Reclaiming History (355 page)

^*
The November 29 date for the one and only supplementary brain exam is partially corroborated by Chief Petty Officer Chester Boyers, who was in charge of the Pathology Department at Bethesda Naval Hospital in November of 1963. Boyers told an HSCA investigator his records reflected that he prepared tissue slides of sections of the president’s brain for analysis on December 2, 1963, very close to the November 29 date. (ARRB MD 62, Interview of Chester H. Boyers, April 28, 1978, p.4) One of the strongest reasons to believe that the supplementary brain exam did not take place on November 25 (the date, to repeat, that Horne believes the first of two supplementary brain exams took place), and was no earlier than November 29, is that, as Dr. Baden told me, when a brain is put in formalin, it’s “never put in for just a few days. In fact, it’s usually for two weeks. The reason is that it takes time for the brain to harden and fix to the point where it’s easier to make thinner slices. Even November twenty-ninth is early, but November twenty-fifth wouldn’t make any sense for a brain examination” (Telephone interview of Dr. Michael Baden by author on July 14, 2000).
When Humes testified before the Warren Commission on March 16, 1964 (less than four months after the autopsy, when we can assume his memory would have been more fresh), that the supplementary brain exam was “some days after” the autopsy, it is doubtful that he would have been referring to November 25, because he left the embalming room in the early morning hours of November 23, just fifty or so hours earlier. “This delay” he referred to for the brain exam(2 H 355) was probably six days later, on the twenty-ninth. In his testimony before the ARRB in 1996, Humes says the brain exam was “a couple of days after” he delivered the autopsy report to the White House on Sunday evening, November 24, not a couple of days after the autopsy (ARRB Transcript of Proceedings, Deposition of Dr. James Joseph Humes, February 13, 1996, p.148).

^*
Dr. Michael Baden, the chief forensic pathologist for the HSCA, confirmed for me the normalcy of these changes resulting from formalin fixation. On a broader note, Baden only had one word for Horne’s whole theory: “ridiculous.” (Telephone interviews of Dr. Michael Baden by author on July 14, 2000, and March 25, 2002)

^*
Not Finck, since, as indicated, Horne concludes that Finck was only present at the alleged second supplementary exam, and unaware of the fraud being perpetrated by his colleagues.

^*
We can probably thank Gunn for small favors—the aforementioned negative footnote on Stringer, which Horne buried near the end of his memorandum.

^*
Dr. Humes testified before the Warren Commission that when it first became known on the afternoon of November 22 that the autopsy would be at Bethesda, “I was called to the [Bethesda Medical] Center by my superiors and informed that the president’s body would be brought to our laboratories for an examination, and I was charged with the responsibility of conducting and supervising this examination” (2 H 348).

^*
The Zapruder film, art historian David Lubin wrote in his book
Shooting Kennedy: JFK and the Culture of Images
, may be “the saddest movie ever made.” Saying that the “internal architecture” of the film even conforms “to the three-act structure” of modern motion pictures, “whether comedy, drama, or melodrama” (Act I being the smiling and radiant first couple; Act II, the tragedy; and III, the ending of the “terrible tale” as the limousine disappears into a dark tunnel), he writes that if major works of cinematic art “combine beauty…happiness, tragedy and horror,” then the twenty-six-second film “may qualify as such a work.” He sees JFK and Jackie as movie stars, “two of the biggest ever to pass before the eyes of a motion picture camera.” (Lubin,
Shooting Kennedy
, pp.1, 4, 15) Playing off these and other observations by Lubin,
New York Times
reporter Richard B. Woodward writes that the very brief movie, “beginning in anticipation” as the limousine turns the corner into Dealey Plaza, ends “in national despair” less than half a minute later, the film suddenly over. Unlike the film of Ruby killing Oswald two days later, which provided sound for its viewers and showed the killer, not only is the Zapruder film eerily silent, but the killer is “off-screen, his presence announced only by the hero and heroine [JFK and Jackie] reacting to the gunshots.” (Woodward, “The 40th Anniversary of a 26-Second Reel,”
New York Times
, November 16, 2003, p.40; Lubin,
Shooting Kennedy
, pp.4, 17, 35)

^*
The assassination of President William McKinley at the 1901 Pan-American Exhibition in Buffalo, New York, was also captured on film. Unlike the Zapruder film, investigators who studied Kinematographs (produced by the original Edison Laboratory) of President McKinley’s speech easily identified the assassin, Leon F. Czolgosz, as he made his way through the large crowd toward the president. Attempts to detect Czolgosz exchanging glances with possible confederates failed, despite the use of enlargements. Another motion picture camera was a few feet from McKinley just as Czolgosz came through the receiving line and fired the fatal shots. (Olson and Turner, “Photographic Evidence,” p.400)

^*
The shot Zapruder describes as the first one was actually, from all the evidence, the second in the sequence. Zapruder was confused, testifying that “I thought I heard two, it could be three [shots], because to my estimation I thought he was hit on the second—I really don’t know…I never even heard a third shot” (7 H 571). However, according to a
Dallas Times Herald
reporter’s shorthand interview notes (jotted down on November 22), Zapruder said he “heard 3 shots…after the first one Pres slumped over grabed stomac…hit in stomac…two more shots…looked like head opened up and everything came out” (Trask,
Pictures of the Pain
, p.149 note 13).

^*
It is perhaps worth noting that out of the seven Commission members, the three who had problems with the single-bullet theory were among the least faithful in attending Commission hearings during which testimony was given, two of them the worst. Cooper missed 44 out of the 94 hearings, the fourth worst attendance record; Boggs missed 74 hearings, the second worst. Living up to Benjamin Franklin’s adage that an empty drum sounds the loudest, Russell, who should have been the quietest, was the loudest dissenter. Shockingly irresponsible, Russell only attended 6 out of the 94 hearings, having more important things to do at the time, namely, being the leader in the Senate of the South’s opposition to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In fairness to Russell, he did write a letter to Johnson on February 24, 1964, saying that because of his “legislative duties,” he did not have enough time to serve on the Commission, but Warren ignored the letter, and Russell continued to serve. (Fite,
Richard B. Russell,
pp. 406, 416, 421) Chief Justice Warren, who was busier and had more responsibilities outside the Commission than anyone else on the Commission, had the best attendance record, commendably attending all or a portion of all 94 hearings. Representative Gerald Ford had the next best attendance record, showing up at 70 of the 94 hearings. Dulles attended 60, and McCloy 35. (Meagher,
Accessories after the Fact
, p. xxx)

^*
The genesis of the Groden sketch was a copyrighted sketch drawn by conspiracy theorist R. B. Cutler in 1969 (Letter from R. B. Cutler to author dated December 14, 1986). Groden alludes to this in his testimony before the HSCA when he says the sketch he was using “was drawn by a Warren Commission critic” (1 HSCA 65). Although Cutler erroneously had Connally seated directly in front of Kennedy, he at least correctly had Connally turning to his right at the time he was hit.

^*
For years, books and assassination researchers have loosely said 3 degrees, and I was guilty of this myself. But actually, the degree of declination was found to be 3.9 degrees (WR, p. 106), which is almost 4 degrees.

† Another way of looking at this point is this: If Kennedy was hit by two bullets and Connally, as the conspiracy theorists maintain, by a third and separate bullet, what physical evidence is there (the bullet itself or even one single fragment of it) of this third bullet’s existence?

^*
Although it is almost universally believed that Arlen Specter was the sole architect of the “single-bullet theory,” a belief that he himself has promoted, there is evidence that he was not. (See endnote discussion.)

^*
Connally can first be seen reacting to being hit by a bullet at frame 222 of the Zapruder film, when his upper body can be seen for the first time emerging from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign (see photo section of book; HSCA Report, p. 82).

^*
But conspiracy theorists shouldn’t despair. If they need an extra bullet or two, I would refer them to Warren Commission critic Nord Davis Jr. Nord is a serious student of the assassination who has studied all twenty-six volumes of the Commission, and he is confident that
twenty-one bullets
were fired in Dealey Plaza. Now, I can’t vouch for Nord’s credibility. After all, he is the same fellow who says that the Parkland doctors confused Officer Tippit’s body for that of President Kennedy. (Nord Davis Jr., “Dallas Conspiracy, Pardon Me, but…,” vol. 44, self-published, 1968, pp. 12, 16) But hey, with the desperate position the conspiracy theorists are in having run out of bullets, they can’t be picky about who is trying to help them.

^*
In a letter to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover in May of 1964, Warren Commission assistant counsel Norman Redlich wrote that “the Commission is aware that it is impossible to determine the exact point at which the first two shots were fired” (Letter from Norman Redlich to J. Edgar Hoover, May 7, 1964).

^*
As previously indicated, although the Warren Commission had a copy of the entire Zapruder film,
Life
, in response to a request by FBI photographic expert Lyndal Shaneyfelt, only provided the Warren Commission with enlarged color slides of Zapruder frames 171–334, which were thought by Shaneyfelt, at the time, to include “all of the pertinent frames of the assassination” (5 H 139, 142; CE 885, 18 H 1–80). The fact that the Warren Commission, when it published its volumes, only published
sequenced
frames 171 forward is evidence, author Gerald Posner points out, that they were “under the assumption that nothing of interest happened earlier” (Posner,
Case Closed
, p. 323 footnote). However, in fairness to the Warren Commission and FBI, they did analyze and draw inferences from frames 161 and 166 (5 H 147–149, 161, WCT Lyndal L. Shaneyfelt; WR, p. 98; CE 888–889, 18 H 86–87).

^*
If Governor Connally were reacting to the sound of a shot between Z162 and Z167, when might that shot (with its contemporaneous sound) have been fired? Human reaction times in response to the sound of gunshots were measured and published in the 1939 experimental work of C. Landis and W. Hunt (Landis and Hunt,
Startle Reaction
). For “head movement,” “movement of neck muscles,” and “initiation of arm movement,” Landis and Hunt found that the reaction time was 0.06 to 0.20 second—that is, the equivalent of 1.1 to 3.7 Zapruder frames (6 HSCA 28). Since Connally’s reaction begins at Z162, the sound of the shot would have been heard by Connally at about Z158–161. The caveat to the Landis and Hunt study is that it presupposes that one always reacts to hearing the sound of a gunshot instantaneously. This is, on its face, a clearly unwarranted assumption. One may hear a shot and react only in the mind, not moving at all. (Even if, in this case, Connally reacted instantaneously by the “movement of [his] neck muscles,” that obviously would not be discernible on the Zapruder film.) This is why I asked Cecil Kirk, my photographic expert at the London trial, “When you say that your [HSCA] panel concluded that the first shot was fired around frame 160, that’s on the assumption that Connally turned immediately?” “Yes.” “If he took just one second to react, that would put the first shot back around 140, is that correct?” “That is correct.” (Testimony of Cecil Kirk, Transcript of
On Trial
, July 23, 1986, pp. 280–281) What I’m saying is that the HSCA, as well as virtually the entire anti-conspiracy community, has been gratuitously generous (a trait the conspiracy community seems to be incapable of in the assassination debate) to the conspiracy theorists in placing the first shot around frame 160, meaning Oswald may have had more time than believed to get off his later, second shot.

† Because the president also turns sharply to his right during this period (Z157–160), some have suggested that he too is reacting to the sound of the first shot. It should be noted, however, that unlike Connally, he continues to smile and wave to crowds along the north side of Elm Street. Although we can never be sure, it is difficult to believe that the president would have responded this way had he interpreted the sound as a shot the way Connally and some others did.

^*
Ironically, when the president was closest to Oswald—when the limousine was directly below Oswald’s window—he was the most difficult shot for Oswald, which Oswald would know. Directly below, the president would be traveling from Oswald’s left to right the most, and Oswald’s rifle would have virtually no stability.

†There were three signs along the north side of Elm Street between Houston and the Triple Underpass—the R.L. Thornton Freeway, Stemmons Freeway, and Fort Worth Turnpike signs (CE 2114, 24 H 544). From Mrs. Baker’s position in front of the Depository, the “first sign” would have been the R.L. Thornton Freeway sign, which was nearly in line with the west end of the Depository.

^*
The Stemmons Freeway sign begins to block Zapruder’s view of Kennedy and Connally as early as Z201, although the top of Kennedy’s head is visible as late as Z207. While Connally begins to emerge from the sign at Z221, Kennedy doesn’t fully reappear until Z225.