Assanation fo JFK The State of the Evidence, The Evidence of the State by Edward Jay Epstein
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/state.htm
Evidence, by its very
nature, can be controverted. If it could not be, it would not be
evidence but an act of faith. Any document can be a forgery, any
witness can give false testimony, and any object can be either
fabricated or misidentified. Nevertheless, some evidence is better than
other evidence. And when the best evidence is examined, tested and
placed in the proper context, it provides the best way we have to
establish the facts.
In the
case of the assassination of President Kennedy, the central facts have
been investigated and re-investigated for nearly three decades. The
evidence-testers have included the FBI, the Treasury Department, the
Warren Commission, the Rockefeller Commission, the House Select
Committee on Assassination, the Department of Justice, independent
coroners and forensic experts, and assassination researchers. Consider,
for example, the much disputed autopsy findings of President Kennedy.
Although the autopsy examination itself was badly handled by the Navy,
and insufficiently probed by the Warren Commission, many of the
problems were resolved the re-examination of the X-rays and photographs
of the President's body by the panel of nine independent pathologists
(including one Warren Commission critic) appointed by the House Select
Committee. These findings, not those in the Warren Commission (or my
criticisms of the original process in Inquest) constitute the best
evidence.Since as imperfect as
the process has been, it has resulted in filling in much of the reality
of what happened on November 22nd, 1963. I believe that the seven
following questions now can be answered-- or at least narrowed down to
finite possibilities.1. Where did the bullets come from that hit President Kennedy and Governor Connally?The
best available evidence on the nature of the discernible wounds
inflicted on Kennedy is, first, the photographs and X-Rays of the
President taken during the autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital and,
second, the fibers of the President's clothing.Although
the photographs and X-Rays were not examined by the Warren Commission
or its staff, leading to considerable doubt as to the validity of the
Commission's conclusions, they were subsequently examined ,first, by a
panel of three pathologists and a radiologist appointed by Attorney
General Ramsey Clark in 1981, and then more thoroughly in 1976 by the
nine man panel appointed by the House Select Committee. The members of
this latter panel had between them experience in performing over
100,000 autopsies. The House Select Committee, moreover, established
the authenticity of these photographs by having forensic dentists
compare them with Kennedy's pre-mortem dental records and medical
X-rays.All these pathologists
agreed, without any dissent, that all the detectable wounds in the
photographs and X-rays of President Kennedy had been caused by bullets
fired from behind and above him, confirming the conclusions of the
doctors who had performed the autopsy itself as well as those of the
FBI and the Warren Commission. They also agreed unanimously from a
reconstruction of the medical evidence that Governor Connally's
multiple wounds had been caused by a bullet fired from the same
direction. The path of the first
bullet to hit the President was further established by the President's
shirt and jacket fibers. The FBI analysis, as well as the re-analysis,
showed that they were pushed inward, not outward, by the projectile
which could only have happened if the President was shot from behind.The
path of the bullet that hit Governor Connally was also confirmed by
Governor Connally's testimony that he was certain he was hit from
behind.The panel also unanimously
concluded from the X-Rays that the fatal bullet had entered the rear of
the President's head near the cowlick area and exited from the right
front. None of the nine pathologist, including Warren Commission critic
Dr. Cyril Wecht, were able to find any medical evidence that this
massive wound was caused by a bullet fired from in front or side of the
President's car. To be sure, a frame-by-frame analysis of the film of
the assassination made by Abraham Zapruder shows President Kennedy's
head at the time of impact moving backwards, not forward as might be
expected. But this is not the evidence it seems to be because,
depending on the neurological reactions to such a wound, the head can
snap in any direction after being shot. Wound ballistic experts
demonstrated this counterintuitive point to the House Select Committee
through a filmed experiment that clearly showed that, when hit with a
rifle bullet from the rear, the head could move either backward or
forward. So there is not necessarily a relationship between the
direction that the head moves and the direction from which the bullet
strikes the head.By tracing the
trajectory of the bullets from the path of the wounds, an analyst from
the National Aeronautic and Space Administration was able to plot all
three shots to their source the upper floors of the southeast face of
the Texas Book Depository. This was the same building that five
witnesses --Howard Brennan, Amos Lee Euins, Carolyn Walther, Arnold
Rowland and Barbara Rowland-- claimed to have seen a rifle protruding
from a South-eastern window at about the time of the assassination
(Brennan told police he actually saw the rifle being fired and reloaded
before the suspect was apprehended). While
it is possible that numerous other shots may have been fired from other
locations and directions and missed their target, we know from the best
evidence, the autopsy photographs, that the shots that caused all the
discernible wounds came from the a high window on the south eastern
side of the Texas Book Depository.2. Did the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found by police on the sixth floor of the Texas Depository fire these shots?The
best evidence for identifying the assassination weapon is the two
bullet fragments found in the President's car and the nearly whole
bullet found in a stretcher in Parkland Hospital in Dallas. In 1964,
FBI experts ballistically matched this bullet and fragments to the
rifle barrel of the Mannlicher-Carcano by microscopically comparing of
the markings in the barrel with those found on the bullet and
fragments. A firearms panel of independent experts appointed by the
House Select Committee re-examined this evidence in 1977 and
re-confirmed that the bullet and fragments had come from that
Mannlicher Carcano rifle.In
addition, the House Select Committee employed a very advanced form of
neutron activation analysis to match the recovered bullet and fragments
to the ammunition used in the Mannlicher Carcano. In this technique,
traces from the ballistic evidence are bombarded by neutrons in a
nuclear reactor so that the precise composition of elements-- antimony,
silver, and copper-- can be measured by their emissions on a gamma-ray
spectrometer to an accuracy of one-billionth of a gram. The composition
of traces from the bullet and fragments were thus compared to that of
the unfired bullet found in the chamber of the Mannlicher-Carcano and
found to exactly match. This analysis convincingly showed that all the
ballistic material that was recovered, and could be tested, came from
two bullets, and both bullets identically matched in their composition
the ammunition for the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.Although
questions can be raised about the general accuracy of the
Mannlicher-Carcano rifle found in the depository, there can be no doubt
that the particular weapon can be fired with deadly accuracy at a
target 100 yards away-- the distance from the depository to the
President's car. After the assassination three different FBI agents
fired this exact rifle and scored bull's-eyes two out of three times.
Although the suspicion has been raised that the
Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was "framed" as the murder weapon by a
conspirator who planted the nearly-intact bullet on a stretcher in
Parkland Hospital, it lacks any reasonable persuasiveness because i)
the conspirator would have no certainty that he could recover from the
hospital, car, autopsy and crime scene the "real" bullets that
presumably would not match the Mannlicher-Carcano; ii) the fragments
found in the car and Governor Connally's wrist match the
Mannlicher-Carcano ammunition; iii) it would be pointless to frame the
Mannlicher-Carcano, which the conspirators would have had to have in
their possession anyway to leave at the murder site, since it was a
weapon perfectly capable of hitting its target. So why not use it?We thus know that the Mannlicher Carcano found in the depository fired at least two of the shots at the President's motorcade.3. How many snipers fired at the President's motorcade?The
best evidence of the sequence of events remains the ten-second long
film taken by Zapruder. It fixes the earliest time Kennedy could have
been first hit in the back, the latest time Connally was wounded, and
the exact moment the President was shot in the head. From an analysis
of this film, the Warren Commission staff determined that the interval
between the time Kennedy and Connally were first shot was not long
enough for a single rifleman to have fired two shots: therefore either
both men were hit by the same bullet, or there had to be two riflemen.
This conclusion was confirmed by the more sophisticated photographic
analysis of the House Select Committee's photographic evidence panel
and of independent researchers.Despite
the crucial implications of this photographic evidence, the issue of
whether Kennedy and Connally were hit by the same or separate bullets
has not been satisfactorily resolved. The FBI concluded it was separate
shots, the Warren Commission begged the question as "not relevant" and
the House Select Committee, which went most thoroughly into this
evidence, was unable to reach a definitive conclusion because members
of its 9-doctor panel irreconcilably disagreed. Eight doctors believed
it was possible, though not necessarily probable. that the bullet
recovered had caused both Kennedy's back wound and Connally's, multiple
wounds; one doctor, however, Cyril Wecht concluded from the
photographic and medical evidence that it was absolutely impossible for
those wounds to have been caused by a single bullet. Since Wecht
marshals considerable evidence to support his view (as will be recalled
from Epilogue I), we are left with two possible scenarios.A. The Single Bullet ScenarioOne
rifleman fired three bullets from the Mannlicher Carcano in the
depository. The first bullet missed the motorcade entirely and
incidentally wounded a bystander, James Teague. The second bullet hit
Kennedy and Connally and was recovered from Connally's stretcher. About
three seconds later, the rifleman fired a third bullet which killed
Kennedy, abandoned his rifle, and fled the depository.B. The Separate Shot ScenarioOne
rifleman fired the first shot that hit Kennedy in the back from an
unidentified rifle. The bullet exited the car and was not recovered. He
then fired a second shot that went astray and nicked bystander Teague.
About one second after the first rifleman fired, a second rifleman,
using the Mannlicher Carcano, hit Connally; and, with his second shot,
hit Kennedy in the head. While the first rifleman left the depository
with his rifle and shell casings, the second rifleman left his behind.Both
scenarios are consistent with the testimony of eyewitnesses-- one of
whom saw a second person near the sniper's windows-- and the
fingerprints found on the boxes arranged at the site. So we can
conclude that either one or two riflemen participated in the
assassination and that the one with the Mannlicher Carcano killed
Kennedy.4. Whose Mannlicher-Carcano was it?The
best evidence that identifies the ownership of the murder weapon is the
handwriting of the person who ordered the rifle under the name "A.
Hidell" from a mail order house in Chicago in March 1963 and rented the
post office box in Dallas to which it was shipped.It was Lee Harvey Oswald.FBI
and Treasury Department experts determined in 1964 that Lee Harvey
Oswald had signed the name "A. Hidell" on both the purchase order for
the rifle and the post box application. A half dozen other documents
found in his possession, that Oswald used the alias "Hidell". The House
Select Committee panel of questioned document experts, after
re-examining the signatures, unequivocally agreed. So Oswald had
ordered the murder weapon-- and it had been shipped to his post office
box from Chicago on March 20,1963.PossessionMarina
Oswald confirmed that Oswald had received the rifle in late March, and
four other witnesses--George De Mohrenschildt, Jeanne De Mohrenschildt,
Alexander Taylor and Gary Taylor-- saw that Oswald had a rifle in
either late March or Early April.The
best evidence of Oswald's actual possession of the Mannlicher- Carcano,
however, is the much disputed photographs of Oswald holding the rifle
in his hand that Marina Oswald said she took on Sunday, March 31, 1963
in the backyard of their house in Dallas. Oswald claimed after his
arrest that the photograph had been faked by superimposing his head on
the rifleman's body but this theory is contradicted by three pieces of
evidence established by the House Select Committee. First, De
Mohrenschildt produced in 1976 an inscribed copy of the backyard
photograph which Oswald had given him in April 1963. The Committee's
questioned document panel authenticated the signature-- which meant
that Oswald had signed (and dated) the photograph he later claimed was
faked. Second, by examining the negative with enhanced analytic
techniques, the Committee' panel of photographic experts found a unique
random pattern of wear on the rifle in the photograph which
corresponded exactly to one on the Mannlicher-Carcano Oswald had
purchased. Since the experts agreed this could not be faked, the rifle
in the photograph had to be Oswald's. Third, by microscopically
examining the scratch marks that Oswald's Imperial Reflex camera
distributed on all negatives pulled through it, which are the
equivalent of camera fingerprints, the panel established unequivocally
that the backyard photographs could only have been taken by Oswald's
camera, just as Marina had testified. Moreover, using digital
processing analysis and stereo optic viewing techniques that did not
exist in 1963, the panel concluded there was no signs of having been
faked. Even two experts who had previously disputed the authenticity of
the photographs (using copies, rather than the original) now agreed
that the photograph was genuine. In light of this evidence, there can
be no serious doubt that Oswald possessed the murder weapon at the end
of March 1963.
UseMarina
Oswald testified to the Warren Commission that when Oswald left their
house on April 10,1963, he left her dramatic instructions in Russian
about what she should if he were arrested, killed or had to go into
hiding, and when he returned late that evening, he explained to her
that he had just attempted to kill General Edwin Walker with his rifle.
Her testimony is corroborated by three elements of evidence.First,
the Russian handwriting in the note has been unequivocally identified
as that of Oswald by the questioned documents experts of both the
Warren Commission and the House Select Committee. The note, which
contains details that date it, confirms that Oswald expected to be
killed, arrested or a fugitive the week of April 10th 1963.Second,
photographs of Walker's house taken from the position were the sniper
fired at Walker were found among Oswald's possessions after the Kennedy
assassination. Photographic experts established these photographs were
taken with Oswald's imperial reflex camera. By referring to
construction work in the background, the FBI was able to determine that
the photographs were taken on March 9th or 10th (which was just about
the date Oswald ordered the Mannlicher Carcano). Such photographs show
that Oswald had reconnoitered Walker's house.Third,
the previously-discussed Neutron Activation Analysis done in 1977
exactly matched the metallic elements found in the bullet that was
recovered in Walker's home to the batch of Mannlicher-Carcano
ammunition used in Oswald's rifle in the assassination of Kennedy.So
we know the murder weapon was purchased, delivered and shown off in an
inscribed photograph, and used in a prior attempted assassination by
Oswald. 5. Was Oswald at the sniper's window on the sixth floor of the depository where the murder weapon was found.The
best evidence here is three palm prints (which are as uniquely
identifiable as fingerprints) found on the boxes stacked in front of
the window to support the rifle and the nearby paper sack which was
long enough to accommodate the Mannlicher Carcano. FBI experts matched
them to Oswald hands. ( A fourth palm print, found on one box, belonged
to an unidentified individual). The House Select Committee's
fingerprint panel unanimously confirmed this evidence. Since the
"freshness" of palm prints is of limited duration, it was further
determined that Oswald had handled those boxes and paper sack either
the day of the assassination or the preceding day. Moreover, two
witnesses testified he carried the paper sack into the depository that
morning. So we know Oswald arranged the boxes used by the sniper and
handled the paper sack within 24 hours of the assassination and, if the
witnesses are correct, brought the sack to the sniper's window the
morning of the assassination.6. Was Oswald framed?Whereas
there is no doubt that Oswald's rifle was used to shoot President
Kennedy, the possibility exists it was used by another party to frame
Oswald. If Oswald was totally innocent, his activities after the
assassination would reflect his lack of knowledge and involvement in
the event. Instead, the evidence is persuasive that he fled the
building after the assassination, changed his clothing, armed himself,
fatally shot a policeman resisted arrest by attempting to shoot another
policeman, and, after his arrest, lied repeatedly to his interrogators
about owning the rifle, appearing in the backyard photograph with the
rifle, and using the alias "Hidell" (which he purchased both the rifle
and pistol).The best evidence
that he shot the policeman, J.D. Tippit, is that the cartridge cases
found at the murder scene matched the firing pin of the revolver taken
out of Oswald's hand when he was arrested. The FBI determined no all
other weapon could have ejected these cartridges-- and these
conclusions were reaffirmed by the Select Committee's firearms panel.
Oswald admission that he had decided only on the spur of the moment to
fetch this weapon effectively rules out the possibility he was framed
since no one but Oswald could have known he would be carrying it.In
addition, five witnesses identified Oswald from the police line up as
either the person who shot Tippit or the person who fled from the scene
with a gun in hand. The House Select Committee produced an additional
witness who testified he saw Oswald stand over the downed policeman and
fire a bullet into his head.His
post-arrest actions, especially his mendacity in consistently denying
ownership of the rifle to representatives of the FBI, Secret Service,
Post Office, and district attorney, further indicate consciousness of
guilt about owning the rifle. This would not be consistent with the
behavior of a framed and innocent man -- who believed his rifle was
still wrapped in a blanket in a friend's garage.While
none of this evidence is unimpeachable-- no evidence is-- and none of
it proves that Oswald was the only person involved in the shooting of
Kennedy, Tippit or General Walker, it convinces me that he was involved
in the assassination.The Conspiracy QuestionOne
question, perhaps the only one that still matters, cannot be answered
by the state's evidence: was Oswald part of a conspiracy? As we have
seen, the re-investigations of the assassination have left unresolved
the issue of whether or two shooters were involved but, even if they
had definitively established, as the Warren Commission attempted to do,
that a lone gunman had fired all the shots on November 22nd 1963, it
would not logically diminish the possibility that the assassination
resulted from a conspiracy.Conspiracies
do not necessarily require more than one rifleman to accomplish their
purpose. In many cases, such as the highly-sophisticated Rightist
conspiracy in France to assassinate President Charles De Gaulle, a
single "Jackal" rifleman was employed. One accurate rifleman might be
preferable to a conspiracy when it is expected that the intended victim
could be protected by his bodyguard immediately after the first shot is
fired, because each additional snipers would increase the chances of
detection, both before and after the act, but not necessarily increase
the probability of success. Moreover, if multiple gunmen are captured
(or killed), it would be difficult to divert the investigation away
from the conspiracy, whereas a lone gunman, especially if killed
himself, can be dismissed as a lone lunatic.The larger issue then is: was Oswald, whether firing alone or in tandem, acting at the behest of others.Oswald
was not, to be sure, the sort of well-adjusted individual with whom
most people would want to associate. He was wantonly self-destructive
(e.g. his suicide attempt in Moscow); militantly hostile towards
symbols of authority (e.g. the threat he made to blow up the FBI
headquarters in Dallas); contemptuous of legal restraints (e.g. his
plan to hijack an airliner to get to Cuba) and homicidal (e.g. his
brutal murder of Tippit). As early as 1960, he expressed a cold-blooded
willingness to commit political murder in a letter he presciently wrote
his brother from Moscow: "What I say now I do not say lightly or
unknowingly ... I would kill any American who put a uniform on in
defense of the American Government, Any American". The one position
that such unrestrained aggression would not exclude a person for
employment would be a political assassin.In
this context, the bullet Oswald coolly fired at General Walker was,
whether he meant it to be or not, an advertisement of his willingness
to kill or be killed for a political cause. Less than a week before he
went out to assassinate Walker he distributed an inscribed photograph
of himself to De Mohrenschildt (and perhaps others). It showed him
dressed in black, armed to kill with a rifle and telescopic sight, and
holding in his hand the radical newspaper, The Militant. When he went
to Mexico to offer himself to the Cubans, he brought with him the
tell-tale photographs of Walker's house to establish his bona fides as
a revolutionary. Was his have gun, will kill message picked up of any
antennae that summer? Just as De Mohrenschildt and Marina learned of
his assassination attempt, so may have others in pro-Castro,
anti-Castro and other fringe groups he was active with in the summer of
1963 (not to mention the various intelligence and police agencies
monitoring his movements).There
couldn't be that many potential assassins hanging around the militant
peripheries of the Cold War with Oswald's perverse virtues: a
convenient defector background, military training, complete disregard
for human life, including his own, and possession of a rifle he was
more than ready to use. Here was as assassin awaiting a mission. Did
anyone pick him up as a shooter-- or, lacking a sponsor but finding an
opportunity, did he act alone?
http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theories/Primer/Primer_of_assassination_theories.html
A Primer of Assassination Theories
The whole spectrum of doubt, from the Warren commissioners to Ousman Ba
Esquire, December 1966, pp. 205 ff.
HOW IT HAPPENED
1. SINGLE-BULLET THEORY
Proponents:
A 4-3 majority of the Warren Commission (see chart). And most
Commission lawyers, notably Arlen Specter, who developed the theory in
March, 1964, and Norman Redlich, who advocated it as the only
alternative to a two-assassin theory.
Thesis:
The first bullet wounded both Kennedy and Connally. A second bullet hit
Kennedy in the head and killed him. Another bullet missed the car
entirely and was never found.
Selling Point:
This is the only theory that explains the assassination in terms of a
single assassin. Why? Because films of the assassination show that a
maximum of only 1.8 seconds could have elapsed between the earliest
point at which Kennedy was first hit and the latest point at which
Connally was first hit. Since the bolt of the murder rifle cannot be
operated in less than 2.3 seconds, it could not possibly have been
fired twice during the time in which both men were hit. Either both men
were hit by the same bullet or there were two assassins.
This precise bullet path is essential to the Commission's theory
that the first bullet went through Kennedy and then hit
Connally (Exhibit 385). Any slight difference would
rule this out and thereby suggest a second assassin.
Drawback No. 1: The single-bullet theory is
tenable if and only if the three F.B.I. reports (November 26, December
9 and January 13) are completely wrong on their statements of the
autopsy. Why? Because these three reports all state that the first
bullet did not go completely through Kennedy and therefore it could not
have gone on to hit Connally, who was seated in front of Kennedy.
Retorts: 1. The Incompetent F.B.I.
J. Lee Rankin, at the time the Commission’s general counsel, and Norman
Redlich, his deputy, have said—after the December 13 F.B.I. Summary
Report was published in Inquest—that the “so-called F.B.I.
Summary Report” (which the Commission considered of “principal
importance”) was “evaluated and discarded” during the inquiry. Redlich
further said “the Commission study used the actual (November 26)
reports of the F.B.I. investigative agents, not just the summary.”
(However, the actual report, just recently found in the National
Archives, corroborates the Summary Report.)
2. Time
magazine proposes that the F.B.I. was completely wrong on all reports
and has long since publicly admitted these errors. (However, the F.B.I.
told The Washington Post that its Summary Report was accurate
as of when it was prepared, implying the doctors later may have changed
their opinion. The F.B.I. declined comment to The New York Times
in June, 1966, on the question of whether or not its reports were
erroneous. Even to Commission champion Fletcher Knebel, the F.B.I.
would only admit that it was possible that their initial reports did
not reflect a subsequent decision by the doctors.)
3. The Commission’s Post-Report,
reported by Fletcher Knebel, holds that the day after the autopsy, on
receiving further information about the throat wound from the Dallas
doctors, the autopsy doctors reached the conclusions that the bullet
exited from Kennedy’s throat. Aside from the fact that this theory
contradicts the version of the autopsy given in The Warren Report, it
still leaves unresolved the problem of the bullet wound “below the
shoulder” (reported by the F.B.I.), that later apparently moved up to
the back of the neck.
Drawback No. 2:
Photographs of the President’s shirt and jacket support the F.B.I.
report that the first bullet struck Kennedy below the shoulder. If the
bullet fired from above did enter below the shoulder it is highly
unlikely that it exited through the throat.
Retorts: 1. The Creeping Shirt. Norman Redlich has suggested (after the F.B.I. photographs were published in Inquest)
that the President’s shirt somehow rose up a few inches so that the
bullet hole in the shirt coincided with a hole in the rear of the neck.
Experimentation indicates, however, that raising the shirt over the
collar line entails doubling it up, which would produce two holes in
the back of the shirt.
Exhibits 59 and 60 indicate that the bullet entered lower than the Commission said it had.
2. Newsweek magazine suggests that Kennedy may have been bent
over so far that his shoulder was higher than his throat. But the films
of the assassination show that Kennedy was sitting erect, and his back
brace, according to the Warren Report “tended to make him sit up
straight.”
.
This photograph of the F.B.I. restaging, which appeared in several editions
of the Warren Report, not only contradicts the Commission's placement
of the bullet path but shows that if the bullet entered where the hole in the
jacket is, and then went on to hit Connally, it would have come out
Kennedy's chest, not his throat. And Kennedy had no chest wounds
Drawback No. 3: Governor Connally says it
is in conceivable that he could have been struck by the same bullet
that hit Kennedy. He remembers that after hearing the first shot he
turned to his right but could not see the President. He then began to
turn to his left, and was hit. His story is corroborated by Mrs.
Connally.
Retort: Connally was confused.
The Commission brushed aside Governor Connally’s testimony (and his
wife’s) by declaring that in view of the circumstances he could hardly
be expected to recall clearly what happened.
2. F.B.I. THEORY
Proponents: The F.B.I.
Thesis:
1. The first bullet hit Kennedy below the shoulder and penetrated “only
a distance of a finger length.” This bullet was “expelled” onto the
President’s stretcher when the Dallas doctors applied external heart
massage. 2. The second bullet struck Connally. 3. The third bullet
entered Kennedy’s head and fragmentized. (The impact of the shot sent a
tiny fragment of bone through Kennedy’s throat, causing a small throat
wound.) All shots came from the Book Depository.
Exhibit No. 397, the autopsy sketch drawn by Dr. Humes, shows
a bullet wound lower than the Commission's Exhibit 385 does.
Selling Points: 1. An entry wound below
the shoulder would explain the shirt and jacket holes being about six
inches below the top of the collar. It would also serve to explain the
autopsy sketch showing a wound well below the collar line. And it would
explain the Secret Service testimony that it was six inches below the
collar.
2. The supposition that the bullet also
fell out of Kennedy’s back accounts for the bullet found on the
stretcher. (See Planted-Bullet Theory.)
3. The
tiny bone fragment accounts for the small throat wound. Also, a bone
fragment would explain the absence of metallic traces on the holes in
the front of the shirt.
Drawback No. 1:
The F.B.I. Theory, by positing that Kennedy and Connally were hit by
separate bullets, leads to a two-assassin theory. As one Commission
lawyer bluntly put it: “To say that they were hit by separate bullets
is synonymous with saying that there were two assassins.”
Drawback No. 2:
The Fourth Bullet. Late in the investigation, it was discovered that a
bystander, James Tague, had been wounded by one of the shots. The
F.B.I. Theory holds that all three shots hit inside the President’s
car. Yet it was unlikely that Tague was wounded by any of these shots
since he was standing about 260 feet away at the time of the fusillade.
This raises the possibility that Tague was wounded by a fragment from a
fourth bullet. But only three shells were found in the Book Depository.
Drawback No. 3:
If the F.B.I autopsy report is accurate, then the Commission’s autopsy
findings had to be purposely falsified. The implications of this are
almost too disturbing to imagine. Yet, the fact that the autopsy
surgeon, Commander Humes, burned “certain preliminary notes” has given
rise to the theory that the “preliminary notes” actually contained the
earlier version of the autopsy referred to by the F.B.I. This question
is unresolved.
One of the main stimuli for
theories that shots came from someplace other than the Book Depository
is an amateur eight-millimeter film of the assassination taken by
Abraham Zapruder. In ten seconds of color film, virtually the entire
sequence of events is recorded. The Zapruder film shows the motorcade
proceeding down Elm Street with the President smiling and waving, then
suddenly he reaches for his throat, apparently hit. About a second
later Connally grimaces with pain and begins toppling over. A few
seconds elapse, then a bullet visibly strikes the President’s head.
From the film. the Commission judged that the President was first hit
between film frame 210 and 225, and the fatal head shot occurred on
film frame 313. By determining the shutter speed of the camera (18.3
frames per second), the Commission ascertained: 1) a maximum of 5.6
seconds elapsed from the first to the final shot; and 2) no more than
1.8 seconds elapsed between the time Kennedy and Connally were first
hit. This time bind led directly to the Commission’s Single-Bullet
Theory (see above). The Zapruder film also led to four other
interesting theories.
3. HEAD MOVEMENT THEORY
Proponent: Vincent Salandria, a Philadelphia lawyer.
Using
two slide projectors, and superimposing frame 316 over frame 313,
Salandria finds that after the fatal head shot, Kennedy’s head moves
sharply backward and to the left, a direction inconsistent with shots
from the Depository. Salandria extrapolated the trajectory from the
direction in which the head moves and concludes that the shot came from
behind the picket fence or the arcade on the grassy knoll. Salandria
also suspects that, because of the massive devastation, this second
wound, unlike the first, may have been caused by a dumdum bullet—which
couldn’t have come from Oswald’s rifle.
4. EARLY HIT THEORY
A
group of California theorists has used the Zapruder film to show that
the first shot hit Kennedy between film frames 190 and 210. If true,
this would be significant because the Commission established that
during this interval the line of sight from the sixth-floor window in
the Depository was obstructed by the foliage of an oak tree; therefore
the shot must have come from elsewhere.
Harold
Weisberg also uses the Zapruder film to prove the Early-Hit Theory.
Since Zapruder testified that he saw Kennedy hit, and Zapruder’s view
was blocked by a traffic sign between film frames 205 and 225 (by which
time Kennedy had already been hit), Weisberg concludes that Kennedy was
hit before film frame 205.
5. MISSING-FRAME THEORY
The
fact that film frames 208 through 211 have been deleted from the
black-and-white frame-by-frame photographs published by the Warren
Commission (Exhibit 885) and from the color slides of the Zapruder film
at the National Archives—and the fact that frames 207 and 212 show
obvious splice marks—has led a number of theorists to suspect that
Kennedy was shot during that interval and that the four missing film
frames were suppressed deliberately.
Drawback: Life
magazine owns the original film and according to those who have seen
it, the film is complete, no frames are missing, and Kennedy does not
appear to have been hit in the sequence. The Archive’s frames may just
have been damaged innocently.
6. TRAFFIC SIGN THEORY
David
Lifton, a U.C.L.A. graduate student, claims that he can detect stress
marks coming from the traffic sign starting at frame 212 and continuing
until frame 221. He interprets these as shock waves caused by a bullet
hitting the sign. This shot, he figures, could not have been the same
one that Oswald is supposed to have fired because of the timing. And
strangely, right after the assassination the sign was removed.
7. ENTRY WOUND THEORY
Proponents: Mark Lane, Thomas Buchanan, Joachim Joesten, et. al.
Thesis: Early statements were made by Dallas doctors suggesting that the throat wound was made by a bullet entering
the throat. Since films of the assassination firmly establish that the
President’s car was past the Book Depository when he was shot, a bullet
entering the throat must have come from a point well in front of the
Depository. “In front” was at first interpreted to mean the railroad
overpass; however, when the Commission showed that a bullet did not in
fact pass through the limousine’s windshield, as was believed by the
proponents of this theory, “in front” was then interpreted to mean the
grassy knoll. Mark Lane states in his latest version that Kennedy was
directly facing the knoll when he was shot in the throat, although none
of the films indicates this to be the case.
Selling point: The entry-wound theory
explains the Dallas doctors’ early statements and the relatively small
diameter of the wound, although the doctors later testified that under
certain conditions an exit wound would have the same appearance as an
entry wound.
Drawback: The entry-wound
theory does not explain what finally happened to the bullet that
entered the throat. Since no exit wound was found in the President’s
back (and no bullet was in the President’s body), the entry-wound
theory depends on the assumption that the autopsy and other evidence
was changed.
8. OVER THE FENCE THEORY
Proponents:
Maurice Schonfeld, U.P.I., Jack Fox, U.P.I., Burt Reinhardt, U.P.I. In
the United Press-International film library, a New York hobbyist found
an eight-millimeter color film of the assassination made by Orville
Nix. One of the frames of the Nix film particularly interested him
because it showed an object behind the wall on the grassy knoll. He
then employed a film specialist to blow the frame up, and it became
clear that the object was in fact a vehicle. On the roof of the
vehicle, he discerned a man aiming what appeared to be a rifle at the
President’s car. He immediately took his photograph to Dallas and asked
eyewitnesses about it.
U.P.I. editors,
apparently impressed with the photograph, sent reporter Jack Fox to
Dallas to interview witnesses to the assassination.
Lee
E. Bowers, Jr. told him that the photograph was “exactly what I saw.”
S. M. Holland, who was standing on the overpass and had one of the best
views of any eyewitness, told Fox there were four shots: “…the first
came from the book building and hit the President. The second came from
the same place and hit Governor John Connally….The third shot came from
behind the picket fence to the north of Elm Street. There was a puff of
smoke under the trees like someone had thrown out a Chinese firecracker
and a report entirely different from the one which was fired from the
book building…”
According to Holland, the
fourth shot came from the Book Depository. When Holland reached the
fence he found a station wagon and a sedan. On the bumper of the
station wagon there were two muddy marks “as if someone had stood there
to look over the fence.” At least seven other witnesses on the overpass
saw smoke rising from the same area, and many other witnesses thought
the shots came from behind the picket fence. One Dallas policeman, J.
M. Smith, even claimed to have “caught the smell of gunpowder” behind
the wooden fence.
The Nix-U.P.I. film and partial blowup.
9. EYEWITNESS THEORIES
Eyewitness
accounts of the assassination are perhaps the most popular source of
two-assassin theories—virtually any armchair student of the
assassination, given the Report’s twenty-six volumes of testimony, can
develop an interesting theory as to where the shots came from. Right
after the twenty-six volumes were made public, Harold Feldman, a writer
on the psychology of assassins, counted up the various sources of shots
reported by 121 eyewitnesses. His tally revealed that 38 gave “no clear
opinion,” 32 thought the shots came from the Book Depository, and 51
though the shots came from the grassy knoll area. Largely on the basis
of this analysis, Feldman advanced the theory that there were two
assassins: one on the grassy knoll and one in the Book Depository.
Drawback: Eyewitness recollections often conflict: which means that somebody has to be wrong.
WHO DID IT?
The following six theories name Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone assassin.
10. UNDERGROUND MAN THEORY
Proponent:
The Warren Commission. The Commission did not reach a final conclusion
as to why Oswald killed President Kennedy. Instead, it listed five
“factors” (which, a Commission lawyer said, read like clichés from a TV
soap opera). They were:
-
hostility to his environment;
-
failure to establish “meaningful relationships”;
-
desire for a place in history;
-
a commitment to Marxism and communism (a “factor” inserted at the insistence of Commissioner Gerald Ford);
-
a capacity to act decisively without regard to the consequences.
According to this theory, Oswald had no motive; he acted out of blind resentment.
11. MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE THEORY
Proponents: Some Commission lawyers and members of the C.I.A.
Since
Oswald spent considerable time in a Soviet hospital, a few Commission
lawyers entertained the theory that Oswald might have been brainwashed
and conditioned as a “sleeper” assassin; then he went haywire (i.e., he
was accidentally turned on). The Commission decided to send a letter to
the C.I.A. requesting information on the “present status of Soviet
‘mind-conditioning’ techniques.” A few weeks later, a C.I.A. agent
replied that this possibility was still “a main school of thought” at
the C.I.A. on the assassination, and although such techniques were
still in a relatively primitive stage, this form of conditioning could be induced by drugs. The theory, however, was not further developed.
12. DOMESTIC QUARREL THEORY
Proponent: Representative Gerald Ford.
Commissioner Gerald Ford, in his book, Portrait of the Assassin,
suggests that Oswald was still hedging on the eve of the assassination
when he returned home to see his wife, Marina. She spurned him. Oswald
then went to the garage. He got his rifle.
13. HORRIBLE ACCIDENT THEORY
Proponent: Marina Oswald.
In
her final testimony before the Commission, Marina Oswald advanced her
own theory of Lee’s motive. She said she believed her husband was
actually trying to shoot Governor John Connally, and missed, and by a
horrible accident he killed the President.
14. OEDIPAL THEORY
Proponent: Dr. Renatus Hartogs, coauthor of The Two Assassins.
Dr.
Hartogs, a psychiatrist who evaluated Oswald as a thirteen-year-old
boy, has recently advanced a theory explaining the assassination in
terms of Oswald’s repressed lust for his mother. Hartogs observes that
Oswald slept in his mother’s bed long after he should have had a bed of
his own, and suggests that inner guilt feelings may have led him to
kill President Kennedy. Dr. Hartogs finds it significant that Oswald
shot at both Kennedy and Tippit three times, since the number “three”
in psychoanalytic thinking symbolizes the masculine genitals. However,
Sylvia Meagher points out in her review of Hartogs’ book that Tippit
was shot four times.
15. KILLER-INSTINCT THEORY
Proponent: John J. McCloy.
In
a secret colloquium between the Commission and three psychiatrists,
Commissioner McCloy advanced the “killer-instinct” theory. He noted
that Oswald had killed two men and had attempted to shoot at least
three others (Governor Connally, General Walker, and the police officer
who tried to arrest him). McCloy reasoned that this indicated a pattern
of innate violence. By the time the report was written, however,
McCloy’s hypothesis seems to have been lost in the shuffle.
The
following four theories are based on the belief that Oswald was
innocent, that he was framed for both the Kennedy assassination and
murder of officer J. D. Tippit by the real conspirators who planted
evidence against him before and after the assassination. The logic of
these theories inevitably leads to a high-level conspiracy involving
law-enforcement agencies. For example, to believe that Oswald did not
kill Tippit, it is necessary to assume: a) shells from Oswald’s
revolver were planted at the scene by the real murderers; b) the
revolver then was planted on Oswald by the Dallas police (the plot
obviously could not have depended on Oswald going home and conveniently
fetching his pistol; and c) Oswald’s admission that he had his revolver
with him when arrested was fabricated.
16. PLANTED-RIFLE THEORY
Proponent: Mark Lane.
Thesis:
A 7.65 caliber German Mauser was found in the Book Depository, and
later Oswald’s 6.5 caliber Italian Mannlicher-Carcano rifle was
substituted for it. This theory is based on testimony (and an
affidavit) indicating that the three Dallas law officers first
described the rifle as a Mauser. The problem with this theory is that
the bullet fragments found in the President’s car ballistically match
Oswald’s Carcano, proving that it was employed in the assassination (no
matter where or when it was found).
17. PLANTED-BULLET THEORY
Proponents:
Professor Richard H. Popkin, Professor Josiah Thompson, Sylvia Meagher,
Vincent Salandria, Léo Sauvage, Harold Weisberg, Mark Lane and Ray
Marcus.
Thesis: A bullet, which
the Warren Report states was found on Connally’s stretcher, was fired
from Oswald’s rifle sometime prior to the assassination. Then, after
the assassination, it was planted on a stretcher in the Dallas hospital
where Kennedy and Connally were treated, thereby framing Oswald.
This
theory is based on the fact that evidence developed by the Commission
precluded both Kennedy’s and Connally’s stretchers as possible sources
for the stretcher bullet. The Commission’s autopsy report stated that
the bullet exited Kennedy, therefore it could not have come from his
stretcher. And Drs. Finck, Humes, and Shaw testified that more
fragments were found in Connally’s wrist than were missing from the
bullet, thus ruling out Connally’s stretcher as a source for the
bullet. Furthermore, in missing tapes of the doctors’ press conference,
which was held after the stretcher bullet was found, Dr. Shaw
supposedly says that a nearly whole bullet was lodged in Connally’s thigh.
The theorists thus deduce that the bullet must have been planted on the
stretcher. The fact that no blood or other organic material was found
on the bullet reinforces their argument. Professor Thompson further
points out that the only bullet similar in appearance to the stretcher
bullet was obtained by firing Oswald’s rifle into a long tube of
cotton. He believes that this test indicated that the stretcher bullet
was probably obtained by firing the bullet into cotton.
The Commission claims this bullet pierced Kennedy's neck and
Connally's shoulder, ribs, wrist and thigh. Theorists say it's a fake.
The
Commission claims this bullet pierced Kennedy’s neck and Connally’s
shoulder, ribs, wrist and thigh. Theorists say it’s a fake.
18. OSWALD IMPERSONATOR THEORY
Proponents: Léo Sauvage, Harold Weisberg, Sylvia Meagher, (See also Popkin’s Two-Oswald Theory).
Thesis:
Before the assassination, someone impersonating Oswald planted clues
that would incriminate Oswald in the assassination. According to this
theory, the impersonator made himself conspicuous at a nearby rifle
range, brought a gun into a neighborhood gunsmith, cashed large checks,
and acted suspiciously. The impersonator probably took part in the
assassination.
Who is this man? A C.I.A. report on Lee Harvey
Oswald arrived at the F.B.I. field office in Dallas they day of the
assassination. It revealed that Oswald had visited the Cuban Embassy in
Mexico City on September 27, 1963, and included a photograph taken by a
secret C.I.A. camera of the man identified as Oswald leaving the
Embassy. After the assassination, a problem developed; the man in the
C.I.A. photograph was not Oswald! Oswald’s mother added to the
confusion by claiming the man in the photograph was Jack Ruby.
(Obviously, it isn’t.) Commission lawyers, attempting to find out if
the man in the photograph was associated with Oswald or impersonating
him, were never able to identify the mystery man. All the C.I.A. would
say was that it was a “mix-up.”
19. FALL-GUY THEORY
Proponent: Joachim Joesten
Thesis:
That the assassination was the work of a conspiracy involving some
officers of the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. as well as some Army figures and
some reactionary oil millionaires. The conspirators used Oswald as a
“fall guy, a red herring, to draw attention while the murderers
escaped.” The F.B.I. for reasons of its own, completed the frame of
Oswald and covered up evidence of the real conspirators.
The next three theories explain how the second assassin escaped from the grassy knoll.
20. BOGUS SECRET-SERVICE MAN THEORY
Proponent: Sylvia Meagher.
Dallas
policeman J. M. Smith ran to the parking lot behind the grassy knoll
immediately after the assassination. He suddenly encountered a stranger
and pulled his gun. The stranger identified himself as a Secret Service
agent and showed Smith his credentials (although Smith later could not
recall his name). Smith’s account is corroborated to some degree by two
other law officers—Deputy Constable Weitzman and Sergeant Harkness.
Sylvia
Meagher, an independent researcher, made a meticulous check of Secret
Service records and found that no Secret Service agent was on or near
the knoll area at the time that Smith encountered the “agent.” Mrs.
Meagher suggests that the assassin may have escaped by using fake
Secret Service credentials.
21. TRUNK THEORY
Proponents: S. M. Holland, Richard H. Popkin.
Soon
after the shots were fired, S. M. Holland rushed to the picket fence
behind the knoll (where he thought he saw smoke) and found a station
wagon and a sedan parked near the fence (see Over the Fence Theory).
Muddy footprints led from the bumper of the station wagon to the sedan
and then mysteriously ended. Holland said: “I’ve often wondered if a
man could have climbed into the trunk of that car and pulled the lid
shut on himself, then someone else have driven it away later.” Other
theorists, like Professor Popkin, have thought it more likely that the
knoll assassin simply hid the rifle in the car, then fled on foot.
22. STORM DRAIN THEORY
Proponent: Lillian Castellano.
Mrs.
Castellano, a California accountant, located what appeared to be a
storm drain in a photograph of the grassy knoll taken at the time of
the assassination. However, it could not be located in later
photographs of the grassy knoll. Through a contact in Dallas, Mrs.
Castellano obtained a chart of the sewer and drainage system
surrounding the grassy knoll. Apparently, the drain was filled in after
the assassination. Mrs. Castellano suspected that it could have been
part of an escape system.
23. OSWALD AS F.B.I. INFORMER
According
to Secret Service report 767, Alonzo Hudkins, a Houston reporter, told
the Secret Service that he had heard from Chief Allan Sweatt of the
Dallas sheriff’s office that Lee Harvey Oswald “was being paid two
hundred dollars per month by the F.B.I. in connection with their
subversive investigation” and that “Oswald had informant number S-172.”
The Commission never called Hudkins or Sweatt to testify.
There are a number of other interesting circumstances surrounding Oswald’s possible relationship with the F.B.I.
-
Warren
De Brueys, an F.B.I. agent who covered both the New Orleans and Dallas
beat, asked Carlos Bringuier to furnish the F.B.I. information about
the activities of his Anti-Castro group. When Bringuier refused, De
Brueys threatened to send an under-cover agent to infiltrate the group.
Later,
Lee Harvey Oswald came to New Orleans from Dallas and tried to
infiltrate Bringuier’s group by pretending he was an Anti-Castroite.
Bringuier, at first, did not think this was a coincidence.
-
When
Oswald was arrested for fighting with Bringuier, he asked to see an
F.B.I. agent. An F.B.I. agent visited him in jail and questioned him
about the activities of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
-
Oswald’s
address book contained the address and license plate number of Dallas
F.B.I. agent James Hosty. It was later deleted from the police list of
Oswald’s addresses.
Drawback:
J. Edgar Hoover categorically denied that Oswald had any connection
with the F.B.I. and offered the F.B.I.’s file on Oswald to the
Commission. (The Chief Justice refused it, however, on the grounds that
it might contain secret information.)
24. OSWALD AS SECRET AGENT
Proponents: Mrs. Marguerite Oswald and Norman Mailer.
Mrs.
Oswald suggested long before the assassination, and is still of the
belief, that her son was a C.I.A. agent. His trip to Russia was a
C.I.A. mission, and so were his later activities. If Oswald was
involved in the assassination, Mrs. Oswald suggests, “Now it could have
been that my son and the Secret Service were all involved in a mercy
killing,” explaining, “If he [Kennedy] was dying of an incurable
disease, this would be for the security of our country.”
Norman
Mailer, on the other hand, believes that it is quite possible Oswald
was an undercover agent for not one, but a number of espionage services
(who “tend to collect the same particular small agents in common”).
Mailer wrote in Book Week:
“It was all but a comedy of the most horrible sort, but when Kennedy
was assassinated, the espionage services of half the world may have
discovered in the next hour that one little fellow in Dallas was…a
secret, useless little undercover agent who was on their private lists;
what nightmares must have ensued.” Oswald was then liquidated by one of
his employer-agencies. According to Mailer’s scenario, we hear an Ivy
League voice cry out in some unknown council-of-war room: “Well, can’t
something be done, can’t we do something about this man?”, and a little
later a phone call made and another, and finally a voice saying to our
friend Ruby, “Jack, I got good news. There’s a little job…”
25. TWO OSWALDS THEORY
Proponent: Richard H. Popkin.
Thesis:
Professor Popkin (Chairman, Philosophy Department, University of
California at San Diego) has advanced a rather ingenious theory to
explain certain discrepancies in the Commission’s findings. Certain
witnesses claim to have encountered Oswald prior to November 22 in
places where he could not possibly have been. To explain these
anomalies, Popkin suggests that there were actually “two Oswalds”; the
second “Oswald” closely resembled the real Oswald. The real Oswald’s
role was to be a decoy—that is, he would lead the police astray by
becoming the prime suspect. The escape of the second Oswald, who
actually fired the shots from the Depository, was thus facilitated.
When Oswald’s trial came up, he would undoubtedly produce a surprise
alibi, and the evidence would be so confused by the second Oswald’s
pre-assassination maneuvers that the Oswald-on-trial would be
acquitted. What went wrong, however—and here the theory becomes a mite
complicated—was that the real Oswald met Officer Tippit, who knew the
second Oswald, and waved him down. In the ensuing confusion, Oswald
panicked and shot Tippit.
This theory differs from the Oswald Impersonator Theory in one important way: here, the real Oswald is guilty.
Drawback:
The sightings of this “second Oswald” all occurred before it was even
known that Kennedy would be coming to Dallas. Thus it seems unlikely
that a carefully deceptive plot cold have been underway.
Retort:
Oswald and his double were only one of many pairs of assassins being
set up all over the country on a contingency basis, should the
opportunity for action arise.
26. POST-ASSASSINATION DOMINO THEORY
Proponents: Penn Jones Jr. and Mark Lane.
Penn Jones, the editor of the Midlothian, Texas, Mirror,
notes that a number of key witnesses have died under “clouded
circumstances” since the assassination and he suggests the theory that
people who know too much about the assassination are being silenced.
For
example, Jones cites a meeting at Ruby’s apartment at which two
newspaper reporters, Bill Hunter and Jim Koethe, were present. Bill
Hunter was later killed by the “accidental discharge” of a policeman’s
revolver in a police station in Long Beach, California. Jim Koethe was
killed by a “karate chop” in his Dallas apartment. The murder is still
unsolved. Ruby’s lawyer, Tom Howard, also attended the meeting. He
later died of a “heart attack” (Jones notes “no autopsy was
performed”). Jones suggests that some important information was
divulged at the meeting, and those who heard the information had to be
disposed of.
Moreover, Jones’s paper has maintained a death-count on other relevant individuals.
-
Hank
Killam, whose wife was a waitress at Ruby’s nightclub and whose friend
lived in Oswald’s rooming house, was found on a Florida street with his
throat cut.
-
Dorothy Kilgallen, the
only journalist who was granted a private interview with Ruby, died.
Jones points out (erroneously) that her death occurred on the night of
the “strange” Northeast Power Blackout. (Jones missed the connection
that the announcer of What’s My Line, John Daly, is the Chief Justice’s son-in-law.)
-
William
Whaley, the cabdriver who took Oswald home after the assassination and
possibly talked to him, died in a car crash—the first cabdriver to be
killed on duty in Dallas since 1937.
-
Karen
Bennett Carlin, another performer at Ruby’s club and the last person to
talk to Ruby before he shot Oswald, died of gunshot wounds in Houston,
according to Penn Jones. This seems quite strange since she testified
to a Commission lawyer after the reported date of her death.
-
Earlene
Roberts, the housekeeper at Oswald’s rooming house who claimed she saw
a police car stop in front of the house about ten minutes before Oswald
encountered Tippit, also died.
Mark
Lane adds the case of Warren Reynolds, a witness to the Tippit
shooting, who was shot through the head (but survived); Nancy Money, a
former stripper in Ruby’s nightclub who also provided an alibi for the
man accused of shooting Reynolds, hanged herself in the Dallas jail;
and Lee E. Bowers, Jr., a bystander who saw a car making a getaway from
the grassy knoll, was killed in a car accident to which there were no
witnesses.
27. RACIST THEORY
Proponents: Léo Sauvage, Hans Habe (author of The Wounded Land).
Sauvage, an American correspondent for Figaro,
suggests the theory that Kennedy could have been killed by a conspiracy
of Southern racists to prevent him from carrying out his civil-rights
program. To turn blame away from themselves and onto Leftists, they
methodically framed Oswald (by impersonating him and by planting
evidence against him). Oswald’s murder, however, was not part of the
racist conspiracy, but a separate plot instigated by the Dallas police
to prevent a trial in which he might be acquitted of the crime
28. CUI BONO THEORY
Proponents: Izvestia, Trud, Joachim Joesten, Barbara Garson, Don B. Reynolds, Jack Ruby and others.
Thesis:
Although not one shred of hard evidence has been uncovered to prove
them right, many people have taken the “Who benefited?” line of pursuit
and point an accusing finger at Lyndon Johnson.
The Soviet Government newspaper Izvestia,
after condemning The Warren Report as slanderous to Russia, hinted by
sly innuendo that President Johnson may have been implicated in the
assassination. They cite the soon-to-be published works of Joachim
Joesten (seven volumes to be sold by subscription for $200) which
argues that Johnson has been covering up. The next day, Trud, the trade-union paper, made the accusations more forcefully.
Californian Barbara Garson has written a satire, based on Macbeth, called Macbird
in which L.B.J. and Lady Bird take the parts of Macbeth and Lady
Macbeth in the murder of J.F.K. and Adlai Stevenson (the Egg of Head).
In
January of 1964 the Warren Commission learned that Don B. Reynolds,
insurance agent and close associate of Bobby Baker, had been heard to
say that the F.B.I. knew that Johnson was behind the assassination.
When interviewed by the F.B.I., he denied this. But he did recount an
incident during the swearing in of Kennedy in which Bobby Baker said
words to the effect that the s.o.b. would never live out his term and
that he would die a violent death. Reynolds also vaguely suggested that
Governor Connally may have called long distance from Washington to Lee
Oswald who was staying in a Dallas Y.M.C.A. He had no proof.
A
number of letters allegedly written by Jack Ruby and smuggled out of
jail were auctioned off by New York autograph dealer Charles Hamilton.
Penn Jones, Jr. bought one and published part of it.
"I
walked into a trap the moment I walked down the ramp Sunday morning.
This was the spot where they could frame the Jew, and that way all of
his people will be blamed as being Communists, this is what they were
waiting for. They alone had planned the killing, by they I mean Johnson
and others.”
“…read the book Texas Looks at Lyndon and you may learn quite a bit about Johnson and how he fooled everyone.”
Drawback:
In a letter to J. Lee Rankin, J. Edgar Hoover wrote, “I have not
received any information to implicate President Johnson or Governor
Connally in the assassination.”
29. DALLAS OLIGARCHY THEORY
Proponent: Thomas Buchanan.
According
to Buchanan’s theory, “Mr. X,” a right-wing Texas oil millionaire, had
to eliminate Kennedy and Khrushchev to gain world domination of the oil
market. He decided to assassinate Kennedy in such as way that
Khrushchev would be discredited. Oswald was to be framed as the
assassin, then executed by Tippit. With Oswald dead, the Soviet Union
would be blamed for the assassination. Oswald, however, outdrew Tippit
and was captured alive later. The conspirators then induced Ruby to
kill Oswald as a means of silencing him for good. Aside from Mr. X,
Buchanan names the following “additional conspirators”:
-
The assassin on the bridge. (He hints this was Ruby.)
-
A second assassin in the Depository who was wearing a police uniform.
-
A police officer involved in Oswald’s arrest (who was, next to Mr. X, the key conspirator).
-
Tippit.
-
Oswald.
-
One of the policemen who missed Oswald as he left the building.
30. CUBA-FRAMED THEORY
Proponent: Fidel Castro.
About
a week after the assassination, Castro suggested that the conspirators
intended that Cuba be blamed for the assassination. According to this
theory, Oswald may have been one of the riflemen, but his prime role in
the conspiracy was to ghost a trail that would lead directly to Cuba.
Thus, a few months before the assassination, Oswald set up a phony Fair
Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans and Dallas, engaged in “brawls”
with anti-Castro Cubans, and identified himself with Castro and Cuba on
radio programs. Then he went to Mexico where he tried to obtain a Cuban
visa. (Castro notes that Oswald had no reason to go to Cuba. If Oswald
wanted to go to Russia, as he claimed, it was shorter and easier to go
via Europe.)
After the assassination, the plan
called for Oswald to disappear. Evidence planted at the scene would
identify Oswald as the assassin, and Oswald’s pre-assassination
activities and other planted clues would lead to the conclusion that
Oswald had fled to Cuba. This, in turn, might serve as a pretext for an
American invasion of Cuba.
There is some later evidence which fits in very neatly with the Castro thesis.
-
On
September 26, just before Oswald’s trip to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico,
Mrs. Sylvia Odio, a Cuban Refugee leader, claims that three men visited
her in Dallas. Two were Latins, possibly Cubans, the third was
American. The American was called “Leon Oswald.” After the
assassination Mrs. Odio as well as her sister definitely identified
this man as Lee Harvey Oswald. The three men said that they had just
come from New Orleans (the Commission established Oswald left New
Orleans about September 25) and were about to take a trip. They wanted
backing for some violent anti-Castro activities, but Mrs. Odio
suspected that they might in fact be Castro agents. The next day one of
the Latins called Mrs. Odio and told her that Oswald was “kind of nuts”
and that he had said Kennedy should have been assassinated after the
Bay of Pigs, and that “it is so easy to do it.” Thus, Oswald
established himself as a potential assassin traveling with two Cubans.
-
Two
days before the assassination, three people spoke to Wayne January,
manager of Red Bird airport in Dallas, about renting a plane. They told
him they wanted to be flown to Yucatán Peninsula on November 22. After
the assassination, January told the F.B.I. that one of the three
persons was Oswald. January later said that he suspected the threesome
might want to hijack his plane and go to Cuba, and thus decided not to
rent them the plane.
-
Shortly after
the assassination, there were literally dozens of allegations and
“tips” that Oswald was closely connected with the Cubans. For example,
one Latin American free-lance intelligence agent claimed that he saw
Oswald receive $6,500 for the purpose of assassinating Kennedy. (The
Commission found these allegations to be false.) However, if Oswald
escaped and disappeared, these tips might very well have fed suspicion
that Oswald was in Cuba.
31. CRYSTAL BALL THEORY
Proponent: Jeane Dixon.
In
December, 1963, prophetess Jeane Dixon “got psychically” an inside line
on the assassination. “As I interpret my symbols,” she wrote, “Fidel
Castro believed that President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev had
gotten together on a plan to eliminate him and replace him with someone
more acceptable to the United States and the U.N. Castro, in his
conniving way, therefore arranged for the assassination of John F.
Kennedy. Lee Harvey Oswald was the triggerman, but there were other
people involved in the plot.”
32. MAFIA THEORY
Proponent: Sergei Groussard.
In a series of articles in L’Aurore,
Groussard offers the theory that Kennedy was assassinated in order to
forestall a planned crackdown on organized crime. The “Al Capone gang”
in Chicago ordered Ruby to set up the assassination. Ruby then sent
Oswald (who was in his debt) to Mexico to visit the underworld’s own
plastic surgery clinic and other escape facilities; and Oswald agreed
to be the rifleman. Tippit was supposed to drive Oswald out of Dallas,
but when he learned that Oswald was the assassin he tried to arrest him
and Oswald killed him. Ruby then had to finish the job personally.
33. JUNTA THEORY
Proponent: M. S. Arnoni.
The editor of The Minority of One
envisions a “titanic power struggle” in the U.S. Government. He
postulates that the insurrectionist forces included the C.I.A., the Air
Force, relevant defense contractors, and a number of congressmen and
that the Junta’s leaders were high-ranking Air Force and Navy officers.
The object was to deliver the U.S. into the hands of a
“military-industrial cabal.”
Because President
Kennedy attempted to oppose the Junta, he had to be eliminated. His
fate was sealed when he signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in
1963—which he, according to this theory, “signed in his own blood.”
34. RED EXECUTION THEORY
Proponent: Revilo P. Oliver.
Professor
Oliver, in an article for the John Birch Society magazine, advanced the
theory that Moscow ordered Oswald to assassinate Kennedy. It seems that
Kennedy was threatening to desert the Communists and “turn American.”
But the President’s aides persuaded him to go to Dallas where he was
“executed.”
Although the assassin’s accomplices
escaped, Oswald himself was apprehended by dint of the heroic action of
J. D. Tippit, and so it became necessary that “Jakob Rubenstein”
eliminate Oswald.
35. EVIL-FORCES THEORY
Proponent: Ousman Ba, Foreign Minister of Mali.
Ba
charged in the United Nations Security Council that “Kennedy’s
assassination, the murder of Patrice Lumumba and Dag Hammarskjóld’s
death were all the work of forces that were behind the recent
U.S.-Belgian rescue operation in the Congo.” Ba did not elaborate.
Ahead to Second Primer of Assassination Theories
http://karws.gso.uri.edu/jfk/conspiracy_theories/Second_Primer/Second_primer.html
A Second Primer of Assassination Theories
Esquire, May 1967, pp. 104 ff.
Last
December we thought we had offered you the complete works of the
assassination buffs. The opus grows: here are twenty-five new entries
As reported in last December’s Esquire, the
Warren Commission’s crucial Single-Bullet Theory (hereafter, the
S.B.T.) seemed to be in real trouble. This theory posits that President
Kennedy and Governor Connally both were first hit by the same bullet—a
crucial assumption because the Commission established that there was
not enough time for the murder rifle to be fired twice within the
interval that both men were first hit (1.8 seconds or less). In short,
either the S.B.T. stands, or a Two-Assassin Theory emerges.
Trouble first developed for the S.B.T. with the publication of previously classified F.B.I. reports by Edward Jay Epstein’s Inquest,
which flatly contradicted the Commission’s autopsy statement that the
first bullet passed clean through President Kennedy and exited his
throat. The F.B.I. reports instead stated that the autopsy showed that
the bullet in question did not exit from the President’s throat, a fact
which would make it impossible for this bullet to continue on to hit
Governor Connally and thus would rule out the S.B.T. Next, Life
magazine enlarged its 8mm amateur film of the assassination frame by
frame, and, on the basis of this new evidence, concluded that Connally
and Kennedy may indeed have been hit by separate bullets. Governor
Connally also viewed the Life film frame by frame and stated categorically that he
was hit by a separate bullet. The most unkind cut of all came when
Governor Connally called a press conference for the express purpose of
defending the Commission, then inadvertently mentioned that he still
had a fragment of the bullet in his thigh. Alas, that fact alone would
invalidate the S.B.T. because the bullet that is supposed to have
wounded both men was found virtually intact. Finally, Senator Richard
Russell, member of the Commission who now claims the dubious
distinction of having been the only member “who bucked the Report,”
stated that “from the outset” he never really believed in the S.B.T.
Then Commissioner Hale Boggs followed suit during a Face the Nation
interview by expressing his own doubts about the faltering S.B.T. But
even as Commission members began deserting the sinking S.B.T., a number
of last-ditch theories were proposed by the defenders of the Commission.
1. THE SECOND-THOUGHT AUTOPSY REPORT
Proponents: Arlen Specter and other Commission lawyers.
Thesis:
Arlen Specter, a key investigator for the Commission and principal
author of the S.B.T., has attempted to explain the contradiction
between the F.B.I. Summary Reports and the Commission’s autopsy report
in terms of two different autopsy conclusions. In the one and only
autopsy examination conducted on the night of the assassination at
Bethesda Hospital, the doctors arrived at the “tentative” conclusion
that the bullet which struck President Kennedy in the back penetrated
only a short distance, then fell out through the point of entrance when
the Dallas doctors applied external heart massage. The next day,
however, the autopsy doctors found out about the throat wound (which
was obscured by the tracheotomy operation) and changed their
conclusion, now deciding that the bullet went completely through the
neck. This conclusion was reached without benefit of having the corpse
before them (or the autopsy and X-ray photographs). Then, according to
Specter’s theory, Commander Humes incinerated his original autopsy
report in his recreation-room fireplace, and drew up a new autopsy
report stating that the bullet exited the President’s throat. The
F.B.I. was not shown the new report and reiterated the old conclusion
in their summary reports.
Drawback:
Specter’s theory contradicts The Warren Report’s description of the
autopsy, which he himself wrote in 1964. In The Warren Report (pp. 88-89),
Specter states that, during the autopsy, doctors rejected the
possibility that the bullet penetrated only a short distance, and that
the evidence from Dallas of a throat wound “confirmed” this conclusion.
Thus, whereas The Warren Report states that there was only and only one
conclusion of the autopsy reached during the examination, the autopsy
conclusion was changed (not confirmed) the next day by evidence from
Dallas, and thus there were two autopsy conclusions. The question
remains: Which one of these conflicting statements is true?
2. THE HOOVER HEGELIAN THEORY
Proponent: J. Edgar Hoover.
Thesis:
Although the F.B.I. Supplementary Report of January 13, 1964, states
that the bullet that struck President Kennedy in the back penetrated
“to a distance of less than a finger length,” and the Commission’s
autopsy report states that this same bullet passed clean through the
neck and exited the throat, J. Edgar Hoover finds that there is no
“conflict” between the two statements of the autopsy, only a
“difference in the information reported.” Hoover further claims that
the F.B.I. of course knew that the bullet passed clean through the
President’s neck at the same time that the reported the bullet
penetrated only a finger’s length into his back. Since they also knew
that the Commission knew the true contents of the autopsy report, there
was no reason, Hoover insists, to make a false statement of the autopsy
results. Moreover he dialectically explains that although the F.B.I.
report flatly stated that the bullet did not pass through the
President’s body, the F.B.I. itself helpfully pointed to weaknesses in
its own theory by stating that there was a hole in the President’s
shirt caused by an exiting projectile.
Drawback:
Thesis plus antithesis doesn’t equal J. Edgar’s synthesis. Aside from
the fact that the F.B.I. Supplementary Reports were prepared initially
for public release and not for the Warren Commission, a major problem
in Hoover’s explanation is that the F.B.I. told The Washington Post on December 18, 1963, that the hole in the shirt was caused by a fragment from the third shot which exploded against the President’s head (not from the first shot). Therefore, the F.B.I. report of the shirt hole does not “clearly”
indicate that the autopsy doctors’ early observation “that the bullet
penetrated only a short distance into the Presidents head probably was
in error,” as Hoover postulates.
3. VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE THEORY
Proponent: Lawrence Schiller, a photographer and producer of Capitol Records album, The Controversy, on the assassination.
Thesis:
A number of critics assume that shots came from the knoll because a
number of witnesses state they saw smoke coming from the knoll area.
The most celebrated puff-of-smoke witness is S. M. Holland. Schiller
brought Holland back to the exact spot where he said he was standing,
placed a camera level with his shoulder, aimed it at the spot where
Holland said he saw the puff of smoke, and snapped a photograph. The
photograph shows that directly behind and slightly higher than the spot
where Holland claims the smoke came from is the sixth-floor window of
the Texas School Book Depository. Thus, Schiller suggests, “Maybe both
Holland and the Warren Commission are right: the shots came from the
Book Depository but from Holland’s perspective the smoke and the report
of a gun appeared to come from the knoll.”
S. M. Holland (shown on the overpass where he stood November 22, 1963)
saw smoke under the tree directly above his right thumb.
Drawback: Holland, whose depth perception
is normal, was just possibly able to distinguish the knoll, 180 feet
away, from the Book Depository, which was 120 feet beyond that. Also,
Schiller’s analysis is destroyed completely in view of the fact that
witnesses at other points also thought the shots came from the knoll:
the policeman who ran up it, Abraham Zapruder, and others.
4. THE NOBLE LIE THEORY
Proponents: Drew Pearson, Henri Nannen (editor of Der Stern), and Jacob Cohen (former instructor at Brandeis summer school and author of Honest Verdict).
Thesis: Drew Pearson quotes Der Stern’s
explanation that the original autopsy report was suppressed “on the
grounds that President Kennedy was suffering from Addison’s disease”
and “his family did not want it known.” Why? Because “politically
Kennedy’s illness could become dangerous. Addison’s illness—it sounds
sinister.” Thus, according to this theory, the Kennedys withheld the
autopsy report and “hid the X-rays, even from the Warren Commission.”
And “this would also explain the lack of a date on the Warren
Commission autopsy report” which was changed “so that it contained no
mention of the President’s illness,” as well as why the autopsy surgeon
burned the original autopsy report (“otherwise hundreds of people would
have been faced with lying under oath, which would have been
deplorable”).
Drawback: The fact that
Kennedy had Addison’s desease was in the Warren Report (as well as in
Sorenson’s biography of Kennedy), so why delete it from the autopsy
report? And the Commission files show that Attorney General Robert
Kennedy explicitly gave his approval to the Commission to look at the
autopsy photographs and X-rays.
5. MANCHESTER THEORY
Proponent: William Manchester.
Thesis:
In his sometime authorized account, author Manchester recognizes that
there was hardly enough time for Oswald to have fired three shots. He
therefore proposes that only two shots were fired: the first hitting
Kennedy in the back and then going on to cause all of Connally’s
wounds, the second inflicting Kennedy’s fatal head wound. According to
this theory, Oswald left an extra cartridge case at the scene [from the
Walker shooting?] and the some hundred witnesses who thought they heard
three or more shots actually heard only two and echoes.
Drawback: More than a hundred witnesses heard more than two shots, and a number of witnesses claim that they saw
a bullet miss and hit the pavement. Finally, one man, James Tague, was
wounded by a fragment from a bullet. As he was standing 260 feet from
the President’s car at the time of the head shot, it does not seem
likely that he was wounded by a fragment from that bullet.
Gaining wobbly support from the preceding sources, the S.B.T. runs into stiff competition from most of the following theories.
6. CONNALLY’S SMALL-DETAIL THEORY
Proponent: John B. Connally, Governor of Texas.
Thesis: Immediately after he single-handedly demolished the S.B.T. in Life,
creating a nationwide outcry to reopen investigation, Connally called a
press conference in Texas. He said that although he was not hit by the
same bullet which hit Kennedy, it was only a small “detail,” and he
advised everyone to have faith in the Warren Commission because they
were all patriotic men.
Drawback: None.
7. RUSSELL LONG THEORY
Proponent: Senator Russell Long.
Thesis:
The whole controversy over the S.B.T. was made to appear a bit
irrelevant when Senator Long told the A.P. that he didn’t doubt Oswald
played a part in the assassination. “But,” he added, “whoever fired
that second shot was a lot better shot than Oswald.”
8. SHOT-THROUGH-THE-TREE THEORY
Proponent: Alexander M. Bickel.
Thesis: Professor Bickel, writing in Commentary,
finds that although the S.B.T. is untenable, the single-assassin theory
can be rescued by constructing an alternate hypothesis to explain the
first two shots. The Commission concluded that the first shot could not
have come before the 210th frame (photo A) on the Zapruder
film because before that point an oak tree blocked the assassin’s line
of sight. Bickel has found, however, that on frames 185-186
on the Zapruder film there was a “break” or window in the foliage of
the tree (photo B). Bickel thus suggests that Oswald might have fired
through the foliage at this point, which would have left sufficient
time to operate the bolt and fire again at frame 232 to wound Connally,
then fire the fatal head shot at film frame 313. According to this
theory, the first bullet lodged in the President’s back and was later
expelled on his stretcher at Parkland Hospital in Dallas, accounting
for its pristine condition. The second bullet wounded Connally and
fragmentized, accounting for the two fragments found in the front seat
of the Presidential limousine, and the final shot disintegrated when it
struck the President’s head, sending a minute fragment out through the
throat and accounting for the throat wound.
Drawback: Although Professor Bickel’s
theory is certainly a possible alternative to The Warren Report, it
still leaves a few unsolved problems. First, the opening in the tree
gave the assassin a view of the car for no more than a tenth of a
second. It seems improbable that a rifleman could aim, squeeze the
tiger, and fire off an accurate shot in this brief interval. Second,
this theory means that the President was hit in frame 186 but did not
react until frame 225—a two-second delayed reaction. Finally, the
theory fails to account for the shot that went astray and hit a
bystander (although conceivably Oswald had time to fire a fourth shot,
but then why were only three cartridge cases found?).
9. THE STEROID THEORY
Proponent: Ellen Leopold, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Thesis:
President Kennedy may indeed have had a two-second delayed reaction to
the first shot “if he was on steroids.” Not infrequently, Miss Leopold
points out, sufferers of Addison’s disease are put on steroids because
they tend to suppress reactions of the adrenal glands. This theory
lends unexpected support to Professor Bickel’s Shot-Through-The-Tree
Theory and also to the Early-Hit Theory (which posits a shot before the
tree, as reported in Esquire for December, 1966).
Drawback:
The Warren Commission, possibly for reasons pointed out by Drew
Pearson, never determined whether or not Kennedy was on steroids. Until
this question is settled, the Steroid Theory will be academic.
10. RIDDLE-NEWTON THEORY
Proponent: R. A. J. Riddle, member of the Brain Research Institute and former Professor of physics at U.C.L.A.
Thesis:
Dr. Riddle finds a discrepancy between the Warren Report and Newton’s
second law of motion—i.e. that an object struck by a projectile will be
given the same direction as that of the projectile. Because the film of
the assassination shows that the general direction of motion of Kennedy
is backward and to the left (viz. Vincent Salandria’s “Head Movement
Theory,” Esquire, December, 1966) and because there is no
evidence of a sudden acceleration of the car and on the assumption that
a neuromuscular reaction can be ruled out as the cause for President
Kennedy’s sudden violent backward motion, Dr. Riddle believes that the
projectile must have come from in front of the President. His
computations add weight to Vincent Salandria’s “Head Movement Theory.”
Drawback: Are Newton’s laws sound if they contradict the Warren Commission?
11. DOUBLE HEAD-SHOT THEORY
Proponents: Professor Josiah Thompson and Ray Marcus, independently.
Thesis:
The “third” shot, which caused Kennedy’s fatal head wound, was actually
two nearly simultaneous shots, one coming from the rear and another
from the right front.
This theory takes Vincent
Salandria’s “Head Movement Theory” and Riddle’s computations one step
further. In a forthcoming book, Thompson uses precise scientific
studies made of the Zapruder film frames and close analysis of the
medical evidence to show that the damage was inflicted by two bullets,
not one. Also, he cites ear- and eyewitness reports which back up his
claim that the third shot was really a third and fourth.
12. MARK LANE’S FRENCH FIVE-SHOT THEORY
Proponent: Mark Lane.
Thesis: In the French edition of his Rush to Judgment, Lane first proposed a theory which was later appended to his paperback edition of Rush to Judgment. In his original French version bullet “une” strikes President Kennedy from the back. Bullet “deux” strikes Kennedy in the throat. Bullet “trois” hit Governor Connally. Bullet “quatre” misses and wounds the bystander James Tague. And bullet “cinq”
fired from the grassy knoll hits Kennedy in the head. Since one shot
came from behind the President (bullet no. 1), one shot came from in
front of the President (bullet. No. 2)—he was facing straight ahead
when hit in the throat—and one shot (bullet No. 5) came from the right
(the knoll), there must have been at least “trois” assassins firing from different directions.
Drawbacks:
If a bullet hit President Kennedy from in front, as Lane suggests,
where did it go? There are no exit wounds that could account for a
bullet entering through the throat. Then too, if the bullet entered the
head from the rear, as the autopsy shows, it could not have entered
from the right front, as Lane claims.
13. DAL-TEX THEORY
Proponent: Harold Weisberg (Whitewash series).
Thesis: Some of the shots may have come from the Dal-Tex Building across the street from the Texas School Book Depository. In Whitewash II,
a sequel to his first book, Weisberg enlarges an A.P. photo of the
motorcade (A and B) and claims to see “a man in seeming distress” on a
fire escape (arrow) on the side of the Dal-Tex Building and “an
arm-like object projecting from the open second-story window” (circle).
This theory receives some corroboration from a photograph that appeared in The Saturday Evening Post
on December 14, 1963 (C). It purportedly showed the assassin’s line of
sight through the cross hairs of a telescopic lens. What the Post did
not notice is that the corner of the Texas School Book Depository is
visible in the right edge of the photo. Their photographer was shooting
from the Dal-Tex Building, not having been able to gain entrance into
the Depository. And strangely enough, according to Weisberg, the
established bullet trajectories still bear him out.
A
tantalizing note adds intrigue to the theory: a man was arrested in the
Dal-Tex Building shortly after the assassination, allegedly for having
no business being there.
14. THE 24 FRAMES-PER-SECOND THEORY
Proponent: Harold Weisberg.
Thesis:
The Commission’s conclusion that all three shots were fired in 5.6
seconds is based on the assumption that Abraham Zapruder’s camera was
operating at a speed of 18.3 frames per second. The 103 frames that
elapsed between frame 210 (the earliest point the Commission says the
first shot could have been fired) and frame 313 (the point at which the
third shot struck Kennedy’s head), divided by the speed of the camera
(18.3 frames per second), yields the 5.6-seconds time that the assassin
had to fire in. Weisberg has found, however, an F.B.I. report in the
National Archives in which Abe Zapruder claimed that his camera was set
to operate at twenty-four frames per second, not 18.3. This would mean
that the entire assassination occurred in less than 4.3 seconds (103
frames divided by 24), which is less time than the murder weapon could
be fired twice.
Drawback: The F.B.I.
established the film speed of the camera by filming the sweep second
hand of a clock, and the camera’s manufacturer recently confirmed that
the camera speed was less than a tenth of a frame from the figure
reported by the F.B.I.
15. INDUCED CANCER THEORY
Proponents: Jack Ruby, Mark Lane, Penn Jones, Jr., Norman Mailer, and an unidentified Russian newspaper.
Thesis:
That Jack Ruby’s death was planned and brought about by members of a
conspiracy whose prior business had been the murders of President
Kennedy, Patrolman J. D. Tippit and, possibly, Lee Harvey Oswald.
According
to an Associated Press story by Bernard Gavzer (datelined Dallas,
January 3, 1967), Ruby had expressed the belief that mustard gas had
been seeped into his cell and that he was injected with cancer.
The
Dallas Times Herald states in an editorial that “the Communist Russian
press has accused the city of Dallas of being “‘Co-Conspirators’
who…might have deliberately injected cancer cells into the veins of
Ruby.” This theory might in turn stem from such statements as the one
uttered by Mark Lane after a screening of his movie, Rush to Judgment.
Before a celebrity-packed audience he mused, “Isn’t it strange that
Ruby’s sniffles went from a cold to pneumonia to cancer in twenty-four
hours?”
Ditto Penn Jones, whose
assassination-connected death count is now at twenty (before ruby: the
motorcycle death of James Worrell, who allegedly saw somebody run out
of the back door of the Texas School Book Depository). Jones, of
course, finds Ruby’s death “very suspicious.”
In a rambling, emotional obituary entitled A Requiem for the Rube,
Norman Mailer offers his own interpretation of Ruby’s death and the
significance thereof. “Jack Ruby added a point to the general median
cancer potential by bugging the hope we could find one answer via Lee
Harvey Oswald. In turn, us, Great American Pure Breed Public, in for
feed, gave him his cans back. He died of cancer this morning, told us
the way. We do not know the cure, but son, now we know the way. We know
how to give cancer now…”
16. TWO-MEN IN-A-WINDOW THEORY
Proponent: Mrs. Eric Walther.
Thesis:
A few weeks after the assassination, Mrs. Walther stated in an F.B.I.
report that she saw a rifleman in one window of the Texas School Book
Depository, and next to the man with the rifle was another man in a
brown suit coat. Mrs. Walther was unable to see whether or not the
second man had a rifle. A second rifleman of course would explain how
Governor Connally and President Kennedy were both hit less than two
seconds apart. The Commission never evaluated Mrs. Walther’s statement.
Drawback: The window next to Oswald’s was closed during the assassination.
Retort: The second man may only have been a lookout.
17. DOCTORED PHOTOGRAPH THEORY
Proponents: Mark Lane, Harold Weisberg, David Lifton, et al.
Thesis:
The photographs showing Oswald with the Kennedy and Tippit murder
weapons are clever paste-ups of Oswald’s head on another man’s body.
When the Dallas police found the two photographs they were certain they had positive evidence linking Oswald with the weapons. Life magazine ran one of the pictures on its cover. Newsweek and The New York Times also printed the picture.
Confusion
reigned shortly. Careful observers had noticed that all three
publications had retouched the rifle and the pistol, but each did it in
different ways. Their editors were forced to write humiliating letters
to the Warren Commission admitting their alterations, but in essence
none had falsified the photographs. Those accusations were to come
later.
Mark Lane and Harold Weisberg noticed
that the shadow under Oswald’s nose seemed to be inconsistent with the
other shadows in the picture. Both the F.B.I. and the Dallas police
rushed to prove such a photograph was possible, but only
succeeding in adding a touch of Dogberry humor. The Dallas police shot
a picture of a plainclothesman on the scene, but on a cloudy day. The
F.B.I. posed an agent on a roof in bright sunlight, but the photograph
they sent to the Commission had the head cut off.
18. FALSE KNOLL THEORY
Proponent: David Lifton, a U.C.L.A. engineering graduate student and coauthor of the three-assassins article in Ramparts which introduced Riddle’s analysis. (See No. 11.)
Thesis:
On the day of the assassination, three types of camouflage were
employed by conspirators positioned beneath, on, and above the grassy
knoll. Lifton reached this hypothesis after minute study of photographs
of the area during and after the assassination. It answers the question
why, despite the fact that eyewitness reports and the Head Movement
Theory indicate shots came from the grassy knoll, nothing at all was
found there immediately afterward.
Underground
camouflage: Lifton suggests that prior to the assassination, the grassy
knoll was excavated from beneath and a system of tunnels and bunkers
was built into it. Peepholes covered by grass-mesh camouflage were
placed on the sloping surface of the knoll. Subterranean nooks would
explain the statement of witness Garland Slack: “I have heard this same
sort of sound when a shot had come from within a cave…” Lifton goes
further to suggest that the puff of smoke seen by some people on the
grassy knoll may have been the exhaust from a gas engine incorporated
within the camouflage mechanization.
Surface
camouflage: Lifton finds alterations (“bulges”) in the wall and the
hedgerow on the grassy knoll, netting in the bushes and faint images of
heads. Borrowing support from deputy Constable Weitzman who ran toward
the wall and who said, “I scaled the wall and, apparently, my hands
grabbed steam pipes. I burned them,” Lifton points out that there are
no steam pipes atop the wall. This might, he says, be an indication
that things may have been altered for that day. Weitzman also says a
witness told him that he saw somebody throw something through a bush.
Elevated
camouflage: Because a comparison of certain photographs taken during
the assassination with others taken afterward indicates that some tree
structures had been altered on the knoll, and because he sees images up
in the trees in assassination photos, Lifton believes there was some
camouflage in the trees. Eyewitnesses S. M. Holland, Austin Miller and
Frank Reilly all state that shots seemed to have come out of the trees.
Drawbacks:
As even Lifton admits, the photo enlargements are of extremely grainy
quality (they could not be reproduced properly here) and
interpretations of them are questionable at best.
19. BLUNDERBUSS THEORY
Proponents: Mark Lane and Harold Weisberg.
Thesis:
At least five witnesses saw a puff of smoke during the assassination.
Commission lawyers didn’t investigate because they believed no modern
weapon would emit puffs of smoke conforming to the witnesses’
descriptions. (Some of the witnesses, when queried, guessed the smoke
came from a motorcycle or steam pipe.)
Since
Commission lawyers were willing to accept the fact that Oswald used “an
antiquated rifle and twenty-year-old ammunition,” as Mark Lane
frequently points out on TV, why preclude the possibility that the
second assassin used even a more antiquated weapon?
20. MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT
Proponent: Vincent Salandria, a Philadelphia lawyer.
Thesis: Mr. Salandria finds a curious passage in Theodore H. White’s The Making of the President, 1964.
“On the flight [back to Washington aboard Air Force One] the party
learned that there was no conspiracy; learned of the identity of Oswald
and his arrest.” Salandria posits that this
announcement was deliberately misleading and may have been the first
sign of a conspiracy cover-up. The theory, obviously, would have to
implicate strategically powerful individuals. The
argument is as follows: Johnson’s party landed in Washington at 4:58
p.m. Dallas time. But at this point, Oswald had not been charged with
the assassination. He had not yet been identified by any eyewitnesses
in the Tippit killing, much less the assassination. The rifle found in
the Depository had not yet been traced. The photographs of Oswald
holding a rifle and wearing a revolver in his holster were not
discovered until the next afternoon. No fingerprints were taken from
him for comparison purposes until sometime after six p.m. The fiber on
the rifle was not examined until Saturday morning. The brown-paper bag
had not been linked to him. Marina Oswald had not yet been questioned.
In short, none of the evidence itemized in the table of contents of The
Warren Report under Chapter IV, “The Assassin,” was known to the Dallas
police at the time. As to the statement that
there was “no conspiracy,” Salandria believes that the announcement was
suspiciously premature. At 4:58 p.m. it was understood that the shots
had come from the front, yet the suspect Oswald was positioned behind
the President. District Attorney Henry M. Wade told the Warren
Commission that discussions relating to a conspiracy charge were
carried on by telephone between his office and Washington until late
that night. As far as Wade could remember, these included calls from
the White House, the F.B.I. and the State Department. The general drift
of the calls seemed to be to discourage any conspiracy charge.
Salandria finds this disturbing. During
Commission hearings, Congressman Gerald Ford told Secretary of State
Dean Rusk that a comment he made the day after the assassination
indicating that no foreign power was involved seemed a bit hasty. Said
Ford, “You really didn’t have much time to evaluate all of the
evidence.” Ford was concerned about who in the State Department might
have made telephone calls to Texas urging that no charge of conspiracy
be alleged.
Drawback: As yet the precise
text of the announcement on the plane is not known, nor is its origin.
Theodore White refuses to comment except to say that the plane was in
constant touch with the White House, and messages were relayed through
a Signal Corps center in the Midwest. But the announcement may have
been based, innocently, on the lack of any indication that there was a
conspiracy afoot.
21. THE I-MURDER THEORY
Proponent: Malcom Muggeridge.
Thesis:
According to this theory, Oswald “kills Kennedy for Intelligence’s own
sake; the perfect I-murder.” Presume that Oswald was at least a double
agent, recruited first by Soviet Intelligence during his stay in Minsk,
then turned around by the F.B.I., and “finally reduced to a condition
of bemusedness and lost identity which led him, in a trance-like state,
to murder the President, as van der Lubbe, in a similarly trance-like
state, set fire to the Reichstag.” His shooting
at Walker, Pro- and Anti-Cuban activities, etc. were all done as a
cover, in the hope he would lead the F.B.I. to the Soviet contact. This
bizarre game caused Oswald to lose touch with reality, and, not knowing
who he was working for or why, he shot Kennedy. To avoid undue
embarrassment, he had to be shot, and Jack Ruby was standing by.
22. THE SUGAR THEORY
Proponent: J. I. Rodale, editor of Prevention and Organic Gardening and Farming.
Thesis:
Oswald was seen minutes after the assassination with a Coke bottle in
his hand. This fact leads health-crusader J. I. Rodale to suggest
“Oswald was not responsible for this action: his brain was confused
because he was a sugar drunkard. So what is called for now is a
full-scale investigation of sugar consumption and crime.”
The Curb Exchange. James
Tague, who was standing on the curb along the south side of Main Street
near the overpass, was struck sharply on the cheek at the time of the
shooting. Police officers investigated immediately and said they found
a “fresh chip in the curb” near where he was standing. A photograph was
taken of the chip in the curb the next morning (photo A).
Eight
months later (July, 1964) the photographer and two F.B.I. men returned
to the site to make measurements, but could not find the chip. The
F.B.I. men hypothesized that in the interim “there [had] been numerous
rains that could have possibly washed away such a mark and also…the
area is cleaned by a street-cleaning machine about one a week, which
would also wash away such a mark.” A month after that, J. Edgar Hoover
wrote the Commission that the F.B.I. had cut out the section of curb
with the mark (a photo of which he enclosed, B), and that indeed the
mark was the same as that in the original photograph! This
internal F.B.I. contradiction was discovered by Raymond Marcus, who
also claims that the curb cutout doesn’t have any mark at all.
23. THE WASHING-MACHINE THEORY : Proponent: George de Mohrenschildt.
Thesis:
Marina Oswald, on the eve of the assassination, told her husband that
they couldn’t live together “unless he would equip the apartment with a
washing machine.” This demand caused a bitter argument which evoked in
Oswald “the wish to strike and hurt someone.”
Drawback: According to the Warren Commission, Oswald had the materials for making the paper bag for his rifle before he visited with his wife. Anyhow, as the Warren Report notes, they had lived near a Laundromat.
24. KENNEDY LIVES THEORY
Proponent: George Thomson, a Los Angeles swimming-pool engineer and writer.
Thesis:
Thomson, in monographs and tapes which have been underground best
sellers (reportedly 42,000 sold to date), advances the theory that
Tippit was substituted for Kennedy in the Presidential limousine, and
consequently it was Tippit not Kennedy who was shot. (Kennedy, years
after, was the secret guest of honor at Truman Capote’s celebrated
party.) This explains the illegal removal of Kennedy’s body from Dallas
by his close cohorts, the missing X-ray and autopsy photographs, and
subsequent confusion in reporting medical facts. The Kennedy
controversy, for Thomson, revolves around the question of where Kennedy
is today.
25. THE “WHAT HAVE WE HERE!” THEORY
Proponent: T. N. Tastmona.
Thesis: In a privately-printed 200-page volume called It Is As If:
($20), Mr. Tastmona (“American born of American-born parents)
scrutinizes the details of the assassination and the text of The Warren
Report, finding bizarre parallels with the life of Benjamin Franklin,
Sherlock Holmes, Mormon doctrine and American history. One example,
among many, is cited here as an extreme example of assassination
theorizing. In the Chronology index of The
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Tastmona finds mention of Arthur
Lee, an American commissioner accompanying Franklin to France. Three
pages later he finds a reference to Richard Oswald, Chief British
negotiator. “The names ‘Lee’ and ‘Oswald’ sounded a responsive chord. Lee Oswald!—assassin of President Kennedy. Could some sort of historic parallel be coming to light? Could a Harvey
be involved in these diplomatic deals?” Sure enough, on the next page
of the Franklin autobiography Tastmona finds David Hartley, a British
envoy. “Hartley!—a close approximation of ‘Harvey’… “‘Hartley’
differs from ‘Harvey’ by two letters. Perceive a composite form—Har TLV
ey. What have we here! TLV equals a better approximation for
‘television’ that even plain TV. Lee Oswald was shot by Jack Ruby in
full view of a national television audience.…It is as if this
television crime had somehow been arranged to expound the disparity
existing between the names Hartley and Harvey.” Tastmona goes on to
reveal that David Hartley was really David Hartley Junior, or Jr., and
“it was Jack Ruby with initials J. R. who by this brutal system of
criminal cryptology painstakingly identified the Hartley of scholarly
historical allusion to be J R. or Junior. “While
in Russia, Lee Oswald kept what he called a ‘Historic Diary.’ He
affected interest in his place in history. This attitude must be
considered as part of a pre-instructed clue system, hinting the
historical parallels just adduced.”
Back to First Primer of Assassination Theories
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/warrenreport.htm
Who's Afraid of the Warren Report? by Edward Jay Epstein (With annotations by K. A. Rahn) Esquire, December 1966
The Warren Commission was
supposed to end all doubts about the assassination of President John F.
Kennedy. Tragically, it hasn’t. The distinguished members of the
Commission never intended that their Report should become the basis for
an amateur detective game. Yet this is precisely what is happening. A
growing number of people are spending their leisure hours scouring the
Commission’s Report and the twenty-six volumes of testimony and
exhibits for possible clues to a conspiracy. Others, using high-powered
magnifying glasses and infrared lights, are scrutinizing photographs of
the assassination scene, hoping to find snipers concealed in the
shrubbery. Still others are combing the National Archives on the hunch
that they will locate something relevant in the three hundred cubic
feet of documents that the Commission deemed irrelevant. Since the
National Archives will provide microfilm copies of any nonclassified
document in the assassination file at five cents a page, including
F.B.I. and Secret Service investigative reports, a syndicate of private
researchers is planning to buy all the available documents. Presumably
they will then subdivide the 20,000 or so pages into areas (e.g., Ruby,
Oswald, eyewitnesses, etc.) , and attempt a more definitive study than
the Commission itself conducted.1
Elizabeth Hardwick, a literary critic of considerable stature, is
considering joining the syndicate for another purpose. She believes it
might contain the American comédie humaine. Meanwhile, more active private investigators are tracking down leads in
Dallas and re-interviewing star witnesses. A few are keeping the death
count2
on those who have been even remotely connected with the case. And there
is a burgeoning grapevine through which assassination news is rapidly
disseminated. As soon as a new discovery is made, assassination buffs
across the country are alerted by a telephonic chain letter.This phenomenon would not be particularly disturbing if the players
were merely kooks. However, most of them are not. Assassination buffs
apparently are serious people—professionals, students, housewives,
etc.—bent on solving what they consider to be an unsolved mystery.
Perhaps this is all part of the American folklore tradition of amateurs
stepping in and solving cases that baffle the police. Already amateurs
have made some constructive contributions to the case. Mrs. Sylvia
Meagher, a U.N. careerist, has completely indexed the twenty-six
volumes of testimony, a feat the Commission never had time to
accomplish. Mr. and Mrs. George Nash, sociologists, found three new
witnesses to the Tippit murder by following a tip given to them by a
Dallas undertaker. Vincent Salandria, a Philadelphia lawyer, has
charted the precise movements of the President’s head after the
bullet’s impact by superimposing on each other the individual frames of
the film of the assassination taken by a bystander.3
And Paul Hoch, a Berkeley graduate student, has unearthed some
extremely important documents in the National Archives, including the
original F.B.I. report on the autopsy. The man who has undoubtedly done
the most to propagate the assassination cult is Mark Lane,
thirty-nine-year-old attorney and sometime New York State Assemblyman.
Lane began lecturing in coffeehouses, them stumped the college circuit,
and is currently promoting both a book and a two-and-a-half-hour
documentary film on the assassination. Above all, the Warren Commission
itself shares at least part of the responsibility for the game. The
Commission was obliged to publish all twenty-six volumes of data,
although Commissioner Allen Dulles saw no point in doing so. “Nobody
reads,” he said. “Don’t believe people read in this country. There will
be few professors who will read the record.” Making the record public,
however, is The American Way. Indeed, the number of people who have bothered to read the record has
been small (less than a thousand sets of the twenty-six volumes have
been sold to date). But they have been an inquisitive group, often
ingenious. With their help, the public record has spawned a school of
theories that have been swimming in the eddies of the public press,
lately with increasing dizziness. Many of the theories, it is true,
depend on fragments of evidence which, although clear enough, are
palpably irrelevant (i.e., the death of several peripheral witnesses
since the assassination). But they are no more irrelevant than many of
the Report’s own meticulous entries (i.e., in July of 1962 Oswald spent
$3.87 for a subscription to Time). Assassination buffs have
seized, perhaps too eagerly, on discrepancies in the testimony of
witnesses who were understandably shaken and confused. But in this they
are no more at fault than the Commission, which appeared to accept
testimony, even though it may have been ambiguous, so long as it aided
its predisposition to prove Oswald the lone assassin. While the Commission was obviously intent on proving there was no
conspiracy, selecting testimony and evidence for their Report that
particularly suited them, the assassination buffs have responded by
being suspicious of everything in which the Commission put credence.
Throughout the case, where an omission or a contradiction seems best
explained as simple human error, the private theorists loudly claim
intentional deceit on the part of the Dallas police, the F.B.I., the
witnesses, and the Commission itself. Most of these accusations would be difficult to prove without further
evidence, and thus for the time being they are rendered moot. But from
the mass of such charges there has emerged one flagrant contradiction
in the Report which can be proved or disproved very easily. More
important, it is a crucial contradiction upon which all of the other
leading theories depend.
This contradiction involves the one and only autopsy conducted on the
President at the Bethesda (Maryland) Naval Medical Center on the night
of the assassination. The report of the autopsy findings, published by
the Commission, virtually precluded the possibility of a second
assassin. First, it shows that both bullets that hit the President came
from behind and the general direction of the Texas School Book
Depository (where Oswald was at the time). This finding of course would
cut the ground out from under early theories that the shots came from a
point in front of the motorcade. Mark Lane’s theory that the throat
wound was an entrance wound, Thomas Buchanan’s theory that the shots
came from the triple overpass, and the many theories based on
eyewitness testimony that the shots came from the grassy knoll would
all be rendered invalid by the autopsy findings. Second, the autopsy report states that the first bullet hit the
President in the back of the neck and then exited through his throat.
This led the Commission to believe that the same bullet that exited
from Kennedy’s neck proceeded to wound Connally, who was seated
directly in front of the President. This finding would explain the
split-second time lapse between the first two shots. An amateur film of
the assassination shows that both Kennedy and Connally were hit no more
than 1.8 seconds apart. Yet, the bolt of the murder rifle cannot be
operated in less than 2.3 seconds. In other words, both men were shot
in less time than the rifle could be fired twice. And this fact has
given rise to a number of two-assassin theories. But if both men were
hit by the same bullet, as the autopsy report suggests, the time
problem is resolved, and there is only one assassin Finally, if in fact
Connally and Kennedy were hit by the same bullet,
it can be deduced that all the bullet fragments found in the
President’s car came from the rifle of Lee Harvey Oswald. Since the
autopsy findings indicate that only two bullets hit Kennedy, and one
bullet was found virtually intact (raising some other problems), all
the fragments must have come from the other bullet. Since some of these
fragments matched Oswald’s rifle, the other fragments which were too
deformed to be ballistically identified also must have come from
Oswald’s rifle. The autopsy report thus leaves little ground for the
two-assassin theories. But
the Commission’s account of the autopsy is not the only one. Two F.B.I.
Summary Reports that were not published by the Commission give an
alarmingly different version of the autopsy findings. After the F.B.I.
Reports were published in my book Inquest, Norman Redlich, a former Commission lawyer, told the New York Times
that these Summary Reports had to be deemed erroneous and instead the
Commission relied on the original F.B.I. report of the autopsy (known
as the Sibert-O’Neill report), prepared by the two F.B.I. agents who
were present at the autopsy. This heretofore unpublished F.B.I. report
was only recently made available to me. It gives a detailed description
of the autopsy: “Upon
completion of X-rays and photographs, the first incision was made at
8:15 p.m.” The F.B.I. Report then states that Commander J. J. Humes,
the chief autopsy surgeon, made a detailed examination of the head
wound to determine the exact path of the bullet. Only later, in “the
latter stages of autopsy,” did Commander Humes discover the wound in
the President’s back. It was, according to the F.B.I. Report, “below
the shoulders.” In probing the wound, Humes found that the bullet had
barely penetrated the skin “inasmuch as the end of the opening could be
felt with the finger.” The autopsy surgeons were puzzled. The bullet
hole was only a few inches deep, yet there was no bullet to account for
it. The doctors then
learned that a bullet had been found on a stretcher in the Dallas
hospital where President Kennedy was first treated, and Commander Humes
concluded: “The pattern was clear that one bullet entered the
President’s back and worked its way out of the body during external
cardiac massage.” The autopsy examination ended about eleven p.m.
Ten months later, The Warren Report described autopsy findings entirely
different form those reported by the F.B.I. Now, in the Report, there
was no wound “below the shoulders.” Instead, there was a wound in the
back of the neck. Rather than barely penetrating the skin, the bullet
had gone clean through the neck and exited through the throat. The
Warren Report states these conclusions were reached during the autopsy,
the same autopsy that the F.B.I. report described. How can two such
accounts, diametrically opposed to each other, be reconciled? Former
Commission lawyers have recently explained that at the time of
the autopsy the doctors were not aware of the wound in the President’s
throat. The outlines of this wound had been obliterated by a
tracheotomy performed earlier in the day in Dallas. Learning of the
throat wound the next day, the autopsy doctors changed their opinion
and deduced that the bullet exited through the throat. This would seem
to explain why a bullet that was first thought to have penetrated the
back only a distance of a few inches was later thought to have passed
entirely through the body. But it begs the question of how a wound
below the shoulder became a wound in the back of the neck. Obviously,
no amount of information about the throat wound could alter the location of the back wound. And this is the crucial contradiction. Of course, the contradiction might be dismissed (as Time
magazine dismisses it) simply as an F.B.I. error. But the fact is that
other evidence seems to corroborate the F.B.I. version. A diagram of
the President’s body, prepared by Commander Humes4 during
the autopsy, very clearly shows the wound to be below the shoulder. The
other autopsy surgeon, Lieutenant Colonel Pierre Finck, was quoted by a
secret Service agent as saying: “There are no lanes for an outlet in
this man’s shoulder.” Another Secret Service agent, who was called in
after the autopsy for the express purpose of viewing the President’s
body, later testified that he observed the back wound to be “about six
inches below the neckline.” F.B.I. photographs taken of the President’s
shirt and jacket (which were never published by the Commission) show
the bullet hole to be about six inches below the top of the collar of
both shirt and jacket, a position which corresponds with the F.B.I.’s
assertion of a wound “below the shoulders.”
Perhaps all this evidence of a wound below the shoulder is only a
strange series of random coincidences. But so long as these other
discrepancies stand, the contradiction cannot be discounted merely as
an “F.B.I. error.” Nor can it be dismissed as irrelevant. It is true, as former Commission lawyers now
point out, that an investigation as complex as the Kennedy
assassination is bound to have a few “loose ends.” But the
contradiction between the F.B.I. and Commission account of the autopsy
findings is more than just a “loose end.” It is crucial to the question
of whether or not Oswald acted alone.5
For if the bullet did hit the President below the shoulders, it could
not have exited through the throat and continued on to wound Governor
Connally. This is because the bullet was traveling downward and was
undeflected. If the F.B.I. report is accurate, President Kennedy and
Governor Connally were hit by two different bullets which, in turn,
gives grounds for theories of a second assassin.
Perhaps this is why the publication of the F.B.I. Summary Reports and
photographs in my book precipitated a good deal of debate and wrangling
over the contradiction in the autopsy findings. In Look
magazine, Fletcher Knebel attempted to prove that the F.B.I. did not
receive a copy of the official autopsy findings until after its Summary
Reports were published. He stated that Treasury Department records show
that the Secret Service sent the autopsy report to the F.B.I. on
December 23, 1963. However, Professor Richard Popkin countered in The New York Review of Books that Knebel inadvertently had proved that the F.B.I. did
have the final autopsy report in hand when its final summary report was
prepared on January 13, 1964 (a fact Knebel apparently missed).6 Newsweek suggested that Kennedy “might have been bent forward enough” to place the back wound higher than the throat wound. But Life’s
film of the assassination indicated that the President was seated erect
at the time of the shot. And Philadelphia District Attorney Arlen
Specter, a former Commission lawyer, attempted to demonstrate to the Greater Philadelphia Magazine7
how a shirt could rise high enough on the neck to that a bullet hole
about six inches below the top of the collar would be consistent with a
neck wound. The interviewer was not, however, fully convinced since it
appeared that this feat would require doubling over a portion of the
shirt—and there was only one bullet hole in the back of the President’s
shirt. Throughout the debate, the F.B.I. has remained coyly ambiguous. It told The Washington Post that its December 9 Summary Report was “based on the medical evidence at that time.” But it told the Los Angeles Times
that the F.B.I. report was wrong when it said that there was “no point
of exit” for the bullet, explaining “F.B.I. agents were not doctors,
but merely quoting doctors.” To the New York Times and other papers, the F.B.I. declined comment.
The great irony of the controversy is that it can be settled decisively
by available evidence that neither the Commission nor its critics have
seen. Color photographs, taken during the autopsy, would show exactly
where the bullet entered the President’s back, whether it was below the
shoulders, as F.B.I. reports claim, or in the back of the neck, as the
Commission’s autopsy report claims. After the autopsy, these
photographs were turned over undeveloped to the Protective Research
Section of the Secret Service. What happened to the photographs after
this is not definitely known: some Commission lawyers believe they were
given to the Kennedy family, others believe that they remained with the
Secret Service or White House. In any case, the Commission never
received either the autopsy photographs or X-rays. Not that the
Commission lawyers did not try to obtain them: Arlen Specter reportedly
was on the verge of tears when he found out that they were not to be
requested by the chairman The whereabouts of these photographs and X-rays has remained a mystery. Newsweek
recently reported that a two-month inquiry by its staff “failed to turn
up a single government official who can, or will, give a simple answer
to the question: ‘Where are the Kennedy autopsy pictures?’”
Moreover, it is not known whether the autopsy photographs were ever
developed. Undeveloped color film tends to lose detail and decompose in
about five years. Three years have already elapsed. If the photographs
fade or are somehow accidentally destroyed, the opportunity to resolve
the contradiction will be lost forever. What is ascertainable today may
become a moot point in the near future.
What is to be done? The Commission’s investigation of the assassination
of President Kennedy cannot be considered complete so long as the
contradiction in the autopsy findings remains unresolved. By viewing
the photographs, the contradiction can be resolved once and for all
time. If they show the wound to be in the back of the neck, then there
can be no further doubt as to the accuracy and authenticity of the
autopsy report. Theories of a second assassin, evolving out of the
contradiction, would be quashed. And virtually all of the speculation
would be reduced, at least among thinking people, to groundless banter.
There is another possibility. The photographs might show the bullet
wound to be below the shoulders. If this were the case, the Commission
(or any other fact-finding body) would have very serious unfinished
business to attend to.8 Already, the conspiracy theories are proliferating at an alarming rate. As the following Primer
shows, doubts about the authenticity of the autopsy report are at the
root of all the two-assassin theories. The assumption, either explicit
or implicit, that the autopsy report was changed makes tenable the
theories that hold that a shot came from the front of the President’s
car. This in turn leads to theories of suppressed and planted evidence,
which implicates the authorities and other important figures in the
conspiracy. Finally, there come theories speculating on the forces
behind the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, some of which go so far as to
accuse those with power to suppress evidence.
Annotations by K. Rahn
1. This syndicate never materialized.
2. Refers mainly to the death count of Penn Jones, Jr., newspaper editor of Midlothian, Texas.
3.
The film, of course, was the famous Zapruder film. The superposition of
frames by Vincent Salandria revealed the backward movement of the head
and body. But the frames that Salandria chose missed the more important
forward snap from a couple frames earlier. This seriously misled
Salandria and may have set the tone for misleading nearly the entire
research community.
4. It was actually prepared by Dr. Boswell.
5.
Actually, it is not crucial to the question of one assassin versus two.
The basic argument from the number of entrance and exit wounds in the
body, plus the lack of a bullet in the body, is far stronger.
6. The FBI may have had the official autopsy report on hand but not used it.
7. The reporter was Gaeton Fonzi, later a staff investigator for the HSCA. For the full text of this article by Fonzi, click here.
8.
The autopsy photographs are now available via a set that was stolen and
reproduced for the public. Ironically, Kennedy's back has enough blood
spots still on it that it is very hard to determine where the wound is.
Dr. Robert Artwohl, one of the few to have viewed the original photos,
says that the wound is significantly less than six inches below the top
of the collar.
http://www.edwardjayepstein.com/archived/oswald.htm
Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald WALL STREET JOURNAL November 22, 1983 by Edward Jay Epstein
The endless tangle of
questions about bullets, trajectories, wounds, time sequences and
inconsistent testimony that has surrounded the assassination of
President John F. Kennedy and has obsessively fascinated, if not
entirely blinded, a generation of assassination
buffs-probably never will be resolved.
Within
this morass of facts. however, there is a central actor, Lee Harvey
Oswald. His rifle, which fired the fatal bullet into the president, was
found in the sniper's nest, His cartridge cases were also found near
the body of a murdered policeman on the route his flight. He was
captured resisting arrest with the loaded murder revolver in his hand. In
light of this overwhelming evidence, the issue that ought to have
concerned Americans was not Oswald's technical guilt but his dangerous
liaisons abroad. Only eight weeks before the assassination he had
excited FBI and CIA interest in his activities by renewing his contacts
with Cuban and Soviet intelligence officers in Mexico City. Although
these foreign connections remained of great concern to the two U S.
intellige agencies, they were considered too sensitive to be aired,
publicly in the emotional aftermath of the president's slaying. Oswald
was not a "loner- in the conventional sense. Ever since he was handed a
pamphlet about the Rosenberg prosecution at the age of 15, he had
sought out affiliations with political organizations, front groups and
foreign nations that opposed the policies of the U.S. When
he was
16. he wrote the Socialist Party "I am a Marxist and have been studying
Socialist Principles for well over five years" and he requested
information about joining their "Youth League-." He also attempted to
persuade a friend to join the youth auxiliary of the Communist
Party.
He subsequently made membership inquiries to such organizations as the
Socialist Workers Party, the Socialist Labor Party, The Gus
Hall-Benjamin Davis Defense Committee, the Daily Worker, The Fair Play
for Cuba Committee and the Communist Party, USA— correspondence that
brought him under surveillance by the FBI, While
still in the early stages of his flirtation with political causes,
0swald joined the Marine Corps . In October 1959, after a two-year
stint as a radar operator, Oswald became the first Marine to defect to
the Soviet Union, In Moscow, he delivered a letter stating. "I affirm
that my allegiance is to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." Not
only did he publically renounce his American citizenship but he told
the U.S. consul that he intended to turn over to the Soviet Union
military secrets that he had acquired while serving in the Marines,
adding that he had data of "Special interest" to the Russians. Since he
indeed had exposure to military secrets such as the U-2 spy piane and
radar identitification system, and since he may have collected data
while on active duty, his defection had serious espionage implications.
Oswald
thus had compromised all the secret data he had come in contact with in
the Marines. He had also through this act put himself in the hands of
his hosts.He was now completely dependent on the Soviets for financial
support, legal status and protection. Before
disappearing into the Soviet hinterland for a year, Oswald spelled out
his operational creed in a long letter to his brother. From Moscow, he
wrote presciently of his willingness to commit murder for a political
cause: "I want you to understand what I say now, I do not say lightly,
or unknowingly, since I've been in the military .... In the event of
war I would kill any American who put a uniform on in defense of the
American Government --", and then ominously added for emphasis, " Any
American." Although his letter was routinely intercepted by the CIA and
microfilmed, no discernable attention was paid to the threat contained
in it . When Oswald returned
from the Soviet Union in June 1962 (with a little help from a State
Department eager to demonstrate that it could win back a defector from
the Soviets), joined by a Russian wife, he retained his militant
convictions. In Dallas, where he settled, he purchased a rifle with
telescopic sights and a revolver from a mail-order house under a false
name. He also lectured his more liberal acquaintances on the need for
violent action rather than mere words. General Edwin A. Walker, an
extreme conservative, who had been active in Dallas organizing
anti-Castro guerrillas became in the Spring of 1963 a particular focus
of Oswald's attention. He repeatedly suggested to a German geologist,
Volkmar Schmidt, and other friends, that General walker should be
treated like a "murderer at large". He did not stop at fierce words.
For weeks, he methodically stalked Walker's movements, photographing
his residence from several angles. He
then had his wife photograph him, dressed entirely in black, with his
revolver strapped on a holster on his hip, his sniper's rifle in his
right hand, and two newspapers --~The Worker~ and the~Militant~ -- in
his left hand. He made three copies of the photograph-- one of which he
inscribed, dated "5--IV-63" and sent to a Dallas acquaintance, George
De Mohrenschildt. He then left with his rifle wrapped in a raincoat,
telling his wife he was off to "target practice", but his target,
General Walker, was out of town that night. Five nights later, Oswald
returned to Walker's house, and fired a shot at him that missed his
head by inches, demonstrating that he had the capacity as well as the
willingness to kill "Any American". After
the failed assassination, Oswald went to New Orleans, where he became
the organizer for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. Aside from printing
leaflets, staging demonstrations, getting arrested and appearing on
local radio talk shows in support of Castro that summer, Oswald
attempted to personally infiltrate an anti-Castro group that was
organizing sabotage raids against Cuba. He explained to friends that he
could figure out his "anti-imperialist" policy by "reading between the
lines" of the Militant and other such publications. In August, he wrote
the central committee of the Communist Party USA asking "Whether in
your opinion, I can compete with anti-progressive forces above ground,
or whether I should always remain in the background,i.e. underground".
During this hot summer, while Oswald spent evenings practicing sighting
his rifle in his backyard, the Militant raged on about the Kennedy
Administration's "terrorist bandit" attacks on Cuba. And as the
semi-secret war against Castro escalated, Oswald expressed increasing
interest in reaching Cuba. Oswald
told his wife he planned to hijack an airliner to Havana, suggesting,
as the summer progressed, that he might even earn a position in
Castro's government. On September 9th, in a report that appeared on the
front page of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Castro himself warned
that if American leaders continued "aiding plans to eliminate Cuban
leaders ... they themselves will not be safe". The
implication of this threat was not lost on Oswald. Telling his wife
that they might never meet again, he left New Orleans two weeks later
headed for the Cuban Embassy in Mexico City. To convince the Cubans of
his bona fides-- and seriousness-- he had prepared a dossier on
himself, which included a 10 page resume, outlining his revolutionary
activities, newspaper clippings about his defection to the Soviet
Union, propaganda material he had printed, documents he had stolen from
a printing company engaged in classified map reproduction for the U.S
Army, his correspondence with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee
executives and photographs linking him to the Walker shooting. Oswald
applied for a visa at the Cuban Embassy on the morning of September
27th 1963. He said that he wanted to stop in Havana en route to the
Soviet Union. On the application the consular office who interviewed
him, noted: "The applicant states that he is a member of the American
Communist Party and Secretary in New Orleans of the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee." Despite such recommendations, Oswald was told that he
needed a Soviet visa before the Cuban visa could be issued. He argued
over this requisite with the Cuban counsel, Eusebio Azque, in front of
witnesses, and reportedly made wild claims about services he might
perform for the Cuban cause. During the next five days, he traveled
back and forth between the Soviet and Cuban embassies attempting to
straighten out the difficulty. When
he telephoned from the Cuban embassy to arrange an appointment at the
Soviet Embassy with an officer called Valery Vladimirovich Kostikov, he
set off alarm bells at the CIA, which had been surreptitiously
monitoring the phone line. Kostikov was a KGB officer who had been
under close surveillance in Mexico by the FBI ( and who,in 1971, was
identified by a KGB defector in London as the head of sabotage
operations in Mexico). By the time the CIA had identified Oswald, and
notified the FBI, he had left Mexico.
When
he returned to Dallas that October, Oswald assumed a different
identity--"O.H.Lee-- and, separating himself from his family, he moved
to a rooming house. He also forbade his wife from divulging his
whereabouts. He then got a job at the Texas Book Depository, which
overlooked the convergence of the three main streets into central
Dallas. On October 18th,
Oswald's visa was approved by the Cuban Foreign Ministry (despite the
fact that he had not officially received a Soviet visa,as required.)
Three weeks later, he wrote another letter to the Soviet Embassy,
referring to his meeting with Kostikov in Mexico, and adding
cryptically: "Had I been able to reach the Soviet Embassy in Havana as
planned, the embassy there would have had time to complete our
business."
FBI counterintelligence,
which had intercepted this letter in Washington, and evidently was
interested in Oswald's "business" in Havana, urgently requested its
field agents in Dallas to locate him. An FBI agent, James Hosty, rushed
over to the home where Oswald's family was living, and questioned his
wife, but he did not find him Oswald until November 22nd, when he had
been arrested for the murder of a Dallas policeman and President
Kennedy. In the final analysis, the
Warren Commission turned out to be right: Oswald was the assassin. He
had brought his rifle to work on November 22nd, carefully prepared a
concealed sniper's position at a sixth floor window, and, waiting in
ambush for almost an hour, shot the President as the motorcade passed
below. The possibility that he had assistance-- for example, someone
setting off a firecracker as a diversion-- can never be precluded. But
the real question is not how but why Oswald assassinated the President.
The most obvious motive was
provided by Oswald himself in his letter from Moscow: To kill any
American who put on a uniform against his cause. He openly subscribed
to the terrorist creed that a man with a rifle could change history;
and, as far as Oswald was concerned, President Kennedy and General
Walker were both actively working to destroy his avowed hero-- Castro.
Whether
Oswald , given his clear disposition towards killing an American
leader, was prodded or otherwise induced into committing the
assassination was the question that vexed American intelligence after
the shooting. Oswald had disappeared in the Soviet Union for more than
a year, without yielding a trace of what, if any, training and
indoctrination he had undergone. The only record of this missing year
was a "diary" he brought out with him, which had in fact been written
in two days presumably to provide him with a consistent cover story or
legend. His five days with the Cubans in Mexico City were also a blank
-- although friendly sources within the Cuban Embassy indicated that he
was pressured to prove his loyalty and worth. Although the Cuban
government insisted, through both official and intelligence channels,
that Oswald was presumed crazy and dismissed as such by the embassy
staff, it left unanswered the disturbing question of why a visa was
approved for Oswald-- after the report was received from the embassy.
Among the eleven questions prepared by the CIA for Mexican
interrogators was one that expressed its direct concern: "Was the
assassination of of President Kennedy planned by Fidel Castro ... and
were the final details worked out inside the Cuban Embassy". In
Dallas, before Mexican investigators could question their sources,
Oswald was shot dead, and with his death ended the hope of unraveling
his motive.
