Earl Warren: Warren Commission Report

Explanation and Analysis of the Document

On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was shot while riding in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald, an employee of the Texas School Book Depository, was arrested for the murder of Kennedy and of a police officer who had attempted to stop him. Oswald claimed that he was innocent. Two days later, while police were transferring Oswald to jail, Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub operator, shot and killed Oswald.

The Kennedy assassination was devastating to the American public, and the details of the crime and Oswald's murder fostered rumors of a conspiracy. In the early 1960s America was embroiled in the cold war, and tense showdowns with Cuba and the Soviet Union left Americans fearful of the threat of nuclear attack as well as the spread of Communism. As speculation grew that Kennedy's death was the result of either a right-wing conspiracy or a plot hatched by the Kremlin, President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed Warren to head a commission to investigate the details of the assassination.

The Warren Commission Report begins with a description of the commission's charge and then lists the conclusions reached by the investigation. Warren refers to the cooperation of government agencies in the inquiry; one of the criticisms of the Warren Commission was that it relied on the reports of agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation rather than unearthing its own evidence through independent investigations. This feature of the commission and its report fueled later speculation that the government covered up evidence in the Kennedy assassination.

The report's conclusions reflect the commission's goals of providing an objective analysis of the Kennedy assassination and of quashing rumors. One of the questions circulating was whether Kennedy had been killed by a single gunman; many argued that a second gunman had to have been involved. The document specifically addresses the issue of a second shooter, clearly concluding that a single assassin was responsible. Warren states that the killer fired from the Texas School Book Depository; the commission's evidence included the fact that witnesses saw a rifle being fired from the sixth-floor window, and police found a rifle on the sixth floor of the building. A factor leading to the multiple-shooter theory was the fact that John B. Connally, Jr., the governor of Texas, was riding in the motorcade with Kennedy and was also shot and wounded. Some speculated that it was impossible for a single bullet to account for the governor's wounds. The Warren Commission Report's language is rather vague with respect to this, referring to a “difference of opinion” as to the probability that one bullet could cause injury to both Kennedy and Connally. This vagueness also bolstered critics who suspected government involvement in covering up evidence. Part of the problem was that Warren decided not to include photographs or radiographs in the final report, as he believed that including these materials would have been offensive to the Kennedy family and an invasion of their privacy. Unfortunately, the omission became an issue and undermined the credibility of the final report.

Having determined that a lone gunman in the Texas School Book Depository was responsible for the crime, Warren then concludes that the gunman was Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was employed by the book depository and owned the rifle found on the sixth floor. Warren furthermore states that Oswald (and also Ruby) acted alone. As noted in the report, Oswald had lived in the Soviet Union for about three years and was involved in Communist political activity; this detail, of course, led to the rumors about an international conspiracy in Kennedy's death. Jack Ruby, in turn, had traveled to Cuba, which led some to speculate that Ruby and Oswald were part of a plot hatched by Cuba's dictator, Fidel Castro. On the other hand, Oswald had the name and telephone number of a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent in his notebook, which gave rise to rumors that Oswald was a government agent; Warren addresses this concern in the report as well, using very careful language. As was the case with the decision in Brown v. Board, Warren knew that he needed a unanimous conclusion by the commission. Some members refused to approve the final report unless it acknowledged the possibility of a Communist plot; Gerald Ford, then a representative and later president, believed that Castro was responsible for the assassination. In order to achieve unanimity, Warren used wording that allowed for the possibility that future evidence would substantiate a conspiracy or plot.

The Warren Commission Report was well received by the public, becoming a best-selling book. Nevertheless, conspiracy theories continued to emerge, spawning books and movies, further government inquiries, and even the exhumation of Oswald's body in 1981. The shocking, public nature of Kennedy's assassination and of Ruby's murder of Oswald, occurring at a time of heightened political concern, partially explains the skepticism surrounding the commission's report. Yet the open-ended nature of the document's conclusions, written to accommodate the different opinions of the commission's members, helped to spur on conspiracy theorists.