The Red Scare

             Earl Warren clearly did not want his commission to stray into the subject of Communism.  But his reasons for this are not so clear.

            In an earlier post, I pointed out that author Philip Shenon wrote in his book that Silvia Duran agreed to come to the United States to testify to the commission under oath, but Chief Justice Earl Warren vetoed the idea because "she was a communist and we [the Commission] don't talk to communists."  In my book, I quote the lawyer John Abt, who represented Vincent Lee when he testified before the commission:  “It quickly became obvious that neither the FBI nor the Warren Commission were really interested in digging into the case, to really discover if there was a conspiracy.  They certainly weren’t interested in trying to show the Communists were a party to the matter.” And then there is CIA historian David Robage’s characterization of his agency’s investigation of the assassination as “passive.”

            Why was this?  Warren and other members of the commission had the unpleasant experience of “Red-baiting” during the McCarthy era with claims that Communists had  infiltrated government. Naturally, those commission members would not want to be accused of doing the same thing in investigating Kennedy’s assassination, at least not without good reason. 

            On the other hand, the introduction of the Warren Report does seem to parrot Nicholas Katzenbach’s memorandum to the White House on November 26, 1963 – which he later called badly worded – saying speculation about Oswald’s “motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting the thought that this was a Communist conspiracy.” 

            I’ve not seen any books or articles address this question in depth.