Live by the Sword

by Gus Russo

  Initially, only Oswald’s partial palm print was identified under the barrel of the rifle (10 points of identification are usually required for a positive ID). In 1992, I met with Rusty Livingston, a former Dallas policeman assigned to the crime lab at the time of the assassination. Livingston had saved high contrast photo prints of the rifle, taken before it was shipped to FBI headquarters in Washington. The photos contained evidence that had gone unnoticed, and when Frontline had them analyzed, Oswald’s guilt seemed even more certain. Vincent Scalice, a renowned fingerprint expert and HSCA consultant, was engaged by Frontline and expressed astonishment at what he saw—three fingers from Oswald’s right hand had left their mark just inches from the trigger.

  Scalice, in fact, had located a whopping 18 points of identification. After the production aired, he continued his work and increased the total to 24 points. “If I had seen these four photographs in 1978,” says Scalice, “I would have been able to make an identification at that point in time. After this reexamination, I definitely conclude these are Oswald’s prints. There is no doubt about it.”1 Other experts pointed out that the prints were “fresh” because they would not last long on a smooth, oily metal surface such as the trigger guard housing.

  The spent shells found in the sixth floor window matched the Mannlicher Carcano bullet and bullet fragments recovered from the victims. The shells were found near a freshly-constructed sniper’s nest, and Oswald was the only Depository employee whose prints were found there—in five locations, and very fresh (investigators later left their own prints on the book boxes). Rusty Livingston, who initially scrutinized the boxes for the Dallas PD Crime Lab, had no doubt that the last person to touch the boxes before the shooting was Oswald. “When you have a print on paper, the oils from your skin over time cause the ridges of the print to spread out,” says Livingston. “Oswald’s prints that I found were fresh prints with good ridge detail. His were the freshest prints on the boxes.”2

  Oswald alone left the premises, went home to grab his pistol, and killed a police officer (both the eyewitness and ballistic evidence point to Oswald’s guilt in that crime).

  Although Oswald denied his guilt under police interrogation, he lied about so many things that his denial must be seen in that light. In addition, when he was initially apprehended, Oswald’s statements were cryptic, bizarre, and wholly out of character for an innocent bystander: “I didn’t do anything I’m ashamed of.” He made the same statement to at least two observers. When asked directly if he had killed the president, Oswald replied, “You find out your own way,” or words to that effect. What sort of person would answer this way? Is it logical that an innocent person would not have been hysterically protesting his innocence of such a heinous crime?

  Oswald’s capacity for violence was clearly established. In the months before the Kennedy murder, he had attempted to kill General Walker, proposed hijacking a plane to Cuba, and had to be restrained by his wife from killing Richard Nixon, whom he thought was visiting Dallas—all this is in addition to his history of spousal abuse.

  Despite this and other evidence, early confusion about the type of weapon recovered, the wounds received by the victims, and the marksmanship required by one shooter fueled speculation that Oswald had been set up to take the rap for others. (A small minority of critics even believed in Oswald’s total innocence. I was never in that category.)

  President Kennedy’s death at the hands of a man like Oswald was difficult for many to accept. For some, it was impossible. Doubters rightfully pointed out that the Kennedys had many more capable enemies, including Jimmy Hoffa, the Mafia, and impassioned Cuban exiles cut off from the Cuba Project. Many mistakenly believed that Kennedy’s brief falling out with the CIA after the Bay of Pigs had not been alleviated, making the Agency a powerful enemy as well. Further, the secrecy surrounding the autopsy of the president (which was later shown to be inadequate for the purposes) led many to conclude that information about Kennedy’s wounds was being withheld.

  Then there was Oswald. The Warren Commission staff, unaware of the Castro plots, could provide no motive for Oswald’s alleged act. This lack of motive made the official conclusion a relatively easy target for critics. And there were still other problems with Oswald. Doubters of the official Warren Commission conclusion seized upon the following facts about the accused killer to sow more seeds of doubt:

  Oswald had no felonious criminal record.

  He was not known to be a marksman.

  He had allegedly used a $13 rifle (in the murder of the century) to shoot a moving target two or more times.

  At his interrogation, he insisted on his innocence—rare for political assassins.

  His innocence seemed bolstered when paraffin wax molds were taken of Oswald’s right cheek and no nitrate gunpowder residue (which cannot be washed away) was observed. This was clearly the most ill-considered criticism, because rifles rarely leave this residue. After the assassination, an FBI sharpshooter, using Oswald’s rifle, fired three rapid-fire rounds and immediately took paraffin tests. Both his hands and cheek tested negative.3 Dallas police interrogators were cagey enough to guess that although they knew of the test’s unreliability, the suspect perhaps didn’t. It was a classic “good ol’ boy” bluff that often worked to induce a confession. In fact, homicide chief Will Fritz, a legendary Texas interrogator, later said that he was convinced that Oswald was about to crack when Ruby intervened.

  Armed with these seeming contradictions, a growing army of writers and amateur investigators began combing the official record for the error that, in iron-clad fashion, would prove a conspiracy. Clearly these investigators, with no subpoena power, had no real hope of proving a conspiracy by obtaining a confession from the other conspirator(s). The skeptics quickly determined that in order to prove a conspiracy in JFK’s death, they would have to rely on the physical record of the shooting itself. In essence, this meant that the critics would have to:

  I. Prove by inductive reasoning the existence of two or more shooters— in effect, with hard evidence.

  II. Show that Oswald was physically incapable of performing the murder alone with his weapon.

  III. Show that the wounds suffered by the victims displayed two different trajectories, or could not be accomplished by one person in the given timing. This deductive reasoning would logically imply at least two shooters.

  I will address each of these “proofs” in turn.

  I. Was there direct evidence of two or more shooters?

  This issue is the easiest to dispatch. Impossibly blurry photographs notwithstanding, there has never been direct, hard proof of a second shooter; no consistent witness, no clear photo, no other weapon found, and no confession from anyone with a scintilla of believability. The confessions of such characters as “Tosh the pilot,” “Hugh the shooter,” “James the shooter,” “Chauncey the tramp” and others are so replete with contradictions, absurdities, and profiteering that they deserve no consideration. “James,” for instance, has included in his scenario the “fact” that Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele was in the Book Depository at the time of the assassination. “Tosh” claims to have met Lee Oswald in a secret North Carolina spy school at a time when Oswald was known to be in Minsk. More importantly, none of these “confessions” comes accompanied by any proof of their claims.

  II. The Mechanics of Murder: Oswald’s ability and the rifle’s capability

  Oswald’s Ability

  One of the earliest criticisms of the Warren Commission’s “Oswald alone” conclusion was based on the official Marine reports of Oswald’s marksmanship. The Marine scale starts with “marksman” (the lowest qualifying score), moves upward to “sharpshooter,” and ends at “expert” (the top score). On Oswald’s last test with the Marines, he qualified with the score of marksman. This rating is misleading for two reasons:

  Oswald’s scores were hampered by the fact that they were averaged between sitting and standing positions. When in a sitting position, bracing th
e rifle for steadiness (as was clearly done in the JFK killing), Oswald often scored as a sharpshooter. Dr. John Lattimer, a former World War II wound ballistics specialist for the Army, purchased Oswald’s original rifle scorebook from his days with the Marine Corps. The book reveals that in two rapid-fire tests at 200 yards, Oswald scored a 48 and 49 (out of 50). For these tests, Oswald used the .30 caliber M-1 Garand, which is much heavier, and with a stronger recoil, than the light-weight .257 caliber (6.5 mm) Mannlicher-Carcano used to kill Kennedy. In addition, the M-1 was not equipped with a scope, as was the Carcano. And whereas JFK was less than a hundred yards away, the Marine tests were conducted at distances ranging from 200 to 500 yards.

  A Marine marksman or sharpshooter is anything but a bad shot, as some critics have implied. In 1964, the head of the Marine Marksmanship branch in Quantico, Virginia was Major Eugene D. Anderson. When reviewing Oswald’s records for the Warren Commission, Anderson concluded: “As compared to a civilian who had not received this intensive training, he [Oswald] would be considered as a good to excellent shot.”4 The head of training at the Marine Quantico unit, Master Sergeant James A. Zahm, concurred: “I would say that. . . as compared to the average male of his age throughout the civilian [population], throughout the United States, he is an excellent shot.”5

  Among the numerous marksmen and current Marine trainers I consulted, there is total unanimity on this point. Using expressions such as “shooting fish in a barrel” and “virtually point blank,” the experts call the Kennedy shooting a simple feat for a former Marine marksman.

  The Rifle’s Capability

  If Oswald was up to the task, surely his cheap ($13) rifle was incapable of such a performance, other critics assert. Upon close examination, this too proves to be an inaccurate oversimplification.

  Originally manufactured in 1891 for the Italian Army, the bolt-action 6.5 mm Mannlicher-Carcano rifle Oswald owned has been widely maligned as too inferior to be used in the assassination. The truth is that this weapon is so powerful—and accurate—at the range of the Kennedy murder that it should be among the last choices for a weapon someone would want pointed at them from that distance.

  At the turn-of-the-twentieth-century, for example, the Mannlicher-Carcano was the weapon of choice for those competing in 1,000-yard shooting contests! It was preferred because it was one of the first to incorporate the new idea of “gain twist,” popularized by the famous 19th century American gun-barrel maker, Harry Pope. Gain twist means simply that the grooves inside of the rifle barrel were designed to make the bullet spiral as it exited, much like a well-thrown football. Just as in football, the imparted spiral, or twist, increases the stability and accuracy of the bullet. The Mannlicher has a slightly higher twist ratio (1:8”) than the current military issue M-16 (1:7”).

  The rifle has been further ridiculed because of its bolt-action mechanism, which obviously impedes the ability to fire off multiple shots in rapid succession—presumably necessary under the circumstances. This criticism, however, ignores the fact that the knob on the end of the bolt is not there for either aesthetic reasons or comfort. This practical addition allows the well-practiced shooter minimal hand movement when cycling from the trigger to the bolt— essentially rotating the trigger hand in one plane past the knob, with no extraneous movement. This is easier demonstrated than described. Someone skilled in the weapon’s use could recycle the weapon in under two seconds, much less than was actually needed in the Kennedy case.

  Oswald may very well have been so skilled. I noted earlier in the text that Marina Oswald was disturbed by Lee’s repeated dry-firing speed drills on their New Orleans front porch. Witnesses in Dallas recall the speed and accuracy with which he performed at the shooting range in the days just prior to Kennedy’s murder.

  Oswald’s ammunition was similarly deadly. The Mannlicher Carcano bullets are full-metal jacketed, hyper-velocity (2,700 fps—feet per second), and heavy-loaded (160 grains—twice the amount of today’s bullets of the same caliber). In addition, they are extremely long projectiles, giving them (especially in combination with the gain twist rifle barrel) increased stability. HSCA ballistics expert Larry Sturdivan testified that the Mannlicher-Carcano bullet is “one of the most stable bullets we have ever done experimentation with.”

  After the infamous dum-dum bullets (which caused massive fatal injuries) were outlawed at the end of World War I, this Mannlicher rifle/bullet combination became extremely popular because of its amazing penetrating abilities, which are legendary among big game hunters and ballistics experts. Outlawing the combination was in fact welcomed by military planners because even though the bullet, when striking the torso, caused fewer fatalities, it often disabled two or more soldiers—this, combined with the two men who had to carry out the wounded, showed how economical and strategic one well-placed bullet could be. Mannlicher ammunition has often been the ammunition of choice for big game hunters because it penetrates even the thick skulls of elephants.

  In experiments conducted by Dr. John Nichols and Dr. John Lattimer, using identical bullets (and rifle) as Oswald’s, the bullets cleanly penetrated four feet of ponderosa pine and two feet of elm wood, emerging undamaged. Furthermore, these bullets are considered “over-stabilized,” meaning that after the first penetration, they begin spinning like helicopter blades, which causes even more injury to the second person hit. Sound familiar? In the Kennedy killing, the penetrating abilities of this ammunition allowed one bullet to wound two victims, with the second victim, Governor Connally, suffering massive torso damage from the spinning, “over-stabilized” bullet.

  In summary, the Mannlicher Carcano, when combined with its accompanying ammunition, is clearly a weapon to be reckoned with.

  III. Do the victims’ wounds prove a conspiracy?

  This aspect of the killing, augmented by the secrecy surrounding JFK’s autopsy, has led to the most confusion and argument in the entire assassination debate. The wounds in question, to Kennedy’s head and to the torsos of both Kennedy and Governor Connally, inspire the following debates:

  Toward what source(s) do the entrance wounds point?

  As a matter of mechanics, did a single shooter, from any position, have the time necessary to inflict the wounds, with their given trajectories? The timing was established by the famous Zapruder film of the murder (now available to the public on videotape). Because neither victim was wounded before disappearing behind a road sign, and the wounding was complete when Kennedy’s head was struck, it is a simple matter to conclude, using the film, that all the wounding occurred over a period of 5.4 seconds.

  1. Source of the gunfire

  There were dozens of eye and earwitnesses to the events in Dealey Plaza. However, there are many considerations to be addressed when judging their testimony (see Appendix B). Suffice it to say that the vast majority of those witnesses agree with the official findings: three shots from behind the victims. The fact is that all of the witnesses’ statements can be totally ignored and a solution can still be arrived at using “circumstantial” evidence. In any murder case, the strongest evidence is the hard circumstantial evidence: prints on the murder weapon, and artifacts left behind by the perpetrator(s), buttressed by the suspect’s stated motive. As to the source of the gunshots, the “best evidence” is clearly the wounds suffered by the victims.

  Readers can access many sources for the details, but the controversy over the source of the shots can most easily be summarized as follows. Although it is conceded by even the most vociferous critics that JFK’s spine wound and Governor Connally’s torso wound were inflicted from the rear, the real difficulty in determining direction stems from JFK’s head and throat wounds.

  Regarding the throat wound, the controversy arose over the fact that the small wound seemed too small for an exit wound originating from the rear of the president. Furthermore, there was no autopsy description of the wound because it was obliterated by an emergency tracheostomy performed in Dallas. This issue was to be firmly resolved
when the HSCA examined JFK’s X-rays and photos. Here is a sampling of what they learned:

  Exit wounds leave distinct “abrasion collars” which were detected in the Kennedy photos of his throat (the tracheostomy had left one edge of the exit wound intact).

  The X-rays showed wounds to the internal structures of the neck, strongly suggesting that the spine wound, clearly one of entrance, was directly connected to the throat exit wound. The HSCA also pointed out, in an impressive trajectory study, that the downward, right-to-left direction through Kennedy tracked right back towards the window where Oswald’s rifle was found.

  Kennedy’s shirt displayed a bullet hole in the front of the neck band with the fibers splayed out—still more evidence of an exiting bullet.

  In addition, the only doctors who saw the throat wound (at Dallas’s Parkland Memorial Hospital) have voiced their agreement that the wound could have easily been a wound of exit.

  The head wound controversy revolves essentially around two issues: first, the doctors at Parkland Hospital and the autopsies at Bethesda gave confusing descriptions of the massive damage; second, when the Zapruder film was finally aired nationally in 1975, the public saw that when Kennedy’s head was struck, it jerked backwards, strongly suggesting a shot from the front.

  As with the throat wound, when the doctors who actually examined JFK’s body, and the best scientists in the nation review the evidence, there is no controversy. It has already been noted in the body of the text that the Parkland doctors spent no time in describing or studying JFK’s wounds. Emergency room physicians are trained to restore vital functions, not to measure wounds while the patient lays dying. It is not until the patient is stabilized and the wound treated in the operating room that the wound itself is closely scrutinized—and JFK never made it to the operating room. Therefore, with regard to this critical aspect, the emergency room personnel become mere eyewitnesses, accompanied by all the problems inherent with eyewitness testimony (to be detailed in the next appendix). But even these doctors, after viewing the autopsy x-rays, overwhelmingly agree with the conclusion that Kennedy was struck in the rear of the head.