The Newmans in Dealey Plaza
What do you expect from a pig but a grunt? -- Kevin Costner, as Jim Garrison
CBS News, on a July edition of its newsmagazine 48 Hours, offered up another of its dishonest portrayals of the Kennedy assassination. That's no surprise, so I don't want to comment too extensively on it, but a few things must be said.
The subject of the program was eyewitness testimony, and whether it is reliable. "To a jury, it is the most persuasive evidence," stated correspondent Dan Rather at the show's outset. "But it is also fraught with peril. Studies show that up to eighty percent of all false convictions are the result of mistaken eyewitness accounts."
Okay. So far, so good. 48 Hours presented instances where eyewitness testimony, which seemed so unshakeable at one point, appeared to have sent the wrong people to prison. That is not something I dispute.
Then we get to the Kennedy assassination. "Because of conflicting eyewitness testimony, the debate over who killed President Kennedy rages to this day," Rather informed his viewers. Again no argument there.
Experts were presented stating that most eyewitnesses to the events in Dealey Plaza were people "doing something else, such as applauding, waving ... they did not set out to be witnesses." Still no argument.
William and Gayle Newman were on this program, in both new interviews and interviews given the day of the assassination. The Newmans, of course, were on the north side of Elm Street when the murder occurred. Images of them falling on top of their kids as the bullets flew are well known to even casual observors.
The experts used by CBS analyzed their "testimony" [their word --- the Newmans were never called before the Warren Commission] and concluded they were good witnesses. But what did CBS choose to ask the Newmans? Gayle Newman said that she remembers the sun shining on President Kennedy's hair: "He had such a pretty color of hair, it was sort of a chestnut color." Bill Newman conceded that he was mistaken when he said, in a filmed interview minutes after the assassination, that JFK "jumped up" in his seat as he was hit. He got points from CBS for his candor.
If the Newmans were asked anything pertinent to the crime, CBS left their replies on the cutting room floor. This is a serious flaw, but the motives of CBS can only be guessed at. Here's a quick refresher: on November 22, 1963, William Newman gave a statement to the Dallas Sheriff's Department in which he said, "I thought the shot had come from the garden directly behind me, that was on an elevation from where I was as I was right on the curb." He added that he never even looked at the Book Depository. Gayle Newman did not offer an opinion as to the direction of the shots, although she told he Sheriff's Department, "Everyone started running back toward the brick structure," by which she presumably means the concrete pergola above Elm.
Howard Brennan was also deemed a credible witness by CBS. Again, no surprise. He was one of the Warren Commission's star witnesses, having identified Oswald as the lone TSBD sixth floor shooter. Dan Rather did not tell his viewers that before picking him out in a police lineup, Brennan saw Lee Oswald on TV --- twice (WC Vol. 3, pp. 147-8). Any competent defense attorney would have made mincemeat of Brennan, but to CBS he remains "a reliable witness."
The program also examined, briefly, the case of assassination eyewitness Jean Hill. The evolution of her story over the years is admittedly problematic for any honest conspiracy realist. Still, her appearance on the show was mostly in the role of sacrificial lamb.
CBS got right to the point, contrasting an interview given moments after the assassination with a recent one. Here's what she said in 1963:
Hill: I didn't see any person fire the weapon.Reporter: You only heard it?
Hill: I only heard it.
Then, as Dan Rather pulled on a smug grimace, he said: "Now listen to Miss Hill thirty years later."
Hill: I looked up across the street. Behind the picket fence, this man was shooting with a rifle...
"What we have here is a pretty good, real-life case of post-event information," said a CBS expert. People exposed to information after witnessing an event, he explained, "can actually incorporate that information into their memory of the initial event, and remember it as though it had occurred at the time."
This is surely true, just as it is true that Jean Hill did not mention a gunman in the police reports filed the day of the assassination, or in testimony to the Warren Commission. Yet she has been consistent in her statements about seeing a man running from the Book Depository area toward the grassy knoll immedidately after the shooting; about a reporter immediately grabbing Mary Moorman for her photo; and about being grilled by Feds within a half hour of the shooting. CBS did not see fit to mention any of that. No surprise.
Life magazine, in its September 1998 issue, also had a few grunts. The magazine ran an article entitled "Zapruder Rewound," which discusses (although it fails to mention it by its title) the recently released Image of an Assassination.
The article includes a handful of still frames from the Zapruder film, and an artful introduction by former Life man Richard B. Stolley. Stolley negotiated the purchase of the motion picture film by still picture specialists Life, back in 1963. (He is also seen in Image of an Assassination.)
His tone is one of condescension, as he mentions conspiracy theorists who "were politely unreasonable, wholly incapable of understanding my position or why I was not more intrigued with their latest count of conspiring angels on that familiar pinhead."
Pinhead, indeed. Stolley himself is politely unreasonable, as he laments the likelihood that "the video ... will reinvigorate longtime Theorists and spawn a new crop of investigators." He then adds that "we will never know with absolute certainty what happened that day in Dallas." Certainly not with that attitude.
But what do I expect from a pig, but a grunt?
I should probably point out that the Costner-as-Garrison quote at the top of this article was actually in reference to the government, not the media. But the shoe seemed to fit.
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