“The way the bullet went through the Governor’s wrist,” explains Specter, “it really tumbled through his wrist.”
Were any tests made to determine the results of a bullet tumbling through a cadaver wrist?
“You can’t fire a bullet to make it tumble,” said Specter.
Wouldn’t a tumbling bullet be more likely to be deformed than one hitting at a higher velocity on its streamlined nose?
“I think it was unusual for the bullet to come out in such perfect shape,” Specter says, “but very plausible.”
Did any of the test bullets come out in such shape?
“No.”
Third, no one knows near whose stretcher No. 399 was found. Arlen Specter stated that there was evidence which would show that No. 399 was from Governor Connally’s stretcher (II: 368 and 374). The Report emphatically states that “A nearly whole bullet was found on Gov. Connally’s stretcher at Parkland Hospital after the assassination” (p. 79). It is only by tenuous inference that the Commission reached the conclusion that a Mr. Tomlinson took Governor Connally’s stretcher off the elevator on the ground floor after the Governor had been taken to the second floor for surgery. Tomlinson says only that he found a stretcher on the elevator and removed it. Some time later on, No. 399 was discovered by Tomlinson when he adjusted two stretchers that were blocking the entrance to the men’s room, one that he had removed from the elevator, and another that was standing in the corridor.
At this stage of our knowledge of the case, neither Mr. Tomlinson, nor anyone else, knows which stretcher the bullet came from, nor whose stretchers these were, nor whether either Kennedy or Connally was ever on either one of them. There is no real factual basis for the Commission’s claim that the bullet was on Connally’s stretcher. The FBI had earlier said it was Kennedy’s stretcher. Tomlinson just did not know and refused to guess (VI:128-34). There were other patients in the hospital. The stretcher might have come from upstairs or might have come from the emergency section. The Commission did not really find out where the stretcher Tomlinson moved came from, so it has no evidence as to which stretchers may be at issue. It traced Kennedy’s back to Trauma Room No. 2, and Connally’s back to the elevator, but whether either of them is one of the stretchers Tomlinson handled nobody happens to know. Anyone could have entered the hospital. It was full of newsmen, spectators, Secret Service men, FBI men, and according to the management the place was a madhouse. There is even a report by a very reliable newsman, Seth Kantor of Scripps-Howard that Jack Ruby was there. This is denied by Ruby and strongly doubted by the Commission, though Kantor had serious corroboration of his claim in the form of his own notes plus the testimony of an eyewitness; and also Kantor knew Ruby well.
Fourth, when, late on November 22, the bullet was turned over to the FBI expert, Robert Frazier, in Washington, D.C., it didn’t need any cleaning (III:428-29). “The bullet was clean and it was not necessary to change it in any way.” Question by attorney Eisenberg: “There was no blood or similar material on the bullet when you received it?” Frazier: “Not any which would interfere with the examination, no sir. Now there may have been slight traces which could have been removed just in ordinary handling, but it wasn’t necessary to actually clean blood or tissue off of the bullet.”
Later on Frazier said that there was blood and some other material on the two smashed bullet fragments that were found in the Presidential car. The Commission lawyer, Eisenberg, apparently misunderstanding Frazier, said, “You mentioned that there was blood or some other substance on the bullet marked 399.” Frazier, who had not said this, did not bother correcting Eisenberg, but just reported that no test was made of these materials (III:437). Weisberg makes a great fuss about all this, claiming that somebody must have cleaned bullet 399 earlier and thereby destroyed valuable evidence. However, the history of No. 399 does not indicate that anybody ever cleaned it that day, and thus that it may never have been dirty or soiled.
All of these points indicate not only that No. 399 can hardly have done the remarkable things the Commission claims it did, but that there is no evidence at all that it did these things, or came off Connally’s stretcher, or ever was in Governor Connally’s body. I will suggest presently an explanation for its features. At this point, I should only like to stress that No. 399 is a very shaky basis for the one-bullet hypothesis. To argue that it happened and therefore is possible is not persuasive here, since no one knows what had happened to No. 399 before it was found.
Five
The Failure of the Commission and the
Need for a Counter Theory
While the reasons for doubting the “official” theory are becoming much stronger, its ultimate defense is now crumbling because of Epstein’s researches. If his account of how the Commission and its staff functioned is correct (and he seems to have the evidence), then the Commission did not do an adequate investigative job, and did not weigh all of the data carefully. It rushed through its work. The Commissioners and most of the staff were busy men who had insufficient time to devote to their task.
The Commission had no investigative staff of its own, and a few overworked lawyers in a very short time had to interview and check hundreds of witnesses. The Commission was inundated with so many FBI reports that no single person could master them. Pressure for a quick report made careful deliberation of the problems and issues almost impossible. Finally, the Report was written and rewritten in haste, with evidence marshaled, in a one-sided manner, to make a lawyer’s brief for the “official” theory.
Then one staff member, Liebeler, wrote a twenty-six-page critique, showing many of the holes in this case, holes that would have given a lawyer for the defense a field day, and that have been the feeding ground for the critics.
Epstein’s account no longer allows the high reputation of the Commissioners to make up for the deficiencies of the Report. After Epstein it will be hard to believe the Commission served the public well. Instead of ending all the rumors, they set the stage for a new and more serious era of speculations. They have damaged confidence in themselves and in any public body that might undertake to examine facts and possibilities about the death of President Kennedy.
But the critics have still failed to set forth evidence for a counter-theory in a systematic way. Weisberg does so only sporadically. “Of course the ‘single bullet’ theory is porous,” The New York Times review of Epstein’s book stated on July 3, “but no other explanation makes any sense.” If we are to give up the official explanation, what can we put in its place? A two-assassin theory? A conspiracy? If so, what did happen? What role did Oswald play? How can the hard facts be accounted for? As Knebel quotes Allen Dulles, “If they’ve found another assassin, let them name names and produce their evidence.”
Unfortunately one has mainly the twenty-six volumes of data to work with, and most of this was collected either in reference to the theory that Oswald was the lone assassin, or to buttress this theory. Material recently made available in the National Archives, some of which has already been used by Epstein, Salandria, Cohen and Lane, may prove to be a most important source. These materials include not only the originals of what is in the twenty-six volumes, but also apparently a good deal that the Commission did not see fit to include in its publication, such as the O’Neill-Sibert document, discussed earlier, and published here as Appendix I. I have not yet had the opportunity to see much of the data in the National Archives, and so can only theorize from the basic data of the Commission volumes.
Clues that might help speculation are few and far between. For instance, there are indications in the materials supplied by the Dallas Police that other suspects were arrested on November 22, 1963, but except for Molina, who was not involved, they are never identified. We learn that shortly before the assassination someone had an epileptic fit in front of the Book Depository, and that this caused much confusion and commotion. Right after the shooting, the Dallas Police rushed someone over to Parkland Hospital to find out about this. But we don’
t learn whether it was a diversion or a genuine illness, whether it was significant or a coincidence (XVII:465, XXII:599 and 601). A postage-due parcel arrived for the Oswalds in Irving on November 20 or 21, but we never found out what it is, and if it is a clue (XXIII:420). Who, besides the Paines, knew where the Oswalds lived at this time? Who might be sending them a package? Maybe it was a present for the baby, or maybe it was something they had ordered, or maybe it had something to do with the events to come.
At the present stage, any counter-explanation has to rest almost entirely on the material available in the twenty-six volumes and these are extremely difficult to work with. Fifteen of the volumes consist of testimony, depositions, and affidavits; eleven really bulky ones (around 900 pages apiece) contain documents and exhibits. The raw data appear in volumes XVI-XXVI. The documents are not properly indexed or identified. There is an index of witnesses who testified, of the names of documents—e.g., Shaneyfelt 6, Commission Exhibit 1215—and where they are introduced in the testimony, and volumes XXII-XXVI contain material not introduced, including some of the most important.
No index is given for the contents of the documents. Too often the documents are reproduced poorly, sometimes illegibly, sometimes incompletely, and sometimes redundantly. There is a bewildering collection of junk, as well as the most thorough kind of research of some points, and a great many discrepancies that are never explained or accounted for. Having been through the twenty-six volumes twice, I think enough discrepancies exist to provide the bare bones of a counter-theory based on two sorts of materials: first, evidence that some of the “official evidence” is not what it seems to be; and second, unexplained evidence suggesting that some sort of conspiracy involving or relating to Oswald existed as far back as Oswald’s departure for Mexico, and was intensified from early November until at least November 22.
That something more was going on than the Commission believed is, I think, indicated by two crucial pieces of evidence, bullet No. 399 and the brown paper bag. Bullet No. 399 is distinctly odd and unusual. If it cannot have done the damage that occurred to Connally, what is it? It may have come from Kennedy’s body if the FBI’s report of what the doctors originally thought is true. But it has no signs even of being that. As the FBI expert said, “it wasn’t necessary to actually clean blood or tissue off the bullet” (III: 428-29).
What other possibility is there? The Commission never seems to have considered the possibility that the bullet was planted. Yet in view of evidence concerning No. 399 it is an entirely reasonable hypothesis that the bullet had never been in a human body, and could have been placed on one of the stretchers. If this possibility had been considered, then the Commission might have realized that some of the evidence might be “fake” and could have been deliberately faked. Bullet No. 399 plays a most important role in the case, since it firmly links Oswald’s rifle with the assassination. At the time when the planting could have been done, it was not known if any other ballistics evidence survived the shooting. But, certainly, the pristine bullet, definitely traceable to Oswald’s Cacano, would have started a chase for and pursuit of Oswald if nothing else had, and would have made him a prime suspect.
Six
The Brown Paper Bag
Another piece of evidence that seems to be something different from what the Commission supposed is the brown paper bag found on the sixth floor of the Book Depository. This is the bag that, according to the Commission, was made by Oswald on the night of November 21-22 at Irving, and used by him to bring the rifle into the Book Depository. As Weisberg neatly shows (Whitewash, pp. 15-23), there are problems with all the information about the bag. First of all, both Marina Oswald and Wesley Frazier, who drove Oswald to Irving, report that he carried nothing with him when he went to Irving after work on the afternoon of the 21st (XXIV:408 and Marina’s interview on November 23). When Frazier was interviewed on December 2, 1963, he said. “Oswald did not have a package and was not carrying anything with him at that time,” that is, when they left the Book Depository (XXVI:348). The Commission was sufficiently worried about this point to recall Frazier and ask him if at some earlier time Oswald had paper with him, to which he answered, “No” (VII:531).
Next, the only two people who ever saw the bag, Frazier and his sister, Mrs. Randle, described a bag around 27-28 inches, whereas the found bag is 38 inches long. Both Frazier and his sister described it by referring to its position when Oswald carried it, its appearance, and where it was 1ocated in the car; all these gave results of around 27 inches. The longest part of Oswald’s rifle, when disassembled, is 34.8 inches. Oswald is described as first carrying the bag with his arm down, and not dragging it on the ground; later he is said to have carried it cupped in his hand, and tucked in his armpit. “Oswald had this package under his right arm, one end of the package being under his armpit and the other end apparently held with his right fingers” (XXVI: 384).
Both descriptions are applicable only to a bag approximately 27 inches long. If Oswald, who was five foot nine, had carried a 38-inch bag cupped in his hand, it would have extended above his shoulder to ear level, a length that Frazier might have been expected to see and to remember. Despite serious efforts to get Frazier and his sister to change their estimate of the bag’s size, they stood fast; and when one of them made a bag for the Commission that was supposed to approximate the original, it turned out to be about 27 inches long (XXI, V:408). The Commission nonetheless decided Frazier and his sister were correct about seeing Oswald with the bag, but incorrect in their description of it.
A further fact is that on the night of the 22nd, when Frazier first described the bag and estimated its size (about 2 feet), he was given a lie detector test which showed “conclusively that Wesley Frazier was truthful, and the facts stated by Frazier in his affidavit were true” (XXIV: 293). When Oswald entered the building, no one saw him with the bag. A Mr. Dougherty saw him enter and stated that he carried nothing, although a long bag should have been noticeable (VI:376-77). Dougherty was asked, “Do you recall him having anything in his hand?” to which he replied, “Well, I didn’t see anything if he did.” Later he was asked, “In other words, you would say positively he had nothing in his hands?” and he answered, “I would say that—yes, sir.” Lane, in Rush to Judgment (p. 146), suggests that Oswald might have been holding the package in such a way that Dougherty couldn’t see it. Oswald could also have thrown the bag into a trash-bin by the time he was seen by Dougherty.
The next thing reported by the Commission is that a bag 38 inches long was found near the notorious sixth-floor window. (In fact, it is never made quite clear exactly where this bag was found, and apparently no photograph was taken of it before it was picked up.) This bag was made from paper and gummed tape that were in the building. It has four very noticeable folds, but no indication of having been held on the top, as Frazier’s sister saw it. It has one identifiable fingerprint and one identifiable palm print, both Oswald’s. Also, as the FBI expert, Cadigan, testified, it contained no chemical or physical evidence of ever having contained a rifle. No oil or rifle debris, no distinctive marks of the rifle’s location in it (IV:97). Asked to comment on the absence of marks, Cadigan said, “… if the gun was in the bag, perhaps it wasn’t moved too much.” But the Frazier-Randle descriptions show it had been moved a good deal. Besides being carried, it was bounced around on the back seat of Frazier’s car.
The final problem, which only Weisberg seems to have noticed, is that, according to expert testimony, the found bag is put together with tape from the Book Depository’s dispenser, cut by this machine. The machine operator, Mr. West (VI:356-63), indicated he was always at the machine and never saw Oswald use it. But, and this is crucial, tape could only be removed from and cut by the dispenser if it were wet. The FBI expert on paper, Cadigan, confirmed this when he testified (IV :91). The tape came out of the dispenser dampened by a sponge. Oswald could only have gotten dry tape out of it by dismantling the machine, but then it would not have been cut by th
e machine. So the conclusion seems to be that Oswald removed a wet piece of tape, three feet long. How could he have carried it to Irving and then used it to make a bag? If the machine-operator’s description is correct, the bag would have to have been made in the Book Depository.
When? According to the Commission, on the 21st; and then Oswald returned it on the 22nd. But there would still be the conflict about its size between the found object and the testimony of the two observers. Weisberg presents all the discrepancies, but does not see what this can lead to except that the Commission’s case is shaky. The only explanation, however, that seems to remove the conflict is that there were two bags, the one Frazier and Randle saw (which could have been a large supermarket bag) and the bag that was found. This could have been a deliberate effort on Oswald’s part to sow confusion. The bag that was seen could have been disposed of just before Oswald entered the Book Depository (there are lots of rubbish bins at the back entrance, full of paper). Then, during the morning of the 22nd, the bag that was later found could have been manufactured to fit the dimensions of the gun. The bag was happily left in view near the alleged scene of the crime. A careful criminal could obviously have hidden it (along with the three shells). Its presence, like that of bullet No. 399, implicates Oswald. It has his prints and is large enough to have held the gun. Frazier and his sister can supply another link, and Oswald becomes the prime suspect.
If I am right that the bag that was found and the one that was seen are different, this means the rifle entered the Book Depository at a different time from Oswald’s entrance on November 22, and that there was genuine premeditation in Oswald’s actions, to the extent of fabricating evidence that would mislead the investigators. But, one might ask, if the gun was already in the building, why should Oswald bother fabricating a useless bag, and carry it to work that day, and, according to Frazier, claim that it contained curtain rods? It could well be that Oswald wanted to attract attention, get people to suspect him of activities that appeared to be related to the subsequent events of the assassination. What happened may have been intended to happen: Frazier and Randle told the authorities about the bag, and the authorities interpreted this as the means by which the gun got into the building. In this manner the investigators would have been misled, and would not look further to find out when and how the gun got to the Book Depository.
The Second Oswald Page 4