The Dallas Police and Oswald
THEY HAVE NOT HESITATED TO FABRICATE "PROOFS"
PARIS, Dec, 1 -- Not a single publication here, newspapers or magazines, "dailies or weeklies, from the far right to the far left, from the lightest to the most serious, accepts the version offered up to now by the Dallas police of the assassination of Kennedy.
This skepticism, probably expressed in this city in the greate est detail and with the coldest logic, reflects prevailing public opinion throughout Europe, the Soviet bloc and the colonial countries.
Writing about this from London for the American press, Charles Portis expressed some irritation. In an article published in yesterday's European Edition of the New York Herald Tribune, he said:
"Many Europeans are convinced there was a cabal -= probably political -- behind the assassination of President Kennedy. The less they know about the circumstances and the more remote they are from Dallas, the surer they become, i "Londoners are awfully suspicious, and the Parisians are pretty certain they know. In Budapest they! re dead sure,"
In what purports to be a survey of the press, Portis singles out certain questions concerning the evidence, pits of speculation, telephone calls he has received and even a conversation at a bar.
"No theory is too fantastic in this country of Agatha Christie and Ian Fleming," he says of England.
"The continentals," he declares, "simply cannot believe that a mighty Chief of State such as Mr. Kennedy can be cut down by a nasty little man with a mental problem, The French particularly -- they find it intellectually and drama atically unsatisfying,"
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This attempt at dismissing the universal skepticism by light- _ some ridicule is not likely to meet with much favorable comment. ‘Outside of the United States the assassination of President Kennedy 'is taken most seriously,
The anxiety to lnow the truth and nothing but the truth derives from two considerations:
(1) The political use that is made of the assassination will indicate -- and even help determine -- whether another wave of McCarthyism is due in the United States, This is considered very important abroad both for its effect on domestic politics and for whet it can signify in the atomic arms race and the drive toward a nuclear catastrophe.
(2) The world is sick to the marrow with judicial frame-ups and lynchings, Tens of millions of people outside the United States saw Lee H, Oswald shot in the stomach by a police stool pigeon as they watched in horror on their TV screens. What they saw of the working of justice in the United States frightened them as they haventt been frightened since the days of the Nazis, This is the law and order of the country that presumes to lead the world and on whom the fate of all mankind depends? Naturally they examined the evidence of Oswald's guilt offered by the Dallas cops and they did not approach it with any of the racist preconceptions which an American correspondent may have become accustomed to rely upon in handling "facts" dealing with such things as lynch murder in the South,
Day by day every paper in Paris kept its best men occupied in the past week sifting the facts, . They did not even rely on the standard wire services or the big substantial American papers like the New York Times and the Herald Tribune. They had their own men in Dallas, Washington and New York, he Paris newspapermen are good == make no mistake about it,
What they did to the "evidence" proffered by the Dallas cops was dev~ astating. They proved from the internal contradictions of the evidence and from the self-evident contradictions in the declarations made to the public that evidence was being manufactured in Dallas,
For instance, Jacques Amalric, wno has been following the develop~ ment of the evidence day by day for Le Monde, which is undoubtedly one of the most serious and responsible bourgeois newspapers in the world, said flatly in his article in the November 28 issue: "It must be concluded that the Texas police have not hesitated to fabricate tproofs! to cover up the real criminal." ["Il faudrait en conclure que les policiers texans ntont pas hésité A fabriquer des 'preuves! pour couvrir le.vrai coupable,"]
Today's Le Journal du Dimanche stated its conclusion on the case very succinctly: "One has the impression of having a tangled ball of thread in which you cantt find the end,"
A similar conclusion was reached by Léo Sauvage, correspondent
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of Le Figaro after a week in Dallas, His views, published in the week end issue of the Paris daily, carried the graphic headline: “Incompetence, minds made up, display of errors, of omissions, of contradictions and improbabilities -- The Investigation Has Bogged Down in an Impardonable Disorder. "
Since the article by Sauvage provides a very good example of the type of material that has been appearing in the Paris press (although it is much shorter than many of the > carefully worked out analyses) we are providing a sranslation:
THE CONCLUSIONS OF LEO SAUVAGE
[The following article, sent by Léo