Belin was hired by Lee Rankin, chief counsel to the Commission, who assigned a team of two lawyers to each of the major areas for investigation.
Belin and Joe Ball, a criminal defense lawyer from Los Angeles, shared the important task of investigating Oswald’s activities during the assassination.
[8] Belin led the Rockefeller Commission’s effort to investigate and publicize the CIA’s program to assassinate foreign officials.
[10] Responding to Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK,” Belin delivered a major defense of the Commission’s work in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on March 26, 1992.
He described “the lies, omissions, misrepresentations, and manufactured facts” in the film, and characterized Stone’s work as an effort to impeach the integrity of Earl Warren, “a great Chief Justice.” Belin also noted the massive amount of money spent by film studios and television networks to generate controversy and profits “as they rewrite the truth” about the Kennedy assassination.
As he lay in a coma in his final days, his friends would whisper conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination into his ear to confirm his unconsciousness by his unprecedented lack of response.
Past Belin lecturers have included Egon Mayer, Stephen J. Whitfeld, Arthur Green, Deborah Dash Moore, Alvin Rosenfeld, Paula Hyman, Jeffrey S. Gurock, Arnold Eisen, Sylvia Barack Fishman, Jonathan Sarna, Hasia Diner, Susan Martha Kahn, Riv-Ellen Prell, Andrew Heinze, and Fred Lazin.