Crossfire

by Jim Marrs

  Many of the researchers watching the televised hearings felt the testimony was orchestrated and that it followed carefully selected lines of interrogation. This perception prompted a group of researchers who had formed an Assassination Information Bureau to comment:

  [There was] no one to remind the on-looking press and the nation that Blakey’s case against Oswald looks as good as it does primarily because no one with equal staff, budget and time has had the opportunity to take it in hand, pull open its seams and show the world what it is really made of. Blakey and the Committee may at the moment enjoy a certain sense of victory, but their decision to shut down the other side’s chances at rebuttal and rejoinder will eventually work against the credibility of their results. Another one-sided trial of an undefended Oswald is not what the people paid $6 million to see.

  The committee also failed to mention the amount of medical evidence that is still missing.

  And—more ominously—some material given to the committee also turned up missing. FOX News commentator Bill O’Reilly in 1963 was a news reporter for WFAA-TV in Dallas. He recalled:

  A guy who was [in Dealey Plaza] at the time watching the motorcade. His son found [a bullet]. I can’t remember his name. . . . But he wanted to remain anonymous. . . . He gave me this little cylinder. He said that his son had found it on the ground that day. . . . It was definitely a slug. And the guy said he definitely dug it out of there. . . . It was something I came across and held. And then when the Committee started, I handed it over to Gaeton [Fonzi], . . . and I don’t think anything ever came of it. It was a pistol slug, I’m pretty sure. But again, I’m not positive. . . . But again I am no ballistics expert so it could have been a rifle slug.

  Fonzi recalled getting the slug from O’Reilly. He said, “I wound up with the slug just prior to going with the Committee. I gave the slug to the chief investigator, Cliff Fenton, with the Committee and never heard any more of it. I kept asking Cliff whether he turned it over for analysis or what he did with it. I kept getting noncommittal answers.”

  Asked about the slug in 1982, Fenton said, “I don’t know nothing about that. The best thing I can tell you is to talk to Rep. Stokes. I don’t make any comment on the Assassinations Committee. . . . You got to forgive me for that but that’s the way I am.”

  As the committee closed its public hearings and moved toward presenting its final report in the late fall of 1978, it was apparent that its findings in regard to the JFK assassination would parallel those of the Warren Commission—that Kennedy had been killed by two bullets fired by Lee Harvey Oswald from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and that Oswald had acted alone.

  But then Blakey—who had carefully restricted the JFK assassination investigation to simply a reevaluation of previous evidence—was hoisted on his own petard.

  Two separate scientific studies of a Dallas police radio recording revealed evidence that more than one gunman fired on Kennedy in Dallas.

  The Dallas Police Radio Recording

  Even before asking for more funding in March 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations already had uncovered a bombshell in the JFK investigation.

  Sophisticated scientific acoustical studies of a Dallas police radio recording indicated that more than one assassin was involved in Kennedy’s death. This evidence, which prompted immediate controversy, destroyed the Warren Commission’s theory of a lone gunman and forced the Assassinations Committee to completely reverse its findings at the last moment.

  The episode began with an event very familiar to serious assassination researchers—an eight-minute “gap” in Dallas police radio broadcasts during the assassination gunfire.

  Apparently a Dallas policeman—a motorcycle officer by the sound of a nearby motorcycle engine—opened his microphone about two minutes before the shooting started and left it open for about eight minutes.

  In late 1976, Gary Mack, today curator of the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, obtained a copy of the Dallas police radio recording in the belief that the open microphone had been in Dealey Plaza. He began studying it for sounds of gunfire. He reasoned that if the microphone was indeed open in Dealey Plaza, it must have picked up the sounds of the shots.

  By September 1977, he had enhanced the quality of the tape and concluded that the recording indicated as many as seven shots.

  Mack obtained a copy of the tape closer to the original. He explained, “Finding the precise location of the shots, then, was easy and [after filtering out much of the motorcycle engine noise] we heard the first shot . . . a very loud, sharp crack immediately following some conversation between two policemen.”

  The existence of the police recording became known to the Assassinations Committee, which then obtained what was thought to be the original recording from a retired Dallas police lieutenant.

  This original recording—termed a Dictabelt—was turned over to the acoustics firm of Bolt, Beranek & Newman Inc. for sophisticated scientific tests. Dr. James Barger, the firm’s chief scientist, converted the sounds on the tape into digitized waveforms to produce a visual picture. The study also looked into “sequence of impulses,” which could differentiate sharp, loud noises such as gunshots from subsequent echoes. Barger determined there were at least six such impulses and asked for further tests, including an on-site test in Dealey Plaza.

  By summer 1978, Blakey was aware that the acoustical scientists supported Mack’s contention that the tape showed gunfire from more than one location. In fact, during their public testimony, the acoustical scientists stated that there were as many as nine sounds on the Dallas recording that could not be ruled out as gunshots.

  But after the Dealey Plaza testing from two locations, they could confirm only four shots—at least one from the Grassy Knoll.

  Additionally, the tape showed that one shot came only 1.6 seconds behind another. Since the FBI had carefully determined that it required at least 2.3 seconds to cock and fire the Carcano rifle twice, this was further evidence of more than one assassin.

  Blakey shocked committee members with this information, and staff members began to reconsider their conclusions—but not until after the police tape was turned over to yet another team of acoustical scientists for a second opinion. Blakey wrote, “It was deemed judicious to seek an independent review of Barger’s analysis before proceeding with the acoustical reconstruction.”

  The tape was then studied by Professor Mark Weiss of Queen’s College of the City University of New York and his associate, Ernest Aschkenasy. Weiss and Aschkenasy agreed with Barger’s findings and also encouraged on-site testing. The idea was to create computerized graphic pictures of the sound patterns of rifle shots in Dealey Plaza and to match them against the patterns discovered in the police recording.

  Beginning at dawn on Sunday, August 20, 1978, three Dallas police sharpshooters fired a total of fifty-six live bullets into three piles of sandbags located along the motorcade route on Elm Street. Rifles were fired from two locations—the southeast comer of the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and from behind the wooden picket fence on the Grassy Knoll.

  Interestingly, a .38-caliber pistol also was fired from the knoll, leading many researchers to speculate that the committee must have received information leading them to believe a pistol may have been used in the assassination. However, at the time no one could explain why the pistol was test fired. Dallas police commented they were unaware of the committee’s desire to test fire the pistol until the day before the tests.

  It also should be noted that two of the three piles of sandbags were located in the middle lane of Elm Street, exactly where films show the presidential limousine. However, one pile—apparently representing one of the early shots—was located in the far left lane. Asked why it was in this location, Dallas police sharpshooter Jerry Compton, positioned in the Depository, said he could not get a line of sight on the bags when it was in the center lane due to intervening tree branches.

  Less than a year before thes
e tests, a film crew had worked in Dealey Plaza producing a network movie titled The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald. The tree that prevented a line of sight between the sixth-floor Depository window and the location of the first shot had been pruned back to its 1963 size, based on photographs taken the day of the assassination. Compton’s inability to fire at the center lane because of the obstructing tree supported researchers who had long claimed that a gunman on the Depository’s sixth floor would have no unobstructed line of sight to this location.

  As the police marksmen fired their weapons, a line of microphones was moved along the motorcade route recording 432 impulses or “acoustical fingerprints.”

  Later, matching up the tape sounds with the test sounds, two of the six possible shots were ruled out as having been fired from the Depository or the knoll—leaving the possibility that shots came from other locations.

  This still left four sounds that did match.

  After refining their acoustical tests, Weiss and Aschkenasy concluded, “With a certainty factor of 95 percent or better, there was a shot fired at the presidential limousine from the Grassy Knoll.”

  Barger agreed with this assessment and added that sound from the knoll was preceded by an N-wave, or supersonic shock wave, proving that the sound was that of a rifle bullet, which is a supersonic missile.

  The House committee studied photographs taken on November 22, 1963, as well as Dallas police assignments and concluded that the microphone that recorded the shots was on the motorcycle of Patrolman H. B. McLain.

  McLain testified his was the first motorcycle to the left of Vice President Johnson’s car. He acknowledged that his motorcycle was in the correct location to record the shots, based on the acoustical studies, and that his microphone often got stuck in the “on” position.

  However, a week after the committee was disbanded, McLain suddenly reversed his position, claiming it could not have been his microphone that relayed the sounds. Stating that he had accompanied the presidential limousine to Parkland Hospital, McLain told news reporters, “That wasn’t my motorcycle. There would have been a siren on that Channel 1 all the way to the hospital. Everybody had their sirens on . . . you would have heard that on Channel 1.” McLain said he came to this conclusion belatedly because when he testified to the committee, he had not listened to the police recording. To complicate matters, an assassination photograph showed McLain had lagged behind and was still in Dealey Plaza after the presidential limousine raced off.

  But McLain’s criticism of these findings was just the beginning of a controversy over the acoustical studies and their conclusions. Not long after the committee issued its report citing at least four shots at Kennedy, the FBI publicly disputed the acoustical studies. In news stories carried nationwide, the bureau stated that the findings of the acoustical scientists and the committee were “invalid.” This announcement prompted Blakey to term the FBI report “a sophomoric analysis . . . superficial, shoddy and shot full of holes.”

  And the controversy continued.

  At the request of the Justice Department—parent agency of the FBI—the National Science Foundation authorized a $23,360 study of the acoustical evidence by a National Academy of Sciences panel headed by Harvard University physics professor Norman S. Ramsey.

  The Ramsey panel, as it came to be called, decided on the basis of apparent sounds from police Channel 2 (the motorcade security channel) being found on Channel 1 (the regular police channel) that such “cross talk” meant the police recordings were unreliable. Ramsey’s Committee on Ballistic Acoustics concluded, “The acoustic analyses do not demonstrate that there was a Grassy Knoll shot . . . [and] do not support a conclusion that there was a second gunman.”

  However, in the months following the Ramsey panel’s announcement, its findings were called into question by researcher Gary Mack, the originator of the recording study, who pointed out that Ramsey had based his studies on problems involving the automatic gain control (AGC), a system to equalize the volume of a radio receiver. Dallas police Channel 1 had no AGC circuitry at that time, Mack pointed out. Two members of Ramsey’s panel admitted that if there was no AGC in the Dallas police radios, their analysis of the tapes would have to be redone.

  Well into the mid-1980s the controversy over the acoustical tests continued, with one expert challenging another expert and one technical argument being resolved only to find yet another waiting. A 2001 peer-reviewed article in Science and Justice, a quarterly publication of Britain’s Forensic Science Society, claimed the Ramsey panel study was seriously flawed. The author of the article, D. B. Thomas, a government scientist and JFK assassination researcher, said his study proved there was a shot from the Grassy Knoll in addition to three shots from the Depository. HSCA chief counsel Blakey said Thomas’s work proved a shot from a second gunman on the knoll. “We thought there was a 95 percent chance it was a shot. He puts it at 96.3 percent. Either way, that’s beyond a reasonable doubt,” Blakey commented.

  Keep in mind that there is now evidence to suggest that the Dallas police recordings may have been edited or otherwise altered while in the hands of federal authorities in the days following the assassination. If the tapes were altered, then the entire acoustical controversy has to go back to square one.

  Despite the continuing controversy, the acoustical evidence prompted a complete turnabout in the official version of the JFK assassination.

  The House Select Committee on Assassinations issued a preliminary report on December 30, 1978.

  Out of time and money, but faced with the acoustical test results, it could conclude only that President John F. Kennedy “was probably assassinated as a result of a conspiracy” but that the committee was “unable to identify the other gunman or the extent of the conspiracy.”

  Under Blakey, the committee had gone right to the finish trying to find Oswald the lone assassin. Then at the eleventh hour, they were forced to conclude that at least two assassins were involved.

  Conspiracy advocates were greatly pleased with this substantiation of more than one gunman in the Kennedy murder. Others were not so impressed.

  Warren Commission attorney David Belin argued, “Congress is just plain wrong. There was no second gunman firing from the Grassy Knoll. I’ve seen lots of expert testimony where people differ.” Oswald’s mother, Marguerite, commented, “The select committee has done its work, tried hard, they are men of integrity, but they made the same mistake as the Warren Commission. My late son, Lee Harvey Oswald, was framed for the murder of President Kennedy.”

  So the controversy over President Kennedy’s assassination, far from being settled by the House committee, continued anew. Only this time, researchers and critics of the Warren Commission had gained new ammunition through information gained by the committee, and they were now supported in their conspiracy theories by a governmental body.

  Even after the committee had concluded its work, controversy about its operation continued. Five months later, Robert Groden, who had served as staff photographic consultant to the HSCA, told the news media the committee had pulled its punches:

  The direction of the entire House Assassinations Committee rested on one piece of evidence from the beginning—the autopsy photographs. And, from the beginning until the introduction of the acoustical evidence, the autopsy panel assumed the autopsy evidence was genuine. I was not allowed to study the autopsy photographs until December [1978—less than a month before the committee disbanded] and when I did study them, I found at least two were phonies, which can be proved to any reasonable person.

  Groden’s charge has now been substantiated by autopsy photographer Floyd Rebe and by several of the Dallas doctors who worked to save President Kennedy’s life. Interviewed by the Baltimore Sun in 1979, the Dallas physicians unanimously agreed that the photograph the House Committee made public was not remotely like the wounds they saw in 1963.

  Veteran newsman Seth Kantor, who, because of his years working in both Dallas and Fort Worth prior to and during the a
ssassination, may be one of the most knowledgeable media persons on that event, told this author the entire House committee episode was “strange and unusual”:

  The Committee tried to play to Congress . . . by not touching certain bases because certain congressmen didn’t want it. . . . The original chairman [Downing] was about to retire . . . the committee was loaded with second-echelon House members, not leadership quality and with not much clout. . . . When Blakey came in, he wiped out the leadership of the [committee’s] staff and the new people that came in had to start from square one. The investigators sent to Dallas had no working knowledge of the case. . . . My biggest grievance with the committee is that they did not investigate the Dallas police force. Blakey said he had no mandate to investigate the Dallas police. More than half the life of the committee was frittered away.

  Many researchers’ view of the committee’s work was summed up by Groden, who wrote:

  In the end, the Committee consumed millions of dollars and accomplished little. The Select Committee never did the simple things required to get to the truth. Reluctantly, the committee identified the existence of a “conspiracy” in the Kennedy and King assassinations. But the admission of “conspiracy” was a small breakthrough—the public had suspected it for years. The real truth about who was behind the conspiracies was left undisturbed.

  Having totally reversed the government’s view of the JFK assassination by stating publicly that a conspiracy “probably” resulted in Kennedy’s death and that at least two gunmen fired at the president, chief counsel Blakey, writing in an introduction to the committee’s report, noted, “Realizing that there would be an opportunity for others to fill in the details—that there might be indictments and trials as a result of future investigation—we decided to present an understated case. We chose a cautious approach.”