Angle of Engagement Kill zone is obscured by tree branches. Wall and vertical pipes prevent shooter from positioning properly for shot. Only a professional sniper could correctly gauge/scope the exact high-to-low angle formula necessary for a kill shot. Virtually Impossible
Shot Choice Especially if 6.5 Carcano is weapon, shot choice is when target is approaching or beneath window, not when target has trailed off and moving away. Extremely Implausible
Sequence of Shots In any realistic shooting scenario, the first shot is the most accurate. In the assassination, it was the least accurate, missing the entire limousine, as well as the target—leading to very logical speculation that first fire was actually a warning shot in an attempt to thwart the assassination. Extremely Implausible
Timing of Shots “Re-enactment” could not duplicate shots/hits assigned to Oswald because it never happened that way in reality. If the best combat sniper in U.S history could not accomplish the shooting, it literally could not have been done by Oswald. Literally Impossible 108
The point is crystal clear. Oswald could not have been the shooter. I, and many others, can attest personally that the Mannlicher-Carcano isn’t going to get off six rounds; I couldn’t even get off three. The only way the Mannlicher could do that is if somehow Oswald modified it into a machine gun!
And even if it was logistically possible, think about this: Oswald wasn’t even an infantryman, but a Marine radar technician. A pencil pusher! There are those in the Marines too, believe it or not. They go through boot camp, but end up being pencil pushers. So here you had a Carlos Hathcock, specialist sniper infantry who deals in combat, deals in death, who couldn’t do it, and on the other hand, this young guy who looks at a radar screen all day or whatever Oswald was supposedly doing at Atsugi, where the U-2 spy planes were based. Come on, who’s gonna out-shoot who here? When you go into the military, they give you huge aptitude tests, mental and otherwise. They look at your records and then your shooting scores, tie it all together, and send you where they think you can most effectively use your skills. Oswald looked through a radar screen allegedly, not down the scope of a rifle, which his scores in boot camp prove. There was a reason they didn’t send him into 0300 infantry!
105 Jesse Ventura, “Jesse Ventura tries to duplicate Oswald’s shooting sequence,” 2010: youtube.com/watch?v=qSWSgcuYqDo
106 Roberts, Kill Zone: A Sniper Looks at Dealey Plaza
107 Ibid
108 Belzer & Wayne, Dead Wrong, 103–104, citing Carlos Hathcock and Craig Roberts.
12
Shots That Were Too Close Together With a Rifle that Was Not Even “Sighted In”
After reading what an absolute piece of junk that rifle was, and hopefully, watching my video clip which clearly demonstrates that point, I’m sure
you can see that—if two of the three gunshots in the official version were close together—then there’s no way in hell that they could have come from that rifle. And guess what? Two of the shots were actually very close together.
I could barely get off three shots in ten seconds. After each shot, I had to struggle with pulling back the bolt of the rifle in order to re-chamber a bullet for the next shot, and then I had to re-sight re-aim. That all takes time, and it was time that one shooter would not have had.
To fire a rifle with a telescopic sight, like the Mannlicher that they say was used in the assassination, you have to re-sight the rifle! That’s a huge point that anyone familiar with weapons will be absolutely astounded by—Oswald’s rifle was not properly sighted. And that point was even acknowledged by the Warren Commission! Here’s exactly what they said:
The rifle couldn’t be perfectly “sighted-in” using the scope (i.e., thereby eliminating the above overshoot completely)without installing two metal shims (small metal plates), which were not present when the rifle arrived for testing, and were never found.109
And that’s not me saying that. That’s not some “conspiracy theorist” or anything. That’s right out of the freaking official legal hearings!
And even if it had been sighted in, the recoil, or backward “kick” of that rifle, is so hard that it throws the sight off after every single shot. So the shooter has to take the time to re-sight the rifle after every shot.
Walt Brown is a Notre Dame graduate with a doctorate in History who has studied the JFK assassination for most of his life. From the day the assassination happened in 1963, Brown has focused his life on that event; devoting countless hours to cataloging thousands of events related to the assassination as they actually occurred. When it comes to the rifle that was the alleged murder weapon, Walt sums it all up very succinctly:
It would also have made a difference if the expert rifleman was using an expert rifleman’s weapon of choice, not a piece of war surplus Italian junk whose inadequacies were massively compounded by the conclusion that the weapon was assembled and fired without ever having been sighted in. Ask your friend, the hunter. He’ll tell you it can’t be done.110
Reliable witnesses have also testified that two of the shots were actually very close together. That “double bang” that people heard is very important because it has dramatic implications: two shots close together could not have come from the same weapon, so there had to be more than one shooter.
Tosh Plumlee, a veteran Military intelligence operative, was present at Dealey Plaza, on the south knoll, opposite the grassy knoll. According to Plumlee, he was part of a team dispatched to Dallas on an emergency basis, as a result of intel that was picked up by U.S. intelligence about a possible attempt to kill the president. Here’s how Plumlee described the last shots in a sworn affidavit:
Two of those shots were very close together, basically on top of each other—and my partner and I were both aware that it was not the result of an echo-effect, but two clear and distinct rifle reports that were very close together. One of the shots was also from a different direction than the others; one came from the southwest, meaning from the front of the limousine, not the rear. We both knew that with certainty. When my partner and I debriefed each other later that day, we were both sure on that one different-sounding shot. That fact was hard for us to miss because the other shots came from the north and east of us and that one shot from the southwest of us had a totally different sound and came whizzing right over our heads. We were both experienced veterans of gunfire, and very familiar with its sound, and we were both certain that one gunshot came from a westerly direction.111
Keep in mind as you look at the other witness testimony that follows that any two shots being close together logistically precludes them having come from the same weapon. Even from a good rifle, that would be i mpossible. And from a piece of junk like the Mannlicher, you’d be lucky if you could even jam back the bolt in a couple of seconds, let alone re-sight, re-aim, and fire.
The evidence is overwhelming that two of the shots were in rapid succession. The following is testimony from qualified witnesses who were right there and were sure about what they heard.
Secret Service Special Agent Roy Kellerman was in the front passenger was considered an expert in gunfire and testified that there was a “double bang” of two shots extremely close together:
Let me give you an illustration. . . . You have heard the sound barrier, of a plane breaking the sound barrier, bang, bang? That is it. It was like a double bang—bang, bang.
seat of the limousine, sitting directly in front of President Kennedy. He
Secret Service Special Agent William Greer, who was driving the limousine, testified that:
. . . the last two shots seemed to be just simultaneously, one behind the other.
Secret Service Special Agent George Hickey testified that:
At the moment he was almost sitting erect I heard two reports, which I thought were shots and that appeared to me completely different in sound than the first report and were in such rapid succession that there seemed to be practically no time element between them.
Secret Service Special Agent Cl
int Hill testified that the second noise he heard was different from the first shot:
. . . like the sound of shooting a revolver into something hard . . . almost a double sound.
Secret Service Special Agent William A. McIntyre:
The Presidential vehicle was approximately 200 feet from the underpass when the first shot was fired, followed in quick succession by two more.
Dallas Officer Seymour Weitzman:
First one, then the second two seemed to be simultaneous.
Ladybird Johnson, the wife of the Vice-President, was riding behind the President and said that after the first shot, there was a pause and then two rapid shots:
Then a moment and then two more shots in rapid succession.
Dallas Mayor Earle Cabell described the same thing:
They were in rather rapid succession.
An eyewitness, S. M. Holland, who watched the motorcade from the railroad overpass, testified that he heard four shots with the third and fourth sounding like a “double shot” and these did not sound at all alike:
Well it would be like you’re firing a .38 pistol right beside a shotgun, or a .45 right beside a shotgun . . . the third shot was not so loud.112
So if that’s not shots from two different guns, then all of those people were wrong.
109 Warren Commission hearings: 3 WCH 440–5.
110 Walt Brown Ph.D., The Guns of Texas Are Upon You (Last Hurrah Press, 2005), emphasis in original.
111 Belzer & Wayne, Dead Wrong, “Affidavit of William R. Plumlee,” 111–115.
112 John S. Craig, The Guns of Dealey Plaza, retrieved 24 April 2013: acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/11th_issue/guns_dp.html
13
Oswald Couldn’t Have Carried in the Murder Weapon
Oswald is accused of carrying the murder weapon that morning on his way to work at the Depository, but lied by saying it was actually curtain rods. Well, most likely he was telling the truth! The way the Mannlicher-Carcano Italian weapon is made, when you disassemble it, the rifle has an unusually long wooden stock. In other words, the metal barrel only sticks out a little ways from the end of the wooden stock. I could never cup it in my hand and get it up under my armpit, and I’m 6-foot-4! Oswald was 5-foot-11 or shorter, depending on when he got measured. So how was he carrying a rifle under his armpit, according to a fellow who supposedly went to work with him that day? No way! It’s a physical impossibility. The stock of that Mannlicher is not a breakdown weapon, but the actual barrel only sticks out five or six inches from the end of the long stock. Curtain rods would fit, the Mannlicher wouldn’t.
14
No Eyewitnesses
Not a single witness ever placed Oswald at the actual crime scene. Even the Dallas Chief of Police acknowledged that the case against Oswald was entirely circumstantial:
We don’t have any proof that Oswald fired the rifle, and never did. Nobody’s yet been able to put him in that building with a gun in his hand.113
That was the Chief of Police who said that, for goodness sake! Jesse Curry was Chief at the time of the assassination and is telling us flat out that there’s no proof Oswald even fired a shot!
That’s a matter of huge importance in a trial. A person has to have had the means to have committed the crime.
There are so many reasons why that rifle could not have done all the shooting, it’s almost mind-boggling:
Ammunition for the rifle was known to be faulty and rarely shot straight. Gun experts that testified in front of the Warren Commission characterized the Carcano as a cheap, old weapon that was poorly constructed; a rifle that could be purchased for three dollars each in lots of twenty-five. On the day the rifle was found, the firing pin was found to be defective or worn-out, the telescopic sight was not accurately sighted, and no ammunition clip was officially reported. The lack of an ammunition clip would require a shooter to hand-load cartridges. Without an ammunition clip, rapid fire would be impossible.
No reference was ever made to the clip in the original inventories of evidence. Only when the Warren Report was released was there any report that an ammunition clip was found.114
Ballistics and firearms expert, Howard Donahue, examined the case and documented eight specific points of evidence indicating that Oswald could not have done the shooting:
1. The official trajectories given for the alleged rear entrance wound on JFK’s head are incompatible with a shot from the sixth-floor window.
2. The bullet that mortally wounded Kennedy in the head behaved like a high-velocity, frangible missile, whereas Oswald is said to have used medium-velocity, non-frangible ammunition.
3. The reported width of the rear entrance wound in the head, 6.0 mm, is incompatible with the diameter of a 6.5 mm Carcano bullet. (Dr. James Humes, the chief autopsist, said he measured the rear entrance wound on the head and that it was 6 mm wide, which means it could not have been caused by a 6.5 mm missile.)
4. The windshield damage was too high to have been caused by a bullet coming down into the car from the alleged sniper’s nest. (Even the HSCA’s trajectory expert admitted that this seemed to be the case.)
5. Several witnesses said two of the shots came in very rapid succession, nearly simultaneously, too quickly to have been fired from the bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano rifle.
6. Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman heard Kennedy cry out that he had been hit well before the Governor was wounded.
7. There do not appear to be any traces of human tissue on the fragments that were found in the limousine, yet the WC said these fragments came from the bullet that hit Kennedy in the head. If these fragments had in fact passed through JFK’s skull, they would have had traces of brain tissue, blood, and fluid on them. Donahue went to the National Archives, and with the aid of a 30-power jeweler’s loupe, studied the fragments from the head shot—or at least what he was told were the fragments from the head shot—and to his surprise, found no traces of blood or tissue on them, not even in their grooves.
8. The 6.5 mm fragment that was deposited on the outer table of Kennedy’s skull in the back of his head could not have come from the kind of ammunition that Oswald allegedly used. Forensic science knows of no case where a fully metal-jacketed (FMJ) bullet has ever deposited a sizable fragment on the outer table of the skull upon entering the skull. Such behavior by FMJ bullets is simply unheard of.115
The same point keeps coming up over and over again and from every angle that you look at it: One shooter simply could not have done all the shooting.
If Oswald were the only shooter there would have to be at least 2.3 seconds between shots, assuming he used the telescopic sight found on the Mannlicher Carcano. The three shots that the Warren Commission claimed were fired from Oswald’s rifle could not have been shot faster than 6.9 seconds. Secret Service Agent Roy Kellerman described the shots as a “flurry.” Two of the shots were often described by witnesses as so closely spaced that they seemed “simultaneous” and had “practically no time element between them.” Additionally, there is a substantial amount of testimony, presented in this article, that describes the later shots as sounding different from the first shot. Governor Connally’s initial reaction to the gunfire was “that there were either two or three people involved or more in this or someone was shooting with an automatic rifle.”116
113 Jim Marrs, Crossfire: The Plot that Killed Kennedy (Carroll & Graf: 1989), citing Dallas Morning News, Nov. 6, 1969.
114 John S. Craig, The Guns of Dealey Plaza, retrieved 24 April 2013: acorn.net/jfkplace/09/fp.back_issues/11th_issue/guns_dp.html
115 Michael T. Griffith, “Faulty Evidence: Problems with the Case Against Lee Harvey Oswald,” 2001, Third Edition, citing Bonar Menninger, Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK, A ballistics expert’s astonishing discovery of the fatal bullet that Oswald did not fire (St. Martin’ Press: 1992): michaelgriffith1.tripod.com/faulty.htm
116 Craig, The Guns of Dealey Plaza.
15
Logistically Impossible That O
swald Fired Shot
Acouple of minutes after President Kennedy had been shot, a clerical supervisor was returning to her office on the second floor of the lunch room in the Texas School Book Depository building. Her statement said that on the way to her office, she saw an employee whom she knew, Lee Harvey Oswald; that he had a Coca-Cola bottle in his hand and seemed very calm. Her exact words were, “I had no thoughts or anything of him having any connection with it all because he was very calm.”117
She had no reason to lie. She was just saying what she saw. That was all she could recall about him at that time, as there was a lot going on. But those were the two things about seeing Oswald on the second floor that afternoon that she clearly remembered. That he was very calm and had a Coca-Cola bottle in his hand. Remember that. If you’ve studied this like I have, you’re now a “juror for history”; and those are two things that you’ll need to remember later.
Motive, means, and opportunity. Those are the things you have to prove to convict a defendant in a murder trial. People often get confused on the opportunity aspect. What that means is that it has to have been possible for the defendant to have committed the crime. If they had a solid alibi, for example, that they were in a different location at that exact time then—since they could not have been in two places at once—their attorneys can prove that they lacked opportunity.
It is logistically impossible that Oswald was the one who fired from the sixth floor of that building and even a half-decent defense attorney could have proven that to a jury’s satisfaction.
In addition to the fact that “no one could put him in that window”—i.e. at the scene of the crime, which comes direct from the Dallas Police Chief, no less—it has been conclusively established that Oswald was already elsewhere and that he, therefore, did not possess opportunity. Let me explain.
They Killed Our President Page 6