It has now been almost 45 years since John F. Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas, on November 22, 1963. In September 1964, the Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy was issued by the United States Government. It is generally known as the Warren Report after Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court who chaired the Commission. Constituting 26 volumes of testimony and evidence, the Warren Report concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman who caused JFK's death.

From the start, questions were asked about the validity of the report. While initially a majority of people agreed with the Commission's findings, today well over two-thirds of all Americans do not accept that Oswald acted alone, while a significant number doubt that he was involved at all. How is it that in a relatively short amount of time, a report issued by such seemingly impeccable sources has come to be so widely disparaged? One major cause was the skeptical critique brought upon it by philosophers.

It is a remarkable fact that three of the earliest and most influential critics of the Warren Report were professional philosophers – Bertrand Russell, Richard Popkin and Josiah Thompson. Russell, who was 91 years old at the time of the shooting, was one of the first prominent individuals to raise serious questions about the report, even before it was completed.