A DISPUTATION OF THE REPORT OF THE PRESIDENT'S COMMISSION ON THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
After the brutal assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy on November 22, 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson ordered a commission of distinguished citizens including politicians, lawyers and bankers to investigate Kennedy's death. This group, chaired by Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, investigated theories, interrogated witnesses and examined evidence for ten months and eventually compiled their information into twenty-six volumes of exhibits, affidavits and witness statements. Their conclusions, presented in the Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy and commonly known as the Warren Commission Report, were not only questionable, but completely erroneous in some major areas. The report left many valid questions unanswered and important pieces of evidence completely ignored. The reasons behind this gross display of incompetence will never be completely determined; however, it is clear that errors and inconsistencies abounded in three of the main premises of the report.(1) The first questionable conclusion drawn by the Warren Commission was that only three shots were fired at President Kennedy on November 22, 1963.(2) Second, the Warren Commission concluded that all shots were fired from the southeast window on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository.(3) A third finding of the Commission named Lee Harvey Oswald as the lone and completely unaided assassin.(4)
The assertion that only three shots were fired was very doubtful. In direct rebuttal to the Warren Commission Report, there was the testimony of countless witnesses who heard between four and eight shots. The Warren Commission dismissed this testimony as human error or echo.(5)
Another issue concerning the number of shots fired was the type of wounds or damage each bullet caused. According to the Commission, one bullet missed completely, causing a slight wound to a bystander, James Tague, and another bullet caused Kennedy's head wound. This leaves one bullet to account for all wounds suffered by Kennedy and Texas Governor, John Connolly.(6) Therefore, if Kennedy and Connolly were hit with separate shots and two bullets have already been accounted for, then more than three shots must have been fired.
There is actually evidence which supports that more than one bullet caused Kennedy's and Connolly's wounds. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) and the Secret Service both concluded that Kennedy and Connolly were hit with separate shots.(7) Connolly himself asserted, "There is my absolute knowledge . . . that one bullet caused the President's first wound, and that an entirely separate shot struck me . . . It's a certainty."(8) Connolly's wife, Nellie, testified that she saw Kennedy physically react to a shot before her husband was hit.(9)
An amateur photographer, Abraham Zapruder, filmed these horrifying events with his home movie camera. This film also supports the theory that more than three shots were fired. Frame 225 of the film shows Kennedy reacting to the first shot, the one which supposedly hit him and Connolly, as he emerged from behind a sign which was blocking the view of the camera. In this same frame, Connolly shows no indication of distress. Instead, he was still holding his Stetson hat with the same wrist that was supposedly shattered by the bullet which had just hit Kennedy.(10)
The idea that one bullet hit both Kennedy and Connolly is referred to as the 'Single" or "Magic Bullet Theory'. In order to understand the impossibility of this theory, one must consider exactly what this single bullet is claimed to have accomplished. According to the Commission, the bullet first entered the base of the President's neck. Then, striking no bones, it moved slightly upward and left, exiting to the right of Kennedy's Adam's apple. Next, the bullet which had been moving towards Kennedy's left, turned and entered Connolly at the rear of his right armpit. Moving downward, it shattered Connolly's fifth rib leaving five inches of bone pulverized. The bullet then exited the governor's chest just below the right nipple, shattered the radius in his wrist and entered his left thigh. Connolly was seated directly in front of the President in the limousine.(11)
This single bullet was later found in almost perfect condition at Parkland Memorial Hospital on a stretcher in a very busy corridor.(12) The number and extent of wounds that one bullet supposedly caused is an extreme impossibility. Furthermore, for this bullet to be virtually unharmed is even more unbelievable. Dr. Robert Shaw, the doctor who operated on Connolly, professed that he doubted "CE 399 [the magic bullet] could have passed through Connolly -- not to mention Kennedy also -- and not have lost even more particles of lead than it apparently did."(13)
Military doctors, who were not practicing forensic pathologists, performed Kennedy's autopsy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland. The original autopsy report was prepared by one of these doctors, Commander James J. Humes. He and the two other members of the autopsy team originally reported that there was one wound on the President's back, near his shoulders. The doctors believed that the bullet entered the President and then became dislodged during cardiac massage in Dallas. In his initial report, Commander J. Thornton Boswell, another of the three doctors at Bethesda, stated, "Probing determined that the distance traveled by this missile was a very short distance inasmuch as the end of the opening could be felt with the finger."(14) Their report at first ignored the wound in Kennedy's neck, due to the belief that the opening was an emergency tracheotomy.(15)
The next day, Dr. Malcolm O. Perry, a doctor who had operated on Kennedy at Parkland, contacted Humes and informed him of the neck wound.(16) A different autopsy report was prepared which accounted for the wound. The wound had to be shown as an exit, in that an entry would suggest more than three shots. Therefore, the new report was written by memory because the President's body was already in state at the White House. The revised version stated that a bullet entered the President's back high enough to travel downward and still exit from his throat .(17) This contradictory report was the source upon which all of the Commission's findings concerning the President's wounds were based.
In addition, there is even more evidence which points to the neck wound as an entry, unquestionably refuting the idea that only three shots were fired. If Kennedy's neck wound was one of entry, then one bullet could not have caused that wound and all of Connolly's wounds. The doctors at Parkland concluded that the neck wound was one of entry and the doctors at Bethesda, on whose opinion the Warren Report was based, did not even examine it.(18 )Dr. Charles A. Crenshaw, one of the doctors present at Parkland, said, "I identified a small opening . . . at the midline of his [Kennedy's] throat to be an entry bullet hole. There was no doubt in my mind about that [neck] wound."(19) Furthermore, the doctors at Parkland reported that the front neck wound was about five millimeters in diameter. This is a measurement nearly three times smaller than the smallest exit wound produced by the rifle tests conducted by the Commission.(20) Therefore, it is very unlikely that such a small wound, only five millimeters, could have been an exit wound.
The physical evidence presented not only refutes the fact that only three shots were fired, but also supports disbelief in the theory that all shots were fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository, another conclusion of the Warren Commission. It was very questionable how the back wound migrated higher in the report of one day to the revised report the next day in order to have a bullet come from above and behind the President and still exit his throat. This fabrication was necessary for the Commission, not only to support the theory that only three shots were fired, but to place the origin of the bullets at the Texas School Book Depository.(21)
The testimony of several eyewitnesses contradicted the findings of the Commission that all shots came from the Texas School Book Depository. Twenty witnesses out of the 171 used by the Commission placed a gunman on the grassy knoll, an open area to the right of the President's car at the time of the shooting.(22) There were many other witnesses whose testimony was not even considered in the Commission's Report. These included twelve people in the Texas School Book Depository, eleven law enforcement officers watching from Main and Houston Streets and Cheryl McKinnon, a spectator standing on the knoll. She recalled turning "in horror toward the back of the grassy knoll where it seemed the sounds had originated. Puffs of white smoke still hung in the air in small patches."(23) Six witnesses who were standing on the steps of the Texas School Book Depository, almost directly under the window from which Oswald supposedly fired, said that they believed the shots came from the west. To them, the shots originated from the direction of the knoll.(24) Furthermore, of the twenty-five people standing closest to the knoll, twenty-three are convinced that the shots came from that area.(25) There is even a photograph by Mary Moorman, a spectator, which shows the knoll area immediately following the fatal head wound. In this picture, the image of a gunman and a puff of white smoke appear behind the stockade fence at the top of the knoll.(26) This film, along with the above mentioned eyewitness testimony, was deemed insignificant by the Commission and therefore, was not taken into consideration.
Other odd occurrences support the idea that there were gunmen in places other than the Texas School Book Depository. Officer Joe Marshall Smith was standing in the middle of Elm Street a few seconds after the President's car passed him. He declared, "I heard the shots and thought they were coming from the bushes or the overpass. "(27) He rushed up the hill to the knoll where he encountered and stopped a man who immediately produced Secret Service credentials. Upon seeing these credentials, Smith let him go. Other officers and officials in the area also claimed that Secret Service men stopped them and displayed identification. The placement of these agents by security officials is entirely logical; however, the Secret Service has proven that no agents were present in any of these areas.(28) These false Secret Service men were planted in the areas from where the shots came in order to detour police and spectators and give the true gunmen time to escape.(29)
One final fallacy included in the Warren Commission Report was the assertion that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin. The report stated that Oswald was guilty and received no help or encouragement from any other person or group.(30) On the contrary, there is much evidence supporting the belief that Oswald did not kill Kennedy, or if he did, he did not act alone or unaided.
Oswald's government and military involvement must be investigated. If a link can be established between Oswald and the inner circles of government intelligence, the entire premise of the Commission which labels the assassination as the work of a lone madman can be questioned. In October 1956, Oswald joined the United States Marine Corps. Only six months later, he was granted clearance to deal with confidential level material. During his time in the Marines, a few unusual events occurred. He shot himself in the elbow with a pistol he was not authorized to possess. A few months later, he poured a drink on a superior and challenged him to a fight.(31) Because of these infractions he received two courts-martial.(32) There are military records which show he was detained for punishment for these acts, but there are no witnesses or records to prove exactly where he was during that time. Some critics of the Commission believe that after he was enlisted in the Marines, he was recruited by a secret agency of the United States government and trained as a special agent during his time of disappearance.(33)
In addition to Oswald's military involvement, a connection does exist between Oswald and the intelligence community. During his military experience, he miraculously learned the Russian language without any official classes or teaching. Then, in 1959, Oswald defected to the Soviet Union and offered his knowledge of United States military secrets to Soviet Intelligence officials in return for citizenship. However, in 1962, Oswald and his new wife, the niece of a Soviet intelligence official, were allowed to return to the United States with minimum difficulty.(34) Not only was he allowed to return to a country from which he had defected and betrayed government secrets a few months earlier, but the United States Department of State even funded the trip through a promissory note of $435.71.(35) Robert Morrow, a former member of the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), asserted that Oswald was indeed a C.I.A. special agent to Russia.(36)
How Oswald's re-entry into the United States was accomplished without the help of some high officials is inconceivable. Many Warren Commission critics believe that Oswald's defection to the Soviet Union was staged in order to have Oswald appear as a traitor, Communist and basic enemy of the United States. Oswald unknowingly participated in the creation of this image for himself. Clearly, someone or some organization was laying a trail leading to Oswald, the designated patsy or person upon which to place false guilt.(37) Oswald's brother, Robert, wrote that even "the people who feel that the Warren Commission clearly established Lee's guilt are convinced that he was carrying out someone else's orders--and the two organizations most widely suspected are the CIA and the FBI."(38) Oswald himself said, "I didn't shoot anybody I'm just a patsy."(39) Although Oswald's questionable dealings with the United States government and Russian intelligence do not point conclusively to his innocence, they bring up questions as to his role in the assassination and the chance of his actions being completely unaided or of his own design.
The role of the Mafia must also be considered before the sole guilt of the assassination can be placed on Oswald. Frank Ragano, a famous mob lawyer, stated that he was personally instructed by Teamsters Union leader Jimmy Hoffa, allegedly associated with the Mafia, to tell Santo Trafficante, a mob member, that something must be done about Kennedy. Hoffa went on to tell Ragano that the mob had to kill the President. This kind of information makes the claim of the Commission that absolutely no evidence of a conspiracy existed absolutely untrue. The evidence existed, but the Commission chose to ignore it.(40)Another piece of evidence that brings doubt to Oswald's guilt is the testimony of witnesses inside and around the Texas School Book Depository. Carolyn Arnold, a secretary, testified that she saw Oswald sitting alone in the second floor lunchroom calmly eating lunch at 12:15 P.M., only minutes before the President was murdered. Then, about ninety seconds after the assassination, Patrolman Marion L. Baker, with his revolver drawn, found Oswald on the second floor drinking a Coke.(41) When called, he turned and willingly approached the officer.(42) Baker described Oswald as calm. The officer also proclaimed that Oswald showed no apprehension or fear when faced with the revolver.(43) Was it possible for Oswald to squeeze through the tight opening between the boxes surrounding the sniper's lair, wipe his prints from the rifle, hide it with some meticulousness in another part of the room, dash down four flights of stairs, purchase a Coke from a vending machine and then appear calm and not out of breath on the second floor in ninety seconds? Finally, instead of leaving through a less conspicuous manner, Oswald walked through the second floor offices and out of the front entrance only minutes after killing the President.(44)
In addition to the witnesses who encountered Oswald inside the Texas School Book Depository, there were witnesses who saw the events from the outside of the building. There were many people who testified that they saw two or more dark-skinned people moving around in the windows of the sixth floor during the Presidential parade. These could not have been employees because Bonnie Ray Williams, another worker, had made sure the floor was cleared when he left at 12:20 P. M.(45) A home movie taken by Charles Bronson, a spectator, shows the sniper's perch and other nearby windows. Two or three figures appeared to be moving in two separate windows on the sixth floor just minutes before the assassination at 12:30 P.M.(46)
Another issue that must be considered when accessing the validity of Oswald's guilt is the murder weapon, a 6.5-caliber Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. Mechanics Illustrated, a technical magazine, dismissed the Mannlicher-Carcano as being "crudely made, poorly designed, dangerously inaccurate . . . and unreliable on repeat shots."(47) Not only was the rifle itself difficult to handle, but its scope was mounted off-center. Three National Rifle Association master marksmen made attempts to duplicate Oswald's alleged performance. They found it extremely difficult to do so even though they had a corrected scope and were shooting at fixed targets on a firing range as opposed to a target moving downhill at approximately eleven miles per hour.(48) Three F.B.I. sharpshooters also tried to accurately fire the rifle in the short amount of time that Oswald supposedly did. They too failed.(49)
While Oswald was described as calm when he encountered Officer Baker seconds after the assassination, he reacted very differently to Officer J.D. Tippitt. According to the Commission's Report, Tippitt approached Oswald and attempted to question him. At 1:15 P.M., almost an hour after the assassination, Oswald drew a concealed gun and shot the officer.(50)
Helen Louise Markham was the only witness who saw Oswald shoot Tippitt, and there were so many contradictions and inconsistencies in her testimony that it was deemed worthless by the Commission attorney who questioned her.(51) On March 2, 1964, author, Mark Lane, talked with Markham. During this tape recorded conversation Markham told Lane that Tippitr's killer was a short, heavy man with bushy hair. Three weeks later she told the Commission that the killer was definitely Oswald, a lean man with thin hair. She also denied ever having a conversation with Lane. The Commission never requested Lane's tape recording of the conversation.(52) This fact alone proves that the Commission did not fully investigate every lead in order to determine the truth as was claimed.
Why would Oswald react so differently to the two officers? Why did the Commission base one of their main premises on a single testimony of questionable value? The answer lies in the fact that charging Oswald with Tippitt's murder made Oswald appear to the American public as running and scared. This view of Oswald helped convict him of Kennedy's assassination in the minds of many Americans. In fact, a survey printed in the January 1964 issue of Newsweek Magazine reported that only 3% of the American people thought Oswald was not guilty and only 20% thought his motives were conspiratorial or political.(53)
On November 24, 1963, Jack Ruby, a local night club owner, walked down a ramp from the street directly into the basement of the City Municipal Building in Dallas. At 11:21 A.M., as Oswald was being moved from the city to the county jail, Ruby lunged from a group of reporters, pulled a .38-caliber revolver from his coat and shot Oswald. He lost consciousness very quickly after the shooting. Whether he was able to speak if he wanted to was not known.(54) Therefore, it will probably never be determined if Oswald knew Ruby or not. However, if any connection concerning the assassination can be drawn between the two men, then the premise of the Commission that absolutely no conspiracy existed can be proven false. And that connection can be established.
There was the testimony of Julia Ann Mercer. In a signed affidavit she said that she saw two men unload what looked like a gun case on the grassy knoll around 11:00 A.M. on the day of the assassination. At 4:00 A.M. the next morning, she identified the two men from stacks of photographs as Oswald and Ruby.(55) Ruby was also seen at Parkland hospital the day of the assassination by Seth Kantor, a reporter who was acquainted with Ruby.(56)
Even more amazing is the statement made by F.B.I. director, J. Edgar Hoover, which asserted that absolutely no information existed which linked Ruby to Oswald or any other type of conspiracy.(57) Not only was there the testimony of the witnesses who can tie Oswald and Ruby together, but there was also evidence which links Ruby to the mob. Ruby was well known for his Mafia connections in Dallas. Furthermore, while in prison, he was visited by Joseph Campisi, the number two Mafia leader in Dallas.(58)
Finally, there is evidence which links Officer Tippitt to the conspiracy as more than a martyred police officer. Writers, Thayer Waldo and Mark Lane, have both claimed that they were informed of a two hour meeting which took place on November 14, 1963, in the Carousel, Jack Ruby's night club. Two of the three men present at this meeting were Ruby and Tippitt.(59) Also, Tippitt was employed as a security guard at Austin's Barbeque. The owner, Austin Cook, was a very good friend of Ruby's .(60)
The Warren Commission wanted Americans to believe that all of the inconsistencies and conflicting testimonies surrounding the Report were due simply to human error. However, the facts cannot be ignored that evidence was altered or lost, autopsy procedures not followed, eyewitness testimony disregarded and major leads not followed or investigated. Therefore, the Commission's conclusions on the number of shots, the origin of the shots and the assassin cannot be viewed as correct or complete. Furthermore, just as the testimony of a witness is disregarded by a jury if only one untruth or inconsistency is exposed, the complete findings of the Warren Commission can be disregarded on the basis of errors found in the above mentioned three points. Even the chairman of the Commission, Chief Justice Earl Warren, concluded, "Not in our time will all the facts be revealed. "(61)
ENDNOTES
1. For a completely different view of these errors and inconsistencies see Gerald Posner, Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK (New York: Random House, 1993).
2. Warren Commission, Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1963), 110.
3. lbid., 65.
4. Ibid., 140.
5. lbid., 10.
6. lbid., 19.
7. David W. Belin, November 22. 1963: You Are the Jury (Quadrangle! New York Times Book Co., 1973), 302.
8. Henry Hurt, Reasonable Doubt (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1985), 68.
9. James R. Duffy and Vincent L. Ricci, The Assassination of John F. Kennedy: A Complete Book of Facts (New York: Thunder's Mouth Press), 131.
10. Sylvia Meagher, Accessories After the Fact, with a Preface by Senator Richard S. Schweiker and an Introduction by Peter Dale Scott (New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House, 1976), 28.
11. Warren Commission, The Report, 38-39.
12. lbid., 33.
13. Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, 65.
14. Ibid., 39.
15. Edward Jay Epstein, Inquest, with an Introduction by Richard H. Rovere (New York: Viking Press, 1966), 59.
16. Sylvan Fox, Unanswered Ouestions About President Kennedy's Assassination, with an Introduction by Edwyn Silberling (New York: Award Books, 1975), 88.
17. Epstein, Inquest, 58-59.
18. Fox, Unanswered Questions, 87.
19. Bob Callahan, Who Shot JFK? (New York: Fireside Books, 1993), 135.
20. Brant Poore, "A Study of the Medical and Scientific Evidence Presented in the Warren Commission Report on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" (The Upsilonian, Cumberland College, 1993), 16.
21. Meagher, Accessories, 140.
22. Robert G. Blakey and Richard N. Billings, The Plot to Kill the President (New York: Quadrangle/The New York Times Book Co., 1981), 87.
23. Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, 111.
24. Mark Lane Rush to Judgement (New York: Dell Publishing, 1975), 113.
25. Poore, Study of Evidence, 17.
26. David S. Lifton, Best Evidence (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1980), 9.
27. Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, 110.
28. Meagher, Accessories, 25-26.
29. Robert J. Groden and Harrison E. Livingstone, High Treason (New York: Berkeley Publishing Group, 1990), 23.
30. Warren Commission, The Report, 12.
31. Priscilla McMillan, Marina and Lee (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 77-78.
32. William Manchester, The Death of a President (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), 92.
33. Robert D. Morrow, Betrayal (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1976), 95.
34. Meagher, Accessories, 328.
35. Warren Commission, The Report, 342.
36. Morrow, Betrayal, 95.
37. Groden and Livingstone, High Treason, 160.
38. Robert L. Oswald, Lee: A Portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald (New York: Coward-McCann, 1967), 215.
39. Groden and Livingstone, High Treason, 160.
40. The Arts and Entertainment Television Network, American Justice, 16 March 1995.
41. Meagher, Accessories, 71.
42. Duffy and Ricci, Assassination Facts, 50.
43. Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, 87.
44. Warren Commission, The Report, 5-6.
45. Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, 91.
46. Duffy and Ricci, Assassination Facts, 94.
47. Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, 100.
48. Poore, Study of Evidence, 15.
49. Duffy and Ricci, Assassination Facts, 297.
50. Manchester, The Death, 656.
51. Epstein, Inquest, 135.
52. Lane, Rush to Judgement, 178-181.
53. "Lingering Doubts," Newsweek Magazine, 6 January 1964, 19.
54. Gladwin Hill, "Night-Club Man Who Admired Kennedy Is Oswald's Slayer," New York Times, 25 November 1963, 3(A).
55. Hurt, Reasonable Doubt, 114-115.
56. Lane, Rush, 264-265.
57. Mark North, Act of Treason (New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers, 1991), 530.
58. Blakey and Billings, The Plot, 335.
59. Lane, Rush, 249.
60. James R. Duffy, The Web (New York: Shapolsky Publishers, 1988) 224.
61. Groden and Livingstone, High Treason, 6.