Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  Supportive of Specter’s and Hosty’s assumption is the testimony of FBI firearms expert Robert Frazier that when he got the Carcano back at the FBI lab in Washington, D.C., the scope tube had a “rather severe scrape” on it, and the “scope tube could have been bent or damaged.” Ironically, though, if the scope had become defective before the assassination, the defect would have actually assisted the assassin in his aiming at a target moving away from him. Frazier testified that the weapon firing high “would actually compensate for any lead which had to be taken. So that if you aimed with this weapon as it actually was received at the laboratory, it would be necessary to take no lead whatsoever in order to hit the intended object. The scope would accomplish the lead for you.”183

  Quite apart from the fact that the Mannlicher-Carcano, then, could be fired twice within 1.66 seconds, since the HSCA determined that the first shot was fired around Z160, not between Z210 and Z225, the committee had ample evidence to conclude that contrary to the popularly accepted 5 seconds, the assassin had over 8 seconds (18.3 frames per second divided into 153 frames between Z160 and Z313 gives 8.4 seconds), a point I made very clearly to the London jury through my photographic expert, Cecil Kirk.184 But, to be even more precise, Oswald really had 8.4 seconds to operate the bolt, aim, and fire two, not three shots. Most people forget that for the first shot, the cartridge was already in the chamber and Oswald had all the time in the world to prepare for that shot, so the clock doesn’t really start to run until the time of the first shot. Deducting the millisecond it took him to pull the trigger for the first shot, Oswald had at least 8 seconds from that point forward to fire two more rounds, hardly the impossible timing problem that conspiracy theorists have alleged throughout the years.

  Even when we analyze the amount of time Oswald had available to him between individual shots, we find that the feat was not impossible. Virtually everyone agrees that President Kennedy and Governor Connally were showing a reaction to being hit at frame 225 of the Zapruder film, 65 frames or 3.5 seconds after the first shot at around Z160. Even if we use the 2.3-second (telescopic sight) figure as the minimum amount of time to fire two shots, at 3.5 seconds Oswald would have had 1.2 seconds more than the minimum time needed to fire a second shot at the time of Z225. If we assume Kennedy and Connally were hit at Z210 (the earliest time, according to the Warren Commission, they were probably shot), this would be 50 frames or 2.7 seconds after frame 160, which is 0.4 second more than the minimum time needed to fire two shots.

  Using the more likely open-iron-sights figure of 1.66 seconds, if the shot that hit the president was fired at frame Z210 (50 frames or 2.7 seconds after Z160), Oswald would have had 1.04 seconds more than he needed for the second shot. It is only when we consider the HSCA’s conclusion that Kennedy and Connally were hit at about Z190185 (a highly dubious conclusion which every other major study of the Zapruder film has disagreed with, and which is sorely lacking in common sense—see earlier text) that we find Oswald would have been left with only 1.6 seconds (30 frames) to get off his second shot, a very tight window of opportunity to be sure but a period still possible, according to HSCA estimates, if he used the rifle’s open iron sights to aim.

  With respect to the third shot, the head shot at Z313, if the second shot was at Z225 (the latest time, according to the Warren Commission, that Kennedy and Connally were hit), as the Warren Commission concluded, this would have given Oswald 4.8 seconds (88 frames) to fire the third shot. Assuming Kennedy and Connally were first hit at Z210, Oswald would have had 5.6 seconds (103 frames) to fire his third shot. If we accept the HSCA’s questionable conclusion that the second shot was fired at Z190, Oswald would have had 6.7 seconds (123 frames) to fire the third shot, four times the minimum time required. What follows is a summary of the relevant times:

  As these figures show, as opposed to what the conspiracy theorists have been alleging for years, whether Oswald used the telescopic sight or iron sights, he would have had, in nearly every case, more than enough time to fire the three shots. At the London trial, I felt it was relevant to ask those who actually heard the three shots in Dealey Plaza that day, and who had fired a bolt-action rifle, for their on-the-spot sense and impression of whether one person could have fired all three of the shots. For example, I asked Charles Brehm, the combat veteran who was a part of the D-day invasion of Normandy, who was on the south side of Elm Street with his five-year-old son as the motorcade came by, and who was “very familiar” with bolt-action rifles, “Did it appear from the timing of the shots that you heard that you, yourself, could have operated, aimed, and fired a bolt-action rifle as quickly as those shots came?”

  Answer: “Very easily.”

  Question: “So you definitely believe that the three shots you heard that day could easily have been fired by one person?”

  Answer: “Absolutely.”

  Question: “From your experience with rifles and the report of rifle shots, did you hear any difference at all in the report of the three shots that indicated more than one rifle or firing location was involved?”

  Answer: “No. All three shots were from the same origin.”186

  I also asked Dallas police officer Marrion Baker, who was riding a police motorcycle in the motorcade, “Have you personally had occasion to fire a bolt-action rifle and fire shots in rapid succession?”

  Answer: “Yes, sir. I have.”

  Question: “Did it appear from the timing of the shots you heard that you could have operated, aimed, and fired a bolt-action rifle as quickly as those shots came?”

  Answer: “Yes.”

  Question: “So you believe the three shots you heard that day could have been fired by one person?”

  Answer: “Yes.”187

  The conspiracy crowd has three arguments for the proposition that although the Carcano could be fired twice within 1.66 seconds, the accuracy simply wouldn’t be there, none of which have merit. One argument is that, as conspiracy theorist Walt Brown puts it, Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano was a “piece of junk” that “certainly lacked accuracy.”188 Even if Oswald’s Carcano was the worst piece of junk in the world, this is an irrelevant argument since we have seen that firearms experts for the Warren Commission (FBI) and HSCA proved that it was, in fact, the weapon that fired three bullets in Dealey Plaza, two of which struck the president. But in point of fact, the Carcano was not a piece of junk that lacked accuracy. Ronald Simmons, the chief of the Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch of the Department of the Army, had his people test-fire Oswald’s Carcano rifle (not a Carcano rifle, but Oswald’s, the one found on the sixth floor, Warren Commission Exhibit No. 139) forty-seven times, and testified the rifle was “quite accurate”—in fact, just as accurate as the American military rifle being used at the time, the M-14.189 Indeed, the exact type of rifle Oswald used to kill Kennedy was still being used at the time by the Italian NATO rifle team in competition.190*

  Another argument made by the conspiracy theorists is that Oswald’s Carcano had a “hair trigger” that would affect its ability to be fired with accuracy. The problem with this argument is that although the trigger pull of the Carcano, at approximately three pounds, is below average for most military rifles, a hair trigger only requires an extremely light pull, normally measured at one pound or less. So the Carcano’s trigger pull was three times that of a hair-trigger rifle.191

  Perhaps the biggest argument of the conspiracy theorists is that even apart from the rifle, no one could possibly have hit Kennedy twice in the time Oswald had available to him, particularly Oswald. But of course, the very best evidence that Oswald had the ability to fire his Carcano rifle within the subject time and with the requisite accuracy is that we know, from all the evidence, that he did. Conspiracy thorists, naturally, don’t accept this. “Oswald was known as a poor shot,…missing the target [in the military] altogether as often as he hit it,” says conspiracy theorist Harrison E. Livingstone.192 Kirk Wilson says that “to those who knew him in the Marines, Oswald’s marksmanship was a j
oke.”193

  Robert Groden, the self-proclaimed photography expert and Zapruder film guru, told readers of Rolling Stone magazine, “Unfortunately for the Commission, not one man in this entire country could duplicate the incredible feat attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald, who was, according to his Marine Corps records, ‘a rather poor shot.’ The Commission hired some of the nation’s best marksmen, gave them every advantage, and they still couldn’t duplicate the shots.”194

  In the first place, Oswald’s Marine Corps records do not show he was a “rather poor shot” and a “joke” as a marksman. To the contrary, as set forth earlier in this book, on December 21, 1956, during Oswald’s most important shooting for the record, he fired a 212 out of a possible 250, which qualified him as a sharpshooter.195 Even when he was about to leave the corps, and his good or poor marksmanship could no longer help or hurt him in his Marine Corps career, on May 6, 1959, he fired a 191, which still qualified him as a marksman.196* And we know from Marina that during Oswald’s time in New Orleans in the summer of 1963, she frequently saw him dry-firing his Carcano.197 And in Dallas that year he told her he practiced firing the rifle at Love Field and at a shooting range.198 Indeed, Oswald’s friend George de Mohrenschildt told the Warren Commission that Marina, in referring to Oswald, said, “That crazy idiot is target shooting all the time,” and that Oswald himself had told him, “I go out and do target shooting. I like target shooting.”199

  Second, even a cursory review of the record on this issue shows the charges of Groden and others in the conspiracy community to be false. As alluded to in the introduction, way back in 1964 the Warren Commission had three expert riflemen fire Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano rifle at stationary targets (head and shoulder silhouettes) located at distances of 175, 240, and 265 feet, the distances of 175 and 265 feet corresponding to the distances from the sniper’s nest window to the presidential limousine at Z frames 210 and 313, respectively. The fact that the targets were stationary does not quite warrant the criticism the Commission has gotten from critics like Groden, since the critical point in trying to simulate what Oswald did was to compel the riflemen to move the muzzle between shots. And since the targets were separated from each other, the riflemen would have to move their muzzles in the same way they would have if the target were moving as Oswald’s target was. Even given this, however, it would seem to be easier to fire at stationary rather than at moving targets, although as we have seen, the 3.9-degree declination of Elm Street made it less difficult. On the other hand, it is noteworthy that none of the riflemen had any practice with Oswald’s rifle except to operate the bolt for about “two or three minutes,” and did not have any practice with the trigger at all because of concern “about breaking the firing pin.”

  In any event, the best rifleman, one “Specialist Miller,” got off three shots (using the telescopic sight) within 4.6 seconds on the first of two series of three shots, and within 5.15 seconds on his second series. Using the iron sights, he got off three rounds in 4.45 seconds. (The second and third riflemen, using only the telescopic sight, took 6.75 and 6.45, and 8.25 and 7.00 seconds, respectively, for the two series.) As for the accuracy, the Warren Commission’s witness, Ronald Simmons, who interpreted the scoring for the Commission, was unprepared for his testimony, and therefore his answers could have been much clearer, part of the lack of clarity being his jumping from the telescopic to the iron sights without clear demarcation.

  Question by Warren Commission counsel: “What was the accuracy of Specialist Miller?”

  Simmons: “I do not have his accuracy separated from the group.”

  Question: “Is it possible to separate the accuracy out?”

  Answer: “Yes, it is, by an additional calculation…Mr. Miller succeeded in hitting the third target on both attempts with the telescope. He missed the second target on both attempts with the telescope [he makes no reference to the first target], but he hit the second target with the iron sight. And he emplaced all three rounds on the…first target.”

  In the last sentence, he’s presumably (though his language is too sloppy to be sure) talking about Miller’s use of the iron sights. But when Simmons was asked the follow-up question, “How did he [Miller] do with the iron sight on the third target?” he responded, “On the third target he missed the boards completely.”200 (The other two marksmen hit the first target, missed the second, and both of them, it can be inferred from loose testimony, hit the third.) It appears, though it is by no means crystal clear from Simmons’s imprecise language, that using the iron sights, Miller hit two out of the three targets, the same as Oswald. What can be clearly inferred from the information is that Oswald’s rifle was certainly capable of being fired three times within as short a period as 4.45 seconds with the iron sights and 4.6 seconds with the telescopic sight, both of which are more than three full seconds less than we know Oswald had.

  It should be added that in an example of investigative sloppiness, the three experts who test-fired for the Warren Commission did so from atop a thirty-foot tower, less than half the height of the sixth-floor window from Elm Street below. I have been told by firearms experts that this difference in elevation was inconsequential to the validity of the tests, but why not construct a tower as high as the sixth-floor window from which to fire?

  Three years later, as part of a four-part television special hosted by Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather from June 25 to 28, 1967, CBS improved on the Warren Commission’s simulation. Although CBS investigators did not use Oswald’s Mannlicher-Carcano (they used an identical model), they used a tower and target track constructed to match exactly the heights, distances, and angles in Dealey Plaza. Also, the target, a standard FBI silhouette, moved by electric motors at eleven miles an hour, approximately the speed of the presidential limousine. “Eleven volunteer marksmen” were given time to practice with the Mannlicher-Carcano at a nearby practice range and then each took turns firing clips of three bullets at the moving target. All using a telescopic sight, which we know is slower than the iron sights, the average time of the eleven riflemen to fire three shots was 5.6 seconds, much faster than the 8.4 seconds we know Oswald had. And one rifleman hit two out of three targets (Oswald’s accuracy) in “slightly less than five seconds.” A weapons engineer had the best score, making three out of three hits in 5.2 seconds, meaning he was operating the bolt and firing accurately every 1.7 seconds, clearly besting Oswald’s marksmanship on November 22, 1963.201*

  This should have forever put to rest the argument by conspiracy theorists that no one has ever duplicated what Oswald did, yet hundreds of books have come out since the 1967 CBS demonstration alleging that very thing, conditioning millions of Americans to believe the allegation.

  To repeat, because it is so important, what everyone seems to forget is that Oswald qualified as a sharpshooter in the Marines, firing a score of 212. Much more importantly to the issues in this case, for some curious reason Oswald was an even better shot when rapid firing. In an analysis of Oswald’s targets and score cards when he fired his M-1 rifle during several days in December of 1956,202 my London trial firearms expert, Monty Lutz, found that Oswald fired better in rapid than in slow fire.† For instance, at two hundred yards (six hundred feet, well over twice as far away as Kennedy was on November 22, 1963, when Oswald fired the last shot, the head shot), his proficiency rate, Lutz said, averaged “76 percent slow fire, but 91 percent rapid fire.” Lutz said that “some shooters are better at firing rapid or timed courses once they get into a rhythm or conditioned reflex situation.” He added that “on the day of the assassination, Oswald hit two out of three shots, a 67% proficiency rating. So he was shooting below his average for rapid fire on that day.”203

  And so, despite the erroneous claims of the conspiracy theorists, the evidence is very clear that Oswald, with his background with a rifle, had plenty of time to accurately fire two out of three shots in the 8.4 seconds available to him and at the intervals suggested by the various studies of the Zapruder film.

>   And let’s not forget that at the time Oswald hit Kennedy with his two shots, Kennedy was relatively close, around fifty-nine yards for the shot that hit him in the back and around eighty-eight yards for the shot in the head.204‡ Qualifying with a rifle in the Marines starts at two hundred yards (in the infantry at one hundred), and proceeds to three hundred, then five hundred. And, as I demonstrated for the London jury by my questioning of Monty Lutz, Kennedy was “almost a stationary target.”

  Major Eugene D. Anderson, assistant head of the Marksmanship Branch of the Marine Corps, testified before the Warren Commission that based on Oswald’s record in the Marines, the shot to the president’s head was “not a particularly difficult shot” and “Oswald had full capabilities to make such a shot.”205 Sergeant James A. Zahm, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the Marksmanship Training Unit at the Marine Corps school in Quantico, Virginia, told the Warren Commission that compared to the average civilian in America, Oswald was “an excellent shot.” Even in the Marine Corps, Oswald would be considered to be “a good shot, slightly above average.” Zahm went on to say that he considered the shot from the sniper’s nest that hit Kennedy in the back to be a “very easy shot” and the later one that struck him in the head “an easy shot” for a man with the equipment Oswald had and with his ability.”206

  Finally, when you stop to think about it, the standard argument made by conspiracy theorists that what Oswald accomplished demonstrated incredible marksmanship on his part (a marksmanship, they say, he did not possess) is further refuted by the fact that he really hit his “target” not two out of three times, but only one out of three times. What was Oswald’s target? It could only be Kennedy’s head. I mean, we have to assume that Oswald was aiming at Kennedy’s head when he fired all three shots since that would be the most vulnerable (and, if hit, fatal) part of Kennedy’s body. It makes no sense that Oswald would be aiming to hit Kennedy in his back. In addition to the back being far less vulnerable than the head, very little of Kennedy’s back was visible to Oswald, being hidden by the backseat of the limousine. So with Kennedy’s head being the target, Oswald’s first shot not only missed the target, but also completely missed the limousine; his second shot also missed the target (Kennedy’s head) when it struck Kennedy in the back; only his third shot hit the target, Kennedy’s head. I ask the conspiracy theorists, How can hitting your target only one out of three times, particularly when your target is relatively close and essentially stationary, be considered incredibly great marksmanship, as you’ve been successfully peddling to the American public for over forty years?