Comments, additional information,
or if you have difficulty with this page please send e-mail:The purpose of this document is to provide a database of witnesses who provided information to the Warren Commission, either by appearing before the Commission or participating in a deposition proceeding with one or more of the Commission's assistant counsels.
This project was undertaken to determine the
sequence of witness appearances during the course of the Commission's
endeavors. The printed public record, represented by the Warren
Report and its accompanying 26 volumes of Hearings and
Testimony, does not provide that information. Accordingly,
there has been, as part of the public record, no means to determine
the manner and flow of information acquired by the Commission
through its witness proceedings. This database begins to correct
that deficiency.
The user should consider the following:
This database represents only individuals
appearing before the Commission or its attorneys. Those providing
submitted affidavits or statements are not included.
All times have been converted to Eastern Standard
Time for the purposes of uniformity across the database. Accordingly,
there are a few instances of an individual being deposed, for
example, in Dallas at 11:30 PM Central Standard Time, but because
of the time shift to Eastern Standard Time the date shifts forward
one day. This is not considered significant as the underlying
purpose of this undertaking was to provide, insofar as possible,
a sequential witness listing.
The times were not recorded for all individuals
in the printed public record. This information will be inserted,
at a later date and to the extent possible, from information derived
from the Commission's Key Persons files. Where the time
was not recorded, a blank space appears where the time would be
expected. There are 43 occurrences of this type in the database,
with 29 of those instances representing witnesses from New Orleans.
(In the New Orleans group, Wesley Liebeler deposed 18, Albert
Jenner, Jr. deposed 10, and Leon Hubert deposed 1.)
The total number of witness events
incorporated within the database exceeds the number of witnesses
which appeared before the Commission. This occurred because some
witnesses, e.g., Marina Oswald, appeared more than one time before
the Commission or participated in both an appearance before the
Commission and a deposition proceeding with a Commission counsel.
Accordingly, to develop the most accurate picture of the Commission's
procedures, each appearance, including those separated by lunch,
was treated as an individual event. This accounts for there
being more events than witnesses.
The database is segmented into two major groups.
The first group, Annex A, is a chronological listing of
witnesses in order of testimony. The second group, Annex B,
is grouped chronologically by Commissioners or attorneys. In cases
of witnesses appearing before the Commission, only the Commissioners
present are identified, not the attorney conducting the session.
Likewise, where only an attorney is listed the proceeding was
a deposition procedure not attended by any Commissioner.
Beyond the two major groups, the database is exploited by reducing the major categories into more focused and restricted classes of interest. The reduced data sets are listed in the Contents section.
Warren Commission Witness Database
Comments, additional information,
or if you have difficulty with this page please send e-mail: