On the day after the murder of President Kennedy, a New York Lawyer, commenting on the case against Lee Harvey Oswald as it had been revealed up to that point, was quoted in the Journal American as saying that “The District Attorney has a suspect, but not much more.” As a Frenchman, I thought it a strange coincidence that this lawyer’s name should have been Emile Zola Berman. Unlike the suspect whom the first Emile Zola brought back from Devil’s Island, however, Lee Harvey Oswald - even were he to be proved innocent - can never be brought back from the place to which he has been sent. But could he be proved innocent? If we believe that a man must be considered innocent until he is proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, we can already assert that Lee Harvey Oswald was innocent. For to the unbiased, critical mind, the case against him is a tissue of improbabilities, contradictions, and outright falsification.

Is this a hasty judgment? Instead of saying “already,” which suggests that any further information we get will strengthen my own impression of Oswald’s innocence, should I not at least have said “still,” implying that new evidence may yet be brought forward to sustain the almost universal American conviction of Oswald’s guilt? Such prudence would certainly be the only proper attitude to take in any other case. But not in this one. All the available evidence against Oswald has either been leaked or eagerly and even ruthlessly spelled out - whether true, half-true, or demonstrably false; whether pertinent, confused, or obviously irrelevant. So far as Dallas is concerned, the case was proclaimed “cinched” by Chief Will Fritz of the Homicide Bureau as early as November 23, one day after the assassination. The following day, only two hours after Jack Ruby had disposed of Oswald in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters, the case against him was declared “closed” by Police Chief Jesse Curry and by District Attorney Henry Wade who boasted that he had “sent men to the electric chair with less evidence.” That same evening, in a televised press conference whose transcript will stand forever in the international annals of justice as an example of fantastic irresponsibility, Wade spoke the final word for the Dallas authorities: “I would say that without any doubt he (Oswald) is the killer…there is no question that he (Oswald) was the killer of President Kennedy.”

Sauvage added: "Thus, after the press and television conviction of Lee Oswald in Dallas, a second press and television conviction took place in Washington. And just as the Dallas authorities had forced the hand of any jury that would have heard the Oswald case, so the FBI has forced the hand of the Warren Commission. With the help of all the mass media, Oswald’s guilt has now twice been sold to the public - despite the fact that no one had even so much as ventured to explain why a psychopathic regicide, acting (as we shall see) under circumstances that would make his capture inevitable, should renounce the ultimate satisfaction of glorying in his deed before the eyes of the world. I really do not see, therefore, why only those of us who are skeptical about the case against Oswald should await further information."

Thus, after the “press and television conviction” of Lee Oswald in Dallas, a second press and television conviction took place in Washington. And just as the Dallas authorities had forced the hand of any jury that would have heard the Oswald case, so the FBI has forced the hand of the Warren Commission. With the help of all the mass media, Oswald’s guilt has now twice been sold to the public - despite the fact that no one had even so much as ventured to explain why a psychopathic regicide, acting (as we shall see) under circumstances that would make his capture inevitable, should renounce the ultimate satisfaction of glorying in his deed before the eyes of the world. I really do not see, therefore, why only those of us who are skeptical about the case against Oswald should await further information.

Before going on to raise some of the specific questions that Oswald’s accusers should be forced to answer, let me make one final remark. I am a reporter and not a detective. Thus far, however, it is only the reporters, those “amateur investigators into the Kennedy assassination” whom Max Lerner in a recent column sarcastically advised to take “a much needed rest,” who have shown up what Mr. Lerner himself described as “the tissue of guesswork, ignorance and contradictions in which the law enforcement officials were caught.” In the face of so systematically prejudiced an investigation as has so far been made into the President’s assassination, how else will the truth ever be arrived at if “amateurs” fail to ask the questions that the professionals have obfuscated or left unanswered?

Two years have passed since John Fitzgerald Kennedy was slain in Dallas. There will be numerous public and private commemorations, just as there were last November 22. There will be speeches and sermons, reminiscences and understandably sorrowful head-shaking before the television sets. There will be pilgrimages to the grave at Arlington. And again this year, as last, it will be tacitly understood that there can be no casting of doubts on the official account of the President’s assassination.

After July of 1925, thanks to Clarence Darrow, Americans became used to the idea that they could discuss the Bible. But since September 27, 1964, when the Warren Commission Report was issued, they have been subjected to a unanimous chorus in which jurists like Louis Nizer add their befuddled hallelujahs to the frantic hosannas of liberal opinion running from Walter Lippman to James Wechsler and on to I. F. Stone. Thus Americans still do not seem capable of accepting the idea that one can criticize - and even reject - the Warren Report.

The death of President Kennedy has been felt not only by the United States but by the entire free world. How much longer can we all fail to honor his memory through the elemental homage of seriously seeking the truth about his assassination? Perhaps now, 15 months after its publication, it will not be considered inappropriate to at least examine closely the Warren Commission’s case against Lee Harvey Oswald...

The Commission’s explanation is that Oswald killed Tippit “in an apparent attempt to escape.” Yet, no one - the Commission no more than I - knows why Tippit, alone in his patrol car, “pulled up alongside a man walking in the same direction.” The Commission states that “it is conceivable, even probable, that Tippit stopped Oswald because of the description broadcast by the police radio.” This statement is ridiculous. The description broadcast by the police did not mention clothing, shoes, manner or any other distinctive trait enabling identification of a man approached from behind in a car. And this occurred several miles from the scene of the crime, in a neighborhood where Tippit (unless he was informed about Oswald, a hypothesis the Commission avoids like the plague) had no reason to seek the suspect.

If the police had taken to arresting every “white male, approximately 30, slender build, height 5’ 10”, weight 165 pounds,” from one end of Dallas to the other, there would not have been enough theaters and gymnasiums and ballrooms to hold them all. As it turned out, the description broadcast by the police radio did not lead to any other arrest, not even in the immediate neighborhood of the Texas School Book Depository. Is it “probable,” even “conceivable,” that in the entire Dallas Police Department, J. D. Tippit alone was able to identify someone he saw from behind, in Oak Cliff, who in fact stood 5 foot 9 inches tall, was 24 years old, and weighed between 140 and 150 pounds? Finally, according to the extraordinary Helen Markham - whose testimony the Commission regards as “reliable,” though I do not have the slightest faith in it—Tippit did not at any time act as if he were dealing with someone suspected of assassinating the President. In short, it is impossible to affirm that Oswald was seeking “to escape” because it is impossible to affirm that Tippit was trying to arrest him.

Nor is it possible to affirm, as proof number 5 does, that Oswald “resisted arrest by drawing a fully loaded pistol and attempting to shoot another police officer.” The circumstances of Oswald’s arrest in the Texas Theater remain confused, since the Warren Report does not elucidate any of the contradictions and inconsistencies raised by the accounts of the police offices, and the two witnesses it produced (out of a total it estimates at 12 or 14) only added new contradictions and inconsistencies, as the Commission recognizes. The Report itself, and the statements of officer M. N. McDonald contained in Volume III of the Hearings of the Commission, show that in striking the officer who was arresting him, Oswald was not attempting an escape. Oswald resisted arrest, the Report tells us, by hitting McDonald “between the eyes with his left fist,” and it was only after this, according to the Report, that he drew a gun.

If Oswald had wanted to “shoot another police officer,” he had plenty of time to do so, since McDonald - even though the suspect had been immediately pointed out to him in the back of the theater - first searched “two men in the center of the main floor, about ten rows from the front.” McDonald acknowledged that during this time Oswald “remained seated without moving, just looking at me.” Later, when questioned by Senator John Sherman Cooper (R-Ken.), who was clearly intrigued, McDonald repeated a second time that Oswald “just sat in his seat, with his hands on his lap, watching me.” The Report does not reproduce these embarrassing details from the hearings, but it does not hesitate to state that when McDonald finally decided to approach Oswald, the latter “rose from his seat, bringing up both hands.” There was thus no question of Oswald’s resisting arrest even at this final moment, and it was only when “McDonald started to search Oswald’s waist for a gun” that the man presented to us as the calm killer of President Kennedy and Officer Tippit ventures his first gesture of resistance: a punch in the face.

While resistance to arrest is considered an incriminating circumstance, it is not proof of guilt. When such resistance reveals neither premeditation nor method but actually appears to be an ineffective act of irrational anger, it actually often constitutes an indication of innocence.

The problem is that the Warren Report has put the Oswald matter in a different light from what I expected, and I'm now convinced that any book which attempts to question Oswald's guilt would be out of touch with reality and could not be taken seriously by responsible critics. This is by no means to say that the Warren Report is not without flaws - its treatment of the evidence, its indifference to many of the ambiguities which are evident in its pages, and its tendentiousness are clear. But for all this and for all the confusion earlier in Dallas, it is inconceivable that Oswald might yet be proven innocent.

Buchanan’s book, which follows almost the same geometrical progression as the articles in L’Express, at first seems to conclude in a more general sense: “I believe the assassination of the President was essentially provoked by the fear of the internal and international consequences which the Moscow treaty might touch off; disarmament which would dismember the industries on which the conspirators depend; an international détente which, according to them, would threaten nationalization of their oil investments abroad.” No, the sentence was not more general after all; we come back to H. L. Hunt. What I fail to understand, in any case, is why the dangers of the “détente” - which brings the risk, Buchanan tells us again, of causing a reduction of $50 billion in the national defense budget of the United States - should have set off the homicidal reaction of H. L. Hunt and his oil colleagues in Texas, while they apparently did not trouble the huge aeronautical firms of California, the missile makers and other “cannon merchants.”…

In reviewing the mathematical deductions of Thomas Buchanan, I have kept mainly to the articles in L’Express, whose sensational presentation - or straight-faced joking - passed off the delirious lucubration of this sensitive artilleryman as the product of a scientific brain. The bestseller that Editions Julliard has had the shrewdness to compile from these articles under the title Les Assassins de Kennedy tones down some of the most grotesque aspects - and Thomas Buchanan, interestingly, no longer takes Irving to be a man. But the whole remains faithful to his grand mystification and the principal change involves the number of accomplices. Accomplice Number 5, officer Tippit, has become Accomplice Number 7, all having been downgraded two notches, including Lee Oswald, who drops from Accomplice Number 1 to Accomplice Number 3. But this is only a matter of interior reorganization; instead of having two different rankings, one for assassins and the other for accomplices, Buchanan has unified the system by reclassifying assassins number 1 and 2 and accomplices 1 and 2.

For the short history of the French edition, it can be noted that the Julliard firm was not afraid of shaking up the certainties of the “unchallengable analysis” of Thomas Buchanan by bringing out almost simultaneously, under the title Les Roses rouges de Dallas, a frankly fictionalized story by Nerin E. Gun. If Gun, who has no less imagination than Buchanan, presents us with such “discoveries” as a secret trip of Oswald to Havana, he allows a certain number of facts and truths to remain (along with an avalanche of material errors). We thus have Thomas Buchanan continuing to affirm (Les Assassins de Kennedy, page 126) that “it is undeniable that the police succeeded in blocking all the exits of the building”; and Nerin E. Gun writing (Les Roses rouges de Dallas, page 152) that “The police never thought of surrounding the building…”

All this would be quite funny if one could forget that the starting point of it all is the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

In my capacity as criminal investigator, there has come to my attention a distressing crime of which you are the luckless victim. I refer to the long article about me (Thomas Buchanan, Detective) in your issue of September 28. This article was published - in good faith, I’m sure - under the name of a French writer named Leo Sauvage.

The article, my research has convinced me, was not written by Leo Sauvage, but by his brother, K. O. Leo is, as everybody knows, the U.S. correspondent of Le Figaro, and he is one of France’s most distinguished journalists. His brother, a retired ex-pugilist, now makes a humble living as a stringer for the US Information Service.

Articles by Leo cost a lot of money, but they are well worth it. He has done a great of original investigation of the Kennedy assassination and, since I am totally dependent on such sources and have always said so, I have quoted him in the French edition of my book which Putnam will bring out this month, evaluating the report the President’s Commission has just issued. Articles by Leo’s brother K. O., on the other hand, are relatively inexpensive and indeed I think, if you will make the proper inquiries, you will discover that no fee is needed.

We must not accuse K. O. Sauvage of fraud in selling you an article which he has written on a subject with which he is less familiar than his brother. But I do accuse him of unethical procedure when he charges you the fee which you would normally have paid to Leo.

That the author of this article has misappropriated Leo’s byline will be instantly apparent to you, if you will compare the article you published with authentic work of this distinguished writer. The respected correspondent of Le Figaro, for instance, has a certain subtlety of style. He can be witty and ironic. He does not go swatting gnats with baseball bats like the reporter who prepared your article. On style alone, the substitution is apparent.

In regard to content, one has only to compare the views expressed by the authentic correspondent of Le Figaro with the position of his imitator. The impression given by the article you used is that I am no credit to the human race and ought to be exterminated. I am rather sensitive on this point, since I am now 45 years old, and I have never seen the Orioles win the World Series. I was hoping that I might live long enough to see it happen.

But Leo Sauvage himself is one of the outstanding critics of America’s official version of the Kennedy assassination, and would be among the first reporters to be liquidated, if a purge were started. In Le Figaro of September 28, he wrote as follows:

“No doubt the American authorities, who have been largely concerned with the criticism and sarcasm which their previous statements have provoked in other countries, hope that the large amount of documentation which the Warren Commission has gathered in support of its conclusions will finally crush the skeptics and reduce them to silence. I am very much afraid this hope is doomed to disappointment. This is not only because some forces hostile to the United States have no intention of halting their sarcastic comments. Unfortunately, it is chiefly because the voluminous documentation of the Commission provides no decisive refutation of the serious objections which have been raised against the official theory. In some respects, one may even say that the Warren Report increases the existing doubts about the investigation in Dallas, either by offering interpretations which are even less believable than the official version, or by making additional statements for which there is no proof, or finally by relying on key factors which rest upon a base which is too fragile to support them.”

Leo Sauvage goes on to name these weak points:

1. That many readers will have trouble trying to imagine Oswald, in the last few minutes before Kennedy came into range on Elm Street, patiently assembling his dismantled rifle, wrapped up in a package witnesses insist was too short to have been the murder weapon unless it was disassembled. Sauvage notes that this was in addition to the time he sent building walls of book cartons to hide him.

2. That the Commission has relied too heavily upon the testimony of Marina Oswald that her husband fired at General Walker.

3. The chief objection: “One is rather surprised to read that the Warren Commission attaches any significance at all to the fact that Oswald was identified by witnesses late that night, or the following morning, after television programs had repeatedly carried his picture and all the newspapers had published numerous photographs of him.” Sauvage adds that recognition of the man who had just been arrested, after offering resistance, had been further simplified by the fact that when the police put Oswald in the lineup, he was quite conspicuous because he had a swollen eye and a fresh cut where the police had struck him.

I am in agreement with Sauvage on each point that he mentions, and I have some other reasons for suspecting that the President’s Commission has not given us convincing answers to the questions both of us are asking. But before I name them, let me first plead guilty to the charge that my original report in L’Express in February did contain some errors and - worse still - I cannot even claim to have produced these errors from my own imagination. I did no original research in Dallas. I have never claimed to. The material I studied was the work of hundreds of reporters, some of whom occasionally were mistaken. None of us is better than our sources, as Mr. Sauvage himself will best appreciate if he will read the article attributed to him in the New Leader, in which he is quoted:

“The only version that can be considered official since November 23 states that the description of Oswald was transmitted to police cars after Roy Truly, head of the Depository, had noticed - and had informed one of the detectives - that the employee seen in the second-floor lunchroom a few minutes after the attack had disappeared. Buchanan mentions this version elsewhere in charging against his windmill, but without stopping and without telling us why he does not pause there. To me, the Truly explanation appears completely plausible, and I thus have no need of Buchanan’s Accomplice Number 3.”

Unfortunately for our poor friend K. O., Truly’s explanation, which seemed plausible to him, did not seem plausible to the Commission and the very week your magazine appeared, the President’s Commission came out with a new official version: “Howard L. Brennan was an eyewitness to the shooting.…Brennan described the man to the police. This description most probably led to the radio alert sent to police cars at approximately 12:45 p.m... The police never mentioned Oswald’s name in the broadcast descriptions before his arrest... His absence was not noticed until at least one-half hour later... It was probably no earlier than 1:22 p.m., the time when the rifle was found.”

I should be more sympathetic to K. O. Sauvage and pass discreetly over his misfortune, had he not accused me of one error I consider just a bit insulting. He insinuates that I mistook the town of Irving for a private residence. I did not. That mistake was made by one of my translators. It will not be found in the Italian, German, Dutch, or any of the other simultaneous editions of the series. I need scarcely add that the unfortunate young man who made this blunder is no longer working at L’Express; there are some limits, even to the patience of Françoise Giroud.

We are now better placed to analyze official findings, since they have been irretrievably committed to official paper and cannot be modified and shifted to meet each new criticism. I suggest the theory of the lone assassin rests upon a series of official speculations appearing in the Warren Report, variously labeled “probable” or “possible” or sometimes just “conceivable.” Here are some of the most important:

Speculation: “Two bullets probably caused all the wounds suffered by President Kennedy and Governor Connally... One shot passed through the Presidents neck and then most probably passed through the Governor’s body.…The alignment of the points of entry was only indicative and not conclusive that one bullet hit both men.…The evidence indicated that the President was not hit until at least frame 210 and that he was probably hit by frame 225.”

Fact: Refer to Commission Exhibit 893 (frame 210). Observe location of the crosshairs, showing where the President was shot. Note that a shot that passed through Kennedy at the position indicated would have struck the Governor in the lower portion of his back or hip, after first penetrating the car seat on which the Governor was sitting. Now refer to Commission Exhibit 895 (frame 225). Note that the car has turned toward the right, and that a shot fired at the point shown at the intersection of the crosshairs, after passing through the President, not only would have hit the car seat but would then have hit the Governor at the extreme left lower portion of his body or, if he were turning at that time, would have missed the Governor completely. Thus at no time between these two points could a shot have passed through Kennedy and then, while falling at an angle the Commission estimates at more than 17 degrees, “traversed the Governor’s chest at a downward angle... and exited below the right nipple,” as reported in the section dealing with the wounds. The evidence shows that two bullets hit the President, and that a third one hit the Governor of Texas.

Speculation: “Eyewitness testimony... supports the conclusion that the first of the shots fired hit the President.. If the first shot did not miss, there must be an explanation for Governor Connally’s recollection that he was not hit by it. There was, conceivably, a delayed reaction between the time the bullet struck him and the time he realized that he was hit.…”

Fact: The Commission has provided its own answer to this speculation. The remainder of the sentence I have cited totally invalidates the first part: “ - a delayed reaction... despite the fact that the bullet struck a glancing blow to a rib and penetrated his wrist bone.” Flesh wounds can, of course, remain unnoticed for a certain time; a bone wound would produce an instant shock. The evidence shows that the shot which hit the Governor of Texas took place after Kennedy was hit.

Speculation: “It was entirely possible” for one shot to have been fired between Kennedy’s two wounds, although “the gunman would have been shooting at very near the minimum allowable time to have fired the three shots within 4.8 to 5.6 seconds.”

Fact: “A minimum of 2. 3 seconds must elapse between shots,” the report has stated. It must be remembered that this minimum is based on the best possible performance of the greatest rifle experts in the world; an ordinary shot like Oswald, barely qualifying with 191 out of 250 the last time he fired in the Marines, would take much longer. One shot in the interval between the President’s two wounds would have to have occurred “almost exactly midway in this period.…On the other hand, a substantial majority of the witnesses stated that the shots were not evenly spaced.” Two shots between the ones producing Kennedy’s two wounds would mean the speed with which one man could fire these shots had been exceeded. Testimony of the Governor of Texas indicates that he heard shots before and after he was hit. His wife confirms this. Testimony of the witness injured by the wild shot indicated he also heard shots both before and after he was hit. He cannot have been struck by any fragment of the bullet that hit Connally, since it was found intact. The evidence shows there were four or more shots, two of which were fired between the ones by which the President was wounded.

Speculation: “Based on the known facts of the assassination, the Marine marksmanship experts, Major Anderson and Sergeant Zahm, concurred in the opinion that Oswald had the capability to fire three shots, with two hits, within 4.8 to 5.6 seconds.…On the basis of Oswald’s training and the accuracy of the weapon as established by the tests, the Commission concluded that Oswald was capable of accomplishing the second hit even if there was an intervening shot which missed.”

Fact: The Report states that six “expert riflemen” attempted to repeat the feat of the assassin. It appears that they fired at a stationary target, not one that was moving; the report, however, is ambiguous on this point. “Three marksmen, rated as master by the National Rifle Association, each fired two series of three shots. In the first series the firers required time spans of 4.6, 6.75 and 8.25 seconds respectively. On the second series they required 5.15, 6.45 and 7 seconds.” Subsequently, “three FBI firearms experts tested the rifle in order to determine the speed with which it could be fired. The purpose of this experiment was not to test the rifle under conditions which prevailed at the time of the assassination but to determine the maximum speed at which it could be fired. The three FBI experts each fired three shots from the weapon at 15 yards in 6, 7, and 9 seconds.” The evidence shows that in 7 cases out of 9, these experts took longer than the maximum time which has been attributed to Oswald; that their average for three shots was 6.75 seconds and they would, accordingly, have needed three more seconds to have fired a fourth shot.

Speculation: “Constable Deputy Sheriff Weitzman, who only saw the rifle and did not handle it, thought the weapon looked like a 7.65 Mauser bolt-action rifle.…After review of standard reference works and markings on the rifle, it was identified by the FBI as a 6.5 millimeter model 91/38 Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.…(District Attorney Henry Wade) repeated the error that the murder weapon had been a Mauser.”

Fact: The Commission notes the murder weapon “is inscribed with various markings, including ‘MADE ITALY,’ ‘CAL. 6.5,’” etc. No consultation of the “standard reference works” was required to exclude the possibility that it was (a) a Mauser, which is German-made, or (b) a caliber other than 6.5. The error which has been attributed to Weitzman, therefore, could have gone no farther. It would necessarily have been corrected minutes later at the first inspection of the rifle. The report states, “The rifle was identified by Captain Fritz and Lieutenant Day, who were the first to actually handle it.” The evidence shows that the statement of District Attorney Wade was made after this first inspection of the rifle by the chief of homicide, a man who certainly can read the writing on a weapon.

The authorities in Dallas have informed us solemnly that Kennedy was murdered by a Mauser. The men who made this first statement did so after an examination of the weapon. I believe them. They informed us later that the President was killed by a Carcano. I believe that, also. I am forced to conclude that there were two weapons. I deduce that there were two assassins.

That, Mr. Sauvage, is mathematics.

Leo Sauvage, drama critic of The New Leader and a former foreign correspondent for Le Figaro, died Sunday at his home in Manhattan. He was 75 years old.

Mr. Sauvage came to the United States in 1948 and was the New York correspondent of Le Figaro from 1950 to 1975. After resigning, he joined The New Leader.

Mr. Sauvage wrote a controversial book, The Oswald Affair, published in 1966 by the World Publishing Company. It criticized the Warren Commission investigation of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, alleging that the evidence against Lee Harvey Oswald was flimsy.

Mr. Sauvage graduated from the Université de Paris. He was a drama critic in Paris and founded a theater troupe in Marseilles in World War II.

Mr. Sauvage also wrote about Cuba and was the author of Che Guevara: The Failure of a Revolutionary. In an attempt to explain American culture, he wrote Les Américains, a best seller in France. At his death, Mr. Sauvage was writing a book on Sherlock Holmes, Sherlockian Heresies.

Surviving are his wife, Barbara; two sons, Pierre, of Los Angeles, and Michel, of Manhattan; a daughter, Marianne, of Los Angeles, and three grandchildren.