FAULTY EVIDENCE: PROBLEMS WITH THE CASE AGAINST LEE HARVEY OSWALD Michael T. Griffith 1994 In 1964 the Warren Commission (WC) concluded that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a lone gunman, Lee Harvey Oswald, and that there was no conspiracy involved in the killing. The Commission asserted that Oswald shot JFK from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository (TSBD) Building in Dallas, Texas, with an Italian-made 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano rifle at 12:30 P.M. on November 22, 1963. WC defenders maintain that the case against Oswald is airtight, and that were he to stand trial today he would be found guilty of the assassination. Critics of the WC, on the other hand, assert that Oswald was framed, that the case against him is flawed at almost every point, and that an impartial jury would acquit him in a trial where the normal legal standards of evidence were applied. In their view, not only is there far more than a reasonable doubt about Oswald's guilt but the available evidence shows he did not shoot the President. Most WC critics also believe that Kennedy was killed as the result of a conspiracy. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the problems with the case against Lee Harvey Oswald. --------------------------------------- Oswald and the Mannlicher-Carcano Rifle --------------------------------------- One of the first steps in building a case against Oswald would be to link him to the alleged murder weapon, the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. But this is just one of the many areas where a prosecutor would encounter serious difficulties. Although at first glance there appears to be a strong connection between Oswald and the Italian-made rifle, the link becomes highly questionable upon further examination. WC defenders note that the order form, money order, and envelope used to purchase the Mannlicher-Carcano were filled out in handwriting identified as Oswald's (see, for example, Moore 48). Furthermore, they point to Oswald's alleged use of the alias "Alek Hidell." The rifle was sent to Oswald's post office box, but it was ordered in the name of, and addressed to, "A. Hidell." According to the Dallas police, Oswald was carrying an "Alek J. Hidell" ID card when he was arrested. Here's where things get very interesting. To begin with, Oswald was at work when he is said to have purchased the money order (Summers 213). So who bought the money order? If Oswald didn't buy it, why does the handwriting on it seem to be his? There are forgers who can copy a person's handwriting so well that it is difficult if not impossible to detect their fakery, especially if only a small quantity of writing is required. Also, the original order form and envelope were destroyed, so the FBI had to rely on microfilm copies of this evidence. Another problem with the connection between Oswald and the Carcano is that nobody at Oswald's post office recalled giving him a hefty package such as the kind in which a rifle would be shipped (Summers 59; Meagher 50). Furthermore, postal regulations required that only those persons named on the post office box's registration form could receive items of mail from the box, and there is no evidence that Oswald listed the name of Hidell on the form (Smith 290-291). There is a discrepancy in size between the weapon ordered by "A. Hidell" and the rifle that Oswald allegedly left behind on the sixth floor of the TSBD. "A. Hidell" ordered item C20-T750 from an advertisement placed by Klein's Sporting Goods in the February 1963 issue of AMERICAN RIFLEMAN. The rifle that was listed as item C20-T750 is 36 inches long. However, the Mannlicher-Carcano that Oswald supposedly abandoned on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building is 40.2 inches long (Lifton 20). Most conspiracy theorists see the mail-order murder weapon and the "Hidell" ID card as evidence of a frame-up. They note the sheer stupidity of it all. In the Texas of 1963 Oswald could have bought a rifle across the counter with few if any questions asked. He could have done so and risked only a future debatable identification by some gun shop worker. Instead, we are told, Oswald ordered the murder weapon by using the alias "A. Hidell," gave his own post office box number, committed his handwriting to paper, and then went out to assassinate the President of the United States with this same "Hidell"-purchased rifle and while carrying a "Hidell" ID card in his wallet! Many WC critics doubt that Oswald was carrying the "Hidell" ID card at the time of his arrest. They point to the fact that the Dallas police said nothing about the fake ID card until the FBI later announced that the alleged murder weapon had been ordered by an "A. Hidell." Critics also note that neither the phony identification nor the use of an alias is mentioned in the transcripts of the radio traffic between the arresting officer and the police station (Groden and Livingstone 183-184; Lane 133-136). The arresting officer, Paul Bentley, said he established Oswald's identify by going through his belongings, and there was no suggestion that Bentley had to decide whether his suspect was named Oswald or Hidell. Said Bentley, "On the way to City Hall I removed the suspect's wallet and obtained his name" (Groden and Livingstone 184). Lone-gunman theorists assert that the Dallas police found Oswald's palm print on the barrel of the alleged murder weapon. However, the palm print had no chain of evidence, and the Dallas police did not tell the FBI about the print until AFTER Oswald was dead (he was shot by Jack Ruby on November 24). Journalists assigned to the Dallas police station consistently reported, clear until the evening of the 24th, that, according to their police sources, Oswald's prints had NOT been found on the rifle (Lifton 356 n). When the FBI examined the Carcano on November 23, it did not find Oswald's prints on the weapon. There is evidence the palm print was obtained from Oswald's dead body at the morgue (Marrs 443-445). So suspicious was the palm print that even the WC privately had doubts about the manner in which it was obtained (Garrison 113; Marrs 445; cf. Lane 153-158). The WC claimed that a paper bag that was supposedly found at the sniper's nest and a blanket from Ruth Paine's garage also linked Oswald to the alleged murder weapon. According to the Commission, Oswald used the bag to carry the weapon into the TSBD on the day of the murder, and he used the blanket to store the rifle in the preceding months. Yet, a prosecutor would encounter serious difficulties in trying to use this evidence to tie Oswald to the Carcano. Sylvia Meagher discusses some of the problems with the paper bag and the blanket: The Commission . . . offered no firm physical evidence of a link between the paper bag and the rifle. The [Warren] Report does not mention the negative examination made by FBI expert James Cadigan. Cadigan said explicitly that he had been unable to find any marks, scratches, abrasions, or other indications that would tie the bag to the rifle. Those negative findings assume greater significance in the light of an FBI report (CE 2974) which states that the rifle found on the sixth floor of the Book Depository was in a well- oiled condition. It is difficult to understand why a well-oiled rifle carried in separate parts [as the WC claimed] would not have left distinct traces of oil on the paper bag, easily detected in laboratory tests if not with the naked eye. The expert testimony includes no mention of oil traces, a fact which in itself is cogent evidence against the Commission's conclusions. Equally significant, there were no oil stains or traces on the blanket in which a well-oiled rifle ostensibly had been stored--not for hours but for months. This serves further to weaken, if not destroy, the Commission's arbitrary finding that the Carcano rifle had been wrapped in that blanket until the night before the assassination. (62) ------------------------------------------------- What About the Famous Backyard Rifle Photographs? ------------------------------------------------- "Surely," a good prosecutor would say, "Oswald is linked to the murder weapon by the three famous backyard photographs which show him holding the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle in one hand and radical newspapers in the other?" Furthermore, lone-assassin theorists point out that the backyard pictures were authenticated by the panel of photographic experts retained by the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA, 1976-1979). Again, the evidence looks impressive at first glance, but let's take a closer look. There are three backyard photographs currently in existence. They are labeled CE 133-A, B, and C. Each shows the Oswald figure in a different pose. Although the Dallas police said they found two negatives, one for A and one for B, only the B negative is known to exist. When the backyard photos were examined by Major John Pickard, a former commander of the photographic department of the Canadian Defense Department, he declared them to be fakes. Retired Detective Superintendent Malcolm Thompson, a past president of the Institute of Incorporated Photographers in England, analyzed the pictures and came to the same conclusion. (When the HSCA's photographic panel concluded that the backyard photos were authentic, Thompson deferred to the panel on most of the issues concerning the genuineness of the pictures. However, Thompson said he remained troubled by the chin on Oswald in the photos, which is different from his chin in other pictures.) There are indications of fraud in the backyard photos that are obvious even to the layman. For example, the shadow of Oswald's nose falls in one direction while the shadow of his body falls in another direction. And, the shadow under Oswald's nose remains the same in all three photos even when his head is tilted. The HSCA's photographic panel could offer only an unrealistic reenactment based on highly probable assumptions to explain the problematic nose shadow. In the end, the panel ended up appealing to a vanishing point analysis to explain all of the variant shadows in the backyard photos. I discussed this matter with a number of photographers, all of whom said that a vanishing point analysis would not explain the kinds of conflicting shadows seen in the backyard pictures. Another indication of fakery in the photos is the fact that the HSCA's photographic panel could find only minute ("very small") differences in distance between objects in the backgrounds. This virtual sameness of background is practically an impossibility given the manner in which the pictures were taken. In order to achieve this effect, Marina would have had to hold the camera in almost the exact same position for each of the three photos, an extremely likely scenario, particularly in light of the fact that Oswald allegedly took the camera from her in between pictures to advance the film and adjust the settings. Furthermore, graphics expert Jack White has shown that the backgrounds in the photos are actually identical, and that the small differences in distance in them were artificially produced by a technique known as keystoning. I would encourage those interested in more information on this subject to obtain Mr. White's video FAKE: THE FORGED PHOTO THAT FRAMED OSWALD. Further doubt is cast on the backyard pictures by the ominous fact that a Dallas commercial photographer who examined and processed assassination-related photographs for the Dallas police and the FBI said he saw an FBI agent with a color transparency of one of the backyard pictures on November 22, which was the day BEFORE the police said they FOUND the photographs. The photographer further stated that one of the backyard photos he processed SHOWED NO FIGURE IN THE PICTURE (Marrs 451-452). His account was corroborated by his wife, who also helped process film on November 22. Oswald's wife, Marina Oswald, is the one who supposedly took the backyard pictures. However, in a recently recorded interview, she said of the backyard photos, "THESE AREN'T THE PICTURES I TOOK" (Livingstone 454, emphasis added). A new, and different, backyard photo of Oswald turned up in the possession of the widow of a former Dallas policeman in 1976. This is 133-C. Then, in 1977, a much clearer version of 133-A was found among the possessions of George DeMohrenschildt, a wealthy member of the Dallas Russian community who had intelligence connections and who was a friend of Oswald's. The DeMohrenschildt family has stated they believe the photo was planted in their father's belongings to further incriminate Oswald in the public mind. A key development in this matter occurred in 1992 when Dallas authorities released previously suppressed files on the JFK assassination. Among these files were several photos of Lee Harvey Oswald, two of which are backyard pictures that show clear signs of tampering. On February 9, 1992, the HOUSTON POST reported, "One photo of Oswald's backyard in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas shows clear evidence of darkroom manipulation" (Lane xxii). The POST further stated that the manipulation involved "attempts to frame Oswald by 'inserting' him into the background" of the picture (Lane xxii). The POST provided a description of the print: In the manipulated print in police files Oswald does not appear. Instead, there is a white silhouette of a human figure holding an apparent rifle and newspapers. The silhouette appears to be an example of matting, a darkroom technique that can serve as an intermediate step in the combining of photographic images. (Lane xxii) The silhouettes in the pictures appear to be right around Oswald's height, and they are in poses into which the Oswald figure would fit perfectly. The POST article went on to report that Hershal Womack, a photographic expert at Texas Tech University, has noted "a variety of alleged inconsistencies with the backyard pictures." ----------------------------- Oswald's Alleged Marksmanship ----------------------------- The WC said Oswald fired at Kennedy three times, hitting him twice. But could any lone assassin have shot JFK in the manner described by the WC? Could Oswald have done so? I think the answer to both of these questions is no. Oswald was at best only an average marksman. President Kennedy was a moving target as his limousine traveled on Elm Street in Dealey Plaza. From the southeast corner window on the sixth floor of the Book Depository, Oswald would have been firing at the President from sixty feet up and from over two hundred feet away on average. Based on the Zapruder film and on eyewitness testimony, the WC concluded that all three shots were fired in less than six seconds. There are doubts about the capabilities of the alleged murder weapon itself. In reenactments of the assassination, the expert marksmen hired by the WC were unable to duplicate Oswald's alleged shooting performance. Nevertheless, a noted lone-gunman theorist, Professor Jacob Cohen of Brandeis University, maintains that Oswald's alleged marksmanship was entirely possible. However, Cohen finds it necessary to attempt to stretch the assassin's firing time from six seconds to over eight seconds: ...nothing in [the] Zapruder [film] indicates that a possible third shot, which missed, had to have come BETWEEN the two hits. The Warren Commission concluded only that there were probably three shots and that THE TWO HITS, not the three shots, came within 5.6 seconds of each other. The miss could have come first, or last, though it probably came first. That means the gunman had more than eight seconds to shoot, and more than five seconds--ample time--between the two hits. Even if the miss had come between the two hits, there would still have been 2.8 seconds for fire and refire--enough time even for an amateur used to handling guns, like Oswald. (32-33, emphasis in original) There are a number of problems with Cohen's scenario. To begin with, it is based on an acceptance of the magic- or single-bullet theory. Essentially, this theory says that a bullet struck Kennedy in the back of the neck, exited his throat, entered Governor John Connally (who was seated in front of the President) and caused all of the Governor's extensive wounds. This hypothesis has long been seriously questioned. In fact, even two members of the WC rejected the theory outright, and a third member was highly skeptical of it (Groden and Livingstone 67-68). So, from the outset, Cohen's scenario is based on strongly disputed speculation. However, for the sake of argument, I will assume the correctness of the magic-bullet hypothesis. Cohen's suggestion that the miss could have come last was ruled out by the WC itself. The Zapruder film indicates that the fatal head wound was the final hit. Furthermore, as the Commission pointed out, it is just not possible to ignore the substantial eyewitness testimony that the head shot was "the concluding event in the assassination sequence" (Moore 195). It is true that the WC did not provide a final, definite opinion on which two of the three shots were hits. However, Jim Moore, a vocal advocate of the lone-gunman theory, acknowledges that the Commission's report "clearly indicated a leaning by its authors toward a second-shot miss" (195). What about Cohen's claim that the lone assassin actually had more than eight seconds to fire? The majority of the assassination witnesses agreed that all of the shots (whether three, four, or more in number) were fired within a time span of not more than five to six seconds. The WC confirmed this testimony by observing that in the Zapruder film the time span between the first hit on Kennedy and the fatal shot to his head was between 4.8 and 5.6 seconds. FBI technicians analyzed the film and came to the same conclusion, stating that "the best estimate of the elapsed time" between the first and final shots "lies between approximately five and six seconds" (Lane 70). A gunman firing from a building closer to Main St. would have had a reasonably good shot at the limousine prior to Z-frame 210, but not one shooting from the alleged sniper's nest. Some lone-assassin theorists now suggest that Oswald fired before the President's limousine disappeared behind the intervening oak tree, or that he fired through a split-second break in the tree's foliage. Shooting at the limousine before it went underneath the tree would have required a rather awkward firing position, since, for one thing, the window was no more than half-way open. As for the proposed shot through the foliage, since this would have had very little chance of success, it is doubtful that any would-be assassin would have wasted a shot that probably would have only served to alert the President's guards that he was under attack. Any half-way sensible assassin in the alleged sniper's nest would have waited until frame 210 before firing. The WC's lone gunman had already passed up a perfect shot at the President as the limousine drove on Houston Street. Are we also supposed to believe that he compounded his error by taking a high-risk shot that had little chance of hitting its target? No, if the sixth-floor shooter was half the marksman that WC defenders say he was, he certainly would have known enough to hold his fire until frame 210. Therefore, we are left with the lone gunman scoring hits on his first and third shots, having less than six seconds to get off three rounds, with a maximum of only 2.8 seconds to fire and refire. The Carcano's rifle bolt and trigger normally cannot be operated in less than 2.3 seconds, WITHOUT allowing time to aim carefully at the target. The lone gunman would have faced other problems as well. The reenactment sharpshooters also reported that as newcomers to the Italian rifle they found the bolt so difficult to operate that it skewed their aim (Summers 46). Moreover, the shot the WC acknowledged as the miss was a significant miss. The errant shot was off the mark by 33 feet in the air and 21 feet to the right (Marrs 63). Such a wild miss hardly seems compatible with the amazing marksmanship attributed to Oswald. In any case, this means that during and just after the miss the rifle would have been out of line with the President's limousine, and the gunman would have needed to reestablish his aim on the target. The assumption that the gunman's first shot was a hit also presents a problem. The WC determined that for this shot the gunman had less than eight-tenths of a second to aim and fire because until then the sixth-floor window's view of the limousine was blocked by an oak tree. Moreover, the limousine was going faster for the first shot than it was for the third shot. And, in that eight-tenths of a second the limousine (which was then slightly less than two hundred feet away) had just cleared the oak tree. This would have made it somewhat harder for the assassin's eye to zero in on the target. Yet, according to the WC's scenario, the lone assassin's first bullet had to be a hit because in the Zapruder film Kennedy is already reacting to a wound as the limousine emerges from behind the Stemmons Freeway sign. The fatal head shot didn't come until at least three seconds later. Thus, the WC's lone assassin supposedly scored two hits out of three shots in less than six seconds on a moving target from sixty feet up and from over two hundred feet away on average. He allegedly accomplished this feat even though he had to (1) aim and fire his first shot in only eight-tenths of a second, (2) deal with his weapon's difficult bolt, and (3) reestablish his aim on the target after a significant miss. The lone gunman would have encountered other problems as well. We shall consider some of these in a moment. Moore asserts that the shot from the southeast corner window "was not difficult" (49). He adds that he has visited the window any times and that "the more I stood in the sixth-floor window, the easier Oswald's feat became" (49). Moore does not explain why the expert marksmen hired by the WC were unable to duplicate Oswald's alleged performance. In fact, they failed to do so even though they fired from a tower that was thirty feet lower than the sixth-floor window, and even though they fired at stationary targets, while Oswald, of course, was faced with a moving one. I think one of the reasons those shooters could not repeat Oswald's alleged feat was that they used the alleged murder weapon itself. Moore claims that Oswald "apparently availed himself of many opportunities to work the bolt and to sight imaginary targets while familiarizing himself with the Carcano in his screened-in back porch" (49). There is no hard evidence to support this assertion. If anything, the evidence indicates Oswald had very little time for target practice in the weeks preceding President Kennedy's death. Oswald's landlady reported that in the forty days preceding the assassination Oswald usually watched TV or read after he came home from work. On the weekends, he almost always visited his wife and children and/or socialized with friends in the Dallas Russian community. When and where did Oswald have the chance to practice firing at a moving target from sixty feet up and from an average of two hundred feet away? And Oswald would have needed lots of practice. He was at best an average shot. One of his Marine Corps buddies, Nelson Delgado, reported that Oswald had trouble meeting the minimum Marine marksmanship standards, and that he was such a poor shot that he often missed the target completely. Geneva White, an acquaintance of Oswald's in Dallas who saw him shoot recreationally, said Oswald "was a real bad shot" (Livingstone 468). In 1977 former Rockefeller Foundation fellow Henry Hurt interviewed over fifty of Oswald's Marine collegues. Apparently, not one of them described the alleged assassin as an excellent shot, and nearly all of them agreed with Delgado's testimony that Oswald was a poor marksman (Hurt 99-100). Other facts about the Mannlicher-Carcano make it extremely doubtful that anyone, least of all Oswald, could have used it to shoot Kennedy. The rifle needed metal shims placed under the telescopic sight before the Army testing laboratory could determine the weapon's accuracy. The metal shims had to be used because the telescopic sight was so unrelated to the rifle's line of fire, and so inexpertly attached, that it could not even be adjusted. Lone-gunman theorists reply that the scope might have been damaged when the rifle was allegedly thrown down in haste after the shooting, thus creating a need for the use of shims in realigning the scope. They further suggest that handling of the scope after the rifle's discovery might have contributed to the scope's being misaligned. However, it is doubtful the rifle was thrown down after the shooting, since the position in which it was found suggests it was carefully placed there, and the handling of the scope after the fact should not have caused it to be so misaligned. Additionally, the gunsmith at the Aberdeen Proving Ground (APG), where the Carcano was examined, reported that the scope had been aligned as if for a left-handed person (Meagher 106). However, Oswald was right-handed. In the CBS rifle test, the scope was aligned slightly to the left, yet two of the expert shooters managed to score two hits in three shots in less than six seconds anyway. But these were expert riflemen. The leftward alignment of the scope probably would have been awkward for a marksman of average ability, such as Oswald. In response, Posner says, "There is no such thing as a left-handed scope" (271 n). But conspiracists don't claim that the scope was a "left- handed scope"; rather, they observe that, according to the APG's gunsmith, the scope had been aligned for a left-handed shooter. Lone-gunman theorists reply that neither is there such a thing as aligning a scope for a left-handed rifleman, but they are at a loss to explain why the APG's gunsmith reported that the scope had been aligned "as if for a left-handed man." In order to be fired rapidly, the Carcano's scope would have had to be positioned slightly to the left. However, as mentioned, this alignment probably would have been awkward for a gunman of average ability. Some WC defenders point to the CBS television network's reenactment of the assassination as proof that Oswald could have shot Kennedy. The CBS rifle test was reported in the 1975 documentary THE AMERICAN ASSASSINS and was presented as evidence of the WC's findings regarding the shooting. However, CBS's reenactment failed to establish that Oswald could have done what the WC said he did. The CBS rifle test was not a realistic simulation of the shooting feat attributed to Oswald. CBS used only expert riflemen, but Oswald was an average marksman at best. Also, the CBS test assumed the correctness of the single-bullet theory. Therefore, the shooters were not required to load and fire their second shot, or any shot, in less than two seconds. They should have been asked to do so since the Zapruder film shows that the first hit on Kennedy and the hit on Connally's back came only 1.6 to 1.8 seconds apart. Notes Carl Oglesby, "not even the fastest of the CBS team of experts was able to reload and refire the Mannlicher anywhere near that fast" (91). Numerous Dealey Plaza witnesses said two of the shots were fired in very rapid succession, nearly simultaneously (see, for example, Menninger 249, 253, 278, 298, and Brown 92-93, 99, 115). Some of these witnesses said the two shots were so close together that they almost sounded like a single burst of two bullets from an automatic weapon. No gunman, no matter how skilled, could have fired the Carcano with that kind of speed, and, obviously, the CBS shooters were not required to do so. It should also be kept in mind that the CBS reenactment did not take into account such matters as the cramped conditions in which Oswald would have had to fire, and the fact that in the forty days preceding the assassination Oswald had few if any chances to target practice. Additionally, the riflemen in the CBS test did not use the supposed murder weapon itself. They used a Carcano, but not the one Oswald allegedly used. During the A&E Network's THE TRIAL OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD, Monty Lutz, a former member of the HSCA's firearms panel, testified that to his knowledge no one had ever duplicated Oswald's alleged shooting performance. (THE TRIAL OF LEE HARVEY OSWALD was originally produced in 1986 by a British television network.) ------------------------------------------------ Oswald's Whereabouts at the Time of the Shooting ------------------------------------------------ It goes without saying that a key component in any case against Oswald would be to place him at the scene of the crime when the crime was committed, i.e., to place him at the southeast corner window on the sixth floor of the TSBD at the time of the shooting. But here, too, a prosecutor would be in for some very rough going. The WC said Oswald was at the sniper's nest on the sixth floor at the time of the shooting. If so, then how is it he was seen by the building manager and a pistol-waving police officer just ninety seconds afterwards on the SECOND floor, standing in the lunchroom with a Coke in his hand, giving every appearance of being perfectly calm and relaxed? Moore and other lone-gunman theorists assume that Oswald bought the Coke after the encounter with the manager and the policeman (53). However, the available evidence indicates Oswald purchased the Coke before the second-floor encounter (Marrs 50-52). Furthermore, Oswald had no reason to lie about when he bought the Coke. When he mentioned the Coke-buying during his questioning, he did so in passing, and he could not have known the important role the timing of this detail would subsequently play in the investigation. I agree with what David Lifton has said on this subject: The original news accounts said that when [Officer Marion] Baker first saw Oswald, the latter was drinking a Coke. This seemingly minor fact was crucial, because if Oswald had time to operate the machine, open the bottle, and drink some soda, that would mean he was on the second floor even earlier than the Commission's reconstructions allowed. In a signed statement Officer Baker was asked to make in September 1964, at the tail-end of the investigation, he wrote: "I saw a man standing in the lunchroom drinking a coke." A line was drawn through "drinking a coke," and Baker initialed the corrected version. [Dallas] Police Captain Will Fritz, in his report on his interrogation of Oswald, wrote: "I asked Oswald where he was when the police officer stopped him. He said he was on the second floor drinking a Coca Cola when the officer came in." If I were a juror, I would have believed Oswald already had the Coke in hand, and indeed, had drunk some of it, by the time the officer entered the lunchroom. (351) Oswald simply could not have made it to the second floor in ninety seconds. The Dallas police said the alleged murder weapon was carefully hidden under and between a stack of book boxes at the OPPOSITE end of the sixth floor from where the shots were supposedly fired. It is reasonable to assume Oswald would have attempted to wipe his fingerprints off the rifle. Someone wiped off the Carcano before it was "discovered" because the FBI found no prints on it when it examined the weapon on November 23. This would mean that in just ninety seconds Oswald wiped off the rifle, squeezed out of the sniper's nest, ran all the way to the opposite end of the sixth floor, took the time to carefully hide the weapon under some boxes, ran down four flights of stairs to the second floor (actually eight small flights), made his way to the lunchroom, and then bought a Coke, and yet did not appear the least bit winded or nervous when seen by the manager and the policeman. The WC staged a reenactment to prove Oswald could have reached the second-floor lunchroom in about ninety seconds after shooting Kennedy. However, the person playing Oswald was only able to meet the ninety-second time limit when he skipped wiping off the rifle and delayed buying the Coke until after encountering the manager and the police officer (Weberman and Canfield 143-144; see also Brown 200-201). Furthermore, after wiping off the rifle and stashing it at the opposite end of the sixth floor, Oswald would have had to use the back stairway to reach the second floor as soon as possible. However, none of the people who were on or near that stairway heard footsteps or saw Oswald racing down the stairs for his encounter with the manager and the policeman (Marrs 53). According to Jim Marrs, photographs taken of the TSBD before and after the shooting show that someone was rearranging boxes on the sixth floor shortly after Kennedy was shot. Marrs says this evidence forced the HSCA's photographic panel to conclude: "There is an apparent rearranging of boxes within two minutes after the last shot was fired at President Kennedy." Obviously, Oswald could not have been in the second-floor lunchroom meeting the building manager and the policeman while moving boxes around on the sixth floor at the same time. Several people reported seeing TWO men, one with a rifle, on the sixth floor of the Book Depository shortly before the shooting (Summers 40-46; Hurt 91-94). WC defenders have pointed out minor inconsistencies in their accounts, but I believe the evidence supports the essential components of their stories. One of those witnesses saw the two men on the sixth floor at around 12:15 P.M., which is when Oswald was seen by another Book Depository employee eating lunch in the lunchroom on the SECOND floor. Who were the two men? None of the descriptions of them matched Oswald. So, whoever they were, evidently Oswald wasn't one of them. Oswald maintained all along that shortly before and during the assassination he was eating lunch in the second-floor lunchroom. The evidence strongly supports his claim (Marrs 47-53). Cohen asserts that two people identified Oswald in a police lineup as the person they had seen in the sixth-floor window (33). There was only one such witness, Howard Brennan, and he gave implausible, contradictory testimony (Marrs 25-27; Lane 83-99; Brown 119-130). In fact, Brennan failed to make a positive identification of Oswald in a police lineup on November 22, even though he had seen Oswald's picture on TV beforehand (Summers 78). Only after weeks of "questioning" by federal agents did Brennan positively identify Oswald as the sixth-floor shooter. Moreover, a number of points in Brennan's testimony actually cast serious doubt on the official version of the shooting (Brown 119-130). ---------------------------- What About the Magic Bullet? ---------------------------- According to lone-gunman theorists, the same 6.5mm bullet which supposedly hit Kennedy in the back of the neck exited his throat, passed downward through Governor Connally's back, chest, wrist, and thigh, causing all of his extensive wounds, and yet emerged in near-pristine condition to be found at Parkland Hospital shortly after the President was pronounced dead. This bullet, known to many as the "magic bullet," is officially listed as Commission Exhibit (CE) 399. Lone-gunman theorists claim that CE 399 has been ballistically matched to fragments from Connally's wrist and from the Presidential limousine, which allegedly proves Oswald shot Kennedy. It should be pointed out that initially the WC operated on the assumption that Kennedy and Connally were hit by separate bullets. The single-bullet theory wasn't even conceived of until the news came out that another bullet had struck the curb and had caused pieces of concrete to strike a bystander named James Tague in the face. The Commission tried to ignore the reports about the errant bullet. Eventually, though, it was forced to acknowledge that a bullet had missed the limousine. The WC was then left with only one bullet to account for the President's throat wound plus all of Governor Connally's extensive wounds. In response to this dilemma, Commission staffers came up with the single-bullet theory. Therefore, if the magic-bullet theory is wrong, the lone-gunman scenario collapses. To put it another way, if the single-bullet theory is incorrect, then there had to be at least two gunmen firing at President Kennedy. The magic-bullet theory is foundationally dependent on a number of improbable assumptions. The theory assumes Oswald scored two hits out of three shots in less than six seconds firing a bolt-action rifle at a moving target from sixty feet up and from over two hundred feet away on average. The hypothesis also assumes that one of the bullets which hit President Kennedy struck him in the neck and then exited his throat. There is very strong evidence against both of these assumptions. Many assassination researchers find it hard to take the single-bullet theory seriously because it seems so implausible on its face. As unlikely as the theory appears at first glance, however, it looks even more tenuous upon close examination. Even the Kennedy autopsy doctors were highly skeptical of the theory; one of them called it "most unlikely," and the other two agreed with that assessment (Groden and Livingstone 64). Dr. Charles Gregory, one of the physicians who treated Governor Connally, said the bullet which hit the Governor "behaved as though it had never struck anything except him" (Groden and Livingstone 64). CE 399 could not be the same round that hit Kennedy because more fragments were removed from Connally than are missing from CE 399. Parkland Nursing Supervisor Audrey Bell says, "What we took off [Governor Connally] was greater than what is missing from this bullet [CE 399]." "Much greater?" Nurse Bell was asked. "Yes," she replied (Livingstone 312). Furthermore, some fragments remained in Connally until the day he died. Therefore, there is no way the magic bullet could be the same missile that hit Connally (Groden and Livingstone 64, 66, 491 n 9; Summers 38, 546; Livingstone 163, 304, 312). Significantly, the person who found the alleged magic bullet at Parkland Hospital on November 22, Darrell Tomlinson, could not identify CE 399 as the bullet he discovered that day, nor could the Parkland security man, O. P. Wright, to whom the bullet was turned over. Indeed, in a 1966 interview with WC critic Josiah Thompson, security man Wright picked a pointed-tipped bullet shape as more like the bullet discovered at Parkland (Marrs 365). CE 399, on the other hand, has a round nose. Wright rejected round-nosed bullet shapes as being like the bullet he saw and handled. Similarly, Tomlinson also selected a POINTED SHAPE as resembling the bullet he found (Marrs 365). Adding to the confusion is the fact that Governor Connally revealed shortly before he died that a bullet, which he assumed was CE 399, fell from his body, not in a hallway as the WC claimed, but in the trauma room where he was examined. This is very strong evidence that CE 399 was planted. Several pages could be devoted to discussing the conflicting and impossible trajectories of the alleged magic bullet. In testifying before the HSCA, Dr. Cyril Wecht, a former president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, summarized some of the problems with these trajectories: The [HSCA's medical] panel, to the best of my recollection, was in unanimous agreement that there was a slight upward trajectory to the bullet that went through President John F. Kennedy, that is to say, that the bullet wound of entrance on the President's back, lined up with the bullet wound of exit in the front of the President's neck drawing a straight line, showed that vertically the bullet had moved slightly upward, slightly, but upward. That is extremely important for two reasons. One, under the single-bullet theory--with Oswald as the sole assassin, or anybody else, in the sixth floor window, southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository Building, you have the bullet coming down at a downward angle of around 20-25 degrees, something like that, maybe a little bit less. It had originally been postulated, I think, by the autopsy team, and the initial investigators, at considerably more. How in the world can a bullet be fired from the sixth floor window, strike the President in the back, and yet have a slightly upward direction? There was nothing there to cause it to change its course. And then with the slightly upward direction, outside the President's neck, that bullet then embarked upon a rollercoaster ride with a major dip, because it then proceeded, under the single-bullet theory, through Gov. John Connally at a 25 degree angle of declination. To my knowledge, there has never been any disagreement among the proponents and defenders of the Warren Commission report or the critics, about the angle of declination in John Connally--maybe a degree or two. We have that bullet going through the Governor at about 25 degrees downward. How does a bullet that is moving slightly upward in the President proceed then to move downward 25 degrees in John Connally. This is what I cannot understand. My colleagues on the panel are aware of this. We discussed it, and what we keep coming back to is, "well, we don't know how the two men were seated in relationship to each other." I don't care what happened behind the Stemmons freeway sign, there is no way in the world that they can put that together; and likewise on the horizontal plane, the bullet, please keep in mind, entered in the President's right back, I agree, exited in the anterior midline of the President's neck, I agree, and was moving thence by definition, by known facts, on a straight line from entrance to exit, from right to left. And so with that bullet moving in a leftward fashion, it then somehow made an acute angular turn, came back almost two feet, stopped, made a second turn, and slammed into Gov. John Connally behind the right armpit, referred to medically as the right posterior axillary area. The vertical and horizontal trajectory of this bullet, 399, under the single-bullet theory is absolutely unfathomable, indefensible, and incredible. Notwithstanding all of the evidence against the magic-bullet theory, WC defenders continue to hail the neutron activation analysis (NAA) conducted by Dr. Vincent Guinn for the HSCA. Guinn analyzed CE 399 and some alleged fragments from Connally's wrist, from Kennedy's brain, and from the limousine. He concluded it was "very likely" and "highly probable" they were from the same ammunition. The HSCA's chief counsel, G. Robert Blakey, accepted Guinn's NAA without question, and he continues to portray it as absolute proof of the single-bullet theory and of Oswald's alleged guilt. Walter Cronkite's 1988 NOVA documentary, WHO SHOT PRESIDENT KENNEDY?, portrayed Guinn's conclusions as definitive. Moore and Cohen see Guinn's NAA as scientific confirmation of the single- bullet theory and of the lone-gunman scenario, with Oswald, of course, identified as the gunman (Moore 170-171; Cohen 38). However, in light of the evidence against the magic-bullet theory, Guinn's conclusions deserve to be viewed with a great deal of skepticism from the outset. As for Guinn's NAA itself, given the items he tested, as well as those he did NOT test, his NAA does not support the magic-bullet theory. Nor is it evidence of the lone-gunman scenario. When Guinn began his NAA, he found that a can which had contained fragments that had apparently struck the limousine's windshield was empty, so he obviously could not test them (Groden and Livingstone 73). The fragments from Connally's wrist that were tested in 1964 were (and still are) missing and thus were not subjected to Guinn's NAA, either (Marrs 447). Of the fragment specimens which were available to Guinn, one of them, CE 569, could not be tested because it was only the copper bullet jacket with no lead inside (Groden and Livingstone 73). In addition, Guinn later conceded that NONE OF THE FRAGMENTS AVAILABLE FOR HIS TEST WEIGHED THE SAME AS THOSE LISTED AS EVIDENCE BY THE WC (Groden and Livingstone 69; Lifton 558-559). Guinn also admitted he could not verify the genuineness of the fragments given to him for testing. These facts alone render Guinn's NAA results highly suspect, if not irrelevant. In 1964 the FBI subjected CE 399 and fragments from Connally's wrist, from Kennedy's head, and from the limousine to spectrographic analysis AND to NAA. BOTH TESTS INDICATED THE WRIST FRAGMENTS DID NOT COME FROM CE 399 (Marrs 445-446; Oglesby 87-89). When J. Edgar Hoover informed the WC's chief counsel of the results of the tests, he tried to put the best possible face on them. With regard to the spectrographic analysis, Hoover said that "no significant differences were found." In other words, ". . . differences were found." In reference to the NAA, he reported that "minor variations in composition were found." As Hoover well knew, with NAA ANY difference or variation, no matter how small or slight, indicated that Connally's wrist fragments did not come from the magic bullet. Perhaps this explains why the results of the FBI's NAA were concealed until 1974 when their release was forced by a suit filed under the Freedom of Information Act. Further ballistics evidence against the single-bullet theory came when the FBI analyzed the piece of curb that was struck by the bullet that missed. FBI crime lab experts found traces of lead on the piece of curb, but no copper. However, the bullets allegedly used by Oswald were copper-jacketed. The WC admitted that the absence of copper on the curb fragment precluded the possibility that the mark on it was caused by the kind of bullet Oswald allegedly fired (Lane 69). However, in an astonishing display of circular reasoning, the Commission then went on to cite this fact as its basis for DENYING that the curbing section was struck by the gunman's errant bullet! The piece of curb couldn't have been struck by the bullet that missed, said the Commission, because the metal smears on it were incompatible with the ammunition supposedly used by Oswald! The Commission lamely speculated that the mark was caused by a solid lead fragment, but there are serious problems with this suggestion (see, for example, Marrs 61-63 and Meagher 7). The WC's specious denial notwithstanding, the evidence indicates the curbing section was indeed struck by the errant bullet and was therefore the source of James Tague's face injury. The fragment came from a spot on the curb close to where Tague was standing when he was struck in the face by flying concrete. After the assassination, Deputy Sheriff E. R. Walthers went with Tague to examine the ground near the location where he was injured. They found a mark on the curb. Said Tague, "There was a mark quite obviously that was a bullet, and it was very fresh" (Lane 69). And it was this same piece of curb that was identified, removed, and analyzed by the FBI. ------------------------- Howard Donahue's Research ------------------------- Ballistics expert Howard Donahue has documented a number of important points of evidence that indicate Oswald was innocent. Donahue's theories and research are the subject of Bonar Menninger's book MORTAL ERROR (St. Martin's Press, 1992). An examination of all of Donahue's theories and documentation is beyond the scope of this paper. However, I would like to summarize some of the evidence he presents that would go a long way toward convincing a jury that Oswald was innocent: 1) The trajectory given for the alleged rear entrance wound on JFK's head is incompatible with a shot from the alleged sniper's nest. 2) The bullet that mortally wounded Kennedy in the head behaved like a high-velocity, frangible missile, whereas Oswald is said to have used low-velocity, non-frangible ammunition. 3) The reported size of the rear entrance wound in the head is incompatible with the diameter of a 6.5mm Carcano bullet. 4) The windshield damage was too high to have been caused by a bullet coming down into the car from the alleged sniper's nest. 5) Several witnesses said two of the shots came in very rapid succession, nearly simultaneously, too quickly to have been fired from the bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano rifle. 6) Connally's wife and one of the Secret Service agents in the limousine both heard Kennedy cry out that he had been hit well before the Governor was wounded. 7) There do not appear to have been any traces of human tissue on the fragments that were found in the limousine, yet the WC said these fragments came from the bullet that hit Kennedy in the head. If these fragments had in fact passed through JFK's skull, there would be traces of brain tissue, blood, and fluid on them. ---------- Conclusion ---------- The problems with the case against Oswald considered herein are but a handful of those that could be discussed. There are substantive questions about the validity or significance of virtually all of the other items of evidence that supposedly identify Oswald as JFK's assassin. It is often difficult to judge how a jury will decide a case. I cannot say for sure that a particular jury would acquit Oswald of President Kennedy's murder. However, I can say that the case against Oswald is woefully lacking in substance. ------------------------------------------------------------ About the Author: MICHAEL T. GRIFFITH is a two-time graduate of the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California. He is also the author of two books on Mormonism and ancient religious texts. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ This paper consists of excerpts from my book, MORE THAN A REASONABLE DOUBT. If you would like a copy of the book on disk, please send $2.00 (money orders only) to Michael T. Griffith, PSC 45, Box 1295, APO AE 09468. Price includes P&H and the disk (2DD). Please specify what size disk you want. The book is available in WordPerfect 5.1 and 6.0, Word for Windows 2.0, Lotus AmiPro for Windows 2.0, and ASCII. Please allow two to three weeks for delivery. @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ ------------ BIBLIOGRAPHY ------------ Brown, Walt. THE PEOPLE V. LEE HARVEY OSWALD. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1992. Cohen, Jacob. "Yes, Oswald Alone Killed Kennedy." COMMENTARY, June 1992. 32-40. Garrison, Jim. ON THE TRAIL OF THE ASSASSINS. Warner Books Edition. New York: Warner Books, 1988. Groden, Robert J. and Harrison Edward Livingstone. HIGH TREASON: THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY AND THE NEW EVIDENCE OF CONSPIRACY. Berkley Edition. New York: Berkley Books, 1990. Hurt, Henry. REASONABLE DOUBT: AN INVESTIGATION INTO THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1985. Lane, Mark. RUSH TO JUDGMENT. Thunder's Mouth Press Edition. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1992. Lifton, David S. BEST EVIDENCE. Carroll & Graf Edition. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1988. I think Lifton's two-casket and body-alteration theories are highly improbable. However, his book does contain a lot of worthwhile information. Livingstone, Harrison Edward. HIGH TREASON 2. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1992. Marrs, Jim. CROSSFIRE: THE PLOT THAT KILLED KENNEDY. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 1989. A monumental research effort. Meager, Sylvia. ACCESSORIES AFTER THE FACT: THE WARREN COMMISSION, THE AUTHORITIES, AND THE REPORT. New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967; Vintage Press, 1976. A classic critique of the Warren Commission's findings. Moore, Jim. CONSPIRACY OF ONE. Ft. Worth: The Summit Group, 1991. Oglesby, Carl. THE JFK ASSASSINATION: THE FACTS AND THE THEORIES. New York: Signet, 1992. Smith, Matthew. JFK: THE SECOND PLOT. Edinburgh, England: Mainstream Publishing Company Ltd., 1992. Summers, Anthony. CONSPIRACY. Updated and Expanded Edition. New York: Paragon House, 1989. One of the most thorough and scholarly books ever written on the Kennedy assassination. Weberman, Alan J. and Michael Canfield. COUP D'ETAT IN AMERICA: THE CIA AND THE ASSASSINATION OF JOHN F. KENNEDY. Revised Edition. San Francisco, California: Quick American Archives, 1992.