The Presumption of Innocence: Lee Harvey Oswald

[James DiEugenio]

As everyone who studies this case knows, the Warren Commission was a mockery of a judicial proceeding. What made it worse it that it was run by a fleet of lawyers.  So they knew what they did was a travesty of a judicial proceeding.  The other side knows this, which is why they don't talk about it.  Even if you consider the WC as simply a fact finding inquiry, as say the Watergate or Iran Contra congressional committees were, you still have problems.  First, those committees had minority and majority counsels. They allowed the witnesses or defendants to have lawyers present. But third, the WC was not a fact finding inquiry.  It was a fact avoidance inquiry.  They deliberately deep sixed much exculpatory evidence. What makes this worse is the Brady Rule had been passed that year, which said the DA had to give exculpatory evidence to the defense. 

In the article below, Johnny Cairns begins an exploration of what a real trial of Oswald, with everything on the table, would have produced

 

https://kennedysandking.com/john-f-kennedy-articles/a-presumption-of-innocence-lee-harvey-oswald-part-1

[Pete Mellor]

Like his Lancer presentation last November, JC has written a great article demolishing the prosecutions evidence against LHO.

I'm no expert on U.S. Post Office regulations and processes with regards to the Mail Order 10:30 time stamp and the discrepancy with Oswald being at work at JCS at that time.  Maybe someone can explain that to me.

[James DiEugenio]

That is not the weirdest part.

The weirdest part is the  SR 71 mailing.

You know, it took 24 hours for the money order to fly a thousand miles, be picked up  at the Chicago post office  and dropped off at Klein's, and then sorted out at Klein's and taken to the bank and deposited.  

Belin did not ask one question about this.

If that guy would have been woken up in his sleep by a burglar at 3 AM he would have screamed Oswald did it!

 

[Karl Kinaski]

 The last paragraph of this New York Tomes Obituary of David Belin shows author Eric Paces sense of humor ... 

quote:

David W. Belin, Warren Commission Lawyer, Dies at 70

By Eric Pace
Jan. 18, 1999
 
David W. Belin, a lawyer for the Warren Commission, which investigated the Kennedy assassination, and for the Rockefeller Commission, which looked at Central Intelligence Agency activities, died yesterday at St. Mary's Hospital of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. He was 70 and lived in Windsor Heights, Iowa, and on the East Side of Manhattan.

The cause was head injuries sustained in a fall in his hotel room in Rochester, where he had gone for his annual physical checkup at the Mayo Clinic, said Michael Gartner, the editor of The Tribune in Ames, Iowa. After the fall, Mr. Belin was in a coma for 12 days.

Mr. Belin (pronounced ''BELL-in'') was a co-owner of The Tribune with Mr. Gartner, a former president of NBC News, and of other Midwestern publications. At his death, he was the senior partner in the Des Moines law firm Belin Lamson McCormick Zumbach Flynn. He worked in various areas of the law, including corporate law, litigation and estate law. In New York, he served as an adviser to wealthy families.

He was described, in an editorial written for today's issue of The Tribune, as ''a moderate Republican who had no use for the far right of his party or the far left of the Democratic Party.''

Mr. Belin was appointed by Chief Justice Earl Warren in 1964 to be assistant counsel to the Warren Commission, whose formal name was the President's Commission to Report Upon the Assassination of President Kennedy. The commission was created by executive order of President Lyndon B. Johnson and given broad powers.

Mr. Belin concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had worked entirely on his own as the President's assassin, and the commission's main finding was that speculation that conspirators or Government elements were involved in the killing was false. In its final report, the commission affirmed that Mr. Oswald had acted on his own.

In later years, Mr. Belin defended his work against those who criticized the investigation of the President's death, and his writings included two books about the assassination. The truth, he liked to say, was all that was sought, and he remained adamant in his conviction that the truth had indeed been determined.

The Tribune editorial said: ''He was sure -- more sure than he was of anything else -- that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when he killed John F. Kennedy on that awful day in Dallas in 1963. He would argue the minutest detail with anyone who challenged him, and he would excoriate Oliver Stone and others who preached of conspiracies. That issue could make his blood boil.''

In an article in The New York Times Magazine in 1988, Mr. Belin declared: ''The truth is that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who murdered President John F. Kennedy and Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit on that tragic Friday afternoon in Dallas.'' But he went on to acknowledge that, as he put it, ''25 years after the event, a majority of the American public does not believe the truth. Rather, polls have shown that most Americans believe President Kennedy was assassinated as an outgrowth of a conspiracy.''

In 1975, Mr. Belin was appointed by President Gerald R. Ford, who had been a member of the Warren Commission, to be executive director of Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller's Commission on C.I.A. Activities Within the United States, which became informally known as the Rockefeller Commission.

While serving on the commission's staff, Mr. Belin learned of extensive Government plots to kill the Cuban leader Fidel Castro. He proposed a Congressional investigation to examine ''whether or not there is any credible evidence of a foreign conspiracy.''

''The Warren Commission found none,'' he said, ''but the Warren Commission did not have any information concerning the C.I.A. assassination plots.''

Around that time a Senate select committee issued a 347-page report declaring that United States officials had ''instigated'' plots to kill two foreign leaders and had known about or supported the overthrow of three others that had resulted in their deaths. The report found no evidence that the C.I.A. had carried out any assassinations.

 (...)

While Mr. Belin lay in a coma in his last days, a friend, visiting him, sought to appraise how ill he really was. He held Mr. Belin's hand, watched his face hopefully and, after a preliminary remark, said, ''David, I think there was a conspiracy to kill John F. Kennedy.'' The friend was grieved when, for once, Mr. Belin gave no rebuttal.

Close quote

[Lawrence Schnapf]

nice piece by Johnny. i'm interested to see what he says about the chain of evidence for the hulls and various bullet fragments. 

 

 

[Micah Mileto]

What do people mean when they ask for proof that Oswald wouldn't be convicted in court? I like to think I could be a reasonable member of a jury, and I wouldn't feel comfortable with any of the official theories for obvious reasons. The opinions of average people ARE the court!

Edited June 14, 2021 by Micah Mileto

[James DiEugenio]

Tanenbaum has said this in public at least twice.

In his upcoming book, he will go over what would have happened at a pre trial evidentiary hearing.

When i said you probably have done a lot of those, he said, "About a thousand."