Live by the Sword

by Gus Russo

  Sitzman’s recollections are bolstered by photos and films taken on that day. Just prior to the shooting, photos and films show a black man standing behind the wall, and a soda bottle placed on the wall. The bottle is missing in photos taken after the shooting. In a film taken by John Martin (and shown on the 1993 Frontline program), the bench, with a large paper sack on it, is clearly visible behind the wall. The black couple has never come forward, nor been identified.

  2. The Mechanics of the Shooting

  Regarding the mechanics of the shooting, and the question of whether it was possible for one person to accomplish the assassination as it occurred, another major consideration is timing. Using the Zapruder film as a clock, the question becomes: Could the rifle be fired three times in the amount of time allowed, causing all the wounds? Because 88 percent of those present heard three and only three shots, and because three spent shells were found near Oswald’s rifle, this hypothesis is necessary to drive home Oswald’s guilt.

  In using the Zapruder film as a clock, both the Warren Commission and the early critics made a serious misjudgment about timing that made the lone assassin theory just barely possible. In the film, the only obvious wound that can be precisely clocked is the final shot to JFK, the one causing the massive head wound. Five-point-six seconds prior to that, Kennedy disappeared behind a road sign unscathed. When he emerged, he had been shot through the back, with the spinal injury causing his arms to splay upwards in the “Thorburn” position.

  The Warren Commission decided that, if it could show the entire attack taking place within those 5.6 seconds, all three major wounds (Kennedy’s back, Connally’s back, Kennedy’s head) could conveniently jibe with the three known shots—consistent with Oswald’s culpability. The chief problem with this approach is the later determination that two of the major wounds were caused by just one bullet. Therefore, the shooter had to shoot just twice in 5.6 seconds. One shot obviously missed at a time that is impossible to determine.

  Still, for years, experts and amateurs debated whether anyone could score three separate hits in 5.6 seconds. They were trying to prove something that never happened. In their March 27, 1964 reconstruction of the shooting, the Warren Commission’s experts, using Oswald’s rifle, came close, but not close enough, to validating the mistaken hypothesis. Like Oswald, they achieved their best results in the seated position. Their results were as follows:

  3 experts achieved 2 hits in 5.6 seconds.

  3 experts achieved 2 hits in under 7 seconds.

  1 expert made 2 hits in 8.13 seconds.

  It was not until 1967, in a meticulous reconstruction commissioned by CBS News—it used a six-story tower and a moving target—that a number of experts achieved 3 hits in 5.6 seconds, with one scoring even better. (Using a rifle and ammunition virtually identical to Oswald’s, expert marksman Howard Donahue was, amazingly, able to score three hits in 4.8 seconds.)

  In 1968, Dr. John Lattimer, as well as his 14 and 17-year-old sons, were able to consistently score 3 hits (within 6 inches of the target) in 6.5 seconds. These tests were likewise meticulous reconstructions, using duplicate weaponry, and using three targets placed the appropriate distances between them. More importantly, they had no difficulty accurately shooting the weapon twice in under 5.6 seconds (the Warren Commission’s experts had long ago achieved the same result).

  By far the most impressive testing was performed in 1994 by independent researcher Todd Vaughn. Vaughn acquired rifle and ammunition of the same year and lot as Oswald’s, and proceeded to set up targets at the appropriate distances. In preparation, Vaughn dry-fired the weapon only a few times on the day he received it. Until the test was conducted a month and a half later, Vaughn did not touch the weapon again. Todd Vaughn had never received any formal firearms training, had never been in the military, had never worked a bolt-action weapon, and had never even fired a high-powered rifle before.

  On the day of the tests, Vaughn fired fourteen shots to make sure the rifle worked at all, and to familiarize himself with the scope. With his assistant’s digital stop watch at the ready, and with only ten minutes of practice with a high-powered, bolt-action rifle, Vaughn fired off four sets of three rapid-fire shots each, with the following results:

  First attempt: 3 hits in 6.29 seconds (not using scope)

  Second attempt 2 hits in 7.53 seconds (using scope)

  Third attempt 2 hits in 9.11 seconds (not using scope)

  Fourth attempt: 3 hits in 8.25 seconds (not using scope)

  Vaughn even attempted four rapid-fire shots, as some have mistakenly theorized Oswald pulled off. On that attempt, he was able to accomplish all four shots, with two hits, in 6.93 seconds.

  (When I later learned what Todd Vaughn accomplished, I recalled a meeting I had with a member of the Dallas Police Department. As we peered down from Oswald’s sixth floor perch, I informed the officer that I had never fired a rifle. He responded, “I could teach you to hit these shots in a half hour.”)

  In assessing all the above simulations, the key point is that at least once in every series of attempts, experts were able to achieve two hits in 5.6 seconds. For that timing to be the linchpin, one bullet must account for two sets of wounds—and it did.

  When first proposed by the Warren Commission, it was known as “The Single Bullet Theory.” With its verification by current, high-powered computer reconstructions, it should be called “The Single Bullet Fact.” In order to show that one bullet from Oswald’s perch struck both Kennedy and Connally, two key questions must be resolved:

  Is there a straight line of trajectory through both men’s wounds?

  Could one Mannlicher Carcano bullet cause so much damage and emerge in the condition of the bullet recovered at the hospital?

  The Trajectory

  Initially, critics of the single bullet theory (SBT) used sketches to “prove” that the wounds didn’t line up (see illustrations). These drawings, however, were absurdly over-simplified, and failed to take into account such not-so-minor details as the measurements of the limousine in which both men were seated, and the precise locations of the four entrance/exit wounds through the victims’ torsos. When these considerations were eventually taken into account, there was no question about what had occurred in Dealey Plaza. As Robert Groden, an assassination lecturer, has explained, “The effect of angle or trajectory can be easily manipulated or obscured.” 13

  First verified by the HSCA’s science experts in 1978, it is now a certainty that the bullet wounds through JFK’s back tracked backwards towards “Oswald’s perch” and forwards into Governor Connally. Starting in the 1980s, with the advent of computer modeling, the HSCA’s work has been verified on the three known occasions this technology has been brought to bear on the controversy. Unlike the critics’ sketches, these efforts utilized precise measurements taken from surveyors maps, the limousine’s blueprints, and all the information from available films and photos of the shooting.

  In truth, the first computer model (for the PBS science series “Nova” in 1988), was crude by today’s standards. It was unable to achieve an accurate overhead picture of the victims’ position at the time of the shot. However, it concluded that, contrary to the critics’ contentions, it was at least possible that they were indeed in line at the time of the shot.

  In 1993, a more powerful computer model was rendered for Court TV by Failure Analysis Associates, which specializes in computerized crime reconstructions for the legal profession. For the first time, the computer viewer was able to “fly over” the victims. It was clear that Kennedy and Connally were indeed in line for the shot, which tracked back to Oswald’s sixth floor lair in the Texas School Book Depository.

  Drawn without scientific basis, sketches such as the one below created the myth of the “magic bullet.”

  However, when the car blueprints, body sizes, surveyors’ maps, and exact measurements are considered, it is clear that Connally’s wounds track back through JFK to Lee Harvey Oswald’s perch in th
e Book Depository, as the Myers computer renderings clearly demonstrate.

  Computer modeling courtesy Dale Myers Animation.

  This previously unpublished photo of Kennedy’s limousine was taken the night of the assassination and shows the true relationship of Kennedy’s back seat and Connolly’s jump seat.

  By far the most sophisticated and impressive computer model was completed in 1995, after two years of work by Dale Myers of Microtech. In addition to verifying the work of his predecessors, Myers was further able to ask the computer to resolve the ultimate conspiratorial question: If all the hard evidence is forged, and if the torso wound trajectories went from front to rear, where would the shooter have to be located? Myers’ answer is that the driver of JFK’s own limousine would have had to stop the car, lay down in its floor-well, and shoot upwards through Connally.

  The still frames in the photo section are from Myers’ reconstruction. They show the true trajectory through the victims.

  The Condition of the Recovered Bullet

  Soon after the victims left the emergency rooms, a spent Mannlicher Carcano bullet was found on Governor Connally’s stretcher in Parkland Hospital. In 1964, FBI ballistics experts determined that this bullet, CE 399, and two large fragments recovered from another bullet, were indeed fired from Oswald’s Mannlicher Carcano, and could not have been fired by any other weapons. This conclusion was reached in two ways:

  1. Rifling. The interiors of all rifle barrels are etched lengthwise with grooves that twist to the right or left. These grooves, referred to as rifling, cause the bullet to spiral, or twist, thus increasing accuracy. Every rifle model has its own unique rifling, which makes its imprint on the exiting bullet. The patterns left on the stretcher bullet, and the other fragments large enough to study, clearly indicated that they emanated from a Mannlicher Carcano rifle.

  2. Microscopic etchings. Because rifle parts are not manufactured using identical molds, but with mechanical filings and carvings, each rifle has thousands of microscopic scars unique to itself. This is true of the bolt, hammer, interior of the barrel, and other metal parts. These scars become incontestably unique given every weapon’s peculiar history of cleanings, corrosion, and actual firing; they, in effect, are imprinted on bullets fired from the weapon. When these “fingerprints” from Oswald’s rifle were compared to those on the recovered bullet, there was a perfect match. Thus, the bullet came from the rifle clearly linked to Lee Harvey Oswald.

  According to the HSCA, it was “highly probable” that the elemental makeup of the stretcher bullet (already shown in 1964 to have come from Oswald’s rifle) was responsible for the bullet fragments left in Connally’s wrist. (The operative thesis is that one bullet traversed JFK’s neck, and entered Connally’s back, emerging from his chest, and leaving fragments in his wrist. The body of the bullet struck Connally’s thigh, later to fall down his pants leg onto his stretcher. As odd as this sounds to the layman, this type of multiple wounding is not uncommon to wartime MASH units, or to modern urban emergency room physicians.)

  The HSCA further determined that all the other recovered fragments originated from one, and only one, other bullet—one of whose fragments had enough rifling scars to prove it also came from Oswald’s rifle. (Using a technique known as neutron activation analysis, the HSCA received supporting testimony from Dr. Vincent Guinn, one of the country’s top experts in the field of neutron activation. Although at the time, Guinn would only use the words “highly probable,” he later published two articles in which he makes it clear that by “highly probable” he meant 99.99% probable.)14

  Although the bullet was now traced to the miniscule fragments in Connally, in a trajectory previously proven to have had JFK in its path, critics, most with no background in science, were unconvinced. Among other things, they pointed to the condition of the bullet itself, which has quite mistakenly been referred to as “pristine.” When photographed at one angle, the bullet indeed appears pristine. However, these photographs are intellectually dishonest. Massad Ayoob, a ballistics expert with American Handgunner magazine, has written of this bullet: “Turned over a quarter revolution, it is bent like a banana— consistent with passing through ribs [and] wristbones (at greatly reduced velocity by that time, which would also reduce deformation).”15

  The fact is that the metal-jacketed Mannlicher Carcano bullet has great “sectional density,” making it very hard to deform. This is especially true of a slowed-down bullet, whose speed was diminished from a muzzle velocity of 2,000 feet per second (fps) when it hit Kennedy’s back to 900 fps when it hit Connally’s wrist. The bullet’s nose appears unscathed because it tumbled (as designed) after it hit Kennedy, with its rear portion breaking Connally’s rib and radius bone (wrist). Ballistics and wound specialists have testified ad nauseum that a slowed down, metal-jacketed bullet could easily break two bones with its rear portion and end up looking the same as CE 399 did.

  In 1964, the FBI had little success in duplicating the bullet’s appearance when firing full velocity at cadaver bones. Critics trotted out the test photos, showing grossly deformed bullets that had struck bones at full velocity (and head-on) to demonstrate that they bore no resemblance to the “pristine” stretcher bullet. It was a dishonest analogy. However, it wasn’t until three decades later that experimenters finally demonstrated what ballistics experts had long known:

  In 1992, Failure Analysis Associates reduced the powder charge of a Mannlicher Carcano bullet in order to reduce its velocity. It was then fired through a cadaver wrist, breaking the radius bone. According to Dr. Martin Fackler, who conducted the tests, “The test bullet was non-deformed. It was not flattened in the least and had nowhere near the damage of CE 399.”16

  In 1994, Dr. John Lattimer went to great lengths to duplicate the murder conditions. In addition to using identical weaponry as Oswald, Lattimer slowed down his bullet by firing through pork muscle with the same dimensions as JFK’s neck. Twenty-four inches in front of that, Lattimer placed a rack of ribs (clothed like Connally), and a radius bone the size of Connally’s. When fired through all three targets, the recovered bullet emerged virtually identical to CE 399.17 At a later point, Lattimer actually went so far as to acquire two recently-deceased human cadavers with which to experiment Again, he achieved the same results.

  The Missed Shot

  If, in fact, two bullets caused all the wounds, what happened to the third shot heard by so many, and implied by the three spent cartridges found in the Depository? The simple answer is we will never know. However, the best evidence appears to reside once again in the clear print of the Zapruder film. At about frame Z 155, three occupants of the presidential limousine appear to suddenly react to some stimulus. Both JFK and his wife, as well as Connally, stop waving and turn quickly to their right. At the same time, a small girl who had been running on the sidewalk stops suddenly and turns away from the president’s car, which she was following, and looks back. She would later say that she stopped when she heard the first shot, and turned to look back at what she thought was the source of the shot, the Book Depository.

  If what the film seems to show—and the girl’s perceptions—are accurate, the first shot missed, with the next two commencing four to five seconds later. Why Oswald missed, and where the bullet ended up, are anyone’s guess (one possibility is suggested in the text). The bullet could have been deflected by a tree branch and buried itself in the turf, yet to be discovered by some lucky archeologist.

  The fact that the “single bullet theory” was initially proposed by now-Senator Arlen Spector, considered by some to be exceedingly arrogant, has made it harder for some to accept. It is a classic example of the maxim that sometimes one must accept the message, in spite of one’s feelings about the messenger. (No one is more upset than the author over the fact that Anita Hill’s basher-in-chief was correct about the single bullet, but in fact, he was.)

  Those critics who absolutely refuse to alter their views in light of the new scientific developments suffer fr
om what psychologists have alternately referred to as “groupthink,” or the “pathology of knowledge.”18 This phenomenon allows the critic, hyped-up by passion, paranoia, or greed, to fall back on any number of arguments in order to maintain his/her position. The most common methods consist of either finding inconsistencies in FBI “raw data” reports, or taking testimony far out of context.

  A good example is the way Constable Seymour Weitzman’s testimony has been treated. Anyone who has ever interviewed an FBI agent is aware that preliminary reports are just that—preliminary. They are not meant to be a show of proof for a courtroom. Weitzman, a knowledgeable gun enthusiast, was the official who discovered Oswald’s rifle on the sixth floor of the Depository. In his FBI summary interview, he described the rifle as a “Mauser bolt-action” type.

  But critics seized on this to show evidence of Oswald’s innocence. Of course, when a detailed briefing of Weitzman was undertaken, he made it clear that he was not describing the manufacturer of the rifle, only the generic bolt type. In fact, Weitzman was more correct than he may have known, for the Mannlicher Carcano company had licensed Mauser’s bolt assemblies from Mauser.

  The out-of-context approach is typified by an oft-cited Jack Ruby interview with Earl Warren. Ruby had begged Warren to bring him to Washington so he could feel free to talk about the “conspiracy.” Out of context, this is a bombshell. In context, it amounts to nothing. If one reads the entire interview, it quickly becomes apparent that Ruby was referring to a Dallas-based “conspiracy” to frame the Jews in the murder of JFK. Ruby wanted Warren to know that he knew nothing of a Jewish conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Because Warren had no such suspicions, he felt no need to bring the increasingly-delusional Ruby to Washington.