The Man Who Killed Kennedy

  At least four shots hit the presidential limousine. The first shot hit Kennedy in the upper-right shoulder area of the back; the bullet lodged there “a short distance … the end of the opening could be felt with a finger,”53 according to the FBI autopsy report.

  “My God, I am hit,” shouted the president.54

  The next bullet fired on the presidential limousine came from the front and penetrated him at the base of the neck. As the Zapruder film clearly shows, the president then balled up his fists and moved them to the area close to his throat.

  “Kenny, I think the president’s been shot,” Powers said to O’Donnell.55

  “What makes you think that?” O’Donnell asked, making the sign of the cross.

  “Look at him!” Powers answered. “He was over on the right, with his arm stretched out. Now he’s slumped over toward Jackie, holding his throat.”56

  Governor Connally, who heard what he believed to be shotgun fire, also sensed something was wrong.57 He turned to his right to try to catch a glimpse of the president over his shoulder. Struggling to get a good look on the right side, he was attempting to turn in the opposite direction when he was hit. Over a decade later, Nellie Connally recalled the events sharply:

  I heard a noise that I didn’t think of as a gunshot. I just heard a disturbing noise and turned to my right from where I thought the noise had come and looked in the back and saw the President clutch his neck with both hands. He said nothing. He just sort of slumped down in the seat. John had turned to his right also when we heard that first noise and shouted, “No, no, no,” and in the process of turning back around so that he could look back and see the president. I don’t think he could see him when he turned to his right—the second shot was fired and hit him. He was in the process of turning, so it hit him through this shoulder, came out right about here. His hand was either right in front of him or on his knee as he turned to look, so that the bullet went through him, crushed his wrist, and lodged in his leg. And then he just recoiled and just sort of slumped in his seat. I thought he was dead. When you see a big man totally defenseless like that, then you do whatever you think you can do to help most, and the only thing I could think of to do was to pull him down out of the line of fire, or whatever was happening to us and I thought, if I could get him down, maybe they wouldn’t hurt him anymore. So, I pulled him down in my lap.

  At that moment, the presidential limousine rolled into alignment with the grassy knoll: the kill zone. Earlier in the day, Dallas resident Julia Ann Mercer saw a green Ford pickup truck illegally parked on the curb at the base of the knoll, partially blocking the road.58 The truck was labeled “Air Conditioning” and had a Texas license plate. One “heavy-set, middle-aged man”59 occupied the driver’s seat while another, “a white male, who appeared to be in his late twenties or early thirties and wearing a gray jacket, brown pants, and a plaid shirt,”60 who was at the rear of the vehicle “reached over the tailgate and took out from the truck what appeared to be a gun case,” according to Mercer.61 The brown case had a handle and appeared to be 3.5 to 4 feet long. The man then walked up the grassy hill, case in hand. Mercer added that this was all carried out in the presence of three Dallas police officers, “standing, talking near a motorcycle on the bridge ahead.”62

  Lee Bowers, Jr., a railroad towerman, who had a clear view of the area behind the grassy knoll saw three suspicious vehicles just before the shooting moving through the railroad yards, which had been sealed off by Dallas police. The first vehicle, a station wagon with out-of-state plates curiously adorned with a Goldwater bumper sticker moved through the area approximately twenty minutes before the shooting “as if he were searching for a way out or was checking the area, and then proceeded back though the only way he could, the same outlet he came in.”63 The second vehicle, a black 1957 Ford with a sole occupant who, while casing the area, seemed to “have a mic or telephone or something … He was holding something up to his mouth with one hand, and he was driving with the other.”64 The third vehicle, a Chevrolet Impala, showed up minutes before the assassination and was driven in a similar suspicious fashion.65 Bowers lost track of the car, but he saw two men who completely fit Mercer’s earlier description near the fence on the knoll just before the shots were fired.66 According to Bowers, “These men were the only two strangers in the area. The others were workers whom I knew.”67

  Just following the kill shot on President Kennedy, J. C. Price, watching from the Terminal Annex building in the plaza, saw a man with khaki pants, who fit the description of the younger man supplied by both Mercer and Bowers, running away from the area behind the picket fence.68 The three witnesses would be ignored by the official investigation in the coming months. Bowers, along with S. M. Holland, James L. Simmons, reporter Cheryl McKinnon, Ed Hoffman, and others saw puffs of smoke, which indicated to them that a gun had been fired, rising above the picket fence on the knoll. Hoffman had also seen two men behind the fence; one held a gun.

  Compounding the evidence of a shooter on the knoll was an acoustical analysis of a Dictabelt recording from a motorcycle microphone in the presidential motorcade—an integral part of the HSCA investigation. Dr. James Barger, a scientist from the acoustical consulting firm Bolt, Beranek, and Newman concluded, that there were at least six sounds on the tape, which were likely gunshots, and at least one was fired from the grassy knoll.69 Following Barger’s analysis, Mark Weiss, a professor at Queens College, and his research associate, Ernest Aschkenasy, both experienced in acoustical analysts, were commissioned by the HSCA to reconstruct the Dictabelt using microphones placed throughout Dealey Plaza and live-fire tests from the Texas School Book Depository and the grassy knoll.70

  “The principle behind the acoustic reconstruction was based on the timing of shock waves and their reflections off of buildings and structures in Dealey Plaza,” wrote Paul G. Chambers in Head Shot. “When a projectile exceeds the speed of sound, as in a rifle shot, it produces a shock wave, a pressure wave, commonly known as a sonic boom. An example is the cracking of a whip: The tip briefly exceeds the speed of sound to produce the characteristic snap. The pattern of shock waves with time is called an acoustical signature, which differs from one sound source to another due to echoes and reflections off of structures in the area. These echoes create characteristic patterns that can be used to determine the origin of shock waves.”71

  Each microphone location would produce a “unique sound travel pattern, or sound fingerprint.”72 When the recording was compared to the Dictabelt tape, researchers were able to gain a strong indication as to where the shots were fired from. The test was able to verify a 95-percent certainty that a rifle shot had been fired from the grassy knoll.

  This was the area of Dealey Plaza that onlookers and police alike believed to be the location of the assassin. Many ran there after the shooting. Of the ninety people asked by the police, FBI, or the Secret Service where they thought the shots had come from, fifty-eight said the grassy knoll. This overwhelming evidence pointing to the knoll as the strategic kill location73 was suppressed.

  The shooter, positioned behind the picket fence on the knoll, was insurance that President Kennedy would not leave Dealey Plaza alive. Unlike the shots fired from the depository, the proximity of the fence to Elm Street made the final blast a turkey shoot. With Kennedy lined in his sight, the assassin, no doubt a trained assassin from Operation 40, dropped the hammer and hit Kennedy in the right side of the head towards the front.

  As seen clearly on the Zapruder film, which was not shown to the public until 1975, the final shot jarred Kennedy’s head back and to the left. This was an important piece of evidence, which was intentionally misinterpreted for years following his murder. The deception was aided in part by Dan Rather, then a green newscaster who worked at a Texas television station.

  Rather was the only reporter to view the Zapruder film the day after the assassination. In this situation, he was an all-important set of eyes from the fourth estate, a voice the public could trust.
He issued an erroneous, purposely falsified statement concerning the film. Following the final shot, the head of Kennedy in Rather’s angled report “went forward with considerable violence,”74 a description that anyone with eyesight in the fifty years following the assassination would find to be a blatant lie.

  In 1993, CBS anchorman Dan Rather confessed to Robert Tannenbaum, the former deputy chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations: “We really blew it on the Kennedy assassination.”

  “I could see a piece of his skull coming off,” Jackie said a week after the assassination to journalist and historian T. H. White. “He was holding out his hand—and I could see this perfectly clean piece detaching itself from his head. Then, he slumped in my lap; his blood and brain were in my lap.”75

  Powers and O’Donnell watched helplessly from the “Queen Mary” as their friend and leader died violently.

  “While we both stared at the president, the third shot took the side of his head off,” O’Donnell wrote. “We saw pieces of bone and brain tissue and bits of his reddish hair flying through the air. The impact lifted him and shook him limply, as if he were a rag doll, and then he dropped out of our sight, sprawled across the back seat of the car. I said to Dave, “He’s dead“.”76

  Appearing before the Warren Commission, O’Donnell would testify that he had heard the shots coming from behind him. But years later, he would admit to longtime Massachusetts Congressman and Speaker of the House Thomas “Tip” O’Neill that he actually heard shots coming from the knoll.

  “That’s not what you told the Warren Commission,” O’Neill said.

  “You’re right,” O’Donnell replied. “I told the FBI what I had heard, but they said it couldn’t have happened that way and that I must have been imagining things. So I testified the way they wanted me to.”77

  With the hit on the president complete, the limousine sped to Parkland Hospital to perform fruitless last minute procedures in an attempt to save John F. Kennedy.

  “I have read stories where I screamed and he screamed and all these things,” said Nellie Connally. “There was no screaming in that horrible car. It was just a silent, terrible drive.”78

  NOTES

  1. Bugliosi. The Commonwealth Club, San Francisco, CA. May 29, 2007.

  2. Hepburn, Farewell America, pg. 352.

  3. Ibid, pgs. 352–353.

  4. Politics and Presidential Protection: Staff Report, HSCA, second session, 1979: pg. 508.

  5. Ibid.

  6. Ibid, pg. 518.

  7. Ibid.

  8. Gillon, The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours Later, pg. 16.

  9. Ibid.

  10. Zirbel, The Texas Connection, pg. 188.

  11. Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination, pg. 374.

  12. Caro, Means of Ascent, pg. 118.

  13. Ibid, pg. 274.

  14. New York Times, June 16, 1993.

  15. Briody, The Haliburton Agenda, pg. 170.

  16. Bryce, Cronies, pg. 103.

  17. Zirbel, The Texas Connection, pg. 191.

  18. Manchester, Death of a President, pg. 82.

  19. Ibid pgs. 82–83.

  20. Ibid, pg. 20.

  21. Livingston, Harrison Edward. Groden, Robert J. High Treason, pg. 135.

  22. Ibid, pg. 134.

  23. Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination, pg. 379.

  24. Ibid, pg. 429.

  25. Turner, “The Men Who Killed Kennedy-Part 9” (Movie Citation, not sure if this is correct way to cite).

  26. Ross, www.youtube.com/watch?v=POmdd6HQsus.

  27. Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination, pgs. 321–322.

  28. “LBJ’s Mistress Blows Whistle on JFK Assassination,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=79lOKs0Kr_Y.

  29. LBJ’s Mistress Blows Whistle on JFK Assassination,” www.youtube.com/watch?v=79lOKs0Kr_Y.

  30. Hersh, Bobby and J. Edgar, pg. 253.

  31. Pietrusza, David. 1960: LBJ vs. JFK vs. Nixon. Pg. 387.

  32. Summers, Anthony. The Arrogance of Power. pg. 262.

  33. Fulsom, Don. “Richard Nixon’s Greatest Coverup: His Ties to the Assassination of President Kennedy.”

  34. Dallas Morning News, November 22, 1963.

  35. Manchester, Death of a President, pg. 121.

  36. Manchester, ibid.

  37. O’Donnell, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, pg. 28.

  38. Manchester, Death of a President, pg. 122.

  39. Gillon, The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours Later, pg. 23.

  40. Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination, pg. 393.

  41. The New York Times, February 5, 2004.

  42. Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination, pg. 387.

  43. O’Donnell, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, pg. 28.

  44. Gillon, The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours Later, pg. 25.

  45. Ibid, pg. 27.

  46. Ibid.

  47. Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination, pg. 471.

  48. Newcomb, Fred T., Adams Perry. Murder From Within. Pg. 49.

  49. Nelson, LBJ: The Mastermind of the JFK Assassination, pg. 477.

  50. Ibid, pg. 478.

  51. Ibid, pg. 473.

  52. Marrs, Crossfire, pg. 16.

  53. Fetzer, James H. Assassination Science, pg. 98.

  54. Epstein, Edward Jay, Inquest. Pg. 49.

  55. O’Donnell, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, pg. 29.

  56. Ibid.

  57. HSCA testimony of Mr. and Mrs. John B. Connally.

  58. Lane, Mark, Rush to Judgement, pg. 29.

  59. Ibid.

  60. Ibid, pg. 30.

  61. Ibid.

  62. Ibid.

  63. Marrs, Crossfire, pg. 76.

  64. Ibid.

  65. Ibid.

  66. Lane, Rush to Judgement, pg. 31.

  67. Ibid.

  68. Ibid, pg. 32.

  69. Chambers, Paul G., Head Shot, pg. 118.

  70. Ibid, pg. 121.

  71. Ibid.

  72. HSCA Final Report, pg. 73.

  73. Lane, Rush to Judgement, pg. 37.

  74. Marrs, Crossfire, pg. 68.

  75. Gillon, The Kennedy Assassination: 24 Hours Later, pg. 49.

  76. O’Donnell, Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, pg. 29.

  77. Kelin, John, Praise from a Future Generation, pg. 214.

  78. Warren Commission Testimony of Nellie Connally.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  LYNCHPIN

  Surely one of the main thoughts that plagued Johnson following the assassination was the whereabouts of Malcolm Wallace and the shooters. Had Wallace fled from the depository unnoticed? Had the CIA and Mafia conspirators firing from behind the fence on the grassy knoll gotten away successfully? Unlike the other murders that Johnson had guided, this one had many pieces that could not easily be lawyered away.

  In the early hours after the death of Kennedy, Johnson uttered more than one ridiculous cornpone morsel promoting a cabal.

  “We’ve all got to be careful,” he said at one point. “This could be a worldwide conspiracy to kill off all our leaders.”1

  It was a necessary move. Parkland Hospital was frantic when the Kennedys and the Connallys arrived and was insulated from news of the goings on in Dealey Plaza. If a conspiracy was unearthed in the unfolding madness, it would be Johnson who would have the power to direct the outcome. Once Oswald was in police custody, Johnson would order his minions to hush any talk of a conspiracy.

  Johnson aide Cliff Carter placed multiple calls to Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade to this end. It “would hurt foreign relations if I alleged a conspiracy,” said Wade, “whether I could prove it or not … I was to charge Oswald with plain murder.”2 Wade added that, “Johnson had Cliff Carter call me three or four times that weekend.”3

  If Johnson was, on the surface, overwrought with the reality of the events that had unfolded that afternoon, there is also evidence that he was putting on an act—inside, he was cool
ly calculating.

  Attorney Pat Holloway, whose boss Waddy Bullion was Johnson’s tax lawyer, overheard a conversation between Bullion and Johnson that fateful afternoon. In Holloway’s estimation, Johnson, in typical style, was less worried about the tragedy of the day and more concerned about personal business interests and how they might affect him personally.

  Johnson talked to Bullion “not about a conspiracy or about a tragedy,” said Holloway. “I heard him say: ‘Oh, I gotta get rid of my goddamn Haliburton stock.’ Lyndon Johnson was talking about the consequences of his political problems with his Haliburton stock at a time when the president had been officially declared dead. And that pissed me off … It really made me furious.”4

  Finances aside, Johnson was also concerned with validating his presidency. The moment when the final rifle blast had shattered John Kennedy’s skull, Lyndon Johnson was the new president. It was the formalities of the position, though, that he immediately sought to wrap himself in, requiring the power and safety that the presidency now afforded him.

  Johnson would later try to distance himself from the eagerness that he showed in taking full and unabashed command of his new office. On most counts, he would use Kenny O’Donnell as his front, possibly believing that O’Donnell was too grief stricken to challenge or recognize the facts as they happened. The new chief executive certainly knew that the approvals of a close Kennedy confidant would bolster his credibility as president.

  Johnson claimed that O’Donnell had told him of Kennedy’s death at 1:20 p.m. “He’s gone,”5 O’Donnell was claimed to have said. In reality, Secret Service Agent Emory Roberts had told Johnson of Kennedy’s death seven minutes earlier.6

  The importance of Johnson’s claim is minute, but revealing of the total control the new president sought over the official story.