Warren Report's Cherrypicked Testimony
Mark Lane's 'Rush to Judgment' was one of the first books to critique the investigation
As the 60th anniversary of the Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy arrives this week, JFK Facts is providing daily analyses of the commission’s work.
The late author, activist and lawyer Mark Lane remains a seminal figure in the annals of JFK assassination research. He was among the first to publicly call into question the official narrative of the event, as extolled by the Warren Report. His trailblazing 1966 book, “Rush to Judgment” — subtitled, “A critique of the Warren Commission’s inquiry into the murders of President John F. Kennedy, Officer J.D. Tippit and Lee Harvey Oswald” — took direct aim at the Commission’s work.
Among the many questions Lane raised are those to do with the many witnesses whose testimony the commission chose to ignore. What follows is a small sampling taken from both Lane’s book and filmed interviews he conducted with witnesses. (Links are included.)
‘Where They Thought the Sniper Was’
On Nov. 22, 1963, 13 employees of the Union Terminal Railroad, along with two police officers, stood on top of the triple underpass and watched as the presidential motorcade approached. The underpass, a sort of western border to Dealey Plaza, runs roughly perpendicular to the westward direction the motorcade was traveling down Elm Street. These men had a unique view of the scene as events unfolded.
When shots rang out, the railroad workers’ attention was immediately drawn to the left toward the area that came to be known as the grassy knoll, in particular to the area behind the picket fence from where the gunfire seemed to emanate.
The railroad employees were “among the witnesses closest to the grassy knoll,” Lane writes, and 11 of the 13 “indicated either explicitly or implicitly that the fenced-in area above the knoll was where they thought the sniper was.” (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 39)
In a filmed interview, Lane asked railway employee S.M. Holland where he thought the shots came from. Holland answered with certainty: “Well, I know where that third shot came from … behind that picket fence. … There’s no doubt whatsoever in my mind.” He said he “made it plain to the Warren Commission” and to the Dallas County Sheriff’s office. He also maintained there was a fourth shot.
“… I made it very clear [to the Commission] that there was a fourth shot fired and one of those shots came from behind the picket fence. And there’s no doubt in my mind, and never will be, because I was on the spot, I saw the smoke, heard the report … behind that fence.”
(The Warren Report, on page 76, noted that Holland testified to hearing four shots.)
None of the 13 railroad employees “thought the shots came from the Book Depository,” according to Lane. (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 39)
At least seven of the 13 also said, via affidavits or in interviews with the FBI or Warren Commission counsel, that they saw puffs of smoke hovering among the trees in the picket fence area following the gunshots.
Holland told Commission counsel that following the gunfire, “a puff of smoke came out about 6 or 8 feet above the ground right out from under those trees.” (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 40)
Railroad worker James Simmons said the gunfire “came from the left and in front of us, toward the wooden fence, and there was a puff of smoke that came underneath the trees on the embankment.” Richard Dodd concurred, saying that “the smoke came from behind the hedge on the north side of the plaza.” (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 40)
Holland and the others made their way to the area behind the picket fence. Dodd said there were footprints and cigarette butts and signs that someone had been standing on a car bumper. Simmons too said they had seen foot tracks in the mud.
All three men told their stories to authorities, but only Holland appears in the Warren Report.
The Commission concluded from Holland’s testimony that there was “no suspicious activity” in the area behind the picket fence. (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 34)
“Holland, for example, immediately after the shots, ran off the overpass to see if there was anyone behind the picket fence on the north side of Elm Street, but he did not see anything among the parked cars,” the Report reads. (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 34; Warren Report, p. 76)
Holland was confounded by the Commission’s conclusion: “I can’t understand [the Commission’s] statement,” he told Lane. “[The sniper or snipers] could have got away easily before I got there.” (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 34)
Simmons and Dodd were similarly bemused about how their stories were ignored.
“Do you think it’s rather curious that you had such a fine view of the whole Dealey Plaza area, and you were among those who saw smoke coming from evidently behind the fence, and yet you were not called by the Commission as a witness?” Lane asked Simmons.
“Well, I always thought it peculiar,” Simmons said, adding with a slight grin, “I thought that was the way they did business.”
For his part, Dodd told Lane: “… Looks to me like there was something going on there … somebody should’ve found out something … a man walk up and shoot a man handcuffed to a couple policemen can get away with it … why I figured there’s something else been going on besides what should be.”
Despite the information these witnesses provided to investigators, Lane writes, the Commission “concluded that there was ‘no credible evidence’ to suggest that shots were fired from anywhere except the Book Depository sixth floor.” (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 41)
‘Something I’ll Never Forget’
Charles Brehm was standing with his 5-year-old son on the south side of Elm Street as the presidential limousine approached. As he tells Lane, they were approximately 20 feet away from the president when the fatal shot struck. Brehm, who himself had been shot while serving as an Army Ranger in the invasion of France during World War Two, said that he instantly recognized the sound of gunfire.
Brehm told Lane, “That which appeared to be a portion of the president’s skull went flying slightly to the rear of the president’s car and directly to his left. It did fly over toward the curb to the left and to the rear” — a trajectory that would seem to indicate a shot from the knoll.
Brehm spoke to media immediately after the shooting and spent approximately four hours with the Dallas County Sheriff’s office. Nevertheless, Brehm, who acknowledged that he was “if not the closest, then one of the closest to the unfortunate incident,” was never called by the Commission.
“I did get a view of something I’ll never forget,” he said.
Tippit Murder Witnesses
Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit was shot to death outside his patrol car less than an hour after the assassination in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas. The Warren Commission concluded that accused JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald had committed this murder after Tippit apparently stopped Oswald to question him.
Thirty-seven minutes after Tippit was killed, Oswald was taken into custody at the Texas Theatre on nearby Jefferson Street.
As with much of the assassination story, there remain questions about the official narrative of Tippit’s death.
Domingo Benavides was closest to events. Sitting in his truck, he saw a gunman walk away after emptying his spent bullet casings. But Benavides, in speaking with Commission counsel, “steadfastly refused to identify Oswald as the murderer.” (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 178)
Benavides was also never brought before a police lineup.
Another witness, Acquilla Clemons, approached Tippit’s car after hearing the shots and said she saw two men. The shooter, whom she described in a filmed interview with Lane as short and “kind of chunky, kind of heavy” was reloading his pistol, while across the street, there was a tall, thin man dressed in khakis and a white shirt who appeared to be waving the gunman on — as if urging him to leave. They both left the scene in opposite directions, Clemons told Lane.
Two days after the event, Clemons said, a man showed up at her house wearing a gun, and who “looked like a policeman to me.”
“He just told me it’d be best if I didn’t say anything because I might get hurt.”
Lane contended that the Commission was aware of Clemons because the FBI had sent transcripts and tapes of radio shows he’d appeared on in which he talked about “the existence of such a witness.” (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 281)
Nevertheless, her name does not appear in the Warren Report.
Warren Reynolds
Warren Reynolds was at the Reynolds Motor Company, a used car lot, just a block away when Tippit was murdered. He and three other employees saw a man with a pistol heading in the direction of Jefferson Street. Reynolds followed the gunman for a block before losing him.
It was two months later, in January 1964, before the FBI approached Reynolds for his version of events. He told them he could not identify Oswald as the man he followed from the murder scene.
Just two days later, while closing the used car lot for the day, Reynolds was ambushed in the office by a gunman who proceeded to shoot him in the head. Miraculously, Reynolds survived.
A man named Darrell Wayne Garner was taken into custody for the crime after drunkenly boasting about it and also admitting to it to his sister-in-law. But police released Garner after a woman named Nancy Jane Mooney provided him with an alibi.
While providing that alibi on Feb. 5, 1964, less than two weeks after the shooting, Mooney also told police that she had worked as a stripper for Jack Ruby, the man who had killed Oswald.
Eight days after providing Garner’s alibi, Mooney was arrested for disturbing the peace; and less than two hours later she was found dead in her cell, an apparent suicide by hanging.
Not surprisingly, the shooting drastically altered Reynolds’ life; he installed flood lights at his home and got a watchdog.
Roughly six months after his brush with death, in July 1964, Reynolds changed his position, telling Commission counsel that he now believed it was Oswald he had seen leaving the Tippit murder scene. But the Warren Report doesn’t explain why he may have had this change of heart.
As Lane writes, “[i]n reporting [Reynolds’] changed statements, the Commission omitted to mention the attempt on Reynolds’ life and Reynolds’ own conclusion that it was related to the events of November 22.” (“Rush to Judgement, p. 279)
There is a mention of the shooting on page 663 of the Warren Report in the “Speculation and Rumors” appendix, that dismisses any connection between Reynolds’ fate and the world-shaking events of Nov. 22, 1963:
“The Commission has found no evidence that the shooting of Warren Reynolds was in any way related to the assassination of President Kennedy or the murder of Patrolman Tippit.”
Helen Markham
For its conclusions about Tippit’s murder, the Commission relied almost exclusively upon the testimony of Helen Markham.
Yet Markham’s version of events proved to be scattershot if not wholly unreliable — rife with “nonsensical statements,” as Anthony Summers wrote in “Not in Your Lifetime” (p. 104). She told authorities that she conversed with Tippit up until he was loaded into an ambulance, and that she was alone with him for 20 minutes before anyone else showed up at the scene.
Both statements beggar belief, as Tippit likely died instantly and the area was soon swarming with people.
Dallas Police Captain Fritz described Markham as “quite hysterical” — to the point that they considered sending her to the hospital — when she was brought to a lineup at 4:30 p.m. on Nov. 22 and identified Oswald as Tippit’s killer. (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 178)
However, when she provided testimony to the Warren Commission, she seemed to have scant memory of selecting Oswald.
“Q. Did you recognize anyone in the lineup?
Markham: No, sir ….
Q: Did you identify anybody in these four people?
Markham: I didn’t know nobody
Q: I know you didn't know anybody, but did anybody in that lineup look like anybody you had seen before?
Markham: No. I had never seen none of them, none of these men.” (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 179)
It took five attempts and some prompting by the Counsel to get Markham to eventually agree that “Number two is the one I picked.” (Oswald was in the second position at the lineup.)
“…. When I saw this man I wasn’t sure, but I had cold chills just run all over me,” Markham testified.
“A mystical identification at best,” Lane wrote. (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 179)
Nevertheless, the Warren Report states on page 168: “Addressing itself solely to the probative value of Mrs. Markham’s contemporaneous description of the gunman and her positive identification of Oswald at a police lineup, the Commission considers her testimony reliable.” The Report goes on to say that there was “ample evidence” beyond Markham’s testimony to pin the crime on Oswald.
Lane spoke to Markham on the phone on March 2, 1964 — three weeks before her Warren Commission testimony — and she described Tippit’s murderer as “a short man, somewhat on the heavy side, with slightly bushy hair.” (“Rush to Judgment,” p. 180)
Lane presented Markham’s description of the killer in his own testimony to the Commission. When the Commission later queried Markham about this, she at first adamantly denied she’d ever spoken to Lane, but eventually admitted to it.
When she asked Commission counsel if she was in any kind of trouble for her dissembling, he assured her she wasn’t.
In a 1964 debate, senior Commission counsel James Ball called Markham an “utter screwball … utterly unreliable.” (“Not In Your Lifetime,” p. 105)
Lane went on to write other books about the Kennedy assassination as well as that of Martin Luther King. In 1968, he was comedian/activist Dick Gregory’s running mate in their write-in quest for the presidency.
Gregory went on to play a role in revealing the Zapruder film to the public for the first time in 1975.
Lane died in 2016 at age 89.
Many of these interviews and others can be seen in Lane’s “Rush to Judgement” documentary from 1966, or in the recently restored version via Apple TV and Amazon Prime.
Mark "KGB" Lane did a big disservice to our country by spreading KGB disinformation.