by Gus Russo
As stated, the doctors at Bethesda showed little interest in accurately measuring the entrance and exit points of the wound—they perceived their role as determining the cause of death, not the exact source of the cause of death. In doing so, the autopsies rendered a correct opinion: Kennedy died because part of his head was shot off. To learn about the direction of the shots, a better autopsy was needed but not administered. Once Kennedy was buried, the “best evidence” became the photos and x-rays of his wounds. Thus it fell to later scientific review, utilizing x-rays and photos of the deceased president (stored at the National Archives), to resolve the mystery. And it has been resolved.
Commencing with a 1967 report commissioned by then-Attorney General Ramsey Clark and continuing to the present time, many dozens of qualified experts have viewed the X-ray and photographic materials. Included among these experts are eminent forensic specialists, radiologists, pathologists, general practitioners, physics scholars, photo analysts, etc. Estimates by the National Archives place the total number of experts who have seen the material at over 150. Given their expertise, the fact that 99 percent of them agree on everything is conclusive. Among their findings:
All of the photographic and X-ray materials depict John F. Kennedy, and are authentic and unaltered.
The entrance and exit wounds are clearly defined and show that Kennedy was hit from behind, near his cowlick, with a large portion of the bullet exiting above his right temple.
The size of the entrance wound is consistent with Oswald’s ammunition.
Only one person who has viewed the material has stated a belief that these photographs are forgeries. Not coincidentally, this person has no photo analysis schooling, no medical expertise, and in fact no college education. He was allowed to view the material only because he was a member of the HSCA photo panel, a post given him because he was a well-known critic, and not because of his academic expertise. Among many observers, it is accepted fact that his appointment was viewed by the committee as an appeasement of the more vocal critics.
This same critic was largely responsible for the furor over the last key element of the head shot controversy—the Zapruder film, having displayed a bootlegged copy of the film on the conspiracy convention circuit.6 The bootlegged copies of the Zapruder film clearly show JFK’s head snapping backwards after being struck. It furnished proof that the shot came from the front—or so many of us thought. That conclusion, it turns out, suffers from two key errors:
On a clear, first-generation copy of the film—available at the time only to Congressional investigators—Kennedy’s head can be seen jerking forward before the back snap. In fact, one early critic, Josiah Thompson, perceived this forward motion when he was granted a rare viewing of the film at the National Archives. He mistakenly deduced that this demonstrated a rear shot, followed in one-eighteenth of a second by a frontal shot We shall see that there is a much more plausible explanation.
Few who saw the Zapruder film ever visited the scene of the crime. Upon visiting Dealey Plaza, it becomes instantly apparent that there is no available sniper’s nest in front of Kennedy from which a shot could be fired! (More on this in the trajectory discussion.)
If the shot originated from the rear, then why the backward snap? Every human instinct and experience tells us that the struck object should continue in the same direction as the projectile. How could Sir Isaac Newton have been wrong when he postulated as much in his second law of motion, describing the conservation of momentum? The answer is that our instincts are occasionally wrong, and Newton was postulating about solid objects, not a projectile piercing a thin shell of bone under pressure, which also involves the conservation of energy. Everything changes when these critical distinctions are taken into account. To be specific, one billiard ball striking another is not analogous to a bullet piercing a living human skull.
On numerous occasions, scientists have attempted to study this phenomenon. Every time the Kennedy assassination has been experimentally simulated, whether by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist (Luis Alvarez), a longtime Army wound ballistics specialist (Dr. John Lattimer), or the best scientific team that Congress could assemble, the results are the same: A bullet that cleanly enters a pressurized human skull produces minimal resistance—thus minimal forward momentum. This momentum is greatly overshadowed by what Alvarez referred to as the “jet effect.” When the bullet traverses the brain, it causes a pressure cavity to form behind the bullet. This pressure continues to build until the head literally explodes in all directions. The greatest mass of brain tissue exits in the area of least resistance—near the larger exit wound already created by the bullet. If that wound is in the front, then this escaping material rockets the head backwards. Thus, as Alvarez wrote in his 1976 paper, if one considers all the interacting forces—the bullet, the skull, and the pressurized brain—then both the laws of momentum and energy are taken into account.
Having concluded that the shots could indeed have come from the rear, it must be ascertained where exactly to the rear the shooter was located. Once again, when the best scientific minds are brought to bear on this question (on four occasions thus far), there is no controversy. Using powerful computers applied to the known surveys of the plaza and blueprints of the Presidential limousine, and merged with the position of the President as seen in the Zapruder film and other films and photographs, the wounds have been plotted through JFK’s body. The unanimous conclusion: The shots originated in the area of the southeast sixth floor window of the Texas School Book Depository, where Lee Harvey Oswald left so many traces of himself.
The first such study was the HSCA’s “trajectory study” (1978). This was followed by the studies rendered to video by the PBS science series “Nova” (1988), the tests of the legal profession’s preeminent crime reenactment firm, Failure Analysis Associates (1992), and the computer graphics rendering by Microtech Graphics & Animation (1995). Utilizing the most state-of-the-art equipment yet, Dale Myers’ work for Microtech is not only consistent with the previous studies, and is much more dramatic, but resolves virtually all the remaining nagging mysteries of Dealey Plaza.
Like the preceding studies, Myers’ work is conclusive that the wounds track back to the sixth floor window where Oswald’s prints and ammunition were found—just a few steps from where his rifle was stashed (and, lest we forget, from where Howard Brennan saw Oswald shoot). Myers’ work puts still another nail in the coffin of a sensational allegation, long dispensed with by noted ballistic and forensic scientists—the legend, or rather myth, of a shooter from the infamous “Grassy Knoll.”
The Myth of the Grassy Knoll Gunman
The oft-repeated belief in a shooter from the knoll (to the right of JFK) originated as a result of the following:
A. Three railroad workers standing on the overpass bridge thought they saw smoke rise from behind the fenced-in knoll area just after the shots—this area fences in a parking lot behind the knoll to the north.
B. Within minutes of the shooting, dozens of people followed a police officer up to the knoll and behind the fence.
C. Three witnesses who rushed the knoll talked of encountering mysterious “government agents” in that area, although government agencies readily admitted having none there.
D. A few earwitnesses (12 percent) believed one shot emanated from behind the knoll/fence area.
When these facets were added to the potentially misleading head snap depicted in the Zapruder film, the myth of the grassy knoll gunman took hold. Later information regarding the knoll would be developed, such as the acoustics tape already dealt with in the text, and impossibly blurred photos of the knoll which are too unconvincing to merit discussion. (The eyewitnesses’ accounts of the grassy knoll story are discussed in Appendix B.)
Taking these points in order:
A. The Smoke
Since the days of the Civil War, pistol and rifle ammunition has been smokeless when fired. (I was on hand for the filming of the 1991 film, “JFK,” where the smoke
on the knoll is seen rising. However, when it came time to film the scene, a number of rifles were trotted out, none of which emitted any smoke. Eventually, the special-effects team was brought in. Now the truth can be told: when the film audience sees the “smoke behind the fence” scene, what they are seeing are the effects of a production assistant kneeling behind the fence, armed with a smoke machine.
Other witnesses provide a plausible explanation for what was described: one said he saw smoke from a policeman’s motorcycle abandoned near the knoll; another saw smoke that he described as exhaust fumes emanating from the parking lot behind the fence; still another saw steam being vented from a steam pipe running along the fence (on which a police officer later burned his hand).
B. The Crowd on the Knoll
When those who ran up the hill are questioned (I have spoken to six of these witnesses), they have no explanation other than that they were merely following the person in front of them. Some have said that the area just appeared to be a logical place to check out, while others were looking for a place to hide. The vast majority of those charging the hill did so after motorcycle patrolman Bobby Hargis raced up to inspect the area. Therefore, they had reason to suspect something had happened there. However, Hargis told me that he went up there only because he deduced that there were just two places where the shooter could have been: the overpass near the knoll, or the Texas School Book Depository: in fact, he saw or heard nothing suspicious in the knoll area. As Hargis testified, “There wasn’t any way in the world I could tell where they [the shots] were coming from.” Nonetheless, it was Hargis’ curiosity that started a virtual stampede.
C. The Agents on the Knoll
Three of the eyewitnesses—Jean Hill, Malcolm Summers, and policeman Joe Marshall Smith—have told of encountering a government agent in the vicinity of the knoll. In fact, eyewitness Summers told me that his encounter was well in front of the white retaining wall in front of the knoll. Eyewitness Hill’s account, which has been exponentially and dramatically enhanced each year, is considered too inconsistent to merit discussion (the phenomena of Jean Hill and other questionable eyewitnesses is discussed in the following appendix).
By far the most serious account comes from policeman Smith, who had been directing traffic at the corner of Elm and Houston streets. After the shooting, a woman told Smith she believed the shots were coming from the bushes near the knoll. Smith then rushed to the parking lot behind the picket fence, where he inspected both the bushes and the parked cars. Smith, however, found nothing out of the ordinary. At one point, he stopped a man in a sports shirt who displayed Secret Service credentials. Smith had seen these Treasury Department credentials before and, recognizing them as authentic, left the man and continued his search of the area.
Years later, when all the federal protective agencies (including the Secret Service, which is a branch of the Treasury Department) were queried, they replied that they had placed no agents in the knoll area. This fueled speculation that impostors had shot the president from behind the grassy knoll. There is, however, another, more plausible explanation for Smith’s encounter with someone having Secret Service credentials.
Secret Service agent Mike Howard had been in charge of security for the Fort Worth leg of the JFK trip. As he told me in 1993, there was coincidentally a “grassy knoll” on the way to the Ft. Worth Airport. These kinds of topography were clear security risks, says Howard, who adds, “We placed two deputies there. This is routine. Sorrells [Forrest Sorrells, the Secret Service Agent in charge of the Dallas motorcade] did the same thing in Dallas.” Howard was told by the now deceased Sorrells that, like Howard, he had placed security people in all the obvious areas. Howard elaborated:
We deputized everybody we could get our hands on—including agents from ATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms], customs, border patrol, reserve police, deputy sheriffs, etc. The motorcade route in Dallas was crawling with these people, especially in Dealey Plaza and the overpass.7
Howard adds that many of these security reinforcements were technically off-duty, and wouldn’t appear on any “official” listing of posted officers. In addition, many of these agents had the standard ATF ID’s, which were virtually identical to Secret Service cards, both being issued by the Treasury Department. Compounding the confusion is the fact that the ATF and Secret Service were often perceived as interchangeable in 1963. Frank Ellsworth, a Dallas ATF agent at the time of the assassination, told me, “In 1963, if you would have asked me if I was a Secret Service agent, I most likely would have answered yes—our roles overlapped that much.”8 Robert Gemberling, the FBI agent in Dallas who investigated Oswald after his arrest, told me that he remembers being told that two Customs Agents who worked at the Post Office building across Dealey Plaza were, in fact, spending their lunch break helping with security in the knoll area. Gemberling says he was informed by an assassination researcher that the two agents have in fact been identified.9
Finally, the grassy knoll shooter is in and of itself illogical, given: 1) the available sight lines of a potential grassy knoll shooter, and 2) the absurdity of an assassin choosing a spot within ten feet of potential witnesses—who never saw or heard the killer.
D. The Sight Lines
When one first stands behind the picket fence, he/she is struck by a number of sensations. First, there is no clear shot at the middle lane of Elm street until the instant of the head shot, allowing for no earlier shots or tracking of the moving target. It turns out that the intended victim is obscured by road signs and a white retaining wall about ten feet in front of the fence.
An even more compelling problem was driven home during the filming of “JFK.” I was fortunate to be able to stand near the camera as this scene was reenacted. With the street crowd added as it appeared on the day of the shooting, it became clear that, insofar as the first two shots are concerned, a grassy knoll shot was also obstructed by the crowd that lined the sidewalk. The assassin would thus had to shoot through the white wall, the road signs, and bystanders to get to the president. If the assassin shot Kennedy in the head, he had to shoot in the first second the car emerged from behind the retaining wall, again past (or through) the heads of spectators.
Standing behind the picket fence, it is also apparent that if the shot were from the front, then it couldn’t have originated behind the fence: the fence is at a 90 degree angle to Kennedy’s head—tilted 34 degrees left of center when hit—at the time the president was struck. A virtual broadside hit. Such a shot would not have forced JFK’s head forward or backward, but side to side, with the bullet exiting near Kennedy’s left ear, hitting Jackie. Of course, none of this happened.
In Dale Myers’ meticulous reconstruction of the event, he asked the computer to draw a line from low in the back of Kennedy’s head—where some have erroneously stated a wound existed—to the wound in the right temple area. Giving the front-shooter theorists the benefit of the doubt, and negating all the autopsy X-rays and photos, Myers then followed the line forward to determine where such a shooter had to be located. It turns out that if the shooter were in front of Kennedy, in a line with his wounds and front-to-back axis of movement, the assailant could only be in one place: thirty feet in the air above the southernmost point of the railroad overpass. This, of course, also never happened.
Finally, would a shooter place him/herself so perilously close to witnesses? It is well-known that there were three men on the knoll steps, barely twenty feet below the fence, between a potential shooter and JFK. It is also well-known that Abraham Zapruder stood filming the presidential motorcade about the same distance to the east of the fence. But there were spectators even closer to the fence, according to Marilyn Sitzman, Zapruder’s secretary, who held his legs steady as he filmed standing atop the white pergola. From at least 1966, when she was first asked, until her death in 1993, Sitzman told a consistent story that renders the idea of a grassy knoll shooter even more implausible.
“I tried to tell that [writer] Mark La
ne when he interviewed me in 1966, but he didn’t want to hear about it,” Sitzman told me in 1992, 10 months before her death.10 What she was trying to tell Lane, she also told me, as well as writer Josiah Thompson: on November 22, 1963, between the picket fence and the retaining wall, there was a bench on which a young couple sat watching the motorcade. That bench has not been there for many years, and is a fact not known by most grassy knoll theorists. As Sitzman told Thompson:
There was a colored couple. I figured they were between 18 and 21, a boy and a girl sitting on a bench. . . between that [concrete slab] and the wooden fence. . . They were eating their lunch, because they had little lunch sacks, and they were drinking Coke. The main reason I remember them is that, after the last shot, I recall hearing—I heard a crash of glass, and I looked over there, and the kids had thrown down their Coke bottles, just threw them down and started running towards the back. . . The pop bottle crashing was much louder than the shots were.11
In still photographs taken from the corner of Elm and Houston, some fifty yards away, the young black man appears as a blurry figure behind the wall.12 Unbeknownst to him, this photo would give him a kind of infamy among conspiracy theorists as the mysterious “black dog man.”
Sitzman further told me emphatically that there was no one shooting in the area of the fence. “That’s absurd. I was only a few feet away, and I didn’t hear or see anything suspicious,” said Sitzman. “And that black couple was only a couple feet in front of the fence, and what did they do after the shooting but run behind the fence. Would they run right to the shooter?” And would the shooter post himself a mere five feet behind them?
