ustxtxb_obs_1966_11_11_50_00002-00000_000.pdf

to be paid by those who continued to publish before the evidence was fairly well jelled. In return for this penalty, they received the satisfaction of knowing they forced both explanations and changes of stance out of government spokesmen. The press has interacted with the government in countless ways; the case is a stilltangled weave of this very interaction. Sauvage has played a strong, honest, sometimes mistaken role in this interaction. Sylvan Fox’s The Unanswered Questions About President Kennedy’s Assassination is also a necessary book for anyone who intends to know about the case. Fox, a New York reporter, did what any intellithe 27 volumes and asked some of the questions that cry out for answers. This is a pretty good book. The Second Oswald, Richard Popkin’s thought that a double for Oswald might make much of the evidence less perplexing, is potentially an important contribution. ONE MEMBER of the Commission, the Republican leader, Gerald Ford, evidently wasn’t entirely satisfied personally with the Report. He wrote, \(“with” his assistant John Stiles, field director for Portrait of the Assassin. One naturally notices the use of the article, “the,” and the singular form of the word, “Assassin.” Apart from being in doubtful taste, Portrait of the Assassin would have been almost without excuse as a book \(although OK as soap revelation in the opening pages that Atty. Incorporating the State Observer and the East Texas Democrat, which in turn incorported the State Week and Austin ForumAdvocate. We will serve no group or party but will hew hard to the truth as we find it and the right as we see it. We are dedicated to the whole truth, to human values above all interests, to the rights of man as the foundation of democracy; we will take orders from none but our own conscience, and never will we overlook or misrepresent the truth to serve the interests of the powerful or cater to the ignoble in the human spirit. Editor and General Manager, Ronnie Dugger. Partner, Mrs. R. D. Randolph. Associate Editor, Greg Olds. Business Manager, Sarah Payne. Associate Manager, C. R. Olofson. Contributing Editors, Elroy Bode, Bill Brammer, Larry Goodwyn, Harris Green, Dave Hickey, Franklin Jones, Lyman Jones, Larry L. King, Georgia Earnest Klipple, Al Melinger, Robert L. Montgomery, Willie Morris, James Presley, Charles Ramsdell, Roger Shattuck, Robert Sherrill, Dan Strawn, Tom Sutherland, Charles Alan Wright. Staff Artist, Charles Erickson. Contributing Photographer, Russell Lee. The editor has exclusive control over the editorial policies and contents of the Observer. None of the other people who are associated with the enterprise shares this responsibility with him. Writers are responsible for their own work, but not for anything they have not them Gen. Waggoner Carr and Dallas D.A. Henry Wade precipitated a quivering crisis in the Commission. I have not meant, in this remark, to get into the evidence. However, an exception: For several months after Nov. 22, 1963, I investigated the assassination in Dallas, sending reports to the Washington Post and to the Observer. I was in and out of the city, but lived a lot of time in hotel rooms. At one point an official told me that Oswald had been an FBI employee and had had a certain pay number, which my source gave me. He would not give his source but said it was solid. I at once relayed this to the Post. Journalistically, the source would have had to have been so masked, the story would have seemed fishy if printed without confirmation, and FBI sources said it wasn’t so. So that, for the time being, was that. Ford opens his book saying Carr and Wade brought this report to a full meeting of the Commission. Lane argues with sickening persuasiveness that the Commission decided it could not just take J. Edgar Hoover’s word for it, and then did. Who Killed Kennedy? by Thomas G. Buchanan and Oswald: Assassin or Fall Guy? by Joachim Joesten are beneath serious attention as to the facts, although not, necessarily, as to theory. There has been one recent important development. The Kennedy family have given to the national archives the X-rays and photographs of the late President that are the best evidence about the direction and number of the shots. It is not yet clear whether access to these vital documents will be limited to approved govern selves written, and in publishing them the editor does not necessarily imply that he agrees with them, because this is a Journal of free voices. Subscription Representatives: Arlington, George N. Green, 416 Summit, Apt. 41, CR 70080; Austin, Mrs. Helen C. Spear, 2615 Pecos, HO 5-1805; Corpus Christi, Penny Dudley, 12241,E Second St., TU 4-1460; Dallas, Mrs. Cordye Hall, 5835 Ellsworth, TA 1-1205; Denton, Fred Lusk, Box 8134 NTS; Fort Worth, Dolores Jacobsen, 3025 Greene Ave., WA 4-9655; Houston, Mrs. Shirley Jay, 10306 Cliffwood Dr., PA 3-8682; Lubbock, Doris Blaisdell, 2515 24th St., Midland, Eva Dennis, 4306 Douglas, OX 4-2825; Odessa, Enid Turner, 1706 Glenwood, EM 6-2269; San Antonio, Mrs. Mae B. Tuggle, 531 Elmhurst, TA 6-3583; Cambridge, Mass., Victor Emanuel, Adams House C112. The Observer is published by Texas Observer Co., Ltd., biweekly from Austin, Texas. Entered as second-class matter April 26, 1937, at the Post Office at Austin, Texas, under the Act of March 3, 1879. Second class postage paid at Austin, Texas. Delivered postage prepaid $6.00 a year; two years, $11.00; three years, $15.00. Foreign rates on request. Single copies 25c; prices for ten or more for students, or bulk orders, on request. Editorial and Business Offices: The Texas Observer, 504 West 24th St., Austin, Texas 78705. Telephone GR 7-0746. Change of Address: Please give old and new address and allow three weeks. ment specialists or will also be open to critics of the assassination under controlled, responsible conditions. If only government people are to see them, there should be a court test. The import of these documents belongs to the people and xve ought not to have to wait until 1971 to have non-governmental access to them. The next important book on the assassination will be Harland Manchester’s. Manchester has been understood to be Jacqueline Kennedy’s \(and thus the Kenassassination investigations. He has, I am told, worked himself mercilesly in preparing this book; he had access to the Warren Commission’s inner sanctum; he has done a meticulous and in countless ways startling book. Without, so I am also told, invalidating the basic thrust of the Warren Report’s conclusion that Oswald was the only assassin, his work will have profound reverberations. It should begin to appear in serialized form in Look Magazine before long. N MY OPINION the time has arrived in the post-assassination period for the matter to be advanced ,to a new stage, if it can be. The Warren Report is not convincing, and neither are any of the theories that run contrary to the Warren Report’s conclusion. The legitimate doubts about that conclusion continue to be merely preliminary in The absence of evidence that there was a conspiracy and who the conspirators were. The government should re-open the investigation. Whether it does or not, the time is right for the active renewal of inquiries. I discontinued my daily work on the subject when, several months after the event, I saw that what I was finding out was being twisted here and abroad to serve speculations I knew to be false and conclusions I thought to be unjustifiable other than as suspicions; while I have continued to make inquiries sporadically since then, I have not written anything more for the reason I just mentioned and also because the matter is too complex to be dealt with as a spot news story. But I would like anyone who might be interested to know that my work is continuing, as I hope is also the work of others who, declining to be weakened by suspicions in any direction, rigorously distinguishing reports, rumors, and theories from facts, and refusing to accept explanations that the plainest operations of the mind discredit, want the truth. R.D. A Special Reprint The Observer has published a special 24-page reprint of our coverage of the Valley farm workers strike and march from June through September. It is entitled “The Farm Workers Arise” and carries the Rio Grande City strikers all the way north to their confrontation at New Braunfels and their climactic meetings in Austin. Order your copy of this historic record now. THE TEXAS OBSERVER Texas Observer Co., Ltd. 1966 A Journal of Free Voices A Window to the South 60th YEAR ESTABLISHED 1906 VoL 58, No. 21 70Mt ‘ November 11, 1966