June 29, 1964 - Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (pictured in Cracow today) said today that his brother had been assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald, “a misfit” who took out his resentment against society by killing the President of the United States.
Answering questions at a meeting of the City Council of Cracow, the Attorney General said that Oswald was “a professed Communist” but had not been motivated by Communist ideology when he shot the President last Nov. 22.
It was in response to a hesitant question put by a Communist youth leader of Cracow, who attended the council’s meeting, that the Attorney General spoke about Oswald and the assassination.
It was Mr. Kennedy’s first public discussion of the accused assassin, aides said.
The young Pole apologized for asking “a personal question,” but he said Polish youth would like to hear “your version of the assassination.”
Mr. Kennedy responded with a lengthy discussion of the event. He began by saying that “there is no doubt” that Oswald was the killer.
The Attorney General briefly sketched Oswald’s life story, describing him as a man who had embraced Communism and had gone to the Soviet Union but found no place for himself there.
“He was a professed Communist, but the Communists, because of his attitude, would have nothing to do with him,” he said. “What he did he did on his own and by himself.”
Mr. Kennedy said the assassination was not a racist plot, such as some persons had speculated.
“Ideology, in my opinion, did not motivate his act,” the President’s brother said. “It was the single act of one person protesting against society.”
A report on the assassination, prepared by a Presidential commission headed by Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States, is expected to be published later this year. It will be based on an exhaustive investigation into President Kennedy’s death.
The Attorney General is known to be fully acquainted with the findings of the Warren commission. It is presumed by persons close to him that the commission’s report will reflect the views expressed by Mr. Kennedy today.
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