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Whitewash the Report on the Warren Commi
Harold Weisberg's Whitewash was self-published in 1965, at a time when few publishing houses would consider a book challenging the Warren Report. Written in Harold's fiercely passionate yet scrupulously honest style, and relying on the government's own evidence and documentation, Whitewash destroys the Warren Commission's claims about Oswald and shows that the Commission knowingly engaged in a coverup.Chapter 1. Death in Dallas2. The Assassin3. The Set Up for the Assassination4. The Marksman5. At the The Tangible Evidence6. The Tippit Murder7. Oswald's Legal Rights8. Oswald's The Police and the Press9. The Witnesses and Their Treatment10. The Oswalds' Government Relations11. The False Oswald12. The Number of Shots13. The Doctors and the Autopsy
Paperback
First published August 1, 1965
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About the author
Harold Weisberg
45 books7 followersHarold Weisberg was a prolific author & persistent critic of the official report that found a lone gunman responsible for the death of President John F. Kennedy & who was often dubbed the dean of assassination researchers.
Mr. Weisberg's career as the writer of about 10 published & roughly 35 unpublished books on the murders of Kennedy & the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. came last in a series of endeavors. He had been a journalist, a labor investigator for then-Progressive Party Sen. Robert M. La Follette Jr. (Wis.), an investigator for a World War II spy agency, a State Department intelligence analyst & a prize-winning Montgomery County poultry farmer.
In an obsession that kept him in financial hardship during the last 35 years, Mr. Weisberg collected in his home more than 250,000 government papers on the 1963 Kennedy assassination & scoured millions more at the National Archives. He produced one of the earliest books about the president's death, in 1965.
Mr. Weisberg also became a leading authority on the 1968 King killing & was an investigator on behalf of James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty to the crime but later recanted his story.
Mr. Weisberg came to believe that neither Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused Kennedy gunman, nor Ray was responsible for the deaths of the prominent leaders. He focused on what he considered the inadequacies of the government investigations, specifically an improper probe of the available evidence. But for all his work, he never found definitive answers.
He detested many other students of conspiracy, foremost filmmaker Oliver Stone, whose 1991 "JFK" spun out all kinds of theories about the president's death.
"To do a mishmash like this is out of love for the victim & respect for history?" Mr. Weisberg said to The Washington Post. "I think people who sell sex have more principle."
In contrast, Mr. Weisberg presented information he gleaned from government investigative papers in an often dry manner--even if that belied his cover tag lines promising "the end of the cover-up--official lies exposed. Never such an investigation--never such evidence!"
His first literary success was a self-published work called Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report (1965). After being turned down by several publishers, he publicized the book himself & sold more than 30,000 copies. Dell then published it & a follow up, Whitewash II: The FBI-Secret Service Cover Up (both 1966).
Other books followed, including: Oswald in New Orleans: Case of Conspiracy with the C.I.A. (Canyon Books, 1967); Martin Luther King: The Assassination (Carroll & Graf, 1993); and Case Open: The Unanswered JFK Assassination Questions (Carroll & Graf, 1994).
Mr. Weisberg, a Philadelphia native, grew up in Wilmington DE, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. He attended the University of Delaware & then wrote articles for the Wilmington Morning News & the Sunday supplement of the Philadelphia Ledger.
In the late 1930s, he worked for La Follette, who chaired a special Senate investigating committee commonly called the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee. Mr. Weisberg was sent to look at suspected labor-rights violations in Harlan County, Ky.
During World War II, he served in the Army & the Office of Strategic Services. He joined State after the war but left in the late 1940s. He turned to farm life near Hyattsville with his wife, & they won prizes for their poultry. They also were early participants in a Peace Corps program called "Geese for Peace," in which the birds were shipped overseas to be raised in poverty-stricken countries. He turned to writing full-time after relinquishing farm life in the mid-1960s.
By that time, Mr. Weisberg's fascination with the Kennedy death was solidified. In September 1964, the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy -- called the Warren Commission -- concluded that Oswald was solely responsible for
Mr. Weisberg's career as the writer of about 10 published & roughly 35 unpublished books on the murders of Kennedy & the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. came last in a series of endeavors. He had been a journalist, a labor investigator for then-Progressive Party Sen. Robert M. La Follette Jr. (Wis.), an investigator for a World War II spy agency, a State Department intelligence analyst & a prize-winning Montgomery County poultry farmer.
In an obsession that kept him in financial hardship during the last 35 years, Mr. Weisberg collected in his home more than 250,000 government papers on the 1963 Kennedy assassination & scoured millions more at the National Archives. He produced one of the earliest books about the president's death, in 1965.
Mr. Weisberg also became a leading authority on the 1968 King killing & was an investigator on behalf of James Earl Ray, who pleaded guilty to the crime but later recanted his story.
Mr. Weisberg came to believe that neither Lee Harvey Oswald, the accused Kennedy gunman, nor Ray was responsible for the deaths of the prominent leaders. He focused on what he considered the inadequacies of the government investigations, specifically an improper probe of the available evidence. But for all his work, he never found definitive answers.
He detested many other students of conspiracy, foremost filmmaker Oliver Stone, whose 1991 "JFK" spun out all kinds of theories about the president's death.
"To do a mishmash like this is out of love for the victim & respect for history?" Mr. Weisberg said to The Washington Post. "I think people who sell sex have more principle."
In contrast, Mr. Weisberg presented information he gleaned from government investigative papers in an often dry manner--even if that belied his cover tag lines promising "the end of the cover-up--official lies exposed. Never such an investigation--never such evidence!"
His first literary success was a self-published work called Whitewash: The Report on the Warren Report (1965). After being turned down by several publishers, he publicized the book himself & sold more than 30,000 copies. Dell then published it & a follow up, Whitewash II: The FBI-Secret Service Cover Up (both 1966).
Other books followed, including: Oswald in New Orleans: Case of Conspiracy with the C.I.A. (Canyon Books, 1967); Martin Luther King: The Assassination (Carroll & Graf, 1993); and Case Open: The Unanswered JFK Assassination Questions (Carroll & Graf, 1994).
Mr. Weisberg, a Philadelphia native, grew up in Wilmington DE, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. He attended the University of Delaware & then wrote articles for the Wilmington Morning News & the Sunday supplement of the Philadelphia Ledger.
In the late 1930s, he worked for La Follette, who chaired a special Senate investigating committee commonly called the La Follette Civil Liberties Committee. Mr. Weisberg was sent to look at suspected labor-rights violations in Harlan County, Ky.
During World War II, he served in the Army & the Office of Strategic Services. He joined State after the war but left in the late 1940s. He turned to farm life near Hyattsville with his wife, & they won prizes for their poultry. They also were early participants in a Peace Corps program called "Geese for Peace," in which the birds were shipped overseas to be raised in poverty-stricken countries. He turned to writing full-time after relinquishing farm life in the mid-1960s.
By that time, Mr. Weisberg's fascination with the Kennedy death was solidified. In September 1964, the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy -- called the Warren Commission -- concluded that Oswald was solely responsible for
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 16, 2022
This was one of the first books released on the JFK assassination criticizing the Warren Report's conclusions that Lee Harvey Oswald killed President Kennedy and Officer Tippitt and there was no conspiracy. The book goes into great detail tearing apart the conclusions of the Warren Report with the Report's own evidence used as rebuttable. It is painstakingly detailed.
Being published in 1965, the book appears to have been written on an old manual typewriter (single spaced) and then photocopied. That makes the book a little bit hard to read due to the smaller typeface, and the amount of material is much larger than the 226 pages would seem to indicate. This is not a quick read, but it is a thorough treatment of the subject.
Being published in 1965, the book appears to have been written on an old manual typewriter (single spaced) and then photocopied. That makes the book a little bit hard to read due to the smaller typeface, and the amount of material is much larger than the 226 pages would seem to indicate. This is not a quick read, but it is a thorough treatment of the subject.
April 16, 2022
This was one of the first key critical documents of the Warren Report and for that reason below it is important and essential for keen readers of this subject.
BUT...
*It isn't 232 pages long (it's more like 600+). This is really frustrating to page counters like me.
*While some chapters are compelling (especially those early on), there are others towards the end (although not the final chapter on the autopsy) that are really laboured and claim conclusions that aren't clearly justified.
*The decision to reproduce the book in its original form - all typewritten pages, single (indeed, very narrow) line spacing, with raised capital letters galore and hyphens that look like underscores, etc etc) - is really off-putting. It makes the effort of reading it really tiring. Not only that but with each page actually being an image the file took up a large amount of space on my ancient Kindle (nearly 40MB). On my phone it took up more than 100MB.
There are better initial works of this type (e.g. Rush To Judgement).
I see that Vol II has been reformatted making it easier to read - but again it looks to be more than double the length (in pages) as it's listed on here. But Vols III and IV return to the typewritten originals. My original intention of firing through all four volumes one after the other might have to be revisited.
BUT...
*It isn't 232 pages long (it's more like 600+). This is really frustrating to page counters like me.
*While some chapters are compelling (especially those early on), there are others towards the end (although not the final chapter on the autopsy) that are really laboured and claim conclusions that aren't clearly justified.
*The decision to reproduce the book in its original form - all typewritten pages, single (indeed, very narrow) line spacing, with raised capital letters galore and hyphens that look like underscores, etc etc) - is really off-putting. It makes the effort of reading it really tiring. Not only that but with each page actually being an image the file took up a large amount of space on my ancient Kindle (nearly 40MB). On my phone it took up more than 100MB.
There are better initial works of this type (e.g. Rush To Judgement).
I see that Vol II has been reformatted making it easier to read - but again it looks to be more than double the length (in pages) as it's listed on here. But Vols III and IV return to the typewritten originals. My original intention of firing through all four volumes one after the other might have to be revisited.
July 5, 2010
Mr. Weisberg is to be commended for her service to this particular field of study. He has since passed but the amount of work and research he has put into this subject is simply amazing. This book is hard to read physically because it's single spaced and self published so it looks like old type-writer print. But the information is amazing. A must read for anyone thinking about researching the JFK murder.
October 14, 2025
This piece by piece deconstruction of the Warren Report is the one that started it all. Using items from the Report's own appendices, Weisberg dismantles the government's claim the Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin.
June 22, 2013
A very important early criticism of the official story of the murder of JFK.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews