Reclaiming History

by Vincent Bugliosi

  *Is there any inconsistency between Oswald being calm in front of Baker, yet, as we saw earlier, somewhat frantic at the Russian and Cuban consulates in Mexico City when he couldn’t get his visa to Moscow and an in-transit visa to Cuba? No. Being stopped by a police officer moments after killing the president of the United States is a real crisis, and one that can’t be compared with having your request for a visa turned down, which is not a crisis situation at all, only one that induces anger and disappointment. Moreover, this ability to be calm in a crisis frequently exists in the very people you wouldn’t expect to be that way—excitable and high-strung people.

  † Even in the Marines back in 1959, Lieutenant John Donovan, Oswald’s superior in the Air Control Squadron in Santa Ana, California, noticed that in his job in front of the radar screen as a “radar plotter,” Oswald appeared to be “very cool and deliberate under periods of tension.” He said that emergency conditions (referred to as “May Day”) discovered by radar plotters would arise, and that “on at least one occasion [which was] identified as an emergency,” Oswald responded in a “matter-of-fact voice, did not get excited, and did the right thing at the right time.” (CD 87, pp.2–3, Secret Service interview of John Donovan on December 4, 1963)

  *Although the evidence is overwhelming that Oswald was a very independent person who disliked being led by others, at the heart of the conspiracy lore is the belief that he was the opposite and was used by the true conspirators in the assassination. New Orleans district attorney Jim Garrison, saying what most conspiracy theorists say, told an interviewer that Oswald “was influenced and manipulated rather easily by his older and more sophisticated superiors in the conspiracy” (“Playboy Interview: Jim Garrison,” p.163).

  † That Oswald was a “patsy” is one of the most widely accepted and popular of all conspiracy dogma. But at least one conspiracy theorist elevated the patsy argument to a new level, believing that the CIA used drugs, hypnosis, and mind control to program Oswald to kill Kennedy, Oswald being completely unaware he was a Manchurian candidate (Leonard, Perfect Assassin, pp.1–2, 17, 21).

  *I guess one could make the argument that if Oswald truly was completely unaware that Kennedy was to be murdered, and was a completely unwitting patsy, the conspirators wouldn’t have had any reason thereafter to have Ruby “silence” Oswald, as conspiracists believe. But the conspiracy community also believes that Oswald had been associated with those who set him up, like David Ferrie and Clay Shaw, so that his connection with Kennedy’s killers would alone be enough to silence him.

  *Though usually referred to as a picket fence, technically the structure is not a picket fence. As Gary Mack, curator of the Sixth Floor Museum since 1994, points out, “In a picket fence, the wooden slats are not touching each other across the width of the fence. Here, they are. The fence is more properly referred to as a stockade fence” (Telephone interview of Gary Mack by author on August 18, 2005). However, in this book, since the term picket fence is the one that nearly all Americans know the fence by, I will use the terms picket and stockade fence interchangeably.

  The picket (stockade) fence is five feet high (5 HSCA 603). Starting near the northeast tip of the Triple Underpass, the fence, which has been called “the most famous fence in the world,” runs in an easterly direction parallel to Elm Street for around 125 feet and then turns in a northerly direction for around 40 feet. When I spoke to Mack in 1999, he said that “the original fence—as far as the metal posts, brackets, and hardware, such as clamps and cross-bars—is still there, but the pickets, the wood, have been replaced many, many times” (Telephone interview of Gary Mack by author on December 17, 1999). The next year the fence was torn down (because of considerable deterioration) and replaced by the present replica fence.

  *Surprisingly, although we have the testimony of many Dealey Plaza witnesses that it was their opinion, based on their auditory senses, that the shots came from the Book Depository Building, grassy knoll, or some other direction, we have virtually no photographic evidence capturing their bodies responding to their minds’ message as to the origin of the shots. One exception is arguably the most famous Dealey Plaza photograph taken, by AP photographer James Altgens around the time of the second shot. As can be seen in the photo section, Secret Service agents on the right running board of the follow-up car to the presidential limousine, as well as several of the spectators on the north side of Elm Street, are seen looking backward, indicating a shot from the rear.

  *I’m not a hunter, but more than one whom I have asked has told me that if there are several people out in the forest and there’s a sudden gunshot, it’s very common for them to have diverging opinions as to the direction the shot came from.

  *Thompson noted that 10 witnesses heard “two or three” shots and 5 heard “three or four shots.” When Thompson included these 15 witness reports under “three shots,” he calculated a total of 88 percent; excluding all of these reports yielded a figure of 79 percent. Thompson split the difference and reported a figure of 83.4 percent hearing three shots. (Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas, p.23 footnote)

  † In the HSCA study, “7 other witnesses reported [hearing] 1, 4–5, 5, 6 or 8 shots” (2 HSCA 122).

  *Although a railroad spur of the Union Terminal Railroad Company ran in a southwesterly, diagonal position across the “railroad yards” behind the fence, this area was used as a lot for cars, which parked on both sides of the spur.

  † Warren Commission witness S. M. Holland told the Warren Commission he saw “about a hundred foot tracks” just behind the picket fence (6 H 246), and told author Josiah Thompson he saw “four to five hundred footprints” there (Thompson, Six Seconds in Dallas, p.122). Between Holland’s observation (which is ludicrous on its face, and he is the only witness who ever said he saw any footprints right behind the picket fence) and Boone’s observation, the latter should have far more credibility.

  *In the December 1994 issue of Vanity Fair, conspiracy theorists Anthony and Robbyn Summers wrote, “We now have an FBI report revealing that at 7:30 on the morning after the assassination, ‘a snub nose thirty eight caliber Smith and Wesson, Serial Number 893265, with the word “England” on the cylinder was found…in a brown paper sack in the general area of where the assassination took place.’ It is a scandal that the public had to wait 30 years to learn that a second gun was found at the scene of the crime” (Summers and Summers, “Ghosts of November,” p.100). But the FBI report on the recovered revolver contains information the Summers didn’t tell their readers: “On 11-23-63, Patrolman J. Raz brought into the Homicide and Robbery Bureau, Dallas PD, a brown paper sack which contained a snub-nosed .38 caliber Smith & Wesson, SN 893265. This gun had the word ‘England’ on the cylinder and had been found at approximately 7:30 A.M. in a brown paper sack, together with an apple and an orange, near the curb at the corner of Ross and Lamar Streets and was turned in by one Willie Flat, white male, 9221 Metz Drive, employed at 4770 Memphis, to the Dallas PD” (FBI Record 124-10005-10210, November 25, 1963). The corner of Ross and Lamar streets is about five blocks northeast of the Book Depository Building and Dealey Plaza, hardly “the scene of the crime.”

  *Author Larry M. Sturdivan explained the absence of this evidence in his pithy observation that “nonevents leave no evidence” (Sturdivan, JFK Myths, p.249).

  *As Dr. Cyril Wecht, the most prominent medical doctor for the conspiracy theorists, told me, “Whichever direction the bullet was traveling in, it passed through soft tissue. There was no bony or cartilaginous damage in the neck and throat area of the president” (Telephone interview of Dr. Cyril Wecht by author on December 14, 1999). At the trial in London, Wecht testified that the bullet “did not strike any dense bone. There was nothing to deflect it whatsoever. Nothing to alter its path. When it exited from the front of the president’s throat, it would have continued on a straight line” (Transcript of On Trial, July 25, 1986, p.728; see also Wecht’s testimony before the HSCA, 1 HSCA 344).

  † Not only didn’t any
bullet hit anyone on the south side of Elm Street, but no one reported hearing the sound of any bullet passing by. If the speed of the alleged bullet from the grassy knoll area were faster than the speed of sound (around 1,100 feet per second)—for instance, the Carcano bullet traveled in excess of 2,000 feet per second—this supersonic speed would have caused a “high-pitched sonic cracking sound” (not the report of the weapon being fired) as it passed by people on the north and south sides of Elm Street, which would not be loud but “clearly audible.” Even a subsonic speeding bullet causes a lesser sound called a “ballistic wind” due to the movement of air being displaced by the traveling bullet, which would also have been audible to someone whom the bullet passed by. (Telephone interview of LAPD firearms expert by author on August 26, 2002)

  *He wasn’t, for example, like John Hinckley, who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981. Hinckley shot at Reagan in plain view of many witnesses and made no attempt to escape.

  † Since your location would immediately expose you as the assassin, the great likelihood is that you wouldn’t be able to escape from the building. The considerable number of law enforcement personnel in Dealey Plaza would immediately surround the building and it would be sealed off before you could get from the sixth floor down to the ground level to escape from the building.

  *Dr. Wecht’s consistent disagreements with the other forensic pathology panel members was such that in its final report, the HSCA was constrained to say that “in all references to conclusions of the [forensic pathology] panel, unless it is specifically stated that it was unanimous, it should be assumed that Dr. Wecht dissented” (HSCA Report, p.43 note). In a parting shot to his colleagues on the panel, Wecht wrote to G. Robert Blakey, the HSCA’s chief counsel, that “I do not intend to sign the final report of the Forensic Pathology Panel.” After setting forth a litany of disagreements with his colleagues on the panel, he closed by saying, “Serving as a member of the HSCA’s Forensic Pathology Panel has not been a pleasant or satisfying experience for me, and I continue to be disgusted and appalled at the manner in which this entire matter has been handled. I believe that the record will clearly show the partisan bias of the members of the House Committee, staff (with individual exceptions), and the Forensic Pathology Panel. I plan to continue my criticisms of the original Warren Commission Report and all the subsequent sycophantic reports that have followed under the imprimatur of the Federal Government.” (HSCA Record 180-10109-10256, Letter from Dr. Cyril Wecht to G. Robert Blakey, December 15, 1978, pp.1–4)

  One of the panel members, Dade County (Miami, Florida) medical examiner Dr. Joseph H. Davis, wrote Wecht a personal letter expressing his umbrage at Wecht’s suggestion that he had not been impartial in his findings. “Most assuredly,” Davis wrote, “if I felt there to be a preponderance of scientific evidence to support your conclusions, I would have so stated. The X-rays, photographs and other relevant evidence furnished to the panel cannot be interpreted by me as supportive of your conclusion.” Davis went on to say that Wecht’s suggestion that he had not been impartial, an absolute requisite of all scientific professions, was “a libelous attack most unworthy of our profession.” (Letter from Dr. Joseph H. Davis to Dr. Cyril Wecht, October 30, 1978, pp.1–2)

  *But Wecht added that based on the trajectory of that bullet through the president’s body, it could not have been fired from as high up as the sniper’s nest on the sixth floor of the Depository Building. It had to be from a lower floor, and possibly from the Dal-Tex Building. This latter observation was not a new one for Dr. Wecht; he has maintained this for years. See earlier text.

  † On cross-examination of Dr. Wecht at the trial in London, I made the point about the utter improbability of synchronized shots. If there were synchronized shots, the two shooters would have had to know, in advance, that the presidential limousine would be passing within their cross-hairs at the agreed-upon time, which they could never know (i.e., at the agreed upon time, the limo could have been on Main or Houston, or past Elm onto the Stemmons Freeway). Even if they were to have this unachievable foreknowledge, there would virtually be no way for the two shooters, in different locations, to fire at the same, precise time. Since a gunman can’t look at his watch and fire simultaneously, a watch would literally have to somehow be attached to the cross-hairs. To add to the extreme improbability of such an occurrence, the shot from the grassy knoll would have to have hit Kennedy’s head at the precise point where the bullet from behind was exiting. (Transcript of On Trial, July 25, 1986, pp.778–780)

  *The terms parking lot and railroad yards behind the stockade fence are used constantly in assassination literature. Are they one and the same? For the most part, yes. “The parking lot was on railroad property, and at least one railroad track passed through the parking lot.” (Telephone interview of Gary Mack by author on August 18, 2005) Of course, there is a considerable area behind the stockade fence that is part of the railroad yards but is not a parking lot.

  *It has been widely assumed throughout the years that that person was NBC reporter Robert MacNeil. Indeed, in his book The Right Place at the Right Time, MacNeil says that as he ran up the steps of the Book Depository Building right after the shooting, he asked a young man in shirt sleeves who was coming out of the building where there was a phone, and the man pointed to another man inside who was talking on a phone and said, “Better ask him.” He adds that although it is “possible” that Oswald was the man he encountered, he had “no way of confirming” that he had spoken to Oswald, and when he saw Oswald on television later that day, “there was no leap of recognition” on his part. “My hair was very short then and I was wearing a White House press badge [Oswald] may have mistaken for Secret Service ID.” (MacNeil, Right Place at the Right Time, pp.208, 213)

  Although it is not important just whom Oswald spoke to that day, there is a possibility it was someone other than MacNeil. On January 29, 1964, the Secret Service interviewed Pierce Allman, who was a reporter for Dallas TV station WFAA at the time of the assassination. Allman was described in the report as a “white male” with a “crew cut.” The Secret Service report reads that Allman also ran into the Book Depository Building right after the shooting, “where he met a white male whom he could not further identify. He asked this white male for the location of a telephone…The person pointed out a phone to him which was located in an open area on the first floor of the building.” The interview report’s “Synopsis” is that Allman is “believed to be [the] one mentioned by Lee Harvey Oswald as identifying himself as a Secret Service agent.” (CD 354, p.2, Secret Service File 00-2-34,030) Gary Mack, curator at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, agrees: “Photos of MacNeil on November 22 [1963] show he had short hair, but it definitely was not a crew cut. Allman’s the guy Oswald spoke to” (Telephone interview of Gary Mack by author on April 20, 2000).

  *As Dealey Plaza spectator James L. Simmons told the Warren Commission, “Immediately after the shots were fired, people were running in every direction through the whole area, and there was a scene of mass confusion” (CE 1416, 22 H 833).

  † Regarding this cuckoo bird phenomenon, let’s look at what just a few among many have said about the death of Elvis Presley on August 17, 1977, in Memphis, Tennessee, at the age of forty-two. The following are from letters written to Ann Landers that were published in her syndicated column of October 23, 1988. From Stamford, Connecticut: “The King lives! I attended his funeral and lingered at the casket for quite awhile before the guards made me move on. Elvis was not in that casket. It was a wax dummy. I stood very close and had the opportunity to look at him for a long time. I would bet my life on it.” From Henderson, Kentucky: “My uncle works in a place that manufactures coffins. The elaborate coffin that Elvis was buried in can be obtained only by special order because it takes a long time to construct. Elvis’ coffin was ordered several weeks in advance, which proves that his ‘death’ was planned long before the public was told that he died.” From Bismarck, North Dakota: “My sist
er’s niece works in the courthouse where Elvis’ death certificate was processed. The original certificate stated that the body weighed 170 pounds. The paramedics who picked him up said he weighed at least 250 pounds. Looks like there were two corpses, doesn’t it? To add to the mystery, the first death certificate disappeared and was never found.”

  *In 1986, Hoffman changed the clothing of the men considerably. He told conspiracy theorist Jim Marrs that the man with the rifle was “wearing a dark suit, tie and overcoat” and the second man “was wearing light coveralls and a railroad worker’s hat” (Coverups, March 1986, no. 25, p.1).

  *Hoffman sent a letter on October 3, 1975, to JFK’s brother, Senator Edward Kennedy, telling him of his observations on the day of the assassination, and adding in broken syntax, “I talked F.B.I.’s office in Dallas last 1968 or can’t remember date and year ago. If you will find to see F.B.I.’s report about I talked them. I guess, maybe F.B.I. did not know understand what I talked a thing, because I am deafness and hard to talk F.B.I…. If you will help me and tell some things. Thank you much. Respectfully, Virgil Edward Hoffman.”