Mary Moorman stated that she stepped into the street to take her photograph. Jean Hill stated that she stepped into the street with her to get the President’s attention. The reconstruction photograph confirms that Mary was standing in the street when she took her photograph. As the Zapruder film shows the women standing only on the grass, this proves that, at the very least, frames have been removed from the film. And that, in turn, is more than enough evidence to prove the lack of authenticity of the Zapruder film.
The elegant proof arises from a procedure used in creating a special on JFK for television. The Discovery Channel took a photograph with the same model Polaroid camera as Mary Moorman’s, from her exact position as shown on the Zapruder film. (See Figure 2.)
Because Polaroid film of the 1960s is no longer available, the Discovery Channel researchers used modern negative film and made a print. This produced a 3-1/8″ by 2-1/4″ image – the size of the “aperture cutout” at the film plane in the Moorman camera. The Polaroid film used by Mary Moorman, however, was only reactive within a slightly smaller 2-7/8″ by 2-1/8″ area.
According to Melbourne, Australia physicist John P. Costella, Ph.D., who made the discovery, and California physicist and radiation oncologist David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., the two images can be compared directly if the Discovery Channel print has 1/8″ trimmed off each of the left and right edges, and 1/16″ trimmed off each of the top and bottom edges. (See Figures 3 and 4 below.)
When this trimmed image is compared with the Moorman Polaroid, there is clearly too much of the grassy knoll and too much of the roadway of Elm Street visible in the Discovery Channel reconstruction in comparison with the Moorman original. This means that the Discovery Channel camera was further away from the grassy knoll than was Mary Moorman when she took her famous photograph. It is the same effect as when you are trying to photograph a landmark or a group of people which doesn’t fit inside the picture – you walk backwards to try to get a wider view.
For the sizes of the structures and the positions of the bystanders on the grassy knoll to be matched up in the two photographs, the Discovery Channel reconstruction would need to be magnified by some 7%. (Note that the infamous “picket fence” was recently rebuilt in a different location.)
According to the physicists Costella and Mantik, this means that the Discovery Channel photograph was taken from a position that was about 7 feet too far away from the grassy knoll. “That puts Mary onto the roadway of Elm Street,” says Dr. Costella, “and that completely disagrees with the Mary Moorman we see on the Zapruder film.” The discovery provides an unexpected proof that Mary Moorman was standing in the street (just as she said she was) when she took her famous Polaroid (Figure 6). It thereby settles one contentious issue.
Since the Zapruder film shows Mary standing on the grass at the very instant that she took her photograph, it also proves that this 27- second home movie – which many take to be the closest thing to “absolute truth” in the assassination – has been subject to alteration.
Experts continue to debate the reasons for altering the film, the most important of which may have been that the driver brought the limo to a halt after bullets began to be fired. The purpose appears to have been to make sure that the shooters would have an easier target. Vincent Palamara, the leading expert on the Secret Service, has collated the reports of some fifty-nine spectators who said that the limousine had either slowed dramatically or come to a halt in Dealey Plaza, including all four motorcycle patrolmen accompanying the President. They were published in the book Murder in Dealey Plaza.
These reports suggest that the limousine slowed dramatically as it came to a halt. The Zapruder film, however, does not show the limousine stopping or slowing dramatically. There is a slight loss of speed – imperceptible to the naked eye – that is gradual enough that the occupants of the limousine are not jostled.
Dr. Costella, an expert on light and the properties of moving objects, is also a contributor to a new book published in September, The Great Zapruder Film Hoax, which provides extensive evidence that the Zapruder sequence was fabricated using other genuine films and photographs of the assassination.
Before this latest discovery, the simplest yet most powerful proof that the Zapruder film was fabricated has been the lack of any “blurring” in Frame 232 of the film, which was published in Life magazine just weeks after the assassination. Because the limousine was moving, and the shutter speed of the Zapruder camera was only 1/40 of a second, either the limousine or the entire background should be blurred by the same amount (or some combination of the two). They are not.
Another powerful proof has been the inconsistent behavior of a road traffic sign seen in the film. When the optical properties of the Zapruder camera are carefully accounted for, and two different frames of the film are precisely overlaid, the sign appears to “twitch.” “This is one of the few technical mistakes made in the fabrication of the film,” explains Costella. “The optical properties of the Zapruder camera were mimicked extremely well. However, some poor-quality images published on the weekend of the assassination showed the sign as it would look through a perfect camera. Unfortunately for those who faked the film, the Zapruder camera was not perfect. Once published, the mistake could not be retracted. The toothpaste was out of the tube.”
Governor of Texas in 1963, John B. Connally, was himself hit by bullets as he rode in the jump seat in front of President Kennedy in the presidential limousine. Connally survived the wounds and throughout the rest of his life stuck steadfastly to his description of events on that fateful day.
Connally refuted outright the Warren Commission’s “single bullet theory”, concocted by then junior counsel and now Senator Arlen Specter. He adamantly insisted that he was not hit by the first bullet to strike the President. Connally also described making a turn to his left, which is not seen on the Zapruder film. Until recently, it was believed that Connally was simply mistaken as was any witness statement that disagreed with what could be plainly seen on the Zapruder film.
Recognition that the film is itself fabricated evidence has caused researchers and historians to reassess all of the eyewitness reports that have previously been disregarded as “mistaken”.
The Discovery Channel production was under the control of Gary Mack, Archivist for The Sixth Floor Museum. Several chapters in The Great Zapruder Film Hoax discuss this documentary and question the role of The Sixth Floor Museum in slanting its coverage of these events. David Lifton, the author of Best Evidence, describes how Mary Moorman was repeatedly admonished by Gary Mack – during filming for the Discovery Channel special – for stating that she stepped forward before taking her picture and then stepping back afterwards.
Lifton has since discovered that Moorman’s words were edited in production to remove the latter statement. For the final “take”, Mack stood in front of Moorman to ensure that she did not step any further forward. (See Figure 7.)
Lifton also found that the “silent edit” removed Mary’s explanation that she snapped her Polaroid at the moment of the first gunshot, after which she heard two further shots. The Zapruder film, however, shows Moorman taking her photograph at the moment of a final shot that appears to blow out the back of the President’s head, some six seconds after he reacts to a shot to his throat.
Moorman made the same claims in her live 1997 radio interview with Jones. This prompted Costella to examine the affidavits of Moorman and Jean Hill, sworn on the day of the assassination, as well as the FBI reports of interviews with the two women.
Costella found that both women consistently described the first shot occurring as Moorman snapped her photo. The heated controversy over Moorman’s position arose in 2000 when veteran JFK researcher, Jack White, of Ft. Worth, Texas, discovered that Mary’s location could be constrained to a “line of sight” that aligned structures on the grassy knoll.
White’s one-page summary of the method, published in Murder in Dealey Plaza, has ignited more controversy than anything else published on the assassination in the past ten years. This has led some observers to speculate that the Moorman location is a sensitive issue for those trying to maintain the U.S. government’s position that Lee Oswald alone assassinated Kennedy.
White and Costella both believe that even the famous Moorman Polaroid may have been tampered with before being published the day after the assassination. But this new Discovery Channel discovery was completely unexpected. “There are plans for checking the field of view of the Moorman Polaroid using an identical camera during the 40th anniversary visits to Dallas this week,” says Costella. “I hadn’t realized that the Discovery Channel had already performed the same experiment earlier this year – the special was only broadcast in Australia in recent weeks.”
But is there any other explanation for the Discovery Channel photograph? “I guess it’s possible that they could have faked the details of their reconstruction,” concedes Costella, “but given how devastatingly damaging that would be to the Discovery Channel and to The Sixth Floor Museum, I can’t imagine they would be that incredibly foolish.”
The discovery is certain to fuel further controversy over the role that agencies of the U.S. government played in the cover-up of the assassination. More than 80% of Americans believe that there was a conspiracy to assassinate JFK (USA Today), but until now the government has been able to cast doubt on the involvement of agencies such as the Secret Service, the CIA, or the FBI.
The proven falsification of the photographic evidence, however, leaves them little room to maneuver: only these agencies had custody of the evidence and the means to alter or change it. It has been speculated that, in turn, the complicity of key members of these agencies in the planning of the assassination supplies a powerful motive for a coverup.
Despite these discoveries, any official Watergate-style admission of wrongdoing by agencies of the U.S. government looks as unlikely today as it did then. ABC network broadcast a special on November 20, 2003 claiming to prove Oswald acted alone on the basis of computer animations that take for granted the authenticity of the Zapruder film, observers can only wonder how historians of the future will regard this Orwellian “doublethink.”
An important point of which most Americans are generally unaware is that legal procedure permits photographs and motion pictures to be used as evidence in courts of l~w only when a foundation for their introduction has been established by eyewitness testimony, as Milicent Cranor has observed. According to McCormick on Evidence, 3rd edition (1984), Section 214, for example, concerning photographs, movies, and sound recordings
The principle upon which photographs are most commonly admitted into evidence is the same as that underlying the admission of illustrative drawings, maps, and diagrams. Under this theory, a photograph is viewed merely as a graphic portrayal of oral testimony, and becomes admissible only when a witness has testified that it is a correct and accurate representation of the relevant facts personally observed by the witness.
The practice of the Warren Commission and apologists for its findings appears to be the exact opposite, where photographs and films — including X-rays — have been used to discount the testimony of eyewitnesses, which is not only the better evidence but is actually required to lay a foundation for the admissibility of evidence of those kinds
Some defenders of the official account have maintained that the Warren Commission inquiry was not a legal proceeding but merely an advisory body offering its findings and its recommendations to the President, which is technically correct. The precise legal status of The Warren Report (1964) is therefore open to doubt. But how could the interests of the American people — in truth, justice, and fairness — possibly be served ·by failing to adhere to clear and established principles for the admissibility of evidence? Alas, the question has only to be asked for the answer to be all too obvious. As Harold Weisberg and Bertrand Russell already understood, the Commission was not created to advance the interests of truth, justice, and fairness, but to convince the American people that a lone gunman had assassinated the 35th President of the United States, that the matter had been thoroughly investigated, and that there had been no conspiracy or cover-up.
Evidence of Autopsy Tampering & Fraud
Dr. Mantik, also a physicist as well as being a board-certified radiation oncologist, is another contributor to the new volume. He is the leading expert on the medical evidence in the assassination and has previously used a physics technique called “optical densitometry” to establish that the X-rays of JFK’s autopsy had been altered. His previous studies of the medical evidence and of the Zapruder film were published in Assassination Science and in Murder in Dealey Plaza.
The axis of debris appears to be consistent with a shot entering the area of the right temple rather than the back of the head. Studies of this issue are found in Joseph N. Riley, Ph.D., “The Head Wounds of John F. Kennedy: One Bullet Cannot Account for the Injuries,” The Third Decade (March 1993), pp. 1- 15, and in Mantik’s research on the X-rays published in Assassination Science (1998), in his comments on the recent deposition of James J. Humes, M.D., for the ARRB (Appendix G), and in his new study of the medical evidence. In the autopsy report, Humes had described this metallic trail as beginning low on the right rear of the skull. The actual trail, however, lies more than 4 inches higher, much closer to the top of the skull than to the bottom.
Confronted with this discrepancy, Humes concedes that the autopsy report is wrong by some 10 cm. Humes here faced an impossible paradox, which he could not honestly resolve. If he had described the trail correctly and simultaneously reported the low entry wound to the back of the head, then the behind and one from in front–which, in turn, would have implied the existence of at least two gunmen. Humes had no choice but literally to move the trail of metallic debris downward by more than four inches (10 cm), which is precisely what he did. As Mantik explains, it took more than three decades for Humes to be asked to confront this important paradox, which falsifies the lone gunman theory.
Gary Aguiliar, M.D., has collated the testimony of more than 40 eyewitnesses, spectators in Dealey Plaza, physicians and nurses at Parkland Hospital, Navy medical technicians and ~BI agents at Bethesda Naval Hospital, who report a massive blow-out to the back of the head. Several physicians have diagrammed this blow-out as it was observed at Parkland, which had the general character of the wound depicted below. David Lifton, Best Evidence (1980), however, has diagrammed what the wound resembled based upon the official autopsy report from Bethesda. These may be labeled as “the heel” and “the footprint” due to their size and relationship. When the HSCA reinvestigated the crime in 1978-79, its diagrams and photographs now depicted a small entry wound, which is sometimes referred to as “the red spot”.
As Mantik has discovered through the employment of optical densitometry studies, the lateral cranial X-ray has been fabricated by imposing a patch over a massive defect to the back of the head, which corresponds to the eyewitness reports describing (what is called here) “the heel” shot. In effecting this deception, the perpetrators used material that was much too dense to be normal skull material, which enabled Mantik to discover what had been done. It turns out that, although not common knowledge at the time, instructions that could be followed to create composites were available in contemporary radiology publications. He has replicated these results in the radiology darkroom, as he explains here and in earlier studies in Assassination Science (1998).
The anterior-posterior (front-to-rear) autopsy X-ray, moreover, has been fabricated by imposing a 6.5 mm metal object not present on the original, which Mantik has established on the basis of additional optical densitometry studies published in Assassination Science (1998). All three of the military pathologists who conducted the autopsy at Bethesda have now confirmed to the ARRB that they did not see this metallic object on the X-ray, no doubt because it was added after the autopsy was finished. The addition of this metallic object appears to have been done to implicate a 6.5 mm weapon, such as the Mannlicher-Carcano, in the assassination of President Kennedy. The conspirators made mistakes ~due to their lack of familiarity with this weapon, however, since it is not a high-velocity rifle and could not have inflicted the damage that caused the President’s death.
Robert B. Livingston, M.D., a world authority on the human brain, has concluded that credible reports of damage to the cerebrum and especially to the cerebellum — numerous and consistent from the physicians at Parkiand, as Aguilar has explained — are incompatible with the diagrams and photographs that are alleged to be of the brain of President Kennedy. As he summarizes his findings, Livingston, who is also an expert on wound ballistics, states, “A conclusion is obligatorily forced that the photographs and drawings of the brain in the National Archives are those of some brain other than that of John Fitzgerald Kennedy” (Assassination Science 1998, p. 164). This stunning inference has been confirmed by new evidence released by the ARRB, which establishes the occurrence of two distinct post – autopsy brain examinations involving two distinct brains, as Douglas Home, who was the Senior Analyst for Military Records of the ARRB, explains in a contribution to this volume.
As a consequence of depositions by the ARRB, we now also have extensive additional evidence that autopsy photographs have been altered, created, or destroyed. One of the fascinating discoveries that has emerged from its efforts are eyewitness reports from John Stringer, the official autopsy photographer, that the photographs of the brain shown in the official set are not those that he took at the time; from Robert Knudsen, White House photographer, who has reported having in his possession–at one and the same time — photographs that displayed a major blow-out to the President’s head and others that did not; and from Saundra Spencer, who processed the originals, who explains that she knows they are not the same because they do not have the same physical features as other photographs she processed using the same film, some of which she still possesses. The importance of these and related discoveries for understanding the medical evidence in this case is explored in studies by Aguilar and by Mantik elsewhere in this volume.
See more at JFKMurderSolved.com
The Setup
CIA operative David Sanchez Morales appears to have been involved in the assassination of Robert F Kennedy and his brother, John, on November 22, 1963. He said to friends while drinking heavily that he had been in Dallas (“We took care of that son-of-a-bitch!”) and in Los Angeles (where “We got the little bastard!”) [23]. He can be positively identified inn pictures at the Ambassador in LA where RFK was killed.
His involvement was confirmed by E. Howard Hunt, who told his son, St. John, that those who were responsible for the assassination of the 35th president included LBJ and CIA officials Cord Meyer, David Atlee Philips, William Harvey, and Morales. Others who knew Lyndon well have also implicated him. And high-level involvement by the government has been confirmed by multiple lines of investigation. Cord Meyer was identified by Joe McCarthy as a communist and rightfully so. He was at the San Francisco conference that formed the UN, headed Operation Mockingbird for the CIA and headed the International Organization Division.
As head of the International Organizations Division, Meyer oversaw the funding of groups such as the National Student Association, Communications Workers of America, the American Newspaper Guild, the United Auto Workers, National Council of Churches, the African-American Institute and the National Education Association. He also provided the money for publishing the journal, Encounter. Meyer also worked closely with anti-Communist leaders of the trade union movement such as George Meany of the Congress for Industrial Organization and the American Federation of Labor. According to Frank Church, Meyer ran a division which constituted the greatest single concentration of covert political and propaganda activities of the by now octopus-like CIA.
Meyer perhaps had an ulterior motive as his ex-wife, Mary Pinchot Meyer, was one of JFK’s mistresses and a former neighbor of the Kennedy’s. Mary was most likely killed by a professional hitman within a year of the JFK assassination. In 1958, Mary Pinchot Meyer filed for divorce. In her divorce petition she alleged “extreme cruelty, mental in nature, which seriously injured her health, destroyed her happiness, rendered further cohabitation unendurable and compelled the parties to separate.”
There are more than 15 indications of Secret Service complicity in setting JFK up for the hit. Two agents assigned to the limousine were left behind at Love Field. The flat-bed truck for reporters to that should have preceded the limo was cancelled. The motorcycle escort was cut down to four and was instructed not to ride ahead of the rear wheels. Open windows were not covered, the manhole covers not welded, and the crowd was allowed to spill into the street.
Most strikingly, the vehicles were in the wrong order, with the Lincoln first, when it should have been in the middle. This was such a blatant violation of protocol that any security expert could have detected it, which is undoubtedly why, when the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) asked for the Presidential Protection Records for other JFK motor-cades, the agency, instead of providing them, destroyed them [28].
The route was changed just days before the event and included a turn of more than 90°, in violation of Secret Service protocol. After bullets began to be fired, the driver, William Greer, pulled the limo to the left and to a halt [29]. At Parkland Hospital, agents got a bucket of water and a sponge and washed brains and blood from the crime scene [30].
The limousine was taken back to Ford and on Monday, November 25, the day of the formal state funeral, it was stripped to bare metal and rebuilt, including replacing the windshield, which had a through-and-through bullet hole, which spectators had noticed at Parkland and the Ford official responsible for its replacement confirmed, where the Secret Service would later produce yet a third windshield which had only interior cracks [31].
Single or ‘Magic’ Bullet Theory
Much of the early critiques of the Warren Report focused on the implausibility of the “single bullet theory”, wherein the Commission attempted to explain how Oswald had killed President Kennedy and wounded Governor Connally with just three shots. In particular, the Zapruder film showed Connally reacting to being hit too soon after Kennedy was shot for Oswald to have operated the bolt-action Carcano and fired again. Were the two men hit by different bullets fired from two different rifles?
The solution created by Commission counsel Arlen Specter was to posit that both men had been hit by a single shot which entered JFK’s upper back, exited his throat, and then struck Connally, breaking a rib and shattering his wrist, and finally coming to rest in his thigh. The “magic bullet” deemed to have done all this was found somewhat mysteriously on a stretcher near an elevator in Parkland Hospital, about an hour after the victims had been brought there.
Some of the problems with the Single Bullet Theory (SBT) which have been pointed out by critics include:
- Timing. The Zapruder film shows Kennedy clearly wounded as much as a second before Connally, and the Commission’s idea of a “delayed reaction” by Connally is implausible. Connally himself was certain he had been struck by a separate bullet.
- Trajectory. The Parkland doctors believed the neck wound to be an entrance, not an exit. Further, the location of Kennedy’s back wound – as measured by the shirt and jacket holes, medical witnesses, autopsy photos, and other evidence – is too low for a shot fired from the 6th floor of the TSBD to have exited the neck wound where it did. The Warren Commission misrepresented the back wound location in drawings.
- “Pristine” Bullet. Commission Exhibit 399, the bullet found on the stretcher, is virtually undamaged and had no blood or tissue on it. Its appearance is consistent with having been fired through the rifle into water or cotton, recovered, and then planted. Also, there is a serious question as to whether the minimal amount of lead missing from the base of CE-399 can account for the fragments left behind in JFK and Connally.
Recent discoveries in the FBI records have even raised the question of whether the bullet found on the stretcher is actually CE 399. Defenders of the SBT point out that alternative shooting scenarios require bullets which were never found in bodies or recovered in the limousine, and that the HSCA’s Neutron Activitation Analysis (NAA) confirmed the theory. (source)
David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., who holds a Ph.D. in physics and is also board-certified in radiation oncology, has studied X-rays of the President’s chest. He has used the cross-section of a body whose upper chest and neck dimensions were the same as those of JFK and performed a simple experiment. Taking the specific locations specified by the USCA for the point of entry at the base of the back of the neck and the point of exit at the throat, he has drawn a straight line to represent the trajectory that any bullet would have to have taken from that point of entry to that point of exit. Any such trajectory would intersect cervical vertebrae.
It would have been anatomically impossible for a bullet to have taken the trajectory specified by the official account. This hypothesis is not just false but cannot possibly be true. (Mantik’s study may be found in Assassination Science 1998, pp. 157-58.)
Also, if the magic bullet was fired from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and entered the back of Kennedy’s head, then any such bullet must have entered the President’s head from above and behind because that is where the 6th floor was located from the limousine JFK was in. That much is indisputable. No photographs of the President’s injuries were published at the time, but The Warren Report (1964) did provide drawings (copies of which may be found in Assassination Science (1998), p. 438). The drawings of the head wound therefore appear to show a trajectory from above and behind, as the official account requires.
Stewart Galanor, Cover-Up (1998), however, has juxtaposed the official drawing with frame 312 of the Zapruder film, which the Warren Commission itself regarded as the moment before the fatal head shot incident to frame 313, with the following result:
When the President’s head is properly positioned the Commission’s own drawing displays an upward rather than a downward trajectory. If the official drawing of the injury to the head is correct, then the conjecture that the President was hit from above and behind cannot be true; and if the President was hit from above and behind, the official drawing of the injury must be false. Hypothesis (H2) cannot possibly be true.
Two wounds were widely reported on radio and television that day, a wound to the throat and a massive wound at the back of the cranium, which was caused by a shot that entered his right temple [32]. Both wounds were observed by many experienced physicians at Parkland Hospital. Charles Crenshaw, M.D., who closed JFK’s eyes before he was placed into the bronze ceremonial casket, sent me drawings of the wound to the throat and of the exit wound to the head [33].
Malcolm Perry, M.D., who had made the incision, described the throat wound as a “wound of entry” three times during the Parkland press conference, which began at 2:16 PM [34]. The Warren Commission would cope with these problems by simply reversing the trajectories, turning the throat wound into a wound of exit, where the damage to the cranium was altered to make it look more like the effect of a bullet fired from above and behind [35].
The greatest problem arose from the discovery that, of the three shots it claimed to have been fired, one had missed and injured a bystander named James Tague. The FBI and Secret Service had concluded that each of the alleged shots had hit: that JFK had been hit in the back, that Texas Governor John Connally had been hit in the back, and that JFK had been hit in the head, which killed him.
Since one shot had missed, the commission now had to create an alternative explanation, claiming the bullet that hit JFK in the back had passed through his neck and exited from his throat, then entered the back of Connally, shattering a rib, existing his chest, damaging his right wrist and finally embedding itself in his left thigh, a most unlikely scenario that is known as the “magic bullet” theory [36].
To make the “magic bullet” theory remotely plausible, Gerald Ford (R-MI), a member of the commission, had the description of the wound to the back changed from “his uppermost back”, which was already an exaggeration, to “the back of his neck”, which would not become known to the public until the first releases from the ARRB [37].
Even The Warren Report (1964) located the hole in the jacket 5 3/8” below the collar and 1 1/8” to the right of its center seam and the hole in the shirt was 5 ¾” below the collar and 1 1/8” right of its center seam [38] — a location that corresponds to an autopsy sketch, an FBI sketch, the death certificate by the president’s personal physician and even reenactment photographs by the commission’s own staff.
Descriptions of two wounds — of a small wound to the throat as well as a massive blow-out to the back of the head caused by an entry wound to the right temple–were widely broadcast that afternoon. If you look at television coverage from that day, you will find that, at 1:35 P14, NBC reports both a shot to the throat and a shot through the right temple, findings attributed to Admiral George Burkley, the President’s personal physician. At 1:45 PM, another network reports a shot through the head and a shot to the throat. Chet Huntley reports a shot through the right temple. Robert MacNeil says it is unclear to him how the President could have been shot through the throat and temple if the assassin was firing from above and behind. Frank McGee calls it incongruous.
Malcolm Perry, M.D., who performed a tracheostomy in a vain attempt to save the life of the mortally injured President, was so certain that a small wound to the throat at the location of the tracheostomy had been fired from in front that–when told that the assassin had been above and behind the limousine–he concluded that JFK must have stood and turned to wave to spectators who were behind him. During a press conference held at Parkland that afternoon, he stated three times that the wound to the throat had been a wound of entry, not a wound of exit. Through deceptive use of a series of hypothetical questions — that assumed the bullet entered at the based of the neck, transited the neck without hitting any bony structures, and exited at the base of the throat–the author of “the single bullet theory,” Arlen Specter, was able to obfuscate these observations in support of the official account, in which the trajectories of these wounds were reversed.
The Rifle
Consider the theory which maintains that the bullets that hit their target were fired by Lee Harvey Oswald using a high-powered rifle, which The Warren Report (1964) also identified as a 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano. As other authors, including Harold Weisberg, Whitewash (1965), Peter Model and Robert Groden, JFK: The Case for Conspiracy (1976), and Robert Groden and Harrison E. Livingstone, High Treason (1989) have also observed, the Mannlicher-CarcanO that Oswald is supposed to have used is a 6.5 mm weapon, but it is not high velocity. Its muzzle velocity of approximately 2,000 fps means that it qualifies as a medium-to-low velocity weapon. [Editor’S note: Indeed, strictly speaking, the Mannlicher-Carcano is not a rifle but a carbine.)
The death certificates, The Warren Report, articles in JAMA, and other sources state that the President was killed by wounds inflicted by high-velocity missiles. (Some are reprinted in Assassination Science (1998).) The Mannlicher-Carcano is the only weapon that Oswald is alleged to have used to kill the President, but the Mannlicher-Carcano is not a high-velocity weapon; consequently, Lee Oswald could not have fired the bullets that killed the President. Thus, hypothesis (H3) cannot be true. This discovery is especially important, because the extensive damage sustained by JFK’s skull and brain could not possibly have been inflicted by a weapon of this kind. The major trauma the President endured had to have been inflicted by one or more high- velocity weapons.
The hypotheses under consideration, (Hi), (H2), and (H3), therefore, are not merely false but are provably false. Moreover, these hypotheses are by no means peripheral to the official account but the core of its conclusions. If (H1), (H2), and (H3) are false, then The Warren Report (1964) cannot be salvaged, even in spite of the best efforts of the Gerald Posners of the world. [Editor’s note: Some problems encountered by his popular attempt to revive it have been dissected in Assassination Science (1998), pp. 145-152.] Among the central findings of The Warren Report (1964), therefore, the only one that appears to be true is the least important, namely: that bystander James Tague was hit by a bullet fragment that ricocheted from a distant curb and caused him minor injury.
There are many more, which may be found in this and other studies of the death of JFK. Since Bertrand Russell raised 16 “questions” about the investigation during 1964 — even while it was still in progress — it seems appropriate to contrast what we know now with what Russell knew then by offering 16 “smoking guns” that complement his work. In some instances, these smoking guns overlap with Russell’s questions, but discerning readers ought to have no difficulty discovering others in the course of study of this book. I have found that every access route to this subject — whether by means of the medical evidence, the physical evidence, the eyewitness evidence, the Dallas police, The Warren Report, the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, the Secret Service, or any other avenue of approach–leads to the same conclusions we have reached here and in Assassination Science (1998).
The ammunition that Oswald is alleged to have used was standard full-metal jacketed military ammunition, one round of which was supposed to have been found on a stretcher at Parkland Hospital, a photograph of which appears as Commission Exhibit 399 (elsewhere in this volume). This kind of ammunition conforms to Geneva Convention standards for humane conduct of warfare and is not intended to maim but, absent its impact with hard bodily features, to pass through a body. It does not explode. The lateral cranial X-ray of the President’s head (the image of his head taken from the side), however, displays a pattern of metallic debris as effects of the impact of an exploding bullet, which could not have been caused by ammunition of the kind Oswald was alleged to have used, thereby exonerating him.
The Warren Report & the Jim Garrison Investigation
The crux of The Warren Commission Report (1964) is the claim that the same bullet that hit JFK in the back also hit Gov. John Connally, which the report itself downplays the “magic bullet” theory as “not necessary to any essential findings of the Commission”.
That is complete rubbish, however, since if the same bullet did not both exit JFK’s throat and enter John Connally’s back, then those wounds have to be accounted for on the basis of separate shots and separate shooters, which implies a conspiracy to kill JFK.
A mountain of evidence proves that the shot that hit JFK in the back did not enter at the base of his neck but 5.5″ below the collar to the right of the spinal column, which was a shallow shot at a downward angle, making it all but impossible it should have taken an upward turn to exit his throat.
Jim Garrison vs. The Warren Report
With a deft verbal sleight-of-hand, the Warren Commission downplayed the significance of the “magic bullet” theory, where no less an authority than Michael Baden, M.D., the one-time medical examiner for New York City and head of the medical panel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) when it reinvestigated the case in 1977-78, has observed, “If the magic bullet theory is false, then there had to have been six shots from three directions”, which makes its tenability of enormous importance.
When we “look inside” The Warren Commission Report (1964), here is how it describes the matter (on page 16) after maintaining that the weight of the evidence “indicates” that only three shots were fired:
3. Although it is not necessary to any essential findings of the Commission to determine just which shot hit Governor Connally, there is very persuasive evidence from the experts to indicate that the same bullet which pierced the President’s throat also caused Governor Connally’s wounds. However, Governor Connally’s testimony and certain other factors have given rise to some difference of opinion as to this probability but there is no question in the mind of any member of the Commission that all the shots which caused the President’s and Governor Connally’s wounds were fired from the sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.
That Governor Connally’s testimony should have given them pause is unsurprising, since he maintained until his death that he had been struck by a separate bullet and not by the same bullet that hit JFK. Here is a critique of the Warren Commission’s stance by New Orleans District Attorney, Jim Garrison, to wit:
So which is correct? Was JFK hit at the base of the back of his neck as the Warren Commission claims? or is Jim Garrison right and the “magic bullet” theory is a fairy tale? It turns out that there is a great deal of evidence that settles the question beyond a reasonable doubt. Just consider the following for yourself.
More from Jim Garrison:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4BdB1yZP5fA&list=PLsHJfZh_XFZqUcZlT4sZXNmyDjkULXsgv&index=2
Where was JFK hit in the back?
I presented a lecture at Cambridge University during an international conference, which was published in an international peer-reviewed journal under the title, “Reasoning about Assassinations”, which I thought had settled the matter. Here is the shirt and the jacket he was wearing, left behind at Parkland:
They both show holes about 5.5″ below the collar and just to the right of the spinal column. During one of his visits to the National Archives, David W. Mantik, M.D., Ph.D., had a member of the staff put them on and determined that the hole in the shirt was slightly lower than the hole in the jacket. While some want to maintain that they were “bunched”, a wound at this location appears on the autopsy diagram:
The autopsy diagram was verified by Admiral George G. Burkley, the President’s personal physician, who also composed a death certificate on JFK, which described his death as the result of a massive wound to the back of the head and a second wound to his back at the level of the third thoracic vertebrae:
It will come as no surprise that the third thoracic vertebra is about 5.5″ below the collar, which confirms the other evidence from the shirt and the jacket he was wearing and the autopsy diagram. So we know where JFK was hit in the back, which was not at the base of back of the neck but 5.5″ below the collar.
Continued on next page…
