Grad Student Challenges Warren Panel's Report On JFK's Assassination

A graduate student in the Government Department has challenged the findings of the Warren Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy in a new book.

Edward J. Epstein, a Ph.D. Candidate, wrote the book, Inquest, as his master's thesis at Cornell. In it, he claims that the Warren Commission's published report fails to support its conclusion that Lee Harvey Owald had no accomplices in the assassination.

He also claims that many Commission members failed to hear much of the testimony and that much of the 27-man staff spent little time on the investigation.

The average Commission member, Epstein, states, attended about 45 per cent of the meetings, and many of the well-known private lawyers who supposedly assisted the Commission kept up their regular practices and left most of the investigative work to a few less prominent members of the staff, particularly lawyer Arlen Spectre.

Allen Dulles, the Commission member to attend the largest number of hearings, heard only about 71 per cent of the testimony, while Senator Richard Russell, who attended the fewest, was present for approximately 6 per cent.

Epstein challenged the Commission's conclusion that Oswald had had no accomplices since Kennedy and Texas Governor John Connally were wounded within, at most, two seconds of each other, according to films of the assassination.

If Connally's wounds were not caused by the same shot that struck Kennedy in the throat, there must have been two marksmen, since two shots could not have been aimed and fired so quickly from the bolt-action rifle which Oswald used.

Independent Investigation

According to Epstein, Spectre developed the theory that one shot had wounded both men, but under pressure to complete his work he limited his independent investigation to interviews with 28 medical personnel at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, Texas.

Epstein states that some members of the Commission never were convinced that one bullet had wounded both men.

Under pressure to complete the Report well in advance of the upcoming 1965 Presidential election, however, the Commission finally agreed unanimously to a statement that the evidence was "very persuasive...to indicate that the same bullet that pierced the President's throat also caused Governor Connally's wounds," Epstein says.

Another recent book, Whitewash, by Harold Weisberg, presents much the same thesis as Epstein does.