CE 2011

[Greg Doudna]

On Commission Exhibit 2011 (https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/pdf/WH24_CE_2011.pdf )--the FBI document which reports a number of identifications of physical evidence in the JFK assassination and Tippit killing cases based on reported interviews for none of which can FBI interview reports be found in FBI records released (according to Aguilar and Thompson here: https://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/EvenMoreMagical/EvenMoreMagical.htm )--can anyone help with answers to these questions? 

(1) Who was the author of the document? If not known, is there credible speculation concerning identity of the author?

(2) Is it common or unusual for an FBI report of this nature to have no author identified?

(3) Is there any known signed cover letter from FBI which accompanied delivery of this document to the Warren Commission? If none is known, is that unusual?

(4) Since the President's Commission's (Warren Commission's) inquiry of May 20, 1964 to which this document represents itself as a response, referred to in the document's opening sentence, would have been addressed to FBI headquarters, Washington, D.C. (Hoover), is it unusual that the letterhead, while identifying itself as FBI, does not identify itself as FBI, Washington, D.C. or any other address or location, and typewritten below the letterhead (in the same font as the body of the report) is "Dallas, Texas" followed by the date (July 7, 1964)? 

(5) Is it unusual that an FBI response to an inquiry addressed to FBI headquarters, Washington, D.C., would come from Dallas and not Washington, D.C.? (If CE 2011 was sent to the Warren Commission accompanying a cover letter from FBI headquarters, Washington, D.C., this question would be resolved, but if so, #3, is such a cover letter known?)

(6) To the left of the first page as part of the letterhead and under the logo at left, may be seen printed: "In Reply, Please Refer to File No." followed by no number. Why is a file number missing? Was it common or unusual for no file number to be identified on FBI issued documents, in order to facilitate correspondence or to assist in later inquiries to FBI files?

 

[Gary Murr]

Hello Greg:

I cannot supply you with answers to the six questions you posed but can give you my two cents worth on this subject matter. You are correct, CE2011 would appear to have been generated as a result of a request sent to the Bureau by J. Lee Rankin dated, again as you have indicated May 20, 1964. [the link for this document is: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=59597#relPageId=2&search=%22C6_C7%20C38%22 

You will note in the bottom right hand corner of this document the numeral “3942”, which to me is indicative that this request and its response is to be found within the FBI’s JFK HQ File, 62-109060, specifically in this instance serial number 3942. The curious thing about this serial, when you look it up, is that you find it has been withheld under that good-old catch all “…referred to another agency and is in a pending status” the agency in this instance being the CIA [link for this specific serial is: https://www.maryferrell.org/showDoc.html?docId=62381#relPageId=125

However, what I think may be a key in helping you to unravel/answer some of your questions can be found in a statement made by Rankin in this correspondence of May 20, 1964, on the last page of this three page letter to wit:  “Some of this information may have been set forth in your various reports; however, we would like a complete answer to this request set forth in a separate, self-contained report.” To me this statement is indicative or indicates that the “complete answer” as represented by CE 2011 has no individual author but rather is comprised of information pulled from more than one of the FBI “bulky file” reports generated by/compiled by Dallas FO SA Robert Gemberling. I do not have the time to look these up but it I am correct, a search of the Gemberling compiling’s – and there are more than one and some run to hundreds of pages – could just possibly contain the “interviews” that you seek. If I am correct in this assessment, that would mean numerous reports potentially generated by numerous FBI field agents. This of course represents a particularly onerous task but who knows – I may be wrong.

FWIW

Gary Murr

[Greg Doudna]

I appreciate your answer Gary Murr. I rechecked and every one of the 37 items, without exception, involve reports of dated interviews conducted after May 20, 1964, of identifications of physical evidence. So CE-2011 was not a compilation of prior documents.

What is that about the file missing because "referred to another agency and is in a pending status"? That was decades ago? Perhaps that other agency has completed its "pending status"? Can you say why you think the unnamed agency is the CIA? 

[Greg Doudna]

I found this FBI document for comparison, CE 3001, dated July 14, 1964, Dallas: https://maryferrell.org/archive/docs/001/1142/images/img_1142_551_300.png, same letterhead and logo, same "In Reply, Please Refer to File No." with no number after that (so not unusual), same format of description of FBI interviews intended to answer a question responsive to a Warren Commission letter of request for information. But there is this difference: everything else is similar but this document at the bottom of its last page has the familiar fill-in lines: On___at____File #-____by Special Agent____Date dictated_____, and those are filled in. This (this last data) is missing on CE 2011.  

Gordon Shanklin, head of the Dallas FBI, was communicating with headquarters concerning the interviews of CE 2011. Shanklin would seem to be the responsible party in Dallas underlying the content of CE 2011 since the interviews were done by agents of his office and there are memos from him to headquarters about certain findings. However Shanklin's name does not appear on CE 2011 nor is any other Dallas agent identified as author (seems curious). 

 

Edited November 14, 2021 by Greg Doudna

[Greg Doudna]

[Photo analysis in error and retracted.]

 

 

Edited November 14, 2021 by Greg Doudna

[David Lifton]

On 9/22/2021 at 5:42 AM, Greg Doudna said:

On Commission Exhibit 2011 (https://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh24/pdf/WH24_CE_2011.pdf )--the FBI document which reports a number of identifications of physical evidence in the JFK assassination and Tippit killing cases based on reported interviews for none of which can FBI interview reports be found in FBI records released (according to Aguilar and Thompson here: https://www.history-matters.com/essays/frameup/EvenMoreMagical/EvenMoreMagical.htm )--can anyone help with answers to these questions? 

(1) Who was the author of the document? If not known, is there credible speculation concerning identity of the author?

(2) Is it common or unusual for an FBI report of this nature to have no author identified?

(3) Is there any known signed cover letter from FBI which accompanied delivery of this document to the Warren Commission? If none is known, is that unusual?

(4) Since the President's Commission's (Warren Commission's) inquiry of May 20, 1964 to which this document represents itself as a response, referred to in the document's opening sentence, would have been addressed to FBI headquarters, Washington, D.C. (Hoover), is it unusual that the letterhead, while identifying itself as FBI, does not identify itself as FBI, Washington, D.C. or any other address or location, and typewritten below the letterhead (in the same font as the body of the report) is "Dallas, Texas" followed by the date (July 7, 1964)? 

(5) Is it unusual that an FBI response to an inquiry addressed to FBI headquarters, Washington, D.C., would come from Dallas and not Washington, D.C.? (If CE 2011 was sent to the Warren Commission accompanying a cover letter from FBI headquarters, Washington, D.C., this question would be resolved, but if so, #3, is such a cover letter known?)

(6) To the left of the first page as part of the letterhead and under the logo at left, may be seen printed: "In Reply, Please Refer to File No." followed by no number. Why is a file number missing? Was it common or unusual for no file number to be identified on FBI issued documents, in order to facilitate correspondence or to assist in later inquiries to FBI files?

 

REVISED, 10/2/21 -4:20 AM):  Hi Greg: Let me relate my own experience(s), based on recollection.  Sometime around 1970 - 1971, I went to Washington, and spent a good month at the National Archives.  (As I recall, I stayed at the home of Bernard ("Bud") Fensterwald.)   As those familiar with my background know my primary education was in math and physics.  After I began attending  Prof. Liebeler's UCLA law School seminar on the Warren Commission, i went to the UCLA Library and checked out several books on evidence (e.g., "McCormack on Evidence," a standard text used at the time.)   Of course, a good course on "evidence" is basic to any legal education.

What i learned was that in any criminal case, the evidence --every item of evidence --could not be  "entered into evidence" -- unless  assessed to be "officially legitimate" -- i.e., until its "chain of possession" was established. The legal jargon for this fell under the purview of "relevance," a legal term which has a specific meaning in the law.  Bottom line:  If there was no "chain of possession," a rifle could not be "admitted into evidence".  Why?  Because it wasn't "relevant."  The same for bullets removed at autopsy;and, going to the macroscopic, the body itself was evidence, and it--too --was required to have a chain of possession. From the "found" body to the autopsy table. 

Much of this is familiar to those who watch the TV program "Law and Order."

Now let's apply these rules (and insights) to the "case against Oswald."

 

As everyone knows, the key "evidence against Oswald" consisted such items as "the rifle", "fingerprints at the sniper' nest", bullet fragments removed from JFK's body. And of course, thee was the body itself.  The President's body was critical evidence in "the case against Oswald.  So it, too, had to have a "chain of possession," (All  of this is discussed in Chapter 16 of Best Evidence.")

Had Oswald lived--and the case against him gone to trial--many of the key items could not have been "admitted into evidence" without a valid "chain of possession."

Oswald was murdered on Sunday 11/24/63, so the case being built against him began with the Dallas Police file, and then the FBI file, and --finally--the Warren Commission investigation.

So... faced with these legal requirements, how did the Warren Commission legal staff behave?

Basically, they accepted all the basic evidence --the "found rifle,"  the "found bullets" (or bullet fragments) etc. --as evidence, without paying sufficient attention to the "chain of possession."

Accepting the validity of these items of evidence, the Warren Commission legal staff then set out to write their "report".   But note: Just as when a high school or college student writes a term paper, the Warren Commission's legal staff first wrote an "outline" -- an "Oswald was guilty" outline as the basic structure for the Warren Report.  These outlines --in the "office files" at the National Archives (and designated the "REP" files) --were dated between January and March, 1964. Once these outlines were approved by Warren Commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin, the work for the individual chapters was parceled out to individual staff lawyers, who then proceeded  to write their 'preliminary drafts" for the document which, when completed, would emerge as the Warren Commission Report (the WCR). (All of this-- what I have just described here -- is documented in the "Office Files" of the Warren Commission -- abbreviated as the "REP" files in the "office files" of the Warren Commission.  (I examined this material -- the REP files -- back around 1970. (Arlen Specter, for example, wrote the "original drafts" for the section of the Warren Report about the autopsy.  Wesley Liebeler --and Albert Jenner -- were in charge of the chapters on Oswald's biography.)

What I found-- again, back around 1970, when I first examined the Warren Commission's "working paper's" at the National Archives-- was simply this: : The Warren Commission legal staff wrote their "first drafts" of the "Oswald-did-it" Warren Report in mid-January 1964!

Just consider what this means: President Kennedy was murdered on 11/22/63; the Warren Commission was created by 11/29/63; several weeks passed while staff was hired, the nation was told that the Warren Commission was hard work.  Meanwhile,  by January 1964, the earliest "Oswald did it" outlines were already created!  (This same bizarre situation was addressed by author Howard Roffman, whose book -- appropriately titled "Presumed Guilty"  --was published around 1970,

Bottom line: the "Oswald did it" fix was in by January 1964.  

All i can say is: "Wow! What a betrayal of the public trust!" 

Once this bizarre "preliminary outline"  was adopted (i.e., "green lighted") by the WC's General Counsel), what happened next was predictable. 

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT --i.e., starting in January 1964

Between January and June 1964, when the senior  Warren Commission staff lawyers (e.g., Stuart Eisenberg, and Norman Redlich)  were already drafting the document that became known as "the Warren Report-- some of the senior legal staff in effect recognized the emerging legal problem. Indeed, the documents show that senior members had a serious "Oops!" moment. Someone apparently realized "Oops!  We are constructing this "Oswald did it" narrative  based on the "sniper's nest evidence"  (e.g the rifle, the bullet fragments, etc.) --but we (the WC legal staff) have  neglected to establish a "chain of possession" on the key items of evidence!

 In other words, it was as if they (the WC legal staff)  were building a house that had no proper legal foundation!

So now, having conducted their investigation without bothering to establish a chain of possession, senior attorneys Eisenberg and Redlich let out an enormous "OOPS!" exclamation;  consulted with Gen. Counsel Rankin, and that's how (and why) it wasn't until May 1964, that the Warren Commission legal staff set out to repair the situation.  At this rather "late" date, the FBI was requested (by the Warren Commission) to establish a "chain of possession" on a whole array of "sniper's nest" items of evidence: i.e., the rifle, the bullets, the shells, etc.

All I can say is: "Welcome to law school, and the "legal way" of viewing theWarren Commission's view of 11/22/63.  

This --of course--  was akin to putting the cart before the horse, but the legal eagles of the WC staff behaved as if none of this mattered. It was as if their attitude was: "Oswald killed the President. Here's the official narrative; we can worry about the legal details later." 

The country deserved better.

There was a lot of talk -- back in the mid-sixties --about how the Warren Commission was involved in a conspiracy.  From attending Prof. Liebeler's UCLA seminar, I learned otherwise.  Because I watched the law students arrive at the same false conclusions,  

As i wrote in Best Evidence: a major conspiracy on the Warren Commission legal staff wasn't  necessary: just that they went to law school. That was like putting your mind into a straight jacket, when evaluating reality. 

DSL

 

Edited October 2, 2021 by David Lifton

[Greg Doudna]

8 hours ago, David Lifton said:

REVISED, 10/2/21 -4:20 AM):  Hi Greg: Let me relate my own experience(s), based on recollection.  Sometime around 1970 - 1971, I went to Washington, and spent a good month at the National Archives.  (As I recall, I stayed at the home of Bernard ("Bud") Fensterwald.)   As those familiar with my background know my primary education was in math and physics.  After I began attending  Prof. Liebeler's UCLA law School seminar on the Warren Commission, i went to the UCLA Library and checked out several books on evidence (e.g., "McCormack on Evidence," a standard text used at the time.)   Of course, a good course on "evidence" is basic to any legal education.

What i learned was that in any criminal case, the evidence --every item of evidence --could not be  "entered into evidence" -- unless  assessed to be "officially legitimate" -- i.e., until its "chain of possession" was established. The legal jargon for this fell under the purview of "relevance," a legal term which has a specific meaning in the law.  Bottom line:  If there was no "chain of possession," a rifle could not be "admitted into evidence".  Why?  Because it wasn't "relevant."  The same for bullets removed at autopsy;and, going to the macroscopic, the body itself was evidence, and it--too --was required to have a chain of possession. From the "found" body to the autopsy table. 

Much of this is familiar to those who watch the TV program "Law and Order."

Now let's apply these rules (and insights) to the "case against Oswald."

 

As everyone knows, the key "evidence against Oswald" consisted such items as "the rifle", "fingerprints at the sniper' nest", bullet fragments removed from JFK's body. And of course, thee was the body itself.  The President's body was critical evidence in "the case against Oswald.  So it, too, had to have a "chain of possession," (All  of this is discussed in Chapter 16 of Best Evidence.")

Had Oswald lived--and the case against him gone to trial--many of the key items could not have been "admitted into evidence" without a valid "chain of possession."

Oswald was murdered on Sunday 11/24/63, so the case being built against him began with the Dallas Police file, and then the FBI file, and --finally--the Warren Commission investigation.

So... faced with these legal requirements, how did the Warren Commission legal staff behave?

Basically, they accepted all the basic evidence --the "found rifle,"  the "found bullets" (or bullet fragments) etc. --as evidence, without paying sufficient attention to the "chain of possession."

Accepting the validity of these items of evidence, the Warren Commission legal staff then set out to write their "report".   But note: Just as when a high school or college student writes a term paper, the Warren Commission's legal staff first wrote an "outline" -- an "Oswald was guilty" outline as the basic structure for the Warren Report.  These outlines --in the "office files" at the National Archives (and designated the "REP" files) --were dated between January and March, 1964. Once these outlines were approved by Warren Commission General Counsel J. Lee Rankin, the work for the individual chapters was parceled out to individual staff lawyers, who then proceeded  to write their 'preliminary drafts" for the document which, when completed, would emerge as the Warren Commission Report (the WCR). (All of this-- what I have just described here -- is documented in the "Office Files" of the Warren Commission -- abbreviated as the "REP" files in the "office files" of the Warren Commission.  (I examined this material -- the REP files -- back around 1970. (Arlen Specter, for example, wrote the "original drafts" for the section of the Warren Report about the autopsy.  Wesley Liebeler --and Albert Jenner -- were in charge of the chapters on Oswald's biography.)

What I found-- again, back around 1970, when I first examined the Warren Commission's "working paper's" at the National Archives-- was simply this: : The Warren Commission legal staff wrote their "first drafts" of the "Oswald-did-it" Warren Report in mid-January 1964!

Just consider what this means: President Kennedy was murdered on 11/22/63; the Warren Commission was created by 11/29/63; several weeks passed while staff was hired, the nation was told that the Warren Commission was hard work.  Meanwhile,  by January 1964, the earliest "Oswald did it" outlines were already created!  (This same bizarre situation was addressed by author Howard Roffman, whose book -- appropriately titled "Presumed Guilty"  --was published around 1970,

Bottom line: the "Oswald did it" fix was in by January 1964.  

All i can say is: "Wow! What a betrayal of the public trust!" 

Once this bizarre "preliminary outline"  was adopted (i.e., "green lighted") by the WC's General Counsel), what happened next was predictable. 

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT --i.e., starting in January 1964

Between January and June 1964, when the senior  Warren Commission staff lawyers (e.g., Stuart Eisenberg, and Norman Redlich)  were already drafting the document that became known as "the Warren Report-- some of the senior legal staff in effect recognized the emerging legal problem. Indeed, the documents show that senior members had a serious "Oops!" moment. Someone apparently realized "Oops!  We are constructing this "Oswald did it" narrative  based on the "sniper's nest evidence"  (e.g the rifle, the bullet fragments, etc.) --but we (the WC legal staff) have  neglected to establish a "chain of possession" on the key items of evidence!

 In other words, it was as if they (the WC legal staff)  were building a house that had no proper legal foundation!

So now, having conducted their investigation without bothering to establish a chain of possession, senior attorneys Eisenberg and Redlich let out an enormous "OOPS!" exclamation;  consulted with Gen. Counsel Rankin, and that's how (and why) it wasn't until May 1964, that the Warren Commission legal staff set out to repair the situation.  At this rather "late" date, the FBI was requested (by the Warren Commission) to establish a "chain of possession" on a whole array of "sniper's nest" items of evidence: i.e., the rifle, the bullets, the shells, etc.

All I can say is: "Welcome to law school, and the "legal way" of viewing theWarren Commission's view of 11/22/63.  

This --of course--  was akin to putting the cart before the horse, but the legal eagles of the WC staff behaved as if none of this mattered. It was as if their attitude was: "Oswald killed the President. Here's the official narrative; we can worry about the legal details later." 

The country deserved better.

There was a lot of talk -- back in the mid-sixties --about how the Warren Commission was involved in a conspiracy.  From attending Prof. Liebeler's UCLA seminar, I learned otherwise.  Because I watched the law students arrive at the same false conclusions,  

As i wrote in Best Evidence: a major conspiracy on the Warren Commission legal staff wasn't  necessary: just that they went to law school. That was like putting your mind into a straight jacket, when evaluating reality. 

DSL

Thanks very much David Lifton, your account being valuable because you knew Liebeler and were part of his UCLA seminar learning about the workings of the Warren Commission. This sheds light on CE2011. One item I noticed missing altogether from CE2011 was the Tippit killer's abandoned light-gray jacket as the killer fled the scene of the crime. Chain of custody was requested by the Commission to be established on everything else, why not that jacket? I don't think the most basic item of information concerning chain of custody on that jacket, the name of the first officer to come into possession of that jacket at the scene, was ever officially disclosed or confirmed (it was not Westbrook who reported it; when asked under oath Westbrook said he was handed it at the scene by an officer whose name he could not remember and no one else could remember either). While I have no doubt that jacket came from the killer, there was something about the circumstances of its finding that would have destroyed its validity as evidence in court in terms of chain of custody if brought to light. Dale Myers' recent researched story on his blog of the daughters of Dorothea Dean of Dean's Dairy saying that their mother had found and taken that jacket into her store that day and then given it to officers when they arrived, before it was "found again" out back in the parking lot by officers, I think may be a glimpse of the back story on the chain of custody legal issue on that one (Myers reports the Dean daughters' story handed down from their mother but rejects it as being true). For some reason, the Commission did not include that jacket on the list of items for which the FBI was requested to establish chain of custody. I suppose it is too long ago for you to remember anything that would shed background on how a specific, relevant item like that would not be included on such a list submitted by the Commission to the FBI to establish, when the shells ejected from the Tippit killer's gun found at the scene of the crime were on that list, other physical evidence from the same crime.

It also seems to me now that the odd denial of Bardwell Odum to have been involved with the two C399 interviews at Parkland reported in CE2011 may be some sort of dissembling on the part of Odum, rather than Odum's role having been fabricated in the text of CE2011, between those two choices, when Odum later claimed to Aguilar and Thompson that he never carried out those two interviews that CE2011 said he did. The third possibility is Odum forgot but how could that be. As Aguilar and Thompson present it Odum, even though in his 80s was remembering everything else very well. Odum seems not to have wanted to be considered responsible for the reporting in CE2011 on that item, C399, and the author of CE2011 itself appears not to want to be held responsible for writing CE2011, since no author's name of the report is disclosed or reporting agent submitting that report is identified, and so far as I know no one in the FBI ever claimed authorship or identified someone else as author otherwise. Would a good Oswald defense attorney have had a field day with this in court, like shooting ducks in a barrel? Thanks for the background.