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The Warren Ommission
an excerpt from The Warren Omission
Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, Former Director of the CIA Allen Dulles, Senators John Sherman Cooper and Richard Russell, Representatives Hale Boggs and Gerald Ford, and international financier John McCloy: "The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy." The 'Warren' Commission.
The Warren Commission was made up of seven honorable men and yet became the most vilified fact-finding body ever assembled in the United States of America. While persuasive arguments can be made for the correctness or the falseness of both of the assertions in the preceding sentence, the Commission was, without doubt, the most unique group ever assembled, and therein may reside the germ which would blossom into the perception of abject failure in years to come.
The personalities became the focus of public attention as "The Warren Commission" when they were appointed by a besieged President on the Friday following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The first, and often overlooked uniqueness, was their respective political persuasions. Although appointed by a Democratic who had made a career out of log-rolling and political back-scratching, the Commission was composed of five Republicans and two Democrats, and those numbers do not reflect a bipartisanship on the part of LBJ born of recent grief.
When Presidents appoint, their party always receives the majority. It may be only a majority of one, but it is such a virtual certainty that it is taken for granted. As one minority member of the House Judiciary Committee investigating "Watergate" was often heard to say in 1974 (paraphrased), "You have the votes; let's get on with it."
That is in the nature of politics as practiced in Washington, D.C., and it is hardly an abuse that began in the lifetime of anyone reading this work. Presidents from Andrew Jackson's time took note of its occasional ugliness, and "Civil Service Reform" was as much a catchword in the late nineteenth century as "Incumbents Out" has become at the tail end of the twentieth. Given LBJ's penchant for throwing his clout around and being proud of it, it strains belief that he would appoint a Commission of seven that contained not four, or even three Democrats, but a mere two.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, Former Director of the CIA Allen Dulles, Senators John Sherman Cooper and Richard Russell, Representatives Hale Boggs and Gerald Ford, and international financier John McCloy: "The President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy." The 'Warren' Commission.
The Warren Commission was made up of seven honorable men and yet became the most vilified fact-finding body ever assembled in the United States of America. While persuasive arguments can be made for the correctness or the falseness of both of the assertions in the preceding sentence, the Commission was, without doubt, the most unique group ever assembled, and therein may reside the germ which would blossom into the perception of abject failure in years to come.
The personalities became the focus of public attention as "The Warren Commission" when they were appointed by a besieged President on the Friday following the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The first, and often overlooked uniqueness, was their respective political persuasions. Although appointed by a Democratic who had made a career out of log-rolling and political back-scratching, the Commission was composed of five Republicans and two Democrats, and those numbers do not reflect a bipartisanship on the part of LBJ born of recent grief.
When Presidents appoint, their party always receives the majority. It may be only a majority of one, but it is such a virtual certainty that it is taken for granted. As one minority member of the House Judiciary Committee investigating "Watergate" was often heard to say in 1974 (paraphrased), "You have the votes; let's get on with it."
That is in the nature of politics as practiced in Washington, D.C., and it is hardly an abuse that began in the lifetime of anyone reading this work. Presidents from Andrew Jackson's time took note of its occasional ugliness, and "Civil Service Reform" was as much a catchword in the late nineteenth century as "Incumbents Out" has become at the tail end of the twentieth. Given LBJ's penchant for throwing his clout around and being proud of it, it strains belief that he would appoint a Commission of seven that contained not four, or even three Democrats, but a mere two.
406 pages, Hardcover
First published January 28, 1996
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