Chapter 3c: The Whitewash

The Twilight Zone

On 5-24-64, the Warren Commission and FBI conduct their on-site tests in Dealey Plaza. A few days later Arlen Specter takes the testimony of the FBI’s photographic expert Lyndal Shaneyfelt. Shaneyfelt testifies about the distance of the limousine from the sniper’s nest at relevant moments of the Zapruder film. He submits that Kennedy was 176.9 feet from the rifle at frame 210 of the film, and 190.8 feet from the rifle at frame 225, the frames book-ending Kennedy's disappearance behind the Stemmons Freeway sign, and representing the purported moment of the first shot. While discussing frame 313, the moment of the fatal headshot, he testifies that the “Distance to the rifle in the window is 265.3 feet.  The angle to rifle in the window is 15’21’ and this is based on the horizontal.”  (6-4-64 testimony of Lyndal Shaneyfelt before the Warren Commission, 5H139-164).

The establishment of this distance at 265 feet raises questions never properly asked or answered.  If Specter had looked back through the records he would have seen that on 11-27-63 Agent Howlett, using the Zapruder film, determined the distance to be 260 feet. Close enough. He would also have seen that, on 12-5-63, just after the formation of the Warren Commission, Agent Elmer Moore, using the Zapruder film and the same surveyor used for the previous re-enactment, determined the distance to have been 294 feet.  Something’s beginning to smell.  He then would have remembered that on 1-20-64 the FBI had provided him with exhibits indicating this distance was 307 feet.  An even closer look would have indicated that, while the May 24 re-enactment determined the limo traveled no more than 88 feet further away from the sniper's nest between Kennedy’s receiving his two wounds, and may have traveled as little as 74 feet, the Secret Service on 12-5 indicated it traveled 110 feet, and the FBI Exhibits Section, after surveying the plaza and studying the films for 5 weeks, 140 feet. While the inflation of this distance may have been on purpose,and designed to increase the length of the shooting scenario, the Zapruder film had already been tested, and the speed of the camera calculated, and the time span of the shooting widely reported. This suggests then that the inflation of the distance traveled, should it have been on purpose, was designed to cover something else. But what? 

Well, how bout this? As the distance traveled between the first and third shots, when correlated to the shooting time span established by the Zapruder film, concurrently established the speed of the limousine at the time of the shots, perhaps the Secret Service and FBI inflated the distance to hide the uncomfortable and politically embarrassing fact that the limousine slowed down just before the head shot, and was traveling less than 10 miles an hour. Specter almost certainly considered this possibility. I mean, he and his fellow counsel must have wondered why the FBI and SS, when left to themselves, couldn't establish a consistent location for the President at the time of the third shot. They must have had discussions, conveniently kept off the record, of course, of whether the Secret Service and FBI were deliberately misleading the commission, or whether they were merely incredibly incompetent. As Specter had called Dr. Malcolm Perry before the commission and forced him to explain why he had initially described Kennedy’s throat wound as an entrance wound, he should have called Agent Moore of the Secret Service and Chief Gauthier of the FBI’s Exhibits Section before the commission to explain how they could be so wrong about the distance of the sniper’s nest from Kennedy's position at the time of the headshot, when the location of Kennedy at this time is easily established by the Zapruder film, Nix film, and Moorman photograph. That he left their phenomenal errors unexplained suggests the commission was scared of undermining the credibility of its prime investigators, the Secret Service and the FBI, and hoped no one would notice the contradictory conclusions contained within the Secret Service and FBI reports.They nearly got their wish. 

The FBI’s ballistics expert Robert Frazier is another participant in the re-enactment.  Testifying after Shaneyfelt on 6-4-64, he relates “At frame 231 the Governor is, as I saw it from the window on that date, turned to the front to such an extent that he could not have been hit at that particular frame. In frame 235, which is Commission Exhibit no. 897, the Governor…was also facing too far, too much towards the front…In frame 240 the Governor again could not have been shot.” (6-4-64 testimony of Frazier before the Warren Commission, 5H165-175). The re-enactment thereby confirmed that Connally was out of position to receive his wounds at frame 231 of the Zapruder film, 11 frames earlier than Specter had hoped for.  Specter now knows the only way he can have the last two shots close together, a la the eyewitnesses, is to have the first shot hit both Kennedy and Connally, and have one of the last two shots miss. 

On 5-27-64, Chief Counsel Rankin gets some interesting news of his own. Richard Helms of the CIA sends him a memo recounting a meeting between an unnamed source (columnist Drew Pearson) and Chairman Nikita Khruschev of the Soviet Union.  According to Helms, when the unnamed source told Khruschev that Oswald had acted alone, Khruschev was “utterly incredulous.”  The unnamed source described this attitude as “archetypical of every European I have ever talked to on this subject.”  He “got the impression that Chairman Khruschev had some dark thoughts about the American Right Wing being behind this conspiracy. The unnamed source then “repeated that the reaction of Chairman Khruschev and his wife was one of flat disbelief and archetypical of the universal European belief that there was some kind of American conspiracy behind the assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of Oswald.” One can only speculate that news like this would inspire the Commission to re-double its efforts to convince the world that Oswald acted alone.

On 5-29, Dallas station KRLD broadcasts a scoop related to the 5-24 re-enactment. The Associated Press  reports the details of this scoop the next day. "DALLAS, Tex. (AP) - Television station KRLD said Friday it has learned the Warren Commission's report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy will show that the first bullet hit both the president and Texas Gov. John B. Connally, and that the third shot went wild. In a copyright story, KRLD said this information came from a highly placed source to the Warren Commission following last Sunday's re-enactment of the assassination. Previous thinking had been that the first bullet hit the president, the second hit the governor, and the third fatally wounded Kennedy. KRLD said it also had learned the commission's report, which it said was to be released in a few weeks, will show the following: The first bullet entered the president's body slightly above the right collar bone and exited just to the left of the tie knot, then entered the body of Connally just above the fifth rib. The second bullet struck the president in the back of the head. The third bullet followed a much flatter trajectory than the first two, because the motorcade was moving down a sloping street, and it struck a manhole cover, then ricocheted off the curb and never was found. Medical opinion in the commission's report will show that chances for the president's recovery from the first wound would have been excellent. Also, had the first hit been a fraction lower, the force of the bullet probably would have knocked the president to the floor of the car and removed him from the line of sight for the second— and fatal — shot. The first bullet traveled 168 feet before it hit, the second 207 feet. There was an interval of 4 1/2 seconds between the first and second shots, and about 2 1/2 seconds between the second and third shots, and experts contend a crack marksman could have fired all three in the time it took the assassin to fire the first two."

Well, this is most interesting. The information provided is all garbled. The source reportedly said the commission concluded the third shot missed but the shot distances provided, with the first shot being fired from 168 feet and the second shot being fired from 207, suggests instead that the first shot hit Kennedy (167 feet was the distance for this shot in the FBI's 1-20 report) and that the second shot hit Connally. This inexplicably leaves out the headshot. The purported distance for the second shot--207 feet--correlates to frame 242 of the Zapruder film, the earliest point at which Kennedy and Connally could have been hit by separate shots, and the point which Specter had been holding out as the last moment Connally could have been shot. The reported 4 1/2 second gap between the first and second shots, furthermore, is clearly a reference to the shot at frame 242 and the head shot at frame 313, which comes about 4 1/2 seconds afterward. This then indicates that the source believed the final shot came two and half seconds after frame 313, at approximately frame 358. The final shot in the January report of the FBI exhibits section, we should recall, came at approximately frame 358. This suggests that the source for this article was not simply mistaken about the commission's concluding the first shot was fired from 168 feet, and that the last shot missed around frame 358, but was inferring as much from the FBI's earlier report. Since that report specified that the last shot hit Kennedy, moreover, this suggests that the source for this article was futilely trying to correlate the contradictory information contained in that report, with subsequent information derived from Specter and the re-enactment. The result was nonsense. Who was this source?

On 6-1-64, more leaks reach the public. Anthony Lewis, a writer with a close working relationship with the Supreme Court, writes an article for the New York Times with the headline “Panel to Reject Theories of Plot in Kennedy’s Death.  Warren Inquiry is Expected to Dispel Doubts in Europe that Oswald Acted Alone.”  Lewis would go on to claim “The commission’s report is expected, in short, to support the original belief of law enforcement agencies in this country that the President was killed by one man acting alone, Lee H. Oswald…A spokesman for the commission said that none of the critical works, foreign or domestic, had come up with any new factual information.  He said that the commission had found “just a rehash of the same material. The same questions and each man’s conclusions.”…The commission’s spokesman expressed the conviction that its report, when issued, would completely explode the theories published (abroad).  He said that not even the authors would stand by them. “We’ll knock them out of those positions,” he said.”  In its 6-12-64 issue, Time Magazine jumped on board and echoed the Times’ endorsement of the commission’s conclusions months before they were even released. An article on the attitudes of Europeans to the assassination began “The most myth-filled aftermath of John F. Kennedy’s assassination is the stubborn refusal of many Europeans to accept the belief that the U.S. President could have been killed by a lunatic loner” and admitted “Last week word leaked from the Warren Commission that its report would spike each of the overseas theses and endorse with few changes the FBI’s original version that Oswald killed alone. However, this is hardly likely to end the myth-making in Europe.” From these articles, it seems likely the “spokesman” speaking to Lewis was either Warren himself or someone acting with his blessing.  

If so, however, it's clear these leaks were not "authorized" by the full commission. The 6-4 executive session of the commission reflects that Congressman Ford, for one, is irritated by these leaks, as he is not at all convinced there was no foreign involvement in the assassination. He, furthermore, threatens Warren that if these leaks persist he will find it necessary to tell the press that "the Commission has not discussed these matters as a Commission" as yet, and that whoever is telling them otherwise is not to be trusted. Warren then interjects that he "personally cannot account for any of these stories", and that he has not spoken to any newspapers and that he has urged General Counsel Rankin to urge the staff not to do so as well. This, of course, leaves open the possibility that Warren nudged someone on the staff to make these calls behind Rankin's back. Perhaps sensing this possibility, then, Warren adds "I have no knowledge of anybody talking to anybody...If I knew that anybody from the Commission or the staff has been discussing these things with the press, I would feel very badly about it. But I don't have any belief that they have." This leads Ford to refer back to the articles published around the time of the Commission's creation, and to Acting Attorny General Katzenbach's request that they immediately release the results of the FBI's report, and the concurrent leak of this report to the press. It seems clear from this that Ford suspects Katzenbach.

In any event, after input from John McCloy, who offers "Until you complete the testimony, you cannot have a final conclusion" and voices his own suspicions of the Justice Department, it is decided that a statement should be issued announcing that the Commission is still taking testimony, and that therefore no conclusion has been reached. This, of course, is a bit disingenuous, as the commission, acting as both prosecutor and defense, has the option of taking only the testimony that will help support its already scripted conclusions.

(It would later become clear that in the Spring of '64 the writer of the New York Times' article, Anthony Lewis, was working on a book, Gideon’s Trumpet, whose main source was President Johnson’s closest adviser Abe Fortas. This, in turn, raises the possibility that Johnson and Fortas were behind the leaks. Perhaps Johnson, angered by the Commission's failure to meet its original June 1 deadline, had simply decided that enough was enough, and had decided to assure the world that neither he nor the Soviets had been involved in the assassination, and had asked Fortas leak the story to Lewis. Perhaps not.) 

On 6-2-64 Rankin writes a letter to Lt. Col. Allison G. Folsom requesting an appraisal of Oswald’s shooting ability, based upon Oswald’s test scores while in the Marines. On 6-8-64, he receives an unexpected response.  Folsom writes “In view of the lapse of time since Mr. Oswald was separated from the Marine Corps, it would be impossible to ascertain precisely the number of hours in which he participated in weapons marksmanship practice or how many rounds of ammunition he fired.” He then gives a breakdown of the training received by Oswald and his subsequent tests scores.  These show that Oswald was tested on the M-1 rifle on December 21, 1956 and received a score of 212, or sharpshooter ranking.  This was the test discussed in Folsom’s 5-1-64 testimony.  The record shows that Oswald was tested on the M-1 rifle a second time on May 6, 1959, however, and received a score of 191, only 1 point above the bottom of the Marksman ranking. These were the scores reported by the New York Times on 11-23-63. The big surprise for Rankin comes in Folsom’s summary. He tells Rankin “The Marine Corps considers that any reasonable application of the instructions given to Marines should permit them to become qualified as a marksman.  To become qualified as a sharpshooter, the Marine Corps is of the opinion that most Marines with a reasonable amount of adaptability to weapons firing can become so qualified.  Consequently, a low marksman qualification indicates a rather poor “shot” and a sharpshooter qualification indicates a fairly good “shot.” Folsom was thus telling Rankin that Oswald was a poor shot when he left the Marines and would have been an even worse shot after 4 years without practice.  

After the letter from Folsom, Rankin should have had great doubt that Oswald was capable of hitting the shots described by the FBI. The FBI, after all, claimed Oswald fired three times at a moving target and created two hits and one near miss (the bullet striking Connally) in a time span of roughly 5.6 seconds. In an ideal world, this would have led Rankin to push for more rifle tests, with civilians firing rifles similar to Oswald’s at moving targets on a mock Dealey Plaza. 

The Tests That Should Have Been 

In 1967, CBS News, realizing the Warren Commission's error in not conducting these tests, conducted some tests of their own. While the shooters used by CBS were all well-practiced rifleman, their over-all skill level was roughly that of Oswald at his best. (Of course, Oswald hadn’t been at his best since his first years in the Marines, a half a dozen years before the assassination.)  

There were still other problems with the test. For one, the rifle used by these shooters was in prime operating condition, and was in no need of the adjustments performed by those test-firing Oswald's rifle for the Warren Commission. For two, the CBS shooters, unlike the man firing Oswald's rifle in Dealey Plaza, were given practice shots. For three, the target upon which these men fired, unlike the limousine in Dealey Plaza, moved at a constant speed away from the shooter, and at a constant angle. 

Now, all these problems should have worked to the advantage of CBS' shooters, and have led to their easily replicating the shots purported for Oswald... That is, if the shots have been indeed easily replicable...

But let the test results speak for themselves…

1. Col. Jim Crossman, ret. (expert rifleman).  First attempt--3 near misses in 6.54 seconds.  Best attempt (of 6) ---2 hits and 1 near miss in 6.20 seconds. 2 hits or more in 3 of 6 attempts. (6.34, 6.44, and 6.2 seconds)

2. Douglas Bazemore (ex-paratrooper).  First attempt—unable to operate bolt effectively to fire the shots.  Best attempt (of 4)—unable to operate stiff bolt action; gives up.  2 hits or more in 0 of 4 attempts.

3.  John Bollendorf (ballistics technician).  First attempt—2 hits and 1 near miss in 6.8 seconds.  Best attempt (of 4)—the same.  2 hits or more in 1 of 4 attempts. (6.8 seconds)

4.  John Concini (Maryland State Trooper).  First attempt—no record of where shots went in 6.3 seconds.  Best attempt (of 2)—1 hit and 2 near misses in 5.4 seconds. 2 hits or more in 0 of 2 attempts.

5.  Howard Donahue (weapons engineer).  First attempt—too fast with bolt—gun jammed.  Best attempt (of 3)—3 hits in 5.2 seconds. 2 hits or more in 1 of 3 attempts. (5.2 seconds)

6.  Somersett Fitchett (sportsman).  First attempt—gun jammed at 3^rd shot.  Best attempt (of 3)—2 hits and 1 near miss in 5.5 seconds. 2 hits or more in 2 of 3 attempts. (5.9 and 5.5 seconds)

7.  William Fitchett (sporting goods dealer).  First attempt—3 borderline hits in 6.5 seconds.  Best attempt (of 3)—the same.  2 hits or more in 1of 3 attempts. (6.5 seconds)

8.  Ron George (Maryland State Trooper).  First attempt—gun jammed at 2^nd shot.  Best attempt (of 3)—2 hits and 1 near miss in 4.9 seconds.  2 hits or more in 1 of 3 attempts. (4.9 seconds)

9.  Charles Hamby (shooting range employee).  First attempt—gun jammed.  Best attempt (of 3)—2 near misses and 1 complete miss in 6.5 seconds.  2 hits or more in 0 of 3 attempts.

10.  Carl Holden (shooting range employee).  First attempt—gun jammed with first shot.  Best attempt (of 3)—3 near misses in 5.4 seconds.  2 hits or more in 0 of 3 attempts. 

11.  Sid Price (shooting range employee).  First attempt—1 hit, 1 near miss, and 1 complete miss in 5.9 seconds.  Best attempt (of 4)—the same.  2 hits or more in 0 of 4 attempts.

12.   Al Sherman (Maryland State Trooper).  First attempt—2 hits and 1 near miss in 5.0 seconds.  Best attempt (of 5)—the same.  2 hits or more in 2 of 5 attempts.  (5.0 and 6.0 seconds)

Of the 12 first attempts, only 1 shooter was able to hit the target twice in less than 5.6 seconds.  Of the 43 total attempts, moreover, these well-seasoned shooters were able to replicate Oswald’s purported feat—2 hits in less than 5.6 seconds—just 4 times. If the Warren Commission had conducted similar tests, they would almost certainly have concluded that Oswald needed more than 5.6 seconds to fire the shots, and that either the first shot or last shot missed. But this was not to be.

 

Slips and Spills

On 6-4-64, Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley testifies about the May 24 re-enactment (5H129-134).  Under Arlen Specter’s guidance, he tells the commission that the location of the back wound mark on President Kennedy’s stand-in was established by a “medical drawing.”  Strangely, Counsel Specter is quick to insert “Permit me to show you Commission Exhibit 386…I ask you if that is the drawing you were shown as the basis for the marking of the wound on the back of the President’s neck?” Kelley answers “Yes.”  Later, Kelley slips up and says that “the wound in the throat was lower than the wound in the shoulder” and Specter leaps again “By the wound in the shoulder, do you mean the wound in the back of the President’s neck, the base of his neck?” (5H175-176) Once again, Kelley agrees. The problem is that, while CE 386, one of the drawings submitted by Specter during the testimony of Dr. Humes, shows the wound to be on the base of the back of the neck and higher than the throat wound, Specter and Kelley, by their own admission, looked at a photo of this wound on the day of the re-enactment, and this photo showed the wound to be on the BACK, at the same level or lower than the throat wound.  Specter was thus coaxing Kelley to mislead the commission, and hide that the wound was in fact on the President’s back, at the same level or lower than his throat wound.  

That Specter and Kelley were conspiring on such a deed may sound a bit far-fetched, but there is additional evidence to support this. While trying to establish the alignment of Kennedy and Connally during the shooting--that is, while trying to establish that they were in the proper alignment to receive simultaneous wounds from the rear in Kennedy's neck and Connally's right armpit--Specter asks Kelley the distance of Connally's seat from the right door, and Kelley replies "There is 6 inches of clearance between the jump seat and the door." The problem is, once again, that this just isn't true. (The schematic of the limousine to which Kelley refers, Exhibit CE 872, does not have this measurement, but a schematic obtained by the HSCA from the same source does have the measurement, and it is, in fact, 2.5 inches, not 6.) That Kelley mis-represents the facts on two key points, and that both of these mis-statements (or lies, take your pick) just so happen to help Specter sell his theory that all the wounds save Kennedy's head wound were created by the same bullet, is undoubtedly suspicious.

After Kelley’s initial testimony, FBI Exhibits Section Chief Leo Gauthier testifies about the scale model he created of Dealey Plaza (5H135-138). Here Arlen Specter carefully avoids questioning Gauthier about Gauthier’s earlier conclusion, using largely the same tools used in the May 24 re-enactment, that the President was 307 feet from the sniper’s nest at the time of the head shot, 42 feet further than is now proposed.

After Gauthier testifies, the FBI’s photography expert Lyndal Shaneyfelt takes the stand (5H138-165). He testifies that the location of the President's back wound was, when viewed from the sniper's nest, obscured by an oak tree from frames 167 to 209 of the Zapruder film. When asked the last frame before Kennedy appears to be hit, Shaneyfelt testifies in accord with this testimony. A hit on Kennedy before frame 210, after all, might suggest there'd been a shot fired from somewhere other than the sniper's nest. Shaneyfelt testifies: "Approximately--I would like to explain a little bit, that at frames in the vicinity of 200 to 210 he is obviously still waving, and there is no marked change. In the area from approximately 200 to 205 he is still, his hand is still in a waving position, he is still turned slightly toward the crowd, and there has been no change in his position that would signify anything occurring unusual. I see nothing in the frames to arouse my suspicion about his movements, up through in the areas from 200 on and as he disappears behind the signboard, there is no change. Now, 205 is the last frame, 205 and 206 are the last frames where we see any of his, where we see the cuff of his coat showing above the signboard indicating his hand is still up generally in a wave. From there on the frames are too blurry as his head disappears you can't really see any expression on his face. You can't see any change. It is all consistent as he moves in behind the signboard." If Shaneyfelt sounds tentative, and unsure of himself, it's quite possibly because he's not used to perjuring himself in such a manner. In 1978, a panel of 20 photographic scientists studied these same Zapruder frames for the House Select Committte on Assassinations. Their report, included in volume Appendix number 6 of the HSCA's report, reflects "By a vote of 12 to 5, the Panel determined that President Kennedy first showed a reaction to some severe external stimulus by Zapruder frame 207, as he is seen going behind a sign that obstructed Zapruder's view."

Shaneyfelt also testifies that Kennedy was struck in the head when he was 265 feet away from the sniper’s nest. The vast difference between Gauthier’s earlier report and Shaneyfelt’s conclusions are not discussed, nor noted.  Shaneyfelt also tells the commission what they need to hear before they can accept Specter’s theory that Kennedy and Connally were hit by the same shot—that the angle from the sniper’s nest to Kennedy’s throat wound to Connally at the moment they both could have been hit “passed through a point on the back of the stand-in for the President at a point approximating that of the entrance wound.”  To support this, Specter introduces Commission Exhibit 903 into evidence. Suspiciously, this re-enactment photo of Specter holding a rod at the angle from the sniper’s nest at the presumed moment Kennedy and Connally were hit against the stand-ins in the limo was taken from the front and fails to show the location of the back wound. In the FBI’s files, however, there are several photos taken from the opposite angle. These show the rod passing several inches above the location of the back wound.   Well, at least Shaneyfelt was correct in stating the wound was on the back. (This is discussed in more detail in the Examining the Examinations chapter.)

After Shaneyfelt, the FBI’s Robert Frazier comes on and explains that Connally was out of position to have his wounds be caused by one bullet after frame 231 (5H165-175). This means that he must have been hit before this point, at a point too close to Kennedy’s being shot to have both shots fired by Oswald, unless they were in fact hit by the same shot.  Frazier drops another bomb as well.  Under questioning by Commissioner Dulles (notably not Specter), he lets slip his recollection that the back wound used in the re-enactment was determined by the measurements taken at the autopsy. This contradicts the statement Specter drew from Kelley that the mark was established by looking at CE 386.  So which one’s telling the truth?  Well, fortunately, there were pictures taken of the re-enactment. One of these ran in the 6-1 New York Times. These pictures show the marked location of the President’s back wound to be…on the back, in line with the autopsy measurements and face sheet, as stated by Frazier.

So why did Specter deceive the commission about 1) the actual location of the back wound; 2) the location of the mark used at the re-enactment; and 3) the distance from the right door of the limousine to  Governor Connally's seat?   Well, when one considers that, by this time, Specter knew that 1) the FBI and Secret Service had disregarded the evidence and come to questionable conclusions about the shooting scenario; 2) Chief Justice Warren had forbidden the use of materials necessary to establishing the facts; and 3) Dr.  Humes had lied about the use of measurements in the creation of the drawings, perhaps he decided it was time he join the crowd.

The Home Stretch

Only six months after the shooting, and the same day that Arlen Specter turns in his initial draft for the Warren Report’s chapter on the shooting, the Commission finally gets around to questioning the closest eyewitness, the former First lady.  Jacqueline Kennedy (6-5-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 5H178-181) “Well there must have been two because the one that made me turn around was Governor Connally yelling.  And it used to confuse me because first I remembered there were three and I used to think my husband didn’t make any sound when he was shot. And Governor Connally screamed like a stuck pig.  I heard Governor Connally yelling and that made me turn around, and as I turned to the right my husband was doing this (indicating with hand at neck).  He was receiving a bullet.  And those are the only two I remember.” Unsure. Only heard two clear shots.

On this same day, the FBI reports the recollections of another vital witness, whose photographs of the assassination were everywhere. Strangely, they had no intention of interviewing him until a 5-25 column in the Chicago American asked why he’d not been interviewed.  James Altgens (6-5-64 FBI report, CD 1088 p.1-6) “at about the instant he snapped the picture, he heard a burst of noise which he thought was firecrackers…he does not know how many of these reports he heard…After taking the above photograph…he heard another report which he recognized as a gunshot. He said the bullet struck President Kennedy on the right side of his head and the impact knocked the President forward. Altgens stated pieces of flesh, blood, and bones appeared to fly from the right side of the President’s head and pass in front of Mrs. Kennedy to the left of the Presidential limousine.  Altgens stated Mrs. Kennedy grabbed the President and Altgens heard her exclaim “Oh, no!” as the president slumped into her lap.”  (7-22-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 7H512-525) “I wasn’t keeping track of the number of pops that took place, but I could vouch for number 1 and I can vouch for the last shot, but I can not tell you how many shots were in between. There was not another shot after the President was struck in the head.” (on the head shot) “up to that time I didn’t know that the President had been shot previously.  I still thought up until that time that all I heard was fireworks and that they were giving some sort of celebration to the President by popping these fireworks. It stunned me so at what I saw that I failed to do my duty and make the picture I was hoping to make.”

On 6 7-64, almost three months after the conclusion of his trial, the Commission finally gets around to questioning Oswald’s assassin, Jack Ruby, about his possible role in a conspiracy involving Oswald.  Ruby requests he be given a lie detector test. He tells Judge Warren “I would like to request that I go to Washington and you take all the tests that I have to take.  It’s very important.”  Later, he returns to this theme.  “Gentleman, unless you get me to Washington, you can’t get a fair shake out of me.  If you understand my way of talking, you have got to bring me to Washington to get the tests…Unless you can get me to Washington, and I am not a crackpot, I have all my senses—I don’t want to evade any crime I am guilty of…Unless you get me to Washington immediately, I am afraid…” Ruby then goes on to accuse his own lawyer of conspiring against him, to make it look like he’d planned out Oswald’s murder, which Ruby insists was a spontaneous act.  Ruby then throws in “Well, it’s too bad, Chief Warren, that you didn’t get me to your headquarters 6 months ago.”  Ruby then asks Sheriff Decker and all other law enforcement officers to leave the room.  After they leave, he tells Warren and his staff “Gentleman, if you want to hear any further testimony, you will have to get me to Washington soon, because it has something to do with you, Chief Warren.  Do I sound sober enough to tell you this? …I want to tell the truth, and I can’t tell it here.  I can’t tell it here.  Does that make sense to you?”  He then muses “Boy, I am in a tough spot, I tell you that…But this isn’t the place for me to tell what I want to tell…” 

Ruby then gets serious, and comes straight to the point:  “Chief Warren, your life is in danger in this city, do you know that?”  He requests again he be given a lie detector test, which will help him clear his name, and concludes “Gentleman, my life is in danger here.  Not with my guilty plea of execution.  Do I sound sober enough to you as I say this?...Then I follow this up.  I may not live tomorrow to give any further testimony...the only thing that I want to get out to the public, and I can’t say it here, is with authenticity, with sincerity of the truth of everything and why my act was committed, but it can’t be said here.  It can be said, it’s got to be said amongst people of the highest authority that would give me the benefit of the doubt.  And following that, immediately give me a lie detector test after I do make the statement.”   During a stenographer's break to change paper, Ruby then corners Warren and Counsel Arlen Specter (the source for this story) and begs them to “Get to Fortas.  He’ll get the job done…Get to Fortas.  He’ll get it worked out.” Ruby then goes on to assert that the John Birch Society is trying to use that he’s a Jew to persecute other Jews, and claims “The Jewish people are being exterminated at this moment. Consequently, a whole new form of government is going to take over our country, and I know I won't live to see you another time. Do I sound sort of screwy--in telling you these things?…It may not be too late, whatever happens, if our President, Lyndon Johnson, knew the truth from me. But if I am eliminated, there won't be any way of knowing…I won't be around, Chief Justice. I won't be around to verify these things you are going to tell the President...I have been used for a purpose…” 

While Ruby appears to be unstable, the fact that he's paranoid doesn't mean that he's insane. Warren and Specter are certainly aware that the radical right, including the John Birch Society, a prominent presence in Dallas, have been pushing the story (in newspapers such as The Thunderbolt) that Oswald killed Kennedy on behalf of a Jewish/Communist cabal, and that Ruby silenced Oswald on behalf of this same cabal. One book, just coming out in May '64, Legacy of an Assassination, offered that Ruby was a communist, and that as a communist, was ready to sacrifice his life for his cause. It mused further that Oswald, Ruby, Tippit, and others were all "concealed Reds" and that Ruby and Oswald had previously worked together on the attempted assassination of General Walker" but were "protected from arrest afterwards by concealed Reds in the CIA who got Attorney General Robert Kennedy to intercede with the FBI and the Dallas Police." 

Another book, shortly to be released, entitled None Dare Call It Treason, noted that Kennedy was killed by a "self-admitted communist" and railed "Volumes could and should be written on the press coverage of President Kennedy's assassination by a Communist killer. Even after Oswald was captured and his Marxist affiliations disclosed, TV and radio commentators have conducted a continual crusade of distortion and smear to direct the blame against right-wing or conservative groups." This, as we've seen, is a lie. Sure, the press conducted a "continual crusade of distortion and smear" but it was a crusade to convict Oswald as a lone-nut assassin, not a crusade to blame the right-wing. This deliberate lie, then, seems designed to make None Dare Call It Treason's readers--and there were plenty of them--the book sold over 7 million copies--believe that a communist conspiracy to kill Kennedy had infiltrated the mainstream media, and that the enemy within was all around. Ruby's concerns were very real.

If Warren and Specter consider that Ruby, by his own admission, had immediately grown suspicious that Jews were being set-up as patsies in the killing of Kennedy (He'd learned that the Kennedy Wanted for Treason ads in the Dallas papers on the day of the assassination had been paid for by a Jew named Bernard Weissman, and was so distressed by this fact that he contacted the Dallas Post Office at 4:30 AM the next morning in hopes they'd give him Weissman's address) they might reasonably suspect that Ruby had received orders to kill Oswald by someone other than this non-existent cabal, and was worried that his silencing Oswald on their behalf was gonna be used against his fellow Jews.(What else could he mean by "I have been used for a purpose"?) Ruby's cornering Specter, who was only involved in the questioning because he was Jewish and Ruby felt he could be trusted, and telling him to "Get to Fortas...He'll get the job done" should have aroused their suspicions even further. Fortas was President Johnson's most trusted and secret adviser, and a JEW, and would be the man best in position to shut down any orchestrated efforts to deflect attention from Johnson by blaming the assassination on Jews. So does Warren bring Ruby to Washington so that Ruby can tell his whole story? Nope. Does he have Fortas interviewed or investigated so he can determine what, if any, ties he has to Ruby? Nope. Does he even get a doctor to testify that Ruby's unstable, so he can justify his not bringing Ruby to Washington?  Nope, nope and nope again. Ruby's testimony has opened a door to a room that Warren refuses to enter.

The next day, 6-8-64, another door is opened, and ignored. An internal FBI memo on this date from Alex Rosen to Alan Belmont relates that on 6-3 the FBI was contacted by President Kennedy's physician, Dr. George Burkley, wondering what became of a statement, dated 11-27-63, he'd given to the U.S. Secret Service, and why he hasn't been contacted by the Warren Commission. Rosen relates further that he's discussed this matter with Warren Commission Chief Counsel J. Lee Rankin, who requested he call the Secret Service and find out what happened to Burkley's statement regarding the events of 11-22-63. Rosen then relates that he talked to Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley, and Kelley told him he was indeed aware of Burkley's statement, "was of the opinion it had been made available to the President's Commission," and "would see that a copy of the memorandum was sent over to the Commission per Mr. Rankin's request." Burkley's statement is eventually published by the Commission as Exhibit 1126. Strangely, however, despite this incident, and despite his name appearing in the autopsy report, numerous Secret Service reports, and in the testimony of witnesses such as Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, Dr. Paul Peters, and Dr. Charles Carrico, no one from the FBI or Warren Commission ever interviews Burkley, the only witness to see the President's body both at Parkland and Bethesda. While this may simply have been an oversight, it would eventually be revealed as an incredibly convenient oversight for those hoping to convince others that Oswald acted alone. On October 17, 1967, in an interview conducted for the Kennedy Library, Burkley was asked if he agreed with the Warren Report’s conclusions “on the number of bullets that entered the President’s body.”  He replied “I would not care to be quoted on that.” Similarly, on March 18, 1977, Burkley’s attorney, Willaim Illig, contacted HSCA Chief Counsel Richard Sprague and told him that Burkley had information indicating that Oswald did not act alone. (While no one followed up on this letter, the record suggests that Burkley suspected both that the back wound was too low on Kennedy's body to support the single-bullet theory, and that more than one bullet struck the President's skull.)

Returning to the eyewitnesses, it turns out that Phil Willis, whose photograph of Kennedy just after the first shot has been studied extensively by the FBI, has also never been interviewed.  His wife and daughters witnessed the shooting as well, and his eldest daughter is paraded before the Commission.  Phil Willis (6-22-64 FBI report, CD1245 p. 46-48)  “Willis advised that just about the same time that the limousine carrying President Kennedy was opposite the Stemmons Freeway road sign he heard a loud report and knew immediately it was a rifle shot and knew also the shot “had hit”…About two seconds later he heard another rifle shot which also hit, as did the third, which came approximately two seconds later.  Willis said he knew from his war experience the sound a rifle makes when it finds its mark and he said he is sure all three shots fired found their mark.” (7-22-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 7H492-497) “my next shot was taken at the very—in fact the shot caused me to squeeze the camera shutter, and I got a picture of the President as he was hit with the first shot.  So instantaneous, in fact, that the crowd hadn’t had time to react…I proceeded down the street and didn’t take any other pictures instantly, because the three shots were fired approximately two seconds apart, and I knew my little daughters were running alongside the Presidential car, and I was immediately concerned about them, and I was screaming for them to come back, and they didn’t hear me.” 

Marilyn Willis  (6-19-64 FBI report, CD1245 p. 44-45) “Mrs. Willis advised when the motorcade passed on Elm Street in front of where she was standing she heard a noise that sounded like a firecracker or a backfire.  A few seconds following this she stated she heard another report and saw the top of President Kennedy’s head “blow off and ringed by a red halo.” She stated she believes she heard another shot following this.” Shot after the head shot.  Linda Willis (7-22-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 7H498-499) (When asked if she heard shots) “Yes; I heard one. Then there was a little bit of time, and then there were two real fast bullets together. When the first one hit, well, the President turned from waving to the people, and he grabbed his throat, and he kind of slumped forward, and then I couldn't tell where the second shot went… I was right across from the sign that points to where Stemmons Freeway is.  I was directly across when the first shot hit him…I heard the first shot come and then he slumped forward, and then I couldn’t tell where the second shot went, and then the third one, and that was the last one that hit him in the head. No; when the first shot rang out, I thought, well, it's probably fireworks, because everybody is glad the President is in town. Then I realized it was too loud and too close to be fireworks, and then when I saw, when I realized that the President was falling over, I knew he had been hit.”  Last two shots bunched together with the last shot head shot.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, the Warren Commission counsel charged with writing its report are turning in their chapters and the Commissioners themselves are making changes. On 6-24-64, Commissioner John J. McCloy writes Rankin: “I think too much effort is expended on attempting to prove that the first bullet which hit the President was responsible for all Connally’s wounds.  The evidence against this is not fully stated.”  This indicates that McCloy has his doubts about the single-bullet theory. It will eventually come out that Senators Russell and Cooper, and Congressman Boggs, also have doubts about the theory. Which means that just 3 of the 7 commissioners—Warren, Dulles, and Ford, wholeheartedly support the cornerstone of the Commission’s conclusions, without which they would rightfully have to conclude the probability of a second gunman. 

Ford at least is witting enough to understand the importance of the theory to the Commission's conclusions. On a 6-26-64 draft of Chapter 1 of the report, Congressman Ford changes the statement “A bullet had entered his back at a point slightly above the shoulder and to the right of the spine" to “A bullet had entered the back of his neck at a point slightly to the right of the spine." The published report reflects a compromise: “A bullet had entered the base of the back of his neck slightly to the right of the spine." From this change it seems clear that Ford was deliberately skewing the report to help convince the public that a bullet fired from above could enter a man’s back and exit his throat on a straight trajectory, a la the single-bullet theory. When the working papers of J. Lee Rankin were given to the Archives in 1997 and Ford’s changes were discovered, the Former President reportedly responded “My changes were only an attempt to be more precise.” While the inaccurate drawings entered into evidence by the doctors may have confused Ford into thinking his correction was more precise, a less generous interpretation is also reasonable, particularly when one notes that this very topic came up in Ford's 12-17 meeting with the FBI.  Cartha DeLoach's memo on his meeting with Ford reflects: "Two members of the Commission brought up the fact that they still are not convinced that the President had been shot from the sixth floor window of the Texas Book Depository. These members failed to understand the trajectory of the slugs that killed the President. He (Ford) stated he felt this point would be discussed further but, of course, would represent no problem."

Apparently, Ford knew the caliber of men he was working with. Apparently, he knew that nothing could dissuade these men from claiming Oswald killed Kennedy.  On July 2, 1967, an interview of Commissioner John McCloy was aired on Face the Nation. Although CBS' treatment of the assassination in its just-broadcast four part special on the Warren Commmission was questionable, and at times quite deceptive, here Walter Cronkite actually did some digging. McCloy's answers, accordingly, are quite revealing. When asked why the Commissioners doubting the single-bullet theory claimed Oswald acted alone, even though, in Cronkite's words, it is "inescapably obvious that without the single bullet theory, the whole case made by the Commission collapses into a mass of incredibility," McCloy gave a jaw-dropping response. He said: "Well, what is the case? The case is, as--and, I think, this about right, and I can--I think I can summarize the conclusions. One. Oswald killed the President by shots fired from the sixth floor window of the school book depository in Dallas. He also killed Tippit...Now that's--that's the conclusion. Those are the essential conclusions of the Commission. They don't stand or fall by whether there was a single bullet there, or not."

In other words, McCloy told Cronkite that they'd decided to blame the shooting on Oswald, EVEN IF THE EVIDENCE INDICATED IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE FOR HIM TO HAVE FIRED ALL THE SHOTS. The possibility that a conspiracy existed outside Oswald, and had set him up as the "patsy" he'd claimed to be, was not even to be considered.

 

4th Times the Charm

The FBI, Secret Service, and Warren Commission's absolute conviction that all the shots came from the sixth floor of the depository, no matter when or how the shots rang out, is by now abundantly clear. Perhaps no one is better able to see this than Dallas County Surveyor Robert West. Between December 7, 1963 and June 25, 1964, he has created and revised four plats of Dealey Plaza, with the angles of trajectory for proposed shots from the sniper's nest  All four of these plats were purportedly based on a careful analysis of the Zapruder film, and were created for a government agency.  And yet, from plat to plat, not one shot has been of a consistent distance or at a consistent angle! (West will eventually testify at the trial of Clay Shaw, and acknowledge that he was in Dealey Plaza when the President was shot, and that he in fact heard four shots. This raises the question of whether or not he mentioned this fact to the Secret Service, FBI, and Warren Commission investigators employing his services, and, if so, why none of them ever interviewed him as a witness.)

On 6-29-64, the Warren Commission meets and deliberates over the submitted chapters of its report.  Intriguingly, little was known of this meeting until 1997, when General Counsel J. Lee Rankin’s private papers were donated to the National Archives following the JFK Records Act.  Rankin’s notes reveal that this meeting consists of his running down a list of questions, and the Commissioners’ deciding whether the proposed chapters adequately answer these questions.  Over and over, on the questions of the number of the shots, the order in which the wounds were inflicted, etc, they answer “Treatment in proposed draft satisfactory.”  This indicates that by June 5, Specter’s conclusions were written in stone, and that the subsequent testimony of close-up witnesses such Jacqueline Kennedy, James Altgens, Phil Willis, and Linda Willis was taken entirely for political reasons, i.e., to convince the American people that the words of all the prominent witnesses had been considered, when in fact they had not.

Strangely, while the commission is completely convinced that Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy, they still can't figure out why he performed his purported act. If he did it because he hated Kennedy then why was everyone who knew him so convinced that he actually liked Kennedy? If he did it for fame or for political reasons, then why did he try to get away and why did he deny his involvement?  (It's so hard to be a martyr without a cause.)  If he was simply a raving lunatic then why was he so calm before the cameras?  By July, the commission counsel tasked with answering this question, Wesley Liebeler, is so perplexed that he gives in and asks Oswald's brother Robert for guidance. Robert is unable to give him an answer. (In an interview published in The Nation on March 9, 1992, Liebeler would voice his continued inability to understand Oswald's motive. He revealed: "I drafted a psychological profile of Oswald for chapter seven of the report. It was reviewed by a panel including the chief of psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic, who threw my draft down and said, 'This is very interesting stuff, but it tells me a lot more about you, Liebeler, than it does about Oswald.' So how the hell do I know why Oswald killed the President?")

A few days later, we see a 7-7-64 letter from the Dallas FBI office, written in response to a 5-20 letter from the Commission, asking they establish the chain-of-evidence for a number of items. When discussing the chain-of-evidence for FBI C1/Warren Commission Exhibit CE 399, a near-pristine bullet found on a stretcher at Parkland hospital, an hour or more after the President and Governor were admitted, and purported to have caused Kennedy's back and throat wound, and all of Connally's wounds, it relates: "On June 12, 1964, Darrell C. Tomlinson...was shown Exhibit C1, a rifle slug, by Special Agent Bardwell D. Odum...Tomlinson stated it appears to be the same one he saw on a hospital carriage at Parkland Hospital...On June 12, 1964, O.P. Wright...advised Special Agent Bardwell D. Odum that Exhibit C1, a rifle slug, shown to him at the time of the interview, looks like the slug found at Parkland Hospital on November 22, 1963 which he gave to Richard Johnsen, Special Agent of the the Secret Service...On June 24, 1964, Richard E. Johnson...was shown Exhibit C1, a rifle bullet, by Special Agent Elmer Lee Todd, Federal Bureau of Investigation.  Johnsen advised he could not identify this bullet...On June 24, 1964, James C. Rowley, Chief, United States Secret Service...was shown Exhibit C1, a rifle bullet, by Special Agent Elmer Lee Todd.  Rowley advised he could not identify this bullet as the one he received from Special Agent Richard E. Johnsen and gave to Special Agent Todd on November 22, 1963. On June 24, 1964, Special Agent Elmer Lee Todd...identified C1, a rifle bullet, as being the one he received from James Rowley, Chief, United States Secret Service."  We note that the Secret Service has refused to swear by the bullet, and that an agent of the FBI itself, fifth in a line of possession, is the first to assert the bullet is the one found in the hospital.  As this bullet has been linked to Oswald's rifle and is necessary to demonstrate that Oswald fired the lethal shots, this is problematic.  Fortunately, the first men to see the bullet, Tomlinson and Wright, appear to agree with Agent Todd's identification.

By now well familiar with the FBI's inadequacies, however, we decide to do a little digging. We uncover a 6-20 memorandum from Dallas Special Agent in Charge Gordon Shanklin to J. Edgar Hoover telling him that "neither Darrell C. Tomlinson, who found bullet at Parkland Hospital, Dallas, nor O.P. Wright, Personnel Officer, Parkland Hospital, who obtained bullet from Tomlinson and gave to Special Agent Richard E. Johnsen, Secret Service at Dallas 11/22/63, can identify bullet."  As this memo specifies that Tomlinson and Wright could not identify the bullet, and as the letter sent to the Commission indicates they believed the bullets appeared to be the same, we find yet another reason to suspect the FBI's integrity, and to seriously question the Commission's reliance upon its services. (In subsequent years, Josiah Thompson and Gary Aguilar would dig into this even further.  In 1967, Thompson would show Wright a photo of CE 399 and ask him if CE 399 was in fact the bullet he remembered seeing, and Wright would tell him the bullet he saw had a pointed tip.  In 2002, Thompson and Aguilar would contact the FBI's Bardwell Odum, to see if he remembered Tomlinson and Wright identifying the bullet, per the FBI's 7-7-64 letter to the Commission.  Odum would insist he had no recollection of ever handling CE 399, let alone showing it to Tomlinson and Wright.)

In its 7-10-64 issue, Life Magazine resumes its campaign to convict Oswald in the public eye and bolster the by-now certain conclusions of the Commission. Its introduction to Oswald's diary from his time in Russia claims that the diary "is one of the most important pieces of evidence studied by the Warren Commission in its effort to unravel the character and motives of President Kennedy's assassin."  No "accused"  No "presumed." Assassin. Singular. Period.

Around this time someone on the commission decides it might be a good idea to interview Abraham Zapruder. Seeing as his movie is one of the commission's prime pieces of evidence, it kinda makes sense. Abraham Zapruder (7-22-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 7H569-576) “Well, as the car came in line almost...as it reached about--I imagine it was around here--I heard the first shot and I saw the President lean over and grab himself like this (holding his left chest area)…In other words, he was sitting like this and waving and then after the shot he just went like that…Leaning—leaning toward the side of Jacqueline. For a moment I thought it was—you know, like you say, “Oh, he got me,” when you hear a shot…but before I had a chance to organize my mind, I heard a second shot and then I saw his head opened up and the blood and everything came out and I started—I can hardly talk about it. (the witness crying).  (When asked how many shots he heard) “I thought I heard two, it could be three, because to my estimation I thought he was hit on the second—I really don’t know…I heard the second—after the first shot—I saw him leaning over and after the second shot—it’s possible after what I saw, you know, then I started yelling, “They killed him, they killed him.” Here is one of the best witnesses to the shooting--a nearby witness watching the shooting through a zoom lens, for chrissakes, and here he is looking through  stills taken from his movie of the shooting, and here he tells the commission his impression of the moment of the first shot--"I imagine it was around here"--and here the commission fails to note where his "here" is. Since Zapruder says Kennedy was waving when shot, and says nothing about Kennedy coming from out behind the sign when shot, the clear impression is that he thought Kennedy was hit just after he stopped waving and just before he went behind the sign, between frames 190 and 200 of Zapruder's film. As the commission believes a tree hid Kennedy from the sniper's nest between frames 170 to 210, moreover, and as they've already decided Kennedy was hit while behind the sign in frames 210-225, they, apparently, have no interest in telling the public Zapruder's proposed moment of impact. And so they fail to ask him to mark an exhibit indicating the moment of the first shot on his film, and allow his "here" to slip forever into  "where?".

In the subsequent discussion of his famous film and camera, Zapruder makes another interesting statement:  “Well, they claimed, they told me it was about 2 frames fast--instead of 16 it was 18 frames and they told me it was about 2 frames fast in the speed and they told me that the time between the 2 rapid shots, as I understand, that was determined--the length of time it took to the second one and that they were very fast and they claim it has proven it could be done by 1 man. You know there was indication there were two?” This statement indicates that someone, probably from the FBI, has been keeping him informed on the FBI’s tests on his camera.  Instead of telling him that the speed of his camera calls into doubt that one man could have fired the shots, however, they have told him the opposite, that the tests revealed it could have been done by one man.  One can only assume this is a reference to the tests performed in December.

It is also decided that another close-up witness, the groundskeeper of Dealey Plaza, Emmett Hudson, should be called. Emmett Hudson. (7-22-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 7H558-565) “the first shot rung out and, of course, I didn’t realize it was a shot… when the second one rung out, the motorcade had got further on down Elm…I happened to be looking right at him when that bullet hit him, the second shot…it looked like it hit him somewhere along a little bit behind the ear and a little bit above the ear.  (When asked where the car was when he heard the first shot)  “I remember it was right along about this light post here.” (indicating the first light post)   (When asked if he heard three shots)  “Yes, sir.”  (When asked if he was sure the second shot hit Kennedy in the head)  “Yes, I do believe it was—I know it was.”  (When asked what happened during the third shot)  “the young fellow that was sitting there with me—standing there with me at the present time, he says “Lay down , Mister, somebody is shooting at the President”…so I just laid down over the ground and resting my arm on the ground and when that third shot rung out and when I was close to the ground—you could tell the shot was coming from above and kind of behind.” (When asked if he’d “heard it come from sort of behind the motorcade and then above?”) “Yes.”

And then, at the last second, a problematic witness resurfaces. The FBI had forwarded an interview with this witness to the Commission on 12-23-63, but the Commission had not sought him out for further investigation, or even acknowledged his existence, until a 6-5-64 article in the Dallas Times Herald brought his story to the public’s attention. James Tague (7-23-64 testimony before the Warren Commission, 7H552-558) “I was standing there watching, and really I was watching to try to distinguish the President and his car.  About this time I heard what sounded like a firecracker.  Well, a very loud firecracker.  It certainly didn’t sound like a rifle shot.  It was more of a loud cannon-type sound.  I looked around to see who was throwing firecrackers or what was going on and I turned my head away from the motorcade and, of course, two more shots.” (When asked if he saw the President hit) “I did not” (When asked which shot hit him) “maybe the second or third shot, I couldn’t tell you definitely” (When asked if he heard any shots after he was hit) “I believe I did…I believe it was the second shot, so I heard the third shot afterwards. (When asked where he thought the shots came from) “my first impression was that up by the, whatever you call the monument…somebody was throwing firecrackers up there.” As Tague was hit by a fragment from one of the last two shots, his testimony cuts into Specter and the Commission’s options.  If Specter says the first shot missed then he has to hold that Tague was injured by a fragment from the head shot, which many might find far-fetched. 

A 7-24-64 FBI report on Mrs. Clotile Williams is also revealing. Mrs. Williams is a previously undiscovered eyewitness to the assassination.  The bulk of the report is not on Mrs. Williams’ recollections, however, nor on the names of her co-workers in the building across from the school book depository, who may have seen something.  The report’s focus, instead, is on trying to establish the identities of two independent researchers who contacted Mrs. Williams after someone recognized her in one of the photos of the motorcade.  The investigating agent goes as far as taking a detailed description of these researchers from Mrs. Williams’ neighbor.  The FBI, of course, has not found the time to interview either of the motorcycle officers to Kennedy’s right, nor Abraham Zapruder’s secretary.

Elsewhere, on 7-24-64 the Warren Commission engages the Marine Corps in a little self-protection. To counter Lt. Col. Folsom’s description of Oswald’s marksmanship as “poor,” they take the testimony of Major Eugene D. Anderson, an assistant head of the Marksmanship branch of the Marines, and  Master Sergeant James Zahn, an NCO of Marksmanship Training.  Arlen Specter takes their testimony. After being shown Oswald's test scores, Anderson offers an explanation for Oswald's lowly score in 1959, shortly before he left the Marines:  "It may well have been a bad day for firing a rifle, windy, rainy, dark. There is little probability that he had a good, expert coach. and he probably didn't have as high a motivation because he was no longer in recruit training and under the care of the drill instructor.  There is some possibility that the rifle he was firing might not have been as good a rifle as the rifle he was firing in his A course firing. because he may well have carried this rifle around for some time, and it got banged around in normal usage." Anderson summarizes Oswald's abilities as follows:  "I would say that as compared to other Marines receiving the same kind of training, that Oswald was a good shot, somewhat better than or equal to--better than average let us say.  As compared to a civilian who had not received this intensive training, he would be considered as a good to excellent shot." Specter then shows Anderson frames from the Zapruder film and asks him if hitting Kennedy from the distances determined at the re-enactment would be within Oswald's capabilities, and Anderson repeatedly says the shots were within Oswald's capabilities. He then asks him if Oswald could fire three shots in a time span between 4.8 and 5.6 seconds, and Anderson once again replies in the affirmative. Specter fails to ask Anderson the more pertinent question if Oswald could be expected to hit the 2 "not particularly difficult" shots within a 4.8-5.6  second time span while firing at a moving target with a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.  Perhaps he already knew the answer.  After finishing with Anderson, Specter makes a point of asking Zahn about Oswald’s ability “based on the tests.” This avoids that the most recent test was 4 years before the shooting and that Oswald had failed to keep in practice.  Zahn tells Specter what he undoubtedly wants to hear: “I would say in the Marine Corps he is a good shot, slightly above average, and as compared to the average male of his age throughout the civilian, throughout the United States, that he is an excellent shot.” Clearly, this is the new company line.

Commissioner Dulles was especially receptive to this line. A letter from Dulles to Rankin on 7-27-64, available on the Princeton University website, asks "Where have we dealt with the evidence as to Oswald's ability to handle a rifle?" This confirms that Rankin and his men had held off writing anything about Oswald's shooting ability, until after they could get "friendly" witnesses, such as Major Anderson and Master Sergeant Zahn, on the record.

In this attempt they were not particularly concerned with the truth. Only hinted at in the testimony of Anderson and Zahn is the strange fact that the Commission has already concluded that Oswald, who'd received no training whatsoever on firing at moving targets, firing from elevation, firing with a telescopic site, or even firing a bolt-action rifle, was able to rapid-fire a bolt-action rifle equipped with a telescopic site and hit a moving target from elevation two out of three times without one lick of practice. This is like a man with a driver's license--who hasn't driven a car in several years--getting behind the wheel of a dragster and winning a championship race. Also unmentioned in the testimony is that there was a stack of books found in the sniper's nest, and that the commission had presumed these books were used as a rifle rest by a sniper shooting Kennedy. The use of such a prop is not taught in the Marines. Instead, Marines like Oswald are taught to fire from a standing, kneeling, or prone position, with the rifle at a 45 degree angle to the body, and to track moving objects, such as a car, by moving the site along the path of the target, even after firing. The use of a "rifle rest", therefore, precludes such a tactic, and suggests that, instead, the shooter waited for the target to cross a pre-selected point. There is also a question about the angle of the rifle to the sniper's body. The location of the box purportedly used as a seat by the sniper, and the indentation on the "rifle rest," indicates that the shooter was sitting back from the sixth floor sniper's window, aiming toward its right. Someone with Oswald's training, on the other hand, in order to fire far off to his right, would have to have been up near the windowsill, with his profile clearly visible to those on the street below. No one saw such a profile.

On 7-27-64 Chief Counsel Rankin receives yet another correspondence relating to Oswald’s marksmanship abilities, this one from J. Edgar Hoover. Someone at the Commission recalled the claim in the December 6 issue of Life Magazine that Oswald’s purported shots had been duplicated by someone at the NRA, and asked the FBI to look into it.  The FBI report forwarded by Hoover is quite damaging to Life’s credibility. While Life claimed the shooter was an official of the NRA, it turned out the shooter had merely been recommended by the NRA. The shooter, Clayton Wheat, moreover, admitted that he’d had 8 or 9 practice shots and had used a 7.35mm Carcano in his tests, not the 6.5 mm Carcano purportedly used by Oswald.  He also acknowledged that he’d fired on a moving deer target traveling slowly, 3-5 mph, right to left over 33 feet, and not at a human head and shoulders-sized target traveling 12 mph away on an angle over a distance of 100 feet or so. He also mentioned that that he’d fired at the target from a distance of 150 feet, from approximately 10 degrees above horizontal, as opposed to firing from a distance of 160-265 feet from approximately 22-16 degrees above horizontal for the purported shots on Kennedy from the sniper’s nest. In short, he didn’t reproduce the shots at all. While Wheat stood by his claim that he’d had three hits in 6.2 seconds on his first try, he admitted that he’d missed two shots in his five runs due to poor ammunition, and couldn’t remember the times of the other runs.

On 8-4-64, 8-21-64, and 9-10-64, the FBI creates reports on the “Mark Lane Security Matter” and forwards them to the Warren Commission.  While ostensibly an investigation of communist involvement in Lane’s Citizen’s Committee of Inquiry, which he’d formed to unveil the truth about the assassination, these reports are really designed to feed the Commission what its critics are saying, so that the Commission can counter these arguments in their final report. (Indeed, many of Lane’s questions would be answered by the report.)  There are unnerving elements to these FBI reports however. The 8-4 report details a number of Lane’s speeches, and cites ten separate confidential sources, the 8-21 report includes a complete transcript of Lane’s appearance on a radio show, and the 9-10 report details more of Lane’s speeches, and cites twelve confidential sources.  This raises a few questions:  Where was all this manpower when it came time to identify the unidentified witnesses in the photographs of the shooting? Where was all this manpower when it came time to interview the witnesses who were known to the media, or mentioned in the early reports of the Dallas Police?  Where was all this manpower when it came to accurately simulate the conditions in Dallas, to see if Oswald could actually have performed his purported feat?  Furthermore, where was all this manpower when it came time to review the autopsy report? Study Kennedy’s wounds?  Study the reactions of the human body to gunshot wounds, and see if the exact moments of impact could actually be identified in the Zapruder film? And finally, where was all this manpower when it came time to match the eyewitness testimony to the proposed shooting scenario?  Spying on Oswald’s mother?  Watching Mark Lane?

By late August, the Commission has begun preparing for the release of its report. On 8-28-64, General Counsel Rankin and Counsels Liebeler and Griffin meet with the FBI's fingerprint expert Sebastian Latona, and ask the FBI's help in ascertaining whose fingerprints and palm prints were found on the boxes of the sniper's nest  Here, only NINE MONTHS after the shooting, it finally dawns on them that not knowing whose prints were found in the sniper's nest "leaves room for the allegation and speculation that Oswald had a co-conspirator in killing President Kennedy." The FBI's memo on this meeting reflects no genuine interest on their part in finding out whose prints these were, mind you, only that they were concerned about the speculation should they not endeavor to find out whose prints, besides Oswald's, were found in the nest. In any event, Rankin makes a formal request that the FBI help "resolve this issue by whatever additional investigation was necessary." Within days, the FBI compares the unidentified prints to those of 16 current and former employees of the depository, 4 employees of the Dallas Police Department, and 5 employees of the Bureau itself. From this they discover that 14 of the 19 fingerprints, and 4 of the 6 palm prints, came from the DPD Crime Lab's Robert Studebaker, who originally dusted the boxes for prints. They discover as well that of the other 5 fingerprints and 2 remaining palm prints, all but one palm print came from an FBI clerk named Forrest Lucy. Despite their best efforts, however--over the course of the next month, the FBI checks this lone palm print against the prints of another 85 Dallas Police and FBI employees--they are unable to identify the source of this print.  

On 9-1-64, in an effort to tie up loose ends, the Commission calls upon FBI photo expert Lyndal Shaneyfelt. This is the the third time he's testified. He discusses the various photos of Oswald with his rifle, and how the newspapers and magazines showing these photos had tampered with them, and accidentally created the illusion the rifle was not the rifle recovered at the Book Depository. He then discusses photos of Oswald's shirt, which essentially prove nothing other than that Oswald had been wearing that shirt when arrested. He also discusses a photograph by Phil Willis. This photo was taken, per Willis' testimony, a split second after the first shot. Egged on by Norman Redlich, Shaneyfelt testifies "it is my opinion that photograph A of Shaneyfelt exhibit no. 25 was taken in the vicinity of the time that frame 210 of the Zapruder film was taken. This is not an accurate determination because the exact location of Mr. Willis is unknown. This would allow for some variation, but the time of the photograph A, as related to the Zapruder film, would be generally during the period that the President was behind the signboard in the Zapruder films, which covers a range from around frame 205 to frame 225." Redlich then interjects "Prior investigation has also revealed that when viewed from the southeast corner window of the sixth floor, the President emerges from the oak tree at approximately frame 210." Redlich then asks Shaneyfelt if it would be possible to fix Willis' exact location, and thus the exact time of his photograph as compared to the Zapruder film. Shaneyfelt replies "Yes, it would be possible having Mr. Willis' camera, to fix his location with some degree of accuracy..." When then nudged by Redlich "You are reasonably satisfied, however, that the technique that you have used to fix his location is a reasonably accurate one  upon which you can base your conclusions which you have stated today?" Shaneyfelt responds "Yes, yes. I feel that the exact establishing of the position of Mr. Willis would not add a great detail of additional accuracy to my present conclusions." 

Well, wait a minute. On June 4, Shaneyfelt testified in a curious manner that Kennedy appeared to be un-hit before he went behind the sign around frame 210 of the Zapruder film. Now he has testified that the Willis photo was taken around frame 210, the exact moment, as Norman Redlich was so kind to point out, that Kennedy was first visible to the sniper's nest after passing under the oak tree. A more accurate location for Willis might mean that Willis took his picture before Kennedy went behind the sign. It might be an indication that someone fired a shot when Kennedy was hidden from the sniper's nest. It might be an indication there was a second shooter. That Shaneyfelt refused to accurately plot Willis' location, and thus the timing of his photo, when added to the fact that he and Redlich went to such great lengths to assure everyone a more accurate assessment was unnecessary, when added to the fact that this testimony is being taken in the last weeks of the Commission, suggests the possibility that both men know the photo was taken when Oswald couldn't have fired the shot, and were trying to keep this off the record. (Sure enough, it was subsequently demonstrated that the photo was taken at frame 202 of the Zapruder film, before Kennedy went behind the sign. Equally intriguing, when deposed in a Freedom of Information act lawsuit brought by Harold Weisberg in 1977, and asked about his work on the Willis photo by Weisberg's lawyer Jim Lesar, Shaneyfelt testified "I may have" three times and "I don't recall" five times, and concluded smugly that "I am sure the record speaks for itself." Yes, it does--to those who listen.)

Cover-ups are afoot. The wound ballistics expert at Kennedy's autopsy, Dr. Pierre Finck, writes a memo to himself on 9-11-64, stating: "I am called by Captain Stover, CO of Naval Med school. He tells me that Adm Burkley, White House Physician called him. The Warren Commission Report will be released to the Press shortly. However, the prosectors involved in Kennedy's autopsy are still required not to release information to the press. Inquiries should be referred to the White House Press Office. Brig Gen Blumberg, AFIP Director, calls me within two hours, notifying me of the same White House orders." This memo suggests that Johnson himself is behind the scenes, orchestrating a hush-hush of the medical evidence. For who else could pressure the President's personal physician into making phone calls first to the boss of Dr.s Humes and Boswell (Stover) and then to Finck's boss (Gen. Blumberg) insisting that the doctors stay quiet?  While one might venture that Burkley has taken this upon himself, due to his loyalty to his former patient, Kennedy, it is highly doubtful that an Admiral in the Navy would give orders to a Brigadier General in the Army without first obtaining backing from his Commander-in-Chief.

On 9-18-64, President Johnson and Warren Commissioner Richard Russell have an intriguing conversation. This conversation further illuminates Johnson's desire that the murder of his predecessor just disappear. The conversation reflects the dissent within the Commission over Arlen Specter’s single-bullet theory, as well as Russell and Johnson’s inability to understand the importance of the single-bullet theory to the single-assassin conclusion.

Senator Richard Russell:  “No, no.  They’re trying to prove that the same bullet that hit Kennedy first was the one that hit Connally, went through him and through his hand, his bone, and into his leg…I couldn’t hear all the evidence and cross-examine all of ‘em.  But I did read the record…I was the only fellow there that…suggested any change whatever in what the staff got up.  This staff business always scares me.  I like to put my own views down.  But we got you a pretty good report.”

President Lyndon Johnson:  Well, what difference does it make which bullet got Connally?

Senator Richard Russell:  Well, it don’t make much difference.  But they said that…the commission believes that the same bullet that hit Kennedy hit Connally.  Well, I don’t believe it. 

President Lyndon Johnson:  I don’t either.

Senator Richard Russell:  And so I couldn’t sign it.  And I said that Governor Connally testified directly to the contrary and I’m not gonna approve of that.  So I finally made ‘em say there was a difference in the commission, in that part of ‘em believed that that wasn’t so.  And, course if a fellow was accurate enough to hit Kennedy right in the neck on one shot and knock his head off in the next one—and he’s leaning up against his wife’s head—and not even wound her—why he didn’t miss completely with that third shot.  But according to their theory, he not only missed the whole auto mobile, but he missed the street!  Well, a man that’s a good enough shot to put two bullets right into Kennedy, he didn’t miss that whole automobile.”

This last conversation becomes even more intriguing once one takes into account that the minutes of the 9-18-64 executive session of the Warren Commission fail to note Russell’s dissent, or even that the single-bullet theory was discussed. (When researcher Harold Weisberg pointed this out to Russell in 1968, Russell cut-off contact with his one-time protege Johnson. While this was probably not the only reason for his cutting Johnson off--he was also upset about Johnson dragging his feet on the appointment of a judge--it is symptomatic of most historians' refusal to understand the importance of the assassination that they fail to mention it as even one of many reasons.)  

On September 24, 1964, the Commission gives their completed report to President Johnson.  The Single-Bullet Theory that had been supported by “compelling evidence” is now only supported by “persuasive evidence” after Warren compromises with Senator Russell. Russell’s skepticism is thereby hidden from public view.  In time it would be revealed that three other Commissioners--Senator Cooper, Congressman Boggs and John McCloy--had also expressed misgivings about Specter’s single-bullet theory.

So, now we’re in the shoes of the Commissioners.  Of the 40 closest witnesses hearing three shots, 35 have indicated that either the last two shots were close together or that the last shot came after the head shot.  Only 5 have indicated the last shot was the head shot without also indicating the last two shots were grouped together. Since 3 of those indicating the last two shots came together said the last shot was the head shot, this makes a total of 8 witnesses hearing 3 shots to state the last shot was the head shot.  And 2 of these were the Connallys who ducked down in the car before the head shot.  And another of these was Gayle Newman, who dived to the grass after the head shot. And 4 of these were men in the Secret Service back-up car; 3 of whom made no statements indicating the last shot was the head shot until after the Secret Service had studied the film and come to its conclusion the last shot was the head shot.  Which leaves just one bystander witness to assert the last shot was the head shot: a 14-year old girl who testified for the first time eight months to the day after the assassination.  On the other hand there are 22 witnesses claiming to have heard shots after the head shot, including the young girl’s mother and the majority of the closest witnesses.  How do Specter and the Warren Commission describe the shots?.

The Specter Solution: The Warren Report's Conclusions (with Italicized Comments)

Number of shots

The consensus among the witnesses at the scene was that three shots were fired. However, some heard only two shots, while others testified that they heard four and perhaps as many as five or six shots. The difficulty of accurate perception of the sound of gunshots required careful scrutiny of all of this testimony regarding the number of shots. The firing of a bullet causes a number of noises, the muzzle blast, caused by the smashing of the hot gases which propel the bullet into the relatively stable air at the gun's muzzle, the noise of the  bullet caused by the shock wave built up ahead of the bullet's nose as it travels through the air, and the noise caused by the impact of  the bullet on its target.  Each noise can be quite sharp and may be perceived as a separate shot.  The tall buildings in the area might have further distorted the sound.

The physical and other evidence examined by the Commission compels the conclusion that at least two shots were fired. As discussed previously, the nearly whole bullet discovered at Parkland Hospital and the two larger fragments found in the Presidential automobile, which were identified as coming from the assassination rifle, came from at least two separate bullets and possibly from three. The most convincing evidence relating to the number of shots was provided by the presence on the sixth floor of three spent cartridges which were demonstrated to have been fired by the same rifle that fired the bullets which caused the wounds. It is possible that the assassin carried an empty shell in the rifle and fired only two shots, with the witnesses hearing multiple noises made by the same shot. Soon after the three empty cartridges were found, officials at the scene decided that three shots were fired, and that conclusion was widely circulated by the press. The eyewitness testimony may be subconsciously colored by the extensive publicity given the conclusion that three shots were fired. Nevertheless, the preponderance of the evidence, in particular the three spent cartridges, led the Commission to conclude that there were three shots fired.

The Shot That Missed

From the initial findings that (a) one shot passed through the President's neck and then most probably passed through the Governor's body, (b) a subsequent shot penetrated the President's head, (c) no other shot struck any part of the automobile, and (d) three shots were fired, it follows that one shot probably missed the car and its occupants. The evidence is inconclusive as to whether it was the first, second, or third shot which missed. 

The First Shot

If the first shot missed, the assassin perhaps missed in an effort to fire a hurried shot before the President passed under the oak tree, or possibly he fired as the President passed under the tree and the tree obstructed his view. The bullet might have struck a portion of the tree and been completely deflected. On the other hand, the greatest cause for doubt that the first shot missed is the improbability that the same marksman who twice hit a moving target would be so inaccurate on the first and closest of his shots as to miss completely, not only the target, but the large automobile.

Some support for the contention that the first shot missed is found in the statement of Secret Service Agent Glen A. Bennett, stationed in the right rear seat of the President's follow-up car, who heard a sound like a firecracker as the motorcade proceeded down Elm Street. At that moment, Agent Bennett stated:

...I looked at the back of the President. I heard another firecracker noise and saw that shot hit the President about four inches down from the right shoulder. A second shot followed immediately and hit the right rear high of the President's head.

Substantial weight may be given Bennett's observations. Although his formal statement was dated November 23, 1963, his notes indicate that he recorded what he saw and heard at 5:30 p.m., November 22, 1963, on the airplane en route back to Washington, prior to the autopsy, when it was not yet.known that the President had been hit in the back. It is possible, of course, that Bennett did not observe the hole in the President's back, which might have been there immediately after the first noise. (It is interesting that Specter accords Bennett’s observations substantial weight here, considering that Bennett was never called to testify and that elsewhere Specter completely ignores Bennett’s appraisal of the back wound and head wound. It is also interesting that Specter gives Bennett's statement substantial weight, because it was based on notes written within hours of the shooting, but ignores the notes themselves. In the notes Bennett says that after he heard the first shot and he looked at the President he saw "a shot that hit the boss" and that  "a second shoot followed immediately and hit the right rear high of the boss's head." This suggests that writing skills were not Bennett's strong point, and that he in fact had seen "that a shot had hit the boss" before a second shot followed. In other words, Bennett may very well have heard only two shots and have seen the President hit by the first of these shots. This makes using him to support that the first shot missed a bit of a stretch.)

Governor Connally's testimony supports the view that the first shot missed, because he stated that he heard a shot, turned slightly to his right, and, as he started to turn back toward his left, was struck by the second bullet. He never saw the President during the shooting sequence, and it is entirely possible that he heard the missed shot and that both men were struck by the second bullet. Mrs. Connally testified that after the first shot she turned and saw the President's hands moving toward his throat, as seen in the films at frame 225. However, Mrs. Connally further stated that she thought her husband was hit immediately thereafter by the second bullet. If the same bullet struck both the President and the Governor, it is entirely possible that she saw the President's movements at the same time as she heard the second shot. Her testimony, therefore, does not preclude the possibility of the first shot having missed. (Specter is being disingenuous here, and is attempting to hide that the single-bullet theory he proposes elsewhere is at odds with the testimony of the Connallys.  Mrs. Connally would have heard a shot from the sniper’s nest only 1/10^th of a second after the bullet impacted on Kennedy.  It is not reasonable to assume she would hear a shot, turn, see Kennedy’s reaction to a second shot at the same time she heard this second shot, and then attribute Kennedy’s reaction to the first shot heard more than 2 ½ seconds earlier.)

Other eyewitness testimony, however, supports the conclusion that the first of the shots fired hit the President. As discussed in chapter II, Special Agent Hill's testimony indicates that the President was hit by the first shot and that the head injury was caused by a second shot which followed about 5 seconds later. James W. Altgens, a photographer in Dallas for the Associated Press, had stationed himself on Elm Street opposite the Depository to take pictures of the passing motorcade. Altgens took a widely circulated photograph which showed President Kennedy reacting to the first of the two shots which hit him. (See Commission Exhibit No. 900, p. 113.) According to Altgens, he snapped the picture "almost simultaneously" with a shot which he is confident was the first one fired. Comparison of his photograph with the Zapruder film, however, revealed that Altgens took his picture at approximately the same moment as frame 255 of the movie, 30 to 45 frames (approximately 2 seconds) later than the point at which the President was shot in the neck. (See Commission Exhibit No. 901, p. 114.) Another photographer, Phillip L. Willis, snapped a picture at a time which he also asserts was simultaneous with the first shot. Analysis of his photograph revealed that it was taken at approximately frame 210 of the Zapruder film, which was the approximate time of the shot that probably hit the President and the Governor. If Willis accurately recalled that there were no previous shots, this would be strong evidence that the first shot did not miss.(Subsequent study of Willis' photo showed that it was taken at frame 202, when a tree blocked a clear view of Kennedy from the sniper's nest. The FBI conclusion that it was taken at frame 210, just as the limousine was emerging from behind this tree, is more than a little suspicious.)

If the first shot did not miss, there must be an explanation for Governor Connally's recollection that he was not hit by it. There was, conceivably, a delayed reaction between the time the bullet struck him and the time he realized that he was hit, despite the fact that the bullet struck a glancing blow to a rib and penetrated his wrist bone. The Governor did not even know that he had been struck in the wrist or in the thigh until he regained consciousness in the hospital the next day. Moreover, he testified that he did not hear what he thought was the second shot, although he did hear a subsequent shot which coincided with the shattering of the President's head. One possibility, therefore, would be a sequence in which the Governor heard the first shot, did not immediately feel the penetration of the bullet, then felt the delayed reaction of the impact on his back, later heard the shot which shattered the President's head, and then lost consciousness without hearing a third shot which might have occurred later.

The Second Shot

The possibility that the second shot missed is consistent with the elapsed time between the two shots that hit their mark. From the timing evidenced by the Zapruder films, there was an interval of from 4.8 to 5.6 seconds between the shot which struck President Kennedy's neck (between frames 210 to 225) and the shot which struck his head at frame 313. Since a minimum of 2.3 seconds must elapse between shots, a bullet could have been fired from the rifle and missed during this interval. This possibility was buttressed by the testimony of witnesses who claimed that the shots were evenly spaced, since a second shot occurring within an interval of approximately 5 seconds would have to be almost exactly midway in this period. If Altgens' recollection is correct that he snapped his picture at the same moment as he heard a shot, then it is possible that he heard a second shot which missed, since a shot fired 2.3 seconds before he took his picture at frame 255 could have hit the President at about frame 213. (Specter misrepresents the minimum time lapse between the shots.  FBI ballistics expert Robert Frazier, who test-fired the gun, testified that 2.3 seconds was the time lapse between shots while firing at a stationary target, and that firing 3 shots at a moving target would add  a second to the overall time.  This translates to 51 frames between shots; in other words, Oswald would have to have fired as rapidly as possible in order to squeeze 3 shots between frames 210 and 313.) 

On the other hand, a substantial majority of the witnesses stated that the shots were not evenly spaced. Most witnesses recalled that the second and third shots were bunched together, although some believed that it was the first and second which were bunched. To the extent that reliance can be placed on recollection of witnesses as to the spacing of the shots, the testimony that the shots were not evenly spaced would militate against a second shot missing. Another factor arguing against the second shot missing is that the gunman would have been shooting at very near the minimum allowable time to have fired the three shots within 4.8 to 5.6 seconds, although it was entirely possible for him to have done so. (See ch. IV, pp. 188-194.)  (Here, Specter is admitting that the majority of witnesses heard the last two shots bunched together, and that this suggests that the second shot did not miss, and was therefore most probably the head shot.) 

The Third Shot 

The last possibility, of course, is that it was the third shot which missed. This conclusion conforms most easily with the probability that the assassin would most likely have missed the farthest shot, particularly since there was an acceleration of the automobile after the shot which struck the President's head. The limousine also changed direction by following the curve to the right, whereas previously it had been proceeding in almost a straight line with a rifle protruding from the sixth-floor window of the Depository Building.

One must consider, however, the testimony of the witnesses who described the head shot as the concluding event in the assassination sequence. Illustrative is the testimony of Associated Press photographer Altgens, who had an excellent vantage point near the President's car. He recalled that the shot which hit the President's head "was the last shot that much I will say with a great degree of certainty." On the other hand, Emmett J. Hudson, the grounds-keeper of Dealey Plaza, testified that from his position on Elm Street, midway between Houston Street and the Triple Underpass, he heard a third shot after the shot which hit the President in the head. In addition, Mrs. Kennedy's testimony indicated that neither the first nor the second shot missed. Immediately after the first noise she turned, because of the Governor's yell, and saw her husband raise his hand to his forehead. Then the second shot struck the President's head. (Here, Specter is confusing the issue unnecessarily.  As Mr. Altgens and Mrs. Kennedy could clearly recall but two shots, his attempts at using their testimony to establish which of the three shots missed the car is a bit strange.  Why doesn’t he use the words of Charles Brehm, Malcolm Summers, or Marilyn Willis?  Oh, that’s right, they were never called before the Commission…)

Some evidence suggested that a third shot may have entirely missed and hit the turf or street by the Triple Underpass. Royce G. Skelton, who watched the motorcade from the railroad bridge, testified that after two shots "the car came on down close to the Triple Underpass" and an additional shot "hit in the left front of the President's car on the cement." Skelton thought that there had been a total of four shots, either the third or fourth of which hit in the vicinity of the underpass. Dallas Patrolman J. W. Foster, who was also on the Triple Underpass, testified that a shot hit the turf near a manhole cover in the vicinity of the underpass. Examination of this area, however, disclosed no indication that a bullet struck at the locations indicated by Skelton or Foster.

At a different location in Dealey Plaza, the evidence indicated that a bullet fragment did hit the street. James T. Tague, who got out of his car to watch the motorcade from a position between Commerce and Main Streets near the Triple Underpass, was hit on the cheek by an object during the shooting. Within a few minutes Tague reported this to Deputy Sheriff Eddy R. Walthers, who was examining the area to see if any bullets had struck the turf. Walthers immediately started to search where Tague had been standing and located a place on the south curb of Main Street where it appeared a bullet had hit the cement. According to Tague, "There was a mark quite obviously. that was a bullet, and it was very fresh." In Tague's opinion, it was the second shot which caused the mark, since he thinks he heard the third shot after he was hit in the face. This incident appears to have been recorded in the contemporaneous report of Dallas Patrolman L. L. Hill, who radioed in around 12:40 p.m.: "I have one guy that was possibly hit by a ricochet from the bullet off the concrete." Scientific examination of the mark on the south curb of Main Street by FBI experts disclosed metal smears which, "were spectrographically determined to be essentially lead with a trace of antimony." The mark on the curb could have originated from the lead core of a bullet but the absence of copper precluded "the possibility that the mark on the curbing section was made by an unmutilated military full metal-jacketed bullet such as the bullet from Governor Connally's stretcher."

It is true that the noise of a subsequent shot might have been drowned out by the siren on the Secret Service follow-up car immediately after the head shot, or the dramatic effect of the head shot might have caused so much confusion that the memory of subsequent events was blurred. Nevertheless, the preponderance of the eyewitness testimony that the head shot was the final shot must be weighed in any determination as to whether it was the third shot that missed. Even if it were caused by a bullet fragment, the mark on the south curb of Main Street cannot be identified conclusively with any of the three shots fired. Under the circumstances it might have come from the bullet which hit the President's head, or it might have been a product of the fragmentation of the missed shot upon hitting some other object in the area. Since he did not observe any of the shots striking the President, Tague's testimony that the second shot, rather than the third, caused the scratch on his cheek, does not assist in limiting the possibilities. (What preponderance of the eyewitness testimony? That members of the Commission and its counsel knew this was nonsense is supported by a December 17, 1991 Washington Post article by Commissioner Gerald Ford and counsel David Belin. While trying to argue that Oswald had more time to fire his shots than proposed by Oliver Stone in his film JFK, they nonsensically argued "the most probable time span of Oswald's three shots was around 10 seconds, in light of the fact that one of Oswald's shots missed--most likely the first or the last." By citing that it was more likely that the third shot missed than the second, they confirmed that the section of their report arguing that a final shot miss was unlikely, was not a unanimous opinion.)

The wide range of possibilities and the existence of conflicting testimony, when coupled with the impossibility of scientific verification, precludes a conclusive finding by the Commission as to which shot missed. (He is clearly mistaken here. The preponderance of eyewitness statements indicates that the first shot hit.  It also indicates the likelihood that the last shot missed.  The problem for Specter is that, if he submits that the last shot missed, then he has to butt heads with those absolutely convinced that the last shot hit.  If he goes along and states that the last shot hit, however, he can’t come to the obvious conclusion that the first shot hit, without committing the Commission to a shooting scenario he knows may not pass the smell test, particularly after Frazier’s testimony.  So what does Specter do?  He pretends there is just no way of knowing what happened.)

Time Span of Shots

Witnesses at the assassination scene said that the shots were fired within a few seconds, with the general estimate being 5 to 6 seconds. That approximation was most probably based on the earlier publicized reports that the first shot struck the President in the neck, the second wounded the Governor and the third shattered the President's head, with the time span from the neck to the head shots on the President being approximately 5 seconds. As previously indicated, the time span between the shot entering the back of the President's neck and the bullet which shattered his skull was 4.8 to 5 seconds. If the second shot missed, then 4.8 to 5.6 seconds was the total time span of the shots. If either the first or third shots missed, then a minimum of 2.3 seconds (necessary to operate the rifle) must be added to the time span of the shots which hit, giving a minimum time of 7.1 to 7.9 seconds for the three shots. If more than 2.3 seconds elapsed between a shot that missed and one that hit, then the time span would be correspondingly increased.  (This is Specter at his best/worst.  Here he sidesteps the possibility of the missed shot’s being too close in time to either the first or second hit to have been fired by Oswald, by arbitrarily adding 2.3 seconds on to either end of his shooting scenario.  He almost certainly knows that the expected delay between shots while firing at a moving target is 2.8 seconds, not 2.3, and that this amounts to 51 frames.  He almost certainly knows there is no eyewitness support for a shot  as early as frame 173 (51 frames before the last possible moment Kennedy could have been hit by the second shot) nor for a shot as late as frame 364 (51 frames after the head shot).  The only scenario he can honestly push therefore is that the second shot missed.  He doesn’t want to do this, however, for two reasons: one, Governor Connally insisted he was hit by the second shot, and two, the shorter elapsed time makes Oswald’s purported shooting feat many times more difficult and probably beyond his abilities.  So what does Specter do? Once again, he decides not to decide.)  

Conclusion

Based on the evidence analyzed in this chapter, the Commission has concluded that the shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally were fired from the sixth-floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository Building. Two bullets probably caused all the wounds suffered by President Kennedy and Governor Connally. Since the preponderance of the evidence indicated that three shots were fired, the Commission concluded that one shot probably missed the Presidential limousine and its occupants, and that the three shots were fired in a time period ranging from approximately 4.8 to in excess of 7 seconds. (Let’s recall the 12-16-63 Executive Session of the Warren Commission, in which Chief Justice Warren and Congressman Boggs discussed the FBI Report’s failure to clear up which shots struck the President.  Sayeth Warren: “It doesn’t do anything”  Respondeth Boggs: “It raises a lot of new questions in my mind.”  Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?)

 

Straight Shooters or Smoke Blowers?

Since the Commission refused to decide how the shots were fired, the possibility that Oswald successfully hit a moving target two of three times in less than 6 seconds had to be supported. This put the writers of the report in a bind. As a result, the section of the report on Oswald's rifle capability is among the least credible parts of the report, filled with errors and (almost certainly) deliberate deceptions. This section follows...with my added comments (of course).

Oswald's Rifle Capability

In deciding whether Lee Harvey Oswald fired the shots which killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally, the Commission considered whether Oswald, using his own rifle, possessed the capability to hit his target with two out of three shots under the conditions described in chapter Ill. The Commission evaluated (1) the nature of the shots, (2) Oswald's Marine training in marksmanship, (8) his experience and practice after leaving the Marine Corps, and (4) the accuracy of the weapon and the quality of the ammunition. 

The Nature of the Shots

For a rifleman situated on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository Building the shots were at a slow-moving target proceeding on a downgrade in virtually a straight line with the alignment of the assassin's rifle, at a range of 177 to 266 feet. An aerial photograph of Dealey Plaza shows that Elm Street runs at an angle so that the President would have been moving in an almost straight line away from the assassin's rifle. (See Commission Exhibit No. 876, p. 33.) In addition, the 3 degree downward slope of Elm Street was of assistance in eliminating at least some of the adjustment which is ordinarily required when a marksman must raise his rifle as a target moves farther away.(As shown on the slide above, the Commission knew full well that the limousine was not proceeding "in virtually a straight line away" from the sixth floor sniper's nest, but was heading to the right. This makes this statement suspicious. That the FBI's Robert Frazier failed to measure the lead to the right necessary to hit the limousine for his March 31 testimony, and that FBI Exhibits Chief Leo Gauthier on June 4 misrepresented a photo taken from across the street of the sniper's nest and directly behind the limo as a photo taken from the sniper's nest, suggests that the FBI was being deliberately deceptive on this issue. That the Warren Commission, which oversaw the May 24, 1964 re-enactment, measured the angle of descent from the sniper's nest, but not the angle of the bullet into the car (which was subsequently shown to vary from 12 to 8 degrees during the assassination sequence), and that photos of this re-enactment show the limo at frame 313 in line with a shot from the sniper's nest, but out of alignment with the lines in the street, suggests, furthermore, that they were a witting part of this deception. This should make us wonder if some "executive decision" had been made on this point. That Legendary LAPD Chief William Parker called a press conference on 11-27-63, and told the big, fat, Canada goose-honking lie that the lateral movement of the limo during the shooting sequence was so small it would have been "imperceptible" to a shooter in the sniper's nest, should only intensify this suspicion.)

Four marksmanship experts testified before the Commission. Maj. Eugene D. Anderson, assistant head of the Marksmanship Branch of the US. Marine Corps, testified that the shots which struck the President in the neck and in the head were "not ... particularly difficult." Robert A. Frazier, FBI expert in firearms identification and training, said:

From my own experience in shooting over the years, when you shoot at 175 feet or 260 feet, which is less than 100 yards, with a telescopic sight, you should not have any difficulty in hitting your target.
I mean it requires no training at all to shoot a weapon with a telescopic sight once you know that you must put the crosshairs on the target and that is all that is necessary.(This avoids that, according to Frazier's own testimony, the crosshairs of Oswald's rifle were misaligned, and that his rifle, when first tested by the FBI, fired 4 inches high and 1 to the right at only 15 yards.)

Ronald Simmons, chief of the US. Army Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch of the Ballistics Research Laboratory, said: "Well, in order to achieve three hits, it would not be required that a man be an exceptional shot. A proficient man with this weapon, yes." (This avoids that Simmons actually tested the rifle, using three Master shooters employed by the Army, and that, of the 14 shots rapid-fired by these men, not one of them hit as close to the center of the head and shoulders target as the two hits attributed to Oswald.) The effect of a four-power telescopic sight on the difficulty of these shots was considered in detail by M. Sgt. James A. Zahm, noncommissioned officer in charge of the Marksmanship Training Unit in the Weapons Training Battalion of the Marine Corps School at Quantico, Va. Referring to a rifle with a four-power telescope, Sergeant Zahm said:

...this is the ideal type of weapon for moving targets...
...Using the scope, rapidly working a bolt and using the scope to relocate your target quickly and at the same time when you locate that target you identify it and the crosshairs are in close relationship to the point you want to shoot at, it just takes a minor move in aiming to bring the crosshairs to bear, and then it is a quick squeeze.
I consider it a real advantage, particularly at the range of 100 yards, in identifying your target. It. allows you to see your target clearly, and it is still of a minimum amount of power that it doesn't exaggerate your own body movements. It just is an aid in seeing in the fact that you only have the one element, the crosshair, in relation to the target as opposed to iron sights with aligning the sights and then aligning them on the target.

Characterizing the four-power scope as "a real aid, an extreme aid" in rapid fire shooting, Sergeant Zahm expressed the opinion that the shot which struck President Kennedy in the neck at 176.9 to 190.8 feet was "very easy" and the shot which struck the President in the head at a distance of 265.3 feet was "an easy shot." After viewing photographs depicting the alignment of Elm Street in relation to the Texas School Book Depository Building, Zahm stated further:

This is a definite advantage to the shooter, the vehicle moving directly away from him and the downgrade of the street, and he being in an elevated position made an almost stationary target while he was aiming in, very little movement if any. (It bears repeating that the vehicle was not actually moving directly away from the sniper in the school book depository, but away and to the right. It is also suspicious that Zahm was shown an overhead view of Dealey Plaza to convince him of this alignment, long after photographs of the May 24 re-enactment, and showing the exact angle of the limo to the sniper's nest, were available. It is also intriguing that Zahm was only asked to testify after the report had been completed, and was being re-written. Why was his speculation on the difficulty of the shots considered more significant than the tests performed by Simmons?)

Oswald's Marine Training

In accordance with standard Marine procedures, Oswald received extensive training in marksmanship. During the first week of an intensive 8-week training period he received instruction in sighting, aiming, and manipulation of the trigger. He went through a series of exercises called dry firing where he assumed all positions which would later be used in the qualification course. After familiarization with live ammunition in The .22 rifle and .22 pistol, Oswald, like all Marine recruits, received training on the rifle range at distances up to 500 yards, firing 50 rounds each day for five days.

Following that training, Oswald was tested in December of 1956, and obtained a score of 212, which was 2 points above the minimum for qualifications as a "sharpshooter" in a scale of marksman/sharp-shooter/expert. In May of 1959, on another range, Oswald scored 191, which was 1 point over the minimum for ranking as a "marksman." The Marine Corps records maintained on Oswald further show that he had fired and was familiar with the Browning Automatic rifle, .45 caliber pistol, and 12-gage riot gun.

Based on the general Marine Corps ratings, Lt. Col. A. G. Folsom, Jr., head, Records Branch, Personnel Department, Headquarters US. Marine Corps, evaluated the sharpshooter qualification as a "fairly good shot" and a low marksman rating as a "rather poor shot." When asked to explain the different scores achieved by Oswald on the two occasions when he fired for record, Major Anderson said:

...when he fired that [212] he had just completed a very intensive preliminary training period. He had the services of an experienced highly trained coach. He had high motivation. He had presumably a good to excellent rifle and good ammunition. We have nothing here to show under what conditions the B course was fired. It might well have been a bad day for firing the rifle, windy, rainy, dark. There is little probability that he had a good, expert coach, and he probably didn't have as high a motivation because he was no longer in recruit training and under the care of the drill instructor. There is some possibility that the rifle he was firing might not have been as good a rifle as the rifle that he was firing in his A course firing, because [he] may well have carried this rifle for quite some time, and it got banged around in normal usage.(This is classic obfuscation. The Commission offers speculation by Anderson that Oswald's "poor" shooting could have come as a result of bad weather, but fails to follow through and call the Weather Bureau or check a newspaper archive to see if this was true. Well, for what it's worth, early critic Mark Lane was a little more industrious and found the day in question to have been a warm sunny day with temperatures ranging from 72 to 79 degrees, with only a slight breeze. Anderson's speculation that Oswald's rifle in 1959 may have been inferior to the rifle he'd used earlier is also problematic. Oswald's Marine Corps-issued rifle was without doubt in far better condition and far more accurate than the presumed assassination weapon, a WWII surplus rifle that had not been cleaned for months, and had purportedly been carried to the assassination disassembled in a paper bag.)

Major Anderson concluded:

I would say that as compared to other Marines receiving the same type of training, that Oswald was a good shot, somewhat better than or equal to better than the average let us say. As compared to a civilian who had not received this intensive training, he would be considered as a good to excellent shot.

When Sergeant Zahm was asked whether Oswald's Marine Corps training would have made it easier to operate a rifle with a four-power scope, he replied:

Based on that training, his basic knowledge in sight manipulation and trigger squeeze and what not, I would say that he would be capable of sighting that rifle in well, firing it, with 10 rounds. (This avoids that, according to the testimony of Agent Frazier, Oswald's rifle was not properly sighted in on 11-22-63, and could not be properly sighted-in when they tried to do so.)

After reviewing Oswald's marksmanship scores, Sergeant Zahm concluded:

I would say in the Marine Corps he is a good shot, slightly above average, and as compared to the average male of his age throughout the civilian, throughout the United States, that he is an excellent shot. (More obfuscation: Zahm was asked to comment on Oswald's ability based upon his test scores in the Marines, and was not asked to speculate on Oswald's presumed abilities after falling out of practice, and firing a rifle unlike any he'd been trained on.)

Oswald's Rifle Practice Outside the Marines

During one of his leaves from the Marines, Oswald hunted with his brother Robert, using a .22 caliber bolt-action rifle belonging either to Robert or Robert's in-laws. After he left the Marines and before departing for Russia, Oswald, his brother, and a third companion went hunting for squirrels and rabbits. On that occasion Oswald again used a bolt-action .22 caliber rifle; and according to Robert, Lee Oswald exhibited an average amount of proficiency with that weapon. While in Russia, Oswald obtained a hunting license, joined a hunting club and went hunting about six times, as discussed more fully in chapter VI. Soon after Oswald returned from the Soviet Union he again went hunting with his brother, Robert, and used a borrowed .22 caliber bolt-action rifle. After Oswald purchased the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, he told his wife that he practiced with it. Marina Oswald testified that on one occasion she saw him take the rifle, concealed in a raincoat, from the house on Neely Street. Oswald told her he was going to practice with it. According to George De Mohrenschildt, Oswald said that he went target shooting with that rifle. (Notice that the Commission could not find a single witness to Oswald's actually practicing with the rifle. Notice also that it fails to show how practice so many months before could be of any help in the shooting. It also avoids that neither cleaning supplies nor ammunition were found amongst Oswald's possessions.)

Marina Oswald testified that in New Orleans in May of 1963, she observed Oswald sitting with the rifle on their screened porch at night, sighting with the telescopic lens and operating the bolt. Examination of the cartridge cases found on the sixth floor of the Depository Building established that they had been previously loaded and ejected from the assassination rifle, which would indicate that Oswald practiced operating the bolt.  

Accuracy of Weapon

It will be recalled from the discussion in chapter III that the assassin in all probability hit two out of the three shots during the maximum time span of 4.8 to 5.6 seconds if the second shot missed, or, if either the first or third shots missed, the assassin fired the three shots during a minimum time span of 7.1 to 7.9 seconds. A series of tests were performed to determine whether the weapon and ammunition used in the assassination were capable of firing the shots which were fired by the assassin on November 22, 1968. The ammunition used by the assassin was manufactured by Western Cartridge Co. of East Alton, III. In tests with the Mannlicher-Carcano C2766 rifle, over 100 rounds of this ammunition were fired by the FBI and the Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch of the US. Army. There were no misfires.

In an effort to test the rifle under conditions which simulated those which prevailed during the assassination, the Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch of the Ballistics Research Laboratory had expert riflemen fire the assassination weapon from a tower at three silhouette targets at distances of 175, 240, and 265 feet. The target at 265 feet was placed to the right of the 240-foot target which was in turn placed to the right of the closest silhouette. Using the assassination rifle mounted with the telescopic sight, three marksmen, rated as master by the National Rifle Association, each fired two series of three shots. In the first series the firers required time spans of 4.6, 6.75, and 8.25 seconds respectively. On the second series they required 5.15, 6.45, and 7 seconds. None of the marksmen had any practice with the assassination weapon except for exercising the bolt for 2 or 3 minutes on a dry run. They had not even pulled the trigger because of concern about breaking the firing pin.

The marksmen took as much time as they wanted for the first target and all hit the target. For the first four attempts, the firers missed the second shot by several inches. The angle from the first to the second shot was greater than from the second to the third shot and required a movement in the basic firing position of the marksmen. This angle was used in the test because the majority of the eyewitnesses to the assassination stated that there was a shorter interval between shots two and three than between shots one and two. As has been shown in chapter III, if the three shots were fired within a period of from 4.8 to 5.6 seconds, the shots would have been evenly spaced and the assassin would not have incurred so sharp an angular movement.

Five of the six shots hit the third target where the angle of movement of the weapon was small. (This avoids that none of these hits landed as close to the center of the head and shoulders target as the final hit on Kennedy, even though the rifle, for this test, had been re-aligned, and was purportedly shooting straight as an arrow.) On the basis of these results, Simmons testified that in his opinion the probability of hitting the targets at the relatively short range at which they were hit was very high. Considering the various probabilities which may have prevailed during the actual assassination, the highest level of firing performance which would have been required of the assassin and the C2766 rifle would have been to fire three times and hit the target twice within a span of 4.8 to 5.6 seconds. In fact, one of the firers in the rapid fire test in firing his two series of three shots, hit the target twice within a span of 4.6 and 5.15 seconds. (Note that they are discussing hitting the target, not hitting the target as close to center as the purported hits on Kennedy.) The others would have been able to reduce their times if they had been given the opportunity to become familiar with the movement of the bolt and the trigger pull. Simmons testified that familiarity with the bolt could be achieved in dry practice and, as has been indicated above, Oswald engaged in such practice. If the assassin missed either the first or third shot, he had a total of between 4.8 and 5.6 seconds between the two shots which hit and a total minimum time period of from 7.1 to 7.9 seconds for all three shots. All three of the firers in these tests were able to fire the rounds within the time period which would have been available to the assassin under those conditions. Three FBI firearms experts tested the rifle in order to determine the speed with which it could be fired. The purpose of this experiment was not to test the rifle under conditions which prevailed at the time of the assassination but to determine the maximum speed at which it could be fired. The three FBI experts each fired three shots from the weapon at 15 yards in 6, 7, and 9 seconds (Not true: Agent Frazier later corrected his testimony and claimed the correct times were 5.9, 8, and 9 seconds) , and one of these agents, Robert A. Frazier, fired two series of three shots at 25 yards in 4.6 and 4.8 seconds. At 15 yards each man's shots landed within the size of a dime. (Deliberately overlooks that these shots all landed inches high and to the right and that, by Frazier's own testimony, the close grouping of these shots suggested that the scope had not recently been adjusted. This, of course, suggested that the sniper had shot at Kennedy with a severely misaligned scope!) The shots fired by Frazier at the range of 25 yards landed within an area of 2 inches and 5 inches respectively. Frazier later fired four groups of three shots at a distance of 100 yards in 5.9, 6.2, 5.6, and 6.5 seconds. Each series of three shots landed within areas ranging in diameter from 3 to 5 inches. Although all of the shots were a few inches high and to the right of the target., this was because of a defect in the scope which was recognized by the FBI agents and which they could have compensated for if they were aiming to hit a bull's-eye. They were instead firing to determine how rapidly the weapon could be fired and the area within which three shots could be placed. Frazier testified that while he could not tell when the defect occurred, but that a person familiar with the weapon could compensate for it. Moreover, the defect was one which would have assisted the assassin aiming at a target which was moving away.  Frazier said, "The fact that the crosshairs are set high would actually compensate for any lead which had to be taken. So that if you aimed with this weapon as it actually was received at the laboratory, it would not be necessary to take any lead whatsoever in order to hit the intended object. The scope would accomplish the lead for you." (While it's true that Frazier said this, it is a completely ridiculous statement that should not have been repeated, let alone cited. FBI Director Hoover's letter to the Commission preceding Frazier's testimony specified that the misalignment as it was in March, AFTER the rifle had been sighted-in, could have been an advantage. Frazier then screwed up, or was pressured into screwing up, and said that the misalignment of the rifle as first received by the FBI in November could have been an advantage. There's a huge difference. If the scope was as misaligned in November as Frazier indicated, the assassin would have to have fired behind Kennedy in order to lead him while he was moving away. This is of no assistance whatsoever to a sniper.) Frazier added that the scope would cause a slight miss to the right. It should be noted, however, that the President's car was curving slightly to the right when the third shot was fired. (This is disingenuous. Yes, the car was curving slightly to the right at the time of the head shot, but earlier, in order to sell the relative ease of the shots, the report has claimed it was driving "virtually in a straight line away" from the sniper's nest. Well, which is it? One can not say that the car started out in a straight line but then curved away, because this simply is not true. It started out curving to the right and continued to curve to the right at a slightly reduced angle.) Based on these tests the experts agreed that the assassination rifle was an accurate weapon. Simmons described it as "quite accurate," in fact, as accurate as current. military rifles. Frazier testified that the rifle was accurate, that it had less recoil than the average military rifle and that one would not have to be an expert marksman to have accomplished the assassination with the weapon which was used. (Both Simmons and Frazier were discussing the relative consistency of the rifle, and were operating under the assumption the misalignment of the scope was either not present on the day of the shooting, or was something well known to the sniper. The problems with the scope were, in fact, so severe that the HSCA ballistics panel concluded that the sniper would not have even used the scope, and would have instead just used the iron sights of the rifle.)

Conclusion

The various tests showed that the Mannlicher-Carcano was an accurate rifle and that the use of a four-power scope was a substantial aid to rapid, accurate firing. Oswald's Marine training in marksmanship, his other rifle experience and his established familiarity with this particular weapon show that he possessed ample capability to commit the assassination. Based on the known facts of the assassination, the Marine marksmanship experts, Major Anderson and Sergeant Zahm, concurred in the opinion that Oswald had the capability to fire three shots, with two hits, within 4.8 and 5.6 seconds. Concerning the shots which struck the President in the back of the neck, Sergeant Zahm testified: "With the equipment he [Oswald] had and with his ability I consider it a very easy shot." Having fired this slot the assassin was then required to hit the target one more time within a space of from 4.8 to 5.6 seconds. On the basis of Oswald's training and the accuracy of the weapon as established by the tests, the Commission concluded that Oswald was capable of accomplishing this second hit even if there was an intervening shot which missed. The probability of hitting the President a second time would have been markedly increased if, in fact, he had missed either the first or third shots thereby leaving a time span of 4.8 to 5.6' seconds between the two shots which struck their mark. The Commission agrees with the testimony of Marine marksmanship expert Zahm that it was easy shot" to hit some part of the President's body, and that the range where the rifleman would be expected to hit would include the President's head. (This is as close to the truth as the Report comes. It was "easy" to hit some part of the President. The head is a part of the President. Therefore, it was "easy" to hit the President in the head. This, of course, presumes that the assassin was not actually all that skilled, and that he JUST GOT LUCKY, a presumption that becomes difficult to swallow once one considers that the previous hit is presumed to have landed but a few inches away and that BOTH of these shots landed closer to the middle of a head and shoulders target than ANY of the 14 shots rapid-fired by the Army's test shooters on STATIONARY head and shoulders targets.)

Oswald's Rifle Capability Conclusion

On the basis of the evidence reviewed in this chapter, the Commission has found that Lee Harvey Oswald (1) owned and possessed the rifle used to kill President Kennedy and wound Governor Connally, (2) brought this rifle into the Depository Building on the morning of the assassination, (3) was present, at the time of the assassination, at the window from which the shots were fired (4) killed Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit in an apparent attempt to escape, (5) resisted arrest by drawing a fully loaded pistol and attempting to shoot. another police officer, (6) lied to the police after his arrest concerning important substantive matters, (7) attempted, in April 1963, to kill Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker, and (8) possessed the capability with a rifle which would have enabled him to commit the assassination. On the basis of these findings the Commission has concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald was the assassin of President Kennedy. ("Possessing the capability" is, of course, another way of saying "well, it's possible..." Well, OF COURSE, it's possible. But was it likely?  The Commission clearly felt the answer to this was "no", but was so committed to their premise that Oswald alone fired the shots that they saw no alternative other than to pull a Chico Marx and say "well, he musta gotta lucky.")

 

In a Word: Whitewash

Let's recall that the FBI found no evidence that Oswald have been practicing with his rifle in the weeks before the assassination. They found no extra ammunition or cleaning supplies among his possessions. The re-enactments of the shots by the FBI and outside experts, which suggested that Oswald may have been able to fire the shots as rapidly as presumed, were all conducted on stationary targets. The testimony on Oswald's shooting ability was based on test scores from many years before, and not based on his presumed ability after failing to keep in practice. There was, moreover, no attempt to re-enact the shots using a rifle with the limitations of Oswald's rifle, and shooters of Oswald's presumed ability on 11-22-63, firing cold without any practice shots. It seems clear, moreover, that if such a test had been performed, the results would almost certainly have been negative, and have forced the Commission to explore the possibility Oswald did not fire the shots, and was, indeed, the "patsy" he claimed to be.

And how could they do that when the FBI, the Secret Service, and, gulp, Life Magazine, had already crowned Oswald the assassin? 

The Mysterious Mr. Moore 

Should the Warren Commission's refusal to reach a conclusion on the timing and number of the shots, and its utter failure to make the case Oswald was capable of firing these shots, not cause one to wonder if their entire investigation wasn't a political charade, there's also the question of Elmer Moore, and his role in the commission. After seeing Moore's name pop up numerous times in the most suspicious of circumstances, I asked researcher Gary Murr if he’d ever looked into Moore, and it turned out that he'd shared my curiosity. He sent me some of what he’d compiled on Moore. (Additional information comes from Moore’s 1-6-76 testimony before the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities.)

At the time of the assassination, Elmer Moore was a Secret Service investigator assigned to their San Francisco office.  A week after the assassination, 11-29-63, he was instructed to go to Dallas and assist Inspector Thomas Kelley with his investigation of the assassination. Once there, he conducted the Secret Service’s investigation of Jack Ruby, in order to establish the connection or lack thereof between Ruby and Oswald.  Not surprisingly, he found no connection. On 12-5-63, he oversaw the Secret Service Survey of  Dealey Plaza. The survey plat of this re-enactment, published by the Warren Commission as CE 585, and Moore’s subsequent reports, reveals that he concluded, after studying the Zapruder film, that the fatal head shot at frame 313 occurred when Kennedy was 34 feet further down the street than his fellow Agent Howlett concluded only the week before, and 29 feet further down the street than the Warren Commission would conclude 6 months later. This is a bit suspicious.  Is it a coincidence that Kennedy’s traveling this extra distance would give the presumed sniper more time to aim, and make Oswald’s purported shooting feat less fantastic? The next week, on 12-11, Moore engaged in more mysterious activity. He visited the doctors at Parkland hospital who’d worked on Kennedy, and showed them the official autopsy report stating that the throat wound was an exit.  This came as a surprise to some of these doctors, who’d initially believed and stated that the throat wound was an entrance, and repeated this speculation to reporter Jimmy Breslin, whose article on their treatment of Kennedy was in that week’s Saturday Evening Post.   Since the doctors were giving interviews and repeating what was believed to be incorrect information, it only makes sense then that someone in the government would want to set them straight. Evidently, it was  Moore’s job to set them straight.

Now here’s where things get weird. Moore’s 1976 testimony reflects that on 12-19, he was ordered to contact Chief Justice Earl Warren and request that he accept Secret Service protection.  He had known Warren for over 20 years.  But he had never worked in the protective detail of the Secret Service beyond temporary assignments.  Nevertheless, he successfully convinced Warren he needed protection, and was Warren’s near-constant companion and bodyguard from that day until after the Warren Report was issued the next September. In this role, as bodyguard, he accompanied Warren to Warren’s questioning of Jack Ruby.  But Moore was more than just a bodyguard.  He admitted to the Senate Committee in 1976 that he had “discussions daily” with Warren.  The obvious and vital question of whether or not Moore kept anyone informed of these discussions was not asked. The equally obvious question of whether anyone thought it was a conflict of interest to have one of the Secret Service’s chief investigators act as Warren’s personal security, when Warren was supposed to be reviewing the Secret Service’s investigation, also was not asked.  (A Church Committee document listing the names of 27 "Secret Service Agents investigating the Assassination of President Kennedy" lists Moore as one of three "supervisors," with 24 subordinates.)

What was discussed was Moore’s relationship with James Gochenaur. Gochenaur had come forward with the allegation that he’d met Moore in 1970, and that Moore had told him about some of his experiences investigating the assassination. Gochenaur said that Moore had guiltily admitted that he’d badgered Dr. Malcolm Perry into changing his testimony about the throat wound.  Moore admitted meeting Gochenaur, and discussing the assassination with him, but denied Gochenaur’s allegation.  Moore’s testimony, however, reveals he was greatly concerned about Gochenaur’s allegation.  He'd arrived for questioning with a personal attorney. He expressed the opinion that “to induce any witness to change his testimony, of course that’s a felony.”

Where Moore’s testimony falls apart, in my opinion, is where he tries to explain what DID happen when he talked to Dr. Perry and the other Parkland doctors.  Moore testified “I was given a copy of the Bethesda autopsy.  A mimeographed copy.  There were numerous copies sent to the Dallas office and it was assigned to attempt to determine the trajectory of the bullets, the missiles, from the wound, and the report I referred to covers this…Well, what happened here, when I received the autopsy reports, there were medical terms and measurements that I was not familiar with one.  I recall it was the acromion which is a process of the shoulder blade, I learned through Dr. Perry.  And I think the description of the neck strap wound, the first bullet in the President’s neck, was determined about 14 centimeters from the acromion process arc, and another arc from the mastoid of 14 centimeters...They’re exactly the same measurements.  And I was not sure of these in medical terms.  The logical thing I thought at the time was to go out to talk to these people and also to let them see for the first time the results of the autopsy because they had not had the opportunity to actually see the fatal wound at all.  They had never turned the body over at Parkland.  They were engaged in respiratory and circulatory, you know, the trauma actions rather than examining wounds.  So I had talked to Dr. Perry and he was, as I recall, 34 years old, a very personable man.  He was very disturbed, as he had been quoted, where he had performed the tracheotomy through the exit wound, which is right over the Adam’s Apple, it went by part of the tie.  He was quite disturbed that he had been quoted in the press as having said that is an entrance wound, and he had denied that consistently, that he ever said that, that what he said was there was a wound there and it could have been an entrance or an exit…And then when he saw the autopsy report, which was the first occasion, they got a copy, I think, the following day or so, was sent down from Bethesda, and they had been in contact with the doctors by phone, I believe…but they were quite interested in the autopsy report.  And after reading it I think it was Dr. Perry first and then Dr. Carrico came in. And after they read it they asked if there would be any objection to other staff doctors seeing it who had attended the President in some manner or another and were interested in it.  And I saw no objection.  So they went into a little conference room—I would say six or seven doctors—and discussed it for possibly ten or fifteen minutes, and I left.”(When asked why he went to Parkland) “(To see) If it could be determined from the wounds the trajectory of the bullets.  Did they come from the sixth floor of this and could this be proven by the—(When asked what Perry told him) “Well, that was not actually for him to answer, but what he was doing for me was  determining where this wound was on the body and what direction it went”.

The problem with this is it’s just not credible.  I mean, really, Moore just so happens to show Perry the autopsy report, telling him the throat wound is officially an exit, to let him "see for the first time the results of the autopsy because they had not had the opportunity to actually see the fatal wound at all...They had never turned the body over at Parkland"?  It was all just for Perry's general information, mind you, not to get him to shut up. And really, Moore just so happens to pick Perry, the guy who told the nation in a press conference the throat wound was an entrance, as the guy to teach him a little anatomy?  His contention that he consulted with Perry about the relative locations of the wounds, as opposed to his telling Perry the official conclusion about the relative positions of the wounds, is also suspect. The measurements for the back wound on the autopsy report, 14 cm from acromion and 14 cm below the tip of the right mastoid process, as we shall see, place the back wound in the back, at the same level as the throat wound.  Moore’s 12-11 report, after his meeting with Perry, however, asserts that the missile path of the first bullet to strike the President “is from the upper right posterior thorax to the exit position in the low anterior cervical region and is in slight general downward direction.” I doubt a doctor would say such a thing. The upper thorax is, by definition, below the lower cervical region, unless the body is leaning forward.  And the Zapruder film studied by Moore demonstrated that Kennedy was not leaning forward before the shots were fired. The probability, then, is that Moore went to Parkland at least in part to bring Perry into line, and let him know that the throat wound was officially an exit., and below the back wound. As Moore, in his testimony, was dismissive that wound locations could effectively establish a bullet’s trajectory, he may honestly have figured an entrance on Kennedy’s back was close enough. This doesn’t explain, however, his reporting that the back wound was above the throat wound, something the measurements shown to Perry prove false. One should wonder, furthermore, if Moore noticed that the location of the back wound in the drawings created by the autopsy doctors in March was far higher than the wound location he’d mapped out with Perry, and if he told Chief Warren about this problem. Perhaps the apathetic attitude towards the wound locations and trajectories revealed by Moore in his work for the Secret Service infected the Commission’s re-enactment in May.

If so, it may have been by design.  A 1-7-64 Treasury Department memorandum for the file reflects that Moore, who’d been traveling with Earl Warren since 12-19, was asked by Warren on 12-2 if “he could be available to the Commission for an indefinite period to assist in its work.”  A 12-8 memo from Secret Service Chief Rowley reflects that Moore was assigned to “furnish any service, assistance, and cooperation the Commission considers necessary.”  These memos fail to mention Moore’s purported role as Warren’s bodyguard. This raises the question of whether Moore was protecting Warren or helping him run the investigation. In Professor Gerald McKnight’s Breach of Trust, he discusses a document found in the voluminous archives of researcher Harold Weisberg, now held at Hood College.  Among the documents recovered via Weisberg’s numerous Freedom of Information Act cases was a February 7. 1964 letter from Chief Counsel Rankin’s Secretary, Julia Eide.  This letter reflects that “all the waste material” (that is, notes, carbons, tapes) of the 1-22-64 meeting of the Warren Commission, in which they discussed the possibility Oswald was working for the FBI , was to be turned over to Secret Service Inspector Elmer Moore and burned. Doesn’t sound like straight guard duty to me.

That Moore was more than Warren’s guard dog is undoubtedly intriguing.  In the years following the assassination, it would be revealed that the Secret Service has been used at times by Presidents as a private intelligence unit.  Richard Nixon used them to spy on his own brother, and, according to Nixon aide Alexander Butterfield, spy on other political candidates as well. This raises the uncomfortable possibility that Moore was President Johnson’s eyes and ears on the Commission, put in place, with Warren's acquiescence, to help keep the commission "in line". This might explain why Moore, a long time Warren acquaintance, was brought into the Secret Service’s investigation on the same day that Warren agreed to chair a Presidential Commission reviewing the Secret Service’s findings. This might explain as well how Anthony Lewis, writer for the New York Times, while working on a book with Johnson's close associate Abe Fortas, became privy to information that could only have come from within the Commission. It could also explain Moore’s seemingly exaggerated concerns about Gochenaur’s statements, and his willingness to lie about his visit to Perry. It could also explain why Moore, the only one working with the Commission to admit measuring out 14 cms from the tip of the mastoid process on a body, failed to alert Warren that this put the wound on Kennedy’s back, inches below the location on the drawings entered into evidence on March 16, 1964 as the official representations of the President’s wounds.  

And then there’s this…On November 22^nd 2003, Senator Arlen Specter addressed a crowd at an assassination conference held at Duquesne University.  He told the crowd about his work for the Warren Commission and of being shown an autopsy photo of the President’s back wound on May 24, 1964. This autopsy photo, as we shall see, should have convinced Specter that the wound on Kennedy's back was inches below the level depicted in the commission's exhibits, and that it was therefore doubtful the shooting had occurred as purported. Instead, Specter stuck by his belief that the bullet causing this wound, after striking Kennedy's back on a sharply downward trajectory, had somehow exited from his throat. In his 2000 book Passion for Truth, and in previous interviews, Specter had said that Secret Service Inspector Thomas Kelley had shown him this photo. On this day, however, he told the audience it was “Elmer Moore, who was the Chief’s bodyguard.”  If it was indeed Moore, it would suggest that Specter was shown the photo with Warren’s blessing.  Which in turn suggests that Warren, Moore and Specter all knew the wound was on the back and inches lower on the body than in the commission's exhibits. And that they'd conspired to hide this from the public...