Norman Redlich was born
in 1925. He attended Yale Law School before joining the New York University
School of Law faculty in 1960. He was promoted to full professor in
1962, and served as the director of the Law School's Project on Urban
and Poverty Law. He was also a member of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
In 1963 J.
Lee Rankin appointed Redlich as his special assistant on the Warren
Commission in
the investigation of the assassination of John
F. Kennedy.
Gerald
Ford provided
J.
Edgar Hoover with
information about the activities of staff members of the commission.
Hoover ordered that Redlich's past should be investigated. He discovered
that Redlich was on the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, an organization
considered by Hoover to have been set-up to "defend the cases
of Communist lawbreakers". Redlich had also been critical of
the activities of the House Committee on Un-American
Activities.
This information was leaked
to a group of right-wing politicians. On 5th May, 1964, Ralph
F. Beermann, a Republican Party
congressman, made a speech claiming that Redlich was associated with
the Fair
Play for Cuba Committee.
Beermann called for Redlich to be removed as a staff member of the
Warren
Commission.
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?"
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.
In 1975 Redlich became
Dean of New York University School of Law. He also served as Chair
of the American Bar Association's Section of Legal Education and Admissions
to the Bar (1989 to 1990). Redlich is presently a member of the House
of Delegates of the American Bar Association.
Forum Debates
Gerald Ford and the Cover-Up
The Kennedy Assassination
Watergate
(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.
(2)
Karl
E. Mundt,
speech in Congress (5th May, 1964)
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? I predict
with certainty that Communist leaders around the world will have a
detailed report on such testimony long before it reaches the American
public - since once a Government body is infiltrated by one with Communist
sympathies or connections, history has shown that the pipeline to
Moscow is fast and it is filled with classified material.
(3)
August E. Johansen, speech in Congress (25th May, 1964)
The Commission cleared
Redlich on the grounds that there was no evidence of actual Communist
Party membership. Standard government security criteria include many
other disqualifying factors - among them, "unsuitability and
pressure risk" and "Sympathetic association with subversive
individuals or groups".
(4)
Seth
Kantor, Who was Jack Ruby?
(1978)
The Belin Theory was that the city bus transfer in Oswald's shirt
pocket might well have been his basic "passport" to Mexico.
Oswald had been reported to have been in Mexico two months earlier
and having gotten there by bus. Belin also was aware of the Warren
Commission testimony given by Nelson Delgado, who had served in the
Marine Corps with Oswald. Delgado had recalled Oswald once telling
him that the best way to escape from authorities in the United States
to Russia was by way of Mexico, where a plane could be caught to Havana,
and then another plane to Moscow.
The Belin Theory was innovative
and extremely logical but suffered a fatal axing within the Warren
Commission when Belin figured out that Oswald probably was in the
act of escaping to Mexico when encountered by officer Tippit on Tenth
Street. That injected a foreign connection into the escape which blew
the Warren Commission's mind. Mexico. Cuba. Russia. Belin had practically
invented World War III.
It was Norman Redlich
who put the ax to the Belin Theory. Redlich had a great deal of control
over what would appear in the Warren Report. Redlich, remember, had
survived the communist witch-hunt aimed at him on Capitol Hill three
months earlier when the granting of his security clearance had been
threatened. And now Redlich wanted to keep from stirring up any more
problems for Earl Warren, so he argued that Belin had come up with
nothing more than supposition, which had no place in the Warren Report.
Belin argued in return that the Commission had a public obligation
to disclose the existence of Oswald's possible escape plan, even if
it were removed from chapter six of the Report and relegated to the
31-page section in the appendix of the Report, entitled "Speculations
and Rumors." But Redlich instead saw to it that the Warren Report
made no attempt to explain why Oswald, the fast-moving young man on
the lam, appeared to be heading directly toward Jack Ruby's apartment
with a gun. Instead, the Warren Report simply said, "There is
no evidence that Oswald knew where Ruby lived."
Available from Amazon
Books (order below)
