Who Really Killed Kennedy?: 50 Years Later: Stunning New Revelations About the JFK Assassination (8 page)

Specter hung his single-bullet interpretation on the assumption that Connally had a “delayed reaction” to having been shot, allowing for the possibility Connally misinterpreted that the first shot missed and the
second shot might have been the one that hit both JFK and Connally. This is the theory Specter pursued when questioning Dr. Humes:

Mr. Specter
: Could that missile have traversed Governor Connally’s chest without having him know it immediately or instantaneously?

Commander Humes
: I believe so. I have heard reports, and have been told by my professional associates of any number of instances where people received penetrating wounds in various portions of the body and have only the sensation of a slight discomfort or slight slap or some other minor difficulty from such a missile wound. I am sure he would be aware that something happened to him, but that he was shot. I am not certain.

Representative Ford
: Would that have been the potential reaction of the President when first hit, as shown in [CE] 385?

Commander Humes
: It could very easily be one of some type of an injury—I mean the awareness that he had been struck by a missile. I don’t know, but people have been drilled through with a missile and didn’t know it.
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Dr. Humes in his next answer blew Specter’s single-bullet theory out of the water. Humes testified it was “extremely unlikely” the nearly pristine CE399 struck Connally’s thigh because X-rays show metallic fragments in the thigh bone. “I cannot conceive of where [the fragments] came from.” The Commission conveniently overlooked that comment and focused on the possibility of a delayed reaction to a gunshot wound.

The Warren Commission continued:

There was, conceivably, a delayed reaction between the time the bullet struck [Connally] and the time he realized he was hit.… The Governor did not even know that he had been struck in the wrist or in the thigh until he regained consciousness in the hospital the next day. Moreover, he testified that he did not hear what he thought was the second shot, although he did hear a subsequent shot, which coincided with the shattering of the President’s head. One possibility, therefore, would be a sequence in which the Governor heard the first shot, did not immediately feel the penetration of the bullet, then felt the delayed
reaction of the impact on his back, later heard the shot which shattered the President’s head, and then lost consciousness without hearing a third shot which might have occurred later.
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“It is frustrating and ironic that the Zapruder film does not enable the viewer to pinpoint the exact moment of impact of the bullet in the President’s back, or of the bullet (or bullets) that struck the Governor,” Sylvia Meagher wrote. “But the film does establish a definite delay between the wounding of the two men—a delay too short for the Carcano rifle to be fired twice by one man, and too long to leave the single-missile hypothesis with credibility.”
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A further anomaly is that to establish that CE399 traversed JFK’s back through his neck Specter would have had to concede an upward trajectory. However, to establish that the same bullet hit Connally, who was sitting in the limousine’s jump seat several inches below JFK, he would have to allow a downward trajectory.

Commission Exhibit 385 was a drawing that showed the “magic bullet” CE399 penetrating JFK’s back at nearly the base of the neck and exiting through the throat. CE385 is inconsistent with the testimony of the doctors at both Parkland and Bethesda and with autopsy photographs that place JFK’s back wound considerably lower on the back, down at least an inch or two from the neck. The drawing was controversial because it showed the bullet trajectory on a downward angle when the natural assumption and the available medical evidence of JFK wounds suggest that a line drawn from a back entrance wound to a neck exit would be on an upward bullet trajectory. However, an upward trajectory through JFK’s body would be inconsistent with the assumption that a lone gunman firing from the far corner sixth floor window in the Texas School Book Depository shot both bullets that struck JFK, which would have been on a downward trajectory. To achieve this affect, Specter had the drawing made to show the point where the bullet entered JFK’s back higher than where it actually did enter. Specter also drew the attention of the commissioners to photographs showing JFK’s suit jacket was bunched up in the back so as to explain why the bullet holes observed in JFK’s shirt and suit coat were lower down on the back where he argued the bullet entered.

Three important photographs taken instants before JFK was wounded the first time, supported Specter’s argument that JFK’s suit jacket was bunched up in back at the time of the shooting. Yet all three photographs show JFK sitting upright, such that a bullet hitting him in the back an inch or more below the neck would have had an upward trajectory to exit JFK’s neck. And in none of the three photographs is JFK’s head bent down. JFK is clearly seen sitting in a normal posture with his head upright as he observed bystanders along Elm Street on the right side of the limo.

The first photograph, taken by Hugh William Betzner, is a photo of the Dallas motorcade roughly at Zapruder’s frame 186, showing the back of JFK’s head as the limo approaches the R. L. Thornton Freeway “Keep Right” road sign on Elm Street. Betzner’s photo shows JFK sitting upright, with his head held upright and JFK looking right.
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The second photograph, taken by Phillip L. Willis, is a color slide labeled by the Warren Commission as “Willis Slide #5.”
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Willis took it at apparently the precise moment the first shot was fired. “As I was about to squeeze my shutter, that is when the first shot rang out and my reflex just took the picture at that moment,” Willis later recalled. “I might have waited another full second … but being with my war nerves anyway—when that shot rang out, I just flinched and got it.”
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Willis, a World War II Army Air Corp veteran, was at Pearl Harbor the day the Japanese attacked. From his military and hunting experience, Willis immediately recognized the first shot as a gunshot. His photograph, corresponding to Zapruder frame 202, shows Kennedy’s limo from the rear, approaching the Stemmons Freeway sign. Kennedy can be seen sitting upright, his head held upright, with his gaze turned slightly to the right as the limo approached the Stemmons Freeway “Keep Right” road sign and JFK looks to his right at the bystanders on Elm Street.

The third photograph is the most important of the three. Robert Earl Croft’s photograph, taken a few instants ahead of the Betzner and Willis photographs, shows the limo on Elm Street before reaching the R. L. Thornton “Keep Right” road sign. Croft’s photo has the advantage of showing the limo from a side view. In the photo, JFK’s head is clearly upright as he looks slightly to the right. There is no doubt Kennedy is sitting upright, with the entry point on his back clearly being lower than where Kennedy’s neck wound was found. The photo makes it obvious that
any bullet passing through JFK’s body from the back to the neck would have had to have been on an upward trajectory.

So, a careful analysis of the Betzner and Willis photographs suggests a shot hitting Kennedy three to four inches down on the right side of his back would have passed through his body on a slightly upward trajectory, not the downward trajectory required by the single-bullet theory. Various documents, including JFK’s death certificate, reveal that the back wound was located at the third thoracic vertebrae, which would place the bullet wound some three to four inches from the base of the neck. This evidence, plus the three photographs taken at approximately the instant the first shot was fired, suggests that JFK’s suit coat bunched up in back, but not bunched so high as to reverse the bullet trajectory. At most, the angle would have been horizontal instead of downward, and a horizontal angle would have missed altogether the entry point on Connally’s back near the angle of the shoulder blade.

The controversy was intensified when researchers discovered handwritten editing that Warren Commission member Congressman Gerald R. Ford had done on the final report. The two key sentences originally read: “The President’s hands moved to his neck and he stiffened in his seat. A bullet entered his back at a point slightly above the shoulder to the right of the spine.” Ford edited the second sentence to read: “A bullet had entered the back of his neck at a point slightly to the right of the spine.” Ford argued he did not alter the language to support the single-bullet theory, but because he felt the changes made the language more precise.
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Specter’s efforts to establish the single-bullet theory inevitably required moving JFK’s back wound higher. Commission Exhibit 903 is a photograph taken on May 24, 1964, the same day as the Warren Commission’s re-enactment of the assassination in Dealey Plaza.
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In the photograph, Arlen Specter can be seen holding a metal rod or pointer at approximately a 17.5 degree angle—the angle the Commission calculated was required for the single bullet to hit both JFK and Connally. Two stand-ins are sitting in the JFK limo, one in JFK’s seat and the other in Connally’s seat. The person in Connally’s seat is wearing the same suit jacket Connally wore when he was shot. This gave Specter an exact location within which to point the tip of his metal rod. Examined closely, it is clear Specter had placed the pointer on JFK’s shoulder to make the angle work. Had
Specter placed the pointer four or five inches down on the JFK actor’s back—much closer to the actual location in which the bullet hit JFK, the bullet passing through JFK’s neck according to this photograph would have had to travel an upward trajectory, making it highly likely the bullet would have missed Connally altogether.

When examining FBI firearms expert Robert A. Frazier, Specter returned to asking hypothetical questions in the attempt to establish a downward trajectory could be established between JFK’s back wound and neck wound that would permit the argument that CE399, fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, could have transited JFK to enter Connally. Consider the following exchange:

Mr. Specter
: I have one additional question.

Mr. Frazier, assuming the factors which I have asked you to accept as true for the purposes of expressing an opinion before, as to the flight of the bullet and the straight line penetration through the President’s body, considering the point of entry and exit, do you have an opinion as to what probably happened during the interval between [Zapruder] frames 207 and 225 as to whether the bullet which passed through the neck of the President entered the Governor’s back?

Mr. Frazier
: There are a lot of probables in that. First, we have to assume that there is absolutely no deflection in the bullet from the time it left the barrel until the time it exited from the Governor’s body. That assumes that it has gone through the President’s body and through the Governor’s body.

I feel that physically this would have been possible because of the positions of the Presidential stand-in and the Governor’s stand-in [in the FBI reconstruction], it would be entirely possible for this to have occurred.

However, I myself don’t have any technical evidence, which would permit me to say one way or the other. In other words, that would support it as far as my rendering an opinion as an expert. I would certainly say it was possible but I don’t say that it probably occurred because I don’t have the evidence on which to base a statement like that.

Mr. Specter
: What evidence is it that you would be missing to assess the possibilities?

Mr. Frazier
: We are dealing with hypothetical situations here of placing people in cars from photographs which are not absolutely
accurate. They are two-dimensional. They don’t give you the third dimension. They are as accurate as you can accurately place the people but it isn’t absolute.

Secondly, we are dealing with the fact that we don’t know whether, I don’t know technically, whether there was any deviation in the bullet which struck the President in the back, and exited from his throat. If there were a few degrees deviation then it may affect my opinion as to whether or not it would have struck the governor.

We are dealing with an assumed fact that the Governor was in front of the President in such a position that he could have taken. So when you say would it probably have occurred, then you are asking me for an opinion, to base my opinion on a whole series of hypothetical facts, which I can’t substantiate.
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This has been the crux of the argument presented by computer simulations of Dealey Plaza and the JFK limousine popularized by various television shows that attempt to show it was possible for JFK and Connally to have lined up in such a way that a path could be projected back in a straight line to the supposed sniper’s nest in the sixth floor far corner window of the Texas School Book Depository Building. Even if that straight-line hypothetically—from (a) the sixth floor corner window to (b) JFK’s back wound to (c) JFK’s throat wound to (d) Connally’s back wound to (e) Connally’s wrist wound to (f) Connally’s thigh—existed at the moment of the JFK assassination, that still does not prove that a single bullet actually hit both men as speculated.

Specter resorted to asking hypothetical questions in the attempt to convince an American public not trained in legal logic that a lone shooter killed JFK. Specter did so, largely because he had no alternative. The proof Specter needed lay buried with JFK in Arlington Cemetery. As a consequence, the single-bullet theory at best assumes the status of a clever solution to a whodunit parlor game—a possible, but not proven explanation for who committed a crime, and how. As such, the single-bullet theory is not definitive proof Lee Harvey Oswald pulled off the greatest political crime of the twentieth century with an Italian Army World War II surplus rifle he purchased by mail order for a total cost of around twenty dollars, including tax and shipping. The facts that were established leave us with an unexplained entry wound in JFK’s neck that, by itself, proves the presence of a second shooter from the front.