Warren Commission | History, Testimony, & Facts (2024)

Warren Commission, commission appointed by U.S. Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson on November 29, 1963, to investigate the circ*mstances surrounding the assassination of his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, and the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald, the alleged assassin, two days later. The chairman of the commission was the chief justice of the United States, Earl Warren. The other members were two U.S. senators, Richard B. Russell of Georgia and John Sherman Cooper of Kentucky; two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, Hale Boggs of Louisiana and Gerald Ford of Michigan; and two private citizens, Allen W. Dulles, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and John J. McCloy, former president of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

From December 5, 1963, when it first met, to September 24, 1964, when it submitted its finding to the president, the commission took the testimony of more than 550 witnesses and received more than 3,100 reports from the FBI and Secret Service. A key piece of evidence was the home movie of the assassination recorded by Abraham Zapruder. It was aided by 10 major departments of the federal government, 14 independent agencies, and 4 congressional committees. The commission’s 888-page report was released to the public immediately after being submitted to President Johnson. The commission reported that the bullets that killed President Kennedy were fired by Oswald from a rifle pointed out a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.

There is very persuasive evidence from the experts to indicate that the same bullet which pierced the President’s throat also caused Governor Connally’s wounds. However, Governor Connally’s testimony and certain other factors have given rise to some difference of opinion as to this probability, but there is no question in the mind of any member of the Commission that all the shots which caused the President’s and Governor Connally’s wounds were fired from the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.

The commission also reported that it had found no evidence that either Oswald or Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub operator charged with Oswald’s murder, was part of any conspiracy, foreign or domestic, to assassinate President Kennedy. This conclusion of the commission was later questioned in a number of books and articles and in a special congressional committee report in 1979.

The commission described in detail its investigation of Oswald’s life but did not itself attempt to analyze his motives. The commission also proposed the strengthening of the Secret Service organization; the adoption of improved procedures for protecting the president; and the enactment of legislation to make killing the president or vice president a federal offense. The report was published by the U.S. Government Printing Office under the title Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (1964).