JFK & the Unspeakable: Why He Died & Why It Matters (124 page)

[
366
]. Charles A. Crenshaw, M.D.,
Trauma Room One: The JFK Medical Coverup Exposed
(New York: Paraview Press, 2001), Table 1, page 285.

[
367
]. FBI interview of Dr. A. B. Cairns, Chief Pathologist of Methodist Hospital, by Special Agent A. Raymond Switzer, July 10, 1964. Warren Commission Document 1395, p. 50.

[
368
]. Letter from David Lifton to Cyril Wecht, July 10, 1972; cited in Lifton,
Best Evidence
, p. 504 (emphasis in original).

[
369
]. David Mantik, “Optical Density Measurements of the JFK Autopsy X-Rays and A New Observation Based on the Chest X-Ray,” November 18, 1993, p. 2. Cited by Harrison E. Livingstone,
Killing Kennedy and the Hoax of the Century
(New York: Carroll & Graf, 1995), p. 86.

[
370
]. When one examines the frames of Abraham Zapruder’s twenty-seven-second home movie of the assassination, the film does not show what the twenty-one doctors, nurses, and Secret Service agents said they saw at Parkland Hospital in Dallas—a large exit wound in the right rear (occipital) area of JFK’s head. Instead, as David Lifton observed, “the occipital area, where the Dallas doctors saw a wound, appears suspiciously dark, whereas a large wound appears on the foreword right-hand side of the head, where the Dallas doctors saw no wound at all.” (
Best Evidence,
p. 557).

Lifton has suggested that the film was altered, partly to black out an exit wound in the rear of the head and to create the illusion of an exit wound in the front, thereby corresponding more to the Bethesda Naval Hospital’s “best evidence” in the autopsy’s body and the official X-rays and photographs. Another reason for altering the film (by removing frames and speeding up the car) may have been to eliminate evidence of the limousine stopping while the president was being shot, as Dallas witnesses claimed was the case. If the car-stop had not been removed, the film would have dramatically implicated the Secret Service in the assassination. (David Lifton, “Pig on a Leash: A Question of Authenticity,”
The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFK,
edited by James H. Fetzer [Chicago: Catfeet Press, 2004], pp. 404-5).

Those who argue that the film was not altered point especially to its depiction of the backward snap of JFK’s head, providing evidence of a shot from the front. As David Wrone writes, “Why would the government steal and alter the Zapruder film to hide a conspiracy only to have that alteration contain evidence that a conspiracy killed JFK?” (David Wrone,
The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination
[Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003], p. 122).

However, if as we have seen the initial assassination scenario’s purpose included scapegoating the Soviet Union and Cuba, evidence of a conspiracy was no problem, so long as it did not implicate the U.S. government per se—as would have been the case if the film revealed the Secret Service stopping the car to facilitate the shooting.

Those who reject the hypothesis of alteration see a chain of possession for the film from Abraham Zapruder to its purchaser,
Life
magazine, precluding that possibility (Wrone,
Zapruder Film,
pp. 123-24). A counterargument includes the documented fact that the Secret Service delivered such a film to the CIA’s National Photographic Interpretation Center (NPIC) in Washington for analysis “1 or 2 days” after the assassination. Homer McMahon, then manager of the NPIC color lab, was asked to make color prints of “frames in which shots occurred.” McMahon told the Assassinations Record and Review Board in 1997 that, in the process of selecting frames showing the wounding of Kennedy and Connally, “his opinion, which was that President Kennedy was shot 6 to 8 times from at least three directions, was ultimately ignored” (ARRB, June 12, 1997, call, and July 14, 1997, interview of Homer McMahon; Appendix C in Fetzer,
Great Zapruder Film Hoax,
pp. 457, 459).

The film’s purchase by
Life
publisher C. D. Jackson, who as Lifton notes was “a close friend of former CIA Director Allen Dulles,” may have provided a more flexible time frame for a possible alteration (Lifton, “Pig on a Leash,” p. 405).

[
371
]. Author’s note on change from hardcover text: I have removed here three pages of the text that go beyond the evidence as I now understand it—on the famous picture of the assassination taken by Dallas AP photographer James “Ike” Altgens that was wired around the world less than half an hour after President Kennedy was shot. Altgens’s clear, black-and-white, head-on photograph of the approaching presidential limousine showed JFK through the windshield clutching at his throat, while spectators in the background lined the sidewalk in front of the Texas School Book Depository. This first pictorial evidence of the assassination also revealed the upper half of a man behind the limousine, standing in the doorway of the Book Depository. When the man’s image in the picture was blown up, many people thought he looked like Lee Harvey Oswald. If it was in fact Oswald, how could he have been watching the motorcade from the doorway and at the same time shooting the president from a sixth-floor window in the same building?

In an appendix titled “Speculations and Rumors,” the
Warren Report
identified the man in the doorway as Billy Lovelady, “an employee of the Texas School Book Depository, who somewhat resembles Oswald” (
Warren Report
, p. 644).

The evidence I found most convincing over against the government’s claim it was Lovelady, and Lovelady’s own statement that he was the man in the doorway, was the unusual shirt worn by the man. It had a distinctive pattern, apparently with tears in it and several buttons missing—all of which seemed to match Oswald’s shirt in photographs taken after his arrest.

Still prints drawn from a motion-picture film taken of Billy Lovelady immediately after the assassination seemed to show Lovelady had his outer shirt buttoned all the way up to the collar, covering his t-shirt. In contrast, Oswald (in his arrest photos) and the man in the doorway (in Altgens’s photo) both had the upper halves of their outer shirts unbuttoned, exposing t-shirts with identical, pulled down collars.

I concluded: “Based on clothing alone, it was clear Lovelady could not have been the man in the Book Depository doorway when the presidential motorcade went by.”

However, researchers such as Michael Green (letter to author, June 16, 2008), Robert Groden (
The
Killing of a President
, pp. 186-87), and Richard E. Sprague (letter to Marguerite Oswald, May 19, 1970; Georgetown Univ. Library) have concluded from photographic analysis that the man in the doorway was in fact Billy Lovelady. In our correspondence, Green added the witness argument: “Since Lee Harvey Oswald puts himself in the lunchroom at the time of the shooting, and since numerous coworkers put Lovelady near the doorway
and do not put Oswald
there
, that is very strong” (Michael Green email to John Kelin; shared by Green with Jim Douglass, June 17, 2008; emphasis in original).

I agree. I tried unsuccessfully to find a witness to Oswald’s being in the doorway. In the absence of such testimony, I think Green is right to argue that it is because Oswald was inside all the time.

On the other hand, photographic analyst Jack White has held for more than thirty years that the man in the doorway is not Lovelady, but neither is it Oswald or an Oswald double (Jack White email to Jim Fetzer, November 16, 2009).

In January 2010, having found no witness support for Oswald’s presence in the doorway, I simply don’t know who the man in Altgens’s photo is. I have removed the claim in the text that I do.

[
372
].
Warren Report
, p. 600. All of Oswald’s police interviews are secondhand reports. For the twelve hours he was interrogated through three days by both local and federal investigators, the
Warren Report
stated incredibly: “There were no stenographic or tape recordings of these interviews” (ibid., p. 598). If we can believe that none of these officials tape-recorded the accused assassin’s statements, we are then asked to accept their distillation of his words in only “the most important” of their “prepared memoranda setting forth their recollections of the questioning of Oswald and his responses” (ibid.).

[
373
]. Ibid., p. 613.

[
374
]. Earl Golz, “Was Oswald in Window?”
Dallas Morning News
(November 26, 1978), p. 13A.

[
375
]. Ibid.

[
376
]. Summers,
Not in Your Lifetime
, p. 60.

[
377
]. “Was Oswald in Window?” p. 13A. Several of Carolyn Arnold’s co-workers said they departed from the Texas School Book Depository at about the same time or a little before she did and stood with her outside the building to watch the motorcade. Betty Jean Dragoo said she left the Depository “about 12:20 p.m.” with Carolyn Arnold, Bonnie Richey, Virgie Baker, and Judy Johnson.
WCH
, vol. 22, p. 645. Judy Johnson said she and two other friends left “about 12:15 p.m.,” and were joined outside by Arnold, Richee, and Dragoo (ibid., p. 656).

[
378
]. Summers,
Not in Your Lifetime,
p. 60.

[
379
]. “Was Oswald in Window?” p. 13A.

[
380
]. A person planning to kill the president could have read a
Dallas Morning News
article on Wednesday, November 20, 1963, which stated that the presidential motorcade would arrive at 12:30 p.m. Friday at the Trade Mart (Warren Commission Exhibit No. 1364,
WCH
, vol. 22, p. 616). That schedule allowed for five minutes of driving time from Elm and Houston, where the Book Depository was located, to the Trade Mart. An assassin on the sixth floor of the Book Depository would have expected the motorcade to pass under the building’s windows at 12:25 p.m.

[
381
]. To determine whether Oswald could have descended from the sixth floor by the time Patrolman Baker saw him in the lunchroom on the second, the Warren Commission timed a stand-in for a sixth-floor assassin, Secret Service agent John Howlett, enacting a quick transition to the second floor, and Baker reenacting his ascent to the second floor. Howlett “carried a rifle from the southeast corner of the sixth floor along the east aisle to the northeast corner. He placed the rifle on the floor near the site where Oswald’s rifle was actually found after the shooting. Then Howlett walked down the stairway to the second-floor landing and entered the lunchroom. The first test, run at normal walking pace, required 1 minute, 18 seconds; the second test, at a ‘fast walk’ took 1 minute, 14 seconds” (
Warren Report
, p. 152).

Because the minimum time required for Patrolman Baker’s ascent to the second floor “was within 3 seconds of the time needed to walk from the southeast corner of the sixth floor,” the
Warren Report
concluded Oswald had barely enough time to get downstairs for his encounter with Baker (ibid.).

However, the commission’s own exhibits and testimony called the timing of its reenactments into question. The photograph that is Commission Exhibit 723 (
WCH
, vol. 17, p. 504) shows a barricade of boxes stacked around the “sniper’s nest” in the southeast corner of the sixth floor. As Warren Commission critic Howard Roffman pointed out, “the gunman would have had to squeeze through these stacks of boxes while carrying a 40-inch, 8-pound rifle. Considering these details, we must add at least six or seven seconds to the Commission’s time to allow for the various necessary factors that would slow departure from the window.” The escaping assassin then had an even more time-consuming task—hiding his rifle amid clusters of more piled-up boxes, where it would be found as shown in another photograph, Commission Exhibit 517 (
WCH
, vol. 17, p. 226). Even to discover the concealed rifle, Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone said he had to squeeze through piles of boxes until he “caught a glimpse of the rifle, stuffed down between two rows of boxes with another box or so pulled over the top of it” (
WCH
, vol. 3, p. 293). The Warren Commission’s trial runs for an assassin of a minute and a quarter, barely corresponding to Baker’s time, had eliminated these original sixth-floor obstacles. It would have been impossible for an actual gunman at the time of the assassination to squeeze out of his box-barricaded corner, climb in and out of another cavern of boxes to hide his rifle under them, then still descend the four flights of stairs quickly enough to be calmly buying a Coca Cola by the time Baker saw Oswald in the second-floor lunchroom. Howard Roffman,
Presumed Guilty
(Cranbury, N.J.: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1976), pp. 211, 216. I am grateful to Steve Jones for having brought Howard Roffman’s work to my attention.