Post by Rob Caprio on Dec 18, 2019 21:55:36 GMT -5
All portions ©️ Robert Caprio 2006-2024
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The House Select Committee On Assassinations (HSCA) would call a man to testify who had been very involved in the day-to-day operations of the Warren Commission (WC). He was in a very important position, General Counsel, and this allowed him to work with the staff, the members and the various intelligence agencies that were called to conduct the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (JFK).
The HSCA says…J. Lee Rankin.
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James Lee Rankin was the General Counsel of the WC and was in charge of the day-to-day operations of the staff.
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Mr. Klein. Mr. Rankin, what was your position with the Warren Commission?
Mr. Rankin. I was General Counsel.
Mr. Klein. And could you give us an idea what your duties were as General Counsel?
Mr. Rankin. I had the executive responsibilities for the staff working under the Commission.
Mr. Klein. Were you in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Warren Commission staff?
Mr. Rankin. Yes, I was. (HSCA, III, p. 612)
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This shows some of his duties, but he was also a conduit between the staff and the members. Furthermore, he was also the main point of contact for the various intelligence agencies that would be supposedly conducting the investigation.
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Mr. Klein. Would it be fair to say that the Federal Bureau of Investigation did most of the investigation for the Warren Commission?
Mr. Rankin. Well, that would be accurate as to the proportions if you mean by most, percentage wise; but we used all of the intelligence agencies of the Government before we got through and sometimes we used intelligence agency on matters that we were not satisfied concerning and which were worked upon by another intelligence agency. Oftentimes we wanted double check or felt that there were some inaccuracies or we were not completely satisfied, and asked some other agency that had no apparent relationship to check on the matter for us.
Mr. Klein. Whose decision was it to use Federal agencies as opposed to hiring investigators?
Mr. Rankin. That was a decision of the Commission, although I recommended that kind of procedure because I described various possibilities of getting outside investigators and that it might take a long period of time to accumulate them, find out what their expertise was, and whether they could qualify to handle sensitive information in the Government, and it might be a very long time before we could even get a staff going that could work on the matter, let alone have any progress on it. (Ibid, pp. 613-614)
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I personally don’t believe that the decision to use governmental agencies over using outside private investigators was really the WC’s as I doubt that because the FBI, CIA, Secret Service (SS) etc...were not about to let that happen. From the moment the shots rang out the FBI had a strong grip on this case and J. Edgar Hoover (JEH) was not about to let that go so private investigators, that he would have no control over, could take over. This is not what the creator of the WC, President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) wanted either.
I wonder what kind of Investigation we would have gotten had private investigators had been used? What kind of sensitive government information might they have trouble getting? And, why would they run into this problem if JFK was killed by a sole assassin as claimed? Why would sensitive government information be involved when LHO supposedly had no connection to any government agency or group?
Rankin would then be asked about his impression of the FBI’s performance at the conclusion of the WC’s tenure.
Mr. Klein. In 1964, at the conclusion of the investigation, what was your opinion of the performance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?
Mr. Rankin. Well, as to their cooperation with us, I thought it was good. We were critical about some of the things that happened about alerting the Secret Service, about information that they knew about and we learned they had not informed the Secret Service about. That was all in the report.
But as far as not being frank and open with us and revealing what information they had, we assumed that they did that. I did, at least, and I think the Warren Commission did.
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Mr. Klein. You have partially anticipated my next question, which is, today, 1978, with what you have learned over the course of the years, what is your opinion with respect to the performance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?
Mr. Rankin. Well, I have been very much disappointed with some of the things that have been revealed and I have, of course, no personal knowledge about these matters, I have just read about them in the press from the reports of Investigations by the Senate committee and others, but I had a close relationship with J. Edgar Hoover while I was at the Department of Justice and I was always friendly, but also professional, and I thought good. I never believed that he would withhold information or have it withheld from anybody like the Commission or that the FBI would do that.
It seemed to me from my experiences that they were more professional than to do anything of that character. When I learned that they were supposed to have known about plans for an assassination that were underway in the CIA, according to the investigation of the Senate committee, and did not report it to us and that we did not receive any such information from the CIA , it was quite disheartening to me to know that that kin of conduct was part of the action of our intelligence agencies at that high level.
Mr. Klein. I only asked the question as applying to the FBI, but your answer applies to the CIA and the FBI; is that correct?
Mr. Rankin. I think it was out experience as it is revealed by investigation on the Senate committee. With the CIA it is worse than with the FBI because the FBI apparently did not originate the assassination plans and apparently the CIA did. So the FBI only happened on to them or were informed about such plans and then did not convey them to us.
But the CIA, they were apparently involved in them and did not alert us to the situation at all, give us any opportunity to take the action that we should have had the chance to, of investigating that type of information.
Mr. KLEIN. As General Counsel of the Warren Commission, you had no knowledge whatsoever of the assassination plots against Fidel Castro?
Mr. RANKIN. That is true, I did not. (HSCA III, pp. 614-615)
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There are some interesting things in this portion of Rankin’s testimony. We see that Rankin had a “close relationship” with JEH and that they were “friendly.” We also see that Rankin worked with JEH when he was in the Justice Department. Was this why he was selected to be General Counsel of the WC? This is an important point since the WC basically came to the same conclusion as the FBI (i.e. JEH) save for the Single Bullet Theory (SBT). How did this friendly close relationship affect the investigation that the WC was overseeing?
Then we see that neither the CIA or FBI ever passed on the small detail of the CIA trying to kill Cuban Premier Fidel Castro. Rankin said that he couldn’t believe that the FBI would do this, but to me this sounds naïve. If he really had a close relationship with JEH then he should have known that he was very secretive and that he leveraged information like this to his advantage. The better question is, why didn’t the WC find this out on their own? The answer is because they did not investigate anything on their own, but rather depended on the very groups who had no desire to share this with them. Rankin couldn’t blame anyone but himself since he was not for hiring independent investigators. This shows how rigged the process was from the beginning.
Rankin then says something else that was either very naïve or not the truth.
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Mr. KLEIN. What were some of the pressures, the political pressures, time pressures, that were exerted upon the Warren Commission staff?
Mr. RANKIN. We had pressures from the beginning on the time element because the country was anxious to know what had happened and whether there was any conspiracy involved. I was assured by the Chief Justice that it would only take me 2 or 3 months at the outside in this job and that is all the time I would be away from my law practice, and, of course, I wished to get the job done correctly and properly, but also to get back to my other work. On the other hand, the first meeting we had with the staff, I told them that our only client was the truth and that was what we must search for and try to reveal. I think we adhered to that, that we never departed from that standard, any of the Commission or myself or the staff. We tried as conscientiously as possible to convey the information explicitly that we discovered. (HSCA III, p. 615)
If what they did was adhering to the truth then I sure would hate to see them being openly dishonest. How can he think they adhered to finding and revealing the truth? The WC’s finding was anything but the truth.
He then tells another obvious falsehood with this comment.
Mr. KLEIN. Was there any pressures exerted not to find a foreign conspiracy because of the dire consequences that such a conspiracy might have for war or peace?
Mr. RANKIN. None at all. There was a conscientious effort throughout to try to discover anything that would reveal that there was a conspiratorial action about the assassination of the President. (HSCA III, p. 615)
Beyond the very small minority who defend the WC’s conclusion, does anyone actually believe this? If you research this case the first thing that you notice is how the WC avoided evidence and witnesses that may have lead to showing that a conspiracy took place in the murder of JFK so this statement is totally false.
He is then asked if he thinks that the WC spent enough time on investigating if a conspiracy was involved and of course he said that they did. He then said it was hard to investigate countries like Cuba and the Soviet Union due to the closed nature of their societies, but if this was true why do we even have intelligent agencies if finding information in these places was so hard to get? (III, pp. 615-616) The point he never mentions is that they never considered a domestic conspiracy. Why not? Why did it have to be a Soviet or Cuban conspiracy? Neither of those countries gained anything with the removal of JFK.
He is then asked about the criticism regarding the evidence not adequately supporting the Report’s conclusion in some areas.
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Mr. KLEIN. The Commission has received a good deal of criticism to the effect that in some areas in the final report the evidence was not strong enough to support the conclusions reached in that report; and that some staff members immediately prior to the issuance of the report stated that in certain areas they felt the evidence was not strong enough to support the conclusions. What would be your position in reply to this criticism?
Mr. RANKIN. I do not think it is a valid criticism. I examined, I think, every word of the report before it was printed and I constantly tried to understate rather than overstate the findings, the position of the Commission on all of the various matters that it acted upon and reported upon.
These positions were carefully reviewed by the Commissioners, in fact by each one of them, and they argued them, and the staff presented such materials they had and the Commissioners examined it. They participated in hearings and it was their disposition, so expressed, that the report not overstate what the Commission found and the evidence that would support it. (HSCA III, p. 616)
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It is not a valid criticism? Saying that the evidence does not support the WC Report in “some areas” is being kind as it does not support their conclusions in almost every area. He then says that the report “understated” the findings rather than overstating them. This too is hard to believe as the report constantly stated that LHO was guilty and that there was no doubt about it. The report also made it clear that no conspiracy was involved in the murder of JFK and they didn’t say this in an understated way either.
Despite all the evidence that had come to light since 1964, including the plots against Fidel Castro by the mob and the CIA, he still felt the WC reached the correct conclusion.
Mr. KLEIN. As you sit here today, do still believe the conclusions of the Warren Commission to be correct?
Mr. RANKIN. I do. (Ibid)
This makes no sense since he himself had said earlier that the Castro plots should have been told to the WC so that they could have looked into this themselves. This was hardly the only thing that the WC did not look into either. His answer just reaffirms for me that the WC reached the conclusion that they were supposed to reach as there simply was too much that was brought to light by 1978/1979 for him to have no doubts about the conclusion that they reached in 1964.
Rankin is asked about where the WC thought LHO was headed when he was allegedly stopped by Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit (JDT). His answer is very interesting.
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Mr. SAWYER. Did you make any effort either as a staff or, to your knowledge, as a Commission, to determine just where Oswald was going at the time he was intercepted by Officer Tippit?
Mr. RANKIN. We speculated on it but speculations aren't worth much.
Mr. SAWYER. Did you come to any reasonable hypothesis as to where he was going?
Mr. RANKIN. We all agreed that he was on his way to try to escape but where we didn't know, and everything from that point on was just one person's guess against another's. (HSCA III, p.617)
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So in their scenario they had LHO intersect with JDT, but had no idea why this occurred. In other words, they had NO clue why LHO was allegedly at 10th and Patton as they claimed. What kind of Investigation was this? Shouldn’t this kind of stuff be solved before you state your claim?
His answer of “We speculated on it but speculations aren't worth much” in regards to where LHO was headed when he was allegedly stopped by JDT is right, but when had that ever stopped the WC from speculating on almost everything else? The WC Report (WCR) is nothing but speculation, and it is biased too, that is not supported by the evidence in their own twenty-six volumes. As he said, speculation isn’t worth much.
The truth is that there is only a small amount of shaky witness testimony that places LHO at the scene of the JDT shooting. None of the physical evidence points to LHO in the least (see my series “Statements That Sink The WC’s Conclusions” for information on this evidence). Assistant District Attorney William Alexander even admitted that they never found one witness to say that they saw LHO walking the route he was claimed to have taken to get to 10th and Patton to be allegedly stopped by JDT.
Rankin is then told some interesting things about this area.
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Mr. SAWYER. Well, did you find out that Jack Ruby's apartment was about two or three blocks up the street, also on the direct route he was going?
Mr. RANKIN. Yes.
Mr. SAWYER. Did you also find out that in the Dallas newspaper announcement of the President's visit, that on the same page was the identity of an informant who had substantially destroyed the Communist Party in Texas by informing to the FBI and he was identified as living just about two blocks up the street, also on the direct route he was going?
Mr. RANKIN. I don't recall that I was aware of that.
Mr. SAWYER. But other than just the fact that on this some 14 1/2 or 15 minute walk he had taken through a neighborhood after leaving his roominghouse, other than just running or escaping, you had formed no hypothesis on where he may have been going or what his intent may have been?
Mr. RANKIN. That is true, we did not. (HSCA III, pp. 617-618)
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In this response we see that Rankin admits that the WC was aware of the fact that Jack Ruby, the man that would kill LHO, lived just two or three blocks from where they claimed LHO was walking when he was allegedly trying to escape. Why did the WC not find this interesting or a lead to what might have been going on? Then he is informed about an informant who helped the FBI to bust up the Communist Party in Texas residing again within blocks of the area that LHO was allegedly walking in. He admits that the WC had no knowledge of this, but the HSCA found this information many years after the assassination. Again, what kind of investigation were they conducting? Actually, they were not conducting an investigation at all, but were at the mercy of the FBI, CIA, SS, ONI, DIA, etc...This makes one wonder how he thinks that they still reached the right conclusion when there are countless things that they did not know about or look into.
Again, he admits that they had NO idea why LHO would have been where they claimed he was.
Rankin would be reminded of another piece of evidence that allegedly showed LHO illustrating a violent temper.
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Mr. SAWYER. But as you probably know now, information was withheld by the FBI with respect to the so-called Hosty note from Oswald threatening to burn down a police station, or allegedly so.
Mr. RANKIN. Yes, but Congressman, if you look back at that period we, all of us, did not believe the FBI was capable of that kind of conduct, at least I did not, and none of the commissioners did. And I think all of our ideas about what people in government are capable of and do has changed, but back then we did not think they would do such things.
Mr. SAWYER. Did you ever receive any advice from the FBI about the 17 agents that were subjected to administrative discipline because of their mishandling of the pre-assassination information about Ruby--not Ruby, Oswald?
Mr. RANKIN. I think that is very shocking too. I think we were entitled to that information and a frank disclosure by Mr. Hoover that he felt they should be disciplined and why, and that we should have been able to go into that and try to discover whether it had any effect on our work. (HSCA III, p. 620)
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With all this stuff being withheld from them, how is he still so sure that their conclusion was correct? Furthermore, why is he acting like this was all something that was learned in the later years when he knew that there were doubts about the FBI’s performance at the December 16, 1963, executive session?
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The Chief Justice and I finally came to the conclusion, after looking at this report, that we might have to come back to you and ask for some investigative help, too, examine special situations, because we might not get all we needed by just going back to the FBI and other agencies because the report has so many loopholes in it. Anybody can look at it and see that it just doesn’t seem like they’re looking for things that this Commission has too look for in order to get the answers that it wants and is entitled to. We thought we might need some investigative staff. (HSCA XI, p. 33)
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The report that he is referring to was the FBI Summary Report that the WC had received on December 9, 1963. Rankin is saying that after discussing this report both he and the Chief Justice (CJ), Earl Warren, found the FBI report to have “many loopholes in it”, therefore, he is seeking approval to secure outside investigators, but this never happened.
This is further confirmation that the WC simply endorsed the FBI’s report that had “so many loopholes in it” because they were left with relying on them despite their bias and refusal to investigate “tenders spots” for the FBI and the other agencies. This was knowledge that Rankin and the WC had on December 16, 1963, so why was he acting like it was shocking to learn this information years later before the HSCA?
The CIA of course kept things from the WC as we already seen in regard to the assassination attempts on Castro, but they also were dishonest with the Yuri Nosenko issue as well. They would not let any one from the WC meet with him or interview him. They even told them that Nosenko was not even an agent.
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Mr. SAWYER. So that, then, because of the doubt cast on his veracity by the CIA, you opted not to even have the staff talk to him or even check what he had to say, is that right?
Mr. RANKIN. No; they were not telling us his veracity--whether he was truthful or not, except insofar as he was representing that he was a KGB agent. They were telling us that he was not a real agent and that seemed to me very important with regard to what he might have to say about the matter.
Mr. SAWYER. You are aware that the CIA has now reversed themselves totally on that position, I assume.
Mr. RANKIN. Yes; but I am shocked by the way they arrive at that conclusion and the procedures they apparently went through as I observed from some of your TV programs. (HSCA III, p. 621)
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More than likely, Nosenko would have been able to shed a good bit of light on the time LHO spent in Russia, and exactly what he did there. This was obviously information that the CIA did not want the WC to have, and in all fairness, it was information that the WC didn’t want to have. Despite Rankin’s protestations before the HSCA the truth is that the WC wasn’t formed to actually investigate these types of leads anyway. They were formed to endorse the single assassin theory that the FBI and DPD had already arrived at, not find evidence pointing to a conspiracy.
No President, and Attorney General, were more harsh then JFK and Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) on the Mafia, but despite this fact Rankin admitted that the WC never had access to FBI’s section that handled the Mafia.
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Mr. SAWYER. The FBI liaison officer who appeared before this committee and who was acting as the sort of sole or principal liaison between the FBI and the Commission said that they had never involved or were never asked to or ever did involve their organized crime section of the FBI in the matter.Is that consistent with your recollection of it?
Mr. RANKIN. That is, yes.
Mr. SAWYER. So, you did not have access what electronic surveillance may have been available in that section that may have related to their interest in doing away with President Kennedy; am I correct on that?
Mr. RANKIN. That is correct. (HSCA III, p. 622)
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This shows again that the WC was not really searching for the truth as they claimed. Any investigator worth their salt would have investigated the possibility of the Mafia being involved in the killing of JFK based on what they had done to them, and what they were going to do in the future.
Rankin is then asked about the topic of LHO being associated with the FBI.
Mr. PREYER. ...Early on in the work of the Commission, I believe it did come to your attention, allegations came to our attention that Lee Harvey Oswald might have been an FBI agent; is that right?
Mr. RANKIN. That is correct.
Mr. PREYER. How were you able to investigate the truth or falsity of that charge? What did you do to investigate it?
Mr. RANKIN. When that information came to my attention and then to the Commission's, we were very much shocked about it and the Commission had deliberations in which they tried to determine what was the best approach to try to find out the fact. They decided that we should make direct inquiries to J. Edgar Hoover.
The problem was not, as I recall it, whether Oswald was ever listed as an agent in their records because, as I recall, we checked that out and he was not. My recollection is that the question involved whether he might have been a numbered personality that the FBI had where the name of the individual is not revealed and thus has a cover, and it could be concealed. We examined the possibility that we could try to go into their records and examine every person, identify every person who had a number and we were assured that involved a large number of personalities.
The FBI was greatly disturbed about the idea of taking the cover off of all those agents that they had established over a long term of years and revealing their names to all of the staff as well as the Commissioners. I couldn't assure that their identity would not become known in that kind of a process.
So, the Commission finally determined that they would accept J. Edgar Hoover's personal assurance by affidavit that Oswald had never been an informer or agent of the FBI, and that was given.
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Mr. PREYER. But you were somewhat in the position of asking the FBI to investigate itself or going to the innkeeper to ask whether the wine was good or not.
Mr. RANKIN. Well, back at that time, Congressman, that did not seem so impossible as it might today.
Mr. PREYER. Yes; I think your answer to an earlier question has demonstrated a certain fall from innocence that we have all had since that time. Things are now believable which we would not have thought believable at that time.
Mr. RANKIN. That is correct. (HSCA III, pp. 624-625)
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So the WC learned that LHO had no affiliation of any kind with the FBI from the FBI’s director. Okay, that sounds good. NOT! This was like asking the fox to guard the henhouse.
Mr Preyer then asked another good question.
Mr. PREYER. …The FBI reached a conclusion in their report that was made 17 days after the assassination that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. Don't you think that would have had some chilling effect, would have dampened the incentive of FBI agents in following out the question of a conspiracy where his organization had already declared itself to the effect that there was no conspiracy?
Mr. RANKIN. I think that is true but we always assumed that. We started out knowing the FBI had already decided who the assassin was and that no one else was involved, and we knew that was the agency position. It was very evident. But we did not rely on anything like that. We sought detailed evidence and if we didn't get the evidence we asked for, we sent back time after time to get it.
We treated their report in which they promptly found Oswald as the assassin and that was no conspiracy as though that was just an interesting document, but we are not there to ratify that; we were to find out if it was true and I think we were probably quite offensive, especially some of the younger members of our staff who looked forward to the opportunity of finding that the FBI was wrong, at least on as much as they could find. (HSCA III, p. 625)
To me it is totally incorrect (dishonest?) to say that they were not out to ratify the FBI’s report because that is just what they did. They basically agreed with a report that was finished just 17 days after the assassination and had no time, nor inclination, to investigate leads that could have shown that a conspiracy was involved in JFK’s assassination. Furthermore, of course the report put a squash on the investigation for most of the agents as their omnipotent director had already given his verdict, and they were not about to go against that.
The next to last question and answer is very interesting.
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Mr. EDGAR. What is your feeling now in retrospect looking back in terms of your relationship and coldness and the resentment that the FBI felt about their alleged withholding from you of information?
Mr. RANKIN. Well, you know, I assumed at that time, apparently mistakenly, that they were professionals and even though the didn't like whatever I would demand as a lawyer, or if I was too insistent about the investigation or wanted a better investigation or something more complete, or more information or more disclosure, that they would recognize that I was acting as a lawyer in trying to carry out my work, and if they didn't like it they still would appreciate that it was necessary to my work. Therefore, the thought never crossed my mind that they would deliberately withhold something as important as information about what had happened in connection with this assassination, which I thought was of major importance to the country. I didn't think the FBI's interests in its own Bureau, as important as I appreciated it could be to an agent or Hoover, still was more important than that of the interests of the country as a whole, so I never thought that they would deliberately conceal or withhold anything.
I thought there might be some times when I would have to pull it out of them, and I might have to keep after something a good many times that I should have been able to get the first time, but the other never crossed my mind, as I say, and I never believed that Mr. Hoover would deliberately lie to the Commission. (HSCA III, pp. 640-641)
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This is why the WC should have used independent investigators as relying on these various intelligence agencies was not a smart move. It also led to many critics questioning the results of the WC as they basically had groups who were suspected of involvement (however small) in the assassination and/or the cover-up. Rankin had to be very naïve or dishonest to say that he never entertained the possibility that JEH would lie to them. The FBI claimed to solve the case within forty-eight hours for goodness' sake.
This post shows that the WC did not do a thorough job as they ignored leads, allowed the intelligence agencies to ignore them, and they were denied vital information that would have altered the conclusion that the WC reached according to Rankin.
All this is understandable when one realizes that the WC was meant only to rubber-stamp the FBI’s already reached conclusion.
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The House Select Committee On Assassinations (HSCA) would call a man to testify who had been very involved in the day-to-day operations of the Warren Commission (WC). He was in a very important position, General Counsel, and this allowed him to work with the staff, the members and the various intelligence agencies that were called to conduct the investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (JFK).
The HSCA says…J. Lee Rankin.
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James Lee Rankin was the General Counsel of the WC and was in charge of the day-to-day operations of the staff.
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Mr. Klein. Mr. Rankin, what was your position with the Warren Commission?
Mr. Rankin. I was General Counsel.
Mr. Klein. And could you give us an idea what your duties were as General Counsel?
Mr. Rankin. I had the executive responsibilities for the staff working under the Commission.
Mr. Klein. Were you in charge of the day-to-day operations of the Warren Commission staff?
Mr. Rankin. Yes, I was. (HSCA, III, p. 612)
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This shows some of his duties, but he was also a conduit between the staff and the members. Furthermore, he was also the main point of contact for the various intelligence agencies that would be supposedly conducting the investigation.
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Mr. Klein. Would it be fair to say that the Federal Bureau of Investigation did most of the investigation for the Warren Commission?
Mr. Rankin. Well, that would be accurate as to the proportions if you mean by most, percentage wise; but we used all of the intelligence agencies of the Government before we got through and sometimes we used intelligence agency on matters that we were not satisfied concerning and which were worked upon by another intelligence agency. Oftentimes we wanted double check or felt that there were some inaccuracies or we were not completely satisfied, and asked some other agency that had no apparent relationship to check on the matter for us.
Mr. Klein. Whose decision was it to use Federal agencies as opposed to hiring investigators?
Mr. Rankin. That was a decision of the Commission, although I recommended that kind of procedure because I described various possibilities of getting outside investigators and that it might take a long period of time to accumulate them, find out what their expertise was, and whether they could qualify to handle sensitive information in the Government, and it might be a very long time before we could even get a staff going that could work on the matter, let alone have any progress on it. (Ibid, pp. 613-614)
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I personally don’t believe that the decision to use governmental agencies over using outside private investigators was really the WC’s as I doubt that because the FBI, CIA, Secret Service (SS) etc...were not about to let that happen. From the moment the shots rang out the FBI had a strong grip on this case and J. Edgar Hoover (JEH) was not about to let that go so private investigators, that he would have no control over, could take over. This is not what the creator of the WC, President Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ) wanted either.
I wonder what kind of Investigation we would have gotten had private investigators had been used? What kind of sensitive government information might they have trouble getting? And, why would they run into this problem if JFK was killed by a sole assassin as claimed? Why would sensitive government information be involved when LHO supposedly had no connection to any government agency or group?
Rankin would then be asked about his impression of the FBI’s performance at the conclusion of the WC’s tenure.
Mr. Klein. In 1964, at the conclusion of the investigation, what was your opinion of the performance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?
Mr. Rankin. Well, as to their cooperation with us, I thought it was good. We were critical about some of the things that happened about alerting the Secret Service, about information that they knew about and we learned they had not informed the Secret Service about. That was all in the report.
But as far as not being frank and open with us and revealing what information they had, we assumed that they did that. I did, at least, and I think the Warren Commission did.
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Mr. Klein. You have partially anticipated my next question, which is, today, 1978, with what you have learned over the course of the years, what is your opinion with respect to the performance of the Federal Bureau of Investigation?
Mr. Rankin. Well, I have been very much disappointed with some of the things that have been revealed and I have, of course, no personal knowledge about these matters, I have just read about them in the press from the reports of Investigations by the Senate committee and others, but I had a close relationship with J. Edgar Hoover while I was at the Department of Justice and I was always friendly, but also professional, and I thought good. I never believed that he would withhold information or have it withheld from anybody like the Commission or that the FBI would do that.
It seemed to me from my experiences that they were more professional than to do anything of that character. When I learned that they were supposed to have known about plans for an assassination that were underway in the CIA, according to the investigation of the Senate committee, and did not report it to us and that we did not receive any such information from the CIA , it was quite disheartening to me to know that that kin of conduct was part of the action of our intelligence agencies at that high level.
Mr. Klein. I only asked the question as applying to the FBI, but your answer applies to the CIA and the FBI; is that correct?
Mr. Rankin. I think it was out experience as it is revealed by investigation on the Senate committee. With the CIA it is worse than with the FBI because the FBI apparently did not originate the assassination plans and apparently the CIA did. So the FBI only happened on to them or were informed about such plans and then did not convey them to us.
But the CIA, they were apparently involved in them and did not alert us to the situation at all, give us any opportunity to take the action that we should have had the chance to, of investigating that type of information.
Mr. KLEIN. As General Counsel of the Warren Commission, you had no knowledge whatsoever of the assassination plots against Fidel Castro?
Mr. RANKIN. That is true, I did not. (HSCA III, pp. 614-615)
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There are some interesting things in this portion of Rankin’s testimony. We see that Rankin had a “close relationship” with JEH and that they were “friendly.” We also see that Rankin worked with JEH when he was in the Justice Department. Was this why he was selected to be General Counsel of the WC? This is an important point since the WC basically came to the same conclusion as the FBI (i.e. JEH) save for the Single Bullet Theory (SBT). How did this friendly close relationship affect the investigation that the WC was overseeing?
Then we see that neither the CIA or FBI ever passed on the small detail of the CIA trying to kill Cuban Premier Fidel Castro. Rankin said that he couldn’t believe that the FBI would do this, but to me this sounds naïve. If he really had a close relationship with JEH then he should have known that he was very secretive and that he leveraged information like this to his advantage. The better question is, why didn’t the WC find this out on their own? The answer is because they did not investigate anything on their own, but rather depended on the very groups who had no desire to share this with them. Rankin couldn’t blame anyone but himself since he was not for hiring independent investigators. This shows how rigged the process was from the beginning.
Rankin then says something else that was either very naïve or not the truth.
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Mr. KLEIN. What were some of the pressures, the political pressures, time pressures, that were exerted upon the Warren Commission staff?
Mr. RANKIN. We had pressures from the beginning on the time element because the country was anxious to know what had happened and whether there was any conspiracy involved. I was assured by the Chief Justice that it would only take me 2 or 3 months at the outside in this job and that is all the time I would be away from my law practice, and, of course, I wished to get the job done correctly and properly, but also to get back to my other work. On the other hand, the first meeting we had with the staff, I told them that our only client was the truth and that was what we must search for and try to reveal. I think we adhered to that, that we never departed from that standard, any of the Commission or myself or the staff. We tried as conscientiously as possible to convey the information explicitly that we discovered. (HSCA III, p. 615)
If what they did was adhering to the truth then I sure would hate to see them being openly dishonest. How can he think they adhered to finding and revealing the truth? The WC’s finding was anything but the truth.
He then tells another obvious falsehood with this comment.
Mr. KLEIN. Was there any pressures exerted not to find a foreign conspiracy because of the dire consequences that such a conspiracy might have for war or peace?
Mr. RANKIN. None at all. There was a conscientious effort throughout to try to discover anything that would reveal that there was a conspiratorial action about the assassination of the President. (HSCA III, p. 615)
Beyond the very small minority who defend the WC’s conclusion, does anyone actually believe this? If you research this case the first thing that you notice is how the WC avoided evidence and witnesses that may have lead to showing that a conspiracy took place in the murder of JFK so this statement is totally false.
He is then asked if he thinks that the WC spent enough time on investigating if a conspiracy was involved and of course he said that they did. He then said it was hard to investigate countries like Cuba and the Soviet Union due to the closed nature of their societies, but if this was true why do we even have intelligent agencies if finding information in these places was so hard to get? (III, pp. 615-616) The point he never mentions is that they never considered a domestic conspiracy. Why not? Why did it have to be a Soviet or Cuban conspiracy? Neither of those countries gained anything with the removal of JFK.
He is then asked about the criticism regarding the evidence not adequately supporting the Report’s conclusion in some areas.
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Mr. KLEIN. The Commission has received a good deal of criticism to the effect that in some areas in the final report the evidence was not strong enough to support the conclusions reached in that report; and that some staff members immediately prior to the issuance of the report stated that in certain areas they felt the evidence was not strong enough to support the conclusions. What would be your position in reply to this criticism?
Mr. RANKIN. I do not think it is a valid criticism. I examined, I think, every word of the report before it was printed and I constantly tried to understate rather than overstate the findings, the position of the Commission on all of the various matters that it acted upon and reported upon.
These positions were carefully reviewed by the Commissioners, in fact by each one of them, and they argued them, and the staff presented such materials they had and the Commissioners examined it. They participated in hearings and it was their disposition, so expressed, that the report not overstate what the Commission found and the evidence that would support it. (HSCA III, p. 616)
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It is not a valid criticism? Saying that the evidence does not support the WC Report in “some areas” is being kind as it does not support their conclusions in almost every area. He then says that the report “understated” the findings rather than overstating them. This too is hard to believe as the report constantly stated that LHO was guilty and that there was no doubt about it. The report also made it clear that no conspiracy was involved in the murder of JFK and they didn’t say this in an understated way either.
Despite all the evidence that had come to light since 1964, including the plots against Fidel Castro by the mob and the CIA, he still felt the WC reached the correct conclusion.
Mr. KLEIN. As you sit here today, do still believe the conclusions of the Warren Commission to be correct?
Mr. RANKIN. I do. (Ibid)
This makes no sense since he himself had said earlier that the Castro plots should have been told to the WC so that they could have looked into this themselves. This was hardly the only thing that the WC did not look into either. His answer just reaffirms for me that the WC reached the conclusion that they were supposed to reach as there simply was too much that was brought to light by 1978/1979 for him to have no doubts about the conclusion that they reached in 1964.
Rankin is asked about where the WC thought LHO was headed when he was allegedly stopped by Dallas police officer J.D. Tippit (JDT). His answer is very interesting.
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Mr. SAWYER. Did you make any effort either as a staff or, to your knowledge, as a Commission, to determine just where Oswald was going at the time he was intercepted by Officer Tippit?
Mr. RANKIN. We speculated on it but speculations aren't worth much.
Mr. SAWYER. Did you come to any reasonable hypothesis as to where he was going?
Mr. RANKIN. We all agreed that he was on his way to try to escape but where we didn't know, and everything from that point on was just one person's guess against another's. (HSCA III, p.617)
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So in their scenario they had LHO intersect with JDT, but had no idea why this occurred. In other words, they had NO clue why LHO was allegedly at 10th and Patton as they claimed. What kind of Investigation was this? Shouldn’t this kind of stuff be solved before you state your claim?
His answer of “We speculated on it but speculations aren't worth much” in regards to where LHO was headed when he was allegedly stopped by JDT is right, but when had that ever stopped the WC from speculating on almost everything else? The WC Report (WCR) is nothing but speculation, and it is biased too, that is not supported by the evidence in their own twenty-six volumes. As he said, speculation isn’t worth much.
The truth is that there is only a small amount of shaky witness testimony that places LHO at the scene of the JDT shooting. None of the physical evidence points to LHO in the least (see my series “Statements That Sink The WC’s Conclusions” for information on this evidence). Assistant District Attorney William Alexander even admitted that they never found one witness to say that they saw LHO walking the route he was claimed to have taken to get to 10th and Patton to be allegedly stopped by JDT.
Rankin is then told some interesting things about this area.
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Mr. SAWYER. Well, did you find out that Jack Ruby's apartment was about two or three blocks up the street, also on the direct route he was going?
Mr. RANKIN. Yes.
Mr. SAWYER. Did you also find out that in the Dallas newspaper announcement of the President's visit, that on the same page was the identity of an informant who had substantially destroyed the Communist Party in Texas by informing to the FBI and he was identified as living just about two blocks up the street, also on the direct route he was going?
Mr. RANKIN. I don't recall that I was aware of that.
Mr. SAWYER. But other than just the fact that on this some 14 1/2 or 15 minute walk he had taken through a neighborhood after leaving his roominghouse, other than just running or escaping, you had formed no hypothesis on where he may have been going or what his intent may have been?
Mr. RANKIN. That is true, we did not. (HSCA III, pp. 617-618)
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In this response we see that Rankin admits that the WC was aware of the fact that Jack Ruby, the man that would kill LHO, lived just two or three blocks from where they claimed LHO was walking when he was allegedly trying to escape. Why did the WC not find this interesting or a lead to what might have been going on? Then he is informed about an informant who helped the FBI to bust up the Communist Party in Texas residing again within blocks of the area that LHO was allegedly walking in. He admits that the WC had no knowledge of this, but the HSCA found this information many years after the assassination. Again, what kind of investigation were they conducting? Actually, they were not conducting an investigation at all, but were at the mercy of the FBI, CIA, SS, ONI, DIA, etc...This makes one wonder how he thinks that they still reached the right conclusion when there are countless things that they did not know about or look into.
Again, he admits that they had NO idea why LHO would have been where they claimed he was.
Rankin would be reminded of another piece of evidence that allegedly showed LHO illustrating a violent temper.
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Mr. SAWYER. But as you probably know now, information was withheld by the FBI with respect to the so-called Hosty note from Oswald threatening to burn down a police station, or allegedly so.
Mr. RANKIN. Yes, but Congressman, if you look back at that period we, all of us, did not believe the FBI was capable of that kind of conduct, at least I did not, and none of the commissioners did. And I think all of our ideas about what people in government are capable of and do has changed, but back then we did not think they would do such things.
Mr. SAWYER. Did you ever receive any advice from the FBI about the 17 agents that were subjected to administrative discipline because of their mishandling of the pre-assassination information about Ruby--not Ruby, Oswald?
Mr. RANKIN. I think that is very shocking too. I think we were entitled to that information and a frank disclosure by Mr. Hoover that he felt they should be disciplined and why, and that we should have been able to go into that and try to discover whether it had any effect on our work. (HSCA III, p. 620)
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With all this stuff being withheld from them, how is he still so sure that their conclusion was correct? Furthermore, why is he acting like this was all something that was learned in the later years when he knew that there were doubts about the FBI’s performance at the December 16, 1963, executive session?
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The Chief Justice and I finally came to the conclusion, after looking at this report, that we might have to come back to you and ask for some investigative help, too, examine special situations, because we might not get all we needed by just going back to the FBI and other agencies because the report has so many loopholes in it. Anybody can look at it and see that it just doesn’t seem like they’re looking for things that this Commission has too look for in order to get the answers that it wants and is entitled to. We thought we might need some investigative staff. (HSCA XI, p. 33)
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The report that he is referring to was the FBI Summary Report that the WC had received on December 9, 1963. Rankin is saying that after discussing this report both he and the Chief Justice (CJ), Earl Warren, found the FBI report to have “many loopholes in it”, therefore, he is seeking approval to secure outside investigators, but this never happened.
This is further confirmation that the WC simply endorsed the FBI’s report that had “so many loopholes in it” because they were left with relying on them despite their bias and refusal to investigate “tenders spots” for the FBI and the other agencies. This was knowledge that Rankin and the WC had on December 16, 1963, so why was he acting like it was shocking to learn this information years later before the HSCA?
The CIA of course kept things from the WC as we already seen in regard to the assassination attempts on Castro, but they also were dishonest with the Yuri Nosenko issue as well. They would not let any one from the WC meet with him or interview him. They even told them that Nosenko was not even an agent.
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Mr. SAWYER. So that, then, because of the doubt cast on his veracity by the CIA, you opted not to even have the staff talk to him or even check what he had to say, is that right?
Mr. RANKIN. No; they were not telling us his veracity--whether he was truthful or not, except insofar as he was representing that he was a KGB agent. They were telling us that he was not a real agent and that seemed to me very important with regard to what he might have to say about the matter.
Mr. SAWYER. You are aware that the CIA has now reversed themselves totally on that position, I assume.
Mr. RANKIN. Yes; but I am shocked by the way they arrive at that conclusion and the procedures they apparently went through as I observed from some of your TV programs. (HSCA III, p. 621)
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More than likely, Nosenko would have been able to shed a good bit of light on the time LHO spent in Russia, and exactly what he did there. This was obviously information that the CIA did not want the WC to have, and in all fairness, it was information that the WC didn’t want to have. Despite Rankin’s protestations before the HSCA the truth is that the WC wasn’t formed to actually investigate these types of leads anyway. They were formed to endorse the single assassin theory that the FBI and DPD had already arrived at, not find evidence pointing to a conspiracy.
No President, and Attorney General, were more harsh then JFK and Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) on the Mafia, but despite this fact Rankin admitted that the WC never had access to FBI’s section that handled the Mafia.
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Mr. SAWYER. The FBI liaison officer who appeared before this committee and who was acting as the sort of sole or principal liaison between the FBI and the Commission said that they had never involved or were never asked to or ever did involve their organized crime section of the FBI in the matter.Is that consistent with your recollection of it?
Mr. RANKIN. That is, yes.
Mr. SAWYER. So, you did not have access what electronic surveillance may have been available in that section that may have related to their interest in doing away with President Kennedy; am I correct on that?
Mr. RANKIN. That is correct. (HSCA III, p. 622)
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This shows again that the WC was not really searching for the truth as they claimed. Any investigator worth their salt would have investigated the possibility of the Mafia being involved in the killing of JFK based on what they had done to them, and what they were going to do in the future.
Rankin is then asked about the topic of LHO being associated with the FBI.
Mr. PREYER. ...Early on in the work of the Commission, I believe it did come to your attention, allegations came to our attention that Lee Harvey Oswald might have been an FBI agent; is that right?
Mr. RANKIN. That is correct.
Mr. PREYER. How were you able to investigate the truth or falsity of that charge? What did you do to investigate it?
Mr. RANKIN. When that information came to my attention and then to the Commission's, we were very much shocked about it and the Commission had deliberations in which they tried to determine what was the best approach to try to find out the fact. They decided that we should make direct inquiries to J. Edgar Hoover.
The problem was not, as I recall it, whether Oswald was ever listed as an agent in their records because, as I recall, we checked that out and he was not. My recollection is that the question involved whether he might have been a numbered personality that the FBI had where the name of the individual is not revealed and thus has a cover, and it could be concealed. We examined the possibility that we could try to go into their records and examine every person, identify every person who had a number and we were assured that involved a large number of personalities.
The FBI was greatly disturbed about the idea of taking the cover off of all those agents that they had established over a long term of years and revealing their names to all of the staff as well as the Commissioners. I couldn't assure that their identity would not become known in that kind of a process.
So, the Commission finally determined that they would accept J. Edgar Hoover's personal assurance by affidavit that Oswald had never been an informer or agent of the FBI, and that was given.
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Mr. PREYER. But you were somewhat in the position of asking the FBI to investigate itself or going to the innkeeper to ask whether the wine was good or not.
Mr. RANKIN. Well, back at that time, Congressman, that did not seem so impossible as it might today.
Mr. PREYER. Yes; I think your answer to an earlier question has demonstrated a certain fall from innocence that we have all had since that time. Things are now believable which we would not have thought believable at that time.
Mr. RANKIN. That is correct. (HSCA III, pp. 624-625)
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So the WC learned that LHO had no affiliation of any kind with the FBI from the FBI’s director. Okay, that sounds good. NOT! This was like asking the fox to guard the henhouse.
Mr Preyer then asked another good question.
Mr. PREYER. …The FBI reached a conclusion in their report that was made 17 days after the assassination that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. Don't you think that would have had some chilling effect, would have dampened the incentive of FBI agents in following out the question of a conspiracy where his organization had already declared itself to the effect that there was no conspiracy?
Mr. RANKIN. I think that is true but we always assumed that. We started out knowing the FBI had already decided who the assassin was and that no one else was involved, and we knew that was the agency position. It was very evident. But we did not rely on anything like that. We sought detailed evidence and if we didn't get the evidence we asked for, we sent back time after time to get it.
We treated their report in which they promptly found Oswald as the assassin and that was no conspiracy as though that was just an interesting document, but we are not there to ratify that; we were to find out if it was true and I think we were probably quite offensive, especially some of the younger members of our staff who looked forward to the opportunity of finding that the FBI was wrong, at least on as much as they could find. (HSCA III, p. 625)
To me it is totally incorrect (dishonest?) to say that they were not out to ratify the FBI’s report because that is just what they did. They basically agreed with a report that was finished just 17 days after the assassination and had no time, nor inclination, to investigate leads that could have shown that a conspiracy was involved in JFK’s assassination. Furthermore, of course the report put a squash on the investigation for most of the agents as their omnipotent director had already given his verdict, and they were not about to go against that.
The next to last question and answer is very interesting.
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Mr. EDGAR. What is your feeling now in retrospect looking back in terms of your relationship and coldness and the resentment that the FBI felt about their alleged withholding from you of information?
Mr. RANKIN. Well, you know, I assumed at that time, apparently mistakenly, that they were professionals and even though the didn't like whatever I would demand as a lawyer, or if I was too insistent about the investigation or wanted a better investigation or something more complete, or more information or more disclosure, that they would recognize that I was acting as a lawyer in trying to carry out my work, and if they didn't like it they still would appreciate that it was necessary to my work. Therefore, the thought never crossed my mind that they would deliberately withhold something as important as information about what had happened in connection with this assassination, which I thought was of major importance to the country. I didn't think the FBI's interests in its own Bureau, as important as I appreciated it could be to an agent or Hoover, still was more important than that of the interests of the country as a whole, so I never thought that they would deliberately conceal or withhold anything.
I thought there might be some times when I would have to pull it out of them, and I might have to keep after something a good many times that I should have been able to get the first time, but the other never crossed my mind, as I say, and I never believed that Mr. Hoover would deliberately lie to the Commission. (HSCA III, pp. 640-641)
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This is why the WC should have used independent investigators as relying on these various intelligence agencies was not a smart move. It also led to many critics questioning the results of the WC as they basically had groups who were suspected of involvement (however small) in the assassination and/or the cover-up. Rankin had to be very naïve or dishonest to say that he never entertained the possibility that JEH would lie to them. The FBI claimed to solve the case within forty-eight hours for goodness' sake.
This post shows that the WC did not do a thorough job as they ignored leads, allowed the intelligence agencies to ignore them, and they were denied vital information that would have altered the conclusion that the WC reached according to Rankin.
All this is understandable when one realizes that the WC was meant only to rubber-stamp the FBI’s already reached conclusion.