William Buckley of the Central Intelligence Agency Debates Mark Lane of US Army Intelligence

William Buckley of the Central Intelligence Agency Debates Mark Lane of US Army Intelligence from Paul Coker on Vimeo.

The Warren Report: Fact Or Fiction?

December 1st 1966

"William Buckley’s ability to torture reason and logic has always amazed me. Some people would assess this ability as a mark of a great analytical mind. I don’t. He’s an expert at jumping off subject and bringing up meaningless premises that have nothing to do with the issue at hand leading people around in circles and away from the central point.

Although many people had been skeptical of the Warren Report’s conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the assassination of President Kennedy, Mr. Mark Lane’s book was the first to lay out the argument seriously. He defends himself ably in this spirited exchange.

Lane: “I take really the same position Alfreda Scobey, one of the lawyers for the Warren Commission takes, and that is, had Oswald lived, he could not have been proven guilty, had he faced trial, based upon the evidence the commission was able to secure.”

Buckley: “And of course Warren says that he was a practicing district attorney for ten or twelve years and he could have gotten a conviction in 48 hours with the evidence. You simply disagree with him professionally.”

Lane: “That’s nonsense. It would take longer than that to pick a jury, of course.”

Buckley: “Do you think Warren should be impeached?”

Lane: “I don’t think he should be impeached. I think the report should be impeached.”

It is well known that William F. Buckley spent some time in the CIA before he went on to start National Review. In certain libertarian circles, the charge has been made that Buckley never left the CIA and that, indeed, the CIA funded the launch of National Review.

All of this makes a note in a book, Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir by Buckley's son, Christopher, quite interesting in that it ties a string between Buckley and the CIA, after Buckley was already involved with National Review.

Christopher Buckley writes that in the early years of National Review, his parents rented out an apartment above the garage at their house to a Charlie Blair, a Pan Am airline pilot. According to Christopher, Blair was more than just a Pan Am pilot, though. He was also a CIA operative who trained Francis Gary Powers to fly the infamous U-2 spy plane that was shot down by the Russians, during the cold war, as it flew over Russia.

No smoking gun here, but it shows that there was at least one tie between CIA people and Buckley, during his early National Review days. And quite a tie at that.

Note: Christopher's book also details that Buckley stayed in contact with his former CIA boss E. Howard Hunt (Of Watergate notoriety). When Hunt's wife was killed in a suspicious plane crash, Hunt told WFB that if he mysteriously died, WFB would be contacted with some material that was to be released to the public. WFB told Christopher that he thought it was dirt on some presidents. William Buckley and the CIA.

Also: Bill Buckley’s Strange History Revealed "