THE LAST INVESTIGATION

A laying of tombstones on 1964's Warren Commission Report and 1979's House Assassinations Committee report; by a former senior editor of Philadelphia magazine. Fonzi early found the Warren Report dependent almost entirely on doctored intelligence from the CIA and biased toward proving Oswald the lone gunman. An autopsy report written by FBI agents who witnessed the autopsy included a third bullet wound, in the shoulder, which the Warren Report ignored: Its inclusion, Fonzi says, would have undermined the Report's lone gunman bias. Elation filled Fonzi in 1975 when he was hired by Senator Richard Schweiker to head the Miami area of the reopened assassination investigation: This time, Congress was looking into the skewing of the Warren Report by US intelligence agencies. Said Schweiker: ``We don't know what happened but we do know Oswald had an intelligence connection. Everywhere you look with him, there are fingerprints of intelligence.'' But the Assassination Committee failed to break through the CIA's shield, Fonzi argues, then ``cover[ed] its ass'' by creating a biased report that diverted light on to the Mob and was the fruit of a ``pseudoinvestigation'' that was compromised at every turn by dark forces that chopped off its financial legs and disallowed resources for a real investigation. According to the author, three important witnesses committed suicide just hours before he was to interview them. Fonzi's own villain is ``Maurice Bishop,'' cover name for the CIA's David Atlee Phillips, who'd been observed with Oswald before the assassination. Fonzi's report turns on the identification of Phillips by Antonio Veciana, an anti- Castro assassin who worked for ``Maurice Bishop.'' Fonzi sticks mostly to personal knowledge, which adds persuasiveness to his theme that Oswald's ties to the CIA may veil the final answer to JFK's murder. (B&w photographs)