Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  One thing arguing against everything Craig said is his overall lack of credibility. In his 1971 unpublished book manuscript, “When They Kill a President,” he unwittingly lays out his own brief for being a highly paranoid, unbalanced person. He strongly suggests that Sheriff Bill Decker, with the full knowledge of the FBI, was a part of the conspiracy to kill Kennedy. The motive? Decker and most of his deputies hated Kennedy, in large part because he “was a Catholic.” Craig alleges that Warren Commission assistant counsel David Belin changed his (Craig’s) testimony before the Commission “fourteen times” in the published volumes. He also wants the reader to believe that after he was fired by the sheriff’s office in July of 1967 (“because of a disturbance growing out of personal matters, according to the Dallas Sheriff’s personnel officer”),58 he started being followed everywhere. When he arrived in New Orleans in late 1967 after volunteering to help New Orleans DA Jim Garrison* in Garrison’s prosecution of Clay Shaw, “four men followed” him around town. He writes, “Upon returning to Dallas…I was picked up by another ‘tail.’ I was followed constantly. My wife could not even go to the grocery store without being followed. Sometimes they would go so far as to pull up next to her and make sure she saw them talking on their two-way radios. [He doesn’t say why the people were following his wife, or him, everywhere.] They would also park across from my house and sit for hours.”

  He claimed that on November 1, 1967, in Dallas, someone shot at him, and “the hair just above my left ear parted.” Unable to hold down a job and in failing health, he was eventually befriended by Penn Jones, the architect of the “mysterious deaths” theory, who provided a home for Craig and his family on his property near Dallas. But strangers continued to follow him. “One day,” he writes, “after being followed by this truck for several days…the driver stuck a revolver out the window and was about to fire, when another car pulled up behind me and he withdrew the pistol.” He also said he got threatening calls in the middle of the night reminding him, “You have a family.” He claims that on October 27, 1970, when he turned his car’s ignition on, his car exploded, causing severe injuries.59

  Craig’s unpublished manuscript was dated 1971. But he told others that the attempts on his life continued: being run off the road in West Texas in 1972, causing him to break his back, and being shot in his left shoulder in January of 1975. All in all, according to Craig, there were five unsuccessful attempts on his life.60

  The conspiracy theorists who have accepted Craig’s entire story without qualification hint darkly that Craig did not commit suicide as reported, but was murdered on May 15, 1975, in Dallas because of what he says he saw on the day of the assassination. One example among many: “At the age of 39, Roger Craig, suffering from the stress of the constant back pains he endured and the financial pressures he encountered because of finding it difficult to get work, succumbed, they said, and committed suicide. They said.”61 Even the more scholarly conspiracy theorists like David E. Scheim have implicitly bought into the possibility of the Craig murder scenario. Scheim quotes a source for the proposition that it was the mob who was out to kill Craig.62

  The Dallas Police Department and coroner’s office both concluded that Craig, who in 1960 was named the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department’s officer of the year by the Dallas Traffic Commission, shot himself to death with his own rifle inside the home he shared with his father. He left a suicide note that said in part, “I am tired of all this pain.” His father, who found Craig’s body in a back bedroom when he came in from mowing the lawn, told police that his son had been taking painkillers because of injuries received in an auto accident two years earlier, and just that week had received notice from the Social Security Administration that he had been turned down for benefits. Dallas police detective Robert Garcia said that the gunshot wound to Craig’s upper chest was “self-inflicted,” and Craig’s .22 caliber rifle was by his side.63

  But if we’re to believe the clear implications of the conspiracy theorists like Matthew Smith, the conspirators (CIA, mob, etc.) were apparently trying to kill Craig, eventually doing so. Apart from the absurdity that these high-powered conspirators, who could kill the president on their first attempt and get away with it, found it almost impossible to kill the completely unprotected but apparently Rasputin-like Craig, finally succeeding only after an eight-year effort, why would they want to kill him anyway? To silence him? He had already told his story to the authorities, many times over. So what could possibly be achieved?

  If Craig was murdered by the alleged conspirators in the Kennedy assassination, here is the essence of what their decision would have had to have been: “I know this guy Craig has already told his story to the local police and feds, and they didn’t buy a word he said. And I know twelve years have already gone by. But who knows? What if he tells it again to them, and this time they believe him because, I don’t know, maybe his voice or body language will be more convincing this time. Best thing to do is kill him. Oh, by the way, and this goes without saying, we’ll have to reach the Dallas police and coroner’s office to let them know that even though he was murdered, they both have to report it as a suicide. If they refuse to go along with it, then we could be in real trouble for approaching them, so we’ll have to kill the detectives and coroner who worked on the case, too.” You see, if you play out the countless conspiracy theories, something the theorists never bother to do, the absurdity of their original position only degenerates into greater absurdity.

  One of the most sacred and iconic beliefs by conspiracy theorists resulted from the testimony of S. M. (Sterling Mayfield) Holland, a signal supervisor for the Union Terminal Railroad. Holland testified to the Warren Commission that at the time of the motorcade, he was “on top of the Triple Underpass”* watching it with two uniformed Dallas police officers (J. W. Foster and J. C. White) and about eight or nine other coworkers of his, who had to identify themselves to the police for security reasons.64 Holland testified that at the time of the shots he saw “a puff of smoke,” presumably from a shot, coming from the trees on the grassy knoll.† Warren Commission counsel asked Holland to draw a circle on a photo indicating the area to his left front where he saw the puff of smoke, which he did. But when this photo was reproduced for the Warren Commission volumes, the entire grassy knoll area came out so dark that no circle is visible.65‡

  It should be mentioned that Holland says he heard four shots and, per his affidavit to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department on the afternoon of the assassination, only saw the puff of smoke after the first shot.66 But in his Warren Commission testimony, and partly because of imprecise questions by Warren Commission counsel, although at one point he again indicated he saw the puff of smoke after the first shot,67 at another point in his testimony he implied it was after the third or fourth shot.68 When Warren Commission counsel asked, “What was your impression about the source of these noises?” he answered, “Well, the impression was that…the first two or three shots came from the upper part of the street…from where I was.”

  Counsel: “East on Elm?”

  Holland: “Yes, up in here somewhere [indicating]…That is what it sounded like to me from where I was.”

  Counsel: “You are indicating on this [Holland] Exhibit C. Why don’t you put a square around the area that you just pointed to. You had no idea, I take it, that the shots were coming from your area?”

  Holland: “No.”69

  The square Holland drew is at the southeast corner of the Book Depository Building.

  As Warren Commission assistant counsel David Belin says in his book, November 22, 1963: You Are the Jury, “[The November 22, 1963] affidavit by Sam Holland is the fountainhead for speculation that there might have been another source of rifle shots.”70 In his affidavit to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department that afternoon, Holland said that at the time of the first shot he “saw a puff of smoke come from the trees,” but he said the trees were in the “arcade” area (i.e., pergola or pavillion area).71 However, in his
testimony before the Warren Commission, when Holland said he saw “a puff of smoke [come] out about six or eight feet above the ground right out from under those trees,” although he continued to refer to “the arcade area,” he drew a circle on a photograph on the grassy knoll (not the arcade area) for the Warren Commission counsel.72*

  If we give the benefit of the doubt to the conspiracy theorists that what Holland claims he saw did not come from the exhaust of a motorcycle (as a coworker of Holland’s on the railroad overpass believes), a question that presents itself is whether any smoke would emanate from the muzzle (and be visible upon the firing) of a modern rifle using so-called smokeless powder. In a September 23, 1964, letter from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to J. Lee Rankin, general counsel for the Warren Commission, Hoover said that in test-firing a Mannlicher-Carcano rifle, “a small amount of white smoke was visible.”73 My firearms expert at the trial in London, Monty Lutz, later told me the same thing, saying that “a very small amount of light gray smoke” would be visible. Lutz told me that the smoke would “dissipate almost immediately,” and on “a windy day, such as this was, it would be gone almost immediately and it would be virtually impossible to see it.” He continued, “You’d almost have to be alerted to where the muzzle was and concentrating and looking for the smoke to see it.” He added that an additional factor made it even more difficult to see the smoke. “By all accounts,” he said, “this was a very bright and clear day.” When I asked him why that would make a difference, he said, “Imagine if the background were dark. The light gray smoke would show up better because of the contrast. All in all, even if there had been a grassy knoll shooter, I doubt very, very much that anyone would have seen any smoke coming out of the muzzle of his rifle.”74 In fact, in Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, he didn’t even use a rifle to create his puff of smoke, machine-generating the smoke instead.75

  It would seem, then, almost impossible for Holland, about sixty-five to seventy yards away, to see any “puff of smoke,” particularly since it was a very windy day, and such a puff would not linger in the air but would immediately dissipate before Holland could even direct his attention away from the motorcade and over to the grassy knoll. Dallas deputy sheriff Luke Mooney, who was in Dealey Plaza at the time of the shooting, testified, “The wind was blowing pretty high.”76Dallas Morning News photographer Tom Dillard, who was also there, testified there was “a very brisk north wind.”77 Associated Press photographer James Altgens testified that at one point, “Mrs. Kennedy was looking at me…[and] just as I got ready to snap it the north wind caught her hat and almost blew it off.”78* Indeed, the velocity of the wind was such that at the trial in London, Gerry Spence, referring to the wind “blowing very hard,” said to Dallas police officer Marrion Baker that because of the way “the wind was blowing…you were about blown off your bike, isn’t that true?” and Baker responded, “That is correct.”79†

  In addition to all of the above, one must view Holland’s unequivocal testimony that he saw a puff of smoke on the grassy knoll at the time of the shooting in relationship to all the other evidence. Since we know that no gunman was seen behind the picket fence at the time of the shooting nor was one seen running away from the grassy knoll with his rifle, and no rifle or expended shells from said rifle were found behind the picket fence or anywhere else in Dealey Plaza other than on the sixth floor of the Book Depository Building, we cannot logically and reasonably give any meaningful weight at all to Holland’s testimony. If an ephemeral wisp of smoke—even if it existed—can overcome several mountains of solid evidence to the contrary, then the investigation into the truth in the assassination is more of an existential exercise fit for black coffee–sipping Left Bank philosophers who have always been more interested in asking questions than in getting answers to those questions.

  It should also be noted that on at least two occasions Holland saw things that no other human did. As previously indicated, the famous photograph by Dealey Plaza witness Mary Moorman of the grassy knoll at the time the president was shot in the head is very blurry and of poor quality. Photographic experts for the HSCA concluded that the images behind the picket fence in the photo may “represent parts of a tree, or they may be photographic artifacts. Due to the poor quality of the photograph…it was not possible to determine the nature of the images with the naked eye.”80 In other words, no human figure can possibly be made out behind the fence. But when conspiracy theorist Josiah Thompson showed Holland this same photo in 1966 during the writing of his substantive and well-researched book, Six Seconds in Dallas, Holland said, “Well, now you have something here…I didn’t see this man before…Well, you know, I think you’re looking right down the barrel of that gun right now.”81

  And in Holland’s sworn affidavit to the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department on the afternoon of the assassination, he said that “after the first shot the Secret Service man raised up in his seat with a machine gun and then dropped back down in the seat,” the context of Holland’s observation clearly being that the subject Secret Service man was in the presidential limousine.82 No Secret Service agent in the entire presidential motorcade had a machine gun that day (Agent George Hickey did stand up in his seat in the vice president’s car holding a rifle), and no Dealey Plaza witness, other than Holland, reported seeing one. In 1966 Holland told an interviewer that the agent was “in the President’s car,” and the agent “pointed this machine gun right towards that grassy knoll behind that picket fence,” then, after standing up, “fell backwards, like he was shot.”83 No other witness that day saw Hickey fall backward or down.

  Finally, there is another enormous problem for conspiracy theorists who desperately want to avail themselves of Holland’s “puff of smoke.” All of the conspiracy theorists who believe that one or more shots were fired from the grassy knoll area place the alleged assassin behind the picket fence on top of the knoll, or at least behind the retaining wall or some other structure in the pergola area. None of them place the alleged assassin on the grassy knoll itself, in front of the fence and in plain view of everyone. The problem for the buffs is that even if we accept Holland’s observation, he himself didn’t say he saw any puff of smoke at the top of the picket fence, which, if a weapon had been fired from there, would have been the only place (right at the muzzle) where a puff of smoke could have been seen. Instead, he told the Warren Commission that he saw the smoke “under those trees.” In using the plural, he had to have misspoken, meaning the many branches of the single tree in the photograph on which he placed a circle for the Commission. In his November 30, 1966, interview with author Josiah Thompson, he first said “trees,” then said “right under this tree, [this] particular tree.”84 It’s the same location he encircled for the Warren Commission. And that location is eleven feet in front of the picket fence. So the puff of smoke that Holland claims he saw would not likely have been from the muzzle of any rifle on top of the picket fence.

  If Holland is an example of the well-known phenomenon that witnesses to a sudden, startling, and dramatic event genuinely think they see things that aren’t there, I’m not sure what phenomenon Lee Bowers would be an example of. Bowers was in the Union Terminal’s north tower operating the switches and signals controlling the movement of trains at the time of the assassination. I’ve been at the south window on the second floor of the tower, and from that vantage point, about fourteen feet above the ground, one has a clear, unobstructed view of the area behind the picket fence atop the knoll, which is only approximately 125 yards away.85 This is the location where most conspiracy theorists allege the president’s assassin was.*

  Bowers told the Warren Commission that he saw “one or two” men “in the area” before the shooting, presumably, from the context of the questioning, somewhere behind the fence, though inept questioning by Warren Commission counsel failed to establish just where these men were. At one point he said, “They were some distance back, just a slight distance back,” suggesting they were not at the fence itself. Just who were the
se men? Bowers said he recognized one because he was “a parking lot attendant that operates a parking lot there.” This man and the other man, whom Bowers didn’t indicate he knew, “each had uniforms similar to those custodians at the [county] courthouse.” Bowers did not indicate that he saw anything suspicious or out of the ordinary with these two men.

  Although Bowers saw nothing suspicious about the two men, he told the Warren Commission that “at the moment” he heard the shooting he was “looking directly towards the area” (again, presumably the area behind the fence, though he never expressly says this, and remarkably, Warren Commission counsel never nailed down what specific “area” Bowers was talking about) and “there seemed to be some commotion” atop the grassy knoll. When Warren Commission counsel asked Bowers what he meant by that, he said, “It was something out of the ordinary, a sort of milling around, but something occurred in this particular spot which was out of the ordinary, which attracted my eye for some reason which I could not identify.”