Washington, DC — Forty-four prominent authors, medical doctors, academics, lawyers and other research experts convene from Sept. 26 to 28 to reveal recent findings undercutting the Warren Commission’s 1964 report ascribing President Kennedy’s murder to a sole assassin.
On the unique, historic occasion of the Warren report’s 50th anniversary, experts and surviving witnesses will examine evidence showing the commission was wrong about its core finding, that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in killing the president with three shots from behind. Polls for decades have shown that most Americans – sometimes more than 70 percent – disbelieve the commission, which was chaired by the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.
“Few serious scholars believe the Warren Report any longer,” said Assassinations Archives and Record Center President James Lesar, whose non-profit group AARC has organized what he called, “one of the most important JFK assassination conferences in history.”
The three-day conference, “The Warren Report and the JFK Assassination: A Half Century of Significant Disclosures," will be at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Bethesda, MD. It begins Sept. 26, with an evening reception Sept. 25. Find registration and hotel details at: www.aarclibrary.org.
Among those making unprecedented or rare speaking appearances will be: Alpha 66 founder Antonio Veciano, leader of the CIA-backed Cuban exile group that tried to kill Cuban Premier Fidel Castro; and Prof. Ernst Titovets, who was Oswald’s best friend in the Soviet Union.
Other speakers include: Prof. Robert Blakey, Ed Lopez and Dan Hardway of the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA), which concluded that JFK fell victim to a conspiracy. Among others: Dr. Gary Aguilar, Russ Baker, Brenda Brody, Rex Bradford, Jim DiEugenio, Dr. Peter Kornbluh, Robert Groden, Prof. Joan Mellen, Jefferson Morley, Prof. John Newman, Jerry Policoff, Dr. Randolph Robertson, Prof. Peter Dale Scott, Dr. Wayne Smith, Anthony Summers, David Talbot, Dr. Donald Thomas, Dr. Cyril H. Wecht, Lamar Waldron, and Dr. David Wrone.
Surviving members of the Warren staff were invited. All commission members are deceased.
The conference will include a number of special events. These include autograph signings by prominent authors and film makers. They have produced more than two thousand books alone regarding the assassination and its larger context, plus many films and other videos.
Other highlights include a banquet Sept. 27. Also, there are panel discussions on why virtually all mainstream newspaper and broadcast networks last year retained on the 50th anniversary of the killing their themes promulgated from the killing’s first day: Oswald did it, and acted alone.
Another special event will be a dramatic re-enactment by Brian Connors, John Heard and other well-known actors TBA of a pivotal Warren Commission meeting. Recently declassified documents show that former CIA Director Allen Dulles took a lead role on the commission. As background, JFK had vowed to cut CIA funding. Also, JFK fired the top leadership of the CIA in 1962, including Dulles and his deputy, General Charles Cabell, brother of the mayor of Dallas.
“Why does it matter,” Lesar continued, “that the controversy still lingers and researchers continue to demand release of JFK assassination records? Because Congress passed a 1992 law requiring that release.”
Lesar, a longtime advocate for full disclosure of still-secret assassination records, continued:
The Warren Report marked the profound slide in public distrust in government and the press. And JFK assassination and those of Dr. Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy created a devastating political impact that continues to erode democratic government.
The result has been to encourage the rampant growth of the national security state in ways that have had profound adverse effects on our world standing, our economic vitality, and our personal liberty.
The conference will focus on major revelations in four million pages of documents released since the Warren Report on September 26, 1964, and on the importance of documents still suppressed despite disclosure requirements of the JFK Records Act of 1992.
Visit AARC’s website for details on registration, hotels, email bulletins, and expert interviews.
About the Assassination Archives and Research Center (AARC)
AARC was founded in 1984 as a permanent organization to acquire, preserve, and disseminate information on political assassinations. With the passage of the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Collection Act and successful suits under the Freedom of Information Act, the AARC has obtained hundreds of thousands of pages of long-awaited government records. The AARC seeks the widest possible audience with this new information. Details: www.aarclibrary.org.
