Chatter: Philadelphia Magazine 100 Years: “The Warren Commission, The Truth, and Arlen Specter”

In honor of our centennial, we look back at some of the stories that shaped Philly Mag By 1965, Gaeton Fonzi had read the Warren Commission evidence on JFK's assassination and the resulting report, and had his doubts — namely, about the "single-bullet theory" posited by a Philly lawyer on the commission: Arlen Specter. “I kept thinking Arlen would have answers about things that didn’t make sense,” Fonzi says, “but to my shock, he didn’t.” His further reporting led to “The Warren Commission, The Truth, and Arlen Specter” (August 1966), in which Fonzi — who later served on the House Select Committee on Assassinations — tore apart Specter's reasoning. Specter never rebutted. “Not a letter to the editor, not to the newspapers,” Fonzi says. “He never even called me and said, ‘You’re absolutely wrong.’”