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Final Disclosure: The Full Truth About the Assassination of President Kennedy
The Warren Commission's chief investigator into John Kennedy's murder dispels the controversial "conspiracy theory," showing that Oswald was indeed the sole killer, and exposes CIA efforts to assassinate foreign leaders
- GenresHistory
249 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 1988
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January 18, 2014
Belin gets it right. He sucessfully debunks all the assassination conspiracy theories and by the end of the book, gives a simple explanation for Lee Harvey Oswald's actions. Along the way, he discusses CIA programs that eerily parallel today's NSA. A great book, even twenty five years after its writing.
May 15, 2024
AN EXCELLENT SUMMATION OF THE EVIDENCE, INCLUDING SOME CIA ACTIONS
David William Belin (1928-1999) was an attorney for the Warren Commission and the Rockefeller Commission. He wrote in the Preface to this 1988 book, “My own life was especially affected by the Kennedy killing. I was selected by Chief Justice Earl Warren as counsel to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination. This led to my appointment in 1975 by President Gerald Ford as executive director of the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States… These appointments … led to my writing this book. I want principally to counter the continuing deception of the American people about what took place… This book also addresses the deceit, obstructionism, and cover-up by the CIA and the National Security Council… It deals, too, with questionable acts by the dead president’s brother, Robert Kennedy, as well as other high officials in both Democratic and Republican administrations… So this book is intended to show how the American public has been misled about the death of their president---by a relatively small combination of assassination sensationalists and assassination cultists---and deceived about what happened inside the CIA for former CIA officers and former high government officials.”
He recounts that witness Howard Brennan “described the gunman to police officers as being white, slender, possibly five feet ten… in his early thirties. Actually, Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin, was… in his mid-twenties… and only an inch or two shorter than Brennen had described… Brennan’s description was certainly very close. After the assassination, Brennan would not positively identify Oswald as the gunman. Later, Brennan said he did identify Oswald as the gunman but was afraid to say so because he feared for his own safety… there were others who also saw the gunman with the rifle in the window or a rifle being withdrawn…” (Pg. 7-8)
The police “started a floor-by-floor search… they found stacked boxes that had been used as a rifle perch, a large paper bag that had been used to carry the rifle into the building, and … three cartridge cases… [They also] found a rifle that had been pushed between cartons of books as the gunman fled down the stairs… With remarkable speed, the FBI traced the ownership of the rifle… the rifle was shipped to a ‘A. Hidell’ [in] Dallas… When Oswald was arrested, he was carrying in his billfold a forged Selective Service card with his picture and the name ‘Alek J. Hidell.’ ‘Alek’ was Oswald’s nickname when he lived in Russia. The writing on both the mail-order coupon and the postal money order was determined by handwriting experts to have been the handwriting of Lee Harvey Oswald… No one knew where Oswald was at the exact time of the assassination. However, he was seen on the sixth floor of the depository minutes before the assassination. And he was seen shortly after the assassination on the second floor, heading toward the front door. He was the only depository employees who was inside the building and who fled it after the assassination.” (Pg 9-11)
He asserts, “if one wants to pick and choose one witness here and one witness there and deliberately … ignore witnesses with a differing view, you can pick and choose and come up with a remarkably logical conclusion, albeit a false one. But the evidence is otherwise. Lee Harvey Oswald was the gunman, and the only gunman, who fired at President Kennedy and at Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit… It was the murder of Officer Tippit that triggered the arrest of Oswald. I call the Tippit murder the ‘Rosetta stone’ to the determination of who was the assassin of President Kennedy.” (Pg. 16)
Domingo Benavides heard and saw the immediate aftermath of the Tippit murder: “Benevides turned over to the police two empty cartridge shells that he had seen the gunman thrown in the bushes as he fled the scene… The Dallas Police Department did not take him to see a police lineup of their suspect. This was a gross error. But Benevides was not the only person who saw the Tippit murder… the Dallas police took…. [William W.] Scoggins [to a lineup], and he identified the gunman… Scoggins was not the only one who identified the gunman…” (Pg. 18) Later, he adds, “If you read the books of the assassination sensationalists about the Dallas tragedy, you will find this common denominator: Most of the books fail to mention that there were six witnesses who were at the scene of the Tippit murder or saw the gunman running from the scene… who individually identified the gunman as Lee Harvey Oswald… Omission of available evidence is the besetting sin of all the assassination sensationalists’ books.” (Pg. 20-21)
He summarized, “The Tippit murder weapon, like the Kennedy murder weapon, was purchased by Lee Harvey Oswald through the mail… under his alias, A. Hidell, to his post-office box in Dallas… Oswald was carrying a concealed weapon at the time of this arrest, that he pulled out as policemen approached him, and … this turned out to be the Tippit murder weapon… all of the cartridge cases unequivocally were fired by Oswald’s revolver… There were many other incriminating factors, such as Oswald’s palm print on the gun and his fingerprint on the paper bag found at the assassination window who was inside the depository at the time of the assassination and had fled the building after the assassination.” (Pg. 33)
He acknowledges, “Earl Warren and the commission made mistakes. Perhaps the biggest blunder was to yield to the desires of the Kennedy family and not include the autopsy photographs or the X-rays of President Kennedy as exhibits in the material and physical evidence examined by the commission staff… Warren directed that the physicians furnish us their own drawings, which depicted what the photographs and ex-rays showed… this shortsighted decision helped breed the various false theories of assassination sensationalists---claims that could have been demolished if the autopsy photographs and X-rays had been shown.” (Pg. 44-45)
He continues, “There were also other errors of judgment by Warren. For instance, when we obtained the testimony of Jack Ruby, the chief justice did not permit participation in the interrogation by the two lawyers… who were charged with investigating Ruby’s life and activities… A similar error in … taking the testimony of Marina Oswald… several of us lacked confidence in her credibility … So Marina Oswald was not questioned as thoroughly as she should have been… Although I do not believe Marina Oswald or any Soviet agent was conspiratorially involved in the assassination, I believe that she did not make full disclosure to the Warren Commission… another mistake made inside the Warren Commission… Some urged that the report include substantial portions of the transcript testimony of key witnesses… others wanted everything put together in a one-volume report because it would be read by the greatest number of people.” (Pg. 45-48)
He goes on, “several panels of medical experts have examined the evidence to determine whether the ‘single bullet theory’ was correct… All these panels have concluded that indeed there was a bullet that entered the back of Kennedy’s neck, exited from the front, and then struck Connally… a new test known as ‘neutron-activation analysis’ … corroborated that, indeed, all of Connally’s wounds had been caused by the single bullet… that bullet, according to ballistic tests, lost little of its velocity as it passed through Kennedy’s neck… And the fatal shot did strike President Kennedy from behind.” (Pg.
54-55)
He notes, “In Oswald’s belongings was a picture of him holding a rifle and wearing his pistol. Oswald… claimed he never owned a rifle. When confronted with the picture, he claimed it was a composite made by superimposing his head on someone else’s body holding a rifle. However, what Oswald did not know was that … it is possible to determine whether the negative same from the particular camera… the picture was taken by Oswald’s camera. Marina Oswald later admitted she took the picture.” (Pg. 60)
He summarizes, “Oswald had ready access to the sixth floor of the depository, and he was the only employee who was inside the building at the time of the assassination… who left the building shortly after the assassination. There is all of the other evidence: walking seven blocks east to board a bus, then leaving the bus to enter a taxi, taking the taxi to a place several blocks away from his rooming house, the curtain-rod story, the homemade paper bag… that was undoubtedly used to carry the unassembled rifle that contained a fingerprint and palm print of Oswald, the clipboard with his unfilled orders found on the sixth floor… the ballistic testimony, the responses of Oswald during his interrogation in which he denied owning the rifle… denied that the picture of him and the rifle was a true picture, denied that he carried a long package into the depository … claimed that he as having lunch at the time of the assassination with ‘Junior’ when he was not, denying that he shot Officer Tippit… when you put all of the facts together… there can be no reasonable doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald murdered John F. Kennedy.” (Pg. 73-74)
Of his investigation of the CIA, he states, “It is to the credit of the CIA that the agency people realized it was in their interest to start to cooperate… How was it that the CIA ever got involved in plots against the lives of foreign leaders?... What did the Rockefeller Commission investigation disclose? And why weren’t the results of that investigation included in the Rockefeller Commission’s final report?” (Pg. 90) Later, he summarizes, “Hiding these facts … was one of the most damning facts I discovered in my investigation. The ramifications of an agency out of control were very grave.” (Pg. 116) He adds, “Inside the CIA, there was knowledge that the agency was dangerously close to violating its charter. Therefore CIA officials took extreme precautions within the agency to limit who had access to these information banks on activities of American citizens.” (Pg. 145) He concludes, “Although I found no credible evidence that the CIA was conspiratorially involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, because the CIA withheld important information from the Warren Commission and because of the birth of a new generation of assassination sensationalists who were gaining a large following on college campuses, I began to reconsider the whole subject of whether the investigation of the Warren Commission should be reopened by Congress.” (Pg. 176)
Of the House Select Committee on Assassinations report, he observes, “a major flip-flop occurred… a majority of the committee approved a nine-page ‘Summary of Findings and Recommendations’ that concluded that although Oswald was the assassin, there was a conspiracy involving an unseen second gunman. The invisible person supposed fired a single shot from an elevated portion of land known as the grassy knoll, located to the right front of the presidential limousine. According to the committee summary, this shot missed Kennedy and everyone else, and even missed the presidential limousine, barely one hundred feet from the invisible gunman. How was it that the committee reached this erroneous conclusion? From its inception, the committee was subject to a pro-conspiracy bias.” (Pg. 187-188)
He explains that a “new panel … the Committee on Ballistic Acoustics …[found out that] the portion of the tape where the House committee’s experts claimed … indicated gunshots actually contained talk that occurred at least one minute AFTER the time of the assassination. (Nowhere on the tape are there any sounds of gunshots.)” (Pg. 199)
He discusses theories about Oswald’s motive, and suggests “There is little doubt that Oswald was trying to set the stage to escape. He left the depository. He was headed toward a destination to catch a bus that would take him to Mexico. He left his wedding band with his wife. He left her most of his money. And here we have a crucial question: If Oswald was planning to escape to Mexico … is it not reasonable to assume that he would have taken cash with him unless he was in league with someone who could provide funds to him when he reached his destination?” (Pg. 215) He adds, “one must add the possibility that while in Mexico City, Oswald had a conversation with a Castro agent of sympathizer about getting back at Kennedy and was promised financial and other support if he ever was able to succeed.” (Pg. 217)
He concludes, “In perspective, I’ve come to the realization that if there is a dominant reason the Warren Commission Report has not been accepted as the truth by a majority of Americans, it is because all our investigative work was undertaken in secret. The public was denied not only the benefit of reports on the developments unearthed as the investigation proceeded but also the testimony of the witnesses.” (Pg. 220)
This book is an excellent defense of the main conclusions of the Warren Report, but is also forthright in its criticisms of the various investigations, and of the CIA and other federal agencies.
David William Belin (1928-1999) was an attorney for the Warren Commission and the Rockefeller Commission. He wrote in the Preface to this 1988 book, “My own life was especially affected by the Kennedy killing. I was selected by Chief Justice Earl Warren as counsel to the Warren Commission investigating the assassination. This led to my appointment in 1975 by President Gerald Ford as executive director of the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States… These appointments … led to my writing this book. I want principally to counter the continuing deception of the American people about what took place… This book also addresses the deceit, obstructionism, and cover-up by the CIA and the National Security Council… It deals, too, with questionable acts by the dead president’s brother, Robert Kennedy, as well as other high officials in both Democratic and Republican administrations… So this book is intended to show how the American public has been misled about the death of their president---by a relatively small combination of assassination sensationalists and assassination cultists---and deceived about what happened inside the CIA for former CIA officers and former high government officials.”
He recounts that witness Howard Brennan “described the gunman to police officers as being white, slender, possibly five feet ten… in his early thirties. Actually, Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin, was… in his mid-twenties… and only an inch or two shorter than Brennen had described… Brennan’s description was certainly very close. After the assassination, Brennan would not positively identify Oswald as the gunman. Later, Brennan said he did identify Oswald as the gunman but was afraid to say so because he feared for his own safety… there were others who also saw the gunman with the rifle in the window or a rifle being withdrawn…” (Pg. 7-8)
The police “started a floor-by-floor search… they found stacked boxes that had been used as a rifle perch, a large paper bag that had been used to carry the rifle into the building, and … three cartridge cases… [They also] found a rifle that had been pushed between cartons of books as the gunman fled down the stairs… With remarkable speed, the FBI traced the ownership of the rifle… the rifle was shipped to a ‘A. Hidell’ [in] Dallas… When Oswald was arrested, he was carrying in his billfold a forged Selective Service card with his picture and the name ‘Alek J. Hidell.’ ‘Alek’ was Oswald’s nickname when he lived in Russia. The writing on both the mail-order coupon and the postal money order was determined by handwriting experts to have been the handwriting of Lee Harvey Oswald… No one knew where Oswald was at the exact time of the assassination. However, he was seen on the sixth floor of the depository minutes before the assassination. And he was seen shortly after the assassination on the second floor, heading toward the front door. He was the only depository employees who was inside the building and who fled it after the assassination.” (Pg 9-11)
He asserts, “if one wants to pick and choose one witness here and one witness there and deliberately … ignore witnesses with a differing view, you can pick and choose and come up with a remarkably logical conclusion, albeit a false one. But the evidence is otherwise. Lee Harvey Oswald was the gunman, and the only gunman, who fired at President Kennedy and at Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit… It was the murder of Officer Tippit that triggered the arrest of Oswald. I call the Tippit murder the ‘Rosetta stone’ to the determination of who was the assassin of President Kennedy.” (Pg. 16)
Domingo Benavides heard and saw the immediate aftermath of the Tippit murder: “Benevides turned over to the police two empty cartridge shells that he had seen the gunman thrown in the bushes as he fled the scene… The Dallas Police Department did not take him to see a police lineup of their suspect. This was a gross error. But Benevides was not the only person who saw the Tippit murder… the Dallas police took…. [William W.] Scoggins [to a lineup], and he identified the gunman… Scoggins was not the only one who identified the gunman…” (Pg. 18) Later, he adds, “If you read the books of the assassination sensationalists about the Dallas tragedy, you will find this common denominator: Most of the books fail to mention that there were six witnesses who were at the scene of the Tippit murder or saw the gunman running from the scene… who individually identified the gunman as Lee Harvey Oswald… Omission of available evidence is the besetting sin of all the assassination sensationalists’ books.” (Pg. 20-21)
He summarized, “The Tippit murder weapon, like the Kennedy murder weapon, was purchased by Lee Harvey Oswald through the mail… under his alias, A. Hidell, to his post-office box in Dallas… Oswald was carrying a concealed weapon at the time of this arrest, that he pulled out as policemen approached him, and … this turned out to be the Tippit murder weapon… all of the cartridge cases unequivocally were fired by Oswald’s revolver… There were many other incriminating factors, such as Oswald’s palm print on the gun and his fingerprint on the paper bag found at the assassination window who was inside the depository at the time of the assassination and had fled the building after the assassination.” (Pg. 33)
He acknowledges, “Earl Warren and the commission made mistakes. Perhaps the biggest blunder was to yield to the desires of the Kennedy family and not include the autopsy photographs or the X-rays of President Kennedy as exhibits in the material and physical evidence examined by the commission staff… Warren directed that the physicians furnish us their own drawings, which depicted what the photographs and ex-rays showed… this shortsighted decision helped breed the various false theories of assassination sensationalists---claims that could have been demolished if the autopsy photographs and X-rays had been shown.” (Pg. 44-45)
He continues, “There were also other errors of judgment by Warren. For instance, when we obtained the testimony of Jack Ruby, the chief justice did not permit participation in the interrogation by the two lawyers… who were charged with investigating Ruby’s life and activities… A similar error in … taking the testimony of Marina Oswald… several of us lacked confidence in her credibility … So Marina Oswald was not questioned as thoroughly as she should have been… Although I do not believe Marina Oswald or any Soviet agent was conspiratorially involved in the assassination, I believe that she did not make full disclosure to the Warren Commission… another mistake made inside the Warren Commission… Some urged that the report include substantial portions of the transcript testimony of key witnesses… others wanted everything put together in a one-volume report because it would be read by the greatest number of people.” (Pg. 45-48)
He goes on, “several panels of medical experts have examined the evidence to determine whether the ‘single bullet theory’ was correct… All these panels have concluded that indeed there was a bullet that entered the back of Kennedy’s neck, exited from the front, and then struck Connally… a new test known as ‘neutron-activation analysis’ … corroborated that, indeed, all of Connally’s wounds had been caused by the single bullet… that bullet, according to ballistic tests, lost little of its velocity as it passed through Kennedy’s neck… And the fatal shot did strike President Kennedy from behind.” (Pg.
54-55)
He notes, “In Oswald’s belongings was a picture of him holding a rifle and wearing his pistol. Oswald… claimed he never owned a rifle. When confronted with the picture, he claimed it was a composite made by superimposing his head on someone else’s body holding a rifle. However, what Oswald did not know was that … it is possible to determine whether the negative same from the particular camera… the picture was taken by Oswald’s camera. Marina Oswald later admitted she took the picture.” (Pg. 60)
He summarizes, “Oswald had ready access to the sixth floor of the depository, and he was the only employee who was inside the building at the time of the assassination… who left the building shortly after the assassination. There is all of the other evidence: walking seven blocks east to board a bus, then leaving the bus to enter a taxi, taking the taxi to a place several blocks away from his rooming house, the curtain-rod story, the homemade paper bag… that was undoubtedly used to carry the unassembled rifle that contained a fingerprint and palm print of Oswald, the clipboard with his unfilled orders found on the sixth floor… the ballistic testimony, the responses of Oswald during his interrogation in which he denied owning the rifle… denied that the picture of him and the rifle was a true picture, denied that he carried a long package into the depository … claimed that he as having lunch at the time of the assassination with ‘Junior’ when he was not, denying that he shot Officer Tippit… when you put all of the facts together… there can be no reasonable doubt that Lee Harvey Oswald murdered John F. Kennedy.” (Pg. 73-74)
Of his investigation of the CIA, he states, “It is to the credit of the CIA that the agency people realized it was in their interest to start to cooperate… How was it that the CIA ever got involved in plots against the lives of foreign leaders?... What did the Rockefeller Commission investigation disclose? And why weren’t the results of that investigation included in the Rockefeller Commission’s final report?” (Pg. 90) Later, he summarizes, “Hiding these facts … was one of the most damning facts I discovered in my investigation. The ramifications of an agency out of control were very grave.” (Pg. 116) He adds, “Inside the CIA, there was knowledge that the agency was dangerously close to violating its charter. Therefore CIA officials took extreme precautions within the agency to limit who had access to these information banks on activities of American citizens.” (Pg. 145) He concludes, “Although I found no credible evidence that the CIA was conspiratorially involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, because the CIA withheld important information from the Warren Commission and because of the birth of a new generation of assassination sensationalists who were gaining a large following on college campuses, I began to reconsider the whole subject of whether the investigation of the Warren Commission should be reopened by Congress.” (Pg. 176)
Of the House Select Committee on Assassinations report, he observes, “a major flip-flop occurred… a majority of the committee approved a nine-page ‘Summary of Findings and Recommendations’ that concluded that although Oswald was the assassin, there was a conspiracy involving an unseen second gunman. The invisible person supposed fired a single shot from an elevated portion of land known as the grassy knoll, located to the right front of the presidential limousine. According to the committee summary, this shot missed Kennedy and everyone else, and even missed the presidential limousine, barely one hundred feet from the invisible gunman. How was it that the committee reached this erroneous conclusion? From its inception, the committee was subject to a pro-conspiracy bias.” (Pg. 187-188)
He explains that a “new panel … the Committee on Ballistic Acoustics …[found out that] the portion of the tape where the House committee’s experts claimed … indicated gunshots actually contained talk that occurred at least one minute AFTER the time of the assassination. (Nowhere on the tape are there any sounds of gunshots.)” (Pg. 199)
He discusses theories about Oswald’s motive, and suggests “There is little doubt that Oswald was trying to set the stage to escape. He left the depository. He was headed toward a destination to catch a bus that would take him to Mexico. He left his wedding band with his wife. He left her most of his money. And here we have a crucial question: If Oswald was planning to escape to Mexico … is it not reasonable to assume that he would have taken cash with him unless he was in league with someone who could provide funds to him when he reached his destination?” (Pg. 215) He adds, “one must add the possibility that while in Mexico City, Oswald had a conversation with a Castro agent of sympathizer about getting back at Kennedy and was promised financial and other support if he ever was able to succeed.” (Pg. 217)
He concludes, “In perspective, I’ve come to the realization that if there is a dominant reason the Warren Commission Report has not been accepted as the truth by a majority of Americans, it is because all our investigative work was undertaken in secret. The public was denied not only the benefit of reports on the developments unearthed as the investigation proceeded but also the testimony of the witnesses.” (Pg. 220)
This book is an excellent defense of the main conclusions of the Warren Report, but is also forthright in its criticisms of the various investigations, and of the CIA and other federal agencies.
December 19, 2023
I really thought I would learn something new in this book and I didn’t. He says that he’s going to prove conspiracies yet he says there is none I disagree. I kind of feel like it was a waste of time reading it.
December 2, 2023
Dude was a lackey.
Double check everything he says.
Double check everything he says.
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