Justice for All (89 page)

To those points, Warren added a dramatic human observation and a deft parliamentary maneuver. Lest his fellow Commissioners fool themselves about the consequences of letting Redlich go, Warren reminded them that they would be casting off a member of their staff in the face of allegations that he was disloyal to his country. They would subject him and his family to harassment. His wife would suffer, as would his children. And that suffering would go on and on. To be branded disloyal, Warren reminded all of them, “is a hurt that can never be remedied as long as a man lives.” That sobering observation then led Warren to his conclusion: If the Commission was inclined to question Redlich's loyalty, Warren insisted that the professor be granted a hearing where he could present his own evidence and challenge those who questioned him. Such a hearing in the midst of the Commission's work would be a time-consuming spectacle, as Warren well knew. None of the commissioners was prepared for such a course, but none dared challenge Warren's authority to demand it. Suddenly, the issue was turned—the human costs of casual dismissal were now before the Commission and the practical matter of how to carry it out was now vastly more daunting.

McCloy was the first to speak when Warren concluded, and he joined Warren in arguing that Redlich should be allowed to stay. Ford continued to insist on an up-or-down vote on Redlich's continued employment, but Warren again maneuvered. The chief justice insisted that the Commission first vote on whether to grant all its staff members, including Redlich, their security clearances. Since Ford already had acknowledged that he had no question about Redlich's loyalty, he could only vote in favor. The motion passed unanimously. And then, once Redlich's loyalty was off the table, the idea of firing him became more complicated. Fire him for what, precisely? And for those who wanted him gone as a way of appeasing the Commission's critics, what of Warren's threat to expand the matter with a full hearing? Still hoping for a vote that would allow him to go on the record against Redlich, Ford moved to force the issue. “It seems to me that from the position I take, that there ought to be some action by the Commission affirming his continued employment—if that is what the majority of the Commission wants to do,” Ford insisted. But his allies were dropping off. Dulles now saw the futility of that approach and began to craft an alternative. Warren had the momentum, and he allowed himself the luxury of losing his temper with Ford. “Jerry, there are no charges against this man,” Warren said, dropping his customary formality and addressing Ford by his first name. “There are no charges against him.”

Other members of the Commission then jumped in, urging Ford to withdraw his motion, which no member would agree to second. All members of the Commission staff, including Redlich, were granted their clearances and allowed to continue working. Chastened, Ford retreated, but he did not soon forget Warren's handling of the matter. “He was given that job to run the show,” Ford remarked forty years later. “And he did.”
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As with so much of the Commission's work that spring, the Redlich debate sapped Warren's strength. When the Commission adjourned that evening, Warren headed home, where his old friend Bart Cavanaugh waited for him.
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Nina Warren had asked Cavanaugh to spend some time with Warren, to help revive him from the wearing months of early 1964. Arriving in Washington, Cavanaugh was distressed to find Warren in shaky health. His weight, which normally hovered around two hundred pounds, was way down. He was watching his diet carefully, and he was accompanied everywhere by Secret Service. “It was getting to him,” Cavanaugh realized.
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So that Friday, at Nina's urging and without tipping off the Secret Service, Cavanaugh hijacked his friend, piled him into a car, and headed for New York. They arrived in time to catch the late innings of a baseball game, then went for dinner and checked into a hotel. They stayed through the weekend, watching games during the day, relaxing at night. Warren liked Toots Shor's and New York's other grandly male habitations; he liked a scotch at the bar, a booth with friends, and a steak. He and Cavanaugh enjoyed the city for two days and nights, then headed home, Cavanaugh at the wheel. Warren was back at work on Monday morning.

On June 7, Warren and Ford led a small Commission delegation to Dallas. Warren was in good spirits that morning. He picked up Arlen Specter in his limousine on the way to Andrews Air Force Base, and he chatted brightly with Ford during the flight.
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In Dallas, it fell to Specter to explain to Warren the theory that he had developed regarding the shots to Kennedy and Connally—namely, that a single bullet had struck Kennedy from behind, had passed straight through his neck without striking any bones, and had exited his throat, nicking his tie as it tore through his body and clothing. That bullet, continuing in a direct line but wobbling slightly, then struck Connally in the back, just to the left of his right armpit and, after hitting a rib, exited below his right nipple. It then passed through the back side of Connally's left wrist and, at last spent, hit him in the thigh. That shot—later to be derided as the “magic bullet”—was followed by another, which struck the back of Kennedy's head and exploded out of the right front of his skull, the force of that aerial explosion snapping his head backward. Warren initially was skeptical of the single-bullet theory, as were many upon first hearing it.

And yet that theory was consistent with all the medical evidence in the case—consistent with the wounds to Kennedy's neck and throat and Connally's injuries. It was consistent with the positions of Connally and Kennedy and with the so-called Zapruder film, which the Commission reviewed and which captured the moments of the assassination. It was supported by the majority of witnesses who heard the shots and recalled that there were three, one of which apparently had missed. It explained Kennedy's motions—his hands pulled toward his throat after first being shot in an involuntary muscle reflex; his head slumped forward, but his back was propped up by the brace he was wearing that afternoon; after the next shot, the right side of his skull blew up and jerked backward. And it answered another vital question: If Connally and Kennedy were struck by separate bullets, then where was the additional bullet, the bullet that struck Kennedy in the back but that was subsequently unaccounted for?
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It should have lodged in the car, and yet none was there. Specter's theory, meanwhile, was supported by the bullet found on Connally's stretcher, only slightly damaged. When fired, that bullet had weighed approximately 160 to 161 grains; when recovered, it weighed 158.6 grains, with the balance being explained by the fragments recovered from Connally's wrist and thigh. Specter laid out the evidence for Warren in about eight minutes, talking with the chief justice as the two stood in the window of the Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald had been spotted by witnesses moments before the shooting. Warren stared down at Dealey Plaza. He said nothing. He quietly turned and walked away.
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The second act of that trip—the only trip that Warren would make to Dallas in connection with the assassination probe—was to interview Jack Ruby. Warren had avoided Dallas during the time that Jack Ruby was on trial, but by June, Ruby had been tried for the murder of Oswald and had been sentenced to death. Late that morning, after taking in the scene of Kennedy's murder and visiting that of Officer Tippit's death, Warren and his entourage arranged to meet Ruby in the kitchen of the local sheriff.
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Specter retired downstairs to watch the Giants-Phillies game on television, but after about an hour, he was summoned back into the interrogation. Ruby, who was Jewish and who, in his consuming paranoia, was convinced that Jewish children were being murdered in the jail, had asked for a Jew to be present during his questioning. Specter filled that role.
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With Texas officials, Ford, and Specter all on hand, Warren began the session, but even before Ruby was sworn in, he asked that he be allowed to take a lie detector test. Warren was not a believer in lie detectors and tried gently to dissuade Ruby, but added, “ [I] f you want such a test, I will arrange for it.”
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From there, the interrogation spun away, with Ruby holding forth about subjects at best tangentially related to the assassination. He went on at great length, for instance, to describe his decision to close his burlesque club after the Kennedy assassination, and he frequently interrupted himself to make sure Warren was tracking him. To the extent it was possible, Warren seemed to. He urged Ruby along, hearing him out, eliciting from him a wobbly tale of the anguish that Ruby felt over the assassination and of his two-day descent into violence. That Sunday morning, after Ruby read a public letter to Caroline Kennedy in the
Dallas Times Herald,
his emotional state fractured: “Suddenly I felt, which was so stupid, that I wanted to show my love for our faith, being of the Jewish faith, and I never used the term and I don't want to get into that—suddenly the feeling, the emotional feeling came within me that someone owed this debt to our beloved President to save her [Jackie Kennedy] the ordeal of coming back [to Dallas, presumably to testify at Oswald's trial] .”
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Ruby's testimony was hard to follow, but one fact alone seemed to eliminate the idea that his Sunday morning murder of Oswald was part of a larger plot. That morning, Ruby came to downtown Dallas to wire $25 to one of the dancers who worked at his club. A copy of the receipt for that wire provided solid evidence that Ruby was in the Western Union office at 11:16 A.M. Oswald had been scheduled to be moved by that time, so Ruby's movements that morning would have precluded him from being at the police station at the right moment had Dallas police carried out the transfer as scheduled.
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Instead, Oswald's departure was delayed, and when Ruby emerged from the Western Union office, his gun in his pocket as usual and his business with his dancer complete, he walked down the jail driveway and into the loading area just as Oswald emerged from the building. There, with a breathless nation watching, he pulled his gun, shoved it toward Oswald's stomach, and fired—at 11:21 A.M. on Sunday, November 24.
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Coincidences may not be satisfying to the conspiratorially minded, but there was no evidence that Ruby's arrival at the driveway at just that moment was anything but a coincidence.

A weary Warren returned that night to Washington. He had hoped that the Commission would be done by now—June 1 was his target date, apparently picked to have it out of the way in time for that year's political conventions—and he hoped still that it might conclude its business within the month. He was to be bitterly disappointed. As the deadline approached, Warren met with Redlich and another commission lawyer, and Warren exploded when told that the staff was not ready to finalize its report. So furious was Warren that one staff member worried he might have a heart attack.
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Then resignation set in. “Well, gentlemen, we are here for the duration,” Warren remarked quietly.
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Warren did squeeze in a vacation that summer, but he cut it uncharacteristically short. He had lunch with Rankin on July 6 and departed that night for Oslo. He was gone for three weeks of fishing. His first meeting after his return was with Rankin again.
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Normally, Warren would have been in Europe or California for the notorious Washington August, when few government officials who could leave town chose to stay. This time, he supervised the Commission staff as it prepared its findings and submitted them to the full panel. Warren also enlisted his Court clerks for their help, and they proofread copies of the report as sections were completed. Warren had learned the value of a unanimous opinion in
Brown,
and as the Commission neared the end of its work, he lobbied hard for a report that would speak for all its members.

It had not been easy in
Brown,
and it was not easy now. Russell in particular remained unconvinced that Oswald had acted without help, and dickered regarding the language by which the Commission dismissed all conspiracy theories. And Ford hesitated as well. “Both refused to sign,” Warren told Drew Pearson afterward. Ford “wanted to go off on [a] tangent showing [a] communist plot,” Pearson's notes of their 1967 conversation say.
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Convinced that unanimity was more important than the precise language used to describe the Commission's conclusions, Warren agreed to accommodate them, especially Russell.
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Rather than state that conclusion without equivocation, the Commission reported only that it had “found no evidence that either Lee Harvey Oswald or Jack Ruby was part of any conspiracy, domestic or foreign, to assassinate President Kennedy.”
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That left open, at least a bit, the possibility that new evidence could change the report's central conclusion. The Commission similarly debated the single-bullet theory, but eventually agreed that it was the only satisfactory explanation for the injuries to Kennedy and Connally.

Russell professed not to be entirely satisfied. “I tried my best to get in a dissent,” he told Johnson a few days before the report was delivered, “but they'd come 'round and trade me out of it.”
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Even then, with the Commission's work complete, Russell demonstrated how badly he had misunderstood the significance of the single-bullet theory, insisting that it “don't make much difference” whether a single bullet struck Connally and Kennedy.

The commissioners delivered their report to Lyndon Johnson on September 24, 1964. Early reactions were widely positive—at the
New York Times,
James Reston wrote that the Warren Commission had “fulfilled its primary assignment,” while also predicting that the assassination would long continue to occupy American imaginations.
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Polls later that year showed that the American people overwhelmingly accepted the Commission's conclusions .
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