PAUL MAY SAID:
The inability of the WC to determine any motive whatsoever imo was the downfall of the WC in the minds of most if not all Americans.
DAVID VON PEIN SAID:
Lee Harvey Oswald's possible motives are discussed in the Warren Report (Chapter VII). Perhaps not as definitively as Paul May would like, but I think Chapter 7 does a pretty decent job at describing the kind of person Oswald was and his potential motive(s) for the murder of President Kennedy.
Essentially, I'd say the Warren Commission, within Chapter 7, is letting America (and the world) make up its own mind regarding Oswald's motive.
But the evidence presented in the Warren Report prior to Chapter 7 certainly establishes Oswald as the murderer of both JFK and Officer Tippit, beyond a reasonable person's reasonable doubt (note the way I worded that there). ;)
Therefore, since Oswald's guilt has been established in Chapters 1 through 6 of the Warren Report, the subject of motive is really secondary. Plus, any single motive ascribed to Oswald for Kennedy's murder can never really be "definitive", since Oswald was killed two days after the assassination. It will always be a subject of debate and guesswork--from now till the end of time.
But let me ask Paul May this related question:
Do you think the Warren Commission should have simply GUESSED as to what Oswald's motive was, and written about this GUESS in the WC's final report as if it were the ONLY possibility regarding this key "motive" topic?
Or, alternately, are you of the opinion that the WC just simply didn't look hard enough to establish a clear and concrete motive on the part of Oswald?
IMO, I think the WC was wise when they didn't place a final stamp of FINALITY on some of the things that are part of the Warren Report--and Oswald's specific and forever unknowable "motive" is one of those things.
And another one is: the Single-Bullet Theory timeline. I think the Warren Commission was smart to not get themselves pinned down to picking out one specific frame of the Zapruder Film and label that exact frame as the "SBT Frame".
Instead, the Commission, based on the on-site re-creation that was done at Dealey Plaza on 5/24/64, placed the SBT within a bracketed series of Z-Film frames (Z210-Z225). And I happen to think that the SBT is, indeed, occurring within that 16-frame bracket.
So, I think the Commission did a good job by not trying to pretend they had all the answers to every single question about the assassination--or the assassin.
Another instance of this is the topic of "Which Shot Missed?"
The Warren Commission readily admitted it really didn't know with 100% certainty which one of Oswald's three shots missed the President's limousine entirely. The WC speculated and guessed to some degree (as we all have when it comes to certain things connected to this case), and the Commission's conclusions that are found at the end of Chapter 3 of the Warren Report, on Page 117, include words like "probably" (twice), "preponderance", and "approximately". And, in my opinion, that's a good thing, not a bad thing:
"The Commission has concluded that the shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally were fired from the sixth-floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository Building. Two bullets probably caused all the wounds suffered by President Kennedy and Governor Connally. Since the preponderance of the evidence indicated that three shots were fired, the Commission concluded that one shot probably missed the Presidential limousine and its occupants, and that the three shots were fired in a time period ranging from approximately 4.8 to in excess of 7 seconds." -- From The Warren Commission Final Report; Page 117
David Von Pein
May 26, 2010
