Dead Wrong: Straight Facts on the Country's Most Controversial Cover-Ups (26 page)

Six of the Dallas physicians reported that they even observed a large portion of the cerebellum oozing out of the back of the President’s head and onto the ER table he was laying upon. When these physicians were asked if they remembered that with certainty, they basically responded that you quite simply just don’t forget a thing like that, especially when it’s the President of the United States.

Eighty percent of the eyewitnesses to the murder of President Kennedy reported that a shot came from the west (the site of the “official sniper’s nest” was east in the Texas School Book Depository building). The closest eyewitnesses reported that the upper knoll was the direction from which the fatal headshot occurred (west). Their reports were with certainty and were not instinctual—they heard the shot and it was different from the other shots. They reported statements such as the fact that the last shot was so close to them that it seemed as if it went right over their heads and they even dove to the ground seeking cover from the imminent danger registered in them by the last gunshot.
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SECRET SERVICE TESTIMONY:

Forrest Sorrels, SAIC (Special Agent in Charge), Dallas District, U.S. Secret Service
(in Lead car; the car ahead of President Kennedy):

At the moment of the assassination, Special Agent Sorrels was a passenger in the lead car of the presidential motorcade. He was seated in the right rear of the lead car and was peering out the right rear window at the time of the shots. He testified that:

“I looked towards the top of the terrace to my right as the sound of the shots seemed to come from that direction.”
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Special Agent Paul E. Landis, White House Detail, U.S. Secret Service
(in Follow-Up car, the car immediately behind President Kennedy):

“My reaction at this time was that the shot came from somewhere towards the front.”
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Thomas L. “Lem” Johns, Assistant to the Special Agent-in-Charge, Vice- Presidential Detail, U.S. Secret Service
(riding with the Vice-President, two cars behind President Kennedy):

“The first two (shots) sounded like they were on the side of me towards the grassy knoll.”
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The collective testimony of U.S. Secret Service special agents has been well- documented in Vince Palamara’s book,
Survivor’s Guilt.
The immediate focus of many special agents was on the area that had been
in front
of the limousine because that was from where it had seemed that shots had been fired.
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It has been established that in the moments immediately following the gunshots, virtually all attention of law enforcement personnel was focused on the area that had been in front of the motorcade at the shooting (the overpass area, the railroad yard near it, and the grassy knoll area where scores of witnesses were rushing up the hill which they had determined as the location source of the gunfire).

Witness the very first police radio reports:

Jesse Curry, Chief of Police, Dallas, Texas
(in Lead car; the car ahead of President Kennedy):

DALLAS POLICE RADIO TRANSMISSION: November 22, 1963, 12:30PM

Chief Curry later acknowledged that:

“We don’t have any proof that Oswald fired the rifle, and never did. Nobody’s yet been able to put him in the building with a gun in his hand.”
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Bill Decker, Sheriff of Dallas County
(in Lead car; the car ahead of President Kennedy):

DALLAS POLICE RADIO TRANSMISSION: November 22, 1963, 12:30PM

Officer Clyde Haygood, Dallas Police motorcycle officer
(riding flank right- side behind President Kennedy):

TESTIMONY OF OFFICER CLYDE A. HAYGOOD

Officer Haygood, along with over one hundred other eyewitnesses and law enforcement officials, ran up the knoll embankment to the railroad yard in the minutes immediately following the shots.

J
AMES
T
AGUE
was an eyewitness in Dealey Plaza who noted for the historical record that the Texas School Book Depository was not at all the focus of early attention:

“If you go back to Dealey Plaza at 12:30 and get the photographs and police tapes, there was really no action taken on the School Book Depository for seven minutes. True, there were a couple of policemen who said they rushed in, which looks good on a sergeant’s report, but it didn’t happen that way. In those seven minutes, I think Oswald may have assisted in letting people into the building by saying they worked there or whatever. During that time, they could have moved an army in and out of the Texas School Book Depository.

In viewing the Zapruder film, there’s overwhelming evidence that there was a frontal shot. They keep saying that there was possibly a neurological reaction, but if you view the film in slow motion, the Groden enhancement, the power of that shot even throws the body backward. The car was barely moving, so it wasn’t from the acceleration, and I’ve never found anybody yet that has seen a kill of an animal where they fall toward the shot. As a result, there very definitely had to have been a shot from the grassy knoll.”
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Therefore, six primary evidence chains indicate a frontal shot:

1. The dramatic backward movement of head and body;

2. A large fragment of skull or brain material visibly driven backward at moment of impact;

3. Immediate blood and brain spatter on the windshields of the left- rear flanking motorcycles;

4. At least twenty-five credible eyewitness reports of smelling street- level gunpowder and/or seeing gun smoke down at street level (Oswald was supposedly on 6th floor);
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5. Over 100 witnesses reported seeing and/or hearing at least one shot from the grassy area at street-level in front of the motorcade. That area is precisely where law enforcement personnel rushed in the moments after the assassination amid live on-scene reports of
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6. The medical evidence, especially at Parkland Hospital where the President was taken immediately after the shooting,
overwhelmingly
indicates that at least two shots in the President’s body were frontal entry wounds: an entry wound in the front of the throat and another intact entry wound high in the right forehead at the hairline.
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OSWALD COULD NOT POSSIBLY HAVE ACCOMPLISHED THE SHOOTING THAT IS OFFICIALLY ATTRIBUTED TO HIM

“Now if I can’t do it, how in the world could a guy who was a non-qual on the rifle range and later only qualified ‘marksman’ do it?”
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—Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, Senior Instructor, Quan- tico, U.S. Marine Corps Sniper Instructor School

The most accomplished combat sniper in the entire history of the U.S. military is Marine Corps Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock. Hathcock’s skills are legendary; as a sniper, he was officially credited with ninety-three confirmed kills. He was also senior instructor for the U.S. Marine Corps Sniper Instructor School at its headquarters at Quantico, Virginia. Hathcock and his crew meticulously reconstructed the entire shooting scenario in the JFK assassination and concluded that the shooting was not possible from one gunman on the 6th floor of the building.

“‘Let me tell you what we did at Quantico,’ Hathcock recalls. ‘We reconstructed the whole thing: the angle, the range, the moving target, the time limit, the obstacles, everything. I don’t know how many times we tried it, but we couldn’t duplicate what the Warren Commission said Oswald did.’”
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SNIPER SNAPSHOT
of Dealey Plaza

Based primarily on the work of Lt. Colonel Craig Roberts and Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, both of whom were professional snipers.

Lt. Colonel Craig Roberts was a Marine sniper in Vietnam and a police sharpshooter with an urban SWAT team. Roberts examined the technical details of the shooting, and of Dealey Plaza itself, and wrote the book
Kill Zone: A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza.
Roberts puts it very simply: