Reclaiming History (110 page)

It is a maxim in the conspiracy theorist community that to get around the apparent slight discrepancy in the reaction times of Kennedy and Connally, the Warren Commission “came up with” (as out of whole cloth) or “made up” the “single-bullet theory,” the notion that irrespective of what the Zapruder film shows, the same bullet that hit Kennedy must have gone on to hit Connally. But the Commission didn’t have to make the theory up. In view of all the evidence that there was only one gunman in Dealey Plaza (e.g., only one rifle and one gunman were seen, the bullets that killed Kennedy were connected to only one rifle, etc.), the Commission’s conclusion became inevitable. However, what solidified the theory was the FBI and Secret Service reenactment of the shooting in Dealey Plaza on May 24, 1964 (see later text). When three points—the sniper’s nest, the bullet wound to Kennedy’s back, and the bullet wound to Connally’s back—were found to exist along a straight line, the Commission’s single-bullet theory was “substantiated.”
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The Commission staff’s hypothesis didn’t exactly receive a warm welcome from all of the Warren Commission members. At the Commission’s last meeting on September 18, 1964, and with its report scheduled to reach President Johnson’s desk in just six days, the majority of Chief Justice Earl Warren, Representative Gerald Ford, Allen Dulles, and John McCloy sided with the staff’s single-bullet theory, but Representative Hale Boggs and Senators Richard Russell and John Cooper thought it improbable. Boggs told author Edward Jay Epstein that he had “strong doubts” about the theory and felt the question was never resolved. Cooper claimed that “there was no evidence to show both men were hit by the same bullet.” Russell was the most adamant and wanted his opposition to the single-bullet theory to be acknowledged in a footnote at the bottom of the page in the Commission’s report.
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But Warren felt it was vital that the Commission release a unanimous report. After haggling over the language of the report, Russell relented (as did Cooper and Boggs) if his dissent was acknowledged by reducing the word the majority wanted (“compelling”) down to “persuasive,” and the Commission finally held that: “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.”
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As tape-recorded on the evening of September 18, President Johnson called Senator Russell at his home in Winder, Georgia. Russell complained to LBJ, “That danged Warren Commission business, it whupped me down so, I’m just worn out fighting over that damned Report.” Russell proceeds to talk about his opposition to the single-bullet theory, saying, “The commission believes that the same bullet that hit Kennedy hit Connally. Well, I don’t believe it.”

LBJ responded, “I don’t either,” as if he had studied the issue and was very knowledgeable about it, both of which we can reasonably assume are not true.

Russell goes on to say, “I couldn’t sign it [the Report]. And I said that Governor Connally testified directly to the contrary and I’m not going to approve of that. So I finally made ’em say there was a difference in the commission, in that part of [us] believed that that wasn’t so.” Russell, who, as indicated, attended far fewer hearings of the Warren Commission than any other member, apparently was so out of it and ill-informed he never understood that the Commission agreed to no such thing. The members did make a concession to Russell, but only in the language used about the single-bullet theory conclusion. Nowhere does the Commission report refer to the division of beliefs among the Commission members about the theory. One typed transcription of the telephone conversation has Russell telling LBJ, “I tried my best to get in a dissent, but they’d come ’round and
trade me
out of it by giving me a little old
threat
.”
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But when assassination researcher Max Holland listened to the tape, he concluded that Russell had actually said, “Little old
thread
of it.”
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Russell most likely was referring to the “thread” or tidbit the Commission had given him in reducing the language from “compelling” down to “persuasive.”

Russell tells LBJ that “I don’t think you’ll be displeased with the Report. [But] it’s too long.”
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A point that never, ever is mentioned by the conspiracy theorists who speak about the division among the Warren Commission over the single-bullet theory is that although a minority of members found the theory hard to accept, the report that all seven Commission members signed off on said, “There was 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.”
²⁶

Despite the Warren Commission’s assertion that the single-bullet theory was not essential to its conclusion that there was no evidence of a conspiracy, as critics would correctly point out, the single-bullet theory
was
essential to its findings. Commission assistant counsel Norman Redlich put it more bluntly: “To say that [Kennedy and Connally] were hit by separate bullets is synonymous with saying that there were two assassins.”
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It may be advisable to step back for a moment and reflect on what the dispute among the Warren Commission members over the single-bullet theory really says about the Commission. With the single-bullet theory being so important to the Commission’s finding that there was no evidence of a conspiracy in Kennedy’s murder, if—as virtually all conspiracy theorists allege—the Warren Commission deliberately set out to suppress the truth about a conspiracy from the American people, how would it be possible that three out of the seven members of the Commission voiced, for the public record, their skepticism about the theory’s validity? Are the conspiracy theorists at least willing to alter their decades-old argument that “the Warren Commission” conspired to suppress the truth from the American people, by changing it to “four members of the Warren Commission” conspired to do so? Because if the other three members (Boggs, Russell, and Cooper) were trying to suppress the truth about a conspiracy, why in the world would they be advocating a position (i.e., the invalidity of the single-bullet theory) that could only serve to reveal the conspiracy’s existence? And if the Warren Commission critics are willing to make this concession, as it would seem they almost have to, do they then really want us to believe that whoever (Warren?) decided to keep the truth from the American people only approached Ford, Dulles, and McCloy with his conspiratorial idea, not Boggs, Russell, and Cooper? Or that he also approached those three and they refused to join in the conspiracy, but agreed not to tell anyone about it?

Indeed, the very fact that the Warren Commission, by its noncategorical language (“very persuasive evidence”), did not unequivocally rule out the possibility that Kennedy and Connally were struck by separate bullets (in effect, not ruling out the possibility of a conspiracy) is itself extremely powerful evidence that not only didn’t the Commission, or any portion thereof, set out to suppress the truth from the American people, but that its conclusion of no evidence of a conspiracy was not, as conspiracy theorists believe, a predetermined conclusion.

Although the HSCA, with more sophisticated technology at its disposal fifteen years later, and employing more experts to reach its determination, had little difficulty concluding that Kennedy and Connally were, indeed, struck by the same bullet,
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the almost universal position of the conspiracy community is that the Warren Commission’s single-bullet theory has “no basis in fact”
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and was invented by the Warren Commission out of thin air. Actually, the single-bullet theory was only arrived at by the Warren Commission after a very comprehensive examination of all the evidence, including the Zapruder film. But at the start of the investigation, the FBI at first thought that three separate bullets caused the wounds to Kennedy and Connally. “Three shots rang out. Two bullets struck President Kennedy, and one wounded Governor Connally,” the FBI wrote in its first preliminary report on the assassination on December 9, 1963.
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FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover would later say that this error was based on oral comments made by the autopsy surgeons on the night of the autopsy (and picked up by the two FBI agents in attendance) that the bullet which struck Kennedy in the back had not passed through his body, a conclusion they reached because they couldn’t find the exit wound. Although we’ve seen that the chief autopsy surgeon, Dr. James Humes, found out the following morning where the probable wound of exit was and incorporated this into the final autopsy report, the FBI and the Warren Commission did not get a copy of the autopsy report from the Secret Service until December 23, 1963, two weeks
after
the first FBI report on the assassination.
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A
s I said at the beginning of this chapter, an examination of the Zapruder film to determine the timing and number of shots, and in particular, whether or not the bullet that hit Kennedy also went on to strike Connally, is mostly academic. We can have all the confidence in the world, by an examination of the physical evidence and the utilization of common sense, that it did do so. When you can establish the single-bullet theory by reference to evidence other than the film, you necessarily know that the film itself cannot, by definition, show something else. Therefore, anything in the film that is perceived to contravene the single-bullet theory is either a misinterpretation by the viewer or explainable in some other way. One could say, Wait a minute. Are you saying that even if it’s very clear from the film that Kennedy and Connally were hit by separate bullets, we should ignore this fact? That the film can never count? No, I am not saying that at all. If, indeed, the film showed Kennedy and Connally being hit by separate bullets, then the film evidence would be powerful and persuasive. But since we
know
Kennedy and Connally were not hit by separate bullets, we know, before we even look at the film, that it
cannot
show otherwise. That the best that conspiracy theorists can possibly hope for in the film is confusion and ambiguity, not clear, visual evidence that Kennedy and Connally were hit by separate shots.

Let me give a different example of the point I’m making here. If, indeed, you can prove beyond all doubt that Oswald killed Kennedy, then you thereby know, by definition, that even if someone else confesses to the murder, he is either lying or crazy. An extension of this logic answers the contention made by conspiracy theorists that with every single point they make, the anti-conspiracy theorists claim they have a good answer. How can that be, they ask? The reason it can be is that all of the evidence proves Oswald’s guilt and there is no credible evidence of a conspiracy. If, for the sake of argument, we accept these two propositions as realities, then naturally there
necessarily
and
automatically
are answers that satisfactorily explain away all contrary inferences and allegations,
irrespective of how many allegations there are
. Likewise, again by definition, if we were to accept the opposite proposition, that Oswald is innocent and there is credible evidence of a conspiracy, there could not be satisfactory answers to all adverse allegations.

So, what evidence is there,
unrelated
to the Zapruder film, that only three shots, not four (or more), were fired on the day of the assassination, and hence, the single-bullet theory is more than a theory, it’s a reality? I can think of five reasons, based on evidence and logic, that are conclusive and overwhelming:

1. Perhaps the biggest argument the anti–single-bullet-theory advocates make is that the alignment of Kennedy’s and Connally’s bodies to each other was such that any bullet passing through Kennedy would have had to make a right turn in midair to go on and hit John Connally—thus, the “magic bullet” of conspiracy lore. As conspiracy author Robert Anson puts it, “After CE 399 emerged from the President’s throat, evidently it stopped in midair, made a ninety degree [right] hand turn, traveled on a few inches, stopped again, made a ninety degree [left] hand turn, and then plunged into Governor Connally’s body.”
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But actually, the alignment of Kennedy’s and Connally’s bodies to each other is, all by itself, virtually conclusive evidence in support of the single-bullet theory.

In a gross and brazen misrepresentation of the facts, sketches in conspiracy books and literature have consistently and falsely placed Connally seated directly in front of Kennedy in the presidential limousine. In fact, Connally’s jump seat not only was situated a half foot inside and to the left of the right door, but also was three inches lower than the backseat
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—placing him to the left and below Kennedy’s position on the extreme right side of the limousine’s backseat. (See photo section.)
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The HSCA said, “A photogrammatic analysis of several pairs of pictures taken from the Zapruder movie” and viewed through a “stereoscopic viewer…clearly showed that Kennedy was seated close to the right-hand, inside surface of the car, with his arm resting atop the side of the car and his elbow extending…beyond the body of the car. Connally, on the other hand, was seated well within the car on the jump seat.”
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Moreover, at the moment Kennedy was hit with the bullet to his back, Connally’s body was turned to his right, causing their bodies to be aligned in such a way that a bullet traveling on a downward trajectory, entering the upper right part of the president’s back, passing through soft tissue in a straight line, and exiting his throat (which the Warren Commission and HSCA found),
had
to go on and hit the governor in the upper right part of his back. As Warren Commission assistant counsel Norman Redlich testified before the HSCA, the bullet that entered the president’s back and emerged through the front of his throat “had nowhere else to go other than to hit Governor Connally.”
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But conspiracy theorists have avoided all this by simply placing Connally directly in front of the president, as the chief proponent of this false alignment, Robert Groden, does in a sketch that appears in a book he wrote with Harrison Livingstone,
High Treason
. (Note that in addition to Connally being seated directly in front of Kennedy as opposed to Kennedy’s left front, Groden also doesn’t show Connally’s body turned to the right, as it was at the moment he was struck.)
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