"A Sad & Solemn Duty"

The seven-member commission appointed by President Johnson to investigate the assassination of John Kennedy got started last week -- but just barely. It met twice in Washington's National Archives building, performed a few routine organizational chores, voted to ask Congress for subpoena powers, and called it a week. "This commission has a sad and solemn duty to perform," said Chief Justice Earl Warren, chairman of the investigating panel. But, he added glumly, "we are operating somewhat in the dark." A first step toward getting the inquiry off the ground would be the receipt of an FBI report on the circumstances surrounding Kennedy's death and the slaying of Lee Harvey Oswald by Dallas Strip Joint Owner Jack Ruby. The report was expected to be forwarded to the Warren commission sometime this week. It will indicate that 1) Oswald, acting in his own lunatic loneliness, was indeed the President's assassin, 2) Ruby likewise was a loner in his role as Oswald's executioner, 3) Oswald and Ruby did not know each other, and 4) there is no proof of a conspiracy, either foreign or domestic, to do away with Kennedy.

In fact, the report will contain only one real surprise: a heavy hint that Oswald was the sniper who tried to put a bullet into former General Edwin Walker, a right-winging malcontent, in his Dallas home last April 10. Investigators have uncovered evidence in Oswald's own handwriting that links him to the attempt on Walker. Moreover, Oswald's Russian wife, Marina, recalled that on the night of April 10, Oswald rushed into their apartment, excitedly told her he had just tried to kill Walker. When she asked why, Oswald vaguely replied that it was because he had wanted to "watch it on television."

Bits & Pieces. As the unruly bits and pieces of Lee Oswald's life continued to come to light last week, there were a few kind words for him from at least his mother. "Lee was such a fine, high-class boy," insisted Mrs. Marguerite Oswald. "He didn't waste time with comic books and trashy things. On Sundays I'd take him to church and then we'd have lunch somewhere and go to the zoo. If my son killed the President," she said, "he would have said so. That's the way he was brought up."

But others described Oswald's upbringing rather differently. Said John Carro, once probation officer for Oswald, who was a chronic truant during the time he lived in New York: "I got the feeling that the mother was so wrapped up in her own problems she never really saw her son's. I got the feeling that what the boy needed most was someone who cared. He was just a small, lonely, withdrawn kid who looked to me like he was heading for trouble."

Reason for Hope. Meanwhile, in Dallas, the trial of the man who killed Oswald was postponed until Feb. 3 to give both prosecution and defense time to prepare their cases. Even though he faced a possible death sentence, what Jack Ruby seemed most worried about was his popularity. "Are my friends still with me?" he asked his few visitors.

Deep inside the Dallas County jail, behind several locked doors in an eight-by-eleven-foot cell where a bright light shines 24 hours a day, Ruby busied himself reading fan mail ("Congratulations to a good American"; "We feel you did a very patriotic thing"), writing his memoirs, and sprucing up in fresh white jail duds whenever his lawyer, Tom Howard, came to call. If only because of Howard's record as a defense attorney, Ruby has reason for hope. Of 30 clients accused of murder, Howard has not lost one to the electric chair.

And near week's end, in perhaps the only happy ending that will ever be written about Nov. 22 in Dallas, Texas Governor John Connally, his wife Nellie at his side, left Parkland Hospital for home and a welcome from their three children. Though it would be at least six months before he knew whether his right hand and wrist--pierced by the same bullet that went through his chest--would ever be fully usable, Connally gamely demonstrated for newsmen that he had already learned to sign his name with his left hand.

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