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Assassination Tapes
USED FROM PAGE 47
a successful criminal lawyer and
tor of the Committee, in a modern
building a few blocks from the White
e. Fensterwald is a small, dapper man
thin beard. Smith is a lean, intense
smoker. Both men appeared to be
ir forties.
fore we begin," I said. "I think I should
on that I used to work for the CIA."
ve run across it often, the theory that
IA killed Kennedy. It seems absurd
and I don't believe it. I worked there
ee years and never saw or heard any-
suggesting the Agency was involved
assassination. I never met anyone
I thought capable of doing it. Still,
learned through bitter experience of
uspicion which attaches to former in-
ance officers. Epidemics of paranoia
o accompany us through life. I thought
tter get that issue out of the way.
ith and Fensterwald exchanged
es and smiled. Fensterwald told me
ey did not necessarily believe the CIA
sin theory, and they certainly didn't
talking to a former Agency employee.
ieved. I began to outline my project.
d if they had heard of the PSE. Both
were dimly aware of it. I described
vice and started to detail the way it
be used as a research tool. They im-
ately understood what I was proposing
were tremendously enthusiastic. Yes,
said, there were many key statements
e somewhere, and they would be glad
mpile specific references for me.
ermore, they could, in some cases,
de me with the tape. They said they
I be in contact when they had some-
for me.
ile I was waiting, I experimented with
SE. I telephoned a friend and told him
the device. I asked if he was willing
y a little game to test it out, and he
d. He picked a number between one
en. I asked him, "Is the number one?"
e number two?" and so on, and he
ered no each time. I recorded his
nses, ran them through the PSE and
J him back. The number he picked,
him, was five.
was dumbfounded. He had not heard
PSE and had thought I might be con-
g some elaborate joke at his expense.
hen I called back and correctly iden-
the number he had picked, he realized
serious. And he was shocked.
layed the same game several times
thers and did not always have similar
ss. With Bernard Fensterwald, I was
only to narrow the answer down to two
ers, one of which turned out to be cor-
PENTHOUSE
problem with this game is that the player
knows that it is just that. He knows that I
know he is lying, it is a socially acceptable
situation, and there is nothing at stake. The
stress which accompanies real deception
is not always present.
I obtained a tape recording from CBS
News of a portion of a Sixty Minutes program
in which Mike Wallace interviewed Clifford
Irving. The interview took place during the
height of the controversy, while Irving was
still claiming to have gotten Howard
Hughes' life story through a series of inter-
views with the billionaire. It was a consum-
mate job of lying, embellished with such
convincing details as Irving's disagreement
with his colleague Susskind about whether
Hughes kept his organic prunes in a paper
or a plastic bag. Sixty Minutes re-ran the
segment after Irving's confession because
the man's sheer virtuosity as a prevaricator
was amazing. I was interested in the inter-
view for a different reason: at the height
of the controversy, Irving had been given
a polygraph examination and had passed
it. I wanted to see if the man who had beaten
the conventional lie detector could also
beat the PSE.
I selected a point in the interview at which
Mike Wallace suggested that Irving had not
interviewed Howard Hughes, but had hap-
pened on some transcripts of Hughes' state-
ments: Irving asked how he could have hap-
pened on them. Wallace rejoined, "Where
did you happen on those transcripts?" Ir-
ving replied, "I got the transcripts from
Howard Hughes." I charted this statement
on the PSE.
It was a perfect example of total stress,
horizontally blocked, with the smooth,
"trimmed-hedge" wave form. Clifford Irving
was a master liar, and he had beaten the
polygraph, but he would have been caught
by the PSE.
A few days after our first meeting, I
received a call from Bob Smith. He had
turned up a few things for me. I visited him
at the Committee's office in downtown
Washington. He gave me a tape recording
and a typewritten transcript. The recording
was the Louis Lomax television program of
Sunday, October 16, 1966. Wesley Liebler,
a member of the Warren Commission's staff,
was the guest. The transcript was of a CBS
News television program entitled The War-
ren Report, which had been broadcast in
four one-hour segments on June 25, 26, 27
and 28, 1967.
I examined the transcript. The programs
had been narrated by Walter Cronkite and
other CBS newsmen. They reviewed every
major point of controversy that had been
raised by the critics of the Warren Report,
interviewing eyewitnesses, Dallas police-
men, medical examiners, ballistic special-
ists and many others who had some inside
knowledge of the assassination of John F.
Kennedy. For what I had in mind, it was
a gold mine. I telephoned CBS and learned
that I could get a copy of the program's
Next I played the Lomax-Liebler tape.
Apparently Mark Lane had been on an
earlier Lomax program, and now Liebler
was on to rebut him. I didn't need the PSE
to know that Liebler was stressed. He
seemed very agitated, and his breathing
audibly indicated his tension. He was angry
about the things Lane had said, the ques-
tions Lomax was asking him, and the reac-
tion of the studio audience. Given his highly
emotional state, he did not seem a very
promising subject for the PSE. Nonetheless,
I decided to give it a try.
Charting a tape with the PSE is a long
and tedious process, and it was impractical
to chart the entire program. I ran some of
Liebler's statements which were not in dis-
pute and discovered, as I had expected,
a great deal of stress. He was pretty
charged up.
Most of the exchange between Liebler,
Lomax and the audience was argumenta-
tive and did not deal with specific factual
points. I found two key statements by Lieb-
ler, though, and I charted them.
The first statement, in response to a ques-
tion by Lomax, was, "I have no doubt about
the conclusions of the [Warren] Report."
Plenty of stress was evident, but not much
more than in other statements.
The second statement related to those
Warren Commission documents which were
not included in the Report—they were
locked up in the National Archives. Lomax
asked Liebler if there was anything in the
documents which would alter Liebler's
opinion. Taken literally, it was a strange
question, since Liebler had seen the docu-
ments and, if they would alter his opinion,
they would already have done so. Lomax
probably meant to ask if the documents
would conflict with the conclusions of the
Warren Report. Whatever Liebler thought
the question meant, he answered quickly,
"Oh, none, none at all." The PSE showed
much more stress here than during any of
Liebler's other statements.
It was all pretty confused and fuzzy, and
it didn't tell me more than I'd already known:
Wesley Liebler was pretty upset when he
appeared on the Louis Lomax program. I
hoped that the CBS tapes would yield more
enlightening results.
I finally received a call from CBS's
Washington office saying the tapes had
arrived. I broke a few traffic laws getting
there to pick up the tapes and returning
to my apartment. I had already selected the
points I wanted to check from the transcript
of the program. I mounted the first tape on
the recorder, ran it down to the first point
of interest, and turned on the PSE.
For the next three days and nights, I ran
charts. When I finished, I had a splitting
headache, my kitchen floor was ankle deep
in chart paper, but I had a much clearer
idea of what did and did not happen that
day in Dallas.
Before I describe my results, I feel that
I must offer the reader a few comments and