Vincent Salandria and brother-in-law Harold Feldman traveled to Dallas in the summer of 1964 to investigate the assassination of the President. Mr. Salandria took this photograph of Mr. Feldman, his wife Immie (center), and Oswald’s mother Marguerite (right).

We questioned Helen Markham and her husband. I must say that before we got to her that we saw a Dallas Police Car pulling away.

When we spoke to those people, I have never seen that kind of terror. Their teeth were actually chattering. I only could get a little from them because of their terror.

When we began, I began as, really, an investigator. I collected newspaper articles which seemed to point in the direction of Oswald being a US intelligence operative. An agente provocateur. When we put these together Harold wrote an article for The Nation which was called “Oswald and the FBI.” That’s what we were doing initially.

Then The Warren Report came out and I read it. I remember calling Harold after I read it and said, “It seems clear to me, the report is totally convincing. It had to be, the assassination, [at] the very core of the American government, the highest level of power. Because the report reveals quite clearly an assassination by conspiracy. And then comes out with a conclusion that one man did it and did it alone. This contradiction, of the conclusion against the evidence, is a manifestation of great arrogance and great power. Only the center of the American power structure could have effectuated this and expected that the American press would play along with it.”

And whereupon I went with my report, the Warren Commission Report, to a meeting of the Philadelphia Bar Association, immediately after the report came out. The meeting was designed to pay an accolade to a staffer of the Warren Commission who was of tremendous significance in solving the ammunition shortage which the Commission was confronted with having only three bullets with which to perform all the wounds and hits of Dealey Plaza. And that was, of course, Arlen Specter.

He made a presentation to the Bar Association members who were assembled there and then opened himself up to questioning. I directed some questions to him and he was unable to answer them.

When the meeting was over, my colleagues at the Bar—some of them—gathered around and said ‘Look, write an article on this.’ So I went home and that night, while dealing with other clients, I wrote the first analysis of the shots, trajectories, and wounds of the Warren Commission, sent it to the then-Chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar, Theodore Voorhees, and said ‘The Bar Association has paid honor to Mr. Specter. I think that there are problems in the analysis of the assassination as set forth in the Warren Commission Report. Do you have the courage to put a dissenting view in a law journal?’ His answer was, he put it—that article, “The Warren Report - Analysis of Shots, Trajectories, and Wounds: A Lawyer’s Dissenting View”—in the oldest legal journal in the United States, The Legal Intelligencer, that analyzed the shots, trajectories, and wounds, and concluded with the idea that the Warren Commission Report was totally convincing and everybody should believe what it provided in evidence. And what it provided in its evidence was conclusive evidence that there was a major conspiracy in the killing of the President.

It was the first attack of the single bullet theory—the first analysis I know printed anywhere in the world—and I must say that I should get no credit for that, whatever. I did it while dealing with clients, in between clients, and answering phones. I did it that night. I don’t think it took three hours of work. It just rushed out at me from the Warren Commission Report.

It’s almost as if the government wanted us to know that this was an act of great power and that evidence be damned. It didn’t matter. That it was not the evidence that mattered, but the affairs of state that mattered. It was not the people that mattered, but it was the government, and its legitimacy—or illegitimacy—that mattered.

That’s what the Warren Commission Report cried out to me. And I’m a man of limited intelligence, limited ability—never fired a rifle in my life—and was able to see what they were telling us if we wanted to know. If we wanted to know. But once you know—that as you know Dave—then you become committed to the idea of doing something about this.

So what I think the most significant thing I did was to pull myself out of this microanalysis and to try to explain why it happened. To give a model of explanation.

Under the guise of Cold War we were told that the increase of governmental expenditures to the military sector of the economy was necessary. So we began to spend on the order of 300 billion dollars of national wealth per year on the military industrial complex which caused us to neglect the private sector, neglect education, neglect health service delivery to the poor, neglect increasing poverty, neglect the homeless. Neglect, in short, an effort to make the society fair, and to make the wealth of the country more equally and equitably distributed so that we’d have a state which we could be proud of, where the needs of our people would be met. Whether it be upward social mobility, which I enjoyed, and the future of the society could enjoy.

Instead, we became militarized. Instead, rather than being competitive economically and maintaining our competitive edge and being able to maintain the highest standard of living in the world, we have been slipping. And now we have slipped to eleventh or twelfth in our standard of living. The number of poor increases. The injustice of this unequal distribution of wealth escalates. Public education is neglected. The poor are neglected. And we see that although the Cold War has dissipated, the military expenditures remain pretty much flat, hanging close to a 300 billion dollar a year point. We find the President, who I think is a basically decent man, nonetheless coming out for increased expenditures—in the absence of a cold war—for “intelligence.”

So if you know this, and say you know it, you become an outlaw in terms of being able to communicate with people. But we have to get enough outlaws in that respect to say, We know what happened. We know this government is illegitimate. We know we don’t have a democracy and we want our democracy back again. When enough of us say that, then we will get change.

Now, why is that historically important? All other investigations which any way deviate from that design of the Central Intelligence Agency, having been at the center of the killing of Kennedy, any other investigation or investigative work either consciously or unconsciously is missing the mark. It can be used therefore, as a standard against which all other investigation can be compared. And if the other investigation does not comport with it it can be rejected. So Gaeton Fonzi was of enormous importance.

Sylvia Meagher was of enormous importance. Sylvia Meagher prepared an index on the Warren Report, and also on the House Committee, and that work was significant and aided researchers. She (of course) wrote, Accessories After The Fact which was perhaps the best book written in terms of the work and the modus operandi of the Warren Commission, destroying it as a responsible body. Sylvia did monumental work.

But think of what this man Garrison did. Garrison was a public official, enormously respected in New Orleans—I’m certain, was on his way, to becoming the governor. A much beloved man with a great charisma. He was the only public official in the whole world who understood that the assassination was a very high level conspiracy of intelligence agents who had enormous power—and he took them on. What courage. What a hero. What a man. How deserving of our admiration. How deserving of the happy role he will play, and enjoy, in history.

Should there be further investigation? Sure. We should zero in on the people who did it. Identify them. See them for what they are. Take them on no matter what their power. But that investigation should not be conducted by governmental circles. It should be conducted by private individuals, around the world. Because this affects not only this country, but around the world. Perhaps a million South Vietnamese died as a consequence of what happened in Dealey Plaza. The world, hanging always, between peace and war. And it’s the interests of the people who killed Kennedy of maintaining war. To find enemies, to seek them desperately. To manufacture them. To have the American media play them up so that the weapons business can continue and that the greed can continue to be satisfied.

So that our job is to have international scholars from around the world join in the commission, very like, for example, the Dewey Commission which met with distinguished academicians, respected scholars, John Dewey, a very loved and respected philosopher and educator in the United States, heading up the commission, looking in to the issue of the purge trials in the Soviet Union that began after the assassination of Kirov, December 1, 1934. Which resulted in, eventually, the elimination of maybe a million old Bolsheviks. The Dewey commission determined, correctly, that all these confessions, in all these trials, were phony. That the Soviet government was framing these people. And they were cooperating in many respects in the framing, out of their sense of duty to socialism, for the Soviet state. They went along to their deaths, sometimes admitting, confessing to their crimes which were no crimes at all.

The Dealey Plaza killing of Kennedy did not only kill a president. It effectively killed the Presidency. Every president who has had to follow Kennedy, even one I can think of with very few brain cells, had to know what happened. Had to know therefore, what could happen, to him if he did not recognize where the power over the Presidency really lay.

So I suggest to you that yes, ideally, the President should openly advise the American public and the world that we had a coup but that, as a practicable matter, that is not going to happen. And therefore, it’s up to the American people to use this politically. Not to divide up the society. And I suggest to you that the people who killed Kennedy have effectively managed to divide up the family, the country, in a very effective way: rich against poor, class against class, race against race, ethnic group against ethnic group; shattering old coalitions. That people must come together in the knowledge that a more open society will benefit all of us, will improve the quality of life for all of us, will improve the relations in the world for all the peoples of the world. And therefore all of us have a great stake in knowing the truth of that coup and reversing it. And organizing politically. One man, one president, won’t be able to do it, Dave. Each of us who come to know the truth must join together, organize politically, and struggle—maybe a long struggle—to defeat the power of those rulers who took over the Presidency in Dealey Plaza. No single president can do it for us. We have to do it....

He became a defector. His mother always felt, told me, told the Commission, that she never felt he was a defector. She went to Washington she tells me and was treated with kid gloves; had an appointment in the State Department immediately. She was reassured not to worry about his defection when he had defected. He was sent over by US intelligence to the Soviet Union, and in their program of trying to get fake defectors in the Soviet Union.

He was returned to the United States having married Marina, who was a niece of a KGB Colonel and the Soviets let him out which leads me to think that maybe he was doubled by the Soviets as a double agent.

He returned and wrote to the American Communist party. He was interested in the Communist Party. He got a three-page response from Arnold Johnson of the Communist Party which leads me to be suspicious of that. At any rate they treated him with a great deal of respect.

He performed the Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans and it was quite clearly the product of US intelligence because he was the only member of that committee, a matter of some suspicion.

He was befriended by Michael Paine, who had secret clearance, working in Bell Helicopter although his father George Lyman Paine had been a Trotskyist and for that kind of clearance, when you’re associated with the family with left wing connections of that sort some quid pro quo has to be given. So Michael Paine, very likely, was doing favors for US intelligence in order to be able to have a secret clearance. He was associated with Oswald and he told me, Michael Paine told me, in an interview, that he would go with Oswald to right-wing meetings in the Dallas area and that Oswald would take very careful notes afterwards and he was apparently reporting on the right wing in Dallas. Michael Paine told me he went with him to the ACLU meeting and that Oswald joined the ACLU.

So what you see is Oswald being dipped into every aspect of the American political spectrum. As my friend Jim Garrison was fond of saying, what he saw in New Orleans was the Cubanization process of Oswald. There he was being given pro-Castro airs.

Then of course, whether or not it was he, someone posing as Oswald made a scene in the Mexico City Russian Embassy and then the Cuban Embassy. What you’re seeing is—incidentally he was operating in New Orleans out of the same building which was being utilized by anti-Castro people.

So he was identified with pro-Castro people, anti-Castro people, pro-Soviet people, US Marine Corps, he was reportedly having shot at Edwin Walker, attacking the right, and apparently also perhaps picketing against Stevenson with the right wing in Dallas.

He was all things to all political aspects of the American political spectrum. A typical pattern for an intelligence agent to follow. What they’re doing is, making it impossible for any aspects of the American political scene to undertake investigation of attack on the official version for fear that they would be therefore vulnerable because Oswald had been associated with them. Associated with the liberals, associated with the right wing, associated with the Trotskyists, associated with the Soviet Union, associated with Castro—a perfect, a perfect patsy. Sure, he was associated with American Intelligence.

Did he do any firing, Dave? No, he did no firing. With that rifle, which fired, due to its sight, high and to the right; with that trigger mechanism which was defective; with his lack of skill as a marksman, he could have fired away all afternoon, right through the afternoon into the night and have done no damage. But was he doing any firing? No, the paraffin test indicated he hadn’t fired a rifle.

On December 9th—think of this—on December 9th—Hoover wouldn’t have had this kind of guts—the respected Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Earl Warren, just getting ready to undertake the job of investigating who killed Kennedy, is treated like the lowliest of shysters—no lowly shyster would take that kind of treatment—is sent this memorandum, same kind of memorandum by the-then Deputy—really operating as the Attorney General of the United States—Katzenbach telling him that he should leak to the press that Oswald did it, there was no conspiracy, and end speculation.

Issac Don Levine, who was an old Czarist right-winger, came to the United States, had solid US intelligence connections. Dulles said, ‘Isaac Don Levine, I have known him, has been assigned by LIFE magazine to write an article about Marina.’ Incidentally he never wrote such an article. He was assigned—I’m sure by American Intelligence, not LIFE magazine—to Marina Oswald to keep her quiet. ‘I have known him. I will talk to him. She will not so testify.’

That’s suborning perjury. That’s a crime. So Allen Dulles was clearly a criminal. Now, he said very early, when the critics started to attack the Warren Commission, ‘If the critics do not believe the Warren Commission, do not believe that Oswald killed the president alone let them name names.’ A heavy burden.

I think, thanks to the work of Gaeton Fonzi, we can name names now. You can be sure that David Atlee Phillips, that fine gentleman, was very cozy with Allen Dulles. You can be absolutely sure that Dulles was not completely fired by JFK over the betrayal that the CIA, under Allen Dulles, did of Kennedy when they sucked him in to this [Bay of Pigs] enterprise contending to him that if it was not successful that the people who hit the beaches would be able to retreat in to the mountains and operate as guerrillas when there was no possible way of doing that. When the real plan was to have the US ships loaded with Marines, the follow-up airstrikes by US and invade when the Bay of Pigs effort failed—that was the real plan. He recognized that. JFK recognized that and fired Dulles. He thought he fired him.

When the Rockefeller Commission was looked at by reasonable people they could see that many of those people, including Ronald Reagan and others, had connections with intelligence and it looks like a pattern of the Commission, like the Warren Commission, was set up again.

What happened is people didn’t believe that that was a legitimate investigation either which led to the Church Committee and your friend Gaeton Fonzi was on the Church Committee. I think that the Church Committee was one of the more honest—if you can even say that of the investigations—in that it found extensive misbehavior, withholding by the intelligence agencies of information, negligence, and obviously lying about it.

Only when you get political movement of that kind can you get change. No single president can do it. No single investigator can do it. No special investigator can do it. Nothing from within the government can do it. History has demonstrated that pressure has to be put upon the government in order for progressive changes to occur.

While all this evidence was known, while they saw him, they saw the president being thrown leftward and backward into the presidential limousine when he was supposed to have been shot from the rear and therefore required, according to Newton’s second law of motion to be driven forward rather than leftward and backward. And all of this could be wrong. Where Senator Yarborough in the motorcade said he smelled gunpowder in Dealey Plaza. All this could have been wrong. But at that evidence, Dealey Plaza reeked at that moment, at the killing of the president, that Dealey Plaza reeked of conspiracy. All of which may have been wrong. People heard more than three shots. Most of the witnesses thought the shots came from the grassy knoll. Zapruder thought the shots were coming from over his shoulder. All wrong say. But that’s what we had at that time. We had conspiracy.