"Willens, one of the commission's few living staff members, gives a behind-the-scenes take on the investigation, its personalities and methodology. One by one he discards alternatives to the lone gunman theory…Willens admits mistakes in the investigation, but says these did not affect the veracity of its ultimate conclusion. He defends chief justice Earl Warren's prediction that "history will prove that we are right". For sceptics this is the greatest conspiracy theory of all, a brazen lie to whitewash the crime and aftermath." —The Guardian
"Willens makes a strong case that he and the other lawyers worked hard to do the best job they could, despite the lack of full cooperation from the FBI and CIA, each of whom had reason to withhold evidence. Willens stands by the Warren Commission’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone shooter and there was no credible evidence of a conspiracy." —Publishers Weekly
"The commission got it right — Oswald was the sole assassin —and that conclusion hold up after 50 years of scrutiny." —The Washington Post
"Willens's account deserves close and careful scrutiny by anyone interested in the Kennedy assassination."—Library Journal
"This fascinating book takes us through the commission’s lengthy investigation, detailing how the group assembled the evidence, examined various theories of the crime, and slowly whittled away the speculation to arrive at what they believed to be the truth. Many will still disagree with the Warren Commission’s conclusion, but this book serves a valuable function by laying out how it did its work." —Booklist
“With his precise and very discerning pen, Howard P. Willens has written with unimpeachable authority what actually happened, making his book an historically important one. I can't imagine any future writer on the Warren Commission doing so without having History Will Prove Us Right at their side. Highly recommended." —Vincent Bugliosi, bestselling author of Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Helter Skelter
"A magisterial assessment of how the Warren Commission's investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy stands up after the passage of fifty years. A superbly written account by someone who knows precisely what needs to be said and how to say it." —Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review
“Of all the new books inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of President Kennedy's assassination, the most valuable contribution to the historical record may well be Howard P. Willens’s meticulous and exhaustive narrative of the inner workings of the Warren Commission and the vast evidentiary support for its much-maligned conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald in all probability acted alone. Willens reviews and refutes the still-swirling conspiracy theories while painting a compelling portrait of the truth-seeking zeal of the seven-member commission's talented, twenty-three-person staff and of its chairman, Chief Justice Earl Warren. The book's contents justify its title, derived from a 1965 prediction by Earl Warren: History Will Prove Us Right.” —Stuart Taylor, Jr., Contributing Editor for the National Journal and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution
09/15/2013
Fifty years on, our efforts to come to grips with Kennedy's murder continue. Often at the center of the conversation—or shouting match—is the 1964 report of the commission, appointed by President Johnson and chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren, to investigate the assassination. The commission concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin and that there was no credible evidence pointing to any conspiracy. The report was received with criticism, skepticism, and, in some quarters, outright dismissal. There had to be a conspiracy, some critics contended: a loner like Oswald could not have brought down the leader of the free world. Willens, then an attorney in the criminal division of the justice department, and now the only surviving member of the commission's supervisory staff, contends that the commission got it right. His book, based on a personal journal he kept during his work then and on correspondence files he maintained, focuses in minute detail on how the commission was formed, went about its work, sought the truth, and came to its conclusions. Willens takes readers step by step through the investigation. While he does not assert the work of the Warren Commission as infallible, he does argue assiduously that had a conspiracy existed, the commission would have found it and that proof of such a conspiracy would have surfaced by now. VERDICT This work likely will not change the mind of any hard-core conspiracy believer; however, Willens's account deserves close and careful scrutiny by anyone interested in the Kennedy assassination.—Stephen Kent Shaw, Northwest Nazarene Coll., Nampa, ID
★ 2013-10-01
A magisterial assessment of how the Warren Commission's investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy stands up after the passage of 50 years. In 1963, Willens, now a lawyer in private practice, was appointed to the commission. Here, the author uses his journal and notes from the commission's nine months of work as an unmatched framework for telling the story of JFK's assassination and the subsequent investigation. During the five decades since the event, no firsthand evidence has been brought forward to prove that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the assassin, nor that other shots were implicated in the crime. Therefore, none of the many conspiracy theories hold up. Evidence withheld by Richard Helms, director of the CIA, and J. Edgar Hoover, chief of the FBI, does not change this foundation in fact. Willens outlines the procedures adopted by the commission and how the staff was deployed. In order to establish how well the commission's work has stood the test of time, he reassesses the evidence assembled in light of the internal discussions within the commission and its staff, as well as among commission members and other government agencies. Formed shortly after the shooting on the initiative of President Lyndon Johnson, the commission moved rapidly to establish its own area of competence against the FBI, especially in the area of the shooter and the shooting. Willens reconstructs the investigators' work and describes how the final report was assembled, one chapter at a time, in response to questioning. Despite the countless conspiracy theories, Chief Justice Earl Warren was right to trust to history for vindication. A superbly written account by someone who knows precisely what needs to be said and how to say it.
