---for it shows, using only official evidence---that LHO cannot have been the 6th floor shooter and been in the second floor lunchroom with a Coke in his hand with a minute and several seconds after the last shot.
3. The Charles Bronson film shows the alleged assassin's lair during the shooting with no Oswald in it.
4. The autopsy document shows that with a bullet entering JFK in the back at the level of the third thoracic vertebra it could not have exited upward through his throat (indeed, above his necktie) and then travelled downward into Gov. Connally, seated in front of the president.
5. The statements and testimonies of the Dallas doctors and those who performed the autopsy are consistent that the bullet which is alleged to have caused seven non fatal wounds in the President and the Governor could NOT have done this damage and remained essentially in pristine condition. Further, FBI ballistics expert Robert Frazier stated there was no blood or tissue on the bullet---it was officially linked to no body. And, McKnight definitely shows that the bullet cannot be linked by a chain of evidence to either Kennedy or Connally or the stretchers that held them.
6. McKnight cites the testimony of Dr. Joseph Dolce who performed scientific experiments showing that the ammunition attributed to Oswald cannot have caused the seven non fatal wounds to Kennedy and Connally. Dolce performed these experiments for the Warren Commission and they did not like his results so he was not called to testify before the Commission.
These results are always ignored by supporters.
McKnight is unable to shed light on one of the key remaining areas of doubt: just who was it who impersonated Lee Harvey Oswald in Mexico City several weeks prior to the assassination? Whoever did this was trying to implicate Cuba in the assassination of JFK. They failed but LBJ and Hoover and Warren failed the nation, truth and justice by not properly investigating the crime.
For those of you familiar with the works of Harold Weisberg, many of the documented claims in this book will not be new.
The work is important in that it takes the passion for truth and the ground breaking (but largely ignored) research of Weisberg and frames it from the viewpoint of the trained historian (...)

45 of 51 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Two conspiracies October 9, 2005

By John C. Landon

Format:Hardcover

Too many books on the JFK assassination get sidetracked by the many false leads there to tempt sober analysis. This remarkable addition to the literature is unique for its restraint, refusal to indulge in speculation, and careful focus on what can be documented, and no more. There were really two conspiracies, that of the Warren commision, and the conspiracy they stumbled on half-consciously but refused to pursue. Since their agenda was fixed in advance, making the 'lone nut' interpretation a foregone conclusion, the whole investigation was bogus. Many previous writers have gotten this far and confused this with the indirect, but very strong evidence of the other conspiracy. But as the author notes there is no smoking gun, only the many discrepancies in the evidence, and the transparnt deceptions in the way the initial investigation was carried out. The author's slow but steady pursuit of the basic deception of the Commission is convincing and manages to avoid the traps that have claimed too many previous efforts in this field. Everytime you think this field has reached its limits another book reopens the whole can of worms. Well done.

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A solid excellent book September 28, 2005

By Zola

Format:Hardcover

This book roots in a majesterial examination of the documentary records of the Warren Commission and the FBI, a product of careful, hard work conducted over the decades of the type seldom met with in most histories today and rarely in the JFK inquiry. In addition it is well written. The results are devatating to the coverup inflicted upon the American people by the Warren Commission. It should be noted that four of the members of the Warren commission did not believe their own Report, nor did LBJ, the District Attorney of Dallas, the Police Chief of DAllas and even the FBI and the Secret Service--as the documentary record shows beyond cavil. Russell and Cooper, members of the WC, did not believe the SBT, for example, and left records to the fact. Further, interviews with the head of the Secret Service and Warren Commission records prove the Commission and its staff saw the X-rays and medical photographs, some as early as December 1963. It is unquestionable that the WC and its chief counsel Rankin early on [January, 1964] worked with this knowledge, e.g. Jan. 22 executive session of the WC. To argue otherwise is blindly to accept and faithfully to reiterate the political devices employed by investigators as they realized late in their investigation that they had to coverup their nefarious actions and leave a pious paper file that to scholars is further affirmation of their failure. Breach of Trust's objective and scholarly presentation will assist the reader to understand the workings of the WC and lead an inquiring mind to the light. McKNight's unique book ought to become the standard reference to the crime for decades to come.