The Kennedy Half-Century (113 page)

48
. Marrs,
Crossfire
, 12–13; Warren Commission Hearings, vol. IV, p. 147, History Matters website,
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh4/html/WC_Vol4_0078a.htm
 [accessed October 3, 2011].

49
. Blaine,
Kennedy Detail
, 214–15; Warren Commission Hearings, vol. II, pp. 74 and 117–18, History Matters website,
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh2/html/WC_Vol2_0063a.htm
 [accessed October 3, 2011].

50
. E-mail from Gerald Blaine, January 9, 2013.

51
. Gerald Blaine with Lisa McCubbin,
The Kennedy Detail: JFK’s Secret Service Agents Break Their Silence
(New York: Gallery Books, 2010), 216–17.

52
. “Testimony of Rufus Wayne Youngblood,
http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/russ/testimony/youngblo.htm
 [accessed October 4, 2011].

53
. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. V, p. 562, History Matters website,
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh5/html/WC_Vol5_0286b.htm
 [accessed October 3, 2011].

54
. Warren Commission Hearings, vol. VII, pp. 474–75, History Matters website,
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh7/html/WC_Vol7_0242a.htm
 [accessed October 3, 2011].

55
. “Report of United States Secret Service on the Assassination of President Kennedy,” C. Douglas Dillon Papers, Box 43, Folder “The President’s Committee on the Warren Report,” John F. Kennedy Library, Boston, Massachusetts.

56
. Bugliosi,
Reclaiming History
, 67.

57
. Affidavit of Seymour Weitzman, appendix VI in Mark Lane,
Rush to Judgment
(New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992), 409.

58
. Telephone interview with Eugene Boone, September 14, 2012. Boone also added some comments worth considering on the possible presence of a second gunman; I have included them on my website,
TheKennedyHalfCentury.com
.

59
. Bertrand Russell, “16 Questions on the Assassination,”
The Minority of One
(6 September 1964), 6–8.

60
. Telephone interview with Wesley Buell Frazier, April 16, 2013.

61
. Testimony of Robert A. Frazier, March 31, 1964, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. III, The Assassination Archives and Research Center website,
http://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/jfk/wc/wcvols/wh3/html/WC_Vol3_0202a.htm
 [accessed April 19, 2013].

62
. “Chapter 4: The Assassin,” p. 133, JFK Assassination Records, National Archives and Records Administration website,
http://www.archives.gov/research/jfk/warren-commission-report/chapter-4.html
 [accessed April 19, 2013].

63
. Bugliosi,
Reclaiming History
(photo insert.)

64
. Telephone interview with Wesley Buell Frazier, April 16, 2013.

65
. Frazier’s friendship with Oswald initially convinced police that he was involved in the assassination, and they tried to force him to sign a confession. “Captain Will Fritz, after quite a few hours of interrogation … [came] through the door, and that was the first time I’d ever seen him, and he had this red-ribbon paper, 8.5” by 11”, and he had a pen with him. He put this [confession] down in front of me and said, ‘I want you to sign this.’ And I looked at him and said, ‘I’m not signing that. That’s ridiculous.’ Well, he drew back his hand to hit me and I put my left arm up for a block. And I told him, ‘There’s policemen on the other side of that door but we’re gonna have a hell of a fight before they get in here.’ He got real red-faced. He snatched the paper up in front of me and the pen and walked out the door. I don’t think I was treated properly because I never had been in any type of [trouble before].” Frazier says that he had difficulty sleeping in the days that followed. “This was a very terrifying thing for me.”

66
. Warren Commission Report, chapter 1, p. 53, History Matters website,
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0039a.htm
 [accessed October 3, 2011].

67
. Anthony Summers,
The Kennedy Conspiracy
(London: Sphere Books, 1989), 391.

68
. Interview with James T. Tague, March 30, 1999, conducted by Bob Porter, Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas. However, Vincent Bugliosi says that bullets “consist of 98 to 99 percent lead, the rest being trace elements” (Bugliosi, 813). Chris Kincheloe, owner of Nuckols Gun Works in Staunton, Virginia, told me that copper residue would probably not show up in a scar caused by a copper-encased lead bullet.

69
. Cliff Spiegelman, one of the researchers involved in the study, credits a high school government teacher named Stuart Wexler with piquing his interest in the assassination’s ballistic evidence. “Wexler and a friend of his had bought some bullets of the same type believed to have been used in the Kennedy assassination,” Spiegelman explains. “They were Mannlicher-Carcanos, which were only manufactured in 1954 and are now antiques, mainly because most surviving bullets have been bought up by conspiracy buffs. He was looking for someone to analyze them. I thought it was interesting and that it would be a neat project, so I agreed.” Spiegelman told me that Dr. Vincent Guinn, a chemistry professor at the University of California, “testified to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, that he knew what kind of ammunition was used … We disagree that he would know that from the chemical composition … He also said that he could count the bullets in the Kennedy party … From the chemical analysis it’s just impossible to count.” Telephone interview with Cliff Spiegelman, July 27, 2011. Using a technique known as neutron activation analysis, Guinn told the HSCA that all of the bullet fragments recovered on 11/22 came from just two bullets and that those two bullets closely matched ammunition made by the Western Cartridge Company for Mannlicher-Carcano rifles. But Spiegelman told me, “If Dr. Guinn’s wrong and bullets aren’t chemically unique [which is what Spiegelman’s team basically concluded], then those five fragments could be five different bullets.” Telephone interview with Cliff Spiegelman, August 3, 2011. See also Gary L. Aguilar, “Is Vincent Bugliosi Right that Neutron Activation Analysis Proves Oswald’s Guilt?”, Mary Ferrell Foundation website,
http://www.maryferrell.org/wiki/index.php/Essay_-_Is_Vincent_Bugliosi_Right_that_Neutron_Activation_Analysis_Proves_Oswalds_Guilt
 [accessed September 1, 2011].

70
. “Texas A&M Statistician Probes Bullet Evidence in JFK Assassination,” May 14, 2007, Texas A&M College of Science website,
http://www.science.tamu.edu/articles/550/;%20%20http://arxiv.org/abs/0712.2150
 [accessed June 8, 2011].

71
. The wound at the base and rear of the president’s neck also showed a bullet channel that had terminated at the throat, in the area obliterated by the tracheotomy.

72
. Warren Report, chapter 1, p. 60, History Matters website,
http://www.history-matters.com/archive/jfk/wc/wr/html/WCReport_0042b.htm
 [accessed October 3, 2011].

73
. See G. Paul Chambers,
Head Shot: The Science Behind the JFK Assassination
(New York: Prometheus Books, 2010). See also David R. Wrone,
The Zapruder Film: Reframing JFK’s Assassination
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003), 1; Richard B. Trask,
Pictures of the Pain: Photography and the Assassination of President Kennedy
(Danvers, MA: Yeoman Press, 1994), 124. Professor Wrone’s argument is especially noteworthy. Wrone used advanced forensic techniques to examine the Zapruder film and concluded that more than one person fired on Kennedy. He doubts that Oswald was one of these gunmen.

74
. See Barr McClellan,
Blood, Money, and Power: How LBJ Killed JFK
(New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011); Joseph P. Farrell,
LBJ and the Conspiracy to Kill Kennedy
(Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, 2011); L. Fletcher Prouty,
JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy
(New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2011); and Roger Stone,
The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ
(New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2013).

75
. See Robert Caro,
Means of Ascent: The Years of Lyndon Johnson
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990); Fredrik Logevall,
Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of the War in Vietnam
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); and Robert Dallek,
Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–73
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

76
. David McCullough,
John Adams
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001), 389.

77
. Johnson had had a near-fatal heart attack in 1955. Once out of office, Johnson had another serious heart attack in 1972 and finally succumbed to heart disease at the age of sixty-four in January 1973.

78
. Randall B. Woods,
LBJ: Architect of American Ambition
(New York: Free Press, 2006), 422. Having succeeded Kennedy with only fourteen months remaining in the term, Johnson was constitutionally eligible to run for two full terms. Had he not been essentially forced out by anti-Vietnam war sentiment in 1968, LBJ might have served over nine years as president, more than anyone except his political hero, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

79
. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.,
A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), 1020–21.

80
. “Sale 43, Lot 240: John F. Kennedy’s Personal Secretary Lists Suspects in His Murder,” Alexander Autographs,
http://auctions.alexautographs.com/asp/fullCatalogue.asp?salelot=43+++++++240+&refno=+++68450
 [accessed June 3, 2011]. Lincoln’s other suspects were (in order) the “KKK, [Southern] Dixiecrats, [Teamsters boss Jimmy] Hoffa, [the] John Birch Society, [Richard] Nixon [who had been in Dallas on a well-publicized trip the previous day, perhaps raising suspicions in Mrs. Lincoln’s mind], [the late South Vietnam Premier] Diem [presumably, Lincoln meant loyalists to Diem upset about his recent assassination], Rightist[s], [the] CIA in Cuban fiasco [presumably, she meant the Bay of Pigs], [unnamed] Dictators, [and] Communists.”

81
. David Talbot,
Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years
(New York: Free Press, 2007), 252.

82
. “Godfrey T. McHugh Oral History Interview, May 19, 1978,” John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum website,
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/Archives/JFKOH-GTM-02.aspx
 [accessed April 23, 2013].

83
. Craig I. Zirbel,
The Texas Connection
(New York: Warner Books, 1991), 226.

84
. Zirbel says that Hunt assisted LBJ during the 1960 Democratic primaries by printing and circulating “over 200,000 copies of a speech lambasting Kennedy as a Catholic.” Zirbel also believes that Oswald wrote a letter to Hunt or Hunt’s son on November 8, 1963, that read, “Dear Mr. Hunt, I would like information concerding [
sic
] my position. I am asking only for information. I am asking that we discuss the matter fully before any steps are taken by me or anyone else. Thank you, Lee Harvey Oswald.” Handwriting experts are divided over the authenticity of the letter. In the 1990s, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin published a book claiming that the Hunt letter was a clever KGB forgery. Mitrokhin was a KGB agent who worked in the agency’s foreign intelligence archives; he defected to Great Britain in 1992 and turned over a treasure trove of notes and secret documents. See
The Sword and the Shield: The Mitrokhin Archive and the Secret History of the KGB
(New York: Basic Books, 2000). The Hunts were staunch right-wingers. One of Hunt’s sons helped pay for the highly critical advertisement headlined “Welcome Mr. Kennedy” that appeared in the
Dallas Morning News
on 11/22. Hunt Sr. hosted a right-wing radio show called
Life Line
and founded a conservative organization called the Facts Forum. Another wealthy Texan sometimes linked to Hunt and the Kennedy assassination is D. H. Byrd. David Harold Byrd was an oil baron who purchased the Texas School Book Depository in the 1930s. He was affiliated with the so-called Suite 8F Group—a coterie of conservative businessmen who took their name from the Houston hotel room where they would often meet. Lyndon Johnson and John Connally were supposedly affiliated with this group. Byrd also founded an aviation
company called Temco that employed Mac Wallace, a man who was charged with killing the owner of a golf course in Austin (John Kinser) who was allegedly sleeping with Johnson’s sister. Wallace also knew Lyndon Johnson, and it has been alleged that LBJ interceded to get Wallace off the hook following the murder. Wallace has also been linked to a palm print found on the sixth floor of the Depository. If Wallace worked for Byrd, it is not unreasonable to think that he might have been in the Book Depository at some point for one reason or another—assuming the palm print was actually his, which is hotly disputed. In 2001 author Vincent Bugliosi interviewed Nathan Darby, a Texas print examiner who identified a print found on the sixth floor of the Depository as Wallace’s. Darby told Bugliosi that he’d been given “two fingerprints, one from a card, the other a latent [print]” and that it was “all blind.” “I didn’t know and wasn’t told who they belonged to,” said Darby. Bugliosi told Darby that the “latent” print found in the Depository was a palm print, not a fingerprint. Darby replied, “Of course, you can’t compare a palm print with a fingerprint.” Bugliosi,
Reclaiming History
, 922–23. Gary Mack of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza goes further: “There was no ‘Wallace print’ found anywhere in the Depository. One partial print [on the sixth floor at the time of the assassination] was unidentified and a study decades later using photocopies, not actual prints, concluded the partial belonged to Wallace. But another examiner found far more points of dissimilarity which, to print experts, immediately rules out a match.” E-mail from Gary Mack, August 30, 2011.