KENNEDY REMEMBERED Controversy Raging Over Assassination

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31224, 23 November 1966, Page 21

KENNEDY REMEMBERED Controversy Raging Over Assassination

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) NEW YORK, November 22. Americans today honoured the memory of the late President Kennedy on the third anniversary of his assassination, while the controversy over the circumstances of his death flared more fiercely than ever.

His assassination in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963, was being recalled for the most part in private services and observances.

No official ceremony was planned in Dallas itself. The Kennedy family—the President’s widow, Jacqueline, his children, Caroline and John junior, and his brothers, Robert and Edward—were expected to remain in seclusion. Crowds, however, were preparing to file past the Kennedy grave on a hillside in Arlington National Cemetery, near Washington. The gravesite, with its eternal flame and low, white picket fence, was banked with wreaths.

One memorial service, similar to many others across the country, was held last night at Tufts University, Massachusetts. only a few miles from the late President’s home town of Boston. FAVOURITE SONG

Intended as “a tribute In word and song,” it included, as well as a Mass and Bible reading, the singing of the theme song of “Camelot,” President Kennedy’s favourite musical. Throughout Massachusetts, flags were flying today at half-

mast by order of the Governor.

But as the nation remembered and mourned, the Warren Commission report on the assassination is coming under the most intensive attack since it was first published just over two years ago. In recent days many of America’s foremost magazines have carried long articles, minutely scrutinising the com. mission’s investigation methods and its central conclusion, that Lee Harvey Oswald, act-

ing alone, murdered President Kennedy. The controversy has been fed by a flood of books, and pictures and home cine films taken of the fatal scene have been subjected to microscopic examination. Theories have been advanced that the assassination was not the work of one aberrant mind, but a conspiracy. Few Americans have had the time or inclination to wade through the massive Warren Commission report

and the volumes of evidence on which it was based. The stature of the commission members, headed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, is such that none could doubt their personal integrity. But the welter of questioning books and articles, discussed in innumerable television debates, can hardly fail to raise doubts in even the most unquestioning mind.