The Second Oswald Read online

  Serge’s Russia could only see an assassination as part of a grand conspiracy. The western European critics can only see Kennedy’s assassination as part of a subtle conspiracy, involving perhaps some of the Dallas Police, the FBI, the right-wing lunatic fringe in Dallas, or perhaps even (in rumors I have often heard) Kennedy’s successor. Thomas Buchanan, in his otherwise far-fetched work, Who Killed Kennedy?, shows that it is part of the American tradition to regard Presidential assassination as the work of one lone nut, no matter how much evidence there may be to the contrary although of course, this does not mean that some of the assassination attempts were not the work of lone, mad people, doing the whole job by themselves.

  There seems to have been an overwhelming national need to interpret Kennedy’s demise in this way, and thus the irresistible premise of the investigators, almost from the outset, was that Oswald did it all, all by himself (as Ruby was believed to have done it all, all by himself). Congressman Ford’s book, Portrait of an Assassin, is a valiant and not entirely unsuccessful effort to make the thesis psychologically plausible by constructing an Oswald in turmoil looking for his moment of glory. Representative Ford also goes so far as to blame the conspiracy theories on one lone woman, Mrs. Marguerite Oswald, and to act as if there were no reason whatever, save for the alienated confused mind of Mrs. Oswald, Senior, even to doubt that one lone assassin thesis.

  However, the “official” theory was in many ways implausible. It involved a fantastic amount of luck. If the FBI and Warren Commission reconstructions were correct, Oswald had to get the rifle into the building without attracting attention. Only two people saw him with a long package, and none saw him with it or the rifle in the building. He had to find a place from which he could shoot unobserved. The place, according to the “official theory,” was observed until just a few minutes before the shooting. He had to fire a cheap rifle with a distorted sight and old ammunition, at a moving target in minimal time, and shoot with extraordinary accuracy (three hits in three shots, in 5.6 seconds, according to the FBI; two hits in three shots in 5.6 seconds, according to the Commission).

  If the “official theory” of the Commission is right, Oswald had no access to the rifle from mid-September until the night before the assassination (since the rifle was transported by Mrs. Paine from New Orleans to Dallas, and thereafter was in the Paines’ garage) and had no opportunity whatsoever to practise for at least two months. Having achieved such amazing success with his three shots, Oswald then was somehow able to leave the scene of the crime casually and unobserved, go home, and escape. But for the inexplicable (according to the “official theory”) Tippit episode, Oswald might have been able to disappear. In fact, he did so after that episode, and only attracted attention again because he dashed into a movie theater without paying.

  The critics have argued that the Commission’s case against Oswald, if it had ever been taken to court, would have collapsed for lack of legal evidence. A legal case would have been weakened by sloppy police work (e.g., the failure to check whether Oswald’s gun had been used that day), confused and contradictory reports by witnesses (e.g., the mistaken identification of Oswald by the bus driver), and questionable reconstructions by the Commission (e.g., testing the accuracy of the rifle with stationary targets).

  Mark Lane, for example, in his uneven work, Rush to Judgment, indicates many of the points a clever defense attorney might have raised, some of which would probably have caused serious damage to the prosecution case against Oswald. The Report (against the better judgment of at least two of the Commission’s staff, Liebeler and Ball) had to rely on some of the shakiest witnesses, like Brennan and Mrs. Markham. It also had to impeach some of its best, like Wesley Frazier.

  The critics were still dismissed. This was not, I suspect, simply because it was more difficult to believe that the Commission, its staff, and the FBI could be in error than it was to accept a counter-explanation, as Dwight Macdonald contended in Esquire. It was also because the critics had no counter-theory that was better than science fiction, no explanation less implausible than that of the Report.

  Two books recently published move the discussion to a new level. Harold Weisberg’s noisy, tendentious Whitewash (which, for some good and probably many bad editorial reasons, no publisher would touch) is nevertheless the first critical study based on a close analysis of the twenty-six volumes themselves. Edward Jay Epstein’s Inquest, a remarkably effective book, presents startling new data about the internal workings of the Commission. In addition, two recent articles by Vincent Salandria in The Minority of One and those by Fred Cook in The Nation raise important questions. This material suggests not that the “official theory” is implausible, or improbable, or that it is not legally convincing, but that by reasonable standards accepted by thoughtful men, it is impossible, and that data collected by the FBI and the Commission show this to be the case.

  Before these writings appeared, there were already strong reasons for doubting that Oswald did the shooting alone, or at all. The majority of eye- and ear-witnesses who had clear opinions as to the origins of the shots thought the first shot was from the knoll or the overpass (and these witnesses included such experienced hands as Sheriff Decker, the Sheriff’s men standing on Houston Street, diagonally across from the Book Depository, Secret Service Agent Sorrels, and many others). All of the Commission’s obfuscation notwithstanding, Oswald was a poor shot and his rifle was inaccurate. The Commission tried hard to account for Oswald’s very poor score on his last shooting test in the Marines. They got their expert witness to say that it might have been due to the poor atmospheric conditions at the time. “It might well have been a bad day for firing the rifle—windy, rainy, dark.” (XI:304) The much maligned Mark Lane took the trouble to check on this, and reports in Rush to Judgment, p. 124, that the weather on that day in the Los Angeles’ area, where the test occurred, was sunny and bright, and that there was no rain.

  Experts could not duplicate the alleged feat of two hits out of three shots in 5.6 seconds, even though they were given stationary targets and ample time to aim the first shot, and had partially corrected the inaccuracy of the sight for the test. Furthermore, no reliable witness could identify Oswald as the marksman. No one saw him at the alleged scene of the crime, except Brennan, who did not identify him later on in a line-up. Hardly enough time was available for Oswald to hide the rifle and descend to the second floor, where he was seen by Policeman Baker.

  No one saw or heard Oswald descend. And a paraffin test taken later that day showed positive results for nitrate on Oswald’s hands, but negative ones on his cheek. All of this indicates that Perry Mason, Melvin Belli, or maybe even Mark Lane himself could have caused jurors to have reasonable doubts that Oswald did the shooting, or did all of the shooting. But none of this shows absolutely that Oswald could not have done it. He might have had fantastic skill and miraculous luck that day, and might have outdone the experts. He had an amazing talent for getting from place to place unobserved and unaccountably, and it could have been successfully employed at this time. The FBI and the Commission tell us a paraffin test is inconclusive (but then why do police forces use it?).

  The “hard” data relied on by the Commission are that Kennedy was hit twice and Connally at least once; that Oswald’s rifle was found on the sixth floor; that three shells ejected from Oswald’s rifle were found by the southeast window of the sixth floor; that Oswald’s palm print is on an unexposed portion of the rifle; that his prints are on some of the boxes found near the window; that ballistics experts say that the distorted bullet fragments found in Kennedy’s car are from Oswald’s rifle; that the almost complete bullet No. 399 found in Parkland Hospital (whose strange history and role will be discussed later) was definitely shot from Oswald’s rifle; that Oswald was observed by at least five people in the building between 12:00 and 12:30, plus or minus a few minutes—two saw him on the first floor around noon, two report him on the fifth and sixth floor around this time, and Baker saw him right aft
er the assassination on the second floor; and that Oswald left the building around 12:33 and went to Oak Cliff. (One might add some of the data on Tippit’s murder as “hard fact,” but Oswald’s role in this incident is too much in dispute.) All of this certainly made a suggestive case that, difficulties notwithstanding, all of the shooting—three shots—was done by Oswald with his own rifle.

  The material presented by Epstein and Salandria, and to a lesser extent by Cook and Weisberg, undermines the Commission’s case in two ways. First, they closely examine both the sequence of the shots and the available medical evidence in order to demonstrate that all three shots could not have been fired by Oswald. Secondly, they show that the Commission’s theory is in conflict with the FBI’s on a number of crucial points: Indeed, one can only conclude either that both theories, considered together, are impossible, or that they establish that more than one assassin was firing at the President.

  Two

  The FBI Reports and Zapruder’s Film

  Two of the most important pieces of evidence undermining the “official theory” are the FBI’S Summary reports on the case and the film taken by Abraham Zapruder, a bystander during the assassination. The FBI’s first summary report was dated December 9, 1963, just after the Warren Commission was appointed. The report is not in the twenty-six volumes and is published for the first time, and only in part, in Epstein’s book. In it, the FBI states simply that “three shots rang out. Two bullets struck Kennedy and one wounded Governor Connally.” This seemed to account for all the wounds; but it ignored incontrovertible evidence that one shot missed the car and its occupants and wounded a spectator.

  As Epstein shows, this fact, and the evidence of the Zapruder film, forced the Commission to reconsider the problem. For the film established the time when Kennedy could have been hit, and when Connally could have been hit. The speed of Zapruder’s camera is 18.3 frames per second and his film shows that Kennedy was hit between frames 208 and 225. (For reasons never explained, the Commission omitted Frames 208-211 from its reproduction of the series in its exhibits.) It seems from the medical and photographic evidence that Connally was shot between frames 231 and 240. Some people suggest it was either earlier or later, but the most likely possibility appears to be in this interval. (The shot that struck Kennedy on the side of the head and killed him was at frame 313.) This leaves less than 2.3 seconds between shots one and two; and the Commission found that it is physically impossible to pull the bolt and reload Oswald’s rifle faster than once every 2.3 seconds (without aiming). Therefore it was impossible for Oswald to have wounded both the President and Connally in separate shots.

  Epstein writes that, in early March, Arlen Specter, a Commission lawyer, discussed this time problem informally with Commanders Humes and Boswell, the Navy doctors who had performed the autopsy on President Kennedy. “According to Specter, Commander Humes suggested that since both Kennedy and Connally apparently had been hit within a second of each other, it was medically possible that both men had been hit by the same bullet and that Connally had had a delayed reaction. This hypothesis would explain how both men were wounded in less time than that in which the murder weapon could be fired twice …” (Inquest, p. 115).

  On March 16, 1964, when Dr. Humes’s undated autopsy report was first introduced in evidence, it directly contradicted both the FBI report of December 9, 1963, and the subsequent FBI report of January 13, 1964. Dr. Humes’s report stated that the first bullet struck the back of Kennedy’s neck and exited through his throat. “The missile contused the strap muscle on the right side of the neck, damaged the trachea and made its exit through the anterior surface of the neck” (Report, p. 543). Commander Humes, in his testimony, referred to the place of entrance of the bullet as the low neck (II: 351). The FBI had said, “Medical examination of the President’s body had revealed that the bullet which entered his back penetrated to a distance of less than a finger length” (Exhibits 59 and 60).

  These exhibits, reproduced in Epstein’s book on pp. 56-57, are photographs of Kennedy’s jacket and shirt. They show clearly a bullet hole 5 3/8 to 5 3/4 inches below the neckline, i.e., in his back. If the bullet had been shot from the Book Depository, it was on a downward course, and thus could not enter the back and exit through the throat unless it was deflected. Further, the FBI report had said, “Medical examination of the President’s body revealed that one of the bullets had entered just below his shoulder to the right of the spinal column at an angle of 45 to 60 degrees downward, that there was no point of exit, and that the bullet was not in the body.”

  If the FBI data are correct, then Kennedy and Connally were hit by separate bullets and the time interval between these shots is much too short (less than two seconds) for both to have been fired from Oswald’s rifle. Hence, either another gun was employed, or two different marksmen were shooting. In either case, the Commission theory is no longer tenable, nor, in view of the time-interval problem, is the theory of the FBI that all the shots came from Oswald’s rifle. In response to Epstein’s book, Commission staff members have stated that the two FBI reports of December 9th and January 13th are wrong about the wounds, while spokesmen for the FBI have implied, in more ambiguous language, that their reports were in error. Even before publication, Epstein’s book had the effect of bringing a lot of information to light. Besides the portions of the FBI reports he has published, newspaper and magazine accounts have given the FBI explanations and the history of the autopsy report, etc., items which the Commission did not bother to clarify. If the FBI did make a mistake, one explanation may be found in Fletcher Knebel’s article in the July 12, 1966 issue of Look. Knebel attributes his explanation to the three Commission lawyers and one of the autopsy doctors (apparently Dr. Boswell).

  At the autopsy proper on November 22, 8-11 p.m., the doctors had not found an exit wound (or a bullet channel) and were puzzled. The next day they learned from Dr. Malcolm Perry of Parkland Hospital, Dallas, that there had been a bullet wound in the throat, obliterated by a tracheotomy operation. This led the doctors to conclude that the throat wound (which they never saw) was the exit wound. Their report was completed on November 24, and sent to the White House on the 25th. The Secret Service then received the report, and, according to statements published recently, sent it to the Commission on December 20 and to the FBI on December 23.

  If this is what happened, it could account for the discrepancy between the FBI’s first report and the autopsy report. But why didn’t the supposedly thorough FBI ask for the autopsy report or check with the doctors? How could the FBI have conducted an effective investigation without at least ascertaining the contents of the autopsy report? Is the December 9th FBI report an accurate account of what the doctors found from their one and only look at the body on November 22?

  A most interesting document concerning this question has recently come to light, discovered by a Mr. Paul Hoch in the papers in the National Archives (and published in full in Appendix I to this volume). It is the report by two FBI agents, F. X. O’Neill and James W. Sibert, on what happened at the autopsy. The report was dictated on November 26, 1963, based on what these two agents saw and heard while the doctors were examining President Kennedy on the night of November 22nd. (It may be of some significance that neither Sibert nor O’Neill was ever called to testify before the Commission, and that the Commission did not think that their report was worth including in the mass of documentation in the volumes of exhibits.) They list all of the persons present and the number of photographs and X-rays taken of the body. They state that during the latter stages of this autopsy, Dr. Humes located an opening which appeared to be a bullet hole which was below the shoulders and two inches to the right of the middle line of the spinal column.

  Then they describe Dr. Humes probing this opening with a finger, and determining that the missile’s trajectory was downward at 45-60 degrees, and that the bullet had gone in less than a finger length. No bullet was found by X-rays, and no point of exit was discovered, so “the indiv
iduals performing the autopsy were at a loss to explain why they could find no bullets.” At this point, the FBI report tells us that the FBI men received word about the discovery of the whole bullet, No. 399, in Parkland Hospital, and that Dr. Humes was informed of this. Dr. Humes immediately offered his opinion that this accounted for the fact that the bullet “which [had] entered the back region,” had not been located, and that “it was entirely possible” that the bullet came out on to the stretcher during cardiac massage in the hospital. This account is quite consistent with those of Secret Service agents Kellerman and Greer, who were also present at the autopsy, although Kellerman attributes the statement that there was no exit to the back wound to Colonel Finck. Kellerman quotes Finck as saying, “There are no lanes for an outlet of this entry in this man’s shoulder” (II: 93) and also as holding that No. 399 could have dropped out of the wound in Parkland Hospital.

  The report of O’Neill and Sibert seems obviously to be the basis for the medical information in the December 9th and January 13th FBI reports. Almost the same words are used and none of the technical vocabulary of the autopsy report appears in any of these documents, indicating that the two major FBI reports were probably prepared without reference to the contents of the “final” medical report. With the corroboration of the Secret Service men, it would certainly seem that the O’Neill-Sibert document reflects, and reflects accurately, what was found and what was surmised at the autopsy on November 22nd. These witnesses all describe a back wound, not a neck wound, and also state that no path of exit was found, and that No. 399 falling out of the back seemed to be the only possible explanation of the data.