Book Excerpt: 'A Simple Act of Murder: November 22, 1963' by Mark Fuhrman

May 10, 2006— -- Former Los Angeles detective of O.J. Simpson trial fame, Mark Fuhrman has written several books, including "Silent Witness" about Terri Schiavo and "Murder in Brentwood," about the case that thrust him into the national spotlight. In "A Simple Act of Murder," Fuhrman examines the death of President John F. Kennedy, and why so many theories about the shooting still abound.

CHAPTER 1: A National Tragedy

The teacher slapped him with the back of her hand. No hesitation, no warning."Don't you ever say that!" she yelled at the boy. The teacher never apologized for hitting him, and no one felt an apology was needed. For the next few days, the afternoons I usually spent playing basketball or army were spent sitting on the floor in front of a black-and-white Zenith television. I had no understanding of politics. I had never read PT-109 or Profiles in Courage. I didn't know anything about the Kennedy family and didn't even understand what they meant when they called him "rich." I thought everybody lived pretty much like we did. Even if I didn't know or understand anything about the man, he was my president, and I was pulled into the drama of his violent death. One afternoon, sitting just a couple of feet from our television, I watched carefully as the assassin walked in front of the cameras. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw my mom ironing our uniforms for school the next day. Turning back toward the television, I saw Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed by Jack Ruby.

I turned back toward my mom.

"We killed him," I said.

I had forgotten I said that, but talking with my mom just a couple years ago about the JFK assassination, she asked me if I remembered what I said when Ruby shot Oswald. I didn't remember, but when she described the moment in detail, so many memories and emotions came rushing back. What exactly did I mean when I said, "We killed him"? Was I voicing suspicions that the government had murdered Oswald to shut him up? Did I think there was a conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy? Maybe the seed of doubt was planted those first few days and grew in my mind somewhere.

Now that Oswald was dead, there would be no trial. The FBI was preparing a report on its massive investigation, and the Texas Attorney General's Office planned its own inquiry. Two separate congressional committees were being formed to look into the assassination. Just after Oswald's murder, some were already talking about a possible conspiracy. To quiet these suspicions and keep the separate inquiries from turning into a political nightmare, President Lyndon Baines Johnson appointed a seven-man panel to investigate the assassination, presided over by Chief Justice Earl Warren and including senators Richard Russell and John Sherman Cooper, representatives Gerald Ford and Hale Boggs, former CIA director Allen Dulles, and John McCloy, former head of the World Bank.

Within days of its investiture, the Warren Commission was being urged by Assistant Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to issue a statement that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. While they refused to make any public statement about the guilt or innocence of the only suspect, the commissioners apparently saw their task as presenting the evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald killed the President and dispelling rumors that Oswald might have been part of a larger conspiracy. Relying first on the investigative reports of the FBI, the Secret Service, and Texas law enforcement, the Warren Commission went on to conduct its own investigation. The Commissioners analyzed the information gathered by other agencies, called witnesses for hearings and depositions, and performed tests and reenactments to fill what they saw as holes in the evidentiary fabric. The Warren Commission was a political body, created by politicians, made up of politicians, with the responsibility, in the view of its members, of resolving a political problem: fears that the President of the United States might have been assassinated through some conspiracy or even as part of a coup d'état. But the commissioners were all busy men. Most of them attended only a small fraction of the hearings, and their participation in those hearings was minimal. Supporting the commissioners was a staff of fifteen lawyers, led by J. Lee Rankin, the former solicitor general. The legal staff was divided into two groups, senior counsel and assistant counsel. Since the senior lawyers were busy with their own private law practices, almost all of the work was done by the seven assistants, bright young lawyers who had graduated at the tops of their classes at prestigious law schools but had little or no experience in criminal investigations. They worked under intense pressure

to gather all the necessary information and write it up into a publishable report before the presidential elections.On September 24, 1964, the Commissioners presented Lyndon Johnson with the "Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy," or the Warren Report. The first thing the President said was, "It's heavy." Then he gave it to one of his aides to read. And that was just the 888-page report. Shortly afterwards, 26 volumes of hearings and exhibits were published. The Warren Commission had been established in order to squelch rumors about a possible conspiracy, yet the vast public record it created had the opposite effect. Even before the Warren Report was published, several writers, mostly European, had speculated that Kennedy's assassination was the fruit of a conspiracy. Once the Commission's report and hearings were published, several American writers published books critical of its findings. Edward Jay Epstein's Inquest, Mark Lane's Rush to Judgment, Sylvia Meagher's Accessories After the Fact, and Josiah Thompson's Six Seconds in Dallas (to name only the earliest and most prominent criticisms) all raised troubling questions about the basic facts of the assassination. Some of the questions had to do with evidence, such as the bullet found on a stretcher in Parkland Hospital that was alleged to have caused a series of wounds to both Kennedy and Texas governor John B. Connally, who was riding in front of Kennedy in the presidential limousine. This became known as the single bullet theory, and the bullet responsible was called the Magic Bullet. Others raised questions about the rifle linked to Oswald: it seemed inadequate to the task and impossible for him to have fired as quickly as the shots appeared in the amateur film of the assassination taken by Dallas dressmaker Abraham Zapruder. In addition to these, and other, questions about the evidence, there was talk of other gunmen and claims of a well orchestrated cover-up to frame Oswald. The Warren Commission had made public all the testimony and evidence, but by keeping many records classified, it only fueled the suspicions. The government could not ignore these accusations for long. Less than two years after the report was issued, the medical team from the President's autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital was asked by the Justice Department (under Attorney General Robert Kennedy) to authenticate the X-rays and photographs held at the National Archives. During the autopsy the doctors had seen the X-rays during a brief search for a bullet they believed was still lodged in the President's body, but they were denied access to this important evidence while writing their reports. Earl Warren had viewed the photographs and X-rays before deciding that his commission should not make use of them, for fear that they would then have to become part of the public record. During the Justice Department inquiry, the doctors concluded that the X-rays and photographs were authentic. Yet they still weren't released to the public.