Doubts About Dallas

One of the minor exhibits in the Sacco-Vanzetti case was a revolver, belonging to the foreman of the jury, which was later confiscated by the court. When I was writing about the case I happened to come across this revolver in the files of the Dedham clerk of court. A few months later, I went to his office to see it again, to compare it with photographs of Vanzetti’s revolver. I remembered exactly where I had first seen it, in the bottom drawer of the left-hand filing cabinet. My memory was at fault. The revolver was in an upper cabinet drawer on the opposite side of the room and had never been anywhere else. Yet so sharp was my imaginary recollection of that bottom drawer that I would have been willing to swear I had seen the exhibit there, and I should have continued to swear this was so even if a man’s life had depended on it. That I, in such a slow-paced and unemotional situation, could have been so mistaken has made me doubt the trustworthiness of most witnesses who in one tense moment have glimpsed an act of violence. No two people will recall such an event in the same way and with the same details, nor do the contradictions necessarily mean that anyone is a conscious liar.

In the case of Kennedy’s assassination it might only be expected that from the hundreds of persons who witnessed the occurrences before, during and after the shooting, enough conflicting stories would spring up to develop a variety of theories as to what really happened. Lee Harvey Oswald’s fantastic appearance on television after the assassination, and his even more fantastic television-viewed murder by Jack Ruby were the stuff of which myths are made— and the myths were not long in coming. In spite of Oswald’s checkered Communist background, the Left will-to-believe in a right-wing conspiracy was stronger than the facts.

FR

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Francis Russell

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One of the minor exhibits in the Sacco-Vanzetti case was a revolver, belonging to the foreman of the jury, which was later confiscated by the court. When I was writing about the case I happened to come across this revolver in the files of the Dedham clerk of court. A few months later, I went to his office to see it again, to compare it with photographs of Vanzetti’s revolver. I remembered exactly where I had first seen it, in the bottom drawer of the left-hand filing cabinet. My memory was at fault. The revolver was in an upper cabinet drawer on the opposite side of the room and had never been anywhere else. Yet so sharp was my imaginary recollection of that bottom drawer that I would have been willing to swear I had seen the exhibit there, and I should have continued to swear this was so even if a man’s life had depended on it. That I, in such a slow-paced and unemotional situation, could have been so mistaken has made me doubt the trustworthiness of most witnesses who in one tense moment have glimpsed an act of violence. No two people will recall such an event in the same way and with the same details, nor do the contradictions necessarily mean that anyone is a conscious liar.

In the case of Kennedy’s assassination it might only be expected that from the hundreds of persons who witnessed the occurrences before, during and after the shooting, enough conflicting stories would spring up to develop a variety of theories as to what really happened. Lee Harvey Oswald’s fantastic appearance on television after the assassination, and his even more fantastic television-viewed murder by Jack Ruby were the stuff of which myths are made— and the myths were not long in coming. In spite of Oswald’s checkered Communist background, the Left will-to-believe in a right-wing conspiracy was stronger than the facts.