Crossfire

by Jim Marrs

  By the time the presidential limousine was approaching the underpass, Holland was standing just in front of Officer Foster. He told the commission:

  And the motorcade was coming down in this fashion, and the President was waving to the people on this [north] side [of Elm]. . . . The first report that I heard . . . was pretty loud . . . and the car traveled a few yards and Governor Connally turned in this fashion, like that, with his hand out and . . . another report rang out and he slumped down in his seat . . . [then Kennedy] was hit again along . . . in here. . . . I observed it. It knocked him completely down on the floor . . . just slumped completely over. . . . I heard a third report and I counted four shots. . . . There was a shot, a report. I don’t know whether it was a shot. I can’t say that. And a puff of smoke came out about six or eight feet above the ground right out from under those trees.

  Holland said the first two or three shots seemed to come from “the upper part of the street,” followed by others of “different sounds, different reports.” In a 1966 filmed interview, Holland was even more specific:

  I looked over to where I thought the shot came from and I saw a puff of smoke still lingering under the trees in front of the wooden fence. The report sounded like it came from behind the wooden fence. . . . I know where the third shot came from—behind the picket fence. There’s no doubt whatsoever in my mind.

  Due to Holland’s credibility and clear description of what he saw, the Warren Commission Report accurately stated, “According to S. M. Holland, there were four shots which sounded as though they came from the trees on the north side of Elm Street where he saw a puff of smoke.”

  Having mentioned the smoke in the trees, the report went on to conclude, “In contrast to the testimony of the witnesses who heard and observed shots fired from the Depository, the Commission’s investigation has disclosed no credible evidence that any shots were fired from anywhere else.”

  The clear implication by the Warren Report is that Holland was mistaken in believing shots came from behind the wooden picket fence. However, the testimony of the other railroad workers on the Triple Underpass—Richard C. Dodd, James L. Simmons, and Thomas J. Murphy, none of whom were asked to testify to the Warren Commission—corroborated Holland’s version of the assassination. The only account of what they saw is in FBI reports made during March 1964. These reports are sketchy and seem very incomplete in view of the questions that these men should obviously have been asked.

  Simmons, a Union Terminal car inspector, was in the group on the Triple Underpass. In his FBI report, it merely states:

  When the President’s car started down Elm Street he heard three shots ring out. President Kennedy slumped down in his seat and appeared to have been hit by a bullet. . . . Simmons said he thought he saw exhaust fumes of smoke near the embankment in front of the Texas School Book Depository building.

  During a 1966 filmed interview, Simmons’s account is much clearer:

  As the President’s limousine rounded the curve on Elm Street, there was a loud explosion. . . . It sounded like it came from the left and in front of us, towards the wooden fence. And there was a puff of smoke that came from underneath the trees on the embankment directly in front of the wooden fence. . . . I was talking to Patrolman Foster at the time and as soon as we heard the shots, we ran around to [behind] the picket fence. . . . There was no one there but there were footprints in the mud around the fence and footprints on the two-by-four railing on the fence.

  Railroad workers who also saw smoke off to their left included Nolan H. Potter, Richard C. Dodd, and Clemon E. Johnson.

  Simmons was quoted in his FBI report as seeing smoke near the Depository, yet he plainly stated later that it was in front of the Grassy Knoll fence. There is no mention of smoke in Dodd’s FBI report, yet in a later filmed interview, he said, “Smoke came from behind the hedge on the north side of the plaza.”

  In 1966 interviews in Dallas, both Walter L. Winborn and Thomas J. Murphy—who were among the railroad workers on the Triple Underpass—confirmed seeing smoke in the trees on the Grassy Knoll.

  It would be most interesting to talk to the other people who stood on the Triple Underpass that day. Perhaps they, too, saw the smoke, but such sighting was left out of their reports—if any report was made.

  Further corroboration of the smoke came well into the 1980s, when a frame from TV news film was analyzed by assassination researchers. NBC photographer Dave Weigman was riding in the seventh car in the motorcade. Hearing shots, Weigman started filming even before the firing stopped. He then jumped out of the convertible and ran up the Grassy Knoll with his camera still operating. Because of all this motion, his blurred and jerky film was overlooked as assassination evidence until recently. However, in one clear frame, which depicts the presidential limousine just entering the Triple Underpass, a puff of smoke is clearly visible hanging in front of trees on the knoll—exactly where Holland and the other railroad workers placed it.

  It has been well established that there was no other natural source of smoke in that area that day. FBI reports attempted to show that it might have come from police motorcycles but none were on the knoll at the time.

  Warren Commission apologists for years have tried to argue that modern rifles do not smoke. This is an error, since a recently oiled rifle or defective ammunition certainly can cause white smoke during firing. This was made clear to this author in the summer of 1978 when the House Select Committee on Assassinations fired rifles in Dealey Plaza in connection with their acoustical studies. Visible puffs of smoke were common.

  And considering the slightly gusting breeze from the north that day, the idea that smoke drifted over Elm Street from the knoll is highly plausible. It is now obvious that many people that day saw this puff of smoke drifting down from the knoll—also recall those witnesses who said they smelled gunpowder in the lower end of Dealey Plaza. However, it is equally obvious that the authorities, particularly the FBI and the Warren Commission, did not want to hear about it.

  Dallas policeman Earle Brown also smelled gunpowder although he was far from the Depository. Brown was standing on the catwalk of a railroad bridge crossing over Stemmons Freeway located just north of the Triple Underpass. Because of his location, Brown said he was unable to get a clear view of the motorcade. Brown said the first indication to him that something was wrong was when a large flock of pigeons suddenly flew up from a grassy low area between him and the underpass. He said, “They heard the shots before we did because I saw them flying up . . . then I heard these shots and then I smelled this gunpowder. . . . It come on . . . maybe a couple of minutes later.”

  Brown said the gunpowder smell seemed to come from the direction of the Depository. However, the Grassy Knoll was almost in a direct line between the officer and the Depository.

  Another railroad worker, Royce G. Skelton, supported the statements of Sheriff Decker and others who saw one of the first bullets strike the pavement near Kennedy’s car.

  In an affidavit signed the day of the assassination, Skelton stated:

  I was standing on top of the train trestle where it crosses Elm Street with Austin Miller. We saw the motorcade come around the corner and I heard something which I thought was fireworks. I saw something hit the pavement at the left rear of the [President’s] car, then the car got in the right-hand lane and I heard two more shots. I heard a woman [say] “Oh no” or something and grab a man inside the car. I then heard another shot and saw the bullet hit the pavement. The concrete was knocked to the south away from the car. It hit the pavement in the left or center lane.

  Austin Miller, standing next to Skelton on the Triple Underpass, also mentioned this errant bullet in his affidavit that day. Miller stated:

  I saw a convertible automobile turn west on Elm off Houston Street. It had [proceeded] about halfway from Houston Street to the Underpass when I heard what sounded like a shot [then in] a short second two more sharp reports. . . . One shot apparently hit the street past the car. I saw something
which I thought was smoke or steam coming from a group of trees north of Elm off the railroad tracks.

  If a bullet hit the street pavement, it certainly could not have been the one that passed through Kennedy and Connally as described by the Warren Commission and it was not the bullet that struck the Main Street curb wounding a bystander. But more than three shots would mean more than one assassin.

  The one assassination witness who singlehandedly caused more concern than anyone else within the 1963–1964 federal investigation was Jim Tague, the third man wounded in Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963.

  The Third Wounded Man

  James Thomas Tague, like Jean Hill and Mary Moorman, was not planning to see Kennedy. Shortly after noon that day, he had driven downtown to take a girlfriend (later his wife) to lunch.

  As Tague drove his car east on Commerce Street, he found himself stopped in the traffic that was halted at Houston Street due to the arrival of the presidential motorcade. The hood of his car was just poking out the east side of the Triple Underpass. Tague got out of his car and stood by the underpass on a small concrete median separating Commerce and Main to watch the motorcade.

  In an interview with this author, Tague said when the shots were fired, he immediately thought, “Who’s the nut throwing firecrackers?” However, after hearing more shots, he realized what was happening and ducked behind the corner of the underpass. He said the shots were coming from the area of the Grassy Knoll “behind the concrete monument.”

  Tague was watching a policeman run up the Grassy Knoll with a drawn pistol when another policeman came up to him asking, “What happened?” “I don’t know,” mumbled the shocked Tague.

  Dallas motorcycle patrolman Clyde A. Haygood had been riding back in the motorcade on Main Street approaching Main when he heard a shot, then a pause followed by two shots close together. He gunned his three-wheeled motorcycle up on Houston and turned on Elm in time to see people pointing toward the Grassy Knoll and the railroad yards.

  Haygood said he got off his cycle on Elm Street just below the Grassy Knoll and went up into the railroad yards but saw nothing suspicious despite quite a number of people in the area. He said he returned to his motorcycle after speaking to a man he believed to be a railroad detective.

  Haygood told the Warren Commission:

  At that time some people came up and started talking to me as to the shooting. . . . One came up . . . and said he had gotten hit by a piece of concrete or something, and he did have a slight cut on his right cheek, upper portion of his cheek just to the right of his nose.

  Haygood said just then another witness came up and told him the first shot had come from the Texas School Book Depository. Using the call number 142, Haygood radioed the police dispatcher and asked that the Depository be sealed off. He also mentioned a man who had been wounded by flying concrete.

  Tague and the policeman walked into the plaza a bit and encountered a man, who was sobbing, “His head exploded!” This man apparently was Charles Brehm.

  Moments later deputy sheriff Eddy R. Walthers arrived and, pointing to Tague, said, “You’ve got blood on your face.”

  In his report that day, Walthers, who was standing with the other deputies in front of the sheriff’s office, stated:

  I immediately went to the Triple Underpass on Elm Street in an effort to locate possible marks left by stray bullets. While I was looking for possible marks, some unknown person stated to me that something had hit his face while he was parked on Main Street. . . . Upon examining the curb and pavement in this vicinity I found where a bullet had splattered on the top edge of the curb on Main Street. . . . Due to the fact that the projectile struck so near the underpass, it was, in my opinion, probably the last shot that was fired and had apparently went high and above the President’s car.

  Tague said he called the Dallas FBI office later that afternoon, to tell them about the bullet striking the curb, but “they didn’t want my testimony about the stray bullet.” Apparently no one else wanted to hear about the extraneous bullet either. There was no mention of the incident in the news accounts at the time nor was there any investigation of the bullet mark on the curb until the summer of 1964.

  During late 1963 and early 1964, it was widely reported that the first shot struck Kennedy in the back, the second bullet hit Governor Connally, and the third was the fatal head shot. This was a consistent theory of three bullets. Tague’s story of yet another bullet was totally inconsistent with the lone-assassin/three-shot theory being formulated by the Warren Commission, which initially seemed prepared to ignore both Tague and the bullet mark on the curb.

  In fact, there may have been an effort to eliminate the evidence. In late May 1964, about a month before the Warren Commission finally talked to Tague, the car salesman took a camera to Dealey Plaza to photograph the mark on the curb. He was surprised to find that it was not there. Only faint traces of the bullet mark were found. Tague said it looked as if someone had tried to repair the curb.

  Apparently it was a letter from an assistant US attorney in Dallas that finally prompted the Warren Commission to confront the Tague wounding. Martha Joe Stroud mailed a letter to Commission general counsel J. Lee Rankin on June 9, 1964. In the letter was the comment:

  I am enclosing a photograph made by Tom Dillard of the Dallas Morning News. It is a shot of the curb which was taken shortly after the assassination on November 22, 1963. When I talked to Mr. Dillard yesterday he indicated he did not know whether the photograph was material. He did say, however, that he examined the curb when the photo was taken and that it looked like a piece of lead had struck it.

  Faced with this notification of the curb shot by a government official, the Commission was stirred to action. On July 7, 1964, the Warren Commission asked the FBI to look into the matter. In an FBI document dated July 17, the FBI stated, “The area on the curb [where the bullet or fragment hit] was carefully checked and it was ascertained there was no nick in the curb in the checked area, nor was any mark observed.”

  This FBI document attempted to explain the disappearance of a mark that had been plainly seen eight months earlier. It stated:

  It should be noted that, since this mark was observed on November 22, 1963, there have been numerous rains, which could have possibly washed away such a mark and also that the area is cleaned by a street cleaning machine about once a week, which could also wash away any such mark.

  But if the FBI could ignore the mark, the Commission could not. Since both a Dallas policeman and a sheriff’s deputy had mentioned Tague in their reports, although not by name, and after the arrival of Assistant US Attorney Stroud’s letter, his story could no longer be ignored.

  On July 23, 1964, Tague finally was deposed in Dallas by Commission attorney Wesley Liebeler.

  Following Tague’s testimony, the Commission again asked the bureau to investigate the matter. This time the FBI suddenly found the mark, removed the piece of curb in question and took it to Washington for analysis. In an August 12, 1964, report signed by J. Edgar Hoover, it was stated:

  Small foreign metal smears were found adhering to the curbing section within the area of the mark. These metal smears were spectrographically determined to be essentially lead with a trace of antimony. No copper was found. The lead could have originated from the lead core of a mutilated metal-jacketed bullet such as the type of bullet loaded into 6.5 millimeter Mannlicher-Carcano cartridges or from some other source having the same composition. . . . The absence of copper precludes the possibility that the mark on the curbing section was made by an unmutilated military-type full metal-jacketed bullet. . . . Further, the damage to the curbing would have been much more extensive if a rifle bullet had struck the curbing without first having struck some other object. Therefore, this mark could not have been made by the first impact of a high-velocity bullet.

  So the FBI, which at first had stated no bullet hit the curb, now said the mark had to have been made by a rifle bullet but not on first impact. If the FBI is correct�
��and keep in mind the many instances of misinformation and omission by the bureau regarding assassination evidence—the mark on the curb could only have been made by the lead fragment of a bullet.

  Yet the only one that could have lost such an amount of lead is the final head shot and that was at a location more than two hundred feet away, a considerable distance for a small fragment to travel and still impact the curb as described.

  If the bullet mark on the curb was a miss, it was an incredible miss. If the shot that struck the Main Street curb came from the Texas School Book Depository’s sixth floor, it must have missed Kennedy by thirty-three feet in the air and twenty-one feet to the right. Such a miss is hardly compatible with the claim that Oswald was able to hit home with two out of three shots with a misaligned scope on his inefficient rifle aiming at a target moving laterally and away from him at a distance of more than 265 feet.

  Another possibility, never considered by the Warren Commission, was that the mark was made by a lead bullet without copper jacketing. But of course, this would indicate different ammunition and perhaps a different rifle from the one allegedly used by Oswald. Or perhaps the curb was hit by a large fragment of bullet that had already struck the street (recall the witnesses who saw one do just that) and had separated from the copper jacket.

  Whatever the truth of the curb bullet and despite the attempt to ignore this evidence, the matter of the wounding of Tague was finally acknowledged and the Warren Commission was compelled to construct a scenario of the assassination that included the “single-bullet theory,” which postulates that one bullet caused seven wounds to Kennedy and Connally. This theory has not been accepted by a majority of Americans. More on that later.