Warren Commission

* I recently have received a copy of a Nov. 23 article on the Kennedy assassination by Sara Fritz. In that article she quotes me as counsel to the Warren Commission, saying: “David W. Belin, a former staff attorney who has been the most outspoken among the defenders of the Warren Commission, says the (medical) panel’s ‘biggest mistake was to yield to the desires of the Kennedy family that the autopsy photos be kept out of the public domain.’ ”

That quotation was part of an overall interview in which the primary focus was that, beyond a reasonable doubt, Oswald was the lone gunman who killed Kennedy, wounded Gov. John Connally and killed Officer J. D. Tippit; all of the shots came from the rear, as confirmed by four separate medical panels as well as by the ballistic evidence; and the main reason so many people do not believe the Warren Commission is that electronic media have never given the truth an equal opportunity to be heard. In this connection, I asked Sara Fritz to read copies of several articles I had written together with the transcript of an appearance before the National Press Club.

Unfortunately, although the quotation that Sara Fritz made was technically correct, it failed to communicate to your readers the primary thrust of our conversation.

As someone who is involved in the media world and who is deeply concerned about First Amendment rights, I find a great frustration when the truth does not have an equal opportunity to be heard and when reporters take snippets of conversations and do not report the basic thrust of the interview.

DAVID W. BELIN

Des Moines