v Primary Sources v

Ralph Beermann was born in Dakota City, Nebraska, on 13th August, 1912. He attended Morningside College, Sioux City, Iowa, before joining the United States Army. He served in the 601st Ordnance Battalion and the 301st Ordnance Regiment during the Second World War.

After the war he farmed in Dakota County, Nebraska. A member of the Republican Party he was elected to 87th Congress in 1960. On 5th May, 1964, Beermann made a speech claiming that Norman Redlich, a special assistant on the Warren Commission, was associated with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Beermann called for Redlich to be dismissed. He was supported by Karl E. Mundt who said: "We want a report from the Commission which Americans will accept as factual, which will put to rest all the ugly rumors now in circulation and which the world will believe. Who but the most gullible would believe any report if it were written in part by persons with Communist connections?"

Assassination of John F. Kennedy Encyclopedia

Gerald Ford joined in the attack and at one closed-door session of the Warren Commission he called for Redlich to be dismissed. However, Earl Warren and J. Lee Rankin both supported him and he retained his job.

Beermann was an unsuccessful candidate in 1964 and resumed his business in Dakota County, Nebraska.

Ralph Beermann died in an airplane crash at Sioux City Municipal Airport, Iowa, on 17th February, 1977.

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(1) Ralph F. Beermann, speech in Congress (5th May, 1964)

Considering these circumstances, it is amazing-shocking-incredible, to find that although competent and unimpeachable legal and investigative counsel can be found in any community in the land, the Warren Commission has on its staff as a $100-a-day consultant a member of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee - an organization cited by both the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee.

Prof. Norman Redlich, on the national council of the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee - cited by House and Senate committees as an organization "to defend the cases of Communist lawbreakers" - is currently employed at $100 a day, for the Warren Commission. And as recently as April 13, 1964, just a few weeks ago, this "consultant" had his name listed in an advertisement appearing in The New York Times with other members of the cited Emergency Civil Liberties Committee - an advertisement condemning the Un-American Activities Committee...

Strangely, little has been said or written about the Redlich hiring, although it certainly impresses me as one of the greatest miscarriages of appointive judgment in the history of American Government. I call upon those in responsible positions to dismiss this patently unqualified "consultant" from the Warren Commission staff and to investigate and make public facts concerning how Redlich managed to get hired and keep his job despite his known Communist-front affiliations.